They Came to America . . .: Ida Simone Merenz Davidson

This is an autobiography of Ida Simmone Merenz Davidson. It is not the complete story of her life, but we are grateful for what she left.

After my mother [Bertha Noemi Flamand] died of consumption, when I was 24 months old, my father brought my sister Helene [9 years], my brother Gabe [4 years] and me, Ida [2 years] to America from Aure, France in 1912.

My father had a half sister who was married and had twelve children of her own. They asked my dad to come to live with them. They had a large ranch in Montana; so we three children stayed with them while my father built a small cabin for himself on land adjoining the ranch. He stayed there three years by himself. This is what was called homesteading. After so long, the government let you have the land for yourself. Dad then turned the land over to the Franks in payment for our keep for four years.

It was so interesting to live in such a large family. So many things happened that are still vivid in my mind. They had huge wedding chivarees where the men drank moonshine liquor and had fist fights. We kids were so frightened. We had under the beds where we were safe and out of the way.

My brother was whipped with a cat-of-nine-tails [three leather straps fastened to a handle] for being accused of doing something which later was proven he didn’t do. He carried those scars to his grave. I saw a man who had too much to drink try to crawl through a barbed wire fence. There was blood all over his white shirt. Guess he got where he was going. I didn’t wait to find out.

Two of the Frank boys were in the Navy during the World War I. Grandma Frank made all their own sausage, ham, wieners and we churned all our own butter, made huge pans of homemade bread which I remember was so good with homemade butter and jam.

I started milking cows when I was five, rode horseback, gathered eggs and fed the pigs. We all had chores to do, and we did them well. It was a good life though. Grandma Frank was very strict with all of us including her own. But she was good to us too. One event that took place every Friday night without fail was eight o’clock rosary on our knees in the parlor with a chair to learn on. Guess it takes about an hour to say the rosary. We were all good Catholics.

After we left Franks, Dad rented a farm. My sister, brother and I worked real hard to help make a living. Of course, all was done with horses and by hand. No tractors or milking machines or hay bailer then. I don’t think we minded the hard work though, cause we seemed to always be happy and healthy.

During the winter of 1919 and 1920, Dad to put us in a Catholic orphan’s home, because the winters were too severe, and he couldn’t make a living. So Dad worked for the sisters at the home as janitor. I contracted the flu which was so bad those two years. I was administered the Last Sacraments of the Catholic church. Anyway, I got better and was able to go back to the ranch in the spring. My sister [Helen] didn’t fare so well. She had diphtheria, appendicitis and pneumonia. She was in the hospital a whole year. After she was well, she stayed and went to high school and became a dietician and worked in the hospital. She didn’t come back to the ranch anymore—only to visit.

Helen and Ida Merenz

It was such fun growing up in a community where everyone knew everyone else. Large community picnics were held on the 4^th of July. Also ball games, sack races, three-legged races, flag pole climbing, catching greased pigs and horseshoes. Then all the marvelous food the women were preparing and dances at night until four o’clock in the morning. Everyone was so tired and happy with the whole family together.

I guess my brother and I were kind of special cause we didn’t have a mom. So the ladies made over Dad and always kept check on my brother and me. We couldn’t have been naughty if we’d have wanted to. The ladies all saw to that.

My brother and I had to walk four miles to school. We milked anywhere from eight to sixteen cows before we went in the morning and again in the evening.

In the winter, we had a sleigh driven by two horses. Dad put bells on it and would go around and pick up all the kids for a sleigh ride. Everyone loved him and his sleigh. They called him Jumper cause they couldn’t pronounce his name, Jean Pierre Merenz.

When I was thirteen, my brother fifteen, we had a very sad experience. It happened in November at the community where we went to school. There was also a store, a creamery and dance hall. There was a turkey shoot held there a couple times a year. People from all of the ranches came. The little children were put to bed for naps in the store where the owners lived upstairs. Everyone was outside at the shooting range [my brother and I were both good shots] when someone noticed smoke at the store. By the time everyone ran over, the store was in flames with three children inside. Needless to say, it burned to the ground with no water available.

Well, this was real cold weather time. Dad was working eighteen miles away at the time. Gabe and I were so frightened, we wouldn’t put fire in the stoves. It’s a good thing it was a weekend and Dad came home cause Gabe and I were in our beds almost freezing to death.

On Sundays, most of the young people would get together on horseback at someone’s ranch. We’d ride steers, rope calves or hogs—anything that would run and try our hand at riding untamed horses. This was all good fun—no one seemed to ever get hurt. Our parents all thought it was good training for us.

About this time, my sister Helene was working for Charles M. Russell, the famous western painter. This was in Great Falls, Montana. We visited her there. The house was so lovely and Mr. and Mrs. Russell treated us so gracious. She was a grand person. The cabin where Mr. Russell painted was so interesting.

My dad got an old Model “T” Ford. My brother and I took it to dances. I would lay on the running board with a flash light because the lights always burnt out.

I went with a boy who was the youngest of a family of 16. I couldn’t go with boys but met them at dances. We danced and had supper with them. My dad didn’t let me go with anyone until I was 17.

I knew the young men driving in the hub mobiles were loaded with liquor. They would sell it to the farmers and in town. They had to go right by our ranch. I didn’t know that sometimes Ernie was with them.

My group from Eden would go to Stockett to dances. There was always a group from Great Falls that would come and get in fights with our guys and break up the dances. I found out later that Ernie was part of that group from Great Falls.

When I was 16, I went to help during thrashing time about 12 miles from where my home was. I helped the lady cook for the thrashers. At night, this good-looking guy kept coming out. I thought he was visiting the lady I was working for. After the third night, I found out that he was coming to see me, because the lady was his aunt. I let him drive me home for the weekend. He lived in Great Falls. He had a Chrysler Roadster with a steamboat whistle on it. When he got to the town of Stockett, about six miles from my home, he would blow the whistle and I could hear it. The sheriff would take out after him for disturbing the peace—but never got him. Later he and the sheriff became friends. In the winter, he would come out as far with the car as he could, and I would go to meet him on horseback. My dad decided that he didn’t like him because he was too old—nine years older. I would sneak and meet him anyway about 1 ½ miles from home. We went together two years before we got married.

My brother married his school teacher--the one who taught him in the eighth grade. She was nine years his senior.

I went to Great Falls to get work doing maid service while still going with Ernie. We got married when I was 18 on the 1^st of September. He was driving a laundry truck. We drove to a little town and got married during his lunch hour. He gave me my engagement ring in April.

We lived in a one-room apartment. I didn’t know much about housework when I first got married. Ernie was driving a laundry truck and wanted to teach me to do my housework instead of going back to bed. When he would make his calls outside of town, he came to get me to take me for a ride. If I didn’t have my housework done, he wouldn’t take me, and I would cry and cry. He didn’t like a dirty house. His mother was very clean.

I got pregnant right away. When I was seven months along, my sister-in-law came into town off the ranch. She had had Gilbert and came in for a check-up. We walked to town and were waiting on the corner to cross the street. Two dogs came across and knocked me down. I fell as hard as I could on my backside. We laughed so hard cause it was funny. The dog came and licked my face which made it even funnier. I went up to the apartment and called the doctor. He told me to get right up to the hospital. He told me I would have an April Fool’s baby. Marilyn was only six pounds coming a couple of months early.

When Marilyn was about two, we had a big kitchen cabinet that hooked on one side. She was missing one day. Everyone was looking up and down the street, and I finally remembered she had been playing with the pots and pans. She had crawled in and shut the door. She had cried herself to sleep. Marilyn used to lay on her stomach looking into the neighbor’s basement windows and fall asleep with all the neighbors out looking for her.

Once, I ran up to the store for something one day and left the door open. The breeze blew a black feather from out of her pillow back and forth. When I came back, I found she was petrified, sitting as far back in her crib as she could. This is why she is so afraid of bugs.

We had a coal stove and bucket. She was always in the coal eating it. She was always black from that. When Marilyn was three, Ernie went out to help the Eagles decorate graves for Memorial Day, and I went with him. They put an Eagle flag on the graves. We left Marilyn in the back seat asleep. It was about three miles from home.

I was helping him find the graves and he got quite a ways ahead of me. I found an interesting headstone made of flat shale rock. Ernie turned around to see where I was and all he could see way my head out of a grave. I went right down through the casket and everything. I said, “The Devil’s come to get me.” He said to the day he died, he would never forget the look and color of my face.

Ida, Ernest

Beverly and Marilyn in front

When we got back to the car—no Marilyn asleep. The caretaker told us he saw a little girl trudging over the sand hills going home. Finally, we found her with a dirty face crying about one-half mile away. She woke up, couldn’t see us so she started home.

Several years after Beverly was born, we moved into our own house which we were in the midst of building. It was not completely finished—not all roofed or windowed. Every time it stormed, we would grab the kid’s beds and put them where the roof was finished. Marilyn is three and some older than Beverly.

Ernie’s mother, brother, and sister lived next door to us. Murray was working on his garage, and I wasn’t paying attention to what Marilyn and Beverly were doing. For a long time it was quiet. I went out and looked for them. They had a 2” x 4” and a hammer. They had used a whole sack of nails and pounded them into the 2” x 4”. Murray never swore, but he was threatening them within an inch of their lives.

Beverly and Ida

In 1936, we were in Chicago at a convention when Ernie’s mother died. It took two days to drive back without stopping.

In 1939, Dad disappeared. He walked to town one day to come up for dinner. He was working on the west side of town. He was walking which he loved to do. He just vanished. We had his name and description broadcast on the radio. We went clear out in the country and had the river drug, and to this day, he has never been located or do they know what happened to him.

During the war, Ernie wanted to go on a ship and be a machinist and join the Navy. So he went to Seattle, because there was no other place around Great Falls. They didn’t take him in the Navy, because he had had a mastoid [ear] operation. He had had a lot of experience when younger so they told him to go to Spokane or Salt Lake, because they needed railroad people. This was 1941. So he went to Spokane but he was six months over the age limit to get on there. So they told him to go to Salt Lake or Ogden. He came to Ogden and they hired him despite him being over the age limit. The kids and I came to Ogden in January of 1943--the war having started in December of 1941.

Ernie and I were married for 43 years--some good and some not so good but mostly good. He died April 24, 1971 of emphysema and heart failure.