Publisher's Synopsis
My Mother's diaries 1933-1935; and her childhood memories and (Miller) family history. My narration and her words are dedicated to all mothers in memory of my Mother Ernestine Marie (Miller) Owen. My Mother, Ernestine (Miller) Owen, was born October 27, 1913. Ernestine was a wife, mother and homemaker - she was also artistic and creative. Her husband, Ralph, my father, was a farmer and carpenter who worried about the deeper meaning of world events. My Mother did not worry about world events. She filled her days (and nights) as a homemaker and a mother -- she focused her creative energies on artistic craft projects; she spent her 'spare time' filling many scrapbooks with pictures and memories of her family and friends. This is a collection of her memories, from her diaries, photos and scrapbooks. It is her eyewitness account of "The Greatest Generation." Ernestine Marie Miller lived her entire life in Jackson County, Iowa. For those not familiar with Iowa; Jackson County borders the Mississippi River mid-point between Minnesota and Missouri. During her childhood and young adult years she did not have much free time or any money to travel more than fifteen miles from her childhood home in Stony Point. In 1931, she met her future husband, Ralph Owen when he and the Hiland Owen family of nine, moved into the house at Stony Point across the road from the Harry Miller family - the home of Ernestine Marie Miller. Soon after Ralph and Ernestine first met at Stony Point, Ralph traveled to Ardmore, Oklahoma and lived with his Uncle Percy Preston. While in Ardmore he attended one semester and a summer session of high school. In the spring of 1933, he returned to the Owen family home in Stony Point and rekindled his friendship with a special young lady who lived across the road. Ernestine Marie Miller was born October 27, 1913, in the farm home of her father's parents, Nick and Emma Miller. The Nick and Emma Miller farm was located on the southeastern edge of Cod Fish Hollow, about five miles south of Stony Point. In 1921, Ernestine and her parents and younger brother Wilford moved to a farm at Stony Point. Her years living at Stony Point always held a special place in her childhood memories. Stony Point was named after the jagged limestone ledge at the site of a one-room country school where Ernestine Miller attended from 1921 to 1930. Stony Point school was at the edge the driveway to her home. A few years after Ernestine graduated from 8th grade, the old wooden frame Stony Point school burned to the ground. A new brick school building was built a half-mile east, it also destroyed by fire during the 1960s; arson was the suspected cause. Cod Fish Hollow was settled in the early 1800s by families from the northern coast of Germany and nearby areas of Denmark. Ernestine was born in her paternal grandparents home at the east edge of Cod Fish Hollow; also the childhood home of Ernestine's future mother in-law, Ralph Owen's Mother, Helena (Schneekloth) Owen. Helena was a young girl, when she and her family moved to Cod Fish Hollow during the late 1800s. Yocum Schneekloth, Helena's father, was the first person buried in the Cod Fish Cemetery; her mother and brother are also buried at Cod Fish Cemetery. Much like Cod Fish Hollow, Dark Hollow is a mystical place. An aerial view shows a kidney shaped bowl, with a tree- covered ridge running north and south through the middle of the bowl. Grassy pastures and a few hardwood trees cover the steep slopes of Dark Hollow. Before the 1950s, tall trees nearly touched their branches across the narrow dirt road that cut a path through the deepest, and darkest, part of Dark Hollow. Now, if you drive through Dark Hollow, there is more sunlight on the road -- some of the trees have been cut and the dirt road has been widened and covered with a layer of gravel.
