When one writes for a newspaper you never know who reads what you write. Nor do you know how many lives you touch.

Until someone picks up the phone and gives you a call. Like one rainy morning last week when my phone rang.

An elderly woman’s voice: “Does Mrs. Tippett live there?”

“This is Janie,” I replied.

“I’ve wanted to talk to you for so long,” she said. “My name is Vera Culver and I live in Elgin, but I was raised on the Divide and up Big Sheep Creek.”

Vera said she was born Vera Nadine Fruitt in 1928. Vera and her family lived up Big Sheep Creek, and she and her siblings attended school on the Divide. Her dad worked for the Huffmans, and built fence for the Fruedenbergs, she told me. Vera said she went to school with Jean Butler, and the Huffman and Bird children. She said she wanted to tell me how much she looks forward to my columns about Wallowa County. Hearing those stories triggers memories of her childhood on the Divide.

Vera’s family lived out near the Downey Lakes area, which meant the children had to go over the Cat’s Back to get to school. But then, recalls Jean Butler, who remembers Vera, everyone lived a long way from the school.

Vera, now 80 and widowed, told me about the time one of her baby brothers was born. Her dad was gone, she said, and they needed help, so her mother told her older brother to saddle up a stallion (a horse he’d never ridden before) and ride to the grandparents’ place. Off went the brother down Big Sheep Creek – but when he arrived, their grandfather had just passed away. And by the time he returned to his mother, the baby had come into the world on its own.

“I’d been told babies slid down the stovepipe, left there by a stork, so this was all a bit confusing,” Vera said. “My mother told me to keep the wood cook stove going to keep the place warm, then she tied and cut the cord. Then my mother had me brown some flour on the stove, and carefully cut a band of cloth. And when the flour was browned (sterilized) to spread it on the cloth. Then my mother put this around the baby’s tummy.

“I was really puzzled because this baby didn’t have soot all over it, how could it come down the stovepipe?”

In today’s complicated world we sometimes tend to forget that among us are folks like Vera who have lived when times were such that you couldn’t call on a service for help … you took action yourself. And folks who sprang from these humble beginnings continue to live into their old age. However, we are losing many of them. Which is sad, because we’re losing a library of stories.

Was saddened to hear of Ray Brown’s passing. Ray and Charlotte, his wife of 65 years, lived on Eden Bench, up the steep winding road from Troy. Ray just celebrated his 89th birthday. Years ago, Ray and Charlotte purchased property on Eden Bench, and realized a dream of building a house there. They named it Brown’s Eden, and with its stunning view of the Grande Ronde Canyon, their beloved home lived up to its name. For years the couple recorded their lives, which revolved around the small settlement of Troy, on a video camera. Whether it was a wedding, a new bridge being built, a school picnic, or the Fourth of July Parade in downtown Troy, Ray was there with his camera. Every year at Christmas they would present their friends with a copy of that video, wherein they had documented the seasons, the wildlife, the weekly appearance of the garbage truck, high water on the Grande Ronde, rafters, and numerous fishermen over the years.

Our old folks are our treasures. Next time you’re in the nursing home say hello to Mike McFetridge – he’ll be 100 come November, or Ken Kooch, who owns a Century Farm on Alder Slope.

Wayne Marks celebrated his 90th birthday last Saturday in Imnaha. And then there’s Wilmer Cook up on Alder Slope, who’s made all those checkerboards for so many of us. And don’t forget Mike Vali, he just had a birthday too. We know we live in a beautiful part of the world, but a good part of that beauty radiates from the good folks who call this place home.