Farm girl turns 100

After a life of taking care of dozens of children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, great-great-grandchildren and hungry farm crews, Mabel Wheeler will mark her 100th birthday Saturday with fitting grace.

“That’s just how her life has been,” said granddaughter Sue Gilchrist. “She’s so considerate for everybody else that she just had to have her 100th birthday fall on a Saturday.”

Ms. Wheeler was raised alongside 15 siblings in the Moscow mountains and has lived a down-home farm girl life ever since.

She remembered packing half-gallon and gallon-sized Karo syrup buckets full of water from a creek uphill to the house every day. The children would start packing half-gallon buckets and work their way up to hauling two full gallons of water up the hill every day.

“My dad just loved sourdough biscuits, and we’d have them every morning,” she explained of the family’s glut of Karo buckets.

As she grew up, Mabel kept up the farm lifestyle, earning $4 a week as a cook and housekeeper for farm families throughout the area - hard work considering the August days spent over a wood stove cooking for harvest crews of as many as two dozen.

“The worst was ironing day,” she said, recalling the hot, steamy work of pulling irons from the stove to press the men’s chambray work shirts and stiff jeans.

It was on the farm that she met James Alva (Al) Wheeler. The couple was married in 1935, and together lived the farm life, working for large families like the McCroskeys and LaFollettes.

They had three children, daughters Marie Kallenberger, Colfax; Barbara Belala, Davenport, and son James Wheeler, La Grande, Ore.

And to help support the family, Mabel always kept a big garden. Even when the couple moved to Colfax in 1967, Mabel kept up a big country garden in her city yard.

“But I never could get a touch for tomatoes,” she admitted.

“I love tomatoes, but I guess we just never had the right spot.”

Al and Mabel loved to socialize in the Odd Fellows and Rebekah organizations and regularly attended the hopping dances at the Whelan Grange Hall.

And, while the Whelan band cranked out a fast-hopping sound, it was the farm home fiddling of Al that really appealed to Mabel’s ear. She loved when he played her the Tennessee Waltz and another, more obscure number.

“He had another waltz he liked to play,” she said. “He said his dad taught it to him. I don’t know if it even had a name.”

But what she has always loved the best is trips to pluck mountain huckleberries.

As a girl in the Moscow mountains, she and her siblings would grab mason jars and run out to fill them with fresh huckleberries. Later, she would bring back loads of huckleberries from visits with her sister in Montana. Even as recently as the 1990s, Mabel and her brother would head up to Priest Lake to bring back juicy huckleberries.

“I used to make huckleberry-rhubarb jam to give to all my family,” she said.

Gilchrist said Mabel made the “meanest” huckleberry bread pudding.

For her 100th birthday party, Mabel’s family has planned a party at the Cederberg barn north of Colfax, the most fitting place for a long-time farm girl to celebrate. For Mabel, the plans brought back memories of the country parties of her youth.

“They used to have pretty good parties in those barns,” she said. “Up in the hay loft. Of course it was clean, there wasn’t anything but hay in there anyway.”

A reception will also be held at the Courtyard, Sunday from 2 to 4 p.m.