...Henry "Lloyd" Phillips still calls the original farmhouse he was born and raised in "home". At age 85, Lloyd lives in the same two-story home his father built in 1908, located at the westerly end of the current day Ponderosa in the Spokane Valley. ("Born and raised" is just a figure of speech. Lloyd was born at Deaconess Hospital.)
..."Its home," Lloyd said about why he's stayed. "I've never had a desire to move. This is where I've known neighbors for over 50 years."
...Lloyd was born on January 21, 1924, just prior to the stock market crash of 1929. Growing up during the Great Depression, his childhood memories reflect a time when families struggled to make ends meet.
...He remembers his mother saying he was born during a raging snowstorm at Deaconess Hospital. The storm was so bad his father couldn't join his wife at the hospital because of large snow drifts blocking the road out of the farmhouse.
...The small, wood-floored farmhouse has one bedroom, a small kitchen, dining room and front room on the main level. The whole second level was a large open room which Lloyd used for his bedroom. He had no closet in that room, so he used a bureau and a coat tree for his clothes. An open back porch led out to three barns and over 200 acres of fields.
...The farm had no electricity until 1937, or indoor plumbing. It was heated by two wood stoves; one of which was used only when the family had company, Instead of a refrigerator, perishables were put in a cellar to keep fresh.
...The Great Depression changed things for the Phillips family almost overnight. The family went from earning an allright wage to living off an average of $8 a week selling

Lloyd pictured during his military service in 1945. He was a gunner with an anti-aircraft unit serving under General Patton.

eggs, milk and cream.
..."You did what you had to," Lloyd said. "Pioneers got used to anything."
...Every Saturday, they sold their dairy items to the Benewah Dairy. The money they received from the sale was the money they used for the next week.
...If there was any extra money from the sale, the family would go into town for a special treat at a local coffee shop.

... "Coffee, soda and doughnuts were all a nickel," Lloyd remembers. "So for $.30 we had a nice treat."
... The Phillips family earned extra income by taking in boarders, bringing in an extra $20 or $30 a month. Lloyd shared his second-level bedroom with a tenant.
... "I remember one of the boarders particularly," Lloyd said. "His name was Zack Humphreys. He was an old pipe-smoking Welshman. Sometimes I would join him on his walk on the hill. One day on a walk, he let me smoke his pipe. I came back to the house green at the gills and could hardly eat dinner. My mother gave us disapproving

looks, but she didn't say anything."
... Supporting a family on $8 a week didn't allow for many other conveniences, such as new clothes. Patches covered the holes, socks were darned, and when Lloyd wore a hole in the sole of his shoes, his dad inserted cardboard into the bottom of the shoe.
... "You don't have much money to spend foolishly," Lloyd said.
... With a limited income, Lloyd's mom only had enough to buy sugar, flour, and coffee. Sometimes she would buy beef for $.15 a pound.
... The farm provided everything else they needed to survive.

... "We grew apples, pears, cherries and raspberries," said Lloyd. "We raised chickens, cured our own pork in a smokehouse out back. We even made our own butter."
... Lloyd fondly recalls the tantalizing aromas permeating from his mom's kitchen. She baked daily for the family, stretching every dollar they had. During the summer months, she would cook for a dozen hired hands. He remembers her baking bread, raisin bread, cinnamon rolls, pies and cookies.
... 'She would bake sheets of cookies," Lloyd said remembering the cookie jar always full. To this day, his favorite dessert is still cookies.
... On Sunday, his mother sometimes invited the pastor and his family over after church for dinner, the mid-day meal. Before church, she picked out and killed two plump roosters. After plucking the feathers, she used newspaper to burn the remaining fine feathers off and cooled the birds in a bucket of water. After church,

... In those days children were served last. While the guests were served with his parents in the dining room, Lloyd sat at a small table in the kitchen. His mother brought the plate over to him with the remaining chicken after their guests had been served.
... "It's like the Jimmy Dickens song 'Get a Cold Tater and Wait," Lloyd said. "That is

what we did. You never went hungry; you just had to wait."
... When Lloyd was eight or nine, it was his job to keep the wood box in the kitchen full of wood. He split kindling with a hatchet every day after school. His dad taught him to hold his hands on the side of the wood so as not to cut his fingers.

... Lloyd's main job was getting the cows home. Sometimes the cows roamed up the "big" hill west of the house, so he saddled up a spare work horse named Shory and headed out.
... "You'd fall off, he'd wait for you," Lloyd said on Shory's gentle nature. "Sometimes when I was opening the gate, if the cows scared him, he would take off with the cows, and I would have to walk home."
... He also collected chicken eggs, milked cows and helped his dad feed the horses after he came in from working the fields. He was usually done with his work by 8 p.m. so he could listen to his one nightly program,

Amos and Andy, on the large battery-operated radio in the front room. His parents allowed him to listen to one program because the batteries didn't last very long, and his dad enjoyed listening to opera.
... "The radio was pretty good sized," Lloyd said of the radio. "It had three dials, and we had to dial each one to get a station. KHQ was 640 I think, so you dialed 6 on one, 4, and then 0 on the last one."
... Outside of work on the farm, Lloyd played Monopoly with his good friend Martha Gorremans (Eachon), practiced roping poles with his friend Delbert Cox, and played baseball with Francis Shank.

... Each farm was separated by fields so the kids had to walk a good distance to get to each other's house.
... "The price of gas was $.13, but my parents could only afford to put in $.50 worth per week," Lloyd said. "So we walked everywhere. We'd walk as far as where 28th Avenue and University are today."
... Lloyd also enjoyed working and playing at Ski-More, a resort located a few miles south

of Lloyd's family farm. The resort, open on weekends and holidays, featured an Olympic-sized ski jump, a smaller ski jump, a man-made ice skating rink, toboggan run, and indoor ski lodge.

... He was eight when the resort opened. With no money to use the facility, Lloyd would sweep the ice every few hours in exchange for a hamburger and a coke plus use of the resort.
... "I would go to Ski-Mor every chance I got," Lloyd said.
... Phillips spent most of his time at Ski-Mor ice skating. He taught himself to skate using metal blades tied to his boots. To this day, the ice skating pond is one of his favorite Ski-Mor memories.
... In 1937, the farm was wired for electricity. His father sold a steer to pay for the electrician. After getting electricity, the family purchased a state- of-the-art Philco radio. Later they purchased a waffle iron, and electric butter churn.
... He attended the one-room Chester school through the eighth grade. He remembers being the only student in the first grade.
... Graduating from West Valley High School in 1941, he earned a Bachelor of Commercial Science Degree from Kinman Business University in 1943.
... Lloyd worked at the Naval Supply Company after graduating from Kinman. Leaving Naval Supply, he went to Browns' Trailers. He was working there when he was inducted into the service in March 1943. While serving under General Patton, he was awarded the Purple Heart for being shot in action.
... Upon being discharged from the army, he returned to the farm in 1946. His father had a heart attack and passed away while working on the farm in 1949.
... Afterwards, his mother was offered $40,000 for the farm. Lloyd met with her and convinced her to give him a chance at farming it. She agreed, as long as he paid the property taxes.
... He began dairy farming in 1951, and owns the property to this day. Over the last sixty years, he has had three marriages and five children. During that time, he lived in another home just south of the farm for thirty years while raising his children, renting out the farmhouse to hired hands. But in 1999, Lloyd remodeled and moved back in to the farmhouse, where he lives today with his wife, Faith.

... To the Editor of The Twice-A-Week Spokesman Review: In the testimony of ex- Senator R.C. McCroskey before the state railway commission and his figures in the cost of raising wheat, particularly in the Palouse country, he stated that the average yield in the Palouse was about 35 bushels to the acre, from 10 to 15 bushels more than the average in the Big Bend country, and his figures are not far from correct.
... He stated further that the taxes in the Palouse country were about $.40 to the acre, or $.80, with the summer fallow, or $64 to every 160 acres; while in the Big Bend, Lincoln County, we are paying $.44 an acre, or $.88 and put in the fallow. It might be possible that some parties pay more. My taxes for 1906 were $114.93 and for 1907 $123.70 on 281 acres. And still, according to figures, the land production is less from 10 to 15 bushels to the acre.
... If the Palouse farmer can not make the land pay, where is the Big Bend farmer going to come out? I think it is time for the farmers to unite and look into these things, or else our high-salaried officers and the railroad companies will take land and all.
... Why not have some good, reliable, and well informed man in the Big Bend, like ex-Senator McCroskey, find out why our taxes are advancing each year and nothing to account for it, while all the land today is under cultivation, and we can say that every one in Lincoln county pays taxes. All of the homesteads are gone. After all, taxes are going up at the rate of $5 to every 160 acres this last five or six years and if they keep on climbing, it will pay better to sell the farm and run for a county office.
... - Henry Phillips