AMERICAN FALLS
Grandma Morris Pioneer Tough WATER ARCHIVES
BY MAX JENKINS
WATER ARCHIVES
COURTESY MAX JENKINS
I
TOP: Pocatello, 1954. MIDDLE: The author's Grandma Morris with other family members. BOTTOM: American Falls orchard, circa 1915.
n April 1916, after enduring several years of drought in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, Grandma and Granddad moved with their four children to Idaho. Grandma’s brothers and sisters had already purchased train tickets to Idaho, and my grandparents sold their small ranch and boarded a train to American Falls. When they arrived, Granddad bought a one-room house near the Snake River. He negotiated to purchase a homestead, which required him to live on the land, so Grandma stayed in the house in town, enabling the children to go to school. I have no idea how she and four kids could live in a one-room house. My Aunt Jo, Mom’s sister, interviewed Grandma Morris just before her death and wrote an essay about her life. Aunt Jo’s written description of the living conditions was simply, “It was crowded.” About a year after their arrival, Johnny Morris, my granddad, was killed in a wagon accident near the homestead. The child who would grow up to become my mother, Orpha Mae Morris Jenkins, was then two years old. Times were tough for Grandma and her children. She was left with only thirty-five dollars and, in those days, there were no safety nets for widows with children, just the help of friends and neighbors, who were also poor. But Willie B. Wallace Morris was a tough pioneer woman, who lived to the age of ninety-four. Her family had bounced between Missouri, Oklahoma, and Arkansas. One of the moves became necessary when her grandad got into an argument with his boss and shot him in the chin. Her father had anger issues, and all his kids left home at the first opportunity. Grandma met a veteran of the SpanishAmerican War, Johnny Morris. After a summer and fall courtship, they got married and moved to Broken Arrow to get away from Grandma’s dad. In Idaho after her husband’s death, Grandma was desperate. She was introduced to a thirty-five-year-old © JUNE 2021 47
