The following are excepts from the diary of Hannah Asp during a summer that she worked for the John Olin family near Chinook, Washington. A copy of the diary was generously donated to us by Bernice Olin. This is the fourth installment in this series. If you haven’t read the first installment it can be found here, the second installment here, and the third installment here.
August 12, 1902
This morning I made up my mind that I would behave myself to-day and the first thing I did was to misbehave. When I went to ring the bell this morning August came up first and I ran and he ran after and he caught me just as we came to the kitchen door and I gave a scream and just then the engineer came in and he said, “What are you doing?” I tell you I felt pretty cheap.
I washed in the forenoon and got through with the scrubbing just at 12. Mrs. Olin set the table for me said I could finish on the forenoon. We had to rinse some in the afternoon so it was 3 before we got through. Then we rested till 4 and then began with supper.
August 13, 1902
I ironed in the forenoon as much as I had time to. At noon Mrs. Kronholm and her little baby & girl and they stayed till after 5 o’clock.
August 14, 1902
This morning we overslept. It was 10 min. past 6 when Ina awoke and she jumped out of bed and ran to the stove to make a fire. I woke from the noise and got up and Mrs. Olin woke too so she came to see what was the matter. Breakfast was made in post haste. I can tell you I took longer than usual to do the dishes this morning so I did not get through before nearly 10 o’clock. In the afternoon I ironed the rest of the clothes. This evening August, Alfred and Jack came up here a while and talked to us in the kitchen.
August 15, 1902
This forenoon it rained so hard that the men could not work but they worked in the afternoon. In the afternoon I showed Mrs. Olin how to make thread picture frames. This evening when I was chopping kindlings in the woodshed the engineer came there. He said that I was getting along fine in the wood-chopping. It was he who taught me how to cut kindlings. He wanted to borrow my ax because he said he was going to make a roaring fire tonight.
August 16, 1902
This morning it took me so long to do the dishes that I did not get through till 10 o’clock. In the afternoon we scrubbed and cleaned up and got through at half past three. This evening Mr. & Mrs. Olin and Mr. Christians and I are going to Chinook and stay there all night and go on a picnic tomorrow.
August 17, 1902
August went with us to Chinook. We started right after supper. They had an auction there for the Swedish Church and we went to it, and had a fine time. They had some very nice things to sell and they came pretty high too so I think they must have made a good deal of money. Mr. Christians bought a white apron which he gave to me. It had a very pretty lace. Mrs. Olin is making a pattern for herself now. I stayed with Mary Nelson and we did not go till after eleven o’clock and they were not through with the auction yet. I got up at 6 o’clock in the morning but there was nobody else up so I stayed in the room till Mrs. Nelson went down. I should have been at Baziel’s store where we were to start from at half past seven and when Mrs. Olin got ready she came down to Nelsons to get me. When we came to the store they did not have the horses harnessed so we had to wait a while. It was nearly 9 when we started and besides having to wait so long we got only a grocery wagon although John ordered a buggy but that did not spoil the fun.
The way over there is very pretty. It is not very far either. After we passed the Chinook bridge we drove down on the beach till we came to Wallicot. Wallicot is a little place at the mouth of the Wallicot river. After that the road passed through some woods and then over ah ill where nearly all the trees had their limbs cut off and as they were nearly all white it looked like a white forest. The next place was Ilwaco. That is quite a little town. It has two streets running parallel with the river and I don’t know how many the other way. It has also some stores a livery stable, some saloons one stone building, a school house and 3 churches I think I saw. The railway runs right out to the docks where the steamer lands, so I should say it begins there and goes through Ilwaco & Long Beach. About half way there was a little lake. The road was along the south side of it and toward the west end it branched off in 2 parts and we could not see how far they went because of the trees. The banks were just lined with waterlilies and on an end of it was a patch of cattails. After we had passed the lake there were different kinds of trees. I did not see any spruce & hemlock only pines just like at Seaside. The land was very flat and covered with a kind of brush with red flowers (the flowers were all bloomed out though). On places were bunches of crab-apple. Just before you get to the beach there is a raise in the land covered with pines and there is a road going through. Just as we got on top of the raise the whole sight “burst on our view” as they say in story books and the roar of the ocean got very much louder. We drove quite aways southward along the beach and left the horses under some trees in the shade. We ate our lunch on the shade of a large rock. It looked just like Tillamook Rock. There was a hill behind it too, to represent the mainlands.
John was cook and made coffee for us. Mrs. Olin went down on the beach to find some shells and Mr. Christians & I climbed the hill behind the rock. From the top of it we could see the whole beach. At the south end are cliffs and up at the north end it looked like a little town but it was so faraway that we could hardly see.
After we came down we climbed to the top of the rock too. It was about as high as a one story house. Then John announced that coffee was ready so we had our lunch and brought our things to the wagon and then set out to explore the beach. We started toward the place where we saw the little town. Olins got tired before they had gone far and turned back and went to the cliffs but Mr. Christians and I kept on till we came up to the town and found that it was only a line of houses built along on the bank. The distance made them seem close together. We went up on the bank and sat down on the grass a while and then went back through the town of Long Beach. We wondered why there were so few people on the beach and now we found out the reason they were mostly in the town. They have all kinds of things there. I even saw a real log house and they had fish net for curtains. There were also a house trimmed with net corks. They had quite many hotels & public houses. We went in at a restaurant and had ice cream.
When we came to the road we went down in the morning we went down on the beach to find Olins. They were hitching up the horses already. They had found some water at the cliffs so went to water the horses first. While the horses were drinking we went out on the cliffs. It was a pretty sight, when the water came dashing over the rocks. There were some people fishing out on the rocks and they caught a fish while we were there.
We at last turned our faces homeward. When we came to Ilwaco we brought our horses to the livery stable to be fed and while we were waiting for them we strolled around the town, had some ice cream, and took a walk down to the wharf where the Potter lay. We then went to the stables and got our horses and started again. We got home at the quarter past ten without anything worthy of mention happening. We were all very tired but we had had a very pleasant day and what did we care.