Anna Samp was a thoughtful and generous woman, as any number of her contemporaries living in an Indian camp would testify more than a century ago.
Samp was Don Bauer’s grandmother. He recalled tales about the last of the itinerants who populated small camps not far from the Samp homestead on the bank of Big Creek a few miles east of Elsmore.
The Indian women would stop by and ask for a sack of ground corn meal. In exchange, one in particular promised “to dance at your next wedding,” Bauer heard many times from his grandmother.
Bauer came by for a chat this week, prompted by a recent column about my artifact-hunting days along Big Creek.
Picking up points after freshly plowed fields were scoured by rain was a favorite pastime of Bauer’s when he was young. Heavy rainfall earlier this year washed at the edge of a field on his place and exposed a formation that he intends to explore a bit whenever the creek gets down to an accessible level — the likelihood if hot, dry weather continues.
John Zahm and I looked into a small cave not far from the Bauer spread many years ago, but found nothing. To set the record straight John and a nephew wiggled back into the cave, while I guarded the entrance. I’m not much of one to venture into such geological formations.
The story about Bauer’s grandmother reminded me of one my grandmother, Ada — everyone called her Meme — Oliphant, told me.
We lived in an extended family arrangement on the east side of Humboldt, about three blocks from what then was the Santa Fe Railroad. During the Great Depression, a good many men down on their luck rode the rails — hitched free rides in empty boxcars.
Every now and then one would knock on our backdoor and beg a bite to eat, usually offering to do a bit of work in exchange. She never turned anyone away, making them a sandwich, usually from bread fresh out of the oven and whatever she had on hand.
“On hand” usually meant something from the garden, freshly picked or preserved, or if they came at an opportune time eggs or part of a fryer, which we raised for years in a large pen behind the house.
Our house was on three lots, which left ample room for chickens, a few ducks and a large garden.
Bauer observed the railroad could have been considered the precursor of the Internet, with the fellows riding from one place to another passing word that Grandma Meme in Humboldt had a big heart and a knack for making a great sandwich.
Handouts once were a way of life
