A Quiet Life

             What’s a quiet life?  Is it living on a farm? Or is it a small community? Or is it in the big city?  Is it during peacetime?  Or war?  Is it somebody who lived a short life?  Or is it retirement?  Is it somebody who travels?  Or a stay at home person? Or is it an ancestor you haven’t researched?

I have over 7,000 names in my family tree; covering both my family and my husband’s family.  Maybe that’s the quiet life – researching your family tree.

Do I think I have a quiet life?  I have a very busy life.  So, I do need those “down” times.  I grew up on a farm.  Yes, it was quiet but it was work – pulling tansy so that it won’t get mixed in the hay or the cows won’t eat and get sick.  You had to get to it before it blossomed and went to seed.  It was hay season where  you had to stack the bales either on the truck or in the barn.  It was weeding the vegetable garden then harvesting it in the fall.  It was moving the cows from one field to another.  It was bringing them in to be treated for pink-eye.  It was feeding them hay in the winter months.  But there was a fun time!  In the winter when it snowed, we got to go sledding on our own property using an intertube.  In the summer, we rode our bikes to either the river or the neighbors to swim.  We had our quiet times too – camping, fishing, and hiking.

I started working for a living when I was 17.  At first, part-time as I was in school.  Then in 1979, I started working full-time for the State of Washington and going to school part-time to get my degree.  I did take vacations – like a trip to South Dakota to visit an old high school friend and a trip to Kentucky to meet family and do research.  I met my future husband at work.  We dated for a little over a year before getting married and having a family.  I still worked until 2021, when I retired.

When did genealogy come to play?  1980.  That Kentucky trip? – it was in 1982.  1984 was a trip to Iowa to meet and research my dad’s family.  After that it was just short road trips to local cemeteries, courthouses, and libraries until retirement.  My husband & I took a vacation in 2016 by flying to Virginia to visit our son who was stationed there.  We had rented a car and visited sites in the area before moving on to Washington DC area then on to Butler County, Pennsylvania.  It was in Pennsylvania that we did some research on my husband’s family.  Visited a cemetery, a community that was owned by an ancestor, and a courthouse.  We returned a few years later (2025).  In 2021, when we did our Route 66 road trip, we took some time to go to Wisconsin where my family had lived.  Wasn’t able to do as much research as desired.  Was going to do more when we were back in the area last year but that didn’t happen.

I’m looking forward to our next cruise for that quiet down time.  Yes, cruising is our quiet time.  We’ve done several since our first in 1995.  We’ve done Alaska (2x), Caribbean (2x), New England/Canada, Panama Canal, and now Hawaii this fall.  Another Caribbean cruise is planned for 2028 in the spring.

An Address with a Story

           

Zenkner Valley where I grew up.  It had many addresses – it first started out as a Rural Route with a Box number (Rte 2 Box 276).  Then it became an actual street address (21903/21904 Zenkner Vly Rd SW).

       Edward William Kludt and his wife, Bernice Swinehart, purchased the 120 acre farm on May 1, 1954 from Earl and Ann Shearer.   Description of the property:  NE quarter of the SE quarter of Section 20 and the north half of the SW quarter of Section 21, Township 15 North, Range 2 West, WM, excepting therefrom county roads known as McElfresh and Zenkner Roads, in Thurston County, Washington.[1]  They lived on the farm until 1957 when their son, my father, William Edward Kludt and his wife, Joycelyn Bea Keesee, took over the operations (not ownership).  

In 1962, Bill & Joyce purchased a dairy farm of their own in Rochester.  They sold it in August 1967 and returned to Zenkner Valley where they raised their children. They turned the farm into a beef instead of dairy.  In June 1975, Papa (Ed Kludt) passed away and the farm came under the ownership of my dad, Bill Kludt.

I left the farm in the Spring of 1979.  At that time, it still had the rural route address. By the end of 1979, it became known as 21903 Zenkner Valley Rd SW.  At the same time, the folks decided to build a new home across the road (address was 21904 Zenkner Valley Rd SW).  They moved in and sold the farm house and barns (total of 40 acres) in June 1980.  In 2005, they sold another portion of the acreage (no buildings) known as the back 40.

In 2020, the folks decided they could no longer take care of the remaining 40 acres that they lived on nor could they be in a two-story home.  So, they purchased a home on the prairie and sold the remaining property to the owners of 21903 Zenkner Valley Rd.  These same people had purchased a portion of the original back 40.  So, an original 120 acre farm that was sold in pieces is almost back together.

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[1] Various Deed Documents downloaded 4/23/26 from https://eagleweb.co.thurston.wa.us/thurstonrecorder/eagleweb/docSearchResults.jsp?searchId=3