Thaine A. Norris

Our Life Together

by Eloise Norris

Chapter 1:  The Beginning

Thaine A. Norris was born October 30, 1917 to Vernon Stephen Norris and Rubie Alameda Morris Norris.  He was born in a sod house on the homestead north of Burlington, Colorado.  They were there a few years working so hard to build a productive ranch.  Thaine was the fourth child in the family.  His sister Grace was the oldest.  Then came Verlin and Velma.  There were there during World War One and the great flu epidemic.  Mother Norris helped a number of the neighbors when they were sick, as well as caring for her own family. 

When Thaine was three years old, they moved to a neighboring town where Vernon had traded their homestead, sod house, fruit cellar, and a good well for a grocery store, stocked, and a new car.  After a few months, they discovered that the stock in the store wsa not paid for.  So in the new car, they took Thaine and his older brother and sisters and moved on.  Nadine, his younger sister, was born when Thaine was eight years old. 

Vernon Norris had suffered with typhoid fever in the first few years of their marriage and recovered from a broken leg while on the homestead.  The family excused his inability to settle down to those problems.  They moved around from one job to another in Kansas, Nebraska, and Colorado.  Thaine attended 13 different schools in 12 years. 

They came into Natoma, Kansas when Thaine was in the eighth grade.  He met me his future wife, Eloise White, that year in school.  Natoma is a small town and we associated with the same group of students.  Vernon was working for his brother-in-law in his oil well drilling and refining business.  We could buy gas for 10¢ a gallon then.  Thaine worked at the well site and refinery during vacations and in the summers.  He also delivered groceries for the store in town to the farmers.  I went with him a few times that summer. 

They moved to Ft. Collins and Boulder for Thaine's Sophmore year.  Then they returned to Natoma for his Junior and Senior years in High School.  Thaine and I began dating those years and grew to love each other.  I went to Denver after graduating to work in my uncles restaurant.  Then I went to Ft. Collins to stay with another aunt and uncle.  So Thaine and I got to spend some time together then.  I worked in a little restaurant there too.  I would got off at 10 pm.   Thaine would come down and walk a couple of miles to my aunt's house after work.  Then he had to walk back to town to his sister's home where he was staying. 

When the Norris's returned to Kansas, they moved back to Salina.  Thaine and his dat started an oil re-refining business.  I went to Dodge City to go to business college.  I worked for my board and room at my uncle George Putnam's home.  His wife was seriously ill.  For Spring vacation that year, Thaine borrowed his brother Verlin's car and drove to Dodge City and took me to his parents' home in Salina for the week.  Then back to Dodge City to finish school.  I passed the tests in typing and shorthand well enough to have gone to Washington D.C. to work.  That's what some girls did for better pay than in Kansas.  But I just wanted to go to Salina to work so I could see Thaine. 

Chapter 2:  Marriage, Moving, and Family

I got a job in a stationary store for $60 a month.  Rented a room in a home with board and settled in.  Thaine took a job to train for management in a Firestone store for $75 a month.  So we went up to Natoma on a Sunday (October 2, 1938) and were married at my parents, William and Kathryn White, home.  We returned to Salina where we had rented an apartment for $15 a month.  It was a two bedroom and Verlin planned to stay with us to help with expenses.  Thaine was working 70 hours one week and 80 hours the next.  I lost my job so was home.  After a few weeks of those aweful hours, Thaine decided we should go to his parents home in Boulder.  

We moved in with Thaine's parents and Nadine.  She had to give us her bedroom and sleep on the couch.  They didn't have running water in the house, no bathroom, just an outhouse out in the back yard.   They had fruit trees and a large garden spot.  Thaine got a few laboring jobs in construction and I drew unemployment for a few months.  At $7 per month it was very little help for groceries.  We had a sack of onions, a sack of potatoes, and lots of carrots.  A little hamburger along was our diet.  Certainly was a change for me.  We had beans, lots of beans.  Then I became pregnant with our number one son, Terry Alan.  That summer, Thaine got a job in a grocery store.  It paid $18 a week.  He worked at least 10 hours a day, with Saturdays being 12 to 14 hours.  We rented a small apartment close to the store.  The bedroom was upstairs.  The last few weeks before Terry arrived I had to crawl up the stairs to bed.  Terry was a couple of weeks late and was a heavy load.  So on xxxxxx, 1939, around 8 am Terry arrived. 

The next Spring, we moved up to Left Hand Canyon into a cabin of bed bugs.  Thaine and Verlin were cutting lumber for the saw mill there.  They cut the trees, hitched a big old white horse to a bundle of logs, and skid them down to where they could be loaded onto a truck and taken to the saw mill.  It was really a rough cabin—just a shell.  So Thaine got lumber from the saw mill and linked it inside with 1x8 lumber.  We put linoleum on the floor and set up a bed for us and Terry's baby bed which had belonged to Sister Grace for cousin Dick two and a half years older. 

Then the bed bugs started moving in with us.  We put the bed legs into cans of kerosene, so they couldn't climb up that way.  They they would drop off the ceiling onto the bed.  I would feel them hit the bed or me.  I would light the lamp and chase them down.  So we started spraying the inside of the cabin with gasoline.  We would spray it Saturday morning and go down to the folks house and go back up Sunday.  We got rid of the bugs and didn't burn up, which was almost a miracle. 

While in Boulder I would wash Thaine's clothes and the sheets in Mother Norris's washing machine which rocked back and forth.  Then ran them through a wringer into a tub of water and from the rinse water through the wringer into a basket and hung them on the clothes line.  The rest of the laundry I wahsed on a wash board at home.  Always washed the baby clothes each morning in the babies bath water.  But we were young, healthy, and very much in love. so we got along fine. 

Thaine eventually put a barrel up on the side of the cabin so water could run into the sink he put in the kitchen for me.  So we had running water.  I cooked on a coal or rather wood range.  Baked bread, cake, etc.  We fed Terry jars of baby food and put left overs in the window with a screen to keep cool.  We dipped a barrel into James Creek for our water.  There weren't many people around then and it was at least fairly pure.  I used lots of clorox too. 

Terry was almost a year old and toddling around.  October arrived and it was pretty cold at night.  Thaine would jump up and build a fire in the little stove we had in the living room/bedroom combination.  It would warm up fast.  Then Verlin's birth date was arriving.  Thaine was working up at Ward in a gold mine then.  So he was getting ready for work when my labor pains started.  It was only 7½ months, but the baby was arriving.  Thaine went to the neighbors to call his Dad.  He had to call his uncle, who was chief of police in Boulder to get word to his Dad to come up and take me to the hospital.  It was a maternity hospital a couple of nurses had opened in a big old house on Mapleton St.  There was no incubator or usual equipment, but Verlin Stephen arrived that evening on xxxxxx, 1940.  I stayed in bed there for 10 days.   During that time Thaine and Vernon moved us down to their home again.  They wanted to go to Kansas again and needed someone to stay with Nadine so she could continue going to high school. 

Verlin only weighed 4 lbs 10 oz and had to be fed every two hours around the clock.  Thaine had to find some construction work around town, because we had no car, so he couldn't go up to the mine to work.  There we were in a house with no bathroom and no water in the kitchen, except for what was carried in.  The heat was a parlor furnace.  We burned wood and coal.  Thaine would take a trailer out to a mine and fill it with coal.  We would bank the fire at night, so it wouldn't be too awfully cold for me to feed the baby every two hours all night.  I was nursing him, but he didn't care whether he ate or not so I would pat him on the back to keep him awake enough to nurse and count every swallow to be sure he ate something.  Guess it worked.  He just celebrated his 60th birthday.  Verlin and Terry were both 6 footers. 

In 1941, Thaine started driving a truck, which brother-in-law Chuck Wilson owned for the State Hiway Dept.  That paid a little better, but meant moving around wherever they were building roads.  We were living in a motel in Denver.  Thaine found a homemade mobile home we could buy for $100.  We borrowed the money to buy the mobile home and had to move to Kremmling to work.  We moved that Sunday.  Thaine drove a truck pulling our new home and I drove our car with our two babies.  We arrived in Kremmling that evening.  The heater in our home wouldn't work, so Thaine took it all apart to fix it.  About midnight my labor pains started.  It was only eight months, but our third son was arriving.  There was no hospital and no doctor in town.   The old folks home in town took me in.  Sister Grace thought she was going to have to deliver that baby, but in the nick of time the doctor from Hot Sulphur Springs arrived and delivered Kenneth Dale Norris on xxxxxx, 1941.  He weighted 5 lbs and had to be fed every two hours like his brother Verlin who was 11½ months old. 

Thaine rented a cabin and parked our mobile home next to it.  My mother, Kathryn White came out to take care of us.  Of course I stayed in bed for 10 days as everyone did in those days.  After I was up and around, mother made new slip covers for the home.  In a few weeks, we moved to Hot Sulphur Springs for the rest of the winter.  I was washing diapers for two babies and trying to dry them in freezing weather.  It was 40 degrees below zero at night and not much warmer in the day time.  But we survived, babies thrived, and we were happy. 

Chapter 3:  Drafted

World War Two started with the Japanese attack on Perl Harbor.  I stood in the mobile home ironing clothes and heard Congress declare war.  We always had a little radio for news and music.  In August of that year Thaine was working on the highest road in the world—the Mount Evans highway. 

We later heard that men were needed in Denver at Remmington Arms, our arms factory.  So we returned to Boulder and Thained worked in the munitions factory.  A few months later Thaine got blood poisoning in his arm from the powder he was working with.  We nearly lost him, but he pulled through.  Then we heard that men were needed in Mare Island in California.  So Thaine and his uncle Ray Morris went with a bus load of men to California.  Then Thaine's parents came out and packed up the boys and I and took us back to Kansas to my parents' home.  That was in the Fall.  We stayed there until Spring.  By then Thaine had quit the Mare island job because they put him to work in a machine shop without proper ventilation.  He refused to work under those conditions because he had seen silicosis of the lungs in miners in Colorado and knew what would happen to him if he worked in a place like that.  He went to San Pedra and got a job in the ship yards.  He found an apartment for us in Banning Homes.  I drove our 1936 Buick and our three little boys to California.  Kenneth was 15 months old, Verlin was about two and a half, and Terry was three and a half.  A friend of my sisters' was wanting to go to California so she rode out with me to help with the babies.  We had to stop in Albuquerque, New Mexico to have two tires retreaded.  Thaine sent $50 for the tires and to get us on to California.  He was very happy to see his family when we arrived. 

In a few months Thaine went to work in a screw machine shop.  They were making aircraft parts.  In a few months he became foreman.  He could set up the machines better than men who had been working there for years.  He had quite a long drive to work from San Pedro and got some traffic tickets.  He was afraid he would loose his drivers license.  So I went to work in a plant that made aircraft gas tanks.  They were covered with heavy black rubber which had to be stretched over metal tanks.  When Thaine went to court and did not loose his license, I was happy to quit.  We found a house in Gardena which was close to his work.  We lived there until we returned to Kansas. 

Thaine was Drafted!!  Ordered to report for duty.  I had a broken arm and the boys had mumps.  He called Boulder, where he was registered and asked for 30 days to get us moved back to Boulder.  Before that time was up, the atomic bombs were dropped on Japan and no more men over 26 were drafted.  Thaine was 26. 

We decided to go back to Kansas.  My Dad offered Thaine a White Eagle service station to operate.  My parents were living in the telephone office, operating the switch board 24 hours a day.  So we moved into their home in Natoma.  We stayed there six or eight months while Thaine operated the station and worked on the side to invent some new playground equipment.  We had a bad car accident in which I broke my left heel bone.  I was on crutches for a few months.  So Mother and Dad Norris came back and stayed with us to to the necessary house work until I was able.  When they left for home I hopped around on one foot cooking, hanging out laundry, and caring for my boys.  When I was healed up and limping around we decided to move back to Boulder.  By then I was pregnant again.  Darrel Gene was born in Boulder on xxxxx, 1947. 

Thaine was working in a gold mine up by Ward.  So we found an apartment in the mouth of Left Hand Canyon closer to his work.  Terry and Verlin were in school by that time.  In order to get to school, they rode into town with a man who worked at the courthouse.  They had to go in at 8 am and didn't get home until after 5 pm.  They were six and seven years old.  I don't see, looking back on it, how they stayed well.  A few months later we moved to an apartment in town.  Thaine had gotten a job doing construction work.  He started out carrying wood for $2 per day.  Some of his friends who were carpenters, helped him pass the Union Carpenters exam.  So he made more money working as a carpenter for some months.  He worked on the dam at Estes Park for awhile. 

Chapter 4:  Home in Boulder

Walter Moore started a subdivision in North Boulder.  We borrowed $100 from Sister Grace and paid down on a acre.  Thaine worked out the $600 balance, helping Walt Moore, evenings and weekends.  While working on the dam at Estes, he saw an old filling station that would be flooded by the lake.  The owners gave him the material if he could move it.  Some friends had a truck so they helped Thaine load up the material and hauled it down to our acre.  Thaine and his Dad used that lumber to build a 24' x 26' house for us.  Dad Norris said that Thaine build the house with a hammer in one hand and a switch in the other.  The boys did need a little pushing to pull the nails from the old lumber.  No wonder, they were six, seven, and eight years old.  Daniel Lee was born on his brother Ken's birthday, xxxxxxx, 1948.  We moved into our little house on November 30, 1948.  We were sitting in the middle of rocks, cactus, and grasshoppers.  The horse ran in the pasture behind the house.  The so-called street to our house had the irrigation ditch running down the middle of it.  We had no bathroom and our heat was a tiny coal stove. 

We carried the water in a five gallon cream can for the kitchen.  Thaine got barrels of water  for laundry from the Watts-Hardy Dairy.  He backed the trailer with the water on it up to the front door and I bucketed it into the washer and tub for rinse water.  That was the way I did laundry for five children, my husband, and myself.  He would go to the outhouse with the boys before they went to bed and we used a chamber pot through the night.  Of course I washed the baby clothes every day in the baby's bath water.  In the Spring we had a well driller drill a hole on our first acre on the west.  It made very little water, but Thaine and the boys piped it to the house.  Then I had a sink and Thaine put a bath tub, toilet, and lavatory in the room we had provided for that.  So we finally had running water!  But because there wasn't much water in the well, it was always running dry and loosing prime.  So I wore a path through the June grass going out to the well pit to prime the pump.  That grass was at least 15" tall through the Summer and did it ever catch in the boys' socks and jeans. 

Chapter 5:  Norris Brothers Drilling Co.

Because water well drillers seemed to be in such high demand, Thaine and his Dad got ahold of a little old rig and drilled a few wells before the rig was repossessed.  The man who sold it to them didn't really own it.  What drilling they had done seemed like a good business to be in, so Thaine soon found another rig.  Soon he had more calls than he could handle.  So he called his brother Verlin from his job in Kansas.  They named the business "Norris Brothers Drilling Co."  They worked hard and made good money.  We grossed $3,000 the first year.  Thaine also sold and installed pumps on the wells they drilled.  We would go on Sundays with my little portable typewriter and fill out FHA loan requiests for many of the people whom they had drilled for. 

Chapter 6:  Norris & Sons Drilling Co.

While Thaine sat in the mountains waiting for the old cable tools to beat their way through the granite, he came up with the idea of a jack hammer at the bottom of the hole drilling through the granite.  He drew up plans for such a "down the hole" drill.  However, when he took his plans to a company in Denver that built rigs they said it was a great idea, but someone else had beat him to it.  So Thaine bought the Mission Hammer from Texas.  He had the first one in the West.  He built a special rig to hold a compressor and what was needed to run the hammer.  So he began to drill mostly in the mountains.  Verlin wanted to stay around town to drill.  So they split up.  We becane "Norris & Sons Drilling Co." and Verlin became "Verlin E. Norris Drilling Co."  Thaine bought a second rig before long.  He hired men to run the rigs.  He drove his Lincoln Continental around overseeing the work and installing pumps, and contracting work.  All these years I had done all the bookwork, filed the State logs as required, all the government returns for taxes, etc.

In 1960 Thaine was elected as President of the Drillers Association.  Whenever a rig was around so he could, he drilled another hole on our property.  He finally found a good well in the southeast corner of our second acre.   In January, 1961 Terry married Janice Kline.  Then in September of that year Kenneth married Joni Burton.  A few months later in December Verlin married Judy Smysor.  Three boys gone from home in five months.  If I hadn't had the other two boys left at home, I felt like I would have had a nervous breakdown! 

I managed to pull through the trauma and start working on plans to build 1555 Norwood Ave.  We had the house built to the plans that we drew up and moved in in June, 1965.  Darrel and Dan had bedrooms in the basement where we also had a big rec room with floor and ceiling finished.  Thaine panelled the walls sometime later.  We had a pool table and table tennis table down there.  The boy's friends enjoyed playing there with our sons.  In a few years Thaine bought a used 16' fiberglass boat and we spent many Sundays on the reservoir water skiing and picnicing.  Those few years took us away from First Baptist Church where I had been singing on the choir.  If I wanted to see my family on Sunday I needed to pack a big lunch and join them at the reservoir.  Darrel and Dan became quite expert skiers, whizzing around on their slalom skis.  I even got so I could enjoy a ski turn or two.  Darrel even took the boat out with some of his friends during the week.  Then it seemed that the wind would come up every afternoon so those lonv evenings of skiing became a thing of the past. 

Chapter 7:  Divorce

In 1968 I decided to quit doing the book work for the drilling business.  I hired a woman and worked with her for awhile until she could take over.  Then I took a Real Estate course and got my salesmans license.  I guess this was that Thaine was wanting.  After a few months he moved out—office and all.  He asked me to file for divorce which I did at his insistance.  In September, the day after our divorce was final, he married Barbara Schory.  Darrel had gotten married that Spring the last boy to go.  So Thaine said he was free to do what he wanted.  I was devastated!  Even thought I knew it was coming. 

I had to make the best of it, so I got my brokers license, worked hard, and went to the conventions.  I made many friends, which I had never had time for before, and did lots of dancing.  The first thing I did was take square dancing lessons, which Thaine would never do.  I danced with the Swinging Singles.  A retired C.U. Professor asked me to dance with him which I did until he was no longer able.  I was fascinated by the beautiful round dancing, so took those lessons.  Met a man from Denver who asked me to dance with him.  He was very good and we had a wonderful time for several years.  I even traded the boat for Fred Astair dancing lessons.  Got good enough to dance with the men in Denver.  Some of my friends and I would go to Denver and dance the night away. 

I took a leave of absence from Broak Realty where I was associate Broker, to help my Mother take care of my Father.  We took care of him at home as long as we could, but finally had to put him into a nursing home. 

In 1978 I got a chance to buy duplexes from the City.  My offer was accepted and I borrowed money to have them put on the Oak Street side of the two acres.  It took nearly a year of hard work to get them moved, set on basements, hooked up to city services, and painted and then rented.  Many a harrowing story lies herein of my struggle with the city, etc.  But I won out.  I rented them sucessfully for a few years.  Had the yards landscaped and sodded.  Hired homeless men to plant trees and bushes which I watered each week all summer and once a month all winter.  They grew nicely.  Ken put in a sprinkling system.  Had the drivways paved and rented them.  Then I decided to have a new house build at 1535 Norwood Ave.  I moved into that house and rented 1555 to an old friend who needed to move out of the mountains.  I fully expected to live the rest of my life alone.  I took a number of trips with the Senior Citizens Group, even went to Europe for 27 days. 

In the Spring of 1982, Mother White moved into my lower level at 1535 Norwood.  Thaine had been divorced from Barbara for several years by then.  He had served as a State Examiner, one of a board appointed by th eGovernor.  He sold the drilling business to Dick Wilson in 1973.  He did some drilling for the Government all around the West, but that played out.  Then he sold the buildings he had built for rentals to Disk also. 

Dick paid Thaine so much a month for ten years.  When the ten years were up and the money quit coming in, Barbara found another man.  She had been looking and testing for years.   Thaine divorced her and moved to Texas to work with a promoter friend.  After two or three years, he began to come to Boulder to visit his sisters, Velma and Grace who lived here.  They worked at getting us back together and they succeeded. 

Chapter 8:  True Love Never Dies

Mother White passed away in November of 1982.  She was dead set against my remarrying Thaine.  When the family was here for Mother's funeral, my sister's husband said we should go for it, if I wanted to.  So Thaine began courting me again.  It wasn't long before I realized that I had never stopped loving him and he felt the same.  With no one talking against our remarriage—don't know if I consulted the boys, we were remarried on April 1, 1983.  I had never found anyone to take his place and was tired of the single life and of being so alone.  

Thaine had nothing but his social security, but I had rent money from several houses and the duplexes.  I thought he would help me take care of repairs, etc. but he just wasn't up to it.  So I just gradually sold off the houses and even the duplexes.  That was probably a good deal for I carried the second for ten years, so we had a good income there.  Then when it got to be too much for him to mow all the grass around two houses and half an acre in the middle, I sold that too.  Don't know why I didn't just hire it mowed as I had done for years.  Anyway, we had 13 good years together before his heart just stopped.  Of course there were several surgeries on his heart and various other illnesses through the years, but I stayed well and helped him recover.  After two open hearrt surgeries, staff infection, etc. it finally caught up with him.  So now I have to grow older alone after all.