Loren Paulsson

Claude and Clyde Miller remember 1931 as the year their family’s 500 acres of spring wheat blew away. The last of may, the wind blew hard for several days. It “started in the northeast and turned to the west,” Clyde said. Claude remembers sitting in the house and not being able to see the person across the room. That year the family lived on the money they made selling eggs and cream in Coulee City. Claude and Clyde were born to Reuben and Mrytle Miller on December 11, 1913, joining older sisters Mayme and Nellie. Last Saturday, December 13, 2003, they celebrated their ninetieth birthday with family and friends at the Coulee City First Presbyterian Church. In 1918 the Millers temporarily moved to Wenatchee for Frank’s birth. During this time the armistice was signed at the end of World War I and Clyde remembers the jubilation: including some folks dragging a dummy of the Kaiser down the street. The twins attended most of the first eight grades at the Rock Rose School, but they also we...

When Mildred Scheibner moved into Coulee City in September 1989, her daughter Marilyn Tanneberg was running the Tanneberg Insurance Agency by herself. So Mildred started stopping by what is now the Main Street Center where Tanneberg Insurance is located to pick up and deliver the day’s mail. Someone meets her at the bottom of the stairs now, but she still treks past the fire station to the Center nearly every day on her appointed rounds. The Scheibners raised five girls: Nancy, June, twins Marilyn and Carolyn, and Janet. Mildred now has 14 grandchildren and 28 great grandchildren with number 29 due in the next two weeks. Wendell and Ida Bogart had their first child, Mildred, on August 29, 1909. A nurse traveled from Coulee City to the family’s home near Saint Andrews to assist the new mother and child seven years before the Bogarts became the first family in the area to have indoor plumbing. Mildred was eventually joined by a brother, Maurice, and two sisters, Doris and Winifred. The...

Don and Linda Rushton celebrate thirty years of service at Steamboat Rock Restaurant since the late, longtime Coulee City resident Boyd Jenkin was their first customer November 19, 1973. “Hello,” Linda greets four of the “Presbyterian ladies” as they walk into the Steamboat on a rainy November Sunday shortly after noon. The ladies seat themselves near their accustomed spot as Linda follows with four menus. “They have the best steak in town,” Joyce Jones said to general agreement around the table, though today her diet called for soup and a salad.   The only other diners at the moment are waitress Darlene Luedke’s husband Lew, son Ryan Slahtasky, daughter-in-law Farah and grandson Camryn, but Bob and Pauline Dingman soon seated themselves at a nearby table. “I Think we’re entertaining to look at,” Pauline Dingman said as 8-month-old Camryn checked them out from behind his “I love Grandma” bib.  “The food is excellent. It’s really clean. It feels like home to us,” Claudine Davis...