Helen Catherine Monnot [50]

  General Notes:

Helen Monnot (Lively), born in Pasadena, California to L. P. Monnot and Mary Hatfield. The Monnot family settled in Gridley, California on a small farm that provided a subsistence lifestyle. L.P Monnot worked as a carpenter, hay bailer and other agriculture related enterprises as the need arose. The Hatfield side of the family relates back to West Virginia; the Monnot can be traced to French origins and possibly to famed painter, Monet.

NOTES ON THE MONNOT FAMILY FARM

Gerald Lively: I remember the farm very well. It might have been as small as 14 acres but to us kids, my sister and I, it was as heaven as heaven could be. We were small back then; six, seven, eight years old. We loved visiting there in July and August when the orchards were in harvest. We were allowed to climb up on this very tall wide-stanced "fruit tree" ladder beneath a gigantic fig tree on the western side of the house and eat figs right off the tree. My sister, Catherine, always wanted me to pick the figs so she wouldn't have to touch the white sap that seeped out of the fig stems. I would flick off that stem and hand her a fig, and we loved doing that. We ate figs until we burst.

The water for the house came from a hand pumped well in the front yard. It always took a great deal of pumping to get it going, or so it seemed to me. And the water was always cold, even on those hot summer Gridley days. It never ceased to amaze me that the water came out of the ground, and was clean and cold.

Grandpa (L. P. Monnot) would take us cat fishing in Butte Creek in a row boat he built, and he used cork, a hook and a worm. We always brought something home.

There were those gigantic peaches, how delicious they were. Out in the barn we joyed in the hunt for chicken eggs in the loft, and the squad of meowing kittens that gathered at milking time. It was all hand milking and those kittens couldn't get enough of those squirts in the face. There were hundreds of feet of climbing red roses running the fence lines, the magpies squawking in the tree, the walnuts from the tree in the front yard, and helping churn the butter until our little arms seemed like they would fall off. Making ice cream was the same experience, it was turn, turn, turn and it always grew more difficult, not easier, to turn some more. Chicken dinner, Grandma (Mary Lee Hatfield) chased the chickens, caught them and chopped their heads off, grewsome; but the chicken was good and we soon forgot the anguish of the chicken kill.

The Monnot farm was a bit of heaven. It lives in memory now; the house is gone as is the barn, the shop and all the magic inside of it. The roses and trees are gone too. It is nothing more than pasture land now. Butte Creek is too polluted to fish anymore and the water is mostly drained off for irrigation.

I wonder if I dreamed it all. I wonder if it was real.

GL

  Noted events in her life were:

• Family: Helen with husband in Concord, California, 1961.

• Burial, 1980, St. Dominicks Catholic Cemetery.

Helen married John Unknown [2478] [MRIN: 845]. (John Unknown [2478] was born about 1915 in Butte County, California and died in Los Angeles, California.)

  Marriage Notes:

Never married.

Helen next married Samuel Edgar Lively Jr. [49] [MRIN: 48], son of Samuel Edgar Lively Sr. [44] and Cora A. Eagle [45], on 17 Dec 1938 in Reno, Nevada. (Samuel Edgar Lively Jr. [49] was born on 5 May 1920 in Gridley, California, died on 28 Jun 1978 in Benicia, California and was buried Saint Dominicks Catholic Cemetery in Bencia, California.)