I am sorry that my letter is late. Writing is one thing that I am not good at. I can talk a lot better than I can write.

   There are so many things that I did as a girl in Palmdale, but they may not be interesting to the folks that live there now. I lived there the first time in 1910 and started to Grammar school there in the (old) red brick school house. I was the only child in the first grade. We had an elderly man for a teacher and he taught all eight grades. Later when we moved back in about 1915, they had made two rooms out of the school and had two teachers. I graduated from grammar school in the new school and was the only girl in that class. One of the boys I remember was Kenneth Sadler.

   One of the fun things that I got to do was to ride up on the Helper Engine to Vincent and back. The train men were all our friends.

   I met my husband at a dance in Palmdale. He courted me for several years and we were married in 1921. We will celebrate our 50th Wedding Anniversary the 25th of November. We lived in Lancaster and our four children were born in Lancaster. We now have twelve grandchildren and four great grandchildren.

   While I was still a young girl, I was voted the Belle of Palmdale. I have a lot of fun kidding about that. Vaudeville shows used to come to town for a one night show and they would sell boxes of candy kisses and in each box were so many votes. I was lucky and knew most of the folks there so I got to be voted the Belle of Palmdale. A lot of my votes were from the Ritter boys and the train men who lived in Palmdale to help big freight trains up the hill. I still do now know if I was the first Belle, I was only the Belle for that one night. Thanks to my many friends who voted me in.

   The one thing that really frightened me was when the gypsies would come to town. We had no protection in those days and about two or three times a year the gypsies would come through town in covered wagons. They would steal from stores, the women would go from door to door telling fortunes and begging I worked for a Real Estate man named Jarvis J. Phillips, his office was across the street from the Palmdale Inn. He also had the library and telephone office (Bell Telephone, I might add). I was Chief Telephone Operator etc. We also sold stage tickets, there was a stage going each way once a day, it ran between L.A. and Lancaster. On their way out of town, the gypsies would stop in front of the office and yell that they would "keel" me. (Kill) I always locked the door when I saw them coming.

   I write this like I was an only child. Besides my mother and dad (who worked on the railroad) there was my sister Ruth and brothers Bill, Earle, Irving, Glen (who was born in Palmdale), sister Mildred and brother Mark. My mother and dad had Bob and Jack later in Lancaster.

   I am sorry that I have jumped around so in this letter and I do hope that you can read it. As I said in the beginning, I lived in Palmdale many years ago, so this could be very boring.

Yours truly,
Mrs. Maude Settle Mumaw
44663 N. Beech
Lancaster, CA 93534


P.S. My husband, the children and I moved to Burbank in 1933. We moved back to Lancaster after my husband (George Mumaw) retired from Warner Bros. Studio. He worked there for over thirty years, not in front of the camera, but behind the camera as a Grip.