THE BEGINNINGS
She awoke early on that chilly morning in March with the realization that her baby wasn't going to wait the full nine months. It was just eight months. Her husband was out of town on business, and nothing was ready. Bert, her oldest stepson had already left the house and Elliott, 14, and her stepdaughter, May, 10, were stirring. Then her son, Charles, only 17 months old himself, woke up. The mother rose, packed some toilet articles in a bag, left the little one in the care of the older ones, and got ready to go to the hospital.
She checked the contents of her purse; not really enough for cab fare, and any incidentals the children at home might need. So she didn't call the cab. Instead, she went to the corner, boarded the street car and went to the hospital by herself. At four o'clock that afternoon, in the middle of a snowstorm, the black-haired baby girl was born. I was that baby.
I don't remember anything about our family life in Salt lake City. The family lived in a large two- story house on 13th South near 9th East. Later we moved to another house on Main Street on the hill leading from the Temple area up to the Capitol Building on the north bench above the city. Years later I went back and took pictures of the first house, but the second was gone by then.
Sometime when I was three, we moved to Brigham City, where my first memories begin. We rented a house on the west side of town, set down below its neighbor on the south. There was a cement retaining wall on that side. I was frightened every time we drove into that driveway. I wanted to get out of the car and get away from that Wall! When I played outside, it was always in the middle of the yard, or better yet, on the north side of the house where I couldn't see the wall. (I guess the fact that my mother was just learning to drive at that time had something to do with that fear!)
In spite of this fear of the wall, I had a happy time there. My father's consulting business took him away a lot. But one time when he was home, he built a little table for me to use when I played with my dolls. I had some nice toys which had been handed down to me from my sister, May; an oak rocking chair, a little red kitchen chair, an electric stove and electric iron (which I wasn't allowed to plug in until I was older, or when May or someone else grownup was there) and a doll bed. This table, though, was made especially for me, and it made a big impression on my young mind. I used it with a little table cloth embroidered with a peacock, and four little napkins, made by my Grandma Brown. Sometimes my brother, Charles, would come to my "dinner."
I was always close to Charles, who was less than a year and a half older than I was. At that time we didn't use our given names with each other or with other members of the family, but were called “Brother and Sister.” Sometimes, though, when there was reason for emphasis, say when we didn't come when called, then it was "Charles F.!" and "Almeda!" I was small for my age, and that earned for me another nickname, "Midget," which my cousins, Bob and Tenney Johnston, always used, even when I was grown up.
Later that same year we moved to a red brick duplex on North Main Street, and it was there that I had my fourth birthday and a party. Our special friends were Steve and June Johanson, who lived a few houses to the north, and Donald Day, who lived on the corner beyond them. There were two more girls and a little boy whose names I don't remember. At the party we played games, led by my sister, May, including a trip through the bedroom, which was supposed to be a jungle with wild animals. The little boy whose name I don't remember, was frightened and upset, so he took the present he had brought and went home. The other children stayed for cake and ice cream, and I opened the other presents. My mother gave me a little boy doll, and a doll trunk to hold its clothes and the clothes of the other dolls. That little boy doll became my favorite, and I named him Eugene.
There were some severe rainstorms that summer. The thunder and lightning scared me, as much as going through that downstairs bedroom where the wild animals were supposed to be. During one particularly bad storm, we were huddling on the couch, when the lightning and thunder came right together. The lightning struck a tree down at the corner. After the rain stopped and the fire engines were gone, we were allowed to go down and look at what was left of the tree, black and awesome.
Not long after that the family decided to drive to Salt Lake City. We got as far as Willard, where we were stopped, because there was a huge pile of dirt and rocks on the road. The houses were half buried in mud. I asked a man what happened, and I thought he said a big giant had moved all those rocks and mud, and was still in the muddy water coursing down. What he probably said was that it was as though a giant had done it, and there was still danger in the stream. But impressionable as I was, I really believed the giant story! There was nothing to do but turn around and go back to Brigham, since there was no longer a road there.
Many years later I learned that my husband and his family had tried to take a trip to Ogden from Bothwell, that same day, and they got to Willard after the road was gone, just as my family did! Every once in a while throughout our life together, he and I have discovered we were in the same place at about the same time, but we didn't know each other. As children we lived about 34 miles apart, so those times were not too often; but of course when we were in college, that could have been often during those first two years.
Back to my childhood again, things went along quite smoothly during my fourth and beginning of the fifth year. My mother was working away from home, and Charles and I missed her when she was gone. To help us understand her going away, she had taken us to see where she worked, in the county Court House. Charles was a bright boy, and he remembered the way. Whenever we had trouble with the baby sitter (an older woman who didn't really like us, we thought) we would run away and go find our mother. Then she would have to leave work and take us home again.
We really would rather stay with our sister, but of course she had to go to school and didn't take care of us very often. One day, though, we were alone with her, and to keep us busy and happy, May decided to make fudge. Soon the candy was bubbling, and delicious odors of chocolate filled the kitchen. Then suddenly as May was beating the candy, the pan jerked from her hands, and spilled the hot viscid liquid on her arms. We ran to the neighbors in the other side of the duplex, and the lady took care of May and got her to a doctor. None of us realized it at the time, but this accident was the first indication that May had developed a disorder know as St. Vitus Dance, or chorea. It is a nervous disease, in which there are irregular jerking movements caused by involuntary muscular contractions. It was frightening, but by avoiding things like hot pans of fudge, she gradually recovered, with no more serious accidents than broken dishes occasionally.
It was some time after this that we went to Salt Lake to visit my Aunt Hulda, Mother’s sister, and her husband and family. Uncle Adrian was a guard at the state prison, and they lived in a grey stone house, the second or third house up the street from the prison, which was built on a square of the same grey stone, with a high grey stone wall around it, with a watch tower at each corner. It was with a feeling of dread that I looked at it, and I transferred that dread to the grey stone house. I didn’t like being there, and I was glad when Uncle Adrian left his job and took the family to homestead a farm in eastern Utah.
In front of the house on North Main Street were two tall evergreen trees in which many birds lived. In the spring one of the baby birds fell out of the nest and died. We children picked it up, and someone decided it needed to be buried. We located an empty match box, lined it with scraps of cloth, put the bird in, and had a funeral. Charles and I were too young to have known much about funerals, except that our Grandfather Brown had died in Loa, and our father went to the funeral and burial. It must have been older children who planned that funeral.
That summer we moved again, this time to South Main Street, to a lovely big old house which had been divided into two apartments. We had the south side, and really enjoyed living there. One blight on our happiness was May's operation on her leg. She evidently had suffered from Polio as a baby, when she had a very high fever and almost died. Now when she was fifteen her left leg had drawn up and become shorter than the other. The operation cut cords in her leg, and then a cast was put on it. She got used to the cast, and soon she could run almost as fast as I could, even with the cast on her leg. It finally came off, and the leg slowly healed, but the scars remained all her life. Later the leg became shorter again. This time nothing was done to it.
There were children in this neighborhood, too, and we made friends again. We played war games, and the bad guys were the always the Germans. The rhyme that sticks in my memory is, "Kaiser Bill went up the hill, to take a look at France. Kaiser Bill came down the hill, with bullets in his pants." The big hero of the day was Jack Dempsey, who had just become the World Champion Heavyweight boxer. I was proud that we had lived in Salt Lake City on the same street as his mother, and where he grew up, although I was too young at the time to remember even the house we lived in. Charles started school, in the first grade, and he really liked it. I missed him while he was gone, but fortunately it was for only half a day.
We made two trips to Logan that year, where Mother had meetings to attend at the college. The first time we stayed in the Plant Industry Building, which had been built during World War 1 as a barracks. We took showers in the gym and had our meals in the cafeteria. It was fun. The next morning when we started home, we found in our car a car robe. Someone must have slept there and left the blanket.
The next trip we stayed in an upstairs apartment on 4th North. Daddy would walk with us up to the college, stopping on the way to rest under a big tree about half way up the hill. The grass was long, and I learned to braid, and made necklaces for all of us. When we got to the Animal Husbandry Building, we had ice cream cones. First, though, Daddy insisted we drink a glass of buttermilk first. I guess that's where I learned to dislike buttermilk. Elliott came to visit, too, and he taught Charles and me to make battleships out of folded newspaper, and we had mock battles on the little balcony off the apartment.
As Christmas neared that year, my father took me to the store to look at dolls, so I would know what kind to ask Santa to bring me; he always telephoned before Christmas to ask what I wanted. Sure enough, that Christmas, there was a lovely red-headed doll, just like the one I had picked out in the store!
That Christmas was also noteworthy, because we had flu. When it was my turn, I was ensconced in a bed in a little alcove off the living room, instead of upstairs in our airy rooms among the trees. As I was beginning to recover, my half-brother Elliott came home. He had been working in Salt Lake City, where he was studying for the competitive exams for entrance to the Naval Academy, where Bert was already studying. Elliott brought for my Christmas present a little tea set made of orange colored metal with black flowers on the rims. I had that tea set as long as I played with dolls and was almost grown up, when I finally gave it and other things to some second cousins, who didn't have much.
THE EARLY LOGAN YEARS
Not long after Christmas, Mother's work took her to Logan, and the family moved there. Since Charles and I had just recovered from the flu, we went with Mother on the train. I had a new thick wool cape, woven in knife pleats, in red and yellow stripes. Daddy and May drove the car. They met us in Logan at the station, and we went to the Bluebird restaurant for dinner. I had the first of my favorite suppers, a grilled chicken sandwich, called a "toastwich." We rented a house just east of the 4th Ward L.D.S. Church. It had a furnace in the basement, and it was our first experience with central heating. We were all happy with that. Charles, though, didn't want to go back to the Benson school after just one day there. No one ever knew why he didn't like it, but my parents agreed that he could stay out a while and didn't force him to go. That was nice for me, because he was there to play with. He had an electric train and an Erector set, and I was allowed to play, too. We also had Lincoln logs, and various other toys. Outside there was snow and a new sled, which livened things up, too. My doll population had grown to 17, counting all the tiny ones, and I was allowed the hall closet to house them and my other toys.
The winter gradually turned into spring. My birthday came and went, and I lost my first tooth while eating a peanut butter sandwich. May had made friends who liked to get together in the evenings and sing songs. When they gathered at our house, I joined in and learned songs such "Yes, We Have No Bananas" and "It Ain't Gonna Rain No More." There was a boy named Jack O'Neal who lived up the street, and the girls all liked him, even me, (but I don't know what happened to him in later years.) That summer May went to the Church MIA Camp in Logan Canyon. On the last night our parents took us up to visit and have dinner with the group. I was so thrilled and impressed, I couldn't wait to get old enough so I could go to Camp, too. (Unfortunately I was ill three times in my teen years, and the doctors said I shouldn't go.)
My father wasn't well that summer, and our Grandma Brown came to stay with us. She had the deepest voice of any woman I have ever known. When she called, you came! She was kind to us, though she seemed to prefer the company of May, who was older. Daddy went to the hospital in Salt Lake City for surgery, and we went down to visit him, staying nights with Rhetta Emery's family. Rhetta had been one of Mother's students when she taught at the L.D.S. Business College there. The family owned peacocks, and I was enchanted by these beautiful birds. There was a nice thing that happened at this time; Bert had finished his studies at the Naval Academy, and was home on leave before going to sea duty. When we were at the hospital visiting our father, Bert called him "Pop," and he didn't seem to like it much. At home again Daddy soon was recovering.
That summer Bert and Jean Jones were married. They had known each other the four years of high school, and kept their love alive afterwards through all those four years of separation, while Bert was at the Naval Academy. The wedding was at the Jones home, a big older house on the east side of Salt Lake. There was a long curved stairway, and Jean and her bridesmaids came down this stair, and I thought it was the most wonderful thing I had ever seen. Afterwards I was given a piece of the wedding cake, and told if I slept on it, I would dream of the man I would marry. Well, I didn't dream anything, but the cake was a piece of good fruitcake, which I ate the next morning.
THE COWLEY HOUSE
That summer, also, marked our moving again, this time an apartment in the Cowley home at 353 E. 5th North St. Sister Cowley was one of Matthew Cowley's plural wives, my first knowledge of that practice early in the Church history. At the Cowley home one of the first things I remember was the Indians who came asking for food and clothing. Sister Cowley let them in, and an Indian mother breast-fed her baby as we children watched, until we were shooed out. That was my first experience with that.
There were no girls my age in the immediate neighborhood, but Ann Ryan (called "Toots" in those days) was my special friend, although she was two years younger. We still see each other when we can; she lives with her husband, Lane Palmer, near Philadelphia, so it isn't often. Grover and Mark Carter and their sister Carol lived two doors east. Marie Daines, about four years older than me lived just east. That year we had breakfasts with the Daines family, and I learned to love homemade white bread--huge, fragrant, hot buttery slices, which made it possible for me to choke down the oatmeal and egg. Marie had an older sister, Wanda, who was beautiful and had a boyfriend, who gave her big boxes of candy that she hid under her bed. I remember the excitement and joy Marie and I had of slipping under that bed and taking just one chocolate apiece, so it wouldn't be missed. Another sister, Carmen, who was married and studying for her Master's degree, would be at our apartment when mother or May wasn't there when we got home from school. She was good to us, making cakes and cookies sometimes.
My first cultural experiences came about this time. When I was still five I took ballet lessons from a talented lady from New York, a Miss Hinman. She made me feel very special when she called me her "little Pavlova." Pavlova was the famous Russian prima ballerina of that time. Another thing was my being a flower girl in the performance of Shakespeare's "Much Ado About Nothing." I loved my costume of deep red velvet. The other flower girl, Beverly Hodgenson, whom I knew from Dancing class and from the fact that her father and my mother both worked at the College, had one of a teal color, and the adult members of the cast all had very elaborate costumes. Those impressed me more than the audience out in the dark in front of us, or even the actual words of the play. It was an outdoor theater, with the seats going up the college hill and the stage at a flat place a little way down. From then on Mother took us to see the Shakespearean play each year at the College. One year Ann Ryan's big brother, Miller, was "Hamlet," and so that was really special. The next year he was "Macbeth". Miller also had a radio, which he played with earphones, and he let me listen to it. This was my first experience with radio. It was another two years before we got a radio, this time with a speaker we could all hear.
BEGINNING SCHOOL
The fall I was six, I entered Whittier School. I was in the first grade, and the first week or two Charles was in the same class, since he had stayed out the last half of his 1st grade. However, the teacher soon realized he was far beyond the rest of us, a few of whom had a few weeks of kindergarten. He went into the 2nd grade, and we didn't have a class together until a physiology class in high school, that comes later in my story.
But to get back to grade school; my school was different from most, I guess because it was an experiment of the teacher training program of the Utah State Agricultural College, where our mother was now employed. It was called Progressive Education, in which the child was allowed to learn at his own speed without much direction. No Phonics were taught, and as a result, I didn't really learn to read until the 3rd grade. The classes were large, but every six weeks a new group of 5 student teachers would come into the classroom. They helped with study groups, when there were any. The classes weren't structured very well.
There were big trees all around the Cowley house, so in the fall there were leaves everywhere. My friends and I raked them into rows, for walls for our play house. We had a wonderful time, with dolls and furniture, and then later we raked them into a huge pile, and took turns jumping in it. In the early evenings the older children taught us to play "Kick the Can", and "Run Sheepy Run", and on Saturdays we would play ball, or "Cowboys and Indians" and an early version of gang fights. The college football team would run down the hill from the college to Adams Field, in the block just east of ours, and we would go up and watch the scrimmage after school, and then sometimes we got to see a real game there.
Another of my favorite memories of that time, was the evenings we spent together as a family. We had no radio, and TV hadn't been invented, so Mother read to us. "Winnie the Pooh", "Alice in Wonderland" and "Through the Looking Glass" were favorites, Later came the works of Rudyard Kipling. Through Mother's influence we were able to go to the Children's Library at the College, which at that time was for the use of student teachers, not children. We checked out other books, which she read to us.
That first Christmas in this house stayed in my mind for a long time. Our Christmas tree was set up in the combination living and dining room. What had been the "parlour" was shut off by very heavy velvet drapes, and was used as a bedroom in winter. Since there was no central heat, there was a large grey coal heater in the living area, and that's where our Christmas tree was set up. There were candles on the tree, and wreaths made of popcorn, some of cranberries, and others of paper chains, of which we all had a hand in making. Santa called me on the phone, as he did every year, and I asked for roller skates.
On Christmas Eve, my Father lighted all the candles on the tree, and we all watched and loved to see the light and shine on the wreaths and some glittery ornaments we had on the tree. The only trouble was that my Father wouldn't let them burn all the way down, because the tree might catch fire. When we opened our gifts, there were my skates, and I was thrilled with them. Daddy helped me put them on and guided me around the kitchen on the linoleum and down the hall. There was a low step down from the kitchen, and it was several days before I could manage that without falling down.
The next morning Charles told me there was no Santa Claus! I didn't believe him. I knew the skates weren't there earlier, because I had looked over all the packages, as kids do. Charles said they were put there while I was at the Daines house. I just couldn't believe it, and I worried for weeks. The other children told me, too, and finally I believed. It was a shock for a six year old, but at least the other people in the family gave each other presents, so it wouldn't be so bad. Later in the spring I had great fun on the skates on the sidewalks in the neighborhood, and that special interest lasted several years.
About two months after Christmas, we got our piano. It was a great event, and my Father played it, and we all wanted to take turns, and did. Mother had some music she had bought once when she was taking lessons, but she didn't play too well. Charles and I both started our music lessons, with Mrs. Walter Welti, the wife of the head of the music department at the college. Sometimes after my lesson I would take her baby for a walk in his buggy. ( Much later he grew up to be an important radio and TV announcer in Salt Lake City.) I also would sometimes take the Carter baby, Carol, for a ride. (When she grew up and had a family of her own, my children knew her as Carol Hanson, in San Bernardino.)
It was in the spring of the first grade. The Cowley home was the second from the corner, and around the corner was the house of Mr. Aimes, whose son, Erwin, was my age. He had a brother a year younger, whose name I have blanked out of my mind.
Mr. Aimes had ordered a load of sand delivered, because he meant to pour some concrete walks around the house. He hadn't gotten to it, so the sand pile made a wonderful place to play with buckets and shovels, or to build roads for our toy cars.
The two Aimes boys made a tunnel to play in. I was one of the children who greatly admired it, but I didn't want to go in. The sand was wet enough to hold its position, but the next morning it was drier. I wasn't over there, but I heard the dreadful news, the little brother was in the tunnel, and it caved in and covered him. The people worked frantically to get him out, but it wasn't in time. He was dead.
It was decided that since he was so little, that the children who had known him would be part of the funeral arrangements. Six bigger boys carried the little casket, it seemed little to me then, although it was almost my size, I guess. I was one of the little girls who carried flower baskets into the chapel, just ahead of the casket, and then to put them in place around the casket. I dreaded doing this, because I couldn't think of anything but that little bird we had buried just a couple of years before. I couldn't stand the idea of that boy, whom I had known and liked, being put into the ground.
The odor of those hot house flowers became connected in my mind with death. So when my uncle Adrian died about a month later, and then my cousin Mildred that winter, that odor haunted me, and I dreaded their funerals, too. My mother understandingly didn't take Charles and me to the uncle's funeral, But we did travel with her to Vernal for the cousin's funeral.
Following the death of the little Aimes boy, the rest of the children in the neighborhood seemed sort of obsessed with the idea of tunnels. Together we dug one in the Carter's back yard. However, Mr. Carter insisted the covering should be of blocks of reinforced plywood. We didn't get to play in the tunnel, though. The first day, Kent Ryan, another of Toots' older brothers, (who later became an All American Football player, also professional player,) came into the tunnel with us, sent by the parents of the neighborhood. They knew of course that we would listen to an older boy, more readily than our own parents. He told us there was an epidemic of spinal meningitis in town, and we should not be in crowded places with other people, in case we would catch it. Well, we listened, and the tunnel was filled in. In a few weeks we had proof of the disease, a college student who lived at the other end of the block got it. When he was recovering, (fortunately), he sat up in bed in the living room window, looking out and playing his ukulele and singing for us.
Although we escaped that disease, we did have bad cases of whooping cough and measles. With the latter, Charles's eardrum broke. Since I was almost well, it was my job to make cotton swabs for him by rolling bits of cotton around the ends of tooth picks. Fortunately he didn't lose his hearing. In those days doctors made house calls and after such a visit, if the doctor diagnosed any disease, the county sent a man around with a large placard with the name of the disease in big letters, and no one who hadn't already had it, could come into that house. It was quarantined. There were different colored placards for the different diseases.
After Uncle Ad's death, Aunt Hulda came to stay with us. It wasn't a stay of a few days or a week, but she stayed months. That's the way family members visited in those times. At Christmas that year I got a newborn baby doll, and Aunt Hulda sewed a complete layette for it. She did the same for my cousin Mickey Johnston., who got the same kind of doll. We both loved them. The other dolls were children look alikes.
Daddy was working at an engineering job in Tooele, and he took us down and showed us around the smelter. There was a tramway up over the mountain, and ore was brought over to the smelter on that. People didn't ride in it, darn it! It was either on the way home from there, or perhaps another car trip with the three of us, that Daddy asked Charles and me what we would think if he and Mother were divorced and he married another lady. Charles didn't say anything, just sat there stony faced. I cried quietly all the way home. Fortunately it was not mentioned again.
The second grade went along pretty much as the first, with the same teacher, just a different room. We didn't receive report cards with A's, etc. just a Plus or Minus in each subject. Interestingly enough, I didn't get a Minus in reading, although I couldn't read. Maybe the teacher thought that would discourage me and I wouldn't try. I knew all the letters and could write them, but the idea of words just didn't come across. I could add and subtract numbers and liked to write them. Music class was fun, also recess. I learned to play hopscotch and jump rope.
At home, besides playing with dolls and making clothes for them, and roller skating, I played other games. One of my favorites was jacks. One of the Cowley nephews came down from Blackfoot, Idaho, and he played, too, along with Toots and me and other girls. I really wanted to win, to prove to him how good I was, and I cheated! No one saw it, but I did. I didn't feel good about myself after that. Winning didn't seem at all important anymore. I suffered in silence, and I never did tell anyone how badly I felt. Finally I came to the conclusion that I would never cheat again, in that game, or in any other thing. I did learn to play better and eventually managed to beat everyone in the neighborhood, but my resolve stayed with me, and I never cheated on anything again. I liked myself a lot better!
The Ryan’s house had only half the basement excavated. The other half had one high window with three feet excavated below it. Up this hill, we children built roads for our toy cars, and we had cardboard houses along the road.
About this time I was attracted to one boy in the neighborhood. He was David Jr. Murray, who lived in the fourth house east of the Cowley's house. His father was at the College, too. He was quiet and shy, and quite different from the rowdy ones. He liked books, and so did I, now that I was learning to read, so we had that in common. I wanted him to fit into the group when we played with our toy cars in the sand and dirt, so with my allowance one week I bought him a little car. That helped get him in, and soon he was in the other games, too.
One day, after we had been playing a while with our little cars in the unexcavated part of the Ryan's basement, I climbed up an unfinished wall partition in the larger room to reach a piece of bicycle tire the Ryan boys had nailed up there as a basketball hoop. As I hung from this hoop, it gave way, and I fell to the cement below. I was knocked unconscious. I came to later out on the lawn where Mrs. Carter had carried me. She had come to get her boys for lunch. I had no broken bones, but was sore for a while. I wonder if that fall had anything to do with the back aches I developed later in life.
THE BATT HOUSE
The next summer we moved again, to 527 East Fifth North, just two blocks up the street. It was a house owned by Charles Batt, and so we always called it the Batt house. There was central heating again, thank goodness! No more huddling around the stove to keep warm. Next door lived Ruth Jenkins, and it was she who stayed with Charles and me when there was no one of the family there.
Before my eighth birthday Mickey Johnston, my very dear cousin, died, but we didn't go to her funeral. I found out later that her father had such difficulty accepting her death, that he didn't want to see me. She was just my age. When I was baptized in the Logan Temple, I wore the white dress her mother had made for her. At that same baptism, I was baptized for her and for 72 other people. That helped me accept her death.
There was a basement in the Batt house, and we had one bedroom down there and a big playroom, for when the weather prevented our playing outside. I had a doll house made of two orange crates for my little dolls, and my friends and I spent a lot of time there.
I had a new friend, Hazel Owens, and I liked to go to her house after school and play. It was always "Cinderella", and we took turns playing the prince and Cinderella. When we got tired of that, we would make fudge, if it was all right with her mother. I was supposed to be home by the time Mother got home from work at 5, but sometimes I forgot, and I found myself walking up the hill from the Island (so named because the river ran along the south side and the canal on the north) and then along those three long blocks in the dark. It was scary, with the shrubs all looking like trolls, but I always hurried along, and nothing bad ever happened. Small towns were quite safe over 60 years ago.
I was now in the Third grade, and I finally learned to read! It was slow going for a while, but it was worth all the effort. The teacher was Miss Jensen from a little town called Mantua, on the way to Brigham. Half way through the year she got married and became Mrs. Hill. There was a rule no married woman could teach school, but for some reason the powers that be let her stay until the end of the year. My birthday came on Saturday before Easter, and fortunately Mrs. Hill took the class on an Easter hike that day. We hiked up to the first dam in the canyon above the town. Ray Hughie was a classmate and his father was in charge at the dam, and he showed us around. After our tour, we crossed over the dam and climbed about a third of the way up the hill, which seemed like a mountain to me. We rolled Easter eggs down the hill, and they almost all got away from us. But we had brought sandwiches and cookies for lunch. I found what I thought was Indian pottery, but later it turned out to be only a broken piece of an insulator from the power lines above. I was disappointed, I thought I had made a real find.
Charles and I got flu again, and I thought it was entirely unfair. We had this nice house with central heating, and we should have stayed well. Daddy came home while the Doctor was there. Later he brought us balloons as we were feeling better, and we lay on our beds and batted the balloons back and forth. We had our first radio, with a carved leather front on it. Mr. Skanky, who had the little grocery store on Fifth East, sold it to us. Anyway, that radio helped us get well, too.
One day while I was playing with my little doll house in the basement, Mother and Daddy came downstairs and started going through boxes that were stored in the bedroom closet there. I wandered in, but I was shooed away, and didn't see or hear what was going on. Later Daddy left again. After he had gone, I noticed that a picture Grandma Brown had painted of Black Rock on Great Salt Lake was no longer hanging in the dining room. Mother just said Daddy wanted to take it with him, and that was all the explanation I got.
May graduated from high school and went to Salt Lake City to stay with Aunt Dell (Daddy's sister) while she went to nurses' training. She came home on holidays, though. We sometimes went to visit at Aunt Dell’s and stayed overnight. Charles and I and our cousins slept on beds on the living room floor. We did the same thing when we visited Uncle Joel and Aunt Alice in Provo. Their son Ralph Brown is the only Brown cousin I hear from regularly. All my cousins on my mother’s side are dead.
That Christmas I got my biggest doll, a walking doll, so tall I could hold her hands above her head while I "walked" her by swinging one of her legs and then another. She could still fit in the doll bed and carriage, though. She could wear regular baby dresses, too.
Aunt Nettie and Uncle John Bates came for a visit, and then that summer I went with them and Aunt Hulda Ross to Southern California on the train. It was my first experience on a long ride, and I was very excited about it. We rode all day, and I looked out of the window for a while, then I had toys to play with as we rode along. It was an overnight trip, and I was amazed when I got back from brushing my teeth that night, and the births were all made up. Instead of rows of seats, I saw a narrow corridor with dark green curtains along each side. I was allowed to sleep in the upper birth, with Aunt Hulda in the lower. There were heavy straps to hold me in, so I wasn't afraid. I woke up, though, when someone walk down the aisle, but I soon got over being startled.
The next morning Aunt Sara and Uncle Seth Perry met us in Los Angeles, and I stayed overnight with them. Uncle Seth was taking a course in radio, so he could go back to Vernal and open a radio sales and repair shop. Aunt Sara planned to open a dress shop next door, which I thought was a nice arrangement.
They took me to Aunt Nettie and Uncle John's house in San Diego. Aunt Hulda and I shared the room that had been my cousin Mildred's before she died the winter before. My cousins Royal and Parker Bates were still living at home, and they slept on a sleeping porch that stretched across the back of the house. They were both working that summer for a fruit company. I made friends with a little girl my age, named Virginia, next door. We played together all that summer. Sometimes we were movie stars, like our favorite, Bebe Daniels, and sometimes we were radio announcers and commentators, with a microphone we made out of cardboard.
One day the neighbor on the other side invited Aunt Hulda and me to go to the beach. There was a little girl living there because her parents were divorced. Another girl was invited, too. We had a good time, my first swim in the ocean. I enjoyed it thoroughly, and next time they went, I wasn't invited, nor was Aunt Hulda. (I guess she was invited to keep track of me the time before.) I asked her why I wasn't invited to go again, and she said, "You know why!" I didn't know, and no matter how I begged her, Aunt Hulda would never tell me what it was I did to be banished that way. I asked her again years later, and she still wouldn't tell me, and all she would say to me was that I knew. I never did find out what it was.
I did have another chance to visit places with Aunt Nettie, Aunt Hulda and friends of Aunt Nettie's, who had a son my age. I can't remember his name, but maybe as I delve further into my memories, I will come to it. Anyway, we went Balboa Park several times and to the Zoo. There was a big Merry go round at the entrance to the Park, and we children really enjoyed that, as well as the picnics in the Park, and to see the animals at the Zoo. Another time we all went to La Jolla for the 4th of July and had a picnic and watched the most wonderful fireworks I had ever seen.
The destroyer Bert was on came into the bay, and he invited me to come on board to see the ship and to have dinner at the Officers' Mess. It wasn't a "mess" at all, but it was my first experience at a formal dinner, with all the extra silver I wasn't used to. I worried that I would do something wrong, but somehow I got through it without any calamity.
Bert came out to Aunt Nettie's house several times, and once he took me swimming in the ocean off Coronado. Jean wasn't there, she was busy in Salt Lake having her first baby, my niece Elizabeth Anne, now known to my children as Betty Murphy. I was thrilled to be an aunt, and I told all my friends when I got back to Logan.
By the way, I came home by train, this time in the company of the family of our grocer. He had a store downtown, and Mother would call him when we needed groceries, and he would pick them out, (always the most expensive brands) and the delivery man would bring them out in a panel truck. When we could, and the weather was good, we drive down and got our own. We would stand there in front of the counter, tell him what we wanted, and he would load them in paper bags. We ran an account and paid once a month, when Mother got her check. We also got our laundry done out. Once a week another panel truck would come by and pick up what we needed washed. It would come back in a few days, with the sheets, pillow cases, tablecloths, napkins, and dish towels all ironed, but we had to iron the rest. This was called "rough dry" laundry.
THE SWENSON’S HOUSE
We moved again, this time to an upstairs apartment in the Dan Swenson house. He was head of the Manual Arts Department at the College. The day we moved in, the Swensons asked us to have dinner with their family-- mother, dad and eight children. During the table conversation someone said I was a little heavy for my age, and Dan Junior said, "That's what makes her so darn cute!" He was my good friend from then on. The fact that he was a little heavy, too, probably had something to do with his remark about me. When we went sleigh riding, he took me on his sled, and we raced down the road from the college hill, and just managed to make the turn onto Fifth North, and then into their driveway at No 669, second house from the corner. This was the beginning of many happy days spent with that family. We lived there through my fourth, fifth and sixth grades.
Our apartment was upstairs, and we got to it by coming through a small glassed in foyer and a central hall in their house and then up the stairs. There was a door at the bottom of the stairs, with glass panels in it and with a with a curtain covering. Upstairs we lived among the trees, and I really liked that place. I had a little room at the back of the house for my play room. I had my little doll house set up there, and Charles wired it for electricity. Across the room I had a toy box, and in the closet was the rest of my furniture, like the two chairs of May's, the table, the stove and iron and ironing board. In the main room I had a desk that folded up against the wall, where I sometimes wrote letters to May or Daddy. I remember Grace Swenson, the girl closest to my age, reading one of them, and she said I should write better, and spell the words right. I was almost a year older than she, so I was cut to the quick by her criticism. But we stayed friends.
A door led from this room to a balcony, where we kept our ice box. Twice a week the iceman would come and put a chunk of ice in it when the weather wasn't cold enough to keep the food. Before the three years were up, though, Mr. Swenson bought one of the newly invented electric refrigerators, which was put in the kitchen. There was already an electric stove, too, so there was no more using a stove that burned coal and wood.
In the summers I went to the six week's summer school at the college, where I took swimming or dancing lessons along with the college students. Most of these were teachers who came back to college to get more training. Many of our friends, whose parents were on the college faculty, also took these classes.
After the classes were over, sometimes I would stay to hear the eleven o'clock lecture in the big auditorium, sitting on the balcony so I could see better. There were special guest speakers, who were hired for the summer, from other colleges and some professions. I remember one, who was called the Tune Detective, because could he could trace plagiarism in music. He had been called to consult in several lawsuits, and was famous for that.
There were lots of other things to do at the college. I learned some of the facts of life in the museums. There were stuffed animals native to North America, along with their life stories (when I learned to read enough to understand them), and besides that, a whole display of human fetuses at various stages of development in jars on the shelves in the middle of the room. There was also a plaster cast of a dinosaur footprint left in mud thousands of years ago. The rest of the geological exhibits didn't interest me much.
The Art Department was another of my favorite places. One summer there was a class in painting on china plates. I was fascinated, and would have liked to do it myself. But I never did enroll in an art class until I was college age, and they didn't do china painting anymore.
One of our favorite places in the summer was the bell tower on the Main Building. If we could find the attic door unlocked, or could talk one of the workman who knew us to let us in, we could roam around in the huge attic and look at all the old theater scenery and props that were stored there, and then climb up to the actual tower where the chimes and the big bell were. Every morning all year when school was in session the bell was rung at 7:30 and again at 8, telling the whole east end of the town it was time to get going. The chimes were played only at noon, after the noon bell rang. There was a marvelous view of the campus, the whole town, and up and down the valley, and across to the Wellsville Mountains. We could send paper airplanes soaring, and sometimes down on unsuspecting people.
Since this college was agricultural, it had what they called a Farmers' Encampment. In the summer farmers would come, and live for a week or two in tents provided by the college, and pitched on the main quadrangle. Indians would come, too, and live in teepees on the same lawn. It was an exciting time for us children, who were accustomed to using the campus for our playground. The children of the farmers and Indians were with us sometimes, and we compared our upbringings. But they were mostly shy, and kept to themselves. There were programs at night, including native Indian dances, and movies shown on the lawn by the President's house. Because of the agricultural interests of the farmers, there were classes and seminars on the best methods, and nutritional and other training for the wives.
Sadie O. Morris was a Farm Bureau Agent and a friend of my mother's. She was giving health and nutritional lectures to some of these women. She needed a model of a healthy child, and since she didn't have children of her own, she "borrowed" me as an example. I had a pair of new green panties to wear, and that was it. I stood on the table in front of the audience and demonstrated exercises Sadie described. When it came time to talk about foot exercises, she asked me to pick up some marbles with my feet. I did that, and then on sudden inspiration, I threw one, with my toes, down the aisle of the audience. I missed, and hit a woman sitting on an aisle seat! It was quick and fast, and she didn't have time to duck. Needless to say, Sadie didn't ask me again to be her example of a healthy child!
East of the campus was a grove of trees that made a nice place to play Daniel Boone and other outdoor activities. Farther east and then about half way down the hill to the "island," (so-called, because a canal ran along the foot of the hill and the river ran down the far side of the small valley between,) the Boy Scouts had built a small log cabin. Although the boys in our group were too young to have helped build it, they knew about it, and showed the rest of us.
One day I went out to play, and there was no one to play with, so I went off by myself. I cross the campus, went through the grove of trees, picked some sego lilies that were blooming on the hillside, then went down to the cabin. I pretended it was my house, but I soon tired of this solitary play, and decided to go home by way of the canal. I followed the trail down, but it seemed there was someone on the path above me. I was frightened, and ran down as fast as I could make it through the brush. Thankfully I soon burst out, crossed the canal on one of the logs bracing it, and ran faster along the path by the canal. I couldn't see anyone behind me, because of the turns and trees along the canal, but I could hear him! With my throat aching with my wild run, I finally got to the place were the path met the road. I thought briefly of running on to Hazel Owen's house, but instead I went up the hill toward home. Whoever it was following me, turned and went the other way. I hurried on home, but I was one scared little girl, and I resolved then and there not to go off to play by myself!.
In the basement of the Swenson's house was another apartment, which was rented to college students during the year. In the summer, after summer school was over and all the students gone, the children of the family and their friends often played cards at the dining table there. I enjoyed these games, even helping Beth, who was five, to play her cards.
Another gathering place was a large tree house Mr. Swenson had built in and around an apple tree in the back yard. You could pick and sample the green apples as you sat there, talking or reading something. It was there that Dan Swenson taught us to sing silly songs, such as: "It was midnight on the ocean, and not a streetcar was in sight, I stepped into a drugstore to get myself a light. The man behind the counter was a woman old and grey, who used to peddle shoestrings on the road to Mandalay." There was a chorus and many other verses, I guess each singer could make up his own.
George Swenson was not to be outdone; he did reckless things like jumping off the side of the treehouse, and off the roof of the garage. He earned my admiration, and he took David Junior Murray's place in my affections. But that never did amount to much; we were too young to have boy friends or girl friends.
This winter May became very ill, and they said she had rheumatic fever. Her heart was so weak, she could no longer live at that altitude. She was taken by train to Long Beach, California, where she lived in the family of a practical nurse. I would write to her, and she would answer my letters. She was mostly bedridden.
The next fall I entered the fourth grade. It was taught by Miss Robertson. She was generally the best liked teacher in the school, although the students knew they had to learn. She taught well, and we all learned what we needed to know. This was the year for long division, and in preparation we had time tests on multiplication tables. I got along well in that, so the long division wasn't hard. I also learned to read a dictionary and an encyclopedia that was in the room. I still like to do this upon occasion.
Every afternoon we had a snack time. The college dairy delivered 1/3 quart bottles of milk, one for each child and it was good, provided the truck didn't come early and the milk was still cold. While we drank our milk and any cookies or other goodies we had brought from home, Miss Robertson would read to us from "Tom Sawyer" and "Huckleberry Fin".
There is another thing I remember about this time, As a class we made soap in a big kettle in the hall outside the room. The whole school smelled of this soap for what seemed like two weeks, although it might have been a shorter time. Next we made paper, and that didn't smell quite so bad.
This year a new girl came to our room, the first time we had anyone new in our grade. She came from Idaho, and her family was poor. Her name was Arneda Christensen. She wasn't well liked by anyone, so I made friends with her, so she wouldn't feel so alone. She was there through part of fourth and fifth grades, then she left. I didn't hear about her again until my high school 45th reunion. One of my friends was teaching school in Idaho, and met her. Arneda remembered me, and said she thought a great deal of me, because I was the only one to be her friend all the time she was in Utah.
In the early spring of the fourth grade and during recess at school, I was outside on the playground when I got a terrible stomach ache. I sat down on the ground and leaned against the building. I didn't realize the bell had rung and everyone else had gone back in the school. I don't remember just how it happened, but I was taken inside the school, and someone called my Mother. She took me to the doctor, and it was decided I had appendicitis. That night I went into surgery. I was very scared, because it was in just such circumstances that my cousin Mickey died. Under the anesthetic I had the same weird dreams I had had before, when I was delirious with measles and whooping cough.
I didn't know until years later that my slow recovery was due to my having gangrene in the incision. I spent 18 days in the hospital, and Daddy came to see me, and brought me a red silk kimono with a lovely dragon embroidered on the back. He brought it from San Francisco. Mother brought me new nightgowns and yarn and knitting needles, and I learned to knit to pass the time. When I got home I remained there another 2 weeks, and the doctor would come to the house to see me and to change the dressing on the incision. Finally I got back to school again.
I had missed a lot of classwork, and I was worried about how to catch up. Miss Robertson told me not to worry about it, I could catch up all right. I wanted to take books home to study, but she wouldn't let me; the books always stayed at school. Everyone had gone home. I went outside sat down on the steps and started to cry. Roy Swenson, the oldest of the brothers, came by on his way home from high school. When he found out I was crying because I couldn't take any books home from school, he said he wished he didn't have to take books home, and I would have plenty of time to take books home later. He talked some more, and I felt comforted, and we walked on home together. I'm sure it was slower than he usually walked.
That summer was the usual one, taking classes at the college, playing with the Swenson children and others in the neighborhood. I don't remember anything particular happening. We did find some snakes to play with, just little garter snakes and gopher snakes, but the boys took them away from us girls. We didn't like that, but we still all played cards together, and touch football. I had a pair of spring skates, with two coil springs on each skate instead of wheels. I spent lots of time on those, and on stilts Daddy had made for us before we moved to Swensons. The college campus was still a playground, too, since most of the children had one parent employed at the college, either as a professor or a research person. Mother was one of the latter and Head of Purnell Investigations for the State of Utah.
Elliott came home for a visit from the US Naval Academy. We enjoyed his visit, played games, and walked around the campus. As we played cards he would hum or sing snatches of "I Took My Sugar to Tea."
Uncle Tom and Aunt Hattie Johnston by this time was getting a little accustomed to the loss of Mickey, so we were able to visit Vernal again, as we had done for a week or two every summer before she died. Now that we could go again Charles and I enjoyed this, with our cousins Bob and Tenney, although we all missed Mickey. I spent time in the drugstore when the boys were there, and I learned to mix my own cokes at the soda fountain. I have always been fond of cokes, but now after sixty years, I have finally gotten over drinking them every day.
The next fall I started fifth grade. The teacher was Miss Garff, who was an art major. I enjoyed this year, too, because we could do a lot of drawing as well as other studies. We divided into reading groups again, but this time each group wrote an original story, and we each made an illustration. These stories were bound into a large book and donated to the school library. This library was just a small room, partitioned off the hallway where we hung our coats and put our boots when it was winter.
One winter day there had been a heavy snowfall. By afternoon the sky had cleared, and Miss Garff took us for a walk in the snow. It was beautiful and still, and the sun glistened on the snow on the ground and on all the tree limbs. We walked west from the school, to an empty lot, where there had been a house, where Mother had lived one year when she was going to college. Miss Garff explained the nature of snow, and why it was so beautiful just after it fell. I think all of us were impressed by this trip.
On November 15 Charles and I didn't go to school, and Mother stayed home as well. She told us Daddy was dead. She didn't go into any details, that I remember. After school my friend Arneda Christensen came over, and she told me the newspaper had said he was killed with a shotgun. I never did see an account in either of the newspapers, and later I found Mother had asked Mrs. Swenson to pick up our two papers and destroy them. When Edith Hayball, one of her good friends came over, Mother told her, and us, she was sure it was an accident; our father would never do a thing like that to himself or to us. Charles and I didn't go to the funeral in Salt Lake City, because Mother said if we didn't go, it would seem as though he was only away on one of his business trips. Edith Hayball went with her. Edith was the aunt of two of our friends, Bill and Paul Thomas.
When we did go back to school, everyone was kind. My friends, Patty McGee, Dee Louise Parker, and Betty Pedersen, the Wintergren twins Ted and Carol, Keith Sorenson, Ned Clyde, all said they were sorry. Also, one of the student teachers told me she had recently lost her father, and she knew how I was feeling. I appreciated their sympathy. I thought about him while I was at school, especially while I did my art work. I remember drawing a big brown bear, and a group of people in colonial costumes, but it was a long time before I could come to terms with his being gone entirely.
That Christmas I got my last doll, a sort of a forerunner of the Barbie dolls my daughters played with years later. She was about 15 inches tall, with hair cut in the Dutch style. She came with panties and bra, so I immediately started sewing clothes for her. Aunt Hulda was back for another visit; she offered to help me sew, but I wanted to do it myself. Of course my sewing wasn't as good as hers. I did ask her help on a dress for my big doll, and she taught me how to make small stitches, all hand sewn. It was a good dress, but I got sloppy again on the next one I made, and she was slightly disgusted with me. But she would still make apple pie, if Charles and I would peel and cut the apples.
I learned about ground hog day this year. As I walked home from church on Feb. 2, the sun was shining brightly, melting the snow left on the sidewalk after the horse- drawn plow had gone by very early in the morning. I didn't want winter to last another six weeks, but it did. Finally, though, spring came, and then May Day. The teachers made a big deal of that. We had a party on the lawn on the south side of the school, with games and refreshments. Then we braided a maypole. There were alternating streamers of purple and gold, the school colors. The boys and girls alternated in a circle around the pole, each took a streamer. The boys walked in one direction and the girls the other, weaving the streamers around the pole. I never forgot it, and I set up a maypole for my daughter Karen's sixth birthday party.
That summer we did many of the same summer activities. The swim and dance classes at the college, and card games down in the basement apartment. There was one thing different, though. Although I was bigger and could play better, the boys wouldn't let me play football anymore. I was so upset, I went to Mother and complained bitterly. She gently explained to me that I was growing up, and so were the boys, and they we beginning to think differently about girls. It had nothing to do with me personally, it was just part of growing up. I still didn't like it!
We went to Vernal for our usual visit, stopping on the way at Aunt Hulda's ranch out of Duschene. My cousin Helen and her family were living there and helping Aunt Hulda run it. After than we went on to Vernal. My cousin Tenney Johnston was running the projector at the local theater, and he got us in free to see the movie. It was Eddy Cantor in "Roman Scandals," a funny musical, which I saw five times!
This year May Swenson went to New York, where she lived most of her life. She wrote poetry and had it published in lots of magazines, and she had books of poetry published. She came back to Utah State University as a guest lecturer, just a few years ago, shortly before she died.
After May had gone, Sunny Swenson, a cousin of the Swenson children, came to live for a while. She gave dancing lessons at the Dansante Ballroom downtown, and those of us who could, walked there after school twice a week for lessons. My mother made me a lavender dotted Swiss dress with a full skirt and lace trimming to wear for the lessons. The dress was perfect, and I really enjoyed the lessons.
At home again, it was fall, and Ruth Jenkins still came to stay with us whenever Mother was away. Besides that, she came on Saturday mornings to clean house (all except my playroom, which was my responsibility) and she gave me piano lessons. I had stopped taking from Mrs. Welti after we moved from the Cowley house. Sometimes, when there was a home football game at the new stadium at the college, Ruth would take me with her to the game. We would sit in the student section, and hold up colored cards at half time, to spell things. I thought this was great.
Back at school, I entered the sixth grade. The teacher was Miss Lewis, who was also the school principle. I walked to school with Patty McGee, or in good weather she rode her bike and let me ride on the seat while she did the pumping. That was easy for me; I just had to be sure my legs didn't swing and put her off balance; we spilled when that happened.
. In math, we studied decimals (begun in fifth grade) and then percentages. Reading was never a problem to me now. I read all the Nancy Drew mystery stories I could buy, get at the town library, or borrow from or trade with other students.
We still had four or five student teachers. every little while. One of these was a young man named Jessie Reeder from Box Elder County. I remembered him later when I was a freshman in college. He came back to school to get a master's degree. I dated him a few times, even went to his family reunion in Brigham Canyon, but we split up soon.
Back to the sixth grade, though. One of my new teeth came in with a really sharp point on it. A little membrane under my tongue kept getting caught on it, and it was very hard to get it off, and it hurt. Also, I couldn't answer the teacher's questions. When my classmates explained to the teacher why, she said she wished some of the other people had that happen! Well, I went to the dentist and had the point filed down. I had to go to the dentist very six months anyway, my teeth weren't very good.
In connection with our social studies classes where we studied the founding of our country, we had a big Sesquicentennial Celebration, I think it was called. As well as learning the governmental history, we learned how the people lived in those days, what they ate, what they wore, and what they did for fun. We learned the Virginia Reel and some other dances. The culmination of this celebration was to be a colonial dance at the college gym, with other sixth grade classes from other schools who had studied the same things. Aunt Hulda was visiting, and she made me an a colonial dress, authentic in every way. The main part of the dress was yellow and long with a full skirt, with panniers of a yellow print with lots of small flowers all over, long sleeves ending in a wide ruffle, and a white lace neckerchief to set it all off. Mother piled my hair on top of my head and added a braid of her hair (that had fallen out when she had scarlet fever and was made into a braid) . I tied on pierced gold earrings that Aunt Hattie had given me, and I went happily off to the dance, held in the afternoon. It was a big success in my mind.
Before school was out that spring, I managed to beat everybody at jacks (and no cheating!) and hopscotch, but I wasn't very good on the rings. Both boys and girls had softball games, and I remember the feeling of great satisfaction when I could hit that ball all the way across the diamond.
The boy's team played the teams of other schools in the town, and I remember going to a school down on the "island" to watch one of those games. I wore my first pants suit; girls just didn't wear pants up until that time. This outfit had long wide legs with cuffs at the bottoms. As I was running across the lawn to get to the ball field, I caught one foot in the big cuff of the other leg of the pants, and fell and rolled over and over. Thank goodness I wasn't hurt, and there was only one rip in my new outfit, and some grass stains. It was print material, so that last didn't show too much.
Summer came again, and my activities were much the same, although the dancing lessons were again by Sunny Swenson, the cousin of Grace, Ruth and Beth, at the Dansante Ballroom downtown. I enjoyed this, and for the recital I got my first long dress. I never did get another chance to wear it, but that comes later in this story.
Each evening in the local newspaper there was a chapter of a novel, called "Dime a Dance Girl." Each afternoon I would sit on a bench on the front lawn and read that episode. One day Eccles Cain, who lived next door and was a year younger than I, came a sat down beside me and started to talk as I was trying to read. Annoyed, I turned around on the bench, with my back to him. That was a mistake. He was whittling on a stick, his knife slipped, and ended up in my back! Mother took me to the doctor, who, instead of stitching it up, just put butterfly bandages on it, which of course pulled out.
I still have that scar on my back, and evidently Eccles' bad luck has continued. He grew up all right, and was an army officer in W.W.II . He was tall, dark and quite handsome in his uniform, and a tall pretty girl married him. Not long after the war they were divorced. Ec, as he was now called, got a job in a bank in Salt Lake City, where his uncle was a vice president, and he married again. When I went to my high school 55th reunion, I sat at a table with friends from the old neighborhood. They told me about Ec and his latest experience. It seems these three women and families now living in Salt Lake all had bought houses on a lake in Idaho, and Ec. bought one, too. Ec was barbecuing on his deck, and set the house on fire! It burned to the ground. The other people had to scramble to prevent the flames from spreading to their houses, too.
Back to my childhood; I had a new adventure that summer. I went to spend most of it with Aunt Hulda and my cousin Perry on their ranch. It was a great new experience. The ranch had been sold, but Aunt Hulda got it back when the people couldn't make the payments on it. Those people evidently didn't keep it very clean. There were bedbugs, my first experience with them. There was no electricity, so we had kerosene lamps. Each night Aunt Hulda would go around the bedroom holding a lamp under the hapless bugs on the walls, and they would fall in and be killed. There were still some to bite us, though. There was no plumbing in the house, either. We dipped water from the ditch that ran outside the back door, let it settle, and then used it for all household needs. There was a water jacket on the coal and wood cooking stove, and that supplied the washing up water, and also the clothes washing water. We washed in a galvanized tub outside the back door and used a scrubbing board.
Mother was afraid I might not get enough green vegetables, so she told me that each day that we didn't have anything green, I was to pick and eat the young leaves of dandelion and Lambsquarter plants. I did this faithfully. We did have good food, though, fresh strawberries, milk from the cow Perry milked every morning and evening, and gooseberries that made wonderful pies and jam to go with the homemade bread.
I made friends with a girl on the next farm, and we spent time together. One day she rode a horse over, and took me for a ride. We rode bareback, my first time, although I had ridden the Ryan's horse, Shorty, and one of the Pedersen's, but never bareback. When that horse galloped, and then ran, I was sure each moment would be my last! It was a dirt road, in sandy soil, so I probably wouldn't have been hurt if I fell, but it seemed an awfully long way to the ground. Fortunately nothing happened.
I had a lot of spare time since there was no radio or TV to watch, and I read all of Shakespeare's comedies, and McBeth and Hamlet. I had seen many of them on the stage at the college, and the language is about the same as that used in the King James Bible. I think this reading became the background of my love of the plays. I also sewed a dress, my first, with Aunt Hulda teaching me what I needed to know. I really enjoyed that summer.
JUNIOR HIGH IN BERKELEY
Mother had asked for sabbatical leave, and it was granted. We packed up our things, stored them with friends, or gave them to my cousin [Aunt Hulda's daughter], Helen Mar Fullmer's family, and set off for Berkeley, Calif., where Mother attended the U. of Calif. We drove in tandem with the Stott family (he was also on leave), and we had Mary Greaves in our car, too. She was about 4 years older than I, going to visit her brother who was doing graduate work at U.C. Berkeley. I enjoyed having her along, and we waved to all the truck drivers we saw, and they waved back.
The fourth night of the trip we stayed in Albany, just outside of Berkeley. I went to a little store to buy 10 cents worth of grapes, and I came back with a big bag, such an amount we certainly didn't get in Utah. That was our beginning of a year of surprises in California.
We found an apartment to rent in a fine old apartment building called The Lafayette, which stretched all through the block. There was another family from Logan, the Vince Cardon family, living about a mile up the same street. Our rent was $25 a month. As soon as another apartment was available in the building to the east, we moved over there, and paid $35 for a newer nicer apartment. The Stotts living in the same building.
We were within walking distance of the Sather Gate entrance to the University, off Telegraph Ave. and also of Willard Junior High School, in the opposite direction. Every school morning Mother would set off for the University, and Charles and I would go to the junior high. It was very different from the elementary school, where I stayed in the same room all day, and I knew everybody. Here, I didn't know anyone but Charles, and I didn't see him very often at school. I went from room to room all day, and my classes were English, Math, Latin, Social Studies, Sewing, PE alternating with Singing, and a study period at the end of the day. I also had a violin class once a week, during the study period. I had enjoyed the violin in the 6th grade, but here it was different. I was in a class with three other girls, who all played better than I did. And I would forget to practice, since I had real homework for the first time, and I would forget to bring the violin on the day of the lesson.
My home room where we met first thing every morning was in the sewing room, and we came back there for the study period. I made a friend there, Luanne Boynton. Her father was an instructor at the University. One time when I had forgotten the violin I was in the storeroom crying about it, and Luanne came in and comforted me. From then on we were friends. She wore her hair short in almost a boy cut, but she wasn't a tomboy. She was quiet, yet friendly, and she invited me to her house on some Saturdays. To get there I would walk through Sather Gate, past the Live Sciences Building where Mother did her research, and on across the campus to Luanne’s house on the east hillside. She had grown up here, and was as familiar with this campus as I was with Utah State campus. She showed me around, and I most impressed by the Library. They had a huge collection of books. Above Luanne’s house was a big "C" on the hillside, and from the house, we could look right down over the campus. They had a sun room with windows all around, and it was a perfect view, all the way to San Francisco on a clear day.
One Saturday when I was visiting Luanne we went out on the hillside and looked down on the football stadium, where the Berkeley team was playing Stanford. We should have had field glasses to really see the game, but since I had seen the Utah State team play often, I could follow the action. It was this day I learned one of their fight songs. "Up on the wooded eastern foothill, Stands a symbol clear and bold. Big "C" means to fight and strive, and win for Blue and Gold. The golden bear is ever watching. Day by day he prowls. When he hears the tread of lowly Stanford Red, From his lair he fiercely growls." For some years, after watching the Berkeley team, I kept track of their games, as well as those of the Utah State team. I really enjoyed my association with Luanne, and we wrote to each other for years after I left Berkeley.
Latin class was hard, but I enjoyed it. I learned more about English grammar than I had in elementary school, as well as the Latin grammar. Words always had a fascination for me, and now I was learning where a lot of the English words came from, and I was learning the history of the Roman Empire, too.
Math was a precursor of Algebra, and we learned ratio and proportion, but not by those names. Once in a while the white- haired principal came in and taught the class, not replacing the teacher, just "butting in" for a while. He was an old Math teacher and liked that better than being principal. The teacher was a Mrs. Hardy, and many years later when Mother was coming to Santa Barbara on the train to visit our family, the year after Kaye was born, Mrs. Hardy was her seatmate. She remembered me, although I was in the school only one year, 23 years earlier.
The PE class setup was better than any I encountered later in my school days. There was a good sized gym, where on rainy days we did some gymnastics and learned the grand march, that I didn't do again until the military balls in high school and college. We were in alphabetic order, so I always had the same partner, a red haired boy, who was friendly. Not a lot of boys that age cared about girls. He was my only other friend, besides Luanne, and the blond boy who was the crossing guard I went by each day, and who delivered our paper every afternoon after school. This junior high was in the better part of town, so everyone you met was a nice person, not like the rowdies on the other west side of town.
The girls' locker room was beneath the gym, and stretched the length, and half the width of the gym. There were lockers along each side, and in the middle, two rows of dressing rooms, with a shower between each two, with a door to the dressing rooms on each side. If I hurried fast, I could get in the shower before the girl in the other dressing room, and get out in time to reach my next class in the five minutes allotted. If she got it first, I really had to scramble. In this scramble, I once lost the belt to my green gym suit. I had to go buy material as near in color as possible, and sew another. Thank goodness I had access to a sewing machine at school, since we didn't bring anything but absolute essentials with us from Utah, no machine.
In sewing class, my earlier instruction from Aunt Hulda came in good stead. My small, regular, hand sewn stitches were admired by the teachers, even to the point of showing them off to visiting dignitaries. With the machines, we made either a slip or panties and bra, and I chose the latter (it was harder,) Then I made a dress, too big for me, so Mother wore it! Needless to say, I had a stupid teacher that term.
In Singing class I particularly enjoyed a song about Bonny Prince Charlie, when he was fleeing the English troops and went to the island of Skye. "Speed, bonny boat, like a bird on wing, Onward the sailors cry. Carry the lad that's born to be king, over the sea to Skye. High the waves roll, loud the winds roar,.... Baffled our foes stand by the shore, Follow they will not dare." If I can find all the words, I will add them later.
I won't comment on the English and Social Studies classes, they were just the usual stuff taught then, and now.
As Christmas approached, we decided to go to San Diego, and spend the holidays at Aunt Nettie and Uncle John's house. We packed up the car, and left rather late in the day. That same day, Congress had repealed the 18th Amendment, and we didn't know what to expect in the way of celebrations. We drove as far as Hayward, and decided to stay at a motel there, in case there were a lot of drunk drivers on the road. We heard a lot of singing and carousing, but nothing serious happened that night.
We drove on, and finally reached Long Beach, where we stopped to visit with May, who was living with a family of church members. She was confined to bed. She helped me finish dressing a pin cushion doll I was making for Mother's Christmas present. It was dressed much better than I could have done by myself, and it had a reverse hem at the bottom of the long skirt that held several spools of thread. I was grateful to my sister for her help. We drove on to San Diego the next day. It was warm and pleasant, and we enjoyed Christmas. Charles and I both got roller skates, and we used them right away, and I got re-acquainted with the neighborhood, all the way along Felton Street from Adams Avenue to Mission Canyon.
On the way back to Berkeley the car broke down near Buelton, and we spent three days there waiting for a new part to come from Los Angeles. Bert and Jean had sent me a book, "An Old Fashioned Girl" by Louisa Mae Alcott, and I read it through, and then started reading all the newspapers. We thought of walking to the Mission, but it was about three miles, so we didn't. I really did enjoy the book, and it remained my favorite until I read "Jane Eyre" a couple of years later.
After the three days in Buelton, the town of "Anderson's Split Pea Soup," we drove back to Berkeley. School was about the same, except that I took cooking instead of sewing. That was not my favorite by any means, although I did learn to make a few good dishes.
The roller skates were a welcome addition. I could skate around in the parking lots at the apartments, and also see the paper boy (also the crossing guard at school) when he came by. He was blonde with blue eyes, and a great smile. We talked a little, but not much. Come to think of it, he was a lot like the man married later in my life. I also skated to school in good weather, and used them on weekends on the University Campus. Charles and I would go with Mother to feed her experimental animals, guinea pigs and rats (that she used to test the diets of rural Utah school children) in the Live Sciences Building, and I would also skate around the campus, in the dry fish pond and along walks. I guess that wasn't really allowed, but I didn't know it. Charles used his skates to go further afield. I remember once he skated down Telegraph Avenue all the way to Oakland, the city to the south. His skate wheels were worn down before mine. Of course they could be replaced.
On the top floor of the Live Sciences building were cages containing animals, mostly dogs, which I learned were used in experiments on hearts. I didn't like it then, but perhaps the work they were doing helped pave the way for the heart surgery that May had later, and our daughter Karen needed, and the pace makers my husband now needs.
It was this spring on March 10, 1933, that there was a disastrous earthquake in Long Beach. We worried about May, but a telegram came, explaining Elliott was with her, and neither was hurt. Later we learned the chimney had fallen down, across the door to May's room, and they couldn't get out until someone came and dug them out. Many people lost their lives, so Elliott and May and that family were very fortunate.
Later Elliott's ship came into the Bay, and he invited us out to visit it and him. It was the battleship New York, a huge ship. I had been on Bert's destroyer, but this was much larger, and had big 16 inch guns. I was really impressed. While the ship was in port, Elliott had some shore leave and took us sightseeing around Berkeley. It was good to be with him again. Being a naval officer hadn't changed him. He was still the same good big brother.
Although I learned to swim at the college in Logan, I had never taken the life saving course offered by the Red Cross. I had a chance in Berkeley, because it was offered at the YWCA in downtown Berkeley. I would take the streetcar downtown, go to the lesson and take the streetcar back home. I never did pass my test, because I just couldn't seem to stay on the bottom of the pool long enough to pick up all the coins that the test required. I enjoyed being in the water, though, and learned to take off my outer clothes in the water, and to do the swimmers' carry, so the class wasn't a complete loss. At the end of the course there was a little party with cake and ice cream, and a magician performed. I had never seen one before, and I was properly mystified.
Shortly after President Franklin D. Roosevelt took office, he declared a bank holiday. That meant no one could cash a check, and that was the way we got our money for food. Mother had a friend who's mother had a charge account with a little family grocery near the apartment, and she let Mother charge food items on her account. That was a very friendly thing to do, and we didn't starve those few days. Food is very important, especially if you don't think you will be having it. We could get along without a lot of things for that year, but not that.
Speaking of food, we had a special thing we liked to do occasionally, and that was to have dinner at the Pepper Tree Tea Room. It was a little restaurant tucked right under the branches of a big old tree, and they served a great chicken dinner with homemade biscuits. It cost thirty-five cents, and we really enjoyed it. Also, there was a bakery on Telegraph Avenue up near Sather Gate that made a wonderful chocolate cake roll, that we would get for a special treat sometimes. Recently I tasted one just like it at the home of a friend here in Fallbrook. She gave me the recipe, so I will make it as soon as I have a good excuse for doing it.
An old friend of Mother's, Dr. Ray Fisher, lived with his family in Oakland. There were a daughter and son still at home, but they weren't near our ages, except Bruce, who was younger. The Doctor invited us over to their house, and we got acquainted. We did go some places with their family, but because they lived in another town and he was busy with his practice, we didn't do a lot of it. He was quite a remarkable man. Everything he had anything to do with, his house, his practice, his car, the town, was in his eyes, perfect. One day we were riding in his car with him, and as he drove, he read poetry to us. Another time he stopped right at the top of a hill, in the middle of street, to show us Mt. Tamalpias across the bay, north of San Francisco!
Later in the spring, though, I was glad we knew this family. I got a kidney infection, called acute nephritis. Dr. Fisher took care of me, sent me to bed for over a month, and had me eat a completely salt-free diet. It was awful. He also gave me a drug for menstrual pain, which I later found out was opium. I knew about opium, from hurrying home from school the year before, to listen to "Dr. Fu Man Chu" on the radio. Also, I had read all of the Sherlock Holmes stories by then, and opium was talked about there. I finally recovered from the infection and was able to go back to school. I finished up the year and got my grades, to take back to Logan to the junior high there.
BACK TO SWENSON’S APARTMENT
Back in Logan, we rented the same apartment at Swensons, and our junior high was located in what had been the high school. It had all the necessary rooms, offices, auditorium, and gym with dressing rooms, but it was a far cry from Willard Junior High in Berkeley. I soon got used to it. Instead of going to school on roller skates I rode a new bicycle, new to me, that is. There weren't many girls riding bicycles, but I rode along with the boys and didn't mind that. We didn't have gears on bicycles then, so I was very proud of myself when I could pump all the way up Temple Hill. When the snow came, I rode the city bus and took my lunch or ate in the bakery on Main St.
My home room this year was with my English teacher, Miss Afton Thain, a distant cousin of Bert's wife, Jean Jones Brown. I liked her very much and she became a model for me to pattern my life after. Besides teaching English, she worked in the office, and she always dressed very nicely. I was thrilled when Aunt Hattie sent me a sweater just like Miss Thain's, but white with red dots instead of yellow with brown dots.
Since I already had junior high cooking and sewing in 7th grade, I wasn't required to take them again this year. Instead, I had a library period, and I assisted the librarian, Mrs. Merrill. The Social Studies teacher was Mr. Kilburn, and he taught from the next book in the Harold Rugg series I had started in 7th grade. Algebra was the math class, and I liked that better than social studies. My only elective was art, and I liked that, too. Science was taught by Mr. Combs, the father of Charles' friend, D'Monte Combs. PE was taught by a Miss Green, a distant cousin of mine.
As the year wore on, I became extremely sorry for this girl. She was pregnant, and although there was a ruling about not letting married women teach, they let this poor girl finish out the year. Maybe they thought having her there would teach the students to stay out of this particular trouble. Some of the students were cruel to her, but she took it with only a fiery red face below her red hair. She never did lash back at them. She left town after school was out, and I never did see her again.
There was one thing that was a sort of problem with me. Many of my old friends from elementary school had found new friends from other schools in the junior high the year before. But Toots Ryan and the Swenson family remained my fast friends.
THE MERRILL HOUSE
At the end of the year Mother had decided that we needed to have a place of our own, so we could learn something about taking care of a house and having a garden. She rented a little house on 5th East, from my first and second grade teacher who lived next door with her college age son and daughter. She rented rooms to college students, too, and I met some of them, whom I admired from afar. Two were Frank Fister and John Aamodt.
About this time Bert was ordered to the east coast, and Jean and Betty Ann brought their six-month-old German Shepherd pup to stay with us for the summer. He was a handful, but a lovable dog, who made good friends with our kitten. They often slept together. Charles took a picture showing the kitten sleeping within the front paws of the dog.
Jean also needed someone to drive to the east coast with her, and Mother found a second cousin, Eugene Gardner, who needed a ride east. He came to our house to meet her and Betty Ann, and they decided to travel together. This cousin later became a nuclear scientist, at the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory when it was still at Berkeley. He was accidentally exposed to radiation and died of radiation poisoning. He carefully documented his decline, and he left a valuable record. Time Magazine, in reporting his death, called him one of our country's great natural resources.
In the fall I started the ninth grade, the last grade in junior high. I had literature from a Miss Morrell. We studied the Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner", and the novel "Silas Marner", and we read Shakespeare’s "Julius Caesar". I had already read it, so I was ahead there. More about Miss Morrell later.
This year I started to play the oboe, but I didn't do very well. The band master put me on the alto horn, and I made it as far as the "B" Band. I was chosen to be a band sponsor, one of three girls who carried a banner whenever the "A" band played in public or marched in parades. The highlight of the band year was the state band contest that was held that year in Ogden, Utah. I stayed the two nights I was there with one of Mother's dear friends from her teaching days in Mexico, "Aunt" Lydia Tanner, who was teaching at Weber College. That way I didn't get into any trouble, although Patty McGee and I started to go into a movie with two boys from the band, when Patty's mother appeared out of nowhere, and stopped us. We were too young to date, even in the afternoon.
Besides the literature and band classes, I had Social Studies taught by Harold Bateman, Biology by Mr. Peterson, Sewing by Mrs. Lund (her favorite expression was "Thank God for the uplift Brassiere!"), Speech by Miss Cardon, who later in the year played Beatrice in Shakespeare "Much Ado About Nothingl", the play I was in before I started school. I enjoyed seeing it, and sat again in the balcony at the college auditorium as I used to do when I was younger.
I got quite a crush on Mr. Bateman, the Social Science teacher. He was in the army reserve, and two days a week he came to school in his officer's uniform, complete with jodhpurs, Sam Brown belt, and all the rest of the things. He maintained order in the classroom in a masterful way, but was gentle at times, when things were going well. Since he was older, and married, I tried to transfer my feelings to his younger brother, who was in my class, but he just was just a pale and uninteresting copy. I did dance with him , though, at my first night dance at the school, and he wasn't too bad.
Speaking of dancing, reminded me that each ward of the Church's young men's and young women's program would have a dance once a month, after the usual Mutual classes, which were always held on Tuesday evenings. That's where we learned to dance, by going each week to the dance at the ward that was having one that week. With ten wards in town, we could pick and choose. There was always live music, provided by the various young men's bands about town. Charles played the trombone sometimes in the one Grant Holman had organized, and they played at some of these dances. I enjoyed the dances. One sticks in my mind; I was dancing with the son of the Band leader at school, and he danced very fast, and thought he was very good. Well, he was, until he slipped and skidded clear across the room. Thank goodness he let go of me! I also enjoyed the road show plays that I was in, at MIA in these years, in junior high and high school.
Mr. Peterson's Biology class met in a room several steps up to a small landing, then into the room. When the students were coming in, Mr. Peterson would stand on the landing, and reach out to touch all the girls that came up the steps. We tried hard to avoid him, but he had quick hands! He got married half way through the year, and we thought that might reform him, but it didn't. No one thought to report him to the principal, as I guess girls would do now. We just tried to keep out of reach, but almost always failed.
As I said earlier my English teacher was Miss Morrell, who had a limp, and a sharp crooked nose, but she was able to inspire some people to read. I won the reading contest she set up for the school, by identifying the most of the fictional characters on her lists. She was a member of the Professional Women's Club that Mother was the president of, and she told Mother that I had a good wardrobe for school; some girls had too much, but mine was just right. Speaking of that club, Mother was the state president when I was in high school, and she was written up in the newspapers. I guess more people knew her that way than through her research, although she wrote scientific papers and was a member of Sigma Xi, and went to Washington DC at the invitation of the President for the Conference on Children.
This was the year I got Hepatitis. My skin and eyes and fingernails had turned yellow, and my brain got fuzzy. I stayed out of school for four weeks, and when I went back, I was sent home again for another two weeks. When I finally got back to school, my skin, eyes and nails were normal again, and I had lost ten pounds and looked great in a new knit dress. When I walked into Band, I got a real cheer. Later I even smiled at Mr. Peterson on the stairs leading to his room, and he said, "You should smile more often. You don't know what you can do with that smile."
I was chosen Valedictorian, but I was afraid my brain wouldn't let me write my speech. Miss Morrell stood by me, encouraging and reassuring me. Evidently the Hepatitis affects the brain as well as the skin, eyes, and fingernails. Anyway, with Miss Morrell to correct my writing errors, I finally got the speech ready. I practiced it in the auditorium, and I felt I was capable of delivering it. Mother bought me a new pink dress, and everything went well. People congratulated me, and I was happy.
Summer came, and with it another trip to California. This time it was just vacation. Aunt Hattie and my cousin Bob came with us. Aunt Hattie still sometimes looked sad when she looked at me, then she would give me a hug. And I knew she was thinking of Mickey. I loved her for it, and I was very glad that she didn't resent my being there when her own little daughter was dead. We went to Berkeley first, and we enjoyed showing my aunt and cousin around. We rented an apartment in the old Lafayette where we lived when we first got there. I had forgotten that when the building went through the block, the ground sloped up, and the first floor became the second. When I went out for some groceries, and came back, I came down the hall and entered the apartment, walked right to the kitchen where two men were sitting! That was really one of my most embarrassing moments, up to that time.
We went to see the Fisher's, and it was on this trip that I discovered he was Aunt Hattie's beau before she married Uncle Tom! I kept expecting something really exciting to happen, but they seemed to be were beyond any emotion, except maybe curiosity to see each other again after all these years. Maybe they just hid it well. Mrs. Fisher didn't lose her cool at all, and I kept thinking if I'd been in her place, I would have! She was quite gracious, and she even loaned Mother a summer coat to wear on the cool evenings, since she had come without one.
I don't remember how it happened, but Mother sprained her ankle. We talked of giving up the rest of the trip, but she wouldn't hear of it. She had it bandaged, and got some crutches, and we kept on. We planned to visit all the missions, as we went south, and she even went to all of those. In the San Jose area a Catholic father who was the guide, was very careful to be at her side, whenever there might be some danger.
We went from there to Santa Cruz to visit my cousin Perry Ross, who was living there with his wife and working as a carpenter. Aunt Hulda, his mother, was there, too, so we had a visit with her. Marian, Perry's wife, had a dress shop in Capitola, and I bought a cute short set from her, that I wore a lot the rest of the trip.
We also visited the Carpenters, Aunt Hattie's brother-in-law and sister-in-law in Santa Cruz. She was Uncle Tom's sister. While we were staying at their house we went to the beach with Bob's cousins on that side of their family. I thoroughly enjoyed the day, but that night I had the worst sunburn of my short life! I couldn't stand anything on my back and shoulders, and couldn't sleep with the pain. Also, the brother-in-law snored so loud you could hear it all over the house. The next day Mother made a halter top for me that tied around my neck and waist and didn't touch my back anywhere. That was great. The Carpenters were Catholic, as was Uncle Tom, and drinking wine in the evening was a custom. I had my first taste if it here, and I thought it was awful. I haven't change my mind much in the last 60 years.
We drove on south, visiting the missions on the way. Santa Barbara was one of our favorites. We reached San Diego, and Aunt Nettie and Uncle John went with us to the San Diego Mission. After we had looked all around it, including the cemetery, Aunt Nettie told us a story that horrified me; when workmen were digging to put in a foundation to restore a room, they found the skeletons of lots of newborn babies. Aunt Nettie said the inference was that these were the remains of babies born to the nuns, fathered by the priests at the mission. I could understand maybe this happening once or twice, but not lots!
This was 1935, the year of the big Exposition in Balboa Park, commemorating the Exposition of 1915 when most of the buildings in the park were built. It was a great place for teenagers, like a big state fair, only more so. We enjoyed it all, and Mother's ankle was better by now, and I think she and Aunt Hattie enjoyed it, too. We saw it all, the Art Gallery, the History of Man, the International House, the performances at the Ford Bowl, everything but the Nudist Colony, which was limited to people over 21. For getting around in the Park there were buses that were jointed in the middle, so they could turn corners more easily. I have looked for such buses since, because I thought it was a good idea, but I have never seen them again. Of course there were all kinds of foods, and we tried lots of them.
There were some trips to the beach, but one stands out in my memory. We were with the friends of Aunt Nettie and Uncle John, who had a son my age, that I had played with on my first trip there. Now he was grown into a tall rather interesting person, and I wanted to make a good impression. That proved to be difficult, because I was coming down with a bad cold, and didn't have even one hankie or Kleenex with me. I had to sniff in and either swallow, or unobtrusively spit when no one was looking. This was a miserable day, which was followed by several more I spent in bed, while the rest of the group continued enjoying themselves.
We started home, and it was a hot trip over the desert in southern Nevada. Mother became so overcome by the time we reached Baker, that she had to lie down in the shade, where it was 115 degrees. Air conditioning hadn't been invented, either for cars or buildings. Charles and Bob did most of the driving as we took several days to reach home again.
SOPHOMORE, HIGH SCHOOL
I started high school, the 10th grade, in the fall of 1935. The location was the campus of the old Brigham Young College where my mother taught school many years before. There were lawns and trees around the building with the classrooms and offices, gym and swimming pool, and the building housing the auditorium and music departments. There was a canal behind these buildings, separating them from the football field and track facility and a shop. There was to be a new gymnasium, but it hadn't been built yet. It was a much more beautiful setting than other schools I had attended, and I remember many times that I spent time outside, enjoying it all.
To get to school I rode the city bus with a student ticket, and I walked home in good weather. I had traded my bicycle for a bow and three footed arrows, and I was enjoying them. However, I regretted getting rid of the bicycle. I still could have used it for recreation, even though I no longer wanted to ride it to school. In the school yearbook next spring, there was a picture of my shooting with the bow and arrow, and wearing the shorts outfit I had bought from Marian Perry the summer before. It was the sport I enjoyed most, next to swimming, in my PE classes.
My schedule of classes was: English and Literature with Miss Morrell, who moved to the high school that year; Sewing with Mrs. Brown,(who was a distant relative, but on my mother's side instead of my father's;) Biology with Mr. Hodges; Social Studies with, to my delight, Mr. Bateman, who had moved to high school also; French with Miss Aldath Thain, a sister of Afton Thain, who taught me English in junior high; and P.E. with Mrs. Hall.
I liked all of these classes. My Latin in junior high helped me to catch onto French. Mother had spoken a little French, German and Spanish around the house as we were growing up, and I liked French the best. Also, it was supposed to be the cultural language of the world, and I thought it might help me out in the future.
I gave up trying to play a musical instrument. I guess I was lazy. I could have probably made it if I had really tried. Instead I took a chorus class, and I liked that. That meant I was no longer connected with the Band, and I wasn't elected Band Sponsor. I felt bad about that. However, at the end of the year I was invited to join Cantadoras, the girl's glee club. That was an honor.
To get to the Biology class in the winter was something of a challenge, because the door the girls had to use was outside, over 100 feet away from the door of the school. The boys could go through their dressing room beneath the gym, but the girls' dressing room didn't go through. One time when there was a blizzard outside, a bunch of us girls ran through the boys' dressing room on the way to class. There was nothing much to see, because it was between classes, and the boys were dressed. We didn't do it again, at least I didn't.
Fate, though, paid me back one afternoon. I had just got out of the shower room, after swimming class, and didn't have my towel. I had to walk across the landing at top of a short flight of steps that led to the small pool, and the door to the pool was open. The boys' coach was standing across the pool, and got a full view of a naked girl! I hoped he'd never recognize me again.
I was 15, and the Church hadn't made it definite that boys and girls shouldn't date until age 16. I had my first date with a boy from Smithfield, who was the leader of one of the dance bands young people had formed. We didn't go out much, because he never knew when he could come to town, and we couldn't set up dates.
I was quite flattered when a senior, Gorgas Paulsen, asked to meet me, and I started dating him. He was 6 ft. 2 in. (a little awkward, as though he wasn't used to it yet), and the son of a doctor in town. We went to the Harvest Ball and most of the other big school dances, and to a movie now and then. George Swenson finally asked me out, but it was only for a couple of times. There were some other boys I dated; one reason was because I didn't want to appear to be "going steady". However, Gorgas seemed the most interested in me. He was on the debate team, and got me to join, too. Mr. Bateman was the coach, and that was another attraction. We went to meets at North Cache High School and South Cache High School and I enjoyed it all, maybe because it was a new mental exercise. The topic for Sophomores (10th grade) was Socialized Medicine. I liked most to debate for it, because I really believed in it, and couldn't get too enthusiastic debating against it.
When my MIA teacher insisted we should date only Mormon boys, I didn't agree, and kept going out with Gorgas. I even started going with him to the youth group of his Presbyterian Church. There I met two southern boys, or I should say men, because they were older college students. I dated one of them, Andy Grey, and then later the other, Lucas Dargan.
I got acquainted with Gorgas' family, and his mother, who was an artist, painted my portrait. The next spring the Utah Federation of Business and Professional Women's Club, of which she was a member and Mother was State President, gave an exhibit of Esther Paulsen's paintings, 52 of them; the one of me was among them. Later Mother purchased it, and now it hangs in Karen's Victorian house in Denver. I enjoyed that exhibit, along with Gorgas and the other friends of ours and Mother's who were present. Gorgas's portrait and one of his younger brother were also hanging there. There were refreshments served, and there was a piano recital by Thelma Fogelberg, another member of the Club and a fine musician as well as a French and Spanish professor at the College.
About this time, someone told Gorgas Paulsen a made up story about Mother. He said he was told Mother had married in polygamy a Mr. Tanner, and that was why she went to Colon Guars, Mexico, before I was born. Of course none if it was true, she was hired to teach at the Church Academy there. I guess part of the story got circulated because of my going to stay with “Aunt” Lydia Tanner in Ogden when I went with the Band to the band contest there when I was still in Junior High School. Charles and I called her “Aunt’ just because she and Mother were such good friends over the years.
This was the first year of the Junior Reserve Officers training Corps. at the high school. They added a presence to the campus, with their parades, and then the Military Ball in the spring. Charles joined with other friends of his, and so did Gorgas. The next year Charles was made Battalion Commander, and that was a big honor and I guess a lot of responsibility for him.
I had enjoyed my sewing class with Mrs. Brown, so the next summer I took another class from her. I made a white wool summer coat, which I wore when Charles and I drove with Mother in our new Ford car to Seattle, where she had meetings to attend. I don't remember where the others stayed, but I was at the YWCA, where my room cost 25 cents a night. The convention was at the Olympic Hotel, where the room rates were much higher! The highlight of the trip as far as I was concerned was a ferryboat trip to Vancouver Island, Canada, to the town of Victoria. It was very British, and I'm sure that it was even more so, because they wanted to appeal to the American tourists who came over there. I wished I had more spending money, but I did buy a pair of Japanese wooden slippers, which caused my arches to fall. I'm sure of it, because they were so painful to wear, and later I was flat footed.
On the way up or back, I don't remember which, we went to Yakima, where my cousin Annona lived. She was Aunt Hulda's daughter. Later Annona's husband died of lead poisoning, which he got from the lead spray he put on his apple trees. Our route must have taken us near Richland, where our daughter, Kaye, lives now. I know we went through Pendleton both times and once down the Columbia Gorge. It was spectacular then, too, although I don't remember all the dams.
Back home again, the summer went much as previous ones had. I swam, took dancing lessons, and went to the 11 o'clock lectures, all at the college. One new thing this summer was that my dates with Gorgas continued, movies when he could afford the tickets, and outings with his church's youth group. One of those was a hike to the old Jardine Juniper, way up the hillside of Logan Canyon. It was 4,000 years old then, and I suppose it's still there. Another trip was to the cave where Logan River began. This one wasn't a hike, because we could drive to it. But there was another hike, up behind the Girls' Camp, where I should have been with the MIA girls from our church.
I really must have been stubborn, because this year I was well enough to go to the church camp, but I was still upset about the church not wanting young people to date outside the church. I stopped going to MIA meetings. Gorgas' grandfather had been a Mormon, but when he died, he left his money to the Church, and left Gorgas' father only a building block on West 1st North St. Their family lived upstairs there, and had the medical practice. They rented the downstairs to various businesses. The doctor never got over his antagonism, which he transferred to his sons.
THE JOHNSON HOUSE
JUNIOR YEAR
We moved that summer to a house on West 2nd North, owned by the Johnson family. We had a large living room across the front, the dining room and kitchen were behind it on the east, and there were two bedrooms and a bathroom on the west. There was a screened porch across the back, but we used it mainly for storage.
I started my junior year at high school, and it was a walk of only four blocks, so I didn't ride a bus. This year my classes were Speech with Miss Morrell, French with Miss Thain, Social Studies with Mrs. Merrill (a different Merrill widow from my 1st. and 2nd. grade teacher, and not the Merrill widow, the librarian of Junior High, whom I assisted a while), Chorus with Mr. Baugh, and Physiology with Miss Norda Finlinson. This was the only class I ever had with Charles, after those first few weeks in 1st grade. He came to Physiology class, but he didn't take many notes. I drew pictures of the muscles and bones we were to learn about, and kept up with my notes, until I sprained my right ring finger playing baseball in gym. My notes were a mess after that. At the end of the year, we had to turn in our notes to get a grade from the class. Charles borrowed mine, typed them up, and got an A, while I got a B. I resolved to learn to type!
My only class with Mabel Bott, Charles' girlfriend, was in chorus and Cantadoras. I got to know her better, and I really liked her. I don't think Charles was ever serious about any other girl, so I knew she was special, because he was such a great person, as well as my brother! I have always been glad they stayed together.
This year I was selected as one of the three Band Sponsors. That was good, because it made up for my missing out on it the last year. Our uniforms were white tops, white skirts, and maroon jackets and caps, and a white Sam Brown belt. These were the school colors, and the same as the Band wore. I really liked being a Sponsor, and that made up for missing out the year before.
This year I stayed with the debate club and was vice president and joined more clubs. In addition to the Cantadoras, I was invited to join the social club Called Zeta Tau. It was patterned after a college sorority, but the high school banned the name, and it was the ZT club from then on. I also joined the French club, and the Girls' Rifle Club. This was the first year for that club, and it was popular with the ZT girls, and others who wanted to learn to shoot. I joined because I thought it would be good to know how to handle a gun if I ever had to.
It was here that my friendship with Elise Stillman began. She was the daughter of the Major who had come to Logan to form the ROTC. She was tall, about 5 ft. 10 in. and I was 5 feet. 2 in. That didn't make any difference to our friendship, and we are still friends after all these years. While we were still in high school, I had my lunch each day at the Bluebird Cafe on Main Street. I guess this was because Mother didn't want me to go home and eat alone. Our street was the main one leading into town from the railroad, and there was almost always a "Knight of the Road", a sort of tramp, walking along there, sometimes coming to the door and asking for food. When Mother was there, she had the man sit on the front porch, she would make a couple of sandwiches, and put them on the back stoop, or little porch, and have him go around and get it. These times she kept the doors locked.
Anyway, what I was leading up to, was that once a week Elise Stillman would come and have lunch with me at the Bluebird. We enjoyed these grown-up times. She had been around to various places that I had never seen, and she would tell me about them. She was never proud of it, or overbearing, but was just a good friend. Every once in a while she would come to my house, or I would go to hers, and we would sew together. We both were taking the classes from Mrs. Brown, and also cooking classes with Miss Roland.
There was another thing that happened when I would have lunch at the Bluebird. A young man named Willard Thornley, who worked at that time at the Cardon Drugstore, would also come in for lunch. When I wasn’t having lunch with Elise, I sat on a stool not far from Willard. I planned my lunches with economy in mind. One day I would have a sandwich (15 cents) and a coke (10 cents), and another day a bowl of soup (10 cents) and a piece of pie (15 cents.) Sitting at the counter there, I became better acquainted with Willard, a quiet and shy young man with heavy glasses. Each day we would talk about what pies were on the menu, and which would be the best to order. Outside of that and the weather, and a few people we both knew, we never did talk very much.
My good friend Mary Louise Rector was well acquainted with Willard; she had worked at one time in a printing office where Willard was working then. Many years later when I was visiting her in Logan, she mentioned Willard, and she told me he was writing poetry that was good, but he was almost totally blind. She would visit him when she was in Logan to see her mother. I told her then about my sitting by Willard in the "Bluebird," where we enjoyed the pie and small talk that year. She said she would tell him, he would be pleased that I remembered him.
Later that year a package came from Mary Lou, containing a book written by Willard's sister Gwendella. She was Professor of Speech and Oral Interpretation at U.S.U. until her death in 1968. She had the book published privately, and after her death, Willard inherited several copies. He had inscribed this one to me, inside the front cover. The year, 1983. He had asked her to send it to me. I wrote him a letter thanking him, but I'm ashamed to say I haven't written since. I will ask Mary Lou next time I see her how he is getting along. Being blind must be very difficult for him.
Back at my story of high school, in the spring The Contadoras went to Tremonton to the Region One Music Festival. Mr. Baugh had taught the Cantadoras a couple of rather difficult songs, and we didn't know just how well we would do. We waited for the judges decision; they didn't grade us, just said, "It was a good attempt at Bach!" We were satisfied with that, because it was much more difficult singing than the other groups had "attempted."
As for my social life, I was still going out with Gorgas Paulsen, although he had graduated and was going to college. He joined a fraternity, Sigma Nu, and I went to fraternity dances with him. Also, I asked him back to high school for a couple of ZT parties, so we were still going together. However, I still went out with high school boys. One was a new boy, Dean Farnsworth from California. His parents had moved back to Utah because they didn't want their children to grow up there. He was interesting at first, but he got on my nerves at a dinner of the French Club that I was in charge of, and he tried to take over. The one boy, besides Gorgas I spent most time with was Earl Anderson, the son of the Anderson Lumber Co. president. All that was fine, except that sometimes I felt a little squeamish when I was with him; he had a part time job at the local mortuary. I didn't ask him what he did there, I really didn't want to know! I also went out with Andy Gray, the Southerner I mentioned earlier.
Something happened this year that made me wonder about Gorgas Paulsen’s family. He came over one night about 2 a.m. and woke us up. He was very upset, because his father had hit his mother. Gorgas was really what Mother called beside himself. He said he couldn’t take his dad in a fight, because he was taller and outweighed him. Gorgas choked out that if he had a gun he would kill him. This was probably what he would do, because he was in a black mood. Of course this was an extreme situation, but it seemed as though he was always very happy or very sad. I preferred him when he was very happy.
The summer of 1936 our family made another trip to California. Mother had some meetings to attend, and Charles left her there and drove me to Long Beach to stay with May, and went on to San Diego. May was feeling a lot better and was up and around. In fact, she had a little perfume shop in the beach section of Long Beach.
She mixed her own perfume, mostly orange blossom, and sold it under her own label. She could arrange her own hours, because she was the only person in the tiny shop. There was just barely enough room for us both to be behind the counter, which opened right onto the lobby of a large building on the beach. I would stay sometimes with her, and sometimes go swimming right out in front of the building. That was before the big breakwater was built, and large waves came clear up to the beach. There were three Mexican strolling musicians who strolled around in the building, and I learned some Spanish songs from them.
While I was visiting there May had a boyfriend who was a marine, and another who was the elevator operator in the building. She asked me a couple of times to spend time with the Marine, so she could be with the elevator operator. We would go out on the beach , or along the “Pike” as the board walk was called, or go on the rollercoaster or other rides. It was sometime that week that the mother of the Marine came up from San Diego to meet May, because her son wanted to marry her. I don't know how that came out, but May didn't marry her son.
After visiting May for a while, I went to stay with my brother Bert and Jean and Betty Ann (who had been born that first summer when I was at Aunt Nettie's). Bert's ship the Quincy, a heavy cruiser, was stationed at San Pedro, so they had bought a house east of Long Beach, along the waterway which had been built for the 1932 Olympic Games swim meets. I enjoyed the visits, and also swam every day in the waterway. It was connected with the ocean, so it was tidal. Bert took me sailing on a lagoon near there, and I enjoyed it, but I ran the little boat aground. Fortunately Bert was a good sailor and got us off.
I went with Jean to buy furniture, and I got some good ideas of what went with what when you are fitting new purchases together to make a home. Some of the things Jean bought then, were still in their house in Maryland when I last visited there 49 years later.
Since our father died, Bert, and to some extent Elliott, tried to be an advisor to me. Sometimes I resented their attempts at guidance, but I realized that they were concerned about me, and wanted to help me grow up properly. I was proud of both of them, and wanted their approval as much as I wanted Mother's and Charles's. The approval of those I love has always been very important to me.
SENIOR YEAR
In the fall of 1937 I became a senior. My classes were English with Miss Spencer, Chemistry with Mr. Pederson, History with Miss Mitton, and I think a P.E. class. I remember going to gym classes and doing modern dance, and going swimming in the big new pool in the new gym that had been built, but that was about it. I was part of a bicycle group that did formations. We performed at half time at a college basketball game, and so I got my picture in the college yearbook the year before I was in college. Also, I spent some time in the Sewing department, and I made a pink wool suit.
I was in the senior play, and judging by some comments made by my classmates when they wrote in my yearbook, I must have done a good job with it. I have always enjoyed dramatics, and this was no exception. We rehearsed on Saturdays and after school, and it was no problem, it did not interfere with my classes.
The English and Literature class was good. We studied literary style, and read Hawthorne's "Scarlet Letter" and Shakespeare's “Macbeth.” Also, it was the first time since fifth grade that I really enjoyed poetry. In fact, I wrote a couple of poems myself. One was when we were studying Middle English, and I had an assignment to either write a short research paper or a poem. I wrote while I was at rehearsals for "Senior Hits", the variety show the seniors put on every year. I was one of team of Egyptian dancers, and there was a lot of time waiting around, so I used it for writing the poem, in Middle English style. The other poem was for a speech I gave at a dinner dance of the ZT club at the end of the year. The club was to be disbanded, and I don't know if another club took it's place the next year.
I had put off Geometry until my senior year, because I hoped I would be smarter than when I took Algebra in the eighth grade. It seemed to work, because I caught on easily and helped out my classmates. Another thing I remember was that the teacher was a shy young man just out of school himself, and Dee Louise Parker flirted shamelessly with him, and he used to blush a beautiful red. Chemistry was something entirely different but interesting. We wore rubber aprons and worked with chemicals and Bunsen burners. I managed to spill acid on my new navy blue wool dress, but fortunately I wasn't burned. I learned all about periodical tables, but now since the atomic age, everything has changed. I'd have to go back to school to know anything about Chemistry.
Mr. Bateman didn't teach seniors, so I had to have Miss Mitton for History. It worked out all right, though. I got a job, my first, correcting papers. She paid me twenty-five cents a set. Dee Louise Parker and I decided we wanted to be Egyptologists, and talked about it during class. We were reprimanded, but I can't remember what the punishment was, if any. Neither of us ever followed up on it, but I still like to read about new finds in Egypt.
I seem to have dropped out of debating, I can't remember anything of it. I was president of the French Club, and we held all our meetings in French. I imagine our accents weren't too good! Elise Stillman was president of the Rifle Club and I was vice president. We didn't do much, except fire our rifles when we met for our meetings at the rifle range. We did have one dinner party, though.
My social life was divided between college parties with Gorgas and occasionally with Lucas Dargan, the southern fellow, and high school parties with different boys. I still went out some with Earl Anderson, and also with Paul Thomas, a boy from the old neighborhood and son of college professor. Gorgas and I had an understanding, that after he finished pre-med and medical school and was set up with a practice, we would marry. I was beginning to feel a little disturbed about joining that family. Part of that was due to his father’s treatment of his mother, and also the fact that his aunt was in a mental sanitarium.
It was sometime after I turned 18, that I got a letter from Andy Gray, the first Southerner I went out with. We had exchanged letters since he graduated and went away. This letter, though, was a real shocker. He wanted to marry me, now! I got Mother to help me write a letter back, explaining that I was very fond of him but didn't love him, and wanted to finish high school, go to college and graduate before anything else. He stopped writing soon after that, and I learned later from Lucas Dargan that he had married a piano teacher in Alabama not too long after.
I wasn't chosen Band Sponsor this year, and it was a disappointment, as it had been in my sophomore year. In fact, it even overshadowed in my memory the fact that I had been one in my junior year. But I was School Historian, and I was editor of a new registration catalog. Before this time, there had been only a few mimeographed sheets mentioning the classes available. Now with the help of a good staff, I produced a nice booklet, telling about each class, the time, and the teacher. I was proud of that booklet and the people who helped on it. This year I also won a writing contest. The prize was $5, which I spent on new gold colored evening slippers to wear with my flame colored evening dress that I wore for graduation. We didn’t wear caps and gowns. There was a dance after the ceremony, and of course I wore the flame colored dress. It was cut longer in the back, and Mr. Baugh, the chorus teacher, watched the dancing, and a couple of times he told me he was afraid I would step on the dress and tear it. But I didn’t.
The summer after graduation I went to California again and stayed with May. She and Russell Hiner, the elevator operator, had married during the year. He had a son and daughter by his first wife who had died, and they lived with May and Russell. May got along quite well, but it was a strain, and she spent most of each day in bed. I helped with whatever I could around the house. The real test came, when I had to cook a rabbit for dinner. I had always thought bunnies were cute, and the idea of eating one was revolting. I did get it cooked, but I had a time trying to eat it. However, I enjoyed being there and also enjoyed the children, especially when May was feeling well, and we could go to the beach together.
After my visit I came home again. I was very tired, but I had time to become rested before entering college in the fall.
