Jan 13, 2011

What was your room like?

It was an upstairs room until I was a teenager. (Early teen). Then it was a basement room the rest of my youth. The upstairs room had a sloping ceiling since it was shaped by the roof of the home. It was always hot in the summer and cold in the winter. The cooling was a cross breeze between the two windows on each side of the house and heating in the winter was by heat coming up from the living room via the stairs and a small hole in the other bedroom closet.

The basement was always cool and felt pretty good. Heated by a vent into the room from the furnace system. There was a shower in the one corner of the room that on one occasion had a visitor while I was showering, a scorpion. Many other visitors made their way through my room as well until I figured out a way to catch them where they entered the room, speaking of mice by the way. I had a neat place to grow up and wouldn't trade it.

Jan 12, 2011

What was the yard like?

HUGE!!! Especially when it came to mowing the lawn, picking the fruit, planting the garden and weeding the garden. It had to have been a full two acres or at least 1 and a half, well maybe just one, no it was a lot bigger than just one. The yard was made up of a lot of lawn, which I added to later in my teen years since I would rather push a power lawn mower than weed a garden. However when I was younger I liked weeding better than mowing since the lawn mower was a hard to push "push mower". The wheels made a blade turn against a bar that trapped the grass and cut it off. Only problem was that it was hard to push in long grass and we hated to mow so the grass grew as we put off mowing only making it worse. We did usually mow every saturday when mom could get us to do it along with helping do the wash. There were a lot of trees including 6 old apple trees, couple of cherry trees, apricot and pear and crab apples also. We had one green ash tree and several black walnut trees. Mom also planted a lot of other trees through the years with me getting to dig the holes usually when we planted them. She even planted a mighty Oak that dad mowed down several times until it gave up. He didn't mean to it was just that it was in the area where the wild grass grew and dad usually mowed that part.The lawn and garden were watered with irrigation water from the canal so it was always fun to play on the lawn when the water was on it. It was a beautiful yard too. Mom made sure there were alot of flowers and trees to make it that way. we had a playhouse in the lower part of the yard and an outdoor fireplace as well. It was always fun to have dinner out there and we had a lot of special meals there as well for different holiday during the summer. It was at the end of the road from town so we often had people drive in and turn around and drive back out but it was a fun place to grow up. It lent itself well to outdoor night games like "No Bears are out tonight", "kick the can", and "hide and seek". There was a hedge that mom had planted to kind of block the view of the clothesline from the rest of the yard so that made for a lot of good hiding places in that yard. It also made for a good place to change completely out of my clothes the day the skunk sprayed me on the way to work at 9:30 pm. It was dark and I never turned o the light to go out to the truck but should have that time.

Jan 11, 2011

Where was your first home? What are your earliest memories of your home? Can you draw a floor plan of your home?

We lived in an older home 2 miles or so from Duchesne. I remember in my earliest years at age three having to climb the stairs to my bedroom with a leg brace that prevented bending of my knee so I would step up one and swing my leg up to the step above that and lift myself up. It took me quite a bit of time to climb the stairs and strange as it may seem I do not have any vivid memory of going back down. There was also a pipe that ran up the side of the house near our bedroom window and I would climb out of the window and slide down the pipe to get out, a built in fire escape i suppose. It was easy to climb back up and get in the same way. Later after we dug two more rooms out from under the house that became me bedrooms , one for sleeping in and one for studying, of which I did very little of the latter. I could easily draw a floor plan but not in this blog. I will have to draw it and photograph it instead. there were three levels to the home consisting of several rooms. The basement had two bedrooms and a furnace room. Mainfloor had a kitchen, side porch (later included into the living room), two bathrooms, master bedroom, fruitroom, and back porch. The upper level had two bedrooms and two sides used for attic storage. I was the one who always got to clean and organize the attic space that collected old clothes, magazines and toys. It was actually pretty fun to play in also.

Jan 10, 2011

Share a memory of your brothers and sisters. To whom did you feel the closest? Why?

I think that the memories of the whole family together were mostly around the piano on sunday evenings after church.We would sing and dad was always so fun to listen to with his deep bass voice. Other than that I did a lot of things with them individually as well. Alma was older by 10 or so years and by the time I was very old she was off to college and I actually became closer to her after I was married and we would visit them in Sandy, Ut where they were living at the time. Stan also was older and I remember him best as my roommate after he returned from his mission and how I loved to listen to him play his guitar out in the furnace room. Lynn and I did an awful lot of farming together and that included irrigating, haying, gardening and milking the cows. We usually got along pretty good but did have our moments. Leesa and Marsha were probably the closest to me and Leesa especially after Pauline came to live with us. Pauline was Leesa'a age but in my class at school due to her Aug birthday and she waited a year while I went ahead a year. Marsha and I have been close most of our lives and I figure that is because we had to play together being the youngest and all.

Jan 9, 2011

What are the full names of your brothers and sisters? Where was your family living when they were born?

Alma Joyce Poulson Rasmussen Duchesne July 2, 1942

Stanley Kermit Poulson Duchesne April 19, 1945

Clair Melvin Poulson Duchesne Nov 12, 1946

Lynn Hansen Poulson Duchesne Jan 11, 1949

Leesa Ilean Poulson Wall Duchesne May 24, 1952

Kent Jay Poulson Duchesne Aug 13, 1953

Marsha Poulson Peterson Duchesne July 7, 1956