Jan 22, 2011

Where did your family go on vacation? What are your favorite memories of the trips you took together?

I told about some of these already but I will expound a little more on one of them to Yellowstone. I don't know how big I was but I do remember watching all the bears on the side of the road. We even had one that stood up on the door of the car or rather leaned his front paws on the door as he stood up. I also remember seeing one in a tree, a small cub, and wanting to go over and photograph it with my Brownie Instamatic. I realize now why mom and dad wouldn't let me do it. Also there was a big buffalo in the filed and I did go to the side of the road but that was as far as I could go as well and I also realize now why. It seemed also that Old Faithful went hundreds of feet into the air. I was mildly disappointed in 2010 when we went there again and it seemed to barely get started before it was done. It still is a magnificent thing to behold but to a young child it was all the more spectacular. It was a fun trip as I remember but it seems like the upper falls of the Yellowstone River was viewed from the other side of the river. I think we did actually go down to the lookout as well that was right by the falls. Needless to say it left a huge impression on me.

Jan 21, 2011

Did you have any favorite uncles, aunts or cousins growing up? Who were they and what did you admire most about them?

Gosh this is not fair. I had a lot of favorites depending on whom I was around at the time. I was blessed with great relatives on both sides of the family, mom and dad's. I knew dad's the best since they lived for the most part in Duchesne and surrounding areas. Uncle Mont and cousin Jack were probably the two favorites though if I have to narrow it down . Mont because he was such an old cowboy and loved to have us ride with him and work with him. He was always funny and even gross at some points when he would eat raw eggs just to see our reaction. That doesn't seem so bad to mew now though since I know a scoutmaster that would shock his scouts by eating the shell and all.

Jack was just a lot of fun even though it was mostly at my expense. He and Chuck both kept me on the edge of my senses wondering what they would do next and I must admit I was far to gullible to be very safe AROUND EITHER OF THEM.

I got to know another cousin after I was married though that became a very close friend in the few years that we were around each other. That was Ned Poulson. I loved the way he decorated his house and John Wayne was a favorite movie star for both os us. I am still quite close to his children and enjoy interacting with their families quite often. We have done quite a lot together because of scouting and being in the same district.

On mom's ide I must admit Doyle was probably the highlight since he was such a joker. He kept us laughing (and still does) every time we met at reunions. I enjoyed going finally to California where they live and photographing one of his daughter's wedding. I t was a special experience for Marie and I. It was too bad that I was over 45 years old before I ever got to visit their home. We were there one other time for Thanksgiving prior to that wedding by a few years when we were asked to do a wedding for someone from Oakland who we met at her cousins wedding here in Utah. We ate dinner with them and did a few other activities before heading to the hotel to prepare for the wedding the next day.

Jan, 20, 2011

What appliances did you have or not have in your home?

We had an outhouse but luckily could use the indoor toilet except when at the ranch where the double seater outhouse was the only place to go. We did not have a phone that you would have to pick up and crank until you got the operator but we did have one where you had to wait to answer it since it would ring once or even twice depending on if it was you or your neighbor that was to answer it. Iy was called a party line since there were two parties on it and if you were not nice you could listen to the neighbors conversations but of course that isn't so different from today when you can listen to several of them at a time as they talk on their cell phones, I guess there was one major difference in that you could hear both sides of the conversation instead of having to make up the one side you can't hear today. We had an ice box but by that time the name refrigerator was starting to catch on since it wasn't anything like an ice box in reality. We had an old Black and White TV which was upgraded to a color one sometime before my teens. We had two old wood burning stoves to cook on out in the shed and we used the electric one in the house. I did use an old wood burning one in the barn to heat up the wash room so we could wash the milking tools. We had old dutch ovens that we cooked with on special occasions in the fireplace in the yard but used pots and pans on the stove. We had a coal burning furnace that didn't get upgraded until I was long gone from the home and married. I did have to haul coal every morning and night into the basement and then fill the stoker and pull the clinkers out of the furnace. Dad usually did that in the mornings while waiting for me to get up but I usually did it at night. We had old kerosene lamps that we would have to trim the wicks on before using when the power would occasionally go out. And we heated water on the stove to cook with if the electric water heater didn't keep up with the demand of seven children. We had an old washing machine that we would ring the clothes out and then hang them on the outdoor clothesline to dry in the summer and indoor clothes lines during the winter. I was in my early teens when we did get an electric washer and dryer set that was really welcomed. We did have an electric freezer that was huge and could hold a full beef and lots of other things like deer meat and chicken that we had killed. It also held ice cream occasionally in the summer after we would sit out under the grape arbor and crank the ice cream maker until it was cold and frozen since we did not have an electric one to do the job of freezing the cream.We also made butter from the cream that I would bring in from doing chores after it was separated from the milk with an old crank style cream separator. Well that's not all of them I am sure but it is all that I can think of right now. Oops we did have an old iron that was heated on the stove for ironing sitting in a cupboard somewhere while we used the electric iron instead.

Jan 19, 2011

Was there a chore you hated doing as a child?

OK let's face it and rephrase it. Was there a chore I didn't hate to do as a child? Much easier to answer this one since it can be stated with two letters "NO". I hated washing or drying dishes, setting or clearing off the table, vacuuming, cleaning my room, washing the clothes on saturday, making my bed in order to go to sleep on saturday night (well Sunday morning technically), mowing the lawn, milking, feeding the cows, slopping the pigs, feeding the calves with a bottle of milk, cutting, raking, baling, and hauling the hay, irrigating, planting, weeding and harvesting the garden, picking the fruit and canning it also, cleaning the fruit room so there could be room for the new fruit, putting the empty jars in the grainery, getting the empty jars out of the grainery, cleaning the black widow spiders out of the jars, washing the jars, peeling the fruit, cooking and processing the fruit, bottling the fruit and putting it away after labeling it. Actually I really didn't hate it that bad now as I look back on it but I am sure that I complained about it plenty to mom since none of my friends in town had that much work to do. I didn't complain about the other ones who lived on farms as most of them did since I knew they also had plenty of chores as well. Life really was quite OK on the farm as long as we could cool off in the canal in the afternoon or late evening when the water always seemed to be a lot warmer.

Jan 18, 2011

How did your family spend time together?

Playing games inside and out. Listening to record on the record player an old 78. Eating together. Having Family Home Evening before it really became a push in the church to do it. I guess though it was a lot of working together also since we had the farm and plenty of work to do. Haying in the summer, canning in the fall, and chores all year round. We would maybe go to Centerfield a couple times a year and have Uncle Mont and Milton and then later after they moved have Harold do the chores for us. We went on only a few vacations to Blanding and Idaho falls and Yellowstone. I remember going to the Four Corners area of Utah before it became commercialized and cost a lot to go to see. We also went through the area where Lake Powell now is located. we also went once while the dam was being built. One other activity that we did almost yearly was go to Vernal and to Dinosaur land. I saw a lot of the bones excavated through the years as we would take cousins over there. It was always a lot of fun. we also tried to go to Split Mountain Gorge each time as well and have lunch there by the Green River. When Alma graduated and went to work at Jacob Lake AZ we took a coupe of trips down there and then on to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. I loved that place but I think it scared mom and dad since it was hard to keep track of us as we went near the edge of the rim. I didn't go very close since it scared me pretty good just looking down from behind the fences.

Jan 17, 2011

What did you talk about at dinner?

Probably the farm work and what we did at school or whatever. I really don't remember that well but I do remember Lynn on one corner and Marsha on another since they were left handed. I was usually in the middle agains the wall. Dad had built a large table so that we (all 9 of us) sit around it at one time. The table always seemed so big until later years when I would go home and realize it really wasn't very big. I think it was maybe 7 feet in length or maybe only 6 but we did fit around it and that was the important thing. I do remember though that we always ate together as a family.

Jan 16, 2011

What did your family do for fun when you were a child?

Several things that are quite unlike anything done today. We had an old B&W TV which didn't hold our attention very long so we played games. We also went swimming in the canal just about every day in the summer afternoons. We also played around on the hillside above the house, went rabbit hunting in the hills around the house and climbed trees.

The games we played I mentioned the other night. Those games are called night games now as played in your childhood. No Bears are out tonight, Kick the Can, Hide and Seek, and Flags were the most popular ones.

Swimming in the canal above the house was always fun. It was only 2 feet deep and thus really didn't lend to swimming but it was wet and fun. We would often walk up the lane to the weir (where the water was taken out for our ditches) or to where the bridge was that we crossed coming to the house about a half mile away. We would then put inner tubes into the canal and sit on them and float back to the house. We would sometimes paddle to go a little faster since it was a pretty slow running stream. We would have water fights in the canal also and loved to find the pockets of sand where it was easy to walk. Sometimes we would just float on our backs down the canal without tubes.

There was a small bridge that crossed the canal by where we swam and it went up onto the hillside. There were numerous trails that went along through the trees and lot of rocks and scorpions. We would sometimes go hunting the scorpions and tickle their heads with long pieces of grass until they would strike themselves, not very nice but we did it since we didn't really like them. There were also a lot of black tail jack rabbits that dad would let us hunt with .22 rifles so that we could control their numbers. They would eat the hay in the filed and destroy a lot of our feed if let get out of hand. I can also remember chasing a badger up there one time trying to kill it. When I was in high school I would run up the hill and across the bench training for cross country and half mile races. I use to run after the deer but of course never ever catch up to them.

There were a lot of trees around the farm also that we would climb and play in as well. There really was no lack of things to do once the work got done.

Jan 15, 2011

Where has your family lived since that time?

That was and is our family home. My brother Stan and his family live there now and have since mother went on her mission. Clair built his home on part of the property and two of his children have built on the bench just above the property. My grandmother and grandfather originally moved a part of that house up there from Duchesne and then it was added onto a couple of times (or more) and thus has always been in the family. When dad passed away we gave Stan and Clair all rights to the property and in turn they gave all of the inheritance from mothers estate to us when she passed away. We have always been welcomed back and enjoy going there and walking around the farm, yards and hillside. It will always be a special part of me.

I guess though part of the answer can also be as to where we each now live. Alma is in Mesa Arizona and moved there from Sandy, Utah where they had lived just after their marriage. Stan and Clair of course are still on the farm, Lynn lives in Ephraim, Ut, Leesa in Idaho Falls, Idaho after a short time in Duchesne and Moab Utah, and Marsha lives here in Mapleton but has also lived in Phoenix, AZ, Sandy, Ut and Layton, Ut. And of course we have lived here in Mapleton in three homes and one in Spanish Fork for 6 weeks.

Jan 14, 2011

What was your favorite thing in the house or the yard?

Wow that is a hard one but I suppose it would have to be the old stone fireplace in the center of the yard. I always enjoyed when we got to do things there and especially the dinners but I also remember making homemade soap out there by that fireplace. Mom and dad stopped making soap when I was fairly young but I will always have visions of the cow fat hanging in the barn that they used when doing it. The fat was melted at the fireplace in the yard and the rest of the process was, well forgotten by me. I can really only remember doing it a couple of times but I do remember the bars of soap that were around for years after that. There may even be some still sitting out in the barn somewhere for all I know.

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.