I don't remember Halloween being a big deal when I was young. I read in books that people made Jack-O-Lanterns and dressed-up for parties but I don't remember anyone ever doing that for school. I do remember some of the kids talking about going out and doing some pranks--mostly harmless. I don't remember anyone mentioning dressing up. I didn't hear about "trick or treat" until I was 11 or 12. Someone mentioned it and said, "Let's go trick or treating." No one was in a costume but there were five or six of us, so we decided to try it. We didn't have made-up faces or anything. We just went to the door, knocked and shouted, "Trick or Treat." I remember going to my Uncle Ben and Aunt Jenny's house. Aunt Jenny came to the door and laughed when she saw us. She wanted to know what kind of trick we were going to play if she didn't give us a treat. We told her we didn't know what kind of tricks to play but we'd like a treat, so, as I recall, she gave each of us an apple. I don't remember going anywhere else. It wasn't all that much fun. We preferred to go to someone's house and make candy so we did. That's the only time I went trick or treating. (I will be telling you more about Aunt Jenny and Uncle Ben at a later time. I had two favorite aunts. One was Aunt Jenny and the other was Aunt Ellen. I'll tell you more about Aunt Ellen, also.)
I always thought it would be cool to have a pumpkin and make a Jack-O-Lantern but I don't remember ever seeing pumpkins for sale anywhere. I probably didn't have the money for one, anyway. I don't remember ever seeing anyone grow pumpkins. They probably did, because people made pumpkin pies and I don't think canned pumpkin was an option then. My dad didn't grow pumpkins. He grew squash. Squash could be stored in the "pit" to eat during the winter. We had lots of squash. My mother made squash pie but she never put spices in it so it was not all that tasty. I really liked the whipped cream on top, though. I'm not sure what I'd have done with a Jack-O-Lantern if I had one, but it was fun to think about having one.
Now, don't let my boring Halloweens lull you into thinking that no one else in Blanding did things on Halloween. Generally, it was the older boys in town (who should have known better) who did the pranks and some of them were not necessarily nice pranks. It was the same thing every year. A group of boys would go out and do their thing, then they'd grow up and go away and another group would take over.
I told you about our outhouse. We weren't the only family in town to have an outhouse. When I was young, probably half the houses in town had outhouses. Yeh, I know you know what I'm about to tell you. Some of the boys would go out to see how many outhouses they could tip over without getting caught. Our three-holer was tipped over at least once because I saw it. I heard stories that occasionally someone would accidentally fall in the hole. I know the stories were true--it was a hazard of the prank. Pretty GROSS, huh? We just figured it was "instant justice." I often wondered if a person felt entirely clean ever again after having fallen in a toilet hole filled with "crap." Whenever an outhouse was tipped over it was always pushed from behind and it would fall on the front side where the door was. There were a couple of times when someone was actually inside the outhouse when it was pushed over and that person was unable to get out until someone else found the outhouse on the ground and gave aid to the entrapped person inside. You may ask how that could happen. It was like this: The guys who did the tipping were sneaky and quiet. They didn't want to make any noise for fear of getting caught. Apparently, on occasion, they were able to sneak up on someone inside--it just happened. I remember waking up the day after Halloween and seeing our outhouse on the ground. Now that's pretty bad. You can't "go" until the building is upright. Getting it back in the exact spot was tricky. Daddy needed help to get it upright so he would have needed a couple of people. We laugh about it now, but at the time, it was no laughing matter. Frankly, I have never approved of kids going out and creating havoc merely because it's Halloween. It's rude and often destructive.
After our outhouse was tipped over, my Dad decided he had to see to it that our outhouse would never, ever, be tipped over again, so the following summer he dug a new hole. The hole had to be at least six feet deep and it was probably four feet square. I don't remember whether or not he shored up the sides. I would think he'd have had to in order to insure that it would never cave in. Anyway, after the hole was dug, he made some concrete for the floor. I suppose he had to make a mold for the hole in the middle of the concrete. He somehow worried the concrete floor across the big hole and then built the seat, lid, walls and roof. There was a pipe(maybe five inches in diameter) that went up through the roof for ventilation. And then, he fixed that outhouse so it would never be tipped over. He dug a post hole about three feet deep on both the east and west side of the outhouse (the door faced north). He put the posts into the post holes and then poured concrete around the posts in the bottom of the holes. When the concrete was set, he filled the holes to the top with dirt and tamped it solidly. Next, he drilled two holes in both the east and west walls of the outhouse; he took heavy fence wire and wound it around the post and through the two holes (in a figure 8). He must have wound that wire around the post and through the holes at least six or eight times and then twisted the ends with pliers so it would be almost impossible to undo them. No one was going to try to undo the wires so they could tip over the outhouse because it would take too much time. The deal with tipping over an outhouse is getting in and out quickly. We never had any more problems. I thought he was pretty smart. He couldn't control all the boys in town but he could control whether or not our outhouse would be on its face on November 1st.
When I was a senior in High School, one of the boys in my class who had a pick-up truck got some friends to go with him and they found an old, mostly abandoned outhouse. They loaded up the outhouse on the back of the pick-up truck, took it over to the High School, carried it up the front steps and deposited that outhouse in front of the doors and left it there. I guess they thought they had really pulled off a great prank. It just so happened that the High School Principal lived across the street from the High School and he just happened to be outside his house while this was happening. Hey, Blanding was a small town and everyone knew everyone else's vehicle. Mr. Alexander recognized the pick-up truck. He didn't make a sound. He let those guys carry the toilet up the stairs and he let them leave. The next morning we all had to enter the school through another door. Mr. Alexander called an impromptu assembly as soon as the bell had rung. We all went to the Gym. Mr. Alexander called the driver of the pick-up truck to the front of the Gym and told him to go load up the outhouse from the front steps and take it back where he found it. He told him if he wanted help to move it he'd have to tell the names of his accomplices. Of course, the driver of the pick-up truck quickly "ratted out" his friends. We were all excused to go outside and watch while the outhouse was carried down the stairs, loaded on the pick-up truck and hauled back where they found it. I've always thought Mr. Alexander was extremely wise to handle it the way he did. He totally embarrassed the guys and gave the rest of us a good laugh. By the way, Mr. Alexander was one of my favorite teachers and I will be telling you more about him later.
Well, that's pretty much how I remember Halloween in Blanding. In the meantime, Halloween has turned into a major celebration for a lot of people. Personally, I did not much care for Halloween when my kids were small because I am not a clever, creative person. Halloween became more fun when Jackie was about eight or nine years old. She was extremely clever and creative. When she started thinking up and creating costumes, Halloween was kinda' fun. I remember one year Bret dressed up in one of my old muu muus, put pillows underneath and went to school as a "fat lady." As I recall, he won first prize in his class. Jackie, Patti and Shanna were all creative and clever. One year Jackie made herself a black cat costume that was adorable. She also made a matching black cat costume for Tal. She took Tal with her when she went trick or treating. In later years, Patti dressed up as a devil and Shanna dressed up as a Martian. They looked spectacular. I believe they all won prizes of some kind. There were many other costumes for all of the kids but I don't remember all of them. Before I move on to other things I should tell you that there were many Jack-O-Lanterns, INCREDIBLE JACK-O-LANTERNS. I loved them all. Jackie made a witch jack-o-lantern out of a BIG zucchini squash. She made a hat, skirt and everything. We always left a squash on the vine to grow big so Jackie could make a new witch every year. We saved the costume from year to year. It was so scary and cute.
Then, all my kids got married and left home. They and their husbands/wives were well equipped to handle the Halloween costume thing and I was left to my own devices as far as costumes were concerned--which was to do nothing but hand out Halloween candy to trick or treaters.
We lived in Big Water from July 1987 until May 26, 2006 and during that time we had a total of 10 trick or treaters. We were always prepared for more but the houses were so far apart in Big Water that it was too much work for the kids so their parents took them into Page, Arizona where the houses were closer together. They got a lot more treats for the time spent in Page than they'd have gotten in the whole town of Big Water.
Now, we are in Loa. Last year we had maybe a couple dozen kids come. It was fun. Oh, my gosh--did I say Halloween was fun? I must be getting old.
I love you all.
P.S. I will be adding another chapter within the next three or four days so be looking for it.
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
Friday, October 5, 2007
Sunday Sweetheart + More Pioneer Beginnings
I must tell you a cute story. It is a current story but I must share it with you all. There is a lady in our ward who is probably in her late 80's. She has black hair (with help from her hair dresser, I'm sure), she gets around very well and still lives in her own home. I don't know how long her husband has been dead--actually, I don't know that he is dead. He never comes to Church so I'm assuming he is no longer with us. I have to find out what her name is. This is ridiculous. Anyway, she dresses very stylishly. When I say stylishly, I mean stylish for an older lady. None of this business of trying to look like she's 30. She wears nice suits in beautiful colors. Last Sunday she was wearing a purple suit and it was gorgeous. The color was terrific on her. She is very slender and just a darling lady.
Now the reason I'm telling you about her is this: When this lovely lady leaves Sacrament meeting to go to Sunday School she walks past where Grandpa and I always sit (unless I'm playing the organ for Church, or the piano for Choir or to accompany someone). She always stops, grabs Grandpa's hand, and reaches over to give him a kiss on his forehead. Then she turns to me, if I'm by him, and says, "He is my Sunday Sweetheart." If I'm not there, she tells him: "You are my Sunday Sweetheart." She squeezes his hand a little and then she is off to Sunday School class. Is that the cutest or what?
Now, back to the Pioneer era of my life.
Since I wrote last, I've been thinking more about the size of the two-room house where I was born. I'm thinking it was possibly a little larger than I told you. The rooms could possibly have been 15' x 15' each, so the overall total could have been 15' x 30'----that's 450 square feet and I was the seventh child. Porter had died but there were eight of us living there. No wonder Daddy felt compelled to add on some extra rooms, small though they were. Let's say the addition was 10' wide and the over-all length was 30'---that is an additional 300 square feet for a total of 750 square feet for eight people. I don't know how the older kids felt about the small space, but it was all I knew and that's just the way it was. I never remember wishing it were bigger. Good grief, the Navajos on the nearby reservation lived in hogans that were much smaller than our house and some of them had pretty good sized families. Often they had grandparents living in their hogan with them. And we have all read and heard horror stories about people in the third-world countries who have two or three families living in spaces much smaller than then home where I was raised. I was always grateful to have a roof over my head, food in my stomach and clothes on my back. And the house was always warm, during the day, in the winter.
Of course, when the fire went out, the house got cold. The bedrooms were never heated so the beds were COLD. We had a solution for that. We put bricks or smooth rocks (about the size of the bricks) in the oven to get hot, then we wrapped them in towels or old denim, or some such material, then we'd put them in our beds about 20 to 30 minutes before we expected to be getting into bed and lo! our beds were nice and warm. However, when I was small I was very skinny (yes, I really was) and before morning the bricks or rocks would cool off and my skinny little legs were too small to keep the bed warm so I'd have to sleep the last half of the night in the fetal position to stay warm.
In the mornings, I'd get out of bed and run out to the living room or kitchen where there was a stove with fire in it and dress by the stove. My dad was usually the fire builder. He'd always get up about 5:00 a.m. to make the fires. In the winter it didn't get light enough to go out to do the chores for a couple of hours after he had the fires built, so he would pull a chair up close to the stove (it took a while for the heat to spread around the room) and read the Scriptures, mostly. Sometimes he read his farm magazines but he really liked to read the Scriptures. As soon as it began to get light, he'd head out the door to do chores. What were his chores? Well, let's see. We always had at least one cow that had to be milked. And of course, the cows needed to be fed. Then he'd chop wood so the woodbox would be full for the day. He'd bring in coal (when we had coal) so mom wouldn't have to go carry it in. Also, all the kids had chores as we got old enough to do them. My mom and dad always believed in starting their kids when they were young. I remember when I was very young, going to the wood pile to pick up the chips that daddy created when he chopped the wood. We used them to start the fires in the mornings so we picked up chips every day. We also fed the chickens at a very young age, although daddy carefully oversaw things to be sure they were done correctly. We almost always had a pig and the pig liked to eat, as well.
I need to amend things just a little. Daddy didn't always read. Sometimes he fixed breakfast for the family. No, he didn't get the cornflakes out. We ate big breakfasts when I lived in my parent's home. We ate fairly good lunches and light suppers. (More about that later.) Oh my goodness, I loved it when my dad cooked breakfast. If he had recently killed a beef, or a pig, or a lamb, he liked to cut off some steaks and bring them in to cook. He'd make baking powder biscuits that were light and airy and wonderfully delicious. Of course, we always had homemade butter to spread on them or how about some milk gravy made from the meat drippings? We'd eat steak, pork chops or lamb chops with biscuits and gravy. While daddy was cooking up this really good breakfast, mom would come into the kitchen and make the "mush."
For those of you who do not know what mush is--we call it cereal now. She always insisted that we have hot cereal for breakfast. Sometimes she'd cook oatmeal (regular, not quick cooking)
or cracked wheat, or germade (farina). I loved them all. Still do. Once in a while, she'd make cornmeal mush. I liked that, too. And then, occasionally, if we had run low on some of the other cereals, she'd make mush out of whole wheat flour. I knew she didn't like to make whole wheat flour mush very often because it was so hard to get out all the lumps and it took longer to cook.
But, I didn't mind. I liked it a lot. And, my dad cured his own ham and bacon. It took quite a while to get it to his satisfaction but it was worth the wait. Sometimes we had ham and eggs or bacon and eggs (and mush) for breakfast and daddy made baking powder biscuits and gravy with the ham or bacon. I guess what I'm trying to say is: I loved those big breakfasts. It seems to be a good idea to eat large breakfasts and small suppers. I was skinny until I changed the plan and began living like other people who ate little or nothing for breakfast and big suppers.
The sad thing is that I didn't do that for my family. I loved the big breakfasts but didn't take the time to make them. Of course, we didn't live on a "farm" and the pace was a little less relaxed when we were raising our kids. Sorry about that!
It occurs to me that you may be wondering how we were able to preserve those hams and bacon that my dad made. Well, flour sacks were always fabric in those days (never paper) so daddy would wrap the hams and bacon in several layers of flour sacks and then he'd climb the ladder on the north side of the house and hang those hams and bacon under the eaves. That was the coolest place there was. It seemed to work. No one ever died from eating his ham or bacon.
I got off in a direction I hadn't really intended for this installment. Originally, I had intended to tell you what life is like with no electricity, refrigerator, sink, running hot water, bathrooms, telephones, computers, carpet, double-paned windows, air conditioning, etc., etc. I can do that at a later time. There is so much more, as well. How I grew up is why I'm me and it has been a fantastic journey. I was rarely unhappy as a child--or at any time of my life. I've always thought it better to be positive and cheerful and have tried to maintain those attributes in my personality. I'm excited to be sharing this with all of you and I've loved your responses to my efforts.
One last thing before I sign off tonight: September birthdays: Taylor, 16, Sept. 10th; James, (how old are you?), Sept. 15th;Eric, 4, Sept. 25th; Davey (how old are you, 23?), Sept. 26th; Kammie, 18?, Sept. 26th. October birthdays: Heidi (I know how old you are but I won't mention it), Oct. 3rd: Zac, 19, Oct. 13:
Kacie, (are you 21?) Oct. 26. Happy Birthday to all of you. I love you more than I can ever say. You are all more wonderful than I have a right to expect and I'm proud of you.
Goodnight for now. It's been fun and it's still only the beginning.
I love you all.
Now the reason I'm telling you about her is this: When this lovely lady leaves Sacrament meeting to go to Sunday School she walks past where Grandpa and I always sit (unless I'm playing the organ for Church, or the piano for Choir or to accompany someone). She always stops, grabs Grandpa's hand, and reaches over to give him a kiss on his forehead. Then she turns to me, if I'm by him, and says, "He is my Sunday Sweetheart." If I'm not there, she tells him: "You are my Sunday Sweetheart." She squeezes his hand a little and then she is off to Sunday School class. Is that the cutest or what?
Now, back to the Pioneer era of my life.
Since I wrote last, I've been thinking more about the size of the two-room house where I was born. I'm thinking it was possibly a little larger than I told you. The rooms could possibly have been 15' x 15' each, so the overall total could have been 15' x 30'----that's 450 square feet and I was the seventh child. Porter had died but there were eight of us living there. No wonder Daddy felt compelled to add on some extra rooms, small though they were. Let's say the addition was 10' wide and the over-all length was 30'---that is an additional 300 square feet for a total of 750 square feet for eight people. I don't know how the older kids felt about the small space, but it was all I knew and that's just the way it was. I never remember wishing it were bigger. Good grief, the Navajos on the nearby reservation lived in hogans that were much smaller than our house and some of them had pretty good sized families. Often they had grandparents living in their hogan with them. And we have all read and heard horror stories about people in the third-world countries who have two or three families living in spaces much smaller than then home where I was raised. I was always grateful to have a roof over my head, food in my stomach and clothes on my back. And the house was always warm, during the day, in the winter.
Of course, when the fire went out, the house got cold. The bedrooms were never heated so the beds were COLD. We had a solution for that. We put bricks or smooth rocks (about the size of the bricks) in the oven to get hot, then we wrapped them in towels or old denim, or some such material, then we'd put them in our beds about 20 to 30 minutes before we expected to be getting into bed and lo! our beds were nice and warm. However, when I was small I was very skinny (yes, I really was) and before morning the bricks or rocks would cool off and my skinny little legs were too small to keep the bed warm so I'd have to sleep the last half of the night in the fetal position to stay warm.
In the mornings, I'd get out of bed and run out to the living room or kitchen where there was a stove with fire in it and dress by the stove. My dad was usually the fire builder. He'd always get up about 5:00 a.m. to make the fires. In the winter it didn't get light enough to go out to do the chores for a couple of hours after he had the fires built, so he would pull a chair up close to the stove (it took a while for the heat to spread around the room) and read the Scriptures, mostly. Sometimes he read his farm magazines but he really liked to read the Scriptures. As soon as it began to get light, he'd head out the door to do chores. What were his chores? Well, let's see. We always had at least one cow that had to be milked. And of course, the cows needed to be fed. Then he'd chop wood so the woodbox would be full for the day. He'd bring in coal (when we had coal) so mom wouldn't have to go carry it in. Also, all the kids had chores as we got old enough to do them. My mom and dad always believed in starting their kids when they were young. I remember when I was very young, going to the wood pile to pick up the chips that daddy created when he chopped the wood. We used them to start the fires in the mornings so we picked up chips every day. We also fed the chickens at a very young age, although daddy carefully oversaw things to be sure they were done correctly. We almost always had a pig and the pig liked to eat, as well.
I need to amend things just a little. Daddy didn't always read. Sometimes he fixed breakfast for the family. No, he didn't get the cornflakes out. We ate big breakfasts when I lived in my parent's home. We ate fairly good lunches and light suppers. (More about that later.) Oh my goodness, I loved it when my dad cooked breakfast. If he had recently killed a beef, or a pig, or a lamb, he liked to cut off some steaks and bring them in to cook. He'd make baking powder biscuits that were light and airy and wonderfully delicious. Of course, we always had homemade butter to spread on them or how about some milk gravy made from the meat drippings? We'd eat steak, pork chops or lamb chops with biscuits and gravy. While daddy was cooking up this really good breakfast, mom would come into the kitchen and make the "mush."
For those of you who do not know what mush is--we call it cereal now. She always insisted that we have hot cereal for breakfast. Sometimes she'd cook oatmeal (regular, not quick cooking)
or cracked wheat, or germade (farina). I loved them all. Still do. Once in a while, she'd make cornmeal mush. I liked that, too. And then, occasionally, if we had run low on some of the other cereals, she'd make mush out of whole wheat flour. I knew she didn't like to make whole wheat flour mush very often because it was so hard to get out all the lumps and it took longer to cook.
But, I didn't mind. I liked it a lot. And, my dad cured his own ham and bacon. It took quite a while to get it to his satisfaction but it was worth the wait. Sometimes we had ham and eggs or bacon and eggs (and mush) for breakfast and daddy made baking powder biscuits and gravy with the ham or bacon. I guess what I'm trying to say is: I loved those big breakfasts. It seems to be a good idea to eat large breakfasts and small suppers. I was skinny until I changed the plan and began living like other people who ate little or nothing for breakfast and big suppers.
The sad thing is that I didn't do that for my family. I loved the big breakfasts but didn't take the time to make them. Of course, we didn't live on a "farm" and the pace was a little less relaxed when we were raising our kids. Sorry about that!
It occurs to me that you may be wondering how we were able to preserve those hams and bacon that my dad made. Well, flour sacks were always fabric in those days (never paper) so daddy would wrap the hams and bacon in several layers of flour sacks and then he'd climb the ladder on the north side of the house and hang those hams and bacon under the eaves. That was the coolest place there was. It seemed to work. No one ever died from eating his ham or bacon.
I got off in a direction I hadn't really intended for this installment. Originally, I had intended to tell you what life is like with no electricity, refrigerator, sink, running hot water, bathrooms, telephones, computers, carpet, double-paned windows, air conditioning, etc., etc. I can do that at a later time. There is so much more, as well. How I grew up is why I'm me and it has been a fantastic journey. I was rarely unhappy as a child--or at any time of my life. I've always thought it better to be positive and cheerful and have tried to maintain those attributes in my personality. I'm excited to be sharing this with all of you and I've loved your responses to my efforts.
One last thing before I sign off tonight: September birthdays: Taylor, 16, Sept. 10th; James, (how old are you?), Sept. 15th;Eric, 4, Sept. 25th; Davey (how old are you, 23?), Sept. 26th; Kammie, 18?, Sept. 26th. October birthdays: Heidi (I know how old you are but I won't mention it), Oct. 3rd: Zac, 19, Oct. 13:
Kacie, (are you 21?) Oct. 26. Happy Birthday to all of you. I love you more than I can ever say. You are all more wonderful than I have a right to expect and I'm proud of you.
Goodnight for now. It's been fun and it's still only the beginning.
I love you all.
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