I was born February 9, 1922. That was in the days before paved roads and big snow plows and my mother was apprehensive about being out in the country for the birth of her first child so she went to Rigby, Idaho to her oldest sister Lucy Ball's home to stay. Lucy Ball was affectionately called Aunt Vin and it was in Aunt Vin's home that I was born. My father and mother were living in a little log home in Annis, Idaho. It must not have been a very fancy log home. I remember mother telling me how frightened she was one day to look up and see a rattlesnake coming through a hole in the "chinking" between the logs.
Before I was a year old I contracted whooping cough - a disease that has been virtually wiped out through modern research and practices. But in those days it was a "dreaded" disease. My grandmother Morgan was not very well but she sat up day and night and held me while I slept. She must have been a very devoted and loving grandmother. I would like to have known her but she passed away when I was only eleven months old. Many people have told me of her generosity and hospitality. Her name was Lucy Jane Morgan but she was known affectionately as Jennie.
When I was 4 years old my father got a job in Terreton, Idaho - commonly called the Mud Lake area and we moved away from family and friends to live in a pioneer type settlement. Although there were a few cars most of my early life was spent either on a horse or in a wagon or buggy being pulled by horses. I began driving a team of horses to help my father stack hay before I was old enough to go to school - actually my father had trained the horses well and about all I had to do was to hold up the "lines" and my father called orders to them which they obeyed. But I thought I was very grown up to be helping my father in the fields.
We always lived a long way from friends and neighbors. When I was 5, mother and a friend developed a system of signals with white dish towels hung on a clothesline. They allowed us children to walk through the sagebrush and sand to play at each other's house and our Mothers knew when we left or arrived by the number of dish towels hanging on the clothesline. We had no car and the horse and buggy was not like jumping in a car to drive us a mile or so away.
In winter time there were no snowplows so we rode horses or sleighs to school and church. I remember of a neighbor coming to our house on skis and I pulled him behind my horse the next two miles to church. He was an immigrant from Switzerland so skiing had been very much a part of his life. This same neighbor had an ice house and my father helped him cut large blocks of ice from the lake near by and haul it to their home where it was packed with straw so that we could make ice cream occasionally. We had no refrigeration in our homes in those days.
My sister Clara and I used to get tired of carrying wood for our cook stove and it usually was my job to clean the chimney of the kerosene lamp each night and to trim the wick so it was ready for mother or father to light at night. I remember as a child of using an ax to chop sage brush that burned almost as though it were an explosive and was a never ending task when my mother did her baking. I loved the smell of burning sagebrush - I only wished that it would last longer. One year I went - just my father and I - to the mountains west of the settlement about 30 miles in an old iron rimmed wagon to help my father get a load of firewood. I remember how thankful I was to see the dust flying up behind my mother's car as she came to meet us. We could see the dust for miles across the flat arid sagebrush land west of Mud Lake. There are farms now for miles and miles across this flat land but in those days nothing inhabited this desert area but antelope, rabbits, and the usual creepy, crawly things that girls are scared of like - lizards and ugly toads. No one drove these roads except an occasional sheep herder pulling a camp or another wagon going for firewood. Mother came with freshly baked bread and fresh water. It had been fun trying to cook dinner over a campfire for my Dad and leading a horse to the bottom of the hill - unhook the chains from around the logs and leading the horse back up the hill to where Daddy would have more logs ready for me to drag to the bottom of the hill. No tractors or power saws to make our work easier. By the time Mother arrived the romance of the trip was over - our food gone - and our water supply depleted. We sat in the middle of the desert with no living soul for miles and miles around us and savored the food she had brought. I was glad to give my sisters the privilege of riding the heavy wagon loaded with big pine trees behind the plodding tired team of horses while I climbed quickly into the car and rode home with mother. It was an experience that I remember vividly these 50 or more years. Three long days with my Dad.
Clara and I used to lay at night on our beds and dream about how fun it would be to just push a button and lights would come on and push a button to bake our bread and heat our homes. It never occurred to us that someday we would go to a store and buy bread that had been made by others in large bakeries. We spent hours dreaming of the many things that would make our lives easier. How surprised we would have been if we had realized that someday we could actually do just that.
We stood for hours each day pumping water by hand for the animals to drink in the winter time when the irrigation canals were empty. I helped my father dig that first shallow well we had. I never dreamed that someday I would be able to turn on a tap and hot and cold water would flow freely and never did I dream inside toilets and bathtubs would some day replace the cold, smelly "outhouses" and round tin tubs of our day.
How excited we were when in the early 1930's we purchased a 1928 Chevrolet car that took us places if it had gasoline or no flat tires. Often we would get stuck in the sand that had blown across the road. This would mean sometimes and hour or so of sitting in the hot sun while someone shoveled that shifting sand away from the wheels so we could be on our way. There were no improved roads so in the spring when the frost went out of the ground the roads would be deep ruts full of water so horses would be our only means of transportation again. In the winter snow would drift into the roads making roads impassible so it was horses to the rescue again.
I remember as a child how much I loved my ponies. At one time I rode a white horse named Stub. It was so fun to ride across the fields with my hair flying in the wind. I rarely ever used a saddle and I never stopped for a ditch but the horse and I took those big irrigation ditches in one flying leap. Mother said she used to watch through the windows and pray each time she saw me hoping I would land safely. It seemed that horse and rider were one and we never failed to make it safely across.
One horse, Brownie, was a small pony that was so small my father didn't like to "break" her to ride so he had me train her. Daddy could never catch her in the field so he would call me to go to the field. I would call to her and she would come from any place in the field 1/2 mile away. I really missed her when my father traded her for a bicycle for the family when we moved away.
Most of my early days after the age of 7 I rode a horse to keep track of the family's herd of cows. Some summers the neighbors would combine their herds with my father's and I would take them either to the desert on the west or to the Lake on the north and east for them to feed.
As a girl about 10 years old I rode a horse after school about 20 miles to deliver a weekly newspaper called Grit for which I received 5¢ per copy. From the 5¢ I was allowed to keep 2¢ and send 3¢ to the company. One day when I was older my mother told me that one winter we were so poor that that was all of the money that she had to buy groceries. I remember that Mother let me keep 32¢ of that money to buy me some yellow print material to make me a new dress. How proud I was as I counted the 32 pennies out on the counter and told the clerk to cut off the piece of fabric.
We did not have a store closer than 40 or 50 miles so the trip to town that day was also a big event for me.
When I look at all of the things children have to play with these days, I wonder that we were so happy. My sisters and I remember going into one of Daddy's hay fields and tromping down the hay to make rooms for a play house and spending hours there playing house in the cool green hay. As a child we never lived in a home where there was green grass or shade trees.
When I was 9 years old my father decided to buy 160 acres of ground with no improvements on it and much of it still in sagebrush. Since I was the oldest and as yet no boys in the family it was my job to help father put the land under cultivation. With just a team of horses and very little equipment that was no small task.
We moved a one room house onto the property. There were no bedrooms so we slept on a screened porch. In the winter the screen was covered loosely with canvas. When there was a blizzard from the North it was not unusual to wake up with drifts of snow across our beds and always our eye lashes would have frost on them when we woke up. At night we took bricks that had been heated in our oven and wrapped in towels and put them in our beds to warm them before we retired.
My father was Presiding Elder of the Mud Lake Branch of the Idaho Falls Stake of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for nearly all of the time we lived in Mud Lake area. He had great respect for the people who lived there - both members and non-members alike. It was really a tough job because the community in its early history was basically anti-Mormon. We met in a one room school house. When I was young my father and I usually rode a horse to church early to sweep up the cigarette butts from the card party of the night before and start a fire in the big pot-belly stove. We sat in old fashioned school desks that really didn't accommodate the rotund bodies of some of the adults very well. I remember one white haired old man who came every Sunday and brought a grand daughter to church with him. None of them belonged to our religion but he felt that he should attend some religious meeting on Sunday. My sisters or I always saw that he had a hymn book and he was always so appreciative.
We attended school at Terreton. The first year I was in school we had 8 grades in one room and my teacher was Della Gerard. The next year and all of the time after while we lived there we had 2 small rooms - rather buildings. We had 4 grades in each building. There were no work books or library books. All of the work was written on the black board by the teacher and copied by the students onto their individual tablets. When I was in the second grade I would get through with my school work and would do the third grade work too so the teacher had me skip the second grade entirely. Paper was expensive and hard to get and pencils also at a premium. The only heat was pot bellied stoves. As we got older and were allowed to use ink it was the old straight pens which we dipped constantly in a bottle of ink. Many a dress was ruined by the ink spilled from the open bottles. How nice now to have ball point pens that contain their own ink and never leave blots or smudges.
We move to La Belle, Idaho and bought my Grandpa Morgan's farm the year I graduated from the 8th grade and I attended Rigby high school. In Mud Lake I had always either walked or ridden a horse to school but when I went to Rigby to school we had a school bus to transport us. My father was soon put in the bishopric of the La Belle ward. Of the first 35 years of my life my father served in one position or another over 30 years. This meant that he sat up front and I being the oldest child was expected to help with the younger children. My father always watched our behavior and commented when we arrived home. We couldn't sneak out of a boring meeting or join our friends in a giggle session on the back row.
We had lived such an isolated life that it was very difficult for me to adjust to life in a world of close neighbors, electricity, cars, and telephones. I graduated from Rigby High School as an honor student - one of the top 10. The year was 1939. My father had set an example for me and constantly encouraged me to seek and education. He had graduated from Rigby High School - which was quite an accomplishment for a farm boy those days. He walked over 5 miles to school each day and 5 miles back home. He encouraged me to go on to Ricks College.
I began in the fall of 1939 and graduated in May of 1941 with an associate degree and a teaching certificate which entitled me to teach any of the lower 8 grades in the state of Idaho.
Those two years at Ricks College were very happy years for me and I formed many friendships that I cherish still. I especially enjoyed the friendship of Jean Murdock who later married Russell Nash and lived in Driggs, Idaho. I was finally accepted for what I was and not judged by my family or circumstances. I worked in the office of Doctor Morrell - the head of the education department and also cleaned houses and baby sat to get enough money to go to school. I would go home on weekends to get fresh clothes and food and Daddy would say, "Do you still have that dollar I gave you last week?" If I said, "no" he would give me one more. I had no social life because I had no time or money for it, but I had a lot of friends whose circumstances were similar to mine. Our families made a big sacrifice for us to get an education.
The second year at Ricks College most of the young men were "called up" to go to the army so Ricks College became virtually a girl's school. At one time during World War II there were only 4 boys and 300 girls attending.
I got a chance to return to Mud Lake area to teach school. I received one of the highest salaries of anyone graduating from Ricks that year. I got $90 per month for 9 months. The next year my salary was raised to $110 per month for 9 months. Most of my friends - men or women received $60 per month that year.
My class held 36 students in 4 grades 1 to 4. It was separated from the upper grades of 18 students in grades 5 to 8 by a single sheet of celotex. Anyone entering or leaving that room had to pass through my classroom which often caused many problems.
It was while teaching there for the Level School district that I attended church at Terreton with Bishop Shuldberg's family. I would walk nearly 2 miles to their home for a ride. We always passed the home where I had lived as a girl growing up. Naturally, I was interested in the family of boys that had moved there when we moved away.
The branch had quite an active social group. There M.I.A. parties were always family affairs and they often had dances or plays. Babies were brought and put to sleep on benches while all of the families joined the fun. I loved it. I was one of about 5 or 6 young women teaching in the two communities and everyone wanted to show the school "Marms" a good time.
I dated a few men there, going with Von's brother Lee for a few dates. He found me boring and bet Von that he couldn't kiss me on the first date. That challenge was too much for Von's adventurous nature so he asked me out. Had I known it was on a bet I would have probably been very indignant and refused to go. But we went to the dance together and he was a lot of fun. Our first date was to a dance January 1943 - we were dancing in a floor show together. About the bet, he vowed he'd never see me again but he came back and we'd have such fun times together. It was Mother's Day 1943 when he finally got enough courage to kiss me the first time.
He loved to sing. I remember him taking me home one night - think he had borrowed his brother, Floyd's new car. I had a pretty new black dress with pretty trim, a new coat and a wispy white scarf and he sang "Moonlight Becomes You." It was a beautiful moonlit night and as he sang "Moonlight becomes you it goes with your hair - you certainly know the right thing to wear. Moonlight becomes you so." It was a popular song at the time and he really stole my heart.
In July 1943 I took a trip to Northern Idaho with Margaret Love and Lila Love. We drove to Farragut Naval Base and brought Lila's husband, Bus, home - he had 10 days leave before shipping out. Gas was rationed during war time so we had been saving stamps for some time to get enough gas to make the trip. It was such a fun trip and such beautiful scenery. I had been so undecided about my future and had prayed so hard for guidance from our Heavenly Father. While I was there in the woods I received a peaceful feeling and knew that things would work out all right for me.
When I arrived home about midnight July 19, 1943 I found a letter waiting for me containing a call to fill a Stake mission for Rigby, Idaho Stake. During the war time no young men or women of military age were allowed to go on missions because of the demands for "fighting men" (soldiers).
I remember so vividly the night I was set apart - July 22, 1943. As the priesthood put their hands upon my head and set me apart a warm feeling flowed from the crown of my head clear through my body and I felt I had been washed clean. It was my first real experience with priesthood power and I was almost overwhelmed by the knowledge that I received. I had never imagined that the power of the priesthood could be felt as a tangible force. My life truly changed from that point and I am so grateful for the influence in my life.
Actually the mission call complicated my decision about marriage but after much fasting and praying I had an opportunity to go with Von to Idaho Falls to get his patriarchal blessing. Patriarch Brunt allowed me to go into the room while he gave Von his blessing and as he finished the blessing before he took his hands from Von's head he looked at me and said, "this man is a man of God." My own patriarchal blessing given many years before had said "you shall marry a man of God." So I knew beyond a doubt that my prayers had been answered. We went ahead with our wedding plans and were married November 10, 1943.
