Tributes to Unita Bernice (Pember) Crandall

Date: [unknown] [unknown]
Location: [unknown]
Surnames/tags: Pember Crandall

What Is True Greatness?

HOWARD W. HUNTER.

Talk given by Mike Crandall at Unita Crandall’s Funeral. May 4, 2007.

From a devotional address given at Brigham Young University on February 10, 1987.

I am confident that there are many great, unnoticed, and forgotten heroes among us. today. I am speaking of those of you who quietly and consistently do the things you ought to do. I am talking about those who are always there and always willing. I am referring. to the uncommon valor of the mother. My mother was an example of an unnoticed hero who was always there and willing to help her family. She spent a lot of time with her children especially her three handicapped ones. She taught Tommy, Buddy and Susie to take care of themselves in every way possible and spent many hours in therapy with them. She had my sister Patty and me crawl on each side of Tommy while he tried to crawl to help him to crawl and stay up. She first hired someone to teach Buddy to read but with no success then she sat with Buddy for hours during the week using two cardboard signs that were maybe 4X6 feet in size with the alphabet and words on them, but it just was not in Buddies capability to learn to read. Another time I went to moms house and saw my three brothers and sister sitting around her bed having family prayer. My mother said that they
have Family Prayer every night with her.

We moved to Phoenix just in time for me to go to first grade. In one of my earliest grades my teacher let mother know that I was not keeping up with the other kids in reading. and spelling. I couldnt even spell my name. So mom decided to teach me herself. I remember spending many hours with my mother in the backyard learning to read and to spell. Mom said she helped me most of the time at the kitchen table but I dont remember that. I loved being outside. I enjoyed mom teaching me very much. To me it was like a game and I loved spending the time in the back yard with mom. She also tried to teach Patty how to read but Patty just could not sit still and was not interested then. She reads all the time now.While I was on my mission my sister Patty was in the hospital having her second child and then came down with appendicitis while in the hospital. Then while Patty went in for surgery and afterward was recuperating mom watched Pattys year old baby and the newborn. together. Then for every one of Pattys four babies mom had one more to watch.

Years ago there was a fire behind our house across the alley when we lived in Phoenix. My sister first smelled smoke then I got up and saw flames coming from the neighbor utility shed. Then my mother even though she was little went over to the house diagonally behind us and woke up the lady and got her out. She moved the car out of the carport by pulling on the bumper by herself even though the brakes were on. Her adrenalin was really high then. She also started pulling the couch out of the house by herself until someone
came over to help with Unita directing them.

When Unita was small she used to ride with other kids in Cedaredge, Colorado on a wagon with canvas around it to keep the wind, rain and snow out. She wrote;. We lived in New Mexico, maybe Farmington. Daddy made us a tent house. There were boards around the bottom and the top was a tent. When we were there Mom would have me sit with her on the south side of the tent in the sun to keep warm because it was cold. We used a pot and emptied it into a neighbors bathroom all the time.

Unita was born in Cedaredge, Delta County, Colorado on October 31, 1920. She wrote in her life story,œ We moved a lot because in the 1920s money was real tight. Coffee was made from toasted ground grain because of the First World War they couldnt get coffee. One place we lived had a phone behind the heater, a little off to the side of the chimney. It was up so high I couldnt reach it, even though I did try. It was a telephone that you got the operator at central by turning the handle and then she would answer and ring the party you wanted. The only thing wrong with that was that the phone rang for everyone else too and anyone could listen in on the call. I think they used long and short rings to specify whom they wanted.€

At this same place mom writes, œAt that house there was an old min e out in the hills. away from our house. There were also coyotes and mountain lions around. I used to go out to that hole in the hills and play. I dont think anyone else played there, it was my secret place. I dont remember a baby being around at this house so I was real little. One day. mama and daddy had gone to town and left us alone at the house with Winston to watch us and cook our supper I remember the cold fried potatoes. When it got dark they called up to see if everything was all right. Of course, I was missing. I had been playing in the mine; it. had isinglass, or mica, all over. It was in little layers and I had lots of fun splitting them. Well, this time I went to sleep. Mom and Daddy came home on horseback, they had unhitched the wagon, to get there faster”.

When mom was about 18 she started working at the citrus shed (On Broadway by Country Club). She wrote, “We used to put paper on the oranges or grapefruit before we put it in the box. I did pretty good doing that. I worked there for 6 years. One day they gave everyone else their checks but me. I had to go to the office to get mine. When I got there they told me that I had gotten the biggest paycheck of that pay period, even more than the pickers or the bosses. I felt real good. It wasn’t too long after that that they laid a lot of us off. They kept the ones that were the only breadwinners in the family. They weren’t putting papers on them any more, so they didn’t need so many of us. Mom was the head-grader and had been for several years so she was kept on”.

“I took role in the English class. One day Harold Crandall was absent. There were two Crandall’s, Curly and Harold. Harold had real curly hair. The teacher was out of the room and some of the other kids were helping my take role. So I thought that Harold was Curly. because his hair was so curly, so I marked Curly absent. For about two weeks he was absent. I never was scolded for that mistake. I guess no one but me knew it. Anyway, that is the way I met my future husband. I found out his real name was Elton after we go t engaged. I went over to see his mother all the time, when I wasn’t working. I got lots of attention because they had no girls and I was their first daughter-in-law. It seemed like that was my home so.much of the time.

At Banner Hospice on the day just before mom passed away mom with eyes closed and lying down was reaching up like she was hugging and kissing someone. When she had been asleep for almost a week before that. I like to think that was family visiting her that was about to take her with them to the spirit world. She passed away that night at 2:3 0am on the 28th of. April 2007. Yes there was a mistake. We realized that last night. The date of passing was on the 28th not the 27th.When Ruthie and I told Tommy, Buddy and Susie later that day about mom passing away. Tommy told us that he already knew that mom had passed away. He said that he saw a light. early in the morning and heard mom say, “Now that I have passed on you need to do what Mike. and Ruthie ask you to do”.

Life story of Unita Bernice Pember Crandall.

Like I told Mike, I was born. I tried to get my birth certificate once, and the reply to my letter was that no such person ever was registered i n the Delta County courthouse. When Mom and Daddy met they lived in Kansas. Mom said she could remember painted Indians coming to the door and her mother would give them a slab of bacon or some tobacco. They never raided the farm because they were tolerant of them. My Grandmother was a midwife. She had so many kids of her own she knew all about it. They would ca ll on her at all times of the day or night and she would go, sometimes stay a few days if they had trouble. They had a farm first. Mom said her Mother would hitch up the team of horses and haul the barn back where it belonged after a tornado hit their farm. She never did remember if the bar n got torn up any time. Maybe it had to be repaired. Mom said they move d into town later. Mom had taken a year of school that enabled her to tea ch school in Kansas so she moved into town to a room. Teachers had to b e so strict in those days. She wore her hair long and braided it in lon g braids and then would roll it around and have a braided bun over each e ar. Sometimes she would use a curling iron. On the farm they had lamps t o heat the curling iron on but in the room in town there was electricity . She tried to heat her curling iron on the light bulb hanging down in the middle of the room but that didn’t work.

Daddy’s family lived in Kansas where Mom lived and that is how they met . Mom said she and Daddy would write postcards to each other in Morse cod e. The mailman would take their penny for postage and draw a stamp on it , that way they got it sooner. I saw some of the cards but Mom threw the m away after she and Daddy were divorced. Daddy and his parents and hi s brother, Uncle Harold, moved to Cedar mesa, which was the mesa near Ced ar Edge where Grandpa farmed. We thought their house was so big. It was 4 rooms and a back entry and a front porch. Anyway Daddy had Mom move t o Cedar mesa thinking she could teach school there. They were planning t o get married anyway. After she moved and had given up her teaching jo b in Kansas, she found out her license wasn’t any good in Colorado. Wel l, Grandma and Grandpa went on a trip and it was either move back to Kans as or get married because she couldn’t stay in the house with the two m en. So they got married on “New Years” Day. She had a beautiful whit e wedding gown. Goldie later dyed it green and made a dress out of it fo r her daughter, Peggy. There was none of the dress left and no picture wa s ever taken of it. It was a shame because it was a beautiful dress. Whe n Mom was teaching school in Kansas she was teaching all 8 grades in on e classroom. She had to build a fire to warm it in winter and clean it an d do all the work herself. Some of the boys were bigger then she was an d some were even older, because the farm work came first as far as the yo ung men were concerned. One other time Mom told me how her brothers woul d take a wagon and start out across the prairie. When they came to some d ry cow dung or biscuits they would put them in the wagon. It made good fi rewood when it was hard and dry. They would also find turtles and turn th em on their backs. They would do that until they figured they had enoug h and then they would start toward home again and pick up the turtles o n the way back home, that way they had a supply of meat other than chicke ns, pork and beef.

One time I asked my Grandmother Pember what her most embarrassing momen t was. She said that it was when she and Grandpa were courting. They ha d rode in a buggy to a dance and ladies wore hoop skirts at that time. An yway there were steps on the buggy and she must have missed it somehow an d Grandpa had to help her down. She had gotten her hoop over the buggy wh eel and couldn’t get up or down. The men were not supposed to touch any thing on the ladies except their hands; here she was showing her ankles t o everyone, and heaven knows what else showed. Grandpa had to put his arm s around her and lift her off the buggy wheel. That was very embarrassin g out in the open to do that to an unmarried lady. My Grandmother Pembe r was a Spaulding before she married. I don’t know if her forefathers c ame over from Holland or Germany. I have learned since I wrote this tha t her branch of the Spaulding’s came from Holland, so that is why Grand pa called her “Dutch”. I never did hear her called Emma by him. Mik e found out about the Spaulding’s on the Internet.

My folks lived on a farm on Cedar Mesa. About three miles from Cedaredg e down a winding hill on a two-lane road. It wasn’t much of a road, a l ot of turns and corners. Whenever anyone came to a turn in the daytime th ey would slow down and honk. They didn’t have to do that at night becau se the headlights would shine and they would see them and know there wa s someone coming and move to the side of the road. Dr. Aust, made house c alls. He was always so busy that he would go from one patients’ house t o the next one. When my brother Stanley was born there was diphtheria o n the Mesa and when he came to our house Winston came down with diphtheri a later and the baby died. The doctor put a cloth around the baby’s mid dle and he told my mother to leave it, to not take it off, but she did on ce because she was worried about it. Well it got infected. Mom said his n avel was big as a fist when he died. His name was Stanley Lewellan and h e is buried in New Mexico. Another time my dad had typhoid fever and he w as real sick. Someone had to be by the side of the bed so he wouldn’t f all out of bed. I remember he had a big red spot on his forehead from hit ting his head on the floor when he did fall out of bed. We had to get vac cinated. Every time Dr. Aust came to our house, I and maybe Goldie woul d run out to meet him and pull up our dress to get the shot he had been g iving to us. I remember being disappointed because he said we didn’t ne ed any more shots. He was always so busy that he forgot to report everyth ing. I tried to get my birth certificate and couldn’t, as I never was r eported to have been born. Maybe I was born before Dr. Aust got to the ho use. Mom didn’t have too hard a delivery so maybe he wasn’t there whe n I was born. I know someone in our family was born before the doctor go t there but I can’t remember which one of us it was. Goldie and I had c hicken pox and measles about this time.

We lived in so many different places and sometimes the same place severa l different times. One house we lived in had an upstairs to it. I remembe r Mom putting things on the bottom of the stairs and she would tell us th at if we went upstairs to take something with us. Sometimes Goldie an d I would hear the hurdy-gurdy man playing his music in the street afte r dark. Evidently he was going home. From the upstairs window we would li sten to him going by and sometimes we would see him. That was exciting. W hen we were at this house I remember sleeping on the floor in front of th e fireplace where it was warm. We got up real early in the morning and le ft before it was even light. I guess Mom and Daddy owed money and they co uldn’t pay it so it was leave or lose everything. They left a sewing ma chine and a set of dishes in storage and lost them.

One place it was Christmas and there were real four inch long candles o n the tree. Mom told Winston to light the candles. He had on a nightshir t at the time and it was long like a nightgown. I remember him climbing u p on a highchair to light the candles at the top and he had lit some of t he bottom ones first. Well, you know what happened, his nightshirt caugh t on fire. I remember him climbing up on the highchair but I don’t reme mber very much about the fire. How your memory plays tricks.

One of the first things I remember was feeding the chickens. I would tak e the pan of feed and call the chickens, they weren’t in a pen, and th e horse would come and follow me. You could look off into the hills by o ur house and see the deer. We lived in a small house; I remember we had t hree rooms, a bedroom, living room and a kitchen. One night in the middl e of the night I got up and went to the kitchen and Daddy and the Docto r was bathing a little tiny baby in a dishpan on the kitchen table. S o I climbed up on the bench behind the table and watched for a while, the n Daddy told me to go back to bed, so I did. In the morning he came an d woke me up and said Mamma had had a baby and I had a new little sister . I went into the bedroom expecting to see a little girl, just my size st anding at the head of the bed with her hand up holding on to the metal o f the head of the bed. All I found was a little baby in the bed, boy wa s I disappointed and I cried and cried. I didn’t have a new playmate. D addy would take me on his lap to rock me to sleep in the rocker and he wo uld play his mouth organ. Sometimes when the music wasn’t right any mor e I would know he was asleep and I would crawl down off his lap. Mama wou ld ask me why I wasn’t asleep and I would tell her that Daddy was aslee p instead, still playing his mouth organ but a little off key now. Someti mes she would put the baby in the rocking chair and tell me to rock her t o sleep. One time I rocked her so hard that she fell out of the chair ont o the floor.

That house had two men living in the other part of it. They had a whit e cat that had sore ears all the time. The men would either flip them o r turn them back and its ears were so sore. We doctored them and we fina lly got them all healed up. I vaguely remember playing on a big machine t hat was huge. I pushed and pulled on the levers and evidently I took th e brake off and it started rolling and nearly ran over someone. Before M om had the baby she would have to carry water from a place by the school . She was quite clumsy and big by that time and one time some boys saw he r walking by the school with the pails of water and started to sing “Th e old gray mare she ain’t what she used to be.” It was pretty embarra ssing for her, she remembered, when she told me about it. This house ha d two men living in the other end. It was what we would now call a duplex . We moved a lot because in the 1920’s money was real tight. Coffee was m ade from toasted ground grain because of the First World War they couldn⠀™t get coffee. One place we lived had a phone behind the heater, a littl e off to the side of the chimney. It was up so high I couldn’t reach it , even though I did try. It was a telephone that you got the operator a t central by turning the handle and then she would answer and ring the pa rty you wanted. The only thing wrong with that was that the phone rang fo r everyone else too and anyone could listen in on the call. I think the y used long and short rings to specify whom they wanted. At that house th ere was an old mine out in the hills away from our house. There were als o coyotes and mountain lions around. I used to go out to that hole in th e hills and play. I don’t think anyone else played there, it was my sec ret place. I don’t remember a baby being around at this house so I wa s real little. One day, mama and daddy had gone to town and left us alon e at the house with Winston to watch us and cook our supper I remember th e cold fried potatoes. When it got dark they called up to see if everythi ng was all right. Of course, I was missing. I had been playing in the mi ne; it had isinglass, or mica, all over. It was in little layers and I ha d lots of fun splitting them. Well, this time I went to sleep. Mom and Da ddy came home on horseback, they had unhitched the wagon, to get there fa ster. Mom on her horse jumped the fence and daddy had to stop and walk hi s horse through the gate. He always got so sick when he rode fast or jump ed he would get regular carsickness. He couldn’t ride sitting backward s in a train or go out fishing in a boat. When my stepbrother, Breen too k daddy fishing in a boat they always had to bring him back because he wo uld get so sick. Another time he tried to go to Alaska because they wante d workers. Well he got to Oregon and had to quit because it made him so c arsick to ride the train and he knew he couldn’t ride on a boat. One farm we lived at, I remember during October, mom had me close my eye s while she took me outside and then had me open them. There was a newbor n colt in the corral with its mother. I thought it was my birthday presen t but mom said no. Another time she was washing clothes on the board an d I was playing. It was the fifth of July and the old firecrackers that t he big kids had played with were lying on the ground. Well, I proceeded t o pick them up and try to get them to light, one off the other. I finall y succeeded. They went off in my hands and I got burned pretty badly. I d idn’t ever do that again. I lost a fingernail because of it. I wasnt i n school yet because the big kids werent there. One time there was a stor m and a lot of lightning. As I remember it Winston was on the front porc h watching the lightning and it struck the telephone lines. When it was o ver Winston was upstairs under the bed. The clock that was on the telepho ne was thrown across the room and was all bent up. We still used it for y ears after that.

I remember Goldie and Winston dressing me up in some of Winstons clothes . I remember the big folds on my arms and my legs. He was five years olde r that I was. Then they took me out to the alfalfa field to play hide an d go seek with me. The alfalfa was taller than I was and I never did fin d them. Mom and Daddy came home about that time and were quite upset abou t it. I think part of the reason was because there was a big bull tied i n the back yard and was supposed to be a mean one. One place we lived in Goldie and Winston went to school but I wasnt old e nough yet. They would play cards on the sewing machine-one at each end. A nd I would stand at the back of the sewing machine and watch. Finally the y let me play, that was real nice. They would go to school but they had t o ride the school bus and it was quite a walk for me to go meet them. Mo m and Dad told us to stay away from the bushes because rattlesnakes live d in bushes, she was afraid we would get bit by one. Well, we found som e sticks and rattled them in the bushes, but we didnt find anything but r abbits. Shep, our dog, would be with us, if he ever found anything he wou ld grab it and shake it all to pieces. Sometimes he found a skunk and h e would do the same thing. Then Daddy would have to take him swimming . I remember when he got a porcupine; we found quills coming out of his n ose for a long time afterward. I remember Mom pulling them out of the to p of his nose with the pliers because we could feel them when we petted h im.

I had a bright red knitted sweater that I loved, I took it everywhere, an d it was getting a lot of holes in it. One day it disappeared and I could nt find it any more. On Christmas Eve we had been shopping and when we go t home we had to run hide in bed real fast so Santa Claus could come. H e wouldn’t come unless you were in bed, you know. We all ran to the be droom, I believe I was under the bed when Santa’s bells rang and Daddy called us. That year I got a doll with the prettiest red sweater on. It was so pretty. Years later I found out that was what had happened to the sweater. Before that I had a small blanket that was colored like an Indian blanket an d Mamma would roll it up somehow to where it would look like a baby in a blanket. It would disappear and then come back. I guess that was whe n it got washed because it was dirty. When it finally disappeared, I foun d out later, it was used in a quilt that my mother was making. Then I go t a cupie doll. It was the first doll that was a real doll that I ever ha d. All I remember about it is that it was sitting on top of the icebox . I had been naughty so the doll was put up there until I got over bein g punished.

One time, before I started school, the class Goldie was in had a picnic s o Mom sent me to school so I could go to the picnic with her. The next ti me it happened we didn’t get to go to the picnic. The teacher made us s tay in the classroom until they got back from the picnic, and the teacher made us sit together in the same seat. She was real strict. Mom wasn’ t supposed to send me to go to the picnic. I never went to school with Goldie again. We lived in New Mexico, maybe Farmington. Daddy made us a tent house. There were boards around the bottom and the top was a tent. When we were there Mom would have me sit with her on the south side of the tent in the sun to keep warm because it was cold. We used a pot and emptied it into a neighbor’s bathroom all the time. While we lived there I went over to the neighbors to play with two girls just about my size. They tied me to a board and pushed me down the steps. I was supposed to walk down but with my legs tied I couldn’t very well. I went home with a bloody nose , two black eyes and I never went back to see if I could play with them again. When we sat in the sun by the tent I don’t think I was in school then but I seem to remember going to school later. I was walking by myself and the buildings were so tall. That is all I remember about going to school there. Mom and Dad had a bed, Goldie, Lyona and I slept on a pallet on the floor. We would roll it up and push it under the bed. In the daytime Elaine slept with Mom and Daddy. Winston slept outside, maybe in the car, I don’t remember. There were five of us kids there because when we moved to California Elaine was the baby. We didn’t have Shep because he died before this.

After Uncle Jim came to New Mexico, where we lived in the tent house, we moved to Long Beach, California. We were in a three-room house. There was one dresser. Toys in the bottom drawer and we each had one drawer to put all our belongings into, clothes etc. Goldie and I slept in a bed in the living room. Elaine learned to walk at that house. Goldie would sit on one end of Mom’s bed and I sat at the other end and Elaine would walk back and forth to us, and this way she did not get hurt if she fell. Uncle Jim was my mother’s brother, John Davis Bailey.

Someone had a birthday at this house. Mom baked a cake and frosted it all up with white frosting and then she put it on the cupboard so that it was behind the door when the door opened. That was sure good frosting. By the time we were through eating supper and ready for the cake there was no frosting on the cake at all. So Mom had to refrost it. I don’t remember her being mad about it. One time I needed some new shoes and Mom would take a strip of paper and measure the length of our foot and then use that to buy our shoes. Well they brought me home a pair of shoes. I still say they were boy’s shoes. I refused to wear them. I wouldn’t even try them on. They sat around the house for a few days and then they finally took them back and bought some shoes that looked like girl’s shoes . Elaine was a baby-not quite a year old when we moved to California. I was six years older than she was. Mom worked; I don’t know what kind of work but she left Elaine at babysitters every day. One day she went early to get her and she still had the diaper on that she had on when she took her there. The sitter would just put her in the crib and leave her there until time to be picked up. One day she didn’t take Elaine to the sitter and I said I would baby sit her and Goldie said she would. So, we both stayed home to babysit her. Maybe that was Lyona, I don’t remember . Winston bought a new bicycle here at this house. It came in a box and he had to put it together by reading the directions that came with it. It was the bicycle that he used to deliver papers at Signal Hill, which was his route. One time his bike spilled him and he fell in a hole in the road. It was lucky because a large plank off an oil derrick fell on top of him. Since he fell in a hole in the road he wasn’t hurt. In Long Beach the Hughton's lived next door in a house in the back of another house. Evelyn was an epileptic. In those days they didnt know how to control seizures as she had them quite often. That was 74 years ago. Sh e was my age and we had a lot of fun together but she kept getting worse and they nailed the windows shut at night and kept her on a chain like a dog in the backyard so she could get the sun and play outside in the daytime. Whenever she had a seizure, she didn’t have seizures like most people. She just got hyper and would want to run. She was the oldest of seven children. While she was on the wire and chain outside, the Hughton’s had a chicken in a pen and I guess they would go to the beach and get a lot of little clams and they gave her a hammer to break them and feed them to the chicken. Well, she figured out that if it would break the shell it would also break her chain. So she did. She carried the length of chain in her hand with her mother calling to her. It was on the train track, she would stop and her Mother would try to catch her but Evelyn was always faster than her Mother and the police had to catch her again. One time she had a needle and she was sticking everyone with it. Mom took it from her and very nicely showed her how it hurt. Evelyn said that she didn’t know it hurt and she wouldn’t do it anymore. One time we were playing in the yard and Evelyn went over to Mom and told her to hold her tight, not to let her go. She had a seizure and Mom held her until it was over and everything was all right. She had a lot of adventures in a hospital that were funny to her but not to the people around her. She was my age and the youngest was 1 year old. Evelyn would always run toward Signal Hill. There were oil wells on Signal Hill and one of men that worked there had some pigs, Evelyn was always there when the police would find her. They finally had to put her in a home in Canada because they were from Canada and weren’t U.S. citizens. Then they moved back to Canada so they could be close to her. The youngest girl played with Elaine . We called her by her name and we called Elaine “Baby”. One day Ela ine came up to us and said she didn’t want to be called “Baby” any more. The girl next door was a year younger than she was and they didnât call her Baby. Since Elaine’s name was Mary Elaine we had to decide which to call her, Mary we didn’t like, Mary Elaine was too long so we ended up calling her Elaine. Our landlord lived just down the alley from us and Daddy would let me go pay the rent. He would give me a $100.0 0 bill and I would walk down the alley and knock and give it to them and bring back the change. It made me feel real important. I went to school here and at the school crosswalk there was a policeman. We would run at him and he would catch us and whirl us around. He finally had to quit because other kids saw us do it and they wanted to have it done to them too. Goldie and I used to go to the schoolyard to play. It was summer time and it was hot and the city would turn on the fire hydrants. We would always have our bathing suits on and we had lots of fun playing in the water from the hydrants. One day some men came around where we were playing . There were quite a lot of us kids playing there. Anyway these men had us take them to our parents and they told them that if we would make little pink costumes and go to their dance class we could dance in the Exposition. It was the Los Angeles Southwest Exposition. Well, we all had the costumes. I remember dancing. I still had mine when I was in high school . I finally threw it away when I moved out of my mother’s house befor e I got married. We used to go to the movies for 10 cents. We would get t o see a movie and we saw a serial that would be continued for about 10 we eks. We would have a ticket to let us in to all these movies by paying th e first time and just showing the card the rest of the time. One time I w asn’t ready when Goldie and Winston left so I had to run to catch up wi th them. They were already in the theater when I got there and the man st ill let me in without the ticket. After the movie everyone would line u p and go the ice cream place and everyone would get a free cone every tim e. We used to go to the corner store by the park and get a chocolate cove red mint for 2 cents. If he was out of mints he would give us half a bana na each. He would make icy -cones and scrape the ice and then pour the sy rup on it. They were really good. The park was across the corner and we w ould go there to play. I got behind the two kids and was running to catc h up and I ran into a park bench that hit me right in the stomach. My bre ath was knocked out for a while but that is how small I was. In one hous e in Long Beach our cousins Hamlin and Keith Pember came to see us. One t ime Hamlin had a broken leg and he was on crutches. Everyone teased hi m a lot. I remember him being so mad he threw his crutch at a kid. He wa s in the middle of the street at the time and when the kid took the crutc h and wouldn’t give it back Hamlin threw the other crutch at him, whic h left Hamlin sitting in the middle of the road without a crutch, yellin g and screaming. We had our dog, old Shep. I remember he always rode on the running boar d of the car when we moved, We were in the middle of the desert on our wa y back to Colorado and we stopped for something and we couldn’t find Sh ep. So after hunting and still no luck Mama and Daddy decided to go on wi thout him. They didn’t drive as fast as they would have before but we h adn’ t been on the road again for very long when here came Shep. He mus t have gotten ahead of us somehow. We were sure glad to see him; he was p art of our family. Some time later we lived in a campground or a court o f some kind and we were playing in the yard and Shep came up to us wher e we were sitting on the running board of the car. We helped him to try t o get on the running board but he died, right there while he was in our a rms. We didn’t ever find out who poisoned him. This was before Uncle Ji m came and got us to move to California. Goldie said we were in New Mexic o, we moved so much. We didn’t have a cat at one house in Long Beach. I guess we always lef t our cats when we moved because I would remember Daddy always bringing u s two cats every time so that we didn’t rag one to death. We would dres s them up in doll clothes and they would lay in our doll beds and look s o cute. Well, anyway at this house I told some kids I wanted a kitty, s o they told me that this certain lady who lived on the way home from scho ol had a cat that was going to have kittens. So-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-I stopped t here e-e-every night on the way home from school to see the mama cat, an d when the kittens were born I got to pick one out and when it was weane d I got to take it home with me. I’ll bet that lady was real glad whe n that happened because I was there every school day on the way home fro m school. This school played the Star Spangled Banner in the morning whe n they put the flag up. If we were on the school grounds we had to stop w hatever we were doing and salute the flag. We had a teacher, who insisted everyone go to the dentist if they hadn’ t gone recently. Well, I needed to go to the dentist badly. I had 7 teet h filled and 2 pulled. On the way home from the dentist Mom gave me som e peanut brittle candy. One tooth bothered me for years after that. It wa s a baby tooth so I was lucky. The last house we lived in while in Long B each was at the foot of Signal Hill. On Walnut St., there was a store o n one of the corners. There were about 5 corners at the place we lived. W hile we lived in this house it rained and rained and rained. Winston woul d roll up his pants and take a wagon and go to the store for groceries. S ome of the people were taken out of their homes with little boats becaus e their homes were flooded. The water was so deep we couldn’t see the b ottom step on the porch. There was water everywhere. While we lived in t his house Lindberg flew over the Atlantic. The Graf Zepplin flew over. Wi nston took a picture of it, just a speck in the sky. Daddy had rabbits i n the back yard. He let me hold one of them one time and it filled one o f my pockets with water. I didn’t hold any more bunnies. Winston had w hite mice here also, when we moved from there I never did know what becam e of the white mice Winston had. He told me years later that he just turn ed them loose and the neighbors probably hated him for it. There was an e arthquake while we lived here. The main highway next to the coast had a c rack in it 3 feet wide. We would stand in the kitchen and know when an e arthquake came because our lights used to hand down from the ceiling an d the light would sway when there was an earthquake. Grandma Pember cam e to see us while we were in this house. We would buy a loaf of bread a t the store and it wasn’t sliced at that time so Grandma got to slice t he bread. One day when we bought the bread it was sliced. The first tim e ever. Well, we put the loaf of bread out on the platter all pushed toge ther so Grandma wouldn��t know. She went to slice it and it fell apar t. She was real surprised. She stayed with us a while then went home to C edaredge. She was there to get us to come back to Cedaredge. We didn’ t live very far from the school and I would play on the school ground aft er school for a while before going home. One night I stayed because one g irl said that her sister was going to fight someone. Well, I found out wh o she was going to fight, Me! I ran and ran. I ran faster than she did be cause she never caught me. Daddy was coming after me when I got off th e school ground. I was crying and when I told him what happened, he wen t back and talked to the girls. I didn’t stay and play any more on th e school ground after school. That was where I fell off the rings whe n I played after school one night and had to wear a splint on my left ar m for about three weeks. I didn’t break it but it was very badly sprain ed. When my mother would bake pies I was always there watching her. The n eighbor thought I was a nuisance, but Mom said no I wasn’t. When she go t done with her pies she would leave enough crust for me to bake a littl e pie. I would roll out the dough and peel the apple for it and make it j ust like my mother did. I still have one of little pie pans I used to mak e those pies. When we moved back to Colorado we moved back to the Kipp pl ace. I was in the third grade and we didn’t wait for the school year t o end so I never finished the third grade. I went into the fourth grade , on trial, the next year in Cedaredge School, the teacher’s name was M iss Heck. I guess I did quite well in school. I never finished the thir d grade. I had one month of the fifth grade and one semester of the sixt h grade when we moved back to Arizona the last time. I never did learn m y roman numerals. We lived on the Kipp Place quite a while. We had some white cats while w e lived there. One was going to have kittens and one night she disappeare d; but we could hear her meowing all over the place. We used an outhous e at the Kipp place. It was originally dug to be a well and they never s truck water so they put an outhouse on it. It was about 50 feet deep. Whe n we lived there the floor and the seats were broken. I remember jumpin g on the boards to see if I could break them. If I had broken the board s I would have fell in the well. I guess it had been there since the hous e was built, because they used to dig wells for water for drinking, the y considered that to be fresh water. Well, that is what the cat fell into . The cat would meow and you could hear it for everywhere because the sou nd came from so deep in the hole. Daddy tied ropes together and wire an d put a wire basket on the bottom of them trying to get the cat out. Well , the cat didn’t co-operate very well so my dad had me get on the rop e and, then he let me down into the hole to get the cat. There was a lon g plank that stuck up out of the mess at the bottom and the cat was on th e top of the board, but she had been in the mess and she smelled terrible . When we got the cat out we bathed her good but no matter how much we ba thed her we never could get the smell out. She was going to have kitten s and when she did have them under our house, the tomcat killed them all . She disappeared after that. I guess she couldn’t stand it because s o much had happened to her. The house we lived in. while at the Kipp place in was in the middle of th e piece of land, maybe 40 acres’ and we always had to walk all that dis tance to meet the school bus. Winston used to tease us about seeing “be ar ” legs in the spring and we would look all over for a bear. It too k me years to catch on that he meant that our legs were bare. We had take n off our winter underwear and our long socks. While we lived on Cedar mesa, Goldie and I would go to church. We woul d start out walking; it was 3 miles at least to town. Everyone on the mes a knew each other so we would always catch a ride and we would go to th e church that the people we caught the ride with, we had our names on th e roll of about 4 different churches in Cedaredge. We lived on the Waite Place. That was the last place we lived in the las t time we were in Colorado. We lived there quite a while. At Christmas Da ddy went out and cut a tree down and he didn��t have to have a stan d for it. He just pushed it in the corner and it stayed there. We strun g popcorn to trim the tree with. The last string of popcorn we were strin ging we left it hang on the tree thinking that it wouldn’t hurt anythin g. The next day the cat we had, Tom, was sitting under the tree for suc h a long time. I finally went to see what was the matter and saw the popc orn string coming out of his mouth. The cat had swallowed the needle a s well as some of the popcorn. I gently pulled on the string and the ca t just sat and let me do it. Finally the needle came out nice and straigh t and nothing happened to the cat. He was lucky. If I had picked him up t o move him he could have been hurt real bad. One of the presents I bough t was a top. We never did find it Christmas morning. Mom said that a pac k rat probably carried it off. One time Mom took Lyona and Elaine to Kansas to see her mother. She mus t have been gone about ten days because a lot happened while she was gone . The string beans matured and Daddy had us help him can them to surpris e Mom when she got home. He didn’t put any salt in them and she said th at they couldn’t be eaten without salt. We ate them and nobody died. Mo m should have been happy but she wasn’t. Goldie had her turn to wash th e dishes but I was the one that was supposed to stack the dishes first, w ell, I didn’t, and so Goldie didn’t. We had about a weeks dishes stac ked and Mom was going to be coming home. Daddy said we had to do them NOW ! We got the washtub and put it by the cistern and put the dishes all i n it and then pumped water into the tub. We had to let them soak for a wh ile; they had been sitting dirty for so long. Anyway, they were all don e when Mom got back home and she never did know how we had left them fo r so long. They gave me about 10 little ducks, and told me they were mine. All mine . I took care of them, fed them, made sure nothing ever happened to them . Daddy would want to go down the ravine. There was a creek there and I w ould walk those ducks down the trail to the creek and they would go in th e water to swim. I think they caught cold because several of them died be fore they were full-grown. I know that I carried the largest one up the t rail because he got too tired. We quit taking them down the trail becaus e we realized it was too far and the water too cold. Anyway, one day the y turned up missing. Mom and Dad had butchered and sold them while I wa s gone. We also had a setting hen that I loved. Every day after schoo l I would go to where she was sitting on the eggs and I would feed and wa ter her. I called her Rosie because she had a rose comb. It didn’t stan d up tall like the other hens’ combs. She was missing one day when I go t home from school. Anyway Rosie was missing and I hunted and hunted her , I never did find her. Well, that night we had chicken potpie for supper . I asked Mom where the chicken came from that we were going to eat and s he told me it was the settin’ hen. That was my Rosie. I couldn’t ea t any supper that night. One of the young roosters had something the matt er with him. He got big like a rooster but he had only about a third of h is feathers. He was also very near sighted. He couldn’t see to eat of f the ground so we would set him in the feed sack while we fed the othe r chickens. That way he could get all he wanted to eat. One time we forgo t him and his crop was really bulging. When we left CedarEdge we gave hi m to the neighbors across the street. They had a girl my age that I playe d with and she said she would take care of him. Her two older sisters wer e going to go to Tempe Normal School, in Arizona. That is what they calle d the college then, I guess. There was a pair of wool trousers that Winston had outgrown. I took to w earing them all the time; I loved the way I felt when I had them on. Anyw ay, I wore them until they wore out. I found a cactus someplace. They wer e very few and far between on Cedar mesa. I never saw another. I took tha t cactus and planted it at the corner of the house. Years later Daddy liv ed there with his second family and they said the cactus was still there . One time Mom was putting things back on the closet shelf and it was rea l high up. Mom had me get on a box that was on a chair to put them on th e top shelf. She turned to go to the kitchen for something and I fainted . Probably because the house had been closed up for winter. It snowed the re in the wintertime. Anyway when I came to I was in the bed and have n o memory of how I got there. In the back yard there was a room that had some old things in it. One o f them was a big old clock. I would work on it and try to get it to wor k but it never would. I could get it to chime all right but it wouldn’ t keep on running. I had lots of fun making it chime anyway. One year, o n Halloween, Winston was out with a bunch of boys playing pranks. Mom wa s popping popcorn for us at home. We looked out the window and it was sno wing, the first snow of the winter season, and it was my birthday! One t ime the dam was in trouble, it was leaking and they called the men on Ced ar mesa to go work on the dam. Mrs. Kipp had a bunch of small kids and ne eded help, so I was elected. I even helped her to milk the cows. I was h aving fun. I slept on the couch, had a nosebleed every night after I wen t to bed. I don’t know what caused them and I never told anyone. Mrs. K ipp found blood on my pillow I guess and she told mom. Nothing ever cam e of it. While the men were gone to the dam, a chick fell down our cistern. Mom pu t me on a rope and lowered me into the cistern with a dipper and a pail . I fished out all the dead bugs and drowned mice that I could find. Save d the little chick, it was quite an adventure, and that was our drinkin g water!. When the men were still gone, the irrigation water came and Mom filled th e cistern with the cleaner irrigation water. That is the water we had t o drink all the time. Daddy butchered the hogs when they were grown. He h ad a hoist made of a singletree from a horses harness that he fastened th e hind legs of the hog to and then hoisted him up until he hung up to a b oard that was sticking out from the top of the chicken house to fasten th e rope that had the singletree on it, One time he didn’t take the singl etree down. Knowing me, you know what I did. I stood on the singletree a nd then pulled myself to the top with the other rope; then I let go of th e other rope and took hold of the rope I was standing on. Of course I fel l, I knocked all the breath out of myself and I couldn’t take a breat h at all. I got up and ran to Mom and Dad who were walking in the yard o n the other side of the chicken house. I tried to tell them what was th e matter but I couldn’t, they guessed and they patted me on the back un til I could breathe again. I was always learning what not to do. We did s o many things that we wouldn’t dream of letting our kids to do now. Th e chicken house wasn’t quite as tall as the house but we would climb u p on it. Winston and Goldie would jump off but I don’t think I ever did . We had to use the outhouse all the time and what Mom told us about eati ng in it was; “Don’t eat in the outhouse or bathroom because we woul d be feeding the birds.” I never could figure that out. Mom baked a birthday cake for Winston one time; she put it on the porch t o cool because it was still warm. When it came time to have the birthda y cake, I went to get it but a hen that had come in through the hole in t he screen door had scratched it, about half of it was gone. Well, that sc reen door got fixed after that. . We had two dirt cellars to put things in. One, Mom put her canned goods i n, and other things that had to stay cool. Colder than that we had a bo x in a tree with a pan of water on top of it with burlap hanging out th e sides. It kept our butter from getting soft as well as other things, li ke leftovers. Goldie and I played in the other cellar. Goldie hung an ol d sheet up to use as a curtain and we played Movie Stars. Our cousin wa s there, Arthur, one of mom’s nephews. His folks came and got him abou t a month later. We got to meet Clarence, his brother, that time too. W e had regular chickens at that farm and some banties. When the chicks wer e getting full grown the old bantie rooster would go on top of the dirt c ellar closest to the house. He would take a different young rooster up ev ery morning and he taught all the young roosters to crow that way. Bert Plantz stayed with us for a while. His sister was Aunt Vina who wa s married to Uncle Harold, Daddy’s brother. They were the parents of Ha mlin and Keith. Keith went down with his ship in the Second World War. Ha ml in is still around. He came to see us once a few years before Elton pa ssed away. Winston brought him over. Bert Plantz was quite a character. H e chewed every bite of food 64 chews. He used to sit at the table long af ter the rest of us were through eating, just chewing his food. Sometime s we wondered if he chewed his drink too. Before this he had a little far m and he raised vegetables and wanted to know if we had ever ate purple e ggs. He showed us his garden and we saw the purple eggs for the first tim e. Grandpa Pember had a young male calf. He came over to our place all the t ime and Goldie and I played with him all the time. He was so tame he foll owed us around the yard all the time. We petted and fed him all summer lo ng. Then school started and we didn’t see him any more. The next summer , a big red bull would stand at the fence and bellow at us. We made him s o mean tormenting him. I felt sorry later, we found out he had been the y oung bull calf we had played with all summer and he just wanted us to pe t him again. Daddy had an old mare we used to ride. Only one thing was wrong. She wa s wind blown. Every time she would trot she would make such a terrible no ise. We rode Felix too, Grandpa’s horse. He had been a racehorse at on e time, Daddy said. We had no saddles; we always rode bareback. We had ab out a dozen kids from the farms around that rode. I don’t remember Wins ton riding but he must have. I was in the 4th grade and Goldie was in th e 6th grade. We rode all over the Mesa; Mom always was waiting with the j ar of Vaseline. Which we sorely needed after riding bareback all afternoo n. Then one day Goldie rode Felix through a wire gate that was laying o n the ground and Felix cut his ankle with it. It was quite bad; he had t o be left without being used for months. Sad to say we never went ridin g again. One time when I was on Felix he shied and I fell off. He stoppe d right there. If he had stepped he would have stepped on me, but he didn ’t. I never rode him again; I rode the mare after that, noise and all. We moved to Cedaredge after that. Lived in a house in town, but I don’ t know the street name. We walked to school after that. All through town , past the library, I liked that. The General Store. I don’t remember t he other stores. The general store had things hanging from the ceiling . I say “ general” store. They had everything. I had one month of th e fifth grade before we came to Arizona there was a party. They had som e hard cider. Us kids never got to drink any of it but I remember Grandm a coming into the kitchen because she didn’t want Grandpa to see her ti psy. She giggled a lot. When we got all packed to leave for Arizona we go t into the car and it would not start. Daddy couldn’t understand it. H e got out and walked around the car and there lay the jack on the ground . He put it in the car and then when he tried to start the car it starte d right off. Daddy said, “God must have been watching out for us.” M y teacher had given me a note with my report card saying I was one of he r best students because she knew that in Arizona they had each class divi ded up into sections. The car was so full that we rode lying down all th e way. Winston stayed with Grandma and Grandpa to finish because he wa s a senior and he didn’t want to leave the courses he was taking in sch ool. Later Winston rode his bicycle to our house in Mesa, Arizona all th e way from Cedar mesa. It took him about a week and he camped out at nigh t. I don’t know what he ate; maybe Grandpa gave him some money to buy s ome food. The car was an old touring car. The top folded down and had windows mad e out of using glass in the right places to look out of. This car had a j ack to start the car. They hadn’t put batteries in them yet. I heard th e folks talking about starting the car without having to use the jack. It took us from Thanksgiving till Christmas to get to Arizona. On the wa y we had a lot of things happen. We got snowbound at a pass in the mounta ins. Daddy went to take a shortcut and we were in trouble. Our car was to o heavy to go and make a path in the snow. There was a family, a couple w ith a dog that had a Ford car. One of the Model T’s. They couldn’t g o on the road, as they were too light to go on the snow. So-o-o Daddy pus hed them and they made the path and we followed. Goldie was on the outsid e of the little Ford to make more weight in the front and she got chilbla ins on her heels. They bothered her for years after that. They would swel l up with matter, almost like a boil. We stayed at a place in Colorado t hat was building cabins. It was called Egnar. It spelled Range backward . None of the cabins were built; one had walls but only outside ones. I t was sure cold there at night. I slept on a cot with just a couple of bl ankets to keep warm. Goldie said that I even slept in the house in the ba thtub one night. It was cold too. I think Daddy slept in the car. Mom ha d a bed with Lyona and Elaine. I remember coming into Phoenix, we stoppe d one night at a tourist camp. They looked for work for a couple of day s and then we came to Mesa. I had put 2 pillows in the breakfast nook se at along with about half of the hangers that we had to hang our clothes o n. So we lost them because we never went back for them. Mom and Daddy fou nd a little adobe house that rented for about 7 or 8 dollars a month. Rem ember it was the depression. Two rooms and a basement. They opened the do or to the basement one day. It was in the floor of the kitchen. At some t ime or other, Mom thought, there had been a still in the basement, anyway , that was the first place that I ever saw a cockroach. They never did op en it again because of the cockroaches. The walls and floor of that basem ent were covered with them; we couldn’t even see the walls because of t hem. Everything I owned was in an apple box that Winston had put a littl e til in and a top with hinges. I had that box until we moved to the hom e we have now, about sixty years. I had painted it, wallpapered it. Use d is as a toybox for the kids for a while. They kept asking me if we wer e in Mesa yet. I told them I would know, and I did, when we had crossed t he old Tempe Bridge. When we got to Mesa the clock was on the corner of M ain Street and MacDonald. Now it is fastened to the building behind it. I t used to sit on a pedestal at the corner of Main Street an d MacDonald , before they built the big bank building. “Everybody’s Drug ” wa s across the street from it and on the south side of the street on the ea st was, at different times, a drug store and a bank. It was torn down an d they built a new building that is there now. When we first moved to Mes a there was a Piggly Wiggly on the southwest corner of Main and MacDonald . It was later turned into a drug store. When the Mormon pioneers settled Mesa they made the streets real wide. Th ey all had horse and wagons to use. So they made the streets wide enoug h to turn the horse and wagon around in the street without having to bac k up the team of horses. When they got cars then they made parking down b oth sides of the street and down the middle. Most of the shopping was don e around Main Street and MacDonald. There was a Basha's store and three d rug stores in one block besides the Piggly Wiggly. We had a Johnson’s S tore where we bought shoes and clothes and other things. I do know Dadd y took me there and we bought me a pair of shoes one time. The Johnson st ore was where the Woolsworth store was later. It isn’t there either any more. J. C. Penney was on the south side of the street next to the feed s tore on the west end. Later where the Johnsons were, it was a Woolworth†™s store. I was in Franklin School when we enrolled in school here in Mesa. The pu t me in 6B-1 rather than putting me in the fifth grade, because of the no te the teacher in Colorado had put in my report card. The next year I wen t to 7B so I guess I did all right. The students at the school in Frankli n are the ones that I went to High School with and I ended up marrying on e of my classmates. There were several couples that married classmates. L amar and Ruth Perkins, Greta Moody and her husband, Velva Skousen and he r husband Norris Enloe. We lived in several houses in Mesa. One we lived in I used to play jack s with Lyona, and I would get mad at her and tell her I was going to tel l if she didn’t stop cheating, she would yell I was cheating and I woul d be the one that was punished. She used to tickle me so much that I coul dn’t even breathe. I made up my mind one day that I wasn’t going t o be ticklish any more. When she tickled me the next time I didn’t laug h and she wanted to know what was the matter, that I wasn’t ticklish an y more. I told her I wasn’t ticklish any more, no matter how much she t ickled me, and I wasn’t. One house we lived in had a front porch on it. We had two beds on it. Gol die and I slept on one and Winston slept on the other one. One day he cal led Goldie over to where he was still in bed and he pulled the covers bac k and showed where our cat had had her kittens in his bed. We always ha d a cat no matter where we lived. One time I was standing at the fence ta lking to the next-door neighbor. Goldie came out and told me to get up an d I told her I was up, couldn’t she see I was standing at the fence? We ll, she "insisted" I get up and she finally woke me. I was in bed aslee p dreaming. That house we didn’t have an icebox. We hadn’t had any ye t anywhere we lived. Mom and Dad always fixed a crate with a burlap bag o n it. On the top was a pan of water and the bag was in the water on top a nd hung down the sides. It kept our oleo cool even in the summer time. W e lived here when I stared to make the bread. I would put the big kettl e on a chair because I was so short. I had been ironing pillowcases and h andkerchiefs since we lived in the house in Cedar mesa. When mom’s mother died I was about 11 years old. Mom inherited some mon ey from an uncle (possibly a ggg or gggg-uncle) that had left a lot of mo ney to one of his niece’s. When she died the rest of the brothers and s isters got it. When the last one of them died, which was Mom’s mother , then the rest was divided up among the next generation, and Mom was th e youngest of eleven brothers and sisters. She took the money that she in herited and made the down payment on the house we lived in the rest of th e time until Mom sold it after we were all married and on our own. I pain ted the house inside. I also painted the porch she had built on and the f loor of the porch two different times. I painted the outside of the porc h also. I painted the inside of the house all over except the ceilings. A mmon, Goldie’s husband, painted the ceilings. The house wasn’t that l arge. There was a living room, dining room, kitchen, bedroom, and she pu t a bathroom in it. With the porch on, it was like two bedrooms added on . One time, before the back porch was built, Winston slept in the fron t room on a regular bed. Winston woke Mom and she asked me what I was doi ng, I told her I was looking for my toothbrush. I was walking in my slee p and feeling all over Winston’s bed for my toothbrush. Which was silly , of course, because they were in the kitchen cupboard. I baked bread eve ry Saturday and also a cake of some kind. One cake I baked was a white ca ke and on the top I put sliced bananas and sprinkled sugar on the top fo r frosting. I didn't like the bananas because they spoiled before we go t the cake all eaten. It was for our lunches and had to last out the scho ol week. So we had home baked bread sandwiches and cake and usually an ap ple in our lunch. We usually had two sandwiches, one lunchmeat and one wi th apple butter and peanut butter. The peanut butter was the cheapest kin d and it always stuck to the roof of our mouth. Mom was working at the Wa ldorf Cafe by this time. It was on Main Street about 3 doors from the cor ner. Mom said I was the housewife and kept the house and she was the brea dwinner after Mom got a divorce when I was 13 years old. Goldie got marri ed about that time too. Winston married Irma Tryon about the time I gradu ated from high school. He built a house on the lot that Mom gave him fo r staying and making the house payments. They were, I think, $25.00 ever y three months. I had to go up to the bank and get a money order to sen d it to the people that sold it to mom. When I started working I would d o all the cooking, do the laundry, iron all the household linens, Mom’ s clothes, Winston’s clothes and mine. The two girls would help me clea n the house from top to bottom every Saturday. I would go to town and bu y the groceries on Saturday. One time I bought $10.00 worth of grocerie s and Mom had spells. Usually I spent $3.00 for groceries, and then I wou ld have to carry them home, usually 2 large sacks full of groceries. Late r on Basha’s started to deliver the groceries for you and then I didn†™t have to carry them any more. I had several boy friends. I hardly eve r went steady. So me of the fellas thought I was going steady but I neve r did. Mom worked at the citrus shed. The lady next door knew we were real har d up and she had mom go down to apply for work and she got it. I worked a t the Nile Theater for a while and then I worked for a family of Tibshera ney’s and also for a Dr. Truman doing housework. Then I started workin g at the citrus shed. We used to put paper on the oranges or grapefruit b efore we put it in the box. I did pretty good doing that. I worked ther e for 6 years. One day they gave everyone else their checks but me. I ha d to go to the office to get mine. When I got there they told me that I h ad gotten the biggest paycheck of that pay period, even more than the pic kers or the bosses. I felt real good. It wasnt too long after that that t hey laid a lot of us off. They kept the ones that were the only breadwinn ers in the family. They weren’t putting papers on them any more, so the y didn’t need so many of us. Mom was the head-grader and had been for s everal years so she was kept on.

I took role in the English class. One day Harold Crandall was absent. The re were two Crandall’s, Curly and Harold. Harold had real curly hair. T he teacher was out of the room and some of the other kids were helping m e take role. So I thought that Harold was Curly because his hair was so c urly, so I marked Curly absent. For about two weeks he was absent. I neve r was scolded for that mistake. I guess no one but me knew it. Anyway, th at is the way I met my future husband. I found out his real name was Elto n after we got engaged. I went over to see his mother all the time, whe n I wasn’t working. I got lots of attention because they had no girls a nd I was their first daughter-in-law. It seemed like that was my home s o much of the time.

In the block next to the high school there was a lot of grass and a hig h chain link fence surrounded it. In this pasture there were buffalo an d deer just south of that was the armory. The big building that the Natio nal Guard had all their meetings. During the week we had P. E. in the bui lding. I tried to take tap dancing one year. I got so sore I could hardl y ever walk, so. I went back to the gym class. I was so short that in m y senior year they put me in with the freshman because they were smalle r than the seniors. Then one year we were in the marching squad. We woul d practice marching and when the football game was in the half time we wo uld march during that time. We wore white skirts, white oxfords that we u sed for gym, white bobby sox and a white blouse. We wore a hat that was p urple and orange and was like a sailor hat. We also had a little vest tha t was purple and gold satin. I still have mine. 02