The people that bought the home from dad remodeled it so much that they took away the value of it being a pioneer home, they changed it so much. So when they sold it, it was in the business section of Kaysville, and the city wanted it for businesses. I can remember, in the area that was the dining room and the kitchen, we used to play Annie-I-Over. We played that a lot as kids. And the trees on the sides were black walnut trees, you don't see black walnut trees much anymore. Boy, how I hated having to pick up all those walnut shells. Then we'd have to take the shells off and they would turn your hand black. Black walnuts, they were black and your hands turned black too. On the other side of the house there was a big tree and you couldn't see the house behind it. It was the longer part of the house. It had two bedrooms up there. It sat on a large piece of ground so that we could have a garden and grow enough food so that we could can our fruits and can our vegetables. And that is what we did.
Dad was a gardener anyway, he loved to garden. But he, to make a living, worked in the Kaysville bank. But he had a pasture where he had cows and he had chickens, a lot of chickens. Eventually he quit banking and just raised chickens. So all through my older years of school, from the 3rd or 4th grade on up, we'd have to come home every day and collect eggs. I learned how to candle them. Candling them is putting them in a light where you can see whether there was blood in them or not. Once in a while we'd have one, so we had to candle every egg and then put them in a box after we had cleaned them. And we had to clean them with a brush that had sandpaper on it. Because if you put them in water they would get rotten too soon, they wouldn't stay fresh as long.
All through school, even when I was in High School, I was cleaning eggs. We'd kill chickens on Saturday. We'd get up really early and dad would kill the chickens and we'd have to clean them. Dad would sell them, he took orders for chickens. Oh my gosh, we all worked, anyway. A lot of work.
One thing my dad and mother loved was going to the temple. Of course they would. And they always went once a week. And in those days it was hard to get in to the Salt Lake Temple. It was far. And I can remember them going and every time they would go dad would tell us that when we were keepin ght efire goin g, becaus ewe were burning logs and coal back then, not to make a big fire in the stove or fireplace, wherever we were doing it, because sparks come out the chimney. And if sparks fall on the roof the house will burn. So when they left to go to the temple I spent half my time out looking at the roof to see if it was on fire. I was a worry wart when I was little. I would worry about things like that all the time.
We had East winds that were a lot worse than the ones we have now. And when ever we had an East wind we had boards that fit the big front window we would have to put on. It took three boards to cover it to keep the window from being broken because the house was facing East. And one time, when I was older, but still at home, when Dad had about 3,000 chickens, we had a strong East wind. There were three long rows of chicken coops on the property, we had thousands of chickens at a time that he was raising. This one big long line, there were three coops, and the roof was all one length covering all three coops. And an East wind came while they were at the temple one time and it lifted that roof right off. It was terrible and those poor chickens, he lost most of the chickens in those three coops. It was quite a set back for a while.
I didn't tell you another thing about while dad was on his mission when I was three years old. Between three and four years old and Bob was just a tiny little 18 month old. He sent us things for birthdays and stuff. He sent a little black doll to me for my birthday and I put it in bed with me and I wet the bed and I ruined that sweet doll. It took all of the paint right off of her face. I'll never forget that. It just ruined that doll, I still remember that doll, she had pigtails with little red ribbons around them. I love dolls, I always did. I loved to play dolls. And Virginia was just the opposite. She couldn't stand to play with dolls and if she got mad at me she would take a way my dolls as punishment. I can remember when Gloria was born, I was five years old. I wanted to take her for a walk in the buggy and mother wouldn't let me. But she let Virginia push her. I won't ever forget that either. I was so mad about that. As Gloria got older Mother would make me take her with me if I went to someone's house to play, because she wanted to go play too. And I hated that.
When my mother was alive we had family night and back then the church didn't tell you to do it. But my parents just did it every night. We would all gather in and I can remember mom pealing apples so that we could each have a pealed apple while dad talked. Dad loved to talk about religion. He was a preacher and we'd listen to him for a little while and then there was a program that would come on the radio. We didn't have television back then. So they would turn that program on each night and after that we'd go to bed. Some nights they couldn't do it but most of the time it was a nightly thing, but they didn't do it the night they went to the temple.
My mother died when I was 11 years old. She had to have a gall bladder operation and she didn't live through the operation. It was a terrible thing. It was really sad. It was hard the rest of our lives after that. Our whole lives were changed completely. Then dad married again with in a year. She died in August and he was married in June the next year. Well, he just didn't know what to do about his children. He had five house keepers come in and one or two of them left because they couldn't stand us and then he fired three of them because he couldn't stand them. There was one that I really liked. I can remember that so well. We all liked her, she would do anything for us, but dad caught her smoking and he wouldn't have anything like that around the house at all. He one time said, (this was when mother was still alive) "I want all of you children to promise me that unless you ever see me smoke, drink coffee, or drink liquor that you will never do it!" My oldest brother, see, but after mother died things just went to pot, he didn't live that promise. Other than that, we did. Now Gloria was really young when mother died, she was 6 years old. It just seemed like our family was torn apart. Aunt Luella came (married) and told dad she would have the youngest child from him, but the others were old enough to be on there own. And it ended up that Martha came, she was my age, and that was her youngest child. Lillian came and she was 20 years old and she really upset the family. And then she had an older son, I don't remember how old he was, I think he was in his late twenties or thirties, that came and lived there because he was mentally unbalanced. He could write, he had been to school and learned to write. He could write like a child of about eight, I guess. That was about his mentality. Everything that happened, he would get into things and do sneaky things. He wasn't to blame, I mean you couldn't blame him, but Aunt Luella would blame all of us, not him. No blame was ever put on any of her children. We were the ones who had to be punished for anything at all. It was just an awful time. I always got along with Martha though. She was my age and we were good friends. And we ran around with the same crowd in High School. With most kids it would be a split with something like that, but it wasn't with us. I still just love her. Her husband is dead and she hated him so bad. They had a terrible life together. They had five children and they had just a terrible life. I used to tell her to divorce him and she would tell me that if she did he would take the kids and everything so she would have nothing. Since he died she's just gotten worse. I try to get her to come and go places with me, but she never does. She lives right here in Centerville. She married Budd's cousin, Ralph, she's a Tingey. It's too bad I've always just loved her. It's amazing how we got along, her mother pampered her. Anyway, our lives really did change after mother died. Dad too, he wasn't the same person anymore.
I was so excited to go to school with the kids and my brothers and sisters. To get ready adn to go to school, that was just great. I liked school, I was so excited. The first day I went, when it was recess I went running home for lunch and my mother had to take me right back to school. I had to learn that you had recess and you got to go out and play for a little while, then go back in and then I could go home for lunch. When I started school all the kids went home for lunch. Or, would take lunches and eat at school. But eventually, I don't remember which grade it was, they started a lunch program and it was just soup. Different kinds of soup that the kids could buy for a nickel or a dime. I don't even remember how much it was. And oh, I wanted to do that so bad. Have some money so that I could do that, but we just didn't have it and I had to go home to get my lunch.
