Chapter 1 A Chapter 1 B Chapter 2. Chapter 3 Chapter 4A Chapter 4b Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8. Chapter 9. Chapter 10
The summer after I graduated from high school I worked as usual in the beet fields with my father. The family decided to move to Pocatello. Mama and the children moved to Pocatello in time to get the children started in school. Papa and I stayed in Lincoln and topped beets to support the family. We lived-in a tent in a beet field until along in November. I did not have money to go to college. The money I earned and had earned in the beet fields when I worked with my father always went into the family fund. I didn't need it and times were so desperate that I was glad to help. If I needed a little money was given to me. Overall, it was a family effort to survive. The fall was wet and miserable. We were still topping beets in the snow. We had no car. The tucker who hauled the beets was an especially nice man. He had moved Mama and the children to Pocatello and ws going to take Papa and me down when we finished our work. But I had a problem. The previous summer a boy with whom I sometimes danced had twisted my arm behind me and taken my class ring. I had been unable to get it back. I had worked so hard to earn it and treasured it so much that I was not about to leave it forever with a fellow I didn't especially like. So I asked the truck driver to take me to the boy's home to get my ring. When my father learned about it he went wild to think I'd let someone have my ring. He began to beat me. For about the past four years, since I was about twelve, my father had beaten me frequently and badly. He usually used a razor strap which was nearly a yard long and was made of two separate pieces of leather, each about three inches wide and one fourth inch thick. He had beaten me for everything and nothing. For instance, he always told me I had to be home from a school dance that let out at 12:00 by 12:15. It was impossible. After the dance everyone went to a little store across the street for ice cream. Then we'd start home. The kids who lived closest were dropped off first. Each stop took a few minutes. I never got home by 12:15 and I always got a severe beating. He'd really lay into me, with Mama crying and trying to stop him. Each time I went to a school dance he'd let me go, but would warn me what would happen if I were late. I'd try to explain to him but he would not listen. So each time I knew what I faced either that night or the next morning. He would also begin beating me for nothing. I realized, even then, that he beat me because of his pressures and frustrations during those trying years. He never touched anyone else--just me. But he beat me horribly. However, when he started to beat me over the ring, I'd had it. I was able to convince him that he'd never see me again if he touched me. Meant it. He never beat me again. But when Wilford go to be about twelve he started on him and beat him until he left home. I did get my ring back. I've never really held the beatings against him. He was having a bad time and had to relieve himself some way. I always just thought, what a stupid way. I'm sure I'd have had more affection for him if he hadn't beaten me so much. If I've been too easy with my own children, those beatings were probably why, plus the fact that their father was a very gentle man. Anyway, we got to Pocatello and it was a bad time. There was no work anywhere. Papa went toward for the Works Progress Administration, a government project Roosevelt had started to help the unemployed. He worked with a pick and shovel on bridges, buildings and other civic projects. I too worked for the W.P.A. I worked in an office at a busy-work job. I checked the list of meant eligible to work against those who showed up. What I took eight hours to do could have done in an hour. I worked there three months. Then I couldn't stand it any longer. I had a friend, Fern Harris, who did housework for a family and she found a better job so I took over her job. At the W.P.A. I had been paid $12.50 a week. My new job paid $4 a week plus room and board. There was a woman who worked away from home, her husband and two children in the early grades of school. I slept in the basement and except for two or three evenings off each week I worked all the time. The woman fancied herself a lady. I was truly their servant. I was not permitted to eat with them. It was really rather funny because the lived in a little four-room house which was very plainly furnished. Her husband was 10 or 15 years younger than she. He was nice to me and always treated me as a gentleman would. She did have an old dirty man for a father who had a dozen hands, but he wasn't around very often. The children were nice. I had almost total care of them until I read them to sleep every night. I did all the work. I had no affection for any of them. I had made a few friends. What we usually did for fun was go to each other's homes and play cards. Sometimes we went to a movie. But I had little free time. When fall came I quit my job and started college. I had less money than I'd had the fall before, but the bursar let me pay what I had with the agreement that I'd pay the rest as I could. Imagine that today! I had always wanted to be a nurse. After I had graduated from high school I had gone to L.D.S. Hospital in Idaho Falls to see about admittance. They couldn't accept me until I was 18 and that was too long to wait. So I decided to become a teacher. I was 16, soon to be 17, but the college was there and I had decided to become a teacher. Elva and Paul stopped to see us. Elva was teaching in the Basin. I confided my dreams of college to her and she gave me $.50 to start my college fund. That was a lot of money in those days. I lived at home the first year. It was a great year. I made some dear friends. My uncles, Norval and Orrin, started school the same year, both of them in the teaching program. I went to the Institute and it was so neat. We did so many fun things and there were so many boys! I was crazy about most of them. My classes were fun. I was truly inspired by dear, old Ethel Redfield, my teacher. My grades were only average, but I was too busy to study a lot. I got another sort of government subsidized job. I cleaned the bathrooms in the boys' dorms. All my friends envied me. My boss was a wonderful old lady named Mrs. Walters. She always went to the dorms with me and did other work while I cleaned the bathrooms. We always went at about eight and worked for about two hours. Then I attended my classes. She was a true friend and helped me a lot. Once when I had to have a coat I got a job working at a creamery. A manager there was the older brother of my dear friend Karl Hale. I worked from four until twelve each night for two weeks and was able to buy the clothes I needed. I was on the girls' hockey team and loved it. I especially liked my P.E. classes. J. Wiley Sessions was the head of the Institute and the only teacher. I loved him and his wife. They were good and taught me so much. I loved to dance and we danced a lot. Every Tuesday after mutual we danced at the Institute. Every Friday we went to the Third Ward and every Saturday we danced somewhere, usually at the University to the Stake House. We had dance programs or would make them. I always had my program full before the second dance was over. Had more fun than anyone. Therewere so many people that I liked to dance with that I would only give a fellow one dance. Except for two fellows. I always went the first and last dance with th fellow I went with. And then Reed Coffin. Oh, fun Reed! I dated him a little, but he was just a friend. But we danced perfectly together. He was about three inches taller than I, slender, and with coal black wavy hair. I was very blonde and loved bright clothes--red, green. The contrast between us made quite a sight. I always saved two dances for Reed. Reed and I worked at Penny's together for a while. I was a terrible salesperson, but the manager, Mr. Denny, moved me around so he could keep me on. He knew I ended money desperately. My folks moved to Salmon at the end of y first year in college. I stayed with Aunt Lucy and Uncle Vernal for a little while. I dearly loved Aunt Lucy and she helped my many ways. When school was out I went to Salmon and go a job washing dishes in a cafe. Everyone there was good to me. In the fall, I returned to college. I lived in a little apartment with my dear friend, Effie Moyes, from Murtaugh and another girl Effie's folks forced on us. I'm afraid she didn't have much fun. Effie and I wanted a good time and she didn't. Sometimes we had little or nothing to eat. Our folks had sent fruit and vegetables with us. The parents of the other girls sent them money, but mine had none to send. Thank Heaven for Mrs. Walters and the others who helped me with work. One time we had nothing to eat for two days and felt we were starving. I got the other two girls to walk over to Aunt Lucy's with me. She couldn't imagine what we were doing in the middle of the afternoon. When I explained, we all pitched in pitch in and cooked a big meal right in the middle of the afternoon. Sometimes we got up very early and wend out and stole milk that had been left on doorsteps. We'd take it home, empty out the milk and then take the clean, empty bottles to the store and trade them for bread. We only did that a few times, but we did it. At the end of the first semester, Effie went home. I had no place to stay so I went to Aunt Lucy's and stayed with them. I did my student teaching this semester, nine weeks at Washington in the first grade with a wonderful woman, and then nine weeks at the old Lincoln school in the sixth grade with another wonderful teacher. I learned so much. I walked across town several times a day, about three miles one way. I still had my job with Mr. Walters. I often went home to get lunch for Aunt Lucy's children. In fact, she took a trip to California for a couple of months and I ran the house with everything else. And I still had fun. Most of the time, especially at a dance or on a date, I just felt as if I were sizzling inside and ready to explode. I was enjoying life so much I never ran out of energy. I had more fun than anyone else. My folks had lived in the Fifth Ward before they moved to Salmon and I made some wonderful friends there. We had great times. There were two Ellsworth brothers , Reed and Dean. I dated them both a little and danced with them a lot. They had a younger brother about 14. He'd always come to the church dances and hang around and finally ask me to dance with him. I liked him so I danced with him. Years later, after I was married and had a child, if he was at a dance where I was he always asked me for a dance. By then he was a tall, dark, handsome young man. Talk about casting your bread on the waters! I began going with Effie's cousin, Louis Adamson, while I lived with her. He was 6' 3" and I was 5' 3". We looked sort of funny. But he was such fun and a real brain. We planned to get married. But still there were all those other neat guys. I just had to cheat a little. For months, I went to a movie with another old boyfriend I liked, Clyde Lewis. Then the next afternoon or evening I'd go to the same with Louis. I thought he'd never find out, but he did. About the time school was out he told me he was going away to work for Morrison Knudsen. If I'd settle down we'd be married when he came back. But that was too long a wait for me. I meant to, but there were too many neat guys around. By the time he came back I'd met Ellis and decided to marry him. Louis was killed on Wake Island when the Japanese attacked. I still feel affection for him. But he should have let me eat my cake and have it too. School ended and I had a teacher's certificate and a Junior College Degree. The depression was ending, but jobs were few and far between. I had no way to go looking for one. Mama wouldn't let me go alone, so we hitch-hiked around the area looking for a job. I'd find an opening, then write and make a appointment. Then Mama and I would hitch-hike there. I finally got a job at the Bates School in Teton Basin. My biggest problem was that I looked about 16, but I was really 19. I worked that summer at an A&W root beer stand in Pocatello. My folks had moved back just before school was out.
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