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
We spent lots of time in the hills. Papa would go to get wood or logs for building. The trips were always work trips. We went in a big wooden wagon, whose wagon box had been built by Papa. The whole family would go. If it was a trip for a day to pick huckleberries, choke cherries or service berries we didn't take too much with us, just quilts, hay, water and a lunch. The lunch usually consisted of fried chicken, bread and butter, potato salad, garden vegetables and a cake or cookies. If we were picking huckleberries we took along cream and sugar so we could have huckleberries for dessert. We children sat on the quilts spread over the hay which the horses would eat at noon. Papa usually had a spring seat for him and Mama. While Papa worked, the rest of us would spread over the hillside picking berries, eating them and laughing and talking with each other. If we stayed overnight, we'd take more food and enough camp quilts to sleep in. Mama would have made these quilts from old scraps of denim and wool. We'd cook over a campfire and then sit around it talking, telling stories and singing, with the horses tied to the wagon box chomping their hay. When we went to bed we'd snuggle between several quilts and get close to each other. The mountain nights were always cold. We'd lie and listen to the wind in the pines and quaking asps, and look up at the brilliant stars and the moon. We'd whisper until we fell asleep. In the morning, we'd roll up quilts, pile them in the wagon and go wash in some icy stream. Breakfast would again be cooked over the campfire; hotcakes or bacon and eggs, or both, with cocoa to warm us up. Then back to the berry bushes again. If papa had come for wood, he'd pack the wagon full. chain the logs on and let us perch high on the load for our return trip. We'd all get home tired and dirty. My brother, my sisters and I all love the mountains. It must be because we have spent so many fun times there. Even today, I'd rather take a sleeping bag, go up in the hills and camp out than anything I know. We'd sometimes go to the hills with our relatives and that would be even more fun because even more kids would be there. On the 4th or 24th of July the church or town would often have a celebration in the mountains, usually in Teton Canyon. Our mothers would bake and cook the day before. Then, on the day, we'd dress as for Sunday, get in our wagons and head for the canyon. There we'd spend the day. Long ropes would be hung from the trees to make swings. There would be speeches and sometimes a band. All day long there would be all kinds of contests and races for everyone. There would be an enormous dinner around noon with everyone offering their best food. It would be laid out on long make shift tables with make shift benches running down both sides. Everyone liked to eat the specialties of other people. There was always lots of home-made ice cream and wash tubs filled with ice and watermelons. About sunset all the wagons would load up and head for home. Sometimes the celebrations would be held in Driggs with a parade ending at the town square across from the Stake House. When I was about eleven years old, President Heber J. Grant came to Driggs for stake conference. I got to listen to him, be near him, shake his hand and have him talk to me. Meeting this prophet of God made a lasting impression on me. At about this time two brothers and their families moved to town. One, named J. Leo Paul, became my Sunday school teacher. He had a contest for our class. There would be prize for the person who wrote the best composition on "Why I Believe the Book of Mormon to be true." I won. The prize was a leather-bound copy of the Book of Mormon with my name engraved in gold. It was by far the most beautiful book I had ever owned. I still treasure and use it. We went to Saturday afternoon movies. They were looked forward to all week long. We usually had a dime to get into the movie and a nickel for candy. You could get a sack of candy for a nickel. The movies were silent, with words appearing at the bottom of the screen. I remember seeing Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford and Charlie Chaplin. I saw the movie Ramona there in the old Driggs theater. There was always a news reel and a short or two. There was always a serial, a continued story. Only a little was shown each week. It always ended in a situation from which no one could escape and then we had to wait until the next week to see how it turned out. Someone played the piano during the movie to provide "mood" music. Christmases during my childhood were wonderful! We'd get a tree from the nearby hills, erect it in the front room and cover the stand with a dish towel or sheet. For decorations we would pop popcorn and string it, string cranberries, make colorful chains of paper and make ornaments from anything available. We would also have some tinsel and a few "boughten" balls. We clipped little candles on the tree and carefully lit them. We made many of our gifts, but the girls aways had a "boughten" doll and Wilford something comparable. We'd have clothes, ribbons and treats. Mama had always sewed something special for each of us. And each us always got a book. In fact, each of us always got a book for his birthday as well. No matter how short of money my parents were, they always found a little for books. Melissa and Wilford both loved to read and so do all of their children. We used to pick peas in the winter and spuds in the fall to buy our school clothes. School was dismissed for two or three weeks in the fall and kids could stay out longer if the wanted to. Verla Byrne and I usually picked spuds together. One fall when I was in about the seventh grade, an older boy had an old car. He would load it down with kids and we would head for the spud fields. We took our lunches and stayed a long day. We would pick for one farmer and then move on to the next one. That year I earned all my school clothes. They included a rust colored coat with yellow sheep fur around the neck and cuffs. I ordered it from the catalog. Most of the clothes we bought were ordered from a catalog. What fun hours we spent with the "wish book." After they were old we cut them up for dolls and to use in doll houses. Last of all, they were used to clean the coal oil lamp chimneys and for toilet paper. We moved into one house where someone had left an old bookcase. Mama gave it to Lula and me to use for a doll house. It had five shelves. The top shelf had a mirror inset in the back and a lot of ornate carving around it. We used this shelf for a bedroom with a dressing table below the mirror. We had a tester bed, tables, overstuffed chairs and everything imaginable. We decorated the entire house like a Civil War mansion. We built a kitchen on the bottom shelf, then a dining room, a living room and a library. We papered the walls with samples from catalogs. We made rugs and curtains. Mama had many scraps and she let us use what we wanted. We used match boxes, all sizes of spools, pieces of wood, tin boxes, anything. It was beautiful. We had little celluloid dolls about six inches high whose heads, arms and legs would move. We made elaborate costumes for our dolls, even parasols. We spent endless hours playing with our house and dolls, but the most fun of all was the building and decorating. The summer that I was twelve my father went to Rockland to work in the harvest. My Wardle grandparents lived there. Papa took Lula and me to their home and left us for a two week visit. We went down in an old touring car. Mama had made us identical cotton dresses with white ruffles around the sleeves and pockets. Grandma was so good to us. She made big sheet cakes and many other good things. Orrin had a lot of little trucks. The three of us spent lots of time playing with them, building roads, farms etc. Grandma had a lot of old clothes she let us use for dressing up. It was a fun time. I had some wonderful teachers in Driggs School and other schools I attended. When I was in the eighth grade my teacher was Frank Knight. He was also the principle of the school. I respected and liked him and learned a great deal from him. During the year my father decided to go from Driggs to Salt Lake where he could get a job in a body and fender shop. So I didn't get to finish the year and graduate with my eighth grade class. My father really wanted all his life to live in Jackson Hole. My mother refused to move there because she didn't think it was a fit place to raise a family. Perhaps that was why Papa was always moving. The next place always looked better. In my first nine years of school I attended eleven schools. I can't see that it hurt me academically, perhaps because I could read well and I'd try hard. I'd always hate to leave my friends. But at least, I made lots of friends and learned to adapt easily to new situations. My poor mother didn't have it so easy. The houses into which we moved were usually little two-room houses with no water or bathroom. Often they were infested with bed bugs. I have seen her work and clean, putting kerosene to kill the bugs into every crack, to make the places habitable. She'd just get it cleaned, make it comfortable, live in it a few months or a year and then have to move and start all over again. My parents loved each other, but there was always lots of jangling between them. They did their jobs as mother, father, husband and wife well, but they jangled a lot. I don't remember this so much in my younger years as I did after I was about twelve. When we moved to Salt Lake we had a nice four-room house with water and a bathroom. The school said I'd have to go to seventh grade. I guess they thought Driggs would have been a poor school. But in the tests they gave me I ranked near the top of their eighth grade so they let me finish the eighth grade. We stayed in Salt Lake that summer of 1929. Verna, my last sister was born there. During the Summer I sold cakes and rolls. Every morning, except Sunday, I met a truck where I filled with goodies the basket that had been issued to me by a bakery. I had a route which I followed until my goods were sold. I received a percentage of the sales. It was rather fun. I had a second cousin, Everett Peterson, who was about my age, who lived nearby and we attended the same school and church. We had fun together. We went to Saltair several times. We would ride little open-sided cars ut to the pavilion. Then we'd spend the day riding a little and watching a lot. One time Everett found $12 an he and I used up every cent of it. What a day! We had a ninth grade graduation exercise when our school ended. Mama bought new cloth and made me a beautiful peach colored dress. As I remember, this period was about our only affluent time. About the time school ended Papa lost his job. The depression was here with a vengeance. We were forced to move back to Victor and another little two-room house. These little homes always became warm, clean loving homes. The only job my father could get was on herding sheep. Lula and I went with him as camp tenders. We herded sheep on the south side of Teton Pass, a little south and a long ways west up into the high mountains. Mama was left in Victor with three little children. At the camp we lived in a tent. We Dug a little trench on the high side of the hill so the rain water would be carried off. However, we had sudden, frequent thunder showers which nearly swept us away. We would place bedding and supplies high as possible on up-ended boxes. We too would perch on boxes as the rain ran in a stream through our tent. This was a wonderful time. Lula and I took care of the camp and did the cooking. I was 14 and she 12. I rode an old mule named Jenny, Lula rode a big old horse, and Papa had a good horse. We rode all over the mountains. Whenever Jenny got tired she headed for camp. I could not stop her. We had a couple dogs to help with the sheep. We had been there half the summer when Papa became very ill. It looked as if he'd die if he didn't get help. Someone brought us supplies about every two weeks, but they had just been there when Papa got sick. I had to go for help. I rode Lula's old horse, starting early in the morning. I had to find my way down out of the mountains, then north to Teton Pass, over the pass and finally home to Victor. I was a small girl, rather thin and frail looking, with two long long blonde braids. I looked very young. My biggest problem during the day was the cars I met. They all stopped me and wanted to know what such a little girl was doing up on the pass all alone. When I reached home it was long past dark. I must have been on the road about nineteen hours. I called to my mother who came out and helped me off the horse. I could not move then and could scarcely move for the next couple days. Someone went off for my father and got him out to a doctor. He got better, but our sheep-herding was over. When it got time for school to start, we moved to Lincoln, east of Idaho Falls. Papa worked in the sugar factory. We lived in another little two-room house with no water, on the edge of Lincoln in what is called "Doll Town." I started school as a junior at Ammon High School. I had taken all the classes I needed to enter as a junior except algebra. The principal, Mr. Magleby, could so no reason to keep me back a year for one class so he taught me algebra in his spare time. Once a week I went to him. He checked my week's work and gave me another's week's assignments. At 14 and 15, I was rather young to be a junior. All the other students were from 17 to 21. I did alright in my classes, but I was really too young to be in the class I was in. Lula started the seventh grade in Lincoln School. The fact that I had started school at five and she at nearly seven and that I had skipped by sophomore year of high school put us four years apart in school. It was hard for her. I loved my two years at Ammon High. It was by this time that I had been in eleven schools in nine years. I entered Ammon High School in the fall of 1930 when I was 14 years old and graduated in the spring of 1932 when I was 16. It was the longest time I had been in one school and how lucky it was that those two years were my high school years. I had wonderful teachers. Archie Williams, a young unmarried man, taught all the English classes. He instilled in me a life-time love of literature. He was small and wore glasses. He gave me a good foundation in grammar. He had me learn "The Highwayman" by Alfred Noyes, a poem I've never forgotten. He directed our plays. Even today I think of him with gratitude and affection. He opened my eyes to many new ideas and different kinds of literature. Floyd Anderson taught all science classes. He was a tall blonde jock type. All the girls were crazy about him. He had a lovely wife and several little boys. During my senior year he was killed. He fell on a harrow which had been left upside down in his back yard and the teeth pierced his body. It was a tragedy for all of us. The third teacher who influenced me was a young lady whose name I have forgotten. She had black hair, worn in rather a mannish cut-quite different in those days of long hair! She taught business classes. I took both typing and shorthand from her. She taught me a never forgotten lesson. One day we were to have a shorthand test. I studied hard for all my classes and got good grades. This time I had not studied so I decided to cheat. I made notes on some small pieces of paper and kept them in my palm. I used them. When I got my test back it had been fold lengthwise and had a big "A" on the front. when I looked inside, down on the bottom, she had written, "Audrey, this is a good paper, but I think you could do just as well without the notes." I nearly died because I adored her. I never mentioned it to her, nor she to me, but it was my first and last time of cheating. In my own teaching, I have used this technique I learned from her. We moved into a larger, four-room house with water and a bathroom. We would sit around the kitchen table, after supper, and read or study. I had a real problem with Papa. He especially loved to read history. As soon as we sat down, he took my book to look at for a minute. Sometimes I never got it back! There was so much to do at school. Our student body numbered only about 130 so everyone knew everyone else well. We did everything together. We put on plays and operettas. We had debates and speeches. We had sports. I was running center on the girls basketball team. I was little and quick. When I graduated from high school I was 4'10" tall, but I had started to get little plump. When our boys' ball teams played another school all travelled in the bus to support them. We had a bobcat for a mascot. We kept him in a cage in the furnace room. When we travelled to a game we took him in a carrying case. Whoever sat above his cage always got their legs scratched. Our bus was driven by a man named Oscar. He was tall and fun. He took us to games too. In the winter time the school bus was a sled because the roads were impassible. Weather was much more severe then. There was so much snow! I remember climbing to the top of the snow thrown up at the side of the road by the snow plow and being able to reach higher than the telephone wires. Ivy Field was my best friend. I often stayed overnight with her. Her father was a very prosperous farmer. This was really the depth of the depression. My parents were so poor I don't know how we survived. What my parents must have gone through! Papa would work the sugar beet run and then do what odd jobs he could. The two summers we were in Lincoln he contracted to thin and hoe huge fields of beets for different farmers. I worked side by side with him, all day, every day but Sunday. Lula helped too and my mother walked to the field and worked when her housework was done. Lots of times we'd take home the beets we had pulled up on our thinning and have them for supper, with gravy over bread and fruit Mama had canned. We had a cow. In the winter, Lula and I pulled a wagon up to the beet dump and brought home a wagon-load of pulp for food for the cow. It smelled terrible and made the milk taste like beet-pulp. One time we had no flour and no money to buy any. I know my parents were frantic. As we sat around our kitchen table after supper there was a knock on our back door. When we answered it, there in our little lean-to porch, was a 50 lb. sack of flour. We never knew who brought it, but suspected a dear old couple who lived in "doll town." But what a heaven-sent gift! Mother still made over old clothes for us, but we always looked good. I worked in the fields at harvest time picking spuds and topping beets to earn money for school clothes. I earned my class ring this way. I think it cost $7.50. If we went anywhere we walked. We walked all the time to Idaho Falls and back. In the winters, my legs above my stockings were frost-bitten most of the time. Girls couldn't wear pants. In the summer time, there were dances at different churches and two big dance halls, Wandamere and Riverside. I loved to dance. Because we had no car and no way to go anywhere my parents wouldn't let me go on a date, in the summer, unless I took Lula and one of her girl friends. They didn't think it was fair for me to go when she couldn't. How I hated to tell a fellow I could go, but I'd have to take my sister and her friend. Surprisingly, I still had dates. Lula had no fun. She'd just ride to the dance, sit on a bench and talk to her girl friend all night and then ride home. She was totally out of place. I was so nasty to her in an effort to make her too angry to go that I have always been bitterly ashamed. My folks were just trying to be good to her, but they created such bad feelings between us that we really drifted apart. But in spite of no money, my high school years were fun. When we graduated there were about 32 students in our class. About four of them were older fellows (23) who had dropped out of school and then come back. We did all kinds of things to make our graduation special. We wallowed in our grief. We even had a "sob" assembly." I had no money for a graduation dress. Papa loaded up Verna's old buggy with the tools he had used in Salt Lake and some other things. He pushed it to Idaho Falls and sold it at a second hand store. Then he walked home with some money. Mama and I walked to town and selected a beautiful boughten dress.
