Oral History Program Barbara Bigler Interviewed by Shanna Seiler 08 February 2005 i Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Barbara Bigler Interviewed by Shanna Seiler 08 February 2005 Copyright © 2012 by Weber State University, Stewart Library ii Mission Statement The Oral History Program of the Stewart Library was created to preserve the institutional history of Weber State University and the Davis, Ogden and Weber County communities. By conducting carefully researched, recorded, and transcribed interviews, the Oral History Program creates archival oral histories intended for the widest possible use. Interviews are conducted with the goal of eliciting from each participant a full and accurate account of events. The interviews are transcribed, edited for accuracy and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewees (as available), who are encouraged to augment or correct their spoken words. 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It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Bigler, Barbara, an oral history by Shanna Seiler, 08 February 2005, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. iii Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with Barbara Bigler. The interview was conducted on February 08, 2005, by Shanna Seiler. Present at the interview is a girl named Jenny. Barbara Bigler talks about her life growing up and how her family survived by canning fruits and vegetables. SS: This is Shanna Seiler. Today’s date is February 8, 2005. I am speaking with Barbara Bigler. Do I have your permission to record this interview? BB: Yes. SS: Okay. Can you tell me your full name, please, and date of birth? BB: Barbara Ann Child Bigler, and I was born June the 30th, 1931. SS: And where were you born? BB: I was born actually in Ogden, but I lived in Clinton. SS: In Clinton? BB: In Clinton, Utah. But I was born at the old Dee hospital. SS: Tell me where you grew up. BB: I grew up in Clinton ‘till I was eighteen and I got married at nineteen and moved to Ogden. SS: You moved to Ogden? BB: Yes. And I’ve been in Ogden ever since. SS: You grew up in an LDS family? 1 BB: I did. SS: Okay. Tell me about your family. BB: Let’s see. I have two sisters and two brothers, and a father and mother. My mother and father were divorced, however, when I was – well, when we were younger. We always attended the little LDS church in Clinton, the little teeny one. Now it’s a reception center. We actually used to have to clean the church house. It was tiny, but all of us kids cleaned it while my mother played the organ. And my dad, he helped clean. That was before they were divorced. SS: Tell me about your mom. BB: My mother worked awful hard for us kids. She made good meals out of practically nothing, because – I mean, my dad was always working. He did work. He always had a job, but at that time they didn’t pay a heck of a lot, and my mom always fed us kids, and when my dad left, my mother took care of us. SS: Did she have a job? BB: Yes, she worked at the Ogden Arsenal, and she didn’t work while we were really young. She went after - or just before they were divorced - she went to work at the Ogden Arsenal. SS: Alright. Growing up in Utah, where did you guys tend to buy your fruit and produce from? BB: Oh, heck, we grew most of it. SS: Did you? Did you have an orchard? 2 BB: We had a whole group of different kinds of trees. We had an acre or so and we would grow our own tomatoes and potatoes; we had regular gardens. People then almost all had gardens, where there are homes today. We all used to practically live, out in Clinton anyway, on maybe one, two acres of ground. We grew our own produce. SS: What kinds of trees did you have? BB: Oh, we had apple trees, and we had peach trees, and pears, and apricot. And mom used to can every bit of it. SS: Everything. BB: Almost everything, all but the apples us kids threw to each other across the street. We’d have apple fights. That was the only apples she didn’t can. SS: Was the ones that you threw? BB: Yeah. The one that us kids – we had a family across the street that we always had fights with apples. SS: Didn’t that cause injury? BB: No, it was mostly in fun. SS: Apple fights. That’s fun. Did your mom make jam? BB: Oh, my mother made jam, jelly, preserves, all kinds of preserves. Always. And the very best raspberries you could ever imagine. She was the queen of the raspberries. Yep, she made raspberries, always, and raspberry jelly, raspberry jam… SS: Do you remember how she used to do it? 3 BB: Well, yeah – she used to even make it fresh. As she grew older, she would make it fresh and freeze it, but Mama canned everything. We had large shelves, and they were always full of canned goods. Well, not particularly canned, but usually bottles is what she canned with. She would can it, but it was in bottles. SS: Do you remember her doing that? BB: Oh, yes. Well, I did it. I helped her a lot. SS: Did you? BB: Yes. We all had to pitch in, in those days. Everybody had to pitch in. I even made it myself, after. I’ve made a lot of jam and jelly myself. SS: Have you? And you did this with your mom – do you have any memories of doing this, stories that you could tell me? BB: I do – oh, yeah, I can always remember. My one sister wouldn’t help, she kinda hindered while we was doing it, you know. But I can remember going over to Mom’s house long after I was married, and we would put up fruit together. Mom would sit and peel it by the hour, and even my stepdad helped. He would peel a lot of it for us. We would put up pears, and peaches; and by then we didn’t have our own, we had to go buy it. We’d drive up to Brigham and buy it in one of the fruit stands up there. SS: I just interviewed Ralph Neilson from Neilson’s produce, and he’s been up there for – years and years and years. That was a fun interview. BB: Oh, yeah. I’ll bet it was. There’s a lot of nice fruit stands up there. They have the best fruit, and berries… in fact, I used to pick berries. You know, they used to pay us so much to pick a whole thing of them, but berry picking wasn’t my cup of tea. And I picked 4 cherries – hey, us kids had to work in the fields out there! We picked up potatoes – until I started working in potatoes. I thought they grew on vines, but they grow in the ground! Didn’t know they grew in the ground – I didn’t! I thought they were ears of potato vine. SS: They grew on vines, that’s funny. What’s your earliest memory of your mom making jam? BB: Of my mother? Oh, she always made it. Since we were just teeny kids. We’d come home from school, and she’d have it – we had to walk, of course, then, we didn’t have cars like they do so much today. And we’d come home and we could smell it. You could smell it when you come in the door. And she would – and it was hot, still hot, and we would have it on hot bread and stuff. She’s always – my mom always canned everything. And I have friends today that still can everything. SS: I do it. BB: I don’t. Not that much, anymore. But I always make jam and stuff. I’ve got one you should make. It’s pear. SS: Do you have a recipe? BB: Yes, I do, and Sue loves it. She keeps asking me when I’m going to make some more pear jam. SS: I’ll make it. BB: Okay, I’ll find the recipe and give it to you. SS: I’ll make it, I’ll go up to Neilson’s fruit and get some pears. 5 BB: Yes, yes! And right now would be a good time, ‘cause they do still have pears, you know, and stuff like that. SS: Yeah, he sent us home with a lot of fruit. BB: Yeah, I’ll look the recipe up. SS: Why did your mom make jam? BB: Why did she make it? Well, we had to have it to survive. People them days had to have it to survive. Where today, you know, you can go over to the store and buy jam and stuff, people have the money to do it. But we didn’t have a lot of money then, and that’s the big reason my mom canned and made jam and all kinds of preserves. But that’s why she did it, is because you know, it was almost a necessity. SS: Canning fruits. How many – what kinds of fruits did she can? BB: She did apricots, pears, peaches, plums; she even canned rhubarb. SS: Rhubarb? BB: Yup, she even canned rhubarb, for pies and stuff. We used to have rhubarb pies all the time. And she – she done everything. Cherries, and especially her raspberries. Oh – they were the very best. J: They were, they were very good. BB: But we liked it all. Mom was very good at it, she really was. SS: Do you remember how she would do it? BB: Well, we’d peel it, we’d slice it… J: She’d put it in a big pot. 6 BB: Yeah, she’d put it in a – what they called a cold pack, sometimes. Sometimes she’d cold pack it, and you’d put it in a big thing with water, and then you’d cook it, take it out, wait for the seals to seal. You’d hear them popping all over the kitchen, you’d hear the seals pop. The jam she would put in a big pot, just mix it all up, put it out in a big pot and cook it. She was excellent at it. SS: Do you remember how long it used to take? BB: The whole thing? Well, Mom was a little slow peeling. If someone helped peel, it wouldn’t take quite as long. But – oh, I don’t know, we’d be half the day by the time we’d get through like with peaches and stuff. ‘Course she’d put them in a little hot water, and it would make the peels come off easier. But a lot of the things we had to peel; was hard, took a long time. SS: It does. Apples take forever. BB: Yes. Apples and pears. Pears take a long time too. SS: Peaches aren’t too bad. BB: She used to always put pineapple in the apricots. SS: Like pineapple juice, or pineapple… BB: Pineapple. Just the regular pineapple. She would just put pineapple in – that really made it taste good. SS: Did she ever put sugar in it? BB: Oh yes. Mom used sugar, a lot of sugar in them. SS: Do you remember any of the brands? 7 BB: Of the sugar she used? I don’t. I don’t remember what sugar she used. She used any, probably the cheapest she could get at those days. I don’t remember the brands of it. And I know that she used to buy a lot of wax – you know, they had a wax, paraffin wax that you put on it too. She used to do a lot of it with wax. SS: This is a weird question, but did she ever use beet sugar? BB: Well, isn’t most sugar made from beets? SS: Utah produces a lot of beet sugar. BB: Oh, yeah, my dad used to sell beets, we used to take beets over, yes. I’m sure she used beet sugar. SS: Did you take them to the beet dump? BB: Yes, we did. SS: Do you remember anything about that? BB: Oh, I remember hauling it stunk. SS: It stunk? BB: The place stunk. Yeah, we used to take peas too, to bottle. You know, we grew peas; you’d pick the peas and take the peas over to Pea Vinery, they called it the Pea Vinery. Oh, mom used to can peas also. I mean, not only fruit… SS: But vegetables? BB: Vegetables, vegetables too. SS: Ralph Neilson told me that they were really gross. 8 BB: When they were canned? Well, I don’t know, I thought they were all right. Especially the peas. I think the peas were good. But Mom used to do corn, and everything. You know, back in those days, when Mom was doing it, we didn’t have all the refrigeration and the freezers and the stuff that people have today. We did have a refrigerator with a little freezer, with some ice cubes. But not, you know, not a big freezer that you could freeze corn and stuff. J: I had some of her corn, and it wasn’t bad. Canned corn is good. SS: Yeah, I think he said the canned carrots were gross. BB: Well, I like fresh carrots right now better than I do the canned, but – we canned them sometimes. I don’t can them, I buy them canned. SS: Do you remember many problems with making jam and canning food? BB: We never did have any problems, because I always had my mom to help me, but now my mom’s gone, and so I don’t do it. Very seldom. I make jelly or jam, but I don’t can like I did. I always had my mom to call. But my girlfriend, she does everything. Tomatoes, she stands for hours doing that. SS: I’ve just heard stories about bottles exploding, and - BB: Yeah, sometimes they do. We had more problems with the kids knocking them off the shelf than we did with them blowing up, but a lot of times they wouldn’t seal either. So – she’d just have to - redo it usually, and do it as jelly or jam. I mean, there used to be so many canneries, and now they’re not here. Tomatoes, I worked where they make the ketchup; I worked where they done peas, I worked where they done tomatoes, where I had to stand on a box to peel them – I mean, they just canned everything. It’s kinda like 9 the LDS do now. They have their own canneries, and people go put their time in. But my mom done a lot of tomatoes too. SS: Did she? BB: Oh, yeah. She did stewed tomatoes, she did – she didn’t do much salsa, ‘cause they weren’t on the salsa deal then, but she – oh, she done lots of tomatoes. We grew tomatoes – we had a whole field of tomatoes. I can remember watching the tomatoes boiling. It was good. It seems like she used to make something else out of tomatoes, and I can’t remember what it was – it was kind of a thick-based stuff, but I can’t remember just what it was. And spicy, but I can’t remember what it was. SS: Did you make hot sauce with them? BB: Well, she didn’t make the hot sauce too much, because you know, you just didn’t use it those days, like you do today. Salsa and all that stuff, you just didn’t make it then like you do today. But my girlfriend today even cans tomato rice soup. She does it in the jars. She cans constantly. SS: I need to learn how to do that. BB: Yeah, she does a lot of canning. Still today. SS: Let’s see what else we’ve got here. Who would your mom can with? BB: We had a neighbor across the street that mom done a lot of canning with. And my stepdad helped an awful lot. He was really good. He really helped her. But most of us kids helped, and as we all grew older, we’d go home so she could show us how to do different things, you know. Especially the raspberries and stuff that we liked so well. She 10 was constantly helping all of us. I can remember when she helped Sue, you know, my sister, do all of hers. J: I remember that. BB: She did! She would do all of us. I mean, Mom loved to can. Most of the people from back then really loved to do it. You know, it was great to have Mom do a lot of it for us and teach us how. And what to do, you know. SS: Did you mostly learn how by doing it with her? BB: Yeah. That’s the only way. My mother-in-law didn’t can a lot, but my mom always did. Oh, and I loved the rhubarb pies she’d make with the canned rhubarb. SS: Did you do strawberry rhubarb pies? BB: We did. SS: That’s my mom’s favorite. BB: Yeah, we made strawberry-rhubarb pies. But I will tell you, the best thing my mother did – we know, don’t we, Jen – raspberries. Definitely. My brother-in-law would always tell her, go buy – don’t stand there and pick those darn raspberries. She’d pick ‘em and bring ‘em in, and wash ‘em and clean ‘em; Mom was really good at canning. I don’t think people today can like they used to. But we used to have to. That was what we lived on, all winter. SS: When you got married, did you do it after you got married? BB: I did, yeah, with my mom’s help mostly. On my own I haven’t done an awful lot of it. I’ve made more jellies and jams and stuff. 11 SS: Why did you do it? BB: Why did I? Well, my husband – I don’t know, you just did it. It was mostly because of my husband. And I made a lot of the freezer strawberry jam for my son. My son liked that. He used to – well, Mom used to make it for him too. But now that Mom’s gone, he doesn’t get it, because I haven’t made it lately. SS: It’s hard to do that stuff. BB: But some people love to do it. My girlfriend loves to can. SS: I like to do it. BB: I mean, she’s just canning constantly. I mean, all summer. She takes it up to my other sister – she takes boxes. Last time we went we took six boxes. So it helped my other sister get through the winter, the one that lives in Idaho and lives all alone on a very tight income. And it does help people. My friend Donna that does it is very generous with it. SS: In a lot of my research, I found that a lot of women have joined canning clubs – do you remember anything about canning clubs? BB: I don’t. I don’t really know much about a canning club. Maybe if I was out more in the country again, where we used to do so much and have our own fruit, you know – but here in the city I don’t know much about it. Not about canning clubs. SS: I’ve only seen it like in the Relief Society magazine and stuff. BB: Well, I think maybe the Relief Society does it. SS: Were you guys members of the Relief Society? 12 BB: I am not, now. We were, when I was a kid. I mean, I’m a member, but I don’t get involved in a lot of the canning and stuff now. I don’t get involved in a lot of the stuff they do. BB: Tell me about working at the canning factory. SS: I was in my last year in junior high, and everyone was at war – a lot of the men that worked there, and women – women had government jobs, you know. So they give us a special permit to go to the cannery and work, and we would work for about four hours a day after school. Four hours, we’d go down – walk down to the canneries in Clearfield. There was the Smith’s in Woods Cross, and we’d walk down to the cannery, most of us. Some of the kids were lucky and got to chute the cans down, there was a belt that the cans would come down on, but the biggest share of us would have to peel tomatoes. We’d have to stand on boxes and peel tomatoes by the hour. They had a little – certain knife, that you used, with a little crookedy thing on the end of it, and we’d peel the tomatoes. We’d take them off the belt, peel them, put them back on. Then I worked on the ketchup belt, where they made ketchup. But there all you had to do was just pick out the bad tomatoes. And that wasn’t bad, because you just had to pick out – well, some of the tomatoes were kind of bad – you know, rotten or wormy or something. So you’d have to grab them off. That was kind of fun. Everything was done by belts. A belt that would go in front of you, you know, a big kind of wide belt. And it would go in front of you with all these tomatoes on it. But I would work through all of the tomatoes and usually the peas every summer. That’s kind of how I bought my school clothes. SS: Was it hard work? 13 BB: It was hard work. Oh, yeah. You’d have to stand there for – when I worked full time, you know, during the summers, eight hours a day you’d stand there. Peel tomatoes. No, it wasn’t easy. It was kinda hard. J: Sounds hard. BB: I was young. I was probably twelve? Well, from twelve on I’d work every summer. But we had a lot of them then, you know? Then I walked to Varney’s, I worked at Varney’s a lot too. That’s another canning factory, out in Roy. And I went there too, during the summers. It was a good job, for kids. And we had a lot of produce. You know, out there, a lot of tomatoes, everybody raised tomatoes. SS: Would people just take their produce to the cannery? BB: Yes. SS: Do you remember how much you got paid? BB: Oh my gosh – I bet it was probably fifty cents an hour if it was that much. It wasn’t very much. But then – you know, no one got paid. No one got paid very much. But it was hard work. They’d have these big plastic aprons you’d put on, and yeah. It was hard work. SS: Tell me about bottling root beer. BB: Oh, well, Mom used to make the root beer, and us kids would – you had a big machinelike thing that clamped the lids on. You’d put the lid on, and then you’d push this thing and it would clamp it down. Yeah, we always bottled the root beer. That was probably the soft drink we had other than punch, you know, and stuff like that. We always bottled root beer. And it would taste good and it would smell good. It would smell good while 14 you was bottling it, and it tasted good. It was great. We’d just put it in the regular bottles, just like it comes in today. We didn’t put it in fruit jars, we put in regular bottles that had caps on. But during the war, you know, sugar was hard to get, so my aunt would get sugar from her mother-in-law that had a lot of money, and she would share it with my mother. And she would bring the sugar up, so that’s how we got sugar. A lot of the sugar. Not all of it, but a lot of it, from my aunt. And my uncle grew potatoes, so – yeah, he had a potato farm. SS: Is that where you found out that they don’t grow on a vine? BB: Yeah. Where I found out how you start a potato! Was by cutting potatoes. Have you ever seen that, how you cut the eyes out of them? And that’s how they plant them. He made lots of money at it, too. SS: We used to grow potatoes. It was fun. Have you ever heard of victory gardens? BB: Oh, yeah – well, we all had a victory garden. Everybody had a garden. SS: Did you call them victory gardens? BB: Well, no, but they did call them victory gardens, but that’s what they were. I mean, you couldn’t get a lot of stuff. You couldn’t find it. You had to grow it yourself. That’s why I thought they called them victory gardens, because, you know, during the war there was a lot of stuff you couldn’t find. SS: Yes. BB: Most of it was flown over for the troops, and we didn’t have a lot. In fact, a lot of stuff was rationed. I still have my ration book. SS: Do you? 15 BB: And I have my father’s ration book. I still have my ration book. Sugar was rationed, shoes, a lot of stuff was rationed. But everybody had to grow a garden then, if they had a spot for it. Well, they’d even – even a teeny little yard you’d put a victory garden in at that time. Almost everybody had a garden. We had lots of garden space, ‘cause we had a lot of room. SS: During World War II, in a lot of my reading I’ve found that there’s been a lot of governmental push for canning, such as they would make posters that would say “Can for Victory” or “Garden for Victory”, things like that. Do you remember any of that stuff? BB: I do. I remember a lot about the war. I was eleven when it started. And yes, they did, they pushed a lot. That was one reason everybody had a victory garden. That’s why they called it that, was because they did want you to can. Well, you had to, actually, because so many things were rationed and so much was flown overseas. And then, we just always had a garden. I can’t remember not having one. And my mother was real good at it. But my dad, he was the gardener. My own father, he was the gardener. He could make anything grow. He had the green thumb. So we did, we always had gardens. And we always used every bit of it. We always canned every bit of it. My mom always canned everything. Oh, and asparagus – we used to go pick asparagus along the ditches, and Mom would can asparagus too. Neighbors were very generous then too. We all shared. Well, everyone had to share. Everyone shared whatever they had. If you had a garden, you’d take what you had left over to your neighbors. You know, a lot of people didn’t have as much, especially before the war. Especially when I was real young, before the world war. It seemed like people had a little more than what they could give. What they could find. But they couldn’t always find everything, you couldn’t. 16 A lot of stuff was rationed, even down to stockings was rationed. You couldn’t find silk stockings. They was rationed. Shoes. It was bad. You had to take care of yourself. You had to can and you had to share. But my mom would always share with my aunts. I lived in a neighborhood that had – I had two aunts that lived right by me, right close. And we all shared with one another. One of them had a potato farm, and he had a lot of Japanese people that worked for him, that lived on his place. They grew peas and potatoes. And we (me and my cousin) used to go down and eat the peas out of the thing all the time; you know, the new peas? We would – but, as far as growing things, we had the most, ‘cause we had like the tomato fields, and a lot of fruit trees. Yeah, we had a big area there. But I can’t remember any kind – I know the neighbors used to get together and can together. A lot of the neighbors. You know, three different neighbors I know that Mom was real friendly with. And then my aunts would get together too, and can and cook. They would do a lot of things together, my mother and her sisters. Of course, there was ten of them, so they had plenty – there was plenty of them to do it. But Mom learned at a young age, because her family was quite poor. They lived on a farm in Layton, and they had their own garden, even back that far. So my mother never lived where she didn’t have a garden. She even had one down here in her house, didn’t she? J: Yeah. BB: In her backyard, she even had a garden. Always raspberries, and a few other things, but she always grew raspberries. Yeah, and they had apples. J: Extra sour apples. SS: Extra sour? 17 J: They were. BB: Yeah, Mom done a lot of that. She was really handy at growing stuff. I haven’t been that great myself. But my mother was. And my dad. They both had a green thumb. And Nimroy, my stepdad, he was good too. He’d help Mom can. She canned ‘til the day she died. She had a whole – oh, all kinds of stuff, and Gail - my sister-in-law – shared it out, you know, the canning stuff that Mom had. J: She had like a cement room full of her bottled stuff. BB: Yup, she did. She had everything. You can’t believe. She loved to look at the shelves with all of her canning on it. It was kind of like – I guess – it was kind of like people saving their money, you know, that was important to them, that they had a lot of canning. But Grandma always had it, every time. My brother liked the raspberries; boy, he loved Mama’s raspberries. J: Maybe we should can some raspberries. BB: Yeah. J: Weren’t they kind of sweet and soft? BB: Oh, yeah, they had a little sweet sauce on them. SS: Do you have a raspberry recipe? BB: I don’t. My sister-in-law might - Gail might. She has a lot of Mom’s recipes. No, I don’t. In fact, I don’t think I ever done raspberries with her in the bottles. I did the jam and everything, but I don’t think I - 18 SS: My mom might, ‘cause I know she did the raspberries. ‘Cause we did raspberries, but I don’t know if it’s the same recipe. We always had raspberries, and peaches and pears and apricots and salsa and taco sauce and relish, and – BB: Oh, yeah – Mom did it all - she didn’t do much taco sauce, ‘cause they didn’t use it much. You know, the older people don’t use it much. She did relish, she done pickles – SS: Did she ever make tomato relish? Green tomato relish? BB: I can’t remember tomato relish. SS: Maybe it’s a new - my mom did tomato relish. It was good – it tasted like pickle relish. BB: And it was done with green tomatoes. SS: Green tomatoes. J: I don’t remember that. BB: No, I don’t think she done that. Donnie might, though; Donnie might’ve. SS: I believe you about the taco sauce, ‘cause my mom gave that recipe to my grandmother, where my grandmother gave all the other recipes to my mom. She used to make taco sauce and salsa and – everything that you could, anything that you could bottle, she’d bottle it. And we had metal shelves in the garage, just full to the top with - BB: That’s what my mom did. She had one place that was quite large and when we lived out in Clinton we didn’t have that much room, but I’ll tell you, we never went hungry. From all of our garden, you know – we always had a garden. Mom always – and corn, she’d grow corn, just everything. But as far as canning everything, nothing went to waste. 19 Well, you couldn’t waste anything, really. I mean, she felt guilty if she was wasting anything. It was kind of a guilt trip, wasn’t it? J: Have to eat everything on your plate. BB: Yeah. And she felt guilty if, you know, she was wasting fruit and stuff. One time we went to Idaho and Roy ate a whole barrel – bucket of cherries. He was sick. SS: I’ve gotten sick from the same thing. BB: A whole bucket. That’s all he ate. SS: They’re so fresh and pretty. BB: While Mom was gone. It was cherries. She was gonna can them, you know, and he ate them all. SS: Bet he got in trouble for that. BB: Mom was very – oh, she didn’t waste anything, to the day she died. J: I remember, every meal I ate there had a canned product in it. SS: In the meal? J: Yes. Always. You had a side of something that was from bottles. BB: Yeah, it did. J: She’d say, “Go down in the pantry –“ BB: Yup, we all did, we all ate there, ate a lot of fruit from – and she gave a lot away. But she didn’t buy much canned goods. She done it all herself. Hardly buy any. Yeah, the cannery, that was a part of my life that was kinda different. 20 SS: That’s all the questions I have, so do you have anything else to tell me? BB: Well, just that – you know, during the war you had to can. You had no choice. And people did get together and can – that might be what you – you know, they taught one another. Where nowadays, you don’t find that very much. You don’t – I think a lot of people learn, too, by going to the LDS cannery, and canning. SS: I worked with some ladies that would get together on weekends – and they were probably my age – they would get together on weekends and can. BB: And one would teach the other one. That was the thing, that’s how they learned it – one teaching the other one. But a lot of them learn at the LDS cannery too, because you do a lot there. And they, you know, that’s a – most of their stuff though is canned, I think. I think they can all the peaches. Well, Mom always bottled them, you know, in bottles and then would cold pack them or – Mom always bottled them. And I did, when me and Mom would do it together. But since Mom’s gone, I don’t do too much, you know, stuff like that. But there is a lot of people my age that still do it constantly. Donnie is a good one – you know, she does everything. She could tell you everything about canning. SS: Do you think that she would mind if I interviewed her? BB: I don’t think she would. SS: Can I get her phone number? BB: Sure. I’ve got it right here. 21