Oral History Program Cora Peterson Interviewed by Andrew Kaline 21 May 1997 i Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Cora Peterson Interviewed by Andrew Kaline 21 May 1997 Copyright © 2014 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: Peterson, Cora, an oral history by Andrew Kaline, 21 May 1997, 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 Mrs. Cora Peterson. The interview was conducted on May 21, 1997, by Andrew Kaline in the home of the interviewee. Mrs. Peterson describes a few memories she has about her life in Utah during the Depression and World War II. AC: This is Andrew Kaline conducting an interview in Mrs. Peterson’s home with her granddaughter Penny. This interview is being conducted for a class project for a history class, Women in American History at Weber State University. Today is May 21st, and it is about 6:50pm on that date. I’d like to start by thanking Mrs. Peterson for allowing me into her home and allowing me to conduct this interview. Could you just begin with some background on yourself please? CP: I’m Cora Peterson and I was born in Salt Lake City. I was born at 992 Lake Street. I used to think that that was such a large street, but when I go back to it now it seems very narrow. They didn’t even have room for garages at that time; they didn’t have any use for garages, and so they built their houses so close together, now they have to park their cars on the streets. They have nowhere else to park them. I went back a while ago and they showed me through my home that I lived in, and also, we went down to Liberty Park. We used to go to Liberty Park all the time for family entertainment, for picnics; we’d spread our lunches out on the grass and we really enjoyed it. And if it was a special occasion, my father would let us ride on the merry-go-round, and I always wanted to ride in the boats but it just seemed like that was a little bit too expensive. I used to have a girlfriend next door whose name was Mary Wells, but my mother never used to let us go very far. My father didn’t belong to the Church, so we didn’t get to go 1 to church because my mother had to stay home with an invalid child. So, I would play with this one girl next door, and other than that I didn’t know very many until I went to school. When I was five years old, they had very null attendance for the first grade at school, we never ever had kindergartens in those days. So, in the first grade, they came and asked my mother if I could go to school. I had not been very many places, I had not been to church very much, and so I was frightened to death. My sister brought me back and forth to school, and so that way I wasn’t too frightened. But one night, she wasn’t there for me and I didn’t know the way home. I just waited out on the corner for her and she didn’t come. Some boys and girls were there and they were catching waterskaters— I don’t know whether you know what water-skaters are or not. There is this little bridge that went under the street and we would catch these water-skaters and then we’d run up to the top and let them float down again, and we’d keep doing that. Well I did it for about an hour and I was having a good time. AC: So are water-skaters bugs? CP: Uh-huh. AC: Oh, okay. The little ones that have the long legs? CP: Yeah. AC: Oh okay. CP: I was so interested in playing with these boys and girls I didn’t even care whether Nessa stringed along. Then she finally came and it was really one of the most enjoyable days I had at school. We stayed there; I was in the third grade when I moved from there. We moved out into the… Oh, I need to tell you first about our car. We had one of the first 2 Fords on that street and I was so excited. We would go for rides up the canyon at night and we had relatives up in Cottonwood Canyon. AC: Was that a big thing for the neighborhood, the whole community, for you to have a car at that time? CP: Oh, there was just very few cars at that time and ours was one of the first Fords in the neighborhood, and so that’s why it was so exciting. So we’d pick up my grandfather and my grandmother and we’d ride up to the Cottonwood Canyon and see our relatives up there. My mother would dress us all up in our best clothes to go in the car because that was a special occasion. Then when I was in the third grade, that’s when my father decided he wanted to live on a farm. So he went looking all over for farms, but he finally found this one farm out in Granger, Utah, which is now West Valley City. It was a special, nice farm and it belonged to Preston Tanner’s folks. In fact, I think her name was Fern Tanner, and she married Herald E. Lee— I think I have that right. We were really privileged to live in that home, it was such a nice, well-built home. AC: You might want to mention who they were in case someone listening to the tape wouldn’t know who Herald E. Lee was or Tanner. CP: Well Herald E. Lee became the President of the Church. I don’t know just which president he was, but he became the President of the Church, and of course Fern Tanner was his wife. First of all, I had a very special teacher in that school. She turned out to be my aunt after I got married. One day she came over to use our phone; they didn’t even have a telephone in the school at that time, so they used to come over to our house to use our telephone. And one day this—Katy Peterson was her name… 3 P: Really? CP: Mhmm. She came over to use our phone and she was a very particular person and a very beautiful person. She had on a white suit I remember, and my Dad looked at her and he says, “If that’s the kind of teachers you have now, I would like to go back to school!” That third grader school there, she made it so interesting for us. She used to have us put on little plays and she had costumes for us. She used to teach us our arithmetic by putting a circle on the board with the numbers all around it, and then in the middle she’d put number three or number four. She’d teach us our times tables by saying: three times four, or three times six, or six times seven, whatever, and that’s the way we learned our times tables. She made everything so enjoyable to us, we just loved her. And then when I was in the fourth grade I had a teacher that I really liked too; she was very artistic. We used to take and have salt dough and make maps out of it, and that was really interesting. Then she’d have us draw pictures, and one time, years later, she had us draw black and white pictures of horses and things like that. Well, when I got married—I haven’t told you about that yet— there was these two horses facing each other on her board, and she took them off of her board and she sent them to us; one was Merrill’s and one was mine. P: Okay, I have a question. You and grandpa had the class together? CP: No. This was different years. AC: Oh, so she just happened to keep those and put them on the board facing each other? CP: She just happened to keep those horses and they were facing each other and after we got married she gave them to us. I still got them. 4 AC: Wow. That’s fascinating. CP: That was the fourth grade. Then in the fifth grade something very special happened. All at once there was a boy sitting in front of me, I had never seen him before. He’d been out of school for a year because he had had rheumatic fever, and he’d had rheumatic fever because they had taken his tonsils out when he had too much infection in his body and it caused him to have the rheumatic fever, which affected him all the rest of his life. But there he was, sitting right in front of me in the fifth grade. And boy, he had grew up. All the time he was sick, he had stayed with his grandmother for a whole year while he was sick, and when he came back he had grew up the whole time he was sick, and he was so grievant anyway. From then on, no matter where he was, in the sixth grade he was kiddy-corner to me. I remember it. P: It’s weird to know you guys were like twelve years old! CP: Yeah, then I started going out with another fellow, and so I didn’t think so much about him in my seventh and eighth, but in the ninth grade, he asked me to go to Saratoga Springs with him. I didn’t know much about it; he was secretary in the Sunday School, and so they were going to go to Saratoga Springs. My mother says, “Well, you’ll have to have a special lunch to take.” So she made me prepare a special lunch to take for two. Well, when he comes he says, “Oh no, we don’t need that lunch. The lunch was prepared by a committee.” So, the carefully prepared lunch was left at home. From then on, I really like him. And so we did date occasionally, but like I said, his dad would never let him drive the car so we’d have to go with a friend if we wanted to go together other than church, we had to go with somebody else. He just didn’t let him drive the car, that’s 5 all there was to it! Then, he went on a mission and we wrote to each other all the time he was on his mission. AC: I want to ask you a question at this part. Now, when he want on his mission— because something similar happened to me with a woman that went on a mission— did your relationship with other friends change after he left? Did you become closer to someone else— a girlfriend or something at that time— did that relationship change at all after he left, for more support since he wasn’t there?… Or was it more “made you a stronger person” religiously or physically? CP: Well, I went in and worked for my sister quite a lot in Salt Lake because she lived in town and I used to have to go and help with her children quite a lot. I still taught primary and things like that and I was going to school, I was in plays, and I was busy, so I didn’t… AC: So you just became a busier person to fill up your time, then? So it was more of distracting yourself type of thing, then? CP: Yeah. AC: But, you never know how it’s going to turn out when they come home. I was playing in a ward play at the time when he came home. The night he came home, I was scared to death. His folks took me in to meet him at the train; they rode on trains then, they didn’t go on planes. I just stood back as far as I could there. So then we went up to his folks’ house and had dinner and then I had to go to play practice. Of course they were all asking me how I was at play practice, but I didn’t know. I didn’t know how he was, so I didn’t know what was ahead of me. That night and the next day or two were just a 6 nightmare. They’d all keep asking me about him and I didn’t know what was going to happen. Then in a day or two he asked me for another date and to come over, and it was wonderful. And this time, he got to take his dad’s car alone! It was wonderful to be with him again. The night that he proposed to me, he came and I didn’t know that that’s what he was going to do, and I says “I’m not ready to get married, I don’t have anything!” It was during the Depression, I don’t know if you know what the Depression was; it was terrible. I says, “I’m just not ready to get married,” and he says “Well, I’ve been talking to my folks, and they say we can live in the old summer kitchen, and that I can have my old bedroom, and we can sleep in my bedroom and stay there for a while.” Well, this was really it. I knew then that I still loved him as much as I ever did. So I guess, I don’t know… AC: How long after he came back from his mission did it take for him to propose to you? CP: Well, we got married in June and he got back in March, so it was just three months. AC: But you kept in touch with him while he was on his mission, too. CP: Yeah, he wrote all the time. My mother went and helped me pick out a dress for the wedding, and I thought that was so much; we had to pay twenty five dollars for a wedding dress! We didn’t have the money to have any pictures taken, so we never even had a picture in the wedding dress. Years later, my granddaughter had her picture taken in the wedding dress. That night, all the missionaries came to the wedding, and I was scared something was going to happen and they really did give us a bad time that night. Well, his friend, the one that was his best man, he says, “Oh, you got to stay in a hotel this night!” Well, we hardly knew what five dollars was. He did work for a little while but he turned all his paycheck over to his mother to haul some gravel before he got married, 7 but he turned all his money over to his mother. And so I think we had about five dollars that night and he had paid for the hotel ahead of time. So then we stayed one night; it was a one night honeymoon. That’s all we had. He had to get out to his Dad’s and water irrigate the next day. About three months after we’d been married, why, my brother and his wife got married just before we did, the year before, and so we would get together and we decided we was going up to the canyon this one night. So we went up the canyon and we took a lunch but they had to go home that night, and they says “There’s plenty of food left, why don’t you two just stay again for another night?” So we did, because we’d never had a honeymoon. Well, his dad was upset with us because we had not come back and irrigated. He had to work for his dad on the farm and because his dad had a farm during the Depression, he could never go to work for President Roosevelt because he had a CCC account, so he could never have a job there because his dad had a farm. AC: So he had to help his father. CP: Yeah, he had to help his dad. How much do you want to go in? AC: Whenever you want to stop. You can set the scene, you can go any direction you want. If you want to stop now, that’s fine, too. CP: Well, we’d been married about a year and his aunt and uncle, because of the Depression, they were school teachers, and they had to go up to the Northwest to teach school, so they asked us if we would like to come and stay in their home, which was a very nice home. We really enjoyed it in that home except for one experience. They had a watering system to water their lawn, they had put a motor out by the ditch, and that motor would pump the water into large fire-hoses and they’d water their lawn that way. 8 Well they didn’t tell us that when the neighbor watered, if we didn’t take the motor out, it would flood the motor and the motor would go dead. Well, I was going to turn the water on and irrigate the lawn, and I heard the most awful noise out in the back porch, and then everything went dead. It had flooded the motor, and the motor went out, and the motor cost $14 to repair, and we didn’t have a cent to repair it. So we had to go to his dad and ask him for the $14 dollars to repair the motor. But it was nice living in that home. And then I thought they were going to build us a garage to live in, so we waited and we didn’t plan a basement home or anything, but when Merrill came home one night he says, “Well, we dug a hole for the basement and we’re building a basement home.” So we built that basement home and it wasn’t too much to any specifications that I’d had, but we lived in that basement home for eight years. P: Where was this at? CP: In Granger. Then, after we had lived in that home for eight years, his brother came down and his brother had gotten married meanwhile, and he says, “You’ve just bought a Plymouth car for $900,” he says “If you can buy a car, you can build up on your house.” And so we says, “Well, maybe we will try.” By this time, Merrill was a bishop of the ward and so we needed a home upstairs, you know, to talk to people. So he decided that we were going to build up, and we built up on the house, and we paid for it. By this time, he had got steady work up to Linder Dairy, but first he just got a work day on Sunday, and that gave us $1.75 a week to buy our groceries where we lived in the summer kitchen. AC: At that time was that a lot of money or was it nothing? CP: Well, it bought our groceries for a week. Of course we had a garden and we lived off of the garden, too. It was really something to have him have steady work up at the Dairy. 9 AC: Now, the car that was bought, was that the one where he gave you the choice between the car and the engagement ring? Was that the car? CP: No, that wasn’t the car. His dad bought it for us and it was a Shiv, a blue Shiv. AC: Why did you choose the car over the ring? Maybe that’s what I was curious about. CP: Well because we always had to ride with his folks everywhere we went! That was a luxury to us to have a car to go. Of course, his dad had gas on the place to run the implements, but if we used too much gas we got told about it, too. AC: I was just curious because I’ve been reading that in your book. CP: No, this Plymouth that we bought was a red Plymouth and it was a new one. This other one was a secondhand car. AC: Okay. CP: So we decided that if he thought that we could build up on the house because he was working now, and I can’t remember exactly how much he was getting a month. So we tried it and we built up on it and we paid for it. But we no sooner got it paid for and lived in it that, about five years, it was after World War II, Merrill had to stay because he was working at the dairy as long as the War was on because they would have drafted him had he quit his job. AC: Oh really? So he wouldn’t be drafted if he kept working? CP: Not as long as he was working at the dairy, he wouldn’t be drafted. But if he didn’t work at the dairy, he would be. And so he started looking for farms and he went all over, even up at Emmett where your mother lived. He saw a place up there that he really liked, but somehow he came back and his dad says, “If you want the place, I’ll give you the down 10 payment on it so that you can get it.” So he got up there with the down payment and could not buy it. P: In Emmett? Really? CP: Uh-huh. And so then my aunt and uncle owned this ground that we live on, and he had written to them and asked them about coming up here and buying this ground but they said no, they didn’t want to sell it quite yet. And then they got home off their mission, and they decided that they did want to have Merrill move in with their son because they didn’t think their son was going to make a go of it on this other farm of theirs. So we moved into a little house on that farm— four room house, very small rooms— with eight children. We had stayed there just one year and we knew we did not want that any longer. In the arrangements it said that in buying the farm and moving up here, we had been given the option of this ground here, 17 acres. AC: Right here? CP: Mm-hmm. We decided it was agreeable with Harold to let us go; they weren’t any happier than we were with the arrangement. Meanwhile, Uncle George had died and he used to come over every morning and see that they were doing the chores right and everything and Merrill really liked him, he had a lot of respect for him. But he had passed away. It was all right with Harold that we moved down here, and so we bought this barracks home and we were going to put it up later so we could use it later for a chicken coop, but I don’t know why, somehow Merrill fixed the foundation right where it is now, and he built and put this barracks on here. I have a story of a house that grew, and it surely did grow and this was a barracks home. I am very grateful for it and I love it very much now. It is a beautiful home, I think. 11 AC: Yes it is. CP: But we’ve added on the back and we’ve added on the front, put a family room on the back, and I really appreciate being able to live here. 12