Oral History Program Ethel Hess Interviewed by Andrea Hess 24 August 1980 i Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Ethel Hess Interviewed by Andrea Hess 24 August 1980 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. The reviewed and corrected transcripts are indexed, printed, and bound with photographs and illustrative materials as available. Archival copies are placed in University Archives. The Stewart Library also houses the original recording so researchers can gain a sense of the interviewee's voice and intonations. Project Description The Weber State College/University Student Projects have been created by students working with several different professors on the Weber State campus. The topics are varied and based on the student's interest or task for a specific assignment. These oral history assignments were created to help Weber State students learn the value and importance of recording public history and to benefit the expansion of the Weber State oral history collections. ____________________________________ Oral history is a method of collecting historical information through recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account. It reflects personal opinion offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable. ____________________________________ Rights Management All literary rights in the manuscript, including the right to publish, are reserved to the Stewart Library of Weber State University. No part of the manuscript may be published without the written permission of the University Librarian. Requests for permission to publish should be addressed to the Administration Office, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, Utah, 84408. The request should include identification of the specific item and identification of the user. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Hess, Ethel, an oral history by Andrea Hess, 24 August 1980, 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 Ethel Hess. The interview was conducted on August 24, 1980, by Andrea Hess and a second unknown male interviewer in Roy, Utah. Hess discusses her life story and personal experiences while growing up in Utah. AH: This is an interview with Ethel Hess on August 24, 1980, at 3800 S. 1900 W. Roy, Utah. I need you to tell me a little bit about how your mother came to Utah and your early childhood experiences. EH: The one sister was here all alone and she wanted companionship so she wanted her sister to come out. She didn’t have the money, so Grandma Stratton and Grandpa Skucrove put up some money and brought us out. AH: How did Mrs. Stratton become involved with your aunt? EH: Her husband was our uncle. There was a brother and a sister. Elizabeth and Edward Brewer. He came to this country for the church. Grandma Brewer never joined. Grandpa came for the church and I don’t know where he met Grandma. She was French. They had five or six children. AH: Did your mother’s sister get her the job with the Scowcroft’s? EH: No, my mother was a professional cook. Grandma Scowcroft wanted her to come and work for her. That way she’d be able to pay her transportation. AH: How old were you when your mother started to work for the Scowcroft’s? 1 EH: I don’t know. Two years old, I guess. She died when I was four. I remember living at the Scowcroft’s. AH: What do you remember about the Scowcroft’s? EH: They were very nice to me. Her granddaughter used to come and play dolls with me. There was grandson who lived on Main Street and we used to go and play in their yard. I don’t remember much about the house except sliding down the verandah and getting scolded. Grandma’s bedroom was at the top of the stairs. AH: What happened to your mother? EH: We were getting ready to go to Riverdale to spend the holiday with her sister. Just before we left, Grandma came and asked Mother if she would clean the verandah. The cleaning girl had gone home. Mother went out and there was a north wind blowing and she took cold. She had pneumonia and she died in January. She had typhoid when we died. Grandma Scowcroft always felt it was her fault. That’s why she was always nice to me. Whenever I went to see her, she’d give me a five dollar gold piece. I had seventyfive dollars in gold pieces. I#2: What was it that you called Grandma Scowcroft? EH: Mama. I#2: After your mother died you visited often? EH: Oh yes, every conference. We had quarterly conference and Mother and Dad would take me there and I’d stay with her while they went to conference. AH: Didn’t she want to keep you? 2 EH: Yes, she felt that she was responsible for Mother’s sickness and that she owed me. We often wondered what my life would have been like if I’d lived with Grandma Scowcroft. I would have had an education. I#2: Did the Scowcroft have gardeners at the house? EH: No. They lived on 26th Street, just above Washington and they just had the girl who helped Mama and helped turn her bed down. I#2: Then you went and lived on the farm in Riverdale? EH: Yes, after my mother died I lived in Riverdale and went to the Riverdale school. AH: How was the fair laid out? EH: It was eighty acres. They grew sugar beets. On the lower field they sometimes planted onions and cabbage. From that, they made sauerkraut. I#2: Where did they send the sugar beets? EH: They’d take them over to the sugar factory. They had a place where you could take a big truck. AH: Did you start to help out on the farm when you were small? EH: I used to drop cabbage plants for the guys that were planting—I’d drop them and they’d come along and put them in the ground. We had an apple orchard and we used to harvest the apples. We had some English walnut trees that we’d dry so we had walnuts all year long. We split them between the families. AH: Tell me about when you went to school and what your mom wanted you to wear. 3 EH: I walked a mile and a quarter. I had to get up in the morning and feed the chickens and feed the pigs and milk two cows and take the cows to the pasture before I went up to the house to get ready to school. Sometimes you had to run to school because you were late. We always took our lunch because it was too far to go home. Mother insisted that I wear an English pinafore. I was the only girl in the school who wore a pinafore and they used to tease me because it had so many ruffles. I would take it off and fold it and put it in a bush to hide it while I was at school, then put it back on before I went home. One day I got home and the Relief Society lady was there and Mother said, “I just can’t figure that girl out. She wears a pinafore all week long and she never gets a spot on it.” So I got away with it. I#2: Did your mother make most of your clothes? EH: Yes. I#2: Did you live off the farm or did you buy some things from the store? EH: Our butter and eggs used to pay for our groceries. We had like $2.50 of butter and eggs, then we’d get that much groceries—like cereal and flour. I#2: Did you have a refrigerator back then? EH: We had a well that I believe was sixty feet. Father had two small cans and we’d put our butter or meat or whatever in the can and put the lid on. With a rope we’d lower it down into the cold water and that would keep it. I#2: Did you have hot water? EH: We heated it on the coal stove. One time my half-brother brought I guess it was two tons of coal and he wheeled it up against the coal bin and went up and left it. We 4 couldn’t get any coal to put in the stove so Mother and I got up on the stepladder and, believe it or not, we shoveled that two-ton of coal. He said, “Oh, what good exercise for you!” He didn’t care. It was hard for Mother because she was getting old. The big pieces we just rolled because we couldn’t lift them. I#2: About how old were you when you did that? EH: I was about twelve. I#2: Was your house very big? EH: Yes, we had four rooms upstairs and I think five rooms downstairs. I#2: Did your half-brothers live there? EH: No, they were all married and gone. AH: Was it a brick house? Or a frame? EH: It was frame house and it was painted yellow. It was one of the nicest homes in Riverdale. It was furnished nice. AH: Did you have a radio? EH: No, they didn’t have radios. We didn’t have TV. We went out to Don Bourne’s to watch TV one Sunday afternoon and it was snowing on the TV and Dad said, “Well, if that’s TV, I don’t want any more of it.” AH: What would you do for entertainment? EH: We used to go to dances with our parents because if you had children, you couldn’t leave them. We read. Dad read the Saturday evening Post from cover to cover. I’d sit by 5 him and darn socks. He’d scold me for darning socks. He said the yarn cost more than the socks were worth. I don’t darn socks now. They don’t wear darned socks anymore. AH: When you were living on the farm, tell me about when the governor came. EH: That was Governor Bamberger. He used to come to our home often because Father had helped him buy the land between our home and 33rd Street. People didn’t want the sale. They didn’t want Bamberger in there. Dad would go tell them how it would improve their property. Bamberger used to come real often. He was governor at the time. One day he came when we were all through dinner and he never came unless he wanted something to eat, so Mother came in and said to Father, “What am I going to do, Pa? I haven’t got a thing but pork chops.” He said, “Put some gravy on them and put them in the oven and he won’t know the difference.” She sliced the pork chops and put them on the dripper with some gravy and put them in the oven. She had mashed potatoes and vegetables and she served it to him. When he left, he gave a five dollar bill and he said that was the best meal he had eaten in years. I#2: He was Jewish. EH: Yes, he was a Jew. I#2: Is that one of the reasons people didn’t like to deal with him? EH: I don’t know. They didn’t want that Bamberger going through their property. They thought it would distract from their property or reduce the money they could get for it. But after he got it going through there, they found that it was an improvement. Father talked them into it. Down in Farmington, he’d get Grandpa Hess to go with him. I#2: I read about that—another railroad to haul coal or something. 6 EH: Yes and Grandpa Hess helped him get that property from those people. He talked at Grandpa Hess’s one-hundredth birthday. He said that Grandpa Hess was a hundred years old and had a thousand descendants. Grandma and some of the girls counted them up after and it wasn’t. I guess he’s got more than that now, but he didn’t then. I#2: What about your horses? EH: I used to ride horses. We had about six. There was Minnie, then there was a swayback and stubborn as a mule. There was the old one we used to ride to take the cows to pasture. Then we had the work horses that pulled ploughs. Nick was the name of the horse Mother and I were riding home one day and we got to 36th and Riverdale Road and Old Nick stopped and you couldn’t get that horse to go for love or money. Mother was scared to death of horses. I gave her the lines to hold and she’d hold them up in the air and I had to get out and talk to Nick, then run and jump in the buggy because if he stopped to let me get on then that was the end of the ride. We got home alright but, boy, it was an experience. Then we had old Minnie. She had just one gate and she just walked at that one funeral gate. She’d get you there and get you back, but you had to give her plenty of time. I#2: When you went into town, what would you take? Milk and eggs? EH: Eggs and butter. You couldn’t take milk. We’d take the buggy and horse. I’d put the harness on the horse and hook the horse to the buggy, then Mother would get ready and we’d take the butter and eggs. Sometimes Father would go with us. This time I told you about, the Weber River was high so even the horse had to swim. Mother and I shut our eyes because we were scared. Father said, “Open your eyes, there goes our butter 7 and eggs down the river.” We had to go down the river and get the butter and eggs. We took them to Homer Nichols who always bought our butter and eggs. I#2: That was on 24th Street? EH: It was 25th Street. He owned a bar. Homer Nichols did. I#2: Was it a mercantile or a grocery store? EH: Grocery store. I#2: And you went there every Saturday? EH: Yes. AH: Did you have friends that you were really close to? EH: Oh yes, the girls that I went to school with. Mother and Dad didn’t approve of the girls. Neither one of them belonged to the church and they didn’t want me to go with them but they were in the same grade in school and you couldn’t very well do anything else but go with them. They used to come home once in a while and Mother was a marvelous cook and she’d fix little dainties. One of the girls remembered my mother’s apple pie and told me later, “We didn’t go there to see you; we went to get your mother’s apple pie.” I didn’t remember my mother making apple pie, but I remember we had rabbits and Mother used to make rabbit pie. My half-sister Ella came over and told her girlfriends, “Aunt Livy makes rabbit pie and if I touched rabbit pie, I’d vomit.” That afternoon they came and Mother had rabbit pie but they didn’t know it. They ate their fill and oh, it was the best supper they’d ate and couldn’t remember when anything had tasted so good. Mother never said a word. The next day Ella came over and she said, “Well, Ella, how 8 did you like the rabbit pie?” She said, “Oh! Did I eat rabbit pie? Why didn’t you tell me sooner so I could throw it up?” Laughter AH: Did you make all your own quilts and things? EH: Mother didn’t like to sew. She was from the old country. We had a sewing machine and she used to make our clothes, but the Relief Society made the quilts, we didn’t. Mother used to quilt but not me. I bound the edges for the Relief Society. I did over a hundred quilts one year. AH: Where did you go to high school? EH: I didn’t go to high school. The year I graduated, my father got sick. I had a choice of going to high school or staying and helping my dad. I stayed and helped because he’d been so good and kind to me. My neighbor’s daughter went to high school and she didn’t like it. I#2: Was he paralyzed? EH: No. Father had bladder trouble and in those days they didn’t take care of you like they do these days. His bladder was about to burst. The doctor was Doctor Edward Rich and mother never forgave him because he bore a hole through his stomach and into his bladder and put a tube in there. Every time he had to urinate, Mother had to put a tube in there. One time we had another doctor come and look at Father and he said, “Whoever done this? I never saw such cruelty in my life!” He fixed Father up, but they never fixed the bladder trouble. He’d had it since he was nine until the day he died. He used to make me bring all my boyfriends in and he’d look them over. I was embarrassed lots of times. If they smoked cigarettes, I’d didn’t get to go with them. He’d look at their 9 hair and if their shoes were shined and if he smelled tobacco then that was it. I was seven years old when I started milking cows and when I was eighteen I was still milking cows. My boyfriends used to come and I couldn’t go until the cows were milked. Mother would put an apron on my boyfriends and they’d milk one cow while I milked the other. I#2: You said something about a cow that you could talk to it? EH: Oh yes. One was named Bossy and one was named Rose. You could say for her to step forward or whatever you wanted her to do and she’d do it. Then Vera, my halfmother’s daughter, she milked one cow and used to take the Home Cupboard magazine and I’d milk one cow and then milk another and she’d read stories out of the magazine. AH: Was Vera friend of yours for a long time? EH: She lived right next door and I went to school with Clara and Vera and Ella. We all went to the dances together. AH: Where would they have the dances? EH: Over by the school house. Ted Parker, my half-brother, was the manager. There was a lady who used to play the piano for them. I#2: Do you know if there are any Parkers still in Riverdale? EH: They’re just about all gone. The only Parker is up in the hospital with me. She’s got two brothers who have homes in Riverdale. I#2: Did you ever have any relatives from Connecticut come out? EH: No, I didn’t have any relatives. The lady who brought Mother out was just a hired lady. She hired my mother to do her cooking. 10 AH: Besides go to school and go to the dances, what else would you do? EH: We used to go picnicking. I don’t remember going to many shows. I remember going over to Ogden to a theater there because it was a cheap place that you could get in for a nickel or dime. Sometimes we’d come over on Saturday and see a show. I always felt they were cheap pictures and I didn’t care for them. AH: What kind of pictures were they? EH: Westerns, love stories, I don’t remember. AH: Did they have sound? EH: No, they were silent pictures. AH: Tell me how you came to meet your husband. EH: Have I got to? Mother was going up to Morgan to visit some Francis people that were friends of hers. I didn’t want to go and sit a whole week with some elderly ladies. I said to Mother, “Can I call Margaret and ask if I can come and stay down there while you’re in Morgan?” She said I could. Margaret said she’d be glad to have me, so I went to Farmington and stayed with her. I’d been bragging about how I could pick 500 pounds of cherries in a day, so they had a big cherry tree, so they went over and cut a great piece and Ed helped him bring it over to see if I could pick cherries. That’s where I met him. Then he invited me to go to Lagoon to dance that night, which I did. The next day he wanted to take me for a ride on his motorcycle. I didn’t want to go but Margaret said I should. He gave me some black jack gum and I thought he was trying to poison me because we were never allowed to chew gum at home. I gave it to Margaret and said, “He’d tried to poison me. Here’s this black jack gum.” She never let me live it down. 11 Every time she’d see a package of gum, she said, “Give it to Ethel, she likes black jack gum.” I#2: Were you still living on the farm at this time? EH: Yes. We lived on the farm until 1918 when Mother bought this house I live in now. Ed and I were married and went to Fielding, Utah and lived on John Bourne’s farm. He had 350 head of cattle and that way he didn’t have to go to war. That’s where we stayed the first year. The war was over in November and we moved down to Mother’s and I lived in this house more than sixty years. AH: That was World War I? EH: Yes. Mother decided she wanted to go to Salt Lake and do temple work, so Ed and I decided to buy the home from her, which we did. We were paying for a home and raising six kids at the same time. Ed got almost twenty-seven dollars a week in wages. I don’t know how we did it. I don’t know how we kept from starving to death. Well, Ed worked at a bakery so we got stale buns and bread. I guess that’s what kept us alive. I#2: Dad said that during the Depression, they’d always wait for Grandpa Hess to come home because he’d bring stale roles. EH: The neighbors would come. The neighbors gave me the credit and said, “Oh you were the grandest neighbor. You used to give us rolls.” But it wasn’t me, it was Dad. I never corrected them, I let them think it. AH: Tell me about when you started your family and when your babies were born. Who was born first? 12 EH: Marine was our oldest. I rode from Fielding down to Holmes because Ed’s sister took care of children and she took care of me. My mother came, too. Garth was born December 14. He was born eighteen months after Marine. AH: So you had two little ones in diapers. EH: No, Marine was as clean as could be. AH: You had her trained before you had the next one? EH: Yes. Then there was Theron. I forget how close he was to Garth. Then Dwight was born on Christmas day. AH: Was it a surprise or did you expect him? EH: We expected him but not on Christmas day. Dad took the kids up to Mrs. Schmaldt’s and she took care of them. When they came home, they had a baby brother. Aunt Lizzy came down to take care of me but she wouldn’t do anything for the older kids that she had already taken care of. She just took care of the baby. Then there was Calvin. There was just eighteen months between them. AH: How old were you when you had six kids all together? EH: Seems like I was fifty-two when Dad died. AH: Were they mischievous or hard to handle? EH: One time I was holding Garth and one of the other boys, I think it was Dwight, stepped up to me and said, “Mother, save your breath, you might need it someday.” AH: Did you sew a lot of their clothes? EH: Yes, I made all of their clothes except we used to buy their jeans. 13 AH: Was it hard getting them all up and ready for school? EH: Dad used to get up at 6:00 to get to work. No, they weren’t difficult to get up. I#2: How old were the kids when Grandma lived with us? EH: There were just the three of you—Garth, Marine, and you. I#2: How long did she live with us? EH: I don’t know…Dad was paying for the place and Old Man Steel was spending her money. Dad scolded her. Dad knew about it because he went to Riverdale to do some carpenter work in the church. When he got out there, the man said, “You’ll have to get some more money from Mrs. Walker because we’re running out of paint.” That’s the first time he knew that she was paying for the paint for the church. Dad scolded Mother for letting Steel have her money and she said, “He’s an honest man.” I#2: She lived in the Steel home for a while, I think. Was that before she married Walker? EH: Yes, before. You guys used to go down and clean her house for her. I#2: How did she meet Mr. Walker? EH: She went down to Salt Lake to do some work in the temple and she met him down there one day. He helped her find a bench to sit on and then asked if he could take her to lunch. In no time at all, they were married. He was from England and he liked the same kinds of things that Mother liked. They got along real well. He had maybe three or four children—two girls I can remember. Mother moved her things down there and when she passed away, Walker’s got all her things. I know because Dwight gave me a ride down to Salt Lake one day and so we looked at the house they were living in and there was Mother’s dresser. But then your dad didn’t want it anyway. 14 I#2: I remember we went down and stayed with her one time. We went down on the Bamberger. EH: Yes and we stayed a few nights and old man Walker had to sleep on the floor to make room for you kids. Another time, Mother got it into her head that she wanted to sleep with me once more. I couldn’t figure that one out. Anyway, I went down to sleep with her and old man Walker had to sleep on the floor. I didn’t sleep all night because Mother snored so awful. I felt sorry for old man Walker lying down on that floor, but he didn’t care. I don’t know why Mother wanted me to come down to sleep with her. I hadn’t slept with her since I had been a baby. Even when I was in school, I had my own room and my own bed. I#2: She was strong-minded, wasn’t she? EH: Oh she was. A man said to your dad one time—he was quite a bit older than me, and he said, “How are you getting along with your wife?” He said, “Oh I’m training her. She’s a bullheaded Englishman but I’m doing the best I can.” I#2: The time that we went to Saltair, Dad didn’t come along. We rode the Bamberger down. EH: That’s right. We stayed with Grandma that time. I#2: We went to the fairgrounds. That was a long day. EH: I didn’t think you’d remember that. That was when it was on 4th Avenue. Right in back of the Washington School in Salt Lake. Old man Walker was good to us. He’d go along with us. I#2: I remember him being a little man with a white moustache. EH: Yes, he was. 15 I#2: How long were they married? EH: I don’t know. Six or seven years, I guess. AH: Did all of you kids go down to Saltair with Ethel and Grandma? EH: There was only the four of you, I think. AH: What did they have down there that you would do? EH: They would have a dance or they had a row of places where you would change into your bathing suit and get in the salt water. When you got out you had to have a shower to wash the salt off. If you didn’t get it all, it would hurt. I#2: The water usually came way behind Saltair, itself. EH: Then it evaporated and it was just out there on the dry land. I#2: Did you tell them about Dad and his half-brother Billy and the roller coaster. EH: Dad and Milton built the scenic railway and they kept it up for years. The planks would come lose and they would have to put new planks in. I#2: Were you and Dad married when he worked with Milton on that? EH: No, that was before. AH: Did he live right by Lagoon? EH: Yes, and Milton Hess lived right next door. Milt’s mother was Sarah and then across the street was Caroline and she was Mark’s mother. There were the three boys and there was just about three months between their ages. Milt’s was December 23. In January, there was Mark’s birthday. March 8 was your dad’s birthday. 16 AH: How old were you and Ed when you got married? EH: I can’t remember. I#2: Dad was thirty-four? EH: Yes. And he was fourteen years older than me, so I guess I was about twenty when we married. It seems like I was nineteen when we married, but I can’t remember. AH: It was common for younger girls to marry much older guys, wasn’t it? EH: I guess so. AH: Was he established? EH: Oh yes. He had been doing carpenter work for years and years. He went down to Continental and built that—the Continental bakery. He worked there until the unintelligible was giving more money to men. He went there and worked two weeks and then he quit because he couldn’t stand it. He said the guys would go and check in and then get on a cot and go to sleep. I#2: What was the story of why he got bitter with the church? EH: A couple of the men were out doing their teaching and a lot of people had moved into the neighborhood from the south and they were poor. They didn’t have any jobs or any money and they went to this home and this little boy was lying on a straw bed and he was so sick. He hadn’t had anything to eat so Dad went home and hooked up a team of horses and went around to the neighbors and told them the condition that these people were in. Of course, some gave butter and some gave eggs and some gave clothing. They had a sleigh full of things that they gave to this lady. She cried and said how they had saved her boy’s life. A few weeks later, there was a knock on the door and 17 Grandma said to come in. It was one of the high guys in the ward and he said they wanted Dad to come down to the church. He did and when he got down there, they were holding a meeting like a juvenile court. This fellow that he had been teaching with was already sitting there. They asked him what he did and he told them. They said he didn’t do right, that he should have gone to the bishop and told the bishop the circumstances and let the bishop take care of it. Dad said, “Hell, she would have starved to death while she was waiting for the bishop.” The man got up and said, “You know, Mr. Hess, you can be ex-communicated for saying that.” And Dad said, “Go ahead.” The Bamberger train was coming and Grandpa—John W.—had been down to Salt Lake to a meeting. He saw light in the meeting house and went over. He said, “What are you doing? Why do you have my son here?” The man said, “We’re going to ex-communicate him.” He said, “You’re not excommunicating any son of mine.” He went over and took ahold of Dad’s arm and took him home, but Dad never went back. I#2: Didn’t John W. tell him it was up to him if he wanted to go to church or not? EH: That’s true. He didn’t want to. I#2: Was John W. the stake president at the time? EH: Yes, he was. I#2: Dad used to drive him to the meetings, didn’t he? EH: Yes. He had a team of jet black horses. The prettiest horses in Davis County and he used to keep them just immaculate. He had a surrey with fringe on top. I#2: I remember Dad telling me that he drove all the way to Syracuse one time. EH: To Hooper, too. To their conferences. 18 I#2: Was John W. dead before you and Ed got married? EH: Oh yes, I never met him. He was seventy-eight years old when he passed. He had a kidney disease—Wright’s Disease, they called it—it gave them so much trouble. They’d get a little pain in their back and know they were going to die. AH: Tell me a little about all the food you’d have to prepare for such a large family. EH: Oh boy. We did so much canning. Dad came home one day with six bushels of tomatoes and said, “I brought you some tomatoes.” I could have killed him. But he helped me and we got them canned. We did a few of them that night and the next night we did the rest. One year, we had over six hundred quarts. I#2: We had a wine press, didn’t we? What was that for? EH: It was to squeeze the juice out of the fruit or whatever you were bottling. I#2: Somehow you made ketchup. EH: I’d fix the tomatoes and put them all up and cook them and then run them through like a sieve and then you just add the thickening. I had about three bushels of tomatoes and I worked all afternoon on it and I was tired, so I thought, “I’ll just put this seasoning in it and leave it until tomorrow to cook down.” I went out on the porch and Dad had brought home—what was it? Lead that kills flies. It was the same color as vinegar so I picked it up and put lead into this great big can of tomatoes! Oh, did I bawl. Dad came home and said, “What’s the matter with you?” I told him. He said it was partly his fault; he had no business setting it there. We had to throw it all away and start all over again. I used to say, “Oh I wish I’d never let him know that I knew how to make ketchup,” because I had to make ketchup every year. Every one of them likes ketchup. I was sitting at a table up 19 at lunch the other day and she brought me a hardboiled egg and I said, “You don’t expect me to eat that, do you? I can’t eat it unless you bring me some ketchup.” She said, “Yuck! Ketchup on a hardboiled egg?” But she brought it. I#2: We used to go to Porterville, too. EH: We’d go to Porterville and have sauerkraut. I’d make that, too. My half-brother Ted used to grow cabbage for a man who lived on 34th Street. Sometimes he’d give him quartergallon barrels to make sauerkraut. You have to know how to make sauerkraut. You can’t put too much salt or not enough. AH: How do you make it? EH: You put a layer of cabbage and then you sprinkle it with maybe a tablespoon of salt. Then a layer of cabbage and a layer of salt. Then you put a weight on it like a rock or a piece of wood. That presses the juice out of the cabbage and in a little while it ferments and that’s what makes it tender. AH: Is it cooked or raw? EH: It’s raw. Then you shred it. We had a shredder. Don borrowed it because he decided he was going to make sauerkraut. The first they made, they put too much salt and the next they made, they didn’t put it enough. You have to put it just right. I don’t think he’s made any the last two years. I#2: How long did it take to ferment? EH: It seems like it took three or four weeks. Then it was ready to bottle but we used to just eat it. I#2: Would you make the sausage yourself? 20 EH: I used to get a pork and make the sausage. I#2: Did you do it at the house? EH: Yes. We were just about self-supporting. The old stove is still down there. I#2: Would you cure the sausage? EH: No. I forget. You’d put them out at the cross woods and froze them and then you’d hang them in the garage. I#2: Dad was working at that time…he was making like thirty-five dollars a week? EH: I found two boxes that he had put his receipts in. One was twenty-five dollars a week and that was when we were buying a home and raising six kids. Then I found another box that was forty-seven dollars and that was as much as he ever got. I#2: They worked six days a week, didn’t they? EH: Yes. AH: When did you get your first ice box or refrigerator? EH: Seems like we saved up…he wouldn’t go into debt for anything. It seems like it was in December when we got the ice box. AH: Did you have children? EH: Yes, some of them. We used to have a box out on the porch that the ice man used to come and put ice in for us. I#2: How often would the ice man come? 21 EH: Twice a week. I forgot to empty the pan and the water would get all over the porch and run down into the basement. I was sure glad to get the electric one. I#2: I remember Dad bringing ice home. Do you know how much it cost for the ice man to come? EH: No, I don’t. AH: When did you get your first automobile? EH: That was in Fielding when Dad would work down in Cornwall for the winter. I#2: 1918. AH: What was it like? EH: We’ve got pictures of it. It had wire wheels. I#2: Did you have that motorcycle when you were married? EH: That’s all the transportation we had when we liked out on the farm. We used to go to Fielding to get groceries. The neighbor, Mrs. Beauty, used to go down to the grocery store because her husband had a car and she let me go with her. That way I didn’t have to cart it all. I#2: That’s where Mary was born, wasn’t it? In that little house? EH: No, she was born on 36th Street. You were all born in that room. I#2: The little house up in Fielding…I remember the Indians coming and scaring you or something? Dad was out in the field and they came into the yard. 22 EH: Yes, but I don’t remember what they did or what they said. They had a language all their own, but you would know what they wanted. You’d have to give them flour or butter or eggs or something. AH: Would they come around often? EH: They weren’t too bad up there. They came quite often, but not as bad as they used to be. AH: How would you wash all the clothes? Would it take you a long time to wash for a big family? EH: We had a washer that had a wheel on it. You’d put the water in and the kids would turn it. Then they come out and you’d rinse them and hang them on the line. AH: Did the kids help you a lot around the house? EH: Yes, they all did. Dad had Marine and the boys wash the dishes and they took their time scrubbing the floor. I#2: Where did the boys sleep? EH: Dad fixed a bed in the basement. Theron and Garth slept in the one bed. Dwight slept in the other. I#2: unintelligible EH: Oh yes, that’s right. Marianne slept there. That was her room and the boys slept down in the basement. 23 I#2: I remember we dug the basement and dad laid the brick or cement. We had coal out there. In the summer that’s where they put the conveyor belt. We’d load the dirt on that and that’s how we built it all. Now, were all of the boys in the basement together? EH: The little ones used to sleep upstairs. Just the three older slept in the basement. Marine had her room in the back. I#2: Did Marianne have a hard time keeping her brothers out of her room? EH: Yes. She used to aggravate them. On Saturday, she’d back cookies all afternoon and then she’d say to the kids, “I’ll give you some cookies if you’ll wash the dishes.” She’d have a stack of dishes. But those kids would light in and do them. Just for a couple of cookies. But the Mosses got most of them. AH: Were they better dishwashers or just faster eaters? EH: They were friends. Another time, we went to the dentist and she said, “Oh, Mrs. Hess, I was sure glad to meet your daughter. She sure can make lovely pie.” Oh brother, I about fell off the chair. We’d pay for it and she’d buy her friends with it. I didn’t think friends were worth having that you had to pay for. I#2: I used to get a kick out of Dad saying you used to take charge of unintelligible . There were Sawyers there on Riverdale Road. Every month she had to go down and get her birth control. You paid by the month, wasn’t it? You’d take all those kids with you and then you’d pay the bill and Mr. Sawyer would give you the little sack… unintelligible …a sack of candy and I remember saying to Dad how nice Mr. Sawyer was and he said, “Don’t worry about it, we’ll pay for it.” Everybody charged. There was very little cash. Did 24 you charge? What was the grocery store up the street—Salmons Grocery? There used to be a grocery store on VanBurren. EH: Yes. We never did go there. We had an account at the other. I#2: Everything was behind the counter, I remember. EH: I wonder who go their estate. I#2: I’m not sure. In those days they were well-to-do. They said George’s boy got the apartment. But he died. They said the old lady was still alive. Unintelligible EH: When Mother first lived in that house, she only got six dollars. Of course, widows only got ten dollars discount. So the taxes were sixteen dollars and she got ten dollars off, so she paid six dollars tax. Then Dad took it over and it went up to thirty-two dollars and they’ve just raised ever since. It’s a $106 now. It’s only forty-two feet wide. They don’t give the widows a discount now. They can’t afford to. AH: How would you celebrate birthdays and holidays? EH: I never had a birthday cake in my life until I was in my thirties. Father’s birthday was the only one we did anything for. He was born March 21 and Grandma Stratton was born March 21, only not in the same year. But they used to celebrate together and they’d have a party at our house or at their house. They’d invite seventy or eighty guests. AH: Would you have music? EH: No, just feed them and chatter about the good old days and what they did or didn’t do and what they’d do if they did it over. Dad was the guest of honor because he was the oldest, then Grandma Stratton would sit next to him. They kicked me out and the older folks had dinner. Just recently the Relief Society president took me out and she said, 25 “How many old folks’ parties have you been to?” I didn’t have the nerve to raise my hand, but I’ve been to Lagoon and Provo and Salt Lake and all over to old folks’ parties. Well, I couldn’t remember how many I’ve been to. I#2: Was Grandma Stratton your mother-in-law? EH: No, she was my mother’s aunt. Everybody called her Grandma Stratton because she was about the oldest lady in Riverdale. AH: How old was she when she died? EH: She was eighty-seven or eighty-eight I think. I#2: What was your mother-in-law’s name? EH: Francis Marianne Biggerton. Irene’s got her oldest daughter named Francis, then we’ve got our daughter named Marianne. I#2: When you went there would you stay overnight? EH: No, we wouldn’t stay all night. Grandma wouldn’t have beds enough for all of us. She used to make your dad so mad. You’d go in the house and we had Mary and Dad would always carry her. Dad would take the wet diaper off her and Grandma would have it washed and hanging on the clothesline in no time. She didn’t want any wet diapers in her house. She wanted everything spick and span. I#2: Was Ed the oldest? EH: No, Claire was the oldest, then Aunt Hattie. Andrew was the youngest. She just had the two boys. I#2: Carl was the baby. We all used to wonder about Uncle Carl. 26 EH: They just babied him to death. He couldn’t think for himself. If he wanted something, he’d get it. But he got married. AH: Would you celebrate birthdays for the kids? EH: I’d make them a cake. I#2: We had a lot of parties. EH: I remember Dwight complaining because his birthday was on Christmas Day and everyone else had a party but he never had one. He’d get all sad and I’d say, “The whole world celebrates your birthday.” And he’d say, “It doesn’t do me a dang good.” I#2: Yours is two days before Christmas, isn’t it? EH: It is, and I don’t get any gifts either. AH: How would you get ready for Christmas when the kids were small? EH: We always had a Christmas tree. They all hung up their stockings. I#2: What room did you put the tree in? EH: In the front room by the big front window. We used to put wax candles on the tree. I don’t know how we kept from burning the house down. I#2: One Halloween we had carved pumpkins in that room and one lit on fire. EH: The neighbors saw the drapes on fire and came running. Dad grabbed it and took it outside. It was a jack-o-lantern in the window. AH: Would the kids make Valentines? 27 EH: Oh yes. They got them for maybe a penny a piece and they’d buy them for the kids at school. I don’t remember the boys making very many, but Marianne used to. I#2: What would you do Christmas morning? EH: What didn’t we do? Laughter We’d go to bed at about 12:00 and they’d be awake at 2:00 to see what they got. One year they got motorcycles and they rode them through those rooms. AH: Real motorcycles? I#2: Tricycles. EH: They had little bells on them that they’d ring every time they went by. Oh brother. I#2: Would you have a dinner on Christmas Day? EH: Yes, we all had dinner together. One Christmas, Theron wanted a sleigh for Christmas and they were quite expensive. He wanted a flier sleigh. So Dad went and got it and put the kids’ names on it with Theron’s. That ruined it for him. He didn’t want anything to do with the darn thing. They finally got so they all rode down the hill on it but Theron never enjoyed it because he had to share it. I#2: We got to pick one present that we wanted for Christmas. EH: Then Dad would give me ten dollars and say, “Go buy it.” I#2: Where would they go sleigh riding? EH: Up on 36th Street. There’s a house built on it now, but there used to be a hill and they’d slide down 36th Street. It wasn’t as busy as it is now. I#2: Did the street in front of the house get a lot of snow packed on it or did they plow it? 28 EH: No. I#2: Remember the guy who came down the sidewalk with the horse and plow the sidewalk? EH: He just had one horse and he’d plow the sidewalks. I don’t remember if it was when you were born or when Dwight was born, the Dr. Merrill had to leave his car down on Washington Boulevard and walk from there because the street was snowed in. I#2: Did they bring a midwife in? EH: Yes, Aunt Lizzy. She used to come. She took care of Aunt Ireta with all her kids and they claimed she was as good as a doctor. AH: Did she come up and take care of you with all your kids? EH: I don’t think she did with Calvin, but she did with the others. She was quite old and pretty tired by then. Mrs. Biden came later. I#2: I remember when Cal was born and I had no idea mother was pregnant. They brought Cal in and put him on the dining room table. I looked at that baby on the table and I thought, “My God, where are we going to put them all?” Laughter And Rule came after that. How much time was there between Rule and Calvin? EH: Eighteen months. AH: How much did the doctor charge? EH: It was fifty dollars. AH: Fifty dollars to deliver a baby? What about the midwife? EH: If he didn’t come then she’d take care of everything. Aunt Lizzy would come for twentyfive dollars and stay for a week. You’re supposed to stay in bed for ten days, but Aunt 29 Lizzy didn’t believe in that so she’d have you up and out of bed before she left so you could bathe your babies. AH: Did a lot of people lose their babies? EH: Most of them made it. I can’t remember anyone losing any babies. AH: Which one was the one that didn’t talk? EH: Dwight. AH: How did you find out what was going on? EH: When Calvin was born, I said to the doctor, “Look at that kid’s mouth.” He could tell you he wanted bread or he wanted milk but he didn’t say a half a dozen words. He didn’t say sentences and he was four years old. The doctor opened his mouth and saw that his tongue was attached to the side of his mouth. So the doctor fixed it and the boy’s been yacking ever since. Laughter I#2: Clark told me a story as Calvin as a baby. Grandma was mad because unintelligible EH: Yes, but we had a brown goat. I#2: That was one of Whitey’s kids. Whitey had twins. Calvin had a deficiency and he needed goat’s milk because it was rich. We used to make ice cream out of the milk, too. EH: He couldn’t eat cow’s milk. We took him to Salt Lake to the doctor and he said to feed him goat’s milk. So we got more goats. I#2: Making homemade ice cream was a big thing. EH: Your dad couldn’t have just a saucer of it, he had to have a big vegetable dish full when I made homemade ice-cream. 30 I#2: I remember going to get the ice and everyone would take a turn on the handle. EH: The old ice cream freezer was down in the basement. I#2: I don’t remember what happened to Whitey. EH: Dad killed the brown one and we had goat. Dad took it and froze it and it was good meat. I can’t remember what we did with Whitey. I think somebody took it. I#2: There was an ordinance that you could have animals in the city. But there were cows and chickens and goats all over. You had chickens, didn’t you? EH: Yes. It meant we had eggs. AH: Did you travel much with the kids? EH: No. We used to go to Sam City every summer. That’s up in Idaho. Ed’s sister lived there with her family. I#2: It’s on the border of Idaho and Montana. EH: It was the eight of us and she’d fix beds of straw for us. AH: How would you get up there? EH: We’d drive. One time we took Grandma Hess with us and she couldn’t go without her mattress, so we drove up to Sam City with this old mattress on top of the car. Laughter I’ll never forget that. I#2: That trip must have been before I went up there. I went twice. EH: You went more times than that. But this time Grandma went. She sat in the front with Dad because she’d get car sick. Then you and Garth and Mary and I would sit in the 31 back. We didn’t have Rule and Cal yet. It was a sight to me—going into town with that old mattress on the car. It was embarrassing. I#2: We’d get up in 4:00 in the morning and make sure everything was packed. We drove up Logan and Sardine and by the time we got to Pocatello, the sun was going down. So top speed was probably twenty miles an hour. EH: When we were coming home, the front wheel came off the car and it was on the side Grandma was sitting on. She said, “Oh there goes the wheel—it’s all my fault!” And there went the wheel and it dropped us down on the ground. Laughter Oh, what a trip. AH: What car was that? EH: That was the Volkland we had. It was the second car we had. I#2: The top would fold down. EH: But oh, Ed’s sister was such a good cook. I#2: They had a salmon fishery up there. They’d have listening points because all the roads were one way. You’d swear you were never going to get out of there. Ahead of you would be this great big mountain but pretty soon there’d be this little path. 32