Oral History Program Murran Elizabeth Lockhart‐Boren Interviewed by Marie Boren 15th to 21st July 1983 i Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Murran Elizabeth Lockhart-Boren Interviewed by Marie Boren 15th to 21st July 1983 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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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. 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It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Boren, Murran, an oral history by Marie Boren, 15th to 21st July 1983, 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 Murran Elizabeth Lockhart-Boren. The interview was conducted between the dates of July 15-21, 1983, by Marie Boren, in her home in Roy, Utah. Mrs. Lockhart-Boren talks about her family history, her upbringing in Utah, and what life was like in the early 1900’s. MB: This is Marie Boren interviewing my mother-in-law, Murran Elizabeth Lockhart Boren, at my home in Roy, Utah, on July 15, 1983 for the purpose of obtaining her life history. Could you tell us a little bit about your parents, what their names were, where they were born, a little about your brothers and sisters? MLB: My father's name was Daniel Lockhart. He went by the name of Dan. He was born 25 February, 1857, in Scotland and died 17 December, 1930, in Provo, Utah. My mother's name was Jennette Innis Graham. She was born 2 October, 1871, in Almy, Sweetwater, Wyoming. She died 14 August, 1940. They were married 2 January, 1890, in the Logan Temple in Logan, Utah. She was his second wife. His first wife was Murran Mitchell Young. Three children were born to them. Their names were Mary Graham Lockhart, Daniel Lockhart, and Archibald Bert Lockhart. She died in childbirth before the fourth child was born. My parents had nine children. Their names were Daniel Alexander Lockhart born 15 September, 1890; George William Lockhart born 6 May, 1893; James Lee Lockhart born 14 November, 1894; Glen Dewey Lockhart born 6 March, 1896 1898 MB : Jeannette Oreen Lockhart born 13 August, 1900; Murran Elizabeth Lockhart born 23 December, 1903; Verl Dellis Lockhart born 23 April, 1906; Eugene Lester Lockhart 1 born 24 May, 1909; and Margaret Fawn Lockhart born 22 September, 1913; at Provo, Utah. MB: What personality traits did your parents have? Were they happy most of the time or stern or strict? You've mentioned before that your mother liked to sing. MLB: My mother was a happy person. She was always singing little ditties to her children. Dad was a happy person, too. But his word was very stern. When he told us to do anything, we did it. We didn't monkey around. We knew he really meant it. MB: What was your father's occupation? How did he support the family? MLB: Before I was born, he used to work on the railroads and they moved from one place to the other. Then they moved to Provo and then from Provo they moved to Wallsburg on a farm. And then I was born, the first child after they went onto the farm. MB: Now, he worked for the railroad first, didn't he? MLB: Yes, as far as I know. MB: That was with his first wife? MLB: No, that was with my mother. MB: They traveled and had their home right on the railroad car? MLB: One of the boxcars was their home and like enough he had to go from town to town, so they could go to bed in one town and wake up the next morning in the next town. MB: And then after that, they moved out to Wallsburg? 2 MLB: And after that they moved to Provo; and they lived in Provo for some time. But I don't know much about that. MB: That was before your birth? MLB: That was before my birth. Then they moved to Wallsburg. My sister, Oreen, was born in Provo. Then they moved to Wallsburg. I was the first child born after they went to Wallsburg. MB: Where is Wallsburg located? MLB: Well, east of Heber City, up Provo Canyon. It's a little valley. They used to call it Round Valley. On my husband's side, the Walls ... he went into there and located this. So Wallsburg is named after him. William Madison Wall, early pioneer of Wallsburg, MB It's a pretty little valley—very pretty. MB: What traits do you think you inherited from your parents? Do you think you're anything like them or are you different? MLB: It seems like my dad was given things. He could say things to you. One time he went to one of his grandchildren and said, "I see you with a certain boy. I don't care for him." He seemed to know things. One time my sister was going with a fellow and my dad said, "I don't like that fellow. I think he's got a family somewhere." And that night, I believe it was, my sister came into the house and she was mad. She'd been going with this fellow and he asked her to marry him; but she found out he'd been married before and he had children. When she come and told my mother and I, she said, "We just won't say anything to your dad." She says, "He was so sure he had a family. We'll just keep still." 3 And I've kind of been that way— where I was never surprised. It seemed that I knew what was going to happen before it happened a lot of the times. MB: Kind of psychic. MLB: Dad was that way. Like the time I made candy and we were taking a cooking class in school. The teacher had us make candy—fudge and divinity. I made a loaf of one and a loaf of the other. She said, "Now you can keep that and put it away for Christmas." So I went home and put it away up in the cupboard. We never used the cupboard at all. At Christmastime I went to get it and it was gone. I said, "Well, who ate the candy?" And come to find out, my dad ate the candy. I said, "How did you know it was there?" He said, "I don't know. I just got up and went and got it." My mother was very kind. Everybody loved my mother. I don't think there was anyone that didn't love my mother. Dad was a great hand to take mother and her three sisters around in their older life. They'd go in the car and go places and do things and take them to different cities and to see their children. They had a great time. MB: What were some of the things that they taught you when you were a child? MLB: Well, my dad taught me many things. So did my mother. They always said that they'd rather bury me than to see me get in troubles and have children before I was married; and I knew my dad really meant it. He was very strict. He said, "If you haven't got . . ." Well, both of them used to say, "If you haven't got anything nice to say about people or anything good, don't say it. Just keep still." And then they always taught us that when there was company around to be seen but not be heard and not take over. MB: They didn't want you to start performing? 4 MLB: No. They didn't want us to perform and take over. It was very important to them that we was honest—honest in all of our dealings. MB: How did they want you to act with your brothers and sisters? MLB: My dad was very strict. I remember one time he come into the house and he says, "Murran, get your socks on. The boys is coming in." And so it was very important that we dress right and not expose ourselves to our brothers. MB: You had to be very modest. MLB: Very modest. MB: When you were born, were you delivered by a doctor or midwife? MLB: No, a midwife delivered us. That's all they had in those little towns of Wallsburg was midwives. MB: And it was quite far to go to a regular doctor? MLB Oh, yes, a long ways. And then in those days the ones that had doctors, they'd have to call the doctors and then stay home and wait until the doctor come from the town they was in over from Heber over to Wallsburg to deliver. MB: How would the doctor come? MLB: I guess in those days they didn't even have the doctors that would come in. They had the midwives entirely. MB: Were there any unusual circumstances at your birth? You were born in December, so I imagine it was cold. 5 MLB: I don't know of any. We never talked of anything that took place at that time. MB: What was your hometown like when you were born? Did they have many stores? How many schools did they have? MLB: Well, they had one big school, several teachers it. But yet there was so many that met in one room; and the thing I remember, we used to always have little programs. My mother used to sing a little song around the house. It was: Me and my wife lived alone In a little log hut We called our own. She liked gin And I liked rum And I betcha We had lots of fun. Ha! Ha! Ha! He! He! He! Little Brown Jug Don't I love thee? Ha! Ha! Ha! He! He! He! Little Brown Jug 6 Don't I love thee? If I had a cow That'd give such milk, I'd dress her in The finest silk. Feed her on the choicest hay Milk her forty times a day. MLB: Mother had a lot of fun just singing this to her babies. It was a cute little lively tune. And my brother and I at school, when they'd ask what we could do on the program, we'd always get up and sing this song and we sang it for a long time. But all of a sudden I come to the fact that I didn't like gin and I didn't like rum. I was realizing what I was singing. I didn't ... we didn't sing it anymore. MB: How many stores did they have? MLB: There was just two little stores in the town bearing just the necessities, but they used to have the Watkins man and the Raleigh man come around and they always brought salve. I think every home had carbolic salve, a box of carbolic salve. And every home had a box of mentholatum. We bought our spices and our lemons and vanillas and things like that. Then, if there was things that was really necessary, these men'd have them and that's how we bought things. Then for winter time or the big things, my father 7 used to take the big wagon and go down to Orem and he'd always buy a great big cheese to bring home for winter. Then there was a keg of pickles. MB: How big was this cheese? MLB: Oh, this cheese was... MB: About two feet wide, in diameter. MLB: Two feet wide. A great big one. And the strongest cheese he could buy. He loved strong cheese and he'd get a keg of pickles. Then they'd have as many peaches as they could pile into the wagon and pears and apples and everything they could get that way for our winter's supply. Then the wheat that was grown they'd take to the mill in Heber and the flour was made and they'd bring sacks of flour home, several sacks, seven and eight sacks at a time and always a great big sack of germade for our cereal. This was put on swings in our big cellar so that the mice and things couldn't get at it; and that's the way I remember it. And then we'd put up pickles—my family maybe not so much—but they'd put up pickles and put 'em in salt brine and have their pickles for winter. And then their beef. My dad used to corn beef and then they used to have salt pork. Most people in the town had lots of pork, but my father liked beef more so he had the recipe to corn the beef and it was very good. MB: Did you ever watch him corn beef, how he made it? MLB: Yes, he gave me the recipe and I think it's somewhere in my belongings now— how he used to corn the beef; but after I went off of the farm I didn't have use for it, you see. MB: But most of the people ate pork then? 8 MLB: Most of the people had pork and then lamb, of course. MB: What did your father grow on your farm? MLB: Hay, wheat. We always had a big garden. We used to can peas and beans and store potatoes in the cellar. The cellar was a cold place; and the milk and butter and things like that. My mother used to make her own butter. It was put in a big bucket and let down the well to keep cool and that's how they cooled things off. My sister, May, used to take a ... they used to take a frame and then cover it with burlap. She had a big ditch with nice fresh water running in front of her house and they'd put this right over that ditch and let the burlap go into the water. After it was once wet in water, the burlap just sucked the water up and it always kept it cool like a nice fresh ... refrigerator. MB: So this was even before ice boxes then, wasn't it? MLB: Yes, and then ice boxes came out where they'd buy big chunks of ice. They used to take their houses in Wallsburg, and they'd make what they called an ice house. They'd make just a big room kind of down in the ground. Then they'd cut big chunks of ice out in the winter out of the creeks and pack it in sawdust. This used to keep all summer long for us to make ice cream or use it when we needed ice and put it in ice box and things like that. MB: And you didn't get refrigerators until much later then, did you? MLB: No, I don't think we ever had a refrigerator. Well, yes, late on they did have refrigerators in Wallsburg. Of course, they didn't have the electricity then. The electricity was brought into Wallsburg later. 9 MB: What did you have instead of electricity? Was that the gas lights? MLB: Some had gas lights; some coal oil lights. MB: And the lanterns. MLB: And the lanterns, yes. MB: Did many people have fireplaces for warmth? MLB: No, I think it was too cold there for fireplaces. They had to have the coal or the wood stoves. They had wood stoves. We'd go out and gather sagebrush and have just loads of it and bring it in and burn it. MB: Where did you store all of this sagebrush? MLB: Oh, just in big piles. Of course, we had lots of room up there, especially on the farm. It was just big piles. MB: How did it smell when you burned it? Was it aromatic? MLB: Yes, it was a regular pleasant smell to burn, this sagebrush. Because those stumps of the sagebrush gets real big; they're just almost like logs (indicating with arms). Some of them. MB: Oh, almost a foot in diameter. MLB: I don't think that people realize how big those stumps get . . .just like ... great big ... big, big logs. MB: Just like tree logs, then? 10 MLB: Uh huh. And then, of course, trees were taken down and then used, too, as logs in your stove. They were all split and cut up and everybody had a big woodbox to the side of their stove to keep the fires going. MB: You burned wood and sagebrush? MLB: An awful lot, and coal was brought in to help. MB: But it was probably more expensive. MLB: That was more expensive, you see, so they burned all this other to keep the expense down. MB: What comforts and conveniences did you have in your home? You probably didn't have indoor plumbing then, did you? MLB: Oh, no. We didn't have water in the home. Water was brought ... everybody had a well and the water was drawn from the well. When you started to make your home, you always dug your well before anything and made sure you got good water. Everybody had their well. They did have irrigation ditches, too; streams of water, you know. Lots of us would do our washing by dipping out water in the ditches and heating it. MB: Was it clean water? MLB: Yes, oh yes, clean water. It came down from the mountains. It was good, clean water. Some of it was springs. At the first place we went to, it was a spring we had. We didn't have a well there. That was a spring, and I remember the water coming out of that spring—very lovely water. MB: How did you do your laundry? 11 MLB: Well, we've done it all ways. Scrubbing board; and they'd scrub the clothes and the white clothes was then put in a big boiler and boiled on the stove to make them white and then they was hung out in the air. When it was cold, if they was froze, why that would just whiten sheets and things up. Everybody had a lovely white wash. You never seen any dingy clothes. Everybody had white. Then the washer come out where you pumped it by hand, you know. That was before the electricity. That's the way we did our washing. MB: You hung them out on the clothes line winter and summer both? MLB: Yes, pretty much so. During the wintertime there was times that we had to have little racks in our house. Some people had clotheslines strung from one end of the room to the other. Where they had children, of course, they had to have things to dry clothes every day, you see. We had the racks to put them on and dry them. MB: How did your mother prepare the food? Did she use an old cooking stove? What was it like? MLB: Oh, yes. We had a cook stove and on this cook stove there was generally a great big place at the end for water. You filled that up with water, and it was always hot water in that big place on the end. Then we had a teakettle, you know. The ovens, boy, you could just stick your hand in the oven and you knew if it was hot enough for your bread. They got so they was really good cooks. MB: Did they have a thermometer gauge on the over or anything? MLB: No, later on. Some stoves did and some stoves didn't. They later on got the thermometers on the oven but there for a long while they just tested it with their hands. 12 MB: They guessed then. What foods were included in your diet? What were some of the foods that you liked to eat and that your mother fixed? MLB: Well, I think in a little town like that, they always had potatoes and gravy and their meat. That's what I say. Nearly everybody had pork, see, and potatoes, gravy, meat. And in the summertime, of course, they had eggs when the chickens would lay and they made their own butter. They had milk and there was all kinds of fruits that you had bottled. My father would go down to get the fruit, you see. Every fall he'd go down and get this fruit. We'd fill all the bottles. When all the bottles were filled, why we'd take and make preserves. I've seen my mother take the pitchers, water pitchers, out of the cupboard, and fill them with preserves and then put wax over them. Up there it was a dry climate. Before the dam was up there, they never spoil. They never molded. After we moved to Provo, then the preserves and things would get that way with mold; but up there they never did. And there was apples put in your cellar for the winter. And there was the flour put in and the germade was there. We didn't get many oranges and things like that. MB: So your cellar was sort of like a general store in itself. MLB: It was like a ... just like a storehouse. And it was very clean. Some cellars were built right off from the houses. Some were dug outside where you had the door that you lifted up and went downstairs right in your cellar and they had shelves and one part of the cellar was made for the potatoes. They was put right on the ground and the apples were put right on the ground. And cabbages was kept this way. MB: And carrots, too? MLB: Carrots. 13 MB: Did you have a cow? MLB: Yes, we always had a cow; made our own butter. MB: How did you make your butter? MLB And then they ... Well sometimes we used to put ... at first put a little butter cream MB in a jar and shake it up until it come to butter and then mold the buttermilk out of it and salt it a little bit. But my mother got so she was making it with great ... she had a great big molder and Dad made this molder for her and she just worked that buttermilk right out of there and then she'd salt it and then they had their . . . MB: Paddle? MLB: Well, they used the paddle but it was a mold—a pound mold. They'd mold it and put it in pounds. I had aunts that would take it and sell it. You know, make money out of it. Sometimes they'd separate their cream. Right at first they didn't but they got so they had separators and separate the cream from the milk. Then there was a man that would come through the town and gather up all the cream and that's the way they made their butter. And after we went to Provo ... and moved to Provo ... why we didn1t eat butter for a long time. We seen lots of things that we didn't hardly like. MB: When they'd collect it? MLB: But they got so they were more clean and inspected things so that it wasn't quite like it used to be. MB: What were some of the jobs and responsibilities that you had to do in your home? 14 MLB: Believe me, beds had to be made every day. Believe me, you washed the dishes and you kept up. Our dishes were never ... never left standing around. We washed the dishes and we washed the clothes and ironed the clothes. We ironed with irons that you had a handle that you just put them on your stove and then you'd connect your handle to these irons and we'd iron. When it got cold, you'd put it back on your stove and go pick up the next iron. Then you'd iron a little bit longer and then you'd go back and get another iron and that's the way you did your ironing. MB: Did you use starch in them, too? MLB: Oh, yes. We starched our clothes and then sometimes we had to go out in the fields and weed the beets. They used to grow beets; and we had to weed the beets, help tromp the hay. When we was little tiny kids we'd tromp the hay as they gathered it on to the big wagons to take it into the barn. So there was always jobs to do. MB: Was it divided like the boys did certain jobs and girls did certain jobs; or did you trade off? MLB: Well, we went ... the boys didn't work in the house too much. It was lots of work outside to do and even the girls went outside to help a lot of times. It was more ... in the first days, why the men worked outside and the women inside. And, of course, there was pies to make. There was cakes to make and there was bread to make. It took a lot of making. MB: Did you make white bread or whole wheat? 15 MLB: Both kinds. Mostly white. We'd mix our bread at night because of the heat, you see. We'd mix our bread at night and we'd let it raise through the nighttime because it wasn't so hot. And then we'd get up the next morning and then we'd bake it. MB: What kind of yeast did you use? MLB: We made our own yeast. And if we'd run out of yeast, we'd run to the neighbors to borrow a start of yeast and the neighbors'd come running to us. Of course, at first ... at the first place we lived, we lived too far away for that. You made your own yeast. You'd get yeast and then you'd start it. MB: In your family, did you make your own clothing or did you buy them at the store? MLB: No, we had to make everything. All the clothes were made. Quilts were made. Even the mattresses on the bed were made. They took and made mattresses and filled them with straw. Many beds. And then there was mattresses made and they filled the ticks with feathers. They'd save all the feathers off of the chickens and the geese things, ducks, whatever you might have. And then these feathers were put in there. And some were made with ... and even on your floor, they'd make ... they'd get the carpeting and then they'd put this fresh straw on the floor and stretch this carpeting over it and nail it down and even under MB your carpet was straw. Every year in the spring of the year, you know, you house cleaned. You took and made all these things with fresh straw, or maybe it was in the fall after we got through thrashing. MLB: They put everything fresh in them again, you see. Every year they was changed into fresh straw. And they made their clothes. And when the women had their babies, we didn't get little shirts or anything. We made everything—all the diapers and ... They 16 made petticoats. They made dresses for all babies—boys or girls. It was a long time before a baby ever dressed in boys clothes, but they always made so many ... But they made what they ... It was a long piece that they wrapped up over the baby's feet. All of that had to be made. There was lots of work when a child was expected. The mothers generally made them when the children wasn't around. If the children would come around, why they'd quickly slip them under something so the children wouldn't see them. MB: Didn't they want them to know that a new baby was coming? MLB: They didn't. Nobody talked about babies being born in them days. That was awful to talk about—babies being born and things like that. You never talked about those things. Lots of times they never knew they was going to even have a new baby until they'd get you all ready and take you to the neighbors or something. And then they'd come back and say, "Well, you've got a little baby brother or baby sister. Do you want to go home and see it?" We wouldn't even know we were expecting any. MB: They didn't have maternity fashions and things like that at all then, did they? MLB: Oh, no. Now, my mother didn't dress this way, but there was many people in the town that did. They had what they'd call a "chimmy." They'd wear a chimmy. And then they wore a flannel petticoat and then they put on another petticoat and then a long dress. My mother-in-law always dressed this way—long sleeves, high necked, long dress down to her heels. You couldn't tell whether a woman was pregnant or if she wasn't pregnant. Lots of them you could, too, but children just didn't know about the babies coming. 17 MB: What type of clothes did you wear as a child? MLB: Oh, the dresses generally gathered around, you know, onto a waist. MB: Were they long sleeve, high neck, down to your knees, or . . .? MLB: No. No. But everybody wore aprons. You never did anything around the house but what you didn't wear aprons. And then they made nightcaps, too. I guess it was because it was so cold. But we always made nightcaps. We did a lot of tatting and we did a lot of crocheting. And we did a lot of quilting and things like that. They'd have ... some of the women used to have what they called "rag bees." They'd get together and tear rags. They used to braid their own rugs and make their own rugs, too. They'd take all the old overalls when they was worn out and tear them into strips—all the old coats and things MLB: like that. Then they made all the coats. Half of the coats the children wore was made over from grown ups' coats. So they did a lot of sewing. A coat—to have a coat once in two or three or four years was a great thing. Nearly everybody sewed. MB: Your mother made most of your clothes, then? MLB: Yes, we learned to sew real young, too. MB: What were your shoes like? MLB: Well, we had high shoes. MB: High tops? MLB: No, high. MB: Up over your ankles? 18 MLB: Yeah. Up over our ankles where we laced them up. MB: They were laced and didn't have lots of buttons like they had had earlier, then? MLB: Well, there was a few of them. I remember a few of them button ones, too. You'd take your hook and button them up. But we had laced ones, too. MB: Were they pointed toes or were they comfortable? MLB: Well, I remember ... I don't remember just when we had pointed toes. But they were good sturdy shoes. And everybody had their kit to mend shoes to half-sole shoes you had . . . MB: The leather. MLB: Yes, you had these stands to put them on and they mended their own shoes. MB: My father had one of those, too. MLB: They were good sturdy shoes when you bought them. MB: How many clothes did you have? You probably didn't have a big closet full, did you? MLB: No, you had a nice dress for Sunday and land, you always wore that nice dress for Sunday, but it was taken off and hung up and kept. It was never worn for just anything. And then you had other clothes, too. You always had an apron over your clothes to keep your clothes clean. MB: Were the clothes passed down from one child to another? MLB: Oh, yes. As long as they was good, they were worn and then on to the other. MB: And then when they were worn out they went into a rag bag? 19 MLB: They went into a rag bag and then that's when the rugs were made and the quilts were made. They never bought new material for quilts like they do nowadays. It was just always used up— everything. Everything was used up. Of course, there was some that had their spinning wheels and used them to spin and take the wool off the sheep and make their own clothes, you see. But that went out just about the time I was born. It was just a few that had them. I didn't see too much of that, but they did used to do that. MB: Did they knit their own stockings and sweaters and things like that? MLB: Oh, yes, very much so. I remember my mother knitting to send to the soldiers. Socks they used to knit—socks upon socks. MB: What are some other early memories that you have of your parents? What special talents did they have? MLB: My dad used to like to play the piano. He had had his three fingers cut off on his right hand, but he played the piano and he could make those two fingers just go so fast. I used to just love to get in bed and lay there and hear my dad play the piano. And he used to play the piano until we got into the city and then he was scared the neighbors would hear him (chuckle), so he didn't play as much. But it seemed like he played the piano every night. It seemed like I always went to sleep with my dad playing the piano. Many, many times he'd hear me singing a little song, maybe, that we'd learned at school or church or something; and he'd have me stand to the end of the piano and sing this song until he got on to the tune. Then he never forgot it. He'd pick it up. It'd always be played. MB: He played by ear? 20 MLB: And he played by ear. Well, he used to play the accordion for dances before he had his hand cut off. He never could play that again so I don't know if he had music lessons or just what; but he did pick up when we was on the farm everything. He didn't play it by music. He played it by ear. MB: Did anyone else in your family have musical talents besides your father? MLB: My sister Oreen picked up this playing by ear and she used to play a lot by ear. MB: Did she have lessons, too? MLB: No. I don't remember ever having lessons. There was no teachers up there. I would have liked to have taken music lessons, but I don't know of a teacher up there. In fact, one time later on in my life there was one woman up there that played the piano and she played for everything. I don't believe they ever had another pianist until she taught her children and then they became players. MB: Pianos probably weren't too common, were they? Did many people have them? MLB: Yes, we had a piano. We had a piano in our home and we had a phonograph in our home. My dad bought a phonograph and we was the first one in the town to have this phonograph with this great big horn, you know. I remember the tunes, "The Whistler and His Dog" and then there was one about the Groundhog Day. The groundhog come out and if he seen his "shader". He went back in and they had six weeks more of winter "wather." But if he didn't see his "shader" he stayed out. And that meant that winter was over.I remember those two records very plain. MB: What talents did your mother have? 21 MLB: Well, everybody loved my mother's pies. She used to make the best raisin pies. Everybody used to love to have my mother's raisin pies. She was a good cook. But my mother never had the chance of going to school at all. She taught herself. She taught herself how to read and to write and all those things. She did a pretty good job of it before she got through life. MB: Did your father have the chance to go to school? MLB: Yes, my dad had gone to school, but mother taught her own self. MB: What were some of the talents that she had in the home? Did she do crocheting or knitting? MLB: Oh, she crocheted and she knitted and she embroidered, made quilts and sewed. I'm sure there's lots that I don't even remember. MB: What activities did you do together as a family? MLB: Well, we always went out, us children, and played games. Every night it seemed like we'd go out and played hide and seek, kick the can, and all those games. Then we sang songs and things like that. MB: Those were mostly games you played outside weren't they? What were games you played inside the house? MLB: We'd have our parties and we'd play "Button, button, who's got the button." And we'd play the game of "Gossip" and start sitting around in a ring and somebody would start a tale out. They'd whisper it to the next one and then when they got around the ring, why the first one would tell what he'd said and the last one would tell what come to him; and 22 they could get some pretty tall stories sometimes. It showed what gossip would do, you know. MB: What were some of the funny things that happened to you when you were little? Any funny experiences you had. MLB: Well, my sister was always trying to play a joke on us, it seemed like. I know one night—oh, I don't know if she did this on purpose or not—but we had this big long tent or house, you know temporary housing used during construction of new house, MB , There was a door from both ends and they used to take their white top buggy, put it right against the house, and mother was washing the dishes. She said, "Murran." It was night, and she said, "Murran, go out under the buggy. I think I seen a cup out there, and get it for me to wash." She says, "Somebody's taken it out." So I went out and I got there and I could see this laying down under the buggy. But I thought it was the dog. So I got there and just as I went to pick up the cup, my sister had gone out the other door and was laying there. She said, "Boo!" It just like to scared me to death and I made the funniest little sound. My folks come running out there. I never dreamed anybody'd play a trick on me. It just scared me so that I couldn't move. Then another time we was going to build a house, so they had put the well about a block away from the house we was living in. Then they'd built or dug the foundation of the house around to put the house. My sister said, "Tell Dellis to go out and get a bucket of water." So I had him go out and get a bucket of water. She'd gone out the back door and put a sheet around her and laid down in this foundation. He come and stepped over the first ditch. She got to thinking and thought that would scare him to death and she better not pull that on him; so she was going to let him go and get his bucket of water. He got almost to the well and she 23 thought, "I'll get in the house before he sees me. I don't want to scare him." So she raised up, and just as she raised up he turned around and looked. There was this white thing coming out of that hole. Like to scared the tar out of him! Then another time she says. Mother and Dad was always at these times I guess. She got up on top of this house. We had a log house and then a great big long house that they'd boarded up—a great big long tent they'd made as houses to live in 'till they built a house. There was a place between this log cabin and the house. She yelled at me to come out the door there, and as I opened the door a great big dummy came down in front of me. She'd got up on top of the house and dropped this dummy down. So we never knew what was going to be pulled. MB: Did Oreen get into trouble for doing some of these tricks that she did? MLB: No, I don't remember. We all just had a good laugh. Nothing much said. We had to do something. MB: She rode a horse too, didn't she? MLB: When she went to school she'd just jump on this horse and no saddle, no bridle, or anything and go up to school. We had to go about three miles to school. Jump off the horse and give the horse a hit and say, "go home," and the horse'd go back home. Sometimes I'd ride with her on the back of her. One time we was going along. We had one horse and his name was Nig, a black horse. You'd give him a little chug in the ribs, you know, and he'd just kind of leap quick into a lope. We was going along and Oreen chugged him and said, "get up, Nig." Well, he give one leap and I just took one summersault and stood up behind him and they went on to school and I stood there. 24 Another time we was on the white horse. Her name was Dolly. It had been raining and there was a big mud puddle in the middle of the road. We got to this mud puddle and she slipped on the mud and I slid off. The horse got up and they went on up the road and I was in the mud in my new coat. I had a brand new coat and we'd ordered it through the catalog. That's how we used to get our coats and things. There was my new coat, just one mass of mud! MB: Were you a tomboy when you were little? Did you like to do things . . . MLB: Oh, my! I used to love to climb. We had the tallest barn in the town. One day I looked up and my brother Dewey was walking along the very top of this barn, along that edge of the roof. He hollered, "Murran, I'll dare you to do this." Up the barn I went just as fast as I could go. He turned around and looked, and there I was walking along the top of this barn. He says, "Oh! My land! Sit down! Sit down quick!" Now he says, "You cling on quick! Hold on," he says. "Hold on." And boy, he got to me and got a hold of me and got me off of that barn. I thought, "Well, what's he so excited about. He dared me to do it." I used to climb the biggest trees. Dellis and I used to go out and get in the top of a big tree and sit there and teeter up and down. It was our swing. MB: On the limbs, you mean? MLB: On the limbs of the tree. We'd be way up in the air. MB: Did you have a swing on your trees, too? MLB: No, just the limb. We'd just sit there. Those limbs could have broke and we'd a went to the ground. 25 MB: You liked to swing in the barn, too, didn't you? Oh, we used to take and tie the ropes to the barn and then we'd swing from one place to the other and swing back and forth. MB: Like a trapeze. MLB: Like a trapeze. It was like being on a trapeze. That's the way we had our fun. MB: What did you keep in your barn? MLB: Hay. Of course, we'd have the hay sometime to stand on in and swing in the open place and light on another bunch of hay and swing back and light on the other bunch. We used to go up in the hollows. There used to be the hollows where the water would come down. When it would storm it would make hollows and this was all sand. We used to go out there and play for hours and we'd make us houses out of this sand. Then we'd gather rocks and decorate them. We'd gather flowers and have flowers in our houses. We could play all day long making things in these sand hollows. MB: Did you have a pet when you were a child? MLB: Yeah. We had dogs. I always loved ... We had a shepherd dog. I was especially fond of shepherd dogs. Then we had cats. We never had them in the house, but we had cats around. MB: What kind of animals did you have on your farm? MLB: Horses, cows, sheep, chickens, turkeys, ducks, geese. MB: Everything to provide your own food and transportation? MLB: Yes, everything ... lambs. Yes. That's where they got their food from. 26 MB: What was your transportation in those early days? MLB: We went in a buggy, a big buggy. We had a white top, what they called a white top; then sleighs and horseback. MB: Did your family go on outings or things like that? MLB: We used to get in our white top in the summertime and go over to the Midway Hot Pots. That was great fun. We'd take a lunch. There was always tables there to have our lunch. We'd go in swimming. That was really a big outing. We'd take people with us sometimes. MB: How did the Hot Pots get its name? Was it because of the size of it, or shape? MLB: No, it was the water. It comes out of the ground hot. It's a natural hot pot. They're still up there. There's the Snyder Hot Pots and there's the Luke Hot Pots. We used to go to the Luke's Hot Pots. Somebody just the other day said they'd been over to the Snyder's Hot Pots. As you go across the ground your horses (knocking on table) hooves would sound like something travelling over. MB: Hollow? MLB: Hollow, oh yes. It's hollow. Then they have their craters up there. You can crawl up and look down these great big crater holes. MB: Is it anything like Yellowstone? MLB: I don't know. I've never seen Yellowstone. But it's got its craters, and it could be. It's a volcanic place, and that used to be a great sport. MB: Did you ever go to Saltair and places like that? Or other resorts? 27 MLB: I remember once going to Saltair. That was quite a ways away. We didn't hardly travel that far. A buggy didn't get you as far as a car. You didn't go too far away. We used to go out Eastering and things like that. MB: How did you celebrate your holidays? For example, Easter. Did you take hikes and take picnics or anything? MLB: Oh, we always took a picnic. It was generally the boys and girls that did that. Mostly a bunch of girls. We'd go out and cook out up in the mountains and cook our dinner, take cakes and whatever we might have. MB: What would you cook? Things like hot dogs? MLB: Oh, we didn't have too many hot dogs then. You didn't see too much like that. We'd cook potatoes ... fried potatoes over the fire. MB: Bacon and eggs and things like that? MLB: Eggs ... things like that. MB: How did you celebrate Christmas? MLB: Well, that was more of just in our family. We always hung up our socks. Always come down at the same time. We'd be upstairs and come down and open our gifts after Dad had made the fire in the stove. There was a gift for everybody. MB: Did you have a Christmas tree? MLB: They'd send away for these gifts and order out of the catalog. Oh, yes. We always went up and got our own Christmas tree. We had lots of ways to get our Christmas tree. That was one of the big highlights was going and getting the Christmas tree and popping 28 corn and putting papers that you make yourself ... strings of paper around it and strings of popcorn. MB: What was your favorite Christmas present that you got when you were a little girl? Did you get a doll? MLB: I got a great big doll once that they'd sent away for. But my birthday was the 23rd. So they used to, if I got a big present, they'd say, "Well, this is for your birthday and Christmas." So I got saying, "Well, if it's just ten cents, I want a Christmas present and I want a birthday present." MB: The joys of having them right together! MLB: But it was generally clothes and things we needed. Our shoes come at Christmas time and our coats come at Christmas time. Maybe a new dress that Mother had made. We all crocheted and knitted so there was gifts. There was plenty of gifts. MB: How did you celebrate Thanksgiving? Did you have a turkey and a big dinner? MLB: We always had a turkey, great big turkey, dressing and big dinner. Yes, Thanksgiving was always a big day. MB: Did you have relatives come in or did you go to someone else's? MLB: Sometimes after we got older we had more of that than at first. We lived so far away and kind of by ourselves, that it was just our family. MB: Did you live near your grandparents? MLB: I never knew a grandma. My grandparents were all dead before I was born. I never knew a grandpa or grandma. My uncles and aunts were a long way off—Pleasant 29 Grove. I remember going there and seeing aunts and then Orem. My Aunt Nellie lived in Orem. Aunt Aggie lived up in Kaysville. Aunt Jennie lived up at Ogden. I remember their kids coming down once. Aunt Jennie brought her girls down once—her family. We took the girls out picking flowers. We'd go out and get wild flowers. We come across the cactuses and cactuses are very pretty. They thought they were so pretty. This one girl took her apron . . . Part Two MB: This is Marie Boren with a continuation of the interview with Murran Elizabeth Lockhart Boren at my home in Roy, Utah in July 1983. At the conclusion of Tape 1 she was telling of her cousins' visit to her home and going out to pick wild flowers. MLB: We took the girls out picking flowers. We'd go out and get wild flowers and we come across the cactuses. Cactuses are very pretty. They thought they were so pretty and this one girl took her apron and she put all these cactuses in her apron to take them home to show her folks. But when she got home they had to pick out the briars in her. MB: How did you celebrate birthdays? MLB: Oh, we generally always had a big dinner for the one that had the birthday. Everybody gave them gifts, you know. MB: Did they have birthday cakes then with candles? MLB: Oh, yes. I don't know as we had the candles. Yes, sometimes we had candles. Yes, we had birthday cakes. We always had a birthday cake. MB: How did you celebrate Halloween? Was that different from now? 30 MLB: Oh, they used to have a great time on Halloween. They'd go out on Halloween. I don't ever remember in the first place for them coming to your door and ask for tricks or treats. They'd just trick you. They'd paint your windows and wax your windows and the next morning when you got up you were liable to find your outhouse, your toilet, on your front porch. I remember one time when somebody found it on the top of their house. Toilets would be tipped over all over town. If there was anything sitting out that could be moved or taken or placed somewhere, gate's be taken off and put on top of the house. Anything they could do like that they'd do it. They had a great time on Halloween. MB: Did they ever get caught? MLB: No. It was just part of the fun of the town. But later on if you'd of been in Provo and places and done the things we used to do, why we'd of got arrested. MB: And land in jail? MLB: Yes. MB: What childhood diseases did you have? MLB: Oh, scarlet fever and mumps, measles, German measles. I had them all, it seemed like. At one time there in Wallsburg they had scarlet fever and they just could not get rid of it. They'd seem to get over it and the very next bunch that would come into school would come down with it again and they just could not get it out of the schools. I remember going to school and I remember the children after they'd been sick where their hands would peel. They'd just take these peelings and peel it off and put it in their books for bookmarks. They couldn't get rid of this epidemic so they finally took all the books in the school and burned them to get rid of this disease. Later on I found out, the doctors told 31 me, that scarlet fever is a streptococcus infection. I also had a doctor tell me once that scarlet fever can live in blankets and everything like that if they're not sterilized proper, and break out months and months later. So this streptococcus germ was a very deadly germ. They burned all the books in the schools and then they got rid of their breaking out with scarlet fever. MB: Were there any other diseases that you had besides scarlet fever that there were interesting stories about? How did your mother cure you of colds? MLB: I just remember what I used to do. I'd get sick. Our cooking stove set out from the wall quite a ways and it was big enough to put two chairs back of it. I always used to go get a pillow, put on this chair, and put something over me and I'd sleep. So the measles, chicken pox, scarlet fever, and these things that break out would just break out wonderful on me because I'd just lay there. My mother used to say she always knew when I was sick because I'd go make this bed and then I'd lay there. She said I always slept diseases off, just laid and slept and never made much fuss but just slept and then I'd get over it. MB: Did your family use mustard plasters? MLB: Yes, for colds and things. But at this time I don't remember having many colds. When the flu was on, then they used lots of mustard plasters and things like that because it was a chest cold. Mustard plasters were used for chest colds. I even heard of people putting on onion plasters--raw onions. We never used that. Then they used to use sassafras for people that got nervous. I don't ever remember using it in our home, but I remember smelling 32 MLB: It on other people. It was an awful smell. They'd put it around their neck and on their chest. I remember smelling this in school on some of the children. MB: How did they make a mustard plaster and where did they put it? MLB: Well, they mixed it up--mustard and flour. MB: Dry mustard? MLB: Dry mustard and flour. MB: Was there any particular proportions? MLB: Oh, yes. You used about a third of mustard and two-thirds of flour, and you dampened that. Then you put it on your plaster cloth, MB . Then you put it on your chest. You leave it there until your chest would begin to pink up, and then you'd take it off. The proper way was to put a cream or something on after you'd taken it off. Some people didn't know how to use them; and boy, they just blistered their children's hides with them. MB: They could really get red, couldn't they? MLB: Oh, yes. If they were left on too long, it would really blister them and give them an awful burn. So you had to know how to use them. But it seemed like I worked with the doctors a lot and they taught me how to put these mustard plasters on. After I got larger, you know. That's all we had to work with for pneumonia until your drugs and things come out was your mustard plasters. Once in a while the doctor would say, "Well, go home and put on a good mustard plaster." 33 MB: What are some of the early recollections you have of your brothers and sisters when you were little? MLB: Oh, we used to go out and thin beets together. I remember that because we used to see who could get through our row the first. Then we'd have to go out in the fields and gather the hay. The bigger ones would take the big pitch forks and put it up on the wagons and us little ones would tromp it down so we could get a lot on the wagon. I remember going out picking peas and at that time we used to bottle our peas and our beans. It seemed like we didn't have a lot of pests in the garden then. Our gardens would just . . . MB: Flourish? MLB: Oh, yes, very much so. Then we'd go out on the hills and gather the sagebrush and bring it in to keep our fires going. At Christmas time we all went up in the mountains to get us our Christmas tree and to decorate it together. There was things like that we did. Shelled peas together, peeled fruit together, MLB: Because we'd have so much all at once that we all had to work at it to get it all taken care of before it spoiled. MB: You mentioned to me at other times about mushrooms, too. MLB: There was a place that we had that produced mushrooms. It was just almost like a little field and we used to go out and pick those mushrooms. My dad was very fond of them. I don't remember the other members of the family caring much for them, but Dad really liked the mushrooms. Then we'd go out in the spring of the year. My mother was always anxious to get green things into our diet and so we used to go out and get what I believe 34 was salt weed. It's the weed that looks like there's salt on the bottom of it probably lamb's quarters, MB , and the young tender dandelion leaves make very good greens every spring. They were very good. We looked forward to the time when we'd gather these green things like this and eat them. Then out on the mountains they used to have what was like an onion. They were very good. They were edible. MB: Did you eat sego lilies or any of those things, or did they have them there? MLB: Yes, oh yes, we had the sego lilies. Maybe that's what I'm trying to think about now. We had lots of sego lilies. MB: You mentioned to me a while ago about Dewey singing to the cows. MLB: Oh, when Dewey would go out to milk the cows, he'd sing to the top of his voice. Relax and sing. The cows used to give lots of milk. They said that the cows relaxed too, and would produce lots of milk when they'd do that. We used to go out picking wild currants and wild strawberries. What's the other one we used to go out and gather them and make jelly? Chokecherry jelly every fall. We used to go out and get pinenuts. So there's many things to keep you busy. There was always something to have fun with. MB: Did you make kites or things like that? MLB: Yes, I remember at one time the boys all making kites to fly, but Dewey's kite wouldn't fly. Once he just couldn't get it to balance right and it didn't fly. I remember how bad I felt for Dewey. My land, I wanted to go off and cry for him. MB: What were your brothers and sisters dispositions like? You mentioned before that Oreen liked to play tricks. What were the others like? Did they have any special talent? 35 MLB: Well, Lee. In those days they used to have our Mutuals and things like that for entertainment in the town. They'd put on plays and Lee was always chosen as one of the actors. He was generally chosen as a Chinaman and he could do this very well. All the rest was kind of in these plays, too. It was very good entertainment in the town. I still remember some of those plays that was put on. MB: Do you remember the names of any of them? MLB: I have done, but not right now. MB: Or what they were about? MLB: Well, there was one play that this young couple was married, and she said to her lover, "Tarry a while, I’ll hide, I'll hide." Each way, she runs upstairs and runs and hides in a trunk. They looked, and looked, and looked, and she says, "You be the first to find." And they looked and they looked and it told through the years how they looked and how he searched for her, but they never, never found them. But when he was a young man, why one day he happened to open that trunk. It was way up in the attic and there was her body and it showed her coming out of there in her wedding dress and then him dying in his chair, and them walking to heaven together. I still remember that, and I was just a young kid. MB: What were some of the other brothers and sisters like? What did they like to do? MLB: Oh, they liked to sleigh ride. They'd get in the sleighs and they'd have sleigh riding parties. If we didn't have snow by Thanksgiving time, we thought it was horrible. We had lots of good snow and they'd have parties, snowing, chickories, and stews. 36 MB: Could you tell us what each of those were--the "chickories" and oyster stews? MLB: Well, a bunch would just get together and they'd say, "Oh, let's have a party. Let's get together and have a party." So sometime some of them would say, "Well, you get the chickens." And some of them would go to the other guys' chicken house and just help their selves to a chicken. But my husband's father, that was before I married him of course, he used to say, "Now, Eldie, if you want a chicken, you don't need to go to somebody else's chicken coop for it. All you need to do is come to the door and say, 'Dad, I'm going to take a chicken or two chickens or whatever you want.' There's no need of you going to anybody else's place." So when we wanted a chicken we always got on the horse and went to his dad's place and say, MB "Dad, we're going to take a chicken." We always took our share of chicken, but we didn't have to take it from anybody else's place. One night we got together and had a chickorie. The parents were to a show in Heber. Dewey and Ev had gone over to Heber and we was all together having this chickorie. This one boy, Mayo Ford, had gone out to his own chicken coop and got chicken and Eldie had got chicken and we had the meal all ready. Just as they come home, they walked in and we'd gone in the cellar. Mayo's mother had a cellar right off from her kitchen. They lived right off from a mountain. They'd dug this mountain out and they'd made this beautiful cellar. It was cold and beautiful, clean as clean. We'd gone out and got her pies and we'd got a cake that was there and preserves. Whatever we wanted we got out of this cellar. We had it all set out on this table just as they come home. They said, "Oh, what a good chicken supper for us." They all sat down and ate with us and we had a good time. There had been some chickens stolen from town that night. Of course, there could be two or three parties going on at once, you see. 37 Somebody said there'd been a chickorie up there, so they come up there to see about it. Mayo's dad took them out and showed them where the kids had skinned the chickens and it was his chickens that was there, so they couldn't arrest us for anything. MB: So a chickorie then is just a big chicken dinner. MLB: Just a big chicken dinner. MB: Sometimes they stole the chicken? MLB: Oh, you bet! There was lots of stolen chickens. Every once in a while they'd get together and steal chickens. MB: What was an oyster stew? MLB: Well, they'd say, "Oh, let's have an oyster stew." Oysters were pretty cheap then and they'd go buy a can of the oysters, open it up, put it with milk, salt and pepper, and make a stew of it. They always had their salt crackers to go with it. Very good, that's the way they used to do. MB: That was the dinner. MLB: We'd always sit down and have the dinner. Of course, it was generally at night time. MB: What about the pies? You've mentioned about the pies being stolen. MLB: The older folks, they'd get together. There was lots of pies made and there was lots of ice cream made. They had to have fun, too, so they'd call their parties. I remember one night some of the older folks was going and some of the younger folks went up to the women as they was getting into the sleigh. "Let me help you in," they'd say, MB , "Let me hold your pie while you get in," and they'd quickly slip it to another and it'd go down 38 the line. They'd help the ladies in the sleigh and get them set down and then they'd be gone. They'd turn around and, "Where's my pie?" Well, they didn't have any pie. Somebody else had taken them all. And then some nights, they'd be stolen from them and they'd go to three different bunches before they'd get them ate. Same way with ice cream. They'd get ahold of a freezer of ice cream. Of course, there was always several freezers of ice cream made. When the young folks would get ahold of one of their freezers of ice cream, why they had a party of their own. My mother used to be a great pie maker, you know. She used to make, MB raisin pies. They used to make a lot of raisin pies up there. Mincemeat pies. They made their own mincemeat. So they'd have ice cream and mincemeat pie, pie a' la mode; and that went over very good. MB: So this was one of the chief entertainments was getting together to eat. MLB: Yes, making your own party. Then there was lots of good games played, just fun games. That was quite a talent to get all your fun games written down and your prizes for your games. You had really a lot of fun if you could keep something going. MB: About how many people lived in Wallsburg then? Not too many, were there? MLB: I don't remember the population. There was quite a few. They all did things together. Now like a wedding. Like the night we was married and at the same time my mother and dad was doing the work for my two brothers that was killed in the service. So we had to be in Salt Lake for two days. It took all day to go through a session then, so it took two days to do two boys' work in the temple. We stayed up there and when we got back we didn't know anything about it. But when we got back, why we found that they'd got on their horses and they'd start at the top end of the town and they'd say, "Wedding dance 39 tonight. Bring refreshments and come." They'd always bring their gift and they'd bring a can of salmon. Salmon was not very expensive then. And a box of soda crackers. Then somebody's bring milk and they'd make chocolate drink. They'd have these soda crackers and nobody was put to a lot of trouble or a lot of expense. Then there was certain ones that played and they didn't take pay for their playing. There was two or three of them that could play the different things. There was one woman that she nearly always played everything. I don't believe there was very many that played in the town. I know there wasn't. I don't know the other instruments, three or four instruments, a drum and things like that. MB: Piano? MLB: The drum, piano. MB: Violin? MLB: Oh, I guess it was a violin. I don't remember now. That's what we always danced by. It was fun to have a dance. Everyone was taught to dance because after school many times they had dances for a matinee. The children were all taught to dance. Everybody danced. MB: What kind of a dance was it? Foxtrot or waltz? MLB: They used to get some of those old time dances in them but mostly waltzes, foxtrot and things like that. The young folks that would have babies would bring their babies and put the benches together and make beds and put the babies down to sleep and they slept and everybody danced. 40 MB: Where were the dances held? Were they at the church? MLB: In the church house. At the church house. Of course, the church house was just one big place with classrooms off, so they'd have to move all the benches out, you see, and clear if off and then dance. MB: Were most of the people there L.D.S. in Wallsburg? MLB: It seemed like everyone was. At the time I was there I don't remember anybody that wasn't L.D.S. MB: So all the activities were held at the L.D.S. Church—the dances and plays. MLB: I don't remember of anybody not being L.D.S. about that time. MB: When you were little, how did you earn your money? Did you have to earn money? Did you get an allowance? MLB: We didn't have any need much for any money. All the things were bought and when mother and dad would go to Provo for the fruits and things, they'd always bring us back a treat. When they'd go away, we always knew we'd get a treat. MB: What were some of the treats? MLB: At school they didn't have much to buy. There was one store that always had candies that you could always buy. You could buy quite a bit for a penny. And if you didn't have pennies, you'd take eggs--so many eggs. That's how we used to get our treats. We'd take the eggs and buy the treats that we wanted. MB: What kind of candy did they have? 41 MLB: Oh, mostly hardtack. They used to have bottles of this hardtack. Pick out what you wanted, you know. MB: Horehound candy? MLB: Yes, they had horehound. They had peppermint mints and also the other. Just all the candies. Hardtack, they'd call it. MB: How did they store them in the stores? Was it in those big jars? MLB: Just in the big jars. But I think the school kids kept them so they was quite fresh all the time. MB: They liked them quite well then? MLB: Yes. MB: Did they have candy bars then? MLB: I don't remember candy bars. It was always just this hardtack. There was five or six different bottles of different kinds of hardtack. MB: Where did you go to school? Which school did you attend? MLB: Well, we just had the one. Wallsburg School is all it was called. MB: How many grades were in the school? You didn't have kindergarten then, did you? MLB: No, no. They had no kindergarten. I don't know if it was the eighth grade or not. MB: First grade to eighth? MLB: First to eighth, I believe. 42 MB: How many teachers would be there? MLB: Well, one for each one of those. I don't remember that, but I know there would be several teachers come into town. There was many, many, many of those teachers that come into town and married people from the town and were married there. They got their companions there, boys and girls, many, many of them. I think there was more that was married than wasn't married, as I remember. MB: What were your favorite subjects when you went to school? Was there any you liked better than any other? Did you like history or math? MLB: I always liked math, mathematics. And I liked history, too, very much. MB: I think you mentioned elocution one time, too. MLB: That was in high school. We didn't get any of that until we moved to Provo. We went to high school for that. MB: Who were some of your friends in school? MLB: Oh, our bunch was Florence Wall, Earl Boren, Thelma Taylor... MB: What were some of the things that you did together? Was Florence one of your best friends then? MLB: Oh, yes. There was many more. I just can't remember. I can remember Susana Parcel1 and, oh, there was lots. All that was the same age generally chummed together and went with the boys. We had little parties. MB: How did you get to school? Did you have to walk or did you ride? 43 MLB: Many, many times we walked. I guess we walked more than we did anything else. Then we'd go in the winter time on horseback. Then we had a little buggy, too, that we went on and went up in this little buggy and horseback and sleigh. MB: How far was it to school? MLB: We lived about three miles away when we lived on the farm. We were a good three miles away from school. MB: Did you carry a lunch to school? MLB: Yes, we always had to carry a lunch. MB: Do you remember what you would take? Was it sandwiches? MLB: Oh, we'd have sandwiches and whatever there might be. I don't remember too much about it, but I know we always took sandwiches. We'd go outside and find a cool place to sit and eat our lunch. Maybe a piece of cake or a cookie, sandwiches, and apples if we had it, and carrot or whatever we had like that. MB: Did you have report cards then? MLB: Yes, I think there was always report cards. MB: What lessons do you remember from school that you learned that wasn't just book learning? Is there anything that you can think of? MLB: Not right now. MB: What was the general condition of your health when you were a child? Were you usually healthy? 44 MLB: Yes, I believe I was pretty healthy. MB: Did you ever have any accidents? What were some of them? MLB: Yes. I remember once when I was a child. This was in the first place we lived. It was a swampy land we had to go through, down a little lane to get to the main road. It was swampy land, so we had to take rocks and dump in that land and put dirt over it to make it solid to go over with the buggies and the horses and things. One day I was sitting on the load of rocks and somebody said, "Oh, Mrs. McAffee's coming over." That was our neighbor. I guess I turned a little to look and I guess the wagon went down in a chuckhole and give us a kind of a bounce and I went over the wheel. When I come out, half of my hair was all pulled out. My one ear was pretty much cut and it injured my eye. I remember having to have my hair shaved right to my head. I remember I was about in the first grade then, and I remember how they used to tease me at school over my hair, I didn't like that at all. So I had that accident. And then one day I went out of that little buggy, too, and the wheel went right over me. I had that accident. MB: Did anyone else in your family have any accidents? MLB: Yes. I remember Dewey. Dewey was just like I was. He liked to climb. The Biglow’s had a big barn and on the way home the kids was walking and they had stopped to play in this barn. He had fell, and I remember walking home and he was laying on the bed waiting for the doctor to come. He always had to come from Heber to Wallsburg to take care of us. He was laying and he looked just like a big mouth right under his chin was cut him from one side to the other and they had to take eight, nine more stitches in it. Then one time I remember my mother saying that when Dellis got home (Dellis had 45 gone with them to bale some hay; he was just a kid, too), we could go in the creek swimming. So I was looking forward to this going in swimming. So I kept watching and watching for the buggy to come, which should of come early in the afternoon. But it didn't come. So, of course, we begin to wonder. Then when we seen the buggy a way off, you could see it turn a way off around the mountain, you know, and we felt like there was something wrong. Then as it got closer we could see that Dellis was laying across their laps on the seat. When he got there, why we found out that he was tromping the hay and he had slipped. When he had slipped, he had went into the baler and it had cut two of his toes off and they'd had to take him to the doctor in Heber. I remember how disappointed I was because we couldn't go in swimming. Of course it was long toward night then; it had taken so long. MB: What religious training did you have? Did you have any at home? Did you read the scriptures together or was most of it at the church like Primary and Sunday school? MLB: Well, we got it in the Sunday school more. Them days it seemed like people was colonizing and cleaning their lands and getting settled in homes. They didn't talk of the scriptures like they did later on or nowadays. But we did have the Bible in our home and the Book of Mormon. And we always had a picture on our wall of Christ before Pilate and we had a picture on our wall of Joseph Smith and Hyrum, and it was framed with a big wreath around it. Then we were told of Christ before Pilate and we was told of Joseph Smith, so we really did get religious training. MB: Then you went to Primary? You weren't able to though, when you were out on the farm, were you? 46 MLB: Well, sometimes we had it in school—what they called religion class. We were given a little religious lesson right in school. And then, of course, in school we always had prayer and program. They were all Mormons, so it was centered around Mormon activity. Then we didn't have the lights to sit up and read at night. We had a coal oil light, you see, and you don't do a lot of reading by those coal oil lights. Then we were tired and we retired to our bed early and we was up early in the morning at chores because there had to be cows milked and there had to be eggs gathered and everything like that-a lot of things. We really didn't have a lot of time for anything else. MB: All that had to be done before you went to school? MLB: Yes. My sister was a great reader, though. She read a lot. I think we all read a lot when we had time. MB: In those days the times of the church meetings were different, too, weren't they? MLB: Yes. Our sacrament meetings was always at night. We'd get to sacrament meeting, but sometimes it was impossible to get to all the rest because we was too far away, MB: Because it would have taken two trips into town, wouldn't it? MLB: Yes. Or if we had stayed to go to Primary we would have been after dark getting home. MB: Were there any other funny things that happened to you while you were out living on the farm? MLB: I remember one time we had some men there on the farm. I don't remember what they was there for. They were working. But I had to go to the little house, the bathroom. I went in and I said to mother, "Why I've got to go to the bathroom, but those men are out 47 there." She just looked at me and said, "You go on out there and if they say anything to you, you say if they've quit the business you'll leave town." And then another time I remember going out to the little house and I heard this hissing sound and I got out of there in a hurry, and there was a rattlesnake down in the hole. MB: What did you do in the winter time when there wasn't all the farm work to do? MLB: Well, machinery was repaired and harnesses repaired and made ready to put on the horses in the spring time. My two older brothers, Dan and George, went to Eureka and got work in the mines. They were working in the mine when the World War I, MB broke out. They came home and said they had joined the Marines that they wanted to serve their country. So they'd come home to tell us and say goodbye. We took them back down to Orem to catch the car going into Salt Lake City. When they swung their self onto the platform of the car they looked back and they said, "If they get us, I hope they get us good. We don't want to come back maimed or crippled." And we never seen them again. That was the last we seen of them. They didn't stay in the states very long. They were sent to France, and they didn't get a lot of training. And then it went on, and in the early part of June, 1918, we got word that one of them had been killed. My mother said at that time, "Well, I had a dream last night and they stood side by side. They're both gone." And then we went on until the third day of July and we got word about the second one. I remember it was third day of July because the town always had a celebration on the 24th 4th, MB of July and they didn't celebrate that year. They called it off. All of our fun was called off because my family had got this word about the boys. There was memorial services held for both boys, you know, and a United States flag was presented to my mother at this time. It was a very hard blow on her. It was right 48 along then that the flu broke out and the next spring, I think it was in February, that my little sister ... Well the whole town ... the flu was brought into the town. And we all got it, all but my father. But there was eight of us down sick at once, and my father was the only one. He never did take the flu. There was one nurse that come into the town that was supposed to take care of everybody. She came at our place because we had so many down with the flu. People were scared to death to come to your place or do anything. We had one dear little lady that would come and get our washing and would take it and do it. She wasn't as frightened as the rest of them. And people would make food and come and set the pans on your doorstep, but they'd never come in. And at this time my little sister died. Then there was another little girl, a little Boren girl the same age, about seven years old, I think, and she died. That was the only two in the town that died with the flu. My brother, Lee, was very ill at this time. He almost died, but he did make it. Afterwards his hair all came out. When it come in, it come in as curly and pretty. MLB: They didn't dare to hold funerals. They held no public meetings, no dances. People was scared to death to get together for the funeral. We just drove up to the cemetery and sat in our carts while my little sister was buried. That's all the funeral that was held. So it was quite a sad time. MB: So this meant that your mother lost three children in one year. MLB: In one year. It was very hard on her. She never sang her cute little songs after. Our home was kind of different. I remember sitting down to the table and looking up and I could see the tears in my mother's eyes. And my throat would be so full that I couldn't eat anything, and I'd have to leave the table. The night I remember was when Germany 49 surrendered, they called our place. My sister had called central and for some reason or other they got my name and called for Murran Lockhart. I don't know how they had it mixed up with Dad's first wife. I remember going to the phone and I stood there and waited and waited and waited for them to answer and they just didn't come on. I couldn't imagine why they didn't answer me, but the news had come that my brother was killed, so my sister wouldn't tell it over the phone. She just left the phone the way it was or hung it up. And I didn't hear her hang it up. Then they come to town to break the news to us because we lived out at the first of the town, to tell us that our brother was killed. Then when the Armistice was signed why it was called in and said that Germany had surrendered. I remember the janitor of the church. The church was right next to us and he lived just across the road. We went over and he opened up the church and we rang the bell and rang the bell and rang the bell. Well, everybody in town wondered why this bell was ringing and ringing and ringing. So everybody turned out and was told that Germany had surrendered. Alford Ford, that had the little store there, opened up his store and they got all the wood and all the trees and branches. We had had a big street right at the side of the schoolhouse. And they threw all these branches and things and poured gasoline on it and lit it and burned it. Kids built a dummy of Kaiser and Kaiser was throwed onto the fire and burned. They danced and sang around the fire. Of course, the early hours of the morning some of them started to go home and the older ones went home. There was some of the younger ones was left there that stayed pretty much all night. I remember I had two brothers there and there was me and my sister. Of course, we was young, but we would kind of stick around. There was a few actions that went on that wasn't very good. I remember when we got home how my brothers took us 50 girls and said, "Now we don't ever want to see you act like Polly did tonight. We don't ever want to see that. That isn't good, and we never want to see those things." They really taught us a great lesson. I never forgot it all the days of my life. I remember the teachings. I got that night from my brothers. They were very concerned with how I acted because my brother had come home before that. One time when he was in Eureka, the boys had gone out there to work in the winter time when there was no farm work, and they'd gone to do work in the mines. He had a cousin that had opened his mail and he'd had a big box of candy they used to get off of the punch boards. They'd punch these boards and pay 25$ a punch, some of them a dollar a punch, and they'd bring this candy and he'd won this great big box. It fit just in the bottom of his trunk and he wanted to bring it home to my mother. We didn't have candy and stuff like that--boxes of candy. He wanted my mother to have it. And she this cousin, MB got it and he didn't like it, so he taught me a great lesson because he got me and he said, "Now I want to tell you, when mail comes to the house and if it's not got your name on it, that's none of your business. Don't you ever open it. Don't you ever look into the other fellow's mail. That is theirs. And don't go into their belongings and take things. That is theirs and not yours." Of course, he was unloading for what he'd got, you see. But they taught us great lessons and I've never forgotten them in all my life. I've never forgot the things that my brothers taught me. I know when he come home he brought my sister and I a little silk handkerchief. It was all embroidered in colored silk and very pretty. I still have that handkerchief somewhere in my belongings. One corner of it got tore, but I still have it. MB: Going back just a little bit, your mother was given a trip to France, wasn't she? 51 MLB: This was after we moved to Provo and it was about '29, I guess. The government decided to take all mothers and all wives over to see the graves of their loved ones. I've often wondered why they didn't take the fathers, but I guess it was too much to take the fathers. But my mother went with Mrs. Tucker. She'd lost her son and she lived in our ward. They traveled together. They went to France and they were gone it seemed a month or more. They were paid for their way over and tips and their meals and everything they did. Then they returned home. But a day or two before she went, she said to me, "I would like my patriarchal blessing." So we called Brother Keeler and got an appointment and got a blessing. She went over and Brother Keeler's wife was his scribe. He had a little room off from his front room that he and the person that he was giving the blessing to and his wife went in there and the door was shut and the blessing was given. And after this blessing was given, why he came out and he took what his wife had written, and he said, "Would you like to hear your mother's blessing?" And I said, "Yes, I would." So he read this blessing to me. In this blessing it said--I don't know exactly the exact words right now--but it said that my mother would go to France and she'd go in peace and safety and she'd visit the grave of her son and return home all right. And I wanted to speak up and say, "But, Brother Keeler, it's sons' graves" But there was something that kept me still. I don't know why I didn't. I just kept still. I didn't say anything. Then we got home and after we'd been home for a while my mother said, "Murran, there was one thing that bothered me in that blessing." She said, "Brother Keeler said son's grave." She said "I wanted to speak up and say something but there was something that kept me from speaking. I didn't speak up." I says, "Yes, mother, I know. I had the same feeling, and something kept me from speaking." Well, my mother 52 and father had received pictures of the markers of these graves with these boys' names on them. Everything from the government that indicated that they knew just where to go and what to see and all this information was taken with them. So they went over there, but you know when my mother got over to France, she seen one boy's grave and the other was amongst the unknown. They didn't know where it was. So my mother seen one son's grave and returned home. MB: Just like the patriarchal blessing. MLB: Just like the patriarchal blessing said. To me it was a great testimony. After this first word had come or after the second time it came in, you know the first time we got the word that Germany had surrendered. Then later on don't remember just how late it was. It wasn't too long after that we got the word again over the telephone that they had signed the peace treaty. And then again the big fire was made and all of them went out and danced and had a good time. I'll never forget. Well, I guess it was the first time. I'll never forget everybody was screaming and yelling and hollering ... so tickled. I went home and I can see my mother to this day sitting to the table crying. Her two boys were the only two boys in the whole town that didn't come home. Later on at Midway they built a monument where they put all the names of all the boys from all the Wasatch County on this monument; and my mother unveiled that monument. I was there the day she unveiled that monument. I don't think there was a dry eye on that hill. Then at Heber they had a Post and they named this Post after my brothers—the Lockhart Post. I'll never forget those days. I remember I had my little child there and I was with Mother the day she unveiled this monument. MB: Was it about this time that you moved into Provo? 53 MLB: It was shortly after that I think that Mother and Dad decided that they'd take the family and move to Provo so that they the children, MB could go to school. Previous to this, you see, Oreen had had to go to Pleasant Grove to get some high school in and Dan had come to Provo. He went to the B.Y.U. there for a while. In fact, they said that Dan helped to build that "Y" on the B.Y.U. MB: On the mountainside? MLB: On the mountainside. And now that the three had gone, they decided they'd take their family, sell their farm, and go to Provo. And that's what they did--went to 644 North 1st East. And we bought Professor Osmond's home there. Then we lived in Provo from then on. Dellis still lives in the home. MB: So you went to school in Provo for high school then? MLB: Yes, we all started high school. MB: Did you graduate from high school? MLB: I was in high school until it was about time to graduate. In the accident we talked about when we was in the first place, I'd had some trouble with my eye through that accident, so I went to the doctor and had this eye operated on. So I didn't get to graduate. I had to stop school then on account of this, because I went to work and earned my own money to have the operation. So I didn't get to graduate, but I did go to the year of school. MB: Where did you work? MLB: I worked at the Woolen Mills there in Provo. MB: What kind of work did you do there? 54 MLB: I did the rewinding, what they called rewinding. They'd spin the wool and they'd bring it back to us to rewind it onto spindles. That's the part I did. MB: Did you have machines to do it? MLB: Oh, yes. You had to work very fast to keep all those spindles going. You had to keep your yarn tight and take them off and put new ones on. It was very fast work. MB: Do you remember how much money you earned? MLB: No, I don't remember at all. I know I paid for this trouble I had to have on my eye. Then when I had tonsil trouble, tonsillitis, I went to the doctor and he said that I needed my tonsils out. I remember going to the doctor myself and having the tonsils out and he kept me there until night time and took me home. MB: The doctor took you home? MLB: And the day that I was operated on for my eye, too. It was very hard on me. He just laid me down and I just laid there. My sister went with me. Mother was scared to death for me to have an operation and she said, "Oh, you'd have more trouble afterwards than you did before." And I says, "No." And I never did. It was good that I had that done. Then he kept me there in the office all day. Well, I was too sick to go anywhere else. They didn't have hospitals in them days. Then he took me home and I remember at night when I couldn't sleep how I'd lay there and sing songs through and sing songs in my mind and do things like that. I was always thankful for that. MB: How did you meet your husband? 55 MLB: I knew him all my life. We was kids together. We grew up together. As soon as we could date, why I think he was the first one I dated with. Then I'd go with other fellows. He'd go with other girls, but we'd just always go back to one another. We was both married when we was 21. MB: Where was the Boren family home from where you lived? MLB: It was up the valley, more up the valley. We lived right in the center of town. In fact, this store was across the road from us and the Post Office was just down the road from us. And so that was called the center of town. Then they lived farther on east. (Part Three) MB: This is Marie Boren on July 17, 1983, interviewing Murran Boren. She is going to tell about some of the things she remembers about her husband, Eldwin Boren's life history. MLB: The Boren’s lived there in Wallsburg. Grandpa Boren was a very well read man. So was his brothers and sisters—very well read. Grandma Boren hadn't had a chance to have schooling at all like the rest. Eldie and I were kids together. We went to school together, played together. We knew each other all of our lives it seemed like. It seemed like he was always the best fellow I ever had, and I guess that's the way he felt with me, because he'd go out with girls and I'd go out with boys but yet we'd always drift back together and start to go with one another. So we went with one another for a long time. Some of the girls said, "Well, I'd never marry a man from my home town that knew so much about me." And I used to say, "Well, I thought it was quite an honor to know him all my life and then still want to marry me." He was quiet, a good man. We was married. We were sitting on the lawn one night at our place when he proposed to me. We both 56 wanted to go through the temple. I've often thought that in those days you didn't know a great deal about the gospel, but yet you had that desire to be married in the temple. So my folks took us up to the temple. His birthday was on the 30th of May. He turned 21 years old, so then we could go on our own. We was married the 3rd of June. We went to Salt Lake and Mother and Dad wanted to do the temple work for the two boys that had been killed in the war. So we were there in Salt Lake for two days. It took you all day long to go through the temple for one session. You was in the temple all day. Then we stayed there with my brother and when we got back on Friday night to Wallsburg why they had it all planned out for a big dance. They always had a dance when anybody got married up there. They'd get on a horse and go to the very end of the valley and knock on every door and say, "Well, we're going to have a wedding tonight. Murran and Eldie's wedding. Come." So everybody'd come and bring a gift. They'd always bring a can of salmon and a box of soda crackers. That was their lunch. And they'd make chocolate. My folks was up with me, so it wasn't them that planned the wedding at all. They we'd go to this wedding. The couple would get up and dance. Then everybody else would dance after. After you got up, they had what they called the Grand March. You got up and marched around and everybody followed you. Then you danced, and everybody danced. Of course, everybody had to come and dance with the bride. Then we had to sit in the middle of the floor and open all the gifts that was given to us. For a short while we had to live with my husband's people. We had a little room off from the kitchen that we used to sleep in. Later on when they put the water in Wallsburg, they used that bedroom to make the bathroom out of. That's the bedroom that we slept in when we first went there. Then we moved in the old house that we used to live in before 57 we went to Provo. We got that home and we lived down right in town. But the Boren’s were good people. He Eldwin, MB was timid in a way, but he was a good worker in the church. I know the Bishop said to me one time that they depended on him for a lot of things. In the town, Grandpa was always called on to teach the class in Sunday school. His sister, Aunt Ann Biglow, was always called upon, because they really knew the scripture. And Grandpa Boren, after all the children were born, he went on a mission. Grandma took care of the farm and all while he was gone. He filled a mission and he was a very good man. MB: That was to the Southern States, wasn't it? MLB: Yes, I think he went to the Southern States Mission. He was a very good man. He was very good to me. He watched out for me. Then we moved in this place down town and was expecting my baby at this time. The doctors had to come from Heber over to where you were to help you with your baby—to deliver your baby. But I had no one up there to take care of me, so I had to go to Provo to my folks and so we went down there. MLB: Grandpa Boren used to say, "Now, Eldie, if you're going to take that girl down to Provo, don't you stay here too long. You get gone." He worried about me. But before this when we was with Grandpa before we got this house to live in. It was sometime before we got that house. He'd gone to Provo and Grandpa Boren had bought either five or seven cows. He'd paid a good price for them—$100 or more for each cow. They were supposed to be thoroughbreds. When he got home, why one of these cows took sick and died. Everybody felt so bad. They'd say, "Jap, we're sure sorry to hear about that cow." Grandpa would say, "As long as it stays out in the corral, I'm not going to complain. I'm not going to say anything as long as it stays out in the corral." Well, the 58 second cow got sick and it died. Of course, then people said, "Jap, that's just too darn bad. My land, that's a lot of money to lose." And Grandpa'd always answer, "As long as it says out in the corral, I'm not going to complain." Every time Grandpa would say this I'd think ... somebody's going to die, and Grandpa knows it, and so do I. I wondered sometime if it'd be me or it'd be my baby or just what it'd be. And the next cow took sick and died. Again, the people'd say, "My land, Brother Boren, that's just too bad." "As long as it stays out in the corral," he says, "I'm not going to complain." And this feeling'd come over me: somebody's gonna die. Grandpa knows it and so do I. And it went on that way and every one of those cows died. Come to find out, they had a disease and they had to bury these cows and destroy them so that that disease wouldn't go to all the herds up there. But he buried every one of those cows. Then I remember after I went to Provo to have my baby why they told of Grandpa coming in the house several times smothery and choking. Grandma would always give him peppermint tea. It seemed to ease him. Anyway, the night my baby was born, it was the 4th of April 1925 1926, MB , and I had taken sick. The doctors had to come to your homes then and deliver your baby for you. I'd taken sick and the doctor had been there and seen me and he'd said I wasn't quite ready, but he'd be back. He was to a party and he kept going to this party. Then he'd come back to see how I was, and then he'd go back to the party. I was having some pretty hard pains and it was kind of getting my husband down. He walked out on the porch. We didn't have a phone at that time. Our neighbors, the McDonalds, had a telephone. Mrs. McDonald come over, and she was thinking my husband's name was Boyden and my sister's family was Boren. She'd got us mixed up. So she'd walked up to my husband and just said, "Somebody just called and said to tell you that 59 a Jasper Boren had just died." It struck him so forceful. He just kind of went down. He had his arms around the post on the porch and he just went down. He said, "Oh! My poor father!" This scared Mrs. McDonald, and so she come and just opened the door and as she opened the door I heard him say, "Oh, don't tell Murran." I said, "Tell Eldie to come in. I know what's happened. His father died." And I knew what he meant then. I knew that the one that was gonna die had died. I knew my baby'd be all right. I knew I'd be all right. So, of course, he went back then. He went up the next day. My pains had stopped. It just seemed like it stopped right there and I didn't have any more pains for a little while till after midnight. Then they started in again. Then about two o'clock in the morning I had my baby. So Grandpa died on the 4th and my first baby was born on the 5th of April, 1926. Then, of course, they went up, so I didn't get to go to the funeral or anything. It seemed like it was never the same without Grandpa around. Grandpa was always looking out for me. I know one time we went to Provo and we were going down the street and he said, "Eldie, there's some nice pillows on sale. I heard Murran say she wanted some pillows." Then when we were first married, he bought us a stove for a wedding gift. His brother give us a heifer cow for our cow, and that's the way things went. But it was very lonesome for Grandma after that. So all the family got together and they wanted us to move in with Grandma. There was Grandma and Reva left. The rest of the boys and family had all married, of course, and moved off. Grandpa had told Eldie if he'd just stay with him on the farm, he'd give him half of the farm and that he'd give him part of the land down below the creek and they'd build a home. Grandpa was a builder. Of course, after Grandpa died things turned different. There was no more said about the land and there was no more said about any homes or anything. When there 60 was anything sold, why it was divided with his mother, and we just got along the best we could. We stayed there until I was expecting the second baby. I didn't have anyone to take care of me, and you had to have someone to take care of you. So there was nothing to do much but go back to Provo. So I went to Provo. MB: They didn't have hospitals then? MLB: Oh, no. They didn't have hospitals you could go to. The doctors come to your home and delivered you. So I went back to Provo to my folks' place. When I left, I said to my husband, "Well, it's been hard now with living the way we've lived in with the family." It seemed that especially the children or the older ones would like to tease my baby so much and it was kind of hard on him. I said, "It's been hard enough. I'm not coming back now until we have a house. So you try to get us a house. So I went, and my baby was born in July of 1927. I stayed there in Provo. There was just no houses in Wallsburg to buy or to rent. And there wasn't one vacant until Thanksgiving time. So at Thanksgiving time he came down one night after working doing his chores and everything on the farm with Grandma and got me. He'd have to go back and forth all the time. We went up and I had to sit in the car with the two children while he went in the house and made a fire and got the room warm so we could take the babies in. When I got in the house the only thing that was in place was the stove was connected up. That was the only thing that was in place at all. Before we could even put the children to bed we had to put up beds and make the beds and put things in order and everything. We lived there. Then he still went up to the farm, and it was quite a ways to go. He'd have to get up every morning at five o'clock. He'd get up and I'd get up and fix breakfast. But he'd look at the food and he'd say, "I'm just not hungry right now" and “you really weren't just getting out of bed." 61 And he'd go. His mother liked to fix breakfast for him. She'd fix breakfast for him and then, of course, he couldn't take any lunch there. She had to fix dinner for him. Then when he'd come to come home, she'd always fix supper. It seemed like he never was home. I know one morning I said to him, "Now I'll have everything fixed tonight. You'll be home for supper, won't you?" "Yes, I'll be there." Well, he didn't come, and when he walked in, just the minute he walked in, I knew he'd ate supper. And I kinda cried. He threw his hands in the air and he says, "Damn it to hell! What am I gonna do? What am I gonna do," he says. "I went in at five o'clock," and he used to call her Ma, "and Ma had supper ready and I told her I was going home and eat with Murran and the kids. And I went out and milked the cows and done what things had to be done." And then he says he come back in and "they was still sitting there waiting for me to eat supper. Damn it to hell, what am I gonna do?" Well, I couldn't say anything but just let it work out the best way it would. MLB: So in the fall of the year I said, "Well, we'll wait until the crops are all up and I think I'll go to Provo because it's impossible to live alone." It seemed like I was never asked to go there. They'd always kind of forget me. One time I thought, I wonder how long they'd let me sit here without some of them coming and taking me up or inviting me up or something. I had the two babies and I couldn't get anywhere. I tried to go to Relief Society once but there was so much mud and things that I never tried it again because it was almost impossible to pack two babies and go. So I never got to go to Relief Society or anywhere. So I said, "Well, we just can't live this way." Then his brother-inlaw wanted the farm and he wanted to buy it; so we left. When we left we had $35.00 in our pocket—no job. But we went to Provo, and it wasn't long and he got work at the 62 steel plant. He worked at the steel plant for quite a few years. We didn't have another child then until five years went by. We wanted a child so bad, but it just seemed like we didn't get a child. I know my husband and I talked about it. We decided we'd go to the patriarch and see if he'd say anything about it. So both of us got a recommend and both of us went over to Brother Keeler and we both had a patriarchal blessing. But in this blessing it didn't say one thing about a child or anything. But after he had given the blessings and all and were sitting there talking, he looked up and said, "Sister Boren, how many children have you?" I said, "I have two." He said, "You shall have more." And so within nine months I had Naoma. We lived there in Provo; and Rollo, the brother-inlaw, took over the farm and bought it from his mother in-law, MB . Of course, Reva run part of it for a while. We never went back to Wallsburg at all. Then he worked there for several years at the plant that he worked at. Then they wanted him as head custodian at the Paramount Theaters and at the church house. The plant was closing down, so he picked up the other job and worked at that. We lived in Provo until he died, till he broke his leg. He was going out once to buy me a birthday gift. I'm sure that's what he was going for, MB . In the year of '48 and '49, and he got about a block and a half on his bicycle. It had started to snow, and it had been nice and pleasant. And it snowed just a little bit. Then it got real cold and that froze. That made an ice over the ground. Then it didn't snow anymore for a little while. Then it snowed just a little bit again, just to cover up that. But you wouldn't hardly get your feet in the snow. It wasn't very much, just to hide the ice. One day he was going to town to get me this gift for my birthday. My birthday was the 23rd of December. I was teaching Primary that day, and I said to him, “Oh, Dad. I wanted you to help me today. I was going to have my class and I wanted to 63 give the children a treat, and I wanted you to bring this treat to me." He said, "Oh, I'll be back to help you." But I got to Primary, and we just went in to our class to have our prayer meeting for our Primary and our neighbor boy, Lee Knell, come. He stepped to the door and he said, "I'd like to talk to Sister Boren a minute. There's been a slight accident and I'd like to have her come home with me." We was supposed to write letters that day and thank our bishopric and thank our bishop for all that he'd done for us. So I turned around and I think I put it on one of the counselor's laps and said, "There's all the material. The boys and them's supposed to write a letter to the bishop and thank them." I told them what the lesson was an’ walked out. I arrived there just as the ambulance arrived. They'd called the ambulance. But Lee was so cute about it. He just kind of let me have it slow so I wouldn't get all excited about my husband. We took him to the hospital and he had a compound fracture just above his knee. He was put in the hospital bed. His knee was put up on a derrick like, you know. He laid there sixteen days. He was in good spirits and all. The doctors had been in on that day and took an xray and they said, "Well, Eldie, it's coming along just beautiful. All you got to do now is lay there and knit that bone together." And they left. That night we went up to the hospital to see him after sixteen days. But I've left something else out there that I wanted to say. After he was taken to the hospital it started to snow, and it snowed, and it snowed, and it snowed, and it snowed; and it never let up. It just snowed until the snow was up to windowsills in our homes and they had to get up on the roofs and take the snow off or the roof would cave in—heavy snow. It seemed like it never stopped all the time he was up there. Then when it did stop, it was terrifically cold. 64 MLB: Anyway, he'd been there sixteen days and the doctor had told him that this knee, all he had to do was to knit that bone together. We went up to see him that night—the girls and I—and we got stuck. Somebody else was with us. I don't remember who. We was in their car and we got stuck in the snow and couldn't get home. I remember we had to walk back into the hospital about 10 o'clock at night. I had the greatest desire to just go down and look in that room and see him. But, of course, I couldn't, and I didn't go. But the next morning bright and early before 7 o'clock I got a phone call and told me to come quick, that my husband had made a turn for the worse. I had to call my nephew and tell him to come and take me to the hospital. Then I tried to dress, but I guess I was in shock. They just had to put everything in my hands before I could put it on. And they put things in my hands and I dressed the best way I could. When I got to the hospital, I walked in. Everybody was at their jobs and doing it just like they should do. But I knew. There wasn't one that was really natural. They was trying to be natural, but they weren't. And I seen all that at once, and I went to the big doors and started to go in and one of the nurses stepped up to me quick and she said, "Just a minute, Sister Boren," she says. "The doctor'll be here." And the doctor come up to me and I looked up at him and I said, "My husband's dead, isn't he?" And he said, "Yes." It had been a blood clot just hit him— took him in just a minute or two. I know that in my patriarchal blessing it said that anything that I desired and would call upon the Lord in mighty prayer would be granted unto me. I used to think, "Well, the Lord, He sure took him in a hurry. He didn't give me any time to get elders and pray and everything. He just took him when I was off guard." I never dreamed he'd ever go just breaking his leg. But while he was in the hospital he wanted the elders, so he had had the elders come in and pray. They had given him 65 blessings, and that was the greatest comfort to me because it said, "If you have any sick amongst you, let him ask of the Lord." And if he died or he could get better, if he had enough faith, but if he died he died unto the Lord. So I always felt like the Lord needed him and took him because he had had and he asked for this prayer himself. It never dawned on me that he would go. So we lived right there. He was a very good man. He loved his children dearly. In the funeral they mentioned how he loved his children and how he always wanted to do for his children. The day we had the funeral, why the church was overflowing. They couldn't all get in the church house. Now I've been alone for a long time. MB: Murran Elizabeth Lockhart Boren is telling about the funeral of her husband, Eldwin Boren. MLB: I've been alone for a long time. One day after he died I had a dream. In this dream he came back to me and we was walking along talking and he said that he had gone away and that the place he'd gone to was much better and that it was such an opportunity. But I didn't remember the opportunities, he said. I don't think I was supposed to remember them. But he said that it wasn't very far away. But he says it will be a long time, a long time before you or any of the children can come. Now it's been 34 years, and none of us has gone yet—me or the children. That dream has literally come true. I dreamed many times of him. It seemed like there was always a message sometime, or the biggest share of the time, for me. But I don't dream like that anymore now. My mother loved my husband very dearly. She used to tell me that he was as good as any of her sons to her, that he was very dear to her. He used to tell me that if we lived a thousand years we could never pay my mother back for her goodness and kindness to 66 us. When my mother took sick, she had cancer, we'd go to the doctor. We went up there for a while to see a doctor that had his office upstairs. My husband would pick mother up in his arms and up the stairs he'd go. When she got through, he'd pick her up in his arms and carry her back to the car. Many, many times he'd pick her up in his arms and carry her. I know one time when my dad was sick, our child had pneumonia and Dad was sick. He had an older sister and she took sick. She had no children or anybody around to take care of her, and they'd call for Mother to go down there. Dad had said, "Murran, if you'll go down and take care of Aunt Ellen, we'll take care of your children for you. So I had gone down and took care of Aunt Ellen. MLB: But one day my little girl Innis woke up and she was sick. Dad said, "They've come after your mother this morning. Will you go?" I went down there. They wanted me to stay that night again. I said no, I'd have to go home first and see how my child was. When I got home, my mother said, "Well, she's been pretty good. She's just slept all day." It was about 8 o'clock then at night. I said, "I don't like it. I'm going to have the doctor." My dad looked up at me and said, "Tonight?" My husband said, "Well, don't you think you can wait until morning?" I said, "No, I want the doctor." We called the doctor. The doctor come over and he sat there examining my baby, my little girl I should say, and my dad coughed. He turned around and said, "Grandpa, how long have you had that cough?" My dad was never sick. It seemed like never. He said, "Oh, about a week." He says, "All right. I want you to bring your bed out here in the front room. I don't want you to go off in a cold bedroom. I want you to bring the bed right here in the front room where you can keep your room warm. And I want you to go to bed and get some mustard plasters, or you'll have what this girl has got." And I says, "Pneumonia?" And he says, "Yes, but 67 you've got it in time. If you'd waited until morning, we'd a had quite a time. But you've caught it in the very first stages, and I don't think there's a thing to worry about. I want you to start your mustard plasters and work with it." Well, we mustard plastered Dad all that night and worked with him that night—mustard plastered my little girl. The next day here come my sister in. We had a big house and she'd come in. She was expecting a baby. I run out and I said, "Oh, 'Reen, Dad's sick and my little girl's got pneumonia. Do you want to come in to it?" And she said, "I can't ride another minute. I've gone as far as I can go." Anyway, my husband picked her up and carried her into the kitchen while her husband went back out home at Orem to take care of his horses, and he said, "I'll feed the team and be back as soon as I can get here." Immediately we had my husband hurry and put a coal stove up in this big bedroom we had. He hurried and got the stove up and we called the doctor. The doctor come in and Oreen said, "Oh, I can't walk." My husband again picked her up, carried her into the bedroom, put her on the bed, and the baby was there just in a second or two. So we had Dad in the front room in his bed, and I'd made a little bed for my daughter in the front room and we had her there, and Oreen with a new baby in the bedroom. MB: A regular hospital. MLB: We went to bed that night. Well, the doctor didn't leave that night after delivering the baby until 10:30 at night, I guess. I'd said to Mother, "Now, Mother, you stayed up all night last night. You go in the bedroom with Oreen and I'll stay up and take care of Dad." We had to put a mustard plaster on him in the night time about 3 o'clock. I stayed with my little girl. Immediately she began to heal. When I put this mustard plaster on Dad, he just slept on. He didn't wake up at all. Then I had to give him medicine at 6 68 o'clock. I went to give him medicine and I couldn't wake him. I couldn't wake him at all. I went in to Mother and said, "Mother, I can't wake Dad." So we both come out and tried to wake him. We couldn't, and so I run to the neighbor and called the doctor. He come right up. And I also called my brothers and they come right up. He said, "Your father's had a stroke. He won't last too long." Before my brothers even got there—'Reen was in the other room, you see—I sat down and Mother was kind of crying and she says, "Oh, Dad, don't leave me. Don't leave me. I expected you to live with me another ten years before you went." He was ten years older than my mother. "I thought you'd stay with me ten years." Dad kind of started to froth at the mouth, and I just had a cloth there and I sat mother down at the side of the bed by me and took my left arm and turned her face away from Dad so she couldn't see him. Then I wiped his mouth and he soon passed away. I didn't let my mother see it. I just kind of held her head. And then by the time the boys got there, or anybody got there, Dad had passed away with a stroke. As far as I knew, my Dad had hardly ever had any kind of sickness. Nothing more than a headache. But one night before that, a week or so before that, when I was going down to Aunt Ellen's, in the night time when I got up Dad was trying to wipe something off of the floor. I don't know why I got up, what woke me up, or what even made me get up. We'd hung a couple of sheets in the kitchen to dry and dad had vomited, and it had splattered blood all over those sheets. It had gone on the floor and he was trying to wipe it up. I took those sheets off, rinsed them out, cleaned it up, hung them up again, took a big pail of water, got down and scrubbed the whole floor. It was a big kitchen. My mother never woke up. She never knew that Dad had that sick spell, and that was just a few days before he died. So I guess he had troubles then. But that was the only signs of 69 sickness that we ever had, and he died. I think he was 73. He was ten years older than mother. I can go back to Grandpa Boren and say that Grandpa Boren loved to go visit. He wanted so much to go visit his children and stay all night. He used to say, "Mother, let's go down and spend the night with Arch or Ray or one of them and stay all night." But she loved her home and she never would leave her home, never went with him. She would never go on any trips. Grandma didn't like to go, so they didn't go on trips. MB: She always stayed in her own bed. MLB: She always stayed in her own. Later on, after Grandpa died, there was a time that Reva had an appendicitis operation, I think it was. It was some kind of operation. She had to be in Provo for it, so she did come to my place and stay while Reva was in that hospital. She had a big wart on the side of her nose and it grew out there. When she was there to the doctor with Reva, they got to talking about this wart and the doctor said to her, "Oh you ought to have that off. You come down and we'll take that off." I know they went down and they took it off and when she got home, she said, "Well, I'll tell you, if I'd a known they'd had to lay me down, they'd never got that off because I wouldn't a had it off if I'd known they had to lay me down." When Grandma Boren died, we were all there to the house one day before she died. She spoke up and she said then, "I'll tell you. When I die," she says, "I don't want to go over to Heber and sleep in any old man's bed. You can keep me right home here in my own bed. I got plenty of my own beds." So when Grandma died, the boys honored her. They went over to the mortician and he come over to the house and embalmed her there to the house. She never did have to leave her home. They dressed her there and had her funeral. Grandma never went to the undertaking parlor. 70 MB: That's kind of unusual isn't it? MLB: That's very unusual, but he was a good fellow, this guy Olpin, in Heber. They did it right there to the house. Grandma never did have to leave her home. I used to always say, "Well, Grandma ruled even after she was dead." She was stern in what she wanted— very stern. I know, one time when we was living with Grandma right after Grandpa died, my husband always used to drive the car for them. They wanted to go somewhere one time and we walked out to the car. Grandma hurriedly got in the front seat and she turned around and she says, "I'll tell you, I don't give up my seat for anyone." Of course, I got in the back seat and didn't say anything. I know, one time when Ethel was having a baby and Grandma went over there to take care of her. Grandma used to always get up every morning, and no matter how early her folks got up either to go on jobs, whether it was three o'clock or four o'clock, Grandma always got up and she had her breakfast before they left and she always made baking powder biscuits. They always had baking powder biscuits to eat. And this time that Grandma went over to Ethel's, it was left for me to get breakfast. And I just wasn't used to making baking powder biscuits. So I got his sister to come and make them for me. Grandpa said to me, "Murran, don't worry too much about it. You know it took me a long time to get used to the baking powder biscuits. We used to always eat salt risin' bread." But I was just scared to death to try to make biscuits because Grandma made them so good. And yet, when I was going to have my first baby, when I had morning sickness, you know, all I had to do was sit down and look at that stack of baking powder biscuits and I'd get morning sickness. I used to look at those biscuits and I'd get up very quietly, the nicest I could, and walked to the door slowly. And when I'd go out the door, I'd go around the corner where they couldn't 71 see me and I'd run as fast as I could to get to the toilet before it all come, before everything come up. I'd just go like mad. So she always had her baking powder biscuits. Then she made mincemeat pie a lot for breakfast, and they'd fry their pork. MB: Describe some of the things they had for breakfast. MLB: Lots of times potatoes and gravy and then at dinner again. MB: Even a cake on the table, wasn't there? MLB: Well, no, not for breakfast. But Grandma always had all kinds of preserves and they were put in dishes. Then they were put in the cupboard. But when the table was set, the tablecloth was put on and the table was set, why all these dishes of preserves come out and the dish of honey and the sugar, salt, and pepper. They was always put on the table and taken off, you know. She always had preserves, but she didn't make great big batches of preserves. She'd put the fruit up and then when she needed preserves she'd make it. She made a plum preserve that was really good. They had plum trees and apple trees, pear trees. They had some of the best apples. Oh, how I used to like to climb up in the top of those trees and get those beautiful red apples! And, oh, they were so good! MB: What else did they eat? MLB: Well, they always seemed to have meat, you know, their pork. And they had their potatoes and gravy. MB: Wasn't she the one that had the coconut cakes? 72 MLB: Oh, I don't know. I believe she did make coconut cakes. I know every Christmas they'd get celery. We didn't have celery all the time, but she'd get celery and it was always put in a pitcher—just the whole stalk of celery was washed and cleaned and then just put in this pitcher and set on the table. Of course, we didn't have a lot of vegetables in the winter time. But their cabbage used to amaze me because Grandma used to say, "Well, we can't cook cabbage now because it takes a couple of hours for it to cook." They always had cabbage, and then they had their own milk and butter and stuff of course, and their eggs. They had big chicken coops. And they always had eggs and chickens to cook and to kill if they wanted them. That was their diet. But in those little towns, their diet always was potatoes and gravy and meat. You always got them, fixed them always. I know, Grandma thought a cucumber was poisonous or it wasn't good unless it was put in salt and vinegar. They used to put salt and vinegar and sugar on it. I used to kind of smile because I'd seen my mother pick up a cucumber many a time and just eat it whole without anything on it. I knew it wouldn't hurt them. But I know somebody died once, and Grandma said, "Well, no wonder she died. They ate cucumbers without putting vinegar and salt on it." When you was around these older folks they didn't show any signs of affection like kissing one another or anything. But Grandpa always had such a sweet way of sitting down at the side of Grandma when we'd eat meals and his hand always went over and laid on her leg. And that was the way he had of showing his affection for her. He was always putting his hand over on her leg and you could just feel the affection that he had for her. Of course, they wore long clothes. Grandma always had long dresses, long sleeves in her dresses, and aprons. They had "chimmies" and they had a flannel petticoat and then just another straight petticoat over that. 73 MB: Did they wear that winter and summer both? MLB: Winter and summer. MB: I would think they would get hot. MLB: It wasn't always that way. No, they used to say what kept out the cold kept out the heat. Grandma was a good strong pioneer woman. That's the way she appeared and her sister was like that, too. They always wore these clothes and they didn't expose themselves at all. MB: Were they dark colors all the time? Or did they use light colors, too? MLB: Oh, different colors. No, they were never too bright colors. They were pretty colors, though. Then they always made their aprons. They always had aprons to wear. And they made their mattresses of straw and they had a big feather mattress. The feather mattress generally went on top of the mom's and dad's bed. The kids had the straw beds, but Grandma had a big straw bed. Sometimes you'd crawl on those beds and those feathers would just come up over you, and it was so cuddly. MB: Really soft. MLB: Yes, soft and nice. MB: Seems like Lenn mentioned something like that. MLB: And they made lots of quilts. Grandma had stacks of quilts that they'd make up and she'd fold them and put them in the corner. I can see them laying in that corner. I bet they was two feet high. They made lots of quilts. They didn't have a lot of blankets then. They made their own quilts. She sewed her own dresses. They were always homemade 74 dresses. I think at Christmas time Grandma and Grandpa Boren and the kids would all come. We'd all get together for Thanksgiving dinner and Christmas dinner. They got together and ate. They used to that in our family, too. If there was anybody away that could come, they'd come for Thanksgiving. I know once the VanWaggoner man was telling about his family up there. He says every Christmas holiday he got in the sleigh and went to her folks' place. He thought that was just the way you were supposed to treat a wife. But everybody did was "to Grandmother's house we'll go" and everybody went to Grandma's for Thanksgiving. That's just kind of a tradition. They all thought they had to go to Grandma's and Grandpa's. But, of course, after Grandpa died, then it was just a little different. It wasn't too many years I got in on that kind of thing because ten months after we was married Grandpa was dead. MB: Well, you didn't have a car then and that made a difference. MLB: No, there was Grandma's and Grandpa's car, you see. We did have Lee's car once when Lee went to California and left his car, and we had it there at the house to chase around in there for quite a little bit. But we didn't ever have a car of our own. Then Reva got to driving the car, and Reva was a good driver. Reva never married. MB: She drove the grandmother around after the grandfather died? MLB: She drove Grandma around. They'd go downtown every day. Aunt Linny owned a store and they'd go to town every day and sit and visit ... go down when the mail come in to get her mail and then they'd go sit in the store and then go home again. MB: And spend their days down there every day. 75 MLB: I've walked to Primary and carried my baby and an hour or half an hour later they'd come down in the car. Many times when we'd come home at my home when I was a kid, we'd have great big pots of soup. My dad always had corned beef and he'd always kill the beef. He didn't like the pork as much as beef, and so my mother used to make great big pots of beef with vegetables in them and then they used to buy beans. We used to have what they called pink eye beans and she used to cook them with a piece of meat in them. Oh, they were good. And we always had dried beans, dried pink eye beans. In fact, I think we grew them in the garden, dried them ourselves, and had them for winter. We always had beans on hand to last through the winter. We always had this meat so that we could always have soup, because we always had vegetables. We had our carrots and our potatoes in the cellars and then we'd bottle our beans and our peas and things like that so we always had nice soup. And it was sure fun to go home and smell this soup or this big pot of beans cooking. MB: Was there anything else you'd like to tell about the foods that you ate, what you particularly enjoyed when you came home from school? MLB: I should have said that there was always onions put away, too, to flavor our soups and things like that. Then my mother made bread. Land, she'd make, oh, 12, 13 loaves of bread at a time. We had a mixer. It was like a great big bucket with a handle on it. You'd turn this mixer around. We could mix in this mixer and we'd make 13, 14 loaves of bread at once. When it'd come out of the oven, my dad used to always take one loaf, take the whole crust off, and butter that and eat it. Every time Mother ever took a batch of bread out, I never knew of a time that my dad didn't take his loaf of bread, the whole crust off the top and eat it. 76 MB: How often would she bake? MLB: Oh, every few days. I don't know exactly. Just when we'd run out of bread, you know. We had a large family. Always had lots of company there. Seems like if anybody come to town, why they come to our place to eat. And then if anybody come to see you in those days you always fed them. You never let people go away without feeding 'em. (Part Four) MB: This is Marie Boren continuing my interview with Murran Elizabeth Lockhart Boren at my home in Roy, Utah, on July 17, 1983. In the last tape she was describing meal preparation in her childhood home. MLB: Many, many times we've started a meal. But we never made a meal for two or three, even if there'd be maybe two or three around. We always cooked for at least ten; and nine times out of ten we had somebody there to eat. MB: All the food? MLB: Ten to eat the food. The meal was gotten so there was always, always somebody. If anybody come around visiting, menfolks, sheepherders, anybody that might come. I think that sometimes they came to eat. Of course, they didn't have restaurants and places to go to. They had to go to somebody's place. Somebody come in to town, why they had to end up eating with somebody, because there was no place to go and buy food like there is now. Mother made lots of pies—raisin pies. That was another thing that was always lots put away for the winter—raisins. Then she made big cakes. Everybody it seems like used to make big rice puddings and bread puddings. So there 77 was lots of baking and cooking going on all the time. And they were good cooks. They were really good cooks in those little towns. MB: Could you tell me a little bit about the Depression times when work was so scarce and it was difficult for your husband to find work? MLB: He worked for some time at the pipe plant, and then I know the pipe plant was closed down. Then I know I got to working with the doctors. Of course, they was still delivering babies in the homes. It was hard to get people to go into the homes to help them in the homes because they'd deliver the baby and then you had to keep the women in bed ten days. And you had to care for them. The doctors would come every day to see that things was done; but you had to take care of them. So I got to going out with the doctors. In fact, I started that right at the first. Faun was born the first of April and I helped the doctor deliver Faun. Then I had my baby on the 27th of July. That was Innis. So I started back there. So I'd been doing this for quite a while. So I got to helping the doctors deliver babies. MLB: I went out with Dr. Garn, Dr. C. Clark, Dr. Stan Clark, MB , Dr. Cullimore. In fact, I delivered one baby all myself. The doctor had been there and said she'd go until morning, and she didn't go until morning. She took sick in the middle of the night, and I kept sending my her, MB husband after the doctor and telling him to hurry. Of course, they thought I was just a young girl and didn't know much what I was saying. After telling him to go call the doctor twice—why the doctor lived about a block and a half away from where we were—I said, "Oh, Bill, go to his home and tell him the baby's coming." He run to his home and before he got back, why I finally got her to the bed. I had made the bed up ready before that and the doctor had come and said she'd go until 78 morning. I finally got her to the bed and she had her baby. I wrapped it in a blanket and just kept it. And I remember her looking up and she just said, "Oh, Boren, is it here? Is it here?" And I said, "Yes, it's here." She said, "Oh, that's the easiest birth I ever had." I was with this same woman with a baby she had before and she had a Metropolitan Insurance Company, MB nurse then. But she made me promise that I wouldn't leave her. I'd stayed with her and the doctor had come and said she won't deliver until morning. And this Metropolitan nurse had said to Dr. Stan, "Well, you better leave your suitcase here. I might need it." And he said, "If the case is to be used, I'll be here to use it." And he went. But, oh, she'd had such a hard time of anybody I ever knew. Sweat just stood out on her little head, and she had such a hard time delivering that baby. So when she was going to have the next one she said, "Will you help me instead of the Metropolitan?" They'd given up their policy, I guess. I promised to help her. I don't believe that I ever went to bed at night that I didn't ask the Lord to please bless her and that she could have an easy time having that baby. And I delivered it. I had it before the doctor got there. I had it twenty minutes, although he lived a block and a half away. I know the husband come back and seen the baby there and he said, "Oh, Boren, what is it?" And I said, "I don't know. I haven't looked." I was so excited. But he got there and tied the cord. I know afterwards he said, "Well, Mrs. Boren's the only one that held her head of all of us." And I thought, oh maybe I held my head, but they don't know how my insides was churning. MB: Well, did the insurance companies have their own nurses that did the work then? MB: Their first baby, the Metropolitan Insurance had sent out their own nurses to nurse the women. But what had ever become of her insurance or whether they said they didn't 79 have it with the second one. Later on I asked that same woman if she had had easier times or if it had went back into hard birth again, and she said it went back into hard births. I remember the doctor saying to her at that time, "You know, some day they are going to have something for women that has hard times, but right now we don't have the help that we want. But they'll have help some day for you women that has to suffer like this." MB: Did they have shots or anything like that then, or was it all natural childbirth? MLB: Well, I helped give them chloroform while the doctor worked with them. And I helped the doctors deliver 20, 25 babies. I was going out quite a little bit. I remember this one time why I had a small child, and my husband one time brought my baby to me in the night time to nurse, and then he'd take it back home while I took care of the woman. I got to going out quite a little bit to a lot of them. It seemed in the Depression time I got more work than my husband did. I remember him once going down to the employment office to see if they had any jobs. He got down there and they wanted to know all of his brothers' and sisters' names and addresses, wanted to know all of my brothers' and sisters' names and addresses. When they got them all written down he said, "Well, what do you want all that for?" They said they'd first write to all of them and see if they couldn't help us out some. If they couldn't they'd see what job they could give him. He reached over and took it out of their hand and said, "I didn't come down to ask for help. I came down to ask if there was a job I could do." And he tore it up. He said, "I didn't ask for help." So he tore it up. MB: What kind of jobs was he able to get during the Depression? 80 MLB: Well, the doctor was remodeling his office and he went to work for him and he helped. I don't know if it was the employment office. Anyway, somebody had come to him and wanted him to sign that they had got the job for him, and he said, "No, you didn't help me get the job. I'm not going to put down that you got the job for me. I got it on my own." And he wouldn't put it down that way. He was very independent and he wanted to take care of his things himself. We got along fairly good—picking up odd jobs here and there. Then it was later on that he got a steady job again. MB: So the failure of the banks didn't really affect you at that time? MLB: No, no, I don't think so. Naoma was born in '32, and we'd moved in a house just a block east from mother's place into an apartment. There was two apartments in that house. It was there that I helped this Mrs. Merrill with her baby and delivered it myself because we just had to go through a door to get to one another. It was there that I delivered the baby for Mrs. Merrill. We'd waited a long time for Naoma, so we was so happy to get her. That was the one that was born after the patriarch said, "Well, you'll have another." And just in nine months we had Naoma. She was always such a sweet baby. We even had a neighbor that liked to come in and lay down on the couch and watch us. She said that we were such a happy family with that baby and all. It'd make her feel so good so she used to come over and watch us and rest. She didn't feel good. She wasn't too strong. She'd say, "Can I come in and watch you today with the baby? You're all such a happy family here." MB: When was Neldon born? Was it soon after that? 81 MLB: Well there was another one born after that. That was Lyle. Lyle was born and he was seven months old when they got chickenpox and the chickenpox had its complications. Naoma and Lyle were very ill with it. I almost lost Naoma, but Lyle did die. I had the elders in one night to administer to them. We'd gone back home to mother's place. Then we'd went back home because there was chickenpox in the place, and we wanted to get out of it. So we went back to mother’s to avoid catching it. But we got it. It was chickenpox, and the two of them was very ill. We had the elders come in one night and they administered to both children. They told me later on that they went outside and after the elders had got outside they looked at one another and the one said, "Well, the little girl's going to make it. She'll be all right, but the little boy won't." And he didn't. He passed away with this disease—this streptococcus infection that come right with the chickenpox germ. And if the body happened to be in the right condition at that time, they would take this complication. And the boy died. He said this happens once in a thousand times. But I had the two that took it. Of course, Naoma lived, and the baby was about seven months old and he died. Then it was after that that I went quite a while again and I didn't get children at all. I went quite a while and then finally I got Neldon. Within two years after Neldon I got Gordon. Martin Larsen, he was our second counselor in our bishopric. We had called him in to bless this baby. It had got so it just couldn't sleep, just throw itself and moan. That's because the disease had gone inside and was swelling the organs of the inside. There was no way for him to live. He had come in with somebody else. I don't remember whom, but they were giving this baby a blessing. He died right while they were blessing the baby. When I called the doctors, why Dr. Stan suggested, "We knew he'd die, but we didn't expect it this quick." So the 82 Lord had really blessed him and took him out of his misery. Then I had Neldon after that, about 18 months I think it was. When Neldon was blessed and given his name-you see the fathers didn't do it so much then. The bishops and people like that used to bless the children instead of the fathers. Martin Larsen had been made Supreme Judge and he had moved into Salt Lake City. He came all the way down, he and his wife, and blessed this baby, Neldon. And two or three days after he went home, I received an envelope and here was this baby's blessing, word for word, typewritten and sent to me. Neldon has that blessing in his possession right to this day. And then Gordon was born. He was eleven pounds. The doctors used to joke with me. We'd moved into another place then because I remember going over at night time and talking to my mother. My mother wasn't very well then. I did this on purpose, took a bath over to her place, and then I went home. And the baby was born during the time before I seen her again. And so she didn't have to worry about me. I had this baby and I remember we had a girl hired to come and help us. At the time I hired this girl, I said, "Now are you sure she'll come? She won't disappoint me because I have other children." "Oh, no, no. She goes out all the time." But the doctor had come. I got up in the morning and I had some pains and then my pains quit. It was Sunday morning. But I called the doctor and I said to him, "Well, I've had pains and I have a showing, but I'll need you sometime today." I did it on purpose because I knew they went off on Sunday someplace. Well, here he come after a while. He just opened my door and he said, "Hey, Murran, what's going on here?" I was all alone in the house and I said, "Well, doctor, I don't know. I had pains this morning but they left me and I don't have any more." He said, "Let's see what's going on here." My husband had come home and he examined me and said, "Well, we could 83 have this baby in twenty minutes." He said, "Eldie, go get your nurse." There was an older lady that was going to help me with the baby. "Take my car," he said. So he got in the doctor's car and went up and got the lady that was going to help me. When he got back with Mrs. Bennett, why the baby was born just right soon after that. Things were fine. The baby was an eleven pound baby boy. I know, the doctor teased me about it when he went to go. He stuck his head back in the door and said, "Murran, for heaven's sake, keep the doors and the windows locked," he said. "That baby might get up and walk out." MB: Just about big enough to do that, wasn't he? MLB: Yes, he was so big that he said, "I'm afraid he'll get up and walk out." But he was a good and healthy baby boy. And we never had any trouble with him. Then two years from that time we had Jennette, and the next baby after Jennette was born in 1942, but it was stillborn. I nearly lost my life there because I didn't take sick. I just started kind of hemorrhages. I called the doctor and told him that something was wrong and I hadn't felt life for quite a while. He came and that baby had to just be forced. It was just like a pump pumping. The doctor worked with me for a while and then he'd pat my leg and he'd say, "Good work, my dear. Keep going." It seemed like something just seemed to tell me it was up to me whether I lived or not. He'd say, "Okay." And then he'd start working on me again. I'd stand it as long as I could. Then I'd say, "Oh, please stop." He'd stop and he'd give me a little pat on the leg and he'd say, "Good work, my dear. Keep it a goin'." And I said, "Doctor, it seems just like all my strength's going so fast. It seems like a pump pumping my strength away." And he said, "Yes, my dear, I know." And I had had first aid, and I should have known that I was hemorrhaging inside and 84 what was wrong, but I just wasn't thinking in those lines. So I'd say, "Okay, come on." And he'd work with me and he did save my life. MB: Were you bleeding to death? MLB: Yes, I was hemorrhaging. And of course, when the baby was born I didn't hear it cry. And my husband was standing at the door looking at me. I looked at him and I said, "My baby's dead, isn't it?" He didn't answer me. Nobody answered me. He just stood there a minute and I said, "The baby's dead, isn't it?" Nobody answered me. Finally, I said again, "My baby's dead, isn't it?" And my husband just gently nodded his head yes. And then, of course, I started to cry. Immediately the doctor sat down and pulled up a chair and sat down at the head of the bed, and he said, "Now listen, my dear." He said, "You just wasn't strong enough this time to build a strong baby. You quit feeding that baby some time back," he said. "There wasn't enough there to take the two of you through." He said, "Just don't feel bad. Keep your strength and be glad that you've got your other children." And so it was taken and buried in a little shoe box. The mortician and my husband made the little casket for it and put a new little nightgown on it and fixed it up and it was buried out in the cemetery with my other little boy. It took me about a good year to build my strength back. I just was awfully weak for a year. At that time, you see, they didn't take your blood count or test anything. They didn't know. It took me about a year before I could get back into activity like I used to be. MB: Well, you had six living children, too, at that time. MLB: Yes. MB: It was before Gordon was born that your mother took sick with cancer, wasn't it? 85 MLB: Yes, mother was sick when Gordon was born. You remember me saying I went over there the night before he was born and took my bath over there and then I went home. I did it on purpose so she wouldn't worry. When she saw the baby she said, "Oh, smarty you, just pulled that one on me, didn't you?" I hadn't worried her with the baby and then I'd told you I had this girl coming to help me. My mother wasn't able to, of course. And this girl never did come. Her folks got to thinking about it and they thought it was too big a family for her to handle, so she never did come. My husband bathed me, took care of me, would bring the baby to my bed, and then I'd put the bathtub on the bed and laid there and bathed my baby all myself. We never had any help. He helped me all the time and took care of me and took care of all the children. Then I got pregnant with Jennette, and many a time Mother and I was very ill at the same time. So she knew that I was expecting another baby. She would get to vomiting and so would I at the same time. But I took care of my mother. She had cancer, and it was two years before she died. The doctor had said that she had cancer and she'd live for about two years. So we took care of Mother and then Mother died in December. Then the baby Jennette was born in February. So we had buried Mother during that time. MB: Now all the time that you were pregnant, you were still taking care of your mother, weren't you? MLB: I took care of my mother. I would leave my little girl, Naoma, with Mother at that time when I couldn't be there. She would tell me. She would come over home and tell me how Mother felt. She would come lots of times and say, "Mother, Grandma didn't say anything today, but I know she isn't feeling well. You better go over." I had to leave my home and I stayed right with Mother, with my husband taking care of my family. And 86 Innis was a pretty good sized girl right then. But, you know, all the time that my mother was sick, the first months anyway, the first years she never missed a Sunday school. She'd get up, go to Sunday school, and then it seemed like she'd have her sick spell during the week. Then she'd go to Sunday school and meeting on Sunday, although she was that sick. Then when she got down in bed, she was in bed for a good three months before she ever died. I bathed her every day. Her clothes were changed, her bed clothes changed. I bathed her every day. She got so she could eat nothing but a little piece of chicken and a little piece of fish. Then she got in the worst stages of where she didn't keep any food down. The doctor told us to give her a little tea. I'd just take a teaspoon of tea leaves, just a sprinkle of tea, and put in the sieve and pour some boiling water over it and then put a little milk in it and a little sugar. That's one thing that my mother could keep down for a little while. Then it would come back again. She lived over three months with just that food—just that much food. Her body got so thin that it was just like the skin stretched over her bones. The doctor said to me one day, "I don't know why your mother lives." MLB: He said all other people with the sickness she had should have been dead three months before she died. But when Mother did get real ill, when we knew it was the last, we all got together. My sister went to Salt Lake and got my brother that night. She seen Mother was going to go and we come back; and just before Mother went, why she looked over in the corner and she said, "All right, Pa. All right. I'm coming." In life Dad used to kind of prod Mother a little, you know, say, "Well, hurry, Mother. Let's go. Let's get this done," or "Let's do this," and kind of keep at her a little. And it sounded like he was there ready and waiting for her. She said, "All right, Pa. All right. I'll go." Everybody 87 liked my mother. I don't know of anybody that disliked my mother. Everybody would tell how they loved Aunt Nettie. She was very patient, very kind, very good to everybody. Many meals she's cooked for people as they've come in. They used to come from everywhere to have dinner with Mother and Dad. In fact, they used to say that if Dad didn't have company, he'd go down town and bring somebody home off the streets to have company. They always was feeding somebody it seemed like. MB: This is Marie Boren with a continuation of the interview with Murran Elizabeth Lockhart Boren on her life history. What do you remember about World War II and about the time when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor? MLB: I remember standing in front of the radio and heard when it come over that they'd bombed Pearl Harbor and I'll never forget how I felt. I really felt glad that my mother was gone so that she wouldn't have to go through that of sending more boys into the service or seeing more of her grandchildren go into the service. It was quite a feeling. MB: Now, in the World War II they had rationing. Could you tell us about what things they rationed, like sugar? MLB: I remember they rationed sugar and they rationed sheets. There was quite a few things that you couldn't get, only say that they are on sale today. It seemed like I always missed them. I never go there. I don't believe I ever had a chance to buy sheets. But I wasn't really affected by it because I had sheets. I had plenty. Then I remember people coming and asking me 'cause I had a big family, about sugar and they seemed to think that we got more sugar. We didn't use all the sugar that was rationed to us because we didn't use that much sugar. So it really didn't seem to affect us at all. I think that year we 88 had a lovely garden. We had a cow and we was giving milk away. And we was giving food out of our garden. We had a great big garden and the more food we'd give away, the more the garden would produce. We'd give food right and left. And this milk cow gave so much milk. There was Sister Clayson lived not far from us. Her husband had been sick for so long. He couldn't work. She'd had to care for him. I remember her every day sending her child over. I'd fill up the bottles and we'd give her milk every day. As far as I remember, I don't remember of suffering any about food shortage because I always had plenty of stuff in the cellar put away. I always started with a hundred quarts of strawberries. Then I'd put hundreds of quarts of peaches, pears, applesauce, tomatoes—make our own chili sauce, pickles, what not. So nearly any time I wanted to make a meal, why I could go down in the cellar and get what we had and be able to make a good meal out of it. I remember Gordon after he came out of the service going into my cellar. Of course, the children moved away, nearly all of them. MLB: I didn't have the stuff that I used to have. He said, "Oh, Mother, that cellar don't look like your cellar does. If I buy the stuff, will you get the fruit up there? He didn't realize that there was plenty there for those that was home. MB: It wasn't too long after this time that Gordon came down with polio. Could you tell about some of the treatments that you had to give him and what you had to do for him? MLB: I know that it was about this time that the doctors had said to me, "I know what I'd like to prescribe for you. I'd like you to just go on a vacation and rest a while." It was shortly after that that Gordon began to get a little fever. He'd seem to be clumsy on his feet. Then it would kind of leave. I'd seen the doctor's test for polio. They'd ask them some way to duck their head and I don't just remember now. But I proceeded to give Gordon 89 these treatments because this fever would come and then it'd go away. Then it'd come back. I didn't like the way it was coming back. When I'd ask him to do that, he'd say, "Hurts right there," and always run his hands up and down his sides. "Hurts right there." So I went to the telephone and I called the doctors. I said, "Wish you'd come up and go over this child. I can't stand it any longer." So Dr. Stan Clark came up and he took his temperature. He said, "Why this kid's not even got a temperature." And I says, "I know it." Then he looked in his throat. He said, "Why this kid doesn't have any sign of sore throat." I said, "I know it." Then he went on further examining him. He went down his back and he got part way down his back, and he said, "Yeah. There you are. There's that peculiar stiffness." I said that I knew that, too. So Gordon was put to bed and the nurses was called. The doctors did not prescribe your treatment at all. There was nurses that were trained to take and give the Kenney treatment. So a couple of nurses was assigned to my place. They came to my place. The hospitals were full. There was no more room in the hospitals for them. They came and they taught me. They took army blankets because they're all wool and they'd cut them like a great big three cornered diaper. You remember the three cornered diapers? MB: Um hum. MLB: And then they took, cut a couple of those, and then one about a foot square . . .oh, three feet long, and then one thinner, a long one. You had to put these in a great big kettle and you had to boil them for ten minutes and then another blanket, just any ordinary blanket, was taken and cut in these same shapes. Then a piece of plastic was cut in these shapes and you had to boil. You had to strip your child off and they made the bed up so it was perfectly straight. They put a board under him and it was made up 90 and he laid on his back and then this was boiled ten minutes. I had my washer brought to the stove. I chose the bedroom right off from the kitchen. I boiled these ten minutes and then you had to lift them out with a stick, put them through the wringer. I think we used to put them through quickly two times and then I had to take that hot blanket and smack down on his bare skin. MB: Did it burn him? MLB: Oh, no, because your water's out. It never burns if it's wool. I'd slick that down and that was wrapped quickly and then the other blanket or the piece of plastic was put over it and wrapped quickly. Then the other blanket was put on top of that, and then you did the other leg and wrapped it quickly and then you put a piece down his back. Then you put a piece around his neck the same way, with the blankets. Then you left that there. It was the heat and the cooling off that did the trick. You left that. Every two hours that had to be boiled, on and off, boiled, on and off, every two hours. MB: Day and night both? MLB: No. You'd start early in the morning. They had you start at 9:30 in the morning. Your last pack went off at 9:30 at night. I never missed a pack. I have run to town and got what I wanted and run back home during that time and still boiled my blankets and had it on him and nobody else, I don't think, ever put a pack on him but me. I never missed a pack. MB: How many years did that go on? MLB: It went on for ... well after so many months they kind of changed the method. They kept me putting it down his back. But for nine months I did some kind of hot packing. But it 91 went on for a long time. I remember putting them on and I'd get about half way and I'd say, "Well, Gordon, two more," and then, "Thank goodness," or something like that. One day he said, "Mother," ... they put the last pack on and he said, "Mother, it's thank goodness now isn't it?" And he'd lay there, and if I'd go to the store or go anywhere or if anybody would bring anything in (you didn't have many visitors because people was scared of you), he'd listen to what I was doing and he could tell what to tell Jennette to go in and get. He always could tell where I put everything. He could tell by the sound what I was doing. At first, when they first come down with it, they're absolutely put in a room and isolated by their selves. You have to take their waste, their urine and all, into a bedpan and then you had to put Lysol into that and let it set an hour before you even dump it into your toilet. That was never to be brought out. Your instructions was never to send any food out of your home to anybody. It was got through food. MB: Was he completely bedridden all that nine months? MLB: Oh, yes. You kept him right on his back. As much on his back as you could. You'd have to put some of these ... well, I guess he laid on this one on his back... just turn him and lay it there and leave it. It was the heat and the cooling off that done it. He never did get into paralysis. When they first come they said that nearly everybody before they'd caught this, it went into paralysis before they caught it. But they'd get fevers and then not have a fever. Then they'd get like they had a cold again and fever and then not. They'd keep that up and then one day they'd be walking along and they'd just fall over. They wouldn't walk anymore. But they said for some reason I had caught that in the first stages so he never did get into paralysis. His muscles were pulled awful hard. The doctor used to say if it wasn't for these treatments now he'd be an old, old man long 92 before his time. After we'd give him these treatments I had to take him into Salt Lake to see a doctor and he really knew polio. He'd have hundreds of children come in there, and you'd have your appointment time. Gordon used to love to go in there because he always got me to take him to the restaurant afterwards and have a pie ala mode. He used to look up at the temple and say, "Someday I'm going in that temple, Mother. Someday, I'm going in there." He loved to go into Salt Lake. Then I had to give him exercises after all of these. I exercised him for years until he got so sick and tired of exercises he just up and left. When he was about 14 he joined the services. He was a big boy. MB: He'd had all he could take. MLB: He'd had all he could take. He didn't want anymore. At first when he started to try to walk, of course, he couldn't catch himself with his legs. Somebody would give him just a little push and of course he would go over. The children soon learned this. It wasn't long until people at school was calling up or people that lived around school and telling me that certain boys was picking on him and pushing him over. He never started it. Why they just loved to see him do that. I remember one day being in a meeting and I sat there looking out the window. It was a great big window. I could see these boys come from school and him walking along. These two boys had pested him and pested him and I could see them walking along. I'd told them once before if they didn't cut this out I was going to talk to their folks. This day I could see them walking along and pesting him and teasing him. At last they give him a shove. When they shoved him over, there was two got on top of him, you know, I just quietly raised up on my feet and wiggled my way between two rows of seats, went outside and went down a block. I'd watched him a 93 whole block, crossed the road, and they was still on him. I just picked them both up and put them back and I says, "I'm sick and tired of this. I've told you boy’s lots of times that we didn't play this way, and that if you had to keep going I'd have to talk to your folks about it." "Oh, don't talk to my folks." And I said, "Well, I'm afraid I've got to go talk. Right now it's very important that we talk about it." So that night I went down and talked to his folks, told them that I couldn't have it go on, that we had to do something about it, work together or something. I said, "If he wants to come to my place and play with Gordon that's fine. I'd just love to have him." If even the mother would like to come up I'd be glad to have her come up and visit me. They was people that had come into town and they didn't know too many. So after that I about had the mother and the boy every night. I fed them bread and butter and lots of things many nights. But it kept on, and of course, as I'd give him these exercises he got stronger and stronger and stronger. So one day he walked in from school and said, "Mother, so and so (I don't remember the name now) hit me today, and he hit me first. But he said I hit him right back, and he said he was gonna come home and tell you. But I'm gonna tell you first, so there." And he walked out of the house, and from then on he stood his own. Nobody ever bullied him after that. Then it got time for service and people was going in the service, and he thought it'd be fun to go in the service. At 14 he was a big kid. He took his cousin's name and went into the service. He spent two years in that service. They sent him overseas. When he got home he told about more than once the officers saying, "Gordon, I want you to get those whiskers off." He didn't have any whiskers. He wasn't old enough to grow a beard then. They knew he was young and they was just giving him a good time. He said many a time he was out taking exercises and he thought, "Oh, 94 I've just got to fall out. I've just got to fall out." But he said there was a big fat fellow there and he said, "I'd look up at that guy and I'd think, if you can take it, so can I. And he'd go on a little bit faster, and I never fell out once." So I guess he got good exercises in the service. MB: I'm sure he would with all that running. MLB: Yes. MB: Then after he had come home from the services he got his draft call, didn't he? MLB: He was just eighteen then. So he went down and registered up, of course. They was going to send him right back in the service. He didn't want that. He didn't want to go back. So, anyway, he went to Rowan. They went down and seen about it, the draft people. They said, well he'd have to go. I'd have to go with him and sign that he was my son and he was so old and that he'd been in the service, to keep him from going in. And he'd have to have it signed by a notary public. So Brother Rowan, our Stake President, why he took care of things and took care of Gordon and fixed it all up. Gordon had to send these copies everywhere into the service and into different ones to prove that he had served his time in there. MB: Then didn't the cousin get his draft notice? MLB: I think later on, yes. I think he had to. I'm not right sure what happened there, but he did. MB: Can you tell us any of the funny, humorous things that happened with the children? Can you think of any? 95 MLB: Oh, there was one time with Gordon and Neldon. Neldon got to be, MB quite a ball fan. He used to go up to the stadium and there was a fellow up there that liked him. He used to let him sell hot dogs and things. He'd go see the ball games. So they was having a big game in Salt Lake and Gordon and Neldon decided to go. They just up and left, and when night come and they didn't come home why I got worried. They'd gone up there. They'd hiked there to see this big game. Then Neldon had went in to sell things. He said, "I'll go ask the guy to let me sell so then I'll get a ticket for you." When they got to the gate the fellow said you go on in and watch the game anyway. So they went in and watched the big game. Of course, it was late when they got through. They just slept there on a bench. They couldn't come back home that time of the night. Well, at home we was worried. We had the police out. They said they had hundreds of police out all over the state. Anyway, the kids showed up home. We wondered how on earth they wasn't picked up and I said to them, "Didn't any police ever talk to you?" "Well, yes, lots of them." "Did they ask you questions?" He said, "Well, no. We just seen them. We'd always say, 'Well, hi there,' and they'd say, 'hi,' back." So they'd gone up and seen the ball game and went back home. Neldon wanted to go into the service. Of course, I asked him if I had to sign for him, asked him if he knew how to take care of himself. "Yes." "Do you know how to go out into the world like that?" "Yes." I thought, well he'll find some way to go in, I guess, so I let him go. When he went to catch the train he said, "I don't want you to go with me. I want you to stay right here in the house and tell me goodbye in the house." So when he got ready to go I said, "Well, are you gonna kiss me goodbye?" He said, "Not on your life! Not on your life! I don't kiss any girl! I don't kiss any girl!" I didn't know whether to cry or whether to laugh. But as he went walking out 96 the back through the back yard to catch his ride, why I thought, well, if he don't want to kiss any girl, he'll be all right. He'll take care of himself. Maybe he'll get along better than I think. So he went. Both Gordon, well all three of them, Neldon and Lenn, all went overseas. MB: But just at different times. MLB: Yes, at different times. I remember Lenn writing back and saying, "Mother, put plenty of stuff in your bottles." He said, "I've seen a starving Germany and it's not a pretty sight." MB: What are some of the inventions that have come about during your lifetime that have played a part in your life? MLB: Well, I've seen quite a few things take place. Of course not every place is the same. But where we was, why we had the coal oil lights and then it went to the gas light. Then later on to electricity. Then there was the phonograph. When we lived on the farm, I believe we was the first one that had it come in. It played records. It had the great big horn. It was little at the bottom and then it just went out to a great big two feet across horn. That used to play. Now, of course, they've got the beautiful stereos and things now. Then they went to radios. We seen the radios and the television come in. Then we seen silent movies. They'd act, but you wouldn't hear any sound. You'd read about it. Then the talkies come in. There was the ice box. First we didn't have any ice box. We put things in a cellar, down the well, and made believe ice boxes to keep things cold. Then we seen the ice boxes where they just put chunks of ice in the top to make it cool. Now they have beautiful ice boxes refrigerators, MB to take care of things. The wells and springs is where we used to get our water to drink. Of course, now the water's 97 pumped into the house and fixed into beautiful bathrooms. There's beautiful kitchens. All these conveniences right in the house. We used to have to go pump them out of the well or go up to the spring and get them and carry them home in buckets. Sometime I've carried water a block away from the place I lived in. Then there was the sewing machine. We used to have sewing machines, but we always had the treadle. We'd pump it with our feet to go. Now they have the electric sewing machine, beautiful sewing machines. We used to have the churn. We used to first churn butter in a bottle—put some cream in a bottle and shake it until a chunk of butter'd appear. Then we got the crank churn. We used to have our churn and churn it that way or the one that went up and down. Then they got so they took care of butter beautifully. And the washing machine. We had a board that was fixed—the washing board. We'd scrub our clothes up and down on that washing board, get the water in the big tub, and lean over there and scrub the clothes clean. White clothes was then taken into a big boiler and put on the stove to get them good and white, hung out on the line to dry. But now you have your beautiful washers and your dryers to take care of that. MB: Your iron, too. MLB: And then your iron. We used to have irons that the handle was opposite, and they'd put them on. We'd have six, seven irons on the coal stove heating. When we wanted to iron, we'd just snap it on to that iron and iron until that got cold, go back and change for a hot iron. That's the way we did our ironing. Then, of course, later on the iron came out where the handle was already on it and then a little later it was a better iron. Then the electric iron. Then with water in it, so that there'd be steam irons. So it was all kinds of changes there. And of course, we had the wood stove. Then it went to electric stoves 98 and gas stoves. Then the heaters. We'd just have a big potbellied stove to heat the house up. Then it went to furnaces in the cellar or in the basement that you kept up with the coal and the wood. Then pretty soon to the gas heaters and to the electric heaters. Then, of course, there is your Mixmasters. We used to do everything by hand—mixing our bread by hand and beating our cakes by hand. Then we got the little hand beaters where you beat them. Then pretty soon there was electric beaters that we was working with. 99