Oral History Program Maurine Gull Interviewed by Lorrie Rands 1 February 2017 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Maurine Gull Interviewed by Lorrie Rands 1 February 2017 Copyright © 2018 by Weber State University, Stewart Library Mission Statement The Oral History Program of the Stewart Library was created to preserve the institutional history of Weber State University and the Davis, Ogden and Weber County communities. By conducting carefully researched, recorded, and transcribed interviews, the Oral History Program creates archival oral histories intended for the widest possible use. Interviews are conducted with the goal of eliciting from each participant a full and accurate account of events. The interviews are transcribed, edited for accuracy and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewees (as available), who are encouraged to augment or correct their spoken words. The reviewed and corrected transcripts are indexed, printed, and bound with photographs and illustrative materials as available. The working files, original recording, and archival copies are housed in the University Archives. Project Description The World War II "All Out for Uncle Sam" oral history project contains interviews from veterans of the war, wives of soldiers, as well as individuals who were present during the war years. The interviews became the compelling background stories for the "All Out for Uncle Sam" exhibit. The project received funding from Utah Division of State History, Utah Humanities Council and Weber County RAMP. ____________________________________ Oral history is a method of collecting historical information through recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account. It reflects personal opinion offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable. ____________________________________ Rights Management This work is the property of the Weber State University, Stewart Library Oral History Program. It may be used freely by individuals for research, teaching and personal use as long as this statement of availability is included in the text. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Gull, Maurine, an oral history by Lorrie Rands, 1 February 2017, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. Maurine Gull February 1, 2017 1 Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with Maurine Gull, conducted on February 1, 2017 in her home in Centerville, Utah, by Lorrie Rands. Maurine discusses her life and her memories involving World War II. Michael Ballif, the video technician, is also present during this interview. LR: It is Wednesday, February 1, 2017. We are in the home of Maurine Gull in Centerville, Utah, talking about her life and her memories of her time during World War II, for the World War II in Northern Utah project. I am Lorrie Rands conducting the interview, and Michael Ballif is here as well. Thank you again for your time, I am extremely grateful. MG: Glad to have you. LR: Awesome. So, let’s just start with when and where you were born. MG: I was born in West Bountiful. I was born at the hospital though, at St. Marks, June 29, 1928. LR: That seems like an awful long drive from here to St. Marks, or was St. Marks in a different place? MG: It was where the old one is now, but they’ve turned it into something else. I don’t know what’s all in there, but that’s across from the water, the municipal, what do you call it, I think they even had an art studio in there. It’s just on your way into Salt Lake, at the park there. It’s on the West side of the street. LR: So it’s not where it is now, all the way on 39th? Okay, so you grew up here in West Bountiful? 2 MG: Yes, on 5th South and 11th West. That’s where my two brothers had their two friends that lived next door. We were relatives, but not sure how close that Hatch’s were to us. My grandmother was a Hatch. LR: Where did you fall with your siblings? MG: I’m the youngest. We’re all two years apart. LR: There were four siblings, two boys and two girls, and you were the youngest? MG: Yes. LR: What were your parent’s names? MG: Leonard Winegar and Pauline Grant Winegar. LR: Okay, and were they both from Utah? MG: Yes. The Winegar’s are from West Bountiful, and my grandmother was a Hatch. She married the Grant, and my grandfather was married to Myra Pace. LR: Of the Pace family? MG: Yep, it is. LR: Okay. You have very deep Utah roots. MG: Yes I do! My great-grandfather was Orrin Hatch, but I don’t know what the relation to the Orrin Hatch that’s in the Senate. Must come from there, but I don’t know where down the line. LR: That’s interesting, I didn’t realize your roots were so deep here. MG: Well, my grandfather Grant was first cousin to Heber J. Grant. Andrew Grant. So we really, really go deep. 3 LR: That’s great. Can you talk a little bit about what it was like growing up in West Bountiful? MG: In West Bountiful when I was first growing up, we had asparagus on two sides of the house. I used to carry it like this, and take it to my father, and then he would box it and they had an asparagus place that he took it to, there in West Bountiful. Dad hired a lot of boys from around, and they cut the asparagus, and then me and my sister carried it to Dad and he would box it. LR: Did your Dad grow onions, or was that just your grandfather? MG: No, my Dad grew onions and then you’ve got the picture of him. They grew it in the column. They dried it and then they put it in the sacks to send and to sell. LR: So you were very busy working on the farm. MG: Oh yes. LR: What would you do for fun? MG: What did I do for fun? Oh, well, we used to have shower baths out on the front lawn. LR: A shower bath. MG: Yes. I forgot to tell you, after that we had cut the asparagus and all, my mother would make this great big thing of ice cream and then they’d churn it, and then everyone would have ice cream out on our big front porch in the summertime. That was real big fun. We had sheepherders that came by with all their sheep, and we’d run to the fence and watch the sheep and 4 cows go by, they took herds of cows also. It was fun. We lived on a street, of course there weren’t cars, and my sister and I would walk down and we’d pick what we called Johnny Jump-ups, wildflowers, and pick a handful for mother. LR: Johnny Jump-ups? Can you describe that? MG: They’re little purple flowers, and I think sometimes you can see some down here on the frontage road. LR: Okay. Johnny Jump-ups. I have never heard of a flower like that. MG: I know. My children hadn’t either. LR: That’s just what you called it. MG: Let’s see we had parties and I have to tell you this, my mother used to make ice tea, and she would squeeze three lemons and two oranges and put them in the Jewel tea pitcher. Of course you’ve never seen a Jewel tea pitcher, but they have them still, and then a cup of ice tea in the water. We would have that and company would come and she’d always make that or ice cream. LR: Where did you go to school? MG: The West Bountiful School. It’s still there. Of course it’s changed, it doesn’t look like the old West Bountiful School that I went to. We had great big poplars across the street from the school. They must have been rotten inside, but anyway, we would have little houses in the trees. Crazy. Till I was about eleven I would walk from eleventh west and fifth south to school, which is on fourth north and eighth west. In the wintertime, it was 5 just straight snow and ice, and it was higher than my head, the snow banks. My mother always had candy chocolates, and she’d say, “You take this on your way and this will keep you warm.” LR: Did it work? MG: I guess, I don’t know. Who knows? LR: So you went to West Bountiful elementary. Where did you go for junior high? MG: Bountiful Jr. High, and we walked up there too, and that’s quite a ways. LR: I don’t know where Bountiful Jr. High is. MG: It’s on Main Street, right off of Main Street. LR: Here in Bountiful? MG: Yes. On 4th North. LR: Is that the one that’s right on 4th north and Main Street? MG: Yes it is. LR: Okay, I do know that. Then you went to Bountiful High School? MG: Yes. LR: I’m going to rewind a little bit. What can you remember about growing up during the Depression? MG: Well, we didn’t get a car for quite a while, and my dad was a postmaster for North Salt Lake. I remember going over there quite a bit, with the old coal stove, it was a little tiny place down by Cudahy’s. Of course, Cudahy’s isn’t there anymore. That’s where they killed the animals, and that’s North Salt Lake. 6 LR: So where the municipal building is now in North Salt Lake, was it there? MG: Just down the street. LR: Okay. Because you lived on a farm, do you think that made it so you guys always had something to eat during the Depression? MG: Yes I’m sure it is. LR: Would your mother ever can anything? MG: Oh, she had a canner. We used to get great big things of cans, about this tall and just loaded with cans. She canned everything. We had a coal stove, and Myra and I bathed in the little round tub in front of the stove, that’s before we got a bathroom. I was so thankful when we finally got a bathroom and two bedrooms to sleep in, and a wash room. Otherwise, we washed in the little house in the back. It was cold. LR: About when did you get that? MG: I would say it would be a few years before, let’s see, I was around eight years old or something. I really hardly remember, I just remember getting it. LR: And it was the coolest thing. MG: Oh yes, of course. Mother used to take the clothes out and hang them in the wintertime and bring them back stiff as boards. Why we hung them up outside I never understood. LR: Then they’d have to thaw out inside? MG: And get dry over all the chairs, oh yes. LR: That’s kind of funny. So, you were about twelve? 7 MG: I think maybe eleven when we moved up to 8th west and 4th north. LR: Okay. So originally you lived in the 5th south. MG: When I was first born, yes. Then when I was about eleven or twelve, we moved up to take care of Grandmother. LR: That’s about when Pearl Harbor happened, around in there. What can you remember about that day? MG: How horrible it was. It was so devastating. We really just didn’t have a lot of money, but I was so thrilled to move up there, as a kid around twelve, thirteen years of age. I’ve been trying to go back to all that happened, and my brother had started college, and my other brother was still in school. I remember them joining the Marines. Grant would have had to have been in college, and he joined the Marines. All four of them, the two neighbor boys, and my brothers joined the Marines. LR: You’re still not quite a teenager, or you’re a teenager when all this is happening. Can you remember what it felt like to watch your brother’s leave? MG: Yes, and you know mother was upset. We were taking care of Grandma, and I’m trying to think of how many years we were there when she passed away in 1941. LR: Okay, so you moved up to take care of your Grandmother? MG: Yes. MB: If you were eleven that would have been around 1939. 8 LR: You were thirteen when Pearl Harbor happened. Okay. So you were a teenager when your brothers left. MG: I’m trying to think back. Dad farmed up there, because Grandma had farming, and, I’m trying to think of what all went on. I think maybe Myra went up to Hill Field, but I can’t remember, she’s my sister, and she would have been eighteen, she was four years older than I was. I’m not right sure when mother went up to the Ogden Arsenal. It must have been after Grandma died, before Aunt Plyne died. Grandma died in 1941, Aunt Plyne died in 1942, and my mother in 1943. We had Aunt Plyne’s funeral in our home, and Grandma’s at the church, but we had the viewings in our home. I was a teenager, so all I could think about was going out sleigh riding and going to the shows and playing with the kids, and I was finally up where other kids were that I could play with. Down on 8th and 11th West, I didn’t have anyone to play with but my brothers and sisters. I remember I wanted a bicycle, but we never could afford one. I’ll tell you a little story, dare I? LR: Go ahead. MG: I tended children. I tended this little boy and saved my money all summer, and I put it in a little atomizer, that mother had, a little box on her dresser. I put all the money in there because I was saving it for a bike, and she’s cleaning out her drawer and shook it and couldn’t hear anything, so she tossed it in the fire. There goes my bike. I never did get one. 9 LR: Oh, that’s heart breaking. MG: It was. We had a coal stove in the front room at Grandma’s. LR: So did you live in your grandmother’s home? MG: Oh yes. LR: So it wasn’t your own home? MG: No, we lived with Grandma, and of course she deeded it over to mother and dad when they moved in. LR: So that’s where you were living when your brothers left, during the war? MG: Yes. LR: Those two neighbor boys that left with your brothers, did they live by there? MG: No, they lived by 11th west, right on the corner; Clyde Hatch. Their father and mother were Clyde and Myrtle Hatch. LR: Before we talk about your brothers; your mother, you mentioned, died in 1943. MG: She went to the Ogden Arsenal, the war effort, and I think she probably went before Aunt Plyne died, 1941, and that’s where she worked, at the powder plant up on top of the hill, and got TNT poisoning, she and another fellow. LR: Now I have never heard of TNT poisoning. Can you kind of describe what that is? MG: Yes. Well, I don’t know what lead poisoning is like, but TNT poisoning is from the TNT and the powder and bullets whatever they made up on the 10 powder plant. You kind of bleed to death, probably like a leukemia patient. The ambulance would come and get her every little bit and take her into St. Marks to have blood transfusions. No, it wasn’t St. Marks, she went to the LDS Hospital, that’s where she died, at the LDS Hospital. LR: Was she able to work at all after she got the poisoning? MG: No. That was in May. She lived until September, and they literally just kind of bleed to death. LR: Was she home or was she in the hospital most of that time? MG: No, not until the end, she was home and then they would take her for blood transfusions and then take her back home. LR: Did that kind of bring the reality of war closer to home? MG: Definitely. She didn’t want the ambulance fellows to come in and get her, so she would make Myra and I get her in the walking chair and make us pull her out to the big front porch, and then she would let the ambulance fellows put her in the ambulance. Why, I don’t know. She said, “No way are they coming in here to get me and everybody see.” LR: That’s interesting. How did your brothers find out she had died. Were you able to contact them? MG: Yes, and my one brother was able to come back home, but the other was out on the ocean. It is so different nowadays. When we’d write a letter, you’d have to have a, what did you call it? It was private, they only knew the words that we were saying. LR: Okay, so you kind of did a little code? 11 MG: A code, thank you. Nowadays, it isn’t secret. We didn’t tell stuff like they do now. It isn’t broadcast, and we didn’t do that. When President Franklin D. Roosevelt came into office we thought he was wonderful. LR: Why do you think that, that he was wonderful? MG: Well, because everyone was so poor, and he’s the one that did the CCC camps. They used to have a CCC camp as you go to Kaysville, up on the hill, but there’s a church there now. They did everything, worked, forests, and did so many things for the country. Put those men to work. LR: Gave the men a purpose again. MG: Yes he did. LR: Can you talk a little bit about your brothers, and their story? MG: I’m not sure where they first went, cause all I remember is them being on Iwo Jima. Carl came home, and of course Grant couldn’t. It was just pretty sad. LR: So they were both on Iwo Jima? MG: Yes, and they both went to the cemetery because they didn’t know. They knew they were both on Iwo Jima, but they didn’t know if one of them had been killed, so they went to the cemetery and bumped into each other. That’s where the poem comes from. Our neighbor up the street wrote it, and it was in Believe It Or Not. LR: It’s interesting to think about what it must have been like to run into one another there in the cemetery. 12 MG: The only thing I remember Grant saying about Iwo Jima is that at night it was either cold in the ground and hot in the air, so they had to keep rotating all night long, cause you were either froze or you were to hot. Carl didn’t say very much. LR: That’s pretty typical. MG: They didn’t talk very much about the war for some unknown reason. My husband, he was in the Philippines and New Guinea, but he didn’t talk much about it either, I just knew where he had been. LR: Interesting. What can you remember about the rationing during the war? MG: Oh, you mean about painting our legs? Yes, we painted our legs. LR: What would you use? MG: They had a cream or whatever it was that you wiped on your legs. LR: So they actually made it. MG: Oh yes. LR: I thought it was just something you picked up. MG: No, they had something, probably like a sunscreen, I imagine. LR: Would you only paint it up to your knees or so, and what would you use for that black line? MG: I didn’t do the black line as much as some did. That was pretty difficult to do. LR: I can only imagine trying. MG: I didn’t. I just painted my legs. LR: So nylons were rationed. 13 MG: Sugar was rationed. My brother came home hating SPAM. We ate lots of SPAM, even at home, and when we tried to give it to him when he came home, no way! LR: Now with your Dad being a farmer, did he get some extra rations for gasoline? MG: I don’t remember that. It was rationed, that’s for sure. I’m trying to think what else. We used to have a cannery, where they used to take asparagus and vegetables, and I worked there for a year, and I think that was during the war. They’d go along and we would sort out the vegetables and things. LR: Like an assembly line type thing. Do you know what else you would do during the war to kind of help? I’m thinking of bond drives. MG: Yes. I bought bonds. When mother died they gave my brother and I fifteen dollars a month, because of the TNT poisoning, until we were eighteen. LR: That was helpful. MG: I just put them in bonds. Wasn’t very much, fifteen to eighteen wasn’t a lot of money. LR: So instead of saving it, you just put it back into the war effort. MG: Yep. LR: That’s kind of fitting, I suppose. MG: Yes, that’s what I did with it. LR: Do you have any questions? 14 MB: I do actually. So, you move up to your grandmother’s house to take care of her, and you said you were excited because this was your first chance to hang out with a lot of other kids your age because you didn’t have that chance earlier. Then the war happened really shortly after you moved up there. So how much did the war affect your day-to-day living? MG: I don’t think a lot. LR: So other than the rationing, it was just… MG: Because I think I was trashy. I was a kid. LR: I understand that statement now. MB: You’re good. So, do you remember being involved with anything, like with those drives for scrap metal? MG: No. MB: Okay. You said one of your brothers was able to come back home for your mother’s funeral. MG: The youngest brother. MB: Youngest brother, how much communication did you have with your brothers overall throughout the war? Like, how many opportunities did you have to write letters, and did they write very much? MG: Oh, yes we did. But a lot of times, like I told Lorrie, we had to do code writing. They would never let us know where they were. They wrote a code as to where they were, and apparently we had the code. MB: You don’t remember what that code was? MG: No, I don’t. 15 MB: You were in high school during this time, right? Junior high/high school? MG: Yes. My mother died when I was in the ninth grade. When I started going to Davis High in 1944, that’s when the war was really going. I was about a week late of starting high school, cause mother died the week of high school. I was frightened to death to go to school. I was so frightened because I was by myself. All the girls from West Bountiful were all in different classes, and I met a girl that I knew brought cows up the street when I was on 8th west, and her brother worked for dad; Norma Riley. We were in the same classes, and we became very best friends, so, I was thankful of that. LR: So from being scared to start you ended up having a pretty good high school experience. MG: Yes, and I enjoyed it. LR: How did your father cope with everything? Can you remember what it was like for him? I know fathers don’t often talk to their daughters about things. MG: Oh, he didn’t very much. He was the most gentle man, the most wonderful man I’ve ever known. When I started school he did as much as he could, I remember him making tuna fish sandwiches, and they were delicious, for my lunch. So I must have taken lunches to school. He worked long, long hours on the farm. I need to read it, what he did. He was in the welfare for Davis County for years. Mother always worked the Davis County fair. She was in the 4H. She did a lot. I’d have to read exactly all she did, and dad, they were both very active in Davis County, and the church. I just 16 remember him out under the big tree boxing his vegetables to take to market and he’d get up at four o’clock in the morning and go to Grower’s Market in Salt Lake with his goods. He missed mother terribly, and worried about his two sons. We had so many boys from West Bountiful that were killed in action; Homer Bangerter, his brother Ron is still alive. You wanted to ever talk to him, he lives on 8th west. LR: How did it feel to have your brothers come home? MG: Oh, lots of hugs. LR: Can you remember, I’m not so concerned about the date, but can you remember that day? MG: No, I wish I could. I remember my brother and his girlfriend. She waited for him for eight years. He went to college and then he worked in California for years before he joined the military or did he do that after he came home? I can’t remember. We had an Aunt Phalia, my mother’s sister, lived in California in Santa Monica. He lived there and worked. That probably would have been after he came home. But anyway, she waited for him for years. They were high school sweethearts. My other brother didn’t have a girlfriend until he came home. Of course he left school when he came into the marines, so he had to come back and finish his schooling. I don’t know when he did that. LR: I’m mostly just looking for your memories of that time. Do you remember how relieved your father was to have his son’s home? 17 MG: Oh yes, and sad because of these two boys, and his wife gone, so he was thankful when they both came home. We all were. LR: When did you meet your husband? MG: I met my husband when I was a senior and I was hop mistress. My boyfriends were all in the service, and the one fellow that was planning on taking me never asked me, and Ferrin’s folks moved to West Bountiful from Willard. Anyway, I thought what a good looking fellow, I’ll ask him to go with me, that’ll be a shock. So my sister introduced me to him, because she knew him. He was older than I was, so we went to the hop together, and it was lots of fun. Night and day, was the theme, but we had a great big round thing in the middle of the gym, with black crepe paper on it that we put mirrors all around it, so it went around and sparkled all over. LR: Like a mirror ball. Okay. MG: So that’s when I met my husband. LR: How long after that were you married? MG: I think about it now, and I was stupid marrying so young. The month before I turned nineteen. LR: So you graduated from high school first? MG: Oh yes. LR: Then turned right around and got married. MG: Not too smart! LR: You mentioned before that he was a World War II veteran as well. 18 MG: Yes. He was in New Guinea and the Philippines. He was in the service for three years. I don’t think he ever had a furlough. LR: He never talked to you about his time? MG: No, just about when the ships would unload. LR: Do you know what he did? MG: Whether it was unloading the troops, which kind of sounded like it to me. He really never ever talked about it, but I know that the two places that he talked about the most was New Guinea and the Philippines. LR: 1944 was when you started high school, so you were married in 1949? MG: 1947. LR: Wow, I’m getting ahead of myself. Okay. How long did your husband stay in the service after the war or did he get out? MG: He got out. LR: What did he do after the war? MG: Let’s see, he worked at Hill Field, and he went into printing. We had our first baby in 1950, and he and two other fellows that had been in the service, friends of his, one friend of his from Willard and another friend from West Bountiful, they decided to join the, what is it, that you can stay home? MB: The National Guard? MG: Yes, the National Guard. The Air Force national guard. So anyway, they went right to the war. LR: Right, Korea. 19 MG: They didn’t go to Korea, they went to France. LR: But they were activated. MG: Activated, yes. LR: Okay. But that was after you were married, right? MG: That’s after we were married. My son was born in 1950. LR: And he was gone? MG: He was gone. LR: Of course. How long was he gone? MG: Well he wasn’t gone too long. I’m trying to think. I wasn’t well, and I’ve still got this degenerative disease, osteoporosis and scoliosis and all that stuff. Anyway, I was having a really bad time. So the Red Cross had him come home on furlough. LR: That’s always nice; make him come home. MG: He was in France, which was the reason he was short. LR: Not anyplace bad. So were you a stay at home mom, or did you go and work outside the home? MG: I worked at Hunter’s Ice Cream, and I think that was before Lamar was born. LR: Okay, and Lamar is your son that was born in 1950, and then you just stayed home? Okay. So what did your husband do, outside of the National Guard? Was he just in printing? MG: He was in printing, and then he worked for the bakery, DeAnn’s bakery, and then we went up to Vernal for six months, and he was a baker. We 20 ran a bakery shop in Vernal, and then he came back and got into the post office. He was in the post office for twenty-five years. LR: Alright. How has West Bountiful changed since you were a little girl? MG: Oh my goodness, it’s grown. We used to go down skating at the dykes, we called them, when I was in grade school. We used to go swimming, and my very dear friend went down in the water and didn’t come back up. Her father went down in the water to get her, and he didn’t come back up. His father went down, and they all three drowned. Bull; her last name was Bull. It was the saddest thing. LR: Yeah. Oh my goodness. MG: I don’t know if you wanted something like that, but I’ll tell you that. We used to skate down there, when it was ice. We’d go skating down there all the time. LR: Where was that? MG: By the lake down there. Not so very far, because we used to go down and go ice skating. LR: So obviously it had some fresh water in it, because salt doesn’t freeze. MG: It’s called the dykes, so I’m trying to think. MB: Was it like an irrigation ditch? MG: Not really. The Jordan River used to go down there. We used to go down to the Jordan River. But it’s not like that now, there’s nothing that even looks like it, even. 21 LR: So nothing’s the same from when you were a little girl, is that what you’re saying? MG: Yes. Now they have a golf course there, and buildings to go down 5th south. There’s a gas station where the Hatch’s lived on eleventh west. Our home was the next one, and they made that one into a, where you take your stuff and put it in lockers. MB: Storage units. MG: Storage unit. The house, I think, is still there but doesn’t look like our place did. It’s all built up down there. We used to go down to the gun club, is what we called it, and they used to shoot ducks and our friends lived down there; Kimbers. We used to go down there and ice skate in the winter because they had a little pond. Then it used to snow so bad that their children had to walk up to our house and stay with us to go to school because they couldn’t go up and down that road. Don’t know how they ever got up there, really. Sometimes when it was really, really bad they would come up here and stay. That’s when we lived on 11th west, going down to the gun club, is what we called it. LR: I just have one final question to ask. How do you think World War Two changed you? MG: Well, I think back at school, and I was up to Pine Crest when the war ended. Our mutual class, was up at Pine Crest. LR: Where is Pine Crest? MG: You know where the zoo is, up that canyon? 22 LR: Emigration Canyon? MG: Emigration Canyon; its way up there. We used to walk down to Hotentot, which was right across from the zoo, and we used to rent horses and ride them up and down the canyon. LR: That’s cool. So you were up at Pine Crest when the war ended. How did you hear about it? MG: Oh, they came up. LR: It was such a big deal they came up and told you? MG: Yes. One of the girls came home because her boyfriend was home. But we stayed. We didn’t come home. So we didn’t get in the big celebration. All I can think about was President Roosevelt. We loved that man and he did so much for the country. I think back on all the things he did, and what we thought of him. Of course, he served four terms, so that was my life. But we didn’t have much. When my mother went to work, was the first time they’d ever been out of debt in their life, and then she passed away. It was kind of a jolt, because she was able to buy a few things and put some pretty curtains on the windows, otherwise we wouldn’t have ever had them. She bought a new table that the leaves came up and I just think of a few things like that. She went to work for the war effort, and she was gone. She didn’t last very long. I don’t know how long she worked before she got the TNT poisoning, because I’m not sure how long she had been there. LR: Is there any other story you’d like to share before we turn off the camera? MG: Oh there’s so many to share. 23 LR: What was the first one you thought of when I asked you that question? MG: Of walking. We walked and walked. You know, kids don’t do that so much anymore. LR: Right, so you walked everywhere you went? MG: Oh yes, I’ll have to tell you this story. We used to walk up to Bountiful to the show house at this time. We’d go in a group, because there were about six or seven of us, and we would all walk, and my boyfriend would walk on the sidewalk and we’d all walk on the road. He was so bashful he wouldn’t walk with us. That’s when Fidel’s had their little shop up there, and I think of Bountiful Drug. We used to get off the bus and have a Coke and a meat pie. I would have a meat pie, but the others wouldn’t have a meat pie because they were going home to dinner. I wasn’t going home to dinner; my sister and I had to do the cooking and washing, and we did the washing out on the porch. I told you about the fire. My one friend came to live with me before her mother got remarried, so Jackie lived with me, and we were out washing the clothes, and we took the garbage out. They used to put the garbage out in a big barrel with holes in the bottom for the air. Anyway, we didn’t know that dad had put the barrel close to the garage, so we took it out and lit it. Of course, the garage caught on fire. Dad was clear at the bottom of the field and came running as fast as he could, yelling. Of course we’d called the fire department and the women, we had a trough, that’s where we washed the vegetables and stuff, they scooped all the 24 water they could and rushed it to the garage, and Jackie and I took the laundry water out, and we had it out practically before the fire engine ever got there. So then the boys that were in the service wrote me letters, “You were out there smoking your cigarettes, that’s how it caught fire, we know.” They used to call me spindle legs, that’s what they used to call me. Oh, dear, those stories. LR: They’re fun. So it sounds like after your mother died, you and your sister took over her chores and her duties. MG: Oh yes. We cleaned house. She taught us very well when we lived on 8th west, because we used to clean the pan cupboard out every week. We’d put the pans in and it would make it black, so we would clean it out every Saturday. She was a fussy lady. She worked hard all her life. She was forty-two when she died in 1943. LR: That’s my age. I’m trying to imagine what that would be like. MG: Well we slept upstairs and it was ice cold, so we always took a hot water bottle to bed with us, or a covered brick to keep warm. It was still so cold upstairs. No heat. LR: Yeah the coal stove was the only thing that heated the house and that was right down where it was. MG: That’s right. LR: Any other stories? MG: Oh, I think you’ve heard enough. I can’t think of them. 25 LR: Well, if you’re sure. Cause I’m enjoying the stories. They’re good stories. Did you have any other questions? MB: No, I’m good. MG: Oh, that was our life. We had a Kermis in our ward. LR: What’s a Kermis? MG: It explains it in that book too. But it was the most fun, that’s what we looked forward to all our lives. We had programs, and we had dances, and this is something I have to tell you. The dances we used to have, they would bring the military men and we would dance with them. We thought that was wonderful. MB: I bet they thought it was wonderful. MG: Yes. The Kermis had a tent, it had to have been as big as this house; it was huge. It was from one end of the amusement hall to the other. We had bake sales, games, and all the food you could eat, any kind of food. LR: Now, was this during the war? MG: It was during the war, before the war. LR: So this was just an event that took place in Bountiful. MG: West Bountiful, and everyone would come from across Davis County. LR: Okay. Kind of like a fair, in a way? MG: Yes. They used to auction off quilts and I can’t remember what else they used to auction off. But then they thought, “You can’t do auctioning,” so they quit that at the very last, but I don’t know why, because it was just for a quilt or something. But it was so fun. My mother used to make the most 26 delicious chocolate cake, and my aunt made delicious cherry pies. The event lasted for years. LR: Now what was it called again? MG: Kermis. The tent was huge, and they used to have programs; they’d have programs at a certain time. MB: So was that organized by the county or the church? MG: Kermis, I don’t know if it was done by the West Bountiful Ward or the West Bountiful Stake. LR: Something about West Bountiful put it together. MG: It was probably the ward. LR: Okay. So every time I ask you if you have another story, you have another story. MG: As I sit here, I remember. LR: That’s not a criticism, you keep sharing some really good ones. MG: Some funny ones. LR: They’re all good.