By Zelma Simmons Hunt

I was born in Logan, Utah to Frederick William and Maretta Althea Simmons on March 16, 1906.

My father and mother lived in the small farming community of Beaver Dam, Utah which was 9 miles west of Logan, Utah.  I was the youngest of 6 children.  Their first child, a girl named Estella, died at the age of 6 weeks with Spinal Meningitis.  Then came Frederick Edwin, Clarence Wight, Cleon, Musetta, and myself.

My mother had a midwife for the birth of 4 of her children, but my father decided she should have a doctor for the birth of my sister and me.  My father did not like to live in a rented house, so he bought a little house in Logan where my sister, Musetta, was born.  When my mother was able to go back to the farm, he sold the house in Logan.  Three years and four months later he did the same thing over again. We lived in Logan until I was six weeks old and I was blessed and given the name of Zelma by a brother Smith.

We remained in Beaver Dam for about two years after I was born.  Then my father and his brother, George, decided to go to Bend, Oregon and take up homesteading.  They cleared land, planted and raised beautiful crops for one year, then sold out and went back to Beaver Dam with about $5,000 each.

Just before my brother Clarence was born, mother's sister died and left a family.  The father was unable to take care of the smaller ones, so Mother and Dad took a girl named Charlotte to live with us.  I think she was about 12 when they took her, and they called her Lottie.  She was always like a sister to us.  She was with us in Bend, Oregon.

As soon as my father got back to Beaver Dam he began to look for another farm to buy.  He still owned the one up creek, but wanted more land.  Beaver Dam had a big gulch that went the length of it, and all the homes were on each side of the gulch.  There was a creek in the bottom of the gulch.  The people were called upcreekers or down creekers.  The place Dad bought was in the center, so we didn't have a name.  The house was a big two story red brick with lots of lacy woodwork on it.  The rooms were large.  The yard was beautiful, three big lawns around the house, a stream of water ran down two sides of the place, a big orchard with every kind of fruit tree, a large garden spot, a granary, barn and buggy shed.  The out house was surrounded on one side by tall poplar trees which shaded the house and lawns.  The orchard was grassy with bunches of hollyhocks growing here and there.  Our place was separated from the road to lower Beaver Dam by this deep gulch.  The beavers had built a dam, so the men of the community put in a cement dam there.  It was up at the head of our orchard.  It was used for irrigation for many of the farms.

The spillway from the dam dropped about 25 feet into the gulch.  Trees were growing up in the gulch, and the water from the spillway made a nice little stream which meandered on down to Bear River Canyon which was about two miles from our place.

It was by this spillway that I spent many hours playing in the summer.  On a hot day it was so cool down in there with the spray from the water as it dropped from the spillway.  The banks in some places were sloped so it was easy to get down into it.

It was there in this little community I had a very happy childhood.  There were about 25 families that lived up and down this gulch.  I can't tell about my life without telling about the people who lived here, for they were as much a part of it as I was myself.  They built the church on a little hill above our orchard, and the school house was across the road from us.

My father, Grandfather, and my uncles helped build the church which still stands and has been put on the register as an old landmark and will never be torn down.  It is made of stone, and is a beautiful little chapel with a grove of trees below it where we gathered for community parties.  Everyone belonged to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and were like one big family.  Everyone in the ward called my mother "Aunt Rett."  We were taught to either call everyone Aunt or Uncle or Brother and Sister.  Aunt Kate and Uncle Jode (who were no relation) lived up creek about 1/4 of a mile.  They had a girl my age and one Musetta's age.  Their names were Melba and Blanche.  They were our dearest playmates.

Now I have given you a picture of the people and my surroundings.  I will start back now to the time my father bought the place.  I was too young to remember everything that was done or said, but have heard my mother tell about it many times.

One day my father asked my mother if she thought if he should die if she and the boys (who were then 11, 14, and 17, my sister 7 1/2 and I was 4) would run the farms.  She laughed at him and told him not to talk like that.  But soon after that he took sick with a fever and was dead four days later.  He died two weeks before my 5th birthday.

I still remember the night he died even though I was so small.  My sister and I were asleep in the room next to their bedroom.  He was in so much pain we could hear him scream.  Mother said his last words were, "My poor little girls."  He loved us all, but we were the youngest, and he thought we needed him more, I guess.

He was laid out on two long boards with a sheet under him and one over him.  His face was covered.  My mother sent us into the room to get something out of the dresser which was by his head.  I remember holding onto Musetta's dress as she was opening the drawer and peeking out around her at him.  I remember to this day seeing his black hair showing from under the white sheet.  There weren't any mortuaries in those days, so people took turns sitting up with the dead until they were buried.  It was always two women and one man.  They had to go in every hour or so and wring cloths out in saltpeter and water, and put it on the face and hands to keep them from going dark.  This was done right up to the time they were dressed and put in the coffin.  Then all the grown people of the ward came and marched around and looked at him.  The casket was put in the center of our living room.  It was then closed and taken up to the church for the funeral.  He was buried in the cemetery on a hill across the road from our house.  There wasn't any grass in that little country cemetery and they made huge mounds of dirt on the grave.  It seems like everyone planted a yellow rose bush by the family plot, and sometimes the bushes covered the grave and marker.  One had to push the branches away to see the name.  Now that cemetery is in lawn and the yellow roses and the big mounds of dirt are gone, too.

[Zelma often said that her mother disapproved of the big mounds of dirt.  People were shocked when she had her husband's grave leveled out and planted grass over it.  The children were assigned to carry water to the grave site to water the grass—the only green spot in the cemetery.—JEK]

My mother was very grief stricken.  It took her a long time to get over it.  I remember her standing making a cake or pie, and she would stop and stare out the window for 5 or 10 minutes, it seemed.  I was the only one at home with her because the rest were in school.  The boys would tell me when they left not to leave mother alone, so I didn't go out to play, and the days were very long for me.  I turned 5 one week after Papa died, and Mother didn't even make me a cake.  I was feeling kind of sad about the whole thing, then in the afternoon someone knocked on the door.  I ran to open it, and there stood Sadie Hansen, a very lovely lady who lived about two miles from us.  Her birthday was the same day as mine.  She had walked all the way with a big cake and some paper dolls for me.  She said "happy birthday to my little birthday girl."  I had never had paper dolls before, so I was thrilled to death with it.  While I played with them, she talked to mother.  She stayed all afternoon.  I heard her say, "Rettie, I want you to come out to church and socials."  She gave mother quite a talking to.

Later on in the spring, my Aunt Eva, mother's sister, came over from Malad and stayed with us for two or three weeks, and by the time she left, things had settled down a bit.

The last of summer the bishop called brother Fred on a mission.  That left Clarence and Cleon to run the farms.  The reason for this was that Fred was very hard to handle, so Bishop Johnson thought it would help mother out, which it did, but it put quite a load on my younger brothers.  They planted the wheat in the spring, and it was a very good crop.  Mother went to Salt Lake to see Fred off to the southern states.  Before she left she hired a woman to come stay with us and cook for the threshers.  It was very hot weather.  We had pulled the beds under the windows so it would be cooler.  We didn't close them when we left to go up creek.

Aunt Kate Johnson was having a baby, and old Dr. Walk, the country doctor who had moved there from the South, stepped to the door and said, "Jode, we are going to have a tornado.  If you have any stock, be getting it in shelter."  Uncle Jode laughed at him and said, "We don't have tornadoes here."  The doctor said, "Well, you're having one today.  I'm from the South and I know."

What a storm!  My brothers were working in the fields with the rest of the threshing crew, and they unhooked the horses and ran for the barn.  My cousin didn't make it, but he crawled in the feed hole of the threshing machine and was saved.  The wind was terrible, and with it were big chunks of ice frozen together as big as oranges.  It killed horses and animals that were not in shelters.  The woman that was with us took us down in the cellar and prayed all through the storm.  When it was over there wasn't any grain to thresh.  We had cut a field on the lower farm, so we had enough grain for our bread for a year.

When we went back to the big house there were 18 windows broken out of it.  Our beds were filled with ground glass.  We had to throw most of the bedding away.  It also took all the windows out of the church.  It tore a lot of trees up in our orchard, and one big box elder tree was split down the middle.  Half of it went over the gulch.  It didn't die.  It was called the hail tree after that.  The limbs were about three feet off the ground and made a wonderful place to sit and bounce up and down on.  I have fond memories of that tree, for I spent many hours playing in it.  My sister and I took an old crib mattress, and put it on the big branches.  I'd lie on that and gaze up in the sky and watch the clouds and the birds.  I can still smell the blossoms in the orchard.

My mother was coming home from Salt Lake after seeing Fred off on his mission the day the storm hit.  Two men were sitting across the aisle from her on the train, and she heard them talking about a terrible storm that had hit Beaver Dam.  One of them said, "I guess it destroyed all the crops, and you know that big red brick house?  I think a Simmons owns it now.  They say it took every one of the windows out of it, and also the church above it."

The women worked hard to get the glass swept up and beds taken care of.  There was glass everywhere, downstairs and up.  The boys went to meet Mother at Collinston.  When she saw what had happened, she sank into a chair and began to cry.

In less than six months Mother had lost her husband, sent a boy on a mission, had all the windows broken out of her house, and lost all the crops she had planned to live on the coming year.  We never did get over the loss.  It seemed like we were always poor after that.  Mother had to go to Logan and borrow money from the bank to live on until our crops were harvested the next year.

The winter was long and cold.  Mother and I were alone so much because of school.  The wind howled around the house.  The snow drifted and formed big hills of snow around the windows.  Mother was very lonesome on these days.  As small as I was, I tried very hard to make her happy by doing little things I thought would please her.  Many times that winter they had to close school because of the storms.  I thought this was great fun.  We played games and sometimes made taffy candy and popped corn.  The long evenings were spent around the big kitchen stove, reading books.  Mother's eyes were very poor, so the boys took turns reading aloud to us.  I was too young to understand the book they read and would become very sleepy, but was afraid to go upstairs alone to bed.  Mother would say, "Zelma, go to bed."  I'd say, "I like this book."  They would all laugh at me and I would end up with my head in Mother's lap fast asleep.  We always woke up with ice across the top of the quilts where we breathed.

We had a nice parlor.  It was a large room with white lace curtains, a flowered carpet, a green plush sofa with a head rest on one end, a secretary (I think they called them that) in red mahogany, a settee, a rocker and a big chair all in green plush, and a piano.  The heating stove was black, with lots of shiny steel on the sides and top.  There were big pictures in big beautiful frames of Grandmother and Father and uncles and aunts.  Everywhere you moved in the room they stared down at you.  It made me feel like I couldn't get into any mischief.

We didn't get to go into the parlor too much in the winter.  Sundays and holidays were mostly all.  Then Mother would take the coals from the cook stove, put them in a bucket and carry them in the front room and put them in the heater.  She'd then add a little more coal, and soon the room was nice and warm.

At Christmas time the tree was put in the southeast corner of the room, and decorated with cranberries and popcorn and chains made from art paper colored green and red with crayons.  They let me color the paper and the rest did the pasting.  That winter Mother went to Logan and brought home some tinsel and a few ornaments.  (I still have one of the ornaments that hung in that parlor on our tree).  Then we put the candles on.  They were red, green, blue, pink and white.  They were put in little holders of tin with a little clamp to hold them on the tree.  We hung our stockings by the tree on a chair or tacked them to the window sill.  Christmas eve the boys would get a bucket of water ready for fear of the tree catching on fire, and Mother would light the candles.  This was a beautiful sight to see.  Then Mother would read "The Night Before Christmas" to us.  Then Musetta and I had to go to bed so Santa could come.  The first year after Papa died, Aunt Alice spent Christmas with us.  She had lost her husband, too.  She had a little girl the age of Musetta.  In Beaver Dam the church always held a children's dance on Christmas day and gave everyone a sack of candy and nuts.  Then the grownups had a dance at night.  Aunt Alice was a very good seamstress and made the three of us new dresses to wear to the dance.  That year on Christmas eve they put Musetta, Josie (Aunt Alice's girl), and I all in the same bed.  It had a big feather tick on it and white spread.  I felt just like the children in "The Night Before Christmas."  I was nestled all snug in my bed between Musetta and Josie.  Our stockings had been hung with care with our names on them.  I guess I must have gone to sleep, but out on the southeast corner of the lawn by the front porch I heard a clatter.  I looked out the window and there I saw Santa and his reindeer.  I could show you the very spot where they stood to this day.  There never was a Christmas like that.  Santa brought the three of us doll beds and dolls and a story book and of course lots of candy and nuts.  That afternoon we went to the children's dance, and everyone said we had the prettiest dresses at the dance.

Through tears Mother made the usual big three layer cake.  The first layer in a milk pan, the next in a little smaller pan, and the last in a still smaller pan.  It was full of fruits and nuts, and the icing was white with all colors of cake candies.  We found Mama and Aunt Alice crying a lot that Christmas, but still I think of it as being a very special Christmas.  It was fun having Josie there.  They stayed a long time with us that year, and Mother was glad to have her there.

When Fred came home from his mission, he changed things.  The pictures in the living room were replaced with new ones.  The ones of the relatives were stored away upstairs in the closet.  Mother didn't like this so well, but Fred always got his way with things.  I can't help but say I liked the new ones better.  They were Cupid awake and Cupid asleep.  They were in the same wooden frames with two oval pictures of two beautiful children.  One had her arrow ready to shoot, and the other holding hers, sound asleep.  Another picture was the Madonna and her child.  Another was of a knight in armor with his horse.  They were all classics.

Fred changed things in many ways.  He had lots of parties at our house, and I was allowed to stay up and watch for awhile.  When Papa was up in Bend, Oregon, he killed a big black bear.  He had a rug made out of the hide.  The head was stuffed.  It had eyes and ears and even claws on the feet.  Every party Cleon or Clarence would put it on their backs, tie the legs to their arms and legs and crawl in the front door.  The girls would scream and run.  Every party this was repeated, and every time the girls went wild.  I took many naps on that old bear hide.  The winter was so cold, the snow would drift, then crust over until the team and bobsled couldn't be driven over them.  This was when the coasting parties would begin, and Fred was always the one to get them started.  Most of the ward would turn out.  The hills on Uncle Jode's place (which were back of the church) were perfect for coasting.  The women would make hot chocolate at the church, and when they got too cold, they would come in and get warm.

My brother Cleon always entertained us on long winter evenings.  He put on plays.  We had a large closet off the kitchen, and this was his dressing room.  The stage was a portion of the kitchen.  Sometimes I was in a play or two.  His costumes were everything from long winter underwear to mother's dresses and hats.  He was always the one to make everyone laugh.  Fun like this was greatly needed that winter.

Mother had bad days and nights.  One morning she got up and I could hear her downstairs telling Clarence what had happened that night.  She said she was lying in bed awake waiting for Clarence to come home.  (He had gone down to Uncle Albert's house to visit his Cousin Tom).  When she heard someone coming upstairs, she said, "Is that you, Clarence?"  Then the voice of my father said, "No, Rett, it is me."  She said he came in the room and went to my sister's and my bed and looked down on us, then turned and came to her bed, then disappeared.  Clarence said, "Oh, Ma, you were dreaming," but he couldn't convince her of that.  She would never sleep in the bedroom downstairs where Papa died.  She moved in with Musetta and me.  When it went to 20 or 30 degrees below, she would sleep with us.  It kept us all warmer.  I was always glad to be there when the coyotes howled.

On Sundays after Sacrament Meetings, which were held at two o'clock, she would come home and take the coals from the kitchen stove and put them in the heater in the parlor stove.  It was great to go in the parlor for the afternoon and evening.  Mother would play the piano, and we would sing.  Mother played by ear.  We always had lots of good apples to eat and corn from the summer garden to pop.  I liked to pull the bear hide rug up in front of the heater, lie down and listen to the grownup people talk.  Lots of times we would have company come.  We would all jump with joy when we saw a buggy stop at the gate.  I thought it was neat to listen to the ladies talk, but sometimes they would whisper something to Mother about some woman in the ward that was going to have a baby, and this was a deep dark secret.  The children never were supposed to hear this, but I usually had good ears and couldn't wait to tell Melba about it.

That winter passed and the days began to lengthen.  The big drift of snow gradually melted and left the hills behind the school house bare.  This was when the sego lily bulbs perked up out of the ground.  It was at this time we would sharpen a piece of wood, and dig sego bulbs to eat.  To us this was a big treat.  The kids would put them in their pockets, and eat them at school when the teacher wasn't looking.  There were four grades in each room and one teacher for each room, so when he was busy with the other grades, we could do lots of things.

Later the grass turned green.  The robins and blackbirds returned to built their nests.  It was on a morning like this, I was turning the washing machine.  Mother made us turn the batches of clothes before we went to school.  This washer had a wooden tub with a handle that pushed back and forth which turned the agitator.  I was taking my turn that beautiful spring morning.  The washer was pushed out on a platform in nice weather so Mother could put a hose on it and empty the water out on the ground.  The blackbirds were trilling and I was filled with the joy of it all while looking out over the pastures greening up.  All the while I didn't notice the washer moving towards the edge of the platform and finally the big crash!  The white clothes, washer, and all mixed with dirt on the ground.  Two metal bands that held the slats that made the tub were all in pieces.  Needless to say, I was not very popular with my mother for a while.

I don't know why I remember this spring so plainly, unless it was because of the sad winter that had passed, and the previous summer we had the big storm, but it was especially beautiful to me.  The ice was melting on the dam, the water in the flume was dropping again into the gulch.  I went up into the orchard and along the ditch banks.  The buttercups were showing their little yellow faces, and I thought I would burst with all the wonders of the new life unfolding before my eyes.  I went to the bank of the gulch and decided to take our path down to the bottom.  I sank in mud up to my shoe tops, which buttoned up to the calf of my legs, and even onto my black wool stockings Mother had knit for me.  I made it to the stream below the flume.  There I took off my muddy shoes and socks, and washed them and my shoes, rolled my long winter underwear up, and put my feet in the ice cold water.  It was the rule we had to leave our winter underwear on until April.  I broke the rule, and Mother about broke a willow over my legs.  I always wondered how she found out about it, but of course my socks were wet and so were my shoes.

I went back many times after that, down into the gulch and sat by the little stream and watched the birds build their nests.  I saw the leaves open up on the trees.  They looked like green satin waving in the breeze.  I can still smell that pungent aroma of the sap running in the trees.  I often think how sad it is that every child doesn't have a gulch, a hail tree, and an orchard to play in.

The summer went by slowly like all summers on a ranch.  Riding in the header box filled with turkey red wheat, itching our legs, and the wonderful smell of new mown hay, big moonlight nights, sitting on the back porch until bedtime.  Then the coal oil lamps were lighted and we prepared for the work next day.  It was mine and my sister's job to carry lemonade out in the field to the men.  I loved that job especially when the little boy that I liked was driving the derrick horse.

The fall I started to school was a big thrill for all of us, because my mother decided she couldn't stay in the big house alone.  My cousin knew a lady in Logan who wanted to give her little year old baby boy away.  He was at least a year old.  She came and talked to Mother, and the day she told us we could have him was the greatest day of our lives.  I'll never forget when she brought him home.  He was a beautiful little boy.  He had large brown eyes, blonde curly hair with dimples in his cheeks.  We all fell in love with him.  His name was Bobby Craig, but of course he took the name of Simmons.  He was very intelligent, and at the age of two years he began to sing.  He sang for all the programs in the church and everyone loved him.  We had a player piano.  He learned to pump it and hang onto the lid that covered the keys.  When he was two years old, he could hook the roll in place.  World War One was on at that time, and he learned all the war songs such as, "Keep the Home Fires Burning," "There Are Smiles," "Long, Long Trail Awinding," and many more.  He would sing along with the roll on the piano.

We had an Irish Setter we named Guess.  He became Bobby's constant companion.  There were many blow-snakes in that part of Utah.  They were harmless, and Bob used to take old Guess, go down to the lower end of the farm and hunt snakes, and sometimes he would come home with 3 or 4 snakes over a stick that Guess had killed.

[Zelma neglected to tell here an oft-repeated story about Guess.  Guess was named by Cleon, presumably so that he could have the following conversation with people:  "What's your dog's name?"  "Guess!"  "Well…maybe…Red?"  "No, Guess!"  "Oh, I don't know, tell me."  "Guess!"  Cleon's game was to see how long he could keep the questioner going.—JEK]

Uncle Jode and Aunt Kate had a little boy his age, and they were really full of mischief.  He loved the out of doors as much as I did and soon learned all my favorite places on the farm.

My brother Clarence had a cow he had raised from a calf.  He named her Blossom.  She became one of the loved pets on the ranch.  She thought it her duty to protect Clarence when his friend came to see him.  They would wrestle on the lawn, and she thought they were hurting him.  She would come on the run from the pasture with her head down, and chase them away.  When Bobbie and I would go into the pasture, she would follow us around like a puppy dog.  One day she went up in the top of the orchard and had a calf.  It didn't have any eyes.  It had eyelids that opened, but all that was there were big white places where the eye should have been.  It had to be killed, and we all cried.  We also had a mare named Doll we loved, too.

I move on now to a time later, but I don't remember the year.  We had moved, but Mother wanted to move back.  Maybe it was because Mother wanted to be back where all the memories of her years with Papa were that made her decide she wanted to move up there for one winter.  It was a small house and much easier to take care of, but it was 2 miles from school.  She thought it would be nice to have a close neighbor.  Her brother-in-law and his wife lived across the road and one family to the side of us, so after we picked our apples and got our potatoes dug we moved up creek.  I wasn't happy up there.  I hated the long walk to school that winter.  We took just enough furniture to get by.  I was homesick most of the time that year.  One morning in the spring I started to walk to school.  I got about a fourth of a mile from the house when I saw a big bull coming up the road.  He was pawing the earth and was really mad.  I ran as hard as I could for home and told Mother.  She went out to the barn where Cleon was and told him to put me on one of the workhorses that were in the barn.  He put a bridle on him and lifted me on.  His back was so wide my legs stuck straight out on each side.  I looked like a bump on a log and was almost as afraid of him as I was the bull.  When I got down the road the bull was still there bellowing at another in the field.  The fence was keeping them apart.  He turned around and started toward the horse.  By that time I was crying and kicking the horse.  Pretty soon the bull lost interest and left me alone.

This is a story about Fred, my brother.  One night he had gone into Collinston for awhile and was coming home.  He was beginning to get very cold, and could hear and see a pack of coyotes close by.  The last mile he began to feel he didn't know if he could make it or not.  As he laid down to rest, the coyotes would walk around him.  He had to get up and yell at them and trod on a little further.  All he could do was hope and pray the coyotes stayed close behind him until he came to the road that was close to the farms.  He passed two or three farms he could have stopped at because we knew everyone there, but he said they were all in bed and all he could think of was getting home.  He finally made it about 9:30.  We were all in bed and Mother heard something hit the back door.  She looked to see what it was, and Fred was lying there too exhausted to move.  She called his wife, and they got him in the house and warmed him and got him in bed.  About a month after that he got a job in Wyoming on a big cattle ranch.

When spring came again, Melba and I put up a mailbox in the grove and we wrote letters to each other, and many times we both came to mail our letter at the same time.  We would swing in the big swing in the grove that seemed to me was 10 feet high.  It was on a slope.  We would get in it and back up the hill, then put our feet up, and it seemed we went out forever.  This was the same summer that I got typhoid fever.  I heard Mother and old John Watkins talking.  He was getting water for the threshing crew's cook wagon.  Mother said, "John, you aren't taking the water out of the ditch for her to cook with are you?" And he said, "Of course, it's pure enough.  When water runs over the rocks it purifies itself."  I thought that sounded great, so when I was up at the head of the orchard and I got thirsty, I'd drink out of the ditch.  So I became very ill.  Old Doctor Walk said it was typhoid.  I was sick most of that summer.  I lost most of my hair, and Mother cut off all my curls.  I cried and cried, but it did thicken my hair.  I was feeling normal by the time school started.  The summer seemed endless in those days, and we couldn't wait for school to start.  The falls were beautiful with the leaves turning gold in the orchard.

As winter approached and evenings became longer, the knitting of the family stockings started.  I can still hear the click, click of Mother's knitting needles while she would tell us stories that happened in her early married life.  I remember one she told about Dad and Uncle George going up around the big hill one morning to hunt ducks, and came home with 35 or 40 ducks.  They told Mother and Aunt Alice they would dress them out, and if they wanted to, they could take them down to Brigham to a general store and sell them and divide the money they got between themselves.  This sounded pretty good to them, so they got in the buggy early one morning and drove to Brigham which was about 18 miles.  They planned to sell the ducks and stay there all night with relatives and return the next day.  They arrived in Brigham that afternoon and stopped in front of the store.  Aunt Alice said, "I'm not going in there peddling ducks.  I'm afraid I'd meet someone I know."  They were both from Brigham before their marriages.  Mother said, "Well I certainly won't go in alone.  We should have thought of this before we came down here."  They argued awhile, then my mother finally said, "Alright, I will do it."  She went in the store and found the manager and said, "As I was coming in here a lady asked me to tell you she has some ducks out there to sell."  The manager thanked Mother and went out, and Aunt Alice had to take care of all the details.  Needless to say Aunt Alice was a little disturbed at Mother.  I've always remembered that story.

Some of the things she told us were more exciting, like the time the Gypsies came to the house up creek.  Aunt Alice and Mother lived side by side when they were first married.  Uncle George and Dad had gone over to Logan for supplies.  In those days people were very afraid of Gypsies.  When the men were gone they always stayed together in one house or the other.  This time they were at Mother's.  They saw the Gypsies coming around the hill in their caravan.  Mother had a big black curly-haired dog named Pedro.  She called him in the house, as he was a very good watch dog and very, very big.  The two women stood shaking in their shoes and hoping they would go on by, but they stopped at the front gate and two of their women came to the door.  Mother went to the door.  They said, "You go get all the material you have and give it to us."  Mother said, "I don't have any material for you."  "Oh yes, you do, you have it in a trunk and if you don't get it we will put a curse on you and your family and cause your children to die."  Mother did have some material in a trunk, but she told her to get out.  She started to curse and swear at Mother and Aunt Alice.  Mother said she reached down and got Pedro by the collar and Pedro knew what to do.  When Mother spoke to him he began to snarl, and the two Gypsies lifted up their skirts and ran down the path as fast as they could go.  Aunt Alice and Mother were very shaken up, and about that time Grandpa Simmons, who was a very fiery little fellow, came down the road on his horse.  They ran out and told him about it and he said, "Oh, they did, did they."  He turned his horse around and headed back to his house.  In a few minutes he returned with a gun and went down the road until he caught up with the Gypsies.  He said, "What do you mean by scaring my women, now you get out of this place as fast as you can go and don't you stop until you're miles from here or we will all be after you."  Grandpa said they started their horses going as fast as they could, and that was the end of the Gypsies.

Another time Mother was alone and a tramp came to the door and wanted something to eat.  She always had Pedro in the house with her when she was alone.  She told him she would get him something to eat, but she also told Pedro to stay by the door.  He put his paws on the man's shoulders, and every time the fellow would move he would growl.  His head was even with the man's head, and the man called to Mother and said, "Come get this dog down and forget the food."  The poor fellow also went on the run.  We enjoyed those kind of stories because they were funny and exciting.

But one winter evening she told us another story that happened one night, and this one made us cry.  My father's sister, Elizabeth Twitchell, lived across the road from Mother and Father.  There were 5 children in their family.  Her husband's name was Charles.  One day, one by one the mother and two children took very ill.  At that time they had to go to Logan for a doctor and that was always the last resort.  The elders were called in to give them a blessing, but nothing seemed to help.  They called Mother and Aunt Alice to come sit up with them, as they were the closest relatives.  As the night went on, their condition became worse.  The elders stayed there, too, because of the seriousness of their illness.  About 11:00 the nine-year-old boy died.  The elders and my father laid him out in his bedroom with a sheet over him and under him.  By twelve o'clock the beautiful little 2-year-old girl died.  She had beautiful blonde curly hair and big blue eyes.  They laid her out in the same room with her dead brother.  The mother called to Mother and Aunt Alice.  They felt they couldn't tell her another one of her children had died, but she said, "My little girl is dead, isn't she?"  Then she said, "Bring her to me and put her on my arm."  They went and got her.  She was in her little white night gown.  They put her on her mother's arm.  Aunt Lizzy ran her fingers through her hair and put her face next to hers.  Then Aunt Lizzy closed her own eyes and died.  They found out afterward it was Typhoid Fever.  Poor Uncle Charlie lost 2 children and a wife that night and had them all laid out in the house.  They buried them all in the same grave, and Aunt Lizzy and the little girl in the same casket.  I remember as a little girl that wide grave in the Beaver Dam Cemetery.  After their deaths, Uncle Charlie married again to a woman much younger than he, and his 3 older children left and lived with relatives.  Charles, the oldest boy, came and lived with Mother and Dad.  He was sort of different, but very nice.  One day Mother and Dad went down to Collinston to buy groceries and told him if he went anywhere to lock the house and leave the key in the hiding place.  When they returned, Charlie was gone, but the first thing they saw as they were coming up the road was KEY UNDER THE NORTH WINDOW written in letters as tall as the house.

After the hay was put up we would often go up to Pleasant View to visit Uncle David and Aunt Eva (pronounced Eh-va).  One of the boys would stay home to take care of the ranch, and the other would drive us up there in the white-topped buggy.  It was only 40 miles to Pleasant View, but it took us all day to make the trip.  We would get up at 4:00 in the morning.  Mother had a lunch put up, and we would leave at 4:30, and at noon we tried to make it to a spring where we would unhook the horses, water and feed them with hay we brought in the back of the seat of the buggy.  We would eat our lunch, and start out again and get to Aunt Eva's about dark.  Aunt Eva, Mother's sister, was a dear, sweet, lady and our favorite aunt.  As I think of her now she seemed tall, but maybe that was because my mother was so short, 5'2".  Aunt Eva's husband was very stern.  Aunt Eva was lots of fun, and a very good cook.  We loved her, but we didn't like Uncle Dave too much.  She would cook a wonderful breakfast with home-cured ham and hot biscuits.  We couldn't wait to start eating, but we had to have family prayer first.  We would kneel down and he would pray for 20 minutes.  I remember keeping my eyes on the ham and eggs all through the prayer and thought he would never stop.

The next day or two we would go to Uncle Steven's and stay awhile.  We loved him, but we didn't like his wife.  She always wanted us to clean her false teeth or dig her greasy hair with a fine toothed comb.  We loved to go up there, but it was nice to get home, too.

[Zelma always wished that Uncle Steven and Aunt Eva would have married each other, and that Uncle David would have married Steven's wife.  She thought those would have made better matches.  The only problem was that Uncle Steven and Aunt Eva were brother and sister.—JEK]

The years in Beaver Dam passed as usual.  One winter Mother moved to Logan to send us to school.  Musetta was going out with boys then and met a very nice looking fellow in Logan.  The boys were giving me the eye, too.  I met two boys by the name of John and Kenneth Kimball that I had an eye for, but Mother wouldn't let me go out with a boy, but I could dance with them and they always quarreled over me.  They were cousins, and were the same age.

This was the year the war was on and that bad influenza raged through the country.  Hundreds were dying with it.  The schools closed and everyone had to wear a mask if they stepped out of their yards.  It kept getting worse and Mother moved back to Beaver Dam.  It was wonderful to be home, but I did miss my new school friends I had met in Logan.

World War (One) finally ended.  There was great rejoicing for some who were having their loved ones return home, and sadness for the ones who had lost theirs.  A star on a plaque in a window showed they had lost a son, and many times there were two or three stars in one family.

My brothers weren't old enough to go until Clarence became old enough just a month before the war ended, and Fred was married with a family.

Fred was always on the move, and at this time he decided to go up to Mountain Home, Idaho where he had a job waiting for him.  They had two children by then.

The next two summers in Beaver Dam were bad years as far as farming went, one failure after another.  The summers were hot and dry which made it difficult for dry farming.

Musetta and I were becoming young ladies.  Musetta was going out with boys a little, and Mother could see it was going to cost more for our clothes, and I'm sure it was a great worry to her, but we managed to skim by and had our usual good times in Beaver Dam.  One day we came home from Melba's and Blanche's house and found Mother crying.  She had received a letter from Fred, and it had bad news.  He wanted Mother to come to Mountain Home and take care of his kids because Vivian had run off with another man.  Mother didn't know which way to turn.  She and the boys decided that the boys would stay home and take care of the place and get the harvesting done, and she would take Musetta, Bobbie and me with her.  We had no idea how long it would be.  It was summer, and we thought by the end of summer we could come home.  It broke my heart to have to go, but we packed, and the four of us took a train at good old Collinston and left for Mountain Home.

I hated every part of Mountain Home.  It was a very small town and full of Spanish people which were so different from home.  I'd go to bed at Fred's house, I slept upstairs, and would cry quietly while Bobbie would cry and say, "I want old dog Guess.  I want to go back to our red brick house."

Summer passed, and it came time for school, and still Fred's problems were not solved.  Mother, as usual, thought she had to stay with Fred's children, at least till he heard from Vivian.  We went to school that year in Mountain Home, and I hated the kids.  I hated all the teachers, and I hated the town, Vivian, Fred, and everything that took me away from my Utah home that I loved so much.  We were the only Mormons in town, and were made fun of because we were Mormons.  However, another Mormon family did move in, and lived next to us and they had a girl my age.  This helped a lot.  Musetta met a boy at school, and went out with him to school affairs.

It was the saddest day of my life when Fred came home and said he had good jobs for Cleon and Clarence and thought we should rent the ranch and move up to Mountain Home, and that is exactly what happened.  The boys rented a boxcar on a freight train and loaded the furniture, horse, and old Blossom the cow, and came to Mountain Home.

I knew then I had said goodbye to my good old Beaver Dam home, and many times I cried myself to sleep.

Shortly after, we moved to Baker, Oregon.  Baker was much better than Mountain Home because they had a Mormon church and there were young people our ages to get acquainted with.  The church was an old building they were using for a church.  It wasn't much compared to the one in Beaver Dam.  The members were friendly and nice.

Mother went through a period at this time of poor health.  Her heart was not working as it should, and she had sinking spells.  Someone had to be with her most of the time.  Money was still very scarce until the boys had a few paychecks coming in.  We lived in a 5-room apartment.  The first Christmas we spent in Baker was nothing.  We all decided there wouldn't be any gifts, tree or decoration of any kind.  Cleon had found a good job at the Democrat Newspaper learning the trade.  It was small wages, but it turned out to be a lifetime job, that is until he retired when he was 65.

My mother's mother had taken in a young boy from England who had joined the church there, and wanted to come to the United States where there were more members.  His name was James Smurthwaite.  He was about 14 when he went to Brigham City, Utah, and my grandmother let him stay with them until he got situated.  When he got married, he and his wife and family moved to Baker, and this is how Cleon got the job at the paper office.  One of Brother Smurthwaite's sons had advanced to a good position there and was instrumental in getting Cleon the job.  Cleon later married Brother Smurthwaite's daughter.  Her name was Florence, and they had three daughters:  Norma, Marcene and Carol.  Brother Smurthwaite was a judge in Baker.  He gave me work in the City Hall once in awhile putting out mail.  When my grandmother took him in and cared for him, she didn't realize how he would help her daughter's family when their needs were great.

Now I'll continue about our first Christmas in Baker.  Cleon worked nights at the paper office as it was a morning paper.  He came home about 4 or 5 in the morning.  When we got up Christmas, there were all kinds of gifts in the living room.  All of them were wrapped in newspaper.  He found things around the house and wrapped them up.  My gift was a bar of Fells Naphtha soap and other things he found in the house.  We found a piece of wood, a pair of socks for Clarence that he (Cleon) had just taken off.  We had steam heat, and all these gifts were around the radiator.  Bob was so young (that) we did get gifts for him.  Even though we didn't get any gifts, we had fun laughing at what Cleon had done.  The next Christmas we made up for it.  I got jobs baby-sitting in the evenings, and Musetta took care of Mother.  Clarence was working on the Sumpter Valley Railroad, which was a little narrow gauge track and a funny little engine.  It brought the logs from the mountains down to Baker to the lumber mills.  There were two mills in Baker then, the Stoddard Lumber Co. and White Pine, and I believe one more.  I got a baby-sitting job whenever the owner of the Stoddard Mill went out.  (The Stoddards) were very rich.  They belonged to the church, and had a large family.  She had this baby girl when she was forty.  This little baby turned out to be my sister-in-law.  My husband's brother (Albert Hunt) married her.

I also worked in the house for her on Saturdays, too.  The house was big and very beautiful.  I had never seen anything so lovely.  I earned enough that fall to buy myself a new winter coat, which I needed badly.

The boy Musetta went with in Mountain Home moved up to Baker and got a job at one of the mills and they became engaged.  They were married the next spring.

I finally got a job working at the theater selling tickets, taking tickets, and when there was a big crowd (and that was when they had a vaudeville and the place would be packed), I would usher too.

I wanted to take music lessons, so I bought a piano.  Mother had sold the piano we had in Utah to help with the expenses when we moved here.  I took piano lessons from a Mrs. Little and did very well.  It wasn't long until she turned some of her pupils over to me.  These were the ones she couldn't crowd into her schedule, and I would get them started for her.  The piano I bought was an old second-hand one, which cost me $200.  I paid it off at $10.00 a month.

I was a popular girl, and didn't want for boy friends.  I liked a boy in our ward, and there was going to be a ward dance, and I decided to go.  I thought he might ask me to dance, so I dressed up in my best and went.  When I got there he was dancing every dance with our neighbor's daughter, and didn't look at me at all, but there were boys there from town who didn't belong to the church, that really kept me busy dancing all night.  I loved to dance and was a very good dancer.  This came from me being raised in Beaver Dam, and I started dancing when I was 4 years old because they had children's dances all the time.

I went to lots of parties in homes.  They were quite different from the parties young people go to now.  The parents of the girls or boys giving the parties were in the rooms with us at all times.  They would roll the rugs up and we danced to the phonograph.  They served punch and ice cream and cake usually.  We dressed up in party dresses when we went to these parties.  The ones giving the parties most of the time would tell us who we would be going with.  Of course if you were going steady with someone in the group, they paired you off with him.  This group was the society people's children of Baker.  None of them were Mormons.  I ran around with them until they went away to college, and that ended my friendship with most of them.  However, one of the boys married a Mormon girl, and she is one of my best friends today.

There were dances up town every Saturday night here in Baker, and I usually had a date to go.  Sometimes a bunch of us L.D.S. girls would go together if we didn't have a date and there would always be lots of boys there we knew who didn't have a date, and we danced with them.  It was one of these nights that I was up there with a boy, and this L.D.S. fellow I went to the church dance to see if he would take a shine to me was there.  He was leaving that night at one o'clock on the train for Salt Lake to go on a mission to Germany.  He was a really good dancer, and while we were dancing he said, "In a way I hate to go because everyone my age will be married when I return in 3 years."  I laughed and said, "Don't worry, I'll wait for you."  He said, "Yes, it looks like it.  You with that diamond on your hand."  He danced with me twice that night and he seemed so sad.  I was engaged to the fellow I was at the dance with, but we broke up about 6 months before this fellow came home from his mission.

I was working at my desk in an office up town one day and looked out the window, and standing out on the street was this guy all dressed up and looked like a million dollars.  He was home from his mission.

The Mutual was having a picnic up on the hill that night at the lonesome pine.  It was quite a hike.  We took wieners and buns.  Clara Hunt was the one that got it going, everyone was to meet at her house.  I got off work at 5.  Angela Smurthwaite, Esther Hill and I walked down to Hunts' house, as the hike was to start from there, as the hill was close to them.  As we walked up the sidewalk toward the house, there was Dave Hunt, the guy who had been on a mission.  There was a crowd around him shaking hands with him.  He saw me coming up the street and came to meet me.  He had eyes for no one else that night.  He was still all dressed up as he was uptown that day.  Someone asked him if he was going to the picnic and he said, "No, I have to milk the cow, but I'll take you all up to the trail in the car.  We crowded into the car, and he went back home.  I was walking up the hill with Esther and Angela and they were too slow for me, because in those days I was quite a hiker.  I told them I was going to be the first one up there, and away I went, but when I arrived, there sat Dave Hunt on a rock.  To this day I've never figured out how he got there so fast.  He walked me home that night, and we went together from then on.  We were married the 12th of June in the Logan Temple.  He gave me my diamond the week before.

In 1929 the Depression was at its peak, and everyone was out of work.  Dave had worked in the bank before he left on his mission.  They told him when he left, his job would be waiting for him when he came back, but when he came home, President Roosevelt had closed all the banks, so he didn't have a job, but he had always paid his tithing and didn't want for a job long.  When one would run out, another would come up.  Wages were very small.  He was paid one dollar a day on the Sumpter Valley Railway.  Then he got a job in the Forest Service office for about $1.50 a day for a few months until the Forest Service had to lay off some help, but they promised him a job on a lookout for the summer.  It was between these jobs that we decided it was a good time to get married.  He bought a little Ford convertible roadster with some money he had saved before he left on his mission.  My sister-in-law, Florence, made my wedding dress for me, and then away we went to Utah.  We had a two week's honeymoon, then he went up one of the highest mountains around the area on a lookout.  I was working in an office for Leo Adler, a magazine specialist.  He let me have another week's vacation, and I went up and stayed with Dave.  It was quite an experience.  The lookout had big cables which were fastened to the big rocks to hold it in place.  We could look out the windows (which were all around the cabin) for hundreds of feet straight down.

The first night I was there a hard wind came up and the cables creaked, and the cabin shook and swayed.  I did get used to it, though, and it was very beautiful up there.  We could, on a clear day, see Mt. Hood which is a very high mountain in western Oregon near Portland.  After I went back to work, every other weekend, my brother Cleon or my sister's husband, Homer MacArthur, would take me up to see him.  It was a five mile hike from where we had to leave the car.  Up and back in one day made it ten miles.  He came home the day of the first snow.  He had only been home a week when my boss called me over to his desk and told me to send Dave up to the City Hall, that he had heard of a bookkeeping job that was going to be open.  He went up, and got the job.

We moved into a little new house on Edgewater.  It was a cute little place.  Living room, bedroom, dining room, kitchen, and bath, and a 1/2 basement.  We bought a new davenport and chair for $30.00, a bedroom set for $27.00, a dining set for $30.00, and a rug for the living room for $28.00.  The rent for the house was $15.00 a month.  I might add that a house like that, as I write this today, would cost two hundred a month, and a davenport and chair today would cost one thousand dollars.

We were married in 1933, and it is now 1981.  I wonder what the prices will be when my great grandchildren read this?

My first baby, a girl, was born 10 months to the day we were married, which was the 12th of April 1934.  She only weighed 5 lbs., but was a beautiful little baby with big deep blue eyes and brown hair.  We named her after my mother, Maretta.  We just gave her the one name of Maretta.

I thought it was going to be so easy to have a baby.  I really worried that I might have her while I was alone some day.  I intended to have her at home, and Dr. Higgins said that would be ok with him as long as I had someone there to help him.  Mother used to help the doctor a lot in Utah, so she consented to come to my house when I started with labor.  It was much different than I had imagined.  I was in labor for 36 hours, and finally Dr. Higgins said he had to take me to the hospital and take the baby with instruments.  She was born in an electrical storm.  This was in 1934.  We didn't have any winter that year, and the temperature when she was born on the 12th of April was 85 degrees, which was very warm for this climate.  When she was 6 weeks old she contracted whooping cough, and we almost lost her.  This was a terrifying experience to go through.  We gave her up for dead many times, but as the scripture says, "This too shall pass."  This also did pass leaving me 10 lbs. thinner, and I was already way too thin.  She was worth all the trouble.  She was a very intelligent little thing.  She could sit alone at 4 months, walk at nine months, and talked at one year.  I invited her little cousin, Carol Simmons, who was two weeks younger, and Carol's sister to her 1 year birthday party.  When they left she stood in the door and said, "Don't go, please, don't go."  When she was in the 2nd grade the teacher had her take some of the slower children into the cloak room and help them with their reading.  She was a joy to both of us.

When she first got the whooping cough we were in the process of looking for a place to buy.  We knew the little house where we were living was too small to raise a family in.  As we were going down to his father's house one day, before Maretta was born, we noticed this big white house was for sale, but we didn't give it much thought.  Then as he came home from his folks' one afternoon he said, "Why don't we go see the old Heatherington house."  I didn't much like the location of it, but the Depression was on and we didn't have much money, so I agreed.  The old lady who owned it gave us the key.  We went down, and as we entered the house we could smell mice.  I kept saying to myself no way will I move in here, but as we went up the winding stairway the house kept speaking to me.  I could see the challenge it would be to fix it up.  It seemed like it was asking us to take it even though all I could see was a lot of hard work.  We went and asked the owner how much she wanted for it, and she said $865.00.  We told her we would let her know and went down to Dave's dad's to see if he would loan us the money.  He sat there and wouldn't give us an answer.  Dave would say, "What do you think, Dad?" and no answer, so we left and went over to Bishop Eardley's house and asked him if he would lend us the money.  He said, "Why of course I will, David."  Dave told him he would sign a note, but he said, "That won't be necessary."  He gave us the money.  We began to clean this house up.  The baby was still having bad coughing spells, and I couldn't do much.  The lot was in bad shape.  It was a block long and 1/2 block wide, so we had plenty of work to do.  We went to work on the inside of the house first so we could move in.  My brother, Bob, who was in high school taking carpentry, built cupboards in the kitchen for us.  We tore all the cupboards out of the pantry because that was where the mice were.  The bathroom had a wash basin and tub, but no toilet, so we put one in, and as soon as the cupboards and that was done we moved in.  Dave had cleaned floors and wallpapered the kitchen and bedroom.  My brother, Cleon, helped Dave move in on the 4th of July.  I stayed with my mother until everything was taken care of which was about a week.  Then we took our little girl and started our life in this old house, which we still live in.  Maretta is 47 years old.  The house has been completely remodeled, all new floors, windows, walls, and doors and is a fine place.  It has been a happy place where everyone likes to come.  Our children and grandchildren also enjoy it.

Maretta was two years and 3 months when we had another beautiful little girl.  She was born on the 21st of July.  I had to go to the hospital to have Mary because of complications.  It cost us $50.00 for the doctor and $3.00 a day for my room at the hospital.  For a normal birth the doctor only charged $30.00, which took care of you for the whole nine months and the delivery.  Today, 1981, the doctor charges $1,000.00 and the hospital about two hundred a day for the room.  Dave told me if I could have this baby at home, I could have a new cook stove.  I had been using the old one that had been left in the house when it was built, so of course, I tried real hard to have her at home.  It was a hot summer day.  I had washed and ironed because I felt sort of strange that day.  It was 105 degrees.  Needless to say, I was miserable.  My good old doctor, who was Thomas Higgins, said he would bring 2 nurses (who were in training at the hospital) down to the house if I wanted to stay home.  We called him at about 11:30 that night.  He came with his nurses, and we also had a dear Sister Leishman in the church that was a practical nurse.  She took care of me after the doctor and nurses left.

Mary Helena was born at 6:30 that morning.  Sister Leishman was washing her, and she was screaming to the top of her voice.  I heard Sister Leishman say, "I don't see how anything with such a beautiful face can have such a temper."

In those days we had to stay in bed for 10 days to 2 weeks.  Sister Leishman came in morning and night to take care of me and bathe the baby, and we had a girl work for us to take care of little Maretta and do the house work and cook the meals.  It was terribly hot, and I was so glad when I could get up and take over after Sister Leishman got Mary washed up and dressed.  She brought her in and put her beside me, and when I looked at her beautiful little face a strange feeling came over me that she would have many hardships in this life.  I was really saddened by it.  When she was two she took sick.  It was in the summer.  She ran a fever, so I called the doctor, but the office girl said he was out of town.  She told me there was a lot of summer flu going around, so I assumed that was it.  When she was three, her dad went hunting.  When he came home he sat down in a chair and started to take off his boots, but Mary said, "Let me take off your shoes for you, Daddy."  She was working so hard with one hand, and Dave asked her why she didn't use her left hand to help.  She looked up at him and said, "It doesn't work."  We got to examining it, and it was much smaller than her right one, and also one leg was smaller, too.  When we took her to the doctor he said she had had polio.  We had to start working with her.  Exercise her arm and leg, but it didn't seem to do too much good.  It still doesn't work as well as it should.

When Maretta was five and Mary was three I taught them to sing harmony.  Maretta sang alto and Mary soprano.  The first time they sang at a church program, everyone went wild over them.  They carried their parts perfectly.  They sang at most of the programs.  When Christmas came around, they asked them to sing the night of the big cantata.  Half way through, the director had them come out and sing, "I, Said the Donkey."  We went in when the church was almost empty and sat down on the front row with our backs to the audience.  When they got up to sing Mary started out singing, but when she saw the church was full, she gave a gasp and started to cry and sat down.  I was playing the piano for them, and Maretta kept right on and sang alto to all 14 verses of "I, Said the Donkey."  Mary wouldn't sing anymore after that until she got older.

I sewed for the two of them and kept them looking like dolls.  This was very important to me because I didn't have many pretty things when I was little, or even up to when I could earn the money for them.

When Mary was 2 years and 4 months, I had another baby.  This was our boy, David James.  He was born on the 17 of November.  I tried to have him at home, but again they had to take me to the hospital, and the doctor took him with instruments.  He was my largest one, weighing 8 lbs. and some ounces.  We were really thrilled with our boy, but he had thymus gland trouble.  Normally it shrinks up when the baby is born, but his didn't, and it caused him to have difficulty breathing.  One could hear him breathing all over the maternity ward.  I didn't even get to see him for hours after he was born.  The nurses had to watch him very closely.  He was a darling baby, but he was such a worry to us.  The nursery was about 2 doors down the hall from my room, and I could hear him struggling for his breath.  The doctor told us he had to have x-ray treatments, and the only place to get them was down on the coast.  The doctor did fix it so he could get treatments, but they didn't do any good.

When it came time for me to go home on about the 10th day, the doctor consented to let us bring him home.  We had him sleeping right next to my side of the bed so if he started to choke, I could get to him in a hurry.  We decided to have the elders come down and administer to him.  Dave's brother-in-law, Parley Thomas and Brother Heggie came.  Brother Heggie was one of the older men in the ward.  He was a fine man with a strong character, which was very noticeable in his face.  He had gray hair and gnarled hands, from working hard all his life.  He was one of the old stalwarts of the church.  He gave our baby the blessing, and when he got through (and this is the picture I still plainly see in my mind), he stood holding the baby out in his arms as though he were going to give him to me, but instead he stood in this position for what seemed like 5 minutes staring straight ahead with perspiration dropping from his face down to his clothes.  Finally he put him in my arms and said, "Here, Sister, your baby is well."  They said goodnight, and I got little David ready for bed.  I might explain that he always had this raspy wheezing sound with him.  We went to bed about 10 o'clock, and about eleven I woke up with a start, and there wasn't a sound coming from his little bed.  My first thought was maybe he had died, but when I picked him up he was breathing as normally as any baby could.  He, as Brother Heggie said, was well.

David was a quiet little boy, and very good-natured.  He didn't smile too much, and my brother used to call him poker face.  One day when he was about four he turned up missing.  It was a hot summer day, and they had turned the water in the creek about a half a block from us.  I was afraid he had fallen in there.  We looked everywhere, and even had the mailman looking.  Finally some little girls said they would go down through our lots that had a lot of tall grass, and he was sound asleep in there.

When David was 5 years old we had another baby boy.  We named him Donald Norman.  He was a darling little boy, but David didn't seem to like him.  I guess he felt he wouldn't be the center of attention anymore.  Maretta and Mary were very excited about him, though.  Don had a mind of his own from the day he was born.  He required hardly any sleep.  When he was about one year old, I would put him to bed at nine, and he would be awake at 12 for the rest of the night.  He would stand up in his crib and say, "See moom."  He could see the moon through the window.  He would try every trick to get attention.  I would take him out in the kitchen so Dave could get some sleep, as he had to get up very early for work.  Don was having a good time out there, but I was so sleepy I couldn't enjoy any of his cute little things he did.  This kept up until he was about 18 months old.  After that he was a very sweet little boy and very well behaved, but still had too much energy for me.  When he was in the second grade he told us he couldn't see out of one eye.  We took him to an eye doctor, and he told us he had lazy eye.  We had to give him exercises to strengthen it, but nothing seemed to work.  They gave him eye tests at school, and found he couldn't see with one eye, and his teacher called me up to see if we knew this.  She said she had wondered why he wasn't to the head of his class.  She then told me he had the highest I.Q. of any child in school.  He didn't like school because what little sight he had in the one eye didn't coordinate with the good eye, so he didn't enjoy reading at all.  He loved to stay home and play in the back yard after school.  He loved little cars, and would make roads in the dirt and run his cars around in it, and later Dave had a big load of dirt dumped out under our big tree in the back for the boys to play in.  Don never did want to go to anyone else's house to play.  He liked to have the boys come and play here, but would never go to their place to play.  Don was about 4 years old when I found out I was going to have another baby.  It came as a shock to me because I was 42 years old and thought I was through having children.

My mother wasn't able to take care of a house and was getting very forgetful, and we decided it wasn't safe for her to live alone.  Clarence had been living with her.  He wasn't married, and he went to work each day, so I decided to have her move in with us.  We moved Don upstairs with the rest of the kids and fixed a room for Mother in the front bedroom downstairs.  She lived here almost two years.  She had Pernicious Anemia, and there wasn't any blood getting to her brain.  Toward the last she screamed all the time.  She just adored Donnie, and he was the only one who could get her to stop.

This was a very trying time for me, because I was 7 months along with my last child.  On about the 20th of January 1948 a very strange thing happened.  Dave's mother came up that day and told me she had come up to fix lunch for the kids.  As long as someone was in the room with Mother she wouldn't scream, so I asked Grandma Hunt if she would sit with Mother and let me get out of the room for awhile.  She said she would, and as we stood there for a minute my mother said to Dave's mother, "I have to go home."  Grandma Hunt said, "You are home in your room here at Zelma's."  My mother replied, "I don't mean this home, I have to go home and I don't want to go alone, will you go with me?"  Just to satisfy her, Grandmother Hunt said she would go with her.  Mother seemed more contented after that, and a few days went by.  She became steadily worse and we knew she wouldn't last much longer.  On the 22 of January 1948 in the early morning hours her screaming became very faint.  I was resting upstairs when I heard the nurse call Cleon and told him to come over, his mother had passed away and she didn't want to wake me as she thought I needed my rest.  They called Beaty's Mortuary, and I waited until everything was quiet, then I got up.  We took the bed, mattress, and bedding out and opened the windows and closed the room off.  Dave's mother came up later on that morning and said she was on her way to town to get something for dinner that night, and wanted us to come eat there.  We tried to talk her out of it, but she insisted, so we went down about 6 that evening, and she had her best china, glasses, silver and linen on the table.  We had a lovely dinner.  I had an appointment with the bishop to make funeral arrangements, and couldn't stay to help her with the dishes, but left Mary and Maretta there to help her.  Later Dave brought them home, and we all went to bed for the first all night sleep I had had in months.  About 10:30 p.m. the phone rang, and it was Dave's brother, Tom.  He told Dave to hurry down, his mother was very sick.  He left, and I could hear the wind blowing so hard and howling through the open window in the room where Mother had died, and I couldn't stand to stay in my bed because it sounded just like mother's screaming.  I got up and sat in a chair in the living room and tried to read, but the wind blew out the lines with its howling.  Dave came home about midnight, closed the door and leaning against it and as if the words stuck in his throat, he said, "She is gone."  All I could say was, "This can't be!"  Once again we went to bed, but instead of sleep, I started with labor pains.  We knew if these pains kept on it meant a premature baby.  Dave put his arms around me and kept telling me to settle down, I was not going to have the baby at that time.  Through his persistence, my pains did quiet, and we went to sleep.

We had the radio on the wall at the foot of the staircase, and just as the girls came down the stairs that morning, an announcement came on and said that Annie Hunt had passed away at her home on Colorado Street.  It was a great shock to the girls.  Dave put his arms around them and told them what had happened.  They took Dave's mother to West and Company.  We took the children to see their grandparents, first to Beaty's to see Grandmother Simmons, then to West to see Grandmother Hunt.

My adopted brother had promised Mother, when he was with her in February, he would sing at her funeral.  He had a beautiful voice, and at her funeral he faced the casket and sang the songs she had requested, "In the Garden" and "The End of a Perfect Day."  She was shipped to Utah to be buried by our father.  Cleon and his wife went with the body.  They had a large funeral for her in Beaver Dam, and she was laid to rest by her beloved husband who had died when she was 39 years old.  She had many chances to marry again, but she would say, "I'll remain faithful to the man I married for time and all eternity."

My brother stayed (in Baker) and sang the same songs he sang at our mother's funeral at Grandmother Hunt's funeral the next day.  When Cleon and Florence came back from Utah they told us what time it was when Mother was buried.  With the change of time down there it turned out that Grandmother Hunt and Grandmother Simmons were being buried at the same time.  So, I guess all we can say is that Grandma Hunt did go home with my mother.

I closed the windows where Mother had been and locked the door and couldn't make myself go in there, but Donnie who was 4 kept wanting to go in there.  He seemed to think she had come back.  He would say, "Grandma doesn't scream anymore."  I told him she wasn't in there, but he kept at me to go see.  I picked him up and carried him in there.  I said, "See, she is gone, she is in heaven."  He smiled and was satisfied.  I don't think he even mentioned her again until he was older.

One month and 17 days after Mother died I had my last child, a daughter, born 17 March 1948.  She was a beautiful baby, quite a lot of black hair and big eyes.  She was the best natured of all my babies.  When she was about 6 months old I'd give her the bottle, and she would hold it with her feet.  We had a big rocking chair that rocked sideways and backward too, and she loved to sleep in that chair.  Sometimes she would get up at night and slip out into the living room and get into the chair with her blanket.  I would find her there in the morning.

When she was two, every time she caught a cold it always turned into asthma, but when she was 6 years old it seemed to completely leave her.  She was a joy to have.  She did very well in school.  The principal of the school taught square dancing to all the students in the fourth grade.  She loved this, and they went to other towns dancing.  When she was 10 years old I started her taking piano lessons from Margaret Coats who was the best teacher in town.  Marjorie did very well.  She started accompanying the choir at junior high school.  She did this all through high school, too.  When she went to college she majored in music and became accompanist for many groups.

When she was 13 years old she came to me one day and asked me what was on her neck.  I thought it was a pimple and didn't think anymore about it, but about three weeks later she came to me and said,  "Look what that pimple has turned out to be."  I was shocked when I saw how it had grown.  I took her to our doctor, and he informed me it was a hemangeoma tumor.  He took it off and sent it to be tested and it came back O.K., but about 2 months later she showed me her neck again and she had about 15 of them on her neck.  We took her to a specialist then and he operated on her and found a tumor wrapped around the jugular vein.  It was benign, which we were thankful for, but it was a very serious operation.  She had to have a skin graft made, and it was a bad place on her neck, but it was to the back and her beautiful dark hair covered it.  She is a beautiful girl.  All that was years ago.  She now has 10 children and lives on a beautiful place in the timber.