MyrlMemories 5

We were eagerly looking forward to our baby’s arrival. Richard was born December the 27th, 1922 here in our apartment. I wouldn’t go to the hospital. Some time earlier, Aunt Mabel had a baby in California, and she saw the baby when he was born; she knew what he looked like. Later, the nurse brought a baby to her and it wasn’t hers. And though the nurse insisted it was, Mabel made such a fuss they kept bringing in babies until she recognized her own. That scared me so, I wouldn’t go to the hospital. So I had Richard at home.

Richard was a beautiful 9 pound baby with big brown eyes and nice hair. He was always so lovely and such a sweet baby. We had a happy time there. Our great friends, Genna Bradshaw who married Mark Clark, lived right next door. We used to take our babies for walks most every day.

Austin decided to accept the position of instructor in the Engineering Department at the University of Utah. It was the fall of 1923 when we moved to 4th South and 11th East. It was close to school and a very nice home. Here we bought our first piano. I also taught the Social Science lesson in Relief Society that winter. We enjoyed our family life very much.

We were to be blessed with another choice spirit. Lois was born in the LDS Hospital March the 28th, 1926. What a little beauty she was. We were only privileged to have her until February the 14th, 1929. She passed away within twelve hours of meningitis. What a sorrowful time that was. She was such a beautiful and brilliant child. The gospel gives us great joy when we realize that if we live as we are taught, we can have her in the world to come. When she died, dear little Richard put his arms around me and said, "Don’t cry Mama, she’s still ours." Tear, tears, tears as I write this now. We took Lois to Lehi. We have a burial spot there, and that’s where she’s buried. So every year when we go up, we can go to her little graveside and decorate it and appreciate the blessings of having had her at all.

This is February the 16th, 1977. We just came back from the hospital where Austin had his examination, and now we don’t have to go back for six months. He’s getting along very well. He had a stroke, December 20th, 1976. He was released to go home, January 3rd, 1977. It took him some time to recover, but he is improving.

I’ve been sitting and laying on the floor in there thinking about the things in the past, the things I wanted to remember about my childhood that I haven’t recorded, especially those things that meant a great deal to me.

It was my job to take the cows to the pasture. We had a horse that we called, "Old Kid" that my mother used to hook up to our surrey "with the fringe on top." And she used to go down after Grandmother. But in the morning, I would always take the horse and ride bareback down to our pasture which was near the tracks, down nearly to the sugar factory. Each morning and night, it was my job to go get those cows. Sometimes my mother would go with the surrey, especially at night. But always in the morning, it was my job. So I just took the horse over to the fence and I’d climb up on it and go down and take the two cows. It was usually in the beautiful spring and summer when it was nice. I used to love to go down and hear the birds in the fields. I’d get off the horse and take a drink from that large flowing well. The water came out of that well so swiftly that you couldn’t have possibly put your mouth to it. But you’d cup it in your hands and get a good drink from that cold well. I can still taste that cold water and how good it was. After fooling around a little bit there, then I got on the horse and went back home.

I remember one day; I forgot the key to the lock on the gate, and I got clear down there and remembered that I didn’t have it. So I hurried home with the horse loping along. But after Little Kid got to the house, he decided that he didn’t want to go back, he’d already been once. After I’d gotten the key and started back with him, and he didn’t want to go back. But I make him go, and we were loping down the street to get to the cows before they got on the railroad tracks. I remember I was so exited about it and feared that they’d get killed, so that I was going fast. And he stopped short and he sort of threw me off, and boy, I went right over his head. There happened to be a traveling man from Salt Lake close by, and he came running over and picked me up, but I was all right. He asked me who I was and someone said, "That’s Sam Goodwin’s daughter." And he said, "My goodness, I was just going up there!" But anyway, I had him put me back on the horse and I gave him a good switch and made him go back down to the pasture. The cows were all right, munching along the road. So I was able to open the gate and get them back in. Then when we went home that Old Kid was really glad to get home, and we just went a-tearing with my hair blowing in the breeze. I must have looked like a real tomboy. I enjoyed it just the same, I had lots of fun. And I knew that when I got home, the dishes would be done because that was Wanda’s job - to do the dishes while I took the cows to the pasture.

Evelyn Bushman lived a block south, and we were the greatest of pals. We had such good fun together. We were so compatible. We went with Sybil Winn, but she was not nearly the friend that Evelyn was. I remember Evelyn and I, every afternoon, we’d go downtown and spend 10 cents and we’d get an ice-cream soda or a sundae, or something ice-cream. They had big sundaes and they were only 10 cents. I can still remember how good they tasted. We were coming home one evening at dusk and went in Evelyn’s house, and her sister Julia didn’t hear us come in. She had gone into their pantry and Evelyn was in back of her and Julia didn’t know we were there. And just as Julia reached her hand up to turn on the light, Evelyn touched her, and Julia screamed so loud she nearly scared the two of us to death! My, did she get after Evelyn! But Evelyn was full of the dickens, so she may have done it just to scare Julia, I don’t know. I’ve often thought of that and can still hear the shrill screeching of her voice. Julia never married, and I remember she was thirty years old, and I thought, "Nobody could be older than that!" And yet when I reached thirty I thought, "My, how young it is." It all depends on how you look at things.

I used to go with Lexia Southwick; she was a very dear friend. She was part of that group of girls who always chummed together, who had such a good time in a group. She’d have me come down in the evening and she’d say, "Let’s go for a ride in our dump card." Her brother’d hook the horse up, and we’d get in that dump cart and it’d bounce around. It had just two wheels and a seat. It was really fun. And I’ve thought of us doing that many, many times, and what good times we had.

Sybil was a friend too. She only lived about three blocks from us. I remember one night we both had dates with Frank Sharp and Frances Wilcox. We were over to our house and had been in the grape arbor and founded on the grapes. They were so delicious. We sat there in our swing, and then the boys decided that we should have a dinner. So they went downtown and bought the milk and oysters and crackers and everything else and wanted us to fix some oyster stew. Sybil’s mother wasn’t home at the time, but we fixed a dinner and it was real good. We set the table so nice. It was kind of late by the time we got our dinner. After dinner, we sang and we danced a little, and we played some rummy. And we couldn’t get those boys to go home. They just sat there and laughed and then they’d want to do something else. And they stayed there all night long and they wouldn’t move, they wouldn’t go! They thought that was the biggest joke on us because they said, "When Sybil’s mother comes in the morning and sees us here...!" These two boys had good voices and they used to sing a lot, and they sang, I think, every song that was ever published. Now-a-days people would frown on it very much, but it was such an innocent thing at the time. I look back on it now and it’s an experience to remember.

While I’ve been sitting here, I’ve been thinking of some other things that happened. When I was younger in my teenage years, it was my job to do the laundry. I used to hang the clothes out. My father had put up two lines and had attached them from our porch out to a great big telephone pole. They were on pulleys, and we would swing them out as far as we could until we had two big long lines full of our clothes. I remember our neighbor next door tried hard to get her clothes out before mine. She just had regular lines, but she had someone to help her. But it was my job to do ours, and we had big laundries, I can tell you that!

We had so many little things that used to happen to us. I remember we used to have pigs at one time in a pigpen. There was a plum tree close by. Wanda and I were out after some plums, and we had to hit the pigs to get them away so we could get the fruit. One of the boards broke that she was standing on, and a nail came out and cut her leg. She had to have seven stitches, and it scared us to death. The doctor found that it was mostly just a fleshy wound. Harold and I shelled peanuts for Wanda; we felt so sorry for her. Oh, you should see the peanuts we had! I suppose we had a ten-pound bag that Dad brought home. I can still see the two of us shelling peanuts.

There were so many funny things that happened to us. We used to tease Arema that her birthday was going to leap over in leap year, especially Harold. He was a tease, and he said, "Oh Arema, you’re not going to have a birthday this year cause it’s leap year."

And so that night when she said her prayers she prayed, "Bless me and bless me that my birthday won’t leap over." We teased her lots of times as she got older, and especially now we say, "We bet you wish your birthday WOULD leap over now, don’t you!"