On a very cold day in January of 1937, our family moved to Midvale [from Dividend] settling in Aunt Maggie Jones' house (Aunt Maggie is my Grandpa Werrett's sister) on Lennox Street and began to put our lives back together in an unfamiliar community. How brave our mother was to leave her friends and sisters behind and move to Midvale.
At the side of the house, there was a huge rock that was flat on the top and made a wonderful stool. Whenever I got lonely for my dad, I would sit on this rock and think of him and my friends and my beautiful white cat named "Snowball" that we had to leave behind. I wanted so badly to go home and have things as they were.
Life without our father was just beginning for this little family. We all needed our daddy, but especially my brothers who were just seven and nine. We hadn't had a chance to do some of the things with my father that Mary and Rayma had been able to do. Rayma remarked to me how sad she felt for us four younger children. She and Mary had had such a wonderful childhood going camping, hunting, shopping and fishing with Mom and Dad and we did not have those experiences.
After Rayma died, I was going through some of her papers that her girls had given me, I found a handwritten note of hers that said, "MarDella was only five years old when dad died and we left Dividend. I wanted her to know what a happy life mother and dad lived during their first years of their marriage. They spent hours shooting ducks and pheasants. We have pictures of them both shooting with their guns and in their shooting clothes. They were very much in love with each other. We spent many happy hours fishing together. Mother and dad spent a lot of time swimming with their relatives and friends especially at Saltair. Their suits at that time were very old fashioned".
Mother and dad apparently were very compatible, but they also had arguments like all married couples. My dad was very patient and avoided confrontation. If they got into an argument, mom said he would just put his hat on and leave the house. When he thought mom had had time to "cool down", he would return home, open the door and throw his hat in. If the hat didn't come flying back out, he knew it was safe to go in.
Whenever I went to Goshen to spend time with my Aunt Gwen and my cousins, I always visited with Aunt Sarah and from her front porch which faced west, 1 would follow the road from Goshen to Dividend. Oh, how my heart ached. I wished so much that I could go back home where we were all so very happy. 1 bad said goodbye to my friends-especially Erma Dean and my cat Snowball. For a small child that was such a sacrifice. I'm sure my aunt and uncle would have taken me there if they had known my feelings. I was in high school before l bad the opportunity to return to Dividend. I bad a boy friend take me. Of course, by then the houses were gone. I remember my friend complaining because it cost $5.00 for gas. Some friend! Thank goodness I dumped him. He passed away in the spring of 2010.
Mother did not have any income after dad's death. Social Security had just been started in 1935 and she did not receive any money from the mines. Mother had $35.00 in her purse when she moved to Midvale. We were what you might call a very poor family. My mother had a lot of pride and kept us clean and we didn't know how poor we were. It was, however, when a lot of people lived very modestly. What we lacked in money we made up in love and support of one another.
Mother was a very good cook. She didn't have a lot of money to make fancy dishes, but we were always blessed with enough to eat. Her patriarchal blessing promised this to her-that her basket would always be full. She was a very spiritual person and I learned much from my mother. I always felt that her prayers would get us through anything. Mother was a great pie maker. I especially loved her pumpkin, lemon and apple pies. Mother baked bread almost every other day. Rayma and I loved the crust on the bread and we would try to be first to get the crust when a new loaf was being cut. After Rayma left home, I didn't have as much competition. My mouth waters when I think of how good that crust was with butter and mom's homemade chili sauce spread on it.
When we moved to Midvale, Mary went to work for the Telephone Company. The manager of the Telephone Company and her sister were friends of my mothers. Mother cleaned houses and at night she cleaned the Midvale Bank to supplement money she received from the State.
While we were living on Lennox Street, my father's brother Alvin and his wife Dee and their three children came to stay with us. Uncle Alvin had quit his job in Idaho and was trying to find something out in this area. They had a son, Alvin, who was Darrell's age, a daughter Shirley who was my age and a daughter Geri who was Beth's age. This was such an imposition to move in with our family, but my mother was a "jewel". When someone needed help, she did what she could. They didn't give my mother any money while they lived there and mother kept herself busy baking and cleaning for all of us. Rayma would get upset with Geri who was still on a bottle as she would spill milk on our living room rug, staining it. Aunt Dee never did anything about it. Later we found out that Uncle Alvin had a lot of money with him and was able to buy a saloon in Mercury, Utah. He had sold some property in Idaho. • This was a sore spot with Rayma, but I don't remember mother complaining.
Mother couldn't afford to finish paying for the new car Dad had just purchased a short time before he died so she had to sell it. We lived close to church, stores, schools and doctor and dentist offices so we never seemed to mind having to walk. It was good exercise.
Rayma went to high school and took care of Darrell, Frank and I when mother was away. She was very patient with us. When she was still in high school, she fell in love with John Brown and they were married 22 August 1938. In 1939 along came a special niece, Marilyn. Marilyn was born on Frank's birthday. I was eight years old when she was born and I loved tending her.
Rayma and John lived in Midvale, Salt Lake, and then Glendale, California. They later moved back to Midvale to an apartment at the top of Third Avenue in Midvale. By this time, we had moved to a big home at 131 North Main Street which we rented from Mr. Watson who also lived up Third Avenue.
Our house on North Main had indoor plumbing with a bathroom between the two bedrooms. However, it was so cold in the winter that we heated water on the kitchen stove and bathed in a tin tub in the kitchen. We did not have central heat so our house was warmed by the stove in the kitchen and a pot bellied stove in the dining room. It cost $25.00 a month to keep the stoves going in the winter and to cook with all year.
Barbara my friend who lived up 3rd Avenue did not have indoor plumbing. There was an outhouse on
the west side of their house separated by a drive way. One evening when we were in our teens, some boys came to see us and parked just outside the outhouse and we were stuck inside. Mrs. Corak had to lie a little and tell them that we weren't home. Thank goodness, the boys finally left. We could never have come out of that outhouse while they were there.
We didn't have air conditioning. I don't think I even knew what that was then. Everyday, mother or the boys would have to go out and bring in wood and coal. We had to keep the houses warm enough so the pipes to the sink and tub would not break. It had broken a few times when we had a very severely cold winter. What a lot of work getting the pipes thawed out. Our home was brick and we had large apple trees on both sides, so we never noticed it being very hot in the summer. Occasionally when it was in the heat of summer, my brothers took their mattress and put it on some boards and slept unde tthe trees.
We enjoyed eating the apples from the trees that surrounded our house. They were especially good when they were green and we would sprinkle them with salt. Mother would make applesauce and apple butter from the apples and, of course, her apple pies. When Mary would come home during apple season, she always made apple butter to take home with her. Neighbor kids thought it fun to steal the apples, but that was okay. It was more fun for them to steal them than to have asked. Mother didn't mind them doing it and there were enough apples for everyone.
There was one big old tree at the very back of our yard and its branches were shaped so that one could sit up high in the midst of it. I spent many hours up there singing and pretending. One of the songs I sang a lot was "Somewhere over the Rainbow", which was popular at that time.
There was a small plum tree on the south side of the yard and it had a branch that grew straight out and I could barely reach up to it. It made a wonderful hanging bar. I would swing on that old thing until I had calluses on my hands. Once I was swinging and my hands slipped, and down I went with a thud. The fall knocked the breath right out me. l didn't swing on that old branch much after that. At school, we had tricky bars from which we would swing at recess time.
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