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| Paul, Junelle and Jim at the Park Valley Cemetery | about 1941 |
We
grew up after the great depression of the 1930's and were children during the
war years of the early 1940's, and the rationing of World War II. It was normal everyday life for us and all
our neighbors in the small country communities of Lynn and Park Valley. As we have talked through the years, we have
found that our family life experiences were much the same, which included baths
in the tin wash tub, hair cuts with the hand clippers, back when school attire
the boys was shirts and bib overalls and the girls wore dresses, pinafores and
long socks.
Most of our food was basic, “made
from scratch”, meaning that if we made a cake, we used flour, eggs, shortening,
sugar etc. There were no cake mixes back
then. We grew large vegetable gardens
and had orchards of fruit trees. We had
lots of greens and vegetables. We grew our own chickens, pigs and beef cattle
for meat and the small herd of dairy cows we milked morning and night. The milk was poured into a separator, we
cranked the handle by hand and the skim milk came out one spout and the cream
from another. The pigs were fed the skim
milk and we made butter from the cream in the old churn, turning it by hand,
which also provided the buttermilk for Mom’s special ginger crumb cake. We also sold whole milk and cream, giving us
checks for cash. We had laying hens and
it was our job to feed the chickens and gather the eggs every day. Some eggs were also sold. In the spring the folks would order baby
chickens through a mail order and raise them in the little brooder house until
they were big enough to let out in the chicken run. We really enjoyed Mom’s fried chicken with
mashed potatoes and gravy, or potato salad and deviled eggs. Homemade ice cream and cinnamon rolls were
also a very special treat. Those country women were really good cooks!
Only a few essential items were
purchased at the grocery store. The
fruits and vegetables were “bottled” all summer long, also jams and jellies,
corn and beans and various kinds of pickles, were all organized down stairs in
the fruit cellar. There was also a root
cellar, near the brick house, for storing potatoes, carrots, squash, onions,
apples, at harvest time. We were pretty
much self sustaining.
In the summer we helped in the
gardens, watering and weeding, and in the fields of hay and grain, where we
used teams of horses. We rode the
derrick horse and liked to ride on the top of the wagon loads of loose hay
headed to the stack yards by the house.
We set the nets for the meadow hay, used a hay loader, a buck rake, a
dump rake and a Jackson fork to ‘put up’ the stacks of loose alfalfa and meadow
hay. We had a binder to cut and tie the
grain into bundles which we stood in shocks, ready for the thrasher crew. There
were no tractors or bailers back then.
We had daily chores, like filling
the wood box, feeding the animals, gather the eggs or watering the horses, but
a lot of the work was fun for us kids, and adventurous too. There was time to pick wild flowers, catch
bull frogs, watch the clouds roll by, run trap lines, ride horses, check out
nests for bird eggs or make mud pies. We
liked to go with Dad to the meadows to change the water, and to the canyon to
fish or fix fences. We enjoyed feeding the cattle in winter, going to the
mountains for the Christmas tree or branding calves in spring. We didn’t have
electricity back then. (We were almost
teenagers when electrical power lines were built into the small rural
communities in western Box Elder County where we grew up and it CHANGED OUR
WORLD!)
In those early years, for heat and
cooking we had a wood burning kitchen range with a baking oven and small
warming ovens on top, and warmed water in the
reservoir on the opposite end from the cook top. We also had a fireplace
and a coal stove for heat. Our lights were
small gas or coal oil lamps that hung from a hook in the kitchen ceiling or sat
on the table. Our bedrooms were cold and
frigid in winter.
Back then, in the rural communities
and on the ranches, breakfast was a large meal and was meant to get the day
started right. It would include cooked
cereal, bacon, sausage or sliced fried ham, eggs, baking power biscuits, or
fried potatoes, hash, or pancakes.
Several if not all of these, especially when we had company. Dinner was the noon meal, usually a large
full meal, would include meat, potatoes and gravy, with vegetables and salad,
followed by dessert. Supper was in the
evening and was the smaller meal of the day.
Sunday dinner was often a pot roast of venison or beef with vegetables,
put in the oven of the kitchen range and left to cook while we were at
church. Homemade rolls, pies, cakes,
cinnamon rolls or cookies were a part of most meals. Ice cream was homemade with our own milk,
eggs, lots of cream, vanilla and sugar, then churned by hand with ice from the
ice shed or from the mountain. We
learned that using snow in the freezer took a lot longer to freeze.
In the early years, our water came
from a well in the front yard that had a hand pump that stood on the top of the
well. We just pumped the handle and into
the bucket hanging on the spout of the pump, came fresh cold water. Our friends, the Al James family in Muddy,
had a large, long rope on a reelthat hung from the well cover with a bucket
tied to the end that they would let down into the open well to fill with
water. Our bathroom facilities were hand
soap and a little water basin in the kitchen and a path to the outhouse.
On wash day, we would fill two large
boiler pans with water from the well and heat them on the kitchen range, then
pour them into the gas-powered Maytag washer, and add some of Mom’s homemade
laundry soap. The rinse water was a tub
of cold water from the well with a little “blueing” added to whiten the whites
and sheets. It took all day to do all
the batches of clothes and get them hung on the clothes lines to dry. Washday was Monday and ironing day was on
Tuesday, using the flat irons heated on the top of the kitchen range. Cleaning day was usually on Saturday. Bread baking took place a couple of times a
week, four to six loaves at a time, made by hand.
We often had company drop in and
they were always invited to stay to eat.
Those country cooks could really stretch a meal. We went to visit often with family and
friends and they came to our house. It
was a slower pace of life back then.
There was no TV, but we did have a battery powered radio that Dad would
turn on in the evening to hear the news.
We played games and did a lot of reading and puzzles on the long winter
nights and we also had a piano.
We had a very close bond with family members and
neighbors. We depended on each
other. We spent a lot of time together,
enjoyed church socials, dances and school activities. It was a bonding experience and a diversion
from everyday life. It was simpler way
of life and what great memories we each have from those days of our childhood
on the ranch.
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