Alta Rae Wilson Tolman, Daughter of Alma LaVoy & Pearl Elva Bingham Wilson, Written July 1963
I am the eldest of four children and the only daughter born to Alma Lavoy Wilson and Pearl Elva Bingham Wilson. I was born in a small farmhouse in Kanesville, Weber County, Utah, on June 27,1917. My mother is the daughter of Brigham Heber Bingham Jr. and Catherine Rozilla Wilson of Wilson, Weber County, Utah. My father is the son of David Evans Wilson and Elizabeth Ann Hayball of Kanesville and Ogden in Weber County, Utah.
Several months after my birth, my parents and I moved to Logan. Father was connected with the Utah Agricultural College and was State Pathologist for the United States Department of Agriculture. A month after my eldest brother, Alma Lavoy Jr. was born March 10, 1919, we moved from Logan to Morgan, Utah. Father was County Agricultural Agent there for a year. In 1928 father was asked to be superintendent of the newly set up Agricultural Experiment Station at Farmington. During the eight years we lived on the Experimental Farm two more brothers, Warren and David Lloyd, were born. My first memories are of this home. I remember roaming all over the large farm with my brothers and acting like a tomboy. During these years on the “farm” we moved each winter to Logan as soon as the harvest was in. Old Doc Vernon usually had one of his “places” for us to move into. Every year it was a different place, and usually a different ward and school we had to adjust to. It was an experience I dreaded. During the winter months father wrote up the farm records and instructed at Utah Agricultural College. Then as soon as planting time came in the spring, we’d pack up again and move back to the farm.
I started piano lessons when we lived in Farmington, that continued under various teachers until I was a senior in high school. I had an accident with my hands which left one finger permanently disfigured and I made a lasting friend, Marie Welling. I had my first trip alone. I traveled by the old Bamberger train to Ogden to a Bingham family reunion. Father put me on the train with a quarter in my shoe for spending money, and mother met the train at Ogden, The occasion which had such an exciting beginning ended in misfortune when I fell off the giant slide at Lorin Farr Park and had to be taken to the hospital with a leg injury. It must not have been too serious for after spending a night unconscious, I was allowed to go home. When I was six years old I was sent to school in the next town, Kaysville. I rode the Bamberger train along with Marie Welling and some older boys and girls.
In 1928, father received a Fellowship to Cornell University at Ithaca, New York. For almost three years we lived there while father worked on his doctorate degree. We lived in a big white house just outside the city limits. We children attended a one-room rural school and loved it. It had certain advantages. I completed three grades in two years, passed the required State Regent’s examinations and started to high school. While in the East, we took several trips. One summer we went up into French Canada and down the New England coast by way of the Joseph Smith birthplace in Vermont to Boston, New York City, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. We visited many places of historic significance. On April 6,1930, the Ithaca branch of the L.D.S. church went to the David Whittmer Farm at Fayette, New York, to commemorate the 100th Anniversary of the organization of the church. We celebrated the 24th of July each year by joining other L.D.S. families of the Branch in an encampment at the Joseph Smith Farm at Palmyra, New York.
Upon returning to Utah in April 1931, we made our home in Logan where father held a position on the faculty of the Utah Agricultural College. We lived in a number of different houses but always in the same neighborhood, until 1936 when we built. Now that I am married and have a family of my own, I still live in the same neighborhood, only a short distance from the house my parents built and where mother still lives.
I graduated from the Logan High School and the Logan LDS Seminary in 1934. I attended Utah Agricultural College with the plan to go out in Home Economics and to study Foods and Nutrition especially. When I was a Junior, my plans were nearly upset but I made up my mind to stick to them and I did. A little later, after deciding to spend five years in College, I worked to fill requirements for a Smith Hughes Certificate (a teaching certificate for Homemaking). So I really accomplished two majors. While in college I became a member of Phi Upsilon Omicron, a national honorary Home Economics Fraternity.
All my life I have attended church meetings regularly—Sunday School and Sacrament meeting, Primary and then MIA. When I was a senior in high school, I became Primary organist. Soon after that it seemed like I was playing the Reed organ or piano for almost every church meeting I went to. During my college days there was a group in the ward called the Junior Genealogical Committee that I belonged to. I made a Book of Remembrance and worked on family genealogical records. This committee became “The Crowd” and we had good times together. These friends shall always have a special place in my memories. My future husband was one of this group. When I was a senior in college, someone decided I should do something besides play the music in church and I was asked to help teach a younger crop of Jr. Genealogists. This was my first teaching experience, church or elsewhere.
It was during my last year in college that my father passed away, Oct. 30,1938, after a long illness. Mother took in boarders to support us. My brothers and I had jobs to help out. I checked papers for a Child Development Class at the college and was cook at the College Nursery School.
In June 1939,1 was graduated from the Utah Agricultural College with a B.S. degree in Home Economics. I thought I was ready to be a teacher. That fall I went out to Duchesne County to teach at Tabiona High School. It had an up and coming band but no facilities for teaching Home ec. I taught mostly English and the last period of the day I had all the girls to do with as I could in a desk-filled classroom. The town claimed a population of 350, had a post office, two general stores, and no electricity! I matured fast in Tabiona and almost changed my mind about being a teacher. I went back the second year only because they promised me an appropriate room with some equipment. In 1941 and 1942 I taught mostly Homemaking at the Lyman, Wyoming High School. In 1943 I taught Homemaking only at South Cache High School in Hyrum, Utah. I lived at home with mother and commuted the few miles each day.
Our family suffered another loss in the fall of 1941 when my eldest brother, Alma, died.
When I moved back to Logan to live, Elden A. Tolman and I renewed an old friendship. During the Christmas holidays we became engaged. After finishing out my year at South Cache High School we were married June 19, 1944 in the Logan Temple and made our home in Logan.
Elden was the son of Eliza Ann Riley and Cyrus Tolman of Bancroft, Idaho, who had moved to Logan to work in the Temple. (Elden’s father died a few years prior to our marriage). Elden had served in the Spanish-American mission, had done post-graduate work in business and was an accountant by profession.
Elden and I both worked in various church organizations. I have worked in Primary, Sunday School and Mutual in the ward and served a number of years on the Stake Primary Board. Elden was MIA officer, Seventy’s Quorum officer and served under two Bishops as ward clerk.
My husband, Elden, had had a heart condition since boyhood days. In July 1949 he suffered a mild stroke but recovered quickly. In January of 1952 he had the flu which aggravated the heart condition. He was hospitalized for some time and it took several months of convalescing at home before he could resume normal activities. On October 6, 1952, my husband passed away, suddenly and without pain.
When Elden died we had three children. Ellen was born May 29,1946 and Marie was born Sept. 22,1947. Thomas Wilson was born Feb. 10, 1952 while Elden was hospitalized.
Seven months after Elden’s death, on May 8, 1953, our fourth child, Shirley was born. She was something of Elden returned to me, I felt.
After Elden’s death I considered several possibilities for supporting my family and decided to return to teaching, but to teach young children. I waited for several years while my children got a little older. I learned to drive a car, and then I went back to College and filled requirements for an Elementary Teaching Certificate the summer and fall of 1955. In the spring of 1956 I was offered a contract to teach in Logan City Schools. Soon I will be starting my eighth year of teaching and in the same school. (1963) I enjoy teaching but it is hard for me to do the kind of job I want to do with my family and my school work too.
Alta Rae Wilson, Written 1936:
I was the first child and the only girl born to Alma Lavoy Wilson and Pearl Elva Bingham Wilson. I was born in a small farmhouse in Kanesville, Weber County Utah, June 27, 1917 at 6 a.m. and weighed nine and one half pounds. My grandmother Bingham was present and Dr. Hanzler? was the doctor.
Mother has told me I looked just like a Japanese baby. I had lots of dark hair and my nose was a small bump on my face. Mother often thought of resorting to a clothespin to give my nose a respectable shape. A little Japanese lady brought me a richly embroidered silk handkerchief for a gift.
I was blessed and given the name Alta Rae Wilson by …..on….. I nearly received the name of June after the month of my birth.
Three weeks after my birth my folks, young and foolish, took me to crowded Lagoon for the fourth of July.
I was a good-natured baby in the daytime but was ill-tempered with colic at night until I was six months old.
One week before moving to Logan, father had a run-away on a wagon of grain. He fell off and broke his arm and bruised his leg badly. At this tune father was Utah Pathologist and doing extension work. Mother and I were often left alone.
We moved to Logan three months after I was born. Father taught at the Utah State Agricultural College in the winter. We lived in a small red brick house on Fourth North at 555. Mrs. Elvira Peterson who lived next door knitted a jacket and booties for me.
When I was eleven months of age father was called to Washington D. C. To a meeting of Pathologists. Dr. Ralph Porter advised mother to go with him and so I was left with my grandmother Bingham and father took mother with him to “show her the president.” They were gone for about one month. My first birthday came while mother and father were on the train coming home. Father brought me a tiny gold locket with a very fine chain for my first birthday present. You can see it on my baby picture.
While the folks were in Washington D. C. I was ill. My grandmother, not wishing to cause my parents any worry, did not write them of my illness and when mother returned I was thin and sickly. I suppose that was the beginning. At present I’m not exactly ‘skinny’ but neither am I fat.
Mother took my baby picture with her and each night she took it out and looked at it. It made her cry because she was so homesick.
When I was learning to talk the first thing I learned was to imitate all the animals I saw. It made my grandfather Bingham laugh when I mocked the animals especially when I would “hee-haw, hee-haw” on seeing a donkey.
Father belonged to Phi Kappa Iota fraternity. To initiate a prospective member he was sent over to take care of me for the evening.
When I was about a year and a half old we moved over on Sixth North into the house next to the canal, hi January I fell in the canal but the weather was like spring. I was making plenty of noise when I was pulled out by a fellow who happened to be coming down the street. About the same time I fell on a hot stove and burnt my hands badly. I must have had a hard time keeping on my feet!
My oldest brother Alma Lavoy Jr. was born March 10, 1919. Mother and father called him Jerry even before he arrived. They must have wanted a boy baby. They had a difficult time breaking themselves of the habit of calling him Jerry.
In April 1919 we all moved to Morgan, Utah where father was County Agent for a year.
From Morgan we moved to Farmington in Davis County where father was superintendent of the Davis County Experimental farm. We remained there most of the time until September 1928 and my other two brothers, Warren Harding and David Lloyd were born.
Early memories of this home are vague but I do remember roaming all over the large experimental farm with my younger brothers. I especially delighted in spending my time on a small knoll situated near the farthest end of the farm. It was covered with tall grass and old dead trees. It was the favorite haunt of magpies, squirrels and pheasants. When old Tabby had carried off her kittens they could almost always be found in an old dead stump on the knoll.
Another playground was the orchard, which was to the rear of the house. It belonged to the neighbors but I helped myself to the fruit. Many is the time I have raced for the old apple tree to escape an angry ram or bull which was pastured in the old orchard. I remember one time when Warren, Alma and I were chased up a cherry tree and kept there for a good hour shaking the tree with our fright. The more frightened we became (it was only a tiny tree) the more the tree shook; the more the tree shook, more cherries fell to the ground and the angry ram stayed longer to eat the fruit. We didn’t dare call for help because we knew we would be severely reprimanded for our being in the orchard at all. We were finally rescued by an uncle who shook his cane and uttered an awful sound at the ram, whereupon it made haste to the other end of the orchard and we fairly fell out of the tree in our hurry to reach the yard.
The house was old and rickety even in my first memories of it. It was a big adobe house and had an upstairs which was never used except for storage. At the head of the stairs there was a board out of the floor and honeybees had built some combs. I was a little afraid of the bees, which were continually crawling in and out, especially after I had had the bad luck to sit on a bumblebee. However, I sometimes dared these bees for the upstairs was a good place to go to
rummage around in. In the upstairs there was a small balcony. In my more daring moments I would venture out upon it, but I never stayed there long. The railing was very old and liable to crumble under pressure and the balcony floor slopped toward the hard ground.
The big yard was a pretty place in the early summer. It was surrounded by stately poplars and the grass was long and green. In a corner of the yard there was a crab-apple tree. Every year as sure as that tree had apples I had the stomachache from eating green apples and salt.
I was quite a “torn-boy” in my younger years. I’d climb over just about anything. One day I decided to try the old granary and tool shed. Well, I finally reached the roof having accumulated numerous scratches, and decided to descent via a plum tree. I reached the plum tree . too and got myself perched on a limb ready to jump. I jumped but lo! I didn’t reach the ground. I was swinging frantically to and fro. My dress had caught on a good solid twig and I was suspended upside down in mid-air. I soon set up such a racket that one of the hired help on the farm came running and set me on my feet.
I guess I just couldn’t keep out of trouble. Only the next day I was climbing over the box of a new Ford truck which was not yet fastened to the chassis. I ventured too near the end of the box and before I could utter a sound I was on the ground with the box over me. I must have tried the patience of all the hired help. They didn’t know when or where they might hear me yelling for help.
Like most kids we had a dog or two. We never had the same dog for long because our dogs were stray dogs. It seems to me we had a dog only long enough to get sick and die. We took quite a fancy to most of them and when one of them died we made a special grave for it.
I was about eight when I had my first serious accident. Alma and I were playing around a culvert and throwing rocks in the water. Alma tried to carry a piece of tile too heavy for him and it fell on my out-spread fingers. It smashed the middle finger on my right hand. I hurried to the house holding my smashed finger. Alma ran and hid in the privy. I was so “scared” I didn’t cry. Doctor Tanner came and wrapped up my shapeless finger and hoped it would grow into a finger again. It did, but there is still a bad scar and a misshapen nail.
After my finger had healed I began taking piano lessons from Mrs. Christiansen of Farmington. Mother had a difficult time getting me to practice at first. Later I was interested enough to practice myself although the outdoors still held more interest for me. I continued piano lessons while in New York from Mrs. Mamie B. Stillwell of Ithaca and after returning to Utah, from Mrs. George W. Thatcher of Logan. Due to heavy schoolwork I stopped my music lessons when seventeen. I was always frightened to play from memory in public and seldom did except in recitals which Mrs. Stillwell gave.
I can remember when Uncle Wallace, mother’s brother died. My brothers and I were swinging on a big gate down in the field when father came down looking so queerly that I was sure we were going to have a good spanking. Soon after uncle’s death my grandfather had a stroke which left his right side paralyzed and speechless. He has now regained (1936) some speech and can walk and move his right arm a little.
One summer mother and father went to California. Warren and Alma stayed at Aunt Clara’s in Kanesville and Lloyd and I stayed in Ogden at Grandmother Wilson’s. I was very happy when they returned. I wanted to get back on the farm.
The summer before the one previously mentioned I took my first long train trip alone to Ogden. It was a thrilling adventure. Of course I had ridden on a train many times before, but that was going to school. Now I was going the great distance from Farmington to Ogden all alone. My mother would be there to meet me; then, we were going to what people call “a reunion” where you meet all your relations and some others who call themselves relations. Father put me on the tram and told the conductor to take care of me. Just before he left me he slipped a quarter into my hand and I put it in my shoe. I waved proudly to father as the train moved off. However, as I watched him rapidly slipping from view I felt very small. I wasn’t so sure that I would get to my destination after all. The most horrible of catastrophes passed through my mind. Just in the middle of one I heard the conductor saying, “What’s the matter little girl?” I didn’t want him to know I had the least fear so I smiled and told him I was just fine. The conductor smiled in return and reassured me he would see that I got off at the right place. As I watched the countryside glide swiftly past the window, I was amazed. I had gone to Ogden in a car many times before and never seen such scenery. The country passing before me was a huge patchwork quilt with the acres of orchards and various crops as colorful blocks. As the train neared Ogden I became uneasy again. What if mother would not be there to meet me? What should I do if she were not? As the train pulled into the station, the conductor took me by the hand and helped me off. There in front of me was my mother and my first train ride alone had come to a happy ending.
We went to Lorin Farr Park where the reunion was being held. I had lots of fun until I decided to go down the slide. I picked the highest and had just started down when I heard a boy say “Hurry up.” The next thing I knew was the next morning when I found myself in the Dee hospital in Ogden. Mother says I fell off the slide and was unconscious most of the night. I had cracked the bone in my leg when I had fallen. I was taken from the hospital that morning. On the way home I lay in the back of the car. Every little bump caused my leg to hurt terribly. The car was bumped into by another while in Ogden and when we finally got out of the city it was necessary to detour. It seemed to me we hit bumps all the way home.
My best and first childhood friend was Marie Welling. She was my age and lived in North Farmington. Our parents were good friends and so it was inevitable that we became good friends too. We didn’t live very far apart but we very seldom saw each other except on Sundays and when we went to Primary.
When we were six our parents sent us to the Kayesville school. The school in North Farmington was poor and we were the only ones in our grade. We had to ride on the train every day. One night the train didn’t stop at the crossing long enough for us to get off. The older girls jumped off while it was going slow but we didn’t dare. We had to ride to Lagoon and walk the good distance back. I didn’t like those school years. The teachers all had pets and I wasn’t lucky enough to be one of them.
In 1928 father received a fellowship to Cornell University, and so on September 8, 1928 Father and Mother and my three brothers Warren, Alma and Lloyd and I left Utah to go to Ithaca, New York. We arrived in Ithaca about two weeks after we left Utah. It seemed like a long trip. I saw many new sights and things I had never seen before. We stayed in cabins most of the nights but camped some. When we arrived in Ithaca, Harrison? Maughan had found us a house just outside of the city limits.
Ithaca is a city of many hills and rocky gorges situated at the south end of Lake Cayaga. Our house was nestled closely to a hill. Behind the house and over another small hill a train ran. The station was a short way up the track and every time the train came in it whistled just as it got behind our house. It was very disturbing to hear the shrill whistle in the middle of the night.
Across the road from the house there was a vast meadow with numerous old fruit trees and other kinds. A good-sized creek flowed through the middle. When it was low there was a small island in the middle. It was reached easily over a pathway of dry stones, which stuck out of the water. Our gang called it “Treasure Island.” We built a “lean-to” hut and also a museum in which we placed pretty rocks and other treasures. We had great fun hunting snakes on the island. They were numerous and harmless. One had only to raise a big flat stone to find a snake. We even had a visit from the pirates in the form of a gang of city boys who just about wrecked everything.
The hill next to the house afforded a lot of good times too. One summer it was covered with golden rod. It was a beautiful sight besides being a dandy place to hide. In the winter there was good sleigh riding and skiing. I was never any good at skiing but there is nothing like trying something for the first time. I chose a nice cold windy afternoon, borrowed my brother’s skies and started down the hill. Due to the stiff wind the snow was very thin. I lost my balance as soon as I started. I bumped the remainder of the way down hitting all the bare rocks in my way. Needless to say I could not comfortably sit down for a few days.
Because we lived outside the city Alma, Warren and I had to go to a country school and what a school! It was a sturdy little rectangle of white set in the midst of the green rolling hills just outside of the city limits. There was an orchard on one side, and across the macadam road in a small ravine a tiny stream of clear water trickled over the smooth stones of an old rock bed. The school house was situated far enough from the city to escape the noise of a busy industrial and college town, and to be in silent surrounding disturbed only by the gay infectious laughter of children or the sound of the wind through the pines which were huddled together at the rear of the school. The rolling hills covered with trees and bushes was a new setting for me. I had always lived in the West, close to the rising heights of rugged mountains. My parents were indignant when they saw the school I was to attend. Why, it was ridiculous to have to send a child of theirs to a country school with only one teacher for all eight grades! Nevertheless I went to that little country schoolhouse. My parents soon discovered to their surprise that it was just as efficient as the modern eight-room building where I had previously attended school. Each morning I set out from home, a lunch pail on one arm and my books in another. The walk to school was rather long but I thoroughly enjoyed it. I was often tardy because I stopped to watch a noisy blue jay or a flock of blackbirds soaring about a scarecrow. Sometimes I took a shortcut through a cemetery and the orchard bordering the school grounds. I liked the feel of the thick sod in the cemetery. Early in the spring it was sprinkled with purple and white violets long before any other place for miles around. As I emerged from the orchard I would be eagerly greeted by schoolmates and invited to join in a game of hide and seek. The schoolhouse was only one room with two small anterooms for coats. At the ringing of the bell we would all rush for the door and swarm into the tiny coatrooms where we stumbled over each other in our hurry. The teacher was Mrs. Heringarde Marion, a young married woman. She welcomed me to school that first morning and introduced me to my first New York friends. Madeline Grover was my best friend and lived near to where I did. Every noon we “swapped” sandwiches or fruit with others. The teacher always received choice morsels from our lunches. In the winter we would toast sandwiches over the red coals of the heater. After finishing our lunches, we older girls played the victrola and danced in the small space at the front of the room. We tried to get the boys to dance with us but they were too bashful or else too interested in some other game. In the afternoon the older girls, having had their classes in the morning, helped the teacher with the little ones. I remember the day, and how I swelled with pride when I took the second grade for their reading. I was in the sixth grade then. Early in the spring everyone who could hold a bat played baseball. The girls were just as good as the boys, which fact provoked the eldest of them. On May Day we all made May baskets, and gathered sweet Williams and violets from the cemetery and pussy willows from a swampy place in the orchard. One day a circus came to town and the whole school packed themselves in and on the teacher’s touring car and went to see the parade. We arrived in town somehow or other. We crowded ourselves on one corner curb until the teacher discovered that some of the younger ones had strayed away. The older sisters and brothers of the truants went to look for them and the corner became considerably less crowded. The truants were found running along beside the calliope. They were brought back and kept in the car until we were ready to return. Every year all the rural schools of the county had a singing contest and East Lawn (my school) won the $25 prize both years I went to East Lawn. Everyone in the school who could sing do re mi fa so la ti do, practiced for weeks before the great event. It was a great event. Besides a singing contest it included a picnic and a whole day’s vacation from school. The school days were happy ones, full of childish simplicity and frankness. It was a sad day indeed when school was dismissed for summer vacation but the vacation soon passed and I returned once again with fond memories to the old school house.
In the spring of 1930 I finished grade school. I had completed the sixth, seventh and eighth grades in two years. The State law stated that after passing the state regents’ examinations one could attend high school. I passed all of mine with a high average. That fall I began high school with Madeline. I walked the short way into the trolley line and then rode the trolley to high school. On May 6,1931 I stopped school and the family left for Utah. I hated to leave but I was glad to be going ‘home.’
On April 6, 1930 the Ithaca branch of the L.D.S. church went to the David Whittmer Farm at Fayette New York, the place where our church was organized with six members just one hundred years ago. It was a very inspiring occasion. On July 24 of each year we were in New York the families of the branch would go to Palmyra to the Joseph Smith Farm and camp. Missionaries from the eastern states were there. On July 24,1930 a special encampment was held. Many people and missionaries were there and meetings were held in the sacred grove and at the Hill Cumorah. My brother Warren was baptized in the creek.
In the summer of 1930 the family took a trip up to Lake Champlain and Fort Ticonderoga, from there to Montreal and Quebec. French Canada was very interesting. The picket fences were painted red and white or green and white. Road signs were in French and English. Most of the peasants were French and spoke French. Montreal was old and interesting. We went on the “Duchess of York,” a steamer of medium size. After coming off I began to feel the first signs of what I think was seasickness. I couldn’t enjoy life for the rest of the day. On leaving Montreal we drove along the St. Lawrence River for quite a distance. At Quebec we saw the Plains of Abraham. It was acres and acres of green grass and beautiful shrubs. At one end of the park there were a number of buildings. Mother noticed one especially which she thought was a museum. She asked the caretaker how we could get inside, and he said, “Why Ma’am, that’s the jail!” We drove farther into town and parked at the bottom of the Citadel hill. We asked if it was alright and were assured that it was. When we returned to the car from seeing the Citadel, we found a tag under the windshield wiper. We thought it was just an old American Custom of advertising but to our chagrin it was a police summons to the city court the next morning. Father went to the court next morning. The judge smiled and said not to believe everybody, took father’s name and dismissed him.
We returned from Canada via the New England States. We visited the Joseph Smith birthplace in Vermont. It was beautiful! We went to New York City, Philadelphia and Washington B.C. I like Washington very much. It seemed clean and peaceful and there were lots of trees and shrubs. We visited the capitol, Lincoln and Washington’s monuments. New York was alright but I strained my neck trying to see the top of the Empire State building. In Philadelphia we visited the Betsy Ross home and Independence Hall. We camped at Valley Forge and visited the museum and church there. I was glad to get back to Ithaca but still happier to get started on our way back home.
I liked the East very much. Many people have said the East is more friendly than the West. I can easily believe it. The Eastern people, or at least those I associated with are not as strongly prejudiced against Mormons as we are often led to believe. They are just as thoughtful and generous as anyone could expect.
We took a route through the Southern States in returning to Utah. We intended to go as far south as Florida but it was too far and we were too anxious to return to the West; not because we didn’t like the East immensely but because the West held a special interest for us. Father didn’t accept a position on the Cornell faculty in order that he might return to Utah and accept a position at the Utah State Agricultural College.
In Kansas we had an accident which nearly cost us our lives. The roads were damp from the rain, which had fallen the night before. Because the roads were of clay and sand they were treacherously slippery. Father had been driving slowly but as we reached a stretch of the prairie road, which was not so slippery, he drove faster. It all happened so suddenly I was bending over the bread box in front of me getting some cookies when all at once I felt the car going wildly from one side of the road to the other. A telephone pole scraped the fenders; the car went down a five-foot embankment, snapped a barbed wire fence in two, carried off a post and came to a stop. We were breathless. None of us could speak. There we were stranded in the Kansas prairie with only a railroad in the distance and tumble weeks rolling about us. We were finally towed into a town and the car was repaired. The steering rod had snapped in two.
Upon returning to Utah, April 1931, we made our home in Logan where father held a position on the faculty of the college. I went to school at the Junior High School for six weeks and then graduated. It seemed queer because I had already been going to high school in Ithaca. They didn’t have junior high school there. When we first came to Logan I didn’t have any friends. I was very lonely after having had so many in New York. I gradually made acquaintances until I have many Logan friends now (1936). I liked high school and enjoyed it although I was still pretty lonely. I graduated in 1934.
In the late summer of 1933 the family took a trip to California. It was a business trip for father. We visited Zion’s and Bryce’s Canyon enroute. I was impressed with the delicate rock formation of Bryce’s canyon but I really liked Zion’s canyon. As we entered its cool depths I was impressed with its simplicity and stateliness. The canyon with its clear balmy atmosphere gave to me a feeling of profound serenity, peace and rest. It was so real, yet not common; so simple, yet aloof. The mountains were huge, although not of a common hugeness. They were not as high as many mountains I have seen, but on that summer day they seemed to reach out and conquer the world about them. The whole canyon seemed like one mass of rock, sinking down into small valleys, rising gradually to smooth ridges or jutting out abruptly into sharp rugged crags. Some of the mountains were like huge expertly molded lumps of sculptor’s clay. Others resembled thick mud, which had been poured down the side of a hill. Many of the mountains were generously decked with trees while others were barren but with an air of proudness. I shall always think of Zion’s Canyon as a monument of massive beauty to the Almighty.
While in California Warren, Alma, Lloyd and I went bathing in the Pacific Ocean. I didn’t dare do much but wade in the shallow water. I couldn’t swim and so I didn’t risk floating out to sea. In California we saw many old picturesque Spanish missions. They interested me very much. Being led through the old buildings and grounds by a solemn-eyed, humble priest held a lasting thrill for me. I especially enjoyed San Gabriel, which is near Los Angeles. The day we visited the sunlight was filtering slowly through the trees and resting on the old mission. The faded colors of the masonry, and the varied hues of the old tree trunks, already rich in color from age, were enhanced by the bright, dancing beams of light. It was a festival day. Soft melodious music issued from the open windows of the aged structure. Old and young were assembled outside, chatting gaily and playing games. The children swarmed the courtyard and “the lovely old gardens.” Most of them played hide and seek and were continually popping up from hidden corners like impudent Jack-in-the Boxes, hi the far corner of the courtyard there was a colorful scene indeed. A fat calf was in a pit of ashes and a barbecue was in the first stages. A group of old ladies with bright shawls and mantillas were clustered about, gossiping freely. I gazed bewildered upon these scenes; this bit of old California. The spectacle became all the more precious to me because of the humdrum world in which it was hidden and because I had seen something few tourists have the good fortune to see.
In September 1934,1 entered the Utah State Agricultural College as a freshman, and I was green. That year I did things with Margaret Peterson. We had gone to summer school together that summer and had had more fun and learned only a little. We took Composition, Shorthand, and Social Dancing. So – my first dancing lessons were had. What a fish out of water I was. Couldn’t stay on my own feet five minutes at a time. I don’t know where I found the nerve but when it came time for the A.W. S. Ball that fall I accepted another poor freshman who asked me and went to the dance spending most of it trying to walk on my own feet.
When I first started college I had my mind made up as to what my field should be. Home Economics was my desire, and especially foods and nutrition. (Queer things but I’ve always had a leaning toward anything to eat). When I was a junior, I was afraid for a while that I would have to change but I made up my mind to stick to it and did. A little later, after deciding to spend five years at college, I decided to fill requirements for a Smith Hughes Certificate (Teaching Certificate).
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