Four Summers in 4-H Club

Head, Heart, Hands, and Health

As much as I liked school, I liked 4-H club more.  Although I only spent four summers participating in 4-H, it had a powerful influence on my life, even influencing my choice of a college major.


 ( Insert: When at age 70 yrs old and teaching in China,  I observed the vast difference between the rural poor and the educated urban parts of China,  I thought that what they really needed  were County Agricultural and Home Demonstration Agents like they had when I was a child and a really good 4-H club to go with them. ) 


One day near the end of the third grade year,  all of the students from 3rd grade up, went to the auditorium to learn about joining the 4-H club for the summer.  4-H was an official government sponsored program run by the  U.S.Agriculture Department.   Clubs were offered in Clothing, Food Preparation, and Canning for learning home making skills.  Agricultural skills were offered in dairy cattle, beef production, sheep, pigs, rabbits, chickens,  and gardening. There were probably a lot of other options, but these are the only ones I remember.  There were picnics and other social activities attached to being in 4-H.  There were real meetings where you said the 4-H pledge with hand motions to go with each of the four words.


I pledge my head to clearer thinking, (touch your head)
My heart to greater loyalty, (put your right hand over your heart.)
My hands to larger service, (hands in front with palms up)
And my health to better living, (move your arms down body sides)
For my club, my community and my country. ("and my world" was added in 1973)


 Volunteer parents were  recruited to run the various clubs, which would meet in the volunteer's home or barn as the case may be. These volunteers would "teach" the children how to take care of cows or chickens or how to sew or cook.  There were handbooks for the volunteers and for the 4-H members, as well.  The projects got more difficult as you progressed from the beginning classes  up through the intermediate and  advanced classes.  A local 4-H fair was held at the end of the summer with prize ribbons offered on the town level and, later in the fall, cash prizes and pins were awarded on the county level, probably at the County Fair in Holbrook.  There was a Dress Revue where girls modeled their dresses and prizes were given out for the best dress. 

Of course, I wanted to sign up immediately.  There was one hitch, you were supposed to be 9 years old and I had just turned 8 in April.  Eventually, my mother, who was one of the 4-H volunteers, got special permission for me to be in the program.

Beginning 4-H Club Sewing

 Flour came in 50 lb. cotton sacks with

 printing that could be washed out, 

giving you a piece of "free" cloth.

You could sew pajamas or anything
 but,the most common thing was to
make dishtowels.  They still sell
flour sack dishtowels even though I
doubt that they really were used
for holding flour. 

  One of the projects I signed up for  was beginning sewing and we made three projects.  The first was a machine hemmed  dish towel made from a recycled fifty pound flour sack.  We measured and cut it, measured and basted the hem by hand, and then, we hemmed it by machine. You didn't really use a sewing machine at the home of the volunteer, but she told you how and demonstrated it as the members sat around her living room.   Since the clubs met once a week, you would sew at home during the week and bring what you had done to share with the others. 

My mother had taught me how to sew on her portable Singer sewing machine the summer after second grade, when I was only seven years old.  Most of the other girls had treadle sewing machines at home. They were impressed that I sewed on an electric machine.  In reality, a treadle is much more difficult, because at any moment with a twitch of your ankle it begins to sew backwards. If you want to sew faster, you have to move your feet faster. And another problem is that your legs have to be long enough to reach the treadle foot rest.  You also have to coordinate all these feet movements, up and down, fast and slow, while your hands hold and guide the fabric and while your eyes are watching the needle so as to let your brain know what to do with both your hands and feet.  Although I had the same eye and hand coordination problems sewing on my mother's electric machine, my feet had nothing to do   I only had to push slightly with my knee to sew slowly and push a little bit harder to sew faster.  (You can tell by my description of a treadle sewing machine, that I have used one, but it was later in a seventh grade home economics class.) 

A Petticoat Slip

My slip was like the one on the left.

The second sewing project was an apron, I think.  The third one was a petticoat slip like the one in the pattern above. In retrospect, this seems so difficult that it might have been an intermediate sewing project the next summer. I am certain that there were three projects.  I probably could have made this slip from flour sacks, but my mother bought some nice, smooth white fabric.  The seams at the sides and shoulder were easy and the hem wasn't much harder than the dish towel hem.  The hard part was  applying bias tape to the curves of the neck and armholes.  This was very difficult for me to do and had to be sewn down by hand.  I can still remember all the tiny stitches. 

It's All Over But the Paper Work

 At the end of each project the 4-H club members were to fill out an official form where you entered the cost of materials and the  market value of what you made and how many hours you had spent making it.  You then calculated what your profit was and how much per hour you earned.  Why this is so clear in my memory, is because the cost of the pattern, fabric, bias tape, and thread, was, even then, more than the cost of a new slip purchased from Penney's store in Holbrook or from a Montgomery Ward Catalog.  My mother said that my slip was much better than the ones from the store and that it would last much longer, although I never remember wearing out a slip before I outgrew it.   She said that I should put down that the slip was worth $2.99. At least that is what my memory tells me.  Even then the profit didn't begin to cover the hours it had taken me to make it.  


So, at age 8, this was my second financial lesson.  Sometimes "homemade" things cost more than "store bought," which Walmart has taught the current generation, in a big way.  So, now, we have to call them "handmade," rather than "homemade," in order to give them value.

Cream-of-Tomato Soup

From Scratch

I had to search hard on the internet to find a plain  bowl of soup.
No one put dabs of sour cream or parsley on soup then, at least not in
Snowflake. When I was a child,  soda crackers looked just the same as now.

I have memories of learning to cook cream-of-tomato soup in Allene and Carma Smith's mother's house.  Although we raised tomatoes on a large scale and canned hundreds of quarts every year, my mother did not make tomato soup,  let alone, cream-of- tomato soup.  We learned how to cook something different every week all summer, but this tomato soup is the only one I remember, because it was new to me and it tasted really good. 

Making Yeast Bread
The Red Ribbon Way

Check out the texture and the holes.

I probably learned to make yeast bread that summer between third and fourth grade, because I remember making the family's weekly six loaves of bread throughout fourth grade. My mother was teaching school in Snowflake that year and, probably, really needed my help.  She would brag on me and say that I could make bread as good as a "grown woman."   I was very proud of this until the next summer when I submitted a loaf of my bread to the 4-H fair and got a second place red ribbon.  Up until that time I had only gotten blue ribbons for everything that I entered.  I still remember the comment by the judges.  "Texture uneven.  Too many holes."  I got a second red ribbon that year for a "packed lunch," for the same uneven textured bread used in the sandwich.  I still have my stack of ribbons and I can't tell you, for certain, what any of the blue ones were for, but, I know exactly what the two red ones were for.  Bread!


P.S

My bread didn't have this many holes.

Yeast Cakes and Sponges

  

A marvelous 1 inch square of bacteria

To make yeast bread, you had to have yeast.   My parents would have bought a year's supply of yeast, wholesale, in Phoenix, if dried yeast had been available.  But it wasn't and so we had to buy it fresh.  Bushman's store had a huge sheet-cake-like pan of yeast behind the counter.  While you waited, they would cut a little piece about one inch square and then wrap it in butcher paper.  It cost 5 cents. 


My mother could make 6 loaves of bread and a pan of dinner rolls or a pan of cinnamon rolls with one of these five cent yeast cakes. 
She did this by making a "sponge"  that allowed the yeast to grow.   Bread making took all day because, even after the sponge was ready, you added the flour and mixed the dough, which had to rise two more times before you put it in the pans and then it had to rise again, before it was ready for baking.  


 Sometime during all this, you had to start a wood fire in the stove and make sure the oven was up to the right temperature and you had to maintain the fire so as to keep the oven steadily at that temperature during the baking process.  After the loaves were baked, you had to brush butter on the top of each loaf, so that the top crust would stay soft, and cover them with a clean dish towel until they cooled.  Then they went into the bread drawer which was another custom built-in in our Snowflake house.   (For the rest of my life, I've had bread boxes, but I have never had a house with a bread drawer, until last year when I moved to Provo.  Now, I have a bread drawer, again.    It even has a pie rack.  Too bad, I don't still make yeast bread.)

A few years back when I was teaching in Xian,China, I really had a craving for some homemade bread.   I remembered my mother's instructions from 4th grade.  Since I had only one package of dry yeast, brought from home,

I made a "sponge," just like she had taught me, with warm water, milk, a little sugar, and a little flour. No recipe really needed!   The bread turned out great.  Besides loaves of bread, I made cinnamon rolls with raisins in them just like the ones my mother baked when we lived in Snowflake.  I shared with all the American teachers and even with a couple from Australia.  No one complained about the uneven texture or mentioned any holes.

4-H Poultry Project

During the second or third summer of 4-H, I signed up to do an agricultural project,  Poultry, in addition to my homemaking projects.  My parents ordered fifty baby chicks and they came by U. S. Mail  crowded together into  a flat cardboard box with air holes so they could breath, very similar to the ones in the picture.  I have no idea how long it took for the mail to come from some farm  in the Midwest to a post office there and to the nearest train depot and then travel by train to the Holbook train depot and then in someone's car or truck to the Snowflake Post Office and then wait there until my parents went to get the mail.  The most surprising thing is that these baby chicks were still alive without food or water all that time.  It is also surprising to me that you can still order baby chicks by mail, today.


My job was to feed and water the chicks.  I suppose that I learned some 4-H lessons on how to care for chickens, but have no memory of such lessons.  My father had raised chickens throughout his childhood and so he probably taught me most of what I needed to know in order to raise chickens.

 It was not very long before the little chicks lost their fuzzy yellow feathers and began to look more like adult chickens.   By the end of the summer, I remember that we sold all of the chickens to some one in town who would keep them for their eggs or use them for their meat.  My end-of-project report for 4-H showed a much bigger profit than any of my sewing projects did.  Another financial lesson learned.

Canning in 4-H

The  summer after fourth grade, I signed up for canning as one of my 4-H projects along with sewing and cooking. This would not be new to me since my mother would "bottle" hundreds of quarts of fruit and vegetables every summer and I helped.  Now that I was taking this as a project my mother said that I had to do it all by myself.  I had to wash, peel, cook, bottle and be entirely in charge of  it from start to finish.  I remember that at age 9,  I bottled 200 plus quarts of food all by myself from raw  product to sitting on the shelf in our food storage room.

We had a food storage room very similar to this in our house only with shelves on
both sides of the room and across the end.

 That same year my mother canned 700 quarts of just tomatoes and  even more than that of other fruits and vegetables. Although my mother didn't usually count what she had canned, she did that year, because I had to count how many I canned for my 
4-H project report.  We had a large number of 2 quart jars for tomato juice and applesauce.  We used pint jars for jams and jelly, but most of our canning was in quart jars. 


 It was a mystery to me, then, and still is today, why we call it canning instead of "bottling"  or "jarring."

The Great Fruit Cocktail Episode

or
How My Mother  Became a "4-H Mom"

I think it was the next summer that my mother saw that they had added a new category in the canning section for the 4-H fair and it was mixed fruit cocktail.  She told me that I should try a few bottles of this since it was fruit season and we had a variety of fruits available at the same time.  So I did, under her supervision.


 A few days later, my cousin who was also in 4-H,  came to visit. My mother and I were sitting on the couch talking to her.  I was so excited about fruit cocktail that I began to tell my cousin about it.  My mother didn't want her to know, that we were doing this.   I guess this was a sibling rivalry thing with her sister, my cousin's mother.  Anyway, she pinched me on my leg and stood up.  I was supposed to understand that this meant to "shut up," just like when someone, surreptitiously,  kicks you under the table.  But being too young or too naive for such subtleties  I just said, quite loudly, "You pinched me."   My mother said, "Sorry, I was just trying to stand up."  I was surprised at her blatant lie, because it was a definite pinch.   After my cousin left, she said that my cousin would go home and make fruit cocktail to enter in that category.  My mother explained the pinch as her way of trying to tell me, "Don't talk about the new fruit cocktail category."  There are "stage moms" and it looks like there are "4-H moms," as well.


My mother was right.  When the 4-H fair came along, there sat my cousin's jar of fruit cocktail with little tiny pieces of fruit all chopped up, like the fruit cocktail you find in the cans at stores, but even smaller.  My mother needn't have worried because I won first prize. The judges commented on the larger pieces and that the individual color of each separate kind of fruit was maintained.  I don't know if my cousin got a ribbon or not.

A Giant Leap of Faith

The fence I jumped was a rounded wooden picket fence.
 I would have just climbed through this kind of fence.

 One day, the home demonstration agent,  Miss Beasley, came to Snowflake and she stopped at our house to talk to my mother about some kind of 4-H business.  When she went to leave, my mother offered to give her some tomatoes to take home.  Our rented garden lot, where we grew tomatoes, was several blocks down the road in someone's back yard.  My mother told me to go with her and pick her some tomatoes. 


 I was happy to go pick tomatoes for Miss Beasley.  I got into her one seated coupe and we drove down the street.  When we got there, she didn't park near the gate.  No problem,  I gave a little run, grabbed onto the wooden fence with both hands and flung myself over and landed easily on the other side.  She smiled and said, "I guess you have done that many times," thinking that I was showing off for her.  I had never done it before, nor had I seen my older brother do it.  I might have seen it in a movie.  I was a totally nonathletic child and have no idea why I would try such a thing for the first time in front of her.  I have never done it since.  


 She was right about one thing.  I was showing off.  I really admired her and wanted to impress her.  Seven years later, I, actually, enrolled in a triple major Home Economics program in college, that would qualify me to become a Home Demonstration Agent.   Knowing her  for four summers of my childhood was probably the most influential reason.  On the internet I saw  a picture of a girl who had just won the dress revue medal and underneath the photo it explained that she later became a home demonstration agent, herself.  Role models are very powerful in a child's life.

When I went on the internet to see if  I could find a picture of someone jumping a fence.  I found an entire "how-to-jump-over-a-wooden-fence" article with six steps. As I read the article,  I realized that, when I jumped the fence for Miss Beasley, I had done all of those six steps except number one, which was  "Lay down your backpack."  At the end of the article there was this post script:

 " If you have any doubt

 about your ability to jump the fence, 

climb it instead."

I, obviously, had no doubts about jumping the fence, but, if  I had thought about it, I would have had plenty of doubts.  I just did it without thinking.  If I ever acted, so impulsively, again, it never ended so perfectly.     

My Last Summer in 4-H

World War II was almost over and my parents had decided to move to Phoenix.   At the end of the school year they sold our house and we moved to the ranch  just north of  Snowflake for the summer.

We prepared for our new life in the city just as we always prepared for winter by canning food, making butter and cheese, and making soap. (see blogs on Milk and Soap)  I still registered for 4-H and I suppose they assigned my mother as my leader.  I don't remember what my projects were except for the sewing one.  I made a pinafore dress with puffy sleeves and ruffles up over the shoulders and around the skirt.  The ruffles were all edged with rick-rack that my mother insisted be sewn zig zag, so when it was laundered, it didn't fold over on itself and create an ironing problem. 

My dress was like the one on the left only with puffy sleeves.
and of course rick-rack on all the ruffles.

The only problem was that there was no electricity at the ranch and we only had an electric sewing machine.  The next year, my father adapted the sewing machine so that we could sew by having my younger brother, Wendell, turn a bicycle wheel with a handle.  The wheel was mounted on a desk and around the rim was a cord made of strong string that attached to the wheel of the machine. My brother sat on a little stool and turned the wheel.  speed was controlled by telling him to turn faster or slower or to stop.  You could also put your hand on the machine wheel and the string would just slip around in order to stop exactly when you wanted.  But this first summer we had no such contraption.

The solution to "no electricity" was  for my father to drive me and the sewing machine to Snowflake and I would spend the day at Aunt Lydia's sewing on my dress.  He would pick me up that evening and take me home.  My great grandmother, Nora Savage, lived with Aunt Lydia and so I got to know her a little bit.  There was a counted cross stitch sampler on the wall that she had made as a child and I was really impressed.  Years later, as an adult, I learned to do counted cross stitch and thought about my great grandmother doing it as a child.  I don't know how many days I spent at Aunt Lydia's, but eventually the dress was finished.

My First Hamburger

or 

Half-Hamburger

The Snowflake 4-H fair was being held at the elementary school, both inside the building and outside on the playground.  My parents dropped my sister and me off to attend by ourselves and would be back that evening to pick us up.  Since this was an all day affair,  the  4-H Club was providing lunch for some nominal fee.  Knowing this, my parents had given us money for lunch.  It turned out that it was not enough money for the two of us.  So we decided to walk a block down to The Cafe,(that really was it's name.)  It was the only place that served food in town.  It had a sort of general store near the front door and the cafe part at the back.  I had been inside  The Cafe a few times to buy bread when we ran out of home made bread, but had never eaten there, before. As a matter of fact, our family did not eat out, ever.  I can remember what I thought was my first  meal in a restaurant and it was a year or two later.   I guess I had forgotten about this meal.  I can remember sitting on stools at the back and when we looked at the menu, we only had enough money to buy one hamburger and one malted milk.  I don't know if we got fries or not. I was worried about getting back to the fair, since they had to cook the hamburger after we ordered it. After Mary Alleen and I shared the hamburger and the malted milk, we hurried back up the hill to the elementary school for the rest of the activities.I won several ribbons and my dress and some other projects were selected to go to the County Fair to be held later in the fall.

The End of 4-H, But Not Quite

That all day fair with the half hamburger was the last time I participated in a 4-H activity, but there is a postscript. After we moved to Phoenix, my father would commute back and forth from the ranch to Phoenix on a weekly basis.  One week that fall, he brought home some certificates and at least two silver 50 cent pieces, and maybe a silver dollar.   I had won several prizes at the county 4-H fair.   He even had a little pin for me.  I had won the Navajo County Dress Revue medal for the best dress and I wasn't even present at the fair.  I don't remember what the other prizes were for.  I was eleven years old and that was my last summer in 4-H. I still have the pin and the box of ribbons sixty-seven years later.  

Third Grade in Snowflake

New Housekeeping Arrangements

We move from Heber back to Snowflake.   Now, my father has to tend us and we only see our mother on the weekends.    Mary Alleen, who turned  five in October, doesn't get to attend school, anymore, and Wendell, who is now two, are both home during the day.  They will need someone to take care of them while my Dad is at work in Holbrook.  We get a housekeeper, Sarah Decker, the wife of the upper grade teacher in Heber.  She brings her daughter, Eva, with her everyday.  Since she and Mary Alleen are the same age, they have a great time playing together.


I am assuming my father fixed breakfast for us, which would have been cooked oatmeal.  Sister Decker fixed us lunch and supper.  I remember tasting dishes that we had never eaten before. 

 Raisins Raise a Few Problems

 In our food storage room, my parents kept cases of dried prunes, figs, and raisins that they would buy wholesale in Phoenix.  Sister Decker discovered this dried fruit bonanza and began putting raisins in everything.  She would cook prunes and add raisins to "sweeten" the prunes.  She even made raisin  pies.  This was unheard of in our house.  We didn't have our own grape vines and raisins had to be purchased.  They were a special treat.  My mother used raisins, sparingly, in oatmeal cookies, cakes,  rice pudding, and once a year in fruit cake.  My father was upset because the year's supply of raisins was disappearing fast.  Each raisin pie took an entire box of raisins.  Besides that, we all got sick on the pies and vomited them up.   As I was writing this paragraph, I have to smile because it  reminds me of  a current television reality show  called "Wife Swap," where some one else's mother comes to your house for a period of time.


I don't know if it had anything to do with the raisins, but eventually another housekeeping  solution was found.  (Footnote to this story) Thirty years later at a church picnic in Vienna, Virginia, I discovered that little Eva Decker was now a grown up woman with a family.   I asked her if she remembers coming with her mother to our house.  She described some of the things she remembered.   One of them was,  " I remember your older sister being mean to us."   It was then that I realized that she thought I was Mary Alleen.   I told her  "I am the older sister."    I honestly have no memory or guilt of  being mean to my younger sister and her friend.


The next housekeeping solution was to hire a high school girl, Norma Brimhall, who lived in Taylor but attended school in Snowflake because Taylor didn't have it's own high school.  She would come to our house after school and prepare supper.  Then she caught a ride home to Taylor with someone returning from work in Snowflake or Holbrook.  I don't remember what Wendell and Mary Alleen did during the day.  Perhaps Aunt Lydia stepped in again to look after them until Norma Brimhall got out of high school. 

Miss Flake

Third Grade Teacher

My third grade teacher was Melba Flake which was a common last name in Snowflake.  The town was named for her grandfather, William Flake and for Erastus Snow.   My fourth grade teacher was also a Flake.  Her name was  Augusta Flake, but no one called her Miss Flake.  She was known as Miss Augusta, while my third grade teacher was known as "Miss Flake."  Frankly, I think Miss Melba has a wonderful ring to it.

Multiplication is New 

but

 Reading is the Same

Third grade is the year students were supposed to learn their  "times tables" which is how we referred to the multiplication tables.  Flash cards became very important.  I don't remember having much homework to do during most of elementary school.  However,  my mother, since she was a teacher herself, would always help me with flash cards or memorizing poems or scripts.  I probably missed her a lot that year, when she was only home on weekends.  I don't remember much about reading instruction, as such, but I continued to read the Bobbsey Twins, Wizard of Oz  and Raggedy Ann series.  Santa Claus usually brought us some books for Christmas and I got several Bobbsey Twins books and so did some of my friends.  We traded books among ourselves, since there was no other source of reading material.

Third Grade Social Studies

 Another thing I remember studying in Miss Flake's class was American Indians.  We learned that men were called  "braves" and women were called "squaws" and that babies were called "papooses" and they lived in "teepees." I was totally taken by surprise when, recently, some of these words became politically unacceptable. I had learned this information as a child from a very nice teacher in a regular school setting.  How could it be wrong?

The part of this social studies curriculum that fascinated me most was Indian sign language and, especially,  picture writing.  Miss Flake didn't just mention it in passing one day.  We learned to write it.  The teacher would write a message in  Indian picture  writing on the board and we were expected to translate it and write the English version of the message.   It seemed really exciting to me, like a secret code.   I don't know whether I thought I would meet an Indian walking across our ranch and he would scrawl messages in the sand with his fingers or what.  I certainly have never had occasion to use this skill and maybe that's why third grade doesn't have it in the curriculum anymore.  

The Dangerous Last Two Minutes of the School Day

Another third grade memory, that is stuck in my head forever, happened very near the end of the school day.  Everyone was getting ready to go home from school and I walked up to Miss Flake's desk.  There were several children crowded around her and I could see that she was very busy.  I asked her if I could be excused to go the restroom, which was down on the first floor of the school.   Her answer was, "No!  Go sit back down!  The bell is going to ring at any moment."  So I did go sit back down at my desk and immediately wet my pants.  Sanford Flake was sitting behind me and had his feet stretched out under my desk chair.  It took a couple of seconds, but then he let out a yell.  The urine had dribbled off my desk chair and down into his socks and shoes.  Many years later Sanford grew up to be the Sheriff of Snowflake and I laughingly told my sister this incident, wondering that, if  I should ever be stopped for speeding while passing through Snowflake, would he remember it.   I should have kept this story to myself,  because sixty-five years  after it happened, my sister saw Sanford  at some cultural function in Phoenix and actually related the whole story to him.  She didn't tell me if he remembered it or not, but he certainly remembers it now.

"Remember Pearl Harbor" 

On Dec. 7, 1941 the news about Japan bombing Pearl Harbor came over the radio and our family had heard it and talked about it that night.    The next day I was late walking the two blocks to school.  All the children were already in their classrooms.   As I was hurrying  up the semi-circle sidewalk toward the front door of the school, I heard the radio in the eighth grade classroom. This was very unusual since radios or films were not a normal part of the classroom in those days.  I recognized the distinctive voice of  President Roosevelt.  I walked over closer and stood under the window of the eighth grade classroom  and  listened as  President Roosevelt declared war.  I somehow knew that this was an historic moment and so, even though I was late,  I stayed to listen. 

 Shortly thereafter,  slogans on pins and posters popped up everywhere, saying, " Remember Pearl Harbor."  I do remember it  more than seventy years later.

I Loan Money to The United States of America

                                                

The war mobilization effort must have proceeded very fast.  Pearl Harbor only happened in December, but I can remember that even before the end of third grade I was taking ten cents  or more to school to buy a "war stamp."   You licked the stamp with your tongue and then stuck it in a little rectangle space on one of the pages stapled together into a book.   

Miss Flake, our teacher, gave little prizes after you got so many stamps.  I think I got a  coloring book after I filled the entire book with stamps. Of course, this was just a way to get parents to contribute to the war effort since, as a child I had no money or even an allowance. You needed $18.50 worth of stamps to complete the book. 

The book was turned in for a $25 War Bond, which I remember as being very fancy and official looking compared to the wrinkly messy stamp book I had been carrying around all year. You couldn't cash the bond for a whole ten years, but you felt really good about "helping win the war."  The difference between the $18.50 and the $25 was the amount of interest the government paid your for loaning them your money.  This was my introduction to high finance at age seven.

Two Dresses

The buttons are just right, but think
blue  flowered calico and even skinnier..

Not quite the same, but imagine this in peach
silk and you get the image. 

 

I don't remember having a third grade school program.  Perhaps they had already done one before I came back from Heber or maybe I didn't have a part with some drama or trauma attached to it to make it memorable. 


 I do remember another  program that year.  It was a Stake Relief Society program and I was to have a part in it.  My mother had been a member of the Stake board the year before and might still have been a member that year, too.  My mother helped me memorize my part, but she wouldn't be able to attend because it was to take place on a week night when she was still in Heber.  She told me to wear my blue dress.  It was a skinny princess style dress with buttons all the way from the neck to the hem that my mother had made for me.  It was a rather plain, calico school dress, but sort-of new, so I guessed that is why she told me to wear it.  

On the night of the big performance I can remember being back stage with some of the other participants and in comes Nella Rogers, who also had a part in the program.  She had on the most beautiful peach colored, silky dress that I had ever seen.   Nella whirled around in it and it billowed out on every side.  Then, to further demonstrate how really full her skirt was she grasped both sides of the skirt and put her arms straight up over her head, forming a full circle with  more fullness to spare.  I looked down at my skinny calico school dress and wondered, whatever could my mother have been thinking to tell me to wear this dress.  I have no memories of my performance except looking out at an audience that consisted only of women, many of whom were from the other six or seven nearby towns that were in our stake.  


That next weekend when my mother returned from Heber and asked about how the program went, I must have told her about the dress, because she was very upset that I had embarrassed her in front of her friends by wearing "that" dress.  What does she mean,  she was embarrassed?  How did she think I felt?  It turns out that I had worn the wrong blue dress.  She had meant for me to wear another blue dress-- a Sunday dress, that still wouldn't have been as beautiful as Nella's peach silk dress,  but it would have passed as appropriate for the occasion. 

Wire Rimmed Glasses

Of course, Snowflake doesn't have an eye doctor, but once a year a traveling optometrist would come to town and test people's eyes.  

Although I had  no vision complaints, my parents took me to be tested.  He said that I was near-sighted and needed eyeglasses.  My father had excellent vision his whole  life and my mother was far-sighted, so it couldn't be heredity.  I thought it was because I read, too much.  Although I had been told not to do it, I even read while walking home from school.  

I had to laugh a few weeks ago, when I was driving to babysit my great grandson, whose parents are students at BYU and live near campus.  Here comes this college student, totally engrossed, reading a book, while walking down the sidewalk.  I actually paused  my car to see what he would do when he came to the corner.  He did look up, but began reading again before he was completely across the street.

A few weeks after my eye test, my new glasses were mailed to me in a nice little sturdy cardboard box with a lid that lifted off.  Inside was a  hard case and glasses, very much like the ones in the above photo.   Nothing went to waste in our  house and the little sturdy box was saved.  It turned out to be just the right size to hold the prize ribbons that I won in 4-H club over the next four summers.  The box lasted many years longer than the glasses.

 Although I hated them, the glasses must have helped me see better, because I continued to wear glasses for almost 70 years.  After I had cataract surgery on my eyes, I was able to drive and read without glasses and, most importantly, I could read the alarm clock without having to fish around on the nightstand to find my glasses.  I do use reading glasses sometimes now, but only, if the print is too small, or if  I am doing some fine hand sewing.

Sunday Morning Tragedy

Snowflake Chapel

One Sunday morning we were already dressed in our church clothes and were waiting around for my father to come home from Priesthood meeting to give us a ride to Sunday School.  For some reason I walked out into our back yard and when I looked toward my Aunt Lydia's house, I could see smoke billowing high in the sky  above her house and trees.  I ran into the house to tell my mother. 


 About that same time my father came through the front door and said that the church house was on fire. He went into my parent's bedroom to get the movie camera.  It was the same camera that he had used to take pictures of us when we lived in Safford, but hadn't used again in the almost three years we had been living in Snowflake.  


We drove down toward the church house and I remember standing and holding onto the white picket fence and watching as men moved fast and shouted at each other.  I saw  some men dragging benches from the chapel. Others were bringing out folding chairs  Stacks of songbooks came out. I saw someone throw books out of an upstairs classroom window. The fire had started sometime after 9:00 a.m.  Our family arrived to watch at a little after 10:00 a.m. and the building was, still,  mostly intact, with people running in and out.  Snowflake had no fire department and the nearest one was in Holbrook, 30 miles away.  They would not arrive until it was too late and the church was almost a total loss.  


The Sunday before this happened, I was waiting with my father inside the south entrance of the church for the rest of the family, so we could all go home together.  He told me, "Put your hand on the wall."  I put my hand against the white plaster and it was so hot that I  couldn't keep it there, but for just a second.  I assume the hot air ducts for the upstairs went behind this wall, right next to where the stairs led up to the second floor classrooms.   Something was wrong with the insulation around those ducts or for some reason the furnace was too hot.  One week later, it was too late.

This was a tragedy for the whole community.  The church was the center of all activities.  School pageants took place there, patriotic  celebrations were held there,  plays were held there, concerts were held there, dances were held there, wedding receptions were held there, funerals were held there, little kids went to primary there, and Boy Scout troops met there.  


In those days, each ward had the responsibility to build their own church house.  There was a building fund that everyone had to contribute to, as well as tithing, fast offerings, and ward budget. After the fire, church had to be held in the elementary school auditorium which could barely hold all the children, much less the entire congregation.  Since Snowflake was the center of the stake, stake conference had to be held in the high school gymnasium. 

 The church sent someone to supervise the reconstruction of the church house and he brought his family with him. So in fourth grade we got a new boy, whose first name I have forgotten, but whose last name was Hansen.   We also lost a classmate, Carlee Flammer, whose family moved away because her father had been the custodian at the church and now, with the church gone, his job was gone, too.


 Besides donating to the building fund, church members were ask to, literally, build the church.  They had work days several times a week.  Many of the people were farmers or ranchers and so could donate time to work during the day.  Others came and worked after their regular job was finished or on Saturdays.  The Relief Society sisters would bring food to the church for supper and work continued into the evenings.  It took several years for the church to be rebuilt.

It was a personal tragedy for me as well, because I was almost eight years old and had been looking forward to getting baptized in the beautifully decorated baptismal font that was part of the Junior Sunday School room.  If I remember correctly, the font was  surrounded on two sides with a painted scene probably of Jesus being baptized by John the Baptist.  


Records show that I didn't get baptized until the fall after my eighth birthday in April.  My father baptized me on a Saturday in Silver Creek somewhere between Snowflake and our ranch.  In those days you were confirmed on a  Sunday during church services, usually the day after your baptism.  My father asked Samuel Smith, the stake patriarch to confirm me.  We knew him as "Uncle Sammy" because he was married to my great grandmother's sister, Lulu.  I had visited in their home a few times, with my parents.  


When the bishop called out my name, I walked up to the front the auditorium and sat down on the designated chair.  Patriarch Smith, evidently didn't know me very well or had  forgotten who I was, because he bent over and asked me my name. I told him, "Rayna Gay."  He then proceeded to confirm me using the name, "Laraine Day" who was a popular movie star at the time.  No one else seemed to hear it or ask for a repeat in the way they have when there are errors in the sacrament prayer.  After this day and throughout the rest of my life, I had an affinity for Lorraine Day who continued to make movie and television shows up into my adult life.  Curiously, I learned later, that she was also a Mormon.

A Sunday Morning Chocolate Miracle

I have two other stories that are connected with holding church in the school house.  One, I consider a minor miracle.  Sunday School was dismissed to go to classes and as everyone stood up from the folding chairs, I saw a brown wrapped Hershey candy bar fall and hit the floor.  I quickly picked it up and held it up asking who dropped it.  No one claimed it and some man said, "I guess you get to keep it," and so I did.  I think I smiled all the way through Sunday School.  I know that I didn't eat it until I got home.  I doubt that it was fast Sunday, either, or I would have remembered how hard it was to wait until after Sacrament meeting was over, before I could eat it.

A Faith Promoting Lesson

(Derailed?)

Primary was held on Wednesday after school.  I remember exactly where I was sitting and in which classroom, so this must be one of those "memorable moments"  The teacher was giving a lesson,  apparently about faith.  I raised my hand in response to some question and told the teacher that my father had told me to "never believe anything other people tell you and only half of what you see with your own eyes"  I didn't say this to be sassy, and it seemed to fit into the discussion.  My teacher did not think so.  Looking back, I would have to agree.  It was not the appropriate time to share my father's little tidbit, even if this tidbit carried its own valuable lesson.

Some of this blog has gone beyond third grade, but since most of the extra stuff was connected with the church burning down and having to go to church in the school building, I left it in.

Third Grade in Heber, Arizona

We "Sort-of" Move to Heber, Arizona

In the fall of 1941 my mother was ask to teach in Heber which was about 35 miles west of Snowflake.  It was an even smaller town than Snowflake and was in the mountains surrounded by pine trees.  It was decided that Mom and the the three oldest kids would live in Heber during the week and would return to Snowflake on the weekends. The youngest child, Wendell, who was almost two years old, would stay in Snowflake with Dad and Aunt Lydia, who lived across the street, would tend him during the day.  My dad's job in Clifton had ended.  My dad was either working at the ranch almost daily or had started a new job where he drove to Holbrook.  


My mother found two rooms in Heber to rent.  There was a bathroom, but no kitchen.  My mother had a hot plate and a very early version of an electric "crock pot."   This appliance had two aluminum pans with clamp-on lids,  These two pans stacked on top of each other and were put into an insulated and electrified pack covered in white canvas.  She could cook two separate items at the same time and dinner would be ready when she returned from teaching.  An exhaustive search of the Internet has not turned up anything like it.    I think my mother bought it before she was married in 1929.  This year was the first time that I remember her using it on a regular basis.   It seems that she might have used it to cook beans when we lived in Safford.


The school had only two rooms, grades 1 to 4 in one room and grades 5 to 8 in the other.  My mother was to teach the lower grades and Edwin Decker, who also lived in Snowflake, was to teach the upper grades.  (After I was a grown-up with my own children and we were living in Vienna Virginia, I discovered that his daughter, Eva, lived with her husband and children in our same ward. It's a small world.)


All three of us children would be in my mother's classroom. Mary Alleen, who was only 4 yrs old, but would soon be five, would be allowed to attend the first grade, I would be in third grade, and Milton would be in fourth grade.  Since schools got paid per student, Heber was probably very glad to get 3 more students.


I remember hardly anything about the children in the room, what we studied, or what it was like to have my mother as my teacher.  All I can remember is that the room seemed small and  dark.  I will relate a few stories that I remember from the time we lived in Heber although they have nothing to do with school.

Between a Rock and a Hard Place

My mother often had to stay after school to clean up and get ready for the next day.  My sister remembers helping to erase the blackboards after school and pounding the erasers against a wall to get all the chalk out.  I think that I usually walked home from school with my brother.   However, I was walking home by myself when the following incident took place.


I remember walking down the dirt street.  I wouldn't call it a road because there were houses and even a store on this street.   An older boy, who lived in Heber, began teasing me, not in a playful way, but in a mean way.  I don't remember exactly what he said, but I know it wasn't nice.  I bent over to pick up a rock to throw at him and as my hand closed around the rock, "Stomp" went his foot right on top of my hand.  It really, really hurt.  I have no more memories of what happened afterwards, although  I am certain  that I stayed away from that boy from then on.  I also have no memories of ever throwing rocks at anyone else, again. 


 ( post script:  I have no memory of ever throwing rocks before this, either. Come to think of it, since I never really got to throw the rock at that boy, I can say that I have never, ever thrown rocks at anyone and  I have never lived in a glass house, either.)

Overnight Miracle Dress

On the evening of October 9, l941, right after supper, my mother sent my sister, Mary Alleen to bed.  Tomorrow would be her birthday and my mother had decided to make her a new dress.  She cleaned the supper dishes from the card table and began to lay out the tissue pattern on the cloth.  She didn't use pins to hold the pattern  pieces down, but weighted them down with table knives. Before I was sent to bed, I remember watching at least long enough for my mom to begin sewing on her portable electric Singer sewing machine.  My mother had already let me sew a little on this sewing machine.  It ran with a knee push rather than a foot pedal.  My mother probably worked late into the night, but the next morning, my sister had a pretty blue dress for her birthday.

A Once in a Lifetime Experience

Late one night, another incident happened that became a "once in a lifetime" memory.  A neighbor, or more likely, the people we rented from, came knocking on our door and said that we should come outside and look at the Northern lights.  My mother took us all outside.  I remember adults and children  standing in the street looking north.   I can still remember  just how the sky looked above the tops of the pine trees.  I don't remember any colors but there were sheets of lights moving like curtains in the wind.  The above picture is as close as I could find to what I saw.  It even had pine trees, just like I remember.   I have never, again, seen the Northern lights.

We Move Back to Snowflake

By the time November came around, my parents felt that this living arrangement wasn't working out and all of the children moved back full time to our house in Snowflake.  My mother would ride with Mr. Decker every Monday morning to Heber and would come home every Friday evening.  One time later in the year while my mom was on the way to Heber, the steering wheel broke on Mr. Decker's car and the car ran off the road and crashed into a tree.  No one was injured, and I don't remember the details of how they were rescued.  

Chocolate Malt Balls 

One additional bit of trivia from Heber:  That Christmas, my mother bought 100 chocolate malt balls  from that little store in Heber.  Perhaps, they had been on sale.  On Christmas morning, we discovered why.   The balls were all empty.  The foamy puffed-up insides had all collapsed.  I have no idea why I remember this at all.    I am surprised that they still make them today, since you can't buy a malted milk at a soda fountain, anymore.

Snowflake Elementary School

This is an early picture of Snowflake elementary school, perhaps when it was first built. In the background you can see the old Snowflake Academy established in 1888 by the Mormon church.  Most of the academies became colleges later on but this one was given to the school district and remained a high school with several more buildings added around it.  The elementary school was built on an entire city block. It has since been torn down.

Although this land looks flat, the northwest corner of the playground had to be built up and a fairly high yellow sandstone retaining wall held the dirt in place.  There was also a big culvert to drain water away from the playground.  It was big enough to play in.  I remember having "club" meetings in this culvert.  

Across the street was the Relief Society building or the cannery.  Part of this lot was used for a playground, too.  The above  picture was taken while standing on this extra playground.   I remember playing soft ball in warm weather and playing "Fox and Geese" in the winter on this cannery lot.  In the above picture there is a street in front of the school, but since it is dirt, you can't distinguish it very well from the dirt lot on which the photographer was standing.  It was still a dirt street when I went attended school there.

The picture, below, was taken many years later and just before the school was torn down.  It looks almost exactly the way I remember it, only no added classrooms in the background.

The school was more yellow than this picture shows.

To the north of the school was a playground  that had a slide, several swings, a merry-go-round and maybe a sandbox.  At least there was sand under the slide.  The slide was strange.  It was two galvanized pipes that you had to straddle to slide down.  I think the tree shown in the above picture was still there when I attended Snowflake elementary.  On the south side of the building were basketball courts and track meet essentials such as a pit for long jumping and the" hop, skip, and jump" event.

The building was made of yellow bricks all marked, "Gallup" which I assume meant they were made in Gallup, New Mexico.  There were only eight classrooms for eight grades since there were no kindergarten, then.  

On the first floor, there was a principal's office, an auditorium, grades 1, 2, and 8, and two restrooms.   The second floor had grades 3,4,5,6, 7 and in the middle above the front entry hall and principal's office was a library, which was used for sewing classes and teacher's meetings.  
You can see the skinny windows from the end of the building and an entire wall of windows on the left in the picture below.  Notice all the plants and several bulbs blooming in this picture.

This is the third grade room in Snowflake Elementary,1928-29.  My mother taught there before she was married.
On the teacher's desk is  bottle of ink and  a clock.  Someone has given the teacher an apple, too..

 Each classroom had one huge wall of windows and on the opposite wall was a door to the hallway. There was a wall of blackboard at the front of the classroom and in the upper grades there was a map rack with rolled-up maps that could be pulled down.  The teacher's desk was in front of this.  There was a narrow bulletin board above the blackboard that usually had a row of  Palmer handwriting alphabet letters on it or was used for seasonal decorations as seen in the above photo.

There was always a flag at the front of the room, since we pledged allegiance to it every morning.  There was a standard school clock on the wall, as well.  As near as I can remember all of the rooms except first grade faced to the north.  This was helpful when looking at maps and orienting yourself to compass directions.  On the map east was to the right and as you stood facing the maps, east really was to your right.  I still have to face north when looking at a map or at least mentally face north.

Our desks were similar to the ones in the photo and were attached to the floor either directly or an entire row was attached to two long wooden boards. The desk chair for the person in front of you was attached to your desk so they had to be in rows.  Because class sizes differed from year to year some more movable and much newer desks were added at the front or the back of the rows of the solidly attached desks.  

These new desks looked like this and had a top that lifted up so you could put books and pencils inside and nothing ever fell off onto the floor.  I always wanted one of these desks, but in six years never got a chance to sit in one of them.

Ink Wells and Pens

All of the desks and even the new ones came with a round hole in the top of the desk.  In the middle grades, you were expected to practice your cursive in ink.  The teacher would pass out the ink bottles and they fit exactly into the round hole.  Then you got the wooden ink pens to dip into the bottles for writing.  Often ink blobs and spatters went all over your paper.  You also had to use a blotter to soak up extra ink.  These wooden pens, below, look just like the ones we wrote with in school.

This fit into the hole in your desk..

                                           The Principal 

The school principal was also the eighth grade teacher and there was probably a door between his office and the classroom.  I don't know for certain as I didn't go to the 8th grade in Snowflake.  I was only in the principal's office one time and that was to use the telephone.  Hardly anyone had a telephone.   During the time I lived in Snowflake, there were only two principals,  Lee Johnson  and Ezra Shumway who took over after  Lee Johnson moved to Phoenix.  

Fine Art in the Hall

Somewhere in or near the principal's office was a copy of Gainsborough's painting called the "Blue Boy."  It was probably the first famous painting that I had ever seen.   I don't recall any other art work being in the school nor do I recall doing any artwork in class, other than drawing with crayons and cutting and pasting.

Holiday Celebrations 

Halloween

Halloween was not a big dress-up holiday in Snowflake when I was a child.  They didn't have a costume parade and no one went trick-or-treating.  I remember going with my siblings to other houses and holding a jack-o-lantern up to the windows, supposedly to scare anyone inside.  We also might have knocked on doors and ran away.   Big bad boys would, however,  play tricks on people by putting some one's bicycle in a tree or writing words on your car with a bar of soap.  I heard stories about putting outhouses in trees but I never personally saw one.  A few people in Snowflake did still have outhouses, but most had indoor toilets.

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving at school was all about pilgrims and Indians and turkeys.  We colored ditto pictures, cut and pasted turkeys, and made Indian headdresses.   I don't remember any big pageants, but we certainly dressed up because I remember the yellow paper buckles on shoes, tall hats on boys with more buckles, and paper bonnets on girls.

In middle grades we read or listened to stories about the Pilgrims.

At home we always had a big dinner, usually with relatives.

Christmas  

The entire school participated in an annual Christmas program.  I had parts in several of these.  Most of these were  held in the evening  in the church recreation hall rather than the school auditorium.  I assume it was because it could accommodate all the children, their older and younger siblings, and their parents.     Separation of church and state was not a big deal at that time and in that place.  The pageant was mostly of a religious nature including Bible passages and almost all of the Christmas carols.  There were shepherds, wise men, angels, and, of course, Mary and Joseph and baby Jesus. I think that every child from grade one to grade eight had a part in the program.
One year the whole school walked into the pageant carrying lit candles.  I have never seen that before or after that.  Candles are not usually allowed at functions held in the church house.

Another year the school put on a play based on Charles Dickens' Christmas Carol.  I distinctly remember a cloth "roasted goose" someone's mother had sewn and stuffed for the Cratchet's Christmas dinner. 

Classroom Decorations

Every classroom was decorated for Christmas. Often we made red and green chains from construction paper during any free time and hung them in swags on the high up  skinny                        bulletin board or the windows.

 Six sided Snowflakes were made from folded paper and pasted to the windows.  I don't recall having Christmas trees in the classroom, but they might have been there since I have distinct memories of paper chains hanging on trees.  I am sure there was a tree somewhere either in the hall or the auditorium.

Valentine's Day

Valentine's Day was really a big day in every grade from first through eighth.  Early  in February, every class decorated a Valentine's box with a slit in the top. Valentine's must have been readily available and cheap, because I remember almost everyone giving them to each other. Class members would address valentines at home and drop them in the box. Some valentines came with little lollipops attached. When Valentine's Day arrived, the box would be opened and the teacher or another student would call out the name and one or more others would deliver the valentines to your desk.  There was always refreshments, but the exciting part was to see who gave you a valentine and to read the clever sayings on them.

We also made homemade valentines to give our parents using red construction paper and paper doilies or home made lace cut from folded paper just the way we had made snowflakes.

Lincoln's Birthday

Lincoln's birthday was almost always celebrated in school with the teacher reading you stories of Lincoln's life, the students coloring  pictures run off on a ditto machine, or putting on a skit.  In second grade our class  cut and pasted three-dimensional log cabin on his birthday.(see Second Grade blog)

George Washington's Birthday

Actually the entire month of  February was a patriotic month with red, white, and blue decorations everywhere.  Washington's Birthday was celebrated in about the same ways as Lincoln's Birthday. And of course, we heard about the cherry tree and we made little hatchets and three-cornered hats. 

St. Patrick's Day

St. Patrick's Day was hardly celebrated at all.  Maybe at the first of March the class would make green shamrocks to pin up on that upper skinny bulletin board.  I never remember hearing the story of St. Patrick or singing any Irish songs.

Easter

Easter would bring dittoed bunnies to color or cut out, but I don't remember teachers reading us any Easter stories.  We never had Easter egg hunts at school like we did in Safford. 

 At home we colored boiled eggs and on Easter morning we got Easter baskets from the Easter bunny.  Inside were candy and marshmallow eggs and  the same yellow peeps they have still have today.  Almost every Easter our family got real baby chickens or baby ducks which we raised for eggs and meat.  It took several years to save enough down for one pillow. 

May Day

Sometimes we made this kind of basket.

This was the most common kind..

May Day was celebrated with little woven baskets of flowers.  In Snowflake we never did dances around a May pole like they did in Safford the year my brother was in first grade and like they did in Virginia when I taught school there many years later.  We did learn to weave baskets for flowers.  

Patriotic Programs

For four of the six years that I attended school in Snowflake, our country was at war.  We had patriotic programs during the school year where we celebrated America.  We did not wait until the Fourth of July.  We learned all verses of the National Anthem, America, the Beautiful,  My Country 'Tis of Thee, God Bless America and all of the armed services songs.

Track Meet

Every year a school track meet is held.  Dashes, races,  high jump, long jump, the "hop, skip, and jump," and "chin ups."  Ribbons were given out.  I can remember that I never won any of these.  Athleticism was not one of my gifts and besides that  I was  younger than anyone in my class even though I was just as big as they were.