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.