In My Gaden - Life History of Zelda L. Kline - Part 5

My brother, Arvel, spent most of his time at Grandma and Grandpa's. They couldn't bear to give him up. Mama would have preferred otherwise, but we lived close by and saw him almost every day. She was pregnant again that winter of 1928-1929 and she was not well again. However, when Arvel had one of his bouts with pneumonia, it was Mama, who brought him home and cared for him. He was sick a lot when he was little. Now his crib stood in the living room. We kept the corner stove going all the time. Over the back of the chairs were hung the diapers and little shirts and nightgowns that Mama would spend all evening washing by hand. Dad came home that night a little after midnight. He sent Mama off to bed for a while and took over the vigil. Fixing and changing the mustard plasters, spooning the sweet water into the dry little mouth and putting the baby over his shoulder to pound his back when the coughing started. I had awakened and crept out to curl up back of the stove. Dad put me to work handing him pins and folding diapers and finally my little brother slept. In the morning, the doctor would tell us he was better, but we knew it in the middle of the night. Finally, Dad led me back to my bed in the corner of the bedroom. That bed was a folding cot. At night, a leaf was pulled up and doubled the bed size. In the morning it was folded down out of the way. I shared it with my brother, Mark, but later I would sleep on the back screened porch with heavy canvas blinds dropped to keep out the wind and cold.

When a new baby was due, there was always the "box". A square, wooden box, about three feet by two and one-half feet and two and one-half feet high. Daddy made it that winter. It was padded with cotton and covered with pretty, flowered material. Grandma and the Aunts helped fill the box, but Mama did most of it. There were hemmed snow-white flannel diapers and little shirts; there were bellybands and embroidered gowns; little sweaters and bonnets and booties. There was sweet smelling baby talc and little blankets with crochet around the edges.

Warm weather came back. The trees were green again and the newly planted garden put out green shoots. Lottie's calf had her own calf and little yellow chicks were peeping in a box beside Grandma's kitchen range.

On June 15th, it was Idaho Days at Franklin, a day of fun with picnic baskets and races and a merry-go-round. Mark tugged at my hand and we went from booth to booth. I held him up to see everything. We came home sleepy and tired and woke to a new baby sister.

1939 William Arvel (Bill) and Mark

Joyce LaVerna was born in Preston, Idaho on June 16, 1929. She was like a small, black-haired doll. We all doted on her and Grandma Hansen would sit in the rocking chair holding her and singing quiet songs.

The following spring, Grandma Anna Marie Hansen died quietly during the night of April 10, 1930. My cousin Laura and I were flower girls at the funeral. The familiar Chapel of the old First Ward meeting house looked strange and we thought "heavenly", with all the flowers and the big white silk ribbons that adorned the alter. Grandma Hansen had come across the ocean to this new land and now we were here because she had come. Her wrinkled, working hands lay peacefully quiet, the first time we had ever seen them still.

Our Chapels were called Meeting Houses when I was little. I still like that name and sometimes wish we still used it now. They were and are a place where we meet together to take our Lords sacrament, to bless new babies, and to say goodbye to those who leave us in death. We came together then to pray for rain or to find work for those who needed it or for peace when wars began or ended. Sometimes we just met together for fun, to eat and laugh and to enjoy one another.

1930 James House

Summers were such a wonderful time when I was a child. The days were so long and the sounds so much a part of summer. The slamming of the screen door, the sounds of water sprinklers, the evening cries of, "Run sheep! Run!" as we played the games of childhood. There was a large old apple tree in the middle of our back yard. At the top, the branches made a "Y" shaped crook and I would climb up and sit in the crook. I was hidden by the leaves and I kept a store of books stashed up there. When I couldn't make it to the tree, there was always the space under the front steps with a book hidden there too, or the coal shed or back of the rabbit pen. Next door, the Carlsen boys had a sand pile, and I spent many happy hours there, building roads and playing with toy cars. Sometimes the cars were nothing more than wooden blocks painted with crayons, but they were real to us. Sometimes we built a bonfire in the vacant lot and cooked "tin-can hobo" stews of salt pork and "snitched" garden vegetables. How could it have tasted so good? Later, Dad would buy a radio and we would sit around listening to "Inner Sanctum" or "The Lone Ranger" or "The Little Theater off Times Square".

And, speaking of the radio, there was the first time the Latter-Day Saint (LDS) conference was broadcast from Salt Lake City. We had the only radio in the neighborhood. Dad spent the morning making sure it worked perfectly. I remember he had to string a wire to the kitchen water tap to ground it. At conference time the Scandinavian "old" ladies, Grandma Jeppesen, Great Grandma Hansen, Aunt Georgina and Aunt Lindy, gathered in our front parlor to "listen to a prophet's voice." Did I know that I was listening to history being made? I don't think so.

In September of 1928, a new pattern came into my life. A "regular" family was put together and from the first seemed destined to "work". I remember Mama and this new Dad went down to Brigham City to meet all "the Joneses" over the Peach Days weekend. We "old kids" stayed with Grandma while Mama went to meet the "new kids" and all the aunts and uncles and Grandma Jones. I already new Aunt Bert and Uncle Jord. They had gone with Mama and "Barney" to Arco, Idaho when Dad and Mama got married. I really like them, but Mama wasn't ready to face down all of the Joneses with three "mean little kids" tagging along.

But I did meet them all a little later. The first, of course, was Grandma Jones. She seemed small, even to a seven year old. Her hands were brown and leathery but with a surprisingly gentle touch when she brushed my hair out of my eyes. My hair was always that way because I played so roughly.

There was Aunt Lucille who taught school and lived with Grandma. I guess I never knew what color Lucille's eyes were. I always did, and still do think of them as snapping and black. She walked with a cane. I believe I was told it was because of an old ice skating accident. I learned early that you did not enter her room, her "domain", the front parlor, without a specific invitation, and they were few. I remained somewhat in fear of Lucille all my life. I always felt that to her I was somehow not quite worthy of belonging to the Joneses. And yet, there is an almost last memory of her that belies all of this. (It was at) Dad's funeral and her taking my heart-broken Robyn's arm and leading her over to sit beside her, giving her a piece of candy and watching to see that she didn't have an insulin reaction.

Aunt LaVon and Uncle Harvey Erdman lived just a little ways over from Grandma Jones. I was never able to think of LaVon as "aunt" for I never in anyway became friends with her. But Uncle Harvey I truly liked. Sometimes I would wait on the swings in the park across from their house and, when he came out, I would run across and walk to town with him. Often he would take "young" Harvey and me to the drugstore for ice cream cones and then the two of us would sit on the little stone wall in front of the courthouse and make comments about everyone walking past us.

1929 Evan Jones and his brothers (Back Row: Jordan, Evan, Carl Majier, Front Row: Seymour Brigham, Hyrum, Raymond Jay)

Then there was Dad's oldest brother, Hyrum. I didn't get to know him very well until later. But I thought a lot of him because Dad deeply loved him so I knew he had to be good. When in California I did come to know him, it was a happy experience. His wife, Frankie and I became lifelong friends. Years later, after he had died, she and her sister Toni came and stayed with me in Mt. Clemens, Michigan. Two of the most beautiful women I ever ment.

Uncle Seymour, another brother, was married to Varda. They had two children, but I never knew any of them because they were later divorced. He then married Aunt Cora, so it was her I came to know. I liked her. They lived on Goshen Street in Salt Lake, close to Ione and she worked at Auerbachs. Later they moved to California too.

Aunt Bertha and Uncle Jordan moved to Sacramento, California in the 1930's. I still remember the day they came to Preston to say goodbye and I remember their address, 600 50th Street. He started an insurance business and did very well. Their son, Jack, was my age and I missed him when we went to Brigham City because we were friends. I missed Aunt Bert most though, because she was my champion. She always took my side in the squabbles. I especially remember her talking me out of a churchyard tree. I had determined to perch there until we left for home the next day. In California, we always stayed at 600 50th Street in Sacramento. When Owen and I brought our family home from Okinawa, we stayed there, feeling most welcome, while Owen was discharged at Travis AFB. Aunt Bert even let us use her car while we went car shopping.

Uncle Carl and Aunt Bea were so much a part of my growing up years. Not long after Mama and Dad were married, they moved down to Preston from Montana. They bought Gooches' house next door and divided it, half into an apartment. Carl worked at the "Factory" and Bea at the egg hatchery.