In My Garden - Journal Addendum

The final 2 years of my high school were spent in Oregon. I graduated from Nyssa Union High.

I went to college at Boise (Idaho) Junior College and later at Eastern Oregon College of Education at LaGrande, Ore. But I didn't want to be a teacher, so I just substituted and went looking for other things.

During my teen years, Europe was falling apart under Hitler and young people of my generation were very afraid of our future.

I believe I was quite a popular person in my teens and at school. I seemed to have more than my share of

1938 Zelda the Pinup Girl

boyfriends. In LaGrande I fell in love with a Marine Reserve Flyer. When he was called to active duty to go to Guam in the summer of 1941, I went to Washington, D. C. as a "Government Girl". When Willie was killed in the early battles of the Pacific I went looking for a way to fill my days. Finally, I joined the ranks of the Coast Guard Spars. I loved the military life and fit right in.

VE Day came, my mom got sick and I received a humanitarian transfer to Detroit, Michigan, where my folks were living in Mt. Clemens. I was released from service after VJ Day but I felt very lost.

I lived very close to Selfridge Air Force Base at Mt. Clemens and there met a GI whom I married. It was a big mistake. I had a little boy. Five months before my daughter was born, I left my husband. (Laverna always said that he had been caught by the Military Police with allotments going to three wives.) I went to work at the air base and later transferred to Hill AFB, Utah because my parents had moved there with their family.

My middle years were very happy. I met a fellow from Indiana. We were married and have had a sometimes hectic life while he was in the Air Force. We moved many times before he retired, but it was a stable marriage and home life. I was placed on medical retirement from my civil service job when I was 47, but it was a blessing. Owen, after 20 years of the military had gone back to working for the Air Force as a civilian.

1947 Owen Arthur Kline

So it was "mom" who took the kids fishing and camping. We were a close family and had a great time. Money was, and still is, a problem, but we always cope. We have lived in a small house and we make do.

I had a lot of friends and outside contacts. I belonged to a garden club for years. I am still a member of the Utah Associated Garden Clubs. The members of my chapter have gotten old and many have passed away. The chapter is no longer active, but us "youngsters" still try to get together for lunch.

My husband is my very best friend. We play cards, take little trips and really enjoy our ten grandchildren. We are still very close to our five children and their children and I believe they would help either one of us cope, if necessary. God forbid.

I am blessed with a living family of brothers and sisters. My three sisters and I are really friends. We try to get together every week. My youngest sister, Margret, is 19 years younger than I, but probably my best friend.

I have a friend of 35 years who, though she does not live here anymore, is never far away in spirit. Ivene and I both treasure this special relationship. I have supported her through much trial and tribulation and I know she would do the same for me.

My four brothers are special, though I do not see them so often.

I am active in church. Many of the people of my "block" have lived here as long or longer than we have and I could call on most of them for aid or assistance.

Recently, an auto accident has severely limited my activities but I surely haven't given up. I still do handiwork and write my "poetry". I do most of my housework now, again, and we will camp again this summer.

Mostly, I love life and believe that I am extremely blessed.

In My Garden - The Child Who Never Was And The One Who Came to Take It's Place

My mother held in her arms two children who were recalled before their lives barely began. Esther Jeanette, who at nine months, left. Then Raymond Jay, who's days only spanned twenty-one.

But her greatest grief was for a child who never was. That grief was never far from her, even a half-century later.

My brother Bobby's birth in 1934 had been traumatic and extremely difficult, the only one of mom's children born in a hospital. Now in 1938, she found herself pregnant again. "Oh No" she cried, I can't face another baby right now. In addition to dad's uncertainty about employment, Bobby's short four years had been filled with one crisis after another. A pugnaciouns, bright, beautiful child, he left you laughing uproariously with him one moment and the next crying with frustration. His birth was overdue and the umbilical cord had almost strangled him. For several months after his birth he was often ill. One night when he was a few months old the nipple cam off his bottle and he lay choking. Mom grabbed him by the feet and ran next door. Swinging in the wind, he coughed and began to breathe again. Later, in San Jose, where we were moving into a rented house, he found a bottle under the sink and drank from it. It was household ammonia and he had another trip to an unknown doctor. We never finished our move into that house but returned to Preston. On our way Dad stopped in Ogden and secured a job with a new sugar factory being built in Nyssa, Oregon. Since coming to Oregon, other near misses had happened to our Bobby. Once, while putting doll clothes through an electric clothes wringer, he all but tore his arm off when his hand went through the wringer along with the clothes. Now Mom felt it was all she could do to get this son grown up.

1940 Robert Lee Jones

But she was to have another child. The "box" came out again and was covered and she reconciled herself to that fact. She was ill from the beginning and frightened that she might die and leave her other children behind. This child was not to be though. In the middle of one hot summer night, she miscarried. A "tubal pregnancy", the doctor said. She, however, always felt that she was responsible because in the beginning she had been reluctant to bear another child. She spent hours on her knees begging the Lord to forgive her. She went to Luther Fife, our stake president, and asked for a special blessing. She asked that the child be sent back to her so that she could make up for her earlier lack of faith. A year passed, but her wish was not fulfilled. Then, in the late summer of 1939, she had Dad drive her to Boise where I was going to school to tell me her secret. She was to have another baby. God had forgiven her. It was not an easy pregnancy, but it was a happy one. I went back to school after Christmas, but did not stay for the next semester because I was needed at home. Mom would go to the hospital the early part of April, but meanwhile, she had to be careful for she had promised the Lord that she would not let anything happen to this already beloved child.

Then, on the afternoon of the thirteenth of March, she began to hemorrhage. The doctor and nurse came to the house and it was decided she could not be moved the 20 miles to the hospital. Dad was sick with a very bad bout of the flu in the basement bedroom. The doctor worked his way up and down the stairs between Dad and Mama. Before dawn, on March 14th, Margret Ann was born. The doctor worked diligently to stop the bleeding, to save Mom's life and to keep checking on Dad.

I took the tiny new baby to the kitchen. I bathed her and dressed her in the clothes Mama had so lovingly prepared. The doctor came out and watched as I pulled the little flannel gown over her head and tucked her feet into the booties. He pronounced her perfect and went back to care for Mama. I rolled her in a blanket and took her to my bed and snuggled her down between Joyce and myself.

When the Relief Society sisters came in the morning to help care for the children and fix breakfast, they found the three of us in the bed sound asleep. They awakened me and took the tiny one to her mother, who snuggled and cuddled her, then to the top of the stairs for her Dad to see, though the doctor still kept him from coming up and holding her.

Mama recovered quickly. Margret Ann was the light of her life, always. She loved all her children, but this baby was living proof that her Father-In-Heaven truly loved her and forgave her sins.

1940 Evan Laverna and Margaret Ann

Yet--. All her life she secretly grieved for the child who never was. Almost fifty years later, tears would stream down her face when she talked with me about that time. I pray that death has now brought her complete peace.

In My Garden - Life History of Zelda L. Kline - Part 7

Grandma Jones had a cancer on her face. She used to come to Preston for treatment from Dr. Whirly. He used a chemical, burning the spot by her nose. Lots of people thought him a quack but maybe he was ahead of his time. I certainly thought that he was a quack when he set my broken leg and set it crooked.

When Grandma Jones came, my new big brother, Kelly would come too. That made my summer perfect. Daddy fixed him a tent lean-to beside the garage and I thought he was lucky to be able to camp out all summer. He was good to me and let me tag after him, and Mark tagged after me. Georgina said we looked like Indians trailing single file on the path through the lucerne patch over to Don Brights.

Then there was the summer that Kelly and I went into the "boot leg" business. We used Mama's food grinder and ground yellow transparent apples into mush to squeeze apple cider into some of Dad's empty brown beer bottles. Someone told us that a little sugar and a couple raisins in each bottle would "ripen" it better. We climbed up a ladder to the ceiling trap door, hid them in the attic and promptly forgot them.

Another summer came and Dad began the much needed remodeling to make our little house bigger. First, he took off the old back porch. That made the attic open. Grandpa and Uncle Carl and Vick Carlsen were helping. Someone brought the beer bottles down, stacking them where the new floor and the new walls were going up. Joyce was a toddler and played happily there with scrap wood that Dad cut into blocks for her. She found the bottles sitting there (I think the caps had probably blown off in the warm weather attic) and she drank several swigs before she got "sick". Dad realized she was having a hard time getting between the upright 2x4's and he immediately knew who the bottles belonged to. It was one of the few times in his whole life that I really saw Dad lose his temper. Kelly and I were "confined" to the house and yard. Kelly was put to work straightening nails and sweeping up the sawdust. He would go later to help Daddy hoe the beets and I would have to stay home, the worst punishment I could have received.

By the time I was twelve, Ione and I were going every spring to work at beet thinning. We were paid so much for an acre row and although it was hard work, we were glad to make the money. The harder we worked, the more we made. We would come home at night, tired and dirty, but Mama would have supper ready and hot water for us in the new bathroom. We shared the money with the little kids, had money for our vacation and we could buy material for Mama to make us new dresses for Idaho Days and the 4th of July.

1931 Zelda at 10

During the winter of 1931 and 1932, the "box" was again recovered with pretty calico. Mama let us sort through it and Ione and I delighted in folding and refolding the little clothes and soft flannel blankets. We saved our own money and each bought a rattle to tuck in with safety pins and little jars.

One May morning, as the stars were dimming in the sky and first streaks of pink were touching the mountain tops, I crawled under the big old lilac and sought to find a way to stop my tears. The lilac buds were still slightly green but they would still bloom and their purple fragrance would fill this small corner of the earth. Not so the tiny baby boy that lay in his tiny white satin coffin on the piano bench in the parlor. He would never bloom. For a few, brief days he had been with us. His tiny hand had clutched my finger. His sweet smell had filled our house. Now he was gone, after having been awaited for so long. I shook my fists at the fading stars and tried to talk to the God beyond who had taken him away. At eleven, it is hard to find answers to death, yet it had been very much a part of my few years. I felt that God did not care. I beat the grass, so fresh with spring but still cold from melted snows, and found snow still in my heart.

Grandpa Brown died in September of 1927, the same year my father died. That had been his and Barbara Ellen's golden wedding year but they said his heart just quit when his son Will died.

My Grandma Brown died in December of 1932. Mark and I spent a part of that summer with her. I was always glad. I had the choice of going on a camping trip or of visiting Grandma Brown. I was always glad that I chose to spend it with her. She took us up and down the road in North Ogden to visit the old friends and relatives. Mark was just six and a half, so I spent a lot of time tending him. The old people would touch his blond hair and call him "Will". Many remembered his father and in the confusion of old age, mistook him for the boy who had lived in that valley in their youth but who now slept on the hill in the old North Ogden Cemetery. In another year Grandma would be gone and many of those of her youth would be gone too. That would be my last visit to North Ogden. I would visit Ogden often while I was growing up, but the "old home" on Washington Boulevard was open to me no more. I've always thought that it was a coincidence that the last half of my life would be spent in this part of the Salt Lake valley, the place where my Grandma was born and where her childhood was spent.

Daddy's brother, Raymond Jay had spent a campaign with us working at the sugar factory so we got to know and like him. The next year he was sick and didn't come. It was a cold, blustery winter December. It was so cold that Ione and I had to come from our porch bed to sleep on the sofa bed. We took turns getting up and putting coal on the fire to keep the dining room stove going.

We had no phone, but the Carlsens did. Just before morning, I heard Mama awaken Daddy and tell him to get dressed. "Georgina would come soon", she said, to knock on the window to tell us that Raymond Jay was dead. I woke Ione up and we shivered together, not from the cold, but because we wondered how Mama could know that, but she did. Georgina did bring us the message that night. Raymond Jay was only 22 years old. We named our Raymond Jay after him, but he died too.

Vick Carlsen helped Daddy move a garage onto the line between our properties. Daddy could then use his driveway and curve around to our garage. That left a triangle shaped space beside the house but Daddy filled it with seed given to him by Julius Cabutti. It was blue larkspur, and it grew thick, and I thought it looked like a patch of the sky. Each year I gathered seed so that we could have it again the next year. When we moved, I hated leaving my "patch of sky".

The garage floor was dirt, but in the back, Daddy built a wooden floor for Mama's new washing machine. It was electric and had a copper tub. When you filled it with water and turned it on, a plunger went up and down to clean the clothes. In the corner was a small cook stove. A wash boiler was placed on the stove and filled with water. The stove lids were taken off usually so the boiler could sit directly on the fire. We would make the fire and fill the boiler on wash days and bath days. Before the new bathroom was built, that was where we took our summer Saturday baths, in a large round tin tub. One time Ione undressed and sat down on the bench where the rinse tubs were usually set. It was empty except for the two round stove lids. They were still very hot and Ione must to this day, bear the scar of her burn. It was a long time before she sat in comfort, anywhere. Daddy gently dressed the burn each day.

Even in the winter time, our washing was hung outdoors. Daddy would shovel the snow out from under the lines. The clothes would freeze almost stiff before we finished hanging them. In the evening they would be brought in out of the cold and hung over the kitchen chairs to dry. The best part of winter wash day was soup and hot bread. Because the stove was kept going to heat the water, Mama would make a large pot of wonderful hot soup and an oven full of crusty bread.

We didn't always live on 43 East 5th South, but we always seemed to come back to the little house. We bought the Johnson farmhouse out at the edge of town. I remember the fall there because of the many trees. The piles of leaves were high until we would scatter them. How much fun it was for my brothers and I to roll and pounce into those piles. Then I would get Mark to help me get them back into piles before Mama and Dad came home.

It was a brick house with a wide, front porch. What I remember most was the pass-through in the built-in china cupboard in the dining room, leading to the kitchen and the colonnades between the front hallway and the front room.

It was here that Kelly came to live with us full time and to finish his high school in Preston.

1939 Clelland and the tree

We were out gathering icicles to make the ice cream for Mama's birthday. It was a surprise for us and we were surely glad to see him.

We didn't stay in that house long because Mama didn't like the empty fields to the east.

1939 Zelda and her Mother