“Lest I Forget”
I was born at 6 p.m. on April 1, 1917, on a cold, snowy Sunday evening in Rigby, Jefferson County, Idaho. I was born in my parent’s home, a small, flat-roofed, square, four-room, red-brick house about one-half block, north of the very northwest corner of Broulim’s parking lot as it is today (1981- located about 50 North State, Rigby, Idaho).) Dr. Anderson came to our home as was the custom then.
An old Spanish proverb says “The lucky man has a daughter as his first child.” I was the first of four children born to Fern Wride Taylor Call, who was born in Provo, Utah, on December 20, 1893, and George Alvin Taylor, born October 17, 1891, in Lewisville, Idaho. I have two sisters, Lucile Taylor Lund Maloney, born September 9, 1920, and Mary Lou Taylor Evans, born February 23, 1927, and one brother, Max Alvin Taylor, born September 9, 1922. I love them all very much.
I was blessed on April 4, 1921, at age 4, by Elder Shepherd Crowther in the Garfield Ward in the Rigby Stake in Rigby, Idaho. I was baptized on April 4, 1925, by Aldon Tall, a priest in the Rigby First Ward, Rigby Stake and confirmed on April 5, 1925, by Elder Alfred W. DaBell.
A French proverb states, “The most important part of being a good father to a daughter is to love and respect her mother,” and this my father did. He showed his consideration and love for her when he would take her to a dance or to eat out.
He was a gentle and kind man. He would get up at night and rub my legs when I had bad leg aches. He had suffered rheumatic fever as a child and developed a heart condition from which he died at the age of forty-five.
The following is a brief outline of my father’s life:
As a child he worked hard in the fields driving a team of horses, attending his meetings at the small church that had a pot-bellied stove in a large room. He attended school in the large grey rock building which was torn down about 1977. His father was killed (October 10, 1892) in an accident when some logs slid off the sleigh they were on and broke his neck. He had two older brothers.
His mother, Sarah Hegsted, now a young widow with three small boys, Elmer Warren, Horace W., and George (Alvin), married Welby Holmes Walker—a widower with four children (October 10, 1895.) Together they had seven more children, making a family of fourteen, plus two others who lived with them. (One of those others was Jake Hegsted, Sarah’s crippled brother.)
I have many happy memories of visits in their home in Lewisville. Lewisville always celebrated the 24th of July with a rodeo, ball games, programs, a dance, a speaker and whatever else they could think of.
Our family had many outings to Warm River Campground, Swan Valley, Lemhi Valley, and Lost River Mountains. We enjoyed the pheasant, sage hens, and trout Father seemed to always provide. Mother would lead us in picking wild berries. When we arrived back home, she would make them into delicious jams and jellies for the cold winter months. Our mode of transportation was a Model T Ford with curtains that snapped on and off on the sides to keep out the weather. Our shelter was sometimes a tent and other times just the stars above. There was a superstition that if you stretched a rope around the camp on the ground that a snake would not cross it, and so we did. It must have helped because we never had any trouble with snakes.
When my mother was expecting her second child, Lucile, we were so poor that there was no money for diapers. So she stripped some old factory material similar to unbleached muslin from the walls of an old chicken coop to make diapers for the newcomer. She cut them the right size, hemmed them, and boiled them thoroughly to get them white. They served the purpose very well.
Some of my first recollections are of the farm in Garfield, which was located about three miles southwest of Rigby. It was made up of 80 acres and had a comfortable home there with three large rooms. Uncle Oral Walker used to carry me around in a feed grain bucket. We also had colored wax candles brightly lit on a cedar Christmas tree.
Mother, Theo Devereau, Louise Hicks, and other neighbor ladies always made large, delicious meals for the threshing crews. They would have to borrow dishes, silverware, pots and pans, and chairs in order to accommodate the sometimes twenty to thirty men who came to enjoy the tantalizing repast. On holidays and Sundays, Mother would make a large freezer of delicious homemade ice cream, bake a cake and invite neighbors or relatives over. There were always other children to play with. We would play in the large orchard swing, under the apple tree, or sit on the machinery and pretend to run it. When we ate cake, we would always save the frosting on the cake until last. I remember the aroma of the many large loaves of Mother’s homemade bread, picking strawberry crab apples in the orchard, and sitting on the front step in the hot afternoon to eat them.
I remember watching mother hens sit and seeing the baby chicks hatched. I was afraid of the mother hens but I delighted in holding the fuzzy little chicks. I also enjoyed the other farm animals like the cows, calves, pigs, and horses. Tragedy struck one night when our white horse hung itself in the rope in the orchard swing. We missed her as a pony very much.
When I was five, I remember falling down a well about twelve feet deep that was being dug. After discovering that I was all right, our neighbor, Earl Devereau, carried me home.
I started the first grade in the Garfield School, a small, red-brick schoolhouse. The grades were put in rows with first grade in the first row, second grade in the second row, and so forth. Of course, some grades were two or three rows if they had more students. I walked to school 2-1/2 miles and carried my lunch in a small, round, tin lard bucket. One day there was a very large spider web outside the window and the teacher let us all leave our seats to observe it. Some of my friends were Ruth Grover, Harriet Johnson, Alberta Brower, and Fawn Branson.
There was a small store across the street from the school that was run by a quaint, lovable old couple. It was a lean-to building and we called it “Hadlock’s” because that was the name of the couple. They had the best penny candy and we would run over there at recess and after school.
Just north of the store was the Garfield Church House, which served many purposes. It was a white frame building, sort of oblong in shape, with a stage on the west end with a canvas curtain that rolled up when they put on entertainment. I remember going to a children’s Christmas dance there when I was six years old. There was a decorated cedar tree and we marched around the room. When they had Sunday School or Primary there, they would have to draw the canvas curtains that were hung on wire and this would divide the one big room into smaller classrooms. Needless to say, the classes could overhear each other they all got somewhat noisy at times. However, we had a great time.
I had gone to first grade for only six weeks when my father’s health began to fail, and he was forced to give up the heavy work on the farm. We moved to Rigby to a home located at 134 South 2nd West, where he took up the lighter work of painting and decorating, a trade he and his brothers, Horace and Elmer Taylor, pursued for many years, often working together along with their half brother, Oral Holmes Walker.
My parents decided to go to California in 1924 where the weather was milder and my father could work all year. We went in our new Ford Model T with two seats and curtains of black material with snaps and glass windows. We camped out all the way as there were many places to stop. We had a tent, and we were quite comfortable. Dad always bought Fig Newtons to munch on. I got so sick of them I hardly wanted them for a long time. My sister Lucile and I broke out with chicken pox, and we were so irritated by them that whenever we stopped, we got out and scratched our backs by rubbing against a tree. Somewhere in the desert, we drove on a strip of the road that was called “the washboards.” It was a series of quick little dips in the road and we would be going up the next one while our hind wheels were still coming down behind us. I got an upset stomach from the motion. It was nothing like our modern highways today. The roads were quite narrow and dusty sometimes.
While we were in California, I went to three different schools in the Santa Monica area. One day I brought a little black girl home to play and my sister Lucile became frightened and hid behind a chair. In those days, we hadn’t had many black people around. We had a small play yard in the back of the house in Santa Monica.
I don’t remember the three teachers I had at different schools in California. I was retained in the second grade for an extra year. However, in Rigby, I was allowed to “skip” the second grade so I caught up with my friends. Mrs. Nell Marler was my third grade teacher and, throughout the years, she and her husband, Gates, have come back here to visit. They had a son, Ralph, who has been quite successful.
Elsie Lessey was my fourth grade teacher. Our room was in the northeast corner of the basement of the big three-story red brick school building. The playground had cinders on it to keep it from getting muddy, but they really skinned you up if you fell on them. We had two sets of swings, a slide, and a giant stride. This building had a belfry and the ringing of the bell brought the students to school. Mr. Rosenthal, the principal, had his office up by the belfry. I only remember going there once.
The site of the school building was in the middle of the block on the south side of the present tennis courts in the city park. (Address would be about 50 West 1st North on the north side of the street.) There were four classrooms on each level with large hallways in the center of the building. On the east side of the building was a round fire escape which started on the top (third) floor. From time to time, we would have a fire drill, which was always a thrill. We would get to go down inside the fire escape. The building was three stories high with the bottom floor partially underground. Wide stairways led to all floors, and the students had to march up the stairs in an orderly fashion to their various rooms. Floors were wood and were oiled to keep dust down. Someone always played a march on the piano when it was school time. The flag was on the belfry and was raised and lowered each day.
We had a recess each morning and afternoon for fifteen minutes. I was an expert roller skater and loved to skate on the large wide sidewalk in front of the building. Some other games we played were hopscotch, jacks, and jump rope (both single and double dutch). At that time, the school wagons had rubber tires on them, side curtains that rolled down, and were pulled by horses. I rode home on them sometimes to play with friends. Among those friends was Lorette Beck, now Mrs. A. L. Weiand of Idaho Falls.
While I attended the elementary school, it was the custom to hold a May Festival in the month of May. We held the “May Day Festival” on the lawn just north of the Rigby Junior High. It included the grade school children and was very special. We would practice our parts for weeks ahead of the festival. I helped wind the Maypole with its colorful streamers that were fastened to a tall pole. We would each take one streamer in one hand, then we would face the child next to us and walk forward and weave in and out. The streamers would eventually be all wound around the pole in a checkerboard manner. Then we would turn around and go back and unwind it. You walked with a definite slow step as you weaved in and out around the circle. Then everyone would drop his streamer. Sometimes they had two or three Maypoles being wound at the same time. It was quite a gay, colorful sight. They would always have the piano moved out there, usually on a truck. There was always a rhythm band made up of small students which added greatly to the program. Many of the children would have colorful crepe paper costumes that were various flowers, birds, and animals. The parents would come out and sit on folding chairs placed around the large lawn. It was truly a special program which heralded the arrival of spring.
I also performed the minuet with Lyle Oram as my partner for another program. We were dressed in costumes with the girls in Martha Washington-type dress with bustles and wigs. The boys had long-tailed coats and knee-length britches, large tinfoil buckles on their shoes, and cotton wigs. There were about eight couples in the minuet.
I completed four years of grade school in this building. I then attended junior high school, which used to be in the middle of the block that is across the street and south of the Rigby Stake Center building.
The teachers I remember there were Ella May Lemmon Parker, Lola Call Stockam, Vardella Yorgenson, Martha Benesch, and Jay Rencher. The junior high building has since burned down, but it was a large red brick building with its entrance on the east. It has a long gym in the center with a stage on the west end with a woodworking shop for the boys behind it. There were classrooms, the office, and the library all around the outside of the gym. Nimrod Good was the principal. When a play or operetta was performed, he would come around from room to room and announce it and would state that we could get into the performance for the “thin dime.” Those that couldn’t afford the dime would have to stay in a study hall during the show. However, they did relent now and then, and everyone went to the show.
These were formative years for me and I felt quite grown up when I graduated from Rigby Junior High after completing the eighth grade. I had a beautiful long white chiffon dress with red and pink roses on it. We sang a song that was written by one of the class members. I think it was Elmer Lee, who is now a famous doctor in Washington state. The song is as follows:
OUR DEAR JUNIOR HIGH
Oh, Rigby Junior High
Oh, Rigby, hear us sigh
That we must part so soon
From our dear junior high
Some day we’ll be so blue
So far away from you,
But we will always
Love our Junior High.
(Repeat)
I also remember having gym classes in junior high. We had royal blue knee pants and white blouses. We exercised to music in the gym.
I have many good recollections of my childhood. We made a lot of our own entertainment. Among them was swimming in the Rigby Canal, mostly in “Chandler’s Hole.” We didn’t usually have swimming suits, but just wore old clothes like coveralls with the legs and arms cut off. Occasionally we would go to Heise Resort swimming pool, which was a hot mineral water swimming pool. It was still running, and improvements have been made to make it a good place to go swimming, picnicking, golfing and hiking.
We children used to pack a picnic lunch and walk out to the dry bed north of Rigby where we would eat our lunch on the banks of the stream. We also used to hike out south of town through the sagebrush to Ruth Grover’s home and play games like Author and Rook and listen to records. Charlie Hill, my friend Eva’s dad, had some farm land just south of the Burgess canal and we would take our lunch with pink lemonade and sit under the large cottonwood trees and enjoy it. I went on many “May Day” walks. (Usually a May Day walk included gathering flowers and sometimes a picnic.) My father took us on numerous outings as he really liked the out-of-doors. We made camping trips to Swan Valley campground which was located on the south side of the Snake River about where the new bridge spans the river. We went to Warm River many times and I caught my first fish there. It was a trout about six inches long. That is where I first met my dear friend, Leith Later Statham, while she was on a similar trip with her family. We hiked up the hills across the campground and hollered up the canyon to hear the echo. The train to West Yellowstone used to go through there regularly, and we would always be on the lookout for it because we didn’t want to be caught halfway across the railroad bridge that spans Warm River. When we thought a train was due soon, we would put nails on the track, and it would press the nails out flat. The train would always be filled with fancy people who had been vacationing in Yellowstone Park. My father also took us on many outings to the Lemhi Country, Lost River and Medicine Lodge. He truly enjoyed the outdoors.
In the summer evenings when all the kids in the neighborhood finished their dishes and various other chores, we would meet under the street lights on the end of each block and decide which games to play. Those games included “Hide and Seek,” “Kick the Can,” “Run, Sheepie, Run,” and others. More than once, Otis Lemmon came over and helped me finish the dishes. When we lived in the house where the Wells Brady family lives now (1982), we had very large cottonwood trees along the sidewalk west of the house. We would tie one of Dad’s big roofing ropes on a high-up, sturdy branch and really have a lot of fun and thrills swinging in a large circle or back and forth. Our lot there covered quite a lot of the city block, and we raised a very good garden with Dad to oversee us. We had more fruits and vegetables than we needed for eating and canning, so we used to put things in a fairly large red metal wagon we had and peddle them about the neighborhood. There were large ears of yellow corn, early red potatoes, and colorful carrots. We gained considerable spending money through our efforts, and we also learned about hard work and its pay offs. Our father was a good provider, and we always had what we needed in spite of his heart problems.
Some of my Sunday School memories are Belle Tall, the mother of Drs. Asael and Aldon Tall, leading the singing. We sometimes had our class out on the lawn under the trees.
I graduated from Primary in April of 1931 in the Rigby 1st Ward, Rigby Stake. Some of my Primary memories include being a Sea Gull girl for so long. The girls’ Primary groups were the Larks (usually nine year olds), Bluebirds, (usually ten year olds), and Seagulls, (usually eleven year olds). We went until we were 14 years old then. I attended Primary in the old 1st Ward Chapel. It had dark woodwork benches and fine lace work on the sacrament table.
Some of the memories I have from M.I.A. are going into the Beehive class (Afton Tall was the teacher). I remember being in a play—I was the fancy lady from the city and wore a fur around my neck. We had activities like Halloween spook alleys and winter bobsleigh rides followed by hot cocoa and chili at someone’s home.
I attended Rigby High School in Rigby from 1931 to 1935. My special friends in high school were Delia Jacobson, Lova Zundel, Leith Later, Lorette Beck, Marvilla Graham, Ellen Call, and Blanche Lauder. I still see them occasionally, except Ellen, who has died. My teachers included Ezra Lilenquist, Mabel Murphy, W.W. Heyrend, Thomas B. Matney, Elmer Randall, Leo Nelson, Leonard Jenkins, Elsie Goodwin, and Belva Lee. Some memories I have are taking gym, the dances, and attending ball games. I also remember going to study hall.
We didn’t have yearbooks because of the Depression but I got a beautiful class ring during my junior year that cost $7.70.
I attended seminary for three years and graduated in May of 1934. Two of my teachers there were Cecil Hart and William E. Berrett. Cecil Hart was also the stake president in Idaho Falls and the president of the Idaho Falls temple. William E. Berrett was president of the church seminaries for many years and wrote several books. I met him again in Samoa in 1969. (More on the trip to Samoa is included in a separate history.) I had a lovely orchid and wore a princess-style dress at seminary graduation.
At that time, the LDS Church did not tell you to wait till sixteen to date, so I did go out on dates. I was fourteen, a sophomore, when I met my future husband, Leonel Howard Anderson, at a dance at Riverside Garden, a large dance hall about two miles north of Rigby. His cousin, Clyde Statham, introduced us. He took me home later that night.
I was known as a girl who would not kiss the boys, so the fellows had bet Howard he couldn’t kiss me. On the way home, we stopped over by the old tabernacle. It must have been June because he picked a peony and pulled the petals off one by one, chanting, “Kiss me, kiss me not,” with each petal, and I ended up giving him one kiss when the last petal said, “Kiss me.”
There were several large ballrooms in our area and they included The Jungles, located immediately northwest of where the Thornton overpass was. No trace of it (or the overpass) remains today; it is just a wooded area and slough. There was also Wandamere, which was about two miles south of Idaho Falls, west of the road with the slough. These two dance halls along with Riverside Gardens, north of Rigby, were all large and beautiful, and many big name bands played there. They all had spacious hardwood floors, cloak check rooms, restrooms, and sitting areas. Riverside Gardens also had a large rock fireplace. There was also a beautiful huge glass ball that hung in the center of the room and turned slowly. The small mirrors in it reflected a rainbow of lights around the room when the ball moved. It was much like disco lights, but much softer. It turned around continually and the little hexagon mirrors on the ball reflected little spots of rainbow colors on the dancers and the walls. It was very romantic, especially when the orchestra played a waltz. Ray Miles now has his home site on the sport where Riverside Gardens used to stand. Part of the original building is their home. The original large rock fireplace still stands also. The dance floor is now a tennis court. The area is beautifully landscaped and well-cared for, but it is hard to imagine what once stood there. In 1985, the area was being used for horse training.
Del Holland owned the dance hall, and we girls could ride out to the dance if we got over to their place by eight o’clock. Sometimes we would ride home with them, but a lot of times we came home with a date. If you went to the dance with a date, you usually danced the first dance with him, but then you danced with anyone you cared to until the last dance when they played “Goodnight, Sweetheart.”
After I met Howard we dated off and on, and it wasn’t until 1933 when I was sixteen that we got serious and dated steadily until we were married on November 18, 1935.
Howard lived through the block, one block east of my home (about 134 South 1st West on the west wide of the street.) He didn’t have a car, so we walked quite a lot. He lived with his parents, and Edith, Ruth and Keith were still at home. This was during the Depression years. Howard went up to Archer to help build an underground cellar. With the money he earned, he bought Edith and Ruth’s high school books. Everybody was really short on money. My Dad painted the Royal Theater and part of his pay he took in show tickets. He would often slip a couple of them to Howard and me. We usually had a date on Wednesday and Saturday nights.
Some interesting dates Howard and I went on were going to Indian Springs on Easter in a snowstorm. We would go to the Saturday night dances at Riverside Gardens with Clyde and Leith. We would frequently go to the show in Rigby on Wednesday or Friday nights. We would usually walk to the show, but sometimes Howard would drive his folks’ Buick car.
My first experience with the temple was when I was 17. I went to the Logan Temple with the seminary to be baptized for the dead. We left early in the morning and came home that night.
I did housework and baby-tending through the summer months for Mrs. Hogge and Mrs. Donaldson. Mrs. Donaldson was the wife of the manager of Penney’s. I received 10 cents per hour for this work. Howard would have to go up to Penney’s and decorate the windows after hours after clerking in the shoe department all day. We often wonder where we would be if we had stayed with Penney’s.
Although the year 1935 was still in the Depression, it was an eventful year for me. First, I received my engagement ring in April and then graduated from Rigby High School in May.
I received my diamond engagement ring on a Sunday in April near my seventeenth birthday. We were walking through the block south of the old high school. I was very thrilled. The ring had one larger diamond in the middle and two smaller ones on either side, all set in a band of yellow gold. Howard bought the wedding band at the same time. This set eventually wore out, and we had all five diamonds set in a wide wedding band, which I still have and wear every day with pride. Howard bought it at R&G Jewelry, and he paid three dollars a month for it. It was still Depression times.
We set our wedding date that same year for November 18, 1935, in the Salt Lake Temple to be sealed for time and all eternity. I received my endowment on the same day in the Salt Lake Temple. All of our four children are sealed to us.
As the day approached and we made our plans, my father offered us the use of his new 1935 Plymouth grey coupe. We were very pleased with that because we could “go in style.” We left home early on a Saturday morning because we had to get a marriage license in the state of Utah. We drove right along but it was five minutes to twelve when we arrived there at the Logan Courthouse. We just made it in time. That was the first county courthouse we came to. It was red brick then, but since has been painted white. We first went to see Mid and Dick Van Uitert, (Mid is Mildred – Howard’s oldest sister – She married Dirk (Dick) Van Uitert and they lived in Bountiful) and then Howard took me over to Aunt Mabel and Uncle Barry Wride (my mother’s brother) home (in Bountiful) where I stayed. They were very good to me, and Aunt Mabel helped me get up and get ready to go by 7 a.m. They also went with us to the temple on Monday. Goldie (Howard’s sister) and Bill Barlow and Mid and Dick went also. I was very excited that morning and could not eat breakfast. Needless to say, I was starving when we got out of the temple at 1:30 p.m. We stayed at Temple Square Hotel, and we mostly ate in their restaurant. It was right across the street from Temple Square. It was a beautiful view with all the fall flowers still blooming, and our room was on the fifth floor so we were high enough to see. We went to the spacious Coconut Ballroom on Saturday night where a big band was playing. Our honeymoon was two days, and then we headed back home on Monday as Howard had to be to work at Penney’s on Tuesday. He earned $37.50 every two weeks, making it $75 a month. We had had $40 to spend on our honeymoon, and only $5 was left when we arrived home.
We stayed with my parents the first night and the next day we rented a one-room cabin which sat in the spot where Gene’s Drive-In is now (1985) (Located about 150 South State Street on the west wide of the road in Rigby.) My dad took Howard to Idaho Falls and bought a used kitchen range that burned wood or coal. We bought a bed and mattress from Ward’s on monthly payments.
The cabin was so small that you could sit on the bed and do the cooking. We also had to use the bathrooms that were in a small building in the middle of the eight cabins. We could not afford a refrigerator, so Howard got a wooden box and fastened it on the outside over a window. We would lift the window and put things in or get them out. The only trouble we had was when it would freeze the milk and things. However, we didn’t stay there very long.
One day, Lorette came to visit us. I was having a hard time cooking pancakes fit to eat. My stove at that time was a little one with only two lids on top and the middle of the stove was sunken in. In spite of this, she did bake better pancakes and I learned from her that day. Also, when I didn’t have an oven, I would make some pies and fruitcake, put them on a small sleigh, and walk down to Howard’s mother’s place which was how far away (directly through the block to the west – about 134 South 1st West)and bake them. I really used to make some rich fruitcakes because I put butter, fruit and nuts in them. They became fairly famous among our close friends. We needed some way to bathe, so we bought a large round “wash tub” for this. We also used it to wash clothes, using a scrubbing board. I felt so independent. We didn’t live in this one-room cabin much over a month. We next moved to the upstairs in a large green house, located on the south side of the street, just east of the underpass by the railroad tracks on the Ririe highway. We had three rooms and a bathroom.
We didn’t stay here long either, but moved into a three-room basement apartment in the McBride home. Owen McBride worked as an assistant to the head man in Penney’s, Ellis Donaldson. About this time, I was expecting our first child, Frances Arlene. While I was in the morning sickness stage, Howard’s mother and dad (Hilda and Leo), Keith, Leland, Donna, Howard, and I went up to Island Park and picked huckleberries at High Point and Bishop’s Burn. I sat on a log and the rest of them would bring me branches to pick off the berries. The next day while I was cooking the huckleberries, the smell of the strong-flavored berries caused me to faint—the first time ever. I was standing near the apartment door and I slumped right down on the cement floor. I was only out a few seconds because when I came to, Mrs. McBride was wiping my face with a cold cloth.
We next moved to a little lean-to at the side of Aunt Bea Walker’s house. (A lean-to is a room added to the house, but the roof slopes away from the former outside wall of the house, rather than blend into the existing roof. The home is located on the northwest corner of 2nd South and 1st West.) It is still there and she still occupies that house when she is not visiting one of her children or grandchildren. Lately she has lost most of her eyesight.
Frances Arlene was born when we lived there. She was a pretty blue-eyed blonde baby girl, born January 4, 1937. Aunt Bea was a big help to me when Arlene could cry and have something bothering her. Arlene was born on a Monday afternoon about ten minutes to four at Goody Maternity Home. Our regular doctor was out of town, so Howard trudged around in the snow and cold trying to find a doctor. After talking with three doctors, he finally got Dr. H. Anderson, who had been retired for several years. He was present helping my mother when I was born.
This house only had two rooms, but they were large and we had it furnished so that it was very comfortable. We had an occasional chair by the window. When Aunt Bee’s three youngest children, Eldon, Lenice, and Sharon would come to see me, all three of them could sit in that one chair and eat cookies. One night Howard had a very bad headache, and Aunt Bee suggested putting a cold cloth on his head and his feet in a bucket of as warm of water as he could stand. In a few minutes, his head was much better.
For his painting business, my father bought a 1929 Model A Ford Roadster. He took the rumble seat out and had a box built in there to haul his working tools. Because there was so much paint that was around that wooden box, a fair amount ended up all over inside the box and sealed up any cracks that might have been in the wood. The box was open on the top. It had isinglass curtains on the side that you could roll up. My dad took great pride in this car and painted the body maroon with black fenders on the front and back. To set it off, he painted the spoke wheels yellow. It had a black vinyl top that folded down.
After my father died in 1937, we bought it from my mother. We also bought all of Dad’s ladders, drop clothes, etc. Howard wasn’t making enough money working at Penney’s as the head of the shoe department, and was going to start his own painting business.
One weekend Clyde, Leith and their small boy, Fred, went with Howard and me and our five-month-old baby girl, Arlene, on an outing to Cave Falls. We had Arlene in a pasteboard box in the front seat on the right side of me because when it started to thunder and lightning, she was more protected there. After the guys fished a short time with no luck and the mosquitoes were chewing on us, Leith and I decided to leave. About that time, it really started to downpour. There must have been a cloudburst. The lightning hit one tree along the road, and it split it in half and the tree fell to the road. All this time, Clyde, Leith and Fred were in the back in that wooden box that would not drain because of the paint that had sealed in it. They had two or three inches of water around them and were soaking wet. We were so wet that we stopped in Maryville and rented a one-room motel room. Arlene slept through all through the storm, snug in her improvised crib with the flaps of the box folded across the top.
I learned to drive this car when I was about ten or eleven, and had lots of fun driving it right up to when I got married. I once ran over a young pig, just south of Ucon. He was really solid and gave me quite a bump. Luckily he got up and ran away.
We had this car for several years, and then traded it to the Ford dealer in Idaho Falls. I cried when we drove away and left it there. I think we got $35 for it, and nowadays it would be considered a classic.
The next place we moved to was our first house and it was located just less than a block south of where we lived (located on the northeast corner of 2nd South and 2nd West, Rigby.) We spoke of it as the Christensen house. We still didn’t have a bathroom and had to use a little outhouse in the back. The house had four good-sized rooms in it. It was while we lived here that our first fine son was born on January 21, 1939. Robert Leonel arrived early on a Saturday morning at 5:35 a.m. in the back bedroom at my mother’s house. She was a practical nurse and assisted Dr. Aldon Tall in Bob’s delivery.
The next place we moved was a two-room apartment on the north side of my mother’s house. Grandma Fern then went to California for a while, and we moved into the whole house for $1 per month. We were living there when the news of Pearl Harbor stunned the United States (December 7, 1941. Lucile’s husband, Glen Lund, was in the Air Force and Lucile lived with us while she worked at Reed Drug. He got out of the Air Force with the rank of captain, but he was killed after that in a tractor accident while helping move heavy snow. It was a sad day in Rigby. They held his funeral in the Rigby Stake Tabernacle, with a large crowd attending.
While living in Mother’s home, we planted the bridal wreath plants, barberry bushes, and syringe bush (Idaho’s state flower). They were around the front of the house.
We bought a seven-volume set of John Martin’s children books and the fellow would come once a month to collect my monthly payment. I don’t remember the full price, but it wasn’t much compared to today. (The payments were $1 a month.) Each of the four children had one book.
Our next move was to a nice place on the Ririe Highway, located about one and one-half miles east of Rigby. It was known as the Dowdle place. It had a living room, a dining room, two bedrooms, a nice bathroom and a pretty yard. At the back of the yard were two large chicken houses, which we used for keeping 300 to 500 white leghorn chickens. We sold cases of eggs weekly. We had a pretty little Guernsey heifer for several years. We had a cream separator and that provided a lot of good cream. We also had an electric pasteurizer, and we would process two gallons of milk every other day. Then we would put it in the frig to chill. Out across the ditch in back of the barn, we had three acres of raspberries. I would water them good every other day. Then, on the days between, I had several ladies who would come and pick on “shares.” I also milked the cow twice a day. I never did really admit that I could.
While this was going on, Howard was up by Lima, Montana, on a contract painting for the railroad. He and Uncle Elmer had hired several men. He would come home on weekends, but it was hard for both of us. He admitted he got very homesick at times, and I was having quite a challenge, too. However, it proved to be worth the effort when we were able to buy the old Omer and Annie Call home located at 190 West 2nd North, Rigby, just west of Call’s Greenhouse. Up until 1943, we had been living in rented apartments and houses. This was Grandma Fern’s husband’s (Sylvester Call) family home.
Our lot on the property at 190 West 2nd North was about three acres and had several large cottonwoods on the west. They were the largest ones in town. We had them removed because the large branches were too close to the house. We purchased the home in 1944 for $1,000.00. Of course, it took several thousand dollars to remodel it, put in a bathroom and furnace, and the like. It was very comfortable.
This was a pioneer home, built from adobe brick that was made in a brickyard just kitty corner from the William Warner home, north of town. All signs of the brickyard are gone now. This was Sylvester Call’s home while growing up. The land ran back to the Rigby Canal. We have several before and after pictures on the story of this house which are placed in this history. The house had four rooms downstairs and three upstairs. It was a very roomy house. It had high ceilings and a wainscot on the kitchen. There was a small hall just inside the front door where the stairway upstairs was located. There were coat hooks along the east side of the hall. We tore the wall out and made an open stairway into the living room. We enjoyed this very much. Within a short time, we put in a Lennox furnace and bought an electric stove to replace the white Monarch coal range we had. We put in a bathroom and fixed up a laundry room in the northeast room of the house. This room had an outside door which was handy. We had the washer, dryer, freezer, and furnace in this room. Howard made a very clever (jigsaw) floor design from linoleum scraps and Clyde Statham built us a beautiful cabinet in the kitchen and put a large snack bar on the south end. This sort of served as a divider between the kitchen part and the space in this large room where we had a nice dining room table and chairs. We also had a buffet that went with this set. In the dining area, we had an ivy pattern wallpaper on the walls and a different kitchen paper in the kitchen area. Under all of this, we had some pretty deep red linoleum which was beautiful when clean, but crumbs and the like showed up easily. We painted and papered all the rooms in the house. The first thing we did on the outside was to put a new roof. We also dug a small fruit and vegetable storage room under the garage and built a new double garage. Howard put in a new sunroom that led from the house into the garage. We had a Venetian window shade for when the sun got too bright. We built a new door on the front and put a nice step with a roof over the entrance way. We painted the house a cream color and the trim white. This looked very nice because it had a lot of bric-a-brac in the gables. We had a very nice place to call home.
It was while we lived in this lovely old house that Steven Taylor was born on September 7, 1945. World War II ended just three months before he was born. I was always very happy that he was born in peace time. I remember on V-J Day that year we took Bob, Arlene and Steve up to Swan Valley and had a picnic in a grassy place along the river. Then, three years later, we received another beautiful daughter and we called her Sharol Lyn. She was born on December 12, 1948.
While living in that house, I was often called on to contact people for various fund-raising projects (Red Cross, March of Dimes, and such.) I would have the houses one block west and one block east. At that time, I was a visiting teacher, a (Charter) Rigby Study Club member, worked in the P.T.A., and was kept very busy with all my activities in addition to caring for my family and running that large two-story home. Howard started called square dances in 1949. It was about the happiest time of our life. We made a lot of good friends in southeastern Idaho, were raising our family, and were young and very active.
I have more memories of when we lived in this house than any other place. We sold it in 1955 after living there for eleven years. At that time, Howard had been in the Jefferson County Posse, and he had a beautiful palomino horse, Prince, that we brought from George Nedrow. They won several first place trophies in riding meets in Utah and Idaho. Howard was in the posse for three years and enjoyed it very much. There were about thirty to forty men and they all wore matching shirts and pants and western hats. The horses also had matching saddle blankets and halters.
In 1955, the city passed an animal ordinance and we couldn’t keep our horse, Pepper, chickens and milk cow within the city limits. Pepper was Howard’s horse before Prince, and she was purchased from Orville Walker. She used to do the barrel race, but her knees began to bother her and we didn’t race her after that. She was just for riding. She had a colt and we called it String Bean because he was so tall and lanky. Bob also had a horse out on the farm that we named Cinder because of her parents, Cindy and Ginger. During the hot month of July, she contracted brain fever and was very sick. Steve took good care of her and put cold towels on her head for many hours. She recovered and lived a useful life.
We had been wanting to move to the country, so in 1955, we bought forty acres from Lester and Alma Hendrickson. The land was located one mile north and one and one-quarter miles east of Rigby. It wasn’t long before Howard had plans to remodel the house and enlarge it. He doubled its size and made it very comfortable. We extended the living room out to the south and also built a large bedroom on the west. Howard built a maple wood cabinet in the kitchen and we made various places better. We had a wonderful view of the Grand Tetons to the east. We lived in this comfortable home from 1955. Howard built a detached double garage, and we planted a green willow start out in front of our house. It is a huge tree now, and we got the start from our good friends, DeEsta and Vern Pettingill. We also sent to the University of Idaho through the county agent, and got fifty pine trees. They were about two to three inches tall. Some of them are still in the yard now and are about ten to twelve feet high and very pretty. We raised potatoes the first year and went “in the hole”. So after that we concentrated on grain and alfalfa.
We had a herd of Holstein dairy cows and Howard, Steve and Bob took turns milking them. We sold the milk to the creamery for milk, cheese and butter. Each of the boys had Ag projects while they were in Future Farmers in high school.
Several times while we lived there, I took May walks out to the dry bed which was just north of our field. I would take Bob’s children, Ricky and Robby, and we would have a picnic and watch the birds and water. One day we were walking through the trees and I looked up and saw a wild cat sitting up high on a bigger tree branch. All he did was look at us, but we got out of there right away. We had many happy times together. One winter I tended Robby for Pat while she worked in the law office. Every day after lunch, we would have a rest and I would read to him. He seemed to enjoy that and I loved to have him. I didn’t want to charge her for tending my own grandson, so she gave me a beautiful round orange velvet decorator pillow.
Howard really liked the farm; he still mentions it and says he would like it back. He especially liked mowing the swell-smelling hay. As soon as it was ready, he would get up early in the morning and drive briskly up and down the lands and rake the hay. He had a hay rake that he owned in partnership with Vern Pettingill.
We went on many trips to various camping areas around here or up to Darby and Hamilton in Montana, often with Vern and DeEsta Pettingill or Clyde and Leith Statham and their children. We had our eye on a ranch up there we called “the Kelly place” but we never seemed to be able to buy it. The children would have had to ride the bus 17 miles to school, and there were very few LDS up there. I think the Lord wanted us to live here (in Rigby) and raise our family. All have found a mate in the Church, and that means a lot to us and we are thankful for it.
We had some very good neighbors there including Ralph and Helen Shipley, Stilman and Hazel Whittle, Lloyd and Elma Wilkins, Albert and May Patterson, and Howard and Carma Madsen.
1955 was the year Arlene graduated from high school with honors. It was also the year that Sharol started school. She rode the school bus. Arlene and Sharol are twelve years apart. They didn’t have much in common with the age spread, but can visit good now. It was much the same with Steve and Bob. They were seven years apart. Actually, we had two families. Arlene married Vaughn Hawkes on November 25, 1959, and Bob married Patricia Zundel on May 7, 1960. We missed them a lot, but we had Steve and Sharol for a few more years.
The first summer Arlene was out of high school she spent the summer in West Yellowstone, working at the Knotty Pine Café. She stayed in a small cabin with a friend and former lady high school teacher. She said she didn’t always like that because tourists can be very obnoxious. However, with her pay and tips, she made good money.
Arlene went to BYU that fall. However, at Christmas when she came home, she transferred to Ricks College. She seemed to like that better. The next year she moved back home for a year and worked for General Electric at the AEC site west of Idaho Falls. About this time Bob was attending Utah State University in Logan. At the end of the first semester, he decided to come home and work. He got a job selling appliances for a while, but it wasn’t long till he went back to a previous employer, Fanning Wholesale. He did well with them and worked for them up until a couple of years ago when he became self-employed. The next year Arlene went to Utah State and met Vaughn Hawkes on registration day (January 4, 1958.) Following two semesters at Utah State, she then worked for KSL-TV until she married Vaughn on November 25, 1959.
In September, 1963, I attended vocational school to become a licensed practical nurse at Sacred Heart Hospital in Idaho Falls. I graduated in September of 1964. It took a year to earn my diploma or 1,800 hours. I had to get up every morning at 5:30 a.m. and prepare to go to Idaho Falls, 17 miles from my home. Sheila Gimpel and I traveled together and became good friends. She was about the same age as my eldest daughter, Arlene. I arrived at the hospital for “report meeting,” which was held promptly at 10 to 7 a.m. Then I would do floor duty in all the various areas and departments until 12 noon when we had 30 minutes for lunch. I usually ate in the hospital cafeteria. I would usually take a sandwich from home and buy a drink, salad, or bowl of soup to go with it. We had to report to the basement classroom by 1 p.m. and we would study the various subjects which included medical and surgical nursing, history of nursing, first aid (taught by Robert Pollack, Idaho Falls police chief), diets, pharmacology, bacteriology, maternity nursing, pediatrics, and newborns. We also spent time in Central Supply. It was a very challenging and satisfying year. I had to go over to Boise with the class of eleven (fifteen members started) where we took a day-long test at the desks in the legislative room in the Capitol building. When we received our grade report later, I found that I had finished fifth in the class of eleven despite the fact that several in the class had just finished high school and several others had substantial amounts of college education. I have always been proud to be an L.P.N. and have worked hours at Madison Memorial Hospital and feel I have helped a lot of people and made a lot of friends.
We had a very bad washboard dirt road that ran past our property east and west to the highway. We typed up a petition to get it paved and took it up and down the road getting signatures. Howard took the county commissioners for a ride down that road and it wasn’t long before we had an oiled road. We had to park our cars one-half mile west on the Burgess corner while the road was being fixed. It took several days to complete the road. Steve and Sharol were taking Red Cross swimming lessons at the time and they would walk back and forth to their lessons at Riverside in their bathing suits. They really got a good suntan.
The first year that we raised potatoes we did not even make expenses, so Howard, Steve and Bob raised hay and grain after that. Howard was pursuing his trade of paint and decorating and doing the farming in the morning or Saturdays. He especially liked to rake hay in the early morning. He and Vern Pettingill bought a rake together and shared it to do the work. Vern and his wife, DeEsta Coucher, were very dear friends of ours. She died in March 1967, and Vern later married Sharol’s mother-in-law, Melba Foster.
In the mid-1960’s, we opened our first paint store in Rigby on Main Street on the north side of the street just east of Marshall Furniture. Howard still worked at painting and running the farm as well as spending some time in the store, so I spent most of my days working and managing the paint store.
About early 1966, Lyn Walker, our mailman, and his wife, the former Sharon Hall, called and wanted to buy our 40-acre farm. Since Howard was so busy trying to keep up with everything, we decided to sell it to them. They said they had long admired the place. We didn’t want to move back to town so we kept eight acres in the southwest corner with frontage. In 1966, we built a beautiful brick and siding six-room house there with two bathrooms, two fireplaces, and a two-car garage and a workshop. I drew the plans for it when I was taking a decorating course from Shawna Strobel, for which I earned two college credits. We had two bedrooms, a living room on the back, and a kitchen and dining room with a counter between them on the front. The view out the big picture window on the south side was a cheerful one. The washer and dryer were behind bi-fold doors in the kitchen area. A wide stairway led to the basement from just inside the front door. Down in the basement was a large family room, two bedrooms, and a very nice storeroom with shelves on the walls. We also had a fireplace there along with a spacious bathroom and the furnace room. There were two glass sliding doors on the east end of the living room that opened onto the patio. While there, closed the paint store in Rigby and we sold Fuller paints out of the garage. Even though we were two-and-a-half miles from town, we had a lot of customers. Howard went to work and I took care of the store while I did my housework at home.
While we lived there, Steve was called to serve an LDS mission to Peru in South America. We were more spiritual at that time than any other time in our life. This was the summer (1966) we were building the new house and we lived in a 35-foot trailer. Arlene and Vaughn came home from Samoa and stayed six weeks with us. There was no grass or cement and the kids got so dirty that we had to bathe them every night with the limited hot water we had in the tank. We all slept down in the unfinished basement and the sawdust would filter down from the cracks in the sub floor above. However, we had a wonderful summer and we moved into the new house in the fall. This house was located on the east side of the four acres to the east. We gave the other four acres to Bob and Pat, and they built a beautiful cream-colored brick home and some good outbuildings like a double-wide garage and workshop, a barn for registered horses, and a shelter shed. They still live in this home, and it is a very attractive place.
While we lived in the new house Howard had his first hip surgery in Pocatello. I would drive down there every day to see him and he would look out the window at the parking lot and make sure I got away all right. He stayed there about ten days and was most of the winter recovering. Several years later when they announced a new method for replacing worn-out hips, he had his left leg done over by Dr. Bjornson at the Idaho Falls hospital. It was much better, but it never was as successful as the right one which was done a few months later. This was in 1972 and 1973.
In 1970, we decided to sell the house to Dick and Audra Copeland and move to Rexburg and open a paint store. We purchased a house and lot from Dr. Lester J. Petersen. This was located at 211 South 2nd West. There was a small two-bedroom white house on the lot, and we wanted the location for the store. So we had the house movers come and they moved it out about one mile south of town onto an acre of ground. We were the first house on that mile other than Lolavi and Margaret Rigby. That block is now filled with new homes and the people who bought our home have enlarged it. Howard added a garage. We painted it inside and out, drilled a well, and were very happy in our cozy little house. Sharol was still at home then, but worked as a secretary and drove to Idaho Falls every day. She had a little gray Volkswagen car and I used to worry about her driving it. She didn’t keep it very long—I was glad. It was during the time we lived in the little house out south that Brad Foster came home from a mission to Texas. He and Sharol were married on May 14, 1970, in the Idaho Falls temple.
As time went by, (about 1973 or 1974) we decided we couldn’t keep up with the store and the acre we had. So we sold the little house and moved into a double-wide mobile home that was all set up in the trailer park in Rexburg. We were on the far end and had a nice fresh stream flowing just east of us, with a grassy bank and shade tree. About a year later, we moved the double-wide mobile home to a lot on the Ririe Highway where we still live now. Howard has added front and back porches, a patio, a double garage and workshop and it is a nice home for us.
I haven’t worked steady at the hospital since about 1968. But I have spent my time selling paint and the like in our store, first in Rigby and then in a small shop in our garage at our new home northeast of Rigby. Since 1970 I have worked steadily at our new store in Rexburg where we had a growing business and sold paint, wall covering, unfinished furniture, carpet, window shades, and many other items. It was called the Anderson Paint and Decorating Center, and was a very successful business. We sold it to Steve because Howard’s hip was bothering him. He has had two hip operations and got along well. We helped Steve part-time.
In 1975, Howard and I were the Welcome Neighbor couple in the Rigby 3rd Ward. We were to call on all the new people who had moved into the ward boundaries and present them with a packet of information and “friendship” them. Most of the positions I have held in the Church have been teaching positions. I have taught the 9-10-11 year olds in Sunday School; various classes in Junior Sunday School; the Merri Hands, the Trail Builders, and the Seagulls in Primary; the Beehives in MIA two different times; and the Social Relations and Home Health lessons in Relief Society. I served as secretary to the Relief Society and have been a visiting teaching all my life. I also served as a luncheon hostess.
Vaughn and Arlene have eight children: Susan, Richard Vaughn, Diane, Pamela, Cynthia, Daniel Harvey, John David, and Scott Michael. They live in Blackfoot, Idaho, where Vaughn has been a school administrator since 1971. Richard married Julie Rodgers on August 31, 1984.
Bob and Pat still live just outside of Rigby and have two children: Richelle Dawn and Robert. Richelle is married to Richie Roecher and they have one daughter, Nicole. Robby married JoEllen Cottle in August 1985.
On September 16, 1977, Steve married Lori Lynn Kristof. They have lived in Rexburg where Steve operated Anderson Paint Centre, which he purchased from us. He has since sold the business and now (1985) works at Valley Bank in Rexburg. They have three daughters: Merideth, Ashley and Piper. (Matthew was born on February 9, 1989.)
Brad and Sharol have lived in Clark since their marriage where he has farmed. They have four daughters: Kara Jo, Melissa, Erica Ann and Michelle.
