A Not So Brief Encounter

“1912, it was, in Idaho, in Filer, about 5 miles from Twin Falls, where I lived later.  My mother was born in Minnesota and my dad was born in Nebraska, and they met.  My Mother was visiting her cousins in Oregon, and she had gotten on a train, and she saw a young man walking outside her window, walking along, eying her.  And she didn’t think anything of it and pretty quickly he came and asked if anyone was sitting in the next seat, and she said no, and he sat down and they started talking and they got acquainted.  And so he got off at a hotel, he was going up to Canada, he had land up there so he was going up there to see if he could sell it, and she went home to Minnesota.  And they started writing back and forth and then they were married.  For a year and a half they had been writing and they were married in October.

So it sort of paralleled with my husband and I.  William Ward’s parents were from England and her parents were born in Germany.  They got married in Minnesota and then they moved to Oregon.  She was a Lutheran and my Dad was a Methodist. You see when I was working- I was a telephone operator in Twin Falls- when I was working I had a split shift, sometimes I would work from eight to twelve, sometimes from six to ten, I would be going to work as he was coming home.  He had moved too, when he had graduated from BYU, he had got a job in Twin Falls, and I would go back to my office and tell my friends ‘I saw the man I am going to marry,’ so, he would just smile at me and I would smile back, I didn’t speak to him and I didn’t get acquainted with him yet.

That was during the summer.  Then I saw him all summer.  I would go back and forth, walking and he would be walking home and we would be passing each other on the street.  At New Years I had a date.  In Twin Falls they had a radio station that had a big New Year’s Ballroom and they had the big bands come in, this was a big band, and so we went to the dance and he was there and he asked me for a dance and so I did. And then he asked me for a date for the next day, New Year’s Day.

So that’s how we got acquainted and we dated for all that year and then, New Year’s Day, the following New Year’s- it was one year later- we were married.”

The Filer Farm

“My dad was really a farmer, he loved to farm.  He had two farms, one by Filer and we moved into one of the farms.  He rented the other one.  Then five years later we moved to town- to Twin Falls.  But while we were on the farm, one little thing that happened was when there was a meeting at the schoolhouse- I don’t know what it was but my mother and aunt went to it- the men were not involved.  It sounds like a PTA meeting but I’m not sure because of course, I was a baby then.

But they went, mother and my aunt, they went in a buggy and my Aunt was driving and my sister Wilma, over a year old, was standing holding onto the front of the buggy and I was in my mom’s arms.  We got almost to the school, the horse got scared, something got in the way and the horse started bucking and the buggy fell over and my poor mom- she was the only one that was hurt- and she got a big gash and she got a big scar and always had her hair combed with her hair over it.”

“My older sister was Wilma and my younger sister was Juanita and there was just the three and I remember once visiting, when Wilma went to school- it was just a little schoolhouse- one of those old school houses when they had the isles and this one was grade one and this one two, three, four, and it was like that, just a small school, and you could see it from our yard, the school was across the yard.  A sheep always followed Wilma to school.  My dad had to always go get the sheep.”

“It wasn’t a town, it was the country- Filer- there were only about 500 people, and it was very small.  The farm- they grew a lot of alfalfa and corn, and potatoes- now that I can remember, but maybe other things. They had chickens and pigs and we used to have to go over to my Aunts- she lived three miles over- and get the milk every night in a pail.  We rode on a horse- Wilma and I did.

I can remember going to visit Wilma’s school and I can remember the teacher would give me some blocks and I would sit in the same row she was in, I was about four and a half, and I remember piling them up and looking at her, piling them up and she would say ‘Now you are getting it too high and they will fall over’ and it did!  I remember that, that is very clear.  I was five years when we moved in town, and then when I was six I went into the first grade. 1917.”

The Big City: Twin Falls

“The school was called Bickle, and we lived up Fifth Avenue East- a big yellow house on the corner.  We lived there for two years and then we moved to a new, brand new house.  My dad had two houses in town and then the two farms, and there for a while he was pretty affluent.  And then of course the tumble came and we lost everything.  He took care of these houses; he would go out to the farm and the other farm and see if anybody needed any help on the other house that we rented out to people.  He had to take care of that.

We moved into this lovely neighborhood- it was a brand new neighborhood area- and they picked out the kind of house they wanted built; it was kind of a Hollywood bungalow. I think they were looking through a book and the one my mother picked out it was the kind of style of the house.  We moved to town in 1918, the year my mother’s dad came from Minnesota to visit- grandma had already died.  She died a week after my mother and dad were married.  My dad was born in 1875 and my mother in 1878.  They were married in 1908.  My grandpa came to visit.  He had a very German accent and I can remember him saying ‘Nice little girl, but she doesn’t mind!’  He died in that flu epidemic, 1918, and he died in our house.”

“You started first grade when you when you were six- you had to be six before you started school.  It was a two story.  At first they had a chute that they used in case of a fire but they took that off and built stairs on the outside, and it was a pretty building- it looks good now.  Of course in those days, at six years old, I didn’t remember, but it was a nice building.  Twin Falls in those days was about the same size as South Pasadena, about 30,000.  Of course it is bigger now.

This year I started school was the year I started taking piano lessons, when I was six years old.  They had recitals and I am not sure, I must have been about seven and Wilma was about eight and everybody came.  They had chairs lined up, and they had each of us play solo and then they had a duet.  So, when it came for the time of the duet, Wilma was sitting on a stool that twirls around and I was sitting on something else, some kind of a stool that did not twirl.  Anyway, we were playing away and the door opened- somebody late came in- and Wilma stopped and twirled around and she started right where we left off!  I was going on and on and Wilma didn’t miss a beat.”

“I didn’t get along with Wilma that well.  She had a different childhood than I did.  She claimed that she didn’t have a good childhood.  I had a great childhood!  I thought my parents were the most wonderful people!  We didn’t have that much money by that time.  We didn’t loose everything till closer till the depression time, but the farmers lost first since most of our money came from the farm and the rentals, when they started not taking much.  Potatoes were 25 cents a bushel.  But I got along with Nita my younger sister, my older sister- maybe she didn’t like me-

I was a smart-aleck! I had a wonderful childhood.”

The Ward’s Way

“We played outside a lot and the neighborhood kids came and our yard was the ‘main place.’ We played Run Sheep Run, Hide and go Seek….oh all those old games…it was just great!   And our mom was so good to all the kids.  She just was great.  She was always a regular mom- she was home all the time- she didn’t want to go anyplace. I didn’t know anybody that worked outside of the home…in those days.  Not even one.  Of all of my friends the mother was always home.  Not until the War, that changed everything.  She wasn’t a ‘joiner,’ she went to church but she didn’t go to PTA and any of these things.  We were Methodist and they saw to it that we went to church whether they did or not.  They did together in our younger years but later they stopped.

My dad’s dad was still alive.  My grandmas I never knew either one of them, but my dad’s dad came a lot.  He visited a lot from Nebraska.  He was married again.  We just love her because I did not know my real grandmother but boy I loved that grandmother that came.  She was really great.”

“In school there were some things I loved.  History was my favorite.  I really loved that.  And I loved later- when I was going to high school- I loved Spanish.  We had three grade schools and then a high school building and half of it was Jr. High and then half of it was sr. high.  It burned down.  It was a brick building and burned down after.

We went in little gangs, to parties together.  I didn’t learn to dance till I was a teenager.  Of course we just played together; there was no dating till…I was sixteen till I had my first date.”

“My mom sewed a lot, she made all of our clothes, she was a good cook and I think she enjoyed that; she just enjoyed her three girls.  My dad always said ‘All my boys turned out to be girls.’  But he loved us all weather we were girls or not.  My mother always had a coffee pot on the stove because neighbors came.

I had an aunt and an uncle who lived close- they had a farm not too far- who moved to California later, but they lived there, and people dropped in to see us.  I just thought it was fun.  I can remember just little flashes.  I don’t think I’ve changed.  I was kind of shy, I think I was kind of shy but I read a lot, I had my music to practice a lot- I could read notes- and my Mother loved it so much and she could play too.”

“I was a Girl Scout at one time and before that they had Camp Fire Girls, so I was both. At eight I was a Camp Fire Girl and at eleven or twelve I was a Girl Scout.  We camped up in the mountains, stay for a week, that was so fun, that was great fun.  We didn’t go on vacations like they do now.  At one point, when grandpa came from Nebraska, they and my parents and Wilma went to Yellowstone, and left Nita and I out on the farm with the renters of the farm at that point.  And we were so, well, I was, I don’t think Nita cared but I did, but my mother couldn’t handle two of us at Yellowstone and thought someone might reach out from one of those geysers and grab us.

And then another time, we took a vacation, all of us, and we took a tent, down into Snake River Gorge where the Shoshone Falls came over, and it’s almost as good as Niagara Falls- only ten miles from Spring Falls.”

Grandma Dances Her Way through The Great Depression

“Wilma didn’t like it that we lost all of our money but it didn’t phase me one bit.  I still had as much fun after and it didn’t matter either way.  It started with the farms- they were losing.  It wasn’t as if the Crash came all of the sudden and everybody lost their money at the same time, it started with the farmers, and I would say that was 1923 it started.  Then we lost one farm and then a year later we lost the other farm, and we didn’t loose the house in town we rented out, we didn’t loose that till 1928.  We lost our ‘nice house’ before we lost the other one and had to move back into the older one in ’28.  Then we had to move to a rental house and we rented all the time that I was in high school.”

“We lost the money by the time I was through jr. high.  Everything was gone.  I don’t know that it affected my mother that much.  And of course it did.  My dad was not as affected…of course a sad time but they did not dwell on it.

My dad was a retiring person but not shy.   My dad was gone quite a bit.  He had an oil well in Oklahoma and land up in Canada and he’d go to see how they were doing, every so often, and when our new place was built and moved in.  Then they put the lawn in.  Our mother had a hard time putting our play and all of our friends away from the yard so it would grow- he was gone and she was afraid we’d trample….oh it was fun!!!!”

“I remember when my dad first told my mom that we had lost the farms and he sold the Canadian lands.  In the worst, ’35, and the Crash came, I can remember when my mother heard about the first farm that we lost- they didn’t go at the same time but one and then another- anyway, she cried, and that was all, that was all I heard about it. I guess she didn’t say too much on account of us kids, and kids don’t notice things like that so much.”

“Irene Foster, Elsa Anderson, Barbara Sanger, we all ‘played together.  I rode my bicycle a lot.  There wasn’t any dating, they guarded us. I graduated from high school in 1930.  I had a lot of friends.  You got a job unless you got married right away.  I didn’t get married; I dated long after I graduated.  Wilma and ‘Nita got married right away.  I was having too much fun!

I really loved to dance and I did a lot of that.  We always went to this radio station- big ballroom- they always had a big band there and then we roller-skated a lot- there was a big roller-skating rink and in the winter we ice-skated.  We gathered and had a lot of fun.  After I learned to dance I sure dated then.”

“I wasn’t ready to get married; I don’t know but neither one of them [Juanita or Wilma] stayed married.  I was just not ready.  My best friend was from Burley Idaho and she was a Mormon and I went with her to Church sometimes but nobody-I don’t know of any missionaries-I never heard of one till I moved to South Pasadena, even in Vale- nobody came to teach me anything.  I just had to pick it up as I went a long.

When your grandpa and I got married I knew he was a Christian, that’s all I cared, I knew we believed in the same thing, but there are so many things that are different.”

“There weren’t that many jobs, the Depression was on and I wanted to go to college and we just did not have the money.  And since the girls were married, I had to work because my dad- he drove a taxi and he sold shoes, he did everything and gosh it was so hard, it was terrible.  It did not effect me much because here I was working and dancing my way through life.

When I graduated I knew I had to get a job and the telephone company hired me right away.  It was fun and I loved it, I really loved it- I could type and I played in the orchestra.”

Courtship and Matrimony

“1938 I was 25.   I had met your grandpa and in the meantime I had been persuaded to go back east to see the relatives in Nebraska and Minnesota.  A whole month- January- and your grandpa was at the depot.  I went on the train, stopping in Iowa to see my cousin Verna.  My mom and my dad both had two sisters and a brother, four in each family.  I went to Minnesota and in Nebraska.  I stayed with a niece of my Dads, with steps that you had to climb to get into the feather bed.

Oh it was so cold that winter, colder than Twin Falls, and we went on to Minneapolis to stay with my cousin there.  When I came back there was Gene, at the train station because I had written to him.”

“My mother and dad didn’t have to pick me up, he did, with some flowers, these roses he had.  He worked for this company; his dad was the president of this mill- one of the big ones in Ogden.  He was the president of that so he got Grandpa a job in Twin Falls- they needed some body for a short period of time- and he had just graduated from BYU when he came to Twin Falls.  But he wanted to stay longer in Twin Falls so he got a job as the head of the Chamber of Commerce so he was there until he heard of a place they wanted to sell in Vale, Oregon, a feed and grain mill and he wanted to buy it.  He was there for a while and we decided to get married the first day of January.”

“He had bought the Mill and when we got married we went right to Vale, we had no honeymoon.  My honeymoon was in a hotel in Vale.  We had to stay for a whole month because our house wasn’t renovated for us.  We bought the house from the owners of the Mill- they were moving to California.”

“Since it was depression times my folks weren’t even driving.  Gene and I decided to be married in Boise.  We were married by a Methodist minister, not in the Church- I wasn’t a member.  My girlfriend and I got on the train to Boise.  Your grandpa and his best friend got a hotel room for us and we all stayed in the Boise Hotel- a fancy hotel.  We got up there and had dinner and your grandpa had left his coat on the rack with the keys in the car with the marriage license in the glove compartment.

The next day when he left he realized it wasn’t his coat and someone had taken his coat with the keys to the car with the marriage license.  Around noon a man had called in to find his coat with the keys to the car and the marriage license… in the very, very nick of time.  So we got married and stayed in the Vale hotel for a month and drive around looking at different towns.  We had the house, they were moving to California so we could fix it up, and we got the dog too…Pepper.

Six months after we were married, in July, I was baptized in Vale, in the swimming pool!  It was the Vale Swimming pool, a big building and people came from all over because it was built on a hot spring.”

Vale Grain and Feed Company

“We didn’t have a honeymoon, we went to the little town Vale, Oregon where we had bought a business there.  I spent a month honeymooning in a hotel, in a little hotel room, it was just a little hotel in a town with 1500 people so you know…It wasn’t very big.  The business was the Vale Grain and Feed Company.

Gene’s dad was in the feed business, he was head of one of the big feed companies in Ogden, UT, so he heard that this place was for sale, the man who owned wanted to retire and move to California, so that is the reason we bought that.  It was kind of the business Grandpa wanted to run.  Your great grandpa and your grandpa purchased it together and we bought it from him later.  We had just started out, we didn’t have much money together.  The farmers around bought their feed from him and their seeds and things like that…it was a farming company.

Grandpa was the owner and great grandpa had nothing to do with it…he put some money in it but we bought it.  Between the time I met him he was working for a seed company in Twin Falls where I lived and he had just graduated from BYU.  We were married in 1939 and the mill was purchased right at that time.  It was just before we were married and when we got married we just drove over to Vale and moved into the hotel for a month before the house was ready!

Grandpa would run the mill for 15 years.  Veil Grain and Feed Company was almost a must have there for the farmers who bought their feed…anything for farming they bought.  They didn’t buy equipment because that wasn’t what they sold.”

Vale in Those Days…War!

“Vale was not much different than it is now, just a wide spot in the road…1500 people, a farming town.  Grandpa, three years after we were married was the mayor I think until four years later and he ran the mill too…it was a small town and they didn’t have…it wasn’t like being a mayor of a big city.  He was in the bishopric also.

They had one movie theater, three restaurants, a hotel, and of course there were quite a few businesses: there was a mercantile company, there were several saloons- but they didn’t call it that, and one grocery store when we first moved there and a new one came in later.

There were some people that lived there before but most of the town people came later because the area was opened up to farming several years before we moved there.  There were just cattle ranches before but they opened it up to…the water came, they got a water system and most of our best friends were not of Vale but came later like we did.”

“Vale was a social town and I belonged to several clubs and we had parties where you invited almost the whole town.  We had dances, and of course there was the church.  Very few in town belonged to our church but a lot of them had to come long distances.  We had a pretty good membership.  There were only a few families who lived in town and the rest were all farmers.

Our church had quite a few dances and we had callings…MIA mostly…mutual.  I call it MIA because that’s what we called it then.  In those days we used to have traveling road shows and we traveled…everyone didn’t come to one building and we only had so many minutes to do it in…and it was a big area so we had to travel miles.  It was a real road show…and we won several times!  You had to really hurry but the traffic there wasn’t like it is nowadays…it was country- we could move faster!  And then you only had a short time to put up your props and get ready for it and then you had 15 minutes to do your show.  There were seven wards in the stake and then one was changed so only six.

Weiser was the stake, or we called it Weiser anyway.  It covered a big area.  When we had conference there were quite a few people in Weiser stake.”

“For the War, of course we had our things that we had to have stamps for, like shoes…we couldn’t buy silk stockings…there was a shortage of silk and certain foods…rubber and of course gasoline was very hard to get.  You had to have a card with an A,B or C and with high priority you could get more gas.  Your grandpa’s business made him high priority and he had to travel sometimes to the farmer’s places…it was a big area and that was the reason he couldn’t get in the War, he went to sign up and they didn’t want him…he was in charge…he was the owner of a business that needed to be there due to the priority of what he sold.

We knew what was going on and we felt it more than it seems like they do now…I think it is because we were rationed.  We probably may not have felt it so much.  A lot of boys from our town were going to war and we knew them.  Of course a close-knit small time town is different from an area like we live in now…big cities.”

Lynn and Leslie

“We moved into the house in ’39, Lynn was born in February of 1940.  There was a place where instead of going to the hospital they all went there to have babies- a baby hospital.  It was in Ontario about eighteen miles away.  It was called Brittingham Hospital.  It was great…of course it was during war time and they had to have a separate place where you could go and have babies born.  This lady was a nurse who owned the place…it was a great big house and she turned that into a nursing home and that is where she was born and also Leslie and Gene were born there.  She had closed the place before Stephanie was born and she was born in a hospital…a hospital in Vale.

I think the doctors wanted it this way, there were a lot of babies born at that time and I think the hospital was not that large…that was the only reason…they wanted extra room.”

“I got to name the girls we had and grandpa got to name the boys, we knew that before that came…but we didn’t know back then what the gender was going to be, that wasn’t even thought of in those days.  I didn’t care…each time we didn’t care whether it was a boy or a girl.  Leslie was born in ’43.   Gene was born in ’46 and Stef was born in ’51.”

“It was kind of lonesome but we had friends in town but when you have little ones almost the same age, you are busy, busy with them.  I was busy all the time.  I went with Grandpa when he would go to conventions, I would visit my mother in Twin Falls, and to Utah to visit Grandpa’s family.

I think once a week we went to a restaurant called the Top Hat…I was on the set of that show when it was made…but that was before we were married.”

“At one point the girls had measles…that was just Lynn and Leslie, Leslie was just a baby, Lynn was about four.  The quarantined me, they put a sign on the front door – “Quarantined.”  So grandpa had to stay with some friends of ours and he would bring the groceries over and we wouldn’t let him in- measles are harder on men than they are on women.

That lasted almost two weeks and grandpa couldn’t go home at all- put groceries in a box and left them on the front porch.  That was a hardship.  It was a hardship when he was gone hunting or fishing…he and his buddies loved to hunt and fish.  When he was gone I couldn’t go because of the babies, but, that was hard.  They wouldn’t leave for a long time but close to a week.

We used to go camping and grandpa did all of the cooking.  We would go up on Strawberry Lake; there were several places we went.  Grandpa was a fisherman, a fly fisherman, it had to be a moving stream, it wasn’t fishing in a pond.  He was very good and he was a great archer too.  His dad wasn’t but he and his cousins used to do a lot of hunting and fishing when he was growing up.  He was an outdoors-man…he liked to camp but he wasn’t particularly liking to go on a vacation to a town or some place.”

“Lynn was the first one and she was my little helper, she was so great about helping me out with the other kids and she was very…not a rebel…she did what you wanted her to do and she helped you out so much, like she is now…a steady person.  Now Leslie was different, she was a rebel as a little girl…like her “Mama!”

Lynn was a good student…a darn good person…and Leslie was too.  Leslie was a little different.  They fought quite a bit but not more than other kids.  They shared a room and Lynn was neater than Leslie, Leslie was a little…she made Lynn mad not hanging her clothes up.

Lynn had a good friend right in the area and they helped take care of Stephanie when she was born…those two girls really lugged her around and played with her when she was a little baby.

Lynn rode her bicycle a lot but Leslie didn’t want to learn to ride a bicycle and she didn’t want to learn to drive a car as early as Lynn and you would think it would be just the opposite.

Leslie played by herself a lot, she made little dolls out of hollyhock…she played with those for the longest time but she always came to the door to see if I was still there.  She had this thing where she was Mrs Mcgillacuty, I don’t remember what she called me, but she was Mrs Mcgillacuty.  She would come to the door and knock and I would say “Come in Mrs Mcgillacuty,” and then we would have a little treat.  She played by herself quite a bit, Lynn needed to have a friend but Leslie…she played by herself quite a bit.”

Poppie and Stephanie

“Your dad, now there was a guy!  We had bought Leslie a pair of cowboy boots because she wanted cowboy boots, when she out grew them your dad took them over…you couldn’t get them off of him.  His grandma, your grandpa’s mother, made him a little suit of short pants and a little jacket, and he would not wear it!  He just fought like a tiger and would not wear it.

When we would go camping he always took his little cars with him, little tiny cars, and he would run these cars around the campfire and his hands were just black with ashes…I couldn’t scrub it out of his hands!  But I can just see him on his hands and knees with those cars around that campfire.  I think he was about twelve when he started hunting with grandpa.

He almost burned our hay barn down.  He and his little friend were out in the hay barn and they had matches out there, which was a big no no, but they had them.  And all of a sudden he came in “Mama, there’s a fire out in the hay barn,” so I ran out there and of course I had to call grandpa and the firemen came and put it out before it cost too much damage.  I’ll never know for sure who the actual culprit was.  It could have been really bad, but anyway, it wasn’t.”

“Stephanie, until she got to be twelve years old was really tiny.  She always had a pencil and a writing book in her hand.  She was drawing all of the time.  I can’t remember her ever not having a pencil in her hand and drawing.  She did that constantly.”

“The kids didn’t have really bad accidents or anything like that but Lynn fell off the horse, named Toby…she didn’t like to ride, but grandpa put her up on the horse and she immediately fell off and broke her collar bone.

That was one thing.  Another was when Stephie was about two years old just before the move to California, we, grandpa and I, took the other three kids, Lynn and Leslie and Gene, over to a movie, in Ontario, California, that was eighteen miles away.  In the middle of the movie they turned it off and put the loud speaker on and wanted Gene Clark to go to the telephone-important call.  When he came back he said we had to leave…Stephanie got hurt…her eye was involved and all the way home on those 18 miles…those were the longest miles I ever went…I knew she was blind!  But it didn’t get into her eye…the girl next door who was 16 years old- she was our babysitter and she was taking care of Stephanie and took her to the grocery store.  They used to have wire things to advertise something and she climbed up on this wire thing- just like a little monkey- and slipped and one of the ends pointed right by her eye.  But, the doctor said it did not affect her eye…very close he said.”