A Home of Our Own At Last

We had lived in Grandma Knapp's crowded basement apartment for the first four years of my life. Grandma refused to take any rent so my parents were able to save money to purchase a home. And Dad felt that we girls were now old enough (8, 7, and 5) to pick up some of the load that Grandma and Aunt Dorothy were carrying. Thinking that it would be more economical to build their own home, an acre of property was bought way out in the "boonies", or at least it seemed so to us. Actually, it was on the eastern outskirts of Salt Lake City known as East Mill Creek. But back then it was considered out in the country. There weren't too many people there on our street, Claybourne Ave. which was at about 23rd E. and 27th So. I remember the Ehler's, who were still in the process of building, the Beck's who had the only two story house on the street, the Lamo's, a Norwegian family who ran a chicken farm, the Vernon's who had a small farm with cows, the Hodges', an older couple with no children, and the Mes's , an older Dutchman married to a very sweet German lady named Mimi. She was like a grandma to us. This may sound like a lot of people for a rural street, but it was a long street.

Work on the new house began. It was a small house...two bedrooms (we three girls shared a room), a living room, small kitchen, a dining area between the living room and kitchen, and one small bathroom. Actually, homes back then only had one bathroom, at least all of the ones I was aware of. The great concept of having more than one bathroom in homes was yet to come. The house was covered with white wood siding, unusual at that time when most houses in Utah were made of brick, which I'm sure was more expensive. The floors in the house were all hardwood. I remember that well because every week we had to get down on our hands and knees to wax and polish them while Mom supervised. A full basement provided a place for us to play during the winter months...minus the space needed for the big coal furnace and stoker that held the coal, and the space needed for the wringer washer and double wash tubs to do the rinsing and bluing. (I'll explain later what it was like doing laundry back then.) There was a detached one-car garage to the side and rear of the house. That was all we needed because we never had more than one car. The acre of land was divided diagonally by a cement irrigation ditch, the upper or east side of the ditch was the beginning slope of a hill that bordered our property. The west side of the diagonal was flat, suitable for growing a garden.

We were excited about moving into that house the summer of 1939. It seemed like we had so much room to move around compared to our cramped little apartment. And all the open fields of green lucerne growing, meadow larks singing, grasshoppers jumping, horned toads scampering, and wild flowers (Sego Lillies, Indian Paintbrush and Goldenrod) growing made this a children's paradise. But then my new perfect little world crumbled. Having just turned five years old, I was excitedly looking forward to attending kindergarten in the fall. The school that I would have been attending was over a mile away, and I had no way to get there except by walking. And that my mother would not allow, not only because there were no sidewalks, but because I would have to be walking alone because my sisters would be going to school at a different time. And kindergarten was not mandatory back then. I was crushed! But I soon found a friend, Ruthie Lamo, to play with, and that helped the lonely days home alone.

Dad soon began working on the yard. The flat area on the west side of the house was soon planted with fruit trees and a vegetable garden which could be watered by damming the the irrigation ditch that ran through our property. The water would be directed through small ditches along the rows veggies and trees. The property owners were assigned times that they could use the water. Sometimes the assigned times would be in the middle of the night, so that was the time Dad would have to get up and water. Since there was always water in the main ditch, we would tie small tin cans to a string and wrap the string around a stick and pretend to fish in the ditch. We would also catch bottles full of grasshoppers, chase horned toads (sometimes we even caught them), and roam the hill above us to pick the wild flowers. We didn't need toys or television to keep us busy and happy.

The upper side of the property was soon prepared to house animals (pigs, lambs, rabbits, and chickens) to provide meat and eggs for the family. Dad built the rabbit hutches, a shed for the pigs, and later a small barn when we acquired two goats. We were never allowed to make pets of the animals because they were for food, and Dad knew it would be hard on us when they had to be slaughtered. It was hard not to become attached because we had to take care of them. We had to pick the wild lucerne to feed the rabbits, (baby bunnies are so cute) bottle feed the orphaned lambs that we got from my Mom's uncle who raised sheep in Manti. We loved that...watching the lambs guzzle milk from those nippled bottles (baby lambs are so cute).We never got too attached to the pigs because Dad took care of them, collecting the discarded food from a Walgreen's Drug Store that had a lunch counter (we called it "slop") to feed them. I don't think I could ever gotten attached to them, anyway. As you can see, we were very frugal back then. Dad even bartered with the neighbor who had cows to get our milk. He would do the night milking in exchange for milk. Later when we got the goats, we had to drink goat's milk. NASTY!!! We rarely bought meat. Dad would kill the rabbits and chickens to eat (rabbit was our traditional Sunday dinner. I liked it); the lambs and pigs were slaughtered, butchered and wrapped by a professional. The prepared meat was then stored in a rented frozen food locker at the Hygeia Ice Plant in Sugarhouse. Home freezers did not exist.

In the vegetable garden we raised potatoes, carrots, green peas, beans, radishes, onions, tomatoes, and corn. It was our job to weed a row of vegetables each day while they were growing. They were VERY long rows!..or at least they seemed so to us. The half acre of garden produced enough vegetables to last us most of the winter. Potatoes and carrots were stored in a root cellar under the garage. It was just a large hole dug in the dirt and supported by wood beams. There was a wood trap door on the floor of the garage that led into the cellar. A wood ladder allowed you to go down to the bottom. Oh how we hated going down into the cool, dark place to retrieve vegetables for Mom when needed. And it was always us girls who had to do it. There were cobwebs and spiders down there that scared us to death. The peas were shelled and the beans and corn were prepared, put in containers, and stored in our rented frozen food locker. When our fruit trees began to bear, the fruit was bottled. My sisters and I spent many hours helping mom can peaches, pears, apricots, and tomatoes. We were truly self sufficient except for bread and other bakery products. Mom could not knead bread so it was purchased at the bakery. It helped when later on both of my sisters and myself worked at a bakery and were able to get discounts.

About a year after we moved in, Dad cemented the driveway and the back patio which provided us a wonderful place to roller skate. We loved to rollerskate. Skates were very different than what you have today...no roller blades attached to shoes, no wheels attached to any shoe in any configuration. Our skates had to be attached to our shoes using a special "key" to adjust the length and the tightness that the side grips gripped the toe of your shoe. A strap that went around the ankle secured the back side of the skate. We were always losing the "key" which made it impossible to secure our skates onto our shoes. And they weren't easily replaced. I remember spending hours and hours looking for a skate key so we could skate.

This is the first home that I remember well. There are some wonderful memories there and in the home we later built next door. Between these two homes were spent all my growing up years. Some of those memories to come later.