This picture of Mother is beautiful to me.  I love to see pictures of her when she was young.  After Sacrament Meeting on Fast Sunday in the winter, Jean and I would come home from church, and while waiting for the potatoes to cook, which seemed to take hours to hungry little girls, we would play “Sacrament” behind the warm stove. We would break up bread and serve it to each other. It never tasted as good as the bread had at church, but we continued to try off and on.  This was also a warm place to dress on a cold winter morning.  When he was home, Daddy would be the first one up. He would make the fire, heating the kitchen before any other room was warm. The window on the north side of the room presented me with my first memory. This window looked across the street to our neighbors, the Birds and the Sorensens.  Mother kept close watch over me when I was young.  I can probably point to that fact because my older sister, Jean, was quick to get out from under Mother’s care and came close to losing her head once, while riding bareback on a horse, heading towards a gate, which had a pole across the top.  Somehow she ducked and missed the pole, saving herself from being decapitated.  Mother witnessed the whole event and nearly had a heart attack.  Jean was only 10 years old.  This was just one of her many hair-raising adventures, and so my young movements were carefully guarded. Jean points out that I probably would not have tried anything that exciting anyway, which is probably true, but has never been proven, as my movements toward any adventures were quickly squelched. Jean (on the horse) was always the rider.  I was never allowed to sit on a horse except when someone was leading me around the corral.  I was nearly three years old when it happened.  I know, because I remember I was wearing the hated thumb-guard Mother had put on my thumb to keep me from sucking it.  (I quit that comforting habit when I was three.)  I was sneaking across the street one day to play with the little visiting granddaughter of our neighbors, Mr. and Mrs. Sorensen, when I heard the dreaded rapping of my mother’s knuckles on the north window.  I can still remember how tense I felt as I started across the street, almost feeling my mother’s eyes on me.  I had been spotted and was not far enough across to make a run for it.  I came back crying, partly from relief that the tension was over, and partly from the disappointment of not having made good my escape.  Mother always used the north window to get my attention with those rapping knuckles of hers. The kitchen table, which was in front of the west window, was pulled out into the room at suppertime so the four of us could get around it when Daddy was home.  I remember seeing him put sugar on everything, it seemed—tomatoes and other such unlikely foods to be topped with sugar.  Our meals seemed pleasant, except that I was prone to spilling things on me, on the floor, on the table; I just spilled things.  I was grateful that Mother used to say, “Don’t cry over spilled milk.”  I’m sure she couldn’t help but get somewhat exasperated at my clumsiness.  Daddy didn’t like the fact that I wiped my greasy fingers on my clothes.  He felt clothes should be kept clean and neat.  Somehow I still felt loved.  Maybe I made up for my shortcomings by doing lots of dishes by myself.  Jean and I together used to have our turn at doing the dishes.  Doing dishes was a tough job in those days.  There was no such thing as detergents, just soap.  Pans needed scraping, soaking and lots of scrubbing.  I felt so good when I would sneak back into the kitchen after the meal, softly closing the swinging kitchen door between the dining room and the kitchen, where the family would be reading or listening to the radio.  I would oh, so softly, do the dishes before Jean would come in and see what was happening.  She was smart enough never to notice until I would leave the kitchen, opening the swinging door and waiting for her to see my good deed.  She would say, “Look, the dishes are done!  It must have been some good little fairy that did them.”  Can you believe I fell for that!  It made me feel just great! I remember my daddy putting me on his knee while we were still at the kitchen table.  I had asked him to sing me a song.  The song he sang was “Red River Valley.”  I have always loved that song.  I can listen to Western ballads because of that experience.  I still do not like other Western music. I was so happy to find this copy of “Red River Valley”. In the wintertime, we would often pop popcorn on the stove.  We would put the kernels in a container that looked like a square basket made of wire, with a long handle connected to it.  Shaking the basket over the hot stove until the popcorn was all popped took some time, but it was worth it.  Then off we would go to the floor or table to happily play a game of checkers, Old Maid, Fish, or some other game, while eating our hot, buttered popcorn. Another delight was making and pulling taffy.  I can’t remember if we did it in the winter or the summer.  It seems to me that project was made up of a party, many hands involved.  We would rub our hands in butter, preparatory to pulling off a hot blob in our hands, and start to pull.  The final effect was a beautiful, white ribbon of taffy. The kitchen table was one of the last places Jean and I would be before running to our beds at night.  We always had bread and milk, with homemade bread and good, fresh milk straight from a cow.  I always put on lots of sugar, but I secretly worried that I would die of “sugar diabetes” like the little girl that had lived in the big, brick house out on Main Street.  I even used to sneak sugar from the sugar bowl, knowing I might die someday of sugar diabetes, hoping that day was still far away.  No evening snack has ever tasted as good as that bread and milk did to me when I was young. The kitchen was a good place to be, except on washday during the wintertime!  The ringer washer would be pulled into the kitchen from off the porch.  Two galvanized tubs were set up, one with bluing in the water and the other with soapy water in it.  The knuckle-scraping scrubbing board, made of brass or copper so as not to rust, leaned on the side of the soapy water tub.  Sometimes a large oblong boiler sat on the stove so the clothes could be boiled to get them cleaner.  Our homemade soap was made from lye, grease, and I’m not sure what else went into it; very hard on the hands! We would come home from school to water spilled on the kitchen floor, and mother would be so tired.  It was hard to get past the washer into the house, and it all seemed so crowded and depressing.  The only bright spot was that mother usually threw potatoes in the oven to bake for dinner (I loved baked potatoes) and pork chops to fry on the stove (I loved pork chops).  No doubt we also had vegetables and bottled fruit for dinner, but the potatoes and pork chops almost made the day seem bearable. Washing machines similar to the one we used Summer washdays were not quite as bad.  We would sometimes help hang up the clothes on the clotheslines.  Hanging clothes was an art.  I would try to hang them like mother did, in order of clothing—stockings, under clothes, towels, sheets—not all jumbled up on the line.  I remember going out to bring in the sheets off the line after the sun and summer breezes had dried them.  Oh, how fresh they smelled!  I would throw myself, with the sheets in my arms, on the bed and breathing deeply, I would fill my head with that wonderful, delicious fragrance of summer. Memories of playing Jacks and Pick-up-Sticks on our kitchen floor come to mind, and bouncing balls (I always loved balls!), and watching our lazy dog, Nytan, letting the little kitten we brought in from the barnyard chew on his ears and tail.  T.V. was never this entertaining! I have memories of Mother standing at the table making butter in the churn, washing all the little parts from the separator; the pungent smell of feathers when she dunked a chicken into boiling water so she could pluck the newly-killed fowl; Mother cooking at the stove, sometimes burning herself in her haste to pull down the oven door so she could take out the newly-made bread; Mother singing in her beautiful alto voice and quoting poetry to me, or pulling funny faces to make me laugh.  The kitchen was definitely my mother’s domain, and I loved being in it with her. The Dining Room:   Come, let us eat.  It is our      Plan Always to have the best we            Can And if that best is but a bit Well – we can make the best           Of it.    The dining room furniture was dark.  Two windows on the north side of the house were tall but covered with curtains.  Sometimes there was a couch, along with a round table and chairs.  When I was little, this room seemed very big to me.  The chiffonier (an elegant, tall chest of drawers) on the south side of the room seemed so high.  I see myself in my mind’s eye as a little girl, standing by the large chiffonier, my Aunt Ethel (Uncle Joe’s wife, my father’s sister-in-law), so tall and elegant, standing next to me.  I can barely see over the top of the drawers.  Next to Aunt Ethel, I felt very small but thought, “I must be growing, because I can finally see over the chest.”  This remembrance has had importance to me because that is the only time I remember seeing my Aunt Ethel.  She was killed as a result of an automobile accident on the day of Grandpa Anderson’s funeral. I remember helping to clean the wallpaper in the dining room.  The winter’s worth of coal smoke from the stoves would leave the paper looking very dirty. We used a substance that looked and felt much like clay.  This cleaner started out pink in color, but by the time we rubbed it across the wallpaper for a while, it became very dirty looking and would begin to fall apart.  It was always fun to start out with a new pink ball of cleaner.  Mother would say we were using “elbow grease” when we worked as hard as we did, rubbing and cleaning those walls.  It was very hard work and took a lot of rubbing to go around all the wallpaper in a big room, but also very satisfying to see the difference we would make.  This was done faithfully every spring.  We did not always do the ceiling, because it would have a tendency to look worse, seeing where each stroke was made with the cleaner—very discouraging.  A new coat of paint was the best you could do on a ceiling, if you could afford it. One evening, I remember Mother and friends (I have in mind it was the Relief Society sisters) put up a quilt in our dining room.  It was almost wall-to-wall frame and quilt.  Mother put me to bed on the couch located almost under the frame.  As I lay there, it was as though I were wrapped in a snug cocoon, with the bees buzzing softly around it.  I would occasionally hear my name or Jean’s, as they visited back and forth about their families.  I felt so safe and happy as I drifted off to sleep. We would sometimes let a little cat in the house if it were really cold outside.  This provided us with unexpected entertainment—the dog would chase the cat around the table, both of them slipping and sliding on the floor.  The dog could never quite catch the cat.  We would laugh and laugh.  On the east side of the dining room, a wooden step led up into the sometimes-bedroom, sometimes-livingroom.  Near the step and in the southeast corner, our Heatarola sat.  This was a stove, much smaller than a kitchen stove, usually decorative, with a door opening in the front to place the coal or wood and an Isinglass window in the door that you could see through. It was always a treat for Jean and I to go to bed on the davenport, a couch that worked like a hide-a-bed does now, where we could watch the little stove window reflecting the fire dancing about on the walls. Mother took us on many an adventure in the dining room.  Jean and I would sit on the little wooden step or in a chair near her, with the cozy fire crackling away in the Heatarola.  She read books to us, such as Swiss Family Robinson, Robinson Crusoe, Treasure Island and Rob Roy.  Our sense of family was strengthened through reading Heidi, Little Women and The Birds’ Christmas Carol.  She touched our tender souls with “The Happy Prince,” “The Little Match Girl,” “The Little Fir Tree” and “Little Boy Blue,” as well as poetry from Robert Louis Stevenson.  She read to us The Christmas Carol, books about animals and Alice in Wonderland.  She encouraged our sense of humor and love for rhymes with such poems as “The Table and the Chair”, “The Broom, the Shovel, the Poker and the Tongs” and “The Spider and the Fly”.  We listened to fairy tales and poetry, which sometimes struck guilt in our hearts, such as “Which Loved Best?”  This poem she knew by heart, along with many others.  Some evenings we would play board games, such as Pollyanna, Checkers, Chinese Checkers and Monopoly, or card games, such as Old Maid and Rummy.  Our love for reading and the enjoyment of playing games comes from those winter nights, sitting by our beautiful Heatarola, with our mother by our side. Meals were usually held in the dining room on Sundays.  Jean and I, being good little helpers, would set the table to prepare for the meal.  For some reason we almost always forgot to put on the water.  It was a test of endurance between Jean and me to see which one could hold out the longest. Finally, one of us would get up casually and try to reach the kitchen for our water or milk before the other noticed.  But the dreaded call would be heard, “Would you please bring me some water while you’re out there.”  Everyone would echo it, and you were stuck finishing up the job you should have done at the beginning of the meal.  It must have happened often because it is very clear in my mind. A vivid memory comes to me of being behind the dining room door and having the spanking of my life!  Jewel Anderson was my friend.  She was a very persuasive friend.  I must have been a weak character because she could almost always talk me into going home with her and playing after school.  We lived on one side of town.  Jewel lived on the other side.  We didn’t have a phone at that time, nor did we own a car.  Walking was our mode of transportation.  Mother’s nature was one to worry, but that was no excuse for my actions.  It would get later and later, and I would weakly say, “I really should go home.”  But Jewel had so many wonderful possessions: a little cupboard, stove, fridge. She had everything I could have dreamed of and never expected to get, so I would stay later and later.  Too many times Mother had to walk across town to bring me home.  Sometimes she would send me outside to cut a willow off the lilac tree and bring in for my spanking.  That always gave me time to think of what was coming—not pleasant!  I learned that if I stayed late playing with Jewel or other children, and if I brought the friend home with me, Mother would not embarrass me in front of my friend.  She was much too kind, and I would get a lecture after the friend left instead of a spanking.  I almost preferred the spankings; she was so good at the lecture.  One late afternoon I came poking along with a few friends, feeling very confident that Mother would not say anything in front of them.  Much to my horror, she sent them all home!  That was the day of the SPANKING!  Mother took me behind that dining room door, pulled down my long stockings, put me over her knee, and really laid it on!  I believe that was the day I repented because I can still remember that spanking, and I could not have taken the chance of another spanking like that again in my lifetime. I remember a few pictures in our house.  We had one in the dining room that Grandpa had taken of a large ship stuck in the ice.  I have learned since that he took that picture while he was on his second mission to Sweden.  I wish I would have know that sooner.  Another picture was “The Gleaners.”  It was very popular in homes at that time.  In our living room was a picture of a mother’s face in a beautiful oval frame, looking down into the upturned face of her baby daughter.  I identified with that picture and wanted that baby girl to be me.  I fantasized that it was me.  I loved that picture. The Pantry: A room where sun                 Can’t see Butter, eggs and milk                          There be. The pantry was located off the dining room in the northeast corner, where it stayed cold most of the year.  I remember butter, milk, etc., being put in that little room.  One of the items placed on a shelf in the pantry was cod liver oil.  It’s odd with my fussy taste buds, but I really liked cod liver oil!  Mother always gave us a big tablespoon each day.  Later, I would slip in when no one was around to get more. Jean hated the taste.  Maybe it balanced out my love affair with sugar. The Bedroom-Livingroom: Up the wooden step from the dining room was Mother and Daddy’s bedroom while Grandpa was living.  After his death, they took Grandpa’s room as their bedroom and this room became the livingroom. The Bedroom: Sleep tight tonight    Come joy or sorrow There is Another Day              Tomorrow! My crib was set up in this room while it was a bedroom.  During that time, Mother had tried everything she could think of to stop me from sucking my thumb.  She had put black, nasty tasting stuff on my thumb. Yuck. Then she tried a thumb-guard.  Nothing seemed to work.  She was at her wits’ end when LaVar, Aunt Josephine’s son, and his daughter came for a visit.  The daughter was a pretty teenager.  I can see her standing by my crib with me standing in the crib facing her.  I was about three years old.  She told me that if I would stop sucking my thumb the next time she came to visit, she would bring me a present.  That did it!  No more sucking my thumb!  But the next time they returned she didn’t have a present for me.  I felt bad.  It was probably a year after she had made the promise, and of course, she had long forgotten.  Because of that experience, I have realized children have long memories. One early memory I have of this room was snuggling down in Mother’s bed.  Daddy must have been on construction and was not at home.  I was older than three and had done something wrong and probably had had a spanking.  I was crying, sobbing.  Mother was in the lighted kitchen finishing up her evening work. The bed was situated so that I could look through the open bedroom door, past the dining room, into the kitchen.  It would be hard to express the feeling of well-being I had, while sobbing into my pillow.  The room was dark, but through the darkness I could see the lighted kitchen and hear my mother’s movements as she busied herself.  I felt secure and safe and somehow happy.  I was sobbing as hard as I could, without any expectation that mother would come into the bedroom, and I felt so good!  Many times in my life, when I would rather not face the morrow, I remember that evening, secure in my mother’s love, cozy in her bed, secure in my home.  I have wished I could once more be that little girl who was allowed to sob and sob, knowing no bad repercussions would come from my cleansing cry. Mother would put me to bed before Gang Busters would come on the radio at nine o‘clock.  I would ask if I could stay up and listen to the program, but she wouldn’t think of it!  It was far too violent for my little ears.  I can still hear the sirens screaming and the rat-a-tat-tat of the machine guns coming from the kitchen radio.  Maybe this is why I like action movies.  Not violent ones, just a good old mystery or a fast-moving show. While this room was a bedroom, I also remember being in bed with Daddy.  He was rubbing my back.  Mother had probably told him to rub it, thinking it would soothe me and put me to sleep.  But his hands were so rough I could hardly stand it.  I’m sure his mind wasn’t totally on what he was doing, because his rubbing also seemed erratic to me, the rough fingers starting and stopping then starting up again, harder and harder.  I endured it because I knew he loved me and was trying to help me go to sleep.  I feigned sleep so he would stop.  What a relief! Jean and I had our tonsils out at an early age.  Jean, being more worldly-wise than I, chose to have the operation after me.  I, not knowing what was coming, agreed. We had been promised all the ice cream we could eat after the operation was over.  Ice cream was a rare treat in our house, so I was anxious to take care of business and get home for my ice cream. I can see us now, propped up in Mother’s bed, feeling terrible, Aunt Alvilda and Vivian coming to the door, bringing the coveted ice cream.  What a shock!  I couldn’t eat it!  Every bite felt like I was pouring liquid fire down my throat!  I thought of that ice cream and knew it would be melted by the time I could eat it. We didn’t own a refrigerator.  All was lost!  I’m sure they promised we could have some ice cream when we healed; but I knew that promises are soon forgotten by adults.  This was probably my first great disappointment in my early life. The Livingroom:       Lord, may this room in truth                  Express Comfort and ease and kindliness;     And may it intimately give        That zest and glow for which          We live. What a fun room this was!  Jean and I both have good memories here.  On the east side of the room was a beautiful bay window. Mother changed the furniture around in our home, just like I did when I was a young homemaker. Usually it was done in the spring, after the Christmas decorations came down.  It was a spring thing.  At times Mother would have a table in front of the window.  But the best times were when she would put a couch in front, and there would be that wonderful area behind the couch and in front of the window, a perfect place for children to hide, play, dream, whatever, well- hidden from the eyes of others.  Sometimes we would play together; other times it was a private playtime, great for hide-and-seek. The piano was on the north side of the room.  Aunt Josephine gave us the piano. Mother ordered the music magazine, The Etude.  It had music helps I could never understand.  But now and then I could play a few of the pieces it contained.  I can envision looking through the magazines and noticing the date, 1938, and thinking, “I am eight years old.”  Just one of those moments you never forget for some reason.  That was the year Aunt Josephine gave us the piano. I took piano lessons for the next three years and can’t say I learned a lot.  I was a little fearful of my piano teacher; I had good cause.  One day we had a piano recital.  One of the other piano students and I were to perform a duet. I’m sure it was very simple.  The recital was held in the old Presbyterian Church.  I walked onto that stage, shaking.  The two of us sat at the piano and started to play.  One of us made a mistake, and we also made the mistake of looking at each other when it happened.  That did it.  We got the nervous giggles!  We couldn’t stop giggling.  We started over three times and finally had to leave the stage without completing our performance.   I felt horrible.  I wanted to just go home and cry and cry.  Mother was so embarrassed and the teacher was upset.  But every time I thought of looking at that girl, I couldn’t help it, I giggled! I only learned well enough to play for my family and myself.  After I had children and tried to play the piano, the children would sit right there with me and they would try to play, or pound was more like it.  That ended my piano playing, almost.  When we moved to Tuba City, Arizona, I was asked to play for a funeral; they figured every Anglo knows how to play the piano.  Scott said, “Go ahead.  No one will know if you make mistakes, they don’t know the pieces anyway.”  I played.  There was no one to giggle with me. The piano bench has special memories for Jean and me.  Daddy would be gone for a few weeks while working on road construction. (Dad was a foreman for the Whiting Company.)  When he would come home, we would go in by the piano with our dog, Troubles.  She would be so excited to have Daddy home again (she loved our dad).  Troubles would jump on the piano bench into his arms, down to the floor and back to the bench, doing it over and over again.  We would just laugh and laugh at her.  Then Daddy would tell her to chase her tail.  Around and around she would go.  Such simple pleasures and such wonderful memories. Jean and I saw this separator recently. We hadn't seen one in years.