We never owned a car when I was young, so we did a lot of walking.  I always felt it brought me closer to nature.  Walking along the dirt walk on my way home from school, past the Humphrey home, I could smell the poignant, wild roses growing along the fence.  I walked slowly there. The rock in Maple Grove Beautiful Maple Grove Uncle Oscar or Uncle Mark would drive us different places since we didn’t own a car.  Uncle Oscar and Aunt Alvilda drove us for picnics out to Maple Grove, a beautiful place about 20 miles east of Salina.  I loved going there.  I remember wandering around the woods while my parents, aunt and uncle visited as they sat around the picnic table.  One special time, I found the perfect rock to sit on and meditate…well, dream.  How I loved sitting there in the middle of the woods, the birds singing and me off into my dream world.  Sometimes I would sit around and listen to the adults.  I especially loved to hear my Aunt Alvilda tell stories about the people in town.  She had such a great sense of humor and could paint those personalities and their foibles so well that she would have everyone wiping their eyes from laughter.  Uncle Mark would drive to Salina to pick our family up and ride back to Provo with him to visit Grandma Foote.  Jean and I would ride in the back seat of the car.  I thought that drive would never end.  At that time, there was mostly sagebrush to view outside the windows.  For one short span, we went through some small hills.  It added interest to the drive.  However, when we came near Provo, both Jean and I would sit up and take big, deep breaths; we were breathing in the smell of the Pipe Plant (we thought it was the Pie Plant) located north of Springville.  We loved that smell.  We never found many people who did, but we knew we were nearing Grandma Foote’s home and Provo!  I also remember looking out the car window and up at the mountains, afraid they were going to fall on me.  Closing my eyes, I would will Uncle Mark to drive faster to safety. Our Second Ward churchyard in Salina was sometimes our playground in the summer.  We would play cowboys and Indians, running around the building, shooting and yahooing!  When playing, my regret was that I didn’t have a holster to put my gun in.  When I was a mother and my boys were young, I could never pass up buying one.  I had to fill that hole. Second Ward chapel in Salina I do remember going to a Halloween party at the church.  My costume was probably a gypsy or a princess.  When I walked into the recreation room, I somehow thought they were holding this party for me, because it was my birthday.  I never told anyone that, but it was a nice thought.I had another thought:  After I had learned some devastating news regarding a Christmas tradition, I questioned if there was a Jesus.  But while walking the halls to my primary class, I studied the faces of the adults and came to the conclusion that they would not be there just to fool me.  I never doubted there was a Jesus again. My baptism and confirmation Jean was baptized in the Manti Temple.  I was baptized in our church basement.  (You need to understand that I had a fear of water because of an experience I had had when I was six.)  We had a big, empty swimming pool at the park, with graffiti written all over in it.  My baths were in the #3 galvanized tub, with hot water poured in from big pans on the stove.  When I was baptized, I was very nervous.  A young man performed the baptism by the name of Warren M. Crane, a Priest.  He had to perform it twice because all my hair wasn’t underwater.  Twice I was submerged in one day! After the baptism (I think only my mother was with me), we sat in a room while the talks were given to us.  I was attentive and had a clear understanding that whatever I had sinned in the past was forgiven, but whatever I would do in the future I had to be careful.  I was now responsible!  I think that part of that understanding, to me, was that I closed my eyes during prayers and folded my arms.  I was reverent.  One day after Sunday school, I walked home with my friend, Shirley Humphrey.  When we went into her house, her mother greeted us.  I immediately told her, “Shirley didn’t close her eyes during the prayer.”  Shirley’s mother looked at me and said, “How do you know?  Were your eyes open so you could see her?”  I was embarrassed and hurt.  I knew she was telling me what a bad girl I was for tattling, and she didn’t like me for it!  A hurtful lesson learned. I was in a hurry to get home after the baptism.  I wanted to be part of a funeral for a cat that had died in our barnyard.  The neighbor kids and my sister had not waited for me.  The funeral had been performed and the cat buried.  I was so disappointed!  I made them show me where the burial was so I could pretend to have been part of it. In back of our yard, behind our big barn, was a fairly large building.  It was the “Icehouse.”  I must have been very young the first, and only, time I was in it.  Someone from our family had sent us (myself and someone much older than me) to get ice from the icehouse so we could make homemade ice cream.  It was a mystery to me how the ice ever got into that building and why it didn’t melt, until I was much older and dared ask those questions.  The ice was brought to town from a frozen reservoir located south of Marysville, Utah.  After the ice was chopped into blocks, it was covered with straw to keep it from melting and taken to the different icehouses in various towns.  We made ice cream at home when relatives came to town, or for very special occasions, such as birthdays.  Nothing, nothing tasted as good as that homemade ice cream!  We would take turns turning the handle that would slowly get harder and harder as the ice cream set.  When it was completed, we would hope to get a lick from the beater before it was set aside in the sink.  I always remember wanting more.  After I finished my ice cream, Jean (always my tormentor) would slowly eat hers in front of me, making faces of pure enjoyment, as I suffered. There were no other structures in town that bring me memories, but there were other events and people. My Aunt Alvilda and Uncle Oscar lived, for a while, just west of us on our same block.  I remember a wonderful evening when we were invited to their home to see outdoor movies.  Helen and Hal Stewart and Uncle Oscar and Aunt Alvilda’s daughter and son-in-law were visiting, and Hal had set up the big movie screen (I think it was a sheet) out on their porch.  We all sat on the lawn and enjoyed the movies.  Every time I think of homemade ice cream, I think of that night.  I’m sure that was part of the evening’s pleasure. When I was really young, I remember going out to the farm at Lost Creek, located approximately three miles south west of Salina.  Uncle Oscar and Aunt Alvilda owned the farm.  I remember that there was no electricity, just oil lamps for light.  Uncle Joe rigged their first lights to the house.  One Christmas time, we all went to the farm for a party.  There were gifts for all the children.  I remember two things, sitting in the kitchen to eat and the adults sitting in the dining room; and the gift I received.  It was a small croquet set.  I couldn’t believe it was just for me!  I remember playing with it out on our lawn.  This was like a major Christmas gift!  I thought Uncle Oscar and Aunt Alvilda must be very rich to give a gift like that! A family lived just a short block west of us.  I never, ever saw the parents.  I believe they were foreign.  I think of them now and feel badly.  Maybe our parents knew who they were; Jean and I didn’t.  Our parents never spoke of them.  We only knew of one daughter.  She was beautiful and dark, and she wore a holster with a gun in it, boots and a skirt.  And she rode a bike.  Jean’s and my memory were of her in her teens, 15 or 16 years old. She would ride her bike down to the pool hall every day.  I wonder if she ever went to school.  Jean thought she was “glamour.”  I was just gaga when I saw her.  Not knowing her beginning, I can tell you something of her later life.  Scott was working at the State Hospital, and on one of our trips to Richfield, he said he needed to stop off in Salina for a few minutes and check up on a former patient.  Low and behold, we stopped in front of “her” house!  He said all she did now was scrub, scrub, scrub walls, floors, everything in her house, poor soul.  She could never really get clean.  Such a sad ending. Our dad bought us a bike one year (August, 1939).  It came through the mail.  We knew it was coming and we couldn’t have been more excited!!  When that wonderful, glorious day came, our dad was working in Beaver, Utah and would not be home for several days!  We just couldn’t wait to have it put together.  We asked our neighbor, Mr. Bird, if he would do the good deed.  He did!  Our bike was a boy’s bike, so I could ride on the bar in front of the seat.  Ah, yes, I rode on that bar every day on our way to school.  One of our neighbors, Mrs. Johansen, told us years later that she would stand at her window at about the time we would round the corner and watch Jean taking the corner too tight, skidding, and then we would fall over.  Getting up again, we would brush ourselves off and continue our precarious ride on to school.  We did have many glorious days on that bike! Mrs. Johansen was always kind to me.  She would make her daughter, Kathryn, and me bread and butter with sugar sprinkled on the top.  Mother would not do that because she knew it wasn’t healthy.  One time Mrs. Johansen, trying to make me speak up more, asked, “Alma Dawn, do you want me to fix you some?”  I could hardly look at her.  I nodded my head up and down, but she said, “Answer me.”  I couldn’t open my mouth.  She asked several times.  I just stood there, too embarrassed to speak.  Finally she said, “I guess you don’t.”  She walked away.  I learned a lesson.  Speak up when spoken to! Kathryn Johansen was near my age.  We sometimes played together.  Kathryn was like an only child with her siblings grown and out of the house.  She was another of my friends who had everything!  It was her tricycle that I was loaned to ride up and down their sidewalk when my grandfather’s funeral was happening.  Mother thought I was too young to be at the funeral.  I was feeling very sad.  I was born on my grandfather’s 80th birthday and felt I should be there.  I was six years old.  I had always wanted a tricycle but never asked for one, believing we couldn’t afford it.  I told that to my mother when I was grown.  She said, “Why didn’t you ask for one?”  I had messed up again! The Johansen’s had a good sidewalk leading up to their house.  Some of the kids would gather there and we would play Mother May I, jacks, jump the rope and even marbles. I had a friend for a while who lived just in back of our barnyard, on the corner and next to the Johansen’s.  She had older sisters who had discarded their clothes to a trunk in the basement.  I do not know where the other dresses came from, but this was our “dress-up trunk.”  Oh, what fun it was to put on those heavenly garments and pretend and pretend!  You had to be a little girl with an imagination to know the joys this held!  One day, we went upstairs in her house.  We walked into her kitchen and I gasped!  There were dirty dishes from one end of the counter to the other.  It was a long counter.  I have always enjoyed cleaning, and this was just too much for me.  We were the only two at home, so I started to wash those dishes.  I must have been about six or seven years old.  I washed and washed, giving up playing dress-up to finish this wonderful task.  At last I had washed all the dishes and was just admiring my work when in walked my friend’s mother.  She took one look at the counter and asked, “Who did that?”  I didn’t know what to say because she was looking right at me, and she looked mad!  I believe she told me to go home.  I was devastated.  I couldn’t figure out for a long time why she would be so mad at me.  I do know I was much more careful about my interfering in any of my friends’ homes after that. Every year, Mr. and Mrs. Bird would bottle homemade root beer.  They were our neighbors across the street.  When the root beer was ready for drinking, Jean and I would be invited to their home.  I was always nervous about going for that occasion, because I knew Mr. Bird would laugh at me when the bubbles from the root beer tickled my nose. He enjoyed my discomfort.   In spite of that, I timidly relished the root beer.  The Birds were good neighbors.  They had two boys, Clair and Junior, and a girl, Utahna.  One of the memories I have of their family is Mrs. Bird trying to hold on to Junior, while getting him to brush his teeth before going to school.  Junior, by then, was at least as big or bigger than her.  They would wrestle out on the front porch, both laughing, him trying to get away from her and her hanging onto him and the toothbrush.  We would enjoy this wild scene from our kitchen window. For some reason, once a year, Mrs. Bird would send Junior over to our house to see if Mother could tie his tie.  I can’t think what the occasion was, but it must have been the only time in the year Junior wore a tie. If Dad wasn’t home, Mother had to send him back with the information that Mother, having had only girls, didn’t know how to tie a tie either. Mrs. Bird had beautiful flowers at the side and back of her yard.  When I was small, they seemed to tower over me.  I loved the flowers but also noted that Mrs. Bird’s feet were covered in dirt or mud.  Beauty doesn’t come without sacrifice.  Mrs. Bird’s mother lived in a small, little house in back of their property.  I have thought about the care they gave her in her old age.   During snowy winters when measles, mumps or chicken pox were on the prowl, the sheriff would put quarantine notices on the doors of invaded houses, warning others not to enter!  The Birds would often have the same illness at the same time we did, so children were exchanged back and forth to play hours of Monopoly or other board games to quell away the confined hours. Kitty corner from our house lived the Larsons.  They had a daughter near my age.  I can’t recall her name.  She also had older siblings, but they were not around that I recall.  She was very pampered.  Mrs. Larson kept a spotless house.  I don’t remember going into her house very often.  At Christmas time, we had to wait until it got light to visit their house.  Jean remembers tons of presents under the tree, still wrapped, and her in the kitchen slowly eating breakfast.  We were always dumbfounded when we saw the lack of interest these overindulged children had in all their gifts!  She had lots of miniature people and would play with them out on her sidewalk.  When I would play with her, she would only let me use one little figure.  I couldn’t talk her into letting me play with any of the others.  It certainly dampened my play.  At home I just had sticks for my people.  Friends like that just aren’t friends! I mentioned that Mrs. Larson was very clean, but Mr. Larson was of a different nature.  We were buying milk from the Larsons for a while, and then Daddy didn’t think the milk looked clean.  He went over and watched Mr. Larson milk his cow.  Mr. Larson’s hands had not been washed, and the udder of the cow was dirty.  We never bought milk from them again! I had also heard a rumor that Mrs. Larson would sometimes chase Mr. Larson out of the house, throwing pans at him.  I didn’t believe it until one day, from the safety of my yard and with my mouth wide open, I watched Mrs. Larson chasing Mr. Larson down their front sidewalk, screaming at him and throwing pans!! Jewell Anderson was the friend who coaxed me to go to her house after school.  I would sometimes watch Mrs. Anderson make a bed or clean a windowsill.  I took note of everything she did.  Our windowsills were not like theirs, so I had never thought that would be a place to clean.  I loved learning new ways to clean and make a bed. One day when I was at the Anderson’s, they had friends over and were serving some kind of drinks.  I remember standing in their kitchen and Mrs. Anderson asking me if I would like a 7-Up.  I had no idea what a 7-Up was.  I had learned from my sister’s experience with iced tea not to trust all adults: Jean came home one day drinking some ice tea, not knowing it wasn’t different from just plain “tea.”  Mother hit the ceiling!  I knew Mrs. Anderson served iced tea, so I refused the 7-Up.  It didn’t matter how hard she tried to coax me, I wouldn’t drink it! We didn’t have a postman to bring mail to our door.  We had to walk to the post office and pick it up.  One day, Jean and I walked the four and a half blocks to pick up the mail. We were given two heavy packages.  Our encyclopedias had arrived.  One package was much heaver than the other.  Jean, being older and smarter, took the smallest one.  I lugged those heavy books four blocks, begging Jean to take them.  Jean finally took them from me, carrying the heavy one the last half of the block into the house for Mother to see!  She was four years older and four years smarter than me! Mother and Dad only left me overnight twice that I can recall.  I was left at the home of Aunt Orvilla and Uncle Leon Humphrey.  They were not our real aunt and uncle, but we referred to them as such because of the deep friendship between the Humphreys and the Andersons. This friendship started when my grandparents, John and Edla Anderson, first came to Salina from Sweden.  The Humphreys were English, but somehow they connected and formed an unbroken friendship that lasted throughout their lifetimes.  Quoting my Aunt Josephine (my father’s sister): “We children, living so close to each other, and having the usual ‘scrapes’ of children, our mothers never took issue nor had any ‘words.’  They no doubt felt, at times, to ‘straighten’ us out.  Thus, we grew up having a great love for our mothers and each other.  Of course, when we became too unruly, the one at whose home we were would take us to task.”  This friendship between my mother and Aunt Orvilla couldn’t have been stronger than if they were blood relatives.  They loved each other.  The Humphreys of my generation had seven children.  I was closest in age to Shirley. Barbara, a little older than Shirley, became a good friend in later years.  So that’s three generations as friends.  The day and night I was left by my parents at the Humphrey home was memorable for me.  They left me standing outside the door, waving to them and feeling lost and scared.  I remember going around to the back of the house and crying and crying.  That night was the worst night of my life (up to that time).  I couldn’t have been more than seven or eight years old at the time.  The children all slept on the floor, without pillows!  I couldn’t sleep what seemed all night long!  I was missing my mother, and there was no pillow to rest my head on!! I tried to push blankets up under my head, but it still hung at an uncomfortable, upside down position.  I cried again, but not so that anyone could hear.  What a long, long night! Another memory was of the big walnut tree in the side yard of the Humphrey home.  We would go out there and gather walnuts that had fallen from the tree and, with a rock, would break them open and eat them.  One day when I was in the process of gathering some walnuts, one of the Humphrey boys said I couldn’t have any nor take any home.  I was mortified.  It made me feel as though my intent was to steal them.  What had happened to make me fall out of favor, I’ll never know. I must have sat out on the curbing in front of the Humphrey’s house many times.  Highway 89 ran in front of their home and on through Salina to the towns and cities beyond.  I watched the cars and buses go past with the names of wonderful, far away places on signs in front of the buses, announcing, Los Angeles, California or Las Vegas, Nevada.  Oh, how I wanted to be on one of those buses or in one of those cars going places, having wonderful adventures, away from this street, away from my town, to far, far away! My most unhappy stay at the Humphreys was when I was told to go to the Humphrey home after school and wait for my dad to pick me up. Mother had gone to the hospital to have my baby brother, John Horner.  I hadn’t know what had happened until my dad came for me, and as we were walking across Highway 89 on our way to our home, my father broke down crying and could hardly speak to tell me our little brother hadn’t made it.  I don’t know what hurt me more, to see my wonderful daddy crying or hearing the sad news about my little baby brother.  What a tragedy in our lives.  I was ten years old.  Jean was 14.  When she heard the news, I remember her running up the stairs in our home crying over and over, “I knew it was too good to be true!”  Jean also remembered coming down the stairs the next morning and climbing into bed with Daddy, where they both cried together. My little brother was beautiful and perfect.  The hospital didn’t have the equipment to save him from aspirating during his birth, or he would have lived.  We were all able to see him.  Aunt Maude came from Provo to stay with us while Mother was in the hospital.  I’m sure Mother was so grateful to have Aunt Maude watch over us at that time, although she could be a little scary.  I was going to sit on Mother’s hospital bed when Aunt Maude yelled at me, saying, “Don’t do that!  Don’t you know your mother is in pain?!”  I do remember my shock, as I jumped off, looking at Mother and Mother kindly smiling back at me. Sadly, Aunt Orvilla died and left seven children without a mother.  The youngest of the seven was only a year or two old.  Mother and Dad asked if they could adopt the little boy.  Uncle Leon said they did not want to break up the family.  I know it was a blow to Mother to lose her good friend, and both Mother and Dad must have been very sad when Aunt Orvilla’s little boy was to be raised mostly by the older children.  Uncle Leon was not that responsible after Aunt Orvilla died. On a more positive note, in our little town was a “castle.”  It was Jean’s and my castle and the home of Auntie West.  She was not really our aunt; it was just an endearing name.  Auntie West was the wife of a doctor.  I do have pictures of the house, but the yard has been totally changed.  When Jean and I were children, there was a high hedge running around the two sides of the yard.  Two beautiful iron gates opened from the street, between the hedges on the west, into “heaven.”  A wide sidewalk ran up to a porch that started on the west and ran around to the south of the house.  Another wide sidewalk ran to the south from the porch to a building where the doctor’s office was located.  This was all on the West’s property.  Lining the wide sidewalk on the south were high hedges made into topiaries.  One was of a chicken sitting on a nest.  The other was of a rooster in the position of crowing.  Dr. West had done the sculpting.  The wide porch on the south was where Auntie West would sit, either watching Jean and I skate or listening to our jabbering.  From the ceiling of the porch hung a big cage with a beautiful, talking parrot.  I was always so amazed as Auntie West would talk to the parrot and it would talk back! On the north side of the property was a wonderful tree house.  It was built very sturdy with beautiful wood.  There were large, round poles reaching to the ground and wide steps leading up to the top.  Railings were on both sides of the steps, and a little gate at the top of the stairs could be swung shut and locked.  Knobby wooden furniture filled the tree house, and a pointed, shingled roof gave it a final, grand appearance.  I was only allowed to go up there once.  What a dream! A recent picture of our dear Auntie West’s home