Chapter 7 Farrer Junior High School Years It seems whenever anyone in our family passed on to the other side, the four of us took their place.  We moved into Grandma Foote’s home after she passed away on the 12^th of May, 1942.  I was so sad when Grandma died.  I cried a lot.  Aunt Maude told me not to be unhappy.  Grandma had lived a good life (she was 83 and 2 months from her 84^th birthday).  Aunt Maude made me realize leaving mortality was not to be looked on as ‘sad.’ Grandma Foot died on May 12, 1942.  She died 20 years and one day after Grandpa died.  He died May 11, 1922. We moved into Grandma’s home when Uncle Mark and Uncle Keith went into the army.  The age limit was around forty-five years.  I believe Uncle Mark was close to that but he and Uncle Keith were ‘called up.’ The war was still going on.  I can remember my dad, with his ear close to the radio (his hearing was bad), listening to the evening news.  It was always about the war.  We heard strange names like Corregidor, Baton, and Okinawa—the little bit of fear I would get when it sounded so scary.  We were especially afraid of the Japanese.  Later, when I read the Book of Mormon and we were told we would be safe if we followed Christ’s commandments, I thought of those days and wished I had had more understanding of faith.  When we went to the movies, they played the news before starting the movie.  It was mostly about the war.  Sometimes they would show President Roosevelt talking with his positive way, and I felt a little safer.  If a big-name picture were showing, they would play a ‘Short’ first.  The Shorts were entertaining and sometimes very informative.   You could walk into the theatre any time—even in the middle of the picture or near the end— and continue watching until you got to the place where you came in.  You could even watch the movie twice without leaving the theatre.   I remember when they announced they were not going to allow people to go into the theater until shortly before the movie would start.  No more coming in at the middle. I would save my money for the movies.  If I wanted popcorn (who wouldn’t?) or candy, my friends and I would slip into the little shop next to the Academy Theatre because no popcorn or candy was sold inside the theatres at that time.  Sometimes I found that I didn’t have any ‘tokens.’  You had to have tokens to go with change.  One token was required for every five cents.  The woman behind the counter was adamant; she had to have the tokens!  I would start scouring the street to see if I could find any lost tokens.  People were pretty casual about them.  It was usually like losing a penny.  I would be pretty upset if I couldn’t get my goodies for the movie.  She ran the shop herself.  I wish I could have seen her then from my eighty- one year old eyes.  I’m sure I would have felt a little kinder towards her because at that time, she didn’t seem very reasonable or kind towards us kids.  Popcorn was important to take into the movies.  Mother would save Gold and Green Stamps.  When you bought so many groceries you would earn Gold and Green Stamps.  We had a drawer in the kitchen where the stamp-filled books were kept.  When you had a certain amount of stamps, you could retrieve something for them.  At one time, Mother was saving them to get silverware.  Dishes were one of the many different items.  I believe Scott and I even saved them for a while. Daddy was working at Geneva Steel Plant.  He really hated working there.  The men he worked with were lazy and crude.  He was using a jackhammer, which is very hard work.  I remember the only time I upset my dad.  I had been washing the dishes and I dropped his thermos.  He carried his hot drink in that thermos to work.  I had broken at least one before.  He picked up that thermos and threw it down hard to the floor.  I was shocked.  I ran into the bedroom.  It wasn’t long before he came to the door, knocked on it, and apologized to me.  I should have been apologizing to him!  I felt so bad. While Jean was still living at home, mother brought home two different girls at two different times, to live with us for awhile.  The State Hospital, at the time, didn’t have a home for those patients that were recovering (in between hospital and home) from their illness.  I’m sure Aunt Maude wouldn’t have been living in our home during their stay.  Jean hated having the girls there.  It was like they were taking what little time we had with our parents away from us.  The girls would do jobs around the house.  I remember they would do a little ironing and at one time were in hot pursuit of making Uncle Marks’s bed, because he would leave some pennies or a nickel by his bed for us to have.  Mother had such a kind heart, but it caused friction in our home; so no more patients. I also remember that at the end of our 9th grade I found I was drifting apart from some of the girls.  We had different values and they were beginning to show. My morning routine was to get up from bed, dress, raise blinds in the house, do the dishes, and go to school.  Mother would get home around three in the afternoon to a clean house.  She would have dinner on the table at 5:00 each evening.  I loved walking into the house and smelling dinner.  We always had some kind of meat or fish, potatoes, vegetables, and a green salad.  I did some prep work for Mother but I didn’t really cook; I cleaned. For the first Christmas in the Foote home, my main gift was a pair of ice skates.  Mother was working at the State Hospital at the time.  She asked a doctor and his wife if they would take me with them ice-skating at Vivian Park, which was up Provo Canyon.  On my first try, I fell.  But I was persistent, and even though I was shy with the group I was with, I found that I loved ice-skating!  I would skate into the area that was away from the lights.  I would just twirl and twirl on those skates—very romantic in my mind. I was able to go to Vivian Park several times with friends.  We would also skate on the little pond at Memorial Park.  There was a little island in the middle of the pond with a wicker bridge leading on to the island, where we would build a fire to get warm.  They removed the pond at some point, but it is still a wonderful memory. Another winter memory I have was of hiking up the small (dirt during the summer) road north of the State Mental Hospital, pulling my sleigh.  It was still on the hospital’s property.  Barns were at the top of the road where cows were kept.  The patients would care for the cows. We would haul our sleds up the hill and have a crazy, long, fast ride back down, usually ending up in a snow bank, screaming and laughing.  Great fun!  In those days the streets stayed icy.  We would run down the middle of the street and slam ourselves down on the sled, gliding as far as we could.  There weren’t as many cars back then, so it wasn’t as dangerous as it sounds, but still exhilarating! School Memories Farrer Junior High School was opened in 1931.  Farrer students have received recognition for the school newspaper, orchestra, chorus, athletics and the “posture parades,” which were akin to drill teams.  When I attended, there were 500 students in the school. Over the years, students enjoyed field trips and Farrer-run cultural assemblies for the war effort (World War II).  The school began to be used as an elementary school around 2006. Farrer Junior High was right behind the Foote home.  The school didn’t have typical student officers; they had a mayor and commissioners.  My neighbor, Kent Christenson, was Mayor the year I became a seventh grader.  The first dance of the year was held after school.  I was so nervous, and I remember hanging close to the girl’s locker room.  If I ended up standing too long against the wall waiting for a boy to ask me to dance, I could slip into the locker room.  I was thrilled (and relieved) when Kent came over to me and asked for a dance.  I hoped all my friends were looking at me (at the perfect time) while I danced around the room with the Mayor! It was not all happiness in my life.  A boy asked me if I would go with him to a dance.  He said he would meet me on the corner and we could go together.  I accepted.  My mother walked with me to the corner where we waited and waited and waited.  I came home devastated.  I cried and cried.  I was even contemplating not going to school the next day.  As I think back on that time, he could have been as shy as I was, and when he saw my mother standing with me, he probably changed his mind.  Life can be hard in junior high school. I remember my 7^th grade as being my most fun year at school.  I was part of a group of girls.  We called ourselves a ‘gang’—not with the same connotation as ‘gang’ would be now.  At first there were 8 of us; later, we added more.  I came across a paper I had written probably in my 9^th grade year.  I can see how immature I was at that time.  I will let you see for yourself.  I believe this was written on May 29, 1944. I was born in Salina on October 31, 1930, on my grandfather’s 80^th birthday. At the time of my birth my parents and my sister, Jean, were living on a farm, called the King’s Ranch, 8 miles south of Salina.  My grandfather Anderson lived in Salina.  My parents and my father’s brother and wife, Uncle Oscar and Aunt Alvilda were going to have a turkey dinner for my grandfather’s birthday but mother wasn’t able to be there as I was born that day. I lived in Salina until I was 10 years old.  We moved to Provo on the 5^th of July, 1941.  My father worked up in Provo canyon on a road from Deer Creek Dam.  We moved to an apartment on 8^th east and between 2^nd and 3^rd North. At that time I was going to school, Juaquin, where I made many new friends.  One night after a school dance, Halloween, we went over to my place afterwards, it being near my birthday and we had pumpkin pie and ice cream.  Donald Bybee, one of the boys got sick and had to go home early. In the 7^th grade I moved to another house where my great Uncle Orson had lived.  It is on 2^nd North and sixth East.  I went to the Farrer Junior High.  I got going with a bunch of girls there and we started a gang.  These are the girls that were in it then.  Lola Mae Hoover, Susan Linginfelter, Jo Ann Hansen, Phyllis Winkler, Nancy Brockbank, and then a little later Jackie Okey, and Bobbie Hoopes (Barbara) and of course me.  In the summer we went up to the canyon at Brockbank’s cabin (Wildwood); we stayed up there about a week.  Everything was just swell.  Then in the 8^th grade we got Joyce Madsen, June Cloward, Marilyn Price and Verneil Rodrick and Lois Bullock in the gang. Down in my back yard, oh yes, we moved again in the 8^th grade to my grandmother’s house, 672 East 2^nd North.  She had died about 5 months before we moved.  Uncle Mark and Uncle Keith had gone to the army one day before we moved here.  My Aunt Maude had been keeping house for us while my mother worked.  She worked up to the State Mental Hospital.  Now to get back to my back yard.  We had a small barn down there.  Well all of us girls got together and cleaned it out.  We even built a loft in the top of it. (Uncle Mark did the work)  We had two mattresses up there.  We slept there quite a few times.  Downstairs we had a couch, an old refrigerator, a small stand, a table, and a long table also that Uncle Mark had built to work on, right next to that we had a small cupboard.  We really had it quite nice until a big rat decided he would like to stay there, too.  We left it for quite awhile and then Bobbie Hoops’, and Jackie Okey, Jo Ann Hansen and I decided we would clean it up again and sleep in it.  We four went around quite a bit together.  In the summer we would go up on the hillside and take our lunches.  We had quite a bit of fun.  In the summer I went down to Salina and stayed with Jewell Anderson.  We would have lots of fun together, but after awhile we didn’t get along very good together.  I also went to Sandy, Utah and stayed with one of mother’s best friends’ daughter, Margaret Tennant.  Our gang also went up to the cabin in the 8^th grade, in the summer.  We didn’t get along as well that year as we had before.  We had also put Lola Mae Hover out of the gang.  I started getting quite close to June Cloward.  At that time I liked La Mar Brown as a boyfriend. June liked James Cromer.  We got off by ourselves and talked about them.  There was Bobbie Hoopes, June and I that started going around together then. I still went to the Farrer in the 9^th grade.  I got a Commission this year, ‘Girl’s.’  There was out of our gang, Susie Lingenfelter, she held the Records, June Cloward held, Red Cross, Nancy Brockbank, held Recreation and Phyllis Winkle held Display.  We were the only girls that got Commissioners’.  So you see our gang ran almost everything in that school.  We were the most popular.  (I am so embarrassed I said that.) Just at the starting of the 9^th grade our gang started breaking up.  Nancy Brockbank was in the middle of everything.  She was getting jealous of June and I and she was trying to start trouble for us, but she just lost all of her friends by doing it.  Nancy only has one friend and that is Marilyn Price.  She is just like Nancy.  Although she even told us that she doesn’t even like her.  We have named our gang and it is, “Omega Gama.”  It stands for, our gang, in Greek.  (I doubt that.)  We put Lois Bullock out of the gang (against my will) and put Beth Jolly in.  I still don’t know her very well. I went to my first formal dance last night with James Cromer.  It was the Job’s Daughter’s and the girl had to ask the boy.  Susie thought she had asked me before, but hadn’t, so she didn’t get to ask me until the day the dance was and I didn’t get all of my dances.  I missed 3 of them.  I didn’t know who to take out of Dick Felker and James Cromer.  You see, right at the first of the year James had taken me to all of the school dances and I had taken him to the Sadie Hawkins.  Then when the, Backwards, dance came up some of the girls wanted to take Dixon boys. They went to the Dixon, the only other Junior High School in Provo.  Well they finally coxed me into asking one, too.  By the way, Bobbie Hoops’ had moved to Los Angeles, California not very long before and Susan Lingenfelter had moved to Salt Lake City, Utah.  Well Bobbie used to go with Dick Felker so I knew him a little bit so I had asked him to go to the Sadie Hawkins dance (he went to the Dixon).  After I had gone with him he asked me for a date the next Friday and I said yes.  We double dated with Jackie and Johnny Thatcher and Elsie Jorgensen and another boy.  Then he asked me for a date the next Friday and we double-dated with Jackie Okey and Johnny Thatcher.  So there I was, I didn’t know who to ask.  James is about a head taller than me and Dick is about 2 inches taller than me so I decided to ask James.  He brought me a corsage.  It was carnations and it went just beautiful with my formal.  It was black at the top and white at the bottom.  It had lace at the bottom.  It was really Jean’s formal and it had been kind of torn at the bottom where Jean had stepped on it so mother washed the lace and trimmed it off so that it would fit me.  I had my hair in a ‘rat.’ I got a compliment from Jack Kelly on my formal and from Gary Loverage (he was our school Mayer.)  Gary had said that I looked so different and that I danced like a feather.  He also said he liked my hair. Well I am finally caught up with myself and can start on it every night from now on. I turned down two jobs for tending children tonight because I was too tired and here I am sitting up until 10:30 p.m. writing this.  Well I am going to quit for tonight.  I have lessons to do, English, to be exact.  I have to draw a map.  Well so long for tonight.  Gert                                                            -------------------- Today is the 29, Monday.  I went to school today and everything went along just as usual.  We are going to have a test tomorrow in Homemaking.  June came down tonight so that we could study it but, of course, when we get together we never study, we sat around pointing to numbers in the telephone book and then we would take turns phoning.  LaMar Brown wore his rust jacket today.  It is just like June’s and mine.  We were about to wear it but hadn’t.  Went down town tonight with June and Stinky (Phyllis Winkler).  I took Jean’s shoes down to be half soled and mothers and my dresses down to the cleaners.  They have the cutest boy at the shoe shop his first name is Keith, but that’s all I heard.  June and I just about played a game of bowling but didn’t.  We all went to Walgreen’s instead and had an egg salad sandwich and some orange juice.  We saw James downtown and he had been playing a game of basket-ball, I guess his lip was bleeding a little. This picture was taken when we were in eighth grade.     Picture of me sitting on my dad’s lap with Mother at the side. Grandpa and Grandma Foote. Uncle Keith standing in his uniform in front of the old home. Uncle Keith in his uniform sitting.  I am front row right. Taken in 1942.  I was 12 years old. Top row: JoAnn Hansen, Bobbie Hoopes, Jackie Okey, Susie Lingenfelter, Phyllis Winkler, Marylyn Price, Verneil Rodrick, Joyce Madsen, Nancy Brockbank, Lois Bullock, June Cloward, Alma (Gert) Anderson. Feb. 26, 1943 Top line – left to right Jackie Okey, Bobbie Hoopes, Alma (Gert), JoAnn Hansen (Jo) Verniel Rodrick, June Cloward (Mugs) Susie Lingenfelter, Jackie McBeth, Marilyn Price Joyce Madsen, Lois Bullock, Nancy Brockbank (Nan), Phyllis Winkler (Stinky).