Chapter 9  High School Years 1947-1948 Provo, Utah  1947/48 Mother and I moved back into the old Foote home.  I call it old because my mother and many of her siblings had been born in the home. Mother made contact with Miss Curtis, the supervisor of nurses at the State Mental Hospital.  Miss Curtis wanted Mother back at the hospital.  She was to be over the Insulin and Shock Ward.  Mother worked there for about 15 years.  What a blessing for us that she was still able to nurse.  I’m not sure what we would have done if she had not had that skill and a loving family to turn to. Home: In my home lived Uncle Mark, Uncle Keith, Aunt Maude, Mother and I.  Sometimes we would have visitors who stayed for dinner.  They included: David Schulthess, my cousin, who was attending BYU and who usually brought a friend; Aunt Alice, who lived in California at the time and would come for a lengthy visit; or Aunt Lurline, who then lived in Salt Lake City and later moved to Provo.  We would usually go to visit Aunt Fern, who was living in southwest Provo.    My family was now made up of aunts and uncles and cousins.  I loved it.  I can see in my mind’s eye Aunt Lurline saying, “Let’s have a party.”  It was always unanimous!  One party I remember included an activity that consisted of a sheet with a feather placed in the center. We all lined both sides of the length of the sheet and held it tight while we tried to blow the feather away from ourselves to the other side. We filled the living room with that sheet, blowing the feather back and forth and doubling up with laughter in the midst of quips, mostly from Uncle Mark.   This was my home now.  I cleaned as I had before: washing dishes, mopping the floor and vacuuming the furniture and carpet.  I still didn’t cook, but I washed windows; and all the while, I felt safe and loved.  We had our piano in the living room.  I would play my music with what little ability I had.  Shirley, my cousin, would sit at the piano and play Clair de Lune by ear!  I was so envious.  My Aunt Alice, Shirley’s Mom, would walk by and say, “Why don’t you play like Alma Dawn?”  I would be so embarrassed!  Aunt Alice always had something good to say about me.  Why, I’ll never know! One of the joys I had was looking through the bookcase in the living room. Once I found two books that have become treasures to me: Honeymoon Wife by Agnes Louise Provost, which was written in 1947; and Juggernaut by Alice Campbell, which was written in 1928.  I must have loaned Juggernaut out at some time, and it became lost to me.  I mentioned it once to Jackie Pruett.  She immediately started looking online and found it for me.  I was so happy!  I continue to re-read these books off and on.  Honeymoon Wife is such a simple story but so satisfying.  Juggernaut is a suspense novel and is still so pure in the writing.  I love books! The neighbors were pretty much the same ones as when we lived in Provo earlier.  Norman Richards was a neighbor who was a year older than me.  We would see each other at church.  Maybe we even walked together.  We were talking one day at church and decided to get our Patriarchal Blessings together. We got it all arranged and walked to the Patriarch’s home together.  I remember it as a beautiful day!  When I read my blessing to my family, I remember Aunt Maude saying, “How wonderful, a mother in Israel.”  Little did we all know! I didn’t have all the same friends that I had had before.  I made a new friend, Dorothy McBride (Hollingshead).  I remember her being very quiet.  She loved to come to my house because there was humor, respect, life and love there.  Those are the things that she told me she had felt in my home.   Uncle Mark had made a room for himself by digging out under the house.  It was a nice, small room.  It soon ended up with two beds in it and Uncle Keith, who was a heavy smoker, moving in.  That forced Uncle Mark to take the front bedroom upstairs.  I’m really not sure where we all slept. Uncle Mark was a carpenter.   He built a porch out from the kitchen, with stairs that lead to the outside where he had also poured cement and made a patio.  But he didn’t stop there: he made latticework all around the patio, with a little gate leading to the front of the yard and driveway.  We had many a lovely lunch out there.  He must have also made the white picket fence that divided the south lawn from the garden.  Uncle Keith kept up the garden.  He planted roses to grow along the fence and tall flowers that bloomed behind the roses.  Of course, Uncle Keith also planted vegetables.  The tomatoes he planted were used to make chili sauce.  The chili sauce that he made was always too hot for anyone else to eat…all the more for him! My favorite place to be in the house was on the bed that allowed me to look out a long, low window onto the south lawn and garden.  There was a big tree that grew near the back of the house, shading the room and keeping it cool in the summer.  I used to lay there and dream, read, or talk to Aunt Maude, who might be trying to take a nap; the window by her bed had a view to the east, where a huge lilac bush grew on the lawn.  It also had a side and backyard view of our neighbors, the Alexanders.  Mrs. Alexander, Dee, grew huge hollyhocks.  She would also come over to our yard and take things from our clothesline.  Not only that, the Alexanders would hook their garden hose up to the water faucet under our lilac bush so they wouldn’t have to use their water.  You would think there would be words said between the families.  Not that I didn’t hear a lot of, “Can you believe the nerve!  I’m going to go right over there and tell her what I think of her!”  But that never happened.  When we saw our clothes hanging on her line, someone from our family would just go over and retrieve them.  When it was noticed that they had their hose hooked up to our faucet, we would just undo it and throw their hose back onto their yard.  The families had lived next to each other for many, many years.  In another place, I have written about the tea party that was held out on our east lawn with Grandma Foote, Aunt Maude, Mother, Dee, and her daughter, Dee Lily.  I believe that the odd things that they did became reasons to laugh at the ridiculousness of it all. Mother would come home from work at about 3:30 p.m.  Then she and Aunt Maude would start dinner, which would be served at 5:00 p.m.  That had always been the case, even after Uncle Mark retired.  We would sit around the old, round, white or green (repainted many times) table, which would be covered with a tablecloth and say a blessing on the food.  Then someone would ask Mother, “What happened at the hospital today, Venice?”  Mother would then regale us with either the funny or the sad things she had observed.  She often had us laughing so hard that I would have to bend over to get my breath.  Sometimes I would leave the table to blow my nose because I was tearing up.  I have related some of those things that happened to her in her history.  My mother was a strong, caring nurse.  I have always been so proud of her. Another memory I have regarding hearing about people in the hospital: Mother considered one of the doctors who served the patients to be a “quack,” meaning that, in her mind, he wasn’t well qualified at all to be a doctor.  She would go to him about a patient who was ill, and he would often just say, “Give him/her an aspirin.”  He said that one too many times to Mother.  She asked if they could go into his office for a minute.  With the door closed, Mother, in no uncertain terms, told him, “If you tell me one more time to give a patient an aspirin without seeing the patient, I will expect it in writing and signed by you!”  He looked very surprised as she walked out the door. I went to a party that was held on Mother’s behalf when she retired.  When I was introduced to that same doctor, who, by the way, never again requested that any meds be given to Mother’s patients without first seeing the patient and signing his orders, he said, “You have eyes just like your Mother’s.”  I was pleased. Family Reunions: We didn’t have formal family reunions until I was in my twenties.  We did get together with Mother’s cousins and their families now and then at the North Park in Provo.  As I drive by there today, I have this feeling of nostalgia.  Sometimes we would drive up Provo Canyon to Upper Falls where there were areas to picnic. (I don’t believe there is a place there anymore.)  Or we would stop at Canyon Glen, which is on the north side of the road going up the canyon.  That was our favorite.  We also went to Pioneer Park on Center and Fifth West in Provo.  Oh, what wonderful memories those names conjure up! I remember the family reunions would be held on Sunday.  Aunt Maude would explain to me that Sunday was the only day they could all come together.  I was very much on the outside listening in with the understanding that, “It is very important to bring families together.”  I was usually the youngest one there. My mother and her siblings grew up being fairly close to their cousins.  Aunt Matt was the sister of my grandfather, Charles Foote.  Aunt Matt was a cute little lady.  Charles and Matt were the children of Eliza Ann Barrett and Thomas Foote.  There were also other Foote cousins.  The oldest Foote cousin was Earl Foote.  He was the only cousin to have served a mission in his youth. When Jim Craddock was on leave during WWll U. Keith, U. Mark, A. Fern, A. Maude, A. Lurline, A. Alice, Venice (my mother) Another favorite with Mother in the middle Extended family