Pearl Black

Pearl Black Parker, Daughter of Phoebe Harrop and Nephi James Black

By Teddy B Parker

Pearl was born October 19, 1897 in Lehi, Maricopa County, Arizona. She was the fourth child of eight, they were: Gertrude, Nephi James Jr., Sylvia, Pearl, Rueben, Deloy, lona died and was buried in Cowley Wyoming from eating too many green mother told me and Grant Arley born 22 Jan 1908 and died March 1908.

The family had a wood frame home described as a large house with her Grandmother, Susannah Jacaway Black, living in a lean-to extended from the side of the house. The only entrance to the lean-to was from the outside. Her Grandmother had the habit of using long sticks of wood; by this we mean the sticks were a lot longer than the length of the firebox. She would feed them through the end door of the kitchen stove, rather than through the top as most people did with coal and short pieces of wood it was hard to keep the back lid as hot as the front. To keep the stove the same temperature all over with an even heat was necessary to get the oven the right temperature and without hot spots when baking bread this was not and easy task As the wood burnt off she would push the sticks into the stove to keep the fire hot. This type of feeding fuel to the fire had its benefits but required constant attention. While she was gone to town Phoebe, Pearl’s mother, my Grandmother, smelled smoke. They hurried outside to check and found that there was smoke coming through the roof of the lean-to, Susannah Jacaway Black occupied and the inside was full of fire. Sylvia says her Mother, Phoebe Harrop Black used to build such big, hot fires that she would make the chimney red, that is why the house burnt down. The chimney of those old cook stoves was thin sheet metal if the firebox was half full of hot coals and you filled up the box with good dry wood, the resulting fire would cause the chimney to turn red. This happens very often because looking at wood does not always tell you how hot it will burn. Here are some of the causes moisture content, type of wood and size and even the way the wind was blowing and direction. I believe that Mother’s story was more correct. She also said they had some baby kittens in the house and they burnt with the house. The children all cried for the kittens. They ran back inside to try and save some of their things, but were not very successful as the fire spread very rapidly. They figured that Susannah had left some sticks sticking out of the stove and they had burnt off, the burning ends dropping to the floor, causing the fire. This burn out was the main reason they moved to Coyote, Utah, there were also other members of the Black family living in the Coyote area. There must have been other reasons they moved but we were not told of them. Rueben was born March 25, 1901 in Lehi, Arizona, and Deloy was born on April 11, 1902 in Coyote, Utah (this town is now known as Antimony, Garfield County). They moved to Utah between these two children, making Pearl near four when they moved. Pearl had black hair and dark brown eyes with fair skin; her hair grew long enough for her to sit on the ends. She was a very beautiful child and woman, with a loving and pleasant disposition. Her father, Nephi James Black was on a mission to the Southern States when she was born and did not see Pearl until she was two and one-half years old. lona was born April 10, 1904 in Coyote, when she was able to run around well the family moved to Cowley, Wyoming. lona had blond hair, the rest of the children had black hair and showed the Indian heritage, Pearl’s mother was part Indian. They traveled by wagon to the end of the train line at Marysvale, then by train to Wyoming. (The train had arrived in Marysvale, Utah in 1900). lona was quite a favorite of all the people on the train as she was little and cute. This was probably in the early spring of 1906. While they were on the train some fellow tried to pick Grandfather’s (Nephi James Black) pocket. Grandfather felt him pulling his wallet out of his back pocket and was able to stop him. From then on grandmother carried the money in her brassiere. We are told that the house they built in Wyoming is still standing. Apparently Pearl’s father was a mason and laid the brick for the house. (Sylvia also said he was a brick mason). lona died July 1907 in Wyoming at the age of three and is buried in the cemetery in Cowley. They said her eating too many green peas caused it. They left her in the pea patch to eat all she wanted. They were back in Coyote, Utah in 1908 as Grant Arlie was born there January 22, 1908. (On the way to Wyoming, they stopped in Salt Lake City and went to the Temple, as they were sealed with their children on April 4, 1906 in the Salt Lake Temple). This time they stayed in Coyote for about two years. Mother would have been near eleven when they came back to Coyote. She remembered how fast the trains went; she judged this by how fast the telephone poles went by the windows. According to Sylvia when they returned to Coyote. She and her father stayed behind until they could get enough money for more train tickets. Pheobe brought the other children by herself on the train. Because of lona’s death and how caused her to be so sick. (I came home when the girls had the mumps and Mother had them in bed with a string tied around their necks just below the swelling, this was supposed to keep the mumps from going down on them.) Mother was greatly afraid of the mumps for a very good reason.

Mother said they used to run behind the wagons that came by and hang onto the back. One young boy went around to the side of the wagon and stepped on the brake block support beam in front of the rear wheel. He lost his balance and fell under the wheel and was killed. The man whose wagon the boy fell from was so upset by the accident that he used a long whip from then on, to keep the children away from his wagon when they began to chase him. Chasing wagons seemed to be one of their entertainments in those days.

Mother remembered the first car that came to Coyote. She told how they heard it coming long before it came into view and how they chased after it for a mile or more. One must remember those cars were slow and the roads not built for cars, the wagons had made deep ruts in the roads. This would be between 1908 and 1910, would be my guess.

Grandmother Black taught the three older ones (Gertrude, Nephi James and Sylvia) to work, to help in the house cook sew and etc. She would send Mother out to play. As she didn’t learn how to do these things when she was young it caused her problems then and later in her life. Her grandmother (Susannah Jacaway Black) would call, “Pearly, come to your music lesson.” Mother told us how she would hide in the bushes so her Grand-mother could not find her. She was always sorry for her actions, she would say, “I missed a good chance. If I had done like Nephi and just worked a little.” When she married and realized how little she knew, she would lock Dad out of the house while she learned to bake bread. Through her determination she became a very good cook, but as she never ate meat she never learned to cook meat tasty. She would never make pies when Dad was home as she said Dad could make better pies than she could. She was determined that we would learn something as we grew up, so we started early, doing the dishes and other things around the house. That didn’t last long as Garn and I were needed to do the outside chores. Gertrude and Sylvia did not like the choice of boys in the Coyote area, so due to pressure from them the family moved to Richfield about 1910. Gertrude got married in 1911 to Heber Phillip King, who was from Antimony (Coyote). In spite of the move she went back to Coyote for the man she married. Nephi James Jr. married Ida Nichols in 1913, Sylvia married Horace Bertelson in 1917 he was from Marysvale. Mother and Dad were married January 15, 1915, in Richfield, Sevier Co., Utah, Mother was seventeen and Dad was twenty-three. (Margaret, Sylvia’s daughter, says that Sylvia had a trousseau ready for herself and gave it to Pearl, as she was married first.) The next October their first child, Teddy B, was born. On the first day of March 1916 they took me to the Manti Temple and we were sealed as a family for all eternity. They also had Teddy blessed as he had a hernia. He was completely cured. Dad’s older brother, Lyman and his wife Jennie and their daughter Juanita, accompanied us and were also sealed that day. Their first home was a block from the first Ward church. That first summer they lived in a little red one-room house in the north field, it was still there when we grew up and we used to sleep in it some nights when we were working there putting up hay or beets. It was very small. When Dad and Mother began to buy the place at 476 West and 2^nd South, Dad would milk the cow and sit the milk bucket with the milk in it, on the window sill of the barn. Then, in order to have milk, Mother had to wade out and get the bucket, One day Mother decided this had to stop, so she did not go and get the milk. When Dad asked, “Where’s the milk?” She said, “I guess it is out in the barn where you left it.” From then on Dad always brought the milk into the house when he finished milking, and before he did the rest of the chores. With no way to cool the milk it would be somewhat sour by noon by evening mother was making cheese out of the extra milk. Mother started from the very beginning to keep a good supply of food, we would now call it a two-year supply. Dad sustained her and helped in any way he could. They always had a cellar for storage; except the time they lived in the shanty and the Colby home. The first one was under the floor of the house (this was at 476 West 200 South. in Richfield) the last two was outside. I remember the last cellar that was built or I should say rebuilt, the original had a very slick door, which we kids used as a slide. This I do not remember, Mother told of a neighbor girl sliding down with us and running a long sliver in her bottom. She didn’t know about it until the girl’s mother cane and showed the sliver to her, anyway that stopped the door sliding. During World War I, 1917 and 1918 (Mother was already storing a supply of white flour), she told us kids how they wanted all of the people to use whole-wheat flour it was part of the war effort. Of course Mother made white bread with the flour she had stored. Several people had been caught using white floor and had been fined, so when a man was scheduled to eat at our house (I was never clear as to why he was coming). Mother took her good white bread and fed it to the pigs. Then she went to the neighbors, borrowed some whole-wheat flour and made bread for her guest. She always seemed worried or irritated by the experience. Mother and her sister Sylvia sang at nearly every funeral in Richfield until Mother’s neck started to swell and her headaches increased.

She decided to stop; it seemed to irritate the headaches when she sang. We always had chickens, pigs and cows to take care of after we moved back to 476 West 2nd South. I heard Dad tell another man that he come home and found Mother and us kids shelling corn for the pigs as they were too fat and lazy to eat the corn off the cobs. The pigs gave Mother her year’s supply of lard. She would render it on the back of the wood and coal kitchen stove. It was no easy job, too hot and it would burn, not cooked enough and it would spoil. She always complained that her lard was not as pretty and white as the commercial lard in the stores. They both tasted about the same, but hers was not bleached nor did it have chemicals added to it. During the time Mother and Dad were out of this home a man and his two sons lived there and left bed bugs. Mother spent many years trying to get rid of the bed bugs. The only thing she had was kerosene to kill them with. She would brush the kerosene (also called coal-oil) on the mattress, which was on their bed, wherever she found the eggs. Up until I was in high school we used straw ticks on our beds. Each fall when they threshed the grain Mother would fill the bags with new straw. These bags she sewed from muslin, some years she made new and other times she just washed the old ones. These bags were the shape of a mattress the only difference was they had a slot in the center about 18 inches long. Through this opening straw was stuffed and pushed to all the corners, all that we could get into the bag. It had a rectangular shape with a big bulge in the middle. The first nights we slept on them the straw ticks were high in the middle and it was easy to roll off of them, soon they were only a couple of inches thick. These were warm to sleep on and I assume that Mother used them because they did not harbor bed bugs so readily and she could get them out easily by washing the tick or cover. All the clothes were boiled in a special big tub; most of them were made of copper. Mother would show us how she played jacks as a girl. Where we could pick up one jack and catch the ball, she could pick up all of the jacks before catching the ball. She was very nimble with her fingers.

Mother and Dad enjoyed going to dances and parties with their friends. Dad had a dog-called Billie. He was an excellent cattle dog. Granddad Parker used to take him when he had cattle to move, he was the one they always talked about, because he was a very good dog in many ways. One evening as they were leaving for the night out I was to tend the younger children, Donna V being the youngest, and they knew that I went to sleep easily. Dad persuaded Mother to leave Billie in the house to help me tend the kids. Dad must have done some talking, as Mother disliked dogs and cats in the house. Billie stayed in the house that night and I, of course, went to sleep. When they returned home they could not open the front door, as there was something against it. Dad ran around to the kitchen door and found Billie lying against the front door with Donna V curled up between his legs. She had gotten out of bed looking for Mother and had gone to the door to go outside. Billie laid down by the door to prevent her from going out and also kept the cold draft from under the door away from her, she had laid down beside him and gone back to sleep. The house always got rather cold when the fire went out and there was a space under the door where cold air came in. If Billie had not kept her warm she could have become sick or possibly received some frostbite from the draft. From then on Billie stayed in the house when they were gone. (The sad part of this story is that a year or so later someone poisoned old Billie.) Several times during the summer they would go north of town and there have a chicken roast

(there were no houses north of town and they could find places where they were able to build a fire). I remember these because they would take me along to tend the baby, the baby and I stayed in the car. Mother would come to the car and feed the baby when needed. It seemed like they lasted forever, especially when the baby fussed, which seemed continually. They would sit around the fire and laugh a lot. Mother and Dad enjoyed these outings with their friends. They were all young married couples.

Mother became an expert at bottling fruit and vegetables. The first bottles were very fragile and she had a hard time cooling them without some of them breaking as she took them out of the hot water bath sit them on the table a cold draft or object would cause some to break. She used a large tub and put the bottles in to boil. In order not to break the bottles with a cold draft she kept the room closed up as she bottled. She was using the wood and coal stove at this time, so you can imagine how hot the room became, I do not know how she stood it. The first bottles had about the same threads as the present ones, but at the bottom of the threads was a lip, a type of shelf around the bottleneck for a rubber gasket to sit on. The lid was a soft metal like zinc, and formed from one piece of metal the sides had threads and at the bottom was protruding lip at right angles to the threads, called flare out. This lip would sit on the top of the rubber gasket she put on the bottle shelf that was below the bottles threaded area. Mother would run a dull knife around the lip burying the lip of the lid into the rubber gasket on the bottle. This is the way they sealed the bottles. Many times the juice would ooze down the threads of the bottles under the lid making it very hard to get the lid off. This was the best in those days. Next came the two piece lids, the lid one piece and the threads another, called the ring. Each time the bottle was refilled it required a new lid, as the seal area is now above the threads and is on the top of the bottle mouth and the sealant glued to the lid. About this time they came out with a can sealer and cans for home use, also a pressure cooker. We liked the cans as more of us could help and Dad could take them with him on the mountain easier, he would break many bottles, making the cost too high. The problem with the cans was the sealers, they were not sturdy enough and we would wear one out before the canning season was over. Mother always had a garden and some fruit trees to can from. She would put around eight gallons of dill pickles in crooks in the cellar. I never ate these but Dad’s sisters and others loved to come and eat them, they would smack their lips and say how good they were. Mother grew beans in her garden, both the green beans she bottled and the dry beans we used for chili and such in the winter. We shelled the dry beans the hard way, the vines were pulled with the bean pods on them then they were piled in a place where they could dry. When they were very dry we would gently beat them over a canvas. This caused the beans to leave the pods the pods were very brittle and would break up in little pieces. The vines were then put in the garden for fertilizer. On a windy day four people stretched out an old sheet or a canvas and the beans and pod pieces were poured slowly onto the sheet. The wind would blow away the small light pieces and the beans would fall to the sheet, no easy job, and very time consuming. Even then the beans had to be picked over when we were ready to use them, as some of the pieces did not blow away and sometimes we would find little rocks in with them.

Dad was gone a lot when we were young, even if they were only eight miles away at Sigurd, a small town eight miles north of Richfield, working at the gypsum plant, they would stay the whole week, as it was a long drive with a team and wagon or those old cars, which were expensive to run for the wages, they received. Mother would take a chair, many nights when Dad was gone and sit in the front yard, watching us children play. When it became time for us to go to bed she would send us in to bed and stay sitting in the dark alone. When they put in streetlights they were still a block away from our house, which made it very dark around our yard.

One day, in the late fall, when a car came to pick Dad up to take him to work at the gypsum plant at Sigurd, Garn saw a woman in the car with the men, and told Mother. Mother fretted the whole week until Dad returned and she found out why the woman was in the car. While Dad was at working at Sigurd, there was a man who would tell Dad how his wife beat him and the fights they had. Then Dad would tell him stories about how mean Mother was to get more information, it would start the man to talking and he would tell Dad more. Dad always told Mother about the conversations they had. Mother became extremely anxious to see this man. Dad told Mother this man was coming up to the house a certain day, he was coming to get something Dad was giving him. They agreed that Mother was not to come out of the house until he got what he was coming after. When Mother came out of the house and he saw her, for every step she took toward Dad, he took one step back away from Dad. This went on until he had backed a good part of the way down to our East fence line, which was in the middle of the block, and then he turned and departed in haste a very fast walk. Mother and Dad laughed and laughed. Mother always enjoyed telling about this man and how scared he was of her and how he acted that day. She and Dad liked to do things together, and both enjoyed people.

When Dad would come home from the forest service mother would try to get Dad to go on a picnic or camping with all of us, she loved to picnic and to go camping. As Dad was camping all week he would want to do something else, it was like a fisherman going fishing for a vacation. Charles MacDonald, the man Dad worked with in the forest service, killed a rattlesnake and decided to skin it and cook it to see what it tasted like. He was very curious about many things. After he cooked it he put the pan back in the pack to be used, Dad tried to lose that pan many times but it always returned. He told Mother of this experience and that the cooked rattler looked just like the neck of a chicken when it was cooked. Mother would never cook the neck of any chicken after that.

I was very likely in the third grade when Mother and Dad went out into the front yard and after much discussion, Dad cut off Mother’s long hair, at that time she could sit on the ends of it. When they finished it was about to the bottom of her ears where she wore it the rest of her life. They hoped this would help her severe headaches some days they were so bad her eyes seemed to bulge out. This did not help as they hoped and her headaches grew more severe until she passed away. The x-rays showed a dark spot from the base of her brain down into her shoulders. My guess is the trouble began with the mumps.

Mother and Dad borrowed Granddad’s four-cylinder dodge and drove it to Ely, Nevada to visit Aunt Sylvia. It took them two days to get there, as the top speed of the car was twenty-five to thirty miles per hour. Mother told us how nervous Dad become the second morning, as he was unable to get his usual cup of coffee. She used this as an example of why we should not drink coffee. Life in Ely was not to Mother’s liking, as she thought they wasted too much money. Mother was very religious and their way of living was not the way she wanted to live. She would use this experience as an example of how not to live. She said they would go to the store to get food and put the money in the slot machine and lose it, and then they would go home without any food.

When I was about twelve, Granddad Parker would bring us a range cow with a calf for us to milk. We would lock up the calf until milking time, and then we would turn out the calf and compete with it for the cow’s milk. We really had to hurry in order for us to have enough milk as a hungry calf can suck very fast.

Mother was the one who was always pushing us to go to church and to do the things we were supposed to do. She would push Dad to go, in a very gentle manner, but most of the time he could find an excuse for not going.

Mother had the habit of asking us to go out to the woodpile and get a chip or two when she needed wood. We knew that she meant an armful of wood, but one day I decided to take her at her word and I brought in three chips about the size of your hand. Mother very seldom lost her temper but this was one of the times she did. I never did that again. Maxine tells of the time she and Patty were arguing in bed, each wanting the other to move over. Mother called to them a couple of times and it still went on. Mother got up from bed and walked into the bedroom and gave them both a spat. They cried because they had upset her, that hurt more than the spanking. Mother was usually very even-tempered and easy going.

Mother never learned to use the horse and wagon or to drive a car; as a result she had to rely on other people for her transportation. As I grew older and could harness and drive the team she would have me take her in the wagon where she needed or wanted to go. Once she had me hook up the team and take her west of Richfield to get some pine gum. This is the pitch from the pinion tree, when the tree is injured it exudes sap, which when exposed to the air dries and hardens. As it gets older it turns darker, when it was just the right color of brown, Mother liked it for gum. You had to chew it for a long time to get it into gum, I tried it but all it would do was to break up in very little pieces, like sand but no gum. We tied the horses to the wagon and walked up the hills looking on every pinion tree for this certain shade of brown pitch. When we found enough for her supply we went home. They sold regular gum in the stores, but she liked the pinion pitch having grown up chewing it. Another time the bull berries were just right, so she had me hook the team to the wagon to take her and the rest of the family, except Dad, to the river east of Central (a little town about four miles south of Richfield Utah.) The way we got the berries was for Garn and I to cut the branches off of the bushes, then the younger ones would hold a sheet by the corners and we would beat the branches to knock the berries off. The bushes have long thorns on the branches and the berries too small to pick. The berries were hard to get off the branches and about a third of them would fly so far they went off the sheet. These berries were very abundant in those days, and they made the best jam and jelly. After some labor we ran out of food and water, as the younger ones ate and drank more than they worked. Mother sent me to Central to the store (it was a very small store), to get something to eat. The only thing I could find was bread and peanut butter, nothing to drink. When I got back and Mother saw the dry bread and peanut butter, she said in disgust, “Let’s go home.” Peanut butter and bread are very hard to eat without something to drink and we were out of water.

When we grew older and had a model T, she always got whoever came home first to drive her around to the places she wanted to visit. The car always sat in front of the house all day as she did not learn to drive but did enjoy going. This was a boring job as we would just sit in the car and wait until she came back to the car, then off to the next place. As I was the oldest Mother sent me to town very often, this was a walking trip, usually for some very small item. I like dogs and most of them on the way would come out to greet me. I was of the opinion that I knew every dog on the street. One day Mother wanted me to walk to Main Street with her, she hated to walk alone because of the dogs on the street. As we walked along every dog came out and barked at her, even dogs that I never knew existed. They seemed to know she was afraid of them and they would circle around me to get nearer to her.

This seemed to be a trying period in Mother’s life as MacDonald was so slow getting the money to Dad and Mother. It would sometimes be up to three months before a paycheck came. This forced Mother to have a charge account at the grocery store mostly for Dad’s supplies, which was hard to payoff. There was no consistency in how Dad got his pay and this was hard for Mother as she managed the finances. Mother found that the clerk was adding things on the bill that we never received. One day she called Garn and I (we were usually the ones who went to the store) she had found on the slip canned shrimp something she never used. We had to account for each item that was on the slip. This is the way she found the clerk was adding onto the bill. She stopped going to that store and did not charge anymore, he must have done the same to others as the owner went broke shortly after Mother quit.

Mother seemed to be the one that others came to for some reason or other, like a listening ear, or advice. I think it was because she never took sides or allowed herself to become involved with one side or the other. One of her pet quotations was “I would rather be a live coward than a dead hero.” There were times when Rueben would come up and talk to Mother and we would be sent outside. Grandmother and Grandfather Black were having problems and they were talking about how to help. These difficulties eventually led to their divorce.

Garn and I helped pour the cement porches front and back at Grandmother Parker’s and worked at other jobs around the home. Sometimes Grandfather Parker would pay us, especially as we grew older. Grandfather was over to our place often. Though Garn and I were at grandfather’s place often we seldom went in the house nor did she ever come out and talk to us. Yet all of us would go to Grandmother Black’s home just to talk to her and listen to her stories of Arizona. We just loved to have her come and tend to us and make her skilly-glue as she called it. Dad, every day when he was home, went to Grandmother Parker’s at least once a day. Sometimes they would make decisions for us without Mother knowing anything about it until it was time to go to work. We knew this irritated Mother but she never said anything about it. When the Parker book was printed I said of one woman she looks like she has Indian blood in her. Dad became very indignant over my statement; you see the picture was one of his grandmother. This was apparently a sore spot. Shortly after my return home from my Canadian mission 1948. I was at the Richfield High School with a group-playing ball. Among the group was an Indian girl and I knew she lived near the fairgrounds on the opposite end of town. I asked her if she had a way home which I sure she did not have. She said, “No,” and I asked her if she would like me to take her home. When the time came we went to the Model-A ford in which dad had converted the rumble seat in the rear to a pickup type thing out of some lumber. She sat on these boards and could not be coaxed into coming up front. I also had told her I must go to my home before we could go to her home. The two of us went to my home she wanted to stay in the car. By the time I was ready to leave, mother had looked out the window and saw this girl. It really was a shock to her system. She exclaimed, “What’s that girl out there.” And I could see she had never expected her son to go with an Indian. Then I could see, she herself being part Indian knew very well the problems involved. Later I went with another girl and how mother found out she never told me. She was not against her, but not for her. However she reminded me of a hereditary problem that occurred from time to time in this family. As I grew up with one of the family that was afflicted, therefore I knew what she was talking about. I guess she wanted to help the Lord steer me to Betty Jo. While in second or third grade my teacher saw I was too close to some boys that were headed in the wrong direction and told mother about my friend’s mother when she could get me alone would counsel me to stay away from them, this was not easy as they lived on our way to school this went on until junior high school then they moved where I saw them no more. One of the three boys I remember was raiding the local drugstore when the town marshal caught him in the act he raised a brick to hit the marshal with, the marshal was a very small man but very good with a revolver he just shot the brick out of his hand. I have always been amazed this teacher could pick those boys nature out so quickly. Mother was afraid of animals her family never raised animals. As we grew older she would tell stories of what her neighbors experienced one boy decided to pea on one of the pigs so stuck his penis though a knot hole what could you expect a pig bit the end of it off, I will bet there was some screaming there. A man left his wife to go feed the pigs just before supper meal. He never came back so a search was started but he was never found. In the spring the women hired some men to come and clean the pig pen they found his watch the buckles on his bib overalls then they were sure the pigs ate him. This happened near Lehi Arizona. With her stories and praying we grew to adults. Only once did Mother ask me to get a team and wagon and park it behind Winkel’s Bakery, which was where she always bought her flour as she said it made the best bread, was when I was in my last year of high school, or just out of high school a year or two. I borrowed Granddad Parker’s team and wagon, which happened to be a hayrack; these are much higher than regular wagons as the bed sits above the wheels. These hayracks did not have a solid bottom and were miserable to load something like sacks of flour on. As I remember it was ten sacks that I loaded on the wagon. (Mr. Winkel’s son Anton worked with me at the temple and said his Dad always had the flour come in 100 pound sacks.) This was the only time I was given this responsibility as Dad usually went with Mother for the flour.

Mother’s brother Rueben took Mother for a ride to show off his new car. As Mother did not learn to drive she was not familiar with cars or how they worked, but she loved to travel. She was looking out the window, the wind was blowing the leaves along the ground at exactly the same speed as the car so she thought the car was stopped and opened the door and stepped out. She hung on to the door and was dragged some distance before Rueben got the car stopped. She got some badly scraped knees from this experience. In the later years she always wanted to go for rides with Maxine and Dad, or anyone else who would take her in the car.

As the years passed Mother’s headaches grew more severe and they began to change her personality, she was unable to care for herself. The doctors in Richfield had tried for many years to find out what was causing her headaches. They treated her for sinus and she took a great many aspirins to help the pain. Dad and Maxine, who were still home at this time, took very good and patient care of her. Dad as always was a kind and loving husband. Finally it was decided to take her to the doctor’s in Salt Lake City to see if they could help her. They found she had a growth from the base of her brain to her shoulders, not knowing if they could help they operated. She had problems so they stopped the operation. A few days later they tried again but were unable to do anything. Mother died the first day of July 1951; she lacked almost four months of being fifty-four. She still had her black hair in spite of her suffering. She was buried beside Garn on July 5, 1951 in the Richfield City Cemetery.

Things I Remember About Mom and Dad

By Phyllis Parker Warnock

Phyllis’s memories ..I believe we kids had the best parents ever.

Mom and Dad worked hard. When we were young Dad was away from home a lot working to take care of us.

I believe Mom had one goal that was to improve our lives so we could have things better than she had when she was young.

Mom was always mindful of her family. She stopped going to her “ladies club” and serving them elegant dinners. I’ll serve them to my family” she said.

We always had a big garden. The goal was to have peas by the 21^st of June. We picked peas by tubs full. Once we even tried putting the pods through the wringer of the washing machine we had peas all over the kitchen but not in the bottles. Putting up fruit and vegetables was a family project, the bottling of the fruit in the air-tight, steamy kitchen. To start canning, Maxine and I would take a tub of water outside, and then bring dirty quart bottles up from the cellar. Maxine and I, because our hands were small enough to go into the bottles (When Garn and Teddy were young they had this job also. They would get little rocks from the ant bed to help clean the bottles.) The bottles were really dirty and had to be soaked, they also had spiders in them. When the bottles were clean we put in the peeled fruit with a sugar and water syrup. Then we sealed the bottles. We then put the bottles in a boiler which held about 8 bottles. The boiler’s were long and were made of copper. It covered the two lids that was over the fire box on the coal and wood kitchen stove. We put about 3 slats of thin wood on the bottom of the boiler. Next we put in the bottles, then we put rags between and around each bottle and covered them with water. Then we boiled them about ~ hour with a lid on the boiler. Before we took the bottles out of the boiler we closed all the windows and doors and put rags in all the cracks. It was so hot and steamy in the kitchen you couldn’t stand it, but we couldn’t let cold air on the hot bottles. A cold draft would easily crack those old bottles.

We all liked Mom’s dill pickles. To make them Mom picked the cucumbers, if possible, when they were about two inches long. She put them in salt water brine for about seven days. Then they were put in crocks with waxed sides and bottoms.

Mom melted paraffin wax rolled it on the sides and bottom of the crock. We poured vinegar water over them and put dill on them, put a board in to weigh down the pickles and put the lid on. The crocks were stored in the cellar. Each time we went down to the cellar for something we came back with a dill pickle. Mother and Grandmother Black had special ways of cooking and none of us learned how to do these things.

Mom and Dad took pride in the garden and in their ability to fill the cellar with vegetables, fruit, pickles, relishes and etc. The cellar was full to the brim with the most yummy things for the winter. We also had a smoke house. Dad built the smoke house, it looked like the old out-houses except it was a little smaller. There we smoked meat for ourselves and for people as far away as Salina’ The church had Dad cure and smoke meat for them until he got so he couldn’t lift the hams. After the meat was cured and smoked we wrapped them in special paper and then hung them from the rafters in the cellar. We had another pit for potatoes, carrots, etc. As I remember we were one of the first to put our vegetables in cans instead of bottles.

Mom was active in church and always encouraged us kids to go. We always washed Saturday so that Sunday morning we could iron white shirts for the boys to go to priesthood meeting. I remember when Patty was blessed, Mom and I took her to Sacrament meeting, we decided on the name on the way to church.

We were always taught to get our work done first, then you would get some free time. In our free time, we were encouraged to read the Scriptures, in fact, Mom gave a dollar to the one that finished first.

Everything wasn’t just work ….. holidays were always special. The 4^th of July was one …. w e got a new dress and Mom always made ice cream, root beer, jello, and etc. Valentine was another special day. A knock at our door always meant a treat. We girls always went with Mom to buy the treats. Christmas was also a special day.

We would stay at the ranger station while the MacDonalds were on vacation. We would put everything on a flat wagon and then it took all day to go from Richfield to the station at Belnap. While at the ranger station we always put our milk and other things in the icehouse to keep them cool. This ice house Dad and Charles MacDonald cut in the rock in the hill near the house and is still there.

When we made the big trip to California to see Sherman, while he was on his mission, Garn and Teddy at San Luis Obispo, we also went on down to Bellflower to see Aunt Gertrude. Dad never let the gas tank get lower than half full. He drove so slow the California people started honking at him. When Dad came to Sacramento to live with Maxine and Scott, after he retired, our kids got a chance to get acquainted with their grandfather. They learned to enjoy him and his stories.

It seems we kids always got along fine:

Teddy ………………..  Always doing some project

Garn …………………. Always singing

Sherman …………… The clown

Donna V …………… The serious one

Maxine……………… The fun one

Patty ……………….. The baby who grew up while I was away.

Things I Remember About Mom and Dad

By Maxine Parker Geringer

I remember that life was easy and Mom and Dad did everything possible to make things easy for us. Maybe we were not rich money wise, but we never wanted for food, clothing and care. Mom and Dad were both fighters for our cause, never allowing us to hurt in anyway. We always planted a big garden and we girls had to get up very early to weed the carrots and onions. Probably about 6:am (seemed like the middle of the night.) Mom would come in and sing “Girls, tis girls that makes the world go ’round.” We would pull ourselves out and start weeding. We would always race to the end of the rows to break the monotony. Mom always run the hand plow until things got too big. She would never go near the tomato plants after they got big, we always had to pick them as she was scared of the tomato worms. She would stand back and point out the worms out and we pulled them off and smashed them. (yuk!) She taught us to always get up and get the work done in the cool of the day, then when it got hot we could sit in the shade and read or play. We always did lots of canning fruits and vegetables, made lots of jams and jellies. Mostly from things on our own lot. We would go to Annabelle to gather service berries for jelly. Dad would cut off the limbs and take a big stick and beat the berries into a canvas which we held by each corner. We always took along a picnic lunch and made it a fun day. Mom always liked to make special things for special occasions, like valentine. She would buy oranges and sack candy, then when we would come from kicking our valentines at friends homes, (when you kick valentines you put the valentines on the step kick on the door and run and hide) she would kick on the door and we would always act so surprised. Mom always worked hard, cooking and cleaning. She would just get one meal done and it was time to start in again. She was always the one that did the cooking when out of state visitors came to visit. We would ask her why she did so much canning and she said she didn’t have things when she was a girl and she wanted us to have the things she never had. She always hated we girls to go places alone. She would always walk with us. She even walked with us to take the cows to the pasture and that was in the daytime yet. We always went as a family to things of entertainment around town, like the Kow Kounty Karnival, parades and to the Wednesday night serials or thrillers (a continued short each week, like Flash Gordon. Mom always went without things so we kids could have clothes for church and school, as a result she had only one nice dress, one pair of dress shoes and a hat at a time. When it came time to dress for church, she would say, “Bring me my dress.” and we would always say “Which one?” She always said “My new one, the blue one, the one I wore last.”Her dresses always seemed to be some color of blue. She hated black and in those days the choice was rather slim. She knew how to handle Dad. She made sure he had his dinner and rested before we approached him with some big family matter. One thing I can say for sure is that I never in my life heard Mom or Dad ever argue. If they did or got angry at each other they didn’t show anger in front of us.

Dad enjoyed taking us for rides up those two big steep hills in Joseph, and over the Glenwood dug way (these towns are both in Sevier County, Utah). He would pull over to the edge and tell us to look down; he knew we were scared to death. Boy did those hills seem high and steep then. Guess they were for those little model-Ts. The one and only vacation the family ever took was in 1942 to California. WE borrowed Grandpa Thomas Bryant Parker’s car and went to Porterville Calif. where Sherman was on his mission. He went with us to San Louis Obispo where the army boys were stationed We visited with Teddy and Garn and lots of others from Richfield.

We went to Bellflower to visit Uncle Lee and Aunt Gertrude Ward (Mama’s sister). When it was time to go, Dad wanted Uncle Lee to drive us to San Bernadino,which he did. On the way we went through the worst sandstorm I have ever seen. It was because of this trip that Uncle Lee got his job back with the railroad. He was forever thankful to Dad for this. Dad also took us to Belnap Ranger station a few times.

In 1950 Dad and I bought a new Ford. We took Sunday rides to Marysvale, Belnap and Fishlake. But after Mom died it was just Dad and I for about a year. We had many good times. When they had Elders parties he would make me go with him, then after we two, Mr. and Mrs. Collier Clint and Elsie Robinson (neighbors) would go for rides. One time they made me stop at the “Honkey Tonk” in Aurora and they pushed me inside, only because I protested, they wanted to see me squirm.

Another time Dad went to town in the car, he met his friend Earl Hansen, they decided to go to Koosharem to a reception dance. They decided to come home and pick up Opal and I.

We had walked to town and were walking home when they turned up our street. I saw it was our car so I turned and put up my thumb to hitchhike, they stopped we got in and he turned around, we thought he was just taking Earl home, but he drove straight out of town with me protesting all the way. We kept asking where we were going, Dad just laughed and said, ~You will see!” Well when they got to Koosharem, they went into the dance and enjoyed themselves for several hours. (We had our hair in rollers, so had to stay in the car.) Finally when they came out, Dad said “It’s your turn to drive.” Dad and I laughed many times after about my being kidnapped by my own father. He and Earl laughed to think they had pulled such a good trick on us girls. Dad and I had many good times during those years. We often divided up the housework, he always took the kitchen, he didn’t mind washing dishes at all. He did most of the cooking. He just loved to make sugar cookies. He would say ~I’ll bake them if you’ll stir them up. Opal (a neighbor and friend, last name Collier) and I would be in the front room and dad would come in with a big hot cookie on the spatula and ask her if she wanted a cookie. When she said yes he would flip it to her and she had to catch it. She talks about it. Dad was as good at cooking, cleaning, and running the washing machine as any woman. He took pride in the way he hung out the wash.

Things I Remember About Mom And Dad

By Donna V Parker Thornblad

Mom was a gentle easy-going, soft spoken woman. Whenever we tried to get her to take sides in an argument or in an “I’ll betcha” time, she would always smile and say ‘I guess”, whatever we asked her. Mom was a real good cook I thought the best. When we were young and relatives from Nevada came over, we usually met down to Grandma Blacks home (Phoebe Lorraine Harrop Black), Mom would bake the best lemon pies, make the best root beer (with wheat) I ever tasted. What fun! Every time Mom was invited to a party they asked her to bring the pies. It seems like she was left alone a lot of the time when we were young. She was a real good friend as well as a mother she would go with us to the grade school and sit while we played on everything there. That was when we were young. When I was in high school she would go to a show with me if I wanted to go. One time Mom had to go to the hospital for an operation. I felt real bad because I felt that not everyone came home alive, anyway after surgery and Daddy said she was doing real good, I decided to take the girls down to see her. I washed their faces, slicked back their hair, and put on a fresh dress; whether it was clean I don’t know. I knew where the hospital was; it was clear across town, a long way for us to walk. When we finally got there, we were looking allover wondering where Mom was, then I heard Mom laugh, she yelled my name. Pretty soon the head nurse who owned the hospital, by the name of Mrs. Bean came out and called us in. We were introduced to the other patients in the hospital. I remember what a real weird feeling it was to go in there and see our Mother sick in bed.

Mom loved gardening and putting into bottles her vegetables and fruits her cellar was always full. She made the best dill pickles, she put them into a big crook, and then Ermom and Marge (Daddy’s sisters) also Juanita Parker and Coral Black would come up and ask her if they could have a pickle.

Mom had a “white” sewing machine to mend clothes with it was treadle. She didn’t do any sewing of our dresses, usually Grandma Black would do it or Mom would go and do housework for someone who could make us 4^th of July dresses. . She always picked out some real pretty colors of organdy for each of us.

Mom did housework for a lot of people, even though she was feeling poorly at the time, to help out with whatever we needed. She also went to work at “Babs Auto Court” and as I got older into high school, I was able to go help her; the younger girls would make us a lunch, and then bring it to us. Every day it was fried eggs and tomatoes on toast. We used a gas to clean the sinks with, with the smell of the gas and the sandwich left a long lasting smell I can still remember.

Mom would buy wieners and marshmallows and after dark we would build a fire and roast them, she always sat outside and watched us, she let us do everything, big things like slide the wieners and marshmallows on the stick.

Mom had many friends she visited with many of them and usually she’d take the girls with. Dad was away most of the time. Whenever Mom needed groceries she took one or two of us with her to the store. We lugged big sacks home, our arms would be aching by the time we got home (we walked both ways).

When I was quite young, Mom and Aunt Sylvia (Sylvia Black Bertleson, Mom’s sister) used to sing at funerals or wherever they were asked. I never went to any to these places, but I remember them going at times. Mom said they sang together all the time before they both married. Mom used to sing around the house, she had a very pretty voice. When Phyllis (my sister, Phyllis Parker Warnock) was small she used to sing a lot, I believe with some training she could have been a real good singer.

Today I watched a segment of the “Walton Family” it was us exactly when we were growing up. They where hard times then but oh how fun, we didn’t realize it at the time. Mom raised her vegetables and fruits, baked her own bread, Dad traded for cows, calves and pigs, etc.

We wore hand-me-downs, but got new things for Christmas each or at the beginning of school. When the souls of our shoes wore through Dad would half-sole them with his tanned horsehide. We had our own milk, butter, cottage cheese, eggs, chickens, pigs, cows, horses and calves. We used to sell bags of potatoes for .20 cents Mom let us keep the change.

Mom belonged to a club that got together once a week or month, they always asked her to make the pies. She always made extra for us to have. I remember one time I asked her about the club, what they did, etc. and why she had to go to all of them. She laughed when I asked that question and told me that the ladies always talked about the ones that didn’t show up and she didn’t want them talking about her.

Mom never did learn to drive a car or how to milk a cow. She didn’t think it was a girls place to milk, an if you learn you’ll inherit the job automatically. She marveled one time, that she was able in her lifetime to see a car, small airplanes then into huge passenger planes and faster cars in her day.

Mom was always very protective of us all. A life really meant a lot to her, and she tried to shield us from things she didn’t want us to know about unpleasant things.

My Mother was a pretty woman, not just because she was my Mother She had high ideals and she stuck with those ideals.

Grandma Black (Phoebe Lorraine Harrop Black) told me many times of when Mom was two years old how very serious she was when she prayed. One day she walked into the room and saw Pearl praying for her doll.She did it just like a grown person. Another time grandmother was sick so she asked Pearl to pray for her and she says she was healed of her sickness.

As Mother never learned to milk the cows, Grandmother Black taught Garn and I when we were very young. We were small enough we did not need a stool to milk the cow; we would just bend over and milk. It seemed like a long time before we became good at milking and could get all the milk from the cow, consequently we spoiled a couple of cows in our learning.

My grandfather, my mothers father, told me this story as near as I can remember after about Seventy-five years have gone by. To me it is the greatest example of the teachings of Jesus Christ and our free agency to get into the Celestial Kingdom.

All around were people living on should I say rolling hills but in the distance was this very high hill that was very large around at the base and was way above any other visible thing. It looked just like a very large cone and was peaked at the top. People were gravitating toward this very high hill some faster than others. As they came nearer to the base of the hill they found lush vegetation and everything was very good in their eyes being tired of much traveling they said, “Oh, this is good enough for me and pitched their tents. Others started on up the hill. The hill required more effort the people could see farther away and understood more than the people below. Still many said, “This is enough for me.” At each level there were less people and less crowding, they were easy to get along with and were given much more light to live by. Then he said to me, “I want you to get to the top there is lots of room up there.” Progression is an eternal principle. I hope I may never say, “This is enough for me.”

Fielding Smith. The sacrifice required of Abraham in the offering up of Isaac, shows that if a man would attain to the keys of the kingdom of an endless life; he must sacrifice all things. When God offers a blessing or knowledge to a man, and he refuses to receive it, he will be damned. The Israelites prayed that God would speak to Moses and not to them; inconsequence of which he cursed them with a carnal law.