Thanksgiving Memories

My memories of Thanksgiving were always driving to Fairview to my Grandma's house. I was always so excited that I could hardly contain myself. I thought we would never get there. Those were the days when there was no freeway and we had to take HWY 89 all the way. We used to sing Over the River and Through the Woods to Grandmother's house we go. When we got to the railroad bridge which was called Hill Top, I knew we would soon be there and the my excitement grew more intense. My cousins were always there as well and would help my grandma, my aunt and my mom make the fruit salad by whipping the cream and stirring the gravy.

My grandma had a big dining room where we all sat. I remember she had glasses with pictures of horses on them. We got to use the good china. We got to have orange Kool Aid. I never got to have Kook Aid at home. We always had to have milk. So I was so glad to drink Kool Aid.  My cousin Bessie and I always got the giggles and we would get angry looks from my mom and grandma. We stuffed ourselves with the turkey and all the trimmings, the cranberry sauce and all the pumpkin pie. We got so full that we thought we might die and my mom would tell us to go and walk up and down the road to wear off the food. But we too full to move. All the adults sat around and most of them fell asleep. The rest of the day was kind of boring. We wondered why we had gotten so excited in the first place.

We left for home when it was getting dark and I liked to look at the mountains in the twilight and imagine there were ghosts looking down on us. Those days are long gone. Bessie died when she was only 16. Grandpa Sanders died in 1956. Grandma Sanders is gone too. She died in 1993. Mom and Dad left in 2003. My uncle and many of my cousins have left this world as well. But I still remember those days like they were yesterday. I am so glad I have those memories. Death is inevitable but we live on through our memories and children.

Memories of Mom

Seven years ago today, my mom died. Mom had a life full of pain and illness. The last few years of her life she suffered terrible back problems and stomach problems. When she died, I was a little thankful because I knew at last, she was pain free.

I miss her greatly. She made quilts for all the babies and she sewed many cute little dresses for my girls. She made afghans too. I never developed a desire to do those things and I wish I had tried a little more in that regard. She taught me many things: canning fruits and vegetables among some of them. We traveled with her and my dad a lot and really enjoyed the trips we had with them.

I wish her health would have been better and that she could have lived a more full life. Although my religious beliefs are different than hers, I do know she is in a better place. I am sorry that I did not live up to her example in many ways. But I loved her very much and I miss her every day. I know my dad missed her very much and I sure he would have lived a little longer had she stayed with him longer. I do believe they are together now. Life is sad without them but life goes on and they made life what it is today.

Remembering Alex

Today would have been Alex' 67th birthday. Today I would like to write some things about him that made him the person he was.

When the kids would come home from school he would asked them how school was and they would say "fine" and then he would ask them "what did you find."

When John said he as going to fix potatoes O'Brien for breakfast he would say, "potatoes for Brian?"

When somebody called on the phone he would say "Go ahead it's your dime."

And when he called somebody, he would "Jello, this is the fruitcake." Or, I tried to call but the line was busy."

Whenever I called him on the phone he would say "Hi Cutie." or "Howdy Doodey."

Sometimes he called me Emma Lu or Eba Kay
He called John Ocho
He called Matt Mathusala
Tammy was Tomasa

I am sure he had names for the other kids and they probably remember what they were but I don't.

He was a very giving person, going all out for Christmas, birthdays and holidays. He always sent me flowers, candy or something to my work when there was a special occasion.

He could fix most anything and could build almost anything. And you could always count on him to help out. He loved his garden and working with the soil. He loved the mornings watching the sun come up and smell of the earth on a Spring morning.

He had faults but all of us do. His biggest fault was not taking care of himself. He would probably be alive today if had of taken care of himself as well as he did others. I don't know where he is, but I know that with all his faults he is in a better place than here and is being rewarded for all he has done while on this earth.

I Wrote This Poem for Alex Birthday 2006

ALEX CARRILLO

3/22/1942-4/9/2004

Today would have been Alex' 64th birthday. I miss him so much. I wrote a poem for him. The last birthday I spent with him we had a great time with Kipp and Tina at the Clark Planeterium. Little did I think that day that this would be his last birthday here on earth.

For Alex on his birthday

Happy birthday honey

Although you are not here

You are always with me

Each day of the year

I miss you so much honey

I miss your sweet hello

You were always thoughtful

Why did you have to go?

The things we did together

The places that we went

Were always such a joy to me

I never will forget

So all I have is memories

Of days so glad and bright

But now the days are kind of gray

And gloomy as the night

But you are always with me

In every kind of way

You were there when I needed you

When my day was gray

So happy birthday honey

It’s almost been two years

I celebrate the memories

And I know your spirit is near.

March 21

Lament

I didn't write this poem but I remember it from school. It fits how I felt after losing my loved ones. The poem is matter-of-fact until the last line. The last line tells exactly how it is. It tells all.....

Lament

LISTEN, children, Your father is dead

From his old coats I'll make you little jackets;

I'll make you little trousers From his old pants.

There'll be in his pockets Things he used to put there:

Keys and pennies Covered with tobacco.

Dan shall have the pennies To save in his bank

Anne shall have the keys

To make a pretty noise with.

Life must go on And the dead be forgotten

Life must go on Though good men die.

Anne, eat your breakfast;

Dan, take your medicine.

Square Dancing

In the mid 1970's Alex and I strarted attending square dance classes and then joined a club. We made many friends and loved it so much. We usually danced on Tuesday's and Saturday nights. We always looked forward to those times. I had so much energy then. I would clean the whole house and mow the lawn on Saturdays and still have energy to go dance that evening. I had a square dance dress which stood way out. I wore pantaloons and slips that made the skirt stand out. We had all kinds of parties and I can say without doubt that during those times, Alex was so full of life and so happy. He was always the life of the party. It was a good clean group with no smoking or drinking. We always went with our group to A&W Root Beer after we danced. We once had a Halloween party and we won first place. Alex dressed as a Mexican with a poncho and sombrero and I wore a black wig and lace scarf and a Mexican skirt and blouse.

We went with our group to Logan and stayed overnight to a big square dance convention and also went to Loa Utah to dance. We often went up to SLC to dance with other clubs. We even danced in the 4th of July parade but it was raining really bad. Later our group which was called "The Hoot and Hollers" dwindled down and eventually broke up. We later joined another group called "The Sweetheart Chains." We were really good at doing the square dance.

I am not sure how or why we really stopped but one day we just did. It might have been Alex's knees, I just can't remember but anyhow we just didn't go anymore and I wish we had kept it up.

Television Memories

I started a new category of some of my memories of my family and life. It works like this; Whenever a certain memory jumps into my head, I will enter it in this category.

Today I am writing about how our family life was like in the 70's and 80's and how it differs from today.

We had two TV's, one that didn't work and aother one that did work sitting on top of the one that didn't work. We had to use a pair of pliers to turn it on. And sometimes we had to kick it. We had all of 3 or 4 stations to watch. No cable. Each kid had a certain place that they sat to watch TV. When the left the place for even a second, they would worry that some other sibling would take their place so they would say, "My place is saved." Or sometimes they would say, "My safe is placed.

When VCR's finally came out, they cost $1500 so we couldn't afford to buy one. There were only two people I knew who had a VCR. You used to go to the video store and rent the VCR and the videos. The VCR's were really big and bulky. You had to reserve the video in order to really get a decent one and you could only keep one night max. Alex' brother, Nazario got a VCR and it had a problem of over-heating and when it did, the videos would not play. So you would have to blow on the VCR to make it play again.

We didn't know any better, so our life was fun. Kids now-a-days would think this was really weird and not much fun but we had lots of good times with our rented VCR's and our old TV's that we turned on with a pair of pliers.

Stuff from My Good Old Days

Speaking of Buttons....

When my Mom did her mending, she would bring out the button box. While she was mending, I would play with the buttons. I put the pretty colored ones in one pile. I put the average buttons in another pile. And I had a pile for the ugly ones. I pretended they were people. The pretty ones were the popular ones. They would not let the ugly ones play with them. The average ones were usually the grownups. They were usually the larger buttons.

I remember the prettiest of the buttons was a blue button with ruffled edges. I named her Sally Ann. One of the ugly buttons was a grayish-white button that I named Sour Sour. I also played with other inanimate objects. My Dad had an old army flashlight that was khaki in color. I named her Barbara the Flashlight. I spent many hours playing with these objects and making them into families and having them go to school etc. Sour Sour was actually Sally Ann's younger brother. He was kind of like Charlie Brown; always the underdog and Sally Ann was like Lucy; always the one who got all the attention and thought she was better than anyone else.

11:40 AM |

The Milk

When I was growing up, my mother always wanted to buy a house that had a lot of land so we could have a garden and animals. In 1953, we moved to a home in Lakeview that had an acre of land. My mother also wanted a milk cow. She loved milk. So we got Jersey milk cow. My dad had to milk the cow (by hand)morning and night. He would get up before work and milk. Then when the milk was brought in, we had to strain it and the milk from the night before. It often had hairs and dirt in the milk. We poured the milk through the strainer. Then we poured the milk into a large container and put it in the fridge to chill. After it chilled awhile, we took it out and the cream had settled to the top. We skimmed the cream off the top and put it in a bowl. We then poured the milk into 2 quart containers. We could not get all the cream out however, so when drinking the milk we often got lumps of cream which I didn't like and would often gag on. My mother loved the lumps of cream. After the cream dish was full, we would churn butter. We had a churn that you turned the handle around and around until the cream became butter.

We would get about a gallon of milk from each milking. I don't know how we ever drank that much milk. We never got anything to drink at our meals other than milk or water. Because of that, I craved Kool Aid and pop. My mother hated pop and Kool Aid so she didn't understand why we craved it. We only got pop on 4th of July and Kool Aid at my Grandma's house. (Grandma didn't like milk)

Having a milk cow was a pain. It was hard to go on trips because you had to be there for the milking. Also, we had a couple of cows bloat and my mother would take that so hard. One morning I woke to hear my mother sobbing. When I asked her what was wrong she told me the cow bloated and that we were so poor and had spent so much on that cow. We also bred the cows to have calves. One of our cows started to deliver her calf and I was the first to see. I ran to the house to tell my parents. They got angry at me for watching the cow have a calf and told me I could not go up there and watch again. They acted like it was something shameful. So I became afraid of birth and I also thought it was something terrible because it wasn't explained to me.

Mending Day

Mending day was usually on Wednesdays. My mother would put all the clothes that needed mending in a basket. On mending day she would separate the clothes. The ones that needed buttons would be in one pile; the ones that needed stitching would be in another, and the socks would be in yet another. My mother had a large box of misc buttons. She would go through the buttons and find the ones that matched the closest to the ones that needed to be replaced.

The socks were the most interesting of her mending chores. The mending of socks was called 'darnng.' She would get a burned-out light bulb and put the sock over the bulb with hole that needed mending. The bulb was to hold the sock out so she see the hole and have it held in place. She would then get needle and thread and stitch the hole in the sock until the hole was all stitched over. I was always too lazy to do that. When one of our socks got a hole in it, I just threw the socks away and bought new ones. Not my mother. She grew up in the depression and you didn't throw anything away if you could fix it or eat it later. When my mother made a cake she was so frugal about getting every bit of the batter out that there was never any cake batter for us to lick.

Ironing Day

Ironing day was usually on Tuesday. We would take the sprinkled clothes from the plastic wrap and iron them. There was no such thing as permanent press. We had to iron little girl dresses that had lots of ruffles and pleats and was really a chore to iron. We even ironed bras and pillow cases. Everything was always very wrinkled. The starched clothes were especially hard to iron because they scortched really easy; so you had to be really careful.

My grandma used her coal stove to heat the iron. She did not have an electric iron. She would put a heavy metal iron on the stove and let it heat and when it was hot, she would iron her clothes. I really hated ironing day, especially with my two girls and all their dresses. Dryers and permanent press clothes have made a woman's work so much easier.

Back in the 'old days" you had a certain day to do your chores.

Monday: Wash Day

On wash day, you could expect the wash would consume your whole day. My grandma would roll out her wringer washing machine into the kitcen and fill it up using a rubber hose hooked to the sink. She had two other tubs sitting on wooden stools, one filled with 'bueing' as she called it, (blue powder was added to make clothes whiter) and the other with rinse water. She would also fill a large metal container with water and boil the water on her coal stove. Very dirty clothes such as my grandpa's work clothes from the mine would be boiled in that water. She would use a large stick to stir the clothes up. She would then start the washer and add homeade lye soap. She would wash the whites first and then continue to the colors washing each in the same wash water. The washer had a wringer attached and you would wring the clothes through the wringer to get the water out of them. More soap and and water would be added as needed.

My grandma would then prepare the starch. She would fill a large container with water and add powdered starch. The clothes that she starched were mainly dress shirts, skirts and dresses. She would put the clothes in the starch water until they were saturated with the water and starch.

My mother did her wash the same way until in the 1950's we finally got an automatic washer. My mother's first automatic had a suds saver. With the suds saver you could drain the washer out while you clothes spinned and then suck it back up again to do another batch. I myself only used a wringer washer for a short time when I was first married and their was one in the house we rented. I will be adding another entry on how we dried our clothes.

The other part of wash Day was drying the clothes. That could be very pleasant experience or it could be not-so-fun experience, depending on the weather.

We had a clothes line that went from one side of our backyard to the other. You would take the clothes outside in the clothes basket and hang them on the clothes line using wooden pins called clothes pins.

On a pleasant Spring, Fall or Summer day, it was a soothing experience to hang the clothes and watch them flowing in the breeze. I loved being outdoors hanging them. Winter however, was something else. You would run out and hang them as fast as you could, your hands so numb from the cold that you could hardly feel the clothes pins. You would let the clothes hang out there, sometimes as many as 2 or 3 days hoping they would get dry. When you went to retieve the clothes, they would be frozen stiff. Many a time I brought in sheets and other things that were so frozen they could stand on their own. I dried clothes this way until 1967 when I got my first clothes dryer.

After the clothes thawed, you would get pop bottle with a sprinkler on the top and fill it with water and sprinkle the clothes with water. Then you would take the sprinkled clothes and put them in a large plastic bag and let them sit overnight and get moist and ready for ironing day. And that's another day.

There was a time when I got so tired of trying to dry clothes in the cold wet Winter, that Alex strung a clothes line in the basement so I could dry our clothes there. That was much better than going out in the cold.

I do miss seeing the bright white sheets flowing in the breeze and the smell of the clothes that were dried outside. Sometimes, however, they would not smell so good. If someone had a bonfire or something, they would pick up that smell. Sometimes wasps would get in the clothes though and you had to be careful when taking them down. A wasp once got in one of my brother's Levi pant legs and when he put his pants on, he got stung.

More Memories

Old Days Fashion and Customs

In the Winter when I was in school, I had to wear long brown stockings to keep my legs warm. Girls were not allowed to wear pants to school. The long brown stockings had to be held up by a garter belt. The garter belt consisted of two shoulder straps that hooked on your shoulders and went down past your waist. On the ends of the straps were two elastic bands in which two garters on each side were placed. One garter for the front of the stocking and another for the back of the stocking. So four garters in all. I had to pull the socks up really tight and then hook them to the garters or they would wrinkle up. In Spring I got to wear white long stockings. The was exciting to me.

When I got to be a teenager, I got my first pair of nylons. You had to wear a garter belt with those too but the garter belt was more feminine and fit around the waist with the garters connected to it. The nylons had seams in them and you had to be very careful putting them on so the seams would be straight. Older women usually wore rayons. Rayons were thicker and more durable. But they were ugly. I don't know what it is with old ladies who are somewhat oveweight, but they always seemed to sit with their legs slightly open. I remember as a girl one old lady who visited often used to sit on our couch with her legs open and you could see the garters that hooked up her rayon stockings. Their rayons were always wrinkled and they wore old granny-type shoes. Sometimes they wore round elastic garters that only held up their stocking part of the way. Women in the old days seemed to be proud to be old. Anyone over 50 looked like they were closer to 80 and mainly because of the way they dressed and wore their hair.

My Grandma didn't like change and she continued to wear rayons or nylons with a garter belt even after pantyhose came out. My Mother had a hard time finding silk stockings for her and she had to make a garter belt because you could no longer buy them. She didn't like to wear pants either. They were for men. She always wore a full petticoat and a dress with an apron.

My Grandma didn't like clothes dryers or automatic washing machines either. She still hung her clothes up even if she had to string them over chairs and tables in the house. She only liked lye soap and didn't believe that modern day dertergent could get anything clean. I know lye soap was made with pig fat. My Mother used to render the lard from a pig in the oven. It was kind of like pork cracklings. It stunk awful when she was doing it. I really don't know how it is made but I know that after the lard is rendered you grind up with lye to make soap. It cleans really well but it is hard on clothes, It makes them wear out faster.

Memories of Childhood

Written From an Earlier Blog

Early Memories

Last night I was thinking of some of the earliest childhood memories I could think of. All of these memories took place when I was about two when we lived in an apartment in north Orem called Anderson's Basement. We had mirror in the hall. I remember my daddy lifting me up in front of the mirror. It was before church and he told me to look in the mirror and see the pretty little girl. I remember I had a wine-colored velvet jumper on.

Another early memory was some girls around 8 or 9 putting ants down my back so they would sting me. My mother came out took me in the house and I wished she would have told those girls off but she just took me away from them.

I remember also sitting at the kitchen table not wanting to eat my fried egg. My mother made me sit there most of the day but when she finally realized it was futile, she sat the egg on the floor for the cat. When I found out she was giving it to the cat, I got mad and ate it. It was awful. It was hard and cold.

I remember also that my mother had a beautiful rhinestone watch that my dad had got at an auction. It fell in the toilet and got flushed down. I remember my mom being so upset about that.

I must have a pretty good memory because I remember when I went to the toilet in those days, I can still remember calling to my mom to "come wipe my bum." I was toilet trained at age one according to my mother.

I remember being pushed in a wicker baby buggy to church and on the way I remember seeing a dead, yellow cat on the side of the road.

I remember a ceramic squrrel I used to take to church and wrap in a hanky and sing "Rock-a-Bye squirrel on the tree tops."

The people who owned Anderson's Basement had chickens. I tried to catch a rooster and he pecked me. I remember my dad putting iodine on it.

I remember playing with Barbara the Flashlight and with my buttons Sour Sour and Sally Ann.

These are my earlist memories.