Winter Coups: A Memoir. . .
Virginia C. Parker

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GROWING UP: 1925–1938

I have few memories of living in Roosevelt, but many of living at Fort Duchesne. I spent the first year of my life in Syracuse, Utah where my father taught school. The next year he taught at Roosevelt High School. In 1925 the family began to migrate between the Uintah Basin at Fort Duchesne and Logan while he continued work toward his master’s degree. A U.S. Post Office was established and the old army post officially became Ft. Duchesne, Utah, familiarly referred to as "the Fort." For the next ten years we lived at the Fort in summer and in Logan during the school year.

The journey between Logan and the Fort was a long journey for a child, especially in a little Model T Ford. On one of these journeys, there was an epiphany moment when I discovered how to read.. I was not yet old enough to begin school, but I knew the alphabet. While driving through the endless mountains and desert, to pass time I recited the letters on the road signs we passed, s-l-o-w, s-t-o-p, winding road. "What do they say?" my mother asked.

Suddenly I knew. Slow. Stop. They were words I understood. I could read them! Using that technique, I went on to sound out words I discovered everywhere, names of towns, stores, buildings.

At Fort Duchesne, we had no radio, no television, no movies. There was a two-room school house, but no stores and no library. We lived in one of the twelve former barracks that had been divided into duplex apartments. My Father had remodeled one of them for our use, leaving part of it unfinished.

We had a small reading room, partitioned from the large kitchen. It had a single couch, book case, a table with a reading lamp and rocking chairs. I had a small oak rocking chair just like my Father’s. In the bookcase were a set of the Harvard Classics, a Webster’s unabridged and illustrated Dictionary, some church books, textbooks and a dog eared copy of The Real Mother Goose. I poured over the illustrations in the dictionary, accidentally acquiring a reading vocabulary as I studied the colored plates illustrating flags, coins, vehicles, plants and animals.

I began school at the two room Indian School at Ft. Duchesne. I was not yet six years old, but I took a reading test with Mr. Panter, the Principal, and he admitted me to the first grade. There were four grades in each room. I remember listening to older children read, while I rolled clay into long strings to coil into a little basket. We moved to Logan in late November, after my Father closed the farm.

In Logan, he rented a house on Center Street, located about half way between each of my grandmothers. For the next six years I would spend my summers at Ft. Duchesne and move back to Logan in time to begin school. I was enrolled in the Wilson School, located in the block behind my Grandfather’s house and barn. My Father did not buy a permanent home in Logan until after my brother Leroy and my sister Lorraine were born.

My brother John Leroy was born at Ft. Duchesne, June 17, 1926. Lorraine was born in Logan, March 28, 1930. Then he bought a new house and a new car, too.

WILSON SCHOOL

For a number of years prior to 1926, the Logan City grade schools held double session classes in the lower grades . A movement was begun in 1922 to provide additional class rooms. The Board of Education originally planned to provide an East and a West Junior High School and a new elementary school in the southeast part of the city known as the Island.

With the decision of the L.D. S. Church to discontinue the Brigham Young College and training school, the City acquired this property for a Senior High School. But the problem of housing elementary school children residing in the southeast part of the city still existed. Prior to building Wilson School, children from this area attended the Woodruff and Whittier schools, neither of which was conveniently located for small children residing on the island. The ground on which the Wilson school is now located was purchased in 1923, from Mr. A.G. Lundstrom and Mrs. Alice Smith, at a total cost of $3287. The building was erected in the summer of 1926 at a cost of $35, 300.

The Wilson building was ready for use in September 1926 with an enrollment of 274 pupils. Miss Abbie Hendricks.[later Mrs. Abbie Scholes, a neighbor] was Principal. In the fall of 1928 the faculty consisted of Miss Virginia Daniels as Principal and the following teachers, Miss Hazel Adams, Miss Angela Larson, Miss Myrtle Jacques, Miss Violet Jensen and Miss Elva Carlson, my father’s sister. Mr. Kennard was Custodian

During this year, swings, teeters and a sand pit were installed on the playground and the field laid off for baseball and other forms of outside activities. The school was developed with playground equipment, drinking fountains, lawn, shrubs, flowerbeds, etc. The library had 600 volumes of books on the shelves located in the school office.

I entered Wilson School as a first grader, in 1928. I had transferred from the two room school on the Indian reservation, in November. I was assigned to the afternoon session of the First Grade and my teacher was Myrtle Jacques. Other teachers that I remember were Grace Stewart, Violet Jensen and Virginia Daniels, all wonderful and inspiring teachers. Mr. Kennard, the custodian, was every child’s comforter and surrogate grandfather. His office was near the broom closet in the basement. Wilson School was the newest school in Logan, and we were very proud of it.

The playground with swings and teeters was not paved, part of it was grass. Big poplar trees grew in the corner of the ball field on the north side. Girls played hopscotch on the wide shallow steps and paved walk on the east side of the school building, where we drew the hopscotch court. On the west side, the boys carved circles for games of marbles in the dirt. Girls did not play marbles, boys did not play hopscotch but we all played ball games together.

Music, i.e. singing, was taught in every class. A music teacher served several schools. We had Halloween parties with a Spook Alley in the big central hallway, but we marched over to the Seventh Ward Church Amusement Hall for our Christmas Pageant because it had a proper stage with a curtain. It was painted by Professor Calvin Fletcher with a scene of the pioneer covered wagons and oxen crossing the plains. We braided a maypole in the spring and had graduation in the Seventh Ward Church Amusement Hall, with a dance afterward.

Other things I remember about my grammar school years were collecting birthday pennies for the LDS Church Primary Children’s Hospital. We collected dimes for the American Red Cross, for which we got a little round pin with a red cross on it. We also had a Banking day when we put our coins in a little brown envelope that was deposited in a saving’s account in the First National Bank. I had that account when I went to Stanford University and until I married..

I remember Grace Stewart, my second grade teacher. Our third grade teacher became ill with Diphtheria, so we had several substitutes for the rest of the year. I lost my spelling book that year and Daddy made me earn the money to pay for it. We had Georgia Roberts in the fourth grade and Violet Jensen in the fifth grade. My favorite teacher of all I ever had in school was Virginia Daniels, who was both the sixth grade teacher and the School Principal. She was also the only other person I knew named Virginia.

Throughout grammar school, I spent many of my English and spelling classes in the Office, to answer the telephone for Miss Daniels. The School Library was also located in the office and Miss Daniels appointed me school librarian. It was my duty to keep the books in order, to keep track of the borrowers cards and to collect overdue fines. I also read every book in the school library. All through grammar school, I spent many hours in the hall listening to slow readers, who needed practice and help with new words. Working in the school library was the beginning of my career as a librarian which I did all through school and pursued professionally, off and on for 67 years.

Before my father bought a house in Logan we stayed with grandfather Carlson until my father found a place to rent. Aunt Vera Carlson, also lived with Grandfather and Grandmother. She worked at the College as secretary to President E. G. Peterson. In fact, it seemed like Aunt Vera’s college for she had all the keys and seemed to be in charge of all the activities. I was the only girl among half a dozen grandchildren living in Logan, and Aunt Vera saw to it that her niece and nephews benefitted from all College activities available to children of the faculty. This was a distinct advantage among my peers.

The most memorable of these occasions was the summer that Anne Carroll Moore, the famous children’s librarian of the New York Public Library, came to teach at Summer School. She demonstrated the art of storytelling in the new children’s library, named in her honor. She needed a group of children to tell her stories to. I was chosen to be one of those children who sat in a circle, as she demonstrated the art of story telling. Afterwards, she left a library of several hundred books, that became the College curriculum library.

I recall only one real vacation my family took during the summer. It was the year the road from West Yellowstone was completed. We went with Uncle Carl’s family to tour Yellowstone National Park. Though I have visited it several times, nothing equals that first visit. We stayed in the magnificent Lodge at Old Faithful. We saw the Old Faithful geyser erupt several times, and encountered many bears along the roads and even in the camp grounds. We drove to Yellowstone Lake and up to Mammoth Hot Springs. We saw many buffalo and both grizzly and black bears along the way. My cousins and I took turns riding either in Uncle Carl’s car or ours. He gave each of us a small notebook in which we recorded the license plates of the many states and foreign countries that we saw in the park. Uncle Carl bought ice cream cones for the one who had the most names at the end of each day. It was a great trip.

When the Experimental Farm at Fort Duchesne closed, in 1935, my father was unemployed. He wanted very much to continue his work with alfalfa. He had discovered an important problem in growing alfalfa for seed at the farm in the Uintah Basin and he wanted to find a solution. He applied for a Fellowship and admission to the University of Wisconsin and was accepted, to begin in September1936. It was decided that he would leave the family in Logan while he worked toward his Ph D degree.

I would be twelve years old in November that year. Up until then, I had spent every summer at Ft. Duchesne and only the school years in Logan. Most of my friends were members of the Seventh Ward. We had all gone to the Wilson School, both were within three blocks of where we lived. Thus my familiar world was less than half a mile square. The idea of going to Jr. High School uptown was both exciting and a bit terrifying for it was a big school. There children from all four grammar schools came together in the seventh grade. I was assigned to a special class that included the best students from the four grammar schools in Logan, which separated me from the children in my neighborhood, except for Desmond Andersen. All through grammar school we had sat alphabetically–Andersen, Burns, Carlson, and Crookston. And we were together in class 7–W.

Before leaving for Wisconsin, my father arranged a loan from the family Corporation that owned the Carlson Furniture store in Preston, to make the mortgage payments on our home and pay a small stipend to Mother. A college student came to board and room with us. With help from Mother’s family who were all farmers and by using her many skills she would make do. No one had much money in 1936, but I never felt poor, or deprived. We had plenty to eat, a house with a furnace and pretty clothes.

In July, I had acute appendicitis and underwent surgery at the Cache Valley Hospital where Dad’s friend Dr. Leroy Hanson practiced. What I remember is my brother Leroy coming to visit me. He read stories from a book of tall tales about Paul Bunyan. He read the story of "Babe, the Blue Ox." And we laughed so hard I thought my stitches would break.

I returned home from the hospital and stayed in bed for three more weeks, because something was wrong with my feet. I could not stand or walk. We thought it was due to recuperating from surgery. There was an epidemic of polio in Logan that summer and we have since come to wonder if I had a mild case. At any rate, I gradually learned to walk again in time to begin school at the Junior High School in September. I was excused from gym classes, because I still could not run. I was sent to the Junior High library, where Miss Merrill put me to work shelving books. This again separated me from my peers.

My father left on the train for Wisconsin. We had retired the automobile and it was put up on blocks in the garage for the duration of Dad’s schooling. Leroy was moved to a bedroom in the basement and his room was rented to a college student. Helen Conrady was from Salt Lake City. She had a free pass on the Oregon Shortline Railroadand she went home nearly every weekend. She walked to and from the station on 4^th West to our house on 5^th East, which was more than a mile each way. She also climbed the hill to the college for classes, but so did all the students for there were no dormitories on campus. I remember very little about her, except that she was hooked on certain radio shows. We listened to them as a family. They included Amos and Andy, Myrt and Marge, and a couple of other "soap operas." However, mother preferred the Metropolitan Opera broadcast on Saturdays. We listened to the opera as we cleaned the house. We listened to the Salt Lake Tabernacle Choir as we got ready for Sunday School every Sunday.

Our Junior High School building was formerly a senior high school, so it had a number of amenities that were unusual for the time. They included an auditorium with stage, a music room, an art room, science laboratories, a kitchen and sewing room for teaching home economics, a gymnasium and a swimming pool. The playing fields were located across the road in a separate block.

I was assigned to class 7W with students from the other grammar schools in Logan. It was an accelerated class and it separated me from the girls in my neighborhood, so I had to make new friends. I remained friends with Claire Larson and Wanda Schow but we did not have classes together. I also began to take piano lessons.

I soon discovered that I had experienced many things that none of my classmates had. They did not know about petroglyphs. I had seen them carved on the red rock walls and large stones in the Uintah Basin. I knew about dinosaurs for I had played with dinosauer bones at Ft. Duchesne. I knew real Indians who wore eagle feather bonnets. They had never been to a Sun Dance, or a Bear Dance. Nor had they experienced anything like the annual U.B.I.C. with Indians dressed in full regalia for the parades and their ceremonial dances. Nor had they seen mountains like those we had crossed twice each year, with wild rivers, red rock canyons and the primitive forest in the High Uinta Mountains. They had never seen a river as big and wild as the Duchesne or Green River in spring flood. Nor did they know anyone like my Chinese friend Wong Sing. I soon learned not to talk about these things. However, I wanted to preserve those memories, so I eventually wrote a book about them. To preserve those experiences as part of our family history I wrote the book called Indian Summers. . .

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