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MY SCRIBBLINGS: FROM THE SUNNY SIDE OF THE ROCK (1905)

 Back to Main Page    Shoo Fly!   Summer In Salt Lake City 

Papa’s Last Year   Christmas, 1914 

Shoo Fly!

Vera, there’s a fly over here!"
    "Vera, I need a drink of water!"
    It was thrashing time. Workers were staying on our farm to help with the thrashing. It was meal time, and they were seated around long tables that had been set up in the yard behind our farm house. I was about five years old, and I had important work to do.
    I had a small leafy branch for shooing flies. Because we lived on a ranch and had horses and cattle, there were always plenty of flies around. When a fly became a nuisance to one of the workers eating his meal, he would call out: "Vera, come shoo this fly!" And I would run over and shoo it away.
    After awhile, my branch would get worn down, and I’d try to reach up in a nearby tree and get another one, but I couldn’t reach high enough. One of the men would see the trouble I was having, and he would come over and break off a new one for me.

Annie Hansen, seamstress. Click for full image.
    Shooing flies was only one of my jobs. My other job was seeing that the workers water glasses were kept filled. We kept two buckets filled with water near the tables, and when a worker needed a refill, I would hear him call: "Vera, I need some water!" And I would dip out a dipper full of water and go running off to fill his glass.
    Thrashing time was an exciting time of year. There was lots of work to be done on our farm. The men who owned the thrashing machine would come to help with this work. They would stay for about two weeks.
    My father would set the tables up in the yard for the meals. He set up two long tables, each the length of a sawed board. The tables were two boards wide, each held up by three saw horses. It seemed to me that there were just so many men there! They were local Boulder men who made their living at this time of year going from ranch to ranch helping with the thrashing.
    I remember my mother coming out to serve such big, big meals; her face covered with perspiration, and her hair falling down in her face. She was in the hot kitchen all day, cooking.
    I couldn’t believe how much the men ate! Mama cooked mashed potatoes, and meat, and carrots. She really put on a feast for them. And then she always served a dessert. She made wonderful pies and cakes. Sometimes she didn’t make cooked icing for the cakes, but instead she would pile whipped cream, sweetened with sugar and vanilla, on the cake. She would heap it on so thick that it spilled all down the sides. That was my favorite!
    During mealtime, I felt that I worked as hard and ran as fast as anybody. And when the men got through eating, and I got a chance to sit down and rest, I was tired and hungry. I was ready to sit down with my mother and eat!

The thrashing operation was interesting, itself.
    The thrashing machine stood in the center of a cleared area. Horses were harnessed, two abreast, to a long pole attached to the machine in the center. The horses walked round and round and round in a circle, providing power for the machine. I used to wonder if they didn’t get dizzy!
    The machine had a spout down to the bottom, and a big hopper up on top. There was a conveyer belt that carried the grain up to the hopper. On the side opposite the spout, there was a chute where the chaff would blow out and make a stack of chaff.
    The thrashing machine separated the grain seed from the chaff. We used some of the seed for next year’s livestock feed, and what we didn’t need ourselves, we sold. Our family used this money to buy supplies and farm equipment.
    We grew alfalfa for the cattle. We called the alfalfa seed "lucern seed." We grew oats for the horses, and wheat for the pigs. We didn’t raise wheat to make flour. We bought our flour in fifty pound sacks.
    As the different kinds of grain were fed up to the hopper, different sieves were used in the machine to separate the seed. The seed would pour from the spout at the bottom of the machine. My father would hold a large sack under the spout to catch the seed. We called them "seamless" sacks. They were made of heavy cotton, very tightly woven, so that the seed couldn’t seep out. The Alfalfa seed was especially very tiny.

I’d stand by my father to help him. When Papa had to put a new sack on, he’d hurry and take the full sack off, while putting an empty one on. The seed, of course, wouldn’t stop, but just kept coming. I would hold the new sack open until he had a chance to tie the old one. Sometimes, when the machine stopped for awhile, he would let me help him tie the full sacks.
    One year our Alfalfa crop failed. It started out looking as if we would have a wonderful crop. It rained the entire month of August, and the alfalfa was just beautiful. But it was too wet to cut. Then that crop bloomed and went to seed, and a whole new crop began growing. But it just kept on raining, and finally the entire crop fell down to the ground and rotted. The year was 1909, only the second year we were in Boulder. And that year we didn’t have any alfalfa seed to sell.
    I was too young to remember that year, but I remember Mama describing how beautiful the fields of alfalfa blossoms were, as they rippled in the breeze. She would hold up her arm to show how tall the alfalfa plants grew before the rain Mama often told us stories of our family’s early days in Boulder. Sometimes it is hard to know whether a memory is real or the result of hearing stories over and over as a child.
    My memories of mealtimes during thrashing time are real. I can still see the workers gathered in our yard for Mama’s wonderful meals. And I can still hear their voices calling, "Vera, can you shoo these flies away!"

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Summer In Salt Lake City

We were going to Salt Lake City! probably for the whole summer! Papa needed an operation because he had injured his kidneys chopping trees to make fence posts.
    Though the reason for the journey was solemn, we children were excited at the prospect of traveling so far from our little town of Boulder, Utah. First we traveled by horse and wagon to Richfield. Then we took the train to Salt Lake City. Our whole family made the trip because Mama needed to be with Papa to care for him during his recuperation, and we children were too small to be left in Boulder alone. Franklin, the oldest, must have been about ten years old. I would only have been about five.
    When we arrived in Salt Lake City, we stayed with Aunt Sena until we could find a place to live. Aunt Sena was Papa’s oldest sister. I remember Mama being embarrassed because we kids would spread the butter on our bread just as thick as thick. We’d always had lots of butter at home, but, at Aunt Sena’s, Mama would say, "Oh! not so much!" And Sena would say "Oh, that’s okay, that’s okay. We just don’t care much for butter." But Mama would watch Aunt Sena and her children, and they’d spread the butter just as thin as could be, and then they’d scrape it off!

Hansen Children during Salt Lake trip 1910. Clockwise from left: Vern, Omer, Franklin, Esther, George, Vera. Click for full image

    Papa spent the first few days with us because he had to wait until he could go into the hospital. Our family had wonderful adventures together during this time. One day we went to a place called Wandemere, which was an amusement park, with games and rides. The thing that sticks in my mind about Wandemere, was a game where you spun a wheel to win prizes. My prize was a little coin purse, a little bitty one, but I was so excited to win a prize!
    Another day we went on an open air streetcar out to Saltair. And that was something for us kids to go out to the Great Salt Lake, out to where the dance hall was. And to see people swimming in the lake! My dad wanted us to get in the water, but we were afraid. He said, "You can’t sink, you can’t sink!" That was something, you know, to think that you could go in the water and not sink. But I don’t think any of us went in.

We finally found a place to live in Salt Lake. It was down in a poor neighborhood. There was not even a lawn, or anything. And there were poor little houses there. Our house was only partially furnished, and we used dry goods boxes for chairs and a table. There was a big river next to where we lived and then quite a steep hill on the other side. On top of this hill were big houses, and we thought, "My, those must be rich people living up there!"
    Of course, we didn’t have much money, and so Papa decided that Franklin and Omer could sell newspapers to make some money. He bought them each a coin purse and gave them some change. They were to sell the newspapers on the street corners. Omer was younger, only about six, and he was standing quite close to where we lived. Franklin was a little further on down the street. Maybe he moved back and forth, I’m not sure. It was shortly after they started selling the papers, when another boy came up to Omer and said, "Omer, how many papers have you sold?" He said, "I haven’t sold any." The other boy said "Well, I’ve sold all of mine now, but I’ll tell you what, you let me take your purse, so I can make change for people, and your papers, and I will sell yours for you. And then I will bring your purse and your money back to you, and I’ll do that as a favor for you." Omer waited till dark. The boy never came back.
    That was the last day that Omer sold papers on the street. Omer was just a little boy. He didn’t know that there were people in the word that you couldn’t trust. He was a little boy from a small town where everyone’s word could be trusted.

My father finally went into the hospital, and my mother spent as much time with him as she could. Vern and I had to stay in the house with the baby, but the older boys had new friends in the neighborhood that they could run off and play with. These friends would frequently come around with things that they would try to sell, and my mother was very concerned that these boys were stealing. She was very concerned about this. She was worried that Franklin and Omer might get into trouble playing with these boys.
    One day Aunt Sena came to visit, and she gave Franklin a dollar and told him to go to the store and buy something for all of us. He went to the store–there was a little grocery store right close where we could buy our bread–and he came back with a great big bag of cherries. They were big, black, sweet cherries. All we’d ever had at home were little red sour pie cherries. We ate cherries till we were all sick at our stomachs! "More cherries, more cherries, more cherries!"
    One day Mama took us on the streetcar out to the City and County Building for a picnic in the park. I remember that when we got on the streetcar and bought our tickets the conductor said, "Are all those kids yours?" And Mama said, "Yes, they’re all mine, and I love every one of them!" When we got to the park, Mama explained to us that we mustn’t spill any crumbs. We were almost afraid to eat our sandwiches and cookies for fear we might drop a crumb and be arrested for littering!
    All of a sudden we heard a little bell ringing, and a voice calling, "Ice cream! Ice cream! Ice cream!" And my mother bought us a quart of ice cream! Wonder of wonders! All we’d ever seen was home-made white ice cream. This was in a brick, and it was chocolate and pink and white! Wonder of wonders for little kids! That was something I will never forget. And then we walked around the City and County Building and took in the sights of the big city.
    My father’s operation was a success. Mama spent as much time with him at the hospital as possible while he was there. During her visits my father spoke highly of a certain red-headed nurse at the hospital who was particularly kindly toward him. I think Mama was a little jealous of this nurse. She didn’t care for red-heads for a long time after this. That is until some of our dearest neighbors, Bert and Rose Peterson, had several red-headed children. Mama loved every one of those children dearly.

We finally returned to our home in Boulder. We had been gone all summer, and so we hadn’t been able to plant a crop of potatoes for the winter. We did, however, have a lot of apples in our orchard that fall, and as a result, that winter we practically lived on fried apples. Apples, apples, apples. Mama would fry apples every night for supper, and for other meals too, and we’d say, "Mama, is this fried potatoes?" "No, dear, this is fried apples." "Ooooh, no." Every night, it seemed like it was the same thing. "Mama, is this fried potatoes?" "No dear, just fried apples." And it seemed like that was the longest winter!
    We children felt pretty important when we got back to Boulder. We had been to Salt Lake City! We felt pretty smart! We had been to Saltair. We had been to Wandemere! We had ridden on the merry-go-round!

When the other kids went to town, they went to Escalante, but we –  we had been to Salt Lake City!

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