Enjoyments then and now - are they the same?

Question: What things do you enjoy doing today that you also enjoyed doing as a child?

I learned to read and then had a book in my hand often. I love(d) to read! Reading takes me to places that I would probably never go otherwise and allows me to me wonderful characters. When I finish a book I always feel very low because I have lost friends that I have spent a lot of time with and will miss. That is why I will often read the sequel, if there is one, to any book I read. I have found, though, that most sequels never meet my expectations.

I also love to create things. When I was very little, I was often found making mud pies. My mother was not happy with this endeavor. I loved working with that medium and would try to "bake" it so I could keep it. Mud does not harden well, though. It breaks when you try to move it. Now I don't use mud, but I do like to create. I like to see a finished project and see what I can do to create it in my own way. I purchase patterns for many things, but I seldom follow them.

I love to make up stories. I have always been a dreamer. I still think the stories in my head are better than anything you would see on TV. Perhaps someday I will write some down and see what others think.

I honestly don't think people change all that much in their make-up from when they were kids. They just change the way they approach things from then.

Food preferences. Seems an odd question.

Question: What are your food preferences? How did they come about?

That truly does seem like an odd question to come up during a journal entry. But there it was.

When you think about it, it is not so odd. Food does help make you what you are. So why not ask the question?

I love food. I use food to make me happy and to console me when I am down. We just came back from Mom's 90th birthday party celebration. When asked what we did, it was noted that it all was surrounded by food. We went here and ate this; afterwards we went there and had fresh water clams; we went to Anne's and had steak and so on. It was fun, but food was definitely at highlight at each event - except the quilt show we got to attend while we were there.

So food preferences. Growing up in southeastern Idaho, our food choices were not as great as my kids had it growing up in California, the bread bowl of the world. In Idaho we ate a LOT of potatoes. They were readily available and cheap and often free from local farmers. Vegetables consisted of green beans, peas, yellow squash (yech), corn on the cob and such. Fruit was mostly apples and pears and berries. My memories of dinners were some sort of meat, always a pot roast on Sunday afternoon. With the meat we had potatoes, never rice or noodles, and green beans. Occasionally bread would be served, but it was usually sliced, white bread. Lunch at home was usually sliced, white bread sandwiches of bologna or peanut butter and jelly. Breakfast was cereal during the week and bacon and eggs on weekend. Always. Snacks were limited. We were not allowed to have sodas at all. That was a treat to be saved for family get togethers only. Ice cream we had maybe, if we were lucky, once a week. Popcorn occasionally. No candy unless we saved and bought it ourselves. Cake or pie usually accompanied Sundays repast. That was pretty much it.

Let me tell you about our school lunches, though. This was in our elementary school at least. We had these wonderful ladies that came into our school kitchen, which was in a building right across from my first grade class and again my fifth grade class. They would come early in the morning and make bread, usually dinner rolls. They would serve turkeys with mashed potatoes and gravy or macaroni and cheese and jello or roast beef with mashed potatoes and gravy and on and on. I LOVED to eat at school. I always ate at school during my first eight years. I would savor every bite. I could not believe we got such good food, especially seeing what is served in todays school lunch rooms.

I was a slow eater. I was often the first one in the lunch room and always the last one out. I often missed the recess part of lunch because I was slowly eating, and enjoying, my lunch. The lunch ladies would come and sit with me to hurry me along. I often was late getting to class afterwards, too. I didn't care. I LOVED my lunch time. The one thing them hurrying me up did was I was encouraged to eat really fast, which I still do today, which is not good either.

You probably think I was fat eating meals like that. Well no I was not during that time. I am now and have been my entire adult life, but not then. Then I was skinny as could be. A friend told me one time that when I walked into class the first time, she thought she had never seen anyone so skinny. That was because when I wasn't eating, I was running, biking, skipping, whatever. Then I could eat like that. Now I still like to eat like that but I don't do the running, biking, skipping, so it stays with me.

In high school, french fries was the lunch I preferred. We had a little shop across from school at both Bonneville and Pocatello high schools. I never had enough money to buy a real lunch, but I always had enough to buy french fries and a soda. That is when the weight was a little harder to keep down. During my senior year, I thinned back down because I never ate lunch.

After graduating from high school from Cody Wyoming, I was working at Western Union. I had the opportunity to come to California for a job with them and took it. Food in California is another thing all together. Californian's have meat and potatoes, but they also have oodles of noodle dishes, vegetables and fruits that are relatively cheap and very fresh. I was introduced to such things as broccoli and brussel sprouts, asparagus and kiwi fruit. Yummy. Now I will try many new things and seldom eat just meat and potatoes.

My husband will eat anything, absolutely anything. One of my favorite stories about him is him eating quiche. I loved to try different recipes. I have a million or so cookbooks and use to spend a lot of time reading them and then trying the recipes I would mark to try in them. I love cheese and thought quiche sounded wonderful. I made it one night and loved it. It was just the two of us; I guess it was before we started having kids. Between us we ate half the quiche. When we were done, I said how wonderful I thought it was. He would usually agree, but he said nothing. So I pressed him on what he thought about it. He said, "Please, don't ever make that again." He hated it. But he ate it and ate more than one helping. He taught me through the years to try it. Because of that, I eat things now that at age 18 when I came to California I would have never attempted.

I love food. I love all kinds. I love all American food, but it is not my favorite. I love Italian for its yummy sauces and pastas. I love Chinese for its blend of veggies and meats. I love Thai for its veggies and heat. I love Indian food for the curries and spicing they do. There is an English pub here that I love to go have breakfast at. It is called the Fox and the Goose. We have a local Lebanese restaurant that I love and would go to every week if possible. It is the Maloofs restaurant. I love it all. When asked where I want to go eat, I usually say wherever because I can find something yummy anywhere - except McDonald's. I hate their food.

My childhood home(s)

Question: Tell about the house you lived in as a child. Do you remember the addresses or phone numbers?

Well I can start out first with the last question. I do not remember the phone numbers. I seldom remember my cell phone number that I have now. I don't know why but numbers and I are not good friends.

I have two homes that are dear to me from my childhood. My first was on South Water Street in Idaho Falls Idaho. I do not remember the number. I did not remember it was South Water until I Googled it. I remember we lived near a park and across from the park was our church that I was baptized in. I think if someone took me there, I could take you to the house [if it is still there, of course].

That house was a neat house. It was an older home. It only had two bedrooms and one bath. Of course since there were three kids, we all slept in the same room. From what I have been told, we all slept together in the same bed. I know that was problemmatic from my siblings. I was the youngest and Mom always placed me in the middle. I also was not totally potty trained and would occasionally wet the bed. Needless to say my brother and sister were not happy about that.

We had a porch on the front and just a stoop at the back door. We had a nice backyard with a garage that faced the alley way. Behind all that was the railroad tracks. I remember the train and how powerful it was when it went by. I loved to sit in the back and watch it go by. Dad was worried that I was too interested in the train and someone would always come into the backyard when a train was passing by to keep an eye on me. I don't think I would have ever left that yard to see it closer, but I did stop everything I was doing when one went by.

We lived there from the time I was two until we moved into our own home in Ammon when I was six.

Two strong memories from there were one when I stepped on a bee. Dad fixed a bowl of mud for me to stick my foot in to take out the poison. I sat on the back stoop with my foot it in for a long time. The family had their dinner while I sat back there. It made me sad that they did not wait for me, but I loved having my toes in the squishy mud.

The other memory was coming home one day and running up the front porch only to be greeted by my mom yelling to go to the back door. "Don't come in this way," she yelled. "Go around. Get away." I just stood there looking at her. Soon Dad came around the house carrying a broom and told me to get away. He ran up onto the porch. Then I saw my mom's concern. There was a bat on the front screen door. Dad knocked it down and stepped on it. To this day, I fear bats. My mom was really freaking out that day.

The other house I remember really well was our house in Ammon. The numbers of the house was 2330, but for some reason I cannot remember the street name. Odd, but that is how my memory works these days. Afterall that was in the 1950s.

To me it was a huge house on a huge piece of property. When Gil and I went back to see it thirty years later, I saw a small house one an average size property. Funny how kids visions of their past is different from reality. The house was only a two bedroom with a den that could be closed off into another bedroom. It also only had one bathroom. My brother got the den. Anne and I got the other bedroom. It did not have a dining room like our house on Water Street did, but it had a big kitchen with room for our dining table.

After a while Dad built out the basement to have two more bedrooms, a tv/rumpus room and a washroom and pantry. I got one of the bedrooms downstairs after that, as did Bob. Anne had the one upstairs and when Kris came along, they shared that room.

They planted a weeping willow to the north of the house. It was small. When we saw it again in later years, it was finally big. Big enough to swing from it by then.

We had a huge garden in the back, which we harvested enough vegetables to be canned for the winter months.

The rest was all grass. I mowed that grass often, so I know how big it really was. It was huge!

I loved that house.

We moved from there the summer before I entered seventh grade. We moved to San Diego for a year. We moved back in the spring of that school year. We stayed there until after my sophomore year in high school. Then we moved to Pocatello for my junior year. Moved to Idaho Falls for part of my senior year. Moved to Cody Wyoming for the second semester of my senior year. Not a lot of stability during those years. I wouldn't give up my experiences in each school, though. I guess it didn't hurt me any to move around so much.

I loved living in Ammon. It was a great, small community. It was very religious oriented. The church was a big part of all our lives. All the teachers in our school were Mormon. All the activities in the community were school and church combined activities. I loved it all.

My sisters, Anne and baby Kris, in the front room of our house in Ammon in 1960.

Position in family

Question: Were you the oldest, youngest or middle child?

I was the youngest child for ten years. There were three of us. Parents should never have just three children. My brother and sister were and always will be best of friends. I am just that other person that had to tag along with them, the one bringing up the rear, the one that Mom and Dad told the others to "keep an eye on."

I used to say a prayer daily that my mom would have another child. I used to pray for a sister, but then I got desperate and would pray just for a sibling. I wanted someone I could be best friends with, that I could hang out with.

Guess what prayers are answered. The year I turned ten my mom had a beautiful baby girl. Her name is Kristina. Wow! Did our world change. I loved her from the get-go. She was my answer to a prayer.

My mom was 36 years old. I don't think she liked having a baby when she was that old. All of a sudden her hair was too grey, she was too old, she didn't want people to think of her as a grandma to this child. Mom started dying her hair an auburn color to look younger. Anne, my oldest sister, seemed embarrased that Mom was pregnant "at her age." I am sure that did not help my mom's outlook. Other changes came that year but not because of the baby coming; they were on their way long before then. More later.

My brother, Bob, and Kristina.

With the birth of Kris, I was then a middle child, with youngest child tendencies. That means, at least to me, I still expected to be treated like the youngest, the cutest, the more darling. Well that was gone because there was this beautiful little baby that took the attention of us all.

She was the greatest, though. She was born with black, black hair. It all fell out and the new hair that replaced it was almost a white blond. She has maintained that blond hair even to this day some fifty years later.

The birth, as stated above, moved me into a middle child position. One of responsibility. One that had to help more around the house. One that got to take care of the baby once she was not so breakable. I grew up some during those early years. I learned what it was like to take care of another life. I was given responsibilities that I had never had before. It set me in good stead with the neighbors when I let them know I could baby sit. They knew I had experience. I started babysitting for others when I was eleven. I loved that as it gave me money for me to spend without asking.

When I was twelve, I started making my own clothes. Simple things at first. By the time I was in high school I made almost all my own clothes made using the money I made baby sitting.

Now the down side for Mom having a baby when her previous baby was 10 was that at 18, I moved away. I moved to California to follow a job that was offered to me. That left this baby that I helped take care of alone, with no siblings at home. She instantly became an oldest child with youngest child upbringing. I think that was hard on her. I have always wished I would have stayed around longer to help her through into her teens at least.

It is was it is.

My favorite aunt

Statement: Tell about your favorite aunt.

My favorite aunt? Hmmm. Let me think. This is hard because I love all my aunts for different reasons.

I had several on my dad's side, but I never really had a chance (or made one when I got older) to get to know them. Many I don't even remember meeting.

My mom's side there were five. Each very individual people. Let me tell you a little about each one.

Aunt Barbara was Uncle Jim's wife. She is wonderful. She is soft spoken and very loving. She was a farmer's wife, which was something I always wanted to be. She has had health issues off and on throughout her life, yet she was one of the strongest women I know. I never spent too much time at their house. When we were there it was just for a day. My main rememberances of Barbara were at family get togethers at Grandma's house, where there were loads of people. I just remember never hearing a cross word from her or any gossipy discussions. She always seemed perfect to me. She was beautiful, too.

Aunt Nola was Uncle Park's first wife. She was a little different from my other aunts; a little harder to get to know. They were not active in the church at the time she was in the family. I got to know Nola really well when in my junior year in high school, we were living in Pocatello and my mom decided to move back to Idaho Falls. I had a few months before school was out. I loved Pocatello High and did not want to leave. Uncle Park and Aunt Nola lived on the other side of Pocatello. Their kids went to the other high school there. They had a bedroom downstairs that was not being used and offered to house me for the rest of the school year. The only problem was getting to school. I drove but had no car. Uncle Park worked as a Safeway manager a few blocks from my high school. I would get up really early and go to work with him. I would do my homework in his office until it was time to go to school. Then I would walk to school. After school I would walk back to his store and stay until he got off. It made for a long day, but I had two set times I could work on my homework without interuption. I did really well that year because of it.

Staying at their house, I found that Nola was very funny. She had a real sense of humor. She was great with her kids, who were all about my age. She was a good cook, too. Like Mom, she worked outside the home. I was really thankful for her and Uncle Park allowing me to be part of their family for that semester.

Later Uncle Park married Colleen. She was a wonderful friend to Mom. They spent summers together and for a while lived near each other in St George Utah. She was so fond of Uncle Park and took good care of him. Where I never stayed with them or got to know her real well, I learned to love her from the stories my mom told me about her. She has such a warm and giving heart and I am thankful to know her.

Aunt Margene was my mom's sister. There were quite a few years between them. As adults they became very close. I loved Aunt Margene. She was witty and always ready with a helping thought. She was a great cook and seemed always to be working in her kitchen cooking, baking or canning or something along those lines. They lived in an old, two story home. The outside was covered with lava rock from the desert. I loved that house. To get upstairs in the loft where the kids slept, you had to go up a ladder. I was okay with that, but I hated to go back down. When I stayed there, I refused to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night. I was afraid I would fall down the ladder.

Her home was an exciting home to be in. Uncle David was a very funny man, who loved to tease all the kids and especially me. The cousin that I was closest to was Brenda, their oldest. I spent many a summer at their farm. It was fun because everyone, guest or not, had work to do. Uncle David would get us all up early to milk the cows. This was before milking machines. I would get maybe an inch of milk in the bucket by the time everyone else had a bucket full. I thought it was fun to try to milk, but I was slow and very inadequate in doing so. The worst part was when the cows pooped in the middle of trying to milk it or when they hit you with their tail.

They had a huge garden that we would help weed or harvest the ripe veggies. They had an old fashioned barn that had a barn loft. We would spend time up there. They always had hay in a round pile outside the barn. I loved jumping from the barn into the hay. Uncle David would holler at us for doing so because he was afraid there would be a pitch fork or something we would land on. Never happened, but I could understand his worries. It didn't stop me from jumping though.

Good memories at their house.

Aunt Margene was confined to a wheelchair as she got older. Don't think for a moment that stopped her from doing anything she wanted to do, though. She got more done in a wheelchair than I do with full use of my body. She was always an inspiration to me. Whenever I thought my life was hard, I thought of her and what she had to do just to get out of bed each day. She did it alone, for the most part. I could never feel sorry for myself with her as an inspiration.

Aunt Margaret I didn't get to know very well until I was a mother. They lived in Utah and then Michigan while Uncle Kent went to college. Then they moved to Arizona where he was a professor at one of the universities there. I only saw them at Grandma's house. Well there was one time Mom and I went to see them in Utah before they moived to Michigan. The only story I can remember about that trip was Aunt Margaret always had a pot of water boiling on the stove. I was helping feed her baby that was sitting in the high chair. I accidentally dropped the spoon I was using. I picked it up and went to the sink to wash it off. Aunt Margaret took it from me and dropped it in the boiling water and got me a new one to use. I always thought my mom was a cleanliness above all else person, but I learned Aunt Margaret went a step above her.

As I grew up and would see Aunt Margaret, she always commented on how beautiful my skin was. I always have had good skin. I never had blemishes. I was just lucky. She always made me feel beautiful. I always thought she was special because she had 9 kids and never complained, not ever. If I had 9 kids, I would have to have a lot of help to raise them. I was doing my best to raise 3.

When Gil and I went to see the spring training for baseball in the Phoenex area, Aunt Margaret and I had the opportunity to attend the temple together. That is a very bonding time. I think about that often when I think about attending the temple.

Aunt Rae was the baby of the family. She was talk and skinny compared to Mom and Aunt Margene. They were relatively short and not skinny. They were not fat, but not skinny. Aunt Rae had seven kids. Five boys and two girls. I used to baby sit for her when we lived in Pocatello. She had her hands full. Those boys were everywhere doing everything all at once.

When Aunt Rae gave birth to her last child, she had a stroke a few days later. She was given a special blessing that she would raise her kids, which she did. I loved listening to her afterwards because she had a hard time coming up with the right words. Mom told me I could not laugh, but it was funny as she would mean to say refrigerator and say spaghetti. We just would all learn to help her with her words. She went on to raise all those kids, was a Bishop's wife, and a Relief Society President even with her handicap, which I don't think she ever saw it as that. She was remarkable to me.

Hearing that about each of my aunts can give you an idea as to why I could never choose one that was my favorite. They all enriched my life. I am thankful for each of them and for the guidance and inspiration they were to me.

From left to right: Mom, Uncle Boyd, Aunt Rae, Uncle Park, Aunt Colleen, Uncle Jim, Aunt Barbara, Aunt Margaret, Aunt Margene in wheelchair and Grandma.

Smells of Childhood

Question:  What is a special smell you remember in your childhood?

I grew up in an almost completely (if not 100%) Mormon community. In the 1950s Moms, for the most part, stayed home and sewed and cooked and grew vegetable gardens and baked. Carol, my best friend, lived across the street from us. Her mom, Bernice, was so great. Once or twice a week she baked bread. During the warmer days when doors and windows were open, we could smell her bread as we walked around the corner coming home from school.

When I smelled that, I would run home, dump my books and run across the street. She always made an extra loaf just for us kids as we came home, and she always had fresh, real butter for us, too. Homemade bread is the best. But homemade bread just out of the oven with fresh butter is even better. If she would have let me, I could have and would have eaten that whole loaf.

I always wanted to be there first, so I could get the end slice with harder crust one one side. Yummy!

Thanks, Bernice.

Favorite games as a child

Question: Tell about your favorite games you played as a child.

I loved my older brother, Bob. I loved his friends. I loved everything they did. So I followed him around as much as I could. I played football in the backyard with him and his friends. Well until my dad stepped in and told me they were too rough with me and I couldn't play anymore. I think Bob was happy over that statement. I was sad.

I loved dolls. I carried at least one of my dolls with me whereever I went. I dressed them, changed them and dressed them again. I made dresses for them when I got old enough to sew by hand. I bathed them and fed them. I loved them. They were mine and they loved me unconditionally.

My mom hated cats. I loved them. Still do. There were a lot of cats in the neighborhood. I would just grab one of them and dress them in my doll's clothes. Then I would put them in my doll's buggy and try to keep them there as I walked down the street with my living "baby" in the carriage. It got so bad that if a cat saw me coming, they would run the other way.

My best friend, Carol, lived across the street. She and I were together a lot. We slept together often. Occasionally at my house but more often at hers. They had a big feather mattress in their basement. I loved sleeping on it. It was huge and we would get as many people as we could on that mattress and fall asleep. I always tried to get in the center so I could stay there all night. If you started on the side or at the end, you were usually pushed to the floor by morning.

We kids of the neighborhood loved to go doorbell ditching. I am sure most of you know what that is, but for those of you who don't, I will explain. You would, as a group, get near a house but not too near. Someone, usually the youngest, had to go ring the doorbell. Then run back to a hiding spot. Then we would watch as someone would come to the door and look for whoever rang the door bell. It was fun. I don't know why now that we thought it was fun, but it was.

All the houses had big vegetable gardens. We would go raid their gardens. I loved fresh carrots and would either grab some of those or the peas. Yummy. There were some houses we did not do that to. Like mine. If my dad would have caught us raiding our garden, we would have been punished. One of my favorite places to raid was Carol's garden. Her mom had a huge rhubarb plant. Sour! Yes. But really good with a little salt on it. She would get mad at us if she caught us. It was right outside her bedroom window, so she often would hear us and come after us. That was part of the fun, though.

During the summer we seldom slept in our own beds. If we didn't sleep over at someone elses houses, we slept outside. In fact we usually slept outside if we slept over at someone elses homes. We would do all these shenanigans during those nights. We wandered around our neightborhood well into the early hours. Then we would lie down and watch the stars. Oh what wonderful times those were.

We had a large irrigation ditch that ran behind our house. We would walk up the banks for some distance and then jump onto our inner tubes from cars or even big ones from tractors and ride down until we got to our house. We seldom went past our house because the ditch narrowed down and started running faster from that point on and there were several bridges and other hazards from that point on. What fun that was.

On my 8th Christmas, I got my first bike. That winter was a long one and had a lot of snow. I did not get to ride it until around my birthday in March. That was painful. I would see it every day, but couldn't do anything with it. My best friend, Carol, decided she would show me how to ride it since I had never ridden a bike by myself. She got to ride it before me. Ouch that was painful after waiting three months to get to use it. She was riding along just fine showing me how to do it. On the way back to our driveway, she got nervous that a car was approaching and ran into the curb and fell over. She broke her leg. But even worse (what a friend I was) was my bike fender was all bent up. I cried. Everyone thought it was because Carol had to go to the hospital and spend the night. No, it was because my new bike was damaged. My dad tried to straighten out the fender, but it never looked the same after that. Boo hoo.

My bike and I went everywhere together. The most fun thing I loved to do when I was all alone was to ride my bike into the hills. There was the community cemetery up there. It was covered with beautiful, big trees. It was high enough that you could look out over the community and see the church and the school and on past all that into Idaho Falls. It was so peaceful. I would ride up there and just sit on the grass and day dream. I would lie back and watch the clouds go by. I loved it. I was very careful and respectful of the gravesites. I would not walk on them or sit against the gravestones. I loved to read what was on them and who was buried there. Not that I knew many of them, but it was fun. I especially loved it if they listed what they died of or other pertinent information. I would then make up stories about their lives and deaths.

My childhood, as I look back, was idyllic. My kids and definitely my grandkids could not have a childhood like I did. It was free of boundaries and don'ts. I could leave the house first thing in the morning and not be expected back until dinner time. No one asked what I did or where I went. After dinner I could go back out and not be expected back until the sun went down. Mom always said once porch lights went on, I had to come home. There were no worries about strangers or weird people. Everyone knew one another and everyone knew who I belonged to. I am sure if I needed help I would have had several moms or dads help me out. I am also sure if I did anything wrong those same moms and dads would have let my parents know about it.

I was safe and secure and I lived in my own little world.