Three little girls miss Mother

We had lived in Colorado City for three years.  We would go to church regularly and participated in every event. Mother really enjoyed being in this little town.  But our father really loved to farm.  He had lost a farm in Montiview, Idaho and the pain was still fresh.  He found a farm out in Beryl Valley, Utah that needed a family.  So that next summer we all went out there to live and farm.  It was a broken down house and our mother made it our home.  There was a giant well that pumped water into a reservoir right in the backyard it was quite a hill that encircled the water. Mother warned us about going by it because we did not know how to swim. The water ran through canals throughout the farm.  We were growing alfalfa that summer and the older brothers were busy getting the fields watered.  Us little kids would stay by the house and play, help with the house and mother.  One day Lee decided to teach me how to ride a bike he said,"Helen get out here and I will have you ride down the hill.” He was the boss so I said, “Okay, but I don’t want to do this.”  He had taken the only bike that we had, a 10 speed bike  up to the top of the hill.  Lee showed me how to get on and he rode it down the hill.  He said,"its easy, just stay up and balance."   He helped me straddle the bike and gave me a push.  Well, needless to say I went down and fell at the bottom of the hill.  I started crying because now I had scraped hands and knees.  I did not ride a bike for a long while. 

 Most of the time us girls played dolls out under the trees by the side of the house and once a day we were allowed to watch T.V. Usually the show was "Leave it to Beaver" or "The Addams Family".  We had a great summer.
    That fall we all enrolled in the Colorado Elementary public school.  Everyone was in school and all was going good. Then Father got a job up in the Idaho potato fields.  He decided to take the older kids up to work.  Fara, Ruth and I would stay and continue school.  The only friends that my family trusted was the Blackmore’s.   Father had met the Blackmore Family in Canada before they moved to Colorado City.  They were a polygamist family.  Harold Blackmore had married two sisters Gwen and Florence Williams.  Mother took us aside and said,” Father and I have decided to have you go to school.  We want you to stay with the Blackmores for just a while.  The family must go to Idaho to harvest potatoes."   Father said, “I will come and see you every few weeks. Okay?” I said, “ Good we get to go to school and see our teachers.”  Father said, “yes you do.”  We had no idea what we were getting into.  Father took his little girls with our little suitcases over to their house.  We were going to to live with them for sometime.  I was in third grade, Fara was in second and Ruth was in first.  Aunt Florence and Gwen met us at the door and welcomed us.  Father walked us to the door, told us to be good then left.  Aunt Gwen let us stay in a room by the kitchen.  It had one large bed in it and a dresser.  Each of us had a drawer to place our clothes.  We didn’t want to take them out of the suitcase but we did.  Aunt Gwen would get us up early in the morning so we could get ready for school.  She had little aprons for us to put on while we did chores like sweep the floor and dust items.  Aunt Florence would make us a little stack of pancakes with syrup then we would get ready for school.  It was such a treat for us to have our own stack of pancakes.  Breakfast time was a happy time.

Aunt Florence was a third grade teacher so she would take us with her.  We would play quietly in her room before school.  Our community school was making lunch for the kids that year and it was soup.  All we brought from home was a slice of bread with butter.  At times the soup was good but at times it had such a bad taste that you could hardly get it down.  Our dear Aunt Florence would take home the leftovers from our school and then for supper many nights we would just warm up the soup.  At times it was very hard to get down the second time around especially when it was split pea or Vegetables with Thyme.  We were just little girls and it was a very hard time for us.  We would get so homesick that we would cry at night and Ruth would pee her pants so I would cover it up and not let the Aunts know.  One time at supper they had cauliflower /vegetables for supper.  We had never had it and could not get it down.  Ruth was very stubborn and would not eat it.  “We can not eat this supper.” I said, Aunt Florence replied, “ In our home, our policy is waste not want not, and we live by it.”  We just looked at them in fear.  Fara and I tried to swallow some just so they would not get mad at us. I do believe we sat at the table for two hours while they cleaned up the kitchen trying to get us to eat the food.  We were quietly crying, because we knew better than to make any noise.  Finally, they let us go to bed and that night we all put our arms around each other and tried to sleep, we really felt abandoned by our family.   It was about a month before our Father came to see us.  We were so glad to see him, but he was not our mother.  He left us once again with the news that in one month the family would be ready to come home.  It seemed like it would never end.  Aunt Gwen and Aunt Florence tried to help us out but when you only want your mother and family nothing can help.  At last, we were reunited with our mother.  She never let us out of her sight again at least not for more than a day.  I'm sure it was as hard on her as it was on us.  

Love Helen