Mom's Story Part 7

My Brothers and Sisters:

As I have said, I was the third child.  Mayola and Louise were older, and my brother, Roscoe was three years younger than I.  

Louise was the next in line.  She was two and a half years older that I, born April 23, 1916.  Her life was like a beautiful song.  She had many trials in her younger life; too hard for many of us to stand, but it only made her more unselfish and loving.  Her married life was hard, but she developed the most Christ-like personality I have ever known.  She married Royal Preston in the Mesa Temple, December 19, 1940 and was the mother of three children, Marsha Louise, Roger Lee, and William Bowker Preston.  Her married life was spent on a ranch in Bedford, Wyoming.  One of the sorrows of our later life was to loose dear Louise after a short, violent bout with brain cancer.  She died July 9, 1975.  She was one “without guile”.  I’m so glad she was my sister.  We were very close during our childhood; always it was Louise and Bessie.  We did everything together. 

Royal and Louise 1940

Preston Ranch

Marsha Preston

Bill and Roger Preston

Mom's Story Part 6

Mayola

My Brothers and Sisters:

As I have said, I was the third child.  Mayola and Louise were older, and my brother, Roscoe was three years younger than I.  

Mayola

Baby Mayola

Mayola was born October 13, 1912, the year Arizona was made a State.  Even though she was six years my senior, we have been the best of friends throughout our lives.  

I remember a few “scraps” we had as we were growing up, especially when I and my girl friends invaded the upstairs where the cities of rag-dolls which she and Marge Smith had made, were kept.  There were several families of dolls, which they each would “operate” making the dolls they used, the furniture, the clothes, and the cars, everything they needed.  The dollhouses were made from cardboard boxes and decorated with wallpaper, curtains etc.  Mother’s scrap drawer was always cleaned out.  What fun they had, but it was definitely “off limits” for Louise and I.  It would fill a book for me to tell all the beautiful incidents of our childhood growing up in such a fine home with a big sister such as she had always been.  But her life has been filled with beautiful experiences.  It is so natural that she would concentrate her efforts toward helping others.  She was trained in Social Work and received her Masters Degree in that field.  She has truly been a tower of strength to me and my family as well as to all who have had the privilege of coming under her influence.  As I write this, she is finishing up her seventeenth year as General Secretary and Treasurer of Relief Society of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in Salt Lake City.  What a contribution her life has been for Relief Society.

She married Edwin John Miltenberger known as “Red” to us, on July 12, 1937 in Salt Lake City.  She had met him while she was getting her Masters Degree at Tulane University in New Orleans.  It was a storybook romance.  After her marriage she made her home in New Orleans for many years.  Many of “Red’s” family are still living in that beautiful old Southern City.   Mayola and Red had no children. 

 

Happy Birthday March 17th to Grandma Virginia G Ericksen

17 March 1974
Snowflake Arizona
Grandma's 80th Birthday Party

Hanna Elizabeth Wallace Gilbert
Virginia's mother- died when Virginia was 5

Annie Wallace
Virginia's grandmother who raised her

Her father James Alexander Gilbert (top left)
and brother Frank (top right)
Virginia (lower left) and sister Kate (right)

I think Kate and Virginia are wearing the black hats

1st row on Right: Kate Gilbert
back row on Right: Virginia Gilbert

1st Lewiston Relief Society 1928

                                                                               

Fritz & Virginia and a baby
I don't know who? or when?

Graduation from Kinman U.

Spokane 1945

Christmas 1947

F E Ericksen Family
Back row:  Frank, Willis
Front row:  Frances,  Grandpa Fritz, Grandma Virginia

in Arizona 1960

Mother's Day May 1963
Isabel Holms - oldest Mother at Sunday School gets a photo with
Virginia and Fritz in Spokane Washington

Grandma's garden
in the backyard

Grandma's little white house in Snowflake
Beautiful iris

<click for 14 more pictures>

Grandma's 80th Birthday

Dad's Story Part 4

Frank and Willis

My brother Frank (full name Franklin Russell) was born in the LDS Hospital at Salt Lake City on March 19, 1920. One thing that happened to us in Salt Lake City, which proved to be providential, occurred during the 1918 influenza epidemic, which killed hundreds of people in the City. Somewhere I had contracted a light case of scarlet fever. I was hardly sick at all but my father got it from me. It hit him like a ton of bricks. He was very sick for about two weeks. During the time that we were sick we were quarantined. No one could leave the house, and no visitors were allowed inside the house. The groceries and milk were delivered to the house and left out on the porch where we would pick them up. The milkman would pour the milk from his containers into our milk bucket, in order to avoid contamination. This quarantine took place at the height of the influenza epidemic, and we feel that it was partly responsible for none of our family contacting the dreaded swine flu that killed so many people.

Another vivid memory I have of our days in Salt Lake City is the memory of getting the Sunday newspaper from the front porch, taking it into bed with Mother and Dad and listening to Dad read the comics to me. I have an indelible memory of the smell of the fresh printer’s ink on the paper. The comics I remember are “The Katsenjamer Kids”, “Happy Hooligan”, “Mutt and Jeff”, and “Felix the Cat”.

The movies had not yet become popular or very well developed when I was very young. But vaudeville shows were at their peak. Salt Lake City had a theater called Pantages. Mother used to take me to these vaudeville shows occasionally. I would laugh so hard at the comedian’s jokes that the audience got more kick out of watching me than they did from the show.

The Pantages Theater in Salt Lake City

Dad's Story Part 3

Willis Ericksen Age 3

In the fall of 1916, Dad had an opportunity to go to work for the Continental Oil Company in Salt Lake City, as an order clerk. I’m sure my folks were happy about this move. It was like moving back home, because both Mother’s sister Kate and her brother Frank were living in Salt Lake City. Dad’s sister Eva and her husband Sherm Allred also lived there. In fact, Dad was able to buy a little house right next door to Eva and Sherm which was located on Logan Ave., a little street between 4th and 5th East on 17th South. It was here that I have some of my earliest memories. In Salt Lake the only playmate I remember was my cousin, Elaine Allred who lived next door.

Our house had a basement with an outdoor entrance. The stairway opened on the outside of the house and was covered with a wooden door that had to be pulled up like a trap door in order to gain access to the cellar (as it was called). One day this door was left open, and I tumbled down the stairs into the cellar. More pleasant memories were our frequent visits to Liberty Park, which was not far from where we lived. This park had a wonderful merry-go-round, and a small zoo. I especially remember the seals.

Mt. Pleasant, Utah was only one hundred miles south of Salt Lake City. I remember going there to visit Grandma and Grandpa Ericksen. There the main attractions were the barnyard animals. Uncle Ralph raised pigeons and rabbits in addition to the usual cows pigs, horses etc. I remember also the delicious smells that emanated from Grandma Ericksen’s kitchen. She was an excellent cook. She used to make homemade sausage and headcheese, and was an expert at making Danish dumplings, and many other delicacies.

Mom's Story Part 5

Louise, Bessie, and Mayola Rogers abt 1920

Let me describe a Saturday at home when I was growing up: Saturday’s at our home was a beehive of activity. Each girl in the family was assigned a task. There was bread to make, beans which had been soaked the night before, to cook; butter to churn, and little fruit to cook to make a cobbler or pie. One girl’s job was to keep the stove full of wood so the food to be prepared could be kept cooking. The wood box had to be filled, and the sticks of wood and chips as they were poked into the little door on the front of the stove, crackled noisily as they caught fire. Thick cream, which Mother had collected during the week, was put on the warming oven an hour or so before churning time, so it could sour. The old wooden churn had been soaked and thoroughly cleaned before the sour cream was put into it. Then pound, pound, pound, as the dasher went up and down until the little chunks of butter appeared on the dasher handle and on to the lid. Occasionally, Grandma Rogers used to come and churn for Mother, and I remember seeing her use her forefinger to scrape the dasher handle. Often the finger was wiped off in her mouth.

Homemade bread was usually made on Saturday for the week. Yeast was made from potato water and sugar and a yeast “start”. The yeast “start” and the potato water were guarded carefully. Usually we would get the “start” from a neighbor. But it was good, oh, so good, and we savored the one taste of the tangy, fizzy liquid that we each received before it was put into the dread dough. The bread was mixed in our old Bread Mixer with the crank on the top of the lid; but of course, before we afforded that luxury we mixed our bread in a big dishpan and kneaded it on the table. Slap! Hit! Punch! Back and forth until the gluten was well established. Then it was molded into a neat ball to rise. It was all worth the effort as the smell of the hot bread permeated the house and the big loaves of bread were turned out onto a clean dishtowel on the table. When the beans were done they were big, plump and juicy with lots of good bean soup. I still remember how good those Saturday night suppers were with hot bean soup and homemade bread and butter; some good honey from Aunt Em’s bees was used as a spread for the bread. Good simple foods were our diet, with nothing extravagant, and I attribute the strong bodies we have all had during our lifetime to this good diet.