Mom's Story 1942

Courtship and Marriage:

            The next year 1942 found me again in New Orleans with my sister, Mayola.  Red had a European tour of duty, which lasted three years, and of course, Mayola was very lonely.  I prayed so hard to know what was the right thing for me to do.  Mother visited me several times during this period of my life and she helped me make my decision to go and live with Mayola again, so I took the long train ride back to the South.  This proved to be the greatest blessing of my life for it was there that I met my beloved Willis (Bill, as I called him).  He was stationed in New Orleans teaching Radar for the Air Force. 

Mayola in New Orleans

            I had no trouble at all in securing a job as a Dietitian.  I was accepted immediately at Touro Infirmary, one of the large privately owned Jewish Hospitals in the City.  It was only three or four blocks from Mayola’s home, so I could walk to work.  New Orleans is such a beautiful city with the huge oak trees spanning across the streets and the clinging moss hanging from them.  Magnolia trees were everywhere.  It was truly a paradise.  Mayola and Red lived in the old, established part of the town and the homes were immense with wrought-iron railings around the balconies and porches.  It was beautiful. 

Bess

            New Orleans had many big bases there, both Naval and Air Force, and so the city was swarming with military men.  It was a hunter’s paradise for a young single woman.  Many faithful members of the Church attended our little Branch, and so I had a lovely time and never lacked for dates.  After Church on Sundays Mayola would often bring some of the young people to her home for lemonade and a songfest around the piano.

Social at Mayola's (check out Mom's shoes)

Bill was one who came.  He was standing off to the side, I remember, and we exchanged smiles and a wink.  (He claims I winked at him, but I deny that).  Whoever made that daring gesture is to be thanked eternally for I started dating that quiet, self assured, sergeant and found a treasure under the serene exterior.

One interesting detail is that I was still writing to Knight Kerr, and after finding out Bill had served on a French mission and knew Knight Kerr, I wrote and told Knight about Bill.  Of course, Knight shot back a letter, written in French, to Bill, telling him to take care of his girlfriend.  So Bill did.  Knight was then a high commissioned officer in the Artillery, and made a trip or so to New Orleans to see me before we finally broke off our relationship. 

"Bill" in uniform

            It would be too involved for me to explain all the feeling I had during this period of falling in love and our sweet courtship.  I had the assurance that he was the one I wanted, and the glamour of the Military officers that I was dating held no allure for me.  It was during the Christmas holidays that Bill asked me to marry him, and there was no hesitation on my part.  My prayers had been answered, and I had a sweet assurance he was the one.  His quiet, steadfast manner assured me our life together would be wonderful.  There was no need to meet his family nor he mine … we knew. 

            Bill was being transferred to San Antonio, Texas, Kelley Field, so wedding plans started immediately.  Mayola, realizing she would be left alone again decided to move to Phoenix.  She had a job waiting for her with the State Welfare Department, so that was no problem for her.  So, in February 1944, with gas rationing in full swing, we made the big move to Phoenix, Mayola doing all the driving.  I should mention that I had learned to drive during the year I was in New Orleans, but that is a story in and of itself.  After a few harrowing experiences she didn’t have much confidence in my driving ability.  We spent two or three weeks in Snowflake before going on to Phoenix. 

The day we left Snowflake for Phoenix, a Valentine’s Day, I received my ring.  I was thrilled beyond measure; I held out my left hand to everyone I met to show off the beautiful blue white diamond my Bill had selected for me.  My “oh’s” and “isn’t it beautiful?” left smiles on the faces of everyone who came in contact with me.  “Cloud Nine” was a reality for me during those weeks prior to my marriage. 

Dad's Story Part 16

Great Falls, Montana

-1929 – 1933-

There was a big Catholic School on Central Avenue a few blocks east of where we lived.  This school had a nice gymnasium.  There was a good scout troop (Troop #1) that was sponsored by the Catholic Church that held their scout meetings in this gym.  I don’t remember how it happened, but I became a member of this troop, and being a first class scout became patrol leader of the Flaming Arrow Patrol shortly after joining.  Our troop meetings always ended with a basketball game, and at this time in my life (before my eyesight started going bad) I was a pretty accurate shot. 

            My patrol specialized in semaphore signaling.  We practiced once a week during our patrol meetings, which were generally held, at my house.  Every member of our patrol became very proficient at the art of signaling.  Our troop also learned to play the harmonica and we had a harmonica band. 

            Every summer that we lived in Great Falls, I attended Scout Camp near Neihart, Montana, which is in the mountains about seventy miles southeast of Great Falls.  This was the Council Camp of the area.  RD Cook was the Council Scout Executive whose council office was in Great Falls.  I became very well acquainted with him during my years in Great Falls.  After attending camp one year, I remember him telling me how much I had grown and what a good leader I could be – building me up and then asking me if I would serve on the Junior Camp Staff the next year.  This I did for a couple of years.  The name of the camp was Camp Jefferson.  It was in a beautiful wooded area with a good spring for our water supply.  RD Cook always led an overnight hike to Big Baldy Mountain every camp period.  It was about fourteen miles from Camp headquarters.  We carried all of our food and camping equipment for a two-day hike.  We thought it was pretty rugged, but an experience never to be forgotten. 

            While serving on the camp staff my jobs were to teach a signaling class every day and to be in charge of the dishwashing detail.  We ate all of our meals together in a large mess hall.  Each patrol had a table in the mess hall.  Our head cook was an ex-boxer and a very good singer.  After each noonday meal one of the adult camp staff members taught us songs.  This is where I learned “The Forest Ranger” and many other old popular songs.  I have many fond memories of my experience at Camp Jefferson that are too numerous to mention here.  

Great Falls is the county seat of Cascade County.  There was a large county court house in which scout courts of honor and boards of review were held.  The courtroom made a very impressive place to hold courts of honor, and I remember attending many of them. 

  Lyrics to The Forest Ranger Song:
 The Lucky Ranger by P.S. Lovejoy (tune: Johnnie and Frankie)

 O once there was a ranger / Who always did his best
 He wore the Service uniform / And a badge upon his vest
 He had no interest / Save in his forest.

 He had his breakfast early / Two hours before daylight
 He hit the trail at sun-up / And kept it up till night
 And half the night / He'd read and write.

 He thought the world was skookum / But asked two things from life
That he should own a forest / And that he find a wife
For to marry / Was necessary.

 One day a tourist's daughter / Got lost out in the brush
The 'phoned in to the Ranger / And he was there with a rush
They needn't worry / For he would hurry.

 He tracked her down a canyon / And up a mountain side
And if he hadn't found her / She certainly would have died
But she was plucky / And that was lucky.

 For when the ranger saw her / A great big grizzly bear
Had run her up on a pile of rocks / And he was a-keeping her there
And now the Ranger / Was in great danger.

 But the Ranger ran right up / And pulled his forty-five
 And the air turned blue with the smoke of it / But the bear was still alive
The fighting / Was exciting.

The Ranger's guns were empty / So he pulled his Bowie knife
 For the bear was coming for him / And he had to save his life
 And for a fight / That was all right.

 The bear reached for the Ranger / Who had fainted with the shock
When the girl ran a hairpin down his ear / And beaned him with a rock
 And with the knife / She took his life.

 The Ranger's leg was broken / But they had to get outside
 So the girl she carried him fifteen miles / And all the way she cried
 For she was sad / And also glad.

 She nursed the ranger well / And then one moonlight night
 He said, "My dear, I love you / You certainly can fight
 You saved my life / Please be my wife."

Dad's Story Part 15

Willis Ericksen- High School Graduation

Great Falls, Montana

-1929 – 1933-

           I started my freshman year of High School in the old high school building near downtown Great Falls.  I remember enjoying Freshman English because it consisted of mainly reading English literature.  We read a lot about Roman and Greek mythology.  I also took algebra, which was very difficult for me.  The other classes I took that year have mostly faded from my memory.  

Great Falls High School

          During my sophomore year of high school I had the pleasure along with about 2,000 other students, of breaking in a brand new high school building, which was a marvelous structure.  It was a two-story brick building.  On the west side of the campus was a modern football stadium with grass turf and floodlights for night games.  This was the first high school in the state of Montana to have a lighted football field.  On the north end of the school building was the double gymnasium that had a large folding door that divided the area into two full size gyms for boys and girls PE classes.  With the doors open there was room on the north and south side for bleachers in addition to balcony seating for basketball games on a court that ran east and west.  On the far south end of the building was a beautiful auditorium that could seat over 2,000 people.  The stage and lighting equipment were the finest and most modern available.  There were footlights and overhead lights with banks or red, yellow and blue lights that were controlled by a huge switching and mixing panel where the different colored lights could be mixed to make all different colors of the rainbow.  This auditorium was as good as any theater in the State. 

            Another outstanding feature of this building was its mechanical arts department.  There was a fine mechanical drawing room, a wood working shop, a tin (or metal) shop, an electrical shop, a print shop and machine shop.  During my three years at the school I took three years of mechanical drawing, one year of electric shop, and one year of machine shop. 

            During our first year in Great Falls, I started taking
saxophone lessons from Mr. Richards who had a boy’s band that practiced at the YMCA.  At this time music and the band was just a sideline with Mr. Richards; his main job was with the Great Falls Tribune Newspaper.  I soon was good enough to play alto saxophone in the Great Falls Boys Band.  

        The music department had a large room for the band, and another large room for the orchestra.  The school hired Mr. Richards the first year the new building was opened, to direct the high school band.  So I played in the band the three years that I was there.  I started off on the alto sax, and the last year I played the school’s baritone sax.  The band played at all the football and basketball games, and each year we prepared for a big band concert that was held in the auditorium.  We worked on this all year long and it was really good.  The special numbers like the saxophone sextet I played were all memorized.  There were also instrumental solos, trios, duets, etc as well as the numbers played by the entire band.  There were no high school marching bands in those days like they have today.

12th Grade report card

            The other subject that I remember taking besides the one already mentioned were English, two years of French, history, physics, geometry, advanced algebra, and trigonometry.  I had to go to summer school after flunking my sophomore English composition class.

 

Christmas Memories

                               DAD' S  CHRISTMAS  MEMORY  FROM  GREAT FALLS

We lived in the new house on Central Avenue for a little more than a year.  Then we moved to an older and larger house on 3rd Avenue north across the street from a large hospital.  The house had a coal furnace in the basement and it was my job to carry out the ashes every day after school.  

 There was a big bay window on the west side of the house, with a window seat over the hot water radiator.  One Christmas evening we went for a ride to see the Christmas decorations and left a large three inch diameter candle burning in this window which was visible from the street that ran along the west side of the house.  The house was on a corner lot so there was a street on the south and west side of the house.  While we were gone the heat from the radiator caused the candle to tip over against the curtain and set it aflame.  Fortunately someone saw it immediately and called the fire department before too much damage occurred.  

 

                           MOM'S  CHILDHOOD  CHRISTMAS  MEMORIES

Christmases at our home were always special too, with dad often acting the part of Santa, in the old red velvet pants and coat and a cotton-batting beard.  The house was always decorated with the red and green garlands from one corner of the room to the other.  

 

 

Dad's Story Part 14

Great Falls, Montana

-1929 – 1933-

            Great Falls, Montana is a little “jewel” of a city in north central Montana on the south bank of the Missouri River.  When we lived there its population was about 30,000.  The city got its name from a large falls in the river east of the city.  A large hydroelectric generating plant at the falls provided an abundance of cheap electricity for the city and for a large copper refinery across the river from Great Falls at Black Eagle.  The refinery belonged to the Anaconda Copper Company.  Besides producing near pure copper ingots by the electrolytic process.  They also made copper wire. 

            Great Falls’ domestic water supply came from a large spring just east of the city near the bank of the river, called Giant Springs.  The flow of this spring was constant the year around, and had a flow of thousands of gallons per hour.  There was a fish hatchery at the springs. 

            The countryside in this part of Montana is very barren of trees.  The low rolling hillsides are covered with grass and wild flowers in the spring and early summer, but there are no trees or brush except along the banks of the river.   

            The first house we lived in was on about 15th East on Central Avenue.  It was a new house.  I believe we were its first tenants.  About all I remember of this house was that it had a furnace that was controlled with a thermostat, which was a very new invention at the time.  I also remember that there were no lawns or landscaping around the house, and the following spring Dad worked very hard to get a lawn started around the house. 

 a new invention:the thermostat

            We learned during our first winter in Montana what 40 degrees below zero temperatures are like, and that the wind blows very hard and drifts the snow into ten to fifteen foot drifts.  We soon learned the necessity of keeping ears, fingers, and toes well covered or they would freeze in a very short time.  And when they did become frost bitten the thawing out process was very painful. 

 

Dad's Story Part 13

Graham-Paige automobile

          My grandfather, James A. Gilbert stayed with us a part of the time that we lived in Spokane.  Grandfather Erick Henry Ericksen died in December of 1929, and the summer after his passing away, grandmother Ericksen and Jerry came to Spokane to visit us.  Shortly before their visit Dad had bought a new car, a four door Graham-Paige.  He bought it from a car dealer in Opportunity, Washington, which is a suburb east of Spokane.  Dad was very proud of this car, and it was the finest one we ever had.  Dad took a two-week vacation during the summer of 1929, and to help “break-in” the new car we decided to take grandma and Jerry back to Mt. Pleasant.  The car was pretty well loaded with three adults, two teenage boys, and my brother Frank, who was nine years old, and Frances who was one and a half years old.  Everything went along beautifully until we got nearly to the Utah border.  Then just a few miles north of Preston, Idaho, as we were going up a slight grade on a very twisty road – a big green car coming down the hill and around a blind curve suddenly appeared on our side of the road.  In order to avoid a head-on collision, Dad quickly swerved off the road and into the ditch.  The car tipped over on its right side, but since we were not going very fast at the time, the car was not too seriously damaged.

 Mother and I were the only casualties.  We were both sitting on the right side of the car.  I received a couple of deep cuts on my left elbow and third finger.  Mother’s right leg and hip were injured, but not broken.  Several people stopped to help us and rendered first aid to Mother and I.  The car that forced us off the road, did not stop, but sped on down the road.  The car was put back up on its wheels, and we were able to drive on into Preston, Idaho where a doctor sewed up my cuts.  I’m sure the Lord was protecting us during this mishap.  If Dad had not reacted so quickly, we could have all been killed.     

            While we were in Utah, Uncle Ralph Ericksen, who played in a dance band in Salt Lake, helped us pick out a used alto saxophone.  My first formal music training had begun in Lewiston, Idaho, where I had been exposed to piano lessons for about two years.  For some reason or another I did not enjoy practicing the piano and as a result my progress on the piano scarcely got off the ground.  I remember spending a lot of time trying to convince my Mother that I should be spared the agony of continuing my piano lessons.  She finally gave in after I compared my piano lessons to the drudgery of scrubbing clothes on the washboard, which she was doing at the time I thought of that argument.

       Another musical adventure that I had while we lived in Lewiston was with a Hawaiian steel guitar that we ordered from a magazine advertisement.  The “deal” included self-instruction lessons, which I worked at diligently for several weeks.  My interest in this so waned as I was not destined to be another Alvino Ray.  

Shortly after returning from our trip to Mt. Pleasant, Utah with Grandma Ericksen and Jerry, Dad was transferred from Spokane to Great Falls, Montana.  There he was promoted to assistant division manager of the Continental Oil Company.  This was in the late summer of 1929. 

 

Mom's Story Part 16

ANDREW LOCY ROGERS FAMILY

In the picture:  Left to right:  seated - Clara Gleason, Thora, Andrew Locy, Clara

standing - Chase, Alvirus, Leroy, Marion, and Andrew.

**A quote from Biography of Marion Rogers by His Wife Leonora S. Rogers pg.89**
"August 1919 marked the beginning of a new venture for four Rogers boys (Chase, Marion Alvirus and Leroy).  They formed a company known as Rogers Brothers Road Contracting Company with Chase as manager.....  (For many years) they built many roads in Arizona."

Horse team with Fresno scraper

During this time (early 1930s) my Dad was just realizing that he could no longer compete with the new wonderful road-building equipment coming on the market with the immense tractors and dirt movers, so seeing the handwriting on the wall, decided to get out of the business of road building with horse teams and fresno scrapers.  However, his brothers remained and the next year or so took heavy losses on some of their contracts.  They mortgaged their homes and land to pay the debts, but Dad and Mother picked up the mortgages from the Bank and paid them off through their hard work and saving habits.  Later, when Dad and Mother were on their mission and the lands were finally paid for, Dad returned the deeds to the homes and lands back to his brothers with no interest or payments.  It was a magnanimous gift of love.  This gift was given just a few months before Uncle Bige’s death.

            In 1932 it was the height of the depression and there was very little money available.  Dad was faced with the problem of sending children to college.  This was one of his dreams to give each of his children a college education – something he always longed to have.  So, in his creativity he started a milk route into Winslow, a thriving railroad town sixty miles west of Snowflake.  He used his family car at first for a truck, taking a few cases of milk and fresh garden produce but gradually the business grew to a point that a company was formed to take milk into both Holbrook and Winslow and the same truck hauled milk to both places.  He bought the milk from local farmers who had formed a cooperative organization. What an effort this business was for my father, getting up at three or four o’clock in the morning to get to Winslow then running madly for several hours delivering the milk to his customers.  After a day like this he would drive home just to pitch into the never-ending tasks of getting ready for the next day’s run.  Rain or snow, heat of summer, Sundays and holidays, the milk had to go.  Mayola and Scully were good to help him as long as they were home.  Mayola drove the truck and Scully ran the milk.  Often I was pressed into service to run the milk.  I remember how tired I was when the milk was delivered and I climbed into the truck to head for home.  Dad had several accidents during the sixteen years of service (from age forty-five to sixty).  Some were too close for comfort, but the Lord protected him and he prospered. 

Maeser Bldg at BYU

            Mayola started BYU in 1931.  I remember Mother sending her the huge amount of $15.00 per month.  On that allowance, it left no surpluses for clothing.  I suppose it was bleak at times.  However, one of Dad’s customers was Mr. Greaves, who owned a shoe store and paid Dad in shoes for the family.  They weren’t what we liked particularly but at least we were shod.  The pretty shoes seemed as though were always a half size too small for me, so I suffered a lot with sore feet and corns.  I’m sure my pride entered into the picture too, for I had big feet.