Nadeen Smith Interview

              Dr. Radke- Moss Women’s Oral History Collection
Nadeen Smith
By Nadeen Smith
November 4, 2004
Box 1 Folder 28
Oral Interview conducted by Maren Miyasaki
Transcript copied by Dawn Kim
Brigham Young University- Idaho
2
This is a preliminary introduction for Nadeen Smith. She has lived in Rigby, Idaho most her life and has a background and interest in Idaho history.
Maren Miyasaki: Alright, this is Maren Miyasaki. I am interviewing Nadeen Smith today, November 4, 2004. Alright, the first question I would like to ask is where did your family originate before they came to America?
Nadeen Smith: England, Ireland, France, and I think Germany, I’m not sure.
MM: Did they first settle in, in the Idaho area, or did they come from some other area?
NS: They were early members of the Church, so, uh… they came from New York and Pennsylvania. They came… well, of course, they came with the Saints west to Utah.
MM: When, when did they move into the Idaho area?
NS: my great grandfather moved here in… it’d be 18 [ 1918]. He first came in 1882 alone, a, with two other families.
MM: So you’ve lived here a long time?
NS: Yes, the family all our lives.
MM: Did you move? Have you lived in Rigby all your life or have you lived somewhere else?
NS: Myself, I was born and raised here, yes. Oh, for a year and a half, I lived in Idaho Falls when I was first married, and then we moved back.
MM: When were you born?
NS: Uh, July of 1929.
MM: What about your family? How many kids did you have in your family growing up?
NS: Uh, you mean siblings?
MM: Yes.
NS: Uh, I have three sisters so.
MM: No brothers?
NS: No brothers.
MM: Wish I had that. Uh, what are some traditions you remember growing up?
NS: Traditions, well, my, my parents, uh, loved to go up to Island Park and Yellowstone Park. And it has carried on with, a, my family. So we go up there at least once a year, or tried to, until 3
it has become a real tradition. Another tradition is that, uh, after I was married, we dry farmed east of Idaho Falls, and we had deeded ground up there that my father- in- law had homesteaded. And there was a mountain there that we called, that we called Pine Mountain, and we always went up to get our own Christmas tree. And, a, if there was a lot of snow, my husband would carry the youngest on his shoulders, and uh, the rest of us would walk, drag the Christmas tree out. And then when we got, a, snowmobiles, became the fashion, we had a snowmobile, and we’d had a sleigh behind it. We’d pull the kids and a hot lunch on the sleigh, and we go up and cut our own Christmas tree and bring it out that way. That became a tradition. I would always make a big pot of chili or hot soup, and we go up and eat it out underneath a special tree, a pine tree that we always at under. There was Idaho Pioneer Day, which is the 15th of July. We’d have a real special, big carnival and a parade. The floats were all done by the church wards. We’d play Chinese checkers and pop popcorn. Reading was something we did a lot. In the winter time, we’d make candy. My mother was a real, good cook, and we made candy but not cookies. And we visited relatives.
MM: Fun. Do you have any other holiday traditions that you can think of?
NS: Holiday… well, we always had a green Christmas tree; we never had an artificial tree. Uh, well, when it comes right down to traditions, the way we did things a lot was tradition. Uh, my father was quite a tease, areal fun person. And uh, we as kids always played games outside, and a, he would play “ No bears out tonight,” and he’d be the bear. He’d come and growl at us and try to catch us, and that was a real tradition that I will always remember.
MM: That’s fun. Did you do anything special on Sundays? Did you have any Sunday traditions?
NS: My parents were inactive; they were both members of the church, but they were both inactive.
MM: Okay. Did you have neighbors close by?
NS: Yes, uh, yes we did. Well, as a teenager, I was especially close to, to one neighbor. One girl my age, and that was another neighbor that we always got together. And we would play Halloween pranks and that type of thing. We had helpful neighbors, and we also had rough and really course neighbors. I think there was one man who we left one time, and he stole my father’s violin and our banks— we had banks you know. We found our empty banks, but we never got back my father’s violin.
MM: Fun. Did you ever move as a child or did you always live in Rigby?
NS: Well, a, I was born at my grandmother’s home. Uh, she died in December, and my mother went into town to take care of her younger brother and sister and, also, her grandfather that lived next door, so she moved right into my grandfather’s home, and took care of them. And that’s the period of time that I was born. Then mother and daddy— you see, this was Depression years as I 4
was growing up— moved several times while I was young until I was eight years old. When I was eight years old, they were able to get a farm, and we moved out there, and that’s where I was raised.
MM: Okay. Do you have any other memories of growing up in this area that you really enjoyed as child?
NS: Uh, I did a lot of bicycling with this girl friend that was a neighbor. Oh, we used to ride all over, and, also, we used to do a lot of roller skating at that period of time, and we went to movies. We had two show houses, movie theaters in Rigby, and so we always went to Saturday, and a movie and sometimes during the week.
MM: Fun; any good movies that you remember?
NS: Uh, no. I remember some wonderful books that I read, but they were all the old movies that they are playing now on TV on the TNT channel. They play the Turner Classic; I should say is the one that they are playing some of those old movies. They’re a lot different than a lot different than the movies that t hey make today. We talked about my earliest memories. I remember that my father was a farmer and a horseman. He had a black stallion that he told us all to stay away from. When I was three or four, mother always helped with the chores, and I guess, I followed her out. I got in and that black stallion backed me into a corner and knocked me down. It kicked my back, and I was badly bruised. Also, I remember having tin dishes. You probably don’t remember those. We had a canal, and we weren’t supposed to play in the canal. But I would throw dishes and float them down to my sister. One time, I was playing by myself and my dad saw me. He told me to stop, and I said “ I don’t have to mind you, you’re not my boss.” He got real mad and started dumping me in the canal. My mom said she was afraid he would drown me. And he would ask me who is boss, so I must have finally said he was.
MM: What do you remember about elementary school?
NS: Well, Rigby had two story brick building that housed the first through fourth grade, and I went to school there. And there was an incident at that school when I was only three or four years old. And my older sister wanted to take me to school with her on Valentine’s Day because they… you know, that’s a special day. I guess, maybe, it still is to the young kids but mother and daddy did consent for me to go, and it was snowy; there was a lot of snow on the ground, and it was real cold. And when we got there, this building was heated by these old iron steam radiators. I don’t know if you know what they’re like or not, but they get really hot. And when we got in off the bus, or wagon, it was a school wagon then. Of course, we were cold, and some of the older girls, my sister’s age, and a little older, oh she said “ come over here, and let’s get her warm.” They boosted me up and set me on that hot radiator with benefit of anything underneath me.
MM: Oh! 5
NS: And I burnt my legs and buttocks real bad, and I couldn’t sit still when school started. My sister, she tried to keep me quiet but, of course, I was whimpering and crying. And the teacher, she says that she’ll have to keep me quiet or she’d have to take me home or something. And, of course, we lived out in the country. And, anyway, I guess I continued. My sister kept trying to quiet me down, and anyway, I had an aunt and uncle that lived in Rigby, on the northeast side of town. And so my sister took me over there, we waded through an empty lot, through weeds and snow up to the middle of the calves of our legs, and went over there. And my uncle got in his little Flibber ( Ford pickup), his old car, and went out and got my mother. And I spent several weeks just lying on my stomach; I couldn’t sit down at all, but that was as experience in that school. Uh, they had an old school bell, a lot of the old schools had bells in the towers, and this did and I remember that, that was just outside of the school’s principals’ room, he taught school in fourth grade. And I remember ringing that bell that was quite a privilege to get to ring that bell. And then, they built the present, well, it isn’t a school now. Well, it was the Kinghorn building. It was built by the WPA ( Welfare Program Agency), and they were building that, and I remember out on the playground of this old two story building seeing them start construction on that building. And when I was in the fifth grade, we went to school over in what was then the junior high school; that school burned down a number of years ago. There was, always, bullies in elementary school. One bully loved to pick on me. He was about my sister’s age, and one day, he was teasing me. And my sister knocked him down. She said no one was going to tease her sister. And I was in that building for one year, and then, of course, I went to school another year in the new school building, the new building that was built by the WPA, and that was called the Kinghorn building for years; it was named after the principle of the elementary school. And then I went into the junior high school for the seventh, eighth, and my freshmen year in high school. That was just a one story building. And then, of course, the old high school, that building was torn down when they built, what is today the junior high school, there on West Main Street.
MM: They built a new high school?
NS: Yes, not the high school today, the high school today is out here, a mile west of town.
MM: Okay.
NS: never when I was growing up did I ever dream there would be a high school across the street from where we used to mud crawl in the ditch and try to ski down that little slope.
MM: Fun! Did you have a favorite teacher when you were growing up?
NS: I certainly did. Ah, in the… I really thank my first grade teacher, Elva Tall for what she taught me in phonics. She was strict. Oh, I really got to love her. And then me and another girl friend that was named Nadeen used to visit her all the time, you know, during recess or in between noon hour or something. We’d always go over and visit with her. She was a lovely teacher, and we became friends through the years. It was only, not too many years ago, I took 6
her with Blackfoot with me to visit with some of her relatives, and I went out to visit some of my relatives, and we had quite a visit. Ah, she really was a favorite teacher. And then, there’s a teacher I remember in the seventh grade, I don’t know if it was geography or a social studies class that the subject o evolution was brought up. And this really frustrated me, and I went to him and I asked him some questions, and he was an LDS member of the church. And I tried to explain to him how I felt, I felt that we were children of our Heavenly Father, and he really took the time to explain to me and tell me that he understood how I felt and explained the difference between evolution and what we believe as children of our Heavenly Father. I always appreciated him. I had a teacher who became my brother- in- law. I remember ball games and the places that were the kid’s hang out was Reed’s Drug Store, Nickel Inn, and Dill Pickle Inn.
MM: What were some of your hobbies while you were in high school or just growing up going through school?
NS: Hobbies? Well, I followed my mother tradition of doing a lot of croqueting and handwork but as far as activities was concerned, we did a lot of roller skating and going to the movies, bicycle riding; this type of thing. I was always in drama classes, and I was the student director for our plays.
MM: Fun.
NS: We didn’t have cars to run around in like they do today. Being young, I remember going to school in a school wagon, horse drawn… and in the winter time, they would put straw in the bottom to keep our feet warm. And we’d cuddle up in quilts or whatever. We did that as a family, too. My father did that whenever we went anywhere. In the winter time, they would take the wagon box off and put it on the sleigh runners. They would just take the actual wagon box off and just set it over on the runners of the sleigh. We’d go do all our shopping in the sleigh, of course, that was horse drawn.
MM: Do you remember any interesting vacations or outings you took with your family or friends?
NS: Well, I had an aunt in Toole, Utah, that’s just outside of Salt Lake a few miles. We used to go down there, and that was a real choice thing to d o. She was fun, she always treated us real special, and it was really something to go down to Salt Lake and visit her. We go down, and we could swim in the Salt Lake. That’s when they had all the beaches down there and, also, we went to Saltaire that was a big recreation, or not recreation but activity place. You know, they’d have all kinds of fun things. It really was a Fun House. And we’d go all kind of things in there, you know, just walk through rotating barrels and slide down the slide on sacks, and all kind of things. It was just a Fun House is what it was, and that was always special. And, of course, I mentioned going up to Island Park. One year, I think just the fourth year seminary got to go to Salt Lake, to Temple Square and Bingham Copper mind places of interest. We even went in a Catholic Cathedral, and we had to put scarves on our heads. 7
MM: Fun. Did you go to church as a child?
NS: I remember going to Primary just a little bit and to Sunday school. We had neighbors that were active, and I never ask my mother if they were the ones that took me and my older sister to church, but I remember this one lady, Sister Doman as a Primary, a Sunday school teacher. We sat on little tiny chairs and wooden chairs— some of them were red but they were wooden— and she had the most beautiful white hair. And she’s the most lovable lady, and I think, maybe, she took us. And then when I got older, we lived outside of town, and we had to walk if we went most places. And my father, of course, was working. And I rode my bicycle into Primary a lot when I was older, through the older classes. Yes, we did. There was also two others that I remember really made a difference in my life. There was the stake patriarch, Walter A. Clement, who was the patriarch, and an older lady who taught the teenage girls choir in school Geneva Snow. She was also our chorister in relief society. She really touched my life. I couldn’t sing that well, but she had me sing in a sexter and encouraged me to sing in choir and relief society. She also helped me with Daughters of the Utah Pioneers, DUP.
MM: Do you remember ever having a calling at church?
NS: Yes, as a teenager, I was secretary of the Sunday school at 16 or 17, and that was choice experience. At 18, I was Beehive leader and drama director. And then, also, before I was married, I taught the Beehive class, and I went to Mutual, and I received my Golden Gleaner Award. That’s, I think, probably the equivalent of the Young Womanhood Award, today.
MM: Fun. Did you attend college?
NS: No. I have taken some adult classes from the “ Y” ( Brigham Young University Provo), but I wasn’t a student at the “ Y”, no. You know, Maren, I was afraid I wasn’t smart enough. I wish I had gone but I also knew it would be hard on my family. I always loved business classes, and I believe I would have gone to business college and do secretary work, and I did do that a year after I was married.
MM: Okay, did you have any jobs growing up?
NS: Oh yes. Yes, you see, I was raised during the Depression and people didn’t have a lot of money. We always worked in the potatoes, and we picked up potatoes in wire baskets, you know, by hand. And we used to tease and laugh about it a lot because we’d pick the potatoes in the fall. And in the spring, we would cut potatoes for them to be planted. And then, also, as a teenager during the war, I worked in a spud cellar, a potato warehouse. My girlfriend’s father was the manager, and that isn’t too good of an environment to work under, and my father wasn’t going to let me work there. But when my girlfriend’s father was managing one of the warehouses, he said that he would look after us and take care of us, so we worked there in the spud cellar due to the man power shortage. They just didn’t have the men; they were all serving in the military. And I remember that experience a lot because we had a prisoner of war camp out here into 8
Menan, and they were German soldiers, and they were working in the potatoes, and they would bring a load of potatoes and these German soldiers were on the trucks under heavy guard. And, a unloading the potatoes in the warehouse, it was interesting to hear those German soldiers talk. Of course, we were never allowed, you know, around the trucks really, that we could hear them talk, and it was interesting. I babysat starting at 12 or13 years old for neighbors and friends. I charged ten cents, sometimes for all night. I remember one night I babysat all night, and I got 25 cents. I did house work, for one lady: I helped with her social entertainment. She played bridge, and I helped with her luncheons and always helped clean the house.
MM: Did you have any jobs after high school?
NS: The summer after I was a junior in high school, I started working, yes. And so, when I… school started in the fall, I was a senior. There was a rule that you couldn’t, you had to go to school, you had to have so many classes, hours spent. But my employers, he happened to be chairman of the school board. And I remember the principle coming down and talking to me. I had two classes first thing in the morning, real early in the morning, and I had a study hall between the two of them. And the principal come down one day while I was in study hall, and he said, “ Nadeen, you’ve got to come to school.” “ Well,” I said, “ I’m working.” And he said, “ You can’t’.” And I told him I’d been working all that summer, and he said, “ Well, who are you working for?” And I told him, and I says “ he’s chairman of the school board.” They never said another word to me. So I worked but I also missed out a lot too. I missed out on a lot of the school activities, and a lot of other things by not you know, being at school, but I did enjoy my job. Yes, I certainly did.
MM: What were you doing?
NS: I was a dental assistant and did lab work. I enjoyed it.
MM: Oh, interesting. So, how did you meet your husband?
NS: It was a blind date. He… well, he had a real close friend, and I had a girl friend that was teaching school in Rigby, and she was living in the same ward I was in, and we became quite close friends. And she was dating this fellow’s, my husband’s friend, and she was supposed to set up a date with her cousin for him. And her cousin wasn’t able to come down, she was going to come down on the bus from up in a basin, and she didn’t come. And, so my friend said, “ Nadeen, would you go out with him?” and I said, “ Well, yeah.” She, she had met him before and “ he was a fine fellow,” she said. I says, “ If it’s alright with my folks.” And so he came, and my father, when I told that his name Darcel C. Smith, he said “ Well, if he’s who I think he is, you won’t want to go with him.” And so he says I want to meet him and talk to him. So when they came, he came in the house and actually, they sent my girl friend into get me, and that was a real no- no. My dad wouldn’t have let me gone, have gone even if he had known who it was. They were to come to the door to get us, and I says, “ Well, my… I would like him to meet my folks.” And so she started back out to the car, and both, he and his friend, were to the door 9
before she could get out to the car. And, anyway, the fellow my dad knew of was I… I won’t mention names here, but very similar to his parent’s names, and the location to where he lived. And, anyway, my husband says, “ I could never figure out what was going on there with all the questions your dad was asking me.” But that’s how I met him. Our activities when we were dating, was Tri- stake dances. They had dances in the first ward or the tabernacle down to Idaho Falls, they were good LDS Church dances, Tri- Stake, and that’s where we did most of our dating. We went to hardly any movies, but we went to all the dances, and we went to dances in Wanda mire and Riverside, and the traditional places that they danced.
MM: How old were you?
NS: When I met my husband? I was 19, no 18. I was 18 when I first met him.
MM: Tell us about your children, how many children do you have? Anything interesting, illnesses…
NS: Well, we had seven. I lost one of them as a baby, three boys and three girls is adults now.
MM: Fun. Do any of them live in the Idaho area besides your daughter?
NS: Well, this daughter who has come home to live with me, she’s a graduate from BYU. I have a son who lives in Harriman, he’s a farmer. He graduated from BYU, a daughter who… and this son served a mission in Mississippi. My daughter served a mission in Toronto, Canada. Russell Ballard was her mission president, and she graduated from BYU, and then this daughter here and I don’t know if you want me to mention names or not. Then I have a son who lives in Washington, he went on a mission to Indiana. And another son, he lives in Idaho Falls; he served a mission to Iowa. And a daughter who lives in Rexburg… Hibbard, she went to Ricks and married in the temple; all the children have been through the temple, so I’ve got some close and some not so close. Neither I nor my husband went on a mission. You asked about illnesses. I have two sisters, one younger, who three years ago died from cancer and an older one who two years ago had breast cancer. My oldest daughter had breast cancer; it runs strong in my father’s family. The oldest four children are married out of seven. I have twenty- seven grandchildren and nine great grandchildren.
MM: That’s fun. What apostles or prophets do you remember growing up?
NS: Ah, George Albert Smith, and President McKay, Heber J. Grant, and of course, all of them since.
MM: Anything that you specifically remember about them.
NS: I remember George Albert Smith. The seminary was taken up to Rick’s College, I don’t know whether it was just acquainting thing for the seminary kids, as you know, to maybe stimulate them to go to college, or what, I don’t remember. But, anyway, we were up there, they 10
were escorting through the different rooms and one thing and another. And, none of us knew that President Smith was going to be up there, but I remember we went to cross the hall from one room to another, and there was some people coming down the hall as we were going across, and it happened to be President Smith. And he stopped right there so that me and those right… right by me in front of me and in behind me could go across the hall. That was quite the experience, and then I talked personally with the President Lee when he was a member of the twelve, when he came here to Rigby to speak at Conference one time. And also, our family went on a trip back East, and we went to the Visitor Center there at the Washington D. C. Temple. And President was there at that and attended the lectures in the visitor center right along with us. And he, he stopped and shook our hands and spoke personally to one of my sons. That was quite an experience, too.
MM: That’s neat. How do you feel the church has changed during your life?
NS: Oh, it’s just unbelievable, everything has changed so much. Well, I remember my mother and— of course, this would be during my life but I don’t remember it personally— just my mother telling about how they lived just across the street from the church house here along this road. In fact, the old Bybee Ward. And my great grandfather’s wife, it was his second wife; she took care of all the sacrament cups. They weren’t sacrament cups as we know them today, it was one… just one glass goblet, and everybody drank out of that. And she says, and my grandfather happened to be ward clerk at that time, and mother says, of course, they’d all go to Sunday school, and they used to go back in the evening for sacrament meeting, and she tells how the kids would all go outside to play during sacrament meeting while the adults attended sacrament meeting. And it wasn’t until, when was it, the late… no, it would’ve been the 1980’ s that they started having the three hour block. So, yes, I remember going to sacrament when it was in the evening up until about 1980; and yes, things have really changed. The lessons, the speakers, the sacrament… in fact, my father and his brothers, they played musical instruments, they all three played the violin, and my one uncle played whatever you handed him, and y instrument you handed him. He was quite the fellow that I had found out from some of his friends how they used to do things during sacrament meeting. They would always play music during the sacrament, just meditation music, I guess. And the children in the ward took turns furnishing that music, and one of my father’s friends, when I interviewed him, he said how they would each take turns, and my father and his brothers each took their turns, of course, playing their violins. And, just a minute the sacrament was over— and this wasn’t just during sacrament meeting, it was during Sunday school when they passed the sacrament— I guess no different than some of the kids are today, they’d go into the classroom and go right out the window and go jump in the canal. And that wasn’t just wild kids, this was one of his friends was a bishop in a stake presidency, another one was a take president; so they all did it. It was, they would just take off and go jump in the canal. And then they’d manage some how to get a brother or sister or just somebody cover for them so they’d get home and get their clothes changed before their folks caught them, I guess. That was something that I thought was quite an incident. 11
MM: Did you or anyone in your family ever serve in the military?
NS: My husband, he served in the military. He was in the air car.
MM: When did he serve?
NS: During World War II, from 1941 through 45.
MM: How old were you when World War II was taking place?
NS: Let’s see, 41… how old was I? Forty- one, 42, 43; I guess, I was 13.
MM: What do you remember about Pearl Harbor?
NS: Well, I remember most of my memory in connection with that was due to— I was in what junior high school. No, so I would’ve been younger than fifteen because I was in junior high school. We had a teacher that she taught us to sing the song “ Let’s remember Pearl Harbor,” and we used to sing that all the time. My husband says how, where he was on oral tapes what he was doing on the seventh of July or seventh of December in 1941, he was on his way to church.
MM: Oh, did you ever have any animosity of the Japanese or the Germans around this area?
NS: No, like I told you, the German prisoners of war, of course, I never had any affiliation besides just seeing them and hearing them talk. The Japanese, there was a Japanese fellow that lived here in Rigby; the family lived here, very well thought of. He went to school here, and he also served in the service, he was killed. No, in fact, they were really nice people, a lot of them.
MM: How did your families cope with World War II?
NS: Well, my family… my uncle was in the service but he’s the only one that I can think of that was in the service. I may have had some older cousins that was in the service, but no, no I don’t think they were.
MM: Okay.
NS: But I remember rationing, the shoes were rationed, sugar was rationed, gasoline was rationed. We went a lot with holes, in our shoes wearing cardboard in them. No, the war on a personal basis didn’t affect our family too much.
MM: Did it affect the community?
NS: Yes, I remember the first boys that were called up at the beginning of the war. The community all met up on the stops of the courthouse to see them off before they got on, I guess, the train, when they were called up and went. Oh, and I did have another cousin; he was in the navy during the war. In fact, after the war, he worked in NASA; he died here just oh, about three years ago, but he served overseas in the Navy. 12
MM: Do you remember anything about the Vietnam or Korean War?
NS: Oh yes, the car burners and all those. Those are sad wars; there’s a lot of emotion tied up in those wars.
MM: What did you think about the draft? Was there a lot debate about the draft?
NS: During those wars, very definitely; yes, there was.
MM: What about the Great Depression? How did that affect your family?
NS: I remember my parents didn’t have very much. My father was out of work, he couldn’t find a job. He drove the school wagon. I remember mother saying how he’d get up at daylight or before to get the team ready, and he drove the school wagon for quite a while. I remember my mother saying that there were times that there was nothing in the house to eat but a little bit of macaroni, and they had one cow, and so they had milk. And so mother said she made a lot of cottage cheese. They had cottage cheese with pepper and salt, cottage cheese with milk, cottage cheese with this, macaroni with milk, also tomatoes. They were lucky to have very much money. Also, I remember grocery shopping, if you had the money to go grocery shopping was always on a Saturday, the evening. And if you had a nickel or a dime, you could go to the show. Once in a while, we got to go to a Saturday matinee, and they cost ten cents. Ah, there was a fellow who was a neighbor and friend to my older sister and I. This fellow went into the service, and he wrote his mother a poem and he was killed in Italy, I guess, the same time his mother got that poem. It was heart breaking; I remember he used to go to the show with us, like I say, if we ever got a dime to go.
MM: Where were you when the Teton Dam broke?
NS: I was here in this house, ah, my brother was up to the dry farm with the boys, and he happened to hear it on the radio, and they got right in pickup to come down. And we had a two way radio, and he called me to tell me to turn on the radio and to watch and listen. And he says get thing ready, we, to take it back up to the dry farm that’s high country. But, yes, I remember it very well.
MM: Did it affect your family or anyone else that you were close to?
NS: That I was close to, I remember the water come up over into Annis, over there. Some of those people over there got water, we didn’t right here but we were watching it awful close. We did a lot of washing, you know, due to the mud and that up from Rexburg and that area up there. My sister was president of relief society in Pocatello, and she remembers coming up and working in hip boots, I guess, trying to clean up there up there. In fact, she’s mentioned in that book, That Day in June, which covers the Teton Dam flood. The government took our ranch which ruined us. Did I tell you about the Grosventre dam that broke? 13
MM: No, I don’t think so.
NS: Well, it burst near Jackson and Swan Valley in May 1927 and flooded clear out to the Sugar factory. Mom said my older sister was just a baby. My father took the horse out and the water was up to his belly. There was barbed wire and all sorts of animals out in the water. The sheriff scared everyone by telling them to get to higher ground.
MM: Fun. What are some influential businesses in this area? Is there anything that you think of?
NS: Fresh pack is one of the biggest that I’m acquainted with. They process potatoes, dehydrated potatoes. Ah, they were small; they found they had a flowing well over there Lewisville, so they utilized that water to further the processing over there. I worked over there in accounts receivable and payable for a while, and they expanded and got quite a bit bigger after that but that’s quite a job. They did a lot of government contracts supplying potatoes, dehydrated potatoes for the service.
MM: Did tourism have an influence in this area, do you think?
NS: Well, the South Fork has always been known for its fishing, and I think there’s a lot of people who come here to fish, and of course, if you get into the higher country, there is the skiing. People go a lot of skiing, and of course, now, there’s the four wheeler, the snow machines, that type of thing.
MM: Did Ricks College ever have an influence on you or in this area?
NS: Well, it certainly had an influence on this area because they… there was talk about moving Ricks down to Idaho Falls, and there was really quite to do over that. And then I don’t remember, someone… one of general authority, I suppose, said that they would never take the college out of Rexburg, and it hasn’t. But, you see, it was a three- year college, and it was a four- year college for a short period of time. And now, they made it a university, and that’s great. But, there were some real feelings over that about the time they wanted to move it to Idaho Falls, but personally it didn’t really affect me very much.
MM: You didn’t care either way?
NS: Well, I wasn’t. I didn’t attend Ricks so I don’t know.
MM: That’s true.
NS: I’m sure glad they had it there when I’ve been involved in genealogical work all my adult life. So when I was assistant librarian up there, I really enjoyed that and the people I worked with up there: Brother Bake, and of course, they probably don’t remember me but there’s Jerry Glenn, and Brother Southwick, and then Sister Jardine— she was there— and Sister Blanchard, and some of those ladies that I’ve got acquainted with that. It was a choice experience when I was up there. 14
MM: What do you think of the new growth that it’s bringing into the area now?
NS: Our ward is just booming with new houses. I just can’t believe they’re moving in here so fast, just young married people that— I bet I don’t know a third of the ward anymore, and I was raised in this war. I’ve been a member of this ward ever since it’s been created.
MM: Is there anything else you can think about that has really changed over the years?
NS: You interested mostly in church thing?
MM: Whatever.
NS: Well, yes, when… I see, I remember as a child of coal oil lamps, kerosene lamps, the doctors, the medical treatment, transportation, and communication; those things are almost… just almost unbelievable, and, of course, electronics today. Back then, we didn’t even dream of anything like it is today. It was a real delight to me when I was able to get a computer.
MM: Fun.
NS: So we are, we are greatly blessed in this valley, greatly blessed. And I have a grandson that’s going on a mission; he’s going to Tallahassee, Florida, in December. I think how different just the preparation for his mission is to what my kids went through in preparing to go, how, how finances are handled and different thing like that. And even when my husband and I went on our mission I see changes now that are different from then, and that hasn’t been that long ago.
MM: Where did you go?
NS: We went to San Diego. I was supervisor at the family history center in San Diego.
MM: Neat.
NS: At that period of time, that was the third largest branch library in the church.
MM: Alright, well, I think that’s all the questions I have for you. Do you have anything you’d like to add, I’d be happy to hear it?
NS: I can’t think of anything right off hand. I made a not if you’d like to hand me that front pink piece of paper. There is an incident in our family life I didn’t mention to you. Before I got my driver’s license, my father says “ if you are going to drive the car, you’ve got to learn how to take care of it.” And he always taught us to be dependable and self- reliant. And before, he would let me get my driver’s license, back then we didn’t have driver’s training. He said “ you have got to know how to change a tire on the car,” and he literally meant that. I had to jack the car up, take the tire off— and this is before tubeless tires— take the tire off the rim, patch the inner- tube, put it back on; and generally we had to use a ire iron to get those tires off the rim. But I learned to do it, and he sat there and watched me and made sure I did it right. And I 15
patched that inner- tube and got it back on the car, back on the rim, and the tire, put it back on the car and got the car off the jack. I’ve always been very grateful for that experience, very, very thankful because back then if you had a flat tire, you didn’t have a cell phone to call mommy or daddy to say “ come get me” or call the service station. That’s an experience I’ve been very grateful for is being taught to be self- reliant and dependable. And, of course, we always sued to do all the farming with horses. We put the hay up using the Jackson Fork.
MM: What’s that?
NS: Have you ever heard of a derrick?
MM: Talking to the wrong person.
NS: Well, its’ a great bit, a big long pole on an upright crane. And there’s a cable on it, and at the end of the cable is a… have you ever seen a hay rake? Well, anyway, kind of a clawy affair. It’s a fork affair and you put it down into the loose hair and clamp it shut. And then you’d have a horse that would pull this cable, and it would pull the hay and the fork up to the top of the haystack. And then you’d trip it and the hay would fall on top of the stack, and then you’d bring it down again and get another fork full of hay and take it up on top of the stack that… and that fork on the derrick is called Jackson Fork. And that’s the way we used to put up hay. And you ask about the work that we used to do. We used to shuck grain, you know, after the binder go through and bind it. Then we would go out and put it in shucks, and we used to pile the hay, load the hay, unload the hay, and feed the cattle or horses, feed the stock, yes.
MM: Is there anything else?
NS: Well, I just don’t… just know all the things you want to know about. I suppose others have already told you these things. We used to carry water; we didn’t have modern conveniences. We didn’t have electricity so we had kerosene lamps. We’d have lanterns if we had to go out, you know, to the corral or anything after dark, we’d have these lanterns that we’d light and carry. I have another thought, but it slipped my mind. We’d carry water from a spring, and I did this for a long time after I was married because we didn’t have electricity nor a pump. We’d carry water from a spring and my mother used to carry water from the ditch rather than a quarter of a mile than the ditch. And we used to heat water in a old boiler, I don’t know if you know what a boiler is or not, heat it on the coal, wood stove to bathe in. We bathed in a round laundry tub, an old tin tub. Most all my canning in my early years of marriage, I take my bottles, my fruit jars and my fruit up to the dry farm, and I would can it on a wood stove, and it would be brought down here for the winter months so it wouldn’t freeze. No, there was always, there was always a lot of work to do but we always had a lot of play time too. Games that the kids used to play; the girls would play jump the rope and jacks, you probably know what that is.
MM: Uh, huh. 16
NS: And we would play outdoor games, boys and girls together. We’d play: Red Rover and Steal the Sticks, Kick the Can, all those games. We used to do a lot of reading; that was one thing that we did. We could do was a lot of reading. We didn’t have a lot of money for Christmas. In fact, there was one Christmas I remember that my mother had been in the hospital a couple of time, and I had a new baby sister, and there was just no money for Christmas. That’s when I learned there was no Santa Claus. And we wouldn’t have had any Christmas at all but the neighbors gave us our Christmas that year. And I’ll never forget that Christmas, and it took me a long to found out why when we were, when mother and daddy didn’t have anything why we got such a good Christmas. It was due to neighbors and friends.
MM: That’s neat.
NS: It really is, it’s something special. And we just need more of that today. I don’t think people look or understand deep enough into their neighbors or their friends’ lives to realize what’s going on with them; lots of times, we can do things of them. They don’t have to be elaborate things but we can; we can help them out.
MM: This is Maren Miyasaki doing a follow- up interview with Nadeen Smith on December the third. Okay, we’ve been talking about your dad. So what is it, some of those things that you wanted to talk about that you remember about your dad and about him growing up?
NS: Well, there… my family didn’t have very much in the material things of life but my grandma somehow had a piano. She came from a very musical family. She originally was from England, and she raised berries, all kind of different berries, so the boys could have music lessons. And my father and his two brothers played the violin, and they used to play music when they… well, in those days, they used to line up and march into school from recess every day before school started— we had long lines— then we just marched into school. Well, at that period of time, children would play music for them to march in by and the school building was an elementary, two- story brick building, and they had stairs to climb. And my father and his brothers used to take turns or some friends together and they would play music for the kids to march in by. Also, I think I mentioned that they, also, played music during the sacrament, during church then; they would cover for one of father’s dear friends who was a bishop when I interviewed him and so, I feel is correct because he was among one of the boys that did that. My father also was a noted for being a great basketball player and this is something that he dearly loved all his life. When I was in high school, he would come to all the basketball games because the team that played, that he played on; they won every game that they ever played. They played college teams, academies, everything all around, and in Utah and Idaho; every place they played, every team they won. Anyways, they in the teams weren’t rated then like they are today, they were offered the after winning all these games, all these tournaments, they were invite to go back to the national playoffs in Chicago. But Rigby couldn’t raise the money for the team to go, so they missed that opportunity. My father was also offered a scholarship to play basketball, but due to the lack of money, he just didn’t feel he had the means by which to get the clothing and 17
the things that he would need to go. So he missed that opportunity also. But it has meant a lot to the grandchildren in playing a basketball, they all go after the sports, and my father was a great one to have many friends. He was very friendly, and he loved to tease. He was well liked by everyone, one that he ever knew, and these were not only members of the church, those who were in executive positions those so to speak within the church but also down to people who didn’t have anything at all. I know there was one fellow, and I won’t mention his name, but he just lived in a little shack in by the lumber yard here in town. And my father used to tease him, and he just came to love my father dearly. There was also an incident when I was a teenager. I wanted to go somewhere, and of course, I wasn’t driving at that time in my life, and I had to wait for my father to get home— he raised a lot of stock, bought and sold a lot of stock and was a farmer and anyway, I waited and waited for him to get home so I asked him if he could take me. And when he finally got home, I asked him if he’d take me. And he said, “ No.” And I says “ why not,” and of course like any other teenager, I coaxed and coaxed. And he kept saying no, and he had his reasons, and then I said “ well, why not!” And he says, “ Well, I got to go see a lady over here in the Garfield area.” And I says “ what for?” And anyway, he says, “ I bought a cow from her, and when I sold the cow, it brought a lot of more money than what I expected.” “ She’s a widow lady with two little boys, and I’m going over to give her the money I got from the cow.” I didn’t think too much about it at the time but a few years ago, I was visiting with a lady in Garfield about some DUP business, Daughters of the Utah Pioneers and her husband was there in the house at the time. He wanted to know who I was and I says “ I’m Everett Allen’s daughter,” and his eyes lit up, and he says, “ Oh, I know Everett.” And he proceeded to tell me the same story my father had told me, and I thought that was really something for my father to be known, for being that type of person. The first three years of their marriage was, of course, just before and during the Depression. He worked out at the… out on the desert so to speak, or at around… I can’t think of the name right now, but anyway, this farmer had mules. And my father worked for him driving mules to do the farm work. And I says “ well, mother and daddy, how did you live out there?” I says did you have a house, and they lived more a less a shack at the back of this man’s place.
MM: Well, how did you bathe, what did you do?
NS: Well, sometimes, after work there’s warm spring over in that area. Indian Springs is what’s it called; they would go over there and bathe in the springs. I guess, now, they have made it into a little resort and it… they had geothermal water there so I think there’s a place that grows roses and plants there because of the warmth of the water. At that period of time, my grandmother was ill and my mother came over here to take care of her mother. And mother just had a young baby, a couple years old, my older sister and I took care of her. And then after she died, mother went back out and lived with daddy again, and they came. They’d come back here and was able to rent a little farm. They used to go to church. I asked mother “ where did you go to church?” And mother said the ward originally was known as the Rigby Ward, which became the Rigby First Ward, and then it was divided and they made the Rigby Second Ward. And I says where 18
did you go to church then; I says, they didn’t have that second ward church house. She says, no, we went to church in upstairs in a old stone, rock or stone building, and it was located on State Street. It was called the Olsen building, and I believe it was the Olsen Blacksmith shop. And they went to church up there for a long, and then, of course, the second ward building was built and that’s where I went to church when I went. And I said before my parents were inactive. It was the Rigby Stake, and it encompassed 17 wards. It covered the area all the way from Palisades, up to Swan Valley; clear over to Harriton, Montague, Beaver Creek, Dubois; all that area in there. And when we used to have stake meetings, those people over in Montague and Harriton had a long ways to travel from here to Rigby for their stake meeting. I remember talking to several of the ladies that worked in the Sunday school at the same time I was working in the Sunday school, and they’d say how difficult it was for them sometimes to drive that long way distance over here. So that’s been quite a change now that we’ve got the Menan Stake, and the Robert’s Stake, and the Rigby East Stake, and Ririe Stake, and all these different stakes that have come out of the Rigby Stake.
MM: How big did the wards used to be that you…?
NS: I don’t’ know just exactly what they policy is now; I think it was a membership of 350 that they would create a new ward or divide, of course, depending on the priesthood authority, if they had enough priesthood to part a new ward. The Rigby Fourth Ward was created in 1942, right after the Second World War started, and that’s the ward I was raised in, I still live here.
MM: There anything else that you want to talk about, your dad or anything?
NS: Well, my father really taught us to be dependable, and we were never to be late. If we told someone we would do something, we did it. He saw that we did it even if things turned out that we didn’t want to do it. If we said we’d do it, we did it. I think that he was noted for that, and I think that I only had three sisters, no brothers that I think we girls were noted for that too. I know one incident in particular, this area if noted for the potato business.
MM: Uh, huh.
NS: We used to earn a little bit of money, especially our Christmas money, by going and picking potatoes by hand in wire baskets, dumping them in a sack. We used to do this for a cent and a half a sack. And anyway, some years you have a good crop and some years you didn’t. And my sister had gotten a job, jobs were kind of hard to find, so they felt they were really lucky to get a job. But they got a job at a farmer’s place, and it turned out that the potatoes were not very good, the ground was rocky, and it was cold, and it was just a not very good.
MM: A very good farm
NS: It was just not a good field to be picking in and most of the kids that were working in that field quit and came home, back into Rigby and my two sisters were one of them, the two of them. 19
And when my father found out he loaded them both up in the car and told them, “ You will stay there till that field is picked and they did.” The farmer, I don’t think that he ever forgot that. He was left there without anybody to pick potatoes and, of course, it’s vital to get the crop in when the weather is decent. But I don’t know he said how grateful he was that the girls went back out and finished the job— he was good to them to give them the job in the first place, and they said they would pick potatoes. That was a good experience for them. Another crop, being a farming area, that were our livelihood came from; another crop that they raised was seed peas.
MM: Really.
NS: My grandfather was very instrumental in getting that as a permanent thing here, during the Depression years, especially, and as teenagers, young girls in high school in the summertime; I would gout and rogue peas. I don’t know if you know what that is or not.
MM: Is it a wanderer or someone wrong.
NS: Scoundrel or something like that. Well, liken that to peas, it wasn’t a good pea, and that was a hot miserable job, but we earned a little bit of money and this was during the war years when the manpower was… when all the men and boys were in the service, and so we did that. But it was fun too, because of all that hot sun in the middle of the summer, and we would, sometimes, we would get to the end of the field. And then we’d go jump in the canal. So we had fun along with that. The work during the war years, a lot of them women were doing the work that, due to the lack of manpower. I think I told you that I worked in the potato, the potato warehouse. It was a sad day when they tore sown the Tabernacle; the pioneers sacrificed much to get the timber out of the canyon for the tabernacle. They worked hard to build that. It was built in 1916 when mother was the second person to be baptized in the tabernacle, in the font. After they raised the building, they burned it and, some of the timbers in that building were just like brand new. They were strong and there were some pretty strong feelings among the older people in the area when they burnt that building and tore it down. The Rigby Stake building was a little stone building to the side of the Tabernacle, I didn’t’ know for years really that that was the Stake Office Building. All I knew was that is where we went to Seminary when I was in high school and it was used as a seminary building. And then when they tore the Tabernacle down and also the First Ward building, and then the Stake Office Building then, they built the new stake center. And they put new offices in that building, of course.
MM: Um, one thing we talked about before was about influential businesses in this area. I know we talked about Ricks College, that potato packaging plant, but you mentioned the site was a big one too?
NS: Well, that is a Federal Department of Energy. You know, so many people work out there today. When it first started, they started building that in about 48, 1948, 19 and my… let’s see. It was going well at that period of time in the late 50’ s. It was going very well. My brother- in- law, who wasn’t my brother- in- law at the time, was handpicked by Admiral Rickover. He was in the 20
navy, was handpicked by Admiral Rickover to be there at the site and train the men for the nuclear submarine.
MM: Oh.
NS: And that he lived here in Idaho Falls, and that is where my sister met him, and so he was instrumental in that and has always shown an interest in who was managing and operating the site out there. Today, I have one son- in- law that works there out at the site, but that has been a big influence on this area, whole area. I guess, they aren’t businesses but we had two theaters in Rigby and that’s where a lot of the entertainment came, the silent movies. For a matinee, they cost a dime, and we were very lucky if we got to go to a matinee on Saturday. And, of course, we saw all the serial then, and they were continue from one week to the next, so you really felt that you were deprived if you didn’t’ get to go see the next, the next show. As talkies came in after, after that, there were silent movies. And there was generally a person that played the piano as they showed the film, and you’ve seen silent movies, and how they are, but generally they would have entertainment, someone who played the music for the film and then they would other entertainment, people would sing and are vaudeville actors and things.
MM: Fun.
NS: Also, there were dancehalls; dancing was very popular— Riverside Gardens, Wanda Mire— and then there was another dancehall. It was up at Lorenzo, and I understand that dancehall was in a potato warehouse. And a lot of the older people went to that. We had a lot of stake, tri- stake dances; we had stake dances. They were held in the Tabernacle, and the tri- stake dances were held in various stake buildings or tabernacles in Idaho Falls, Rexburg, St. Anthony, Rigby. Mostly the teenagers went to those dances that were active in the church. A business that— and this is kind of back tacking, Pennies, I was seeing a great change there. Pennies was one of our main stay stores in Rigby as long as I can remember. They had at Christmas time a toy land downstairs in the basement. You’d go down and, you know, to wander lust, you know, they want book or whatever you want to call it. And we’d go down and look at all the toys and wish for the… but that was a great experience for that and then to have Pennies leave Rigby was sad, it really was. We had a fabric store, it also left when they started getting the big chain stores in Idaho Falls, so Rigby kind of got left behind in some areas. The courthouse, I remember when the boys left for the war, the draft, and the boys left for the war, everyone met up on the steps of the courthouse to wish them farewell and wish them well before they got onto the train or the bus. The train depot was another big thing. Rigby raised sugar beets, the area raised sugar beets too that was another farm product that was raised that was very influential in the area, of course the sugar factory operated for a number of years and then it was only used as a storage building for sugar, but the railroads built a spur out to Menan and different areas, Lewisville, of course, a spur for the sugar beet dump. Where they’d dump the sugar beets and the train would take them on to each of the sugar factories to be processed. That was a big thing. They had the Yellowstone, Yellowstone Special, it was a train that in the summertime would go up to West 21
Yellowstone, to the park. In the wintertime, in fact, that generally was the opening of the season is when they would a blade on the front of the train to open the track into the Park, into the northern part of the country here. Sometimes those drifts were so high that the train could hardly clear the tracks, and that was a special train because we got mail a couple of times a day. The train would go up, and back in a day; and that was really nice to have that. Of course, that came out of Pocatello and then, of course, there was the train that went on up to Butte through Roberts and that area, and the pioneers, lots of times settled up in that part of the country, that’s the way they came. The railroad, they were working for the railroad, and the railroad went from Pocatello on up to Butte and, of course, when it hit the center of that area that they called Beaver Canyon, and they hauled a lot of wood out of that area. Many of the pioneers, that’s where they would go, also, they went up there and saw the land at Kilgar and Clark country; so they homesteaded up there. My grandfather was one that homesteaded up there. The snow was very, very deep up there. And in the wintertime, many times, the only way they could get out of there was by dogsled. My father… well, my grandparents were living up there at that period of time homesteading, and my father, my grandmother would go to Ogden to be with her mother when the children were born, anyway, my father was just a young boy, I think— maybe four, maybe five years old— and he got into a can of lye. Then they had to take him out by dogsled for medical treatment, and the shortest way was to go down through to St. Anthony for medical treatment, also that’s where they hauled there hay.
MM: Uh, huh.
NS: Sold their hay, those farmers up there would… they had cattle. My grandfather had cattle, and they would turn the cattle out on the open range. And then the following years, they would have a cattle round up and the riders would ride— well, they would go— well, my grandfather was assigned to go all the way to Marysville and that was his area to cover. And he would go that far, and he would stay the night in a hotel to bathe and clean up, and then he’d come back the next day with cattle and then, of course, they would cut the cattle out when they got back to Kilgar to the different owners. I thought that was quite interesting. The railroad would go to Spencer into what they called the roundhouse, that’s where the train would go, turn around in, and go back. Another interesting event that when my grandparents were living at Kilgar was that there was a place they called Spring Creek. And in the wintertime they took a old wagon box, drilled holes in the bottom of it, put it there at the head gate, I guess the head gate of the Spring Creek and draw the water down, which would drain the water off and then the fish would freeze over night, and then they’d take the fish into the roundhouse in Spencer…
MM: Ship them?
NS: And sell them. The cook, you see, for the train, the railroad worker that type of thing. I thought that was very interesting that they did that, I’d never heard of that before. My great grandfather was the first person to drill a well in this area right here, Rigby and Lewisville, here in the Bybee Ward. When they came from Utah, they… he dug that well. I just said drill; 22
actually, they dug it, and while the others were building their homes, they lived in a tent while they dug the well. Then they went back to Utah to get their families. When they came back the well had gone dry.
MM: Uh, hum.
NS: And they had to go over to Annis to haul water for stock and my mother. They lived, my grandfather lived in a tent until they could get a log home built. And it was very, very cold, and I know my grandfather said they moved in on Christmas day.
MM: Oh.
NS: And the snow was very, very deep and cold. They dug; of course, one of the contributing things for farming was the canal system, the great Feeder Canal. And grandfather used to work on the canals with his father, and he states how he used to wrap his feet in gunny sacks and deer hide while he worked on the canals so that he could save his shoes for Sunday. And they would make their bed, they would dig pits. Well, they would dig pits and build a fire in them and put rocks in them to heat the rocks, and at night, they would cover these pits with straw and make their builds over them.
MM: Oh.
NS: So that the heat from the rocks would waft up and keep them warm because tey dug these canals and ditches with a scrapper, with a horse and scrapper all these canals here. And Jefferson County has, I think, it’s a biggest of network of irrigation systems in the States.
MM: Ingenious.
NS: I was… we wrote a card for the Jefferson County Historical Society. I was founding president, and it gives a description of those areas on that card. The historical society was organized in 1975, and then there got to be some disagreement on what it should be called. And so, they changed the name of it to the Philo Farnsworth Museum, the Rigby. I think they do say it is both now. But anyway, that was interesting for that and also the Daughters of the Utah Pioneers; they’ve done a lot for this community too. I think the college up there has the… has a very short video of the reason in the beginning of the historical society. Pocatello, ISU ( Idaho State University) or the PBS ( Public Broadcast System) was doing a video of the history on the different communities here in the valley and was showing it on PBS. And they wanted pictures of the pioneers. So my husband’s cousin and I got together and collected pictures of our families and that is part of that video. I think college has a copy of that, I think we gave them a coy.
MM: I’m sure they do.
NS: And, so that is very interesting and the DUP, they’ve done a lot too for history in this area.