Lucille Harrison Orgill Interview

              Dr. Radke- Moss Women‟ s Oral History Collection
Lucille Harrison Orgill
By Lucille Harrison Orgill
4 February 2008
Box 5 Folder 13
Oral Interview conducted by Amy Law
Transcript copied by Amy Law Feb 2007
Brigham Young University- Idaho
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Interviewee: Lucille Harrison Orgill Interviewer: Amy Law Date: 4 February 2008 Place: Home of Lucille Orgill in Egin, Idaho Amy Law: Lucille you were talking a little bit about your last name Orgill. Where did you say your family came from? Lucille Orgill: Now this would be my husband‟ s family. Originally from Scotland and it was spelled A- r- g- y- l- e to begin with and then they migrated to England and changed it to O- r- g- i- l- l- e… AL: In England? LO: And then, of course, they came over here, and I… they didn‟ t drop the “ e” off then, and I don‟ t know just what the deal was, but anyway they dropped it off and changed the pronunciation. It was Argylle and then it went to just Orgill. That was easier. AL: What‟ s your full name then, with your maiden name? LO: My maiden name was Harrison. AL: So it‟ s Lucille. And did you have a middle name? LO: Nope. AL: Lucille Harrison. I don‟ t have a middle name either. It‟ s a tradition in our family so that‟ s fun. LO: My mother was Grace Lucille Benson and they called her Gay so my older sister they named Gay and named me Lucille. But we didn‟ t either one of us had a middle name and I always wanted a middle name because I thought whatever it was I would have liked it better than Lucille. But I eventually got called Lou and Lucy and it didn‟ t really matter anymore. AL: And then you got your middle name Harrison so… LO: Ya. AL: How many siblings did you have? LO: I had two sisters and one brother. AL: And were they all older? LO: The sister was older and then the brother was younger and then the last one was a sister and she was handicapped. AL: What did she have? 3
LO: You know it was so long ago they never did put a name to it but I think maybe it was muscular dystrophy or something like that. She didn‟ t hear and she never learned… didn‟ t learn to talk but they didn‟ t have people then that could work with those children. And she didn‟ t have… this one ear was not formed right and mother took her down to the Primary Children‟ s Hospital two or three times. And all they could do, think of to do, for her was build her a new ear. You know, cosmetic surgery and that wasn‟ t going to help her learn to talk or hear or anything and mother wouldn‟ t let them do it. But we never did, never did know really what… She did eventually learn to walk and they said she‟ d never be able to do that so that was something. AL: How long did she live? LO: She was 26 when she died. AL: Interesting. How did your family help her out then along the years? How did you work a system…? LO: There wasn‟ t a great lot that anyone could do but mother, you know, just be with her and just love her and just take care of her. And that‟ s a lot of years you know for … and, you know, it took a special person to love her. AL: Was it very taxing… all the energy that you had to put in to it? LO: Well yes, yeah it was and um… the mental anguish and that, you know, it was… it‟ s a sad… and I see and hear of these children… and so many that are autistic now and I wonder if that was maybe part of her problem. But now that autism is getting worse. There‟ s so much and oh, I‟ ve got a neighbor down here that‟ s got a little boy that is autistic and he‟ s mean! And oh, she has done everything and she‟ s got him on a special diet. There‟ s so many things that he can‟ t eat. You know, and it is sad. My heart goes out to anyone that‟ s got a handicapped child and dealing with that you know. We never know what we‟ re going to have to face in this whole life. AL: What year were you born? LO: In 1923. AL: And were you raised here in Idaho in this area? LO: Uh huh. AL: Your whole life? LO: I was born in Teton city and um… we lived in, oh in Egin and St. Anthony and up in Chester and then back to Egin. But I‟ ve stayed right in Tremont County all my life. AL: So you met your husband here then? LO: Uh hmm he was from Egin… a farmer. His parents were farmers. AL: Did you guys grow up together? 4
LO: Nope. No, I met him after I graduated from high school. My sister had a date with his older brother. And they had… do remember Warm River? Janae Neibaur: Uh huh. LO: They had an old dance hall down at the foot of that one steep hill… down along the river called the Warm River Rendezvous. JN: Yeah, I do remember that. LO: Okay, I think the building is gone now. JN: Oh, yeah it is. LO: And these dances there every Saturday night and she had a date to go with his older brother and my girlfriend and I didn‟ t have dates, so we thought well if they had room we‟ d just go along with them. So when he came to pick her up he had his dad‟ s pickup. They weren‟ t very big then, had those great big cabs like they‟ ve got now and she wanted to know if it was alright if I went and our girlfriend Marjory. “ Ya, ya that was fine.” Well, we got out there and there‟ s Blaine, the fellow I married and, you know, we were crowded in that pickup and Blaine was not happy. You know, he was mad at his brother. They were always arguing about who got to take the car. Well the older one always wins out so the younger one tagged along see. So it was kind of comical and before the night was over we were going together. AL: Really! Wow! That‟ s fast. Did you get along with your sister? It was your older sister right? She was the only one older than you? LO: Yep. AL: What kind of activities did you do as you were growing up? LO: Oh, you know, uh then we played outdoor games. The kids in the neighborhood would all get together after supper when they had their chores done and we‟ d play Run Sheep Run and um… oh, what was another one, uh, Here Comes an Old Woman with a Stick and a Staff…. AL: How do you play that? I‟ ve never heard of that. JN: Me neither. LO: … and Blind Man‟ s Bluff and Kick the Can. AL: Kick the Can‟ s a good one. JN: I‟ ve heard of that one. LO: We would play until it got dark and then you‟ d, all of a sudden you‟ d hear different mothers or dads holler out a kid‟ s name. Well I had to go and, you know, it just gradually we all have to go in, but every night we‟ d do that. We had so much fun and now look at the kids you can‟ t get them off the computer long enough to hardly eat a meal. So times have really changed. 5
AL: So you grew up in a neighborhood where everyone lived close by? LO: Oh yeah. We lived in Sugar City when we were kids and went to school there or started school there and then we moved to St. Anthony. My sister was just, what 19 months older and so we were more like twins. We went to um… my folks would go to Escondido, California in the winter and work in the fruit packing plants down there and so they started Gay in the first grade down there and I went to Kindergarten and then we moved back to Sugar City and mother just started us both in the first grade and we went through school together. AL: Speaking of that what was your education like? How far did you get to study? LO: I graduated from high school and I started over here at Ricks and went for one semester. Didn‟ t do anything just went over there and goofed around and Blaine was over there to pick me up when I got out of school and that and then we just took off and got married on the 13th of December. We got married a week after Pearl Harbor. AL: Really? LO: They bombed Pearl… AL: Was it because of Pearl Harbor that you got married that soon? LO: Nope, nope we just… that‟ s just the way it worked out. AL: What was it… in your younger years, what was the education like? LO: It was just basic. You know reading, writing, and arithmetic. JN: Did they only have like the one building for all the students back then like they did in New Dale? LO: They had a high school and we were all basically in the same building. It was right there on Main Street. JN: That use to be the Junior High? Is that the school? LO: Uh huh. And the grade school… we were down in the basement. Cement floors, you know. JN: They still have that. LO: Oh another game that we‟ d play. We‟ d… um, they didn‟ t have pop in cans then. What did they have? I guess beer was in the cans and we‟ d lay it down sideways and stomp our foot down in that. The can would curl up around your foot and we‟ d clunk around on them. I don‟ t know what you‟ d call that, but it was noisy and we had a lot of fun. We just made our own. You know nobody had any money. Well that was a silly thing we did for entertainment. It gets pretty noisy half a dozen kids clanking down the sidewalk on them. AL: What was the weather back then? What… would it keep you guys from going to school? 6
LO: You know, winters were worse and we didn‟ t have warm clothes that they‟ ve got now. So it was tough. AL: Did you have to stay home from school a lot because of the weather? LO: Nope. Well, I imagine there was days and I don‟ t, um, don‟ t really remember that but, I can remember when my brother was in… he would have been in the first grade. We didn‟ t live too far from the school. You remember that big old, I don‟ t know, it was two or three story… that block rock… that they built so many houses and church houses and that and it was over across the railroad tracks where the beet dump was there in Sugar City? It‟ s been years ago. JN: Which railroad tracks? The ones that are really near the… LO: The one going through Sugar City there. And they‟ ve got the warehouses, potato warehouses there. And they‟ ve torn down the scales and that where we‟ d use to haul the beets over there. JN: Right I know where you‟ re talking about. LO: And the school was just out in one of those fields to the west of that. We went to school there and we didn‟ t live too far from that but, mother would cover my brother‟ s face up with a handkerchief and bundle us all up, you know, as well as we could and we‟ d each take one of his hand and lead him to school in the winter time when it was really cold and we‟ d get there and his eyelashes would have ice cycles hanging off. JN: Wow! AL: I can only imagine. LO: It was cold. And those four buckle overshoes that would come up to about there. There was no insulation or anything. They were just rubber and they kept your feet dry but they, you know, weren‟ t really that warm and that‟ s what we had for overshoes and the girls wore those long, heavy, brown socks and long underwear. Your underwear was tucked down in them and oh it was a sloppy job. You didn‟ t have clean clothes every day. You‟ d wear the same clothes pretty much all week long and so by the time those socks was ready to be washed they were stretched out till… baggy, ugly things. When spring would come we‟ d roll our socks down around our ankles and pull our underwear up under our dresses and then we‟ d go bare legged, but boy we had to remember to pull our underwear down and pull our socks back up before we went back home… but the girls all did that. AL: Were your classes together then with boys and girls or was it just…? LO: Yep. AL: It was boys and girls? LO: Yep. AL: How did most of the students get to school? 7
LO: They walked. AL: All of them? LO: Ya. AL: Were there a lot of them that lived far out in different areas? LO: Um… ya, there were some of them and I don‟ t know um, I don‟ t know if their parents took them to school because that was before school busses. I know down here in Egin they had somebody with an old sheep camp and a team of horses on it and when the roads got bad… if they could get through with the horses they‟ d go around and pick up kids and they had a little stove like that little one sitting there. That‟ s a sheep camp stove, as you can… and they‟ d have a fire in that to have, you know, a little bit of heat in there and they‟ d go around and pick up kids and take them to school. AL: That would still be cold. LO: Yep, and the snow… the winters were worse then. The snow was deeper. Now we‟ ve got all this buried, the phone lines and that are all buried but you can remember when they had the telephone poles. Well… and then they did get so they were taller poles, you know, these last fifteen, twenty years but back then they weren‟ t that tall, they weren‟ t that heavy a pole and those lines would hang down and sometimes be dragging on the snow before winter was over so… and you couldn‟ t see the fences they were buried in snow so that‟ s how deep it‟ d get. It was just one of the things you had to cope with. AL: Were your parents farmers? LO: No. My dad worked in the sugar factory over there in Sugar City and we lived not too far from there at one time. They had a row of houses there that were called The Sugar Houses. They were all alike, you know, and just people that worked at the sugar factory could live there and of course they had to pay rent. I don‟ t know what it was. AL: Did your mother work at all? LO: Mother worked. She slid peas at Northbrook King in St. Anthony. That was after we moved to St. Anthony. She didn‟ t work there, she didn‟ t work when we were in Sugar City and I‟ ve got some of her check stubs. She would make eleven dollars for two weeks work. Can you imagine? And it was amazing. You could buy a pair of shoes for $ 2 and you know skirts and blouses, but it was still tough to raise a family and get them all clothed and you know. AL: Speaking of that. Your family went through the depression or at least the end of it right? LO: What? AL: You were born by the time the depression… what year did you say you were born? LO: Twenty- three.
AL: Twenty- three so that would be… 8
LO: Well that would be… my mom [ inaudible]. Those were lean years for a long while. AL: How was it that your family were able to survive through that time… how did they gain…? LO: You just did a lot of things. My dad was a hard worker and he‟ d do most anything to earn a dollar and, you just… you were frugal. Everything was… what‟ s that old saying? “ Wear it out and… um, hand me down and”… I can‟ t remember now, but everything was… you didn‟ t just discard clothes because you didn‟ t like them. JN: I know during… my grandma and grandpa they would keep a lot of stuff because of the depression they didn‟ t let you throw anything away. Were you the same way? LO: Yes. JN: You didn‟ t want to throw anything away? LO: Mother had an old cedar chest and after she died and I went through that, she saved the hooks and [ inaudible] off of her old bras, saved the elastic if it wasn‟ t all stretched out of shape and just saved everything because you might need that. She had a tin box that had body powder in it. She had that full of buttons you didn‟ t… if it was a rag you cut the buttons off and saved them and then you could use the material for rags or whatever but, you know, everything was just used until it was just disintegrated. AL: Were there a lot of programs set up by the church [ The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter- day Saints] that helped out? LO: Nope. AL: No farms or anything? LO: Nope. They had… they were always talking about going to the poor house and then it eventually evolved in to the old folks home and we‟ d hear the stories you know…” well so and so was going to the poor house”, that was old people that couldn‟ t take care of themselves, but I never did see one of them so I don‟ t know if they really had them or what it was, but they must of done because we‟ d hear stories about people having to go to the poor house and that was the very bottom of the ladder, you know, so… it was tough. And people didn‟ t live as long then. They worked so hard that they just wore out. But, you know, as long as we were… and we didn‟ t eat then like they do now, you know. There wasn‟ t such a thing as a hamburger. They did have hotdogs now and then. But, um, we‟ d raise chickens and everybody had a garden. Course that was before they pressured food and if we did any canning you‟ d put it in the old boiler and boil it for four hours your bottles of beans or corn or peas… boil it for four hours… and you can imagine what that food tasted like. We ate it. But, we were glad to have it so then we had vegetables, you know, through the winter… and of course everybody had a cellar where they could put their potatoes and carrots and squash and cabbage and different things, you know, that you could save through the winter and so… onions, and like that so… you just learned to be thrifty and utilize everything. AL: What were… what was the Christmas holiday like for you guys? 9
LO: It was slim but um…. Oh now, like one year my dad made a cupboard for my sister and I out of an old orange crate, and they were heavier wood then. Now you don‟ t… everything is in boxes… but, you know, some of my grandkids, great grandkids are still playing with that little cupboard. That‟ s how sturdy it was and he made us a doll bed and a highchair and we shared them, Gay and I. And, you know, we had our dolls we had our little doll buggies, those little wicker doll buggies. AL: Cute. LO: Well, the baby buggies were wicker back then and they would sleep in that but it…. You‟ ve seen them. You know what I mean or have seen pictures… and wherever you‟ d go, the baby or the ones that couldn‟ t walk, you‟ d pile them in the buggy and while we‟ d go down town and get our shopping done. We didn‟ t go very far and you didn‟ t load them in the car and go it was everybody walked and we were healthier really because we got the exercise. AL: I asked my grandma this one time and I got a really fun answer so I‟ m going to ask you as well. What would you say was your favorite Christmas present throughout your years with your family? LO: You know one year… now my sister and brother and I slept in one of these little folding metal cots. They had leafs that came up on the side and then you could put them down during the day because they took up so much room and Junior slept on the, at the foot of the bed and Gay and I slept on the other and it worked out fine. But this one year we decided to hang our stockings on the bed so we could catch old Santa Clause. Well he didn‟ t fill our stockings that year. He put all of the candy and nuts… it wasn‟ t much candy, a few nuts and an apple and an orange in a bowl on the table. And so we still got it but we were so disappointed. And, the first thing that went in that… and it was just one of our stockings that we wore. You didn‟ t have these cute, red, fuzzy things that, you know. And the orange went in first and then a few nuts and then the apple was always on top and we saved that orange because they were… you didn‟ t have them very often up around here. And that was the last thing that we ate. And oh, we‟ d eat all the white off of that pealing. We ate everything but the pealing you know. And we didn‟ t hog it down. Maybe we‟ d make that orange last for two or three days. It was so good. We just eat a two or three sections and savor that. AL: Sounds good right now. LO: But that was… we never did that again. Boy, we didn‟ t mess with Santa Claus after that. AL: Well, let me ask you a little bit then… you said your mom worked a little bit to help out with the family. Did you also work when you had the opportunity to do so?
LO: We tended kids and we‟ d go, as I got older and in high school I would go and help different ladies clean their houses on Saturday. Made one dollar a day and you‟ d clean the house. You didn‟ t work so many hours you cleaned the house and if it took 6 or 8 hours or 4 or 5, whatever that was… you got a dollar a day. But, you know, we‟ d save our money or we‟ d have a dress or a skirt or sweater that we wanted put on lay away. Paid 25 cents a week or something like that and… we managed. Mother did a little sewing. She wasn‟ t a fantastic seamstress but then she‟ d make what she could for us. And, you know, everybody was in the same boat. We didn‟ t make 10
fun of kids, you know, that weren‟ t dress just like… or had the fancy sneakers like, you know, everyone else. We got along good, had a lot of friends, played with everybody. We went to mutual on Tuesday nights and they had activities, you know something planned every so often. AL: Were there lots of opportunities for girls to go and get jobs? LO: Not really. That‟ d be about it just tending kids and I thought when I had my first baby, you know, I knew all about it because I had tended so many kids. Yah right! You‟ d go there to tend the kids and the baby was usually in bed asleep by then and if he woke up you changed their diaper and gave them a bottle and it went back to sleep. It didn‟ t say anything about the babies bawling all night long and you up walking the floor, and they didn‟ t want the bottle, and their bum was dry. So it was…( chuckling) a whole different experience. AL: You said that you had your first child during the war didn‟ t you? LO: She was born in 1943. AL: Okay. So it was closer to the end… LO: So the war was still going on and she was two years old when Blaine went in to the service and I stayed with his folks. We lived down here in Egin. I stayed with them and then I worked in the potato sorting warehouses, my sister- in- law and I. Well, and all the men in the war, you know, when they were through with their farming, had that all took care of then they worked for Tibbits Potatoes and that worked out good. AL: You said for a little bit of time you were away from… your husband was away in the war. What did you do… how did you… what did you do during that time? LO: I stayed with my in- laws. Uh huh. And Venice, my sister- in- law and I, worked in the potatoes and so did my father- in- law and Blaine‟ s oldest brother wasn‟ t in the service and so we all worked in the potatoes. The other two boys were in New Guinea and in that area. They didn‟ t see a lot of fighting but they built roads and that and um… Laurel was um… she was a year old. She was a year old on the twenty- second of November and then Blaine went in to the service right after Christmas that year. AL: Okay. Had you had experience working with potatoes before? LO: No. AL: How was that [ inaudible]? LO: Uh, I had uh… Do you remember when they used to pick up spuds? JN: Well, I don‟ t remember but I‟ ve been told about it so.
LO: Oh! Oh, I tell you, that is the worst job on the face of the earth. You had a harness, went around your waste and it had hooks on it and you had this gunny sack that you‟ d pull up between your legs and hook one edge on these hooks and then it‟ s open and then you‟ re going down that row picking up spuds and throwing them in that… and you had to drag that sack „ til it was half 11
full or just a little better and oh, I‟ m telling you, that got heavy… and your back… that is the worst job on earth… and we would get 3 cents for each one of those sacks that we filled. You had a partner and you would do two rows, one over here, you know, and then we would help each other. One would hold the sack. We would pick up in baskets and then dump them in the sacks after we… when they got away from that harness. But if you worked by yourself then you got the whole three cents but if you worked with a partner and were dumping in then you had to share that three cents. AL: About how many bags could you get done in one day? LO: Ugh. The one year I worked through the harvest for this one man and, my brother and I, and he was four years younger and kind of a frail kid so he wasn‟ t a lot of help but then we got along good. But we worked and we each made eleven dollars through the harvest. AL: Through the whole season? LO: And this farmer, we couldn‟ t get a hold of him to get our money. We‟ d call and call and he was never home. The man never came home and so we knew who he was and he was down at the Pool Hall so we just marched down there one day and I couldn‟ t go in but I sent my little brother in. “ Tell him that we wanted our money.” And, well Arch would have been… oh he‟ d have been probably twelve or thirteen then but he went in and found the guy and he came out and paid us… that must have been the most embarrassing thing for him. But we got our money. But we earned it twice. AL: Why weren‟ t you allowed in to the pool hall? LO: Well, kids going in where the men are drinking beer and swearing and all that. No, kids didn‟ t go in there. Not even little boys but we wanted that money and that‟ s the only way we could get it. So it was… it was crazy sometimes. And then we graduated in to working on the spud combines, pulling vines, and then in to driving truck. I broke my thumb driving the truck the one time. I was… the truck driver didn‟ t show up so he had different ones of the women on the combine drive that truck. Well, no instructions at all and I could barely drive a car, but when you were driving that truck you had it in the lowest gear and then you had power but you could still keep going. Well I wanted to shift that up in to third gear and it didn‟ t work, you know, you‟ d kill your motor because you had to go slow and in that heavy dirt… that lose soil, you know. But, he just said get in there and drive that truck. And so I was trying to cram that back in to first gear and my hand slipped off of the gear shift and I rammed that thumb in to the dashboard and broke that ( chuckling) that hurt. And I had to finish out the season working with that broken thumb. Great big clods of dirt would come up … now this was up in Ashton. Down here the soil is [ inaudible]… it doesn‟ t clod like that. But up there we had those great big clods of dirt that we had to throw out and oh I‟ m telling you we‟ d be so tired at night that we could hardly get home. And your back would ache. You‟ d ache in places you didn‟ t even know you had. Get up in the morning and pack your lunch and go at it again. And that‟ s what you did to have a little extra money for things that you wanted. AL: How did you learn… who taught you how to drive? 12
LO: My sister- in- law taught ourselves. My father- in– law had an orange dodge pickup, the same one that we went to the dances in and um… it was so funny. They‟ d have their gas delivered when they were in the fields working… my father- in- law… when we were first married they were digging potatoes with a team of horses. That‟ s a lot of fun. You‟ re down there pulling out the vines and that and here comes this fresh horse poop up over the… so you had to be on your guard. But, anyway, then they, he got a little Ford Ferguson tractor. And everybody had to have one of those. Can you imagine? The machinery that they‟ ve got nowadays, you know it was just so different. But anyway, that was the way to go. But, um… then on the back of that combine they had a little platform that the guy stood on… the potatoes going up this conveyor and then he‟ d fill those sacks about half or just a little better. You couldn‟ t fill them clear full because then they couldn‟ t lift them on to the truck and they‟ d spill all over. So he‟ d hang them on hooks and when it was full he‟ d flip a little gate over and it‟ d fill the other sack, you know, and he just went back and forth. He‟ d just take the one off, set it off. He just kept going down the row like that. And everybody was picking up spuds that were… that got spilled, you know, went over on the ground and just, whatever it took. It was hard life but you know we just… it just, it had to be done and there‟ s no sense in bawling and moaning and groaning about it because that just made the job worse. AL: What was the… for your first baby what was it like in the hospital? LO: Hospital. Ugh. You didn‟ t go to a hospital. They had back then they had maternity homes that you went to to have your babies. Now we do most of our shopping in Rexburg, but then it was St. Anthony and the maternity home up there, for some reason or other, was closed down. I don‟ t if that woman had gone on vacation or what but it was closed down so I went up to my parents and the doctor came up there that night after he closed his office and delivered the baby and my sister had had her baby there to. And he was just a little older than Laura. So that‟ s what we did. AL: How much did you pay for… how much did he ask? LO: He charged $ 75 for a delivery. And it was hard paying for that. AL: I can imagine. LO: And even with some of my others. Oh, I know one doctor went up to $ 125 and we just thought that was highway robbery and I think the last one was about $ 300 and now a normal delivery, they say is about 5,000 dollars. But people have got insurance now and that‟ s why everything is so high because the insurance company is paying for it. AL: Did you have any of your children in the maternity home?
LO: No. No, then there was seven years between my first two and by then I was going to Dr. Hatch down in Idaho Falls, and I‟ d had problems I‟ d um…. This doctor that had delivered my first one, I‟ d gone back for my six weeks check- up and he said everything was fine. So, we just went along and um... oh, she was probably five or six years old and um, we were living out in Twin Groves at that time, and I was having quite a discharge so I went… somebody had me go to this Dr. Hatch down in Idaho Falls and his office was right across the street from where the old LDS hospital was, where the temple is now. And um… I had a… there was a three cornered tear 13
in my uterus and can you imagine how infected that‟ d be after all those years. And so he gave me some… oh I think they called it Blue Violet or something. It was the awfullest medicine. And everything that… you had to wear a pad to bed, and if that got saturated then it was on your sheets and it never did wash out. And it was just a deep purple, but that healed up and the first thing I knew I was pregnant again. And then I had three little girls. One was born in „ 50, one in „ 52, and one in „ 53, so they were like triplets, and then I didn‟ t have any more for about four years, and I had a boy… had two boys. They were about four years apart, and then had one more girl. I was forty when my last baby was born. You‟ d have thought I had better sense but that‟ s the way it worked out. I had seven children all in all. And the one little girl that would have been the youngest of the… like the triplets… the mailman ran over her when we they were down at their grandparents and um… the three little girls had been in the habit of going out and getting the mail. They had to go across the street to get it. And the little one, Betsy, slipped between the gate and ran out and right in front of the car and he didn‟ t see her. He was leaning through the car to put the mail in the box and she was right in front of the car and she would have been three in August and this happened in June. So she was just a little bit of a thing and he ran over something. And he felt that, you know … and that wasn‟ t normal. He never ran over a rock or anything there and he stopped and oh, it just about killed him. He was one of my husband‟ s friends. They‟ d gone to school together and he just about lost his mind. It was harder on him than it was on us. And oh it was… he died… my husband died in „ 91 in August and this fellow died in December of that same year. And the Memorial Day before that, the last one before, he was up there at her grave in Parker just crying his heart out… and oh it was… it was so hard but after all those years he hadn‟ t let that go. And I wasn‟ t up there to see it but my sister- in- law was and her husband and they went over and talked to him, you know, and that. But there was just no consoling him. And their children were about the same age as ours and so he compared them…” well, so and so was the same age as… as this one” you know, and he had um… I think it was a boy that would have been the same age as Betsy and… every time he‟ d look at that boy he‟ d think of her and so it took a lot of joy with his own kids away from him, you know, so it was a sad situation but we lived through it. AL: Was the infant mortality rate high in this area? LO: You know, I don‟ t actually remember that. I don‟ t think it was any worse than it is now. In fact I think it‟ s worse now. There‟ s so many babies that are born handicapped and you hear oh, some weird goins on in these hospitals and the doctors and that but… and I think really that the infant mortality was higher back then because you‟ d hear those stories but I wasn‟ t actually aware of it. AL: I was going to ask you about raising your children. You said you did work while your children were growing up to help the family? LO: Oh ya. Ya. AL: And it was in potatoes again? LO: Mostly. AL: Did your children work a long side you at all? 14
LO: Uh, at one time when I worked down here for Tibbitses the one girl was in high school and she worked down there in… during spud harvest. He‟ d hire a lot of the kids but that was the only incident and then I ended up working over here at Sunviste, that warehouse by Roger Brothers and I didn‟ t retire from there until I was 82 years old and then I wished I‟ d have stayed with it a few more years. AL: You must have like it? LO: Well, I liked what I could do with the money. My husband died in ‟ 91 and I retired in ‟ 95 so… but I wish I‟ d have stayed with it and bought me one new car. But I didn‟ t think of that till a couple years after I retired and too late then. Hindsight [ is] better than foresight. AL: The jobs for your girls and your boys, was it easy for them to find jobs around here other than in the potato harvest? LO: Well, the, ya they‟ d work in the potato harvest or um… let‟ s see my oldest girl um… she got a job with Doctor Miller who was a dentist in St. Anthony and learned chair side assistance from him and he liked to do that. Rather than the girls that went to school and learned how to do it, he liked to teach you his self because they all had different ways of doing things and so she learned that. However, she didn‟ t like the job and I don‟ t know what she went on to but then she had office jobs and that, secretarial and now she‟ s the dispatcher in Pocatello at the city busses. She does the payroll and dispatching and that and she hates it. She‟ s looking forward to retiring. And I told her… AL: Get a new car. LO: There‟ s worse things than working and one of them is having things to do that you‟ re no longer able to do which is the situation I‟ m in now. I‟ ve had this knee replaced and it wasn‟ t a good job. It‟ s never been right since. I had both of them scoped before that and so my knees are bad and I‟ m just glad that I can get out of bed and dress myself and do a few things. AL: Can I ask about your semester at BYU- I… at, uh, Ricks College? What classes did you take? LO: Oh I think, well we were going to be secretaries, my sister and I were both... and we rode the union pacific bus back and forth to school. But we wanted to be nurses and at that time they had a nursing program down at the LDS hospital in Idaho Falls and you would go down there and stay through the week while you were in school and you‟ d go home for the weekend and that‟ s what we wanted to do but he wouldn‟ t… my dad wouldn‟ t let us so he got us over there in Ricks College and we were going to be secretaries and make some good money and uh, my sister… she pretty well… well, she was smarter than me and she paid attention. She was doing her lessons but I wasn‟ t. I was just goofing off… sloughed classes and I feel sorry for the teachers that had me because, you know, that would be so frustrating. But I quit school. I‟ d started in September see, quit school in December, got married. That‟ s how smart I was. It got worse before it got better. AL: How did you pay for the schooling?
LO: Well my dad paid for it and it was money wasted. You might just well have flushed that down the toilet because… and the bus ride, you know, he‟ d buy us those books of tickets, and I 15
don‟ t know what they cost, probably 50 cents a day or something like that but it was all money wasted. AL: Why didn‟ t he want you to go in to the nursing program? LO: Well, you know how parents are. They‟ ve got things that they want their kids to do and usually it was something that they weren‟ t able to do, you know, and they wanted to give their kids better chances than they had and the kids had a mind of their own and so it was…. AL: Can I ask one last question? You were here during the time that the Teton Dam broke. Was this area, were living in this area, here in this house? LO: Yes, we were right here then. AL: What happened during that time? LO: I had just got out of the hospital from a perforated ulcer operation and I had been in there for eleven days and I came home on Mother‟ s Day that year… well, from the hospital. And the dam broke on the… was it the 5th or the 6th of June? So see about two weeks after I got home. And that incision was still draining. It still had those drain tubes in it, and um, everybody was… they were taking people in to their home or they were doing washing or something to help the flood victims out and I felt like, you know, I could be doing washing or something and so I checked with my doctor and he said absolutely not. He said with that incision still draining, he said if you‟ d get infection in there why you probably would be dead. So, I raised a pretty good garden that year and I did have some of the gals that wanted beans they came and picked beans or whatever garden produce I had that I could share. That was my effort. But that was… we weren‟ t in any danger here. You‟ d come up that kind of a hill and down below the hill there by the bridge that crossed why it was just devastation. Cattle drowned and homes washed away and… just, just horrible. But we weren‟ t hurt like that up here. Some of our neighbors on down that lived right there on the river bottoms why, they didn‟ t lose their home but they lost a lot of cattle and it ruined the ground for a long while before they could get that built back up. So, it was… and oh, you‟ d see them… they were um, hauling cattle out when the water went down. They‟ d go in with helicopters and hook on to those dead cattle and I don‟ t know where they hauled them off to but they had to get them out of the [ inaudible] ground and that down there. So it was a sad situation. AL: Were your children able to help out in the relief effort?
LO: Umm… Let‟ s see the one boy that‟ s living with me now was working over in Rexburg at that time and I don‟ t know. I can‟ t remember just what he was doing. He might have been… I wouldn‟ t say for sure. But there were people came… there were Amish people that came and helped out, got in and the homes that weren‟ t totally destroyed… cleaned them out, shoveled the mud out and they had to rip the carpet out and most of the furniture was beyond use but they said, in cleaning out cupboards they‟ d wash and wash and wash and that mud was still seeping out of those cracks. They never did get it all, so a lot of them eventually just remodeled and built new cupboards and things like that. But it was… and they told us not to… everybody wanted to go see, you know, when the water had gone down. It was weeks before one of my daughters finally come up and got me and she said “ I‟ m going to take you over there so you can see.” And we 16
drove around Sugar City, what roads were drivable and oh, it just made you sick. It just made you so thankful for what you had. Can you remember that? You‟ d have been… JN: I wasn‟ t born. LO: You weren‟ t even born so all you know is what you‟ ve heard. JN: Yep.
LO: Did you know it was the funniest thing. The government would pay for their machinery that was damaged. And they said they paid for more antique machinery through that flood. Course everything they lost then was an antique. And so there was a lot of skullduggery going on then, you know, but that‟ s the way it goes. The government furnished those flood trailers for people that didn‟ t have any homes and they were in a big trailer park and just crammed together as many as they could get in there. Oh that would have been horrible living situations you know. And then when they could get a new house built, or a piece of ground… along the ground was to the point where they couldn‟ t farm it any more, you know, washed out and that but some of them bought those trailers and made it a permanent home for as long as the trailers lasted. So it was… that was quite a thing. They wanted us to evacuate and the state police were going around telling everybody to take some food and go out on the sand hills. And so we did. Got a bunch of milk and bread and picnic stuff more or less and went out on the sand hills there by that one sand hills resort. And there was quite a few people from St. Anthony that went out there. We just sat around and talked and, you know, listened to the radio and one report said that the water was up to the courthouse steps in St. Anthony. Well it never did get anywhere near that high but, you know… if you could make a bad story better why… or make it worse. So, we finally just gradually went back home. I don‟ t know why … I guess the one brother- in- law lived close to his mother down the road here and um… he was in charge of getting her but she wouldn‟ t leave her home and she told the cop “ I‟ m not leaving,” and she didn‟ t and we sat out there and then we wondered why they didn‟ t show up. But the one sister- in- law that lived IN St. Anthony she was out there with her one daughter and they had horses in a pasture there in on the south side of St. Anthony and finally the girl said “ Hey, I‟ m going home and if the waters getting that bad”… some of the horses were tied up… she said I‟ m going home and get to those horses and untie them. I‟ m not going to have them drowned because they‟ re tied to a fence post… and then they went in and then they called us. The water wasn‟ t anywheres near see… and that, oh, it was up to the foot of the courthouse steps… and the people in Rexburg, I guess, just went up on the hill by the college and up that way and just sat there and watched that water running down Main Street and the stores all flooded. They had… what merchandise was in there, like the clothing stores. They just piled it out on the curb of the streets and anybody that wanted it… course it had to be washed 14 times to get the mud out of it. They sold levis for 25 cents a pair and shoes… and course the shoes weren‟ t really good… but the clothes that could be washed and that why… but it was… and different ones, you know, took advantage of that, but I never made it over to Rexburg until it got things pretty well cleaned up… and it, it was um.. and now they‟ re talking about building the dam again. They‟ re wanting to. So I hope they do a better job. I had a niece that her husband worked on the dam … and he‟ d talked with the contractors and different ones, you know how‟ d they visit back and forth and they‟ d made mistakes on that from day one. And 17
they knew it was never going to hold and yet the government, the way they do things, that dam is going to be finished and it‟ s going to be wonderful and we all know the rest of that story. AL: Well thank you Lucille for your time. LO: Well, you‟ re welcome. I hope I helped you out. AL: It‟ s been wonderful. Any last words of advice? LO: Have a good time. Enjoy life. Get your education. You‟ re no where now if you haven‟ t got education and a lot of them can‟ t find jobs. It‟ s a sad… I feel sorry for the kids now a day. They work and oh, they‟ ve got all these student loans to pay for and can‟ t get a job in the field they‟ ve studied for. AL: It‟ s true. LO: That probably isn‟ t as often as what they portray it but it‟ d be sad you know. I‟ ve got grandsons, two of them. Ones a pharmacist and ones an optician now, and oh, they‟ ve got student loans they‟ ll be paying for when they‟ re old men. Not the pharmacist he‟ s making good money. But, you know, but they‟ re driving nice cars and they‟ ve got new homes… AL: So it worked out. LO: They seem to be doing all right and happy; having their families. And there they were going to school and having their families, you know, just as happy as if they had good sense so more power to them. AL: Thank you Lucille. JN: Yes, thank you. LO: Well, you‟ re welcome.