Pearl Jenta Sutherland Interview

              Dr. Radke- Moss Women‟ s Oral History Collection
Pearl Jenta Sutherland
By Pearl Jenta Sutherland
January 7, 2008
Box 5 Folder 16
Oral Interview conducted by Amanda Stauffer
Transcript copied by Elizabeth Rich Jan 2008
Brigham Young University- Idaho
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Amanda Stauffer: I‟ m Amanda Stauffer. I‟ m interviewing at 6: 07pm on January 7, 2008 at the Homestead Assisted Living.
Pearl Sutherland: My name is Pearl Jenta Sutherland. I was born June 2, 1919. Esther came along and then Dolly. It was a family of six children three boy and three girls. We all lived in a three room house. No plumping, no electricity, and a pass through the outhouse.
AS: What were your parent‟ s names?
PS: Oh, my father‟ s name was Bartholomew Thomas Jenta. He was born in Italy in 1882.
AS: Do you know what part of Italy?
PS: Actually, he was on his way to America and he was born in Marcellus, France. But his folks were both Italian.
AS: What was your mom‟ s name?
PS: My mom‟ s name was Lydia Catherine Badero. And a…
AS: What year was she born? Do you know?
PS: No. She was about five years younger.
PS: I remember my mother only briefly. She passed away on April 16, 1926. I remember sitting on the floor and brushing her long hair while she rocked in the rocking chair with the other kids. Our pleasant life came to a brief stop in 1926; mother went to the hospital for gallbladder surgery and never came home. I remember dad getting us out of bed and kneeling on the floor and saying a prayer before he told us she had passed away. That was all I knew about my mother except what he told us. She was not born in Italy. Her folks came from Italy into the Utah Valley several years before.
We survived…. well we all worked on the farm. The three boys were the oldest and the three girls were the youngest. I was the oldest of the three girls. We worked on the farm, we worked in the fields. We worked in the yard and in the garden. I learned very young to make bread, at about ten years old and I would have to stand in the chair to mix it down. But I could put it in the pan and let it rise and bake it in the oven in a cold stove.
We had to do all the work. We didn‟ t have any help in the house. So we‟ d take the three girls and my youngest brother would take turns keep the house clean, picking the fruit in the garden and I was the one that did most of the canning.
My dad taught us how to wash clothes and all the things that he learned. But he decided that we would learn ourselves and not have anybody come in. He was not very enthused about having the Relief Society come it because he didn‟ t know the ladies and he wanted us to learn on our own. 3
We used to wash the cloths by hand. I washed the cloths in a big tin tube that I used [ as] a scrubbing board to wash out diapers and all the other clothes. The hardest part of that was scrubbing out the levi‟ s that they wore on the farm because they were too stiff and hard. I had a little help from my two sisters but they were not as ready to help as they should have been.
My school years at the Sugar/ Salem grade school and high school were just a passing of time as any other school would be: nothing of importance. I went on the grade school at that time the eighth grade was in the high school because of the lack of room in the grade school for the eighth grade, which was actually our freshman year.
I wanted to go into nursing but had a job at the telephone office as an operator, which I really enjoyed. At school I was not very much in demand with boys. When I came to Rexburg I earned a little more money and had money to spend on a few nice clothes and met a lot of boys there. And I‟ ve got a whole slew of names and I‟ m not going to read them. Nobody would know them anyway.
AS: A whole slew of names? So wait a minute. You got some new clothes and came to Rexburg and then you met all the boys.
PS: Yes I came to Rexburg and that‟ s when I met the boys, but I still hadn‟ t met the one I was looking for. We went to a dance at a big dance hall it was down between Rexburg and Rigby. And huh, it was called Riverside Gardens. Everybody that was anybody went down to the Saturday night dances. We all dressed up and went. We had to hitch a ride with one of the friends or had a boyfriend that would take us. It was the way we worked it.
Hum…. oh this is where I met one of my old friends. A friend I went with down there was quite friendly with all the others because he went to high school in Rexburg. It was then that he mentioned me to Brent, my future husband. And asked him if he thought I would go with him if he asked me. And he says, “ No she won‟ t go with you. Just don‟ t bother to ask her.” And he says, “ Ah come on. I will bet you fifty cents she won‟ t go with you.” And he says, “ Well I‟ ll give it a good chance.” And so he come and asked me for the next dance. I kind of noticed that he held me a little tighter then usual. After the first dance he nonchalantly asked me for a date. I listened, hesitated then he said, “ Oh Preston told me that he‟ d bet me fifty cents that you wouldn‟ t go with me.” And I thought, well buddy he‟ s in for a surprise. I said, “ Yes, I‟ ll go with you.”
So I got off the telephone office at 3 o‟ clock and he took me hunting down on the river, [ the] Teton River. Though the slews and the water and I had jut bought a new pare of shoes. I was about ready to kill him. Anyways that was our first date.
I didn‟ t realize what my life would be when I got mixed up with him. He was playing football at Ricks College and running a floral shop which he was working at and decided to buy. I went on dating others for a while and gradually the calls from Brent got more frequent. He took me to meet his mother and dad. Ruby his mother was sort of a social butterfly. She played the violin like a pro and she studied at the Julliard School of Music in Chicago while Brent‟ s dad went to medical school. Get passed that…. he took his residency in medicine at the Kirk County Hospital 4
in Chicago one of the first doctors in town that came to stay. We only had two doctors at the time. He was the second one that came in and the town was about 3,000 people.
AS: This was in Chicago or here?
PS: Here. Chicago… 3,000 people.
AS: So he came to live here and took residency?
PS: Yeah and brought his family here.
PS: Let‟ s see. I didn‟ t know I was such a rotten writer. I didn‟ t used to be. Let‟ s see I don‟ t want to get mixed up here. We dated for almost two years struggling to make the greenhouse business go while I worked at the telephone office. Often going after I got through work over to help him at the floral shop. The Rexburg floral was the only floral shop in town and had been in business for 15 years before he bought it. We finally decide to buy it and then we put it together for a couple of years. Me at the telephone office and him at the shop and I would go over and help him.
He had one brother, older brother. His name was Bill and he was a dare devil. He had a Harley Davidson bike and boy he used to ride it up and down main street standing up on it both arms waving in the wind [ with] the police right on his tail, but they never caught him. He was in the South Pacific during the war. His base was the Island of the Gautama Canal in the South Pacific. When the war started, the Second World War started, and that‟ s where he had his duty for two years. He was shot down. He was put in a dive bomber. He was shot down three times and on the third time that is when he got injured and was sent home. He came home with malaria. They always got [ it] in the South Pacific and there is no cure for it. It just goes away and comes back.
I was not living at home, I was living in an apartment, but I would still go home when I had a day off from the telephone office and help clean the house and do a little cooking for my dad and brother. After that went on for a couple years we finally decided we had enough money to get married. I worked in the telephone office all the time right up until the day we got married. Brent would call me from his room at the floral shop. He had a telephone and a… I can‟ t read my writing. He would call me at night while I was working at the telephone office and it wasn‟ t busy so he‟ d call. I‟ d call him and then he‟ d find a scary story and lay the phone down by it. He‟ d go to sleep and I‟ d listen to that in between telephone calls. Anyway they never caught me from doing it. I wasn‟ t supposed to do that but with no calls at all between 1 and 5 I had a lot of time just to think and I was there alone in this building.
We went to a lot of movies for lack of places to go and things to do on nothing. [ It was] 25 cents to 35 cents for a movie for adults and 10 cents for kids. April 12 finally came around and that was at 11am but Brent had a high school formal and had a bunch of corsages to make so he was late to the wedding. Anyway, but he finally got there. Brent‟ s folks had a breakfast ready and a brunch, you might call it, for us. Dad was their and my family.
AS: Where were you married? 5
PS: We were married in his family home. We was married later in the Temple, but anyway.
AS: On April 12?
PS: On April 12, 1940. We borrowed, Brent‟ s Dad‟ s ( Dr. Sutherland) Lincoln continental to go to Salt Lake for our Honeymoon. And we left his little black ford, Brent‟ s little black ford, for him to drive. I think the neighbors thought he‟ d sure taken a drop in his income to be driving that poor little ford car around.
He had thirty dollars, Brent had thirty dollars and I had about fifteen dollars for our honeymoon. That included our trip to Salt Lake and a show and then we bought a few things at the Cresses Rollers down there. Then we came home.
We had a hard time getting the family or getting the house which belonged to Brent, but the lady wouldn‟ t move out and we had to get a judgment against her from a lawyer, a judge to get her out. She had about six kids. And we finally got that. His folks gave us a refrigerator for a wedding present. Before the wedding Brent went to my dad and asked him if it was alright if he would marry me? Dad says, “ Yes you can have her, but just don‟ t bring her back.” Brent and him became very best of friends.
I kept working at the telephone office as an operator and I did some of the company books and took the money to the bank that they collected there. I stayed there all night alone with just a…. they didn‟ t even pull the blinds till the war started. After that they pulled the blinds shut and we had to turn all the lights out accept just he ones over the switchboard.
He was drafted into the service in 1942. And was finally called and he left here in the first of ‟ 43. We took him to the train. He ended up in Livermore, California where he was working at the… they had him in the pharmacy division which he said he is not sure he learned anything. But the first little while they were their Guam hadn‟ t been secured yet so they had to take their guns and their rifles and their knifes to bed with them because they were in tents for a couple of months before they got the island secured. They didn‟ t have anyway of keeping the Japanese from sneaking in through the tents and killing people.
I finally had while he was gone…. Oh, we‟ ve got to get down here where we had a one little child. One little girl, she was born, June 17th 1943 and we named her Brenda. So she was four months old when he left to go to the service.
We had no snow blows to clear the roads in those days. That was in the late 30‟ s and 40‟ s. So we had to go to school in sleighs with horses and we‟ d cover up. Dad would put straw in the bottom of the sleigh and through a couple of blankets in and then heat some bricks and that‟ s the way we‟ d go into school. They kept the fences down and [ we‟ d] go through the field because they couldn‟ t the roads plowed. Because that‟ s where all the snow piled up, was over the roads and so it was pretty, pretty rough.
AS: That was for your kids or when you were a child? 6
PS: Me. We finally got a car and it was an old Nash. When the road was good dad would drive us to school in the car. Actually, it was a school bus because there was only about four kids on our ride so he made a little extra money by driving us to school and coming and picking us up. One day it was colder than the dickens and we all got ready to go and dad says, “ It‟ s awful cold out there don‟ t think we should be going.” And all the kids says, “ Oh come on, we gotta go to school.” So he warmed up the bricks and the quilts and threw them on top of us and he rapped one around him and the horses had icicles dripping from their noses. And… do they have chins? Well anyway, from their chins. When we got to school they told us it was 54 below zero and all the pipes were frozen up in both schoolhouses, both the grade school and the high school. So we had to go over to the bank and to the grocery store and go in there and warm up and turn around and go home.
We were out in the shop one morning early working. The date was December 7, 1941 and life began to change. Brent had already had his draft call by than but he applied for a six month leave, deferment to take care of the greenhouse because we couldn‟ t find anybody to work, to do it. And I couldn‟ t work in the shop and the greenhouse and take care of the baby. It was a sad time anticipating his departure and wondering if he would come home. We had no idea where he was going and they never told him what branch of the service he would be in. October got here faster than we wanted it to.
AS: Which year was that? That was 41?
PS: ‟ 42 it would have been.
AS: Do you remember December 7th? What were you doing then?
PS: I told you that. I read that to ya.
AS: You told me that you remember the day but what were you doing on that day?
PS: I said we were working in the shop.
AS: Ah, and you heard it over the radio?
PS: No, Brent‟ s dad called and told us that the war had broken out. Anyway, after about six or seven months we couldn‟ t put the greenhouse together again without any snow. There wasn‟ t any heat on there. So we fixed the shop up and I opened it again and decided to run it myself. And so for a couple of years my brother worked at the federal express company and he would deliver at three in the morning. So he would bring the flowers that came in from Salt Lake and down the line and he‟ d stop and help me unpack them and help me for a couple hours and he‟ d go on and finish his delivering and then he‟ d come back and help again with the shop. We kept that going for a couple of years and then things got so he…. well anyway, from Idaho falls were he went. He went to Shoremont which is in California, and they shipped him from there on a ship to Hawaii and they‟ d mark out this ah… what did they call it? Anyway, they‟ d read all the letters and anytime there is any mention of the South Pacific, anything in the South Pacific, 7
they‟ d cross it out. And since my name was Pearl, he‟ d right Pearl Sutherland on the envelope and they‟ d cross that out and they‟ d cross it out in the letter and anybody with a brain would know that we could tell where he was because they crossed out the Pearl, he was in Pearl Harbor. And they did the same with Bill when he was in Guatemala Canal and wrote and told us one day, his brother told us one day to get the Life Magazine and look on page so and so and that‟ s how we found out where he was. He was by the Guatemala Canal.
Anyway, I went down to California and stayed with Barb and Dale, that‟ s Brent‟ s sister and her husband. And I took Brenda with me. And we stayed there for six weeks. Dale, Brent‟ s brother- in- law was in the FBI and we stayed there for six months. And I got back to the telephone office when I got back home. I worked at night at the telephone office and then in the day time at the shop. I had a girl staying with me, her name was Tish and she worked days at the hospital, at Brent‟ s Dad‟ s hospital. And so I worked night, so she took care of Brenda in the nights and I took care of her in the day time. So I didn‟ t get much sleep. About 1: 00 am every night I‟ d place a call to the hospital in Livermore and talk to him and then finally he wasn‟ t there and nobody could tell me were he was. They wouldn‟ t tell me, they probably knew. Anyway, it was several months after that that he finally got to me where he was and he was in Guam— a little island in the South Pacific.
Anyway, when the war finished he called me from San Francisco and he said, “ Send me some money I‟ m in San Francisco and I‟ ve got to get on the bus and come home.” So I wired him the money and never heard another thing from him. He never came home, I never heard anything. Two weeks later he called me from Bremerton, Washington. He said that he had gone back to the ship to get his clothes and his things that he was bringing home and they put him on the ship, to release him, they put him back on the ship and sent him to Bremerton, Washington to be released from the service.
PS: Anyway, what time is it?
AS: 6: 40.
PS: Anyway, he had quite a time while he was over there. He wasn‟ t injured but he did get some kind of an injury that he almost lost his foot. Then he had two or three doctors fighting over whether to remove his foot or try and make it well. One of the dermatologists there told him that “ You‟ re not taking off that foot. I can cure it.” So they went around and around but they finally got it cured and he came home with his foot. And it wasn‟ t in any fighting. He really didn‟ t get into any actual fighting accept when they first got there and had to be so aware of the Japanese getting in the tents at night. He said it was the most sinking feeling he had ever had in his life to leave and go out under the golden gate bridge because he had no idea where he was going or where he would end up. He watched from… there was no lights because the lights were all out. You had to have all the lights out. This is when he left here to go a…. we left and stood on top of the apartment building and watched the navy go out under the Golden Gate Bridge. It was a moonlight night and we didn‟ t know which ship he was on but there was about seven ships that were all lined out at once. And we knew he was on one of them but there was no way for him telling us which one he was on.
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Anyway, the time kept passing and when he got to Bremerton he got released form the service. There was no way to get home because trains and the buses and the planes were all so swamped from running all of these people out of the service all at once. He said they couldn‟ t find a bus or train or a truck or anything so he decided to hitchhike in the middle of the winter. It was Christmas time. He got home Christmas Eve. Anyway, he finally haled a ride with a truck driver. He was piled high with lumber or big logs and he says, “ I can take you a ways.” So they took him clear out through the mountains up in Seattle. This guy took him clear to Montana and anyway they found a bus there was two seats left. So he and this fellow that went with him and he was a guy from Sugar City, he just happened to show up in Guam shortly before they left so they came home together. And they got to butte and there they got a bus and came home.
I had my hair put up just in case. I was in curlers and I had been working all day in the shop it was Christmas Eve. I was trying to get all the banquettes and stuff delivered, and plants. And the phone rang about 7 o‟ clock and I picked it up, a guys says „ hey this Jerry Garvin from the Adamant Hotel‟ he said „ do you know a grimy, dirty, old, sailor‟ he says „ he needs a ride home‟ and of course I about fated. I said tell him to wait there I‟ ll be there. He says „ he‟ s not going anyplace. He says „ I‟ m not leaving this town again”. So I went up and got him and he went in and took a shower. And when he saw Brenda he about flipped. She already knew he was her dad because I had shown pictures of him. She called him Daddy. He got cleaned up and went out and we finished the Christmas delivering and that was the Christmas we spent that year about one of the happiest we‟ d had in a long time.
AS: How old was Brenda then?
PS: Ten months. No she was two years and a half.
PS: Anyway, we kept working at the floral shop and that went on for years. Brent was an excellent singer and he sang for the businesses, for the banquettes, for schools, and he sang for close to a thousand funerals in our lifetime, which was 62 years I‟ d been married. He was called everytime there was a funeral and he never turned them down. He had a lady named Mary Hill that was a natural born pianist. She was better than any the other that you see on T. V. or on the radio or anything. And she played for him for 25- 30 years. Whenever he needed… he[„ d] go get her and she‟ d go and play for him.
Now there isn‟ t a lot of other stuff. It is just… well we had our first boy came along in 1946. We named him Michael. And then in 1950 a second son came and between there and 1958 we lost three babies, two boys and a girl. And they never could find out why. And then Gary was born and we had our family and we decided that was it, we got our four kids.
AS: Do you remember the depression before the war?
PS: Oh, ya you can put that in there we went through the depression. That was from about 1920 to 1940. Close to that.
AS: Did you have to ration food and things like that?
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PS: Oh I forgot to mention in there, that we were rationed during the war. For food, butter, milk, bread, meat, eggs. Of course we grew ours on the farm, dad did so we didn‟ t bother with that as much accept for the shoes and the clothes and stuff and gasoline. And I had to go around and beg for stamps from people to run the car to deliver the flowers.
There are so many things that seem not very interesting to me but maybe they would be to you.
We had a girl come live with us in 1944 and she was a nurse. She worked at the hospital for Brent‟ s Dad. He had a hospital that he had five beds, an operating room, and kitchen, one bathroom and one nurse. And I worked at the telephone office nights and Tish worked. So Brent got home in December 24, Christmas Eve, 1945. All he could send me home while he was gone was 50 dollars a month because he had to have enough to buy his things he needed, toothpaste and stuff like that. But I didn‟ t have to pay a mortgage. Mortgage payments were put on hold when you were drafted because there was no way you could pay them if you not working. So we didn‟ t have to pay the mortgage on the place until he got home. Tish lived with us for maybe a year in a half and then she married my brother John. He had a chicken business and sold eggs. They had a good little house out by the river. I got ahead of myself. The war was over in August 14, 1945 and he didn‟ t get home until Christmas.
AS: So, August 14 was when he called you and he didn‟ t get home until Christmastime? That is how long it took to get home?
PS: Well there were too many men. There were 16 million men and women in uniform. 16 million and they think this is a war that we‟ ve got over there today.
AS: So when he came back then you both owned the floral shop?
PS: He owned it. We owned it because we both worked ourselves to death to get it, to pay for it.
AS: The Rexburg Floral Shop?
PS: Yes. He was about 15 years old when he bought it.
PS: Then we built a new one in 1967. And I was just a little lean to shack, it was really a little old building.
AS: What was it like for you raising kids?
PS: Gary was born in 1958. He weighed six pounds and seven ounces and was just as lively as he could be and we were happy to have a family all there. Felt badly about loosing others but they couldn‟ t figure out what happened. And I could tell you a couple of things that did, but… we knew what happened but we… My sister was in nursing at the LDS Hospital in Idaho Falls, she was seriously ill and they couldn‟ t... And so Brent and I went down to see her and she was just in terrible shape. So Brent called his Dad and said, “ Come on down and see if you can help.” Had about 15- 20 doctors trying to figure out what was going on. But they didn‟ t get anything done, they couldn‟ t figure it out. Anyway, I had just had Brenda about six weeks and 10
she needed a transfusion so I gave her a transfusion. Our bloods matched so that saved her life. She had some type of infection that she had gotten at the hospital. Probably a staff infection because that is about that time they started finding staff infection.
AS: What are some of your favorite memories of your husband?
PS: Taking the kids to Disneyland and we all went to work. Gary came along in 1958. In 1958 we decided to put a basement under our house. It was an old house because it was built in 1882 because it was written on the rafters inside „ cause we could see that when we had to knock it in for after the flood. Anyway don‟ t ever try to put a basement under your house after it had been built for that long.
AS: So you tried to put a basement in before the flood came?
PS: Yah, we put it in about 1967 and the flood came in ‟ 76.
AS: What happened with that?
PS: Went down the drain.
AS: So let‟ s see. Tell me how it was set up. You had your house next to the floral shop and then the flood happened. Describe the flood.
PS: The flood didn‟ t take the house down but it did fill our basement so full of water that all it was mud because we couldn‟ t build it clear the whole end of the basement because you had to have a bearing wall. So we just had to put cement and then for the bearing wall to hold the rest of the house up. And all the mud came over and pushed the cement out and the rest was two by fours and we made it all out or noted pine and, oh, it was beautiful. We had a nice stove down there. We didn‟ t put a fireplace in but we had a nice stove. We didn‟ t use it a lot. We had electric panels put in the basement. We heated it with oil, it was all oil. Mike was drafted into the first Persian War, when the first George Bush had the first Persian War in 1991 or „ 90. And he was a medical student and he had to go and leave his family. He had to go to Texas and Louisiana somewhere for training. For fighting training because he had his medical training. And then they put him on a 747, that those great big boeing planes, they had five- hundred men in that one boeing that is built for 350. And they flew clear to Frankfort, Germany. He said the toilets were run over, they didn‟ t have much to eat, he said they didn‟ t have hardly enough water. Talk about a ride. He didn‟ t like Germany at all. He ended up in Frankfort. And it had a big hospital there and it used to be in the shape of a swastika because Hitler had it built. The US when they took Germany back did away with the shape and made it just a hexagon building. He said we had over one thousand doctors and nurses there and they never had more than one thousand patients in all the time he was there, just from kids getting in fights and just accidents. They didn‟ t have more then one to three hundred causalities from the war. The war only lasted about 30 days and when he came home he said they can keep Germany. They can have all of that fat food. He said he wasn‟ t happy to get along with them.
AS: Describe the Teton Dam Flood? 11
PS: That was June 5, 1976 and we were working in the shop and it was the new shop. I had just made up a couple bouquets of roses to send from Jimmy Nickels to his wife. They hadn‟ t been delivered and they were sitting there by the telephone. We had five telephones in the place because we had an upstairs and a down stairs. Sherrill, my niece, called me and said, “ Did you know that the Dam broke?” And I said, “ Well what Dam?” And she said, “ The Teton Dam.” And I said, “ Oh Sherrill.” She said, “ Well turn your radio on and get out.” They didn‟ t have it on T. V. then, maybe they did but we didn‟ t have a T. V. in the shop. So we dashed in the house and turned the T. V. on and you could just see the water grumbling out of that dam. How many gallons? We figured it was about two or three hundred million gallons that came out of that Dam. We sat up there by Bruce‟ s house just up there on the hill where they just built the Temple and watched it come down. It was 11: 57 when Sherrill called me and she had heard it on the radio and watched on the television. We sat up there and watch horses and cows, buildings and houses go down main street. Then Mike‟ s wife‟ s dad decided he better go down to his house and put cloth around the basement windows. Brent said, “ You can‟ t do that Ralph it‟ s too late.” And Ralph said, “ I‟ m going on his bicycle.” Brent said, “ Mike let‟ s go get him because he is not going to make it back in time.” We could see the water coming. So they went and got him he was only about three blocks away but on a bicycle and that water coming it would have just taken him. Mike threw him over his shoulder and put him in the truck to get him to come back with him. It didn‟ t take their house out but it sure made a mess of it. It was [ a] brick home. It was a really nice home. It went through the basement and the stuff around the windows didn‟ t do any good. It took the windows out and everything else. There were dead cows and two or three sheep out there in the greenhouse. There was a big stream broiler that Brent had out there to sterilize the dirt when he would plant and it weighed about five ton. And that took that and just rolled it clear down to Hibbard. Now you can see the pressure of that water. And only 13 people were killed. I can‟ t imagine. If that had happened on in the night instead of on a Saturday morning when most people were home from work, a lot of people, there would have been thousands of people dead. Over two thousand homes were destroyed in that, plus all the farmland. You went out a little later in the day, and drove out north of town and looked at the railroad tracks and they were just like a swirl. It was just rolled up. Sugar City was buried and so was Wilford. It just wiped Wilford right off the map. It didn‟ t get to Teton it just went right on through, as far as American Falls. That water almost over run American Falls because it was miserable build up anyway down there.
AS: So was your house completely gone?
PS: No, it was still sitting there but the inside was gone and that basement was gone and the upstairs was ruined.
AS: And the Floral Shop?
PS: The Floral Shop stood it. It moved it about an inch off the foundation but they got some trucks and stuff in there and put a chain around it. And anyway, they got it moved back on the foundation. We had to redo it all inside.
AS: And you built a new house? 12
PS: Well that is when we moved. We bought another house. Century Twenty One was building stake houses to sell after the flood. So Gary was out wandering around and he is the one that likes to look and he found this house that we bought. He says, “ I found our house Dad.” It was only about five blocks from here. So we went and looked at it and went over to Century Twenty One and put down our money on it and that was that.
AS: And you‟ ve lived in that house ever since?
PS: Yes until I sold it.
AS: One more question what did you feel about women‟ s rights?
PS: I think it was a lot of baloney.
AS: What made you feel that way? What was it like here in Rexburg? Did a lot of women talk about it?
PS: No. There is too many Mormons in the town to talk about it.
AS: Yeah, so religion had something to do with it?
PS: Oh yeah. In fact the whole state is more Mormon than anything else, that and Utah. Of course, Utah had more polygamist than anything else. I think there is a lot of stuff I left out but we got an hour. Anyway it was something to live through the depression and see the people walking down the streets, ragged and you wanted to give them what you had but you didn‟ t have much more than they did.
AS: You saw a lot of that in your childhood and stuff.
PS: Oh, I canned raspberries. I canned peaches. I made jelly and jam and crabapple jelly. We[„ d] go out, grab a chicken and put its head on a block and whack it off, dip them in boiling water, clean „ em, sock „ em for a while, and them cook them for dinner. That is what we did.
AS: Did you want to vote? Or did you not care much?
PS: Oh, I didn‟ t care that much. It didn‟ t affect us that much. I was happily married. And it didn‟ t bother me. I just thought it was baloney that they would make such a big deal of it.
AS: Did many of the women here think that?
PS: Yah, most of them thought the same thing. There were a few loud mouths that had to have their say.