RULA BECK JOHNSON, WIFE OF ALLAN JOHNSON

(Note-CJC:  I retyped this history from a copy that was sent to me.  It was so

enjoyable to read and ponder the lives of this wonderful family. )

RULA BECK JOHNSON

RULA BECK JOHNSON


Typed and edited by Edythe Rula Johnson Lloyd

We have bits and pieces of this history so it will not be in any order of her life. But with the help of Aldon and Del Ora and all the tapes that they used to record mothers history, I thank them and all others that may have helped with this history.

RULA

The first thing I remember in my life was when I was about three years of age and because it was the year before my sister was born, I remember waking up on Christmas morning and seeing a small rocking chair across the room. It had cushions in it made of a red color material and it had a doll sitting in it. I remember saying, “Oh, he did come”. I must have been very skeptical. Then only a short time later on the 1st of January my sister Thelma was born. Of course they had to put my mother to bed. I was very angry because she didn’t help me dress. My father had to help me dress and he didn’t know how and so I was very cross about it. I don’t know how it turned out. That’s all I remember about it.

I remember when we went out north of Rexburg to what we call the Egen Bench and that we had a large cat and he went out and brought in, as I remember it, an enormous squirre,l probably about six or seven inches long and my mother took it away from him and hung it on the wall, so we could find out what it was. When my father came home, he said it was a kangaroo rat. It had long back legs and it had a pouch to carry its babies in. We never saw one again while we were living on this ranch.

Then when we were still living on this ranch my mother was going to town. She harnessed up the horse and put me in the buggy and then I suppose she went around to untie the horse and the horse decided to go and started to run and he tried to go into the barn and of course the buggy shaft wouldn’t let him go in and mother was very frightened. She thought sure I would be hurt. He didn’t run fast, he just walked fast to the barn. He broke the buggy shaft so of course mother wasn’t able to go to town. We didn’t have cars or automobiles or anything like that so we had to use the buggy.

Then later I remember when we moved up east of canyon Creek on a farm. One of the early memories while we were there was we went up and cut huge blocks of snow out of big drifts and we put them in wash tubs and boilers and took them home and boiled them and that was what we used for drinking water and our water to wash with. Later my father built a huge tank out of lumber and it would hold about 500 gallons of water and mounted it upon and wagon and he would take it up to a spring. The spring was up on the side of the mountain and they would run this tank under the trough that ran from the spring and that pretty clear water would run from the spring into this tank and we took it home. It had a plug in the back that we could open. We would have a tub there for watering the cows and then we would run it into our buckets and take it into the house to use for our water in the kitchen.

Then another incident that I remember when we were out on the ranch was that my father came home with three horses hitched to the wagon. The one horse was frightened some way and he started to run and the others went with him. As they went up running across the prairie, the one horse stepped into a hole and broke his leg. My father said he could not afford to shoot the horse which was what they usually did when a horse broke his leg. And so he got him into the barn some way and he made a hammock and put it under the horse’s stomach and hung the horse so that his back legs didn’t touch the ground and the front leg touched the ground, the horse didn’t seem to be very uncomfortable. Then he put a splint on his leg and wrapped it with strips of sheet. He kept the horse hanging there for several weeks while that bone healed. He called the horse Nibs. Where he got the name from I will never know. He lived for many many years and worked pulling our plows and our harrows.

Then east of this place about a quarter of a mile was a canyon and one morning my sister and I were playing at the side of the house. At the time we had only one room and we were playing out there and I came running into the house and said, “Mother, there is a bear out there.” Mother said, “There is not a bear out there.” I said, “There is a bear,” and she said, “it must be a big dog.” So we went out there and as we went out towards the prairie, we saw this old bear lumbering up the side of the mountain and mother became frightened and she made us all go into the house. And just an hour or so later a man came riding up and said to come up to his place. He said he had shot a bear. I remember going up and he had shot this bear. I don’t know whether it was as big as I remember but it seemed like it was huge. It must have been about 8 feet lying down and I remember watching the men skin the bear and then they hung the skin on the side of a building and rubbed salt into the skin to make a bear rug out of it. I don’t know what else they did to it.

Then on the edge of this canyon there were quaking aspen trees and during the summer we used to go out to those trees with our dolls and play for hours and hours. At that time we had no way of keeping things cool, we had no refrigerators, we had no way of keeping our water very cool. We kept our water in this wooden tank. Early in the spring my father would take a load of straw out and cover a snowdrift. They were often times 8 to 10 feet deep. And so this snowdrift covered with straw would last all during the summer; in fact sometimes clear up until the snow came again. We would have this snow. And it was just beautifully clean; of course we didn’t have any smoke or anything in the air. That snow was just as white and beautiful and we would scrape the straw away and cut it into chunks and put it in our drinking water to cool it. And (we would) put it down in our cellar and put it into a box to keep our milk and butter cool with it. There was no other way of keeping it cool.

Another incident was sometime in my youth I was given a baby pig to raise as my own. I made a pet out of it and it would follow me around when I would be outdoors. One day my mother and I hooked up the buggy and started to go into town. After we had traveled a ways, mother happened to look back and saw that the pig was following us. Of course, the pig was getting very tired and so we turned around and picked up the pig and took him back home.

Another incident was when my parents sent me to a neighbor’s house to borrow and ax. On the way home from the neighbor’s house, I was playing with the ax and I saw what I thought was a stick of wood laying across the path. I hit this piece of wood with the ax and chopped it in half and the head and tail of a snake came together. I had chopped a rattlesnake in half.

This next section was recorded in Nevada while Mother was staying with Aldon and Del Ora there. Del Ora would ask questions and mother would answer them.

When were you born? October 31, 1906 and mother said I came about 4:30 in the morning and weighed about 4 ½ lbs.

And where were you born? In my grandmother’s house in Hibbard, Idaho, which was on a Rexburg mail route.

Do you know why you were named Rula? My father named me and my whole name only has eight letters in it. Rula Beck.

Who delivered you, did you have a doctor? Well, I don’t think I remember that. Either from when it happened or being told. I’m sure there was a doctor there and my grandmother was there.

What were your parents names? My mother was Mary Tressa McNeil from Scottish stock and my father was Alma Edward Beck from Scottish stock and English. My grandmother was Emma McNeil Evans and she married George McNeil but he died before I was born in a train accident when mother was about 7 years old and my grandmother remarried. I knew her as Emma Evans who was married to George Evans. My Father’s parents were Martha Sugden and Jonas Nuttal Beck. I am the oldest child, then Thelma who was about 2 ½ years younger than me. Then there was Martha who died when she was about 13 months old, my only brother, Edward Beck and another sister Maurine and then Emma who died, when she was just 6 years old.

Why did she die? Appendicitis.

Did you go ice-skating? We played on the ice a lot. I never skated until I was in High School. But not far from our home was a large slow running canal and there was always skating on it. We had lots of snow and ice.

What kind of games did you play when you were a child? As soon as I learned to read, I didn’t play any games. I guess I was a different type of child. I spent all the time I could reading. I read every book I could get my hands on. My father began teaching me to read when I was just 3 years old.

Did your mother ever spank you? Not that I can remember. I remember once when my father took a hold of my shoulders and gave me a little shake. I could tell that he was angry and cross. But that’s about the nearest I came to a spanking that I can remember.

Did you ever have any birthday parties when you ere a child? Well, I had lots of parties but since I was born on Halloween they usually turned into Halloween parties. When I was 80 years old, I was still getting Halloween cakes for my birthday. I said I had never had a birthday cake. No, I hadn’t but I didn’t miss them. The whole world celebrated my birthday.

Did you have a bicycle as a child? No, but I had several horses. I loved to ride and rode horses for many years. From the time I was quite young. I got my first horse when I was about 7 years old.

Tell how you went to school. When we were living up on the dry farm I would take a horse to school and tie the reins up around the neck and she would go back home and then my father would bring all the horses down to the creek, he farmed with horses, to drink and I would walk down the hill and get back on my horse and ride home. I did that for several years. I had a gray or sort of a dapple-gray horse at the time. Her name was Kate.

What kind of pets did you have? Cats. I have always had cats. I still have a pretty white one; she is up at Edythe’s home.

I didn’t have a brother for several years, but I had cousins. Edward was born when I was nine years old. My cousins would try to tease me but I was about as good at teasing as they were. They met their match.

Who was your best friend? When I was in the sixth grade we moved to Rexburg and I had a friend whose name was Sarah Troust. Her parents came from Germany, she was born in the United States and she had the most beautiful almost black hair. It was so shiny. Of course she had long hair and lots of it.

Did you ever go on train rides? When I was about seven years old my father and I got on the train at Rexburg and went down to Cache Junction where I had an uncle who was there to meet us and he took us from Cache Junction over to Newton which is a little town just outside of Logan. We went to Logan a number of times. I remember staying there for quite some time. I don’t remember why or for how long. We went to Logan when my grandmother Beck died.

Do you remember some of the first automobiles? Yes, I must have been about eight years old when one of my mother’s uncles, his name was Thomas E. Ricks, got an automobile and it was made by Studebaker and it was interesting to me because our wagon that we used to haul grain and wood was made by Studebaker. Always that name fascinated me.

Did you have ice cream when you were a child? Yes, lots of it. How they made it. First we would cover a snowdrift with straw and then in the summer we could go out and get this snow. It was very nearly ice and that would be cracked up and put in a tub and then this bucket had a bale on and we would turn that bucket back and forth with our hands rather than turning an ice cream bucket. And that would be our ice cream freezer. I think I must have been about fourteen before I ever saw an ice cream freezer. I remember we used to make a lot of ice cream in the refrigerator.

Where did you go swimming when you were a child? Everywhere there was a puddle of water. I never got into the rivers but we had a canal and we would run water from the canal into a pond for the horses to drink. That was a fun place to swim in. But it got so muddy; I don’t know how the horses could drink it. Children always like water.

Did you break any bones when you were a child? No, not until I grew up and then I broke my wrist many years later.

What kind of houses did you live in? Quite a number of houses. The house that I remember my grandmother living in a big rock house. The rocks had not been trimmed. They just fit in around one another and plastered in between. My Grandmother lived with us until she died. That was the big house. The house that I was born in was made of wood. My step grandfather was a very fine carpenter. And they had some of the first homemade kitchen cabinets. I remember the tables that he had made. My mother had one of the tables that he had made. He made beautiful furniture.

Did you have hiding places when you were a child? Only as I got older and wanted to get away from my younger brothers and sisters.

Is that why you spent so much time on your horse? One of the reasons, I guess. I was kind of independent, probably a little ornery child.

Did you have fireplaces in your homes? No we didn’t have fireplaces. I remember the little old stove that we had that had a hearth and we could open it up and watch the fire. And the reason I remember it so clearly was that my mother was teaching me to crochet and I was making booties for my doll and I somehow got the doll tangled up in the yarn and when I stood up she fell and broke her head. I wept bitterly. Dolls were not easy to come by.

Did you have your own bedroom? My sister and I had a place to sleep. I remember at one time that we had our bed in the attic; it was rather an unfinished room, and at other times we had a bedroom with all the children in one bedroom and my mother and father in another and their room was our living room as well. Then the bathroom was out back wasn’t it? Usually.

Did you have soda pop? I don’t remember soda until I was in the sixth grade when we moved into Rexburg. And then I remember soda pop. We probably had it before. Mother would make some kind of drinks and also made the homemade root beer.

What kind of lights did you have in your houses? Most of the time we had coal oil lamps and you had to wash and shine the chimneys almost every day and then at a later date we had gasoline that you had to put into the lamp and pump air in to make it so it would burn. And it came up and was in a cloth mantel and if that mantel was touched it broke. It was almost like ash and you had to be very careful with it.

Did you have jobs to do when you were a girl? Yes, I always had jobs. I learned to do almost everything but I spent more time with my father than I did with my mother. I had a younger sister that was three years younger than I who was a much more docile child than I and she got along better with my mother. I spent lots of time with my father out in the fields. I drove horses, wrangled horses and I remember even when I was in High School and we were running the grain combines and we would put 12 horses on it. We would bring the horses in the barn and feed them their oats and father would throw the harnesses over the horses back and I would fasten them. And then we would let them eat while we ate our breakfast. Then we would go out and put bridles on them and I used to have to stand on the manger to bridle the horses. I loved horses.

How did you keep cool in the summer? Play in the mud and the water.

Did you have a basement or an attic in your house? Well, we had an attic in the first house that I remember and then we built a house on the ranch and we had a basement and then Thelma and I slept in that basement. That basement was lovely and cool. And then when we went down to Rexburg to go to school, we had the upstairs that you remember the windows. We would have to go down kind of long hallways to get to the windows.

Do you remember your grandmothers? I lived with my grandmother Evans one year and went to school, when they didn’t have a teacher for my grade out on the ranch. And then my other grandmother lived with us for a couple of winters when I was in High School. She didn’t approve of me. I was not enough of a lady. That was my grandmother Beck. And I always thought it was funny because she was a little short lady and quite fat and she didn’t have any lap. She was English.

Did the fireman ever come to your house? No, I don’t remember any fires.

What about Christmases? I remember we always hung our stockings and there was always candy and nuts. I remember one Christmas when I got the most beautiful doll that any girl ever had. I had her for several years until I finally broke her. I was trying to crochet some booties for her and got her tangled up in the yarn and broke her myself.

Did you make cookies and candy when you were a girl? No, I didn’t. I didn’t do much cooking until I was in High School then mother used to stay in town and I would go out to the farm and cook for the men and I kind of taught myself how to cook. I wasn’t very good at letting my mother teach me.

What about Thanksgiving at your house? It seems like we always had relatives at our house or went to Aunt Mary’s or to Grandmother’s or I don’t remember a lot about Thanksgivings. They were never very much family traditions, other than for the larger families.

What did you do on the Fourth of July? Was there anything special? It seems like we always had little ward celebrations and I remember running races. I could always out-run the other kids my age and getting a nickel or an all day sucker or something. I had long legs and could run.

What about family traditions, did you have any? My grandmother made the most heavenly Yorkshire pudding and I tried but I couldn’t make it. I always remember my mother’s fresh bread. She was quite a bread maker and everyone praised her bread. Well, I had her recipe and it never turned out the same.

Did the boys send you valentines? O yes.

I was reading what I had written about my baptism. It was on the second of January when I was baptized, my birthday of course was on Halloween day. I remember a fellow by the name of Grant Zitting and his sister – they had not been baptized so they took us up to a hot spring and baptized us. For many many years, he and I were very good friends, never serious sweethearts, but just very good friends. My mother’s sister just older than she had three boys, the Remmingtons, Afton and Lowell and one was older and one just younger than me. We were very close.

Where did you go to school? I would have been 8 the last of October and I started school the 1st of September up in a little one room school in Clementsville was the name of it and I walked about 1 ½ miles to school. I had a black dog. I’m sure, he was part collie and part something else and he would go to school with me and the teacher let him lay up in the front of the room. He would go out and play with us at recess and then go back and lay there and take me back home. When I went there, because the winters were so severe, we had school, I imagine, about March through May and then school closed for the summer. And I didn’t get back to school until we moved to Rexburg the next fall. But I was able to finish the first grade that year and the next year I was able to catch up by going through two grades, with my age group. My father taught me to read.

You had a special teacher that helped you didn’t you? I had several very special teachers. The first one I had was a Miss Balentine and she took such an interest in me and helped me so very much.

Did you do sports or anything like that in school? I used to play run my sheepo, run. In school, no, school was pretty much studying.

Did they play football? No I didn’t know anything about football until I was going to High School.

Did you have a lot of homework? Yes, and I read everything I could get my hands on because I always loved to read. And my father would get books because he liked to read. I read them much beyond my age group. I remember reading Jesus the Christ when I was very young.

Did you go on vacations? We would go down to my grandmother’s when I was very young. She lived in Logan, or Newton. I can’t remember how old I was when we got our first car. And then we got a Ford Touring car. And then we were able to go when we could all get away. No one in the family could drive. My mother never did learn to drive. When I was old enough and I learned to drive, then I could take her places.

Did you ever go to a World’s Fair? Yes, after we were married we took the children and went to San Francisco to the World’s Fair on Treasure Island in the Bay. We stayed with my sister Thelma, who was living in San Francisco at the time.

When did you start dating? I don’t ever remember many dates until I must have been a Junior in High School. It seems like we would get together and play a lot. But as far as a formal date, not until I was a junior in High School and then I had a friend that I would see some. My husband was my favorite boy friend. When I met my husband to be, I was on a date with another fellow. I went out with both of them off and on for quite awhile.

Where did you meet? I was working in Blackfoot and I went up close to Rexburg to a dance and Allan, who was from Shelley, was with another girl and she introduced him to me. And that night he asked me if he could have a date and I said I was kind of busy. But he came up that Sunday evening and I canceled something else I was going to do and we just sat in the car and talked so I don’t know whether that could be called a date or not. I had danced with him a number of times.

What did your folks thing of Allan? Well, it was quite a blow to my father. He had just met Allan. He had been out on the farm working when we had decided to be married. My mother had met him and also my brother.

When did he ask you to marry him? We had only been out a few times and he asked me to marry him and I told him I’d have to think about it. I didn’t know if I would ever see him again or not. But the next time he came, I had to work. I was working in a store and he came and sat there and watched me for quite awhile and it was a little after that that he asked me if I was going to marry him.

Where were you married? In the Salt Lake Temple on April 7, 1927

How did you get down there? Well, my father took my mother and I to Shelley and then we drove to Salt Lake in Allan’s father’s old Blue Nash automobile.

Did you have a reception? No, Allan’s mother invited a few friends in and also many of my school friends came. It was very informal. Some brought gifts but not all. When you are going to college there is not much gift giving and I had to go back to college to take my finals in all of the subjects.

Did you have a honeymoon? We came back from Salt Lake to Rexburg and back to Shelley. I guess that could be called a honeymoon.

Did you have a nickname? When I got older and started college the teachers used to call us by our last names and so I was called Beck quite a bit.

What used to make you angry when you were growing up? My little sister because she was always following me. A neighbor was annoyed at me sometimes.

Where was your first baby born? Aldon was our first. When he was born my mother came down and stayed with me for a few days and Allan called and told my father that we had a red flannel baby with silver hair. We rented an apartment from Allen’s parents somewhere by the High School there in Shelley and that is where Carl Aldon Johnson was born on January 28, 1928.

Miriam Louise Johnson was born December 4, 1929, in a little community called Lavaside just about five and one half miles west of Firth, ID. She was born in our home there and Dr. Roberts came down and helped deliver her.

Edythe Rula Johnson was born August 29, 1931 in our new, unfinished home in Shelley, Idaho. She wasn’t supposed to come for another three weeks. As a result we didn’t have any lights in the house yet. When the doctor came, he told Allan that he would need light to be able to see to bring her into the world. So Allan went out and got the lights from the car and wired them into the house, set it up on the chest of drawers and we had good light.

Earl Allan Johnson was born on 9 September 1938 in the Hospital in Idaho Falls, Idaho.

Did you have garden? We had a garden of some kind, sometimes good, sometimes poor ones, and sometimes mediocre. But we always had a garden.

What was your favorite meal to fix to eat? Just good meals. Meat, potatoes and gravy and vegetables and sometimes, even desserts.

Did you ever have your own radio or stereo? We had radios for many years. We have had a good stereo for many years.

What were your favorite songs when you were growing up? I played in a dance orchestra for quite a few years so I liked all the music. (Saxophone)

What were some of the songs that you played, do you remember? ”It Ain’t Gonna Rain No More, No More” and “When Johnnie comes Marching Home” and lots more.

Did you ever take piano? I took enough to play for our little community when we lived at the ranch. We had a nice organ up at the ranch and when we moved to Rexburg, we got a nice piano.

Do you remember going to your first dance? I don’t suppose that I ever danced until I was a sophomore in high School. We had dances for just girls at first.

Mother had a very good voice but she wouldn’t sing much. We used to sing at home a lot but that’s about all.

Did you work other than at home? During my junior year in High School I worked for a neighbor cleaning house and helping her with her work. And then when my folks moved out to the ranch I moved in with her and helped her with her work and canning etc. I worked in the Liberty Dept. Store and in Young’ Confectionery when I met my husband and he had to sit in the store and wait until I got off work before we could do anything together. But he hadn’t told me that he was coming.

Aldon breaks in at this point and wants mother to tell about Dad when he built the first wagon with rubber tires.

Rula. He went to town and bought an old car. It had been wrecked. We dragged it home to his makeshift shop. Everyone thought he was nuts. People would ask him what he was going to do with that old car. He said he was going to make a wagon. People thought it was ridiculous. But he tore all the old body off. He got a good battery out of it but he especially got some good tires from it. He cleared everything off from it down to the frame, and then he ran stringers from the back to the front of the frame. Then he made a flat bed on it. He put in a tongue from the front to steer it with and then he hitched the horses to it. He did go out and haul some hay with it. He found quite a few things he needed for this behind his dad’s potato cellar. He had a lot of old junk there. I don’t remember how much but it was really only a few few dollars, probably for some bolts and maybe for the stringers under the bed. Then he hitched it behind the tractor and hauled potatoes. I remember the kids came out and followed him and neighbors followed him to see how it was doing. Later one of the blacksmith’s started making them and they called them Hoover wagons because of the fact when President Hoover was president he was encouraging people to be very economical and save and use all of the things that were being thrown away. His main political thing was to use instead of throwing away and of course this was all made from thrown away things other than a few bolts and nuts. I think that he did have to buy a larger bit to fasten the stringers and the floorboards to them. And that was about the only thing that was put in it that cost any money to get. That was after Aldon was born.

Aldon asks her to tell about Dad’s Tuberculosis. How did it start? When did you first realize that was a problem?

Rula.  He just simply had a string of real bad colds. It turned into Pneumonia and he was in and out of the hospital. Then finally the doctor there in Shelley sent him to see another doctor. They thought because he was having pneumonia so often that they sent him down to Salt Lake to the hospital. The doctor there found Tuberculosis germs in the lungs, so that meant he would have to be hospitalized. The only thing they knew was bed rest for treatment at the time. Then in later years when they had penicillin, it probably would have been treated and taken care of rapidly. But such a thing had never been thought of, at that time. So we put him in a Tuberculosis Sanitarium for a time. I think it was about 6 months. Then Aldon and I went down and brought him home. Of course then Aldon and I took over the responsibility of the farm and we had neighbors and friends who helped us a lot. Something I probably shouldn’t write and put in here was that Allan’s brothers and his parents just never came to be of service or help to us. My parents, mother and father, came down and helped all they could. I think that Allan’s mother was just terribly afraid. While we lived very close to Allan’s parents we hardly saw them. The neighbors were very supportive. All of them. But I think Allan’s mother was just horribly afraid. We were so close but just like strangers. And I guess I have always held that against them but I know I shouldn’t have done. I probably made no effort to let them know the situation. When we brought him home, the doctors assured me that there was no danger of anyone else getting it. As long as he rested and things were kept sanitary and that he would not over tax himself, there was no danger of anyone else getting it. The Tuberculosis germ got into his damaged lung and he just wasn’t able to fight them off.

Aldon. I remember one time when he got terribly sick you called the bishop to have him administered to. I forgotten the detail of it now.

Rula. The word tuberculosis made people become very nervous.

Aldon. Tell us about that first Potato harvester.

Rula. He was in the hospital about 5 ½ months. I just couldn’t manage it so I brought him home. He stayed pretty close to the bed while he rested. From this his mind started thinking about an easier way to harvest potatoes. Out on his dad’s farm there was an old “PUGH” potato digger. And so he pictured that and he was going to put it behind the regular potato digger so that the potatoes run from the digger over another chain and then he put a bagger on the back of that. There would be two baggers on the back of that and he had a guide that he place on the back of the chain. This second digger had a chain, like the regular digger and it continued to shake the dirt off and then you had a divider that would send the potatoes into one of the sacks and then the divider would be changed to the other side and the first bag of potatoes would be taken off and set along the row while the second bag would fill. I think that about describes it. Then the bags would be picked up and taken into the cellar.

Aldon. Aldon says dad would decide and then he (Aldon) would go out and put it together. We took that old digger and took it apart and turned the frame upside down on it and we spent about 15 dollars for additional parts that he had bought. Mainly the boards that we put on the sides. The frame was turned over and the frame would go up high on the back. There was platforms on the sides for people to stand on to take the vines and rock and dirt off so the clean potatoes would go on up and into the sacks. We had literally hundreds of people came out to watch. They said it would never work. But they decided to try to make their own using dad’s ideas. Later they made some that were much more elaborate.

Aldon.  What did you do while dad was sick?

Rula.  I tried to keep things going. I had some cows. I had another cow that Allan’s father had given us but she was so stubborn that he couldn’t manage it. Remember the old red cow. She was very stubborn and very annoying but she gave lots of milk. We sold the milk, put it into cans and it went to the dairy and was made into butter. Allan’s father had raised her and he said that she couldn’t be held in a fence. She would break through any fence. I think fences must have been very poor. Allan’s father was not the best farmer, he had been raised in a city and he was a good man and good provider but he was very different from anyone I had ever known. If you could get him to talk about himself then he would be friendly. Otherwise he was quite standoffish.

Aldon. I remember separating quite a bit of milk. I remember you had a butter mold. Didn’t you make quite a bit of butter?

Rula. Yes, I would separate the milk and churned the butter. Most of the time I didn’t have a churn early in the process and so I used an eggbeater and then a wooden paddle to work the butter. Then we would put it in the basement to cool it, and we did have a good cool quite damp basement. The mold that we used would make one pound. It was made of wood. The butter would stick to it so we put this mold into water and boiled it. It seemed to temper it some and we also boiled the butter paddle. And then when the butter came in the churn and we would push the butter into the mold and then when it came time to get it out, we would push it out by the hole that was in the mold and it would come out in one-pound bars. We had the basement. It was not finished so I would keep the cream in the cool basement and some of the neighbors were very happy to get some butter. I think we were milking 4 or 5 cows. The old red cow was a very picky animal and she would come into the barn and she would go into someone else’s stall and grab an extra bite of grain before she would go to her own stall. We called this cow Bossy. We had an old cream separator and would put the milk into the large bowl on top and it would run through some separator plates spinning with centrifugal force and the cream would come out one side and the milk would come out the other. We didn’t separate all the milk. We always drank whole milk. But the pigs got some of it, and usually we would buy wiener pigs to start with and then we had a few sows and they would have baby pigs. And we would feed the milk from the five or six cows to the pigs after we separated it and the cream would be taken off. We would make butter out of the cream and quite a few of the neighbors really clamored for the homemade butter and several people from town would come out to buy the butter. It was quite a problem to make it without refrigeration but we did have our cool basement and we could keep it in pretty good shape.

Aldon. Tell us about building your home in Shelley.

(Note-CJC 2011: I grew up thinking Allan once owned the “Miller” farm which is the first farm on the left side of the road going east from Shelley to Taylor. However, Rula mentions their farm being next door west of Samuelson’s, which in my memory, would make it the “Fielding Farm” or the one just west of the canal on that same road.)

Rula. We bought the farm in Shelley but there was nothing on it. It was done up in several fields and out towards the road the soil was quite gravely and so we dug a basement and put a foundation around it and then we built a shell over the top. And we did plaster the last two rooms. And we lived in those two rooms. However the basement was just a gravel floor and when it got hot in the summer we put beds in the basement and I believe you children slept down there. It had rough cement walls but no floor for that first summer. Then that fall, we were able to put a floor in it and made two bedrooms and a storeroom and a place to do the washing. And so it was sort of a place to move onto the farm and build under and over and around us. But we enjoyed our life. We never felt sorry for ourselves. We were always happy. I don’t know if you felt under-privileged or not. (Aldon said he didn’t). Or of you resenting the work. I have known children who have been quite resentful of the work. The Lord sent me such fine spirits that they worked with us always. They never had all of the comforts and conveniences. I have always appreciated you children for that reason.

Aldon. I remember some things about that. I remember when the back two room, the bedroom and the kitchen were plastered.

Rula. There was still no plaster in the front, which was the dining room and living room. I remember the electricity coming into it. And it came in about that same condition.

Aldon. I remember later getting the other two rooms finished and if my memory serves me correct the finishing of the two bedrooms downstairs and then later built the back porch area. I remember the well driller with a steam powered drilling machine coming and drilling the well.

Rula. Yes, he was a relative to Mrs. Samuelson our neighbor to the east. He was a Swedish fellow. I remember having difficulty understanding him but I remember one morning, he came to our house for breakfast. I made him breakfast with biscuits. And he said you should always make biscuits. He surely ate a lot of them.

Aldon. With that we had running water. At least cold water.

Rula. It was a while before we got a water heater. We built a barn to harness the horses in and an extension where we milked the cows.

Aldon. I remember the barn very well. I remember having cows so stubborn they didn’t want to go into the barn. We hooked a rope on a tractor and pulled the cow in with the tractor. Of course, this was later when we had our first tractor.

Rula. And she plowed furrows with her feet. It was one stubborn cow. After that we couldn’t keep her out after she got a taste of the grain. She would try to get a mouth full of grain from the other stalls before she would go into her own stall. I don’t remember what we called her. She was a big red cow.

Aldon. We had two or three like that. I remember milking in that barn many times. We got our first surge automatic milker after we moved to Idaho Falls on another farm. When we got to Idaho Falls we even had an indoor bathroom, which we didn’t have in Shelley.

Rula. Yes and the funny part of it was we had the bathroom fixtures for about a year in Shelley but didn’t have the money to build a room to put them in.

Del Ora. Can you tell us about the first car that you had?

Rula. It might be interesting that when we first married we had been renting an apartment in Allen’s mother’s house. A downstairs kitchen and living room and an upstairs bedroom that had nice big closets in it and so we rented that apartment and moved in. Allan had been trucking and he had a 1926 Chevrolet truck to haul farm products to market and later after we were married he traded that in on a newer model and he did trucking for farmers. He put a beet bed on it so he could haul beets in the fall. The farmers didn’t get all their beets out in the fall and many of them were piled in the field so he had trucking until almost Thanksgiving from the beet fields.

Del Ora. I think I remember about one of your uncles or someone who had a car and he went to the bank to get the money. Mother, I don’t remember who that was but when he got to the bank he pulled back on the steering wheel and hollered, Whoa, Whoa. And it went up on to the sidewalk and went into the bank. I can’t remember who it was. Tell us how you acquired the Zitlaw Motors.

Rula. Someone from the factory came out and asked us if we would take the Zitlaw Motors dealership. We had a large shop out on the farm so we had started business out on the farm, and started selling tractors, then he hired a mechanic, Elmer Robinson and we were out there for about two years. After that, the Massey Ferguson people came and thought we could run the business. The Zitlaws had built the building in Wendell. They were living in Idaho Falls, Idaho as the time. They were in the throws of going broke and the building was going to go into bankruptcy. They wanted too much rent on the building and we couldn’t afford that much rent, I think they were asking about 800 dollars so the Zitlaws lowered their rent so that we could afford to get started in the business there. And we moved into the building. Elmo Short had been with us out on the farm with our business there and he went with us to run the shop part of it. When we had our grand opening which wasn’t very grand, many of the farmers were quite disenchanted with the former car dealerships that was in the building, and we were trying to sell tractors and our repairs already had received very high marks on the farm because Elmo was so conscientious and was such a fine mechanic and really a fine man. It went off and started off much better than we had hoped. We were about 8 years. We had hired a couple of parts men and one man was ordering too much and we couldn’t afford to pay the bills so we had to let them go and I went into the parts dept. I stayed there doing that until we sold the business. People kind of laughed at first but our parts made money for us. We made a lot of fine friends. We sold the business but the people who bought the business didn’t last very long and it finally went out of business. The people who owned the dry goods store moved into the front and some other people run a shop in the back and the far back had been torn off.

Del Ora. They made it into a mini mall. How many years all together did you run the business?

Rula. About 8 years and then Allan’s health was failing and he just gardened. He really enjoyed gardening. We went on a mission after that for 18 months to Tulsa, Oklahoma Mission. We started our mission in Missouri and then moved over to Pittsburg, Kansas. We thoroughly enjoyed it while we were out. We learned a lot about people. We missed our family but that was to be expected. Allan passed away not too long after we got back from this mission on December 26, 1981. He had been quite sick with Aneurysms. This left such a large vacancy in my life. At least he didn’t have to lay and suffer for a long time.

End of this tape.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Edythe Johnson Lloyd. I found another tape of mother’s life that I will insert here.

Rula

Ricks College was started when my mother was in the fourth grade and it was called Ricks Academy. And the very first year she went to it when it was started. Then she, Mary Tressa Beck and her family moved back to Ogden and she never did complete the eighth grade. Then I went to it and completed my High School there and then took two years of college. Then Aldon went there as a two year college. First it was a grade school then a High School and then a College. BYU was started the same way. My father went there when it was in Logan. Provo was also started as a grade school and High School and then a college, which later became a University. One of the finest Universities there was. I thought that might be interesting to all who read this. Some of mother’s children, grandchildren and great grandchildren also went to Ricks College. Five generations. During the years that I went to School in Rexburg, I took four years of high School at Ricks. And then the last year that I was in High School, my father bought me a Saxophone. I had been wanting one for years because the group that I associated with all played and so I played in the school orchestra and then a dance band. Then we played around the valley. We had some real good times playing for dances. Finally I had to quit because it was a bone of contention with my mother because I was spending too much time out late at night. We would go and work hard and we always were hungry so we would stop and eat somewhere, and it really got to be a hard situation at home. At that particular time I was at least sleeping at home.

In the summer of 1926, I had a job in Rexburg, but I could see that it would not pay enough to be able to go to school the following year. I had just finished my first year of college and I wanted to get one more year. My father received a call from his brother in Blackfoot that his wife had to go to the hospital and have some surgery and wondered if I would be available to come down and help keep their house running and be with the boys while their mother was away. As I really loved Aunt Emma and Uncle Wilford as well as their three sons, I decided to go. When I got there, they introduced me to a number of fine young people and I already knew a lot of people who had been up at school with me. So I did not lack for dates and opportunities to go out and have a good time.

At this time there was a dance hall about 14 miles north of Blackfoot that had dances once or twice a week. We almost always went out there on Saturday evenings. One night about the last part of June, as I remember it now, a girl friend introduced me to Allan Johnson, who seemed to be going steady with her. Allan asked me to dance and we visited a while, talking about the desert around the hall and he told me that there were sun flowers growing in the desert, and I guess I acted as if I doubted him so he wanted me to go out with him to see the sun flowers. I was not impressed so after we danced again, I promptly forgot him.

I finished the summer and moved back to Rexburg and started to school. A I was having a hard time making ends meet financially so I took a job. I went to school from seven in the morning until eleven then I went to work. I was working in a small confectionery store, so I stayed there until 2:00 while the owner had lunch and rested, then I went back to school for two hours then worked until 10:00 at night. I had some time to study for the evenings at the store.

One night during October some of my friends came as we closed the store and wanted me to go with them to Idaho Falls, Idaho, to a dance that was held after a party for a friend, who was leaving for a mission. There I was again introduced to Allan. We remembered having met before and danced again and really enjoyed one another. This time he gave me a ring that he was wearing and asked if he could come up the following Saturday evening to pick up the ring. I told him that he could come but that I would be working and would not get off until ten. I really did not expect him to come, but he did at about eight o’clock. I went on working and about nine, Ed, the boss came and seeing that I had company said that he would take over and close the store, so we went out on our first date together. We spent most of our time just driving as we went clear to Blackfoot and danced a time or two. On our way home, he asked me what kind of a honeymoon I would want, if I decided to marry, so we planned a lavish honeymoon. As it was Halloween night and my twentieth birthday, he bought me a box of candy. As we got back in front of my home which was on a tree lined street, a policeman came by and shined his flash light in the car and called that it was time to go home. I answered that I was at home and he apologized and said that he did not recognize me and went on his way.

A week or so later Allan called and asked me if I would come down to meet his family, if he would send a train ticket up to me. So I got the weekend off and he met me at the depot in Shelley and took me to his home to meet his mother and father. I found out later that they were not a bit impressed with me because they had a girl all picked out for him. I really enjoyed his younger brothers and sister. Their mother tried to keep them out of the living room, but with me inviting them in and playing with them, she fought a losing battle. Allan did not have a car, so we had to use his dad’s when we went anywhere. Allan took me back to Rexburg on Sunday evening. I don’t remember feeling anything more than a passing interest at this time because I had all the friends and dates that I could manage with my work and school.

At Christmas time, I again had some time off from work, so I went to Blackfoot to spend a few says with some friends there, and on New Year’s Eve, I had another date with Allan. Each time we went out, we seemed to enjoy one another a bit more. Again he asked what I planned to do about getting married and I just said that I had not thought about it yet and laughed at him thinking that he was just making conversation.

Along about the middle of January, Allan again had me come down to Shelley on the train and we went to a party out east of Shelley and after a good time we started back to town. The roads were icy and we had not gone far when we began to slide and as we could not stop sliding, Allan headed the car straight into the barrow pit so as to avoid turning over. Now we had to figure how to get out of this. Another carload of friends came along and thought that they could pull us out, but they could not get the footing and also began to slide off the road so we all pushed that car to keep it from going in with ours. We finally maneuvered Allan’s car straight in the barrow pit and by all pushing, we were able to get it to a place where the bank was shallow and get it back on the road. I was wearing a new long dress and by now it was wet to my knees and looked like a rag. We were nervous about driving back to Rexburg, but I had a midterm exam the next morning and felt that I had to get back. We got into a blizzard on the way and I arrived home in time to take a bath and a couple aspirin and go take the test. By this time both Allan and I had decided that we liked each other more than a little. We soon decided that we would like to be married but neither of us had any money, so we decided to think about it and see what we should do. Allan said that we would have almost nothing to start out with, and I told him that I could take it, if he could.

My mother had met Allan but my father had always been out on the farm when he was around, so had not met him when I told them I had decided to get married.

Because of the distance and the lack of transportation and no money we were not able to spend as much time together as we would have liked, but we learned to make the most of the time that we could be together and we stayed out much later than our parents would have liked. We decided that we could not be married outside of the temple, so about the first of April, my father took my mother and I to Shelley and we started for Salt Lake. Allan’s older sister Gerda was living in Salt Lake at that time, so he wrote a letter to her telling her that we were coming down to be married and asking if we could stay in her home. He did not tell her who he was bringing or any details so when we arrived there on Saturday and it was the time when the temple was closed because of conference, so we could not be married until Thursday morning. My mother went through the temple with us for which I have always been very grateful. I had no knowledge of what it was all about, but when I felt most afraid, I had only to look across the aisle and Allan was there and I felt reassured.

When it was time for the marriage ceremony, the man who married us was very matter of fact. All he asked us was how to pronounce our names. Then he went through the ceremony in very broken English. I had a hard time understanding him. I did understand when he told us that we were man and wife and told Allan that he could kiss his wife over the alter.

After the ceremony we started back to Shelley. Allan's sister and her two children went with us. (By the way, Gerda and I learned that we had a great deal in common and became fast friends as well as sisters in-law).

We rented an apartment in Allan’s parents home. A kitchen, a living room down stairs and a bedroom upstairs and furnished it with a few new things, some wedding presents and any cast-off that we could find. I guess I should say that we lived happily ever after but instead it was just the beginning. Allan and I are both independent people with minds of our own, so life has not always been smooth. We have argued and fought (not physically) and made up, always knowing that we loved one another and that we had made commitments that were more valuable and lasting than we were.


Memories of Mother

By Edythe Rula Johnson Lloyd

Mother spent four years with me and my family after dad had died in 1981. She came to live there after having a heart attack as a result of her blood sugar going too high. She had two of these heart attacks but after the second one, I knew that she would not be able to live alone because she had to have insulin shots and her hands had become so shaky that she could not fill the needles and give herself her shots. While she lived with us, she convinced my husband, Richard that he should try his hand at painting pictures. This is what she had to say about this. “Richard is trying his hand at painting. He is doing well. The only thing he needs to do is go a little slower and see a little more detail. He has a good eye for color. I enjoy painting with him. Right now my hand is very shaky. It usually gets a lot better in a few days.”

Mother also enjoyed making quilts and she had almost enough blocks cut to make another one. She also enjoyed crocheting afghans to help her hands. We were forced to sell her home in Wendell after she had been with us for a year or two. She knew she would not be able to live alone at that time but always held out hope that someday she could get an apartment and live alone again. But she was never able to. She died in 1994 at the age of 89. She had been staying with my sister Miriam and her husband and then went into a care center when she broke her hip. Mother lived a good life and served as a teacher in many capacities, especially in Seminary in Gooding. She is survived by her four children, and 23 grandchildren and many great grandchildren. she was also called to the Stake Relief Society Board in Gooding. She also had a strong testimony of the truthfulness of the Gospel. She loved her heavenly father and served him faithfully most of her life. I learned my love for the Gospel from my parents in my growing up years.

Note: CJC.  Although this picture appears elsewhere on the blog, I added it here as I believe this was taken at a farewell party for Allan's family when there were moving to Wendell or Gooding Idaho.