First Welding Job

 
     I was lucky and got a job at the factory welding electric filaments on a device about as big as my hand.  Three of us applied and two of us were hired.  The nice thing the city bus picked me up a block from where I lived. To take me to work.
    Again my competitive nature took over.  They told us the highest number of grids that had been welded in one day and I knew I could weld more than that.  The first time I set a new record I worked through my lunch break.  After I did that for several weeks, I could weld more than that and still take a lunch break.
     I was still living at the boarding house but when Jess came from the desert, where he was working, to Salt Lake he couldn’t stay in the boarding house so I moved into a private home.  This didn’t work out either.  I had to eat all my meals out and there wasn’t a café up there on the avenues.  I only stayed there a week.
  Jess didn’t like working out on the desert and living with a group of men.  He quit his job the week before Christmas and moved back to Salt Lake.
     Everyone warned us we would  have a hard time finding an apartment but we found one the first day we looked.  3rd south and 3rd east and only had one room.  The couch made out into a bed.  We shared a bathroom with four other apartments.  It was close enough to walk to town and I could catch the bus to go to work.

Off to Salt Lake

Moving to Salt Lake 1942
     I picked up spuds all fall and made what I thought was a lot of money.  We were in good shape financially when spud harvest was complete.  Jess didn’t want to work in a spud cellar all winter and there weren’t any other jobs so Jess, Dale Clay and I drove to Salt Lake City on my 18th birthday in the cold red convertible.  We had a hard time finding  a hotel room that first night.  It was war time and Soldiers stationed at Fort Douglas came to visit before their loved ones were shipped out.  Jess always felt badly he couldn’t join the army.  Because of his bad heart he was rated 4F.
     Jess couldn’t find work in town but there were several men from Archer who were working out in the desert at a chemical plant.  Jess and Dale went to work there.
     I found work as a waitress at Walgreen Drug store as a waitress.  I couldn’t afford to stay at a hotel so I stayed at a boarding house on State St.  Two gracious elderly widows ran the boarding house and there were only ten boarders and the food was fantastic.  I shared a bedroom with  two girls my age, who were looking for work.  We searched the want ads and decided to go to a radio tube manufacturing plant.  I wasn’t making very good money at Walgreens.  I lost five pounds the one week I worked there.  People were always standing in line waiting to be served and it was a hectic rat race.

Cooking

 

I didn’t know how to cook, but Jess did. I had always worked outside and my sister Marva helped cook. The first thing I did was go to my mother and ask her how to prepare a meal. I wrote down her instructions. She told me to peel the potatoes and put them on to cook half an hour before we were to eat. We didn’t have much meat during the summer months because we didn’t have fridge. We ate a lot of scrambled eggs and Jess liked them. Our vegetables came from every ones gardens and I was suppose to put them on to cook at a certain time too. I didn’t try to make bread or do any baking.

Wilcox’s had a huge orchard by our house and I decided to make an apple pie. I worked all afternoon and had the house hot from the wood stove to heat the oven. When I took the pie from the oven I tasted it and promptly took it outside and buried it. Jess’s friends were in the army and when they came to visit we took them out to dinner.

First Home

 

    

 

I wonder if all newly married couples were as unconcerned as we were, about where we were going to live.  After the honeymoon, we stayed with Jess’s folks, while we looked for a place to live.  We decided not to buy a two room log house from Mattie Erickson’s brother.  Rachel thought we ought to buy it and move it by their house.  We finally decided to rent a little two room house across the street from Wilcox's, (across from where Jan Wilcox lives).  I thought this house was fantastic, it had electricity.   My folks didn’t get electricity until after I had been married two years..  It was called the honeymoon cottage, since so many newly weds rented it.  I didn’t have an electric stove but I had a two burner electric hot plate to cook on so I didn’t have to build a fire in the cook stove for everything.  We went down to Jess’s folk every Saturday night to take a bath and Rachel washed all our clothes since I didn’t have a washer or any running water.  We packed all our water from a hand pump outside and had an outhouse.

   ***** August 27th would be our 70th wedding anniversary.  I can still remember the excitement we felt when we moved into that first little home!!!

Wedding Reception

    The next Sunday  after we were married my folks held an open house for us at the Sutton home.  My folks paid for the ice cream.  I was amazed at the people who came.  The day was gorgeous and people came and stayed and visited.  Jess's folks gave us the round oak table
that her mother had given her when she was married and six matching chairs, they had purchased.  Kent has the table in his home now.  Jess's grand parents gave us silverware that we used for over thirty years and a quilt. My folks gave us money and we bought a bedroom set, with a dresser and chest of drawers all for $125.00.  That was a lot of money.  Most of it is still being used.  I kept a list of the gifts and there were three sets of dishes, nine sheets, twenty-six towels, three bedspreads, five blankets and many small items.

     It was tradition to give a wedding dance and we did that the following Saturday night at the Archer school. It was

free to those who came and we paid for the orchestra.  We were broke for a long time.  We had drawn an advance on Jess's wages to pay for it.

1942 ….. Grain Field to Marriage

That summer I thinned and hoed beets and potatoes and also rode derrick horse, turned hay and shocked grain.  The grain was cut with a swather, which tied and laid the bundles of grain, on the ground.  We would stand the bundles up with the grain heads to the sun where they could finish drying, so they could be hauled to the thresher.  Much of the grain had thistles in it.  We didn't have much for shoes or socks and no gloves and yet we handled those thistles because we knew it had to be done and we were the only ones that would do it.  Jess was working long hours farming for Ronald Hill and was so tired but we still tried to get together to just talk and be together.   One Sunday two days before Jess' twenty second birthday, we took a picnic lunch up Kelly Canyon.  Jsss gave me a diamond ring and we were officially engaged.  We planned on being married on my birthday,Nov. 21, when I would be eighteen.  By August we decided to get married and August 27, 1942.  We wanted to get married before grain harvest, which was followed by potato harvest.  I am ashamed to admit I had no desire to get married in the Temple.  The Idaho Falls Temple wasn't built until 1945 and none of my friends and I ever talked about Temple marriage.  How could I have taken 3 years of Seminary and never had a desire for the Temple?

   I didn't realize until after what a financial burden this placed on my parents.  They didn't have any money.  They sold some pigs, that weren't big enough to bring top money.   Mom and I went shopping for me a going away dress and  I thought every thing was too expensive.  My mother finally in exasperation said, "Quit looking at the price tag and pick out one you like."  I picked a green velvet two piece dress that I loved and wore for years.  It was a long time before I had another new dress.

     

WE were married at Jess's parents home by Bishop Sterling Magleby.  I wore my graduation dress.  Jess's mother served a wedding dinner right after the ceremony for both families.  Rachel had bought red glass plates and gave them to us after the dinner.
We only had three days for a honeymoon.  Jess had to be back to work Monday.  We went to the the finest hotel in Idaho Falls, (Bonneville).Friday and Saturday we spent at a hotel in St.Anthony.  We visited Jess's friends in Ashton and my grandpa Atkinson and his new wife, who were living in Chester and made grand plans for the future.

 

 

Wedding Picture

High School Graduation

 

I graduated from seminary after three years.  I learned more from those classes that has helped me through out my life, than from any other class.
     It was 1942 and I was ready to graduate from High School.  I didn’t have any money for a dress and I wouldn’t ask my folk to buy one, they didn’t have any money either.  I missed the last four weeks of school and thinned beets.  I purchased a three tier white organdy formal.  It fit perfectly.  It didn’t even need shortened.  I was glad later I had chosen a white dress because it was also my wedding dress.  I had it until 1987 and it still fit perfectly but I lost it in one of my moves.   I have not changed dress sizes in all the years since.
    The night I graduated Mom didn’t have any way to come to my graduation so she went with Jess and I.  My Dad and none of my brothers or Marva went, we didn’t have a car.  I had my hair fixed at a beauty shop and it looked terrible.  We took Mom home after the graduation and instead of going to the high school dance we went to Riverside Gardens. Jess gave me a watch, which would have taken a months wages.

Interesting use for a little black dress!

      Jess picked me up after school and we went to Ashton to pick up a load of seed potatoes.   The spuds were in sacks and sitting against the wall of the cellar.  Jess and I loaded all those spuds alone.  He lifted them on the back of the truck and would drag them to the front.  It took a long time.  I had worn my good black dress,  and it got really dirty. Girls had to wear dresses, no pants and boys had to wear dress pants, no levis or work clothes. We stopped in Ashton on our way home and it was 3:00 a.m. when I got home.  Again I was grateful that my mother understood and didn’t  even scold me.  As I look back now I think my mother lost a lot of sleep over me.

 

 

       I doubt Mom’s dress looked like any of these!

      Once again Grandma Millie was amazing!!

      I bet after than night Jess knew he had quite a find!!!