Your Favorite Ghoul

 In the Great Clean-out of the Legacy Apartment, I found this treasure.  Forgive the first photo, with its glare.  But the little treasure of the note made trying to shine up the frame all worth it.

I am pretty sure she purchased this frame in Peru, as the sketchy construction and the silver-atop-the wood all point to this conclusion. At first, I cut a mat to frame it, but it wouldn't fit (too thick), so I used just some card stock to frame my favorite ghoul.

Photos from Instagram & iTunes

 

Today I closed Mother's Instagram account, but took screenshots of what was there.  This was the second photo on the account, a picture of them eating a meal on their honeymoon.

 

 

This was the first image on the feed, the cover to the souvenir photo (above).  Obviously it was a test for her account.  

 

 And this photo is from her iTunes account, many years later.  The date on the photo is June 17, 2017.  The only other salvagable photos from that account were of her getting a vaccine in January 2021, and another blurry shot of her famous silver sneakers.

 

The following photos were also on the Instagram feed.  My guess is that she took them, and I was trying to show her how to post.  

 

The dates are Christmas Day 2014 (the snowy day), August 2013 (Dad and Dave), and May 2014, when Mother and I were chatting in her bedroom, a site of many conversations for all of us.  The caption mentioned the rocking chair, which was her mother's (I think).  Also in the jumbled photo is the footstool for which she did the needlepoint, an item she was proud of, as well as the hope chest at the end of their bed, from Grandmother Sessions (Dad's mother).  They came into possession of it, and was their habit, promptly took it to the refinisher's to have it re-done, or as Dad would say "refurbished."  Also shown is Mother's small writing desk, now residing at her daughter's.  I remember that Mother often had some pretty ribbons draped over her small chair, which you can also see in this photo.

That's all that was on her Instagram.  She kept it so she could look at what her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren were doing -- her pride and joy.

 

Apricot Marmalade

 A text went out, looking for Mother's Apricot Marmalade recipe.  I went into the green box, and found two.  On closer look, they are they same, just worded differently.  Click to enlarge.

Vaccines and Polio

 

 

This photo was taken February 1953, after Dad's bout with polio when Mom and Dad drove down to the La Jolla area of Southern California.

The full story of Dad's polio is written in his book (pages 72-74), but I was interested in what Mother could remember, what details would flash bright in her memory.  This was dictated to Elizabeth in July 2021.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 Susan was six months old when Sterling came down with the polio.  I had three small children and it was Christmas and he was out setting up television sets for people who'd bought them at the Store (Utah Valley Furniture Store).  The televisions in those days were complicated to set up, and Sterling was in and out of people's homes.  It was Dr. Webster who picked up on Dad's illness.  He looked at Sterling's symptom and said "I think he has polio."  So they put Sterling in the hospital and put him on penicillin.  They knew two people who'd contracted polio: one had died and the other was paralyzed.  [Note: The year 1952 was one of the worst two years of polio transmission; the other was 1916.]  So they took this very seriously.  

Sterling was in the hospital and could get no rest because of all his friends would come and visit with him until late in the evening, watching ballgames, talking.  Meanwhile, all three little girls were home sick with the croup, and Mom was worn out going back and forth, trying to keep up both fronts.  Chuck Peterson, a family friend, finally said to Barbara: "the children need you more than he does; the hospital will take care of him." She spent more time at home after that. 

Finally after one week of this, Dr. Webster sent Sterling home to get some rest (as he wasn't getting much with all the socializing going on in his hospital room).

These were scary times.  Sterling, as a salesman, made his living with his mouth, and polio had affected the nerve that controlled speech so he wasn't really able to talk.  He was Ward Clerk at the time, but luckily no talking was needed for that calling. And now he was home.

To keep himself occupied, he read a lot of books, and built several models: cars and ships.  He had to have something to do, and Mom was busy tending kids.  Sometimes he'd watch the children so she could go shopping.  His speech was impacted for a long time, until Arch Madsen gave him a blessing.  After that, he could do some talking.  We felt he had a weak recovery, and he didn't have perfect speech but enough that it gave him courage to talk.

Our friends, Bob and Maddy Hickle, invited us to come to Southern  California for a couple of days.  We knew them from our New York days, when we were in school.  There was a 2-room flat we lived in on the second floor, and we had a car.  So we could drive and we'd go places.  Maddy was a beautiful young woman, and an illustrator's model.  She had several of these magazines and she showed me which pictures were her.  She was wearing a hat in one of the pictures, but it wasn't hers.  She'd stopped by a department store and taken it out "on loan," then returned it after the sitting was finished.  She was from LA  and was more experienced than I, and knew to do this.

So Dad drove us down to Southern California, and we were in a motel (Bob and Maddy didn't have room in their home), and we spent two days at the beach.  We relaxed, slept, talked, and walked on the beach.  It was R & R for him.  He needed a lot more of that, but we headed home after a couple of days.

 

When the polio vaccine came out, I lined my kids up and they got their drops on a sugar cube.  There were actually two types (Mom remembers).  The first type was the live polio vaccine, called the Salk vaccine.  The second type was dead polio viruses, which were administered by shots to the adults, and the little kids got sugar cubes.

When I asked Mother about other vaccines, she said her mother was always interested in the latest.  Mother's older sister Martha died as a baby of Whooping Cough, and so Grandma Bickmore was always aware of science and breakthroughs.  When the vaccine came for Whooping Cough (pertussis), Mom left high school in the middle of the day to walk down to the doctor's office to get the shot, and then she walked back.  Grandma B. wanted her first in line.

Working at the Bean Factory

Working at the Bean Factory 

Summers 1945-1948

Sugar Beet Factory in Logan, Utah

Dictated to Elizabeth E.

Summer 1945:

The bean factory was on the east side of Hyrum and it was hiring, but only if you were eighteen years old. I had just barely turned 17, but my neighbor heard I was interested, whether it was my mother that told him, or his wife, but he found out.  So he told me to come on down to the factory and ask for him.  “Just talk to me and don’t say anything to anyone else.”  

So she went over to the bean factory and there were a few questions from him about if she was able to work, etc.  Then someone else came in and asked “Is she old enough?”  The neighbor answered “Yeah.”

I was glad to get the job, as everyone was anxious to get money and to work.  My starting wage was 50 cents an hour [Ed note: that works out to $7.35 in 2021 dollars].  They loaned me a uniform that was just a sack.  It was a plain short-sleeved blue dress with buttons up the front, a white collar and a hat that had a hairnet attached.  I would return it at the end of the summer’s work. I had to buy my own gloves to use.

My first job at the factory was to check the beans as they came down the conveyer belt: discard the damaged or dead beans, cut off parts that weren’t okay.  I was so bored.  Every hour we would get a five minute break, when we could move off the line, go to the bathroom, etc.  The neighbor’s wife worked there, and nearly every housewife that could get a position worked there too. [She mentioned Mrs. Cook and Mrs. Mable Miles.]  

Mountains dryland farm, 1940. Cache County, Utah (from here)

We worked in shifts.  I would call the night before to find out how many beans they had and they’d tell me my shift.  Mostly I went in at 5 a.m., but occasionally there would be a four a.m. call.  I’d get up early, make a sandwich and go outside to wait for my ride.  A neighbor would come down the street, picking people up and if you weren’t out there, she’d go right by. We’d work for a few hours, then the factory horn would sound for our lunch break.  We’d grab our sandwich and head outside to the tables.  I’d buy a drink, and my first best friend Maxine and I (she also worked at the bean factory) would eat lunch together.  If I was really feeling flush, I’d stop at the little hamburger stand a woman ran, and purchase a hamburger.  I felt really lucky to have a job.

After a while, I was moved to be a checker which included a 5-cent raise.  In that position, I’d be able to walk all the way up and down the line on the other side of where I’d been sitting culling beans.  When the women who stuffed beans in the cans would get a dozen cans, I’d come over and attach a tag, punch a hole in the tag, and then take that over to another conveyer belt.  It would then go down the line to where they added the broth to the cans (which is where my neighbor’s wife worked). Those women who put the beans in the cans worked so hard.  At one point they all went on strike for higher pay, and they got it.

When my Senior Year at high school started, I turned in my uniform and went back to classes.

from here  Cache County bean crop, 1940

Summer 1946

I went back to working at the bean factory with Maxine, my first best friend.  My second best friend, Darlene Hatch, went up to work in Ogden.  That summer she stole my boyfriend from me.  His name was Reece Richmond and he took me nice places and we had been dating for a while.  I didn’t mind much as I had several boys waiting in the wings.  I always felt sorry for Darlene because of their family tragedy.

A few years earlier their large family [the Hatch family] had moved into Paradise, and were just getting started on getting their farm up and running.  That winter the family was coming home and were in a terrible car accident.  The father was killed and the mother was severely injured.  She was in the hospital for weeks, and it took her a long time to recover—they had to keep pulling glass out of her face and she was in bad shape.  The married daughter helped and some of the children were older, but no one told the mother that her husband had died.

Finally Mrs. Hatch came home to recover.  She took off her wedding ring, saying that she didn’t want to be married to anyone who wouldn’t come and visit her in the hospital.  They finally told her then.

[back to the bean factory] 

So one day in the middle of August, Maxine and I went out to eat our sandwiches, and the factory horns started tooting.  And tooting and tooting—they never stopped.  We realized then that it was VJ day—August 14th — and the war was over. 

I went off to BYU at the end of that summer.

A FARM GIRL PUTS AWAY DISHES IN THE KITCHEN CABINET. BOX ELDER COUNTY, AUGUST 1940. RUSSELL LEE, COURTESY LIBRARY OF CONGRESS •  FROM HERE

Summer 1947

I worked at the bean factory again, but had decided to myself that this was the end…that I could do better than this.  At the end of the summer, I turned in my uniform and went back to BYU.

Click here for more information about Utah's Canning Industry.

Some of the reasons for the demise of the factories appear to be pollution-related (effluence in Bear River).  Others are outlined in these excerpts (from here):

and

excerpts are screenshots from above link, a History of Cache County

Donald Gill, Cache County, Utah beekeeper needed bees, sugar and equipment to weather a series of bad seasons caused by weather conditions. A Farm Security Administration rehabilitation loan put him on his feet again.  from here

Grandmother Bickmore raised bees on the farm in Cache County, too.

Mormon children at Church in Mendon, Utah 1940.(from here)  Mendon was a small town about 15 miles from Paradise.  Granny Sessions would have been about 12 years old at this time, maybe even looking like some of those older girls at the back of the room.

Mustard PIckles • Bread and Butter Pickles

 

I tried to post this also as a PDF, but this Blogger software wouldn't accept that, so if you need a PDF of this image, drop me an email  (no texts, as I'm from *that* generation).

Additional Notes

PTO:  Please Turn Over

I used teeny tiny cukes, like "sweet pickle size" (some you didn't even have to cut them up)

I like smaller "big cukes" like about 3" or less.  These were firmer and didn't have large seeds in them.

"Cut fine": about the size of a nickel.  I sometimes would slice them lengthwise, then crosswise, so they fit on a sandwich.

 I cut the small onions crosswise so they would be rings.

Green peppers are cut to about 1-inch pieces.

Notes: Be sure to taste, then rinse if it was too salty. 

My Dad used to help her in the making in the later years, so his handwriting is on the back of the card.

Mom used to take a glass quart measuring cup with her to the store to know how much to buy.

Living with Grandma Critchlow

 

The Winter I Lived with Grandma Critchlow

dictated to Elizabeth E. by Granny Sessions

 

       After Christmas was over and at the beginning of 1944, Mother, Aunt Lottie, and Aunt Frances decided that Grandma Critchlow could no longer live alone.  It was decided that I should go to live with her in her home in Hyrum.  Even though it was about nine miles away from Paradise, in those times with their long hard winters, graveled roads, and lack of public transportation, it seemed much farther in many ways.

       I was agreeable  to the idea.  I only had ever had one living grandparent so I was close to Grandma Critchlow, my mother's mother.  In many ways it was an adventure for me.  Mother told me that Grandma was diabetic and needed good meals and that I could stop at the grocery store and buy fresh vegetables -- even an avocado which I loved -- and prepare her evening meal everyday.  

 

      It worked out well except for one thing.  There was only one heated room in the house and the kitchen wasn't one of them.  There was just a two burner hot plate to cook dinner on, but we managed well most of the time.  She had the same thing for breakfast everyday which she prepared herself.  Lunch was simple for both of us.  I prepared my breakfast before going off to South Cache High School, and either took a lunch or bought one there. 

       I got up early and went into the big kitchen with its old Monarch coal range and left open the door to the dining-sitting room (which was the only heated room) in order to let enough warm air into the kitchen to take the chill off.  I put a teakettle on one of the burners to heat water for the washbasin on the washstand so I could wash my face and hands before combing my hair and getting ready to leave for school.

       One morning I tried to fill the teakettle and no water came out of the faucet.  Then I realized that the pipe was frozen.  Not to worry, Aunt Frances had showed me how to put the flatiron down the hole under the sink.  So after taking up the floorboard and putting the iron down and positioning it near, but not against, the pipe where it came in from outside, I plugged the cord into an extension cord which in turn was plugged into the only outlet nearby.  I turned the tap and soon the water came through.  Then I reversed the flatiron routine being careful no to burn myself.  I was usually successful.

       I slept in Aunt Frances' bedroom which was a cold unheated small room added on to the house in back of the parlor (also unheated.  I was pretty quick at jumping out of bed and putting on my clothes every morning and heading for the one heated room, in order to open the door to the kitchen.  It would take the chill off and I could get breakfast, gather up my books and head down the hill to school which was a bit over a mile away.

       Grandma's bedroom was also a little room added on to the house, but it was off the dining-sitting room and with the door open most of the time.  It was a comfy room even at night when we turned the heat lower in the oil heater.  I studied at the dining room table while Grandma read  the newspaper, scriptures or The Church News.  She listened faithfully to the news and to the BBC when she could get it clearly.  She was always interested in the land of her birth and early years.  Sometimes we talked and I got to know her on a more mature level.  She was very well educated for her time and also well read.  I enjoyed those times very much.

       School was as usual.  I went to the same school that I would have attended had I lived at home.  I caught the bus and rode to Hyrum to school along with all the other children from Paradise, so my friends stayed the same.  Sometimes when I was late getting away from Grandma's house I ran down to the Hyrum elementary school and caught the Paradise bus as it was letting off the little children it had gathered up along the way.  The bus driver who recognized me and saw my need seemed glad to give me a ride.   If I were in good time and it was a good day,  I simply walked down the hill and through the "hollow" to school walking with friends from Hyrum.

       Spring came and as the weather warmed I sometimes spent evenings with the other young people in the neighborhood.  I had gone to Church with them and sometimes we spent the evening at the movie theater, getting home early enough to be able to be up early for school the next day.

       The school day was coming to an end, and I caught the school bus to my own home, for some reason, probably to pick up clean clothes.  Mother was ready to drive me back to Grandma's for the night, but Grandma said she would be fine and I could come back the next day.  Sometime during that night Grandma slipped down and couldn't get up.  She spent the night on the floor and when Mother called on the phone the next morning and couldn't get her, she immediately called the neighbor who looked through the window and could see Grandma on the floor.

       Grandma never recovered from that fall and continued to decline through the summer.  Aunt Frances came for the summer and when she needed to go back to teach school in the fall, Aunt Dot, Mother's sister-in-law by her first husband and close always to all of us, came to stay with Grandma. She was trained to care for people.  It was sad for me to see Grandmother declining.  She was such a remarkable woman to whom I had grown even closer.  When she died on September 30, 1944, at almost age 89,  I had lost a dear friend and the only Grandmother I ever knew.

 

Picture of Bickmore farmlands, from USU Digital Library.  They've catalogued it under "Bickman."

 

I took a look at Grandma Critchlow's death certificate in the Family Search Library.  Listed as causes of death are Type 2 Diabetes (condition present for 10 years before death), Myocardia Infarction (we think--can't quite decipher that last word), and Hypertension (present for 8 months).

 

Grandma Critchlow's record of her daughter Jessie's birth (also from USU Digital Library), Aug. 1898.  Looks like the midwife who delivered her daughter was popular.

 

Leave a Story about your Grandmother Sessions

 

This post is strictly so you can leave comments.

If you have a story you'd like to share with us about Grandmother Sessions (or Mom, as many of us call her), please leave a comment with your story on this post.

The Tale of Two Pans of Lasagna

 

I asked Mom about her lasagna recipe, as I had found two in her card file.  The first one, above, was here because of the fact that my then-husband was Italian and I should know about Italian food.  This is the one I remember being made.  Cottage cheese in lasagna? (so 1970)  Then there is the recipe below, a recipe written on the back of a little Relief Society message.  In her ward, they used to print up these cards to take to the sisters that were on your Visiting Teaching list, so that they'd have something every month from the sisters that visited.  

When I asked mother about lasagna receipes, she kept saying she didn't remember, and that it was too long ago.  But she did remember this:

"When we moved to Ogden, I learned a microwave recipe that is a lot faster. That’s when Scott’s friend lived with us, when he came home off his mission. His parents had managed the Winestocks store, and then retired. They bought a sailboat and took off, so when the young man came home, we said to Scott, You know, he should come and live with us. Maybe the parents had planned to be back, but they weren’t. After a while, the young man went off to college. I just know we had an empty house with lots of space. The mother brought us back a large cross-stitch tablecloth, white with red stitching. Do you have that? No? I wonder who does have it."

"The first lasagne I made may have come off the package, but Middy Magleby may have given it to me. She inspired me to do a lot of unusual things in my cooking. We’d go to her place, and she'd serve something different. We’d taste it and I’d ask her about it, and she’d say, 'oh it’s just a little of this and a bit more of that,' and then I’d try to find the recipe and serve to my family. Middy was always making something new that I had never thought of, so I'd go home and look it up, and try new things."

Interestingly, in these recipe files are many recipes from her daughters: Christine, Cynthia, Susan and Elizabeth, all written up on little 3x5 cards in their handwriting.  Some appear to be variations of recipes she already had, as the one above.

THE Fruit Cake Recipe

 Dictated to Elizabeth E.

Right after we got back from New York, we were living in one of Grandfather Sessions' apartments, and I decided to try to make a moist kind of fruit cake, different from the dessicated ones that I'd previously tasted.  This was before Cynthia was born, probably about 1950.  

Dad said, "You're not going to make a fruit cake.  They are so awful and dry!"  

"Yes, I am," I replied.

I found this recipe in the Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook and cut it out.  (It's not printed in their cookbooks anymore.)  I followed the printed version almost exactly, but left out the citron, as I thought my mother didn't like it. I pulled it out of the oven as Sterling wandered in.  He asked what I'd pulled out and I said "fruit cake."  He made a funny sound, and said "Ugh! Fruit cakes are awful things."  So I cut a sliver from the end and handed it to him.  He tasted it, took a few more bites.  Then he had another slice.  

Grandfather Sessions had come home with Sterling.  They often would go selling things together, or Grandfather would say, 'I"ve got to go measure for draperies," and he'd take Sterling with him.  Grandfather Sessions also thought he didn't like fruitcakes, but when he tasted them, he liked them.  And then I think I sent some home with him for Grandmother Sesssions.

Time passed and after a while, I couldn't get the list of nuts and candied fruits on the left.  I could only buy the fruits altogether, so I adjusted quantities and wrote them out on the left.  "Of course I didn't use the brandy," she said, in response to my query about that item in the printed recipe.

Note: The recipe was folded up into a plastic sleeve and these two pieces of paper were tucked behind it.  The bottom one is the interesting one; it was the famous List of Who Got Fruitcakes.  Initially I didn't like fruitcakes, so my name is not on the list (I grew to like them, but never could get back on The List.)  Apparently Susan gave a non-committal answer, so she didn't make it onto The List. 

Mom's comment: "They take over four hours to bake, so no one who wasn't enthusiastic about it got one!"

Now you have THE Fruit Cake recipe.

More tidbits that came up later about the Cedar Avenue home, all in mother's voice:

Dad would leave early in the morning, when the house was a disaster, with kids toys everywhere, dishes in the sink and laundry to be folded.  But one morning he came back to the house about 10:30, just as I was preparing to give baby Elizabeth a bath.

"Wow!" he said.  "I’ve never seen the house look so clean!"

I said to him: "It looks this way at this time every morning."  

He had always left really early to go to work, and then by the time he came home at night, everything was a mess again, as I had four small children and dinner to fix. So I think he thought that's how the house was all the time.

Grandfather Sessions and Sterling were the bright lights of my life, that every once in a while they would pop in and say hello, and stay for a bit in the middle of the day,

Grandfather doted on Christine and Cynthia, one time coming over with a box from Kiddyville [the children's clothing and toy store in Provo].  He'd purchased two little pink satin bathrobes with matching satin slippers.  I thought that was so wonderful.

It was comfortable there living there in Provo.  We didn’t have a lot, and were eating on Grandmother and Grandfather's cast iron table and chairs, having put their patio furniture in our dining room.  When we moved to Salt Lake, we bought the maple table (not from Grandpa) and chairs, and gave them back their table.

Ironing

 

Ironing

Dictated to Elizabeth E.

 
       I don't know how I was I first started ironing, but it must have been when we got our first electric iron.  I don't think I would've been allowed near the old coal stove with all those old irons.  There were actually a series of flat irons that were warming there, and when the iron you were working with got too cool, since the handle was detachable, you clamped on a new hot iron which had been on the stove.  At some point it became my job to help with the ironing.  I ironed all the flat items: handkerchiefs, napkins, pillow slips and dishtowels.  We ironed everything in most days, even our bras and slips.  I always thought I would really like to iron something that maybe had ruffles and wasn't just entirely flat, but I guess I didn't realize that when I got older I have a lot more ironing to do so.   
       One day mother set me up in the upstairs bedroom ironing, because it was cooler room.  She said iron everything in the basket except your father's white shirt. When you get to that let me know and I'll come and iron it.  I ironed everything in the basket.  Of course by that time, I was ironing my father's workshirts, which were called that because fabric was so stiff and hard to manage.  I was always glad when I got those done.  Having finished up everything, I wished I was still ironing. Mother was busy in the kitchen doing something very important and so I thought I would iron that white shirt of my father's since I had watched her do it so many times that I know exactly how to do it.  So I did. 
       I then called to mother and I said, "I finished the ironing."  She came in and half-panicked said, "But you did not iron your father's white shirt,  did you?"  I said "Yes." She looked it over and pretty soon the smile broke out on her face. She told me I had done a really good job.  The only thing I hadn't done correctly was when I turn down the collar,  I had turned it down on the seam instead of just letting if fold naturally.  She corrected that and hung it on the line.

Sugar Cookies

 Both of these were in a plastic sleeve.  There is nothing on the back of the recipe card, no directions or anything.  I'm assuming it would go like this:

Cream together shortening and sugar until light and fluffy.

Add in eggs, one at a time. Add almond extract to milk and add to egg-sugar mixture.

Mix together all dry ingredients (flour, soda and salt) and add to the above.

Bake at 350 for 8-10 minutes.

The doubling of the cookies (in the hand-writing) were written on the back of a cut-up typewritten page of which I can't make sense, but the following phrases are present:  Bernard Food Industries, quick freezing, Nature's nutrition, dried through extremely low vacuum (sic), dried food, resistance to bacteria, hermetically sealed cans.

White Fruit Cake (Aunt Louise)

 Written on Aunt Francis' stationary: Louise's recipe for White Fruit Cake.  Mother has multiple fruit cake recipes in these boxes; I hope I can find "her" recipe.