Thoughts and stories, by Pal

This touching story is told by my mother Ruth in her journal:  (It brought tears to my eyes just reading it again -- ) Two main tragedies happened during my last year at Dixie, both involving my mother. Just before  Thanksgiving we were expecting George to come home. Mother was alone and either fell or perhaps fainted  and fell between the stove and the wall. On the stove was a pot of boiling beans which tipped over and dripped over her, burning her badly, particularly around the breast area of her body. Oh, the agony  she went through with this! During this ordeal was my final weeks and months of teacher training , final exams, etc., during which time M other's friend whom we lovingly called Aunt Amy Haycock came down daily to sit and take care of her while I was in school. I guess that all my life I had heard of my mother's dear friend, Amy LeFevre Haycock, but it was not until March 1928 , when the tragedy of mother's wreck struck our family, that I fully r...

              The Flu of 1918  – Written November 1993 from Ruth's journal      I’ve heard that the flu of 1918 caused more deaths than the war did.  (World War 1) Be that as it may be, a great amount of the deaths of the soldiers was terminated “flu.”       It was before the days of penicillin or any other drug we use now to fight bad colds or “flu” with.  It was in Europe, and all parts of the United States and in the entire world.      It hit Panguitch about October so we stayed on the farm a few weeks longer so we would not get exposed to it.   We moved from the farm November 11, 1918, into town as we came into town we could hear Church bells ringing, and school bells saying that the war was over, but the dying had just begun as far as we knew.  For the town was full of “flu”.   Everyone was wearing masks we made ourselves by doubling gauze several times ...

                       Childhood on the farm:      My earliest recollections on the farm I guess was the summer I turned 6 years old.  (This would have been about 1914, and the summer before her father died in October.) We were living in a little log house close to what we called "the wash."  Often there were immense floods that came down this wash, from Casto Canyon about 2 miles to the east.  These swift torrents would cut in at the bottom of the wash, and soon a big section of the land would slide into the flood.  I remember this summer watching my father walk along the side of the lucern patch which was sliding in piece by piece, as if his walking there could stop the disaster.   Each flood left its deposit of sand in one bend, which we joyously played in calling it our "sand patch."  It was the most beautiful white sand I've ever seen.  I wonder if I were to go...

                             MY LIFE HISTORY  BY RUTH ALLEN MILES # 1                                (As she wrote it, partly from journals)  Her own story is quite extensive, with many chapters.  I'll include many of them in the days to come, as her life was truly inspiring, and full of wisdom.      I, Ruth Allen Miles, was born on Sunday morning, on May 10th, 1908, about 8:a.m. in Panguitch, Garfield, Utah, at home.  Strangely enough I was never interested about the details of my birth when anyone was alive who would have known.  The only details I remember having been told was that my mother had a very hard delivery, and nearly lost her life to give me mine.  A Dr. Clark, I believe was the attending physician.   Mother had been told 4 years before that to attempt to have an...