144. Continuing Ruth's life story, girls growing up, Miles Sisters Trio
Mavis is born:
During this winter Pratt’s service connected disability check was increased from $12 to $35 a month. We wanted more family and we decided we’d rather live on that amount than put off having another child. So by the time school was out Mavis was on her way. How thankful we’ve always been we did not procrastinate for we may have been eternally deprived of the wonderful blessing she has been to us. During that winter Pratt was able to take care of the babies part time. At other times we had a 16 year old girl. I guess she did okay for her age, but my what a contrast from Grandma Aldridge.
By mid summer the doctor told me I was going to have twins. (They didn’t X Ray then much.) So I prepared and was happy with the thought of twins. I even went up to Emily Foremaster’s to spend a few hours to see how she managed with her twins plus the 2 older ones.
We were expecting “our twins” about December 10th. But December 1, 1939, Mavis put in her appearance after a very hard 24 hours for me. (Which rendered me unable to ever have any more.) When she was finally born the doctor said, “Well, there won’t be another one. This one’s an elephant.” (Mavis never did like that comment!) She was 10 lbs. 12 oz. A beautiful baby – well formed, fat and cuddly. And how she did love to be cuddled. When she was 17 days old I sat in a chair long enough for my bed to be made. Twenty one days and I walked out in the kitchen to eat. Then 2 days later I rode up town long enough to go into a store to buy 2 dolls for “Santa.” My doll I already had.
Pal seemed to sense her worth too, for on Christmas Day I went into the room to see Pal’s doll on the floor and Pal dancing around the room with Mavis, who seemed almost as big as Pal herself, who had always been tiny and frail. We all enjoyed her so much. She was a healthy good natured baby.
The fall before Mavis turned two found us up to Gunlock. Again I was teaching all 8 grades, and again we had an angel to take care of the babies. This time it was Aunt Nell Bracken. What a happy winter we had there. Pal was in second grade.
Vina went ½ day to a W.P.A. kindergarten and Mavis went wherever her little legs could take her before we could catch up. Once we found her out in the middle of a foot swinging bridge trying to step over a broken board that presented a hole big enough for her to fall through into the river below.
Pratt was well enough by now to do some barber work. His barber chair was in our front room. He bought a little trailer house which he moved to St. George and put on Aunt Sarah’s lot. He often stayed during the week, going to the Temple and coming up to Gunlock week ends. Some of the finest people on earth lived in Gunlock. I loved them dearly and school was a joy. By spring I signed a contract to go to Mesquite, Nevada, to teach for the unheard of price of $1400 a year. We moved down after school was out in the spring and stayed until time to go on a vacation to a cooler spot. The superintendent wrote that I’d go to Logandale instead of Mesquite – another move! Well, we decided to make the move back to St. George as I also had a chance to go to Santa Clara. So the next year we were home – Mother lived in the little trailer, and her loved bedroom was turned into a home barber shop.
One year at Santa Clara and I was back in St. George teaching 3rd grade. These were good years. Pratt was well enough to tend Mavis, Mother was in the Temple and Pal, Vina, Colleen (Vina’s friend) and I came and went to school together. I had asked that Vina (or her friend Colleen – next door neighbor Vina’s age, and her best friend) not be placed in my room but they both were there. I never asked why. I suppose Vernon Worthen wanted to test my ability to handle the situation. I think it was hard on Lovie. (Vina) She was naturally a talkative fun-loving child and I had to sit on her hard a few times so that the class would not brand her as my “pet.” I was “Aunt Ruth” to Colleen until we reached the school house door then a formal “Mrs. Miles” until school was out and we started home together. Never once did she forget, bless her heart. She was and still is like a 4th daughter.
The next year (1944-45) found us in Salt Lake City. I needed and wanted to get my degree. I had hoped to teach ½ day and go to the U. ½ day but when they found I had taught Music I was placed in Longfellow School on the avenues to teach music. I had my home room (a third grade) until 10 A.M. and then every hour I went from one room to another teaching music. (From Kindergarten to 6th grade.) I enjoyed it but missed getting close to the class like you can if you are with one group all day.
World War II was raging this winter and things were rationed sharply. I remember how Pratt and I wore shoes nearly bare to save our shoe stamps to buy shoes for the girls. Children’s shoes just didn’t last from one ration stamp to the next. (Many things were rationed: sugar, butter, meat, gas for cars, etc.) This year was hard on the whole family. The girls, used to the freedom of a small town life, suddenly had to be more confined. This was hard, particularly on Vina Ruth who developed terrible night mares. As I stated I taught school all day and then went to the U. for a few hours and then home to washing, cooking, trying to make a stab at being a decent wife and mother, and then after the others were in bed, usually around 10 P.M. studying for a few hours often until 2 A.M. Then up again at 6 to get the girls and myself ready for school. I think during the entire winter I didn’t get over 4 or on rare occasions 5 hours of sleep a day.
During the spring months, Andy had got home from the army and he and Delsy (who had been living with her grandmother) wanted to get by themselves so we sold our home under the Black Hill to them. We all had a case of the worst flu we’ve ever had in the home that year. We were just getting over it when we received word Mother had had a severe heart attack. LaVern and I took the first bus to St. George. Mother was at Adelia’s in Washington. We arrived about 12 hours before Mother passed away. I rushed back to Salt Lake City to get the girls ready to come back to Panguitch to the funeral.
We had bought a home on Quince Street in Salt Lake City (paid cash for it with the war bonds we had so carefully bought during the last 3 or 4 years.) But by spring we knew we wanted to come home to raise our girls in Dixie. I wanted to stay there and finish up my degree, but Pratt seeing how worn out I was said, “That degree won’t get you through the pearly gates if you kill yourself off, nor will it help me raise the girls alone. We are going home and you are using the summer getting rested up.” He came to St. George and traded straight across with his sister Sarah our home in Salt Lake City for the home we are now in – except it was only a basement 4 rooms finished and 2 more to be finished. I have the satisfaction of knowing Sarah was not cheated. Little by little the next few years we got one room finished, then another until finally we built the main floor and moved up here. (230 South 100 East, St. George.) There were several “basement” homes built here during the war.
Ours had the distinction of being the first one to build on top. For years the basement went unused, except for storage. This storage included each girl’s wedding presents, etc., until they each one finally got in their own home with room for it. During their school years here at Dixie we didn’t want to curtail their home activities which often included parties of singing, recording, etc., into the night – sometimes after a dance, which no renter down stairs would have tolerated. Also Pratt in his nervous condition didn’t want to be bothered with renters. Strange but true, the fun noise of your own is music to your years, while the noise of someone else is so undesirable, but thus it was.
These were happy years. My activities consisted of teaching school, running the activities of a home, trying to do my bit publicly – and supporting the girls in their many activities. I will merely say our home became sort of a public place. By now, Pratt was well enough to do some barber work, which he did in the room built as a service room off the kitchen. This he did by appointment. The front room became a studio – where Pal gave music lessons after school and on Saturdays – not to mention the practice – practice – practice that went on there. Both trio practices – for our three girls were well known then as “The Miles Sisters Trio” – and also the many vocalists and instrumentalists that Pal accompanied.
She was in demand because she could transpose music – play by ear if they didn’t have a copy – and most of all she was willing and dependable. During these busy years my home activities were confined largely to the kitchen so as not to disturb the activities going on on each side. The front room was cleaned usually in a rush between practices – usually by the girl that had the earliest “date” that night. Such was our life until one by one the girls took their turn leaving the home nest to make a nest of their own.
We are told that our Life History should not be about our children so much but more about ourselves, our activities, thoughts and hopes and dreams, but my activities, hopes, and dreams were completely centered around my family. They were, and are, the object of my deepest hopes and dreams. These hopes and dreams now include 15 grandchildren and 4 (Dec. 28, 80) great grand children.
Pratt was older when we were married. He had longed for a home and family. His first marriage had ended sadly in divorce and he hd largely been deprived of association with his beloved daughter Delsy – 10 years older than Pal. So when we had our 3 daughters he felt extremely possessive of them. Sometimes I felt he was too much so – but they all turned out okay and I’m sure they never, ever had a doubt of our deep love for each one of them. If each child born into the world was showered with the love ours were, and I assume most of them ar, what a lot of love is absorbed by children.
I shall now attempt to relate if not go into detail, a few of the family memories I have:
Family Memories:
Because of a lack of money our activities were often confined to “Little Runs” as Dad called them. I remember one potato back up on the Red Hill – Dad baked the potatoes in the coals of a small “camp fire.” Pal lost her first tooth biting into a potato. We often rode up on the Black Hill at Evening to watch the sun go down on the town and the lights come on. Sometimes there was a treat with these rides but always there was Daddy’s stories of his childhood.
He’d point out to us where this or that happened. It was interesting to the girls but I suppose more so to him as it recalled his childhood days in, I’m sure, a very happy environment. Occasionally we’d go down to old “Price City” to sleep out on a hay stack (if the mosquitoes would let sleep come.) Once I remember getting up and coming home in the night to get away from their buzzing and biting.
Always, every summer there was the trip to Grandma Allen’s at Panguitch. (She was the only grandparent my girls ever knew.) What an experience it will be some future day to meet them all and realize that most likely we were all well acquainted in the pre-existence. Grandma usually had some little thing to please little girls. Often it was a little bottle of jelly for each one, (usually in a small vaseline jar.) These trips to Panguitch most generally included a picnic in Zion’s Park on the way out and one at Bryce while there.
One summer we took the girls out into the Uintah Country to see my Aunt Sadie Norton, and her family whom I hadn’t seen since my childhood. While there we visited the Dinosaur National Monument in Vernal, which was very interesting.
We made 2 trips to California while the girls were home. One when they were smaller. This was to Los Angeles where we stayed with their cousin Elsie Hanson (Aunt Amanda’s daughter.) Here they saw, and played in the ocean for the first time.
Later in their teen age years we went to San Francisco to an Opera Clinic. This I think was our outstanding vacation. Joseph McAllister, the Dixie College Music teacher (the one we called Joe Mac) went with us. He helped with the driving, and he had a daughter who lived in that area. Here we saw an outstanding opera each night but one, (which was the outstanding orchestra.) We visited Fisherman’s Wharf, and the outstanding art exhibits (which Pal loved and wanted to stay longer.)
After the girls were married, the “little runs” we took were no longer than the distance to “see the kids.” (Note by Pal -- We lived in Sandy for 19 years, and Mavis also lived in the Salt Lake area, and Vina lived in Provo for a few years. Later Vina and Pal have moved down to St. George and LaVerkin. We never lived out of the state.)
I’ve always been interested in traveling and have often longed to go places, but have had to be satisfied with the reports of my friends who have (many of them at least) traveled over much of this old world of ours. Now at age 72, I no longer feel that great urge to go much farther than to “see the kids."
During this winter Pratt’s service connected disability check was increased from $12 to $35 a month. We wanted more family and we decided we’d rather live on that amount than put off having another child. So by the time school was out Mavis was on her way. How thankful we’ve always been we did not procrastinate for we may have been eternally deprived of the wonderful blessing she has been to us. During that winter Pratt was able to take care of the babies part time. At other times we had a 16 year old girl. I guess she did okay for her age, but my what a contrast from Grandma Aldridge.
By mid summer the doctor told me I was going to have twins. (They didn’t X Ray then much.) So I prepared and was happy with the thought of twins. I even went up to Emily Foremaster’s to spend a few hours to see how she managed with her twins plus the 2 older ones.
We were expecting “our twins” about December 10th. But December 1, 1939, Mavis put in her appearance after a very hard 24 hours for me. (Which rendered me unable to ever have any more.) When she was finally born the doctor said, “Well, there won’t be another one. This one’s an elephant.” (Mavis never did like that comment!) She was 10 lbs. 12 oz. A beautiful baby – well formed, fat and cuddly. And how she did love to be cuddled. When she was 17 days old I sat in a chair long enough for my bed to be made. Twenty one days and I walked out in the kitchen to eat. Then 2 days later I rode up town long enough to go into a store to buy 2 dolls for “Santa.” My doll I already had.
Pal seemed to sense her worth too, for on Christmas Day I went into the room to see Pal’s doll on the floor and Pal dancing around the room with Mavis, who seemed almost as big as Pal herself, who had always been tiny and frail. We all enjoyed her so much. She was a healthy good natured baby.
The fall before Mavis turned two found us up to Gunlock. Again I was teaching all 8 grades, and again we had an angel to take care of the babies. This time it was Aunt Nell Bracken. What a happy winter we had there. Pal was in second grade.
Vina went ½ day to a W.P.A. kindergarten and Mavis went wherever her little legs could take her before we could catch up. Once we found her out in the middle of a foot swinging bridge trying to step over a broken board that presented a hole big enough for her to fall through into the river below.
Pratt was well enough by now to do some barber work. His barber chair was in our front room. He bought a little trailer house which he moved to St. George and put on Aunt Sarah’s lot. He often stayed during the week, going to the Temple and coming up to Gunlock week ends. Some of the finest people on earth lived in Gunlock. I loved them dearly and school was a joy. By spring I signed a contract to go to Mesquite, Nevada, to teach for the unheard of price of $1400 a year. We moved down after school was out in the spring and stayed until time to go on a vacation to a cooler spot. The superintendent wrote that I’d go to Logandale instead of Mesquite – another move! Well, we decided to make the move back to St. George as I also had a chance to go to Santa Clara. So the next year we were home – Mother lived in the little trailer, and her loved bedroom was turned into a home barber shop.
One year at Santa Clara and I was back in St. George teaching 3rd grade. These were good years. Pratt was well enough to tend Mavis, Mother was in the Temple and Pal, Vina, Colleen (Vina’s friend) and I came and went to school together. I had asked that Vina (or her friend Colleen – next door neighbor Vina’s age, and her best friend) not be placed in my room but they both were there. I never asked why. I suppose Vernon Worthen wanted to test my ability to handle the situation. I think it was hard on Lovie. (Vina) She was naturally a talkative fun-loving child and I had to sit on her hard a few times so that the class would not brand her as my “pet.” I was “Aunt Ruth” to Colleen until we reached the school house door then a formal “Mrs. Miles” until school was out and we started home together. Never once did she forget, bless her heart. She was and still is like a 4th daughter.
The next year (1944-45) found us in Salt Lake City. I needed and wanted to get my degree. I had hoped to teach ½ day and go to the U. ½ day but when they found I had taught Music I was placed in Longfellow School on the avenues to teach music. I had my home room (a third grade) until 10 A.M. and then every hour I went from one room to another teaching music. (From Kindergarten to 6th grade.) I enjoyed it but missed getting close to the class like you can if you are with one group all day.
World War II was raging this winter and things were rationed sharply. I remember how Pratt and I wore shoes nearly bare to save our shoe stamps to buy shoes for the girls. Children’s shoes just didn’t last from one ration stamp to the next. (Many things were rationed: sugar, butter, meat, gas for cars, etc.) This year was hard on the whole family. The girls, used to the freedom of a small town life, suddenly had to be more confined. This was hard, particularly on Vina Ruth who developed terrible night mares. As I stated I taught school all day and then went to the U. for a few hours and then home to washing, cooking, trying to make a stab at being a decent wife and mother, and then after the others were in bed, usually around 10 P.M. studying for a few hours often until 2 A.M. Then up again at 6 to get the girls and myself ready for school. I think during the entire winter I didn’t get over 4 or on rare occasions 5 hours of sleep a day.
During the spring months, Andy had got home from the army and he and Delsy (who had been living with her grandmother) wanted to get by themselves so we sold our home under the Black Hill to them. We all had a case of the worst flu we’ve ever had in the home that year. We were just getting over it when we received word Mother had had a severe heart attack. LaVern and I took the first bus to St. George. Mother was at Adelia’s in Washington. We arrived about 12 hours before Mother passed away. I rushed back to Salt Lake City to get the girls ready to come back to Panguitch to the funeral.
We had bought a home on Quince Street in Salt Lake City (paid cash for it with the war bonds we had so carefully bought during the last 3 or 4 years.) But by spring we knew we wanted to come home to raise our girls in Dixie. I wanted to stay there and finish up my degree, but Pratt seeing how worn out I was said, “That degree won’t get you through the pearly gates if you kill yourself off, nor will it help me raise the girls alone. We are going home and you are using the summer getting rested up.” He came to St. George and traded straight across with his sister Sarah our home in Salt Lake City for the home we are now in – except it was only a basement 4 rooms finished and 2 more to be finished. I have the satisfaction of knowing Sarah was not cheated. Little by little the next few years we got one room finished, then another until finally we built the main floor and moved up here. (230 South 100 East, St. George.) There were several “basement” homes built here during the war.
Ours had the distinction of being the first one to build on top. For years the basement went unused, except for storage. This storage included each girl’s wedding presents, etc., until they each one finally got in their own home with room for it. During their school years here at Dixie we didn’t want to curtail their home activities which often included parties of singing, recording, etc., into the night – sometimes after a dance, which no renter down stairs would have tolerated. Also Pratt in his nervous condition didn’t want to be bothered with renters. Strange but true, the fun noise of your own is music to your years, while the noise of someone else is so undesirable, but thus it was.
These were happy years. My activities consisted of teaching school, running the activities of a home, trying to do my bit publicly – and supporting the girls in their many activities. I will merely say our home became sort of a public place. By now, Pratt was well enough to do some barber work, which he did in the room built as a service room off the kitchen. This he did by appointment. The front room became a studio – where Pal gave music lessons after school and on Saturdays – not to mention the practice – practice – practice that went on there. Both trio practices – for our three girls were well known then as “The Miles Sisters Trio” – and also the many vocalists and instrumentalists that Pal accompanied.
She was in demand because she could transpose music – play by ear if they didn’t have a copy – and most of all she was willing and dependable. During these busy years my home activities were confined largely to the kitchen so as not to disturb the activities going on on each side. The front room was cleaned usually in a rush between practices – usually by the girl that had the earliest “date” that night. Such was our life until one by one the girls took their turn leaving the home nest to make a nest of their own.
We are told that our Life History should not be about our children so much but more about ourselves, our activities, thoughts and hopes and dreams, but my activities, hopes, and dreams were completely centered around my family. They were, and are, the object of my deepest hopes and dreams. These hopes and dreams now include 15 grandchildren and 4 (Dec. 28, 80) great grand children.
Pratt was older when we were married. He had longed for a home and family. His first marriage had ended sadly in divorce and he hd largely been deprived of association with his beloved daughter Delsy – 10 years older than Pal. So when we had our 3 daughters he felt extremely possessive of them. Sometimes I felt he was too much so – but they all turned out okay and I’m sure they never, ever had a doubt of our deep love for each one of them. If each child born into the world was showered with the love ours were, and I assume most of them ar, what a lot of love is absorbed by children.
I shall now attempt to relate if not go into detail, a few of the family memories I have:
Family Memories:
Because of a lack of money our activities were often confined to “Little Runs” as Dad called them. I remember one potato back up on the Red Hill – Dad baked the potatoes in the coals of a small “camp fire.” Pal lost her first tooth biting into a potato. We often rode up on the Black Hill at Evening to watch the sun go down on the town and the lights come on. Sometimes there was a treat with these rides but always there was Daddy’s stories of his childhood.
He’d point out to us where this or that happened. It was interesting to the girls but I suppose more so to him as it recalled his childhood days in, I’m sure, a very happy environment. Occasionally we’d go down to old “Price City” to sleep out on a hay stack (if the mosquitoes would let sleep come.) Once I remember getting up and coming home in the night to get away from their buzzing and biting.
Always, every summer there was the trip to Grandma Allen’s at Panguitch. (She was the only grandparent my girls ever knew.) What an experience it will be some future day to meet them all and realize that most likely we were all well acquainted in the pre-existence. Grandma usually had some little thing to please little girls. Often it was a little bottle of jelly for each one, (usually in a small vaseline jar.) These trips to Panguitch most generally included a picnic in Zion’s Park on the way out and one at Bryce while there.
One summer we took the girls out into the Uintah Country to see my Aunt Sadie Norton, and her family whom I hadn’t seen since my childhood. While there we visited the Dinosaur National Monument in Vernal, which was very interesting.
We made 2 trips to California while the girls were home. One when they were smaller. This was to Los Angeles where we stayed with their cousin Elsie Hanson (Aunt Amanda’s daughter.) Here they saw, and played in the ocean for the first time.
Later in their teen age years we went to San Francisco to an Opera Clinic. This I think was our outstanding vacation. Joseph McAllister, the Dixie College Music teacher (the one we called Joe Mac) went with us. He helped with the driving, and he had a daughter who lived in that area. Here we saw an outstanding opera each night but one, (which was the outstanding orchestra.) We visited Fisherman’s Wharf, and the outstanding art exhibits (which Pal loved and wanted to stay longer.)
After the girls were married, the “little runs” we took were no longer than the distance to “see the kids.” (Note by Pal -- We lived in Sandy for 19 years, and Mavis also lived in the Salt Lake area, and Vina lived in Provo for a few years. Later Vina and Pal have moved down to St. George and LaVerkin. We never lived out of the state.)
I’ve always been interested in traveling and have often longed to go places, but have had to be satisfied with the reports of my friends who have (many of them at least) traveled over much of this old world of ours. Now at age 72, I no longer feel that great urge to go much farther than to “see the kids."
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