Thoughts and stories, by Pal

This is a continuation of my mother Ruth Allen Miles's life, as she wrote it.  Her life story began in blog # 137, continued 138, 139, 140, 141, and 142.  Her birthday was May 10, 1908, and this May she would have reached age 106!  As Mother's Day approaches, I want to finish her writings in a few more entries.  Often her birthday was on or very near Mother's Day. Her writing continued:       The summer before the government had paid farmers $12 a head to kill their beef cattle because of the oversupply and depression.  They were not allowed to sell the meat but could use it "for their own families."  We went out to Panguitch when Earl killed several.  He gave us 2 veal (young beef) which we  bottled.   That was our meat for a few years.      The next winter Pratt was feeling some better.  Mother was with us.   We had 2 darling little girls and were doing a lot of public singing.   We now...

My Eternal Companion       I first met Pratt Miles, my husband, while I was in College at Dixie.  We were in the same ward and worked together in M.I.A.  He was chairman of the Young Men's Program for each M.I.A. night and I for Young Ladies.  I was 19 years old, and he was 35 years old.  We worked very closely together and became good friends;  But -- I was in college with all its excitement and he, 16 years older than I was, a man about town -- a barber and divorcee, so we had nothing in common except our Church positions.  Occasionally there was an M.I.A. party or dance we enjoyed together.      Our paths separated and I didn't see much of him for about 3 years.  I was teaching in Enterprise and one evening he appeared on the scene.  Just dropped by to say "Hello," as he was passing through.      I had a date that night, so the 3 of us visited and rode around together .   They both...

School Teaching (from her journal)      September 1928 found me in Enterprise (about 35 miles north of St. George -- small town)  teaching 4th grade for $80 a month--8 months a year , $640 a year.  I found to my surprise there was a lot I didn't know.  That year was presidential election year.  School was dismissed ½ day for the teachers to go vote.  I was 20.  The age for voting then was 21, so I had to stay at school and teach--the only teacher in the building.  That didn't help my popularity with the kids that day.      It was an extremely cold winter that year.  Roads in and out of Enterprise were closed.  Phone lines were down and mail didn't get through for 3 weeks.   That was during the great depression.  Some children came to school that year with shoes, shirt and pants on, no socks, no underwear, no coat.  The next 2 years I taught a combination of 5-6 grades.  I learned to love ...

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...