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Show Volume XVII Issue XVI The Ogden Valley news Page February 15, 2010 Memories of Huntsville and Its People By Donald D. McKay Note: This is the eighth in a multi-series of articles that is from the above titled compilation. It is being reprinted by permission of the McKay family. The information was initially printed in 1960. Pioneering seems to be a tough job. It certainly was in Utah. Frequently, necessity made it so. Often after a settler had been located for some time in their new home and had acquired some property around, the family might be called to move and help establish a new town somewhere else in a new part of the country. Thus the strenuous work required at first had to be sacrificed in order to get located a second time. The purpose of such a policy was to get settlements established over as wide an area as possible so that a large stream of immigrants coming into the country would have no great difficulty in finding people of their liking and land enough on which to raise food for themselves and acquire a home. Men and families, therefore, who had this experience, were the most suitable people to go into these new places. They thus became important advisors to newcomers in all the problems that were likely to face them in the new settlement. When I was a small boy, I remember such an occasion occurring. Bishop F. A. Hammond and his family were called to move from our town to Bluff, way down in San Juan County. That town still seems to me to be at the end of the earth. The Bishop had been in our town for quite a few years and by hard work and good management had made himself quite well-to-do. His big, white frame house was on the corner of the lot just east of the Renstrom home. The half of the block north of the house was covered with barns, corrals, and sheds. The day he moved out, the whole town watched with heavy hearts as the stock, wagons, and all went down the street. I can remember that procession, for I had a feeling in me that something awful was happening. That feeling soon passed off, however. The Bishop, it seems, had always been a most hospitable man and he had gratified that feeling by inviting people to dine at his house. He had built a very long and substantial table of native red pine and rounded ends, and painted red. Upon it, I suppose, many a scrumptious feast had been served. Because of its size, I imagine, it could not be transported on those heavily loaded wagons down to distant Bluff, so it was disposed of to my father. The long caravan was not yet of sign when that table began its trek to our house, followed by a highly pleased boy. Our old rock house had two large rooms on the lower floor and two rooms and a sizable hall upstairs. The north room downstairs was the kitchen. It had a large fireplace and a nice mantle shelf. Stoves, of a kind, had arrived by that time, so very little use was made of the fireplace. The south room was the parlor. It, too, had a fireplace and a nice mantle. Occasionally an extra bed had to be set up in it. The two rooms and the hallway upstairs were the sleeping quarters. Almost everything in the house, like the furniture, bedding, and clothes, was homemade. The floor in the kitchen, and I suppose through the house, was made of native pine, and was as knotty as it could be. It had been used for a long time, I suppose, without any kind of floor covering. As a consequence, since the knots were harder than the balance of the wood, they had resisted the natural wear and therefore stood out as conspicuously as a sore thumb The so-called “rag carpets” had made their appearance about that time. At harvest time in the fall, white, clean oat straw was gathered and all carpets were taken up, the old straw was removed, and the floors scrubbed white. It was at this operation that I first noticed the knots in the floor. It was a real joy to see the new straw come in. It had to be spread as evenly as possible over the whole floor and as deep as the carpet could be stretched to cover, and yet be tacked down at the edges. To keep the youngsters from bouncing around on top of it during the stretching operation required half a dozen pairs of sharp eyes. It was soft and springy when completed. How warm and inviting, that combination of rag carpet and clean oat straw. Cooking for a large family was an unending task. There was the yeast to keep fresh. Bread was mixed first as “sponge” and usually allowed to raise overnight. In the morning it was mixed down, then put in the pans and finally baked. There was nothing that could be served out of cans as now. Everything had to be prepared and cooked in the home. Foods were so limited that mothers were driven to distraction. Cream was skimmed from the pans and churned. The butter had to be mixed, and salted. Every piece of tallow was saved, and when there was enough on hand it had to be “rendered” for greasing cowhide boots and harnesses, as well as for making soap and candles. There was always a pile of darning, knitting and patching waiting until Mother found some leisure time. Wool had to be washed, scoured and dried, then carded into rolls and finally spun into yarn. I can remember as though it were just yesterday, a plainly furnished room, dimly lighted of a winter evening, with an old fashioned wood cook stove placed out in the room some distances from the wall. There was a shallow ash pan covered with a moveable lid protruding from the front of the stove that constituted a useful hearth. In front of the grate there was a door that swung out when necessary, and air vents that exposed the whole box. This allowed emanation of considerable heat and not a little light of a kind. Nearby sat a woman at a spinning wheel. Close at hand there was a pile of soft, fluffy wool rolls. At regular intervals, one of these rolls was taken from the pile by her left hand and without any apparent effort was attached to the end of the yarn without the loss of a second. Her hand moved methodically from end to end, thinning and shaping the roll to prepared size of the yarn as it moved to the spinning wheel. At the same time, her foot kept the peddle moving up and down at the proper speed to allow the work of the hands to be thorough as well as comfortable. In a corner of the room, a bed was improvised for the comfort of two small boys, the tick of which was fat with the recent filling with new, clean white oat straw. On the floor a rag carpet, stretched tight over an abundant layer of that white material used in the bed tick, which gave the youngsters a feeling of soft, springy comfort never since attained by the most expensive rugs. The air is loaded with the scent of the heated wood behind the stove and the home made soap spread over the pine floor before the carpet was laid. The flickering light from the stove dancing on the opposite wall, the purr of the spinning wheel, the diminishing pile of the fluffy white wool rolls, the ceaseless, rhythmatic movements of the woman—your mother—to fall asleep in such surrounds is, for a child, truly heaven. HISTORICAL cont. on page 10 Historical Photo Seventh grade class at Valley Elementary, 1938. Please help us identify these students. Call or email Shanna or Jeannie. Your Neighborhood Tax and Accounting Practice Celeste C. 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