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Show When lights were turned on here Editor's Note: The following story was written as an assignment in a genealogy class but it seemed so appropriate for the New-Year, New-Year, that the newspaper asked Mrs. Whitney for permission per-mission to print it. It will be of special interest to the younger young-er generation and to others also al-so who remember when the lights were turned on in SpringvUle. If anyone else has an interesting "I Remember" story, of happenings in early SpringvUle history, we woiUd like to publish it. by Mrs. Jessie A. Whitney When we were children, we lived in a lovely big home on the corner of Fourth South and Main St., in SpringviUe, and since there was no electric power plant in the area, we used oil lamps and candles for light. The house was heated with a coal stove in each room and a fireplace in the dining-living dining-living room combination. We used to study in this room where there was a fire and over the fireplace was a mantle man-tle on which two lamps were kept burning to give more light. One night, my sister, Lela, and I were going out, and I threw a cape around me to keep warm. As the cape came down about my shoulders, it knocked one of the lamps off and broke it. Luckily, the family fam-ily 'was all there, so the fire was put out at once or there could have been a terrible fire. Perhaps this is one of the reasons rea-sons why I remember so clearly how glad we were when the electric power plant was built in the canyon and SpringviUe was soon to have electricity. Sometime before this, someone some-one from Salt Lake City had given us some old burned-out light globes and we thought they were so beautiful, we carefully placed them on some cotton in a basket and kept them as ornaments. Finally when electricity was available in SpringviUe, mother had our house wired. I don't remember the year exactly, but think it was about 1900. The anticipation of having the lights in the house was so keen, it was like waiting for Christmas. The night we turned them on was one I'll never forget. We hurried home from school and waited for it to get dark. Finally Mother turned on the chandelier and we were so excited and thrilled. My brothers Glenn and Will went through all the rooms upstairs and down turning on all the lights. My sister was so happy about the upstair's lights because she was always frightened to go upstairs in the dark. , , We all ran up and down the lighted stairs because it was so wonderful to be able to see where we were going at night without having to carry a lamp. |
