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Show 90-Year-Old Vera Hansen Johnson's New Book Looks At Early Life In Boulder BOULDER Ninety-year-old Vera Hansen Johnson, now living in Richfield and legally blind, has survived to see published the story of her remarkable life, chronicling her years in Boulder, Utah from the time she moved there as an 18-month-old toddler in 1908 until she married and left for Richfield in 1931. In "My Scribblings From the Sunny Side of the Rock, " released this week by Agreka Books in Sandy, Vera, with the help of her nephew Joe Naylor, chronicles her days growing up in one of the most remote small towns in the nation. In 1908, and for several decades dec-ades following, Boulder, located in north central Garfield County, was one of the physically most inaccessible areas in the United States. The 35 miles from Esca-lante Esca-lante to Boulder contained some of the wildest, most spectacular wilderness anywhere in the world. Vera writes: "Mama, I'm scared!" cried the tiny children as they watched their papa desperately desper-ately fight to control the wagon and horses careening down a steep, slick rock descent bordered by deep canyons." It was a wild and dangerous two-week trip. Vera's mother, Anne, who was pregnant, refused to be in the wagon, and the four frightened children frantically clutched her skirts as our group navigated by foot. The young family was going to "homestead" this new land. "Papa," Christian Andreas Hansen, had come to America from Denmark when he was five years old, and had worked in the gold mines in Nevada as a young man, while "Mama," Annie Catherine Larsen Hansen, worked as a cook for the miners. But the Delemar Gold Mine was a "widow-maker." Many fell ill and died from breathing the dust. Not wanting his children to grow up working in the mines, Papa made the decision to have a go at cattle ranching in Boulder. He had heard about the lush grazing on Boulder Mountain. Mama, a tall, elegant young woman with proud bearing, had become a trained dressmaker who produced beautiful clothes. Within a few years, there were eight children, and Vera, as the oldest girl, was Mama's helper. Living in Boulder provided the kind of adventure that movies are made of. The children loved Vera Hansen Johnson exploring the canyons and streams, and climbing the boulders that gave the unique place its name. Life was good. But when Vera was only eight years old and Papa only 37, the outgoing man who loved life, books, singing, and most of all, his children, died of the dreaded disease he had not escaped the "widow-maker" called Miner's Consumption. When Mama saw how hard Papa's death was for Vera and the way in which added responsibilities responsibil-ities were impacting her life, she gave Vera a notebook and pencil and encouraged her to write down what she felt and observed. Those youthful "scribblings," along with tales of her childhood dictated to nephew Joe became the basis for the book she and Joe have now published. Her picture on the book's cover was taken in 1996 as she rode on a Fourth of July Parade Float in Boulder, "still" she says, "one of the wildest, most spectacular spectac-ular wilderness anywhere in the world." Book stores carry her book or they may be ordered from Agreka Books. |
