Milburn Green and Verla May (Cook) Hix Part Two

Milburn Green and Verla May (Cook) Hix

I, Verla May (Cook) Hix, was born on 24 March 1915 at Taylorville, Bonneville County, Idaho the 4^th daughter and 6^th child of James Edward and Christine Magdalena (Buchmiller) Cook.  My parents had 6 more children for a family of twelve children.  I always thought being in the middle was a disadvantage because the older kids got to do things because they were older and the younger kids got to do things because they were younger.  Those in the middle got what was left;  not much.  With a large family, times were hard and we all had to work.  As soon as we were big enough to understand we were given chores to do and as we grew the chores did too.  But we had fun times too.  With a large family, there was always someone to play with and my parents made up for their lack of monetary things with a lot of love.  I remember one time my Dad gave my brother Virgil and I some marbles.  We decided to plant them in the ground and grow a whole bunch more.  We did, but nothing happened.  We had been told by our parents and in church that we should pray when we needed something and Heavenly Father would give it to us.  So we prayed our marbles would grow, but they still didn’t.  We asked mother why and she had to explain why Heavenly Father wouldn’t make the marbles grow.

As my older sisters went to school, they would come home and teach me what they learned.  By the time I was old enough to go, I already could do everything they taught in first grade.  I ended up skipping a grade later and that is why Milburn and I graduated from the 8^th Grade together even though he was a year and a half older than me. 

I remember when our family got our first car and how excited we were; the same when we first got a radio.  We moved around a lot when I was young and I had to make new friends quite often, which was hard for me as I was smaller than most of the other girls my age and quite self conscious about it.  I was baptized into the LDS Church on 30 June 1923, when I was a few months past my 8^th birthday.  After I graduated from the 8^th Grade, I attended Midway High School for one year and most of the second, although I never went until after potato harvest was over.  During the 2^nd year of high school, I was in a school bus wreck and my leg was injured and I didn’t get to finish that year.  After harvest the 3^rd year, I had an ulcerated tooth and so I quit going to school.  After the tooth got better, I went to work at the Canners Seed Company in Lewisville sorting peas and worked there for several years until I got married.

Milburn and I had dated a few times before he went into the army and exchanged a few letters while he was away.  When he came back we started dating again and we were married on 3 December 1938 by Bishop George Christensen.  Our good friends, Ralph Jardine and Artell Randall were married at the same time and we left on a honeymoon to Malad, Idaho.  It was storming and the roads were bad so we stopped in Pocatello and stayed in a motel for 50 cents.  We went to a grocery store and bought wieners and buns and had hot dogs for our wedding supper. 

We stayed the rest of that winter with Uncle Joe and Aunt Julie Ellis and then Milburn got a job working for Frank Martinsen just up the road and we moved into a converted granary in the spring.  That summer we traveled to Logan, Utah and were sealed in the temple there on 2 June 1939.  I was pregnant with Veldon at the time and a few months later decided his time had come.  I walked down the road about a quarter of a mile to Aunt Julie’s house and Veldon was born there on 5 September 1939.  We then moved about a mile west on Grant Road and for the first time, lived in a house all by ourselves.  

For the next few years we moved around a lot, to Coltman, the Ucon, back to Grant, and later to Garfield as Milburn found work with various farmers in the area.  We were living in Grant when our 2^nd son Delray was born.  He had a heart defect and was only able to stay with us for about three weeks.  We were heartbroken because he was a beautiful baby, but we were comforted by the knowledge that we could be with him again and we are.  We then moved to Lewisville where Milburn rented land from Aunt June Walker and from Bertha Sauer.  For the first time in his life he was finally farming on his own.  We were living in Lewisville when our beautiful red-haired daughter Garna May Hix was born on 29 December 1946 at the McKee Maternity Home in Rigby.

To be continued next week