Life Story of Ruth Elizabeth Proctor-Part Five

Written by

Ruth Elizabeth Proctor Cook

After Vergil was called to his Heavenly Home, I found out that I was expecting a baby.  I wondered how in heaven's name I was going to have the money to pay a doctor and take care of a baby.  The folks in Tooele sent me the money and I went back to Tooele for awhile.

Vergil

  Everything had changed and the folks were so good to me.  Most of my girl friends were married and had moved away.  Elmer Searle came to see me and wanted me to go out with him.  I just didn't want to do that. He asked me to marry him in due time and he would raise the baby.  He hadn't gotten married yet.  But I just didn't love him the way you should love someone you marry.  I stayed in Tooele for about a month and a half and then went back to Roberts.  I lived with Atha and Opal for a while.  I would take long walks.  One night I walked over to the Snake River Bridge and just stood there and looked at the swirling water. I heard someone call my name.  It was Opal.  Someone had gone to the store and told him I was on the bridge.  He put his arm around me, took me back to their car.  I told him I wasn't going to jump but I surely didn't know what I was going to do.  He told me I would always have a home with Atha and him but that he thought there was someone else for me. One night as I was staying with them, I seemed to wake up and thought I could see Vergil standing in the doorway to the bedroom.  He said for me not to worry that both me and the baby would be taken care of.  I slept better that night than I had.

I thought I had lived with Opal and Atha long enough and I knew that I needed to take care of me and my baby that was coming.  So I took a small room in the home where Wayne and Vandetta Wilson lived.  It was north of Roberts.  I had my cook stove, a cupboard for dishes and pots and pans, a bed, a chest of drawers, a dresser, and a little stand to put a bucket of water on and a wash basin.  They guys put the cupboard in front of the door that led to the other part of the Wilson's home so their kids couldn't run into the place where I was to live any time they felt like it.

Fishing Bridge 1937
Annie, and Ruth are at top and Ruth has hands on Atha

 

Before I left the Staker's home, they gave me a baby shower and I think everyone in the ward came for I didn't have to buy anything.  They even gave me a wicker baby buggy for my baby.  The room was just right for me and my baby.  Cleo and Carl Cook could come at night and take me to the show and many other places.  I never got very large with my baby as I never had to wear anything different than what I generally wore.  I loved that little room though it was lonesome at nights.  Wayne and Vandetta would come around the house and have me come and be with them in the evenings.  They were good to me.

Atha holding Frank and Ruth

When it was time for my baby to make his appearance into this world, I was having sharp pains.  They started about 8:00 a.m.  Cleo drove me to Mrs, Lee Hansen's home in Rigby to have the baby.  We stopped and picked up my sister Atha.  When we got to Rigby, Cleo asked if he could do anything else and Mrs. Hansen said not unless you want to have it for her.  Cleo told her he would wait out in the car and to please let him know if they needed anything.  Vergil Franklin Cook came into this world only weighing 5 pounds.  He wasn't due until 27 September.  He was so tiny.  I remember asking Dr. Aldon Tall if the baby was ok.  He said everything was perfect but that he was tiny.  When I looked up I saw Vergil standing in the doorway.  When the doctor said the baby would do fine in this world, Vergil just disappeared.  I started to cry.  The doctor asked me if I was ok.  I just nodded my head, and then he said he had felt all along that someone else was in the room.  Franklin had tiny curls all over his head and was a good baby.  When everything was cleaned up, Atha went out to where Cleo was in the car and told him I had a tiny baby boy and everything was ok with me and the baby.  Cleo asked Atha if he could come in and see me and the baby, which he did.  Then he and Atha went back to Roberts.  I stayed at Mrs. Hansen's for 10 days and then went to Grandma Cook's for another 10 days.  After being down that long when I did try to get up it was very hard to walk.

I decided it was time for my son and I go to our own place.  Cleo came as often as he could to see me and make sure that I had everything that I needed.  I tried to nurse Franklin, but I wasn't good at that.  What I had didn't help him very much, so he became a bottle baby.

Vergil Franklin Cook

I can remember one time we were all at Parley and Edna Ririe's for Thanksgiving dinner.  Cleo and I were sitting on the couch and I was holding Franklin, when their daughter LaWan asked me if I was going to marry her Uncle Cleo and be her Aunt Ruth.  I am sure I turned very red for we hadn't even talked about getting married.  She just kept asking me and finally Cleo said she could, would that be alright with her.  LaWan said sure that she was just wondering.  Cleo started taking me to the shows without his brother Carl going with us, though I always took my baby with us.  Cleo was very good to me and Franklin.  He did ask me to marry him.  I told him I would.  When Cleo told his folks, Grandpa Cook told him he couldn't marry me because I was sealed to Vergil and that wouldn't be fair to Cleo.  That just about broke us up, for I wouldn't see Cleo or go anywhere with him.  I even left the little room where Franklin and I were living and went to Roberts and stayed with Atha and Opal. 

Frank and Ruth

Cleo came to see me there and I wouldn't even talk to him.  Opal and Cleo had a good long talk one night when Cleo came in.  I was upstairs playing with Franklin, when Opal came up and told me that I needed to go down and talk to Cleo.  He said he and Atha would watch the baby.  He told me I needed to hear Cleo's side of the story.  So I went down.  We had quite a talk.  Cleo said that he still wanted to marry me no matter what his dad said.  He loved me and knew that all the children that he and I would have would belong to Vergil.  But he said there is a just God and things will be ok.  He would be Franklin's father on this earth and a good father to any other ones we might have.  So we decided to go to the Salt Lake Temple and be married for time.  He told me he would get their car and we would go down and take Franklin with us.

Frank

Ruth and Cleo

We set the date for 20 December 1939.  We had quite a funny thing happen to us on our way down to Utah.  We stopped at a service station to get gas and have the oil checked.  I had made a small bed for Franklin between us and I was playing with him and he was smiling for me.  The fellow putting in the gas as Cleo if this trip was necessary.  Just about that time Franklin laughed out loud.  He looked in the window and Cleo told him we were going to Salt Lake to get married.  The fellow looked at Cleo and said, "I guess it's necessary for you to go."  We laughed about that and the expression on the man's face quite a few times as the years went by.  When we got to Salt 
Lake City and went to the court house to get our marriage license, we had quite a time convincing the clerk that we weren't brother and sister, because both of our names were Cook.  Finally I told her that I was married to his brother and that he had passed away and now we were planning to get married.  She asked why we hadn't said so in the first place, and Cleo told her she had never given us a chance.

Frank with his Grandfather, James Edward Cook

Cleo, Frank, James Edward Cook

Cleo took out his endowments the day we were married.  While we were in one of the sessions, a Temple matron came and said something to one of the workers.  The man then asked where Sister Ruth Cook was.  My heart almost stopped.  The sister came to me and as I got up to leave the brother said that there would be a slight delay that a young man needed his mother.  One of the sisters had Franklin in the nursery.  He had woken up and didn't know anyone and had started to cry.  They couldn't get him to stop, so they brought him to me.  When he saw me he reached out his little arms.  I took him and loved him and fed him a bottle.  He went to sleep again.  Bless his little heart.  He sure did a lot of sobbing.  Then the sister took me back to the session and the brother said that now we would continue but that little ones come first.

When we got back from Salt Lake, we moved into two rooms upstairs at Grandpa and Grandma Cook's.  They wanted to go back and finish the mission that Grandpa was on in California when Vergil died.  This time he wanted to take Grandma with him.  There were still young girls living in the Cook household, and they needed someone there.

Ruth and Frank outside home in Roberts

Ruth and Frank

Cleo, Frank and Ruth

Cleo did all the farming.  His sisters had their bedroom in one of the upstairs rooms.  I told them to always remember to shut their bedroom door tight and to shut the gate we had put across the steps as they were quire steep and I didn't want Franklin to fall down those steps.  The only place he had to play was out in the hallway.  One morning in a rush to catch the school bus, they didn't get their bedroom shut tight, though they did lock the gate on the stairs.  I put Franklin out to play in the hall, and sure enough he pushed open their door.  He got into their lipstick, rouge, powder, perfume and anything else he wasn't to get into, and he did it in a very short time.  When I went to check on him, I looked in their room and what a mess I found.  He looked like a circus clown and smelled of perfume.  He was a sight to behold and so was their room.  I took him into our rooms and put him into a tin tub that we bathed in.  His head and hair was a mess as were his hands, arms and the clothes he had on.  I told him he wasn't to go into his aunts' room and that they would be very unhappy with him when they came home from school.  Sure enough when they came home from school and saw the mess he had made, they were very unhappy with him.  Cleo told them it was as much their fault as it was his, but from then on their door was shut tight, for which I was very happy.

Cleo and Frank

When Grandpa and Grandma Cook came home from their mission, Grandpa wanted Cleo to live upstairs still. but I told him we needed to find a place of our own to live in.  So we moved into Roberts and lived in a small two room house of Bessie Jones.  This was 26 May 1940.  We needed a place where Franklin could play outside and I could watch him, also Grandma Cook needed to be over her daughters.  Our land lady Bessie Jones was something else.  She would be on your doorstep the day your rent was due so she could have the money.  She stayed there till she got it, sometimes it was quite late as Cleo drove back and forth to farm.  It was nice to be by ourselves.

Vergil Franklin Cook

Cleo, Ruth and Frank on left with Atha and Opal's family
and others I am not sure of.

Life Story of Ruth Elizabeth Proctor-Part Four

Written by

Ruth Elizabeth Proctor Cook

Ruth

Ruth

I got a job at the seed house in Lewisville.  This is where you sort out the bad peas from the good ones.  I had never picked peas in a seed house before so when Mr. Renard was hiring others pickers, he asked if I had ever picked peas before.  He didn't say in a seed house, so I told him yes, for I had picked peas out of my folks garden.  I was quite surprised he hired me.  When I got up to where they were working, I had no idea what to do.  Here came the dry peas rolling over a belt towards me.  My floor lady was Fontella Lords (she is a cousin to the Cook kids).  She asked me if I knew what I was to do.  I told her no.  She asked how I got a pastMr. Renard?  I told her what he had said and what I said.  She started to laugh and said no one had ever done that to him.  I told her I didn't lie cause he just asked if I had picked peas.  He didn't say in a seed house.  She told me what to do. You were to pick out the bad peas and if you get good peas in your culls you are docked.  I learned to be a very good pea picker.  I rode over to Lewisville with Verla Cook (Hix) and Lila Cook (Christensen). 

Leora Cook, Verla Cook, and Ruth

The Roberts ward had a play and Vergil and I had the leading parts.  What fun we had putting on that play.  We put it on the in the Roberts ward and then went over to the Grant Ward and put it on.  Cleo, Vergil's brother, saw the play there.  He told me many years later he thought about giving Vergil a run for me, then thought he better not.

Vergil was a good dancer.  We won many a contests in dancing.  He loved to waltz, and we sure could jitterbug when that dance tune came around. 

Ruth and Vergil 

In December of 1937, Vergil Cook gave me a diamond.  My Daddy Frank was visiting in Roberts at the Staker's this Christmas.  He was quite surprised because he thought I was going to go to BYU.  Opal and Atha told him that when I started having fun in Roberts, they knew I wouldn't be going to any college.  Daddy Frank asked me if I had told the folks in Tooele about me getting a diamond.  I told him I would let them know in due time, now that wasn't the answer to give him.  I told him I was sorry I said that and would write and tell them.  Vergil and I were married in Atha and Opal's home in Roberts.  They had moved over into the home that belonged to my sister Bessie and Lavell Butt.  They had moved to Marriott, Utah quite some time ago.  Someone bought that home and then decided they didn't want to live there so Opal and Atha bought it.  It was a much nicer home than where they had been living.  We were married 27 September 1938.  President Hyrum T. Moss married us.  He was an uncle to Vergil.  Opal and Atha give us a wedding dance in the Roberts Culture Hall.  My folks in Tooele couldn't come, though they sent me a white skirt and white blouse to be married in.  They also sent us a set of dishes for our wedding gift.  I felt bad that they couldn't make it there.  Their thoughts were with us though.  We received a lot of nice things.  Daddy Frank and my sister Annie gave us a set of silverware, a lace bedspread and some money.

Vergil and Ruth

Vergil and I went out southeast of Rigby and herded sheep for Will Haven.  We lived in a sheep camp and just took what we needed and stored the rest at the Staker's home.  We had a very good sheep dog.  One night I talked Vergil into bedding the sheep down around the straw stack telling the dog to watch them and we walked into Rigby to see a show.  When we sat down I took off my shoes.  Someone came to set on the other side of us and kicked my shoes down farther to the front.  We had to wait till the last show was over so Vergil could find my shoes when the lights came on.  We ran most of the way back to the sheep camp and everything was ok, but we didn't do that anymore while we were with the sheep.  We stayed with the sheep till the weather turned cold, then we came back to Roberts to a two room house north of Roberts.  Fay and Lila Christensen lived in the front two rooms and we had the back two rooms. 

Ruth and Vergil

In November of 1938 Vergil and I were sealed in the Salt Lake Temple for time and all eternity.  Atha drove us down in a little black bug.  On our way down it began to snow and the roads got very slick.  As we were going through Pocatello, Idaho, her car turned completely around when we hit a slick spot on the road.  She asked if I thought we should go back home and we both said no that we wanted to keep going.  We were told we couldn't go over Malad Pass, so we went through Preston, Idaho and down through Sardine Canyon.  Those roads were terrible.  Our Heavenly Father was with us for we made it ok there and had a safe trip back to Roberts. 

We lived in our little two room house.  One night Vergil said to me as we were getting ready for bed that if anything happened to him, I should go to his brother Cleo.  I told him that was a dumb thing to talk about.  Vergil made me promise that I would do it though.  In February 1939, Vergil had a stroke.  I got help for Vergil.  Opal and Atha took him to the LDS Hospital in Idaho Falls.  He was paralyzed right down through the middle of his body.  He lost his speech also.  He was so helpless just laying there watching you with his eyes.  We put Vergil in the hospital on Friday and Cleo stayed with him day and night.  Opal and Atha would take me to the hospital to see him.  It was a Sunday morning while we were setting at the table eating breakfast that the hospital called and said we should come to  the hospital as soon as possible.  When we went into Vergil's room I took his hand and bent down and kissed him.  He looked up when I raised my head and said "I love you."  Those were the only words he had spoken since he had had his stroke.  A nurse came in and took me and Atha out of the room.  Cleo and Opal stayed in there.  The light above his door was flashing red and I heard them say code red.  Before I could get back in the room, he was taken to his Heavenly Home.  This was 26 February 1939.  I then fainted.  When I came to, I could see everyone crying and then it hit me again.  We only had five short months of married life, buy they were happy months. 

Vergil and Ruth

We didn't have much money but we had a lot of love for each other.  I can remember when we were living in our little home that Vergil did something that upset me and I threw a flat iron at him.  He ducked and it went through the window.  I asked how he thought we were going to pay for the window.  He said it was cheaper than him getting beaned on his head.  I was sorry I did that, but we did have some good laughs over it.  A piece of cardboard was put in the window till our milk check came to buy a window pane.  

Vergil Nelson Cook

(I am going to add several pictures here of Ruth and more of her time with Vergil and others in Roberts)

Verla Cook and Ruth

Leora, Ruth and Verla

Verla and Ruth

Picture

Cleo, Ruth and Wayne Wilson

Vergil Cook, Vernell Connel,
Marden Wells, Fay Christensen,
Lila Cook, Eva Christensen

Clayton DaBelle and Bessie Christensen
Vergil and Ruth
Leonard Martin and Nettie Green

Leora Cook and Lynn Christensen
Ruth and Vergil Cook

Fay Christensen, Vergil Cook, Davis Watson

Ruth (aka Duge)

Fay Christensen, Verla, Lila Leora, and Vergil Cook

Ruth's sister, Bessie Proctor Butt died 22 December 1938.  The following pictures were taken after her services in Ogden, Utah.  Their home was next to the Marriot Ward Church

Back row: Vergil and Ruth Cook, Ardis Butt, Annie Carol Proctor, Atha and Opal Staker
Front row: Jay Staker, Vernell Butt, Dick Staker, and Lavelle Butt Jr.

Sisters--Ruth, Atha and Annie

Ruth and Vergil

Lavelle Butt, Vergil Cook and Opal Staker

Life Story of Ruth Elizabeth Proctor-Part Three

Written by

Ruth Elizabeth Proctor Cook

I did date other fellows while I was at the Staker's though Vergil and I got very serious.  One night I had a date with Vergil and I wanted Jay and Dick, Opal and Atha's sons, to go to bed before he got there.  They were being brats as sometimes they were.  I went through the doorway between the front room and the kitchen.  I guess I stepped a little hard for one of the boards broke and I went down to my knee through the floor.  Atha looked at me and started laughing.  I know I looked funny.  She told me she'd get me out.  She went out and got the axe, put it above her hands and was laughing so hard the axe was shaking, I told her no way was she going to get me out by bringing the axe down over her head, so she could cut on the board next to my leg.  I thought she was trying to get even and cut my leg.  Finally she cut the other board enough so I could get out.  We put a throw rug over the holes and told everyone not to step there.  I told Jay and Dick not to say anything to Vergil.  While I was getting ready, he came.  They met him out in front and told him how I had stomped a hole in their floor and their mom had to get an axe and cut the other board so I could get out to go on a date with him.  I loved those kids when they were little.  They have since changed their style of living.

Ruth, Ahta, and Dick

Behind the Staker's home was a slough.  It was frozen solid in the winter.  I talked Atha in to going roller skating on the ice.  We only had one pair of skates so we each put on a skate and tied our inside legs together.  We were doing pretty good for a while when our feet went out from under us and we lit on the ice.  Atha happened to be on the bottom.  We got to laughing so hard, Atha became very wet and it wasn't from the ice.  We had to crawl to the house up a snow bank because we couldn't get the skate off.  She wasn't happy with me.  We finally got the skate off, got the old tin tub in as they didn't have a bathroom in the house.  Water was heated on the wood burning stove and poured into the tub.  She said she was going to bath first.  We didn't skate anymore on the ice, though we did in her home.  She did real fine on her rug but when she stepped on to the slick polished floors, one foot went under their Heatrola (stove in the front room) the other across the way under her buffet.  I told her to stay on the rug and she didn't.  She looked so funny I started to laugh.  She told me to get those skate off her.  I had to lie down on my tummy to get to her foot that was under the stove.  I asked her if she was hurt.  She said what do you think?  I know she had quite a jar but I couldn't help but laugh, she didn't skate in the house anymore.

Atha and Ruth

Opal Staker, Estus and Theola Fullmer and Thurman Long played for dances all over.  Atha and I would go.  I was wondering how she was getting so many different fellows to dance with her.  Then she said that while she was dancing with one fellow and saw another one who was a good dancer she would wink at him and he would wink back and then come and ask her for a dance.  I thought if my sister who was a married lady and her husband was playing in the band could do that then so could I and I did.  I danced all night long and had a blast.  Here Opal was busy playing and we were having a ball, once in awhile he would come off the stage and dance with Atha and me.  Once he told both of us to cool it.  She did because he was her husband, but not me.  Opal threatened not to bring me anymore, so I didn't do it so much any way where he could see me.  What fun I had to those dances.  If I could dance and swim I thought I had it made and now in 1993 I can't do either.

Atha and Ruth

Opal, Atha and I went to a show at the Rio Theater in Idaho Falls.  There wasn't any usher around so we started down the aisle.  Opal said there were three seats and so for us to go on in.  Atha went in, then Opal, and then I, only my seat was a broken one.  One of my long legs went up between a couple in front and one under the seat in front.  Here I was hanging.  The usher came down and told Atha she couldn't sit there.  She said tell me about it.  She said her husband Opal had told her to keep going and then to sit down and she did.  Opal was looking at Atha, people all around were telling us to sh-sh.  Here I was trying to get myself out of the mess I was in.  That dumb couple went to kiss each other as my leg went between them.  I got a very sloppy smack on both sides of my leg.  So then he was trying to push my leg out from between them and that wasn't working.  Opal looked at me and asked what in the world I was doing?  I told him in no uncertain terms to get behind me and help me to get up.  So he did.  He would just about get me up and then he would start to laugh and down I would go.  Finally Opal got me out with the help of the fellow who was next to me.  The usher found us three seats on the side and Atha and I made Opal set down in every one of them before we would set down in them.  When I got ready for bed that night, I was covered with black and blue marks. 

Ruth at Staker's home in Roberts

One time we went to a carnival in Idaho Falls that was held on the west side of the river.  We got on a darn Loop-A-Plane.  It looked like it was going to pitch us right out into the Snake River.  I got scared and reached over and grabbed Atha's sweater with my teeth.  Each time we would go around I would clinch harder.  When they stopped the blessed thing and let us off, I had bit her terrible on her arm.  It hurt her and I sure felt bad.  I haven't ridden on one since.

Ruth and Vergil

Verla Cook Hix, Reva Cook Maas, Ruth Proctor Cook

Opal and Atha had a long screened in front porch on the west of their house.  They had a cot out there and we would go out and lay there after we had eaten our lunch.  We would sing.  I taught her that Alphabet ('A' your adorable and so on).  She had quite a time remembering the words.  What fun we had.  One day we were out there and a good old Roberts wind came in.  She had a large flower on a stand in her front room.  The wind caught it just right and tipped it over and dirt went clear across the floor.  She told me to go and clean it up.  I told her no way that it was her flower and her floor and she could clean it up.  We just laid there and laughed about it.  Suddenly another blew over.  It was a mess in there.  About that time a car stopped out front and lo and behold there was Mom, Dad, and Rozella from Tooele.  Gee Atha felt dumb and I just laughed at her.  She was so embarrassed.  There sat our dirty dishes on the kitchen table and dirt all over her front room floor.  Mom, Dad, and Rozella just laughed.  I did go in and put the dishes in the dish pan while she and Mom cleaned up the dirt.  Dad walked over to the store where Opal was working, laughing all the way.  They stayed the night and when they left to go back to Tooele they asked if I wanted to come home.  I told them no I would stay the rest of the summer if that was ok with them.  Mom asked me if I had written to Elmer Searle.  I said once in awhile.  I told her he wanted me to come back to Tooele, and I wasn't ready to come home right now.  I asked if it was ok with her if I stayed till September and Mom said yes.  I was having fun going with Opal and Atha to the different places where Opal and those guys played for dances, and going out on dates with different guys from Roberts.

Atha Proctor Staker, Ruth Proctor Cook, Annie Procor Jaynes
Bessie Proctor Butts, Nellie Jones, Helen Meier Proctor

Life Story of Ruth Elizabeth Proctor-Part Two

Written by

Ruth Elizabeth Proctor Cook

Ruth Elizabeth Proctor

When we were in Conrad, we didn't live too far from Canada, so as a family we had a vacation in Canada.  The folks didn't have very much money but somehow we always went on a vacation somewhere in the summertime.  We went camping a lot and would get around a bonfire at night and sing songs.  We had a lot of love in our family.

We went to Tooele, Utah, from Conrad.  Dad lost his job as beet field man.  So we loaded everything we could in our car and a trailer and started for Tooele.  We came over the Continental Divide with our furniture in a trailer being pulled by a blue Chevy which we were riding in and also packed to the hilt.  Many times Dad would have to stop the car.  We would all jump out and put rocks behind the tires so it wouldn't roll.  Then we would have to wait until the car cooled off before we could go any farther.  We all pitched in and it was a fun trip we had coming over the Divide.

When we reached Tooele, the folks found a house to rent on 357 South First West. 

Home on 375 South First West

It was a large red brick house.  In the back it had a grape arbor over a small building that kind of connected on to the house.  Us kids slept in it in the summer time and we stored things in it in the winter.  It had two big pine trees on the lawn and another large tree, whose branches spread way out.  What super good time we had on that lawn in the summer.  I walked to the school building down on Vine Street.  It was called Tooele Central School.  We lived about 4 1/2 blocks from school going straight north.  The blocks in Tooele were very long.  I went from grade school to Tooele Jr. High.  We had 7th, 8th and 9th in the Jr. High.  It was connected on the north end of the high school.  I took Seminary in Jr. high and graduated from it.  I also took Seminary in high school and graduated from it.  I took a business course in high school.  My teacher, Mr. Wood, was a good teacher.  One year we went to Provo, Utah, for a contest, We left Tooele early in the morning in a large bus.  What a fun time we had there and going and coming home on the bus.  I can remember my Seminary teacher, Mr. Bently.  He was a very humble man.  I would have learned more about the gospel if I had listened more; I can sure see that now.  I had fun in high school.  We sure did some dumb things like making rotten egg gas and putting it in different places so it went through both the jr. and high school.  School was dismissed very early that day.  Mr. Steele, the principal, questioned every one of us, but no one said anything so we all got to graduate.  We all thought it was very funny at the time because we all go out of school for that day and the next.  I graduated from Tooele High School in May 1937. 

Graduation Day May 1937 

Ruth' with her parents George Annie Proctor
High School Graduation

Ruth Graduation Day

I sure had some neat friends then and after school.  Some of them were: Katherine Spray (Mrs. Herb Lohse) now deceased, Winnifred Black (Mrs. Carl Anderson) now deceased, Bernice Mills (Theral McArthur) who are presently living in Cedar City, Utah.  We were planning to meet when they held our class reunions and that never panned out, though I did get to the 50th reunion held in June 1987.  We had brunch at Harold Barlow's home.  He was our student body president.  Many were there and my how we had all changed.  We even had one of our teachers there, Max Gowns.  He always wanted to wear western clothes to school when he taught and the school board frowned on it, but he certainly had them on that day.  He was a good teacher.  We took a bus and went sightseeing around Tooele.  It had changed quite a bit.  The high school takes in four blocks, has a new football field and a swimming pool.  When I took swimming in Tooele it was an outdoor pool with cold water. That night we went to dinner at a swanky cafe in Tooele that was build up on the south end of Main Street.  We had pictures taken and a fun evening for all who attended.  In the morning when we met, they pinned name tags on us as our names were when we went to school.  We had a silent prayer for our classmates who didn't come home from the war they were in in 1942.  There were quite a few of us who had lost our partners in this life.  But all in all it was a fun time.

Ruth and her sisters, Atha, Annie and Bessie

While living in Tooele, I was going with a young man named Elmer Searle.  My folks thought things were getting to serious, which they were, as were planning on getting married shortly after I got out of school.  He was a year older than I.  His birthday was 11 November.  So my folks sent me up to live with my sister Bessie Butt.  They lived just out of Ogden, Utah in a little place called Marriott.  What a fun summer I had there.  I picked beans.  We would get up at 4:00 a.m. and try to get all done before it got too hot.  One day I wore a nylon blouse and got a super sunburn.  Bessie had to take me to the doctor and I had to sleep on my stomach for a month.  I also picked cherries.  They used cherry pickers.  I ate so many cherries that I never bothered to eat any the rest of the time we picked.  You had to make good and sure you left the stems on them or you got docked.  Bessie's health wasn't the best, so they had Anna Margaret Johnson (Mrs. Don Berrett) from Roberts, Idaho, came and work for them.  They used to live in Roberts.  Lavelle, Bessie's husband, was the mailman on the route for the Post office.  The doctor told them Bessie needed to get in a milder climate so they moved to Marriott where he worked for the post office there.  I met the neatest gut there.  His name was Kenneth DeFrize.  He would take me dancing to a dance hall they had in Ogden, the White City.  It had mirrors that went from the ceiling to the floor.  They also had a dance floor out under the stars.  It was fun to dance there.  I met Kenneth at church there.  They had a neat ward and everyone was so friendly.  We just seemed to hit it off.  Elmer wrote to me and I to him but!!!  I am quite sure that Bessie wrote to my folks in Tooele and then to my sister, Atha Staker in Roberts, Idaho, for lo and behold here comes Opal and Atha from Roberts.  They visited for awhile and then said they were going to take Anna Margaret back to her home in Roberts, how would I like to come and visit with them for awhile.  I was planning on going to BYU in the fall as my sister, Carol, was going to put me through school.  I think between all of them, they decided I shouldn't get so serious with anyone.  But I did  write to Tooele and ask my folks about going to Roberts and staying with Atha.  They said go ahead and have fun.

Atha and Ruth

On our way to Roberts, they didn't have any freeways, I can remember asking Opal how much longer, and he would answer just over the next hill.  I think we must have gone over 15 hills.  It was dark when we got there.  They took Anna Margaret to her home.  Atha and Opal lived on the east side of the tracks in a red brick home with a long front screened in porch.  Roberts consisted of two stores, Dutson's and Gibson's; two pool halls, one with a dance hall above where we went to many good dances; a hotel with a bar; two service stations; a lumber yard; a drug store; a post office; and a dilapidated theater.  I was all for catching the next bus that came through going south to Tooele.  Atha said, "Oh come on and give it a try.  Go to church and you'll meet lots of good kids."  I went to church the first Sunday.  I only knew Anna Margaret, but I stayed and went the next Sunday. 

At Opal and Atha's home in Roberts
Back: Bessie Proctor Butt, Atha Proctor Staker, Ardis Butt, Ruth Proctor, Opal Staker
Front: Lavelle Butt, Jay Staker, Dick Staker, Vernell Butt

Vergil Cook, Lynn Christensen, Woodrow Welling, Wally Robinson
Anna Margaret Johnson, Ruth, Ruth Berrett, Esther Cottle

That afternoon Dorothy Berrett (Mrs. Marden Wells) had a dinner party.  She invited me, Anna Margaret, Ester Cottle, Vergil Cook, Lynn Christensen, Woodrow Welling, and Wally Robinson.  We had a lot of fun.  Pictures were taken (I have one).  When it was time to go home, Vergil asked if I would go home with him.  I said ok.  He also took Anna Margaret and Lynn Christensen home, as Lynn had asked Anna Margaret to go home with him and he had come with Vergil in Cook's car.  We got to Anna's home and Lynn took her to the door.  Then we took Lynn home.  We got back to where I was staying with the Staker's and we talked for awhile.  I told Vergil I was going back to Utah because there wasn't much use staying in Roberts.  He asked me to stay another couple of weeks and go to church with him next Sunday.  I told him I would think it over.  I did go to church with him and I was beginning to have fun.  We would go to Liddy Hot springs out by Dubois.  They had a swimming pool and a dance floor.  So we would dance for awhile and then rent swimming suits and swim.  We also went dancing at Wandmere, a dance hall south of Idaho Falls.  What fun we had there. 

Ruth and Vergil

One night we went there dancing and then decided to go to Lava Hot Springs swimming.  I got back to Staker's about 6:00 a.m.  They weren't very happy with me.  At that time I was working in Dutson's store where Opal was running it, as the owners Rollo and Thelma Dutson were on a mission in Hawaii.  I started to go into where I slept and Opal said, "Ruth, you are to be to work this morning at 8:00 a.m."  I told Opal my shift didn't start until 10:00 and he told me that it had been changed and I had better be there on time.  I was there on time.  He put me in the back part bagging candy.  I almost went to sleep a few times but he made sure I didn't for he kept coming back and checking on me.  When Atha came to work, I asked her why Opal was so hard on me and she told me that I had scared them to death because they didn't know where I was or what had happened.  I told them both that night I was sorry and I didn't even eat any supper, I went to bed as soon as I could.  Vergil told me his dad met them handed a milk pail to him and Cleo.  They milked the cows, did all the chores, had breakfast, changed their clothes and went to work in the fields.  Verla, Lila, and Leora were with us, and they helped in the house and their dad made them go to work in the fields.  We didn't try that trick any more.  Gee it was a fun night, though none of us realized how we would frighten people.

Ruth and Vergil