In 1982 Elaine Munns and her sister Kay Bare stayed in Phoenix with their parents Dave and Cleo Jernberg. While there, they recorded 3 tapes, both sides, of stories told by Dave and Cleo of their early years, homesteading in Idaho, and raising a family. This is part 2 of the series).
ELAINE: We’ll first talk about the things that Mother remembers about her early childhood.
CLEO: Oh my gosh. That was a day or two ago.
CLEO: That was quite a while ago. The first things I remember …
1910 Floyd was born and Haley’s Comet Passes
CLEO: Well, one of the first things that I remember was when my brother was born. When Floyd was born, and I was, I was exactly 4 years and 5 months older than he. And, I remember that my Mother and I were alone when she needed help. This Mrs. Ormand lived just, oh it must’ve been maybe about a half a mile from where we lived at Lorenzo Corner, and my mother sent me for her because she was a mid-wife. They had mid-wives in those days. And I went and told this lady that my Mother needed help, and she knew right away what I wanted her for. And she came back because my Grandfather and Grandmother ….. I don’t know how long we lived with them.
What Grandfather and Grandmother was that?
CLEO: Oh, that was Grandfather and Grandmother Dunn; my Dad’s, on my Dad’s side, my Dad’s folks.
What were their first names.
CLEO: His name was Reagan and her name was Sophie. Sophie.
Was she Sophie Perry?
CLEO: Uh huh, I think so. And she was good to us. She was always good to us. I remember my Grandpa had a beard. It was like they are wearing beards nowadays and a mustache. And one day he came home with his beard all shaved off and his mustache shaved off, and I didn’t know him. And I started to cry because I didn’t know who this guy was.
CLEO: I remember when Haley’s comet. I remember my Mother taking me outside when Haley’s comet came. She took me outside and showed me this bright thing in the sky and told me that it would be, I don’t know, how many years is it, do you remember? How many years it is from one time to another.
ELAINE: Seems like it is 75 or something.
CLEO: And she said oh, you might see this again, but I never will. Dave, how long is it between Haley’s comet times?
DAVE: Between what?
CLEO: The time that Haley comet comes and then it comes again.
DAVE: 1910.
CLEO: I know, but how long.
DAVE: 75 years.
CLEO: How many years?
ELAINE: Seventy-five he said. Cause 1910.
CLEO: Seventy-five years. Well, I was, that’s when Floyd was born in 1910 so I remember that, too, so it should happen again in 85.
Living in Lorenzo
ELAINE: They lived in that little house in Lorenzo, how many rooms were in it?
CLEO: Well, just two rooms, just two rooms. There was a kitchen, and the kitchen was used for everything. And, then the bedroom had two beds and that’s all it had. It had a little root cellar and a pump we had to prime to get the water out of it.
A closed stove to cook on.
CLEO: Oh yes. It was terrible. We had to clean that thing twice a week. Get the big long old thing and clean the soot out from under the oven and there was smoke and ….
We remember a Grandfather’s clock that …
CLEO: No it wasn’t a Grandfather. It was a schoolhouse clock. They call it, they call those schoolhouse clocks because of the way they’re shaped. Aren’t they called schoolhouse clocks?
And they had a chime, huh?
CLEO: Yes, it chimed for the hour, hour, it didn’t chime for the half. It just chimed for the hour. I remember after I got to be a teenager and it was getting kind of late when we’d come in, I was stupid enough to think that I could sneak in if I stopped the clock. One time I didn’t even think about that I should have turned it back and so my Mother knew exactly what time I came in.
The clock had stopped, huh?
CLEO: She knew that I stopped it. After that I’d turn it back.
ELAINE: That little treadle sewing machine that you used to have when I was a little girl. Was that, that was your Mother’s, too?
CLEO: Oh yes, well that was a brand new one. That’s the one I traded for the new Pfaff. That was brand new. I’ve always felt so bad about that.
ELAINE: How old were you when she gave up that? She got that …?
CLEO: Oh, I don’t know. I don’t know how old I was, but I know she was proud of it because it was brand new. She bought it new and when we traded it in, it was new. That was a shame when you really think about it.
ELAINE: And that little rocking chair that I have?
CLEO: Oh yes, my Dad got that at, I would call it a garage sale now. I don’t know what they called it then. He got it and I remember when he came in my Mother said, “How much did you pay for that thing?” and he said, “25 cents”.
Flea market.
It’s still a pretty little chair.
The Dunns Moved a Lot
You moved a lot then, huh?
CLEO: Yes, and we never knew where we were going to live because my Dad would get a job here and then he’d quit. And then away we’d go in the old wagon and find some other job. I’d just get to playing with some kids and make a few friends, and then it would be time to go. And then same thing when we went to school, it would be the same thing.
But after we moved to Lorenzo, then we were more settled in Lorenzo because then I went to school. I remember my Dad working down at Annis and my Mother was working, too. I think that was after we moved to Lorenzo, and he had a job for Bishop Carr in Annis. I wasn’t old enough to go to school, but these little Carr girls took me to school. My first teacher was Miss Harrop, can’t think of her first name. But she, these kids took me to school and the teacher says “What grade are you in?” And, I said I’m in the same grade as Ida. So, I wasn’t old enough to go to school, but she kept me in school. I think I was five, and that was my first school teacher.
And I remember going back to Lorenzo again and now I can’t think. I went to school in Lorenzo quite a bit. I don’t just remember how long, but I remember then my Dad and Mother moved back over to Burton. My Dad was running my Grandmother’s farm, and I went to school in Burton. I don’t remember what grade I was in then. But I remember Uncle Lou Gold had an old horse and buggy that we drove and I took his kids to school. I was old enough to drive the horse, and I took his kids to school over to Burton. And then after I graduated from the 8th grade in Lorenzo, then I went to high school.
ELAINE: When did you run into Agnes (Downy or Downard)?
CLEO: When we first started living in Lorenzo, we went to grade school together. We used to go to grade school together and skate. We used to skate to school, and skate back from school, and skate at recess, and skate at noon.
Where did you skate?
CLEO: On the canal. They left the water in the canal all winter. They don’t do that anymore, do they? But there was water in the canal all winter and we skated, went out on that canal. I remember Wayne Tibbits used to take us on a, we’d all get a willow and take a hold of the willow and we’d skate. He was a marvelous skater, and he’d skate and then he’d put ….we’d have what they called “pop the whip.” And then he’d pop the whip with us all on the end of these willows and just …. we’d just really skate in rings and then we’d all get a hold of hands and pop the whip. The one on the end really got popped cause they had a big long circle to go around. And he had two sisters that I was very well friended with, Margaret and Gertrude Tibbits. I don’t know what’s become of them.
1912 Living in Gilmore and babysitting Floyd
ELAINE: You told me a story too, once about when you lived at Gilmore when you babysat.
CLEO: Oh yes.
While your folks went to the dance?
CLEO: Yes, my Dad worked at the mines up at Gilmore and we lived in a little house. There was a whole row of houses that all looked alike.
Did you go from living with your Grandmother from Gilmore?
CLEO: Oh, I don’t just remember just exactly about that, but this is while Floyd was just little. He was still in the rompers. We called them rompers. My Mother made him rompers. They didn’t have clothes like they do nowadays you go buy at the store all these clothes. She made him blue rompers. I remember them so well. And they left me home with him, so I must’ve been 6, about 6 and he was about 2. They went to a dance and then in the night, he woke up and cried and so I got up and dressed him in these little blue rompers and we went to the dance. And it was way upstairs. I remember dragging him up those stairs and got up there and I can remember my Mother’s eyes when we come walking into the dance hall. Him in his little blue rompers.
ELAINE: Was Floyd sick when he was little? Did he have …?
CLEO: Yes, he had a rheumatic fever when he was little. He just was about 2 years old when he had rheumatic fever.
1917 or so – Cleo Gets Smallpox
ELAINE: How old were you when you had smallpox?
CLEO: I must’ve been ... How old was I when I had smallpox? Gosh, I don’t know.
You say your Dad, you got smallpox but he caught it.
CLEO: From the Mexicans. When he worked with the Mexicans over to Lincoln Sugar Factory and he had it.
Was he really sick?
CLEO: No, he wasn’t very sick. And I wasn’t very sick, but my Mother was terribly sick. I broke out just oh so bad with smallpox. I had them just everywhere, and my fingers were apart like that, and my hair was sticking straight up cause I had so many. And, I remember I counted them on my nose and there must’ve been 10 or 12 just on my nose. So, I broke out so good, but it didn’t make me very sick. But my Mother just had one, one on her face. But she got sick, so she had convulsions and everything. And I don’t remember what it did to Floyd.
Was that after she had had her stroke that she got smallpox?
CLEO: I don’t think so. I think that must’ve been when we were in grade school. It must’ve been before that.
1918 – The flu of 1918
ELAINE: What about the flu in 1918?
DAVE: Well, people died, it seemed like it picked on the big strong people more than anybody else. Somebody’s half sick, it didn’t seem to get them, it would get the people that were really healthy.
Did anybody in your family have the flu?
DAVE: Not that I know of. There was a lot of neighbors had it. Mrs. John Hanson had it, she went down to work, down to Pocatello in the shops and she got the flu and died in 1918. Then she had a daughter and she got the flu in 1919 and she died. I had the flu in 1919, but it wasn’t as bad as in 18.
1918 – Cleo’s Mother Has A Stroke
KAY: I remember you telling me your Mother was sick and you missed some school.
CLEO: Oh yes, my mother got sick. My Mother had a stroke when I was in the 8th grade. That’s where I started the high school, and I had to stay with her and take care of her because she just was, well, she was an invalid. She was, for a long while, she couldn’t even, we couldn’t even understand what she said. But she got so we could understand what she said, but she had to have everything done for her. And, so I missed the year after, but I should’ve been a freshman. I missed that year and so I didn’t graduate from high school until I was, I was 13 so I was 18 when I graduated from high school.
Did she get so she could get around?
CLEO: Yes, she got so she could get around. She got so she raised a garden. But even after I started to high school the next year, I would peel potatoes and things like that before I left and then she could cook them if I’d peel them. She couldn’t peel them. And then she could cook supper for me when I got home from school.
1920 Cleo is Baptized
ELAINE: You and your Mother were baptized into the LDS church. Do you remember about that?
CLEO: Yeah. And I don’t remember how old I was then either.
ELAINE: Do you remember who did it?
CLEO: No.
I think you were about 15.
CLEO: Was I about 15? Probably the first year I went to high school or something (that would be 1920).
1920 through 1924 - Cleo’s High School Years
ELAINE: You and Agnes and Josephine and all went to Rigby High School.
CLEO: Yes, and we drove this buggy. We bought this buggy from Agnes’s sister, from Mrs. Fisher. We bought the buggy and the harness, and I think we bought the buggy and the harness all for $25. Then we all chipped in and paid for it. And they drove their old mare, her name was Old Nance. And we drove our horse, Old Sailor.
We’d take turns driving our horse. And we’d tie this little bunch of hay on the back of the buggy. Then when we got to school, we’d unhook the horse and tie it to the back of the buggy to eat this little bunch of hay. And we were always having breakdowns, and that got to be a joke at school. When we were late, they wanted to know what broke today. The principal would say, “What broke today, did you lose a line or did the tug[1] break today?” So we went with it. And even, there were three of us in it, in this one-seated buggy. We even took a passenger, and we charged her a nickel a day to ride with us.
ELAINE: You were real business people.
CLEO: And she didn’t have any other way to go to school so that was.
ELAINE: And that had to pay for the hay.
CLEO: Yes, had to pay for the harness. I remember how hard that was for us kids to get that much money to get together to pay for that harness and that buggy. $25 in those days was ….
ELAINE: It would be like buying a car nowadays.
CLEO: Yes, it was a fortune.
You used to pick potatoes huh?
CLEO: Oh yes. We picked potatoes every fall.
And Agnes and you, in high school, did you have a lot of fun together?
CLEO: Oh yeah, we were just inseparable, a lot of people couldn’t remember which was Cleo and which was Agnes unless they knew us real well because we were just always together.
Did you go to dances when you were in high school?
CLEO: Oh yeah, I’ll say. We went to a lot of dances. They had dances at Lorenzo in the old hall, and they had dances in the spud cellar. We had a big old spud cellar where they had dances. And we had dances up to Orchard. We’d hook up that old horse and that buggy that we went to school with, and put a little bit of hay on there and go to the dances in that old buggy clear up to Orchard, unhook her and let her eat some hay while we danced. Didn’t know when we’d come back.
Who played? What kind of a …?
CLEO: Oh that was Mark Young. Mark Young’s orchestra and the Glenn Squires, have you heard of them?
ELAINE: Danced to them.
CLEO: Oh, have you? Yes, they had quite an orchestra and they were, we thought it was beautiful music. I guess it was, too. It was really good.
You said something about a dance hall that had a floating floor?
CLEO: Oh, that’s the one at Lorenzo. That old dance floor had …. the floor was on springs and it just sprung up and down as you danced on it.
Get seasick?
CLEO: No, I don’t think so. We moved too fast to get sick. We were on the go all of the time.
Who were some of the people who went to the dances besides you?
CLEO: Oh gosh, I can’t remember. All the Peterson boys from Lyman went and the Robinson boys.
The Carpenters?
CLEO: And all the Carpenters, yeah. And there was a guy named Swede Cook that went. He was kind of sweet on Agnes and Norma, can’t think of his name. All kinds of guys that we thought were really cute went up there. They were the cuties.
And you said we used to have a ball team. You used to play ball?
CLEO: Oh yeah, our ward had a ball team and we played ball. We played with Annis and we played with Menan. I think we played with Menan, Labelle, all of the little places close around that we could walk to. We didn’t have ways to go like they do now. We didn’t have bicycles or motorcycles or anything like that.
ELAINE: And you graduated. Do you remember some things about your high school before you graduated, what did you do, what classes and did you get good grades?
CLEO: Oh yeah, I was smart. Yes, I did get good grades.
Dr. Talls.
CLEO: Yeah, Dr. Talls, and Cecil Hart and …
Philo Farnsworth?
CLEO: Yeah, Philo Farnsworth[2]. I remember so well about going down in the basement and he had all these wires just strung everywhere going back into the back rooms and everything. That was his, when he was doing all of his inventing, so he was really … that was really an honor to have him in our high school.
Floyd was in grade school and going to Lorenzo. Did he go to grade school?
CLEO: Yes, he went to the grade school in Lorenzo.
1924 – After High School - Working for the Reeds
ELAINE: And then from high school, you went to Ricks College. Did you go the very year you graduated?
CLEO: No. I worked for Reeds.
You had diphtheria, too, didn’t you?
CLEO: Well, yes, I had that when I was going to college up to Rexburg when I was staying with Aunt Goldie I had diphtheria. No, it wasn’t diphtheria, it was not diphtheria.
Typhoid fever?
CLEO: Typhoid fever, that’s what I had when I was going to school up there.
CLEO: Well, that was after I got out of high school that I worked for Reeds. I worked for them several years and then I went to summer school and got almost ready to teach school. I wasn’t quite ready and then I went back and worked for them again. I worked for $1.00 a day.
What did you do there?
CLEO: Oh everything. Everything. But washing and ironing. I did the ironing but she sent her washing out to the laundry because she had always done that. Her first husband had a laundry and so that just tickled me to death that I didn’t have to do the laundry. But I did do the ironing, and there was lots of ironing to do. She worked in his drug store with Mr. Reed. I just kept house and cooked and just did domestic things for them.
Did they have lots of food to cook?
CLEO: Oh yeah, and I got so fat. I sure did cause I wasn’t used to all that food. I overate. But they were so good to me. They treated me just like I lived with them, like I was one of their children or something. They took me everywhere. They took me to the fair in Blackfoot and if they’d go somewhere like up to Liddy’s or not Liddy’s or Heise, Heise Hot Springs, they would take me. And they gave me every other Sunday off so, then I’d go see my Mother every other Sunday.
After you got out of Ricks, then what did you do?
CLEO: Well, then is when I took the post office, wasn’t it? Yeah, no it was after when I left Reeds I took the post office, that was it. I took the post office, that’s why I quit them because I got work and took this test for the post office. I was the Postmistress there. The Postmaster they call them. They don’t call them Postmistress. And then I talked to Mr. Reed, I said I had a chance to go teach school. And he says, “Cleo, why don’t you go teach school and meet other people?”. He says, “You can run a post office when you get to be an old, old lady.”. So then I decided that’s what I’d do. Then I applied for this school and Della Gerard, her folks lived right by Reeds and we’d be, and I got acquainted with Della. And she told me about that they, I probably could get a school out to Mud Lake. And so Mr. And Mrs. Gerard took me out there and I applied for the school. That’s when Mr. Reed says, “Why don’t you teach school instead of …”, he says, “You can be a Postmistress when you get to be an old, old lady”.
Attending Ricks College
CLEO: There was Agnes and I and Erva Sayer that batched, and we had just rented a room. And we’d take things from home to eat like fruit. And oh, we’d make cakes and cookies and stuff on Sunday so we could take all that back up there. We’d eat it all up about the first or the second day, and we’d have all of that stuff eaten up that we’d taken, and then we just had to cook beans the rest of the time. We cooked beans, and we ate beans and beans and beans. And I remember, we didn’t have beautiful clothes. I remember I only had one dress and it was kind of worn out under the sleeves. It was a wool dress that I’d made, and I had to wear a jacket over it because it was kind of worn out under the sleeves. We’d trade clothes. If somebody had something that we didn’t have, we’d kind of trade clothes. But we sure were short on clothes.
What about like your gym suit that I saw in the picture in the yearbook?
CLEO: Was it bloomers?
Uh huh. And a sailor top.
CLEO: Yeah, uh huh. That’s what we had.
Did they furnish them, or did you have to buy those?
CLEO: I think we must have had to buy them. I don’t know. I can’t remember.
What did you do for gym class?
CLEO: Well, we took all kinds of exercises and then we played tennis. That was one of our exercises, you know, that we got credit for that, for playing tennis.
Were they kind of strict about the way you dressed over there?
CLEO: Very strict I would say. I remember Josephine had one of these Georgette blouses you know that you could see her brassiere straps and they sent her home. They sent her home; she could not wear that.
What about dancing? Did they allow you to go to dances?
CLEO: No, no. We, I went to Riverside and I went there to help this lady with her concession. And then I’d dance in between times, and they must’ve had a spy or something. They found out that I was dancing in between, intermission you know is when we worked in the, when I worked in the concession. And that was supposed to be all right because you were earning money and you had a job. But this dancing before intermission and dancing after didn’t quite go over with them very good.
You got caught.
CLEO: I got called on the carpet for that.
What classes did you take when you went to Ricks?
CLEO: Well, it was all classes for teaching you know.
Did you have a favorite teacher?
CLEO: Oh yeah, Mr. Mannerick. I used to feel sorry that everybody couldn’t have him for a teacher. He was a marvelous teacher.
- That was Hyram Manwaring
CLEO: He was certainly a marvelous teacher. I used to teach, you’d just go in there and you’d just forget the world was going around. He’d just keep you hypnotized almost with the things he would tell you and teach you. He was a marvelous teacher.
How many years did you go to college?
CLEO: I went two years to college and then I took, oh a lot of what do you call it when you read books. What do you call that?
Correspondence?
CLEO: Correspondence, yeah. I took a lot of correspondence work. And then I went to summer school about three different summers, too, to finish up so that I could get my teachers certificate (1928 to 1930 we think).
Where was your apartment that you lived in?
CLEO: It was Flan’s. It was one of Flan’s, in Flan’s big house up in the top of the big house, but I don’t know where it is. You’d probably know more about that than I do.
It’s probably that red house down there where the ….
CLEO: It seemed to me like it was a white house. It had two stories. We went upstairs to our apartment. Then I stayed with Dr. and Mrs. Sutherland one year when I was going to summer school. I stayed with them and did their … answered their phones and when they would go out. You know they had a lot of social places they went, and I did all of their phone answering and babysitting. I’d bathe the kids and put them to bed and clean up after them, did a lot of things for them. I worked when I went to college.
You lived with Berry’s or where they just there?
CLEO: Oh, well, now we didn’t live with them. I did stay with her some of the time after I was sick with typhoid fever, I stayed with her, but we didn’t live with them. But she was so good to us on Sunday cause we’d get so hungry you know when we’d eat up everything we had and we couldn’t afford to buy anything else. We got so tired of beans, then she’d cook a great big dinner for us and invite us down there and we could hardly wait until dinner time to eat.
Now, we didn’t get a name. That was your cousin?
CLEO: No, it was my Mother’s sister.
Goldie.
CLEO: Aunt Goldie Bierry. Her husband’s name was Ed.
And what was he? What did he do?
CLEO: He was a druggist. He was a druggist, an expert.
And then you also worked for Reeds.
Cleo Works At the Post Office
KAY: When did you start working in the post office.
CLEO: Oh, I was just 18 because you had to be 18 to take the examination to be able to work in there. And this fellow that run the store, he would like to have had it but he was too dumb to pass the test, so I got it. And then he was really mad about me having this post office, so he built a big net wire fence clear to the ceiling and clear down like this so that I’d have to stay in my part. He was afraid that maybe, that I shouldn’t get in his store or anything. And then several times after he got acquainted with me, then he decided that he had to go somewhere or something and would I take care of the store, and then that was really awkward. I’d have to go out of the post office and back into the front of his store to take care of his store.
KAY: You should’ve said I will if you put a gate in your fence.
CLEO: And he was so stupid, because I could’ve helped him a lot because I had to stay in that hospital, or the post office all of the time. And if he hadn’t been so stupid, I could’ve really helped him a lot. He could’ve had a lot of time off and everything but he was one of those suspicious people.
I remember you telling me about some guy that had come in and tried to swindle you out of some money. Do you remember how that went?
CLEO: Oh yes. I’ll tell you about the eggs first, about this guy that run the store. This lady brought in … I think it was 3 eggs, maybe it was a dozen and 3 eggs. I think it was a dozen and 3 eggs and he couldn’t … He knew how much the eggs were a dozen but he couldn’t figure out the 3 eggs, how much to pay her for the 3 eggs. So, then he had to swallow his pride a little bit and come and ask me to figure out how much to pay this lady for her 3 eggs, her dozen and 3 eggs.
These days we have a pocket calculator.
CLEO: Now I remember about the guy in the post office. He came in and he wanted a stamp, a 10¢ stamp, a special delivery. And I said, I don’t have one of those on hand. So he said well I’ll take a 25¢ stamp of books so I gave him that. It was 25¢ and he gave me a $5.00 bill. So I gave him, I laid out $4.75 right here and started to shove it through to him. And he said “that was only a dollar bill I gave you”. And I said, “No it was a $5.00. Here it is right here and here was the $4.25 or 75¢ right here with the $5.00 bill”. And so I showed him the $5.00 bill and here was the $4.75 in change. And he said, “I don’t want to carry all that stuff in my purse, just give me a $10”. He give me the quarter back, he got in his purse and got a quarter. He finally found a quarter, he already had it. He finally found a quarter and put it up there and he says “Just give me a $10 for that”.
So he was trying to get you - the $5 that was already there plus what you had given him.
CLEO: $4.75.
KAY: That was pretty shrewd. (Grandma wasn’t suckered – she was on to him)
ELAINE: Did the post office pay good wages?
CLEO: Didn’t pay any wages. You had to just take the commission on the stamps is what it was. Now they pay $8 or $9 an hour.
They pay $10.
CLEO: $10 an hour for a Postmistress. No, all I got was the commission and it seemed like there was something else that went with it. Maybe if I made out a money order, I got 5 or 6 cents or something like that. It amounted though to quite a bit. I was just really pleased with it. I think it was maybe $2 or $3 a day that I got for running that.
1927 Cloe Moves to Mud Lake and Teaches School
ELAINE: So then you applied and got this job out to Mud Lake then. What year was that?
CLEO: That was 1927. I went out to Mud Lake in September, 9th of September.
And where did you live?
CLEO: I stayed with Mr. and Mrs. Jones, Wibby and (mom thinks it is Frank Jones) Bryant Jones, and they were sure good to me, too. And I talked and that’s where I met Daddy was up to Liddy’s when they took me up to Liddy’s or something. But he couldn’t, that’s where I first saw him. He was up in the hills with the cattle and he’d come down there and, with his big hat on.
Still had hair?
CLEO: Still had hair.
Looked like a real cowboy huh?
CLEO: So that’s where I met Daddy.
And that was about 19?
CLEO: That was 1927 and then I came back to teach school the next year. I’d go up to school the next year in 1928 and then Daddy and I got married in 1929 at Christmas time.
What did you do in the summer when you weren’t teaching school.
CLEO: Well, I went to summer school. I went to summer school every summer.
Where did you teach?
CLEO: Taught at Level two years and then I taught at Spring Lake they call it. That’s right, the school house is right across from where Joe Hartwell lives now to the north of where Joe Hartwell lives, right across that road.
And did you still live with Jones’ then?
CLEO: No, then I stayed with Mrs. Kuharski then.
How did you get to school?
CLEO: I walked. I walked from Mrs. Kuharski’s to school.
And when you stayed at Jones’, you walked?
CLEO: I walked, uh huh. I never did have a car or any kind of way to ride around.
Was it a one-room school?
CLEO: Uh huh. I was a one-room school and I taught all eight grades but I only had 13 people. Mildred Jernberg was my first grader, and then I had Catherine and Elsie Nordstrom and the two, oh what was their names?
Had some Hartwell’s didn’t you?
CLEO: No, not there. What was those two kids I had in the eighth grade with Catherine and Elsie Nordstrom? Kenneth and Helen Underwood, that was their names, Helen and Kenneth Underwood. They had four eighth graders, and then I had Elsie. Or not Elsie, Eda and Elmer Welchman, I think, in the sixth grade. And they had a sister, too, Alice Welchman, the Keller kids. There were 13 all in together. 13 children altogether, and I just had one little first grader. It would go on fine.
What did you do when you needed like a drink of water or?
CLEO: We had a cistern. The trustees had to keep our cistern full of water, but I wasn’t very happy with it. That’s where I got so I didn’t drink much water.
Did anybody ever put anything in it to be funny or?
CLEO: No, not to be funny, no. It was, that was very serious business because we all had to have water. We brought cold lunches to school.
Grandma’s penmanship
ELAINE: You used to teach. You have always had nice penmanship. Did that take a lot of practice?
CLEO: We, when I went to school, in grade school, we had penmanship every day, every day. That was one of the things we had so that’s. I know all the other kids in the school were all nice penmen, too, because that was one of the things we had was penmanship. But when I went to high school, Mr. Good who was our penmanship teacher, and he’d had other things to do and so he gave me the job of teaching penmanship and he’d go do correct papers or do something that he had to do because he said, “you write just as good as I do, just as well as I do, so you be the teacher.” So I taught penmanship.
Footnotes:
[1] A tug is a strap or a rope that hooks around the collar into the single-tree in a wagon.
[2] Philo Farnsworth is an American inventor and television pioneer. He was best known for his 1927 invention of the first fully functional all-electronic television system as well as the first fully functional and complete all-electronic pickup device (video camera tube).