Helen has written a beautiful essay on our life in the clinker-brick home. Being three years older than I, I submit her memories of this time and place in our lives where we were both born.
I was born in a large sage-green clinker-brick house built by my father on the corner of 3rd East and 3rd North in Provo, Utah. Until we moved next door in our new home built on part of the old lot, this home was the hub of a lot of learning, loving, and living--for me, my eight sisters and two brothers, wisely, and incredibly calmly directed by our two parents. This home had a large basement with good-sized windows looking out on the ground. Here potatoes, fruits, and vegetables could be stored, clothes hung next to the furnace to dry, and little children could roughhouse when the weather was too severe outside.
The main floor was at least six feet above the ground. On it was a large living room, a smaller library which sometimes doubled as a guest room, and a large dining room centered with an over-sized oak dining table with detachable leaves that were practically never detached, and which was surrounded by at least thirteen chairs placed outward morning and night for family prayer. Around this table many interesting conversations took place. We were a rather verbal family and school reports, church doctrine, political ideas, and sporting events were freely discussed. There was only one taboo. Whenever an attempt was made to discuss something bad (even though interesting) about someone else, it was ignored. Gossiping was just not approved.
As far back as I can remember, someone in our family was in college, and our life revolved around BYU. My older sisters and brother frequently brought friends home for dinner, and college life and ideas were an integral part of our discussions. Raymond was Studentbody President when Rachel was 2nd Vice President (and then Secretary) and they all brought their ideas to this table.
We had a good-sized kitchen again centered by a table, square and covered with zinc, where suppers and snacks were served and many baskets of fruit peeled and preserved. A large coal stove with a warming oven was a great attraction. To the west of the kitchen was a large screened porch which housed our chug-chug-chug washer and which was completely inundated with fruit during canning season. The chug-chug of that old washer made such an indelible impression not only on us children but upon our father that when we moved to the new house, Papa insisted that from then on Mother send the wash to the laundry, and we didn't become acquainted with the new-fangled washers until we made homes of our own. If you looked south through a window off the screened porch, you could see my brother's bedroom. My brother tells of one time when he found that window helpful. He had been out later than he should have been with my father's youngest brother. My uncle discreetly decided he might just as well return directly home to Salt Lake rather than face explanations at our house. Raymond thought eeryone might be in a better mood in the morning if no one was awakened at that late hour, so he ever so carefully and gently raised that window and crawled into his room. He intended to slip unobtrusively into bed until he discovered my mother sleeping peacefully in his bed awaiting his return!
The community bathroom was on the other side of my brother's room, and it was usually overwhelmed with individually marked towels, neat squares of newspapers, and Sears catalogs, and female unmentionables. In desperation, Papa finally installed a washbowl and mirror in the hall outside the bathroom, hoping to overcome numbers with availability. Next to the bathroom was our parents' bedroom. This naturally had to be large enough to include besides the brass double bed, the beautifully carved and often occupied wooden cradle and at least one other small bed. The girls' bedrooms were upstairs.
To reach the upper floor, you went either through the library and a small hall to the stairs or directly from the front room to the hall and stairs. Mother found this most inconvenient for her nightly checks and didn't like the feeling of being cut off from potential appeals for help. She proposed to Papa that he cut a door from their bedroom directly into the hall which led to the stairs. For sometime Papa resisted this suggestion as he thought there were too many doors in the bedroom already and that there should be a reduction of comings and goings. He melted, however, when Mama (rather than nagging) wrote a song entitled "Cut me a doora" and had us all sing it to him when he returned home one night (tune El Torreador, popular opera at that time).
I read somewhere that the New England character was forged by climbing into icy sheets each night and I firmly believe that. For some reason I have not been able to figure out, only Rachel's bedroom had a radiator in it and the other three bedrooms received the warmth second hand. Since it was the custom to open windows in even the coldest weather for fresh air, I don't know why I complain, but in winter linoleum floors seemed unbearably cold to bare feet and sheets icy. Still, my memories are of comfort and warmth, perhaps because of the many times I found the aluminum hot water bottle wrapped in a towel in my bed and perhaps because I always had at least one tolerant sister who knew how to cuddle and give warmth.
Even today when I hear a train whistle at night, I get the sad lonely feeling I had when our family first began to separate. I remember being at the station with the big black locomotive and everyone saying goodbye to Ramond who was going away on a mission to Colorado. It was all very exciting until the train pulled out and again that night when I was in my bed and heard that lonely train whistle and realized my brother was somewhere out there in the night all alone. Before Raymond completed his two year mission, my sister Jean, just older than I, died as a result of an accident and my brother Blaine died of pneumonia.
We had been up to Aspen Grove for the Timp Hike program and sleepout and had stopped off at Spring Dell where both of our grandparents had homes on our return. Father had waited to bring the older ones back from the hike but Mama and some of us smaller ones were returning with Aunt Jennie and Uncle Will Knight. At Spring Dell, Jean and I were flying back and forth on swings supported by large wooden posts. I remember getting off because it didn't seem steady enough to me and playing on something else. In a few minutes I heard a commotion and found that a post had given way and in falling, had hit Jean on the head. I shall never forget the look on my mother's and Aunt Jennie's faces and the uttered prayers as they worked to retrieve a sucker from Jean's throat so she could breathe and our return to Provo to get her the best medical care available. As they dropped us off at home and we walked into our big lonely kitchen, Elizabeth had us all kneel down and we took turns praying for Jean. We knew clearly that only He could help her now. Jean apparently recovered from her fractured skull and even returned to school. But one day she complained of a headache and Mother dropped everything and picked her up to rock her. About 48 hours after that, Brother and Sister Jensen, who lived next door, had us come in for some bread and milk about dusk. We were really quite prepared when one of the older girls came to get us and we learned Jean had gone to Heaven. She was not yet eight.
I remember seeing Jean laid out in her beautiful dress and having Mother hold us and explain that someday we would be with Jean again and she was still part of our family. But Mama had an awful time letting one of her little ones go and I knew Papa took her for rides in the car in the night to help her feel better.
The next August, almost exactly a year later, my brother Blaine contracted pneumonia, and within a few days he was gone. When Jean died, Blaine remarked to Mr. Litchfield (the man he worked for) and to Mama that within a year he would not be here. It bothered Papa, and when Blaine died, both he and Mama felt that Blaine had had an impression of what was going to happen. He was just 18.
I can't thinkf about our clinker-brick home without thinking about the 5th ward chapel where we spent a great deal of our time. Since we were within a half block, we could hear when the prelude music began and knew it was our last warning to be in our places. Someone said that when the Candlands and Holbrooks arrived, church could begin, and we did each take up a complete row. It was taken for granted that we would always be in our places, and the gospel teachings came first in our home. Saturday was truly spent in getting ready for Sunday, and Sunday was a day of worship with Book of Mormon stories, letter writing, and scrapbooks filling the hours between meetings. Jennie used to play the pipe organ at the meeting house and I can remember going with her to practice during the week and listening to the beautiful music as the afternoon sun streamed through the stained glass windows.
I could never quite figure out how it as that Papa, after going over Mama's bank statements in the kitchen, always thought that we spent too much money; but if you went shopping with Papa, it didn't seem to worry him at all. He bought everything in huge quantities and if I went with him to buy a pair of shoes, not telling how many wonderful things we might come home with. There was no doubt in my mind that Papa was the head of our home and all important decisions were referred to him. We always knew that Papa expected us to be honest, straightforward, and to do our part. "Keep your word as good as your bond" was the creed he lived by and taught. As we became older, we loved to go to shows with Papa because he would discuss such important, grown-up things about life with us on the way home and talk about what was true and what was not in the show. There was something so strong and solid about Papa, and we felt the warmth of his love and interest.
(Helen tells how she felt about each of her siblings which is omitted with the exception of Elaine.)
Elaine was the youngest and she was surely a good one to end up with. Everybody adored her. She had a cheerful, happy disposition and was blessed with uncommonly good sense. We three had a great time together and rarely took sides. I remember one time, though, when I was feeling superior to some fairy game Vera and Elaine wanted to play and was treating them rather scornfully. I was cut down to size, though, when Vera touched me with a stick and said very officially, "I dub you a frog." I felt like blinking my eyes and giving a few croaks.
Well, those clinker-brick days were happy days and the house withstood the buffeting and growing pains of our large busy family with equanimity and great strength. When Papa sold it (for half what it cost him to build it), he sold it to another big family and they did a lot of growing in it, too. It is still standing on that 3rd East and 3rd North corner but now houses college-age youth and hs several apartments in it. Somehow that seems all right because we know that lots of BYU spirit and knowledge are being circulated there, and we know the clinker-brick house would feel right at home with that.
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