4/1949 - 9/1950: Dad used his heavy equipment operating knowledge to get a job with the Washington County Road District. After about a year and a half there, Dad came home saying he was being laid off so the man in charge could hire his nephew.
That year and a half with a steady pay check was good for Mom and Dad. To be laid off unfairly like Dad was, was another proof to Mom that the town was full of Moss Backs.
Dad immediately go a job for Simms Construction Co. in St. George as a dozer operator, a cat skinner. After 4 months the business sold and again Dad was off looking for work.
We couldn't afford shoes in the summer and wouldn't have worm them if we could have. What we would have liked, if we could have afforded one, was an indoors bathroom. As we got neighbors, we learned they would take bets on who would be first to the outhouse in teh mornings. This did not sit well with Mom at all!
When LaVerna; the oldest our our 13, went off to college at BYU and called home, the big family news was that Dad had just built us a new two seater out house!. All the kids took turns to excitedly tell her all about it. I'll bet not too many other girls got that kind of news from home in 1952.
The family bath was taken on Saturday nights, usually, during the winter a fire was built in the wood burning stove in the kitchen. The rest of the house would be freezing! The tub was brought into the house and placed on the floor near the hot stove. Hot water was poured from full pans heated on the stove and cool water was added from the only household tap. located over the kitchen sink.
Several children took turns bathing in the same tub of water. The water got thicker and darker gray with each body scrubbed. Mom would pour a final rinse of clean warm water over us as we stood waiting to get out of the tub. Our shampooed heads were always rinse with vinegar scented rinse water to help strip it clean and make it easier to comb out.
To give us modest children privacy from prying eyes, a folding drying screen was placed around the tub with a blanket draped over it. When we got too tall for the screen to hide anything, we took the tub to our bed rooms to bath in the cold frigged air.
When Mom died she still had the old folding frying screen we older children remembered with fondness. We drew names for her worldly possessions, what few she had, and Erick's name was drawn for the screen. When he was given the prize, he did not know what it was and did not want it. It proves to my point that each of us say life differently from our position in the chain of family.
On my wedding day I took my last bath in the old #3 galvanized tub.
Soon thereafter, Dad finally was able to build the wonderful indoor bathroom! The last two of Mom's babies did not ever get to know the thrill of reading the Sears Roebuck catalog before choosing which page to use for toilet paper.
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