Rock House and Heber Memories

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Life in Heber

The following memories were submitted by Janell Allred Blake:

My dearest memories are the ones I have of living in Heber in the 1940’s. Our house was across the street from the rock house and next to what once was the ranger station. Laureld and Vera Bigler lived there later on. The house we lived in is not there anymore. It was built by my father with lumber from the local sawmill where he worked for a time. I remember when electricity was first installed. We had one electric cord dangling over our table, the only power in our house. Uncle Wilmer and Aunt Zina Porter were very dear to me, as were Laureld and Vera Bigler and many others of the townspeople mentioned.

I have devoured the stories on the website and am so excited and grateful to know that the rock house has been preserved. I loved playing there with Ted, Vard and Terry Porter. I was baptized in Heber and went to school when there were just two rooms next to the old church. Rebecca S. Rogers was my teacher. My little sister died in Heber when a whooping cough epidemic went through town. My father was one of the real live cowboys and rounded up cattle with Laureld and Alma Bigler for the rodeos. I have wonderful pictures of him riding a huge Brahma bull. I played in the caves and waded in the creeks and climbed the old metal bridge. I could go on forever about my memories which were triggered by finding this exciting site.

I am 80 years old now but would love so much to see the old rock house again. I went through Heber two years ago and was astounded at the changes. Thank you for all you are doing to preserve that fabulous piece of history. So many of the people are my relatives too… the Porters and the Biglers especially. I have so much love for all of those dear, wonderful people and the influence they had on my life.

My father worked for the forest service and he also built saddles. Some of them may still be around there. I went to the Saturday night movies at the church in my flannel nightgown and hair done up in rags. We bathed in the old galvanized tub in the kitchen and had to use the outhouse out back.
I have a dear little story about my pet mouse that got loose on the stage and Aunt Zina killed it with a hymn book, because it startled her so. She felt so bad that she promised me the next one that she found in her flour bin. Dear, sweet Aunt Zina. She would have me come and thread her needles for her because she couldn’t see. Oh, the many stories I have. I must write them for my family. I apologize for taking up so much space. I couldn’t write fast enough and it’s all scrunched together.

The worst trouble I was ever in was when I took my little brother and little Terry, who were around three or four years old and walked all day to find the Bigler Ranch. Nobody knew where we were and had searched for us for hours. I was only seven but I was punished severely for that mistake. My birthday and Teds were a day apart and we had combined birthday celebrations a couple of times. We moved away during the summer of 1949 and never got to come back there to live, which was a huge disappointment. My memories are still very vivid and so very dear to my heart.

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THE WOODSHED

The woodshed was not a place to go for discipline when I was growing up. Instead, it was a place that had to be filled up. The woodshed was where we stored the wood that was used to heat the rock house during the winter time. It sits behind the garage. It now has locked doors on it but when I was growing up, the wood shed was open on the east end so that I could put wood in and take wood out with the minimum amount of difficulty.

For the family to have sufficient wood for the entire winter, the woodshed had to be completely full of split wood and there had to be at least two loads of wood piled outside in front of the woodshed. By the time winter was over, the woodshed was completely empty and all other pieces of wood had been burned. Sometimes we had to go out and collect pine knots to keep the house warm until it warmed up enough in the spring.

I don’t know how many cords of wood it took to fill the wood shed. I suspect it must have held at least eight to ten chords or more. We had to cut our own wood. It was possible to buy wood from various sources but that was an unnecessary expense. We cut our own wood. It usually took several weeks to bring in enough wood to fill the woodshed. Dad would go out and find a good area where there were some large trees that were dead. We would select a day for getting wood and Dad would go out in the morning early and the rest of the family who could, would go out with the tractor and wagon later in the morning. By the time we got to where Dad was cutting wood, he usually had most of a tree cut up. He would cut the tree down and then cut up the trunk and the larger limbs  in sections about eighteen to twenty inches long. We would load the cut up pieces of wood on the wagon. We usually put the larger sections of the trunk around the outside of the wagon and then put the smaller pieces in the center. We would load the wagon until it was about three feet deep in pieces of wood. If there were long branches that Dad had cut off, we would stack them on the top of the load. Then it was off to Heber to unload while Dad cut up another tree. We would unload the wood in front of the opening into the woodshed and then go back for another load. On a good day, we could get three or four loads of wood. You can imagine that by the end of the day, there would be a pretty large pile of wood in front of the woodshed.

The next job was to split the wood. If the wood was nice and dead and dry, it was pretty easy to split into pieces that would fit into the stove in the front room using just an axe. Splitting wood with an axe takes some skill and because we split lots of wood each year, we were pretty good at it. I learned where to hit the wood with the axe so that it would crack or split completely. It was always a contest to see who could split a piece of wood up into pieces fastest. Almost everyone in town had wood stoves or fireplaces so everyone had lots of practice at splitting wood.

If some of the wood was still a little green, it had to be split using a sledge hammer and wedge. The wedge was placed in the proper place and then it was hammered in with the sledge hammer until the wood split. We always had more than one wedge just in case it took two or three wedges to split open the piece. If the wood was green, it was difficult to split. Those pieces would be set aside and left to dry out some more before splitting.

Once the wood was split into pieces that would fit the stove, the wood had to be stacked in the wood shed. We started at the back and worked forward. Once the first row was to the ceiling of the wood shed, the next row was started. When we finished, the entire wood shed would be full and there would be wood in piles outside of the woodshed as well.

For the long pieces, we had what was called a “buzz saw”. It was a large circular saw blade that was run by a belt. The belt was about six inches wide. It went around a pulley on the tractor and then around a pulley on the shaft of the saw. By putting the power take-off in gear on the tractor, the belt would begin to turn and that would turn the saw blade which was about thirty inches across. The saw had a table that moved into the saw blade and back out with a large spring sort of like a meat slicer. There was no guard for the blade. The long limbs were placed on the table and then pushed into the saw to cut off a piece the right length, then the table would spring back. Then the limb was moved up on the table and the procedure repeated until the limb had been cut up into pieces the correct length. Dad usually did this job because it was quite dangerous. I would just hand him the branches and then clear away the pieces he had cut off to the right length.  Later when I was older I did all of it including running the power saw to cut up the trees. Dad usually cut them down but then I could take over and cut them up. For several years, Dad, Mom and me were the “wood getting crew”. I enjoyed those times working with my parents. Even when I was in college I sometimes helped “get the wood” during Thanksgiving vacation or on weekends.

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THE WOOD COOKING STOVE

Electric power lines did not reach Heber until the advent of the Rural Electric Authority (REA) which came into being in the 1940’s. Before that, Heber residents got their power from a “light plant”. By the time I arrived on the scene, Heber had pretty dependable electric power unless something happened to the power lines bringing the electricity to us from Lakeside.

Several times when I was going to school, the power would go off. A couple of times it was off for a couple of weeks at a time. When that happened, people had to deal with it as best they could. Usually when the power went off in the winter time, school was let out because the heaters in the school were powered by electricity. Since it was too cold to hold school, the power going off meant an unexpected vacation for all the school children.

At home we didn’t have to worry about heat for the house because our house was heated with the wood stove in the front room. We did have a minor problem because the cooking stove in the kitchen was electric. When the power went off, we weren’t able to use the electric range but “not to worry”. Once again my parents had considered any eventuality and were prepared for this situation.

Sitting in the back bedroom we had a wood cooking stove. It was the type that had four “burners” and a water tank for heating water and an oven. The flat plates where the pots sat could be taken off and under each two was a space where you could put wood for a fire. If needed, you could have four pots cooking at one time if you had two good fires going. The space for the fire was not large and only small pieces of wood could be placed there to keep the fire going. There was also a cavity next to the water reservoir so that it was possible to keep a supply of hot water at all times.

Most of the time we just moved the cooking stove into the kitchen and hooked it up to the chimney and we were ready to go. Mom was a pretty good cook on the wood stove too and besides, it was sort of like roughing it so it was fun (at least for me). My job was to keep a ready supply of kindling for stoking the fire. It was not too much of a problem since I was used to cutting kindling for the stove in the front room. It was fun to watch Mom cook on the wood cooking stove.

Mom also would cook on the stove in the front room. Once she got something like a pot of stew or a pot of beans boiling on the wood cooking stove, she could move it to the stove in the front room and it was hot enough to keep the pot boiling all day long. We ate a lot of simple things like stew or beans when the power was off.

I remember that sometimes even when the electricity was on , we would ask Mom and Dad if we could stoke up the wood cooking stove in the back bedroom. They would let us do it and we would cook potato chips on the top of it. We would peel potatoes and then slice off thin slices and lay them on the top of the hot stove and let them cook on one side and then turn them over and cook them on the other side. More often than not, we had almost charcoal black potato chips but we put a little salt on them and ate them anyway and they were pretty good. As the stove cooled we would get chips that were more brown in color and then finally it wouldn’t be hot enough to cook on at all. When it got to that point, we were eating raw potato chips.

The wood cooking stove is stored in the shop. It hasn’t been used for many years but it’s there just in case it is ever needed in an emergency.

 

 

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WORKING WITH DAD

One of the things I used to enjoy a lot was going to work with Dad. He worked for the U.S. Forest Service.  When we were little, and if Dad was doing something alone, he would sometimes let us go along to watch or “help”. I was always proud of my Dad. He wore a type of uniform and he even wore a badge part of the time. He had an official green pickup or sometimes he took us in the jeep or even in the Power Wagon if we were lucky.

Dad did a lot of different jobs for the Forest Service. Sometimes he would fill in for someone on Gentry Lookout Tower or he would be the lookout on the weekend when no one was there.  He sometimes let one of us boys go with him.  Another thing Dad did was to re-seed the logging roads after the loggers were finished using them. The logging roads were usually just roads that were cut through the forest by a bulldozer. They were usually only wide enough to accommodate a logging truck. When all the timber had been cut out of an area and the loggers moved to another area to log, Dad had the job of re-seeding the road with wild grass to prevent erosion and for grass for the animals. Usually he took the jeep when he did that and we could go along. Sometimes we used a seeder that mounted on the back of the jeep and sometimes we used a hand seeder. The hand seeder had a place to put the seed and then as you walked, you turned a crank that spun a broadcaster and the seed would fly out onto the ground. We walked many a mile re-seeding the roads.

During the Christmas season, Dad often had the Christmas Tree Patrol and we could ride along. We would drive around on the forest roads and check to see that people cutting Christmas Trees had the proper permits. If they did not, Dad usually had permits and they could buy them from him. I think a Christmas tree permit cost something like five dollars or less at that time. Especially on weekends, lots of people from the valley would come up to cut themselves a tree. Quite a few never went to the trouble of buying a permit. We were the guys that caught them. Sometimes Dad would just park at the top of the rim by the Woods Canyon Lake turn off and just stop every car that came by that had a Christmas Tree. I guess he made a lot of money for the Government that would have been missed if people were left to themselves. Usually the people were very willing to pay for their trees.

During fire season Dad sometimes had the job of trying to get people to be more careful. I can remember several times when he would put up a roadblock at the top of the rim. He would stop all traffic coming up the rim and ask them to please use their ash trays if they smoked or to not build any fires because the fire danger was extreme. I had the job of handing out Smokey Bear comic books and copies of the Smokey Bear song to the children in the cars. It was all an effort to prevent forest fires. I guess it worked to some extent. I got pretty good at the Smokey Bear song. Dad had other brochures that we passed out too. It was fun to be of some help.

Later Dad was responsible for some of the camp grounds. He would gather the trash or check to see if campers has the proper permits. Dad loved that job because he had lots of people to visit with. He was a good PR person for the U.S. Forest Service. People liked him and he liked people. It was a good fit.

Dad also did a lot of things at the Ranger Station on Saturdays and we go to help. He repaired things, washed his truck, put new handles in axes and hoes and did lots of other jobs. Working with Dad was lots of fun and he seemed to enjoy having us along.

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WINDY’S THEATER

One of the fond memories of my childhood was going to the show (movie). When I was just a kid growing up in Heber going to the show was part of the entertainment we enjoyed. At that time there were two shows a week. There was a show on Thursday and Saturday evening. The movies came on two or three reels (16mm) through the mail in a film box that was held together by straps. Accompanying the movies were usually two or three small posters about the movie and the actors. The small posters were posted in the Post Office and usually in the Heber Store. If you wanted to know what the show was, you could check out the posters but most of the time people just went because it really didn’t matter what the show was, you just went if you wanted to do something on Thursday or Saturday evening.

Sometimes the movies were in black and white but most of the time the Thursday movies were in color. It cost twenty-five cents for kids to get into the movie on Thursday so we didn’t get to go very often. We could however read the posters and wish we could go.

There was always a movie on Saturday evening. I don’t know all the details, but if your family paid their budget assessment (money required to operate the church building) the Saturday night movies were free. If you didn’t pay your budget like those who were not church members, then the cost was twenty-five cents for kids and I think fifty or seventy-five cents for adults. As you can imagine, there were lots of kids at the Saturday night movies. The reason the members who paid their budget got in free was because the projector was owned by the ward and the movies were shown in the church gym. In essence, it was a church sponsored activity for the community. Most of the Saturday movies were in black and white although later many of them were also in color.

I believe the management of the shows was a church calling in the Heber Ward. The person who had the calling was Clarence Crandall. Clarence had the nick name of “Windy” because he liked to talk a lot. Anyway, Clarence had some tickets printed up that said “Windy’s Theater.” When the popcorn machines and the pressurized pop fountains came in, the ward bought one of each so people could buy popcorn and pop as refreshments. The concession stand also sold candy bars. I imagine the concession money and the admissions more than paid for the expenses associated with having the movies. When the church burned down, some of the things saved were the popcorn machine and the pop fountain although I don’t think they were ever used again. After the church burned down, the movies moved to the school until the new church was ready.

I can remember that Clarence liked boxing. At rodeo time he would set up a boxing ring on a wagon and pull it into the middle of the rodeo arena. After the rodeo was over he would entice the little kids to box by giving us tickets to Windy’s Theater. That’s about the only time we got to see the Thursday movies until we were old enough to earn some money of our own. I saw lots of movies and going to the show was a favorite entertainment all through my youth. I still like to see a good movie. We saw lots of westerns, musicals and love stories. I liked the westerns or comedy’s best . If we didn’t have money to buy popcorn, we could take a bag from home. The kids would sit on the floor in the front of the chairs that had been set up. The screen was on the stage. As you got older, you moved back in the audience. By the time you were a teenager, you had the back row staked out. When I was in High School, Charlie Riedhead, my best friend, was the projectionist so we went together to most of the shows.