Rock House and Heber Memories

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SEPARATING THE MILK FROM THE CREAM

I may have mentioned the milk separator that we had. I will try to add a few more details so that you can understand what a neat machine this was and why it was important to our family. I don’t remember exactly when we got it, but it would have been after we sold “Betsy” the goat and got “Sleepy” the cow.

“Sleepy” came from an operating dairy and she gave a lot more milk than we could drink. Mom and Dad realized that and decided to get the separator which essentially separated the milk from the cream. The separator was mounted on a table in the wash house right above the cellar door. It was a strange looking contraption but it worked in an amazing way. It consisted of a large vat that was mounted on a bracket up about shoulder high. That is where the raw milk was put after milking. The vat held up to five gallons of milk. The vat had a spigot that could be opened to let the milk run into the separator mechanism. The mechanism had two long spouts that went off of it like arms off a body. The spouts could be adjusted for angle so that the skimmed milk and cream could be collected in different buckets or pitchers. One of the spouts dispensed the cream and the other dispensed the skimmed milk. Inside the mechanism were a bunch of cone shaped metal discs that were attached to a shaft. The shaft would rotate very rapidly and as the milk ran down through the discs, the cream would rise to the top and be separated from the milk. The shaft was made to spin with a handle like a crank that the person operating the separator would crank during the operation.

Once the discs were spinning fast enough, the spigot on the vat was opened to let the milk enter the separator. Shortly thereafter cream would begin to come from the one spout and skimmed milk from the other. The entire operation took about ten minutes from start to finish. Then all the parts had to be washed in hot water and dried to be ready for the next evening’s milking. As I recall, the morning’s milking was what we used for drinking. The evening’s milking went though the separator. The cream was used to make butter or whipped cream or ice cream or for other uses. The skimmed milk was put in the “swill barrel” where it was mixed with other food scraps and rolled barley and fed to the pigs

Since we had lots of cream, Mom allowed us to make homemade ice cream whenever we wanted. During the summer we probably had homemade ice cream at least a couple of times a month. We also churned our own butter. I think we had enough butter that Mom also sold some of it. We also sold a few quarts of drinking milk to some of the neighbors who didn’t have a cow. I was usually the delivery boy when we sold milk. (see “Fifth Grade”)

“Sleepy” was a Guernsey cow and her milk had lots of cream. When she “came in fresh” after every calf was born, she would give up to three gallons of milk per milking for several weeks. Mom and Dad knew how to take advantage of that for a little extra income for the family. We boys didn’t think much about the extra money but we did enjoy cranking the separator and watching the cream and skimmed milk come pouring out of the spouts and we certainly enjoyed the homemade butter and the rich homemade ice cream.

 

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SOPHOMORE

I don’t have a lot of memories about my sophomore year of high school. I know I took English, Geometry, World History, Ag (two periods), Seminary, and PE. My English teacher was an interesting guy. Most of the year was literature and he liked the morbid types of literature like Edgar Allen Poe’s poems and stories. I figured that out pretty fast, so when we had to write our own stories I made sure they were as morbid as possible. I remember one was about the “perfect crime” in which the murder was committed by stabbing with an ice-sickle but the blood didn’t wash off—it froze on—and when the murderer threw the icicle in the bay, a layer of ice froze over the blood, preserving it perfectly. I think I got an “A” for that one.

While I was a sophomore, I was elected to membership in the “Key Club.” It was the student service club sponsored by the Kiwanis Club for men. For one of the meetings we got to attend the “real” Kiwanis Club Meeting to see what it was like. I remember the men were always making motions to the “chair” that so and so be fined ten cents for some silly thing they had done or said (like swallowing too loudly or eating their beans before their potato etc.) and the motion always carried and the fine was levied. I don’t know how many dimes the club members went through in an evening but it was quite a few. It seemed to be a contest to see who could come up with the most outlandish charge. We watched and kept our mouths shut so we wouldn’t get fined. 

One of the things the school clubs did every year was to sponsor a booth in the school carnival. Each club had developed a specialty and the club members would man the booth on a rotating basis throughout the evening. There were small prizes for the winners. I am not sure now what the money we raised was used for but it was a good activity. I can remember that the FFA booth was a “goofy golf course” using holes we had made out of sheet metal. It was pretty difficult to win. I can’t remember what the Key Club’s booth was, but there were booths with a baseball throw, a football throw, popping balloons with darts, a ring toss and lots of others. We had a lot of fun putting it on and I think the students had a lot of fun, too. 

I worked at the store after school so I did not participate in very many of the after school activities. At that time the schools would arrange and pay for interesting “people” or “acts” to visit the schools during school time to put on an “assembly.” All the students in the school would get out of class for about an hour or so to go to the auditorium to watch the assembly. Some were educational and some were just entertaining. I can remember one about “Liquid Nitrogen,” one with gyroscopes, several with acrobats, jugglers or magicians. There were some with clowns and some with trained animals. They were all usually very good and everyone enjoyed them. I think the performers went from school to school across the state putting on the shows. Different shows were selected each year.

 

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SKUNKS

I had a lot of experiences with skunks when I lived in “The Rock House.” I will  tell you about some of them. Since Heber was just a small town and close to the hills and forest, it was not at all unusual to have skunks come into town. It was also not unusual at all to have one or more dogs in town smell like skunks because they had tried to protect their property and been sprayed by a skunk.

One of the reasons the skunks came into town was to scavenge food. Those who had pets and fed them on the back porch or in the garage sometimes ended up feeding the marauding skunks instead of their pets. We had that experience as well.

I can remember one time when Charlie Reidhead came home with me from some church function (probably MIA) and he stopped to visit for awhile before going home. To go home he went out our back door, across the backyard, through the fence and then to his house. On this particular night, when he stepped out the back door, he encountered a skunk that was busy eating our dog’s food from the dish on the back porch. Yes, he got sprayed!

I also remember one summer when the skunks seemed to be especially bad about coming into town. It was a summer when Ted was home. Ted always liked firearms and he had purchased a twenty-two caliber revolver (it looked like a Colt .45). He either bought or made a holster for his pistol and he kept it hanging over the bed post of his bed. I think I was sharing a bedroom with him that summer or else I was sleeping up in the top of the shop. All I remember is that if he heard anything moving outside or if he heard any dogs barking he would jump out of bed, grab his pistol and a flashlight and run outside to find the skunk. When he found one he would shoot it with his pistol. Naturally all of us younger kids would follow him to watch. I think he killed several skunks that summer.

Sometimes the skunks didn’t cooperate. I remember one time when one of them ran into Uncle Mart Porter’s garage to hide. We never did get it to come out of the garage so Ted could shoot it. I’m not sure how happy Uncle Mart was to have a skunk cowering in his garage.

Probably my least favorite memory of skunks occurred when I was about to leave for college at ASU. We had been having skunk problems and following my big brothers example, I decided to “shoot the pesky critters.” I did not have a pistol but I did have a twenty-two rifle. Being the “great white hunter,” I discovered a skunk outside our house and I shot him. The only problem was that I did not kill him instantly. In fact, I only mortally wounded him. To escape, he crawled under our house to die.

You may think you can imagine what that was like, but you would be wrong. The smell was pretty awful! We opened all the doors and windows and left the house for a few hours to let it air out. At first we thought maybe he had crawled out from under the house and escaped into the wild again but as the days passed, it became apparent that he was still under the house. I was about ready to leave for school but Mom informed me that I wasn’t going anywhere “until that skunk was out from under the house!” I got a garden rake, opened the crawl space cover and went under the house to find the skunk. I found him and he was dead alright, but he still “stunk like crazy.” Using the rake I raked the body out from under the house and carried it off somewhere far from the house and buried it. Maybe that was my punishment for killing one of Heavenly Fathers innocent creations or maybe it was my punishment for being a poor shot. Whatever the reason, it was an experience I have no desire to repeat again in this lifetime. Every time I smell a skunk I am reminded of it once again.

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SIXTH GRADE

My teacher in sixth grade was Mr. Stevens. It was unusual at that time to have men teaching elementary school except for Mr. Capps, of course. I don’t know whether Mr. Stevens was the first male teacher in the Heber School System besides Mr. Capps or not, but I don’t remember any others.

Mr. Stevens was an OK teacher, but I don’t remember much about what he taught us. I do remember that after school he would sometimes spend time with the boys in the class. Several times he walked with us down to the little café that was next to the service station and we would have a pop with peanuts in it. I guess he may have been the one to teach me to pour a small bag of salted peanuts into a Barg’s Strawberry Soda and watch it fizz up. I’m not sure that is what he would have wanted to be remembered for but it is one thing I do remember about him.

Another thing I remember about him is that he decided that instead of an end of school play, we should put on a play at Christmas time. That was unheard of in Heber but he went ahead and did it. The name of the play was “Santa and the Spaceman.” I was Santa and Charlie Reidhead was the spaceman. I remember there were some neat props for the play but that is about all I remember about it. I wore a Santa suit and beard and had a pillow to pad my belly. In later years I replaced the pillow.

I guess the original LDS church building must have burned down about this time because up until it burned down, the school used the church gym for basketball practice and games. We also used the stage at the church for school plays because there was not a stage at the school. Following the fire, a gym and extra class room was added onto the school building. The sixth grade met in the new classroom. It had some lab-type tables and we were able to do some simple lab experiments that were fun.

The other thing I remember about sixth grade is playing four‑square. When the gym was added onto the school we had a place to play indoors. Someone had four‑square courts painted on the gym floor so that we could play four-square in the winter when the weather was bad outside. We played it a lot and had a lot of fun playing it. We could also play basketball indoors and that was lots of fun. Unfortunately, we did not have a backboard that extended out into the gym. All we had was a basketball hoop attached to the wall at approximately the correct height, but we were glad for an indoor hoop. The only problem was that when you went in to shoot a lay up, you ran splat into the wall. They didn’t worry about having a pad for us to run into. It was just the flat wooden wall, but we survived.

The gym also had a stage at one end where we could put on plays or have programs. That stage is where I graduated from the eighth grade.

 

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SENIOR IN HIGH SCHOOL

My “Senior Year” at Snowflake Union High School was 1965‑66. Not too many things stand out as memorable in my senior year. Maybe my most memorable class that year was English. It was taught by a lady named “Miss Jones.” It was unusual to have a female teach English and even more unusual to have a “Miss” teach it. She was relatively fresh out of college herself and I think Snowflake was one of her first teaching positions. She actually tried to prepare us for the English we would take in college. We learned to write essays and research papers and we even learned some “Public Speaking” in her class. She played soft music during the time we were writing essays and that was also very unusual. I was glad she taught us something before I went off to college.

I also took German as an elective my senior year and enjoyed that. The teacher was Mr. Bates (Herr Bates). We learned little dialogues and practiced talking to each other and we had a lab with small cubicles with ear phones and microphones where Herr Bates could talk to us individually to help us practice or listen in while we were practicing with each other. I was an officer in FFA and I think also in Key Club that year.

One incident I remember from my senior year is seminary graduation. Our seminary teacher decided that for graduation we should learn the Tabernacle Choir version of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” We practiced and practiced and got pretty good at singing it with all the different parts: soprano, alto, tenor and bass. The seminary graduation was held in the Snowflake Stake Center and one of my good buddies was the organist who accompanied us on the large church organ. He was very good on the organ. I don’t remember exactly what happened, but about half way through the song, the lights went out, including the light on the organ. He never missed a beat and we kept right on singing to the end. He had memorized the music. It was pretty impressive to me. I still remember the bass part to “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” I wonder if the Tabernacle Choir would sound as good as we did that night if they had to sing in the dark?

I don’t remember too much about High School Graduation. At that time the graduates and their families attended a religious meeting called a “Baccalaureate Exercise” the Sunday evening before graduation. It was a routine part of the graduation activities. Some of the church leaders would give motivational talks. The regular graduation was held in the gym.

I look back on my high school years with good memories. I was glad to be finished with high school and move on to college, but I had a lot of good experiences in high school. I enjoyed the group I was with and I learned a lot from many of the teachers. They tried their best to teach us.