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.

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.

 

 

The rock house was often the center of activity for the boys in Heber, especially the boys the ages of me and my brothers. I think there may have been several reasons for that but at least one of them was that we seemed to always have ideas about things to do. I think Mom also encouraged us to stay at home and do things rather than wandering around town getting into trouble. She could keep an eye on what we and our friends were doing if we were around the house because invariably we would need some supplies that were in the house and she could ask us what we were doing.

I can remember one time when we all decided to make “beanie flippers” out of clothes hangers and rubber bands. We had a supply of the required materials at our house so a lot of the kids in town came to our house to make their “beanie flippers”. Everyone knows that a beanie flipper is of no use unless it is shooting beans or rocks and we did plenty of that after they were made.

On one particular day, Brother Petersen from Snowflake who was on the High Council with Dad was working on the little house across the road from the rock house. He was remodeling it and painting it inside as I recall. Anyway, I don’t remember exactly what happened, but apparently one of the beans or rocks someone shot with their beanie flipper either hit him or near him or hit one of the windows in the house he was working on. Anyway, he came out and he was not very happy. We were just playing around in the yard having fun and didn’t pay any attention to him coming over to our house. He went in to talk to Mom.

As Mom describes the visit he came in and complained about someone shooting a rock or bean toward the house where he was working. Mom told him it was just a bunch of kids having fun and assured him she would talk to us about it. His response was “Sister Porter, do you have any idea how many boys are playing in your yard? You don’t have a bunch of kids, you have a mob!!” Mom said she went outside and counted and there were about twenty boys playing together. I think that happened many times. Vard had a bunch of friends, Terry had several also and I had a pretty good sized group of friends so if they all ended up at our house, it was a pretty big bunch of kids. I don’t ever remember us getting carried away and becoming a mob but we could probably never convince Brother Petersen of that fact.

Because there were so many kids, we could play lots of different games as teams. We played not only sports like football and baseball, we also played army, cowboys and Indians, cops and robbers and many other games where we needed teams. One of our favorite games was to put one team on the porch and another team scattered elsewhere around the yard and buildings, and then let the battle begin. The team won that had the last man alive. We killed a lot of people and used up a lot of ammunition in those games. I guess one of the advantages of a small town is that everyone knows everyone else so playing together was very natural. I don’t remember the older kids not wanting to include us younger kids in the teams although there were probably times like that. I do know they included us most of the time and we had lots of fun playing different games or building different things at our house. I think my Mom was pretty wise. With us close at hand, she could monitor not only the games but the way we played together, the language used and other things. She did it without our being any the wiser.

We always had a big garden at the Rock House. Mom would get one of us to plow and harrow the lot that lies on the west side of the rock house. That plot of land became our garden.

The major crop in our garden was sweet corn. The corn was planted by a two man team. One person was on the shovel and the other had the seed. The person with the shovel would dig the shovel into the ground three to four inches and then push forward on the shovel to open a slit in the soil. The person with the seed would throw two or three seeds down in the slit and the person with the shovel would pull the shovel out of the ground, take one step forward and repeat the procedure. This placed the hills of corn about thirty inches apart. If the soil was dry, then a third person was required. That person poured some water in on the seed before the shovel was removed.

Another popular crop was squash. We grew summer squash to eat out of the garden, but the majority of the squash we grew was “winter squash”. It was planted in the same way as the corn. Over the years we grew several varieties of winter squash. One of the favorites was warty hubbard squash. It was greenish in color and the skin was covered with bumps like warts. The squash was allowed to grow all season and just before frost, the vines were pulled up and piled over the squash to prevent them from being frosted. After the frost, the squash were collected and stored in the cellar or wash house. I think the cold temperature associated with the frost was suppose to make the squash sweeter. We had baked squash quite often and I liked it a lot.

Another crop we had several rows of was green beans. Mom always bottled green beans and we grew a lot of them. Most of them were bottled as green beans but sometimes Mom would let them get ripe and dry on the vine and we would pick them and shell out the not quite mature beans. They were called “shelled beans” and they were very good. Sometimes we planted real green beans but most of the time we just planted pinto beans and harvested them as green beans when the pods were not mature. They made a flatter green bean but they tasted good.

Besides the crops mentioned above, we also had a section of garden next to the house where we raised vegetables for eating as they became ripe. That garden had carrots, beets, green onions, radishes, turnips, lettuce and cabbage. Sometimes we also had cucumbers. The radishes always came off first and we used to have fresh radishes or green onions with bread and milk. It was really good.

My job and the job of my brothers was to help weed the garden, help water the garden by carrying buckets of water to each hill of corn and then in the fall, to help harvest the produce. We ate fresh corn on the cob and we always froze a lot of corn too. The squash were eaten baked or boiled. The green beans were bottled. If we had a good cabbage crop, Mom would make sauerkraut out of some of it. Mom made pickles and relish out of the cucumbers.

Mom and Dad were self-reliant and used the home grown vegetables to supplement the family food supply. We always had plenty to eat and we learned to eat a lot of different things. I like most types of cooked vegetables because that is what we ate all the time.

 

When I was nine years old the Church began to sponsor a Cub Scouting program for the young boys. Since I was nine, I was in the Bear Den. Mom was our Den Mother. I had lots of fun as a cub scout. Each month there was some type of theme and we spent all month working on that theme and then we would demonstrate what we had learned at the Pack Meeting that was held each month. Some of the theme’s I can remember were Indian Lore, Newspapers, Pull Toys, Indian Writing, Nature, Carving and Painting.

For each rank we had to complete certain requirements and get them signed off by a parent or leader. Mom made sure we advanced and got things passed off. After earning the rank badge like the Bear Badge you could continue to pass things off and earn Arrow Points. I managed to earn all the ranks and a bunch of Arrow Points as well. The ranks were Bobcat, Wolf, Bear, Lion and Webelow. Since I started as a Bear, I never did get the Wolf badge but I earned Bear, Lion and Webelow patches.

One of our favorite things to do was to go on field trips. I can remember various parents helping us with field trips. We went to the Petrified Forest, the Holbrook Tribune office, the Post Office and the County Court House to name a few. We also had lots of craft activities. We built at different times, neckerchief slides from bones, treasure boxes, Indian costumes out of burlap, flags, little hinged dogs that were pull toys and a lot of other things.

We put on lots of skits in the pack meetings and had lots of fun competing with the other dens. I can remember one month when we studied Alaska and we made kayaks with wheels and we had kayak races in the gym using sticks with pads on the ends as paddles. We had all sorts of contests between the dens and had lots of fun.

One of the requirements for one of the arrow points was to learn to make fudge. I excelled at that skill. I memorized the recipe and would make fudge whenever I could convince Mom we needed some fudge. Sometimes on cold winter nights when we were all at home Mom would suggest that I make a batch of fudge. I was always ready to do so. Sometimes the fudge “went to sugar”.  I learned that if I beat it while it was still hot, it wouldn’t go to sugar as often. Usually it was all gone before it cooled off. I can still remember the recipe:

2 cups sugar

1 cup evaporated milk

2 tablespoons of butter

2 tablespoon of Karo Syrup

A pinch of salt