Mabel’s Memories, part 10

This is part 10 of the memories tape-recorded by Mabel Wahlquist in the 1970s and transcribed and edited by me. Part 1 can be accessed here. The family had moved from Heber City to Myton, Utah, in about 1915, when Mabel was nearly 12 years old. This part tells the story of how Mabel and her mother moved to Salt Lake City in 1927.


Chapter 5
From Uintah Basin to Wasatch Front

During these years, Mother’s hernia had gradually been getting worse, and she was having much more distress and difficulty, and her stomach was bad. Everything she ate disagreed with her, and that upset the hernia worse. Things began to look quite serious for her. I think it was June 1927, probably, that Jack and Grace came out on a vacation when school let out. Jack was very much upset about Mother and her condition. He was determined that she was going to go into Salt Lake and have surgery done. He had had some surgery with a Dr. Hatch (I assume it was the same Hatches that were in Heber City). He had liked him very much, and he had talked to him about Mother, and he had assured him that her condition could be easily taken care of. He finally persuaded Mother that she should go back with them and have this surgery done, and so she did.

I couldn’t get away right then from the store, but she went out with them and had the surgery. When Dr. Hatch opened her up, he discovered that the tissue was just completely gone around the incision where the smallpox had eaten away the tissue. The surgery was much more difficult than he had anticipated that it would be. She came through it all right, and when it was time for my vacation, I came out to get her.

I came out fully expecting to bring her home. It was getting along towards the end of the summer by this time. But when I arrived and talked with the doctor, he told me that I would not be able to take her home that summer; she would need to be—well, in the first place she couldn’t stand that rough a trip or that long a trip, and in the second place he wanted her to be closer, where he could keep in touch with her better and see how she was getting along. When she came out of the hospital, we both went to stay with Jack and Grace, for about a month.

When I had learned that she couldn’t go home, she was very anxious that I not go home and leave her there, so I began to give some thought to getting a job in Salt Lake with the idea of just staying there that winter, and then we would go home in the spring. Soon I went down to ZCMI to look for a job.

I really didn’t know anything about hunting a job; I’d never hunted one in my life before, so I didn’t know about personnel offices and things like that. I asked to see the manager, who was Mr. Bennett—Harold Bennett’s father was the manager at that time—and somebody told me where his office was, and I went directly up there and asked him for a job. I’m sure he was very surprised and nonplussed at someone coming into his office, especially a little country girl like me, to ask for a job, but he talked to me for quite a long time and then sent me down to the personnel office. I’m sure that they were expecting me—I’m sure he had called them—and they gave me a job. They asked me where I would like to work, and I remember I said that, well, I told them the experience that I had had and I said that it didn’t matter, I could work in the notions or piece goods or so on. They explained to me that I would make more money working in the piece goods than in the notions, and I said, well, I’d work in the piece goods. They put me on and I went to work at ZCMI the next week.

I’ve always remembered what a kindly man Mr. Bennett was. In all of the years—well, I shouldn’t say that; I was only there a year—any time that he came down on the floor and saw me, he always stopped and talked to me and remembered me. I just thought he was a wonderful person. At that time, Harold Bennett, who later of course became president of ZCMI, was still in college and used to work at the store in the afternoons, in the marking and stock area. He used to come down pushing trucks in the afternoon after school with piece goods and other merchandise to go in the store and unload it in the departments. I’ve always thought what a wise father his father was in teaching him how to work. I think that probably had a great deal to do with making him the successful person that he was as a manager, because he understood all of the areas of the store and the workings of the store. Later, as I got acquainted with him at other times when I worked at the store that I’ll tell you about later, I’ve always thought a great deal of Harold Bennett.

You can imagine what a change it was for me to go to work at ZCMI after Waugh’s Store. It took me about a week to learn how to even get in and out of the place. I didn’t know anything about ringing a time card when I came in; I didn’t know anything about leaving my purse and my packages there at the desk before I went up. I had never ridden on an elevator before, and I—well, everything was just so strange and so new that it was just like coming into another world. Out in Waugh’s Store where I’d worked everywhere from the plug tobacco to the overalls, it was rather a change when I went to ZCMI.

I was put in what I’m sure was the lowest classification of the piece goods department, which was outing flannels, calico and ginghams. That’s all that I sold, but even that was a great, long counter, and I thought that was quite a bit. Later, before I left the store, I had worked my way up so that I was in the white goods counter. In those days, that was the way they did. You started down in the ginghams, and then you went from there to linings, and then you went into white goods, and then you went into silks, and so on. Even when I came up to work in Wright’s [in Ogden], I went through all of those different areas. It was good training.

I got acquainted with a very lovely girl there, who was my friend for many years and who was very, very good to me. Her name was Ruth Gershner. I haven’t seen her for a long time; I don’t think she ever worked anywhere but ZCMI. She would be at the cashier’s desk at that time. We didn’t ring up our own sales; we took the sales slip and the money to the cashier, and she rang it up. Or rather, what she did was send it up in those little cups that I’m sure none of you remember, but it went on a wire, electrically, up to the main cashier’s office. There the money was taken out and the change was sent back. That was Ruth’s job. She did that for many years, and then the last that I saw her and talked with her, the last time I worked at ZCMI, she was working in the stock room, marking merchandise. I think her whole life was spent, from the time she started working until she retired, in ZCMI, which is quite different from the experience that I had.

Not just ZCMI, but coming to Salt Lake was a tremendous experience for me. I had been in Salt Lake once before as a young girl. Now to be in this huge city, walking on paved streets instead of up dirt roads, seeing all of the people, automobiles and the street cars, and learning which street car to take to get up to Jack and Grace’s at night after work was rather a terrifying experience. I was never quite sure whether I was going to arrive there, or where I would end up. Trying to find such simple things as the employees’ lunchroom and learning to be casual about using a telephone—oh, I just can’t tell you how many things were different. It was just like coming into a new world. Being able to walk across the street over to the temple grounds and walk around and to look up at the temple and to see the beautiful flower gardens was a thrill for me. I also remember one night coming downtown with Jack and Grace in their car and listening over the radio downtown to Jack Dempsey fights, being broadcast out on the streets.

When Mother was strong enough, Jack helped me find us a little apartment where Mother and I could be by ourselves. We thought it would be better for us to be alone; the children made Mother rather nervous, and she needed to be quiet where she could lie down a great deal of the day.[1] We had to find a place that was near enough to the store so that I could go home at lunch each day to see how she was, and it couldn’t be very expensive, because I was only making $50 a month. We found it—a place about three or four houses east of the McCune School of Music.

The house on 200 North where Mabel and her mother lived in 1927-1928

We lived in two different apartments, I think both in that same house.[2] I can’t remember the order in which we lived in them, so I’ll have to describe them both to you. When I think about it now, that seems like quite a little hike up there and back at noon, up that hill, but I guess I was younger then than I am now, because I don’t remember it as being too difficult to do. I think that the first place we lived, the first apartment was really just a closed-in porch at the front of the house. It was rather a pleasant room, because there were a lot of windows, and Mother could see out and see people and cars going by. There was just one room. There was a bed in one end of the room, and there was a rocking chair, and I suppose a kitchen table. I don’t remember furniture details.[3] There was a hot plate and a few dishes. The bathroom was down the hall, and we shared it with the other people on that floor, and there were several, so I had to learn to dodge in and out very quickly in the process of getting ready for work in the mornings. I think that Mother probably enjoyed that place as much as any until it came cold weather, and then it really just was not warm enough. There was a radiator in it, but it wasn’t enough with the cold winds, and so we moved into another apartment.

I’m quite sure it was in the same house. Both apartments were on the second floor. The second one was two rooms, a bedroom and a small kitchen at the back. Well, in fact, the whole apartment was at the back of the house. It was a very dark room; there was just a window that looked at the wall of the house next door. In order to have light enough to see, Mother had to have the lights on all day, so it was not nearly as pleasant a room for her, but it was warmer. We used the same bath, which was a door closer than the other one had been, so I didn’t have to run quite so hard to outrun the other tenants to get to it.

I suppose that we would have stayed there longer, except for the fact that it was upstairs, and the hill was really too much for Mother to get out and get any exercise or to get to church. I remember us going downtown a time or two and going over to the Capitol Hill Ward to church a few times and getting out a bit, but it was always so hard for her, and she would be so exhausted when we would come home, that it was hardly worth the effort to go downtown to a show. The shows were very inexpensive, I think 25¢ or something like that. We did see one or two plays at—I don’t remember the name now—it’s now a movie house, but it was a theater then, right on State Street just east of ZCMI.[4]  She loved doing that. But she simply couldn’t take the hill and didn’t get out a great deal that winter; in fact, it must have been rather a lonesome winter for her.

I think the only thing that saved the day for Mother was that she loved to read. Magazines were very inexpensive in those days, and I used to bring her home lots of magazines. The library was close by, and I got her lots of library books. Fortunately, her eyes would permit her to spend many, many hours reading. I’m sure she missed her friends in Myton, and things were not as happy for her as I would have liked them to have been, but Mother was always an awfully good sport, and even if she couldn’t go, she insisted that I go. She always put up a good front. I went to Mutual in the Capitol Hill Ward and to all of the Mutual functions, and to all of the store parties and many places with Ruth Gershner, the friend that I mentioned, and had rather a pleasant winter.

As it came near spring, we decided that we should get off the hill; we should move where she could get around more, and so I started looking for places. I finally found a little apartment up Canyon Road. It was a basement apartment; that was the only thing that we didn’t like. In fact, I think Mother thought we had really sort of got in the cellar when we moved into that apartment. But it was very pretty; Canyon Road was very much like a park in those days. There were trees and grass and she could walk much better along the even ground, and we could walk downtown along the sidewalks and get to a show and do more things. I’m sure that she enjoyed it there, but we had hardly gotten settled there—I don’t remember how long, but I don’t think even a month—when we got word from Keith that Eva was very ill and they wanted Mother to come. It was only a few days after Mother came to Ogden to be with the children that Eva died, and so we really didn’t live in that place on Canyon Road very long.

Before we go to Ogden, I’d like to talk a little bit more about ZCMI. It was like a fairyland to me, particularly the piece goods department where I worked. I very soon found out that I would have been completely lost anywhere but in the ginghams and calicos and outing flannels and fabrics where I was placed. At that time there were really only four basic fabrics: things had to be made from cotton, or linen, or wool, or silk. I’m sure ZCMI had an unusually good piece goods department. It was simply beyond my wildest dreams to see the crepes and satins and brocades and georgettes and beautiful fabrics that were in the silk department, and the wool department with its serge and herringbones and plaids were just something that I had really never dreamed about. I would imagine that the white goods department at ZCMI at that time was one of the finest in the west.

It was a long way from the old days when the pioneers had done most of the weaving in their own homes and when they finally got the unbleached muslin, which in those days was called “factory cloth” because it was woven in the factory rather than at home. Out at Myton we were still calling it “factory cloth” and then after they’d learned to bleach it, a customer would ask you for “factory” or “bleach.” Outside of the ginghams and calicos and a few voiles, that was about all we had in the store at Myton. So ZCMI was a marvelous place to me.

Everyone was nice to me. ZCMI had been sort of a home for so many converts who came from foreign lands and who were given jobs there because of it being the Church store.[5]  You heard a great many different accents as you went through the store. I suppose because of this, they were very closely knit and everyone was very friendly with one another.

One of the people that I remember most and who probably helped me most of anyone was a little Englishman. He was quite an elderly man. (Of course I can’t remember his name; you’ve learned by now I’m sure that I’m not very good at names.) He had charge of the white goods section. Apparently he had worked with cottons and white goods all of his life. He had been apprenticed in a cloth factory in England as a young boy and had worked there until the time that he joined the Church and came to Utah, and then he worked there at ZCMI. He knew more about white goods than any person that I have ever known in my life, about the weaves and the qualities of the merchandise. He carried his little magnifying glass as many people did in those days, well, and much later, so that he could count the number of threads to the inch, and he could recognize—his fingers were so sensitive—he could recognize whether or not there was filling in the fabric, or whether it was all that it was supposed to be. For some reason, he liked me, and he took an interest in me, perhaps because I was so interested in fabrics, and he taught me a great deal about white goods and about how to recognize the quality of fabric. Years later, when I became a buyer, a lot of the information he gave me stood me in good stead. He was getting to be quite an elderly man when I knew him, and in fact, that winter he was getting rather senile. His wife died and he completely broke under the strain, and he was finally taken down to Provo, to the mental hospital there. That’s another story that I might tell you before I leave Salt Lake.

Many of the people from the store had gone down to visit with him, because everyone did love this old gentleman. One day the manager of our department—his name was Mr. Hagen, that’s one that I can remember—took Ruth and me down to visit him. We were taken into a waiting room, and Ruth and I were left there while Mr. Hagen went to talk with his doctor. While we were there, another lady came in, and they soon brought her husband, who was a patient, in to visit with her. He was not at all interested in her; he was interested in us, and he sat and grinned at us, and giggled and grinned and giggled, and we got more frightened by the moment. Finally, she got up and left, and then we were terrified. She had gone—we didn’t realize it—but she had gone in search of an attendant. After she had left, then he began coming toward us a little way and then he would laugh and back away, and then he’d come toward us and back away. We were just about ready to—well, he was between us and the door so we couldn’t leave. Presently an attendant did come and took him away when the wife came back. She apologized profusely and was very much embarrassed, and left. Not too long after that, Mr. Hagen came with our friend’s doctor and said that we were to have a tour of the hospital.

We thought that would be very interesting, but I dreamed about it for months afterward. I’m sure that the hospital at Provo is one of the most up-to-date now; it has a very good reputation, and it probably was as good as any at that time. But it was a horrible experience to go through it. We went through wards where there were women sitting on bare floors on little mats; some of them had a little blanket or a little mat or something that perhaps their family had given them, on these bare floors. There was no furniture in the rooms; I guess that was so they couldn’t knock each other out with them, I don’t know. It was the same in the men’s wards.

Then a rather amusing thing happened. We were going along a long corridor from one ward to another, and the doctor was ahead, and then Mr. Hagen, then Ruth, and then I was last. I looked around and there was the oddest little man coming along right behind me, and he smiled at me. We had just been in the men’s ward, and so I thought that he had probably slipped out of the ward and was following us. I crowded up closer to Ruth, and I tried to get someone’s attention so that I could tell them, let them know that he was there. I kept looking back at him, and he kept smiling at me, and he followed us all the rest of the tour. When we went back to the office he was still following us, and he walked around to the front of the group and to the desk and sat down. Then he was introduced to us as the superintendent of the hospital. He had realized how frightened I had been and had suspected what I had thought. He was an odd-looking little fellow; I can’t say anything else about him. He laughed and laughed, and of course he told everybody else about it, and they all laughed. I always used to blush very badly, and I was terribly embarrassed, and it created a lot of fun for everybody.

This dear little man from ZCMI was there for, I guess, several years, and as far as I know died there.

I want to tell you something of Eva’s family before we go to Ogden. Eva was the oldest of the family and her folks had gone out to Altonah very early, after the opening for settlement of the Uintah Basin. They went to a little town called Altonah, where her father opened a general merchandise store. The store became very successful I understand; I never did see it, but it was in operation for quite some time after Mr. Maxwell’s death. The Maxwell family were rather a large family. There were at least eight children whose names I can think of but won’t give here. They ranged in ages from Eva, who was a year younger than Keith, down to Grace, who was a little bit older than Max. There might have been some miscarriages in there somewhere, but I don’t know anything of that. Mr. Maxwell was a big, strong, outgoing person. He really had rather a temper, which got the best of him at times, and he was very plain spoken, but very fond of his family and a good father. He died I think before Eva did. He was killed by a horse kicking him in the head. Mrs. Maxwell was a smaller woman; I imagine she was about the size of my mother. She was a very quiet, retiring, little woman, and she was quite religious. She had sort of kept the children religious. She lived many years after her husband died, and died in Salt Lake City in their home, which they bought after Mr. Maxwell died.[6]

Eva and Cylesta were the two oldest in the family[7]  and when it came time for them to go to high school, of course there was no high school in Altonah, and it would be necessary for them to go away from home. Mr. Maxwell thought that they might just as well go out to Salt Lake and get a good education as long as he could afford it (which he well could) so they came out to Salt Lake and went to St. Mary’s of the Wasatch. He felt that they should be in a boarding school where they would be well looked after, which I guess they were. They loved it there; they loved the school, and they loved the Sisters and enjoyed it very much, even though they felt that it was rather strict. On a few occasions when Harold went out, he used to laugh at the problem he had getting in to see them, because of course he was only a few years older than Eva, and she had a hard time convincing them that he was her uncle and not her boyfriend! They did enjoy it there, as I said. Eva evidently had taken some classes in nursing while she was there and also some classes in sewing and some business courses. When it came time for them to graduate—at that time they all were dressed in white and wore their veils, and as they walked across the platform they were to kneel and kiss the priest’s ring. Cylesta was rather a large girl and not as graceful as some, and Eva of course was rather small. As Cylesta went to walk across the stage and she knelt to kiss the ring, her veil fell off, much to the amusement of the audience and to the consternation of the bishop and Cylesta. She and Eva used to laugh about that a great deal.

When they finished school, Eva went back to Altonah to help her father in the store. In fact, I think she pretty well managed the store, at least the business end of it. She did all of the bookkeeping and a great deal of the buying and was a very good help to him. He also had some land out on South Myton Bench which by this time he was trying to do a little with. Up until that time I think it had just lain idle. Eva continued to work there in the store until the year of the flu epidemic of 1918, when, as I’ve told you before, she came down to stay with her grandfather and Harold after her grandmother died of the flu, and it was at that time that she met Keith.

Cylesta, I guess, went right from school to teaching, and I know she taught for several years in Weber County. And from there on I don’t know just where she taught.

Eva was very close to her family and loved them very much. Even after her death, Keith remained very close to them, and I can remember many times going to visit Grandma Maxwell with Keith and the children. Even after Keith married Ruth, I remember us going to visit Grandma Maxwell. Ruth and Cylesta were always very close friends. After Mrs. Maxwell’s death even, we still continued to visit at the Maxwell home. I think Elizabeth and Joe spent a few weeks visiting there one summer. We always loved Cylesta; she was very, very close to all of us. I don’t remember too much about the boys and the younger girls, so I won’t attempt to tell you any details of their life. Cylesta died just last year[8], and it was the end of a very lovely friendship which we had all enjoyed for many, many years.

Frank has always stayed very close to the Maxwell family and has had a nice friendship with several of the Maxwell boys, and of course always loved his Aunt Cylesta very dearly. Max, during his long illness, which I’ll tell you more about later, always found a welcome at the Maxwell home. Cylesta was always very good to him, as were the other members of the family, and they were good to visit him in the hospital and to make him feel welcome when he was well enough to come to their homes. They were always very good to his family and tried to do what they could to make things more pleasant for them. As a family, I think that all of the younger members of the family, who probably hardly knew Eva because she was so much older, they certainly have rallied round and been good to Eva’s family. I probably should mention too that Ruth and Cylesta made a trip up to see Grant after he had his first heart attack and were very concerned for him. I’m sure that he also was remembered through his illnesses by the Maxwell family.

Since I’m sure there’s very little room left on this cassette, I think I’ll wait and go on to the next cassette to start in again at the point where Keith sent word to Mother for her to come because of Eva’s illness to take care of the family. I’m sure Jack took her up to Ogden at that time.

Eva and Keith Wahlquist and sons:
Frank (back), Grant and Max

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As I’ve told you before, I’m not trying to make this a personal history; I’m really trying to sort of tell the family story, and perhaps answer some of the questions that are often asked of me by various members of the family. It’s really only for that purpose that I’m doing this.

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Notes:

1. Don was 2 years old, and Carl was less than a year when their Grandma Wahlquist stayed with them after her surgery.
2. The McCune School of Music was located in the McCune Mansion on the corner of Main St. and 200 North St. in Salt Lake City.
3. Mabel never said what happened to all their belongings still out in Myton. Her brother Fred sent some things to them, and the house and land were still in Mrs. Elizabeth Wahlquist’s name up to her death in 1935.
4. The Orpheum Theatre opened in 1905, and during the year Mabel and her mother lived nearby, it could have been known as Loew’s Casino Theater, Wilkes, Roxey, or Salt Lake Theater. It went by more names after that, finally becoming Promised Valley Playhouse in 1972. It was demolished in 2003.
5. Zion’s Cooperative Mercantile Institution (ZCMI) was founded in 1868 by Brigham Young, president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and was the first department store in the United States.
6. Evalett Eldredge Maxwell died in 1948; her husband A.F. Maxwell died in 1924.
7. Eva was born in 1897; Cylesta (pronounced “Clysta”) was born in 1899.
8. Cylesta Maxwell died September 14, 1976. Mabel had been working on this book for 3 years at this point.

Go to Part 11 here.
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