Grandma's piano

 During her oral history interview, Fay was asked if she refinished a piano. The following is the story that she tells about that incident.

"Yes. I found out the hard way that they stain the wood and then put clear varnish on it. I thought when I went to take the finish off of that that all I had to do was take it off. When I got down to it, it was stained that color. It was terrible. So I thought, well, they bleach clothes with fabric bleach so I don't know why you can't bleach wood with it. So I proceeded to bleach the piano. I would get my bleach and I would brush it on. You know bleach is really something else. Boy, it would eat that wood. So I would watch and when it would get down so far, then I would take my brush and dip it in cold water and brush off the bleach real fast before it had eaten down to the wood and made it grainy. Anyway, I got the whole thing bleached. (laughs). I made a black piano blonde, which really is a feat."

"And then I put a mirror on the front of it and Sherry didn't want to sit and play because she could see herself. It just annoyed her something terrible to have that mirror in front of her. I went in one day and Sherry had books all along. I said, "Are you playing out of all those books at the same time?"

"She said, I just can't stand to look at myself while I am playing."

Roger's family has that piano today. The picture is of that same piano. My daughter Tara had refinished it at the time this picture was taken. It is quite a family treasure. The reason that I remembered that little story was because some of my family are helping me refinish my living room and we had to move my big old piano around a bit. Those old piano's were really heavy.

 This is a poem, written by Fay, about when her and Dell met.

Twas' at a ball I met him He asked me for a dance.

I danced with him and it was swell Cause deep in "Love" I really fell.

I knew then, that there'd never be Another man so nice as he.

His eyes, they are the deepest brown Dark curly hair, his head does crown.

And then began, what seems to me The loveliest romance ever to be.

After I met him at the ball Every week he came to call.

Quite late at night, twas' after dark He drove and found a place to park.

I think I knew that he would say "You're sweet, you know. I love you, Faye."

And long before he spoke I knew That I would say "I love you too."

And there, with no one else to see He placed a ring on finger three.

In October of thirty-five, We decided to take the dive.

It was then a wedding band Joined the ring on my left hand.

Seven years of love and play Have passed by since that day.

Now we have a child age three We're the happiest couple that ever could be.

The picture is of Fay, Ardell and Sherrie who was about 1 year old.

Dream Home

 Good morning to everyone. I decided to share a story that Fay tells about our family's moves years ago. I guess this has been on my mind because my daughter Amy and her family are living with me right now while they are looking for a house to buy here in South Davis County.

Here is what Fay says: She is asked by me, "I think you had a dream or premonition about moving".

"Well, the dream I had was about six months before we moved to Homedale and we were in Pocatello, and Dell was going great guns on the railroad. We had no idea of ever moving."

"I got up one morning and told him, "I dreamed that we moved."

"We just laughed, haw, haw. Then I explained in detail that little house sitting there on the Paulson Place. And I said, "Boy, we didn't even have running water inside."

"I said, " You know what, there was an old pump deal sitting out in front and I said all we had was cold water."

"And he just laughed about it. Within six months' time, we moved to that exact place that I saw in my dream. It looked just exactly like that when we pulled into that little old shanty."

"I dreamed about the Downing place, too. I saw that place in a dream before we moved there because we knew we were going to have to get off this other place, and we were having quite a time finding a place to move on to. And I told Dell what that one would look like, too, In a dream before we even moved on to it. And we were there for 15-20 years."

I am sure that Amy would like to be able to see their new home in a dream just as Fay did years ago.

The first picture is of Sherry, Leola, Lamar, Vicki and Marianne in front of the Paulson place. The second picture is of Sherry in front of the Downing home. Leola, Lamar, and Marrianne are Uncle Glens Children. These are the homes that Fay saw in her dreams.

Sherry B Parker

Dad's gold tooth by Sherry Parker

 I (Sherrie) wanted to share the story this morning of how dad (Ardell) got his gold tooth.

"I don't remember just which grade I was ink 7th of 8th, it must have been about the 7th grade--we were in the big room in the building (school) playing a game of drop the handkerchief, and as the person would go around each of you held hands, and they would hit your hand and you and whoever you had hands with would run around and do the same for the next one and you would drop the handkerchief at the same time and then they would have to go around as you had done. And as we were running, one of the mean little boys stuck his foot out and tripped me and I fell down on my face and broke my two front teeth. So I didn't have my two front teeth for Christmas that year. They broke right in the very middle and I never was so sick in my life, because both nerves were sticking out and I had to go to the teacher's cottage and lay down until the bus came to take us home.

Our bus was usually a team of horses and a sleigh, because we had lots of winter, and that's the way we would ride back and forth, either in a buggy or a sleigh.

My brother Clarence took me to the dentist. I think we had to go clear to Soda Springs to the dentist to have the teeth pulled out and the false teeth put in. I've had false teeth ever since.

I was eleven years of age, and when I went in one time to have some repairs, the dentist couldn't believe that they had been there that long because the bridgework was still solid and good.

 

Fay tells about their first home in Lava (see below):

"We went out and got this five acres and we planted it into potatoes. Then we went in town and we didn't have any money to build a house, so we saw this little old house up on the hill that nobody had used. It was just kind of a shell. We talked Dell's brother (Don) into bringing it down on his truck and sitting it on our little five acres and we went about fixin up the walls and it was only one room. So we had a big old cookstove on one end and then we bought a fold-away bed that we slept on. We were living in this one room. That's where we were living when Sherry was born. In this little one room in Lava Hot Springs. We had it fixed up kind of cute.

 Merry Christmas to all of my Byington Cousins

I thought that today I would share a story from Ardell's oral history.

We all know that years ago it was always very snowy in Lava in the winter. The steep hills would get very slick. Ardell tells a story about taking his mother (grandma Sarah) home from a short trip. She thinks that they had been to Pocatello. Grandma Sarah's house was up on one of those steep hills in Lava. Ardell says that in the wintertime they disconnected their brakes because using them just caused them to slide out of control.

As they were getting ready to go up the hill to take Grandma Sarah home. Ardell says, "We would start from the bridge and get up speed to make it up the hill. This particular time--I don't know what had happened that got my mother excited, but she reached over to grab the steering wheel."

Fay (Ardell's wife) had all that she could do to keep Grandma Sarah's hands off of the steering wheel.

Ardell says,"Through the excitement and everything we couldn't make it up the hill. We started spinning. Of course, we didn't have any brakes to help us and all that we could do was slide back down the hill really fast. My mother was scared plum to death. The next attempt we made was to go up the hill the other way and back to her house. Finally, we made it."

This is from Fay's oral history about Christmas in Lava while she was growing up.

Fay says, "I don't remember much about Christmas, only that we went to church. Oh yes, we always had a big Christmas tree in the middle of the school auditorium. They had a Christmas Party, I remember that. Sometimes practically the whole town came. Then Santa Clause would come and hand out things and we would get to dance around the Christmas Tree. The tree was always put in the middle of the hall, never in a corner. My memory, when I was just little tiny, was dancing around that Christmas Tree at that Christmas Party. That school was the only place big enough to have any kind of community party because the church was too little.