Alicia Kay Burk - Linda Kay Flake - Dolores Jordan

Dee (left) with her brother Raymond and mother Gladys / Dee

Mothers letters-- Dolores Jordan (sent from Les Flake)

My mother lived in Farmington, Utah about three blocks from a large amusement park. There was a large dance pavilion where John Philip Sousa used to give concerns during the summers. They also had dance bands to play for dances every Saturday night. Mother’s brother Ken was her escort and that is where she met my dad, George Jordan from Ogden.

Growing up in Ogden and being very unsupervised, as a young boy he used to dive from a moving freight train into the Ogden River. This prepared him for his occupation when he met my mother, diving while on fire into a very narrow but deep pool at the Lagoon. My mother soon changed this part of his life and he soon found other more orthodox ways to make his money. My parents were married after a whirlwind courtship. They always remained deeply in love though many times things were very stormy as they had very different temperaments.

My grandmother Stevenson died when I was about 10 years old. She had been ill for many years from a stroke. My grandfather Stevenson lived to be in his 90’s. My father had a very hard childhood. He told of being hungry most of the time. He made sure that even in the great depression we always had full stomachs. He horded food and kept the cupboard and the garage full of food. Dad was involved in sports all of his life. His idea of a day with his family was a day at the park with us watching him umpire a baseball game for some extra money. He played ball when he was young and was a professional umpire for the Coast League. In his later years he was a recreation director at the Huntington Park California City Recreation Department. My life growing up was sometimes very hectic but not badly short of love which we received from both of our parents.

My mother was very slow to anger but given provocation she could get quietly steamed at us. Dad on the other hand had a very low boiling point. There was a great difference in age between me and my younger brothers and my sister. Ten years for George, twelve between Bob and 15 for Donna. I was married in 1937 at 17 (almost 18) so my siblings were all very young.

I grew up during the depression and I remember it well. My dad always managed to have a job of some kind even though his wages were very low. I can remember my parents buying groceries for their friends who were out of work. During the depression there were no food stamps and little if any financial help except church run soup lines and government bread lines. I had very few clothes in those days –a couple of skirts and blouses and better clothes for church. I was very lucky when I was about 16 to get a part time job in a dime store. I got it by sheer determination. The store got tired of seeing me always in their office waiting room to be called to work. People came and waited to be chosen.

As hard as money was to come by, my parents paid for my violin lessons I started when I was 8 years old. I am now 70 and I play in quartets and the college orchestra. Although I am not and have never been a soloist I am a pretty good violinist. The good part is that I have had so much pleasure from my playing, especially the musicals I played for in North Bend Oregon from 1961-63. Linda played Leisel in the Sound of music and I played concert mistress in the college orchestra.

I have always regretted the fact that I quit high school when I was only 3 credits form graduation. I thought I wanted to be a beauty operator. I went to beauty school and I had only a few weeks to go when I realized I didn’t like the work and I was allergic to the fumes 8 hours a day. However, I don’t regret my training as I have been able to cut my children’s and my husband’s hair. I still cut hair today plus being able to cut my own hair has been a great money saver. (Note f rom her son Les—Mother did complete her high school degree after dad died)

I grew up in Alhambra California and Huntington Park California. The years I lived there were free from smog and the weather was beautiful. There were still dairy farms around. My dad loved to grow bantam chickens, never mind that mother mostly took care of them. He also raised rabbits to eat and she got stuck there too. One day when she was really irritated she placed an ad in the paper and sold all dads bantam chickens and pens. That is a day the air became blue when dad got home.**

My life began for me when I was around 7 or so. Things before my brother Ray died are not in my memory. I remember vividly when he was sick. I remember the house we lived in and him in bed in the living room playing with a gold piece mother had on a chain. He only lived a few days after he caught Diphtheria. Prevention shots were very new and people, including my parents, were afraid to trust them. We weren’t protected, however, I didn’t catch it. Ray was given a heavy dosage of antitoxin but he just didn’t make it. He died at home in his sleep.

After he died, the Health Department was at our house to disinfect us all. I was given a bath in a metal wash tub that was so strong with Lysol it was sickening. My hair was washed in it too. Everything that couldn’t be washed in Lysol was burned in a bonfire in the back yard. I remember the funeral. He was in a cascade with a heavy glassed covering. My mother told me that he and I were very close. He was 4 years old. In a few months my brother George was born. Then Bob and Donna.

Horace and I were married November 4th, 1937. He passed away on Lester’s birthday, July 26, 1963. During the in between years many moves were made and many things happened. Lorna and Lester were born when we lived in Lynwood, California. From there we moved to Phoenix, Arizona where we lived for a year. We then moved to Portland Oregon. This was during World War II. We both worked in the Kaiser Shipyard where we helped build Liberty ships. Dad worked as a painter and I was a pipe welder. I was a member of the Pipe Fitters Union until the war was over and then they didn’t allow women to belong and they cancelled my card. I found it too difficult anyhow to work and care for two young children so I quit to stay home. Soon I knew that Cheryl Ann was going to make an appearance. I was very unhappy with the rainy weather and dad was unhappy with his job. He quite knowing that he would be drafted into the Army. We moved all of our belongings in a car plus two youngsters and headed back to California. We rented a house for a couple of months but the Army made good its threats and he did get drafted into the Marines. He took his basic training in San Diego. Before the Marines came Cheryl. Army dependence pay was very meager and I found it impossible to pay expenses. My parents had a double garage with gas piped into it so we put a gas stove and a couple of beds in it and we moved in. We really had it fixed up quite comfortably. After we moved out my brother George and his wife lived there for awhile.

First days on the ranch. After the war we joined forces with our good friends Jimmy and Martha Ney. Jim and Dad grew up together in Arizona. They were like brothers. Martha and I stayed home while the two men left on a scouting trip to buy a ranch with not too much money between them. They found 520 acres in Bend Oregon where the seller would carry the contract for the balance.

Mom Alt had homesteaded the Ranch with her husband who was now dead. For many years she and her two daughters had farmed the place with the help of her married son. They had lots of old machinery, a few cows, a couple of horses, and a pig. Everything was included. The house didn’t have electricity or water. There was a hand pump in the kitchen piped to a cistern that had long ago caved in when a cow fell in. Near the house was a ditch that was the size of a large creek used for irrigation and filling cisterns.

Neither Martha nor I were keen on the idea of living on a farm, especially one we couldn’t help pick out, but we were not prepared for the story we were about to hear when the men returned home. They both loved to tease so we didn’t believe one word they said about the primitive house, outhouses, and no running water.

While the Neys were in the process of selling their house, we loaded our three children, Lester, Cheryl, and Lorna into an old car packed with everything we owned (not much) and drove to Bend. When we arrived and I learned that they had been dead serious about how primitive things were, I felt sick inside. There was a wood cook stove that was large and black with a built in deep well for heating water. When I tried to build a fire in the big black cook stove, my first try, I felt even worse. At times I not only felt like crying, at least once I sat on the floor and cried, frustrated when the damp wood wouldn’t burn for me.

I never did get very good at building fires in either the cook stove or in the living room stove. Usually the wood was damp and juniper didn’t burn like pine. It’s a wonder that I didn’t burn up the house as I used kerosene to start my fires. My neighbor, Jimmy (a woman) Alt, Marvin Alts wife, helped me to learn what little I learned. Mrs. Alt left me iron skillets, frying pans, and a Dutch oven. I used to take the round tops off the stove to help the food cook faster. I still have the old Dutch oven burned black on the bottom of some pans to remind me of the good old days. When I got a little money ahead I bought a small pressure cooker and it’s black on the bottom too. We didn’t have any refrigeration so we put things in the small creek (ditch) that ran a few feet from our house. We usually had lots of sour milk, especially when there was a thunder storm. We had lots of thunder storms in the summer time and I never overcame my terrible fear of those storms.

Well to get on with my story, the Neys arrived but I had written Martha the grim details so she was expecting the worst which it was. We tried living in the same house but that was nearly impossible. We just couldn’t get coordinated. We spent a couple of months trying before we all knew it just wouldn’t work. So while we still liked each other and were good friends we made some changes. We closed off the door between the kitchen and the living room. That gave us the kitchen, small bedroom, pantry, and screened back porch. They took the front room and the upstairs attic.

At the auction we bought a cook stove to replace the front room heating stove, which gave them a way to cook. None of us had any water or conveniences anyway. That left the small bedroom for Les, Lorna, and Cheryl. The only thing left for Dad and me was the screen porch. Thank heavens for the home made down quilts Mrs. Alt left us considering that Horace and I slept on the screen porch. We heated bricks to put by our feet and covered our heads as the snow blew in through the screen. The porch was decorated with dry corn hanging from the ceiling, sauerkraut containers, a butter churn, and other miscellaneous items. We slept pretty warm under the heaviest bedding I had ever felt. When we got up in the morning and brushed off the snow that came through the screen. We were so tired from all that weight that we decided to put canvas on the screens. Also, I made a clothes closet out of the pantry.

This old house was a cold house. Two feet away from the stove and you were cold. I stuffed all the cracks with newspaper but there were just too many cracks.

Max and Francis. After the Neys gave up on the farming, Horace’s nephew, the son of his half-sister, came with his wife and daughter. We had a shed where canning bottles and miscellaneous items were kept. There was a wood stove there. This was their home. The problem with this was that as soon as a fire was built the bedbugs came out of the woodwork. Max and family were chewed up and when they came to our house, we got the bugs too. By the time we discovered what was biting Max’s family it was too late. We had a full blown infestation move in. They were in the sofa and mattresses and we were being chewed to pieces in the night. If you have never had a bedbug attack, you can compare it with a room full of mosquitos, that are blood hungry. We went to the druggist who recommended chlordane. Since that time it has been bound to be a carcinogen. I have worried for years that we had used this as a bug killer in our own house.

We burned up the old sofa and chairs but the mattresses seemed to be free of infestation after a while. This was one of many really trying times we had on the ranch. Max and Francis were a very delightful couple. They were always cheerful even through the bedbugs and living in the shed. They later moved back to Arizona.