Morinda Part 2
by Morinda Martina Larsen
I went to school until I was fourteen. My first school was a little old one room school house in Georgetown where one teacher taught all the grades so our class didn’t get much attention. My first teacher was Mr. Douglas Hicks. I didn’t have a book and read from a chart. I had done some reading at home so it wasn’t too hard for me. They didn’t have very many students, 3-5 in each class. After I had been there a little while they told me to bring my book. It was one that had been handed down from my brothers and sisters. I really enjoyed school. We had a short recess twice a day, morning and afternoon and an hour for noon. We had slates and slate pencils and could erase our work with a damp cloth. When we learned to write the teacher wrote the A.B.C. etc. and we copied them on our slates. We did the same thing with the figures. When I was in the third grade I had pen and ink which we bought. We had to carry the ink bottle with us. In the fourth grade they built a new school house and had two teachers. They still had two teachers when I left school. The last teacher I had was Alma Hess, a native of Georgetown. When I had to leave school I practiced reading and writing and spelling but I didn’t try arithmetic and grammar. My brother, George, and I would practice together at night and correct each other’s work.
My brother, George, fulfilled a mission for the church and soon my sister Eliza was married. After Eliza’s marriage, I was left to care for father and take over the house-hold duties. Father was very patient with me and knew that I must learn by doing. Father seemed to grow more crippled with rheumatism as the years went by. Soon all the boys were married and had families of their own and more and more I felt my responsibility. At times I yearned to attend school with my friends, and my father, sensing this encouraged me to read and study often. I read every time I had a chance and when I didn’t have enough books I borrowed them. George and Neils ran a store, and if I needed help with father I would have to run two blocks to the store. They would come in, in the evenings to help out. In the winter time when snow was falling, the wind blew and filled the path ways and roads and there were drifts I waded through that came up to my knees and with the long dresses we wore at that time the snow stuck to them and when I took my place in the store to wait on customers it melted and my skirts would be wet. On the return trip it was so cold that the snow naturally stuck to the wet skirts and froze stiff so they had to be changed and hung up by the stove to dry.
One of my most embarrassing moments was a time when I went to a dance at Swan Lake, a little place on the Blackfoot River. When my escort helped me down from the wagon the full slip I had on was made with a ruffle of about 5 to 6 yards of hand made lace which hooked to the break teeth of the wagon. When I reached the ground I couldn’t walk. My escort unhooked the slip from the wagon and his sisters who were along pinned it up for me.
I had one friend whose name was Clairse Robinsen who lived next door. We saw each other every day until they moved to Wyoming. Of course I had other friends but she was the closest so I missed her very much. I didn’t get out very much, but I found time to be a counselor in the YWMIA. Elsie Larsen, wife of my brother George, was president. George would stay with father so that I could go to Sunday School.
Through my work in the MIA I was able to go to June Conference in Salt Lake City. I surely enjoyed the trip. It was there that I met Bart Harrison at the M.I.A. dance at Saltair. He was representing the Sharon ward of the Bear Lake Stake. We took a few sight-seeing trips the day after conference at Lagoon at Farmington and some other places close around and then we went home. In about two weeks he found his way over the mountain from Sharon. He didn’t seem to get discouraged when I told him "No wedding as long as father needs me." We became engaged and it was two years before we were married.
Father became weaker all the time. He often read his Bible (in Danish) out loud to me as he sat in his chair with a board across the arms to hold it. One winter he read it and the Book of Mormon through. So I learned as I worked. His birthday, March 10, was quite and event that year as all the family came and we had a big dinner. We had a wonderful time together and he loved it. On June 3, 1907 he passed peacefully away, just as quietly as one falling asleep. Although he had earned his rest it was hard to give him up. We loved him so and I missed him so much as I had cared for him so long. Often at night I would wake up thinking I heard father tapping with his cane on the floor as he often did when he needed me during the night. He was a good man and a kind and loving father. After 15 years he had gone to join his mate. He never used profane language. My father dearly loved his adopted country and was never sorry that he came because he had his religious freedom and was able to homestead and build a home for his family and children and to see that they got some schooling. He enjoyed immensely a good joke and was loved by the young people of the community. Although he was a sober man and often stern, he was a kind husband and father. We all owe him a great deal for the honesty, industry, and reverence he taught us, and for the testimony of the gospel that the instilled in our hearts with such a firm foundation.
After father died, I worked in the store for George and Neils until December. Our store had groceries on one side and dry goods on the other. In the back of the store we had large 40 gallon barrels of kerosene, vinegar, etc. The people would bring their containers and we had to measure it out. The sugar, rice and beans were all emptied in bins and we had to measure them out. We sold pitch forks, shovels, hoes, rakes, rope, nails etc., and also any drugs that didn’t need a prescription. I kept a clerk running from one part of the store to another, especially when the customer didn’t know what they wanted until after they came in the store.
There is one day I’ll always remember at the store. George always cashed pay roll checks for the Greeks that worked on the section crew and so we kept large sums of money on hand. On this day George went home for dinner and I was left alone at the store. The Greeks came in early for their money and I could not understand them. They were very angry because they had to wait for their pay. I went into the post office and got a pistol we kept and put in my apron pocket. George laughed at me, but it made me feel safer until he came.
While I was in the store I weighed the first phosphate taken from the hills in Georgetown where the phosphate mine is now. A sheep herder brought the sample to the post office we had in the store. After he had filed on it the company that now owns the phosphate mine bought it from him.
One time we had some big, wide rimmed Stetson hats that had been in the store for a long time and they had been there for so long we had marked them down half price. A sheep herder came in for a hat but said those hats were no good so I pulled a hat out that was just like the others but hadn’t been marked down and he bought that hat for full price.
One time I was sweeping the floor. There were a group of men standing around the big bellied stove in the middle of the store talking. Among the men was a forest ranger and he grabbed an armful of paper to put in the stove. As he did he felt something hard. On investigating he found 50 caps and each cap was good for about 500 pound lift.
