O’Leah Lasson Hurst History (Part 1, recorded 2006)

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We lived on a cattle ranch all my childhood.  My father was Niels Oscar Lasson, and my mother was Ursula Spencer.  We lived up Spanish Fork Canyon where we owned a dry farm and raised cattle.  The nearest small community was Birdseye, Utah.  There were five children in my family.  My brother Oscar Ward Lasson, who went by Ward, was the oldest, born July 25, 1917.  Edythe followed, born February 7, 1920.  I was the third and middle child born January 20, 1926 in Indianola, Utah which is in Sanpete County.  I was named O’Leah Lasson.  I was named this odd name because my mother liked it. I went by the name of Lee Lasson when I entered college in l946.  Electa was born fourth in line on May 5, 1928, and then eight years later Marilyn Kay was born on October 16, 1936.
I was closer to Electa because we were nearer in age.  She was a petite little girl with long, auburn ringlets, which Mother curled on her finger every day.  She was a “show-stopper”.  She’d sleep on her face to keep her hair pretty.  Poor plain me. Mom would get me a yearly permanent and tie a ribbon around my head to keep the hair out of my eyes.  (Can you hear the violins playing?)  She was and is cute as a button.  She was quiet in nature and loved to stay indoors and read or do embroidery.  I was a “tom-boy” and loved the outdoors.  Although we were quite different in nature, we were very close and spent many hours together.

Electa lived to sew and made most of her own clothes as a teenager.  One time, she was voted as the “best dressed” girl in her school.  She had a “sneaky” streak and was lazy from the neck down.  One day, she and I were supposed to do the dishes after a big dinner feeding the “hay men”.  When dish time came, Electa suddenly became scarce and so the dishes were done without her.  About half an hour later, Dad went out into the farmyard to gather eggs and standing against a haystack was Electa.  She asked, “Daddy, are the dishes done yet?”  She has never lived down that story.

On Christmas Eve, it was tradition for us to all collect around the stove in the front room.  We opened all our gifts from each other on Christmas Eve.  We only had Santa’s gifts to open the next morning.  A week or two before Christmas, Mom would take us all into Provo to shop for a new dress and shoes for Christmas.  Dad would bring out a large bowl of nuts with their shells on and a nutcracker.  We shelled nuts and talked.  We were permitted all the candy and nuts our little hearts desired.  The candy was a variety of hardtack, gumdrops, ribbon candy, etc.  A large five pound box of a poor grade of chocolates was purchased and kept under lock and key in a “steamer trunk”.  This was shared on Christmas Eve.  We usually got new nightgowns or PJ’s at the same time.  We each selected a chair or corner to hang our stockings for Santa to fill.

I loved Christmas.  If I wouldn’t go to bed,   Mom would say, ‘I can hear Santa’s bells,” and I replied, “No I can’t,” and she said “You just listen.”  I did, and I could hear bells.  Boy, I went to bed fast, let me clue you, so I still believed in Santa Claus.  Later I learned it was my dad, over at the barn. They’d had it planned between them, or maybe he just thought of it on his own, just to get us to go to bed. 

Our home had no central heating.  The stove heated the kitchen and one bedroom.  A Heaterola stove heated the front room and the other bedroom.  We had no indoor plumbing, and we used kerosene or gasoline lights.  Our house was so cold in the mornings that we probably opened all the gifts at night because the house was nice and warm.

We loved Christmas and Mother always cooked a chicken dinner, rolls, pies, etcetera for Christmas Day.  Good, good memories!

Our home was located 26 miles to the north and 21 miles to the south of any town.  Because we were located in Utah County, we had to attend school in that county which was to the north, in Birdseye, Utah, even though San Pete County was only 2 miles to the south. 7th Grade and up we were bused to Spanish Fork for school.

My house was less than 1000 square feet in area.  It consisted of a living room, two bedrooms and a kitchen/dining combination.  Yes, that is right - four rooms.  My parents had the larger front bedroom, and all the kids shared the back bedroom, where the girls slept three to a double bed and my brother Ward slept in a cot on the other wall.  Edythe was 17 when she left home and so until then, she, Electa and I slept together.  I was 6 years younger and Electa was eight years younger than Edythe.  The only closet in the whole place was in my parents’ room, and so all the things we needed to hang up went in there.  We had an outhouse outdoors.  It wasn’t until after I was married that my parents finally split off part of the bedroom and made an indoor bathroom. 

We had flannel sheets in the wintertime and cotton sheets during the summer.  The flannel sheets were warmer but weren’t washed as often.  They probably needed it oftener but the soil didn't show so plainly.  We only bathed once a week, so I’m sure they needed it.  We bathed in round laundry tubs.  Some families used the same water for each member of the family, but at our house we each had our own fresh water.  Sometimes, Dad would use our used water if the warm water had all been used.  We heated the water on top of the coal stove.  We were pioneers or something like that.

Underneath the floor of the kitchen was a cellar where we stored fruits and vegetables, and added onto the back of the house was a shed where other things were stored.

It was ranch-land strung along Spanish Fork Canyon.  Our nearest neighbor was 2 miles away.  Our school and church was 7 miles from our home.  We were bused to school for the elementary grades.  It was a one-room schoolhouse which could be divided in the middle by folding doors.  The same building was used as a church on Sundays.  The building did not have running water, central heating, or indoor plumbing.  We had a cold unisex facility outdoors, a two-seater.  A man was hired for cleaning the building and bringing in fresh water in a 10 gallon can for drinking.  He also had to haul in coal and start the big stove in one corner of the room, which was used to heat the entire building.  He had to come early to get it warm enough for us to study.  We had two recesses per day and an hour break for lunch.  We played games outside, and sledded on a road that ran in front of the school when there was snow, which was very often.  I wasn’t the best softball player, so when they chose teams, I was one of the last chosen.  (Can you hear the violins playing?)

Our social life was mainly Sunday school parties (quarterly).  We had Ward dances two or three times a year.  They hired a 3 or 5 piece band and all the family came to the dance, babies and all.  Mothers would nurse their babies and put them to sleep in a secluded and dark corner, or in the supply closet.  There were more watchers than dancers.  I can tell you that I wasn’t a watcher.  I think I came out of my mother dancing and yelling – and I haven’t stopped either activity 77 years later.  Sometimes my partners weren’t my first choice, but mom said it was impolite to say “no” to a neighbor or an ugly kid.  I tell you I’ve danced with some ugly boys.

I lived at home until I was 17 years old, and then I left to work for two years.  Then I finally went to U.S.U. where I met grandpa and got married when I was almost 20.

I had close friends in middle school and thereafter but before that time, my best friend was probably a gal named Odetta Gardner. Her mother was my mother's niece, although they were the same age and very close friends.  We used to have sleep-overs.  They had a field of grass that they used to feed calves, and they would irrigate it by flooding the entire field. It was so much fun to get into shorts and run and slide on the grass. Because it was pasture grass, they didn't care if we packed down the grass. When it was wet, it was very slippery.  Man it was fun, fun, fun.  We sometimes made honey candy or taffy and stretched it.  Every farmhouse had sugar, honey, cream, or vinegar and that was all that was needed for either batch. Maybe that is when I started growing my sweet tooth.

Grandma and Grandpa Lasson died when I was 10 years old, so my memory, hearing any of their history, is very vague.  I think they came over for the church.  At the age they were when I knew them, they were not active in the church.  My grandpa Lasson (your great-grandpa Lasson) was president of a bank in Fairview, and had holdings in a mercantile store.  He was pretty well off financially, and had this ranch out in Birdseye, one big cattle ranch.  When he decided to retire and go back to Fairview, he divided it among his five sons.  It made the ranches so small that it was a marginal living for everybody.  The four of them stayed on the ranch.  One left – Uncle Glenn; he was an engineer and his wife didn’t like ranch life much.  There was Uncle Art, Oscar (my dad), Uncle Dolph, and Uncle Bernard.  They all had adjoining cattle ranches that were given them by Grandpa Lasson. 

Even though they were small, couldn’t they see that they couldn’t make a living on these ranches?

Well, it was during the depression, and everyone was hurting.  They were doing as well as anyone else around them, if not better, because they always had the eggs and milk and meat that they produced. 

I was born in 1926. They were living in the old homestead, (what we kids called the old place of Grandpa and Grandma Lasson).  They moved to the present home in 1932, when I was six.  They lived there every since. 

What brought my grandparents to the United States?
At ten, I was not interested or never asked.  I know Grandfather donated to the church, and he had two sons that went on missions, so he certainly was active.  In the later years when I knew them, they had each suffered from a stroke.  I never knew both of them to be up and spry.  One was either down and bedridden or the other was. By the time I turned ten, they both died.  They were very stern, big-framed people, not heavy, and not an ounce of fat on them.  Your great grandpa Lasson was heavier-set than your grandpa Lasson and your great Grandma Lasson was about as tall.  She was a tall lady, kind of a mannish frame.

So Aunt Edythe was built like them?

Yes, she was, but Edythe had more weight on her.  Great Grandma Lasson wasn’t fat at all; she was just big framed.  I imagine she weighed 150-60 pounds and was 5’ 10”- 5’ 11”. She was a tall lady.  Almost all her sons were tall.  With her daughters, one was short and one was tall. Aunt Marcell was built just like her mother.  They had two daughters who lived in Fairview.  They were both married, in Sanpete County.  .

What is your earliest memory?

(With a wink) When I was born I came out a kicking, and as fat as a pig.


When my mother (Ursula Spencer) was born, grandmother didn’t know she was pregnant. She was 47.

How do you not know you’re pregnant?

Mother came from a large family.  They thought it was a tumor.  They thought she’d gone through the change. The tumor kept growing.  Grandmother was thinking she was feeling life, and the doctor said, “Oh, tumors move.  With your body movement, the tumor can move”.  They only would go to a doctor when they’re dying.  They didn’t go to doctors all the way through the pregnancy like you do now.  She must have gone into labor.  They thought the baby was dead and laid the baby on the bed. They just went to work on grandma, so they set the baby aside.  They were so surprised to find a living baby. 

Ursula Spencer was born in 1897 and wasn’t baptized until 1912.   I’m not sure why she was baptized so late. I don’t think her folks were active.  I believe she was introduced to the church while she was living in Payson, going to school.  She was baptized when she was fifteen. Her mother died in 1910.  They lived up the canyon. Mother went down to Payson, and lived with a cousin to go to school.  They didn’t have a school up the canyon.  During the school year, they’d have to go by horse and buggy. I don’t know how often she would come home, but I know she got her schooling down in Payson.  When her mother died, they took Ursula out of school.  She returned home to take care of the ranch.  She had a brother, John, who had gotten married.  His wife had died in childbirth.  So John had a baby to take care of.  He worked on the sheep ranch there with his dad, and so my mother was needed to take care of this baby, and to feed her brothers and dad.  So her education stopped at age thirteen.

So grandma wasn’t really happy as a child?

No, she wasn’t.  She loved it going to school.  She had long black curly hair.  She sang and had a beautiful voice.  They had her singing in every ward in Payson. She did a lot of performing. Mother wasn’t shy, and so I don’t think it bothered her.  She was short, and thin, and if that wasn’t a cute little moppet, tiny with that long dark hair to her waist, and singing away. She went out of the limelight to a grumpy, grumpy father and a brother that expected food to be cooked, meals to be on time, and the baby to be taken care of. 

I don’t remember Grandma as being negative.

No, she really wasn’t.  She had a good attitude.  She had a very poor, if not non-existent, education on childbirth, having a family, standards, raising a family, maturing, puberty.  She always had a negative outlook on sex, which was always nasty to mother.  There was no beauty in it at all, but she never had anyone teaching her about intimacy.  I don’t know where that attitude came from, but maybe because she lost her mother, and her mother had been ill before that.  No one ever talked to Ursula about it.  She formed her old conclusions.

Mom had elementary school in Indianola, and lived at home.  It wasn’t until later than she moved into Payson for school.

My Mom adored her mother, absolutely adored her mother, and always looked at her as a saint, but then she probably thought anybody who could live with her dad had to be a saint.  Grandpa [Hyrum Spencer] was very mean to my Mom [Ursula].  Mom only had one dress for everyday and one dress for Sunday (so evidently they did go to church).  After her mother died, Ursula asked him if she could get material for a dress to make.  He said, go get a gunny bag, and go make a dress out of that. That’s all you’re worth,

Their wheat and all their grains used to come in gunny sacks and that’s how they fed their animals, so they had a lot of gunny bags around.  Their flour used to come in flour sacks.  We used to unpick those flour sacks and make dish towels out of them.  Mother used to do it for years and years, and then she’d embroider on a corner, like the days of the week.  It was really popular to use your flour sacks that way, but not gunnysacks - they’d scratch you to death.  My dad said Grandpa Hyrum Spencer (who went by “Hy”) was really an ornery man, and dad wasn’t one to voice an opinion.   As long as Uncle Frank (Ursula’s favorite brother) could remember, he never knew of anyone to say a good word about Grandpa. Grandpa was just an ornery, ornery man. 

I think Mother had a real hard time tending her brother’s baby because she would have had no milk.  They didn’t have formulas like they do now, so the baby was cross a lot, just from not getting enough to eat.  Mother had the baby and took care of him until he was six.  She even tended him after she married.  When the boy’s dad remarried and took him away from her, it just about broke her heart.  (Cherri writes: I looked up John Spencer on the family search, but didn't find out much. He is listed as born 14 Oct 1886 in Payson, Utah, Utah. His death is listed as 2 July 1979. It shows a marriage to Nellie Hoytz on 26 Jun 1911, no place listed. It doesn't show any more info about her than that, although a search on just her name shows birth Abt 1890 in Payson, Utah, Utah. Both items were in brackets, which means they are a guess. It shows him with a wife named Marie Good, but no marriage date, children, nothing more.)

Ursula was 19 when she got married, and Oscar was 29.  They lived on neighboring ranches.  Spencer’s were the next ranch after the Lasson’s ranch.  They lived to the north of Uncle Dolph.  His ranch was set way in.  You go over a bridge and the ranch was over against the mountain next to a spring.  There was Uncle Dolph’s, then Uncle Bernard’s, then into the old homestead.  Uncle Glenn had it, but then Uncle Bernard had it, but he’s dead now.

If my dad were alive, he would be a hundred and nineteen.  He was born in 1887.  He was the third child, so they’ve all died and all their wives are dead – all except for Aunt Marcel.  She was born in 1896, maybe she’s dead then.  Uncle Bernard died in the last five years. 

Wasn’t Uncle Bernard there when Ward Lasson died? 

Yes he was.

When Marilyn Kay was born, I was with Mother.  I was ten at the time.  A few months before delivery, we were over at Fairview at Grandma Lasson’s.  Mom saw her doctor out on the sidewalk, as we were going through town, so she stopped and said, “Would you like to deliver a baby in October, out at the ranch?”  He said “Yes, how are you doing?”  She said “Okay.”  He said, “Are your feet swelling?” and she said, “No.”  He said, “Let me know when it comes.”  That was her only pre-natal treatment, complete.

Doctor Rigby came out.  I remember Mom moved the big bed into the living room.  They sent us kids in the bedroom.  Aunt Ray (married to Uncle Frank) was there helping.  We came out and saw this little red baby just screaming and squalling; we thought it was the cutest thing that had ever hit the ranch.

Francis Marion was known as Uncle Frank.  He lived on the Spencer farm where mother grew up, Uncle Frank stayed on the farm, next to the Lasson farm. 

The Lasson brothers all got along well.  They would start harvesting at one end of the ranch (the one that matured earliest to the latest) and work their way to the other end.  Whosever property they were on, that’s who cooked the dinner for the hay men.  When they were on our property in August for the hay, that’s when we cooked for the hay men. 

[Whenever we have too much food, Lee will always say, “I’ve cooked enough for the thrashers.”  Cooking for the hay men must be the motivation behind that phrase.]

When they had a haying crew, they had to have a lot of men.  We would have the brothers and their sons who would work on the ranch.  We would cook for them a big full cooked meal: potatoes and gravy, meat, salad (cabbage/pineapple, carrot/apple, canned fruit with bananas/orange, whipped cream dressing), vegetables,  hot rolls  and dessert.  (We had carrots a lot as you could store them  or we had canned corn, peas and carrots, cabbage, home canned string beans.)  It was like a Sunday dinner.  I used to love it when we had the hay men, because we ate so well, but then we had to do the dishes. It took forever. 

The brothers didn’t have trouble working together until the brothers had sons old enough to have a say in the work.  They would complain, “You’re not just going to pay me $4 a day, or I can go elsewhere.”  The sons didn’t want to put in the time for the minimum wage that they were given.  The thought was that they were earning a share of the property, but some of them just had girls, didn’t have any boys, so it wasn’t fair, as the girls would marry and move away.  Plus, when some children moved away and others stayed, it was hard to know how to divide the income.  Uncle Dolph had girls, never had any sons at all.   He didn’t want to pay wages on the other sons just because he had girls.  They never let the girls work in the fields, some of the other farms did, but the Lasson’s wouldn’t.

The girls would bottle fruit and can. Plus, they were busy at their own farms, and when it was their turn, they had all the men to feed.

When the brothers started having older sons, they wanted a say in what was happening.  Ward was one of the oldest sons and he took it for quite a while. When the other cousins got older, then they started having troubles with the family business, too.  I remember Ward griping about it, but Dad would just say, “No, that’s just how things are.” 

As a child, I can remember Mother and Dad arguing a lot about Dad smoking.  She absolutely hated cigarettes. Smoking was very common;  I know her brothers smoked, too.  She just hated the smell.  She just thought it was just a dirty, dirty habit.  Probably because of the church too, she thought you could live without it.  I remember witnessing their arguments.  She just sat there crying.  I think she was frustrated, too, because I wouldn’t go to bed, but I can remember watching her cry and feeling so upset. Later on, he started chewing.  He went from being a heavy smoker to a heavy chewer. Later, he gave smoking up completely.

We had no electricity in my home when I was growing up. We used kerosene and gasoline.  When I was younger, we didn’t even have running water in the house. 

I remember going outside for the latrines.

I don’t think we got the telephone until after I graduated from high school, that was in 1943.  We didn’t have television at all.  We had the radio.

We had a television in Iowa in 1959 that was color, I know we had one then.  Color TV’s were introduced in 1951, but they weren’t that common at first.

With your parents, was money an issue with them? Did that come off a lot as reason not to do things?

They just never had it.  Everyone was in the same boat.  In the Fall, if the cattle prices were up, they’d sell cattle, and they’d get maybe $6000 – $10,000 dollars, and if they were out of debt, then that would carry them over the next year. If they were in debt, they had to pay half of that back on the debt, so it was a never ending cycle.  Dad never paid tithing.  He said “I don’t have any gain, I’m in debt.”  Mother used to pay tithing on her income, but dad never did. 

Mother worked in the school cafeteria as a cook, and then she drove her touring car down each day to Spanish Fork to pick up the Kindergarten kids and bring them home up the canyon.  I was in high school, or maybe Junior High.  She paid tithing on her income.  Dad said he wasn’t clear, he was always in debt.  As long as I knew, he was in debt.  We didn’t know it so much as kids, because if our car wore out, we got a new car. Because we lived so far from everybody, we just couldn’t afford to have broken automobiles.  We were out there remote.  We would always buy the old cars from uncles that had more money.  The oldest uncle (Art) had no children.  He retired early and went to live in Fairview.  He had it pretty well off.  Art married his older brother’s wife.  His older brother committed suicide, hung himself, there on the ranch.  Uncle Art married his brother’s widow.  She had four children, by her first husband.  He helped raise his nephews and nieces, but he didn’t have children of his own.  He was older, and just had more time to accumulate money.  Plus, I think he was just a better manager.   He didn’t have children that he was putting money out on.  I think there was some kind of inheritance the kids got, too.  Anyway, he was well off, and Grandpa Lasson was well off.  When Grandpa Lasson was alive, they used to borrow from him.  Cars were only two or three thousand, so they would ask him to borrow money for a car.  My parents were always in debt, either to grandpa or Uncle Art.  It wasn’t to banks; the debt was kept in the family.  We didn’t feel that we were any poorer than anyone else.  When people would drive by, they’d think we were wealthy because they would see miles and miles of cattle, but they all belonged to separate families.  People would say it was the Lasson ranch, and others thought it was one ranch.  We never had the stigma of being poor; we always were known to be well to do. Fellow people and classmates thought we had a big ranch, but the truth of it was not there.

My sister Edythe went to Salt Lake to work.  She went to be a housekeeper in a wealthy home, maybe a nanny, but that’s what she did for a year.  She left home at seventeen. She had finished high school.  She’d gotten in an accident with some date she was on, and got a lot of road burn in her skin, it really roughed her up. Edythe came home and mother took care of her for a little while when she was maybe eighteen.  Dad said he would borrow money to send her to Snow College, as she needed to get in a better environment. I guess the fellow was drinking. I didn’t know the details.  Edythe went down to Snow College for a year, and that’s how she met Edith Goulter, Ward’s wife to be.  The two Edith’s were roommates.  She introduced Ward and Edith.  Edith Goulter introduced her to Bud Dame, from Fillmore.  The girls would go to each other’s homes for weekends, and so the two Edith’s were close, closer than sisters at that time. 

I also went to college.  I stayed in Spanish Fork with a girlfriend, and we went to BYU every day on some kind of public transport, a trolley car or something (Bangerter, I can’t remember the name of it).  This was during WWII, and there were no fellows at BYU as the draft was so heavy.  It was just like a girls’ school, except for the 4F-ers, the guys who couldn’t pass the draft.  It was plain boring going to school, when I was so used to dating in high school and junior high.  We had a friend that was a telegrapher in San Jose in California.  She called us and wanted us to work down there.  She could help us get a job.  She said, “Come down here.  There are all kinds of servicemen down here”.  Zola and I both went down to San Jose, and got work at Moffat Airfield.  We were thrust among the men. 

My folks were not happy with the decision to travel to California. Mother wouldn’t even see us off, but Zola’s mother went down to the bus station with us.  Zola was the only daughter, and I think she thought, “Whatever Zola wants, she can have.” We went.  I worked there a year, and then Zola met the fellow that she married on the naval airbase.  He was over at our apartment every night, until like 2:00, and that was for the birds.  It was just a one bedroom place; the bed was over in the corner.  They would sit on the divan and visit and whatever else they did.  I didn’t date a lot there – as least nothing serious, and I would try to go to bed.   It wasn’t any fun, so I decided to go home and go to school – this time to Utah State. I had two old boyfriends that were going to USU, and I thought maybe my chances were better there.  USU had a reputation of having more men than women at that time, so off I went.

I had only been there two months before I met Rex.  I was dating someone else at the time. Bob was my roommate’s neighbor from Ogden.  I met your dad in February, was engaged in April, and married in August.  That was the end of my education.  That summer I worked in the capital building as a secretary to an extension agent.  Rex was up there milking cows, June, July, August, to try to get some money for wedding clothes and such, and Electa and I worked  in Salt Lake where we had an apartment.  Rex would thumb rides down to Salt Lake, and we’d go on a date, and then he’d thumb a ride on down to Payson where his folks lived.  He had no car.  In fact, we didn’t have a car when we got married. 

Your grandparents, what did they do for a living? 

My dad’s father was a banker.  Mother’s father was a sheep farmer. The Lasson’s were considered wealthy next to them.  They only had one small herd and a small farm, and just barely eked a living on it. 

Were your parents glad you got married? 

Well, I think they were glad.  When you got up to your late teens and early twenties, they thought you should be getting married off.  When you started getting up to age 21, you were thought of as an old maid. They don’t think that way now, but they did then.  There weren’t many lady missionaries then, as women were usually married by twenty-one.  As soon as women matured, that was all there was: homemaking and raising kids.  There was no encouragement to get a career or to finish college.

Was marriage what you thought it would be?

I was thrilled to get married, but I used to wake up with nightmares, thinking, “How could a piece of paper make this stuff legal?”  I had been told all my life by my mom that it was terrible, that it was bad, and I’d wake up thinking, “Did I sign that piece of paper that said I could do that?”  I’d go to bed knowing it was okay, but then wake up with dreams where it didn’t seem like it could be okay.

I worked to help put Dad through school.  After I got married, I was a stenographer for the USDA. There were seven scientists that were studying entomology, soil, pollination, irrigation, germination.  It was a project with two beekeepers, an etymologist, geologists, and a hydrologist.  The federally funded project was the first time they worked together, and I was their first secretary. I don’t think they had any idea of the load they put on me.  I had to have seven copies of everything I typed, six carbons.  You think of how much pressure that was.  Anyway, I worked there three years, and then I had Craig.  When Craig was about 15-18 months, we went back to New York. 

When I was first working, I was just going to work until Rex got his BS, but then Doctor Zundel(?) wanted him to get his MS,  I got pregnant - we planned to be done but then we went to graduate school. It took Rex two years to get his masters, at USU and in Provo.  That summer we lived in Provo, taking care of his celery plants for his thesis, but the degree was from Utah State.  It was hard on Rex, as Craig was such a cross, cross baby. Rex almost lost it.  I was home full-time so it worked out okay. 

Was Vicki a good baby?
Cherri was the best baby, as she sucked her thumb.  Vicki was just kind of irritable; she wanted attention all the time. 

What do you remember as your happiest time?

I think my happiest time was after the birth of each child.  I was just in a state of euphoria. For some reason, that was just extra, extra special to me.

Did you always want five children?  I always wanted four.  I didn’t want them too close together, and I didn’t want too many.  You first four were planned. I guess that was why I was so happy when you got here. 

I can remember when Cherri was born in May.  Everyone used cloth diapers, and so we’d wash baby clothes every day when you were little.  I remember it was in June and I would look out on the clothesline and see the clothes on the clothesline.  I remember thinking that was a beautiful sight, all those clean clothes flying in the wind like little kites.  It was a good thing I took so much satisfaction from motherhood, as there wasn’t much else.

Was your mother a good cook?

She was a very good cook, but very limited, she’d had no one teach her.  She learned some from her mother.  Her mother was a really good southern cook. Her mother was born in Council Bluffs, Iowa.   I think her family was from Kentucky, so a lot of mother’s recipes were southern.  One of my favorites is the white gravy and fried chicken.  She had good basic recipes, and didn’t do much else.  I find myself doing the same thing.

Did you milk cows?

They had milk cows, but I never learned how to milk.  Mother knew how.  She was a fast milker, even faster than dad.  A lot of times, she would go out and help them milk.  They had maybe ten or twelve cows.  They had a separator, over in the barn.  They would sell the milk and cream separately.  They had a milk truck that would come out to the farm every day.  They would lug them out to the road, and they’d come and pick it up.  Don’t ask me how they kept it from going sour.  They had to take a bucket of hot sudsy water and wash out the buckets.  You know how milk sticks like glue if you let it dry on things.  Oh, it was hard  work.  They would go over and clean up the buckets every day.

Ward ran the ranch.  He worked at Geneva Steel, and he would work ten days and then have long weekends, like four days off.  That’s how he farmed.  He didn’t have milk cows.  I know they had chickens and pigs, because they always had to go take care of them. 

They would slaughter them in fall, and have pork, ham and bacon.  They would kill a beef, and half of it they’d give to a brother, and keep the other half.  They had no way to refrigerate it.  They’d just hang it out on the roof of the house and the cold air would freeze it.  The next season the brother would kill a beef and reciprocate.  They would just bring the big quarter piece in and cut off their steak, or roast or whatever.

The half a beef outside – was frozen.  You would take the whole side down and grandpa (her dad) would take a hammer to a knife to force it through the meat.  They had a flour sack that they would cover it, so spiders (or whatever) wouldn’t get on it.

The sausage was canned in bottles. That was a treat. That was really good sausage.  In the winter months, Mother would make a whole meal around it. Or we would come home from school and make sandwiches out of it.

We ate our chicken in the Spring – Spring fryers.  We would get 30-40 baby chicks a year.  Once they got a red comb, so we knew they were roosters, we would catch them with a wire hangar and fry them up and eat them. The hens would be put in the chicken coop for eggs.

I can only remember having chicken two or three months in the Spring, though we had meat year round.  I can’t remember EVER being without meat.  We were big meat eaters – meat and potatoes

 Pork had more treatment.  They salted it down and had to smoke the hams.  The bacon wasn’t cooked.  The bacon was real, real salty.  They had to par-boil it to use it, because it was too salty.  It was really good bacon, but they had to salt it as a preservative.  There would be a big barrel just loaded with salt on the back porch.  They’d put the meat in it and leave it outside.  It was done in the fall, when it got cooler.  In the summer, we had chickens.  The meat was seasonal, so they would preserve it.  In the fall, they had turkey that they’d trade for.  Mother’s brother, Uncle Frank, ran sheep, and sometimes the sheep would have twins and wouldn’t accept one of them.  He’d give it to Mother, and she would bottle feed it with a pop bottle with a nipple on it.  She used to feed it until they got grown, and they’d slaughter them.  We’d eat them, and that would be our mutton.  So we had a good supply of meat and eggs, milk, and cheese and butter.  They’d give you back your cheese and butter from the creamery, instead of paying it out in the money.  We didn’t make our own butter, although I did do it a time or two; we had a butter churn.  I don’t even know why we made it, but I can remember helping make it, but we didn’t do it for our use.  Dad had a great love of butter, and he said there was no way he was going to live on a dairy/cattle farm and not have all the butter he could eat.  When he had butter he had a slab of butter, it wasn’t thinly spread.

When your mother died in 1969, she died of what?  I know she had heart problems, but what did she die from?
An aneurysm of the brain, I don’t know what they put on her death certificate. 

Didn’t you say she lost a lot of weight?
Yes, she did, she had pneumonia several times, she was in and out of the hospital for the last two or three years.  She was 71 when she died.  She’d have been 72 in November.  She died April 1, 1969.

I heard you say once that Grandma (Ursula) Lasson had epilepsy when she was pregnant.  Did she have any episodes when she wasn’t pregnant?  No.  I didn’t know that until Edythe told me about twenty years ago.  I didn’t know Mother had epilepsy.  I knew she had some kind of seizure thing, Dad used to call them fits.  She’d only have them at night, and I could remember hearing them through the wall.  Our bedroom was only one wall away, and their brass bed rattled.  All my growing up years, I always had a fear of mother dying.  I think it was because I would see her with these fits and didn’t know what they were or what caused them. I would think each morning that I was happy she was still alive.  I lived with that fear.  I was ten and I would go into the bedroom, and dad would be really upset trying to get her calmed down, and trying to keep her from swallowing her tongue. She was actually having a seizure, he didn’t call it that, and I don’t know if he knew that was what it was.  Mother evidently knew what it was and told Edythe that.

On her mother (Grandmother Sally Elmer Spencer’s) death certificate it said epilepsy. 
We knew that Grandma Spencer had epilepsy, but not on my mother’s case.  I don’t think it said epilepsy.  They knew that term, and Mom didn’t have any medication for it and so if you had it people knew it.  I can remember Dad having mother grasp onto the brass railing of the bed.  He’d say to me, “Don’t take hold of her hand.  She’ll break your hand.”  He’d take a wet cloth and wipe her brow and her mouth.  She might have been frothing at the mouth.   I’d stay with dad until she stopped, and then I’d go back to bed.  I’d think, “She might not be alive in the morning”.  I don’t remember the other kids being in there with me.  The baby would sleep in a bassinet in my parent’s room.  Electa may have been there, I just can’t remember. 

Was Edythe gone when Marilyn was born?  I know Edythe graduated from high school at seventeen.  She didn’t particularly like high school, so I know she was anxious to be on her way.    She may have been there one year.  I can remember sleeping three to a bed for one year, no wonder she was ready to go. I always slept in the middle. I don’t know why. I guess because I was the middle child, but I was a bed-wetter, so they had miserable nights with me.  Still, they’d have me in the middle of the bed.  Ward slept on a cot, and the baby was in a bassinet in my mom’s room. 

Dad was very quiet, and unless things got really bad, he didn’t have an opinion.  He’d say, “Talk to your mother.”  Or “Go to your mother for money.”  Mother dominated the family, in activities where kids were concerned.  Who actually ruled the roost and money was Dad, but as far as governing the family, it was Mother.  She was a pretty good manager.

So would you say your mother and dad were pretty happy?  I’d say so.  She wasn’t in love with him when she married him.  She just wanted to get away from her brother and her dad.  This was an option, probably her first date.

I’m not sure how they got together. I think he just came a calling.  He would come over and sit on the back porch.  He was very, very shy, and extremely quiet.  All of his brothers were really outgoing and had forceful personalities -  strong, strong personalities.  Dad didn’t really have a personality.  He was just really quiet.  He just worked.  He loved to work, and that is what bothered Ward.  Ward thought the brothers dominated Dad and took advantage of him because Dad would never stand up for his rights.  He felt like they walked over Dad, because he was so quiet and easy-going.  Dad was the middle child, I think.  There were two sons and a daughter before him.  I never knew my oldest uncle. I only knew Uncle Frank and Aunt Nellie.  Uncle Ole Edgar died in 1915.  That was before I was born.  Grandfather’s name was also Ole.  I don’t know why Ole Edgar committed suicide.  He was 33 when he died.   Dad wouldn’t talk about it.  It was just hush, hush.  Mother was the one that told us; it wasn’t Dad.

Ole Edgar’s  (known as Edgar or Ed) wife married the next younger brother.  Ed had four children.  I don’t know if they were adopted by the brother, but he raised them.  One was a beautician, one was a nurse.  One went into bookkeeping, banking, and another went into a Ford dealership in Mt. Pleasant. 

Did you keep in touch with cousins when you got older?
When I was a young married, I did, but we were back east for schooling, and up to USU.  We just lived a long ways away to keep in touch with people.

Family life

Grandpa and Ward did all the yard work, and the women stayed in the house and canned, and that is just how you divided the work.  The actual yard work was done just by who they could get to do it, but the farm work was only done by men.  Mother would sometimes gather the eggs, and if they were in a pinch (like if Ward was out of town), Mother would go help milk. 

For fun, we went horse back riding.  We would go down in the field when they were stacking hay, and ride horses around the newly stacked hay.   We were pretty busy until early afternoon.  By the time we got up, and got chores done, it would be two o’clock before we were free.  We mopped the kitchen floor every day, and waxed it.  We got beds made, and made dinner by 12:30, and then had to clean up from dinner. Sometimes we’d go out in the field, or stay around the house.  Mother did a lot of visiting, and if the friends had kids our age, we’d go too.  On Tuesdays, they had Relief Society in the homes.  Every Tuesday afternoon, we’d be in someone else’s home for an hour or hour and a half.  We always went. I don’t know what we did, but we always went when we were little.

What kinds of games do you remember playing as a kid?  Pick up sticks, Red Rover, tag, Merry go round, Joseph, Joseph.  I don’t remember anything fancy.

We played with dolls, but not a great deal.  Electa did a lot of sewing.  She was extremely gifted with a needle and thread. She would get a doll and make doll clothes for it, all sewn by hand.  She’d make up patterns, and cut them out.  She would spend hours and hours and hours making doll clothes and playing with her doll.  I would get absolutely bored to death with that. I wanted to be outside.  I liked to be outside better than inside.  Electa liked to crochet and knit, and mother loved to crochet, so she and mother would spend hours sitting in the living room doing handwork.  I did a little, but not much.  Electa was red-headed and would burn really easily. When she went outside, her face would go almost brown all over, one continuous freckle.  She hated the freckles.  It was a treat if she’d come out and play and with you, but it had to be after the sun was down.

We played softball at school, but not at home. Grandma would play card games with you, Big and Little Casino.  Grandpa would play solitaire by the hour.  He would never do anything to entertain kids. He was just pretty much a serious provider.  He loved the kids.  He just didn’t feel it was his role to entertain them.

After we got married, we would see the folks three or four times a year.  We didn’t have a car when we first got married, and Rex would have research and stuff that he didn’t want to leave on Saturday.  Plus, we didn’t have the money to pay for gas to come down and back.  When we came down, we would have to go to both sets of parents, so it just felt like a quick trip.  I know when Mother was in her early sixties, she would tell us, “Don’t just drop in.  Let me know if you’re coming so I can get some hotdogs and buns, and we’ll have a wiener roast in back.  She’d stopped cooking. Dad had a really bad stomach, and so he was just eating boiled eggs and porridge.  She’d say, “I don’t have a roast, and I don’t have anything in my house.”  She’d eat bread and butter and fruit.

Dad had to have candy in the house, and he had his pockets full of candy, all the time.  It was usually wrapped taffy.  You couldn’t go there night or day that he wouldn’t pull out a piece of taffy for you.  It might have been dented and wrinkled, but it was taffy.  Dad loved Coke.  He said a coke would settle his stomach.  He would keep a Coke by the side of his chair, and eat candy and coke.  He might have had a soft-boiled egg and that would be his diet the rest of the day.  The single bottle of Coke would last all day.  It would go flat and warm, but he just liked to have it there. 

We went to church every week.  The priesthood would go early in the morning, and then a neighbor or someone would take you later for Sunday School.  You’d go home and have a meal and come back in the evening for sacrament meeting.  That’s a lot when you’re up the canyon, and then Relief Society would be held Tuesday, in the afternoon.  Women didn’t work (outside the home) much.  Grandma worked, but not until after everyone was grown. I don’t know of anyone else that did.  If you live on the farm, you’re pretty busy.  The fellows would milk, then they’d come in to have breakfast, then you’d have to do something with the milk, separate it and put it in containers. Then you’d gather the eggs and take care of them. Monday was wash day, and mom would wash all day Monday.  She had a gasoline washing machine, but she had to heat the water outside on a bonfire.  They’d put on a big round tub, she’d lift up buckets of water from the well and fill the tub.  She’d do all the clothes through that first batch of water.  Then she’d reheat the water for a second washing.  She’d do two washings, then two rinses - a warm one and a cold one.  Then you’d do the wringing.  It was an all day job.

I used to love Monday, because Mom would put on a hambone and pink-eyed beans.  I used to love coming home from school on Monday’s because I would smell my favorite dinner.  They had their hot meal at noon.  When we were in school, we had school lunch, but we didn’t have a hot meal at home during the week.  For breakfast, we had juice and toast, or whatever.  Our bus came at 7:30 in the morning, and we didn’t get up any earlier than we had to.  In the morning, we didn’t sit down and eat breakfast, we were always running late.  Mom and Dad would eat breakfast after Dad got done with his chores in the morning, but we were gone to school. At night we would piece, we would have bread and milk, or a dish of fruit and bread and butter.  Sometimes we’d cook up some bacon.  Mom didn’t cook a lot.  We had a big Sunday dinner, and then when we had the hay men in the summer, we had a big meal.  When it wasn’t summer, the men were off working and had their big meal at noon.  The women would just kind of fend for themselves. 

Did you change clothes every day?
No, you’d wear weekday clothes then Sunday clothes.  For school, you’d change clothes, and at home you wouldn’t.  You didn’t change underwear everyday either.  Tuesday was ironing day.  They would heat it on top of the coal stove.  You’d have four or five in different sizes of irons.  You’d put some on to heat and then use one until it was cold.  The same handle fit all the irons.  I had one of mother’s for a while, but I don’t know where it is now.

I was in high school when World War II began.  It broke out in ’41, and I was a sophomore.  The boys my age weren’t going, and I had dated all the way through high school and junior high and I didn’t know what it was not to have a date.  The boys nineteen and older were drafted, they didn’t have a choice.  Only the 4-F-ers were around.

I liked school and I was a good student.  I was interested in college, but I wanted to have fun at the same time.  I didn’t want to waste money on just a girl’s school. Gad, I’ve got to get more for my money than just education!

Do you remember when Pearl Harbor was bombed?  I think we heard it at school, and of course when you got home it was all over the radio. I was in San Francisco when they announced the end of the war.  Then, I came home and went back to college, I figured I might as well get both, a husband and an education at the same time.   But the husband was the end of education. No wives went on to college.  It wasn’t like I thought, “I’ve got a lot to offer.  Don’t pull me out of school”.  It was just a fact of life.  You got married, and you helped your husband through college.  Now, I think it is unfair to the girls, but then that was what everyone did.

So when did Zola get married? Zola got married two weeks later than I did.  I was on my honeymoon.  She was my maid of honor.   She had been dating the guy for over a year, but he wasn’t a member of the church.  He was from Pennsylvania, and he was Czechoslovakian.  He was in the navy and his parents didn’t speak English.  She asked me to be her maid of honor, but we were going on a honeymoon with another couple.  We didn’t have a car, so we couldn’t control the timing.  The girl we honeymooned with was a cousin of Rex’s.  We had double dated with each other.  In fact, it was their car we used all the time we dated.  We got our engagement rings the same night.  She had a reception one night.  We had a reception the next night, and then we took off.  We stopped in Logan to harvest string beans before we left. Rex had planted a garden that summer, and he had string beans.  We froze them.  When we went to eat them, they were the toughest beans you ever did eat.  We finally ended up throwing them out. 

We went to Canada for our honeymoon, down the Oregon coast, and then to California.  We were gone for two weeks.  We were traveling all the time.  It was a dumb way to have a honeymoon.  We had two drivers, and I guess we thought we could see a lot of country. We didn’t have cars, and gas was rationed during the war.  The fellow had just gotten a new car through his uncle.  To have a new car to go driving in was a luxury.  We slept in motels along the way.

I was closest to Electa.  Because Kaye was so much younger, I took on more of the mothering role with Kaye.  Anytime Mom and Dad left, I babysat.  I even felt that mothering role after Kay was married. When they got married, they didn’t have anything.  He was at USU going into forestry.  She was really young and wasn’t trained to do anything. 

I was trained in high school: typing, shorthand, and was quite good at it.  I was one of the top students. I had taken bookkeeping and could run a general office. The first year of college, I took business classes.  I probably had about three years of office training between high school and college.

I am not sure when I was baptized, but I do know it was in the winter or early spring in the river near the Church in Birdseye.  I thought I would freeze to death as I shivered and shook for an hour.
I was born in a private home and delivered by a midwife. I was a chubby, fat little female.  Mother already had one son and daughter, so I wasn’t new.

My earliest memories were when I was around four years of age.  We lived in a three-room old house on the Lasson  farm.  We all slept in one bedroom…that is Mother and Dad, Ward, Edythe, myself, and Electa.  We had a cellar outdoors where we kept our dairy foods cold and stored the potatoes and carrots for the winter.  We also had an outdoors bathroom, a three-holer, a short distance from the front door.  We had only one entrance to the house -  definitely a fire hazard.
I have a bowl that was my Grandma Spencers.
We did not have a telephone until I graduated from high school.
The ranch had a little stream flowing at the bottom of the hill, and we used to pretend we were fishing.  We did catch many minnows with our hands.  There was no lawn.  We had one big tree out by the sheds, and Dad had put up a rope swing. We had a huge barn, sheds, chicken coops, etc. We had cattle, horses, milk cows, pigs, chickens, sheep and dogs and cats.
We shopped once a month at a Co-op.  We traveled to Fairview, Utah, to shop.
My father is Neils Oscar Lasson.  He was born in Fairview, Utah on June 26, l887.  At the time of his death, he was living alone. The stove he was using burned fine coal.  It backed up on him and smoked up the entire house.  No fire appeared and his son (who lived a short distance away) didn’t find him until the next morning.  He died of smoke inhalation.  He died December 6, 1975.  He was 88 and ½ years of age.
My mother is Ursula Spencer Lasson.  She was born in Birdseye, Utah on November l2, l897.  She died in the hospital in Payson, Utah from a brain aneurysm.   Our son, Steven, was just a baby in arms at that time, but Mother and Dad got to see him before she passed away. She died April 1, 1969.  She was 71 years of age.
 Mother was less than five foot tall and was on the heavy side.  Dad was around six foot tall and was quite slender.  He was bald headed as long as I can remember. Both were very even tempered.  Mother was much more outgoing and loved people.  She liked to go places and visit relatives.  She had a keen sense of humor and was fun to be around.
Dad was head of the house, but Mother had a great influence on his decision-making.  She was the neck that turned the head. He was a farmer and cattle rancher.
Dad stressed honesty at all times.  His word was binding, and he was a fair-dealing man.  He said to do nothing that would discredit the Lasson name.  He was very proud of his heritage.
For fun, we went to movies, visiting relatives, going to see my father’s parents, picnics, etc.
I read very few books.  I read all my assignments in school and was a conscientious student.  I got good grades all throughout my school days.  We did not have electricity and so we had to read by gasoline or coal oil lights.  They were very, very poor excuses for light.  We went to bed by eight o’clock each school night.  We got up early but had to wait for Dad to build fire in the cook stove to warm up the kitchen.  Many a time, we let down the oven door and warmed our backside a wee bit.
As children, we knew all the nursery rhymes and fairy tales, which perhaps explains why I have always loved poetry. I cannot remember any scarcity of food.  Mother was a good cook and made cookies very often.  We often helped Mother when she made the cookies.
We had very few toys and I cannot recall any favorites. I had favorite horses and cats.
As children we played, tag, spin the bottle, pick up sticks, horse back riding.