Remembering My Mother and Dad, Alice and Evan Jenkins - By Ann Jenkins Staker

Remembering My Mother and Dad, Alice and Evan Jenkins - By Ann Jenkins Staker

Remembering My Mother and Dad, Alice and Evan Jenkins

By Ann Jenkins Staker

July 7th, 2001

My assignment was to share my memories of my mother, Alice Hawkins Jenkins for the Evan Jenkins Reunion. It is difficult to speak of my mother without also remembering my father, so I will refer to both from time to time.

Alice Hawkins Jenkins was born January 20, 1882 at Samaria, Idaho to William E and Margaret Thomas Hawkins. She was the sixth child of a family of twelve. My father, Evan Jenkins, was the first child of Evan and Ann Williams Jenkins. He was born June 14, 1878 to a family of nine.

Our country was still recovering from the Civil War in those years. Elder John Taylor, the senior member of the Quorum of the Twelve, was presiding over the Church at this time. Brigham Young had passed away in August of 1877 and Elder Taylor was not sustained as President of the Church until 1880. He served until his death in 1887.

Utah was a territory in 1850, and became a state in 1896. Idaho was a territory in 1863 and became a state in 1889.

The earliest picture of my mother was the family group picture taken in 1885. She was a happy, delightful, tag-a-long child to her father. She was “Daddy’s Little Girl”

My mother would tell us of the Washakie Indians coming to her parents’ home when she was a child. They were begging for food, sometimes even begging her mother for one of her “white papooses.” They would sit on the wooden steps, chanting mournfully and begging for hours, only going away after she would share some of her flour and honey with them.

Wild animals were prevalent in those days. Coyotes, bears, bobcats, and deer were numerous in the nearby mountains and would come down into the valley often. Rattlesnakes seemed to be everywhere. My mother was terribly frightened of them throughout her life.

My mother was five years old when her oldest sister, Mary was married to Samuel Mitton. Aunt Mary was just seventeen and very homesick, so she asked her parents if she could have her little sister Alice come and stay with her in Wellsville, Utah. Her mother consented and this little blond five year old brought much joy and comfort to her sister. My mother (Alice) would often go and live with her sister Mary throughout her young life whenever Mary needed her. During her teen years she lived with her at times and attended classes in Sewing and Physical Education at the Brigham Young Academy in Logan, Utah. There she learned how to construct her own patterns, becoming an excellent seamstress. These skills served her well as she provided for the needs of her own large family in later years.

Mother used to tell us of the times as a child she would sneak quietly behind the white picket fence of her home watching my dad (Evan) as he herded the cows along the road. He was about 11 years old at the time and she was about seven. She would whisper under her breath, “Hello little Evan Jenkins with the cow shit hat!” My dad wore a little tam hat, which was distinctly Welsh. In fact, he spoke only Welsh until he entered grade school in Samaria. My mother’s heritage was English and Dad’s was Welsh and the English and the Welsh had no use for each other. My dad often said, with a twinkle in his eye, that if he had known she had made fun of him, he never would have married her.

One spring day, her brothers were looking after the calves in the pasture. The younger ones were riding them when my mother joined them as an onlooker. They asked her if she would like to ride one and she replied, “Yes, I will! Ok, yes I will!” They put her on a calf, facing backwards and gave her the tail to hang on to. These brothers collapsed in peels of laughter at the terrified expression on their little sister’s face as the calf lunged forward. After about a half dozen bucking lunges, she fell off.

Mother remembered with fondness, going to Primary with her mother and young brothers and sisters, picking up all the children along the way in the white top buggy with the fringe on top. Sundays were busy. The older children helped the younger ones prepare for church. They attended their meetings together dressed in the “Sunday Best”, and always arrived early. Those dear parents were ever faithful and true to the gospel of Jesus Christ and their examples were always there for the children.

In the summer, their little community and the surrounding hills were ablaze with wild flowers. They picked red bells in the meadows and forget-me-nots, lady slippers, bluebells, and sego lilies among the sagebrush.

When my father was courting my mother, he called on her in a two-wheeled cart, pulled by a white horse named Dick. Later he came calling in a buggy pulled by a horse named Fanny. In a short time these horses, Dick and Fanny, just automatically turned into the Hawkins place when coming down that road.

Their courting days were filled with dancing. They danced the Virginia Reel, the Polka, the Quadrille, the Schottische, the Varsuvianne, and the Rye Waltz. They both loved to dance, but their favorite was the Waltz. They were a handsome couple. My father was tall with black hair and blue eyes and my mother was a tall blonde. There were Sunday chicken dinners, strolls down “Lovers Lane”, which was a lane down between the rows of apple trees in the orchard, and long buggy rides together.

They were married in October of 1902 in the Salt Lake Temple. The wedding festivities included a dinner and gathering of my father’s relatives. My grandfather Jenkins loved my mother. The cherished name he called her was “Allie.”

My parents moved to the Snake River Valley in 1908. Mother came by train to Idaho Falls with two little sons in hand. My father traveled by team and wagon (a hayrack with sides on it) with all their worldly possessions on it – a kitchen stove, a bedroom set, a table and chairs, and a trunk. They owned nine head of horses, which they brought with them. My mother’s 14-year-old brother Seth helped my dad with this move. It took them three days. Their new home was a four room, log house with a dirt roof, nestled in a thicket of trees near the town of Ucon, Idaho.

Mother worked shoulder-to-shoulder with Dad in good times and bad. When the depression came in 1929 she sought ways to help support the family, lucky for us that we lived on a farm.

I overheard a conversation my parents had while we were riding in the car in 1929. My dad said he had been offered $6,000.00 for his potato crop, which would wipe out all their debt. They discussed it and decided to hold out for a little longer to see if the price would improve even more. Within a few days, the market crashed and they never raised their heads above the debt again until they left the farm.

Our mother could do most anything! She was an excellent nurse to our family. She administered Caster oil and orange juice or Epsom salts for a “physic” and total bed rest. She nursed us back to health with oatmeal gruel and chicken broth. She survived five of us with whooping cough all at once and numerous other contagious diseases. Not one of us broke an arm, or leg, or even our necks during our growing up years.

She was also a psychologist for sure, but was never a student of that subject. When she needed to discipline us she would send us to cut our own willow switch. Then she would often wait a whole day before using it on us, giving us time to “think” about our misdeeds.

When Dee and I were little children playing in the garden one day, we came upon our oldest brothers, Evan and Bill, having a terrible knock down, drag out fistfight on the bridge located below the orchard. They were shouting and threatening each other. We ran to the house for our Mother as fast as our little legs could go and followed her back down to the orchard and hid behind the berry bushes. When she saw the situation, she literally threw herself between them and said, “Hit your Mother instead!!” The fight was over!

Mother was a wonderful cook. Our meals came from our garden and the meat we could produce from our farm. She canned at least a thousand two-quart jars of fruit every fall. The shelves in our cellar were lined with those jars, which provided for us, and many others during the winter season. Hay men and threshers loved to eat at our table during harvest season. She served homemade pie, cut in fourths, even offering seconds. She made apple, pumpkin, custard, gooseberry, rhubarb and raisin pies. They were “melt in your mouth” good.

Life was real and our needs were meager. We were living on a farm, raising a big family with little or no money during those Depression years. Once Don was about 14 years old and came into the house one Saturday morning stating that he had a ride with one of the neighbors to Idaho Falls. He asked Mother for a little money. She said there was a quarter in the sugar bowl in the cupboard and he was welcome to it, but she asked that he bring it back. He happily took the quarter and put it in his picket and went to town. Two or three hours later he returned from his trip to town, walked into the kitchen, put the quarter back in the sugar bowl, and said, “Thanks Mom!”

I cannot end this without telling you about Mother’s buggy and “Old Bawly”, the horse. Together, they were her independence in transportation. She never did drive the car and refused to learn. She delivered cream and her homemade butter to customer in Idaho Falls and traveled for her church callings with the youth in both the ward and stake. After serving the youth and leaders of the church for 18 years, it came time to retire the buggy and Old Bawly.

We played in that buggy for hours. One day Dee decided he could make a chariot out of it and so he did. He was about 10 years old. He removed the top, the seat and the back wheels, leaving the buggy stripped to the flooring, with an open back end. We had our chariot!! There was many an afternoon we traveled the dirt roads with glee, North, East, South, and West in a square mile radius surrounding our home. Dee would hold the reins of the horse trotting along and I would hold the horse’s tail standing beside him.

In the fall, we scattered sacks for Dad for the potato pickers, going up and down the long rows and bumping across them in our chariot. How could I ever forget…we had so much fun for a couple of years and then all too soon, we were the ones picking those potatoes. Thank you Mother and Dad for our chariot!

My brother Dee never forgot the day of the tragedy he had at school in the first grade. Our mother had him wear a pair of MY winter underwear with the buttoned “back door”. YOU CAN GUESS THE REST OF THE STORY.

During the early 30’s mother came home on a late afternoon after a day’s work selling foundation garments (corsets) with a surprise for Dad. She had purchased a pair of Gumboots for him. He had irrigated the farm the whole spring and summer in his bare feet. That had no money for boots for him. I can still see him to this day with pant legs rolled below his knees, bare footed, hat on, the shovel over his shoulder, going to the fields to set or change the water on the crops. As she unwrapped the boots, my Dad, standing beside her leaning on Spencer’s car, started to sob and cried out, “Why did you do this for me?” Those of us watching shed tears of happiness for our Dad and Mother that day. This was our Mother.

Times were tough, first the bank notes, then the Mortgage Company and finally a double mortgage on everything and then a foreclosure at our very door! It was mother who pulled us through these stressful times, going outside the home to help sustain us.

Early one evening we were getting ready for a Halloween masquerade party and dance. Mother was helping us and all of a sudden she said, “I’m going with you!” We replied, almost rejecting her, “But you will be out of place. Do you really want to go?” Mind you she had worked for years with the youth of the church. We didn’t understand the spirit and the love that was still there. She said, “I’ll be ready. Don’t worry.” She made a mask out of dough, cut tiny slits for eyes, nose and mouth. Then she put on a garb that was unbelievable and a great hat. How she anchored the dough mask on her face I’ll never know. Off we went to the party. We were sent on ahead of her and told not to linger near her. The evening progressed. This “Mystery Person” sat on the sidelines and the doughface became wrinkled and old, so old no one knew who she was the whole evening, until we were ready to go home. She had such a great sense of humor!

Mother had a handicap we didn’t know about. One day she had an itching in her ear and asked Seth to check it out. He took her over to the kitchen window for more light and with a thin hairpin he removed some wax and could see something beyond that. He cautioned her to stand very still and carefully proceeded. She smothered a distressful cry and said, “Seth, what are you doing? My ear is tearing apart!” He removed a thing black bug with a hard shell about a third of an inch in length, which was quite well preserved in earwax.

It was then that mother recalled years before, when she was 9 or 10 years old, sleeping on the floor in the home of her sister Margaret in Samaria. She awakened with a horrible fluttering in her ear and a pounding earache. They put warm oil in her ear and finally the pain stopped and soon it was forgotten. This bug had been in her ear for over forty years!

She was a perfectly good, beautiful Mother to us. She was witty and always happy. She could turn any cloud into a silver lining. All who knew her – brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, children, grandchildren neighbors and friends, loved her.

She was faithful in her church callings. Her life was forever a testimony anchored in the truths of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.