This is the home in Hailey, Idaho where my mother lived with her family. She moved out in 1942 to go to business school, then to Biola, and then to live with her sister in Salt Lake City. A year or two after she left, this family home burned. What was left after the fire is what you see here.
My mother was the fifth of eight children, so when she lived in this house, there would have been at least three of her siblings and her parents living there, too. From the photo, it looks like it’s a single room with an added lean-to. It would have been just a little cramped, wouldn’t it?
My mother’s note on the back of the photo says, “Bldg at right is where cow kicked Thelma [my mother’s name] out of doorway.” By the looks of it, the cow may have had a roomier home than the family.
As you can see, my mother’s family was dirt poor. People were poor during the depression, but her family was poorer than most. She felt, growing up, that her family was the poorest of all the families around and I think she may have been right. Even as an adult, she was a little embarrassed by the poverty of her family.
When she was in first grade, my mother was invited to an after school birthday party for a girl in her class. She only had one dress and my grandma washed it out by hand every evening, hung it to dry overnight, and then ironed it every morning. My grandma didn’t want my mother going to the party wearing the dirty dress she’s worn all day at school, so she wrote a note to the teacher asking that she be excused a couple of hours early.
The plan was to wash, dry, and iron the dress so it would be fresh and ready to wear by the time the party started, but the teacher refused to let my mother go home early without knowing why she needed to leave, and my mother was too ashamed to tell her. She didn’t want her teacher to know that she had only one dress, something the teacher must have already known, since she wore the same dress to school every day. So my mother sat in school all afternoon, worrying about how she was going to make it to the party, and feeling different—somehow worse—than all the other little girls.
As it turns out, her mother and older sister managed to get the dress washed and ready just in time for the party, but I don’t think my mother ever forgave that teacher for her insensitivity.
When she told this story, my mother always contrasted this callousness with the thoughtfulness of her second grade teacher. My mother had borrowed a sweater from her much younger sister to wear to school one day, and looking back, she said, it must have been way too small for her. But at least it wasn’t just the same old dress she always wore. Her second grade teacher noticed the sweater and told her that it was lovely. My mother never forgot how thrilled she’d been to be singled out with a compliment on something she was wearing.
My mother always made sure that my sister and I were well-dressed. Much of our clothing came from the missionary barrel or other second-hand sources, but she saw to it that our outfits fit and matched and were in style. It was, I think, her way of protecting us from feeling poor—and somehow different—as she had when she was a child.