ENID SUPERNAW AND VAYDES BRUECK
Oral History Interview
Interviewed by Susie Montgomery
April 7, 1999
Transcribed by Mercel Day Nickerson
SUSIE: This is an interview with Enid Johnson Supernaw and Vaydes Johnson Brueck. They are sisters um the interview is going to be about their time in Kanab and living in Johnson Canyon and their experiences there. It is April 7th 1999 and my name is Susie Montgomery. Could you say, just introduce yourselves so I can see if the microphone is picking up your voices.
ENID: I am Enid Supernaw and I was raised in Johnson Canyon, and lived there in the summer time.
VAYDES: I am Vaydes Johnson Brueck and I lived there in the summers until I was 17 and we homesteaded part of the ranch so I lived on a homestead.
SUSIE: Thank you. So I'll start with you Vaydes and I guess, um, we'll start this interview by talking a little bit about Johnson Canyon and um.. um. Seeing that you were there, since you were a little girl can you tell me a little bit about the history of Johnson Canyon.
VAYDES: Well it was uh used to be called the Spring Canyon Ranch because it had so many springs in it, and my Great Great Grandfather was one of the first settlers and so it was eventually named Johnson Canyon because of him. He and his brothers settled over there and he also began quite a few towns around this southern Utah like Pinturia, Enoce, Cedar City above Cedar, Hillsdale, up by Bryce Junction not the one by Colorado City, and uh let's see what else. Anyway uh, he and his brothers had ranches there before anybody else did, and eventually why, it was, there was a town begun there and because the state highway ran around that way and so it was named Johnson, and uh as a child I know they still had the post office there, there were many springs, every home there had it's own spring., and uh. Then some enterprising soul decided that their was too much flooding so he widened, took his plow and widened the little creek that went down and so naturally floods widened it till we had this big wash that we have now and it drained many of the springs, but uh I remember quite a few houses there and there was a post office and my father when I was a child uh drove the mail between Kanab and Johnson. Was it once a week?
ENID: Three days a week.
VAYDES: Three days a week, I couldn't remember, but that's all....uh.....
SUSIE: So your Great Great Grandfather what was his full name.
VAYDES: Joel Hills
SUSIE: Joel Hills
VAYDES: Johnson uh huh.
SUSIE: Joel Hills Johnson, and then your Great Grandfather was who?
VAYDES: Nephi Johnson, but he didn't live there too much, and our grandfather was the first representative from Kane County and he uh wanted to get the strip, you know where the Arizona Strip is. He wanted to get that annexed by Utah because it was so difficult for southern Arizonans to get up there it was mainly Utah cattlemen who were the people who lived there and the only way you could get through to southern Arizona was by way of Lee's Ferry, which is over on the east side of the county but he was unable to get anyone interested in Northern Utah.
SUSIE: hum. You mean in Northern Arizona.
VAYDES: No in Utah when he was a representative see, and a well known Arizona author Charlotte M. Hall, got wind of it and so she got the Arizona people interested in keeping that strip.
SUSIE: I see. For cattle purposes.
VAYDES: Well just part of Arizona. She wanted it kept.
SUSIE: Uh huh, There was a problem with water there though wasn't there, on the strip.
VAYDES: Well yes, but there is water there and the cattlemen form Utah used it, they still do.
SUSIE: Oh I see, I understood that a lot of wells in Fredonia were salt water wells and they drilled they got salt water right on the border there and I was wondering...
VAYDES: Alkaline um hum, but they seem to be doing alright now.
SUSIE: There is probably a lot of fresh water around...
VAYDES: yeah uh huh right.
SUSIE: Huh That's interesting. So um your talking about your Grandfather doing this so he was a cattleman. Is that right?
VAYDES: Yes he began the ranch where, my, our cousin has it now, but he began the rance where, uh, we grew up and it was called Sun Up Ranch. Because he liked that, he liked the sun rises there, and he uh, my father and his other son Lamar, huh, did some homesteading to add to the ranch and that's why we lived on a homestead, until I was seven, before we moved to the main ranch.
SUSIE: I see. Huh. Do you have anything right now you would like to add, Enid, about what you remember about Johnson Canyon and [recording unclear}.
ENID: Well I know we lived up in the dry farm for a long time in a homestead, I guess I wasn't very old when we first went up there but I remember it, ah what a good time we had up there, and and of course we had relatives that would stop by frequently and and it was pretty well traveled highway for the times and so many people would stop by and get water because we had such good water and then our dad raised a big garden so everybody that stopped by went away with arm-loads of produce and melons and what-have-you apples we had a big apple orchard, and so we spent so many days picking up apples. That's the way our day started, picking up apples, and we dried them.
SUSIE: Uh huh. What process did you used to dry 'em? While we're on the subject. How did you do that?
ENID: Just put 'em out on a big scaffold and out in the sun shine.
SUSIE: Out in the sunshine?
ENID: Uh huh..
VAYDES: And we raised Cattle and we had 80 acres of alfalfa, and it was a cattle ranch. I remember specially the round-up's. Don't you Enid?
ENID: Uh huh. I made a note of that.
VAYDES: It's all the local people met and the local ranchers met because we had, I guess, more room there and the cattle was all you know they'd find the cattle in the brush and they'd bring them all into the ranch and then the local cattlemen would cut out their brand, and so that's where we had the round-ups every year.
SUSIE: I see, now what did your brand look like?
VAYDES: Well...
ENID: Let me tell about the... We also had a lot of sheep herders come by with their sheep. And they used to have a lot of sheep in this area, but they don't anymore because I think over- grazed it.
SUSIE: Yeah it kinda went from sheep, then, to cattle.
ENID: Well they had both.
SUSIE: Uh huh.
VAYDES: We didn't have sheep on the ranch.
ENID: We didn't have sheep, but so many of the people would take them down to the strip and then bring them back in the summer. They'd put them down there in the wintertime on the winter range. So they would always end up by giving us a lamb or two, that wouldn't keep up with the herd.
SUSIE: You guys can leave this microphone, this way, you don't have to do it this way it should work just fine. Vaydes is drawing the symbol of the, the branding symbol for your family.
VAYDES: They had the same name so this is why they had this brand. And I forget Uncle Mar's brand at the time, do you? Don't remember it.
ENID: Oh gosh I can't remember it now.
SUSIE: So everybody. So tell me in detail about a round-up. What would happen? So all these guys would get all the cow's from all over and bring 'em in and corral them into this one area on your ranch.
VAYDES: Uh huh.
SUSIE: And was it a big [recording unclear] like festivity where you were looking forward to it.
VAYDES: Heavens no it was too busy it was hard work [laughter] And, uh, Mother would usually cook for them wouldn't she?
ENID: Yes same way with, uh, wheat when they would cut the wheat then the threshers would come by and, uh,
VAYDES: Rye we raised. Wasn't it rye?
ENID: Wheat too and, uh,
VAYDES: Oh, I guess
ENID: And uh, then she would cook for all the
ENID, VAYDES: threshers
ENID: Neighbor. Neighbors come in some around
VAYDES: See one man used, uh, we did a little farming too, but one man owned a thresher and so he'd go around to different ranches that's why they did that way, and the bailing was the same way, one man owned a bailer and so they'd go around to the different ranches and then they would take their pay, wouldn't they, in so much produce?
SUSIE: I see so it was a real barter system.
ENID, VAYDES: Yes. Right.
SUSIE: And a community effort.
VAYDES: Right
SUSIE: That's interesting, that's unique to Utah, I think, compared to maybe a ranch in Wyoming where everyone seemed to have their own private system going. There was a private system going in each end of Utah ranches as well but it seems like you depended on each other more.
ENID: Yes.
VAYDES: Well, see, Utah ranchers farmed, too, more, possibly more than many cattle ranchers I know living in Arizona, that many of the cattle men were just cattle raisers they did not do any farming on the side, but in Utah we did because we became self-sufficient that way.
SUSIE: I see.
ENID: We didn't have the water in Arizona that we had either.
VAYDES: No, true.
SUSIE: Uh huh. So I know, um, this is kinda going back but you mentioned Lee's Ferry, and I remember it was, I think it was a Warren Johnson who manned that ferry for a long time.
VAYDES: Wasn't a relative.
SUSIE: No Wasn't a relative huh, I was wondering about that.
VAYDES: No.
ENID: No. Different Johnson. Different Family.
SUSIE: O.K., Well then we'll skip that whole part because you probably won't know a whole lot about that, I met a guy named Gary Johnson, Justice Gary Johnson.
VAYDES: That was his grandson.
SUSIE: Yeah and so I'll get that information from that side.
VAYDES: Er, great grandson, I guess it would be. Yeah. They can tell you more about it
SUSIE: Yeah. So um, up in the canyon where you were homesteading you did farming and you mentioned dry farming, can you tell me a little bit about dry farming and what the difference was from your regular farming.
VAYDES: That would be the wheat wouldn't it Enid? And [recording unclear].
ENID: Yeah wheat. Uh huh.
VAYDES: Wheat and [recording unclear].
ENID: Don't have to irrigate.
SUSIE: You didn't have to irrigate at all.
VAYDES: No.
ENID: And we also raised a lot of alfalfa and of course that had to be irrigated.
SUSIE: Right.
VAYDES: That was 80 acres of that. Uh huh.
SUSIE: Big Field, so now this dry farming,, um, what would you do with the produce from the dry farm.
ENID: Oh just, sometimes they would sell it if they had a good year. Most the time they just kept it for their own use.
SUSIE: Right, I was wondering about that, whether, uh, you ever, I know you gave away the apples. Did you ever sell the apples or did you ever sell your produce at all.
ENID: Oh yes, yes
VAYDES: Used to sell the dried apples to the sheep and cattle camps, Remember?
ENID: Yes.
VAYDES: Uh-huh.
SUSIE: The sheep and cattle camps?
VAYDES: Uh-huh, because the dried fruit that's what they wanted because that's all they could keep.
ENID: Yes all they could carry, yuh know.
VAYDES: Yeah
SUSIE: So that's interesting, so you were in an area where everyone was taking their animals to graze up in this area and so there would be a lot of camps around is that how it worked?
VAYDES: Well, see it was, uh, much of it was, uh, well it's BLM now but , uh, government land and see they didn't have spacial places then to run their cattle, I mean now you have to be carful where you graze your cattle, but then, I mean, you grazed them all over except on people's land, see, I mean where it was personal land. And so therefore at, at round up time why they had to go find them and then they'd move them to different places, too, in the winter, for other grazing we had big meadows and they'd graze a lot of that in the winter.
ENID: I always wondered how they could ever find some of those cattle.
SUSIE: I know [laughter]
ENID: But they did, and how they would know whose belonged to who, but they did.
VAYDES: Well
SUSIE: Maybe the brand on there.
ENID: Well the brand, and like our dad said, "Well they have their same old habits of going the same place all the time"
VAYDES: The one's that haven't been branded, mavericks.
SUSIE: Was that something that hasn't been branded?
VAYDES: Right older calf that hadn't been branded.
SUSIE: Oh that's interesting, I never knew that, never heard that before "Maverick"
VAYDES: That's an old western term [laughter]
SUSIE: Well I'd like to um, I'll start with you Enid and just if you could give me your birth date and tell me a little bit about your perspective of the family into which you were born and what you remember hearing about your birth and that kind of thing.
ENID: Well I was born here in Kanab April 29th 1919, and I, my mother had a hard time with me she had a hemorrhage, and then I think I was 6 months old when I got pneumonia, so I never was very heathy as a child, and but, I don't think it curtailed me in any way, uh. But, and we lived in town in the winter time and go to school and in the summer time we'd go back to the ranch and we had good neighbors up where we lived. We played games with them and, uh, she was good friends with one of the neighbors. I don't think there was anybody my age. Never was [laughter].
SUSIE: What did you do for, I guess up in Johnson Canyon in the summer what did you do when their was so many men around rounding up their cattle and sheep and cattle camps coming. What did you do for chores as a little girl.
ENID: Oh, we'd have to go after the cows and bring' em into the corrals.
VAYDES: We'd get five or six cows going with us.
ENID: Sometimes thirteen, I remember that one summer when we had thirteen, and then we had horses and we'd go out to get the horses in the meadow and usually Dad got so he'd have one handy kept there in the lot so we wouldn't have to run all over the meadow 'cause we had smart horses they let us get right up to them and then they'd run stand and look at us and laugh. [laughter] Oh how frustrated we used to get [laughter], and then we, uh, Dad would milk the cows. We'd run the calves in and round them up.
SUSIE: Wow, yeah.
ENID: They'd turn them out at night as soon as they'd milk the cows and in the morning they'd come back in.
SUSIE: So you milked them in the evening and milked them in the morning.
ENID: Right.
SUSIE: Was that a hard thing to do? Would your hands cramp up? Would it be really cold or what?
VAYDES, ENID: I never milked... [laughter] never milked
SUSIE: You didn't have to milk, ah, I understand that that wasn't really a thing women did if they could prevent it.
VAYDES: Oh, some did, but we didn't.
ENID: Our mother did, but not on the ranch she didn't. but uh, we decided we didn't want to. [laughter]
SUSIE: Oh, really.
VAYDES: I tried to learn but I couldn't seem to get the hang of it. [laugher]
SUSIE: Oh that's interesting, so you did mostly, you, you rounded up. Did you do any gardening, at all?
ENID: Oh yes we had a big garden and we had to irrigate it. And so, we'd, had to cut though the orchard to get to it and so we had, we played lots of paper dolls, and so we had our little houses, individual houses, there . we'd cut paper dolls out of the catalogs and, oh, we'd have a ball [laughter] and so we'd play paper dolls and in the mean time we'd run down to the garden and turn the water and then back up [laugher].
SUSIE: So how would you, when you say you'd irrigate the garden, what does that mean? To me, I can't imagine what that means.
ENID: Well we had ditches.
VAYDES: A big pond out there by the corral.
ENID: Big pond and then we'd have to go and turn the water down in the rows.
SUSIE: I see.
ENID: We didn't have a great big stream so we could let it run quite a while before we had to go down and check on it, see if it was down at the end of the row. Turn it into another row.
SUSIE: And that was your job.
ENID: Uh-huh.
SUSIE: I see.
ENID: That, and picking up apples [laughter]
VAYDES: That was our job.
SUSIE: So Vaydes do you want to tell me, starting when you were born, and tell me a little bit about the family that you remember and your experiences as a little girl.
VAYDES: Well I was the oldest one, so I took, I had to take on a lot of things, and, uh, I always think about, uh, I've had people ask me "How old where you when you first learned to ride?" I have no idea. I remember the only spanking I ever got from my father, I was four years old and my cousin and I were riding a horse, we were running a horse up and down the lane by the ranch, and my father was scared to death, and he came out and hauled me off the horse, and spanked me good because we were running the horse bare back, four years old.
SUSIE: Gee. Holding onto the mane for dear life.
VAYDES: But, uh, we always had a milk cow. We'd bring one milk cow over here in the winter. And so when I, I think I was eight years old when I first drove the cow to Kanab. That was fifteen miles.
SUSIE: Wow.
VAYDES: I'd bring that in the fall and in the spring I'd drive it back. And in those days there wasn't a whole lot of traffic. But any rancher that came by, er, whoever that knew us why they'd stop and see how we were doing, how I was doing. And uh...
SUSIE: You were by yourself.
VAYDES: Sure.
SUSIE: Wow.
VAYDES: And then uh, I got the cows every night, I had to go up in the meadow and bring them down and then when they got older why they helped. But, , then we, uh, did, made a lot of things on the ranch. It was always the apples to pick up every day, and dry whatever because mother wouldn't let anything go to waste.
SUSIE: Right.
VAYDES: And then, our, our grandparents lived there in part of the ranch house for a while and grandma made cheese. We had a big cheese press in a little house, special outside. And so she would make cheese every day.
SUSIE: Do you remember the process of making the cheese?
VAYDES: Yes.
ENID: Oh Yes [laugher]
VAYDES: Then she had this big tub that was kept exclusively for this and then all the milk would go in there I don't know how many gallons. And they would heat it on the back of the stove and rennet was put in it and then, see, that would, sort of coagulate, I guess that's what you'd call it.
ENID: Uh huh.
VAYDES: Like cottage cheese, and they would dip out every little bit of whey, and then we had a big cheese press, it had a thing about this big around, and they put all of that curd in when it was dry enough and then it had a big thing that screwed down on it, what do you call 'em? Anyway, and during the day, it took all day, they would, they would, she would go out and turn it down a little more. And then at night, why, they'd take out this big cheese like this, and it had coloring in it, too, to make it yellow of course. And then over the years, I mean over the days, why, it would get about this big around and about this thick. Well, and we had our little, uh, we didn't have refrigeration of course, but we had this little house out in the back just a few yards form the house, and it had a dirt floor it had thick walls with sawdust in them so it was always cool and they'd sprinkle the floor yuh know and it was always cool and that's where we kept our milk and butter and cheese.
SUSIE: So the sawdust was an insulation?
ENID, VAYDES: Uh huh.
SUSIE: I see, huh, and so this little room was like a cool storage room?
VAYDES: Right
SUSIE: It wasn't underground?.
VAYDES: No,
SUSIE: Huh
VAYDES: When we lived up on the homestead, why we had an underground, didn't we?
ENID: Uh huh.
VAYDES: We called the cellar. But it was, y' know, it had, uh you went down underground and it had shelves down there, and it kept everything cool. It had a sod roof.
SUSIE: What are some other things then, either of you, I'm directing this to both of you but, what are some things you used to make, when you were young girls, that perhaps isn't made these days? What do you remember making?
VAYDES: Cottage cheese.
SUSIE: Cottage cheese?
VAYDES: We made our own cottage cheese.
ENID: Lots of butter. And we'd eat lots of that curd [laughter].
SUSIE: Butter?.
VAYDES: What else can you think of that we used to make Enid?
ENID: uh...
VAYDES: We, we, canned everything on the place of course for winter use.
SUSIE: That was a big job, a big job for the women, all the sisters-in-law would get together and can fruits?
VAYDES: Right. And vegetables.
SUSIE: Was it fun?
VAYDES: Yeah, well, we worked hard but it was still fun. We loved the ranch.
ENID: We did lots of hiking and we did lots of exploring on our own and our dad was always afraid we'd get hurt.
VAYDES: Know it.
ENID: And he was raised with, up by, , a step mother and she was, had so many children of her own, she just kinda neglected these kids and let them do what they wanted to, and so he was over-protective of us girls.
VAYDES: He wanted us to be sure that, that he was interested in our welfare, see, so he over-did it.
.
SUSIE: [laughter]
ENID: Wouldn't let us climb trees, and the minute. he'd get out of sight, Mother'd let us.
SUSIE: Really [laugher] That's pretty funny, huh, but he'd let you ride from Kanab up through the canyon.
VAYDES: Oh yeah we had to. And we'd go down to Johnson, every now , see Johnson was two miles down from our ranch, so we used to go down there now and then, and pick up the mail if they had something special between mail days, that or when Dad hadn't, you know, run the mail somebody else had, so we'd do that.
ENID: And Vaydes and I'd ride up the canyon to visit the Buntings that had a ranch up, what three mile from where we...
VAYDES: I don't remember two or three miles, anyway.
ENID: It was about three miles.
SUSIE: The Buntings?
ENID, VAYDES: U huh. Yeah.
ENID: And, uh, and we'd drive down through Uncle [recording unclear] Hamblin's down at the point of the mountain. About five miles down and visit them. Vaydes and I always did.
VAYDES: Called Hell, it, he named it Hell's Bellows because the wind blew all the time.
SUSIE: Oh really?
ENID: Still does too. [laughter]
VAYDES: She lives there now, she knows.
SUSIE: Oh, that's the ranch you're on now, the Hamblin's?
ENID: Well no but it's about in that neighborhood.
SUSIE: I see.
VAYDES: yeah
SUSIE: I want to hear a little bit about that town, um, you just mentioned it, you'd ride down to Johnson. I'm assuming you mean the town. Is that, what condition is that town in right now?
ENID: There isn't anything left.
SUSIE: Nothing at all?
VAYDES: There's. uh, see the LDS church bought a lot of land in there, and there's a house they built there and then a Macklprang (recording unclear) boy across the creek, his uh, grandmother used to be the post-mistress, he has a ranch there and those are the only one's left aren't they Enid? In the town of Johnson?
ENID: I think so uh huh.
VAYDES: And most of the houses, in fact all of the houses, have been pulled down. There's one old out-building that's still there, but the school house is gone and all those old ones that we remember. We, we remember a lot of the old houses that no one lived in, but they were still there. But they've been pulled down since.
SUSIE: So by the time you were young girls the houses were already deserted.
ENID: Uh huh.
VAYDES: Yes
ENID: The old, uh, church, and the church ranch that old house was there, and it belonged to our, was it Grandpa?
VAYDES: Well it was his brother, it was our Great Great Grandfather's brother who built that.
ENID: And it was such an interesting old house, and then they tore it down a few years ago and I always felt badly because it, should have been left alone.
SUSIE: What was interesting about it? Was it just so old?
VAYDES: Well it was built with Adobe. Yuh know and, uh then it had a, I remember a secret place, do you remember that?
ENID: Yes.
VAYDES: You pulled out this uh, window sill and there was, uh, a recess back in there for valuables or whatever. That was the only one we knew like that.
SUSIE:[laughter] Well that's neat.
ENID: There's lots of petroglyphs around that whole canyon,
SUSIE: That you remember seeing?
ENID: Including ours [laughter].
SUSIE: Really?
VAYDES: I'm afraid so.
ENID: We used to add ours, too.
SUSIE: Uh huh to the actual panels? Yeah, well you probably didn't, you know , you were just young girls, right?
VAYDES: No didn't think about it.
ENID: Well there's still an old cemetery up, where the church ranch is now, up, quite a few people.
VAYDES: Further west.
SUSIE: There's a cemetery? With your relatives?
VAYDES: Uh huh.. The first great, the first Joel Hills is buried there. Our Great Great Grandfather, and then many of his family.
SUSIE: So do you think the reason for the town being deserted, was the fact that that new road was built and no one needed to come that way. Is that...?
ENID, VAYDES: Yep.
ENID: It had a lot to do with that uh-huh.
VAYDES: And Kanab had grown, and so they built the road to Kanab and this was just a by-pass.
SUSIE: Did you notice in your lifetime a difference in traffic, from when you were young until when you were older?
VAYDES: Oh yes, yes much.
ENID: Yes.
SUSIE: When you were young was it horse and buggy going through there? Or, was it cars?
VAYDES: No, we don't go back that far.
ENID: Well, the only family I knew of, Marian Hubert Bunting, Had, uh, uh. Do you remember they had a horse and buggy?
VAYDES: No I don't remember that.
ENID: Don't you remember that?
SUSIE: So everyone had a car up there.
ENID:VAYDES: oh Yeah.
SUSIE: Oh, that's interesting. Now you didn't say when you were born. You were 1919 and when was your birth date?
VAYDES: July the 11th, 1916.
SUSIE: Okay 1916, So yeah I guess at that point car's were. When was the first car in Kanab, do you know what year that was, around what year?
ENID: Oh, I've read that somewhere not very long ago. But I can't remember what it was?
VAYDES: Eh, I'm not sure I remember, either.
ENID: Somebody was...
VAYDES: Nineteen, what? Would it be, much, like it seems like five or seven. Would that be right do you think?
ENID: I can't remember.
VAYDES: Before my time.
SUSIE: It was before your time. There was always cars all your life?
VAYDES: Yeah.
SUSIE: Huh, that's interesting. I'm going to flip this tape over and then we will continue
END OF TAPE ONE SIDE A
START SIDE TAPE ONE SIDE B
ENID: There on the front porch and Mother and Dad would sing. We'd all lay out there..
SUSIE: Oh, really.
ENID: Uh huh. Great family to sing.
SUSIE: Uh huh. Everybody sang all the time?
ENID: Uh-huh.
VAYDES: Yes.
ENID: Always.
VAYDES: It was, their old songs, and then everything that was on the Hit Parade, we sang too. We had the Hit Parade then.
ENID: And we had an old organ over there, and mother used to wake us up in the morning by playing that organ. Ah, they finally, my dad sold it for some movie that was being made. They wanted to take it back to Hollywood. So he sold it to 'em, along with part of the picket fence.
SUSIE: Really? [laughter] huh So you would lay out on the front porch and your, with your. How many kids were there total?
ENID: Well, we had five all together but, lets see, most of the time, it was just...
VAYDES: Three of us.
ENID: Three, and then Phyllis was a baby there.
VAYDES: And we have a sister, Beth, who is two years younger than Enid.
SUSIE: I see.
ENID: So it was just the three of us most the time, doing things together.
VAYDES: Oh, and an interesting thing that I always point out. When I was young you never heard the term "Cowboy". I think it was a Hollywood term later. It was always "Cowpuncher" or "Cowhand".
SUSIE: Interesting.
VAYDES: Mainly "Cowpuncher" wasn't it?
ENID: Uh huh.
VAYDES: And, uh, because Cowpuncher was an old Texas term that they, ya know when they put the cattle on the trains, they had to punch 'em to get 'em up in. That's where it originated. But that's what we called them not Cowboys.
SUSIE: And then after Hollywood influenced the area it became "Cowboys"
VAYDES: Well you hear Cowboys all the time now.
ENID: Yeah.
SUSIE: Hum that's interesting. Well I want you to explain um just because that town doesn't exist anymore, just everything you remember about that little town when you rode down there. There was a post office, you said?
ENID: Uh huh. It was a beautiful area, you went up a big, big lane and trees on both sides and up against the cliff was a, a little house and then, uh, over a little farther from that was a spring, that we always had to go and get a drink of water, 'cause you could open the old door and walk right out there and dip your dipper in and oh that's the best water coming right out the side of the moutain.
VAYDES: It's still in there, now, but the trees are all gone.
ENID: Yeah, the springs there but the, everything else is gone. It was so pretty.
SUSIE: So there was a house there and then on the side there, with the spring? And then what else?
VAYDES: And they kept their uh their uh...
ENID: Milk and...
VAYDES: Milk and stuff in that cave where the big spring was. Had a door to it.
SUSIE: I see. Oh yeah. And how many people were living there about when you were there do you remember?
ENID: Just two that I know of.
VAYDES: Well, there were two families, there was three families one there at, the, where the road crosses, and then the two [recording unclear]. This man and he lived with one wife and his other wife. Ya know polygamy wasn't being practiced anymore. So she lived in a house, oh, possibly several hundred yards below the other one.
SUSIE: I see.
VAYDES: But that's about all there was, wasn't it?
ENID: Uh huh.
SUSIE: And you would spend, you'd go quite a few times to get the mail at the post office.
VAYDES: Yeah.
SUSIE: And someone just worked the postoffice there?.
ENID: Yes, the couple that lived there and took care of it.
SUSIE: The [recording unclear].
VAYDES: Yeah, she ran the postoffice and then our dad would take it to Kanab three times a week.
SUSIE: I see, drive the mail truck down there.
ENID: Just a car.
VAYDES: And then we'd pick it up, we'd pick up mail bags, there was still a lot of the ruins, you know, of houses, and then, every now and then, there was a mail bag in a particlular place there because there was a ranch back up in there particluarly down at the mouth of the canyon there were several ranches still there and uh, people living on them So they'd put their mail bag out there by this old ruin. We had several we picked up that way.
SUSIE: And you'd come and scoop them up.
VAYDES: Uh huh. Yep.
SUSIE: Ah that's neat, I see. So I think we've covered, uh, basically the cows and the road. When you were young, I guess, because you had cars you could travel further. Did you ever go to St.George?
ENID: No
VAYDES: Nope.
SUSIE: No?
VAYDES: We didn't have time.
ENID: Besides the way to St. George. You couldn't go like you could now. You'd have to go clear down through Zion and, uh,
VAYDES: You could go through the strip but it was strictly a wagon road. See the old honeymoon trail lead through there. That they began with, coming up from Arizona to the temple.
SUSIE: Uh-huh.
VAYDES: And, but, it was, ah, heavens we never, went over that. Did we? Until the.
SUSIE: Never traveled that?
ENID: Un huh.
SUSIE: Wasn't that accross the Colorado River at Lee's Ferry, and up through St. George? That's how that went?
VAYDES: Yes uh-hun. Across what we call the strip.
SUSIE: Yeah. So if people were going to from Kanab to St. George. How was that route? How would they have to go? They'd either have to go the wagon route, the Honeymoon tail route?
ENID: Yes they would.
VAYDES: Yeah, because before they built the tunnel and they built the tunnel in 1928 so they had to go though the Strip.
ENID: But I don't think they went to St. George very often.
VAYDES: No.
ENID: They'd go to Panguitch and up that way.
VAYDES: Yeah they'd go to Pipe Spring and they'd go from there down, but it was just a wagon road.
SUSIE: The one to Pipe Springs was a wagon road too.
VAYDES: Yeah/ They did use it, you know, cars, but it wasn't very good, and so it was and many times like she said they'd go up by Panguitch and down that way.
ENID: And then up to the railhead. And what was the name of the town?
VAYDES: Maiorsville. [recording unclear].
ENID: Maiorsville, yes, they had the railway.
SUSIE: Yeah that's where the railway and, yeah.
ENID: Some People going to Salt Lake always went that way, I don't think, not many people went to St. George.
SUSIE: Uh huh. Oh. Well, do you remember ever? Um, what was the first time either of you went to Salt Lake City?
VAYDES: Oh, gee. I didn't go until after I was married, no I did, too. I was working at Bryce when I met my husband and I went up, we went to Salt Lake one day.
SUSIE: Oh really?
VAYDES: That was the first time I'd been there. I was 21 I guess. How old were you Enid when you went?
ENID: I can't remember, I went to Cedar City before I ever went to Salt Lake. I can't remember the first time I ever went to Salt Lake.
VAYDES: Yeah I did too. You could go through Zion to go to Cedar then because they had a good road.
ENID: I think I'd been to California, up a place before I ever went to Salt Lake.
VAYDES: I had, too. I had, too.
SUSIE: Really? That's interesting. Well my question's sort of geared around the fact that you grew up in quite an isolated area, there just isn't a whole lot goin' on.
VAYDES: This is supposed to be the fartherest from a railroad of any place in the US.
SUSIE: Really?
VAYDES: Uh huh.
SUSIE: I've actually heard that but I never knew if it was really true or if, so yeah. But um did you ever feel isolated out here? Did you have a sense of isolation? Did you, were you aware of any.
VAYDES: I wasn't did you?
ENID: Nope.
SUSIE: Pretty happy and self contained.
VAYDES: We had a lot of tourists.
ENID: And we had a lot of family get-togethers.
VAYDES: I never felt isolated.
ENID: And the neighbors. We'd have a, one week where the neighbors across'd make ice cream we'd go over there and, one's come down from up above and stop and have ice cream. No, we always had get togethers and the kid's would congregate and play kick the can and different games.
VAYDES: We were used to this, see.
SUSIE: Yeah, Yeah, It was all you knew. You didn't know any different. Huh.
ENID: And we'd have friends that come over and spend a week with us.
VAYDES: We'd take our cousins over every now and then.
SUSIE: So then when someone would make ice cream they would make plenty for the whole neighborhood.
ENID: Oh Sure.
SUSIE: They knew they weren't making it just for the family.
VAYDES: See, we ah, we didn't have and ice house on the ranch. The people across the creek did. You know they'd put these wide walls with sawdust in and then they'd cut in the winter because it froze more solid, then they'd cut ice on our reservoir on theirs too. And big blocks, gosh it'd be two feet thick sometimes. They'd cut these big blocks and put a layer of ice and then a layer of sawdust over that, and a layer of ice until they filled the house. And see, and. Uh. Heavens we'd have ice most the summer, wouldn't we Enid.
ENID: Well I'll say.
SUSIE: Really?
ENID: Course we always had, always had plenty of cream and butter and all those good things, eggs.
SUSIE: It's amazing you'd keep ice in a non refrigerated way and that's really amazing.
VAYDES: Yep. But we did, they did that way here in Kanab too.
ENID: Yeah. Oh, yeah. All that from up the dam here.
VAYDES: There by Three Lakes.
SUSIE: So, um, you really didn't feel isolated 'cause you didn't know any different. Did you ever feel, were there at any point in your lives where you realized you had been in a really isolated area compared to a lot of different areas in the world and maybe felt that you didn't have as much money or as much materialistic goods or anything where you first remember comparing yourself to, you know, something else other than what you've known all your life.
ENID: I guess we did 'cause we read lots. [Laughter] We were great readers, anything we could get our hands on. And so...
VAYDES: I don't remember ever felt so isolated because we had lots of tourists came through from all parts of the would. And on the ranch see, Grandfather had a house out there by the main gate, and it was a camp house. And people who came, you know, were camping, everybody was camping then of course, and they would camp in there and they always came in and talked to us on the porch, and we'd sit there and they'd came in to get water, and so we visited with people all over the world. Didn't we Enid?
ENID: Oh, yes.
SUSIE: Huh,
VAYDES: But I don't remember being isolated so much.
SUSIE: It wasn't a big surprise to go to a bigger city or anything it was nothing? You didn't desire curtain things like a new pair of shoes? Or?
ENID: Oh we probably did.
VAYDES: Oh we probably did, but we didn't have very much money so.
SUSIE: Yeah it was kinda out of the question.
SUSIE: So, lets go on to education. I haven't talked to you at all about education. You went to school in Kanab during the winters and then would go back up to the ranch in the summers. Were women encouraged to get educated all the way up through collage.
ENID& VAYDES: Sure oh yes.
SUSIE: And what about you Enid did you proceed onto collage or..
ENID: No I didn't
VAYDES: Neither did I
ENID: Couldn't afford it.
VAYDES: Enid and I couldn't afford it, we couldn't find a job it was the depression.
ENID: And our folks couldn't afford it.
VAYDES: We couldn't make it and the two younger sisters went but we just, at the time we couldn't find a job to pay enough to take us. We wanted to but.
SUSIE: Huh. So the depression affected you quite a bit.
VAYDES: Oh, yes.
SUSIE: I always imagined in my own head and this is no, there's no real basis for this, but I always imagined that because you were people who knew how to live off the land and live so frugally that the depression wouldn't have affected you nearly as much as most people.
ENID: It's true.
SUSIE: You were just so used to...
VAYDES: We always ate.
ENID: Always had plenty to eat, that's for sure.
SUSIE: Never, ever were hungry at all.
ENID: Might not had our little luxuries or anything but we surely ate well. Because we raised our own beef and Mother canned a lot of that we had pigs and chickens and things.
VAYDES: All kinds of vegetable and fruits.
SUSIE: So you were fine for food all the time.
VAYDES: Yes so we didn't suffer that way at all.
SUSIE: Was there anything you remember going without during the depression?
ENID: Oh, there's probably lots of things.
VAYDES: Yes, I remember their having a party at school when I was in elementary. I couldn't go, because you needed five cents. I didn't have five cents. And, uh, most of our clothes were hand-me-downs from our aunts that taught school and things like that.
ENID: Mother made all of our clothes.
VAYDES: Made them over from whatever.
SUSIE: She'd get fabric down in Kanab at the store? Or?
VAYDES: Yeah, you could buy cotton for thirty cents a yard. and we always had cotton dresses.
ENID: She was a beautiful seamstress so.
VAYDES: We looked just as. We were dressed as well as anybody.
ENID: Oh yes, better than lot of them.
SUSIE: Would you pick out a dress from the catalog and have her make it something the same?
VAYDES: Yeah because we, I never had a boughten dress until I was, I think, maybe, it was my graduation dress from high school, and I paid eight dollars for it.
ENID: I didn't have one until I was in high school going to graduate but this wasn't my graduation dress. We were having a program and Mother bought this dress for me, first boughten dress I'd ever had.
SUSIE: How did that feel?
ENID: Oh it was great, we thought it great, but I don't think it was any prettier than what she'd made herself.
SUSIE: But the fact was is that it was something you know...
ENID: She made my graduation dress.
VAYDES: Have you still got yours Enid?
ENID: Oh yes.
VAYDES: I still have mine too.
SUSIE: You do?
VAYDES: Yep.
SUSIE: That'd be a good picture to take for sure.
ENID: I couldn't get in mine but I've still got it. [laughter].
VAYDES: So do I.
SUSIE: So, in your best words describe to me your mother, and what her role as a woman was as the, uh, I'll just say as a woman and a wife out on a ranch, and in Kanab in those days?
VAYDES: She was a special person.
ENID: She really was.
VAYDES: And she and dad had a great,uh, marriage.
ENID: A great relationship.
VAYDES: Her brothers were forest rangers out on the Kaibab, that's where I decided, years ago, I was going to marry a forest ranger. I married a national park ranger instead. [laughter] but that's were I got that idea.
ENID: She would go out and cook for her brothers out there. She loved it out there. Well, they ran cattle too, I guess, out there, and she cooked for them.
VAYDES: They just... uh..
ENID: She had a beautiful voice and she could play the piano.
VAYDES: Yes.
ENID: Very talented.
VAYDES: She'd gone to BYU for a year, didn't she?
ENID: Uh huh.
SUSIE: What does she look like?
VAYDES: Oh she was dark and very slender.
ENID: Brown eyes, real dark eyes.
VAYDES: And a lady, I mean a lady in the best sense of the word. Where you'd never imagine her screaming at anybody or drawing attention to herself out in public. And she was always cautioning us to be ladies.
SUSIE: Really?
VAYDES: Uh huh, and Enid's an awful lot like her.
ENID: Oh, dear, I wish [laugher].
VAYDES: Doesn't look like her, but she ...oh, she does, too, look like her. But, she was always blonde, but I mean she is a lot like - our mother.
ENID: We have a mixture in our family, some are blonde and brown eyes and some are blue eyes and dark..
SUSIE: Really?
ENID: Our sister, Beth, is dark, brown eyes, and Phyllis is dark, or was, gray-haired, now, but
she has brown eyes, our brother's blue-eyed and blond, no, he has brown eyes, doesn't he?
VAYDES: Who?
ENID: Ken
.VAYDES: Yeah, he has brown eyes.
ENID: Yeah, he has brown eyes, but blond hair.
SUSIE: Huh, so there's quite a mixture.
ENID: There, really is. Course, our dad was blond and blue-eyed.
VAYDES: I had red hair.
SUSIE: You did?
VAYDES: Yep.
SUSIE: Wow.
VAYDES: Darn near red, anyway, it was red out in the sun.
SUSIE: Uh huh. Well, um, so your mother was very lady-like and musical and a hard worker.
VAYDES: Boy, I'll say.
ENID: Very hard worker. She played, she was the organist in the church for years. Relief Society President. I don't know what all she didn't do....taught Sunday School, Primary, different auxiliaries.
SUSIE: Um hum. What would she do if.....Was there any pioneer member, anyone in the family getting ill, with any kind of sickness?
ENID: Yeah, scarlet fever..
VAYDES: Scarlet fever, mumps.
ENID: I brought scarlet fever home.
SUSIE: You did? Tell me about that.
ENID: Oh, I know ..
VAYDES: I was quarantined for what was it? Six weeks?
ENID:: I think so. I got it and then the rest of the family got it, even though they had us, had me isolated from the rest of the family. Still picked up the germ some place.
VAYDES: Everybody got chicken pox and what do they call German measles now? I've forgotten.
SUSIE: Rubella.
VAYDES: Rubella. That's right. And everybody got that.
ENID: We had measles, whooping cough, we had everything that came along.
SUSIE: You did, didn't you?
VAYDES: Yeah, everything.
ENID: Well, five kids, you know
VAYDES: Except I slept with her when she had whooping cough, and I never got it.
SUSIE: Really?
ENID: That's right, you never did.
VAYDES: Nope, I never did.
SUSIE: So now what would, there wasn't , um, a doctor available very often was there?
VAYDES: Yes..
ENID:: Yes, we had a doctor.
SUSIE: Doctor Norris?
ENID: Yeah.
VAYDES: Yeah, we had him.
SUSIE: And Doc Aiken was next?
VAYDES: Oh, he came when I was, oh, about the time I graduated from high school, Dr Aiken came. But, Dr. Norris he was quite something. I remember I fell in a ....we had an out-building with a cellar in it, you know it had stone steps down into it, and I fell into it and cut a gash in my head. I still have the scar, and he did give me chloroform to sew it up, but later on I got infection in it and he had to, I don't know what all he had to do, but he didn't give me any chloroform
[laughter]
ENID: And it hurt
VAYDES: They told you to, I mean, if you got hurt, and had to maybe have a stitch or two, they didn't give you anything. Just be...don't be a boob, and a baby, and
ENID: Grin and bear it.
SUSIE: Really? They really thought you had to do that.
VAYDES: Sure
ENID: Right
SUSIE: What about, let's see, scarlet fever, I guess you were quarantined and isolated into a separate room and the rest of the family ended up getting it, so everybody was quarantined after that. What did your... caretaker, being probably your mother, was it your mother who took care of you?
ENID: It was my mother, uh huh.
SUSIE: What did she do, I'm interested, I'm getting at, old remedies, I want to talk about what they did in the face of these diseases when there wasn't modern medicine to deal with things. Um, did she do anything specific that you remember when you had this fever?
ENID: She gave us aspirin for our fever.
VAYDES: I can't remember much. Usually if you had a headache or somethin' they put a cold cloth on your head and you lay down, but we didn't have the plethora of, uh, medications that we have now, to call on.
SUSIE: Right. Does the, um, I can maybe stir your memory from talking to some other people, did you ever have a mustard plaster put on your chest, so that was one for what, pneumonia, or
VAYDES: Like congestion or chest condition.
ENID: I used to get one quite often, because I'd had pneumonia, and Mother was always afraid I'd get it again so she always started me on the mustard plaster..
VAYDES: Oh, yeah, That's right. She did.
SUSIE: What was that like? Was it awful, or was it all right?
ENID: Oh, it wasn't bad, as long as you didn't leave it on too long. [laughter]
VAYDES: Yeah, otherwise, it might burn a little.
SUSIE: Would it get a little hot?
ENID: Uh huh.
SUSIE: Huh. What else, was there any kind of herbs that she used for teas to prevent sickness from the garden or anything like that?
ENID: Well, an old standby was green tea because her mother came from England and she was a great believer in having her tea every morning. So whenever we'd get sick, out'd come the green tea.
VAYDES: We hated it.
SUSIE: You didn't like it.
ENID: It's so good for upset stomachs, you know.
VAYDES: Brigham tea, of course, we drank.
ENID: Oh, yeah.
SUSIE: Would you go out and pick the bush, and then make the tea?
VAYDES: Still do that.
SUSIE: Do you? Well, that's interesting.
VAYDES: The Benson Institute at BYU did a test on it, and there isn't a thing in it that will hurt you, but it does have a mild sedative in it.
SUSIE: Hah
VAYDES: But, it wont hurt you at all, and we have sugar and cream in it, of course.
SUSIE: Yeah, I know, of course.
ENID: I always put a little tiny sugar in mine, but not much.
VAYDES: I always put sugar in mine.
SUSIE: Anything else you remember as a remedy of any kind? Well, what did you do for a month, do you remember , when you didn't [recording unclear] anything.
VAYDES: Just waited it out. I remember my, .our, younger sister broke her leg
They'd gone down to the creek, and were digging in the side and the bank fell on them and broke her thigh, so she [Enid] and our cousin who was with us, how old were you, Enid,? You were about ten, I guess
ENID: About that....
VAYDES: Dragged her home two or three blocks,
SUSIE: Wow
VAYDES: And then the doctor wasn't in town,
ENID: We picked her up and carried her between the two of us.
VAYDES: So they had to wait, what, about 10 hours before the doctor got there, and he didn't even give her any anaesthetic, he just went ahead and set it. And then they didn't put a cast on. They never put casts on, they put a weight on that pulled, they put splints, but a weight at the end that pulled and fastened it to the foot board, and it kept your leg down see, well, somehow hers
got out of place, and so he had to re-break it and he never gave her any anaesthetic.
SUSIE: He had to re-break that leg?
ENID: Yeah.
SUSIE: Oh, my goodness that must have been awful..
VAYDES: You could hear her scream for blocks away.
SUSIE: Really.
ENID: She was only in the third grade.
VAYDES: Yeah.
SUSIE: And they basically, so what the weight was, what I'm imagining is a sort of primitive traction. Right?
VAYDES: Yes, right. I started to think of the word. [laughter]
SUSIE: I was thinking tension, I thought, it's not tension, you know. Traction, yeah, that was it.
ENID: She was the same height as I was, and what we weighed the same, people always thought we were twins. So, you can imagine, me and my cousin carrying her home, a block or more.
VAYDES: They literally dragged her.
SUSIE: She was in pain, I would imagine.
VAYDES: Oh, yes.
ENID: I tried to get her to walk and she says, "I can't". [laughter] so we just literally ....dragged her along.
SUSIE: So, that's how they fixed broken bones. That's an interesting story. I would have never heard that one before, I'm sure, not not using casts at all, not using...
VAYDES: No, they didn't use casts, did they Enid?.
ENID: No, just splints.
VAYDES: Splint and the weight. And when, in childbirth, why they usually had them in their home and my our youngest brother, I remember when he was born, and had it at home and no anaesthetic, un huh, Dr. Norris didn't believe in it.
ENID: He did give her some.
VAYDES: Did he?
ENID: Yes. I could smell it. Ether, I think.
VAYDES: Gas or something?
ENID: Ether.
VAYDES: Oh, was that what was it was?
SUSIE: Do you remember the smell of ether?
ENID: Chloroform or something.
VAYDES: Chloroform or something.
SUSIE: How would you, how would he he administer that?
ENID: I don't know.
VAYDES: I don't know, either.
ENID: He probably did [recording unclear] in her nose, I guess.
VAYDES: Saturate something. Um hm, and put it over their nose.
SUSIE: Hm, that's interesting.
ENID: And he was a big baby and she was...how old was she?
VAYDES: She was forty five.
SUSIE: Hm.
VAYDES: So, you don't think much of that now, but they did then.
ENID: Yeah.
SUSIE: Well, um, on another topic, then, would seem as your mother she was a daughter of someone from England, so maybe that was part of her being refined and lady-like.
ENID: Uh huh.
VAYDES: Uh huh..
SUSIE: Did she ever...what did she do for cosmetic purposes. What was. Was there any kind of ritual a woman went through back then that would be different than today? I wouldn't imagine there was a lot of make-up available or anything, so
VAYDES: They couldn't afford it.
SUSIE: Yeah.
VAYDES: A littler powder. Face powder.
ENID: She used a little powder, and a little rouge.
VAYDES: Uh huh. When she could afford it.
SUSIE: What was hygiene like? Talk about hygiene then.
VAYDES: Oh, good heavens. [laughter] We practically boiled everything. Our mother was just that way. You got something on the floor. Forget it.
SUSIE: Really.
ENID: Very meticulous.
VAYDES: Yes.
SUSIE:: Even, yeah, it wasn't exactly easy to sterilize things.
ENID: Oh, no, And see we had our water. We had a well just out across the yard. And we had to carry all the water we used and heat it up on the stove. And we still bathed and everything.
SUSIE: Uh huh. Did you bathe only on one day a week?
ENID: Oh,. no, [laughter]
VAYDES: No. No.
ENID: No.
VAYDES: We usually had two tub baths a week, and sponge baths in between.
SUSIE: Really? That's a little different than most.
VAYDES: It was quite a ritual. And a thing to do, but Mother was very clean.
ENID: A lot of times we'd go down to the reservoir swimming and take our soap and towel with us, when we'd go swimming.
VAYDES: And, we'd have a bath.
SUSIE: Really.
VAYDES: In cold water, but it was still a good bath.
SUSIE: Did you go swimming in there for fun?
ENID: Oh, yes, you bet.
VAYDES: In the nude. There was nobody around but us.
SUSIE: Ah, how fun.
VAYDES: And we had to wear a hat, didn't we?
ENID: Oh, yes. [laughter}
VAYDES: Mother insisted we wear a hat, [laughter] though the rest of us was bare. But we all learned to swim.
ENID: We got so we had neighbors, though, across, the Robison kids and the Judd kids so we had to start wearing bathing suits and our uncle their kids would come over and swim so we had to quit going in the nude.
VAYDES: Yeah, we had to wear something.
SUSIE: So you'd go in the nude with big hats on?
VAYDES: Yeah
SUSIE: Oh, that's so funny.
VAYDES: You never went out of the yard without your hat.
ENID: Oh, never. Never.
VAYDES: See, we had a big yard and loads of trees around, but you never went out of the yard without your hat on. It wasn't good for you.
ENID: She was right.
VAYDES: Right?
ENID: Right she was
VAYDES: .And that's why the rest of us could be bare, though we had to wear our hat. [laughter]
ENID: We never went anywhere without those hats on.
VAYDES: No.
ENID: If we went out in the sun.
SUSIE: What did the hats look like?
ENID: Oh, we always bought a hat before we left town in the spring. Oh, just a big straw hat, kind of well,... I can't, it's just a, wide brim,
SUSIE: Did it have a wide brim?
ENID: A big wide brimmed hat, uh huh.
SUSIE: Just like they are today kind of, straw..
ENID: Yeah
VAYDES: Yeah.
SUSIE: Oh, that's funny. So you did that a lot, I'm going to turn over this tape and continue .
END OF TAPE 1 SIDE B
BEGIN TAPE 2 SIDE A
SUSIE: This is tape two of an interview with Enid Supernaw and Vaydes Brueck. My name is Susie Montgomery.
VAYDES: One of the highlights of one summer, a cousin, her grandmother was a librarian in Cedar and they'd culled a box of books, oh, twice as big as that table, I guess, and they brought
'em all to the ranch, and I'll never forget, oh, we thought we'd fallen into a million dollars.
[laughter]
But I remember some of the books. There was Lamb's Tales from Shakespeare, Stories of the Opera, to mention two.
ENID: Robinhood.
VAYDES: Robin, oh, my gosh, they were just marvelous, we thought. [laughter]
ENID: I remember When a Man's a Man
VAYDES: Oh, yeah, who was that, Harold Bell Wright was a favorite back in those days, uh huh, he wrote Westerns, but we acted out things, I always wanted to be an actress. When I was four, I can remember we had this, up on the homestead, we had this old two by four and I'd put on plays for her.
SUSIE: Really?
VAYDES: She was about four.
ENID: I'm well entertained. [laughter]
VAYDES: I mean, I wanted to be an actress for years, I don't know why, but I did.
SUSIE: Oh, that's funny.
ENID: She was in a lot of high school plays, and she was good.
SUSIE: Really?
VAYDES: I don't know about that, but it was fun.
SUSIE: And so, then, um I guess I'll jump to this it just seems natural. When the movies came into Kanab, you must have been
VAYDES: I never lived here.
SUSIE: You were gone by then.
VAYDES: I was gone.
SUSIE: Oh, 'cause I was thinking that would have been something you would have been really interested in, had you been here.
VAYDES: Nope, I was never around, I was married by then. We lived at Bryce and Grand Canyon and [unclear recording] national monument, then we were in San Francisco for a year.
SUSIE: Life married to a park ranger. [laughter] Interesting. So, for entertainment let's say that you used to do a lot of plays and you used to read a lot of books and you used to swim in the reservoir.
VAYDES: And our paper dolls, that was the main thing.
ENID: And in the old cheese room we had, three of us had a little section so we'd each have our own room, and we used old car seats and , oh, go out and dredge up old pieces of things for furniture, like old bee hives boxes, and
SUSIE: Uh huh.
VAYDES: We had good imaginations and we were always, we'd go down on the creek bank and play, sometimes we were the settlers and drive off the Indians and sometimes we were the Indians attacking the settlers. [laughter]
SUSIE: Oh, that's funny.
ENID: And every time it would rain up above we'd rush over to the creek, we'd listen, wait till we could hear a flood coming down, then we'd rush over and watch it take the bridge out, which nine out of ten times it did.
SUSIE: Really?
VAYDES: Uh huh.
SUSIE: So you'd know it was coming and you'd go to watch the bridge get washed out.
VAYDES: They had these big mud balls and you could hear them, you know, rolling and making a heck of a noise. Do you remember Fort Arrowhead, Enid, up on the hill?
ENID:: Yes.
VAYDES: We found an arrow head there, and it was a ledge and so we pretended that was our fort.
SUSIE: Ah.
VAYDES: And we
ENID: [recording unclear] have great imaginations [recording unclear].
SUSIE: Did you ever , like, hunt arrow heads or have an interest in that stuff?
VAYDES: Yes, yes.
SUSIE: Did you find any?
VAYDES: Oh, you bet. Above the ranch there, why, they, there used to be in my father's time, a Paiute Indian encampment up on the hill. Probably been there for , who knows, and their ancestors, too, so there was plenty of indication.
SUSIE: Uh huh.
ENID: It's too bad we didn't know about this, but later years, after we were grown, why, they went over in those caves , up in the, up in the dry farm and dig out big pots and , oh, all kinds of things.
SUSIE: Hm.
ENID: But, we didn't know about them, so, we'd just go and pick up arrowheads and flint, and
SUSIE: Yeah, which is, you know, which is all right, I mean
VAYDES: Yeah, but I don't go for digging.
SUSIE: Yeah, that's the thing.
ENID: I don't either. We never did.
SUSIE: Neither did I.
ENID: We hiked all over the hills everywhere up there, but we never dug.
VAYDES: Unh uh. Never.
SUSIE: You lived on the area like the Indians did, but didn't disturb it.
VAYDES: Yeah, right.
SUSIE: So, that's kind of a [recording unclear] thing in my opinion.
ENID: Every time we three of uq would get together, four of us, there's four of us, isn't there, four of us would get together, we'd head for the ranch and hike the hills. My mother used to say, "Oh, why do you want to go up to that old ranch?" But, it was special to us.
SUSIE: Really, you always wanted to go up there to play.
ENID: Even after we were grown and married and had kids of our own we still'd do that, and we still do.
VAYDES: Except the house burned down, so it's not like it used to be. But, we loved it, that was home.
SUSIE: Yeah, when did the house burn down?
VAYDES: 1972.
ENID: I didn't remember what year it was.
SUSIE: Struck by lightning, or something?
VAYDES: No, it was some kind of faulty, they had a man living in part of it, and something he did, I don't know, maybe his stove wasn't functioning properly or something.
SUSIE: Or had too big of a fire and it caught, in the chimney and set it on fire..
VAYDES: No water, I mean, nothing, they couldn't get the fire department from Kanab in time, so it just burned.
SUSIE: Yeah
ENID: It was an old house, made out of lumber, and so you can imagine how it went up.
SUSIE: Yeah, just immediately, old lumber. yeah.
VAYDES: Right. Well seasoned. Let's try to think of some of the other things we used to do.
ENID: Went on lots of picnics.
SUSIE: Oh, yeah?
VAYDES: I remember Dad would be so tired he couldn't move, but he loved to go on a picnic, and so we'd go up in the meadow and put a blanket down and he'd lie there and we'd cook supper.
SUSIE: Oh, how fun.
VAYDES: We didn't have very much to cook sometimes, but we always had something. We loved picnics, we still do. We're never so happy any of us, unless we're out in hills.
SUSIE: Really?
ENID: Oh, yes.
SUSIE: Your so very much outdoor girls.
VAYDES: Oh, all four of us are that way. Out. Away from people, and just wandering around together. Oh, man. We love it, don't we Enid.
ENID: [recording unclear]
VAYDES: Watch the light change on the hills. Listen to the birds, we knew all the birds at the ranch and the first thing we did after we moved to the ranch was go up in the meadow and find the nests the new nests, and in the orchard, we had a big orchard, so we would go to every tree and locate all the nests and what bird was there and then we'd watch'em.
SUSIE: Really?
VAYDES: Yeah, that was one of our
SUSIE: So you are so in tune with nature.
ENID: Uh huh.
VAYDES: Yeah.
ENID: You bet.
VAYDES: So being out here, and kind of being away from people and things going on in the outside world and things, you ended up having a real close relationship with the land out here.
ENID: Course, she's lived in lots of parks and I have, too. So..
VAYDES: But, I know, we've had people say, are you kids, gals, all alike? We are.We are never as happy as when we're out.
SUSIE: Yeah. So what was it like, um, I'll start with you, Vaydes, going, after you were married, and you left, and lived in all these different places Give me a little rundown of your, of the places that you lived after you left Kanab.
VAYDES: Well, first, I, my husband was a seasonal park ranger at Bryce, that's where I met him, and we lived up there for, let's see, , a year and a half, I guess, and then we moved to Zion..
And he couldn't, the CCC, you know the Civilian Conservation Corps was on then and he couldn't get a ranger job, but they gave him, this, uh, they wanted somebody who knew, he'd been there, he started there as a [recording unclear] They wanted somebody who knew the area, and he was the clerk for awhile, and then he got a permanent , uh, a permanent job at Grand Canyon, the south rim, as a warehouseman, so they said it will work into a ranger job, if you take it, because it was permanent, so we moved there, and we moved to the north rim in the summer
and then, the war came along, of course, before then, and he volunteered, so we went to, he was in radio material school, so we lived in San Francisco and Monterey for a year or so. And then we came back to Grand Canyon and he had this ranger position by then. So we lived on the east end of Grand Canyon, we were there alone most of the time. And we lived on the north rim of Grand Canyon way into the fall one year , and we were the only ones there, and that was a marvelous experience.
SUSIE: Really.
VAYDES: There was nobody around, and the silence that comes out of that place is like a symphony, incredible. So I am glad I got to experience that. And then,
SUSIE: You were never lonely?
VAYDES: No. No never. He'd take me every where he went. I remember when they'd clear roads and things, he and some of the rangers in the spring, they'd always take me, I don't know why, but I went along, I'd hike or whatever, and then, uh, we'd move back to the south rim in the winter. And then he got superintendent at [recording unclear] monument which is between Flagstaff and [recording unclear], it's Indian ruins, and so we lived there for two years, we had two children by then, we moved there with a three week old baby and I was 45 miles from the store
SUSIE: Oh, my goodness.
VAYDES: And two miles from a neighbor, and people said, "Wasn't it awful?" And I said, "No, I had the prettiest house I ever had." I didn't mind it, and, you know, at first, why I'd, I couldn't leave the baby, 'cause he was small and everything, so when Fred' would come in at night, he'd take the baby and I'd run out in the desert, and I'd, oh, I found petroglyphs they didn't know
they had and all kinds of things.
SUSIE: You'd go hiking.
VAYDES: Yeah, and then we moved to Grand Canyon, I mean to, Zion again and we stayed there until he retired, because he didn't want to move, and he became chief ranger there.
SUSIE: Wow
VAYDES: We raised our children there. It was a great life.
SUSIE: Uh huh.
VAYDES: We always knew where they were, and
SUSIE: You're a wilderness girl. And what about you?
ENID: Well, I went to work at the south rim as soon as I got out of school, spent the summer there, and then I came back to Kanab and worked for a fellow that had the store here.
And then
SUSIE: What's the name of the store?
ENID: Duke's down here.
SUSIE: I see.
ENID: And the, then, I got a chance to go to Grand Canyon and go on the south rim, and work, 'cause she was over there, too, and I thought, gee, that would be a good time to go and then, my girl friend got, she went with me, and she, gosh we were the youngest ones there, we were with Fred Harvey and they hired all the older people, and she got fired because she was going with the wrong person and his mother was, a good friend of the housekeeper, so she fired Vi, and she said, "Enid, you can stay". And I said, "No, I wont stay without Vi." Because we were the youngest ones there, so we came back to Kanab and she went to Zion to work and I went to the north rim, and that's where I met my husband. He was cooking out there that summer.
SUSIE: Oh.
ENID: I stayed there till the end of the season, and I came back to Kanab, and he joined the National Guard because they were going to get their year over with, so he went to Cedar City and joined the Cedar City National Guard.
SUSIE: Uh huh.
ENID: Well, of course, war was declared after that, so I went to, back to Grand Canyon to the south rim to work, and I worked, I was there when war was declared, and then we decided, well, we might as well get married, so I went to Los Angeles and we were married in Hollywood at my aunt's place.
SUSIE: Really.
ENID: We'd known each other for two years, and decided that that war wasn't going to end right away, so we just as well get married.
SUSIE: Right, right.
ENID: And then, I came back to Kanab for awhile, and then as soon as he was transferred up to Fort Lewis I went up there until he sailed, and then I came back to Kanab and went to Phoenix, worked for awhile, and then our sister was working in Santa Monica for Douglas Aircraft and she says, "Why don't you come down here?" I was working at [recording unclear] Field out of Phoenix.
SUSIE: Doing what?
ENID: I worked in the PX there.
SUSIE: PX?
ENID: Uh. Post exchange. And so she said why don't you come and go to work for Douglas Aircraft, and so I did. I worked in the shipping and receiving department offices. Until just before Floyd came back from overseas, and then we, uh, he was, I had met him in Santa Barbara, we went to Santa Barbara for R and R and then he decided he'd like to be stationed there, so, he'd been overseas two years, so uh I went to work in the PX s there, three of them, [recording unclear] Biltmore Hotel and the, uh the, Miramar. So, I stayed there until he was discharged and then moved him back to Cedar City, ran a restaurant there.
SUSIE: Wow.
ENID: From there he went to, back to Grand Canyon, as a traveling chef for Utah parks.. So, we moved around a lot,
SUSIE: Did you ever, considering you both grew up in, you know, Johnson Canyon and roaming the hills and stayed put until you were, what, over twenty and then moved everywhere all at once. [laughter]
ENID: Been moving ever since.
VAYDES: We did a lot of traveling, too, we've been every state, when we were raising our children.
SUSIE: So, I know Kanab has changed a lot since you were little girls
ENID: Oh, yeah.
SUSIE: Um, do you, are you, still happy with what Kanab is today, is it still a good community?
ENID: Oh, you bet.
SUSIE: And a nice place.
ENID: They needed to grow. They were, you know, we knew everybody and everybody knew us, and now you don't know half the people, and it's better that way.
VAYDES: We enjoy, these new people have added so much.
ENID: Yes.
SUSIE: What have they added.?
VAYDES: Well, you know you can get a little community and the same people have been there for two or three generations and they get a bit, oh, what's the word?
ENID: Stagnant
VAYDES: Or something. Or you know, narrow-minded, you might say. And the new people, a lot of new people with...are from different cultures and
ENID: Different ideas
VAYDES: Yes, and it's really helped the community. It really has.
ENID: Different religions.
VAYDES: Uh huh. We've become, but we're quite a close community, don't you think?
ENID: Oh, yes. I think so.
SUSIE: It seems so. So, you think that the change is good. You accept change.
VAYDES: Absolutely.
SUSIE: Well, that's good to hear. It's progressive.
VAYDES: Right. We just hope it doesn't get too big.
SUSIE: Yeah, [recording unclear]
VAYDES: But in five minutes we can be out of town, so that's all right. But, they've added, you know, people have come in with, from different cultures with and a lot of people, who are, I can't even think tonight, who have a lot of talents and they have added so much to our community. We retired here 26 years ago, Fred and I. I can't believe it.
ENID: We spent, we lived at Burley, Idaho, and then we come back to Sage and spent a few years there, my husband was chef and manager of [recording unclear] Lodge, and in between times we were in Las Vegas for awhile and then he came, when they first started building the dam they wanted, Whit Parry wanted, Floyd to come out and be his chef 'cause he said, "They're going to build a big dam or something out here and I need you." So, we came back to Kanab, which I was glad to because I didn't like Las Vegas, and neither did he. And our son was getting up to where, let's see he was in junior high, and I didn't, no way did I want him to go to high school down there.
SUSIE: Right. It would have [recording unclear].
ENID: Well, they were having so much trouble between the blacks and the whites, and so, we decided it was time to get out of there, so we went to Paige, after he started out there.
SUSIE: Hm
ENID: And that was [recording unclear]
SUSIE: So he cooked for Whit Parry. I heard Whit Parry was a real stickler for good food, so he wanted a good chef.
ENID: He was. He really was
VAYDES: I've been back East and met people, they'd say, "From Utah, where are you from Utah?" Kanab. That was after we moved to Kanab. Oh, did you ever eat at Parry's? Wasn't that marvelous? More people. And it was. Excellent food.
ENID: He had excellent cooks. He had all women cooks.
VAYDES: Yeah, and they were good cooks, you know, I mean, . Oh, he was a stickler for .
SUSIE: Good ingredients.
VAYDES: Uh huh.
SUSIE: Professionalism
VAYDES: Uh huh.
ENID: Oh, he tasted everything, and like my husband used to say, "You can't fool him on anything." You couldn't. He didn't work for him very long at a time, and all.
SUSIE: Uh huh.
ENID: "Cause he went out. From there he went, as soon as the lodge closed in the winter, he went out and worked in the cook shack out at the dam when they first started to build the dam and there was 24 people out there. So he cooked for them.
VAYDES: You worked here when the movies were on, didn't you?
.ENID: Oh, yeah, eight years off and on.
SUSIE: Did you enjoy that time?
ENID: Yes, I did.
SUSIE: When the movies were here? Was it? Was it? It must have been a different culture, than Kanab people. . They must have brought a whole different element to the town.
VAYDES: It was. But, then,
VAYDES: But they didn't, it didn't do much to Kanab, did it?
ENID: Un huh, Un huh, and like guys would say, "Gosh, you gals, aren't you excited about seeing all these movie stars?" And I says "Good heavens, no, what's to get excited about?" [laughter]
SUSIE: The reality was they were just people who need food.
VAYDES: Some you liked and some you didn't like.
ENID: Oh, absolutely.
SUSIE: Who did you like?
ENID: I liked Ronald Reagan.
SUSIE: Did you really?
ENID: I really did, uh huh, he was a nice man. And, oh, there were so many of them, uh, Fess Parker was another.
VAYDES: Phyllis said she liked Robert Taylor, too.
ENID: Yes. I didn't know him. He wasn't there when I was, but there was different people.
I didn't care much for Frank Sinatra.
SUSIE: He was part of that rat pack, wasn't he? Extravagant rat pack?
ENID: But, they come after the war, even, Dean Martin and James, uh, James,
VAYDES: Harry Davis, Jr.?
ENID: Yeah, Harry Davis, jr. What's the big tall,
SUSIE: James Dean? Or?
ENID: No, James, what's his name? Real good actor, quite prominent,
VAYDES: Oh, Stewart?
ENID: Stewart, yeah.
SUSIE: Oh, Jimmy Stewart.
ENID: He was a nice man. He really was. And all Bing's boys, they were a fun group.
SUSIE: Who's boys?
ENID: Bing Crosby's boys.
SUSIE: Oh, Bing Crosby, uh huh.
ENID: Many of them were here making a
VAYDES: You didn't care for the Kennedy's, though, did you?
SUSIE: No.
ENID: We had those at [recording unclear] Kennedy family.
SUSIE When you refer to the [recording unclear] I don't know. What are you talking about the [recording unclear].
ENID: Out at Paige.
SUSIE: Oh..
ENID: It's [recording unclear] out there on the lodge, uh, lake.
SUSIE: Okay, I gotcha, They would all come out there for
ENID: They made movies out there, too.
SUSIE: I see, I see, okay. I'm with you now. So, um, you got just tons of stars, then.
ENID: We really did.
SUSIE: Hm. And you worked a s a server, did you say?
ENID: I was a waitress.
SUSIE: Uh huh.
VAYDES: They made over , what, 200 movies or more? More than that, I guess.
ENID: I know, that one summer, we had seven movies, five of them at one time.
SUSIE: Wow.
ENID: James Garner and
VAYDES: A lot of people in town were extras, I know our parents were.
ENID: I could have been, but I didn't want to.
VAYDES: My sister, Phyllis, she was Ann Blythe's stand-in.
ENID: Yeah.
SUSIE: Who's stand-in
VAYDES: Ann Blythe's.
SUSIE: Huh.
VAYDES: She was quite a noted actress at the time, but our sister was her stand-in.
SUSIE: Oh, neat.
ENID: But, you'd go out and stand in the sun for hours and I thought, oh, that doesn't look like much fun.
SUSIE: And I should be wearing my straw hat, anyway, and I don't have it with me.[laughter]
VAYDES: Yeah, right. It was really very dull. I went out twice to watch movie scenes and they did a little segment and then, just stood around, and
ENID: Awfully monotonous
VAYDES: Awfully monotonous. Yeah. [recording unclear].
SUSIE: Did they leave you good tips and did you make good money at that job because they had money?
ENID: Some of them were pretty good tippers, and then there were others that....nothing.
SUSIE: Really. So it would even out kind of thing, or would you make...Probably brought some more money in town than you were used to, though,. huh?
ENID: Oh, yeah.
SUSIE: Did it increase your, your life-style. Did it change your, life-style at all as far as how much money you were bringing in?
ENID: Gosh, no.
VAYDES: Un huh, Un huh. Nobody. [laughter]
SUSIE: No? It didn't make that big of a difference, economically.
ENID: It didn't make that much anyway. You worked awfully hard for what you got. I was working a split shift most of the time. Go at, at uh, go to work sometimes at five o'clock in the morning, get off at ten go back at four o'clock in the afternoon, work till eleven at night.
SUSIE: Oh, yeah. Yeah. You had to work hard, and it wasn't that good of money. Hm. That's interesting. Well, I've covered all my topics that I was interested in from Johnson Canyon to the movies to everything else. Is there anything you'd like to add? Um, that you recall, anything about, even like the smells you used to smell or the places you used to play or the types of trees you remember or flowers, vegetables, anything like that you remember, that you want to share for the record on this tape?
ENID: The smell of the meadows, oh.
VAYDES: And the mocking birds.
ENID: Yes.
SUSIE: What do you remember about the meadows and the mocking birds? [recording unclear] with the meadows. What is it?
ENID: That good smell, I don't know.
SUSIE: Uh huh.
ENID: Go out looking for the birds, and we used to take the, three of us gals would take our supper up there and have bread and milk and onions and lettuce and radishes, and sit out there on the grass and listen to the birds.
SUSIE: Wow.
ENID: Then the old smell of the orchard, the apples.
VAYDES: And the scent of the sage, the scent of the sage.
ENID: Oh, when it would rain, yes.
VAYDES: Oh, it smelled like the ranch. [Long pause] I know, there's some more interesting things if we can think of.
SUSIE: Well, we've had quite a long interview. Maybe we'll..I'll end this. Thank you very much for letting me share your memories with you.
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