We would spend the winters in Malad and the summers out on the ranch. With two small children, Dad and mother took an old granary and made it into some kind of living condition. I just remember mother talking about laying awake at night and listening to the mice run up and down inside the walls, and worrying about rattlesnakes getting into our beds. We were both scared to death of mice and snakes. I don’t even remember when we lived in the old granary shack. I have a picture of it, but I don’t remember it.
 |
| Rulon with Karolyn and Dave |
I do remember when Dad built the basement and we lived in the basement with only one bedroom. We had bunk beds, I was up on the top with Dave and I would sleep at one end and he was at the other end. Then Sheila and George were on the bottom bunk and Mom and Dad’s bed was over to the side of us. We lived that way for I don’t know how many years until they finished the upstairs. After they built upstairs, Sheila and I shared the basement room together and Dave slept in the front room of the basement. Mother and Dad’s room was upstairs, and George shared a room with Alan when he was born.
 |
| Snowville Ranch Home |
 |
| Snowville Ranch Home |
We had a bathroom with a flushing toilet and a tub. Didn’t know what a shower was. But we had it better than a lot of people because we had the spring right there and plenty of water. Mother was a really fussy housekeeper, so our house was always clean and nicely kept. We had a wood stove for heat and a coal stove in the kitchen and that’s what mother cooked on for a few years. I remember walking out of the bedroom and coming around to the front room and going into the bathroom and the coal stove was right there against the wall where I walked to go to the bathroom and she’d put the oven door down for something, I can’t remember what was going on. There were so many mornings I would wake up and Grandpa would have a lamb in there that had just been born and needed to keep warm. But I came around and tripped and fell against the stove and burned the whole inside of my arm on that oven door. I had great big blisters that just hurt so bad and had to go to the doctor to get wrapped. I must have been in 4th or 5th grade I’m guessing.
Mother was sick a lot. She had a lot of health problems and a lot of migraine headaches, so I wasn’t very old when she started teaching me how to cook and clean because I was the oldest and I really had to do a lot to help her. I remember coming home from high school and having to do all the laundry and at the time it was the gas-powered washing machine with the ringer, and one time it had a leak in it and we were lucky we didn’t all get asphyxiated. Mother got a real sick headache and dad came home and could smell the gas the minute he walked in the house. We were lucky.
Dad always raised all our meat. We lived on mostly mutton or deer or whatever he had. Mother would make really nice rice pudding that we all liked. We always had a garden so we just always ate whatever we could raise. We were quite a ways from the store so we didn’t get to the store very often. We made our own butter, milked our cow so we had our own milk. I remember sitting on the table with a little glass butter churn just turning the handle making the butter. But we bought our cheese at the store. Later on, when we got a hand grinder, we loved making cracked wheat cereal and that was always our breakfast. Dad would get up and cook that for us every morning. Before we went to school we had our cooked cereal. I loved to go to Grandma’s because she would soak it whole and have the whole kernels, I remember eating that at Grandma’s with brown sugar and cream and just thinking it was wonderful. We didn’t have a big variety. In fact I didn’t even know what Mexican food was until I got older.
The boys always had plenty of dogs. I always loved the little puppies. I didn’t ever like the cat because she scratched me, so I wouldn’t have much to do with the cat. But I could take the little puppies and dress them in my doll dresses and put them in my little buggy. I remember wheeling them around the yard and they’d never jump out and run away. That worked for a while until they got big enough to jump out. Mama Rose wrote this memory: "Karolyn was always a motherly gal, right from the word 'go.' She'd mother cats and pups and Dave, and if a baby came to visit, she couldn't keep her hands off it and would always end up holding and packing the babies around and mothering them. She'd always take over our babies and mother them. I think Allen was a little confused for years just who was his mother. Karolyn washed, cooked, and helped me a great deal at the ranch during some years when I was having some bad health problems, and so she was very capable to take care of children and a home at an early age." (Experiences and Memories of Rulon Allen and Rose Dredge Ward, p. 45)
 |
| Karolyn and her bunny |
Daddy had a cow and a rooster that liked to chase us kids. I remember running to that house many times with one of them after me, screaming all the way. But I’d have to go over a lot of the time and gather eggs because Dad had a big chicken coop with hundreds of chickens, and we’d have to sit and wash eggs every night. That would be our chore every day after school. We would wash the eggs and put them in crates so Dad could haul them town and deliver them to the grocery stores and sell them to bring in extra money. When Alan was old enough to bear his testimony he got up one day in sacrament meeting and said, “Heavenly Father, please bless me so I won’t have to wash any more eggs.”
We had a horse named Star, and I was always a little scared of her but I would ride her. My cousin Janice who lived in Malad but came down to live next door during the summers was the same age as me and she loved the horse, and she and Dave were really close and knew that I was scared of him. But every day it was our job to take the horse across the highway over to the water lane and herd the cattle back up over the mountain so they wouldn’t get up on the road because there were no fences, but they would come down to the water lane to get water. So Janice and Dave would always try to get my horse to buck or we’d see a rattlesnake and he’d get nervous. One time Old Star walked right out to the middle of the pond with me and acted like she was going to roll over and scared me to death. I couldn’t get my feet out of the stirrups and I was screaming. I had never learned how to swim (we were never at a swimming pool) and I was scared to death of water. We were always taught not to go by the water until you learn how to swim. I finally got her out without going over on top of me. I never wanted to take the cattle again, but of course I still had to help, so I always tried to be real busy and help mom in the house and Janice and Dave would go take care of the cows. I was always afraid of the rattlesnakes. We were trained to always watch and listen for them. We had an old dog named Blackie, and we would call him and he would kill them for us.
We lived right by the main highway, so there were always tramps and gypsies stopping by and asking for a handout. Daddy was always giving somebody gas or food, and sometimes a place to spend the night when their car broke down. We were 30 miles from Tremonton so Daddy would always take care of them. That was before we had any telephones. I only remember bits and pieces about life during the War (WWII). One time I went up to Malad with Mom and Dad to meet the Greyhound Bus and see Uncle George, Dad’s brother, leave to go into the service. I remember seeing him dressed in his uniform and getting on the Greyhound bus, Mom and Dad cried, and it felt quite dramatic. Every now and then I would hear mother and dad talking about the war and I was always scared to death of Russia. But I don’t ever remember feeling deprived because of rations or anything because living on the farm we always had plenty of milk, butter, and food.
Every Thanksgiving and Christmas we always had to have our carrot pudding. Grandma Dredge and Mother always used to make carrot pudding. I did it for a few years here with my kids and Bryan still makes it once in a while for his family. On Christmas I remember my daddy always waking us up by jingling some bells that he had and hollering “Merry Christmas!” So Arlin started doing that when the kids were little after I told him what my dad would do, so once in a while he did that.
 |
| Rose and Rulon on vacation |
Our family always took us on a summer trip and we’d go to Disneyland or Sea World or up to Canada and Lake Louise, Banff. I just remember them taking us on all these nice trips. I remember when we went to Sea World and watched them train the porpoises and how cute they were and how fun it was to watch them jump in the air and do different things and I really enjoyed that.
 |
| George, Sheila, Dave, and Karolyn |
I loved the mountains and the scenery in Canada, I just thought it was beautiful. It was always so clean. I remember we were on a trip to Canada and Mother wanted to go up to Lake Louise and Banff, which wasn’t very far from where we were, and Dad said “No, we don’t have time. I’ve got to get back to the ranch.” But she was driving and he fell asleep, so she turned around said, “Don’t you kids make a sound” and she kept driving until we got to the lake. It was always a treat when we could go up to Malad to visit our Grandparents at least once a month. We would go through Stone, Idaho and come up through Holbrook, come out through Arbon Valley and Samaria into Malad. It was kind of a switchback through the canyon, and my younger sister Sheila would always get so car sick she’d be throwing up by the time we got to Grandma’s house. We’d have to go slow and roll the windows down and she’d be hanging her head out the window. I remember Mother and Dad always arguing on the way home from Malad because the brothers were involved together on everything and Mother wanted Dad to be separate. One day I said to her, “How come you always get daddy so riled up and argue with him when we come back from Malad?” and she said, “So he doesn’t fall asleep while he’s driving!” Over the years he finally bought the rest of the brothers out and it was ours and everything was fine after that.
My cousin Janice and I were playmates when we were young, although she had more in common with Dave. I don’t ever remember playing dolls with her much, but we’d sneak in and borrow a few eggs to mix in with our mud pies. They would set up really well. Our homes were not very far from each other and they had a little play house we’d go play in, but it was only for the summer. The rest of the time I spent mostly alone until I got older and could have friends come over.
