Bryan was three months old when we moved from Logan. There was no place for us to live in Sugar City, but we found an upstairs apartment in Rexburg. Mother and Dad helped us move from Logan, and Mother helped me get the apartment clean and livable.
On our first visit to our new ward in Rexburg, we ran into our friends The Flamms and The Jeppsens, from Utah State. We couldn’t believe it! They had moved back home and Merle was working on the family farm and Jim was working at the family mortuary. Over the years we have been great friends and have done many things together with our families. I would cut the girls hair and Merle would cut hair for the men (except Arlin) and we would put the money in a jar, which was the money we used to buy gas for all of our little trips we would take together with our small children to Yellowstone Park and Grandpa Bartschi’s ranch.
When I graduated from Weber and got my cosmetology license for the state of Utah, my dad told me to go ahead and get the one for Idaho and I just looked at him and said, “I’ll never live in Idaho!” And of course, when I moved up here I thought to myself, “You dingbat!” Because people were always wanting me to do their hair, and I didn’t really charge anything, people just paid me what they wanted. But I didn’t have an Idaho license and I was doing it here in the home until one day one of the state board members came and rang the doorbell and said, “You don’t have a license and you can’t do this anymore.” So I agreed not to do it anymore, but I asked them if I could continue going to this one couple who was homebound and provide haircuts for them as a service and he told me that was fine. After that I had too many kids and couldn’t do it anyway.
Arlin got work in construction that first summer and helped build the Kmart building and many homes in the area. That fall before school started, the Stake President asked us to move to Sugar City. They wanted us to be in the community where Arlin would be teaching. They had a home on the church dairy farm, and they also needed a relief milker on weekends, so this would help pay our rent. We were thrilled to be able to make the move. In the small house where we lived there was no central heating, and I thought I was really picked on because I couldn’t remember living without central heating. We had a little coal burning stove and a tiny wood burning stove in the kitchen that would keep the kitchen warm. We had bunk beds downstairs next to our bed because the upstairs level had been built but wasn’t finished. I remember one night I was dreaming and felt prompted to wake up and I opened my eyes and looked over and saw Craig hanging by his head through the railing off the top bunk. Arlin jumped up real quick and got him and he was fine. Arlin had to do a lot of work fixing up the house. He finished the upstairs and made a bedroom for the boys and a playroom.
When we lived in that house, I was in having a bath one evening, and the bathroom was right next to the kitchen through a little tiny hallway and Arlin came pounding at the door with a broom yelling, “There’s a mouse! There’s a mouse!” and I jumped up out of the tub screaming like that mouse was going to come right up and jump in the tub with me and he just laughed and laughed and laughed. He was always doing things like that with me and I was always jumping. I worked so hard sometimes to scare him and I hardly ever could. Once in a while I’d get just a little jump from him but nothing like he’d scare me. Then when we had kids the girls would come down the hall and peek around the refrigerator first to make sure he wasn’t waiting around the corner to goose them.
Our home on the dairy had a fenced in yard and we lived on the main highway, so I felt safe letting the boys outside to play. One day I had made cupcakes and set them out on the back step for the boys to eat them, since I had just cleaned the house and didn’t want crumbs all over. A few minutes later I went to check on them and couldn’t find Bryan. I asked Craig where he was and he said, “He fell in the water and we will have to get another one.” I looked and saw the gate was open where Arlin would go to the dairy barn. There was a small bridge where the canal runs through the property that Arlin always had to walk across. I ran as fast as I could up and down that canal crying and hollering for Bryan. I couldn’t see him anywhere and the water was moving quite fast. A few minutes later the milkman came carrying him out of the barn and asked me if I was looking for him. He was just a little toddler and only had his diaper on. I was never so glad to see my baby. He had gotten the gate open somehow and had made it into the barn. He was tall for his age and had very long arms for just a little guy. That just meant he could get into more trouble. Ha ha! That was one day I knew our Heavenly Father was with us and protecting us, and it was one experience I’ll never forget. Of course, I was scared to death of water and never learned how to swim. Arlin even tried to teach me how to swim after we were married, but he finally gave up… you can’t learn how to swim if you won’t put your face under the water. I did make sure all my children learned how to swim, but I hated taking them to swimming lessons. I was always so nervous and just knew they were going to drown, but I was so glad when it was all over, and they finally knew how to swim.
We were always very busy with church jobs and our little family. Besides Arlin teaching seminary and milking cows on the weekend, he was asked if he would also like to be a school bus driver. So, he would get up early in the mornings and go to Newdale, pick up all the students in that area and head back to Sugar City in time for school to start. Then after school he would take them all back home. He loved that job and really got to know all the kids and where they lived. He also drove the sports teams to their games, and he loved that. So, you can see I was home alone much of the time trying to raise our family. Arlin was a good hard worker and loved to be around people. They all loved him as well, with his humor and all the tricks he played on everyone. His seminary classroom was above the school cafeteria, and he came home almost every day smelling like an onion. I guess that is one of the reasons he dislikes them to this day.
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| Lisa Ann Bartschi |
On May 8th, 1964, our Lisa Ann was born weighing 8 lbs, 8 oz. (This was the only birth date and weight Arlin could remember, because it was all eights!) I got to bring her home from the hospital on Mother’s Day. What a special Mother’s Day present. She was a darling baby with lots of black curly hair. I was so thrilled to have a baby girl, especially with all that hair that I could play with. She was a thrill for all of us, and the boys really enjoyed their new baby sister. We still lived in the house on the dairy farm. When she started to move around, I had her upstairs in her little walker and told the boys to watch her while I ran downstairs for something. The next thing I heard was her crashing down the stairs, walker and all. They were steep stairs and plenty of them, but she landed at the bottom right side up and still in one piece. We were so lucky she didn’t get hurt, just crying and scared, and it scared all the rest of us as well. Our Heavenly Father was watching over her that day.
In June we had to go to summer school in Provo for six weeks as one of Arlin’s Seminary requirements. We stayed in the girls’ dorm up on the second floor that summer. Arlin and I were busy unpacking the car, coming up the stairs with an arm load of things, only to find our two sweet country boys peeing out over the deck trying to see who had the longest aim. Needless to say, we had to teach them a few things about city life.
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| Craig, Bryan, and Lisa Bartschi |
