Grandma Wessman's Letter Page 3

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As mentioned previously our entertainment was a weekly movie on Saturday afternoons which cost 10¢ or after I was 12 yrs. old 15¢ and then 25¢. For 5¢ we got a bag of candy. We carefully rationed it to last through the news, the cartoon (Mickey Mouse began life here), then the feature movie. The movies were usually life situations with happy endings — a superman, or a serial of Buck Rogers in the 20th Century — then musicals became the rage with dancing and stage sets of gorgeous proportions but still all in black and white. We listened to radio serials after school and in the evenings after dinner. For vacations each year we would go camping in the mountains for a week with 5 or 6 families in similar circumstances as ours. There were tents, camping stoves, canned goods, blankets and pillows to pack in the car with only a small trunk on the back. We often had to put radiator water in several times on the way to a camp spot. Our family also went on two vacations to California in my first 15 years.

I remember all the vacations. They were so important. In the 20’s we went to Yellowstone Park before the Great Depression which limited traveling very far for our family, but the camping made up for it. It took creative thinking to be able to figure out fun times in spite of economic strife. We’d sing, tell stories around the campfire. We would hike, play in the river, play paper dolls or card games. We loved the mountains and the parks.

Halloween was always fun to dress up and go door to door for trick or treat to get candy and apples. It was not part of school or as big a scale as it is now — we’d go to the 28 homes which was both sides of Sherman Ave. One year 3 of us girls made rattlers by notching the edges of a wooden spool from sewing thread, putting a nail through the holes & then instead of ringing the doorbell we would roll it on the window & then instead of ringing the doorbell we would roll it on the window & it made a rat-a-tat — but we were bored after 3 houses as it wasn’t so scary or fun to do. I remembered the wild stories of Uncle Bert in Morgan who told of groups of boys on Halloween would tip out-houses over on their sides or take a plank or two out of the bridge over the Weber River and watch the drunks fall thro to the river on their way home at night — They made their own fun!