Going to Grandma’s house was as much a part of Sunday as our mandatory attendance to worship services. It was a place where the Whitney families congregated, a sacred space where life was lived, where childhood relationships were formed, nurtured and reinforced, and where one was privileged to feast upon Grandma’s repertoire of homemade meals, cookies, pies and breads. Sitting in the backseat with my brothers and sisters on the black mesh fabric of the family’s 1973 Chevrolet Nova, making the customary 18-mile southerly journey to Springville, Utah, was an event anticipated all week and one which transported us to another time and place. Equipped with an AM radio, our Nova lacked air-conditioning and our trips were uneventful, relentless, and monotonous. Our young imaginations demanded and created diversionary games and thereby, the journey and destination melted into a single monolithic event. Along the route, milestones were marked, measured and checked-off with military precision. Contests were constructed to find who could spot the familiar landmarks first. Just outside of our hometown, American Fork, the vandalized foothills of Mount Timpanogos bearing the block “G” loomed above Pleasant Grove and ceremoniously symbolized the beginning of our journey. Geneva Steel – the grimy iron smelting plant spewing its toxic smoke – bisected the path between origin and destination. Utah Lake, situated to the west, lapped the shores with its polluted waters and wafted its distinctly putrid smells into the broad valley. The old radio transmission tower found off of Provo’s Center Street exit, with its contrasting red and white checkered motif, seemed in my impressionable and abundant mind a rocket ship readied on the launch pad awaiting the final countdown. The larger and more impressive white-washed block “Y” on Y-Mount marked the province of Brigham Young University. The white-washed Mormon temple, further to the south – and a necessarily stark counterpoint to the perpetual black plumes of the grimy steel plant – gleamed like a beacon on the east bench at the mouth of Rock Canyon below the towering crags of the Wasatch Mountain. A large star-shaped concentration of white gypsum deposits on the east slope as one neared Springville was, in our young minds, a perpetual patch of snow. Mapleton Mountain to the southeast of Springville was always snow- peaked and loomed austere in the distance, a calm and stoic form, a taut canvas on which local folk histories were painted. An old color picture of my mother as a little girl sitting in the “V” of a small tree on the back lawn with Mapleton Mountain in the distance always elbows its way into my mind as I see that mountain. I’m reminded of the static presence of the mountain against the dynamic, chaotic progress of life. It marked the end of our journey, the end of our movement, our commotion, as we were cloaked and consumed in its shadows.
First explored in 1776 by Father Silvestre Vélez de Escalante, a Jesuit Priest, the Spanish fathers found native Americans of the Ute tribe living around “Lake Timpanogos” in the well-watered valley. They hunted and fished, but left no written record of their culture; the first such record of these people was found in journal entries of the Dominguez-Escalante expedition. Springville was originally settled in 1850 by my Great Great Grandfather, Aaron Johnson. These Mormon settlers displaced the Native American populations and transferred them to an Indian Farm, located on poor ground, unfit for farming, at the mouth of the Spanish Fork River near the Utah Lake. Incorporated in February 1853, the city was first called Hobble Creek and was later changed to Springville due to the abundant freshwater springs in the area.
The modern city of Springville is accessed by two freeway exits and fierce competition ensued each week as we kids vied for our preferred path of travel. There was some order to the final selection, but inevitably tears were shed. The interstate trundles by Springville about a mile to the west through the low lying fertile farmland which rises gently from the eastern swamps of Utah Lake toward the city. The north exit leads to the northern end of Main Street and through the picturesque commercial spine of Springville. Once on Main, our journey routed us past Sage Creek Inn, with its familiar form, a bold triangular porte-cochere, jutting out toward Main Street like a severe knife-edge, forcefully enticing the road weary traveler into the well-disguised prosaic interiors. The old skate park, long since vacant and overrun by weeds whispered of its erstwhile glory through dynamic undulations of its extant concrete structure. The monolithic menhir-like forms of the immense screens of the Art City Drive-In always appeared patently monumental in memory, contrasting to its modest marquis displaying the titles of the latest Hollywood films. The old Arctic Circle, housed in its diminutive gabled-shack, peddled its famous soft ice-cream and boasted its local prominence through the unremitting stream of cars pulling into its drive-through window and stretching out into Main Street, balancing the rabble of customers scrambling around the front like a swarm of irritated ants. The local fire station, proudly displayed the Springville’s historic red fire-truck with its gleaming bells and whistles brightly polished behind a diaphanous screen. The old Allen’s, a local grocer on the west side of Main Street was sited just beyond the low-slung horizontality of the modern city offices set off the street in the City’s main park. Finally, at the intersection of Main and 400 South we arrived at Coaches Corner, a greasy small town chicken joint with a decent video arcade lounge; it marked my Grandma’s street and joined with the other freeway route.
The other route was clearly superior and contrasted nicely with the urban oriented path through its distinctly rural leanings. Continuing along I-15 another mile or so, the south exit pulls one through the agricultural greenbelt on the west edge of town and rather than over-passing the Union Pacific Railroad tracks, the 400 South exit crossed them, or rather, the tracks crossed over the road. The railroad had installed all the safety barriers and annuciators, but there was always some sense of adventure as one approached the line and raced against the approaching or assumed to be approaching train. My mother would request that we look both ways for the train, and this action quickly devolved into a game of turning ones head from side to side as quickly as possible and, really, doing very little looking. I can just conceive of the image broadcast from our vehicle to one traveling behind as three children suddenly went into a coordinated epileptic seizure. After regaining ones wits, permitting the inner ear fluids to calm from the chaotic squall, and restoring normal blood flow to the most vital organs, we would anticipate our impending arrival at the open hay storage shed just off to the side of the road. Why this became so iconic I don’t recall, but I have a vague recollection of it as hay storage shed for Santa’s reindeer. That will make more sense later in the narrative, at least perhaps to a young mind. It was an important landmark and a welcome place on the journey to Grandma’s. Further on, an overpass had been constructed at the second set of tracks. I always imagined that we were careening down the runway in a sleek jet, lifting off as we ascended the near side of the overpass, leaving the rural landscape behind. We gained our destined altitude but briefly, and immediately descended, touching down softly on the far side, magically transported to the city, and landing on an asphaltic strip lined with a stock of modest, yet eclectic, mix of striking residences built in the 1920s and 30s.
Traveling east up 400 South, Camelback Mountain reached a crescendo and loomed massive, so named for the barren spot at the summit in the abstract shape of a camel. One was drawn up 400 South toward the foothills like an insect is drawn drunkenly toward the light. As we passed old Springville High School with its distinct architectural duality borne of diverse building periods, it always conjured and suggested nostalgic and magical memories in my mother’s mind. Springville is the “Art-City” and the renowned art program at Springville High was vital to that distinction. The 1930s stuccoed exterior of the Spanish Gothic style addition with the Gaudian inspired catenary arches embellishing the entrance pavilion was sited adjacent and to the west of the original 1890s-era Classical revival academic building, balancing the equation through its weight and mass but in stark contrast to the 1920s Classical addition to the east, joined at the hip as it were by an elevated breezeway. The architects of the Art building clearly strived for the least compatible design.
As one ascended up Grandma’s hill, a term certainly only used by us, we passed Brookside Market, a 1950s era building housing a small neighborhood grocer. The establishment was frequented often by us as we packed our pennies in our pockets down the hill, aided by gravity and the added weight to trade for sugary sweets which we consumed with urgency as we trudged back up the hill with little haste.
Continuing up the hill, was the Springville City Utilities building. For reasons unknown to me, we crowned this Santa’s vacation home, his southern refuge from the harsh temperaments of the North Pole. And now, one understands the necessity for the hay storage shed. As we passed, we craned our necks and strained our eyes to catch a glimpse of the jolly old elf and his reindeer entourage. It was a myth which gained slow acceptance, like an old ships slow accumulation of barnacles, made all the more real without eye-witness accounts to bolster the claim. It was, however, real in our minds and an evocative marker of place.
The last marker of our journey was Mr. Patten’s house just before Grandma’s on the south side of 400 south. We always turned to see if his spit-shined El Camino was in the drive, and if so we would plan an imminent visit and cross the irrigation ditch through the break in the fence and hedge to pay him a visit. A cheery bespectacled fellow with smartly combed gray hair, he would always have a joke on his tongue, drawing out a laugh from us as he fed us sticks of gum and disheveled our hair. We never knew him as anything but Mr. Patten and I strain to recall his given name as I write this. That shoulder height hedge, separating the front section of the Mr. Patten’s property and my Grandmother’s, was always neatly trimmed and the cue to begin the turn into Grandma’s unpaved drive. Getting a ton-and-a-half vehicle into the drive required driving skill only my mother and father could muster. As I learned to drive, this was for me an indicator of my future as a Nascar-circuit driver. A narrow arched-concrete slab bridged the gutter and invariably the back wheel of the car snagged on the edge of the mass as our car made its final approach, giving us a jolt in the back seat. As we pulled up the gently sloping drive, pebbles and twigs would crack and pop as the weight of the vehicle bore down, the sound of the engine muted by the hedge and the low branches overhanging the drive. It was a familiar and acute aural experience, contrasting with the constant and relentless din of the car wheels rolling along the highways and freeways. It was rare that my grandmother’s jovial face didn’t materialize at the front entry as we rolled to a stop. Switching off the engine revealed the quiet calm of my Grandmother’s house, with the occasional chirping bird and rustle of leaves as the wind passed through the sheltering canopy. We were placed directly in the fantastical world of Grandma’s.
Grandma Whitney’s house was a modest folk-Victorian dwelling. Deeply set-back from the street in a copse of towering trees, its steep gabled end fronted the street. The north facing window of the living room below the main gable threw its gaze on the front lawn and provided a discreet observation point to the street beyond. With its shade providing refuge from the harsh summer sun, the front lawn was site to many picnics and outdoor evening meals. Clad originally with horizontally laid white-painted clapboards, Uncle Garth first updated the house with white asbestos shingle siding in the 50s, and later, in my lifetime, with a shoulder height stacked-limestone wainscoting. A concrete path crossed the front yard at a moderate angle from the drive path. Stepping up from the walk, centered on house was a wide front porch with hipped roof, supported by square posts in the corners and oriented to the west toward the Patten’s place. Aluminum frame lawn chairs were constant occupants of the porch. The brass colored letter box with the"Whitney" nameplate marked the entrance. A mass of concrete turned on end formed a rectangular enclosure at the north end of the porch, a fantastical hiding spot to any kid’s imagination, so long as one could negotiate and avoid the thorns of the Winterberry Holly within. A steep gable roof sheltered the main house. Originally constructed in 1904 as a one-room house with a small kitchen, he and my grandmother purchased the house in just after my mother’s birth in 1945 from John and Venetta Wainwright after spending their first years of marriage on the road at various jobs and WPA work camps throughout Utah. A depression in the roof line betrayed the modesty of its initial construction phase and the later extension to the south of the main house with a shed addition to the east and south adding a larger kitchen, two more bedrooms and basement below, adding a fourth bedroom and a storage area there. I spent my first two weeks of life in the house under the care of my Grandmother as my mother recovered from internal hemorrhaging resulting from delivery. I was a colicky baby and rejected heartily each meal that was given me, marking the house with spoiled regurgitations. The house enacted revenge and forever marked me when I was two, as I was running a clockwise circuit around the inside of the house through the connected rooms, from living room, to kitchen to grandma's bedroom through the connecting bathroom and back through the living room. At some point, as my toddler equilibrium became compromised I fell, cleanly slitting open my head on the corner of the door jamb, leaving a two-inch scar of which I'm extremeley fond. My fondest memories, however, of the house were the sleepovers. Grandma would fix a roasting meal with meat, potatoes, gravy and hot fresh rolls and her and I and Leanne would sit in the small kitchen and eat as the fiery glow of western sun filtered through the kitchen window as the hum of the old refrigerator fought against the chatter of the television in the front room. Typically I would sleep on the old pull-out couch in the front room, but given the proclivity of my vivid imagination to conjure terrifying visions, I would occasionally end up in Grandma’s bed, betwixt soft sheets and the smells of mentholatum used to ease her arthritic pains, my nerves stilled and rocked into a restful slumber.
The house rested on a large site, which was partially parceled off and sold out of necessity after my grandfather’s death in 1955. The remaining tract still provided us kids an endless world to explore with each successive visit. An irrigation ditch entered my grandmother’s lot from the centerpoint of the east property line and marked the divide where the yard began a gentle slope toward the south. The ditch snaked its way quietly thought the yard to the west and north where it was channeled through a 16-inch metal pipe toward the Patten’s yard where it daylighted briefly to allow control at the sluice gate. When the ditch was full, Grandma’s entire yard flooded and became a pool. We would lie in the ditch in our rolled up jeans and float along with the gentle force of the cool water as the hot sun rained down on us. The back sidewalk ended abruptly at the ditch and we would always imagine it to be a diving board from which we would spring over the raging waters below. Grandma’s productive fruit trees all lined the perimeter of the south lawn and included apricot trees, plum trees, pear trees, and peach trees. My younger brother fell out of the apricot tree one summer, generating a nice gouge under his chin. When we weren’t monkeying around in the tree structures, and enjoying the limitless freedom and refuge offered by their unreachable heights, the back lawn was our play area. We created intricate obstacle courses, played baseball and watched fireworks on the fourth of July. My sister honed her gymnastic skills on the ‘L’ shaped steel pipe supporting the clothes line. At then end of the south lawn just beyond the apricot tree, the grass ended and the yard sloped down to the back hill which was a tangled mass of scrub down to the flat farmland below. In this density, and often with our cousins, we discovered endless locations for huts and hideouts, went on hikes and adventures, looked for lost treasure, and imagined and played out complex fantasies. A small stream meandered through the cottonwood and box elder trees creating a muddy bog in the spring. We often returned back to Grandma’s house soiled from head to toe, required by her to remove our shoes before entering the house. From her back promontory, we viewed the world.
My grandmother’s aura was a constant presence, made more real by the smells emanating from her stove and producing an endless supply of cookies, breads, pies, and soups. Grandma’s cookies were famous and as we entered the house each week, our observant senses yearned for those familiar smells, and if they weren’t present, Grandma would hasten to mitigate the deficiency. Grandma's cold tuna-fish sandwiches, with pickles and 'salad dressing', as she called it, were emanently satisfying and to this day transport me back to her small kitchen on a hot summer day. In the wintertime, we huddled around Grandma’s old gas-fired furnace which was akin to having a snoring elephant in the room. It was as reliable as my Grandmother, and we would call upon it to dry our sodden backsides or soaked socks. It was the hearth and center of my Grandmother’s house and matched the warmth evoked by my Grandmother’s jovial laugh.
Constancy defined Grandma's house, yet changes through the years marked significant family events and a display of devotion and love for Grandma and the house. Ranell, the youngest son and a construction worker by trade, removed the bedroom wall in the front room and the sky-blue faux-wood paneling, thus opening up the living room and creating a space worthy of the rapidly expanding family. We put in a sprinkler system in the late 1990s. Mardean, the oldest son, worked tirelessly and I pretended to know what I was doing. In 2001 a new roof was put on, and again, everyone was there. In the early 1990s, racoons invaded the attic and established a homestead amidst the fluffy insulation. The whole family as military-like operations were put into effect in an effort to evict the furry little creatures.
Grandma was born in 1912 in Orderville, Utah, a hamlet on the outskirts of Zions National Park. She was a vibrant and passionate person and carried that vitality throughout her life. Grandma became a widow with five kids still at home, although the older boys were well into their teens. My mother was ten when her father died. Grandma would drive the kids downtown on all of the back roads because she never got a drivers license, but eventually stopped driving when the law became more strict and enforced. Before she got married, she consistently made the drive from her home to Kanab but her sisters Lorie and Nelda never did learn to drive. Grandma relied, therefore, on the three older boys at home who could run the errands and chauffeur her to where she needed to be. Ranell was around thirteen when Grandpa died, and the youngest of the boys, closest in age to my mother and her younger sister Leanne. He took on the fatherly role of rearing the girls. A color photograph taken just a few years later with the whole family in front of what I assume is Mardean’s Chevy, communicates the rare bond that developed between Ranell and my Grandmother, she has her arm around him and his around her, and they seem content and resolved. The bond lasted late in life and Ranell would often be found at Grandma’s for lunch when he worked in town. Grandma was born during the dawn of the automobile and traveled by airplane once in her life to make a trip to Texas. I don’t remember the details of the trip, but I well remember, and have forever cherished, the postcard she took the time to send me. On the front was a boy standing on the running board of a car with the caption: “The sun has ris, the sun has set, and here I is in Texas yet.”
Grandma worked at a time when it was taboo for women to work and she never remarried. She didn’t speak often of my Grandfather, but there was a love that one perceived that never diminished and the place was imbued with my Grandpa’s presence and reputation. Symbolically his life was extended and became immortal in our minds as we visited the house throughout our childhood. The sense of place was defined by his abbreviated life. His itinerant work instilled the house and landscape with a broader cultural context; it was a house that reached out to Zions National Park, to Kanab and to Price. He was not a rich man but he had a work ethic that few have lived up to. He and my grandmother named their oldest son Mardean, in honor of Dizzy Dean, Ace of the St. Louis Cardinals’ Gashouse Gang, and Grandpa’s baseball hero and contemporary to boot.
Grandpa toured around Utah playing local ball in the 30s, and had a reputation for a forceful and dominant player. Unfortunately he had an appendix burst and spent three months convalescing in a hospital in Price, Utah dropping his weight to under 100 pounds and, eventually, gave up baseball for meager and intermittent wages and joined ranks with everyone else during the difficulties of the 1930s. Grandpa’s rough hewn stern looking face with his full head of hair emerges out of grainy family photographs and commands a seat at the head of the table in the present-day. He worked in construction building bridges alongside his brothers and was a smoker but, nevertheless, a loving and careful father, grandfather and husband.
There was always a sadness and longing as we were corralled into the waiting car to make the journey back home. Grandma died in 2004 at the age of 93 and Ranell died this year. The house was razed in 2007 to make way for an anabolically gabled stucco home with a three-car garage, and all but erasing the history of the site and fragile and sensitive place we called home.
© 2010 Steven D. Cornell
