Grandma Peters

Walking

I visit with Mom almost every day. During those visits she has shared many of her memories of living at 248 W. 1^st North (N. Temple), Salt Lake City, Utah. She lived close to everything. Her elementary school was farther than West High school which was around the corner and up a couple of blocks, and West Jr. High which was across the street. She and her brother George walked to school together each day. They came home for lunch most days.

Here are a few of those memories:

Grandpa Buck loved to walk over to the Assembly Hall and sit on the bench by the pond and watch the fish. Grandpa enjoyed visiting with the gardeners about the plants. Mom would go over to the tabernacle and listen to the organist practice. They could see the Salt Lake Temple lit up at night. She loved to see the Walker building lit up a Christmas time.

When her dad was in the LDS Hospital, she and George would walk five to six blocks down North Temple and up C Street eight blocks to visit with him. I think they could take a short cut by going through City Park but that was still a long walk. Grandma wasn’t able to walk so she took a taxi once a week or so to visit him. Grandpa’s job as a machinist caused him to end up in the hospital. One of the jobs he frequently did was to clean the parts of the train engine in a liquid cleaner,(I assume a degreaser). He sat down to do the job and the liquid would splash on him as he worked. In 1936 he ended up in the hospital for almost a year. This from Mom’s book: “He lost all the skin on his arms from the elbows down to the tips of his fingers. Then it showed up on his legs from his knees to the tips of his toes. The doctors tried all kinds of treatments, but he almost lost his legs to gangrene anyway. The doctor put maggot eggs on his legs then put bandages on his legs and the eggs hatched and ate away the dead flesh so the new flesh could grow. One day when the doctor came to see my dad he told the doctor that he felt bugs crawling on his legs. They removed the bandages and there were worms all over his legs but the legs looked better. The doctor said the maggot procedure was an old remedy he had learned in France. My Dad’s legs healed just fine and he learned to walk again. George or I would go the LDS Hospital and help my dad to walk and exercise. We lived at 1^st North still between 1^st and 2^nd West and we would walk to the hospital where my Dad was and then walk back home. When winter came we still went. Snow used to get quite deep so we had to stay on the walks where snow plows had been. We didn’t have any high boots. We had long underwear to wear but nothing warm like people have today. I helped my Mom take care of my Dad before and after school after he came home from the hospital.”

Mom had a babysitting job in the Avenues that often lasted until 10:30 pm. If she missed the last bus home, she would walk the 9 blocks to catch the bus to her house.

Another comment from her history: “We would walk and pull a red wagon to 4^th North to the state run facility where they gave away food. We would get rice, flour and I don’t remember what else now, but it was always more than we could carry home.”