Chapter 10
Turning Twelve and My Teenage Years.


The dress I made in 4H		 
        When I turned twelve, I graduated from Primary September 24, 1939 and started attending the Beehive Class in M.I.A. I did not enjoy being a Beehive girl. All the girls in my class were two grades ahead of me in school making me very uncomfortable with them. I went because Daddy took me! I filled my requirements but only went two years.

        The same year I started M.I.A. I also started 4H. Now let me tell you, that was a different story. I was with my friends and happy. Mrs. Burnet, LaPreal's mother, was our 4H leader. We had cooking one year and sewing the next, I was in 4H for four years. I grew a lot from my 4H years. Going to 4H Camp every summer was a real fun experience. I got to meet other 4Hers from all over the county, enlarging my circle of friends. The first year I got a red ribbon on the dress I made and got a blue ribbon for modeling it.

 
Donna Gooch
        One of my requirements was to bake cookies to serve the class which I did. Oh no! I had put celery seed in them instead of nutmeg. (Mother had put celery seed in an empty nutmeg can). I did very well with sewing. The Cassia County Fair in late summer was a great time for us 4Hers, setting up and decorating our booth hoping to get a blue ribbon on the booth. The judging of our projects was a real source of anxiety. About the most fun was seeing my other 4H friends from camp. We also got to go to the rodeo for free on the first night. It was a good time in my life.


Burley High School - the Junior High was on the first floor.		  
Looking through the fire escape in Jr. High
        Starting Jr. High was a new experience for me even though I still hated school. I had a hard time with my studies. It was fun going to that magnificent three story building. There again was a chance to meet new friends as the students came from all over the county to the Jr. High School. This is when I discovered boys.


Myron and I, ready for church		 
        I had some funny run ins with Miss O Rourk, Miss Kiesz, and a couple of others. A couple of boys were throwing spit wads across my desk at each other. One landed on my desk so I threw it back. Guess who got caught? Another time I was running down the hall and around the corner. Ran smack dab into a teacher, that was not a pleasant encounter! I loved my home economics class where I learned more sewing and cooking. Miss Pratt was my teacher. I hated my Physical Education class. I was taught modesty at home and was very uncomfortable undressing and showering with a whole class of girls.

        Our School held a track meet each spring that was fun. One year Myron broke his arm while high jumping. We practiced against other classes at our our own school and then competed with the Rupert and Paul Jr High Schools.


The Frost Family in 1940 Back row: Me, Myron, Eunice, and Thelma. Middle: Marion, Lorna, Ira, Vyla, and Irma. Front: Gerald and Kathryn.

 
This is what the contraption looked
like, only I don't think I was
smiling like that.

        When I was about fourteen, Mother took me to town to get my very first permanent so I would have lovely curls for school. Mrs. Boyd's beauty shop was upstairs above the M.H. King's 5 & 10. I didn't know what I was getting in for. Mrs. Boyd started winding my hair into the darndest contraption. Then she attached some clamps with electric wires that were connected to a machine. I had to sit there forever. All of that weight on my head made me slump over. When I tried to sit up, it pulled my hair. After going through all of that, instead of the lovely curls I hoped for, it came out frizzy. From then on, we girls gave each other Toni Home Permanents, which we continued to do into our married years.

        My first formal dress was another great and painful embarrassment for me. Mother bought it from Mrs. Eva Crane. She had made it for her daughter, Minnie. Mrs. Crane and Minnie were both real snobs in our ward. I was so humiliated wearing that cast off dress of Minnie's to the Gold and Green Ball. Every kid in the ward knew that it was one of Minnie's, and I was wearing it. I also had to wear it to the Jr. High dances. How I hated that dress even though it was a pretty rose color and just sort of cute, it was where it came from that hurt. Mother could have made me one so much cuter. I don't think Mother knew how badly that affected my self esteem. As I mentioned before, I could write a whole big chapter on embarrassing moments in my life.


Me as a teenager		 
        Myron had a friend, Eldon Lowder, from View. He was the first boy that had a crush on me, that I knew of. He would ride his bike down to play with Myron but he really came to see me. But, the boy who I had a crush on in the 7th grade was Billy Dunford. He liked me too. He had blond curly hair and very blue eyes. I thought he was the cutest guy in the school. During the summer he died of an inherited illness. I was so sad and really depressed the day of his funeral. I tried to sing happy songs. I was told by some of the other kids on the school bus that after I would get off the bus every day, Gerald Hurst and Eugene Christensen would fight over me.

 
The Frost girls: Kathryn, Irma, Marion,
Lorna, me, Thelma, and Eunice
        Eunice graduated from high school the spring of 1940 and in 1941 moved to Salt lake City to go the L.D.S. Business Collage. She lived with the George Woods family. Daddy and Mother knew him as a missionary while they were living in Moscow. She later got a job with the Beneficial Life Insurance Co. and then received her mission call in 1945 to the Western States Mission. Thelma graduated a year later in 1941 and she too went to Salt Lake where she roomed with Eunice for the time.

        Sunday December 7, 1941 is the date I will forever remember. When the news came that Pear Harbor was under attack by the Japanese, terror gripped my heart. President Roosevelt declared war on Japan on December 8th and two or three days later he declared war on Germany as they were allies with Japan. Germany had been trying to take over all of Europe. Our young men were sent over to Europe and the Islands of the Pacific. Most of them were just boys. How brave they were! We had been following Hitler's War in Europe since Mr. Reeds 4th grade class.


Ration stamps: these are from Book 4
which was issued in October 1943. These
stamps were used for purchasing canned
vegetables, fruit, and juices.		 
 
Norma Jo Price and me
        1942 came and life went on. Some food, sugar, coffee, gas, tires, and even shoes (leather) rationing took place, among other great changes. We were all issued stamp books for the rationed items. All of the rubber and leather went to the military along with the newly developed nylon. No more nylon hose or even elastic! Our panties were now manufactured with draw strings. One evening Norma Jo and I were on Main Street headed to the Burley Theater to see a movie. Just as we got to the ally my string came lose. Oh yes, my panties were falling off! I stepped behind a big light pole there in the ally with Jo as a shelter. I hurriedly, readjusted that miserable string and we went on to the movie. Life was not the same for Americans, rich or poor. At that time I was fifteen.


Our family car 		 
        We teenagers kept Mother and Daddy busy running us to school functions, ball games, movies, 4H, roller skating, school dances, jobs, and church activities. When I turned sixteen in 1942 I learned to drive.. I don't recall anything interesting about mastering the wheels.

        On July 4, 1943 my dear, beloved, teasing Grandpa Dayley passed away in his sleep. How I missed that sweet old gentleman.

 
Donna, me, and Lorna
        Myron worked in the hay on a ranch out at Raft River for a couple of summers. I really missed him and was glad to have him back on weekends. On November 11, 1943 he went to Twin Falls and enlisted in

Helen Wixom		 
the Navy. He was sworn in and left on the 18th for boot camp at the Farragut Naval Training Station in Northern Idaho.

        The night before he left for boot camp he and Joyce Gooch took me, Lorna, Donna, and probably a couple of the other kids, with his date Helen Wixom, one of my friends, to the movies. It would be the last time in a long time that he would get that chance. Myron took me on a lot of his dates with Helen. But I don't ever remember him going to the dances at the Y Dell.