Memories of Grandparents
Grandma Ethel Rockwood was a fabulous cook and I always looked
forward to going to her house for Sunday dinner. She and her friends Minnie Thornton, Mamie
Longhurst and Mildred Smith all cooked for the school district for many years and
they were all amazing cooks! Grandma
Ethel cooked at Iona Elementary when I was at school there and I always got
seconds, if I wanted them. She later
moved to Bonneville High School, so when I was in high school I would get to
see her at lunch time. She often brought
left-overs home (it was allowed back then).
My favorite lunch at school was chili and cinnamon rolls that were nearly
as big as the lunch tray. They also made peanut butter balls. Grandma Ethel rarely used a recipe, she just
knew how much to put in. Her home-made
rolls were the Best and that is what I test any good roll against. Some of my favorite things that grandma Ethel
made: angel food cake, carrot pudding, roast beef and gravy. Grandma Ethel and her friend Minnie
“wall-papered” all over Eastern Idaho to earn extra money. They finally quit when they were both in
their 80s. Grandma Ethel was also a
talented seamstress. She could look at a
dress in the store and come home and sew it!
She made Linda and I many cute dresses over the years. I always felt loved and welcome anytime at
Grandma and Grandpa’s house. I would
often walk to their home after school, where Grandma always had cookies and
milk waiting. If she wasn’t home, she
always told me to help myself – and there were always cookies in her cookie
jar. I liked to sleep over at their
house and did so often. One evening,
when I was in college, my date couldn’t get up the hill to our house because a
storm had come in and the snow was drifted too high across the road, so I just
had him take me to Grandma Ethel’s and I knocked on her door at 1:00 a.m. and
stayed the night with them.
Grandpa Warren Rockwood was a farmer and he loved rodeo and
horses. He rode in the Bonneville posse
and we would get to see him in every parade and at the rodeo. When we were up at the dry farm, Grandpa
Warren would always help me get the horse from the pasture and bridle and
saddle him. He smoked for many years,
and was a little taciturn, but after he quit smoking, his personality changed
and he was jovial and more outgoing. I
figure he just didn’t feel very good all those years.
Grandma Ruby Gifford was a gifted artist. She did oil painting, but her joy was making
sculptures. She would sculpt, usually
horses or people in clay, then make a rubber cast mold over the clay. Then she poured the plaster into the
mold. Once the plaster was cast, she
would sand it carefully, then paint in all the details. She made tiny bridles and saddle for the
horses, and built small wagons for them to pull. The cowboys had on jeans, chaps and fringed
shirts and hats. It was delightful to
watch her work and see her art work when she was finished. Grandma Ruby was also a really good
cook. Grandpa Milo would bet us that we
couldn’t eat one of Grandma’s flapjacks . . . and he was right, her flapjacks
were bigger than the plate!
Grandpa Milo Gifford liked to try his hand at all kinds of
things. He came from a farming
background, so that is what he mostly did, but he liked to move and change jobs
every few years. He farmed, owned a
grocery store, a restaurant, a dairy farm, worked on a ranch, and went back to
farming.
It was fun going to their home when they had the dairy farm up
in Star Valley Wyoming. I don’t think we
ever got up early enough to “help” Grandpa Milo milk the cows way early in the
morning, but we’d join him when he came in for a big breakfast of flapjacks,
eggs, sausage, biscuits and gravy and fresh milk. After breakfast he’d put all five of us cousins up on his huge
Clydesdale workhorse and we’d help get the cows out to their pasture and bring
them in again to be milked in the late afternoon. It was fun to help grandpa set the water for
irrigation and Grandma always made huge meals to feed all of us. They had a Victorola that we would crank up
and dance to “Big Rock Candy Mountain,” “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes,” or “Over the Rainbow.”
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