MY SISTER, MARION
by Joy McArthur Belnap (1992)
My sister Marion was the first child born to Leslie Gale McArthur and H. LaVern Hastings McArthur. She arrived at 1:05 a.m. on May 20, 1930, in the Thomas D. Dee Memorial Hospital in Ogden, Weber County, Utah. She was delivered by Dr. Edward I. Rich. After several days of confinement in the hospital, mother and child returned to their apartment at 2962 Wall Avenue.
Marion was given the name Marion Louise McArthur, after our maternal grandmother, Marion Pearl Allen Hastings. Mother had a dear friend named Louise, and I think that might be where her middle name came from.
Marion had it in her mind that she was going to have a baby brother. After I came into the family about two and a half years later and turned out to be "just another girl," she kept calling me her baby brother. It was some time before she was convinced I was her baby sister.
CHILDHOOD MEMORIES
Marion and I were very close growing up. We only had each other. The following are memories of mine that involved Marion equally, so perhaps they are her memories also.
We had a very average childhood. We didn't have a lot, but we never seemed to be poor, even though we were born in the depression years. Mother was very frugal and made most of our clothes, sometimes alike.
A story I've heard Mother tell was when Marion was just toddling and they lived in the Huish Apartments. Marion all of a sudden disappeared. Mother was frantic looking all over for her and calling all the neighbors. She finally found her in one of the other apartments "visiting." Mother was a little put out that the neighbor hadn't let her know Marion was there.
One afternoon Mother had just got both of us all cleaned up ready to go to town. Mother was always very particular on how we were dressed. She gave us definite orders not to get dirty or she would spank us. Not too long afterward, the neighbor next door came over and told Mother to come out in the front yard. There was Marion playing in a mud puddle stark naked. She had taken her pretty dress off and had hung it over the fence so it wouldn't get dirty and had proceeded to play in the mud. I don't know how old she was at that time.
Another time similar to this one was when we both took our shoes off and were running around barefooted. Evidently this happened on more than one occasion because Daddy cussed us out and said: "If you take your shoes off anymore I'm going to nail them to your feet." My comment was: "Oh, goodie, Marion, we won't have to take our shoes off again."
We moved to 20th Street and Grant Avenue in our pre-school years. Marion remembers, but I don't, an old man came to the door one day and asked to see her mother. He had a very long beard and Marion thought he was Santa Claus. It turned out that this old man was our grandfather, James Hastings. Mother was very surprised to see her father as she hadn't seen him in many years and had even lost track of his whereabouts. Mother's parents had divorced when she was a young girl. Her mother had remarried, but her father never did. He stayed with us a short while, I think.
An early memory I have of this time on 20th Street was when Daddy would pull Marion and me around on a sled in the winter time. We had some close friends who lived a few blocks away, Geneva and Maurice (Morrey) Moore and their two sons, Gary and Phillip, who were close to our ages. Whenever we visited them in the winter, Daddy would put us in a large box on the sled and wrap us up good in blankets and pull us over there. Marion and I thought this was great fun and enjoyed every minute of it.
I have early memories of watching the circus unload from the train down on Wall Avenue about 23rd Street. I was little enough to sit on Daddy's shoulders in order to see what was going on. Marion and I thought it was exciting to see those huge elephants walking past. We stayed long enough to see most of the wild animals unloaded and then leave as it was very late by then.
Mother and Daddy tried to see that we got to see a lot of things in our young lives. One year there was a carnival in town that was close enough for us to walk to set up on the west side of Washington by the 19th Street bridge over the Ogden River. Even though we didn't go on a lot of rides, maybe just the merry-go-round, it was intriguing to walk through and see the people and all the barkers yelling for people to stop at their booth. We might have a cotton candy or some other treat and then go home.
We were living in the Ogden Third Ward at that time and we both attended Primary there. Marion was baptized on June 24, 1938, in the Third Ward. The building used to be located on the corner of 22nd Street and Grant Avenue, presently the Temple Square of Ogden.
We got our first pet--a darling little puppy--while living on 20th Street. We named him "Spot" because he was black with white markings. We think he was part terrier and part bulldog and he had such a sweet face. He had a stub of a tail which had been cut off after birth. The poor dog tolerated a lot from us. We had great fun playing with him, dressing him in doll clothes and wheeling him around in our doll buggy.
One frightening exprience I had during this time period was at Liberty Park in Ogden. Marion's memory of this might be entirely different. The park in those days had a little wading pool. It sloped from very shallow water on one end to about two or three feet deep on the other end. To children our age it really seemed very deep. Mother had warned Marion and me to stay away from the water. One day we were over at the park playing and we decided to wade in the very shallow end. We just wanted to cool our feet off for a minute. Somehow I ended up at the deep end and lost my balance and ended up sitting on the bottom of the pool, clothes and all. I didn't know what was happening, but I had the sensation that I was drowning. I couldn't get out of the water and I couldn't breathe. I thought my lungs would burst. The next thing I knew I was being pulled out of the water by someone. Daddy and Mother had come looking for us and had arrived just in time. Of course, they were very angry with us and frantically upset with the possibility that I might have drowned. We went home and both of us were spanked and put to bed without any supper to punish us. We were told that if we ever went near that water again, we'd be two sorry kids. Many years later that little pool was condemned by the city as being unsantitary and it was filled in with sand for a huge sand pile.
DEE SCHOOL
Marion started school at the Dee School located just up from Washington on 20th Street (now Li'l Audrey's Health Spa). Marion was in a program one day at the school and Mother and I went to see her. The Kindergarten teacher, Miss Bugbee, just fell in love with me and coaxed Mother into letting me start Kindergarten right away. I was only four at the time, but because I was a November baby, I did start the next fall at the age of five.
Mother always took great pride in how she sent us to school. Every morning she would spend much time brushing our hair around her finger to form ringlets which we wore many years.
We had to cross Washington Boulevard to go to school and back everyday. This was a big, busy street for two little girls to cross twice each day. In those days they didn't have traffic guards or policemen on the corner for the school children to cross like they do now. We just had to make sure the light was the right color when we crossed. We had an old maid principal named Miss Fitzgerald. She was a tall, big lady with her hair in a tight bun and she was very masculine and firm. One morning I was called into her office just after we got to school. Being called into the principal's office was a frightening thing and I had no idea what she wanted me for. I went into her office and there was Marion and she was crying. Miss Fitzgerald had spanked Marion with a ruler. She asked me a lot of dumb questions about crossing the street. I was only about five or six years old by then and Marion about seven or eight. She told us she had just happened to look out her office window and had looked down on the corner of Washington just as Marion and I were running across the street against the light. She said it's a wonder we were not killed. So she had called Marion into her office and spanked her hands with a ruler to teach her a lesson. She said she forgave me because I was younger and was just following my sister and didn't know any better. Marion was punished because she was older and should have known better but had acted wrongly. Of course, we were much more careful after that. Who knows, maybe Miss Fitzgerald was watching us.
It seemed like we were always doing something. At one time Marion and I took tap dancing lessons and performed at the Ogden Stadium. We practiced at the Grant School one summer for this one program. We wore paper dresses (sandwich-type) that tied on each side. My dress was blue. I don't remember what color Marion's was. Marion also started taking lessons on the mouth organ. She got to be pretty good.
LORIN FARR SCHOOL
We moved to 2263 Jackson Avenue in the middle of a school year. I was in the second grade and Marion was in the fourth at Lorin Farr School located at 22nd Street and Harrison Boulevard. This building was just torn down in 1991.
Marion went from harmonica lessons to voice lessons. Her teacher was Dorothy Corey, who was also our music teacher at school. Marion has always had a pretty voice. We used to sing while we did the dishes and harmonize. We sounded pretty good. I guess the folks didn't mind listening to us because they never asked us to be quiet.
We were now living in the Ogden 13th Ward located just across the street from our house. We both attended Primary and I was baptized while living in this ward.
There was a little neighborhood market called White Way Market located just a block away on 22nd Street and Mother was asked by Jim Bush if she would come and work in the bakery there. She decided to give it a try and remained there for many years. This presented some problems for Marion and me. Because Mother now worked, and we were certainly old enough, the responsibility of doing the dishes fell to us girls. When we arrived home from school it was our job to clean up the breakfast dishes and have the kitchen cleaned when Mother got home from work to prepare dinner. I think we alternated who would do the dishes and who would make the beds. At this time we had twin beds. After doing this for a long time, all of a sudden I rebelled and decided to run away. But after going a block or two I changed my mind and returned home. Marion kept my secret and we had the house clean by the time Mother and Daddy got home from work. We always got along well together as sisters. The only thing we really seemed to fight and argue over was whose turn it was to wash the dishes. We even got to the point of marking it on the calendar to keep it straight. We both hated to wash because of the pans and cleanup. Mother would fix the meals and Marion and I would do the dishes after every meal.
We used to have some great times roller skating in the basement on Jackson. It had a smooth cement floor. This was a good way to spend a rainy day.
We used to make our own rootbeer in the basement. I remember helping Mother and Daddy wash all the bottles we could find in the two big wash tubs we had. After we made our brew we would bottle it and then cap the bottles with a little hand tool that would clamp the cap on tight. Then after the rootbeer was chilled it sure tasted good. We did have a few bad experiences when some of the bottles exploded and went all over the basement.
Spot was a lot of fun now that he was older. In the winter Daddy and Mother would take us sleigh riding over by the Ogden Stadium. The city would block the road from the edge of the cemetery on Madison Avenue down to Canyon Road for sleigh riding. We would ride down the hill with the dog chasing after us. Then we'd give him the rope and he would pull the sled up the hill for us, but not with us on it. We had some great times.
Marion and I got our bicycles when we lived on Jackson, only Marion got hers the year before I did. I learned to ride on hers, probably putting in most of the dents. We also got our first wrist watches during this time period.
Marion always talked me into snooping at Christmas time. We would look in everything and everywhere to see what we could find. In the hallway that led from the living room to the bedrooms and bathroom Mother kept a cedar chest and it was always locked--always. This one particular day when we were snooping we discovered the cedar chest was unlocked and so we opened it. Unknown to me Marion had already gone through everything before and then had come and talked me into finding it with her like it was the first time for her, too. Anyway, in the cedar chest were the dolls we were getting for Christmas and a few other gifts. Oh, it was exciting to know what we were getting! When Christmas morning came the excitement wasn't there because we had snooped. It really took all the fun out of Christmas morning.
The city bus used to come up 23rd Street. On Saturdays after we got our Saturday work done, we would each get 25 cents as an allowance. We would catch the bus right on our corner at five cents each way, spend a dime to get in a movie, and have five cents for candy. We did a lot for 25 cents in those days. Sometimes we'd go to the movie with Grandma McArthur (Neta). She would buy us dinner sometimes down at Ross and Jack's Restaurant or at Wallgreen Drug Store that had a snackbar. She was very vocal in the movie and she would shout out, "Look out behind you" and such things that got her excited. Marion remembers catching Grandma smoking in the lounge at one of these movies and how bad it made her feel. Sometimes we would stay overnight with her when Mother and Daddy were going to be out very late or away overnight. We would sleep three in her double bed. We would take turns scratching each other's back. The one in the middle got it twice. We would lie on our right side and scratch for awhile and then turn over on our left side and scratch. We had great fun staying with her. We were older at this time. Marion remembers staying with Great Grandmother Gale (Edna Stimpson Gale) also and sleeping out on her back porch. She died in 1937 and I guess I was too young to remember this.