Erma Interview Transcript

We have Dave Connor, my uncle, to thank for this priceless insight into the life of Erma Connor, her husband and children. Dave sat down with Erma sometime in the 1980's and videotaped this interview. Additionally, Dave took the time to edit this transcript and add details that only he would know. Here is the transcript.

Dave: Let’s do a little family history. Why don’t you talk about how you met Dad? Why don’t we put that down?

Erma: Well, all right. I was working at a drugstore in Los Angeles, I had been going to Wiggins trade school and got employment through them, and Byron was working at a drugstore just a block away. He had gone home and wanted a root beer, and…er no! a Coca Cola!… and came over to our drugstore because it was closer to his apartment…er his room. I don’t think he had an apartment. Well, my heart fluttered the minute he came in the door. I could hardly serve him the Coca Cola (laughs). I think we must have been both impressed because he brought me a bottle of Toujours Moi Perfume the next night. He came every night after that for a week; and at the end of the week he invited me to walk home, or asked if he could walk home with me, and that night he asked me to marry him and I told him I would.

Dave: (laughs) This all happened in a week?

Erma: Within a week.

Dave: You were in Riverside?

Erma: No. We were in Los Angeles. I had a room over there. We didn’t live too far apart. We were just in our places of work that were within a block of each other, so were in the immediate neighborhood.

Dave: Now is this over…?

Erma: Commercial Blvd and Gower Street. No, Gower was in Hollywood. No, what was the?…I can’t… 11^th street in Los Angeles. It’s the area. It’s all together different now.

Dave: Is that where that park was, Macarthur Park, whatever it is?

(Note A)

Erma: That is nearer to there, we walked that area.

Dave: Why did you move to Los Angeles in the first place?

Erma: Well, because of Wiggins Trade School. I wanted some kind of learning. It was a very reasonable place to go to school and I could do it. Those were depression years; we didn’t have much to go with. And a lot of people went there. Jack Bennett went there too.

Dave: Really?

Erma: He took training there - mechanical training – at Wiggins.

Dave: He took auto mechanics training there and you took the nursing training?

Erma: I took fountain service.

Dave: Oh, that was a trade then.

Erma: Right. We learned enough there so that we could go into a drugstore without any training, you know. You could get employment more easily and know what you were doing.

Dave: What was Dad doing in his store then? He wasn’t doing the fountain was he?

Erma: He was working the fountain. Yes, he knew the people that he worked for. He had met the Warricks and he knew them before he started working there.

Dave: Oh, I see. Now he met them through what? Uncle Lionel?

(Note B)

Erma: No. I don’t remember just exactly how he came to know them.

Dave: He came to California just to kind of to get away from Canton (Ohio) then?

Erma: No he had been working…He had been employed in a CCC camp, and not too long before he came there he met…Oh dear! This was an awkward situation.

Dave: That’s all right.

Erma: He met the lady that was at our wedding while he was with the CCC camp, and through her he met these other people. It was just kind of a…

Dave: Oh, I see. So the camp was right there in California?

Erma: It was in California, but it was out in the San Bernardino area. Closer to that area.

Dave: Like up toward Big Bear?

Erma: Well it was more… They were building roads, probably fire roads, over those hills there - the CCC - and they had a camp and they were going to different areas. But this is what I think they were doing there. (Note C)

Dave: I see. So you got married and moved into this apartment. Now did you continue, both to be in the soda business for a while?

Erma: Well yes, as long as we were there. Mother came down to be with us at our wedding. We both quit our jobs and went home with her, and then we went back east to see Byron’s people and visited Ohio. We were there for a while.

Dave: He wanted to stay and you weren’t that crazy about Ohio?

Erma: Well, we weren’t either one of us was crazy about Ohio. Employment was hard to get here. The family’s home burned while we were there. We were staying with Fritz and Venetta in their apartment and after the family’s home burned, they all moved into this apartment temporarily. They had to. They didn’t have any place to go. So of course we were surplus baggage, and we took a little hotel room for a while. But we couldn’t afford that: Byron was only making a dollar a day working at a service station just enough to help out with expenses. He wasn’t able to get work right away, so we decided we better come back west. But it was a good experience for us. The only time I ever met his mother. I wouldn’t have known her otherwise.

Dave: Did he go back to the funeral too?

Erma: He went back and was with his parents for several months while his mother was ill, before she died.

Dave: Oh, o.k. A little different angle. I remember…The very first vacation that I remember was going to Yosemite and I had my teddy bear and I vomited on it and you ended up throwing it away, I think you kind of wanted me to get rid of it anyway.

Erma: Your Boo?

Dave: Yeah, I think you kind of wanted to get rid of it anyway, so you threw it away.

Erma: I think you were getting older by then.

Dave: Now Dad got his…He didn’t have a car when you got married.

Erma: No.

Dave: Did you have one after you left Ohio?

Erma: Well, no. When we left Ohio, Jack had us buy this Ford, and he said he would sell it when we got out here, and he did and made a profit. It was a Model A and it brought us comfortably home. We did very nicely with it. No, we got…I can’t think of the name of our car was, the first one.

Dave: The only one I remember is the Plymouth.

Erma: It was a very odd name. We had one over on Lamar Street for a little while, and I think we had it for a little while after, when we bought our home. But, it was…we had… Dad had a wreck and he was hurt real badly before. That was before we were married. But Jack fixed the car I think anyhow. We bought his Chevy that he had wrecked and he bought another car. And we used that for a real long time.

Dave: When did you guys begin to take these vacations? The thing I remember about us was taking all these vacations.

Erma: Well, we always took a vacation every year of our marriage. I don’t think we ever missed. Uh, yes, we did too. Our attic years. Although I’m not sure that we did, even then. Our vacations for a number of years were camping trips, Up in the Sequoia and Yosemite and…

Dave: Did you always take Jack and Ursell?

Erma: Always. It was always family camping trips for quite a lot of years when you were young because we didn’t have a lot of money and it was a fun thing to do together. So that was vacation for a lot of years. Of course we would take trips to Idaho after we got a car, because Mother was there. Sometimes I would come up a month ahead and be with her and help her, and then when Byron got his vacation he would come up and be with us.

Dave: O.k. I took one of those trips with you.

Erma: Yeah, we would go up on the bus. I don’t think you went on a bus with me ever. Ellen did.

Dave: How did I get up…? I remember getting up there somehow. Maybe it was a bus or a train or something and we slept overnight.

Erma: We came one time with Dwight, and we came as far as Boise with Dwight. I think you were with us that year. Yes, I’m quite sure you were.

Dave: I remember getting there late at night, and we slept out on this little log type garage thing. This is when Grandma had already moved across the street…

(Note D)

Erma: Yes, she’d moved across the street.

Dave: …and we slept in there. And Grandma was out doing something out in the yard the next morning, and she didn’t know that we were in the garage. And I remember staying there, and I think it even snowed or something like that. I don’t remember.

Erma: Daddy must have been along with us.

Dave: He came up later.

Erma: He did?

Dave: Well, that’s what I remember.

Erma: I guess I might have looked around to see if there was a bed out there or something. Or maybe she told me we were going to sleep out in that little…I had forgotten that we had slept out there but it sounds familiar now. (Laughing)

Dave: How did Dad take to camping for the very first time? Or did he do that before?

Erma: Well, he got broken in with the Bennetts. You remember that trip that I told you about. (Laughing) We only had Ellen then, I’m sure. We were sleeping out on the ground and the Bennetts were in the tent. Daddy and I said, “Well, just put the food out right below our feet and it will be all right there.” We woke up in the morning and there were egg cartons and papers and things all over the place. Some bears had come in and eaten the food.

Dave: Right at your feet.

Erma: We didn’t even wake up. We had hardly any perishables left. They had just eaten almost everything we had.

Dave: What were you trying to do, wake up and scare the animals?

Erma: Well the next night, we stayed in the very same place and we stayed awake until the bears got there. We woke up and saw these bears and we got quite frightened. They were in the tent - Ursell and Jack. So we saw the bears there eating, and we told them we were frightened. Ursell said, “Oh, I’ll come out with you.” So she came out and got in bed with us, and Jack got out with a broom and chased a bear with a broomstick.

Dave: Well, he would. He’s fearless.

Erma: That was a story we told for years. We still talk about it. It was really funny. And another time we brought this refrigerator deal. I think you were probably around by then. We borrowed it from the Baldwins next door. It was made out of shelves and burlap. To keep the food away from the bears, you would wet the burlap and then you would hang this up in the tree and the bears weren’t supposed to get the food. So we hung it up there and the wind blew that night and it blew back and forth and pretty soon the whole thing came down and the watermelon was on top of the eggs and we lost most of our perishables that time too. We had some real funny experiences through the years. (Laughing)

(Note E)

(tape is stopped for a break)

Dave: When Dad got back, did he just have to go out and look for a job again, or did somebody have something lined up?

Erma: We stayed with the Bennetts. They had a rented home in Los Angeles at that time and Jack was working for an automobile company there. It hadn’t been too long since he went to Wiggins, and he got work in Los Angeles, as I did, through Wiggins. We stayed with them for a little bit and both of us got jobs at restaurants then. After we had drawn wages for a little bit, we got a little apartment. And it wasn’t too long after that, that Ellen was on her way and I was dreadfully ill, like I usually get at that time. I got so sick I couldn’t stay by myself, so we went back to stay with the Bennetts and Ursell took care of me. I was in bed for a good month or so, and she waited on me and took care of me.

Dave: Let’s see…is Barb (Jack & Ursell’s daughter) older than Ellen?

Erma: Oh yes, Barbara was 2-3 years old when we were married.

Dave: So she already had one. She was already staying home by that time. Ursell wasn’t working at all.

Erma: She wasn’t working. We were there and I got a doctor. Then we found our little attic apartment in Los Angeles. We moved into that. There was an older man who lived there and he had apartments for rent at the rear of the lot, and then he rented the lower part of the house and lived in this little attic. Well he died and they rented the attic for $10 a month. That was the best rent we could find around. There were 4 rooms and a bath and a little porch. And they were quite small rooms, but the furniture was most interesting. It was all antique. We had a lot of fun fixing that little attic up. We repainted it and refinished the kitchen. Daddy used a blowtorch and took all the paint off the kitchen walls and cupboards and we painted it all over and got linoleum. We went out and bought new furniture and bought a new davenport and stove and linoleum and refrigerator and did things that newly-marrieds do sometimes. We got ourselves in so much debt that he didn’t have any spending money, and got very, very discouraged. And that’s when he got a little bit implicated with racing and we had a few bad years there; lost our furniture and started over again. But, yes, it started a lot of experiences, but we had some real good years in that little attic. It was during that time that his mother became ill and we rented our apartment to the Browns. Do you remember who they were? Do you know anything about them?

Dave: You talk about them once and a while.

Erma: He worked at the same place with Emerson Brown. They called him Brownie.

Dave: O.k. Now I know Brownie, I know the name.

Erma: They worked together. He came back from New York, Brownie did. He married a girl, Veronica, from New York. They didn’t have any immediate place to live and we rented our little apartment to them while Byron went back to see his mother and I stayed with Mother and Dad in Idaho. From about October to March. It was March or April when he was able to come back and get us, and we came back to our little apartment again. We were there for a little while, and then we went out to Bakersfield to live. I went on and got there with Mother alone for a little bit and then he came out, and we both worked at drive-ins out there. We were there for a little over a year and then we came back to the Los Angeles area and lived for a little while, and then he worked for Sunland Biscuit Company for, I would say, several years. He liked it very much. He delivered their products to various areas in Los Angeles. He drove a truck, a delivery truck there, and liked the work and was very good with it. But we had problems again and we went back to Ohio again.

Out in Bakersfield, Ellen went to nursery school or kindergarten for half a year and then we went to Ohio, and she didn’t get back to school again until we came back to Burbank. We were there for a good… we must have been there a year all together. And that’s when I came back alone with Ellen to Burbank and we moved in with Vera and Ronald and Geraldine then.

Dave: By that time Dwight had already gone then.

Erma: He was in the army at the time. He got spinal meningitis back in New York, and Vera went back and was with him. After that they were together for a while. They moved into a house together and we bought our home. We lived together for, oh I guess, it was a little over a year on Lamar street. And then we moved into our home and it was shortly after that that you were born.

(Tape is stopped and we take a break)

Dave: You were going to say something?

Erma: Well not really, I didn’t know whether you were expecting me to say something right away, I’m wondering what you remember about your church years?

Dave: Church years?

Erma: Uh huh. Your Primary years.

Dave: I do remember, uh…did we always go to the church on the hill?

Erma: Yes, I think as long as you were there, we did didn’t we? No, didn’t you go out to North Hollywood?

Dave: I went to Studio City. Now did you go to church at all? How did you introduce the church to Dad?

Erma: Well, Dad got introduced to the church with a lot of things. He resented it very much at first, because nearly all of the family talked church. The Taylors were very active in church, and they naturally, when we were in Burbank, they tried to get us to go to church with them. And sometimes we did, but more often we would take off on Sundays and go to a movie and do a few things.

Dave: Oh you weren’t even active then.

Erma: Hum?

Dave: You were never active then. When did you get active again?

Erma: I went to church a little. When Vera and I were alone, I would go. Vera never was. She was too unhappy with her life to be… But after we moved to our home, the people in our ward came home teaching at our house because we were an LDS family, or I was LDS, and so they knew that we were there and they would come home teaching there and the ladies in our ward came Relief Society teaching and they got me active teaching Primary. I taught primary for a few years before. And then we were activated in a study group sort of thing that the inactives were…it was an inactive group that the Seventies probably were working with in the ward. And Daddy liked the people in that group. And it was through this group and his home teachers that he... Well really what gave him his final decision that he wanted to join the church was a film and lecture he went to. I never did go to it but it was on the South America. They talked about the ruins there and their connection with the Book of Mormon. Whoever gave that lecture must have been very good, because that was what convinced him that is was a true thing and something he wanted to belong to. He surprised me very much one evening. He said that he was going to be baptized in our study group meeting.

Dave: Oh my goodness! He didn’t even tell you before the study group then?

Erma: No, he just came out with a statement all at once. And everybody of course was rejoicing over the fact, and I was delighted, of course.

Dave: Oh year, were there other families in the study group that you kind of stay with? The Nebekers or the Davis’?

Erma: The Nebekers were one of the inactive group, I’m sorry, but I can’t tell you too many of them. Do you remember Brother Enderlund?

Dave: Yeah.

Erma: I think he was the leader of that.

Dave: O.k. But he still fought the church even after he joined it pretty much, didn’t he?

Erma: Well I think it is very natural, don’t you?

Dave: Yeah I still have problems.

Erma: You don’t learn all of the principles of the gospel; you don’t learn all of the feelings of the church until you get into it all together. And there were things that were hard for him to accept after he joined, yes! And he was very honest about it. He was outspoken like you are.

Dave: Yeah.

Erma: He didn’t hide the fact.

Dave: O.k.

Erma: Which is good. I mean it brings it out and helps it to be solved. You can’t just keep something inside you. You’ve got to do things about it.

Dave: So, uh, was I in your Primary class?

Erma: No, I never did teach one of your classes, I taught one of Ellen’s, you were in my class because I was carrying you around. (Laughing) I didn’t have any babysitter so I took you to classes with me. But it caused a lot of complication between you and Ellen being in my family. It was one of the most difficult classes I ever taught.

Dave: Now you took me also to work at the pottery factory?

Erma: Right. You had a little playpen, and it was made by an arrangement of the tables that held the pottery molds and it kept you in a little corner there. You had a little window that you looked out at the trains and the traffic and uh, had a few blocks and toys there that you played with while I worked.

Dave: 8 hours a day?

Erma: Oh no, I never did. I seldom worked more than 6 hours, and quite often no more than 4 hours a day.

Dave: Oh I see.

Erma: Probably I was only working 4 hours while you were there.

Dave: Was this a matter of demand? You’d worked the 4 hours and…?

Erma: Well, the demand was on your part. I didn’t feel that I should be keeping you there that long. I would do my shaping and things there, and then I would take clay home and make candles and flowers and such to put on the pottery and I could put in another 2-3 hours.

Dave: Did you get paid by the piece?

Erma: Yes it was piecework.

Dave: Yes, I see. Even when you were there was piecework then?

Erma: Because I could work faster while I was there with the work that I did at home, it evened out pretty nicely.

Dave: You always supplemented the family income, then? You had the pottery job…

Erma: Not until after… Well, yes, while we were in Bakersfield, I did. We both worked out there. But then there were a few years in between that I didn’t work until we bought our home there. Well, I was working the pottery all the time we were on Lamar Street.

Dave: I see. You worked at the pottery place while you were living in LA?

Erma: That’s where I got the job over there. Vera got work at the library and I got this job before Byron came out. I didn’t have any income. So I had to get a job.

Dave: Ellen was in the picture. She was going to school while we were at the pottery, right?

Erma: Well yes. She started school at Lamar Street. All her elementary years, she went to Lincoln Elementary and you other younger ones went over to Central.

Dave: Yeah, well they just finished building Central about the time I got going, didn’t they? You said that she took care of me a lot?

Erma: Well, yes. You were born, you see and I was working at the pottery and didn’t quit. I took a little vacation to have you and get you started. But of course Daddy and I were both working. I would go to work really early sometimes around 6 in the morning and then…I would leave home at 6 and wouldn’t get there until about 7. But they opened early and I would start working early and you would still be asleep until maybe 8 o’clock.

Dave: O.k. We’re talking about 3 years old? about 2?

Erma: Well no, you were still in your crib.

Dave: Oh really?

Erma: Yes, and Ellen would have to...Daddy would be home, he would be working probably night shifts. I don’t know how it worked at the time. I imagine that at the record company he worked nights there, and he would be there asleep. But she would have to get up and take care of you until around lunchtime, when I would come home. It was a very bad thing for her because you were a heavy baby and she wasn’t that old and she would have to lift you in and out of bed and lift you around and take care of you and I think this wasn’t real good for her.

Dave: She was probably, maybe 10 years old then.

(Note F)

Erma: I think possibly

Dave: Because if I was 2, she was 10.

Erma: I’ve got to figure this out sometime, get this age bit. But she wasn’t that old, and it deprived her of hours of her playing. At nights she would baby-sit with you too. It made it a little bad relationship there for a long time because she remembered that. I expect she took all her resentment out on you. She was probably was very hard on you. (Laughs)

Dave: Yeah, it could have been, I…

Erma: Of course, Byron would get up after a while and help her, so that she wasn’t alone all those hours with you, taking care of you. But I image quite a bit of the care came from her.

Dave: You are talking then about summer vacation, what were we doing when she was in school?

Erma: Well this was…

Dave: Cause she couldn’t stay with me until noon during school time.

Erma: Well, I’ve forgotten I don’t know just how we did work that out. Either Byron was home with you or she was home helping him.

Dave: Gads! So you were never….

Erma: And you were never, you know…we never did hire anyone to take care of you, and you weren’t taken to the family, so it was a family thing.

Dave: So Dad would come home from work, and he would have to be up until you got home from your work.

Erma: Right.

Dave: You worked like from 6 to 10 or 8 to 12 or something like that?

Erma: I worked from 6 to 10 or 11, I expect.

Dave: So you would just take over from then. You must have been very exhausted by the time the night came!

Erma: Well, they were very tiring years, I worked a lot of years. I got used to it.

Dave: I mean, what time did you get to bed generally? Around 10?

Erma: Oh, we didn’t…yes, we… I didn’t get that much sleep, but I, it wasn’t that bad either. I’m sure I wasn’t hurt. In fact I think I give the credit of my good health to these years when I had to work, otherwise I’d have been a lazy bum. (Laughs) I did a lot of walking. He very seldom took me to work. I would walk to work and home. All those years.

Dave: You walked form Sparks Street all the way to the tracks. Everyday. (She assents) And…well that’s right! You didn’t drive and Dad had the old Plymouth or something like that.

Erma: I’d quite often take the bus home, but I would always walk down.

Dave: Oh my goodness! For the record that’s about a mile or so.

Erma: Oh, it’s more than that.

Dave: A couple of miles,

Erma: It’s at least 2 miles.

Dave: Oh my goodness! And you’d work at the factory and then walk home. You’re talking another half hour there.

Erma: I didn’t always walk home. I’d walk over and catch a bus when you were little and there alone, yes. But I would walk to work quite often.

Dave: O.k., and then you wanted to talk a little bit about my relationship with Teresa.

Erma: Right, and just how you felt about Teresa. I know how Ellen felt. She felt I was much too old to have children and she wouldn’t walk with me to church or wouldn’t be seen with me while I was pregnant.

Dave: Is that right?

Erma: Absolutely. She would walk clear away from me. She felt it was terrible.

Dave: Is that right?

Erma: Disgusting! She was ashamed of me, having a baby at my age. (Laughing)

Dave: Well you were just about 40.

Erma: I was 41 when Teresa got there. And her friends, of course were all teenagers and she was ashamed of her mother. But after Teresa came it was a different story, but I don’t think she especially liked more babysitting again. (Laughing)

Dave: Yeah, I was only probably 9 or 10 at the time, during the babysitting time. You wouldn’t have given that to me.

Erma: Yeah, well you got a little of that too. But Ellen was working then and I expect that was the reason you were babysitting quite a lot. But she… We left her alone with Teresa when we went vacationing with you, do you remember that?

Dave: Did you really do that?

Erma: We went to Idaho and left Teresa with Ellen. This was the first time she was very long alone with Rob. And so poor little Teresa ended up with the relatives or the neighbors and everybody she could find to sit with her. And she (Teresa) didn’t think she had a mother anymore, and when I got home, she wouldn’t come to me.

Dave: Is that right? This is the trip to Idaho.

Erma: You came to Idaho with us. We brought you along. We went to a family reunion…

Dave: I remember the reunion, o.k.

Erma: …and we went to the Pasketts, and Clifford and you rode around on the horses.

Dave: Yeah, I remember that. It was a fun time.

Erma: It was a nice time for you. I think you had a good time on that trip…

Dave: Yeah, I did. That was a good trip

Erma: …and it worked out all right. I have a letter that Ellen wrote to me, and she was real good-natured about it all. And Teresa stayed in good health and everything turned out all right. (Laughing)

Dave: Now wait a minute. She was married at this time?

Erma: No she wasn’t. In the letter she told me how she would have Rob there, but they would eat on the patio so that it didn’t give the wrong impression. (Laughs) All of the neighbors would feel good about it and that there wasn’t something going on that shouldn’t be. (Laughing) It’s quite a cute letter. I’ll have to make a copy of it for you. The relatives up in Idaho, Oh! They thought we were terrible. They just thought we were terrible. How old was Teresa? I don’t think she was even 6 months or so (laughing), and we were away for 2 weeks. (Laughing)

Dave: My goodness! I remember the trip. I remember riding the horse, and I remember it was about the last time Uncle Earl was alive, wasn’t it?

Erma: Well, I guess. Did he take us up Yellowstone fishing with him? Oh it was a nice trip and it turned out all right. And Ellen, she was always such a dependable little gal, and if it hadn’t been for Rob coming at that time she wouldn’t have neglected anything. And she didn’t anyway really, but Teresa did have quite a hectic time. (Laughing)

Dave: I bet. Well, we’re going to call this off, were at the end of the tape and the kids would like a couple of minutes, it’s been fun because this is history.

PERSONAL NOTES AND COMMENTS BY DAVE

A) Macarthur Park was a favorite park even in my early years. It had a small lake and (I believe) a fountain in the middle. You could rent paddleboats there.

B) Dad’s uncle lived in Long Beach, I believe. He was sort of a “home base” for Dad and his brother Ralph when they went out to California.

C) I’m guessing Dad worked for the CCC for 3-6 months. I believe they were given food and lodging while they served, then given their pay as they were released from service. The day Dad quit the job a friend suggested they get a hotel together to share on expenses. The next morning the friend was gone, and so were all of Dad’s earnings from the CCC.

D) I may be wrong about this, but I believe my grandfather moved into a small house next to the canal in Firth, Idaho. When he became prosperous he built a larger two-story house across the street. After Grandpa died, Grandma sold the larger house and moved back across the street to the original homestead.

E) Before there was ice available at every store, campers would “refrigerate” their perishables in a container with canvas sides. The canvas was soaked with water periodically. The evaporation of the water on the canvas would keep things cool. A variation of this was a canvas-lined water bag, which was hung in front of a car’s radiator. It would double as a source for cool drinking water, plus extra water if the radiator boiled over.

F) My brain was stuck on being 2. Actually I was an infant, which would make Ellen 8 years old.