Teaching for Visitors, or how I learned to love Springville as an outsider
Teaching for Visitors, Or how I learned to love Springville as an outsider
September 22, 1999
When I first moved here from Denver, my visiting teachers were Veloy Bailey and Minerva Callahan. If you’re new here and aren’t familiar with LDS lingo, your visiting teachers and home teachers, in theory, are the folks who will be there when its your turn to utter those famous last words, “I’ve fallen and can’t get up,” either metaphorically or literally. When I first met them, they were in their late sixties and as vigorous and energetic as anyone could with to be.
“Grandma Bailey” lived at the other end of my lane, what was once a dirt road is no 1150 North, in the white house that’s still on the corner, now occupied by her great-grandson and his wife. She was an avid gardener who had beautiful roses and something blooming in every season. She wore her long, shiny gray hair in a French Twist and she had a natural dignity. I was delighted to find out that on Halloween she would rat out her hair in all directions, black out her teeth and be a witch for trick or treaters!
Minerva lived in the little brick house south of the fish hatchery. She was a notoriously frank person. She’d been a school teacher at Westside, I think for 20 years and as a visiting teacher, she could tell you with a certain sense of command that you needed to get the weeks out of your garden and your peas in by April!
In fact, because of Minerva and Howard Sumsion I honestly used to think that getting your peas in early was some kind of religious tenant not unlike the commandments to bottle up fruit and quilt. Howard thought I was the weediest person he’s ever met and once even brought his tractor up to plow me out of morning glory land.
I was a convert to the church, divorced, and had moved here to learn how to be a Mormon. I got some of the best teachers that anyone ever had.
In 1974, when I moved here, Springville Third Ward went from where Brand X is, and included everything west, clear over to where the Gores lived on the road to Khuni’s and down to 400 North. I got to know “old Springville-ers” and their descendants. People told me that Springville was cliquey but somewhere we didn’t find this to be true of any of the people we wanted to know.
We met in the ward chapel on Main where you could open the big side doors in the summer and feel the breeze and breath the fresh air (and maybe stay awake) on long Sunday afternoons when you went back to church after “dinner” for Sacrament meeting.
Minerva and Veloy taught me what it meant to live in Springville. They told me about trudging out to visit teach the folks at the end of town when the snow piled up twelve feet high in winter and came up past your window ledge. About how the flood came down the mountains one spring, before the catch basic was built, and covered the peach orchard above the fish hatchery and reached to the second story of the home up there.
Veloy’s father had been a polygamist and her mother had raised her alone after the Manifesto. The white house belonged to one of his wives. Her grandfather was Jacob Houtz who built the first flour mill in Springville where the Red Bridge Park is now. When she was little, Indians living down by the lake would come to town and ask at her window for biscuits.
It was pretty exciting stuff for me. When we first drove here, my dad said that Springville looked like the town in the school books he’d learned to read in when he was a boy. It was just that perfect. And the people I looked up to: Harold and Marie Whiting, Gwen Tippetts, Howard and Ruth Sumsion and Grandma Tucker (who had the best and funniest funeral ever) and youngsters like Art and Judy Tucker and Shorty and Marie Huff and many others, were models to me for the good things I could have if I stayed and raised my kids here.
Now, at this point, because my eyes are all teary and I’m feeling very moved, it would be tacky to say that I sure hope the city council is darn careful about what happens downtown of the will betray years of my trust.
But my space is used up, so I wont.
September 22, 1999
When I first moved here from Denver, my visiting teachers were Veloy Bailey and Minerva Callahan. If you’re new here and aren’t familiar with LDS lingo, your visiting teachers and home teachers, in theory, are the folks who will be there when its your turn to utter those famous last words, “I’ve fallen and can’t get up,” either metaphorically or literally. When I first met them, they were in their late sixties and as vigorous and energetic as anyone could with to be.
“Grandma Bailey” lived at the other end of my lane, what was once a dirt road is no 1150 North, in the white house that’s still on the corner, now occupied by her great-grandson and his wife. She was an avid gardener who had beautiful roses and something blooming in every season. She wore her long, shiny gray hair in a French Twist and she had a natural dignity. I was delighted to find out that on Halloween she would rat out her hair in all directions, black out her teeth and be a witch for trick or treaters!
Minerva lived in the little brick house south of the fish hatchery. She was a notoriously frank person. She’d been a school teacher at Westside, I think for 20 years and as a visiting teacher, she could tell you with a certain sense of command that you needed to get the weeks out of your garden and your peas in by April!
In fact, because of Minerva and Howard Sumsion I honestly used to think that getting your peas in early was some kind of religious tenant not unlike the commandments to bottle up fruit and quilt. Howard thought I was the weediest person he’s ever met and once even brought his tractor up to plow me out of morning glory land.
I was a convert to the church, divorced, and had moved here to learn how to be a Mormon. I got some of the best teachers that anyone ever had.
In 1974, when I moved here, Springville Third Ward went from where Brand X is, and included everything west, clear over to where the Gores lived on the road to Khuni’s and down to 400 North. I got to know “old Springville-ers” and their descendants. People told me that Springville was cliquey but somewhere we didn’t find this to be true of any of the people we wanted to know.
We met in the ward chapel on Main where you could open the big side doors in the summer and feel the breeze and breath the fresh air (and maybe stay awake) on long Sunday afternoons when you went back to church after “dinner” for Sacrament meeting.
Minerva and Veloy taught me what it meant to live in Springville. They told me about trudging out to visit teach the folks at the end of town when the snow piled up twelve feet high in winter and came up past your window ledge. About how the flood came down the mountains one spring, before the catch basic was built, and covered the peach orchard above the fish hatchery and reached to the second story of the home up there.
Veloy’s father had been a polygamist and her mother had raised her alone after the Manifesto. The white house belonged to one of his wives. Her grandfather was Jacob Houtz who built the first flour mill in Springville where the Red Bridge Park is now. When she was little, Indians living down by the lake would come to town and ask at her window for biscuits.
It was pretty exciting stuff for me. When we first drove here, my dad said that Springville looked like the town in the school books he’d learned to read in when he was a boy. It was just that perfect. And the people I looked up to: Harold and Marie Whiting, Gwen Tippetts, Howard and Ruth Sumsion and Grandma Tucker (who had the best and funniest funeral ever) and youngsters like Art and Judy Tucker and Shorty and Marie Huff and many others, were models to me for the good things I could have if I stayed and raised my kids here.
Now, at this point, because my eyes are all teary and I’m feeling very moved, it would be tacky to say that I sure hope the city council is darn careful about what happens downtown of the will betray years of my trust.
But my space is used up, so I wont.
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