Eborn Home on Lanark Lane - 1947 and 1981 Editions

This is my first attempt at blogging.  Struggled with the pictures a bit, but hope this will be interesting to future readers.   I stayed home from school the day the house was moved to its present location.  It was origanilly located a half mile or more up in the fields West of Melvin and Leo Passey homes and was know as the "Bunn" home.  Dad paid $500.00 for it but had to have it moved.  He bought it near the end of World War II and it took him a while to figure out how to get it moved.  It cost him about as much to get moved as he paid for the house.  It had not been lived in for many years and was in pretty bad shape.  Mom and Dad had drawn up plans to build a home but materials were difficult to come up with because of the war and one day Dad came home and announced he had bought this home.   I don't remember mom objecting.

The company employed to move the home was from the Preston Idaho area.   They jacked the home up high enough to back a trailer under it and started down through the fields.  The picture shows it on the road just North of the Irwin Parker home, I believe.  From that point they went down through the fields and around behind the Jim and Lareva Findley home and placed the home on a foundation that consisted of two cement walls on the East and West sides of the home.   I have often wondered why it was necessary to go through the fields but just don't remember.  Perhaps there were electrical wires in the way but I just don't  remember.  Trenches about three feet wide had been dug to a depth that would hopefully accomadate a basement someday.  It was no small task to build forms and pour cement  for the walls.  No cement trucks were available.   Everything was all done with the most basic of tools, such as a wheel barrel , a pick and shovel. and a hammer.  Supports were placed under the middle of the house to keep it from settling.

I don't remember much about cleaning the house and moving in but that process was started soon after the home was moved onto the foundation.   It was a daunting task to provide heating, electrical, paint and wall paper inside. Linoleum was installed on all the floors, temporary steps were built, windows replaced and a new phase of life began for the Eborn Clan.   Every thing was done by family and friends who generally did not have many construction skills..   No money for hiring anything done.  It was hard, slow going all the way.  I am amazed sometimes at the ability of Dad and others to figure out how to do things and pick up a shovel or a hammer and go to work providing for their family, maybe not in a manner that we are accustomed to in this day and age, but the very best they could with the skills they had and money available.

The home as pictured on the truck is a view of the rear of the home.  It had an open porch across the front which Dad modified to enlarge the front room and later enclosed the rest of the porch as it is now.  Later an enclosed porch was added on the rear.  An indoor bathroom was built a couple of years later, if my memory is correct, which made life in Bear Lake much easier.   Imagine sometime having to go out in the cold every time someone needed to use the out-house - night or day.  Even the poorest of todays society likely has more comforts than existed with our family in those early years.

It took a number of years to dig out the basement and complete the foundation on the front and rear.  I remember as a 10-12 year old kid coming home from school every night and working on digging out the dirt from under the house.  Dad had an old horse, I think named "Old Flax", that he hooked up to a scraper.  The scraper was about four feet wide and had a handle on it to allow it to be dumped.  My job was to fill that scraper each night.   All the dirt had to be removed with a pick and a shovel and then was taken out and dumped as fill dirt between the road and the house.   The basement floor was added several years later.

There was a lot of sacrifice, sweat and aching muscles that went into making the home as it is today and for us, as the children of Darrell and Edna, a pleasant place to live.  We never went hungry,  went without clothes or  suffered because of the elements, except maybe on some hurry-up trips to the out-house.   The lessons we learned were many.

I am sure there are other memories that each of you have of those years.  I have attempted to shed some light on the events surrounding the origin of the home where we grew up.   If you have additional insights please comment.

Ellis

Halloween Memories in Lanark

As Halloween approaches my thoughts go back to some of the things we did to celebrate the occasion when we were growing up.  I recall getting together with some of our friends in Lanark and going out trick or treating from one end of town to the other.  Of course, we all walked along the country roads in the dark all the way from our home on Lanark Lane, meeting up with friends along the way.  We often made our way out as far as Warren Passey's place to the south and sometimes up as far as Worthy Beck's place to the north.  That is a distance of maybe seven or eight miles all together.  We got our share of treats, usually some sort of home made goody like popcorn balls, taffy or fudge and of course we stopped by certain of the neighbors who would become easily upset and tried to get their goat in some mischevious way.  I don't recall doing anything really outlandish, but we did wax a few windows or put a cow pie on the front step of some of the people's houses, if we thought it would get to them. I don't claim to have been involved in this particular activity, but the story was told of a group of teenaged boys who got together and lifted an outhouse from its foundation and moved it back about four feet, hoping that someone would need to use the outhouse during the night and would fall into the exposed pit just before reaching their destination.  I'm not sure they had any success at this endeavor, but I can kind of see their devious little minds at work.

      Some of my fondest memories are of Mother dressing up as a witch every Halloween and anxiously awaiting the arrival of the kids from far and wide.  When the children arrived they always were made to feel welcome and got a special treat, usually one that had required some effort to create,.  I especially rememmber popcorn balls. One might think there was nothing to do in Lanark, but it seems we always found something to keep us busy and happy.  It did require a little imagination and some effort , but I think the memories were all the better for the effort.

by Bart

Edna's Halloween Memories

Edna Hymas Eborn was born on November 8th, 1912 in Liberty Idaho.

The ninety-seventh anniversary of her birth is coming up soon.  I think of her often and sometimes find myself chuckling at the things she told me about her growing up years.  Since Halloween is coming up soon I'll tell you one of the stories she told me about Halloween in Liberty back in the 1920s.  She said of course they did the "Trick or Treat" thing, but there seemed to be more emphasis on the Trick than the Treat.  She said there was an older gentlmen and his wife, I believe the man's name was Freddie Alsop, who lived out along the road in East Liberty.  Like everyone else in town, he had a few cows, which they milked to help sustain their family.  Grandma, then Edna, and a few of her friends decided to play a trick on this  good brother, so they went down to his place in the dark and discovered that Brother Allsop was out in the shed/barn milking his cows.  They found a long willow stick and climbed up on the roof of the building where the cows were being milked.  The roof must have been mostly covered with straw.  I remember her saying how when Brother Allsop would sit down on his one legged stool to milk a cow they would stick the willow down through the roof and poke the cow.The cow would kick.  The milk would be spilled and Brother Alsop would cuss, and they would laugh.  I remember Mother telling me, that after it was all over and she was home, after their night's adventure, she felt ashamed of herself and sorry for poor, old Brother Freddie Alsop, who had never "harmed a fly."  I could tell a few other old-time Halloween pranks that were pulled by Dad and Mom and some of their friends.  I guess it gave me a few ideas for some of my own teenager Halloween shenanigans.  They seemed to use their imagination and find a way to have a good time.  Now, look at these pictures and see if you can imagine our Mother/Grandmother doing what I have discribed.  Doesn't  it bring a smile to your face as well?

All of these pictures were taken of Edna in her late teens and early twenties.  If I remember correctly, I beleive she was twenty-three years old at the time the first two of these pictures were taken. This would have been the year she married dad.   She was good looking.

by Bart

Edna Hymas Eborn & Darrell Eborn Marraige

This is  a scanned photo copy of Darell aand Edna's marraige certificate.  The marraige ceremony took place in the Salt Lake Temple on April 16th,1936, right in the middle of the Great Depressiom.  I remember Mother telling me that Uncle Ivan took them to Salt Lake for the wedding.  None of their friends or family were with them in Salt Lake.  I never heard a lot about their honeymoon, but only that it was very simple and short.  Mom said when she left Liberty and home that 15th of April to go to Salt Lake to the Temple she walked down over the hill where the old Hymas home was to Uncle Ivan's place down on the main road in Liberty.  She said it had been a very late Spring and the fences were still all covered with snow.  She said when she walked down to Uncle Ivan's with her little suit case, she walked over the frences on the crusted snow.  While they were in Salt Lake the  weather changed and it quickly became unseasonably warm.  She said when they returned most of the snow was gone and there was water running everywhere.  A temple marraige had been important to both Mom and Dad and it is not hard to see that they made quite a sacrifice to make a temple marraige happen.  I, for one, am very greatful that temple marraige was a very high poriority for them and that I and the rest of my siblings were Born in the Covenant,  This meant a great deal to them and it does to me, probably,  more than we will ever know in this earth life. I hope we are all greatful and have the same ideals and priviledges and take andvantage of them in our lives, to become better people. They both showed us, by so many small deeds, that we were for them ,their grestest priority. I, for one, am greatful for my heritage and will always strive to be worthy of it.

By Bart

Edna Hymas Eborn

Our mother, Edna Hymas, was born November 8th, 1912.  She was just a month and two days younger than dad.  She was the sixteenth child born to Benjamin Pitman Hymas and Elizabeth Price Hymas.  They lived in Liberty, Idaho.  Mom and Dad were born just a few days and a few miles apart in this world.  I have often wondered if they had planned this in the prexeistence even before their birth into this world.  They didn't know each other, however, until they were about fourteen years old.  Dad said he first saw her at a Stake Conference in Paris.  For him, it was love at first sight.  I don't ever remember him even so much as mentioning another girl to whom he might have been attracted.  I think it took a little longer for Mom to feel the same way about Dad.  He courted her later when the time was appropriate.  Times were tough then.  Their courting years were during the Great Depression and people were taking their time about getting married and assuming family responsibilities.  I remember both Dad and Mother telling of how he would ride his white mustang stallion, Whitey, up to Liberty to see her and how she came to look forward to his visits.

I don't have any pictures of Mother during her childhood years, but as the accompanying photo shows, she grew up to be a beautiful young woman, and it is not difficult to see why Dad was immediately attracted to her.  Eventually, they got married and started their little family.  Their wedding took place in the Salt Lake Temple on April 16, 1936.  They were both 23 years old at the time. After their marraige, they made their first home in the old Eborn family home in Lanark, where Darrell had been raised.  They shared the home with Dad's younger brother, Virgil, and his wife, Lizzie.  This is where their first child. Ellis, was born.

by Bart

Areal View of the Eborn Farm

This is a Google Earth image of the old Darrell Eborn Farm where they raised their family from about a mile up.  Kind of interesting. Our old stomping grounds.  It holds a thousand stories. Some of them have to be worth telling and preserving for posterity.

October 6th 1912 : Reflections on Dad's Birth and Life

It was 97 years ago that Darrell  Eborn was born in Lanark, Idaho.  These are two of the earliest pictures of him that I am aware of.  The first is, so far as I know, the first photograph ever taken of him and the second is of Darrell as a young man, probably before he was married.  I do not know the exact dates of these photos or even the exact age at which they were taken.  He was a handsome child and young man.  He left a great legacy for us.  Not only did he leave us his genetic blueprint, but he left us a legacy of faith, love, honesty, caring, hard work and sacrifice.  Much of what we, as a

family, have become, can be attributed to the example he set and the hopes and dreams he had for each of us.  Though he has departed this earth life, I often feel his concern about what we are doing.  I especially felt that after he passed away and Mother's health began to decline. He loved her with all his heart. He gave us his name and  taught us the important truths of life.  I hope when we meet him again, he will be happy with what we have done with  the great gifts we have been given.