“There wasn’t much fruit grown around Montpelier except chokecherries, wild strawberries and service berries. Apples and potatoes grown there at that time were small and not as tasty as those grown in other parts of the state. Fruit peddlers came through Montpelier in covered wagons from Cache Valley. They brought apples and pears along with other types of fruit and vegetables in season. My folks would buy whatever the peddlers were selling and what the family didn’t eat my mother would can.
“In Montpelier when I was young the Latter Day Saint church services were spoken in Swiss German. On Saturday nights dances were held in the meeting house. Benches were pushed back against the walls and children too young to dance were put to sleep on the benches and floor on coats and blankets. The Tueller family had a band and played for the dances.
“I often went with my dad to pay our family’s tithing. It was paid “in kind” with hay, grain or livestock.
“When our mother did the washing, Hubert and I turned the washer handle to keep the agitator blades going. In the summer the washing was done outside and the wash water was heated in a kettle outside over a small fire. In winter the washing was done inside and water was heated in the wood stove reservoir.
“In the summertime we swam in the canal and we became pretty good swimmers. We had a gang of boys we played with. I remember our going up into Sam Lox’s hayloft to get some watermelons Sam had stored there. We lifted up the lightest person to get the melons and we ate them all the way home. Sam tracked us home by the trail of watermelon rinds and our dad had to pay $5.00 to get us off.”
-John Joseph Straubhaar
Excerpt from Straubhaar Family History, July 1990
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