From the Pen of Faye Byington Barfus (Submitted by Gladys Brown) 

The wedding of Abner and Nancy Garwood Bell was an attractive feature of pioneer life. Marriages were always celebrated in the house of the bride, and she was generally left to choose the officiating clergyman. A wedding, however, engaged the attention of the whole neighborhood. The morning of the wedding the groom and his best friends assembled at the house of his father and then went by horseback, sometimes on foot, and sometimes in farm wagons and carts to the home of the bride, where the marriage ceremony took place, and dinner or supper was served. A wedding dinner at this time was thus described: on either end of the table was a large fat wild turkey, still hot and smoking from the clay oven in which it was roasted, In the middle of the table and midway between the turkeys, was a fine saddle of venison (part of a buck killed the day before by the bride’s father). Other spaces were filled with pumpkin pies and wild berry pies. Two or three roast chickens were also on the table. 

Apple Butter 

Wild crab apples were preserved with molasses. Apple and peach butter was made in a large kettle or wash boiler over an open fire, in the yard. The family and neighbors sat around the fire, peeled apples and kept throwing them into the kettle. It had to be stirred constantly with a long wooden paddle to keep from sticking and burning. Boiled down with cider until it was thick and dark brown, it was packed in a stone jar and kept all winter. Cucumbers were packed in dry salt which drew the juice out of them and made a saturated brine which kept indefinitely. They were freshened in clear water in winter, a few at a time and then made into pickles with vinegar and spices. String beans were sometimes salted down in the same manner. 

Sauerkraut was made by shredding cabbage, packing it into a stone jar and then salt was sprinkled on each layer of three or four inches. A plate or rock was placed on top to weigh it down. After twenty-four hours the salt drew enough brine to cover and fermentation began which subsided after a week or ten days and the kraut was ready to eat. 

Seasonal chores occupied the weekdays all year around, from early gardening in the spring to butchering in the winter. The men folk plowed the garden plot, the women “put it in” and tended it. Garden seeds were saved from year to year 

Washday 

Mother would get up early on wash day to get the water for the wash heating in a big boiler on the stove or in the yard. While it was heating she cooked breakfast, made lunches for school and made a big pot of starch. Then the heated suds were put in a tub where the clothes were scrubbed on the washboards and rinsed in another tub of clear water. You washed for the hired men as well as for your own family. And since most of the men worked in close contact with the soil and with animals there was always an astonishing pile of extremely dirty clothing-mountains of overalls and socks, heavy underwear and flannel shirts, not to speak of volumes of bed linen. 

Drying the clothes was almost as much of a job as washing them, especially in winter. It often took the best part of a week, and for many months during the year, when the weather was cold, the various rooms of your house were made uncomfortable and unpleasant with smelly underwear and clumsy flannel shirts which took not hours but days to air thoroughly. 

Crickets 

The vegetation was loaded with hideous crickets, their black and brown bodies clinging to the stems of the plants. As these ugly, ogling-eyed insects fed on the juice of these plants, they withered and died, making the landscape even more desolate. 

Later it was the crickets who ate the crops of the Saints and caused much starvation in the valley. 

The Indian bands at this time utilized these crickets for food in large quantities. When they attained their full growth, and weighed about one ounce each, they were very clumsy and easy to handle. The squaws and papooses would enclose a small piece of ground with stalks of sunflowers, leaving an opening on one side, forming a pen. They would drive the crickets and force them into this pen which was several inches thick. The entrance was closed, and the fence fired, while someone in the pen frightened the crickets into the blaze. It would scorch their wings and legs and generally kill them. They were gathered up and dried in the sun on skins. When dry they were packed in skin sacks and used for winter food. 

When the pioneers lost their crops to the crickets they too found that they could be a staple article of food. These were cooked in a kettle of boiling water. They pulled the wings off and used the large part of the leg. They said they tasted much like navy bean soup. 

Great Arrowhead 

This is the Indian legend of the Great Arrowhead on the mountain in the San Bernardino Valley: a long time ago, when the Indians owned all this country, before the white man came, the Indians visited the hot springs to regain their health. In time many of them stayed and lived there. Two young braves fell desperately in love with the same maiden. They could not settle their difficulty and laid the matter before their chief. He decided that they should fight. The maiden would become the bride of the victor. The day of the battle, a great crowd gathered to behold the struggle. The young braves armed with bow and arrow came into the flight area. They faced each other and drew their arrows to the head. A sharp twang of the bows sounded as one, and the heart of one was pierced while the opponent remained unhurt.  

Leaning over his rival, the victorious brave pulled the arrow from the heart of his opponent, and with a scornful smile, he shot it towards the mountainside. It struck, quivered, and fastened itself in the rock, and there it stands to this day to tell the story of love, hate and destruction. 

Family Monster 

It was about the time the Bell family lived in the Bear lake area that the Bear Lake monster made its appearance. “A monster! There’s a monster in the Lake!” cried an excited rider as he raced along the Round Valley road. “I saw only the head and part of its neck,” Johnson said, “It had ears or bunches on the side of its head the size of pint cups. The waves dashed over it and it threw water from its mouth and nose. It stayed only a few minutes, then swam rapidly away.” 

Before the match was invented, fires when once made were never let die out. The  flint and steel to build a fire was the most valuable pieces of equipment of the settlers. If your fire went out, you had to borrow a start from your neighbor. You would check to see which chimney had smoke, then take your frying pan and run to that house for some live coals to start your fire. 

Move to Dempsey 

In June 1895, the Bells moved to Dempsey, Idaho, now Lava Hot Springs. The kitchen range was an important part of the home. This is where the meals were cooked and water heated for the wash. 

When blankets were washed, tubs were taken near the creek, they were filled with water and after placing the blankets in, the girls would remove their shoes and stockings and hold their skirts up and get in the tubs and tromp the blankets until they were clean. 

On “ironing day” everything had to be ironed to get the wrinkles out. Some families even ironed their dish towels. Shirts and overalls were especially hard to iron. The old flat irons were heated on the range, then carried to the ironing board which was a straight padded board laid across the backs of chairs. The fires had to be kept hot; Using the irons alternately, the ironing went steadily on until finished. 

The homes of the settlers were miles apart. When they visited, they loaded the children in the wagon or buggy and went for the day. Usually you went to help the family with some chores. A barn raising, a quilting bee, a rag bee or a surprise party for a member of that family were cause for a day away. In the fall when the corn was picked it meant a husking bee. If it was a quilting bee everyone came with a needle and thimble to stitch long and merry hours to finish the quilt. The rag bee was noisier and perhaps dustier, for all the old things–coats, pants, dresses, everything, was ripped, torn and cut into strips to be sewn end to end for miles, and wound into a ball. Sometimes the balls were gloriously huge and multi-colored from the many colors of discarded clothes. These balls were braided and woven into rugs to cover the hard wooden floors.