Nick Oldroyd

Service Learning Project

Dr. Mulderink

April 14, 2006

Learning to Live with Nothing

This was a great project for me because I learned so much about my grandma and what she went through during the Great Depression and World War II. Growing up I spent endless hours and my grandparents house working around the yard and trailer park but I had know idea the life my grandma lived. The audience for this project is going to be my grandma’s children and grand children. Working with my grandparents daily I felt like I knew my grandma better than any of the other grandchildren but I was so surprised with how little I actually knew. I am going to make copies of this report, (which I am going to finish over the next few months with a more detailed life from 1921 to the present day) bind it, and mail them to all the family members. I think that they are going to be really surprised in what they learn about grandma. The workload for this project has been pretty tiring. We have spent hours on the phone but only one time did we meet in person because I could not make it back up to Logan. We talked on the phone nightly for three weeks straight and I was amazed with her life during the fifteen years that we covered.

Picture yourself in New Orleans during World War II. You rode on segregated buses, ate at separate restaurants then African Americans, but you knew deep down that they are no better or worse than you are. One day while riding the bus to work grandma decided to sit next to an African American and this raised many eyebrows with the white folks on the bus. In fact the bus driver ordered her off the bus because she was not to sit by the colored people. She argued they are no different but it did not matter. Grandma has always stood up for equal rights and this is what makes her the person she is today. Ruby Mauchley Pond is an amazing lady and the best grandma in the world. Growing up, grandma spent endless hours helping her father on the farm. School was set up a bit different back then but grandma would not change a thing. Her taxi driving days were very interesting only with her time in New Orleans and Miami.

Grandma was born August 25, 1921 in Preston, Idaho. Her parents lived on a 120 acre farm in Whitney, Idaho about 10 miles from Preston. She had seven brothers and seven sisters. Growing up was really tough but she knew no different. They had their chickens, pigs, and cows for meat, wheat were in the granaries, and had bees for honey. The bought flour and made their own bread. The garden was filled with vegetables and they had a tree orchid with different fruit. When grandma was about five years old she remembers chopping wood on the jumping block for the chimney and the stove. The farm was so big that they could not plow the fields in time so she remembers sitting in the tractor with the lights on while her dad was driving.

When it came time to go to school there was only one building for first grade through ninth grade. This building was divided into three rooms and grades 1-3 were in one room, grades 4-6 in the middle room and grades 7-9 in the end room. There were only three teachers in the school so one teacher taught three grades. I asked grandma if this was hard or a bit strange and she said “hell no, that is all that we knew at the time.” They all walked to school but every once in awhile her brother Chris would take her on his horse. Grandma loved school and looked forward to going on to high school. This was located in Preston and they had to take the bus. When she wasn’t studying she was on the farm working on the chores.

After graduation grandma was fed up with small town Whitney and moved to Salt Lake City to be a maid for the Moffit family. She did this for a year and decided to try something a bit more exciting so she became one of four women taxi drivers in Salt Lake. Grandma loved this job because she had the opportunity to interact with many different people and us her unique personality to make friends. After two years of taxi driving grandma had to move back to Whitney to help her dad on the farm because all seven of her brothers were drafted during World War II. When I asked the questioned were she was during December 7, 1941 there was no hesitation. It was a Sunday morning and she was on her way to church in Salt Lake. She had heard the news over the radio and could not believe it. Well, the farm was much too big for her and her dad so they had help from German POW’s that were in the jail in Preston. Her dad was Swiss and spoke perfect German so he became good friends with his new help and stayed in contact with them well after the war. During the war grandma would receive letters from her brothers about once a month and that was great motivation. I asked grandma how they celebrated holidays and she couldn’t remember really celebrating any because they didn’t have much. Food and gas were now rationed and many people in Preston were running out of food so they came to the farm and her dad would just give them enough food to survive. They learned to live on virtually nothing. Grandma would have a half apple for lunch and the other half for dinner. She was getting worn out being on the farm so she moved back to Salt Lake to resume taxi driving during the day and at night she worked in the Remington factory making 50 caliber bullets to be shipped off to war. This lasted about sixth months before grandma thought she had to move on.

New Orleans was a different world for grandma. She could not believe all the racism that was going on. She said while she would walk down the street, young African Americans would come up to her and rub the bottom of her dresses. She could not hold back tears of what she was seeing on the buses and in restaurants. She grew up believing that all men are the same no matter race, religion, or sex and this was too hard for her to bear. Six months after moving to New Orleans she hoped up and moved to Miami were she drove a gentni along the beach. This was a good job for the time. She got to meet all kinds of people and loved living next to the ocean. After a year of beach life she thought it was a good idea to come home and be closer to her family. She married grandpa in March of 1947 and lived on a farm in Lewiston, Utah for the next twenty years.

What I gained from this project? This project has helped me better understand the life of my grandma and the trials she went through. I also get a better idea of how the Great Depression affected people living in southern Idaho and northern Utah. I always knew that my grandma was a strong person but after talking to her about life in the thirties and forties my respect grew tremendously. I could not imagine what she went through during this time. She said it was not as bad as it sounds because she knew no different but that is hard for me to believe because of what I know about my grandma. She never wants to be center of attention and always looks out for other people before herself. She talked about FDR a little at the end and said he was the right man for the job at that time. I researched this and I would have to believe that he was the right man to be president. This project is far from over. I am so interested in my grandma’s life that I am going to go a lot deeper with this and let the family know how special grandma really is.