I was born on January 23rd 1943, at 17 minutes after noon. I weighed 6 lbs. 14 oz. and was 20 ½ inches long. I was blessed by my Grandpa Jeppesen on March 7, 1943. My cousin had a doll named Marla and my mother liked the name so much that she named me after her. I was named Jean after a friend of my Mothers. We moved from Corrine, Utah to Naples, Idaho when I was 9 months old and that is where I spent my first Christmas. We didn’t live in Idaho long before we moved to the white house in Bothwell. By the time I was a year old I weighed 25 lbs. I got my first tooth when I was 8 months old. At 8 months old I spoke my first word, Daddy, and then, Mommy, when I was 9 months old. I was always saying, “Whas Sat, Whas Sat?” and “Ta Ta”. I put words together to make sentences when I was 16 months old. I could talk really well by the age of 2. When I was a child I dearly loved my mother’s powder and perfume or “smasmoon” as I called it.
The following are some of the earliest events I can remember from my life.
I can remember my dad picking me up to see my baby brother in his casket. My mother was RH negative, and they didn’t know until my brother was born and they couldn’t help him. His name was Richard Emil. As I remember, he was a big beautiful baby in a crocheted dress. I didn’t understand why he was like that.
When I was three I had to go to the hospital and have my tonsils out. I can remember them putting the Ether over my mouth and nose and I couldn’t breathe. Oh, that scared me bad. I got to go stay with my cousin Illa Rae after I got out of the hospital because Mother went into labor with Dwight while I was having my tonsils out. Aunt Ruth gave me some Aspirin gum for my sore throat. I remember I wanted more and she wouldn’t let me have any more. I liked the taste of it. I can remember being in their bathroom and they had sea horses on their bathroom wallpaper. When I got feeling better I was supposed to go across the street and stay with my cousin Patsy and her family until my mom and dad came to get me. Aunt Ruth was going to a family reunion for my Uncles side of the family and I wanted to go. I wouldn’t go across the street because I wanted to go with them, so they just had to leave me on the step. I guess I was stubborn.
Before mom and dad put on the basement washroom and fruit room there used to be a walk in closet where Dad’s closet door is, in Mom’s room, with a door that went outside. One day I came up missing and my parents couldn’t find me anywhere. They had neighbors and people looking for me everywhere. Either they found me, or I came looking for them, but I had been in the closet taking a nap behind mom’s big old cedar chest.
Sometimes we would go to the old house in Brigham City where Aunt Emma, and at one time Aunt Bonnie used to live. When Mother went to visit Bonnie, I would play with my cousin Linda. They had big trees out by the road, and a little ditch ran down by their roots. Linda had a little playhouse out under the tree roots. Her dad had been in the army and he had these little heavy bowls called “service ware” that he had brought back. He had given her these tiny dishes to play with. We would play with them out underneath the trees and play with and make things out of the tree leaves.
My father baptized me in the old Bear River High School swimming pool. I know I felt awfully young. Another girl was there with no father to baptize her so they asked my dad to do it. For some reason I can really remember that.
I spent a lot of time outside when I was young. I remember mom saying I was brown as an Indian. I played on the swing at home and did acrobatics all over the living room. I would do summersaults and cartwheels. Mom put me in a dance and acrobatics class with Grace Orme. She was a young lady just starting her family. I took dancing from her for years then she had to stop to have a baby. I took lessons in the building across the street from the Garland show house. When she quit teaching, Mom took me to Tremonton to take lessons from Wanda Larsen. I believe for awhile we took lessons behind Cowley’s. We had recitals, and performed at church and other places. I remember recitals at the second ward recreational hall. When Grace started teaching again a few years later, I went back to taking from her. I took dancing from her until I was 12 or 13. The last time I remember wearing a dance costume was when I did a dance at school in 8th or 9th grade. Also, when my cousin got married, she asked me to dance the Hula at her reception, and so I did that as well. The things I liked doing most were acrobatics, dance, and reading.
The elementary school I attended was right close to our church. One day when I went to get in the bus I could see my mother’s car by the church; I thought I’d go over there and go home with mom. So I went over to the church and the ladies were quilting. I was going to sit and wait for mother to get through when Wanita said, “You can’t just sit there Marla, pick up a needle and come over here and quilt.” When I said, “I don’t know how”, she said “It’s never too late to learn.” That is when I learned how to quilt
When I was in my teens I spent a week at my cousin Linda’s in Idaho. I thought I was going there for fun, not to work. So they said, “Come on we gotta go out in the potato field.” They gave me a tin can and told me to pick the worms off the potato plants. It was gross. I could hardly stand it. The next day they came to wake me up to do the same thing. I was way nasty and pretended I was still asleep. I got to watch the young boys instead of taking worms off the plants that day.
One time we’d been up to Aunt Bonnie’s in Idaho and on the way back I got a migraine. It was so bad and just wouldn’t get better, so mom and dad packed me up, took me down to Salt Lake to Dr. Verl Longs. They were friends of my parents that had moved to Salt Lake. He was a “nature-path” and chiropractor. He was in a business with some other men and they had a way of doing treatments with these heating pads that would take the toxins out of your body. They put a pad on your head and on your stomach and the pads were hooked up to electrical wires to a machine. I stayed with the Longs for about a week. I would have a treatment about once a day and stay with them at the office until they went home and then I would stay with them at their home that night. As I had had the migraine we forgot and left my glasses at home. They were trying to find things for me to do while I wasn’t taking my treatment. A man in the office there had optometrist machinery. They put these wire glasses on me, and slid glass lenses in and out until I could see. They picked some up for me, put them in a paper sack and took me down to see “The Ten Commandments” that had just come to Salt Lake. When I was through with my treatments they put me on the bus to Ogden. I had an Orthodontist appointment and mom and dad were picking me up. When I got home I got cleaned up and had to go to a stake dance recital. Back then they had stake dance festivals every year. This year we went to the Ogden Rodeo Arena. We sang and danced and it was really a special experience.
