“We had to go to Salt Lake City to get married which was a long ways from the mining camp and Spanish Fork. Karl had to borrow his father’s car, which was lent to him grudgingly. We did not have enough money even to reserve a motel or hotel room for our weekend honeymoon. I asked my skinflint uncle for a week off to have a honeymoon, but he refused to let me go at all, saying I needed to prepare my lessons for the next week. I was so distraught at the idea that I would not only not be able to have a honeymoon, but I would not be able get married. That argument persuaded Uncle Carl, and he finally and reluctantly relented and gave me the two weekend days off.
Finally, I married Karl Oscar Nielson March 14, 1928. It was raining in a record level deluge on the way back to the mining camp after our wedding. The car could scarcely make it through the mud; and finally, after a wheel fell off, Karl decided that it was unsafe to keep on. In fact, we were stuck in the mud and had no choice. Then, it started to sleet which turned to ice; and the ground became very icy. We were somewhere in Price Canyon. He found a small copse of pine trees which provided a bit of cover from the sleet and snow, and he pitched our borrowed tent to cover us on our wedding night. He and I cut pine boughs to make a bed softer than the rocky forest floor. It was a beautiful, romantic introduction into married life with the man I loved, and I did not then nor have I since regretted the circumstances nor thought of myself as put upon for what we lacked. I did not know anything about sex until that first night, and I learned what I needed to know there on those pine boughs.
“By the time Karl and I got back to Spring Canyon it was noon, and I was very late to begin my day of teaching. As bad luck would have it, that very day was when my uncle Carl chose to do his inspection of the school. In my classroom, the kids were all running around like idiots and messing up the room. They were celebrating like Karl and I were, I guess. I know it gave him a bad impression of both of us. He threatened to fire me which would have been terrible—to be a depression school teacher out of a job. But he never did, thank goodness. I must have fluttered my eyelashes or something at him.
“The mine operation slowed way down, and Karl got a good job at the Golden Rule store—sort of like a Pennys; so, when I got pregnant, I could just stay home and take care of myself. I was sick a lot of the time. The circumstances of the delivery of our firstborn child are important, not only because we lost our long-awaited baby girl after a very prolonged and exhausting labor and delivery, but the experience convinced Karl that he was going to become the best doctor in the country, and nothing was ever going to stop him. I was in full agreement with my man. I believed that nothing would ever be so daunting that he would not be able to overcome in his quest to become a doctor. I expected nothing less of my man, never did.
“The baby was butt first in my womb—a breech. I didn’t know anything about having a baby; nobody told me anything. My mother thought it wasn’t nice to talk about it. I decided, “how hard could it be?” The miner’s wives didn’t even go to the hospital. After the baby came, they would get up and do the washing, like the Indians. I was in for a rude awakening and a tough education. After a very long labor and an unproductive effort at delivery, I sort of went into shock, couldn’t close my eyes, couldn’t push.
“The very inexperienced physician decided that it was past time for him to use obstetrical forceps for the first time in his short career as a tiny town’s doctor. He had not been out of medical school a full year by then. He put the forceps in place and not quite knowing what to do next, he used them to give him a strong purchase on the baby’s chin and jaws. He pulled, twisted, and worked up a sweat to get the baby out. Our baby, Florence, named after me, was born dead with a severely fractured neck. I had the double misfortune to have a small pelvis and birth canal, and to have a completely green doctor whose first delivery was as difficult as they get. The problems did not end there. I became terribly sick in the postpartum period, and Karl had no faith in the green doctor in the camp. He was desperate; so, he sent for his father to come and help me. It was the dead of winter, but Alexander John William Nielson, M.D. caught the first train out– the only way to get to the camp in the winter–and came to my rescue. My recovery was painful and slow, as it was with each of my babies. I guess I wasn’t much of a birther.
“Finally, the Depression closed in on us altogether; the stock market crashed on Black Monday, October 28, 1929; and the mine had to shut down. I worked in the ice cream parlor at the Golden Rule for a while, but Karl and I both were let go because there wasn’t enough business or money to keep the store going. We were broke and had no real prospects. That was the last bit of information we needed to move on. Karl determined to go to the University of Utah for pre-med and that he and I would be able to work our way through even in those dark and dirty days of the Depression. He was nothing if not optimistic, or better described as absolutely determined. And school wasn’t very expensive in those days. I have held off telling you about those bad old days.
“I can’t summon up the energy to talk about it today.”
