August 1996 Blazer

Gathering mushrooms in the old fort

THE HISTORY BLAZER ArEM7S OF UTAH'S PAST FROM THE Utah State Historical Society 300 Rio Grande Salt Lake Ci tv. LTT 84101 ( 801) 533- 3500 FAX ( 801) 533- 3303 Gathering Mushrooms in the Old Fort h JULY 1922, ON THE 7 5AN~ NW~ RSA RY of the Mormon pioneers' arrival in the Salt Lake Valley, the Utah Fanner published reminiscences by several 1847 immigrants who were still living. Richard S. Home of Salt Lake City, for example, described collecting mushrooms: ' Akr the people moved out of the fort and made their homes on their lots, we used to go to the ' Old Fort' and gather mushrooms which grew very rapidly and afforded considerable food for the people. When a boy I was sent ... early in the morning each day or two to gather these mushrooms. One morning.. . I was on my way.. . to get mushrooms in the company of a young lady who was living with us.. . . she began telling me of the great number of mushrooms she had recently gathered in the ' Fort.' She became so earnest and enthusiastic over the matter that she made a fist of her right hand and struck the palm of her left hand ... with all the force she possessed, and said, ' Why, Richard, I gathered forty- eleven of them!' Imagine the awe with which a little boy would gaze upon ... so august and wise a person." On another occasion, after herding cows near the Jordan River, Richard recalled returning home ' in the evening with my teeth as black as if I had been eating chard." This startled his mother until he explained that he had been eating thistles. He told how a hungry boy went about eating them: ' These thistles, which by the way were wonderful-ly plentiful at that time but now are things of the past, consisted of a tall stalk covered with long thorny leaves with a round red flower at the top. We boys would take a stick and knock off the flower then peel the outside of the stalk away. This left the pith on the inside safe for us to gather and eat"- and blacken the teeth. William C. Allen of Draper, Salt Lake County, recalled the infestations of crickets that destroyed so many crops in the early years of settlement. Food shortages were common and often led people to eat unusual things. William's father, who was logging in Mill Creek, saw a rancher boiling the carcass of a wolf to obtain some grease. Some of the men in the logging camp asked to taste the wolf meat: ' The rancher consented and they ate [ the wolfJ meat, grease and all, they were so hungry." The family of Andrew Cony arrived in the Salt Lake Valley about six weeks after the first company. Writing to the newspaper from Cedar City in 1922, he said his first memory was of ' sitting on the hearth while my mother was gathering pig weeds to cook for food. We did not have any bread for six weeks, but had been living on roots, thistles, pig weeds and other greens. " John P. Porter, reporting from " East Bountihl," Davis County, provided a detailed description of harvesting grain by hand with a turkey wing cradle and scythes and raking it with a ( more) wooden rake. Before the first mills were built grain was ground into flour with stones or in a coffee mill. Many times whole kernels of wheat were simply boiled and eaten with milk. But perhaps the most intriguing part of Porter's recollection is the description of his ' lay- out * in the fall of 1867, 20 years after settlement, when he married. The newlyweds had nothing at fist, but after his father had finished building a new house, the young couple moved into the old log cabin: " We had newspaper window blinds, no curtains, our bedstead was made by my wife's father out of some lumber out of Mill Creek that they had discarded.. . . We had no bed cords so we used lumber to lay our straw tick on.. . . We had to nail the bedstead to the wall so it would stand up. We never had a chair, we used an old slab bench with holes bored in it and some pegs stuck in it for legs, just large enough for her and me. We had three tin plates and two tin cups, two or three knives and forks.. . . " Most of those who wrote to the Utah Famr expressed doubt that the young people of the 1920s could have stood such hardship. Porter said: ' The young class of people of today think these are awful hard times, but they don't know what hard times are. They won't get married, and when they do they want to appear Like millionaires. There is nothing good enough for them." He thought the boys and girls of the 1920s ' would just curl up and die" if they had to harvest grain by hand or make all their clothing from scratch out of wool clipped from sheep. Andrew Corry was equally dubious about youth: " It seems to me that the younger generation are seeking more for pleasure and the temporal things of this world.. . . " Temperance Keturah Haight Macfarlane Parry of Cedar City lamented the decline in the moral tone of society, especially immodest dress. In the pioneer era " children did a half day's work before they went to school," and a girl's " music lessons" consisted of practicing on the spinning wheel, she said. The Utah pioneers survived many difficulties and deprivations and are revered today for their self- discipline and endurance. The unique circumstances they faced in 1847 shaped their lives, but in one matter at least- their view of youth-- they were remarkably like generations that preceded and followed them. Source: Utah Fanner, July 22, 1922. THE HXSTORBYL AZERis produced by the Utah State Historical Society and funded in part by a grant from the Utah Statehood Centennial Commission. For more information about the Historical Society telephone [phone] ( MBM)