Yard and garden chores on the Hunt homestead

As early as I can remember, Mom and Dad made sure Merrill and I had chores around the house and yard.
As I recall, the first chores included cleaning our bedrooms, washing the dishes and cleaning the wood furniture in the livingroom with Pledge. Merrill liked to get it done as fast as he could, but I remember wanting to have everthing just right when I cleaned my room. I think Mom was good at making me feel like I had done a good job, which made me want to do even a better job the next time.
When it came to washing dishes, it usually was a battle between Merrill and I -- often a lot of clowning around. I remember that we settled pretty much into a routine: I would wash the dishes and he would take them out of the rinse bath and stack them in the drainer. Once we couldn't stack them any higher -- which became an art -- Merrill would dry the dishes with a dish towel. Remember, this was before dish washers -- at least in the Hunt house. I remember asking Dad about getting a dishwasher and he said we already had several!!! Well, I think I did the washing because I hated it when Merrill would hurry too fast and put dishes in the rinse that still had food on them. When I complained, he would make me wash the dishes. Now that I think about it, he probably did it on purpose so I would wash the dishes. But I don't think I thought of that back then -- I just figured no one could wash the dishes as good as I could and I didn't want to eat on dirty dishes -- especially the silverware (the utensils), we called them silverware though we didn't have any silver-ware! I was very careful to wash every spoon, fork and knife individually so there would be no food left on them to spoil the next meal. When Troyleen started helping to do dishes, I think I still kept washing the dishes and at the same time showed her the right way to do them -- including the right way to stack the dishes in the drainer so we didn't have to dry them. I was pretty dogmatic in what was the best way to stack the dishes and Troyleen would get mad at me for bothering her about "the proper way to stack." It was an art!
Of course, Mom was pretty clever, I guess, because I remember how she would praise me for being so careful in washing the dishes the right way.
The next step in chores for Merrill and I was doing the weeding of the yard.
Our yard was about 30 yards wide (north to south) and probably 70 yards deep (west to east). The house was at the west end of the lot with a driveway on the south side leading to a good size garage just behind and to the south of the house.
The front fence between the driveway and the north corner of the lot was lined with roses, which Dad had grown from sprouts from rose bushes he had found here and there. When he saw a rose that he really liked, he would bring home a sprout that he would plant in the mud under the front house faucet that dripped. The dripping kept the ground damp, and the sprout would be in the shade for more than half of the day. He covered the sprout with a clear glass gallon Ball or Mason jar to keep it humid and warm. If the sprout sprouted roots and started to grow, he would let it get as big as the jar would let it and then transplant the plant. I thought everyone did roses that way.
The job of weeding between the rose bushes was a thorny task -- one that Merrill especially hated. It didn't take long before it became my job. When Merrill got into sports in the ninth grade, most of the yard and house chores became my jobs. Merrill still had to do work with Dad and I on Fridays and Saturdays, unless there was a game. It seemed like we spent most of our weekends working at the apartments just off of North Temple and just west of the railroad tracks in Salt Lake. But that's another story for another day.
When I started doing the weeding between the roses, I was very careful to get all the weeds. I might come in the house with blood on my hands, but when Mom would tell me how good the roses looked without all the weeds smothering them, then I felt good -- but not like I wanted to do it again the next day. I hated it, too, but if I had to do it, I wanted it to look good.
One night, Dad came home with a bunch of tiny pine trees -- about 6" tall. Half were blue spruce and half where ponderosa pine. Guess what Merrill and I had to do? Yup, we got to plant everyone one of those trees along the north border fence and even along the east border. We planted them about a foot apart. After planting them, our job was to keep them watered. I don't think we did a very good job, because later (not sure if it was the next year or later that year), Dad brought home some more tiny trees and we had to replant almost the whole batch.
We did a little better of keeping them watered, and many of the trees actually survived for a couple of years. The ground was so hard that they really had a hard time surviving. I remember that later we transferred some of those trees into the southwest corner spot of the front yard. Some of those grew to maturity.
When it came to gardening, I remember early on being given the chore of watering the garden. I remember keeping an eye on the water running down each row and making sure it got to the end of each row. If the water didn't reach the end of the row or didn't build up enough at the end of the row, the plants toward the end of the row would be stunted or die. So, in everything you do, make sure the water gets to the end of the row. (Do every job you're given the completely if you want to reap the rewards.) Sometimes I would have to repair the rows to get the water to the ends. We would spend it seemed like hours watering the garden. If we left the water running down the rows and went to shoot a few hoops, inevitably the rows would flood and make a quagmire. We had a well with a pump that Uncle Lloyd had put in when he lived in the house before us. If we didn't do the gardening and watering, the garden failed. Also, if we were told to do a chore in the garden, we couldn't play basketball or any of the neighborhood sports and activities until the chores were done. Sometimes when we left to go play before doing our chores, Dad would come Hunting for us with a willow branch!
If we didn't do our chores, we didn't get to play. The neighborhood kids were always complaining about how much we had to work -- spoiling the good times. But still, we played tons outdoors.
One of the most tiring jobs was doing all the weeding in the garden. That was virtually all done by Merrill and me. I really can't remember Dad doing much of the weeding in the garden other than to show us how to do the weeding and how to recognize what were weeds and what were seedlings. This is where Dad's famous quote was used over and over in our youth -- "Get your butt behind you." That was the same phrase whether weeding, shoveling or hammering a nail. But I don't think he used the word butt.
One of the most tramatic experiences of my teen years happened because I failed to do my chores:
When I was a senior at Granger High School, it was a really heady time for me. I was in Concert Choir and Madrigals. I was Lancer Men's president (president of all the male students; yup, they actually had officers like that back then). I was the sports editor of the school paper. I was in the Ushers Club. I was the football manager and we had gone to state for the first time in the school's history. And I had a steady girlfriend. It was a great year for me -- probably the most eventful of my life in a lot of ways (I probably shouldn't say that!).
Well, my girlfriend, Vicki, asked me to Girls Pref dance at school, and it was the first and only time I had ever been asked to a girls pref dance. I was so excited. As it turned out, the night before the dance, the Madrigals had a party where we got up like at 4 in the morning and went bowling and to breakfast. My girlfriend was also in Madrigals -- so I had a great time -- though I was terrible at bowling -- even when I had two legs. I preferred basketball. I think we got home like at 7 in the morning and I went back to bed. I was exhausted!!!! I wanted to sleep all day until it was time to go on my big date that Saturday night.
About eight or nine in the morning, Dad came into my room and said I needed to get up and do my chores. He left and I went back to sleep. He came back a little bit later and woke me up again and told me I had to get up and do my chores. But this time (or maybe it was the third time he woke me up), he said if I didn't get up and do my chores that I would be grounded. Well, I went back to sleep. I didn't think that he would ground me from going on this one huge most important date of my life! But when he came in the last time at about 10 a.m., he was pretty mad!!!! He said I was grounded. Well, I got up finally and did the chores in plenty of time before it was time for my date -- but he said I couldn't go. Because I didn't get up and do the chores when I was suppoed to, I couldn't go.
I begged and pleaded with him -- and I think Mom even went to bat for me -- but he stood his ground. Can you imagine how hard it was to call my girlfriend, Vicki, and tell her that I couldn't go because my dad had grounded me, in my senior year of high school, because I didn't do my chores! She was devastated and mad! She was probably more mad at me than my dad because I could have gotten up and done the chores and then taken a nap.
Doing chores around the house was a big deal. It was a way of helping the family take care of itself. Dad was from a farm family background where everyone had a job and everyone did their part. This was in the 1950s and '60s and though we didn't live on a farm, we still were a part of that heritage. Plus, Dad was always working -- whether it was at Hill Air Force Base or at some other second job or at the apartments or doing church welfare jobs or other church duties. It was Merrill's and my job to help out at home -- to take some of the pressure off.
But there was something else to the whole process of learning to do our chores and the jobs that we were given: We learned a lot about responsibility and about consequences. I learned a very good but terrible lesson about consequences that day in my senior year.
I think I may have learned the lessons of responsibility and consequences, but I'm not sure I did a very good job of teaching those two principals to my kids.
When Nancy and I started our family and lived in Kearns, we had a small garden, about 25 by 30 feet, in the southwest corner of our lot on between the west sideway and the west side of our driveway. We planted a lot of crops there and had a beautiful garden. I think I did most of the weeding -- but maybe Nancy would disagree. One of the reasons we moved was to have a bigger yard. In West Jordan, we had a garden on the east edge of our back yard. It was probably 30 feet east to west and 60 feet north to south. We had some great crops come out of that garden, including a prize-winning giant pumpkin. We grew a lot of tomatoes, some corn, strawberries, boysenberries, raspberries, cucumbers, cantalope, zuccini, spaghetti squash, peppers, peas, string beans. Also, we had beautiful flower beds around the house and yard. It was a lot of work planting all the flowers, the garden and weeding everything every year. It seemed Nancy and I spent a lot of time doing all of that. I honestly don't remember the kids -- especially the boys -- doing much of of anything in the yard, especially not the weeding. I remember Heather and Lena and Jason helping us to plant the garden -- but I don't remember them doing a lot of the weeding. Wait, I do remember Jason doing some weeding a few times. I wonder if it was more than a few? It will be interesting if I'm all wet on this subject.
I remember too many times when Nancy would tell me when I would fight with the kids (the boys) about helping in the yard that it wasn't worth the fight with them, that we just as well do it ourselves, that maybe I was just trying to get them to do my jobs instead of doing them myself. Funny how I remember it. But I remember that I was always working and that the boys were always playing. Am I wrong? I know I always wanted them to be working with me -- but what I was doing wasn't any fun. So I remember sitting on the ground and scooting around and doing the weeding of all the flower gardens. I do remember Heather and Lena helping me a few times. I wonder if it was more than a few?
Then I got too busy to do much of even the weeding -- though I remember Nancy coming in and demanding that I take time to go out with her and weed the flower beds. She just didn't want to fight with the kids about the jobs outside.
Did I teach the kids, especially the boys, about responsibility and consequences? Well, I'm not too sure I did.
But it's a word to the wise that parents have a duty to teach their kids responsibities -- and consequences. How can we do it? Give them jobs to do, even if they are small jobs -- and make sure there are consequences and that you apply the consequences. Everyone needs to learn that they have the freedom to do what they want but that there are consequences to whatever they do -- good and bad.