PIONEER WOMEN HAIRSTYLES AND PRODUCTS AND HILDA'S Take

 

 

We, the old-fashioned long-haired, long skirted women of the modestly dressed school must confess there are times when we do admire and envy our beautifully marceled, well trimmed, brillianteened sisters of the bobbed hair and knee length skirt, and we do fight the temptation to "go and do likewise." And become one of the great masses. We assure you it does take a great deal of will power to say, "Get thou behind me Satan".

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You will acknowledge it takes a more than ordinary strength to come before so many bobbed heads to tell you of your mistake and sins and to defend our long hair and skirts. But thanks to the teachings of our early innocent childhood when we were taught in school and in Sunday School a verse something like this, "Sin is a monster to be hated, needs to be seen, but seen too often, we first endure, then pity, then embrace.

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Friends, we may well compare that sin, to the sins of the world, to the sins of the short skirt and the bobbed hair today, and are we not advised from the pulpit to "keep ourselves unspotted from the sins of the world?"

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We have often heard the bobbed hairdo epidemic defended with the illusion that it makes one look younger. are we not taught to honor and respect old age? Is it honest to look like something you are not? Is it honest to deliberately act out a lie?

***

Only a short time ago, a certain Mt. Pleasant man; (you all know to whom I refer, but we shall call him Bob) was taken to a hospital in Salt Lake City, all on account of something that wasn't. He saw at a distance what he thought was a young chicken. He hopped into his automobile and when he overtook the object, he found that it was an old hen and that she was his mother-in-law at that. The result of the meeting was his trip to the hospital. One day while there, there was a knock at the door.

***

The lady sitting by his bedside, who by the way had her hair, bobbed the day before, stepped into the hall and there she saw a sweet young creature with a boyish bob and a short pantilooned skirt that asked to see Bob. Said the first lady to the younger, "May I ask who you are as we do not allow all visitors." "I am his sister." "Oh, said the other, I am glad to know you, I am his mother." Think of that, mother and daughter not knowing each other, not knowing the members of their own family, all on account of looking like what you are not, with bobbed hair and short skirts.

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The bobbed hair is robbing the women of today of motherly love, of that sacrificing spirit that has made motherhood so hallowed. Compare the long hairdo mother of yesterday with the short hairdo mother of today, for instance. A few days ago a schoolboy asked his patient, red faced, perspiring father, who was busy preparing the midday meal, for some money with which to buy a belt. The poor father sadly replied: "Son, never before have I refused you any of the necessities of life, but since Ma bobbed her hair, it is all I can do to keep her on speaking terms with the barber and the marcellor and attend to the housework. And friends, that poor boy, that son and heir, that representative of the future generation, say perhaps the future mayor of Mt. Pleasant, was forced to go without a belt. And we all know how necessary a belt is to a pair of trousers. Think what might have happened.

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Now there is an example of following the styles. There was a time when men were blessed with gallowses,then fashion said suspenders. Soon they discarded them and left only a belt. And, Oh what agony the men's belt has caused.

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We ladies used to have petticoats, underwear and hose supporters. Gone are the petticoats, fast going is the underwear and we roll our hose. We used to wear sweeping long skirts, sometimes with a graceful train. Then they gave us the ankle length, then the eight inch from the ground, then knees and above. Ah, can you not see the inmodesty, the brazenness, and the trickery of it. i warn you. Stop your sinful style-following ways, or yhou, like the men, will only have a belt left.

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Already a man who often occupies the pulpit, and whose wife is a Relief Society worker has written this verse: Mary had a little skirt, 'twas the latest styles no doubt. But every time Mary got outside, she was more than halfway out."

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Recently I noticed an ad in a journal to the effect that with the short skirts now in vogue, the hose must match the complexion of the jewelry. And after reading that I stepped into J.C. Penney to see the effect it had had. And there, my friends, I saw old women, young women, grandmothers and stepmothers if you please, clambering to be waited on. One dear old lady was in tears, because they had told her the freckled hose had not arrived. A grandmother rushed in to match some purple beads. Had their skirts been long andmodest, like mine, they could have worn any kind of hose, and avoided that grief and worry.

***

A few days ago, I saw a North Ward Relief Society Teacher in tears. I asked her the cause and she replied, "Lost,yesterday, somewhere between Bart's and Slim's Barber Shops, two golden braids, each set with sixty golden hairs, now reward is offered for they are gone forever." She like so many poor bobbed hairdo women here today, was forced to wear her hat or stay at home. Oh, could they only have had a 10-day free trial, could they only have seen the effects of before and after.

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The bible tells us, that in bible days, men wore long hair and flowing beards. What have they done? They have cut it off. They have shaved them off, until what do we have now? In Mt. Pleasant alone there are so many bald or almost bald headed men.

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Oh, what is the world coming to when women, who's doting mothers gave them saint-like names will brazenly parade the streets with bobbed hair and short skirts and unblushingly show their shapely or unshapely calves, I mean limbs?

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In last week's Pyramid there was the followning verse; Henry Snmith is dead, we loved him so, just what caused it, we did not know, until they cut him open, and there they found, short marcelled hairs, floating round and round. Reason tells us, had they been long hairs, they never would have gotten there, for Henry would have seen them, and taken them out of his gravy, pudding, or pie and saved his life before he died.

***

A short time ago, as I was walking through the cemetery, I saw a mound all heaped up with Job's Tears, Love in the mists, Bleeding hearts, and For-get-me-knots. And I thought there has been a great loss. I stepped nearer and read the inscription. "Here lies Randy Lee, the wife of Gus. She bobbed her hair and it ended thus." now think of it. She might have lived forever had she listened to the dictates or that still small voice and the advice of her husband. On a little father in the same cemetery, I heard a man weeping. I went near him to console him, he turned to me with a knowing light in his eye and said, and "Here lies the body of my bobbed-haired wife. Tears cannot bring her back to life. Therefore, I weep."

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I was told that a husband, who had not kissed his wife for more than twenty years, did so, after she was bobbed. The examiners for mental trouble, pronounced him incurable.

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One could go on and on and tell of the sins and sorrows that bobbed hair and the short skirs have caused on the earth. Hee the warning, we are all preparing to be angels bye and bye. Have you ever seen an angel or the picture of an agel with bobbed hair and short skirts? No, they all have flowing robes. Let me plead with you as you are as you shall be. As you sow, so shall you reap. With all the proofs we have offered, with all the sadness that has been caused and all the calamities now existing, how can you unblushingly accept the bobbed hair and the economical short skirt?

***

H.E.L.

Marceled Hairstyle 

Neils Heber Anderson's Memory of the Shooting of Sherriff James Burns ~~~ by George W. Anderson, Son

 Niels Heber Anderson 

 Niels Heber Anderson 

 Father lived in a most exciting period of the earth's history. He drove oxen and lived to see automobiles and the airplane. 

Apparently some sheep stealing had been going on in Sanpete County. Bill Brewer of Mt. Pleasant, Scott Bruno and my father, Niels Heber Anderson, of Moroni, on the 26th day of November, 1894, in company with Sheriff James Burns, came upon Moan Kofford and Jim Mickle at Reader's Ridge, back of the Horse Shoe Mountain.

Evidence of the changing of the ear marks in sheep and brands made it quite clear that certain sheep had been stolen. Sheriff Burns made an attempt to place Moan Kofford and Jim Mickle under arrest without first disarming them. As he approached them they shot and killed the sheriff, then warned the other men that if they did not stay out of the affair they would receive the same treatment as had been given the sheriff.

Hilda Madsen Longsdorf, in her book entitled Mount Pleasant, recorded the incident as follows: "November 26, 1894, Sheriff James Burns, while attempting to place Moan Kofford and Jim Mickle under arrest for stealing sheep, was shot and killed by them, several shots entering his body. The shooting took place on Reader's Ridge, back of the Horse Shoe Mountains, also called Orson Hyde's Arm Chair, or the Bishop's Chair. Bill Brewer, Heber Anderson and Scott Bruno witnessed the shooting. Bill Brewer and Anderson brought the news to Spring City. Thomas Braby, with the militia of Mt. Pleasant, was soon on the scene of the shooting, and the body was taken to Mt. Pleasant.
 Although the Militia searched and guarded for a couple of weeks in the ledges and dense timber, the murderers were never apprehended." (Mount Pleasant, 1859-1930, Hilda Madsen Longsdorf, Stevens and Wallacis, Inc., Salt Lake City, Utah. p. 175)

Father was nervous about the threat Kofford and Mickle had given him and the two other men and shortly after the incident, purchased a "six shooter" which he carried for several years thereafter. He told me that he had decided to sell his life as dearly as possible if ever he met Kofford or Mickle and the occasion might require it.

 Many years after the shooting of Sheriff Burns took place, Father was asked to accompany the Sanpete County law officials into Idaho. A certain man, while drinking in a bar boasted of having killed Sheriff James Burns in Sanpete County, Utah. He claimed to be Moan Kofford. He was arrested and was being held in jail until the matter could be investigated. Bill Brewer and Scott Bruno were deceased and father was the only living witness to the shooting.

Father was well acquainted with Moan Kofford and as he entered the jail, he could hear a man singing and this was something he had never known Kofford to have ever done; but to be positive of his identification, he asked the man to walk down the hallway. As he did so, Father was positive that he was not Moan Kofford because Kofford had a peculiar gait as he walked.

 Father said that he had seen Moan Kofford only once after the shooting. Kofford was driving a freight wagon near Levan and as their eyes met, Kofford pulled his hat down so as to cover his face and at the same time put the whip to the team.

Sheriff James Burns  

CHRISTMAS MEMORIES FROM THE PAST

In about 1885, Grandpa Ericksen (Henry Ericksen) and his brother Allif started a meat and grocery store in Mt. Pleasant. Grandpa managed the store while Alif ran the farm and livestock; buying, feeding and slaughtering for the store. They would notify the townspeople that on a certain day they were going to kill a beef in the evening and bring it to the store the next morning, so that people could get a "hunk" of meat.

There were steaks, roasts, boils, stews or hamburger - just a chunk of meat. They would start cutting just back of the ears and end at the hind shank. all the cuts sold for the same price per pound; whether it was the neck or the porter house. Then, to carry it home, the customer whittled a sharp stick, jabbed it in the piece of meat and went home to mama, to have it prepared for the family dinner. There was no paper, twine or plastic to wrap the piece of meat in.

In 1893, they built their store on Main Street and took in another partner; brother-in-law, Judge Ferdinand Ericksen. The store was incorporated as the Ericksen Meat and Grocery Co. Their store was in a two story brick building with a full basement. It was considered one of the finest institutions in the community.

Ferdinand Ericksen was a lawyer and occupied three rooms on the second floor for his law practice. The town doctor, Dr. W.W. Woodring, occupied the other two rooms on the second floor.

In 1920, Soren M. Nielson and Uncle Harry, Henry's son, bought the store. Then in 1925, Uncle Harry, bought Nielson's half interest and owned and managed the business alone. Uncle Harry put in about forty five years operating the store. They did their own slaughtering and feed their own livestock such as hogs, lambs and cattle. Before the meat packers came into the state, they shipped out daily loads of dressed meat to Salt Lake City, Bingham, Eureka and also Carbon County.

During those first twenty years of operation they started to make their own lunch meats, bologna, minced ham, corned beef, head cheese, hamburger and sausage. But when the big packers came into the state that phase of manufacturing was discontinued. Until 1925 they handled the livestock with a first class saddle horse. After that, motor trucks and trailers were used to move the livestock between range, feed lot and slaughter house.

Ice was used in the store coolers until 1915, when modern refrigeration was installed. Before that, ice blocks were stored in the ice house under sawdust, and used to refill the store's ice about once a week. With the advent of electric home refrigerators, the store discontinued using their own ice supply.

After Uncle Harry sold the store, there has been several companies using the Main Street building, including Al and Naomi Berti's Red and White store, Terrel's Red and White Store.
The Ericksen Meat and Grocery Co. had a lot of competitors come and go, but operated for over sixty two years. And since 1986 it has been the home of the Mt. Pleasant Pyramid, the local newspaper. And now is the Gun Shop.