In Honour of My Mother

My Mother, Myra Elizabeth Helton Thelin was born October 24, 1916. She was the only daughter of John Franklin Helton and Julia Leavitt Redford. She had two brothers Delbert Lamont and Franklin Vernon Helton. She was raised by her maternal grandparents until she was married. They had 10 children of their own.
Her mother Julia died at the age of 40 due to a miscarriage. Myra was working for Mary Dickie, my Dad's sister doing housecleaning, when she met my father, Reuben Alfred Thelin. He had just returned from an LDS Mission, in Stockholm Sweden. He was thirty years old, my Mother was eighteen. They were soon married, in the Cardston Alberta Temple in Canada.
They set up homesteading in Grandma Thelin's home.It was a two roomed small home. Located on the Alberta prairies in Canada. Grandma had moved to Seattle to live with her daughter Laura. She took care of her until her death from Diabetes. Grandpa John Victor Thelin died at an early age, from blood posioning,caused from hitting his knee on a piece of coal, when his horse team were spooked and went out of control, while he was hauling a load of coal home.
Myra was a hard worker,she managed the chickens and turkeys and ducks. She made cottage cheese on the coal stove for food, for the baby chicks and turkeys.She fed the chickens and gathered and cleaned the eggs. She would separate the cream from the milk each morning and sell it and eggs, door to door in town. She would churn her own butter haul her own water no running water in her home. There were no indoor bathrooms only a two hole outhouse.Why do you need two holes I don't know. We didn't have toilet paper either,we used the Eaton Catalog,page by page. We kept a pot under the bed, for pottying during the cold winter nights,or if you were sick.
Myra took care of the farm when Dad was away in the spring, doing custom sheep shearing. She milked the ten cows, fed the pigs and herded the sheep. She helped Dad by driving the tractor during harvest time. She cooked for twenty five hungry men, who were on the threshing crew at harvest time too. They would have fried chicken dinner with all the mashed potatoes and vegetables you could eat and fresh homemade bread and butter. She didn't go the KFC to pick up several buckets of chicken. Dad would kill five chickens, she carried the water from our well, heated it on a coal stove, put the chickens with their feathers in the hot water,then she was able to pull the feathers off them. Clean them and fry them for dinner. Nothing was fresher or more delicious than that fried chicken. She had no fridge or deep freeze. No electric lights, no bathrooms. She used an ice box for her fridge, which was a box with a big ice block in it, to keep food cold.
When Friday came Myra spent the day getting ready to go the Alberta Temple, she washed and ironed, with an iron that was heated on the stove {no electic irons} all the temple clothes. Then heated the water from the well to take the weekly bath in a round tin tub. They went to the Temple weekly.
Wash day was Monday, when again she carried large pails, from the well. When the wind wasn't blowing the windmill, she had to pump the water by hand. She used a wringer washer putting all the clothes, through a wringer to get the water out of them. She washed all the families clothes and hung them on the outside clothes line. Even on freezing winter days. The men's and boys jeans all hung on the barbwire fence. In the winter they froze and when brought in the house they stood up like cardboard. Tuesday was ironing day, she ironed all the clothes all day.
She didn't have a Chesterfield {Sofa}to sit on or a T.V. She sat on the bed. In they summer they planted a big garden. they grew all kinds of vegetables, even popcorn, which she picked,and let dry, then popped it in the winter.
All the family helped with the weeding and hoeing and harvesting. She would can a lot of garden vegetables and fruit which my Dad would get from British Columbia each summer. We had family outings, where we would all pick wild saskatoons, or chokecherries. She would preserve them and make sweet chokecherry syrup for our pancakes. During Thanksgivng we would be really busy getting all the turkeys and chickens ready for market. Killing them,taking the feathers off and cleaning them.
She was a great fisherman, I mean woman. My brother Ronald and Mom went fishing,She caught a 43 " pike and it was so big, she had to throw in on the shore with her bare hands. My brother Ron caught a big one too. I was the babysitter to watch the younger ones. We fished in the Old Man River, and swam in it in the summer. In the winter Dad would go cut big blocks of ice from the river for our ice box.
We finally got electricity and a fridge, and a deep freeze in 1955.
Myra wanted to play the piano, so taught herself and learned to play by ear. She wanted to be a Nurse but was unable to do that.
She had five wonderful children three boys and two girls. Beverly Gay, Aubrey Ronald, Jay Dean, Dennis John and Julia Hildegarde. Beverly became the Nurse, Aubrey Ronald started his own Auto body Business, Jay Dean went on a Church Mission to Finland,went to BYU, then he joined the USA Army, Dennis went on a Mission, to Stockholm,Sweden and started his own business, building homes in Oregon. Julia went to BYU and studied music. Now she has her own music students, and teaches them, piano and voice lessons.
She was a loving Mother to all her children, she would read them stories from her rocking chair each day and sing songs. Every night was like Family Home Evening as a family we worked together, played games,sang and were taught gospel principles.
She worked as a Primary President for several years, and was the Homemaking leader in charge of making quilts for the needy, for many years. Her husband was in the Bishopric for twenty years. She was very active in raising a good LDS family.
During the long cold Canadian winters the home was warm and full of Love. They all sat around the kitchen cook stove, with their feet, warming in the oven. Especially when it was cold and wet outside.
She helped me decorated my bike for the July 1, Orton Parade held every year to celebrate Canada's birthday.It was a girls bike,and all the boys rode it too. They didn't have a bike. She loved to make warm quilts for our family, to keep us warm during the cold Canadian winters.She would go to the thrift store and buy old winter coats and create a warm quilt.She had a beutiful singing voice. snd was known for her penmanship. She would help the teacher, at school write on the blackboard for her.
For our birthdays, she always made it special, she made a birthday cake from scatch using a egg beater and invited our cousins over for a party.I remember the wonderful hot dog sweet rolls she would make, only for our birthday party's.
Myra was my best friend all of her life. The last time I saw her, was when she attended the Lethbridge Stake Gold and Green Ball, where I was the Queen of the Ball that year.
Her life ended abruptly at age forty, on 7 March 1957,at the Fort Macleod Hospital, Alberta, Canada. she died suddenly of a pulmonary embolism. She was six months pregnant with her sixth child. She was buried in the small Orton Cemetery, at Orton, Alberta, Canada. She will never be forgotten by her loving Family. Writen by her Daughter, Beverly Thelin Lowe.