Oral Interviews of Francis M. Gibbons (1921-2016)—Part 4

(Interview of Francis Marion Gibbons conducted by Daniel Bay Gibbons September 19, 2001 in Salt Lake City, Utah)

Description of St. Johns, Arizona

St. Johns, Arizona in the early twentieth century

Pleasant Home Life in St. Johns

So this was the general background of these parents of mine into whose home I was born in 1921.  It was a very pleasant home.  There was love in that home.  My father and mother genuinely loved each other.  I can never recall an instance in my experience with them where there was open contention or argument or disagreement.  I am sure that they had their disagreements, but what disagreements they had they had them separately away from the children, and so we never knew about it.  And so it was a very pleasant, wonderful home.

Old family home of Andy and Addie Gibbons in St. Johns, Arizona.
This photo was taken in 1964, 34 years after the family moved to Phoenix.

Description of My Parents’ Home in St. Johns

It was a home that was devoid of a bathroom.  We had our privy out in back where we had to go when we had to serve the call of nature.  There was no electricity until I was about six years old.  So the house was lit by kerosene or gas lamps.  I’ve related this experience many times, and you’ve probably heard it many times, but it is very significant to me.  One night I was there in the front room alone with my father.  I should mention that this front room was a really special room.  They had purchased a leather set, a divan, a big leather chair, and then there were other leather chairs in the room, there was a nice carpet on the floor.  There were Navajo rugs on the floor throughout the house that my father had purchased from the Navajos over on the reservation, and it was a well furnished, lovely, cozy – I think that cozy is the word that best describes it for me – home.  My father had this special large leather chair, and by it was a table where he could put his books, and on the table was a gas lamp, and these gas lamps had wicks that were as large as a hot dog, perhaps four inches long, and they were round, and when you lit the gas lamp this wick would glow and had a nice bright light to it, and there was always a very quiet hissing sound that emanated from this gas lamp.  And I was sitting on the floor one evening there in our living room.  My father was in his chair, as he always was when he was home, and that lamp was on, and this quiet hissing sound was the only sound in the room.  I was filled at that time with a sense of security and peace to be there alone with my father in that special room in those circumstances.  So, later, of course, we got electricity.  In St. Johns we never had an indoor bathroom.  We got our fuel from the abundant juniper forests that surrounded St. Johns.  My father would usually employ someone to go out and cut a supply of juniper logs, cut them into lengths, to bring them into the house.   There was a Mexican named Joe Salazar who used to do a lot of this work.  And I can remember Joe Salazar supplying us with a big supply of these juniper logs that we used in our stoves.  We had a stove in the kitchen and a stove in the living room.  As to that stove in the kitchen, it was a very special place for a young kid because there was a space maybe two feet or eighteen inches wide between the stove and the wall.  After the fire had died down in the stove, it was not too hot back there to climb in between the stove and wall.  It was very warm and cozy.  So that was a wonderful place for kid who is looking for a place to hide out.  He could climb into that space between the stove and the wall in the kitchen.  

DBG:    What rooms were there in the house?

FMG:   Originally it was a two-room house. My grandfather had built this house for his polygamous wife Ella Harris Gibbons. It was on the same block that A.V.’s brick home was located. So originally the house consisted of what became our kitchen and our living room. After my father bought it from my grandfather, he built three bedrooms on the house. There was large bedroom on the east side and two bedrooms on the south side of the house adjoining our home. Then, in addition to those three bedrooms that were added, my father had built two screen porches. The one in the front covered a good part of the north side of the house, and then in an “L” shape it extended down to adjoin the large bedroom. That was all screened in. My brother Andrew1 used to sleep out on that porch on the northeast side.  He had a bed out there. Then my father built a big screen porch off of the kitchen. So that was the extent of the house when I was born.  Three bedrooms, living room, kitchen and these large screen porches.

Description of Our Property in St. Johns

Then in addition there was what was called the wash house, which was located maybe 20, 30, 40 feet from the home and, as the name implies, this is where my mother did her laundry.  It was a good sized room, and this was where Emo and Prescott, our two Navajos, used to stay when they would come to prepare our garden in the springtime, and you know the story about Emo and Prescott.  Then the privy was off some distance from the house, probably a hundred feet.  So that was the composition of our home.  On the east side there were three or four large trees, and this was the are when I was a little boy that I used to play.  I can remember playing in a sandpile out just to east of my parents’ bedroom.  The shade there was very pleasant.  Then out front there was a row of tamarack trees that secluded the house from the street.  

DBG:    Was there irrigation water?

Children of Adeline Christensen Gibbons and Judge Andrew Smith Gibbons
Back: Andrew Smith Gibbons, Jr. (b. 1907) and Francis Marion Gibbons (b. 1921)
Front: Le Von Gibbons Thurber (b. 1906), Pauline Gibbons Clarke (b. 1912),
and Ruth Naomi  Gibbons Elliott (b. 1918).

Nighttime Watering with Dad

FMG:    Yes.  All of the gardens in St. Johns were irrigated from the reservoir, which was south of town.  There was a water master who was in charge of allocating the times when a family could take the water.  He would distribute little slips that would show the time when Judge Gibbons could take the water.  One of the choice memories I have of that is that my father got me up early one morning.  We took the water probably at three o’clock in the morning.  It was in the summertime, so it was pleasant.  He got me up, and I went with him to take the water. They had sluices that controlled the flow of the water and he’d have to go up to the place and turn the water so it could come down into our ditches.  Of course we had no street lights in St. Johns.  The atmosphere was so clear back in those days.  There was never any pollution at all.  I can remember this early morning experience in turning down the water through our ditches, and the sky was just filled with stars.  I mean, we don’t get to see the stars.  But there in that atmosphere, and at that elevation – see St. Johns is at an elevation of about 6,000 feet, so its up pretty high.  And as I remember there was a moon out that morning, and so there was the moon and here were all of these stars, and I can remember so distinctly the tinkling of the water as you turned it down into the ditches.  That was the only sound, and it was a really special experience.  So that’s the way all of those gardens in St. Johns were irrigated.  That water came from the reservoir, which is the place where I was baptized.  I was baptized in the St. Johns reservoir.  So that pretty well indicates the physical place in which I spent my early years.  

DBG:    Tell me, did you grow food on the lot at home or have a garden?

Our Garden Plot

FMG:    Oh yes.  I don’t know if it was owned by my father or my grandfather, but to the east of our home there was a garden plot that probably was 150 feet by 200 feet.  It was a big garden.

DBG:    Beyond the trees where you used to play?

FMG:    Yeah.  Beyond the trees.  So when the sun came up in the morning, why it would shine across our garden and through the trees and into the bedroom, and it was really a lovely, joyful thing.  So we always had a nice garden.  Corn and peas and beans and all sorts of things.  And then we had a big grove of asparagus that came up every year.  So there was an abundance of fresh vegetables.   My grandfather’s place was just through the lot, through the block from our home.

AV Gibbons

Grandpa Gibbons’ Fear of House Fires

I didn’t experience this personally, but I’ve heard my mother tell it maybe a thousand times (laughing).  My grandfather was very concerned that that house would burn down.  Of course there was always a real danger because those stoves and little bits of fire coming out onto the floor, and Grandpa always wanted to make sure that the damper was closed in both of our stoves.  So he would walk down from his place down to our place carrying his lantern.  And he would come into the house, and he wouldn’t leave the lantern outside, he would bring the lantern inside (laughing), and the smell of that lantern used to set my mother on edge, and she would say, “Dad, why do you bring that lantern inside, why don’t you leave it outside.”  He’d never leave it outside, he’d bring it in.  And so that was kind of a ritual with A.V. before he had his stroke.  He would check out and make sure that they closed both the dampers on both of the stoves so there wouldn’t be sparks to jump out onto the floor and catch it on fire.

DBG:    Dad, how many homes were there on this block?  I’m assuming it was a city block, a square block?

Homes and Other Buildings in the Immediate Neighborhood

FMG:    There were three.  There was my grandfather’s home, which faced the Church square.  

DBG:    Faced east?

FMG:    Faced east.  And this was a brick home with a lean to in back.  You’ve seen a thousand homes like that which the pioneers built.  Then there was this rather large lot to the north, which we used as our garden.  Then to the south was a little house that had been built for the Relief Society.  Then beyond that, on the corner, was our Tithing Office.  It was a little red brick building that had been built in the early days, and that was where people would leave their eggs and what not for tithing.  Then down on the southwest corner of that block was a home owned by Jim Overson.2  Jim Overson had a service station on that corner.  This was right across the street from Rendol’s3 home and catty corner from Christensen’s home.

DBG:    Marinus?

FMG:    Marinus.4  So there were only the three homes on that block when I was a kid.  Our home, Grandpa’s home, Jim Overson’s home and then those two little buildings used by the Church, the Relief Society building and the Tithing Office.  Now, D.K. Udall5 owned a home on the south side of that block, that is the public square. That’s where the Church was located, where the High School was located, and then they had a big lot there where they used to play football.  

DBG:    The public square – was that the block directly east of your block?

FMG:    Yes.  That was the public square.  Then, D.K.’s son Levi6 had a home on the north side of that block.  

Notes

1 Andrew Smith Gibbons, Jr. (“Andy” or “Bud”): Older brother of FMG.  Born 8 May 1907 to Andrew Smith Gibbons and Adeline Christensen. Died 2 September 1986 in Prescott, Arizona.

2 Jim Overson: Friend and contemporary of ASG.  In the family photo collection is a picture of “The St. Johns Hoosiers” basketball team of about 1900, including Jim Overson, Lyman Overson, ASG, Jay Patterson and Junius (“June”) Gibbons.   See, A Turning of Hearts page 401.

3 Rendol Lytle Gibbons (“Rendol”): ASG’s first cousin and FMG’s contemporary and boyhood friend.  Born 19 March 1922 to Lee Roy Gibbons and his second wife, Annella Stanton Lytle.  Though a contemporary and childhood friend of FMG, Rendol is a first cousin of ASG.  

4 Marinus Christensen (“Marinus” or “Grandpa Christensen”): The father of ACG.  Born 8 June 1863 in Torslev, Denmark.  Married Frances Ann Thomas on 6 June 1883.  Their oldest daughter is Adeline Christensen, later wife of Judge A.S. Gibbons and mother of Francis M. Gibbons.  Died 23 July 1927 in St. Johns, Apache County, Arizona.

5 David King Udall (“DK”): Old Patriarch of Udall clan.  Served as the first Bishop of the St. Johns Ward, then as the first President of the St. Johns Stake from its creation on 23 July 1887 until 30 April 1922.

6 Levi Stewart Udall: Friend and legal colleague of ASG.  Born 20 January 1891 in St. Johns, Arizona Territory, the son of St. Johns Stake President D.K. Udall. He was coached through the bar by Judge A.S. Gibbons, and later served as Apache County Attorney in 1923 and 1924.  He defeated A.S. Gibbons for the judgeship in 1930 and sat on the bench in Apache County for sixteen years.  He later served on the Arizona Supreme Court from 6 January 1947 until his death on 30 May 1960. He succeeded his father as President of the St. Johns Stake, serving from 30 April 1922 until 9 September 1945. A History of the St. Johns Arizona Stake , pages 381 - 382.