Lagoon

Last week as we were driving home from Cherry Hills, Grandma (Lorna) was telling me about the summer she worked at Lagoon:

It started when she and a friend got summer jobs rolling cigars. Grandma said they hated that job so much they didn't last the week, and their employer was so mad a them for quitting that he refused to pay them for the days that they did work.

After that experience they were offered jobs working at Lagoon. Grandma ran the dime toss booth, and her friend worked another booth on the other side of the park. During their shift they would communicate with each other by sending notes back and forth with the young men who worked cleaning up the litter in the park.

They would ride the Old Bamberger railroad out to the park each day arriving around noon. Their jobs didn't start until around 5:00 PM, so they would spend the days swimming at the pool there. Then after work the lady who owned the booths would give them a ride home.

Grandma said that most of the people who would play the dime toss were service men who worked at one of the military bases in the valley. The prizes for winning the dime toss were plates or glasses, or other types of dishes, but since the men were going back to base they didn't keep the prizes, but would give them to Grandma. She said that by the end of the summer she had collect a couple of different full sets of plates as well as several sets of glasses.

Cousins and Babysitting

Lorna was saying how as a child she lived two doors down from her cousins, with Grandma in between.  There was a girl cousin her age, Beverly, and Lorna and Beverly were always responsible for Beverly's younger twin brothers.  Beverly would be in charge of one and Lorna in charge of the other.  Even if they were going out for a walk or anywhere, they had to take the twins with them.
Lorna talks about how funny that was, because she didn't have to take her little brother with her, but somehow she and Beverly got snagged for looking after those twins.
Lorna and Beverly were close until Lorna, who was a year older in school, moved on to the Junior High, while Beverly was still at the grade school.  Suddenly Lorna thought she was too important to hang out with Beverly anymore, and when Lorna ignored her after school, Beverly would feel sad and would run and tell their Grandma all about how Lorna was being mean to her.
Unfortunately they didn't stay in close contact after Lorna moved to Salt Lake.

Baptism

Grandma (Lorna) was telling me this morning how different things were when she got baptized.  There was a pond in town that was the local swimming hole and that was where they would have baptisms.  Everyone was kind of disappointed when it was time for baptisms though, because it meant they had to get out and stop swimming!
I asked if they stayed after the baptism for swimming, and she said no, it was more often that they swam before the baptisms while they were waiting for everyone to arrive.  So they were the ones who were annoyed when they had to get out for the baptisms!
Their dad would use "The Ponds" as motivation to get Grandma and Deloy to get their chores done.  Once they had done two loads of hay, then he would take them to the ponds for an hour.