Carry On!: Stories from My Life

By LaVon Brown Whetten

“Carry On! Stories from my Life” is just what the title indicates. The book started out to be a simple collection of stories from my life. With the passage of time, however, it has evolved into a personal record of much more: growing pains, adjusting to new times and places, family responsibilities, community involvement, along with some significant historical happenings that have taken place in the Mormon Colonies over a period of 80+ years. Sit back, relax, laugh with me, and perhaps scratch your head a little as I often do regarding some of the things we see and deal with as we continue to live happily in this little remote valley in northwestern Chihuahua, Mexico! It’s a great life!

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Apr 16, 2021
• ISBN: 9781665522632

LaVon Brown Whetten

LaVon Brown Whetten was born in Colonia Juarez, Chihuahua, Mexico and is a fourth-generation resident of the Mormon Colonies in Mexico. She has lived in the Colonies for most of her life. She attended Brigham Young University where she earned a bachelor’s and then a master’s degree in Business Education and Administration. She spent twenty years working at the Juarez Stake Academy (Academia Juarez), where she held both teaching and administrative positions. She managed a cattle ranch for several years, served as a senior missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for 18 months, and has spent the past seven years as principal of the Colonia Juarez Elementary School. She is the mother of five children and has nine beautiful granddaughters and one handsome grandson. Her greatest love is her family, and her joy is watching them grow and develop in their respective endeavors.

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© 2021 LaVon Brown Whetten. All rights reserved.

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ISBN: 978-1-6655-2262-5 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6655-2269-4 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-6655-2263-2 (e)

Published by AuthorHouse 04/15/2021

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Contents

Foreword

1. Beginnings

2. Details of Our Life in General

3. Childhood (Birth to About 13 Years Old)

4. The Utah Venture

5. Off to Arizona

6. Back to Mexico

7. Basketball Adventures and Misadventures!

8. Becoming A Big Kid

9. Teaching Became My Thing!

10. Graduate School

11. A Change of Career

12. Working for The Company

13. A Family of My Own

14. Back to the Academy

15. Winds of Change

16. Troubled Times

17. Called to Serve

18. A New Adventure

For my children, grandchildren, and extended family.

You are my inspiration and my motivation.

Thank you for your love and support.

Foreword

As I take pen (computer) in hand, the entire world is in a rather peculiar situation. Sometime in February of 2020 those of us living in Mexico began to hear of the existence and rapid spread of a new unknown and treacherous coronavirus. By early March, the virus had spread pretty much throughout the world and government officials were mandating serious measures in an effort to control what had been declared a pandemic.

Here in the state of Chihuahua we received word on March 17 that schools would be closed at the end of the day on Friday, March 20, and would remain closed until April 20, which would be after Semana Santa (our spring break). Well, by mid-morning on March 17, it was obvious that we were pretty much done. Less than half of our students attended school that day, and knowing our people, we were sure that by the next day very few, if any, would show up. So, following a council meeting with our local inspector (who governs about 10 elementary schools in our zone), it was decided that we should just plan to close shop at the end of that day. And so, we did. Teachers valiantly prepared instructions for work that could be done at home for about two weeks—the two when we would normally be in classes. Then at 3:30 we bade them all farewell until April 20, knowing full well that little, if any schoolwork would be done at home. We should get points for effort!

When Lori heard about our extended spring break, she issued kind of a low-key challenge, indicating that I should have plenty of time to write my life story. After thinking about it for a couple of days, I thought Why not? Hence this effort to get after it. I must clarify, however, that this is not a chronological history of my life in the traditional fashion. Rather, it is a collection of experiences that I have lived. If nothing else is accomplished, I hope that you will learn that I have lived a rich, full life and have thoroughly enjoyed the ride! So, for what it is worth, here goes!

1. 

BEGINNINGS

I, LaVon (Vonnie), was born 8 April 1940 in Colonia Juarez, Municipio de Casas Grandes, Chihuahua, Mexico. Although I obviously have no recollection of the occasion, I know that I was born at home in the little house next to the wagon bridge on the northwest side of the river, where Clair and Mary Lou Whetten later lived. When the Browns moved down from Colonia Chuichupa (another Mormon colony located some 50 miles south of Colonia Juarez) Dad had acquired what was then an old warehouse and converted the back part into living quarters and the front part into a small store. In my Mom’s history she gives a much more graphic description of the property. It was an old ramshackle warehouse, but he divided it and made some rooms that were quite livable for us.

I’ve been told that I was delivered by Aunt Ida Kartchner, who was the midwife for many of the colony families. In Dad’s history he records that she came down from Colonia Garcia and lived with the family for a few weeks while awaiting my arrival. That seemed to be common practice in those days since the trip from Garcia to Colonia Juarez could take many hours if not multiple days, depending upon the weather and whether a vehicle was available at the time.

I was the third child born to David Samuel and Ellis Brown. Their first child, a son whom they named David Samuel Jr., was born prematurely in Colonia Chuichupa, on 12 July 1931 and passed away within hours of his birth on 13 July 1931. Rea Lu was likewise born in Chuichupa on 6 March 1935. In December of 1938 Dad moved Mom and Rea to Colonia Juarez, hence the reason for my birth in Colonia Juarez. Five more children would be born to the Browns in Colonia Juarez. Ellis LaRee was born on 30 January 1944 but lived only a few hours. Carolyn was born on 21 February 1945; Kathleen on 28 February 1949; Joyce Lynette on 3 November 1950; and David Ray on 3 March 1957. Six of us grew to adulthood. Dad passed away on 8 August 1987 in Colonia Juarez; Kathleen died in Silver City, New Mexico, 5 November 2000, and Mom checked out of this life on 18 January 2001, also in Colonia Juarez. David Samuel Jr. was buried in Colonia Chuichupa and Dad, Mom, Ellis LaRee, and Kathleen are all buried in the Colonia Juarez cemetery. So, there you have a brief glance at my beginnings.

2. 

DETAILS OF OUR LIFE

IN GENERAL

My Dad was a hardworking man and the business which he built was done pretty much on his own. He certainly did not inherit anything to help him get started except his work ethic. He had started out working cattle on shares with someone else and selling apples for the local farmers on commission. Gradually he was able to build up a small cattle ranch for himself and later he bought a small apple orchard as well. He continued to buy and sell both cattle and fruit on commission all my young life.

My Mom was likewise a hard worker and what one could call a very provident homemaker. She was a master at stretching what Dad brought home as far as possible. Dad always said it was because of Mom’s good management that they were able to get ahead and build a business of their own.

Mom always raised a big garden, and in the summertime, we had lots of fresh vegetables. She didn’t have a freezer in those days so as vegetables ripened, she would have all hands on deck to help prepare them for bottling. I well remember many a big tub full of peas that we were all expected to help shell. When the corn was ready, we would spend the day shucking it and helping get it cut off the cobs and into the bottles as well. She bottled carrots, beets, tomatoes, pickles, green beans, and any other vegetable she raised. Then, when the fruit began to ripen, she bottled peaches, pears, plums, apples, berries, rhubarb, ground cherries, jellies and jams, and any other fruit which became available.

Since commercially canned foods as well as fresh fruits and vegetables were not readily available in our little out-of-the way town, Mom pretty much had to plan for and bottle whatever she would be needing throughout the upcoming winter months. From my current perspective, it almost blows my mind to even think of the massive quantities of products she bottled or dried to have a variety of food to keep us all happily fed!

As the growing season ended, she would get Dad to dig about a two-foot-deep rectangular hole in the garden plot and bring in a load of fresh clean sand. She would then proceed to have us kids help move all the potatoes, onions, carrots, and turnips that were left to the hole. These she would bury in the fresh sand where they would stay relatively fresh until she needed them during the winter.

Mom always seemed to feel like it was her duty to raise a few chickens. Dad liked the fresh eggs, but he made certain those chickens stayed in the coop. If there was one thing for which he had no patience, it was chicken poop around the yard!

Besides the laying hens, Mom usually raised several dozen meat chickens every year. When they got just the right size, she would organize us for a day of cleaning and plucking the freshly slaughtered birds. It was not the favorite day of the year, but she managed to keep us on task.

As I mentioned, she did not have a freezer, so all the birds had to be boiled to free the meat from the bones. Next, the meat was pulled off and Mom would pack it into quart bottles. After adding seasoning, she would cook it in her pressure cooker. It took a couple of hours for each batch of seven quarts, but by the end of the day she would have a substantial new supply of bottled chicken.

I might add here that she also bottled beef and pork in a similar fashion. Fresh meat was a bit of a rarity other than when Dad butchered either a beef or a hog, so most of Mom’s meat supply was what she bottled herself.

Dad always kept at least one good Brown Swiss milk cow. Mom did not believe her girls should have to do the milking, so they hired old Pete to take care of the cow. I took that as a bit of a challenge, so deliberately got Pete to teach me how to milk! I must hasten to say, however, that I was happy to let Pete do that chore himself most of the time.

When the milk came into the house, it was often my job to run it through the separator. I have no idea how it functioned, but as I turned the hand crank, it would separate the cream from the milk. The cream came through a little tube and ran into a pan on the left side and the skimmed milk came out through a larger tube and ran into a pan on the right side.

Mom took great pride in the butter she could make from the sweet cream. She usually used a wooden mold that Dad had made so she could form the fresh butter into pound blocks. Occasionally if something special was coming up she would hand mold the butter into a cone, then take a clean screw and make little curled leaf-looking things all over the cone. By the time she finished, the butter would look almost exactly like a pinecone.

Dad thought skimmed milk was not fit for human consumption, so it was usually given away or fed to the pigs! We always had plenty of fresh whole milk for drinking, cream for Dad’s cereal, fresh home-made cottage cheese, and whipped cream for home-made pies. Dad always said he could eat a cow chip if it had whipped cream on it!

*****

3. 

CHILDHOOD (BIRTH TO

ABOUT 13 YEARS OLD)

Who’s in Charge?

Speaking of what was probably my third Christmas when I was between two and three years old, Dad said: We had gotten a tricycle for Vonnie and also a doll. We had the doll sitting on the tricycle under the tree. When Vonnie came in the room she spotted that tricycle. She squealed and ran over there and with one hand she just knocked that doll off across the room and climbed on the tricycle. She couldn’t even see that doll. It was in her way and she got just exactly what she wanted when she got the tricycle.

In another entry he recorded: Vonnie wanted to go with me everywhere I went. When I went off to see the cattle or went over the town or anywhere, she was always right up in the seat with me. I remember when she was a little tot, I guess maybe she was three years old or so, one day I’d started to back out of the driveway and was looking back to see where I was going. She’d push my face around and try to get me not to look back because she said she’d look back; she’d do the looking.

Humm. Could that have been the seedbed of a take charge sort of personality?

*****

Bishop Brown

I was four years old when my Dad was called to be bishop of the Juarez Ward. He later wrote: After they called me to be the bishop of the Juarez Ward, I got to thinking that the house we lived in down by the river wasn’t exactly what we ought to have if we were going to have to preside over the ward and so we traded with the school board and bought part of the old Ivins block and the old Ivins home. It was getting in pretty bad shape and becoming an eye-sore in the middle of town, so we decided to tear down the old home and build a new one…We had plenty of salvaged brick and lumber to build the new home with.

I remember bits of pieces of the building of that house. On Sundays after church (sacrament meeting) I used to stop by there and wander around the building site occasionally. I suspect I may have been inflicted with a bit of childhood pride! It took about three years for the house project to be finished so life went on as usual down in the house by the river.

I loved being out of doors and spent countless hours romping in the fields and doing guy stuff like playing marbles, climbing trees, and catching pollywogs as opposed to being indoors doing girl stuff like crocheting!

Most of the time Mom let me wear my hair in braids but on Saturday afternoon I had to endure the torture of having my hair washed and rolled up in curlers so that I would look proper for church the next day! I must hasten to clarify that I did have to wear a dress to school and on Sundays I was always required to stay in my dress all day long! Not being able to change into pants after church was a sacrifice but I did learn that you can do most anything in a dress if you have to!

*****

Caballito and Me – My First Horse

Horseback riding was a year-round favorite activity with my crowd. Dad always had at least one very gentle horse around that I could ride. One morning when I was five years old, my little brown horse named Caballito was saddled and ready for me to take a ride. About that time my Uncle Murlyn (Tio) was getting ready to leave the house and drive to the store about 4 blocks down the road on the other side of the river. As soon as he started for the truck, I put old Caballito into a lope and determined to make a race of it. I was through the river and up to the next corner before Tio drove away from the yard.

Just as I rounded the corner, I looked back to see how I was doing. While my head was turned, Caballito came to a small irrigation ditch running parallel to the road. In full stride he gave a little jump to clear the ditch. It apparently caught me completely unaware and the next thing I knew I was on the ground. Caballito stopped short as soon as he felt me slip off and was waiting patiently for me to get back on.

I was just picking myself up when I heard Tio’s truck coming up the road toward the corner. What to do? I certainly did not want him to know that I had fallen off my horse! I quickly jumped up and pretended to be adjusting one of the stirrups. Apparently, he did not suspect my dilemma because as he drove by, he just honked and waved. What a relief! That would have been all kinds of humiliation!

The next challenge was to get back onto the horse. I was too short to reach the stirrups. Finally, I determined to lead Caballito into the ditch he had just jumped. From the bank of said ditch it would be an easy reach to get my foot into the stirrup. Fortunately, Caballito was in the mood to cooperate and I was soon back on board and heading on down the road to meet my friends. I never did tell anyone what really had happened that morning. It would have been way too embarrassing!

*****

The Town Swimming Pool

I must have been about six the year the swimming pool was constructed. Dad was bishop at the time, and in her book entitled, Colonia Juarez, an Intimate Account of A Mormon Village, Nelle Spilsbury Hatch recorded the following.

One of the first achievements of Bishop Brown’s administration was the construction of a community swimming pool. With funds raised through a May Queen campaign in 1945-46, plus liberal donations from public spirited town members a cement pool of regulation size and graduated depths was possible. The pool is situated under the bank of the west canal, back of the Academy campus and has an adobe and cement wall around it. It is kept full of clean fresh water by the Academy water turns. It is equipped with springboard facilities which make diving from conservative heights possible. Close supervision with lifeguards on duty keeps the pool safe and it has become a favorite center for parties, day recreation for children and young people, and a rendezvous far superior to the old swimming holes in the river.

Because all mothers in the colony were firm believers in the theory that swimming right after dinner could cause cramps, which could lead to drownings, the pool was not opened until around three in the afternoon. The pool truly became the happening place most every afternoon. We would line up in front of the door at least 15-20 minutes before opening time in the hope that the lifeguard would arrive a little early and let us get a head start.

I doubt if many of us knew how to swim when the pool first opened and I do not recall anyone giving us lessons, but we all managed to learn rather quickly. As I read about the clean fresh water from the Academy water turns, I must chuckle just a bit. If the water in the canal was clean, then yes, we had clean fresh water. If it happened to be a little cloudy or muddy on account of a recent rainstorm, then it wasn’t quite so clean, but who cared? It was water and it was deep enough for swimming. They usually filled the pool Monday morning and then drained the water to irrigate the Academy campus after the pool closed on Saturday afternoon. If there happened to be a water snake or two in the canal during pool filling time, so be it. We would just share the space until they either escaped or got caught and pitched out. After the Academy well was equipped with an electric pump, the pool really was filled with fresh clean, and very cold water. By the time it sort of warmed up near the end of the week, it was getting dirty enough that it was ready for a change anyway.

We had never heard of Marco Polo, but we had our own folksy water games like Dibble Dabble. I was not much of a diver, but I could do a rather respectable Cannon Ball!

That pool served the community for a lot of years, but eventually the cracks got deeper and wider and it became a thing of the past and was torn down. A few private pools had already begun to spring up in town, so the rising generations still had access to swimming facilities.

*****

Out With The Tonsils!

The summer before I was to start school, we finally got a doctor in our town. Dr. Hatch was a young guy who had just finished medical school in Mexico City and came home to the colonies to set up his practice. He must have liked doing the tonsillectomy thing because he straightway convinced all our parents that those of us about to enter school should have our tonsils removed first.

There was no hospital in the entire region, so he just set up shop in one of the homes in town. They must have had a schedule because one by one our parents hauled us to the kitchen door at Mrs. Mortenson’s home. The doctor would lay each of us out on the kitchen table, put a cone or rag or something over our noses and wait a bit. The next thing each of us knew we would awaken to find ourselves laying on a cot or couch or whatever was available in Mortenson’s living room. Our heads would feel weird, and our throat would be hurting. Talk about pre-school trauma!

As soon as I woke up my Dad picked me up and took me home. I think all I could eat for a while was jello.

It took a few days for my throat to get back to normal, but it did and apparently after all was said and done it had not been that big of a deal.

*****

School Begins

There was no kindergarten at our school, so I started first grade when I was six years old. At that time there were eight grades in the elementary school and most teachers had two grades to take care of. There were seldom more than about 15-20 students in each classroom.

School was held in the old schoolhouse on the east side of the river. It had two stories on the west end of the building and just one on the east end. The first and second grade and the third and fourth grade classrooms were on the east end. The fifth and sixth grade classrooms were on the top part of the west end. Two small classrooms had been created there by splitting what was the old stage into two rooms. Seventh and eighth grades met in the long classroom on the bottom level of the west end.

My first-grade teacher was a lady whose husband had abandoned her years before and left her with two boys to raise by herself. She lived in Dublan, so she rode the Academy school bus up every morning, which meant that she probably had to get up early because in those days there was no highway between Dublan and Juarez. The drive alone would take at least 45-50 minutes over a very rough, bumpy road, to say nothing of having to put up with a bus full of less than reverent teenagers! To my way of thinking she seemed kind of mean, but I suspect that she was just tired most of the time.

There was a small room connected to her classroom which was used for storing extra textbooks and supplies. It seems that her favorite way of disciplining was to isolate the offender by making him or her sit in the book room alone. I regret to say that I must have spent more than just a little time in there over the two years that she was my teacher because I do recall a bit of the detail of how that room was arranged!

I guess the school couldn’t afford a janitor, so we kids were assigned to help clean our respective classrooms each day. The teacher could usually only keep about two of us on task so while one of us beat the erasers on the rock fence outside to clean them out and then washed the chalkboard, the other would sweep the floor. I am not sure how clean our classrooms were, but the system seemed to work.

*****

The Holey Shoe Ordeal

Near the end of my first-grade year, my school shoes were beginning to wear out. My left shoe had a growing hole in the sole, but since it was almost summer, I didn’t really care. One warm May afternoon as I was sitting quietly doing my work, my left foot suddenly began to feel strange. It was kind of a tingly feeling that I had never experienced, and I had no idea what was going on. I tried to ignore it, but it would not go away and before long I was beginning to feel scared. What if my foot fell off? I could not get up and walk around because Mrs. T. had a strict rule about that. What to do?

Fortunately, within a few minutes the bell rang for school to be out. I hobbled over to put my books away and headed on out. I soon got involved in a game of tag and forgot about the foot thing for a while.

When I got home later and told my Mom that I could not wear those shoes anymore and explained why, she laughed a lot. She tried to convince me that my foot had just gone to sleep. I thought that was the dumbest thing I had ever heard of and swore I would not wear those shoes again. Well, I did because she was not about to let me wear my Sunday shoes to school and I didn’t have anything else, and they would not let me go to school barefooted. For at least the next week I was always worried that whatever had happened would come back. It didn’t though and those old saddle shoes and I made it to the end of first grade together.

*****

Club # 1

Sometime during second grade J. Randall Clark and Fernando Chavez and I became partners in crime. One day after school we got the bright idea to form a club. We got some matches from somewhere and planned to build a fire down in the corral in my backyard and then cook some biscuits we somehow imagined we could make. But first, we had to come up with a name for the club. One of my genius friends decided it should be The No Girls Allowed Club. Fantastic! We were totally excited about that until someone suddenly remembered that name was not going to work. But do not worry—we worked that out fast. It promptly became The No One Who Doesn’t Wear Pants Club. We must have burned up all our ingenuity resolving that situation, because the Club started and ended all on the same day!

*****

The New House

Soon after I started second grade our new house was finished, and we moved in just before Thanksgiving in November of 1947. Over the next few years some of my closest buddies became the Romney boys across the street and Chacho Turley who lived next door to them in front of the Academy. It seems we always found something interesting to do.

Our new house was built long before central heating (furnaces) became common in the colonies. It had a wood-burning stove in the kitchen, a nice fireplace in the dining room, and an oil-burning heater in the living room, but there were no heaters in the bedrooms. During the winter months at bedtime, we would hover as close to the fireplace or the oil heater