Karol S. Gleave Oral History Project
Interview with Karol Gleave
Date of Interview: November 18, 2010; Orem, Utah
Interviewer: Jenna Nelson
Transcriber: Jenna Nelson
Begin Audio recording.
Nelson: This is the Karol Shipp Gleave Oral History Project, session number one with Karol on November 18. We are here in her home, 520 W. 10 N. in Orem, Utah. The interviewer is Jenna Nelson, Brigham Young University.
Nelson: Just to get a little background, when you were born?
Gleave: Well I was born on May 22, 1933.
Nelson: And you were born…
Gleave: I was born in Joseph, Utah, at home. Did you ever know the house in Joseph where Aunt Dean used to live?
Nelson: I think my mom showed me.
Gleave: She pointed it out. Well that’s where my parent’s lived and that’s where I was born.
Nelson: With like a midwife?
Gleave: Uh Huh a midwife, and then Dr. Dewey was her doctor, so they used to make house visits in those days.
Nelson: So you grew up in Joseph?
Gleave: I did until I was seven.
Nelson: Is that when you moved?
Gleave: Then my grandmother I think died about that time, my dad’s mother, Grandma Shipp. And so my dad bought the farm down where they lived. So he bought a farm down there and there was a home there and we lived there and had a big old barn. We were so excited. And then Aunt Dean and Uncle Phil bought dad’s house.
Nelson: Did you have animals and everything?
Gleave: No, they just used it for hay and stuff like that.
Nelson: I didn’t know that!
Gleave: We had a rope. They boys tied a rope up in the rafters and we would swing. It certainly took me a long time to work up the nerve to do this, but we’d swing from one side clear over to the other side and then we would get on the landing and swing back. One day it broke and down I went. (Laughs)
Nelson: Oh No! (Laughs) And you finally had worked up the courage!
Gleave: Yeah, we thought the barn was pretty exciting. My dad used to raise cattle and we always had cats and dogs around.
Nelson: You already explained a little about the barn and everything, but what was it like growing up there?
Gleave: Well it was country. I was seven so I can’t remember a lot then, but I know I used to play outside a lot with Jack (her brother) and go shooting guns with him. He had a place where he would go hike up to in the hills up above grandma’s house. So I used to do that a lot, because mother kept Darlene inside.
Nelson: How come?
Gleave: Because she had freckles and she just didn’t like to let her get out in the sun. So any outdoor chores or things like that, like mowing the lawn, or washing the cars, I got to do it.
Nelson: So you had to do all of that?
Gleave: Yes, so then I would go inside and they would have been alone inside all day and kind of left me out of things and I used to get mad (Laughs).
Nelson: So did you mother keep her in so that she didn’t get too many freckles?
Gleave: Well in those days, freckles were… well not like today where freckles are cute and very accepted, but in those days they weren’t.
Nelson: That’s so interesting. So after you were seven you moved into that house?
Gleave: Yes until my dad died, we were there. I had to ride the bus to school.
Nelson: How far away was school?
Gleave: About 20 minutes to Monroe. At that age (seven) we had a schoolhouse in Joseph. I wish they hadn’t torn it down. I went there until about the fifth grade and then went down to Ellsinore in the sixth grade and went to school there until tenth grade and then we went over to Monroe. That’s where the high school was.
Nelson: When was the first time you remember using a form of media? So for instance like the radio?
Gleave: Well we always had radio. The boys would dash in off the school bus to listen to… what was that? Jack Armstrong or something like that. So that’s really all we had, we didn’t have telephone either until I was what in Junior High?
Nelson: How was it when you finally got a telephone?
Gleave: Well when we got a telephone it was on a party line. So there was about five or six people on the party line and you’d have a certain ring. So mother’s number was, 527R2. So it would ring twice and that was our number. And that lasted for quite a few years before they got private lines.
Nelson: Interesting! So did you have a favorite radio station that you liked to listen to?
Gleave: Probably not when I was young. I listened to the Grand Ole Pry.
Nelson: And did you have a favorite band or person on there?
Gleave: I didn’t really; I wasn’t that big into it. You know grandpa lived and died for the radio.
Nelson: He loved his bluegrass! (Laughs)
Gleave: But we used to have people in the area that would play at dances and things. There were some different guys that would play music.
Nelson: Where they pretty good?
Gleave: Yeah! Cowboy style, which suited grandpa! (Laughs)
Nelson: When did you meet grandpa?
Gleave: Well, I always knew him as a kid because he was… Well you know Aunt Dean? She was the oldest of his siblings married my dad’s brother. She came to Joseph to teach school and so they married. Stan was kind of around the family quite a bit, but he was a pest and I couldn’t stand him (Laughs).
Nelson: And then it turned to love.
Gleave: And I used to drive the tractor. I’d get up at four in the morning to drive the tractor out in the hay field and he was working. He was a friend of my brother, Rod. He was the one that died. You’ve probably heard that story.
Nelson: Well what happened exactly again?
Gleave: He was working for a power company, Utah Power and Light. And he was up the canyon. He was on one of those poles, those big ones. Well the electricity jumped from another pole over to his pole and it just went down through his body. It just completely electrocuted him. It went clear through and burned his kidneys, one side of his body. If he had lived, he would have probably had to have amputations.
Nelson: How old were you when that happened?
Gleave: I was married. I was actually pregnant with Jody so I was about 28 I think. And he hadn’t married.
Nelson: I’m assuming that was a pretty hard time for your family?
Gleave: Yes it was terrible. My mother sat by his side for a week. It was really hard for her.
Nelson: So he didn’t die instantly?
Gleave: No it took over a week.
Nelson: That would be hard.
Gleave: Yes.
Nelson: Not to be insensitive, but to go back to what you were saying the radio. You said that the radio was all you had. Is that how you got your news?
Gleave: Yes, that’s how we found out about the war, about Pearl Harbor in 1941, December 7, 1941. That’s how we got all of our news. But you know we’d always go to movies and they always had a newsreel before the movies about that war. That’s all we had, it’s not like today where we have everybody reporting, more than we need.
Nelson: Now it’s 24/7 and little things make big news. Do you remember where you were when you heard about the war?
Gleave: Not specifically, I don’t. I was about seven or eight.
Nelson: Yes, that’s pretty young. Well do you remember reading the newspaper, or did your dad always have a newspaper?
Gleave: Oh yeah, he was always reading the newspaper.
Nelson: Which newspaper would you always get?
Gleave: Oh the Tribune and the Deseret News.
Nelson: Did you have any magazines that you liked to look at?
Gleave: Probably Redbook. It was one of the only magazines in those days. It’s not like today.
Nelson: Redbook? What’s that one about?
Gleave: It’s still out; they still are printing them today. They always had a story and I can’t remember much about them anymore.
Nelson: I was talking to my mom and she was telling me how when you all would go and visit grandma Shipp, that they were still on the carbon line? That they still used coal to heat things? What was that like?
Gleave: Well we always had electricity. But, until we put a furnace in we had to heat with coal stoves. And so she had a stove and she had to cook all the meals on the coal stove; bottling fruit and everything.
Nelson: When did she get a furnace?
Gleave: When she remodeled they had one. But yeah they had a big old coal stove. I used to love to rub up against it. I missed having that.
Nelson: Did it do a pretty good job of heating up the house?
Gleave: Oh yeah, except that the bedrooms were always really cold. The heat mainly stayed around the central part of the house.
Nelson: When was the first time you guys got a T.V.?
Gleave: Not until after we were married and had about four kids. I think Mike was born and then we got one.
Nelson: Was it just a black and white T.V.?
Gleave: Uh huh, black and white.
Nelson: What did you guys think about that?
Gleave: It was pretty exciting! They had cartoons and yeah that was pretty exciting.
Nelson: Did you have a certain show that you liked to watch?
Gleave: Well, I probably didn’t have a lot of time in those years. Stan had finished school and then we moved to Annabelle and we bought a house out on the way to the farm. And then we traded houses with Grandpa Gleave, and that’s where grandpa grew up, in that house. But we only lived there for a few years. That’s when we got the T.V. was when we lived there. Then we went up to Orem for a year and then Stan wanted to get his masters so we went up to there and then in the summer we went up to Logan and then to Albuquerque.
Nelson: So you were kind of bouncing around everywhere.
Gleave: Yes. And then back because I was pregnant with Rod. And then I went in April because I hadn’t been to see a doctor the whole time and decided I wanted to go back to Richfield to have the baby. So Stan moved me home and we lived in that house there in town, it was actually right next door to Uncle Phil and Aunt Dean. So we lived there for the summer and then went to California.
Nelson: For how many years?
Gleave: Fourteen. And the moved down to Corona and then to Orange, the city of Orange. We were there three years and then moved out to Chino. Grandpa just had to get back to more country and then we were there for nine years.
Nelson: And then you moved back to Provo right?
Gleave: Yep, Rod was fourteen.
Nelson: When did you get a color T.V.?
Gleave: When we moved to Orange. We bought a house, like an old three bedroom house and it had a bonus room over the garage, which we didn’t ever get finished, but we still fixed it up for the kids to sleep in. And we got new furniture there for the living room. We got a new T.V. that was like a console with the radio in it and the T.V. and it was color, so exciting!
Nelson: Yeah?
Gleave: And I remember moving that out to Chino, and that was an old house that we had to remodel. We had it there, because I remember I had to build it in by the fireplace, I remember I kind of built it in to that. And we had that and actually moved it up to Provo. I don’t know where it went after that.
Nelson: Do you remember what kind of T.V. it was?
Gleave: Probably RCA.
Nelson: Was there a certain person that you liked to watch on T.V., like for instance with the news?
Gleave: Back in those days I hardly ever watched it because I was so busy. I couldn’t tell you then, but I could tell you whom I like to watch now.
Nelson: Whom do you like to watch now?
Gleave: I like to watch Channel 5, Matt Lauer and Meredith Vera. But I like Fox News with Bill O’ Reilly and Hannity, I watch that.
Gleave: Probably World War II.
Nelson: How come?
Gleave: It was just such a part of our life. It just seemed like we were so involved in that war; the rationing and a lot of guys from our town were in the war. The other wars have been different, that one was really a big deal.
Nelson: Yes I can see where that would be a big deal. How do you feel media has affected your life?
Gleave: Well there’s just so much of it and its just all there. I mean you just know everything, everything’s right on. Probably too much really (laughs). Like all the political stuff, you have to know everything that goes on.
Nelson: It’s true, media is always around us, and it’s almost hard to imagine life without it.
Gleave: It’s just too much. People can’t live their lives or anything, like with the new wedding engagement announcement of Prince William and Caitlin. I mean she will never be able to have her freedom, you know they’ll just follow her all over, that’s what they did with Diana. It’s just like the stars can’t have a life. I don’t get too much attention here, but…
Nelson: But the stars do huh? (Laughs) Where do you think the media will go from here?
Gleave: Oh heavens, I mean after computers, and cell phones, and the blackberries. (Laughs). I can’t imagine, I just can’t imagine. I mean how could it go any farther? It’s just unreal. It’s just like the cell phones. They are changing every year you can’t even keep up with them. I mean I stick with what I know, but I see people using those iphones. Do you have one?
Nelson: No, they’re too fancy for me.
Gleave: My friend has one and she is constantly playing with it. Texting? I don’t know, what’s going to come next? I don’t know.
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