Growing Up in Boone, Iowa in the 1950s

Lonette, Linda, Nancy, 1953

 Growing Up in Boone, Iowa in the 1950s

Linda, age 7

Linda, age 14

Playing in front of the house on Carroll Street

 My name is Jennifer Sapp.  I grew up as Jennifer Iverson in Minnesota in the 1980s.  My mom's name is Linda Iverson.  She grew up as Linda Alber in Iowa in the 1950s.  I have always been fascinated by stories of my mom's childhood.  I'm going to call my mom Linda in this blog.  Enjoy!
  Linda wasn't born in Boone.  She was born in Blytheville, Arkansas (in 1945) because her daddy was stationed there.  She lived in Essex, Iowa for most of her first five years of life.  When it was time to move away from her white house on the edge of Essex, she looked closely at her chickens in the fence and said to herself, "Now you remember what this looks like, you're going to want to remember this!"
  Linda's family moved to Boone in 1950 when Linda was five.  She remembers the specific day that her family moved and how they stayed at the Shangri La Hotel overnight.  She recalls, "I was so excited to be in Boone!  The next morning we went to our house, which was only a few blocks from the hotel.  I remember so vividly thinking, '"Well, it was so close, why didn't we just come all the way last night?"'  Linda felt like her daddy should have been able to stay awake long enough to get to the house and not have to stay in a hotel!    

The house on Carroll Street, 1953

    The family lived in two different houses during their time in Boone.  For the first two years they lived on Fourth Street and then later moved to Carroll Street.  They were able to buy the house by paying only $50 a month.  They bought the house for $4,000 and then in 1962 when they sold the house, it sold for $6,000.  Her folks had put a lot of work into the house, especially the attic.
    The first thing a person saw when they walked into the Carroll Street house was the dining room.  Over on the right was the living room with big bay windows and to the left was the bathroom.  Right beside the bathroom there was a cabinet with a door and three shelves where Linda and her sisters each had their own shelf.  Linda said, "Oh, how we prized those!  It was a place where we could put our own possessions.  It was so wonderful to have that space to ourselves and I remember cleaning out my shelf and getting it organized and of course, just like a school desk, it would get messed up and I would clean it up and then it would get messed up again."
    Past the dining room was the kitchen and farther over to the right from the dining room was Linda's parents' room.  Off of the dining room were some steps that the girls had to climb to get up to their bedrooms.  The roof was slanted.  Lonette's room was the first one on the left at the top of the stairs.  Nancy and Linda shared a big room that was separated into two rooms by a partitition their daddy made.  All three girls shared a closet in the hallway and an upstairs bathroom.  Linda remembers using the space under her bed to store things such as magazines and books.    

The house on Carroll Street, 2012

 At night the girls would lie in bed and talk to each other, even though they had been told not to.  Their mama would come to the bottom of the steps and yell, "Girls!"  Of course, the girls would quiet down immediately and go to sleep.  Well, one night when Linda was in junior high, she played a trick on her sisters.  Lonette and Nancy were already upstairs in bed and were talking to each other.  Linda went to the bottom of the steps and put on her best mother voice and yelled up, "Girls!"  Lonette and Nancy were quiet instantly.  It had worked!  Linda had fooled them!  Linda remembered, "It was such a trick to play on them and I never tried it again, but that one time, it was fun!" 

   Linda's family moved into the Carroll Street house around Christmas time.  Linda's mamma always liked to tell a particular story about Linda from that Christmas.  She said, "The first Christmas we lived in the house on Carroll Street, we didn't have drapes up on the windows yet, but we did have a Christmas tree up.  We moved just right at Christmas time.  We gave the girls bicycles for Christmas that year.  The girls came down to see what Santa brought them and Linda was the one who said, 'I think we should stop right now and say thank you to God for Christmas!'  So, we did.  And, I have never forgotten that!" 

  The house on Carroll Street had a huge mulberry tree (that didn't have mulberries) in front that always had squirrels nesting in it.  Whenever anyone walked out of the house those squirrels would scold and scold.  Linda and her sisters got so used to squirrels that they became part of the environment around their house.  Linda said, "We had a big back yard.  I don't know that it really was all that big, but as a child, it seemed like a big back yard."  There were lilac bushes, peonies, and asparagus growing in the back yard. There was also a mulberry tree in the back of the house that did have mulberries.  Linda describes mulberries as being halfway between blueberries and raspberries.  Linda remembers that although their mulberries from their tree were good, the very best mulberries were down by Honey Creek (where they were not allowed to go).  Linda said with a chuckle, "One day we were down there and we had a feast of mulberries, which we were not supposed to do.  I got home and my mom said, 'Oh, you've been down there eating mulberries.'  I thought, 'She can read my mind!'  And, then I went and looked in the mirror and of course they were all over the outside of my mouth smeared like everything."    

 Linda and her family went on occasional picnics to Ledges State Park, near Boone.  Linda's dad would start the fire and then go for hikes with the girls while Linda's mom prepared the meal.  A particular attraction that Ledges State Park had were fords (little bodies of water) that cars could drive through.  Some people call these "dry bridges."  The park also had large sandstone boulders.
    Linda's family got a television around 1953, when Linda was eight years old.  At that time there were fifteen minute shows.  For example, Dinah Shore and Jane Wyman each had a fifteen minute show.  Some other favorite programs were, "I Love Lucy,"  "Perry Mason," and "Mr. Peepers."  Linda's family enjoyed watching the "Ed Sullivan Show" because of the excellent guests he had on.  They also enjoyed watching, "Bishop Fulton J. Sheen" on T.V.  His program was very popular and was on at the same time as Ed Sullivan for a while.  

   Linda's family always ate breakfast and supper together.  They had a special tradition on Saturday nights:  popcorn, milk, and apples and sometimes they had fudge!  Sunday noon meal was always eaten together as well.  Once a month the family ate out at McCaskey's Cafe in downtown Boone.  They used the money Linda's mom got for being a church choir director.  She got $10 a Sunday and used $5 on their meal out.
   Linda's family attended Central Christian Church.  Linda said, "The only time you didn't go to Sunday School was if you were too sick to stand up!"  They were taught a lot of Bible lessons.  Linda remembers attending church at a very young age.  She said, "Even when I was too young to understand it, I went to church.  At first the sermons seemed awfully, awfully long until I got to where I really could understand what he was saying."  Linda's mom was the choir director and her dad sang, was an elder, and was chairman of the board.  Her dad sometimes gave sermons if the preacher was gone.  Sometimes Linda's parents sang duets together and Linda always felt proud of them.  Linda was in a youth choir that her mom directed.  Linda said, "Church was so much a part of our lives.  Much of what we did together as a family was through church."
     Linda was an active member of her church.  She said, "What inspired me to be a teacher was when I worked at Vacation Bible School at our church in Boone.  I worked with a group of second graders and I just decided, 'I want to be a teacher and teach second grade.'  That was what I had decided."  Years later, Linda did become a teacher, for first graders.     

Central Christian Church

   Linda attended Page Elementary School in Boone from kindergarten through sixth grade.  Page was a small school and had only one classroom for each grade level.  Linda really got to know her classmates.
   Linda attended school in Boone through eleventh grade.
   Linda and her sisters walked to school each day.  It was only a few blocks away.  As was very common at that time, there was a neighborhood store across the street from the school.  In fact, there were stores on many street corners, so almost everyone could walk to a store, get their groceries and walk home again.
   One summer while the family was living in Boone, there was an abundance of boxelder bugs in the house.  Linda's mom made a bargain with her three girls that for every ten boxelder bugs they killed, she would give them a penny.  The girls went to work and caught many of these pesky bugs using old oatmeal boxes as cages before disposing of them down the drain.  Linda earned over nine dollars that summer!  That's a lot of boxelder bugs!

     When not killing boxelder bugs, the girls could be found spending their summers at the pool.  Linda took lessons from the Red Cross in elementary school.  Sometimes popular rock 'n roll music would be playing over the loud speakers at the pool.  Linda did not usually listen to that kind of music, but she remembers that one popular song of the time was, "Splish, Splash, I was Taking a Bath."  
     Linda taught herself piano through the first Thompson book and then took lessons from Mrs. Veale in junior high.  Mrs. Veale charged one dollar an hour.  After Linda had played for a few years, she accompanied the school choir on ocassions.  Linda started violin lessons the summer after fourth grade.  Her teacher was Mr. Scholl.  He started the string program in Boone and taught all the orchestra students from beginners through high school.  When not making her own music, Linda enjoyed listening to records of such pieces as "The Grand Canyon Suite" by Grofe, "The Swan" by Saint-Saens and "The Peer Gynt Suite" by Grieg. 

Grandpa's Music Store in Boone, Iowa

  Linda's dad owned a music store in Boone.  He and his brother Royal worked there together.  The most popular item at music stores in the 1950s was sheet music.
   Linda's mom was a secretary at a junior college and later at a YMCA.
   In 1962, Linda's dad got a job working for his brother-in-law.  The family left Boone and moved to Cedar Falls.  They moved the summer after Linda's junior year.  At first Linda did not want to go because she wanted to graduate with all her friends in Boone.  Linda's friend Sue and her parents offered to let Linda live with them her senior year.  After careful consideration Linda decided to move with her family.  It turned out that she was very glad she did move.  She had a new chance to leave behind her shy self and be the person she wanted to be.  She explained, "When I moved to Cedar Falls, I made a conscious decision that I was going to be a different person.  With nobody knowing Lonette, it was easier to do that."  She said, "There are people now who really can't imagine that I was ever shy."  Despite the fact that Linda did not graduate from Boone, she is still able to attend class reunions with her classmates.