I was not in school. Maurine was in the third grade, Melvin and Rhoda were in seventh grade and Walter was in high school. Melvin and Rhoda were under a teacher named John Horn Miles, a man of distinction and fame in his own country, but that is a story of it's own. Suffice to say here, that I have heard Melvin, and also Rhoda say, that this was their hardest year in school, but also their most profitable. I think mother might have had a slight problem keeping Melvin in school that year.

The second year we lived in Paris I was in the third grade. I wasn't too happy in school but I really have fond memories of our stay in Paris that year, especially the spring time when I would go up on the sunny slope back of the home and pick the early spring flowers or build rock corrals with the pearly white rocks and enjoy the direct rays of the afternoon sun. This was the home of brother Amasa Rich. He had sent his family to Logan or Salt Lake so his children could attend the University. He lived with us when he was at home attending to his holdings. He would come in at night and spend hours, it seemed to me, doing business over the phone. He had a lovely old bull dog who would curl up behind me behind the kitchen stove.

The Academy was on a hill on the west of town and just over the hill to the north. Our home was in the mouth of south Paris canyon. There was only a trail over the hill to the high school (by the road it was very much farther) and Melvin and Rhoda and a few neighbors who used the trail, would break a trail through the snow rather than go around. Maurine and I went on the sidewalks to the elementary school in the north end of town--down in the second ward.

It was in this home that Melvin had the small pox. Mother isolated him in the west room of the house by sealing up the cracks and key hole of the door to the main part of the house. She would look after him by going outside and around the house to a door leading into his room, thus making it possible to care for him as well as the rest of us.

Mother had been vaccinated for small pox when she was a girl. We were being quarantined but brother Rich had had the small pox and, being one of the "Big Wigs" of the town, obtained permission to come and go. Personally I enjoyed the vacation from school and I remember very clearly the day we fumigated the house after which we were free again to come and go. To fumigate a house one would put sulfur in pie tins, set the sulfur on fire, pour some formaldehyde in the pie tins and run, closing the door behind. We spent the day on the side hill back of the house where mother had taken a lunch. I don't remember how we spent our time but what we had anticipated as a long day turned out to be a very enjoyable lark.

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