Ora Carpenter Omerza history, 1st installment

History of Ora Carpenter Omerza
by Ora C. Omerza
compiled by Madge Omerza Thomas, daughter

My very first memory was of my sister Bertha and me walking from our house in Thatcher, on 1st Street and the highway to my Grandparents home on 1st Ave. As we turned the corner from 1st Street to 1st Avenue I can remember being afraid because it was getting dark. Bertha said, “There’s Grandmas house” and then everything seemed to be alright. I think I was three years old at that time. My mother and Bertha tell me I was 5. I know when we got to Grandma’s house she was so glad to see us and told us how brave we were to come all the way by ourselves.

I was born 7 August 1912 in Thatcher, Arizona. My parents were Frank Carpenter son of Erastus Snow Carpenter and Julia Van Orden Carpenter and Lucinda Tyler, daughter of Frank Newton and Mary Adelia Pace Tyler.

My mother tells me I was born in the late afternoon during a thunderstorm. I was the second child in a family of seven. Bertha, Florence, Ivan F., Afton J., Floyd Lamont, and Reid S.

I started school in Thatcher when I was six. I don’t remember much about my first year only that my Aunt Emma Carpenter, my father’s sister, was my first grade teacher. We had our picture of the 1st grade taken on the back steps of the school.

When I was in the second grade we moved to Eden, Arizona. The first three grades met in one building and the fourth through 8th met in another. I remember my Aunt Emma coming to see me when I was in the second grade. The teacher told me there was some one to see me and I had permission to leave the room. I felt so important to think some one wanted to see me.

I have quite a few memories of Eden. We lived about a mile out of town on a hill. At the bottom of the hill was our farm. We just had a little back yard and then it dropped down the hill quite a steep drop. At the foot of the hill was an irrigation ditch and a foot bridge. We had a trail from the back door down the hill and over the bridge. We usually went down the hill on the run as it was so steep.

One day I remember running down the hill and over the bridge. I was looking down to be sure of my footing and crossing the bridge. As I crossed the bridge and was on level ground I looked up and there in a big cottonwood tree sat a big hoot owl. I was so frightened I turned around and back up the hill I went. I went up faster than I went down.

Our house had a screened porch all across the front an in the summer we slept on the porch. All we had in our front yard was rocks and chaparral but I could always see shadowy figures making their way to get me in the middle of the night when I was sleeping on the porch.

Cars weren’t too plentiful at that time. We did most of our traveling with a horse and buggy or wagon. We had a pony named Pidgion. Mother was a counselor in the Primary. She would load us in the buggy and away we’d go to Primary. Pidgion was a very gentle little pony. The only thing was, no one had ever explained to her that cars were here to stay and they were really harmless. Everytime she met a car on the road, which wasn’t too often, she would rear up on her hind legs and whinnie. That didn’t seem to bother Mother too much but sitting in the front of the buggy and seeing this horse on its hind legs pawing the air and making that awful sound was something I could do without. Everytime I got in the buggy I hoped we wouldn’t meet a car.