Wednesday, December 5, 2012

Interview with Marjorie Winter

Disclaimer: This is for a class assignment

This is an interview with my next door neighbor. I've lived next to her for two years now, and still didn't know anything about her! 
We got an assignment in our media history class to interview someone about their memories of the media growing up, so I asked her and she was happy to do it! This is my transcript of the interview!
(p.s. sorry for the horrible formatting. It wouldn't copy over very nicely from Word)




Marjorie W. Winter Oral History Project                               
Interview with Marjorie Winter
Date of Interview: December 5, 2012; Provo, Utah
Interviewer: Lane Phillips/Scobee
Transcriber: Lane Phillips/Scobee
Time: 9:00 am









Marjorie:          I’ve always walked everywhere. Growing up our entire street had 3 cars. That’s                             why I said to you the other day, “The Dinosaur Days.”

Lane:               I know it’s weird to me. So you guys walked everywhere?

Marjorie:          Well we had a bus- a double decker bus- that we could get which was only five                           minutes away, and they ran frequently, you know on usual occasions. If we needed to get further than the next little town then we’d have to get the train to get where we were going.

Lane:               Let me first ask you a little about yourself. Where were you born?

Marjorie:          In England in 1932. I was born in Folkestone Kent and later moved to Surrey.

Lane:               What about your family? Any brothers or sisters?

Marjorie:          I have 2 brothers and 1 sister. They are all older than me. I was the youngest. My sister passed away 2 years ago. My older brothers have both passed away also.

Lane:               Why and when did you move to the United States?

Marjorie:          I moved to the United States when I was about 30 years old, in 1963. We had 3                            children and we moved here mostly because of the church. (she is LDS).

Lane:               What are your earliest recollections of the media?

Marjorie:          Besides the newspaper, we got a daily newspaper, I think I was about 8 or 9… I remember having a radio. There was a thriller serial program that we used to listen to. I remember running home from school to listen to it.

Lane:               What do you remember about first seeing television?

Marjorie:          We went to the cinema in those days. We didn’t yet have televisions. I think I was about 10 years old and for a special treat our class got to go to the cinema and see King Henry V. It was in black and white of course. We did go to see the Disney ones too- in color- we had to stand in line for hours to see them.

Lane:               Where did you go to see the movies? London or…?

Marjorie:          It was in Surrey. We did go to London when I was a teenager and saw Gone With The Wind. The seats were wooden and the show was 3 hours long!

Lane:               That’s crazy! So were there any special programs that you liked to listen to on the radio?

Marjorie:          There was a band leader, Victor Sylvester, and he used to teach how to do the fox   trot, how to do the waltz, you know. It was good because it gave the factory workers a lift every day when they would listen to it and learn these dance moves.

Me:                  Do you remember when you first had a TV in your house?

Marjorie:          I think it was 1956. We moved into our own home and got a TV. We went to     friends houses once a week for an hour for an attorney show- it was in black and white.

Me:                  Talk about your feelings on the internet. Do you use the internet? Do you have a  computer?

Marjorie:          I don’t have a computer, I don’t even have a cell phone.

Me:                  So do you ever use computers?

Marjorie:          No, well my daughter is the family historian so she does the genealogy work on                             her computer.

Me:                  I was going to ask you about what you did for work. Did you work?

Marjorie:          I started work when I was 16. Over there the age for finishing school was 14 at that time and unless you were very smart and passed the exam to go on to  grammar school or college or whatever. You had to pass that in order to do that,  not many did.
                        Right at the time when I was due to graduate from school the government came   out with a new plan where we could stay on for another year and take extra exams during that time if you wanted to, so I took some exams and I got two English exams and it was called the Royal Society of Arts Exams at that time. So actually I finished school when I was just over 15 and then I actually started work at 16.

Me:                  What did you do then?

Marjorie:          I worked in a place called Boots the Chemist which was a pharmacy store. I was a  senior in what they called the surgical department there. But then in the store was separate areas. If you wanted makeup you would go to a certain area of the pharmacy and you wouldn’t pay like you do now at a cashier when you go out. Each department was separate. And at the back of the store was a library as well.

                 I didn’t have a checking account until I was married. Always carried around cash, and of course it was pretty heavy. Let me show you. (shows me her coins from England and her coin purse that she used to carry around. It had different pockets/slots for different coins.)

            We had paper money too, when we were little growing up. Like everybody else we didn’t have a lot. For me, because my siblings were so much older than me,  (my two brothers were out to work) and so every week my parents would give me a little pocket money and I would save up and go buy candy at the store.

                 My mother had a container with three separate sections; one was for utilities, one for food, and one for something else. She’d put the money for each in the sections and then after they were paid, the leftovers were what we used to buy shoes.


Me:                  How often did you go back to England?

Marjorie:          I went back to see my sister three years before she died. She had Parkinson’s.

Me:                  It’s good you went back before she passed away.

Marjorie:          Yeah. But we corresponded over the years you know.

Me:                  What do you remember about war through media sources?

Marjorie:          In the cinema they showed pictures of the war. That was probably the first we’d seen of real war pictures. But we did hear about things on the radio, but when I look back now I think there were a lot of things we didn’t know. We had to carry  those awful gas masks around you know. There were square so they made square containers for them like square purses and we had to carry them over our shoulder wherever we went because we weren’t right inland, but we were close enough, like 40 miles. Close enough where the government said we had to carry gas masks.

Me:                  When did they show you the pictures of the war?

Marjorie:          After. In fact it was later and they showed us the concentration camps and we knew nothing about that until that time.

Me:                  until after?

Marjorie:          It was probably right after the war that they showed the pictures. There was a lot that we didn’t know, and I think a lot that people just never knew about.

Me:                  Once you got a TV, so this is later in your life, do you remember what programs                          you used to watch, like what your favorite TV shows were?

Marjorie:          There was an American attorney show and I can’t think what his name was, of   course it was black and white. And my dad used to come over, he used to like to watch it. He came over once a week to watch this program. Can’t think of what it was called. It wasn’t Perry Mason, but it was kind of that sort of thing.  I think I remember watching the news… honestly can’t remember anything else. I think it was few and far between, the things that we could watch. We didn’t have 200 channels!

Me:                  So what happened to your husband?

Marjorie:          It was at the time when they had stake 70s who were on missions- not a full time mission- but he was called as a stake missionary. He was going to baptize a gentleman on the Saturday and he had the accident on the Thursday- it was on a motorbike and a stray German Shepherd dog attacked him on the road. He tried to  flip him once and he kept control, and then the dog got him again. Of course that was the only time he wasn’t wearing a helmet because the gentleman lived really close.  He was in the hospital two months…

Me:                  Did this happen in England or..?

Marjorie:          No, in California. He was in the hospital two months and had to have… (sound cut out here, but he had to have major brain surgery) He passed away in 2002, so he lived a few years after the accident.

 

Thursday, October 25, 2012

Preston's Birthday

Happy Birthday to Preston!!! (last weekend)

My cute husband turned 25 on the 19th and we had a lot of fun celebrating! We went to Tucanos for lunch that day and it was amazingly delicious just like it always is :)

Here we are at Tucanos:


Then Preston went golfing while I got things ready for his party that night. We had a combined party with Preston's friend, Rob Brinton. Cute thing about this is that Rob and Preston are SO alike. They went to high school together, served their missions together in Germany, lived together after their missions, got married two weeks apart, and have their birthdays a week apart. Crazy huh? (Rob and Tawni didn't wait for us to have a baby at the same time though haha)

So we had a party for them at Rob and Tawni's house. Tawni did such a good job getting everything together and making so much good food! Their Halloween decorations were adorable too!

Preston has some wonderful friends and it was so much fun to have everyone together again! We played the chairs game, ate, watched youtube videos and just hung out. It was a fun night!















Monday, October 22, 2012

Phone Checked

Ok so this is a bit random, but I just wanted to share one of my favorite things on the radio- Phone checked. I feel stupid, but I don't even know what radio station it's on because in my piece of crap car the thing where it shows the radio station is so dim you can only see it at weird angles. So I don't know the radio station- most likely 97.1, but it's so funny! It's just all prank calling and I LOVE prank calling. I did so much growing up that I even got the cops called to my house! Yeah... that was not so funny...

So let me describe the mornings when this comes on. I'm rushing around like a mad woman trying to get to school on time, and then I'm getting parked and phone checked comes on and all of a sudden getting to school on time isn't so important anymore. So I sit in my car and listen to these prank calls and it totally makes my day. This morning's call wasn't that funny, but the other week there was a prank call to this girl who was getting married soon and it was supposed to be a wedding planner or a worker at this hotel or something where she was getting married. So the wedding planner calls and tells her that the place is double booked and the other person is paying a lot more, so the girl is going to have to find somewhere else to have her wedding. Oh my gosh it was so funny, the girl was crying and all that and this wedding planner is just like "well we can offer you a free shrimp platter." Anyway, it probably doesn't even sound that funny but it was! (I told Preston and he just thought that was mean... he doesn't understand the beauty of prank calling)  But the thing is it's so funny once she finds out it's just a phone check because then it's just a fun story she can tell :)

So I just want to recommend that people try to catch this on the radio... it comes on around like 8:00 and maybe even at other times but that's when I hear it. And second, I would like to recommend that my friend Lauren Brown (Jepsen) apply to be the prank caller because she is the absolute best there is.

That's all. Happy Monday!!

Monday, October 8, 2012

Autumn

Fall is in full bloom! (or the opposite I guess..) And even though I kinda dread this time of year because it means that summer is over, I figured I better just start embracing it because it's going to come every year whether I like it or not! (on a side note I think this will be my favorite time of year when I'm older because then fall doesn't equal going back to school and freezing my butt off on campus.)

Today I came home from work and had some delicious potato soup from Old Towne Grill and cuddled with Preston because I won't get to do that for a few days since he is leaving for New York City tonight. I also turned on my little heater at my BYU office, and I wore a scarf! So I guess you could say I'm feeling pretty fallish today.

I had a wonderful weekend watching conference and taking some Scobee family pictures up in the canyon with the changing leaves. These are some pictures I snapped before getting in the car to leave after getting our pictures taken.

Me and Kristine (my sister in law)
  
The little girls

Emma, my sister

Addisyn, my niece

Driving down from the American Fork Canyon

Thursday, October 4, 2012

Engagement Anniversary

Yesterday was our anniversary of getting engaged! 2 Years ago my wonderful, beautiful husband proposed to me and made me the luckiest girl in the world. He surprised me by having my friend, Lauren, call and invite us up to dinner at the Zermatt in Midway. I was so excited, especially because she said to dress up and I love dressing up a little bit! haha So we get up there and he keeps driving past the Zermatt and of course I'm like "Turn there! Turn there!" having a fit that he's driving past it. He gave me a little letter to read  that was very romantic and I knew right then and there that this was the night! (I kind of already guessed that ahead of time though.. I just knew somehow)

He kept driving up into the hills above Midway to a clearing that had a beautiful view of the Heber/Midway valley. He always knows what I love! Once we were there he opened up the back of the car and had a nice picnic basket with food and chocolate covered strawberries (courtesy of his mom and sister) and he also had... A Ring!!!! It was the most beautiful ring I'd ever seen and he got down on his knee and asked me to marry him and I said yes! After that we went to my house and to Lauren's house to announce our engagement. My mom has some pictures from the night but I never got them from her so here are a few from Lauren's house:




It was an amazing night, and I just remember feeling so completely happy that I was marrying this man. He has been the perfect husband and I don't know what I would do without him. Thanks for everything honey and thanks for planning the perfect proposal for me!


Still absolutely love my ring! (ignore my yucky winter hands!)




The past month or so

It's been a while since I've blogged so I thought I would do a little update/what's been going on with us blog post. Nothing too exciting, in fact, it probably won't be exciting at all haha we've just been really busy since school started back up!

We got home from Sun Valley and went back to school like the next week. I am currently taking a full schedule at school in the advertising program (only 1.5 more semesters!!), working on campus doing billing work, and working at the Old Towne Grill. It's been a bit crazy, I mostly work during the day and then have night classes, but sometimes I have class during the day and it's a whole lot of running around between jobs and classes. Also I got called to be the relief society secretary this last summer so that's been keeping me busy too.

I feel like this is turning into a "poor me I'm so busy blog entry" which isn't what I meant to do, so enough about that. I'm really not as busy as I sound, I think everything works out just fine if you don't do homework haha ...which leads me to my next thought.. I have been watching Anne of Green Gables (like the 6 discs that are 2 hours long each) these past two weeks and if you haven't watched them in a while you are missing out! I love that movie/girl with all my might! I even find myself talking like her and like Marilla... Preston doesn't like it when I do that :)

About Preston, he has been working hard on his school work and been doing lots of networking to get an internship this summer. He's been going out to New York and meeting with banks and that's been going really well for him. He's actually going to New York again this next week to meet with people. He's a real hard worker. I don't think I could ever be as dedicated to studying as he is.

He still makes time to do fun things with me though. This last week he took me up to Park City to stay at a nice hotel and go to dinner and shop. It was so beautiful up there with all the leaves changing color, and it was a really fun getaway.

I know this blog post is a little bit all over the place, but I wanted to say that I have been making dinners for almost two weeks in a row!! This is a HUGE accomplishment for me because I don't think I've ever made dinner this often! Sometimes you just get fed up with eating frozen lasagnas, frozen pizzas, frozen everythings and decide that you are going to put to use those 500 recipes you've pinned on Pinterest and that's what I've done and it feels so good! I'm also going to throw in here that I went to the farmer's market that they are having on Wednesdays on Center street last night and got a whole box of wonderful produce. It was the highlight of my week!!

What else has been going on.... well I missed my birth control pill two days in a row and got my hormones all messed up. I was a complete bear for about two weeks, bless little Preston's soul for putting up with me ;) I think I'm doing ok now, although I don't handle stress very well ever. Also we have Scobee family pictures this Saturday and I'll have to post those on here when we get them back, hopefully they turn out well!

Here's a few phone pictures of my life lately:

Hiked Bridal Veil Falls

Made made this cute silly putty word in church for me

Ruby River steaks!

This piece of glass was in my foot for about 3 weeks!! I finally saw a corner of it glisten in the light and pulled it out of my foot! Guess that's what I get for working at a bar.. not really but kinda

Laid grass in my parents yard all Saturday! We were pretty proud of it!
 
The group of sweaty workers getting lunch after laying grass
Not a great picture, but the trees are amazing in the canyon!

A salad and Anne of Green Gables every night while Prest studies, it's a gooood life!


Thursday, August 30, 2012

Sun Valley

I've really been wanting to blog about our Sun Valley trip, but we got back and jumped right into school, so it's been pretty busy. So now it's time to relive the memories of two weeks ago when life was simple and relaxing, and the only choices I ever had to make were what delicious meal on the menu to get and what activity sounded fun that day.

We started our 6 hour trip up to Sun Valley, Idaho with a stop at Maddox. If you've never heard of it you need to go! It is a restaurant in Brigham City that has the type of food you eat for a gourmet Sunday dinner. I loved it. And so does everyone else apparently because there was a line at the door to get in right when it opened at 11:00 on a weekday. And when we ate there on the return trip it was a complete zoo.

Here's me and Prest eating at Maddox :)
The whole drive up there I couldn't believe we were heading somewhere green and beautiful that is known for its skiing when all I could see out the window were fields, fields, fields. BUT it definitely is beautiful! And I have pictures to prove it!






  While we were there, we did lots of fun things like...

Went to some yummy restaurants. 

Out to breakfast
The whole crew at dinner downtown


Went bowling at the Sun Valley Lodge:

Old school way of keeping score

He won.. of course

We love bowling

Preston's dad thought it was perfectly normal to wear these around


Played tennis and swam:





Played with cute Sophie (brady & teresa's baby):

He'll be such a cute dad :)





Rented bicycles to ride around on.. Preston and I got stuck with the tandem:

Turned out pretty good for me though :)


 Went shopping downtown:

Just one of those things that you have to take a picture with

I guess Cass wasn't loving all the "elderly" clothing stores.



And got ice cream...

Home of the 1st ski lift

Preston's parents


And played Games at night at the condo:



We also went ice skating, the boys golfed, and we hung out at the condo a lot. It was a fun get away before school started. Thank you to Linda and Scott who took us all!! 

We love Sun Valley!