From the Relief Society Magazine, June 1950 –

Hall of Fulfillment

By Fay Tarlock

“You look odd, Mother. Is there any bad news in your mail?” Helen Lane’s teen-age daughter Joan asked her from across the breakfast table.

“No,” Helen said, buttering her toast and not looking at Jane’s anxious eyes. “It’s nothing— just looking at the drawings of the new Relief Society building.”

“The one that’s going to cost you five bucks?” young Bill asked, his voice superior.

“I don’t see why that should worry you. Mother,” Joan persisted. “All you have to do is write a check.”

“It isn’t worrying me,” Helen answered. “And I’m not going to write a check.”

“What are you going to do?” Bill, her husband, asked, emerging from the morning’s paper with its black headlines.

“Surely, Mother, you wouldn’t — !” Joan shrilled, her blue eyes wide in protest.

“No, indeed,” Helen replied, smiling at her daughter. “I’m going to earn the money myself.”

“Ha!” came from young Bill. “Imagine you earning money.”

“You know it isn’t necessary,” Bill said, returning to the black headlines.

“We’ll just call it a whim of mine and let it go at that.” Helen brought the coddled eggs in from the kitchen and passed the dish. From the plate-glass panel she could see the smooth side lawn, the perennial border still gay with color, and the neatly clipped privet hedge that separated the yard from the garage driveway.

“Once,” she said as she broke her egg into its cup, “I helped build a Relief Society hall. I can’t do less than earn the money now.”

“Did you really?” young Bill exclaimed, his eyes deep with the innocence of childhood. “What did you do?”

“That’s not so easy to tell,” Helen said. “It happened a long time ago.” So long ago, she thought, that it was in another world. She wondered if any story of hers could bring that world into her sunny dining room with the blonde oak table and the yellow plastic mats.

“Do tell us about it. Mother. Don’t just sit there.” Joan’s voice had a little edge to it.

Helen had been very young, younger even than young Bill, when her mother was made president of the Crane Ward Relief Society for the express purpose of building the Relief Society Hall. The need for the Hall was an old refrain. Helen could not remember a time when she had not heard, “When we get our own Hall.” It was as familiar a part of Crane as the racy breeze from the sage-covered hills.

In Crane the only Church building proper was the ward chapel. This was made from rough stone and topped by a weathered steeple. The chapel had been erected by the pioneer fathers in the days when the settlement was still enclosed by a high adobe wall built as a protection against the Indians. In the building there was only a basement room that the Relief Society could call home. It had differed from the other shabby rooms in three respects: the floor was covered with a rag carpet; there were straight-backed chairs instead of benches; and there was an old parlor organ. The pioneer fathers had provided no kitchen, no work room for quilting or sewing, no social hall for the amenities and gaieties of Relief Society life.

Yes, Crane Ward Relief Society needed a home of its own.

Helen could not remember the exact time she became a willing part of this seemly design. It had not happened at first. “I wish you would go across town to ask Sister Dunhill if she will make the ice cream for the teachers’ party,” her mother had said.

“Can’t you telephone the Denbys? They live on the same block.”

“We never ask anyone to do for us what we can do ourselves,” her mother had reproved her. She had been a grumbling messenger that time.

Her real entry might have come on the occasion Sister Dunhill had asked her to sit down and wait to scrape the ice cream dasher as a reward for hauling the little red wagon full of ice. Whatever the occasion, she was soon the very legs and often the voice of the building committee.

On every possible occasion, from the Friday night dance in the Opera House to a ward wedding reception, the Relief Society advanced with food and quilts for sale. The people of Crane ate frequently at public dinners for more than a year.

Of even greater import than transporting the food from its original source to its cooked finish were the messages Helen carried to the volunteer workmen. Few of them had telephones and the blocks were long. On Thursday the volunteer plasterers would work. Tuesday might be the day the volunteer bricklayers must be organized. “Brother Pridley will work on Friday. Go ask Brother Redford if he can help.” “John Cowgill is going after a load of freight. We must make sure that he brings the nails back.” “Brother Hall is sick. Go see if Brother Alcock will take his place.”

There was no street nor short cut through a vacant lot that Helen could not have followed in the dark. She knew the roads when they were frozen in the morning and mud ankle deep by afternoon. She walked the sidewalks when the brown catalpa and mulberry leaves pulverized beneath her square-toed shoes. And the prints of the same small shoes were made in the summer dust when the air of Crane was fragrant with ripening apples. Mornings and evenings she sniffed the cedar perfume of the blue smoke.

The place she liked best of all to visit was the Pridleys’. Brother Pridley was, among other things, a stone mason who had learned his trade in England. He had built his brick home, with its fan-shaped designs above the doors and windows and his curious chimney pots, with his own hands. His flower and vegetable gardens were straight out of an English picture. The red brick house was set deep among the trees and shrubs. Surrounding everything was a hedge clipped in exotic designs. There were walks bordered with phlox and sweet Williams. Along a cobbled walk that led to the grape arbor was a border of sweet-smelling English lavender. On Decoration Day people came from all over town to buy or beg the lacy snowballs and the big purple flags. Sometimes Sister Pridley would clip some spicy blooms and say in her sweet English voice, “A posie for you to carry, dearie.”

There was another place of enchantment she discovered. It was the Christhansen place. Brother Christhansen had built his white cottage, with the red trim and the matching summer house, while his memories of Denmark were still bright. For generations Crane inhabitants would entertain themselves over his mishaps with the English language. To Helen he was the kind owner of a red weather vane and a carved clock.

Crane was not without other touches of Old World culture. There was the variety shop kept by a convert from Holland. Helen would stop to press her nose against the glass to see the porcelain figurines. When she grew older she learned to prize the chinaware her mother had bought there as ”genuine Dresden.”

There were the homes of the Scotch saints, the block where the Welsh people had settled. They worked and worshiped with the English converts and the men and women from Denmark and Norway. Scattered among them as a leavening force, were descendants of New England. In Crane there were no racial discriminations, no national distinctions in thought or deed.

Once, in the early twilight, Helen was returning from a Relief Society errand to a far part of town. As she passed the unplastered house of Humphrey Hawkins, Ella, his childless wife, with the tall, ungainly body and the shuffling, heavy feet, came out. Helen tried to slip past, her eyes half-closed, pretending she could not see the house. She considered Ella Hawkins a dreary soul and, like the other children of the town, did not speak to her unless it was necessary.

”Wait a minute, will you, dearie?” Ella Hawkins called in her flat voice. A note of urgency in it made Helen stop. “I want you to come in a minute.”

Helen stopped, careful to keep the gate between her and Ella.

“I’ve got some peppermints for you,” the woman coaxed.

Helen did not like peppermints. She tried to pass. “‘Umphrey hasn’t come ‘ome yet,” the woman said, laying a cold hand on Helen’s bare arm.

“He’ll be home soon, I’m sure. It’s almost dark.” She tried to withdraw and close the gate.

“Ah, do come in, dearie,” Ella insisted, pulling her inside the gate.

Reluctantly Helen followed the woman up the dusty path. It was almost dark inside the hot little parlor; so dark she could barely see the outlines of the enlarged pictures of the Hawkins relatives.

“Now that you’re here, dearie, and while Fm getting the peppermints, would you put on the electricity for me, it won’t take but a moment?” Ella Hawkins asked, her flat voice shy.

In the fast-thickening darkness Helen groped for the bare globe dangling on the green cord from the center of the ceiling. She found it and turned the button.

Ella Hawkins beamed like a pleased child. “You know,” she confided as one equal to another, “‘Umphrey always puts on the light for me. I says to ‘im the first time the electricity was put in the house, ‘ ‘Umphrey,’ I says, I’ll never turn that light when you’re not ‘ere. I’ll sit in the dark till you come ‘ome.’ ” Shyly she handed Helen the candy, a whole bag of mints.

After that Helen always spoke warmly to Ella Hawkins. Ella, she knew now, was a grown-up child, afraid of the dark.

Another day she was pulling her red wagon past the cobbler’s shop when old Tom Chilton came out. To avoid meeting the old man with the tired eyes and the toothless mouth, she would have gone around the block. Now it was too late, she must face him. On her walks past the shop she had often wondered what it was in his long-ago youth that had made him join the Church and come to Utah. He paid no attention to Church things now and was never called Brother, just old Tom Chilton.

She tried to slide her wagon by quickly, but he stood in front of her, his big hands under his leather apron, his toothless mouth smiling at her.

“What’s the Relief Society cooking today?” he asked in his gruff way.

Helen did an incredulous thing. She lifted the white cloth that covered the basket in the red wagon. “It’s doughnuts for the Seventies’ party,” she told him gravely. “Smell them.” She dipped her hand swiftly into the basket and brought out a golden brown doughnut, still warm from the frying pan. Old Tom took it, his sunken mouth open in astonishment.

“I won’t ever be frightened of him again,” she told herself. Even old Tom knew she was helping to build the Hall. It was a pleasant thought that helped her when her arms grew tired of tugging the red wagon.

At a later time she and Addie Brown were pulling the red wagon, loaded high with flour, sugar, and home-rendered lard. The load was to be distributed to women who were making the pies for a special food sale. When they came to a landmark known as Old Bridge, they stopped to rest and to throw pebbles into the stream beneath. Helen felt relaxed and happy. “You know,” she said to Addie, “a lot of people in this town think they are building the Relief Society Hall, but do you know who is really building it?”

“No,” replied Addie, leaning over the bridge to watch a piece of driftwood hit by her pebble, “who is?”

“You and me,” Helen said. Her first thought had been to say only me, but decided it would be polite to include Addie.

“I don’t see why!” Addie retorted.

“It’s this way.” Helen was anxious for Addie to understand. “We do the things that make it possible for others to work. We carry the things for the food sales and that gets the money. Then we tell the men when to come to work and when to bring the materials. If we didn’t do it, nothing would get done.”

“I’ll just bet it would get done.” Addie was snappy. “I don’t see that we’re doing so much. You just think you’re so important.” She picked up the wagon tongue and ran off the bridge, leaving Helen to follow.

Helen felt crumpled inside. She caught up with Addie and took half the wagon handle. She did not mention the subject again. To herself she said stubbornly that her work was important.

Only one thing spoiled her pleasure in the building, now so close to its finish. The Hall was not beautiful as she had thought it would be. The plain, rectangular edifice, with the sloping roof and the narrow windows, was so like the other public buildings. Helen didn’t know what the Hall lacked: spires to catch the early sun, colored windows to dim the afternoon light, or white pillars and green, sloping lawns — something was wrong. Inside there was the main room, smelling of newness, the smaller work rooms, and the big kitchen with space for two new ranges, but they, too, seemed plain and somehow ugly. Maybe when everything was completed and the paint on, it would look better.

It was late autumn before the last nail was in, the last coat of white paint on the doors and sills and eaves. Then the stoves were installed, the chairs freshly varnished, moved from the basement room, and a bright new rag rug laid in the larger sewing room. “And every jack last cent is paid,” the women said in pride.

A celebration was planned. All the men who had given freely of their labor to lay the foundations, erect the walls and roof, and make the inside ready, were coming. All the women who had spent long hours over hot wood stoves, who had bent over machines and frames, and who had sold the food and washed the dishes, were coming. Not one thing was to be sold. There was to be a dinner, baked hot in the new ranges. Home cured hams, chicken, roast beef, light rolls, succulent pies, and frosted cakes would be piled high on the damask-covered tables. There was to be a program with speeches and readings and music. And the dedicatory prayer.

Helen took it for granted that she was to go to the party. It was for the workers, wasn’t it? In school, on the day of the celebration she thought of nothing else. At home she skipped through her chores and ran upstairs to start the delicious process of getting ready.

As Helen dressed, she held within her a small but bright hope that in one of the speeches of gratitude her name would be mentioned. She held the thought while she scrubbed her face and neck and ears. Carefully she hung up her school clothes sharply. She had had a hard day before she got out her lace-edged petticoat and her blue-flowered challis dress with the lace bertha and wide sash. She changed to stockings and her black patent-leather slippers. After that she had only her hair to comb. She picked up her brush and blue ribbons and went into her mother’s room. Excitement raced through her like a flood. This was the night!

In the bedroom, her mother, dressed in her blue taffeta, was helping Helen’s father with his black tie. “What on earth!” she exclaimed, turning to face Helen.

“I’m ready for the party. I got ready all by myself, except for my hair.” Her whole face glowed with pride and happiness.

“Well, you can go right back into your room and take those clothes off.” Her mother said the words sharply. She had had a hard day after a succession of hard days, and she had yet to preside over the celebration tonight. “Your supper is ready,” she added more kindly when she saw the glow leave Helen’s face. “It’s in the warming oven. You get it out when the boys bring in the milk.”

“But the party — I’m going to the party for the workers on the building.” Helen still felt there was a chance her mother would relent. She held out the brush and ribbons, her eyes big and pleading

The remembrance of some of the countless errands the child had run must have come to her mother’s mind. Her voice softened. “You can’t go, child. It’s only for grown-ups. it will be late, too, and you have school tomorrow.” She braided Helen’s hair into the big night braid.

Helen did not appeal her case. She might have reminded her mother of all the times she had fetched and carried. Instead, she turned her head and went silently across the hall into her room. If her mother did not appreciate the things she had done, no one else could be expected to understand.

Her face on the bed, she stifled her sobs in the pillow. When her father and mother called a hurried goodbye, she did not speak.

After what seemed hours the crying stopped. She took off the blue dress, now wrinkles, and the lace, soggy from her tears. Downstairs, she washed her face, but she did not eat supper. When a feast is expected, leftovers do not satisfy.

She felt there was no justice in her mother’s decision. She remembered what Addie had said on Old Bridge and felt now, as she had felt then, that her contribution had not been trivial. “I’ll never tell anyone how I feel,” she said aloud in the darkness of her room. “Inside me I know.” With this comforting thought she fell asleep.

The next morning she was very quiet. It would have been good to ask questions: what had been said in the speeches and had the readings been comedy ones? She wanted to know, too, what John Patterson had sung and played on his guitar. But she did not ask and never would.

At the usual time she started for school, her eyes still a little swollen. If she hurried she could go by the Hall. In the crisp morning air it did look different! It looked whiter, bigger, and more imposing. She especially liked the front stoop and steps, all made of smooth cement. It looked as if it would do all those things the women had longed for through the years when they said, “If only we had a Hall of our own.”

This morning, looking at the shining cleanliness of the bricks and paint, it did not matter that she had not gone to the party and her name had not been mentioned among those who had served. What mattered was that the Hall was there, ready to give itself in service. Al who had helped would share in its abundance.

She took one more look at the brave new building, resting where once the fort wall had been. Then she hurried on to school.

“Aren’t you going to tell us the story” There was real impatience in Joan’s soft, young voice. “You have our curiosity aroused.”

Helen looked at her family. The three of them were staring at her.

Beyond them, out of the window, she could still see the smooth lawn, the gay perennial border, and clipped hedge. She felt she had no words, now ay of telling her children how different it had been those many years ago. As she was silent then, she was silent now.

“Yes,” Bill, her husband, said, “we’d really like to know.” His paper, with the black headlines, slipped from his lap, ignored.

There’s nothing to tell — that you’d be interested in,” she said. Then she smiled at the three of them. “Be off, all of you, if you don’t want to be late.”