It was a disaster waiting to happen and yet there I went rushing in, moving faster than I was thinking. I had little to go on: a name, old milk tokens, a vague mention of a park with a commemorative marker, and directions (that looked like I had given them) to a community garden that is somehow related or not to the old Dairy. Assignment: find and write about the Steenblik Dairy and Milk Depo, last (& only so far) known historical mention; 1932 surplus milk supply article Deseret News.
Let me back up to the community newsroom meeting where a long list of story ideas languished like orphans down the third page of the agenda. Any of my friends could have picked half a dozen more fitting stories for me to take but form the moment I read ‘Steenblik Park, history of the Dairy Farm that used to be there’ I had a picture in my mind. A tiny spark of recognition and here is where this all gets weird… “I think my mom used live down the street from this place.” I said laying claim the nonstory story. Funny statement, almost a lie, and considering I know nearly nothing about my mom’s childhood it was a big reach.
This is what I know about her family and her life in no particular order: She lived in a little house on a big farm; she hated the chickens because they were mean. She had a brother and a sister and I think one more sister, my mom was the oldest. Her mother, my grandmother, was a hoarder, her sanity questionable, she died blind. I recall she sewed us underwear which she gave us at Christmas by hiding inside her house and not answering the door but leaving the ‘gifts’ in an old car in the driveway where we left our gifts to her. It was more a hostage exchange than a holiday but to us rich spoiled children it was an adventure.
My grandpa was an airplane mechanic (I think), he drank coffee he smoked he smelled rich and warm like a wood stove, he fought in a war he wouldn’t talk about, rumor has it he was on the beaches of Normandy. He left my mom’s mom after the kids were grown for a waitress he had fallen in love with, even as a small Mormon child I found it romantic and reasonable to want to be loved and poured hot coffee. She is the woman I know and call Grandma despite the fact that she is younger than my mom or maybe that is just a joke, I don’t know for sure. My grandfather died a slow painful death from lung disease with his beloved waitress by his side.
The strongest memory I have tied to this side of the family is of riding in the back seat of my father’s Cadillac feeling the jog in the road and snow on a bridge which I have come to believe is the bridge over the Jordan River at Indian. I know my grandfather (after leaving my mom’s mom) lived on Navajo Street and grew pumpkins. His ashes are buried there below an oak tree (that later died too) in the front yard. I know this because my X husband was the one who buried them and planted the tree… that house is somewhere very near to where I live today but for some reason the exact address hasn’t been nailed down.
My mom had one dress she would wear it to school, come home wash it, and wear it the next day. My mom’s childhood was cold filled with mud up to her knees and farm chores and bus stops and personal tragedies. She was afraid of alligators under her bed from a movie she saw and she loved horses.
The one sister who I am sure she had was my Aunt Jill. We saw her and her husband, my uncle Joel twice a year. Jill passed away from MS after a whole life time of dying, my whole life time anyway. My mom’s brother Mike, known as Lucky, died of drugs or aids or exposure or all of the above. My mom’s grandmother was hit by a car on Redwood Road she was dragged to death. Yep, that is all know about her and her side of the family. Not a lot to know about ones family.
After I agreed to write the piece on the Dairy I phoned my mom to see if she knew anything about it. Funny, she didn’t remember it but she told me all about the Holbrooke Horse Farm and Stables near by, like I said she loved horses. My father however knew the Dairy by name; my father is a magnificent story teller with a mind for history and detail. He confirmed the dairy had been located adjacent to my mother’s childhood house. No one can account for how I would have known that or how this happened…. After striking out all morning online I drove directly to the Steenblik Park. Standing on the corner reading the street signs I realized just like the story I had stumbled on it quite by accident. See I didn’t have the address to the park (nor had I ever had it) located in the belly of the twisty rose shaped streets of Rose Park. I had the address to the community garden (with its questionable ties to the story) located several blocks away. After a brief pause in the park to let Beach play we drove down to the garden plot along the river.
If you have never been to Rose Park perhaps you should go there. It is easily one of the most beautiful and peaceful neighborhoods I have ever seen. As I drove around looking for something, what I’m not sure, my mind was going a million miles a minute. I keep turning around and around looking up the streets and down them. Staring at the river and the houses on the other side; I wanted to get over there. Everything in me wished for a bike. I wanted to be able see and feel the place for ‘reals’. I even thought, "oh shit we made a mistake we should have moved here!"
At some point realizing I had forgotten my paper with my mom’s childhood address written on it, my own child bored to tears, I drove us home after looping the neighborhood one last time desperately wishing I hadn't forgotten that address trying to recall it but with no luck.
As it turns there was good reason for me to stand on 800 North and 1600 West and stare across the river. I was staring directly into my past. Remove a few plus decades and I would have been looking across a river at the fence line of my mother’s childhood home and property. I would have been standing at the bottom of the street that ran past her front door. [Adjusting for the correction of all SLC west streets moving one block west to allow for the original omission of Zero West (West Temple) her home would have sat roughly between 1800 & 1900 West on 800 North.] 800 North was the street I drove directly to, it is where Steenblik Park is located, it was the street I wanted out on, it was the street I continually tracked across until my child in the back seat let out a groan so loud I couldn’t ignore it.
I need to do more digging but I suspect I was treading across the fields of the Steenblik Dairy the whole time too, that park may actually be a remnant not just a name sake to the family (as suggested on line) who stills lives in the area. Standing on the land I was looking for, searching for ghosts of stone that are long gone. My mind knows almost nothing about my mother’s family and yet my blood seems to know how to find its way home. And here I thought I was so cleaver and original to move us West…
