Olive Wixom's story: Lyolya's first years

Earl and Olive Wixom.   I don't know what year this was taken.

Olive Nunn Wixom life story- 1927 birth of Lyolya

----, 1927- Our baby girl, Lyolya Ruth, was born. We had a hard time to choose a name, good enough for her. I was reading a book at the time. It was War and Peace by Tolstoy, and found the name Lyolya, and thought it looked so pretty written and we decided on that and Ruth, after my sister, for a middle name.

Nov. 15, 1928- We went to San Francisco on the bus. They lost one of our suitcases off the top. They gave us $25 insurance but that didn't add up to half of what it was worth....We stayed at a hotel the first night. The next morning as we were eating breakfast we got a paper and looked for jobs. Earl saw where they needed chocolate dippers at The Wilson's Candy factory, so we went over and I applied for the job and they told me to come the next A.M. We found an apartment and moved our things in pretty good.

Earl got a job in the Heintz Kaufman Company, finishing radio cabinets, so we put Lyolya in the Cannon Kipp Nursery. It was very nice for her for they had trained nurses to take care of them. She was then 9 months old and in order for me to leave her there I had to wean her. She drank from a cup all the time and everyone there just loved her. She learned to walk there around in her play pen. We took her there in the A.M. And picked her up at 5 p.m. There was always a fog in at both times of the day that we had to have her out. She caught cold and couldn't get over it.

About the 1^st of January 1929, it turned to asthma. We had the doctor and he gave us some medicine but said she would probably not get over it as long as she stayed there where it was so damp. We thought if Earl's folks would come down and stay awhile and we could keep her home we would stay longer, so we called the folks but they couldn't say for sure.

We were both making good money and didn't want to go back to Burley Idaho where we couldn't even get a job maybe.

Before we could get word back from them Lyolya got worse, so we just wrapped her in her blankets and took the first train home (to Idaho). (Earl's brother) Ken was living just down the hall from us and working in a hat factory. We hated to leave him. We got on the train and before we had gone very far Lyolya seemed to get better and before we got to Salt Lake she was running up and down the aisles. When we got to Burley to our surprise they told us that the folks had left that day so we must have passed them on the way. They got (to San Francisco) and stayed in our apartment and visited Ken for a few days and then came on back to Burley.

The winter in Burley was one of the worst they had ever had. We were snowed in for several days. Even the mail couldn't get through. We worried about being snowed in with Lyolya but she got along fine. We were so thankful we left when we did for her sake.