Grandpa was born on September 13, 1922 to Bartlett Canfield Farnsworth and Lillie Parthenia Holt. He is the fourth of five children, having two sisters and two brothers. Erwin was raised in the small farming community of Enterprise, Utah, but was born in a hospital in St. George, Utah about 40 miles away from Enterprise. I guess they didn't go to hospitals very often, but Grandpa’s reasoning for being born in a hospital was: “Don’t know why, maybe mom had problems with something.”
The home Grandpa grew up in didn’t have any electric lights while he was growing up and he remembers using coal lamps for light. The layout of the house consisted of a living room, dining room, kitchen, one small bedroom and one big bedroom that went the whole length of the house. Mom and dad slept in the small bedroom, and in the big bedroom there was one bed in one end where all the boys slept and one bed at the other end of the room where all the girls slept. Because they didn’t have any “heater” to help keep the house warm in the winter, they would place a hot water bag at the bottom of the bed to help them keep warm, but Grandpa recalled “When we’d get up in the morning, it would be frozen solid.”
Any water that they used would have to come from a well on their property. On Saturday nights, to have a bath, they would have to put a tea kettle on the stove and warm up water to fill up the #3 tub to fill it up for a bath. “We had to use a lot of tea kettles!” T
They didn’t have a refrigerator, freezer, or washing machine in their home growing up. To keep their food cold, they would wrap meat and other foods in burlap sacks and stick them up in the North Corner of the house, and this was considered their “deep freeze.” They did get a second hand refrigerator in the late 1930s and Grandpa also recalled what an amazing thing it was to get a Maytag washing machine as opposed to their scrubbing board and soap.
TV’s didn’t exist in those days, so a lot of quality time was spent listening to the radio in their home. Grandpa recalls listening to episodes of “The Great American Boy” that was sponsored by Wheaties, Breakfast of Champions. He also remembered one ad he used to hear on the radio a lot of the time that was an advertisement for soap: “Use Lifewise soap, and you won’t have B.O.!”
Granpda Farnsworth (Barlett), was on the school board in Enterprise for 30 years and always encouraged his children to get an education. Grandpa always had an interest in radio, movies, and movie projectors and throughout high school would run the shows at the local movie theater earning fifty cents a night. After graduation from high school, he went to Chicago where he attended Electric Radio School.
When Grandpa returned from school in Chicago, he remembers World War II had just begun. As he was visiting his sister in Salt Lake City on December 7, 1941, he remembers listening to the radio and hearing about the Japanese bombing Pearl Harbor. It was a strange thing to listening to as you were just sitting and visiting.
Grandpa then went on to Burbank, California where he went to school to learn about Air Craft Construction. After completing his education, he had a desire to get a job in air craft construction, but after a physical examination, it was discovered he had very high blood pressure, so he was not allowed to pursue that form of work. He still had a high interest in radio and aircraft at the time though, and begin to seek other areas of work that would allow him to continue his interests.
Grandpa had gone to elementary, junior high school, and high school with most of the same people, and had always been friends with Grandma. After he got home from Chicago and radio school, they began dating and were married on August 7, 1942 in the Salt Lake City LDS Temple.
After they got married, Grandpa got a job at the Remington Arm Plant in Salt Lake City making 87 cents an hour. This equaled to be about $32 a week and about $1660 dollars a year. In 1943, he got drafted to the Air Force where he worked at an air base in the United States at an air base and became an Air Craft Dispatcher. He served 33 months there dispatching, doing weather reports, reporting to and briefing pilots. He was discharged in 1946.
Due to the high number of women quitting work as World War II ended, the airport in Enterprise, UT was hiring, and Grandpa decided to apply for a job that would let him pursue his interests in aviation. He was given a job there, but first he and Grandma had to move to Salt Lake in 1947 so Erwin could complete his FAA training to become an air traffic controller. When he began working, in his own words, “that paid pretty good money, about $2600 a year.” After training, he worked in St. George, UT from 1949-1955, Delta, UT from 1955-1971, then in Salt Lake City, UT from 1971 to the time he retired in 1978.
Grandpa was just a child when the Great Depression hit, but doesn’t seem to remember being negatively affected by the economy. When he described the depression, his words were, “We talked about hard times, but you lived in a small farming community and everybody had their own cows, chickens, crops. We all had plenty to eat and we didn’t go hungry. Everyone had a garden and raised their own potatoes, squash, watermelons, cantelopes, corn. You raised your own beef, pork.” He had always been raised in a home where he learned the values of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, where he knew that everyone in the community was a member of the church and knew and helped each other out in times of need.
He never remembers having a lot of money while growing up, so he didn’t have luxury items, but as he pointed out before, they always had plenty to eat and never went hungry. Something both he and grandma mentioned was “we didn’t have a lot of money to spend, but we didn’t know we needed to spend it, so we never noticed a difference.” For clothing, they would order clothes from the catalogs that came from Salt Lake City, but once you had a pair of paints, a shirt, or a dress, they lived by the fact that when you got a tear or a hole in your clothes, you patched it, and you just kept patchin’ it until you couldn’t patch it anymore. Since this is the way he was raised, I’ve noticed that he and grandma have always had modest nice things, but I’ve never known them to buy luxury items or have excess just because their means allowed it. They only have what they need.
Grandpa mentioned that his father was a self-taught doctor that could set broken-bones easily, which helped because when someone in town needed a bone set, they could call Bartlett Farnsworth rather than wait for a doctor to travel the 20-30 miles from St. George or Cedar City.
Before World War II and during Grandpa’s early lifetime, cars were something new that not many people had, so he never had a car growing up. After the war, Grandpa mentioned that sources were still scarce throughout the country, so a car was a luxury that they didn’t have. In 1949, first car Grandpa and Grandma purchased was a used “Grand Old One,” and in 1951, they purchased a brand new Pontiac for $1800.
Grandpa’s job as an Air Traffic Controller helped him and grandma to raise eight children and teach them to work hard for their dreams and to get an education. Between my mother and her seven siblings, they all at least have an associate degree, and some have bachelors and masters degrees.
Grandpa and Grandma bought their first home in 1950, which was eight years after they were married. It was a simple 3 bedroom home that they felt was something extravagant because it had running water for a bath. When they bought a home, they planned to stay in the neighborhood for a while, and their communities were strong, because people took the evenings to spend time together.
Advice from Granpda Farnsworth
• “Stay out of Debt. Live within your income”
• “Don’t buy as fancy of things as you think you need to.”
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