From Elsie Burton’s diary
From that spot by the stream, the structure on sleds was moved some distance away to a field near Tranquility, a small community near Fresno in the San Joaquin Valley. Thinking back to all the things that happened to our family within the short period of time we stayed there, Tranquility was a misnomer.
We had none, absolutely none, of the modern facilities one regards as ordinary living conditions: no running water, no sewage, no garbage pickup, no electricity. There was a pump installed as an irrigation facility for the fields a short distance away. Mother had to pack water in small enough buckets for her to carry, for cooking, drinking, bathing and laundry. The laundry must have been unthinkable. She had a husband who did dirty, hard labor and three healthy children who had nowhere to play except in the dirt, besides a baby, with all the laundry that entails.
This sounds like my mother’s story but it serves to indicate the care and individual guidance one could expect from such an over-worked mother. I remember at one point she lost the diamond from her engagement ring, the only material worth she owned besides her wedding ring. I remember the hours we were set to searching the ground around where she might have thrown it out with wash water. We never found it. I remember her desperate sadness because of it.
Swagerty-Aldrich Family Web Site 