Childhood
I was born in Salt Lake City, UT, July 11, 1911, to Herbert E. Cutler and Mabel Stella Bagley Cutler. I have one younger sister, Estelle.
Farron as a small boy
10th East Home
We lived in a big yellow brick home at 264 South 10th East, Salt Lake City, Utah.
I was a lucky little boy as most of the things I needed and even wanted, were given me.
The first 13 years of my life were both happy and sad. At 13 both of my parents died. My father in September and my mother in November. I guess this is the reason so many things are still quite vivid in my memory. I had one sister who was four years my junior and in talking to her she says she remembers very little of these years. She was only eight at the time of our parents’ death. Estelle is her name. It is now Estelle Cutler Eldredge.
We had a large home. I had a room all my own and, in the summer, we slept out on a large screened in area on the back of the house and on the second story. This was a fun time as sleeping there was a pleasant experience.
Our home was probably one of the first to be heated by a furnace. As I got older it was my job to keep it filled with coal. We ordered and used large lumps of coal which lasted longer than the small pieces. Many nights and it always seemed to be they occurred on the coldest of winter nights, the coal would burn out and the furnace would have to be relit in the morning. Dad must have many nights gone down and refilled the burner. Although we never had one, a coal feeder was invented which fed from a feeder box slack coal (very small coal, almost like dust) into the furnace box.
Another thing I remember was the arrangement dad built for the ice man to fill the ice box. In those days we did not have electric or gas refrigerators. A delivery person would come around to the homes with the ice and chip off for each home the amount the people needed to fill their box. The ice was put in the top if the ice box and the food was kept in the lower part of the container. The delivery man would come right in the kitchen or on the porch and fill the box. My dad put the ice box or refrigerator next to the kitchen wall and made a hole in the wall and in the back of the refrigerator. He had a wooden platform made with wooden steps up to it and the delivery men could then fill the box from outside, not having to come in the house.
