Clement and Audra Gubler were married on April 26, 1921, They were the sixth family to move to Ivins in November 1923 and lived there until 1943, when they moved to California where Clement had been transferred to with the Rocky Mountain Trucking Company. When they first moved to Ivins with one daughter, Clement built a new chicken coop and they lived in it until their house was finished. Their house was a two-room adobe, with a full porch on the west side and a basement the size of the kitchen. After having five more children with a total of six in 1935, they converted the garage into a bedroom. Ferol Gubler Hackman, their second child wrote; “There were from four to six of us that slept out there in the garage until we moved to California in 1943. It was great in the summer."
"Everyone slept outdoors to get a little relief from the heat. No air-conditioning in those days. When a shower (rain) came up, everyone went scrambling with their bed. Well, in the garage, we could open up the doors and the windows and not have to worry. We'd wake up before sun up and close the doors and could sleep a while without the sun or flies. It wasn't too great in the winter. It was awfully cold running to the house with snow on the ground. Then when the wind blew (and it really could in Utah!) the garage wasn't airtight enough to keep the sand out and we would wake up with red sand in our mouth, eyes, ears, and hair.”
Like many of the families in Ivins, Clement and Audra grew produce and then would peddle the produce in Nevada and California. Later with six other men, Clement started a trucking business called Southern Utah Produce Company, where they would truck the produce. Ferol also wrote; “We were as well off as anyone in those depression years. Although our house wasn't great, we didn't know any better and Mom was a good housekeeper. We had the first telephone in Ivins. The telephone lines into the town were party lines with as many as eight people on one line. Listening in on other people's conversations was an easy thing to do. Not much privacy available with this kind of service, but we were so happy to have the telephones, that we did not complain. The folks had a really nice stove and bedroom set. They were such hard workers and tried to give us what we needed. We never went hungry and always had everything we really needed, not everything we wanted, but needed. Dad did get $5.00 for driving expenses when he went on trips to Los Angeles and back, and he would bring two or three dollars home. That is what we would live on until the next trip. At that time, hot school lunches and donuts were a nickel a piece.”
Living in Ivins was hard work, but the kids would also get some time to enjoy themselves. Ferol wrote about their excursions; “We all would go swimming in the Ivins reservoir. We could sleep on lawns, go up to the flue (where the water was piped across a wash) and cook breakfast. Often we'd go up to the red hill and cook supper. These were summer activities. We had a lot of fun and good times. Every year we'd go up and spend about a week on the mountain called Pine Valley. Dad would shoot rabbits going up. We rode horses and all slept on a long wood porch at the front of the house.
"I've mentioned the red hill. It wasn't a hill, it was a mountain about a mile north of Ivins. It was, and is, very outstanding among the blue and gray of the other mountains. It was also very sandy. Because of this, it was also very sandy in our town. When the Dodger and Angel baseball stadiums were built in the Los Angeles area, Dad's old trucking company brought red sand down for around the edge of the playing field. Just east of the red hill was a white canyon, called Snow Canyon. The spring for Ivins' drinking water is located here. We would walk up there for outings also. I have wonderful memories while living in Ivins.”
Written by Cherise Ence Spencer February 2023, Vol. 23 Issue 2 Ivins Newletter