by Dorothy Lawrance Iman
GUEST COLUMNIST
It's all gone -- the Lawrence Floral Shop, the greenhouses, Mom and Dad's home, Grandma and Grandpa's home, Aunt Rosie and Uncle Fred's home -- empty spaces now.
Once there were flowers arranged for funerals, weddings, anniversaries, birthdays and holidays. There were corsages and boutonnieres for dances. No count of the customers who crossed the threshold of the shop -- no count of the occasion marked by orders filled and deliveries made.
Nothing left but the memories that began for me long ago when a very different Tooele was a vibrant county seat, home to a grand assortment of people and places.
Gone are many of the homes where babies grew up and people grew old. Homes that sheltered during good times and bad, that witnessed many changes over the years.
Tooele was a "self" town in those days -- self-contained and self-sustaining. Her inhabitants were self-disciplined, self-reliant and had self-determination.
Shopkeepers lived in the homes along with barbers, bakers, beauticians, doctors and nurses. There were dentists, pharmacists, farmers, icemen, dairymen, teachers, principals and church leaders. And where would we have been without the auto shops, mechanics, grocers, bankers, postmen, judges, lawyers, firemen and policemen? We had musicians, barkeeps and hotel men and women. There were railroad workers and men who worked at the smelter and in mines to support their families.
Those old homes had children, parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles. Some had farms, some were orchardists, but they all had a stake and pride in the town of Tooele. We had a newspaper that is still in business. We had shoemakers and a librarian.
In short, we had everyone to make our town all we needed. It was a place of community and caring. Not one business closed down during the Great Depression because the merchants supported the townspeople and the townspeople supported the merchants.
One of my earliest memories of Tooele was seeing the old Caldwell Hotel on the corner of First South and Main Street, next to the house of my grandparents. The Caldwell Hotel was two stories with long porches top and bottom, with wooden post supports. It was dark brown.
Another memory is of the floral shop. My grandfather had built the floral shop next to his house. The house fronted directly on the sidewalk but had a nice backyard, complete with a Victoria Vine, a fish pond and lots of daisies. It had a walkway between the house and the greenhouse that led to the doorway entry where my grandpa had a large workbench.
We children (cousins and siblings) worked in the greenhouse in the summer "strengthening" tall plants where they grew in the benches. We also put picks and wires on the flowers to be used for funeral sprays. We helped early in the morning before school started on funeral days.
The front of the greenhouse had a room that held large tropical palms, generally used for weddings. The greenhouses had a coal furnace that my dad had to "stoke" each night in the winter so the flowers wouldn't freeze. Dad sprayed whitewash on the glass panes in the summer to shade the plants. There were many windstorms that broke panes of glass that had to be replaced. Next to the greenhouses was the lumber yard. I still remember the smell of the wood that was stacked in the open, covered over by a roof.
That was a very different Tooele, the place of my heart and place of my birth.
Dorothy Lawrence Iman graduated from Tooele High School in 1944. She currently resides in Ogden.
compiled by Abby Palmer