Part 5 --- Daddy's Boy "Bill"

When Janice was only 13 months old, she got a new baby sister.  They named her Connie.  Still poor as church mice, the family could not afford pictures of the newborn.  So Connie's first photo was taken when she was about 10 months old, with her family at the county fair. 

                                                                                                        

Mama dressed Janice in pants, and they took her and her baby sister and went to the fair.  Daddy called her "my boy Bill."  Mama was still mad about the haircut.

Janice had her favorite storybooks that Mama read to her over and over again. In 1950, these pages were taken from her cherished little books and put in a scrapbook.

Part 4 --- Little Janice Goes Visiting

Visiting Grandpa and Grandma Sheen was a treat.  They lived in a converted cinderblock garage while they waited to build their new house in Rupert.  Janice still had peach fuzz for hair until she was over a year old.
                                                                         

Janice liked to go next door to visit the neighbors, the Hales, and play in their dirt yard.  Finally, she had enough hair for Mama to put up in curls.  Her Mama was so thrilled.

One day, Janice went with Daddy to the barbershop.  When the barber asked her if she wanted to get her hair cut like her Daddy's, she happily said yes.  Mama was not so happy when Daddy took her home that afternoon with her curls all gone. 

Janice loved eating ice cream cones with her slightly older, and girly-haired, Watson cousins--Linda, Deanna, (Janice in the middle), Jackie, and Sandi.

Part 3 --- Baby Janice -- 6 months old

Janice was a husky, solid, strong baby girl.  She had a sweet, loving personality, and her parents adored her.  Wayne and Leota didn't own a camera, and there wasn't much money for luxuries, but when Janice was 6 months old, they splurged and had her picture taken by a photographer.  Her bright, funny spirit shines through her pictures.

Part 2 --- Janice's Mama and Daddy

In 1945, Wayne and Leota met at a dance and three months later they were married. She was 19 and he was 24. World War II was coming to a close, and many couples were marrying and starting families. He had come home from the service early because of a back injury, and she was living with her parents and working as a telephone operator. Dances were the main form of entertainment and activity for young adults in those days. Leota remembered dancing with Wayne four years earlier when she was only 14. He didn't remember meeting the scrawny teenager then. But as he danced with her again when she was all grown up, he told her that he was going to marry her. And so he did.

Wayne worked as a truck driver, auto mechanic, town marshal, school bus driver, and other odd jobs in the early years to put food on the table. Leota was a homemaker and stay-at-home mom to their new baby.

The Beginning --- Baby Janice Is Born

On a warm summer day in 1946, a sweet baby girl was born. Her name was Janice Watson. Pink, fat, and bald, she was the first-born child of Leota Faye Sheen and Wayne Follett Watson. She was born at the Christensen Nursing Home in Rupert, Idaho. A few days after her birth, she went with her mother to stay for a week with her grandparents, Code and Clara Sheen. The new mother had a high fever and was in and out of consciousness for a time. In a few days she recovered and her husband took her and their baby home.

Their home was a small, old two-room house on the west edge of the tiny village of Hazelton, Idaho. One room was the kitchen. The other room was the living room/bedroom. To get water, they used a hand pump in the front yard. The bathroom was an outhouse in the backyard. Bathing was done in a galvanized tin tub on the kitchen floor. Leota heated water and did laundry in an old wringer washer on the back porch. About 5 years later, they were able to add two bedrooms and an indoor bathroom to the back of the house. But in the summer of 1946, Wayne and Leota brought Little Janice home to their humble two-room house where they were happy, and in love, and thrilled with their new daughter.