Tape 1 - Side A
Autobiography of Merlin Nelson Larsen
I have several reasons for wanting to write my life's story. I enjoy very much thinking about the past, reminiscing. I'm quite sentimental and nostalgic. I wish I knew more about my own father and mother, and their life as seen through their own eyes. I wish they had left a written account for their children, and also I'd like to know more about my ancestors. So, I think it might be of service to my grandchildren... my own children and grandchildren for me to make a written account of my life. I've had an interesting life, sometimes exciting; a very good life. I've had much opportunity for education and employment. I've always lived in a good home, and in this wonderful free land of America. I have been greatly blessed to be a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and want my descendants to know how grateful I am for the good life that I have been privileged to live. I'm beginning this story in May of 1989, and I am writing it, or recording it, from memory, without reference to written records. I have not been a journal writer or compiler of scrapbooks, but I have a good memory at the present time of events and experiences in people, so I think I can write a fairly detailed story of my life. I plan to write the story in several parts. First I'll compile a chronology, year by year, of the events, the main events in my life as I can recall them. This will make possible for anyone interested to read an overview of my whole life without getting in too much detail. Then I would like to recall my life in greater detail in a narrative form covering the same year by year events. In a third part, I would like to write about separate and distinct aspects of my life. You might call them chapters. One could be on childhood recollections. Another on childhood recreation, how we made our own entertainment in those olden days. I'd like to write a chapter about my recollections of my brothers and sisters, my parents, my association with them, each one of them separately. I'd like to write a chapter on my school experiences. I loved school and have much to say about it and a big part of my life. I'd like to write a chapter on my dad's farm and how it affected my life and a chapter on my employment, the different jobs I've held through the years. A chapter on my service in WW2. A chapter on my church activity, positions I've held, my testimony and its growth through the years. A chapter on my hobbies and special interests. A chapter on me and my children, comments on each of my children. A chapter on me and Roberta and our very special relationship. A chapter on my known relatives, what I know about them. Holidays and celebrations. How we celebrated them in the old days, might be of interest to my descendants. A chapter on special friends through the years. The homes that we have lived in and our life long project of remodeling them, and our yard and garden activity. A chapter on my brother Orville's cars would be very fun to recall. A chapter on our vacations could be of some interest.
In the chronology to follow I'll give the date as accurately as I can recall it, and a short description of the event and some of the people that were involved.
1900, March 25th. My father Merlin Russell Larsen was born in Brigham City
Utah.
1902, March 14th. My mother, Judith Viola Nelson, was born in Salt Lake
City, Utah.
1918, September 11th. My parents were married at Farmington, Utah.
1919, August 26th. My brother Orville Russell was born in Brigham City. All of the seven children to be listed later on were born in Brigham City.
1920, November 7th. Brother Harold Jay was born
1922, The family home was built at 424 South 3rd East. Grandpa died in October. My father and his brother Ira purchased from the family estate a 51 acre farm in the south east corner of Brigham City.
In September 26th, sister Viola Yvonne was born.
1924, November 24th. I was born.
1926, September 13th. Brother Raymond Nelson was born.
1927. I broke my left elbow in the fall while playing. I was attended by Doctor Coolly. The elbow mended perfectly.
1928. Fell on the jagged lid of a tin can. Nearly severed my left thumb. Doctor Coolly attended me again, and the thumb mended perfectly.
1929. Parents bought a used Victrola phonograph and a few records which had a memorable impression on my life. Buck, a black springer spaniel dog, entered our life to live for 13 years. At Christmas, Aunt Anna Cottam, Grandpa Larsen's sister, gave Orville and Harold a beautiful Flexible Flyer sleigh.
1930. Visited for a few days with cousin Bob Koutnik in Ogden.
1931, February 20th. Sister Barbara LaDean was born. This year a bathtub and toilet were installed in the home. I began school in the fall at the Central School.
1932. Cut a large deep wound in my right thigh with a pocket knife. Brother Raymond's leg was broken in an accident with the Flexible Flyer sled. Brother Orville obtained his first car, a model T Ford, given to him by Uncle Ira and Aunt Clara. My father began work for Brigham City. That
employment was to last for about 17 years. Concrete floor was laid in the basement where we four boys slept. Franklin D Roosevelt was elected President. My father was a very vocal republican, my introduction to politics. The little Knudson boy, about age 3, was killed in front of the school, run over by a truck. A very traumatic event which I witnessed.
1933. Daddy built a new stable and barn.
1935. Uncle Will Sorenson, married to Grandpa Larsen's sister Mary, an old maid at this time. He built a new back porch on the home and room partitions in the basement, dividing it into two bedrooms and a store room.
1936, June 1st. Sister Shirley June was born.
1937. Completed the first grade in school and brother Orville graduated from high school and joined the air force.
1938. Brother Harold graduated from high school and went on a trip to the New York world's fair with Charles Dredge.
1939. Had a memorable science class from Wilford Freeman that began my life long interest in astronomy. I bought a telescope with my own earnings and obtained a Salt Lake Tribune newspaper route, which I would continue about four years. The boy scout program revived in our Brigham City 6th ward. and I took a scout camping trip to camp Keysal with my brother Raymond and other scouts. World War 2 began in Europe in September.
1940. Bought a book shelf and a set of Britannica Junior Encyclopedias. Sister Shirley had an unexplained very serious illness, nearly fatal. Sister Yvonne graduated and was Peach Queen in the fall. I attended a stake Sunday School teacher training class. I was called to teach a Sunday school
class of my own age group.
1941. A peace time draft and other aspects of WW2 encroaching on our lives.
December 7th Pearl Harbor was bombed.
1942. The Federal Governments built Bushnel Army General Hospital on the
land which had been my father's farm. In June and July Orvil, Harold, and
Yvonne were all married, and Orvil, and Harold and Yvonne's husband Gordon
all drafted into the service. I graduated from LDS Seminary and was
Valedictorian of the class. During the summer I took flying lessons in a
program sponsored by the Civil Air Patrol and obtained my private pilot's
license. The family home was remodeled and enlarged. I was elected to be
junior class president in school.
1943. I served as student body secretary, graduated from high school, and
was valedictorian of the graduating class. I volunteered into the Army
Air Corps in a program to become a pilot. My brother Harold's wife, Alda, who
was living with him in Texas died suddenly. They had been married less than
a year. I began active duty at a basic training camp at Kearns, Utah.
1944. I continued aviation cadet training begun in 1943 and completed pilot
training in August. Received my pilot's wings and was commissioned second
lieutenant in the army air force. Was trained to be a B17 bomber pilot and
became part of a combat crew preparing for overseas duty.
1945. Flew a new B17 bomber to Europe with a combat crew for service with
the 100th heavy bombardment group in England. Flew 24 combat missions over
Europe prior to the end of the war, World War 2 in May of 1945. Returned
home, returned to the United States in August, was discharged from the air
force in October and enrolled at the University of Utah in December. I
bought a 1941 Plymouth with some of the money I had saved during my service
years.
1946. I'm going to school, working part time. Lived with Aunt Barbara and
Uncle Lester Hubbard for six months. On December 26th I arranged to take
room and board at 563 E 3rd South, Salt Lake, where I met a beautiful red
headed girl, Roberta Carpenter. My friend Clinton Holmes helped get a job,
part time job parking cars at the , Roberta Carpenter. My friend Clinton
Holmes helped get a job, part time job parking cars at the Hotel Utah
garage, which I would have during my four years at college.
1947. In the fall I bought an accordion and began taking a few lessons. In
July Raymond married Kirma Snow in the Logan temple.
1948. A year of school and part time work. I had drifted quite far from
the church by this time. No longer going to church. Quite critical of it.
On the wrong track.
1949. June 9th. Graduated from the University of Utah with a BA degree in
mathematics, with high honors. Elected to Phi Beta Kappa and Phi Kappa Phi,
honorary scholastic fraternities. My plans for the future were quite
indefinite. I had met a woman named Mary Kanolama and in November had
become engaged to her. In September I took a teaching job in Blanding Utah
to teach grades 8 through 12. In Blanding I lived in the home of Mary and
Ed Stevens. In November my father had a terrible election day experience.
He was fired from his job with Brigham City, by the city council, who later
invited him back with apologies, but he refused to take the job back again.
1950. My experience in Blanding was very beneficial to me. I broke my
engagement with Mary Kanolama and began going to church again. Began paying
tithing. My parents moved from Brigham City on July the 5th to North
Hollywood, California, where they bought a six unit apartment. They were
very unhappy. My mother particularly. They sold the apartment and moved
back to Utah to... and rented in Ogden, a home in Ogden, about November 1st.
I enrolled in Stevens Henniger business school in an accounting course in
November. About November 5th I called Roberta Carpenter to see if she would
go out with me on a date. She had just returned from a mission to
California. She accepted my invitation.
1951. In school at Henager. I proposed to Roberta and she accepted. We
were married in the Salt Lake Temple May 11th. In September I took a job as
office manager, credit manager, with Utility Trailer Sales and Equipment
Company. Roberta was working for Zellerbach paper company. We lived for a
year in an upstairs apartment 563 E 3rd South.
1952. May 1st. We moved into our home on 59 East Miller Street, which we
had bought from James and Lucy Stacy. In March my father informed the
family that he was going to divorce my mother. The divorce became official
in September. October 9th our first son, Douglas, was born. Born at home.
Delivered by Doctor Loretta Foote at about 3pm.
1953. From January through March I worked as an auditors assistant for a
CPA firm, Goddard Sunnyville and Griffin. From April through August I worked
for the Utah State Tax Commission as an auditor. In September I began work
as a full time teacher, in day school and night school, for Stevens Henniger
Business School. In April I became the 2nd counselor in the bishopric in
the Murray 8th Ward. In November a new ward house was completed and
dedicated. In the summer we bought the vacant lot east of our home from the
Stacys. This was a very wise move as it turned out years later. This year
we began what would be a 20 year remodeling project.
1954. Taught school at Henager until June. From June to November worked
for the JC Penney Company western accounting division. In October went back
to work for Utility Trailer Sales. In the summer my mother sold her home in
Clearfield Utah and moved into an apartment in Salt Lake City. In November
my sister Shirley went to Texas where she married Hilton Mose. This was
very disturbing to my mother. These recent events in Mom's life made her
very unstable emotionally. She began a series of about twelve moves that
lasted for eleven years. I was very much involved in her frequent moves and
her troubles.
1955. In April Bishop Murray moved resulting in the release of the
Bishopric. I became the assistant ward clerk for finances. Roberta was
called to teach relief society, a spiritual living lesson, which she would
teach for six years. Then she taught literature and cultural refinement for
twelve years after that.
1956. March 24th. Our second child, John, was born at home. Delivered by
Doctor Foote. All of our children were born at home. John's umbilical cord
was wrapped around his neck and he was a blue baby. We don't know how lucky
we were that all of our children were born normally. I was still working
for Utility Trailer Sales this year and we continued our work on remodeling
building bedrooms in the upstairs.
1957. I was called to be assistant stake clerk for finance. I changed jobs
about the first of July. Took a job at Transport Equipment Center. WE
bought a 1952 Pontiac and took our first vacation.
1958. Started work on April 10th for Refrigeration Distributors Corporation
owned by Ted Brown and Warren Brown. A job which I would continue until
1986. My mother had a nervous breakdown in April. Came to live with us
from March until September. Mom received some medical care and in September
was well enough to go to California to live with her mother for a few
months. In the summer we bought a used piano from Heubert Wholer which we
still have. It's still a good piano. Doug started school this year, in
Kindergarten. His teacher was young and inexperienced. It was a poor start
for him in school.
1959. February 5th. Our third son, Lincoln Mark, was born.
1960. We built the new kitchen with new birch cabinets and a big picture
window. I was called to be Ward Sunday School Superintendent. Arty and
Marge Bronson went on a mission in July. We sent them ten dollars per
month. Since then we've almost continually helped some missionary or
supported our own until this very day.
1961. Our tenth wedding anniversary. Busy the whole year with our home,
our job, our children, church jobs. Life was good.
1962. John started school. He got off to a better start than Doug. Doug's
3rd grade teacher, Miss Nielson, helped him quite a lot. He had three bad
years in a row. I was called to be High Priest Group Leader in the ward.
1963. I built the tree house in this summer and a big sand box. In
September I had a hernia operation. I was one of the first patients in the
new Cottonwood Hospital. Kay and Don let us take their little trailer for a
trip to Bear Lake and tended our boys. What a wonderful gift. WE enjoyed
it so much that we wanted a trailer too.
1964. May 26th. Lori was born. We were so happy to have a girl. All our
neighbors rejoiced with us. We named her Loretta after Doctor Loretta
Foote. In September we bought a trailer and went camping at Granite Flats
during the UEA institute in October. We've done this each year since then
when the weather allowed. This is a tradition that has fostered love and
closeness in our family. I continued to enjoy my employment with Restribco.
Changes took place in 1964 which developed increasing tension and division
between Warren and Ted Brown, which continued to increase in intensity
through all my remaining years with them. I was called to be the gospel
doctrine in the ward this year. A job which I had for three years, a most
enjoyable and rewarding experience. My mom moved to 3008 9th east where she
would live for ten years. She became much more stable and settled in her
life, much happier. Reached a milestone in November. We finished paying
for our house, a birthday gift to me for my 40th birthday.
1965. We bought a 1962 Chevrolet Belair which proved to be a fine car.
With it we pulled our trailer on a trip to California, taking the three boys
with us, but Lori was left with Jeneal Dawes, a baby sitter. In February
Lori had Pneumonia. She was in the hospital briefly, but recovered fully.
1966. WE began our annual camp out at Redmond Campground in August.
Christmas was memorable. I bought Roberta a gas clothes dryer and we bought
a TV for the family. Santa bought the boys a slot car race track. I
finished the west bedroom upstairs which became the neighborhood slot car
center. This lasted until the summer of 1971 before Doug went on his
mission. Then the track went to Doug's friend Rocky and the bedroom became
Lori's.
1967. I was called in the Fall to serve a 2 year stake mission which was
mostly a pleasant experience. For the last year I served as a counselor in
the mission presidency. The Nebekers moved to Clearfield, Utah to be closer
to Don's teaching job. Raymond and Kirma moved to Tempe, Arizona. We
missed these families very much. They were our closest visiting relatives.
On the street in Sugar House I met Cyril Beecher, my 9th grade algebra
teacher, and began an association with him that lasted until his death in
May of 1974.
1968. Roberta and I became restless about the house and considered moving
to another home. But as we carefully and prayerfully considered all that
was involved financially and socially, and its affect on our children we
decided to stay where we are. Doug is 16 and I am reluctantly the father of
a teenage driver. In the summer we took a fun trip to Yellowstone Park.
Roberta's mother is beginning to decline in health and mental alertness.
1969. We borrowed 6,300 dollars to further improve our home. That money
bought a lot exciting improvements. A new Magnavox stereo, we finished the
upstairs rooms and carpeted them, new walls and drapes in the front room,
built a new family room, complete except for the lights. We finished all of
this just before Christmas. In the summer we took an interesting vacation
trip to South Dakota by way of Yellowstone Park and the Devils tower.

1970. An eventful year that began New Year's eve. Doug wrecked our car at
the Woodland Drive in Theater. We bought an old Cadillac, which after much
trouble, proved to be a good car until the summer of 1976. On January 24th
my father died of heart failure. We bought season tickets to the Pioneer
Memorial Theater for the whole family. We've been able to do that each year
until the present time, 1989. In December we bought our first new car, a
1971 Volkswagen.
1971. Doug graduated from High School. He and John went with the school
band on a trip to Canada and Roberta went along as one of the chaperons.
Doug accepted a call to serve a mission to New Zealand, north island, and he
left in November. We were very pleased that he chose to go setting this
good example for the family. Roberta's mother was living at the Salt Lake
State home after she had lived about a year with Ted.
1972. WE had an enjoyable vacation trip to Arizona in June. Pulled our
trailer with the old cadillac. Enjoyed our visit with Raymond and his
family. I was called to be the ward membership clerk. Church is well along
in a conversion of membership records to data processing, a very troublesome
system, and it took six or eight years before it worked well.
1973. Doug returned from his mission in November and enrolled for a two
year course in commercial art at Utah Trade Tech. Roberta's mother's health
continues to be poor and is unable to live alone. She has lived with Ted in
Vernal and lived with Kay and us also for two or three months at a time.
1974. John graduated from high school. I was called to the Stake High
Council in April. We bought a second new Volkswagen, a yellow one. Doug is
using the orange Volkswagen, paying us for it on a mileage basis. On
September 8th I was set apart as bishop of the Murray 8th ward and served in
that calling for just about four years. October 4th Roberta's mother died
in Vernal and she was buried on her 88th birthday, October 8th. My mother
was fired from her work with Chet Bailey in his drapery shop. She was 72
years old but still very able in her work and this was most upsetting to her.
1975. A very busy year for me with my bishopric duties and the job. In
September John went on a mission to France. In June the Nebekers moved back
to Murray from Layton. Doug graduated from Trade Tech and took a job with
O. C. Tanner Company as a die cutter. He still works there at this time in
1989. During my years as bishop we had to raise a lot of money. During
1975 we raised money to remodel the ward building and make an addition to it
to serve as stake offices.
1976. We had a very enjoyable vacation trip to Colorado Springs. We
traveled in two Volkswagens. This was America's bicentennial year and
Roberta and I attended a reunion of the 100th bombardment group association.
In my job as a bishop we are now raising money to build a new first and
twelfth ward chapel. In January, Roberta's brother John Lyle Carpenter,
Carp we called him, died of cancer. He died slowly over about a nine
month's time. Very painful, but it was a spiritual time for him and all of
us. He grew closer to the church and closer to his family in the last few
years of his life. With Kay's help he went to the temple while he was
confined to the Veterans Administration Hospital.
1977. A year of great change. Doug and Gwen were married on February 10th
in the Salt Lake Temple. We traveled to California for a second reception
in her home ward. Mark wrecked our car in August. Chil and Ruth Miller,
our neighbors for all these years sold their home to Zion Motor and the
Wilkensens and moved. I began in September to take the bus to work, walking
part way on each end of the bus ride. It turns out to be a good practice
for me, a good exercise. Mark graduated from high school this year and
enrolled at the University of Utah. John returned from his mission in
September and started school, his second year, at Utah Technical College.
Roberta's oldest sister Teddie, Theodocia, died in December. She had not
been well since spring. She was very brave and uncomplaining. She died of
cancer of the pancreas I think. Sadly she never had the opportunity to live
in the new home that they had just built on the top of their basement home
where she had lived for thirty years. At work Warren Brown installed his
son Reynold in Denver against Ted's desires. This was the beginning of
greatly increased strife between Ted and Warren.
1978. Was a year of great change. I was very busy as bishop. In the stake
we were raising money for a new stake house to be built in the Murray second
ward area, and raising our assessment for the Jordan River Temple. This was
a spiritual high for all of us and climatic for me as bishop. I was
released on September fast day of 1978. In June we had a very enjoyable
trip to Denver, Roberta, Mark, Lori, and I, on the Rio Grande train. In May
the Wilkensons, Zions Motor, offered to buy our property. The deal was
closed in September and we moved into this new home on 6th east on September
28th. This move, this change in our life, was remarkable and miraculous in
many ways. The timing, the favorable price, and the smooth and flawless
closing, the fine new home and ward and school and location, and the ease
with which we made this great decision. The change was good for John and
Mark and especially for Lori. Mark accepted a call to serve a mission
before I was released as bishop, but he later left on his mission from our
new ward. At work we bought a new computer in September which was to prove
very interesting and stimulating in my job. On April 30th we became
grandparents when Doug's and Gwen's first child was born. A terrible thing
happened in December. On December 2nd was born. A terrible thing happened
in December. On December 2nd Roberta's brother, Doug, was struck head-on in
his car by a drunk driver. He lay in a coma until the 22nd of December when
he died.
1979. Mark departed on his mission on January 25th. His experience in the
MTC assured him that he had made a good choice to go on his mission. We
sold the yellow Volkswagen to John. It was wrecked in May at 7th east and
45th south, a total loss. We thank God that he was not hurt. Clint
Hastings moved in to live with us in October and would live with us for
about ten months. John met Joyce in March, fell in love. They were married
on September 8th, a very happy affair. At work I was involved in working
very hard to get the new computer operational, spending long hours on the
job. Doug's and Gwen's son, Conrad, was born October 30th. Disturbing
change at my employment. Warren and his son Reynold and Wayne Bullock took
control of Distributors Incorporated Colorado. I don't like how it was
done. It was most unfair and immoral in its treatment of Ted Brown who is
now a minority stock holder rather than an equal owner.
1980. We had aluminum siding installed over all of the exterior wood on our
home, very pleased with the job. I finished a bedroom for Lori in the
basement about May and with Roberta asked Clint Hastings to plan to move out
by August so that Lori could move to the basement, enabling me to start work
on the new kitchen. Clint understood our viewpoint and moved to Spring
Meadows Apartments and there he began to become active in the Millcreek 11th
Ward. I was called to be the High Priest Group Leader in January. At work
there was a disturbing friction developing between me and Kathy Flitton
which increased and continued until I felt that I had to let her go, had to
terminate her employment. I fired her on September 4th. Lee Bullock who
was manager of our business in Denver, and who had been a good friend for 25
years, retired in September.
1981. Mark returned in January from his mission, enrolled at the University
of Utah. Went to work for Reams. In June we had an enjoyable vacation
trip. We went to Tucson Arizona to visit Raymond and his family and to San
Diego up to San Francisco and home. We traveled in the old 1972 Buick which
behaved quite well. Raymond has been bishop of his ward since October of
1978. He and his family have been great assets in that ward. He served
until November 1983.
1982. We bought a new Volkswagen Rabbit in January and bought a second one,
a 1982 Rabbit Diesel in September. Lori graduated from High School in May
and enrolled in the University of Utah. We have three children we have
enrolled at the U, which thing I could never have imagined when I graduated
from there in 33 years ago. WE completed our new kitchen in the summer.
Gary Nebeker went on a mission in July to Northern Germany. Clint Hastings
went on a mission to the Switzerland Genevea mission. This marked a
miraculous change in Clint's life. In June I installed new stereo
components in our Magnavox stereo cabinet which we had bought in 1969. WE
enjoy it very much. John's and Joyce's first child, Heather Roxanne, is
born February 8th. Alex was born July 2nd, Doug's and Gwen's third son. A
very disturbing thing at work. An employee at the Salt Lake store was
discovered to have stolen over 30 thousand dollars from the company. On
September 26th torrential rain storms caused very serious flooding along the
canyon stream beds through the valley. Many homes in Cottonwood Home mobile
home park were seriously damaged or destroyed.
1983. This is the wettest winter in our history. Severe flooding in the
spring. Very destructive throughout Utah. I helped build a bathroom and
bedroom and do some finish work in Doug's and Gwen's basement. Continued
remodeling our home and removed the closet from our living room and widened
the doorway to our living room to 8 feet with a folding door and built
bookshelves in the family room. At work I spent many extra hours, nights,
Saturdays and Holidays, developing some new computer software programs.
1984. I had a very great disappointment at work. Reynold Brown rejected my
software programs without even using them, without even trying them. His
reason became very clear when he announced that he was going to move the
accounting function to Denver. This foreshadows the end of our accounting
office and my job. Very disappointed in Warren and Reynold and their
actions. In August we discovered that Denise Holt, an employee at Ted R
Brown and associates, has been stealing money for ten years. A total of
375,000 dollars. I built a new stairway to our basement in the front room,
transformed the basement from storage area to living space. Then we put
down new carpet and furniture in the living room. Finished the family room
and also put an aluminum roof on the home. Suzanna was born to Doug and
Gwen on August 16th, their first girl.
1985. Another year of great change. John graduated from the University of
Utah in June and accepted a job with Sanders electronics in New Hampshire.
He and his family moved in June. Bradford was born to John and Joyce on
March 2nd. Lori made a trip to Europe in July and August which was very
enjoyable and very beneficial for her. Lori accepted a mission call and
went to Costa Rica in September. Aunt Barbara died in September, Aunt
Barbara Hubbard my father's only sister and the last of his family. Mark
graduated from the University in December and accepted a job with Blackman
and Associates of Chicago Illinois and moved to Columbus Ohio on December
30th. At work, Ted R Brown and Associates Incorporated, was sold to new
owners, Mantle and White. Our accounting office services to Distributors
Incorporated Colorado ended in December. I joined the Olympus Male Chorus
in September. This was a most uplifting and enjoyable activity for me at
this low point. I had another hernia operation in November and recovered
very well. I was merely uncomfortable a bit for a few days. Another great
change, we bought an artificial Christmas tree.
1986. The job which I have had since 1958 ended on February 28th. I took a
half time job with Ted R Brown and Associates new owners, continued their
accounting service until March 31st, a year later. In April I was diagnosed
as having severe coronary artery disease. On May 14th I underwent heart
bypass surgery, had six bypasses. The surgeon was Doctor Steven Richards.
He did an excellent job. I recovered well. A humbling experience for me
this summer. Kathy Flitten whom I had fired in 1980 and who has since
worked for Ted R Brown and Associates came to my rescue. I trained her for
a few days before my surgery and she kept my job going for me through May
and June and into July. I was able to handle it alone after July. I
appreciated her help very much. James Scott was born to Doug and Gwen on
July 16th. Our August camping was fun again. The most enjoyable it has
been for some years. Mark was introduced to Dixie Christensen by Gary
Nebeker. Mark and Dixie courted by long distance telephone and they became
engaged at Thanksgiving time. Roberta and I flew to Nashua NH for a week in
October. Wonderful to visit with John and Joyce and their children.
1987. I retired March 31st when my part time job with Mantel and White
ended. I began drawing my social security. Since my surgery I have been
walking everyday for aerobic exercise. I walk four miles in an hour each
day. In May I began playing my accordion again, the instrument I bought in
1947. It is amazingly still in excellent condition. I feel determined to
stay with it and try to develop some competency in it. Lori returned from
her mission March 13th and reentered the University of Utah. She and
Roberta and I attended a wonderful class on the US Constitution called the
miracle at Philadelphia. Lori took it for credit and all of us for much
pleasure. The professor was J. D. Williams. It was a real high for all of
us. JD paid Lori a superlative complement on her final paper. He said that
from all of the students he had taught in 37 years he had never read a
better paper. Mark and Dixie were married on March 20th in the Salt Lake
Temple. John and Joyce were able to fly out to be with us and Joyce's
brother, Stanford, was married the next day in the Salt Lake Temple. Mark
and Dixie had a reception here and then we traveled to Burns Oregon for a
second reception. We had a delightful trip. Mark and Dixie are very happy.
On July 25th we had a big Larsen family reunion in Fairmont Park. My mother
was the guest of honor of course. They honored her 85th birthday. Her
total progeny counting the in-laws are about 125 and about 90 of them were
present. In February I began singing, practicing with a male quartet
composed of Morris Canegater, Leonard Deburg, Marvin Becksted, and me.
1988. In March Roberta and I purchased senior citizen airline passes,
passports on Eastern Airlines, good for one year. Enable us to fly once a
week anywhere Eastern Airlines flies in the United States. Our first trip
was to Houston Texas in March to visit Shirley, Hilton and their family. In
April we went to Denver to visit Lee and Dorcus Bullock. In May we visited
Mark and Dixie in Columbus Ohio. In June we went for a week to Washington
DC. In July we went for a week to Rochester NY, the Palmyra area, and
witnessed the Palmyra Hill Cumorah Pageant. In August we went to Nashua NH
to visit John and Joyce and their family. In October we spent a week in New
York City, and at the end of November and first of December we spent a week
in Florida. Barbara, my sister Barbara went with us on that trip. On
September 16th Lori and Christopher Adam Weintz were married in the Salt
Lake Temple. They had a lovely reception. The refreshments for the guests
were prepared by family members, Roberta's cousins and her sister Kay. This
has been the driest year in my lifetime. The only rain we had from Memorial
Day to November 2nd was 38 100ths of an inch. There was no killing frost
until the middle of November. Three grandchildren were born in our family
this year. To John and Joyce Stanford Mark was born August 5th. To Doug
and Gwen Natalie was born September 4th and to Mark and Dixie Elizabeth Anne
was born November 10th.
1989. We continued our flying vacation trips on Eastern Airlines and
Continental Airlines. The first week of January we visited Raymond and
Kirma in Phoenix Arizona. The last part of January we visited Bea and Cliff
Cash, Roberta's sister and brother in-law, in Reedly California. The first
week of February we flew to Columbus Ohio for a visit with Mark and Dixie.
The last part of February we flew to Nashua NH again to visit John and Joyce
and their family, and in the first part of March we made our final trip, our
13th trip to San Diego California. After all of that traveling, on March
4th we took down our Christmas Tree. On march 16th Bishop Trost called me
and Roberta to fill a mission. We accepted the call and since then have
been preparing papers and undergoing medical and dental examinations getting
ready to go. One great relief to us, and a great favor to us; Lori and
Chris have agreed to move into our home and take care of it while we are gone.
Tape 1 Side B
1970 - An eventful year that began New Year's Eve. Doug wrecked
our car at the Woodland Drive-In Theater. We bought an old
Cadillac, which after much trouble, proved to be a good car, until
the summer of 1976. On January 24, my father died of heart
failure. We bought season tickets to the PMT for the whole family.
We've been able to do that each year until the present time, 1989.
In December we bought our first new car, a 1971 Volkswagen.
1971 - Doug graduated from high school. He and John went with the
school band on a trip to Canada. Roberta went along as one of the
chaperons. Doug accepted a call to serve a mission to New Zealand,
North Island, and he left in November. We were very pleased that
he chose to go, setting this good example for the family.
Roberta's mother was living at the Salt Lake Stake Home. After she
had lived for about a year with Ted in Vernal.
1972 - We had an enjoyable vacation trip to Arizona in June, towed
our trailer with the old Cadillac. Enjoyed our visit with Raymond
and his family. I was called to be the ward membership clerk. The
church was well along in a conversion of membership records to data
processing, a very troublesome system and it took six or eight
years before it worked well.
1973 - Doug returned from his mission in November and enrolled for
a 2-year course in commercial art at Utah Trade Tech. Roberta's
mother's health continues to be poor and she is unable to live
alone. Has lived with Ted in Vernal, and lived with Kay, and us
also, for two or three months at a time.
1974 - John graduated from high school. I was called to stake high
council in April. We bought a second new volkswagen, a yellow one.
Doug is using the orange Volkswagen, paying us for it on a mileage
basis. On September 8, I was set apart as bishop of the Murray 8th
ward and would serve in that calling for just about four years.
October 4, Roberta's mother died in Vernal and she was buried on
her eighty eighth birthday, October 8. My mother was fired from
her work with Chet Bailey in his drapery shop. She was seventy-
two years old, still very able to do her work. This was most
upsetting to her.
1975 - A very busy year for me, with my bishopric duties, and job.
In September, John went on a mission to France. In June, the
Nebekers moved back to Murray from Layton. Doug graduated from
Trade Tech and took a job with O.C.Tanner Company as a die cutter.
He still works there at this time in 1989. During my years as
bishop we had to raise a lot of money, during 1975, we raised money
to remodel the ward building and make an addition to it to serve as
stake offices.
1976 - We had a very enjoyable vacation trip to Colorado Springs.
We traveled in two Volkswagens. This was America's Bicentennial
year, and I attended, Roberta and I attended, a reunion of the
100th Bombardment Group Association. In my job as a bishop, we are
now raising money to build a new 1st and 12th Ward chapel. In
January, Roberta's brother, John Lyle Carpenter, Carp we called
him, died of cancer. He died slowly over about nine month's time -
very painful. But it was a spiritual time for him and all of us.
He grew closer to the church and closer to his family in the last
few years of his life. With Kay's help, he went to the temple
while he was confined to the Veteran's Administration Hospital.
1977 - Was a year of great change. Doug and Gwen were married on
February 10, in the Salt Lake Temple. We traveled to California
for a second reception in her home ward. Mark wrecked our car in
August. Chil and Ruth Miller, our neighbors for all these years,
for 25 years, sold their home to Zion Motors, the Wilkinsons, and
moved. I began in September, to take the bus to work, walking part
way on each end of the bus ride. Turns out to be a good practice
for me, a good exercise. Mark graduated from high school this
year, enrolled at the University of Utah. John returned from his
mission in September and started school his second year at Utah
Technical College. Roberta's oldest sister, Teddy, Theodocia, died
in December. She had not been well since spring. She was very
brave and uncomplaining. She died of cancer of the pancreas, I
think. Sadly, she never had the opportunity to live in the new
home that they had just built on top of their basement home where
they had lived for thirty years. At work, Warren Brown installed
his son, Reynold, in Denver, against Ted's desires. This was the
beginning of greatly increased strife between Ted and Warren.
1978 - Was a year of great change. I was very busy as bishop. In
the stake we were raising money for a new stake house to be built
in the Murray 2nd Ward area, and raising our assessment for the
Jordan River Temple. This was a spiritual high for all of us and
climatic for me as bishop. I was released on September Fast Day of
1978. In June, we had a very enjoyable trip to Denver. Roberta,
Mark, Lori, and I, on the Rio Grande Train. In May, the
Wilkinsons, Zion Motors, offered to buy our property. The deal was
closed in September and we moved into this new home on 600 East, on
September 28. This move, this change in our life, was remarkable
and miraculous in many ways - the timing, the favorable price, the
smooth and flawless closing, and the fine new home and ward and
school and location, and the ease with which we made this great
decision. The change was good for John and Mark, and especially
for Lori. Mark accepted a call to serve a mission before I was
released as bishop. But he later left on his mission from our new
ward. At work we bought a new computer in September, which was to
prove very interesting and stimulating in my job. On April 30, we
became grandparents when Doug's and Gwen's first child, Jeffrey,
was born. A terrible thing happened in December. On December 2,
Roberta's brother, Doug, was struck, head on in his car, by a drunk
driver. He lay in a coma until the 22nd of December when he died.
1979 - Mark departed on his mission on January 25. His experience
in the MTC assured him that he had made a good choice to go on his
mission. We sold the Volkswagen, the yellow Volkswagen, to John.
It was wrecked in May, at 700 East and 4500 South, a total loss.
We thank God that he was not hurt. Clint Hastings moved in to live
with us in October and he lived with us for about 10 months. John
met Joyce in March and fell in love. They were married on
September 8, a very happy affair. At work, I was involved and
working very hard to get the new computer operational, spending
long hours on the job. Doug's and Gwen's son, Conrad, was born
October 30. Disturbing change at my employment, Warren and his
son, Reynold, and Wayne Bullock took control of Distributor's
Incorporated, Colorado. I don't like how it was done. It was most
unfair and immoral in its treatment of Ted Brown, who is now a
minority stockholder rather than an equal owner.
1980 - We had aluminum siding installed over all of the exterior
wood on our home - very pleased with the job. Finished the bedroom
for Lori, in the basement, about May, and, with Roberta, asked
Clint Hastings to plan to move out by August so that Lori could
move to the basement, enabling me to start work on the new kitchen.
Clint understood our viewpoint. He moved to Spring Meadows
Apartments and there he began to become active in the Millcreek
llth Ward. I was called to be the High Priest Group Leader in
January. At work, there was a disturbing friction developing
between me and Kathy Flitton, which increased and continued until
I felt that I had to let her go, had to terminate her employment.
I fired her on September 4th. Lee Bullock, who was manager of our
business in Denver, and had been a good friend for 25 years,
retired in September.
1981 - Mark returned in January from his mission, enrolled at the
University of Utah, went to work for Reams. In June we had an
enjoyable vacation trip. Went to Tucson, Arizona, to visit Raymond
and his family, then to San Diego up to San Francisco and home. We
traveled in the old 1972 Buick, which behaved quite well. Raymond
has been bishop of his ward since October of 1978. He and his
family have been great assets in that ward. He served until
November 1983.
1982 - We bought a new Volkswagen in January, and bought a second
one, a 1982 Rabbit, diesel, in September. Lori graduated from high
school in May and enrolled at the University of Utah. We have
three children enrolled at the U, which thing I never could have
imagined when I graduated from there 33 years ago. We completed
our new kitchen in the summer. Gary Nebeker went on a mission in
July to Northern Germany. Clint Hastings went on a mission to
Switzerland, Geneva mission. This marked a miraculous change in
Clint's life. In June I installed new stereo components in our
Magnavox stereo cabinet which we had bought in 1969. We enjoy it
very much. John's' and Joyce's first child, Heather Roxanne was
born February 8. Alex was born July 2, Doug and Gwen's third son.
Very disturbing thing at work. An employee in tbe Salt Lake store
was discovered to have stolen over $30,000 from the company. On
September 26, torrential rainstorms caused very serious flooding
along the canyon streambeds along the valley. Many homes in
Cottonwood Cove Mobile Home Park were seriously damaged and
destroyed.
1983 - This is the wettest winter in our history. Severe flooding
in Spring, very destructive throughout Utah. I helped build a
bathroom and bedroom and do some finish work in Doug and Gwen's
basement. Continued remodeling our home. I removed the closet
from our living room and widened the doorway to eight feet with a
folding door, built bookshelves in the family room. At work I
spent many extra hours - nights, Saturdays, and Holidays,
developing some new computer software programs.
1984 - I had a very great disappointment at work. Reynold Brown
rejected my software programs without even using them, without even
trying them. His reasons became clear when he announced he was
going to move the accounting function to Denver. This foreshadows
the end of our accounting office and my job. Very disappointed in
Warren and Reynold and their actions. In August we discovered that
Venice Holt, and employee to Ted R. Brown and Associates has been
stealing money from the company for (?) years. A total of
$375,000. I built a new stairway to our basement in the front
room, transformed the basement from storage area into living space.
We put down new carpet and furniture in the living room, finished
the family room, also put an aluminum roof on the home. Suzanna
was born to Doug and Gwen on August 16, their first girl.
1985 - Another year of great change. John graduated from the
University of Utah in June, and accepted a job with Sanders
Electronics in New Hampshire. He and his family moved in June.
Bradford was born to John and Joyce on March 2. Lori made a trip
to Europe in July and August which was very enjoyable and very
beneficial for her. Lori accepted a mission call and went to Costa
Rica in September. Aunt Barbara died in September - Aunt Barbara
Hubbard, my father's only sister, and the last of his family. Mark
graduated from the University in December and accepted a job with
Lackman and Associates of Chicago, Illinois, and moved to Columbus,
Ohio on December 30. At work, Ted R. Brown and Associates, Inc.,
was sold to new owners, Mandell & White, and our accounting office
services to Distributors Incorporated, Colorado, ended in December.
I joined the Olympus Male Chorus in September. This was a most
uplifting and enjoyable activity for me, at this low point. I had
another hernia operation in November, and recovered very well, was
merely uncomfortable a bit for a few days. Another great change -
we bought an artificial Christmas tree.
1986 - The job I had had since 1958, ended on February 28. I took
a half-time job w/Ted R. Brown and Associates' new owners and
continued their accounting service until March 31, a year later.
In April I was diagnosed as having severe coronary artery disease.
On May 14, I underwent heart bypass surgery, had six bypasses. The
surgeon was Dr. Steven Richards - he did an excellent job. I
recovered well. A humbling experience for me this summer. Kathy
Flitton, whom I had fired in 1980, and who had since worked for Ted
R. Brown & Associates, came to my rescue. I trained her for a few
days before my surgery and she kept my job going for me during May
and June and into July. I was able to handle it alone after July
and I appreciated her help very much. James Scott was born to Doug
and Gwen on July 16. Our August camping at Redman was fun again.
The most enjoyable it has been for some years. Mark was introduced
to Dixie Christensen by Gary Nebeker. Mark and Dixie courted by
long distance telephone and they became engaged at Thanksgiving
time. Roberta and I flew to Nashua, New Hampshire for a week, in
October. A very enjoyable trip, wonderful to visit with John and
Joyce and their children.
1987 - I retired March 31, when my part-time job with Mandell and
White ended, and began drawing my Social Security. Since my
surgery I had been walking every day for aerobic exercise. I
walked four miles in an hour each day. In May I began playing my
accordion again - the instrument I bought in 1947, amazingly still
in excellent condition. I feel determined to stay with it and try
to develop some competency on it. Lori returned from her mission
March 13, and re-entered the University of Utah. She and Roberta
and I attended a wonderful class on the United States Constitution
called Miracle at Philadelphia. Lori took it for credit, and all
of us, for much pleasure. The professor was J.D. Williams. It
was a real high for all of us. J.D. paid Lori a superlative
complement on her final paper. He said that she was, that from all
of the students he had taught in 37 years, he had never read a
better paper. Mark and Dixie were married on March 20 in the Salt
Lake Temple. John and Joyce were able to fly out to be with us and
Joyce's brother, Stanford, was married the next day in the Salt
Lake Temple. Mark and Dixie had a reception here and then we
travelled to Burns, Oregon for a second reception. What a
delightful trip. Mark and Dixie are very happy. On July 25 we had
a big Larsen Family Reunion in Fairmont Park. My mother was the
guest of honor, of course, in honor of her 85th birthday. Her
total progeny, counting the in-laws, are about 125, and about 90 of
them were present. In February, I began singing, practicing, with
a male quartet composed of Morris Cannegaiter, Leonard Berg,
Marvin Beckstead and me.
1988 - In March, Roberta and I purchased senior citizen airline
passes, passports, on Eastern airlines, good for one year. They
enable us to fly once a week anywhere Eastern airline flies in the
United States. Our first trip was to Houston, Texas in March to
visit Shirley, Hilton and their family. In April we went to Denver
to visit Lee and Dorcus Bullock. In May we visited with Mark and
Dixie in Columbus, Ohio. In June we went for a week to Washington
D.C. In July we went for a week to Rochester, New York, in the
Palmyra area, and witnessed the Palmyra, Hill Cummorah Pageant. In
August we went to Nashua, New Hampshire to visit John and Joyce and
their family. In October we spent a week in New York City. At the
end of November and the first of December we spent a week in
Florida, and Barbara, my sister Barbara, went with us on that trip.
On September 16, Lori and Christopher Adam Weintz were married in
the Salt Lake Temple. They had a lovely reception, the
refreshments for the guests were prepared by family members -
Roberta's cousins and her sister Kay. This has been the driest
year in my life-time. The only rain we had from Memorial Day to
November 2, was 38/100 of an inch. There was no killing frost
until the middle of November. Three grandchildren were born in our
family this year To John and Joyce, Stanford Mark was born August
5. To Doug and Gwen, Natalie was born September 4. And to Mark
and Dixie, Elizabeth Ann was born November 10.
1989 - We continued our flying vacation trips on Eastern Airlines
and Continental Airlines. The first week of January we visited
Raymond and Kirma in Phoenix, Arizona. The last part of January we
visited Bea and Cliff Cash, Roberta's sister and brother-in-law in
Reedley, California. The first week of February we flew to
Columbus, Ohio for a visit with Mark and Dixie. The last part of
February we flew to Nashua, New Hampshire again to visit with John
and Joyce and their family. And in the first part of March we made
our final trip, our thirteenth trip, to San Diego, California.
After all of that traveling, on March 4, we took down our Christmas
tree. On March 16, Bishop Trost called me and Roberta to fill a
mission. We accepted the call and since then have been preparing
papers and undergoing medical and dental examinations getting ready
to go. One great relief to us, and great favor to us, Lori and
Chris have agreed to move into our home and take care of it while
we are gone.
Tape 2 Side A
Brigham City, Ut. There is a small street that runs from Mains St.
to 1st East along the south side of the courthouse square. At
first east, on the south side of that little street, there used to
be a small house. During the 1920s, it was used for awhile as a
maternity hospital. My life story began in that house when I was
born on Nov. 24, 1924.
I am the fourth of seven children born to my parents, Merlin
Russell Larsen and Judith Viola Nelson. We were all born in
Brigham City. My folks had built a home at 424 South 300 East in
1922, where the family lived until July of 1950.
So all of us
children lived our childhood years in that home.
I've wanted, for years, to tell the story of my life, get it
recorded one way or another, and I started about 10 years ago
making brief notes from memory of the main events and people
involved in my own life. And the lives of my brothers and sisters.
I've had trouble getting started telling the story as I sit down to
write or to talk onto this tape. A million thoughts run through my
mind.. It's difficult to decided what to say or what to write. So
the story as I tell it may be rambling and disjointed but I feel
that I should get started, one way or the other. I'm making this
recording on January 29, 1992. My whole story I will tell from
memory, without reference to any written record. I've never been
a journal keeper or a scrapbook keeper. But I still have a pretty
good memory of the main events and people in my life.
I don't really have a knack for telling an interesting story. I'm
going to refer to my notes and some of them may not be exactly
chronological nor very interesting to other people, but that's a
chance I'll take. I think the best thing I can do is refer to
these notes that I have been writing over a period of 10 years.
Daddy had the house built by a man named Axel Romer. He was a twin
brother to a woman whose married name was Annie Tingey. She was a
nurse in Brigham City for many years, and over the years attended
my mother a number of times when she had serious illnesses. The
usual pattern, of course of a biography, is to tell the first part
first, so I think I should start with my oldest childhood memories.
I really want to tell the story of my father and mother, as I
recall them, as I knew them, but I'll do that not at this time -
hopefully get around to it later. Right now I thinkI, in order to
get myself going on this project, I need to get into these notes
and I'll talk about my childhood years first.
My very earliest memory, that I can consciously recall, is that of
a very serious fire that burned a barn which stood south of our
house, perhaps 100 feet away. And I believe that happened in about
1926 or 1927, probably '27 when I was almost three years old. The
barn was full of hay. I don't know what started the fire. I've
heard two versions. One that it started by spontaneous combustion,
it being filled with hay that was not properly dried. The other is
that it was started by a neighbor boy, named Denzel Rower. At any
rate, that fire destroyed the barn and it was so hot that it
started our house on fire just by radiant heat. The roof was set
on fire and most of the windows in the south side of the house were
cracked and destroyed by the heat. A very traumatic experience and
I had nightmares for years in my childhood about house fires, about
our own house burning.
I recall one waking nightmare. A year or two, or a few years after
this I was with my mother down on the west side of Brigham City
where she was visiting with one of her friends, Ruby Forsgren. I
believe her house was on 500 West because I remember there was a
railroad track in front of it, out in the street, and the train
went by there during the visit. There was such a train - it was an
electric line on 5th West called the Utah Central Railroad. But
while we were visiting Ruby the fire whistle blew. The fire
whistle could be heard all over the city of Brigham unless there
was a strong wind blowing against the sound. The fire whistle blew
and we went out i the street to see if we could tell where the fire
was and there was a column of smoke off in the direction of our
home, the southeast direction from there. And I remember being
frightened that it was our home burning. Perhaps I picked that up
by comments made by my mother and Ruby. Anyway so much for my
oldest memory.
I have been told of a couple accidents I had at that time but I
don't recall them, actually, except for what I've been told about
them. When I was about three years old I fell and broke my left
elbow. The way that happened, I'll tell you. One of the things we
did when we were little, as a form of fun, was to hold onto the
doorknobs of an inside door and swing the door back and forth with
the help of another person, another kid. And I was doing this, I'm
told, I remember doing that thing, but I don't remember this
incident. But I was told that I fell off and broke my elbow. I do
have a vague memory of going to the doctor and it was Dr. cooley,
who set my arm. My mother has told me that I was very brave, that
I didn't cry, that I looked at the doctor and called him a nice
man. I think Dr. Cooley was practicing in what we call the Cooley
Hospital which at that time was on Main Street and 400 South on the
NE corner of the intersection. There was a large two-story grey
stucco building which was later used as an apartment building. And
prior to its being used as a hospital it was intended to be used as
a refuge home for polygamists wives who wanted to flee the tyranny
of polygamy. It was built by non-Mormons. I don't think it was
ever used for that purpose. Not many of the women wanted to flee
their homes and husbands, apparently. Incidentally, a similar
situation existed in Salt Lake City at the same time in the 1880s
1890s. The non-Mormons in Salt Lake City built a large building on
500 East and between first and second south, intended as a refuge
for the polygamists wives who wanted to flee polygamy. Uh, it was
not used. Nobody fled. The building was later used, oh on into
the DK, it was used as the ambassador Club, an exclusive club for
wealthy businessmen, professional men in Salt Lake City. Oh, just
a footnote to my life's story.
Another accident I had a year or so later, I think, which I don't
really recall, but I have a little evidence of it in my left palm
there is a very distinct scar that starts at the base of the palm
and runs over toward the space between my thumb and index finger
and you can still see the stitch marks in that scar. I was playing
with the tin can which still had its ragged edge lid attached to
it. I fell on the lid and practically severed my left thumb.
Again my mother or father took me to the doctor, Dr. Cooley, who
stitched me back together; Did a perfect job. All I have left is
the scar. No damage or limitation on the use of that thumb.
Healed perfectly.
I do have a clear memory of many times when I fell off the back
porch of our house there on 300 East. The house was rather high.
It was set up on a basement foundation and at the back there was
a very narrow porch leading up to the back door. The porch wasn't
much wider than the door and I, at least for some years, I was
unable to navigate opening the screen door, and getting around it
into the house, without falling off the porch. mom said I fell off
the porch almost every day and often lit on my head. I frequently
had healing scars, cuts, on my head. Now there may have been more
damage than just the scars; that could account for some of my later
behavior, I guess. But I do have memories of falling off that
porch. I remember my delight when about six years later, when I
was ten, that back porch was replaced by a nice platform
constructed by my Uncle Will Sorenson. I'll say some more about
that later. This is what I mean about the events not being
chronological. I'll just throw things in as I recall them, if
that's all right. I hope that some of this will be interesting
enough to be of value to someone.
Let me try to describe the house that we lived in. It was small -
about 25 feet by 35 feet. It was up high on a basement
foundation. On the south side were two rooms, on the east was,
what was called the front room, perhaps 16 feet square, and on the
west, the kitchen, about the same size. On the northeast was the
folks' bedroom, a small room perhaps 10 x 10. To the west of it
was the stairway to the basement and the door to the stairway was
in the bedroom. West of the stairwell was a long closet which
opened into the kitchen and west of that closet was the small room
that became the bathroom. It was about the same size as the
bedroom, about 10 x 10. The basement was partly excavated, only
that part under the front room and the kitchen was excavated. The
rest of it, the soil was still in place up to ground level except
where a trench had been dug around for the footings of the
foundation on the north and east and west sides. The stairway ran
down from north to south through that unexcavated part, there being
a trench dug there to make room for the stairs as they approached
the basement floor level. Off to the right and to the left of the
open stairway were dark holes which we called the black holes.
They were never enclosed. The stairway was always opens o that as
you walked down the stairway into the basement you walked through
these black holes.

The basement did not have a cement floor - it was a dirt floor,
until about 1932 or 1933. The walls were unfinished. The concrete
that had been poured for the basement walls was not tamped down
properly so there were large gaping holes in the basement walls.
Imperfection in the walls and there were frequently spider nests,
webs, built in those holes in the walls. Kind of a creepy place.
the basement did have a plastered ceiling, however, strangely. It
looked as though they had, the plans for the basement had been
interrupted, hardly begun. At any rate, that unfinished basement,
with a dirt floor, was the bedroom for us four boys. Later on I'll
tell how the basement was finished, completed and improved, but it
was kind of a spooky place to sleep during those years before it
was finished.
Our home was on 300 East west of the cemetery, across from the west
cemetery entrance. And east of the cemetery, a couple blocks east
of us, three blocks maybe, was reservoir hill, which was often
called the sand hill. It was made of sand and gravel. It had been
formed by Lake Bonneville and the wash of water through Boxelder
Canyon when Lake Bonneville was there. And Reservoir Hill was
probably 1/1 mile long east and west. it extended from the
cemetery to the mouth of Boxelder Canyon, so there was nothing
between the canyon and our home except the gravestones and some
trees.
There was then, and there still is now, constant wind, almost
constant wind blowing out of Boxelder Canyon. In the summer time,
summer evenings, spring, summer and fall it was a very pleasant
breeze, but in the winter that was a bitter cold wind. And because
we have powder snow here in Utah, generally, that wind caused very
deep snow drifts to form in the cemetery and in our yard and in the
streets in the east part of town. Deep drifts became as high as a
man. They'd drift over fences and when the winter sun was strong
enough to melt snow, the surface of the snow, it would crust and
that cold wind would form heavy crusts on the drifts, heavy enough
strong enough to support the weight of a man and surely strong
enough to support the weight of us little kids so we had a lot of
fun playing on the snow drifts.
Back to our home. The home was heated by coal burning stoves in
the kitchen. There was the coal burning range, cook stove and it
had in it what was called a water jacket. It was a tank, cast iron
tank, that formed one side of the fire box. Cold water was run
into the tank, into this water jacket, and was heated by the fire,
and the hot water then passed off into a storage tank, the hot
water tank, which, in out house, stood in a corner of the bathroom.
the bathroom wasn't really a bathroom. There was not bathtub,
there was no toilet, just the water tank and a wash basin. Until
about 1929, the bathroom served as a bedroom for us boys. There
was a large folding bed in the rom. A folding bed in those days
was a large, high wooden cabinet and the mattress and spring didn't
really fold they just lifted up into a vertical position in the
cabinet. When this folding bed was in the down position, it
practically filled the room, the bathroom door could only be opened
a little bit. In those days Mom and Dad were both very slender so
they could squeeze through. Earlier in this story I mentioned that
we boys slept in the unfinished basement, but that was after 1929
or '30. Until that time we slept in the bathroom and in 1929,
1930, Daddy had the bathroom finished. Installed a bathtub and a
toilet and at that time they sold the folding bed, or gave it to
someone. That's another interesting memory that I'll tell about
later.
I think I'll read from my notes about my memories of how we played
in the house. I have vivid memories of our house and the yard
associated with different seasons and various events. I remember
how we played in the house in winter. Our winters were cold. We
had deep snow and bitterly cold winds out of Boxelder Canyon. The
winds drifted snow over the fences and blew it right into the
house. There was often snow piled on the front room floor by the
cracks around the door and on the window sill of the east facing
window, front window. And it sifted lightly on Mom's and Dad's bed
in their unheated, east facing bedroom.
I mentioned that the house was heated by two coal burning stoves.
Daddy didn't always build a fire in the front room heater and when
he didn't we were all packed cozy in the kitchen, in the warm
kitchen. to make a fire he'd' haul, carry a shovel full of live
coals from the kitchen stove into the front room, dump them in that
top trap door of the space heater and then put lumps of coal in on
them, the live coals. When the fire was going well in that heater
its walls would become cherry red and the firelight would dance on
the ceiling and on the walls through the holes and the cracks in
the stove.
Often we would sit in the dark for awhile, before bedtime, loving
the cozy warmth, hearing the wind moan around the corners of the
house. The heater stood on a metal covered stove board, a floor
shield, about half an inch thick which was needed to prevent the
floors catching fire. We loved to play on this shield with our
little cars and trucks. In the corners behind the stove, where the
chimney protruded from he wall, were a delicious place to hide when
we were little. A neat place to sit with a book where you were out of the traffic.

Tape 2 Side B

Mom always took great pride in her shiny stoves, both the kitchen
range and the front room heater. She regularly polished them with
a black polish like shoe polish. when the stoves got too hot, like
that cozy cherry red, it burned the polish off and made it
necessary for Mama to repeat again one of her endless tasks - shine
the stove again. We liked to play car and truck driving around in
the crowded rooms holding a lid of a pot or a kettle in our hands
like a steering wheel and buzzing our lips to make the motor sound,
driving in and out of every nook and cranny in those small crowded
rooms.
I have a poignant memory of Christmas 1928. For Christmas I
received a set of garden tools, a rake and a hoe and a shovel and
they weren't tin. they were real tools with hard wood handles and
sturdy metal heads. i couldn't wait to get out in the yard to use
them in the dirt and rocks which I did in the spring as soon as the
snow would allow. I was playing with them in the north side of the
yard, our yard was an orchard. It had quite a few fruit trees and
in the north side there was raspberry row down between the rows of
fruit trees and near the fence of the north boundary I was playing
that spring with my tools. And Mom called me in to lunch or
dinner, I don't know which. I left the tools there by the
raspberry row. I never saw them again. I grieved over them for
some years, even when I was a teenager picking cherries out in the
yard, I sometimes looked up and down the raspberry row and the
fence line hoping to find those tools.
Another pleasant memory I have of our playing in the house when we
were tiny boy. My dad always worked outdoors and in the winter he
wore a sheepskin lined coat. My Dad was a big man and he wore a
big coat and often when he came home at night for dinner he let us
take his big coat down on the floor and we would crawl into it like
a tent. It was big enough for two or three boys to play in and
hide under. I remember that it smelled of his sweat but it was a
good smell and it was a pleasant memory I have of my Dad.
In my notes, I have quite an extensive write up about 1929
Christmas. About this time Daddy and Mama bought a used
phonograph; it was a Victrola made by the Victor Talking Machine
Company in New Jersey. It was housed in a beautiful red, mahogany
cabinet. Truly wonderful, magic machine. The folks bought a few
records, maybe a couple dozen, total, over a few years' time. I
remember standing by the side of that marvelous machine, just able
to peak over the top edge, with the top lid lifted up, watching the
chrome plated tone arm ride the record. I wonder how many thousand
times Mom came into the front room from the kitchen to put on a new
record and wind up the spring driven motor. The heavy spring
always bumped and rumbled a time or two as it was wound and again
as it unwound.
I now have a Victrola identical to the one in my boyhood home. It
was made in January 1915 and I acquired it about 1966 from Orrin
Peck whose father acquired it when he bought an old house in some
little town in the mountains east of Salt Lake City. My brother,
Orville, has most of the records that we played over and over so
many years ago. So many times that we memorized the words and the
music and the accompaniment and the style. We had one 12 inch
record; all of the others were 10 inch records, 78 RPM. On one
side of that 12 inch record was the Blue Danube by Johan Strauss
and on the other side was his Tales From the Vienna Woods. These
records set a life-time musical tastes, or a criterium or a
prejudice that strongly influences me to this very day.
I remember the great loss I felt when a chip was broken out of the
edge of the 12 inch record. And we continued to hear the lastthree quarters of each of those great Strauss waltzes.
Another great treasure came into our lives for Christmas this year.
Aunt Anna Cottum, who was grandpa Larsen's sister, gave Orville and
harold a beautiful Flexible Flyer sled, or a sleigh as we called
it. it was brand new, a deluxe sleigh, the finest one available.
About five feet long. And it was built low and sloped to the back~
it was a racer. It had been bought for Aunt Ann's nephew, Reed
Larsen,' who was the son of Aunt Ann's younger brother, Wesley
Larsen. He was killed, Reed Larsen was killed, about age 16 in a
hunting accident down in St. George country. Aunt Ann never did
recover from that tragic loss. His father, Wesley Larsen, had died
tragically young and Reed had lived with Aunt Ann for a number of
years; I don't know how many. She was embittered quite a bit by
those tragic deaths. I'll tell a little more about Aunt Ann in
another place in this story and I'll have more to say about that
wonderful, Flexible Flyer sleigh, too.
Another thing that happened in the summer, or fall of 1929, that
figured largely in our boyhood adventures. We got a dog which we
named Buck about this time. Buck had been given to my cousin, Bob
Koutnick, who is my mother's sister Bernice's boy. They were
visiting us for a few weeks and he and we boys had gone up east of
the cemetery where a large herd of sheep were coming through town
as they often did in the spring and the fall when they were moving
the sheep to and from their summer grazing lands. But the sheep
herders gave this dog, Buck, to Bob Coutnick. His parents wouldn't
let him keep it, and so he gave it to us. Don't know whether he
gave it to any one of us, but all four of us and Yvonne claimed
this dog. He was a black, curly haired Spring Spaniel. Probably
weighed about 40 pounds and had a white spot on his chest. I think
he had a couple white paws.
Another thing I remember about the Coutnicks. they were visiting
with us in the summer of 1929. I guess Uncle Jim Coutnick was
changing jobs, something, I think they'd been living back east and
they were moving here to Utah and they stayed with us. We didn't
have any room for guests so Daddy set up a big tent out in the
corner of the yard and that's were the Coutnicks stayed. I guess
they ate in the house, but one exciting thing was to sleep in that
tent and also, when they left our place, ended their visit with us,
they moved to Ogden and there they rented an apartment. Next
summer, 1930, I was permitted to spend a weed in Ogden visiting
with Bob. I have pleasant, vivid memories of that week that I
stayed there. I was impressed with how many cement sidewalks they
had in Ogden; we didn't have many in Brigham. They were such fun
to play on and to ride wagons and scooters on. I also was
impressed with the luxury of a house down the street from Bob's
that had a carport and the smoothest, sloped concrete driveway I'd
ever seen; I really enjoyed playing ont hat driveway. The owners
were very tolerant of us.
In the fall of 1930 I had another accident, could have been very
serious. One of our self-entertainment projects as kids, in the
winter was to build little, miniature bobsleds. Now a bobsled, a
real bobsled, is one that is pulled by two or more horses and it
has a wagon box that is set low on runners, four runners, in the
front, two of which turn for steering. We made miniature bobsleds
and our favorite materials to make them out of was wooden cigar
boxes. We carved the runners out of a piece of that wood, either
with jigsaws or pocket knives. As I was whittling with my pocket
knife, making a runner, my knife slipped and it sliced open my
right thigh - a deep cut about three inches long and blood spurted
out. My Dad, who was home, tied on a tight bandage and then
bundled up himself and me against the sever winter cold wind and
carried me to the hospital. I still carry a large scar, including
some of the stitch marks, on my right thigh.
As I mentioned earlier, it was about this time that Daddy had a
bathtub and toilet installed in the house and they got rid of the
big folding bed. I remember clearly what they did with it; they
gave it, or sold it, to the father and mother of Ruby Forsgren, Mom
and Dad's dear friend, Ruby. And they put the folding bed on this
new sled that Orville and Harold had received, the Christmas
before, and hauled that folding bed down to the Poulsen's house;
that was Ruby's maiden name, Poulsen. I can see them doing that so
clearly. And also I can see the plumbers sliding the bathtub into
the house over the snow. It was a bathtub that had feet under it;
of course the feet were bolted on afterward when it was in the
house. And to get it into the house, it was a cast iron tub, very
heavy, and to get into the house they slid it over the snow. I can
see them doing that, in my mind's eye, very clearly.
And it was at this time, with the folding bed gone, that we boys'
beds were moved to the basement. The basement still had a dirt
floor and Daddy put some boards down for the boards to stand on, so
the feet wouldn't sink into the dirt, and laid a couple of boards
down from the foot of the stairway over to the beds so we didn't
have to walk in the dirt in order to get to bed. I think they got
two full-sized beds, as least later on we had two of them. Raymond
and I slept in one; Orville and Harold slept in the other.
Although to begin with, since Orville was only ten or eleven at
this time, and Raymond was only about five, we could all have slept
in one bed at that time. But we had some high adventure sleeping
in the basement, although it was creepy with the spiders and
occasional snakes, it wasn't all bad. Especially with our dog,
Buck. I guess right now would be a good time to confess to how
many times we let Buck into the basement through the basement
windows and he would sleep on the foot of our beds. Mom was always
exasperated by that. I'm sure. We pretended not to know how he
ever got in, but I imagine Mom had it all figured out and knew that
dog didn't open the window by himself.
Another really fun aspect, memory, of sleeping in the basement with
that dirt floor. In the fall of the year, every year for many
years, my Dad would buy maybe 10 or 12 bushels of apples, usually
from Henry harris, who was a framer, who had a farm down near my
Dad's farm and raised good apples - usually Jonathan and Golden
Delicious apples what my Dad bought. And we had free reign on
those apples; they were in the basement with us. Was hardly any
way Daddy could limit the other we ate, so almost every night we
would eat two or three apples apiece and we would just throw the
apple cores on the dirt floor under the bed. And that was not
problem because in the spring, every spring, Mom would house clean
our basement bedroom. First she would bring the hose down, the
garden hose, and spray some water on the floor to settle the dust.
Then she would clean the floor with a rake, raking up the apples
cores and banana peels and what have you that were under the bed.
Sounds a little bit like pioneer times, doesn't it?
In the spring of 1931, or rather in the winter, February 20, my
younger sister, Barbara, was born. This seems like a good place to
mention my brothers and sisters and when they were born. We were
all fairly close in age and that was good. We were very close in
our feelings for each other, too, and constantly played together.
The older kids tolerated the younger kids and helped entertain
them, and look after them and taught them many things, mostly good,
some not so good, I guess. But Orville, my oldest brother, was
born August 26, 1919, so he was five years older than I am, a
little over five years. Harold, my second brother, was both on
November 7, 1920, so he was just four years older than I. My
oldest sister, Yvonne, was born September 26, 1922. She was born
in the year in which the folks had the house built and also she was
born one month before my father's father died as a young man, only
about 56 years old. then I was born, as I said, in 1924, and Raymond, youngest
brother, was born September 13, 1926, just about two years young
than I. Then Barbara, second sister, came along here in 1931, and
Shirley, the baby of the family, number seven, was born June 1,
1936. So there was about a five years spread between Barbara and
Shirley. That accounts for all seven of us. Mother had a couple
of miscarriages in between. We don't know who they would have
been, but we would have had a huge family if they had all been born and survived
But we were a close family. We lived in a tiny house and we were
crowded, but it was a peaceful family. Very little jangling. We
respected each other and everyone tried to make life peaceful and
pleasant, and it was so.
New excitement came into my life in the fall of 1931, I began
school in the first grade at Central School. I'll read what I have
written in my scratch notes about that beginning. I began school
this fall, at Central School. My teacher was a tiny, plain woman,
Miss McBride. I loved her; I loved school. That year set the
pattern; I always loved school and loved, or liked, all my
teachers. We got along just great. I was a good student - always
earned high grades, usually A. That wasn't an unmixed good thing,
as I'll discuss more in detail later. As I turned seven in
November, I was one of the older kids in my grade. I had many
friends but did not develop really close, buddy type friendships.
Teachers often told Mama, "Merlin is a good student and never any
trouble, but he's such a little old man." That year Orville was in
the sixth grade, Harold in the fifth, Yvonne in the third, and I in
the first. In those days, the teachers of the grade schools,
produced operettas, in which they involved scores, even hundreds of
the children. At least scores of them. And they were musicals,
real musicals, and the kids learned a number of songs and were
always dressed in costumes. I remember Orville was a pirate that
year. I can still see him in that pirate uniform with a patch over
one eye - don't remember Harold's part in it. But operettas all
through my sixth grade, were exciting. I don't know how long they
continued them after that, but the practice disappeared, I'm sure,
before World War II came along.
I have some specific fond memories of the first grade. I had two
sweethearts that year. One was Sharon Thompson who lived down in
the third ward of Brigham City. Well, at that time, her parents
were renting Mrs. Wagner's home, which was the first house south of
the service station, which was on the southwest corner of the
Tabernacle block across the street there. That's where Sharon
lived. My other sweetheart was Janeal Cazaier who lived in our
sixth ward, just a block south of us, on third east. I remember
too, the big boys in sixth grade, who had the responsibility for
ringing the bells, the schools bell, for bringing us in from recess
and noon hour, ringing the bell for time to go home, school's out,
and ringing the bell in the morning for time to start school.
Janeal Cazaier's oldest brother, Clarice, was one of those boys, I
remember.

They had a big bell that hung in one of the hallways, on the second
floor I think, and they also had a hand-held bell, which a boy
could shake with both hands - good sized bell. I thought they were
pretty, uh, quite the big shots, to have that responsibility.
There's a correction in the chronology of my story. I see a note
here that the incident of my accident when I cut my thigh with a
pocket knife was in the winter of 1932, fall of 1932, not in 1930
as I had recorded earlier.

Tape 3 Side A
In telling this story I'm going to use the year as a focal point so
I can keep straight on what I've talked about and what I haven't.
In 1932, in the fall, when we started school, my little brother
Raymond was just a year behind me, although nearly two years
younger than I am, so I was starting second grade and he the first.
Families around us were large and most families had children in
several grades at the same time so at this time Harold was in the
sixth grade, Yvonne in the fourth, I'm in the second, Raymond in
the first, Orville has moved to the seventh grade, junior high,
which was held up at the same building as the high school. I
remember being very proud of my older brothers and sister. They
all set good records in school which prepared the way for us
younger ones when we came along, often having the same teachers.
I remember, too, being very much aware of the friends of my older
brothers, particularly, but of Yvonne's friends also, and I learned
to admire their friends and felt the same affection, almost more
affection for them than kids of my own age. This may be the
"little old man" coming out in me again. This fall, I don't know
whether it was in the fall or winter after the first of the year,
Raymond had an accident.
We all had chores at home and Raymond's and my chores included
bringing bushel boxes full of coal from the coal pile up onto the
back porch, or near the back porch, and we needed the sleigh to
haul with. Harold had been using the sleigh, playing with it and
he turned it over to us by laying it down and giving it a shove
with his foot down a slight slope in the back yard. The metal
front end of the sleigh struck Raymond's leg and snapped both of
the bones - compound fracture, very serious one. Seems to me, as
I remember, Daddy wrapped Raymond up and hauled him to the hospital
on the sleigh. Probably so because I don't think we had a car at
that time.
I can still see, in my mind, Raymond hobbling around on those tiny
crutches and we even had some fun playing with them, taking our
turn playing with his crutches. We had several serious injuries
with that sleigh along with many exciting adventures. I'll try to
tell a little more about them later. As I became older and more
able to handle that big sleigh I had more fun with it, of course.
But Orville and Harold were having adventures with it already and
some of them were very dangerous, some of the things we did in our
play. It's a wonder that no one was killed.
In school this year, my second grade, my teacher was Miss Carma
Davis. She was a very beautiful woman. I knew that and I fell in
love with her, really. I remember a year or two later, when she
quit teaching school, and married a young Doctor Purse in Brigham
City. I was deeply offended that she wouldn't wait for me, but I
loved school.
Another thing I remember, that winter all four of us boys received
new winter coats. They were all lined with sheep skin. Orville's
coat was made of corduroy and the other three of us had coats that
were made of a kind of a rubberized plastic, something waterproof
and rather stiff that wasn't soft like the artificial fabrics of
today, but they were nice coats and we also had what we called
aviator caps. They were very much like the caps the aviators, the
pilots, wore flying the open cockpit airplanes of that day. We
also received mittens and a pair of galoshes and we were well
equipped for playing in the snow, bundled up warm going to school.
In those days we had regular fire drills at school. In the fire
drill we were to leave everything and get out of the building
immediately and there was a prescribed pattern for each class to go
out a certain, follow a certain other class and go out a certain
doorway so it could be done in an orderly manner in an emergency.
I remember my feeling of great reluctance to leave the building
without my new coat and hat and galoshes and mittens, just like
leaving a dear friend in there to perish in the fire.
We had a school operetta this year, as every year during my grade
school time. I remember that Yvonne was a sweat pea, dressed up in
a costume to look like a sweat pea and I can see her costume in my
mind. I think Mom has a picture of it, which would be black and
white, of course, and not show the color, but it was very
impressive to me I believe only the sixth grade, well sometimes
the younger grades took part in it, of course this year Yvonne was
in the fourth grade and she was in it.
About this time also, Orville and Harold bought, or acquired as a
gift, or some way, an Iver-Johnson bicycle. It was an old bike but
a prize and a treasure. They were generous and let all of us,
including me and Raymond, try to learn how to ride a bike. Of
course we fell down frequently and it was very hard on the bike but
I remember that and I did learn to ride a bike. Some of us were so
small we had to ride with our leg under the top bar which meant
crossing over through the bars with your one leg You'd ride on the
left side of the bike, kind of hanging on, and just put your right
leg through the bar onto the right peddle, kind of awkward, but it
didn't make it, learning to ride the bike any easier, but we were
very determined to learn as soon as possible.
Other practice that we had in our grade school days was to go down
town behind the stores. Our grade school was only a block from the
business district and it was an exciting thing to go down and
rummage through the trash pile behind the stores. They threw out
all sorts of exciting things, big pasteboard boxes and fancy
containers of one kind or another. The Coronet store, which was a
five-and-ten cent store was right next door to JC Penny's so their
trash piles were very close together.
I remember one of the treasures we looked for in Coronet's rubbish
was candy which was sometimes thrown out. It was sometimes clean
and good and oftentimes it was mixed with the floor sweepings, but
people were very poor then and we had very little change for candy.
Of course we hungered for candy, for sweets, and I remember often
we'd pick pieces of candy, whole pieces of candy, out of the floor
sweepings and rub it off a little bit and eat it. It was ok except
sometimes it tasted a little bit of that oil they used on the
floors to settle the dust. Many floors in public buildings in
those days were oiled floors, just a tongue-in-groove fir floor
that they oiled frequently to settle the dust, but we had no qualms
about eating candy with a little oil on it if it didn't taste too bad.
1932 was a Presidential election year. President Hoover had been
the president, was still the president, and in the election
campaign that year he was the Republican candidate and Franklin D.
Roosevelt was the Democratic candidate, the challenger. My Dad was
always a very staunch republican and he was very much opposed to
Franklin D. Roosevelt and had a lot to say about the election and
we kids picked up on it. I'm sure his strong feelings influenced
me to be mostly, most generally a Republican, in all of my voting
experience.
Orville was 12 years old at this time, when school started this
year, and he launched on a hobby which has absorbed him all of his
life to the present time and that is cars, automobiles. he
obtained his first Model-T Ford at this time. A block or two below
us between First and Second East on Fifth South, there was an
automobile wrecking yard owned by Dan Jeppson and his family. Dan
had 20 children all born of the same mother and they ranged in age
down to, maybe Raymond's age, the youngest, and the older children
were much older than Orville and Harold. Orville was fascinated
with cars and worked for Dan Jeppson in his wrecking yard, helping
to demolish cars and reduce them to salvageable metal, scrap
mettle, and he worked for Dan to earn, or to pay for this Model-T
Ford and it began an exciting phase of our childhood.
Orville's cars were always a center of attention in the
neighborhood. He always had several kids riding with him in his
cars. He needed them because they frequently needed to be pushed.
He often had tire trouble and often ran out of gas and often the
cars wouldn't start or would fail, stall, and he needed somebody to
help push them in. But it was always worth that risk to have the
thrill of riding with him in these cars. They were generally open
cars with the wind blowing in your face and he was young and daring
and it was always a thrill to ride with him.
And Orville, of course, became, by practical experience, an
excellent mechanic. He knows cars inside and out, from one end to
the other, machinery, engine, all the parts, the bodies, electrical
systems, he knows all about them. Learned it by experience and he
gradually acquired tools and expertise over the years and I prided
myself in being his tool carrier. I would fetch the tool that he
needed when he was lying on his back on the ground, under the car.
He would ask me to bring this tool or that tool and I took real
pride in learning the names of the tools and learning to know
exactly which one he wanted. I also picked up a little bit
knowledge of cars myself that way.
At school this year I witnessed a terrible tragedy on the highway.
The main highway ran right in front of our school between the
school and the Tabernacle, the Boxelder Tabernacle which still
stands in Brigham City. The school building that we attended
burned down in 1947 and was replaced with a newer building which
stands there today. But all the traffic that went through Brigham
City went past our school, including big trucks. There were a
couple of Knudson families that lived in the neighborhood close to
the school. Some of them were related to us through marriage. My
Grandpa Larsen's oldest sister, Alice, had married a Knudson and
the Knudsons were all related, it seems. Anyway there was a little
boy, a little Knudson boy two or three years old, who strayed away
from home and was playing near the street, near Main Street, in
front of the school. This was after school in the afternoon, three
o'clock to four o'clock. The little boy strayed out into the
street and was struck by a truck loaded with grain. The truck ran
right over his head and smashed it like an egg and I remember the
grizzly scene of that boys' brains scattered on the street mixed
with blood. It was a dreadful, dreadful thing.
I remember a pleasant thing that Christmas. I think it was that
year when I received, from Santa Claus, a wind up tractor. It had
a very powerful motor in it and wide rubber Caterpillar treads and
the style of it was that it had an enclosed cab at the back end.
I don't think it had a bulldozer blade on it, but it may have done.
But I remember we played with that a lot and the older boys played
with it, too. It was a very interesting and quality toy, but I
remember one of the older boys wound the spring too tight and
snapped the spring and that was a great loss to me.
This year, too, my Dad started to work, that is in 1932, my Dad
began to work for Brigham City. He was just a laborer to begin
with, but he quickly displayed his ambition and energy and
dependability and became assistant to the water master of Brigham
City. The water master was a man named Joel Lee. But, anyway,
Daddy started working at this time and his job would last for 17
years. He worked for the city until November of 1949.
I remember of being aware of why he went to work for the city.
Daddy was a farmer, a fruit farmer, at heart. He and his brother,
Ira, his oldest living brother, who is 10 years older than Daddy,
had bought from the estate of my Grandpa Larsen, Lars H. Larsen,
the farm of 51 acres, 51 and a half acres, I think it was, down in
the southeast corner of Brigham City. They bought the farm from
the family estate and to do so they acquired it with a debt on it.
I remember that the debt was owed to the Federal Land Bank in
Berkley, CA. I remember my Dad mailing payments to the land bank,
I think they were annual payments due in the fall after the crops
had been harvested.
On this farm there was a very fine water pump, a well, a deep well,
with a powerful pump on it. Probably a 50 horse power electric
motor that pumped water from a depth of 200 feet. The water was
ice cold and crystal clear and it pumped an eight inch pipe full,
throwing the water out three to four feet, a really large stream.
I don't know how many second feet it involved, but it was a very
fine pump, used a lot of electric power, and those being hard
times, very short on cash, Daddy and Ira had run up quite a power
bill owed to Brigham City.
The crops were insufficient to pay the bill so my father went to
work for the city and part of this wages were applied toward
payment of that power bill. We're not talking about a great many
dollars. I don't know what my Dad earned at that time but it was
probably less than $100 a month and part of it went on the power
bill and he had, at this time, six children. Barbara was the sixth
and she was just a year old. They were lean times so Daddy devoted
his work to the city, most of his working hours. Uncle Ira was
supposed to run the farm and Daddy worked all he could after his
regular working hours and on Sunday, I guess, and holidays. Daddy
was a very hard worker all of his years as long as he lived.
Except in the last four or five years of his life he was disabled
by an injury which I'll talk about later.
Daddy's work with the city became a very interesting part of our
life and the farm was a very big factor, a big part of our life,
our family life, and our individual lives, and I'll talk about that
in years to come., that is in my story of the years to come.
Well, that takes care of the school part of 1932-1933. We're into
1934, when I began school in the third grade. In the school years
of 1934-1935, my third grade, my teacher was Miss Doral White who
was a very tall, thin, rather pretty woman, not a beauty, but a
lovely person and an excellent teacher.
I remember we had a writing contest. We studied penmanship in
those days. We were taught to write as well as we possibly could.
Tried to teach us all to form our letters the same way, it was
called the Palmer Method and it was effective; they need something
like that today. Writing is still important and especially being
able to read what is written. I won in that contest; I won first
prize and the first prize was an Eversharp pencil. It was green
and black. Eversharp and fountain pens were quite a new thing in
those days. The fountain pen, of course, was a pen that had its
own ink supply within it in a rubber tube, which replaced the stick
pen which had to be dipped in a bottle of ink, in an ink well, as
you wrote.
Well, after school, with that prize pencil in my pocket, I went
over to play football with the boys on the Tabernacle lawn. The
Tabernacle, as I said before, was directly across the street,
across the highway, Main Street, from our school. It occupied a
whole city block and most of it was grass, a huge lawn with some
tress. Most of the trees were far on the east end. There were
large areas that were wide open grass and it was our playground.
There was no grass at that time on the school grounds so we played
on the Tabernacle grounds. I remember laying that green and black
pencil down at the base of the lamp post while I played football.
I never saw the pencil again. Somebody stole it; we did have
thieves even back in the Halcyon days. It broke my heart I never
had a chance to use that pencil that I had won. I'm not sure
whether that dampened my enthusiasm for football or not, but it may
have done.
I never was much of an athlete but I played sandlot ball and
football. I played a little hockey later on, tried to on ice
skates. I played along with he kids at most things, but I was
never very good at it. I remember at school we had an iron fire
escape attached to the south wall of the building that went up to
the second and third floors. We had 12 rooms in the school, four
on each floor, one room in each corner of the building with a cross
shaped hallway, a large center hallway with an extension in between
each pair of rooms and the area for hanging our coats in the halls.
The areas were in those extensions of the cross shaped hall.
Anyway, the older boys, the sixth graders and some of the braver
younger boys had a habit of sliding down the vertical iron bar that
supported this fire escape. It was hung on the brick wall of the
building and then supporting its outer corners was a vertical iron
rod that went from the bottom of the second floor platform up to
the bottom of the third floor platform and then a slanted rod from
the top of the third floor platform slanted up to the brick wall
where it was fastened by a bolt into the wall and the boys would
slide down, climb over the railing of the third floor platform and
grab hold of that rod and slide down to the second floor platform
and then the really brave ones would climb over the railing of the
second floor platform and hang by their hands to the bottom of the
platform with nothing but 10 feet of open air below them. That
always gave me the chills to see anyone do that and I never did
have the courage to try it myself, but I admired the courage of
those who could do it.
Well the school was on Main Street between Second and Third South.
Our home was on Third East, three blocks east, and three blocks
south between Fourth and Fifth South, so it's two blocks south,
three blocks east, half a mile perhaps, and the path to school went
through our church lot. The church was on Second East and Third
South, a couple blocks from our home, and it occupied, it still
stands to this day, it's used and owned by the Presbyterian church
who acquired it right after World War II when our church built a
new building on Second East and Fifth South a couple blocks down
from the old building.
Our path to school went right through the church lot. Below the
building, that is, west of the church building on the corner of
First East and Third South, kitty corner across from the Tabernacle
square was a small frame building which we called the scout house.
It was probably 15 by 40 feet in dimension and the Boy Scouts used
that building. Scouting was big and there were a lot of boys in
the ward. Scouting was very active when Orville and Harold were
scouting age from 12 to 14, 15, and I remember the fascination that
that building and its contents had for me. There were three or
four scout patrols, one in each corner of the building, and in
there they had their displays of knots and skills, things built of
branches, collections of rocks, collections of butterflies,
collections of leaves, which they did in pursuing their merit
badges. The ropes and the bandages, oh they had first aid and they
practiced bandaging injured limbs. The things the scouts did were
fascinating to me and that building contained all of that magic.
I remember also the fascination of the big irrigation ditch that
flowed south across the front of the Tabernacle square. It's still
there. I think it is still open, enclosed in concrete~ the walls
and the bottom are concrete. It's a big stream and it was always
a fascinating thing. I don't think it was dangerous although a
little kid, child, two or there years old, could easily have
drowned in it and maybe some of them did. I remember, too, the man
who was the custodian of Tabernacle Square, and the building, I
think. His name was Rasmussen; he was an immigrant from Denmark
and we called him Danish Ras. He lived east of us on Fifth East
and south of Fifth South up across the street from the Richards
family, which will be mentioned somewhere in this story, I'm sure,
a big family of boys and a couple of girls who were close friends
to us kids, played a lot together, had a lot of adventures and
misadventures in common with the Richards family, but that's were
Danish Ras lived.
He mowed the lawn, this huge lawn, a whole city block of grass that
he had to mow. He mowed the lawn with a horse drawn mower that was
built very much like a racing sulky, had two staves that ran up one
on each side of the horse, was drawn by own horse. It had a seat
for the man, the driver, and it had these huge, reel type mowing
blades, did a good job, of course it had two wheels, and it was
stored in a little shed behind the Tabernacle. I remember how
interesting it was that it was pushed into the shed and then the
staves that the horse walked between were pushed up into the air so
that the shed in which it was stored was not very big ground area
but it was very high, about 10 feet high, an odd type of shed. I
remember the funniest things, unimportant things.
A very exciting part of going to school at the Central School was
going to primary in the church house once each week, usually on
Wednesday afternoon, immediately after school. I loved primary.
We had good teachers. They had a fun program of things to do,
games to play, things to learn, songs to sing, and we held our
primary activities right in the chapel. The chapel had a sloped
floor, higher at the back, sloped down toward the pulpit and the
seating was on wooden benches. The benches, there were three
sections, a wide center section and then a narrower section on
either side of the chapel, much the same as now, but the benches in
the center section were not fastened to the floor. They were free
standing and to make room for activities, such as dances and plays,
entertainment of any kind that was held in the ward, those benches
were simply moved to the back. A couple of men would take hold of
the benches, one on either end, and lift them up and over the
benches behind, leaving a large area of the floor exposed.
The pulpit work in front of the chapel was also removable so that
the pulpit and the breastwork of the stand where the bishopric and
others sat during Sunday School and Sacrament meetings were
removable. So that was set aside when there was a play to be
presented or something requiring a stage and the stand area became
an elevated stage. Up behind the pulpit and the stand area was the
choir section. There were choir seats arranged in kind of a semi-
circular area and in the midst of the semicircle there was an organ
and a piano. The organ was a pump type, the player had to pump air
with her feet, or his feet, to provide the wind to make the organ
play like a pipe organ.
A very memorable thing about primary, apart from some specific
classes, was the dismissing from opening exercises to go downstairs
to our classrooms. We went down a wooden stairway, very noisy,
especially under the feet of a bunch of children, but they always
played the song "Called to Serve" for the music to which we marched
out of the chapel down the stairs to our classrooms. It's a
marching tempo, that song, and we made as much noise as we could on
those stairs as we went down and later came back for a reassembly
closing session of primary after our class work. Very memorable.
That song, incidentally, has been revised by the church in its
latest hymn book, just about 1987, and it serves as the rallying
theme song at the Missionary Training Center in Provo. It is
something to stand with 2,000 3,000 young missionaries and sing
that song, "Called to Serve." A thrilling thing; It takes me back
to my exciting primary days. I loved primary and it was primary,
in primary, where I obtained my love for the church and the gospel
and obtained my testimony which has seen me through my life and is
still very strong today. I love the church and the gospel and I
know they are true.
About this time, Wilford Christensen, our dear friend and neighbor,
bought a new 1934 Chevrolet truck. I remember it so well. He had
a Model-T Ford truck. The Chev truck was larger and longer and he
built an extension on the front of his garage to make the garage
long enough for that truck. They lived on the corner, south of us,
on the corner of 300 East and 500 South, the northwest corner of
the intersection. That garage still stands.
Tape 3 Side B
The Cooley Hospital moved into a new building on First East just
between Firth North and Forest Street. The old building was turned
into an apartment building. I remember that our primary president,
Mrs. Caruthers, and her family, lived in that apartment.
About this time, Daddy obtained a Studebaker truck. The truck had
been made out of a touring sedan, with a canvas top. It had a
truck bed on the back and they had replaced the sedan top with a
shorter one. This truck had eight cylinders. The huge engine was
about four feet long. It had huge solid steel disc wheels that
stood about three feet high and were about 30 x 6 inch tires. I
don't know how many years he owned that truck, but it was a
fascinating truck. Dad loved it and loved to drive very fast in
it.
My mother's parents, Grandma and Grandpa Nelson, had moved to
California in the early 20's, maybe about the time I was born. All
of their children, except my mother, moved to California with them,
so we didn't have frequent contact with my mother's family. But
Grandpa and Grandma Nelson came almost every year. Grandpa worked
for the Union Pacific Railroad, so they had either free, or reduced
rate, fare. They always brought goodies of some kind for us
children. Not gifts usually, but maybe a bag of candy or a box of
candied California fruit, which I never cared much for. Their
visits were interesting and it kept us aware that we belonged to a
big family and half of it was in California.
Some time in the early 30's, Daddy had a new barn built. It was a
very fine structure, made of tongue-in-groove fir flooring. It was
used primarily as a stable for milk cows. Daddy kept six to eight
milk cows at this time and the corral in which they could go
outside and get some sunshine, consisted of the lane, or driveway,
that ran from the barn west of the house, up to the street on the
south side of the house. Between that lane, or corral, and our
house, there was a garden which was usually a flower garden.
Sometimes it had vegetables in it, but mostly Daddy raised flowers
there. He loved roses. He raised beautiful gladiolas and zinnias.
Daddy loved flowers and Mom did too.
In the spring of 1935, Uncle Will Sorenson did something to our
house that was very exciting. A cement floor had been poured in
the basement in 1933 or 1934, and the basement walls were plastered
with a nice, smooth plaster. Uncle Will built wooden partitions
dividing the basement into three rooms. About half of it was a
bedroom for us four boys in which there were two full-sized beds,
one bed for each of the two of us. The other half was divided into
a bedroom for the girls, Yvonne and Barbara, and later Shirley.
The other part of that half, which was nearest to the stairway, was
the fruit room/store room. This was a great improvement on our
basement. It also made it possible to get the couch out of the
front room, which had been the bedroom for Yvonne and Barbara.
The other thing that Uncle Will did, which was equally exciting,
was to build a new back porch, really just a platform, that was
about five feet wide and nine or ten feet long with a nice railing
around it. The steps down were 2 x 12 planking and ran along the
house to the south.
Raymond and I still had chores of getting in wood and coal and this
big platform made a neat place to have bushel boxes full of coal up
close to the back door in the winter time. At this time, and for
several more years to come, the winter supply of coal was just a
big pile dumped about thirty feet from the house. Not every
winter, but later on, before the snow fell, we would cover that
coal with a big canvas tarpaulin. Getting the coal in amounted to
cleaning the snow off the tarp, throwing it back, filling up the
boxes and hauling them over to the house with the sleigh, then
covering the coal again.
We also stored kindling wood on the platform Uncle Will built. We
chopped up a lot of kindling wood in the fall because we had to
start a new fire in the kitchen range every morning. We started it
with wadded up newspaper, then fine kindling wood with a few pieces
of coal on top of that. In the winter we used a lot of kindling
and coal, so that was a steady chore that we had. Later on we had
other chores. Of course, at this time Orville and Harold had other
chores including milking the cow. Some years we raised pigs down
at the farm, which was about a mile away, so it was some task to go
down and do chores on the farm.
In 1934-1935, I was in the fourth grade. My teacher was Miss
Vivian Maughan. Her family was related to Gwen Maughan, our son
Doug's wife. They all came from the Cache Valley area, mainly
around Wellsville. Miss Maughan was a middle-aged woman, an "old
maid," and I really loved her. She was a lovely person and a
wonderful teacher.
That year, Clint Holmes and I both thought we were in love with a
girl in our class, Phyllis Cedarholm. She was less than thrilled
by her attention. We often called her "Pie Face" just to taunt her
and show our affection. She didn't understand, I'm afraid.
One memorable project we had in fourth grade was the study of the
history of Brigham City, which included a visit to the city Relic
Hall. The Relic Hall was in the basement of the County Court
House. They had some pioneer artifacts there, enough to stimulate
the imagination of the kids and increase our appreciation for the
pioneers. Brigham City was rounded in 1851, so it was 84-years-old
in 1935.
For our study of Brigham City, we also made a movie theater out of
a large refrigerator shipping box, which was made out of thin
plywood sheets. We cut a hole in one side, about 15 inches high
and 20 inches wide and on two broom sticks we mounted two reels
that ran through the box from side to side and on those two reels
were wound a long strip of butcher paper. To the paper, we pasted
a long series of drawings that we made illustrating the history of
Brigham City, as seen by 10 and ll-year-old kids. We would wind
the reels and the pictures would be seen by the audience through
the little hole in our theater.
I remember that Miss Maughan cried openly as she bid us goodbye at
the end of our fourth grade. I often wonder what happened to her.
She was a sweet person and a wonderful teacher. One of the things
she taught us was tenderness and that it was okay to cry if you
felt sad. We learn important things in the most accidental ways,
often by observation rather than by deliberate teaching. I learned
many wonderful things from my school teachers and the older people
in my life.
For Christmas in 1935, I received an electric train. I think I was
too old for it. The most pleasure I got out of it was building a
wooden frame to support its figure-eight railroad track so I didn't
have to keep taking the track apart. How the folks, and the rest
of the family, permitted me to have that train and track in the
house I can hardly imagine, but it indicates how tolerant we were
of one another and our need for space, and our need for room to
play. I kept that train for a long time, but I don't know what
happened to it. I later used the electric transformer from the
train for our erector set, which required a transformer because it
had an electro magnet as part of its equipment. Incidentally, I
still have that erector set here in our basement. I don't know how
I ended up with it, since it was mine and Raymond's, but I was
always the one to take particular care of things.
Marble playing was a favorite pastime when I was ten-years-old.
Our house faced the east. It was made of frame and always painted
white. On the south side of it there was a 12 to 15-foot wide
patch of dirt between the house and the row of cherry trees and the
garden. The reflection of the sun off that white house onto the
snow melted the snow very early in the spring, so it was the first
area in our whole neighborhood to be free of snow. As soon as it
was clear, before it was even very dry, we would begin to play
marbles there. It was the marble playing rink for the whole
neighborhood. We had a score of kids there. We played different
games including Rings, Pots and Fats.
You shoot a marble with the knuckle of your thumb. You hold it
between the knuckle of your thumb and the tip of your index finger.
That's the way you shoot it. Some kids held the marble in their
curled up index finger with the thumb nail behind it. Anyway you
flip your thumb out and that shoots the marble. Coordination,
strength in your hand, and the ability to hold the marble all
combine to determine how skillful you are at shooting marbles.
In Rings you draw a ring on the ground, any diameter you wish,
depending on how far you could shoot a marble. Each player would
put in his "date," which was two or three marbles apiece. They
were arranged in the middle of the circle and we built little
mounds, which we called "innies," out of mud, on which we set the
marble above the level of the ground. Each of the marbles in the
middle was set up on an innie. Then you'd take turns shooting at
the marbles from outside the ring. You shot with a "taw," which
was usually a little larger than the other marbles. You tried to
shoot straight enough, and with enough force, to knock a marble out
of the ring. If you hit a marble out of the ring, you got another
shot. If you were good enough, you could clear the whole ring in
a turn.
Pots required a long, flat, smooth strip of dirt, about 25 feet
long. At one end of that strip there were nine little holes, or
"pots," dug into the soil in an arrangement of three rows, of three
pots each. The holes were dug about nine or ten inches apart.
There were four corner holes, and on each side there was a center
hole, and then there was one hole in the center of them all - nine
holes all together. Each player would put his dates in the center
pot. Then from the other end of the strip we drew a line in the
ground and each of us, in turn, would try to roll his taw into the
center pot and make it stay there. If your taw stayed in the
center pot, all of the marbles in that pot were yours. If you got
into a corner pot, you had to put dates in again. So if the dates
were three marbles, you had to add three more marbles and that was
your turn. If you rolled your taw into one of the side pots, that
is the middle pot on any of the four sides, you could take your
dates out of the center pot. The game was a great deal of fun.
To play Fats, we had a long, smooth strip of soil. At one end of
the dirt we drew a narrow football shape into the ground, about a
foot long and maybe three inches at the widest spot. The players
would line up their dates inside the fat, in a row, right through
the middle of it. From the other end of the strip we would roll
our taw and try to knock marbles out of the fat. Anything that you
knocked out, you kept, but each turn you only rolled once. If you
didn't get anything out, that was still the end of your turn. Of
course, the object was to get all the marbles you could. Harold
was the champion marble player in the neighborhood, I guess. He
always wound up with more marbles than he had to begin with.
Orville was not so much a winner as a destroyer. Orville could
shoot with such force that he broke many marbles by shooting them
so hard against a rock, another marble, or the foundation of the
house. I guess Orville broke more marbles than anyone else in the
neighborhood.
Another thing we did for fun, was swimming. Across the street from
our house, there was a big irrigation canal that ran across the
cemetery from north to south. We called it the three-mile-ditch,
and that's where we learned to swim. It was four or five feet
across and eight to ten inches deep. On each side of the ditch,
willows grew, so you could be in the ditch and be hidden by the
willows. The ditch is still there in the cemetery, but is mostly
covered over with cement.
On the southwest corner of the cemetery there was a home that
occupied about half a city block. It ran from 300 East up to the
ditch and its south border was 500 South and its north border was
about half a block. This big ditch ran across the back, or east
end, of that lot. It was the Tom Johnson home. Tom had about
three wives, one a time; he remarried each time after his first and
second wives died. Both his second and third wives had children of
their own, so it was a big family of half brothers and half sisters
and step brothers and step sisters. There must have been ten or
twelve children, ranging in ages from Shirley all the way up to
kids who were the same age as, and good friends of, my parents.
They had an orchard that was not very well kept.
In the Johnson home they never had running water. They just had a
water hydrant in front of the house from which they obtained all
the water they needed for cooking, washing and bathing. Carrying
all that water, and warming it up, was not too appealing. A couple
of the older boys Elmer, who was about Harold's age, and Robert,
who was two or three years older than Orville, were in their
twenties at this time. They bathed in the three-mile-ditch as
early in the spring and as late in the fall as they could, even
when there was ice on the water that they could break.
Right on the northeast corner of their property was a big weir in
the ditch. A weir is a dam across the ditch, a horizontal board,
which is set there to back the water up, over which the water must
flow and which can serve as a means of dividing the water. At that
point two smaller ditches were branched off from the main ditch.
The farthest west ditch flowed over the Johnson's property and was
their means of watering their land. It crossed 500 South and ran
along 400 East to water all of the people's lots from 500 South to
700 South.
Farther toward the middle of the weir another stream was taken off.
To get it across the first ditch it dropped down into a hole,
formed with concrete walls that flowed west under and across the
first stream. It flowed down the north side of the Johnson's
property clear down to 300 East and then turned south and flowed
down the east side of 300 East all the way to 700 South. That was
called the Field Stream, and it was about three times as large as
the one that flowed in front of our house.
The irrigation ditch that flowed in front of our house was taken
off of the three-mile-ditch up in the cemetery about a block north,
just east of 300 East on 400 South. It flowed down to 300 East on
400 South and there it could be made to flow south, toward our
house, or to the north. The lay of the land was such that 400
South was a high point and the land sloped to the south, west and
north from that corner, which was just north of our house. So
that's how the irrigation stream originated that flowed in front of
our house.
Almost every street in Brigham City had an open irrigation ditch
that flowed along the high side of people's property. Most of the
residential lots at that time were large enough to have a small
orchard of fruit trees and a flower/vegetable garden, that were all
watered with irrigation water.
Well, I don't know what that has to do with my life except I
remember these things so vividly as part of my memory of my
childhood.
Another thing we did a lot to entertain ourselves was to play
rubber guns. We made guns, rifles and pistols, out of wood. Our
ammunition was bands of rubber cut out of automobile inner tubes.
The bands were perhaps half an inch wide and as large as the tube
happened to be. The rifles were about four feet long. Back where
the bolt action on a real rifle would be, we cut a series of
notches. The rubber bands were stretched from the end of the rifle
barrel. You had as many shots as you had notches, and some rifles
has as many as 12. You would just roll the rubber band off the
notch with your thumb, at the back, and it would fly off toward
your target.
The pistols were a little different. They had a pistol-grip
handle. To the back of the pistol-grip handle we would fasten a
clothes pin, wrapping rubber bands around it to hold it on and also
to make it grip tighter. You had only one shot on a pistol. You
fed one end of the folded rubber band into the clothes pin and
stretched the band to the end of the barrel. You'd point the gun
at your target, squeeze the clothes pin, and your shot would fire.
We acquired real skill in the making of these weapons, so that we
could shoot for twenty or thirty feet with some accuracy.
Our favorite style of rubber guns was to divide into two teams and
get into somebody's barn, preferably one that was not full of hay.
We would roam through the hay loft, stable and harness area and
through attached sheds, looking for the "enemy." You'd shoot at
your enemy~ if you hit him, he was dead. Of course, the object was
to kill off the other team.
Orville and Harold were on opposite teams one day when we were
playing in the Hillstrom's barn. A very terrible thing happened
that day. Harold had always called Orville, "Brother." That day
they had an argument. I'm not sure what it was about, but I think
it was over whether a shot had hit its mark. I remember that
Harold swung his rifle and broke it over Orville's back. He hit
him so hard that Orville had imprints on his back from the notches
of the rifle. It was bitter fight between two brothers. The
reason I remember it so well is that Harold no longer called
Orville "Brother" after that. If he spoke to him at all, in the
weeks that followed, he called him Orville, or something else. It
was a wound in their sweet friendship that lasted for some time.
It was a long time before they felt good toward each other. I
remember this as one of the rare instances in our neighborhood
playing where such strong feelings were generated. We usually got
along quite peacefully. Of course, Orville and Harold are on good
terms now, and have been their whole lives, except for that brief
time of healing after that fight.
Tape 4, Side A
1935 and 1936. My life became a very mixture of activities. Home
chores, working on the farm, school, playing with the kids in the
neighborhood and some hobby activity.
The lives of my brothers and sisters and parents were busier in
these years and a lot of that would be interesting to include so
I'll try to tell the story but it may be chopped up with things
that are out of order and unrelated.
I ought to say something about Daddy's farm here, because changes
took place about 1936. Daddy and Uncle Ira had bought the farm in
1922. Since 1932, when Daddy started working for Brigham City,
Uncle Ira had been managing the farm. Daddy hired men to help with
the farm work, representing his side of the partnership and Harold,
now reaching the age 15 or 16 began to work on the farm, just like
a grown man. Orville also worked on the farm, but not nearly as
much as Harold.
The farm was 51 1/2 acres. The north boundary was 700 South, west
boundary was the west side of 400 East Street. None of the North
South streets extended South of 700 South. The farm extended from
the west side of 400 East to the west side of what would have been
700 East, if there had been a 700 East. It was about 1200 feet
east and west and it extended South of 700 South about 1900 feet.
A sad thing happened in the summer of 1935, which resulted in a
bitter division between Daddy and Uncle Ira, and also a division of
the farm. During the winter, spring and summer, Mom and Dad
charged their groceries on a bill at Wren Smith's store. Wren
Smith was the father of Dee Smith, who later rounded the Smith Food
King chain throughout the Intermountain states.
Daddy would pay that bill in the fall out of the proceeds of the
cash crops raised during the summer. At the end of the summer of
1935, Daddy's cash share of the farm's activity was not enough even
to pay his grocery bill. At that same time, Uncle Ira bought a new
Ford car. And this resulted in a bitter controversy between them
and very hard feelings. Daddy thought that Uncle Ira had cheated
him. So they decided to split the farm, dividing it up and down
north and south.
Uncle Ira took the west part and my Dad took the east half of the
farm and they operated them separately. And in the couple of years
following, Daddy would hire a man to do a lot of the work for him
in the summer, since Harold wasn't able to do it all.
Raymond and I were expected to do some work on the farm and we
gradually were able to do more as we got a little older. At this
time, what it amounted to was picking cherries in the summertime
and helping to gather, out of the orchards, the branches that were
pruned off when Daddy pruned the fruit trees. He usually pruned
them during the months of February and March. We really hated
gathering those limbs. It wasn't bad but we didn't like it much.
We spent some of our time dreaming of a wood magnet that would draw
the branches right out of the orchard and into a pile. Our
invention didn't get very far, though.
We picked cherries, that generally came on the end of June. We had
cherries to pick in the orchard around the house and also on the
farm. Daddy had to hire a number of pickers for the fruit trees on
the farm. He hired many school kids and young adults, unmarried,
usually. And also married people. These were Depression years.
The Great Depression began about 1932, and many people, married
people with children even, picked fruit as a way of earning a few
dollars. Work was very scarce during the 30's.
I wasn't much of a fruit picker. I would pick two or three bushels
of cherries. We would get one or two cents a pound, or about 50 to
75 cents a bushel. Then, being kids, being kids, being the 4th of
July, we'd take off, take our money, go off downtown and buy a six
shooter cap gun to celebrate the 4th of July.
One of the most interesting stores in downtown Brigham City was
Compton's. It was called Compton's Art and Music Store. It's
still there in Brigham City, being run by Glen Compton, a man my
age. He's the fourth generation of that family to run that store,
located on the corner of Street and First South.
There was very interesting merchandise in there - small toys, such
as cars, marbles. They had the most wonderful assortment of
marbles. They were also a photography studio and had been since
the days of Glen's great grandfather when the store was set up in
the late 1800's.
My scribbled notes are such a mixture for these years I think I'll
just go down the page and mention what I have written down. Maybe
when this recording is transcribed onto paper we can arrange these
things in a more meaningful pattern.
I have mentioned here construction of a new gymnasium at Box Elder
High School. I think the gym still stands; it is all that is left
of that high school campus. This was a good project for the city.
It created work for a number of men and some activity in the
economy. Very good building too; it was the center of much
wonderful activity in the high school.
I've made a note here, too, of an accident my mother had. It may
have been even two or three years earlier than this. She was
opening a bottle of fruit, trying to take the lids off with a
butcher knife, which maybe wasn't very wise. She slipped and the
butcher knife cut into her wrist and severed an artery. The blood
spurted out very, very fast. She would have bled to death in a few
minutes if it had not been for her own quick acting. She grabbed
her wrist, pressed it as tight as she could, and she ran to Fanny
Christensens, half a block south of us. Fanny took over, no doubt
applied a compress to stop the bleeding and took her to the
hospital. I'm sure this saved my Mother's life.
I'd like to mention here some other things that we did for
recreation as kids. Our recreation changed as we got a little bit
older. One of the very enjoyable, memorable things that we did as
a gang of kids in the neighborhood was to get together in the
evening, after dark, and we'd play street games under the street
light down on the corner by Fanny Christensen's. Some of the games
we played were Run Sheepie Run, Capture the Flag, Slips, Red Rover,
there were others too. It didn't matter much what game we played.
The fun was the excitement and mystery of being out in the dark,
and being half scared of the dark when we got away from the big
street light. But being together with friends was most of the fun.
I have a note here about the hills east of Brigham City. We played
on the hills, just south of Boxelder Canyon, winter and summer.
Every Easter we would hike all the way to what we called Slide
Rocks. It was a talice (spY) pile made of big rock fragments that
had crumbled off of a cliff over the centuries. As you probably
know, this whole area was once covered by Lake Bonneville, some
thousands of years ago and the action of the water, the waves and
the lake, wore ridges on the hills east of Brigham City. We called
them benches and they marked different levels of the lake which
lasted for perhaps hundreds of years. So the action of the waves
took place over a long enough period of time that it wore an actual
ridge on the base of the mountains. We had first, second and third
bench and Slide Rocks was up on third bench above Daddy's farm.
And every Easter we would hike up there with our sack lunches and
easter eggs and goodies.
At this time, 1935, when I was only 10 or 11 years old, that was a
long hike. It was even longer for Raymond who was only eight. We
did this hike every year into our high school years.
In winter we did a lot of our sleigh riding on the mountains. I
remember one interesting activity that my father engaged in those
early Depression years. Fuel for the stoves was very scarce. My
Dad went up in the hills above the farm and cut down Maple trees
and hauled them downtown. He cut them up and sold them for
firewood, or we used them ourselves. Some of those trees were very
large, up to 10 to 12 inches in diameter. They had no doubt been
there growing for a long, long time. I don't think that there are
any trees up there now of that dimension.
The interesting thing is the way he harvested those trees. He
would cut them down, then tie two or three of the trunks together
and pull them down the hill with a team of horses. Dragging these
limbs through the sage brush on the hill created the drag trail
straight down the hill. In the winter, some of the braver sleigh
riders would ride those trails straight down the mountain. A
couple of those brave sleigh riders were Orville and Harold. They
would ride the sleigh piggy back, with one on the sleigh and the
other on top of him. They would go very, very fast. Once they
went off the trail and uprooted a sage brush with the front of the
sleigh. One of the boys got his face pretty scarred up and his
face cut up that day. The other one wasn't hurt. The very next
day, the one who wasn't hurt and repeated the process and he got
battered up. I .don't know whether they tried it a third time or
not! But Orville and I did the same dumb trick later on, although
we didn't go down a drag trail. I'll leave that story
until 1946,where I've made a note of it.
One of the fun activities at Christmastime that I remember vividly
was how they decorated Main Street with Christmas lights. It was
very simple. The had strings of lights with large bulbs in them,
the size of a small orange, and they strung them across from pole
to pole over Main between First North and Second South. Those
lights were a very pretty sight and, in my opinion, those are the
only kinds of Christmas lights that should be put up. They had all
colors - red, green, blue.
Another thing connected with Christmas that the community did, I
think it was the Chamber of Commerce, that would put this project
together. The grocery merchants in town, maybe all of the
merchants, would contribute to it. They would prepare a good-size
paper lunch bag full of candy, nuts and an orange for each child in
Brigham City. Santa Claus would come to the court house in Brigham
City and give one to each kid. During those hard times, that bag
of candy may have been the best part of Christmas for many
children. They were poor times and there wasn't much money for
most families.
Christmas of 1935 or 1936, I made a sad discovery. I learned that
Santa Claus was not quite the character that we were told about in
the stories. My sister Barbara was five years old in 1936, and
Santa Claus brought her a doll buggy. I remember not being asleep
on Christmas Eve. The folks knew we were in bed and thought we
were asleep, but I had not fallen asleep so I remember seeing my
father come down on the basement stairs, step into one of the dark
holes and bring out that doll buggy. I wished I hadn't seen it,
but we all have to learn who Santa Claus is sooner or later.
Another memorable practice we had in connection with a holiday was
on Decoration Day, which was always on May 30. It was a big
celebration for us; we lived close to the cemetery so there was a
lot of excitement for us with everyone coming to visit the graves
of their family. Daddy's parents, and his grandparents, and other
relatives were buried in Brigham Cemetery. In those days there was
no grass; most of the cemetery was just dirt. We'd go up a few
days before Memorial Day, pull all the weeds out of the cemetery
plot of my Grandma and Grandpa Larsen, and mound up the dirt to
indicate where the graves were. Daddy would go up to a place on
the foothills north of Brigham City to the Beecher Family Farm.
They had some springs that came out of the side of the hill, hear
round, which created a damp spot where wild ferns grew. My Dad
would arrange with the Beechers to get some of those ferns and he'd
get enough so that we could cover the graves with those flat, green
ferns. I thought this was quite an attractive expression of love
and caring for the dead. It was a high day, the cleaning of the
cemetery lot and going after the ferns.
My sister Shirley was born in 1936, June 1st. I don't remember it
being particularly good to have a baby around again. Mom seemed to
be busy enough without that, but she made room for another one.
Shirley was a cute little blond with a lot of hair.
For Christmas 1936, Raymond and I received as a joint gift from
Santa Claus an electric powered erector set. The erector set was
made up of different shaped pieces of metal shaped like the girders
and plates of which building frames and machinery are made. You'd
put these pieces together with little nuts and bolts and you had
little tools and wheels, axles, gears, and make machinery. You
could made derrick, cranes, bridges.
I still have that erector set here in the basement of our home. I
was always one who took care of things. I don't particularly enjoy
playing with it but I sure enjoyed taking care of it.
One of my sweetest memories of childhood, which is the annual
Toyland that appeared in JC Penny Company's store every November.
We didn't have toy stores in those days; we didn't have toys except
at Christmas time. There were little toys, such as miniature
trucks, other times of the year, but children for poor families,
ordinary families like ours, generally only received toys at
Christmas time.
Another Christmas gift I remember was when Santa Claus gave Raymond
and me a wagon with air-filled pneumatic balloon tires. It had a
stream-lined metal body and the wheels were covered on the sides
like a car, so you only saw the lower half. The wagon had two,
round glass-covered headlights in the front that were run with
flashlight batteries.
It was a beautiful toy and about the only wagon of that type in
Brigham City. We saw it in JC Penneys Toyland and drooled over it
and must have impressed our folks with the necessity of getting it
for us. It was a beautiful gift and what happened to that wagon is
a story in itself.
I got the notion when we'd had the wagon for a year or so that I
wanted the wheels to be spring-loaded like a car's. So I cut the
bracket that supported the back axle and tried to mount four coil
springs from an automobile. These were stiff coils about one inch
wide and four inches high. I wasn't successful in mounting them so
that the wheels would remain in place. As soon as we got in the
wagon the rear wheels collapsed. Orville took the wheels up to his
shop at school and built a flat-rack wooden body for them. So the
stream lined wagon became a flat-bed wagon and wasn't nearly as
much fun to play with after that, but maybe more practical, I don't
know. But he salvaged our toy, anyway.
The interesting thing about this is that my father didn't chastise
me for doing that to the wagon. I actually destroyed the wagon,
but I was trying to make something and my Dad could see that. I
never remember a single word of criticism directed at me for that
goof. I don't believe I got much praise for it, but he let me
learn my lesson from my own failure.
This might be a good time to talk about how we were raised by our
parents as far as discipline was concerned. We were given a lot of
freedom as children, and a lot of responsibility. The older ones
looked out for the younger ones. Often when we played, we were
doing ~hings that were quite dangerous, but if we were ever
chastised for it I don't have much recollection of it.
We were never spanked, beaten or whipped. I say never. The only
recollection I have of being spanked was when I was a tiny boy,
perhaps five or six, and I stole a nickel out of my Dad's pocket.
I showed up with a nickels worth of candy and said I had found the
nickel. I guess I wasn't very convincing and must have confessed
that I took the nickel, because I got a spanking for that. I don't
recall ever stealing anything again since then. I've really tried
to distinguish clearly between what is mine and what is not.
I think we were all raised that way. Our parents had a lots of
patience with us and trusted us and we responded. I think we've
all grown up to be fairly honest and honorable people.
In school in my fifth grade, which was 1935 and 1936, I had a
teacher named Leola Sealy. She was a tiny woman and was the sister
of the man that I had later as a teacher in the 9th grade. I don't
know whether she ever married.
During this time of my life we enjoyed swimming in Bally's bond.
Bally was the nickname of Wallace Johnson, who had a farm up on the
side of the hill above my father's farm. Mr. Johnson had about
four children, who were around the same age as we kids were. Above
his house he had a water storage pond built into the side of the
hill in which he captured the water running out of Dunne's Canyon,
south of Boxelder Canyon. The water was cold and clear and his
pond was quite deep and it was the favorite swimming hole for our
whole end of town. We all learned to swim there. It was a
dangerous place but generally there were older kids around to look
out for the little ones.
I don't remember anyone ever drowning there, but we had a couple
close calls. I remember we nearly lost Raymond one of the summers
in the middle 30's. He didn't know how to swim very well. We used
the inner tubes out of car tires, the same as they use tubes now,
for life preservers. Raymond wrapped an inner tube around his
waist and went out into the deep water. The tube was wrapped
around him tight enough that it stayed on him, but he flipped over
so he was head down, feet thrashing in the air. He surely would
have drowned but Fred Forsgren was there, who was about Yvonne's
age, and he swam out and rescued Raymond.
Bally's pond was deep enough for diving. I remember Clint Holmes
father, Dell Holmes, supervised some of the older boys in building
a diving board. They built it in Dell's back yard, out of 2 x 12
fir planks nailed one on top of another with each plank protruding
a little further than the last so the diving board was tapered and
flexible. I remember it took 15 kids to carry that diving board
from Del's back yard up the hill to Bally's pond. They mounted it
in the gravel bank of the pond, weighted down with big rocks and
sand bags. It never was very successful. The first heavy man or
boy who jumped on the diving board either tipped it over or broke
a plank. It didn't amount to much - rather a vain exercise, but it
was a good idea. The diving board was typical of the efforts that
everyone made in those ideas to entertain ourselves. We didn't
have any money so we tried lots of things to have fun.
Another example of this home entertainment equipment was in the
cemetery across the street from our house. The west part of the
cemetery was unused and was an open all alfa field. We used the
area several summers to build track and field area. Where we set
up high jumping pole vaulting, broad jumping pits and structures..
We cut some big limbs out of the poplar trees for the uprights of
the high jump standards and we even got some high enough to
challenge the pole vaulters. This was quite dangerous because we
didn't use strong enough poles for pole vaulting and a number of
times the pole vaulters broke their poles. It's a wonder that
someone wasn't seriously hurt. But we dug up the soil to make a
soft pit and sometimes mixed it with sawdust or straw to make it
softer. We had a lot of fun; it was just as much fun as
professional equipment would have been, probably more. The making
of the equipment was most of the fun.
In 1936 and 1937, I was in the Sixth Grade at the Central School.
My teacher was Grant Valentine. Grant is still alive as of this
time, 1992. I talked with him just a few weeks ago. He's eighty
years old. He was a wonderful teacher although he taught only a
year-and-a-half, then he went into business. During that year he
read to us after noon hour each day, Gene Stratton Porter's book
Girl of the Limberlost. That was most enjoyable and gave us a
taste for really good fiction.
In my Sixth Grade year Melvin Thayne moved to Brigham City with his
family, after the school year had begun. Mel joined our class and
we've been good friends ever since.
My brother Orville graduated from high school in 1937. Harold was
a grown man at 16 and he was running the farm for Daddy. I believe
it was this summer of '37 that Orville had an interesting job with
Leonda Holtz, whom we called Tully Holtz. Tully had a heard of
turkeys that were kept on the sand flat east of Boxelder High
School on the North side of the highway that goes into Boxelder
Canyon. Orville got the job to tend those turkeys that summer. He
had to stay with them night and day. He lived in a sheep herders
wagon. We had some interesting times when we went up to visit him.
When we stayed overnight, sleeping out on the sand flat, which was
really a June Grass flat, our bedding got filled with June Grass
seeds. Orville had an alarm clock with a phosphorescent luminous
dial that glowed in the faint light of the stars, the moon and the
city. It was quite a magic thing to me as I had never seen such a
thing before.
Orville wanted an evening off to go to a show with friends one
night and asked Raymond and me to stay with the turkeys. The
complication was that we were also tending Shirley, but we took
Shirley and went up to the wagon, which was by Boxelder Creek.
Shirley still took a bottle and in preparing her milk, the bottle
broke on the stove.
There we were; Shirley was hungry and started to cry and we didn't
know what to do. We were 10 and 12 years old. Across the creek,
up on the highway, there was one house. We crossed the creek with
Shirley and went over to that house and asked the people to give us
a ride home. I don't know what those people thought of us being up
on the flats alone with our baby sister. But in those days that
wasn't a very uncommon thing because kids assumed responsibility
pretty young and there weren't the fears of dangerous people around
who might harm us as there are such fears today. For all the years
afterward I remember that incident every time we drive by that
highway.
In 1937, I remember that Fred Forsgren's dad, Oliver "Ollie"
Forsgren bought a new Chev Sedan. The Depression was easing up
for some people if they had regular work and there were a few cars
appearing. Hyrum Malmrose also always had a nice Chev pickup
truck. He kept such good care of it, it always looked like new,
even if it was several years old. Hyrum pedaled fruit with his
truck and often bought fruit from my Dad. Myrum was the janitor at
Central School, so we got to know him quite well; he had six or
seven kids the same ages as us children and we were good friends.
Tape 4 Side B

Orville's hobby with cars and the family farm came together in an
interesting way in the Thirties. Orville worked for Rudd Victor,
who had an automobile wrecking yard down on Main Street, just north
of the Tabernacle. Through Orville's contact, Daddy obtained an
old Dodge Truck that had been a delivery van. They cut the top of
the van body off, even with the hood of the car, and left the sides
with the doors removed so that the seat was open. There was no top
and no windshield and the back served as a kind of pickup truck.
We called this the Whopee and it was the family's only car until
1941.
Daddy was still working for Brigham City and had worked himself up
to Superintendent of all of Brigham's utilities, including the
water and sewer systems, streets, parks and the cemetery. The
electric power service was run by one of Daddy's old schoolmates,
Orion Eskelson.
To promote business and community spirit during the summer every
year, the City would give tickets in conjunction with purchases
from the stores of downtown Brigham. These tickets were numbered
for a raffle drawing in the fall, about the time school started.
I remember the prizes were significant. They gave away two cars.
One was a full-size American car, usually a Sedan. The other was
a little British car called an Austin, which was smaller than our
subcompacts today, hardly wide enough for two people to sit side by
side. It was a magic thing to see that little car running around
town~ it was more like a toy than a car.
I developed a special interest in geographical maps at this time
and drew many maps myself. I would get large tag-board sheets from
either the Reminder Office Supply Store or the Boxelder Journal
Newspaper and drew large-scale maps of the different Continents and
of the United States. I drew a couple maps of the world. The
largest map measured about 6 feet wide by 4 feet high and folded
into four parts. I still have this map along with some of the
others. Most of them bear the date of 1937 or 1938.
One of the popular hobbies of the times was making wood carvings.
You would take a piece of soft pine wood, shape it like a picture
frame, draw a picture on it, then crave three-dimensional engraving
into the wood. This was done in school as well as at home. I
tried a few of them, but don't believe I was much of an artist,
although I liked to fool around with it. I remember one carving
I made that was a desert scene. There was a camel and its master
in a desert oasis, with pine trees. I thought it was beautiful; it
was probably chopped up for kindling wood a year or so later!
In the Sixth Grade we put on an operetta. I was one of perhaps 24
boys who were called Night Serenaders. We dressed up a little like
Italian Troubadours in bright colored pantaloons, vests, and shirts
with big full sleeves, with a sash around the waist and a French
beret. We came out between acts and entertained the crowd while
they changed scenery behind the curtain. I think we sang soprano
and alto. About the only song I can remember is "Fair Maples
Sleeping." They were pretty songs.
During these later 30's as the economy improved a little bit, our
parents could afford to let us go to the movie once a week, which
cost one dime. Before the main feature, they often showed an
episode of an adventure movie serial, such as "Tarzan," or "Flash
Gordon." The serials were cut into about 12 parts, with each
segment ending with the hero in a precarious situation. You had to
come back next week to see if he survived or perished, or rescued
the beautiful girl.
Also a feature of the weekly movie were the news reels. The one I
remember best was called "The March of Time." I still remember the
theme music that played over and over every week. The news reels
acquainted us a little bit with what was going on in the world. It
was a much kinder introduction into the world than our modern-day
televisions where they bring into your front room all the gore,
scandal, and tragedy everywhere, as it happens.
In those days, much of the "current" news on the news reels was
already a month or so old. We became aware of the approach of
World War II, although no one could see what was coming, at least
among the people I associated with. Japan was attacking China and
the news reels showed the Japanese war planes bombing the Chinese
cities. This was dreadful; it was unheard of for airplanes to be
dropping bombs on human beings and machine-gunning them as they
tried to escape.
After graduation, Harold took a trip with a man named Charles
Dredge. Charles was little bit older than Orville and had been out
of school for several years. He had a small truck and had gone
into the fruit pedaling business. As he prospered he bought a
larger truck. Today, on the highway you'll see numerous big-rigs
with C.H. Dredge and Company on the them, so he has prospered.
Charles was a "man about town" at that time. He had a car and some
money and he invited Harold to go with him to the New York World's
fair. It must have been a great adventure for them.
School was interesting in junior high. We had friends who came in
from other towns and schools in the county. Brigham City also had
another grade school, the Lincoln School, which was in the north
end of town and still stands today. As I said, the original
Central School Building burned down in 1947 and was replaced with
the building that is there today.
Raymond and I were expected to do more farm work now that we were
getting older. Among our duties were to ride the horse when Harold
used one horse to pull a row cultivator, to cultivate the row-crops
- cantaloupes, watermelons, tomatoes. It was all he could do to
guide the cultivator so it wouldn't cut out the plants. He needed
one of us to ride the horse to keep it from walking on the plants.
It was a hot, tedious job, but it was necessary and I think we
contributed some real help by doing that.
Another of our jobs was to hoe out the weeds that grew around the
fruit trees. First Harold would run a two-horse cultivator through
the orchard. The cultivator had a wide blade about 8-feet long,
which was pulled under the ground and removed the weeds. But you
couldn't get the cultivator close to the tree trunks, so Raymond
and I would use a grubbing hoe around the trees to pull out the
rest of the weeds.
Our annual job of gathering the limbs after pruning continued
through all the years that we had the farm.
Daddy began to raise a lot of strawberries in the late Thirties.
He had about three acres of strawberries. Strawberries are a very
hard crop to raise, very labor intensive. It takes a lot of hands
to pick them and they have to be picked at the right time. He
would hire a lot of school kids to help and my mother was the
supervisor of the strawberry pickers. I remember getting up before
dawn on those mornings in May, having Corn Flakes for breakfast,
and getting down to the farm before daybreak.
I wasn't much of a strawberry picker. I wasn't very fast and I
think I spent a lot of time daydreaming on these jobs. Some of my
friends were super pickers. Melvin Thayne was a very fast berry
picker and bean picker, as were Clint Holmes and Wayne Whitworth,
a neighbor. We picked several hundred cases each picking and the
berries would last through most of the month of June.
I remember my friends gave my Mom a nickname, Missie Lassie, and
she became good friends with those kids. My mother made friends
with many of our school friends and neighborhood friends; she
related very well to them.
Orville joined the Army Air Force in the summer of 1938 and went
off to Hamilton Field in California. He wasn't very happy with his
decision. He didn't like the life-style and discipline, but he was
going to have quite a bit of it in the next seven years with World
War II on the horizon.
I turned 14 in 1938, just soon after the beginning of the Eighth
Grade. I liked the Eighth Grade; it was an exciting year,
especially Mr. Wilford Freeman's science class. Early in the fall
we studied astronomy and I became acquainted with the
constellations and planets. It began a life-long interest that
I've had in astronomy. In the years since I've read books and
drawn star charts and have constantly watched the sky, the motions
of the planets, and especially the interesting motion of the moon
through the months and through the years.
I had Austin Larsen for math and Roland Gurley for history, which
was the history of Utah. I had Miss Davis for English and I had
Grant Prisbee for gym. Ray Payne was my wood shop teacher. We had
wood shop for half a year and art for the other half of the year,
which Harold Madsen taught. I liked both classes very much, but
especially wood shop. One happy memory from the eighth grade is at
Christmas I was in charge of a committee to decorate the halls for
Christmas. We built some beautiful frame boxes, covered with
cellophane paper. Inside these boxes we mounted electric lights
and then the boxes were mounted down the center of the hallway. We
built a total of six, three for each floor, then we strung garland
across the halls and had some Christmas trees with ornaments. We
did a good job decorating the halls for Christmas.
Another activity that I didn't have much success at was a
partnership with John Stewart in publishing a little dittoed, or
mimeographed, newspaper which we called The Weekly Splash. It
didn't last very many weeks; it wasn't my bag. I'm not much of a
journalist, or writer; I have trouble getting my thoughts on paper
and also have trouble getting them onto tape. I drew a few
illustrations for it and we had fun. John Stewart, incidentally,
later married my second cousin, Alice Knudson.
Also in 1938, I obtained a job as a newspaper boy for the Salt Lake
Tribune, a job which I held for four years or so. I was able to
earn quite a bit of money with it and bought some interesting
things, including a telescope through Montgomery Ward Catalog. I
also designed and built a couple of different tripods to support
the telescope. I enjoyed that telescope, but I have to admit that
I got awfully tired of craning my neck to look up overhead. It was
a long refractor type telescope, which meant it had to be supported
above your head in order for you to look upward.
About the same time I became a newspaper boy, we were making a
little more money with our fruit picking and our work on the farm.
Raymond and I went together and bought a new Schwinn, balloon-tired
bicycle. It was a beautiful cherry red and we were very proud of
it.
Many changes come into a boy's life as he reaches puberty. I was
not rebellious at all. I developed some habits that weren't
especially good. I pretended to hate girls, but secretly inside I
really liked them and wanted very much to have girl friends. This
created some kind of phoniness, or insincerity in my behavior.
I was hypocritical, and developed some bad habits at that time.
I developed a habit of masturbation at that time that became a
problem for years to come. I don't know how much I should say
about that. People don't talk much about their personal sex lives,
but I want to put it on the record that I had that problem and it
was a struggle of many years to overcome it. I was introduced to
it by older boys. It was one of the bad things that older kids
taught the younger kids.
Anyway, I was a deacon in the Priesthood at this time. Attending
Priesthood meeting occasionally, not regularly. I didn't go to
mutual very often and boy scouting had died out in our ward. They
didn't have a scout master and it wasn't functioning very well. I
did enjoy passing the Sacrament and went to Sacrament Meeting
occasionally to do that. We passed the sacrament in Sunday School,
too. I usually attended, and liked, Sunday School. I liked the
class work which was very much like school, which I dearly loved.
About this time, the boy scout program was revived in Brigham 6th
Ward, after several years of lapse. Jay Edwin Baird became the
scout master. He was a big, handsome Utah Highway Patrol man. The
trouble was I was a little bit old for scouting at age 14. A
better age to get into scouting is 11 or 12 and the magic that I
saw in my older brothers' scouting experience never quite
materialized for me. But Raymond and I did go on a boy scout
camping trip to Camp Kiesel, which is in Old Kazi canyon, east of
Huntsville, up Ogden Canyon, east of Pineview Reservoir.
Huntsville is the hometown of President David O. McKay and his
family.
Raymond and I went on a one-week scout trip to Camp Kiesel, and it
was a disaster. We weren't well prepared. Our leaders didn't give
us very good guidance on what to take for food. We carried some
canned goods. We didn't know how to cook. We ran out of food
after a couple of days and wound up eating all-day-suckers for the
rest of the week.
On the very first day the trucks hauled us up to the foot of Big
Monte Cristo Mountain, and the plan was for us to hike seven or
eight miles over the mountain into Camp Kiesel. Since our packs
were filled with canned goods, they were too heavy, and it was a
long hike. I had an accident which Raymond and I have enjoyed
laughing about in the years since then. I had to go to the toilet
and we were out on the bare side of the hill with only shrubbery
and a 45 degree slope. I left the trail to take care of business,
and as I was getting up I lost my balance and stepped in my own
mess. It got all over my pants leg and I didn't have any way to
clean it off, so I cut my pants leg off below the knee and that
took care of the problem.
I lived in Boy Scout camp that whole week with my one pants leg cut
off at the knee and no one ever asked me for an explanation.
Raymond was the only one who knew what happened and he really gave
me a hard time that week. Every time he looked at me, he laughed
at me. It was one of those things that turns out to be a life-long
pleasure to recall - a mixed pleasure of embarrassment and humor.
One of my hobbies at this age was building things out of wood. My
dad, in his job, frequently brought home used lumber that had been
used for concrete forms and then discarded. But to me it was a
real treasure. I liked to build wagons. We'd use doll buggy
wheels and I'd build a car on those wheels. I remember one time I
came across a sturdy set of coaster wheels and I built a car out of
one inch pine wood. Before I got through it must have weighed a

hundred pounds or so. I even built a headlight, a square box with
a glass front, on the front of it, in which I'd mount a candle and
supposedly it would give light for night driving. I lined the
inside of the box with shiny tin to make it reflect the light out.
I don't think it cast much light on the road ahead, but it was fun.
I liked to build things as a boy, which was preparation for one of
the great pleasures of my life. After Roberta and I moved into the
Miller Street house I got into a life-long project of remodeling
that house. No doubt that was a result of my childhood delight of
building things with wood.
For Christmas in 1938 or 1939, I received a chemistry set. It was
a very beautiful toy. I built a laboratory for it in my bedroom,
which my brothers probably didn't appreciate since we all shared
the room, sleeping in two twin beds, which didn't leave much room
for anything else. The table was about four or five feet long and
three feet wide. I cut a hole into it and inserted a laboratory
sink that I built out of a tin pan. I soldered a funnel into the
bottom of it and attached a hose to it which ran down into the
cabinet. Then I fastened the chemistry set cabinet to the table
top.
The whole set of little boxes and chemicals was enclosed in a wood
cabinet with double doors that opened up out to the front. There
was an alcohol lamp and some test tubes and couple of flasks and a
couple of beakers along with a book of experiments. I don't
remember performing many experiments with that chemistry set~ I was
much more interested with keeping everything in place on the little
shelves. I liked keeping it in order. That was much more
important than playing with it. I've been that way about some
other things - tools, and shelves full of books that I haven't read
but I enjoy looking at. It's a funny trait that I have.
Tape 5 Side A
With the money I bought from my paper route I bought a bookshelf from
Montgomery Ward, a nice piece of furniture, through the Montgomery Ward
catalog in the fall of 1939, the beginning of my 9th grade. I began to buy
books. Books were not very expensive then. You could buy a well bound book
for a couple of dollars. (00:49) I bought a lot of books, more than I
could read and some of them I haven't read yet. I also bought an
Encyclopedia Britanica Junior set and a book shelf for them. Most of the
money for that I made selling Sunday Salt Lake Tribunes. The war in Europe,
World War 2 in Europe broke out in earnest in September of 1939 when Germany
invaded Poland and Britain and France declared war on Germany. (01:38) So
gradually we all became aware of the approach of WW2. I guess most of us
felt that we would get involved in it sooner or later. My interest in
building things extended to building little huts or little houses. Some of
them were partly excavated, that is they were half in the ground, half in
the ground half above the ground with a willow bowery for a top for a roof.
Then I became quite sophisticated and wanted to build a hut out of wood and
for some reason I built it behind the barn and attached it, nailed it, to
the barn. I don't know wherever I got the idea that I could nail a hut to
the side of my father's new barn. It was only a few years old. It was a
very fine barn as I described earlier when he built it. The first hut I
built that way was about eight feet long four feet wide (03:12) five feet
high. It wasn't a very good one. I lined it with paste board. The roof
leaked. It never was very satisfactory. But it gave me experience which
with a little bit of training at wood shop at school in a couple of years in
the 7th, 8th, and 9th grades, later on I built a finer hut also nailed to
the back of the barn. This one was about ten feet long and 5 feet wide and
high enough, six feet high, high enough that I could stand up in it. I got
more use out that one. I'll talk about it more a little later I think.
(04:24) My dad never said anything to me about my presumption in nailing my
huts to his new barn. Never criticized me, never told me to tear them down,
never punished me. I guess he was an unusually understanding dad. (04:48)
In the spring of 1940 Yvonne graduated from high school and that fall she
was chosen as Peach Queen for Brigham City's Peach Day celebration. 1940
was an election year. Franklin D Roosevelt was running for his third term
which was unheard of before that time. His challenger was a republican,
Wendel Wilkie. He was what is called a dark horse candidate. He was
chosen in the Republican National Convention, but didn't have a very, wasn't
very widely known in the nation, but radio made it possible for him to talk
to the nation. He became well known and ran a very good campaign, would
have made a good president, but President Roosevelt was reelected. (06:18)
At this time Raymond sold me his share of our bike, our Schwinn bicycle, and
he bought one on his own. I was too finicky about his use of our bicycle, I
think. I was critical of him that he didn't stand it up all the time, that
he laid it down and wasn't as fussy with it as I was. I was probably
overbearing and that was his way of solving the problem. (7:01) In 1940
with WW2 underway in Europe the United States government instituted a peace
time draft, conscription of men into the armed forces. My sister Shirley
who was just 4 years old in June of 1940 came down with a very strange
illness that the doctors never did understand, never could explain. Her
tissues swelled, puffed up. Her head swelled up to twice its size until her
eyes were just mere slits, (8:05) and uh, her hair fell out. She lost all
of the hair on her head. She was in the hospital for several weeks and mom
and dad and Harold took turns staying by her bedside, night and day, until
she was well. (8:28) She recovered without anyone ever knowing what her
problem was. The doctors were puzzled; some kind of strange virus. She did
recover her hair. It grew back in, but it took a couple of years. In the
fall of 40 I began the 10th grade, and in that year my father's farm was
more successful than it had been ever before. He finally made a little bit
of money and he bought a new ford pickup. It had a stake bed, that is a
flat bed body with rack sides, a beautiful green truck. The draft was
beginning to take many men. My brother Orvil who was in the airforce had
been transferred to the salt Lake army airbase which was near the airport at
that time, and he came home on weekends and began to court Gay Daley, a girl
who worked at the Peach City ice cream parlor in Brigham City where Orvil
met her. They fell in love. Gay lived in Clarkston Utah over in Cache
Valley. Orvil borrowed daddy's ford truck to drive over to Clarkston to
visit Gay and have a date with her. He had been driving back and forth so
often and at such late hours that he fell asleep when he was, well I don't
know whether he fell asleep, but he must have been drowsy. Anyway, he
wrecked the Ford truck out in Honeyvail Utah north of Brigham City. He hurt
his back in that accident and his back gave him trouble for years, but also
created some injuries which led to his being discharged from the Air Force
about a year later, I think in 1941. I had been ordained a priest this
winter, 1940-41, so I was permitted to administer to the sacrament in church
and I enjoyed that, started attending priesthood class a little more often.
As I've said before, I've always attended Sunday school and liked it. This
winter I was invited to take a teacher training class that was administered
by the stake. It was taught at the Box Elder high school seminary by a
woman named Ellen Robery Hinkley. She was the wife of the high school
principal, FA Hinkley. I enjoyed her class and after I had graduated I was
given a calling to teach a Sunday School class in our Brigham City 6th ward.
(12:51) The class was 16 year olds, kids my own age. I'm not sure how well
that worked out. Probably more of an ego trip for me. The church meetings
for our ward were being held in the stake tabernacle at this time while our
ward house was being redecorated. Our Sunday school class was held on the
north balcony. (13:30) My Aunt Ann Kotum commented a number of times how
proud she of me she was that I was active in the church and teaching that
Sunday school class. The school year of 1941-42 was a time of considerable
change in our family, in the country. Of course in 1941 December 7th, the
Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, taking us into WW2, and another blow to our
family, particularly to my father, followed soon after in February of 1942.
The federal government condemned a big block of farm land in the south side
of Brigham City, taking the land for construction of Bushnell Army General
Hospital. That took my father's farm and about 200 additional acres from
other farmers around there. It was a terrible blow to my father. (15:20)
He dearly loved that farm and he had worked on it for 20 years improving it
continually, planted acres and acres of new orchards which were just
beginning to bear. He had it at a point where he would have made a lot of
money. He was an excellent farmer and would have been a wealthy man, and a
happy man, if that had not happened.
Orvil, Harold and Yvonne all married in June and July of 1942. They were
all married in the Logan Temple. Orvil married Gay Daley. Harold married
Alta Forsgren, a neighbor there in Brigham City, and Yvonne married Gordon
Steele, a man from Salt Lake City whom she met while she was working her in
Salt Lake after she graduated. She attended the LDS business College and
then took a job in secretarial work. She met Gordon at that time. Then in
July Orvil and Harold and Gordon were all drafted into the service. Gordon
went into the navy, and Orvil and Harold into the Air Force. (17:14)
Harold enrolled in the aviation cadet program and was training to be a
pilot. Orvil was very upset about being drafted back into the Air Force.
He had already served in it for about three years, and had been given a
medical discharge hardly a year before. I graduated from seminary in the
spring of 42 and I was the valedictorian of the class, gave an address at
our graduation ceremony in the Box Elder Tabernacle. That summer of 42 I
was privileged to be one of about 20 or 24 high school juniors and seniors
who were given pilot training under a civil air patrol program, and if we
completed the course successfully we were given our private pilots license.
I succeeded and have held a private pilots license since then. That summer
I had a job working with the adult men at the Utah concrete pipe company.
Their plant was just east of the cemetery. I still had my Tribune route and
was taking flying lessons everyday, so I had a busy very exciting summer.
I'd get up at 4 o'clock, 4:30, and go deliver my paper route, then I'd
borrow daddy's truck which had been repaired, and drove out to the airport
for my flying lesson. Then came back to go to work at 8 o'clock at the pipe
plant. The work there was very hard physical labor. My job involved
welding the wire frames that served as reinforcement in the sections of
concrete pipe and then also I would transport the wet, the new wet pipe, in
it's metal form from the machine back into the drying room. I used a little
cart like a wheelbarrow to haul the pipe back into the drying room, strip
off the form, then come back for another one. I enjoyed the work, the hard
work, and the busy summer were very rewarding.

In 1942 daddy engaged some carpenters, some builders, to remodel
our house there in Brigham City. Now that the children were all old enough
to leave we were going to have some more room. Daddy traded the Ford truck
in for a 1941 Chrysler Saratoga, which was a big sedan, a luxury sedan, very
fine car. With some of the money that came from the sale of the farm, of
course the government paid him something for the farm, but the price was
almost bald face robbery. Actually daddy received less for the farm for his
property than he could have made from the fruit crop from one year, that
year of 1942, because others who still had their farms farther south in
Perry had a real bonanza of a year that year, good crops, good market, high
prices, and some of those farmers made more money from their one year's crop
than my father received for his farm itself. He was a broken hearted man
but he went on working hard for the city and he bought with some of the
money from the farm he bought a Bucyrus Erie B15 power shovel (27:41) with a
drag line boom attachment, and began doing some contract work for
construction jobs and land drainage jobs for farmers in the area, hired an
operator for it, and put the shovel to work. My dad was an enterprise and
it looked like an opportunity for him to make some money. (23:34) Well Gay
went to live with Orvil where he was serving in the Air Force. I think they
were in Texas, at Fort Worth at that time, Fort Worth Texas. Alta went to
live with Harold where he was training in Texas. Yvonne and Gordon moved to
Logan where Gordon was stationed in a college detachment of the Navy at the
Utah State Agricultural college. During my junior year I served as class
president, and we officers of the class and a committee, a prom committee,
put on the junior prom, decorated the gymnasium hall, and engaged an
orchestra, provided refreshments and so forth for the junior prom. We
called it "In Old Vienna" at it had the theme of, the old baroque theme, of
the Johann Strauss days in Vienna. It was quite a successful prom. (25:10)
In the spring of the junior year I was elected to be secretary of the
student body for the following year, my senior year. In the remodeling of
our family home my father had a bedroom added to the back of the house, the
west side of the house, and also a large back porch. They also finished
excavating the basement, excavated the other third of the basement, and
changed the stairway around a little bit. With the bedroom added on the
back they took my mother's and dad's bedroom, little bedroom on the
northeast corner, and added it to the front room so the front room stretched
clear across the house, made a nice room out of it. The remodeling wasn't
done quite the way my mother wanted it, not the way I would have done it,
but that was the way my dad wanted it. (26:39) IT did make a lovely home
out of it. He also did install a furnace with a stoker for automatic
feeding of crushed coal, and a steam heating system for the house.
My senior year in school was somewhat affected by the war going on.
We were engaged in campaign to sell savings bonds and stamps to help raise
money to pay for the war, and as the secretary of the student body I
supervised that project. An incident happened in connection with that which
had a long lasting affect on me psychologically. My first period class was
physics from a teacher named LA Richardson. Taking care of the savings bond
and stamps project early in the morning made me late for physics class every
Monday morning and this annoyed Mr. Richardson. The thing that annoyed him
more than that, than my being late however, was a habit, a bad habit that I
had, of answering a question, blurting out an answer to a question before I
was called upon. I'd raise my hand and give the answer at the same time and
this annoyed him very much. Well I came in late this Monday morning and
hardly had sat down in my chair when he asked a question and I raised my
hand and blurted out the answer and it was so annoying to him that he made
this remark to me. He said, "Merlin, you're not very smart. You just have
a way of talking that makes people think you're smart." He said that to me
right in front of all my class mates and it was a deep cut, a psychological
wound, that affected me for years. (29:30) Later on I may remember to tell
you how that incident affected me when I began college at the University of
Utah a couple of years later. Anyway, I forgive the man. I provoked him
terribly with my bad habit, my rude habit, and my being late. I had it coming.

I was the valedictorian of our graduating class. I surely had a
difficult time composing my talk for that occasion. It seems that I've
always had trouble getting my thoughts onto paper. I have too many thoughts
going through my mind and can't decide just what to say, or I can't decide
how to say something to be impressive or whatever it is, or whatever my
difficulty is. I have trouble composing my thoughts. I've encountered it a
number of times in my life since then.
A couple of weeks later a terrible thing happened in the family.
Harold's wife, Alda, died in Texas. They had been married less than a year.
She died suddenly of a hemorrhage in her lungs, some kind of heart failure I
guess. I don't just when, but it was about the 17th of June, I think, the
middle of June when she died. Of course Harold obtained leave and brought
her body home, and her funeral was a very sad thing. I just can't imagine,
can't imagine the grief that Harold felt, and in just a few days or couple
of weeks he had to go back into the service, back to Texas alone, and try to
pick up in his training that had been interrupted. And the men in charge of
his training were not understanding at all of his mental and emotional
state. He wasn't quite up to the demands of his training and asked his
officers for a brief delay in his training, a moratorium so to speak, but
they wouldn't give it to him. They insisted that he go ahead on his regular
schedule as though nothing had happened in his life, but he couldn't handle
it and he washed out of the program. He would have been a cracker jack
fighter pilot, of course he may have been killed in the war if had become a
fighter pilot, you never know, but Harold went into the meteorological
service of the air force and spent the rest of the war years in the south
where he was trained and where he served as a meteorologist.
In June, on the 23rd of June, I entered the service and went to
camp Kearns, Utah. Camp Kearns was a base where the city of Kearns Utah now
stands, or I should say that Kearns after the war was built where Camp
Kearns stood during the war. The city used the infrastructure, the roads
and the sewers, water system, and the power system, and some of the
buildings of Camp Kearns. And then of course, through the years much has
been added to make the present city of Kearns. Well I went there for basic
training, and Kearns was a rough place. It was hot. We did much of our
marching in sandy and rocky soil. Our calisthenics, our physical training,
was performed in the sand and the rocks. The sun was just merciless. I
developed a terrible sunburn. The hats we wore offered no shade to our face
and my forehead and my nose and cheeks became sunburned so badly that the
skin opened up in sores and I had blisters and scabs for several months
after I left camp Kearns. (35:39) I was unbearably homesick there,
although I was only 60 miles from home it was like being on the other side
of the world. I wasn't the only one. Homesickness was a pretty common
problem for young service men, especially for young kids just out of high
school who had never been away from home. While most of the men were pretty
well behaved there was a rough element in the service, but mostly it was
just being away from home. I was with a number of men from Brigham City, a
number of school mates who went into the service at the same time. One of
them had a car, which was not really authorized, but he kept it off the
base. He went home a number of weekends while we were there. We were there
for about two and a half months, and he took a number of us with him. I was
lucky to go home with him a couple of times for a weekend at home. I guess
it helped. I don't know whether it helped or hurt, whether it made the
homesickness worse or not. (37:13) But, I survived and in the latter part
of August the first part of September our squadron, our training squadron,
was transferred to grand forks North Dakota, to the university of North
Dakota located there. We became known as a college training detachment. It
was part of a pipeline in the training program for pilots, navigators,
bombardiers, gunners. Training took about a year and they had several
phases like this college training detachment as a holding phase until
facilities opened up for the actual pilot training. We studied regular high
school course there, physics, math, I don't know what all. We had some
special courses like meteorology, aircraft identification (38:42) and civil
air regulations, that sort of thing that might be useful to us later on if
we completed pilot training or flying training. I was there in North Dakota
until about November 20th, just before Thanksgiving. I continued to be
terribly homesick there. We stayed in fraternity houses, which served as
dormitories there. There were very few men enrolled as civilians in the
school. Most of the students in the school were women. The food was very
good there and I looked back happily with enjoyment, with pleasure, on the
activities there. It was just the homesickness that was unbearable. A
group of us formed a little branch of the church and we held church meetings
there while we were in North Dakota. That was not continued when I moved
from there so I got out of the habit of going to church while I was in the
service. To show how homesick I was there, let me tell you this humorous
incident, rather pathetic. (40:33) North Dakota, between North Dakota and
Utah there are 1500 miles, and Utah is south west from North Dakota. While
I was living in the dormitory on the north east corner of the dormitory, and
I struck a bargain with a Brigham City man who was a couple years older than
me, about Yvonne's age, who was living in a room on the south west corner of
the same dormitory, and I asked him if he would trade rooms with me so I
could be on the southwest corner of the building and look out toward Utah
thinking that might help my homesickness. But nothing helped except time.
It gradually got better with time and as I matured a little bit. I was
quite immature I suppose, kind of a teachers pet, not quite ready for the
adult world. Well, about a week before Thanksgiving we were transferred to
Santa Anna California to the Santa Anna army training base (42:10) Our
activity there was to attend classes, ground school training we called it,
and also we took a whole battery of tests, physical tests, scholastic tests,
endurance tests to determine our aptitude for different assignments in air
force training program. Theoretically we were all going to train to be
pilots or navigators or bombardiers. If we successfully completed our
training we would be commissioned second lieutenants. If we failed in our
training we would be transferred to other training in the air force to be
mechanics or gunners or other service people, or we might even be
transferred into the regular army into the infantry or the artillery. I
succeeded in my tests and indicated that I might succeed as a pilot, so my
next transfer in January was to primary flight training. I had some
interesting experiences while I was at Santa Anna. (43:51) Santa Anna is
south of Los Angeles and most of my mother's brothers and sisters lived in
the Los Angeles area, and also my grandma and grandpa Nelson lived in Los
Angeles. So, for Thanksgiving that year I had a short leave and found my
way into Los Angeles to the home of my grandparents. Being in the big city
was exciting, finding my way onto the buses and the trains, and I looked
forward to spending vacation with mom's family. During that couple days I
was able to visit the home of Aunt Genevieve where I met my cousin Bud
Schwarz for the first time. I got to see all of my mother's brothers and
sisters and their families. I spent, we had Thanksgiving dinner at the home
of (45:16) Aunt Bernice and Uncle Jim Koutnick with whom I had spent a week
in Ogden years and years before, and they lived in the San Fernando valley
where much later, many years later in 1989, Roberta and I would serve a
mission together starting in the San Fernando valley. I can tell you, it
was surely a different place in 1943 than it was in 1989, a different world
all together. In 1943 it was solid orange groves and vineyards, great
vineyards. In 1989 it was metropolitan city from one end of the valley to
the other. Of course, in that 46 years California's population grew from a
couple million to over 30 million. It was a much pleasanter place in 1943.
Tape 5 Side B
I enjoyed my time at Santa Anna. A couple things about it I can mention
particularly. I loved the giant Eucalyptus trees that are all over the Los
Angeles area, all the southern California area I guess, at least the
residential areas. It was the rainy season while we were there. It rained
a lot. (0:54) I liked the rain. We were dressed warmly, had raincoats and
good shoes. There is something intriguing and appealing about marching in a
group of men, even in the rain. I liked the discipline of marching
formation. I especially liked a big gathering like a parade on some special
occasion. I should say here that I really enjoyed my time in the Air Force.
I was in about two and a half years. I was busy most of the time, although
there were periods of time that we wasted a lot of time. I could have made
better use of it if I had been wiser. I could have done a lot of reading,
studying on my own. But, we were kept busy, especially compared with other
units of the armed forces in which the greatest part of the time was spent
sitting around waiting for something to happen. (2:23) But in every phase
of our training we had class work, studies, studied some interesting
subjects. The flight training of course was very interesting, challenging.
I enjoyed the discipline in the military, the orderliness of it. I like the
camaraderie of the men although I didn't form an buddies. I didn't
participate in any of the macho things like women chasing and boozing.
(3:04) But to get on with the story. January 20th we moved on to Blythe
California, which is east of Los Angeles on the Colorado River. There we
began primary flight training. It was a combination of class work and
actual flying lessons and physical training, exercises, calisthenics, that
sort of thing. The food was good. The living quarters were very pleasant.
WE lived in a civilian air academy. It was called Morton Air Academy. And
just a note here of interest. I've often wondered what happened to that
place. So, in August of 1990 when Roberta and I were returning home from
our mission in California, we traveled east through Blythe going to Phoenix,
and in Blythe I drove up on the hill north of the town, I think it's north,
and there were the remains of the Morton Air Academy. The buildings were
still standing, very recognizable. It hadn't change much except they were
falling into ruins. (4:46) The place had been abandoned apparently for a
number of years and the land was for sale. But, it was easy for me to
recapture the feelings that I had when I was there in 1944. I enjoyed my
time there. Our ground school courses were interesting. WE had classes in
air craft identification, in meteorology. WE had courses both at Santa Anna
and later on learning to send and receive Morse code messages. AT Blythe we
flew in an open air bi-wing trainer. I believe it was called a Steerman
PT17. I think that was the designation of it. It was a very sturdy little
airplane. It had two cockpits, one front, one rear. The navigator was
always in the back one. The student sat in the front cockpit. We wore
helmets, close fitting helmets. In each earpiece there was a tube connected
to a rubber hose that went back to the instructors cockpit. There he had a
little funnel on end of the hose and he could talk into that rubber hose and
the student could hear him very well. That device is called a Gossport.
Well, I have a couple issues of a magazine that was printed there by the
association of the cadet students and the base personnel. The magazine is
called Gossport and it contains pictures of the cadets and the service
people, trainers, very much like a year book in high school. Don't know how
many hours we flew there although I have record of that somewhere, but the
training there lasted until March 31st. Then we were transferred back to a
town, Ontario California, which is just east of Pamona, about 40 miles east
of Los Angeles, for our basic flight training. And there again we lived in
a civilian academy, flight academy, that had been commandeered by the
airforce for the training of military pilots. It was called the Cal-Aero
Flight Academy (8:19). Another current footnote on the past. While we
were on our mission in California we visited with Bud Schwarz and his wife
Ilene a couple of times, a number of times. They live in Receeda California
which was just four or five miles from Van Eyes where we were assigned as
missionaries. On one occasion Bud and I drove out to Ontario California and
particularly to Chino which was a little town south of Ontario where the
airport was located, the airport on which we trained while I was assigned at
Cal-Aero. The airport is largely unchanged. The hangers are still there
and the words Cal-Aero are still painted on the roof. It's being used by
private pilots whose hobby is airplanes and the airport is surrounded by
dairy land and bud told me there was a great deal of pressure on those dairy
farmers to sell their land so that Los Angeles could spread out some more.
IN fact on the hills west of the airport just a few miles away the urban
sprawl has crept over the hills. There are large subdivisions built on
those lower hills and I'm sure in a few years the price of real-estate and
the growth of the metropolis will crowd out that Cal-Aero airport. (10:53)
Anyway, at Cal-Aero we lived in very comfortable quarters. The food was
very good. Ground school classes were very similar as I've described and we
flew a volty aircraft. It was an all metal airplane, a low wing monoplane,
called a B213. The nickname was volty vibrator because it did vibrate in
not only straight and level flight but in any maneuver such as rolls, snap
rolls, or loops it vibrated terribly, kind of thought it was going to fall
apart, but it was a sturdy airplane. I was there from April 1st through
June 1st, and at that point a decision was made by the instructors with
reference to my previous record, each man's previous record, whether the
student pilot was more suited to become a fighter pilot or a pilot of a
multiengine airplane, a bomber or a transport plan, something like that.
Fighter pilots a different breed. They have to be a little bit crazy, more
daring, quicker in reaction, more macho I guess, more competitive. The
multi engine pilot would make a good bus driver. AT least that's as I see
it. I was determined to become a pilot of multi engine planes so I was sent
to Fort Sumner New Mexico for my advanced training. There we flew a twin
engine beach craft aircraft I guess. It was mostly fabric covered. It was
not a metal airplane, fabric and plywood I guess. It had two engines
(13:49) and a cabin. It could haul a half dozen people if desired. Fort
Sumner New Mexico is near the east border of New Mexico and about roughly
half way north and south, in the middle north and south. (14:22) We got a
lot of night flying there and some instrument flying. Incidentally,
beginning here in Fort Sumner and in our later flight training that I'll
mention, we had training in what was called a link trainer. It was a little
mockup of an airplane, electronic, just an enclosed seat in which you would
sit, of course they had some little mock wings sticking out of it to make it
look like a toy airplane big enough for a man to sit in. (15:14) And
they'd pull a hood over you so you were enclosed and in front of you you had
an instrument panel and in that link trainer they taught pilots to fly by
instruments without reference to a visible horizon so that you could fly in
weather when there was no visible horizon, or you could fly in a storm or at
night where you couldn't see anything to direct you and you had to depend on
instruments. That's what the link trainer was for. WE began that training
at Fort Sumner and we also had night flights and cross country flights where
we flew to airports 50 or 100 miles away both in the daytime and at night.
(16:22) Training there lasted about two months until August 4th. On August
4th we graduated and were commissioned second lieutenants and received our
pilots wings and we were given a furlow of two or three weeks. I don't
recall how long it was, but it was long enough for me to go home from Fort
Sumner, traveled by bus to Denver. From Denver I flew on civilian airline
to Salt Lake City. In those days of course the airliners were all propeller
driven and this happened to be a DC3 which doesn't have a capacity to fly
very high. It flew up over Cheyenne Wyoming and then west across the south
pass of Wyoming and then down to Salt Lake rather than flying directly over
the rocky mountains, mainly because to get over the rockies you have to get
up to about 15,000 feet. Instead, we flew about 10,000 and the air was very
very rough, very hot in August, and the thermal currents really tossed that
plane around and I got airsick, really airsick. I didn't have to throw up,
but I was really green around the gills. So, here's the hot pilot, newly
commissioned lieutenant, hot pilot Larsen, airsick on his first flight. I
had a couple of weeks to strut around Brigham city, visit a few people, show
off my new uniform and my wings and my bars, and be the macho airforce
pilot. I had largely overcome my homesickness now and I was anxious to get
back to my training. I went to Hobs New Mexico which is south of Fort
Sumner down quite far south in New Mexico, close to Texas. There I entered
into B17 pilot training, learning to fly the 4 engine bomber, the flying
fortress. That was a very challenging and exciting thing. This was a real
airplane. The B17 was 104 feet across it's wings, about 75 feet long, had
about 4800 horsepower in its four engines, carried a crew of 9 or ten men.
Fully armed it had twelve 50 caliber machine guns, carried about 4 tons of
bombs in its bomb bays. It carried about 2800 gallons of gasoline. Fully
loaded it weighed about 75 to 80 thousand pounds. It was a big airplane.
There we learned about the airplane itself, about its systems, safety
procedures, crash landing procedures, ditching procedures for landing in the
water, hopefully safely. (20:31) We learned to fly formation. Of course
the B17s and the B24s, bombers, usually flew in formation. A group of
airplanes fairly close together. They flew this way for protection from
fighters, enemy fighters. They had a disadvantage though of being a bigger
target for anti aircraft guns which shot up from the ground. A formation
of B17s would be about 25 times the area of a single B17 so it really gave a
target to the anti aircraft gunners. But, that risk was worth the
protection that we had from enemy fighters by flying in formation. A single
B17 was quite helpless against a skillful fighter pilot in a fighter with
guns, pretty hard to escape a good fighter pilot. 22:05 Again we had
ground school training, mostly about the B17 itself, and crew management,
because as a pilot I was going to be in charge of a crew of 9 or 10 men, and
they were going to call me an airplane commander, so I had to have some
training in working with a crew. I enjoyed being at Hobbs, enjoyed the
thrill of flying the big airplane. I was there until about November 1st,
and then from there we went to El Paso Texas which was a just a short hop a
hundred miles or so farther south and east, to Biggs field, Biggs Airforce
base, and there the crew members were assembled. The gunners came there
from their gunnery school, the pilots from their pilots school, the
navigators from their navigation school, and the bombardiers from their
bombardier training school, and we were teamed up and formed into a combat
crew. We had nine men in our crew, a pilot and a copilot, a bombardier and
a navigator, an engineer who also manned the top gun turret immediately
behind the pilots' seats, we had a radio operator whose station was just
behind the wings. We had a ball turret gunner whose station was in the ball
in the belly of the B17, a waist gunner who was in the waist or middle of
the airplane and his station, his guns fired out to the sides of the B17.
Some planes had one waist gunner, some had two. We had just one. And then
there was a tail gunner whose station was in the tail of the airplane. The
navigator was directly in front of and below the pilots' seats. He had a
little work area there where he could, a work table, where he could layout
his maps and charts where he could do his work of navigating our course.
The bombardiers' station was in the very nose of the airplane (25:11) where
the bombsight was located. The bombsight was a device for aiming the bombs.
The bombsight actually controlled the flight of the airplane during the
bombing run, controlled the flight through the autopilot, and the bombardier
through that instrument could determine the precise time to release the
bombs to hit the target making calculations of altitude, wind direction,
velocity, and the airplanes direction and velocity, and so forth, and the
bombardier also had two 50 caliber machine guns in the chin turret. The
turrets were all powered, that is they were driven by electric power. The
chin turret, the top turret behind the pilots, the ball turret in the belly
of the 17 right in the middle in the bottom of the plane, and that's all.
All the other gun positions were operated manually. (26:51) Well, we were
put together in November, the first of November, and we flew various
training missions there together to learn how to work together. The
navigator and the pilots had to work together. The bombardier needed some
training in flying the airplane with the autopilot. The pilots needed more
training in formation flying. The gunners needed some experience in
shooting at targets on the ground and in the air from a B17. They needed to
learn how to handle their equipment, their guns, their turrets. WE all
needed experience in handling our oxygen equipment for high flight, high
altitude flights. We spent two months working together until the end of
1944. (28:07) On new years day, 1945, we took a fun flight. Our training
was finished and we were scheduled to leave very shortly, just a day or two,
leave the Biggs field. We flew our plane west toward the grand canyon,
northwest, clear across New Mexico into upper Arizona, flew the bomber down
into the grand canyon. I'm sure that wasn't an approved procedure, but hot
pilot Larsen wasn't above showing off. (29:00) That was quite an
experience. Down in the grand canyon where you were below the horizon, and
surrounded by these vertical rock walls, which are as much as a mile high,
the canyon is a mile deep, of course we didn't fly down all the way, we
just flew close to the top, but you lose your perspective, your depth
perception, and you can hardly tell how far away those canyon walls are, and
it would be very easy to crash into a monolith of stone standing up in the
canyon. It was a foolish thing to do, but it was exciting, and we flew down
into the canyon and flew out of the canyon over the south rim lodge, the
tourist lodge on the south rim of the canyon, and we buzzed the lodge, flew
over it about 25 feet above the room. WE learned later when we got back to
base, we learned next day that one of President Roosevelt's sons and his new
wife were in that lodge on their honeymoon. Well, we were lucky. Nobody
picked up our numbers and we weren't reported. (30:41) WE flew from grand
canyon down the Colorado river. WE flew over as close as we could to a
couple of the dams, the Parker dam, and we were not allowed, it was
prohibited air space, over Hoover dam. Of course no plane could fly over
Hoover dam because that would have been a threat to national security.
Anybody could fly over it and drop a bomb on it, so weren't allowed to fly
there, but we did fly down the Colorado River to Parker dam and then flew
east to El Paso, back home. About January 5th we got on a train and
traveled north to Lincoln Nebraska. The weather was much colder in Nebraska
than it had been in El Paso Texas although they had snow in El Paso it
wasn't bitter cold, but it was bitter cold in Lincoln Nebraska. Lincoln
Airforce Base. Lincoln Nebraska was fairly close to where the B17s were
manufactured in Kansas, and we were assigned a brand new B17. The only
flight time was the testing time and the flight from Kansas to Nebraska.
(32:22) There we had a few operations to perform. One thing we needed to
swing our compass, which meant that we had to make sure that the compass was
aligned properly with north and south, with true north, so it would be
dependable in future flights. Life was miserable there, the barracks were
very very cold, the food was not too hot. We were anxious to be on our way.
We were going to fly that B17 over to England. The first leg our flight
which began on January 25th I believe, the reason we were held up there for
what seemed too long a time was that the weather over the Atlantic ocean was
not favorable, and they held us back because there wasn't room for us at the
intermediate air fields on the trip, on the route, to England. It took us
from January 25th to February 10th to fly to England. We flew first to
Manchester New Hampshire. I think the place was called Edward's Air Force
base. The snow was very deep there, the weather was cold. It was real
winter in new Hampshire that year. (34:20) We stopped there just over
night I believe. Then we flew north to goose bay Labrador, way up in
Canada, west across some part of the ocean, west from Greenland. In Goose
Bay we saw real snow. The B17 when it sits on the ground, its tail, the
vertical part of its tail, is about 20 feet in the air. At goose bay the
big snow blowers, snow plows and snow blowers, in cleaning the snow off the
runways, piled the snow off to the side of the runways, and it was so high
that the B17s could not be seen on the runway from the control tower. The
B17 when it landed flew down out of sight in the valley formed on the runway
by those high snowplows along the sides (35:47). Very cold there. We
stayed there just one or two nights, I'm not sure. It seems like we were
there two nights. the quarters were warm and the food was good. They had
the heaters with which they kept the oil in our engines from freezing.
Well, we flew from goose bay across the sea to a landing field in Greenland,
on the west coast of Greenland. It was called Bluey west one (36:31). I
don't know how far north it was. It was more or less straight east across
the sound from goose bay. Goose bay you'll find on a map from Labrador.
Landing at bluey west one was quite a trick. You had just one chance. You
flew through a fjord which was a narrow canyon between high rock walls and
the bottom of the canyon is the ocean. So, you're flying through this
narrow canyon over the sea. If you have engine failure you have no way out
because you can't climb out, you can't turn around, and you can't land. So
you fly into this fjord and you fly inland a ways and there's the airfield,
and all it is is an iron mat like a big storm mat on your back porch, but
it's made of steel mats and it slopes from the sea upward on a gravel bed
formed by a glacier which is no longer there. And again, you have just once
chance. You'd better land, you'd better touch your wheels down at the
beginning of that ramp. And of course, the upward slope of the ramp slows
you down as you climb up it. Then at the top you turn off to the side so
you're out of the way of the next guy who's coming in. Well, bluey west one
was just kind of a fueling stop, but we did stay over night. (38:39) In
the morning we took off and to take off you again have one chance. You
start at the top of the ramp and you have a full gas load of course. You
fly down that ramp toward to ocean and you'd better be in the air by the
time you hit the end of the runway. Then you fly back out that narrow
canyon, that fjord, out to the ocean, the open ocean, and there you can
begin to climb and get your altitude. We flew, we climbed up to about 25000
feet I think, or 20000 feet, where the temperature outside the airplane was
about 50 or 60 degrees below zero. WE were glad to have electric heated
flight suits and some warm clothing besides that sheep lined clothing
(39:45) Well, we flew down around the south end of Greenland instead of
flying over Greenland we flew down around the south end of it and over to
Iceland which is south east, east of southern Greenland. We flew there,
landed there, at Rikovic (40:07), an airbase near Rikovic, the capital of
Iceland, and we stayed there one or two nights. Iceland is a volcanic
country and the entire area was littered with volcanic stones, some of a
very great size, all the way from the size of a water bucket to the size of
a house, these volcanic stones. Not much vegetation in Iceland. It is a
barren land. And yet it isn't bitter cold. It's not nearly as cold as
Greenland because out there in the middle of the ocean where Iceland is
located, it receives the warm ocean current which comes up the east coast of
the united states from the gulf of Mexico, and it swings out northeast past
Iceland and over toward Scandinavia and great Britain. That's the gulf
stream, and that warm water and the heat that it picks up in the gulf of
Mexico is what makes life possible in western Europe, north and western
Europe. If it weren't for that gulf stream, life there would be like life
for the Eskimos up in the arctic region. (41:44) Well we landed in England
at a place called chorley, and there we turned the bomber, the new bomber,
over to service personnel who would service it and prepare it for combat
duty. We stayed from chorley, which was just an airfield, to a place, I
can't recall the name of it, but it was just a holding station, where we
were assigned to our combat location. Until that time we didn't know just
where we would serve in Europe and England. There we were told that we
would join the 100th bomb group which was based in England, in east England,
about 95 miles north and a little bit east of London, near a town called
Thorpe Abbots (43:08) ordis. This assignment to the 100th bombardment group
is where we would use, make use of all the training we had received in the
preceding 18 months. We arrived there about February 15th. (43:39) I'm
near the end of this tape so I won't go into too much detail, just say that
we began our combat missions about march 1st and flew 21 combat missions
between march 1st and the end of the war which was on may 8th 1945. It's
either 21 missions or 24. I have 24 written in my notes, but somehow it
seems that it was 21. A full tour of duty would have been 35 missions at
that time, but the war didn't last long enough for us to fill a tour. So,
we had to settle for 21 or 24. At Thorpe Abbots we lived in Quonset huts.
I think a Quonset hut is an English invention. It was a tunnel made of
corrugated unit which formed the walls and the roof in one continuous arch.
It was kind of a half of a cylinder. It was a cold kind of dwelling, no
insulation whatever, and it housed, oh there were different sizes, but in
ours there lived about 50 men I think, and these huts in various sizes
served all purposes, a very large one for the mess large, a large one for
the recreation hall, a big one for the hospital, small ones for storage,
every purpose. Every building was a Quonset hut. On the base there were 4
squadrons. A squadron consisted of about twelve or 15 planes and their
crews and ground force personnel to support them. On the base, the 100th
bomb group base at Thorpe Abbots, I think there were about 900 or 1000 men
at one time. The base had been there since 1943. WE were coming over then
when it was occupied by very experienced men, some of whom had been there
that whole time, some of course who were new comers like ourselves.
Tape 6 Side A
It's quite a temptation to get involved in a very detailed account of our
experiences in England as we flew combat missions. I think I'll avoid that.
I would like to mention here the names of the men who were on the bomber
crew with me. Maybe just a general comment about the manner in which a
mission was conducted and then I'll go on. Maybe add more detail later when
this tape has been reduced or transposed to paper. (1:01) My co-pilot was
a man named Arthur V Williams. He was from Colgate Oklahoma, a great big
jolly fellow, quite a grown up boy. He liked to play ball with the other
crew members. The navigator was a man named Archie Brawk. He was from
California, the Bay area. He was considerable older than I was, probably
nearly 30 at that time. The bombardier was Edmund Suttle, and he was from
West Virginia. Our engineer and top gunner was John P O'Conner. He was
from Orange New Jersey. The radio operator was Jack Torogeon from
Wisconsin. (2:29) The ball turret gunner was Alisson Balfore. His middle
name was Merlin, Alisson Merlin Balfore, from Nebraska. The waist gunner
was Robert L Tyre, also an older man, had a couple of small children, and he
was from Nebraska. The tail gunner was a Salt Lake City boy, Trent Parker.
(3:13) We began to fly combat missions in the later part of February and
flew regularly through March and April and into May when the war ended on
May 8th. The decision of what targets to attack of course was made at 8th
Air Force headquarters. It was decided which bomb groups should
participate. They were notified by telephone early in the morning hours, 2
or 3 o'clock, at group headquarters then it was decided which planes of the
group would participate. The group had 4 squadrons, the 349th, the 350th,
351st, and 418th squadrons. I was in the 350th squadron. Then a
messenger, a staff member from squadron headquarters would come around to
our barracks and wake us up. We'd dress, go to breakfast, then assemble
together in the briefing room where we would be told what the target was,
something about the weather conditions to expect. (4:49) WE were all
correlated on the time. We would hack our watches so that we would have the
same time on our watches. We were given set times for starting our engines,
taxing out to take off, and the point on the map over which we would
assemble into formation. We were then taken from the briefing room out to
our plane. The planes were scattered over quite an area. They were not
concentrated in one place. This was to minimize the chance of their being
destroyed by German Air Force. And at the set time we'd start our engines,
taxi out, take off, and begin climbing up to our specified altitudes, and at
the same time circling over the designated point to make our formation. All
of the planes from our group would fly together, rather close together in
formation. We'd fly out to over the English Channel, climbing all the time.
We usually flew at about 25,000 feet over the target. (6:43) We tried to
stay in close formation. Sometimes we couldn't do that. Not all planes had
equal power, sometimes there were stragglers. On the flights, the combat
missions that we flew, we nearly always encountered anti aircraft from the
ground. We saw very few enemy fighters. The German Airforce had largely
been destroyed by the time we reached Europe. Our missions ranged all the
way from the Kiel Canal (7:28) which was up near Denmark, to Berlin, down
into Chekoslavacia, down into southern Germany, and many of them in the
Rhurr valley, which was a highly concentrated industrial area. Many of our
targets were airfields, railroad marshaling yards, factories where weapons
and aircraft and trucks, tanks, were built. I don't remember the flights,
the missions that we flew nor the targets that we bombed. We flew about 24
missions, as I recall, before the end of the war. Somewhere after our tenth
mission we had what was called a flack leave, which was about a ten day
vacation. The crew went to different places. The enlisted men went to one
vacation spot and the officers went to another. There was a sharp
distinction between officers and enlisted men. I was never very comfortable
with it, but had no choice but to comply with it. All of the members of our
crew were on good terms with each other, had a good time. We were together
rather a short time, and since the war since after we came home we've
drifted apart, although I have had contact with five of my crew members.
Three of them, maybe six of them, haven't had any contact with Art Williams
or Arch Brooke, nor have any of the other crew members heard from them.
On our vacation, our flack leave, we went to a large manorial
house, an estate, in central England. It was called Eynsham Hall. It was a
very large house, three stories, many acres of gardens and woodland around
it. We had a good time there. We also had one vacation or leave on which
we were allowed to go to London where we had our meals at a large select
club that was owned by and patronized by wealthy people during peace times.
It had been turned over to the Airforce, or to the American military forces
for the purpose of feeding military personnel who were in London. The
officers had one place again, and the enlisted men a different place. The
one where we ate was called Grovener Hall (11:45) It was near Hyde park as
I recall. While we were there in London we attended one play, one live
stage play. I don't remember the name of it, but it was a comedy and the
main actor was a man named Tommy Trender, a very good comedian. I remember
I enjoyed the play. I remember a happy incident, a pleasant incident. We
were in our hotel rooms on Regent Street in London. In the evening after we
had eaten, just before we went to bed. There were a number of English
people, a group of singers who came by and stopped below our windows in the
street and sang, sang some beautiful songs. I remember Ave Maria
particularly. They were very good and did have the effect of lifting our
spirits and helping us to think about something, think about something other
than the ward and the drabness of life around us. England had been at war
for 4 1/2 years when we were there. London had been severely bombed, much
of it destroyed, but the British were a very hardy people. Their moral was
high. They were not discouraged or depressed. They were very friendly and
kind to the American military people, at least that's the way I found them.
After the war ended, May 8th, we flew a couple of interesting missions, non
combat. Once we flew into Germany and picked up a load of French prisoners
of war who had been freed by the advancing Allied armies, and we flew back
to Paris with these men. After we left Paris we had a little fun buzzing
the country side between Paris and the English Channel on our way home.
Flew just maybe a hundred feet above the ground. It was interesting to
watch the cattle scatter in fright as we flew over them at that low
altitude. (15:06) It wasn't legal, but it was exciting, and we were just
kids. I was only 20 years old at the time. I thought I was a pretty hot
pilot I'm sure. We flew another interesting mission to northwest Africa.
When the war ended in Europe, the strategy was to transport military
personnel to the Pacific theater of operations where the war with Japan was
still in full force, and no one knew how long it would last. No one
expected it to end as suddenly as it did, just three months after the war in
Europe. Of course, it was brought to an end suddenly and unexpectedly by
the atomic bombs which we dropped on Japan. And the horror of those bombs
brought the war to an end with Japan, unconditional surrender in August
1945. But on this flight which we made from England to northwest Africa, we
picked up a load of American army personnel and hauled them to French west
Africa. We landed at a place called Maricatch (17:15) which is inland from
Casablanca. That was an interesting flight. We stayed overnight. We saw
just a little bit of the culture of the Arab people, the desert people.

The Airforce began immediately to return personnel to the United
States. Not many air personnel were transferred to the pacific theater
because the air force strength in the pacific was considered adequate at
that time. Japan had been beaten back to its homeland and our navy was in
complete control of the Pacific ocean and our Airforce in the pacific was
pretty largely in control of the air space. And the American bombers were
bombing japan, the Japanese cities, very regularly, without much opposition
from the Japanese Airforce. There was a lot of anti aircraft fire, but the
B29s being used were much superior than the B17. They were not as
vulnerable to anti aircraft fire as the B17s and the B24s were. So, I was
included in a group of personnel who left Thorpe Abbots on about July 1st
headed for home. We went to an airbase in Valley Wales on the west coast of
England. There we were held up by unfavorable weather over the Atlantic
ocean. When the weather improved we flew from valley Wales to Iceland, then
west to Bluey West one in Greenland, then wet again to Goose Bay Labrador,
and south to Edward's Airforce base in Manchester New Hampshire. There we
were loaded onto a train which traveled down through New York City and west
across the country to Salt Lake City. We arrived about August 15th, and
then we were granted a furlow, allowed to go home for about 30 days, with
orders to report then after that to Santa Anna army Airforce base for
processing to be discharged from the service. I went to Santa Anna, it
seems about September 20th, and I was there until about the middle of
October, about October 15th. As you can see, there is a lot of wasted time
there, not doing much, just waiting to be discharged. I didn't make very
good use of those days, did a little reading, and visiting with other men.
There were a few men there that I remembered from various phases of my
training during the preceding 18 months or so. (22:01) I went home and
must have lounged around until the beginning of winter quarter at the
University of Utah, which started, at least registration then was about the
15th of December. It started in December then instead of January. During
those two months, October to December, I went to Ogden and bought a car, a
1941 Plymouth, which was then 4 years old, and I paid, as I remember, 1250
dollars for it, which was as much or more as it would cost new. There
weren't many cars around. No cars had been manufactured for civilian use
since Pearl Harbor. Oh, there were a few manufactured in early 1942, but as
quickly as possible the factories were all converted to the manufacture of
military equipment. There were no new automobiles manufactured during those
4 years. So, a used car, one in good shape, was highly sought after. Well,
I had saved most of what I had earned during the service, had a small bank
roll, and thought I could easily afford to buy this car. As it turned out I
had the car for 9 years and it served well. I had a little trouble with it
right to begin with. I hadn't had it more than a couple of months when the
engine failed, and I had it replaced with a new engine, a dodge block.
Dodge is practically the same as a Plymouth of course. (24:33) When aunt
Barbara and uncle Lester Hubbard knew I was planning to attend the
University, they very kindly invited me to live with them in their home at
339 Douglas Street. Their two daughters were married and had moved away.
They had the room and I was very pleased to live with them, very convenient
to the university. Of course, they gave me bargain rate too on my room and
board. In march of 1946 I had a little adventure, the only automobile
accident that I have ever had, at least up to this time. I was returning to
Salt Lake from home at Brigham during a rain storm on Sunday evening,
following too close to a car, which applied it's brakes and slowed down to
make a left turn off the highway. I was too close. I'm sure it was my
fault, and I smashed into the rear end of that car, battered in the front
end of mine, didn't hurt his much, very embarrassed, took several weeks to
have my car repaired, parts were scarce. I learned a lesson. I always
leave a lot of room in front of me between the car ahead. I also slow down
when the roads are slick, either with rain or snow. It made a cautious
driver out of me. The winter quarter at the university taught me
something about myself in a very traumatic manner. I enrolled for a course
in beginning physics which of course began in the fall quarter, with a study
of mechanics and statics, basic things. In the winter quarter the subject
was electricity and magnetism. As I said earlier when I was discussing my
life as a student, I always got good grades, generally As. In fact in my
high school career I only had one grade that was not an A. That was a B+
that I got in a half year art class. B+ was probably a better grade than I
deserved, but I was quite offended at that teacher for not giving me an A.
Well, you recall I told something that happened to me in my high school
senior year in my physics class taught by LA Richardson, how he had attacked
my ego and embarrassed me in front of my friends by telling me that I was
not very smart, just had a way of talking that made people think I was
smart. Well, that wound went deeper than he intended probably. (28:51) At
the time he said that to me we were studying electricity and magnetism. Now
three years later I'm studying electricity and magnetism and I had trouble
with it. I was not understanding it as well as I wanted to and needed to.
And more disturbing than that, I could see I was not going to get my
customary A in that class. This was very disturbing to me. It was very
immature of me really to be more concerned about the grade I was going to
get than about what I was doing and where I was going, where I was intending
to go in my studies. I had dreamed since I was an 8th grader of being an
astronomer. I thought I wanted to be an astronomer. I have since learned
that I wouldn't have enjoyed that life, having learned about how astronomers
live and work, just by observation, but at the time that was my goal
in my university studies. In my mind I'm sure I decided at that
time that I would not be an astronomer. You can't be an astronomer without
mastering physics and chemistry and mathematics and other subjects. That
was very immature of me, but at any rate, my reaction to that C in physics
was to enroll for Spanish the next quarter in the place of physics. Spanish
seemed like a subject that I could get an A in. Looking back through my
life I've decided that by getting As all through school and being praised
for it was not really good for my development. It would have been good if I
had had some Cs and Ds maybe mixed with the As. I would have learned to
handle praise and criticism much better and to handle success and failure
much better. In the years following my college there have been times when
my reaction to circumstances has not been very mature. As I look at the
notes that I've made of the year 1946 I see a number of things that were
quite significant in my life. That fall, I didn't live with Aunt Barbara
and uncle Lester. Their daughter Niva had returned home from Kentucky with
her children and was living there. So, for the fall quarter I lived in a
barracks near the annex building on the university campus, ate meals in the
annex cafeteria. It was a little bit like being back in the service. I had
had enough of that, so at Christmas time I looked for room and board in Salt
Lake. I found it at a boarding house 563 E 3rd South. And, I found
something else in that home. I didn't know it at the time, but there I met
a beautiful redheaded girl in the front hall of the boarding house. She
lived there in an apartment with her mother. Her name was Roberta
Carpenter. Neither one of us knew it at the time that we would become man
and wife about four years later. During that summer I had a job with
Charlie Dredge whose father had a fruit farm on the highway south of Brigham
city. Charlie was peddling fruit into Idaho and had a fruit stand (34:27)
there on his dad's farm, on the highway. So I worked for Charlie on the
farm and in the fruit stand and also made a couple of trips into Idaho with
the little truck that he had hauling fruit for the safeway stores in
Pocatello. Bishop Jensen in Brigham City's 6th ward asked me if I'd like to
go on a mission. That must have been in the summer time when I was home. I
very selfishly turned him down. (35:16) The reason of course was that I
had become very inactive in the church and drifted quite far away from it in
my feelings, not that my behavior was so bad. I hadn't done anything bad or
immoral during my service years, but I wasn't very enthusiastic about the
church and I was pretty much interested in what I wanted to do. My good
friend Lowell Young and a number of others who were in the service went on
missions when they came home. It was a happy experience for them. It would
have been a good thing for me too, but I didn't go. When I went back to
school in the fall, my good friend Clinton Holmes, helped me get a part-time
job at the Hotel Utah garage parking cars. That job, which I was to have
during the next 3 school years. Tuff worked there too, of course. He had
learned about this job through his sister Rula, his oldest sister, whose
friend Arch Mecham worked there in as a desk clerk in the Hotel Utah. I did
a little bit of flying the summer time at the Brigham Airport. I didn't
enjoy it very much. A pipercub is not a B17. In the summer I took a trip
up through the northwest, up as far as glacier national park in Canada, over
to Seattle, down the coast to San Francisco and home. Oh, we went up
through Yellowstone park to begin with, with four of my friends, Clint
Holmes, Lowell Young, Clark Olsen, and Ardel Christopherson. I really had a
funny selfish attitude on that trip. It still bothers me. I did all the
driving. It was my car and I guess I didn't trust anyone else to drive it.
It seems like a really strange thing to do as I look back at it now. It
didn't bother me then. I lived during the winter and spring
quarters on into June of 1947 there on 3rd south, taking board and room with
Mrs. Meyers. She had bought the home from Roberta's mother. Roberta's
mother and father had bought the home when they moved to Salt Lake City in
1942 from Vernal. Roberta's father became very sick and needed to be out
here where he could get good medical attention and also he attended the
temple during the last months of his life. When mom carpenter sold the home
to Mrs. Meyers, she retained the right to rent the apartment where she and
Roberta and Doug, Roberta's brother lived, and also the upstairs apartment
where Kay and Don Nebeker lived. Since my lifelong relationship with
Roberta began at this time I'd like to tell a couple of interesting things
about how it began. I'm a very conservative person. When I was made an
officer during 1944 I had bought some very expensive clothes, uniforms,
including some nice slacks and a couple of nice overcoats. When I enrolled,
when I came out of the service I decided to wear those clothes. I had the
epaulettes taken off the winter coats so I could wear them as civilian
clothes, and I was wearing one of those coats when I came seeking board and
room and where I met Roberta. And I thought she must have been very
impressed with my appearance and with me. She has told me many times since
that quite the opposite was true. She felt that I was very cold and
conceited. Well, Mrs. Meyers apparently didn't like Roberta's mother, and
maybe not Roberta either. At any rate, she told me that Mrs. Carpenter
spent a lot of time with gentlemen friends and that Roberta was a pretty
fast girl. Well naturally I waited for Roberta to make a pass or two at me
seeking a date. I waited and waited and waited. It never happened. Then
in April or March I learned that the Nebekers and Mrs. Carpenter had bought
a home out in Murray, 296 E 45th South, and that they would all be moving
out there in April. Well, since Roberta hadn't asked me for a date, I
figured if I was going to get to know that red headed girl I'd have to ask
her for a date, so I did, and we had a date or two before she moved away in
April. After they moved I became acquainted with Roberta's sister Leah and
her husband Albert Tuckey. They lived in the apartment where Roberta and
her mother and brother Doug had lived. It was fortunate that I got to know
Tuckey. We always called him Tuckey as I'll tell you a year or two later.
My acquaintance with him kept me in touch with Roberta. In the summer when
the school let out I went home to Brigham and had another very interesting
part time job, and again my good friend Clint Holmes, Tuff Homes, had helped
me get this job through a friend of his, Win Davis, who was the Uncle of
Marian Davis with whom we had both gone to school in Boxelder. The job was
to serve as an inspector of fruit and produce for the Utah Department of
Agriculture. I was to have this job during the summers of 1947, 48
and 49, enjoyed it very much. I surely am grateful to Tuff for helping me
get these two good jobs, part time jobs, which I had during college years.
On a February weekend I went flying with my friend Clark Olsen and I became
airsick. This was quite an embarrassing blow to the ego of a great world
war 2 pilot. My little brother Raymond was married in July to Kerma Snow in
the Logan Temple. They held their wedding reception in the American legion
hall in Brigham City on east 4th street, and he asked me to be his best man.
I'm embarrassed to look at the pictures of that occasion and see that I was
wearing a little goatee beard. I think I was trying to raise a beard for
the 24th of July, which was a crazy custom in those days. (45:20) About
July 24th I took a trip to California in the Plymouth with, taking along my
mother, my sisters Barbara and Shirley, went down to visit my mother's
family, all of whom lived in California. One memorable event on the way
down was our overnight stay in a cow pasture in Panquitch Utah. We slept in
the pasture overnight and in the morning we were a little bit chagrined to
find that we were in the midst of a bunch of cowpies. Fortunately, any that
we slept on were dry. WE had a pleasant visit in California, met with all
of mom's brothers and sisters and families, and I renewed my acquaintance
with Bob Kotnick and his sister Mary whom I had not seen since we were about
six years old. I also had a good visit with my cousin Bud Schwarz who had
obtained his private pilots license during the war. We flew together in a
small airplane taking off from the airport in Montebello near where Uncle
Norman lived.

Tape 6 Side B
I don't think I enjoyed this flight much more than the one in February with
Clark Olson in Brigham City. So, I haven't flown a small plane since that
time. In the four years since I graduated from high school I had become
very inactive in the church especially in my feelings. My testimony had
become very weak. I went to church occasionally when I was home in Brigham
City. I wasn't committing any serious sins at this time, but I was surely
far from the church. In the fall of 1947, the beginning of my third
year of college, I looked for board and room and found it at a home, 212 S
13th East, a two story house owned by Mr. and Mrs. Harris. I lived there
for the remaining 2 years of my time at the University. In September I
bought an accordion at Summerhayes Music Store, and began taking accordion
lessons. My practicing wasn't very popular with the 8 or 10 other boys that
lived in the Harris home, and so I practiced in the back seat of my car out
in the garage. During my second year, the previous year at the U, I had
registered for calculus which was a three quarter class. I enjoyed it very
much, got good grades. I decided to major in mathematics. I didn't exactly
what I'd do with it for employment, but the important thing was that I could
get As in math. As I look back on my behavior and my feelings of that time
as well as I can remember, I'm astonished at how preoccupied with myself
that I was. My mother and dad were very unhappy in their marriage at this
time as they had been for a number of years. I'm astonished at how
unaware I was at their unhappiness. I was also quite unaware of my sister
Shirley who was 12 years old at this time, and my sister Barbara who was 17.
Barbara was a junior in high school at the same time I was a junior at the
university. My father was drinking quite a bit again at this time. My
mother did my laundry for me all through my college years. I went home
regularly on weekends, a couple times a month, took my washing, my dirty
clothes home, and she did up my laundry, and I took it for granted. I hope
I remembered to thank her, but I'm not sure I did. I started dating a
number of girls at this time. I hadn't dated very many, hadn't had very
many dates until this time. I hadn't had any counseling on what was proper
and what was improper and fell into a bad habit of necking and petting, if
the girl would allow it. And, the girls seemed to think that was the thing
to do on a date too. But, it didn't really get out of hand. It was just
improper and developed some incorrect attitudes about man/woman
relationships. I enjoyed my summer job as a fruit and produce inspector.
It made me think of my dad's fruit farm that had been gone for six years.
It made me really wish that he still had it. He must have deeply regretted
the loss of his farm. It must have seriously affected his outlook on life,
no doubt contributed to his drinking problem. A few weeks ago my sister
Barbara reminded me of something we did together in that year. She
didn't have a date for her junior prom so I asked her if she'd like to go
with me. We had a good time and went to Peach City ice-cream parlor
afterward. I graduated from the University of Utah in June of 1949. I had
taken a variety of classes in history, English, Spanish, science, and
majored in mathematics, with a minor in English and another minor I believe
in history. My plans for the future were very indefinite, however. I
didn't know what to do with a math degree. But, the important thing, I
guess, was that I had got good grades, got the As in the classes, and I was
elected to phi beta kappa, honorary scholastic fraternity, and also phi
kappa phi, another such fraternity, but I didn't know what to do after that.
During the summer I worked as a produce and fruit inspector again, and about
the time school started I became restless wondering what to do with myself.
I looked into possible teaching job, went to a placement agency. They had a
number of openings in smaller towns. They had one in Weston Idaho. I drove
up and inquired about it. It didn't seem to feel right. I went
back to the agency and they had one in Blanding Utah. I had never heard of
Blanding, but it's located in San Juan county, about 350 miles southeast of
Salt Lake City. During my last quarter at the university I had begun to
date a girl named Mary Knolema. She was an immigrant from Holland.
With her I continued that practice of necking and petting and she was
looking for an American husband. I was told that later on by her older
sister who had married an American whom she met during the war. Mary was a
member of the church but not much more active in it than I was myself. I
wasn't particularly happy in my association with her, but as I look back now
I realize I was being trapped by my lust and her desire to trap an American
husband. And also I wonder, looking back, I wonder if I was
subconsciously looking for a job far away from Salt Lake City. At any rate,
I accepted the job to teach in Blanding. My duties would be to teach
English to students in grades 8 through 12, and to teach one class of plane
geometry to high school in grades ten through twelve. On September 7th I
started the long trip to Blanding in my Plymouth. It was a memorable trip.
It took me two days. I left home late in the day from Brigham City, spent
the night in a motel in Murray Utah. That motel still stands on State
Street just north of 53rd south on the east side of the street. When I got
to the hills just north of Monticello, I began climbing up that long grade,
my car over heated and boiled all the water out of the radiator.
Fortunately there was a ranch house a mile or so away and I hiked over there
and got some water, enough to, a bucket full, to put in the radiator, and I
drove over to the ranch house and filled up. I was able to make it up the
grade to Monticello which is at an elevation of over 7000 feet and on over
to Blanding which is about 50 miles, I think, maybe 40 miles south of
Monticello. I stayed that night in a motel in Blanding. The next day I
went to the school, reported to the principal who was Laray Alexander, a
nice fellow. I asked him and the other teachers, there were about six
teachers in the school. I asked them if they knew of a place where I could
find room and board in town. They referred me to the home of Mary and Ed
Stevens. They had just built a new home that year, and had included in
their plans a private bedroom with an outside entrance for Mary's father.
But, before the house was finished her father died. So, they
thought, the teachers thought that Mary would be happy to have a border. I
drove down to Mary's house and had a most interesting spiritual experience
as I walked up to her front door. When she opened the door I felt that I
knew her. I still feel that I knew her before that day. Mary was
older than my father and mother by, oh ten or fifteen years. She was not a
pretty woman, large woman, had worked hard all of her life, not in very good
health, had difficulty walking, didn't have good eyesight, but she had a
beautiful spirit. She welcomed me into her home and into her life.
It was in Blanding that I found the church again, not that day that I met
Mary on her porch, but during the next nine months that I lived in her home.
Ed was older than Mary and he was rather quiet, spent most of his time
reading the newspaper, or reading any other printed matter that came to his
attention, but he was a pleasant fellow too. He had been a farmer all of
his life. My experience in Blanding was wonderful. It didn't start out
that way and it wasn't all wonderful, but overall it transformed my life,
turned me around and sent me in the right direction. Teaching was
very difficult. I hadn't had any training. The English that I knew saw me
through it because I had had some excellent instruction in English grammar
and literature in all four grades of high school. None of the English that
I had studied in college helped me much. It was those high school classes
that saw me through the struggle to teach English myself in high school.
The main difficulty I had in teaching was with discipline problems with
students who didn't want to be in school and whose only function was to give
the teacher a bad time. I didn't know how to handle it, became very
discouraged and gradually decided during the year that I would not be a good
high school teacher. That may have been a poor judgment, however. My main
problem during my months in Blanding was my unhappiness with myself. During
the Thanksgiving break I came back to Salt Lake and up to Brigham. In Salt
Lake I dated Mary Knolema again and we became engaged. with plans
to get married in January, not in the temple however. Neither one of us was
anywhere worthy or prepared to go to the temple. When I got back to
Blanding and told Mary my plans, she broke her usual pattern of being
cautious and listening and not giving advice, and made it plane to me that I
was making a very serious mistake to be married anywhere but in the temple.
She made it plane too that my example to the students in the school and the
people in the town would be a very negative thing. It was a Mormon town and
most of the people there were active members of the church. They knew that
I was a member of the church and I would surely let them down. I was
influenced by what she said, but mostly I was influenced by my own feelings.
I was not happy to be engaged, and I was not happy at all with the prospect
of being married to Mary Knolema. During the Christmas break I went to Salt
Lake again and home to Brigham, and Mary Stevens rode up with me to visit
some relatives and friends in Salt Lake City. Mary Knolema and I discussed
our plans, made arrangements to have our announcement appear in the paper,
and have weddings invitations, reception invitations, printed. In
fact we had previously had them printed and we picked them up from the
printer. I took them with me back to Blanding planning to address them and
mail them from there. I went to visit Raymond and Kerma who then were
living in Salt Lake City on 2nd east and 13th south. They knew that I was
very unhappy. In fact I remember that I cried while I visited with them.
I was very late Sunday afternoon picking up Mary to start on our
way back to Blanding. It was a 7 or 8 hour drive in good weather from Salt
Lake to Blanding and the weather was bad. Going over soldiers summit
between Spanish fork and price Utah we ran into deep snow on the highway. I
had to get out and put chains on the car, the only time I have ever had to
put chains on a car I was driving. When we got east of Price and down
toward Monticello, moab, south of moab, we ran into severe icing conditions
on the road, had to go very slow with one wheel in the gravel off the road.
The road was too slick. WE got home to Blanding about 3 o'clock in the
morning, Monday morning. It was hard to get up and go to school, be at
school at 9 o'clock Monday morning. I believe this was the lowest point in
my whole life to date, these weeks in the fall and early winter of my time
in Blanding. I was so unhappy with myself, so disappointed in
myself. I knew I was on the wrong track. I talked with Mary quite openly
and she counseled me to break the engagement which is exactly what I wanted
to do. So, I did so. I wrote a letter to Mary Knolema, told her that I did
not want to go through with the wedding plans. I threw the wedding
invitations into the furnace, burned them up, and began to repent. I
started going to church. The people in Blanding were very kind and friendly
and understanding toward me. Most of the kids were that way. There were a
few who gave me a hard time. One of my regrets as a teacher was losing my
temper one day in class. One of the sophomore boys had taunted me for
weeks. And we had a confrontation. I wound up slapping his face right in
class, very embarrassing to me and harmful to him. I regret it very much.
A very traumatic thing happened to my parents in Brigham City in November.
My father's job with Brigham was an appointive job. It depended on the
outcome of the periodic elections of the city. On the evening, either
before or after the election, my dad and some of his employees, including
some women, were having a drinking party or a celebration of some kind in
the city shop. The husband of one of the women who was also one of
my dad's employees struck my father over the head with a shovel and injured
very seriously, cutting his scalp open. They took my dad to the hospital.
The next day, while he was in the hospital, without any consultation with
him or discussion, the city council met and fired my father from his job.
A few days later they regretted what they had done, whether they
had found out that they were mistaken or just felt that they had been unduly
hasty, I don't know. I never knew many of the details about it, but the
mayor came to my father and said, speaking for the council, that they deeply
regretted what they had done. That they regarded him very highly and wanted
him to take his job back. But that's something my father's pride would just
not permitted him to do, so he refused to take the job back. My dad was
born and raised in Brigham City and Brigham City was very precious to him,
but during the next six months he and mom made plans to sell the house and
move out of Brigham. Well, 1950 started as a different year for me. As I
said, I started going to church. I continued to struggle with my problems,
discipline problems in school. By the time school was out in May, I had had
quite a change of heart where the gospel and the church are concerned. In
May I paid my tithing for the first time in my life, and I paid it, paid a
full tithing on my teachers salary for that whole year. That
spring I had received a piece of mail from a company that sold a single
volume encyclopedia called "The volume Library". They sent this letter out
to many school teachers offering them a job selling this book during the
summer. So, right after school was out I went home for a visit with my
folks who had in the mean time made plans to move to California. They moved
on July the 5th to North Hollywood California. So, that was the last time I
visited my family in the old family home. Then I went to Albuquerque New
Mexico for a two week training class in selling this encyclopedia, and went
back to Blanding after the class was over and spent the next couple of
months selling this encyclopedia to everyone I knew in Blanding. Then I
went over to Monticello and tried selling it to people that I didn't know.
I learned something else about myself, that I'm not a very good salesman.
But, I was feeling much better about myself spiritually and decided that I'd
like to have a patriarchal blessings. So, I met with Bishop Bayless of the
Blanding Ward. He issued me a recommend and I made an appointment with
Brother Albert R Lyman. He was a very prominent man in the community, and
old man at that time. I think he was a little baby at the time the Hole in
the Rock pioneers came into San Juan county, about 1878 or 80. He
told me some things in that blessing that I am still trying to understand
and figure out how to respond to them. My school teaching experience had
taught me that I didn't have the right disposition for handling the
discipline problems that you encounter in the public schools. My selling
experience in the summer had told me that I wasn't a salesman. So, again I
was in the position of wondering what to do for an occupation. During the
school year something had happened which gave me a lead. In Salt Lake City
there was a business school known as Hennigers Business School and it had
been purchased by a man named Irving W Stevens. He was a nephew of the Ed
Stevens in whose home I lived in Blanding. At Hennigers they formed a
basketball team from the students. They brought that team down to Blanding
to play a game of basketball with an addhawk team of men from the town, not
the high school team, but a team of older men. IW Stevens visited his uncle
Ed and aunt Mary and I visited with them. He talked with me about my plans.
I told him of my uncertainty. He said, well why don't you come to Salt Lake
City and come to Hennigers. We'll make an accountant out of you. Well that
sounded like a possibility. I know that accounting makes use of
mathematics. That's about all that I knew about it. But now in the summer,
after this selling job came to an end, I moved out of Mary's home and said
good-bye for awhile and went to Brigham. There I visited with my brothers
and sisters. I stayed a couple weeks with Orville and his family, slept in
the basement, did a little painting on their house, and practiced my
accordion, just about drove Gay crazy with my practicing. I don't think I
was very good either at playing or practicing. At any rate, it was very
disturbing to her. So, just in time I moved out and went over to visit with
Yvonne and Gordon in Logan. They had just built a new home having moved to
Logan in 1947. The yard was not yet landscaped. I remember
digging a little bit of dirt, digging out a few weeds in their yard. That's
about all I did for my keep while I visited with them. I left, when I left
Yvonne's and Gordon's place I was on my way to California to visit my folks
in North Hollywood where they had bought a six unit apartment building.
When I arrived there I discovered that daddy had just left to go to Ogden to
locate a place to move to. They had already decided to sell the apartment
building after having owned it only for a month or so, a month or two.
My dad had obtained a job at Hill Field and about November 1st they
moved to Ogden. One of my reasons for going to visit my folks was to look
into the possibility of going to school at Woodbury Business College. I had
obtained some literature about their school and had thought that my folks
were going to be living in California. I looked around Los Angeles and
became aware of all the temptation there was, particularly prostitution and
pornography. I was afraid that I was not strong enough to resist that kind
of an environment if I were to live there, especially as a single unmarried
man, and with my folks moving back to Ogden I decided to return to Salt Lake
City and attend the Henniger Business School as IW Stevens had invited me to
do that spring. So I returned to Salt Lake and took board and room
in a home on Wilson Avenue and 9th East, and started attending church at the
Marlborough Ward. I wasn't too happy with the place I was living, so when I
met a man at school named Lem Florez, who invited me to move in with him
where he was taking board and room, I decided to do so. I moved into a home
owned by some Dutch people, the VanHoffs, at 958 East 1st South, where I
lived during that school year. I need to go back to 1947 and bring
you up to date on the major moves in Roberta's life in the 4 years since I
met her. When they moved to Murray in the spring of 1947, Roberta became
engaged to a man that she didn't want to marry. So, late that summer I
think it was, she went to California to live with her sister Bea and her
husband Cliff Cash. She stayed down there for about 7 or 8 months and got a
job and forgot about the man that she didn't want to marry. I thought she
was married and gone out of my life, but that fall, 1948, I met Al Tucky,
Leah's husband, on the street. He was driving a coal truck and we were
stopped together at the same red light. He saw me and rolled down the
window and shouted at me, "Hey, Merlin, Bertie's back." Then the light
changed to green and I was on my way to ask Roberta for another date. I
really liked her and didn't know that she didn't like me. So, we had a few
more dates during that winter of 48 and 49, which was a winter of
terrifically deep snow. I remember driving out to Murray on 45th south to
pick her up for a date and parking my car right in the middle of the street
because I didn't dare pull over to the curb. and didn't need to
either because there wasn't much traffic in the road. So, during my senior
year in college Roberta and I had a few dates. Then in the spring of 1949
she decided to get out of my life again by going on a mission, which she
did, leaving in April 1949 to serve a mission in the California mission.
And while she was gone, as I related, I became engaged to a woman that I
didn't want to marry, broke off the engagement. And now here in the fall of
1950 I'm attending Henniger Business School and I've repented and decided
that the church and the gospel are a good thing, and I can count 18 months
from April of 1949 is October of 1950. And so, on about November 1st I
called Roberta's home in Murray to see if she would like to have a date with
me. She was very surprised to hear from me and not entirely disappointed
because she could tell by the way I talked that something had changed in my
life. So she consented to go with me again. I don't remember where we went
on our first date, but I've remembered the feeling that I had. When I
returned to my room where I lived with Lem Florez in the VanHoff home, I
told him, "Lem (his name was Lemuel), Lem I was out tonight with a girl that
I want to marry." He immediately said, "what do you want to do that for?"
Well, Lem was at that time involved in getting a divorce, or being divorced
by his wife who had abandoned him, and he couldn't' see why anyone would
want to get into that situation. But, I really felt for the first time in
my life that I would like to be married, and Roberta was the one I wanted to
be married with. Incidentally, I had gone back to the Hotel Utah garage and
asked for my old job back while I attended Hennigers, and they very kindly
hired me. So, I was back in the school going, car parking mode. Roberta
says that she had hardly had a date until she was about 20 years old which
was about the time that I met her in 1946. But now after returning from her
mission she was a very beautiful and popular girl.
Tape 7 Side A
She was having dates with about six different men, each one on a different
night of the week. My night with her was Friday. We started going out just
about every week, and it was the high point of my week. Other than that it
was just school and study and work and church. I was going to church
regularly and enjoying it, feeling good about myself now. I decided to ask
Roberta to marry me and she accepted and we made plans to be married in May.
I was worn out with being up late just night a week, dating her on
Fridays. Maybe she was desperate, needed some rest, and decided that
getting married was the only way she was going to get any rest. Anyway, I
was thrilled that she would agree to marry me. We were married on May 11th
in the Salt Lake Temple, about 10:30 PM at night, and we set up housekeeping
in the upstairs apartment at 563 E 3rd South. The house where we had met
over 4 years before. Roberta was then working at Zelerbach paper
company which she continued to do, and I continued my schedule of school and
work through that year of 1951.
People that keep journals say that one of the benefits of that is to
learn a lot about yourself as you grow. Well, I'm having that same benefit
now as I look back through the years and try to remember my life, the things
I've learned and how I learned them. I don't mean things in school. I mean
lessons of life. We're both surprised looking back to see ourselves going
to the supermarket on Sunday, two days after we were married in the temple
and doing a lot of shopping to stock our cupboards in our apartment. We
didn't have a lot money so we didn't do a lot of shopping, but the idea was
the same.
In case I forget to mention it, we learned during that first year
that we were married, while we lived there in the Salt Lake 12th ward, that
we didn't want to shop on Sunday, and before we had been married a year we
decided against that practice and haven't done it since. But, we had to
learn. We've learned a lot of things through the years, mostly by making
mistakes and recognizing them. We attended church in the Salt Lake West
12th Ward. They gave us a joint calling teaching a Sunday School class of 8
year olds. Roberta did the teaching. I sat with the kids maintaining
order, doing nothing really. They realized that I wasn't much help to
Roberta so they asked me to be one of the counselors in the Sunday School
Superintendency.
We enjoyed our Sunday afternoons very much that first year. We read
aloud to each other the book "Jesus the Christ". This was a tremendous
spiritual experience for me as I was nourishing my sick spirit back to
health. I enjoyed it a lot. I also learned something about myself and
about Roberta with a little black budget book. I started out with the
notion that we needed to account for every penny, not only account for, but
record how we spent almost every cent. This annoyed Roberta terribly. She
didn't say much about it. That's her way even today. She will put up with
a lot without complaining. And she never did complain about that budget
book. She just waited for me to see the light and get rid of it. Well, I
got very tired of it and after a few months threw it away. We lived happily
ever after on what we thought was a very slim budget. We've learned since
that we were very rich and prosperous then and ever since then compared with
most of the people in the world.
We didn't have a honeymoon when we got married. We didn't have a
wedding reception or even a wedding party. I don't think Roberta even had a
shower given to her. That may be a mistake. I may be mistaken about that.
But, during that first year we didn't have money hardly for an ice cream
cone or a hamburger. But in August, we felt that we ought to go on a little
trip and call it a honeymoon trip. So, we went to Yellowstone Park in the
Plymouth. We borrowed my dad's double sleeping bag. We bought a Coleman
stove and took off with a few dollars in our pocket. The first night we
spent up in Willowmere Park in Boxelder Canyon, just below Mantuay. We
slept out on the grass and the mosquitoes nearly ate us alive.
The next night we were up in West Yellowstone and that night we
learned that we couldn't sleep together in that single sleeping bag, even
though it was a big one, sitting up in the back of the car. It was raining
and we didn't have a tent. We couldn't sleep out on the ground. In fact,
it rained the whole week we were in Yellowstone. Every night it rained and
we slept in the car, every night, but not in the sleeping bag. We took
turns in the sleeping bag and the other slept with blankets in the other
seat, except one night after we had left the park and we were in Jackson
Hole near Jackson Lake, we slept out on a picnic table in the double
sleeping bag. It was a little bit easier on the table than it was in the
back seat of the car. Well, if you can imagine Roberta going all week
without a bath, and me without a bath, and Roberta without any way to take
care of her hair or her cosmetics, her makeup. But, we did it. (10:31)
Now, I guess we didn't look so strange among the crowds of people then
because we were much less sophisticated, lived a simpler life than people do
now when we have to have everything just so. We arrived home with just, I
think, 50 cents in our pocket. We had given our last five dollars to a
little man that we picked up near the Wyoming border and gave him a ride to
Salt Lake City. That's another change in our society. We would
hardly dare do that today.
In September in that first year of our marriage I, with a year of
accounting study under my belt, I felt qualified to take a job in
accounting. I got a job as office and credit manager working for Glen
Mickleson who owned a business, Utility Trailer Sales and Equipment Company.
It was located at 551 South 1st West, which is really 200 West, second west.
It's the place where the Quality Inn now, the west entrance to the quality
inn, is located. I continued to study at night in night school. I had an
excellent accounting teacher named Ray Closson. He was a very good teacher.
I credit him with teaching me all I ever knew about accountin

Mr. Stevens, IW Stevens, and his family were very good to their
employees including me. They had 4 sons, all of whom worked with him in the
business. They first studied accounting there themselves and then they
served as part of the staff.
Our first Christmas together was memorable. Roberta was able to
buy Christmas ornaments where she worked at Hennigers, or at Zelerbachs, and
we still have the ornaments that she bought then, four or five boxes full of
them, and a lighted Christmas tree stand, which we no longer use but we
still have. Our Christmas tree stood in the room upstairs until
Washington's birthday. It was a pinion pine. Our front room was quite
cool. That tree remained fresh and beautiful and exciting all that time,
two months, two and a half months I guess. It was all right because our
window was high up and nobody could see it from the street and we didn't
have much company.
At Utility Trailers I met a man who was to be a good friend for
some years to come. His name was Forrest E Bair, and we called him Bus
Bair. He was the shop foreman, a very good friend. He had known my dad, or
he knew my dad. He had worked with a business called WS Hatch Company out
in Woods Cross that sold petroleum products including the kind of oil they
use for making roads, and he had supplied that road oil to my father for
building roads, surfacing roads in Brigham City. That first Christmas,
Roberta and I did something which we have repeated every Christmas since
then in one way or another, which has given us a great deal of private
pleasure. We prepared a box of canned goods and goodies and put them on the
back porch of a couple that we knew needed it and would appreciate it
without anyone knowing that we had done it. It has been our secret every
Christmas ever since, not always a box of goodies, usually some money that
the people could spend as they needed it.
I ought to go back to our wedding and enter into the record her
some comments that Roberta has made about something she learned, that she
had married a very unique family. On the night that we were married we
waited in the temple until 10:30 for some member of her family or my family
to show up who wanted to be present when we were sealed. Then we went down
to my brother Raymond's and Kirma's home on 2nd E 13th S, an upstairs
apartment, and there she met other members of my family. I don't know who
was there, whether everyone was there or not. I believe they were. No one
had prepared so much as a glass of punch or a cookie to celebrate our
wedding. We just stood around and talked. There weren't enough chairs to
sit on. We talked until about midnight and everyone went home. We got to
bed late. All of our belongings were in paste board boxes. We looked for
our night clothes and bedding, got to bed 1:30, and at 7 o'clock the next
morning there was a knock on our door, and there stood my grandma and
grandpa Nelson who had come in from California to celebrate their 50th
wedding anniversary. They had been married just 50 years before in the Salt
Lake Temple. I don't know how they found out that that's where we lived,
but there they were.
The next morning which was Sunday morning, we were awakened early
again by someone knocking on our door. There stood my mother and father. I
don't know why they had come down so early, maybe because they were afraid
they'd miss us if we went to church, but there they were. They had come
down to visit us. My father I don't think was with us Friday night, but
there they were to congratulate us on our wedding, and Roberta really
wondered what kind of a family she had married, a strange one, she was sure
of that.
During that summer we learned that that was an extremely hot
apartment. We suffered through the summer, but as we approached the spring
of 1952 we knew that we didn't want to spend it in that apartment, so we
inquired of Kay and Don Nebeker and Roberta's mother, if they knew of a
house that we could rent out there near them. Well, the knew of such a home
and it happened to be for sale also. So, we went out and looked at the
house at 59 East Miller Street in Murray. We liked it and we liked the
price of it. It sounded like something that we could afford to buy. Well,
we didn't look very far ahead. It wasn't a very elegant home. It needed a
lot of work on it. It was a very old home. It had been built about 1900.
We talked with the people who owned it who were James and Lucy Stacy. They
lived up on State Street just north of 33rd South on Granite Avenue. We
arranged to buy the house for 9,500 dollars. They wanted a
thousand dollars down and would charge us 5.5 interest. Well, we didn't
have a thousand dollars or even a hundred, so Roberta borrowed 500 dollars
from her credit union at work, and we borrowed 500 dollars on my national
service life insurance policy. We were a long time paying that 500 dollars
back to Roberta's credit union. We never did pay the 500 dollars back to
the life insurance policy. In fact, a few years later we let the policy
lapse, which is another story.
I should put in here before I forget it another very traumatic
thing in the life of my mother and father. My dad asked for all the
brothers and sisters to meet in our apartment for some reason, I don't know
why they met there, never did know why, but we all met together. Roberta
probably went to her mother's place while we met. It was in March. My dad
announced that he was going to divorce my mother. That was a real
thunderbolt to all of us, especially my mother, but he was determined, and
when my father made up his mind there was no changing it. There was to be a
six month waiting period with the divorce to be final in September.
My dad moved out of the home that they had bought in Clearfield,
and took room and board at a house in Ogden. I don't recall where it was.
My mother was 50 years old and had never worked outside of her own home.
She had to go out into the job market and find a job to support herself and
Shirley, my youngest sister, who was just 16 years old. Roberta was
pregnant at this time with Douglas, but she didn't say much about it, and I
was hardly aware of it. That's been her way all our life together. She's
never complained. She keeps her aches and pains to herself.
That was a very memorable spring. We had had a heavy snowfall
during the winter, and the snow melted rapidly in the spring. It caused
very bad flooding in Salt Lake City, especially around the area of 13th
south where there is a big storm sewer under the street. But, there was a
river about 4 to 6 feet deep flowing down 13th south between sand bag banks.
We were happy to move into the Murray 8th Ward, which had just been formed
by a split of the Murray 3rd Ward, a month before. They were in the process
of building a new ward house and we were to be involved right in the middle
of it.
Roberta went to work I believe right away in the Relief Society,
and I was asked to be the quorum in the ward. That changed my life a little
bit too. We went on an outing to Saratoga Springs down on Utah Lake. This
gang of deacons felt it their obligation to try to drown me. They climbed
up on me and started pulling my head and neck in different directions. They
pulled my neck out of joint. The next morning my head was lying down on my
shoulder and I couldn't move it. I went to a good chiropractor named
William Seare who straightened me out in a few adjustments and told me that
I would have that, I would be aware of my neck for the rest of my life.
Whenever I lean my head forward too long a time, my neck would bother me.
He was a prophet. I've done desk work all my life and there's hardly a day
that I haven't felt the weight of my head on my injured neck, but it remains
functional and it's no great problem.
A study formed in the ward and they included us, although we were
new comers in the ward. There were five other couples besides us, Grant and
Lois Hodgkinson, Leo and Betty Murray, Jack and Helen Barrett, Wendell and
Carol Murray, and Don and Kay Nebeker. We met together, it seems like every
week, for about five years. It may have been less than weekly. We had a
lot of fun. WE did more visiting than studying, I believe, which was good
for us. We're not great visitors, either one of us. Bishop Murray, who had
two brothers in this study group, suggested that each couple pay and
additional 300 dollars on the building fund. We didn't have the money, so
we went to the bank and borrowed it. We repaid it a ten dollars a month for
three years. The banker thought we were very foolish. Perhaps we were.
The church has never encouraged people to borrow money to make donations.
The church itself has avoided borrowing and we don't believe in borrowing
except for necessities such as a home and perhaps a car. But, we felt good
about making that extra contribution. We managed to pay the money.
Another good that came out of it was that it taught us how long it takes to
pay back money that you can borrow in five minutes.
Our first child was born on October 9th, Merlin Douglas Larsen. He
was born at home and Roberta was attended by Doctor Loretta Foote. That was
a memorable day in another way. I picked three bushels of tomatoes in the
garden that day in October. We shared them with Doctor Foote and her friend
and with other people. Doctor Foote was a very interesting person. She was
about the age of Roberta's mother. She had spent most of her young adult
years down in Emery County. She was a licensed doctor. She hadn't attended
medical school, but had practiced as a midwife, had an MD license, and for
years she was about the only medical person in that territory. She
delivered babies until she was very old and feeble. She delivered all of
our four children and all of Kay and don Nebekers children, among about 1500
total. She says that she never lost a full time baby and never lost a
mother in any of her deliveries. She was very skillful and Roberta had a
good delivery. Doctor Foote kept Roberta in bed for 9 days, and she felt
very good. She was very anxious to get up I'm sure, when that nine days was
over.
To give our children and grand children something to compare with,
I'll state here that we paid Doctor Foote fifty dollars for delivering the
baby. That's somewhat less than the thousands of dollars it costs today to
have a baby.
Some years before we bought the house it had been divided into two
apartments. We were living on the east side. With some redecorating and
the purchase of an apartment size gas range, we prepared the west apartment
for renting. Our first renters were Joyce and Eddy Loyal. Joyce was the
daughter of Byron Gleason who was in our bishopric at that time. We
continued to rent that apartment until 1957. We had about five or six
different renters in those five years. It added some interest to our life
and probably we came out a little ahead financially, although we paid the
water, and the power, and the gas bills for that apartment. I don't
remember how much we charged for it either, probably in the range of 60
dollars, including those utilities.
I had been working for Glen Mickleson, Mick we called him, at
Utility Trailers, for over a year and I felt that I had done a good job and
should have a least a small raise, but Mick refused to do that so I decided
to look for another job. I believe that in the back of every young person
who studies accounting is the idea of becoming a CPA. To do that in Utah
it's necessary to serve an apprenticeship for a couple of years in the
office of CPAs. So, in January I started to work for a CPA firm called
Goddard Sunnyville and Griffin, as an auditor's assistant. I discovered
that I didn't like auditing very much, but I enjoyed traveling to some
different assignments whit a man named Merrill Ellis who later became one of
the partners in the firm. We audited half a dozen different businesses
together. My work was very routine and very boring and quite pointless as I
saw it. Most interesting assignment was to audit the books of the producers
livestock marketing association. They had cattle feeding yards and cattle
brokerage offices in a number of western cities, and we traveled to perform
audits in those offices. There was one in Denver in the stock yards, one in
ElCentro California, which is in the area of the Imperial Valley, one in Los
Angeles, Billings Montana, one in Phoenix Arizona.
The job didn't last very long. In March I was bumped out of my job
by a returning serviceman who had had the job before me. The law at that
time required that a returning serviceman could claim his old job. This was
during the Korean War. So, I took another job in March or perhaps the first
of April. I started working for the Utah State Tax Commission as a sales
tax auditor. Although the accounting aspects and the auditing itself were
more interesting than they had been with the CPAs, there was an aspect about
it that I disliked very much. The purpose of the sales tax audit, from the
state's point of view, is to discover deficiencies in the remittance of
sales tax, to discover, if possible, some error in accounting that would
indicate that the business owes the state more sales tax. I didn't like
putting the pressure on people, or putting the "boo" on them, and charging
them with owing the state hundreds of dollars more sales tax where they had
already made an effort to collect and remit the tax, at no expense to the
state. So I really didn't enjoy the job very much, worked at it until May,
the end of May.
All this time I was still in touch with Henniger's business school, Mr.
Stevens, the owner of the school. Because I was still attending night
school which was held Monday and Thursday of each week. Mr. Stevens talked
with me an expressed confidence that I could do a good job as a teacher in
his school. I did have a bachelor's degree and I taught school in Blanding
and I had a real aptitude for accounting and its associated subjects,
English and mathematics. So, he offered me a job to be a full time teacher
in both day school and night school beginning about the first of June.
Well, this was an opportunity to earn quite a bit more money. There were
certain things about teaching school that I had enjoyed in Blanding, and I
thought that the main disadvantage of teaching, the discipline problems with
unwilling students, indifferent students, would not be a factor in a
business school where students were paying their tuition, so I accepted the
job. It turned out to be a very time consuming job, put in really long
hours, preparing for both night and day school classes. I think I've
misstated the time on this. I began teaching school about the first of
September and had worked for the state of Utah until that time.
This summer we began what was to be a very long project of
remodeling the old house and making some changes in the yard. Especially
things that we could do with our own labor and a minimum of cash outlay. I
first removed a wall between our little kitchen and the smaller back porch
to enlarge the kitchen. Outside I installed an irrigation system for the
garden with a pump to draw water out of the irrigation ditch in the back of
our yard in which we bought a half dozen shares to entitle us to the water.
We tore down an old chicken coop that was in the space that we wanted for a
garden. We gave the material to a neighbor, Howard Goodwin. I cut down
four large trees. They were black elm trees. There were three in the front
by the sidewalk and one by the corner of the garage. I did that work with
hand tools, a hand saw, and removed the stumps with a pick and a shovel and
an ax. I had a lot of energy in those days. I did this in spite of the
busy job at school. Also, I built a new gravel driveway by digging down,
removing the top soil and having it replaced with crushed roadbed gravel.
At this time I learned another lesson. I learned something about
my wife. I apparently had quite a constant habit of grumbling to Roberta
about things that we didn't have, things we were going without. It annoyed
her. She took it in silence, but her response was very surprising to me.
In November she informed me that she had applied for her old job back at
Zelerbach paper company and had arranged with her sister Kay to tend Doug
who was just a year old. I stormed and complained about what she had done
without discussing it with me, and definitely against my wishes. She knew
how I felt about her being at home and raising the children as a full time
mother. But, she just very calmly said she was tired of hearing me complain
about the things we didn't have. She was going to work and make a little
extra money that we could use to buy the important things, the things that I
thought were so important. She did say that she planned to work for just
one year. So, that gave me hope and I decided I'd better shut my mouth and
take my punishment. I had learned my wife has her limits and that I had
gone to far with my griping. So I had learned that my wife had the
legendary English stubborn bulldog disposition when she was crowded into the
corner.
Tape 7 Side B
We are talking about the year 1953 here. It was November 1953 that Roberta
gave her ultimatum. In April of that year I was called to be the second
counselor in the bishopric of the Murray 8th Ward. In the fall the members
of the 3rd ward and the 8th ward, the two wards that were building the new
church, were alerted that the building would be completed in November but
could not be dedicated until it was fully paid for. So, a drive was
launched to raise some more money and we and many others were asked to give
another three hundred dollars to the building fund. We didn't have to
borrow it this time. We were always willing and happy to contribute to the
church, pay our tithing and offerings, and have always been blessed for it.
We've never missed the money that we donated to the church. We always
figured that we were just giving back a token portion of what the Lord had
blessed us with.
I forgot to mention that in December of 1952, the year before, we
arranged to buy from James and Lucy Stacy the empty building lot that was to
the east of our home, between our home and the home of Chil and Ruth Miller.
We paid 1200 dollars for that lot. It was a very wise move. It gave us
more privacy and a buffer between us and state street and the business that
was encroaching there. The automobile dealership Zion Motor eventually
acquired all of the property east of us over the coming years, and we did
have that buffer between us and them.
Buying this lot was a very wise move. It doubled the size of our
property and made it possibly attractive for business purposes, and as we'll
see in 1978, that opportunity came to sell our property to Wilkensens who
owned the automobile dealership next to us.
I should mention here a factor in our married life that has been constant
since the day we were married. We always gave some money each month to
Roberta's mother to assist her with her living. She owned her home, which
was half interest in the home that she owned with Kay and Don Nebeker, but
she didn't have much cash and needed a little. We always gave her some
money each month, and we did that until her death in 1974.
In the year of 1954 I continued my teaching job at Hennikers until June. JC
Penny Company had established a western accounting division office in Salt
Lake City and I was asked by Mr. Stevens to go the manager of the office and
help acquaint them with the student employment placement service of the
school, feeling sure that we could supply skilled accounting and secretarial
employees for the JC Penny office. I was surprised when I found that one of
the managers of the office was a man named Jack Jennings whom I had known in
the Airforce. He was from New York City and we talked about old times and
also about the present, and he invited me to apply for a job with JC Penny
accounting division. He made it sound very interesting and like a real
improvement in my income. The wages would have been considerably more for
an 8 hour day than I was making with Hennigers for many more hours than 40 a
week. So, I did that and JC Penny hired me as the supervisor of one of its
accounting divisions in that big office. I started work for them in June.
I was quite content there and heard of many opportunities for advancement
with JC Penny. I was looking forward to a long time of employment with them.
Then, in October, I was very surprised when Glen Mickelson who owned utility
trailer sales, and for whom I had worked a couple years before, invited me
to come back to work for him. He made some very attractive promises of
salary, bonuses, and other benefits. Well, I liked the trailer business,
associating with the big highway trailers and big trucks. It was an
exciting business, and I accepted the offer. I began to work for him about
the first of November.
When I'd been on the job for a little while I had contact with the utility
trailer manufacturing company in Los Angeles and learned that they had
requested Mick to hire me back because they had liked the job I did before
in reporting to them, and also they wanted me to look out for their
financial interests which were sometimes overlooked in Mick's fast dealing
ways. I think this made me rather overbearing and pompous at work. I look
back and I see that I felt a lot more important than I was.
That summer we sold the Plymouth, the 1941 Plymouth, for 50 dollars and we
bought a 1941 Ford. It was a gray sedan and we paid 250 dollars for it.
Also in September of that year a couple moved into our ward who had
emigrated from Holland, and they became life long friends of ours, Heubert
and Elizabeth Wholer. They had a son Eddie who was about 8 years old at
that time, and later on they had a daughter who was a year older than our
son John. Their story was interwoven with our story for all the years to
come, up to the present time. They were very faithful members of the
church, Heubert and Elizabeth were. They were very poor. Heubert was a
piano teacher, an excellent player, and also a tuner. He worked very hard,
never made much money. They were always very grateful for the things that
they had, and for the privilege of living in America, and of being members
of the church.
We were able to buy a few things during this year with the money that
Roberta earned. We bought a gray and chrome kitchen set and a green
hide-a-bed for the front room We bought a Philco radio and record player,
and of course the 1941 Ford. And for Christmas that year Santa Claus
brought to Doug a beautiful tricycle which was to be in the family until the
present time. All of our children rode on it. I rode on it. Doug's
children have ridden on it and it's still going. We were able to do a
little more remodeling. We installed a bathtub in the east bathroom, and in
the process discovered that that bathroom and our kitchen had previously
been a screened porch. We built a fence around the back lawn for an
enclosed play yard for Doug, and we went in partners with Chil and Ruth
Miller to install a chain link fence between our properties.
We were raising a good crop of very tall weeds in the vacant lot that we had
acquired and Chill Miller was quite unhappy with our weed forest. So one
day he pulled all the weeds that were next to his yard and just left them in
a pile. I was quite offended at him, at his presumption. Roberta told him
that if he'd do some of my church work I'd have more time for yard work. I
don't suppose that Chill appreciated that advice, but we were always good
neighbors on good terms with the Millers. Maybe they had just forgotten how
it was to be young and just starting your family, being so busy with everything.
When my mother and father were divorced in 1952 my mother had found a job at
the Ogden arsenal, the United States Government installation next to Hill
Field, and had worked there since that time. But, the Korean War was over
now and the government cut back on employment at the arsenal. My mother
lost her job in April. She then sold her house in Clearfield and moved into
an apartment in Salt Lake City, feeling that she could find employment
better in Salt Lake. This began a series of moves that my mother made from
one apartment to another. During the next ten years, ten eleven years, she
moved at least a dozen times, and I wound up doing most of the moving. I
generally had some help from friends in the ward and also from Bob Bauldauff
after he and Barbara came to Salt Lake in 1958.
My mother moved three times between April and November. This was very
disturbing to Shirley who had just graduated from high school that spring.
Shirley while they lived in Clearfield had met a man, Hilton Mose, who was
stationed at the Clearfield Naval Supply Depot. Hilton and Shirley were
attracted to each other and Shirley now became quite disenchanted with the
constant moving about. For her own good reasons she decided to go to Texas
and see what her prospects might be there. She went down in November and
she and Hilton were married that fall. This was very disturbing to my
mother. All of these traumatic events in my mother's life, the last couple
years, made her quite unstable emotionally.
She obtained employment in drapery work. She worked for awhile for
Auerbachs and also for South East Furniture, but she somehow had the idea
that moving to a different apartment would make her happier. So, she moved
frequently. With each move she became more and more upset and discontented.
Our remodeling project was progressing. I had taken a look into the attic
through a trap door in the ceiling of the hallway and saw the possibilities
of building a large upstairs bedroom area. So, this fall I began to build a
stairway. This involved cutting a big hole in the ceiling which opened up
our front room to the attic. I sealed it off with a sheet of plaster board
which could be slid in and out of place, but it made our house very cold.
Roberta studied her Relief Society lessons, prepared her lessons, sitting on
the stairs near the ceiling to keep warm. Our whole apartment was heated
with just one space heater that stood in the corner of the front room.
People who came into our home were convinced that we were crazy and didn't
know what we were doing.
We knew we did, however, but it took some years to be justified in what we
were doing. For awhile everything we did made it look worse. Our hot water
heater failed this fall. It was located in a cellar area beneath our
bedroom. Access to it was through a trap door in our kitchen floor. I
installed a new heater and finished the job late in the evening and we went
to bed. I would normally go to sleep in just a few minutes in those years.
I was always tired physically. But, that night, something, either my
guardian angel or the Holy Ghost, something kept me awake and I tossed
around fitfully for an hour or so, unable to go to sleep, and I was prompted
to go down in the cellar and check that water heater. I did so and I found
the water heater literally jumping around. It was so hot. It had never
shut off since I lit the flame after installing it. I rushed upstairs and
woke Roberta and we hurriedly opened all the hot water valves in the house,
faucets, and the steam filled the house from the ceiling halfway down to the
floor. Well, I turned the water heater off of course. The next day when
the, we had the mountain fuel supply send a man out to check it. He
discovered that I had failed to replace a spring in the automatic shutoff
valve. That water heater was located directly under Doug's crib, and if it
had exploded it would have probably have shot up through the floor like a
rocket and would surely have killed or injured, perhaps all three of us. We
were surely spared a serious tragedy at that time. I've always felt that it
was the inspiration of the Holy Ghost that saved us.
During 1955 I worked for Utility Trailers and I also had a part time job
teaching night school for Henniger Business School. In the spring Bishop
Fenton Murray moved out of the ward which resulted in the releasing of the
Bishopric. Byron Gleason became the bishop. His counselors were Dale
Ahlberg and Grant Hodgkinson. Leo Murray, Bishop Murray's brother was made
the ward clerk and I was called to be the assistant clerk for finances.
Roberta was teaching in the Relief Society, teaching the Spiritual Living
lessons, which she would do for six years. After that she taught the
cultural refinement lessons for 12 years.
She has often commented since what a hard thing it was for her to prepare
her monthly lessons. She would literally spend days every month preparing
that lesson. It never became any easier, but she always did an excellent
job of it. No one realized the labor and anxiety that she put into her
lessons. We took a little trip that summer down to Blanding to visit with
Mary Stevens. Her husband had died a couple of years before. So she was
alone. Her main interest was with her daughter Elaine and her family who
were living in Provo at that time. So, she made frequent trips up to see them.
In 1956 we continued our remodeling working on the upstairs. WE built a
floor and rewired the house. The whole house had been on one single circuit
of number 14 wire. It was a wonder that he had not burned down. Well, I
divided the rooms into four circuits and we also had a, I did the work
myself, getting some guidance as well as materials from Brinton Electric
which was just across the street from us up on State Street. We had a
furnace installed, a forced air furnace, by Rick's Furnace Company. It cost
about 600 dollars.
Our second son John, John Robert, was born on March 24th. He was delivered
at home by Doctor Foote. His umbilical cord was wrapped around his neck and
he was a blue baby, but she saved the day and prevented any serious damage
to John. He was born about 8 AM and Roberta's mother and sister Kay came to
our aid and were a very great help at this time and at the births of all of
our four children.

In August we agreed to be sponsors for a brother of Huebert Wholer and his

family who wanted to emigrate to America from Holland. We became there
sponsors. They arrived in August and I was able to help John obtain a job
working in the shop for Utility Trailers. John was quite interested in the
gospel and had been active in Holland, but his wife, Koby, was much less
interested, and because of her influence, I feel, the family drifted away
from the church during the next few years.
In 1957 I was called to be assistant stake clerk for finance. My duties
included auditing ward records. This was done in the chapel offices, in the
meeting house offices, for several of the wards, and in a couple of the
wards the clerks did the work in their own homes. It was an interesting
aspect of auditing, but coupled with my office work all day I quickly tired
of it.
In June, about June 30th, I changed jobs. Glen Mickelson had not kept his
word, his promises, which he made to me when he hired me in 1954, and I
couldn't see any future staying with him. I took a job with a new business
called Transport Equipment Center, in the same industry of over the road
trucks and trailers. It was owned by Nick Gallanis and his sons John and
Robert, and it was located in the same building where I had first worked for
Utility Trailers, 551 South 1st West, which was really 200 West. The
building had been owned all those years by Nick Gallanis. I taught Heubert
Wholer to drive. He had never driven a car before. He obtained his license
and then we gave him the gray 1941 Ford and we bought a 1952 Pontiac just at
the time I changed jobs, and we took our first vacation. Kay took care of
our kids Doug and John, and we went on a trip to Cortez Colorado to visit
Barbara and Bob Bauldauff. From there we went to the Grand Canyon, Zion
Canyon, Hoover Day, and Bryce Canyon.
With our family growing and our financial affairs improving a little bit, we
decided to discontinue renting the apartment and take over the whole house
for our family's use. That involved some changes that would be quite messy
so Roberta and Kay took all of her children and our children out to Vernal
for a couple of weeks to visit with Teddy, their oldest sister, and husband
Ralph Walker. They stayed there while I changed the front room. It
involved removing the wall between the front room and the dining room and
reinforcing the ceiling so it wouldn't fall down. I removed the front entry
foyer which had been built in the corner of our front room to accommodate
the apartment, and I changed the entry into the west side so that it went
into the hallway near the bathroom rather than going into the bedroom, the
front room of the apartment. I removed the closet, a closet that was in the
corner of our front room and rebuilt the floor in that corner where our
Christmas tree later always stood. Then when Roberta and the kids returned
after that messy first phase we redecorated our front room, painted the
woodwork gray, put a harlequin design vinyl linoleum in the dining room
which was then the north half of our front room, and put some nice wallpaper
on the walls. It had a pretty design. It was colorful and the design was a
scene in Chinese garden.
This was about the first thing that we had done in our home that made it
look better rather than worse. Our friends and neighbors commented, "Oh you
really did know what you were doing didn't you." We were finally justified
for all of our messy project of the last five years.
My mother was becoming continually more nervous and emotionally unstable.
We bought a gray carpet from her that she wasn't using and put it on our
bedroom floor. I don't know what her price was, but we paid her ten dollars
a month and we decided to continue to pay her every month, which we have
done every month to this present time, gradually increasing the amount as
her need changed and increased.
In our yard we made a little improvement that pleased the Millers. We
planted lawn on the front part of our empty, our vacant lot, to the east of
us. Then we had a flower garden strip north of the grass clear across the
yard. It made our place and Millers' place look much better. They were
pleased. The company I was working for was not very stable, was not very
well managed. The Gallanis boys didn't have very good money sense and I
could see that the business was not going to succeed so I began to look for
another job again, and as it turns out for the last time. On April 10th I
began to work for Refrigeration Distributors Corporation. It had the
nickname of Restribco. It was owned by Ted R Brown and his brother Warren B
Brown. The business was a wholesaler in the air conditioning,
refrigeration, and heating industry. It had associated companies in Boise
Idaho and in Denver. I continued to work with that company until February
28th, 1986.
My mother had a nervous breakdown in the spring of 1958. She came to live
with us from March to September. She received some help from a
psychiatrist, Doctor Mench, who administered to her a serious of electric
shock treatments during May and July. Roberta and I took turns taking her
to the clinic twice a week. Roberta was pregnant with Mark at this time and
she was very sick. This was a very hard time for her. The treatments
helped my mom, stabilized her emotions. When she was well enough in
September she went to live for a few months with her mother in California.
I've always felt a duty and a tenderness toward my mother and a desire to
help her, to look out for her.
This reminds me of some friction that I had with my dad at the time of their
divorce or a year after it. My dad remarried in 1953 to a woman named Ethel
Morby Hennifer. She was from Morgan, a widow who met my father through his
work at Hill Airforce Base. But when my folks were divorce, my sister
Shirley was still a minor child age 16. For the next two years my father
paid child support to my mother and felt that that entitled him to take
Shirley as an exemption on his tax return. But I felt that my mother should
have the exemption since she supplied the greater part of Shirley's
maintenance and support, so I encouraged her to take the exemption on her
tax return. Well, this was challenged by the IRS and my father was not
permitted to claim the exemption. I have always felt this produced a
division between me and my dad, that he always resented me for it.
In 1958 we bought a refinished piano from Heubert Wholer which he had
remodeled nicely. We bought it partly to help him, but we still have the
piano. It's an excellent piano. It has an unusually good harp in it, a
good tone, although it has seldom been tuned. Doug began school in 58 in
kindergarten. He had a young teacher, inexperienced, and about all she
taught the kids was how to play in school and have fun. This poor start
plus some less than ideal teachers in his next couple of years gave him a
bad start in school.
My job with Restribco was as office manager and credit manager with some
duties in connection with the Boise and Denver operations. So, in December
I went to Denver with Warren. It was a very beautiful Christmas season, a
lot of snow and Denver was beautifully decorated. I remember the very warm
and friendly feeling that I felt in our store in Denver, especially the way
I was treated by the employees there. Lee Bullock and Bill Lazir were
co-managers of the business. They had four or five employees, Maude
Simmermeyer, Bob McPhearson, Gene Church, and Max Walker, and another part
time person I can't recall. All of those employees stayed with the business
for many years and worked well together. Lee Bullock was an excellent
manager, generated a high moral among his crew and treated everyone with
kindness and fairness and respect. He had the firm belief that if a
business took care of three groups of people it could not fail. Those three
groups were the companies suppliers, the merchandise that it sells or
handles, and the customers who buy the services and merchandise, and the
employees. And he very faithfully followed that theory and was a very
successful effective manager, and a good friend up to this present time.
We're still in touch with Lee and his wife Dorcus who still live in Denver.
Our third son, Lincoln Mark, was born on February 5th. We named him for
Abraham Lincoln. He was very compact and solid, a stocky little baby. We
called him little nail keg. We never did suppose he'd be a long thin man
six feet one inches tall. He had to begin with and still has very large and
beautiful eyes.
We installed furnace ducts to heat the west side of the house that we had
taken over. I did this myself and I remember hating the creepy feeling of
crawling around under the house in that crawl space filled with dust and
spider webs. It gives me the shivers even now. We didn't do much playing
in those years. No vacations out of town, just work, and busy with the kids
in school and our church work and family gatherings, working on the house
and in the yard, raising our family, but they were very happy years. I look
back on them with great fondness, warm memories. I helped my mother move
numerous times. She was very unsettled and unhappy especially during the
years from 1954 to 1964.
Tape 8 Side A
At this time a very tragic change came into the life of our friends Huebert
and Elizabeth Wholer. Their daughter who was just about a year older than
our John was a bright and friendly and very musical girl in her, until she
was about three or four years old. She would even sign harmony in the
congregational singing in church, standing up on the bench beside her
parents. She was just a lovely young girl, child. About this time some
tragic change took place in her life and she began to regress, retrogress
into infancy. It continued until she became just like a newborn child,
unable to speak, no control of her bowels, unable to eat or feed herself.
They had to care for her just like a helpless infant from that time for the
rest of her life. It was a sad thing, but it was an inspiration to see how
Huebert and Elizabeth handled the problem. It was both admirable and
puzzling, hard to understand why they would not put her in an institution
where she would be trained to be as independent as possible. But they
insisted on keeping her home. It was always a question whether they had
done the right thing, but it was obvious that they had been motivated by
love for the child and a strong sense of their duty as parents.
In winter of 1960, about February I think, we bought from the company
Restribco, for whom I was working, a 1955 Oldsmobile 98. It was a big car,
quite fancy, power windows, power everything. It had been Ted's car. Ted
was one of the owners, and almost immediately after we bought it I was sorry
we had bought it. We tried to sell it or trade it without losing money on
it but was unable to do that. I gradually learned to like the car. In
fact, in hindsight, it was about the best car we every had, new or used. We
had it until 1965.
This pointed out to me, and maybe it was obvious to others, Roberta for
instance, but I was unaware of a trait that I have of immediately having
second thoughts after I have made a decision. I do that quite often. I
decide to do something and then wish I hadn't. It's a little bit like a
trait that my mother has, and I have other traits that I see in my mother.
Some of which worry me. I wonder what kind of an old man I'm going to be.
Of course, that implies that I'm not an old man now at age 67.
In the summer of this year we launched another phase of our remodeling
project. In 1957 we had discontinued renting the apartment and taken over
the whole house for our own use. Now we began to build a new kitchen where
the kitchen of the apartment had been. We were using the front room of the
apartment as our bedroom now, which makes available our previous bedroom,
our former bedroom, as a playroom for the children, which it continued to be
as long as we lived in the house.
The kitchen was an interesting project. It involved some kinds of work I
had never done before. The old kitchen had in its west wall a large double
window of wooden double shashed windows. The north wall was solid brick.
We decided that we wanted to reverse that, close up the west wall which
faced the evening sun, the afternoon sun, and also faced an apartment
building that had been built close beside the west side of our home. So I
devised a method for opening up the north wall of the kitchen which was
brick with adobe liner inside wall. Doing it without disturbing the whole
wall, without disturbing the roof, by taking out a few bricks at a time and
inserting a metal prop support plate and strut. A device that I figured
out. In that way we were able to install in the north wall of the kitchen a
very large picture window with a door beside it. The width of that whole
structure was about eleven feet. Then I used the bricks from that to brick
up the unwanted windows on the west side. I was a pretty slow brick mason,
but I was proud and pleased with the job that I was able to do, never having
laid a brick before in my life.
It was also interesting how the old house lent itself to our remodeling
plans as if it were just waiting for someone to come along and do that. For
instance, in the northeast corner of that old kitchen there had been a
fireplace diagonally across the corner, and the brickwork of that fireplace
and chimney above it extended from the ground up through the floor up
through the ceiling and through the roof, and I had to remove all of that,
opening up the corner of the room and also opening up a doorway between the
new kitchen, which had been the old kitchen, and our former bedroom which
was now the playroom. Also, I installed a closet underneath the stairway
with an opening into the playroom right by the kitchen door. It's
interesting that there was a space beside that new doorway, all the way from
the cellar underneath the room up through the roof of the house, which was
just large enough to accommodate the furnace vent pipe, leaving enough room
for a 24 inch door which was wide enough for that particular spot. It lined
up with everything upstairs where I had previously built bedrooms and
storerooms. Everything seemed to line up just perfectly. We were always
impressed with that. The old house lent itself so well to remodeling.
We worked on the kitchen through the fall months. We bought some new birch
cabinets and they were packed in pasteboard boxes of course which we stacked
in the middle of the room. Our boys, Doug and John, John was about five
years old. Mark of course was just one year old almost two at this time.
But, the boys painted doors and windows and things on those pasteboard boxes
so they looked like buildings, and they played in the room among those
stacked boxes pretending they were a city. They enjoyed that playing. I'm
surprised that I was so tolerant having them under foot all the time while I
worked.
We listened on the radio during those months to a program by Gordon Owen.
He had the late night program from midnight until five in the morning. We
sometimes worked until two or three in the morning. We loved his program
which was a mixture of poetry, which he recited, and beautiful music which
he played. His theme song was a tune called "Forgotten Dreams". We really
learned to love that song and his program and to like him.
In our usual, well this pattern was becoming established, we finished our
project just before Christmas. I was released from being assistant stake
clerk at this time, a job that I had had for about three years. I was
really tired of it. I did office work all day and clerk work at the church
all night it seemed some nights. I was called in the ward to be Sunday
School Superintendent, and asked Fritz Barthell to be one of my counselors,
and a young man named George Vailand, to be the other counselor. He was a
boy only about seventeen years old, eighteen perhaps. His mother was both
deaf and blind. They were from Norway and were sponsored into this country
by a woman in our ward, Rayola Anderson, and a missionary companion of hers
when she served a mission in Scandinavia. I enjoyed that assignment and my
association with those two men.
In July, Arty Bronson and his wife Marjorie, went on a mission to England.
He was 60 years old at this time, quit his job and went on his mission. I
remember the comments of some of the people in the ward who thought he was
foolish to do that. I don't know whether it was good or bad for them in the
long run. Their marriage was quite unhappy during most of the years that we
knew them, which were the last years of their lives. I related pretty well
to Arty. He was just about 3 months younger than my own dad. We sent them
ten dollars a month to help them with their mission all the time they were
gone. We sent them a little note, and from that time we have continually
participated in the missionary program, assisting some missionary close to
us or sending our own children on missions or going ourselves. We've
continued that until this present time. I've always felt good about our
contributions to the church. We've always been blessed for making, for
participating.
Grant Hodgkinson became bishop of the ward at this time. A little footnote
here about our nutritional activities. We began to buy raw milk from Arion
Erikson, which we would do for quite a number of years. WE had been buying
milk from Robert Murray. We preferred raw milk to pasteurized homogenized
milk, so long as it was clean. These men did a good job of keeping the milk
clean.

1961 we celebrated our tenth wedding anniversary. I'm sure we didn't have
any lavish celebration, didn't go on any trip, didn't buy any elaborate
gifts. We probably celebrated it by working hard all day. We continued our
remodeling of the house. We bought new carpeting in the front room
including the stairway to the upstairs. We had it laid just before Christmas.
In our assignment in the Sunday School Superindendency, we met weekly and
met in our homes, alternating from one to the other. We had our business
and them some refreshments, some cookies and punch. This was pleasant, and
helped us to enjoy our assignment. I didn't like church administrative job
then, and I don't like it now, but it seems to have been my fate to have
such a church job, that kind of church job, most of the past 30 years, the
first 30 years we were married.
John started school this year in kindergarten. Doug was beginning the third
grade I believe. He's had quite a hard time for the first three years of
his schooling. The teachers have just not been the right teacher for him.
His kindergarten teacher taught him how to play in school. His first grade
teacher was very hard on him. His second grade teacher Miss Doran was
physical. She really knocked the boy around. Roberta reminds me that he
came home at times with the buttons torn off his shirt and the teacher had
done that as she grabbed him and threw him around. Roberta tells me that I
was aware of it at the time. I don't recall that I was, but it is hard for
me to understand now why I didn't do something then. Doug had also had bad
experiences with a couple of little girls who were real little witches.
They gave him a hard time emotionally. In the fourth grade the sun came up
for him. He had a teacher Mr. Frolic, actually his third grade teacher Miss
Nielson helped him a great deal, and he had a friend, a girl, who was named
Cherise who was a real little lady and treated Doug in a kind and friendly
way, gave him another viewpoint on girls and friends.
These years when the kids were small and in grade school sort of blend
together into one continuous round of work, church work, remodeling, yard
work, raising our children, putting them to bed, reading to them in the
evening, giving them a bath at night, a lot of normal repetitive tasks that
filled the years as the children grew. We had no big troubles, so normal
illnesses, not serious. In 1963 I built a tree house in one of the big
willow trees that stood in the back of our yard and built a huge sandbox.
This became a very attractive place in the neighborhood for children to
play, and for years to come we had many children in the yard, almost all the
time when the weather permitted it. In September I had a hernia operation.
Malcom Jepson was my doctor and did the operation at Cottonwood Hospital.
That hospital was new, had just been completed that summer, and I was one of
the first patients. Not the very first, but in the early weeks of its
operation.
I remember my feeling of confidence in Doctor Jepson and the nurses, how
wonderful it was that I could just go to sleep and wake up with my problem
solved. I missed four or five days of work. The first days of work that I
had missed in many years. I've been greatly blessed with good health and
steady employment. This summer Kay and Don did us a real favor, a real
kindness. They let us take their little trailer up to Bear Lake for a
vacation, and they tended our children for us in the bargain, a really
thoughtful gift. We enjoyed it so much that we decided we would buy a
trailer too.
In 1964 a number of great things happened in our life. Our daughter Lori
was born May 26th. We were so happy to have a girl. All of our neighbors
rejoiced with us and she was given twelve dresses as baby gifts. Before she
was born Roberta had redecorated our bedroom in lavender colors. We named
her Loretta in honor of Doctor Loretta Foot who delivered her and all of our
boys. All went well with this. We were richly blessed. In September we
bought a little camp trailer and went camping with the Nebekers to Granite
Flats up American Fork Canyon during the Utah Education Association
Institute in October. We did this for many years until the early 1980s.
This was a most enjoyable tradition that fostered love and closeness in our
family. We missed it a few years for bad weather. Then after Lori
graduated in 1982 we have gradually discontinued that Granite Flat camping,
but we have continued camping at Redmond Campground up Big Cottonwood
Canyon. At work a great change took place this year in February. Warren
and Ted sold their business Restribco to three former employees, and Warren
began to devote his whole energy to a business called Ice All omatic. That
would last for four or five years when the business failed, Ice all omatic
failed. This created a great division between Warren and Ted which grew in
seriousness and extent through the rest of the years to the present time.
I had a very pleasant calling given to me this year in the ward. I was
called to be the Gospel Doctrine teacher which I would do for three years.
It was a most enjoyable and growing experience. I learned to appreciate the
Old Testament, especially to love the book of Isaiah. My mother moved this
year to an apartment, 3008 9th east, where she would live for ten years. I
had told her that I was through moving her, no more. She has shown real
strength and determination and stability in the years since and has made a
great effort to be happy, to keep busy, and to help others to be happy.
We set ourselves a goal to have our house paid for by November when I would
have my 40th birthday. To do this we paid extra principal. We had
gradually increased the amount we were paying on our home as my salary
increased, and during the last six months we paid four times the required
amount in order to meet our goal.
In 1965 we traded the Oldsmobile in on a 1962 Chev Belair which proved to be
a very fine car. We took a vacation trip to California in June pulling the
trailer. We took the three boys but left Lori with Jeaneal Dawes, a young
girl in the ward, who took care of her with the help of her mother. We had
a wonderful trip, no real trouble. We visited Disneyland and Marine Land
and the Hollywood wax museum near Knotts Berry Farm. We visited Calico, a
restored ghost town, out in the desert. We visited with Grandma Nelson,
with Bud and Ilene Schwarz and their five sons, and with Ward and Rita
Phelps, friends from Roberta's mission, and with Roberta's sister Bea and
her husband Cliff Cash. We had a good time. While we were gone they had
quite a problem in Denver. On June 15th the Platte River flooded over a
wide area and flooded our business there, which was built in the river flood
plane along with hundreds of other businesses. There was six feet of water
in the building. It posed a real threat to the business which Lee Bullock
and his crew accepted as a challenge. They overcame the loss, and not only
survived, but thrived and became stronger than they were before through
their teamwork.
Lori had a light case of pneumonia in February and was in the hospital a
brief time. She recovered fully. In April we moved our accounting office
from 234 West 13th South up to 1233 Wilmington Avenue in a space that we
rented from Milton Christensen who became a good friend during the seven
years that we stayed there. Our time there was pleasant in many ways. The
most unpleasant aspect of it was that we were almost totally neglected by
Ted and Warren who were busy in their own affairs, and we were left out of
it. We weren't considered for raises when other people were, nor for profit
sharing trust contributions when others were. Our good friend Lee Bullock
in Denver became aware of what was going on and made it a point to see that
we were included in raises and bonuses and other benefits that his employees
were receiving as his business prospered. He made it very clear that he
considered us and the office as part of his team. We have always been
grateful to him for this.
Doug now became 12 years old, of mutual age. He didn't like to go. He
didn't particularly like scouting and he was persecuted by a group of three
or four boys who made it their business to give him a bad time in the ward.
We gave him the option of going to mutual or not, and he very seldom went.
But, we felt that way about all of our children when they reached that age.
They went to church every Sunday, and they were taking seminary in school,
and we were having some kind of family home evening, and they and we figured
they were getting enough religion without making it mandatory for them to go
to mutual. We had required them to go to primary feeling that the teachings
that they got in primary were very vital to their having a testimony of the
gospel. Looking back through my own life during the teenage years I know
that I didn't attend MIA very often, didn't amount to much as a boy scout,
wasn't very active in the priesthood, but I did go to Sunday School and
primary regularly and feel that I got a good foundation of the gospel in my
childhood, even though my parents were not active in the church. With our
children Roberta and I went to church every Sunday. We never missed unless
we were sick or out of town. Our children grew up feeling that going to
church was just part of life. So, I'm sure we were right not to be too
demanding on the issue of going to MIA.
In 1966 in my penciled notes which I made in 1982 I describe it as a
nondescript year wondering what happened. I think either this August or the
year before we began our annual family campout at Redmond Campground up Big
Cottonwood Canyon. Christmas this year was memorable. We bought Roberta a
gas clothes dryer and we bought a television in self defense. We had not
wanted to have a television but our children were spending quite a bit of
time at the neighbors watching television watching what we knew not. So, we
decided to try to get control of it. Santa brought to the boys a slot car
race track which of course required a lot of floor space. To provide for
this I finished the west bedroom upstairs and that room became the
neighborhood slot car center, an activity which lasted until the summer of
1971 just before Doug went on his mission. At that time he turned the track
over to his friend Rocky Russo and the bedroom became Lori's bedroom.
These changes remind me of the evolution of that room and some of our
remodeling in the past, and also some of our relationship with my mother.
In 1958 when mom had the nervous breakdown and lived with us for 7 months I
brought her furniture home and put it in our garage. When she felt a lot
better in September she went down to her mother's in Los Angeles and lived
there for about a year and a half. At that time I finished the floor in
that west bedroom upstairs and moved my mother's furniture upstairs where it
remained for that time that mom was gone. Now, at the time that we bought
this, or Santa brought this slot car racetrack for the boys, I finished the
room, plaster boarded the walls, and it remained in that state until 1969
when we had the walls finished and painted and the floor carpeted. Some of
these things sound as though they hardly belong in a life story, and yet
these events and these activities are the substance of my life during these
family raising years.
1967 a lot of changes occurred in our life, in my life. I was called in the
fall to serve a two year stake mission. It was mostly a pleasant experience
with my companions I helped convert ten or twelve people, and they included
Gus and Milly Beckman who were faithful in the church. We kept in touch
with them for a number of years, but they moved away and we don't know how
they are, whether they're alive or not at this time. We haven't heard from
them for almost ten years. My companions on the mission included Jerry
Impson, Lee Hilton, Larry Collard, Paul Pratt, John Riches. During the last
year I was a counselor to the mission president, Ron Oveson. That summer
the Nebekers moved to Clearfield and then to Layton, and Raymond and Kirma
and their family moved from Magna to Tempee Arizona. We greatly missed
these families in the years following. We spent a lot of time visiting with
them. They were our closest visiting relatives.
On the street in Sugerhouse I met Cyril Beacher who was my 9th grade algebra
teacher, one of my very best and favorite teachers. He was partly blind,
living alone at about 20th South and 9th East. He spent his time working in
the temple almost everyday. He had had some very tragic and disappointing
events in his life. His life, he suddenly learned, was a closet drinker and
was also having an illicit affair with a man out where she worked at
Thiokol. They had two sons and his wife and these events estranged them
from Mr. Beacher, and they became very indifferent and inactive in the
church. I kept in touch with him and drove him to Brigham City a few times
in the next few years to visit friends and to attend funerals. I kept in
touch with him, not closely, but somewhat, for the rest of his life. He
lived until May of 1974. I learned something this year about school
teachers which had escaped me when I was in school. I always thought that
teachers were ten feet tall and everything was under control. I never gave
a thought to the fact that they had lives of their own, families, problems,
heartaches, disappointments. Mr. Beacher told me that two things he loved
most to do were to read and to drive his car, and now he couldn't do either
one. I felt real sympathy and sorrow for him. I'd like to tell you
something about his teaching style which was most unique and memorable, and
an enjoyable factor in our becoming reacquainted at this time.

Tape 8 Side B
In his algebra classes almost every time he began with this pattern. He was
a small very stocky built man with a jolly disposition. He would come into
class and either at the beginning of the class or the ending of the class he
would wish us a merry Christmas, no matter what day of the year. Then he
would, he always had on his desk a fruit jar full of paper clippings and on
each clipping was a joke which he had enjoyed. He would fish in that jar
with his hand and pull out one or two of those clippings and tell us a
couple of jokes, and we all enjoyed that. Then he would give us some
arithmetic gymnastics where he would give us a series of numbers and a
function. For instance, start with five, add two, square it, add one,
divide by five, and what do you have? Of course, the answer is ten, but he
would go on for a minute or so and they would become quite challenging. It
was fun and stimulating and would prepare us for the work of the day.
Well, when I met him on the street in Sugar House in 1967 he told me this
joke. A little old lady was out on the street at night and suddenly an
mugger jumped out from behind the bush, stuck a gun out at her and said,
"Give me all your money lady." And she very composedly said, "Well young
man I don't carry any money with me." "You don't, huh", he said. "We'll
see about that." So, he frisked her all over feeling here and there to
discover her hidden purse or money belt. He finally had to give up and
said, "Well, you're right lady. You don't have any money on ya." She said,
"Well, I told you young man that I never carry any money, but if you'll do
that again, I'll write you a check." Well, we both had a good laugh, and
the memorable part of it is this. In 1974 Mr. Beecher lay in the hospital
in Brigham City under an oxygen tent and he was dying. I went to visit him,
Roberta and I went to visit him, and I leaned down close to him and said
something. He didn't seem to hear me, and I said do you have a joke to tell
me today? He shook his head weakly. I said well I'll tell you one. So I
told him this same joke that he had told me and he chuckled a little bit, as
much as he could in his weakened condition. That was our visit and soon
after that, a day or two after that, he died.
I haven't said much about my teachers that I had since grade school. I
should take this time to mention some of them in junior high and high school
and even in college, and in situations other than school. Of course our
relationship with teachers becomes, is very different as we grow older and
more independent ourselves and approach adulthood, but a good teacher can
have a lasting impression and effect on us whether we are little children or
grown adults. I've had some really great teachers through my life. Mr.
Beecher was surely one of the great ones. Another very wonderful teacher in
high school was Rullen Manning. I had him for two years of English in my
sophomore and junior years. His mastery of English grammar and his method
of presenting it was truly unique. He had what he called the verb story,
which was a concentrated discussion of all of the verb forms and tenses
which just made English grammar much simpler, and he was a master of
diagramming sentences. I don't think they diagram any more in English. It
and other techniques have been lost and discontinued at great loss to the
students. But, it was my recollection of Mr. Manning's teachings that
enabled me to teach a year of high school in Blanding Utah to five grades of
students without having had any teacher preparation classes.
Another really great teacher was Floyd Jensen who taught me 7th grade
mathematics. He was also an outstanding Sunday school teacher in the
Brigham City 6th ward. He later became the bishop of that ward during my
teenage years. He had a great influence on me, all positive. Bill
Griffiths was a great teacher in math. He was really an old timer. He
taught my own father in high school, and taught for a number of years after
I graduated. He taught Barbara for instance, six years later. I think he
lived to be in his middle 90s, vigorous, very high quality person. I think
I had about 25 or 30 teachers during the six grades 7 through 12. I can
mention almost all of them but I won't do that nor will I comment on many
others. One outstanding teacher that I had was Ray Colley who taught me to
fly during the summer between my junior and senior years. I've mentioned
that course of instruction sponsored by the civil air patrol in which I was
privileged to be a student. I was always impressed with his precision and
mastery of everything to do with flying. He made it very clear that there
was not much room for mistakes in flying, and yet, he didn't discourage us
by being intolerant of our imperfections. He later became a pilot for
western airlines and was killed during a snowstorm in Montana. I think it
was during the war years.
I've mentioned before the accounting teacher I had at Hennigers named Ray
Clawson. He had a unique way of teaching the very basic relationships in
accounting in such a way that I could apply them in solving the most
difficult problems. It also enabled me to teach accounting in my job at
Hennigers both day school and night school. All I did was teach my students
what he had taught me.
I had one teacher in college who was quite memorable and the opposite
effect, a negative effect, upon me. His name was Clarence Willey. He came
from Ohio, had been an instructor at Wright Patterson Field in the Airforce.
He was an austere man to me, not much humor, very brilliant man, but he made
higher mathematics appear so awesome and unreachable for me that it utterly
discouraged me from pursuing math any farther than a bachelors degree. It
no doubt had quite an effect on the course of my life, directing me into
accounting. Another teacher that I had at college who was very competent
was a woman named Henriques, Mrs. Henriques. Her name was Henrietta
Henriques. That's spelled H-e-n-r-i-q-u-e-s, a French name. She taught me
three quarters of calculus and made calculus very logical and
understandable. I also had her for a couple other classes, analytical
geometry for one. Another memorable teacher that I had taught the gospel
doctrine class in the Murray 8th Ward. He was a very young man, just
returned from a mission. His name was Brent Hanson, just about Doug's age.
He had the ability to teach a single concept in one lesson time and to
include and blend into his own presentation any and all comments that
members of the class might make. It's most unusual in religious instruction
in which most teachers attempt to teach far too many concepts in the class
period time. He was a real master in reaching the objective of the lesson.
He taught that class for a year or two while I was the bishop of the ward.
Well, I have great respect and affection for the many teachers during my
lifetime. I think a skillful teacher is the very finest type of human
being. Of course the greatest teacher of all was Jesus Christ who showed us
that the very best way to do good teaching was through love and simple
presentation and devoted service.
In 1968 Roberta and I became restless about our house feeling that we should
have bigger or finer home or a better location. In the fall we considered
moving. We engaged the help of my friend Melvin Thayne who was in real
estate. We selected a home in south east Murray and put a deposit on it of
500 dollars. Then we began to consider what we should have considered
before. We had no sale for our present house so we would have had to go
into debt deeply to buy the other home. We could have rented our old house
but when I thought seriously I knew that I could not stand to be a landlord
and tolerate what renters do to a rented house if that house belonged to me.
Well, we stewed about it for about a week or so. During that week I was
hardly able to accomplish any work on my job. My mind was so confused and
focused entirely on the dilemma that we were in. I knelt down in my office
one noon hour when I was alone and really prayed earnestly for help in
making a decision. And when I got up from my knees I knew what we should
do. We would drop the deal, even if it meant loosing the 500 dollar
deposit. Fortunately, the people we were dealing with were very
understanding and they let us out of the deal without any penalty. We got
our deposit back and we paid Mel Thayne something for his time and help and
decided to stay where we were. We decided to borrow some money and finish
remodeling our house and making it into the kind of home that we wanted,
even though the location wasn't ideal, being right next to an expanding
business area. But we knew that we could make some improvements in the
house just for our own enjoyment and live there for many years if need be
and be perfectly comfortable and happy.
Doug turned 16 this year and I very reluctantly became the father of a
teenage driver. Trouble at work. The Ice All omatic venture failed and the
business was closed out at a total loss, a very heavy loss for Warren Brown.
That summer we took an enjoyable trip to Yellowstone Park pulling our little
trailer. Roberta's mother began to decline in health and mental alertness.
We weren't aware of it at the time but looking back I can see that it began
to appear then. I first noticed it in my gospel doctrine class about 1966
when she was 80. I had asked her to give a five minute report and she spoke
for 15 minutes and never mentioned the subject, so unlike her. She had been
so alert and such a student of the scriptures and so knowledgeable and
effective in discussing the gospel with other people on whatever level of
learning that other person might have. To see her so muddled and confused
and unfocused indicated a sharp turning point in her life which became more
and more pronounced during the next few years.
Our children had all been happy with our decision to stay on Miller Street.
The beginning of 1969 we borrowed $6,300 from the profit sharing trust at
work, and with that we set out to make some great changes in our house. We
observed to ourselves that this amount of money was approximately equal to
three years of interest, interest only, on the mortgage we would have had on
the house we nearly bought last year. With this money we bought a lot of
exciting improvements. We bought a new Magnavox stereo. We finished the
upstairs room, had the walls perfataped, the floors carpeted. We had new
walls and drapes in the front room. We built a new family room on the back
of the house north from our kitchen, removing the big picture window we had
built nine years ago, opening up the space as an archway between the kitchen
and the family room. The family room was 20 x 24 feet and I built it myself
with some help from contractors on the concrete foundation and the brick work.
And Roberta and Kay then painted the entire interior of our house, upstairs,
front room, family room, must have put on 25 gallons of paint. We finished
all of this just before Christmas. For Christmas we bought a pool table
which was a great source of fun for our boys. We still have that pool table
in our basement after 23 years. It wasn't a slate bed, just a composition
bed table. It's not supposed to last for 20 years, but it has, and the bed
is still in good shape, gives a pretty good game. I completed my stake
mission at this time and was called for the second time to be the deacons
quorum advisor. I didn't enjoy that job and do not do that kind of job very
well. I don't have much rapport with teenagers.
In the summer we had a very enjoyable vacation trip. Went up through
Yellowstone park and east out through Wyoming, visited the Devil's Tower,
went over into South Dakota where we saw the Passion Play put on. It was
presented by a group of Protestant churches at Spearfish. Then we traveled
south down into Colorado and there visited with Warren Brown and part of his
family. They were living in Fort Collins Colorado following the failure of
Ice All omatic. We were all very delighted with the home improvements and
very happy that we had not moved. Even now 23 years later I am certain that
we were directed to make the correct decision then not to move. Later on as
we'll see in 1978 conditions were very different and the correct decision
then became time to move.
I became very restless on my job in 1969. I considered changing jobs and
looked around at different prospects, possibilities. I discovered that at
my age, 45, I was not a very hot item in the job market and there was no way
I could move and match my present income. So, to change my prospects I took
several computer classes at the University of Utah, at LDS Business College,
and out at Trade Tech, and discussed with my bosses, Warren and Ted Brown,
the possibility of upgrading our accounting system with a computer. Warren
had returned from Fort Collins Colorado and had begun to take a more active
roll in a business down in Price Utah called Price Trading Company in which
Ted and Warren had ownership interest. Our accounting office through the
years provided general accounting services for the several businesses in
which Warren and Ted had ownership interest.
Our work was increasing. We needed to improve our accounting system to
handle the increasing work load. So we discussed the possibility of
obtaining a small computer. We experimented during the next few years with
a couple of systems and with the idea of accounting service from an outside
firm. None of these were very successful, but we did learn a lot about what
would not work. I apparently had decided to stay put in my job. Looking
back at it from this vantage point, even from ten years down the road, which
would be more than ten years ago, I had some regrets about this, but who
knows what lay down the road not taken.
Mary Stevens, my dear old friend in Blanding, died in May of this year. A
new member came into our family in 1969. John had a Deseret News paper
route. One of his customers farther down on Miller Street was a young
couple both of whom worked, and who had a little white poodle dog that took
a real liking to John. The dog was lonely during the day and every day when
John came around to deliver the papers this dog would follow him around,
developed a real attachment. The owners of the dog observed this and new
that the dog was not getting the attention from them that it should have so
they asked John if he would like to have the dog. Well, we had no great
desire for a dog. Roberta especially thought dogs were a nuisance. I
remembered pleasantly our old dog Buck when I was a boy. At any rate, we
agreed that John could have the dog provided that it lived outside. So,
Buttons came to join us and would live with us for about twelve years. We
named it Buttons. It was all white and we thought her bright black eyes
looked just like buttons against her white coat. She lived in the garage
for a couple of years. Then, she became pregnant and had a litter of pups.
It was cold, it was in March I think or February, and Roberta's motherly
heart was touched by the little dogs efforts to take care of her puppies.
So, she allowed the dog and her family to move into the back room, the
utility room, of our house. There was a door between that room and the
rest of the house and it seemed that we could confine the dog to that room.
The dog could hardly believe what was happening when Roberta moved her and
her puppies into the house. She was a very intelligent dog and understood
her place very well.
After she had raised those puppies up to the point where they could be given
to other people or sold, we decided to have her spayed so there wouldn't be
any further problem with pups.
A very eventful year in our lives began on new year's eve January 1st, 1970.
Our son Doug wrecked our car at the Woodland Drive-in Theater. Other than
wrecking our car the only injury was to Doug's lip that was cut completely
through by his teeth. We woke Dr. Jepson up in the middle of the night, 3
o'clock, and went to his office where he repaired Doug's lip very skillfully
and it healed with hardly a scar. Another thing that happened that New
Year's day was in our kitchen. Roberta's brother in law Ralph Walker broke
the legs off our kitchen table during an enthusiastic game of spoon.
We bought an old 1961 Cadillac about the tenth of January for 650 dollars.
During the next year we spent about 650 dollars in repairs. We thought we
were killed. But as it turns out it was a very modest investment. The old
Cadillac ran faithfully after that for six years with very little trouble.
It was a very dependable car. About January the 15th our water line from
the street broke under the driveway and water began to flood the driveway.
So I had to dig a trench to repair that. President David O'Mckay died on
January 20th, about the 20th. He was my very favorite President of the
Church during my lifetime to date. I had great affection for President
Kimball also, but President McKay was special. He had been in the first
presidency since my primary days as a counselor. On January 24th my father
died of heart failure. This was, of course, a time of sorrow and regret and
self examination. I wasn't on the best of terms with my dad. I had
offended him a number of times, but I didn't really warm easy association
with him although I loved him and have learned in the years since that I
loved and admired him very much. An incident at his burial in Morgan Utah
was very memorable. Dad's second wife Ethyl had said that he wanted to
buried in Morgan and not in Brigham City. Well, being his wife she had the
final say and we didn't challenge it, although all of us would have
preferred to have him buried in Brigham City.
The day of his burial was a stormy day. It snowed during our trip up Weber
Canyon. As we reached the cemetery it stopped snowing. The sky opened up
and the sun came out during the graveside ceremony. As soon as the prayer
was said it clouded over and began to snow hard again, almost as we said amen.
I was called again this year to be a Sunday School President. I wasn't
excited about the job as I've said before, I didn't like an administrative
job. But, we had some success and pleasant associations and kept the work
going. My counselors included two young men, Robert Barrett and David
Fallend, who were in their 30s, perhaps 40 years old. In December we bought
a new Volkswagen, a 1971 Volkswagen, a bright orange car, and we were
enjoying our enlarged and beautified home, glad all the time that we had
decided to stay.
Lori was now six years old and began school this fall. Another happy thing,
we bought season tickets for all the family at Pioneer Memorial Theater up
at the University of Utah. Our little gal Lori was probably the youngest
patron in the audience. We attended these plays until about 1989. Our
lives were enriched by the plays and by the experience of attending them
together.
At work we finalized our search for a computer and we bought a small machine
from Burroughs, a system called the B400. My philosophy about our work in
the accounting office was that our first duty was to keep current on
information needed by the businesses that we served and that any changes
should be made gradually with a blending, with a gradual transition from
what we were doing to the new system without any interruption of our work
flow. This B400 system worked in very well and we had it for about eight
years.
Roberta's mother became unable to live alone any longer. She went out to
live with Roberta's oldest sister Teddy Walker in Vernal. It must always be
an awful shock to parents when their first child graduates from high school.
We had that shock in 1971. Doug graduated in June, went to Calgary Canada
with the Murray High School band to be in the Calgary stampede. John also
went. He was in the 9th grade that year, and Roberta went along as a
chaperon. They had a grand time. The boys earned part of the money they
needed working for Distributors Incorporated helping it to move back into
the building at 234 W 1300 South. This was the only work that Doug did
during the summer as he waited to go on a mission to New Zealand north
island in November. We're surely pleased that Doug chose to go setting this
good example for John and Mark, and Lori. Our son Doug hears a different
drummer. He's not conventionally motivated. He's imaginative and creative
and very honest, but he's not ambitious in a conventional way although he
has great energy for the things which interest him.
While Doug was on his mission Roberta and I took turns writing to him each
week. We all enjoyed his letters back home. He generally filled most of
the page with drawings, often of a cartoon nature. We enjoyed his mission.
Mom Carpenter came back to Salt Lake from Vernal and lived for some time in
the salt lake stake home which is located in salt lake on north temple and
west temple, no it's on 1st north and west temple. John had graduated to a
different job. He had a job working for Utah Food and Catering, and Mark
took over his Deseret News paper route. Both he and John were excellent
paper boys. In those days the carrier also collected from his customers,
which I think was a wonderful part of that job. It really trained a boy how
to handle money, how to deal with customers, how to conduct a business. I
think it was a serious loss to newspaper carriers when they took away from
them the responsibility of collecting from customers and paying their bill
to the newspaper company. They really lose out on some important experience
there. But it seems to work a lot better for the newspaper company in our
fast moving society.
In the summer of 1972 we went on what we called our "Dam Trip". We pulled
the trailer with the old Cadillac and went down to visit Raymond and Kirma
and their family. We had no serious trouble at all with the car. We had a
fine time. The reason we called it our "Dam Trip" is we visited four dams
on the way, Glen Canyon dam, Parker dam, Havasue dam, and Hoover dam.
Before we left Raymond's place we picked about 70 pounds of thompson
seedless grapes on the farm of one of his friends and we ate grapes all the
way home. We also bought about a hundred tootsie pops two for a penny.
They had broken sticks so we got a bargain on them. Boy did we enjoy grapes
and tootsie pops without limit on that trip.

Tape 9 Side A
I received a different calling in the ward at the beginning of this year as
membership clerk. The church was pretty well along on the conversion of
membership records to data processing. Their first effort was quite
troublesome and frustrating. They had many different forms, a different
form for each ordinance or piece of information, and these forms were, to be
read by an optical reading machine. It had to be typed in a very precise
manner by a certain kind of typewriter. The typewriter was not the least of
our problems. There were many many errors both on our end and the Presiding
Bishoprics Office. The system was really too sophisticated and too complex
for untrained ward clerks, but it was gradually simplified over the next six
or eight years along with other computer progress in the church's
administration.
At work we moved our accounting office from Wilmington Avenue back to 1300
south. Mom Carpenter was living in the salt lake stake home still until the
summer time, at which time she ran away from the home and broke her foot in
the process. This was about the time we were going on our trip. She had to
be in a nursing home anyway, so we placed her in the Bonner Nursing Home for
a month while we went to Arizona. When we came back she went to live in a
group home up in the Holiday area, a very depressing place. She wasn't very
happy there and we weren't happy to have her there. In January she went out
again to Vernal and lived there with Ted until about July. Then she lived
alternately with Kay, with us, and with Ted for two or three months at a
time until the early part of 1974. One time while she was staying with us,
something that's rather humorous happened, humorous but pathetic. Much of
the time mom Carpenter didn't know where she was or who she was and she
didn't know Lori. Lori was only 9 years old at the time. Mom Carpenter
frequently got into Lori's drawers and closet and into her books and things
and upset Lori. Lori being a very spunky girl would challenge her on it and
tell her to stay out of her stuff, and Roberta was between them as the
referee. One time Mom Carpenter came to Roberta and said pointing to Lori,
"Who is that girl anyway?" Roberta said, "Well mom, she's our daughter."
Mom said, "Well, I'm sorry sorry sorry for you!" We've laughed about that a
number of times, many times since.
This year in September we had the 30 year class reunion for my graduating
class. On the way to the affair, it was held in Brigham City, we visited
with Cyril Beecher, Mr. Beecher, in a rest home. I will always regret a
really dumb thing, an oversight, that I committed at that time. After
visiting with him we should have invited him to go with us to the reunion.
He would have enjoyed that immensely, but we didn't. He died the next May
in 1974 as I've related earlier.
Doug came home in November 1973 from his mission, and Roberta and I
discussed at length what our policy should be with respect to our grown
children after high school and after missions. We decided that Doug should
have a couple of choices. He could either go to school and live at home
free. We'd provide room and board. We'd help him with transportation by
furnishing a car for him that he could buy on a mileage basis. He would be
required to work part time, pay his school expenses. If he didn't want to
do that he could get a job and either stay at home and pay room and board,
or find some place else to live. We felt he should begin to act like an
adult. The policy worked really well for Doug and all of our children
followed about the same pattern. Doug enrolled at Trade Tech in a course in
commercial art which would be a two year course, and he launched into it
with good faith and good intentions.
Early in 1974 I received a call to serve on the Murray Stake High Council
and I was assigned as a liaison to the 18th ward. I enjoyed this new type
of service in the church. John graduated in May and was only 18 so it
appeared likely that he would want to go to school for a whole year before
going on his mission which was different than Doug's case because Doug's
birthday was in the fall rather than in the winter or the spring. So we
bought a second Volkswagen to accommodate the transportation needs of our
growing boys. Doug was using the orange Volkswagen and was buying it from
us on a certain, paying a certain amount per mile, toward the purchase. We
still had the old Cadillac, but we didn't want John or anyone to be running
that very many miles. I had started riding the bus to work, having good bus
service along State Street. So, we allowed John to use the new yellow
Volkswagen.
In September, on September 8th, I was called to be the bishop of the Murray
8th Ward. It was a calling that I surely never wanted and never expected to
have. I was almost 50 years old. It proved to be a very difficult and
challenging and rewarding and humbling experience, what you might call a
terrible wonderful job. I was to serve for exactly four years. I started
out using or retaining Dale Ahlberg's counselors. Dale Ahlberg had been
bishop for nine years preceding my call. His counselors were Paul Fitt and
Robert Meyer. Well, this calling changed many things. I spent about thirty
to forty hours a week on my bishop's duties. I probably did a lot of them
the hard way. Looking back at the job I remember that I became aware very
soon that I couldn't do it all, that some things would just never get done.
So, I concentrated on the most pressing things. One of those was the
raising of money. We had a continuous building program in the stake. The
first phase of it was to raise money to remodel our ward building and
enlarge it to serve as a stake center for Murray Stake.
We had to raise ward budget and stake budget, and we spent a lot of our
time figuring out ways to raise money. Another thing that seemed to change
in my life during those four years was my feelings about Christmas. I don't
know exactly why, but Christmas time was a very hectic time for bishops.
There were temple recommend renewals and there was tithing settlement, the
year end reports, plus all of the normal things, keeping the ward staffed,
interviewing people, arranging for sacrament meetings, all of the things
that a bishop does, taking care of the welfare needs of people, counseling
with people. Christmas time became a very stressful time and it seemed to
take out of me all of the pleasure that I had always felt at the approach of
Christmas.
One of the interesting duties of a bishop that I was introduced to in just a
couple of weeks was funerals, helping to arrange and conduct funerals. My
first one was the funeral for Lois Hodgkinson's mother who had been living
in the ward close to Lois's home where she could help take care of her
ailing mother. And Roberta's mother died on October 4th out in Vernal. She
was buried on her 88th birthday, October 8th. She was a grand lady. Her
last six or seven years were a sore trial for her. She lived with Ted for
her last six or seven months.
After John graduated he enrolled at Trade Tech in electronics. John has
loved electronics since he was eleven or twelve years old. We've always
said that John got his start in the junk yard. The reason we say that is
that when he was about eleven or twelve he and his friend David Collard
would go to the city dump looking for treasures. One of the things that he
brought home was a television set, and he was fascinated with all of the
little tubes and components and devices in a television set. He began to
disassemble it and to read books and teach himself to understand how radio
and television worked. Of course, that has been his main focus career wise
to the present time.
My mother suffered a very traumatic experience about May of that year. She
was fired from her job with Chet Bailey in his drapery shop. She was 72
years old, still able to put in a long hard day, an excellent drapery maker,
an excellent seamstress. She enjoyed her work very much, especially her
association with the other women in the shop. She's never quite forgiven
Chet Bailey. She's never understood why he fired her when she was still so
able to do skillful work for him.
That summer I built a drapery work table for mom and she continued to make
drapes at home, primarily for her children and grandchildren. She never did
earn very much doing this work, practically gave her labor away as a gift to
her family. She applied for her social security but that was hardly ever
much more than enough to pay her rent. So my mom needed some support from
her children not having any substantial savings or other income. So all of
us brothers and sisters, her children, began at that time to give her money
each month. Each one giving whatever he or she felt was enough to help her,
help subsidize her meager income. That has continued to this present time
and as I am recording this in one month my mother will be 90 years old.
In 1975 I really felt the weight of my bishop duties. One of the pleasant
parts was interviewing young people to go on missions. I had the pleasure
of helping prepare John for his mission on which he left in September.
Roberta wrote to him every week. I didn't seem to find the time very often
but I wrote every month or two.
The Nebekers brought back some sunshine to our life. They moved back to
Murray from Layton. They had never sold their home here. They rented it
during the eight years that they were gone. They took the job as custodians
of our ward building. Bill Ohwiller had been the custodian since the
building was built in 1953, but he was now 75 years old. No, I think he was
70 years old, and needed to retire. The building was undergoing remodeling
and enlargement at this time and that project went on for a year. It was
really a man sized job to be the custodian under those circumstances. We
were surely glad to have the Nebekers back. Roberta was especially because
Kay is her dearest friend.
We had our family camp at Redmond again in August. We had an interesting
experience with the car. We pulled the trailer up with the old Cadillac but
the car quite before we reached the camp. We had to disconnect the trailer
and have it pulled to camp by one of the other cars. I decided to take the
Cad back to town to see if we could get it fixed. So, I turned it around
and we coasted down the canyon without power which means largely without
brakes or steering. Although, we did have brakes and steering. It's just
that they required a little more physical force to operate them without the
boosters. We coasted from Silver Lake Village just below Solitude down to
the corner of Highland Drive and 7200 South. Then we tried again and the
car started. We took it over to Bob Plougeans Garage in Sugar House. He
told us that what had happened was that our gas filter was plugged up and
that the altitude change made it impossible for the gas pump to supply
enough fuel for the engine and that's why it quite. So he just replaced the
gas filter cartridge and we were on our way again. That old Cad was a
faithful car all the years we had it.
John had a really bad experience on his arrival in his mission field in
Toulouse France. He and the elders from the mission home that picked him up
from the airport stopped on the way at a restaurant and went in to get some
lunch. They left John's luggage on the top of the car. When they came it
out it was gone. Everything he had was stolen except what he had in his
shoulder back. Fortunately that was his identification and what little
money he had, but all of his clothes were gone except what he had on his
back. Well, it was some weeks and months before that problem could be
solved. The clothes he wore on his mission were a combination of clothes
donated to him and some clothes that he bought and some that we were able to
send him from home. But it was a hard blow for any missionary. He handled
it quite well.
Doug graduated from Trade Tech in about June and he accepted a job with the
O.C. Tanner company as a die cutter. He has worked there since that time,
still there now in 1992.
1976 was the bicentennial of the declaration of Independence. We took a
vacation trip in the summer, traveled to Colorado springs in two
Volkswagens. Roberta and I were in one, Mark and Doug in the other, and
Lori took turns riding with them and with us. I had learned of a reunion to
be held in Colorado Springs of the former personnel of the form 100th bomber
group. It sounded like an event that I would enjoy. We lived in a Motel
called the Blue Fox. We ate our meals out or we bought groceries and just
pieced. Roberta had no meals to prepare and she was delighted with her
first real vacation.
The experience at the reunion was not what I had hoped it would be. It
turned into kind of a drinking party. I might have guessed that because
most of the men in the service took up drinking and smoking. That's one of
the main activities today when they get together, there's drinking and
smoking. It didn't appeal much to us. So, I haven't attended any other
reunions since then although they're held every year or two. I have kept in
touch with the association, the 100th bomb group association, and through it
I've had contact with all but two of my former crew mates.
Bishopric duties continued, a full load, through this year. We had
completed the work of remodeling our building and making a stake center of
it. Now we began to raise funds to build a new ward house for the first and
twelfth wards over on Vine Street near Murray Park. So, we still spent a
lot of our energy and time raising money for the building fund.
We bought a 1971 Buick Skylark from Peck and Shaw in August, trading in the
old Cad. I'm mixing things together here without much pattern. Bob Meyer
who was one of my counselors in the bishopric moved away and we called Lynn
Bloxham to take his place. Both Bob and Lynn were excellent counselors to
me. I still had Paul Fitt as my other counselor. In January of that year
Roberta's oldest brother John Lyle Carpenter, Carp we called him, died in
the veterans hospital. He suffered over about nine months time with cancer
that was wide spread through his body. He wasted away until he probably
didn't weigh more than 85 pounds although he had weighed well over 200
pounds in his prime manhood. His death was quite a spiritual experience for
all of us including him. He had grown somewhat closer to us, to the family,
in recent years as he joined with us in our summer camping trips. In the
last weeks of his life his sister Kay helped him prepare to go to the temple
while he was still in the VA hospital. Carp had solved his word of wisdom
problems some years before and had been paying his tithing for years. He
always had a testimony of the gospel. He was always a gentle and kind
Christian man, just out of the habit of going to church. But, with Kay's
help he had interviews with his bishop and his stake president who came to
him in the hospital. Then Kay and Roberta and their brother Doug took Carp
to the temple in a wheel chair and he received his endowment. It made him
very happy and I'm sure his parents rejoiced. I'm sure they were aware of
what happened from the other side. We learned to love Carp through our
closer association with him.
He had had a living trust prepared covering all of his estate which wasn't
much. It was primarily his home and a couple of cars and some savings. He
asked me and Kay to serve as executors of his trust as trustees which we
did. We were able to sell his home and close out his affairs and distribute
the resulting money among his heirs which included his children and his
ex-wife and a little grandson born to one of his sons who had died in a
truck accident some years before. Our duties as trustee continue to this
time. That grandson is just about an adult now and we need to turn over to
him his share of Carp's estate which has grown by about 300 percent. I
think it's grown from 7,000 to well over 20,000. It will be a real gift to
that boy and we will try to encourage him to make the use of it that Carp
intended. The boy has been living with his mother's parents since his dad
died, since Carp's boy Kenny died.
During 1977 I continued to be very busy with my bishopric duties. Paul
Fitt, one of my counselors, and I were developing increasing tension and
difference of opinion over a lot of things. We were not working well
together. So I asked that he be released. I didn't want him developing
bitter feelings about the church because of me and thought he would be
happier doing something else in the ward. We called Jeremy Meyer who was
Bob Meyer's younger brother to take Paul's place and it increased our
harmony in our bishopric counsels and activities.
Another milestone for us as parents. Doug was married February 10th to
Gwendolyn Maughan in the Salt Lake Temple. She is from California. He
parents live in Palis Verdes south of Los Angeles. So, two receptions were
held. The first one was held here in the 24th Ward chapel. The second one
was held down in Palis Verdes. Doug asked me to be his best man in both of
those receptions. That's a bit unusual but it was very pleasing to me that
he felt so warm and friendly toward me. Both receptions were very pleasant.
It was pleasure to get to know Gwen's family. The trip down to California
and back was pleasant. The Buick that we had bought operated well.
Our good neighbors Chil and Ruth Miller had sold their home to the
Wilkensons who owned Cottonwood Chrysler. They moved up into the east
Holliday area. We bought from them their washer and dryer which were like
new and gave them as a gift to Doug and Gwen. Doug and Gwen moved into
Nebeker's apartment where they would live for about a year. They remained
members of our Murray 8th Ward and I was pleased with the way they started
their financial management, paying their tithing and offerings and generous
contributions to the building fund, very pleasing to me as a father and as a
bishop.
Mark graduated from high school this spring and enrolled at the University
of Utah in the fall. He obtained a job working for Reams Bargain Annex
Grocery Market. It's interesting how he obtained that job. Roberta had
traded at the store for years and often took mark shopping with her when he
was a little boy. One time stole some candy, a pocket full of candy, from
Reams. When his mother discovered it she took him back and made him confess
to the manager. She had previously called the manager and told him what she
was going to do and that she wanted him to cooperate and be stern but kind.
We think right there that Mark learned a crucial lessons in honesty. Reams
hired Mark partly because he was honest and later on made him a night crew
manager because of his honesty. They had a great lot of difficulty with
employees stealing from them, so when they found one who was honest they
really valued him.
John returned from his mission in September and enrolled at Utah Tech, or at
Trade Tech I should say, for his second year in electronics with the idea of
graduating there and then going on to the University of Utah. Roberta's
oldest sister Teddie, Theodicia is her name, became quite ill during the
summer months. She had not felt well since the spring, but she didn't do
much about it. She just developed a really bad cough and felt poor, unwell
for many months. She finally went to the doctor about it late in November
and discovered that she had cancer of the pancreas, which is terminal
invariably. She was very brave and uncomplaining about it. She never
complained, never grieved or felt sorry for herself. It's a sad thing that
she never had the privilege of living in their new home. She had lived in a
basement home in Vernal for 30 years. During the year preceding her illness
they had built a nice home on top of that basement. It was just then
completed when she became so sick. She died in December about three weeks
after her cancer was discovered. She never had the pleasure of living in
that lovely home.
In my work at Distributors Incorporated another crisis developed. Warren
installed his son Reynold in Denver as an employee with the idea that
Reynold would become a manger of the store when Lee Bullock retired, which
he was planning to do in about three years. This greatly upset Ted. He and
Warren were equal partners, equal owners, and had always had the
understanding that none of their children would be hired without their
mutual consent. This greatly increased the tension and the strife and ill
will between them. It made me wish that I had left the company and found
other work ten years before when I was so much inclined that way. But now
I'm 52 years old and it's hardly the time to give up a good paying job for
such a reason. I had lived with tension between them for all these years.
I figured I could see it through to my retirement.
In August Mark had his turn wrecking a car. He wrecked our Buick on the way
home from a drive-in. No one was hurt fortunately. We needed a second car
with John back in school and I bought a 1969 Toyota which was beautiful
little car but a very bad mistake. We let John drive that car while we
operated the yellow Volkswagen.
1978 started out as a normal year. I was very busy as the bishop and then a
lot of milestones came along in a hurry. On April 30th Roberta and I became
grandparents when our first grandson, Jeffery, was born to Doug and Gwen.
Then, in May the Wilkensons who owned Cottonwood Chrysler next to us came
and offered to buy our property. The price they offered indicated that they
were really interested, but we were not urgently desiring to move this time,
so we told them that would be interested only if their price was sufficient
to enable us to buy a comparable home in a desirable location and buy that
home debt free since our home was already debt free. We had already made
plans to take a trip to Denver, Roberta, Mark, Lori, and I, on the Rio
Grande train. So we told the Wilkensons that we would think about it and do
some looking for another home when we got back. The train ride through the
Rocky Mountains was a delightful thing. It took all day, and when we
arrived in Denver Lee Bullock arranged to let us use a company car and had
arranged a motel room for us up in the north part of Denver. We had a
delightful week seeing the sites in Denver and visiting some of the Denver
crew, particularly the Bullocks. At about this time our duties as a
bishopric to raise building funds took on a new dimension.

Tape 10 Side A
We had a good visit with Raymond and his family. Only three of his children
are at home, Barbie and Gail
and Allen. The others of course are married and out on their own raising
their own families. Raymond is
bishop of his ward in sareeta, has been since October of 1978 and he served
until October of 1983. He and
his family have been really great assets to their ward and increased the
level of attendance and activity
considerably while they've been there. That is, they've helped to do that.
With both Lori and Mark at home going to school and working we need more
transportation in our family
so in January of 1982 we bought a 1981 Volkswagen Rabbit, a dark green one.
Then, in September of that
year, just so I'll not forget to mention it, we bought a second Rabbit, a
white one, and it has a diesel engine
in it. Our youngest child Lori graduated in May of this year and enrolled
in the University of Utah. Here we
have three children simultaneously enrolled at the University of Utah, which
thing I could never have
imagined 33 years ago when I graduated from there.
At work this year and into next year, 1983, I began to develop several new
programs on the computer,
software programs, with the help of Gail Miles who was an expert programmer.
He lived in Ogden. These
programs were to improve our accounting for accounts receivable to give us
invoice number control and to
account for jobs and commission sales and commissions received in the
activity of Ted R. Brown and
Associates. This was a long term program and it enabled us to keep up with
the increasing volume of sales
activities in the companies, a very nominal expense to the company. It's
always been the philosophy in our
accounting office to do the job with as little expense as possible. Over
the years, all of the years that I
worked for them, which was 28 years, 29 years actually, we never had more
than three people full time in
that office, yet we handled the work entailed by an increase of sales
activity of five or six times, maybe even
seven or eight times the volume increase. I have always felt that I did a
good job for my employers and I
believe they thought so too. They gave me a lot of liberty to do the work
the way I thought it should be
done. They placed complete trust in me and I believe they were pleased with
my work.
This year Gary Nebeker went on a mission to Germany, northern Germany, and
Clint Hastings went also on
a mission to the same mission Mark went to, the Switzerland Geneva Mission.
He lived in some of the same
apartments that Mark had lived in, and met a number of people there who
remembered Mark and thought
Clint must be related to him. He looked so much like Mark I guess, tall and
blond and American. This
surely marked a miraculous change in Clint's life, and we're happy to see
him living the gospel way. That
continues to the present time, 1992. Clint married a wonderful girl, Nina
Walker, I think her name was
Walker, from central Utah, and she has been a really stabilizing and
motivating influence for good in Clint's
life. Today they have a little boy two and a half years old and Clint will
graduate from the University of
Utah in 1992.
I forgot to mention back a couple of years at the time that I terminated
Kathy Fliton's employment with us,
we hired a very lovely lady in her place named Mertyl Rapply. Mert worked
for us for about five years.
Very pleasant to work with. We were always fortunate in our office to have
people who were accurate.
Whether they were fast or slow they were accurate and we didn't have to
spend a lot of time correcting
errors. This was a big factor in enabling us to carry the increased volume
of work that we did through the
years. My boss Warren Brown had an aneurysm in his brain about this time.
That's a very serious thing,
often fatal, but he recovered from it well physically, but his continual
worrying about it plus other problems
including the strife at work with his brother Ted, caused him to become more
and more depressed and
withdrawn during this year of 1982.
Early in the spring we discovered that one of the employees in the Salt Lake
branch of DI Colorado had
been stealing from the company. She was in a position that enabled her to
alter checks, raise the amount of
checks, drawn on the managers operating account which was like a petty cash
fund only it used checks. She
stole something over 30,000 dollars. It was my duty during the later part
of this year to assemble the
information necessary for her to be charged with this crime and be tried for
it. My experience with the court
system in this matter was very disillusioning. We had all of the evidence
to convict her but the county
attorney's office plea bargained the matter and she spent 30 days in jail,
two weekend days at a time, for
fifteen weeks. She never repaid any of the money. The white collar crime
that goes on in this country and I
suppose elsewhere in the world, is just astonishing, and most of it goes
undetected and unpunished.
During the 80's a number of instances of this in Wall Street activity were
discovered, exposed, some
involving hundreds of millions of dollars stolen or taken by fraud. Some of
the criminals were punished,
most of them not very heavily.
In 1969 we had bought a Magnavox stereo in a beautiful cabinet. Now,
thirteen years later the electronic
components in that system have worn out, not functioning very well, so in
June of this year I removed them
and replaced them with modern electronic components, a record changer, a new
amplifier, and a tape deck,
and able to keep this beautiful cabinet which Roberta and I really like very
much.
Two new grand children were born in our family this year. Heather was born
to John and Joyce, their first
child, on February 8th, and Alex, third son, third child, born to Doug and
Gwen on July 2nd. Both in good
health, beautiful whole normal children. We've certainly been blessed with
good health in our family. On
September 26th there were some unusually heavy rainstorms in the mountain
valleys, mountain canyons, and
particularly over the Big Cottonwood area that caused heavy flooding along
that stream through the valley
including damage here in our ward and in Murray 8th ward where there's a
mobile home park called
Cottonwood Cove. The water there was about 4 feet deep and flooded and
destroyed a number of mobile
homes.
It's always inspiring to see how people rally together in an emergency.
Neighbors who didn't even know
one another's names gathered together to build sand bag banks along the
river and around the homes to help
minimize the damage to their neighbors' homes. Members of the church, non
members, it made no
difference. People really rise to the occasion when there's serious
emergency. The winter of 1983 was the
wettest winter in recorded history here in Utah. There was severe flooding
in the spring, water running
down State Street, a river that had to be banked up with sandbags, and
another river running down 13th
south as it did in 1952. It was very destructive throughout Utah, the
flooding. It wasn't as damaging in our
area as it had been last September.
This year I helped to build a bathroom and bedroom and do some other finish
work in the basement of
Doug's and Gwen's home. Gwen's folks bought the materials and I furnished
the labor. They did have to
hire a plumber to do some of the sewer type plumbing for the bathroom. Here
at home I am remodeling ,
remodeling is my favorite thing I think, my favorite hobby. I continued
making improvements. I removed a
closet from our front room which was located right by the front door,
something we didn't like at all. It was
never used. It was unsightly and it made the room appear smaller and
crowded. So I removed that and then
I widened the doorway from the front room into the hallway from 30 inches,
just a normal door width, to
eight feet, removing the whole wall, and installed a folding door there so
that the room could be closed off
from the kitchen area. Then I built some bookshelves down in our family
room under the front room.
There's a fireplace in the basement. These bookshelves surround the
fireplace. It includes a nice mantel
across the width of the room.
A good friend (Cloy Griffiths?) in the Murray 8th Ward died in June of bone
cancer. He had suffered for
two years, had been bed ridden for two years. This cancer first appeared
about nine years before and he
thought it was controlled. He had had it in his prostate gland and then it
went into his bones. His wife cared
for him at home all that time. They couldn't do anything for him in the
hospital or the nursing homes. She
was very dissatisfied with the attention that he got in the nursing home so
she cared for him at home. It was
a most impressive and beautiful thing to see, the love and devotion that she
had for him and he for her. He
was a very brave man and never complained. It was always uplifting to go
and visit him. We were supposed
to lift his spirits. He was the sick one. But he always uplifted the
spirits of those that visited him with his
courage and his acceptance of this terminal illness.
We finally finished the programs for the computer at work that Gail Miles
and I had been working on for
more than a year, or like a year and a half. I had devoted many overtime
hours to this working nights, into
the night, on Saturdays and on Holidays. In all of the years that I worked
for Restribco, which became
Distributors Incorporated with a name change, I was never paid any overtime.
The bonuses at year end
were often very generous. Sometimes there were no bonuses. But, I never
felt abused by not being paid
overtime. I enjoyed the work and was willing to put in the time that it
took to do it. One thing that I do
regret looking back through the last thirty years or more that we've been
married, that I haven't spent as
much time with my children as I should have. I don't think that they've
felt neglected but I know I could
have devoted more time to them especially on a one and one, a one to one
basis. That's one regret I have
and I imagine my long hours at work contributed to that problem.
At the beginning of 1984 I had a very great disappointment at work. Reynold
Brown who had become the
manager in Denver when Lee Bullock retired in 1981 rejected my new computer
programs. He would not
allow us to use them on our work for his operation without even a trial. He
didn't even try them. He didn't
have the courage to tell me himself. He passed the word to me indirectly.
His reasons became clear when
he said a little later in February that he was going to move the accounting
function to Denver. This
foreshadowed the end of our accounting office and my job. I felt and still
feel that Reynold and Warren
were very deceitful and unfair in their treatment of me and the others in
our accounting office. I had been
assured through the years by Warren directly and personally that I would
have work with him, with the
company, until I wished to retire. But here, before I'm 60 years old I'm
getting the word that my job will
soon be terminated.
In August of 1984 we discovered that a long time employee, Venice Holt, who
had worked for Ted since
1957 has been stealing money from the company for ten years. The amount was
approximately 375,000
dollars. It's a long story how she could get away with that without being
discovered. I don't how much of
that if any of it to include in my life's story. Maybe I'll write a novel
about my dealings with Ted and
Warren Brown and their enterprises with whom I worked for about almost
thirty years. But she was
dismissed. She was charged with the crime, a second degree felony. She
never served a day in jail. She
never made, well I shouldn't say she didn't make restitution. Ted required
her to forfeit her profit sharing
trust. She turned over to Ted the titles, the deeds, to two or three
pieces of property she owned but which
were heavily indebted, and other things, other personal property and
possessions that she surrendered. She
probably paid back about a third of the money that she stole, about 125,000
dollars total.
In the spring of '84 I made a big change in our home by building a new
stairway to the basement in the end
of our front room next to the kitchen. This stairway transformed the use of
the space in our basement. It
made a family room, a very nice room, directly under our entire front room.
It created an excellent storage
room in the corner of our home under the utility room. There was no heat or
light in that room and it made
an excellent food storage room. It made our whole basement much more
useful, much more attractive.
Then we put down new carpet in our front room and on the stairway and we
bought a new couch and chair
and a love seat and finished the family room downstairs with carpet on the
floor and repainted and we also
had a new roof installed, aluminum roof, that should last much longer than
we will.
On August 16th Doug and Gwen were blessed with their first daughter Suzanna.
She was our second grand
daughter. Gwen has become quite expert at having babies, takes quite
naturally to this mother business, not
just having children but caring for them. 1985 was a year that had many
large changes in our life. John
graduated from the University of Utah in June and had already interviewed
with and accepted a job with
Sanders Electronics in New Hampshire. So, soon after graduation, just days
after, he drove their car to New
Hampshire. Doug accompanied him. It took them a whole week to get back
there. He looked for, starting
looking for an apartment for his family and on the 22nd of June Joyce and
the children flew back there.
Bradford, their second child, had been born on March 2nd so he was just a
three month old baby. In July
and August Lori made a trip to Europe with a group of university students
arranged through an association
in the east, gone for most of three weeks. She had a very enjoyable trip,
learned a great deal about the
world and about herself and about other people. It was a real growing
experience for her. She had worked
hard and saved her own money for this trip.
She was thinking about going on a mission and I think this trip developed
the maturity and judgment that she
needed to make a good decision. She decided to serve a mission and was
called to go to Costa Rica and
Panama. So, in September she went into the MTC. In November left on her
mission. My Aunt Barbara
died in September just a few days after Lori went into the MTC. Aunt
Barbara had felt a lot of Lori and
we've all been glad that Lori was able to visit with her one last time when
she was failing rapidly. Of course,
Aunt Barbara was my father's only sister, and she was the last one of my
father's family to go. She was 88
years old.
Mark graduated from the U in December and he also had been interviewed for
employment by a business
back east, a firm of professional consultants in computer software and
computer operations, a company
called Lackman and Associates based in Chicago. They contracted to place
employees in Columbus Ohio.
That's where Mark went on the 30th of December and worked with Bell
Laboratories there part of AT&T
their research arm, and he still has that job now in 1992 which is very
unusual. Most of their contract
arrangements are much shorter in duration, just a year or two. Mark has
enjoyed his work there but it was
terribly hard on him and on us when he moved out. He was terribly homesick
and I really could relate well
to his agony. He inherited that malady from me, but we did a lot of talking
on the phone.

For several weeks we talked almost everyday or several times a week at
least. A big change in my own
employment at work. Ted R Brown and Associates, which was one of the
companies we serviced, was sold
in June to a firm called Mantle and White, two young men who were into the
leveraged buyout activity
which was sweeping the nation all during the 80's. I'll tell you something
about leveraged buyouts. It might
be appropriate at this time, maybe a little later when we discuss other
activities with mantle and white having
to do with Distributors Incorporated. But, we were informed that our
accounting services for Distributors
Incorporated Colorado would end with 1985. This was a real blow to me. It
of course indicated the end of
my job also since our office existed to service these corporations.
I joined the Olympus Male Chorus in September and that year we sang at the
Temple Square, Christmas
carols. Learning these songs and singing with these men was a most
uplifting experience for me. I really
needed something like that because I was feeling mighty low about the
approaching end of my job. I had
another hernia operation in the fall, I think November. A doctor Hugh
Vorhies, a young surgeon, did this
job. Malcom Jepson our doctor was no longer doing surgery, hadn't done for
several years. The technique
for hernia operation had been greatly improved. It was in and out surgery.
I didn't stay in the hospital even
overnight. I was just a little bit uncomfortable for a few days and
recovered really well. On the 23rd of
November Roberta and Kay and I went down to the Murray Park where we saw
them dedicate the huge
wooden sculpture called Chief Wasatch which is still located there. It was
carved by a young man in honor
of the Indian Tribes of the Utah area. That young man was an immigrant from
Hungary and became very
much impressed with the culture and the troubles, the travails, of the
Indian people, the American Indians.
To honor them he created a sculpture similar to this in every state of the
union and in Canada.
Well, with just Roberta and me in the home now, all of our little birds had
flown, we decided to have an
artificial Christmas tree this Christmas. I didn't seem to have the heart
to go out and look for a tree without
Lori to go with me, none of the kids at home. So, we bought a full height
tree, seven and a half feet high,
which we've used every Christmas since. We enjoy it. It has a beautiful
shape. It also called for a change in
lighting. The old lights that we had used for years were now worn out. The
wire had become old and
decomposed, so we bought a half dozen strings of these little lights, these
miniature lights. They're also
pretty, but not quite as beautiful as the larger lights with reflectors
behind the bulbs. Our Christmas was
quite different with none of the children home. Of course Doug and Gwen and
their kids were still nearby
and that helped.
1986 was another very different year. My job ended February 28th after 28
years. I took a half time job
continuing accounting service to Ted R Brown and Associates new owners
starting March 1st. And then on
April 4th I started a second half time job for those men Mantle and White,
which made me eligible for their
group insurance. The young man running their office was very kind to me in
this situation. He made my
insurance effective April 1st back dating it a few days, which was fine,
perfectly proper. But as it turned
out, that kindness of his saved me and Roberta about 22,000 dollars.
On the 14th of April I was diagnosed as having very severe heart trouble,
blockage of the cardiac arteries, by
a doctor named Michael Priest. Interestingly he's the son of a man that I
had met many years ago when I
first started working for Glen Mickleson in Utility Trailers. Bill Priest,
father of this doctor, was a good
friend of Glen Mickleson. Well on May 14th I had heart bypass surgery.
They made six bypasses in my
arteries. The surgeon was Doctor Lynn Stevens Richards. He did an
excellent job and I had a good
recovery. Doctor Richards was just the age of my brother Raymond, both born
in September.
That was quite an experience for me. There's hardly anyway I can put my
feelings of the time onto this tape,
but right away I had a humbling experience, a very ironic one. You remember
in my story I told about my
having fired Kathy Fliton in 1980 and my resentment that she had been hired
a couple days later by Ted R
Brown and Associates. She was still working for them at this time and
worked closely together through all
of the intervening years because we were both involved in the office work.
I trained Kathy for a few days
before my surgery, taught her how to do the urgent parts of my job on the
computer so the work could be
kept going. She was able to keep my job going for me during May and June
and part of July. During July I
was, well during those weeks, I was gradually able to pick it up again, and
by the middle of July I could
handle it myself.
I appreciated very much her help and the kindness of Lyle Christopherson the
young man who had seen to it
that I had group insurance coverage. My emotions were very abnormal
following this surgery for most of a
year. I was unusually tearful and a little more openly affectionate than
normal. I had a very rosy outlook on
life. Everything was wonderful. I felt I could jump over the house if I
needed to. I was really in a high an
emotional high.
A fourth son and fifth child was born to Doug and Gwen on July 16th. James
Scott was born. I really
appreciated my part time job during this next year. We went camping up to
Redmond in Big Cottonwood
Canyon again in August and it was really fun. I enjoyed camping this time
more than I had for several years.
A happy thing occurred there. Mark arranged to come home for the camping
time and his cousin Gary
Nebeker introduced him to a young lady that he had met in a singles ward
that was meeting in our church
here next door. Dixie Christensen was from Oregon but was living and
working in Salt Lake. Gary and
Dixie were good friends and Dixie had told Gary she was about fed up with
the dating game, had about
decided she'd never find the kind of man she wanted to marry. She told Gary
what she was looking for and
Gary said, say... you ought to met my cousin Mark.
Tape 11 Side A
Dixie told Gary that she was going home to Oregon for her vacation just at
the time that Mark was going to be here from Ohio, but Gary urged her to
come home, come back to Salt Lake a day or two early and that he would
introduce her to Mark. So they came up to our campground the last evening
that we were to be there and Mark and Dixie sized each other up through the
glow of the campfire. The next morning, Saturday, as we were breaking camp,
they and Gary and a girlfriend who had accompanied him up to the camp the
evening before all went on a hike.
And in those few hours Mark and Dixie discovered that they liked each other
and would like to know each other better. So, over the weekend they spent
some hours together mostly talking and on Monday morning Mark flew back to
Columbus Ohio and Dixie went back to work. They courted during the rest of
1986 by way of long distance telephone. They became engaged about
Thanksgiving time and the happy event is part of the story for next year,
1987.
Robi and I flew to Nashua in October. It was a very enjoyable trip. I was
on my emotional high so everything was wonderful. John and Joyce took us
sight seeing, went up to Sharon Vermont to visit the memorial there to
Joseph Smith at his birth place. WE went to Boston and walked through some
of the historic part of that city. We saw some of the historical places.
WE went down to Plymouth Massachusetts where a village has been restored
very much like the village that pilgrims built there when they came to
America in 1620. And the New England countryside was beautiful in its fall
colors. So we had a fun trip. Mark flew to Boston from Columbus and spent
several days with John's family and us and then Mark and Lori (?) and I flew
back to Columbus together and we visited for a day or so with Mark. WE had
an enjoyable time and discovered that Mark was an excellent very fastidious
house keeper even though no one else came into his apartment. He kept it
spotlessly clean. Mark took us out to Dayton Ohio which is, oh, it must be
one hundred miles west of Columbus, to visit the Airforce museum there at
Wright Patterson field. That was a real treat for me especially being an
alumnus of the Airforce. It's a wonderful place. I'd like to get back and
see it again when I could spend more time. We had just a few hours because
Mark had to be to work the next morning and the museum closed at maybe 6
o'clock that evening. It was surely enjoyable.
I was quite upset by the ending of my job back in February of 1986. At that
time Warren and Ted paid me a termination bonus equal to about three months
salary, but a much bigger benefit had been a long time in building. Back in
1956 they had created a profit sharing trust in which I had participated
since 1961 I think. Now with my termination and the dissolution of the
company my share my account in the profit sharing trust was transferred to
me in the form of an IRA with Tracy Collins Bank Trust Department. So in
1987 I began to look for ways of reinvesting that money more profitably. I
was not impressed with the performance of the bank's trust department. They
had dropped the ball many times and had lost money when they should have
made money.
My part time job with Mantle and White ended March 31st 1987 so I retired
being 62 years old. The previous November I began drawing social security
benefits. I continued walking for exercise, had done since my surgery and
still do. At that time I was walking 4 miles in an hour everyday including
Sunday. I discontinued walking on Sunday about June of 87 and no longer
walk on Sundays. In the winter months from about the 15th of December to
the 15th of February more or less I walked in the Fashion Place Mall in
South Murray, an excellent place for walking in bad weather. I walk around
the mall about six times to cover four miles.
In May of 87 I resurrected part of my past. I took my old accordion out of
its case where I had put it soon after our marriage in 1951 and tried to
play it again. Amazingly the instrument was still in excellent condition,
played perfectly. I decided to put some time and effort into it and try to
develop some competence on it. I had played if for about three or four
years about four years, way back before I was married, 1947 to 1951. I
never did become really good at it but I did enjoy it and I enjoyed it now
again when I began playing in 1987. I'm still playing in 1992 and I'll tell
about the development of that as this story goes along during the 80s. That
summer I erected a new steel storage shed out in the yard and we filled it
with junk from the basement, valuable property that we had stored down there
that no body had the courage to throw away or dispose of. But, getting that
stuff out of the basement made it look a lot better and Robi was very pleased.
Lori returned from her mission on March 13th and reentered the University of
Utah. I had registered her before she came home and had made one wise
choice for her. I enrolled her for a course called "The Miracle at
Philadelphia". It was to be a series of ten lectures on the constitution of
the United States and its creation in 1787. Roberta and I attended this
series of lectures along with several hundred other people. The course was
taught by a professor J. D. Williams head of the political science
department. They enrolled two hundred students who took it for credit and
made room for two hundred people from the community who took it just for
fun. We enjoyed it immensely. It was informative and thrilling and was
especially impressive to Lori. The maturity of it and the appeal of it to
her patriotic sense and her love for America was very strong.

Professor Williams paid Lori a compliment in writing at the conclusion of
that class which truly was a superlative compliment. On her final
examination paper, which was largely a composition rather than merely
answering questions, Professor Williams wrote approximately these words. He
said, "In my 38 years of teaching at the University I have never read a
better paper." A real compliment and very well deserved.
Mark and Dixie were married on March 20th in the Salt Lake Temple, and very
happily John and Joyce were able to fly out to go through the temple with
him, or to be in the temple with them. On the next day, March 21st, Joyce's
brother Stanford and his wife were married in the temple. So, between us
and Joyce's parents, Kent and Jeanine Acomb, we arranged to fly John and
Joyce out here for this occasion and a little visit. Their reception was
quite memorable. They held it in our Millcreek 8th Ward building and the
catering was quite unusual. We engaged a woman to do the catering who had
been recommended to us by friends. The reception began at 7 o'clock. No
one showed up from the caterers until 7:45. Then when they came they were
unprepared. Only one person and they served second hand food from earlier
receptions that they had catered. It was disgraceful and most embarrassing.
But, Kay Nebeker and others of Roberta's family stepped into the breach and
they even went up to Smith's market and bought some additional pastries and
punch for refreshments and salvaged the evening at least for the last half
of our guests. But, those who came from 7:00 to 7:45 must have wondered
what kind of affair we were presenting and inviting them to. We were in the
line of course and didn't really know what was going on until half way
through the affair when Kay had it under control.
Mark and Dixie had a second reception at Dixie's home in Burns Oregon a week
later. We and Lori traveled up for that affair. Mark and Dixie took one of
our Volkswagens on their honeymoon for a week and met us there for the
reception. It was held in Dixie's home ward and it was a very fine
enjoyable time. Dixie's parents took us all out to dinner for a wedding
breakfast at a restaurant there in Burns called Asages. It was on of the
best meals I have ever eaten in a restaurant. The trip up and back was very
enjoyable too.
In July on the 25th we held a large Larsen family reunion in Fairmont Park
here in Salt Lake. Lori had taken charge even before she went on her
mission. She had set this time for the reunion. And even while she was on
her mission and immediately after she got back, circulated a mailing, sent a
mailing to all the family members here and there around the country,
informing them of this reception. It was to be held in honor of my mother
for her 85th birthday. Of course she was 85 that year in March. My mother
at that time had a total progeny of about 125 people. Of those about 90
were there. It was a very happy occasion for everybody. It was good to see
that many family members together, many of whom hadn't seen each other for
years if ever. We've seen Mark enter an airplane and leave us several
times. When he went on his mission and when he went back to Ohio to work
and a number of times since, and every time it happens we rejoice that he is
married and not living back there alone. It was really hard to see him go
the first time to Ohio. He was so utterly desolate. But, when he and Dixie
went back together after their marriage it was a joyful thing. Even bidding
him good-bye was joyful and not sad just because they were together and happy.
In 1988 in March Roberta and I did a most unusual thing. We hadn't done
much vacationing and traveling in the years we've been married, at least not
much compared with some people. But in March we bought senior citizens
passes on Eastern Airlines. These passes entitled us to fly once a week
anywhere in the United States that Eastern flies for a year. During the
next twelve months we managed to take 13 trips. A requirement of the pass
was that the round trips span a weekend so that each trip would take two
calendar weeks. WE could have made 26 trips in a year's time, but we did
pretty well. We made 13. And we did have a most wonderful time. Our first
trip was in March to Houston Texas to visit my sister Shirley and her
husband Hilton and their family. This was a real vacation for Roberta. We
went out to eat everyday in a different restaurant. We visited many points
of interest. WE went up to the Dallas Temple. We went down to Galveston,
an interesting place built on an island in the Gulf of Mexico. We had a
very enjoyable visit with Shirley and her family. Not many of us have been
to Texas to visit Shirley. They were delighted. My mother's been very good
to go to visit Shirley many times. I don't know how many. Perhaps fifteen
or twenty times in the 35 plus years that she has lived there.
Our second trip we took in April to Denver and visited with Lee and Dorcus
Bullock, just a couple of days we spent. I don't know why we didn't take
more time and see Denver a little more fully. It was enjoyable. We rented
a car over there, and enjoyed the time. In May we went to Columbus Ohio and
visited with Mark and Dixie. WE spent about a week there. WE had a good
time with them. They showed us some of the sights. WE would have liked to
go see Mark's workplace but we were not allowed. It was restricted to
employees only.
In June Roberta and I went to Washington D.C. That was a real thrill for
both of us. Neither of us had been in any of these places that we visited

before these trips. It was a thrill to see our nation's capital and the
huge shrines built there in honor of Washington, Lincoln, and Jefferson. We
enjoyed the Smithsonian Institution. We were in for a great surprise. We
were used to museums that were housed in one building. The Smithsonian is
housed in about eight or ten buildings, vast things, each one about a
quarter of a mile long and three stories high, great beautiful buildings
built of marble and granite, filled with exciting interesting things. WE
saw the Capitol building, not as thoroughly as we would have liked. We went
down to visit Mount Vernon and of course visited Arlington Cemetery. On
most of these flights, especially eastward, we flew first to Atlanta Georgia
and there, which was the main hub for Eastern Airlines, and then, well we
flew by way of Denver. We landed in Denver then flew to Atlanta. Then from
there we'd be transferred to another plane to our destination. Even when we
flew to Houston we flew to Atlanta, several hundred miles to the east of
Houston and then flew back to Houston, but that was all right. WE became
very well acquainted with the beautiful airport terminal in Houston (?), one
of the most modern airports in the world and one of the largest. It was a
great pleasure every time we went there.
In July we flew to Rochester New York, which of course is near Palmyra New
York where so much early church history took place. It was in Palmyra where
Joseph Smith was living when the angel Moroni appeared to him and delivered
the gold plates from which the Book of Mormon was translated. We visited
the church historical sights there and also attended the Palmyra Pageant,
the Hill Cumorah Pageant, which the church members back there have presented
every July for many years. We enjoyed it, but somehow not quite as much as
we expected. That year was the first year that they presented a revised and
enlarged version of the pageant, and to me anyway it was more of a spectacle
than a message, lots of lights and lots of electronic enhancement. Somehow
much less impressive to me than the small pageant presented at the Manti
Temple here in Manti Utah.
In August we went to Nashua to visit with John and Joyce again. We had a
real purpose in this trip. Joyce was going to have a new baby, their third
child. Stanford was born on August 5th and Roberta and I timed our visit to
them so Roberta particularly could be of help to Joyce during this time that
her child was born. I wasn't as of much help as Roberta but did a little
puttering around and taxied Heather back and forth to her kindergarten class
which she attended in the summer preparatory to her entering school in the
fall in the first grade. So, this wasn't a sight seeing trip. It was a
working trip. One thing that I did that August that's memorable to me. I
installed a ventilator fan in their bathroom. The climate is very humid in
New Hampshire and in an area like a bathroom it promotes a lot of mildew and
mold because of the moisture. So, they needed a ventilator fan to exhaust
the moisture out of the bathroom and minimize the mildew and mold. Roberta
scoured the tile of their bathtub and shower enclosure and between that and
the ventilator it helped a great deal. It was memorable to me because of
how I perspired. I had never worked that hard in a humid climate and I have
never perspired that hard ever. My head was as wet as if I had dipped it in
a bucket of water.
We had two other grandchildren born in the family that year also. Natalie,
another girl, their second girl, was born on September 4th, and Elizabeth,
another grand daughter, born to Mark and Dixie on November 10th. That gives
us four grand daughters.
Our weather this year was really dry. The driest year in all of my lifetime
anyway. We had less than half an inch of rainfall during the summer between
memorial day and November 2nd. That was the first moisture since Memorial
Day when we had 38 hundredths of an inch. It was a different kind of fall
also. We normally have a killing frost in September, the later part of
September, but this year, 1988, we didn't have a killing frost until
November 7th. It finally came and took the garden.
We're surely thrilled that all three of these grand children were born
whole, well, and normal, and that they and their mothers came through it all
very well. My progress on the accordion suffered during all this traveling
this year, but I kept with it and managed to make a little progress.
A really unhappy thing in the life of my sister Barbara happened in May of
this year. Her husband Bob Bauldauf died, died in St. Mark's hospital. He
had, Bob had been sick in one degree or another ever since they married in
1952. He had serious kidney trouble. About ten years before this in 1978
there abouts, Bob had one kidney removed that became non functional. For
about seven years before he died he had been on dialysis, had no kidney
function at all. Right at the first of this year he developed a serious
cough which persisted until it became so severe and painful to him that he
went to his doctor finally. Although he was seeing a doctor twice a week
for his dialysis he hadn't seen a doctor about his cough. They put him in
the hospital immediately. He suffered and declined for about three weeks,
nearer four weeks maybe, and died of pneumonia as it was revealed by an
autopsy performed after his death at Barbara's request. As it turns out,
pneumonia is extremely difficult to detect in a person who is on kidney
dialysis. Somehow the dehydrated condition created in the body by dialysis
makes it difficult or impossible to detect pneumonia. So, in spite of their
best efforts to discover what Bob's problem was they didn't discover it
until after it was too late and he died.
Roberta and I took a trip to New York City in October. This was a great
thrill for us. We'd neither one been there and had heard of New York and
Broadway and the Statue of Liberty all of our lives. We had a little
adventure staying the first night in the YMCA. We knew that hotel rooms
were extremely expensive in New York and a friend had recommended that we
try the YMCA. Well we did. The rate was half price, but the facility was
pretty primitive. It was about a 9 story building and on each story, each
floor, there were perhaps one hundred guests in small rooms about the size
of a prison cell. The only thing in the room was a television set that
didn't work and one chair, a 25 watt light bulb, and an iron double bunk.
Fortunately the bunk was clean but the room itself was filthy and the
bathroom facilities were more primitive than anything I had seen even in the
military service. They had one bathroom for the hundred people on that
floor. It was really run down. In the women's room both water faucets put
out scalding hot water. There was no cold water for them. The showers were
open stalls, no privacy, no place to hang your clothes, four toilets and
four shower stalls for a hundred people, very primitive. Well we stayed the
night because we had arrived late in the evening and our chance of finding
different quarters that time of night would have been very difficult in that
strange city. But the next morning we went out looking for a hotel to stay
in and we found one close by on west 57th street, the Henry Hudson Hotel,
and moved in there. It cost $91.00 a night instead of 45. It was a very
pleasant place. In New York we saw many exciting wonderful things. We went
to the Statue of Liberty. We climbed all the way up in it. AS you know it
had been reworked and restored, strengthened and repaired extensively and
totally during the couple years before. It was a thrilling thing. They did
a beautiful job of restoring it.
We went up in the Empire State building of course. We went to two plays on
Broadway in the evening. We saw a play Kats which was a fantastic musical
that Roberta immensely enjoyed. It had some memorable music in it. WE saw
a drama in a theater on the round. It was called A circle on the Square.
The name of the theater the circle referring to the theater on the round
idea and the square referring to Time Square. WE would have liked to see
more plays and maybe we'll go back another time and spend the time going to
Broadway plays.
We did a lot of walking around in Manhattan through Central Park, down to
Wall Street, Battery Park at the bottom of the Manhattan Island where you
can look out across the water at the Statue of Liberty far out in the
harbor. We saw a museum there made of a World War 2 aircraft carrier. I
don't remember the name of it but it had been docked and converted into a
museum. It was an exciting trip and we rode the subways of New York. WE
had heard a lot about them. WE enjoyed it. We were never frightened by any
incident. WE had heard a lot about the vandalism and the violence in New
York and also in Washington D.C. but we never saw anything out of the way or
threatening in any degree during our trips there.
The last week of November and a few days of December we went to Florida and
asked Barbara my sister to go with us. We went to Disney World and the
Epcot Center which is part of the Disney tourist attractions there. WE
enjoyed them very much. We rented a car and traveled down the east coast of
Florida to Miami and farther down onto the Florida Keys. That was the last
day that we went out on the Keys. The day before we had gone to the
Everglades National Park which is in central Florida between Miami on the
east coast and Tampa on the west coast. WE were very surprised by the
appearance of the Everglades. The movies had prepared us to expect a swamp
with great overhead trees and ropes hanging down on which Tarzan could
swing, and filled with alligators and ferocious wild animals. Well, the
Everglades is really a great wide river, fifty miles wide and a few feet
deep flowing slowly to the south and the river is filled with grass. It's
just a great sea of grass. The highest thing in the park is only about ten
feet above sea level, but we did see many alligators, dozens and dozens of
huge alligators. Some of them we got as close as oh maybe 25 or 30 feet to.
Even at that time of the year the weather in Florida was in the 80s. It was
actually uncomfortably hot. We stayed in a motel in Miami. No, it was up
near Orlando where we stayed about four days. It was first class,
everything except warm water. There was no warm water in the motel. It was
interesting to hear the excuses that the management came up with why there
was no hot water, but with temperatures like that we didn't suffer too
badly. That hot water in the YMCA in New York made up for it. There we
didn't have any cold water.
Our family camping this year, 1988, was most enjoyable. We had three
campouts. We went to Redmond in August. We went to Payson Lake where we
had never been in September, and camped in October in the Spruces in Big
Cottonwood Canyon. The most enjoyable camping that we have had since the
days when our children were very small and we went down to Granite Flats.
I'd like to take you back to that spring quarter at the U and Lori's story.
It was quite a remarkable quarter for her, the spring quarter of 1987.
Tape 11 Side B
When Lori graduated from high school she obtained an honors at entrance
scholarship to the University which meant that her tuition and books would
be paid for provided that she kept her grade point average at 3.6 during the
previous year. So, the first year was free. The second year depended upon
her grade point average of the first year and so forth. When Lori returned
from her mission her grade point average was just about 3.62, just barely
over the line. So it was necessary for her to get a straight A average
during her spring quarter, her first quarter after her return, to preserve
her scholarship for the next year which would be her last year her senior
year. Well she did it. She got straight As in all of her classes that
spring quarter.

While she was at the university she attended Institute of Religion classes
every quarter and attended the student ward there at the institute. In
April 1988 she met Christopher Weintz who about a month before had been
baptized into the church. Chris was from California where his parents still
lived in Cupertino, a city on the south end of the San Francisco bay. He
was then attending school at Salt Lake Community College. That's the new
name of what had been Salt Lake Trade Tech where John and Doug had gone to
school. Lori and Chris began to date several months later about the first
of June. They had a couple of dates then Chris went home to California for
the summer.
They liked each other and did a little bit of courting during the summer by
telephone and Lori also was invited to come down to California and meet
Chris's family, which she did. She stayed about a week. Well, things
developed rapidly and they became engaged to be married and set the date for
September 16th. They were married in the Salt Lake Temple. I hope Lori
won't mind my making some rather personal comments about her marriage. I
think each person has to make two decisions regarding marriage to begin
with. First, each person must decide whether he or she wants to be married
at all, and then he or she must decide on the person, the right person to
marry. I think in Lori's case she made the second decision first. She
liked Chris very much and he liked her. They loved each other, and decided
to get married apparently before Lori had decided whether she had wanted to
be married or not. So her honeymoon was not a happy time, but Chris was a
very understanding man and gradually she got used to the idea of being
married. But, the first months and the first year were hard for Lori.
She's a very independent person, very conscious perhaps excessively
conscious, of an element in our society during her lifetime, this business
of discrimination against women. The male chauvinist dominance of the
situation. This is a big thing in Lori's feelings. It affected her
feelings about being married at all. I don't think she had quite figured it
out before she was committed to be marry. But now, looking back four years,
three years or more from 1992, Lori would say, and I'll say here for her,
that she's happy that she married Chris. They are happy together. We hope
that that will continue and increase in the years to come. Lori and Chris
moved into Kay and Don Nebeker's apartment which had been very useful to
many members of the family through the years. Quite a number of the family
members on both sides, Roberta's side and my side of the family, have lived
in that apartment.

In 1989 we continued our flying around the country on our Eastern Airlines
passes. We decided that we should use some of our trips to visit family.
In January we flew down to Phoenix, Mesa Arizona, to visit with Raymond and
Kerma. We stayed at the Motel 6 where they were managers. We had a real
bargain on the room rate, totally free, on the house. This was a wonderful
gift from Raymond and his company. He can provide accommodations for any of
his family members who wish to visit them. WE haven't tried it to see how
long they'd let us stay there, but a week is about as long as I can stand to
be away from home. It seems that on every one of these trips a peculiar
trait in my nature enters the picture. AS the time approaches that we have
set to leave I just develop a real dread for leaving the house. I hate to
pack, and I could easily change my mind and not go, right up to the last
time. Roberta on the other hand says that she is a late blooming gypsy and
she would love to travel somewhere continually I think. At least she'd like
to go somewhere every month for a week or two, and she looked forward
greatly to these, and the momentum of her great desire overcame my great
reluctance. By the time we got out of the house and got to the airport I
felt better about it. When we got on the airplane I felt it was okay, it
was okay to leave. But after a week I would become restless and want to get
home.
Anyway, in the latter part of January we took a trip down to visit Roberta's
sister Bea and her husband Cliff Cash. They live in Reedly which is south
of Fresno twenty miles. Our airline pass, the nearest that Eastern Airlines
or Continental Airlines could get us was somewhere in the bay area. So we
flew into San Jose, rented a car, and drove into Reedly. We enjoyed the
drive and we enjoyed the visit. That's all we did. We just visited family
there. Bea and Cliff and Jeff and Carol and their family. And that's all
we did in Phoenix where we visited with Raymond and Kerma. WE did a little
sight seeing there but not much. Of course, Raymond and Kerma were quite
busy with their duties most of the time we were there.
In February we made a trip back to visit Mark and Dixie. There again we
didn't do much sight seeing, stayed pretty close to home, and visited the
family. Mark, of course, had to continue working. He did take off a few
days and we visited a museum, watched a few videos, and mostly just a visit.
In the latter part of February we made another trip to visit with John and
Joyce and their family whom we hadn't seen since the previous August. WE
wanted to see that new baby boy. We had one last trip that we could make
before our passes expired in the middle of March. We decided to go to San
Diego. We flew down there and rented a car, drove around and had a
delightful time. We visited Del Coronado beach, saw the harbor at San
Diego. We visited the Mormon Battalion monument there. We drove inland
quite a ways and saw something I had wanted to see ever since I was 14 years
old. That was the Mount Palamor observatory. I wanted to see that 200 inch
telescope I had read about when I was just 14 or 15 years old. It was a
thrilling thing to see. It's quite remote and is not a great tourist
attraction. They don't go too far out of their way to accommodate tourists.
But they do have a glass enclosed observation room and some displays
relating the building of that great telescope. Still the largest in the
world I think. Still the best.
When we went back to New York, to Rochester New York, the year before, we
had made a side trip down to Corning New York where we visited the Corning
Glass Works. Of course Corning is a famous household word in America. They
make all kinds of dishes, kitchenware, casseroles, the Pyrex dishes.
Corning Glass invented Pyrex glass and the mirror of the great telescope at
Palomar is made of Pyrex glass. They had to make two of them. The first
one that Corning made way back in the early 1940s failed. It had flaws in
it. They cast another one which proved to be useable, perfect. The one
that failed is on display at the Corning Glass Works back in New York. So
now, at Mount Palomar I got a chance to see the telescope which is built
around that great piece of glass more than 20 feet across.
We also visited the San Diego wild animal park where the visitors are behind
the cages and the wild animals run free in vast open areas. Of course
they're enclosed also by trenches and fences, but we enjoyed that trip very
much. We came back on march 14th. Our passes expired on the 15th. The
night that we reentered our home we got a call from the executive secretary
in the ward that said Bishop Trost wanted to see us on Thursday night. The
bishop called us to fill a mission. Well, we didn't have to think very long
about it and accepted the call and began right away to get ready, filled out
our papers, obtained medical exams and dental exams during April. We talked
with Lori and Chris about the problem with our house being empty during the
time we were gone. We decided that we'd like to be gone just for a year,
not more. Lori and Chris agreed to move their home out of Kay's apartment
into our house and that they would take care of our house and our yard, this
huge yard, while we were gone. We thought that was a fair exchange. They
could live here rent free if they would take care of our place.
That took a great worry off our minds and we began to look forward eagerly
to our mission. We went into the MTC at Provo on July 19th and spent about
a week and a half there, had a few days home, then traveled to California to
report to our mission in Ventura California. When we received our call from
the president of the church, his letter, which told us that we were called
to serve in the Ventura Mission, Roberta really had a shock. That was the
same part of the world in which she had served her own mission in 1949 and
50. Then it was called the California mission and it embraced all of the
area that now included the Ventura mission. There were now 13 missions in
California this being just one of them. She thought that was a real blow, a
low blow, to call her to go back to the same mission where she had served
before, 40 years before. But, of course, we went where we're called. We
arrived in Ventura on August 9th and were assigned to serve in Sherman Oaks
Ward in Van Eyes stake down in the San Fernando Valley in the city of Van
Eyes. We served down there for about 3 and a half months. Then the
president of the mission, President McKinnley Oswald, asked us if we would
come into the office and assist another couple, an older couple, with the
work of the office. We didn't particularly want to. I didn't want to. I
had had all the office work I wanted during my working years. Roberta had a
vague notion that she would like to work again in an office. Anyway, we
decided that we should do what the mission president asked us to do if we
possibly could. We knew we were qualified and able to do office work, both
of us. So, on November 1st we moved to Ventura and began to serve there in
the office.
We served the rest of our time there and returned, we were released on
August 10th of 1990. Of course we had taken our car, our little white
Rabbit Diesel with us, which served us very well. We drove about 10,000
miles during the year which was about as many miles as we would drive at
home going back and forth to the grocery store and wherever. Actually, we
lived on less money in the mission than we would have spent at home as it
turns out. When we left the mission field on the 10th of August we drove
east to Phoenix and Mesa Arizona and there visited with Raymond and Kerma
and then came home, arriving home on the 16th of August.
I should mention something that had been going on for a few years before we
went on our mission. The surgeon who operated on my heart, Doctor Richards,
was serving as a sealer in the Salt Lake Temple. I learned that when I
visited him in his office after my surgery. In fact on the morning that he
operated on me at 8:30 or 9 o'clock in the morning, he had spent an hour in
the Salt Lake Temple serving as a sealer. I'd like to tell you about
something that I've overlooked that has been going on for several years. In
January of 1987 Bishop Trost called me and Roberta into his office and asked
us if we would be regular attenders at the Salt Lake Temple, if we would be
really regular, go every week or two, and do at least four ordinances as
proxies each month. Well, Roberta in her characteristic enthusiasm and
dedication decided we would do twice that much. So, since February... well
let me back track a little bit here. After my surgery I discovered that
Doctor Richards who operated on my heart was a sealer in the temple. So,
when the bishop extended this call we decided that we would like to go to
the temple and serve as proxies while Doctor Richards performed these
sealings for the dead. So, we had been going every Wednesday morning since
February of 1987 on an early session. We'd get up at 4 o'clock, get to the
temple to serve as proxies for Doctor Richards from about 5:45 until 7
o'clock. Then we would go on one endowment session and we were able to get
home about 9:45 or ten o'clock. We had been doing this ever since that
time. So that was going to be interrupted now that we were going to serve a
mission.
In May of 1989 just before we went on our mission while we were still
preparing, I bought a new accordion. Not a new, but a new used one, as good
as new, just like new. It is a Titano an Italian name. All good accordions
are made in Italy. I had paid $2,200 for this accordion but it cost about
$5,000 new, so it was a real bargain. I had just begun to play this, was
intrigued by its greatly superior quality as compared with my old Fronteliny
student grade accordion. I really hated to leave my accordion playing
during the year that we'd be gone, but I knew it was not proper to take a
musical instrument along on a mission, especially since I was still a
student needing to practice everyday. If I were an accomplished
accordionist and could take it along just to play for special church events
as an entertainer, part of a program, that would be one thing, but to take
it on a mission with the intent of practicing it every day would be very
improper. So, I knew I was going to have to leave it at home.
We were welcomed warmly in the Sherman Oaks Ward. Our assignment would be
to work with the ward leaders trying to locate and activate inactive
members. We spent a lot of time trying to find people from lists of Ward
members. We discovered that the home teaching and the visiting teaching
were almost non existent in the ward and the ward was suffering because of
it. So, most of the time we spent there trying to find members of the
church. We did some proselyting or teaching with none members. In
particular we met two women that we are still in regular contact with, Judy
Owen, her name was Judith K Owen, was not a member and had many missionaries
teach her for the past 13 years. We continued to teach with her and she
agreed to be baptized and was baptized about the 20th of November. The
other woman we met was not a member, had two children ages 15 and 9. Her
name was Mary Gail Hobbs. We taught her for about a month before we left
Van Eyes and went up to the office.
We met with a number of other people. Won't mention any others. When we
arrived in Ventura to begin our work helping in the office we discovered
that while President Oswald wanted us to serve in the office, Brother and
Sister Severanson, who were primarily in charge of the office, did not want
us there. It was a very uncomfortable nine months ahead of us. I had a
very shocking experience the very first day that we lived in the apartment
there in Ventura. We woke up with red welts on our legs and discovered that
the apartment was infested with fleas. Well, before we could have the place
fumigated to get rid of them they had bitten us hundreds of times. As it
turns out I am extremely allergic to them and they just made hamburger of my
legs from my feet to my hips mostly below my knees fortunately. That's
quite a long story. I tried to treat them, after we got rid of them through
fumigation, I tried to get rid of the sores by using Aloe Vera products, but
they were not effective. About the middle of January I finally got smart
and went to a doctor, a dermatologist. He gave me some ointment that had an
immediate affect of starting to heal those hundreds of flea bites which were
infected. Well, I fought the battle of the fleas all the rest of our
mission time, still having trouble when we left in August. I still have
affects from those flea bytes more than two years later. The flea bites
apparently leave some toxic substance in your skin which can be activated by
rubbing or scratching or in my case too hot water in the bathtub. Some of
those flea bites come to life and itch like crazy.
Well, we did our best to be of service in the office. The president was
glad that we were there. He was quite concerned about the health of Brother
Severanson, afraid that the excessive hours he was putting in and the stress
could be damaging, could even be fatal to him, if he had a heart attack.
Brother Severanson was a hundred pounds over weight and could have, could
have worked himself into a heart attach because they put in very long hours.
They were very devoted and did a good job of running the mission office.
But, President Oswald was glad we were there and we stuck it out and tried
to keep a low profile. Roberta got along better with them than I did. They
both interpreted my presence as a threat somehow to Brother Severanson's
standing or service, his position in the mission, as though I were there to
take over his job. Well, he didn't know that that was the last thing in the
world that I wanted to do was take over his job. But, anyway, there was a
lot of very cool feelings between us in the office. We tried to keep it to
ourselves and not let it affect their service or ours or any of the young
missionaries around us. I think we did a pretty good job of being of
service and putting up with the hostility that the Severansons directed
towards us.
I'm particularly pleased that I exercised the self control that it took to
endure the situation in view of my touchy disposition and my need to be in
control of the situation. I thought I did pretty well to keep peace between
us. The Severansons came home about three months before we did so we had a
more pleasant time after they left for the balance of our mission. We
greatly enjoyed our association with the members of the Ventura Third Ward
that we attended. Looking back our time in Ventura was very pleasant. The
weather there is near perfect year round. The weather is never very hot or
very cold, and there was hardly any rain. We would have enjoyed a few rain
storms. They were having, had had for several years, and are still having a
drought in southern California. They would like a lot more moisture than
they are getting.
One really pleasant aspect of our time in the mission office was our close
relationship with President Oswald and his wife and with their children.
They had six children, one of the married in the December that we came into
the office, December of 1989. The other five were with them there in
Ventura. They were a delightful family, very musical and very spiritual.
The young people sang as a group in many of the meetings with the
missionaries particularly at the testimony meeting each month as
missionaries departed for home at the conclusion of their missions. These
young kids, the Oswald kids, sang several songs that were very appropriate
and quite emotional, really touched the hearts of the departing
missionaries. That testimony meeting was a very spiritual meeting each
month. We got to attend that. We ate many meals in the home of the Oswalds
which was the mission home. It was about a mile or two from the mission
office. We were made to feel very welcome there.
The Oswalds must have spent quite a bit of their own money in their service.
President Oswald also had the ability to charm contributions out of well to
do members of the church in the mission area. They made some generous
contributions to the missionary work. President Oswald used that money for
many of the special activities that he had. We learned to appreciate and
understand the great calling of a mission president. Someone said being
mission president is like going on a scouting campout for two years with two
hundred boy scouts. Of course it would have to be boy scouts and girl
scouts. Both the boys, the elders and the sisters, contributed problems and
worries to the life of the mission president. He was very devoted to them
personally and spent a lot of time counseling them in his interviews. He
made a great effort especially to help missionaries complete their mission
who under different circumstances might have gone home. He felt it was very
important that they have that success of completing their mission and he
went all the way far beyond the point of duty to help any missionary, Elder
or Sister, succeed who would make any effort at all. He earned the
gratitude of many parents and missionaries who succeeded and who without his
devotion and patience might have failed and gone home as having failed in
their mission.
He did some things that were not according to the rule book, nothing very
improper, but a little bit dangerous like competitions and rewards for
achievement and attainment of goals. He handled it well and got good
results. He doubled the number of baptisms in the mission over the levels
under the previous president and had a good relationship with the church
members in the stakes of the mission. There were 17 stakes comprising about
a hundred or 105 wards, something like that, in the mission. Sister Oswald
helped him. She spoke at most zone leaders meetings and general mission
meetings. She was a very inspiring speaker. They were very popular with
their group of missionaries, and we learned to love them and respect them.
One thing for me personally that was complimentary and also enjoyable. We
had been in the accounting (?) office only a couple of months when President
Oswald asked me if I knew anything about reconciling bank accounts. Well,
of course I do because in my working years I reconciled bank accounts many
hundreds of times. So I told him that I was somewhat of an expert at it.
He was pleased because he had a number of bank accounts, his own and his
wife's checking accounts and savings and investment accounts, that had not
been reconciled for most of a year. So he turned them over to me and I
reconciled them through the end of 1989. This was a real help to him. He
had his tax affairs to take care of for the year, and it was a form of
recreation for me. It relieved the tedium of the strained relationship I
had with Elder Severanson. And there's a nasty little streak of vanity in
me that made me glad that the president would ask me to do it rather than
asking Elder Severanson. In June of 1990 just before the President and his
family were to be released and return home to Salt Lake City, I reconciled
those accounts again bringing them up through the month of May.
The Severansons are also from Salt Lake City and went home in the month of
May. They were replaced by Warren and Peggy Avey. They were from St.
George in recent years but had raised their family back in Pennsylvania.
Our association with them was friendly and cooperative and it made our last
couple months in the mission very pleasant. President Oswald and his wife
were released the first of July and returned with their family to Salt Lake
City. They were replaced by a young couple about 45. President Nielson and
his wife and a family of sever children, six daughters and one son, the son
being the youngest in the family. They were a beautiful family, very
friendly and from quite a different background than the Oswalds. The
Oswalds had been accustomed to having more family than the average family.
The Nielsons on the other had were accustomed to having much less. He was a
seminary teacher and they don't make a great deal of money. President
Nielson's ideas and methods for running the mission and Brother and Sister's
Avey's ideas on how to run the office were very different than those of the
Oswalds and the Severansons.
Tape 12 Side A
I should say here that President Nielson's name was Jack K. Nielson and his
wife's name was Trudy. I couldn't recall those names but Roberta could, so
make a record while we can remember. President Nielson also had served as a
counselor to the prisoners at the Utah State Prison. So, he comes from
rather a somber background compared with that of President Oswald. The
missionaries noticed it right away. President Oswald had done a lot of
things to make the work fun maybe a little bit too much. The dress
standards were very very relaxed, almost disgraceful, especially on P-day.
Most other days, Sundays and work days, the missionaries were, most of them,
dressed according to general mission standards, but on P-day they would go
out of their apartments and come into the mission office dressed in a most
inappropriate way. President Nielson noticed this right away and corrected
it, discontinued many of the programs, all of the programs, some of which
had been quite a bit of fun for the missionaries. So, he had a job on his
hands winning their support in view of his much stricter standards. This
was especially true for missionaries who had been out for many months and
were nearing the end of their service time. The number of baptisms dropped
way down below the number that were recorded or accomplished in the latter
months of President Oswald's time. The termination of those special
programs greatly reduced the work load in the mission office. It made room,
more time, available for training of a couple to take our places when we
should leave August 10th.
The couple who took our place were Lee and Theo Butters from Blackfoot
Idaho. They came into the office about the 20th of July and we worked with
them for about three weeks. We left on August 10th and had a very pleasant
trip going to Phoenix. Just in the area of Palm Springs California along
Interstate Highway 10 we saw a most interesting thing. For five to ten
miles the hills and the valleys on both sides of the highway were covered
with hundreds of windmills which were being used to generate electricity.
These were very large very high windmills having two three four blades point
in different directions. I've never seen anything quite like it before or
since.
In Blyth California I had a little visit with nostalgia with World War 2
days. You remember in my story that I had taken primary flight training in
the Airforce in Blyth from January to March of 1944, and a private school,
flying school, called Morton Air Academy was on a plateau up above north of
the town of Blyth. WE drove up and took a look at what was left of the
Morton Air Academy. Most of the buildings were still standing but they were
in a state of decay, very recognizable, but obviously unused for many years,
and the land was up for sale. The place was really full of ghosts for me.
I was glad to get a final look at it before it disappears.
In Mesa we stayed of course in the Motel 6 managed by Raymond and Kerma.
Their job as co-managers-managers of the motel required that they be present
24 hours a day unless they were officially away on vacation. They had an
apartment there in the motel in which they lived, but at this time they were
on sick leave and were living in a home in farther east in Mesa which they
had purchased some time before, a year or two before this. They were using
some sick leave while Kerma recovered from her second major surgery in four
months. For most of a year before this Kerma had been having some serious
abdominal pains and it was discovered that her intestines were full of
abscesses caused by acute diberticultyis (?). In April or May she had had
surgery to disconnect her large bowel from the rectum and portions of her
intestines had been removed. She had been on a colostomy bag for about 4
months. At the time we arrived she had been just a few days out of the
hospital for surgery in which they reattached her large intestine to the
rectum. So Raymond allowed us to live in their apartment at the motel for a
couple days and we also of course spent a good part of the time visiting
with them in their home. Kerma was recovering quite well, but as months
went by it became necessary for her to have surgery twice more. One time
was to reduce a lot of scar tissue around sutures that were not healing
properly. Another time was to insert a nylon mesh reinforcement in her
abdominal wall to prevent hernias which had developed. At this time, 1992,
she is in good health apparently having recovered completely from her near
fatal illness.
We arrived home on the 16th of August. The next Monday went camping for our
August family camping in Big Cottonwood Canyon at Redmond Campground. It
was enjoyable but very hectic. It was such a change of pace from what we
had known, and perhaps our having lived a year at sea level was a factor
also since the camp ground is at about 8,000 feet above sea level. In the
months following we gradually fit back into the routine we had had before
our mission. Our sacrament meeting homecoming was about a month later
around the 20th of September.
We discovered that it's much more difficult to adjust to coming home from a
mission than it was to adjust to going out on a mission. It was for us
anyway. We both commented on it to each other many times in the next six to
nine months. It seemed to take about that long for being home to feel
normal. I was not at all thrilled to get back into yard work, but it's one
of those unavoidable things if you're going to have a home. Lori and Chris
lived with us until about the first of October when they moved into an
apartment in the Mark Twain apartments just west of the river on 48th south.
I had a difficult time recapturing any enthusiasm for the accordion. I had
felt really good about my progress in the two years just prior to our going
on a mission, but it was like learning all over again to play, and now for
the third time I was starting all over. I began to play in latter October,
hadn't touched it much before that. In the 16 months that I had been
playing again I managed to relearn about a dozen of the numbers that I had
known before, when I knew about twice that many. But the thing that is most
noticeably absent is the excitement and enthusiasm that I felt for it during
those two years just prior to our mission. Actually, the thing that is
missing is the discipline of regular practice. I do not practice everyday.
Sometimes I go for two, three, even four days without practicing. That's
very detrimental to my progress. I find that my mind is rather
undisciplined both on the accordion and reading and study and pursuit of any
activity requiring mental discipline. I waste a lot of time.
In September I rejoined the Olympus Male Chorus. It was just a shadow of
what it was previously. Morris Cantigator is no longer with it. Quite a
number of the old members have left it. There are one or two new men who
have joined. Margaret is still the principal accompanist as she had been
since the chorus was founded 43 years ago in 1949. The new conductor is a
man who has been a member of the chorus for some time. He is much less
professional than Morris Cantigator, much less efficient. He spends a great
deal of time talking about how we should sing instead of letting us sing.
We have to have instruction and correction of course, but we are all
amateurs. Virtually non of us have formal musical training, and we learn
best by continuous repetition of the numbers. I also began again to sing
again with a male quartet which I had joined about five years ago in 1987.
It was now a quintet. In my absence while on a mission the men had asked
another man, Vaughn Fotherinham, one of the 1st tenors in the chorus, to
join them. He and I have continued as tenors, both of us.
Roberta and I also began again to go regularly every Wednesday morning to
the temple. We had been doing this since February of 1987, and we were
still very pleased to be serving as proxies for Doctor Richards and his wife
also served as a proxy in his sealing sessions.
Robi and I went to visit John and Joyce for Thanksgiving. We bought eight
tickets a piece, 8 coupons a piece, on Continental Airlines. These coupons
are made available to senior citizens aged 62 or more at a fraction of the
regular fare. In fact, we paid $80 a piece for the coupons and two were
required for each of us for a round trip making the airfare $160 round trip
to Boston, which was a really good discount. At the time of Thanksgiving
while we were away on a mission John and Joyce had asked us, had invited us
to come to their home for this Thanksgiving after our return. As I recall,
Mark and Dixie and Elizabeth were going to spend Thanksgiving with Dixie's
brother Tom and his family. Tom had accepted employment in California and
was to be moving there very soon. It had been really nice for Mark and
Dixie to have Tom so close, only about 200 miles from Columbus.
Roberta's sister Kay had commented very unhappily many times about Roberta's
being gone for 13 months on a mission. While we were gone she and Don had
bought a middle sized mobile home at a real bargain price and had moved it
to Mesa Arizona, and had decided that they were going to spend their winters
in Mesa beginning this year, 1990. So they left about October 1st and were
not to return until about April 30th of 1991.
Their daughter Jerily and her family had moved to Mesa about six months
before we went on our mission. Maybe not six months. In March of 1989.
They also had their son Paul and his family living in a Phoenix suburb. So
they had good reason for wanting to spend the winters down there in addition
to the much milder weather there.
We've kidded them a little bit about taking excessive revenge on us for
having gone away for 13 months. In September Roberta and I enrolled in a
Church Educational System class being taught by Brother David Christensen.
Roberta and Kay had attended that class for several years. It was taught in
the Emigration Stake up in the Avenues, up on second avenue. My original
motive for attending the class was to accompany Roberta since she didn't
have Kay with her. I wasn't sure that I liked Brother Christensen's
teaching method nor his personality, but as I attended week after week I
gained a very great respect for his scholarship and his testimony of the
gospel, and learned to appreciate his unusual sense of humor, and actually I
have enjoyed the class very much. I'm a convert to Brother "C" now.
In October we attended the first reunion of missionaries who served in
Ventura under President Oswald. Neither Roberta nor I found the reunion
very exciting. I can easily see three or four reasons for this. First of
all we didn't have the typical experience of serving with different
missionary companions. Our mission was not a proselyting mission. Office
work is not very exciting. We didn't get really close to very many of the
missionaries. A little bit closer to those in the same zone to which we
were assigned. Then Elder and Sister Severanson were there and they were
very prominent in the picture, having served in the mission for three years,
the whole time that the Oswalds were there, and having been much closer to
the missionaries on a personal basis in the particular work that they
performed in the office. They were actually the people from the mission
with whom we had spent the most time, and it wasn't a very pleasant time so
that was a damper on the excitement that we might otherwise have felt, or
the enjoyment that we might otherwise have had.
We were happy to be home for Christmas of 1990. In the fall I removed the
large shrubs from in front of our house. They were old and overgrown, all
sprawled out, and not at all pretty anymore. This exposed the front of our
house to view from the street and I strung our outside Christmas lights on
the framework of our front porch, the pillars and the railings. It looked
quite festive. We enjoyed Christmas. We had enjoyed Christmas in the
mission the year before, but Christmas has never been the same as it was
when our children were small. Ever since they have grown up and left home
it just isn't the same. We had a very severe winter in 1991. The
temperatures all along the Wasatch front were below zero for many weeks in a
row. The severe cold killed many fruit trees and shrubs. So there was no
fruit crop here in Utah in the summer of 1991.
In May we went to St. George for the spring outing of the Olympus Male
Chorus. ON the way down we visited with the Lebarons, George and Blanch
Lebaron, who lived in Cedar City, and had been with us in the MTC. Then in
St. George we visited also with Warren and Peggy Avy who had returned from
their mission service just a month before. On March 23rd Doug and Gwen's
seventh child was born, another son, whom they named Richard Mark. We had
Gwen and the new child come here to our home for a week following the birth
and Gwen's mother Gene Maughan came up from California and stayed with the
family, took care of the other six children and Doug. I hope Doug doesn't
mind the implication that she took care of him also, but she was a great
help to that family and it was a real boost to Gwen and the child to have a
week's rest here removed from the considerable chaos that usually prevails
in their family life and maybe in the life of any family with that many
children.
In May we went to visit John and Joyce to assist them at the time of the
birth of their fourth child. Our being there really was a support and
comfort to Joyce and enabled John to continue going to work also. We had a
pleasant time visiting with the family. Roberta really is an expert in a
home with those children, fixing their meals and supervising the household.
While we were there, in addition to her many duties with the family, she and
I redecorated their bathroom. We refinished the walls and papered them,
refinished and painted the ceiling, put a lovely border around the room near
the ceiling, repaired some ceramic tile in the bathtub shower enclosure,
replaced the flooring, put down new vinyl flooring, and repaired the
plumbing under the wash basin. The bathroom was really really attractive
when we finished. John and Joyce especially were thrilled, and I suppose
the children were too, although I don't think children pay much attention to
that kind of thing. For Mother's Day John bought Joyce a new mixing faucet
for their kitchen sink. Their faucet that they had had was really a
disaster. It had been worn out for ten years or so, and he bought a deluxe
one and I was able to install that the last day we were there. It was
really an improvement in their kitchen. John was a little bit hesitant to
buy such an impersonal thing for Mother's Day, but Joyce was really
delighted with it.
In the summer we went to Redmond for our family camping and we were in for a
shock about the cost of camping now in "our" canyon. For years the fee to
rent a campsite has been about two dollars a night and our big group
required two or three campsites, but our total cost in fees in years past
has not exceeded $30 for the whole week. This year the management of the
campground had been turned over to private enterprise by the forestry
department and it cost us 30 or 35 dollars a night to rent the space that we
required. The total cost of about $150 for the week. Jerily and her family
came up from Mesa. Doug and his family missed it this year. They had a
Maughan family reunion up in Washington State. The did enjoy it but we
missed them and I believe they missed the Redmond Camping.
In August we had anther camp but this was just for the old folks, no little
kids. I have to admit that I enjoyed it a lot more without a bunch of
little kids around. I must be getting old. Roberta launched some projects
this summer for updating the interior of our home. We also had the concrete
foundation plastered all around. It looks much better than the naked
concrete. Roberta and Kay painted our guest bedroom downstairs which had
been the boys bedroom. They also painted our bedroom upstairs, and Roberta
redecorated our bathroom. It needed it. It hadn't been changed probably
for 20 years or so. Some years before we moved here. The project included
new carpet in the bathroom and in the bedroom and in the back entry hall or
stairway. Roberta also bought new drapes for the bedroom and a new
bedspread. I wasn't exactly the sole of enthusiasm for this project. The
cost of it was a real shock. The inflation that we have experienced in the
last 15 or 20 years has really been a cruel tax on working people of this
country.
In the last part of July we had a most enjoyable event. John and Joyce and
their children and Mark and Dixie and Elizabeth all came to visit us. Mark
and Dixie stayed with us the entire time they were here which was less than
the time that John and Joyce were here. But Joyce's parents live just a
half mile away from us, and they spent part of their time there and part
here with us. This was the first time that our whole family had been
together in six years since John and Mark and their families had gone off to
work in the east. We had some nice pictures taken, a really nice family
group picture of all 22 of us. We were very happy that we had the old 1972
Buick, that it still runs well. We had to have some minor repairs on it,
but it was very handy to have. Joyce and her children stayed over for a
whole month, but John had to go back and was here only about a week or ten days.
When my father died in January of 1970 he was buried in Morgan Cemetery at
the direction of his wife who said that that was his wish, at least his wish
not to be buried in Brigham City. My mother and all of us brothers and
sisters have always wished that daddy's grave was in Brigham City where it
really belongs. So, on September 13th we had daddy's grave moved to Brigham
City. I should say here that some years ago, without checking the records I
wouldn't know just when it was, daddy's second wife Ethel gave permission in
writing for my mother to be sealed to my father even though they had been
divorced. The church of course does this, counting the divorce as a non
binding civil action, just like an civil marriage is non binding in the
eternal picture. But, my mother and father were sealed and all of us
children have been sealed to them. So we hope, all of us hope, that our
father's feelings have changed and that he would desire to be sealed to his
family, have his family sealed to him and mom. So we hope that he approves
of our having done this. I know that it doesn't make any difference where a
person is buried. So many millions of people are not buried at all. Their
bodies are just lost in the sea or lie moldering in distant places, but in
the case of my father, in view of all the circumstances and the fact that he
had been born in Brigham City, had lived there most of his life, had loved
the place, and had been responsible for the beautification of the Brigham
City Cemetery. All of these things and other considerations made it
desirable that his body be buried in Brigham City. I feel really good about
it and I believe all of the family members do. I hope he does also.
In October we made another trip to Washington DC. This time we asked
Barbara, my sister, to go with us. WE were gone from the 14th through the
26th. We spent about 8 days in Washington visiting the historic places
there and the Smithsonian and the seat of our government. We went to Mount
Vernon, also took a one day trip down to Williamsburg, which was the
colonial capital of the Virginia colony. Then we went up to Philadelphia
and on the way we visited Gettysburg battlefield monument national park and
also the monument at Valley Forge where the colonial army spent a bitter
winter during the Revolutionary War. We enjoyed everything we saw, enjoyed
the trip as well, and we spent one day visiting in New Jersey the parents of
a Jewish convert to the church who is a friend of Lori and Chris and also
our friend. His parents are Jewish of course, but they're very warm and
friendly pleasant people and we enjoyed our visit with them and they were
really pleased that we would make the effort to come and visit their home in
a town called Freehold New Jersey near the Atlantic coast.
We enjoyed our visit to Philadelphia the city where the continental congress
had proclaimed the declaration of independence, gave birth to America as a
nation, and also where our constitution was formed. It really gives us a
great appreciation, a greater appreciation for our nation to see these
historic places and the seat of our government.
In September I was called to be one of the instructors of a temple
preparation class held in our stake. It's called "Eternal Riches" class.
The class repeats every 12 weeks so we'll be teaching it three times during
the school year months. Robi was called to be the education counselor in
the Relief Society presidency. This is the third time she has served in
this capacity. They know a good counselor when they see one. She does an
excellent job in any calling that she accepts. I didn't really want to
accept this calling. I had become very attached to my easy lifestyle, but I
recognize that it's an extension of the kind of work we were called to do on
our mission, and didn't get much of a chance to do it out there. We were
originally called to contact and help reactivate members of the church.
That of course is the object of these classes, to get people back to church
and hopefully get them to go to the temple. It's easy to have mixed
feelings about a class like this. There are always a number of people who
begin the class and then discontinue coming as the weeks go by. But, it's
satisfying to see the renewed interest in the gospel and the improved
feeling about the church on the part of those that stay with it and see the
course through to its conclusion.
Christmas this year was much the same as recent years with our very
traditional Christmas tree. I put the lights on the porch again. We made
about 600 popcorn balls as we have done for a number of years, distributing
them to friends and family. My body has developed an aversion to sweets so
I ate only one or two popcorn balls this year, almost no candy at all. This
brings us right up to the end of 1991. We'll add more to this story later
if the Lord is willing and grants me a further extension of my life.