GROWING UP IN THE CHURCH

My earliest recollection of church was while we lived in Boise, Idaho. I think it must have been for Junior Sunday School, because it seems to have been on Sunday. That’s where I met the first friend I remember. His name was Roy. Since that was the same first name as one of my favorite heroes, Roy Rogers, I remember him. I had several nursery rhymes and stories that I had memorized by hearing them over and over. And I recited some of them in Sunday School.

After we moved to Salt Lake, and settled on Wyoming Street, we attended the Beacon 2nd Ward. The building was across the street from Dilworth Elementary School. I’d usually go across the street for Primary, but sometimes I’d skip Primary. Mom and I frequently went to Sunday School.

Once, while partaking of the Sacrament in Sunday School, I received a personal lesson from one of the church leaders (I think it was Bishop Garff) on how to take the Sacrament. It seems that I’d been taking it with my left hand. The gentleman came down from the stand and sat beside me and had me practice taking it with my right hand.

I also met the Prophet, David O. McKay at Sunday School once. My friend, David Ashton was in that ward, and President McKay was his grandfather. President McKay came to our ward for meetings because his daughter attended that ward.

About five months after I turned 8, I was called into the Bishop’s office to be interviewed for baptism. By this time Bishop Garff had been released, and Bishop McMullin was the one I interviewed with. I was asked if I kept the Word of Wisdom. I didn’t know what that was, as I had not been attending regularly. But I figured that it had something to do with being wise, and I was trying to do that, so I answered in the affirmative. Years later, after I had learned what the Word of Wisdom really is, I realized that I had not been keeping the Word of Wisdom. I had been sneaking sips of my dad’s beer on occasion. But I never did after I found out the truth.

I was baptized in the font at the Salt Lake Tabernacle on March 17, 1953. A young Priest named Richard Hardy baptized me. I was confirmed by my grandfather, Elmer W. Gale, in the LeGrand Ward on March 29, 1953.

I especially enjoyed singing the hymns and Primary songs. I know it helped me learn to read as well, since reading along with the hymns was easy. They went fairly slowly, a lot of the phrases ended in words that rhymed, and I could hear what other people were singing, so I got the words right from the start.

When I was about 9 years old, they built a new ward building on Foothill Boulevard. It must have been about the same time that Beacon Heights Elementary was being built. We had to walk further from the school to the church building than previously. I started to enjoy Primary so I attended more regularly.

I liked the activities that went along with the boys’ Primary curriculum. I went to a neighbor’s house a few times for boy type skill practice. I do not remember what we did, but I do remember enjoying it. The 9, 10, and 11 year old boys were the Blazers, Trekkers, and Guides. We had green bandaloes with plastic achievement awards that we attached to them as we learned the Articles of Faith and performed different services.

Not long before Christmas, the Primary chorister came along listening to each class sing. I liked to sing, so I sang as loud and as well as I could for her. Later, she pulled me and two other boys out to take parts in the Christmas Primary Program, a little play called The Littlest Christmas Tree. Since I was the smallest of the three boys, I got the lead part. In the story, a dove is looking for a place to roost to be out of a storm. Both of the other, bigger trees turned her away. But the littlest Christmas tree allowed her to rest in his branches. The dove was played by a cute little blond girl, and I held her in my arms to protect her from the storm.

I also wanted to be involved with Cub Scouts. At the time, the Church did not sponsor Cubs. The people in the neighborhood who were involved with Cubs were anti-Mormon. After I got started, they changed all the meetings to be at the same time as Primary. They wanted to preclude the Mormon boys from participating. So I had to make a choice. I chose Primary, because the Primary teachers were so much nicer than the Cub Scout leaders.

The year we were living at 1070 Lincoln Street, we were in the LeGrand Ward. I became more involved with church that year. I attended both Primary and Sunday School regularly, and even an occasional Sacrament Meeting. Sister Hales was our Sunday School teacher. She had 10 and 11 year old boys in the class. Her son Jimmy was a year younger than I, but he was bigger. He was also a little wilder. When he would get out of hand, she’d speak to him in German and he’d straighten right up. I found out that he was afraid of his German grandmother who lived with them. By this age he was bigger than she was, but was scared to death of her.

When we moved to East Mill Creek, Jeff Anderson and Charlie Nielson came by our home and invited me to go to church with them. I was happy to have new friends. Jeff was a little younger than I, so both of us were still in Primary for a month or so. Sister Barney was our Primary teacher. She loved her “Guide Patrol” boys. Jeff and I graduated from Primary together.

The first Sunday Mom took David and Tawny and me to church, the building was closed. We didn’t know it, but they were having Stake Conference, and were dividing the Canyon Rim Stake from the East Mill Creek Stake. Gordon B. Hinckley was called as the new Stake President.

I was ordained a Deacon on November 11, 1956 by LeRoy M. Strand. He was the Bishop of the East Mill Creek Ward. As a Deacon, I learned about the Individual Award Program. To receive an award, you needed to attend 75% of your Priesthood and Sacrament Meetings, 75% of Stake Conference meetings, complete a certain number of service assignments and pay a full tithe. I had few awards while growing up, and I decided I wanted to be awarded. So I started going to my meetings. It was hard at first, as I was not in the habit of going to Sacrament Meeting. I missed quite a few the first couple of months. But then I settled in and had made all my meetings by the end of the year. I had forgotten about tithing, however, so I didn’t get an award the first year.

I don’t remember much about my first talk in Sacrament Meeting. That was one of the requirements for the Individual Award. I do remember being called “Preacher Jim” by a couple of adults afterward. I must have delivered a sermon, rather than a talk.

I did enjoy gathering Fast Offerings each month, and I enjoyed passing the Sacrament. I especially liked the service projects at the Stake Farm. Hard work beside other boys and good men was very satisfying. We cleaned irrigation ditches, hauled hay, cleaned the milking barn, fed the cows, and cleaned wind breaks. I did get sick on one hay haul, as I worked too hard in the hot sun and got heat stroke. A good drink of cool water and a few minutes rest and I was fine.

Another activity that was new to me was attending Stake Conference. At first the East Mill Creek Stake did not have their own Stake Center. We met at the old Grant Stake Tabernacle in Sugar House. That was the first time I remember feeling the Spirit of the Holy Ghost. I was sitting in the balcony of the chapel and the Stake President was speaking. The feeling was wonderful, and I decided I liked coming to Stake Conference. Further experiences with that feeling as I was growing through my teen age years helped me to develop a testimony. I really enjoyed inspired speakers. Still do.

When I turned 14, I was ordained a Teacher by Bishop Strand. I then was assigned to be a Ward Teaching companion to Brother Larry Morgan. We were assigned to visit families who had recently moved into a some new houses in the ward, at the east end of 3400 South, where I lived at the west end. One of the first was the family of Robert Farr Smith, which included his wife Rae Ellen, daughter Georgia, and sons Stephen and Stuart. They also had 2 chihuahua dogs named Tia and Poky. Georgia was not happy to have moved, so she immediately did not like me.

I loved participating in Scouts. More about that later.

I continued in that ward. It was divided in about 1960 and we were now in the East Mill Creek 11th Ward. Ralph Pitts was called as the new Bishop. I began dating Cheryl Cutler, and as she was best friends with Georgia Smith, we often double dated, me with Cheryl, and Georgia with the Bishop’s son, Paul Pitts.

I had several callings in the Aaronic Priesthood, Deacons Quorum Secretary, Teachers Quorum Secretary, counselor in various presidencies. In 1961 Cheryl and I, and Paul and Georgia were called as dance directors for the ward. We participated in a couple of church dance programs. Later Paul and Cheryl dropped out of the program, and Georgia and I were the only ones involved.

I took Seminary classes in high school. Old Testament from Brother Max Moffett, New Testament from Brother Olsen, and Doctrine & Covenants from Brother Groberg. I graduated from Seminary at the same time as I graduated from high school. They only offered 3 years at the time.

Family Vacations

Family Vacations

I’ve previously written about vacations my family took while we lived in Boise.

Our trip to Yellowstone National Park

In 1953 our family went to Yellowstone. Dave was only 2 years and Tawny was only 5 months old. We stayed in a cabin in the Park. We visited most of the famous geysers and hot pools. I wanted to do a lot more exploring on foot, but was restricted because others in the family couldn’t get around as well. Aunt June and Uncle Jake and Steve and Lloyd Hartman also went along. We saw lots of bears, and moose, and elk, and buffalo.

Dad wanted to go fishing on the Firehole River. He was fly fishing. On one of his casts the fly on his line came and caught him in the soft skin right next to his eye. The barb on the hook would not let the hook be taken out without more damage, so he pushed it through so the barb was on the outside, then cut off the hook with the barb, then pulled the rest of the hook back out. Mom assisted in the surgery. Awhile later there was a hatch of blackflies or buffalo gnats on the river. The flies were very hungry and started attacking and biting us. We fought them off as best we could. Then I noticed that Dad had several streams of blood running down his legs (he was in shorts). The gnats were so hungry they were burrowing right into the skin. But we could not feel them. We decided we’d had enough fishing then.

We did have a great time and Yellowstone has always been one of my favorite vacation places. The geology fascinates me.


Trip Back East

The summer I was 9, 1954, we went to Detroit to visit Oma and Opa, my German grandparents. We traveled from there to New York to visit Dad’s sister, Agnes and her family. There was Mom and Dad, David, 3, and Tawny, 17 months, and me.

Before we went I was given a little camera, a Brownie Holiday. I took pictures with it at the Detroit Zoo, and at the Empire State Building and the Statue of Liberty.

We rode a train out of Salt Lake, The Spirit of Los Angeles dome liner. We had a little compartment for our family, with a couch that pulled out into the main bed, and a let down upper bed. It also had its own little restroom. I don’t remember how we all fit in it for sleep since it really only had sleeping room for 3 adults. For entertainment we had coloring books and drawing materials. I also had a toy gun that shot suction cup darts. Those who cleaned the cabins after the trip probably had a fit trying to get the rubber suction cup marks off all the surfaces of the room.

The food in the dining car on that train was excellent. For one meal I had a lamb chop. It was very fancy with a paper rapped around one end to make it look a little like a drumstick. In those days the dining cars on trains were some of the best restaurants in the country, with the very best chefs.

The dome car was a two deck car with a Plexiglas dome over the upper deck. It was a great way to see the scenery all across this beautiful country. While traveling through Wyoming I went to the dome car to see the countryside. As we rode along I followed with my eyes a meandering stream that ran alongside the tracks. I watched it go away and then come back over and over. After awhile I noticed that my stomach felt very queasy. I went back to our cabin and Mom immediately noticed that I had turned green. Later that evening as we approached Illinois, I saw fireflies out over the meadows. I had never seen them before.

When we got to Chicago we changed to a regular train car to travel to Detroit. That was the first time I ever saw segregation. Some of the cars were “black only”, and some were “white only”. I had no idea before that there were so many black people.

In Detroit we went to Belle Isle, where the children’s zoo was. I took pictures of the giraffes and the rhinoceros with my new camera. Belle Isle is an island park in the middle of the Detroit River. It was Dad’s favorite place while he was growing up in Detroit. There was also a beach and an arboretum there. Dad lived close enough that he could ride his bike there. He played tennis there and swam in the river in the summer and played hockey on the ice there in the winter.

We traveled by car to New York from Detroit. Freeways had just started in California. None existed in the East. But limited access toll roads had been built in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, and were under construction in Ohio and elsewhere. We traveled over the Pennsylvania and New Jersey turnpikes to get to New York. The Pennsylvania Turnpike was fairly new. It was built on a railroad bed, but highways were becoming more in demand so the planned railway was never built. One feature of the turnpike was the service areas, each dominated by a Howard Johnson’s Restaurant. Each of these was a different design from the others, and I enjoyed collecting post cards with pictures of each of the different ones. Those were also the days before air conditioning in cars, and it was very hot on that trip. Oma and Opa didn’t know about deodorants and it got very bad in that car with four adults and three children. Motion sickness wasn’t the only cause of nausea on that trip.

In New York I got reacquainted with Aunt Agnes and Uncle George Stein and my older cousin Katherine. I met my cousins Madeline and Elizabeth. They lived on an estate in Rockland County, just north of New York City. I loved the frog pond in their yard. It was a great place to catch tadpoles. They also had a full size black poodle named Pooh. It was a very smart dog.

We went into New York City and visited the Statue of Liberty and the Empire State Building. That was the first time I had ever ridden in a taxicab. It seemed that almost all the cars on the streets of Manhattan were yellow taxis. I was also impressed by all the bridges. We drove over the George Washington Bridge and the Brooklyn Bridge. We also took a ferry ride along the Hudson River. I wanted to go to the amusement park, Palisades Park, across the river in New Jersey, but we didn’t have time for that.

Trip to Phoenix

The Thanksgiving weekend in 1958 we traveled to Phoenix. We stayed in a fancy motel (fancy to me, anyway), The Egyptian. They had flaming torches all around the place and lots of big palm trees. We had fun playing in the swimming pool. Even David, who was only seven, had learned to swim well enough by then to jump off the diving board. What a novelty to be swimming outside at Thanksgiving time.

Dad had gone to check on a place he had invested in that sold motor bikes. He was very disappointed in what he found. Seems the manager had used most of the investment for personal wants and the motor bikes were not selling well at all.

San Francisco

I think it was Christmas season of 1959. We’d had lobster tail for dinner on Christmas Eve. It was the first time I’d had lobster. I got a spoiled one and didn’t realize it. I got really sick. Really, really sick. Food poisoning.

Two days after Christmas we drove to San Francisco. It was my first trip to the Bay area. We stayed in a motel in Richmond, on the northeast side of San Francisco Bay. We spent the next day or two driving around, looking at tourist sites. There was an old museum on the bluffs over the Pacific Ocean that I really enjoyed. I think that was the last year it was open. It was really old. We also went to Fisherman’s Wharf for lunch. I couldn’t even look at a piece of fish because of my experience with the lobster.

The next evening we went to Chinatown. We had one of those great family style dinners where everyone orders something different and everyone shares. I really fell in love with Chinese food there. It was a lot better than La Choy canned chow main, which was all we’d had before that.


Southern California

Summer of 1960 I got my first drivers license. I was only 15, but Utah law let me get the license since I’d had Driver’s Education in high school. Two days later we headed for Los Angeles and Camarillo, California. Dad had to stay in Salt Lake and work for awhile, and flew down to join us later. Mom and David and Tawny and I headed out in our 1954 Buick.

Mom remembered a lot about the route but not all she wanted to. Near St. George, Utah were some roads that were winding and narrow. She wanted to drive that part, but somehow I ended up driving through there. I handled it ok, but she was very nervous because of my inexperience.

When we got to Las Vegas we stopped for gas and got swindled. The attendant told us our tires looked bad. He talked Mom into letting him put the car up on the rack where he sprayed the tires with something that made it look like the tires were leaking. Then he got Mom scared that she wouldn’t make it another block with the tires like that. So she bought a whole new set of tires from him. He promised to hold the tires for us to pick up when Dad was with us on the way back. But we didn’t stop on the way back. I’m surprised now that Dad wasn’t more upset.

Mom also wanted to drive on the freeways, again because of my inexperience. But I did get to drive on them anyway, and I did great. I was excited to drive there, because I had only seen those freeways in driver’s ed films. I wanted all the driving experience I could get. After all, I was a teen age boy.

We got to Camarillo just fine. Mom drove most of the way while I navigated. Opa met us near the freeway exit and had us follow him to their house at 189 West Loop Drive. They had lived there a short time after Opa had retired from General Motors. They had built the house in the middle of a lemon orchard. They also had several Valencia orange trees. Their next door neighbors, whose last name was Mountain had an avocado tree. It made me want to move to California, just for the fresh fruit. Opa had also planted a lot of onions between two of the rows of lemon trees. Oma was into recycling and would dig all of their organic garbage into the ground around the orange trees.

Each evening Opa would put on his old classical music records and lead the orchestra while they played. Just before bedtime he would wind the grandfather clock that he had built the case for.

They had more TV stations than Salt Lake had. We saw Jack Lalanne for the first time. Also saw a performance by James Brown. I enjoyed watching Opa work in his wood shop, and helping him work in the orchard. He told me he was impressed with my ideas and abilities.

We went to the beach in Ventura and to a great seafood restaurant named The Lobster Trap in Point Hueneme. I ended up taking Georgia there a few years later, and while attending a Fisher Scientific conference near there, I took several of my co-workers.

After Dad joined us we traveled south to Disneyland, Knott’s Berry Farm, and Marine World.


Southern California, 2nd time

With Oma and Opa now living in Southern California, we had an excuse to go back again. This time it was 1963, and I was busy courting my future wife, Georgia. This time we went to get out of the cold, traveling there a couple of days after Christmas.

I was reluctant to leave Georgia behind. I was totally in love. Georgia was not convinced that I was worth her time. I knew that she would not stay at home while I was gone. She would go out to celebrate New Years Eve with somebody else. But I had given her a couple of Christmas gifts that I hoped would keep her thinking of me. One was a sweater. It was a classic, off-white cardigan, with a green cord border, and brass buttons. The moment I saw it in the store, I knew she’d love it. She did. The other gift was a popular record album by Bobby Vee titled, “The Night Has a Thousand Eyes.”

Two adventures stand out for me about this trip. One was my first and only effort at surfing. Oma and Opa had some teenage neighbors who were into surfing. They invited me to go along. It was New Years Eve, but the air temperatures were close to 90 degrees. We went to Ventura County Line Beach. The waves were really not very good and I never got up on the board even a little bit. But I did get very cold. The water temperature was very cool, and I started to get hypothermic while sitting on the surf board waiting for a good wave. It took me about an hour in a hot shower back at the house to start to recover.

The next adventure was a visit to the Tournament of Roses Parade in Pasadena. Dad dropped David, Tawny, and me off near the parade route shortly after midnight New Years Day. We found a spot across from the television cameras on a corner. We were sitting on a blanket about four rows of people back from the curb. There was a rope barricade at the curb to keep people back from the street. As the time for the parade started, however, everyone in front of us moved to fill in the side street, so we moved up to the rope. But the police came by and forced all those who had crossed the rope to move back. I just stood there with my arms folded and nobody tried to take their place back. So we were right on the front row. It was great.

A Year at 1070 Lincoln Street

About the time I started 6th grade, we sold our house on Wyoming Street and started building a new house in East Mill Creek. While the new house was being built, we moved in with my maternal grandparents at 1070 Lincoln Street. I had spent so much time there while growing up, that I felt at home immediately.

1070 was the home of Nana and Pa (Madge and Elmer Gale). It had been their home since sometime in the 1930's. When I came along as the first grandchild, I named them Nana and Pa since it was too hard to say grandma and grandpa when I was learning to talk. And the names stuck through all of their grandchildren.

This was the family gathering place for all holidays, and the feasts there were wonderful. Nana and Pa had 6 children: Mom (Shirley), Jay, June, Val, John, and Pauline. Pa was in the produce business and had purchased a grocery store in 1938, so there was always an abundance of good food around.

I think Jay was the only one of my aunts and uncles who still lived at home when we were there. He had been severely ill after World War II, and was still recovering when we moved in. He had a brand new Mercury convertible that I thought was the best car ever. Pa had a new Kaiser. It was by far the most stylish car for its time, but the company went out of business a year later because of management problems.

A boy named Clary Cardwell lived across the street. He was about a year older than me. Art Nunn, who was about my age, lived in the house behind, across the alley. They were the only boys I knew when we moved in.

I got to sleep in the front upstairs bedroom during that year. Jay had the bedroom across the hall. There was no heat in the upstairs, so it was really cold in the winter. But there were lots of warm quilts to snuggle under, so it was fine with me. It was just hard getting out of bed in the mornings because the floor was sooo cold.

The closet in that bedroom had a box of old books that I really enjoyed. Some of them had been printed before 1900. I was really into reading that year, and I often would read under the covers at night with a flashlight. I don't remember all of the titles, but The Odyssey was one, Gulliver's Travels was another, and I think Robinson Crusoe was also there. The oldest book I remember reading was called Soldiers of Fortune. The summer of 1955 I missed most of the activities I had signed up for at the local playground, because I had stayed up so late reading and couldn't get up in the mornings.

Pa had built a large garage in the back for his produce truck. There was also an attic storeroom and a fruit room in that garage. It was a fascinating place for a young boy. Nana did lots of canning in the fall, and the fruit room was always full of wonderful things. They also had an old chest freezer out there. They'd had to put locks on the doors, because some homeless men had discovered the great stash of food that was always there. The garage opened onto an alley that went between the backs of the houses on Lincoln Street and the houses on 9th East.

The house was heated with coal. A boiler fed large steam radiators in the main floor rooms. The furnace had an automatic coal feeder that kept the fire going. It was accessed through a large trap door and stairway on the back porch. One of my chores while we lived there was to make sure there was plenty of coal in the feeder. Once a week the furnace had to be opened to remove the clinkers. Clinkers are hard chunks of minerals that are left behind when the coal burns. Another job I had was to fish the clinkers out of the furnace with some long tongs and put them in a large metal bucket. After they had cooled I had to carry the bucket out to the alley for the garbage men to pick up.

I attended Emerson Elementary School for 6th Grade. That was probably my best year in school. Lynn Burningham was the main teacher. We went to Mrs. Meservy for music. Both of them were excellent teachers.

In Mrs. Meservy's class I found my ear for music. I found I could hear the various parts, and I sang alto in some of the songs the class sang. We got into Negro spirituals, such as "Swing Low Sweet Chariot", "Nobody Knows de Trouble I See", "Old Black Joe", and "When The Saints Go Marching In", and I loved them. That led me to a love of folk songs in later years.

One of the most exciting activities we were involved with was a series of field trips to one of the local television studios. The class made six total trips, but not all the class could go each time. Somehow I was chosen to go every time. We participated in a live broadcast of a typical classroom discussion each of the trips. We even got to write part of the script. On one of the trips Linda Booth slipped on the stage and landed on her tail bone. She seemed OK, but a couple of minutes later she fainted. We were just about to go on the air. She came to in time to participate, but it was scary there for a minute.

The boys and girls in that class were awesome. I usually hung around with Bruce Bradshaw, Mike Gannon and David Tame. But Sammy Fernley, Ricky Briggs, Bryant Schroeder, Ronny Hathaway, and Ralph Robbins were also good friends. As was Lane Rogers. Lane was the class bully. I noticed that boys who were willing to fight were not picked on. So one day Mike Gannon and I were messing around, and I challenged him to a fist fight after school. He accepted. He had apparently noticed the same thing. We passed the word around that there would be a fight after school. I got the second black eye of my life in that fight. I don’t know if I got in any good blows, but Mike and I went away from the fight as better friends than ever. And the school bullies left us both alone after that. Lane Rogers especially took a liking to me. I liked him and he knew it. Most of the boys did not like him. He confided in me about many of his troubles. His parents were divorced and he just had a difficult time coping. Basically, his attitude stunk. He did not do well in school, even though he seemed to be fairly smart.

I often went to Bruce Bradshaw’s house after school to study and to play board games. Sammy Fernley and I went to Liberty Park to play tennis on Saturdays. Neither one of us was any good. Older boys often chased us off the courts.

There were so many pretty girls in the class. I seemed to fall ‘in love’ with a new one every week. Patty and Nancy Denhalter were famous. They were very cute identical twins who had been in commercials for Campbell Soup. They had been known as the Campbell Soup Twins. I one time or another had crushes on Linda Booth, Kathleen Morris, Jeanne Thiessen, Vicky Rae Haycock, Virginia Viers, Patty Dobbs, and Marva Poelman. Marva was my favorite though. She is related to Elder Ronald E. Poelman, who is now an emeritus General Authority.

An interesting thing happened years later. I used to see Marva Poelman at the University of Utah. I was too shy to approach her then. She was always with another beautiful girl who often wore the uniform of the Army ROTC auxiliary. When Lyle and Marcia got married, they had their wedding reception in a large home in Connecticut. As I walked into the entry of that home, there above the circular staircase was a family portrait, and the wife was the same girl I used to see with Marva at the U.

We had weekly ballroom dancing lessons during P.E. I really enjoyed those classes because there were so many pretty girls to dance with. The girls were starting to blossom at that age, and I really enjoyed them. Too bad that a year later my teenage hormones started to kick in. After that being in the presence of a pretty girl really made me nervous.

Bryant Schroeder and I both moved after the school year and went to Evergreen Jr. High and Olympus High School together. David Tame and Bruce Bradshaw were in some of my classes at the University of Utah. Bruce and I had a diving class together. He ruptured an eardrum on one bad dive and had to drop out of the class. David was in some of my Institute classes.

All in all, this was probably my best year, both socially and academically through all my K-12 years.

Beacon Heights Elementary School

While I was in 4th grade at Dilworth, building began on Beacon Heights. I went to 5th grade there. Then in 6th grade we lived with Nana & Pa, my grandparents, for a year while our new house in East Mill Creek was being built.
Years later, in about 2001, I helped remodel a house across the street from Beacon Heights. While I was working on that house, Beacon Heights was torn down so it could be rebuilt.
I had Mr. Kearns for 5th grade. He loved to tease the girls. More than once he had a girl in tears from going too far with his teasing. I started to do very well scholastically at that time. But Mr. Kearns tried to give at least one poor grade to almost everyone. One report card he gave me a 'D' in spelling. It was my worst subject. I think I had maybe missed 2 words during that report period. Anyway, Dad got all over me for getting a 'D', and wouldn't believe that I didn't deserve it. I didn't misspell any more words that year, and for most of the rest of my life.
Mr. Kearns was not well liked by the parents. In addition to the teasing, he was erratic in his discipline. Many kids were punished severely for minor infractions. One boy was dismissed from school for being late to class one time. Mrs. Cosgrove, the principal, was not much better and even backed him up on some of his extreme discipline. A year after I left, the parents became very angry at his actions and demanded his termination. He was fired. Mom told me about that.
I ran into many of my friends from Beacon Heights years later at the University of Utah. I had a crush on Kathy Erickson. She later became a professional model for ZCMI while she was in high school. Linda Brown and Suzanne Frisby were in the women's auxiliary, Angel Flight, while I was in Air Force ROTC. Linda was one of the girls that Mr. Kearns liked to tease. I didn't pay much attention to Suzanne in 5th grade. When Mom saw the class pictures, she told me Suzanne would be the prettiest girl in the class when she grew up. I thought Suzanne was kind of plain. But Mom was right.
Many of the boys in the neighborhood liked to gather on the lawn at Beacon Heights to play football after school. That was my first experience at being really good at a sport. At least I was good on defense. I could get to the quarterback very quickly and whoever was playing that position would yell at his teammates to block me, but I still got through most of the time. However, I did not remember these experiences, and had no confidence in my abilities when I got to high school, so I didn't even try out for the football team there.
I do remember getting a severe black eye during a snowball fight that year. Someone threw a chunk of ice that hit me in the eye. The eyelid was cut through. The teachers banned snowball fights after that.

A few more Wyoming St. memories

When we moved to Wyoming Street I got a new puppy. A black labrador retriever again. I named her Jet 2. I didn't have her very long. About the time she was fully grown, she was stolen.

I learned to ride a bike there. The street had enough slope so that it was good for coasting downhill. There was very little traffic. Dad bought me a full sized bike. I couldn't reach the pedals. So Dad took off the seat, padded a board that he attached where the seat had been, and wired blocks to the pedals. Dad would put me on the bike, as it was too tall for me to climb onto, and start me down the hill. I'd ride for a short way, lose my balance and crash. That happened over and over. My knees and elbows were covered with scabs before I finally got the feel for it. Even then I often crashed because the bike was just too tall for me.

There was a very poor family a few houses south of us who lived in what was just a shack. The sewer came down the street a couple of years after we moved in. Before that all the houses were on septic tanks. The poor family didn't hook up to the sewer, while everyone else did. I guess they couldn't afford it. They also poured things into their drains that they shouldn't. One night their septic tank blew up. So they had an open sewer hole in their back yard. After a few weeks, the house was condemned. The health department came to condemn the house on Halloween, and I found the Health Department notice on their front door when I went trick-or-treating. The family was gone.

The second house to the south of ours was where the Buckholz's lived. They had two sons just a little older than me. Their house looked like a converted barn. It looked like fun to me. I went there to play once just before Christmas, and we made construction paper chains with homemade glue for their Christmas tree. Mom didn't like me to go there much, because Mrs. Buckholz was infamous on the street for making her own wine, and for drinking a lot of it. She was usually inebriated.

Mr. Buckholz and his sons built a swimming pool in their side yard. They just dug a hole, lined it with cement and filled it with the garden hose. I'm sure the water never got very warm, and it had no circulation, filtration or chlorination. After it sat there stagnant for a few days, the water got pretty bad. They made no easy way to drain it. I think they just used a garden hose to siphon the water out into the back yard. It was a real redneck swimming pool.

Most of the houses on the street had window wells. We boys would get together and go on Black Widow spider hunts. They often made their homes in the window wells, and every couple of weeks in the summer we could take long sticks and visit the window wells, destroying the nests and the spiders. We all thought ourselves very brave. We also tried to scare each other with stories of how far the spiders could leap, and what would happen if we ever got bit.

Another stupid boy game was to catch honey bees from some of the flowering bushes. We did it with our bare hands. We'd try to see who could hold them the longest without getting stung. Of course, to win, you had to hold them long enough so they'd start to sting and then quickly brush them off. Sometimes we waited just a second too long. We were lucky that no one of us was allergic to bee venom.

Summer evenings were often the time to play kick-the-can. Usually we'd play in one of the Olsen's front yards. On hot summer days we often gathered in a cool basement to read comic books. Scott, who lived three doors north of me, had a great collection of Marvel Comics. All mine were Looney Tunes; not cool for a bunch of boys. We also liked to gather in John Wicks bedroom right across the street from me and play Monopoly for hours on hot afternoons. Sometimes we'd even carry games over for days.

David & Tawny

While we lived on Wyoming Street, I finally ceased being an only child. David came along in 1951, and Tawny was two years later.

The house only had two bedrooms when we moved in. David and I shared a bedroom. I was really glad I didn't have to sleep alone anymore. When he became old enough to get out of his crib, we got bunk beds. However, they were set up as twin beds at first.

David was kept in the bedroom much of the time by a gate with a little latch that you had to press with a thumb and finger to open. He didn't have the finger strength to open it by himself. One day I taught him to open it with his teeth. He did have enough jaw strength to do it. I really got in trouble about that one.

David used to get bloody noses a lot. One night he got one in the middle of the night. He climbed off his bed, and climbed onto me to awaken me to help him get it stopped. I was a very sound sleeper, and he couldn't wake me. Mom and Dad heard the springs squeaking on my bed and came in and helped him. When I awoke in the morning, I discovered that I had on different pajamas than when I went to bed. After taking care of David, she had cleaned me up and redressed me. I slept through the whole process, even though she used cold water to wash off the blood.

Another time I got in trouble was on a Christmas morning. I got up really early to see what Santa Claus had brought. I carried the toys that Santa brought for David to the bedroom and awakened him. That was before I taught him to open the gate. So Mom and Dad didn't get to see David discover his toys and stuff. They were quite upset with me.

While Mom was pregnant with Tawny, Jackie Gleason's orchestra released a recording entitled "Tawny". Dad then had a dream about a 'tawny' blond woman. That's where they got the idea for her name. She did turn out to be a blond, so the name fit.

About the time Tawny was born we got a piano and I started taking piano lessons. I had a hard time with learning to play. My teacher, Mrs. Catmull, lived in a house that I passed while walking to and from Dilworth Elementary. After I had been taking lessons for awhile, Mrs. Catmull told me she was retiring as a piano teacher and would no longer be able to teach me. That was a kind way of saying that she was giving up on me because I was making such poor progress. I did notice that other kids continued to go there for lessons and I heard them as I walked by. She just retired from teaching me.

After I stopped going to Mrs. Catmull, a recent Dutch immigrant stopped by the house looking for piano students and Mom signed me up. He was going door to door on a motorized bicycle. When he asked Mom about other kids in the neighborhood, she told him where every other child lived. He was amazed at the number of children and he exclaimed, "How fertile these women are!" A couple of years later, when we moved to East Mill Creek, he gave up on me, too. He said we were moving too far away for him to come all the way out to teach me. But after we had been there a few days, I saw him on his motor bike right in the same neighborhood. He was teaching someone else just two streets away. I was just a very slow learner and frustrated these two teachers. I think it was just poor finger dexterity. But I did learn to read music.

When Tawny came along, we needed an additional bedroom. So Dad built one in the basement for me. The walls of the bedroom were knotty pine tongue and groove boards. The ceiling was acoustic tiles, and the light for the room was a circular fluorescent fixture.

The bunk beds were moved to my new room and stacked. David and Tawny got new beds and shared the bedroom upstairs. I did not particularly like sleeping alone in that new room. I frequently let my imagination run away with me and scared myself silly. I often slept completely under the covers, so I could hide from the monsters and boogey men that I knew were out to get me. I especially avoided looking out the back window at night, because I was afraid that dinosaurs would be out there and would then break in and get me.

One night while I was trying to get to sleep, a dog was barking and snarling somewhere outside. I was under the covers, because I knew that dog was about to break through the window and come in and attack me. Then there was a loud crash. I knew that dog had come through the window and I started screaming. Dad and Mom came rushing downstairs to find out what I was screaming about. Turned out the crash was from one of the circular tubes on the fluorescent fixture which had fallen to the floor and shattered. I had nightmares about that dog for months after that.

Wyoming Street, Dilworth Elementary, Beacon 2nd Ward

On February 25, 1951, we moved to our new home at 1900 Wyoming St. It was a yellow brick (actually more dirty ochre than yellow) 2-bedroom house with a single car garage. Wyoming Street was a dead end street, so the entire street became a playground. The front yard was a single story, and the yard sloped so that the back of the house was two stories. The house faced east. We lived there until September 1955.

Wyoming Street is located between Texas Street and 2500 E. It runs downhill from the dead end to Parleys Way, crossing Redondo Ave and 2100 S. When we moved there, there were still a few undeveloped lots on the street. By the time we moved away, all the lots were filled with houses.

The first two winters there were severe. Lots of snow. To a six or seven year old it was deep enough to be over my head when piled on the sides of the sidewalk. When it melted, the houses on the east side of the neighborhood streets got flooded basements. We were on the west.

The heavy snows brought deer down into the neighborhood. They ate the newly planted pfitzers, tams and euonymus that Mom planted. The neighborhood dogs chased the deer up and down the street. The poor deer ran with terror in their eyes.

I had lots of friends in that neighborhood. Across the street were the Doyle and Byron Olsen families with lots of kids, Joe and Betty Wicks and the Hudsons. David Olsen and Barbie Hudson were my age. The Olsen cousins included Julie, Janice, Dianne, and several others. Johnny and Judy Wicks were younger, Donny Hudson was Barbie’s younger brother. Down the street were several others around the same age. It was a great neighborhood to grow up in. My first grade school crush was on a little girl with golden hair named Sally who lived on the NE corner of Wyoming St and 2100 S. She was in my 1st grade class. The Loveless's lived next door to the north. Judy Loveless was a couple of years younger than me.

The big thrill of that first year was being invited to Sally’s birthday party. I also went to David Ashton’s birthday party near the end of second grade. He was President David O. McKay’s grandson. His younger brother later founded Word Perfect. David’s mother took us to see “War of the Worlds”. It was pretty scary for a bunch of 7-year olds. Another friend, Tommy Anderegg, invited me to his birthday party in third grade. That was where I got another big crush on a girl named Kitty, who had the longest eyelashes I had ever seen.

My first grade teacher at Dilworth was Mrs Peterson. When Mom took me to school the first day, she told Mrs. Peterson that I was to be called Jimmy. But after Mom left, the teacher said they would call me James, because there were already two Jimmies in the class, Jimmy Pizza, and Jimmy Reynolds. Mom and Dad were not happy with Mrs. Peterson. James Pizza and I ended up graduating from Olympus High School together.

Being the new kid in class, I was assigned to share a desk (they were 2-person desks) with Kathy Webster. Apparently no one else wanted to sit by her. She had a bad speech impediment. She was not bad looking, and had a nice personality, so I didn’t mind being there. Except for the time she got sick and threw up lunch all over both sides of the desk.

One friend I walked home with often, was Michael Ruud. Looking back, I think he was very rude. He eventually became a famous ballet dancer with the big ballet company in New York City.

Bruce Vanderwerf was another friend who became somewhat famous. He trained as a chef in France and was named the best chef in Utah at one time. He also founded Eat-a-Burger drive-ins.

I had lots of good friends at Dilworth. John Lund was one of the best. He was tall for his age, and I was short. He tried to teach me to play basketball.

We tried to learn ballroom dancing there. I liked to dance with Barbara Hughes because she was tall and could take big steps to stay out of my way.

The only boy in the neighborhood who had divorced parents lived behind us on Texas Street. His name was David Gartiez. His mother often brought treats to school for the whole class. I thought she was very nice. However, David always seemed to be in trouble. He never did anything really bad, but he liked to try things that didn't work out too well, like bringing snakes to school that he had caught on the way.

My second grade teacher was Miss Storey. She was young and pretty. But she got married the summer after school which spoiled it for a lot of little boys.

Mrs. Hampshire was our third grade teacher. She was very nice. In third grade I liked a girl named Kay. I don’t remember her last name. I chased her around the playground at school and finally caught her at the back door and kissed her. She didn’t like me in third grade. Then she decided in fourth grade that she did like me, but by then I liked somebody else.

Yo-yos were the big rage in those days. The cool boys were the ones with the fancy spinners. My folks wouldn’t buy me a fancy one. One day David Olsen and I decided to go to the corner drug store which was about a half block from the school. It was a popular place. K. Fisher Drug. We thought that in the crowd no one would see us pocketing some fancy yo-yos. But Mr. Fisher caught us and escorted us to the back room for a lecture. We decided that crime does not pay. Many years later, after he retired, Kimball Fisher moved into the Butler 11th Ward where we lived. I was able to thank him for saving me from a life of crime.

Another friend from Dilworth was Paul Gardner. He had red hair and was extremely competitive. He was the fastest in the class in 4th grade at multiplication tables. His father owned Dan’s Supermarket, which was then a single store on the NW corner of 21st S and 21st E.

The church we occasionally attended was across 21st East from Dilworth. The Beacon 2nd Ward. It was named for the air traffic warning beacon which sat atop the mountain to the east of our neighborhood. Bishop Garff was the bishop when we moved there. Robert McMullin became bishop soon after.

Six months after I turned eight years old, I was interviewed by Bishop McMullin to be baptized. I was badly scared about that interview, because I feared anyone in a position of authority. We were not very active in the church at that time. I was supposed to go across the street to Primary every week after school, but I frequently skipped it. We went to Sunday School sometimes. When I was interviewed for Baptism, Bishop McMullin asked if I obeyed the Word of Wisdom. I couldn’t remember ever hearing about that. But I figured that I was trying to be wise or smart, so I answered in the affirmative. The truth was that I frequently took sips of Dad’s beer when no one could see me. But I didn’t know that was against the Word of Wisdom.

I was baptized in the Salt Lake Tabernacle font on March 29, 1953 by a young Priest named Richard Hardy.

Bishop McMullin had a son named Bobby. We were pretty good friends. I kept running into him in later years and we had classes together at the University of Utah.

Since I was afraid of authority figures, the school principal scared me badly. I avoided him at all costs. One day Michael Ruud dared me to open a window in the boys restroom. When I tried to do it, the latch broke off the window. Michael said he was going to tell the principal. I ran to the far end of the playground to get away. Some older kids came and got me and dragged me to the principal’s office. I told the principal, Mr. Hales, that Michael told me to do it. That was the first time I heard the line, “If he told you to jump off a building, would you do it?”

While I was in 4th grade, they started to build Beacon Heights Elementary school at the upper end of Wyoming Street. That summer, the neighborhood kids set up a Kool-Aid stand in the Olsen’s driveway. Lots of the construction workers on the school would come down to buy our Kool-Aid. I never made any money at that stand, even though I helped sell. I didn’t understand anything about business; it was just fun to help.