Monday, September 22, 2008

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.

Thursday, September 4, 2008

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.

Monday, September 1, 2008

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.