Glimpses into the past

To really understand people one needs to experience the circumstances that form the personalities.  You will not be able to do this because times have changed.  You cannot fully understand what circumstances played a part in the development of their characters.  We all have to go through some of the same experiences that test and try us, but the backdrop is different.   

Thus to understand my mother and dad you must know about horses and buggies and dirt roads.  There were coal oil lanterns to light the homes and later the refined Coleman lantern.  Candles burned to light some of the homes long before electricity became commonplace.  Even when I was growing up there were places where electricity was not part of the household.  When we visited my aunt and uncle in Soda Springs, Idaho they did not have electricity.  Wood burning stoves and also coal-fired stoves were present in our home at times even until I was in high school.   

They grew up with Saturday night baths in a little round galvanized #2 tub with water heated on that wood or coal stove.  Many times two or more people used the same water with a little clean hot water added to take the chill off.  We took baths in that round tub in the early days of our stay in Lander, because we did not have a bathroom.  We had no bathtub in the house, but only a shower about half way into my junior year in high school. The bathtub came well after I was gone from home.  I learned to appreciate indoor plumbing and electricity from these experiences.

Radios were scarce and the variety of stations to listen to at a minimum, but they listened to good music and were interested in the arts.  I have probably seen more ballets our mission in Moscow that they have seen in their entire lives, but it was not because they did not have the desire.   I remember that they would listen to a radio program and try to guess the name of the song that was playing.  If the announcer did not give the name of the piece dad would often call the radio station to inquire after the name and the composer. 

I remember going to the opera house in Denver on the streetcar and we saw our first opera, Carmen with Risa Stevens (a famous soprano of the day).  They listened to the opera on Saturday afternoon on the radio.  Even though the culture was not as readily available to them where they lived the desire was there and they taught it to their children.   

Dad bought a 45- rpm record player and we listened to Gilbert and Sullivan operettas.  The first recordings that I bought with my own money were compositions by Tchaikovsky; Caprricio Italian and the 1812 Overture. This was the introduction that stimulated my desire for good music and the arts. This introduction to the arts has always governed my choices.

Today with the miracle of television they were able to enjoy those things that were denied them in earlier years.  They did not have a television set when I lived in their home.  

I still remember and sing some of the songs from those operettas. They will always hold a special memory for me.  We enjoyed some lighter entertainment also, my brothers and I memorized the Spike Jones records as well as others that Dad bought and we used to perform them at family functions.  You are spared today because I am not around most of you..

Dad and mother were born into less than affluent circumstances.  Every one of their grandchildren and great grandchildren has more wealth than they had for all of their lives as children and until most of their children had left home.  As a result they were like most of the people of their day.  They made their own clothes.  They made soap.  They made and baked their own bread.  They ate out at restaurants very little.  They butchered their own meat, raised chickens and sold eggs and they raised gardens with vegetables and berries.   

We had a large garden in Denver on land that we tilled by hand.  The produce was bottled and also eaten fresh.  A man who had a store in downtown Denver owned the land.  When the garden began producing it was my job to bicycle downtown and take him some vegetables from the harvest.  Not many people today would look for a vacant lot to raise a garden.  We even had a chicken house and raised chickens and eggs when I was going to high school in Lander.   

They worked long hard hours for very little money when they were growing up and then when I was finished with high school and got a summer job with the Bureau of Land Management I earned more money in a month than my mother did.  Perhaps that is the reason that I enjoy working and have an appreciation for the affluence that I enjoy.

They sacrificed their convenience and income to support me and their other children to obtain a higher education.  They were unselfish in their support and were pleased that their children could better themselves in the educational fields. 

I did not obtain all my education in school.  My parents were proactive in their children’s education. I remember sitting at the dinner table and dad would have us mentally add, subtract, multiply and divide a series of numbers and then at the end ask us the answer.  My parents drilled me on my spelling words, until I knew them.  My parents stimulated my desire for learning and education.  We read books together, one of the common family activities of the day.  One can never be too appreciative of that influence in one’s life.

From my earliest days the church has always been central to our family life.  As far as I know that was the case with my parents before I came into their life.  I have never known a period of inactivity in their lives as members of the restored gospel.  My life growing up was centered in church activity.  There were many meetings in those days and we attended them all.  In Denver we went to Stake conferences in the high school auditorium and after the meeting the people would line up to shake the hand of the general authority who visited the conference. 

The church was relatively small in those days.  We were acquainted there with people who were later called to serve as general authorities.  John H. Vandenberg who became the Presiding Bishop lived in our ward with his family.  Victor L. Brown who also became the Presiding Bishop lived in Denver, as well as Gordon B. Hinckley who also lived in Denver and was acquainted with my parents.  Elder Joseph F. Merrill of the council of the twelve came to Denver and ordained Dad a high priest and had dinner at our home on his visit there. 

Dad always went to general conference and they attended the June MIA conference as well.  We read the Book of Mormon as a family, seated around the table after supper.   

Strangers who came to church were often invited to our home to eat Sunday dinner and we often had the full time missionaries to our house to eat whatever food we had on hand.  We always seemed to have something to feed them.  From this background I learned to keep the church and the gospel foremost in my life and to be hospitable to those who were strangers and to enjoy the scriptures.

Our food was simple.  We had the basic foodstuffs and our ability to prepare them was limited by the times in which we lived.  When they would find some new way to prepare food or cook some new dish, my parents would adopt it into their repertoire.  Bread and milk was not an uncommon dish in our home and milk toast was reserved to be eaten if you were sick.  I suppose that was stimulus for me to develop my interest in the kitchen and in food.  My mother was patient and let me learn to bake cakes and do simple cooking tasks.  I still enjoy cooking. 

Life for them has, as for all of us, been sprinkled with disappointments and frustrations and unfulfilled dreams.  They have not generally shared those with their family.  

I was ambitious for my father.  I wanted him to advance in the government employ and as I understood it at that time he reached the level that his education would allow him.  I thought that he should go back to school and get a graduate degree.  As it was, he blossomed where he was planted and made lemonade of his lemon in life.   

I once asked him if he had any disappointments in his lifetime and he said that he did, but he never enumerated what they were.   

He has kept a faithful record of the proceedings of his life.  Perhaps one day we will have enough time to read the volumes that he has produced and discover what those bumps in the road of life were.  Keeping a faithful record is one attribute that I have not quite mastered as yet, but I am working on it.