My father’s cars

 

When I was growing up my parents had a model A Ford with a rumble seat.

We had this car as far back as I could remember in Rexburg and then my father drove it to Missoula, Montana when he joined the weather bureau.

We had to take the train to meet him in Missoula. After he was transferred to Pocatello Idaho, we drove from Missoula to Pocatello in that car . He had that car when we drove to Cheyenne and Martell and I rode in the rumble seat and Glendon rode in the front and there was a little shelf between the seat and the back window where he used to lie down.

We had that car all the time we were in Cheyenne. My father had bought the house that we lived in in Pocatello, but was unable to sell it and while we were getting ready to go to Denver, he traded a newer car for the house in Pocatello. Because he did not, want to own two cars he sold the model a Ford when we left Cheyenne to move to Denver.

My uncle Merrill was going to Washington DC to go to law school and so he drove the car from Pocatello to Denver. On the way, he had some car problems, and eventually got to Denver and the car was inoperable. My father did all of his traveling in Denver either by bicycle or public transportation, but mostly by bicycle. He rode his bicycle every workday from our home to the airport when he worked there and after he was transferred to the downtown office, he rode it downtown.

We did not have a car for the first months that we lived in Lander until my mother got a ride to Denver where she picked up a car and paid for it much to my father‘s dismay.

In spite of the fact that we had that car, we walked to school every day and back over a mile each way.

A refugee story

 A refugee story
Ernst Karl Willi Jensen was born in East Prussia Germany in 1913. He married Waltraud Anni Emma Klingbeil in 1942 when she was 18. His father ran a dairy and he worked on the dairy and eventually became the owner. When the war broke out he was not initially drafted into the army, because his work was considered essential to the war effort. Later he was drafted into the military and was sent to Romania. Because the Russians were moving toward East Prussia Ernst and his wife had a plan for her to leave and go to west Germany.

In 1945 they moved to Osnabruk and then to Barsel and 1952 they moved to Hildesheim. Where Ernst worked for a dairy, because in East Prussia they owned a dairy. It was two years later that the missionaries knocked on their door and introduced them to the restored gospel.

Waltraud and her sons were baptized and three years later Ernst followed. He later became the branch president and later a sealer in the Bern Temple and a patriarch. He and his wife had two boys one of which became a regional representative and along with his brother served as stake presidents.

Their sons served missions and some have served as stake presidents.

The son of the youngest of Ernst’s boys was called to serve as an area authority seventy in the April conference of 2024.

I was fortunate to have helped to teach Ernst and Waltraud in 1954 and kept in touch with the family to date.