Personal History - (Almost) All Good Fun

What did your family do for fun when you were a child?

Going to the park
Playgrounds meant great fun - climbing, swinging, kicking and tumbling. A playground had been built almost across the street from us, and we went there. The monkey bars at Washington Elementary School beckoned every recess (and we did have significant amounts of recess back then.)

A park downtown, called Liberty Park, was also a place we loved to go. It had a lot more space to run around, and great playgrounds.

Lagoon
The closest amusement park to Salt Lake City couldn't compare to Disneyland, but we didn't care. Lagoon had the coolest haunted houses that I could almost tolerate (my tolerance for horror of any kind was notoriously low from a young age), and the best roller coasters (I remember the Wild Mouse ride, that felt like it would dump me out every time it turned the corner), and the World War I flying ace ride (I always tried to get the Sopwith Camel, like Snoopy's plane), and a swimming pool that seemed to stretch out forever.

The last time I went back there, I'd just turned twelve, and the years didn't make any difference. It was still super fun (and the boys were much cuter as well). Actually going to Disneyland later in life still didn't change my mind about this place. The local carnivals have a charm of their own that the mega parks can't match.

Television
Mostly our entertainment consisted of our little black-and-white TV with the rabbit ears and the tinfoil, that eventually grew into the color TV with the rabbit ears and the tinfoil. Eventually just the TV remained.

The problem with TV consisted in the ephemeral nature of the shows - you had to live your life around the television, instead of the other way around. When the TV Guide showed up with the schedule of all the shows, I would sit with it and circle when each show came on, and what time I had to be there. If you weren't there, you missed the show, and no replay existed. It was just gone.

This was most tragic around Christmastime, when A Charlie Brown Christmas came around. Nothing, and I mean nothing, interfered with Charlie Brown shows, and the Christmas one was most sacred. The years I missed the show, for one reason or another, were so sad. As soon as video came along, I figured out how to record that show, and I never missed it again. :-)

Visiting Linda Shirts and her kids
The Shirts family emerged first in my consciousness as people I knew outside my home. My mother and Linda grew to be best friends (and still are friends, even today). Their similarity to us drew us together, I think...we were both young families, either mostly boys or in Linda's case, all boys. We played together a lot at their house, just down the street from ours.

They had a chain-link fence, and a wonderful horse chestnut tree in the front yard. You couldn't walk barefoot in their front yard when the horse chestnuts fell, because their husk grew some wicked spines that would poke your feet. But we would pick them on purpose, not waiting for them to fall, and pry them open and pull out the horse chestnut, which was like a beautiful brown and smooth stone, like the color of a horse.

I don't remember ever roasting them or eating them, but I loved to collect them in my shirt and just run my fingers through them over and over. Very soothing feeling.


Bikes
My best Christmas ever was the bike Christmas. There is no feeling in the world like getting transportation with a big ribbon on it, that's yours.

It took a couple more years to learn to ride it, since I was afraid of falling over. The seat was too tall for me, and my feet couldn't reach the ground, but I was too afraid to tell my dad about that. So I waited until I was taller. While I waited, I would sit down on the metal part in the middle, and push myself around with my feet.

There was a big parking lot down the street, near where the Conference Center in Salt Lake sits now, that had a little bit of an incline and we could go around in circles. My brothers, who could already ride their bikes, would ride around and around in circles, and I would ride more slowly behind them, gradually getting used to the speed, always keeping my feet ready to hit the ground in case I lost control.

I was not about to fall off that bike, and I never did.


Movies - Star Wars, Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi
I shared my dad's love of movies, and he taught me in the ways of the nerd.

When I was six, we went to see a new movie called Star Wars. We arrived at the movie theater in downtown Salt Lake, and the line of people waiting to get in circled around the block. I'd never seen anything like it before - but I was six, and I didn't get to go to the movies much.

We waited in the line, and I marveled. Once we got to the ticket booth, the ticket person told my dad all the tickets were sold. We had to come back again. Disappointing in the extreme.

We did come back again, and Star Wars was amazing.  Couldn't wait to see the sequels when they came out, and my dad took us to see each one. The first trilogy film that I remember, and when...I won't spoil the ending if there DOES happen to be a human being on Earth remaining who hasn't seen these movies yet...the climactic end of Return of the Jedi came, the crowd whopped and yelled and applauded. I was sixteen, and I'd never seen a reaction like that from a movie before. Never seen its equivalent since.

Swimming - near-drowning
We loved to swim at the Wasatch Gym - I think that's what it was called. A heavy smell of chlorine filled the air that I associated strongly with that place. We could smell it every time we walked or drove by that place.

I almost drowned there a couple of times when very young - saved on both occasions by my dad. My fear of underwater noises, combined with my fear of the ocean after watching Jaws at age six - made it several more years before I successfully learned to swim, but we always loved water, and playing in the shallow end.

Personal History - Siblings and their New Glorious Nicknames Part Two

If you missed the first installment of this one regarding the older three kids, click here.

HeartBreaker (my fourth brother)

By the time HB rolled around, I was getting sick of brothers, and babies. Being the only girl, the business of taking care of the babies often fell to me, and living life as the outnumbered gender...well, it sucked.

Still, HB and I had a good relationship. At this point, I was so much older that we were not exactly peers, but I wasn't the parent either.

HB grew up gorgeous - he looked like a male model, complete with the lazy smile and the long eyelashes. He and my dad clashed even worse than I did, and home wasn't the easiest life for him. When I moved out, we lost touch a little bit.

My current favorite memory of his is as an adult. My father passed away last year, and the whole family gathered for the funeral. We stayed at his house, back in the woods, and I had some time to talk with him again sitting on his front porch in the evening dusk, as well as getting to know his two boys a little bit. Catching up was a very nice thing, and seeing how good a father he is, and how well his boys are growing up felt very satisfying.

Plus, the rarity of having all the kids together again in one place really added to the experience...and nobody got bombed the next day! (Which is another story for another time...)


TomGurl (my one and only sister)

Finally, my wishes for a little sister ended up in the right heavenly department, and TG came along. There was a ten-year difference between us, but still I hoped we could finally talk ribbons and hair and twirling and all the girl things I wanted to have around that no one else appreciated.

What'd I get? A total tomboy, who never wore dressed, wanted her hair cut short, and ran with all the boys.

Still, she got better as she got older.

My favorite memory of her was when I was an adult, and she was still coming on teenager. We shared a room at one point, and slept in the same bed. Somehow, one night, we ended up in a poke-war, and couldn't stop laughing about it.

Weird, I know. It was more fun than it sounds.


StuckOnYou (my fifth and final brother)

This poor kid didn't stand a chance. I was more mother than sister to this one, and what he wanted, more than anything in the world...was someone to pay attention to him.


He followed us around. He got into everything. I felt bad for pushing him away so much, and tried to play with him whenever I could, but baby stuff just wasn't that interesting to a boy-crazed 12-year-old.

My favorite story about SOY (and I have to admit, this one might be over-told, but I still love it) was the day he disappeared, and nobody noticed.

We were going about our business, when our neighbor pulls up to our house in his truck, and brings us SOY, who's wearing nothing but a diaper and very unhappy.

Turns out no one would take him to the store, so he set off himself. About three years old, with a nickel in his hand for the ice cream cones that cost a quarter at the time, and dressed in nothing but his diaper. Our neighbor found him and fortunately recognized him, and brought him back home without his ice cream.

The incident scared my mother (and me) at the time, but I admired his gumption, and to this day, I still think he might have made it if he weren't intercepted. We were free-range kids to the core.

Personal History - (Best) Memories of my Brother and Sisters, and Their New Fabulous Nicknames!

Can you give any memories of your brothers and sisters? What are their names?

After years of keeping journals and family history, I've collected a lot of memories, good and bad.

I'm only interested in preserving the good memories anymore. The bad ones refuse to go away anyhow, and no point in encouraging them to stick around longer than they have to.

Overall, I grew up in a good family. My five brothers and one sister were very close with each other, although I did notice that we sort of fragmented at some point, and the four older siblings grew closer to each other in a group, while the four younger siblings did the same, with the fourth kid sort of bridging both worlds. Kind of an interesting dynamic.

Since I haven't asked their permission to share these stories, I'm making up names to protect the incredibly guilty here today. If they're reading this, feel free to refute my memory, sucky as it is, if you remember different.

Bubbagumpkin (my oldest brother)

First brother, little sister who stole his mommy from him...our rivalry approached legendary levels. Still, he could be quite useful in a tight spot.

Once, when I was 12 and really stupid, our church planned an all-day hike for the teenagers in Zion Narrows, a really tight canyon path.

Thirteen miles, they said. It'll be a snap - take us a day to hike, and we head back home. I was stoked - this was my first Church activity with the big kids, and going to be something I would never forget.

Well, it was indeed something I would never forget. Something that I'm glad I lived to never forget.

I ate my lunch about one hour into the activity, sure I'd gotten to the halfway point. We went on to hike for another TWELVE HOURS, through really rough terrain, and deep water that kept knocking me off my feet. The boys ran on ahead, while the girls struggled along behind, often without adult supervision.

About six hours in, I found myself totally alone, fighting for my life in this canyon somewhere in Utah, and beginning to panic.

A path led up one side of the mountain, and then went down to a ledge. I hopped down, and found myself up against a wall of rock, balancing on a boulder, up to my armpits in fast-moving water, right next to a waterfall.

And I couldn't swim!

I never prayed harder in my life than I did at that moment...when, a few seconds later, my brother, who decided not to hike in because of an ankle condition, and another adult leader came around the corner in front of me, coming in from the end of the trail. Michael waded into the river, and stretched out his walking stick to me, so I could get across safely.

I forgave him every dirty trick he ever played on me in that moment...at least, up until that moment...

Lil' Elvis (my next brother)

I named him Elvis here, because I think he secretly IS Elvis - he could do a really great Elvis impersonation as a kid. A really entertaining one, at the very least.

My favorite memory with him is still the ghost episode - one late night I'd finished up watching a movie in the living room of our last home in Bowie - I was in high school. On my way back to bed, I heard a sort of thumping noise in the computer room, behind some doors with wooden slats.

I peered through those slats, and saw what looked like a huge black figure behind the doors, but I couldn't tell for sure.

I opened one side of the door to find myself face-to-face with this huge black figure that blocked the light from the streetlights outside. Did my dad leave a blanket on the curtains again?

I put my hand into the room, only to feel another cold hand reaching for me...

I jumped about three feet, and so did Elvis. We scared each other.

Our house had some intermittent ghost sightings over the years, and we both thought the other was a ghost.

BlessYourBeautifulHide (my third brother)

This brother was a massive nerd gone good. All of us (the first three of us) struggled with weight problems as children and teenagers, so we just assumed we were a jolly giant family.

Along came BYBH, who started into that same path, but somewhere around middle school he discovered girls AND weight training, and sharply diverged from the 'jolly giant' model we'd established. A rogue child...but he was so good-natured we couldn't say anything bad about him.

When he turned 12, another big church activity came up. The all-night-long dance marathon.

I was a sucker for these, and swore that I would win. I would outlast everyone and win the big prize. Such was my pattern that I still couldn't see it, even though four years had passed since the Narrows trip.

We started out, and I broke out my best moves. Little BYBH, still in the family dumpy phase of his life before girls and weightlifting, started stepping from side-to-side, the easiest and least-interesting dance move ever, but with a determination that wouldn't quit.

Ten o'clock came. Eleven o'clock. Towards midnight people started dropping out, but BYBH kept to stepping, side-to-side.

One o'clock, and I was sweaty toast. I gave up. Little brother kept on going.

Guess who won?

He went on to win many other honors in his life - college, a great career, beautiful family, black belt in Tae Kwon Do, and admittance to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. Prince of a guy (and I'm not just saying that because I use him whenever something goes wrong with my computer...)


Will upload the last three tomorrow...

Personal History - Scraping the Bottom of my Memory Now

Any more early memories?


Yeah baby! 

Snow
Winter creates such a magical landscape, especially when you're a child, and all that snow in Utah just fed the imagination. I remember walking to school on icy sidewalks where snowdrifts towered over me from either side. The sledding we did down the hill, which probably wasn't the best idea since the hill had cars on it too.

At school during recess, we kids got to work and rolled up massive snowmen, and some of us built igloos and houses while we were at it. Once I built a snow easy chair and a snow television and plopped down on the playground for some real quality time.

After a month or so, the snow got dirty and mushy, and tiring. At that point, spring couldn't come fast enough.


Kindergarten and Meeting my First Bully
I don't remember much of kindergarten. My mother told me later in life that she felt concerned that they weren't stimulating me enough...that the teacher busied herself with the other children and left me alone to read most of the time, so she had me transferred to another class.

Personally, an all-day reading time would feel like heaven to me, so I probably didn't mind very much. Still, I guess the other class did a lot of the same, since I don't remember that class either.

One day I found a worm on the sidewalk and put it in my pocket to keep it safe. It didn't do too well in there, and when I went looking for it again, I found it ground into goop. Still, I tried.

It was in kindergarten and first grade that I first experienced bullying...in most other things I was a late bloomer, but I started early on this. His name was Gilbert Martinez (wherever you are today, Gilbert, that's right - I'm calling you out!) He chased me down a hill, and I fell and my knee got bloodied. He chased me a lot. I had to have my older brother come with me when I wanted to play on the playground if I wanted any peace from him.

Breaking Out My Two Front Teeth 
I think this actually happened in first grade - we had this gigantic metal jungle gym on the playground that I would climb on, and go really high. We all loved it.

One day, from up high, I lost my grip on the bar and fell - but no worries! I caught another bar on the way down - with my two front teeth.

Yep. That hurt just as much as you think it would.

My mouth bled everywhere, I cried and screamed. The teacher snatched me up and ran me back into the school, and called my mom. My teeth were horizontal in my mouth instead of vertical, and the dentist had to extract them. Fortunately the adult teeth grew back, but I whistled a lot when I talked for a while, especially on the 's' s.


Birthday Parties, Friends and First Crushes
As shy as I was, I usually managed to make just enough friends to survive socially in school. I think I even had a friend party for my fifth birthday. My friend Norma came, with her big Afro hair that shook when she walked, and my friend Tina, a big girl with blond hair in ringlets. We usually hung out together in school. Some other kids came, whose names I can't now remember, and Troy came.

That made me very happy. Troy, with his straight blond homemade bowl haircut that made him look like Little Lord Fauntleroy - he was so cute. (Why is it that I can only remember people by hairstyle now?)

Bringing up Brothers
Mostly my friends were members of my own family - we did everything together. We loved and hated each other simultaneously, but we needed each other. Even back then, our family dynamics were complex and ran very deep.

Being the only girl in a houseful of boys presented several unique challenges as well. Once my brother (forget which one) got hold of my parents' pepper spray, and decided to spray it in the backyard. He sprayed it up in the air, and the wind blew it right in my face. Very effective stuff.

I choked, couldn't see, and when I did finally open my eyes, I looked in the reflective window to see that my eyes were a light purple instead of blue.

Another thing my brothers liked to do to me was to convince me to take my clothes off.

Now, I know what you're thinking - but there was none of that going on in our family - at least, not in my mind. But anytime you're a girl in a family of five growing boys, that vibe is there, and the girl is running from those brothers. Just a fact.

Once we had a parade around the house (in all fairness, everyone was naked for that, not just me).

Another time, my younger brother got me to take my clothes off in the backyard, and the Lemons, a retired couple next door, saw me and informed my grandmother of my lasciviousness. My grandma laid into me, paddling me good and sent me to my room.

The unfairness of that punishment was unusual in my family - my brothers played their tricks on me, but usually got as good as I did from my parents. My dad believed in equal punishment for all, and none of us escaped his wrath. I do actually believe I might have gotten off a little bit easier than they did over the years. Our shared parental trauma pulled us together, and we grew up very close, but that sense of rivalry never fully went away either.


A Pox Upon You (and Me)
For instance, when we lived in the Quince Street house, my mother took us over to play with the Shirts' kids, who lived down the street from us. It wasn't an unusual happening - we played with the Shirts family a lot (oh joy - more boys!). I think their first baby girl Emily had recently been born.

When we came home, Mom told us that the Shirts had chicken pox, so she took us over there so we could be exposed and 'get it over with'.

Within a day, one or two of my brothers started running fevers and showing lesions, but I felt fine.

I fear I lorded it over them a little - in a girls-rule-and-boys-drool sort of way. The boys had to stay home while my mother took me (just me!) to the store. I even got to pick out the cereal, and I never got to choose the cereal when my brothers came shopping with me before!

I was loving life. We came home, and I got in the bathtub for a bath. My mother came in, looked at my back, and said 'Uh oh.'

So much for girls ruling - I was dropped from my throne and left to struggle with the peasants for the calomine lotion (which DIDN'T work, by the way). Trying not to scratch when everything itches amounted to exquisite torture.

Eventually the chicken pox died out and we were fine. What I didn't realize (what no one really realized at the time) was that it would one day return to me as shingles, which is like chicken pox on steroids in just one spot instead. Not fun.

Very glad for the varicella vaccine when it came around, and my own kids didn't have to go through that.


Bein' Broke
The last thing I have to say about those years was that we spent most of them in the American version of poverty. What protected us more than anything was my grandparents' retirement money, and our church's welfare program.

But I didn't realize this at the time - what kid does? All I wanted as a kid was to go to the library and read. Poverty broke in on my consciousness when I started school, and realized that other people bought food at grocery stores with money they earned from jobs, while we went to our church's storehouse for food instead. But the butcher in the store would never throw you the pig's ear when he cut it off, and the butcher in the storehouse would, so I almost felt sorry for the store shoppers.

Even then, it didn't really register very much. My father must have been under tremendous pressure to earn more with such a large family. He acted angry with us a lot, so we took some of the heat for him, I suppose.

But most of our time was spent with our mother, who had an indefatigable happiness around her nearly all the time. Poverty didn't mean much at all with her around, and we didn't feel deprived - or at least, I never did. Until we went shopping, and she tried to buy clothes for me.

It was in the clothes department that I felt that want the worst. My mother had a talent for finding that clothes that looked okay in the store, but then something happened on the way home, and those same clothes looked hideous in real life.

We would get catalogs in the mail of pretty women wearing pretty clothes, and I yearned for some of those clothes with all my girlish heart. Once I showed my father some of my favorite pictures from one of those catalogs. I thought he would appreciate them, and maybe buy some of them for me. But he got angry, and told me I was vain for wanting those things.

As an adult, I understand now what he felt, that I had expensive tastes and desires he would never be able to satisfy, and that made him feel frustrated and angry. But I didn't understand any of that at age 8 or 9, and that moment screwed me up pretty bad, for a very long time. But it didn't change anything. I still wanted to be one of those models, dressed up and pretty. For me, pretty just wasn't happening, or so I thought.

To me, that's the worst thing about poverty - how it makes the sufferer want to hide themselves away from anyone and everyone's judgement and criticism. It was a painful lesson I'm very glad to have experienced now, and a lesson that's still unfolding in me every day in different ways.

Personal History - Pulling From the Grab Bag of Memory

What were your earliest memories?

I'll do my best. These memories are like the dark balls in the deep valley from the movie "Inside-Out", so old and dusty they're about to dissolve and blow away. Glad to write them down now before they're totally gone...

Long Leggity Beasties
Everyone looked so tall. So many of my memories are from the ground looking up at something or someone giant.
  Dogs and Dolls
My father loved animals, and our house flocked with them at any given time. As a small child, we had cats and dogs, birds and hamsters and gerbils. The dogs scared me. We had a very high-energy Dalmation puppy, and he needed feeding. I needed to feed him. Not sure how that became my job, but that dumb dog would pounce on me and lick me and nip me and I hated it. Got so scared of him after awhile that I think feeding him kinda stopped, and my dad yelled at me about it, then gave it to my brother to do or did it himself.

Other dogs in the neighborhood wouldn't leave my alone. Our neighbor to the right had two of those St. Bernard dogs. Placing a small child in front of a dog like that is the stuff of nightmares, and I had my share. Also, across the street, another neighbor thought a St. Bernard a good idea, and I walked by these beasts, running up to the fence and woofing at me, showing teeth, every day of my kindergarten year. Terrifying.

My dolls comforted me to some extent - I had several. Never any Barbie dolls, even though I asked for some. My mother didn't like them or what they represented, so I went without those. I had one of those sock monkey dolls you see today - my mother actually took some socks and made that stinkin' sock monkey doll. No prefabricated dolls in those days! I also remember one large doll I named Maude or Molly, that I literally hugged the stuffings out of, over time.

Reading
I took to reading very early, before school. My brother claims he read to me (and he probably did), but I remember more clearly my grandmother reading to me in her rocking chair, and then I would take the book back to my room and try to read it myself.

My favorite one was a book with a gray cover about the seasons, with pictures of trees and leaves. I also loved Dr. Seuss stories. By the time I hit kindergarten, I was into hard-core reading at a second- or third-grade level, and my all-time favorite activity. In the first grade, most of the other kids were in the reading books labeled Level 6, 7, or 8 in big groups, and I sat in a group all alone at another table, reading the book labeled Level 21, 22, and 23. Something felt very different about me.

Piano Lessons Gone Awry (Sorry, Linda!)
We had a piano in our home, and Mom thought it a great idea for me to learn. Our neighbor and one of her best friends, Linda Shirts, taught piano, and she tried to teach me.

I had zero inclination to practice beyond Chopsticks, and eventually dropped it altogether, not realizing the value and usefulness of playing piano later in life. I think I even fought my mother over practicing. But even when I learned the value of it, the interest never did more than ebb at a very low level.

Rocking Chairs and Losing my Grandma
My grandmother's rocking chair held a lot of good memories for me. Sitting with her, or even sitting without her and opening that baby up, felt great. Although I did have to watch out for the cat's tails or brother's fingers. I also had one of those rocking horses on springs that I tended to abuse, just because it was so fun to try to get my head to touch the floor while still sitting in the saddle.

I remember sitting on that rocking horse after my grandmother died, even though I was technically too big for it (age 7 or so). She went to the hospital and never came back. I didn't see her again until her funeral, and while she did look like a deflated version of herself in the casket, when I touched her hand, she felt like the rocking chair: wooden and hard.

I blamed myself for her death, and it made me sad to see my mother cry. Grandma had spanked me a few weeks back for going au natural in the backyard (my brother told me it would be great, and it was, until the neighbors saw), and in my childhood fury, I went before the Lord and prayed for her death. And then she died.

Many years later, I knew it was the heart disease from years of smoking and the colon cancer and not my demands before the throne of Deity, but the guilt persisted for awhile.


Tying my shoes
My determination to learn how to tie my shoes grew over time. For many weeks and months, I could do it, but only with one loop. I couldn't manage two.

So one Saturday when I didn't have school, I sat my butt down in that rocking chair with my shoes, and vowed never to move from that spot until I could tie my shoes with two loops.

I did manage to do it after a few hours, using a cheat hack of tying the bunny ears, but finally I had the two loops. Later on I refined my technique as I got better at working my fingers, but that became my first notable success in life.

Saturday Morning Cartoons
Nothing in my whole world compared to the excitement of Saturday mornings. In those days, all the channels played cartoons, and you couldn't record them to watch them later. So if you missed them, they were gone, and who knows if they'd ever come around again?

My favorites included Justice League cartoons (why has there never been a Wonder Twins movie?), all the hippy-dippy Marty Kroft shows (Shazam, Sigmund the Sea Monster, Land of the Lost (the teenage son Will was sooooooo cute! but almost too scary for me), H.R. Pufenstuf (I even went to see the Pufenstuf movie in downtown Salt Lake when it came out), the Bugaloos, Electra Woman and Dyna Girl, and the Lost Saucer (not Jim Nabor's proudest career moment, I would wager).

We also had the Schoolhouse Rock videos that would play between shows and cereal commercials, which was like a sing-and-dance break for kids, so you could sit still again despite all the sugar you'd had for breakfast and watch more shows.

It was so sad every weekend when 11am rolled around and the grownup shows came on. Time to grab a book or go outside!

Temple Square
Whenever I did venture outside, this place beckoned me. Even if I couldn't go, I thought about going. First of all, I could walk there. It sat only a few blocks away from my house. Even as a small child, sometimes I walked over there by myself.

I would steal all the missionary pamphlets and take them home. I would watch the new couples emerge from the temple doors (including one couple once that looked a lot like Donny Osmond, but a lot of guys looked like Donny Osmond back then).

I loved the buildings, but I loved the visitor's center most of all. This spot felt like Disneyland to me, because of all the interactive exhibits, and especially the movie "Man's Search for Happiness".

I couldn't get in unless one of the missionaries stuck in their key and turned on the movie, and I was usually too shy to ask, but I would watch the theatre and sneak in when someone else decided to see it. I couldn't get enough of it - a world of wonderment for me.

I also loved the circular walkway that rose into the sky and you saw all the planets and stars on the wall, and I pretended I'd died and was going back to heaven, and then at the top was the Christus - this gigantic statue of Jesus Christ. I didn't get close - it was so huge it was intimidating - but I loved looking at it, and wondering how Jesus would look when I did see him again.

They also had a puppet play that talked about the church's Family Home Evening program that I would sit and watch, and then it was time to run into the Book of Mormon presentation and wait until someone turned it on for me (the best part was always when the whole room went so dark I couldn't see anything, not even my hands in front of my face, and then the light got gradually brighter around the figure on the screen who turned out to be Jesus visiting the people in America. Such drama, and I ate the whole thing up. Loved it).

There were the busts of the modern-day prophets after that, but by that time I was satisfied, and wandered out onto the grounds to look at the temple and the flowers before heading home.


That's probably enough stories for today, children. Another round of them tomorrow...

Personal History - Home is Like...No Place

In what other homes/places have you lived?

Lots of homes proceeded forth from the first one I remember - little did I realize that my beloved historic hovel on Quince Street would be but the beginning of many homes.

We moved to another house in Salt Lake when I grew a little older - and this would have been our last home if my dad had anything to do with it. He and his friend Brother Marsden drew up the plans, built it from the ground up, and that was it.

Except it wasn't.

Las Vegas

Economic conditions forced my father to seek employment in Las Vegas, and he stayed away for weeks and months, it felt like. He lived there, and we lived here, and we sold that house and moved to Las Vegas at the tender age of 10 years old (in my case - all five of the other children had come to our family by then, with one left to go.)

I liked our first house in Vegas - it had a sunken living room that entranced me. My dream of ballet died there after just a few lessons, a tragic casualty of the Dukes of Hazzard TV show that I loved instead.

From there, we moved to another house that fronted a busy road - not the best situation for a family full of young children, but it had a pomegranate tree that grew real pomegranates. Lost my cat Betsue there, who wandered away during a viewing of the Wizard of Oz. Never saw her again.

We moved then to our house on Acoma Court - a nice roomy house with a big desert-y backyard that my mother valiantly tried to garden. My mother tells this harrowing story of bugs filling that backyard one night, but thankfully I missed that episode. By that time, I'd reached high school, managed to make a few friends, and felt somewhat stable in life.

And then...

Maryland

My father found himself downsized, and packed his large brood up to take advantage of the opportunity to do something he'd wanted to do for a long time - move to Maryland.

And we did.

My next home was a KOA campground and a tent, for over three months. I think most of the kids considered it a great adventure, though my older brother and I had more of a sense of the disaster we faced. I swam to forget - I read to forget. My upper arms looked great that year. I couldn't afford video games or buying anything from the gift store. I found a boyfriend briefly; my first one. I would have traded all those experiences for a roof and a job for my dad.

A hastily-made friend at a local church then graciously made room for all nine of us in their home for a month or so, while my father looked for work, and we tried our best not to break anything (they had some really nice things). Again, I read, and I played on their piano. Not much else to do.

From there, work appeared, and so did a home in Bowie, MD on Killian Drive, about a mile walk from Bowie High School - I started in about a month late, and was grateful to get in at all.

Another move next year brought us to Seabury Lane, where my family stayed for a very long time. Thankfully, my walk to school dropped by about 45 minutes, and I graduated high school there.

New York (If You Can Make It There...)

...then you're doing better than I did.

In my desire to make it on Broadway as an actress, I flung my newly-graduated body up north. A crazy New Jersey roommate obsessed with Barbara Streisand and second boyfriend came along. Managed about six months before the money and morals ran out, and I had to come home or pretty much die.

Lived with my parents again for awhile, in shame and remorse. (Who has to move back home once they leave? I'd never thought I would do that!)

My slacker self managed an apartment in Gaithersburg, MD after that, while I tried to make a living on my high school diploma and my wicked typing skills. Traveled to England. Traveled to California. Traveled to Hawaii. Went bankrupt with too many credit card bills. Another crazy roommate tried to mix me up in her shenanigans. Traveled to Atlanta, and really almost died. Baby bird flew back home again, to revel in my unemployment and a super case of shingles.

Washington State

Cleaned up my act, and determined to do better from that point on. My older brother and his newly-minted wife and baby needed some assistance, so I took off West. Lived with them for a bit.

Found a roommate and moved in with her (I never did have any luck with roommates). Got married and escaped her.

We had one cheap-y apartment, until the drug bust next door. And the carpenter ants in the windows.

Then we found another apartment, a much nicer one...until I lost my job that I hated. So with very mixed emotions, we packed up the U-Haul and moved back home.

Again.

Deja-With A View

I am forever grateful to my parents for saving my can several times when I needed a place to stay. We lived with my parents for another couple of years, and my oldest boy came to us there. I couldn't bear the thought of giving him to daycare, so I told my boss I would quit a week before he was born.

Boss-man offered to set me up to work from home. This was unheard of in the 1990s, but I jumped on the opportunity.

Hubby and baby and I moved into a new apartment in the next town over from Bowie, called Crofton, MD.

Then a second apartment, also in Crofton.

Then a cheaper basement apartment in a large home, where our eldest girl came to us.

Then we found a townhouse in Crofton again, and our third child, a girl, decided to come and stay. Working at home with three infants grew untenable. We learned that 'HOA' stood for 'hell on acid', at least for us.

Then someone decided to fly some planes into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and a field in Pennsylvania the day after my younger brother got married, and a new trajectory got set.

Texas

We lost our jobs, which was a good thing, since I had four babies now; our last son came right after our pinkslips. We looked for work, then sold our home, and, once again, moved back in with...well, you know. Just us and four infants.

We had to choose a new location. Either Utah or Texas. The decision came down to Texas, and off we went again.

Hubby felt pretty sure we might die, even though we got a boatload of money from the sale of our home. I didn't know what to think, but our new apartment in Seagoville sheltered us through the Christmas season.

After that, a new home presented itself in the Dallas area, and we moved in.

Haven't moved since. All our kids grew up in this home, on purpose. Will probably never move again.

The End...?

Have we found our bliss at last?  Was Texas the end of the line, the 'no-place-like-home' place?

The truthful answer is 'no'.

Not for me, anyway. Hubby loves Texas, front to back. I love hubby, so I stay. But it's not home.

I've moved so much in my life, I don't know that anywhere can feel like home. I might have just broken that part of me that sets down roots for generations and loves just one place; I don't know.

But at least I'm not living with my parents anymore! :-) WaHOO!

Personal History - First Home

Where was your first home?

I feel I've already answered this question in full. But now I can't find the answer.

Though my life began in Florida, I don't remember any of that.

We moved when I was six weeks old, with Hurricane Camille on our heels. Seat belts were optional in those days, and my mother tried to drive the family car and breastfeed me at the same time.

I feel lucky to be alive.

We then landed in Orem for a short time, and from there, we came to sunny Salt Lake City, where we lived on 322 Quince Street, the first home I remember.

The First Home Memory That Stuck...

My first memory involved blue legs, like tree trunks. Looking up and up, to see very tall men in suits in our family living room. Missionaries from our church. Everyone and everything seemed really tall back then.

The stairs might as well have been carved into a mountain. I feared falling down them (and probably pushed my little brother down them a time or two - can't remember very well now).

We split the home with another lady who lived downstairs - her name was Doncella, I believe, and as a child, I feared her. I think I saw an ant on her once, and felt afraid that if I touched her, I would get ants on me too. I have no memory of ever visiting her half of the house, even though she and my mom talked frequently.

Come along for a virtual tour.

My Bedroom

My bunk bed (one of four that I shared with three brothers) seemed gigantic. And younger brother fell out of that one too, and survived. An impressive feat. I used to spin on that bed, hoping to turn into Wonder Woman. One Christmas I was dragged out of that bed and forced to put on a costume and pretend to be Mary in an impromptu Nativity presentation. My brother Mike played Joseph, Peter pulled off a nice shepherd, and baby Paul laid in the crib and nailed the Savior. It's a cute picture, but I got yelled at at least once for being grumpy about it, so the memory is slightly tainted.

...To The Living Room...

The living room in my home held a black-and-white TV, with tinfoil on the rabbit ears from time to time. Getting good reception took some effort, but Saturday morning cartoons wove a magic spell every weekend. And for some reason, adding sugar to those cartoons just supercharged the effect.

...To the Kitchen...

Only a few steps took you to the kitchen, a small white room with a table, a fridge, and a drying rack, with another bedroom to the side. Mom would make bread for us in huge batches - seven or eight loaves at a time - and I would help her knead, up to my elbows in a big washtub of rubbery dough.

I learned to make cake there, and pasta. (Such a carby childhood - again, glad to be alive!) My father tried to get me to eat tomatoes there, and many years passed before I could. Then there was the rabbits...but that's a horror story for another day.

...To the Backyard.

Out the door out back, and a jungle unfolded to one's view. A cement area close to the house, but after that, it was dogs and trees and mud pies and a gigantic wall with vines hanging down.

For some reason, backyards in Utah seemed to extend forever in a sort of Narnia effect when I was a kid. I didn't always go all the way to the back, like my brothers did though. Or maybe my mind did some embellishing of my surroundings.

I would stop about halfway to the wall, and turn around and look at the view of my house, the Lemon's house next door, and the street heading down towards our church and Temple Square.

...and Down the Street to the Rest of my World

Behind the wall was steep mountains, and if you went a little ways to the left down the street and up the hill, the Utah Capital building arose into view along with those mountains. A little further to the left, and the spires of the temple rose.

Everything seemed to tower over me, and left me feeling a strong sense of awe a lot of the time.

This summer my family is planning a return to that place, where I'm sure my bubble of memory is likely to bust. Nothing's ever as big as it used to be. Still, that sense of nostalgia for that home is definitely worth the trip.

Follow-Up

My mother corrected me on several points on this story, as follows...

"...we never lived in Orem. We lived in Ogden when we first moved to Utah. Also, Doncella never lived in the same house with us. She was a family friend. The people who lived in the basement apartment at the Quince Street house were a young couple. My memory of them is inviting them to come to dinner, at which time the young man proceeded to tell me that his mother's food was so much better than mine. We never did become good buddies."

LOL! Oh well - at least I remembered it started with an 'O'! :-) And I don't remember Mr. and Mrs. Manners at all...