My adolescent years are filled with wonderful memories of family and friends as well as the challenges of growing up and discovering who you are. Deanne and I became the best of friends all through life and most of my memories are with her. Although my mother would make all of our clothes the same, we made sure not to dress alike. Only on special occasions or on accident would we find ourselves dressed alike. I guess it was our way of keeping our individuality.
Twins were very prone in our family. At one point, we had nine sets of twins in three generations. Every time we would have a family reunion, Grandma Huntington would always insist on a picture of twins. It was her pride and joy. Here is a picture we had taken at one of our reunions.
Back row from left to right: Michael and Jeffrey Waters, Donald Dunn and Deanna Golden, Marlene and Charlene Wood.
Front row from left to right: Deanne Hansen and Diane Adams, Edith Dunn and Ethel Sorenson, Fay Wood and Fern Warner
The following is a newspaper article written on the Huntington twins.
My mother said that there was never a dull moment around the house with us and with our Dad. He was awesome and we loved him. For bedtime, when he was trying to quiet us down, he would come in a "trounce" us. It was a blast! He would throw us up in the air and let us drop and bounce on the bed. We would laugh and giggle until Mom came in and got after Dad for getting us all riled up. Then he would leave and she would put us to bed.
When Dad would babysit, that was the best. One time, he wanted to watch the ball game so he put a big tub of water in the middle of the kitchen floor and then let us play in it. He knew right where we were and he could watch the games. We had a great time playing in the water and never caused any trouble.
All through grade school Deanne and I were usually in the same class. One year, they decided to separate us to see if one was relying on the other. After a few days of having us split, they decided it wasn't an issue and put us back together.
For some reason, I really had a knack for getting into trouble by saying the wrong things and Deanne was always coming to my defense and helping me out. On the other hand, Deanne was always getting hurt for some reason, and I would be helping her. It seemed like every other week either she or I were in the office with some type of injury from the playground. We got to know our principles and office staff quite well and they got to know us. Over the years Deanne and myself made a good team.
Deanne was the spunky one and loved to challenge the rules, and I was the one that obeyed all of the rules and would tell if Deanne tried to break them. She was fearless and daring in many ways and I was shy and timid. Deanne could learn so fast and do anything and I struggled to learn. If I could do something well, she could do it 10 times better. Rather than being jealous though, I thought she was the best and was so proud of her. I always looked up to her for strength.
My Aunt Eldene had a daughter, Kathy, who was about 9 months older than us and she would come over and Colleen would babysit us. It was like having triplets. One day we decided to check out the fireplace. When Mom came down, she found all of us black as coal and what a mess we made! When we were over to my Aund Eldene's, we found her expensive bottle of perfume and got it all over the furniture. She couldn't breath for a week!
My mother use to tell me that when she would put us to bed in our cribs, we figured out how to take each other's hands and pull our beds together so that we could play with each other. One time she put card board boxes over the tops of the cribs so that we couldn't get to each other or get out. That proved to be a downfall as we messed our diapers so we decided to paint the walls with it. I don't remember much about it, but apparently it was a memory maker for my mother because she told us about it often.
Dad also loved to play pranks on us. He would sneak into the bedroom and grab our toes and we would squeal with delight. When we would be playing outside in the sandbox, Dad would quietly sneak into the bathroom, fill a big tub of water and then dump it out the window right on top of us. Then he would run and jump into bed and pretend he was asleep. We would all come running into the house and pull him out of bed and outside for a wonderful water fight.
The famous tote goats became a major part of our lives in the mountains and in the valley, it didn't matter. In the summer, we would go every weekend to some canyon in Utah, our favorite being Payson Lakes. Here are some pictures of some of our Payson Lake trips.
This is up at Payson Lake in 1961 with Uncle LeVoy and his family. In the back is Uncle LeVoy and in the front from left to right is me, Colleen, our dog Shasta, and Deanne.
All through grade school Deanne and I were usually in the same class. One year, they decided to separate us to see if one was relying on the other. After one day of having us split, they decided it wasn't an issue and put us back together.
For some reason, I really had a knack for getting into trouble by saying the wrong things and Deanne was always coming to my defense and helping me out. On the other hand, Deanne was always getting hurt for some reason, and I would be helping her. It seemed like every other week either she or I were in the office with some type of injury from the playground. We got to know our principles and office staff quite well and they got to know us. Over the years Deanne and myself made a good team.
Deanne was the spunky one and loved to challenge the rules, and I was the one that obeyed all of the rules and would tell if Deanne tried to break them. She was fearless and daring in many ways and I was shy and timid. Deanne could learn so fast and do anything and I struggled to learn. If I could do something well, she could do it 10 times better. Rather than being jealous though, I thought she was the best and was so proud of her. I always looked up to her for strength.
My Aunt Eldene had a daughter, Kathy, who was about 9 months older than us and she would come over and Colleen would babysit us. It was like having triplets. One day we decided to check out the fireplace. When Mom came down, she found all of us black as coal and what a mess we made! When we were over to my Aund Eldene's, we found her expensive bottle of perfume and got it all over the furniture. She couldn't breath for a week!