CHAPTER TWO

Starting from the time we arrived at our home on 23rd Ave. in Phoenix, Arizona until we moved to our new home on 40th Ave. This was three years.

But before I go on with my life, I would like to tell of two more things that I remember while in Woodruff.  The first is the rope bridge that went across the river.  We called it a swinging bridge because it would swing when you were crossing it. Why I remember it is because I was very frightened of it and one day my sister Joyce, wanted me to go across the bridge with her and I didn't want to. I don't remember if I went, but I don't think I did.

The other thing I remember is our black horse and the time my dad put Thad, my older brother, and I on it and I fell off and bumped my head on the dump truck that my dad had. So much for that with my life.

When we first got to Phoenix, it was in the fall of the year and school was almost to start. It was my first year of school. The school we went to was Murphy. It was about a mile from our home and, of course, we had to walk. It wasn't five miles and it wasn't uphill both ways and it wasn't cold because it didn't get cold in Phoenix. My sister, Joyce, and my brother, Thad, were with me so it was great.

My first year of school was quite eventful. My first grade teacher was Mrs. Ryan and all the kids called her Mr. Mellon Rind. One time that year my dad came to a parent-teacher conference. Well, Mrs. Ryan always called me Arthur, so after that my dad would tease me because everyone at home called me Art. The first year I also learned how to ditch. Another boy and I had heard some of the older boys talking about ditching and so we thought we would try it.  Every day after recess we would go out in the ditch and play instead of going back to class. It was great until Mrs. Ryan told my sister, and you know what happened then. That year I didn't get to pass on to the second grade. Instead I was put in the High First. This was the system they had at Murphy and when we moved the new school wee went to didn't have this system. So I was in the same grade that year as the year before which was the third grade.

My first three years of school I learned to read, write, do math, spell and a few other things. My favorite was marbles, and I got almost good at it, but I also got in trouble over marbles. I got my first spanking from the Principal. One day at recess I was in a marble game and I was winning and the bell rang and the boy I was playing with grabbed the marbles that were left in the pot. I didn't think he should have, so I tackled him and we were fighting. The Principal came out of his office and stopped us, then took us into his office and gave us a spanking. So my first spanking, but not the last. I got my first look at sports at Murphy and became very interested. I got out of school before my brother and sister, so I would go out to the ball field and watch until they got out.

The summers in Phoenix were very hot, so the boys in the neighborhood would be in the ditch most of the time. These ditches were cement and had clear water in them. This ditch was about a block away from our house on 23rd Ave. Because we stayed in the ditch, we would sometimes get into trouble.

My brother, Thad, and I were assigned to watch the cows we had and sometimes we would forget and the cows would wander off and Dad would come home and we would be in trouble and we would have to go find them. On one occasion we found them, but we had to go across a sticker patch and I never wore shoes, so I had to go across the sticker patch bare foot. We called these stickers bull heads because they looked like a little bull head. Another time Dad made us go across a 40 acre field to find our cow and in this field was a big bull. As Thad and I were going across this field I was crying because Dad had beat on me all the way to the field. Thad was smarter than I. He got in the back of the truck we had then, but I got in the front. Anyway, I was crying most of the way across the field and all the way across the field this bull would charge at us. Thad would throw a clod at him and the bull would stop and paw the ground a few times and charge us again. This went on all the way across the field. When we got to the other side, my dad was waiting for us with the owner of the field. He got after my dad for sending us across the field because he said that the bull was mean. He also had our cow.

Some of the games we played in our neighborhood were rubber gun wars we made out of a piece of wood and used a clothes pin to hold the rubber band in place. The rubber bands were made form old car tubes. Another thing we would do was to make stilts. One of the boys in the neighborhood made a pair of stilts that he had to get on top of the house to get on, but most of them were only about three feet from the ground, so we could walk down the ditch and not get our feet wet.

When we lived on 23rd Ave. I thought I was pretty fast, but one day my mother taught me that I wasn't so fast after all. That day I did something wrong and my mother said I needed spanked, and I thought I could run fast enough to get away, but she caught me and spanked me. Another time Thad and I did something wrong and Mom told us that we needed spanked, but she gave us a choice. She said either she would spank us or we could wait for Dad. Well we decided we would wait for Dad, so we climbed the tree in our front yard because we thought Dad wouldn't climb the tree to get us. When he got home he didn't climb the tree he threw rocks at us until we came down. Then we wished that we had let Mom spank us.

On 23rd Ave. there were only two other houses besides ours, between Buckeye Road and Durango, about a half mile. Our house was about in the middle and Bartletts at Durango and another, but I don't remember who lived there. It was about a block away.

Some of the boys in our neighborhood that I can remember are Jack Turner, Donald Romine. I guess that's all.

My oldest sister, Wilma (most people called her Billie), Joyce, my brothers, Thad, Teddy, Ronnie, myself and Mom and Dad were our family.

CHAPTER THREE

Dad bought an acre of land on 40th Ave. about one and a half blocks north of Van Buren Street. 40th Ave. was only about two blocks long at this point and dead ended. Dad built a house there and the summer of 1939 we moved to this new neighborhood and lived there until the summer of 1943. While we lived here I will try to tell the things that happened in my life.

All this period of time the U.S. was involved in the 2nd World War, so much of the time we were on rations, but we seemed to get along all right. We had cows so we had all the milk we wanted, and Mom baked bread all the time. One year Dad rented an acre of land about a block west of 40th Ave. on Van Buren and planted watermelons on it. That summer Thad and I had to stay in the watermelon patch for about two weeks when they got ready to pick so that no one would steal them.  But it was all right because the ditch we swam in was just across the street and we were in it a good part of the day and we would get some of our friends and have a watermelon bust. The ditch across the street was where the boys in the neighborhood would go to swim because there was a bridge across the ditch from which we would dive into the ditch. There was also a cottonwood tree there and we would have contests to see who could get the highest in the tree and dive into the ditch without hitting the bottom. I became the champion of that contest, I think because I was so small for my age.

At our house there was a large weeping willow tree in our yard out by the road on the ditch bank. This ditch wasn't a ditch that we swam in. It was only about one foot deep. The tree was about in the middle of the yard. On the south side of the yard was the driveway. On the north side of the driveway just a little ways in was a very tall eucalyptus tree which we cut down after we had lived there for awhile. About in the middle of the yard was a tamarack tree and also one next to the house. In the back yard there was a small house where Thad and I slept during the summer. There was also a row of tamarack trees there, and we would climb up in the trees and go from the last tree in the yard to the front of the main house without getting down. Of course, we built a tree house and we had a rope to swing down out of the tree house. Sometimes we would swing down onto the cows that were in the shade of the trees.

We always had three or four milk cows and it seems that Thad and I were always taking care of them. One acre didn't seem to be enough to feed them, so Dad would rent other places to put them and Thad an I herded them from one place to another. One day Thad and I were bringing them back home and I was doing all the herding. Thad was riding on one of the cows and he thought he was pretty smart because he was laying down on the back of the cow and I was doing all the work. We got almost home and the cows were walking along the ditch bank and I saw a chance to get back at him. I ran up and hit the cow he was riding on the rump and the cow jumped and Thad ended up in the ditch. I ran on home and Thad had to bring the cows on in so he couldn't chase me and beat me up. But although Thad beat me up many times in our life together, we were really good friends all our life. We were together most of our young life. At school when we played football we always tried to get on the same team and when we did the guys on the other team would say, "Don't run around the end where the Turleys are!"  In school Thad was champion boxer and he liked to box, so we built a boxing ring in our back yard and Thad used me for a punching bag. I tried as hard as I could to beat him, but I never did.

When I was ten years old we had two tractors, an Oliver 80 and an old John Deere. The John Deere had steel wheels so Dad didn't use it very much. One day it was parked in one of our neighbor's fields and I decided I would start it up and drive it around in the field. Well, I got it started and was driving it around in the field and Dad came home and caught me. I thought I was in big trouble, but to my surprise Dad wasn't angry with me at all. He thought it was great and from then on I was the designated tractor driver in the family. At this time he was doing custom plowing and disking part time and so I was given the job of disking after he had plowed the field. Well, that was my first paying job. I got paid 15 cent an acre. That summer I made enough to buy me a bike and clothes for school. The next summer I learned how to drive a car because when the tractor would run out of gas out in the field Dad would have me go bring the truck over to put more gas in, but I never drove the truck out on the highway. I did drive the tractor on the highway when we moved from one place to another or to take the tractor to the house.

We had a lot of fun in the trees around our house, but sometimes it might have seemed to be a strain on Mom. One time I remember my brother, Teddy, took a sheet out to the trees and climbed as high as he could and was going to jump and use the sheet for a parachute. I tried to tell him that he would hurt himself, but he wouldn't listen to me. I went in the house and told Mom and she went out and told him to come down, so he didn't jump. Another time my youngest brother, Ronnie, climbed up in the tree in front of the house. He got nearly to the top of the limb and got scared and wouldn't come down, so Dad told me to go up and help him down. Well, I went up to help him, but when I got close he started crying and screaming. I didn't know how I was going to get him down and then the limb broke and both of us came down without a scratch. Ronnie was very frightened and cried for some time, but was not hurt. Looking back on it now I know that that was the only way I could have gotten him down without both of us getting hurt and probably bad. This was one of the many times in my life that I know that Heavenly Father was watching over me.

During this period of time we, as a family, didn't go to Church. I did get to go to Primary a few times because we had a neighbor down the street from us that was a member and she would take us to Primary. She had two boys that went too. It was the only time that I can remember of going to Primary. At this time I was in the Trailblazer class and Primary was on a weekday, so we only got to go during the summer and sometimes on Saturday in the rest of the year. That year I built a hope chest and gave it to my sister, Joyce. She still has it after this many years. The following year I was in the Scouts and Scouts was held in the school, not at Church. Our scoutmaster was my teacher. His name was Earl B. Millet and he was a member of the Church. He lived in Mesa and came all the way over to the school on Tuesday night to teach us Scouting. He also brought his two sons to help. As I remember there were quite a number who came. From our area there were four and we would ride our bikes or walk. If we walked it was a mile and a half. If we rode our bikes it was three miles.

I only remember one overnight camp out that we went on. It was at Camp Creek. It was about thirty miles north of Phoenix then. Now it is part of Phoenix. Anyway, we camped there on Camp Creek and the next morning most of the troop went on a ten mile hike to Seven Springs, but some of us didn't want to go, so we went up the mountain and rolled boulders down the mountain most of the day. Then we went exploring and found an old mining shack and in it we found some dynamite caps. With me were my brother, Thad, and his friend, A.J. Anyway, that is what we called him. His name was Alvin John Richards. Back to the dynamite caps. A.J. took them back to camp and that night after almost everyone was in bed, A.J. threw the dynamite caps into the fire and they made a loud bang. The leaders all came over and wanted to know what it was. A.J. told them that it must have been the sandstone around the fire, but the leaders didn't believe him. Finally, A.J. told them the truth and that he and my brother, Thad, had put the dynamite caps in the fire. The next day Thad and A.J. had to chop wood all day.

As I said before, World War II was going on at this time of my life, so we heard many things about it  the enemy. At the movie during the intermission there was always something about the Japs, Italians, or Germans. At school I had a very good friend that was Japanese. His name was Henry Ishakawa. Well, when Pearl Harbor was bombed by the Japs, the U.S. government put all the Japanese people in concentration camps and my friend Henry was taken away. When he came back after a couple of years Henry didn't want any friends but Japanese, and so I lost a good friend.

During the war period, an aluminum plant was built at 35th Ave and Van Buren. The plant extended past 40th Ave. It had an 8 foot chain link fence with barbed wire rolled out on top. On every corner was a guard house with men with rifles to guard the plant. I guess they were afraid that someone would get in and blow the place up, but nothing ever happened. One night A.J., Thad and I were at a school carnival and on the way home it was after dark and we cut across the field that we always did when we had to walk because it was much closer. Well, every time the light would come our way we would lay flat in the field so they couldn't see us. We did this all the rest of the way across the field. The next day we found out that they were looking for a Jap that was hiding in the pump house out in the middle of the field.

Also at this time a housing facility was built to house the workers that had come to Arizona to work in the aluminum plant. They brought their families, so our school enrollment doubled that year. Every class had to be made into two classes. The principal called the A and B. At this time I was in the 4th grade. I was put in the A class and Mr. Millet was our teacher. Mr. Millet was our teacher every year that I went to Isaac School. The teachers moved up with the class each year.

All the years I was at Isaac School I played sports: softball, basketball, and football. I even played marbles and when I was in the 4th grade I came in 2nd place in the All-School marble tournament. In the 6th grade the basketball team that I played on won the All-City basketball tournament and I was the high point man on our team. Every game I made 4 to 6 points. We should have won.

CHAPTER FOUR

In 1943 Dad decided that us boys were old enough to help make a living for the family, so he quit his job, sold our home on 40th Ave., bought 35 head of milk cows, leased 20 acres with a home on 43rd Avenue and Van Buren, and we had a family dairy. Dad milked 7 cows, Thad milked 6 cows, I milked 5 cows, Teddy milked one and Ronnie milked two. So at that time we were milking 21 head. The rest were not old enough or were not fresh. One of the cows that I milked gave two and a half gallon buckets full of milk every milking, so it was like I milked 6 head. Boy was I glad when she dried up each year. The way it was is that when a cow would get close to the time to have a calf, she would dry up, so we had other cows that would calf before one would go dry. That way we always had 21 cows giving milk at the same time. Sometimes these cows weren't that easy to milk, especially the ones that we were starting to milk for the first time. They didn't seem to like it at all. We had to practically tie them down to milk them for awhile, then after we thought that they were all right, they would kick us over and spill the milk. But what I really didn't like about milking cows was when the cow would lay in her manure and get all over her tail and then when you were milking her she would swish her tail to get rid of the flies and slap you on the side of the face with her manure-filled tail. To me that wasn't very fun, but it happened many times in the 6 years we had the dairy.

When we started the dairy, Dad told us boys that we could have a cow or a horse. Ronnie and Teddy decided they wanted a cow, but Thad and I wanted a horse. Well, Ronnie and Teddy got a cow and they had to milk them, but that is all they got out of that deal, and Thad and I got a horse. Thad got a real good horse, a Morgan. You could ride him all day and he didn't seem to get tired and he was real good with the cows when we had to take them from one pasture to another. My horse Dad bought out of a wild herd. She was a pretty little filly. She had white stockings about a foot up each leg and a white slash on her head and she had a white spot on her flank. The rest was reddish brown. When Dad bought her for me she wasn't yet a year old, so I couldn't ride her for about six months, but that was all right because it gave me time to break her to ride. Every day when I got home from school I would go out to the corral and work with her. At first I would just lead her around, then when she got used to that I would put a blanket on her back and got her used to that. After 6 months when she was strong enough to carry my weight, I would put my arms over her back and have someone lead her around. Then after a few days of that, I put my full weight on her and in about a month after that I was riding her. I don't think I ever got her fully broke, because she would throw me when I was least expecting it, and then she would just stand there as if she was laughing at me. I kept her for 6 years and sold her to Thad for 40 dollars. He wanted to trade to a neighbor for a buckskin mare because our neighbor really wanted my horse, but he didn't want to pay for it. I didn't want the mare, so Thad bought her from me because he wanted the mare. Later I will tell about the buckskin mare, but not now.

We lived on 43rd Avenue for only one year and then Dad found an 80 acre place and he bought it for 25 dollars an acre and we moved there. It didn't have a house on it, so Mom didn't move out there until we got a place for her, and it took awhile to do that. Meanwhile, she stayed with our sister, Willma.

When we moved the dairy herd from 43rd Avenue and Van Buren to the ranch, Thad and I on our horses herded them, which was about 10 miles, so it took us most of the day. We took them out Van Buren to 51st Avenue, then south on 51st Avenue across the Salt River (most of this was on a dirt road then), then to Southern Avenue, and then east to the ranch. When we first moved to the ranch, as I said, Mom didn't go with us, so we didn't have a cook and almost every day Dad would shoot some rabbits and that's what we had to eat. Thad almost starved because he wouldn't eat rabbit.

We were now in the Laveen school district so when school started Ronnie, Teddy, and I went to Laveen School. Thad had to catch the bus to Phoenix Union High School which was about 15 miles away. The school at Laveen was much different than Isaac School because it was so much smaller. We still had all the sports, but we had to play the bigger schools, so we didn't win many games except in basketball.  We had a good basketball team because we had enough people in the 7th and 8th grades to make a team. In the other sports we didn't have enough and had to use younger guys, so our football team was quite small and our softball team had two girls on it. But we still played. We played two of the schools that I attended before moving to Laveen, which were Isaac and Murphy. We also played Roosevelt and they had on their team some of the guys that I later went to high school with and played on the high school baseball team with me. Roosevelt School was the only school that we beat in softball. They let a girl play for them. Our team had a girl play first base and second base. I played short stop. As I said before, we had a good basketball team and would have won the area championship, but I got sick when the game was played and didn't go to school that day. We only lost by 4 points and I was always good for at least 10 points a game.

When our school class had a party or any function, I still had to milk my cows before I could go, so I didn't go very much or get involved in any after school activities. But the next year when I was in high school Dad let me try out for the basketball team and I made the team and played on the freshman basketball team at Phoenix Tech.

The year we moved to the ranch during the summer months, Thad and I went to work for a man that Dad knew who baled hay. Thad did what they called blocking the bales and I bucked bales. What I did was to stack 20 bales on the cart that was pulled behind the baler. I also had to weigh a bale every 100 bales so we could estimate how many tons we baled each day. That's how we determined how much we would get paid each day. The first year I got paid 15 cents a ton. That wasn't very much, but it seemed to me to be quite a bit and I was happy with it because I had earned my own money. We still had to milk the cows each morning and night and I promised myself that when I grew up I would never have a dairy, and I didn't, but I did have a chance to work on a dairy but didn't do it. This baler that we worked on was pulled by horses so it took  one less person to operate it. Normally it would take 5 people, but because it was pulled by horses we only used 4--one to push the hay into the plunger, one to block the bales, one to tie the wires, and one to buck the bales. A few years later the bale buck was eliminated because they invented a loader that would pick up single bales. I worked each year for this man whose name was Dutch Hill, until in between my junior and senior year in high school. The reason was because Dutch's wife died and he quit baling.

This year, because I didn't have a job baling hay, two of my friends from school and I decided to go somewhere else to get a job. First, we went to Showlow, Arizona where I had worked in the saw mill the year before, but they didn't have any work for us, so we next went to Sacramento, California where the friend that had the car we were riding in on this trip, had some relatives. The other guy's name was Al Johnson. We slept in a hay stack that was near the road. The next day Al and I hitchhiked on to Carmel, California and stayed on the beach at a warehouse that belonged to Al's dad. The next day we tried to find Al's dad but he was out of town, so we decided to go to Los Gatos, California where Al's grandmother lived. We thought maybe we could get work there picking apricots. We hitchhiked back up to Los Gatos, because it was farther north. We didn't get a ride the first day so we walked across the Golden Gate Bridge and that night we slept under a bridge at San Rafael. The next day we decided to catch a bus to Santa Cruz and hitchhiked on to Los Gatos where we stayed at Al's grandmother's. The other guy that started with us, found us there. 

The next day Al got a job at a place where they dried apricots and the week after the other guy (I don't remember his name so I'll just call him the other guy) and I got a job picking apricots where the trees were on the side of a hill and it was quite steep. It only took us about three or four jumps to get to the bottom of the hill and we had a hard time setting our ladders to climb up to pick the fruit. Well, these jobs only lasted about two weeks and we didn't make very much money so we next went to Campbell, California where we tried to get a job at the Campbell Soup factory, but didn't get any. I got a job picking cherries. The other two tried to get a job there but the owner wouldn't hire them. He said he didn't like their looks. While we were in Campbell, we rented a tent to live and and because the other guys didn't get a job there, they decided to go to Los Angeles. So they took the car and left me there by myself. One night after picking cherries all day and being tired I laid down on my cot and a knock at the door startled me because I wasn't expecting anyone. I went to the door and two policemen were there asking about the guy whose name I don't remember. His mother had called the police in California and wanted them to send him home. All I cold tell them was that he went to L.A. A few days later Al and another guy came in and told me that the police had come and sent the other guy home to Arizona, no now we were really afoot.

When I finished picking cherries we all went back down to L.A. and stayed for a couple of days. Then Al and I went to Lake Port, California to pick pears. We didn't have a place to stay so we camped out in a park on the shore of the lake. We did get a job right away and the man who owned the orchard told us we could sleep in his barn if we didn't smoke in there. Well, that was no problem for me because I didn't smoke, but Al did and one night the man came in the barn and caught Al smoking and wouldn't let us stay there any longer so we went back to the park.

While we were there in Lake Port we decided to go to church with some friends of Al's. The church they went to was the Four Square Gospel. Al went there because of a girl that he knew that went there. One Sunday when we went the minister asked all who wanted to be saved to come to the front, and Al went up and got saved, but just to impress the girl. I wouldn't go up.

When we finished with the pears we had quite a bit of money because we made $50 a day 6 days a week. It was the end of the summer and time to go home, so Al bought a car and we went home. When I got home I had about $800. While I was gone Dad had had some difficulties with the fruit stand that they had, so I gave him nearly all of the money that I had to help out on the condition that I cold take some money out of the cash register when I needed it. I never did get all of my money back because Dad turned the fruit stand over to my brother-in-law, Jim Buckner and we moved back to the ranch.

Before we moved back to the ranch, while I was in California, Teddy and Ronnie started going to Church and were baptized. They didn't get baptized when they were eight like the rest of us did because we weren't going to church then. So when they wanted to go to church Mom would ask me if I would take them because Dad didn't seem to have time to take them. By then I had bought a car. It was a 1935 Willis Coupe that I bought for $35 and had rebuilt the engine. So I said I would. Well, I would take them to church and leave them and then when it was over I would go back and get them. After about two weeks of that I decided to go with them, so that's how I got started going back to Church after 9 years. I guess Satan thought he had me, but I got out of his grasp after a struggle. It was this period of time that I was running with the baseball team and we were playing summer baseball. After each game the team would have a beer party. Every time they would try to get me to drink with them, but I wouldn't. One night we were having one of these beer parties and the guys kept after me until I finally said that I would try some. I took the bottle, raised it to my mouth, but when I got it that close to my nose and I smelled the beer, it nearly gagged me, so I dumped it out and the guys got very upset. I told them that I couldn't understand how they could drink such stuff as bad as it smelled. After that they never again asked me to drink beer or any other alcoholic beverage and they started calling me the Golden Haired Angel.

When the summer was over and we had moved back to the ranch, I had quit running with that group of guys and had been going to church every Sunday and MIA every week. We were in the Capital Ward so when we moved back to the ranch we had to go some distance to go to church. At this time the Phoenix Stake had formed a new ward. It was much closer, but Teddy and Ronnie wanted to go to the Capital still because they had girl friends there, so we continued going to the Capital Ward. While I was in the Capital Ward I was ordained a Deacon and then after about a month a Teacher and then about a month later a Priest. One night after supper there was a knock at the door. At the door was a man who said he was our Ward Teacher. This man said his name was Frank Biggs. He also had a young man with him who he said was his son named Jack. It happened to be that I knew Jack at school. We were in a couple of classes together. Needless to say, I decided I wanted to go to the Sixth Ward after that, but Teddy and Ronnie wanted to continue to go to the Capital Ward. Well, I went my way and they went theirs for awhile anyway.

CHAPTER FIVE

This period of time was very special to me because I began to know who I was and what I wanted to do with my life. Especially I learned about Heavenly Father and His son Jesus Christ and the Holy Ghost. I learned more about the Priesthood and what it meant to me and my part in the Priesthood and in the Kingdom of God on the earth. I learned about faith and repentance. I learned about testimonies and I developed a desire to have a testimony and to know God and Jesus and to feel their love and to know that they were real. And I began to study the scriptures. I read the Book of Mormon and when I read the verse where Moroni says if you truly want to know to study with real intent and then pray you will know, I did as he said. It happened that at this time I was home by myself for one week. Mom and Dad took Ronnie and Teddy to Sholow with them and Thad was in the Air Force and I was left to take care of the animals. For five days I fasted and prayed. It didn't come as a thunder, but it did come as a still small voice and I began to know and to feel the Spirit. The Holy Ghost had revealed it to me. From that time my testimony began to grow and it hasn't stopped growing and I hope that it never will.

When I started going to Church at the Sixth Ward, the people I ran around with changed and my life changed. No more beer parties after the ball games. I started running with Jack Biggs and instead of playing ball for the school I played on the Church ball team. In fact, the day Jack and I graduated from high school, instead of going to the graduation parties, we played on the Church softball team.

When the Sixth Ward was organized, there wasn't a church building to meet in so we met in the cafeteria of the Roosevelt School for Priesthood meetings, Sunday School and Sacrament, and in the neighborhood house for M.I.A. The neighborhood house was a building across 7th street from Roosevelt School. This is where I learned to dance and where I had my first date. The girl was Toy Openshaw, the occasion was the Gold and Green Ball. I dated Toy only one time because she was engaged to a sailor, but she went off to BYU and married another guy. Most of the girls I went with were in he Sixth Ward.

We had a great time in M.I.A. and we had some great teachers. Some that I can remember are Milt Norton, Georgina Beaty, Phil Smith, and the Jenkins. They taught us some rally run dances. There was also Lot Burk, Tom Beaty, Silas Fish, and of course, our Bishop Walter P. Haggard. Then there was Thurl and Ruth Stapley, Frank and Sister Biggs, Austin Gibbons, Mary Gibbons, Tom Murdock, Dent and Valoria Coombs, Link Packer and many more that I can't remember.

This time of my life I began to look for a wife. The first girl I went steady with was Barbara Jenkins, but she ran off with a guy and got married. Then I met a girl at the stake dance that I dated and thought she might be the one, and then she found someone she liked better, so that ended.

Then for awhile I didn't date. I would just go tot he Saturday night dances and dance with any girl that would dance. I was searching for someone that would be my eternal companion. After about two months I started dating again. This time I dated the Bishop's daughter. Her name was Vida Haggard. Then I got an invitation to be in the military. I got a time to report for active duty. All the young men and women in the ward gave me a going away party and a Book of Mormon as a gift. When I went, or just before I had to report, I had a date with Vida and I asked her what she would do if I asked her to marry me and she said, "I don't know." Then when I went to report for duty they gave us another physical and decided they didn't want me after all. They said that I had a heart murmur and flat feet and they couldn't use me in that part of the service, so I went home and that night I called Vida to tell her the good news. She was on a date.  Well, I got my answer about her marrying me. So after that I didn't date for almost a year because it didn't seem that any girl wanted to marry me so I swore off girls.

After going with Aletha for about six months I got a job in Winslow, Arizona at a Standard Service Station as what they called a salesman, but actually it was a service station attendant. I did get a commission on all that I sold to the customers except gas. I got about $80 a week. I moved to Winslow, but before I went, Aletha and I decided that we would get married and the date we decided on was in June, 1953. After we had been apart for about 3 months, Aletha wrote me and said she wanted to change the date of our marriage to April and, of course, I agreed because I was ready to be married right then. If she would have said let's get married the next day I would have agreed. Anyway, in about 2 more months she wrote and said she couldn't wait until April 1953, and she wanted our wedding date to be in November and we set the date on November 10, 1952. Aletha got everything arranged for that date at the temple in Mesa, Arizona. That date was on a Monday and the temple was closed on Monday, but she, along with her grandmother, got the Temple President to allow us to have our wedding on that date.

We were married November 10, 1952 at the Mesa Temple. There weren't very many there for our wedding. My dad wasn't there because he couldn't get a recommend. My mom had died just two months before that date and Aletha's mom had divorced her dad. But her dad, Austin Gibbons, got a special recommend to come to our wedding at the temple. Others that were there not of our family, but members of the 6th Ward of the Phoenix Stake were Brother and Sister Potter, Brother and Sister Manche, Aletha's grandma and grandpa, her aunts and uncles, Ervin and Lois Phelps, and Glen and Elsie Chapman.

But our reception was big! I don't know how we got all the presents into our car to take them back to Winslow the next day.

Some funny things happened after the reception. My brothers-in-law, Lester Bartlett and Jim Buckner, and my brothers, jacked up my car and put blocks under the back axle,l so when we left to go to the motel that we were staying in that night, the car wouldn't go. The next morning when we started to go to Winslow, we found that they had also filled our hub caps full of rocks. We finally got out of Phoenix and a few hours later we got to what would be our first home. It was all decorated up by our landlord, a member of the Winslow Ward and school teacher in the Winslow schools and my cousins, Kenneth Tanner and his wife, Norma, who I had lived with in their home before I got married.