Memories of the home of 1132 S. State, Orem (Dictated on January 13, 2006) Duane E. Davis

1940's Davis home front yard

To begin with, my dad was a school teacher. He taught at Lincoln High School, which was the forerunner of Orem High. I think he actually taught at Orem high for a year or two after they built it, before he retired. I grew up on the old Davis farm. Joshua Davis, my great-grandfather, acquired the original property and homesteaded it, down on 10th W. and 5th No. in Provo. But then we moved to Orem and I was there until I was eleven. In 1941, the Alpine School District told my dad if he was going to teach there, we had to live out there. So we were required to find a house. Well, my dad wasn't a millionaire, he was a school teacher making mediocre wages with 3, 4 boys and one maybe, on the way. So he bought a lot from A.H. Christensen, a judge in town, on State Street. He had two sons that I know
of who were attorneys and a daughter, Catherine, who was year older than I was. She was beautiful and I liked to think she was my girlfriend for a few years because she lived next door. That is until Parlell Peterson built a home between Christensen's and our place. Eventually, Sankey Dixon, Wes Surlil, the English teacher.Rigby.all bought lots from A.H. Christensen and built homes along there. This was all along 1132 S. State in Orem. They called it "Teacher's Row." My dad helped built the other guy's houses because he was such a good carpenter, in fact, he taught woodworking at the high school for a few years before he got into Human Biology, Family Home Living, Eugenics, which was a sex education. He was also bishop of the ward for several years so he was kind of the Father Confessor. He taught Seniors
only, so they came to him with all their questions and problems. He was a very, very compassionate counselor. He listened and gave them straight-forward information to whatever questions they had questions about. Everybody loved him; that's why he was called "Papa Davis."

1940's Delphia Davis and her two youngest sons, Leland and Roger Davis

I can remember going out with him and sitting down in the basement while he worked upstairs, hearing him hammer, building the home. It was always exciting because I got to eat a lunch with him. One of the other teachers at the high school, the band teacher, E.B. Terry, built a house up by the high school, using the exact same plans. So there's house just like ours on 720 S. 371 E. in Orem. So that's a little bit of the history building the home. I can't remember how long it took to build the home, but it seemed like forever to me, being a little kid.

Like I said, my dad was bishop, and was a fine woodworker so he made a lot of furniture for our home.We had an acre and half of ground, as I recall. Our property went as far back as the Orem tracks, which is now Orem Boulevard and went to the North and the South to the other teacher's houses. We had a big cherry orchard back there, maybe 50-60 trees. We had a lovely garden straight behind the house. We had a barn, we had chickens, a cow, maybe pigs. We had a regular
farm in Orem. We picked cherries every year, Bings and Lamberts. In the summertime, when he wasn't teaching, or during the school year when he was out of school, he was a farmer. He loved it; we loved it.it was just a wonderful place to grow up. We sold the cherries to the Utah Berry Growers Association. They used to pack cherries right by the Orem tracks on 4th south and where the Orem Boulevard is now. The reason they call it "Orem Boulevard" is after the old Orem tracks, which was an electric train which used to run from Salt Lake to Payson and from Salt Lake to Ogden. The money was put up by a Mr. Orem for the south limb and a Mr. Bamberger for the North limb. So if you were going go to Ogden, you took the "Bamberger" and if you were going to go South to Provo or Payson, you took the "Orem" train. Our property butted on it, down to the West. There was a building, a switching station or something, through the fence between our property and the tracks, I'm not sure what it was used for.

The most important feature of the house was it had inside toilets. Down on the homestead, we had an old outhouse, a privy, which straddled the irrigation ditch. So when the water came down he ditch to irrigate alfalfa or raspberries or whatever--we had 25 acres at the old farm in Provo--it would wash the human waste out into the alfalfa to fertilize it. Those boards were pretty cold to sit on in the wintertime, I'll tell you! Anyway, we had inside plumbing in the Orem house, inside sinks to do dishes in. We just turned the tap; we didn't have to pump a pump to get water to wash with. I don't think we had a disposal; I don't think they were invented yet. We had a refrigerator, no more icebox. We had an electric stove. Looking out through the kitchen window, directly over the sink, you could look out to a golden delicious apple tree that was out on the back lawn. When you walked into the front door of the house, you'd be directly in the front room, which was the living room. To the left of the living room was mom and dad's bedroom. Then straight back through living room door was a hallway that turned right to a bedroom and a bathroom. It had a tub and a sink. It was a lovely tub we could bathe in, instead of a zinc clothes wash tub on Saturday nights on the homestead. Going left through the kitchen, you would go down the stairs to the furnace room, a playroom where we had a table tennis table, and all kinds of games. We had two bedrooms down there; one in the northeast corner and one in the northwest corner. There was also a fruit room that was immediately left at the bottom of the stairs. Also, on the way down the stairs was a root cellar. You would open a little sliding nail lock and that opened a little door in, under the kitchen floor, and that's where we kept our potatoes, carrots and parsnips that dad grew in the garden. Dad also kept a locked gun cabinet downstairs with all of his rifles and shotguns. Of course it was always very exciting when we got to go deer hunting or pheasant hunting with him. There was a laundry room downstairs with a laundry chute coming from the furnace room. We had a washing machine, but no dryer. It was a standard sized home for that day.

1940's Backyard garden facing State Street Orem

When Grandma died, I was in Lexington. She had cervical cancer and died of that disease; she died in bed. She was a great lady and a wonderful mother.

Grandpa lived there in the home for many years after she died. She was only 62 when she died and he lived until he was 84 years old, 21 years alone. In
his later years, he had persistent asthma which required, at the time, cortisone shots so he could breathe better. Over the years, the cortisone made his bones very brittle and they'd brake very easily. He broke ribs, his spine, and had to have both hips replaced. But he'd never complain or make a noise about the pain he was in. Sometimes he had to crawl along the garden rows to tend his garden because he couldn't stand for the pain. One time on Lake Powell, on our jet boat, we hit a bump in the wake, and we could tell he had inquired his back. But he insisted that we not leave. He stayed with us in pain for the whole family vacation. Before he died, I brought the bark of a bear tree that we used to have picnics by up in the Alpine Loop. The bear reached up and scratched his height in the aspen bark. There was a picnic table nearby and we used to picnic there. That big aspen tree died, and fell down, and the bark kind of pealed off and I took the piece of bark that had the bear claw marks on it and brought it home and showed it to grandpa and put it under his bed. He thought it was the greatest thing ever. It was still under his bed when he died there in the living room. After he died, Dani and I bought it and turned it into a bookstore and coffeehouse. It was called "Atticus Book and Coffeehouse" and we had it for a couple of years. They widened State Street for about 6 months and nobody could get into the place for coffee or for books unless the walked down the sidewalks, so that was kind of tight. Then about the time they finished the street, Barnes and Noble came to town and they could sell books cheaper than we could buy them. So we went looking for somebody to buy the house and Brenda Birrell was looking for a place to put her business. So we sold it to her. She was from the Birrell bottling company people that used to have the Coca Cola bottling company on south University in Provo. She put a scrapbook supply store about the time the church came out and said we all needed books of remembrance. She chopped the garage off and extended a wing out west, out into where the golden delicious apple tree and flower and vegetable garden were in the back lawn. Anyway, it's a nice looking place now called "Pebbles in My Pocket."

1940's Davis Backyard Barn

Memories of 1132 S. State in Orem, by Delmar Boyd Davis, eldest son of Boyd C. Davis:
Dad was a teacher and that helped us a lot during the depression, and we lived off the farm. But during that period, he often taught for nine months of the year and he was paid for six. I remember the first time he came home with a paycheck that was more than a hundred dollars a month. I remember because he played a little trick on mom. The paychecks used to come in a little brown envelope in cash. So he usually had an envelope with a few bills of ten or twenty dollar bills and some coins. This time, he had just one bill, a hundred dollar bill with a some change. Well he folded the bill so it looked like a ten dollar bill and he came home with this long face saying, "Time are tough, mom, I don't know what we are going to do." She nearly broke down because there was so little money. Then he unfolded the hundred dollar bill and things changed to joyous around the house because we felt so much richer. It as funny because we moved from the farm in Provo that didn't have electricity, running water, a toilet, or central heating when we were first there, to a new house in Orem that dad built that had everything. I can go in there today and still show you the flooring that I helped dad put in and find the marks on the floor where I hammered in the nails but missed and put dents in the wood. So my marks are still there. Dad was very proud of the floor because they were made out of #1 Fir, which was usually saved only for making furniture because it has very few knots in it. He couldn't afford hardwood, so he was very proud of doing the best he could. If you look at the floor today, there are no knots, or very small ones if any. I as about 13 or 14 and started the eighth grade in that house. Dad built the house based on the plans by Elvis B. Terry, another teacher at Lincoln High, except he flip-flopped the plans so it is a mirror image of E.B. Terry's house that is north of the Scera. Dad added an attached garage, which wasn't in the plans and was luxury in those days. An attached garage became somewhat of a traffic problem because there was a door coming from the garage, another door right next to it from the front, which opened up to the inside porch, and another at the top of the porch stairs to the kitchen. During the summer months when we would open the door to the front of the house that had a screen and the kitchen door for ventilation, you couldn't open the door from the garage at the same time because it was blocked by the door from the side porch. It was a good house. It had a full basement which had 2 bedrooms and a furnace room and a family room which actually we turned into a game room. A big ping pong table dominated the game room and we all became pretty doggone good at table tennis. Being the oldest, I had my own room that was on the same side of the house as the game room, in the back. The main bedroom downstairs was in the far northeast corner with two beds in there for the other boys. Upstairs there was another bedroom for Roger, the baby and mom's sewing machine and dad's desk. The upstairs bathroom had a tub, but the shower was built by dad downstairs in the furnace room. It was an open shower, using the exiting drain in the floor that was a floor drain for the washer tubs. The washing machine was an old Maytag washer with a ringer on it with two square galvanized tubs on a stand against the wall. The water would come out of those two tubs and run into the drain. Over in the corner was a shower head that dad put in.The house was heated by a coal-fired furnace that was fed by a stocker. We used slack coal. Built next to it was the hot water heater and it had its own little furnace and stocker. Our job as boys was to keep the coal in the stockers and take out the clinkers. That's kind of a funny thing because we had moved from the farm house that didn't have a toilet or plumbing and we had to carry out ashes every day. In the new house, we were so spoiled that we started complaining when we had to take out the clinkers, and that was
only once a week! The home was situated on an acre and a half which bordered on main street in Orem. Half acre was fronted on the street and in the back; there were acres that went next to the neighbors, Mr. Wesley Surlier and "Sanky" Dixon. Wesley Surlier lived right next to us. His home is still there, but has been moved back behind the house and is now used by some business, like a Real Estate agency. Both men also worked for the high school: Surlier was an agriculture man who later worked for Pacific Railroad for public relations when he quit teaching. Mr. Dixon was the high school coach. A.H. Christensen sold the property to us; he was a lawyer and a judge. The front part had a cherry orchard on it; the back acre was a horse pasture, which A.H. Christensen had used for his horses as a hobby.
We had an apple tree outside in the back, you could see from the kitchen window. You could look out over the kitchen sink and practically touch the
branches from the apple tree. Birds used to build nests in it. My mother used to delight in watching the little hummingbirds hatch in it. It was always a great treat for her.
When we moved in, there were three old large cherry trees on the front and south side of the property and another one that was on the northeast corner of the lawn. Dad planted other landscaping trees and put in a lawn in the front and the back. He pulled out the trees out in the west and put in a garden. He built a new barn on the west side and when we moved from the old farm, he took the loose hay, had it bailed, and we put the bailed hay up in the top of the new barn. It had a chicken coop, a milking stall and a workroom. Later, he put a lean-to on the west side and that became the area where we would sort the cherries. Dad planted Bing and Lambert cherries and Black Tartarian cherries. The Black Tartarian cherries were placed here and there in the orchard to pollinate the real producing trees. Irrigation came from the Provo River via an irrigation system that still exists. It used to come across the road from an underground pipe, which ran under the road, State Street. It was open on the other side and ran into an open ditch on our side. Right there in front of Arby's, there is still today a cement block from the irrigation system. They have buried the canal, but it opens up now on the other side of Orem Blvd. over the old Orem tracks where it comes to the surface again. Doyle Graff, Chester Graff's son uses it to irrigate his orchard. We used to take our water from the head gate. It would come from under pipes, under Parlell Peterson's front lawn and come to dad's property where he had a cement head gate system built so he could divert the water down along the south side of the house in an open ditch to get to his garden. He had another head gate system there by the garden and the edge of the back lawn and the walkway by the barn and he could divert water to the orchard. He also built on that head gate next to the road, a pipe out the side. He had Huish Awning and Tent make him a canvas pipe and he would tie it on to the front head gate and divert water through that tunnel, onto the front lawn to water it. Even though it got sopping wet, it did the job. I was there for only five years, from thirteen to eighteen years old. When I graduated, World War II came and I never really got back home again. The highway, State Street, was a two-lane highway, with dirt on both sides. When I was old enough to drive, our automobile was a 1941 Chevy, black two-door. Dad cautioned us boys to come it easy from the street, not to come in too fast. He got after us quite a few times for not slowing down and easing up the brakes. I remember one particular time when dad had to stay after school for a faculty meeting that had to do with the senior class. The other teachers got to go home, but since he taught seniors, he had to stay. Well it was pheasant hunting season and he was dying to go with his friends, who were already getting ready. So when the meeting was over, he came wheeling down the road as fast as he could, pealed into the driveway, and slammed on the brakes, which gave out right then. He slammed into the garage door and knocked it out about two feet. Even after Marie and I got married, we'd get a good laugh by going out and looking at the dents on the 2 by 4's that never recovered. The electricity is now generated from the back, but there used to be an electric light system running down the main street.

Once when I was seventeen or eighteen, I had worked the Saturday night shift, come home, went to church and then went to sleep down in the basement. That afternoon was a big thunder and lightning storm and lightning struck the big transformer on the pole out front. It produced huge fireworks flying everywhere and woke me up. I came running up the stairs into the middle of the living room, wearing nothing but my shorts, yelling, "Hey, did you see that?" Right then the lightning struck and illuminated the room, which was full of guests, dressed in their church clothes, and me in my underwear standing in the middle. It was really embarrassing! One of dad's prides was the clothesline dryer that he built for mom that ran from a pole buried in cement on the back porch that ran to the top of the barn. It had a pulley that she could put her clothes on. Later he took that down and built a merry-go-round type clothes line that had several different arms on it that she could turn and put clothespins on. Mom loved the house! It was such a joy to have a completely modern house after living on the farm. We had a Frigidaire, an automatic thermostat for the heating with a clock in it. We'd set it to shut down at night and you could always tell when it would turn on in the morning because the flames would start roaring! It was a comforting thing to hear that go on in the morning.

Dad built a bench along the dinette area, which was always a sunny spot to sit in. There was a recessed alcove in the wall behind the table, just big enough to place the phone. We had a party line and at one time, we had 10 different families on it. Each house had their own ring and you were supposed to only pick it up when it was your ring. Busy bodies were known to pick it up quietly and listen in on other people's conversations and hear about private information, like who was getting a date with whom. If mom caught you doing that, she would scold us good! When you wanted to use the phone, invariable there would be someone talking on the line so you'd have to wait and pick it up later to see if they were through talking. If it was an emergency, they would hang up. When we first moved in, there wasn't a dial system so you had to pick it up and ask for the operator. She would say, "Number, please" and you would give her the number of who you wanted to talk to. There was a family joke about mom and Aunt Sade. When I was attending BYU, I would thumb my way to school in the morning and the way back, except when the weather was bad, and I was supposed to call home for someone to get me. One time, it was raining cats and dogs so I tried to call home but got a busy signal. I went back to study, do my homework and called again. It was still busy. So then I thought about calling Aunt Sade to pick me up and he line was busy too. About this time, one of the professors saw me still there, said he was going my way, and offered me a ride home. As I walked through the door, there was mom still talking to Aunt Sade on the phone, over an hour later! And dad had his teaching job. A lot of times he taught for nine months of the year and he was paid for six. I remember the first time he came home with a paycheck that was more than a hundred dollars a month. I remember because he played a little trick on mom. The paychecks used to come in a little brown envelope in cash. So he usually had an envelope with a few bills of ten or twenty dollar bills and some coins. This time, he had just one bill, a hundred dollar bill with a some change. Well he folded the bill so it looked like a ten dollar bill and he came home with this long face saying, "Time are tough, mom, I don't know what we are going to do." She nearlybroke down because there was so little money. Then he unfolded the hundred dollar bill and things changed to joyous around the house because we felt so much richer. It as funny because we moved from a place that didn't have electricity, running water, a toilet, or central heating when we were first there, to a new house in Orem that dad built that had everything. I can go in there today and still show you the flooring that I helped dad put in and find the marks on the floor where I hammered in the nails but missed and put dents in the wood. So my marks are still there. Dad was very proud of the floor because they were made out of #1 Fir, which was usually saved only for making furniture because it has very few knots in it. He couldn't afford hardwood, so he was very proud of doing the best he could. If you look at the floor today, there are no knots, or very small ones if any. I as about 13 or 14 and started the eighth grade in that house. Dad built the house based on the plans by Elvis B. Terry, another teacher at Lincoln High, except he flip-flopped the plans so it is a mirror image of E.B. Terry's house that is north of the Scera. Dad added an attached garage, which wasn't in the plans and was luxury in those days. An attached garage became somewhat of a traffic problem because there was a door coming from the garage, another door right next to it from the front, which opened up to the inside porch, and another at the top of the porch stairs to the kitchen. During the summer months when we would open the door to the front of the house that had a screen and the kitchen door for ventilation, you couldn't open the door from the garage at the same time because it was blocked by the door from the side porch. It was a good house. It had a full basement which had 2 bedrooms and a furnace room and a family room which actually we turned into a game room. A big ping pong table dominated the game room and we all became pretty doggone good at table tennis. Being the oldest, I had my own room that was on the same side of the house as the game room, in the back. The main bedroom downstairs was in the far northeast corner with two beds in there for the other boys. Upstairs there was another bedroom for Roger, the baby and mom's sewing machine and dad's desk. The upstairs bathroom had a tub, but the shower was built by dad downstairs in the furnace room. It was an open shower, using the exiting drain in the floor that was a floor drain for the washer tubs. The washing machine was an old Maytag washer with a ringer on it with two square galvanized tubs on a stand against the wall. The water would come out of those two tubs and run into the drain. Over in the corner was a shower head that dad put in. The house was heated by a coal-fired furnace that was fed by a stocker. We used slack coal. Built next to it was the hot water heater and it had its own little furnace and stocker. Our job as boys was to keep the coal in the stockers and take out the clinkers. That's kind of a funny thing because we had moved from the farm house that didn't have a toilet or plumbing and we had to carry out ashes every day. In the new house, we were so spoiled that we started complaining when we had to take out the clinkers, and that was only once a week! The home was situated on an acre and a half which bordered on main street in Orem. Half acre was fronted on the street and in the back; there were acres that went next to the neighbors, Mr. Wesley Surlier and "Sanky" Dixon. Wesley Surlier lived right next to us. His home is still there, but has been moved back behind the house and is now used by some business, like a Real Estate agency. Both men also worked for the high school: Surlier was an agriculture man who later worked for Pacific Railroad for public relations when he quit teaching. Mr. Dixon was the high school coach. A.H.
Christensen sold the property to us; he was a lawyer and a judge. The front part had a cherry orchard on it; the back acre was a horse pasture, which
A.H. Christensen had used for his horses as a hobby. We had an apple tree outside in the back, you could see from the kitchen window. You could look out over the kitchen sink and practically touch the branches from the apple tree. Birds used to build nests in it. My mother used to delight in watching the little hummingbirds hatch in it. It was always a great treat for her.

When we moved in, there were three old large cherry trees on the front and south side of the property and another one that was on the northeast corner of the lawn. Dad planted other landscaping trees and put in a lawn in the front and the back. He pulled out the trees out in the west and put in a garden. He built a new barn on the west side and when we moved from the old farm, he took the loose hay, had it bailed, and we put the bailed hay up in the top of the new barn. It had a chicken coop, a milking stall and a workroom. Later, he put a lean-to on the west side and that became the area where we would sort the cherries. Dad planted Bing and Lambert cherries and Black Tartarian cherries. The Black Tartarian cherries were placed here and there in the orchard to pollinate the real producing trees. Irrigation came from the Provo River via an irrigation system that still exists. It used to come across the road from an underground pipe, which ran under the road, State Street. It was open on the other side and ran into an open ditch on our side. Right there in front of Arby's, there is still today a cement block from the irrigation system. They have buried the canal, but it opens up now on the other side of Orem Blvd. over the old Orem tracks where it comes to the surface again. Doyle Graff, Chester Graff's son uses it to irrigate his orchard. We used to take our water from the head gate. It would come from under pipes, under Parlell Peterson's front lawn and come to dad's property where he had a cement head gate system built so he could divert the water down along the south side of the house in an open ditch to get to his garden. He had another head gate system there by the garden and the edge of the back lawn and the walkway by the barn and he could divert water to the orchard. He also built on that head gate next to the road, a pipe out the side. He had Huish Awning and Tent make him a canvas pipe and he would tie it on to the front head gate and divert water through that tunnel, onto the front lawn to water it. Even though it got sopping wet, it did the job. I was there for only five years, from thirteen to eighteen years old.

When I graduated, World War II came and I never really got back home again. The highway, State Street, was a two-lane highway, with dirt on both sides. When I was old enough to drive, our automobile was a 1941 Chevy, black two-door. Dad cautioned us boys to come in easy from the street, not to come in too fast. He got after us quite a few times for not slowing down and easing up the brakes. I remember one particular time when dad had to stay after school for a faculty meeting that had to do with the senior class. The other teachers got to go home, but since he taught seniors, he had to stay. Well it was pheasant hunting season and he was dying to go with his friends, who were already getting ready. So when the meeting was over, he came wheeling down the road as fast as he could, pealed into the driveway, and slammed on the brakes, which gave out right then. He slammed into the garage door and knocked it out about two feet. Even after Marie and I got married, we'd get a good laugh by going out and looking at the dents on the 2 by 4's that never recovered.

The electricity is now generated from the back, but there used to be an electric light system running down the main street. Once when I was seventeen or eighteen, I had worked the Saturday night shift, come home, went to church and then went to sleep down in the basement. That afternoon was a big thunder and lightning storm and lightning struck the big transformer on the pole out front. It produced huge fireworks flying everywhere and woke me up. I came running up the stairs into the middle of the living room, wearing nothing but my shorts, yelling, "Hey, did you see that?" Right then the lightning struck and illuminated the room, which was full of guests, dressed in their church clothes, and me in my underwear standing in the middle. It was really embarrassing! One of dad's prides was the clothesline dryer that he built for mom that ran from a pole buried in cement on the back porch that ran to the top of the barn. It had a pulley that she could put her clothes on. Later he took that down and built a merry-go-round type clothes line that had several different arms on it that she could turn and put clothespins on. He also built a child's chair swing that hung down from the apple tree. He carved a "D" on the back and a lot of the grandchildren used it when they were young while the older grandchildren climbed the tree.

Mom loved the house! It was such a joy to have a completely modern house after living on the farm. We had a Frigidaire, an automatic thermostat for the heating with a clock in it. We'd set it to shut down at night and you could always tell when it would turn on in the morning because the flames would start roaring! It was a comforting thing to hear that go on in the morning. Dad built a bench along the dinette area, which was always a sunny spot to sit in. There was a recessed alcove in the wall behind the table, just big enough to place the phone. We had a party line and at one time, we had 10 different families on it. Each house had their own ring and you were supposed to only pick it up when it was your ring. Busy bodies were known to pick it up quietly and listen in on other people's conversations and hear about private information, like who was getting a date with whom. If mom caught you doing that, she would scold us good! When you wanted to use the phone, invariably there would be someone talking on the line so you'd have to wait and pick it up later to see if they were through talking. If it was an emergency, they would hang up. When we first moved in, there wasn't a dial system so you had to pick it up and ask for the operator. She would say, "Number, please" and you would give her the number of who you wanted to talk to. There was a family joke about mom and Aunt Sade. When I was attending BYU, I would thumb my way to school in the morning and the way back, except when the weather was bad, and I was supposed to call home for someone to get me. One time, it was raining cats and dogs so I tried to call home but got a busy signal. I went back to study, do my homework and called again. It was still busy. So then I thought about calling Aunt Sade to pick me up and her line was busy too. About this time, one of the professors saw me still there, said he was going my way, and offered me a ride home. As I walked through the door, there was mom still talking to Aunt Sade on the phone, over an hour later!

Memories of 1132 So. State by Lorin Davis (Son No. 3)
When we first move to Orem to our new home at 1132 So. State, there were three cherry trees in the front yard, two to the left of the driveway and one on the right side of the lawn. That first year, the cherry crop was so good that Dad was able to pay all his taxes from the sale of the cherries. Dad was so impressed that he planted the back acre of land (behind the old barn) into a cherry orchard. At first, our family tried to pick the cherries, but it soon became obvious that the job was too big for us so Dad hired a family of Puerto Rican workers who would take their vacation from working at the copper mine and come and pick cherries. They were a hard working and wonderful family. It was a regular event to entertain them when they came to pick the cherries.

I slept in the North East bedroom in the basement. At that time, the highway was just two-lane and was the main North/South route through Utah. All the big trucks would come up the hill from Provo and shift into a higher gear just as they got to our house. I remember laying in bed, watching the car lights shine through the window and sweep across the room as the cars passed and listen to the trucks shift gears. We used that open room at the bottom of the basement stairs for lots of things. Dad made a very sturdy table tennis table for us to use. We all got to be pretty good players but since the room was so short, our game was control and slices rather than power.

Our radio was in the living room were we used to listen to all kinds of programs such as "The Shadow", "I love a Mystery", "The Red Skelton Show", etc. We had new carpet and wall paper that made the room special. One day may mother gave me the job of mixing butter with the butter churn. It was the kind with a two gallon glass jar fitted with a paddle wheel and crank. I wanted to hear my favorite program, picked the churn up by the top and walked into the living room. About halfway across, the top came off and the jar hit the carpet with a bang, splashed cream all over the walls, then fell over and dumped it's contents on the carpet. We tried cleaning the wall paper but the oil would always seep through. We finally had to paint the walls. As for the carpet, well you can guess. That wasn't one my better days.

My dad was noted for his garden. In the plot between the house and the old barn, he would grow all kinds of things. There were never weeds. You could always find him with his little tractor going up and down the rows or weeding each row with an hoe. He planted corn at different times and always had one that matured when deer season started. It was a tradition to have deer liver, hash brown potatoes and corn on the cob at camp the first day of deer season.

My dad was scout leader most of his life. He used to take boys on hikes all over the place. This was before good sleeping bags. Mom had always wanted a down comforter but we always seemed to spend money on other things. One year, dad showed up with a new down comforter and asked mom to sew it up into a sleeping bag. I have never heard my raise her voice but whatever she said resulted in here getting a new comforter the next month.

When mom died, we moved back from Indiana and spent the summer at home. Our oldest daughter was a year and a half old and became dad's constant companion. He spend hours working on a handmade swing seat for her and then spent hours pushing her in it on our backyard patio. He was devastated at the loss of our beloved mother, his companion. I found him one day, among his flower garden, sobbing.