Introduction

Childhood

Courtship and Marriage

Education

Teaching

Touring

Scouting

Theater

History and Politics

Farming

Church Service

Mission President

Temple Presidency

Ashcroft Observatory

Family

Funeral

Photo Gallery

COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE

“What greater thing is there for two human souls, than to feel that they are joined for life — to strengthen each other in all labor, to rest on each other in all sorrow, to minister to each other in all pain, to be with each other in silent unspeakable memories at the moment of the last parting?”

—George Eliot

It was at the old BYC, (Brigham Young College), that Dad first met Mother. There was no streetcar from Newton and so mother had had to move to Logan. She wore her hair in ringlets and it was very blond. Dad sat behind her in geometry and remembers running his pencil up through her ringlets and out the top. They studied a little in the library together, and they dated some. They can actually remember only four dates during their BYC days. Their first date was to an old silent movie about a sheik, their second was to an old Pantages Vaudeville, then they went to hear John Phillip Sousa's band and finally to an opera called 'Hit the Deck'. Then Dad lost track of Mother as she went to teach school and he didn't see her again for two or three years.

Dad and Mother went on a honeymoon before they were married, a year before in fact. Of course, Aunt Bee went along too. They toured the Utah Parks. They left Newton early one morning and that day made it as far as Nephi. They stayed at a motel there that was quite modern. It had a tap just about fifty feet from the motel. It had springs and a mattress on the bed but no bedding. You furnished that yourself. The next day they drove clear to Zion Canyon. The third night they spent at Grand Canyon. The tunnel road wasn't completed then, so the only way they could get over the mountain was to go back to Rockville. The road was so steep that they were advised to leave early in the morning before the buses. The buses would be unable to pass them, so would push them over the hill. However, the buses left earlier than they thought they would, so they were behind them. They drove as far as they could and then Mother and Bee would push, while Dad roared the motor and then pushed the low gear in. They would grind a few feet and then slip a rock under the wheel. They made it a ways by that method. Then a man came along in an old Dodge roadster. That was a powerful machine in low gear. He would give them a bump and they would go ten feet, he'd give them another bump and they finally made it, although they didn't get to Grand Canyon until way after dark. The next day they went to Bryce Canyon where they took a horseback ride down into the canyon. There they paid a dollar apiece to have their picture taken. While it was being taken, someone said to the photographer, "What happened to the pictures we had taken last year? We never did get them." They weren't even smart enough to catch on then, but come to find out the man didn't even have film in the camera. They made it all the way from Bryce Canyon back to Cache Valley in one day and people thought that was really something.

Dad and Mother were married in the Salt Lake Temple by George Albert Smith.

They drove as far as Woods Cross the night before and stayed with Mother's Aunt May Eldredge. Aunt May was a good friend of George Albert Smith. She had lived in his home as a girl, as had Mother's mother. He was not president of the Church at that time, but he was one of the Apostles. After the wedding, they went to Hotel Utah, where Aunt May treated them to dinner. They ate in the main dining room and had a waiter standing right behind them to give them first-class service. Dad remembers the day they started home. He had taken his milk check with him to pay their expenses. He thinks it was for $4.82. On the way home, they came to a long straight hill. He opened the car up, a ford coupe, and he got it up to fifty-two miles an hour. The biggest event of their honeymoon was an airplane ride over the Salt Lake Valley. It cost them $5.00 and was the first airplane ride for either of them.

When they went back to Hyde Park they rented a little house from Liza Duce, John Duce's mother. She wanted $8.00 a month for it. It had four rooms, nice cherry trees, raspberry bushes and a nice big yard. They told her they wanted it for six months and she gave it to them for $40.

They started to build their own home.  Dad dug the basement with a team and scrapper and they hired two men from Smithfield to pour the foundation.  Dad had dug the walls straight enough down that they only had to form one wall, the inside one.  Then they hired George Ashcroft to do the rest of the work on the house.  As Dad can remember it, the house cost $3500 complete.  The lot was one and a fourth acre that he bought from George Kirby.  He paid either $275 or $300 for it.

In addition to the new house, they also built a new barn and new chicken coops.  They had a new car and they were making good money on their chickens.  Then the depression hit and the eggs wouldn't even pay for the feed.  They would send their milk to the creamery and they would separate it and keep the cream and send the skim milk back in the cans.  Dad and Mother would have around forty gallons of skim milk every day to dispose of.  They fed it to pigs, chickens, and some people even taught their horses to drink skim milk.