Reid Shelley Melville 2 3 Memoirs of Reid Shelley Melville

MEMOIRS OF REID SHELLEY MELVILLE 2 3 MEMOIRS OF REID SHELLEY MELVILLE

In the following pages I’ll be writing about various matters which were told to be buy Dad or Mother regarding my forebears, and things I remember about my life with my parents, brothers and sister; also, happenings in my own life and life with my wife, Ted, and our two sons.

Section 1 Memoirs Regarding My Great Grandparents And Grandparents

Section 2 Remembrances During My Life With Father And Mother

Section 3 Happenings From The Time I Left Home Until I Was Married

Section 4 Remembrances Of My Life From The Time I Was Married Until The Boys Both Left Home

Section 5 Life With Ted And Myself Since Our Boys Left Home

Section 6 Epilogue by Reid Tommie Melville and remembrances of Reid Shelley Melville by his Grandchildren

Appendix A Homes

Appendix B Jobs

Appendix C Clothing Sales Trips (1932 – 1950)

Appendix D (Mostly) Leisure Travel in Later Years (1966 – 1987)

Contributors

There are many people to thank for the preparation of the memoirs. First and foremost, Reid Shelley Melville, who obviously spent quite a bit of time working on this summary of his life. Janette Sakellariou , his long-time secretary, typed the original transcript of the memoirs. Some of the final pages were typed by Julie Hite, his granddaughter. Alan Melville, a grandson, took on the task of scanning the original document and transcribing it into electronic format and various extracting lists of things (travel, jobs, houses, etc). Julie Hite provided the final proof-read, contribut ing countless corrections and confirming dates and events. Tom Melville the Epilogue and provided the family photographs. And finally, each of the grandchildren (that chose to contribute) provided their memories “Grandpa Melville”.

Editor’s Notes

For the most part, the text is as it was originally written. Minor corrections have been made to correct inaccuracies in spelling, some grammar, chronological inconsistencies and in rare cases, to improve readability. The exception to this is items in square brackets (e.g. [1947] ) were added during editing for clarification and were not part of the original manuscript.

4 5 SECTION I - GREAT GRANDPARENTS AND GRANDPARENTS

The first Melville to leave Europe and cross the ocean to the U.S.A. was my great grandfather, Alexander Melville. He was born in Feb 15, 1821, in Pittenweem, Scotland, and grew up in this small fishing village on Scotland’s east coast on the North Sea, about 50 miles north of Edinburgh, Scotland.

As a young man, he learned the trades of baker, blacksmith, and a cooper (barrel maker). When Alexander Melville was 22 years old, he signed on with one of the whaling vessels, which was home based in Pittenweem for a one-year tour of the north Seas hunting and catching whales. He was assigned the job of a harpooner. He had to go out in a rowboat from the mother ship after they had spotted a whale, and when close enough to the whale he would throw the spear-like harpoon into its side. The harpoon had a rope attached to it, and to the front of the boat.

He and other harpooners would throw several harpoons into the whale until they wounded it. After a whale has been stuck with a harpoon or two, it usually takes off in a frantic attempt to get away, towing the small boat on a high speed run through the water. This was a dangerous and precarious operation. In the event the whale would dive, it would take the boat and harpooners with it. They had to be ready to swiftly cut the ropes towing the boat. After the whale had exhausted himself, they then towed the whale back to the side of the boat where they cut out the parts of the whale that were commercially valuable, and then dropped the carcass into the sea.

At one point on this trip, their boat was frozen in an ice jam in the Arctic for several weeks.

After returning to the home port of Pittenweem great grandfather Alexander quit the whaling business and married Elizabeth Adamson in the fall of 1843. They joined the Mormon Church one month later.

In the spring of 1844, they sailed to America via New Orleans, took a riverboat up to St. Louis and stayed there for a while. They later moved to Nauvoo, Illinois, and then to Winter Quarters where his wife, Elizabeth, died. He then married Jane Ann Dutson, who is our great grandmother Melville (see historical note).

Our grandfather, James Andrew Melville, was born on March 3, 1852, on a farm near Council Bluffs, Iowa, just three weeks prior to his parents leaving with a wagon train to cross the plains for Utah. The baby was hand carried in a basket most of the trip.

After arriving in Salt Lake, they moved to Provo, Utah, and stayed there for about one year. Great grandfather Melville enlisted to fight the Indians during the Walker India n Wars. He fought Indians for several months while on this duty. Chief Walker was finally killed and buried in the foothills above Spring Lake Villa, Utah and Dad never let us forget where Chief Walker was buried.

In 1853, Brigham Young called on great grandfather Alexander Melville to move to Fillmore, Utah, and help settle that new town. He worked there as a farmer and at the trades, which he had learned in Scotland.

Grandfather James Andrew Melville grew up in Fillmore, and at age 14, he enlisted with many others in Utah to fight in the Black Hawk Indian War. During this time, he helped build the old mud fort at Deseret, Utah, and helped build the Cove Fort down on the highway between Fillmore and Beaver at Cove Fort, Utah.

Our grandmother, Imogene Gibbs , was brought to Utah by her parents who crossed the plains with a handcart company. Grandmother was just a small girl and walked most of the way. They also went to Fillmore.

In 1869, Grandfather married Imogene Gibbs. He started out his life by making a living on a small farm by Fillmore, and he started up a small logging business east of Fillmore in the mountains. A little later, he tried a mining venture out by Milford, Utah, but had no luck with that.

6 Then he was called by the Church on a special assignment to go into west Millard County and colonize the Delta area. The old towns of Oasis and Deseret had a few people living in them, but there was really nothing at Delta at that time. Grandfather became known as Uncle Jim to everybody in Millard County and was always referred to as Jim Melville by his friends and other people who knew him well. In his job of colonizing west Millard County, he first plotted out a new town. The first settlers named the town Melville, but the U.S. Postal Department wouldn’t accept the name because of its similarity to Millville, Utah, in Cache Valley, which was previously registered. Grandfather then suggested Delta because it looked like a mud flat.

Then he organized an irrigation company called Melville Irrigation Company which still exists, and with state aid organized the building of the Yuba Dam south of Juab, Utah, which formed the reservoir to back up the Sevier River and control the water which was then released downstream for use in the irrigation systems which he had built in the Delta area. He also had the dam built west of Delta and then organized the Deseret Irrigation Company, and was instrumental in the organization and original network created by the Abraham Irrigation Company to serve the area northwest of Delta.

It was during this period that he got into the real estate promotion business. He started out by buying state school board sections of land. He would then put a 40-acre piece or an 80-acre piece under cultivation and plant it to alfalfa. Then he would sell the surrounding acreage to other people. His general pattern of success was to buy these school sections at $1.25 an acre and then sell them to the other farmers buying the land at $40 an acre.

He served one term as district attorney in Fillmore and then served a term in the Utah State Legislature. With all this activity, he apparently was a very busy man.

I remember talking to Dad one time when he was telling me about our great grandfather Alexander, who was chiding grandfather Jim about his multiple activities and how busy he was, and he said, “Jim, you’ll probably be too busy to even come to my funeral.” That’s the way it happened. Grandfather didn’t get to his Dad’s funeral. He was busy outside of the area at the time and didn’t learn about his Father’s death until it was too late. Great Grandfather [Alexander] Melville died in Fillmore on December 6, 1911. [Jane Ann Dutson died May 8, 1911]

Besides Grandfather’s irrigation project promotions and real estate sales, he entered into some other private adventures. One of his first successful ones was a heavy investment in the Sinclair Oil field in Wyoming that hit it big.

In conjunction with some of his real estate ventures and irrigation project developments, he had a partner by the name of Frank Copening.

They learned of a potential oil field in Cuba. They first bought up the oil leases, and then Grandfather made a trip to Cuba to look over the oil dome that they had leased. While there he made a deal to have a wildcat well drilled on the property. The well hit a real gusher.

After having brought in the well he came back home. Shortly thereafter, he and Frank Copening, who had an interest in the Well, negotiated with one of the major oil companies to buy out their properties at a purchase price of $1,300,000.00.

At this time, Grandfather was too busy with all of his other projects to go back to Cuba to collect the cash, which for some reason or other had to be paid off by one of the banks in Havana. He sent Frank down with the sale papers to get the money and bring it back home. Frank left for Cuba and disappeared. A check on what happened revealed that Frank had made the deal, delivered the papers, and collected the $1,300,000.00 in cash from the bank in Havana. After that, Grandfather never heard or saw anything of Frank Copening again. He just could not be located by Grandfather or by Frank’s own family.

7 Grandfather Melville built a hotel in Delta with several rooms of wood structure and a big dining room one block south of the railroad station. Across the railroad tracks to the east, he built a real estate office. He would bring his customers by train down from Salt Lake, put them up overnight, feed them steaks for breakfast, and then during the day would take them out and show them the acreage surrounding his farms. After seeing the land he would take them to his real estate office, close the deals, then put them up overnight in the hotel again and then take them back to Salt Lake on the train.

Grandfather had a very friendly personality and seemed to be well liked. He got along very well with everyone, with the possible exception of the Coopers who managed his Delta Hotel. At one point, they tried to beat him out of the hotel through a dirty type lawsuit, but they failed in this attempt. After this affair, he fired them. Mysteriously, shortly thereafter, the hotel burned down.

The real estate office he built was later converted into a house; with the back porch sitting right on the side of the railroad tracks.

Grandfather’s last big attempt at a real estate and irrigation project development was in the area east of Delta just a few miles northwest of Holden, Utah. He named the place McCormack, Utah, and had a large tract of land to which he had built a high line canal across the foothills from the river up by Lemington, Utah.

Grandfather gave Dad an 80-acre farm a block west of the railroad station in Delta, then built us a new, modern home with the only modern conveniences that were in Delta at the time. We had a pressure water system with running water in the kitchen and a bathroom. Lois and I lived with the folks in this home as kids. I was then eight years old and Lois was a baby. During this period John was born. Mother and all of us went back to Shelley, Idaho, to meet John and the stork. We lived on the Delta farm for about three years, between 1916 and 1919.

While I was living in Delta, between the ages of 8 and 11, grandfather was busy promoting his McCormack acreage, and also had become very active in inducing farmers to grow alfalfa seed in the Delta Valley. He also induced the J. G. Peppard Seed Co. from Kansas City to come into the area and build a seed cleaning plant. He was also active in the Uintah Basin in the same kind of business and got Peppard to build a seed cleaning plant out in the Uintah Basin. He was instrumental in getting this industry brought into Utah, which from here branched into Idaho and other areas surrounding Utah.

It was while I was living on the old Grunning Place, our 80-acre farm in Delta, that Uncle Ab Brown came down in his new Oldsmobile, a car that today would be a real vintage machine. He took me on a trip down close to Milford, Utah, where he was looking for pumice to use in his and Uncle Marion Greenwood’ s Utah Oil Refining Co. which they started just north of Salt Lake. I apparently showed a very keen interest in the automobile, and asked a billion questions on how to drive it, so Uncle Ab stopped the car on the old mud flats and taught me how to drive. After learning how to start it, stop it, turn it and guide it, I then drove the car back to Delta. I was nine years old.

Grandfather learned that I could drive a car, so when I was age 10 [1918-1919] he used me as a chauffeur, paid me two bits a day to drive him and his real estate customers over to McCormack and other places to look at the land he was selling. I drove and he sat in the middle of the back seat selling real estate to his potential customers.

In addition to everything else Grandfather had been doing, he went into the banking business. He helped organize the Deseret Savings Bank on first south and Main in Salt Lake City, built the high-rise building, which is now a First Security Bank Building and also invested in Hotel Utah stocks, ZCMI stocks, Union Pacific stocks, and still owned his stocks in Sinclair Oil and others.

When I was a baby [abt. 1908-1909] , he bought the house at 555 Third Avenue where Mother and I lived with Grandfather and Grandmother Melville during the time that Dad went on his second mission to Scotland. I

8 remember very little about living there then, but I have seen pictures of Mother and me and our grandparents out in front of the house.

When I was very young, Grandfather Melville bought an electric automobile. I was still old enough to remember sitting in it and riding in it. He later bought one of the old Franklin air-cooled automobiles, which he still owned and left parked in the garage on the avenues after he died.

Our Grandfather Melville always said he was a Scot, so of course Dad also maintained that he was a Scot. I remember they both bought those old Edison tube type gramophones and they both played the great Scot singer, Harry Louder’s records.

A few other notes regarding Grandfather Melville: He was a stickler for immaculate manners and cle an dress, and I remember he was very particular about proper eating habits, but he was good to his children and his grand•children and was always doing good things for them such as giving Dad that farm in Delta and building us a modern home. He also bought the house for our Aunt Eva next door to him and gave the house to her; and I particularly remember that every Christmas when we would go to see him he would give each one of us a $5.00 bill. Grandmother Imogene continued to give us the $5.00 bills after Grandfather died.

Grandfather Melville had a severe stroke in mid-December 1926. By now, we were living in Bountiful and I was going to high school. Keith was born in Bountiful while we lived there. In the fall of 1926, I was heading for the Thanksgiving football game at the University of Utah, riding the streetcar on First south, heading east, standing up in the front with the motorman. As the streetcar came to State St. at 1st So., the streetcar had to stop because here came Grandfather “hell bent for election” in his Franklin going north on State St. and running a red light. This is the last time I ever saw my Grandfather Melville alive, as he had his stroke a couple of weeks later.

When Grandfather had his stroke, Dad was not down on the farm. He would go into the hospital and spend the entire time with Grandfather. They finally moved Grandfather home because he didn’t like the little beds in the hospital, and because of his critical condition they released him and let him go home where he died a couple or three days later.

I was on the Davis High basketball team at the time and remember we were heading for Jordan High to play a pre-season basketball game just before Christmas. We took the Bamberger Railroad from Davis High down to Salt Lake and then walked up to Main St. on So. Temple to the corner of the old Deseret News Building to catch a streetcar to Jordan High. I remember reading the news items they always had in bold print posted in the Deseret News front window, and the big item was an announcement that Grandfather had died.

There is one outstanding thing that I will always remember about my Grandfather’s Funeral. It was at Mt. Olivet Cemetery (where he is buried) just after they lowered the coffin into the ground; off in the distance loud and clear somebody played taps on their bugle. The bugle sounding taps may have come from Ft. Douglas. I wondered if it was an angel.

I learned very little about our great Grandmother Jane Ann Dutson. I was very well acquainted with our Grandmother Imogene because of the various times I lived with her. After Grandfather died, Grandmother Melville stayed in her home in Salt Lake City on Third Avenue. Also, after the folks moved from Bountiful back down to Delta, and I had graduated from high school, I lived with Grandmother Imogene during the times that I went to school at the University of Utah [1927-1928, 1931-1933].

I remember she was a very sad lady and really mourned Grandfather’s death very much. During my first year at the University living with Grandmother, she still had some stocks that had coupons on the back. When one would come due, she would clip the coupon and then walk downtown from the Avenues to ZCMI. She would go in and buy a little girl’s dress, as she only wore a size 7. She would just simply put on the new dress, throw the old one away and walk back home. I remember seeing her walking in a new dress heading back home

9 when I was on the streetcar on south Temple going home. She looked right cute in her new bright blue dress. She was very spry and walked very briskly.

One time I remember coming in the front door one late afternoon and here was Grandmother standing on the top platform of a high stepladder that she had put up in the hall, and she was reaching up and washing the ceiling in the hail. Physically, she was quite a chipper young lass.

Grandmother used to like T-bone steaks and I liked them too. She would have the little Gem Grocery Store send down a T-bone steak 2 or 3 times a week, then she would fry it. She would eat the tenderloin section and give me the big end of the steak. She also liked maraschino cherries and kept a bottle of them in her pantry. I liked them too, so I would snitch some all the time.

I lived with Grandmother my first year at the University [1927-1928], then went on a mission to Germany the next year [1928]. I was gone from the University for three years, then came back and lived with her again for two more years while I attended the University of Utah [1931-1933].

Grandmother Melville was quite interested in genealogy and quite active. She wrote me a letter just before I was released from my German mission and asked me to go up to Pittenweem, Scotland, on my way home, which I did, for the purpose of getting the names and birth dates, etc., off the tombstones surrounding the church in Pittenweem. This I did, plus asked everybody questions about the Melvilles while I was in Pittenweem. I remember someone told me to ask an old gentleman by the name of Johnson who ran a news stand in the middle of the town square, as he was about the oldest person in the town who might possibly remember some of our predecessor Melvilles. I went up and told Mr. Johnson who I was and that I was interested in the Melvilles, and he looked at me for a minute and said, “You know, you remind me of another young man who was about your same age 30 years ago who came and asked me the same questions.” This, of course, had to be Dad.

After I quit school at the University and got married [1933], I visited Grandmother quite often until she died at the age 92 [1942].

Now I am going to cover a few of the things that I remember about Grandfather and Grandmother Shelley, and regarding Mother’s Grandfather, Washburn Chipman. My great Grandfather Thomas Shelley married Charlotte Elsmore who was my great Grandmother. They came to the U.S.A. from England and settled in American Fork, Utah, in October, l853. They both died before I was born.

My Grandfather John F. Shelley was born to Thomas and Charlotte Shelley in American Fork, Utah, on August 30, 1862. He married Grandmother Theodocia Chipman August 29, 1882. They first lived in American Fork, and then moved to Iona, Idaho, in l885.

Mother was the first child of John Franklin Shelley and Theodocia Chipman Shelley, and was born in American Fork, Utah [1883]. My Grandmother Theodocia was one of Washburn Chipman’s daughters.

Washburn Chipman was born to Stephen and Amanda Chipman in Canada. The Chipmans moved to Council Bluffs, Iowa, and then left with one of the original wagon trains for Utah [1847] and settled in American Fork.

Grandfather Chipman grew up in American Fork where he acquired considerable amounts of farmland, as most of the early settlers did.

Washburn Chipman was one of the original founders and a director of the ZCMI. He then started Chipman’s Big Red Store in American Fork, which for many years was the predominant mercantile institution in that area.

10 Through Washburn Chipman and his ancestors, Mother has definitely traced my ancestry back to the Pilgrims who came across to America on the Mayflower.

Washburn Chipman married Mindwell Houston to whom Grandmother Theodocia Chipman was born in American Fork January 1, l865.

The most I remember about Grandfather Washburn Chipman was seeing him once personally when Mother took me from Shelley, Idaho, down to American Fork when I was five or six years old [1913-1914]. I remember playing around his house, cracking some black walnuts and eating them This was my first experience finding out that walnuts grow on trees.

I also remember being in great Grandfather Chipman’s front room where he was sitting in a little rocking chair with a blanket over his knees and rocking while he was talking to Mother. He apparently liked Mother because he named her in his will and periodically Mother would get a check from his executor for her share of the estate. Some of this was quite substantial. She had the money that was required for Dad to buy up that tract of land he purchased out by Abraham, Utah.

Grandfather John F. Shelley and Grandmother Theodocia first moved to Iona, Idaho [1875]. After seven years, they moved to Shelley in 1882 where he started in business by opening the Shelley Mercantile Institution, a store that existed for many years. He also started the Shelley Hardware Company and being the first settler in Shelley, Idaho, he named the town Shelley. In the early days, he acquired a considerable amount of farmland.

I do not remember anything about our Grandmother Theodocia because she died a few months after I was born.

Besides Mother, Grandfather and Grandmother Shelley had ten other children. Our Aunt Lottie and Aunt Mary, Aunt Loui and one boy, Uncle Tom Shelley, were the only ones who lived long enough for me to know them.

Grandfather Shelley did not remarry for a few years, but I do remember when he married Sylvia Gutke and built a new home in Shelley. I was something like five or six years old [April 1910, Reid was 2]. Grandfather Shelley had another family that created some aunts and uncles who are younger than I am, such as Wanda, the oldest, then Harold. I also remember my Uncle Jay, who is probably about Keith’s age.

Grandfather Shelley organized and built an electric power plant on the Snake River halfway between Shelley and Idaho Falls, which river dam and power plant furnished a lot of electricity for that area. He also organized the Shelley Bank.

Grandfather started growing Irish russet potatoes on his farmlands from seed potatoes that Dad brought back to the United States with him when he was released from the Scottish Mission [1911]. As Dad grew more and more seed potatoes, Grandfather Shelley bought them and planted more acreage until he built up a large acreage of Irish russet potatoes. Grandfather finally got enough potatoes that he had two or three carloads that he shipped down to California and sold them with no problem. A year or two later he had planted all of his acreage to Irish russet potatoes and then went into the export business.

When I was about five or six years old [1913-1914], I remember Grandfather had loaded an entire trainload of potatoes and rode down to California in the caboose with them. I remember when he left that I was standing behind the caboose and waved goodbye to him as the train pulled out.

At this point, he bought a house in Long Beach, moved to California [1916], and never did return to Shelley to live there.

11 It was when I was eight years old that Mother took me and Lois down to Long Beach where we lived with Grandfather Shelley for about three months [Dec 1916]. The house was on Magnolia Avenue and had some palm trees in front that I decided I would climb, but only once. I climbed up into the inner branches of the palm tree. Getting up was a very easy task stepping on the lower sawed off stumps of the palm branches, but when I got clear up into the top and tried to come back down I found nests of spear-like needles about a foot long. Trying to get back down out of that mess was an experience I would never want to go through again.

I also went to the Daisy School while we were living with Grandfather Shelley in Long Beach for about three months. After Mother and I left Long Beach, we moved into Delta that spring [1917].

As far as I can remember, I never did see my Grandfather Shelley again after we moved to Delta.

After two or three years in Long Beach, Grandfather Shelley bought a mansion in Pomona, California, where he lived for several years, and then moved to Kingman, Arizona, where he went into the mining business. He acquired some large copper ore bearing properties as well as a small gold mine. The copper properties were not commercial during his life, so he ended up spending his life’s fortune just trying to make good in mining. He and a couple of the boys personally worked the gold mine for enough money to live on until he died [1942].

12 SECTION 2 - MY LIFE WITH DAD AND MOTHER

Dad was born in Fillmore, Utah, February 9, 1879, to James Andrew Melville and Imogene Gibbs Melville and was named John Harvey Melville. He lived in Fillmore, Utah, as he was growing up, until he became old enough to go on an LDS Mission to the southern states [abt. 1898].

He told me a story about when he was a young man living in Fillmore regarding a lady who owned a vicious dog. The dog used to come out and try to chew him up as he would go by her place. Dad owned a revolver, so one time when he was passing her house, and the dog came out, he pulled his revolver out and shot it in the air, and then Dad howled loud and viciously like a wounded dog and about scared the poor old lady to death. She thought he had killed her dog. He said she kept it chained in the yard after that.

Another story he told was about a time he was hunting up in the mountains east of Fillmore when he was jumped by a mountain lion and about got tossed off his horse, when he shot the lion with his pistol.

He told me about the time he and Nathaniel Baldwin, who was later to become one of the top world radio inventors, went out in a field and crawled through a threshing machine. He said Nathaniel Baldwin at the time was taking notes of where the machinery and the equipment were, and later Nathaniel built a small-scale threshing machine that actually worked.

As mentioned before, Dad was in Fillmore until he went on his mission to the southern states. He liked to tell about how he traveled the southern states on this mission without “purse or scrip”. He and his companion had no money, so in order to eat or get to sleep in a haystack in a barn, they would have to first make friends with somebody and then talk them out of a meal or a place to stay.

He said because of the dogs most of the people had they would walk up to the front gate, and then he would yell “anybody there” as loud as he could to get someone’s attention so he could talk to them. I guess that is where he got into the habit of driving up in front of someone’s place and then yelling them out of the house, which he used to do quite often.

On one occasion, a gang of southerners grabbed Dad and his companion and threw them in a millpond. Then with sticks and poles kept them from the banks of the pond and almost drowned them. They did get out.

Later Dad got back from his southern states mission he went up to the Brigham Young Academy in Provo, Utah, where he went to school until he graduated [1901-1904]. It was while he was at the Brigham Young Academy that he met Mother, who was also attending at the same time that he was. Mother played basketball on Maude May Babcock’s original girl’s basketball team. Dad told me once why he became attracted to Mother was because of her big, sturdy, husky le gs.

After he graduated from college, he got a job teaching school up in Star Valley, Wyoming, for one year [1904-1905]. At Christmas time, he put snow runners on his buggy and took a trip by horse and buggy from Star Valley down to Fillmore, Utah. He tied the buggy wheels on the buggy and then when he ran out of snow he exchanged the wheels for the runners, and vice versa, when he went back to Star Valley. He said it took one week to make the trip each way.

One year teaching school in the snowbound Star Valley was enough for him, so the next year he got a job teaching school in Woodville, Idaho, and it was during his teaching time at Woodville that he decided to hook up his horse and buggy and go down to Shelley and look up Mother. At that point, he began courting Mother.

My Mother was born in American Fork, Utah [1883] , to John Franklin Shelley and Theodocia Chipman Shelley. They named her Theodocia Chipman Shelley. She lived in American Fork with her parents until Grandfather Shelley decided to move to Idaho, and of course, Mother went with them. After Grandfather and

13 Grandmother moved to Shelley, there was no school available to Mother, so they sent her back to American Fork to live with Aunt Ellie Abel, George Shelley and other relatives to attend grade school.

Mother worked in the Shelley Merc with her Dad when she was an older girl at various times while she was still single, and then Mother went to the Brigham Young Academy where she also graduated [1902-1905]. It was after Mother had returned from the Brigham Young Academy that she and Dad got together. On November 29 1905, the day before Thanksgiving, they went to Salt Lake City and got married in the Temple.

Late in life, Mother told me about taking a trip with Grandfather Shelley by train from Shelley down to Mexico City and back before she was married. She bought a Mexican purse that she kept all her life.

I was born in Shelley, Idaho, to John Harvey Melville and Theodocia Chipman Shelley Melville on June 30, 1908, and was named Reid Shelley Melville. At the time, we were living with Grandfather Shelley, and I was born in his old, original home in Shelley, Idaho.

I don’t remember much about my first two years, but learned that my Grandmother Theodocia Shelley died shortly after I was born [Jan 4, 1909], and also shortly after that Dad was called to go on another mission, this time to Scotland, which he did. He was gone for two years [1909-1911], and of course, came back when I was about two and a half years old.

Mother and I lived with Grandmother and Grandfather Melville in Salt Lake City while Dad was gone. The first thing I remember in life was shortly after he got back. In the bathroom at 555 Third Avenue in Salt Lake, I was sitting on a little kid’s pot sort of half way tucked in back of the round bathtub where I could see under it, and Dad was sitting on the throne on the other end of the bathroom. He was sizing me up, I guess, because he kept looking at me and it scared me. I started to cry which brought Mother into the bathroom in a last hurry, and I remember she asked me what was the matter and I definitely remember telling her “Daddy’s looking at me”.

We immediately moved back to Shelley, Idaho, after Dad got home where Dad either bought or rented a small house on about a three or four acre patch of ground by the Snake River’s edge on the west side of Shelley, just across the canal from where Uncle Jed and Aunt Lottie and Maurice Robinson lived. In my earliest years, until we moved away from Shelley, I just remember Maurice Robinson was always with me or I was always with him. Life for me revolved mainly around the things kids do when they are little, with Maurice and his sisters being part of it.

We used to crawl out on Uncle Jed’s roof and ran all around it in our tennis shoes, jump out one of the second story windows on to an old bed where we would land, things like that until we were caught. It was always fun when Uncle Jed irrigated his front lawn, because he would pond the water about a foot deep and in the sun the water would get warm and it really made a glorious swimming pool.

It was along about this period when “Reece” and I were playing with a bunch of other kids out by the house, and Aunt Lottie had asked us to chop some wood, so “Reece” and I were busy chopping wood when one of Maurice’s cousins by the name of Kenneth Montague happened to come over and stick his head right in front of my axe as it was coming down on a piece wood. I hit him squarely in the head with the axe and cut a big gash in it. The kid’s mother was madder than a hoot owl at me, and she told my Dad that I had cut Kenneth’s head open with an axe, so Dad proceeded to give me a lickin’. Nothing unusual about this except he took me out into the backhouse where the neighbors couldn’t see and used a willow that had two branches on it so that every time I got whacked I got double whacked. All the time, I knew this was unjust punishment because it wasn’t my fault that Kenneth came and stuck his head where it didn’t belong. Kenneth apparently got along all right, as I ran into him many years later when we were both middle aged. He was OK.

When Dad came home from Scotland, he brought home a gunnysack full of Irish russet potatoes. He had found a type potato that was better than anything he had ever eaten before, so he decided to bring this specie of

14 potatoes back and try to grow them at home. He first cut this sack of potatoes up into seed potatoes and planted his little three or four acre farm with as many potatoes for which he had the seed.

I don’t remember whether it was the first sack of potatoes he brought home from Scotland which I helped him cut up into seed potatoes, or whether it would have been the next year when he had grown a patch and then used them to cut up for seed potatoes. Grandfather Shelley was quite interested in this new potato, so when Dad had grown one crop he sold some of the seed potatoes to our Grandfather Shelley. He also started to grow Irish russet seed potatoes. Grandfather of course had expansive acreage, so he kept on growing seed potatoes until he had enough to plant his big farm. It was after Grandfather had obtained enough seed to take care of what he wanted that Dad then grew another crop of potatoes and harvested then. Then Dad exported the first carload of Idaho russets ever grown and sold in the United States.

Dad then decided he needed more acreage, so he bought what the folks always referred to as the Windmill Farm three miles south of Shelley along the Union Pacific railroad tracks, and here lots of things happened to me.

The first thing I remember is that Maurice Robinson used to come down and stay with us for a week at a time. We would play around the farm and even go paddling around in a little pond that we were forbidden to go into, so Dad, in an attempt to scare us out of wandering away from the house, told us there was a timber wolf loose. On one occasion, he tried to show me the timber wolf out in the potato patch east of the house, and put me up on his shoulders so I could get a better look at the timber wolf. I really thought there was one, but Mother told me later that there was really no timber wolf. It was just Dad trying to scare me out of running away all the time.

The reason they called it the Windmill Farm was because it had one of the old style batch windmills on it where the power from the propellers was used to pump water, turn grinding machines to grind flour and turn a big round sandstone that was used to sharpen tools, etc.

Where the cat came from I don’t know, but it was a mother cat and appeared ins ide the windmill. Of course, this was my first pet. I adopted the cat immediately and the cat hung around for a few months. Then one day I was playing in the windmill storage area when some baby cats came tumbling down through the straw attic and landed on me, so now I had a whole bunch of pets. There would have been at least three or four kittens; however, Dad didn’t want more cats around, so he put them in a gunny sack with some rocks and tossed them into the Snake River off the old Shelley Bridge.

Our only means of transportation was a horse and buggy or a team and wagon, and we would occasionally take some long distance trips like from the Windmill Farm up to Shelley or Idaho Falls and back. On one occasion, we went clear to Rexburg and back in the buggy. On this trip , Dad took the Mother cat with us and let it out some place close to Rexburg. The cat showed up back home again about a week later.

One time when we had gone into Shelley and left that night to get back to the Windmill Farm, Maurice Robinson stowed away in the little trunk compartment in the back of the buggy. It was a bitter cold night and by the time we got back to the farm Maurice was frozen stiff. Mother had to sit up all night with him with some kind of a little lamp that burned stinky stuff, and she also put a hot mustard plaster on him to break up the croup that he had contracted. You should have heard him holler.

There was an apple orchard on the farm. One fall, Dad was harvesting the apples and had obtained a great big cider press, so he was dumping apples into the cider press by the box full. The press was powered by a horse tied to a long beam walking around it to squeeze the apples down. The reason I remember this so well is because I had a cup and I was constantly at the spout where the apple juice was coming out and I kept drinking this. Dad came along and told me to quit drinking so much or I would get “coleremarbulos”. I think that was a name Dad coined for the kind of a bellyache you would get if you drank too much apple juice.

15 While we were living on this farm at Monroe, Idaho, Mother was President of the Blackfoot Stake Relief Society. Once a week she would hook up the horse and buggy and take me with her to visit the various ward relief society meetings alternating between Firth, Wapello and Blackfoot. I accompanied her on many such visits. Blackfoot was 23 miles away, so the round trip to Blackfoot would take a full day.

One late summer the folks took me down to Blackfoot to see the County Fair. The workhorse drag races plus the cutter buggy races still stand out vividly in my memory.

The first time we attended this Fair there was to be an exhibition of the new flying machine. The pilot tried to take his airplane off the ground in the short distance in front of the grandstand in the rodeo arena. He didn’t quite make it over the fence on the west side and crashed. However, the follow ing year they had a repeat exhibition and this time the pilot did clear the fence. He then flew up around in front of the grandstand on one occasion made a pass right down over the grandstand where I was sitting at an altitude of about 10’ above me. He was coming right at me and I was very frightened. It was many years later before I ever gathered up enough nerve to try taking a ride in one of those small planes.

About the last year before we left the Windmill Farm, Grandfather Melville and my cousin Alton Melville came up to visit with us. When they got off the train at the Monroe railroad siding we were there to meet them; and I specifically remember Alton bringing me a bullet clip that had about six empty rifle shells in it as a present. World War I had started and Alton lived very close to Ft. Douglas where he used to go up and watch the soldiers practice, so when they discarded the bullet clip and the shells he gathered up some of them.

After a couple of years on the Windmill Farm, we moved back to Shelley, Idaho, into what we called the Dial Place. This was kind of a newer home, had barns and a big potato cellar out in the back, and also a piece of irrigated ground consisting of 11 acres. Then Dad bought three more acres adjoining it making a little l4 acre farm. He kept on growing potatoes. This was a good productive piece of ground, and Dad filled the potato pit with many sacks of potatoes.

I remember waking up the day after one Halloween and finding our backhouse tipped over and also finding Dad’s wagon had been taken apart, stuck on top of the potato cellar and then the wheels put back on by some of the bigger Halloween pranksters during the night. It was quite a job getting the wagon off that high-pitched roof.

A few other things happened to me while we were living at the Dial House in Shelley. First, I learned there wasn’t any Santa Claus. Some of the kids told me just before Christmas. On Christmas Eve, I walked up to Main St. with Mother where she bought some toys and other things when I wasn’t looking. However, we didn’t take them home with us, but on the way back, as we were passing the livery stable, two young hoods came up behind us and snatched Mother’s purse and then ran back around the livery stable. I remember Mother hollering out, “He who steals my purse steals trash.” She didn’t have much money left in it, but she did have a little gold watch that Grandmother Melville had given her. She told me to run back up town and get some help while she watched for the guys to see where they went. I started to run up the walk toward Main St., which was a block away. As I got part way there, I slipped on the slick ice on the walk, fell down, and started to cry, so Mother gave up her sentry post to come and see if I had been hurt. Mother never saw hide nor hair of her purse after that.

In the fall after I had just turned six years old [1914] I was supposed to start school. But Dad, having taught six-year-old kids in school, didn’t think a six year old was old enough to start school, so he wouldn’t let me start and held me out until I was seven. I didn’t mind so much at the time because Maurice hadn’t turned six years old, and he couldn’t go to school that year anyway. I waited until I was seven [1915] and Maurice and I both went to the first grade together in Shelley.

I also remember another trip that we took with the folks and with Maurice’s folks where we got into a big buggy that had three seats, hooked up a team of horses, and went from Shelley over to a place called Heisse Springs. They had a swimming pool there filled with hot water. I remember paddling around in this hot

16 swimming pool. Maurice was with us, but the thing I remember most about that trip was that it took all day to go the 40 miles or so to go over and the same to come back. The outstanding thing to me that scared me to death was when we had to take a ferry to cross the Snake River and put the team and wagon on a flat ferry. It was held in place by big wire cables, and then we crossed the Snake River. The team was nervous and jumping around. Dad and Uncle Jed were holding the horses’ heads, and I could just see me landing in the Snake River upside down, but it didn’t happen.

On May 10th, 1915, the folks sent me down to stay with Maurice all night. The next day when I went home on May 11th, I found I had a baby sister named Lois.

The summer I turned seven [June 1915], “‘Reece” and I went to the barbershop and had all of our hair shaved off. We did this just a day or two before my seventh birthday. Grandmother Melville came up to visit us about the day after we had our hair shaved off. I had been down to Maurice’s paddling in the lawn water, and when I got through swimming, I cut off through the field between Maurice’s place and our house and ran into my Grandmother who had just arrived. She wanted to see me so she was walking down the road through the hayfield to Uncle Jed’s.

She was horrified for two reasons. First, to see me without my hair and second, because I had forgotten to put any of my clothes on before I headed for home. Here was a naked, bald headed kid trudging up the road. Grandmother didn’t know whether to own me or not.

A day or two later it was my birthday. I didn’t know it, but Mother and Grandmother had planned a surprise party for me. Maurice and I were playing around up town, hitched a ride on the back end of some kind of a piece of farm equipment, and kept playing around on that thing while the man drove the equipment up into the foothills. We spent the whole afternoon taking this ride. Then when it started to get dark, we decided we had better head for home, so we started to walk back.

By the time it got very dark and we hadn’t shown up, my Uncle Jed had found out that we had been riding on this farmer’s equipment and he happened to know the man, so he took off in his little Model T Ford and came out and found us about half way from the mountains to home.

When I got home, I found out that I had had a birthday party. A lot of kids had come and brought me some presents and money. Grandmother gave me some money, but I missed my own birthday party.

When I was seven years old [1915-1916] , I was bumming around in the Shelley Merc where “Reece” and I used to hang out. Besides the store being owned by our Grandfather, Reece’ s Dad worked there and let us play around in the store. We got into the toy storage room and set up the most fantastic toy train spread you ever saw. We were having the time of our lives until our Uncle Tom Shelley, who was the manager of the store, caught us and kicked us out in one grand hurry.

Along about this same time, I was standing at the store counter by the coffee grinder where somebody had bought some coffee and had it ground up in a big coffee grinding machine. I thought the coffee machine had turned off, so out of stupid curiosity I stuck my finger up into the hole spout where the ground coffee came out just to see if there were any grounds left on the sidewalls of the spout. The machine hadn’t totally stopped and the blades cut off my right index finger, in between the knuckle and the fingernail. The end of my finger fell out and, of course, I was bleeding like a stuck pig. I grabbed a little felt cloth pennant that was sitting on the counter and wrapped my finger up in that, took the other part of my finger, beat it out the front door and went upstairs where Dr. Cutler happened to be in his office. I gave him the end of my finger and he sewed it back on and had just finished sewing the stitches when Mother came bursting in. She had heard of the trouble and came running up. At this point, I started to cry.

17 It is really a miracle, but this end of the finger grew back on in almost a normal way. I, of course, still have the scar around part of my finger showing the marks where it was cut off, but other than that, the finger is per- fectly good.

Dad had just finished having our house repainted in white. I found a can of green trim paint so I took the brush and smeared a great big streak on one of the boards along the side of the house. When Dad saw that, he got hold of me, and showed me the green streak. Having heard the story of little George Washington chopping down the cherry tree, when Dad asked me who did that, I said, “I did it”. Whereupon, Dad gave me a willowing and then he put me in jail in the potato cellar for a full day.

Mother brought me out something to eat at noon, but I was locked up in that dark place all day long. At one point, I thought I was going to get out. Maurice came along and learned I was in there, but the door of the spud cellar was locked, so he crawled on top of the spud cellar, got to one of the air vents and opened the lid. When I could see daylight, I scuttled up on top of the potato sacks, which were high enough that I might have been able to get out through there, but Dad caught Maurice and bang went the lid. I stayed the rest of the day to take my punishment.

It was while I was still a very young boy in Shelley playing up town around the Shelley Merc with Maurice and a very close friend of ours, Russell Hampton, when there was considerable excitement around the Shelley Merc. Russell’s father was the town Marshall, rode a big white horse, and there had been a robbery at the Shelley Merc by a couple of Mexicans. They robbed the store and then raced off toward Idaho Falls in a horse and buggy. Someone called Marshall Hampton, who rode out after them on a side road, and he intercepted them about three miles north of Shelley on the highway. The Mexicans shot him in the head and killed him, then raced off. They never did get caught.

The three of us boys were in front of the Shelley Merc when Uncle Jed came and told Russell that his Dad had been shot, and then took us up to the Marshall’s office where Russell’s Dad was laid out on a couch dead. I remember seeing two bullet holes in his face. Shelley, Idaho, at that time was really, truly, in the old Wild West territory with a town Marshall chasing bandits and everything.

When I was eight years old [1916] I started second grade at Shelley, but about Christmas time Dad sold the Dial Place and we went down to Long Beach, California, where I went to school in the second grade at the Daisy School.

It was while we were living in a little house behind a large one that I experienced my first earthquake. When early spring came [1917] , we moved from Long Beach to Delta, Utah.

Grandfather Melville gave us an 80-acre farm just a block west of the railroad station in Delta. We first lived in a little two-room log house. Grandfather Melville built us a new, modern home in the front of the farm.

I finished the second grade in a little one-room schoolhouse in Delta, then went to school in the third grade in the basement of the old stake tabernacle and church house in Delta.

By the time I got into the fourth grade [1918], a brand new, brick schoolhouse had been built and my teacher in the fourth grade was a cute redhead girl named Miss Pearce. When school let out for Christmas, I remembered that Miss Pearce had obtained a Christmas tree from some place that was left in the room when school closed. I rode my bicycle on an old muddy road out to Deseret where Miss Pearce lived and asked her if I could go get the Christmas tree. She sent a note back to the janitor, so that year we had a Christmas tree in Delta.

While living in Delta I had a good chum by the name of Art Steele. We played mostly in the canal in the front of our house and in some of the water ponds left on the sides of the road from the rainstorms, which ponds were mostly mud.

18 The first year we were in Delta, Dad tried to grow about an acre of spuds, but the soil was no good for potatoes and his dream of growing more russets got water logged. We did grow about a one-acre garden of various things that I remember well because I had to hoe and weed it.

One day Grandfather Melville saw me hoeing in the corn patch when all of my buddies were out playing in the street. He gave me a quarter because I was working and then later he brought me a big gold watch with a fob on it when he came back from his trip to Cuba.

Dad grew about ten acres of sugar beets. I had my day thinning sugar beets. It is a backbreaking job.

We had six or seven cows and, of course, I was a curious boy and had to learn how to milk; then regretted that ever after.

During World War I Dad let me have part of the milk and the cream for milking half of the cows. Every evening I took the milk and some of the cream out in my little red wagon and sold it, mostly to the Coopers in Grandfather’s Delta Hotel. I was in the dairy business during the War and made about a dollar a day.

Mother grew a lot of chickens and turkeys. Dad grew a lot of pigs. He sold many of them and then butchered some out of which he made hams and bacon. Generally, he used the salt curing process. This is where I learned not to like ham or bacon originally. We grew our own wheat and made flour, so with all the poultry and eggs, pigs and some beef we grew, and our garden vegetables, we had plenty to eat during World War I except for sugar. We had to substitute honey for sugar on most everything.

Dad traded some pigs for a brand new Victrola. The salesman included several records. The tunes I remember most was everything ever recorded at that time by Sousa’s Band, including all the war marches. I also remember another song called “Don’t Bite the Hand that’s Feeding You”, plus some of the other popular war songs at that time.

During World War I, most of the kids in Delta played war. At times, the fights would get a little dangerous. They were building a new post office building about a block south of the railroad station, and the construction people had stacked up brick interliners, which were made just like bricks except they were about 18 inches long, six inches across and six inches deep. They were formed so that they were full of fairly good- sized holes. We found that we could smash these down on a concrete slab that was there and break them into fragments about the size of ordinary rocks. One night we were playing war and one gang of kids was on one side of the stack of brick liners and another gang of us were on the other side. We were breaking these bricks and then throwing them at the other guys, who were doing the same thing to us. I ran out of ammunition, so I reached down on a cement slab to get a handful of chunks when some other kid had decided to smash up a new big brick and I caught the brick full force on one of my middle fingers. It smashed the finger flat and embedded chunks of brick right through it. I still wear the scars from that little war fight.

Another time we were trying to invade the enemy in an old shed by crawling up on the front of the roof, then crawling down from the top to surprise them, when some kid surprised me by throwing an old bone that caught me square in the lip and cut my lip wide open. Even war games can be dangerous.

During this period another one of my buddies and I got into the mood to dismantle various kinds of machinery and see if we could take it apart and put it back together again. We finished taking the wagon wheels off one of Dad’s wagons and then putting the wheels back on, so we looked around for something else to try our mechanical skills on. At this time, they were dredging large drainage canals to drain off the surface water from the area and keep the ground from getting water logged. One of these big steam powered machines was at the end of a long canal about three blocks south of our house. We walked down there and proceeded to take various parts of this big machine apart. We got caught. Dad put me back in jail again in our basement, and this time for three days.

19 During the War when the Delta sugar factory was being built, Art Steele’s older brother, Alton Steele, had a paper route delivering the Salt Lake Tribune out at the factory where the construction workers came off duty. He went away for a month and let me go out and sell the papers and keep the money I received. I was getting quite rich. Then at the same time, someone came and made a deal with me to sell a newspaper printed in Mexican called “El Heraldo de Mexico”. I kept this little paper route until the factory was finished and went out to the Mexican camp once a week every time I received a shipment of the newspapers and sold them to the Mexicans.

When the new sugar factory was finally completed the town of Delta set up a big celebration, and to start it out early in the morning the day the factory was opened, they had a team and wagon race loaded with sugar beets. The farmers who had grown sugar beets, which Dad did, lined up on Main St. in Delta to try to win a prize for the first load of sugar beets being delivered to the factory. Dad entered the race and won it.

During the summer days on our farm in Delta, I inherited the job of herding cows on the west end of our 80 acres. I would pack my lunch, go down and stay all day. We had to herd the cows because they had access to green alfalfa, and if they got into that and ate too much of it, it would bloat them. That was one time in my life when I got close enough to Canadian honker geese to have shot them. The geese would land all around me in the field where I was herding cows, and I would try to hit then with hard clods of dirt, but they were too fast for me. Since that time when I have had a shotgun, I have never been close enough to a goose to shoot one.

When World War I ended, Dad sold the 80 acres to a Mr. Pete Grunning and we have all referred to that particular home and farm as the Grunning Place. When Dad sold the farm, we moved to 2l55 So. Green St. in Salt Lake City and stayed there about a year.

I went to the 4th grade on 21st So. and 9th east for the rest of that spring [1919], then in the Fall [5th Grade] I transferred to the Columbus School at about 24th So. on 5th east in Salt Lake. We used to go over to Nibley Park during our lunch hour and after school to play for a while. Although I have never golfed on Nibley Park, I can truthfully say I have played there.

While we were living on Green St., Dad bought his first automobile - an open-air four-door Dodge. When Christmas time came, Dad hired some fellow from the Tom Botterill Dodge dealer to drive our Dodge down to Las Vegas. We took the train as far as Las Vegas and then drove from there on down to Long Beach, California. The only road that went down there at that time was a dirt road and went via Searchlight, Nevada, and Needles, California. It took us three days to make the trip from Las Vegas to Long Beach, stopping over at Searchlight the first night and then in Needles, California the second night. I well remember what downtown Las Vegas looked like at Christmas time in 1919. There were three or four old saloons, two or three cafes, one hotel and one garage on Fremont Avenue, which extended only from the Union Pacific railroad station east for about two blocks. The sidewalks were board sidewalks and, of course, no paving. I specifically remember the hitching posts out in front of all the buildings that people coming in on horses tied up to.

We lived in Long Beach until April [1920 5th Grade] where I went to School at the Eucalyptus School. I drove my folks crazy and also my schoolteacher when I obtained a little tame white mouse, which I constantly carried in my pocket.

When we first went to Long Beach, Dad bought a 22-acre piece of ground on the north slope of Signal Hill. We didn’t know at that time that that hill was a giant oil dome. Dad subdivided the 22 acres and sold the entire thing off as city lots. If he just hadn’t been such a good salesman we might have gotten stuck with a few lots that would have been worth fantastic money to us shortly thereafter.

Dad sold his car before we left Long Beach and we took the train back to Salt Lake. Dad then bought the new bungalow and home in Bountiful where we had a one-acre lot on the south Side of Center St. between 2nd and 3rd East.

20 We settled in our new home in Bountiful in April 1920, just as spring was starting. The one-acre lot had good fertile soil and good irrigation water. We were able to grow a large garden. I was the only child old enough in the family to do gardening, so I got the job, which I held for the seven years we lived in Bountiful [1927].

Dad employed John Burningham to come in with a team of horses and plow and harrow the lot and get it ready for spring planting. I was given my first job in the garden planting peas. Mother had picked a small plot for a pea patch just south of the house. I was out there planting peas by poking my finger into the ground, making a hole and dropping one pea seed in the hole. Elmer Barlow, who lived across the street and on the corner west of us, got curious to see who the new neighbors were so he wandered up there and came out to see what I was doing.

He was thoroughly disgusted with the way I was planting peas so he grabbed a hoe, made several furrows, then showed me how to sprinkle peas down along in the bottom of the furrow and helped me plant the pea patch. Since that time, Elmer Barlow and I have been as close as peas in a pod. He still lives across the street from me on 2nd No. in Bountiful up on the corner just east of us where John Burningham lived.

I had left the Columbus School in Salt Lake where I was going to school in the 5th grade at the time we moved to Bountiful. I finished the 5th grade [1920] in the Stoker School in the center of Bountiful.

I also attended the 6th grade at the Stoker School. For the next three years [1921-1924] , I went to Bountiful Junior High on 4th No. and Main St. It was while I was in Junior High School that Dad bought his second automobile, a Model T Ford 2-door sedan.

I used to snitch the car out of the garage when Dad wasn’t home, gather up some of my buddies such as Elmer Barlow, Oz Ellis, Arnold Barnett and Gene Bryson, and we would drive around Bountiful, and also go out on dates.

While I was in Junior High in Bountiful, Keith was born September 22, 1921.

While in Junior High School, I took a wood working class and one project for the year was making a pair of skis. I made mine out of oak. They were heavy as the dickens. After shaping the skis and getting them almost ready, we had to bend them around a pipe and steam them so we could get the nose of the ski turned up. I didn’t do too good a job on this as I only got mine to turn up two inches.

However, I tacked on a leather strap to stick my toes in and went skiing up on the foothills of Bountiful. I didn’t have any poles, ski shoes or harness. We just walked up to a high spot on the sides of the mountains east of Bountiful, then would take a wild flyer trying to slide down without killing ourselves. I kept at this until one day I took a good spill and one ski came off. It went sliding by itself about half a mile as far as I could see down into some oak brush. I followed the ski track down to the oak brash, but could not locate that ski any place. This ended my first attempt at skiing.

While I was in Junior High School, we used to hike up in the mountains in the spring, summer and fall. When I became a Boy Scout, our scout patrol would go on outings up in the hills. Sometimes we would pack up on horses and ride to the Summit and stay overnight.

One Saturday afternoon four or five of us were up on the side hills at a gravel pit. The sand had caved off the sides forming about a 45-degree slope down below the rim of the sand pit. It was a big one, probably twenty feet deep. We started jumping off the rim landing down in the sand with our feet first and sort of sitting in it at the same time. I got real bold and decided I wanted to take a real flyer, so I backed up, ran and jumped off, only this time 1 overshot the sand and landed square on my rump on the bottom of this hard gravel pit.

21 Fortunately, Cliff Burningham, Russ Burningham, and Thorel Tuttle came riding by on horses. They loaded me up on a horse and took me home. I could never have walked at all the rest of that day. I was just lucky it didn’t break something permanently. That was a hard lesson in dare devil jumping.

During this period in Bountiful the streets in the winter would get covered totally with snow and then get hard packed with automobiles and bob sleighs, and we had very challenging sleigh riding hills. If an automobile as going up the hill we would hock a rope from the sleigh around the bumper and let them tow us to the top, then take a running slam and go down the hill.

My favorite hill was Stringham’s Hill, although I also went down the two bigger ones at Mosse’s Hill and Tuttle’s Hill on different occasions. We used to go on sleigh riding parties with some of the girls from MIA.

As soon as we moved to Bountiful, Dad wanted to duplicate the real estate business that Grandfather Jim was in, so he bought a large tract of land out at Abraham, northwest of Delta, which originally constituted 400 acres. He built a four-room frame house on a 160-acre piece. He planted these 160 acres into alfalfa where we grew primarily alfalfa and alfalfa seed. He then also planted alfalfa on the 30-acre piece just west of the 160- acre farm. Included in the original tract was a 40-acre piece of older farmland and an old house and barn, which was already in alfalfa. Then a few years later, he planted the 40-acre piece adjoining the 160-acre farm on the northwest into certified Grimm alfalfa and we referred to this as the Grimm 40.

Dad drilled two wells on the 160 that we used for culinary purposes and to furnish a little water for a garden. Down on the Grimm 40 he drilled another well that flowed, so Dad built a cement reservoir about the size of a swimming pool. It would fill up every few days, and then we’d use the water to irrigate the garden.

We all lived on the farm during the summers, but commuted back and forth to Bountiful several times during the year. We spent the fall and winters during the school days in Bountiful. I now call it suitcase farming. We would pick up the suitcases and head for the farm, and then head back to Bountiful occasionally.

About a year or two after Dad bought the Abraham Tract [1922], he traded in the Ford sedan for a new Dodge four-door open-air car. Dad kept this car until it wore out.

Our summers would be spent down on the farm irrigating the ground, catching the quimps (small rodents) that riddled our ditches with holes and let the water out, and also in harvesting hay and alfalfa seed. During the summer, we chopped dodder weed out of the alfalfa. And we spent considerable time shooting jackrabbits to keep then from eating all of our hay.

We were pla gued with grasshoppers that we used to poison by mixing poison with bran and sugar beet syrup and banana oil. We had to get up at 3:00 o’clock in the morning so we could spread this poison before the sun came up.

During the school terms, I went to school at Bountiful Junior High and then to Davis High where I graduated in 1927. At Davis High School, I played football, basketball, went out for track and also got tangled up in opera and the school plays. Lois and John went to school at the Stoker School. One year John was “Little Prince Charming’ in the Stoker School annual play.

Our favorite winter pastime was sleigh riding, primarily down Strin gham’s Hill, which is now better known as Center St. I remember one specific occasion when I took Lois, John and Keith for a ride down the hill. I had Keith loaded on my shoulders, John sitting on my back, and Lois kneeling up in the tail end of the sleigh. When we hit the bridge over the old Bonneville Canal, it threw the whole bunch of us up in the air. When we came down all three of them were on top of me and my head was bent down underneath the sleigh backwards. However, I don’t remember anybody getting hurt.

22 One summer during my early days in high school, I got a job thinning weeds out of onions in the Porter- Walton Seed Farms in Centerville. After working there all day, Elmer and I went home to clean up and go to Lagoon. It was on a Monday night, August 7th, when Bountiful, Centerville, Farmington and Willard all received a tremendous cloudburst with accompanying flash floods in all of the canyons above the towns mentioned.

At the time, various area stores were sponsoring Peter Rabbit Days on Mondays, and for purchases of various items, we got free Peter Rabbit tickets for rides on the different amusement contraptions at either Lagoon or Saltair. On the day of this flood, Mother and Dad had taken Lois, John and Keith out to Saltair during the afternoon, and had returned from Saltair as far as Salt Lake when this heavy storm and downpour started. The roads were washed out between Salt Lake and Bountiful, particularly at the point of the mountain by the old gravel pit, and as a result, the folks had to stay in Salt Lake at Grandmother and Grandfather Melville’s place.

After I took a bath and got all cleaned up ready to go to Lagoon, I was just leaving our front steps as this cloudburst hit. I made a mad da sh back into the house. It was only minutes before all the power in the area was knocked out and heavy, black thunderclouds had darkened the sky as black as night. The rain came down as if it were being poured out of giant buckets, and was accompanied by the wildest, most vicious lightning and thunder I have ever gone through.

I sat around in our front room for about two hours, and have to admit that I was really frightened. The rain let up somewhat after a couple or hours, so I beat it out of there and. ran down to Elmer Barlow’s place where I stayed all night. This flood killed most boys in a scout camp in Farmington Canyon, wrecked havoc at Lagoon, washed houses and barns away in Centerville, and in Willard, Utah, buried cars and killed the occupants.

Mother had tried to phone me from Grandmother’s place in Salt Lake, but the telephones were all knocked out. They didn’t know where I was, and I didn’t know where the rest of the family was until the next day.

Although this doesn’t fit in with the same time, memories of this flood remind me of another one, which involved our family very crucially.

This was three or four years later [1926-1927?]. Our whole family was heading for the farm at Delta during the summer, and was going up the canyon toward Eureka out of Elberta, Utah. I was driving and just as I started to head into the real narrow gorge where the road ran along the creek bed, a great big wall of boulders, mud, trees and other gunk came roaring at us. The front wall of mud was probably 20 feet high at this point. We were about 100 yards from this onrushing mud bank with boulders bigger than our car being pushed in front of it.

I jammed the brakes, threw the car into reverse, and went backwards as fast as I could go. Fortunately, there was a turnout road going up over the Dividend Mining area that I backed into, and up on the side banks of the canyon, just in time to get out of the way, as that killer flood rushed on by. Our whole family missed getting wiped out all at once by a matter of two or three seconds.

We turned around and went up over Dividend and down into Elberta, Utah. As we were descending down from the foothills, we could see that big, massive flood pouring right down the highway that we had just left. By the time we got to Elberta, the front of the flood had gone on through, but a stream like a river was washing right down through Main St. The water was only about a foot deep, so we decided to go on through and go home via Nephi and Holden, Utah.

In order to get through the boulders going down Main St., I drove and Dad got out and kicked around in front of the car finding and moving big boulders out of the way so we could get through. We managed to make it as far as Nephi that night. Then, of course, we went to the farm the next day.

Just before my sixteenth birthday [June 1924] , the folks decided to take a trip in our car to Portland, Seattle and Vancouver, B.C., Canada. Uncle Alex and Aunt Maude Melville and family traveled along with us in their

23 car. We packed our own groceries and slept in a car tent that was fastened on one side of the car. We managed to cover anywhere from 150 to 200 miles a day, mostly on dirt roads. It took three weeks for this trip.

When we reached Portland, we picked up Alton Melville, who was on a mission up in Washington at the time. We went out to Seaside, Oregon, which at that time was just a beach, virtually no houses, and camped overnight. We followed the world’s most crooked and narrow road along the banks of the Columbia River to get there.

The day after we arrived was my sixteenth birthday, so for a birthday present Dad bought me my first airplane ride, and Alton and I took a 25 minute ride in an airplane.

From Seaside, Oregon, we went up to Seattle and then to Vancouver, B.C., Canada. We stayed in a tourist park that was at that time totally covered with big pine trees. Right by the camp, there were three huge totem poles. The park had roads and walkways through it, and this being about the 4th of July [1924] , Alton and I found a place to buy some firecrackers. So we went wandering off through the park shooting off firecrackers.

A Canadian Mounty came running through and said, “Some kid is shooting firecrackers in here. Have you seen him?” Alton, quick as a flash, said, “Yes, I saw two kids running off through that direction”, and pointed off the other way. Of course, we ditched our firecrackers fast after that.

(On a recent trip to Vancouver, B.C., I tried to find the old tourist park that was out on a peninsula on the west edge of Vancouver. I did find the three totem poles still standing, but none of the pine trees were there. They had built some Agricultural Extension University on the same grounds.)

On the way back we retraced our steps as far as Mountain Home, Idaho, where we left Uncle Alex and his family, and drove over a dirt road hugging the foothills north of Bliss, Idaho, Thin Falls and Rupert. We had problems here because we couldn’t find any water. However, we bought some water, two bits a gallon from a farmer, and managed to get across this lonely road.

On this trip , we went over a two-wheel track dirt road all the way and went through Mackay. From there we crossed over some rugged sharp lava rocks where we went right in between the craters of the moon, then we went to Arco, Idaho, and on to Shelley where we stayed a day or two.

Leaving Shelley, Idaho, we drove back to Burley, Idaho, to see Aunt Louie and Uncle Bill McCune. Then, in order to get to Salt Lake from Burley, we took an old two-wheel dirty and dusty road down through Oakley and back into Strevell, Idaho, which is on the Utah-Idaho border. We only made about 60 miles that day because the two wagon tracks we followed were filled with dust, rocks and holes, so that we could only make about five to ten miles an hour. When we arrived at Strevell, we all looked like people made out of fine, powdery dust.

Dad got us a room in the old Strevell Hotel where we were able to take a bath, get cleaned up, and then have dinner down in their dining room. I always remembered this dinner because they served all their guests at once, which weren’t very many, on a great big giant round table that had a “Lazy-Susan” type serving deal in the middle. When you wanted something, you pulled the serving table around to where you could reach what you wanted. This was the only restaurant meal that I remember on the trip.

At the present time, the old Strevell Hotel still stands, minus all the windows and doors, and looks like some ghost house. It has been impossible for me to try to convince anybody with me when I pass through Strevell that I actually stayed in that hotel one night.

From there it took another day to get to Bountiful, about 125 miles on the same type of dirt toads. We went to Holbrook, Idaho, instead of through Snowville, Utah, and then hugged that mountain range south of Holbrook, Idaho, to Malad, Idaho.

24 Along the foothills north of Malad, we ran into a flock of sage hens. I got out and shot half a dozen chickens, as I had happened to take my shotgun along with me. We made it on into Bountiful that night and had a wild chicken dinner at home the next day.

When we were living in Bountiful, we went to church at the Bountiful First Ward in the present Stake Tabernacle Building in the center of Bountiful on Main St. When I turned 12 years old, I started in MIA, and immediately be came a Boy Scout. Elmer Barlow, Arnold Barnett, Oz Ellis, LaMar Parkin, “Pudge” Clay, Glen Harrison, Les Cox and I were all put in the same scout patrol. We used to hold patrol meetings rotating at each other’s houses and did the things boy scouts do to try to become first class scouts and earn merit badges.

One summer while I was still active in scouting, the entire Salt Lake Council of boy scouts organized a trip to Yellowstone Park. I signed up for this trip along with some of the other guys from the Bountiful First Ward Troop and went along. I was assigned to an open-air white truck, which seemed to plod along all right without too many breakdowns.

We were each assigned a companion with whom we were supposed to travel and sort of tag along together and look out for each other’s welfare. Rendall Mabey and I were assigned as companions. He happened to be Governor Mabey’s son, and one day as we were traveling along, someone among the big wigs with our group of scouts decided that the Governor’s son should not be riding in an open-air truck, so they whisked him away and put him in a limousine.

Going north, we stopped at Sugar City, Idaho, where the townspeople came out and gave us a magnificent feed. This was to be about the last decent meal I got along the route. The next day just before we got to Yellowstone Park the chow wagon truck broke down. A lot of the fresh food spoiled. This chow truck never did catch up with us.

I remember the famous naturalist D. Plummer was along; and he and some of the other older fellows purchased huge sacks of oatmeal mush, so we were not starving. We would get three meals a day consisting of all the oatmeal mush with cream on it that we could eat. This is where I learned to hate canned cream, and for years after that, didn’t care for any oatmeal mush. I guess most of us had a little money so we would go into a store and buy a box of cookies or a loaf of bread.

On this trip, we did make a very thorough sight seeing tour of everything in Yellowstone Park, and then came home via Jackson Hole where we stayed all night on the banks of some river by Jackson Lake. The next day, we proceeded on and started up the Teton Pass west of Jackson in what turned out to be a fantastic summer storm -- a downpour of rain and lightning flashing one flash after another. Part way up the one lane dugway dirt road, one of the lead trucks broke down and held up the entire caravan. Our bunch got the word that there was a ranger cabin up at the summit, so we got out and walked through the rain up to the summit. It was so dark you couldn’t see where you were walking, but the lightning kept flashing and lighting up the road, and it was particularly clear where the wheel tracks were. They were filled with water, so we were able to follow these wheel tracks and not fall off the dugway.

I remember as we were going around a curve where they had widened the road out so vehicles could pass, some man in what must have been the first camper was parked in the wide spot in a vehicle that looked something like one of our early motor trailers. He had found out that a bunch of scouts going up had not eaten all day, so he had made a batch of gravy with some bacon grease he had and apparently had quite a bit of bread with him. As we came to this place, he gave us each a slice of bread with homemade gravy on it. This tasted more like something to eat than anything I had had for days.

We finally made it to the summit and to the ranger’s station, a large, two-story building that was not finished. They had completed one room in the attic that had one normal-size bed in it. I happened to be one of the first to arrive and discovered this room upstairs, so I proceeded to crawl in bed with four or five other guys sleeping crosswise. This was fine until Rendall Mabey, the Governor’s son, came in. When he arrived, someone

25 had to be kicked out of bed, and as I was one of the younger guys, the older scouts booted me out and let Rendall Mabey take my place. I was very unhappy about this situation. However, I didn’t fare so badly. I got snooping around and found a bale of gunnysacks in a closet. I broke the bale open, and not saying anything to anyone, I stuck a thick layer underneath me and then piled the rest of the gunnysacks on top of me, and closed the closet door. This made a fairly comfortable bed, so I got a good night’s sleep. Downstairs there were no walls in the ranger’s station, so the guys built a bonfire in the middle of the place and then fought each other all night to try and get close enough to the fire to keep warm.

The next morning I woke up a little before the sun came up so I went downstairs and outside. The storm had passed leaving only a lot of scattered clouds down in the valley around Jackson. This was a beautiful view and I took some unusual pictures.

Then another fellow and I walked down the west side of the Tetons until we reached Victor, Idaho. We had enough money between us to buy a stack of hotcakes and a glass of milk, so we proceeded to have a wonderful breakfast. We stayed in Victor until the caravan of trucks finally made it up and over the hill and picked us up in Victor where we then returned back to Salt Lake City.

We stayed in scouting until LaMar Barlow, our scoutmaster, quit and left Bountiful when he took a job as a mailman in Salt Lake City. At this point, we lost interest in scouting.

Most of us in our scout patrol stuck together and formed a club that we called the “En Avante Club”. Arnold Barnett had become good friends with Don Amodt, so he joined the Club. I had become good friends with Burt Page and Gene Bryson, so they joined the Club. We all bought blue and gray mackinaw-type checked blazers so the nine of us looked alike. We stuck together through most of high school. I remember the girls in high school used to call us all “Little Boy Blue”.

During early high school days, Maurice Robinson used to come down and visit with me and stay for a week or two. He stopped in one time when he enlisted in the Marines at age 16. He went to San Diego and then stopped in again about six or eight months later after he got kicked out of the Marines when they found out he was under age.

Along about this same time my good friend from Shelley, Russell Hampton, stopped at our place after he had been on a bumming trip to California and back. He stayed three or four days, but Dad decided he should be back home with his mother. He bought Russell a train ticket and shipped him back to Shelley. Russell Hampton died shortly thereafter.

We made several trips to Shelley during our stay in Bountiful, as Mother would get homesick to see her sisters and rela tives up there.

While I was in high school, I went out for football and basketball and made the team. I also went out for track. I was also active in such things as drama, opera, and was elected Junior Class president. In my senior year, I was on the Student Body Council.

The first two years I was in high school [1924-1926] , various members of our gang would date the girls from Davis when school dances and events of that type came up. However, at the beginning of our last year at Davis [1926] our gang started having group parties with several of the Gleaner girls from the Bountiful First Ward. We all decided we were having more fun doing this than going out on dates. This went on all fall until Christmas time. On Sunday between Christmas and New Years we all went to church and then decided we would grab one of the Gleaner girls right after church. I saw Ted Burningham walking out the door, so I latched on to her. LaMar Parkin then latched on to Mary Soffe. The other guys picked out girls and went some place, but LaMar and I, and Ted and Mary, went sleigh riding on Stringham’s Hill for the rest of that evening. As it turned out, with a couple of exceptions, each of the guys in our gang ended up marrying the same girl he picked out that night. From this point on, we were each dating the same girl.

Shortly after this Ted’s sister, Marintha Burningham, who was now a speech teacher in high school, decided to put on an MIA play. The name of the play was “The Thirteenth Chair”. Most of the guys in our gang were picked for the cast and so were most of our girl friends. We spent the winter months practicing once a week for the play, which turned out to be a real success as far as we were all concerned.

On Easter Day [1927], following our presentation of “The Thirteenth Chair”, Oz Ellis invited the entire group to go down to an Easter dinner at his Mother’s place in Provo where she had moved. This turned out to be one of the three or four biggest meals I have ever eaten in my life.

We spent the day around Provo sight seeing, which included a visit to the Utah State Mental Hospital. The girls were all wearing overalls, so as we went through the institution, I heard remarks that the girls should be penned up in there too because they were wearing overalls instead of dresses.

Although I had been walking Ted home every night and seeing her every Sunday and whenever anything else came up for about four months, it was down in Provo on this Easter Sunday that she actually let me kiss her the first time. I fell totally in love with her as it happened. Nothing has ever changed since.

During one of the summers while our family was still living in Bountiful we took a trip to Yellowstone Park in our old Dodge and took the car tent along with us where we slept out underneath the tent on the side of the car.

Besides seeing all the sights in Yellowstone while we were there, I remember one thing special when we were camping at Canyon. The rest of the family was busy after we had supper watching the grizzlies feed and looking at the falls, but in the evening I walked around to the other side of the Grand Canyon and up about two miles to another lodge where they were having a special evening program. I was there about two hours and then had to walk back. I was somewhat apprehensive about meeting a grizzly on that road in the middle of the night. However, a nice forest ranger came walking along who caught up with me, and I made sure that I walked with him the rest of the way over to Canyon Lodge where the folks were camped.

By the time I got back to camp, the folks had all gone to bed and were asleep. Here’s where I pulled a dirty trick. I pulled up the bottom flap, stuck my nose through the tent and then growled like a bear. This woke Dad up and came up swinging with both arms and yelling, “Get out of here!” I guess this was one prank on my folks that I shouldn’t have pulled. Fortunately , I ducked down and Dad didn’t hit me. I thought I would get another two-pronged willow for it, but he decided it was just supposed to be a joke and forgot about it.

In May of 1927, I graduated from Davis High School. Each of the three years I was at Davis High, I attended LDS Seminary, graduating in the spring of 1927. The next day we moved out of our home in Bountiful and out to the farm at Abraham. I worked there again all summer with only one interruption.

In the middle of the summer, I took a trip back to Bountiful and went on an overnight camping trip with the old gang, and each one of us had our girlfriends. We went up in some big batch of trees in Weber Canyon. After this little outing, it was back to the farm until school started at the University of Utah in the fall of 1927.

27 SECTION 3 – SINGLE LIFE – UNIVERSITY, MISSION & WORK

As Grandmother Melville was living alone after Grandfather died, my aunts and uncle decided it would be a good thing for me to live with Grandmother while attending the University of Utah so that she would not have to live alone, and this I did.

Uncle Alex Melville offered me a part time job working in his law office to make a little spending money and the cash I would need to pay tuition and other expenses at the University. I worked half a day each day, six days a week, including Saturdays, and my salary was $7.50 per week. By scrimping every dime I could save, this was just barely enough to pay my tuition, buy carfare at four cents per ticket to get to school and to work and back, and also take the streetcar, which cost two four cent tickets each way out to Bountiful and back two or three times a week where I would go out and go to church or just lollygag around Ted Burningham’s home.

The general pattern of my life at the University the first year was going to school, down to work for Uncle Alex and then out to Bountiful and back. I didn’t have time to go out for football, which I would have liked, so I bypassed that. Just before Thanksgiving, in the fall of 1927, the University called for the opening practice of basketball and I decided to try for it. They didn’t start practice until 4:00 P.M., and my working hours at Uncle Alex’s office happened to be during the forenoon that quarter, so I practiced with the squad every practice night until the end of the year and made the squad.

In January [1928] when I registered for school, I signed up for a biology class that seemed to fit in with the work schedule at Uncle Alex’s office. I just got started in the biology class when I learned that I also had to take two hours of biology lab in the evenings three to five times a week. This loused me up totally as far as going out for basketball was concerned, and I had to quit the team.

During winter quarter, I signed up for a gym class and played some basketball, but spent most of my time practicing indoor high jumping and in door track. When spring came the coach, Ike Armstrong, induced me to try the high hurdles. I concentrated on this phase of track. I had been practicing high jumping with another fellow by the name of Grant who was very good at it. I induced him to try the high hurdles along with me. This seemed to be a natural for both of us.

We were both running the course in conference record time. I was able to beat Grant in most races. Ike Armstrong decided to start diligently training us as potential 1928 Olympic high hurdle runners. When the track season was about half way through, they staged an intramural track meet where we were each running under the flag of one of the sororities. I had won the high hurdle race when Ike Armstrong induced me to take a try at the low hurdles, a race for which I had not been practicing.

When I was half way through the race I got off step, landed on my foot the wrong way, and cracked one of the bones in my ankle. This ended my hopes for making the Olympic team, as my ankle just did not seem to heal from this injury for months.

My friend, Grant, did go to the Olympics and won a medal in the high hurdles. I always felt that I might have won it instead.

The next summer in 1928, I went back on the farm again as usual to shoot jack rabbits, poison grasshoppers, shovel out dodder weed, irrigate, plug up “quimp” hole in a long irrigation ditch fill, milk the cows, pitch hay, rake hay, stack hay, tromp hay and in the evenings even found time to join the Abraham baseball team which was part of the Millard County League. I played baseball with Alva Young and others for Abraham during this summer.

During all the summers down on the farm, it would of course rain heavy and this is where I learned how to drive a car on the slickest, gooiest, muddiest dirt roads where steering was a real art. They did have the roads graded, but not graveled between the farm and Abraham, and a car would just simply slide right off the road into

28 the bar pit and then we would have to get “grease woods” and stick under the wheels to get the car back on the road again. I really learned how to drive on slick roads, which probably saved life many times later when I was traveling all over the Midwest on slick snow covered roads in blizzards.

In the fall of I928, I did not go back to register at the university because I had been called on a mission to Germany. I did not leave for Germany until December 3, 1928, so as a result I had the pleasure of working on the farm during that year’s alfalfa seed harvest, which we completed about the first of October. Gene Bryson was also called on the German Mission at the same time, so he came down and lived on the farm with us and worked there during this fall.

We went into the Mission Home in Salt Lake the latter part of October, and then left for the German Mission on November 8th, 1928.

Twenty-one of us fellows left Salt Lake at the same time on the Union Pacific train the evening of November 8th. Everyone’s folks packed lunches, so we were eating sandwiches and other things that we had carried with us all the time we were crossing the prairie country to Chicago. We stopped over in Chicago for a day and went sightseeing. The museum is about all I remember. Then we took the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad from Chicago to New York. Our sandwiches were getting kind of old after four or five days and when we discovered maggots in the chicken sandwiches, we decided to throw the rest of our lunch away.

We stayed in New York City a couple of days, did a little of the usual highlight sightseeing of New York, and then took off from New York Harbor on the SS Leviathan which was a giant battleship captured from the Germans in World War I, but converted to an ocean liner. This, at the time, was the largest ship afloat, and also the fastest. It only took five days to cross the Atlantic from New York to London.

We, of course, took the real gourmet cruise, and because of the fantastic food we ate ourselves sick in the five days and I gained eight pounds.

We stayed a couple of days in London where we dropped off seven of our companions who were going to France, and then took the train and a boat across the English Channel to Hook von Holland. This was an overnight trip and we woke up the next morning in the Dutch port. I looked out my little porthole and could see a real Dutch windmill. It was quite impressive.

We then boarded a train at the Hook and headed for Germany. Holland was a very picturesque country, flowers and windmills, and wooden shoes on the doorstep just like in the picture books.

When we reached the Dutch-German border, we had to unload everything, suitcases, trunks and all, and go through German customs. We had quite a mixed up bunch of maneuvering to do at the German border. They went through all of our luggage and trunks and found some fool thing that we had to pay duty on. None of the Germans could speak English, and we couldn’t speak German. We were having a dickens of a time trying to figure out how to pay them, and what to pay them with.

As it turned out, they had found a box of chocolates in my trunk that Ted gave me before we left home, and it was the duty on this box of chocolates that caused all the hassle.

Some Dutchman who could speak English, German and Dutch happened to come around to do some interpreting and explain to us how much money I owed on this box of chocolates. Howeve r, we had a problem because I didn’t have any German money and they wouldn’t accept American money. I happened to have some American Express Travelers Checks with me so I got a bright idea from having studied French at the University of Utah. I asked one of the Germans in French, “Parlez vous Français?” He replied, “Oui”. Then I said in English, “Will you cash this check?” Gene Bryson never let me forget that boner.

29 We finally got the American Express Check cashed, paid the duty, folded up our luggage and were ready to take off. However, they didn’t hold the train we were riding. It had long since pulled out while we were tied up in cus toms. We were told the train sitting on the tracks was going on to Cologne, Germany, where we were headed for the first night.

So we crawled on the train and got on the last car, which happened to be sort of a club car type. There were just the fourteen of us on this club car. After the train pulled out the conductor came along and wanted to charge us more money because we had tickets on a “Bummelzug” (which is the slow train). The train we had crawled on was an “Eilzug”, which is the medium-fast train and costs more money. Although we knew what they wanted, we pretended to play dumb as if we couldn’t understand them. The conductor kept saying something about wanting more “geld”. Finally Bill Tyson, who was from Brigham City, thought he knew a little German and tried to say, “We don’t speak German”. What he actually said was, “Sie sprechen kein Deutsch”, which meant, “You don’t speak German.” This angered the conductor who got red faced and said “Yah, Yah, Yah, Ich spreche Deutsch”.

When we arrived in Cologne we were met by the District President Whit Smith, who advised us that we had to pay one mark apiece more money or go to jail. We shelled out the cash and paid our perturbed conductor.

We stayed overnight in Cologne. Seven of the missionaries were staying in Cologne in the Swiss-German Mission. Seven of us went on from there to Dresden, Germany, which was headquarters for the German- Austrian Mission.

We stayed at mission headquarters for two days. Brother Valentine was the mission president. Then we were dispersed to our various assignments. I was sent to Vienna, Austria.

I happened to take an express from Dresden to Vie nna and crossed Czechoslovakia . I discovered that German trains do not carry drinking water. I got thirsty and asked for some water and they brought me a big bottle of seltzer water. I didn’t like it, but it beat the daylights out of choking to death, so I drank the bottle of seltzer water anyway.

When I arrived in Vienna, all of the Austrian missionaries were assembled in Vienna and we spent three weeks there pending a big conference meeting which they were advertising all over the city. We spent the next three weeks in Vienna just passing out pamphlets advertising the meeting.

After the conference, I left with my senior mission companion, Merrill Tribe, for Steyr, Austria, where I spent the coldest winter of my life [1928]. The Danube had frozen up totally throughout Austria for the first time in history, and stayed frozen all winter. The temperatures at night averaged about twenty degrees below zero centigrade.

Besides freezing to death trying to do our work during the daytime, Tribe and I bought some skis and poles from some kid who probably had stolen them, and started to learn how to ski Austrian style. We spent a lot of time going cross-country, passing out literature, talking to anybody we met, and calling on some of the farmhouses.

When we first started to learn how to ski, we were fortunate in running into a group of young Austrian kids about 10 to 11 years old who were very skilled in the art. They seemed to enjoy showing us how to turn, jump, climb hills, etc. It was far more advanced than my earlier experiences at just sliding straight down bills and then diving into the snow to stop. We learned how to manipulate the skis on cross-country hikes, so took various trips around the countryside talking to people and passing out tracts as we went.

On one occasion, we were on the very top of a fairly high hill where a farm commune was enclosed in a large rock wall surrounding the houses and barnyards. We stopped at the main gate and rang the bell trying to get someone’s attention. No one answered, but at the far end of the wall, which would have been about a Salt

30 Lake City block away, I noticed the biggest dog I ever saw come bounding around the corner and heading our direction at full speed. We decided to vacate, so we jumped on our skis and headed down the hill. There was a bobsled road going down the hill that we got on immediately and started to pick up speed. By the time we got moving quite fast, the dog almost caught up with Merrill Tribe who was about ten yards behind me. I only looked back twic e, the first time to see Tribe riding down the hill with his legs spread wide apart so that the big, vicious dog, which was running in between his two skis, wouldn’t step on the skis and dump him. The dog was literally trying to get close enough to take half of his rear end off. We were fortunate enough to pick up enough speed that we slowly left the dog, and after about a half mile of this chase the dog gave up.

At Christmastime , Tribe and I took a trip over to Salzburg to visit two missionaries stationed there. We stayed a couple of days, did some sightseeing around Salzburg.

One day we took a little train over to the base of a high mountain peak named the Predigtstuhl. Then we took the cable car to the top and had a beautiful view across the valley from Hitler’s Berchtesgaden Mountain. I got fooling around and borrowed someone’s skis, slid part way down the mountain, then walked back to the lodge to find my companions had left me up there. However, they waited at the bottom of the lift.

About the end of February 1929, the District President, Art Hassler, and my senior companion, Merrill Tribe, cooked up a deal to close up the work at Steyr. He had us transferred into Linz, Austria, where we stayed until the first of May.

While we were in Linz, Austria , we went out to a small Mormon branch of the church at Haag am Hausrook high up in the Austrian Mountains. This was a real Hinterland where we spent a couple of nights and a Sunday holding meetings and eating meals with some of the saints.

Sunday, after Sunday School, we trudged through snow two feet deep about five miles out to one of the farm communes where some of these saints lived, to have dinner. They served a whole , baked baby pig in a giant pan, chopped it to into chunks and put the pig, the juic e and everything else in the middle of the table. Then they gave us rye bread and a plate full of red cabbage. This ultra-greasy baby pig was delicious. Everybody would cut their bread into bite size chunks, dunk them in the pig grease in the community pot and eat the pork along with the red cabbage. I did get plenty to eat.

After we had finished with the pork and red cabbage, they brought us out some Malz Kafe (barley coffee) and a big chunk of Viennese cake, which of course is fantastically good. When they brought my Malz Kafe, they also passed out some hot milk and sugar to put in it. One of the Austrian fellows sitting next to me noticed that I didn’t have a spoon, so he took his own spoon, put it in his mouth, licked it clean, then wiped it off with his shirttail and stuck it in my coffee cup. My companion, Tribe, kicked me on the shins and said, “Drink it”.

This was an interesting typical Austrian ranch-type farm commune where several families lived inside the walls like in a fort with their animals, chickens, etc., in the living quarters. I remember the chickens were running around in the dining room getting drinks of water out of the same trough where our drinking water came from. This would have been really quite an enjoyable day except for that five-mile walk out there and five miles back, plus the fact that I sat down on an old davenport that had a throw cover made out of a dog skin which happened to be full of sand fleas. Believe me, I was scratching sand flea bites for the next three months, which of course was quite typical in various places throughout Austria and Germany at the time. I would especially catch a new batch of fleas every time I went to see a movie , because apparently everyone around me had them. The only way to get rid of them was to wash all our clothes and to take a bath at the same time, which wasn’t an easy task because we didn’t have a bathroom in any of our places.

On May 1st, 1929, Tribe and I left Linz and had to report to the 100-year celebration of the founding of the Church at Leipzig, Germany, where all the German converts assembled, plus all the missionaries in the German- Austrian Mission. This wasn’t until the middle of May so we had about two weeks before we had to report in.

31 We went to Vienna for three or four days, did some sightseeing, and then went back out to Salzburg for a day or two. While there, we walked up a switchback path to the top of a mountain to see the Marie Plain Church. The view of Salzburg from here was fantastic. The interesting thing about this church was wax models of people’s fingers, hands, heads, feet or legs, etc. They believed that if they made a wax model of their ailing body member, and then took it up and le ft it in the church, then it would be healed.

Then we took a small narrow gauge train through the little Austrian valleys west of Salzburg over to Innsbruck and from there up to Munich, Germany.

Quayle Cannon was the District President in Munich at the time, and we stayed with him. He took us around Munich to see many of the sights including the Glockenspiel, which is a big clock on one of the old government buildings on Main St. where each day animated people such as the twelve apostles and others appear after the clock strikes 11:00 A.M. Also, I specifically remember spending one day in the Deutsches Museum.

When we left Munich, Quayle Cannon accompanied us to Nuremberg, where we spent another day sightseeing; primarily an old medieval castle which was equipped as a museum. They displayed old medieval torture equipment such as ste el shoes in which they put people ’s feet, built fires in them and boiled the people’s feet till they would confess they were in the wrong religion. This is where “Die Eisenfrau” (Iron Maiden) is stored. This is a steel contraption that resembles a human being on the outside, but has an interior large enough to house a man. They would execute people who wouldn’t confess by tying them into the Eisenefrau. It was built in two sections. The back to which a person was strapped in and the front where there were six spikes sticking on the inside door, two of which would pierce approximately into the eyes and one about in the mouth of the victim. Another spike went into the heart and another couple into the abdomen. They would then get some big guys to slam the door shut, which of course immediately snuffed the non-believer’s lives out. There were many other torture devices at this castle, too numerous and hideous to bother to describe.

We went on to Leipzig to attend the 3-day jubilee celebrating the 100-year anniversary of the LDS Church. It was sort of like a field day. We had a chance to meet a lot of the missionaries whom we had heard about or read about, but had never seen before.

When the jubilee was over we were given new assignments, and I was sent to Halberstadt, about 100 miles south of Berlin. Also, Wayne Thomas, who was from Ogden, was sent with me as my senior companion. The missionaries we replaced had been living with a Jewish family by the name of Heinemann, who had owned a villa, a rather exclusive single residence home. However, we had been there only a few days when the Heinemanns told us they were forced to sell their home because of financial difficulties and wanted to know if we would go with them to another apartment which they figured they could afford to rent if we were renting a room and sharing part of the apartment costs with them. They were nice people, so we moved with them, and lived in one of the best apartments that I ran into in Germany.

They had a kitchen, a large living room, plus another large parlor or sitting room in addition to the bedrooms. We were allowed the use of the main front rooms and the kitchen, which provided us with very comfortable and enjoyable living quarters.

I called Mrs. Heinemann “Mutti”, which is a rather fami1iar term for a mother similar to “mommy”. She took me under her wing and taught me German. Being a very well educated woman who came from Hanover, where the best High German is spoken, I was able to learn German from her far better than I had been trying to learn it working with my senior companions or other people we met. This was a real break for me in learning the German language.

They had one daughter who was away at a University and one son fifteen years old, named Fritz. He had three young Jewish friends about the same age who asked me if I would form a Boy Scout Troop and be their leader, which I did. We went through all the scout manuals, rope tying, hikes in the Black Forest overnight, and

32 other things that scouts do, which proved to be a rathe r interesting few months as sort of a diversion from the normal work of canvassing the city for converts. (I heard from Mutti once after World War II. She had moved to Hamburg, Germany. Her husband had been picked up and hauled off to a Jewish concentration camp and probably the gas chamber. She told me her son, Fritz, and her daughter had escaped from Germany and gone to Israel).

Halberstadt was a very interesting city. By name, Halberstadt indicates half city. Half of it was sort of a real old medieval town down in the old central section with the architecture being the type that was used about in the l4th century, and the other half of the town was more recent and modern with the latest buildings and apartments being totally modernistic and built after World War I.

Halberstadt was on the fringe edge of the Hartz Mountains. Tommy and I used to take hikes and go on little trips for half a day, and once in a while up in the Hartz Mountains. One day we stumbled on to a large wine cellar hidden in the hills. We couldn’t get in, but we peeked through the windows and saw the world’s largest wine barrel in there. The thing must have been twenty feet high and nine feet long.

Halberstadt also had a brand new Olympic -style swimming pool which we would visit on Saturday so we could take our soap along with us and not only enjoy a swim but also get a good bath. On one occasion, while we were there they held an international swimming meet at the pool, and of course, we attended to see what went on. The Swedes and the Germans were the best swimmers.

I was losing hair fast and my companion, Tommy, had practically gone bald. We decided to try something different to get our hair back. We had the barber cut all the hair off our heads Yul Bryner style, and then we shaved each other’s heads all summer. The deal worked for me. My hair grew back in thick, but Tommy never did get his back. People would laugh at us as we walked down the street.

In October [1929], Wayne had to go to Berlin to get his passport renewed. I went with him, and we spent a couple of days there primarily just sightseeing the city besides getting his passport renewed.

While we were in Halberstadt, we used to have Grant Teasdale and his companion, first Don Frost, and then Rudy Hahn, come over to visit us once every two weeks and attend our Thursday night church meetings. We would set up a big feed for them. Then once every two weeks, on the alternating week, we would go over to Aschersleben to repay the call and let them provide the feast. I was advised later that when we were in Aschersleben we would about eat them out of house and home.

Tommy Thompson was an avid tennis player, so during the summer we signed up to use the tennis court on Saturday morning from 6:00 A.M. until 8:00 A.M. We spent most of our early Saturday mornings there during the entire summer, after which we would head for the swimming pool.

During the first part of December in the fall of 1929, I was transferred to Rathenow on der Oder - which was about 20 miles west of Berlin and received Melvin Ashton as my junior companion.

When we first went to Rathenow, we found a room in the attic of one of the saint’s homes where we had to climb up a ladder. This wasn’t comfortable, so we looked for a new place and found a nice room with a family by the name of Schmidt.

While in Rathenow, we had to make a trip once a month to missionary meetings at district headquarters in Berlin. This gave me an opportunity to see and learn much more about the city of Berlin.

It was New Year’s Eve in 1929 when we went into Berlin to see what happens on New Year’s Eve. The main big frenzied celebration took place primarily on Friedrich Strasse with the side streets being jammed up with people for a block on two each direction going out of the main street. The crowd was about two million.

33 The place was jam-packed. It was even hard to move from one spot to another. Believe me; they celebrate New Year’s Eve in Berlin.

Mel Ashton and I were eating our lunches in a beer tavern in Rathenow where we could get excellent food and very inexpensive. The guy who owned the tavern took a liking to us, and when spring came along, he gave us a two-seated paddleboat with all the equipment to use while we were there. As sort of rent on the boat, we had to sandpaper the entire boat inside and out and then re-varnish it; however, we did have fun paddling around on the Oder River and some of the tributary canals between Rathenow and Potsdam. Our paddle boating days didn’t last very long as we were transferred again.

This time I was sent to Zwickau in Sachson as District President. I moved there the first part of June, 1930. Then on my [21st] birthday, June 30th, I got permission to take a trip down to Oberammergau in Bavaria to attend the world famous Passion Play which is held once every ten years. Gene Bryson also met me down there and we spent my birthday at the Passion Play.

The next day Gene and I hiked to the top of one of those high mountains where we could overlook the valley with the town of Oberammergau down in the middle of the valley. I was fortunate to be in Germany at the time to be able to make this part of what I did while in Europe.

I stayed in Zwickau until February of 1931, when I was transferred again to Frankfurt, on der Oder about 20 or 30 miles east of Berlin. I served here as District President until I was released in June of 1931 [Age 22].

Sweden had a special deal going on transportation fares. If you would buy your ticket to the U.S. in Stockholm, the Swedish government would give you fifty dollars in cash. I took advantage of this because I had no European travel money at the time. By paying about eight dollars to go to Stockholm, I was able to get the fifty dollars and use it to do a little traveling in Europe. I went into Warzburg, Germany, Heidelberg, Germany, and then took a Rhine River cruise down to Koblenz, Germany. From there I took the train through the Mozel Valley along the Mozel River going south out of Germany into France, where the train stopped at Verdun, France, right in the middle of the old big World War I battleground. The city of Verdun was still in a demolished condition.

From there I went to Paris for two or three days, then up to Brussels. I stayed in Brussels part of a day, then took a train to Rotterdam, Holland, and took the night channel crossing from Holland back to England. I spent two more days in London sightseeing, particularly the London Tower. Then I took the high-speed night train , “The Flying Scot”, up to Edinburgh, Scotland. I spent one day sightseeing Edinburgh, then the next day I took a bus trip over to Glasgow, Scotland. I looked up the family my Dad stayed with when he was on a Scottish mission, and found the mother and Maggie, the daughter. He always talked about still living in the same place. In the late afternoon, I took the bus back to Edinburgh.

The next morning I took a train to Pittenweem, Scotland, to try and find what I could learn of my Melville ancestors, which I mentioned at the beginning of this personal history. I spent one day in Edinburgh at the Hall of Records researching genealogy on the Melvilles, tying in some of the names of people I found on the gravestones in the churchyard at Pittenweem.

The next day I took the train back to London, stayed overnight and then left England on the “SS America” and crossed the Atlantic back to New York. I took the train from New York to Washington, D.C., then Salt Lake City. Elmer, Margaret and Ted drove up to Evanston, Wyoming, intercepted the train, and drove me back to Salt Lake.

After getting home Uncle Alex offered me a job for a month working half a day in his office at $6.00 a week. Since I had no money I took the job for as long as it lasted, and then went out to Abraham on the farm to work the rest of the summer.

34 While I was in Delta, Elmer, Margaret and Ted telephoned me and made arrangements to pick me up and drive down to Zion and Bryce National Parks. This was our first trip through Zion and Bryce where we stayed overnight in each of the Parks. Then we drove back to Salt Lake through Parowan.

As we went past Beaver, Utah, we decided to run up to Puffers Lake just to see what was up there. Then they dropped me off back in Delta where I stayed until school started at the University of Utah in the fall of 1931.

Again , I stayed with Grandmother Melville and also worked half days and Saturdays for Uncle Alex, but due to the depression he said he could only afford to pay me $6.00 per week. That was better than nothing, so I took it.

When school was out in June 1932 [Age 23], I harvested seven-acre hay crop, which belonged to Wayne Thomas’ Dad out in Holladay. He let me have what I could grow on the piece of land as a favor to me. He offered to sell me these seven acres of land for $1,500, payable at about $300 per year, but I was flat broke and so were my folks so I couldn’t buy it.

Elmer Barlow had a Model-A Ford two-door and I had been investigating selling woolens for one of the Utah knitting mills. Elmer and I decided to go out that summer selling for Logan Knitting Mills of Logan, Utah. I got twenty-eight dollars from my first crop of hay and we took off, bald headed tires and all. We managed to get into Scotts Bluff, Nebraska, with boots in our tires and no spare.

However, we started selling Logan knits in Scotts Bluff and had a little success, enough to pay our three dollar per week rent on our motel room, and buy gas to get us to Chadron, Nebraska. In Chadron, we sold one sweater to a service station man and got enough money to buy eight gallons of gas.

We then took off and drove up to Hot Springs, South Dakota, as we were assigned to the Dakotas and Minnesota. When we arrived in Hot Springs, we had blown another tire, which we fixed with another boot, but also had burned out a wheel bearing. We stopped in a garage in Hot Springs and had the wheel repaired, and I traded a Logan knit sweater sample for the work. We couldn’t seem to find anyone who would buy anything else in Hot Springs so we took off for the big gold camp at Lead, South Dakota.

We arrived in Lead with an empty gas tank and thirty cents. We spent the thirty cents for hamburgers and milk, so we had to walk. We climbed up and down the steep hills of Lead trying to sell something. Here we met with a little success. We sold a couple of blankets and some girl from Utah, whose husband worked in the Homestake gold mines, saw our Utah license plate stopped and talked to us to find out what we were doing out there. When we told her, she in vited us to come and show her our samples.

She also in vited four other women who were on her bowling team to come and look at our wares. They saw a little red, white and blue knit dress with a wide flare skirt, which they decided would make a very attractive bowling costume, and the five of them each bought one of the $9.75 dresses. We collected $2.00 a piece on this and made $10.00.

We didn’t seem to be able to find anyone else who would buy anything, so we filled the car with gas, bought one used tire and tube for an extra spare and took off through the cowboy country as we were told we could sell lots of underwear to the big ranches in South Dakota. After trying three or four of them without selling anything, we kept on going. We worked two little towns, Faith and Dupree, on the route and didn’t sell anything there either.

I well remember we were out of money and figured we might just have enough gas to get us to Gettysburg, South Dakota, 100 miles further east, so we bought a loaf of bread and a can of Franco American spaghetti. We put the spaghetti on the bread and ate that for our bill of fare for that particular day.

35 We drove on and made it into Gettysburg where we stopped in Cap Warring’s Cafe. We told him we were trying to sell this type of material and wanted to see if we could sell him something. His wife and oldest daughter, who was in high school at the time, both worked at the Cafe.

Cap told us to bring the samples in and he would look them over. So we did. They didn’t buy anything that night, but Cap told us that we could make money in Gettysburg because there were people around there who had some cash. This of course was the height of the depression and finding anyone with cash was next to impossible. Cap said he would make us a deal. We could eat all of our meals there and he would buy something, or take some samples for pay if we didn’t make enough money in Gettysburg to pay cash. We stuffed full on a gorgeous meal.

This happened to be on a Saturday night. It was hotter than all blazes so we just walked around the little town looking at the farmers who had come into town for Saturday. Then we drove out in front of the courthouse where we parked our car in the one side street that was paved as it was raining and we didn’t want to get stuck in the gumbo mud.

From the time we left Scotts Bluff, Nebraska, we had been making a makeshift bed in the car by turning the seats around and laying the backs down. It wasn’t comfortable, but we could get some sleep, so we slept out in Gettysburg in front of the courthouse.

The Catholic Church was about one block farther south from where we had parked. About a quarter to six in the morning we woke up and saw that people going to mass were looking in our car to see what was going on. It happened that Cap Warring and his wife went to mass that morning and saw us sleeping in the car.

When we went in for breakfast that morning, Cap said, “You guys can’t do business sleeping in a car.” He said, ‘I have a spare room in my house and I will rent it to you for 75 cents a day”, which would also be put on the same grub bill. We stayed with the Warnings in Gettysburg about a week. We did exceptionally well there.

Cap Warring, besides running the cafe, was a New York Life salesman. That first Sunday morning we sat down and he talked to us on how to sell. He explained the method of New York Life seeing ten prospects per day, trying to make appointments and have an interview with four out of the ten, which should average out two sales a day. Cap then gave us names and told us where to find virtually everybody in Gettysburg, including the Cheyenne Indian Agency west of Gettysburg and four or five of the tiny surrounding towns. We went to work on this and actually learned how to sell knitwear with this good sendoff.

When we had finished working everything around Gettysburg, Cap Warring ended up buying a knit suit for his daughter and taking a few pair of cur knit sock samples. We paid our bill with Cap for the room rent and the meals and had about sixty dollars left over.

Being lonesome at that particular point, we decided we would go home to see our girlfriends, Ted and Margaret. We got home for the 4th of July and stayed over until the night of the 24th of July.

We just bummed around Bountiful for about three weeks, during which time John Burningham put us to work thinning peaches. No pay, but plenty to eat. This job lasted almost three weeks because after we finished thinning them he made us go over the entire orchard and thin them all over again, as we didn’t thin enough off in the first round.

Elmer and I left about midnight on the 24th and drove all night, then all day the next day and all night the next night. We took the highway going straight east after we reached Chadron, Nebraska, heading for Valentine, Nebraska, then up to Mission, South Dakota, and then north to Pierre.

36 As we hadn’t had any sleep for three or four days and were driving along a straight road at night with nothing to look at except the road, we both became so sleepy we could hardly stay awake. Elmer had been driving from Chadron until we reached another town where a gas station was open and we filled up with gas.

We had previously put the right hand seat down so one guy could stretch out and sleep while the other one drove. After gassing up, I felt like I was wide enough awake to drive, so Elmer crawled in bed and I took off. I don’t think I had gone over ten or twelve miles before I fell asleep at the wheel. I was partially awake as I remember herding the car down the driveway. For what seemed like ages, I was dreaming that I was driving a tractor in between the corn furrows that were all around the country. I had the feeling that I had to stay right in the middle or I would be cutting up all the corn, so I kept my machine right square in the middle of the road.

I finally fell sound asleep and pitched off into the bar pit, which of course woke Elmer up and then he said, “I’ll drive.” After he started, about a mile down the road we saw a sign that said 23 miles back to the place where we had filled up with gas. As near as I could figure, I had driven about ten miles sound asleep.

We came into Valentine, Nebraska, just as the sun came up, and then drove on into Mission, South Dakota. We had to stop there as we had just burned out another front wheel bearing.

Again , we took the car into a garage and made a deal with the guy to buy the parts if he would let Elmer use the tools and put the new wheel bearing on himself, which Elmer did. While he was doing this , I took the suitcase full of samples and went out knocking on doors. I managed to sell a little girl’s dress and one ladies knit dress. I got enough down deposit to go back and pay the garage man for his new parts and a tank full of gas.

We then headed up to Pie rre, South Dakota, where we couldn’t sell anything; so we went on to Gettysburg where we sold a little more, and then up to Mobridge, stopping off in a couple of the little towns along the road where we sold a few items.

We found Mobridge to be about as good as Gettysburg as far as selling was concerned, so we did fairly well. We bought some new tires and we had rigged up a way to fix our bed in the car with board blocks under the seats and with lots of covers to make our bed comfortable, so we spent the entire summer sleeping in the car. Only on rare occasions , like Saturday nights when it was raining, we would rent a room for fifty cents to one dollar where we could take a bath. We had to rely on finding a pond or a ditch or creek of some kind where we could take our cake of soap, go in, and get ourselves scrubbed up once in a while. In the mornings, we used to go into the county courthouses in the men’s rest room where we would shave. This went on all summer long. Late in the summer, we’d bum tomatoes from the farmers, buy a loaf of bread for five cents, and then eat bread and tomatoes.

We worked the northeast corner of South Dakota and the southeast corner of North Dakota. We seemed to make a little money in each of the towns, but only about enough to get us on to the next town. We went halfway across Minnesota but couldn’t sell anything there.

In the fall [1932], we returned to Salt Lake with Elmer going out and finding another job. I went back to school at the University living with Grandmother and working for Uncle Alex again at six dollars a week.

After winter quarter was over at the University in 1933, I went out to South Dakota selling again, and Gene Bryson left about a week later and came out to Gettysburg to meet me. Gene and I spent the next two months working the same territory that Elmer and I had worked the summer before.

Our merchandise had been good and our customers were very well pleased so we found business fairly good. Not enough to make any money; but at least enough so that we could eat, and stay in tourist rooms or cheap hotels.

37 In late May, we came back home again and didn’t go back out into the Dakotas that year. I did a little selling in Salt Lake, Utah and Idaho during June. In between selling, I was spending my time looking around trying to find a local job.

In July , I managed to get the lease on a Utah Oil Refining Company service station at 15th east and Kensington Avenue in Salt Lake, where they had converted the front part of an old bungalow into a service station and still had the rest of the house upstairs in the back that I could use for living quarters. When I got this job, I decided to quit selling Logan-knits.

In the middle of July , Margaret and Elmer pulled a fast one on us and got married without telling us until after they were married. We learne d that they had gone up to Pine Crest up Immigration Canyon to spend their honeymoon, so Ted and I jumped in the car that evening and drove up to Pine Crest and surprised them with an unwelcome visit.

38 SECTION 4 – MARRIED WITH CHILDREN

After Margaret and Elmer were married, Ted and I decided we just as well get married too. She was working at Auerbachs at the time and I had this service station with living quarters, so I borrowed eighty dollars from her to use for a few getting married expenses and paid for a short honeymoon trip to Ye1lowstone Park.

On August 3, 1933, Ted [Age 23] and I {age 24], accompanied by her Mother, drove up to Logan, Utah, where we stayed overnight with Uncle Neil. Early on the morning of August 4th, we were married in the Logan Temple. Right after we were married, we took Ted’s Mother, Emma Burningham, and drove over to Garland, Utah, where we left her with Mark and “Jo” Nichols. We stopped long enough to have lunch, and then Ted and I drove on to Idaho Falls where we spent our first honeymoon night at Hotel Bonneville.

The next day we drove up to Old Faithful in Yellowstone Park and then spent the next two or three days driving around the Park and sightseeing. We left the Park via the south exit, and on a long stretch of road just before we hit the exit to the park I saw two little cub bears sitting on the side of the road. I got a wild idea that I would just steal one and take it home with me for a pet. I stopped the car and got out, but I only took two or three steps toward the cubs when I saw the mother bear come crunching out of the forest, and I made short tracks back into the car, and decided that wasn’t a very good idea.

The rest of that fall and part of next spring I spent working in the service station and Ted worked at Auerbachs.

In February, 1934, we took a look at the new model 1934 automobiles and decided to buy a Plymouth coupe, the first of its kind with four-wheel brakes. It was quite an improvement over previous model automobiles.

However, to save $100 cost on the automobile , I decided to spend twelve dollars bus fare to get to Detroit where I picked up the new car and then drove back home. It was a three-day and three-night ride on the bus to Detroit without stopping, and in those old buses it was cold and a very miserable trip. We landed in Detroit very early in the morning and I was able to get my car by noon that day.

Instead of going to bed and getting a night’s sleep, I decided to just head for home. I started out in sub-zero weather without a heater in the car and on icy, slick roads. As the car was new, I didn’t dare drive over thirty- five miles an hour at that time.

After I had been driving for a couple of hours, I got so sleepy and so cold that I pulled off into a service station in a little town between Detroit and Chic ago to get a heater installed. The fellow at the service station told me I just better knock off driving and find a room for the night, which I found in a private home across the street from the service station. Here I was able to take a hot bath and get a warm place to stay for the night, so I went to bed about four or five o’clock in the afternoon and slept till early the next day.

To help pay for the expenses of the trip and to try to help pay a little on the car, I took five sample Loganknit dresses with me and detoured from Chicago through Madison, Wisconsin, and went on to Webster, South Dakota, where I then spent four days crossing South Dakota and selling dresses to some of my old customers. Business was fantastic. All of my old customers plus their friends wanted more, so I sold a lot of merchandise and in the four days made over $200, which of course was about five times as much in four days as I was making in the service station in a month. I arrived back home feeling I had been very successful the way I picked up the car and stopped off to sell some knits on the way back.

I sold all of my five samples so I simply sent the money to the factory to pay for them and then went back to work in the service station.

39 About three or four weeks later, J. Roland Clark, who was at this time the new sales manager for the Logan Knitting Mills, came down to see me to induce me to go back to selling Logan-knits. He and Otto Mehr had cooked up a special deal for me whereby I would take over the territory of the Dakotas, Minnesota and Wisconsin. They also had three or four potential salesmen who would work under me and provide me with some override commissions on their sales, and they offered me a much higher percentage than I had been used to receiving. This looked like an opportunity to make some money, so I decided to accept the offer, and in April of 1934, I went back out with a small crew, plus Newell Thurgood from Bountiful (one of Ted’s old boyfriends), who wanted to go with me. Dell Eldredge also went out with Newell. LaMar Parkins’ Dad had asked me to help him line up with the company, which I did. I took LaMar Parkins’ Dad with me as far as Rapid City, South Dakota, where we all stopped and worked the town for a week. J. Roland Clark met us out there to help supervise the training of all the new men.

O. T. Ward, who had previously been selling with J. F. Clark, decided he would join my sales force in Deadwood, South Dakota.

Later that year, Harold Clayton and Dick Cummings were assigned to me and took over sales in the state of Minnesota. The rest of us worked the two Dakotas and then later Wisconsin.

Two months later in June, I drove back to Salt Lake to see Ted, who had quit work at Auerbachs because she decided she was going selling with me. We went back out into the Dakotas during the hot summer months, which were also the old dust bowl days, and spent a couple of months together selling in the Dakotas.

One of my customers, a schoolteacher by the name of Nora Nielson, whom I had sold an outfit to early in 1934, had written the factory asking for a job. Arrangements were made to meet her in Sioux Falls at a friend’s place by the name of Edna Conklin. While in Sioux Falls, we hired these two sales ladies who stayed on selling with us for several years. Edna Conklin got married to Cliff Thoe shortly after she started work. However, she continued on selling even though married. Nora Nielson didn’t get married until about 1938 when she married a retired wealthy bond broker from Oklahoma. She then retired with him on a thirty-acre piece of forest ground in the middle of the Black Hills that he had purchased many years before. They built a vir tual palace and in later years, Ted and I visited with them a couple of times.

While Ted and I were working in Wisconsin in late August, we decided to take in the 1934 World’s Fair. At the same time, Newell Thurgood and Dell Eldredge had decided they would go down to the World’s Fair. On the new expressway, the first morning we were there, we happened to pass each other and they blew a special whistler horn they had. We knew they were in Chicago, so we turned around and went back and found then. The four of us spent a couple of days going through the 1934 World’s Fair. The other two guys went back to Wisconsin to continue selling, but Ted and I were invited to stay at a mansion where Hersch and Daisy Garff were living along with Royal Garff and his wife. We spent a very enjoyable weekend in luxury in Oak Grove, Illinois.

Ted and I had been noticing many pretty, new little frame homes that had been built, and then also saw the same new styling and construction at the World’s Fair. We took quite a bit of time looking over these World’s Fair homes and certain modern designs, and decided we would build a house in Bountiful using the ideas we had picked up.

At the end of the year [1935], I received a bonus payment from Logan Knitting Mills covering the override commissions due me from my sales force, plus the balance of the commissions I had personally earned beyond what I had kept as I made the sales and collected deposits. This bonus check came to $1,300, which in those days was almost a fortune. Besides, we had been saving up money all summer and fall to try to get enough cash on hand to make some kind or a payment to start building or buying a home.

Ted’s Dad, John Burningham, sold us a lot across the street from his place for $250, for which I was able to pay him cash. Then he lined us up with Charles Shirley, an excellent individual homebuilder who was out of

40 work, needed a job badly and offered to build the house we had planned for a labor cost of $300. We later added a fireplace before the house was finished, which cost $75 extra.

I had the cash to pay Charles Shirley, so I obtained a bid for the materials from Bountiful Lumber Company in December and gave Charles Shirley the job of building the house, which he couldn’t start until February. In February, he started to build the house and finished the latter part of July, 1935.

Getting this bid on materials from Bountiful Lumber when I did was a good thing. They quoted me $1,850 for all the materials. However, at the first of the year in 1935, under President Franklin D. Roosevelt, FHA cheap housing financing was created and put into effect. As soon as FHA started, the price of building materials rose twenty percent overnight. However, my quote was good for ninety days and I had entered the contract to buy the materials prior to this governmental action that started the first of the big inflation spiral.

I did not try to get an FHA loan because I entered into a loan agreement with Bountiful State Bank prior to the time of FHA to cover the mortgage on the house. I figured I would be able to make enough money by the end of 1935 to fully pay for the house. This dream never did quite come true for many years.

By January 1, 1935, when it was time for me to go back out selling again and round up my crew of salesmen, Ted had announced to me that we were going to have a baby. Because of this, Ted stayed in Bountiful living with her folks, and I took part of my crew with me out to Grand Junction, Colorado, where we worked for a week. Armond Thompson and Mack Budge joined my crew at this time.

Seven of us drove to Grand Junction and looked for a tourist room, which was easy to find. We found room and board with an elderly couple who had just sold their farm, moved into the city and started renting rooms. They didn’t have any money, but they had some frozen hindquarters of beef hanging on the back porch. The lady told me if we could arrange to pay her a little in advance, then she could buy some bacon and eggs and other things she would need to give us good meals. The cost was five dollars apiece per week for the room and board. We went through the bacon and eggs in short order. Then she asked us if we would just as soon have steak and eggs for breakfast instead of bacon and eggs, and we were all for that. So our meals at that place consisted of steak for breakfast, steak for lunch, and delicious home cooked roast beef dinners in the evening. None of us had really eaten so good for many years.

After we spent this week in Grand Junction, three of the fellows quit and went home to Bountiful. O.T. Ward, Newell Thurgood and Armond Thompson went on from there back into the Dakotas into their regular territory. Before going back out to the Dakotas, I drove back home to Bountiful and stayed a week. Then I drove to the Dakotas via Craig and Steamboat Springs, Colorado, and into Denver. En route, I went over the Berthoud Pass in the middle of winter.

As I was going down a steep hill, my car started to slide like a sled and I couldn’t do a thing about it. I smashed into a bank of snow at the bottom of the hill that stopped me. I was pinned in the car as my car went halfway through the snow bank, and snow was packed in on both sides. I stayed there for quite a while until a Colorado Highway truck sanding the road came by, hooked on my car and pulled it back out of the snowdrift. We looked over where I had been sitting and you could see straight down for at least a quarter of a mile. If I had gone another couple of feet, I wouldn’t be writing this history.

I stayed in Denver overnight, and then drove to the Black Hills and South Dakota where I met some more of my salesmen in Rapid City and we started the 1935 selling campaign. I had made up my mind that I would just stay out in the territory selling until I had picked up enough cash to totally pay our new house. However, at Easter time, Newell Thurgood and I decided we would leave Aberdeen, South Dakota, and go home. After a few days at home, we went back out and stayed in the Dakotas and Wisconsin until the middle of July.

41 In June Gene Bryson and his wife, Grace, came out to Madison, Wisconsin, where they worked with O.T. Ward and me a couple of weeks, and then later they worked in Milwaukee and other parts of Wisconsin that summer. Mack Budge also went out selling with me in the summer of 1935. He lasted until fall.

While I was in Madison, I traded our 1934 Plymouth Coupe for a new 1935 Ford Tudor.

O. T. Ward and I left Wisconsin and drove to Fargo, North Dakota. By this time, Ted was getting close to having a baby so I decided to drive home early. En route in South Dakota, I burned up the Ford Engine and limped it along the rest of the way to Bountiful.

When I got home, Margaret and Elmer Barlow invited Ted and I to come over to their place where they were living in an old house owned by Ted’s sister, Cynthia Eames. We slept on a pulled down couch in the kitchen.

On the 12th of August, Ted and I went up to Logan where I reviewed my new sample line of Logan knits and ordered what I would want for my fall selling campaign. We didn’t get back to Bountiful until just before midnight. We hadn’t fallen asleep when Ted announced that the baby wanted to come into the world; so we called the doctor and rushed into the LDS Hospital where our first son was born about 7:00 A.M. on August 13, 1935. [Reid Age 27, Ted Age 25]

During the time Ted was in the hospital, I went out shopping for wall-to-wall carpeting, drapes, curtains and kitchen appliances. I got the house all put into shape ready for Ted and the baby to move into when they came home from the hospital, which was ten days after he was born. I stayed home a couple of weeks and then went back out selling again until late November.

I met Thurgie in Eau Claire, Wisconsin , and we drove over to Milwaukee for a couple of days, after which we drove to Watertown, South Dakota, where O. T. Ward met us. We were all going to go home for Thanksgiving and Christmas. O.T. Ward wanted to get rid of his car, and I also wanted to get rid of my Ford; so we went shopping. I saw a beautiful blue four-door Oldsmobile in the window. We went in and I made a deal to trade in my Ford and O.T.’s old car on the new Oldsmobile. This became my first Oldsmobile. We then all drove home together.

In the meantime, for lack of any other name, Ted and Margaret started calling our little boy Tommie , so we ended up naming him R. Tommie Melville. But Mike Bangerter, the Third Ward Clerk, put his name in the record as Reid Tommie Melville. This resulted in two Reid Melvilles in the family , except we always called him Tommie or Tom.

In January 1936, all of my Utah salesmen and I, this time including Elmer Barlow who went out again to sell Logan-knits, left home and drove to Sioux Falls where we held a convention with Otto Mehr. All of my other sales personnel came to Sioux Falls for this convention.

A real weird college boy from the University of Minnesota had applied for a job as salesman; so he showed up at the convention. His first crazy act was to just walk into the meeting where we were listening to Otto Mehr and proceed to pull off his sheepskin jacket and lay down on top of the samples on the sample tables. Otto asked him who he was, and he got back off his bed and we were all introduced to Kenneth Arnold. He wanted work primarily in the Twin cities to sell Logan-knits to sorority girls. He was a problem. He didn’t do anything normally. He finally quit and ended up years later in Boise, Idaho, flying airplanes in fire-fighting business.

After the convention Elmer Barlow, Tommy Thompson and I took off north to go to Bismark. We left Watertown, South Dakota, heading north in the evening just after dark. We tried to make our way up a snow- covered road with high winds blowing in drifts and temperature down to thirty below zero. We were bucking some drifts and helping push the two cars we had through each of the drifts until we finally made it to a little town where we found a hotel and a room on an upstairs floor with no heat. So all three of us piled into one bed

42 and put all the covers from two beds on top of us to keep from freezing to death. The next morning, we couldn’t get our cars started. They were frozen up solid. Later that morning, we managed to get help starting our cars and then drove to Bismark where Tommy had left his car when he went home for the Christmas holidays.

Elmer Barlow went back with me into South Dakota and worked there for about a month. We were running between towns in blizzards, as the highway department would clear the snowdrifts off the roads.

We were working in Mobridge, South Dakota, and Elmer tried to drive to Selby, South Dakota, twenty-two miles east. He didn’t make it through the last two miles. He got stuck in heavy snowdrifts, then walked on into town with no hat on, and got his ears frozen. He left his car there and took a train from Selby back into Mobridge that night.

That winter and early spring of 1936 was a ferocious, snow-bound winter. I was bucking snowdrifts all winter in South Dakota and sometimes just barely making it into a town before the roads were totally blocked shut.

I got into Mitchell, South Dakota, late one night and put my car in a heated garage. The next morning, I went to get my car out of the garage and was bucking a high wind in thirty-nine degrees below zero temperature. I could only make fifty yards at a time before I would have to duck into a store to get warm as the extreme cold would make my head ache. People were freezing to death stuck in the snow out on the highways in blizzards. I heard from Elmer Barlow a little later, who was snowbound in Minot, North Dakota, in thirty below zero weather. He couldn’t get out for a week.

I went back home at Easter time and stayed until the middle of June [1936]. During this period I gave the house an extra coat of paint and also wheel barrowed all the fill from the basement which had been piled up behind the house and dumped it in the back yard and on the west side of the house to level up the lot. Then Elmer Barlow helped me level up the front lawn and plant it to grass.

In the middle of June, 1936, Ted and I took Tom’ s crib apart and put it in the back seat of our car and made Tommie a bed. Then we drove to Wisconsin, where we met O.T. Ward and Newell Thurgood in Wausau. Ted, Tom and I stayed in a rather new high-rise hotel. There was another high-rise office building directly across the street where the Employers Mutual Insurance Co. had their offices on a floor right opposite our hotel room.

O.T. and Thurgie were sitting with Ted and Tommie in our hotel room when I was showing my sample dresses to some of the girls in Employers Mutual Insurance. I heard one of the girls scream and I went out to look. O.T. Yard had picked Tommie up and was hold ing him out the eighth story window dangling up in the air where I could see him. Ted had him back in the room in less than five seconds.

Tommie [age 10 months] started to say, “I want my white house”. Ted said, “Take us home”, so shortly thereafter, I drove them back to Bountiful. While I was home, I decided to build a garage myself. I contracted the cement work for the foundation and the driveway, then had Charles Shirley help me put up the beams and build the overhead door. By the time I finished this , my total cost for the house, lot, driveway and garage had totaled up to $3,150.

In late June, Dell Eldredge decided to go out selling with me again. We left for South Dakota arriving on July 1st. By July 2nd, it turned out extremely hot and dry, over 110 degrees in the day, and about the same at night. We landed in Aberdeen, South Dakota, on July 4th, 1936. The heat was horrible. Not much relief at night. At 7:00 A.M. July 5th, the radio broadcast the temperature at 111 degrees. We piled out of bed and prepared to get out of South Dakota. We headed for Duluth, Minnesota. We first went north to Oaks, North Dakota. As we were just leaving Oaks, the Aberdeen radio station broadcast that the temperature was officially 121 degrees at Oaks, North Dakota. We knew it was at least that hot.

43 We continued through North Dakota and into Minnesota, where the high heat turned humid, plus 110 degrees. By evening, some relief came along. By the time we were about an hour out of Duluth, Minnesota, it turned very cold. We put on our coats, and then had to turn on the car heater.

I had a sales convention scheduled in Duluth the end of that week, so we went to work there. The first day the heat broke all records for Duluth, and stayed hot all week. When the gang came in for the convention, the hotel we were in was so hot at night we couldn’t sleep, so we all took our mattresses and bedding and camped out on the edge of Lake Superior.

When the convention on ended, we all left for our territories, and also the same evening the head wave broke.

Dell needed a car, so I loaned him the cash to buy a used Ford coupe. He then went on with Newell Thurgood selling through Wisconsin.

I drove home again for our [3rd] wedding anniversary on August 4th [1936], and Tommie ’s birthday on August 13th. After this, Ted and Tommie went back out to Wisconsin with me. We first contacted Dell Eldredge in Stevens Point, Wis consin, and while having dinner that night Dell told us that our friend, Newell Thurgood, had married one of his customers named Loretta. It wasn’t too long after Thurgie got married that O.T. Ward married one of his customers named Ruth, a schoolteacher from La Crosse, Wisconsin.

Dell worked for about a month more, got homesick, and decided to drive home. En route, just out of North Platte, Nebraska, he hit a horse and busted the car. He had it towed into a garage, and just left it there. He advised me where it was, and took a bus home. At the time, he planned to get the money for the repairs, then go back and get the car, but he never did.

During the summer of 1936, I hired a salesman from Aberdeen, South Dakota named Jerry Winter. He could sell the merchandise O.K., but had a weird way of going about everything. He became a problem. When he worked, it was mostly in South Dakota.

In the fall of 1936, Ted, Tommie and I quit for the year and drove home. We had been home about three weeks when Zip Zimmerman, the new sales manager for the company advised me that he and Otto Mehr wanted to hold a convention in my territory, preferably Minneapolis; so I notified everyone and set the convention for the Curtis Hotel.

Zip was driving to Omaha where a similar convention was being held for Clair Fowler’s sales force. Zip said we could ride out with him, and then he’d take us on up to Minneapolis for our meetings. We went along with him. We had Mother baby-sit Tom for two weeks.

The Nebraska convention was in the Borne Hotel. During the convention, the big Aksarben parade went on, and we had ringside seats from our windows on the second floor of the Rome Hotel. This was one of the best parades I ever saw.

Afterwards Zip, Otto, Ted and I drove to Minneapolis. When we checked in the Curtis Hotel, we learned that Jerry Winter had been staying there for a week, and charging all of his bills. He wanted me to bail him out, but I didn’t. Someone happened to rear-end his car, and he collected enough cash to pay his own hotel bill.

Kenneth Arnold was also in trouble with overcharging some of his customers, and I felt it best to fire him. This was discussed with Zip, Otto, and me. Ken wanted to beat me up, but Zip talked him out of it. He got fired.

After the convention, Jerry Winter decided to go out to Casper, Wyoming, to sell there and stay a while with his Grandfather, Wyoming Senator Winter. I offered to pay his gas to North Platte, and give Ted and me a

44 ride that far. When we reached North Platte, I had Dell Eldredge’s car repaired, then Ted and I drove it home. Jerry went on to Casper, then quit.

Dell couldn’t pay me for the car or the repairs, or some of the other money I had loaned him; so he gave me a big 2.13 carat diamond which he had inherited from his father. I kept it a couple of years hoping Dell could pay me and take it back. It was too big for me to dare trying to wear, so I finally sold it to Daynes Jewelry for $600. This was a foolish move considering the value of diamonds now.

Ted and I stayed home the rest of the year in 1936.

When Tommie was about a year old, we tucked him in his crib. He kicked all his covers off every night, so we took his baby wool blanket, wrapped him in it and used a giant safety pin to pin his arms and neck in side the blanket. He soon started to crawl up over the side rails, blanket and all, then come in to our bedroom, wake us up at the crack of da wn and say: “Pin me out.” He could negotiate the crib in a straight jacket.

In January, 1937, I left and drove straight into Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where I stopped for a week and did some selling, and then I went to Madison, Wisconsin. While I was in Madison, Ted phoned me and told me that she and Tommie [age 17 months] would be arriving at the railroad station in Chicago two days later. I drove down to Chicago and picked them up.

About the first of February, we drove back into the Dakotas where we worked and were in the same snowbound condition as the year before. The weather broke a couple of weeks before Easter. We went up to Bismark, North Dakota, and stayed in the Lewis and Clark Hotel in Mandan for a week.

Then we drove over to Dickinson, North Dakota, where O.T. and Ruth Ward were working and stayed with them in a motel that had been converted into rooms from old railroad passenger cars. O.T. always liked to tease everybody, and he apparently enjoyed playing with Tom and vice versa.

In the evening the next day, we left Dickinson to go back to Mandan. Tom was riding on my left arm as I was driving and kept sticking his head out the window looking back at the town of Dickinson. He then kept asking, “There’s T? Where’s T?”

We stayed in an upstairs room at the Lewis and Clark Hotel and had to walk up and down a flight of stairs. At the midway landing, they had mounted a giant bison head which looker very ferocious, I guess it scared Tom, as he would bury his head out of sight so he couldn’t see it every time we had pass it.

A day or two later just before Easter [1937], Ted took Tom and went home on the Great Northern Railroad via Butte, Montana. I stayed out in the territory for about six weeks before I quit selling for the early summer.

Because of the difficulty in finding apartments to rent, and on many occasions even a decent tourist room or hotel to stay in, Ted and I had been looking at the new house trailers that had just been introduced on the market. We decided to buy one, a Covered Wagon model which was a deluxe Pullman all metal style. I was able to make a good deal to purchase one for $700, if I would pick it up myself in Flint, Michigan. Ted, Tom and I drove to Flint, Michigan, and picked up the trailer. We then drove the thing through Chicago and landed up on Michigan Avenue at the Wrigley Building, the most jammed up traffic corner in the U.S. at that time, right at the 5:00 o’clock rush hour. I had my hands full pulling this new trailer behind me and getting through that traffic jam.

We went up to Ashland, Wisconsin, where Gene Bryson, Fla sh Nielson and Tommy Thompson met us. For the next month, we parked the trailer around on various lakes in northern Wisconsin. Gene, Flash and Tommy Thompson on tagged along with us and we would work the towns we were parked in until we couldn’t sell any more, and then move on. Flash Nielson liked to fish, so he would go out early in the morning and catch a batch of fish in the neighboring lakes. Then Ted would cook the fish and all of us would eat in the trailer.

This living in a trailer was fine and dandy for about a month while we were working up in the north woods around the pretty lakes in Wisconsin. However, it became more of a nuisance when we would try to park in any of the bigger cities.

We did manage to find a place in Duluth, Minnesota, perched up on top of a hill on the edge of the lake overlooking half the city of Duluth and also overlooking the city of Superior, Wisconsin, across the bay. Ted, Tom and I crawled into bed just as a horrible thunderstorm and cloudburst came through. The rain came down in torrents. As the big heavy rain drops hit the roof of the trailer, which was made out of light sheet metal, it sounded like we were on the inside of a tin tub in the middle of a heavy hailstorm.

Flashes of lighting would light up the entire bay and the thunder was so heavy it would shake the trailer. Ted and I were quite worried about the wind and storm blowing us off the hill and into the lake. Tommie had gone to sleep and slept through the whole thing as if nothing were going on. As we watched the lighting striking all over, we saw two fires ignited over in Superior caused by the lighting. This started us to wonder about the glories of living in a trailer.

After about a month in the north woods of Wisconsin, we went down to Milwaukee. Gene Bryson and Flash Nielson went along with us. Here we were lucky in finding a place to park our trailer behind a large mansion on the shore of Lake Michigan. The people had strung up an electric cord so we had some electricity there, and they actually used their big back lawn as a place to park trailers.

We all worked in Milwaukee for about a week, during which time Gene and Flash stayed in a tourist room in the mansion where we were parked, which was very similar in size and old time elegance to the big mansions on South Temple St. in Salt Lake.

On Saturday just before we left, we all decided we would go visit a brewery. We picked out the Blatz Brewery, reported at that time to be the largest brewery in the world. We went all through the brewery looking at the big brewing vats and the guide explained how beer was made. We were fortunate in getting there just as a Greyhound busload of tourists was starting through the plant. We took the guided tour along with them.

I used to take Tom down to the post office with me to get the mail. They had a big map lit up with various lights advertising airmail, and by lighting certain groups of lights along the airmail routes to various parts of the U.S. it made quite a fascinating electric light display. Tom loved to stand there and watch the lights.

From Milwaukee, Ted and I went over to Madison, Wisconsin, and found another place to park our trailer in a halfway decent trailer park. I worked Madison for a week where we met Newell Thurgood and Loretta, who had also bought a house trailer, and parked in the same trailer park with us.

When we were in Madison, Newell and Loretta worked with me for a few days. They had bought a little wire-haired terrier, which they named Tippy. Tom enjoyed playing with him. He seemed to miss the dog after Newell and Loretta left, so Ted bought him a little stuffed toy wire-haired terrier which he always called ‘Whiskey” as long as he had it because of the long whiskers on its nose. It became a little embarrassing later when we were home and Ted had company. Tom came into the front room where all of her friends were and said, “Mommy, I want my Whiskey.”

In late August [1937] , Ted, Tom and I left Wisconsin and pulled the trailer over to South Dakota, where things were quite different. There were no regular places to park a trailer. We just had to park on the street, by a courthouse lot, or wherever we could find a place to leave the trailer. This gave us no rest room facilities, as we had no inside plumbing in the trailer.

Besides, virtually all the roads in South Dakota at that time were gravel roads and as we would travel along on these dusty dirty roads, we would put a quarter of an inch layer of dust on everything inside the trailer. After

46 a couple of weeks, we landed up in Mitchell, South Dakota, where we parked on the street by a city park on a Saturday night. The next day the temperature went way up above 110 and it was so hot that we couldn’t stand it around the trailer. So I purposely left the trailer there and we drove down to a little town of Tripp, South Dakota, where some people had made a hotel out of a big old stone bank building which just happened to be kind of cool in the summertime. We stayed there overnight and then went back to Mitchell Monday morning and the temperature was way above 110 again. Ted said, “Take me down to Colu mbus , Nebraska. I’m going home.” So she and Tom went back home again.

I stayed on living in the house trailer by myself until the end of September. I decided to quit for the fall after I had pulled the trailer out as far west as Highmore, South Dakota, where I went to see one of my salesmen, Don Sharp. He had a big old barn, so I pulled my trailer into his barn, left it there for the winter and drove on home.

In January 1938, I drove back out to Highmore to get my trailer and resume selling while living in the trailer. Being January in the Dakotas, it was bitter cold. I decided to stay in the trailer the night I got into Highmore, but it was too late at night to pull it out of the barn; so I just stayed in the trailer in the barn. I couldn’t light the heater in the trailer inside the barn, so I went to bed with the blankets that were available and about froze to death during the night. The next morning I decided to leave the trailer there, forget about it , and go about my business.

Two or three weeks before Easter [1938], I went back home and right after Easter picked up Tom and Ted again, and this time we stopped in Highmore and hooked onto the trailer and drove over to Madison, Wisconsin. Ted wouldn’t stay in the dirty trailer under those uncomfortable circumstances, so I just parked the trailer and we stayed in the Schroeder Hotel while I worked Madison.

When I finished working in Madison this spring, I was going to Milwaukee. Tom [almost three] woke me up and I said, “Okay, Tom, let’s get up and go to Milwaukee.” And he replied “'N have a beer?” I asked Ted, “How come he would remember anything about beer?” She said, “Oh, I think it is because we have been talking about that trip through the brewery in Wisconsin last year.”

So we drove to Milwaukee. After we had been traveling about an hour, Tom said he had to go to the bathroom. I pulled into a service station and he went. As I was paying for the bill for a little gas, I had bought, Tom spotted a penny peanut machine, and of course, he wanted some peanuts, which he got. We then went on and just as we were coming into the town of Waukesha, which is just west of Milwaukee and only about ten or twenty minutes drive from where I had to stop at the service station before, Tom spotted another service station and immediately had to go again. I said, “Tom, you just went back there a little ways back.” And he says, “Got a grunt!” So I stopped in the service station, took him downstairs, got him all ready where he proceeded to do nothing at all for 10 seconds and he said, “All through.” I said, “You little scamp, all you wanted to stop for was to get some more peanuts.” So I whacked his bare butt. No peanuts. He cried but we went on into Milwaukee.

We checked into the Tower Apartment Hotel on Wisconsin Avenue. That night as we were getting ready for bed, I had Tom in the bathroom with me where I was brushing my teeth and I told him to sit on the throne and go before he went to bed. He sat, but couldn’t do anything. I looked down at him and he was looking up at me with great big saucer eyes and tears just running down his face, and I said, “What’s the matter, Tom?” He says, “Don’t 'pank me Daddy.” Just because he couldn’t go, he thought he was going to get another lickin’. This made me feel very badly.

The next morning, as we were driving through the main downtown part of Milwaukee on Wisconsin Avenue, I was heading for the post office. All of a sudden, Tom says, “Can I see the lights?” It took a minute for it to register. I said I think he means that light map in the post office. Ted says, “He couldn’t remember that from last summer.” I said, “I think he does.” We went up to the post office and as soon as he got out of the car, he ran up the steps into the post office and right down where the lighted board had been. He said, “Lights all gone.” They had taken the display down. But he did remember, even at age three, where he had been before.

I had decided to try to make my headquarters in Milwaukee instead of Bountiful. I rented an office in downtown Milwaukee and we found a cute little furnished apartment where we stayed for a couple of months [1938]. My brother, John Melville, had joined my sales force and by this time, he and his friend, Dave McGee Hogan, were working together. They came into Milwaukee and worked for a few days with me while we were there.

While we were living in this little apartment, Ted and Tom both came down with a very severe case of strep throat. They were both very sick. On Mother’s Day [1938], I wanted to go out to the German LDS Ward in Milwaukee as I knew some of the people who had moved there from Germany. I wanted to see if any of them might be at Sunday School on Mother’s Day. So I left Tom and Ted sick in bed and went to Sunday School that particular Mother’s Day. I haven’t lived this one down yet. Even last Mother’s Day just past, Ted asked me if I wasn’t going to go over to Sunday School.

We found a good young doctor in Milwaukee who gave Ted the right kind of medication to snap her out of the trouble, but Tom developed a lymph gland infection, which swelled his neck. While we were at the doctor’s office, his eyes were all bloodshot so the doctor put some Argyrols in his eyes. Tom cried and I said, “Don’t worry about it Tom. Now you have the blackest eyes in town.” He said, “I don’t want the blackest eyes in town.”

Because of this illness and a decision not to try to headquarter in Milwaukee, we hooked onto the house trailer that we had parked behind our apartment and drove back to Sioux Falls, South Dakota. I stopped in a trailer sales lot and make a deal to sell the house trailer to the owner for $650, almost getting what I had paid for it, and also very happy to get my money and get rid of the thing. Then we drove on to Bountiful where Dr. Trowbridge operated on Tom’s 1ymph gland. Tom said the doctor took the “bone” out of his neck.

In the spring of 1939 Ted, Tom and I drove back out to Madison, Wis consin. We worked here for a week.

During this stay, we rented an upstairs apartment on the south side of Lake Monona where we could do our own cooking. The road we took into downtown Madison was a major U.S. highway. Just out of the main section of town on this highway was a nice grocery store where we would stop frequently, going or coming, to buy our groceries. We had stopped several times before, so this store was a familiar sight to Tom.

I pulled up on the opposite side of the store and parked. Tom knew we were going in the store, so he jumped out of the back seat of the car and started to run across the highway heading toward the store just as a big semi-transport truck came bearing down him in the opposite lane from where we were parked. I saw Tom running to the store and also saw the truck coming, which was definitely on a collision course. I just screamed, “TOM” as loud as I could. Tom heard me but didn’t even look. He just whirled around and ran back toward me just in time for the truck to miss him.

The truck driver was screeching his brakes at this point, and jumped out of the car very shaken up asking me if he had hit him. I, of course, told him that Tom had reversed his steps and ran back out of the way just in time. This probably was Tom’s closest call to gettin g killed as far as I can remember.

Just before we left Madison, on a Sunday, we had Tom out pla ying in the park. I put him on a teeter-totter, and we were having a great time until I decided to hang him up to dry. I stopped and told him he was hung up to dry. He didn’t like it. He started to holler so I decided to let him off the teeter-totter. As I lowered the teeter- totter down almost to where he could get off, he decided to scramble off in a hurry. He couldn’t quite reach the ground with his feet. He fell off, hit his shoulder, and broke his collarbone.

The next day, we went over to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and stayed again in one of the old mansions on Lake Michigan in a tourist room. By this time, Tom was showing signs of really being hurt in his shoulder, so we took

48 him to a doctor and found out his collarbone had been broken. The doctor put his arm in a sling and let it go at that.

We had been looking at new cars and a Buick dealer made us a good deal on a brand new 1938 model Buick, so we traded cars and then decided to high tail for home with Tom so Dr. Trowbridge could take care of him.

Shortly after, on July 30, 1939, Fred was born in L.D.S. Hospital in Salt Lake City, Utah.[Reid age 31, Ted age 29, Tom almost 4]

He turned out to be something like Tom. As soon as he could chin himself on the side rails of the crib, he started to try to climb out. He couldn’t walk or even crawl yet when he somehow or other managed to pull himself up over the side of the crib and took a tumble to the floor where he injured a leg. Dr. Trowbridge came to the house, rigged up scaffold ing over the crib, and hung his feet and legs up in the air high enough that only his shoulders would touch the bed. He was strung up this way for about a month until the doctor was satisfied that any leg injury would have healed.

During late June [1939] just before Fred was born, Elmer Barlow, who was working at this time for Sterling Furniture Co. in Pocatello, Idaho, came up with an idea that we could do well by going into the produce distribution business in Pocatello. We set up a deal whereby I would do the buying of the produce on the Salt Lake market in the morning, scrounge up the local produce in the Bountiful area, such as fresh strawberries, which were just coming into season at that time, and ship the produce at 5:00 P.K. on the Union Pacific refrigerated car to Pocatello. The produce would arrive in Pocatello during the night and be ready for pickup early in the morning the next day. We went into the produce business in Pocatello and I quit Logan Knitting Mills.

On one occasion, I contracted for the entire strawberry crop from Jack Ashby who grew several acres of them. Then on his first major picking, I went over in late afternoon and loaded up a truck I had borrowed from Ted’s Dad, John Burningham, took them in and loaded them on the UP refrigerated car. However, at the time I loaded they weren’t quite through picking, so I took my back seat out of the car and stacked the back end of the car to the ceiling with crates of strawberries. While I was loading my car that evening, I wandered into the shed where Jack would normally store his berries after picking, and found that he had creamed all the real choice berries and had them loaded on his pic kup truck ready to take to the Salt Lake market the next day instead of giving me the entire crop. So as he had broken our contract by cheating on me. I advised him that my verbal contract to take his entire crop was finished.

Early the next morning, Ted’s dad and I drove up to Pocatello with the auto filled with berries. Elmer was very unhappy over the type of strawberries I had shipped up to him and also brought up in the car, as they were not the best quality.

By this time, Elmer found out that he needed some kind of a pickup truck to make local deliveries in Pocatello and had spotted a used Model T buckboard-type that he could buy for about fifty dollars. John Burningham bought the pickup for him.

I was still in this business when Fred was born [in July] and had to make a trip up to Pocatello while Ted was still in the hospital. I have never been forgiven for going and leaving her for three days.

On this trip to Pocatello, Elmer and I decided that we would do better if we could just order the merchandise we needed shipped up to us by Smedley Fruit Company from Salt Lake. We decided that I should go up and help Elmer sell produce while he was delivering to the markets and cafes. I worked in Pocatello for three months and lived with Margaret and Elmer. Business wasn’t exactly boomin g, so when Otto Mehr from Logan Knitting Mills came around to see me about going back to work selling, he had a new proposition for me, which I decided to try. So I worked in Pocatello with Elmer until I could see how the new deal would work out.

Otto sent me down to Los Angeles to look over the big Los Ange les Knitting Mills, which he had taken over. I was to design my own type and line of merchandise and set up my own sales force, working with him on a wholesale contract basis whereby he would manufacture the merchandise, sell it to me at a wholesale price, and I could resell at my own price. This deal looked good, as the cost of the merchandise that I had sold for them for years actually was less than half of the price at which I had always sold, so we designed a line of fabric clothes and I took off for the Dakotas again as soon as they manufactured about a dozen samples.

I had just started selling the merchandise, which proved to be very salable when the rest of my samples arrived, with a notice that the price had been jacked up about fifty percent, which wouldn’t permit me to do any better with it than I was doing on my old deal. So I decided to go back home.

I left Bismark, North Dakota, and drove down to Mobridge, South Dakota, where I stopped and sold a little merchandise. I was standing in a room I rented from “Ma” and “Pa” Hvistendahl. “Pa” Hvistendahl raised Shetland ponies primarily as a hobby, but he also sold them as he had quite a string. I made a deal to trade one of my new type samples to Hvistendahl’s 16-year old daughter in exchange for a Shetland pony colt. “Pa” and I went out on the Cheyenne Indian Reservation west of the Missouri River where he kept the ponies and late at night rounded up a colt. We brought it back to his house and got a large cardboard box that would fit between the front and back seat of my oar. At 4:00 AM the next morning, we loaded the Shetland into the back of my Buick in the cardboard box, which we had filled with straw, snubbed the horse’s nose to the window post right behind my head, and I left for home.

About an hour after I left Mobridge with the pony, as I was driving over the railroad tracks in Timberlake, South Dakota, the sun was just coming up and the pony let out a screeching whiner. That screeching whiner in my ear startled me, woke me up and scared me half to death. This occurred several times on the way hone and I guarantee it did keep me awake. I drove the 1,100 miles home straight through only stopping for gas and an occasional hamburger.

I reached home about 11:00 P.M. and went in the house. Ted heard me coming. She got up so I told her to come out. I wanted to show her what I brought home. She said, “If you brought another dog home, I’ll kill you!” When she saw the pony, she couldn’t believe it. We had to wake Tom up so he could see the pony in the back seat of the car. I got the pony out of the car and the little darling hadn’t even wet on the entire trip home. The next day I built a manger in the garage and put down wood flooring as a pen for the pony where we kept it for a month or two. It became obvious that we couldn’t keep the pony in the garage all the time, so I took it over to John Burningham’s farm, where the Bountiful High School now stands, and we turned it loose in the gully around Melvin Burningham’s house, who was living and working on the farm at the time.

Somehow or other the pony encountered a porcupine down in the oak brush in the creek canyon and looked like he had grown whiskers overnight. I had to pay a veterinarian to cone and pull the quills out and put some medication on the pony’s nose. The pony was too small and too young yet to permit Tom to try riding him, so I just staked it out in the vacant corner lot west of our house. It was a cotton pickin’ nuisance trying to take care of it, so when a man from Murray, Utah, who had a kids’ riding academy with a bunch of Shetlands offered to buy it, I decided to sell. Besides, the Shetland pony turned out to be half Shetland and half mustang. After it started to grow bigger, we could see that it was going to be much larger than a Shetla nd’s normal size.

I then went back up to Pocatello to work with Elmer for a few weeks, but it was quite obvious that there wasn’t enough business to support two families. By the end of the year I quit and turned my half of the business over to Elmer, who has continued in the business ever since, except during World War II.

In January of 1940, I went back out selling again, but this time went with Utah Tailoring Mills, and tried to work in Nebraska, but it wasn’t any good so I quit and came back home. Along about March, I took a job selling with Metropolitan Life, but I didn’t like that kind of business either, so I only worked at that until the end of June.

By the end of June [1940], I got a wild idea that I could pick up a big bundle of money by taking fresh fruits and vegetables out into the Dakotas. I started out by loading a pickup truck and a one-ton trailer I had with a straight load of cherries, which I bought at four cents a pound from Anby Briggs in Bountiful, and then left and drove all night to the Black Hills in South Dakota. I got there just after another big truckload of cherries had beaten me into that area and had sold all the potential customers all the cherries they could use. I kept on driving further east and kept going until I reached Huron, South Dakota, where I finally got rid of my load of cherries, which in the summer heat were starting to drip.

I then went back home and ran into Joe Dupler, the big furrier in Salt Lake. I got talking to him about how I sold clothes, so we made a deal where he would give me fur coat samples and I would go back into the Dakotas and take orders for fur coats. So back again I went, only this time I was selling fur coats. It rather surprised me how many fur coats I actually did sell. However, I decided that I just did not like selling clothes anymore.

Just before I came back in, I saw an all-metal portable hamburger stand which looked something like the White Castle hamburger chain shops scattered throughout the mid-west.

I decided buying one of them would be a good idea, so came back home and made the financial arrangements to get one, and unfortunately picked Idaho Falls as a good place to start.

At Thanksgiving time [1940], Ted and I went back to Detroit, Michigan, where we picked up a new Ford truck for Elmer Barlow. We also picked up a new red Ford sedan for ourselves, plus another Ford two-door that was for a friend of mine. I had the two-door loaded on top of the truck, then I drove the truck and Ted followed me in our new red sedan.

We got as far as Toledo, Ohio, by truck. We stopped at a service station at a road intersection on the north side of Toledo where I had to have the taillights fixed on the truck and Ted went on in our passenger car. She was supposed to stop and wait for me at the south Toledo city limits because I had to follow the truck route, whereas she could take the regular expressway.

I fixed the lights and went on across Toledo, but when I got to the city limits, no Ted was waiting for me. I decided truck route or no truck route; I would retrace her highway and see if she had any trouble. I got back to the place where we started, but she wasn’t there. At this point, I decided she might have decided to go check into the biggest hotel in Detroit, so I drove the truck down through Main Street, found the hotel, and went in, but no Ted. I continued on and went back out to the city limits where we would leave Toledo and still could not find her.

After chasing around for two or three hours, I had no way of knowing where she might be, but we were heading for Richmond, Indiana, where Marintha and Harold Gill lived, as we intended to stop and see them on the way. I figured Ted would head for Richmond, so I headed out the same way.

There was a small town in Ohio, about 29 miles south, where I arrived about midnight. I decided to stay there overnight as I was totally worn out by this time. I found a hotel off on the side street where I could park the truck with the other automobile on top of it and be off the main streets.

Then I got in the hotel, I telephoned Marintha to see if she had heard from Ted, whom she had not at this time, and I left word that I was following to Richmond if she did hear from Ted. The next morning, bright and early, I left for Richmond and was going down the highway at about fifty miles an hour when a car honked and passed me. This was Ted. She had gone as far as the same town where I stopped and had checked into their biggest hotel. That morning she left for Richmond shortly after I got going.

We traveled on together, stopping in Richmond to say “Hello’ and drove on through Indiana, across Illinois and into St. Joseph, Missouri. At this point, I had to go south to Wichita, Kansas, to get my hamburger stand.

51 However, it was much shorter and faster for Ted to continue on by herself from St. Joseph to home, which she did.

I had picked up a hitchhiker while we were crossing Illinois who told me he was a truck driver from Seattle, Washington, and was heading home. He agreed to help me drive the truck and also the extra passenger car, which we took off the truck at Wichita when I had the hamburger stand loaded onto the back end of Elmer’s truck. We then had to drive the truck and building, plus the passenger car, from Wichita to Idaho Fails.

The heavy load made the truck rear end heavy, so just as I started out of Wichita crossing some tracks, the front end came clear up off the road. When it got over the bumps, it settled down again. I could only drive about 20 miles an hour, so I stopped in a service station in a little town about 20 miles west of Wichita, got some burlap sacks and loaded then up with sand. I put the sand bags on the fenders of the truck in the front and also loaded about half a ton in the front end of the building, which was sitting on the truck bed. This kept my wheels on the ground for the rest of the trip.

As mentioned above, I had picked up a hitchhiker who was going to Seattle. He was a good truck driver and helped me drive, alternating between the car and the truck. We made the trip to Idaho Falls together. It took us three days and three nights going steady. We could only do about 25 miles an hour, so one of us would drive the truck and the other would go on ahead about 100 miles, and then stop and take a nap in the passenger car until the truck caught up, then we would trade. We kept going this way until we made it to Idaho Falls.

By the time we left Laramie, Wyoming, I was getting so tired and so sleepy that it was very miserable driving and trying to keep awake. I happened to be driving the passenger car as I was going past the Saratoga, Wyoming when I went sound asleep. I fortunately did not land in a bar pit, as there was a big service station area there where I happened to run off the road. I was so tired I lay down in the car and went to sleep until the truck caught up with me.

Then we went on into Rawlings , Wyoming, and stopped to gas up. The man who owned the service station took one look at us and told us we had better quit driving and get some sleep. He offered to let us sleep in his bedroom in his house for a couple of hours.

The next day, we finished the trip into Idaho Falls, where I then proceeded to set up my hamburger business, known as “Reid’s Grill” , on Park Avenue across the street from the Idaho Falls Post Office.

Right after Christmas in 1940, we rented our house out and Ted, Tom and Fred came up and lived with me in Idaho Falls until we decided to give up that business about May of 1941.

Ted had been offered a job by Henry Schubach working for him at Standard Optical Company, so she took that job [May 1941] and I again tried selling life Insurance for a month. Standard Optical put Ted to work in their Ogden store, so I concentrated in Ogden on my life insurance sales, which business wasn’t very good. I then had an opportunity to get a job with the U.S. Constructing Quartermaster out in north Ogden where they had just started to break ground for what is now the Ogden Army Depot. Ted continued working for Standard Optical in Ogden, and I was working for the Constructing Quartermaster. While in Ogden, I went to Idaho Falls, got my hamburger building and set it up as a drive-in in Ogden. I worked nights as my own chef after getting through my day’s work with the Army.

Trying to make any money out of the hamburger business was a nightmare. It was supposed to be an all- day, all-night operation, but I had nothing but trouble with the help I hired.

For a couple of months it worked out fine, but in the fall [1941] I began having trouble with my help stealing everything. Of course, I couldn’t work both jobs at the same time, so I contacted the people in Wichita, Kansas, and made a deal to sell the building back to them for the unpaid balance I still owed them. If my dreams

52 in the hamburger business had been more successful, I would now be Mr. McMelville’s, instead of watching somebody else by the name of McDonald make millions worldwide.

In Ogden we rented a house on 34th St. and got a girl Ted knew by the name of Vivian Christensen to come to Ogden and live with us and to baby sit the kids while we worked. Fred always called her Bubinan. Along about September, the Army had built a set of barracks type apartments that they rented out to army personnel and employees. We were the first tenants in this rental complex.

Tom [1941] had started school in the first grade in Ogden on Washington Boulevard at about 32nd St. just before we moved into the new apartment, so we arranged to take him to school and drop him off on the way to work. Then he could take a bus back to the apartment. When school started, Vivian had to go back to High School in Bountiful, so we hired another baby sitter.

In the middle of November, 1941, Otto Mehr came to see me again and offered me a salary plus what I could make if I would go back out selling with him. He offered me more than I was making at the Army, so I talked to the Captain in charge at the Construction Quartermasters headquarters to see if he would approve a wage increase to equal Otto Mehr’s offer. I put it on an “or else” basis, so he told me to take the new job and go, which I did.

I left Ogden in mid-November. However, before leaving we rented the upstairs part of a home out on 7th St. where Tom, Fred and Ted lived until we left Ogden the next spring [1942].

I had only been out selling about three weeks by the time I worked Billings, Montana; Bismarck, North Dakota; Mobridge, South Dakota; and then landed up in Gettysburg, South Dakota. I went to bed in the old Gettysburg Hotel Saturday night on December 6, 1941, and was awakened early the next morning with a loud broadcast from the radio in the hotel lobby telling all about the attack on Pearl Harbor. I just decided to get out of there and go home.

I stayed home through the Christmas holidays, but couldn’t find a job at that time, so I tried to enlist in the Navy, specifying Naval Intelligence. I only got a thank you letter back stating that my qualifications had been put on file and they would contact me if my services were needed. They never did.

On January 1 [1942], I went back out into Wiscons in and then the Dakotas selling again for two more months. However, my tires all wore out, business wasn’t any good, and I decided I would go back home and join the Army or find something else to do.

By this time [Spring 1942] , the people who had leased our house for one year had built a new home and were ready to move out of our home in Bountiful: so we moved back to Bountiful and Ted was transferred to the Salt Lake Standard Optical main store. About the first day that I went into Salt Lake to start looking for a job or to decide what to do about enlisting in the Army, I ran into a Major Hughes with whom I had worked at the Constructing Quartermasters office in Ogden. He told me about a change that had been made in the Army Contracting. The Constructing Quartermaster’s roll had been terminated and all construction and purchases of supplies had been taken over by the U.S. Corps of Engineers. He told me they had just started up a new division office known as the Mountain Division and were looking for help. Because of my previous experience with the Constructing Quartermaster in the contract department, he thought I could fit in very well. I went with him back to his office and talked to Major Claude Cory, who was Major Hughes’ superior officer, and he gave me a job handling the contracts for the Mountain Division. I ended up with the title of “Chief of Contracts and Claims” and went to work with the U.S. Army Engineers. I was quite happy in this work and also pleased with this job. [age 34]

I started out in charge of the Contracts and Claims Division, hired the new help, set up the filing systems, and got business rolling. I had acquired a total force working for me of 22 people , but a couple of months later there was another change in the setup and the Mountain Division office was moved to Denver. The Army

53 moved the Pacific Division Corps of Army Engineers office from San Francisco to Salt Lake City to get this major operation away from the west Coast and less vulnerable to attack.

Most of the Pacific Division Engineer Personnel in San Francisco were transferred to Salt Lake City, and along with them an old lady by the name of Mrs. Phillips , who had worked for years and years with the Construction Quartermaster prior to the Corps of Army Engineers taking over all construction. Because of her personal acquaintance for many years with General Hannum, who came to Salt Lake to take charge, and because she outranked me in Civil Service, she was put in charge of my department. I then had to work for her. Because of the bureaucratic system of the federal employees in Civil Service, the more people one had working under them the higher Civil Service rating would be given, and higher pay. For this reason, Mrs. Phillips started a gigantic “make-work’ program whereby each and every document had to be cross- referenced to each and every other document in extreme, tedious, detail. She soon had a force of approximately twelve girls working there doing nothing but cross referencing from index cards to contract documents to index cards. She also employed more file cle rks and as the load of work started to pile in on us, she hired still more people to check contracts for small details as well as all legal requirements in the government contracts. It was only six weeks or so until she had over 30 employees in the department doing the same work we had been doing with only l4. Furthermore, she was very fussy and exacting down to the dotting of the smallest “i” before a contract or a supplemental document to that contract could be approved. She started returning contracts to the district engineers who sent them on to the area engineers just to let all of the partners to sign a contract, for instance; whereas only one partner needed to sign to make a contract legal.

Such contracts, for very minor things that meant nothing, had to be redone or corrected and initialed before she would approve them. She used the authority of hundreds of bulle tins that had come out over a period of thirty years from the Constructing Quartermaster as the reasons for each of these long delays in getting a contract approved.

Although I was Mrs. Phillips’ assistant, I couldn’t do anything about her time delaying tactics because I did not have copies of all the Construction Quartermaster bulletins that she had in a personal file. I could only do as I was instructed.

The reason behind these delaying tactics was to create more work and hire more people so she could get a higher Civil Service rating and more pay as time went on. What actually happened was that our department got bogged down totally with over 4,000 construction and supply contracts, together with as many supplemental agreements and change orders that pertained to each of the contracts. They had to be sent back for minor revisions until it reached a point where the contractors were not getting their pay from the government. Hundreds of contractors were going to go on strike unless they got some pay.

This created quite a turmoil by the area and district engineers who got together and demanded a summit meeting with General Hannum and our Contracting Department in Salt Lake. Such a meeting was set up.

Prior to this summit meeting to investigate the bog-down on these thousands of contracts, the U.S. Army Engineers sent out a new publication called U.S. Corps of Engineers Procurement Regulations. The initial set of these regulations totally superceded anything the Constructing Quartermaster, or any other Division of the Army, had ever put out, was published in an outline form and was very short, concise and comple te. The Army Procurement Regulations became the Bible.

I received a copy of these Procurement Regulations and decided that knowing what was in there would be all-important in my job, so I studied the Procurement Regulations as they were initially sent to me, plus the supple ments that seemed to come in almost daily.

When the district engineers arrived in Salt Lake, we met in a large auditorium, and it became very obvious that the district engineers and the area engineers, together with their contracting people who came to the meeting, were very irate and were demanding an absolute halt to this miserable picky fault finding on contracts.

The meeting started out with questions demanding answers. Mrs. Phillips was put on the pan and, of course, I had to answer virtually the same questions that were put to her. As the meeting drew on and the fire started to fly, they pinned Mrs. Phillips down on several contractual requirements and demanded to know by what authority it had to be done exactly that way. She started to quote from the Constructing Quartermaster Regulations in each case. Then Gen. Hannum asked Mrs. Phillips point blank if she had ever received a copy of the new U.S. Corps of Army Engineers Procurement Regulations. She replied that she did have a copy. He then asked her if she had ever read them. She told them she had not read them because she didn’t consider it necessary in view of the many years experience she had had following Constructing Quartermaster Regulations.

Gen. Hannum then turned to me and asked me if I had a copy of these new regulations. I told him “Yes”. He asked me if I had ever read them and I told him I had made a complete study and outline of them. Then he asked the district engineers to interrogate me on several points that had been the real thorns in their sides. They asked me what I would do in light of the new Procurement Regulations. I told them exactly what I would do by following the rules outlined, and by so doing most of the small details which has been bogging down our contract approvals could be eliminated and the process speeded up getting contracts approved and into the General Accounting Office in Washington, D.C., for payment.

We recessed for lunch. When we came back after lunch, Gen. Hannum announced that Mrs. Phillips had been terminated with the Pacific Division Engineer but had accepted a position working in a District Office operating in Edmonton, Canada. He also announced that he was putting me in charge of the Contracts and Claims Division for this office.

Again I was the boss, but this didn’t last very long because in addition, Gen. Hannum had requested a special attorney be sent out to take over the Department, who, at the time, was assigned to the Judge Advocates office in Washington, D.C., and Col. Joseph Dia mond came in. After being there a week, he took charge of the Claims Department, which was a legal department requiring legal knowledge, and had them turn the Contracting Department over to me. I, of course, worked under his jurisdiction, but after he saw how I was handling things he just told me to take care of it the way I had been doing and that he would concentrate on the legal work and also the re-negotia ting of contracts where the contractors might have to take less money than they had charged. This arrangement went on very well for the rest of the summer through 1943 and into February of 1944.

During the time that Col. Joseph Diamond and I were working together, we outlined an educational checklist of all the details that area contracting offices and district contracting offices should watch for so that contracts would come in without errors as much as possible. Col. Joseph Diamond and I made a trip to Seattle and Portland to contact the district engineers there for a two-day meeting in each place. We had already held such a meeting with the Salt Lake District office, and then a month or so after the northwest trip, we went to Sacramento, San Francisco and Los Angeles. Col. Diamond would open the meeting and then turn the balance of the time over to me.

Right after the blowup with Mrs. Phillips when I took over the department, I decided to cut back on wasting time and to cut the work force down, which I did by attrition. Because many of the girls working for us were wives of soldie rs stationed at Kearns, Utah, they would leave when their husbands left, which might have created a vacancy. We cut out the cross referencing business, cut out the tedious filing system, put that on a basis where we could grab the actual contract on one minute’s notice if we got a long distance phone call, and by February of 1944, I had cut the department work force back down to a total of thirteen. We also made short work of clearing out the 4,000-contract backlog, and from then on, we took care of contract approvals on a daily basis.

Shortly after I had started to work for the U.S. Army Engineers in 1942, Alton Melville had an idea that we could start a bus business, hauling passengers from the Bountiful area to and from Remington Arms Plant on the southwest side of Salt Lake City. He discussed this business with Elmer Barlow and me. We decided it was probably a good thing to try. Elmer sold his truck that he had been using in the produce business and traded it

55 for an old, used school bus, plus a Buick Stretched Sedan that could hold sixteen passengers. We started regular bus service to and from the Remington Arms Plant. Elmer was working there at the time and so was our brother- in-law, Melvin Burningham, and of course many others from Bountiful. However, Elmer and Melvin were on different shifts. So we set up a schedule where Elmer would drive one of the buses into Remington and Melvin would pick it up and bring it back with the passenger load. We also had other Remington employees driving the buses for us on similar schedules.

I got stuck with the necessity to drive a bus into Remington or bring it back from Remington on deadhead runs where the plant shut down on Sundays. We first started out with the over-sized Buick, but soon had to add more carrying capacity, so we bought an old beat up school bus and converted it into a regular passenger bus. We later added a Chevrolet sedan that made a run through Woods Cross to pick up a few passengers and bring them up to the main route.

It wasn’t too long until I learned that there was going to be a big Army Base established at Kearns, Utah, as I saw the initial announcement come through my office from Washington. Before any other bus company knew a thing about it, we made application to the State of Utah to run bus service between Murray and Kearns, Utah. As there was no contest, we were given a permit by summary order. Ralph Smith, who was on the Utah Public Service Commission, saw me shortly thereafter and told me I was sure cagey in getting that operation before anybody knew anything about what was going on. With the addition of the Murray-Kearns run, this gave me a lot of moonlighting in driving buses nights between Murray and Kearns in addition to driving the dead head shifts from Remington to Bountiful.

During the time we were operating from Murray to Kearns, I started the Murray Cab Company, which operated cabs between Murray and Kearns. We started out using my red Ford and Alton Melville’s white Ford, plus we would take our other buses out to Murray at 5:00 pm and then go back out again at midnight to take the soldiers back out to Kearns.

When the soldiers started to pour into Kearns by the thousands, we had insufficient bus capacity to handle the traffic . Alton got Airways Motor Coach Lines to give us a lift by running several buses during the peak periods. Then Alton decided that he would trade us his interest in the Remington run for our interest in the Murray-Kearns run and the Murray Cab Company. Elmer and I had no alternative other than to accept his offer, because we had no way to get the bus capacity that was required.

Elmer and I continued the Remin gton run until the end of 1943, when they closed the Remington Plant.

During the late summer of 1943 while I was working for the Engineers, a bulletin came out from Army Headquarters asking for qualified people who would be interested in joining the Army to serve in what they called the Allied Military Government. They asked for such people who had been city managers, governors, or linguists, who could speak, read, write German, French, Italian, Japanese or the languages spoken in any of the countries that at the time were U .S. enemies. The job was to take over as a territorial Governor or City Manager after the Allied forces drove the enemy out of those places. Because of my education in German and being still in fairly good command of the German language, I decided to apply for the job. The deal the Government offered was to enlist any such qualified person in the lowest rank as a Major, or higher depending on one’s qualifications. This was to lend prestige to the officer who would have to take over command of an area.

I mentioned this offer to my friend, Grant Teasdale, who told a friend of his by the name of Leon Burnham, both of whom also spoke German. We went up to enlistment headquarters and filled out our applications and tried to get in this deal. Grant and I were turned down because we were still young enough for draft age. Leon Burnham, who had just turned 36, was accepted and went into Germany and served in that capacity. Grant and I both had to stay with the jobs we had.

In February of 1944 [age 35], we received word that the progress of the war with the Japanese in the Pacific had been so successful that there was no further threat of an invasion on the West Coast, and our Pacific

56 Division office was being transferred lock, stock and barrel, back to San Francisco. Everyone in the Pacific Division office in Salt Lake City was offered their same job if they would transfer to San Francisco. So I went to San Francisco the end of February, 1944.

A Captain in our office, whose home was in San Jose, California, had a big, powerful Lincoln car here in Salt Lake that he wanted to have someone drive to San Francisco for him. He learned that I was going to go and offered to pay me to drive the car out. I agreed and drove his Lincoln to San Francisco.

I drove to Reno, Nevada, arriving there about 5:00 pm, gassed up, got something to eat, and took off for Donner Pass. I left Reno about 6:00 pm. in a heavy snowstorm but had to stop in Truckee, California, to buy some tire chains as the highway over the Sierras was closed to cars without chains. I proceeded to plow my way up to the Summit. When crossed over the Summit, I found myself in a real blizzard. High winds were drifting snow and pilin g it up very deep. I went on down the hill towards San Francisco. It seemed that the drifts were getting higher and deeper by the minute. It was also getting horribly cold , as there was no heater in the car. I would hit sharp curves in the road covered with snowdrifts and plow through these drifts with all the power there was in this car. If it had been a smaller car, I would never have made it through many of the drifts.

Also, on many of these turns I noticed several of the Allied Van Lines with all of our office equipment and furniture from the Salt Lake Division office had slid off the road, some of them tipped over and were getting buried in snow. However, I did continue down the highway until I reached a point where the snow turned into a heavy downpour of rain. I pulled under a vacant service station canopy and took the chains off. Then I reached the gate on the west side of the Sierras, a guard opened up and let me through. He asked where I had just come from. Then I told him Reno, he said he couldn’t understand that because all traffic had been stopped for hours at Truckee and also at his checking station, preventing traffic from going up the hill. I made it into San Francisco that morning in tine to go to work.

I set up the Contract Department office with a total of eight people, some of whom were from Salt Lake and some were part of the skeleton force that had been left at the Rivers and Harbors Division of the U.S. Army Engineers in San Francisco.

Finding a place to stay was a headache. I looked at apartments, at homes, and finally found a room in a boarding house in an old mansion a mile or two west of our office. The room I got was one converted out of what used to be the old horse carriage barn. We had one sink with running water in the room and two small twin beds. I had to share this room with a young man who, the management told me, was a Federal Internal Revenue man. He turned out to be a tall, 20-year old giant, and also definitely on the queer side. He wasn’t a Federal man. He was helping run the first of the tax offices such as are now operated by H.R. Block Co. I didn’t see him for two weeks except in bed in the mornings because he would leave for work and wouldn’t return to the room until after midnight. However, the tax business he was helping run was caught cheating and he lost his job. For the next two weeks, he was around when I came home nights, together with a mob of his queer boyfriends.

When I saw the situation I was in, I started looking for a room again, and it happened that Hazel Nims, who had worked in the Salt Lake Division office, had taken a temporary assignment for thirty days to San Francisco. She had been more fortunate and obtained a room in the Broadmore Hotel. While I was looking for a new place, she arranged with the hotel management to give up her room and let me take it.

I continued in routine contract examination, hating living alone in San Francisco, but had little other choice at that time.

On the first of May [1944], the contracting officer at Utah General Depot in Ogden called our department and requested some special help in entering into a “time and hour” type contract covering boxing and packaging of materials for overseas shipments. Col. Housman, my superior officer, told me to go to Ogden and help them prepare the contract, which I did. I spent three nights at home, working during the days on this contract up at Utah General Depot in Ogden, which gave me a brief visit with my family.

Just a few days after getting back to San Francisco, Ted phoned me to tell me that Leland Flint, who owned Flint Distributing Company handling electrical applia nces, was planning to hire a new sales force to get started selling merchandise as soon as it would become available when the war ended. She said she had talked to Lee Flint about me, and he told her that he would be interested in discussing a sales job with me.

On May 12, 1944, I resigned from the U.S. Army Engineers in San Francisco and went home. By error, the Gas Ration Department in San Francisco gave me thirteen full books of gas rationing coupons instead of thirteen stamps, which gave me a huge supply of gas I could use. I landed in Salt Lake with lots of gasoline, but no job. I met with Lee Flint who was not quite ready to start his post-war business, but told me he probably would be ready by about July. I traded my old clunk Ford that I had bought in San Francisco for a little better used Chevrolet and went back out into the Dakotas and Nebraska selling for the next two months to spend the time until my job with Flint opened up.

I first headed for Lincoln, Nebraska, where I met my brother, Keith Melville , who was there staging for overseas duty. He was a B-17 Captain and ready to go overseas. I arrived just as he had received his transfer orders to report to St. Louis, but he wanted to see a little bit of that country around there. In order to have a little visit with Keith, I drove him down as far as Kansas City. From there he took the train from there to St. Louis. He flew his plane and crew over to Italy where he stayed until he had flown fifteen missions and then had his plane shot out from under him. He landed in a hospital in Italy after this mishap. When Keith got out of the hospital, he was released and flew back home.

I arrived in Lincoln, Nebraska, just before I met Keith with four bald headed tires, one of which had lost all the tread. I went into town with just the fiber wrappings holding the inner tube together. Keith had to pull some Army strings to get us an authorization to buy some new recaps. However, we did get some tires of a sort on the car and left for Kansas City.

We had gone about 100 miles when one of the tires blew out leaving us with no spare tire. We started on our way again and I remember just as it was setting dark Keith started to chuckle and said, “1 hate to laugh at someone else’s misfortunes, and don’t look now, but your speedometer just broke.” Well, we went on into Kansas City anyway, and the next morning the car wouldn’t start because the starter had broken. But I did get Keith off on the train, I got the starter fixed, and then headed back into the Dakotas.

I started work in Sioux Falls. My sample line consisted of suits, coats and dresses, which I carried in long carrying sacks. Each sack would hold about 75 to 100 pounds and to carry them I would throw one of them up on my shoulder and let it bounce down on me. This heavy load apparently applied fantastic pressure on my sacroiliac joint.

I went to bed the night of July 3rd [1944] with my back hurting, which also gave me a bad time all night. As I was planning to move from Sioux Falls to Mitchell early the next morning, I left an 8:00 am wakeup call. When the phone rang, I jumped out of bed and my back caved in dumping me on the floor. I was in severe pain and could not get up off my hands and knees. I crawled over to the phone, pulled it down onto the floor and asked them to send up a bellhop. When he got there, he helped me back into bed and then we decided to call the house doctor.

The house doctor came and told me that this joint was dislocated and that I would have to stay in bed for several days. He then taped me up tight with big bands of adhesive tape, which helped a little, so that by being careful I could manage to get out of bed and over to the phone and back to bed again. This was a miserable 4th of July. The temperature was about 110 degrees and no air conditioning.

I telephoned Mrs. Mary Larson who had previously been one of my sales ladies and told her about my difficulties. She was, at that time, running a cafe across the street from the Hotel Carpenter. I asked her to send my meals up to me, which she did.

I also called Edna Thoe, a previous sales lady, and told her about my problem. Edna’s husband, Cliff, had returned from a weekend trip to Lake Okabojie in Iowa. He telephoned me to find out what the trouble was. When I told him, he said his companion who had gone with him over the weekend had run into the same problem a year or two earlier and that an osteopath in Sioux Falls had put him back in shape, so he recommended that I go see the osteopath.

These two fellows came down to help me get out of bed and go to a pharmaceutical house to get fitted with a back harness, which I put on. It helped a little, but these two fellows convinced me that going to see the osteopath was worth a try. They hauled me up there, one of them on each side holding me up.

The osteopath removed the harness, felt my back, and told me definitely it was my sacroiliac out of joint. When he saw the tape around me he said, “Who the devil put that stuff on you?” I told him that I had called the house doctor at the Carpenter Hotel the day before. He said, “What did you say? You called the horse doctor?”

Then he asked me if I wanted to wear that tape the rest of my life or if I would like him to take it off, fix my back and then walk out of there on my own two feet. I said, “Let’s fix it.” This osteopath put my backbone into its proper place in the socket and when he was through, I definitely could stand up and walk, although accompanied by minor pain. The doctor told me to continue wearing the harness as it would help hold things in place until my back had a chance to heal.

I then left for Mitchell and on out west. I was still picking up these heavy sacks, putting them on my back. Going up a long stairway in Eureka, South Dakota, I popped my back out of shape again. I got into Mobridge where I went to see Dr. Art Spiry, a long time friend of mine. He recommended that I take modest exercises, quit carrying my samples, and rest, but to continue wearing the back support. There was a chiropractor next door and I asked what he thought about going to see him. He told me that he had seen this chiropractor put backs like mine into order before, but also had seen him cripple people for life, so he didn’t recommend chiropractic treatment.

Faced with this problem I decided to head for home. I did stop off in Pierre, South Dakota, for a couple of days, but my back was killing me so badly that I could hardly manage to drive my car. I decided to try to get home by going down to the bus depot and picking up someone who happened to be catching a bus to Rapid City. There was a very nice man who said he would be glad to drive me out to Rapid City to save the bus fare, so I picked him out of the bus line and he drove us to Rapid City.

Earlier, Ted had made arrangements to take the train to Cheyenne, Wyoming, and then the bus to Rapid City and meet me about three or four days later, which she did.

One of my customers in Aberdeen, South Dakota, gave me a tiny Persian kitten that I had been hauling along with me, so when Ted found me in Rapid City with a cat, plus an injured back, she was really quite surprised.

We went up to Deadwood, South Dakota, sold some clothes and then down to Custer, South Dakota, where we stayed at the Sylvan Lake Lodge. I went to work in Custer early in the morning, then went back to the Lodge at noon. Ted had been beefing about me and that little kitten I was taking home to Fred. When I got to the Hotel she wasn’t around, but I found her down in the woods playing hide-and-go-seek with the cat. She then drove me back home.

I contacted Lee Flint at Flint Distributing Co. and was hired as the Bendix Home Laundry Factory- Distributor Manager. I thought I had landed the world’s best job when I first started working there. I started with Flint in August 1944, selling water softeners and a few other things that Flint had available in the way of merchandise.

59 On the 2nd of January, 1945 [age 36], I was heading for work early in the morning and stopped off at the post office where we had a box (because during the war there were no mail deliveries to the house). When I opened my mail, I received formal greetings from Uncle Sam to appear that same morning at 8:00 am in Farmington for in duction. I made a dash up to Farmington to the courthouse where I was to appear, and found out the gang had just left for the Bamberger train station. The building custodian who was there that morning asked me if I had a son who was going in the Army. I said, “Hell, no, it’s me,” and took off for the Bamberger station.

I was ordered to leave my car, get on the train and go up to Ft. Douglas for my physical. I first filled out the long questionnaire and also listed the sciatic problem I had had previously as something that might be wrong with me physically. After my physical, the last Captain who was checking my report asked me about this back problem and if there had been a local doctor who had been treating me. I told him, “Yes, Dr. Juel Trowbridge.” He said, “Is that the same Captain Trowbridge who is over at the base hospital?” I told him it was. He telephoned Dr. Trowbridge and Dr. Trowbridge asked him to send me over to talk to him.

When I went to see Dr. Trowbridge, he asked me to fill him in on the back problem and how I was feeling at this point. He asked me, “Do you want to be in the Army or do you want to be out?” I said, “I want to be out.” He then wrote a little note for me to take back over to the Captain. All the note said was “This is to certify that I have been treating Reid Melville for sciatica and the condition still persists.” With that note, I was declared 4-F and dismissed.

I then continued working for Lee Flint during the next two years. After I started work with Flint Distributing Co., Ted quit Standard Optical [Aug 1944]. She and the kids went with me on some selling trips, even though Lee Flint had told us we couldn’t take our wives or families on such trips.

On one trip to Twin Falls and Boise, Idaho, Ted and the boys accompanied me. There was a little creek in Twin Falls where kids were allowed to fish, which the Fish and Game Department kept stocked for this purpose. The boys tried fishing there for an hour or two, but had no luck.

After I finished work in Twin Falls, we drove up to Boise. It was a beastly hot summer day, and after we left Glen’s Ferry and got up on the desert around Mountain Home, the heat was very intense. I was driving along when Fred reached up from the back seat, tapped me on the shoulder and said, “Dad, you can turn the heater off now.”

On another trip, I took them with me up to Montpelier, Idaho, where I again let the boys try to fish in Bear Lake without any success, and then cut across the mountain to Preston, Idaho. We crossed a little stream that had some brook trout in it, but we just didn’t seem to be able to catch anything there. As we were paralleling the Bear River in the canyon just east of Preston, I spotted a giant fish swimming around down in a hole just below where an old dam had been put across the river. I baited my hook with a spinner and the boys and I went down to see if we could catch this big one. I let the lure out into the whirling water where I had seen the fish and it took the lure, fish line, and all. I had never seen such a big fish before, so when got into Preston, I told Ownes Bower about seeing that fish and losing it and he told me that it was probably one of the big 25-pound trout that get down in there from Bear Lake.

He told us about a little pond east of Preston where the kids could catch some perch. So took them up to the pond and left them there that afternoon where they had a ball catching perch. Even though the fish weren’t any good to eat, they did have fun catching some.

At a later date, I had to make a trip to Las Vegas to work with DeWey Solomon, who had opened an appliance store and needed help selling water softeners. I booked a plane flight to Las Vegas from Salt Lake in the evening, which was my first commercial air flight. I was at the airport waiting to board the plane when up came Ted with her suitcase packed. Henry Schubach had arranged for a ticket and told her to get going with me. So we made our first commercial air lines flight in a plush new DC-3 to Las Vegas, where we spent the

60 week while I worked with Dewey Solomon selling water softeners, primarily to hotels and motels, as well as the State Highway Maintenance shops north of Las Vegas. We sold a large volume of water softeners, but all I got out of it for a commission for helping this guy make $4,000 profit was an invitation for us to have dinner with him and his wife at the Last Frontier, which at that time was brand new and the second resort hotel in Las Vegas.

The next summer [1945] I had to make a trip to Afton, Wyoming, so I took Ted and the boys with me. As we were going up the canyon east of Montpelier, Idaho, into Star Valley, Wyoming, Ted saw half a dozen red- faced Herefords grazing up on the hillside among the trees and brush. She hollered, “Stop. There’s some moose.” I stopped and backed up to where we could see these steers and then went on our way. Ever since then when we have traveled and run across some red-faced Herefords, one of the boys would holler, “Look, there’s some more of Mamma’s moose.”

During the summer of 1945, besides the water softeners that were available for sale, we started to receive some Bendix automatic home washers. By the end of that year, I had sold $750,000 million dollars worth of merchandise. When I started to work with Flint, I started at $250 per month. Then when the merchandise started to come in , he did raise my salary to $300 a month, but I was supposed to be working against a commission; with a bonus paid at the end of the year based on volume sold during that year.

For that year 1945, my bonus should have amounted to approximately $3,000. However, the year-end bonus only amounted to $300. I felt like I had been cheated but I continued working through 1946, during which time I sold over one million dollars worth of merchandise, but no raise in pay was offered. So at the end of the year, I figured that if I didn’t get at least a $1,500 bonus, which was only a fraction of what I should have been paid, I would just simply quit Flint Distributing Co.

Flint didn’t pay the bonus at the end of the year. It was delayed and Ernie Kaple, his office manager, told some of us that the bonus was being delayed waiting for Flint and his tax accountants to figure out his tax bracket before he decided what to pay his salesmen on bonus for 1946. On the first of March, we were paid a bonus. I only received $300 again. As I had promised myself that I would quit unless I got paid a worthwhile bonus for 1946, I looked at the check, went up town to the bank and cashed it, then came back and served two weeks notice on Flint that I was quitting, which I did on March 17, 1947.

I then tried to get into the manufacturer’s representative business. I lined up with a factory out of Minneapolis to sell water softeners and also made a deal with Idaho Steel Co. in Boise to sell an automatic weather stripping, which I had learned about. Idaho Steel offered me a $300 per month retainer. I also tried to get some other lines and make various deals with people to get merchandise I could sell, none of which amounted to anything. Although I did do some business on the water softeners setting up dealers in various places in Utah and Idaho, I wasn’t making very much money out of that. The special weather stripping business was the most promising, so I concentrated mostly on that. Although they hadn’t manufactured any as yet, I was busy lining up business that I could afford to do based on this $300 per month retainer I had.

In January, 1948, I made a trip to Butte, Montana, then over to Billings, Montana, into Bismarck, North Dakota, down through Aberdeen and into Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and was then going to Minneapolis where the world’s largest hardware distributor is located. When I got to Sioux Falls, Ted phoned me and told me she was taking a train to Omaha and that she was going to come out and travel with me. I met her in Omaha and then we drove on up to Minneapolis.

However, this trip was not very productive as we didn’t have anything to actually sell yet, and I ran into certain technical problems that we encountered in the cold blizzard country up in the northern portion of the Midwest. The two most memorable things about our visit to Minneapolis were staying in swank Curtis Hotel, where we had a room with bath for $2.00, and having dinner at Charlie’s Gourmet Restaurant where we stuffed so full we were in misery for the next 24 hours.

61 We then drove back to Omaha where Ted caught the train home, and I continued to call on hardware distributors and weather stripping applicators in Omaha, across Nebraska and back through Wyoming.

Later in the summer of 1948, I made a trip to Los Angeles to contact Sears Department Stores, as that was their national buying headquarters at the time, to sell my weather stripping. Ted and the boys [Tom age 13, Fred age 9] went with me. I did make a deal with Sears to sell this weather stripping on a trial basis and put $155 work in each of their Western Division stores to see how it would move.

Then Ted, the boys and I drove down to San Die go to see Thurgie and Loretta where she stuffed us all full of food day and night; and then we drove up to San Francisco and over to Reno. Then we got to Reno time was running out on Ted because she was a Republican State Representative and had to be at the Nominating Convention in Salt Lake a couple of days later. To get there, she took Fred on the train back to Salt Lake: but Tom and I drove from Reno up to Boise where I was going to turn in my big Sears Weather strip orders.

When we got there, I found out that Idaho Steel had not paid the inventor, a Mr. Bunker from Salt Lake City, the royalty payments that had been promised and their franchise was in jeopardy. I turned in the orders when Bunker and his son, who just got out of the navy, came into the office and found out about this Sears order. Bunker’s son talked the old man into canceling out on Idaho Steel Co. and letting him take over the manufacture of the weather strip. This conked my deal out with Idaho Steel, so I refused to turn the orders over to them and quit that business. Mr. Bunker’s son did go to Los Angeles and tried to get the order from Sears, but failed.

I didn’t have much success trying to get into the manufacturer’s representative business even with this extra little help I had; however, in the late spring of 1948, just prior to the end of my weather strip business, I had contacted Jack Zinc of the C. C. Anderson store chain in Boise while I was attempting to sell the weather strip to that company. At that time, Jack Zinc offered me a job as assistant chain sales manager in the Appliance Divi- sion. In this job, I had to go into each of the stores, hire salesmen and train them on how to sell the appliances. I did this in all of the C. C. Anderson chain stores in Idaho and in Oregon and also the Bon Marche stores in Montana and Washington. However, by the time I had finished this type work in each of their stores, the management of C. C. Anderson decided they no longer had need for that type of special sales work so they dismissed me.

It was while was working in Twin Falls on this job that Kenneth Arnold, who had been one of my clothing sale smen in Minneapolis years before, reported seeing flying saucers and started all this UFO nonsense. About a month after he reported it, I ran into Kenneth Arnold in Pendle ton, Oregon, and spent the evening discussing flying saucers with him. I decided that the whole deal was a “crock”. When he originally reported seeing flying saucers and I realized that it was the same Kenneth Arnold who had been such a “weirdo” while he was working with me, I could understand why such a screwball report would come out of a guy like that.

After the trouble Idaho Steel Co. had with Brunker, and I lost my job selling weather stripping with them, but while I was still in Boise, I dropped in to see Jack Zinc at C. C. Anderson again, who offered me the job as Appliance Department manager in the Boise store. This job had been paying my predecessor about $2,000 per month. I took the job thinking I had a real good deal; however, Bob Shelton, who had been the previous manager, and a couple of the good salesmen in the department, had opened up their own private appliance store and were running us considerable competition. They were buying several types of merchandise from Flint Distributing Co. that were the same appliances that C.C. Anderson handled. But Flint favored them to begin with by shipping them carloads of merchandise and shipping nothing to C. C. Anderson. As a result, they sold all the customers who had been waiting for merchandise, so my department could only get new business as it came into the store. I didn’t make the $2,000 a month I thought I would. It was more like $600 to $700 a month, which of course was still good for that time.

I continued working with C.C. Anderson’s during the fall of 1948. I rented a small apartment while 1 was working in Boise where Ted and her sister, Mary, came up and visited with me once for two or three days, and

62 then my brother, John Melville, came and visited for about a week while he hunted pheasants and stayed with me.

Ted didn’t want to move to Boise and I couldn’t find a decent house to rent up there. My only alternative would have been to sell our home in Bountiful and buy a new one in Boise. This we decided not to do, so Christmas Eve, 1948, I quit C.C. Anderson’s and drove home.

During January, 1949, I looked around for a job but couldn’t find one. John came in with a new sample line of Butler clothes. He showed them to me and talked me into making a trip with him through Nevada and up into southern Idaho. I went with him for about a month and then came back home. This was the time we got such a heavy snowfall in this country that the Army had to set up “Operations Hay Lift” to fly and drop hay down to the cattle in Nevada and Idaho where they were stranded out in snow so deep they couldn’t move around. That trip was not very successful, and was miserable because of the heavy snows and cold.

When I got home, I found a snowdrift in the street just east of our house twice as high as the house, and the kids were using it as a ski hill. We have never had that much snow since.

During the spring of 1949, Ted [age 39] decided to go back to work for Standard Optical.

I went looking for a job again and found a temporary one with Walter B. Lloyd Company selling Scott- Atwater outboard motors. My job was to set up dealers in Utah, Idaho, Nevada, and Wyoming, which I did. I covered this entire territory between April and the end of June, at which time this temporary job was completed.

By July of 1949, I decided to go back out selling clothes for W. S. Butler Co of Ogden and Logan Knitting Mills again. I made one trip west through Nevada, and into Oakland, California, where I stayed with my brother, Keith, who was going to school at Berkley University. I was in Oakland for about a week and then back home. Business on this trip was very good so I decided to go back into the Dakotas, Nebraska and Wisconsin for the fall campaign.

In January, 1950, I went back into the Midwest selling and then came home at Easter time where I continued to sell a little around home and in Idaho until June, 1950. I decided to take another trip out through Nevada and down through California. On this trip, I took Tom and Fred with me. Tom was 14 years old and Fred was 10. We went through Nevada into San Francisco, then on down to Los Angeles and back home through Las Vegas.

While we were crossing “Mormon-Flats” in Nevada on the way home, we were listening to the radio and the news came out that war had broken out in Korea. I didn’t pay much attention to it, but Tom jumped straight up and said, “We are going to have another war”.

I had found out that my merchandise would sell in Salt Lake City and got an idea that I could open up a specialty shop and possibly make good money staying at home. I happened to discuss this type business with Gene Bryson in the summer of 1950, and he offered to go into business with me and put up $3,000. I found a place on the east corner of the entrance to the Centre Theater on State and 3rd So. that would be available September 1st.

I leased this space and then for the rest of the summer went back out into the Midwest territory for two months selling again. Business out there this year was excellent. Also while was back east, I lined up with P.H. Davis Tailoring Co. of Cincinnati, Ohio, to handle their custom line of men’s suits. When I returned just before September 1st [1950], I contracted repainting and refinishing the inside of the new store and then took off on a weekend trip with Ted, Phyllis and Earl Bishop where we went to Elko for Labor Day and the Silver State Fair.

When we came back, I went up to Butler’s in Ogden and to Logan Knit in Logan and made a deal with them to handle their surplus samples and returned merchandise in my store on a consignment basis. At this

63 point, Gene Bryson advised me that he had made a deal with Ken Garff to buy stock in Ken Garff Oldsmobile and had gotten a job as Sales Manager, so I had to start my business with no money. All I had was consignment merchandise and sample lines.

I named the business “Melville’s Custom Apparel”, and at the outset, I did a good business. In late fall, I took a trip to Los Angeles where I took on Park Wilshire men’s custom suits. Putting them all together gave me a good variety of clothes to sell.

Bert Gibson, who was the manager of ZCMI Finance in Salt Lake, which company was owned by Lee Flint, came in and looked at my merchandise. He offered to finance floor plan stocks on suits and coats. This worked out very well until the end of the year.

In January 1951, Howard Nielson, who had bought out Logan Knit, offered me a deal to take their spring line out to Portland and San Francisco and show some of his sales force their new line. This was approximately a 10-day trip , for which he paid me $300, plus expenses, plus whatever I could make sellin g en route. I left my shop with Gene Von Baur, a salesman I hired at Christmas time, and made that trip. I did very well.

I knew I could make a nice bundle on another trip to the Midwest by going on approximately a five-week tour to cover the territory, but I didn’t want to leave the store, and this is where I goofed. I sent Gene Von Baur and his wife out to see my customers and make the trip for me. He took ten weeks goofing around on the trip and didn’t make any money, besides his sloppy way of taking care of orders really ruined my business out in the Midwest.

In January, 1951, Bert Gibson, who managed Time Finance, came in and offered me a big deal to floor plan ladies’ and men’s sample suits. I bit. I loaded up with Butler and Logan Knit women’s suits and coats, plus P.H. Davis men’s suits and Park Wilshire men’s suits. I also took on women’s knit dresses made by Redmond Knit in California.

The first two months of business were excellent. I was making a high percentage of profit on my sales, but most of the sales involved deposits and lay-away for Easter, which came in April.

Bert Gibson then came in and put a real hard squeeze on me by telling me I had to pay for 1/3 of the total bill at the end of each month begin ning with the end of January. He forced me into an early liquidation of anything that I could sell for cash even at my wholesale cost, or in some cases losing a little. I did meet his deadline in mid-February and again in mid-March, but showed no profit. By mid-April, at Easter time, it took all the cash I could gather up to pay him off. As I was paying Gene Von Baur a salary, plus a girl who worked with me part time, I suffered a substantial loss. I had to fire Gene Von Baur.

Along about May, I still kept my shop open and operated until the end of 1951. In January of 1952, an opportunity came up whereby I could take over Crandall Knitting Mills in Ogden, so after I closed my shop I started manufacturing knit dresses and branched off into making men’s knit sport shirts.

Leo Siegel and a Mr. Graham of Salt Lake had learned of my knitting operation and offered to go into business with me as partners, so I made a deal with them in early spring of 1952. The men’s sport shirts that I designed and manufactured sold very well. The first day I had samples of each style , I took stock orders from Arthur Frank’s, Auerbachs and ZCMI. We started to produce shirts primarily, but also knit dresses and some tailored fabric suits.

I made a trip to Los Angeles to lo ok for some equipment we needed and try to find someone who could manage a manufacturing factory of this type. I did find someone who had the know how to handle the production management. I located some special knitting equipment from Lou Reister in Los Angeles, who loaned it to me. However, Leo Siegel wouldn’t go along with my hirin g a factory superintendent so I had to take on the job myself, plus do my own selling.

While I was on this trip to Los Angeles, I showed my samples to a few stores, inclu ding Jerry Rothchild of Beverly Hills, who bought some. I also sold the exclusive Monte Factor men’s stores in Beverly Hills. While I was showing my merchandise, an exclusive manufacturer’s who sold Louie Roth men’s suits saw my shirts and the favorable response I received from these two very exclusive customers of his. His name was Don Halverson. He cornered me and asked for a deal to sell my shirts for me in the western states, so I made a deal with him and he started selling and eventually flooded my factory in Ogden with all the business we could possibly handle.

I was in the middle of trying to organize the manufacture of merchandise, particularly the shifts, when Tom and Fred had a school vacation for a couple of days and went up to the factory in Ogden with me. Tom took over the job of expediting the orders as to which shirts, which sizes, and which colors were made on a priority basis. He set up an efficient operation in those two days.

It appeared that I was on my way to success for a change when Leo Siegel jerked the rug out from under me financially. He told me that because of a $30,000 deal he had made with Woolworth’s to manufacture and sell them a plastic birdcage; he had to have all the capital he could get to handle that particular order. This left me without any cash to operate my business. I had quite a time meeting payrolls, rent, etc. I still continued and tried to do the business I could with no money. This went on until the middle of the summer of 1952.

Durin g the latter part of June, 1952, I decided to make another trip back east. However, I found out that Von Baur had ruined my business for furnishing excellent fitting clothes, and business was bad. I had been selling for a couple of weeks when Ted called and told me that Ray Crandall had padlocked my factory because my rent hadn’t been paid. I quit selling out in the Midwest and hurried home to salvage what I could. I arranged with Ray Crandall to let me operate for another couple of weeks and told him I would try to raise the money I needed. I loaded the car with every sample and every piece of finished merchandise I had, and drove through Nevada and into San Francisco, then down to Los Angeles trying to sell anythin g I could to raise cash. I didn’t stop in Nevada on the way down, planning to work Nevada on the way back to sell my samples all along the route.

I got into San Francisco and Oakland but didn’t seem to have luck selling my new merchandise or any samples. I took off a day later and drove down to Los Angeles, where I stayed at the Mayflower Hotel in downtown Los Angeles.

I had sent a sample of one of my ladies knit dresses down to Don Halverson who had shown it to the national buyer for the Cavendish buyer’s group. They had stores throughout the nation, and Auerbachs of Salt take City was a member of their group. With such numerous stores, I was hoping to be able to get something going on a large scale that, if successful, could open some doors for obtaining financing needed to continue my business. I made an early appointment for Monday morning with the Cavendish buyer to show her my samples. I had to stay in Los Angeles over the weekend.

Early Monday morning, I packed all my samples and other merchandise in my car. I had this material stacked up tight against the ceiling in the back seat, trunk, and all. I parked in front of the hote l and, after loading everything in the car, decided to go back in and get some breakfast, then check out.

When I came back out to my car, I found someone had broken in the right front window, unlocked the car and taken every piece of merchandise except my sample swatches. Everything I owned had disappeared except a few things that were locked up in the trunk.

I first went and met with the Cavendish buyer, told her the problem and showed her the samples of material. She told me when I could get more samples made up she would be very pleased to look at them and would probably be interested in placin g some orders for same.

65 After leaving this appointment, I went to police headquarters and spent the rest of the morning filling out a police report describing every article that was lost. Then I told the police that I parked behind the hotel cab stand they told me that the cab drivers were probably in cahoots on the deal, saw me go back in and one of them operated as a stakeout while the other unloaded my car, put it in his cab and took off. When the loot was heisted, the other cab driver took off. This seemed to be the Los Angeles police’s best explanation of how that could have happened in broad daylight in front of the hotel without arousing any suspicion. At any rate, I lost everything, so I came home and closed the factory for good.

In late fall of 1952, I found a job selling Harvest Freeze food plans which involved the sale of frozen food freezers and loading them up with frozen foods. I worked for Read Bros. of Ogden and sold these food freezers and food plans through December of 1952. I did real well in Ogden with it.

In January, 1953, Wally Duvall, who owned Harvest Freeze, struck up a new deal with Read Bros. that gave them some advantage but changed my deal to where I was only making one-third the money out of each sale made by my salesmen than I had been previously making. This change seriously affected my income. Although I wasn’t happy or satisfied with this, it was still the only thing I had to work on at the time, so I continued on this job.

I was not making enough to live on, so I started taking sample clothes, which I would borrow, and run out to Nevada over the weekends, as far as Winnemuca, selling this merchandise to try to pick up an extra $50 to $100 dollars a week.

I took off one Friday afternoon at the end of the first week in February, and went as far as Winnemucca, Nevada. I finished contacting my potential customers on a Sunday evening, and drove from Winnemuca back home. I had to drive all night. By the time I reached Salt Lake, I was getting late for work on Monday morning, so I drove straight on through without stopping at home. When I arrived in Ogden, I found out that Ted had been trying to get hold of me to tell me that Dad had died over the weekend [Feb 2, 1953]. So I turned around and went back home and into Salt Lake to see Mother and help with the funeral arrangements.

I continued working with Read Bros. until April of 1953, at which time the whole deal went sour. I spent a month looking around for another job with no luck, then decided to take another selling trip during the summer of 1953. I stayed with that until September1st back out in the Midwest, but didn’t do very well.

On my way home about September 1st, I stopped overnight in Denver and spent the evening with Dick and Joan Cummings watching TV. The First National Bank of Denver was advertising a new central credit card financing setup. It looked like a way I could have stayed in business. The next morning, I went into the First National Bank and discussed their program, how it worked and got the fundamenta l information on this kind of credit card cha rging. However, nothing like that was available in Salt Lake City at the time so I put that out of my mind for the time being.

Tom had graduated from Davis High in 1953 and went to work washing cars for Ken Garff during that summer. In the fall, he signed up with the Navy in their NROTC program at the University of Utah. It looked like a way for him to be able to get through the University.

Then in the fall of 1953 and through May of 1954, I helped Bob Cooper and San Smiley start Gold Cloud Uranium. I didn’t make any money at it this year, and also took a job with Bill Thayne selling real estate until I got cheated out of a big deal by Bill and his henchman who was supposed to be his sales manager. Then I quit that business.

I sold air conditioners for Ray Curtis for about a month.

66 All this time, I kept thinking about this central charging system. I discussed the business with several people and was referred to Glen Crandall, who was interested in the setup, but didn’t take any action until late in the fall.

It was this summer that Elmer Barlow’s two sons, Kay and Jim, who were about 10 and 12 years old, decided to back their Dad’s jeep out of his driveway. They got the thing going and backed it clear across the street and into a ditch, but they couldn’t get it out of the ditch. Ted and I were gone up north that day to some funeral and learned what had happened when we got back.

Kay and Jimmy Barlow went down and got Fred to see if he could get the jeep out. He managed to drive the car out of the ditch, so they decided to go for a joy ride. They headed north past Ralph Harrison’s house where a little birthday party was going on. They stopped there and invited the kids to go for a jeep ride. The whole batch climbed on the jeep making eleven passengers in all.

Then Fred drove up 4th north to the top of the hill, crossed back over and came west on Stringham’s Hill. Right in front of Stringham’s house, he hit the edge of the tar road where water had washed outa deep gully. The edge caught the front wheel of the jeep down in the gully and rolled the jeep over totally. It rolled clear over and back up on its wheels again. People who witnessed the accident said kids were flying in the air in all directions.

It happened that Jimmy Barlow, who was locked in under the steering wheel in between Fred and the door didn’t get thrown out. He and Fred rolled clear down under with the jeep and up again. The impact on the top of the jeep when it hit the pavement upside down smashed the windshield down flat on top of them.

Bob Barlow, who was Tom’s age, came home and found what had happened right after it occurred. He then went around and gathered up every one of the kids that were in the wreck and took the whole batch of them down to see Dr. Trowbridge, who scrubbed out all their scratches and bruises with a brush and then bandaged them all up. When Ted and I got home and saw Fred all bandaged up, we of course found out the gruesome details and immediately started to go see all of the parents to see how the kids were. I thought sure we would get into a lawsuit that would take everything we owned away from us, but none of the children was too seriously injured and the parents were nice people and didn’t press charges.

In the late fall of 1954, I contacted Glen Crandall again about the idea of a charging system. He was particularly interested and said he knew an attorney in Salt Lake by the name of Allen Elggren who had just made a pile of money in the uranium business and had $40,000 cash in the bank that he might invest. We got together with attorney Elggren who also was quite interested in the deal. Glen Crandall and I then made a trip over to Denver and discussed this setup in detail with the First National Bank of Denver again.

When we got home, we decided to start the business. We did organize our central charging system, named it the Charge Buying Service, and advertised it as the CBS Charging System. We didn’t operate with credit cards; instead, we arranged for the charges by phone.

Glen Crandall was set up as the general manager and in charge of all monies. Allen Elggren put some money in it; a couple of thousand dollars as an investment and $5,000 as a loan. Gle n Crandall agreed to put up money as needed, but only actually put in about $500 to start. Then Crandall got the Bradshaw Auto Parts Co. to put $10,000 in the setup that gave us a little cash to start up with. My deal was to operate as the sales manager and to get out and enlist retail dealers into using our service and our charging system, which I did. I was also selling stock to various people in the CBS Charging System to raise more money. I did get half a dozen people to put in money anywhere from $1,000 up to $4,000 apiece which helped our finances a little bit. However, by December 1, 1954, business had become so good that I had to go into the office and help with the billings and then the collections.

67 Actually business was so good it boomed us out of business by June, 1956. We developed a growing charging business that required heavy financin g to pay off the dealers at the end of each month. We were unsuccessful in getting any of the banks in Salt Lake to cooperate with us by setting us up with a line of credit using the accounts receivable for collateral. However, the First Security Bank at 4th So. and Main did lend us money to pay off these accounts each month for quite some time, but on a deal whereby four of us had to sign personal indemnity to pay off the loans in case the business couldn’t. Glen Crandall worried himself sick about this kind of potential indebtedness. However, the business did prosper and started to show a profit of about $2,000 a month after one year’s operation. So we continued on.

Then Allen Elggren decided we could raise some big money by floating a stock issue and made a connection with a New York stockbroker who was a member of the exchange and also with Jack Cayias who ran a little uranium brokerage firm in Salt Lake. The deal was all set up to go, and an agreement made between the New York broker and Jack Cayias to each take down a block of stock and put up the cash for this stock to get sales rolling. The New York broker put up $10,000 immediately and started to sell some of the stock. Jack Cayias didn’t out up a nickel, and was only successful in selling some guy $500 worth of the stock, so when the New York broker found out that Jack Cayias had reneged on his end of the deal the New York broker also quit.

When this attempt to finance the business fell through, Glen Crandall really got scared and started to persuade the other directors of the company to close the business. He offered to take over the funds the company had and invest these funds in conjunction with his Crandall Investment Co., where he financed pianos, refrigerators, cars, furniture, etc., and pay the company twelve percent interest. A Mr. Wooley of Hogle Investment Co., who had put in $4,000 and was on the Board of Directors, and Allen Elggren thought this was a pretty good deal, so they decided to fold up the Charge Buying Service. This didn’t occur until about June of 1956.

We had had one offer from a similar operation in the Bay area to buy out our charging system, so Ted and I made a trip out to San Rafael to talk to this guy; but he didn’t want to pay us anything for it. He just wanted to take it over. When I returned with this information, it was then definitely decided to close the business and liquidate the accounts receivable.

Bob Cooper had gotten his Gold Cloud Uranium underwritten and a certain amount of stock sold, so when I no longer had to work with CBS Charging System, I went back to work with Bob Cooper helping him run Gold Cloud Uranium Co. mining operation and promote stock, etc. Bob Cooper died right after we got started on this and then Sam Smiley asked me to take over the management of Gold Cloud Uranium, which I did in April of 1956. Also in April of 1956, I got hit with a bleeding ulcer and was hospitalized for eight days.

Just before this occurred, Sam Smiley had gone to Los Angeles and ran into an attorney friend of his by the name of Ray Wallenstein, whom he had known in Chicago and who happened to be the attorney for a Mr. Julian Weiss who was an investment counselor and financier in Beverly Hills, California. Sam told Ray Wallenstein about Gold Cloud Uranium, the corporate structure stock setup, etc., which interested Ray, so he relayed the information to Julian Weiss who became very much interested in working out a deal with us.

Ray called me and set up an appointment in Salt Lake with Julian Weiss, himself, and me, to discuss the company. At the time, I made the appointment I didn’t know I was going to be in the hospital. Julian Weiss and Ray Wallenstein came out to the hospital and visited with me for a couple of hours and I told them what I would be willing to do and what the Board of Directors would do about them taking a healthy financial position in Gold Cloud. We more or less agreed on how we could operate this.

Then Ray and Julian went back to Chris Christensen’s office at a Gold Cloud Board meeting. They discussed the program with the Board of Directors, told them what they do and what they would expect the company to would do. The Board of Directors liked the whole deal, so we then put Gold Cloud Uranium into business with a wealthy group of financial brokers.

68 I didn’t own much Gold Cloud stock. I had managed to wangle out just a few shares from Cooper and later acquired a little more through Larry Davis of Moab who was managing the mining operation at the time.

However, Julian Weiss and Ray Wallenstein advised me that if I would work with them they would see to it that I got a position into the company in a good way and that I would make a lot of money. This would have been okay except the President of Gold Cloud, Bob Holt, wouldn’t go along with too many of their ideas and none of them when it came to letting me acquire any stock.

I saw an opportunity to get another company started, which I did, and named it Minerals Consolidated, Inc. I became President of this company. Sam Bida, a mining engineer from Ely, Nevada, had learned about me and my money connections. He came to me with some tungsten and silver properties in Nevada that had a potential. We started this company and investigated dozens of uranium and other metal claims. We also looked at various mining and oil deals with the idea of acquiring some with Minerals Consolidated, Inc. stock. Julia n Weiss put $2,000 into this company with me, so I figured I would be able to get the finances to handle it if I could come up with worthwhile mining property potentials. In spite of all the deals and mining properties that were offered us, after investigating it we had to turn them down as no good. Minerals Consolidated, Inc., did take one try on the one tungsten and silver property that Sam Smiley owned in Nevada; however, the bottom fell out of the market on tungsten and we did not make any money in this.

I continued to work as manager for Gold Cloud Uranium, where we were mining uranium finally in two places and selling the ore to Climax Uranium in Grand Junction, Colorado.

Minerals Consolidated, Inc. also took on a gold mining operation at Mancus, Colorado. Between inspections of Gold Cloud mines, investigations of various mining properties, and this Gold mining operation, to go around the country I was flying all over Utah, Idaho and Nevada in light Cessna aircraft and was piloted by a friend of mine from Bountiful, Chauncey Kershaw. I also flew a considerable number of trips with Gib Bennett of Bennett’s Flying Service out of Vernal, Utah.

In the fall of 1957, a big potential uranium mining deal came up in conjunction with Big Horn Uranium who had spent all their money, so I interested Julian Weiss in financing the White Canyon mining properties for Big Horn down by Hite, Utah, and we set up a joint venture operation between Gold Cloud and Big Horn. I inherited the job as general manager of these two mining companies’ joint venture operations.

Then a new deal came into the picture. A couple of fast buck operators out of Vernal, Utah, came in to see me and offered me the Gusher Field Oil Acreage that was up for sale . This happened to be the same deal that Julian Weiss had been investigating with the idea of putting part of the interest in that field into both Gold Cloud and Big Horn. After discussing this setup with Julian Weiss, we decided to start a new company called the Gusher Field Co., a limited partnership consistin g of Minerals Consolidated, Inc., as general partner, Gold Cloud Uranium and Big Horn as limited partners, and then Julian Weiss and several of his broker friends across the nation took partial interests in financing the Gusher Field.

Minerals Consolidated, Inc., Gold Cloud and Big Horn combined put up the money to buy the acreage. I flew to Cheyenne, Wyoming, and bought approximately half of the leases Wolf Land Co. had and the other half of the leases from Anschutz Drilling Co. in Denver. Then our broker friends offered to put up part of the money for any exploration drilling on the property.

When we took on the oil field operation, we discontinued drilling for uranium in the White Canyon area where we had been meeting with some prospective good showings. From here on out, we devoted all of our money and time on the Gusher Field venture. There were two existing oil wells on the Gusher Field leases we bought. They were not prolific wells, so the California company, who had drilled them, capped the wells and just let then sit. These two wells were named the Gusher #1 and the Gusher #3, and came with the lease acreage we had acquired.

69 Gusher #1 would flow l4 barrels per day and Gusher #3 would flow about 20 barrels per day. However, Caldwell and Covington had incorporated a deal into the purchase contract whereby we had to rework each of these two old wells.

We first oil-sand fractured Gusher #3, installed a pump and heating equipment with tankage on the property, and for the first few days we obtained approximately 100 barrels per day. However, this good flow of oil fell way short soon thereafter. We were able to pump this well and get about 30 barrels of oil per day thereafter. Ye then repeated the process on Gusher #1 well and put it into operation.

I did not want to spend the money on Gusher #1 but was over-ruled by the 14 members of the Board of Directors of each of the companie s, and by Julian Weiss and Morris Gluck, who happened to be visiting the Gusher Field in Vernal, Utah, at the time the decision to oil-sand fracture Gusher #l was made. From the experience we had had with Gusher #3, I figured it was just a waste of money and effort, which it turned out to be. It still only would yield the 14 barrels per day that it had been flowing previously.

Fred Melville had graduated from the new Bountiful High School after he had finished two previous years at Davis High. Fred got a job working at the Broadway Garage that he kept all during his last year in high school. In the fall, Fred also entered the University of Utah on the NROTC program. However, he eventually quit after the winter quarter and took a special crash training course in conjunction with Sperry Utah Engineering and Weber College, after which he went to work full time with Sperry Utah Engineering as an electronics technician.

While I was out at the Gusher #3 well site watching the service company prepare for the oil-sand fracturing, I received word that my Mother was trying to get me on the phone. When we went into Vernal at noon for lunch, I telephoned her. The reason for the call was to tell me that she wanted to get married to an Ed Dana and wanted my permission. This was rather a surprise, as I had heard nothing about any such thing being in process previous. What else could I do? I gave her my permission as had John, Keith, Lois given theirs. Mother married Ed Dana [July 23, 1957].

The work had not yet been totally completed by June on the Gusher #3 well when Ted and I made a trip by car up through Portland, Seattle and on into Victor ia and Vancouver, B.C. in Canada. After visiting Canada, we then drove back over to the Cooley Dam up in northeastern Washington where her brother, Clarence, had been one of the chief engineers when the dam was built. From there we went on down through Spokane and over to Yellowstone Park, where we met Elmer and Margaret Barlow and also Cynthia and Fred who had come up with them. We spent a couple of days fishing, then drove back through Wyoming and down into the Bear River country south of Evanston to see what was going on with another oil well that we were drilling at the time in that area. This well had just hit a gusher of water, so that venture was not successful.

Every day while we were on this trip , I would telephone into Vernal to see what progress was being made on the gusher well.

In early spring, 1958, Caldwell and Covington of Vernal called Stanley Bendorff, a consulting petroleum engineer of Dallas, Texas, to come up to Vernal and study the old drilling logs which Standard Oil of California had made available covering the original drilling of Gusher #1 well. As Bendorff had been touted as a top-notch petroleum engineer to the Board of Directors of our companies and to Julian Weiss, we were all sold on the idea that he knew his business. Covington and Bendorff advised us that we had a fantastic potential gas well which had been by-passed between the 6,100 and 6,200-foot level. We took their word for it and organized a deal to drill for gas a couple of hundred yards away from the old Gusher #1 well.

To accomplish this, another company was organized called Uinta Investment Co., which was another limited partnership, and set up With Gold Cloud Uranium being the general partner and with Minerals Consolidated, Inc., and Big Horn Uranium being limited partners. Then we accepted contributions from Julian Weiss and his associates, and several brokers, and other people with money who took a gamble to finance the

70 drilling of the well where they could write off the drilling costs as an intangible expense and then convert their interest into stock in the three different corporations. We spent $130,000 dr illing well, which cleaned out the three corporations of all surplus cash, and of course, the Jewish finances disappeared immediately when the well was declared a dry hole.

71 SECTION 5 – MARRIED WITHOUT KIDS

Tom graduated from the University of Utah in June 1958 and married Pauline Barlow on June 11th, and then Tom and Pauline took off for Pensacola, Florida for active flight trainin g with the Navy.

In the latter part of June, 1958, Ted and I took a week off and made a trip out to Lake Tahoe where we spent one day in Reno and then three or four days at Lake Tahoe, then drove back home again.

When I returned from Lake Tahoe the last week in June, I called a Board meeting of Minerals Consolidated, Inc., with R.J. Barson, Aaron Barson and Bob Holt who were at the time, along with me, on the Board of Directors. Bob Holt was also President of Gold Cloud Uranium, so this meeting adequately represented the management of Minerals Consolidated, Inc., Gold Cloud Uranium, Gusher Field Co. and Uinta Investment Co. As Gold Clo ud Uranium Co. had gone broke, they had to discontinue paying me the $300 monthly salary I had been drawing for the preceding two years, which left me without an income. I requested a salary from Minerals Consolidated Inc., which still had a little money and was the general partner of Gusher Field Co., which also had a little cash left, out of which funds I could have been paid a salary for a short period of time. At this board meeting, a resolution was passed allowing me $500 per month, but not payable to me until such time as Minerals or Gusher had adequate finances to afford it. I had to take my salary in the form of credit against some time in the future. It didn’t help me a bit at that particular time.

I continued to manage all of the companies involved, but minus any salary. Shortly after this, Noble Dodge, who was President of Big Horn Uranium resigned and the Board of Directors of Big Horn asked me to take over as President of Big Horn at a salary of $250 per month, which I did.

To try to do somethin g with Gusher Field and to see if we could rework the gas well and obtain gas from same, we entered into a farmout with the Barson brothers. They did go out and try to rework the gas well and also do some other work on the Gusher #1 well. The only problem was they charged the bills all to Minerals Consolidated, Inc., instead of paying the bills themselves, which ended up in quite a hassle between Deb Casada, who did part of the service work for the Barsons, and R&R Drilling Co. of Rangley, Colorado, who did the major reworking job. I received the bills for this work as they were sent to Minerals Consolidated, Inc., but could not get the Barsons to pay for same, and the whole thing ended up in a lawsuit at a little later date.

The Barsons accomplished nothing as far as doing anything with the oil field was concerned except gain title to it for themselves. This would not have been possible except for the fact that Minerals Consolidated, Inc. was the General Partner and with these two guys and Bob Holt, who was their brother-in-law, on the Board of Directors, they were able to control the situation and do whatever they wanted with it regardless of my objections.

After I thought I had the Gusher Field problems off my back, I turned my attention to seeing what could be done with Big Horn Uranium. A man by the name of Nick Crawford, who had some years before been introduced to me as mining engineer, came to me with a proposition to take over a potential silver lead mine up in the mountains west of Grantsville, Utah. He had old engineering magazines and drawings and productions records from a mine that had been worked years before which had been a producing mine, but abandoned when the price of lead went to pieces and a mountain slide covered up the portal to the tunnel which had never been reopened.

Nick Crawford told us about the big deal that was inside the mountain and from all the tangible evidence, it looked possible, so Big Horn undertook reopening the mine. We did bull doze out the landslide from the portal and found there was mine track still back in about 300 feet to the chute of ore, which was supposed to be where we would find big pay. However, when we got there, it looked like most of the good ore had been previously mined out. We tried cross cutting into what Nick told us could be a good vein, but found nothing there and also mined out several tons of what was supposed to be fairly good ore, but just stockpiled it out at the portal. Winter caught up with us before we got too much accomplished, so we put off mining until the next spring.

The expenditures on this mine were taking the cash Big Horn had left very fast, so I proposed to the Board that I, and Frank Hammond of Ogden, who was the secretary and accountant for the company, take stock for pay instead of the cash. This would save what cash funds we had to use to find the big lead silver vein we were looking for. The Board of Directors of Big Horn passed a resolution authorizing this form of pay, which I started drawing from that point on. I would occasionally have to sell some of my stock to get money to live on.

In the spring of 1959, we reopened the Grantsville mine and worked on it for a couple of months until Big Horn ran out of cash. We did not find the glory hole . We left the equipment at the mine hoping that we would be able to find finances to continue working, but were unsuccessful in accomplishing this by fall of 1959. Late in the fall, I took Fred Melville and his friend, Duayne, up to the mine with me to bring out the compressor, which was mounted on a Dodge 6x6 truck, and also to bring out the miscellaneous equipment in the old GMC pickup that Minerals Consolidated, Inc. owned.

We got all of the small equipment out of the mine and into the pickup, which loaded it clear down, then I drove down the dugway to bring it back into town. Fred was following me in the 6x6 with the big compressor on it. I had just barely got started when I discovered the road was covered with ice and a new layer of slick snow and I started to slide. If I had gone off the dugway, there would have been no chance to survive it. Rather than try to stop and slide off, I gave it a little gas and just simply steered it down the dugway gaining speed all the time. When I reached the bottom of the hill I could see I was going to go right off into a big, deep ravine, so to stop I sideswiped the pickup into the sidewall of the canyon on my right which stopped me just short of going on over and down about 200 feet. This of course scared the daylights out of me.

I then realized that Fred was trying to bring that giant truck and compressor down the same road. I panicked and started to run back up the hill to yell at him to stop and not try it. Meantime, he had started and got part way, and when he hit the slick road, he ran the front end of the rig into the side bank and stopped. I was yelling at him to stop and he hollered back and said he was already stopped, so I asked what the situation was and he told me. I told him to just leave the thing sitting up there and forget about it. Just walk on out. However, he and Duayne did pull the batteries out and brought them down the hill with them. We then just left the truck and compressor sitting where it was until late the next spring when we went and got it out after the roads had dried up.

On May, 13, 1959, Julie Melville was born in Memphis, Tennessee, so the end of June, Ted and decided to drive down to Kingsville, Texas, where Tom, Polly and Julie were living at the time. We went down via Monticello, Utah, where I held a Big Horn Board of Directors meeting, then across the giant scenic mountains of southern Colorado, from Cortez to Trinidad. En route, we stopped off at the Mesa Verde National Park, which contains the old Pueblo Indian Cliff Dwellings. I had passed this point several times before but this was the first time I ever stopped to see what was in the Park. I found it very interesting. From Trinidad, Colorado, we drove down through the Panhandle of Texas, through Amarillo, Ft. Worth and Dallas where we stopped off for a day and visited with Stanley Bendorff, then went on to Houston and stayed overnight. The next day we drove into Kingsville to meet our new grandchild and visit with Tom and Polly.

On the 4th of July, we drove down to Corpus Christi, Texas, and watched the Navy Flying Angels put on an air jet show. Then we went out to the beach on the Gulf of Mexico where Tom and I went swimming, then drove back to Kingsville, Texas.

The next day we drove down to Brownsville, Texas, crossed the border into Matamoros, Mexico, and spent an afternoon browsing Mexican junk for sale. We then drove back to Kingsville, stayed overnight, and the next morning took a tour of the giant Kings Cattle Ranch. After that, we went to San Antonio where we visited the Alamo, and that evening drove on almost up to the corner of New Mexico. On this return trip home, Ted was having me dig up cacti and skinny trees to bring home and plant in our yard, none of which lived after we planted them.

73 Tom mentioned to us that we should make it a point to see the Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico on our way home, so we did just that and found that cave to be immense and most interesting. After we left the Carlsbad Caverns we went on to Albuquerque, where we stayed overnight at the Western Skies Motor Lodge, a place rather unique in modern hotels. The following day we drove on back to Salt Lake.

In August of 1959, I took a job with American Industrial Leasing Co. that looked to me like a deal I could do well with and possibly make a lot of money. I had about $2,000 cash in the bank when I started worked with that company for a couple of months. However, it didn’t work out, as the bankers that were supporting the leasing company wouldn’t approve credit in the Salt Lake area unless it was totally gilt-edged. I did lease a small amount of banking equipment to First Commercial Bank of Idaho Falls, Idaho, and also ended up with a small lease for $100,000 for a buildin g for Dee Smith at Page, Arizona, but was not paid my commission until some time later. I discontinued that business after I had submitted several million dollars worth of lease applications that these people turned down.

I then decided to try selling real estate again; however, I didn’t want anythin g more to do with Bill Thayne of Thayne Realty, so contacted Bettilyon’s who gave me a job and put me to work.

This looked very promising for the first few days, but a week after I started, Bettilyons made a deal with Bill Thayne and his entire sales force to come into Bettilyons and Bill Thayne took over Bettilyon’s operation as Sales Manager. None of the men at Bettilyons was a bit pleased with this deal, but we stayed on to see what would happen. As far as I am concerned, what happened wasn’t any good at all. Bill Thayne had hired Gene Von Baur, the guy I had to fire a few years earlier, and had made Gene assistant sales manager for Bettilyons. There was a definite conflict of personalities here so at the end of the year I quit selling real estate.

In February, I960, I decided to take a trip to Los Angeles to see Julian Weiss and make a try to revive Big Horn, Gold Cloud and include Minerals Consolidated, Inc., in the deal. I left home the end of February on this trip in the late afternoon and went via Wells, Nevada. As I was driving down the west side of the mountain range heading down into Wells, a tire ble w out going at high speed and tossed me right into the bar pit. I first hit a side bank where the road had been cut through a ridge. That bounced me right back on to the highway taking out a guardrail post. Fortunately , the impact slowed me down to where I was able to stop the car before I pitched clear off the road on the other side. I just remember at one point that I was smashed right into the steering wheel with my head up in the upper left hand corner of the car by the windshield.

I then pulled off the side of the road to assess the damage. There didn’t seem to be too much damage except my right front fender was smashed up where it hit the guardrail and the tire was flat. I didn’t think I was hurt, so proceeded to replace the flat tire with my spare. For some reason or other, I didn’t seem to have strength enough to lift the flat tire off the wheel. I finally gave up and flagged a ride with a diesel transport truck into Wells where I was able to get a man in a service station to go back out with me and change the tire for me so I could get on into town. I checked into what was then Wells’ newest hotel, but in an upstairs room. I had a miserable night, had a hard time sleeping and hurt a lot where I had hit my chest onto the steering wheel.

I woke up very early the next morning, went to get out of bed and could hardly make it. It felt like my entire chest was in shambles. I did make it out of bed and opened the hall door, but feeling like I might pass out. I went back and lay down on the bed. After that, everything hurt so bad I couldn’t move. I could hear other people movin g around some place and tried to yell at them, but it hurt so bad I couldn’t even yell. I waited there for two or three hours before I finally caught the attention of a railroad man who was passing my door by whistling. He came in, saw me with this trouble and arranged to call a doctor.

The doctor wasn’t a licensed physician and surgeon. He was a chiropractor. However, he came up and gave me a big shot of Demerol. After about an hour I felt no pain and with the help of a young man the doctor sent up to get me, I got out of bed and went down to his office where he took x-rays of my chest. He said I did not have any broken ribs and should be all right in two or three day, so he taped me all up with big, wide adhesive tape binding my entire chest and gave me a prescription for codeine pain pills.

By this time, it was late afternoon again, but I decided I would be all right; so I bought a new tire and drove over to Elko. By the time I got there, I felt so rotten I just went to bed. The next morning I couldn’t get out of bed again, but had a phone by the bed so telephoned and a bellhop came up, helped me out of bed, and helped me get dressed. I then took some more codeine pills and decided I could make it to Los Angeles.

I did stop in to see Julian Weiss who saw the way I was moving and he called a bone specialist in Beverly Hills who was really a bone specialist’s bone specialist. Julian made an appointment for me; and I went over to Dr. Fred Ilfeld’s office. Dr. Ilfeld was one of the men who put a little money into the gas well we had drilled. The doctor had me x-rayed and by now, it showed up that every rib in my body was broken. This was on a Thursday. Dr. Ilfeld told me to just check into a hotel and stay in bed most of the time. He ripped off all the adhesive tape, which took off part of the hide with it, but he did not put adhesive tape back on. He simply dressed the raw hide with antiseptic powder and then bound me up with elastic cloth bands, which I could remove myself by slowly turning myself around to unwind in order to take a shower.

I stayed in bed most of the time until Monday morning; then I reported back to Dr. Ilfeld. I controlled the pain with codeine. Dr. Ilfeld told me hospitalization wasn’t necessary if I could just wait out six weeks in this condition by not making any sudden jerks.

I had found out that I could sit in my car and, while I was sitting still, it didn’t hurt too much, so I decided to go home. I drove as far as Las Vegas, checked into the new Stardust Hotel and was just leaving the lobby to go out and go to my room when an old friend of mine from high school, Dr. Rulon Smith, saw me and came up to shake my hand. When he shook it, he just twisted himself around and jostled me on up to his back hanging me up in the air on his shoulder. I guess I screamed loud enough to wake up Las Vegas, so he put me right back down and asked me what the problem was. When I told him, he sobered up pretty fast. He was in Las Vegas attending a doctor’s convention and I guess had just come from the happy hour room.

I made it home the next day and then spent about three months in total misery trying to sleep and trying to get in and out of bed. A batch of broken ribs is a painful experience.

While I was in Los Angeles, before coming home, I contacted Westwood Knitting mills and made a deal to sell Westwood knitted sweaters and swimwear. However, that spring, until my ribs headed up, I didn’t do much with it, as I couldn’t carry the samples around.

In May 1960, Ted and I drove out to Sunnyvale , California , where Tom was now on active duty with the Navy. We arrived in Sunnyvale a day or two before Julie ’s first birthday. I was still, even at this late date, suffering from those broken ribs and had a difficult time finding a place to sleep where I could be comfortable. On Julie’s birthday, we took a sightseeing tour of San Francisco where we visited some of the parks, and also Coit Tower. After our visit with Tom, Polly and Julie, we drove back to Salt Lake.

About a month later [June 1960], my ribs were fairly well healed up and I was able to get around and start selling Westwood knitwear. I had sold some of these to several of the stores around Salt Lake and in Utah, and then decided to take a trip through Nevada and go out to San Francisco as that territory was in my area with Westwood Knitting Mills. I first went to Sunnyvale and stayed with Tom and Polly all night. Tom had to leave on Navy duty the next morning, and the movers came to move all the furniture from Sunnyvale up to Alameda, where they had rented the front half of a duplex. I helped Polly pack some of the items that were still unpacked when the movers got there. That evening, I checked in at their place in Alameda and helped her straighten around a bundle of odds and ends after the movers had put the furniture in the apartment. Mostly I babysat and played with Julie.

I contacted several of the big stores and exclusive ladies-wear shops in San Francisco, Oakland and down on the peninsula, as far as Palo Alto, selling Westwood sweaters.

75 Business wasn’t too good, because the buyers didn’t seem to like what Westwood had put on the market that year except for their swimwear. I sold a lot of that. After spending a couple of weeks there and also stopping in the Lake Tahoe and Reno area on the way back to do a little more selling, I went on home.

The last week in August, 1960, Julian Weiss had set up a deal with me to meet with Henry Caulfield, the father of Joan Caulfield , a movie actress, and a wealthy Texan by the name of Bill Moss who had married Ann Miller and had become part become part of the movie group. The meeting was to try to put together a deal between all of my mining and oil companies and Occidental Petroleum, which these fellows held heavy stock in. I could have made a deal with these fellows if I could have obtained any cooperation out of Bob Holt and the Barson brothers. I tele phoned Bob Holt and the Barsons in an attempt to get them to come down to Los Angeles to finish the negotiations and try to wrap up a merger deal. They goofed it up and didn’t come. As a result, nothing came of my three-day meetings with this group of people .

While I was in the Los Angeles area, I contacted Joe Moore again with American Industrial Leasing who had previously offered to let me work the California Bay area around San Francisco to represent the company on leasing in that area. Tom had invited me to come and stay with them for a little while if I decided to do this. Joe Moore offered me an advance of $1,000 per month if I would go up to the Bay Area and go to work there, which I did.

I left Los Angeles on September 1st [1960] and flew to Oakland where Tom met the plane and took me over to his duplex in Alameda as he was now stationed there with the Naval Air Force. I stayed with Tom, Polly and Julie in Alameda from the first of September until October 10th, during which time I tried to make a big deal out of this leasing business and spent my time contacting many of the various corporations in San Francisco, Oakland and down the peninsula.

When I first arrived in Alameda, Polly would introduce me to her neighbors and then tell them that I was a “built-in babysitter.” I spent a lot of time just playing with Julie around the apartment, and a couple of times a day would take her out for a leisurely stroll around the block and just watch all the little things she would do which amused her.

At the end of September, Joe Moore came up to San Francisco and spent a day with me talking about the leasing business. Business hadn’t been any good because again their Finance Committee wouldn’t approve applications for loans, even from such big outfits as Pictsweet Frozen Food Processing Co. and Ghirardelli Chocolate Co., or many of the big electronic manufacturers, etc. They did approve a couple of small loans from a couple of gilt-edged accounts. I pinned Joe Moore down on whether that $1,000 a month was going to continue or not, and he told me he didn’t think they would be continuing it unless I would suddenly land some big accounts whose credit they would approve.

This looked impossible, so I decided to concentrate on Westwood Knitting Mills merchandise in the area for a while, which I did until October 10th. Then I headed for home, stopped in Stockton, California, for one day, then went on over to Reno and spent a day working ladies clothing stores there.

As Tom was practicing naval bombing at Fallon, Nevada, at the time, which was just a few miles east of Reno, I decided to call Tom and maybe drop by and see him or have him come over to Reno and spend the evening with me. However, when I got someone on the phone in his barracks at the Naval Air Station the guy says, “Oh, no. Tom isn’t here. He had a baby this morning and has gone home.” Alan Melville was born that morning on October 12, 1960, in Oakland.

The next morning, I went on over to Elko, Nevada, where Ted and Thelma Ricky had driven over that far to meet me. We spent one night in Elko and then drove back home the next day.

I stared to look for another job again. Shortly after getting home, some litigation came up between R&R Drilling Co of Rangley, Colorado and Minerals Consolidated, Inc. where R&R was trying to sue Minerals Con-

76 solidated, Inc. to collect a bill that the Barson brothers owed but had charged to our company. I went up to see attorney Allen Elggren about this litigation and had him handle that problem.

While I was visiting with him, I mentioned the possibility of opening up a wholesale electrical supply business and told him that I would know how to get that kind of merchandising and could handle the selling if he, or he and a group of his friends, could come up with the necessary finances. He told me that he might have a better idea and asked me if I know John Elggren, his brother, who was a manufacturer’s rep selling electrical products. He told me that John Elggren was considering buying out the Lighthouse Electric in Ogden and that John could use someone to help him run the manufacturer’s rep business selling his electrical lines. I told Allen Elggren I would be interested, so he set up a meeting with John Elggren, himself and me for about a week later. We met in Allen’s office and discussed how we could operate together and they told me they would let me know.

A week went by and as I hadn’t heard anything from them, I stopped see Allen Elggren about this deal. He asked me if John Elggren hadn’t contacted me yet and I told him, “No”, so he recommended that I run down to John’s office and have a talk with him. This happened to be on December 1, 1960. I wend down to John Elggren’s office. He was out so I just walked in and waited. While I was sitting waiting for him, I opened up a Standard Transformer catalog that was sitting on the table. In the front, it said “For the exclusive use of Reid S. Melville.” At this point, I know I had a job there.

John came in a few minutes later and we discussed terms, pay, what I would do, etc. I agreed and started working with him. John took one day off, took me around to a few of his customers in Salt Lake, introduced me to them and told them that I would be working with them, which also included Utah Power & Light Co., and then he let me go out on my own to see what I could sell.

I didn’t know anything about the products he was selling, but did a lot of catalog studying and talked to many people. Bright and early one morning, John picked me up in Bountiful and we drove to Idaho Falls and back the same day, calling on all of his customers at Brigham City, Logan, Pocatello and Idaho Falls. That was the end of the assistance I received from John Elggren in selling the products I am presently working with.

On the 2nd of January, 1961, John didn’t show up at the office so I tried to call him at his home with no answer. I called Allen to ask him if he knew anything about where John was as the phones were ringing with people wanting information and there was some mail there. Allen told me to open up the mail, see what I could find, answer the phone calls and do the best I could with it, so I did.

One of the letters was from Lester Crane, manager of Penn-Union Electric, which was one of the factory lines that John Elggren had. This letter outlined a proposed visit with John in the middle of January, together with instructions on whom to invite out to dinner, and Lester Crane’s fastidious itinerary, and whom he wanted to contact. I then tried to get hold of John, but I couldn’t to make the grade for about a week.

I finally got hold of John two or three days before Lester Crane came in to town and John just told me to meet him, take him wherever he wanted to go, do whatever he wanted to do, and to just simply tell Mr. Crane that John was out of town on business. By this time, I found out that John had bought out Lighthouse Electric in Ogden and was working up there.

When Mr. Crane got off the airplane and found me there instead of John, he was quite disappointed. However, I told him that I was working with John and that I had everything set up. The two of us proceeded to make our contacts. I showed him around and introduced him to all the people I knew. We spent most of two days talking to people at Utah Power & Light. By the time Les Crane was ready to go back home, he told me that he thought he could be satisfied with me as a salesman and mentioned that he preferred his representative to be a salesman rather than an electrical engineer, which John Elggren was.

77 I continued working with the Elggrens. About a week after this, Allen Elggren brought Ray Elggren, a younger brother, into the office and introduced me to him. Ray was a manufacturer’s rep selling several different kinds of merchandise, including houseware items sold through department store, hardware stores, etc. His biggest line was selling Regalware pots and pans, which for him was a good moneymaker.

The deal was to set up a little company called Elggren Sales Co. Ray would manage this manufacturer’s representative business. At the same time we had this meeting, they gave me a little raise in pay to $400 a month, which made it possible to live on that amount for the time being, as my wife, Ted, was still working for Standard Optical Co. and this would provide us with enough money to get by.

Ray Elggren had a line of wholesale floor polishers and janitorial supplies and he immediately hired a man by the name of Mel Ferris to head up that division of the company. We then hired an old time friend of ours, Ed Rampton, to work his promotional sales and gift merchandise that he was selling through some of the oil companied and credit card companies. I was given total charge of all the electrical lines.

I was supposed to get a one-quarter ownership in the incorporated Elggren Sales. I was making money for the company in the electrical lines, so I soon received another raise in pay to $500 a month. Ray Elggren was doing well with his lines that he handled, but Ed Rampton didn’t seem to be able to sell anything, so his end of the business was a losing proposition. However, Ray kept him on because he really took a liking to Ed and was hoping it would work out. Mel Ferris did fairly well with the janitorial supplies, but not really well enough that his department would make any money.

All four of us were working in one little office about 12’ wide and 20’ long. It was a jammed up condition. I had some warehouse stocks stacked to the ceiling across the street in an unheated warehouse. It was miserab1e to get into to get anything out or put anything back in, and especially during the bitter, cold winter months.

I make my first sale of poles that went on Moon Lake Electric lines. This sale netted us out $2,000 commission and started my pole selling career with Moon Lake Electric.

At this time, Fred was working full time at Sperry-Utah Engineering as an electronics technician where he continued to work until September 1961. When school started at the University of Utah, Fred went up and registered. However, the draft board caught up with him and rather than being drafted into the Army, Fred enlisted for a three-year term in September and then took a train to boot camp at Ft. Ord, California.

During the summer of 1961, I had taken on the Berns Airking line of ventilatin g fans. In December 1961, I was ordered to appear at a Berns Airking convention in Palm Springs and was told to 1eave my wife home. However, I took Ted with me anyway. Not only that, Fred was released from boot camp the same day we left for Palm Springs, so we had Fred come down and stay with us in Palm Springs during this two day convention. It would have been a three-day convention, except Ted, Fred and I decided to get out of there and go home. Fred stayed home through Christmas and the New Year.

In December, 1961, Tom was on active duty with the Navy stationed on the aircraft carrier, Ranger, and was out at sea. Pauline was sta ying in Salt Lake City with her parents during this December, and on December 13, 1961, Valerie (Lori) was born in Salt Lake City. Polly called us and told us about our new granddaughter, so that night Ted and I went into the LDS Hospital to look over the new merchandise. We were looking at Lori through the window and Polly steps up behind us and says, “Do you like her?” Polly was running around as if nothing had ever happened.

On Christmas day, Polly brought Julie, Alan, and Lori out to our place to spend Christmas Day. Tom had sent a little porky pig that flips a plastic egg and oinks which was some toy that created a lot of excitement. I had given Julie a little toy dog whose eyes would light up, tail would wag, and the dog would walk and bark. Julie was tickled to death, but she said, “Will it bite me?”

78 Polly laid Lori, who was just an infant, down on the corner of our davenport on a pillow and I proceeded to play with my porky pig toy. I happened to walk over by the davenport and sat down on the corner right on top of Lori. I wound up the pig, and started to fry my eggs, when I heard a little squeal. I jumped up realizing that Lori was under me. Thanks to all the pillows and cushions, she didn’t get hurt, as didn’t sit directly on her. However, I could have smothered her to death if we hadn’t discovered this.

Fred left the first of January and went to Connecticut where he was stationed at a radar station up in the hills during the rest of the winter until the first of May 1962. The 1st of May, Fred received transfer orders to go to Spang-Dahlem Army Base in Trier, Germany. Prior to flying to Germany, Fred came home and spent the month of May with us helping me plant a new flower garden, and he also installed grids 1 and 2 of our underground sprinkling system. He spent the rest of his Army service as a radar technic ian in Germany.

The navy had transferred the active flying personnel from Alameda to Lemoore, California during 1962. Paul was born in Lemoore, California , on July 12, 1963. Ted and I left on a trip to Lemoore shortly after Paul was born. We went via Ely, Nevada, and then over past Tonopah and drove up over the High Dugway road on the east side of Yosemite National Park. This was a frightening road to travel. However, we made it and went on down through Yosemite Park into Lemoore where we visited for a couple or days and then drove back home.

Shortly after our visit with Tom and family in Lemoore, Tom finished his active flying duty with the Navy and took a job with Procter and Gamble employed as a chemical engineer in their Sacramento, California, Plant.

He bought a home in Sacramento and while he was living there, Ted and I made a trip Sacramento to visit with his family. We had the oppor tunit y of visiting the Procter and Gamble plant in Sacramento with Tom where they were manufacturing detergents out of coconut oil.

As my selling electrical equipment required traveling throughout Utah, most of Idaho and parts of Wyoming and Nevada, I made some trips to southern Utah and on down to Las Vegas where I had a little business with Nevada Power Co. and on some trips, Ted would accompany me. On some occasions, I had the opportunity to visit with my sister, Lois and her husband Leigh in Delta where they live.

In 1964, my deal with Ray Elggren was changed to a commission setup that permitted me to make a little more money. However, in late 1964, Ray decided he wanted to quit trying to operate a big sales agency. He dropped Ed Rampton and made a new deal with Mel Ferris. By December, 1964, Ray decided to pull out of the Cheever Building, where we were then located, and move back into the small office with his brothers on 4th So. and 1st West, the place we originally started business.

By this time, I was warehousing too much merchandise that belonged to the various factories, and there was no place there to store anything. To wind that up, Ray Elggren made me an offer to sell out the electrical lines, which I accepted. I bought out my division on the electrical lines from Ray and his brother, John Elggren, and took over the electrical business.

By the first part of September, 1964, Fred had finished his three-year tour of duty with the Army in Germany and returned back to the U.S. Ted and I decided to make a trip and drive through Erie, Pennsylvania, to see Penn-Union, then on up through Buffalo, New York, and across through Bennington, Vermont, where we stayed overnight. The next day we took a look at the monument built in memory of the soldier who “fired the shot that was heard ‘round the world”, then went on across through the hills and mountains into New Hampshire, stopping every once in a while to photograph the beautiful country-side and autumn maple leaves. We went into Manchester, New Hampshire and spent a day contacting Anchor Manufacturing Co. We then drove down through Boston, took a short tour of Boston and then went on into P1ymouth, Massachusetts, where we stayed over night.

Early the next morning, we went out to see the Mayflower: the ship that brought the Pilgrims to America. I took more pictures. Then after we left, I discovered that I didn’t have any film in my camera for all the pictures I

79 thought I had been taking. We then drove on down to New York so we could be at the docks when Fred’s boat landed and watch him and his buddy, Walt Davies, get off the boat. The following day, we all went over to the World Fair in New York, plus did a little sightseeing around New York. The next day, we drove down through Baltimore and into Washington, D.C., where we spent another day sightseeing, after which we drove back to Salt Lake.

Fred went back to work with Sperry-Utah Engineering, but in a mediocre job and didn’t care for the work they assigned him. In February 1965, Fred quit Sperry and joined me in my business as a full partner. Fred was of considerable assistance to me in my particular electric lines because he had a knowledgeable background in this field and could explain many things to me that I hadn’t yet learned.

As selling wood power poles was a major part of business, we were dependent on supplies from Poles, Inc, which would be zero at certain points during the year. Fred and I decided to take a trip and scout out possible availability of poles from other pole treating plants. We went up through southern Idaho and Boise calling on our regular customers, then drove up through the panhandle of Idaho into Spokane, and on to Bellingham, Washington and Vancouver, Canada. On the return trip, we went through Portland where we contacted the Powerdyne factory which we also represented at the time, and then drove back home. This trip lasted two weeks.

When we stopped off at Idaho Power Co. in Boise, an engineer by the name of Bob Hamilton was talking to us and inquired from Fred as to his background, schooling, etc., and highly recommended that Fred go on to school at the University and get a decree in electrical engineering. He pointed out very strongly the many advantages of having such an education to help him out in the future. When we got home, Fred announced that he was going to go back to school at the University of Utah when school started in the fall [1965], which he did.

Tom stayed with Procter and Gamble in Sacramento for about a year and then was transferred to Kansas City, where he worked on a similar job. The plant in Kansas City was located in the stockyards and they were reducing beef tallow into fatty acids. This plant was an old, dirty, stinky plant and Tom didn’t care for that job too much. Tom bought another home in Prairie Village, a suburb Kansas City, where they lived until late spring of 1966.

Reid Melville (Reid III) was born in Kansas City on July 22, 1965.

In early Fall, I made a trip to Buffalo, New York, to interview Osmose Wood Preserving Co on a line of power company pole treating and inspection services. I first flew to Chicago, and then took Lakeshore Air Lines into Warren, Pennsylvania, where I stopped off at the Standard Transformer Co. That evening, I was going to fly to Erie, Pennsylvania to visit Penn-Union, but the plane was six or seven hours late getting in. When we finally did take off, we only reached the end of the runway when the plane returned back to the airport. They announced that they were having trouble with one of the wings, which was about to fall off. By this time, it was 1:00 am in the morning.

A couple of men who were also trying to get to Erie and Buffalo, New York got together and we decided to rent a cab and drive to Buffalo during the night. We arrived about 8:00 am. I was all knocked out from getting no sleep, but got the job with Osmose Wood anyway.

On the return flight to Salt Lake City, I detoured via Kansas City, where I stopped overnight with Tom and family. At this time, Tom told me he was thinking of trying to get a job as a pilot with one of the airlines.

During the night at Tom’s house, Lori, who was four years old, started to cry, and as the kids and I were sleeping upstairs, I got up to see what he r problem was and give her a lift. Then I put her in bed with me. The next morning when I woke up she was waiting for me to wake up, put her arms around me and said, ‘Gwampa, I would like to stay wif you foeva and foeva”. In spite of this very touching plea, I took the plane that afternoon back to Salt Lake.

Tom stayed on active duty in the Navy Air Force Reserves and had to put in a certain number of hours flying time each month. The Olathe Navy Air Base was close to Kansas City, so he flew his training missions out of there. On one of those missions, he scheduled a trip to Los Angeles where he interviewed Western Air Lines. By May 1966, Tom was hired for pilot training with Western Air Lines. He and his family moved to Reseda, California, in the San Fernando Valley, as he was to be stationed and flying out of Los Angeles International Airport.

He bought another home in Reseda. California. I think Procter and Gamble bought his Sacramento home when he was transferred to Kansas City, but he still owned the home in Prairie Village, Kansas, which he finally sold after a year or two of flying back to Kansas City to collect rent at times.

During the summer of 1966, Tom visited us at the Burningham family picnic, at which time he told us about Western Air Lines free passes, and that as Mother and Father of a Western Air Lines employee, we were eligible to receive and use some of these passes. He said you can now fly to Acapulco, Mexico City, Minneapolis, Calgary, or wherever. This was quite a pleasant surprise, so I told him we would take a ticket to Acapulco via Mexico City as soon as possible. He started to work for Western Air Lines on May 2, 1966 but was not eligible for any passes for six months. However, on November 9th, we had our passes and flew down to Mexico City.

This being our first trip to Mexico, we stopped off and went sightseeing in Mexico City for three days and took in about as much sightseeing as we could squeeze in, including a bullfight, a nauseating show. One bullfight is enough. Mexico City was very fascinating with many beautiful things to see; but also had many old, dirty, depressin g streets and buildings scattered out over a wide expanse. During our stay in Mexico City, it was quite cool, somethin g like late fall back home with a few light showers and almost cold enough to snow. We were wearing our topcoats every place in Mexico City.

We then took a Mexican Air Lines plane and flew over to Acapulco. When we deplaned, it felt like we were ste pping into a hot steam bath. The humidity was as high as it can get, and although that evening the temperature was only reported at 80 degrees, it reminded me of places I have been where the temperature was 110 and the humidity 90.

We stayed at the Acapulco Hilton Hote l for approximately four days, which is our first experience being on the south Pacific. The bay and the beaches in Acapulco are very beautiful. The ocean waves roared at night down on the beach right below our hotel window and I remember Ted telling me to close the window because it was going to be cold. She thought she could hear the wind blowing, not realizing that it was just the roar of the ocean. We had a very good time in Acapulco and got horribly sunburned. That was our first free pass trip on Western Airlines.

Fred and I continued selling our electrical products and Fred contin ued going to school at the University of Utah in electrical engineering.

In June 1967, Tom had advised us that we could now fly to Alaska as Western Airlines had taken over Pacific Northern Airlines, which served Alaska on the west edges, so of course we had to get a pass and take advantage of this opportunity. We left Salt Lake August 3rd, flew to San Francisco, then Seattle, and then up to Anchorage, Alaska. Pacific Northern Airlines radioed ahead and made us a reservation at the new Captain Cook Hotel in Anchorage. We spent August 4th renting a car and sightseeing everything around Anchorage, including Alyeska, and one of the glaciers down the coastline south of Anchorage.

The evening of August 4th, we had our wedding anniversary dinner at the Crow’s Nest in the Captain Cook Hotel. The next day, we took the little Aurora train from Anchorage to Fairbanks. It took 12 hours to make the trip. We spent the next day sightseeing some of Fairbanks, but mostly the centennial exposition. That evening we took Alaska Airlines and flew back to Anchorage.

The following day, with nothing else to do, we flew over to Kodiak on the Aleutian Island chain, had lunch, and then flew back to Anchorage. The next day, we flew down to Juneau and stayed two nights, sightseeing during the day we were there, and then the next morning caught the plane and flew back to Seattle and home, going via Los Angeles where we could drop off some of the trinkets we had bought for the grandchildren. [Julie 8, Alan 6, Lori 5, Paul 4, Reid 2]

On December 2, 1967, Fred and I flew to Los Angeles and then were driven out to Ojai, California, to the Ojai Country Club, where Western Insulated Wire Co. held a national convention. Fred and I spent two days there in meetings and playing golf. Then we fle w back to Salt Lake after the convention.

Fred [age 28] had announced to us that he was going to marry Joyce Butcher Benson, then take on a family life with Joyce and her four children by a previous marriage. On December 5, 1967, Fred did get married to Joyce.

Fred continued working with me in the business and going to school at the University of Utah until he graduated as an electrical engineer in June of 1968, at which time he took a job with Westinghouse Corporation and left home for Lima, Ohio, where Westinghouse had assigned him for his first job.

In the fall of 1967, I turned the affairs of Big Horn Natural Gas and Min ing Corp to Attorney Allen Elggren. Shortly thereafter, there was a big push on uranium and other energy stocks, and during late fall of 1967 and all of 1968, the price of the stock jumped up considerably and I was able to liquidate most of my Big Horn and Gold Cloud holdings to pick up over $100,000 on the sale of these stocks. This gave me the financial boost I needed all my life to get totally out of debt, and leaving me only with the financial burden of making a living from that point on.

For a full detailed report on all the Western Airlines passes and interliner passes that we used which Tom provided to us, please consult the Western Airlines pass flight log attached to the back of this history report.

In June, 1968, Tom sent us a pass so we could visit them in Reseda and then fly up to Sunnyvale , California , so we could look at a piece of real estate at Saratoga, California, which was for sale. After visit ing in Reseda, Ted and I flew into San Francisco, rented a car and drove down to Sunnyvale, California . We met Tom at Moffett Field , where he had flown his Navy fighter-bomber from southern California . Ted said his plane looked like a little grasshopper when it landed on this big field. We all stayed at the Holiday Inn in Sunnyvale and spent the next day looking over this six-acre hill which we have since then referred to as the Hill Cumorah. Unfortunately, we didn’t buy the $90,000 piece of real estate. By now, it would have tripled in value. Ted and I then went on up to Sea-Tac Airport south of Seattle and stayed at the Hyatt House just loafing on a four-day do- nothing vacation. Then we flew home.

At Thanksgiving time, Ted and I got a pass for Minneapolis and flew over to Lima, Ohio, where we spent Thanksgiving visiting with Fred and his new family.

In February 1969, I made another trip to see Fred via Minneapolis again on a Western Airlines pass. I spent two days visiting with Fred in Lima and when I was going to leave, the airport got socked in with snow. I rented a car and drove the 100 miles to Toledo in a blizzard, in a car with bald-headed tires and no snow chains.

Fred and Joyce had a very pretty Siamese cat that they were going to have to get rid of because the one daughter, Brenda, was apparently allergic to cats and it was causing her asthma problems, so I consented to take the cat home with me. We bought a cat crate in Lima. On the way to Toledo, I let the cat out of the crate in the car, which was a real mistake. The cat almost jumped through every window in the car about 50 times. It was a difficult drive trying to keep out of this wild cat’s way and staying on the road. On the way back somewhere between Toledo and Minneapolis, United Airlines lost my bag, but they didn’t lose the cat. I made it home with the cat but without a bag, which United Air Lines brought to me the next day after I reached home.

On May 8, 1969, Ted and I flew to Los Angeles and caught the evening SAS flight from Los Angeles to Seattle. We flew non-stop over Canada, Greenland, close to the North Pole, over Ireland and landed in Copenhagen, Demark, the next evening.

The next day, on May 10th, we flew to Vienna Austria, where we stayed a couple of days sightseeing. Then on May 12th, we flew back to Copenhagen. In the afternoon, we flew from Copenhagen down to Munich, Germany, where we stayed a couple more days.

I rented a car in Munich. Instead of flying back to Copenhagen, we drove from Munich down through the Garmisch-Partenkirchen at the base of the German Alps, then over the summit and down through the west slope of the Alps into Zurich, Switzerland.

While we were walking around Munich, prior to leaving for Zurich, Ted apparently stepped on a cobblestone and twisted her ankle. By the time we arrived in Zurich, her foot had swelled up like a balloon. I asked the hotel to contact a doctor and send him over to examine her foot. He prescribed a special salve and bandaged the foot. This salve worked wonders as it took all the swelling out within one day.

Then next morning on May 15, we flew back to Copenhagen. I had to help Ted walk as she couldn’t stand on her own; however, we didn’t leave the Airport, but flew on down to Paris in the afternoon were we stayed in the Paris Hilton, a very elaborate but horribly expensive hotel.

We spent the next day sightseeing Paris from a bus that circuited the city pointing out some of the highlights, but with only a couple of stops. Ted didn’t get to see much of Paris.

On May 17, we flew back to Copenhagen and stayed at the Dan Hotel by the Airport. The next morning, on May 18th, we flew down to Rome. We again spent two days sightseeing Rome. By this time, Ted could hobble a little bit on her foot so we took a tour which took us to the Catacombs, through parts of Rome, the Three Fountains, and that old Coliseum. The next morning, we caught a cab and went out to the Vatican and spent a couple of hours, then caught a plane back to Copenhagen about noon. Again, we didn’t stop in Copenhagen, except to transfer flights, and flew to Amsterdam, Holland, in the evening. We only stayed overnight in Amsterdam.

The next morning, on May 21st, we flew back to Copenhagen and then down to London in the afternoon. We spent three days sightseeing London, as we couldn’t get out of London until the evening of May 24th.

On the evening of May 24th, we flew back to Copenhagen and stayed overnight at the Dan Hotel. On May 25th, we flew from Copenhagen back to Seattle and on down to Los Angeles.

During the morning of May 26th, I went over to Western Insulated Wire and then we flew back to Salt Lake City in the evening.

The reason we had to go from Copenhagen down into Europe and then back to Copenhagen on each place we visited in Europe was because we were traveling on special SAS passes and SAS did not have the authority to fly criss-cross within Europe. Each flight had to originate out of Copenhagen or from wherever we were back to Copenhagen before we could go somewhere else.

On November, 11, 1969, Tom and Polly had another baby boy, which they named Neil. I think they named him Neil after Neil Armstrong who had recently landed on the moon.

My sister, Lois, and her husband, Leigh Maxfield , lived in Delta, Utah. All the time I was traveling anywhere in my sales work, I would occasionally drop by and say hello or stop in and stay overnight with them and visit for a day.

My brother, Keith Melville, in the meantime had obtained his PhD and obtained a job as a professor of Political Science at the Brigham Young University and was living in Provo.

In the fall of 1969, Mother decided to sell her home on the avenues, which she did, After selling the home, she too a trip down through Las Vegas into Kingman, Arizona, and then Mesa, Arizona, where she spent a couple of months visitin g with relatives along the way. She them left Mesa, Arizona and rented a duplex in Provo, a block west of Keith Melville’s home. About a year before this, Ed Dana, her second husband had died so she was living alone, and being in Provo down by Keith seemed to be the best place for her to stay and be happy without too many worries.

By February, 1970, Western Airlines had obtained the Honolulu route, so we were now eligible to fly to Honolulu. On March 5th, Ted and I flew to Honolulu on our first trip to the Hawaiian Islands. We were accompanied by Margaret and Elm, Marintha and Harold Gill, and the girls’ sister, Cynthia. We all went together as far as Los Angeles, but Ted and I could not get on the plane in Los Angeles as we always have to travel standby and the plane was loaded. The rest of the party did get on. Their sister, Cynthia was sitting in the front row, an aisle seat, and a stewardess who had a fresh, full pot of coffee on top of her cart bumped into the leg of the seat and dumped the hot coffee all over Cynthia . She was really scalded. Ted and I flew up to San Francisco, took a plane from San Francisco to Honolulu and arrived a couple of hours late. Then we reached the hotel we then found out what had happened on the plane, so we hustled Western Airlines help in getting Cynthia put into the Queens Hospital where she stayed for her vacation. Ted and I figured we could come back to Honolulu, so during this first trip, we stayed near Cynthia and visited her two or three times a day at the hospital. While there, however, we did rent a car and traveled all over Honolulu, sightseeing. We then all flew back to Salt Lake on the 16th of March.

By now, Fred had announced to us that he and Joyce were expecting a baby. Freddy, which was Fred’s first child, was born in Lima, Ohio, on April 22, 1970. In July 1970, Ted and I decided to fly back to Lima, Ohio, and see our new grandson, Freddy, which we did. On this trip, Ted was in miserable pain with arthritis in her back collarbone and right arm. She was in great misery and great pain, and after comin g home, she visited the doctor who told her to lay off work until the trouble subsided. She had to wear a neck brace for several months. She quit working at Standard Optical on the 1st of August, 1970, and has never gone back to work since.

About this time, Tom transferred from Los Angeles to fly out of the San Francisco Airport and bought a new home in San Jose, California. By doing this, it was possible for him to make Western Airlines Captain much quicker and of course get a substantial increase in pay. Since that time on our various trips, we have tried to fly via San Francisco and then rent a car and drive down to San Jose to visit with Tom and family, or have them come up to the airport and visit with us whenever possible.

In 1971, Fred had an opportunity to transfer with Westinghouse from Lima, Ohio, to the Atomic Energy Site at Idaho Falls. He sold his home in Lima and moved to Idaho Falls, where he is still working with Westinghouse Corp at the Naval Reactor Testing station. He is now occupied as a nuclear engineer, teaching naval personnel what they have to learn about nuclear powered equipment. A year later, on July 21, 1972, Fred and Joyce had another baby, this time a little girl whom they named Judy.

Tom did make Captain with Western Lines. His flight schedules often bring him to Salt Lake City. Sometimes he stays overnight with us. Other times we visit with him at the airport between flights.

Tom stayed on with the Naval Air Force Reserve for his full twenty years, and his last major duty the Naval Air Force reserve was an assignment as commander of Attack Squadron VA 303, based in Alameda, California. Tom is now finished with his naval work and ended up as a Commander in the Navy.

By the summer of 1972, Mother’s eyesight was failin g fast, but she was still able to see objects and had been getting some assistance from an organization for the blind in Provo who furnished her with stereo records

84 of church works, music, etc., which she enjoyed. Although she could see to walk around and go where she wanted to, she couldn’t see to read.

However, she joined this blind organization and went on a camping trip with them in the high Uintas one day. After getting back home, she had a dizzy spell, fell backwards and hit her head on the floor that started her critical illness. I happened to call her to see how she was when she told me about this trouble . I jumped in the car and drove down to Provo. I found her quite sick. I helped her take a bath and got her something to eat, and then two of Keith’s girls came over to stay with her for the night so I came back home. However, I was quite worried about her so I telephoned my sister Lois in Delta to tell her about this accident. The next mornin g, Lois drove up to Provo, bundled Mother up, put her in the car, and took her home to Delta. The next day, they were getting ready to go to church and Mother told Lois she could get her own clothes on, so Lois left her alone for a few minutes and Mother had another fall, this time injuring her hip very severely. Lois and Leigh called an ambulance and sent her to the west Millard County Hospital. She proceeded to get very ill to the point where even the doctors, nurses and hospital personnel, after about five weeks, gave her no chance to live any longer.

I had gone down to see her in Delta a couple of times. When Lois advised me that Mother was really just about at the end, Ted and I drove down to Delta and visited with Mother for most of the afternoon. On the way home that evening, Ted told me that she was afraid that I probably would never see my Mother alive again. However, Mother started to recuperate and finally got well enough that they could transfer her into the extended care division of the hospital where she lived for a few months improving slightly as time went by.

After a few months, Keith Melville went down to see her and decided he would take her home with him and let her use an extra room they had at their house in Provo. Mother stayed with Keith and family until she died on October 3, 1974.

After a six-year intermission, Tom and Polly finally had another baby boy, named Keith, born on January 25, 1975. Then again , on May 15, 1977, they had another baby boy, named Mark. This now brings our grandchildren total up to ten.

As of August 10, 1978, Tom is still flying for Western Air Lines and his flight schedules and routes still bring him through Salt Lake City quite often.

During the past year, Fred has been in the process of getting a divorce from his wife, Joyce. The divorce was made final the end of May 1978.

At the end of May 1978, an interliner discount vacation was made available through UTA-Air France to fly to Tahiti, spend the week there sightseeing, and then fly back. This was the first time that Fred was eligible to participate in such a flight, so he joined us on this week’s a vacation tour to Tahiti and return.

In June, 1978, Fred decided he wanted to buy a new house in Idaho Falls , so he contracted to purchase a new home that was in the final construction phase. Fred is still working for Westinghouse Corp. on the Atomic Energy Site west of Idaho Falls.

This year, 1978, has been an eventful one, some good, some bad. On the good side, Tom and his family have been in Salt Lake to visit a couple of times, and also our granddaughter, Julie, has become engaged and will be married in December of this year.

On the bad side my brother, John Melville, became quite sick in January and had to be hospitalized. He was released from the hospital once for about a month and then had to return to the hospital again for another week. His condition became worse each day, so the doctor let him go home where be could rest in his own bed and let his wife, Phyllis , take care of him. This ordeal was very heavy on Phyllis and toward the end, it became necessary for us to have John moved back into the hospital where he died three or four days later on March 22nd. He had requested that he be buried in Delta, so his wish was granted.

At this writing, I am still working at my business selling electrical products, and Janette Sakellariou who has been my secretary for the past eleven years, is now helping me write this material.

Today is August 10, 1978, and at the present time, I am thinking seriously of retiring shortly. However, no final decision has been made yet. I have been thinking about retiring for the past five years, ever since I turned age 65 and was eligible for federal retirement benefits; however, I did not retire at that time and have continued working as usual on a leisurely basis, whic h turned out to be one of my best lifetime decisions.

Since I could have retired on social security five years ago, my business has been excellent. During the past five years, I have made over a quarter of a million dollars, which is double the amount I made during the preceding five years. This has enabled me to establish a substantial retirement fund which, together with social security benefits, should make retiring safe at the present time, if inflation doesn’t break us at a later date.

For reasons beyond my control, business has been dropping the past three or four months very fast and work is getting tiresome. So I may soon turn to doing something else useful besides just trying to make money.

As you will be able to see on the attached flight log, Ted and I have traveled very extensively, but we are not through yet. I intend to continue adding to this report whenever anything eventful might come up.

Julie Melville decided to get married to Steven Hite in December 1978. Ted and I attended their wedding receptions both in Salt Lake City and then in San Jose California . They went to Israel on a honeymoon and currently are living in Jerusalem.

In January 1979, I sold my business to Paul Densley for cash, have now retired, and drawing my social security monthly checks. It was a good decision to get out and get my cash when I did. I suffered a small stroke on Friday April 8, 1979, which left me partially blinded in my left eye. Without seeing better than I do right now, operating my business would have been too hard, and my factory lines would have been up for grabs. As it is, I have the cash in the bank drawing interest and providing a little of the living expense money we now depend on. Fortunately, we enjoy enough monthly income to go on living the way we always have, not extravagantly, but able to buy about anything we might want. And we owe no bills.

On the morning of April 6, 1979, I awakened to find I could not see out of my left eye. I also discovered a little paralysis in the fingers of my right hand. I tried for three days to get a doctor, and then was sent immediately into Holy Cross Hospital for a check up. First was an Angiogram, then an EKG, Blood tests, and one night in intensive care. A specialist, Dr. Pearce, took charge, then advised me that my left artery had plugged up beyond repair, and that the damage suffered would probably be permanent.

Dr. Pearce had Dr. Nord look everything over, including me. He is a neurology specialist. He ordered an EEG, then afterward advised me I had suffered no brain damage, just my blind eye, and right hand fingers. I’m surviving now with only my right main head artery working. I am on medication to prevent further clotting, hopefully.

Since it happened, I have regained about 50% of the vision in my eye. I am presently hoping for still further improvement.

During the past year, Tom has been busy as producer of the Oakland Temple Pageant. Then, in addition to that work, he was chosen to be the new Bishop of the San Jose 22nd Ward. His mother and I are might proud of him.

Tom provided us with tickets to fly to Oakla nd, and to the Pageant, so we went and thoroughly enjoyed the pageant the evening of July 19th. It was a very good show. Our grandson, Paul Melville , played the part of

86 Joseph Smith as a boy. Lori, our granddaughter was in the general cast, Reid III played the boy Nathaniel, and who else but Tom played his dad. They were all good. We were most pleased.

[1979 – 1984 – No Record – the missing pages! ]

On February 15, 1984, Ted and I flew from Salt Lake down to Zihuatenejo, Mexico, and stayed at the new resort center at the Sheraton Hotel in Ixtapa. Zihuatenejo is on a large beautiful bay 85 miles north of Acapulco. Ted and I wanted to go there after we heard about it in 1970, but were talked out of the idea when we reached Mexico City. Always wanted to go there and finally did. The area is a beautiful place. Came home on February 19.

On March 31, we flew up to Idaho Falls and stayed with Fred for two days. Went down to watch him bowl on Saturday evening, had a gourmet dinner he cooked, with Freddy and Judy there on Sunday, then we flew back home on Monday. Enjoyed this trip very much.

Next big event was Lori Melville being married to David Savage. They were married on April 21, 1984 in Salt Lake. We went into their Wedding Lunch at noon, then rode down to Orem to Savage’s home where they held the reception. Next up? Paul I guess.

Am having trouble with this typewriter, however on May 3, 1984 Ted and I met Fred at the airport and flew with him down through Albuquerque to El Paso, Texas. We were all on WAL passes. We stayed at the El Paso Sheraton hotel, which is actually on top of a new bank building.

We had a good view of the old railroad station and switch yard. Could see a little of the Rio Grande River, Cuidad Juarez, Mexico and the hills around. Sights were pretty at night but in the day dry, hot, and dusty. No grass, few trees.

We drove around the city to see the weird places they have built homes, and went out for evening dinner. We also took a side trip and drove over the desert in Texas and New Mexico to the Carlsbad Caverns, and then back the same day.

Originally, we thought we might stop off in Albuquerque on the way back, but decided against it after the hot dry trip to Carlsbad. Flew right on home on May 5 and Fred went on to Idaho Falls.

On November 9, 1984 Ted turned 75 years old. Same day Julie gave birth to a baby boy. Our 3rd great grandchild but first great grandson. He was named David Samuel Hite and was born in Boston, Massachusetts.

December 18, Paul Melville was married to Laurie Ann Nielsen in the Salt Lake Temple. Ted and I met her at brunch at Tom’s house December 18, 1984.

1985 came without anything special happening until February 3, when Lori had a baby girl. Named her Heather. This now gives Ted and me three great granddaughters and one great grandson. We think they are all great. Heather was born in Provo, Utah.

June 4, 1986, dermatologist Dr. Bruce Bishop took a biopsy of a skin cancer on my lower lip. It had turned malignant; so I was referred to Dr. Gregory Kjar, plastic surgeon, who operated on me June 17. He cut out a large section of my lower lip. Hopefully he got it all. My lip by now, August 1, has almost healed and seems to be coming along OK.

On July 22, 1986 - Tom, Polly and Keith flew to San Juan where they met Reid who was just released from his Puerto Rico mission. They all returned home July 29. I also understand that Julie, Steve and the three children arrived on a vacation the same day.

87 On July 16, 1986 — Fred had a cataract removed and a new lens implanted in his eye. Seems to be OK. As of now, he and Fred Jr. & Judy are vacationing at Flaming Gorge.

On September 4, 1986, Lori had a baby boy in Provo, Utah, and named him David Matthew Savage. He is our second great grandson, and makes our fifth great grandchild.

May 11, 1987, on my sister Lois’ birthday, Laurie Ann and Paul Melville had a baby girl. Born in Mountain View, California. They named her Anna Laura. We first saw her on July 4, 1987. Paul is a very proud father. She has black curly hair you can’t believe.

On July 1, 1987, Julie called me from her Boston hospital to tell me she tried hard to give me a new baby girl, for my birthday on June 30, but the little slow poke slept in for eleven hours and didn’t make it until July 1. Anyway, they named her Shelley after me. She makes 7 great grandchildren.

October 25, 1987 Cynda Melville gave birth to Alison Kay Melville who makes our eighth great grandchild. She was born in Westminster, California. Alan Melville is the proud father.

September 1, 1988 Lori gave birth to a baby girl. She and Dave are naming the baby Kathryn Elizabeth. She was born in Downey, California.

On December 16, 1988 James Alexander Melville was born to Paul and Laurie Ann Melville in Mountain View, California. This makes our tenth great grandchild. He was named after my great grandfather.

On January 26, 1989, Ted’s sister Cynthia Eames, who was almost 94 died rather suddenly and very easily. She just took a bath and laid down and then passed away. She lived in Bountiful, a block away. Our son, Tom Melville, will be the main speaker at the funeral which will be held Tuesday January 31, 1989 in the Bountiful Tabernacle. She will be buried in her own burial plot at Bountiful Cemetery. I wanted to make a record of this before I quit my record.

On January 28, 1989, I’ll say goodbye to all who have read my history up to now. My eyesight is bad and I’ll quit my record as of the present.

Love,

Reid S. Melville

88 SECTION 6 – EPILOGUE AND GRANDCHILDREN MEMORIES

Epilogue – by Dad – Coming Soon

“You Were A Good Grandpa.” Memories of Reid Shelley Melville by his Grandchildren

Ice Cream

?? No memory of Grandpa would be complete without remembering Grandpa and ice cream. He loved ice cream: homemade, in the carton, or on the cone. He always had several types to choose from in his freezer and he served up a heaping bowlful. I recall that one of his favorite’s was pralines and cream. He introduced me to this flavor. He liked caramel sauce on it. Dishing up ice cream was an event—often because he was trying to do it before Grandma found out. I think when we came over it was an excuse for him to break out the ice cream. A couple of times it was in the late afternoon and Grandma complained that it would ruin our dinner. He’d just say, “Oh, Ted, it will not. Just a little ice cream won’t hurt them.” He had a wooden handled ice cream scooper than I recall. I have this scoop now as a memento. [Julie] ?? Grandpa was famous for making homemade ice cream for family dinners. I recall adding ice and salt to the bucket while we watched it churn. When we would eat outside, he would plug in his electric ice cream maker on the northeast corner of his house. As the ice melted, the water would drain out of a little spout on the side. I remember peach ice cream made with fresh peaches. I remember strawberry ice cream. [Julie] ?? Few things in life were more certain than the knowledge that going to Grandpa’s meant getting Ice Cream. I remember sitting at the kitchen table (with one half of the table folded against the wall), Grandpa reaching into the freezer and pulling out the flavor of the day. With a shaky hand, he would scoop out WAY more Ice Cream than a human being should consume in a single sitting, pour and pile on the toppings and deliver a custom-made sundae. [Alan] ?? I remember Grandpa loved Ice Cream and that Pralines and Cream was his favorite. [Valorie] ?? Visiting Grandpa Melville often meant eating ice cream with Grandpa Melville. He always seemed energized by the process of getting out the ice cream and bowls and serving it up. I think he liked to give ice cream to kids, or maybe he liked the excuse to eat ice cream himself, or maybe both. [Reid] ?? He liked ice cream.[Neil] ?? The main bulk of my memories of him involve visiting their home with Mom and Dad, and that we would sit around their front room and talk. Since I was about ten at the time, I'll admit that those conversations were not usually ones I was very involved in. Mark and I would find ways of entertaining ourselves until Grandpa finally broke out the ice cream. [Keith] ?? I loved going to Grandpa's house because he ALWAYS gave us ice cream. I even remember that they had their freezer on the bottom of the fridge unit, which gave kids a good look as to the many assorted flavors we might be sampling. [Mark]

Their House

?? I remember the steep stairs to the basement and being too scared to go down there (especially with Grandma watching!) [Alan] ?? After Grandpa died and Grandma was moved to the nursing home was the first time I saw the basement of their house. I never knew there was that much house below there. [Keith] ?? Grandpa’s Chair -- When I would visit with Grandpa and Grandma, Grandpa would always sit in one of the chairs by the front door. I remember him talking to Grandma while she was in the kitchen or in the bedroom—from the chair. [Julie] ?? I remember the Buffet filled with Grandpa’s “trinkets”, such as little knives, nail files, coins from different countries and naked-lady playing cards! [Alan] ?? Grandpa had a motorized lawnmower he called “The Goat”. It was like a mini-bike with lawn-mower blades attached on the sides. I remember him giving the kids rides around the yard on it. [Alan] ?? When I was younger, I remember watchin g Grandpa mow his lawn on his riding lawn mower. He called it his goat. [Julie] ?? Grandpa had an apricot tree. We used to pick these and put them in buckets. I recall one year, probably about 1975-76, where all of the kids were climbing around in the tree picking apricots. [Julie] ?? I remember going every year to pick the apricots in their back yard, and one time when Grandpa gave me and Mark each $5 for no apparent reason, and of course with no argument. [Keith] ?? In Grandpa’s closet, there was a small window and several hooks. Once Dad told me about how he had two sets of clothes when he was younger – one for school and one for play and that when he got home from school he would hang his school clothes on the hook and change into his play clothes. After hearing this story, I recall going into the closet and trying to imagine Dad’s clothes hanging there. [Julie] ?? When we visited, Grandpa and Grandma would often set up a backyard picnic with Kentucky Fried Chicken, corn on the cob and home-made ice cream. I recall spreading blankets out in front of the old outdoor fireplace. One of our favorite things to do at these dinners was to swing from the old, rusted clothesline bar, at the east end of the yard. I believe we also used to set up croquet games on the north end of the back lawn. [Julie] ?? At visits, either because the house was so small or because we drove them crazy, we would spend a lot of time outside. I remember running around the backyard, playing tag, exploring the garden, climbing on the rock fireplace and snooping around the trailer behind the garage. [Alan] ?? I remember Grandpa playing croquet with us in the backyard. [Valorie] ?? I remember Grandpa giving me a tour of his yard, and the flowers on the side behind his garage. [Valorie] ?? Pigs Frying Eggs & Barking Dogs: I have many memories of watching Grandpa wind up the pig frying eggs. Every time the egg would flip over, I would jump (even when I was a teenager!). I also recall playing with the barking dog. [Julie] ?? Grandpa liked to ask me to get out the “chicken eggs” from the freezer. He always said that he had a chicken in the freezer that laid ice eggs. When the icemaker made its noise, he’d comment that the chicken’s laying eggs again. [Julie]

Visits

?? From when I was very young, I have a very vague memory of standing at the top of a flight of stairs and Grandpa was standing at the bottom. The stairway was not lit at the time. He called to me and I went down the stairs on my “bum”, one stair at a time to get to him. I have assumed this was at Alameda, maybe during his September 1960 visit (or it could have been in Lemoore, in July 1963). I could also have “created” this memory from a photograph that I may have seen. [Julie] ?? At the end of a visit, Grandpa would come out of the house as we were loading up into the car, and secret a quarter to each of the kids. I always looked forward to that. As I read his memoirs years later, he mentions his Grandfather giving him a quarter for being a hard worker. I wondered if he was carrying on the tradition. [Alan] ?? Grandpa taught me how much shampoo to use once while I was bathing at their house. He said, "Pour it in your hand until it's about the size of a....(pausing to think of what thing is the appropriate size)...quarter." I always remember that advice when I shower, even to this day. [Mark] ?? On one visit, Grandpa gave us each a quarter and a tantalizing promise. If we would keep that exact quarter and return it to him in five years, he would give us five dollars for it. I remember painting my quarter bright red so I wouldn¹t spend it, but over the years I lost track of it. Years later, he asked about them and we had all forgotten. The quarters, it turns out, were older, solid silver quarters whose value had appreciated to several dollars. [Reid] ?? Grandpa & Dad Golfing: In Reseda, I remember Dad and Grandpa Melville loading their golf clubs into the trunk of Dad’s white Oldsmobile to go golfing. The car was parked on the street in front of the house. This was the only time I remember seeing Dad with golf clubs. This was likely during either Grandpa’s Dec 1967 visit or his June 1968 visit when Grandpa and Fred went golfing.[Julie] ?? Once when I was young and visiting in Bountiful, I became a little ill. When Grandpa found out, he was very concerned, took me into the bathroom, and expounded the virtues of his preferred medication. It was like Alka-Seltzer, but I think he called it Bromo-Fizz. He offered me an effervescing cup that had no appeal to me. He seemed so earnest that I drank it without complaint. I appreciated his concern, but I have never taken it again. [Reid] ?? Cynda’s parents lived in Bountiful, so most times we would go to visit her parents, we would drop by to see Grandpa. I remember one visit he was reluctant to have us come over, because he had just had a medical treatment to remove some skin lesions on his face and arms. He acquiesced and we went to visit him. His face and arms were bright red. He said they had put acid on his skin to burn off the bad spots. He said thought his skin problems were from all the time he spent digging ditches and working on the farm as a youth. [Alan] ?? Susan and I stopped by to visit Grandma and Grandpa Melville in July 1989 as we were preparing to move to Indiana for Graduate School. When Grandpa found out I was going to Purdue he told me about his one and only visit there. Many years ago on one of his many cross- country jaunts, he was driving from Indianapolis to Chicago on the old highway system. As he drove through West Lafayette, he had to stop his car as streams of young people walked back and forth across the road between various campus buildings. Grandpa leaned out the window and asked a passing student, “What school is this?” The student shot him a disdaining look and snapped, “It’s Purdue!” I don’t think Grandpa cared much for Purdue. [Reid] ?? In Reseda, probably in May 1969 after Grandpa’s European vacation, I remember that he had given us a box of little chocolates from Switzerland. The chocolates were shaped like little people – maybe 10 in the long rectangular box. Mom put these in the freezer section of the refrigerator, probably to keep them good. One afternoon, while she was working with the cub scouts on the back patio (I think they were doing foil dinners in the BBQ), I quietly snuck into the freezer to get some chocolate. However, my hands must have been wet because when my right hand brushed against the side of the freezer my side of my hand by my little finger stuck to the freezer. Somehow, I got Mom’s attention and she poured warm water on my hand to free me. I don’t think I admitted why I had gotten into the freezer. [Julie] ?? The last time I spoke with Grandpa Melville was by telephone early in 1990. The only specific recollection I have is a joke he told me. It seems that when the various critters of the earth make their appearance before St. Peter, he outfits them with transportation for their heavenly sojourn. For instance, when the mice show up he gives them roller skates, and when the cats show up he issues them skateboards. Sometime later, St. Peter comes across a cat with a skateboard and a smile. He asks, “How is everything?” The cat replies, “Oh, heaven is great. I like the skateboard, but what I like most are the Meals on Wheels!” [Reid] ?? The last time we were together, we went out to a restaurant and Grandpa told stories about when he worked on a strawberry farm one summer. (The first year for the strawberries they are always the biggest -- that's why they replant every other year, by the way.) [Valorie] ?? Grandpa and Grandma came to LA and took us out to dinner while they were on a layover from a trip. The thing that really stood out was on the way out of the restaurant, in the parking lot, Grandpa said to Dave, "You kids are doing a great job. You just keep on -- do like Tom and Polly are, not like we did." We always thought that was a nice compliment to us, to Mom and Dad, as well as perhaps his way of saying that he saw the value of being active in church. [Valorie] ?? One year, we had Thanksgiving dinner at Grandpa and Grandma Melville’s home. I didn’t think we would all fit. But we had a table in the kitchen and a table in the dining room area and we all fit fine. I believe that Fred also came that year. (I would guess this was about 1973- 1976). [Julie] ?? While we were living in Boston (1988 or 1989), Grandpa and Grandma came out to visit. While they always stayed in hotels, they came over for dinner and birthday cake. We celebrated both Grandpa’s and Shelley’s birthday. Grandpa was born June 30 and Shelley was born July 1. He was always quite excited about the fact that she’d almost been born on his birthday. He was particularly excited that we had named her Shelley, after his mother. He had hoped she would be born on his birthday because David was born on Grandma Melville’s birthday (Nov 9.) [Julie] ?? Several times while we were in Boston, Grandpa and Grandma would fly in to visit, often on their way to another destination. We would pack up the kids and drive out to their hotel. The kids thought that going into a hotel was exciting. We would pick them up from their rooms and then drive to a restaurant to eat dinner. We had at least three of these visits while we lived in Boston (1982-1990). [Julie]

One on One

?? Grandpa Takes Julie to College – In June 1977, I graduated from high school and went to BYU for my freshman year. Grandpa Melville picked up me up from the airport. I think I stayed overnight with him and Grandma. I recall driving with them the next day on Highland Drive (past the 3 carpet guys store) as Grandma was shopping for some piece of furniture. We ended up at a store with live plants and ferns. Grandpa insisted that I buy one for my dorm. Grandma bought one for her living room as well. Her fern lasted a lot longer than mine! Later, Grandpa and I drove south on I-15 to Provo. As we passed American Fork, he pointed out to me the home that was built by the Stephen Chipman. You can see it on the north side of the freeway. It was being renovated to be a reception center. Grandpa had memories of going to the house when relatives still lived there. In Provo, he helped me to find my dorms, check-in and even carried my luggage up to my room. I remember being very grateful for the time he had taken to help me. This day or two was really my first time visiting with him alone. [Julie]

90 ?? I flew up to Utah (either to start BYU or go on my mission – I don’t remember which). Grandpa picked me up at the airport. On the way back to his house, we stopped by a steakhouse on I-15 and he bought me a big piece of beef. I have a vague recollection of his trying to teach me a life-lesson about how to judge the quality of a good steak. To this day, I can’t drive by that steakhouse with out remembering that dinner. [Alan] ?? I spent that night at his house. He noticed that my hair was a little long, so he offered to cut it for me. He couldn’t find his hair clippers, so we used the backside, flip -up sideburns trimmer on my Norelco razor. I remember it tugging at my hair as he intently focused on giving me a trim. I remember feeling nervous, but I could tell he was proud of me and wanted to help. I got to Provo and got my hair cut again to repair the damage. To this day, I can’t look at the back of a Norelco razor without remembering that haircut. [Alan] ?? On several occasions, I stayed overnight with Grandpa and Grandma. I stayed in the west bedroom, which was Grandpa’s room. Although I felt a bit funny because this meant that he would sleep in Grandma’s room, I enjoyed this room and especially his electric back vibrator that fit over your hand. This was always fun to “play” with. [Julie] ?? In about 1989, Grandpa called and asked me to type up the last segment of his life history. Over the phone, he dictated to me and I typed what he said. He was quite amazed that I could do this onto the computer. I think I typed up about six pages. [Julie] ?? We were visiting Utah on my eighth birthday (July 1973) and I was baptized in the Bountiful 3rd and 33rd Ward Building, just a few blocks from Grandpa’s house. Grandpa pulled me aside and took several pictures of me in my white jumpsuit. I somehow had the impression that he had managed to get me out of the boring parts of the meeting. [Reid] ?? I remember going on walks with Grandpa around the neighborhood. We would visit the various aunts and cousins, particularly Elmer & Margaret and Aunt Cynt. He also took me to see Lila’s huge garden. He showed me one of the small old rock homes built by the Burningham’s, about 2-3 blocks west of his home. One time, I took Melissa for a walk and showed her this home. When we got back to Grandpa’s house, she reported back that she had seen the house built by the “burning man.” I guess that made quite the impression on her. [Julie] ?? Once, when talking with Grandpa, he expressed that he wished he had spent more time with his family. He said they spent so much time with Grandma’s family that they rarely visited with his own siblings. I took this conversation to mean that he didn’t mind being with the Burninghams, but that he missed associat ing with his side of the family. [Julie] ?? Grandpa’s Testimony – Mom told me once that when Grandpa was living with them in Alameda (1960) that he had told her that he knew the Book of Mormon was true. I’ve always remembered this. [Julie]

Other ?? I remember Grandpa's hands, with the sunspots. [Valorie] ?? Although Dad never really used the name Reid, Grandpa liked to call me “Reid Three”. I think he took some satisfaction in having his name moving on, and it gave me a particular sense of kinship to be the namesake. [Reid] ?? I remember Grandpa always wiping his chin with his hand, just in case, because he couldn't feel if it needed it or not. [Valorie] ?? I remember Grandpa telling a story about driving home with a pony in the backseat. [Valorie] ?? I remember Grandpa's comment about the Moroni on the Salt Lake Temple -- that when the Lord came again, Moroni would blow his trumpet and bird poop would land all over Temple Square. (I thought that was so funny then, but now it seems a little disrespectful. I don't know how he meant it.) [Valorie] ?? I remember Grandpa telling us not to drink the water from the hose because it was "Weber Water," and not knowing what that was. [Valorie]

Relationship with Grandma ?? I remember Grandpa teasing Grandma about her peanut brittle. They always used to bicker, but it never seemed biting -- sort of a tolerant complaining. Anyway, Ken Barlow and I stopped in to visit once. Grandpa said, "You know, Ted, if you really hated these kids, you could give them some of your peanut brittle." She very calmly replied, "It's not peanut brittle. It's [some other kind of nut] brittle." He said, "Well, it's not really brittle at all. You bite it, and it sticks in your teeth, and they get stuck. mnnh mnnnh. So you can't get your mout h open again." (He mimicked the stuckness he was describing.) I just laughed and laughed (on the inside, then, but on the outside now). It was so typical and funny. [Valorie] ?? From the time I was a young child, I was disturbed by two things about Grandpa. First, he would occasionally swear which I was not used to hearing. Second, that most of this swearing happened when he was talking to Grandma. When Grandpa and Grandma talked, they had a general pattern of Grandma complaining, correcting him or picking on something that Grandpa was doing or thinking of doing. Grandpa would try to explain and Grandma would not accept his explanation. He would agree with her or do as she wanted and then mumble under his breath about how he didn’t agree. On occasion, he would swear when he disagreed and was frustrated, but he usually ended up doing what she wanted anyway. When I was about 12, I asked Dad once if they were going to get a divorce. He reassured me that, “No. Who would they have to fight with if they got a divorce?” It made sense, but I’m not sure I was really reassured. [Julie] ?? I remember Grandma and Grandpa constantly snipping at each other over trivial things, and wondering if they actually loved each other. Add to that the fact that they had separat e bedrooms

Grandpa’s Death ?? In the viewing room at Russon Brother’s Mortuary, as the viewing was coming to a close and people were being ushered into the chapel, I stayed behind with Grandma. After everyone had gone into the chapel, and just before they closed the casket, she stood beside it and gently caressed Grandpa’s cheek, and weeping quietly, said her last goodbye. But in that instant, in the viewing room, I saw a love that was deeper much deeper than I could ever imagine. [Alan] ?? In July of 1990, we moved from Boston to Gilbert, Arizona. We drove for 10 days across country with the five children and two cars. We arrived in Mesa on July 30 and stayed in a hotel as our home was not yet ready to move into. The next morning, we were lounging around in the hotel room when I got a phone call from Dad. He had somehow found us and called to tell me that Grandpa had died the day before. I was so surprised because I had never imagined that it would really happen. I left the rest of the family in Arizona and flew to Salt Lake City for the funeral. [Julie] ?? I flew to Utah in July 1990 for Neil’s mission farewell. When I got there, I found out that Grandpa was in the hospital. After some discussion, we decided to wait and visit him early the next week, when he was home again -- but he didn’t go home again. I saw him just twice more and spoke to him just once. In the hospital the morning of his passing, I saw his lifeless form but it did not spark my memories of him. At his casket at the funeral, I saw him , remembered him and told him, “You were a good Grandpa.” [Reid]

92 Appendix A – HOMES

Year Location 1908 Shelley Idaho, with Grandfather Shelley 1908 555 Third Avenue, Salt Lake, With Grandfather Melville, while Father was on a second Mission (Scotland) 1910 Shelley, Idaho, West Side near edge of Snake River Monroe, Idaho, three miles south of Shelley along the Union Pacific railroad tracks (The Windmill Farm) Abt. 1914 Shelley, Idaho (The Dial Place) 1916 Long Beach, California with Grandfather Shelley 1916-19 Delta, Utah, Log House, then New House on 80 –acre Farm (The Grunning Place) 1919 2l55 So. Green St. in Salt Lake City 1919 Long Beach, California 1920 Bountiful, Utah. One acre, south Side of Center St. between 2nd and 3rd East. (School & Winters) Abraham, Utah, West of Delta 160 Alfalfa Acre farm (The Abraham Track, included the Grimm 40) (Summers) 1927 Third Avenue , Salt Lake City, Utah - With Grandmother Melville (while attending University of Utah) 1928-30 Germany- Missionary (Assignments: Vienna, Austria; Steyr, Austria; Linz, Austria; Halberstadt, Germany; Rathenow, Germany; Zwickau, Germany; Frankfurt, Germany) 1930 Third Avenue , Salt Lake City, Utah With Grandmother Melville (while attending University of Utah) 1933 15th east and Kensington Avenue in Salt Lake (Gas Station) 1935 Bountiful Home 1937 House Trailer (Wisconsin, Minnesota, South Dakota) while selling…sold in 1938 1938 Milwaukee, Wisconsin (Apartment) – Temporary Business Headquarters 1940 Idaho Falls (running “Reid’s Grill”) 1941 Ogden, Utah, 34th St 1941 Ogden, Utah, 7th St 1944 San Francisco, California, Apartment 1945 Bountiful Home

93 Appendix B – WORK

Year Position Youth Selling Milk from Family Cow Youth Selling newspapers to Factory Workers Youth Herding Cows on Farm Youth Chauffer for Grandfather Melville School Thinning Onions at the Porter-Walton Seed Farms in Centerville School Family Farm at Abraham College Clerk at Uncle Alex’s Law Office June 1932 Harvested seven-acre hay crop June 1932 Logan Knitting Mills July 1932 Thinning Peaches at Burningham Farm August 1932 Logan Knitting Mills Sept 1932 Clerk at Uncle Alex’s Law Office Spring 1933 Logan Knitting Mills July 1933 Utah Oil Refining Company service station 1934 Logan Knitting Mills 1939 Produce Distribution in Idaho with Elmer Barlow 1939 Logan Knitting Mills 1940 Utah Tailoring Mills 1940 Metropolitan Life 1940 Produce Distribution 1940 Dupler Fur Coats 1940 Hamburger Stand (Idaho Falls, then Ogden simultaneous with U.S. Constructing Quartermaster) 1941 U.S. Constructing Quartermaster 1941 Logan Knitting Mills 1942 U.S. Corps of Engineers, Chief of Contracts and Claims 1942 Army Base Bus Service (Simultaneous with U.S. Core of Engineers) 1943 Murray Cab Company (started by R.S. Melville – closed when base was shut down) 1944 Logan Knitting Mills 1944 Flint Distributing Co., Distributor Manager, Water softeners & dishwashers 1947 Self-Employed Distributor (Idaho Steel Co., Weather Stripping, plus other lines) 1948 C.C. Anderson, Home Appliances 1949 Walter B. Lloyd Co, Scott-Atwater outboard motors 1949 W. S. Butler Co & Logan Knitting Mills 1950 Started Melville’s Custom Apparel, Owner (Store closed, 1951) 1951 Took over Crandall Knitting Mills, Ogden, Owner (Factory closed, 1952) 1952 Harvest Freeze Co, Food Freezers 1953 Logan Knitting Mills 1954 Helped start Gold Cloud Uranium (mining investments) 1954 Thayne Realty, Real Estate Sales (cheated out of a deal) 1954 Ray Curtis, Air Conditioners 1954 Started Charge Buying Service, Manager (credit purchasing business, folded 1956) 1956 Rekindled involvement with Gold Cloud Uranium 1957 Started Minerals Consolidated, Inc., Owner (mining investments, oil wells) 1958 Big Horn Uranium, President (mining investments, simultaneous with Minerals Consolidated, folded 1959) 1959 American Industrial Leasing Co 1959 Real Estate Sales, Bettilyon’s 1960 Westwood Knitting Mills 1960 American Industrial Leasing (again, simultaneous with Westwood) 1961 Elggren Sales Co. (floor polishers, janitorial supplies, electrical equipment) 1964 Started Melville Sales Co., Owner (electrical equipment, sold in 1979) 1979 Retired – Whew! 94 Appendix C – CLOTHING SALES TRAVEL LOG

Year Dates (crew) Locations mentioned 1932 June - July 4 (with Elmer Barlow) Scotts Bluff (NE), Hot Springs (SD), Lead (SD), Ranches (SD), Faith (SD), Dupree (SD), Gettysburg (SD) July 24 - Fall (with Elmer Barlow) Chadron (NE), Valentine (NE), MIssion (SD), Pierre (SD), Gettysburg (SD), a few small towns (SD), Mobridge (SD), Northeast Corder (SD), Southeast Corner (ND), & halfway across Minnesota 1933 March? - May (With Gene Bryson) Same territory as trip 2 June (Local) Salt Lake (UT) and parts of Idaho 1934 Feb (Driving new car back fro m Detroit to save $100) Chicago (IL), Madison (WI), Webster (SD), across South Dakota April - June (With Dell Eldridge, Newell Thurgood, LaMar Parkins' Dad, OT Ward, Harold Clayton, Dick Cummings & others) Rapid City (SD), then working the Dakotas, Minnesota and Wisconsin June - August (With Ted Melville) Working the Dakotas & Wisconsin, Visited the World's Fair 1935 January - July (With Armond Thompson, Mack Budget & previous crew (see trip #6)) Grand Junction (CO), Craig (CO), Denver (CO), Rapid City (SD), Dakota Territory, Aberdeen (SD), Madison, (WI), Milwaukee (WI), Fargo (ND), Home for birth of baby November - (with Newell Thurgood & OT Ward) Eau Claire (WI), Milwaukee (WI), Watertown (SD) December 1936 January - April (with full crew, including Elmer Barlow, to Sales Convention, then on to sell) Souix Falls, (SD), Bismark (ND), Mobridge (SD), Selby (SD), Mitchell (SD) June (with Ted & Tommie, met up with Newell Thurgood & OT Ward) Wausau (WI), Take Ted & Tommie home July -August (with Dell Eldredge) South Dakota, Oaks (ND), Duluth (MN), home for Anniversary and Birthday August - Fall (with Ted & Tommie, met up with Dell Eldredge) Stevens Point (WI), Wisconsin Territory November (with Ted, convention in Minneapolis) Omaha (NE), Minneapolis (MN), North Platte (NE), Home 1937 January - April (met up with OT Ward) Milwaukee (WI), Madison (WI), Chicago (IL), Bismark (ND), Dickenson (ND), Dakota Territory June - September (with Ted & Tom & New Trailer) Flint (MI), Chicago (IL), Ashland (WI), Duluth, (MN), Superior (WI), Milwaukee (WI), Madison (WI), Mitchell (SD), Tripp (SD), Colombus (NE), Tripp (SD), Highmore (SD) 1938 January - April (Alone) Highmore (SD), Dakota Territory April - ??? (with Ted & Tommie) Highmore (SD), Madison (WI), Milwaukee (WI), Souix Falls (SD) 1939 April - July (with Ted & Tommie) Madison (WI), Milwaukee (WI) Fall (new line with Otto Mehr, brought home the pony) Dakota Territory, Bismark (ND), Mobridge (SD), Timberlake (SD) 1940 January - March (for Utah Knitting Mills) Nebraska Summer (Fur Coats) Dakotas 1940 November - May (pickup Truck and Hamburger Stand) Detroit (MI), Toledo (OH), Richomnd (OH), Indiana, - Illinois, St. Joseph (MO), Wichita (KS), Laramie (WY), Saratoga, (WY), Rawlins, (WY), 1941 Idaho Falls (ID) 1941 November - (Alone?) Billings (MN), Bismark (ND), Mobridge (SD), Gettysburg (SD) December 1942 January - March (Alone?) Wisconsin and Dakotas territory 1944 June - July (met Keith, hurt back) Lincoln (NE), Kansas City (MO), Aberdeen (SD), Souix Falls (SD), Mitchell (SD), Eureka (SD), Mobridge (SD), Pierre (SD), Rapid City (SD), Deadwood (SD), Custer (SD) 1949 July - Winter (Alone?) Nevada, Oakland (CA), then to Dakotas, Nebraska, Wisconsin Territories 1950 January - June (Alone, then with Family for the summer) Midwest Territories, Utah, Idaho, Nevada, San Francisco (CA), Los Angeles (CA) Las Vegas (NV)

95 Appendix D – LEISURE TRAVEL LOG

Year Date Destination 1966 May Lake Powell with Margaret and Elm Nov. 9 First trip on Western Air pass. Flew to Mexico City. Stayed at Plaza Vista Hermosa Nov. 12 6:30 P.M. Mexico to Acapulco. Stayed at Acapulco Hilton Nov. 17 Back to L.A. and home 1967 Aug. 3 San Francisco, Seattle, Anchorage, Alaska. Captain Cook Hotel. Aug. 24 Sightseeing Anchorage, Glaciers, Mt. Alyeska and the earthquake area. Aug. 5 Aurora Train - Fairbanks. Aug. 6 Flew Alaskan Airlines back to Anchorage. Captain Cook Hotel. Aug. 7 Flew to Kodiak for lunch via Homer and back in afternoon. Aug. 8 Flew to Juneau-Brinkwater Inn. Aug. 10 Flew to Sea-Tac Airport, Hyatt House. Aug. 11 LAX Aug. 12 Home 1968 March 13 Flew to Phoenix via L.A. May 16,17 San Francisco May 19 Tropicana, Las Vegas June 14 Flew to LAX. Holiday Airport Inn. June 16 Flew to San Francis co. Met Tom at Moffett Field. Stayed at Holiday Inn, Sunnyvale. June 17 Visited Saratoga property. Evening, flew to Sea-Tac. June 22 Flew back home Nov. 12 Acapulco, Hilton. Stayed 24 days. Nov. 25 Flew to Minneapolis, Holiday Inn, Downtown. Nov. 26 United Air Lines to Toledo, Ohio, via O’Hare Airport, Chicago. Fred met plane and took us to Lima, Ohio. Stayed until Saturday, Holiday Inn, after Thanksgiving. Flew from Toledo back to Minneapolis, A.M. Horizon Room, Minneapolis, P.M. Late evening flew to SLC in blizzard. 1969 Jan. 15 Palm Springs, Elmirador. Jan 18 Flew home Feb. 6, 9 Reid flew to Minneapolis, Toledo, Lima, Ohio. Brought home cat. Feb. 16 Flew to L.A. Visited Tom in Reseda. Reid flew to Phoenix to meter meeting. Saw Mother in Mesa. Feb 19 Flew Home March 16 Ted and Reid flew to Las Vegas. Met Ray Carpenter. May 8 Trip to Europe - SAS. Flew to L.A. Arrived May 9th P.M. Stayed Hotel Imperial, Copenhagen. May 10 Flew to Vienna. Stayed Prinz-Eugen. May 12 Flew back to Copenhagen. P.M. May 12 Flew from Copenhagen to Munich, Germany. Stayed at Hotel Excelsior. May 13 Rented car Munich May l4 Drove Volkswagen from Munich over Alps to Zurich, Switzerland. Stayed Hotel Astor. May 15, 16 Noon. Flew to Copenhagen. P.M. flew to Paris. Stayed Paris Hilton. May 17 Flew to Copenhagen. Stayed Dan Hotel by airport. May28 Flew to Rome, Hilton Cavalieri. May 20 Flew to Copenhagen A.M. flew from airport to Amsterdam P.M. Stayed Hotel Eatheria. May 21 Flew to Copenhagen A.M., to London P.M. Stayed at Britanica Hotel on Grosvenor Sq., London, until May 2lcth. May 24 Flew to Copenhagen. Stayed Dan Hotel. May 25 Flew to L.A. Stayed at Sheraton Airport Inn. May 26 A.M. Visited Western Wire. P.M. flew home SLC. Sept. 4-9 Flew to Calgary. Drove to Banff with Marintha and Harold. Dec. 25 Flew L.A. Spent Christmas Day with Tom in Reseda. Dec. 26 Flew to Scottsdale, Arizona. Stayed at Papago Motor Lodge. Met Tom at airport

96 1970 Feb. 16 Flew San Diego, Hacienda Hotel. Rain. Took golf clubs. March 5-16 Honolulu. First trip via L.A. with Margaret, Elm, Marintha, Harold and Cynth. Cynth scalded en route. June 22-July SLC to Minneapolis, Dayton and Lima, Ohio. Visited Fred. Stayed at Scotts Inn. 3 July 3 Flew Dayton to Minneapolis . Met Tom. Spent 4th of July in Minneapolis . July 4 Flew home Sept. 7 I flew from SLC to Ketchikan, Alaska. Sept. 8 Labor Day. Spent the day in Ketchikan. Sept. 9 Flew back to San Francisco. Stayed at Hyatt Lodge by airport. Sept. 10 Flew back home. Nov. 2 Flew to Acapulco. Stayed Pierre Marquis Club de Golf - 3 days. Nov. 5 Flew back to SLC. Nov. 19, 20 Flew to Hilo, Hawaii. Drove Hilo to Kona, Kona Hilton. Nov. 21 Flew from Kona to Maui, Maui Hilton. Nov. 22 Flew Maui to Kauai. Stayed Hawaii Islander. Nov. 23 Flew to Honolulu. Drove Makaha Country Club on Oahu. Spent Thanksgiving, then flew to San Francisco and home. Dec. 25 Flew to Mexico City. Stayed Fiesta Palace. Dec. 28 Flew L.A. Stayed at Airport Marina. Flew home. 1971 Feb. 6 Flew Phoenix via LAX, stayed Rodeway Inn by airport. Feb. 7 - Drove to Tucson, met Marinth and Cynth at airport. Went out to Tombstone. Feb. 8 Drove from Tucson to Phoenix via Coolidge, Arizona. Stayed at Caravan Inn, Phoenix. Feb. 9 Sightseeing Phoenix. Feb. 10 Drove to Scottsdale sightseeing. Drove to Mesa. Saw Virginia Shelley. Back to Phoenix via Temp. and University. Feb. 12 Ted and Reid returned to SLC via L.A. on Western. Marint and Cynth flew direct on West Coast Airlines. April 21 Flew to San Francisco. April 22 Flew to Tokyo on Pan Am via Anchorage, Alaska. Spent 2 nights in Tokyo at Tokyo Hilton. Left April 25th to Hong Kong. Spent April 25 to 30th in Hong Kong, Kowloon. May 1 Flew back to San Francisco on Pan Am with one stop at Tokyo Airport. June 30 Flew to LAX on Western Air Lines. LIX to Panama City, Pan Am. Spent 2 nights at Inter- Continental Hotel 2 days sightseeing Panama City and Canal. July 2 Flew to Caracas. Stayed at Inter-Continental Hotel one day sightseeing Caracas . Second day went to horse races in Caracas. Mid night July 4th - Flew from Caracaas to Rio de Janiero. Stayed at Lemhi Palace. Sightseeing Rio until July 7th. Caught pneumonia on Sugar Loaf Mountain. July 7 Flew from Rio to Guatemala City with airplane landings at Brazilia, Panama City, Costa Rica and Antigua. July 8 Sightseeing Guatemala City. Stayed at El Camino Real July 9 Sightseeing trip to Antigua. Earthquake ruins. July 10 Flew to L.A. and home. Sept. 30 Flew to Honolulu and then to Kauai with Marinth and Cynth. Stayed at Kauai. Surf Hotel. Spent 3 days sightseeing the island of Kauai. Oct. 4 Flew to Honolulu. Met Polly and Tom at Sheraton-Waikiki. Spent week sightseeing Oahu and Honolulu. Visited Polynesian Cultural Center and went to the big Polynesian show in evening with Marint, Cynth, Tom and Polly. Tom and Polly flew to Maui about Oct. 8th and we left for home and flew to SLC on Oct. 11th. Nov. 25-30 Flew to Acapulco. Stayed at Condesa del Mar. Met Tom at airport during his brief stopover. Made deal to baby sit New Year’s Eve. Nov 30 Flew home Dec. 29 Flew to San Francisco, Stayed at St. Francis Hotel until Dec. 30th. Dec. 30-31 Ramada Inn, Santa Clara. Dec. 31 Baby sat Toms kids New Year’s Eve.

97 1972 Jan. 1 Flew to L.A. Stayed at Sheraton Inn, L.A. airport. Jan. 2 Flew to San Diego. Stayed at Hyatt Lodge one night. Moved to Sheraton Inn on Harbor Island. Met Margaret and Elm. Flew home Jan. 6, 1972. April 28 Flew from SLC to LA via Western. Pan Am to Guatemala City. Stayed overnight at El Ganzino Real Hotel. April 29 Flew from Guatemala City to Miami. With a stopover in San Pedro del Sud Honduras for one hour at the airport. Continued flight to Nassau Bahama. Stayed at Holiday Inn, Paradise Island. April 30 Moved from Holiday Inn to Sheraton British Colonial Hotel in down town Nassau. Stayed until May 1st. May 1 Flew from Nassau to Kingston, Jamaica. Stayed at Sheraton Kingston Hotel. May 2 Took sightseeing trip across Jamaica Island to Ochos Rios. May 3 Flew over to Montego Bay. Stayed at Holiday Inn. Spent 2 days. May 5 Flaw to Miami across Cuba. First night stayed at Sheraton Key Biscayne. May 6-8 Stayed at Sheraton Four Ambassadors in Miami.,- Sightseeing Miami and Miami Beach. May 8 Flew back to Guatemala City. Changed planes and flew back to L.A. Next. day flew back to SLC. Aug. 4 Flew to Vancouver, Canada, via San Francisco. Stayed at Sheraton Plaza Soo. Next day met Harold and Marint at airport. I had swollen jaw and toothache. Aug. 7 Marint and Harold flew back home and we flew back home via L.A. Sept. 28 Flew to Honolulu. Stayed at Sheraton Waikiki 28th, 29th and 30th. In P.M. Sept. 30 Flew to Fiji. Lost one day in transit. Stayed at Gateway Hotel, Fiji, 2 nights. Oct. 3 Flew Fiji to Sidney. Stayed at Travel Lodge, No. Sidney. Oct. 6 Flew to Melbourne, Australia. Stayed at Travel Lodge, Kilda Road in Melbourne. Oct. 9 Flew from Melbourne to Honolulu. Gained one day in transit. Stayed at Sheraton Waikiki until Oct. 16th, then flew home to SLO. 1973 Jan. 27 Flew Mexico City. Stayed Continental Hilton one night. Transferred to Fiesta Palace one night. Jan. 29 Flew Guadalajara. Stayed Camino Real. Jan. 30 Sightseeing Lake Chapalla. During lunch we got shook up with an earthquake. Jan 31 Flew home on 31st via Mexico City - L.A. Trip Around the World… March 15 Flew LAX, Sheraton Airport LAX March 16 Flew Honolulu. March 16 Ala Moana Hotel - Honolulu. March 17 Flew to Guam. Arrived March 18, same day. March 18 Guam Hilton, hotel bridal suite. March 19 Rented Hertz car. Saw Guam. March 19 Flew Hong Kong - Bangkok. March 19-21 Royal Palace. Went to floating market and other places sightseeing. March 22 Dusit Thani Hotel Bangkok. Flew to Bombay, India. March 22-23 Tajmahal Hotel, Bombay. March 24 Flew Bombay, Tel Aviv, Athens. March 25-26 Grande Bretagne Hotel, Athens. March 26-28 Castella Hilton, Madrid. March 28-30 Holiday Inn, Toremolinos, Spain. March 30-31 Rented car. Drove to Marbella. Saw Marg. and Elm. Stayed same hotel with them. March 31- Holiday Inn, Toremolinos. April 2 April 2-3 Hotel Luz Palacio, Madrid. April 3-6 Lisboa-Sheraton, Lisbon. Visited Palaces and Cascaias. April 6 Flew N.Y., San Francisco. April 6-7 Airport Plaza Hotel. April 7 Visited kids - flew home. Sept. 27 Flew SLC to Hilo. Stayed at Hilo Bay Motel. 98 Sept. 28 Rented car. Drove to Kona via Parker Ranch. Had lunch at Del Webb Resort Hotel. Sept. 29 Kona Surf Hotel sightseeing. Sept. 30 Flew from Kona to Honolulu. Stayed one night at Royal Hawaiian Hotel. Transferred to Sheraton Waikiki. Returned to ~C via L.A. Nov. 18 Flew to Acapulco via Mexico City. Stayed Condesa del Mar. Nov 23 Flew home 1974 Feb. 16 Flew to L.A. Stayed at Hotel Marriott. Feb. 17 Flew to San Diego. Stayed at New Sheraton Harbor Island Hotel. Feb. 18 Flew to Palm Springs. Stayed at Sheraton Oasis. Feb. 20 Flew to Las Vegas. Stayed at MGM Hotel. April 16 Ted and I flew to Idaho Falls on WAL pass. April 17 Played golf with Fred and Joyce. April 18 Ted and I flew from Idaho Falls to Pocatello. (The only passengers on the plane). Stayed overnight at Holiday Inn. April 19 Flew back to SLC. May 25 Flew to London via L.A. Stayed at Sheraton Heathrow Hotel, by the airport until May 28th. May 28 Left London and crossed English Channel by boat. Stayed at Brussels Sheraton Hotel. May 29 Took train from Brussels to Nice, France, via Paris. Stayed at Hotel Westminster. May 30 Drove to Monte Carlo during day. Spent day. P.M., May 30th, took the T.E. Express and a Schlafwagen. Rode overnight to Geneva. May 31 Held a conference at League of Nations in Geneva. Took P.M. train to Interla ken, Switzerland. Stayed at Gasthof zum Roten Lowen. June 1 Took train to Heidelberg via Zurich. Stayed at Der Europaische Hof. June 2 Sightseeing Heidelberg and Castle. Took P.M. train to Mainz, Germany. Stayed at Bahn Hof Hotel. June 3 Took cruise on Rhine River from Mainz to Cologne, Germany, via Koblenz. Stayed at Intercontinental Hotel in Cologne. June 4 Took train to Brussels. Stayed at Brussels Sheraton. June 5 Took train to Oostende, Belgium, and boat across Channel to London. Stayed at Sheraton Heathrow Hotel. June 6 Took bus over to Farnham, England, and back. June 8 Flew back to L.A. and then up to San Francisco Stayed at Ramada Inn, Santa Clara, by San Jose. June 9 Flew back home. Aug. 4 Flew to Spokane via Hughes Air West. Went to Expo 76 with Cynth and Marint. Nov. 2 Flew SLC to Honolulu. Stayed at Sheraton Waikiki. Nov. 5 Flew to L.A. Stayed at Sheraton Airport Inn. Nov. 6 Went to Long Beach. Visited Queen Mary luxury liner. Drove down to Huntington Beach and back to hotel. Nov.7 Visited Disneyland. Nov. 8 Flew back to SLO. Dec. 11 Flew to San Francisco. Stayed at Hyatt Regency Hotel. Went to Alameda to Tom’s change of command where he took over command of Attack Squadron VA 303. Dec 15 Flew back to SLC 1975 March 21 Flew to San Diego with Bob and Madge Johnston. March 24 Flew to San Francisco. March 25 Flew home. May Ted and I flew to Seattle. Took boat to Victoria, B.C., Canada in A.!’!. Returned to Seattle in evening. Next day spent in Seattle. Flew home following day. Aug. 2 Flew to Minneapolis. Stayed at Sheraton northwest. Aug. 6 Flew to Denver. Stayed at Sheraton Airport. Aug. 7 Flew home. Nov. 29 Flew from SLC via San Francisco to Honolulu and then over to Maui. Stayed at Maui Surf Hotel. Dec. 1 Flew to Honolulu. Stayed at Sheraton Waikiki.

99 Dec. 3 Flew to L.A. on DC-10, then on home. 1976 April 7 F1e w to Phoenix and stayed at Sheraton Scottsdale Inn in Scottsdale. April 11 Flew back to SLC. May 30 Drove to Green River, Utah, with Margaret and Elmer. May 31 Drove to Bull Frog Basin. Went sightseeing Lake Powell with Margaret and Elm on Bob’s boat. Stayed in mobile home. June 1 Drove back to Green River. Stayed all night. June 2 Drove home. June 18 Flew to San Francisco. Stayed at Sheraton Airport Inn. June 19 Drove to Alameda for the change of command ceremonies releasing Tom as commander of Attack Squadron VA303. June 20 Tried to fly home. Got bumped in Reno. Stayed at Fitzgerald Hotel. June 21 Flew home. Sept. 20 Flew from SLC to LA and then from LA to Miami. stayed at Sheraton Four Ambassadors. Sept. 23 Sightseeing Miami, Palm Beach and Ft. Lauderdale. Sept. 21 Drove to Everglades National Park. Sept. 2 Flew home via L.A. on DC-lO. Dec. 7 Flew to Honolulu with Cynth. Stayed at Sheraton Waikiki. Dec. 11 Took DC-b to L.A. and then flew home. 1977 Aug. 9 Flew to Portland via Las Vegas. Stayed one night Rodeway Inn by airport. Then moved to Red Lyon Lodge downtown Portland. Aug. 13 Flew home from Portland via L.A. Dec. 4 Flew San Francisco. Dinner with Tom and family in San Jose. Stayed Sheraton Airport Inn. Dec. 5 Fogged in. Left San Francisco 8:30 am instead of &:00, but did get to L.A. just before our DC-10 left for Mexico City. We made it, bags no. Stayed Fiesta Palace Hotel. WAL sent bags to hotel in evening. Dec. 6 Browsed around shopping in Pink Zone. I located Nicholas Fabian at Hotel Del Prado. Hired him next day to drive us. Dec. 7 Rode over to Cuernavaca on high road over Sierra Madre Mountains. Had lunch at Mananitas Villa. Saw castle and palace, etc. Rode back to Mexico City. Dec. 8 Flew home from Mexico City. 1978 April 22 “Tahiti ‘78” tour. Took W.AL to L.A., then Air France-UTA to Tahiti. Left L.A. 10:30 P.M., flew all night, and arrived in Papeete, Tahiti, at S:0O A.M. Fred accompanied us on this trip. Stayed at the Maeve Beach Resort Hotel by the airport. Slept A.M. Sunday, then took the “Le Truck” to downtown Papeete, looked for a restaurant, then ended back at the hotel mid P.M. Monday took tour around the island of Tahiti. Wednesday flew over to Island of Moorea, took sightseeing trip in a tropical downpour of rain, had lunch at Bali Hai Hotel, then flew back in 7-passenger plane to Tahiti. Spent other days looking around, loafing, shopping, then took April 29 Air France - UTA back to L.A. and the late flight from LA to SLC on WAL. June 23 Flew from SLC to Edmonton, Canada. The last place on Western Airlines routes we hadn’t been. First night, Sheraton-Caravan. Ted didn’t like. So next day moved to the new Four Seasons Hotel, just being finished. Stayed sightseeing Edmonton June 27 Flew home. Dec 27 Salt Lake City to San Jose, Calif. Stayed at downtown Holliday Inn- Attended Julie’s wedding reception in San Jose. Couldn’t get on a plane to LA or San Diego; Dec 28 Flew home 1979 June 21 SLC to Idaho Falls — Quarter fare. Stayed with Fred. June 22 Fred drove us to West Yellowstone. Sat, fished on take Lake Hebgen, returned to Idaho Falls. June 24 Flew Home July 15 SLC to Oakland, Cal, quarter fare on Western Airlines. Stayed at the Airport Hilton, go for broke hotel. Attended Tom’s Oakland Temple Pageant. Took a ride to San Francisco and back. July 20 Returned home Oct. 18 Salt Lake City to Honolulu — Stayed at Ala Moana Hotel

100 Oct. 19 Took bus to Waikiki —looked at the horrible ma mmoth construction going on in front of Sheraton Waikiki and Royal Hawaiian hotels, whole area is being turned into a giant concrete mess Oct 19 Flew Continental Air Lines from Honolulu to Auckland, N.Z., stopping at Pago Pago, Samoa airport for one hour. Arrived in Auckland the same day we left, but one day later when we landed. Oct. 21 Sunday Half day tour of Auckland — stayed Intercontinental Hotel Oct. 22 Monday National Labor Day Holiday, everything closed. Couldn’t find any tours to go on, for next two days out of town. Oct. 23 Took the other half day tour of Auckland, Oct. 24 Bummed a ride with the manager of Air New Zealand Tours over to Hamilton, visited Mormon Temple, bussed back to Auckland. Oct. 25 Flew Continental Air to Pago Pago, Samoa (American). Arrived the day before we left. Spent most of our time at the Rainmaker Hotel in tropical rain and heat. Oct 26 Pago Pago to Honolulu. Just got on the plane wing with a prayer. Oct. 27 Checked out of Holiday Airport and flew back home via Western Air Lines. 1980 July 17 Flew WAL to Vancouver, B.C. Canada via San Francis co. Spent one day shopping and looking over downtown Vancouver. Next day took a tour of north Vancouver, including the British properties, a power dam with salmon run steps, and went for an aerial tram ride on a mountain peak. Returned through Gastown. Dined at “The Cannery’. July 20 Took a bus to Gastown, walked around for an hour • We were staying at the Sheraton Downtown. July 21 Returned home via Portland. Just before landing in Port1and, and again right after takeoff we had excellent close up views of Mt. St. Helens volcano. An hour after we passed the volcano, it blew up again. 1981 Jan 28 Flew WAL to Palm Springs, Calif. via Denver. Next day rented a car and drove around Palm Springs, and down south through Rancho Mirage, and Palm Desert. Bought bucket of balls at the Palm Springs Municipal Golf Course and we both found out we can’t see the balls after we hit them up in the air. Gave up the idea of golfing. Friday morning the operator at the Sheraton Piazza where we were staying called us about 8:30 am and told us to get out of the hotel fast, and stay away for an hour. Someone had called and told them three bombs would go off at 9:00 A.M. False alarm. Drove around Palm Springs some more, went shopping. Jan. 31 Decided we had seen all there was and done all we wanted around Palm Springs; so flew back to SLC. Arriving home in a foot of snow. 1982 1983 Aug 2 Flew WAL on passes, SLC to Honolulu, DC-10 all the way. Stayed in Honolulu at the Holiday Inn Airport, until next morning then flew Hawaiian Airlines to the Island of Molokai. Aug 4 Didn’t like it over there so returned to Honolulu, then flew back to Salt Lake via WAL 1984 Feb 15 Flew Salt Lake City to Zihuatenejo, Mexico. Stayed at Sheraton Ixtapa, in the resort area in Ixtapa Pacific Beach. Returned to SLC February 19. Mar 31 Flew SLC to Idaho Falls, stayed with Fred, returned April 2. May 3 Ted, Fred and I all flew on WAL passes to El Paso, Texas. Stayed at Sheraton El Paso. Took drive to Carlsbad, New Mexico and back and flew back home May 5th. July 27 WAL to Jackson, Wyo. Met Fred at Jackson airport. We stayed at the Alpenhof Lodge in Teton Village. Drove with Fred over Teton Pass, Sunday July 29, and then caught WAL afternoon flight home. Sept 26 Flew WAL - SLC to Washington DC. Then Delta Airlines to Boston. Stayed at Sheraton Tara, Danvers, Massachusetts. Thursday, Sept. 27th, Julie, Steve, Melissa & Rachel came over to see us and have dinner with us and spend the evening. Sept 28 Ted & I flew Ransome Air to Washington DC. Froze all night at the Sheraton Crystal City Hotel. Sunday, met Tom and visited Smithsonian Institute Space Age Museum then flew home with Tom driving the plane. Oct 7 Flew to Sacramento. Stayed at Holiday Inn North East. Sunday October 8, visited with Merlene & Bob Sherwood and went to Berta Burningham’s funeral. Flew home Oct. 9. Dec 24 Flew SLC to Idaho Falls. Helped Fred fix a fancy evening dinner. December 25, had lunch with Fred and with Freddy & Judy. Caught the 3:05 flight back home. 1985 May 7 Flew SLC to Minneapolis with Fred and Ted. Stayed at Sheraton Park Place, 3 miles west of

101 downtown. Fred rented a new Cadillac & we toured a lot of the twin cities sightseeing and dining in evenings. May 9, flew back home. Sept 13 Flew St. Louis, Mo. Stayed Sheraton St. Louis downtown, view of Mississippi River, the Arch and Bridges to Illinois. Took tour of downtown, saw the Cathedral, Anheuser-Busch and Budweiser breweries, immense spread over 50 acres, didn’t go in, saw the botanical gardens and river boats, McCledes Landing and visited the Arch, “Gateway to the West.” Rode to top, looked at St. Louis into Bush Stadium, etc. Saw Union Railroad station, now renovated into a giant shopping center. Flew home Sept. 16th. Nov 27 Tried to fly to Idaho Falls. Couldn’t get on the plane. Loaded & no deal again on Nov. 28. However, Fred didn’t cook his turkey on Thanksgiving day. He held up until we could fly up, Nov 29 A day late. Enjoyed a good dinner with friend of Freddy who is Freddy’s cousin John son of Joyce’s ex—sister—in—law. Fred, Freddy and John met our plane and we spent afternoon and evening together. Flew back home on Nov. 30, 1985. Dec 11 We decided to get out of the cold, so flew to San Antonio Texas. Arrived with a cold front. About froze for lack of heat in hotel Sheraton. Did get downtown next day, passed by the Alamo, didn’t go in as we had seen it all in 1959. Took a quick look at the attractive River Walk, then to the airport. Dec 14 Flew on to Austin, Texas. Stayed at Sheraton Crest Hotel on the river bank downtown. Took a car ride around the State Capitol Building, then back to the hotel. It was too cold and windy to walk around downtown. Sat, Dec. 14 — flew back home. 1986 Apr 24 Flew WAL to Mazatlan, Mexico viz Phoenix. Landed in a desert, SE of the city. Dirty dusty ride to town. City of Mazatlan was nice. Stayed at Holiday Inn on the beach. Beaches in Mazatlan are wide, run for miles along the Pacific Ocean, and are beautiful. Can’t say the same for the surrounding area. Dry desert and dusty. April 26, flew home via Phoenix. Nov 26 We flew to Idaho Falls, spend the evening with Fred and the 2 kids. Had a spanish dinner, directed by Fred but prepared by Freddy and Judy. Spent the night at Westbank Tower. On Thanksgiving, Freddy picked us up and took as up to Fred’s. In afternoon, we all went to the Westbank for a Thanksgiving buffet dinner. Then spent the evening back at Fred’s. Freddy drove us back to our Hotel. Freddy picked us up the next noon and drove us to the Airport. Flew home Nov. 28th, WAL naturally. Dec 13 Two WAL passes burned holes in our pockets so we flew out to Sacramento in the a.m. Bob Sherwood picked us up at the airport and drove us to town & Clarence Burningham’s home. We visited with Clarence & the Sherwoods during most of the afternoon; then Bob & Merlene drove us back to the airport. We flew back to SLC in evening on the same day. Margaret & Elmer met the plane and drove us home. 1987 Feb 17 Tom flew his plane to San Francisco and I went along for the ride. Took Tom, Paul & Laurie Ann out for dinner at Charlie Brown’s Steak & Lobster Restaurant close to the airport & our hotel (The Old Thunderbolt Motel). Had a nice dinner, giant shrimps. The others had steaks. Paul is out of the B.Y.U. and has a job with Ford Aerospace in Palo Alto. Lives close by in Mountain View. Returned home on WAL, Feb. 18. Mar 11 Flew to Newport Beach, Orange County, CA airport. Took Alan, Cynda, Lori, Dave, Heather and Mathew out to dinner at Rueben’s. Food was fair. Our company very nice. Stayed at Sheraton Newport Beach Motel. They don’t turn on the heat until outside temp. gets down to 54 degrees C. No heat came on. Froze all day & night. March 12 took a bus down to Southcoast Plaza shopping center. All enclosed. Probably the world’s fanciest mall. Enjoyed it here, but didn’t buy a thing. Returned to the Sheraton Hotel for the night & froze all night again. I caught cold. Returned home Friday the 13th. Mar 27 Took our last flight on Western Airlines. Went up to Idaho Falls. Fred & Judy met us and we went to Jake’s for dinner. Stayed in Westbank Tower. Next morning Fred & Judy joined us for brunch at the Westbank Hotel; then drove us to the airport; and we flew home on March 28. June 8 Had a Delta pass to Honolulu, but stopped in LAX at Sheraton Plaza La Rena. Called Lori, but she had a meeting that night so didn’t see her & family. Ted didn’t go because of leg problem. I returned back home next day. Sunday the 12th, Lori, Dave and kids came out to see us. Cynda was also in Bountiful at that time and brought Alison down to meet us. June 17 Had another Delta Pass to Bermuda via Boston. Again Ted couldn’t go because of her leg. So I

102 just flew to Boston to see Julie and family. Stayed at Sheraton Commander 3 blocks from the old Harvard Square. So I walked over so I could say I’ve been to Harvard. Next morning, Julie brought the 4 great grandchildren over to my hotel where I met Shelley for the first time. I also fell in love with her. Then Julie drove us to her new home in Arlington where Steve was recuperating from a back injury. We had lunch, then a joint birthday party for Shelley & me. Cake, candles, ice cream & the works. Steve even joined us. Then Julie drove me to the airport, and I flew home on the 18th.

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