Glen Brown Harding “My History”

Update: This history now includes scans of all the pages. Note: he text entry has not been completed.

MY HISTORY
By Glen Brown Harding

I was born the 21 of April in 1911. The house where my family lived, at that time, was on about 533 South 5OO West in Provo, Utah. The house has been torn down now, and a plumbing establishment is on this spot. My parents were William Edward Harding and Phebe Dianthia Brown Harding My Father is known to many people in Utah County because he served as a Deputy Sheriff to Sheriff Boyd, who was Sheriff of Utah County for many years. I was the last child born to my parents. The other children are: Ila Harding Sheafer Bullock, Dean Harding, Edna Harding Moore Harvey, and Ellis Harding who died as an infant.

When I was a baby, my family moved to Taber, Alberta, Canada. Two of my uncles had previously gone to Canada, and had established a successful harness shop. They said they could hire Dad and the prospects looked good. Most of the people who were settling in Taber were Latter-day Saints and it would be easy to make friends. Canada was sparcely settled at this time with few planted fields, orchards, or homes to cover and hold the soil. A strong wind blew constantly and dust was a continual problem. My mother suffered with asthma and the dust made the attacks worse. Mother was a meticulous housekeeper and the constant fight with the dust on the furniture and in her cupboards made her very unhappy aside from the uncomfortable affects it had on her ailment, so after two years they decided to return to Provo. Father found a house for us close to Mother’s parents at 5 South and 3rd. West.

Just before I was six years old, my parents and family moved to Magna, Utah and Father worked at the smelters there. When I was about nine we moved back to Provo. Father bought a little three room house on ninth west and third south, but soon traded it in on a house at 74 South 800 West which is still there. At this time Dad got a job as custodian for the Utah Power and Light Co. in Provo. When Provo City voted to go Municipal with their electricity the Utah Power and Light Co. moved to American Fork, but I was in the army by then and when I returned I stayed with my sister Edna and her family. My work was is Provo and I was going to get married to Muriel in the spring. I never really lived at the home in American Fork.

My first two years of school were spent at Magna, Utah. I attended the Franklin School for the next four years. May Scott was one of my teachers and I remember receiving a prize for being the best one in penmanship. Byron Jones was the principal the year I attended 6th grade and a Mr. Paulson preceeded him. I attended Junior High in the old building which was on the same block as the High School. The new Provo City Center is now located on that block. I attended the new building for my Senior High School days. This building was very nice. It had a swimming pool which was an unusual thing at that time. The pool was later condemned because some parents thought immoral things happened in the pool. For years High School students in Provo did not have a swimming pool. Now both of the High Schools have pools. Everyone seems happy about it . Time changes peoples attitudes.

I was a Senior in High School when the great depression came. Money was scarce and there was much unemployment. I decided to do something to help out in this situation I became an apprentice to W. R. Scott, a painter and paper-hanger. Mr. Scott was a very fine man and we got along well. I learned to love him. I will always be greatful for his careful training and for the chance to know and to work with him through these trying years.

The first structure I helped with was the First Ward Church at 2nd. South and 1st. East. The church is still in use and is a lovely church. My first job with Mr. Scott was to dip shingles into paint, some dark red and some dark green, and to lay them to dry by putting them on an old iron fence which had fallen down. The shingles were thicker and heavier than those used today, but they last for 40 years before they had to be replaced. I also helped with the inside of the building. It was here that I learned to be a careful, consciencious worker. I learned good habits of work which have helped me all my life.

I worked for Mr. Scott for five years and then I was offered a job as salesman at Bennett’s Glass and Paint in Provo. I worked here until I entered the army in 1942 which made 8 years with that company. When I left Bennett’s because of the war, they told me that the job would be open for me when I returned. The company kept its promise and when I returned after 3 1/2 years, I went right back to work as soon as I got home.

When I left for the army, the manager of the store was Alma Wright. We had become very good friends. We often met at the Timp Golf Club very early in the mornings and have a round of golf before we opened up the store. Together, we made plans to leave Bennett’s when I returned from the army, and become partners in a store of our own. Shortly after I returned, we secured a building on 35 North 200 West and opened a glass and paint store. The store was named Wright’s Glass and Paint. We did all right for a new store, but competition is high in this field. There wasn’t enough money to give ourselves any fringe benefits such as hospitalization and retirement. In 1953, I decided to return to Bennett’s where these benefits were available. I stayed with Bennetts until my retirement on August 31, 1973. I retired early because I had recently had open-heart surgery which had been a frightening experience to both Muriel and I. Nuriel decided that 43 years of teaching were enough so we both took an early retirement. We have never been sorry about this.

I still go to the store on Saturdays. Many of my old customers wouldn’t let any one else wait on them and they would wait to come to the store on Saturdays. This pleased me very much. We save what I earn by working on Saturdays and label it “our tripping money”. When we go to California to see Cora, or Colorado to see Irene, or to Arizona for fun, we use this money and it pays our way so far as gas and motels go. Since we have to eat at home we use that from our usual money.

My Mother died on November 6, 1954. She had never been an especially healthy person. For years she suffered with asthma. She was a wonderful mother and I missed her very much. Dad came to live with us. He and mother had been inseperatable and it was hard for him to adjust to mother’s death.

We fixed up a basement room for him where he could have his privacy if he wanted it, but Dad was a very sociable guy and didn’t seem to mind being with us upstairs most of the time. He was a pleasant fellow to be around. He knew lots of jokes and was an excellent story teller. The girls loved him and we did our best to make him happy. Father died on October 14, 1958. Mother and Father are buried in the Provo Cemetary.

There is room on the family plot for one more grave. We have assurance that two people can occupy one spot by being placed one over the other. This is our plan.

Sports Activities and Hobbies

I didn’t have as many toys as children have now. There wasn’t even as much variety in the stores as there is now, and no T.V. advertisements to describe all the desirable things that were available and seemingly necessary to own. I had some toy soldiers, some wind up toys and tinker-toys. I had a sleigh but I think that it had been given to my older brother and sisters before it became mine. I had a pair of ice skates from the time I could skate. The first ones were hand-me-downs of Dean’s. As my feet grew I would go up to Bee’s Hardware and trade them far some to fit me. Bees carried on quite a tradeplace for the exchange of skates. The Bee boys were very good skaters themselves and they did their best to help out all of us kids who had no money for new skates. These were the kind that fastened on with key which we used to tighten the clamps over our toes. I finally arrived at the point where I could buy my own shoe skates. My bicycle was second-hand too. I did have a good baseball, bat and mit. I still have them.

I was taught to take good care of my things. I am shocked at the trikes, skates, wagons and bikes that are left out on the front lawn all night where they could easily be stolen, or when they are left in the rain and snow to rust. When Irene and Sandy were little girls, I brought some little wind toys that I had kept since I was small. They still worked, but not for long after I gave them to the girls. I guess I didn’t wait long enough to give them the toys.

I was a good marble player and I would win many more marbles than I would loose. I had a big collection of marbles. My friends and I played marbles a lot at recess time, noon hours, and after school. Mother had to put patches on my pants very often.

Like all boys, I played baseball on the school grounds, in emply lots and in back yards. When I was quite grown up I played on a baseball team. The stores or business firms would sponser a team and buy baseball outfits and equipment for the boys or men. The teams so sponsered played against each other on a planned schedule. I also played some on the High School football team, but going to work ended this.

It seems strange to some people that I do not enjoy seeing baseball or football on television, but I don’t. For a few years Muriel and I attended all the basketball games at the “Y” and enjoyed them, but after a time it seemed so much of a hassle to find a parking place and then fight the traffic home that we gave it up. I got so tired of being in a crowd when I was in the army that I have never liked to be where I was being pushed and joggled ever since.

My Dad was an ardent fisherman, and a very good one. It was once said that if Bill Harding wasn’t catching any fish, there were no fish there to catch. I didn’t inherit his love for the sport or his fishing techniques.

ICESKATING: I was a very good ice-skater and skated on ponds made by flooding pasture land, or at Utah Lake. Our gang of kids would walk to the lake from our homes in west Provo. These days children have to be taken every where they go in a car and then be picked up and taken home. Not so with us hardy Second Warders! The lake was about 3 1/2 miles away from our homes and of course, it would be cold and somedays quite deep snow. This did not stop us on our Saturdays. We would walk to mouth of the river and when it was frozen for a block or two, we would skate down to the lake. We would skate all day long, stopping only to eat a sandwitch from our pocket at noon. Of course we were tired by the time we got home, but that didn’t stop us the next Saturday so long as the ice lasted.

We would play hocky, practice figure skating, have races, or just skate for the fun of it all.

One day some of us decided to skate all the way across the lake to the Oquirrh Mountains. This would have been a distance of about 10 miles each way, or 20 miles. We made it, but the trip to the mountains plus what we had already skated when the idea came to us plus the walk down to the lake and back home was a day we all remembered.

I still have my skates, but I haven’t used them for time, and probably I never will use them again. I think kid who lives in a winter climate should learn to skate. All They think about now is skiing, but that is too expensive many children and much more dangerous than skating.

When we were first married, Muriel had some skates and was just learning to ice-skate. When we first met, one of our dates was to go skating at Vivian Park in Provo Canyon. When Irene was very young, we bought her the smallest pair of skates that was made and taught her to skate. She was the smallest person on the harbor at Utah Lake and received quite a bit of attention – people would gather around her and point her out to other people. By the time she had outgrown the skates and needed larger ones, Sandy was ready to claim the small skates and we taught her to skate. Now she got attention and she loved it. When the girls were older, we continued to skate a little each winter. It was fun to skate as a family and then go home to a warm house and something hot to drink.

GOLF

My very favorite sport now is golfing. I didn’t start to golf until I was about twenty-five. A friend, Garth Fitzgerald, who also worked uptown, talked me into learning how to play and taught me how to play it. I have never had any professional instruction and I have never taken the game so seriously that I got upset if I didn’t do too well. I have played for the fun and relaxation I got out of playing.

I was able to golf ocassionally during the time I was in England and France. When we were in England , stationed at Que, there was a golf course near by and I was able to work in a game now and then with rented clubs. It was strange to play with the smaller ball, which they use in England. When John Merrill and I went to Scotland we played there too.

I played with Marion Halliday for a long time. He owned a shoe store in Provo and so he could take off when I had my day off. We had good times together. I also played for a time with Joe Jeffs and Cora Eggertson. Cora was Muriel’s girl friend for many years before we were married. Her husband Ralph was a very good player of golf and when he and Cora married, he taught her to play golf, but he liked to play with some other men who were also in his league. Joe Jeffs was quite an old man, but he was fun to play with

When we retired, Muriel had some lessons and we began to play together. Cora and Ralph had moved to California to a retirement center called Leisuretown, near Vacaville, California. They bought a home right on the golf course. We had started to visit them every year even while the girls were still unmarried. Since the girls have gone we have never missed going to Leisure Town for two weeks each summer. Sometimes we go twice- in the fall and in the spring. Ralph died some years ago and Cora played after that for a few years, but she is older than we are, and hasn’t played for the last few years. Muriel and I still play golf there when we go down.

Before Muriel got to play golf very much , she was called to be a Relief Society President and for two years her time was taken up all day, every day, with this assignment. We were unable to play together during these years except occassionally Sometimes, on week ends, during this time, we would take off and go to the Junction where the main road takes off for Zion’s National Park. There is a nice golf course at this place and we had some relaxing times down there.

Since Muriel has been released from her position as President, we have golfed at least three times a week when the weather was warm and even in the winter if a warm day came along and there wasn’t snow on the ground.

We found that the Timp Golf Park in Provo was too crowded to be good for us. We were either waiting for the ones in front us to move on, or we were hurrying fast to stay ahead of someone following us. We began going to Spanish Fork or to Payson to play. These two places charged less, so it made up for the difference we had to spend for gas, Payson, we especially like. Here we are seldom hurried and sometime we have teh course practically to ourselves.

Irene and Sandra both learned to golf. They usually give me presents related to golf. Plaques in our home say such things as, “No golfing after 2 A.M. or during hurricanes”– or â€œI’d rather be golfing.”

Model Railroad Building – Another Hobby

For a number of year’s, I was interested in model railroad building. It began when Irene was just a baby-about 15 months old. We were in Sears shopping for toys for the first time. We came to a model train which was running. As we watched I said, “Let’s buy her this.” Muriel decided that I had always wanted an electric train but had never had one. On Christmas morning I received a special present. It was the electric train set.

I built a permanent lay-out in the basement of our little house on 8th West. When we moved to our present home, I sold the entire layout for $100.00. I decided I wanted to start over with a set built on a smaller scale. The size I wanted is called H 0 scale.

There was a space in our house that was exactly right for a model railroad to be built. In the south end of the basement there was area where the basement had not been dug, but the foundation of the house extended about 4’8″ beyond the basement area. A cement wali reaches from the floor of the basement up to the level of the ground and then the shelf, thus made, has been cememted. This shelf reaches the entire width of the house or 25 feet. It is now completly covered with the lay-out for the smali H 0 railroad.

I worked for a long time on lay-out and we had lots of fun as a family. The girls were, by now, large enough to be interested and since I was working in a space only 30 inches high, they were helpful in reaching tools etc. We would all go to the basement at nights. Muriel had her sewing machine downstairs and the girls had a playroom with all their toys in it where they could go when their span of interest gave out regarding the train lay-out.

I painted the walls across the back and the sides a sky blue. Next I constructed a range of mountains out of boxes, wire , crushed up newspaper etc. until I developed the shape and then plastered it all over and painted it. We began to hunt the toy stores and hobby shops for tiny figures of people, animals trees, bushes etc. This was fun too! The people and animals came unpainted and I had to hold them with a clothes pin to paint them. We had fun deciding what color pants, shirts, coats, dresses etc. to use on each one of the people and what color to make dogs, horses, cows, deer etc. We watched for the right weeds to use when we needed more foliage made by spraying the things with green paint. This was fun on every trip we made to the canyon or on our travels during summer vacations.

At one end of the mountain range I constructed a tunnel for the train to run through, and at the other end I constructed pipes down the mountain and a power plant (purchased through Model Railroad catalogues ). The train track was planned and built to go completely around the mountain range and across the front of the shelf. It would then have switches at various places in the center of the layout where the train could be switched from one track to another to make it go under via-ducts, over an over-pass, through villages and paaa’ by farms.

Originally, all of my buildings were made from scratch. I had help with designs described and planned in a Model Railroad magazine to which I prescribed. (I have saved all of these magazines for grandsons who ‘night want to be a model railroader.) For my birthdays and Christmas presents, the girls would find things they thought would be nice for the lay-out. These were all plastic buildings so that the lay-out became a combination of handmade and plastic structures. Some of the ready-made parts were purchased through catalogue because they were too difficult to make like the cattle loading dock which actually loads cattle with the help of the control box and electricity. There is a sawmill also run by electricity which turns the water wheel and makes the saw go back and forth. I made the via-duct but the lights which light up on it work through the control box too as do the lights which come on in railroad station which I made and put in real glass windows. Some other handmade buildings which have come to be favorites are: a lumber storage shed which is next to the saw mill. It is two stories high and open on the front. Various sizes of lumber are stacked in it and around it. Also a favorite is a Wheat Co-op building with 4 silos(made from empty thread spools)

Each of the structures have people, cars, trucks, animals, trees, shrubs , and whatever it took to make the scene come alive and look real. Muriel and I had fun one day. It was my day off and when she came home from school, I told her that I was so very tired because I had worked so much When she asked me what I had been doing to work so hard and I told her that I had made a whole bunch of clothes, sheets, towels etc. and had then washed them and hung them up on the clothes lines to dry. Then I showed her two different homes on the layout where women were hanging up clothes. Since the people were quite small- not quite an inch, the items had to be very small, but I had filled the lines with various items made (cut out) from scraps of cloth from Muriel’s scrap bag.

At the north end of the space for the lay-out, Muriel had asked me to leave some space for storage. When the large area was completed and there was no room for more, I still kept on making buildings.

For about three years we all became interested in ghost town. We visited many of them throughout the west. We have some special souviners which we collected at these towns; some chips of stone from a saloon front in the town of Hamiliton, Nevada which had been shipped all the way around the Cape Horn of Africa, some bits of mirrors that adorned the bar in some other town, bits of wall-paper from the tumbled down homes, pieoes of odd kinds of lumber, some square nails etc.

This interest in ghost towns and also the T.V. show called Gunsmoke made me interested in anything of the old west so that
-the buildings now constructed were of this type.

COLLECTION HOBBY

I have always been a saver of things and a collector of things. I find a special reek every time we take a trip and bring it home for a souvenir of that trip. The girls would help me hunt for the strange t rock or the prettiest rock and we had fun doing this. I have saved tickets to special places we have or where I went in the army. These tickets or stubbs are good reminders of things I might have forgotten without them. Looking through them now, I find such tickets as Shakespear Memorial Theater, Stratford-On-Avon, England. Ice Caves- Leman, Nevada, Disney Land, etc. I save golf score sheets to remind me of the places where I have golfed. I made a picture with bits of wood , moss, shells etc. that we had picked up during a trip up the Pacific Coast. I made a little box with a glass lid to show the things we had found at ghost towns. I made one like it to show the beautiful butterfli:es we had caught after fun chases af ter them.

I love old things from the pioneer days and I have collected items of this period, most of them from our own grandparents, some of them given to us by friends who knew we would like them,

We fell heir to a glass china closet which was in my parent’s home and it is filled with these items. Some of the items are: a coffee grinder,some wool carding brushes with pieces of wool still on them, a cast iron candle holder with a long sharp prong on it so it can be thrust between the logs of a log cabin or a wall, an apple corer carved from a bone, an old straight edged razor that was my grandfather’s two types of stove irons for ironing clothes, 3 hand carved walking canes-each with a story behind it, a pair of balance scales that were once used to weigh nails,etc. a pure pewter teapot from revolutionary war days, a beautiful brown pitcher which was used for a yeast jug by a grandmother of Muriel’s who used it coming across the plains and after that. a music box fitted onto the bottom of a coffee cup- with its saucer, my Dad’s harness making tools, in their original wooden boxes, Dad’s finger printing set which he used as Deputy Sheriff, Dad’s collection of pocket knives, his hunting knives, his fishing tackle and his old dancing shoes.(he and mother loved to dance), Dad’s old leather fishing pouch still contains his old fishing licenses from the year 1915 to 1933 along with two of mine for the years 1954 and 1956. From my war experiences I have kept my map-making magnifying glasses and copies of some of the maps we made for invasion purposes and for progress reports on the take over of Germany. I have golf balls from far away places: England, France, Scotland and a special ball autographed by Patty Berg,a great lady golfer.

We often wonder what will happen to our collection when we are ;gone. Will either of the girls or their families want these reminders of their past and care about them as we have? The China Closet, of itself,is a collectors item. We could have 801d it several times to interested people. We have talked about giving it all to some meusium which might be the best thing to do.

ANIMAL HOBBIES

When I was a kid, I liked animals. When we lived in Canada and I was very small, we had a pet lamb which followed me all around, just like Mary’s little lamb. I have a picture of the lamb and me and T am still wearing dresses. In my time little boy babies were not put into pants until they were very grown up – about four years. I helped my older brother,Dean, take care of the lamb- at least I guess I thought I helped.

Whild we lived in Canada, I had a large dog, named Old Bill. We all loved this gentle dog. Both the lamb and the dog had to be left in Canada when we moved back to Provo. I was sad about this. I would have been six.

When I was quite grown up, I had a cute little German Police puppy. I had a car , by now, and when I would come around the corner at Center Street to go south on 8th south, he would run to meet the car and race long by the car for the last block home. One night, he ran barking with joy as usual because he could see the car. A car, driven by a lady who lived further down the street came past me and hit the dog. He was killed instantly. I felt bad, even though I was grown up. I dug a grave for him in our back yard and burried him in it .

We bought a cute little dog for Irene and Sandra when they were small and they loved him very much. The dog was like any dog, and he would drag home anything loose that he found in the neighbor’s yards. The next door neighbors didn’t like the way they had to hunt for one of their rubbers , or one of their children shoes. They also had a small baby and the dog would bark and wake the baby up so we had to give him to an uncle who lived on a farm. It was a sad time.

While the children were growing up, we always had a cat. The last one we had, we named Sarah. She would sit up in our front window and watched us. When it was time for her to be put in the garage for night, she would watch me carefully, and when I waved my arms around and pointed to the back door, she would jump from the window and meet me at the door. No matter how I hurried, Sarah would be there first. It made a funny little ending to our evenings together. She wouldn’t move if the girls or Muriel did the waving and so we always had a little laugh at bed time.

When I was about twelve, I started to raise rabbits. I raised them for us to eat, and to sell to neighbors to eat. Mother could really cook those rabbits up good. It was lots of work because I had to keep the pens very clean and feed and water them all twice a day.

I bought one rabbit who was a pedigreed rabbit. That meant that I had papers on her telling all about her mother and father, her grandmother and granofabher etc. This was a mother rabbit and I would use her only to get more baby rabbits for me. I entered this rabbit in a County Fair and she received a olue ribbon wnich was a First Place Ribbon. I still have the ribbon and the pedigree.

Another Hobby – Yard Work

Many people think that keeping up a yard nicely is nothing but hard work. I agree that it is work, but it is also a good hobby. I didn’t mind taking care of my parent’s yard, and I have enjoyed keeping up my own yard. I am particular about how I mow my lawns and I don’t think they are finished until all the trimming and cleaning up of the old grass is complete.

My Dad gave me careful instructions on how to do a lawn job both on our own yard when I was growing up, but also on the lawns I did for others. For about two years we didn’t have a lawn mower and I had to keep our lawns cut with grass shearers. This was a slow process compared to the powered lawn mowers of today. It was even show compared to a mower powerer only by man power, but the Harding lawn could not look unkept, anymore than Mom’s houes could stand a grain of dust or one dirty dish, or a piece of clothing not hung up in the closet where it belonged.

I like to raise roses. They are a rewarding flower and make a large, bright corner or a lawn edge on any lot. For years, I had good luck with petunia’s and we always planted them in two spaces in the front of our house, and in a third space along our garage. Then for two different years the petunias would grow big healthy plants and leaves and bloom out and then one by one they would die. We though we had planted the same thing in the same place for too long and changed to geraniums, they died. We changed to chrysanthemums and they died. We finally had the soil analyzed and found it was a little spider mite that was in the soil. Now we are doing better.

I also like to keep my woodword around the outside of the house and my wood garage well painted. Every two or three years, I have had the shingles sprayed with creosote and oil and we have never had to have the shingles replaced.

Of course, a yard needs lots of sprinkling and that takes lots of time. As I get older and older, I will probably go along with what Muriel wants to do now – Install a watering system. I would rather do that than move away to an apartment because I felt I couldn’t do yard work.

My Married Years

On Christmas of 1940, I went to see my friends, Bonnie and Leonard Cockrell, “Merry Christmas.” They had a cute little boy about six months old and I stayed to watch him play with his new toys. Bonnie said that the four girls who baby sat with Gregg, lived right next door and they had asked her to call them before Gregg took his nap so that they could see his toys and him. She made the telephone call and soon four young ladies walked in, and Bonnie introduced them to me. They were the Christensen girls, Majel, Roma, Ardis, and Muriel. The girls didn’t stay very long, and when they had gone Leonard told me that the oldest one, Muriel was about my age and that she taught school in Cedar City. Since I was not yet married, I decided to see if I could date her for that night. I phone her and she accepted my date.

We dated during the holiday week and had fun skating at Vivian Park and seeing a show, in addition to visiting some of our relatives. On New Year’s Eve we double dates with my best friend, Blondie (Alton Peters). Blondie and I had done most of our dating together for years, but he now had a girl and they were going to be married.

We took the girls into Salt Lake City for the midnight show. After the show we went to eat and it was early New Years Day when we took the girls home. We had a nice time that night because Blondie and I didn’t have to worry about keeping the conversation going. The girls took care of that and since Blondie was as quiet a person as I that was a good thing.

My Dad was always teasing Blondie and me about how quiet we were and wondering how we ever managed to date girls. He had a joke he liked to tell about us two. According to him, he was riding with Blondie and me through the main street of Springville when we had to stop for a pretty girl to cross the street. Blondie said, with a whistle, “There’s a good looker!” Dad claims what all was quiet in the car until we turned the corner onto Third South in Provo, when I said, “Yup.”

Muriel had to return to Cedar City on New Year’s Day so that she could be in school on the second of January. We didn’t see each other until spring. I wanted to write to her, but I didn’t get brave enough to write her, and she wouldn’t take the first step either.

When Muriel came home in the spring, we began to date again. I wanted to ask her to marry me, but I knew I had to leave for the service. I had been drafted to serve in World War II. Everything was very uncertain. I didn’t know where I would be sent and there was the possibility that I might now return. I thought I would get a furlough after my basic training and decided that would be a better time to ask her to marry me. I didn’t get a furlough – not until I was in England about a year and a half later.

We carried on a correspondence from September until March of the next year when I wrote to her and asked her if she would marry me. It was an anxious time waiting for her answer, I couldn’t sleep at nights or concentrate on what I was doing during the day. I was very happy the answer came and she said that she would marry me when I got home. How I wished this time to go home would hurry up and come, but the time was a long, long way off.

I had sold my car when I left for the service, and I had signed up for war bonds to be deducted from my wages and mailed home so I had a savings account with Dad could draw from if he and Mother needed money while I was gone. I wrote and told Dad to contact Muriel and take her to a jeweler and have her pick out an engagement ring. When she had chosen the ring both Dad and the jeweler kissed her for me and we were engaged. It wasn’t very romantic for either of us and I sure wanted to be there in person to give the ring to her. These were unsettled times and many people had to do things differently than they would have done during peace times.

We wrote love letter from then on and I longed for the time when we could be together. Writing letters was not easy for me, but I guess I did pretty well. Muriel saved the letters and I cannot believe that I wrote that many. I haven’t written a letter since I got home. Muriel wrote long letters to me and I waited patiently and anxiously for each one. There was a time when we had a to be satisfied with V-Mail which was a very small piece of paper which would be opened and examined for anything which could give information to the enemy if it had fallen into their hands. The V-Mail was highly censored and it was annoying to know that someone else would be reading it.

I expected to be home for Christmas of 1945, but the ship I was coming home on got out to sea a few days and developed engine trouble so it had to turn around and go back to land to be repaired. We got almost back to France before we were me by a ship to help us out. We had lost so much time that I didn’t even make it for New Year’s Day. It was a big disappointment to me, but it was true to army life and I had long ago learned to accept disappointment.

My sister-in-law, Jesse, who lived in Salt Lake City, met Muriel who had come from Provo on the Orem and brought her to the train station to meet me. Dad and Mother would be waiting for Jesse to bring us back to American Ford. It was wonderful to see Jesse and Muriel. I was nearly home at last, after 3 1/2 years in the army. I was surely happy to be home with my sweet-heart and my family. Jesse took us to American Fork and the first thing I did after greeting my parents was to get into some civilian clothes. The war years were behind me.

Although we wanted to get married right away, we decided to wait until June. We needed some time to enjoy a courtship with person to person relations. I was lucky to have a job waiting for me at Bennett’s, but I needed to make a little money to add to my savings before we attempted to set up housekeeping. Muriel was teaching school and decided she couldn’t leave her students in the middle of the year. We set the date for June 5th.

My sister Edna had said that I could stay with her and Melvin, her husband and their four children. She lived in Provo not far from Muriel’s home and since I had no car, I could not come back and forth from American Fork each day. I went to work and Muriel returned to school. but we had nights to see each other and plan our future.

We were married in the Salt Lake Temple. Our Temple party included my parents, Muriel’s Mother and her three sisters with their husbands, Devoe, Rex, and Taylor, and her brother Lorimer and his wife Phyllis. Mother Christensen was so thrilled to be in the temple with all of her children present. My parents were thrilled that I was being married in the temple. I was the only one of their children to have a temple marriage.

… continued…

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