Oral History Program Carol Smith Interviewed by Alyssa Chaffee 30 August 2017 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Carol Smith Interviewed by Alyssa Chaffee 30 August 2017 Copyright © 2018 by Weber State University, Stewart Library iii Mission Statement The Oral History Program of the Stewart Library was created to preserve the institutional history of Weber State University and the Davis, Ogden and Weber County communities. By conducting carefully researched, recorded, and transcribed interviews, the Oral History Program creates archival oral histories intended for the widest possible use. Interviews are conducted with the goal of eliciting from each participant a full and accurate account of events. The interviews are transcribed, edited for accuracy and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewees (as available), who are encouraged to augment or correct their spoken words. The reviewed and corrected transcripts are indexed, printed, and bound with photographs and illustrative materials as available. The working files, original recording, and archival copies are housed in the University Archives. Project Description The World War II "All Out for Uncle Sam" oral history project contains interviews from veterans of the war, wives of soldiers, as well as individuals who were present during the war years. The interviews became the compelling background stories for the "All Out for Uncle Sam" exhibit. The project received funding from Utah Division of State History, Utah Humanities Council and Weber County RAMP. ____________________________________ Oral history is a method of collecting historical information through recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account. It reflects personal opinion offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable. ____________________________________ Rights Management This work is the property of the Weber State University, Stewart Library Oral History Program. It may be used freely by individuals for research, teaching and personal use as long as this statement of availability is included in the text. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Smith, Carol, an oral history by Alyssa Chaffee, 30 August 2017, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. Carol Smith 30 August 2017 1 Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with Carol Smith, conducted on August 30, 2017 in her home, by Alyssa Chaffee. Carol discusses her life and her memories involving World War II. Lorrie Rands, the video technician, is also present during this interview. AC: Today is August 30, 2017. We are in the home of Carol Smith, speaking about her life and experiences during World War II for our World War II in Northern Utah Project. My name is Alyssa Chaffey and I’m here with Lorrie Rands. So Carol, where and when were you born? CS: In Ogden, in 1936. AC: Okay, you would have been five years old when the war started? CS: I don’t even remember. Probably. AC: What are your earliest memories of World War II? CS: Well, my folks never talked too much about it because they didn’t want to get us all upset and have to go into a lot of detail talking about it. I know they would talk about it. But, if we walked in the room they’d be quiet because I was the oldest and my brother and sister were two and four years younger than me. But I would heard things and I remember that we couldn’t always get anything we wanted at the grocery store, because you were on rations. Everything was rationed, and I remember my mom sitting down writing a note of things that she really needed and she looked for and see if she could even get them. I think they had coupons or something, so you could get certain things. They were very frugal the way they used their ration book. 2 The things I remember about it mostly, I remember they were advertising and I don’t know whether it was in the paper or on the news, I don’t know how they ever heard about it. I didn’t know anything about it until all of a sudden my parents said there was a man and his wife was moving into the front bedroom for a little while. They came in and while they were here they just had the bedroom and we were not to go in the bedroom. My brother had been sleeping in there and all of the sudden he’s sleeping in the bedroom with me and my sister. It didn’t seem like they were there very long. I remember they were there for Thanksgiving because my folks invited them to dinner on Thanksgiving Day. Then we had some of our relatives come and they came and had dinner with us. They didn’t know how nice it was to not have restaurant food for a change. But, they didn’t ever impose themselves, unless my folks invited them, they just went out to dinner. They worked at Hill Field and I don’t know what they did but he used to play with us. It was in the summertime, and he used to play with us sometime outside when we was out there. They didn’t have any children, and I don’t even remember their names. They were still there the day the war ended. Right after that, I guess they got released from whatever job they were doing and went back to their original home. I don’t remember where that was. The house was on 24th street, 1440 was the address, and it was a red brick house. Right now it’s a professional building, it’s been turned into a doctor’s office or lawyer’s or something. I don’t pay any attention to it. But that’s where it was and I remember the war ending. The Catholic Church on 24th street, just above Washington, St. Joseph’s or something, all the bells ringing. People 3 blowing bugles, and I remember the trains—the honking of the horns, I remember that. They had cars going up and down the street honking their horns and people outdoors yelling and screaming. Everybody dancing in the streets, it’s a wonder people weren’t killed because you couldn’t even get up and down the streets hardly. But, it was in the middle of the day, I think when it had happened. I remember them giving out coupons that you could only buy certain things, because most everything went to the war effort. My dad worked for Del Monte foods, and he had started worked there up in Morgan, that’s where he’s from, doing sauerkraut. He didn’t mind living up there with his folks. After he met my mother, he had been on a mission and came back and he was quite a bit older than my mother. Not tons, but he was a little bit older than she was because he had been on a mission down to New Zealand and came back, and that was before the war had started. Anyway, the government had sent him paperwork so he could fill it out so he’d get drafted. When they found out that he was in the food industry he didn’t get drafted. He worked inside the plant and he’d go round to the farmers and make sure the crops were good. They grew tomatoes and peas. In the spring or early summer they’d do the peas and then in the fall they would do the tomatoes and canned them. Because he was in that kind of an industry he didn’t have to go into the service because they supplied the troops with a lot of food. My mom was grateful for that he had picked that, and he didn’t do it deliberately, he worked for them for years. I remember not being able to buy shoes when you needed them. You had to wear them till they had holes in the bottom or you absolutely couldn’t get into 4 them anymore, or there wasn’t anything left to wear. You got one pair of shoes every so often, and it wasn’t very often. Because of the war we couldn’t have everything. They never made a big deal or never made us feel uncomfortable or worry that maybe they’re going to come over and bomb us or something. They were just very laid back about it. I mean they knew it was there and I knew my mom and dad were both worried about all these people dying. Mom had a brother that was in the war in Europe, he was in France, and he had been behind enemy lines, but they had gone around and got behind them and in between them. He and some other fellows, it took them a long time to get out. He had bought my mom a doll because she was the youngest of the family. He bought her this doll in France. When he came back into Paris, he saw all these people gathered together and they were auctioning off anything that belonged to the soldiers who were in missing in action. He got there just as they were selling his stuff. He says, “That’s mine!” He had to fight to get it back and prove that he was who the name had said on the back. He said, “I want everything back in here including that doll you bought. That’s for my little sister and I want it back. You guys give them back their money.” That was just a miracle that he got back there when he did. After this he got sent home and it wasn’t very long after he got home, but one day, my uncle and his wife had taken their daughter down to my grandmothers to watch. They had also taken me and my brother, Dan. I don’t think my sister was even born—well she could have been born. She was born in 1940. She was a year old the day war was declared, on December the 8th. That 5 was her birthday. Anyway, this guy ran a stop sign, hit him broad side and killed him. He had only been home just a short time after the war. It wasn’t after the war, it was still during the war because this guy, if he would sign up and go into the service he would not have to go to prison because they were taking a lot of prisoners out of the prisons and sending them off to war. If he would sign up, sign the paper that he would go and not cause trouble, because he was kind of a trouble maker to start with, he would be freed when he came home. That’s what he did, he didn’t spend one day in jail or nothing. AC: That’s crazy. LR: I was going to ask you, what was your uncle’s name? AC: Benjamin, they called him Bennie Bingham. LR: What was your mother’s name? CS: Myrtle, Myrtle Bingham. My father was Wesley Crouch. He was born and raised in Morgan. Went to New Zealand just before the war for his mission, came back and met her. He said he had to wait for her to grow up. But as soon as he saw her he knew that’s who he wanted. She had Rheumatic Fever and they couldn’t get everything they needed in those days to take care of her because a lot of medications like penicillin was just becoming available. She had a hard time getting the medicine that she needed for her health problems. She’d get Rheumatic Fever all of the time, but after the war was over, and they were more available then she could start getting what she needed. AC: I wanted to ask, what school did you go to? 6 CS: For elementary, I went down on Madison, then I went to Central Junior High that was on 25th and Monroe and then went to Ogden High. AC: What are your memories of going to school during war time? Did they have the scrap metal drives? And the stamps? CS: Oh ya, it seems like to me there was always something going on. In the elementary schools, Ray Mentor used to be the drum man who would come around to every single one of the elementary schools and he had the drum corps. So the girls always got to learn how to twirl the batons, unless they knew how to play an instrument. The boys, if they had an instrument then they would be in the band. Every single elementary school had the band. I can’t even remember what they called them, Drum Corps I think. One night, every week, we’d have to meet after school and practice. Oh was it noisy in the school when all that noise would get going. If the weather was nice we’d be outside and walk up and down the street and cars would be tootin’ their horns, “Move over I’ve got to come through.” I remember there was always a gas shortage. My dad, at the time was still living up in Morgan but he had been transferred from Morgan down to Del Monte over on west 24th Street. They weren’t canning anything right then, well they did sauerkraut up there. Oh my word that stuff stunk when it was being processed. Finally, they closed that up and I don’t know where they moved that one, but they closed the Morgan one. He moved out there in the yard. He worked out at Del Monte until they finally retired. 7 AC: Was there a lot of talk between the kids in school about the war? Was that something you were all pretty well aware of? CS: I don’t think so, unless they had a parent or something that was in it. I don’t think so. I think they tried to keep the kids kind of not thinking about it all of the time. I mean we knew that it was going on, but we just didn’t dwell on it. If something happened, I’m sure we heard about it, because we had radios and my folks would turn on the radio and listen to the news all the time. When the war ended, man, every radio in town was on, getting all the news that they could. It was always in the newspaper, but we were young enough, and I don’t think I read the paper all that much because I was just a kid, I had other things that were more interesting. My folks didn’t dwell on it, they wouldn’t talk about it while we were having dinner or anything because they didn’t want to keep us all upset about it. They tried to make things as normal as they could. Our family just didn’t dwell a lot on it when we were around. AC: Okay. Did they have like black outs in Ogden where you had to black out curtains? CS: I don’t remember. I know every night when we went to go to bed we had blinds. We could have mission blinds back then. We had canvas blinds or whatever they are made with, but we used to have to pull our blinds down and a lot of homes had drapes too. I had a cousin who married a guard that was out there at the Prisoners Of War Camp out on second street or something. We never did go down there, but she was eighteen and he was just a little bit older than that. Her name was Shirley Arnold, and he was Tommy. They were married and then they 8 eventually bought a home out in Washington Terrace. My daughter lives out there too, but she’s in a newer development. She’s right behind the hospital. AC: Do you remember if your mom kept a victory garden at all? CS: Yes, we had a big garden. Well, we had a home that my parents had bought. Then my grandpa Bingham died, he had a grocery store that was down on Grant between 28th and 29th. The building is still there but they’ve added onto it and made something else out of it. He had this grocery store and he would save all the soup bones that he had and always left a little bit of meat on them and sometimes they wanted the grocery stores to always have really fresh vegetables. Sometimes his vegetables would get a little older because they didn’t have the refrigeration in the stores like they do now. He never charged all that much extra and the prices were a lot less than they are now. Anyhow, he would save these soup bones and maybe day-old vegetables and he would put them together. Put some carrots and potatoes, celery, some onions, and he would take them over to give to these families who didn’t have much. A lot of it was during the war time. He would say, “There’s enough here to make a great big pot of stew soup. There’s enough here for you guys to eat and keep your family healthy. If I get some more, come and check with me.” But he had several families and he’d mark their name off and put the next one in line, and he just rotated them like that, because he would only have enough for maybe two families that he might be able to handle every other day or every day. He kept a lot of families alive. If they only had fifty cents to give him—that was a lot of money. Fifty cents was like five dollars. If he had some milk that was 9 not sour yet, you know a couple of days and it might be, he would give them the milk and maybe he’d only charge them just a little bit so he could replace it. He said, “Once in a while they might get something besides soup. But not very often because that went the furthest.” AC: What’s your grandpa’s name? CS: Joseph Bingham. On 28th street, just below Washington there’s a German car shop. They’ve taken all of those homes out now, but there’s a little tiny grocery store, before that shop went in there, they tore the house down when they went in. But there was a little grocery store or something on the corner, then there was another house and then there was my grandparents’ home. But they both died when I was in the first grade, the war was going and they had several of their sons in the war. AC: Did any of your uncle’s take over the grocery store after your grandfather passed? CS: No. My mother used to go over and help them out a lot but she had kids. No, they just got rid of everything in there. They sold everything and then they put it up for sale and I don’t know whether it was the same people bought it then that’s got it now and added on this other building. LR: Do you remember the name of the grocery store? CS: Bingham’s Market. Back in those days, back in the early 1920’s, 1930’s, 1940’s on every other block was a grocery store. It would take in maybe three or four blocks below them or above them maybe, and that store took care of that group of homes and they always shopped in their grocery store. Another couple of 10 blocks down there was another one, but he ran his grocery store for a really long time. I remember when we were little kids, he had an old ice box. We had an electric refrigerator, but he had an old ice box that was out in this one little room. It was like a little porch but I think it was at one time one of his boys’ bedrooms. He had this old car and we thought it was so neat because up on the side of the backseat, there was these little glass vases and he would always but a flower in there when the girls got in. We would go down to Farr’s Ice Cream and get ice. At first we would get the ice and then we would go get an ice cream. We could only get a single one because that was his pride and joy, and we didn’t dare get one spot of ice cream in the back of his car. We had to be careful. Usually, it was just my dad and my grandpa but all my brother and sister and I we got to ride in the car. Once in a while my mom and my grandma would go too, but then it was crowded. The men got to sit up front and the women got to sit in the back to take care of the kids. AC: That is really cute. CS: But as far as the war goes, we knew it was going but they just didn’t talk battles and deaths that was going on. There were things in the newspaper but I was learning to read, and I didn’t get to read the headlines or anything like that because my parents said, “Well that’s scary, here I’ll give you this other part. You can read this part. So read the funny papers.” My dad loved Alley Oop. That was their entertainment at night was to read that. They never stopped printing that. They tried to keep it on the light side. AC: Was there anything special that your mom would do to help make ends meet? 11 CS: My grandmother used to make all of her clothes. But back in the early 1940’s, my grandfather died in December, and in the following month, in January my dad’s mother died. In February, on Valentine’s Day, my mother’s mother died. She had promised my folks if they would sell their home and move down with her, that when she died that house would be theirs. Unfortunately, she never had time to put it in writing. While we were at the funeral, her brother had sold the house, he knew what my grandmother had told my parents, but it wasn’t in writing and he didn’t have to honor it. He was an ornery son of a gun, I never did like him. We came back from the funeral, and my dad had walked in the front door and here these people were moving in the back door. A lot of our furniture was still in the house, all of my grandmother’s furniture was in the house because she had lived alone for one month and then she died the next month. They were all about the middle of the month when all three of them died. My dad’s father was still alive and he had a big home up in Morgan, but he was all by himself. He made the money, he didn’t do the housekeeping and he didn’t cook, so we moved up there for a little while. But with the gas rationing like it was, we couldn’t afford to live there. My dad came down and they finally bought another house, eventually, a few years later after the war was over and prices were going up. What you used to be able to buy for a few hundred is now a few thousand. To us it would sound great now, I mean you got a bargain if you could have bought it. The house was huge, and with my mother and her Rheumatic Fever that she would get every now and then, we couldn’t afford to stay there and have her cleaning. She was a perfectionist, and she had to get up there and 12 polish those wooden beams every other week. You could practically see your face in them, but she naturally got the Rheumatic Fever again, but that was part of my childhood. AC: So going back a bit, you mentioned that you couldn’t get shoes very often. CS: You couldn’t get hardly anything. You had coupons. If you had the coupons, you could get them and then your shoes goes to the next girl or the next boy or sometime you’re wearing your brother’s shoes. Oh my gad his feet stunk. I’m glad I had a sister and I was older than him. I haven’t thought of that I’ll have to call him up and remind him. I bet he’s forgotten about that. AC: So where you were the oldest, did you have to make your shoes last longer by putting cardboard in them? CS: No, we ended up with Oxfords a lot of times. You didn’t get dressy little shoes or anything. I remember those white heels, the white over the toes and a rug through the arch, they were brown. You remember hearing about them? LR: I’ve heard about them, yes. CS: I hated them things with a passion. Oh, I was so glad when they had girl shoes that weren’t high heels. I don’t ever remember putting cardboard in them, but that’s not saying I couldn’t have done. My mother was the youngest in the family, and her mother had taught her other daughters how to sew, but when my mom came along, she would always say, “Oh, let me make that. I could get it done so much faster than you can.” Even when she was a kid, you’d think that she would teach her how to sew, but she didn’t. It was always, “Let me do it, I can do it faster than you can do it.” So when I was just a little kid, she would try to make 13 me a dress and oh I hated them. They were so horrible, because she didn’t know what she was doing. She didn’t understand that she had never been taught. When I was about nine or ten years old, I started making my own clothes. They probably weren’t the very best, but I learned. I knew how to read a pattern for some dog reason, I just picked it up. I could just do it. This has nothing to do with war because it was over with by then. But I went to work at the IRS. I was just a seasonal, but I signed up to be a perm, and I got a permanent position the second year I was out there. About four years later I was a manager and I was there for twenty-five years. Then my husband was sick and he was dying, in fact he died on the 29th, back in 2010. Anyway, when I was in school, I would take sewing and the teacher would say, “What are you in here for? You know how to sew. Why don’t you take cooking?” I had two girlfriends that were in there and they said, “She cooks all the time at home.” I was a soda jerk when I was sixteen, that’s what I did. Did you guys every remember Howard’s drug over on 26th street? My dad would stop in there every once in a while if we had a prescription to get filled or something. He got talking the day I turned sixteen. He says, “You’re sixteen now, go down and find yourself a job.” I got a job through the school because I was taking some business classes and I was sixteen. This lady that was a business teacher knew my dad because she worked for him in the summer time at Del Monte. He called her and he says, “Do you ever get requests for people to go to work and can you get Carol a job?” I didn’t know he did this until after. I went and the next thing I knew, I had a job. It didn’t last very long, and it was absolutely boring. 14 They would collect old magazines, tear off the front page of a magazine and throw the rest of it away. All they needed was the front page, the outside page of it, to count how many were returned. They didn’t want all that weight, because they would reimburse the government stores for how many they had left over. Well, they had that and then they had to add them up and they would give me all of these things. They would count how many they had and put a note on it. So there was several pieces of paper, and they’d have all of the different stores, how many and how much they had to pay them back. This lady says, “I’ve been doing this but maybe you could do it.” Well, I had learned how to use a calculator and I was fast at it. I had it done in half an hour, then there was nothing more for me to do except go out there and tear more pages off. I said, “I need a job that I can get some good money out of and not work for a half an hour and walking down there and then having to walk home to save a dime, because you didn’t get much in those days. I remember I got twenty-five or fifty cents an hour. Finally, I said, “To heck with that.” The next day, my dad had come home and he said, “Well, you get another job and I hope you can hang on to this one.” I said, “I didn’t get fired, Dad. I quit.” “Well, I get you a job and you’re not appreciative of it.” I says, “Whatever, Forget it,” because I was expected to stay there. I ended up working in a drug store, and I worked there even after I got married and was expecting my first baby. When she was born I said, “That’s it. Bye.” I didn’t go back. Once in a while they called and asked me, “Can you please come over and help out for a little while?” I did, but that was it. LR: I was wondering, would you ever go see movies during war time? 15 CS: Yes. LR: When they did the news reels, would your parents let you watch the news reels, and if so what was that like watching those? CS: Yes, and I guess it kept us up and let us know a little bit of what was going on. The news reels didn’t get into the real gruesome stuff. It was a quarter for the adults to go in, and we could go down the Utah Noodle Parlor, do you remember that? LR: No, I’ve just done a lot of research on it and I do know what you are talking about. CS: I remember first we would start just eating off of my mom’s plate. Then all of a sudden I was old enough and I had to split a plate with my brother. Then pretty soon when my sister came along, she would eat a little bit off of my mom’s plate. Then, “Carol’s getting a little older she can have her own plate because she can eat more.” Richard and Sharlene, they got to share a plate. They’d get an extra plate and split it in half between the two of them. When he was getting a little older he got his own plate of it. Then when my sister was coming up in the line she got hers. By that time my dad says, “You guys are old enough to go to the show by yourself,” but he loved to go down to the Paramount because we would have the second feature first. Tom Mix or Gene Autry or Roy Rodgers, that was always the first one on and that’s what he enjoyed going to see. It was only ten cents for kids to get into the movies, and a sack of popcorn to split between all of them that was our night out, until my husband and I started to go out dating. 16 I met him when I was fourteen. He wanted to go steady, then I turned fifteen and still he wanted to go steady and I says, “No. Too young.” He was only a year older than me. I’d go out with somebody else and turn around and there he is sitting maybe two rows behind me. He was always there, except he never had a car. Sometimes he got his boyfriend and they’d go sit in their car across the street from me and sit there until we got there. I’d get out of that car and go over, “Get your butt out of here. Stop following me around.” There was two guys and I had a girlfriend and we would go out with these guys but we’d trade back and forth. This way, I’d go out with Jimmy and this time she went with Jim and I went with Lee. It was just every other time we would go with the other one. They both went to Weber High, and they were seniors that year. Lee was a foster kid and the people that he lived with didn’t care about what he did as long as he got paid by the city. He could run away, come back long enough for them to see him and that was that. He started running around with this kid named Jim, he’d go to Jim’s house and have a decent meal. They loved to come up to my mother’s house on Sunday evening. You could bet that they were going to be there, because my mom would always make them a sandwich and she’d always give a piece of cake or pie. They loved my mother’s cakes. They always say, “Oh, I hope your mom made that good cake with that yummy frosting.” She would invite them in and give them that. As soon as they would get through, they might sit there and watch T.V., Bonanza or something, and then off they go. 17 As soon as they graduated that year, they told me and Pat goodbye a couple of days before. They were home packing their bags putting them in the back of their car, went to graduation and took off, they wanted to go to Washington state and get a job. I don’t know what happened to them, I guess they did. I never heard from them again after that, but we were just good friends. But, they liked to go to the school dances so that’s where we would go. Back to my husband, he’d follow me around, but he wouldn’t go to the dances because he didn’t know how to dance. He’d never been taught how. He had a scruff father who was an alcoholic and he’d beat those kids to death constantly. His half-brother, when he was sixteen years old he went into the Korean War. He was right up there on the 38th parallel and the guys that were with him knew how old he was. But they never told anybody that he was just barely seventeen. His birthday was on Christmas Day. He had never had a birthday cake in his life, because they’d always have all of the Christmas things but never had a cake for him. I made him a cake one time before Norm and I was ever married. When Norm came and got me, by then he had a car, we went down to his house and I asked him, “Is Bill home?” “Ya, he’s there.” “Let’s go down to your house, I made him a birthday cake.” We drove down there and I walked in with this cake and he had been in the service and he came back because he was so young. They let him out earlier when they found out how old he was because he had a nervous breakdown being on the 38th parallel with all of these Koreans shooting at him. They didn’t have bullets in their guns and they killed all of the guys but those guys kept him safe. They put him right up the front 18 where they could see him—you know, right across the front where they had to pretend where they were shooting. These guys died all around him and he was there for about a week before they could finally get in and get all of these bodies out. They found him and it really had done a number on him by then. AC: What is your husband’s name? CS: Norm. That’s him over there. It’s Norman, but he hated that, so we just called him Norm. AC: When did he ask you to marry him? CS: Oh probably when I was fifteen. I was in the 11th grade and he asked me. We went out to pick my ring out, but I got it for Christmas. My dad was so mad. He wasn’t active in church but he was a good honest guy. He loved me. His mother and grandpa and grandma, they were born and raised in England and they never came to the United States until they had three little boys and then they came over to the United States and ended up here. They lived in a coal mine town in England and when those boys were in the third grade, the guys that owned the coal mines would come and take all the third grade boys out. They were through with school, there was no need for them to go to school because that’s all they were going to do was work in the coal mines. He never had a chance. They’d pay him a little bit but hardly anything. Then as he got older and he got married and they had three little boys, and he says, “We’re getting out of here before they pull these boys out of this school and put them in the coal mine. I want to go to Utah.” He had enough money for him to go. The boys weren’t quite old enough yet to go into the mines. He ended up in Canada somewhere along the coast—in 19 another coal mine area. He went to work in there and he practically starved to death trying to get together enough money to send over to his wife to pay the passage across the ocean. Finally, they got here and he would get anything he could find in any town just to give him enough money to come over. That’s what he did until they made it down here to Utah. They went down through the coast and came across into Wyoming and down into Utah. He never had any education to speak of, he had to take whatever job he could find. Most of it was janitorial type things. A lot of times he would have to take the kids to help him with it. Do you remember when Boyle’s used to be on Washington? LR: No, but I know where it was. CS: Well Walnut Shade was there first. That’s where he had a job in there for a long time. Sometimes when the kids were little and up to about fifteen, sixteen years old, he’d take the kids and his wife so they could get done faster. Never did own his own home. AC: So what day were you married? CS: December 4, 1954. AC: Was that after you guys were in high school then? CS: Oh ya, I graduated in June of that year. But you know what was funny? My dad, years later, they were waiting to get their visa to go on a second mission. Are either of you LDS? AC: I am. CS: Well, my dad had been to New Zealand on his first mission and he absolutely loved it. His doctor happened to be a Stake President. He knew my dad’s health 20 wasn’t all that great. He says, “I don’t care where you go. I know you want to go to New Zealand, and you may go there or you may not. I am going to tell them that when you go on your mission, you are not to go to a hard working mission.” When he got their mission call it was to the Utah Indian mission. What the letter said, “Would you please send your trucks, your vehicles, any farming equipment you can come up that you have. We can’t give them back to you, the Indian people need the things that you have.” My dad looked at that and he laughed and says to my mom, “Well, maybe we take our shovel. I’ve got a couple of shovels out in the garage. I don’t think they need the snow shovel, do you? I got a couple of rakes and a couple of hoes.” She just laughed. He called his doctor, who is the stake president at the same time, “I got the mission call, and you’ll never guess where we are supposed to be going.” “Where?” “Oh, down to the Navajo Indian Mission.” He says, “Don’t those people even ever read the letters that go with these things?” I think sometimes they just go enie-meenie-minie-mow this is where you’re going today. “You’re not going there. I can guarantee ya. So put all of your farm equipment away.” They just laughed because they knew he didn’t have a dang thing there to take. They lived on 26th street just above Fillmore in Ogden. Anyway, they went back to New Zealand for a regular mission, almost to the same area that he was there before. My dad died and my mother was alone for quite a while. But after she passed away, my brother and sister and I, we went down to New Zealand. We were gone for three weeks and we saw more land than they ever did because when you’re a 21 missionary you just cannot go. You go home and get released and go back if you want to see something extra. AC: I have one more question for you and then we have to head off to another interview. I wanted to know, how do you feel that your experiences during the war time affected you throughout the rest of your life? CS: I don’t think it affected me too much, because they tried to keep us busy and they didn’t talk a lot about it. I know they talked about it, but my dad if he got wound up about something like that my mother would say, “Just get in the car, and go down some place.” My folks never had cokes just sitting around in their refrigerator. So they’d get a drink and go sit down on Washington and watch the people walk back and forth,” because that’s when we had a town and what we got now, is not a town. LR: Not like it was. AC: Thank you so much again for your interview, it was perfect.