Robert Lynn Putnam

(Personal History – 1930 to 1950)
(Recorded on cassette tapes – found after his death. Transcribed by Donna L. Putnam)

I was born August 22, 1930, on Girard Avenue – that’s behind the old Onequa School. I was born in that home. I was not born in the hospital. Later, my parents moved to Marion Street between Second and Third North, and later they moved to 582 Oakley Street in Salt Lake City, where I remember all my childhood days. I don’t remember living on Marion Street.

Our house was one of the last homes out on the west side of Salt Lake City, other than a group of homes we used to call Shanty Town, which would have been approximately five or six blocks north and west of our place. There were two or three other homes north of our home, but we were primarily one of the last homes out on the West Side. We didn’t have [paved] streets – the main ones were not paved – Oakley Street wasn’t paved; it was a gravel road. Every year the Street Department came down and leveled [it] off to get the pot holes out, and the sprinkling wagon would come down behind and keep the dust down. When we were little kids, we’d run out behind the sprinkling wagon for a shower bath, [running] behind them down the road.

Home on the Range

There were so many weeds and not much vegetation out in that area. There was a sidewalk, but the road, as I said, was not paved. There were no homes on either side of our home or even behind us. At the time, we had vacant fields, so as we went to elementary school at Onequa School, we could cut right through the field on an angle to Onequa School. We didn’t even have trees. I remember at one time my father went and bought about a half dozen trees, and we found out later the ones he got were Chinese elms. In those days I guess he even had to pay to get him a Chinese elm.

We raised rabbits and chickens. We always had a cow. As we were growing up a little older, Ralph always was the one to milk the cow. We had different farm animals. We had a barn and a chicken coop, so we raised our own chickens. My father would buy spring chickens early in the spring, and then after a few months we would butcher them, and we would put them up to Utah Ice and Storage on approximately Second South and about Third West. There was a storage place where we used to keep our frozen foods when we would butcher our beef or our chickens or whatever we had. We’d keep them in the cold storage in the lockers. We didn’t have a fridge in the beginning. I remember an ice box. We’d get ice every so often, so we could keep what food we had in an ice box on the back porch.

My father was a salesman on the road, so he was gone a lot of the time. At that time, he worked for Ostler Candy Company, and he had a truck that went to a van – or what you would call a van now – but it was a small one. I remember when we used to go visiting relatives. All the boys would always sit in the back. And, of course, boys being boys, and my father having all kinds of candy and all day suckers and everything, we were always into this candy. I imagine a lot of times he’d get upset because he’d go to sell his candy and find that his boys had eaten part of them. So we’d be sitting on a box of candy and helping ourselves at times when we were on our way to visit relatives or different places we’d go.

My grandparents on both sides lived fairly close to us. My grandpa, David Newman, owned a grocery store over on the old Tenth West and about Third North. His original store right across the street from the Onequa School burned down, and a lot of the lumber was used, I noticed, in some garages around that area. He later worked in a store about a block or half block south and had an old building which I assume is still there. In those days there were a lot of “mom and pop” grocery stores around. There was a Hansen grocery store just up the street from Dave Newman’s store on Third North, and then there was the Davis’s down on Redwood Road and about Fourth North. So there were a lot of little grocery stores around the area; there were no super markets at that time.

Taking Care of the Cow

Having a cow, we always had to stake it in the different fields around our neighborhood because there were few other homes around, and so every day we would have to change the cow two or three times. I guess growing up the frustrating part was that the cow was always getting into different weeds. So when we milked the cow – and we had milk all the time – the milk to me always tasted sour. But I imagine it was between the weeds and then not having refrigeration. As we always had an ice box, the milk really wasn’t as cold as it could have been. So it was kind of hard to drink this raw milk that we had all the time. We made our own butter and had our own cream.

And the folks would dry corn. I remember them hanging sacks of corn on the back porch. This was where the four boys slept before Paul was born – on the back porch. We didn’t have windows in that area. I remember sleeping out there all winter, too. We had screens, but I remember how the wind and snow would blow in, and you’d have snow on the bottom of your bed. I remember in the winter time we had bunk beds where two to a bunk would sleep together. My mother would heat up some irons and wrap them in cloth, and we’d put them on the bottom of our beds before we would go to bed so we could keep our feet warm when we got to bed. And then during the night we would keep warm together. I remember sometimes, not always, but sometimes in the winter, when we’d wake up in the morning our eyes would stick shut. So our mother would have to use Boric Acid to clean our eyes so we could open them up because they were stuck together in the morning.

We didn’t have an electric stove. We had a coal stove in the living room and also a cooking stove in the kitchen area where my mother did all of the cooking. Our home was heated by the stove in the front room and also the stove in the kitchen. And I remember them using it. We used wood and coal, and that was part of the chores. I guess part of the things my mother always did was keep this fire burning in the winter time so we could keep warm.

Visiting Family – Attacked by Dog – Chicken Coop on Fire

My Aunt Mattie lived over with my grandparents, Savannah Putnam and my grandmother. They lived on the old Twelfth West about Sixth North – the old Sixth North. There were no homes between our home and theirs, and we’d cut right through the field to their home when we used to go and visit them.

My grandmother [was Ane Marie Josephine Hemmert Nielson Putnam]. I always had seen two pictures on the wall, and I really didn’t understand when I was younger that my grandfather was a polygamist and had two wives, because I never knew the one wife, because she had died before I really was old enough to understand or know her. So I only saw my grandmother and my grandfather. My grandfather raised pigs and chickens. Once in awhile he would take some of us up to the old Jackson Junior High. After they had cut the lawns up there, he’d take the grass and bring it back down to his chickens. And he’d taken me a few times with him to do that.

He had a great big German Shepherd dog, and I remember petting him one time when we were over at his home. And then, the next thing I knew was that they were taking me to the hospital. Apparently something happened where he got excited and grabbed me by the back of the head and held onto me. To this day, I’ve got great big teeth marks on the back of my head, scars from where this German Shepherd grabbed me and held me down by having hold of my head and neck. I understand how later the next day my grandfather went out and shot the dog because he wouldn’t have a dog that was going to attack any of the kids.

My grandfather had pigs and chickens, as I mentioned. I remember one time when we were young, not too old, where we heard the fire engines, and looked out and we could see smoke rising up over by my grandfather’s place. And we ran through the field up there, and we thought that all the pigs were going to get burned up. And apparently there was just one chicken coop on fire and it wasn’t even around the pigs and that. But of course being helpful and all, we thought the pigs were going to get burned. And so we ran and opened the doors and let all the pigs out, and the pigs were running all over the place, and it created a worse problem than if we had left them in their building. But being young, we thought maybe they might get burned up, but the fire wasn’t even around there.

We went over there and visited them quite a few times. My folks would get in the car and drive around, and we had a dog by the name of Snooks, and we had him my whole life. I guess he lived to be about twenty-one years old, and he died when I was on my mission. But I remember a lot of times he’d see us get in the car and take off, and he’d head off through the field towards my grandparents’ home because he figured we were going to go over that way. But sometimes he’d see us going the other way, and he’d get part way and then turn around and look and see that we’re not going that way and he’d go back home. He never was penned up. He always scrounged for himself. We fed him and he took care of himself, and it seemed like he was awfully independent all of his life. He was one dog that never had a collar or a chain on him, ever. He always ran loose all the twenty-one years that we had him.

Deer Hunting – Digging Basement by Hand – Father’s Jobs

My father was born up in Woodruff, Utah. I remember every year he would always go hunting with his brothers, Uncle Joe and some of the other families. He always seemed to bring a deer home every year. He had all the equipment and we always butchered our own deer. We had deer meat during the winter. Also, he seemed to always have raised a beef and we always had a beef, too, and then chickens, and out of our garden. So a lot of the food and that we ate was milk and items that we raised on our own yard on the west side.

Growing up living on Oakley Street, at the back door we had a kind of like a root cellar underneath the home, just a little teeny square down there that we keep the potatoes and that in it. But my father decided that we were going to make a full basement out of the place, and of course instead of going straight down, kind of have a shelf so that the foundation wouldn’t fall down. But my father had the boys digging that out. It seems like we worked years on it, and I don’t know how much we really pulled out. But I remember we had boards going down in there, and we had our wagons, and every night we’d came home from school, or it seemed like every night, but I’m sure it wasn’t. But many, many times we were loading up the wagon full of dirt and hauling it out and then taking and dumping it in the field next to our place. But I know that we raised the level of the lot to the south of us on Oakley Street about another couple of feet high because we’d had dirt piled all over there from that basement. While we were living there we didn’t quite get it all out. My father had hired another person or two to go in and dig and haul it out, but it was all done by hand. Didn’t have any machinery to do anything. But I understand to this day they did get the basement all dug out, kind of like a shelf basement down there.

Sometimes we were able to go with my parents when my father would go on his trips. He’d always – being on the road – he worked, like I said, for Ostler Candy Company, and then he worked for Brown and Bigelow Advertising Company and then Shaw Barton, and so he was calling on customers in Utah and Idaho and Wyoming to sell them advertising. I know he’d taken us sometimes up to Bear Lake country and other areas. And when we were up that way, we’d be with some of our relatives. I remember one time – I forgot the little town we were in – some town up in Idaho and upper Utah, that we were visiting relatives, and I remember we were out playing in the gutter, but they had fresh running water coming down from the creeks and that. It’s not like a lot of other gutters – it was fresh water – and there was this little trout, we saw a little trout in there. So we all tried to catch that trout, and finally I caught that trout and took it back to where my parents were, and they cooked it up for breakfast, but as I remember my mother got to eat the trout. I don’t remember me getting any of that trout. But I remember they cooked it for a breakfast there anyway, a little trout I’d caught in the stream or in the gutter – I guess it was called a stream or a gutter.

We used to go to Woodruff a lot, and my father would visit his brother, Joe Putnam, and their family. But Aunt Gertie and Uncle Joe had the little cabin there right on the corner coming down from Monte Cristo right into Woodruff. And for years they were the Postmaster, and so, out of their home, that’s where people would come to get their mail. And they actually, it was their little original postoffice right there in Woodruff, Utah. I remember at times we would go up the canyon up by their property where Uncle Joe used to have timothy hay they used to raise for the winter. Anyway, at times we would go up there cottontail shooting. Many a times we’d go rabbit shooting and bring back cottontails. We’d always get some and have them for breakfast or take some home for meals.

Daily Chores – All Work and No Fun – Polio

At home we had turns – each one of the boys had certain days we’d have to stake the cow out. That means before we’d go to school we’d have to put the cow out and put her on a stake. And she had about a, oh, fifty foot chain, and when we’d come home for lunch, then we’d have to move the stake again, and then when we came back home at night again we’d have to move her again. And then, of course, I think Ralph did most of the milking when we would bring the cow in at night. But that’s what she ate during the day was the grasses and whatever she ate during the day, and then we’d have to take buckets of water for her to drink all the time, so it was quite a chore to keep her with water and feed.

The cows we seemed to always have were Jerseys. They’re a smaller cow but of course they were strong enough. I remember many a time the cow didn’t want to go, and we’d want to pull it, and boy, she’d drag us through the fields and whenever she wanted to go somewhere else. And being little kids, why, we didn’t have much control over her at all, so many a time when she was bull headed she would go where she wanted to go and just drag us with her. That was frustrating a lot of times, because I remember a lot of times we would have to run home during lunch hours to move the cow, stake it out, and then we’d have some sandwiches. My mother seemed to always – we always seemed to have had our bread – sometimes she’d make it – but we’d go to the Dunlop Bakery and buy five loaves at a time – my father would get it at five cents a loaf. I remember him paying twenty-five cents for the five loaves of bread. And then we’d have to move the cow. And I remember many a time the kids would go back to play in the yard at school, and we never seemed to have time to get out back and play some of the games with them, because we were piddling around with the cow, or having to do something at home, so we never could quite get out and play with the kids.

A lot of times at night our folks would have us digging that basement out, and the other kids were out playing, and yet we had to dig the basement. I don’t know how often it was, but it sure seemed like a lot of times, and it was kind of frustrating where we were digging basements when the other kids were out playing.

I remember sometime when I was nine years old, I was out tending the cow out in the field, and I got real deathly sick, and I remember crawling and coming home. I was real, real, real sick and couldn’t even hardly get home. And my folks – my mother – had taken me – my folks took me to the hospital, and apparently Dr. Openshaw said I had had appendicitis, and so he operated on me for appendicitis. They took me to the LDS Hospital. And I remember being in the hospital for a few days, and the different nurses would be yelling at me, and I meant yelling and complaining because I wouldn’t move. I’m supposed to move after the operations and turn over and do this and that, and I couldn’t do it. And they used to call me a baby and a big boob, and in those days I thought, man when I get older, am I going to come back and tell these nurses off, because they used to complain and moan at me because I couldn’t move.

Well, after my operation – a week or two after, I imagine about a couple of weeks – they had me back home, and I still couldn’t move, and Dr. Openshaw had told my parents that I’d had polio. At that time they took me up to the Primary Children’s Hospital, the old original one that was across the street from the Temple grounds on North Temple, and the head nurse at that time there that ran the place was called Mama Rose, or Miss Rosenkild. But I remember when they put me in the hospital. After I was there awhile they decided that I had to have these casts put on me because, polio victims, they wanted to make sure that my muscles and that wouldn’t shrink, so whatever ideas they had, so on my right leg they put a cast up to my hip and then my left leg they put the cast up to my knee, so I had two casts on. And I remember laying in bed there for I don’t know how long – it seemed like months – but I just don’t remember how long it was.

But I remember at night – in those days in the summer time they didn’t have air conditioning that they have now. And I remember my legs itching and so hot and so miserable and that that I couldn’t do anything about it because I had these lousy casts on my legs, and I couldn’t scratch, couldn’t do anything about it. I guess unto this day now I have claustrophobia to the point if anybody ever tried to put a cast on me again I think it’s going to be an awful miserable thing. So I have a real feeling about it. If I ever broke a leg or anything again I don’t know what I’d do.

But anyway, I stayed in the hospital for I don’t know how many months. It seemed like many, many months that I lived in the hospital. After I had these casts on for quite awhile, then apparently they decided to take them off and someone gave somebody the proper attitude or ideas, because that was the days when this Sister Kinney treatment was just coming about. So apparently they took the casts off, and they apparently got in a new, big tank, and they started to work with the polio victims with water massage and exercise and that, rather than these casts. And so it was an unusual thing to go through that experience.

And then I remember when my folks took me home for awhile and my mother tried to teach me to walk again. And I remember I was home for I don’t know how long, and she used to put chairs up and the old sewing machine and everything so I could learn to walk again, and I would try to walk between all these appliances and that. I remember during this time they didn’t want me out playing, at least I couldn’t go out and play with all the boys. And so they had a lot of the girls in the neighborhood would have, oh, some kind of sewing parties and that so they would come over to our house, and I would learn to do some kind of macrame or knitting or something I wasn’t learning how to do. And they’d have the girls come over and they would do that, too. And so, some of the girls that came there, I remember, I think Jane Steenblik was one and LaMarr Trumbo, and I think Carolyn Steenblik would come. There were different ones that came at that time.

I remember at that same time, Carol Trumbo and I had gotten polio about the same week, and she had had it in one leg. I had it in both legs and my back, apparently.

Polio Treatments – Schooling – Sibling Rivalry – Frightening Vision

It seems like after I was home for a few months or a year, I don’t recall the time, they sent me back to the Primary Children’s Hospital again and put me in. And that way I had different treatments in that they were working with me on exercise. And that’s when I went to Lafayette School and knew Don Lee real well. That way, I lived right with him in the Primary Children’s Hospital. We’d go to school to Lafayette School and then come back. And before that, when I went in the first time, they used to have school right in the hospital. In one side of the hospital they’d wheel all the beds over, and they’d have teachers come in, and we’d have school so many hours a day the first time I was in there.

I remember they had a big porch on the east side of the hospital, and on one end of it is where Mama Rose and Don Lee lived. Don Lee apparently came to the hospital when he was a wee baby. He had crawled in a fire, and no one caught him, and he’d lost both of his legs because they got burned so badly they had to amputate both his legs to the knees. And I don’t know what the story was that his parents never did keep him, but Miss Rosenkild, or Mama Rose, adopted him. So he lived right in the hospital with her, and they lived at one end of the back porch there. It was their own kind of apartment and he lived there. And then there was another gal that lived with them, too, that was in the hospital as a patient once, called Rose, Roseanne, I think, or no, Jo, her name was JoAnne I think; I can’t remember. They lived at one end. But the south side of the big porch, someone had come in and built a roll away roof. So in the summer time when we wanted some fresh air they would take the great big roof and roll it back, and we could go out on the porch and get sun and fresh air. And that was real exciting sometimes to be able to get out on that porch and be able to get out in the fresh air in the sun.

When I went back home the first time, before I went back in the hospital, I remember they used to tell me I had to wear the casts all the time at night. So they had these casts split so I could have straps on them, so at night when I’d go to bed I’d have to put these casts on. I remember a lot of times, of course boys would be boys, my brothers and I would always have some kind of squabbles or fights. And I remember many a time that they’d get after me, and I would use those casts. I could kick at them, and they didn’t want to get around me very much because I would swipe them with a cast.

It was during this time, I remember one time I got real, real sick, and maybe that’s when they put me back in the hospital again. I don’t know where I was, but I was so sick and yet I know I wasn’t unconscious, and I remember standing up in the bed in the bedroom there on Oakley Street. I know my father was there and my mother, and that was the time that I saw all these personages that came into the room. And to this day, as I remember, there’s a difference between seeing things when you are dreaming and seeing things when you are right there in the middle of broad daylight. And I remember holding onto my father, and I had my mouth open some way to try to do something, I don’t remember what it was, but I looked around me, and all these myriads of people, and some of them weren’t so happy, and they were all around me, and the whole room was full of these other people. But I remember how sick I was. I actually wasn’t laying down in bed at all, I was standing up trying to hold onto my dad, and it was in their bedroom. And as I talk about it now, there I can see all these different people. There were many, many, many, many different people all over the place. True. It wasn’t a dream, it was real!

I remember after I had gone back to the Primary Children’s Hospital the second time and lived there for months – because it seems like to me – I tell everybody I was there for a couple of years, and I could have been off and on. I don’t know exact months. I guess there’s records that they could tell really how long I was there. I know I was there for many months. I remember my folks would come in on Sundays to visit. I remember how homesick I was, especially the first time I was there, and how they’d let me call home and they found out every time I’d call home I was crying, so they wouldn’t let me call home anymore. And I remember my parents coming up and visiting me on Sundays.

I went to Lafayette School. The nurses used to help me on my homework. And I remember at that time that I was in the top of my class in the spelling, arithmetic, and everything, so I think what it really was, as I look back now, I guess I really wasn’t that dumb. And a lot of times I think a lot of people are smarter than me, but I think that if I applied myself I could do anything I wanted to do.

When I came back out of the hospital I know of a problem trying to walk and do things again. I never could quite run again. I remember when I was younger I thought I could do anything any of the other boys could do, but I couldn’t run like the others, and I couldn’t jump like the others. You know, it was a little harder to do everything. But as soon as someone told me I couldn’t do something, then I’m going to do it one way or the other. I remember my Grandpa Newman came a lot of times and said, “Now you can’t do anything in your life, the strenuous things, and you’re going to have to get your schooling in, so you’re going to have to do book work and things like that.” I thought to myself, no way!

The Cat’s Meow – Summertime in Idaho – Aunt Mattie

At this time my folks had a chance to get the old home over on Twelfth West. It used to be called, the Wings used to own it, I think the name was, and my father apparently had the chance to get it for about thirty-five hundred dollars, as I remember. And he bought this big home. Boy, we thought that was really the cat’s meow, I’ll tell you. And a lot of my boyfriends, the Johnson’s that lived down there – as a matter of fact, at this time my grandparents had died on the Putnam’s. I know my grandfather died when he was seventy-nine and my grandmother moved up with Aunt Mattie. Aunt Mattie used to live with them and then she used to walk up to Beehive Clothing Mills and used to work up there on about Second North and about Third North, Second North, Third West, and she used to walk there and back every day to work. I remember she used to come by our house when we were still in bed sometimes on her way to work.

But anyway, she was about forty-five before she got married. She married Parley Willey up in Idaho. I remember the story she always used to say that, boy, she was born and raised on a farm all her life and no way she was going to marry any old farmer. But as we found out, she was about forty-five, and Uncle Parley’s wife had died, and apparently he had met her, and they got married, and she moved up to Aberdeen, Idaho, and they lived on this farm. In the summer times we used to go up there when we were, oh, I remember Steve and I at times between fourteen, fifteen years old, and sixteen years old. We used to go up there in the summer times and work on her farm, where we’d go out and get the cows and we’d milk the cows. We’d work in the gardens, in the fall times we’d buck some potatoes, and so we learned how to do a lot of things which to this day was good experience, because we learned how to do some of those things that I think are important.

I know another family up there, the Griffins who lived up in Sterling, Idaho, are close friends to Uncle Parley and Aunt Mattie, and we used to go over and go to church in Sterling, Idaho. Steve and I used to play with Gary Grimmett and became real close friends with them, the Grimmetts. I know Joyce Grimmett was a little older, well not much older, about the same age as us, and I remember Ralph had gone out with her a few times, and then Steve and I always played with Gary, and we used to do things together while we were up on the farm.

Boy, a lot of times we worked hard on the farm, but I’ll tell you one thing that was real exciting is that one thing about it, they ate good. We’d get up early in the morning, go out and get the cows, and bring them in and milk them, and then feed the chickens and do the other chores and that that were around the farm. Then we’d come in and eat breakfast, and what they had for breakfast! Aunt Mattie would have cereal, and then she’d have ham and eggs or bacon, and then she’d have the toast and all kinds of things, anything for breakfast, and it was a big breakfast.

We’d go out and work in the garden or out in the fields or things we had to do that day and then come back, and then they had a great big dinner, and their big dinners were big dinners. We had like your mashed potatoes and gravy, and that dinner, that’s around noon or one o’clock. And they had all the trimmings, everything you wanted to eat, and that’s a big dinner. And then after dinner Uncle Parley and Aunt Mattie would go in and they’d have an hour nap, and I thought, “Man, why do they want to do that for all the time? That’s wasting your time.” But as you get older, you know why they went in for a nap, I’ll tell you. And then after their naps they’d get out and they’d work hard in the fields again, and then later after that it was time to bring the cows back in, and you would bring the cows in and milk them again. And then for their supper, very light supper, either some leftovers from lunch, or bread and milk. And that’s what they had for their supper. Their big meal was a breakfast and lunch and then their light meal was at supper. But I learned a lot from them, in the way they ate and the way they did things. They were a hard-working people.

I remember one summer I was up there alone, and a cousin of mine and my Uncle Tom were on their way to Mackie, Idaho, and were going to go fishing and wanted to know if I’d go with them for two or three days, and my Aunt Mattie and Uncle Parley let me go. But I remember going up there and to go fishing up in the little streams up around the panhandle of Idaho and up around Mackie, and I’ll tell you I’ve never seen fish like that in my life. I got so tired of catching fish that I’d even hang the hook above the water and watch the fish try to jump out after the bait. The fish weren’t very big but there were oh so many brook trout and other trouts, just eons of them and just thousands of them, and we had all the fish we wanted to catch. But they had me up there for two or three days fishing in the panhandle, and then I came back to my Aunt Mattie’s and Uncle Parley’s again. And that was quite an experience.

New Home – Father in Politics – Troop 57 – Route 36

We moved into the big home on 567 North Twelfth West, which is now Thirteenth West because the hundred numbers changed in the state [city] here. We thought that was really going to be something. We had additional three and a half bedrooms upstairs that we each had a chance to have our own bedroom, or at least two of us into a bedroom, from what we had before. And it was just like we were really something. I remember our boyfriends really thought we were really the millionaires. My folks had had the property to the north of that, and my father had built a lot of lawns and gardens, and it was quite nice. He had the place built up quite nice. At that time I think my father was selling for Shaw Barton or Brown and Bigelow. And it was during that time, also, that he was active in politics, and he knew a lot of the people around in politics. He knew a lot of our General Authorities.

We had a central furnace at this time now, too, but it was still coal fired. But the furnace was radiators, and it was quite nice to live in such a great big nice home. Our kitchen still was a coal stove. My mother still cooked on a coal stove.

It was about the time in our twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen year olds I remember in Scouts. We used to belong to the 29th Ward and Scout Troop 57. Jerry Steenblik was the Scout master for years and years, and I remember at times the different trips they’d go on. They had had this big old black hearse that they would pile all the guys in and take the Boy Scouts on their Scout trips and that in this black hearse that Jerry or the Steenblik’s had donated to haul the boys around in. I worked on my merit badges in scouting, and I don’t know why I stopped at a certain point. I had about fifteen merit badges and I got up to as high as a Star. I think I needed one other merit badge to get my Life, but I didn’t have anybody pushing me either like maybe I should have, or maybe I was waiting for somebody to push me. I did get the Deseret Recognition Award from the Church because of Ted Geurts helping me and pushed me to get that. I got another award called the Eisenhower Award; that was one when we were during the war – Second World War – if we gathered up so many newspapers and that and so many pounds and that we got this award called the Eisenhower Award.

We always had a paper route, a paper route in our family. It seemed like we were passing it down from one person to the next person or a couple of us at a time were out doing it. It was our paper route number Route36. I remember once I got an award and had my picture in the paper for getting so many subscriptions and different awards. I remember one time I won an award to go out to go fishing somewhere. And as I look back now, they took us over by Decker Lake, and we fished for old carp and suckers and that over there, and they called that going out fishing. You know, of course, when we were driving over there, I thought that was a million miles away. And we had to take our own lunch, and then they let us sit on the banks of the old Decker Lake to fish. I remember catching some old carp and that.

Raising Dogs – Santa’s Sled at the Fairgrounds

When I was still a teenager my father helped me buy out Karen Kennels out in Kaysville, and I had an old barn there on Twelfth West and was raising some dogs. And I had Springer Spaniels and Toy Terriers and had a Great Dane and I had Collies and different breeds, and I’d sell them for a few dollars. I remember my dad and I taught me how to, of course, we did our own tail cropping where we’d take the little pups and we’d get our hunting dogs – Springer Spaniels and Cockers and that where the tails always long and we’d learn how to tie the string on the back of the tail real tight to stop circulation and that, and then we would get a sharp knife and cut the tail off and put it in flour and that to coagulate it. So we did our own tail cutting off whenever I raised a dog. So when they were sold and that they would have the short tail.

Steve had more to do with horses than the rest of us, and I remember one time we had he and Kenny Luce, and I don’t remember who else – had Norm or Bob Johnson – I can’t remember now – had their horses and we went over to the Fairgrounds, or I was with them. And there was a whole bunch with them, and we saw an old sled over there. As a matter of fact, it was the Santa Claus sled that was used to put Santa Claus on during the parades every winter, and they must have stored it over at the Fairgrounds. But they thought that was just an old sled laying there, it’s not worth anything, so they just hitched up their horses to it – and this was during the winter – and they drug it home. And course, all of they drug it down I guess to Johnson’s house, as I remember, and all the Police had to do was follow the tracks. They came down and caught them taking the sled down there. Of course, we all got blamed for it because we were all around there.

Playtime at the Jordan River – Tragedy Strikes the Ditzer Brothers

We had the Jordan River going through Riverside Park before it was straightened out and moved more to the west a few acres, and I remember the river going down and around the trees on bends. The boys from one generation to the next generation were always swimming in the Jordan River and swinging out on ropes and then jumping in the river, and I guess all of us swam in it once or twice.

I remember one time when we were in our teens when Lynn Kramer was swimming over there with the Ditzer brothers. I heard the fire engines and the Police and that, and we all ran over to the park. And apparently the three of them were swimming, and the Ditzer boys either had cramps or something, and both had drowned, at least they couldn’t find them. And Lynn Kramer couldn’t get them up, and he ran for help, too, and that’s how they got the Police there. But by the time I got there and that, they had pulled the youngest one out and he was dead, apparently drowned. One of them had probably had a cramp and jumped on the other one to help him get out of the water and apparently pulled his bigger brother down. That’s what I understand. So both the Ditzer boys had drowned in the river that day. There was always that taboo to stay away from the Jordan River.

High School Graduation – Various Jobs

I stayed back because I had polio and I had a chance to either go to junior high or elementary, and I went to Lafayette School instead when I was in the hospital, so I didn’t graduate until I was seventeen. Some of my boyfriends were sixteen years old when we graduated from high school. We had six years of grade school and then two years of junior high and then two years of high school. So a lot of us graduated at sixteen or seventeen years old, so when I graduated from school I went to LDS Business College. And about that same time after I had gotten a job at Tooele Ordinance Depot – my father helped me get a job out there – I went out there. I only worked there a few months. I helped type and do hiring people out at Tooele Ordinance Depot. It was really a feat going out there. I’d have to get up at 6:00 o’clock in the morning and then have a ride that would take me, but the car was packed with people and every one of them smoked, and you would sit there choking yourself to death all the way out there, all the way back in, and then at work everyone was smoking. I’ll tell you I had my mouth full of cigarette smoke from that.

My father helped get me a job at the State Gasoline Lab. I worked there for a year or two at State Gas where I tested gasoline, and I did the books and bookkeeping at the State Gasoline Lab for a couple of years. They had one person downstairs that would check the octane on the gasoline. And so, what it was, the Highway Patrol would go out to all the service stations and get a little sample of their gas to make sure they were selling what they were supposed to be selling. In those days the high octane at that time was approximately 82 octane and the regular would be 72 and then your white gas was around 60 octane. And I would boil the gas to get the residue to find out exactly what the properties and that were in the gas when I worked there.

June 1950 – New England Mission

In June 1950, I went on my mission. At that time all the boys – there was quite a group that went out from the 29th Ward. That was about the time of the Korean War, and I was called to the New England Mission. At first when it said New England, I thought it was England, but it was actually New England, and President S. Dilworth Young was the mission president in the New England Mission. When I went out there, Dave Lord was going to Eastern States at the same time, so we went on the same train most of the way together. In those days we went by train or bus or whatever. There wasn’t that much flying, and so it took me three days to go from Salt Lake to Boston.

And I left on a Wednesday night and got into Boston Saturday morning. And they put us up in a hotel, and then we did eat a dinner and that over at the Mission Home on Brattle Street, and then we were assigned to our companions and that, and I was assigned up to Maine. And I was told I had to go get a little suitcase, which I went and bought, but by the time I got up into Maine I bought a suitcase for $3.50 and I think I had that suitcase for about twenty or thirty years after that. It seemed to work pretty good; it was a little compressed cardboard, but it was a good suitcase. And I was told to load it up with copies of the Book of Mormon and a little change of clothes and socks and that’s it, and all the rest of my items were to be left at the Mission Home or at another member’s home. And so I was sent up to Maine on a bus to meet my companion. It was Elder Moffitt. And from there we were to go out on what President Young called “country tracting” which I didn’t quite understand what it was at that time.

I remember I had problems with my dang feet and that trying to make sure I was walking properly because of the dang polio. But I found out the dumb thing I did, I went and got big thick shoes to make sure my soles wouldn’t wear through and that because I knew we had to do some walking. That was the dumbest thing I ever could have done in my life. But I did it. I had great big heavy shoes, and the first few weeks I was out when I met Elder Moffitt, we started from one part up in Maine and started doing our country tracting, just depending on the people to feed or take care of us, or sleep out. And I remember the first two or three weeks that how it made my toes start bleeding because my shoes were so heavy that it was just too much for me to carry my shoes. I had quite a lot of problems with my feet.

I’ll tell you it’s a frustrating feat to leave three square meals a day at home and knowing where you were going to sleep and going out and they give you a suitcase and load it up with copies of the Book of Mormon and then they say, “Goodbye” and we start walking. And you depend on the people either to feed you. I remember the months I was out that summer I only slept out three times though, so I was real lucky. There were some elders we heard were there sleeping out all the time. But I remember the three times I did sleep out. The first time was down in Wicasset, where we couldn’t find any place, and it was cold that night. We sat in a ball diamond place on some bleachers and that that night and tried to keep warm. Another place in Maine, we went to some people’s homes and told them we were missionaries and if they had a place we might could sleep, because we didn’t have a place to stay that night. They said, “Well, go over to our barn and you can sleep in the hay.” So we did. We went over there and we burrowed down in their hay to keep warm, and it was fairly warm. And the next morning he came over and said, “Why don’t you come out of here and come over and we’ll give you something to eat.” And then he looked at us and here we were sleeping in our suits and our suits were all wrinkled up and in those days they didn’t have the perma-pressed suits we have now, and it seemed like every time you looked at them cross-eyed they really must have looked bad.

And I’ll tell you, after I was out for a couple of weeks I’d lost so much weight, I’ll bet I was down to around a hundred . . . I was, I was down around 115 to 120 pounds. I could have wrapped my suit around me twice. And I guess we really must have looked like something, especially when we had to wear those hats. Missionaries in those days had to wear hats. But, anyway, these people let us in and gave us something to put on so we could iron our clothes and that, and they gave us something to eat. And they told us at that time, “Well, if we knew who you were, we wouldn’t have had you sleep out in the hay out in the barn. But,” they said, “we didn’t know who you were.” But we appreciated their meal and cleaning ourselves up and ironing our clothes again.

Later, Elder Moffitt went home. Apparently Elder Moffitt, my mission first companion there, apparently when he came out on his mission he had just married – hadn’t been married a week or two when he came on his mission. So, it was an unusual thing. But he went home, and then they gave me Elder Carl Anderson, who was an older missionary. Apparently he had started his mission in Norway and had so much problems with his stomach and problems that they sent him back to the States. And he had quite an unusual story of why he went on his mission. There were two boys who, when they were growing up, were both members of the Church, but one was quite active and the other one wasn’t. But they were good friends, they did things together, but one did all of his church activities and the other one didn’t.

It was at that time during the Second World War that they were both drafted and went into the Service. And the one was really upset because he wanted to go on a mission and never had the chance to go on a mission, and he was drafted and went into the Service instead. But both these boys served in the Service. But the one that really wanted to go on a mission never had a chance to, was killed in the Service, and it just devastated this other young fellow. And he was real concerned that his best friend never did go on a mission and couldn’t now because he had been killed. And he says so after this other boy got home after the war he decided to straighten himself out, and he went to the bishop to see if he could go on a mission. He wanted to go on a mission for that best friend of his that never had a chance to go on a mission. And so he straightened himself out and then he had a chance to go. And he says, “I’m that young man.” And he was about thirty years old then, so he was a little older than the rest of us. And that’s why he insisted when he went to Norway and he couldn’t finish his mission there, he insisted he was not to go home – he was going to finish his mission. So that’s when they sent him back to the States, and he finished it out in New England. And he was up in Maine, and I was his companion for so many months.

We came back in out of country tracting and got a little apartment, and it was a one room apartment; it had nothing in it. When I say nothing, it had a sink and some running water. It had no bathroom, so we had a closet there and had a chemical can, they called it, that we used for our restroom. And so, it was so bad – that chemical can – that at night we’d take it and put it outside so we could actually sleep, because this room was only about a twelve by fourteen or a twelve by twelve, the whole room, where we had our stove and our cot that we pulled down for a bed, and the little alcove there for the chemical can. And so we were there for so many months while we were on our mission.

* * * * *

NOTE: Unfortunately, this is the end of what Bob put on the tapes. This account has been edited, deleting duplication of words and sentences, etc. only for clarity.

 

¹The Ditzer brothers, Karl (age 11) and Raymond (age 9), drowned in the Jordan River at Sixth North and Thirteenth West at 4:00 p.m. on Monday, July 14, 1941. They were the sons of May Mercer Ditzer and Milton Karl Ditzer.