Looking Back - - - - and There Was a Proposal - - - - Kinda

I went to visit my mama today.  I try to do it on Monday's - when it is just the two of us.  Sometimes I spend more time than others.  Today, I kind of lollygagged (is that how you spell it?).

My mama as a teen

We were talking about a couple of my aunties that are suffering from cancer, one is terminal.  From that we started discussing a bit of religion and the hereafter.  That brought her to her growing up years.  She grew up in Marysvale, Utah during the Great Depression.  My mother was born in 1928, so she suffered through the worst of it - in small town America.  Her parents were Lutheran and she went to the Methodist Church in Marysvale.  There was a woman pastor and my grandmother was the secretary.  They would pass the collection plate around and the pastor would give the collection to my grandmother and she would take care of it.  My mother also went to the Mormon church meetings because all of her friends did, so at times she would go to church twice on Sunday.

She grew up best friends of Bobbi and Rula.  There was also a girl named Nanette.  Nanette's father worked for the passenger rail, he had a steady job.  Nanette's mother also sewed, so she was always dressed very nicely and she was a very popular girl.  My grandfather was a very hard worker and did a lot of different jobs.  One of those  jobs was "the boss" of the commodity deliveries.  Commodities were government supplies that were passed around to help those in need; food, clothing, etc.  My mother talked about having to wear commodity dresses and being embarrassed by that.  She said they were nice clothing, but she was embarrassed that she had to take charity.  She talked about how many clothes she had now and how little they had when she was growing up during that time.

Young love, 1940's style

We then started discussing about her high school years.  When the depression was ending, my grandfather got a job with the railroad, fixing the rails and other repairs.  It was steady work.  They moved to Richfield, Utah.  She did her freshman year there and had a lot of friends, as she wistfully says, "I sure wish I knew what happened to all those people".  There were twins Ray and Roy.  Roy  had the hots for my mama, but she was interested in Ray who had no interest in her.  Ahh - the memories.  At this time, World War II had started and my mother's sister Oma had married, had a small baby and was living with her husband in Massachusetts while he was in the service.  She asked my grandmother if my mother could come live with her there and help her take care of her baby.  My mother worked in the PX and took care of her young nephew.  All the while, she was doing correspondence courses with her high school in Marysvale to keep up with her studies.  The following year, her other sister, Fern, had got married and was living in Kansas with her husband while he was in the Air Force.  She was also pregnant with her first child.  So my mother's junior year was spent in Kansas.  She went to high school in Kansas, she would go straight from school to a small cafe where she worked and she and her friend would go to the movies right after that.  Her senior year she was back home.  The family had settled back in Marysvale.  She finished her senior year there and graduated as valedictorian of her class.

I said to her after that, "and then you met some boy and got married right after that"

After a few years together

That brought on the discussion of my father.  They met in April of the year she graduated.  He had just returned from his service in the Army and he was working in a sawmill and helping his brother-in-law with his farm and crops.  She was planning to go to college in the fall to Henagers College.  She had been offered many scholarships because of her good grades and valedictorian status.   They would spend two and three nights a week together, mostly to go dancing.  They loved to dance.  There was a group of them.  In late August, her bags were packed and her aunt got her a job babysitting a doctor's children for room and board.  They were in love.  They knew they would get married, but, nothing official - my dad was trying to make money and didn't feel he had enough to offer her yet.

The later years - married 49 years

My dad's sister had been living in Bountiful and she was engaged.  She and her fiance had planned one weekend to head to Las Vegas to get married.  My parents friends, Hugh and Hortence, had planned to get married the next week at her parent's home.  Somehow they got talked in to just going to Vegas to get married instead.  They had gone to the dance the night before the big elopement trip to Vegas.  They ran across a guy who had a flat tire.  The boys got out to help change the tire.  My dad's sister and fiance said to my dad, "Juna says she wants to go to Vegas and get married with all of us".  Then they went to the car where my mama sat and said, "Harry says he wants to go to Vegas and get married with all of us".  This is how I envision the conversation that followed not knowing what had transpired with the other, his hands all dirty from changing the tire:

DAD:  "Do you really want to go to Vegas?"

MOM:   "sure, I guess."

And there ya go - they were engaged and leaving that weekend to get married.  They went to Las Vegas and got married on September 5.  On their way home, they went by the Grand Canyon.  Unbeknownst to them, my mother's parents had thrown together a quick wedding reception for them.  Because they drove by the Grand Canyon, they were an hour late for their own reception.

There were more stories.  I loved this one.