10 Life History --- 1958 Arizona

We packed up the car, and Dad took us to Phoenix Arizona. We lived for a few months in the Alhambra motel, a rundown hotel which had been converted to apartments. It had lots of cockroaches and other bugs. There were some other families that lived there who had kids our age. Dad invited the LDS missionaries to teach us. I believed them from the first, and the family was baptized on 9 September 1958.  (Mel and Gary with pets)

Garrett (Gary) age 12

I attended eighth grade at a school with a Spanish name, while we rented a house from Karl Shurtz. It was a yellow wood house next to lettuce field with a screened back porch. I jumped off the roof a lot, and swung on the high swing. We had fig, date, pomegranate, orange, and lemon trees on the long and narrow lot that was over two acres. My brother and I built a tree house in the large cottonwood tree way out in the back pasture, with scrap wood we salvaged from a nearby subdivision under construction. We also spent a lot of time playing in the irrigation ditch across the street. I was impressed with Del Mecham, my first Deacons quorum president. I think his dad was the bishop. I liked it there.

I won my eighth grade spelling bee, but was quickly eliminated from the school competition when I spoke too fast and made a dumb error on an easy word (I think it was ‘holiday’).

where we lived

In the summer of 1960 we moved to a subdivision in the southwest area of Phoenix on 33rd avenue near the Manzanita Speedway (car racing on a dirt track), which had lots of manzanita bushes around it. I attended ninth grade at South Mountain high school. I did well, was in a couple advanced placement classes, and ended the year ranked #11 in a class of 600 plus. I ran a 7.5 minute mile and did more than 300 sit-ups in the annual end of year events.  (Mel and Spotty)

Mel

 Not long after we moved there, Dad got some kind of a good deal on bicycles, and got one for each of us boys. While riding one day, I was stopped by a man who offered me a paper route. So, from then on, I bundled and delivered papers in the afternoon, achieving a pretty good aim, and learning how to survive dogs. It was less fun getting up early Sunday morning to deliver the Sunday paper. I did occasionally diminish the early morning agony by secretly taking the car to pick up the papers, so I could fold and band them inside the house. I didn’t enjoy collecting either, but I enjoyed having some income.

Mel, Gary, Ken

Ken and I went barefoot a lot and developed pretty tough feet, especially on the hot desert sand. I learned how to climb down a rope from a tree branch - after getting rope burns the first time; I never did it that way again! We also had a small precipice nearby where we jumped off into a sand hill about twenty feet below.

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