Garrett worked the swing shift in Salt Lake when we were first married. He left at 2 in the afternoon and came home about ten or eleven at night. I felt so lonely without him and hated being all alone in the evenings. I found another young married woman whose husband also worked evenings. Her sister had given her some paint to paint on material, so we made ABC books. I enjoyed going over to her trailer.
Garrett was going to school full time at BYU, working full time at the Post Office in Salt Lake, commuting two hours a day, and then had homework to do. We had little time together. I tried to not talk to him while he studied, but I wasn’t very successful. I was used to being around roommates and taking classes and now I just stayed home in our little trailer by myself most of the time.
Garrett, aware of my giving up my dream of being a professional teacher to make a home for us and raise our family, encouraged me to take some morning classes at BYU. I took a Home Management class which I enjoyed. They even showed us how to use the fairly new invention, a microwave, which they assured us was safe. Garrett and I took a church history class from Br. Matthews which we enjoyed. We also took a New Testament class from Br. Ricks. He had a deep rumbly voice, and being so tired since I was pregnant, I promptly fell asleep each class which embarrassed me especially since Garrett insisted on sitting “front row center”.
Garrett had brought some “high-tech” equipment when he was in the Army. He had two large reel to reel tape recorders. The day he got his braces off (his family could not afford to fix his teeth so he did it while in the Army), Garrett showed me how to use the tape recorders. Since he was not supposed to talk that day, he slapped my hand instead when I didn’t do it right. That did not go over well! Later in one of his classes, Garret built a cabinet out of cherry wood for his recorders.
Garrett had off Mondays and Tuesdays. On Garrett’s days off, we had fun and relaxed. We spent a lot of time driving around looking at houses and dreaming about building our own. Since we wanted to get to know the other young couples in our ward, we asked some over for dinner on Monday nights. On Tuesday nights we went to the Provo Temple. One thing we liked to do was Garrett, Ken, and I designed a board game. We also worked on planning our home with Garrett drafting the plans and he and Ken staking out the dimensions on the large club house yard.
Garrett believed literally that two could live as cheaply as one, so I had only the twenty dollars he had spent for himself to buy food for a week for the two of us. Though we had a nice dinner at lunch time, I remember having little to eat for the rest of the day except for broccoli and peanut butter. I made lunches for Garrett with little love notes in them. Garrett wanted me to cook by recipes not to make up my own recipe which I enjoy doing.
We decided to buy a golden yellow Pinto car. This meant that I now had Garrett’s old white car to drive. It was great to get out some even if it stalled sometimes. At first we slept on the living room sofa which folded down to be a bed. Soon we bought a bed for our room. Garrett wanted a hard mattress which was uncomfortable for me.
We went to church in a very old Chapel in the old part of Provo. It had an old painting of the early days of the church across the front. I remember that you had to go outside and walk around the building to get to the bathroom and the other rooms. There is a 7-11 store there now. It was a ward mainly of young marrieds and old widows. We both sing in the ward choir. Our stake conferences were held in the Provo Tabernacle. Garrett was called to be our ward executive secretary (secretary to the Bishop). We both took the teacher development class. Garrett helped me as I served as our ward librarian. I tried to let people know the resources we had so they could use them to teach their classes. Garrett was called to be a Seventy.
Garrett was so exciting and anxious for us to be expecting our first baby. I was nervous about it, but also disappointed when others were expecting a baby and we weren’t. I had gone to the obstetrician and had to wait a long time to see him which made me late for meeting Garrett and our Tuesday temple date, but I just had to know. We were expecting our baby! We were both so excited that we decided to go out looking at baby furniture.
I was very proud to cook my first Thanksgiving dinner by myself. I also made Garrett’s birthday cake for his birthday in the middle of December. I gave him church books for the first few years of our marriage till I realized that he didn’t have the time to read them.
Our first Christmas together we just made small presents for each other such as coupons for a head scratch, or cooking a shrimp dinner. I made tree ornaments out of styrofoam egg cartons, and we borrowed some ornaments from an older couple who lived nearby. I made a nativity scene out of some paper mache and paint that I had left from student teaching and a friend gave me scraps of material to cloth the figures.
Garrett had asked not to work Christmas overtime at the post office which was nice. I worked on his gift, a woolen neck scarf with fringe, in the evenings when he was gone at work. A few times he came home sick. I quickly threw the scarf over my head to hide it behind the sofa.
One night our cat, Fred, who an old roommate had given to me when we were first married, knocked over our Christmas tree and after that had his own small insulated house under our trailer.
In the spring Mom and Lew, who were living in Pocatello, Idaho visited us. They gave us their old Danish modern living room chairs. Mom also gave me material and patterns for maternity clothes and baby clothes which I used our small sewing machine to make. After seeing the prices of new cribs, we decided to buy an old crib from Deseret Industries. Garrett stripped off the paint since it probably had lead in it, and we decided to paint it yellow.
I tried growing a small garden by the front door. I put in a whole large package of flower seeds, but was disappointed when they all looked the same and didn’t flower. Mom told me that I had grown a good crop of pigweed!
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