Snippets from the Dust: Glendon William Gee Grows Up (part I)

A BRIEF HISTORY OF GLENDON WILLIAM GEE By Glendon Gee - age 9

(with abundant thanks and humble acknowledgement to his parents

and brother and others, for collecting and offering photos and memories, edits)

Glendon: "I was born on the third day of June, 1938 in Rexburg, Idaho.

"I was the third child in my family and the third boy. My mother and father would like to have had a girl, but I don't believe they would trade me now.

"We lived in Rexburg until I was six months old, then my father took work with the United States Weather Bureau so we moved to Missoula, Montana.

(These are pictures, the left, of Alberton, a town just north and west of Missoula; the right, a 1938 photograph of the United States Post Office in Missoula)

"I helped Mother have an interesting trip there on the train by screaming as loud as I could just because I was tired and I wasn't in my own bed. We arrived there just as the New Year of 1939 was being welcomed in." (from Glendon's life story in author's possession)

Glendon's oldest brother Laurence's autobiography reads:

"When I was about 5 years old, my father joined the weather bureau and was sent to Missoula, Montana for his first duty station. This required us moving from Rexburg to Missoula, which we did on the train. I can remember vividly the train ride and inasmuch as we were of fairly modest circumstances, we did not have a Pullman berth [a sleeping car with beds that pulled down] but sat in the chair car. The train trip was quite a long one; at least it seemed to me at that time. I remember the conductor heating the bottle in a pan of water on the stove for my baby brother. The picture on the right is exactly how the stove looks. This was taken in October 2007 in a train car on the 'Heber Creeper'."

Pearl Gee's autobiography explains why they moved to Missoula: "Ivin became quite discouraged with teaching, because at that time there was no tenure and no retirement, so if you displeased the principal or the school board you were asked to leave, you didn't have a job, so he looked around for something else. He had taken a civil service exam in weather bureau work in Idaho Falls and it just happened to be that that was the day Martell was born, He was in Idaho Falls and I was in Pocatello in the hospital. He got a good grade on that test and so he was offered a position with the U.S. Weather Bureau in Missoula, Montana. He accepted, talked to Uncle Ezra who was the Superintendent in the schools at Rexburg, and Uncle Ezra Stucki released him from his contract and he went to Missoula. He got to Missoula on Dec. 20th and reported there for his job. He looked around for a house and I found someone to take our furniture. We moved to Missoula, and the boys and I went on the train. We got there Jan. 1, 1939,just as the whistles and the bells were ringing to ring in the New Year. Laurence was surely a good little helper. He was four-years old, and Martell was a year and-half and Glendon was 6 months. Well, Martell was a little more then a year and a half because there is 14 months between them. Glendon was just 6 months old. We rode on the train. Laurence helped me carry the bags. We were in Missoula, just three months then Ivin was transferred to Pocatello and that made us happy because we were back home, because Grandpa and Grandma Gee lived in Pocatello.

This is the Gee grandparents' home at 628 Hayes, Pocatello, taken about 6 years later, about 1945

"We lived in Pocatello two and a half years and then Ivin was transferred to Cheyenne Wyoming, so we left Pocatello and drove to Cheyenne and got there the 10'" of August 1941. We drove all night and got into Cheyenne about 10:00 o'clock in the morning."

Brother Laurence's autobiography:

"We arrived New years eve in Missoula, Montana and at that time I remember that my father got up very early in the morning, at least it was dark, to go to work and my bedtime was always 8 o'clock. We did not live in Missoula long. I remember some experiences at the church there, but generally none of a very spiritual nature.

"It seemed as though my parents were always actively engaged in church activities and made it an integral part of their lives. I do not ever remember in my entire life that my parents were ever inactive or non-participators in the church program and as far as I know, they always kept the commandments and were worthy for temple recommends and to be called to whatever position they were asked to serve in.

"My parents then moved to Pocatello, Idaho [1939] where I can remember the practice of the church at that time was to have the priests at the Sacrament table raise their arms to the square when they offered the sacramental prayer and I remember very vividly this happening. I also at that time had an experience, which has made a deep impression on my mind as to the ability of people to misunderstand the rather plain things. It was not uncommon for the sacramental hymn 'Gently Raise the Sacred Strain' to be sung and it was a favorite in that ward.

"As this was being sung the priests would prepare and take care of the Sacrament. After this took place a number of times, I got the distinct impression that the song was somehow connected with the Sacrament and that the Sacred Strain was the tablecloth which covered the sacramental Table, thus we sang gently raise the sacred strain. I pictured in my mind, that to this day, the priests removing the tablecloth from over the sacrament table.

"We always used to like to go to grandfather's house because he had many toys, which he kept in a box for us to play with. One of the toys was a wind up toy train with the accompanying track, which we used to play with extensively.

(Above is a wind-up train of that era Uncle Laurence verifies as being similar)

"My grandfather was a bishop when we lived in Pocatello and I remember many interesting things about my grandfather, which came from my association with him at that time.

Above is a picture of Grandfather Gee in the center with his counselors.

"Also my grandfather always used to have a case of pop in his house and we always liked to go there so that we could drink pop. Down in his basement we had a stoker (coal) furnace.

(Above is a modern version of what the Gee grandparents had)

"The basement was not a complete basement underneath the house, but just big enough and just enough room for the furnace and I remember sliding down the cellar door, which was inclined, where the coal man used to throw the coal into the coal bin and then grandfather would go down and shovel the coal into the stoker so that it would feed the furnace.*
*More information from Uncle Laurence about the furnace:

"Their stoker was a furnace not a fireplace. The furnace was in the basement. The coal was put in a coal bin with access to the back of the house with a double door that slanted. The coal was then put into a bin in the top of the stoker. There was an auger that would then feed the coal into the furnace. That way the furnace would not run out of coal. We never had a stoker in any home we lived in. We had to shovel the coal in on a daily basis when we wanted heat. One would have to load the stoker about once a week. The heat was always on with this type of furnace. The other type of furnace that we had we needed to put coal in every day if we wanted heat. If the fire went out, then we would have to start the fire with tinder. I would occasionally do this if my father or mother did not do it. The only place that I remember having a coal furnace was in Denver."

"Grandfather also used to have one of the old types of German helmets from World War I. The kind with the tall spike and the German Eagle made of metal and leather.

"We used to marvel at grandfather and grandmother's brass bed, which my father purchased from them some years later just before their death and gave to us and we now have in our house. At the time it seemed much bigger and more elegant than it does at the present time.

"Grandfather and grandmother used to have pictures of all of their children on the wall in the living room in their university graduation caps and gowns. Grandmother Gee did not graduate from college and neither did my grandfather. He went to the university at Logan, but did not graduate. His story is found in another document.

"They were particularly proud that all of their sons had received degrees and were all interested in education and in the cultural arts. Every Saturday when the Firestone Company used to broadcast the metropolitan opera, my grandparents used to sit and listen to the broadcast of the opera. They had a phonograph, generally of the latest model upon which they would play records of the masters, the great musicians of the time. I do not remember them ever listening to any of the current fad music, it was all generally music which was beautiful to listen to and required some taste in order to appreciate.

"My grandfather was always a well-dressed man. Generally he wore suits with a vest. He had a pocket watch with a chain. On the one end of the chain was the watch. The other end of the chain was a small pocketknife. He looped the chain from one vest pocket to the other in the usual manner of the day. My grandfather also used to use Sen Sen which was a licorice type of breath deodorant and I always looked forward to going to grandfather's because I usually got a piece of SenSen.

"My grandparents, it always seemed, had better things to eat than we did when I was a boy and my grandmother would prepare elaborate breakfasts for us. We were used to eating mush and milk and occasionally toast and my grandmother used to prepare such things as sliced oranges with coconut on them and she always had boxes of prepared cereal which was a treat to us during those days.

"I was in the first grade while living in Pocatello and can remember somewhat of school. The things that stick out in my mind at this time are the fact that I was very interested in learning to read and delighted in doing such. The Dick and Jane Book Series was what we learned to read and I was delighted when I could read them completely through. I apparently was somewhat of a nervous child because I chewed my pencil erasers and my pencils and ate the school glue much to the dismay of my first grade teacher.

"We moved twice while we were in Pocatello. We rented a house not too far from my grandparents.

1 March 1939 - Dec 1939, 851 McArthur, Pocatello, Idaho

"It was here that we were quarantined with the Chicken Pox. In those days the health department would come around to those houses that had contagious or infectious diseases and put a big yellow and red sign on the house with the word 'Quarantine' written on it. They would nail this sign to the door or a prominent place in the front of the house and people were not allowed to go into the house until the sign was taken down. Because my father had already had the Chicken Pox he was allowed access to the house.

We next moved to a house that my parents purchased on Park Avenue.

December 1939 to 10 August 1941, 320 Park Avenue, Pocatello, Idaho

(Cream top milk)

"When we lived here in this house in Pocatello we had a cow, which we kept in our backyard. My father milked it which provided milk as well as cream, which he would sell to the neighbors, that which we did not have for our own use.

"Grandfather and grandmother took their milk from the dairy and I can remember well the odd shaped glass bottles, which they used to get pure Jersey milk in. There was a little indentation about half way down the neck of the bottle, which seemed to keep, or separate the cream from the milk. Grandmother would always skim off the cream and then we would have the milk to drink.

Note from Uncle Laurence about the above photo of cousins, visiting "The Paris House" (their Grandmother Stucki's home) in about 1939 :

"We were living in Pocatello, Idaho at 370 Park Street and went to visit in Paris Idaho. The photo was taken in the room just off the kitchen. I would have been 6 years old and Martell age 3 and Glendon age 2. My cousin Mary Lou Thirkill (Evelyn's daughter) was the oldest of grandmother's grandchildren she was 13 at the time. Rodney (Wendell's son) was the next oldest. He was 9 at the time. Jean (Evelyn's daughter. We always called her Jean even though her first name was Evelyn and I never knew her first name until she died.) was next in age and she was 8. I remember that she was going to be baptized that year and she turned 8 in July so this would have been prior to July. Elizabeth (Wendell's oldest living daughter at the time) was born 17 months after me(the only person in this photo still living) Then came Martell and Rae (Wendell's second living daughter and born in the same year as Glendon) and Glendon."

From Glendon: "After I had been accustomed to the wind in Pocatello and was three years old, we moved to Cheyenne, Wyoming on the tenth of August, 1941.

"The wind there didn't bother us as much as it did some people because we had become used to weather almost as bad, and after all, my father was trying to take charge of that part of the universe and he was bringing us up on the cumulus clouds and wind, west northwest--45 miles per hour." (Glendon's life story)

Here is more about the journey there:

Here is an illustration of a rumble seat car.

[1] A rumble seat, dicky seat, dickie seat or dickey seat is an upholstered exterior seat which hinges or otherwise opens out from the rear deck of a pre-World War II automobile, and seats one or more passengers. In a carriage, a rumble (short for "rumble-tumble") was a seat behind the body used by servants. Roadster, Coupe and Cabriolet auto body styles were offered with either a luggage compartment or a rumble seat in the deck. Models equipped with a rumble seat were often referred to as a sport coupe or sport roadster.

In America, this type of seating became largely obsolete in the mid-1930s when cars became too fast and streamlined for the comfort of passengers in such a seat. Their popularity was further diminished by the frequent injuries. Rumble seat passengers were essentially seated out in the elements, and received little or no protection from the regular passenger compartment top. Folding tops and side curtains for rumble seats were available for some cars (including the Ford Model A) but never achieved much popularity. It is possible that the last American-built car with a rumble seat was the 1939 Ford convertible coupe.

Prior to World War I, a single, center-mounted rumble seat was sometimes referred to as a mother-in-law seat.

"Laurence and Martell rode in the rumble seat [see above]. We stopped one time, because Ivin got so sleepy. We were sleeping and then we heard the kids in the back say, 'Daddy, daddy, there is a wolf out here. We want to come inside with you.' (Uncle Laurence's note: Actually it was the coyotes that were howling.) There just wasn’t room for that so Ivin woke up and we drove on, and we got into Cheyenne. Just at the outskirts of Cheyenne we stopped by the side of the road and cleaned up the children and gave them some breakfast, fixed [up] so that we looked pretty good and we drove on into the weather station and Ivin reported in. He met the people and seemed to think that it would be a pretty good place to work. Then we went downtown and found us a motel. Then we looked up the bishop and he told us that there weren’t very many places for rent in Cheyenne. He even drove us around the city a little bit and showed us the homes and just how we would be situated. In our conversation he told us about a family that lived there by the name of Poulson and it was Harold and Artella Poulson from Rexburg and their family.

(Grandpa Ivin's Recollections: [Due to a need for glasses, difficult to come by, that caused a delay in his reading, Grandpa Ivin Gee was kept back a year in the first grade.] "Because my age group was a year ahead of me and I felt I was too big to associate with the class that I was in, I had no friends until we were in the 8^th grade. There Harold Poulson and I became bosom buddies. His father worked in the timber in Island Park from the time the snow went off the ground until it came again. So during the winter time, [Harold's father] didn’t have a steady job but picked up what work he could. Because of this, the family had little standing in the community. But Harold and I had each other and we remained friends as long as he lived." ("Recolections (sic) by Ivin L. Gee.wpd" in author's possession)

Grandma Pearl: "Ivin was really interested in that because he and Harold used to be just real good friends when they were boys, and so we said we would try to look them up, and we thanked the bishop and then went back to the motel. Ivin and I went to get some groceries and left the boys in the motel, and when we got back, they had been playing and Glendon had caught his finger in the door someway and well he had a terribly mashed finger and we were surely sorry, and we bound it up and fixed it the best we could.

"Bless his heart, he was so sad about that poor finger. The next morning was Sunday so we got ourselves ready and went to Sunday School and when we went in the bishop spoke to us. We were a little bit early, but when the people came in, not a soul spoke to us even before the meeting started and we surely did feel strange. After the opening exercises in Sunday School, I took the two little boys up to the nursery class and Ivin took Laurence to the class that he belonged in, then he came back and sat down in the adult class. I got Martell and Glendon in the nursery class and they seated them in the circle with the other boys and girls and then they told me that I could leave.

"There were two teachers, and they just didn’t want me to stay. I hesitated in leaving because before we left Pocatello I had the nursery class there and both Martell and Glendon were in the little class, and I had fifteen other little children and when either of the boys got fussy I would put them on my lap and go on to teaching the class so they sat right by me and felt secure and good. And now to seat them in this strange class, when I hesitated in leaving them, but finally I left and went down and sat down by Ivin, and it wasn’t long before I heard a deep voiced cry and then another cry and pretty soon the door opened and there stood my two little boys just crying. I hurried and went and got them and dried their tears had them come and sit by me. They were pretty good the rest of the time. I should never have left them. I should have told those women I had to be by them because they felt strange and new. That was our first Sunday and we surely did feel strange.

"After the meetings, we went home and I told Ivin, 'I was never going back to that ward again. They were the most unfriendly ward I had ever been in', and he said 'Oh, yes, you are going back. We are going to go back and get acquainted.' If I had said I wouldn’t go, I am sure the boys were feeling real strange and they wouldn’t have wanted to go back either. We did go back and we found that Harold and Artella Poulson had been out of town, they weren’t to the meeting that day.

"The next day we got in contact with them and they were really happy to see us, they lived down in the new addition out of Cheyenne called 'Orchard Valley' and we visited with them and they knew we were having a time finding a place and they said, you come and live in our basement until you find a place, because we were in a motel and it was really quite expensive for us. So I think by Tuesday we checked out of the motel and took our bunch out to Orchard Valley and lived in the basement of the Poulson’s for a few days. We looked and looked. I looked every day while Ivin was at work.

"The boys and I would go around looking for places to rent, and I learned Cheyenne quite quickly [chuckling]. We learned the names of the streets. We found a house or two but always when they saw me with children, they said, 'Well, we can’t rent to you because you have children.' A lady that worked at the weather bureau lived over the viaduct on the southeast part of town. She said that we could move in their basement. Their basement was empty and they would move down in their basement and let their upstairs to us, so we looked at it and oh, it was nice, and we were just so pleased, so by the end of the week we had a place to stay. We sure did appreciate Margaret Mitchell’s kindness, in letting us rent there.

"Then the next Sunday when we went to church, we met John Ames and his two little boys. Now he was the young man that came to date Anne Golden, when we were in Cheyenne that first summer we were married, so we were happy to meet him, and we became real good friends, so we had the Poulsons and the Ames that were surely a blessing to us and we enjoyed their friendship while we were in Cheyenne and all the rest of our lives they have been good friends."

Glendon: "Just four months after we moved to Cheyenne, World War II broke out, and I learned all about ration stamps as well as war-saving stamps.

"I was very very lucky! My father was so busy taking care of the weather that Uncle Sam didn't feel they could spare him for the army, so we had him to enjoy at home." (Glendon's story)

Pearl's description of the fateful 7 December, 1941: "The first Sunday in December, Ivin had to work that day so the boys and I went to Sunday School. They had the Sacrament meeting right after Sunday School, so we stayed to Sacrament Meeting and course it was fast Sunday and Brother Rawlins, a member of the bishopric, bore his testimony and he said, oh, among other things it seemed there was quite a bit of unrest and everything. He said, 'It may be that right now, we are involved in the war'. Oh, it just sent cold chills down me, and the meeting went on. That is the only thing I can remember about that meeting, and when we were on our way out of the chapel someone said, 'Oh, he is just a calamity. We are all right; we won’t be in the war'. We went home, and I got dinner ready and when Ivin came home from work, he said, 'I guess you heard what happened today', I said, 'no' I hadn’t had the radio on. He said, 'Well, Pearl Harbor was bombed and we will be in the war.'

"You see Fort Francis E Warren was a military base just a few miles west of Cheyenne so there were already a lot of military people in our ward, but from then on it really got active. We were in the war and had lots of soldiers come to church. One thing we found out that as we went to church there that that first Sunday almost everybody that came were strange, so that's one reason that they didn't speak and we didn't speak. We found out that they were really good, wonderful, friendly people, and we learned to love those dear people and gained lots of good friends... I helped in the Primary. I would gather the children from the Johnson School and take them over to Primary. Of course, we just had our little one seated car with the rumble seat but some times I would have ten or eleven children to pack in that car.... Oh, we surely did enjoy our two and one-half years there.

Glendon: "I started Kindergarten at the Johnson school in Cheyenne in 1943, but I wasn't able to finish there because on March 10, 1944 we moved to Denver." (Glendon's life story)

The first photo is from family search; the second, more updated.

Uncle Laurence's note about the house:
"It was a duplex and we did know our neighbors. The lady used to play Chopin on her piano. We had a refrigerator and she had an icebox. The ice man would come and carry the blocks of ice with a tong to the home with the ice on his back with a black shield on some material on his back.

Glendon: "When we first came to Denver, I felt strange and didn't know any of the children in my Kindergarten class at Dora Moore School, but it wasn't long until I had friends. Charles Mountfort, a boy on our block was the first boy I got acquainted with in Denver. He was friendly and came over to our place nearly every day. The four years we have spent in Denver have been very interesting. I have had some serious things as well as pleasant ones happen to me.

"I broke my arm in the summer of 1944, and in 1945 I lay very ill in the hospital with boil infection for which they gave many shots of penicillin that saved my life. That fall I had my nose and toe operated on and since then I have been well. (Glendon's story)

Pearl: "We got acquainted in the church. We were in the Denver First Ward. It was just 7 blocks so we could walk, and Ivin had got a bicycle and he went to work on the bicycle. Part of the time he went out to the Stapleton Air Field and worked in the weather bureau out there and he went 8 miles. Sixteen miles a day really put him in shape. We became quite well acquainted with the ward members quite soon. The boys got in school. Laurence was in the fourth grade in Mrs. Johansen’s room. Martell was in the first grade and Glendon was in kindergarten, all at Dora Moore Elementary, and we just felt that things were going pretty well."

Uncle Laurence: "We went to Dora Moore grade school. This was the school where Mamie Eisenhower (wife to a later United States President, Dwight D. Eisenhower) went to grade school. It was later placed on the National Register."

Pearl: "[When we moved to Denver] Laurence was in the fourth grade. Let's see, Martell was in the first grade and Glendon in kindergarten and they seemed to get along pretty well. Then the next year, when Martell went into second and Glendon into first grade, I remember Glendon had a Mrs. Ernst for his first grade teacher. Then the next year Martell went to third and Glendon in the second, I started doing some substitute work there. I went to Denver University to a night class and took some classes and got a Colorado Teaching Certificate so that I could teach. They called them supply teachers instead of substitute teachers and I did quite a little substitute work.

The year Martell was in the third grade his teacher called me one day in early January. See, in Denver, they had 2 promotions a year and then they had half grades. They would have 1A and 1B and 2A and 2B and so on and so on and they were started seeing the B class move to the A class, but Martell was in Mrs. Blixt (‘s class), and she called me that January day just before promotion time and she said, “I don’t think I can do a great deal more for Martell. He is a bright, eager boy and I think he should be promoted to 4A instead of 3B to finish third grade, but to begin fourth grade”, and we talked it over at home, and we talked to Martell. He thought he would like to do that too, so we told her that that would be fine, that he could go on into 4 A.

Then the next year, Glendon had Mrs. Blixt. You know, she did the same thing. She called us just before promotion time, and said that Glendon should be put in 4A. That gave them each a ½ year promotion. Then the next year they would start in the 4B class. I was pleased with them and substituted all over Denver. I went over to the Arvada School (about 25 minutes away.) I taught mostly in the lower grades, I did have some fifth and sixth graders but only for a few days then I would go to another school. I would try and get home early so that I would be there when the boys got home from school or soon after so they wouldn’t be left alone.

Here is a photo of Glendon about age 10, and a later school photo

We hadn’t been in Denver quite a year and Bishop White came to see us one night and called me to be President of the Relief Society. Oh, I was just thunderstruck. I surely felt that I couldn’t do that job, and I told him that, well, if Rella, his wife, would be one of my counselors then I would be the President. So she was my education counselor. Arla Tikkaner was the work and business counselor. Well, I just thought we had a wonderful Relief Society. I took Rella mostly because Arla, I think, was working. Rella and I would go and visit the sisters that needed visiting. She had a car, and we could go drive most anywhere. If then I had to go alone I had to ride on a streetcar and I learned Denver even better than I had learned Cheyenne.

When I would go visiting, there were three sisters; southern sister’s, older ladies that lived together and needed our attention a lot of times, and I think their names were Pots and I think they were all three unmarried and I used to go and visit them.

This is in 1946 or 1947, at a duplex house on 433 Corona Street, Denver, Colorado

"In the summer of 1946, we went to Idaho for the summer. While we were there we went to the Logan Temple and I was baptized for myself on August third. Because I had not been baptized before, I couldn't do work for the dead but my brothers Laurence and Martell were each baptized for nineteen names. This summer I hope to go to the temple and this time I can be baptized for some of the names that my grandmother has been working to gather."

"Glendon was baptized 3 August 1946." (Glendon's story)

Laurence's remembrances:

Summer of 1946

"We did not have a car, but somehow, we were given a ride to Idaho. I received a furlough from the Highlander boys so that I did not have to go to weekly drill, and we stayed with Grandmother Stucki and perhaps other relatives.

We went to the Logan temple on 3 August 1946 to do baptisms for the dead. The names were submitted by Grandmother Stucki and Martell and I were baptized for about 100 names each. Glendon had not yet been baptized so he could not participate in that ordinance, but since he had just turned eight and my father was in Denver working, he was baptized on that date. I do not know who the officiator was. He was the only one of the three Gee boys that was not baptized by my father. I do not remember how we got home or whether my father came. I have in my files a letter that my father wrote for my birthday from Denver that June with some money for me to spend."

Above are photos of Glendon, in Idaho during the summer. The first, where he looks to be about 5 or 6, thus 1943 or 1944, is labeled Eight Mile, a farming community eight miles from Soda Springs, Idaho, where their mother's oldest sister Evelyn lived on a ranch with husband Howard Thirkill. Laurence writes that he worked there during the summers. The second photo is about 1947 or 1948 and is labeled "Glendon in Paris."

About Denver First Ward:

From Uncle Laurence "At [the time Glendon and his family lived in Denver] John H. Vandenberg (who later served as Presiding Bishop of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) and Victor L. Brown (who also served as Presiding Bishop) went to the same ward with us. Also, Gordon B. Hinckley went home on the weekends to Salt Lake but was in our ward. (family search and personal correspondence, in possession of author)

Glendon: "I enjoy going to Sunday School and Primary in the Denver First Ward. I like my teachers and have learned many important things about the Gospel that I will remember all my life." (Glendon's story)

Less than a month after they arrived in Denver, 2 April, 1944, Glendon's family participated in a Primary Conference (the program includes recitations: "We learn good health rules. We keep our bodies clean." and "We honor our parents and our elders" Songs such as "Little Brother Vegetable," "Grandmother's Thimble" "We Brush Our Teeth This Way" are followed by playlets about honoring parents, country, and other, such as "The Garden of Life" and "Four Trails" by "Men and Women of Tomorrow" including a "Primary Class of Zions Boys and Girls of Today" which names Glendon's brother, Martell.

(Laurence, Autobiography)

Above, about 1947, Martell, Duchess (the Dalmatian), Glendon, Laurence)

Glendon: "In 1948 we bought a piano and I am still trying to learn to be a pianist. We had a beautiful Dalmatian puppy last summer that we had such fun with, but she was hit by a car."

Laurence's remembrance: "We had a dog named Duchess. She was a pure-bred Dalmatian. We got her from some member of the church and really liked to play with her. One day she ran out into the street and was hit by a car and it fractured her spine and she was unable to use her hind legs.

We had her in the basement and we fed her for awhile. She would upbraid her skin until it was raw trying to move around, so we had to take her to the vet and have her euthanized."

There was music:
Laurence remembers: "I sang in a choir in junior high school, but my voice was so high that I could sing the soprano part an octave above the written part. About this time my parents bought a used piano. This is the same piano that (Laurence's daughter) Mary Ellen has in her home. It is the same one that I shot a hole in with a shotgun. But that is another story for another time. I took piano lessons with my brothers. The piano teacher was Lela Higginson. I would baby sit her children as partial payment for my lessons." (Laurence Gee autobiography, italics added)

Something about work:
From Laurence:
"I was also taught to wash the clothes and later mother allowed me to iron. First to iron the flat ware and the shirts. I learned how to press suit coats and trousers. When we had holes in our socks, I darned the socks. I learned how to do Bargello embroidery on towels. My grandmother Stucki taught me how to repair runs in nylon stockings and to make rag rugs.

We were expected to make our beds each morning and to vacuum the rugs weekly. When I was old enough, I mowed the lawn with a push mower. We were also expected to edge the lawn with sheep shears by hand. In the winter I shoveled the walks. I occasionally earned a little money by mowing the neighbor's lawn and also by shoveling snow in the neighborhood. We had a paper route delivering papers once a week for a free paper, which we deliver to every house and was called the Monitor. The nice thing about that paper was that we did not have to collect for the paper. We were paid a small amount to deliver, but it helped. Martell and Glendon took part in this route and we shared the money.
Other things Glendon and his brothers used to do:
Reading:

Creating:
Model airplanes

Uncle Laurence: "I will try to detail my experience with model airplanes. In the far distant recesses of my memory we lived in Missoula Montana. I remember that we had some sort of a paper airplane and I seemed to remember that it was associated with cereal boxes. I don't remember much about it except that it was a glider and not self-propelled. We then moved to Pocatello and then on to Cheyenne, but I don't remember much about airplanes during that period of time. When we got to Denver I remember three different kinds of airplanes.

The first were paper airplanes that we made from a sheet of typing paper. There were two different kinds one was a long sharp-nosed glider that we would fly off the porch of 433 Corona Street in Denver. The other was what we called a fighter it was also made out of typing paper but had wider wings and a tail and a rather heavy nose. This we would launch in a different manner by grabbing it by the nose and throwing it forcefully off the porch. Neither one of these was very airworthy.

The next airplanes that I remember were, I think, associated with cereal boxes, but I don't remember if we just sent in the box top and got the airplane in the mail or whether it was cut out of the box. These are represented World War II airplanes and required a penny to be glued into the nose for proper balance. These were not self-propelled but were gliders and seemed to work well unless they crashed.

I then progressed to model airplanes that were propelled by a propeller and a rubber band. These planes came in kits and had to be assembled. They were made of balsa wood and the parts had to be cut out with a razor blade or other sharp object. Because I was so interested in these planes, I asked my parents for an X-Acto knife for Christmas. It came with a number of different sharp blades much like the surgical scalpels that I became used to later in my medical training. I would cut out the parts and glue them together which formed a skeleton structure of the airplane. The kit came with a very thin paper, which would be glued to the framework with airplane glue. The airplane glue that we used smelled like bananas and had a tendency to form a film if it got on your fingers. This could be removed with a solvent, but we preferred to chew it off because solvent cost money. Occasionally we would run out of airplane glue and would use sodium silicate. You could buy a whole bunch of this at the drugstore and it would last much longer than a tube of airplane glue. The only problem was that sodium silicate was water-soluble. In order to tighten up the paper that we use to cover the wings and fuselage we sprayed it with water. It would shrink tightly and would make a good base for the paint that we used to cover the entire airplane. We called this paint model airplane dope. It came in various colors.

The only problem that we encountered was; if the plane was not balanced right when we flew it, the plane would veer to the ground and crash. If the plane withstood the impact, we were lucky. Sometimes we could salvage the plane so that we could make it airworthy to fly and crash again.

Many of the young men in our neighborhood in Denver built model airplanes and flew them. Some of them even had gasoline engines. I don't believe I ever had a model with a gasoline engine. I did have a gasoline engine for a model airplane but never did install it in an airplane.

I do not remember ever having a picture of any of the models that I made. I did draw pictures."