History

HISTORY OF

DON HYMAS LINDSAY

DON HYMAS LINDSAY

I, Don Hymas Lindsay, was born on 8 October 1929, in Rupert, Minidoka, Idaho, to Rupert Clyde Lindsay and Zina Hymas. I was the fifth child of six, born to my parents, the first was Norene, who was still-born in April 1921. One year later, 23 April 1922, Velola was born, then Elro Clive, the first son, on 6 October 1923. Then came Iva Mae, on 24 April 1927, then, myself, and last was Bobby Dean, on November 14, 1932.

Mother said she was expecting me to be born in August. She said I was two months overdue. I was born in the house I grew up in and spent my childhood and teen years there until I left home to join the Navy, in March of 1948. I left home to join the Navy, the same day my Dad left to serve a mission for the church in the Quebec, Canada mission. We both left on her birthday. So Mom was left home alone with a 15 year old Bobby Dean, who was a little rebellious. She had her hands full, with her job, taking care of our 10 acres (irrigating and all), milking the cow, raising a garden and working in town at the dress shop. Many times she would get up at 3 a.m. to make bread before she went to work, or can something, or any number of other things.

Our home was a three bedroom house, with a screened in porch on the back (south side), where some of us boys slept, when it wasn’t too cold. Later, a small entryway was added to the front of the house, with a coat closet on the West side of it. Years later, we also added onto the back, or south side of the house. This was a family project. We put a nice bedroom and a utility room for Mom’s washer and dryer, with cupboards along the west wall, and a stairway leading to the attic rooms, which were made into bedrooms and closets. Also under the addition, a basement was dug where we had a little family room with a fireplace, and a fruit room with a root cellar behind it. Mom and Dad worked hard to get the house into a comfortable and cozy home. Most of the family helped remodel, whenever possible.

The bathroom was added about the time Dad came home from his mission (about 1950) and was a very welcome part of the house. It was between the kitchen and the front bedroom, where the stairway, going upstairs used to be. Until we got the back part added on, we had to climb a ladder to go to the upstairs, through a window. I remember seeing Mom climb that ladder many times when she needed something that was up there. It was a 16 foot ladder, but she didn’t hesitate to shimmy up there if she needed something.

My earliest memories of my childhood were of playing in the sand in the bottom of the irrigation ditch. I also remember spending a lot of time playing with our closest neighbors, the Campbell kids, who lived just west of us, across the pasture. David and I were the same age and we could get into a lot of mischievous things. We had a lot of fun hooking Mom’s heifer to a cart, that we had earned by cleaning out an orchard for Bause’s, down on the corner to the east. We steered the cart by moving our feet on the bar in front. The heifer wasn’t very well trained, so when we hooked it up, she just went like the dickens and it took some maneuvering to steer it to miss posts and other objects. We enjoyed it till we trashed it. But it was fun while it lasted. I was about 10 or 12 years old at that time.

Dave (Campbell) and I each had a sheep that we would get out in the middle of the field and teach to butt heads with each other. They would chase us, as well. We would run like the dickens, for the fence to get away from them. They were pretty mean. One day we were over in Campbell’s yard with our sheep when Mrs. Campbell (Rhoda, Dave’s Mom) came out in the yard to have us do something, when Dave’s sheep chased her up a tree. She was there till we got the sheep away, causing Dave to have to get rid of his sheep. She used some pretty choice words on us, and the sheep. I still have a good laugh, thinking of that day.

The next year, I worked all summer in the potatoes for a neighbor, to earn a horse he had. I was probably 10 years old. He was an old work plug, but he was mine, and I really earned him. We used to ride him up and down the canal bank and go swimming. We herded cows with him as well. We always herded the cows, for feed, even before we got the horse, because we didn’t have any hay. I was herding cows very early in my life. Probably when I was 5 or 6 years old. Elro and I would spend almost the whole day herding them along the roads and ditch banks. We probably had a little fun while we were doing it, as well, like skipping rocks and catching bugs and etc., but it was our job every summer.

When we were little, there wasn’t much money, so we had one pair of overalls and one shirt to wear to school. Mom would wash them out at night and hang them in the house to dry. They were made of heavy denim, so sometimes they wouldn’t be dry by morning. Then she would put them by the pot-bellied stove to finish drying.

When I was about 12 years old, I bought myself a trumpet (I paid $35 for a NEW trumpet) to practice and play at school. Frank Watson was my music teacher. Through school, I got to go on a lot of pep band trips. At the end of my playing career, I played for a little while with a dance band called “Slip and Slide with Jerry Hyde” and his Orchestra. I played 2^nd trumpet. That was quite enjoyable.

I also played (not trumpet, just played) quite a lot with my cousin, Vernal Sheen, as he had horses that we could ride. We did quite a lot of things together, while growing up. Our families would get together, at times and make homemade ice cream and play games and etc. We were a close bunch. My mom and Vernal’s mom, (Aunt Clara), were sisters.

I was a busy Boy Scout a lot of the time and going

on Scout trips and earning merit badges. Some of the time, my Dad was my Scout leader. I had other Scout leaders, as well. Herbert May, and Frank Watson are some that I can remember. At the age of 14 years, I earned my Eagle Badge, along with Page Crandall and Delbert Buckley, just to name a couple of the fellows. I was proud of that, as I worked hard for it.

I got a couple of rabbits, when I was about 12 years old and earned my “Rabbit Raising” merit badge. We kept and raised rabbits for meat for several years, after that.

At the age of 12, I baled hay all summer for Paul Penrod with one of the first wartime balers. I drove the tractor while Paul baled. It took 2 people. I drove tractor (an old John Deere 2 cylinder ) while he rode the baler and tied the bales. He was doing custom work, so we went all over the valley, including Oakley. In those days, Oakley was a long way away. More than 30 miles from where I lived .

When I was about 13 years old, I developed Rheumatic Fever and spent most of the winter in bed, missing a lot of school. In the summer, when I began to feel better, I decided I was going to get a job, and without telling Mom, I got on my bike and headed for Oakley to see if I could get a job baling hay, as I had done the summer before. Mom came looking for me as I was on my way home. I hadn’t fully recovered from rheumatic fever. I didn’t get the job. Mom said when she found me I was almost dead, I looked so bad and was so weak. She was relieved to find me but angry with me for doing such a stupid thing when I had been so sick all winter and spring.

When I was in the 7^th grade, I pulled a prank that landed me in a bit of trouble. I decided to cross my eyes and pretend that they were stuck. So I crossed my eyes and told the teacher that they were stuck, then I had to go along with it. They called Mom and she came and got me and took me to the Dr. He prescribed a sedative, which was ether, and I momentarily went to sleep, to relax me so they would go back to normal. When Mom found out it was a hoax, I was really in trouble. I don’t remember whether or not my teacher learned the truth. But I learned my lesson that day.

I started driving school bus at the age of 14 years. Garr Loosli recommended me for the job, as he was driving as well. But he was a couple of years older than I was. I drove bus for 3 years, and had a few risky experiences, such as running into snow banks, and going through snow drifts across the roads, and some of the older kids not wanting to obey the rules, and resenting a younger kid driving. Occasionally. racing with some of the other guys, driving other school buses. So I got fired from my job at the age of 17 because I was too young. Mr. Lowder was my boss. I kept telling him that the clutch on my bus needed repaired, but he put it to the last of the things that needed done. I had to start the bus while it was in gear and stop the same way. I drove it into the garage and parked it. When he decided to work on it, he had a hard time getting it out of the garage to work on, and cussed me out for letting it go so long that way.

At about the age of 16 I bought myself a motorcycle, a Harley Davidson. That is when I was getting bored with school, and thought I knew more than the teachers. So, many days, we (Al Packham) and I would go to Pocatello, or Indian Springs (swimming), or other places, and skip school. It wasn’t long before I dropped out of school. In my Junior year of school, the first 6 weeks, I only attended 5 or 6 days of school. So I just quit and started working at the Sugar Factory, on the pup crew, which was bagging 5 and 10 pound bags of sugar. I got bored with that and decided to join the Navy. I was too young, so Mom had to sign for me to go. As I mentioned before, I left the same time Dad left to serve a mission in Canada. It was in March 30, 1948.

When I was in the Navy, my pay was pretty skimpy, but Mom was having a hard time making ends meet so I had the government send most of my paycheck home to Mom, to help her out. So I didn't have much to use on my own, which was probably a good thing.

I went to Boot Camp first, in San Diego, California, then to Hospital Corps school. (Also in San Diego) My first duty, after Corps school was at the Hospital in Bremerton. Washington. As a Corpsman, I gave shots, distributed medication, cleaned bedpans and all the bad jobs, in the Cardiology Ward, where some of the old retired sailors were living out their last days. I took orders from nurses who received their orders from the doctors. I also drove ambulance for a short period of time, but I wrecked a Cadillac Ambulance when it was raining and I was driving too fast. I was going to pick up a patient at Fort Lewis. So they took my license away. That was the end of my Ambulance driving career.

I then went to work in an EENT (eye, ear, nose, and throat) Clinic. There I helped give eye examinations. One Christmas a young child had received a bow and arrow for Christmas, and had an accident and shot an arrow into one of his eyes. They transferred him to our Hospital, as his Dad was a Navy man, and I was able to get in on the surgery. The child did lose his eye.

On my first leave to go home, I became engaged to my girlfriend, Irma Frost. She was still in High School. I had met her at an after game dance. Then I would see her at the Y-Dell Ballroom dances on Saturday nights. I soon started dating her and liked her quite well. After 2 years in the Navy, I got out on a COG (convenience of government), because my Mom was having a hard time at home. That was in February 1950. Irma and I decided to get married as soon as she graduated from High School. So I started working as a farm hand for H.C.Bortz (out in Springdale, 5 miles east of Burley). When Irma graduated from High School, we were married on June 9, 1950 in the Salt Lake Temple. Both of our parents went with us, as well as Eunice and Earl Read. We went to Thelma and Jay’s home in Rose Park Addition (Salt Lake) for a little luncheon, afterwards. We spent one night in Salt Lake at Temple Square Hotel, then back to Burley and to work. Bortz’s had a little 2 room house in the midst of a small forest of trees in his yard, and that is where we set up housekeeping. We had an old bed from one of the parents, and Don’s parents gave us, for a wedding gift a new dinette set, a table and 4 chairs. There was an old wood cook stove in the house, but we soon got rid of that and made our first major purchase, an electric range. Irma was in “heaven”. The very first batch of bread she made was pretty good, as 3 of my old buddies (Al Packham, Jack Gransbury, and La Moyne Wilson) came over to see us that night and they ate all of the new batch of bread while it was still warm. I guess it must have been good.

Our bathroom was an old “outhouse” down a little path that had a small irrigation ditch running along beside of it. I always had to go with Irma at nights when the urge came, because she was afraid of the dark.

We worked only part of the summer there. I think I earned $100.00 a month. I soon became bored with that job and went to work in town at the J.C.Penney store. Mr. Balch was the manager and he seemed to like me quite well. But being couped up in a store all day and trying to talk people into buying things they hadn’t come in for (that is what we were trained to do, sell them other things besides what they had came in for), I soon got tired of that. But it was while working here and living in a little house in town, that our beautiful little daughter, Shirley, was born. (on May 10^th 1951). She weighed 7# 8 oz. Irma had a very rough delivery and we weren’t sure she was going to make it. She developed toxemia and was unconscious and very sick for a few days. The Dr. had told me that there would be no more children born to us. (Oh if he could see us now). He didn’t know that there were still 9 more spirits waiting their turns to come into our home. Well, doctors are only human and they don’t know everything!!

Shirley was a good baby, and we liked to show her off as much as we could. I was working at J.C Penney’s at that time and Irma would put her in the baby buggy and walk downtown to the store. As she grew older, she was a very shy little girl and even as a teenager, she was still pretty shy and quiet. She could be quite a lot of help around the house. She grew up and went to Rick’s College. Her room mate was Karen Duncan, her best friend and close neighbor when we lived in Idaho Falls. Then she went to ISU, in Pocatello, where she met her future husband, Marty Wallace. We were very pleased with her choice of a good man. We didn’t realize till she was in college that she has such a beautiful singing voice. She has sung a lot for different things. In fact, when Marty was singing with a group, there were four of them, and their wives all got in on the act a few times on their programs, and their voices blended as well as the men’s did.

We lived in the house in town for a while, (at 1719 Albion Ave) then decided to try to buy something of our own. So we bought a basement house in Heyburn just about a block from where Irma’s sister, Celia and Ray Dudley lived (later divorced). We had hoped to build on top of it, but that never happened. This is where we lived when I went to work for the Farmers Equity, in their mill where they bought grains from the farmers and sold it, as well. They rolled grain and ground grain. It was a dirtier job, but much more to my liking. It was also a hardware store and lumber company, but I worked in the mill part with several other fellows, one guy was my brother-in-law, Ray Dudley (now divorced).

Some days, I would take my barber clippers and cut all the guys hair. They liked my haircuts, so it was an ongoing process for a few years. This is where we lived when Randy Don was born on 21 November 1953. He weighed in at 7# 14 ounces. We were very excited about our first little Boy, and didn’t believe there was any baby more handsome. We were proud of him. He had a lot of dark hair and plump cheeks and was a good baby, full of life, and later mischief. He was the oldest boy, so got the blame for a lot of things the younger boys did. (When he was older, and had little brothers). He was an energetic boy, and grew up to be good with horses and cattle, as he got older. He’s really a cowboy at heart. When the boys were older, they tried to ride some of our steers and had some funny experiences, like when we lived in Firth, they went out into the corral, and Randy was about 12 years old, at the time. They gave Kirk (who was 5 or 6) and Clyde a long board and had one on each end, so when one calf tried to go under the board, Clyde being the biggest, let go of the board and it scraped the side of Kirk’s face and his ear. His ear swelled three times its size and scraped his face, knocking him unconscious. And Randy came carrying him to the house. He didn’t want to go anywhere for a few days because it looked quite bad. Another time Randy & Dennis decide they’d have a ride on one of the calves. The calves were resting in the shade (in the pasture by the house) and the boys wrapped a wire around one calves tail and hooked it over the electric fence so Dennis could ride him. That calf took off on a dead run and tore out a whole section on the fence. I was pretty upset at that and done a little butt kicking. He played the clarinet in school band. He went on a mission to Calgary Canada and ended up in the Winnepeg mission. We went after him in our old, but newly acquired Motor home (Open Road)

When Randy was just 14 months old, on January 25, 1955, our second little tiny baby boy, Dennis Brad, came into our lives. He was small, weighing 5# 14 oz., but was healthy. He had a little bit of blond hair, the same color as his skin, but was also a handsome baby. He had plump cheeks and soon grew to be a rolly poly baby. He was very good natured, and had a quiet disposition, and grew up the same way. He was adorable too. I don’t know why we were so blessed as to have such beautiful children. We were still living in the basement house in Heyburn. When he started school he done pretty well in his school work. He was a little bit shy. He took wrestling in High School and was pretty good at it. He also played trumpet, in the High School band, making it possible for him to go on a lot of band trips. He enjoyed that and had a lot of fun doing that. He graduated from High School and went on a mission to Australia 6 months after Randy went to Canada on his mission. I believe he was a good missionary.

When we lived in Heyburn, Dad Frost gave us a little Jersey heifer (runt). He had a Grade A barn, and sold milk and didn’t think she would produce well enough to earn her keep, so he gave her to us. We babied her along and kind of treated her like a pet. After she had a calf, we had all the milk we needed. We called her “Little Jerz”, and I built a small shed and a small corral back on the sand hill for her. She seemed pretty content. We enjoyed her a lot. We also got a few chickens, so we could have our own eggs. I built a little make-shift chicken coop. We had plenty of eggs for the family.

That little sand hill we lived on had some other surprises for us. Like Black Widow spiders, for one thing. We found them inside the house, as well as many outside the house. We also had little small scorpions out in the sand. I don’t know if they were dangerous or not, but, none the less, when we found some of them, we steered clear of them. We didn’t want to take any chances.

In April of 1955, Dad Frost, who had been a hard worker all his life, had a severe stroke while out milking cows. Mom Frost went out to the barn and found him lying on the cement floor. She called a neighbor, Wayne Call and his brother-in-law, Bernell Stout, and they took him to the hospital. He was never able to do much after that. He did get where he could walk around and feed himself and so on. But he was very unhappy after that, and always wished he could just die. But he lived about 23 years longer and had more strokes, but none as bad as the first one.

We still lived in Heyburn, in the basement house when our 4^th child was born. Another son, whom we named Clyde Frost Lindsay. He was a little bigger, weighing 7# 14 ½ ounces, just a tiny bit more than Randy weighed when he was born. Clyde was our biggest baby. This baby had a medium amount of brown hair, but was still as cute as can be. He was such a happy baby, with an extra good disposition. When he got older and had younger siblings, he was very good with them and could always be counted on to take good care of them if we had to leave for a while. He was so dependable, and has been all his life. In fact, after he worked on a portable sprinkler pipe press in Aberdeen, he made his own from scratch and has made pretty good money on it, with a lot of hard work for several months of the year. When Clyde was a few months old, we moved into a small trailer house out on the Frost parent’s farm, where Gerald and Verlee lived. They were living in the old house most of the Frost family grew up in. They were planning on going to SLC for some schooling, so we thought we could move into the house they were living in (Mother and Dad’s old house where Irma was born), and take care of the farming chores, to help out, since Dad could no longer do it. (Irma’s parents had moved over on the hill in their new home.) It was a challenge for me because I was also working full time at the Farmer’s Equity. But we did move into the house. It was larger than anything else we had lived in, so far, so that was good. We lived here for a few months, but decided we needed a more secure job than the Farmer’s Equity, where I was making $1.00 an hour, so I applied for work at the AEC site, (now called INL) near Arco, west of Idaho Falls. Norry Herrera, who worked with me at Farmer’s Equity, applied also. The government does a background check on everyone that is hired there, so after we cleared, we moved to Idaho Falls and Herrera’s moved to Pocatello and we both started working there for Westinghouse, which was a place where they tested a nuclear submarine, a duplicate of the real one. I worked in the storeroom, where everyone had to check out the tools they needed for any particular job. It was a good job and paid pretty well, but the ride on the bus to the site was not really great. It took about an hour and 15 minutes each way. I caught my bus on the corner by our house. The house we bought when we moved to Idaho Falls was at 1111 Bannock Avenue. We had good neighbors and finally became active in the church there at the North Idaho Falls Stake, in the 13^th ward. Our next door neighbors were the Rulon Price family and the Chester and Hazel Elder family. They both had daughters Shirley’s age that she became good friends to. We sure loved the people there and became very close to them. The first thing they did was put me in as Young Men’s Secretary, but after a while they made me the Scoutmaster. I enjoyed that job and always took my vacations so I could take the boys to Scout camp and weekend campouts. One particular trip I remember, Irma and I had made a life sized dummy to take up to camp, where Bishop George Jensen was going to come up one evening and tell the story of an old outlaw named Kelley (for Kelly’s Canyon), who was hanged up there. Our dummy was the outlaw. The bishop told the story and we hanged the dummy. It was very successful, but the dummy was in pretty bad shape, after the hanging, but I decided to take him home anyway. As we packed the trailer, to go home, I just threw the dummy over the top of the trailer and tied him on and we headed for home. On the way home, some of the boys decided they wanted to walk across this one big bridge, so I let them out. Just then some other people came along and seen the dummy, and thinking it was a real person and very excitedly asked “is he alright?” We all got quite a laugh from that Kelley Canyon trip.

After living in Idaho Falls for a while, on September 19, 1958, our little Myron Kirk was born. Wow, another boy! but a healthy, handsome boy, with quite a lot of brown (auburn) hair. He weighed 7# 7 oz. And was 20 inches long. He was a good and a happy baby and his older siblings loved him as much as the others. As the days went on, we noticed something quite different about him. He had one blue eye and one brown eye. Very unique! The Dr. said only one tenth of one percent of people in the world were like that. He grew up to love the drums, and became a very good drummer in the High School Pep Band. He bought a nice set of drums. He played with a group of his friends who played guitars and etc. They were pretty good too, a little noisy, at times, but very good. I believe Kirk still has a big set of drums, but doesn’t often play them. Kirk was a pretty good student in school, got pretty good grades on the subjects he liked best and fair on the others.

He had a broken arm when he was about 10 or 11 years old, but other than that he had a pretty safe life. He took some classes at the college in Pocatello (at ISU) and also some financial classes at a college in SLC).

Well, in December of 1960, we finally got another little girl. Our beautiful little Debbie was born on December 23, 1960 at about 10:30 at night. She had quite a bit of dark brown hair. She weighed 6# 11oz,20 ½ inches long. We waited for her for a long time, so the whole family was excited to get another sister. We all spoiled her terribly, especially her big sister, who loved her so very much. In fact she wrote a little story about the “Happiest Day of My Life.” It was about getting a little sister. They were 10 years apart, in age, but still good for each other. Irma kept that story for a long time but somewhere in our shuffle of moves and all, it became lost. The big problem was that when Debbie was born Irma was in the hospital for Christmas, and I didn’t know where to find the Christmas things. We had to communicate over the phone to find most of the toys and things. Irma had made them all pajamas alike, red and white stripes. She even made me a pair. There were a lot of stripes running around that Christmas and nobody wanted to take them off. About New Years, we found some more things that I had overlooked, from Santa. So the kids enjoyed “another Christmas”.

When Debbie was 20 months old, Shirley was pushing her in the swing and she fell out, breaking her leg. Shirley felt so bad, but it wasn’t her fault. They put a big old cast on her whole leg and said not to let her walk on it because of how the break was, but it wasn’t long before she wouldn’t stay off of it. She was afraid to be in her crib, with the cast on her leg, so we let her sleep with us. It was quite an ordeal, as she would raise her leg up (in her sleep) and let it fall onto one of us. What a rude awakening! When the cast was off, she still wanted to sleep with us, so we had to break that habit real soon. It wasn’t easy either. She surely was the apple of everyone’s eye at our house. We spoiled her pretty well. She was a busy little go-getter, but we sure loved her, and she knew it. While Debbie was a baby, I was sustained into the Bishopric of our ward, with Bernard Price as Bishop and Reese Casperson being the 1^st counselor, and myself as the 2^nd counselor, where I stayed for 3 ½ years, after that we moved to Firth to try to be farmers, again, so I was released. But when the Stake President tried to get hold of me to ask me about being in the Bishopric, I was on a hunting trip with Norry Herrera. We hadn’t planned to stay over Sunday, but one of us shot an extra deer and had to go into town to get another deer tag. So we ended up staying Saturday night. President Mickelson kept trying to get me on the phone and Irma kept saying that we should be there anytime. Well Sunday morning came and still NO DON. Finally Irma got hold of Norry’s wife, and we had just got there (they lived in Pocatello). Irma talked to me on the phone and I headed for home real quick. President was coming to our home to talk to me just before church started. I took a real quick bath and was putting on my sox, when he came. He asked me and I accepted. But he said “I hope you don’t make a habit of hunting on Sunday.” I assured him that I don’t.

Our next little bundle of joy was born February 3, 1963, in Idaho Falls. Guess what!! Another boy. He weighed 7 # __oz. And was __Inches long. He had a mop of black hair and little chubby cheeks. He was immediately welcomed by the whole family, who loved him so much, they couldn’t keep their hands off him. He had a great disposition and was a happy baby. He had a little extra nub right in front of one of his ears, which we later had removed, so it wouldn’t be a source of teasing as he grew up. When he was about three years old, we moved to a little farm in Firth. We bought some cattle to put on the pasture and were going to be farmers (?), which didn’t turn out very well. All we managed to do is get ourselves into debt buying cattle. That took us a few years to pay off and get out of debt. While we lived here, in Basalt, (Firth), Kevin came up missing at a time when we were irrigating and had a ditch full of water. The ditch ran right in front of the house and was very full. I thought Irma had him and she thought he was with me. Irma panicked and started calling him and running towards the ditch, all along it. She looked out in the pasture where the ditch had made a turn and gone quite away to a head gate about half way down the pasture and there was Kevin crawling out of the ditch at the head gate. He didn’t even seem to be afraid, but he had been in the ditch and carried quite a distance before he was able to get out. Irma went running and grabbed him and squeezed him to her, as she was so relieved to see that he was okay. It was a frightening experience for all of us. And we thanked the Lord for his safety. He also had a close call, in Firth, when I had bought a horse at the sale ring, and brought him home, I put Kevin on the horse (he was probably 2 years old), I was holding onto him, but the horse began bucking and I couldn’t get him to stop, and Kevin fell off right under the horse, which just kept bucking right over the top of him. I was sure he was going to be killed. The horse finally started running and I picked Kevin up and took him over to Irma, who was watching on the other side of the fence and as I was handing him to Irma, that crazy horse tried to run over me. Irma was almost in hysterics. I sold that horse right away.

About that time, we decided the parents (both sets) needed us at home to help out with things, so…

We moved back to the Burley/Rupert area when I got a job with Ore-Ida. I came back in October to start my new job and Irma stayed in Firth, as she was expecting our 8^th child. She didn’t like being there alone, with 7 kids, so we moved the whole family back on the Thanksgiving weekend, knowing she would have to go back to the Dr. every week until the baby came. We were expecting our newest one to arrive in November, but he surprised us and didn’t show up until Dec 19, 1966. I drove Irma to Idaho Falls on Dec 18^th, and the Dr. said he would start labor that day. I had to go back to Rupert to go to work as I hadn’t been on the job very long and couldn’t get off. I left and our good friend, Ruth Clark, stayed with Irma through her labor and delivery. Our little Craig was born with a mop of blonde (sandy colored) hair. Ruth said she knew when he was born because she saw a tall sandy complexioned young man come through the veil the moment he was born. She said he was an outstanding young man. He weighed 7 pounds and 0 ounces and was 19 1/2 inches long. He was born at 8:50 a.m. on the 19^th. When I picked up Irma to bring her home the baby was in a bright red Christmas stocking that the Pink Ladies had made for all the babies who left the hospital just before Christmas. The kids at home were waiting anxiously with Grandma Frost, who had stayed with them while I was gone. We were glad to get home, and the baby was welcomed by all his siblings, and they thought the Christmas stocking he was in was really neat. Craig was somewhat of a cranky baby. When he was 6 weeks old, Irma tried to go back to work at Ore-Ida on the night shift and let Shirley tend the baby. But Shirley was still in High School, and she couldn’t get any sleep, because the baby cried so much, so Irma’s staying a working mother had a short span. She quit so Shirley could get her rest and her school. Growing up Craig was a very busy, energetic child, just full of life and hard to keep up with, but also lots of fun.

About this time, Jay McBride, who was in our Bishopric, and also owned an Auto Parts Store (Minico Auto Parts), asked me if I would work in his store. I told him I would but needed to keep my job at Ore-Ida. So I worked 2 full time jobs for a few years. It was pretty hard and I tried to catch up on my sleep on weekends. Then, after a time, I decided to quit Ore-Ida and just work full time for Jay. I think this was a mistake though. Although he was pretty good to us and if I needed time off for anything, it could be arranged. He increased my pay, as it was hard going from two paychecks to one.

We first lived in a house that we rented from a Mr. Moeller. He was not too pleasant of a fellow and lived next door. He kind of frowned upon the fact that we had a large family, and told us he was afraid our boys would ruin his ornamental trees. So after we lived there a couple of weeks, he asked us to move. So we rented a house from Ardell Jensen, that his parents used to live in. His mother, Aunt Minnie, was my mother’s sister. It was a pretty good home with an upstairs that had 2 or 3 bedrooms. We lived in the same ward we lived in just prior to this one. The Rupert 4^th ward.

One day at church, they asked for volunteers to work on the church farm and Irma volunteered to work on the potato harvester. That is when she hurt her back. She was just starting out with another pregnancy and was in pain the whole time she carried this baby. The night I took Irma to the hospital to deliver him, I had the flu, and was feeling crummy, so, once again, I dropped Irma off at the hospital and went home. So little number nine, Wesley Kim, came into our lives on leap year (Feb. 29, 1968). He was a handsome baby with quite a tuft of brown hair. He weighed 7 # 8 oz and was 19 inches long. He was a very good baby and when he was about 6 weeks old, Irma went to S.L.C. for back surgery. The Dr. removed a disc in her back and she was in the hospital there for about 10 days. The neighbor, next door, Byron & Pat Roy, wanted to take care of our new baby. They had 4 children of their own, but they were older. They loved taking care of him, and did so for 2 or 3 weeks after Irma came home from the hospital. They always called him “our baby”, even when he was grown. He was loved by his family just as much as the rest of them were. We were able to bring him back home after 2 or 3 weeks, and were happy to get him home again. When we lived in the 2 story house (1750 Normal), we went to the Temple one evening. Shirley had been embroidering on the living room floor and had left her things on the floor. Craig and Wes were wrestling and Wes, somehow, rolled over the scissors, and cut his back quite bad. They couldn’t get it to stop bleeding so they called Grandma Frost over. She bandaged it and put him to bed in his top bunk. When we got home, we went up and looked at him and the cut was gaping wide open, so we immediately got him up and took him to the hospital. The Dr. said it could have gone into his kidney, but it didn’t go in that far, but he sewed it up and he healed alright. Wesley was a quiet little boy, and pleasant to be around.

The things Wes remembers most and enjoys thinking about are the wood cutting expeditions we went on every summer to get wood for our fireplace. We had an old green pickup used as well as an old “wood wagon” we used. We often went with Mae and John Jones. Another thing he remembers is the times they would all go over to my apartments, when I was working on them, and help roof or whatever needed done. Wes also played the trumpet in High School.

We rented a home, much newer and real nice, on the Rupert/Paul highway. We rented with the option to buy. It was in quite a nice neighborhood and out in the country a ways, in a cul-de-sac with a few more homes, but again, in the same ward. Here, Irma became pregnant again. When her time was getting close, she felt something wasn’t quite right, and called the Dr. Her Dr. was out of town, so Dr. Walter Peterson took over and checked her at the hospital and told her she would have to have a C-section in order to save the baby, as the cord was wrapped around his head. Dr. Peterson was just ready to leave town to go to the temple when they called him. So that is the way little Rupert Jay came into the world. He had a mop of dark hair and weighed 6 ¾ # and was 19 inches long. He was the 10^th and last of our children. The Lord had a mission for him, as he made it possible for Irma to know that something wasn’t just right, before the delivery, even before she had any labor pains. So we know he has a special purpose in this life, and he is proving that. Even though he didn’t try very hard in school, after he married, he went into Nurses training at CSI college and is now taking classes in Critical Care, in Utah two days a week. People who have had him as a nurse, say he is a very good nurse. I know he is, as I have seen him in action…

We are proud and happy with our family and love each of them with all our hearts. I am just sorry that I was such a hard taskmaster with my children. I was stern and at times my discipline was pretty harsh. If I could change that, I would, because I now know that there are better ways of discipling than the way I did it. If I had been more kind and understanding with them I would now feel better about it. I should have remembered the saying “a soft voice turneth away wrath.” I only want to know that we can be an eternal family, and all be together after this life.

When we this time, we moved to another farm to try our hand at farming again (?). It was in the Heyburn area. By this time, Shirley was in college and our family was growing up. We had one cow, just for the milk, for our family. We only lived there for 1 ½ years, but had a few experiences while living there. The house was so small that I cut a hole in the ceiling in the kitchen and put in a “pull down” stairway. Then in the attic I put some plywood down on the floor so that there was room for some bunk beds up there. It was a pretty crude looking bedroom, but we got by for the time we were there, as it was only a 2 bedroom house and old and drafty, but the boys all survived it. This is the place where, the boys now talk about their “bathroom”. They didn’t want to go downstairs to use the facilities, so they had a pipe that they stuck out the window and relieved themselves that way. I didn’t know it at the time though. In fact, we’ve learned a lot of things, since they’ve grown up. When they sit around reminiscing of earlier days, we find out a lot of things that could curl your hair.

We didn’t do so well on that farm, so, once again, we gave up farming and found a big house in Burley that we decided to buy. It was at 1750 Normal Ave. It was a 2 story house that had 3 bedrooms on the 2^nd floor and one tiny one on the main floor, which was rented to a handicapped fellow named Delbert Greene. He was very slow mentally, but we agreed to let him live there, even with our huge family. He said he didn’t mind the kids. And we decided his rent could help us with our house payments. We only had one bathroom at that time and he would get in there and sit for hours. We were always on him to get out of there so someone else could go. So that probably helped us to decide to build more rooms on the 2^nd floor, as the rooms upstairs didn’t take up all the space available up there. So we started building and done alright for amateurs. We added 2 more bedrooms and a nice bathroom, which gave us a lot more space for our gang. Then when we got through with that, we added a tiny bathroom, with just a sink and toilet, for Delbert. Now he can sit on the commode as long as he wants. He was happy with that as well. There was a “smoke house” (that’s what the previous owners called it, as they smoked meat and fish out there) right behind the house, so we closed all that in and made another bedroom out there. It all worked out pretty well. Now we had plenty of room, whereas, before the building projects, we had 2 sets of triple decker bunk beds for the boys in the biggest bedroom, and Shirley and Debbie in the other, with a crib in there also, besides a crib in our bedroom. So we were pretty crunched for the first 3 or 4 years we lived in that house. Shirley was away at college for part of that time. She went to Ricks College and roomed with her best friend from Idaho Falls, Karen Duncan. Then she went to ISU in Pocatello. This is where she met her future husband, Martin (Marty) Wallace. He was a great guy and we approved of him wholeheartedly. I don’t know what he thought of our BIG gang.

Well I believe that from here, I will merge with Irma’s history, as it will all be pretty much the same.

If I think of other things to add to it later, I may do so, but not necessarily in the order they happened.

I love my family dearly and I love the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and I treasure my membership in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day-Saints.

Don Hymas Lindsay