Dating
When we first started dating, we were together all the time. In one of our first telephone conversations, I asked her to marry me. Kaye belonged to a social unit called the O. S. Travata. They had a great formal dance at the Hotel Utah in Salt Lake City, I wore a dinner jacket and Kaye wore a formal. It was a very fancy dinner dance. We went to all the BYU sports and dances. We walked most of the places we went because I didn't have a car. During Spring Break, Ron and I hitch hiked down to Arizona to pick up my Chevy Capri that my Dad bought me. After that we could go places. We went to Salt Lake to see Nat King Cole at the Salt Palace. We went out to dinner at the Tampico Mexican restaurant and Nat King Cole was eating there. We also went to Kaye's Grandma Cowley's house in Layton some weekends. We also went to Utah Lake and up the Provo River on picnics. We went to Rock Canyon several times. I finally asked Kaye to marry me and we started looking for rings. I borrowed the money for her rings from my brother, Grant.
Engagement
I decided to give Kaye her engagement ring for her 18th birthday. We went out to dinner that night and just before midnight I pulled over on Center Street and told her if I didn't do this now it wouldn't be her birthday. I pulled out her ring and asked her to marry me. I slipped it on her finger and gave her a kiss and we were engaged. When Kaye got home she called her mom and dad to tell them she was engaged. The only thing her dad had to say was, "Give it back!"
There were some rituals that they had at BYU for people who got engaged. At the dorms it was traditional that they throw the guys into the slimy Botony Pond, so a bunch of the guys threw me in the pond. It was really slimy. It was traditional for the girls cafeteria to put the girls who got engaged into the cafeteria sink. I think Kaye got a better deal than I did.
Wedding
We had planned to get married later in the summer. As time went by, Kaye became worried that her dad would really try to keep us from getting married because he thought she was too young and he didn't like the idea of her getting married anyway. We decided to get married and not tell anyone. We would stay in the dorms and would work during the summer. Kaye in Layton and I would go work at the mines in Morence, Arizona. Then we would have a formal ceremony at the end of the summer.
We went and got our marriage license and made an appointment with Bishop Harrison Scott to get married at his home on Friday, May 13, 1955. Kaye pressed my suit at her dorm. She wore a blue polka dot dress with a white jacket. We got married early that evening.
Honeymoon
We went to this neat motel with a duck pond for our wedding night. We went into Tad's Steakhouse for our dinner in Salt Lake. When we went back to the motel I got sick to my stomach and threw up. I guess I was nervous. The next day we went to Grandma Cowley's house. We picked her up and took her to the college rodeo in Logan. While we were there one of the brahma bulls jumped over the fence and scattered the crowd. That night when we were back at Grandmas house I slept in Hal's little bedroom. Kaye sat on the bed to talk to me and Grandma took her right out of the room. We laughed about her not knowing we were married and that she had gone on our honeymoon.
We went back to school to the dorms, but every weekend we checked out to go to Grandma's, but stayed in motels for the weekend. Kaye's mom came out to meet me and she also had orders from Kaye's dad to make sure we didn't get married. I went down to Morence and Kaye went to Layton to work in the Kowley Drug Store. We were both lonely and miserable. We decided to tell everyone that we were married. Kaye came down to Clifton, Arizona, on the bus. We had a little motel room with a kitchenette. My dad met Kaye. I was gandy dancing (means setting and moving rails) in the open pit Copper mine at Phelps Dodge. It was very hot there in the pit. After a few weeks the workers went on strike. While we were waiting for the strike to be over we took a honeymoon trip to the mountains in Springville, Arizona and stayed in a nice cabin there. Then we went to my uncle Earl Cardon's farm in Virden, New Mexico. There we went to El Paso to introduce Kaye to my mom's family. We saw Grandma Cardon and my aunts and uncles. Since the strike was still on we went to Merced, California to see my brother Grant and his family and look for a job. I got a job in the peach orchards driving a truck. Dad called up and told us that the strike was over. We decided to go back to work at PD to finish the summer.
First we drove up to San Francisco in the Persideo to see Kaye's aunt Lou Jean and her husband who were stationed there. We drove back along the coast and slept in the car in Monterey. We went to LA where we had new generator that didn't work which was put in our way to California. Replaced again, then we went back to Arizona.
No comments:
Post a Comment