Cathy's Birth

While Kaye was pregnant, I took a skiing class at BYU. Kaye had taken skiing the year before and wanted me to learn to ski. She told me there were two beginning classes, one for those who had never been on skis and one for those who had skied a little. She said to take the more advanced class, you'll learn more, I misunderstood her and signed up for the intermediate class. The first day we went up to Brighton on the bus. Our class went way up to the top of the mountain on the ski lift. I fell getting off the top of the lift. The rest of the class was lined up with the instructor to go down the mountain. He went down a ways and motioned to the class to follow him. Each one went down and stopped. I looked over that steep edge and started down. I went straight on passed the class and ran into a tree and broke my ski. The instructor said they would meet me at the bottom. I started to climb back up to the top of the lift to get a ride down. It took me all day to get back up because the snow was up to my waist. When I got down to the bottom the class was all on the bus waiting for me and mad because I made them late. The instructor said if I wanted to stay in the class I had to catch up on my own because he couldn't hold up the whole class for me. By the end of the semester I was better than most of the students in the class. I never did learn how to snow plow there.

Kaye's Uncle Hal and I went skiing a lot. On one trip just before Cathy was born I broke my ankle. Mary, was in a walking cast from her broken foot, so she lent me her crutches. When Kaye went into labor and we went to the Utah Valley Hospital, in we came: Mary in her walking cast, me on crutches, and Kaye carrying her suitcase. The nurse looked at us and said which one of you needs to be admitted. On March 24, 1956, Cathy was born. She weight 5 pounds 10 1/2 ounces. Kaye was in labor for 12 hours. Cathy was beautiful and tiny. Kaye and Cathy came home in 3 days. I was a father.

When school was out we went down to work at Phelps Dodge for the summer. I made a bed for Cathy in the back seat of our 1952 Chevy Capri. It was hot and Cathy had colic. It wasn't a fun trip.

When got got there I worked in the locomotive shop. We rented an apartment in an old house in Morence. The people who lived above us were Mexicans. Their kids asked us if Cathy could see because her eyes were so blue. There were lots of scorpions in the house. We were afraid Cathy would get stung and we put the feet of her crib in glasses so they couldn't climb up.

One night after we came home from a drive in movie, Kaye was up making formula and a scorpion stung her foot. I got her a tray of ice and had her put her foot in it. It swoll all up and went black and blue. She survived but was mad at me because I told her not to worry about scorpions because I had lived there all of my life and never been stung.

In the fall we went back to BYU and moved into school housing-Wymount Village. We had a nice little apartment which Mary helped us fix it up. Mary transferred to the University of Utah and majored in Interior Decorating. Kaye and I both went back to school. We took turns taking care of Cathy and going to classes. Sometimes we put Cathy in the stroller and exchange her halfway between classes. While we lived there, I wanted ta horse. Up in Wyoming, Mark got me a quarter house called Katherine Hepburn.