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At some point in time during the three years we lived in North Dakota, we got involved with a guy in Utah who had several 1 acre lots to sell. They were located in Salem, UT which is down near Payson for those of you who have been there. We had some friends named Hutchinson who, I think, we had known in New Jersey and they had bought a lot and built a house and moved out there. They said it was a really good deal.

So, we negotiated with a friend that I worked with (Karen knew his wife, too) named Harlem Lerum who was a member of the flying club that I talked about before and the three of us (Harlem, Karen and I) set off to fly to Provo in a little small airplane. It took most of one day to get there. I remember we stopped in Rock Spring, WY on the way and got gas. We flew right down Provo Canyon with the mountains on either side of the plane.

When the canyon opens up to reveal Utah Lake and the Valley around Provo and Orem, that is a beautiful sight, especially from several hundred feet in the air. We landed at Provo Airport and then (probably) rented a car or got a friend to lend us one (don’t remember which) and drove down to Salem.

The property was very cool. It was part of a housing development that this guy was developing. It was high on the bench in Salem and you could see for miles from up there. I think you could almost see Salt Lake if the smog lifted. You could certainly see Provo and surrounding towns. And, of course, Utah Lake. It was very nice and the price was reasonable, so we signed up.

The only problem with the whole thing was, we forgot how inept I was (and still am) with handling money. The guy we bought the property from never really enforced any payment plan, so if I was a little short, I wouldn’t pay him. That happened enough until I was about a year behind in  payments. The bank would have foreclosed on me long before this, but the man was nice as I said.

One day, I got a letter which said, in effect, you’re not keeping up payments and I need my money and tell you what: I got someone else who’ll buy the lot from you and pay you back everything you’ve paid into the project and take over your payments. Well, I could hardly say no. We could have lost it all. But we got our money back and lost the lot.

One day, a few years later, we drove up and looked at the lot we owned for a short time. They had built a house on it and it looked real nice. If we had still owned it, it would have still been an empty lot full of weeds. Everything happens for a reason.

Dad

Cavalier, North Dakota was just a little town. The 1970 census puts the population at about 1500 and several hundred of those worked at the base. The town had a little airport with a grass air strip. Small planes would land and take off from there quite frequently. There was this old guy who ran the airport and one day he must have decided he needed some extra money. He put up a notice that he was giving pilot lessons to anyone who wanted to learn to fly. I don’t remember exactly how much he charged but it was dirt cheap. Way less expensive than it cost in the big city. I talked it over with Karen and we decided I could take flying lessons.

I had always wanted to fly. I loved it. The old guy had a small prop place, probably a Cesna which was a two-seater. For the first 8 or 9 hours, you go up as a passenger with the instructor doing the flying. He would tell you how to land and how to take off and how to read the instruments. We went over the check list that every pilot must do before he takes a plane up. This is for safety. I bought a pilot’s log book and recorded every hour I spent with the guy. I was having a great time.

At about 8 or 9 hours, my instructor determined that I was ready to solo. I hadn’t just been a passenger. We had done take-offs and landings and I had done quite a bit of flying with only my hands on the wheel. Of course, the instructor was right there if I got into trouble. But, now I was ready to go it alone. There was just one little problem. FCC rules state that in order to solo, you need a physical first. So, I went to see a doctor. I was worried about my weight and thought that might keep me out of the program. But it wasn’t the weight, it was my blood pressure. It was too high. I wasn’t taking medicine for my blood pressure in those days (not sure if it even existed). But, I was out of luck. They wouldn’t approve me as long as my pressure was high.

I was washed out of the program before I even got started. There were at least four of my friends from work who went through the program and eventually got their licenses to fly. They formed a little flying club and together bought or rented a small plane that they all shared. As is the story of most of my life, I was on the outside looking in and couldn’t take part.

Dad

One of the more learning experiences I had as Branch President occurred when we as a presidency (meaning Jerry Stroup and I) decided it would be a good idea to buy a permanent church to meet in. All the time we lived in Cavalier, we drove over to Langdon to go to church and for any meetings which involved the Langdon people. Week-day meetings were usually held at people’s homes and other public areas, but Sunday meetings were held in a building which usually housed something like an Elk’s Club.

On Sunday morning, we would get there a little early and we had to pick up from the parties that were held the Saturday night before. We had to set up chairs and get everything in order so we could have Sacrament and Sunday School meetings. I thought the Langdon Branch needed a permanent place to worship.

One day I found out that a local church in Cavalier was selling it’s building. I’m not sure why. Maybe they were building a bigger one, I don’t know, but I thought that would be a great place for the Langdon Branch to meet. The only problem was that it was in Cavalier and not Langdon. Jerry and I looked into it and found out the price and contacted the Church Building people in Salt Lake and found out what we had to do to buy the church.

Salt Lake was pretty favorable about the whole thing. They said that buying an existing structure was a lot easier to get approved than building a building from scratch. So, it was almost a sure thing. We just needed to do one thing. We needed the consent of the branch. I think we could have gone ahead without the consent, but I didn’t want an uprising on my hands, so Jerry and I and the Relief Society leadership (Karen and her counselors) agreed we should have a sustaining of the project before we actually put in a bid on the property.

Now, more than half of the branch lived in the Langdon area and they were close to church. We who lived in Cavalier had the 30 mile drive. If they approved this purchase, then they would be doing the driving and we would live close to the church. Well, there was a lot of discussion. I could tell they weren’t happy with the idea. I tried everything I could think of to convince people that this was a good thing. Then came the Sunday when we decided to put it to a vote. I was conducting. I stood before the congregation and asked for a show of hands the way we do in the church.

I made one fatal mistake. Instead of asking if they sustain the branch president in the purchase of the building (which is the way it should be done), I said “Do you sustain the purchase of the building for the Langdon Branch.” Quite a difference. In all of my life in the church I have never seen so many votes against a sustaining. We weren’t talking about a Sunday school teacher or even a leadership position, we were talking about a real change in the lives of these people.

Being Branch President, I didn’t need to follow the congregation. I had the authority to go ahead and complete the purchase anyway. But, I decided if there was that much negative feeling toward the project, we would drop it. All the people in Langdon were happy. I felt I had learned a lesson in leadership. It’s too bad I never got another chance to use it.

Dad

North Dakota was the time I was probably closest to the church as I have ever been. For nine months, just before we left, I served as the Branch President of the Langdon branch. That was a unique experience. Karen was the Relief Society president during part or all of that time, too. You never get to know people as well as you do when you lead them in church. My fondest moment during that time was when I went to a Stake (or maybe it was a District) conference in Fargo and Elder A. Theodore Tuttle of the Seventy came to the meeting to address the Stake. I got to sit in a Bishop’s meeting with him and the other Bishops of the Stake and we just sat around in a room in a bunch of soft chairs. It was like he was in our living room. He just sat there and taught us. It was a very spiritual moment in my life.

I had a counselor named Jerry Stroup. I only had one. We were too small to have two. Jerry had married a gal from Vietnam that he had met during the war. It was fun to listen to stories of how he got married and the Vietnamese customs that he had to go through to get it done. His wife’s name was Na and she was a great cook. Jerry and I were good  friends and he was a great counselor. At some point several years later, we came to Salt Lake for Education Week and visited the Stroup’s in Brigham City. She had opened a Vietnamese restaurant up there and we had a good meal. I think that was the last time I saw him and I have no idea where he is today. It would be wonderful to find out.

A couple of memories I have of being Branch President were one time I had to go visit a guy who was a member, but made a habit of beating up his wife every now and then. One night, she had taken all she could and called the cops on him. So, I had to go down to the local jail and talk to him. He wanted me to use church funds to bail him out, but, of course, I couldn’t do that. Jerry went with me and we talked with him and tried to get him into a program that would help the family. I don’t think they made it, though. I left the area before it was resolved, but I think later, they did divorce.

Another thing I remember was, we had a sister whose husband wasn’t a member of the church. We wanted to call her to a job in the Relief Society. I told Jerry, we need to talk to the husband and get his OK to call her. This was a job that took some time and took the sister away from the home occasionally. I wanted to make sure, he was OK with it. So, Jerry and I went to the house and talked to him and asked his permission to call his wife to the position. He not only gave his permission, but he said he and the wife had been married for 20 years and she in the church the whole time and him not in the church. In all that time, this was the first time anyone had ever asked him for his permission to call his wife to something. We were great friends after that.

Dad

One of the families that we were friends with was the Day Family. They weren’t members or anything, but I worked with the husband (don’t remember his name) and David was good friends with their little girl. I think her name was Carla, but not sure. (Karen: correct me if I have it wrong) One day, David is suddenly missing. We looked and looked for him. He was about 3 or 4 at the time. Then we found out that Carla Day was mssing as well. We were just starting to panic when someone spotted them walking across this big open field that was next to the apartment houses. About a mile away from the apartment there was this old hotel. You could see it easily from the apartments. I’m not sure if it was open or not, but Carla and David had decided to walk over and check it out. It would have been a long walk if they had made it, but we got to them first.

There are a couple things I remember most when I think about North Dakota. One is, of course, the winters. The coldest code I have ever felt in my life, I felt in N.D. We were leaving a New Years Eve Party over near Langdon somewhere. I think it was on the M.S.R. base. I checked the temperature and it was -42 degrees. That’s actual temperature, not wind chill. Some friends of ours left the same party that night and their car broke down before they go home. Luckily someone came along and saw them and rescued them. They would not have survived the night even inside a car at those temperatures. White out conditions were common in that area. The snow would blow and since the land is so flat, there is nothing to stop it. It would blow across the roads and in no time at all, you couldn’t see a thing. But, it was always fun to go to town to shop.  The cars would all pull in nose first at the curb so they could plug in their cars. And those who didn’t have block heaters would just leave the cars running. You could drive down the main street of Cavalier and drive through a constant cloud of exhaust. Many of the parked cars were sitting there running. No one ever worried about anyone stealing the car. It just didn’t happen.

Dad

Moving to North Dakota was a real culture shock. It is totally different than New Jersey. The state if flat, flat, flat. Not a hill to be seen for miles. We moved into apartment houses that had been built especially for the Safeguard project in Cavalier, N.D. Not sure if I’ve mentioned it before, but that’s what the project was called, the Safeguard Project. I’ve already talked about the P.A.R. site and the M.S.R. sites. I worked at the P.A.R. and it was about 15 miles outside of Cavalier.

I always carpooled to work since everyone who lived in the apartment houses where we lived worked at the same place. I was one of about 10 programmers whose job it was to get the softwear tested in a real environment and then get it working. Just like any other job, it had deadlines and schedules and sometimes we worked pretty hard and other times, there wasn’t much to do at all.

We were members of the Langdon Branch of the church in the Fargo Stake. Langdon was another small town about 30 miles west of Cavalier. So, when we went to church, it was a thirty mile drive each way. We would leave in the morning and just spend the day in Langdon. Almost all of the people who went to the branch worked in some way for Safeguard. At the peak of activity, we had about 65 people coming to Sacrament meeting.

I must describe the roads in North Dakota. Most of them were very wide and straight as an arrow. As I said, there are no hills (at least not where we were). They have dug very wide shoulders on each side of the road because in the winter, the roads get icy a lot and you can slide off the road very easy. I know, it happened to me more than once. But when you do slide off, they want to get you off the road as far as possible, so the shoulders are intentionally wide so you can get out of the way of on-coming traffic. I remember one memorable drive into work one morning. There were four of us un the car. I was driving and we were cruising along at 40 or so. Suddenly, I must have hit a patch of ice because I no longer had control of the car. The rear end slowly swung around until we were facing back the way we came. We travelled backwards for several feet and ended up in the ditch in the snow. No one was hurt and it didn’t really do any damage to the car, but it was an eerie sensation. To have absolutely no control of the car.

Dad

In 1973, the project we were working on was ready to be installed in the first (of what was supposed to be many) sites in North Dakota. There were many meetings held at the Morristown office to ask for volunteers to go to North Dakota to do the installation. As I have said before, we really didn’t like New  Jersey that much and I was one of the first to volunteer.

We were inticed with all kinds of incentive packages to go. We were given perdiem (which is a set amount of money each day just for the inconvenience of being there). We were given I think it was $1000 just to buy winter clothes. North Dakota goes well below zero in the winter time and people used to New Jersey had to be talked into going. We bought parkas for Karen and I. We may have gotten one for Matt, I don’t remember. David was probably too little for a parka. We bought long-underwear and other clothes that we thought we would need.

One of the coolest things they did was to pay to have our car winterized. And that means more than just making sure the anti-freeze is up to standards. We installed a block heater in the car and an inside header which was independent of the header that the car already had. So the car now had two plugs hanging out from the front of the grill, one to plug in the block heater which kept the engine warm and one to run the inside heater which was really just a small fan that kept the inside of the car warm while it was parked. Of course, neither of these heaters worked when the car was running, they were just for when it was parked. And the cool thing about an inside heater was you never had to clean off the windshield in the winter time.

So, sometime in 1973 (I don’t remember exactly when, probably in the summer), we packed up and once again moved. This time to Cavalier, North Dakota. There was still just four of us. Since IBM was providing the housing for us, we didn’t want to sell our home in New Jersey on the off-chance that we might come back to it. We talked to the Bishop and found this couple who were kind of in need and needed a place to live. So, we arranged to let them stay in the house while we lived in North Dakota. They got to live there rent-free and we got someone to look after the house for us while we gone. And, I think the Bishop agreed to look in on them once in a while to make sure they weren’t trashing the place.

Dad

Karen wrote me today and enlarged upon the story of our home in New Jersey. I had forgotten that we had a wall in the backyard that held the hill up. Kind of a retaining wall. It had steps which led up a short ways so you climb the steps and then go on up the hill. The wall was in bad shape and crumbing, but it held together as long as we were there. Also, we had a garden above the wall.

Karen says: “To the very back of that part of the high yard was a wooded area. Civilized as I was I wanted to clean out the weeds and make it look nice amongst the small trees. Forgot I was in New Jersey I guess! So I’d weed away and feel good about it but I wasn’t too smart. I got poison ivy or poison oak and had to go to the doctor!

Had to put a paste on my itchy spots and I don’t know what else. Maybe I got a pill to take, can’t remember. The Dr kindly showed me what the poison leaf looks like so I could be smarter in my weeding. Not sure if I ever ventured out into the wooded area again.”

She said we had several neighbors. Since New Jersey is really a very crowded place, that’s not surprising. We had people on both side of us and several more at the rear. I don’t remember this, but our driveway was quite steep, although short. One day, David rode his tricycle down the driveway and fell and cut open his forehead. He probably still has the scar to this day. I will check the next time I see him.

Matt was attending kindergarten at this time. He had to ride the bus to school each day. The trouble was, the bus stopped a good long block away and up a steep hill. Are you getting the idea that this part of New Jersey was very hilly. Well, it was. Karen’s not sure just how Matt got to the bus stop, but I’m pretty sure that she or one of the neighbors walked him (and maybe other little kids) up to the stop. I’m pretty sure I didn’t do it as I had a thirty minute drive to work every morning.

One last detail – the color of our house was salmon – a kind of off-pink color. Try to visualize that.

Tomorrow, we get ready to leave for North Dakota.

Dad

Don’t know if anyone actually looks forward to these posts or not, but I have been pretty busy at work this past week and haven’t had the energy to work on this. I’ll will try to do better.

It’s funny how things will spark your memory and bring back to mind images that you haven’t thought of in years. We were watching TV the other night and there came on the set a commercial for a septic tank cleaner. It showed what can happen when your septic tank gets full or clogged up and they have to come in with a back-hoe and dig it up and clean it out.

Well, the only house I ever lived in that had a septic tank was the little house we had in New Jersey. In my mind, I can picture going through the kitchen and out a back door that lead to a small mud-room just beyond the kitchen. You would then turn right and go through a screen door to the outside – the back yard. Now almost directly in front of that door a few feet away was buried the septic tank. We only lived there for 2 years or so, but I think we had to have it dug up and cleaned out during that time.

Our backyard was interesting. When you exited the back door and walked straight ahead, you were walking by the back of the house. The lawn was fairly flat right near the house, but if you turned left and tried to walk through the back yard, the ground suddenly sloped upward. The backyard was mostly a hill and started low near the house and rose several feet as it proceeded toward the rear of the property. This hill was great in the winter time for sliding down on a sled. It wasn’t too steep and for the little people that we had, it was just right. However, in the summer when I had to cut the lawn, it was a royal pain in the neck. But, you get used to anything and we enjoyed our back yard as much as we could.

Dad