The Sages and Travels
J Brent Haymond
The Early Years
1936-1954
The early Years 1936-1950
The Beginning
I was born in 1936 Provo in our home on 800 West and 145 North. In 1938 my father was promoted to a position of dispatcher with the Orem railroad so we moved to 345 East 300 South Springville, Utah. Springville was a small town of 6,000 people, where everyone knew everybody. Nearly every one lived in what we called plat A. The boundary was on streets, 400 South, 400 East, 400 North and 400 West. These streets were the location of the old Indian Fort walls, which were dirt and were taken down in the 1890’s. During the depression the city was very progressive in putting down Asphalt Street, a sewer system, Art Museum and a big gymnasium. This was made possible by the WPA program of the Federal government. We had irrigation ditches all over town. It was fun for us kids to build boats and sail them in the irrigation water. I lived on a street where there were over a dozen boys. This made for a lot of fun.
During the 30’s and 40’s we had very little money so we had to create our own fun. Such as: building airplanes, boats, making up games (Hide and seek, marbles and cards), building rockets and rafts and fishing the creek. We would hunt for deer, ducks and pheasant for winter food. We would catch caterpillars and feed them until they turned into a cocoon and then a Monarch Butterfly. Our minds were our playground.
In 1940 we traveled from Utah to Los Angeles, 700 miles, with no air conditioning, in the middle of the summer on a two lane road. For a little boy it was unbelievable to sit in the back seat and drive, drive, drive with the windows down. To a little boy it was a trip that would never end. However, once in Los Angeles, we stayed with Uncle Von & Aunt Nona and had a good time with their daughter Nona Von.
One of the great events as a little boy was to work with my father. I first remember him as a dispatcher for the Salt Lake and Utah Railroad known as “The Orem” railroad. He controlled the whole train movement to insure there were no train wrecks. Dad was later promoted to Superintendent, which allowed an 8-year old boy to travel up and down the line with him. When World War II was on there were German prisoners of war that were brought into Utah to pick the fruit. As I looked at them, being guarded by soldiers with shotguns, I said to myself, “they look a lot like us yet they are our enemy”. I went with dad on the train that brought them to Orem, Utah to work in the orchards. I was also with dad on the last trip on the railroad before it was closed in 1946. This experience gave me the desire to travel which I have done all of my life.
World War II
World War II was an overpowering event for a young child growing up in that era. I remember going to a theater in March 1942, at the age of six, and watched a color movie on the bombing of Pearl Harbor. We little boys turned into little soldiers by playing war with rubber guns that we made. The wooden guns shot rubber bands made from old bicycle and car inner tubes. Some of our guns could shoot up to six rubber bands. We collected scrap metal, milkweed seeds for life jackets, pop bottles and etc. to help the war effort. We saved our money to purchase War Bonds, at school and the post office, to finance the war.
The evening paper brought the war news to our home. We learned to read the paper and maps as we followed the movement of our troops. Then there was the radio that brought current news. News of the war kept us by the radio to listen to Gabriel Heater. He would start the news with these words, “THERE IS GOOD NEWS TONIGHT” and somehow there was some good news. Every week for a dime we would go to the local movie theater to see the newsreel, a war movie and the weekly serial.
We had neighbors who were in the war. They were Kenny Rothwell, who was on a destroyer in the Navy, serving in the Pacific theater of war and Ralph Goodrich was a P-38 pilot in China. I remember when Ralph came home he was wearing his flight jacket, which had US and China flags on the back and instructions in Chinese about what to do with him if he was shot down. My Uncle Blaine Harmer served as a flight engineer, flying from New Delhi India to Western China in a cargo plane. Dad brought him home after the war from Salt Lake City to our home in Springville. What a thrill it was to see these great men come home having served so well defending our freedom in these far away lands.
During the war each family received ration stamps to buy those thing that were in short supply, such as gasoline, soap, margarine and butter. Margret Haymond, one of my cousins married Dick Miner, a soldier, when he was home on furlough in the Idaho Falls Temple. They lived in Los Angeles. All the relatives went together and gave them their ration stamps to buy the gasoline for the round trip. It was a thrill for us boys to have a real soldier living in our home for a week. Dick had spent two years in a prisoner of war camp in Germany. He was a bombarder in a B-24 and had bailed out of the plane when it was shot down. His boots came off as he jumped out of the plane so he landed in the snow
During the war each family received ration stamps to buy those thing that were in short supply, such as gasoline, soap, margarine and butter. Margret Haymond, one of my cousins married Dick Miner, a soldier, when he was home on furlough in the Idaho Falls Temple. They lived in Los Angeles. All the relatives went together and gave them their ration stamps to buy the gasoline for the round trip. It was a thrill for us boys to have a real soldier living in our home for a week. Dick had spent two years in a prisoner of war camp in Germany. He was a bombarder in a B-24 and had bailed out of the plane when it was shot down. His boots came off as he jumped out of the plane so he landed in the snow without his boots. His feet were frost bitten. He was left him with a limp for the rest of his life. There was a LDS German guard who helped him during the time that he was in prison.
My mother would send me at 7:30 AM to the grocery store to be first in line to buy laundry soap and margarine because often there was not enough to go around. It was a time when you learned to look out for your mother’s soap. We also had Victory gardens, where we raised food for the winter. Dad went deer hunting for meat. It was kept in the Springville locker. Mother bottled fruit and vegetables. Dad would drive to Price to get a load of coal for winter. In the spring we had to clean all the walls and ceilings of coal suet. It doesn’t sound healthy.
My father spent a tremendous amount of time during the World War II working for the Salt Lake and Utah Railroad because of the shortage of men. He was the superintendent of all operations. He had the responsibility of making sure the locomotives were there to move all the freight. If he didn’t have enough people then he had to jump on the train and be the engineer for that period.
The great moment of this period was V-J Day, September 2, 1945, the end of the war. The Atomic bomb had been dropped on Japan, little did we know the destruction or how it would change the world. There was a celebration in our town. My cousin David and I received a quarter from our mothers to celebrate. I bought an ice cream cone and a Baby Ruth candy bar. This was the best time, for peace was finally in the world.
American President
My favorite President, as a boy was Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He was the only President I ever knew. He served during the depression. At a time when the people of the United States had lost hope. The depression was a time when people had little work or food. He had vision that the United States could overcome its problems with the Federal government providing work projects to employ the people. The people started building communities, roads, reclamation projects, water systems and electrifying rural America. He was my favorite, because he had also had polio and had overcome this tragedy by becoming President of the United States in a wheelchair. Because he could overcome his illness, he thought that America could do the same and once again become great. He provided leadership that caused the people to have some hope again and to follow.
He was President during World War II and through his leadership as Commander- in- Chief he selected the right Generals to lead the Military, more importantly he was supported by the people. Some of the projects of the depression made it possible for the United States to build and provide all of the ships, planes, tanks and guns for the war. For example there were four major water and power projects that were started during the 1930’s and finished before the war started in 1941. Without power or energy, it would have been impossible for the nation to build the tools of war. The water and power projects were: Niagara Fall Dam, Grand Coulee Dam, Hoover Dam, and Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA). All of these projects provided electrical power to the factories that built planes, tanks and ships.
A sad moment in my young life was the day President Roosevelt died. It was in the spring of 1945. People were crying in the streets, for he was the only President the young people of America had known. We listened to the funeral and the procession on the radio. It was truly a great moment in history, with World War II ending only months later. President Roosevelt was a visionary at solving the problems of The United States and bringing the citizens together with supporting the solutions. It should be noted that Marriner Eccles of Ogden, Utah had a very big part in bring us out of the depression of the 1930’s. In the thick of the Great Depression, Time magazine sported a cover story of a Utahan, whom President Franklin Delano Roosevelt had tapped to help calm the markets and revive the tanking economy.
A good many people believe that Marriner Eccles is the only thing that stands between the United States and disaster," the magazine declared in 1936.
The Grant School Years
My first formal education started at the Grant School in Springville. We lived two blocks from the school so we walked to school taking a sack lunch. We started with nursery for a half of a day and then a full day in the first grade. Miss Rea Straw was our teacher first grade teacher. School was fun with an opportunity to learn new ideas. Little did I know that I had dyslexia, so reading plagued me throughout my education. The good news was that I was very good in math and science and was willing to work hard to succeed.
The second grade was interrupted with my coming down with Polio. I was six years old when I contracted the disease along with the Luanne McPherson, the girl next door. Mother and Dad had the bishop come and they gave me a blessing that was very helpful in my recovery. The Lord blessed me with a limited disability. I lost the use of my left leg for some time. My mother put hot packs on my legs for months, which saved me. From that time on I had therapy until the ninth grade. It drove me to overcome this handicap and to succeed in sports.
I was out of school for two months receiving hot packs daily by my mother. When I returned I fell behind in reading. I also became the slowest runner in the class, which included the girls. In the third grade Miss Baker was a big help to me with my reading. That year the school district started school lunch for ten cents. It was mostly soup with tomatoes, which I didn’t like. I continued at the grant school through the fifth grade at which time the sixth grade was moved to the high school. I received a good education at the Grant School but I also have to say that 300 South Street between 300 and 400 East was where the application of that education took place. There were about 15 boys and a few girls that lived in the neighborhood and they were truly creative. They were Phil & David Haymond, Don Thorpe, Royal Stevens, Clair Shipp, Mel & Arlen Goodrich. Billy Peterson. Taylor Thorpe. Jim & Doug Bird, and Art Reid. Lynn Walker was our research and development director. He was architect of explosives, flying machines and pranks. We built cabins, bridges, tunnels rockets and firecracker guns. There was always evening games, “Hide & Seek, Relieve-O, Follow the Leader, Kick the Can and Antae-I-Over. We were all into sports basketball, baseball and football. I alway wanted to be a first baseman and what a thrill it was when Dad brought home a first base glove for me.
During the fourth and twenty fourth of July, was fireworks time in the neighborhood. We couldn’t purchase firecrackers, cherry bombs and etc. from stores, but only from friends or catalogs. We would generally order our fireworks from the catalog for shipment to the train station in Springville. We would go down to the train station everyday on our bikes to see if the fireworks had arrived. The problem was we had to wait until Henry Weight, Chief of Police, was not at the station, for he would confiscate our fireworks from us when we picked them up. We were generally successful. Words can’t describe the thing we tried to do with fireworks.
Lynn Walker was my friend on Third South and his father was the high school Principal so he had keys to the gym and high school unofficially. This also helped in our education. Don Thorpe’s father, Howard, was the sexton for the Cemetery and because of this we would help dig graves. It was there that I saw my first dead person, Howard said to his brother Lou, “I don’t remember what the person in the casket looks like.” At that point Howard opened the casket lid down in the grave. Don & I peered over the edge of the grave and looked down into the casket and there was a dead man. We were a little bit scared. Later on a city employee for the power department was electrocuted on a power pole on the corner of 300 east & 300 south. The moms were screaming and crying as the individual hung from the pole. It was hard for us to understand the magnitude of Heaven.
The winters were fun with all of the snow. We would go sledding on 400 south hills or be pulled by a car on the icy roads with six or seven sleds tied behind it. Another way to enjoy the snow was to catch a ride on the bumper of a car. You would stand on the corner, by the Gym, and when the car stopped you would catch the bumper and be sliding on the soles of your shoes. You needed gloves to do this or your hand would stick to the bumper because it was so cold.
Thursday and Saturday David Haymond & I would go to the High School gym and watch M-Men basketball and be home by ten. The High School Athletic Club would have a Tarzan movie in the conference room for ten cents, this was a great night of entertainment.
One night on the way home we came upon a man, with an army uniform, from Price, Utah on 400 South (US 6) with a flat tire. As we stop to watch him fix the flat, the jack slipped and the car fell on his hand and he couldn’t pull his hand out. So David and I pulled the jack out and reset it. We then jacked the car up enough to get his hand out. He was hurting very bad, so we took him to Doctor Neil three blocks away, were Dr. Neil bandaged this hand. The three of us headed back to the car and together we changed the tire and he was on his way. Another learning experience I had on 300 south.
Hobble Creek was a Huck Finn playground. When the water was down we were looking for fish and frogs and any other type of life. We would build rope bridges to cross it. One day Clark Bray’s brother, Boyd, tried to cross over the creek by climbing a tree on one side and climbing out on a branch that connected to a tree on the other side. But as he tried to connect to the other tree he fell into the creek bottom. He was carried to a little hospital at 200 South & 300 East where he later died. This was our first friend to die we all went to the funeral. Some of the older boys were pallbearers.
Catching the First Fish
Spring Creek waters came from the mill pond that passed through the State Fish Hatchery and provided a safe place to fish. Don Thorpe and I set out walking one summer day to fish in Spring Creek. I had my bamboo fishing pole, that I had purchased at Bybee’s Store, a lunch and my dad’s Creel to carry the fish home. Well, Don and I weren’t having any luck after an hour, so we decided it was time to eat our lunch. I left my pole in the stream while I was eating my lunch. Well, I noticed that my pole was sliding into the stream so I grabbed the pole and pulled hard on it and to my surprise there was a huge fish on my line. It was about 24 inches long, but
We would go often fishing with Don & his dad Howard Thorpe up Right Hand Fork of Hobble Creek. Dad, Uncle Paul, David & I would go fishing at Schofield Lake. Schofield was an old mining town with one store left. It was fun to visit the town and of course to fish in the lake. We would rent a boat and bring our own motor, both dad and Paul had motors. We trolled all morning and then cast out of the boat in the afternoon. Uncle Paul and my dad got up early one morning and made a big breakfast and put it on a sloping picnic table. Then they both sat on the same side of the table and flipped the whole thing over food and all. The food landed all on top of them. David and I had quite a big laugh over this event.
Another great event was deer hunting with Dad, Haymonds, Sanfords and the Whitings in Round Valley, up Left Hand Fork of Hobble Creek. We had a very nice camp. The Whitings were in the asphalt business so they laid asphalt in an area for us so it was nice and flat. Over the years we had built a camp site that had asphalt floors in our tents, good fire pits and good cooking stoves. We knew how to hunt on the mountain we called Riddle Snake. We would hike up a fence line to just under the top of the mountain and wait for the deer to come over the top from the hunters pushing them up on the other side of the mountain. To a young boy it was really exciting time. Reality set in, when I was sixteen and shot my first deer and then had to clean it myself and drag it off the mountain. After that experience it was no longer fun.
It was there that my Dad taught me that it was alright to joke but not to tell jokes on the church. I told a joke on the church one day to a group of people. He pulled me aside and told me that “we don’t do that”. It was a profound lesson to me because I thought that it was what people wanted to hear at the camp because a number of them were involved in alcohol and other things. Dad brought me back to the reality of what is good and important. I thank my Dad for that moment. It truly helped me shape my life and decide what was important and not to follow the crowd.
1948 The Move to a New Home
With the end of the War our life started to change as it did everywhere in America. The soldiers were coming home from the war and the Federal Government provided the G.I. Bill to fund homes and Education. It was a big change for Dad since the Salt Lake & Utah Railroad (The Orem) was shut down with the reduction of freight and passengers. Dad was the Superintendent and the employee that was responsible to remove all of the rails and sell everything off. I was able to go with dad often during this period and was with him in 1946 on the last trip of an engine traveling from Provo to Riverton before the power ran out. It was a sad time for Dad having worked for 20 years for the Orem progressing to the top with the President, Mr. Higgins, the only one above him.Dad took a job at Geneva Steel as a conductor on the in-plant railroad. Dad & mother decided to buy the old Thomas Melvin & Luella Haymond home at 11 South and 100 East. It was remodeled into a triplex. We put a lot of sweat equity into its completion. We moved into the home in August 1948. It was great for Karen and I, for we had our own rooms. Dick had married June Hughes, from Spanish Fork and moved to Salt Lake City to attend Pharmacy School at the University of Utah. Shortly thereafter, Mr. Higgins hired Dad to be over the Intrastate Commerce Commission for the Mountain States. This was a wonderful opportunity for Dad, even though he had to travel from Montana to Arizona. This started a new life for our family.
When we moved to the home on Center Street, that Dad had converted into a tri-plex, we also moved into the new 9th ward. The bishop was W.W. Clyde. Clarence Jensen later became the bishop. These two men had a profound impact on my life, second only to my father, especially on my spiritual side and as well on my work ethic side.
Bishop Clyde was a no nonsense type person. I never saw him really laugh at anything. I had the great fortune of working for Wilford, once I was in high school, on his farm every Saturday, which is now called Hidden Valley. We would spread manure, trim trees, and haul this or that away whether it was rain or shine. He also had me try to train his grandchildren, on the farm, to be workers. Which In the case of Bill Clyde’s kids, was unbelievable. It was the first time that I was willing to actually talk back to Bishop Clyde. He came out to the farm and dropped these four boys on me, to teach them to work. They were all under twelve. I was 15 and would be 16 in September. It was August then. I was really tired of working on the farm cutting the corn and making silage. I really wanted to work on construction for more money. I got up the courage to go over to his home and ask if I could be transferred from the farm to the construction project in Spanish Fork canyon.
When I arrived Bishop Clyde was just getting out of his car in the garage. I walked up and said “Bishop, I was wondering if I could transfer from the farm and work on in the construction, I would like to work full time and make a little more money.” He said “Well, we still have two or three more days of the silage and I have a few more things on the farm…” Just then as he was explaining this to me his son Cornell pulled up into the drive way. Cornell was the superintendent of the construction job up Spanish Fork canyon. The Bishop said “Cornell” and he always spoke Cornell’s name with force. “Brent is helping me on the farm and he’ll be done on Wednesday. He’ll start up the canyon on the construction on Thursday. Is there any problem with that Cornell?” Cornell by and large didn’t speak, he just grunted. So Cornell just kind of grunted and that meant “okay.” That was the start of me working on construction.
I started out as a flagger. Shortly after starting up Spanish Fork Canyon at the Red Narrows, I was assigned to flag. That required me to stop traffic for a period while the trucks turned around. Well, from time to time Clyde trucks would pass through from other jobs. I would give them the “hi” sign, to let them know we are working together for Clyde’s. One day here comes a big flat bed truck of Clyde’s. I gave the driver the “hi” sign and he thought I meant to stop. He slammed on his air breaks and stopped the truck on a dime. There was a pick-up, pulling a trailer, right behind the Clyde truck. He could not stop, since the trailer picked up the back of the pickup and rammed it into the Clyde truck. I thought I was going to die. I decided to take the offense. I walked to the Clyde truck and told him to get out of here. Which, he promptly drove away. I went back to the pick-up and started to scold the driver for driving so close in a construction zone. I told him to get his truck out of here, that we have work to do. He said he was sorry and drove off to the side of the road to inspect the damage. It had wrecked the hood of the engine but not the engine. I then went back to flagging worrying that I might be fired. I was safe. I was with Wilford in the High Priest’s quorum years later. Looking back on my experiences, I told him how much I appreciated his toughness in teaching me about work ethic. I owe a lot to Wilford W. Clyde.
Clarence Jensen became the bishop by the time I was a Priest. The Bishop saw in me a desire to do service in the Ward. Because of this desire he called me at sixteen to be the Secretary of the Junior and Senior Aaronic Priesthood. This calling allowed me to learn the operation of the church and gave me some responsibility to try and activate some of the men and youth. The personal time I spent with him was like being tutored to be a Bishop. To Clarence Jensen, I owe the church & gospel base of my life.
Well, here I was with new friends, new ward, new home and starting Junior High. Life couldn’t be better. The ninth ward had been formed in August, 1948 so we were all new. Wilford W. Clyde was the Bishop, Clearance Jensen was the 1st Counselor, Fane Laney was the 2nd Counselor. Charles Porter was the Clerk and Dad was the Financial Clerk. What a learning experience. I was ordained a Deacon in September and starting doing deacon assignments such as passing the sacrament, collecting fast offerings and learning the Gospel of Jesus Christ from the ground up.
The ward had been approved to build the 3rd & 9th ward building. The Church would contribute 50% of the funds and the local ward would contribute 50%. Bishop Clyde was a mover and a shaker. He had everyone come in for an interview and assigned his or her share of the building budget. When it was my turn I sat down in the office across from Bishop Clyde. He looked me in the eyes and said, “Brent everyone has to pay their share of the building and your fair share is $25.00, is there any problem with you paying it.” I answered “No”. I left the office knowing that I had the responsibility to raise the money somehow and that I did, as did many of the Aaronic Priesthood. I sold homemade ice cream, mowed lawns and worked on the building. Priesthood meeting started out with an opening song, opening prayer and then it turned into union hall making assignments for work the coming week, on the building. Everyone was working on the building in some way.
The Priests all got jobs with Clyde Construction with the requirement that each had to attend all the Church meetings, pay tithing on what they made, keep the word of wisdom and NO Swearing or “chasing”. If the Priest didn’t comply they would be fired. In these years I learned, down deep in my soul, that I wanted to be on the Lord’s side. I started to volunteer at every opportunity. I became Secretary of the Aaronic Priesthood and keep all of the records. Then I was Senior Aaronic Secretary, doing the same thing. It was during that time that I started playing City Baseball. Their games were on Wednesday and Sunday. So I went to Priesthood and Sunday School in the morning then was playing baseball from 1:00 To 4:00 and back to 5:30 Sacrament. Everyone was happy if I made all of the meetings.
Shortly after arriving in the ward I joined the Boy Scouts. Louis Cutler was the scoutmaster. And little did I know that 22 scouts were to become Eagle Scouts the next month. We who were new in the troop were in awe of what was happening. I had a difficult time learning to swim. I would go to Park-Ro-Shea to try and learn to swim. I just couldn’t get my legs to work the right way. The best I could do was to swim on my back. It is hard to pass of the Life saving merit Badge floating on my back. It was apparent that I was going to be a land person. In 1950 was the National Scout Jamboree at Valley Forge, Pa. This was a wonderful opportunity to see the world, or what I thought was the rest of the world. There were 22 scouts that signed up from Springville to make the big trip. It cost $300.00 to make the trip. Mother and Dad paid half and I was to raise the rest.
This project to raise the $150.00 leads me into an introduction of my new friends. When I arrived on Center Street I become good friends with Mark and Betty Hoover and there is no end to stories of what we did in that new friendship. Mark was a year older than Betty and I. The relationship was like bother and sister. Their mother, Alberta Hoover, was a wonderful woman with many talents in music and getting things accomplished. She had a very strong willed, pioneer women, that could drive a team of horses. She was very devout and put a lot of pressure on Bliss, her husband, on a few church issues. There was nothing that she thought she couldn’t do. She even tried to make a singer out of me but it appears to have failed.
Well Mark and I were going to Valley Forge with the scouts and the Hoovers wanted to add a new room to provide more space for the family, with the upcoming birth of their daughter Patricia. Well you guessed it, Mark and I were hired for $150 each to build the room with the help of a carpenter, Jess Whiting. We appeared to be doing well with cement block walls. Jess put the roof beam on with our help and we put the decking on and then shingled the roof. Remember I was 14 years old and Mark 15 years old. Next was the inside. Alberta wanted it plastered and she had a book that showed her how to plaster. So Mark and I started putting the brown coat on the walls and ceiling and it was going very well. It even looked good. I had watched our new house be plastered with professionals so I was comfortable that we were on the right path. A couple of days later Alberta decided that it was time to put on the white coat. I think she was tired of seeing us shoot baskets and playing twenty-one. We put the white coat on the ceiling first and it looked good. As we were standing there feeling good about what we had accomplished, the whole ceiling fell on us, both the white coat and the brown coat. We checked the book and found that not enough cement had been put into the brown coat so the water in the white coat sucked the brown coat off the ceiling. Well, we shoveled out all the brown and white coats off the floor and stripped the walls and started over. With a new mix we re-applied the coats and they are still stuck to the walls today. Alberta laughed with us through it. It was just another day of on the job training for Mark and I, under our teacher, Alberta.
With the $150.00 that I had earned and the folks’ $150.00 in my hand I was ready for another adventure of seeing the United States of America. To think that at the age of 14 I was leaving home to travel by train for three weeks. My cousin David Haymond, from the old neighborhood was going with me. He was my partner in our sleeping berth. Dad, knowing trains had us seat in the middle of the car so we wouldn’t feel the wheels clicking on the rails. We ate in the diner and had to move to the observation car when they made up our beds. It was a great experience to see America go by with little towns coming then in a minute they are gone. Each town had their own story of struggles, sorrows and success.
The route of our travel was to Denver, Chicago, Detroit, Nigeria Falls, Rochester, Palmyra, New York and then Valley Forge. Some of the high lights were seeing the McCormick Museum of Natural History. I didn’t realize all of the creatures that had been on the earth. Ford’s Greenwich Museum in Detroit was hard to believe. It showed the creations of man from 1850 to today, with much credit given to Thomas Edison. The Eastman Kodiak Plant in Rochester was another great tour for us. The visit to the Scared Grove was a great moment for us young boys. It was hard to realize that we were the same age as Joseph Smith when he went into the Grove. I knew that I was in a very special place and I knew that the Father and His Son, Jesus Christ, had been there with the boy Joseph some 130 years earlier.
New York was hard to comprehend, the Statue of Liberty, Radio Music Hall with “The Rockets”, the Movie “Father of the Bride” and Coney Island, David I went on this parachute jump and I thought I was going to die before we floated to the ground. The big thrill was going to Yankee Stadium. It was my first major league baseball game. We were up in the third deck, down the right field line. We would look up their number in the program to figure out who they were on the field they were so far away. Oh well it was good to be in Yankee Stadium.
We arrived at Valley Forge in the morning but had to wait in the Railroad car for hours for our transportation to arrive. When we arrived at our site we prepared a camp made of the group of 22 scouts. We had made our cots, tents and packs and it was a good camp. We also had a shower and canvas sinks, for washing in the morning. We would get our food to cook from the central food station and prepare our meals. Things were slow so we went out exploring trading badges and etc.
The rumor got around that a scout could get in free at the Philly’s baseball game. Not knowing how big Philadelphia was I suggested that we hitchhike into Philadelphia and go to the ball game. I had hitchhiked to Provo often and one time to Salt Lake to see the Los Angeles Rams play the St. Louis Football Cardinals. I felt that I was trained for the next step. Baseball was first in my heart and scouting was second. There were three of us who decided to head into Philadelphia. It was Mark, David and I. We caught a ride with a salesman and he asked us were we were going. I told him we were going to the ball game. He said that there was not a game that day. We were disappointed but he said that he was tired of selling and that he would take us on a tour of Philadelphia and that he did. We went to all of the sites: Independence Hall, Liberty Bell, William Penn building and the list goes on. About 5:00 PM he dropped us off at the entrance to Valley Forge. We returned to camp in time for dinner, with stories of our adventure.
Well with the success of our first trip, I suggested that since there was a doubleheader with the Philly’s and the Boston Braves that we should go to Philadelphia tomorrow. The next day four
When we got to the park we found out it was only free on Tuesdays. Just then, a person walked up and said he had one ticket and did we want it? Everyone said no so I said I would take it. The other three bought tickets in the left field bleachers. We agreed to meet at that spot after the second game. I headed into my seat and “wow” it was at third base eight rows back. Now mind you I was 14 years old 6’3” and weighed 114 pounds wearing short pants. The people sitting around me must of thought that I was going to die, since I was so skinny, for they started passing food and money to me. After three hot dogs, five ice creams, two drinks and $4.00 in change I settled down to enjoy the game. I watched Warren Sphan pitch a shutout, one of the great left handed pitchers in baseball. I was in heaven, being left-handed, as I watched I could only dream that I could be like him. I met up with my friends after the game and I told them what it was like being in “Baseball Heaven.”
Well, back to the road, getting directions as to where to start. Our first ride took us to a point half way to Valley Forge. As we got out the driver pointed to the other road and said, “go over there and someone will pick you up.” Sure enough here came our ride to the entrance to Valley Forge and back to camp. We told them of our ventures. I have to say this Scout Jamboree was a lot of fun. The next day the troop took a tour of Philadelphia, I thought to myself “I think I have seen this before”. On Sunday Elder Ezra Taft Benson spoke to all of us Mormon Scouts in an open field. La Var Felix, who was with us passed out with the heat. We gained live life saving experience.
We broke camp and loaded our gear onto the train and headed to Washington D.C. for another experience. We walked around town in awe looking all of their big buildings and wondering what goes on in them. We all went to the LDS Chapel and heard Senator Arthur V. Watkins speak to us. We then traveled by train to St Louis, Grand Junction and then home. It was difficult to comprehend the experience, but for sure it gave me a broader view of the world we live in. I returned home, with more confidence in myself, and a willingness to reach up and out.
1950 The Beginning of Life
Springville Town Baseball Team
In 1946 while listening to the World Series (St. Louis vs. Boston) Enos Slaughter (Mr. Hustle) scored from 1stbase on a single to win the World Series. He became my childhood hero and St. Louis Cardinals my favorite team. It gave me encouragement to overcome my handicap. From that day forward, I lived at the ballpark. I shagged fly balls for the town team, was the batboy, scorekeeper and traveled with team. I was also the business manager and passed the hat, at the games for donations to keep the team operating. We paid the ball chasers ten cents for each ball returned.
Each week had another learning experience for this batboy. One funny event took place in Heber, Utah. I had caught a ride with Jimmie Thorn so I could serve as batboy. The ride in and of itself was an exciting event, with stories not to be repeated. When we arrived at the ball park it was decided that Keith Weight would be the home plate umpire. Keith had come with us from Springville. Keith had his own umpiring outfit. It included a mask that had two bars to protect your face from a foul ball. Well as the game went on everything was going well until Jimmie Thorn hit a foul ball that went straight back into the mask of Keith Weight. The ball lodged between the two bars of the mask. The ball went through the two bars far enough to hit Keith in the nose and knocked him out and he fell to the ground for a minute. As he started to get up, he could only see the ball and he thought the ball was still coming at him. Keith tried to run away from the ball. He started running in circles, it was absolutely funny. We were all on the ground laughing at this sight. This was just another day as batboy for the Springville Artists.
Well back to life in Springville. I had been serving a treasurer of the city baseball team. The duties included passing the hat at the game, depositing the money in the bank and paying the kids 10 cents a ball when they returned a foul ball. I also kept the statistics of the players. This kept my math skills up in the summer. Well, the team had been losing while I had been gone and I felt it was time to make my move to ask for a baseball suit and play for the team. I had been practicing six hours a day when I was not working and playing on the kid’s team at first base and hitting about .450 so I was not just a pretty face. Bill King was the manager, a transplant from the East Coast. He had married a Childs lady in town, during World War II. I got the courage up to ask Bill for a baseball suit, and he said “Kid the season is about over so maybe next year.” I told him that I thought I could help this team. The answer was “maybe next year kid”. Well I tried.
The next Wednesday I arrived at the park to do my duties and as if by magic the team from Provo arrived and had only eight players. They asked Bill King if he would let them play if they picked up a person out of the crowd. Bill agreed and said: “Hey kid, they need a player do you want to play?” I jumped up, picked up my glove and went over to the Provo bench. My heart was pounding as the manager said, “What is your name kid”. I answered, “Brent Haymond.” He replied, “You’re in right field and batting ninth”. Well, you have to start somewhere. As the world would have it there were two balls to right field. They appeared to be uncatchable to the crowd. However, I made running catches with both of them with my back to home plate. I became the star.
One of the balls was hit by my cousin-in-law, Guy Bird. When I was running in from the outfield, at the end of the inning, he said, “Brent what in the hell are you doing out there, you’re not supposed to catch the ball.” The Lord was with me for I also had two singles and Provo won 6 to 4. Well guess what, I got a baseball suit for the Springville team and started on Sunday in Nephi at left field. I got one hit. I ended the season batting .286. I was now on The Great Baseball Road, how great can it be?
I was thrilled to tell mother and father that Bill King, the Manager, had approved this 14 year old kid to play for the Springville Baseball town team. It meant that I would be playing on Sunday. I made a promise to my mother and to myself that I would not miss my Sunday Church meetings while playing on Sundays. The first game that I played in my new Springville Baseball uniform was a Sunday afternoon in August at Nephi, Utah. It was 1:00 PM when the game started and I was assigned to play in left field and bat eighth in the line-up. There was no grass on the entire field. It was what we called a ‘skinned field’ and the temperature was over 100 degrees. Well, when I went into the outfield, because of the heat, all I could see were heat waves coming up from the ground.
In the first inning the second batter hit a fly out to left field. As the ball approached me, all I could see was the ball wobbling back and forth in the heat waves to the point that it was impossible for me to determine where the ball was going to hit on my mitt. Sure enough, it hit the side of my mitt and fell to the ground. I hurried and picked the ball up, and threw it into the infield. I stood there worrying that due to the error, they may take my uniform back after the game. When I came into the dugout at the end of the inning, Bill King said, “It’s OK kid”. I felt better, especially after I walked in the third inning and was able to hit a single in the sixth inning. We lost the game by two runs.
As I rode home in the back seat of Jimmy Thorn’s car, I could only think of what a pressure packed game it was for me. I learned that day; it is a lot easier to watch a big time game than to play in one, especially when people are depending on you to play well. I committed to myself to work harder to be a valued player, rather than a filler like I was that day. The rest of the season turned out a lot better for me. I had only one more error the rest of that season. I also batted 265 for the season, with one double. Yes, I also made all of my sacrament meetings all season.
The rest of the summer was spent working on the farm and helping with the harvest of hay and fruit. September saw me back in school starting the ninth grade. This year of school was a transition year with many changes. School classwork started to expect more of us students, sports were becoming more a part of my life and girls also started to get more of my attention. Each of my days started at 6:00 AM cleaning the Haymond Drug store, which included reading the sports page then returning home by 7:30 AM, get ready for school, eating breakfast then arriving at school by 8:30 AM. I Attended school until 4:00 PM and then practiced sports until 6:00 PM. I would study in the evening until bed time.
The ninth grade brought a real awareness that girls had a lot to offer. Like every boy that age I fell in love with my first girlfriend, Kathleen Childs. This caused me to change my walking path to school to hopefully find Kathleen walking to school at the same time. I must say it was difficult to find a consistent time that she would be walking to school. Then there was social dancing every Tuesday and Thursday. The girls were on one side of the auditorium and the boys on the other side. When it was Boy’s choice you had to move out quick to make sure that you got the right partner. Girl’s choice you prayed that the right girl would show up.
Life was good, I had a lot of friends, some with cars to move around. Basketball was great. I played Forward and center on the Junior High team. We played schools in Spanish Fork, Provo and Payson. Then there was Church ball on Saturday.
These gym experiences developed a sense of confidence that if we believed we could do it, there was a way to do it. There were many different ways that we got into BYU games. We would send one individual in the backdoor to the locker room. The guard, at the back door, would chase after him. Then six or eight of us would run up the stairs into the gym balcony. One time, there I was standing in the ball room for 8 hours playing hearts waiting for the game to start. Or we would hide in the Tower or the ceiling, of the gym; you could be caught in those places. I always wore a sport coat so as to blend in with the BYU students. NEVER wear a Springville Athletic Sweater. That year I was able to get into eight of the ten BYU home games. I only paid for two games. Life was good.
1951 The Pitcher
It was May and the baseball season was in the air. The Springville Town team was starting to practice, so I showed up at the first practice knowing in my heart that I was going to be a part of this team. Well, when I walked onto the field little did I know that a life changing experience was going to happen. Bill King approached me, with his grease stained ball cap on, from working at Springville Meat as a butcher. He said “Kid you’re going to be one of our pitchers this year.” He handed me a baseball and said: “Go learn how to pitch.” That moment would change my life. What I was going to learn could not have been learned any other way. I felt that the Lord had given me an opportunity and I was willing to work hard to succeed.
From that day on I started to figure out how to pitch. I purchased a book by Bob Feller, of the Cleveland Indians, called: “How to Pitch”. It showed how to throw a fastball, curveball and a changeup and the form I should use when I threw the ball. Eddie Holmes and I would go to the ball park for the whole day and pitch to each other. Well, the day finally came and I was to pitch the first home game of the season at Memorial Park.
Game day came and I prayed that day that the Lord would be with me. The game was not pretty, I walked 13 batters, hit 3 and struck out 10, along with seven hits in total. We lost the game 13 to 10. Bill King kept coming over from third base and saying: “Hey Kid don’t give them any free tickets to first.” Well I tell you the pressure was great that day, but I served. Everyone was giving me advice. I listened and was grateful for their advice and compliments.
There was four things that I learned that day. 1. Don’t be afraid that you are going to hit someone, for pitching is always a struggle between the batter and the hitter. If the hitter is successful then you won’t be pitching anymore. If you are successful pitching then you will have lived to pitch another day. 2. Keep the ball over the plate, but not down the middle. 3. Keep the ball down low. 4. Develop the courage to pitch with confidence to win. The next time I would pitch was in seven days.
From that day forward, I realized that you can rebound from being knocked down. With the help of the Lord, you can overcome defeat and rise up to live another day. I also learned that it is not fun to lose and through effort you can win. But it requires that you believe in yourself and know that the Lord is always with you. He will help you if you spend the effort to be prepared. I had to do more preparing so that he could be my helpmate and that I did.
I continued my daily routine of practice. I think I spent over 700 hours practicing and playing baseball that summer as well as working the Clyde farm, cleaning the drugstore and of course mowing the lawn.
Each game I reduced the number of base on balls and kept my strikeout up in the range of seven to ten per seven inning games. I pitched on Wednesday, which was a seven inning game. I was starting to win games in the last two games of the season. We won 7-4 over American fork and 6-2 over Spanish Fork. The Springville Herald reported, “Springville topped Spanish Fork 6-2 behind the 5-hit pitching of Brent Haymond.” That Summer I was chosen to pitch in the league all-star in Payson in late July. I pitched three innings, gave up three hits and struck out two batters. The game was tied at three when I left the game in the fourth inning. I was still fourteen. It was a wonderful time.
1951 Football
It was early August when George Pehrson, Coach of the Springville High Football team, came to me at the ball park and handed me a football and said: “You are going to be the center on this year’s football team. I would play offense only. Springville High was one of the last teams playing the old single wing system. That meant that I would be hiking the ball through my legs to a person running to the right most of the time. It was obvious that it was easier to hike the ball as a left hander than a right hander. This was another changing moment in my life. I had never played any football, other than with the neighbor boys. I was 6’3” and weighed 154 pounds, sounds a little light for the line with everyone else 180 to 220 pounds.
Practice started August 15th and after the first day I was praying to die. My legs were in pain top to bottom and my back and shoulders were so sore that I could not raise my arms above my head. The thoughts went through my mind that I should quit. I prayed that I could endure this learning experience and yes I did. The next 14 days I continued this body pounding experience, I felt some of this pounding was due to the fact that I was a sophomore. There were just two sophomores on the team, Pete Carter & I. The toughest part of practice was the “separators”. There were two polls in the ground with pads on them and then you would get down and go at
The season started with playing at Granite High School. The game ended in a tie, 0 to 0. I was able to hike the ball with no mistakes and did a good job with my blocking assignments. We played eight games, losing to Payson on a trick play at the start of the game. The trick was a Payson player standing over by the sidelines, near the Payson team. They threw him a pass and he ran for a touchdown.
It was during half time that Coach George Peherson gave one of his famous half time speeches. We were behind six points and we were sitting on the floor catching our breath. Coach started calm, asking different players about how good of students they were and everyone that was asked was an “A” student. All answered, “yes, I am an A student”. Then Coach got down on the floor on his knees and started beating on the floor and asking, “why can’t you see what is happening out on the field?” Since this was new for me I didn’t know whether to laugh or to be serious. I chose the latter. In another game George put his fist through a black board, explaining a play.
We ended the season tied with Lincoln (Orem) and the winner would play for the state championship. We had beat Lincoln earlier in the season. We thought that we could win the playoff and go to state. But maybe we were not mentally ready. We had some fumbles deep in our end of the field. One was a punt that we fumbled on the five yard line. They scored on the next play. It was a sad ending to what was a wonderful season. I was accepted by the older players and to my surprise I was chosen on the region’s All Star third team. Phil Haymond was on the second team.
Springville High School
The first day of school was exciting; many of the people I had been with in the Jr. High were there. I had been elected onto the student council for two years in the Junior High. That was a very exciting experience. When I got into high school I didn’t seem to be one that was into the political side like I was in Jr. High. My friends, my very favorite friend David Haymond along with Blaine wood, David Allen, Robert whitehead, Clark Fullmer, John Mendenhall and Allan Hall. We were all taking some of the same classes. We all had heavy science and were into math. Those were the young people I studied with in these classes. One of the starting classes was Geometry. Paul Wilson who was affectionately called “Pear Wilson” by the students was the teacher of the geometry class. He was very brutal and criticized any mistake that a student made. So, it forced all of us to study hard outside of class so that we wouldn’t be abused in the class by his smart remarks.
As soon as football was over along came basketball. I was able to make the JV team as a forward. We had a wonderful team and we won all of our games that year. Baseball was our game in the spring. Dee Sanford was our coach and he also taught at the High School. It was the first year that Springville had a baseball team in the high school. Our team had a lot of energy, but very few wins. In fact we played the whole season without winning one game until the very last game. We drove up to Price to play Carbon high school. Carbon was the state champion the year before so there wasn’t a lot of hope that we might win. We started playing the game and we scored a couple of runs and they scored a couple of runs. My good friend Mark Hoover was the pitcher as we approached the fourth inning. We were ahead by one run. The coach decided to pull Mark out and put me in to pitch the last three innings. Being a sophomore against the great Carbon team was an awesome responsibility but as the world would have it we were able to hold on to the one run and won the game. I had no runs scored on me in those three innings.
We were so excited about the victory that as soon as we got out of the ball park we got in to our cars and went to the dairy queen. Our idea of a big deal was to buy a quart of ice cream and eat it on the way home. As I was eating my quart of ice cream we were driving down Spanish Fork canyon. There had been floods and there was water running across the road and as we went along I started to get sick because of being all hot and everything and then putting that cold ice cream into my body. My body said, “I think I’m not going to be able to keep this.” I said to the driver, “Please stop, I’m going to throw up.” He said, “Oh, just go ahead and roll the window down and just stick your head out the window and throw up.” So, I stuck my head out and threw up. He was going so fast that it blew all the white ice cream down the side of the car. Then, as we were going along there was some water on the side of the road. Someone said, “Why don’t you speed up and splash all the ice cream off the side of the car.” He sped up but there was sand on the road as well as water. As he hit it we did a spin of 360 degrees. There was an edge to the road then a drop of probably about a hundred feet. As we turned I was looking down at the river, before long I was looking at the mountains as we finally came to a stop. It was truly one of those experiences that could have been the end our lives that day. We were lucky enough that the car stayed on the road.
The Haymond Drug
During the school year there was always something going on. I dated different girls and we always had a good time. One thing that I would do that my Uncle Paul had a tendency to frown on was to take my friends with their dates down to the store late at night and serve everyone hot fudge sundaes. This was loved by my friends. One night while we were there having a wonderful time Uncle Paul came back into the store I had all the lights off. He apparently forgot something so as he came in he realized that we were all there sitting at the bar. I decided to take the offense and I said, “Oh, Uncle Paul how are you, how is everything going? We are just having a little hot fudge Sundae here if that that’s alright?” Uncle Paul said, “Oh, yeah, Brent yeah, I guess that’s alright.” but I could tell he was cringing with what was happening.
My Uncle Paul and I had what I call a love hate relationship. We had a tendency to sometimes get on different sides of issues, namely BYU vs U of U (This was before I was converted to BYU). He was very vocal on certain issues. We learned very early not to get on those issues that he was on but from time to time I wandered into an issue not knowing where the mine field was.
One time he let David and I both stock shelves. Eventually David became the stocker and I became the janitor. From time to time we would go through the store and find those things that needed to be put on the shelves. We then would go downstairs, put the items in boxes, bring them up and put them on the shelves. While we were downstairs we saw that there were boxes of candy. We had a tendency to open up packages of chocolate almonds and especially the nut candy. We definitely ate a lot of society candy. One day as I was putting things on the shelf when Uncle Paul came to me and said, “Brent we have a problem in the store.” I said, “What is it Uncle Paul?” He said, “We have mice eating all the candy downstairs.” I said, “really?” he said. “yeah, and if you see any of them eating the candy would you spank their hands for me?” Then I knew he was talking about David and I so I said, “yeah, I’ll do that.”
I need to bring you up to date on the history of Haymond Drug and how it became a part of our lives. In the early 1940’s my father and my grandfather, Solon Earl Haymond, supported Paul Haymond, my father’s brother, in pharmacy school. When Paul returned from pharmacy school, they then purchased the old Tripp Drug, in Springville, which was right next to Central Bank in the early 1940s. They were in that store until 1947 at which time they bought the property of the third store north of the Rivoli Theater. They remodeled the store with a new cement floor and set up a very good storage area down in the basement and in the back of the store. In 1948 we moved the store product from the old location by the bank to the new store. It was a beautiful store with twelve stools at the ice cream counter area and it had one booth. Uncle Paul had a deal that if we won the football game that week then the team could have a free milk shake. The store became a gathering place for the young athletes. Uncle Paul’s son Phil was the captain of the football team my sophomore year.
The drugstore also became a place of learning for me. If you’re down in town between six and eight A.M. in the morning there a lot of interesting things that happen, especially when your Main Street is the main road to Denver and Las Vegas. We had movie stars stopping at Monte’s café right next to the drug store. We had different people from all over America stopping by. When I was out washing the sidewalk in the morning it was exciting to see those people and even to converse with them. No one but I will probably remember Gabby Hayes, she was in all the Roy Rogers Movies, and Gail Storm was another movie star that stopped by at Monte’s. It was an exciting time. It was also a time when you would see people coming through town in the morning that should have been home the night before. It was important to keep these things to yourself so as not to become a source of information for people.
The Sheepherder’s Visit to the Drugstore
On Sunday mornings in 1953, David came down to help me clean the Drugstore which included mopping and waxing the floors through the whole store. It would take about two hours with the two of us doing it. It was a time that people would come in if they had forgot something that they needed to buy. We would or wouldn’t sell things to them depending on who they were and what they wanted.
It was a beautiful spring Sunday morning; I began my day at 6:00 AM, as usual to clean the drugstore, which was my year round job. That Sunday morning I rode my bike to the Drugstore for regular Sunday cleaning. It included sweeping, mopping and waxing the floors, along with washing the windows and the sidewalk. There was also trash to be taken out. It took two hours with two people. David Haymond, who stocked the shelves on a regular basis, would come down on Sunday and help with the extra duties.
When we were at the store early Sunday morning, it just seemed to attract always interesting events. It seems that you can learn a lot about a town when you’re on Main Street at 6:00 AM in the morning. I had wives calling to see if I had seen their husband come through town. There was the morning that “Gabby Hayes”, the partner to Roy Rogers from the movies, stopped by to have breakfast at Monty’s Café two doors down or someone in town needed toilet paper before Church.
This Sunday was no exception. I was in the back emptying the trash, when I returned to the main part of the store I saw David talking to a man at the door. I asked David what he wanted in my usual authoritative voice. David answered, “He wanted some drugs”. David had told him NO and now he wanted two bottles of Bay Rum (A mouth wash with a high alcohol content). Since I was “the take charge guy of the two of us,” I said, “David have him come in and sit down at the fountain”. (We had a 12-stool soda fountain on the north side of the store). As I approached the man I figured him to be in his fifties. He was very red faced from drinking and shaking. I looked at him and asked. ”What is your problem?” He then proceeded to tell David and I that he could not control himself and desperately needed a drink of alcohol. I asked him “Have you ever prayed for help from the Lord?” He answered, “Yes, many times, but I have always broken my promise with the Lord and can’t go back to Him again”. Well, I answered, “He will always listen to you no matter what”.
I then looked into his eyes and said, “I’ll tell you what we are going to do, that is, we are not going to give you any BAY RUM or anything else. But David and I are willing to go with you into the back of the drugstore and kneel down with you and ask the Lord to help you with your drinking problem”. “Are you interested?” He answered with a timid “Yes”.
David locked the front door and we proceeded to the back of the store. As the three of us knelt on the floor I looked at him and asked the question, “Who do you want to say the prayer?” I was thinking that he would ask David or I to offer the prayer. He looked up at us and said “I will say the prayer”. We bowed our heads and he started, “Oh Father in Heaven, I know that I am not worthy of a blessing from you, but could you please help me to stop my drinking and help my family? In the name of Jesus Christ Amen”
Well, words can’t describe the Holy Spirit that came upon the three of us as we knelt in prayer. There has never been a time in my life that the full force of the Holy Ghost had come upon me. We were truly weakened from the force of the event. We arose and quietly walked to the front of the store and bid him farewell. He thanked us and went on his way.
David and I were too weak to finish our work. We cleaned up and went home. Knowing that in that one moment we had called upon the Lord for help and that He had delivered the message that He would help this good man find a new life. We felt it and witnessed the power of His Holy Spirit. That day David and I had seen what could be accomplished if we but had faith in the Savior. David and I left each other knowing that we had had an experience that would forever link us together in this life and the next.
It was the fall of 1953, while I was flagging for WW Clyde & Co on new road construction of Highway 6 in Spanish Fork Canyon that I could see a truck coming with a load of sheep. I looked closer and recognized the driver as the man from the drugstore experience. I flagged him to stop and walked up to the side of the truck and looked in the window. I said, “Do you know who I am?” He answered, “Yes, you’re the boy from the drugstore”, I asked, “How are you doing?” He answered, “Fine!” “I haven’t had a drink since I saw you last spring. I feel my life is back on track”.
The drugstore was operated by my Uncle Paul, my father was the bookkeeper, Grandpa Solon Earl Haymond was the greeter and friendly a face to everybody. Grandpa had learned how to operate a store from his mother, Luella Wood Haymond and his grandpa, Lyman Wood.
My brother Dick had decided after he had married that he wanted to be a pharmacist. My father, knowing my Uncle Paul, who was a pharmacist, felt that the personalities of Dick, and Paul would not be good. He tried to talk Dick out of being a pharmacist and into being a dentist instead. Dick said, no, that he would rather be a pharmacist. He went to school at U of U along with his wife June and graduated with BS degree in Pharmacy.
Several months before Dick’s graduation Haymond Drug bought a second store in Provo which was only a prescription store located on University Avenue just a half of block north of Center Street. In that store there direct line phones to the doctors, it was a first, so all the doctors had to do was call them and they would give us the prescription over the phone.
My brother was excited that he would be the manager of one of the stores and Uncle Paul would manage the other store. About three months before Dick graduated from the U of U Uncle Paul hired a pharmacist to manage the second store. Dick did not manage the store but became the pharmacist working in the two stores which, to say the least, caused a lot of problems. After a period of time Dick became disenchanted and left Haymond Drug and worked as a salesman for Squibb Pharmaceutical driving back and forth to Las Vegas and stopping at all the drug stores along the way.
After a year and a half of that he said that he thought he would go ahead and become a dentist. He applied and was accepted at USC in California. He graduated in dentistry. He set up a practice in Santa Ana, California.
1952 Returning to Baseball
In the year 1952 the word was out that there was a tryout for the St. Louis Cardinals at Timp Park in Provo. I told myself, I have got to do this. It was the end of my sophomore year. I went over to the tryout and there were probably ten pitchers that were trying out. They were from all over the State, there was one pitcher there from Delta. I happened to be the only left hander in the group which was a very positive thing for me. They had us all lined up throwing to catchers. The men running the tryout would look at each of us. The talked to us about throwing, then showed us how to throw again. It was a three day tryout.
The second day there would be actual games. I was chosen to be one of the starting pitchers for one of the games on the first day. Each pitcher had to pitch six outs not three outs in an inning. You would pitch three innings. I think they wanted to see if you had stamina and they wanted to see your ability to withstand pressure. I pitched the three innings and gave up only two runs in a nine inning game. The next day I had a repeat performance so I was very, very high on their list. My control was becoming better and it was apparent that I could strike out many batters, I struck out several. The scouts would wander around watching those that had made the list as we played our scheduled games. The spoke with me on how well I performed and said they would watch me the next two years.
Utah was not a center for baseball players, but a Mr. Leishman, who was the owner of the Salt Lake Bees would keep in touch with me and Herman Franks who was a coach and later a manager for the San Francisco Giants would also keep in touch with me. A scout from the Cleveland Indians came by the High school to see me and later wrote me a letter telling me that they thought a lot of me.
That summer was another great time of playing ball. My first game playing for the Springville team was playing a game in Nephi. I pitched down there in the heat. It was a Sunday. In those days they didn’t care how many pitches you threw. When you started pitching you might have to throw two hundred pitches. The game in Nephi was really the start of my becoming tough as a pitcher. They always had really good hitters. The city of Levan had a great team and some of the players drifted over onto the Nephi teams. Some of them ended up playing professional baseball. We ended up winning that game 6 to 3. That was a tremendous start for me. I continued to win that summer.
Working on Construction
It was the summer going into my junior year that I started working on construction up in Spanish Fork Canyon. Construction became another educational program for me. I continued to play ball. My day would start at five thirty, I would clean the drug store, then my ride would pick me up at six thirty, I would ride in the back of a pick-up truck up to the red narrows in Spanish fork canyon where I would work all day digging post holes with a shovel along the newly constructed road. In the morning, on our way to the job, we would stop in the little town of Thistle for those who drank coffee. I would get a coke. We would work all day and then come home. If it was Wednesday I would change into my baseball uniform in the back of the truck on the way down the canyon and they would drop me off in Springville at the ball park where I would pitch a game. There were times that they would start the game with an in-fielder pitching until I got there, then, they would put me in to pitch.
At the construction site, Cornell was the boss and there is a flood of stories about Cornell, the son of Bishop Wilford W. Clyde, and many to be told about his father. Many of those stories can’t be told in a history but this one can. It is the classic story of WW Clyde. Word would spread through the job site that WW was coming up to inspect the job. I think they would spread the word from the office and it would travel up the canyon person to person to warn us that he was coming to check on us. It meant that we were all to work very hard when he was there. He would come up and inspect all the jobs and if you were a “nothing” like me you would keep your head down and keep working. You were not to greet him, just keep working.
One of those times that he came up he was returning to Springville out of the canyon, at a very high speed. The city of Mapleton had a chief of police named Bluth, his son Don Bluth became an artist for Walt Disney. There had been a rumor floating around about Chief Bluth that he was really an FBI agent and was watching a few families in Mapleton, that were possibly communists. Some people thought that he had been sent to keep an eye on these families to make sure they wouldn’t plot to overthrow the government or anything like that. Well, Wilford was driving out of the canyon very fast that day when Chief Bluth pulled up behind him, put the red light on and pulled him over. Chief Bluth walked up to the side of Wilford’s car. Wilford hit the electric window button that rolled down the window on his Cadillac. The window went down slowly. Chief Bluth said, “Do you know how fast you were going?” Wilford said, “No, do you know who I am?” And the Chief said, “No.” Wilford said, “I’m W.W. Clyde.” And rolled up the window then went slowly back up. Without another word Wilford then drove off. The Chief didn’t follow him. That is just one of hundreds of stories about W.W. Clyde.
One day we were working and we were blasting the side of the hill to widen the road. A lot of rock would come down with each blast. All of us laborers would come down and hide behind rocks when they set the dynamite off. After the blast happened, we would hurry to clean everything up especially off the railroad tracks. The railroad would charge us by the hour if there was anything blocking them as they were traveling on the rails.
One time they set off the blast and it looked like the whole side of the mountain moved up five feet and then it all of the sudden came down. It came down so fast it took out the railroad tracks. For thirteen hours we were cleaning off the track and the railroad people were there laying new track and you cannot imagine the cars that we had lined up on the road just waiting. People could not get through the canyon. It was hot and there was no place for people to use the bathroom. It was quite the scene. So it was into the second day before the railroad could run on it. They were not happy people. We helped lay the track, as well, just to try to make up for the time delay. We would do anything to get the railroad running. There were many life experiences that I learned from talking to and working with people that had worked construction all their lives and were not going to change.
Red Haymond
I rode to work with my Uncle Elwood Haymond, his nickname was Red Haymond. Red took no guff from anybody. He treated me, to this day, as though I was chasing stacks for him on construction. He was the second youngest boy in my Grandfather’s family. He was part of Grandpa’s second family not in the first family. Elwood would drive a rocker or a Ternopol as they were called. They were very large pieces of equipment. The rocker was used to haul rock. It would be filled with a big shovel. The rock was used for building up the shoulders of the road. One dump would be 20 to 30 ton at one time.
There was a Forman named Carl Jensen. Carl had a lot of talents, one was that he could put a cigarette in his mouth and roll it from one side of his mouth all the way to the other side without even touching it with his hands. His job was to direct the rockers where to dump the rock fill. Well, there was only one place to dump it, so all day long he would tell the rocker driver to stop and then point out where to dump the fill. It was completely obvious because there was nowhere else to dump it. It got very annoying to my Uncle Red and he took it as long as he could. The rockers were steered with electricity switches, they had no steering wheels. So, Red is coming along with his load, Carl stops him to tell him to ‘put it right there.’ Red hit the switch and flipped the front of his rocker around and put the front tire right on Carl’s chest and revved the engine. Red told Carl that if he told him one more time where to dump the rock he would run over him. Red revved the engine again and Carl’s eyes became as big as they could go and he just about passed out.
1953 School Year
My junior year was filled with a lot of excitement. Football was going strong. I ended up on the All Region team my junior year and my Sr. year as well. I was second team All-State in football. School was going like it always does and we had a lot of fun times with different issues. One of the issues was that in our junior year we had some friends that were running for office for the Sr. year. Being Springville Red Devils with school colors being red and blue, we had the red and blue parties. The party title was to show us how to be involved in elections. One of the people that we were supporting was on the red party. I came up with the idea of printing leaflets and having them dropped by and airplane while everyone at school was out sitting on the lawn during the lunch hour. Bishop Jensen had a press that we could use to make the flyers, so we printed them. They said ‘vote for the red party’. The student that we wanted everyone to vote for had the last name of Watts. His father owned the grocery store in town. So here comes the airplane flying over the school at noon. They threw a couple thousand leaflets out of the plane and as they floated down, the wind was blowing a little bit so some of the flyers floated over to the neighbor’s homes around the school. The neighbors started picking up the flyers and reading them. They started saying “The red party?!?” and then they saw that they flyer was advertising the name of Watts who was a part of this red party! This was during the time of the cold war when people were very afraid of communism and they started to question if the Watts family were communists in their community or not? It caused a lot of interesting impact. This was a great experience for us.
My parents didn’t say a whole lot to me about the incident. My Mother was always very good to take care of me by fixing meals and making sure my clothes were ready but didn’t get involved in many of the things that I was doing. My father was out of town working a lot, so I was safe.
In 1945, my dad was superintendent of the railroad at the end of World War II. His job was to close the railroad down. He finished that job and then was employed at Geneva Steel for a short while and then was employment with the Interstate Commerce Commission. It was a very, very good job. He was on the road from Montana to Arizona so we didn’t see a whole lot of him during that time. They gave him a car and he would drive it to each of the railroad stations along the line and make sure the records were correct. His old boss was the head of the old Commerce Commission so he was considered one of the top four. It was hard on my Dad because he wasn’t home a lot and was missing what I was doing in high school. He was able to make it home many times for the games on Friday but during the week it was Mother, Karen and I at home.
My junior year our baseball team did better. Our basketball team was outstanding. I started, as a forward, in basketball. I played in the post position, when defenses were man to man. When zone defenses were used against us, I played outside. Because I was a good shot from the outside. I made the honorable mention list on the regional team. We went to the state tournament that year. We won the first two games then lost the next two. All of this made it a fun time.
My grades in school were somewhere around a 3.8 grade point average. I studied with people that could answer questions. I was one that was never afraid to ask questions. I knew that if I was going to be a doctor that I had to learn and pass my classes. I wanted to be a doctor because David Haymond wanted to be a doctor and we were influenced by what we experienced at the drug store. I had the good fortune of being part of a study group that all went on to graduate from college. This was also the case with my friends, in the old neighborhood, on 300 South. It was a very positive upscale learning environment, with a lot of on the job training. That was a blessing for me, to grow up in in such an environment.
The summer of 1953 was a summer to behold because I was working on construction and I was playing baseball and in fact, I was playing in three leagues at one time. Church league, baseball league, and a city league. Two were softball leagues in which I played first base, because I was a slow runner. A couple of the girls we went with worked at the drive in movie. We took it upon ourselves to give them a ride home every night so we could go to the movies for free. I went to bed at eleven p.m. every night and was up at five a.m. to go to work every morning that summer. Everything was going fantastic, that year I won twenty games in baseball as well.
One of the great days of my youth was the opening of the Spanish Fork baseball park in 1953. That day Springville was playing Spanish Fork. Neither team had ever played under the lights before so that gave the pitchers a definite advantage. The Spanish Fork pitcher’s name was Dean Roberts. He was probably twenty four years old, married with two kids and delivered milk for a living. He had played ball a long time. I was pitching for Springville. In the first three innings I struck out all nine batters and he struck out probably five of them on our side. Nobody scored any runs, the next three innings I struck out four and he got everybody out. We got to the eighth inning and nobody had scored. A guy hit the ball in the infield. The infielder threw it over the first baseman’s head and the player ran to second base. So Spanish Fork had a person on 2nd base. I gave up a hit and he scored. When the game ended, I had struck out 18 batters, had given up one hit and lost the game 1 to nothing. Dean had struck out 10 and pitched a no hitter. It became one of the hallmark games of the ball park in Spanish Fork. Spanish Fork Ballpark always had a lot of attendance at the baseball games so many people watched the game. The bleachers were full. The pressure didn’t bother me because what happens when your pitching is that you start feeling the power of throwing and the noise of the crowd starts backing away receding as you focus. Then it’s just you and the batter. You get in the zone and the focus of that zone takes over.
There was a guy, who came to play with us by the name of Dave Oldroyd, who was a catcher for the University of Utah baseball team. He was from Provo High. I have to say it is such a thrill to pitch to a catcher who could manage you, as a pitcher. If you have a catcher who can’t manage you then you end up getting in trouble a lot of times. Case in point, when I pitched for BYU and Pratley was the catcher, if some in the stands would Shout “Pratley you STINK” He would be over in the bleachers after the person. Dave took me in as if I was his child. He taught me how to throw better. If I had had Dave with me through all of my ball years I would have never lost a game. We played a game at American Fork, which always had very good teams. We won that game 6 to 2. There were no real hits, just a bunch of little things here and there. He would help me into the zone. I owe it to Dave for the 20 games that I won that year. I was also a sad time for me. My very best friend, Don Thorpe who I grew up with on 3th South, drowned in the Highline canal in Spanish Fork.
After the divorce of his parents, Howard and Helen Thorpe, Don and his mother moved to Provo. Earlier they had drifted away from what we had been taught growing up. He told me, one day while having a Chocolate Shake at Haymond Drug “what’s the use, I am adopted so nobody cares”. I told him I cared. Helen had an offer to sing in the Catholic Church in Provo Weekly. She loved the attention and latter married a person who also sang in the Choir. I was a loss at a loss and that I felt I had let him down, even though he had moved to Provo.
1954 Springville High Graduation
In my senior year was filled with a lot of expectation. We thought our football team was great but in reality we were still running the single wing formation which was kind of archaic for that time. We didn’t have anyone in our back field that was fast enough to be successful in a single wing. Our first game was against Millard High School, in Fillmore, Utah, and it ended with the score tied. Millard had won the state championship that year before so that enhanced our thoughts of our potential. As the season wound down we were less than stellar. So the team came away really not proud of where we had gone. I did make the third All-State team. I think that is the way it happens if you don’t win the championship. I was happy being on the third team.
The basketball team was different; we had a very good team. We took first place in the region. There were some tough games played away from SHS, especially Spanish Fork. It was a small gym with people right on top of you. They would throw a zone on us so we had to play outside ball. Well, we were good enough shots and we were able to overcome the pressure on defense to win. Another tough game was at Tintic High School. Their gym had a stage at one end of the floor so there was very little room for out of bounds. I was elbowed in the eye which caused cut above the eye and was bleeding. As I ran to the other end on defense I was pushed out of bounds and hit a cheerleader’s head and caused another cut above the same eye. The stopped the game to repair my cuts. We won and I received eight stitches in Dr. Judd’s office that night. Dr. Judd, earlier that year had to straighten my broken nose with scissors wrapped in gauze, I passed out that time.
We went to state and won the first two games and lost the last two to finish 8th in the state. Baseball was just so-so. You can’t win committing 12 errors in one game. When it is all said and done athletics was a great learning experience, showing that if you play as one you can win most always. Never give up.
School was more of the same. We were doing lots of different things in our Physics and chemistry classes taught by Omar Hansen. He was one of the great teachers of my life. Omar was a teacher that could explain a complicated thing in a simple way so that we could understand it. School was exciting at that point. Those subjects did come easy to me because I had a group of friends in the classes with me who worked hard and we all studied together. We had one student in the class who would come late to class every day. He would show up at the same time every day, a quarter after nine, every day. One day at nine o’clock the teacher said “what we ought to do since Duane is always late is hook up an electric eye on the door, we will rig it up so that there are a bunch of bells on the electric eye”. This is right down the alley of physics so it worked right into what we were studying. Well, here came Duane in the door at a quarter after nine. All of the sudden the bells started making a racket. The bells were going off and everyone was laughing. He is looking around and can’t figure out what is happening. The bells shut off automatically a few moments later. The next day Duane came into class at the same time and the bells went off again. About that time he started catching on that he was the problem.
I was also taking an English class and that one wasn’t my strong suit. The teacher was Bessie Finley, she had a sister Mary. Mary taught the eighth grade and Bessie taught Senior English. I took a Utah History from Mary. Both of these sisters were spinsters. Now Bessie was a very nervous woman. Mary was the quiet serene type. Bessie would read The Raven by Edgar Allen Poe to us and she could make it sound like we were right there with him. We started watching her at noon time. She was such a creature of habit that every day she would get out of her car which was parked on the east side of the school, go up one flight of stairs, turn to the left, open her purse, pull out the key and open the classroom door. It was like she was a machine, the same actions in sequence every time.
I was with a group that raced to lunch. When the bell rang at 11:59 it was a foot race to see who could get to the lunch room over in the gymnasium basement first. I generally finished in the top ten so that meant that we were finished eating at 12:04. We had the rest of the lunch hour to just cause problems.
We would go sit on the steps going up to the third Floor landing and watch as Bessie would climb the stairs to the second floor, to unlock her classroom door. We noticed how she was such a creature of habit so I said, “Well, I tell you what we ought to do. Let’s take her door off and move it and see what she does”. So, sure enough the next day we took the door off and moved it around to the inside of the classroom. We leaned the door up against the wall. Then we all sat up on the top stair so we could watch. We watched her car pull up, the door opened, she got out and then Bessie walked up the stairs to the second floor, opened her purse, got her key out and proceeded to put the key into the lock. Well, her key just hit the air. She was alarmed and trying to figure out what had happened to her door? We were all but falling down the steps laughing at this. A few minutes later I did volunteer to show her how we could put the door back on. We never admitted guilt. It was a funny experience.
A lot of things happened in Bessie Finlay’s class. My good friend Lynn Walker from my old neighborhood made a guillotine that would cut off a mouse’s head. One day Bessie was giving another Edgar Allen Poe story when Lynn brought in this guillotine that he had made. Everybody was looking at it. All the sudden he brought out a live mouse strapped to a block. He set it there and pulled the lever. The mouse was beheaded. He had it arranged so that the head would roll down into a basket. Bessie went crazy when this happened.
Another kid who was a smoker had a box of wooden matches is his front pants pocket. The pants were very tight Levis. When he sat down the matches rubbed together in his pocket and ignited. They were all on fire, he was slapping his leg and running to the restroom with his pants on fire. High school was always a lot of fun.
It was at the High school that every year we did gain more of an education in the Arts. For six years we had to write an ‘art theme’ for our English classes. By and large everyone thought this was a pain. We were assigned to go select a painting from the Spring Salon at the museum and write a story theme, based on the painting. The good ones were sent to the artist. The stories were about how you felt as you looked at the painting and what emotions you had. Little did I know that those six years of pain would have such a profound effect on my love of the arts through my life. It was those assignments that started that awakening me of the beauty in all of the Arts.
I know the museum became a great blessing to all of us that grew up in Springville. It had come into being at the turn of the century around 1900 and we fortunately had two famous artists who grew up in Springville, John Hafen and Cyrus Dallin and those artists donated some of their pieces that started our collection. Before long they had started the Spring Salon. Art would come in from all over Utah and even outside of the state. The school would raise money by each class having an art queen. The Art queen was selected by each class which was strictly a popularity contest, nothing else. To unveil the paintings was a great honor for your class and also the young lady selected to be the queen. They didn’t have a very complicated judging system, it was the class that raised the most money that won the honor. Well by the time you’re a junior and senior in high school it’s your girlfriend that is the queen so you better hustle up some money for her. Everyone would raise money and of course the fathers of the girls would casually drop some big money into the pot to try to give their daughters a helping hand. The school would use that money to buy pieces of art for the museum. The art that was bought from the 1920s to the 1960’s was purchased this way. Some of the pieces bought for under a thousand dollars then are worth four hundred thousand dollars today.
It was a wonderful experience to live in Springville during the 30’s, 40’s and 50’s. It was a very creative community. They had many contractors and construction companies in town that built roads, railroad beds and many other projects. In 1955 Springville was recognized as the city with the most road contractors in America.
Springville had people that had vision and knew how to make money. The WPA Federal Government projects came out and said that the government will give you three dollars to build something if you can put in one dollar for their three. The visionaries caught on to that one real quick so they were making a lot of money through construction projects. The hundred thousand dollars that they used to build the Springville museum was nothing. Then they built the gymnasium on the same basis. They also put sidewalks and the sewer system in on plat A. Springville was way ahead on the development in their city compared to other cities its size. Springville’s development was more along the lines of Provo’s development level.
The Springville Museum of Art was built in 1938 and the gymnasium was built in that same period. The Springville high school gym was the premier gym in Utah except for the University of Utah’s gym. That is why in 1949 to 1951, BYU played all their home games in the Springville gym because it was a state of the art gym and was approved by the Skyline Conference for BYU to play their home games. BYU played at Springville High until the George Albert Smith Field house on the BYU campus was completed in 1952.
Utah High All Star Baseball Game
The 1954 school year ended with my being selected to play in the Utah High School All Star Game in Ogden, Utah at the Minor League Park of the Ogden Reds. They divided the state into North and South Teams. The game was set for June. Mother and I drove to Ogden for the luncheon. I was chosen as one of three pitchers on the South Team and our coach was Bailey Santieven, from Bingham High.
The Coach selected Kenny Austin, from Granite, to pitch the first three innings and I was to pitch the middle three inning and Larry Regis was to be my catcher for those innings.
Well the stands were filled with baseball fans and there was a lot of electricity in the air. The game started the South batting first. We were three up and three down. The North came to bat in the bottom of the first and promptly started hitting Austin all over the park. We were down four runs at the end of the first. The second started the same for us and in the bottom of the second North hitting again. Coach told me to warm up, I was going in. Regis and I started to get ready quickly. With only one out in the second and the bases loaded. Coach called me in to pitch. He said that he wanted me to “get us out of trouble”. The first batter hit a flayed ball deep to right field and one run scored. My heart was just a pounding, another 20 feet and it would have been a Grand Slam. The next batter grounded out to short and the inning was over. My heart went back to normal, we were out of the inning and down by five runs. I continued to pitch the 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 6th innings without a run. It was a joy to pitch to Regis, as the catcher. He kept my emotions down. Coach Santieven wrote a very nice letter to Coach Peherson about how well I pitched afterward.
One week later I was back in Ogden for a week trying out for the Ogden Reds. It went very well and there were a lot of good words from players and the Manager. One day I was sitting in the dugout with an Afro-American player from Mississippi and as I spoke to him I realized that he was very home sick and no one was giving him the time of day. I realized that if you aren’t on the inside, then you are on the outside. Few wanted him to succeed because he was black and baseball was sort of a white man’s game at that time. It gave me a little look at the outside world far away from happy little Springville.
About this time I had a visit from the Baseball Coach from the University of Utah offering me a scholarship to play baseball for Utah. I said ‘yes’ and they asked me to write them a letter. After they left, I started to think, if I go to Salt Lake I lose my janitor’s job at the drug store and I would have to use my hard earned money on construction for expenses. I decided to go over to BYU and see if they would offer me the same scholarship and then I could stay home. I met with Coach Crowton and he promptly offered me the same scholarship. I accepted. I wrote a letter to the Utah Coach, thanking him for the offer and told him of my decision. BYU has a tendency to expect the locals to walk on to try out. Well, I was set, BYU here I came. I was on my way to a new life of College, Baseball and hopefully a mission.
Comments
Post a Comment