Carl was born three months after my 19th birthday and two weeks after our first anniversary, on August 11 1955. Notice our new clothes dryer, the wooden rack in the background.
Two weeks before Carl was born I answered a knock in the mid morning to two suited young men my own age. With hats in their hands their ties neatly covering the buttons of their white shirts they announced “We’re ministers of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.” My new mother-in-law had told me that the Ward Teachers would soon come to visit and they would check on us to see if we were doing ok. Each month for nearly a year she had said the same thing. I was pretty tired of telling her they hadn’t come.“I don’t understand it! I told your Bishop, I told your Stake President” I asked the two young“What church?” as I had been subjected to a long “visit” by the JW’s. When they told me I replied “Well it’s about time you got here! I’ve been waiting for nearly a year.” Later I was told their meeting down the street had cancelled and they were “hit and miss” tracting on the way back to their bikes which were chained up at the corner. I still thought they were the Ward Teachers and didn’t know they were missionaries. The Ward Teachers never did come but the missionaries came back again. John knew who they were and set me up with questions to ask them: “Where are your horns?” Without a change of expression Elder Clegg replied “I’m a muley m’am I just got dehorned come Spring.” I didn’t understand. John however cracked up and laughed til he nearly cried when I recounted the tale. Six weeks after Carl was born I was baptized.
When Carl was seven months old the Mare Island Apprentice Blue Devils basketball team, on which John played, went to Washington for a series. The trip lasted a week. As the train pulled out my tears flowed like rain. I didn't remember the difficulties we’d been having getting along nor how much I'd looked forward to having a week to myself I just felt all alone in the world.
It seems we hardly had room to be proud parents when we announced the birth, fifteen months later, of our second AND third, identical twin girls. Exhaustion blacked out most of my twenty-first year but I do remember having told my mother-in-law I would never want to live my life over, once was enough!
When I did the laundry (which was nearly constantly!) The playpen kept the twins safe from harm or Carl who liked to pick them up. They grew as fast as weeds and were soon trying to crawl. They kept me hopping.
For identification purposes information was taped on each twin so no mistakes could be made.
When Carl was seven months old the Mare Island Apprentice Blue Devils basketball team, on which John played, went to Washington for a series. The trip lasted a week. As the train pulled out my tears flowed like rain. I didn't remember the difficulties we’d been having getting along nor how much I'd looked forward to having a week to myself I just felt all alone in the world.
It seems we hardly had room to be proud parents when we announced the birth, fifteen months later, of our second AND third, identical twin girls. Exhaustion blacked out most of my twenty-first year but I do remember having told my mother-in-law I would never want to live my life over, once was enough!When I did the laundry (which was nearly constantly!) The playpen kept the twins safe from harm or Carl who liked to pick them up. They grew as fast as weeds and were soon trying to crawl. They kept me hopping.
For identification purposes information was taped on each twin so no mistakes could be made.
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