As I finished grade school, the principal, Mr Merril called 13 other boys and me into his office. He had the principal from Pleasant Grove High School, Mr Floyd come and meet with him in his office. He thought we were hellions, and we had to verify to the principal of the High School that we would act our age and be decent to go to high school.
You could say we were troublemakers. We had a few tricks up our sleeves like most kids did. We were always teasing the girls or playing tricks on some of the younger kids. It just caused them to think that we were somewhat of the problem.
I stuck by what I said to principal Floyd. However, I should tell you that the principal was only there until my ninth grade. He moved out of town and took a job somewhere else.
The principal, after him, (Mr Rogers) was a teacher that I didn’t like at all. He and I butted heads. He had me in his office several times and expelled me for little tricks that I had pulled.
It was Christmas time, and they gave all of us a bag of candy with peanuts. They took us to a show in the auditorium. While we were there, we ate the peanuts and threw the shells on the floor. He took several of us and expelled us. He told us not to come back until next year.
When he first said that, I didn’t catch it. However, it took a few minutes; he was talking about coming back after Christmas, which is the next year. My parents felt bad about it. They were not happy about it. I was disciplined hard.
I had friends whose names are Alton Hone, Eugene Keniston and Toby Bath. We did a lot of things together. We went on double dates in high school, and we played sports together. I have known these people all my life. I still remember every one of them.
In the summertime, my friends and I played softball a lot. Also, we would sneak over in the middle of the night to Saratoga Springs swimming pool which was 25 miles away and climb the fence so we wouldn’t have to pay to get in. We would go to a lot of different outdoor movies. We would sneak up to Harry Loaders Strawberry patch and sneak Strawberries or we would go to Clifford Wadleys pond several hundred yards behind his house where he grew watermelons and would steal his watermelons.
My one friend whose name is Gerald Olpin, his father was a mortician. Occasionally, when his mother and father had to go to Salt Lake, they would come and get Jerry out of high school and have him come home to stay, in case there were any phone calls of clients or people who were telling of someone who had passed away.
Whenever this happens, Jerry would always get a hold of us boys and girls. We would slough school and go down to the mortuary for a couple of hours and play games.
The game that we played the most was called wink. That’s where you put chairs around in a circle, and you have the boys stand behind each chair. The girls sit on each one of the chairs, except one boy has an empty chair. He would turn to a girl and wink, and she would try to get away before the boy behind her touched her.
After five of those occurrences, he got to take the girl in the other room and kiss her. That got to be a little boring. Since this was mortuary, in those days, they had a rope that they used for their elevator. It would pull the elevator up and down because in the basement was where they kept the caskets.
We put the boy and girl on the elevator and rolled them down to the bottom floor. Pretty soon, we got them all down there. Jerry and I turned out the lights. He and I slid down the clothes shoot. We’d walk around the room in the dark, kiss the girl and slap the boys on the face. We picked up one girl and put her in a casket. Well, she passed out and was very upset when she came to. The only way we could get the lights on was, I had to put Jerry on my shoulders and push him up through the clothes chute to get up to the main floor and turn on the lights.
I played Ward softball and I pitched all the time while I was a Jr M-men (Ages 14-18). At age 17 Alton Hone and I were recruited on the ward M-men team. They were all older than us by 10 years but they needed extra players so they let Alton an I play at age 17. Some of the players on the team were Howard Walker, Gordan Allred, Bill Hoglund, Clair Lloyd and Ross Brady. Alton and I would played outfield.
The first time I remember going away and staying over someplace without a family member was when I was in high school and Future Farmers went up to Utah State for a judging contest and stayed for three or four days and that’s kind of when I decided I wanted to go to school up there.
Some of the places we would hangout or go on a date would be either the Sugar and Spice Restaurant in Pleasant Grove. (just around the corner a little bit from the Purple Turtle) or Kirks Restaurant in Orem. There were 2 outdoor movie theaters; one in American Fork named The Coral and one in Orem named The Timpanogas. If we had a car we would go out to Highland, Utah. There was a drop off on the road and if you drove fast enough you would catch air. We would go sleigh riding up American Fork canyon at Mutual Dell and get on our sleds and ride down the road to the turn off to Tibble Fork.
I graduated from Pleasant Grove High School in 1957.
There were 107 students in my graduating class.
I don’t remember what we did for graduation celebration but I was with Alton Hones cousin, Alene Gilbert. We dated for 1.5 yrs before I left for college.
