MORE LIFE AS AN ADULT

MORE LIFE AS AN ADULT

While on a stake mission I learned another lesson that bears repeating. When your representing the lord, things always seem to fall into place and you don’t give it much thought in whatever capacity your serving.
A missionary companion and I were assigned to take over the teaching of a man
named Harry Dolittle. Harry and his wife lived in our Ward but his wife worked with a man that was a Missionary in another Ward….he taught Harry some of the lessons. (3 lessons I think)

My companion and I started on, I believe, the 3rd or 4th lesson but almost immediately, I had to stopped teaching… …something just wasn’t right. We had some film strips with us so we played one and then made an appointment for the next week. The following week we started in again but had to stop….I looked at Harry and said, “Harry, what are you struggling with?”
Harry told us that he might have a better grasp of Joseph Smith being a prophet, if he could believe that there was a God. AHAA! I told him that he had some work ahead and that he had to do some studying and spend some time on his knees, asking Father if he existed and if the things that he was being taught were real and we left some scripture assignments with him.

When we returned the following week…we no sooner sat down Harry shocked everyone, including his wife, with a pronouncement that he wanted to be baptized.
It seems as though he had been studying and praying and the spirit came to him testifying of the reality of, Father and of Joseph Smith and the Book Of Mormon. After we finished the lessons Harry joined the church, he and his wife were sealed together in the Oakland Temple and last I heard he was the Elders Quorum President in his Ward.

It’s comforting to know that even a bonehead like me has the spirit when representing the Lord…It’s truly his work and he will make sure that we don’t mess it up.

During this time I was also playing “Fast Pitch” softball and really enjoying it….I was a fairly good pitcher and even once threw a no-hitter….What Fun!!

I got a job working at Marriott’s Great America Amusement Park in Santa Clara and really liked painting the signs and the Warner Brothers characters, Bugs, Daffy, Wylie Coyote, etc. I used to kill time on the rides everyday when my shift was over waiting for the traffic to die down on the freeway. I came down with what was thought to be hepatitus and was off work for awhile and they replaced me. I was then offered a job by 2 salesmen from a decal printing company out of LA, Van Johnson and Phil Arnott, to move to Petaluma, Ca. and start a screen printing operation called Identity Services making signs and decals for Chevron, Safeway, Foster Farms Chickens, Boise Cascade Lumber Co.
Five years later I left when I was asked to take a 10% pay cut. I then was offered a job to setting up another shop for a company named Gamefield Concepts… a year and a half later, after I trained everybody and got the shop running I got laid off when they decided I was expendable. I started a little sign shop. Later, Van asked me to come back to Identity Services at a decent wage I said OK.

It was good that Van asked me to come back because my little sign shop was killing us…Irene had to take the girls, including a little one that joined us late…(Yeah Maren, that was you.) to live with her Mom in Layton, Utah for a few months while Jack and I stayed in Cotati, in my shop and sleeping in the van. It was truely a sad day when Gary and I took Irene and the girls to the train depot in Oakland to put them on the train. Jack stayed with me for awhile but was offered a chance to move in with a friend and his family. I couldn't blame him, it was lonely and difficult staying in the shop and sleeping in the van. When I went back to Identity Services I was able to bring Irene and the kids back…I hadn’t rented a place yet when they arrived so we stayed in a KOA campground for a couple of weeks…I said, “Hey, Think of it as a camping trip!” Irene wasn’t impressed with our little vacation.

I had played music, from time with some folks in San Jose during the ‘70’s but when we moved to Rohnert Park I started a band with a girl singer in our ward with a GREAT voice…but her and our bass player started fooling around with each other so I broke the band up and started a new one. It was pretty sad because the singers husband worked for me as a foreman at Identity Services and I was our bass players home teacher…. he was our singers home teacher….WHAT A MESS!! I replaced those two with some other people and had a pretty good band. After a while the music was getting hard to deal with because of substance abuse by some of the guys, so I broke the band up. I then started a band with a guy named “Cisco” we became “Cisco and the Kids” and were doing well around the area and were even offered a summer tour playing fairs and rodeo’s but Cisco's wife nixed that idea. (She was tired of him doing that for 25 years) It would have been fun and profitable.

I was asked to work for a company in Carson City Nevada but the company was AWFUL!! I then went to work for a LARGE company printing t-shirts in Reno as their art director…I decided to leave the company when asked to take a pay cut. The company was facing a lawsuit because I asked for and got more money than the lady I replaced. I went to a little sign company in Carson City and took it over…then the computer sign cutting equipment came out and people started flooding the area with AWFUL signs that could be done real cheap…between that and nearly FREEZING in -30 degree weather I had come to the end of my rope.

Gary had remarried after Sandy left him and was living in Mesa, AZ with his new wife, Sunni and their kids…yup all 10 of ‘em. I came down here to Mesa and stayed with them a few months while I found work and brought the family down…Without Vicky, she got married, and was starting a family back in Gardnerville. Jack was living down here in Phoenix with a few friends from Gardnerville.

Irene came down here with me first and the girls were to follow a few days later…. the funniest thing was to watch us get the luggage that the girls had brought with them off of the turnstile at the airport….Diane’s turned out to be a “HEFTY BAG”…What Fun!!

Since moving to Arizona a lot has happened… Like Irene did 25 years ago….I had a little challenge the the big “C” cancer, and….it appears as though we both have won those battles.

I was diagnosed with prostate cancer…it was rather advanced and the doc’s that I spoke to all recommended a “radical removal”. The evening prior to the surgery I asked my Bishop, Mike Stevens, who I had become good friends with, to give me a blessing. As he was giving the blessing, he also blessed the doctor that “He would do me no harm”. When I awoke from the surgery the doctor was standing there….since they don’t usually hang around after these things I said, “What are you doing here?” He said, “I couldn’t leave without talking to you…I was unable to get a good look at where I needed to cut to remove your prostate, I spent 3 hours working to do it…my attending physician said that since I had been doing this for 30 years I should trust myself and just make the cuts. As I started to, I had a deeling like I was shocked…I pulled my hands away and said that if I cut this man I will kill him…sew him back up.” He recommended that I get radiation treatments …I did external beam treatments for 6 weeks and then had radioactive “Seeds” put in. Six years later I’m still free of that ugly disease…thanks to a priesthood holder’s blessing and a doctor’s wisdom.

We have been blessed with 17 grand children and we love them all dearly…We purchased our new house 2 years ago this January…Hopefully business will pickup and we’ll be able to hold on to it. The economy has gone in the “Tank” this past year…here’s hoping that it recovers soon….Irene needs the value of this house to increase so that she has something to help out when I croak.

I have been playing a lot of music lately, it’s a great hobby that also brings in some money.

The band that I have now is the WEEZUL BROTHERS BAND. The band is really good and seems to be getting more and more attention from folks….hopefully we will get busier so that it can be bringing in more $$$$!