Stories about Preston and his dad - John Hayes Moore
The following memories were shared by Preston with Joseph Moore on December 14, 2016
The following are in random order as memories surface
The only time I remember my dad going hunting was when I was about six and I went with him as he joined several men hunting for pheasant. I don’t believe Dad successfully shot a bird but I was pleased that he took me with him with all the other men and their sons as we trudged through some fields early on a Saturday morning.
When we lived in Twin Falls, ID, Dad was district manager for State Farm Insurance. As I recall he was responsible for all the agents in southeast Idaho. As a result, he was often gone on trips to visit the agents. Frequently, when he was taking longer trips to places like Pocatello or Idaho Falls he would take me with him. Sometimes we stayed in hotels/motels, but often we stayed in the homes of the agents. Back in the 1950s there were no freeways and most of the highways were narrow two-lane roads that followed the contour of the land. When we were travelling Dad would help me identify the makes of the different automobiles by noticing the different and often unique grills or tail lights. Again, in the 1950’s the styling of the various makes of cars were generally quite different from each other so I got very good at identifying the different makes of cars. Even now, when I spot a vintage car from the 1950s and early 1960s on the road or in the movies I can usually identify the make and often the year (within a year or two) of when it was made. Dad would also use these one-on-one opportunities to talk about various gospel principles.
When I was about ten or eleven I was “helping” Dad do some repairs on the garage door. There was a nut missing that needed to be replaced and Dad took me to the hardware store to purchase the nut. Unbeknownst to me he had used a crescent wrench to determine the size nut he needed by sizing it on a similar nut securing the door at a similar location. As Dad drove to the store I noticed the crescent wrench sitting between us on the seat. While Dad was focused on driving I picked up the wrench and started playing with it by moving the dial which, of course, changed the size he had set the wrench to. When he discovered what he had done he was very exasperated with me, but used great restraint and did not yell at me.
After my parents divorced, Dad found a place to live about a mile and a quarter south on 21st East. It was a basement apartment he shared with an older gentleman who owned the house and also rented out the main house upstairs. My two brothers and I spent time with him there on the weekends when he had custody of us. As I remember it, there were two double beds in his bedroom which we pushed together so the four of us could sleep together. Other times when I needed help with my homework (generally math) I would walk from school to his office on Highland Drive which was a little north of the Villa Theater. When he was done at the office I would go home with him and spend the night with him so he could help me with my math homework. He was very patient with me and was a good math tutor.
Before Dad remarried, he would go to church with us on Sunday. Until about 1980 or so, church did not consist of a three-hour block. We would have Priesthood Meeting at 8 o’clock for an hour. We would then go home and come back for Sunday School at about 10 o’clock for ninety minutes. (Back then there was a separate “Junior” Sunday School for children up to age nine at which age children would start attending “Senior” Sunday School, opening exercises which were held in the chapel. The Aaronic Priesthood would prepare the Sacrament for both Junior and Senior Sunday School opening exercises. Senior Sunday School exercises would last for about forty minutes and then we would go to our respective classes. Opening exercises consisted of a sacrament service, two 2 ½ minute talks by a child /youth and then the chorister would lead us in learning a new hymn for several minutes. We would learn a new hymn every month. At the beginning of the sacrament service, a child/youth would go to the pulpit and recite a short scripture called the Sacrament Gem. After Sunday School we would go home again for Sunday dinner and return for a ninety minute Sacrament Meeting later in the afternoon.) Anyway, after Sacrament Meeting Dad would walk us home. Doing so took us by a Fernwood Ice Cream Parlor (the owner of which happened to live in the ward).
Dad felt that he could encourage us to continue to want to go to Sacrament Meeting each week by rewarding us by going into Fernwood’s on the way home and buying each of us an ice cream cone. It became a tradition. I can’t remember exactly when the following occurred but I think it was not long after Craig was baptized. One Sunday when we were walking home from church and approaching Fernwood’s, Craig inquired as to why we were purchasing ice cream on the Sabbath. (I am sure that this was occasioned by Craig having had a Sunday School lesson on keeping the Sabbath Day holy.) To Dad’s credit he recognized immediately that our ice cream tradition had to cease and he replied that Craig was absolutely correct that that we would no longer make a Sunday purchase of ice cream. Dad recognized the need to repent immediately so that he would from hence forth show the proper example of observing the Sabbath.
Dad set us a good example of honoring his parents by taking us, almost monthly, to Spanish Fork to see Grandpa and Grandma Moore. We were not always excited to do so because we often had other ideas as to how we would like to spend a Saturday with Dad. As you may be aware, Grandpa was a blacksmith – in the traditional sense of the word. Visiting his shop was an adventure in and of itself. It was cluttered with all sorts of old farm implements and a variety of pieces of steel in various shapes and sizes. Grandpa never threw things away because he never knew when he might be able to use the scrap metal to create a new implement for a customer (often farmers). Dad said this habit of not discarding scrap was a result of living through the financial depression of the 1930s. His shop had a gas-fired hearth in a bed of coal, welding tools and a variety of power tools used for creating implements. The various tools were powered by an overhead cam system that had leather straps extending from the cam to each tool. When Grandpa had to use one of these tools he would turn on the overhead cam and then use a clutch to engage whatever tool he needed. (I really wish I had had foresight to take photos of the shop—it was vintage turn of the 20th century technology.)
Grandpa also had a sizable garden (at least an acre) behind the house and between the house and the barn where he parked his Studebaker car. In late summer and early fall we would be beneficiaries of the harvest. What I really enjoyed was corn on the cob. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were meals where I may have eaten as many as half a dozen corn cobs.
The house was the second oldest home in Spanish Fork and, I believe, the original part was adobe. Attached to the back of the original home was sort of a wood lean-to that comprised the kitchen, the bathroom and a laundry/storage room. Indoor plumbing was added to the bathroom about 1947-48 so I seldom had to use the outhouse, which was at the far end of the garden. In the kitchen there were two stoves. One was an electric range which had been added (I think) in the early 1950s. But what dominated the kitchen was a large, black, cast iron stove. Once the range was installed it wasn’t used all the time for cooking as it had once been, but it was used to heat the house. (There was an electric heater installed in the living room, but I suspect that it also was probably installed after WWII.) In the storage room, next to the bathroom was a trap door in the floor that led to a cellar. It was down there that preserved food was kept. (I liked the bottled cherries best.)
The original house consisted of a living room and a master bedroom on the main floor. It also had a partially finished attic that consisted of two large bedrooms. A steep stairway from the kitchen went to the attic. When Dad was growing up the larger of the two bedrooms was for his four sisters and the smaller one was for he and his brother, Harvey.
Occasionally, we would spend Saturday night in Spanish Fork and go to church with my grandparents. When that occurred we would sleep upstairs in the attic bedrooms. There was no heat source for the attic so in the winter time we had to bundle up with lots of quilts and in the summer time we would have to open the windows at each end to hopefully get the benefit of an evening breeze.
Grandma contracted glaucoma around 1950 and by about 1952 she went completely blind at the age of 68. As a result, Grandpa had to do many of the daily chores that she used to do, such as cooking and laundry. Grandma was, perhaps, the most angelic person I ever knew. She was always so sweet and soft spoken. What I may have admired most about her was her determination not to let her blindness hamper her life any more than she had to. She learned how to read braille and always had the large braille books around the house because she was constantly reading. By the time she became blind she had lived in her home for some forty years so she quickly figured out how to navigate her home so no one had to lead her around. She could easily find a drawer in her bedroom where she knew various pieces of clothing were kept and she could pretty much dress herself. She knew where everything was kept in her kitchen and only needed help with certain things that required sight. I don’t ever remember her being depressed or saying a sharp word to anyone.
Grandpa was not quite as refined as grandma and almost always was wearing overalls for either working at his shop or out in his garden. I think that the only time he generally shaved was Sunday morning for church because I remember from a very young age the whiskers on his face when I would kiss him goodbye.
It was obvious that Dad loved his parents very much and he told me that he counselled with then frequently—especially when he was going through his divorce and afterward.
The very first football game I ever attended was with Dad in 1958. It was a BYU-Utah game held at Ute Stadium. Until 1964 when BYU built its stadium, the BYU-Utah game was always held at the University of Utah because BYU’s stadium (such as it was) was so very small. The BYU football field was located where the Richards’s PE building is located with bleachers on the hillside on the east with temporary bleachers on the west side. Fortunately, BYU won that game 14-7, only the second time in history that BYU had beat Utah and the first time since 1942. I say fortunately because Dad continued to take me each year to the BYU-Utah game and each subsequent year BYU lost until winning again in 1965. Dad took me to other games as well including a 1961 (I think) show down between Utah and Utah State when the legendary Merlin Olsen was playing for the Aggies. We also went to some games in Provo the most memorable one was the game where All-American Elden (the Phantom) Fortie almost single-handedly won the game with an injured arm.
Dad also took us boys to a number of BYU basketball games including games with the 1964 team that eventually won the National Invitational Tournament at Madison Square Garden in New York City. This was in a time when only 16 teams went to the NCAA tournament so winning the NIT was still a big deal. Going to games was a very memorable time to spend with Dad.
Dad was always very supportive of us boys in the scouting program. When I was a Boy Scout the troop in my ward was not well organized. We did not have scoutmasters who both understood the program and knew how to execute it. As a result, I struggled as a scout and my advancement was slow. Grandpa had been a scoutmaster when Dad was a boy and Dad strived to get his Eagle badge. However, he was stymied from getting it because he just could not pass the required Life Saving merit badge. Dad was determined that his sons would overcome that obstacle. He did so by having us start taking swimming lessons at an early age. At the bottom of the street where I lived was a bus stop where we could catch a bus that took us boys downtown. From there it was a short distance to the old Deseret Gym which was located behind and in between the Hotel Utah (now the Jos. Smith Memorial Bldg.) and the church administration building. Every summer for 3-4 years we would take swimming lessons. Once I became a boy scout I took the classes that were for specifically for passing first the swimming merit badge and then the life saving badge. As a result, these were the very first merit badges that I earned. Dad had made sure that we boys would not fail to get our Eagle for the same reason that he failed to earn it.
When Dad was a scout he was supposed to go with Grandpa to the very first National Jamboree on the east coast. However, an epidemic (cholera, I think) prevented them from going. That had a sufficient impact on Dad that he decided that especially since I did not belong to a well organized troop he needed to provide me with an incentive to earn my Eagle badge. Thus started the tradition of sending his sons to a scout jamboree as a reward for earning the Eagle badge. Without that incentive, I doubt I would have earned my Eagle.
The following are in random order as memories surface
The only time I remember my dad going hunting was when I was about six and I went with him as he joined several men hunting for pheasant. I don’t believe Dad successfully shot a bird but I was pleased that he took me with him with all the other men and their sons as we trudged through some fields early on a Saturday morning.
When we lived in Twin Falls, ID, Dad was district manager for State Farm Insurance. As I recall he was responsible for all the agents in southeast Idaho. As a result, he was often gone on trips to visit the agents. Frequently, when he was taking longer trips to places like Pocatello or Idaho Falls he would take me with him. Sometimes we stayed in hotels/motels, but often we stayed in the homes of the agents. Back in the 1950s there were no freeways and most of the highways were narrow two-lane roads that followed the contour of the land. When we were travelling Dad would help me identify the makes of the different automobiles by noticing the different and often unique grills or tail lights. Again, in the 1950’s the styling of the various makes of cars were generally quite different from each other so I got very good at identifying the different makes of cars. Even now, when I spot a vintage car from the 1950s and early 1960s on the road or in the movies I can usually identify the make and often the year (within a year or two) of when it was made. Dad would also use these one-on-one opportunities to talk about various gospel principles.
When I was about ten or eleven I was “helping” Dad do some repairs on the garage door. There was a nut missing that needed to be replaced and Dad took me to the hardware store to purchase the nut. Unbeknownst to me he had used a crescent wrench to determine the size nut he needed by sizing it on a similar nut securing the door at a similar location. As Dad drove to the store I noticed the crescent wrench sitting between us on the seat. While Dad was focused on driving I picked up the wrench and started playing with it by moving the dial which, of course, changed the size he had set the wrench to. When he discovered what he had done he was very exasperated with me, but used great restraint and did not yell at me.
After my parents divorced, Dad found a place to live about a mile and a quarter south on 21st East. It was a basement apartment he shared with an older gentleman who owned the house and also rented out the main house upstairs. My two brothers and I spent time with him there on the weekends when he had custody of us. As I remember it, there were two double beds in his bedroom which we pushed together so the four of us could sleep together. Other times when I needed help with my homework (generally math) I would walk from school to his office on Highland Drive which was a little north of the Villa Theater. When he was done at the office I would go home with him and spend the night with him so he could help me with my math homework. He was very patient with me and was a good math tutor.
Before Dad remarried, he would go to church with us on Sunday. Until about 1980 or so, church did not consist of a three-hour block. We would have Priesthood Meeting at 8 o’clock for an hour. We would then go home and come back for Sunday School at about 10 o’clock for ninety minutes. (Back then there was a separate “Junior” Sunday School for children up to age nine at which age children would start attending “Senior” Sunday School, opening exercises which were held in the chapel. The Aaronic Priesthood would prepare the Sacrament for both Junior and Senior Sunday School opening exercises. Senior Sunday School exercises would last for about forty minutes and then we would go to our respective classes. Opening exercises consisted of a sacrament service, two 2 ½ minute talks by a child /youth and then the chorister would lead us in learning a new hymn for several minutes. We would learn a new hymn every month. At the beginning of the sacrament service, a child/youth would go to the pulpit and recite a short scripture called the Sacrament Gem. After Sunday School we would go home again for Sunday dinner and return for a ninety minute Sacrament Meeting later in the afternoon.) Anyway, after Sacrament Meeting Dad would walk us home. Doing so took us by a Fernwood Ice Cream Parlor (the owner of which happened to live in the ward).
Dad felt that he could encourage us to continue to want to go to Sacrament Meeting each week by rewarding us by going into Fernwood’s on the way home and buying each of us an ice cream cone. It became a tradition. I can’t remember exactly when the following occurred but I think it was not long after Craig was baptized. One Sunday when we were walking home from church and approaching Fernwood’s, Craig inquired as to why we were purchasing ice cream on the Sabbath. (I am sure that this was occasioned by Craig having had a Sunday School lesson on keeping the Sabbath Day holy.) To Dad’s credit he recognized immediately that our ice cream tradition had to cease and he replied that Craig was absolutely correct that that we would no longer make a Sunday purchase of ice cream. Dad recognized the need to repent immediately so that he would from hence forth show the proper example of observing the Sabbath.
Dad set us a good example of honoring his parents by taking us, almost monthly, to Spanish Fork to see Grandpa and Grandma Moore. We were not always excited to do so because we often had other ideas as to how we would like to spend a Saturday with Dad. As you may be aware, Grandpa was a blacksmith – in the traditional sense of the word. Visiting his shop was an adventure in and of itself. It was cluttered with all sorts of old farm implements and a variety of pieces of steel in various shapes and sizes. Grandpa never threw things away because he never knew when he might be able to use the scrap metal to create a new implement for a customer (often farmers). Dad said this habit of not discarding scrap was a result of living through the financial depression of the 1930s. His shop had a gas-fired hearth in a bed of coal, welding tools and a variety of power tools used for creating implements. The various tools were powered by an overhead cam system that had leather straps extending from the cam to each tool. When Grandpa had to use one of these tools he would turn on the overhead cam and then use a clutch to engage whatever tool he needed. (I really wish I had had foresight to take photos of the shop—it was vintage turn of the 20th century technology.)
Grandpa also had a sizable garden (at least an acre) behind the house and between the house and the barn where he parked his Studebaker car. In late summer and early fall we would be beneficiaries of the harvest. What I really enjoyed was corn on the cob. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were meals where I may have eaten as many as half a dozen corn cobs.
The house was the second oldest home in Spanish Fork and, I believe, the original part was adobe. Attached to the back of the original home was sort of a wood lean-to that comprised the kitchen, the bathroom and a laundry/storage room. Indoor plumbing was added to the bathroom about 1947-48 so I seldom had to use the outhouse, which was at the far end of the garden. In the kitchen there were two stoves. One was an electric range which had been added (I think) in the early 1950s. But what dominated the kitchen was a large, black, cast iron stove. Once the range was installed it wasn’t used all the time for cooking as it had once been, but it was used to heat the house. (There was an electric heater installed in the living room, but I suspect that it also was probably installed after WWII.) In the storage room, next to the bathroom was a trap door in the floor that led to a cellar. It was down there that preserved food was kept. (I liked the bottled cherries best.)
The original house consisted of a living room and a master bedroom on the main floor. It also had a partially finished attic that consisted of two large bedrooms. A steep stairway from the kitchen went to the attic. When Dad was growing up the larger of the two bedrooms was for his four sisters and the smaller one was for he and his brother, Harvey.
Occasionally, we would spend Saturday night in Spanish Fork and go to church with my grandparents. When that occurred we would sleep upstairs in the attic bedrooms. There was no heat source for the attic so in the winter time we had to bundle up with lots of quilts and in the summer time we would have to open the windows at each end to hopefully get the benefit of an evening breeze.
Grandma contracted glaucoma around 1950 and by about 1952 she went completely blind at the age of 68. As a result, Grandpa had to do many of the daily chores that she used to do, such as cooking and laundry. Grandma was, perhaps, the most angelic person I ever knew. She was always so sweet and soft spoken. What I may have admired most about her was her determination not to let her blindness hamper her life any more than she had to. She learned how to read braille and always had the large braille books around the house because she was constantly reading. By the time she became blind she had lived in her home for some forty years so she quickly figured out how to navigate her home so no one had to lead her around. She could easily find a drawer in her bedroom where she knew various pieces of clothing were kept and she could pretty much dress herself. She knew where everything was kept in her kitchen and only needed help with certain things that required sight. I don’t ever remember her being depressed or saying a sharp word to anyone.
Grandpa was not quite as refined as grandma and almost always was wearing overalls for either working at his shop or out in his garden. I think that the only time he generally shaved was Sunday morning for church because I remember from a very young age the whiskers on his face when I would kiss him goodbye.
It was obvious that Dad loved his parents very much and he told me that he counselled with then frequently—especially when he was going through his divorce and afterward.
The very first football game I ever attended was with Dad in 1958. It was a BYU-Utah game held at Ute Stadium. Until 1964 when BYU built its stadium, the BYU-Utah game was always held at the University of Utah because BYU’s stadium (such as it was) was so very small. The BYU football field was located where the Richards’s PE building is located with bleachers on the hillside on the east with temporary bleachers on the west side. Fortunately, BYU won that game 14-7, only the second time in history that BYU had beat Utah and the first time since 1942. I say fortunately because Dad continued to take me each year to the BYU-Utah game and each subsequent year BYU lost until winning again in 1965. Dad took me to other games as well including a 1961 (I think) show down between Utah and Utah State when the legendary Merlin Olsen was playing for the Aggies. We also went to some games in Provo the most memorable one was the game where All-American Elden (the Phantom) Fortie almost single-handedly won the game with an injured arm.
Dad also took us boys to a number of BYU basketball games including games with the 1964 team that eventually won the National Invitational Tournament at Madison Square Garden in New York City. This was in a time when only 16 teams went to the NCAA tournament so winning the NIT was still a big deal. Going to games was a very memorable time to spend with Dad.
Dad was always very supportive of us boys in the scouting program. When I was a Boy Scout the troop in my ward was not well organized. We did not have scoutmasters who both understood the program and knew how to execute it. As a result, I struggled as a scout and my advancement was slow. Grandpa had been a scoutmaster when Dad was a boy and Dad strived to get his Eagle badge. However, he was stymied from getting it because he just could not pass the required Life Saving merit badge. Dad was determined that his sons would overcome that obstacle. He did so by having us start taking swimming lessons at an early age. At the bottom of the street where I lived was a bus stop where we could catch a bus that took us boys downtown. From there it was a short distance to the old Deseret Gym which was located behind and in between the Hotel Utah (now the Jos. Smith Memorial Bldg.) and the church administration building. Every summer for 3-4 years we would take swimming lessons. Once I became a boy scout I took the classes that were for specifically for passing first the swimming merit badge and then the life saving badge. As a result, these were the very first merit badges that I earned. Dad had made sure that we boys would not fail to get our Eagle for the same reason that he failed to earn it.
When Dad was a scout he was supposed to go with Grandpa to the very first National Jamboree on the east coast. However, an epidemic (cholera, I think) prevented them from going. That had a sufficient impact on Dad that he decided that especially since I did not belong to a well organized troop he needed to provide me with an incentive to earn my Eagle badge. Thus started the tradition of sending his sons to a scout jamboree as a reward for earning the Eagle badge. Without that incentive, I doubt I would have earned my Eagle.
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