My mom had two sisters that came out here and a brother. They joined the church, but my mother didn't. She was very slow joining the church. She wasn't sure and she wanted to be sure it was true. And so she didn't take to it right away, but these two sisters and her brother who moved out here were after her all of the time. So she finally moved out here, because she really had a case on dad when he lived with them, I mean he didn't pay much attention to her. He couldn't, he was on a mission. He didn't even know that she had a case on him at all. But my dad was strange in a lot of ways. He was so religious, he was really a religious man. He said he didn't get married because he had decided he wouldn't marry until he was 33, because that was when Christ started his mission and so that's when he would start his married life. My mother waited for him. She was 32 when she married him.
When she got out here she really fell in love with him. She became a seamstress in ZCMI. She was very good with sewing, to the point where she could measure people, cut the patterns and make suits and things like that. She made a lot of men's suits, that was her thing. So she was a really wonderful seamstress.
My dad, when they got married, bought that old home that he had been living in, the Christopher Layton home. The home that I was born in. He was living there after he was on his own. He got a room with the Lady that had the home. We always called her Grandma Taylor. She rented out the bedrooms of the home and then she would give them their meals and stuff. That was how she got along. And so he was there, and another person that was there was LaCont Stewart, who ended up one of the most famous artists from Utah. He won a world prize at one time for a painting that he did back east. They said he had become world renowned. The painting there on my mantle, of the old Christopher Layton home that dad bought, was done by LaCont Stewart. He and dad had been renters there and he painted that because Grandma Taylor, when dad got married, said she wasn't going to rent rooms anymore. "I'm going to retire, I'm too old to do it anymore." So she talked dad into buying the house with all the furniture that was in it and that is what dad did. So LaCont Stewart painted that and gave it to them for their wedding present. I don't know how much money it would be worth, but it's the only picture I have of the old home. It was our family home, I lived there until I got married. Now it's all torn down and they got a restaurant there on that ground in Kaysville. But see right in front there, it wasn't even a paved highway, there wasn't even a highway through Kaysville yet. We were right on main street and it was just a dirt road at that time. I told John Stewart, LaCont's oldest son, that I had a painting of his dad's and he said, "Of what? I didn't know you had a painting of his." Clifford and Virginia bought his paintings, they had them all through their house. John knew that they had all of those paintings, but he didn't know that I had one.
Clifford and Virginia didn't have the money to pay LaCont, of course, his paintings weren't that much money then, so they would just pay so much a month for them. If they got one paid for they would start paying him on another. They did that for years and she had six or eight picture of his. Different sizes and beautiful pictures. Before she died she had to sell them because she needed the money to go into a nursing home. She got 68,000.00 for those pictures back then and that was before LaCont died. They paid about 200.00 for them. I thought that was too much money to spend on a painting at that time. But, they were paying him off for years.
We drew for the picture, drew numbers, and Budd said "If she wanted it so bad why didn't you let her have it?" I said, "because I don't have a picture of that house and I don't have a LaCont Stewart picture and I used to work for him."
I used to clean for him. I would clean his house for .35 cents a week. I would clean their whole house and she would have me come on Tuesdays and do the ironing for them. She had four boys and her husband and in those days everything had to be ironed. And their shirts, oh my gosh, I never got through all the shirts and she would pay me .35 cents for that too. That's all I got. When I got married, he had a studio building back behind their house, and it was just packed with pictures that he had done. Just stacks of pictures that he had painted and I would go out and sweep and clean the place. I didn't move pictures or anything like that and I thought when I got married maybe they would give me one of those pictures. My sister-in-law, aunt Edna, she had a shower for me and invited Zafora. Zafora Stewart was her name, and she brought me a little green water pitcher that cost .54 cents. That was her gift to me after all those years. They said she was a really tight fisted women as far as money went. But I thought surely they'd give me one of those pictures. Dad remodeled the place years later and it didn't even look like that anymore. He took away the old look of it and now that would be right in style today. People would want it to look just like that if it were still around. I'm glad I have that painting. He lived in that house with my father and that's why he painted the picture. When dad bought the place, he gave it to them for a wedding present.
