Centerville - After the War

Centerville - After the War

When we came home Uncle Tom and his family, from California, were living with Grandma Tingey. Uncle Happ and Tom started a business here during the war. It was a re-tread tire company. When we got home they were still at it and so we moved in with Grandma upstairs and they were downstairs. Darrell and their little girl didn't get along very well together. I was so glad to see them move back to California because the kids were fighting and quarreling all the time. They had 3 or 4 kids by then and they were all close together in age. They had a boy younger than Darrell and a daughter a few months older than Darrell and another daughter a couple years older than Darrell and they would get together and gang up on Darrell. We got home in June and in August I had Bruce so we had a house full at Grandma's.

I really hated to leave New York, because we had been so happy there and we were coming home to nothing. Budd didn't even have a job, he went back to Union Pacific but they didn't have anything good for him. They just put him back where he had been which was a beginning position without good wages. Soon after that, why, Standard Oil of California came in and built their refinery and when they began taking applications Budd went right out there and applied because he had been in transportation since he had been home from his mission until we went to war. They took him right in and put him in transportation and as he grew into it he had a real good job there. He was the manager of the distribution of the oil. It was a good enough job that he didn't want to quit it to start a new business. He said I can handle two jobs and he started a new company with Eric Hogan. He and Eric were really close friends and when Eric got home he lived with his grandparents and they didn't have enough money to send him back to college. So, Eric and Budd got together and decided they would start a building business. Eric had been a brick hauler for his uncle who built houses and his back was getting so bad that he couldn't lift the bricks. He knew he wasn't going to be able to do that the rest of his life. So they decided to see if they could build a house and sell it before they started the business. Also, at that time it was hard to get lumber because the government had taken every lumber company to build what they wanted built for the war. So their biggest problem was trying to find somebody who had wood that wasn't green, it had to be seasoned wood to build a house. Budd had a cousin up in Washington, so he called Charlie to see if he had some wood that he could ship down. He told Budd that he was part owner of a company up there and that he could ship him down some wood. He said it might not be completely dry, but that Budd could store it on the lot and use it as it dried out. So, after they built their first house they went in with Charlie and his company so they could get wood for the homes that they were building, because it took years before they had decent wood here to build a home with. You don't know all the ins and out s that go with building. They were just building homes here in Centerville and Bountiful. The first building other than a home was when they enlarged the old church house in Centerville. They bid on that and got the bid and that was the first building going into commercial work. They liked that, Eric especially liked it a whole lot more, because he didn't have the women changing their minds. He'd get something into a home and the woman would say I don't like that there or can you do this or that. He could do it but it would cost more and the people building didn't want to pay more. They had trouble with women. After the church Eric said he didn't want to build another home for as long as he lived. So they got started into the commercial building business doing schools and stuff like that. They did a lot of schools and some hospitals too. They built two hospitals in Nevada and they built schools down there too. They've done a lot of that and the business was getting good when Budd died. By then he had worked 26 years at Chevron Oil and decided to retire. He thought they were doing well enough with the building business that he'd retire. That was in 1976 that he retired and he died in 1982. But after he left the Oil business the building business just picked right up, it was amazing how much bigger it got with him being there all the time. He knew what he was doing.

We lived with Grandma Tingey for two years until we saved enough money to build a home. Bruce was two years old when Budd started to dig the foundation. Darrell and Bruce got a long really well, although Darrell would knock Bruce down a lot when they were running or playing, just because he was so much bigger. We started early in the spring and we got into it before Trina was born, which was about March. So it took about a whole year. We did as much of it as we could, I helped paint the eves around the house and the windows. Budd would put up the scaffolding for me before he would go to work and I would paint. One day I stepped back to look to see if I had missed any spots and I went right off into the hole around the house. Here I was pregnant and I thought I had killed myself it hurt so bad. I also got up on the roof and helped roof the house. After that I painted the house all the time., I sure hated it but I could do a better job than the painters could.

After we were in the house Budd had some friends that lived out east, but they had known each other from serving overseas together. They came and stayed with us for a couple of weeks. They sure did love the Great Salt Lake, we went out there three or four times with them. It was a regular attraction then, they had dressing rooms and everything and I don't think they do anymore. I did not like swimming in the Lake at all. If you got down under you couldn't get back up. If your feet were up and your head was down you had to fight for your life, it was so salty it was holding you down. Then the salt would cake on you, I couldn't stand that. I talked them out of swimming in it.

We loved our home and as the kids got older we remodeled our home and added the family room on, because we didn't have any room for the kids to play. When they first dug they were going to put a basement in the home, they hit water. He had a cousin tell him that there had been a well there at one time, he was an older man. He said I know that there was a well there, right where we were building our house. So we decided that we would dig deep enough just to put a furnace in and just have the furnace room down there. Anyway, we just didn't have enough room and Gary Tingey came and lived with us after his first year of college. He had bought a convertible and was just a playboy. I think Darrell was about a Sophomore in High School. His folks were so mad at him. His sister, she was valedictorian at her High School and was in college a year ahead of him. Here he comes and leaves college, so they were mad at him. So they called Budd and asked him if he could take him on and have him work in the building business. So Budd said sure, send him down, and he can stay here with us. And that's what we did, I had him there with us until he got married. So that was another reason that we felt we had to build a family room on. We just didn't have enough room for all of us to sit down at the kitchen table at that house. We changed a lot of things on the inside during that time too. We made that upstairs room (attic above the garage) when Curt came along, because the boys didn't have enough room. We had three bedrooms, the room we used as the study was just big enough for a single bed and that's where Trina was.

We were changing things all the time. I wanted a two story home with a beautiful entrance way with pillars and stuff. We went over this every year as spring was breaking Budd would say get out your plans and we'll go and find a place to build a new home. He'd say that every year. So I just worked on plans, worked on plans and worked on plans all the time. Then when it would come right down to it he'd say I've been looking and looking and there's just no place to build a home. He was happy where he was, but we did that all through our lives. I was looking at house plans and he was encouraging me until it came right down to having to do it and then he'd give his excuses that we couldn't do it. It was a comfortable home and it was dumb for me to even think of moving. After the kids got old enough to leave home, why, it was plenty big. After Budd died I lived there for seven years. I finally made a whole list of things, a whole page of things that I took over to Bruce and I said these are the things that need to be done in that house. It needed a new roof and a new furnace, it just needed so many things plus painting. So he said mom you've been traveling all around the world and we're sick and tired of taking care of it. Why don't you sale it and get by one of your kids and let them take care of you and watch the house while your on your trips. Cause we went every year somewhere, Stella and I did. I decided that's what I ought to do. Bruce thought I'd go up to Trina's, he said, "go up to Trina's, they've got property going up the hill." When I got up there and looked at all that gravelly mountain and stuff I said to Trina, "I wouldn't even be able to walk down to see you because it's so steep." She's the one that should have had me, really, you know. In my thinking because she was my only daughter. i didn't want anyone else to have the burden of having me if I got sick or something. I just thought my daughter should do it. I told Bruce that I just couldn't live up that hill by Trina. So he asked me where else I'd want to go. I told him that I didn't want to leave Centerville so lets go look around your place. So that's how I got here (93 Rosewood Circle, Centerville, UT). So Bruce took me around to all of the lots that were around in this area. This one worked out so that it was easy for Bruce and Rita to take care of me and the house. I didn't realize how wonderful a cal-da-sac is, I love this cal-da-sac. You feel closer to the people and to watch the kids play. On the 4th of July all the neighbors go out and light fireworks and I can go out and watch them in the middle of that street. It's been wonderful and I've thought so much how Budd would like this home, but we would have never have had it if he had kept on living. He was happy where he was. He never liked to have the furniture moved so I would never change anything around. If I did he would say don't do that. I'm that same way now, I have to keep things just like they are. I wouldn't have been that way if it hadn't have been for him.