Married Life

Married Life

We didn't have a wedding at all. Budd was going deer hunting, we were married in October, and he said, "I think we should get married when I get home." I said, "ok, what day?" He said, "well, how about Friday?" (laughter) He was gone the week before and would be gone that weekend. He wasn't getting home until Tuesday, and we were going to the temple to take out my endowments then, and then we could get married on Friday. Another thing too, was they were starting to draft men, we weren't at war at that time, but they were drafting men. I was afraid that he would get drafted and he was afraid that he would get drafted and if he had to go then he was afraid he would lose me completely. We had gone together for four months by then, our first date was on June the 8th, 1941. It was on December the 7th that the bombs were dropped on Hawaii. Anyway, we got married on October 24, 1941 right after he got home from deer hunting. He got home and we got ready and went to the temple. It was sad that we didn't have a wedding because neither one of us had one thing to put together an apartment, or anything. My folks didn't have anything. Aunt Luella made me a quilt and dad gave me a cheap set of dishes that had been given to him. He was a county clerk and someone had given them to him as a gift for some favor he had done. So that is all we had.

We lived in an upstairs apartment in Bountiful. The man who owned it had put a little kitchen upstairs so that it could be a two apartment home. Budd was  working nights and I was working days so we didn't see each other a lot. I worked for something Steel and Copper Co. and a Mr Orloff worked there. There were a lot of sales men that would come in there and there was a lot of drinking and stuff. In fact Mr. Orloft had drinks for them when they came in. But he watched me, and this was something I wasn't aware of, at the time, but he would always ask me if I was alright. One day he kept asking me if I was alright and then he brought me into his office, there were a lot of men in the office that day and they were flirting with the women and I was the youngest one there. He had me just work in his office that day, I was really out of place. But, now I would appreciate it, at the time I was very upset with him. I think he was just worried that one of those men would really get fresh with me. When I asked him for time off to get married, I only asked for half a day off. I wanted to leave work early on Friday so we could get married. He asked why and I told him so I could get married. He said, "Never let it be said that I refused one of my girls a full day off to get married." And he told me not to come into work on Friday. It was cute of him. He gave me a radio from the company and a rolling pin. As he was hitting the rolling pin against the desk he was telling me that I wouldn't need this gift right at first, but it was all wrapped up so I didn't know what it was. He was a really cute guy, he wasn't a latter-day saint, but a darling man.

I had to get used to him because I was raised in a very solemn family. You din't hear a lot of jokes or laughter or games or anything. Dad wouldn't allow a deck of cards in our house. It was a sin to play cards. And here I've had a son that has died early because of his getting away from the church and gambling. So, I should have stayed just like dad did and not allow cards in the house.

Budd sat me down after we decided to get married and he said, "You cannot join the Tingey family without knowing how to play Peanuckle. You've got to be a peanuckle player to be able to stay in this family." So he sat me down after we were married. We had a little apartment in Bountiful, it was an upstairs apartment. His niece had the downstairs with her husband, they were really close friends of Budds. We really had a good time with them while we lived there. Anyway, we played cards after I learned a little bit. I never got to the point where I was really a valuable player. No one ever wanted to be on my team. So I would get up and fix the desserts when they would come and they could all play without me. But I did play a lot, I played a lot of peanuckle and I enjoyed the game other than I wasn't a really good player. I know uncle Charles' wife and her family played so much. They would stay up all night long. Most of them were from California and when they would come they would have a really big time. Spouses weren't even invited when they got together, they just wanted to be together as brother sand sisters and play. That is something I didn't approve of at all. Uncle Charles' would come over to our house and say, "Oh, she's over there playing cares with her sisters." When she passed away why her sister from California put a new deck of peanuckle cards under her pillow in her casket. I thought that was cute, she was such a wonderful person and I can't think of her name.

Aunt Betty just died this year, and that was her sister, and that was her sister, and she was 98 years old when she died. It was funny, they lived at Grey's Lake, so you didn't have a great choice of dates. This family, I don't know how long they lived there, but the boys started dating the girls in that family. Uncle Charles married Aunt ? Lue and Uncle Mel married Aunt Betty. Two brothers married sisters. And one of their brothers married Aunt Alice's sister and Aunt Alice married Perry Tingey and Aunt Dorothy, was sisters with Alice and the other sister. So the Tingey family had a triangle where a brother and two sisters were all in the same family. But, in the Tingey family Aunt Loretta married a Halbertson and Aunt El married a Halbertson brother, then Uncle Charles and Uncle Mel married the Tingey sisters, and Aunt Dorothy and Alice married Uncle Perry and Uncle Tom. Two sets of boys and one set of girls married brothers and sisters. Isn't that something! Oh, my yes they all got along. I was so fortunate to marry into that family, because my family hadn't been a happy family after my mother died. We just had to fight for each other and ourselves and it just wasn't good. I got into that family where they just all wanted to be together all the time, they just loved each other. I can remember after I had had my baby, Budd was gone when Darrell was born, and they just took me in. They treated me as if I was one of their daughters, the older sisters did, I had nieces and nephews that were older than I was and I became their aunt over night.

One time I went shopping with Aunt May, she was the oldest daughter in the family, she was 25 years older than Budd. You can see that 12 children were born in 25 years of each other. Anyway, I went shopping with her one time and she was buying things for her daughters and when we got home she handed me a blouse she had bought for me. That was the first time anyone had done anything like that for me. I just couldn't get over it. They were such a sweet family. I just wish with all of my heart that all of the grand kids could have got to know Budd.

In December, when Hawaii was bombed, Budd said that this was the end and he knew that he would be gone right away. I just kept praying to get pregnant. I needed to be pregnant. I was so afraid that if anything happened to Budd I wouldn't have anything left. I had to talk long and hard for that too. He didn't want to leave me pregnant or with a child, he said if he died then I could get married again much easier without a child. He had a lot more sense than I had, but we did get pregnant and Darrell was born in September. Budd was still in boot camp or training here in the states at that time and he got 10 days leave to see the baby. So as soon as the baby was born he said I could go get an apartment where he was and then he'd be able to come see us. So I had everything all packed and was going to go right after thanksgiving to see him, I was taking care of Loretta (and lee's home?) at the time. She was ill, she was always in poor health. But he called and he had to be careful what he said on the phone, because they were always listening and if you said something you weren't allowed to they would delete it out. He wasn't allowed to say where they were going or what they were allowed to do. So, he said we're leaving (he couldn't say from where) we're going over seas and I know this is a disappointment to you that you can't come down and see me. But, why don't you go down, get a ticket and go down, to see Aunt Alice and Uncle Perry for a few days, right now. Get a ticket right now and go visit them. They were in California and that was where he was going to ship out from. There was a fort there in Northern California. When he got to California the boat wasn't in and they were going to be there for a few days before they shipped out. So, he called Alice and Berry and told them that I was coming. He got two days off, two 24 hour blocks off while I was there and he got to see the baby and to see me. It was a horrible time. Then he left and it took over a month for him to get over seas to their destination. They had to keep away from submarines and so they would just have to sit on the water without motors running because of Japanese submarines patrolling the water. It was a horrible time for him. They went to New Zealand and were there for a couple of days and Australia also, on their way across the ocean. He said he couldn't believe how many signs in New Zealand that had Tingey so and so on them. There were some Tingey's that had migrated there and had made a business there. It was a shock for him to see his name everywhere. He wasn't able to tell me anything that was going on, all the letters were read through before being sent. He was able to say that he was in Iran after he got there and he could say that they were transporting things into Russia. But they couldn't tell how things were going and stuff. He didn't do well health wise while he was there. He went to the hospital with a fever one time and he never told me about it. He had health problems the rest of his life after he was stationed there. He used to pass out, it would come on him all of a sudden and then he would just pass right out. He did get over that eventually.

When he got home, or they let him come home to go to OCS (Officers Candidate School) in New Orleans, I took a trip to see him and I told him it didn't matter how long we had been apart, I'd never go on a trip like that again to see him. It was just terrible. I was traveling with a two year old and there was no red caps at all and I was on a soldiers train. It was loaded with soldiers. Uncle Gordon got my tickets all the way through. I had been on a train just once and that was to go down to California and I had a room of my own on the train. You know those little compartments, so I was in a cute little room with my baby all the way down there and that was just fine. It was a wonderful trip down. I thought that was how it would be going to New Orleans. I got on in Salt Lake and I had a compartment and it was just wonderful. Got over to Denver and we had a lay over for eight hours there, that I didn't know anything about. When we went to get on the train, it was a troop train going to Texas and we had to wait until all the troops were on the train. There were no red caps and I had two suitcases and a baby that was two years old and wouldn't walk. He walked, but he was scared to death of everything and I had to have him in my arms every minute that we were trying to go anywhere. It was just awful. I finally got the suitcases out to the train with him crying, hanging onto me. I didn't know what train I was getting on because they had no reserved seats, you just had to find a seat. I put my suitcases up in the train and left them so I could go up and down each train to try and find a seat. I finally found one and sat down and more soldiers came in. The conductor told me that this was a soldiers train and I had to give up my seat to them. There was one soldier there that said he would sit on a suitcase if I had one for him to sit on. I told him they were clear back in another train, I counted the trains I had went through and he went back and got my suitcases. That kid did that and then he sat on my suitcases the whole way. We were getting off in Dallas overnight and I didn't have any reservations. I thought I was going to be on a nice train and go straight to New Orleans, I didn't know anything about it. It was just horrible. Darrell had just turned two, but was trained so I didn't take any diapers with me and he wet everything, I'm sure it was just all the different things going on, but he wet every pair of pants I had for him. By the time we got into Dallas I just kept a blanket around him because there were no dry clothes for him. It was so terrible. Then when I got off this one soldier that was so good to me, said you can't go in and just ask for reservations at a hotel, you have to find out what kind of hotel you are going to first. He said it was dangerous down here in some of these hotels. So I went to the desk and asked the girl if there were any rooms and I told her I wanted a first class hotel. She said she didn't have one thing and she showed me h ow everything was filled up. I said well, I'll just have to stay here all night in this station because I didn't want to go to a low class hotel, there were a few rooms in those, but I wouldn't do it. I was afraid. So she looked for rooms in hotels outside of Dallas. I was just praying with all my heart that there was one and she said you know there is one room left and it was a suite. I didn't think I would be able to afford it but she told me it was $10.00, which I thought was terrible in those days. I did have ten dollars so I took it and it was just wonderful. I washed all of Darrell's pants and hung them by the cooler to dry. Then we had to get on the train the next day and Budd wasn't even able to meet me. He was only able to get out of his schooling every other weekend so he couldn't come and get me. He had called a man that was in the Navy, from Centerville that he knew, who was serving down there and he came and got me. I was so happy to see him, so glad and in fact he was the one who found and had done everything for me. His name was Nelson Clayton. His grandfather was the one who wrote the song, "Come, Come Ye Saints." He was a really, really neat guy and I still see him once and a while. He had gotten me a one bedroom, that was all he could find, with kitchen and bathroom privileges. It was a family with four kids and her husband was over seas. I enjoyed her and it was fine, once I got there. At times I didn't think I would even get there. The trains weren't air conditioned so we just had to have the windows open and cinders were constantly flying through.

I was down there until Budd graduated. It was September when I went down there and he graduated in the first of December. He graduated with honors and was lucky, some of the men didn't' make it. There were about 300 men taking the classes and quite a few didn't pass, but he did. I was going to go home then, if he could get me on a train that would go straight through and not a soldier train. There was no way for me to do it alone and I wanted him to arrange the tickets, but he didn't want me to go home, he wanted me to go to New York with him. I said if I go to New York you'll be gone and it will be worse because New York is a lot bigger than this place. I just didn't want to be alone there. But he said, "I might not ever see you again, you've got to think of that." So I ended up going to New York with him.

Of course we couldn't find a place to stay. Budd got in touch with a woman who was married to a man, a soldier, that Budd knew while he was in Iraq and asked her if she knew of anything at all. She said you can come live in my apartment and I'll stay with my sister until you can find a place. It was very sweet of her. Boy, New York was a different place than I was used to. Budd had to work 48 hours and then he was off 48 hours. It was a lot better than New Orleans, especially once I got acquainted with the place it was ideal. We got to see so many things in the 48 hours he had off.

When we got to New York, they told us it would be two months before there would be a ship for them to go back to Iraq. They didn't travel by air at all in those days. Our first apartment we found was with a little Jewish lady. We rented a bedroom up stairs and had kitchen privileges downstairs. She was a sweet little lady and I just loved her. She called herself Mrs. Thomas, but that wasn't her Jewish name. There was an Italian girl who lived in the basement with her baby, she was living alone because her husband was overseas. Mrs. Thomas worked everyday in a store. Her husband was dead and she had an eleven year old daughter to take care of. Her other children were older, married, and gone. It was a very nice apartment she had. She told me I could do anything in her home until she got home at night. And that darn Darrell colored her hand painted dining room walls in crayon! She forgave me for that and we tried to get it cleaned off as best we could and I gave her extra money. But I'll never forget it! I thought that they  must have been well off, they had so many dishes and so much silverware. Now I didn't' know that Jewish people believed that certain foods couldn't be eaten together or on a plate that had been used for something else. And that's why she had so much stuff in her kitchen. But I didn't know that, this was all new to me. One day the girl from downstairs came up and said, "Grayce do you know what you are doing to poor Mrs Thomas?" And I said, "what?" And she said, "well, in their religion you don't use certain foods on certain plates if something else has ever been on it. Same thing with the silverware, you don't eat the same foods with the same silverware." I said, "I surely didn't know that." and she said, "well, she is out purifying the dishes that you use everyday with sand. Scouring them with sand trying to get them pure enough so that she could use them." Oh my goodness I was so upset about that, so I went right to her and said, "Why in the world didn't you tell me?" And she said, "I just didn't think that it mattered that much." I said, "Look what you've had to do to fix it." And she said it was alright and ok for her to do that. She was just so sweet. They never ate bacon, they wouldn't eat pork at all, and I had been frying bacon in her pans! I just didn't know, I had never been around Jewish people before. Anyway, I would tend her little girl when she would go out in the evenings. And one day when I was tending her little girl, before she left she said, "you could fix her a bacon sandwich if you would like to." Evidently her daughter had liked the smell of it and had wanted to try some. So she said it would be alright to let her try some while she was gone. I really cried when we left there, we needed to leave there because we were so tight in there.

We finally found a place in Brooklyn, across the Hudson River from NYC. It was so much better and it was closer to where he was working. The apartment was sublet and so it was furnished and nice. From then on we were alright. Oh, before that, we had found an apartment and Budd moved us in and then he was gone for 48 hours and that night there were so many mice! It was ground floor level and I could just hear those mice running everywhere. I had left some bread and cake on the counter because I needed to clean before I put anything away. So when I got up the cake was half eaten and the bread was so bad you couldn't eat any of it. There were just so many mice in there. I called Budd at work and told him that I couldn't live there, I couldn't even sleep one more night there. I sat in the middle of the bed with Darrell just watching all night for mice to get up on the bed. It was awful! So Budd got leave, he told them the story and they let him come home. And we started looking for a place. A man on base had told him that he knew there was an apartment open next to him and maybe we could get into it. And that is what we did.

The manager had split the apartment so we each had a bedroom and living room and then we shared the kitchen and the bathroom. So the kitchen was in the basement and other than that there was just a door between us. We got along really well and they had a car! We didn't have a car. We became really close friends with them while we lived there. They had a little girl the same age as Darrell and they were little playmates. She died of pneumonia while we were there and it was terrible. She died suddenly. They took her to the hospital because she couldn't breathe, she was just gasping for breath. It wasn't a half hour later that they called and said she was gone, it was just terrible. They were our friends throughout life. They lived back in Kansas and came out to see us a few times, but we never got back there to see them. And then he died of a heart attack one day. She and I would write back and forth, especially on each others birthdays and at Christmas. Then five or six years ago I didn't get a letter from her, so I assumed she passed away. They were the Sinnings, La Vir and Henry Sinning. She called Henry Budd too.

We just loved our stay out there once we got into that little place. We had a backyard to play in and it was just wonderful the rest of the time we were there. We were there until the war ended. We really enjoyed the area and the people. It was such a clean area, it was a Norwegian area and Budd really loved it because he could speak Norwegian with the people. They would get up in the morning and hang their bedding out the windows so the air could get through the bedding. We didn't have driers in those days and we washed on a scrubbing board downstairs and then everyone hung their clothes out to dry. But the first day that I hung them on the line outside, they came in dirtier than before I washed them because the air was so dirty in New York. So I hung everything to dry inside. I don't know how they managed hanging their things outside. But they sure did and the ladies were out there cleaning the sidewalks the minute it started to snow. They would sweep the whole time it was snowing. But I did enjoy living there because they kept things nice and clean. We surely enjoyed it anyway.

Thanks to the Sinnings we got to see a lot more of upstate New York than we would have. We also took trips to Washington D.C. and we could stay with her aunt and uncle that lived there. We were there one thanksgiving and once at Christmas time when they got a little red wagon for Darrell. And in the summer time we spent a lot of time at the beach because Budd had 48 hours off. Henry worked on base too and since he and Budd weren't in the same office they could take the same 48 hours off and we were able to go to all these places together. We always said we'd go back and we made one trip back there before Budd passed away. It wasn't the same place at all. All of the stores that had anything of value in them had gates and bars over all of the windows, you couldn't even see what was in Tiffany's or any of the department stores. It wasn't anything like that when we lived there. It seemed to have gotten a lot worse than it was back then.

I was really impressed with the parks in New York. Everyone living in apartments they had to have a place to rest or for kids to go play and I really liked that. I couldn't get over that all the parks they had every few blocks. I was really impressed with it. I really did love it, but I was also really glad to come home.