Kansas

Written on October 12, 2020

As a young man between eighth and ninth grade, I had the opportunity to go from Boulder City to Kansas to work on my uncle’s farm. I say given the opportunity, but I was really just shipped out. His farm was in the southwest corner of Kansas. Looking back after sixty-two years I realize that my parents, my dad, in particular, wanted me out of town. I’m not sure why, but I guess I was not all that enjoyable to have around.

I can’t even remember the name of the little towns they lived by, but I remember the farm. I suspect that my uncle Harry and his wife Inez were not that excited to have me there, but they treated me ok. I was there for about three months. They had two sons who were older than me. Duane was eighteen and Manley was about twenty.

An old wheat truck like the one on my uncle's farm

I got to work on the family farm driving a tractor, a large wheat truck, and a 1947 Kaiser-Frazer car. After work and on the weekends, I was allowed to drive the car. As way of explanation in Kansas during the summer or harvest season, you could drive vehicles without a license, which I did.

There wasn’t an LDS church anywhere around so I attended church with my uncle and aunt along with their sons. It was a Baptist Church. After the service, there was a youth meeting, and instead of having different age groups that week, all of the groups my age and older met together. I kind of think it was to ambush me, but I don’t really know.

As soon as that meeting started, they introduced me as a Mormon visiting my uncle. They then opened it up for everyone to ask me questions. There were some of the same old questions such as did I have any wives, was I there looking for a wife, were my parent’s polygamists, did I know a lot of polygamists? Why didn’t Mormons believe in God or Christ and so on? I’m afraid they were quite disappointed when they learned that there were no Mormons with more than one wife and if there were, they were excommunicated from the church. As to the question of why we didn’t believe in God or Christ I said that if they actually knew the name of the church that would answer that question. So, what is the name of the church of the Mormons, they wanted to know? I said that "Mormons" was just a nickname but the name of the church was The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

In a somewhat rude defense, I asked if they worshiped John the Baptist like their name indicated? I was told quickly and definitely that they did not worship John the Baptist.

After the meeting one of the young women there asked me if I was allowed to date. I told her yes and she asked me out to a drive-in move right then and there. I told her yes.

My cousin told me on the way home that she had a boyfriend that had graduated from high school and that she was a senior and I was just a freshman. She didn’t seem as sure as he was that she was his girlfriend. We dated each weekend for the rest of the summer. At the end of the summer, she said she had a great time, but she was going to date her old boyfriend. That was fine with me. I had a great time also. My uncle was not too happy about our dating. I think that my parents thought that there would not be any free time for girls.

 

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