Fleeting Memories

448 East 100 South Orem, Utah Behind our home in the southwest corner of the yard at 448 east 100 south there was an enormous pile of rocks. I think that at one time it was someone’s idea of a rock garden, but it looked like a pile of rocks put there for convicts to break up with sledgehammers. Joy said that we had put all those rocks there from the garden area. At that time the city would pick up anything you didn’t want from in front of your home. It was one of the services that they provided every spring. A couple of our children wanted me to build a playhouse for them. They were told that they needed to move all of the rocks to out in front of the house. I didn’t think that they would or could do it, but to my surprise I heard large rocks being put into the wagons and taken out front of the house for the pick-up that the city was going to do. It was not just our children, but all of the children from the neighborhood. There were several wagons and they were like little wo...

Carl James Stubbs (Jimmy) I really like bologna, a slice of cheese, white bread, and mayonnaise. I always have. It is one of the reasons I liked going to my parents’ home as an adult. They always had white Wonder bread, stacks of bologna and lots of Kraft cheese. This continued even after my mother passed away. Luckily for me, my dad didn’t hide these items when I came to visit. I could have several sandwiches during the day, and I did. When we would take trips as a family, my mother would pack white bread and bologna, and we would eat it without the cheese and mayonnaise. It was wonderful. I still think of those trips and how the bread and bologna tasted. It must be real comfort food for me. The first time I remember bologna was when I was very small. I would help my mother fix my father’s lunch. She always made Dad a lunch to take to work. She would spread mayonnaise on the bread and then put a slice of bologna on the bread. My job was to trim the extra bologna from the e...

I have had what I consider an exciting and enjoyable life, at least for me. I have enjoyed all of the jobs I have had and have been grateful for all but one of them. I enjoyed the money from BYU, but I did not really enjoy the job. I never got to see the students, only their work. I loved teaching, river running, grocery stores, lawn care, and other jobs that I have had during my life. Jim and Joy Stubbs  We have always had adequate income for our needs and most of our wants. I fear that I did not spend enough time with my family. I have always worked since I was in about second grade. I am retired and do not have any job, and the only good thing is that I am with Joy now. I get up in the morning and often have trouble getting my body to work. I sometimes think that this is most likely my last day, and I will not wake up in the morning, but then here I am again. Because of the pandemic, I can no longer go swimming each morning. Swimming seemed to get my body moving and ...

When I started school each year, I knew that there would be a mail-order that would come from Sears. There would be new blue jeans, shirts, socks, underwear, belts, coats, and many other items. My shoes I always got from the Men’s Store owned by Gleason. It was next to the only bar in town at the time. It made it just a little exciting to be so close to that iniquitous place. Carl J. Stubbs at work with Robert Stubbs visiting  I worked as a kid in the grocery store. Often, I would just deliver groceries in a couple of paper sacks that were more substantial than they are today. I always got to meet people and often stopped to talk to them. Sometimes when I got back to work, they asked me what took so long, and I just shrugged my shoulders and said they wanted to go over the register list with the groceries. When I went to college, I would work there in the summers as a clerk to make enough money to go back to school. People would call in their orders, and we would fill them ...

When my parents married, they were pretty young. My mother was seventeen soon to be eighteen, and my father was nineteen, soon to turn twenty.  At that time men were not of legal age until twenty-one, but women were considered adults at eighteen. They had to get permission from their parents to marry. I think that may have been difficult for them, but they never said that it was a problem. They both lived through World War II and the challenges that it brought. There was not an Air Force at the time; my father was in the Army Air Corps. He flew the P-38 Lightning. He flew his missions out of France and Germany as the Allies moved east. He was in Germany after the war was over in that theater and helped the people who had been treated poorly in the towns. Many were refugees from the concentration camps that the Germans had, and the people were in need of food, clothes, and shelter. Leonard Smith Stubbs and Rose Carolyn Higgins Stubbs I am grateful to my parents who were ...

Since this Pandemic and the fact that Joy and I need to stay isolated, our hair has grown. I now have tangles in my hair, especially in the morning. They are also sometimes called rats. I understand that they used to sell rat combs or picks so a person could stack their hair up high and then smooth it out. Well again I have strayed from the topic, but not the ideas. My brain has rats in it or tangles which are becoming more obvious, at least to me, and probably everyone I talk to. The problem is that they are not thereby design, and I am unable to smooth them out so they are beautiful. Because I am over sixty-five and have existing physical problems, I am told that when they start opening things, I am still in the red zone. It doesn’t matter what everyone else is on, I am stuck in limbo which is what I call our personal financial status right now. I think that it is really Venmo, but I don’t really understand it. I know that the money travels electronically, and then when it arri...

Joy said that the titles for this and the last writing are sexist. I apologize to any I have offended, and if you were not offended, I will try to get around to you later. I really don’t want to offend anyone; the titles are just thoughts going through my head. Carl C. Stubbs Joy and I were married June 23, 1967 and Carl Christen Stubbs was born fourteen months later. I was worried that we might never have children. I thought that it would just happen immediately but it took five months to get pregnant. The day for his birth finally came, and even though husbands were not allowed to be in the delivery room at that time, I was allowed to be there with Joy as Carl was born. How blessed we felt. He was a healthy strong baby boy. He was always there with me when I worked on projects. When he was very small, he helped me fix the interior of an older van we had purchased. It had been a bread delivery van. He was able to look and see what needed doing. He helped me tar the roof of o...