Newlyweds

I got home from my mission in September 1994. Around 70 days later, I was married to my lover. Our relationship was still wonderful and we seemed to pick up right where we left off.

Our first little home was a basement apartment on 9th East. We paid $350 a month in rent and that included utilities! The house was built during World War II. Were people short back then or something? All of the door frames were 6 feet tall, which meant I had to duck to get around the house. And the duct work for the furnace was even lower than that. I had many a goose egg in that house. The bathroom was so compact that when I sat on the terlet, I either had to put my legs in the shower or out the bathroom door. Don't get me started on the shower head. It was built at navel level....for me, anyway.

The ward was one we called "Newly Wed and Nearly Dead". Half the people were our same age and the other half were 75. The primary was nearly non-existent, but Lisa and I were called to teach one of the few classes there were...the 10-11 year old kids. They were cute kids and well-behaved.

We lived there about 9 months. It was a wonderful time. Lisa and I went on long walks through those old neighborhoods with 50-foot tall maple, oak, and sycamore trees. We'd walk to the corner 7-11 and get Slurpees and play tennis at Granite High School. All of our furniture was purchased at garage sales for around $100. We had a single couch and a recliner in the living room and a glass-top table in the kitchen where we ate dinner. I remember typing college papers at Lisa's old desk with her electric typewriter. We'd listen to the clock radio every morning as we got ready for school or work. Back then it was KISN 97. If you were a real rebel you listened to KJQ, which I did, at times.

On my 22nd birthday I came home from work and opened my present from Lisa. It was a positive pregnancy test. Now that I think about it, that was kind of gross, if you know what I mean. But it was SO much fun. That was when we decided that a one-room apartment was WAY too small. We needed a real house. When I got home from my mission I was assigned to be a home teacher with Bob Henrdickson. He was a top-notch guy. Drove us all around the valley looking for houses. We found one in Taylorsville that we really loved and we put an offer on the house and got it. Then the realtor selling the house died in a fiery explosion in his home. The home was turned over to the bankruptcy court and we were force to go to court and re-bid on the home. Some yucky lady was there and bid on it as well. As soon as the bidding reached $83,000, I quit. I told her, "You can have it. The place isn't even WORTH that much!"

We were ticked.

So we decided to build our own house. Well, not exactly. We hired a builder to build it. We did a few things in the house, like the oak railings, in order to save some money.

Then, right as we were about to close on the loan for our $107,500 house, the federal government ran out of money for the 1995 budget year. Since our loan was an FHA loan, that meant we were stuck until they figured something out. Our paperwork was literally sitting on some underwriter's desk, ready for closing, but held up. We were anxious. We closed on the house about a year after we were married and lived there for 4.5 years. It was a great little neighborhood with great people.

Another funny story about that first apartment. It was the day before Lisa and I moved out. We had cleaned the place from top to bottom and moved most our stuff over to her parents house. We had unplugged the fridge and gone to bed. Then, in the middle of the night, we heard an insanely loud CRASH!!! I thought someone had burst through our front door. I sat up in bed and in the manliest, meanest voice I could muster yelled out "WHO'S THERE!!!???!!!" Five minutes passed and there were no other noises to be heard. I nervously grabbed my baseball bat and headed into the kitchen. The kitchen floor was wet. In the center of the room sat a huge chunk of ice. What the????? It had become dislodged from the freezer we unplugged earlier and fell hard enough to knock open the freezer door and slide across the room.

Fun, fun stuff.