Grandpa's Sleeping Bag

Grandpa had a red cotton sleeping bag that was big enough for two people. The inside was tan-ish yellow. It had a silver metal zipper that held the bag closed when half of it was flipped onto the other half. It was rectangular when zipped and square when open.

Many times I lay in that sleeping bag with my sister, Lani, in the back of Grandpa’s truck when we were picked up from the Lagoon amusement park. I’d lay on my back looking at the stars as we drove south toward Orem on I-15. The orange lights illuminating the freeway would shine in my eyes until we drove under an overpass.  

The first time I slept outside was in that bag. I was seven years old and we lived in the black & white house. My mom put cardboard under it so the morning dew wouldn’t get it wet. Again, Lani and I lay in it together. Many times, Lani and I slept outside at Grandma and Grandpa’s house, in that sleeping bag and under the big tree in their front yard.

When I was in high school and we lived at the "Cascade house" (by Cascade Elementary,) Lani and I would sleep, in that bag, outside on the concrete slab on the West side of our house. (The house was directly to the East of the slab, and the garage was directly to the South.) The canyon breeze would whip around us in the morning. My hair would be a tangled mess and have small rocks in it if I didn’t scoot down in the bag, where the wind couldn’t touch me.

The inside of that sleeping bag wore thin from all the times it was used. I loved that thing and have fond memories of it.

The Places Where I Lived as a Child

I was born in Provo, Utah.

Before starting school I lived in California and Hawaii.

When I was five, I lived in a red four-plex (the red brick house) on 200 North near 500 East in Orem, Utah. We lived in the top east apartment if you stood outside facing the place.

When I was seven, I lived in a black & white house next door to the Maestas' on 250 East and near 500 East in Orem. I went to school, down the road, at Sharon Elementary from Kindergarten through fourth grade.

We moved to our condo not too far away and lived there for a year when I was eight.

We lived in Provo, Utah when I was ten so Mom & Dad could be closer to their restaurant, "The Hungry Hawaiian." We lived at the top of the road on Cedar Avenue on the right in place that looked like a log cabin (the mouse house). We called it "the mouse house" because you could hear mice running along the ceiling. Mice were everywhere, including in the cupboards. Our house had a really big yard and a door that went from my room to the back porch.

From Provo we moved back to Orem and lived in the cherry tree house. It was a small white ranch that had lots of cherry trees outside. There was a barn in the back that had chickens and a big, black bull. We didn't run the farm, but just lived in the house. Irrigation water came at least once a month and covered the entire lawn.

We didn't live there long. We moved to another house in Orem on the corner of Center Street and Eastwood Drive (the Eastwood house.) That's where we lived when Mom & Dad packed up the house and moved to Oklahoma.

I didn't go to Oklahoma but moved in at Grandma & Grandpa's house in Orem, and finished the sixth grade.

Next, we moved to Kingman, Arizona. We lived in a ranch almost at the end of the street near a golf course. Our backyard was dirt, but, apparently, good enough for our golden retriever, Buff, who kept jumping the chain-link fence and running away. I had my own room ,and so did Lani. However, Kenneth and Maile, who were three and five, shared a room. One day, in the spring of the following year, I came home and Mom said to me, "Pack up your things, we're moving back to Utah."

We moved in at Grandma & Grandpa's house in Orem, and I finished the seventh grade. Our family of five lived with them over  the summer, then we moved to Mesa, Arizona for two weeks. Evidently it was long enough to enroll me in school. My school was made up of classrooms connected by outside hallways. It had at least 3,000 students and was the largest school I ever attended. I wasn't there long enough to make friends and don't have many memories of that time, except for cooking a frozen steak and french fries in an electric skillet in our apartment one afternoon. (It was a blessing that both Mom & Dad worked in restaurants otherwise we would have starved. I'm sure Mom wouldn't have let that happen but at least we always had food.)

After Mesa we moved back in at Grandma & Grandpa's house in Orem, and I went to the eighth grade for a couple more months.

From Grandma & Grandpa's house in Orem we moved into a place in North Ogden, Utah that wasn't quite finished. The driveway was mud and our Ford Explorer froze to the ground when Mom parked there. The house in Ogden had so many problems that I can't list them all. As an adult, I'm horrified to think about our living conditions, when I remember how it was, but as an eighth grader, I didn't see the problems.

During the summer before my ninth grade year in school, we moved to Centerville, Utah. The Centerville house was big and had a different color of carpet and paint in every room. My bedroom was golden. It was also down stairs and at the other end of the house.

On January 1, 1983 we moved from Centerville back to Orem. We moved into the cascade house (kitty-corner to Cascade Elementary.) My sister, Lani, and I shared a room in the basement that was light blue and didn't have any windows. We lived there until I was a senior in high school.

During my senior year we moved to a duplex on 1400 North in Orem. It was a lot smaller than our last house. It had just one bathroom and two bedrooms. Ken & Maile shared one room and Lani & I shared the other. Mom's room was downstairs in the family room next to the garage.

We moved back to the cascade house several months later but it wasn't the same. We didn't have the furniture we had and it felt like just a house. A few months later I moved out, permanently, with Bryan, into my own apartment down the road.

Singing

From the time I was little until I was about seven mom used to sing to me and Lani at bedtime. She liked show tunes and sang the same songs to us over and over again. I remember her singing Honey Bun, Ragtime Cowboy Joe, "Pollyanna" (Everybody, Loves a Lover), If I Had a Hammer and Lahaina Luna.

When I was five, Mom taught me and Lani the word and actions to Happy Talk from the movie version of South Pacific. After Lani and I had it down, we went to our neighbors' houses and performed for them.

Grandma Gordon loved singing too. She sang songs like I've been working on the rail road, side by side, the skunk song and hey, look me over. When I was ten I went to camp Naheli Kai in Hawaii with Lani and my cousin, Shelly. We learned a round called rose and another song we called underneath the bamboo tree. We taught them to Grandma and she always messed up on rose. To this day I can hear her saying "wellllll!" after she realized she sang it wrong.

When I was a young girl, Mom and Grandma were in a ladies singing group called "The Chauntonettes." One year they sang Me and My Shadow and used top hats and black canes as props. I learned every word to that song as well as the words to other songs they sang, and remember a lot of words still.

Lani and I shared a bedroom in the basement of our condo. I would lay in bed every night and sing You Light Up My Life (and every other song I knew) before going to sleep. At times, Lani called the music I liked "elevator music." I listened to FM 100, an easy listening radio station in Utah, and it drove her nuts. She whined, "Can't we listen to something else?" until I changed the station.

Whenever we went anywhere in Grandpa's truck, we sat on the wheel wells in the back of the truck and sang at the top of our lungs. Music intertwined with our lives.

In the eighth grade, while Mom worked, Lani and I lip synced to her wooden fruit. Lani always had the grapes and I always had the banana. We moved our lips and held up our microphones when Barry Manilow sang "At the Copa...Copacabana." 

Whenever we went somewhere in the car, eventually, we sang. As a teenager when Lionel Richie's song All night long became famous, I droned the harmony of the backup singers singing "All Night...All Night..." Mom hated it, and would tell me, "Stop It!" or "Sing Something Else."

I had a friend who loved Barbara Streisand. As a result, I grew to love her too. I bought her album on tape called the Broadway Album; I loved it and listened to it all the time. I loved show tunes, and that album was right up my alley.

In my room I would often listen to my records of The Sound of Music, West Side Story, and The Mormon Tabernacle Choir. I loved the Top 40 Hits, but they couldn't compare to my first love of show tunes and choral music.

My Earliest Memory

I wasn't in kindergarten yet. I was being babysat with some other kids. Dad was eating prunes and throwing the pits away. The kids and I would retrieve the pits and suck on them until the fruit/flavor was gone.