Hello.
Hey.
Welcome back.
Yeah.
So, let's see.
So, probably, well, there's two questions I want to go over.
The first, well, whichever one you want to do first.
Well, probably the, I want you to tell me about your first, your ticket that you got
with your first car, and then I want you to, and then we'll talk about your mom.
Oh, yeah.
Well, I got my first car.
I think I remember it was a graduation, it was going to be a graduation present for
graduating from high school.
And it was a yellow Ford Mustang, 1965.
That your dad gave to you?
Or your mom?
Yeah, he gave it.
I had to pay money for it as well.
Okay.
Yeah.
He helped you.
Yeah, I had to help out.
I had to give him money, too.
And that was when I was listed.
We were living in Vista, California.
Okay.
So, I got the car.
I love the Mustang.
It was in cherry condition, inside and outside.
It means no dance, or it was kind of a pale yellow color, and then a tan interior.
It was all stock.
It was really nice.
It had stock hubcaps, but they were spinner hubcaps, so that means they had a, the center
of the hubcap was a spinner, this three-pronged spinner.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
I think you still had those for a while.
Anyway, I think I still have them.
Maybe you still do.
Yeah.
Yeah, so, you know, I drove that car.
I worked in the service stations at Stanard Oil and Chevron Dealers in Southern California,
and Junior College at Palomar Junior College in San Marcos, California.
So, what happened is that, you know, I had to pay money for it.
So, what happened is that I wanted to fix it up, hot rod the engine.
So, I remember that I took it into one of the Chevron Dealers home places that had worked,
and I bought headers for it, which are custom exhausts.
Okay.
And then I had one of the guys at the service station had to put them on,
help me put them on because they were very difficult to fit in,
and the dual exhaust system was put on the car because it didn't come stock with that.
So, my dad and mom dropped me off there,
and I can remember the last thing my mom said before they left the service station was,
don't speed, don't get a ticket or anything because it was at one of the stations which was not where we lived.
We lived in Vista, California, and it was not in Vista, California where the Chevron Dealer was.
So, it was a drive.
Yeah, it was a drive on the freeways.
So, I said, you know, like you usually do with your kids.
Yeah, okay, sure.
You don't really think anything about it.
So, we got the headers on and dual exhausts, and it was cool and sounded neat.
So, I drove home, and as I was driving home on the freeway,
there were very few cars on this one stretch of road, freeway,
and there were two lanes going one way and across the way there was a divide,
and there were two lanes going the other way.
So, I'm heading home, and I noticed in my memory we were way, way, way far away.
I couldn't tell what kind of car it was.
There was a car, and I thought, well, let's not let it catch me.
I kept speeding up, so I kept speeding up,
and I can't remember what the speed limit was.
It could have been 65 or 70 or something.
So, I kept speeding up, and this car kept gaining on me.
I thought, well, you know, I just got headers on the car.
It should improve the power.
So, I speeded up, and so kept doing that.
I kept doing that.
I kept looking in the movie mirror, and this car just kept getting closer and closer.
So, I finally got the car up to 105.
I was doing 105 in my car, and then it was too late,
but as I looked up, the lights flipped on.
It was still too late to tell what kind of car it was,
and then the lights flipped on, and I realized, oh, it's a highway patrol,
a California Highway Patrol.
So, I thought, oh, great, and here I told my mom, don't get a ticket, mom.
That was the last thing she said.
So, the cop stopped me and goes, do you know how fast you're going?
And I didn't know, but I said, well, no, I'm not sure,
because I knew I'd gotten it to 105 when I stood on there,
and he goes, well, you're definitely doing at least 85,
he said, but I think you're doing more than that, but at least that much.
So, I'm going to have to give you a ticket.
So, he gave me a ticket, and I remember it was like 160 or 180 bucks or something,
which back then, that's when I was in high school and junior college,
and that was a lot of money.
Is that like a week's worth of pay or a couple of days?
Is that a week's pay or a couple of days or something?
It would be quite a few days of pay.
So, when I got home, that was the hard part was telling my mom,
because I had remembered the last thing she had told me was,
no, don't speed, don't get a ticket.
And so, I had to tell my parents.
But that's how I got my free ticket was basically racing a cop, highway patrol,
without knowing it was a highway patrol until it was too late.
So, that was pretty embarrassing.
Yeah, but I kept that car for years and years and had it painted red.
That was my favorite color.
I kept the interior the same.
Eventually, hot-lodged the engine and eventually had the engine
and did a rebuild on it with the help of my brother-in-law at the time, Jeremy.
He came up from California with my sister, Chris,
because she lived down there in Southern California.
She married Jeremy Lopez.
So, when he'd come up to visit in Oregon, he wasn't really, him and dad weren't on good terms.
Because originally when my dad and my sister said she was going to marry Bobby Lopez,
my dad disowned her.
Oh, wow.
He just literally disowned her.
Because Bobby was a Mexican, and I think Chris was pregnant,
and so it just wasn't a good situation, but my dad refused to speak to her,
which went on for quite some time.
But he came up, eventually they came up and he helped me rebuild it the first time.
But I kept that car for years and years.
Wow.
Years.
Wow.
And I've liked Mustangs ever since.
That's cool.
Yeah.
So that's how I got my first ticket.
That's a good story.
Yeah.
Nice.
When did you, did you have it when you met mom?
Or no?
I owned it, but I didn't have it.
When I went back to school, by then I had three or four vehicles when I went to BYU.
Wow.
And I had the Mustang, which I left with my parents at their house.
I still had it, and then I had a blue Ford, I think it was like a 65 Ford pickup truck.
And it was in mint condition, just cherry.
Wow.
And it was kind of a navy, lighter navy blue color.
It was just immaculate with wide tires.
And at that time, white spoke were really popular, so I had white spoke wheels on it too.
And it was a stick shift, and it was just immaculate.
So that's what I was driving when I went back to BYU, and I think that's what I still drive when I met your mom.
But yeah, that one, while I was back there, through a timing chain,
I eventually didn't have any money to buy anything.
So I babied it into a dealership, and I bought a Mercury Capri without any money down.
Oh, wow.
Because I was struggling financially.
I had just taken a job as a warehouse manager for Living Scriptures.
And cassettes were just coming in big time that time, and I was the warehouse manager.
So I did all the shipping nationwide to all the different stores that took orders, and we shipped those out.
When it first started out, the warehouse consisted of just this one room and a house,
and the entire warehouse shipping department was me.
But I'd been in shipping and receiving before for years.
Anyway, so I had the Mercury Capri during the moment I got engaged, I believe, and got married.
And that was a beautiful car, dark brown.
It was like a three-door hatchback.
It was magnificent. It was great.
So I had that blue truck, Ford truck, and then I went and met your mom, and then I had this.
But I also had the Mustang, but it was back home.
But unbeknownst to me, it had been parked out in front of Dad's house, and somebody had hit it.
My dad didn't tell me.
There's a lot of things that happened during that period of time with my mom and my dad, but it's for another time.
Let's talk about your mom.
The next question is, what do you remember most about your mom?
It's nice that she's still around.
Yeah, she's still around, so that's nice.
But she was always a housewife, so she was at home with us kids.
And as a girl, there was me and three of my sisters.
My mom actually had, I was first born, and my mom and dad, my dad was still in high school.
I was a senior when they got married. He was 16. My mom was 18.
That's when they had me, so they were both pretty young.
And one of the things I remember growing up with my mom was that when we were little, me and my sisters,
she would read to us every day, and that was the highlight of my day.
I just absolutely loved it. I always looked forward to that.
And she would read for a while, and then she'd stop, and we'd always want her to read more.
But some of us. But Chris was never much into it.
And Chris is the next oldest. Well, I actually have two sisters that are deceased.
Bonnie Lee and Tawny Dee, I believe.
And they passed away 12 and 18, I think, after they were born.
And then my mom had Chris, and then she had Debbie, and then she had Tracy.
And originally for many years, I don't think she thinks that anymore, but she might.
She always thought that Debbie and Tracy were the twins come back at different times.
I don't believe she thinks that anymore.
But when she was not active, not a member, that's what she told me.
But I remember that she always stayed home. She was very loving.
Always did the housework, the laundry. Always kept a clean house.
She was pretty quiet. My dad was the outgoing one, but my mom was, you'd call her an introvert.
And she was shy and quiet.
And she had red hair. You'd call it Auburn.
That's where part of the red hair in her.
It would be not quite as, yeah, but it was still red.
It was still, you'd consider it more red than brown, definitely.
Yeah, so she had long wavy hair.
And they'd cook, and she just took care of the family because she always stayed home.
She didn't have to work my head.
Worked hard so that she didn't have to work out in the workforce.
And of course, back then when I was younger, much younger, growing up as a young kid, that wasn't the norm anyway.
The men worked and the women stayed home and cooked dinner.
And she would always, we always had, pretty typical to have meat at every single meal, without exception.
That was just normal. And when we didn't, my dad would say, where's the meat?
It was that, ingrained into us.
It was just that ingrained.
And then we got into the habit of having dessert.
You'd have dessert not immediately after dinner.
And I can remember my mom taught us to, me and my sisters, how to do dishes, how to rinse and how to dish-washing machines.
So we'd wash and dry and put them away.
And of course, we had to clear the table and set the table.
That was part of the chores.
And she taught, I remember teaching me how to sew and also teaching me how to iron, showing me how to do that.
But I just remember she was always there for us all the time.
But she just seemed, she definitely had acquired her more reserved than my dad was, for sure.
Very definitely.
But that's what I remember about her.
And then as I got older and I eventually moved out, I can remember thinking my mom seemed really, really sad.
Not that I was moving out.
She just seemed sad, not really extremely happy in the marriage.
Because my dad would work and then he'd come home and he'd eat and then he'd sit in the chair and read us some magazines and watch TV.
And it didn't seem like there was a whole lot of interaction more towards the end of the marriage.
They got divorced after they were married 25 years.
Oh wow.
So when you were what, 24? 23?
Yeah. Probably around then.
And then when that happened, my dad was totally taken by surprise.
He didn't see it coming at all.
I think us kids had some idea about it.
But it was still a surprise.
And my mom actually moved out and got her own place, which was totally uncharacteristic of a mom.
And got a job, which was totally uncharacteristic.
And it's just like I often thought that she went through menopause and her personality changed dramatically.
I don't think that was the sole reason for the divorce.
So I remember that, but she went to work for a warehouse, planting seedlings, tree seedlings.
And that's eventually where she ended up meeting Howard.
And eventually she divorced my dad and eventually she moved in with Howard and eventually she married Howard.
Okay, so the move out was before the divorce.
Yes.
Okay.
My dad was great about it.
I mean, it hurt him deeply and he went into depression and everything.
But once she moved out, he found a car for her and bought a car and got her a car that she could use that was dependable.
Because he kept hoping that she was going to come back, but that never did happen.
Wow, I didn't know that.
Yeah, that never did happen.
And it was devastating on my dad.
And my little sister Tracy was still home and still, I think she was a junior in high school when that happened.
So she ended up being a caretaker for my dad for a couple of years.
That was the time your mom and I had moved back to Oregon, just about the time that it occurred, that it was occurring.
And that was probably no coincidence there.
So we were there to assist when that occurred because my dad had definite severe reactions to that occurring.
Very severe, more than once he went out and said he was going to commit suicide.
We called the police and tried to find him.
So it was quite a trial.
And I think for Tracy that really was, I can't imagine what it was like because she was the only one at home.
And she ended up taking care of dad for the most part.
But we were there and she would call and say, hey, you know, dad's taken off again.
Wow.
And I had a difficult time with it, especially when I found out that mom had been seeing Howard before she was even divorced.
So I didn't visit her or Howard.
I told her I didn't want anything to do with Howard.
And that was the thing that went on with it.
But eventually that changed and I softened.
And I never did really get to know Howard real well because we ended up moving again.
In our early years in marriage for mom and I, whenever we moved it seemed like we were moving from one family
to another family, meeting us without knowing that was the case until we got there.
That happened when we moved to Phoenix, Arizona.
One night her dad came over and said, Susie's leaving me, which is his second wife.
So that was something. That's another story.
And then, you know, my mom in these later years, she got re-baptized into the church back in again
and became and has been a very active member and gone into genealogy work.
But I can remember my sister Debbie, who went to the temple with her,
one of the matrons that was there when my mom got her endowments that time,
the first time she'd been in the temple, told Debbie that,
because Colin and Mara had been back in Utah when it occurred, told Debbie,
I've never seen a woman more prepared, ready to be in the temple than your mother is.
Wow, that's cool.
But my mom always liked to read. She loved to read. She would read all kinds of stuff.
She read tons of books on reincarnation. She went through a period where she read Edgar Cayce books,
which I read. She introduced me to all kinds of books when I was growing up and in high school.
She introduced me to Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged, allowed me to read that when I was in high school.
What's Edgar Cayce?
He's a psychic. He's deceased, but he was a very accurate psychic.
He would do readings for people, and he wrote a number of books.
I read a number of his books and stuff and told my mom.
She would just read stuff that wasn't probably mainstream.
When we were growing up, for a short while, my mom and dad were active.
Yeah, I was going to ask, I don't know much about that.
They were active up until I think it was probably before I turned 12.
Even before then, they had gone inactive. They just didn't go home.
But they would always take us kids to church.
What happened is that my dad was heavily into the scouting program in the church.
He was an explorer leader as well, and he was very active in it, taking the kids camping.
Then him and one bishop that was put in, from what I understand from my dad,
the program in the scouts was different.
The bishop felt that the men that were part of that scouting program,
because it was part of the church too, if they didn't attend church on Sundays,
they couldn't be part of the scouting program.
Not everybody that was in the troop was a member.
My dad didn't think that was right.
So he said, I'm not going to do it if that's what you're going to do,
because I refuse to do that. They all should be part of it.
Just force somebody to come to your church because of that.
So he quit coming.
But he and my mom would take us to church, drop us off, me and my sisters,
and then we'd go back home.
Then one day, I had friends at church, so that was okay.
But then one day I just told him, I said, this isn't fair.
You guys don't have to go to church.
You have to go. You make us go. You take us.
I said, no, that's fair. And that was it.
Then they stopped taking us.
Wow.
And so we became inactive for many years.
In fact, I was the first one in our family to get reactivated.
I can remember in Crown Falls, Oregon, when my mom and dad were still together,
when I was still living at home and everything,
because the home teachers would come over and everybody would go and hide
and not answer the door.
But my dad and I would sit out there and we would visit with them.
They'd come in, but nobody else in the family would come out.
And eventually I started home teaching with my dad and we became companions.
And then eventually through a series of things, which I can go into another time,
I went back to BYU and became activated back at BYU and gained a testimony back there.
But my dad did not continue on. He went inactive again for a long time.
And so eventually when I came back, dad got activated and eventually mom did
and one of my sisters, Debbie, did.
But I was the first one to get reactivated in my family.
And that happened a couple different times, once in high school, which didn't take.
For me, I attended seminary a couple times.
This one kid asked me to attend when I came, but it was just too early for me.
It was like five in the morning or something and I just sat out there.
So we were inactive for many years.
But I always remember my mom and dad were good people.
I remember eventually I started drinking coffee.
We never did, the kids, but they liked their coffee.
And then we got to where they liked their coffee.
And occasionally we'd have a glass of wine after dinner or occasionally have a beer,
but they were never big beer drinkers or anything like that.
But I remember my mom was always there for us, always calling after school on that.
Always took care of us and always pretty much did what my dad wanted to do,
as far from what I could see.
I think that she felt neglected and he didn't realize that.
But that's really what I remember about my mom, and of course she's still alive.
And now I usually call her every Sunday or at least once a week,
and I've already talked to her today.
Talk about TV programs like Masterpiece Theater, Masterpiece Mystery.
She loves reading mysteries as do I. She loves reading.
She just reads and reads and reads. She's always loved reading.
And she's always loved her kids, always.
Even when they went through the divorce and that,
she still tried to make us a part of her life.
And I still feel that same love from her.
That's really cool. That's awesome.
I don't know if I can be sealed to my... I can't be sealed to my mom and dad.
Mom checked into it and she can't.
She was going to get sealed to my dad just so I could get sealed to both of them,
even though she didn't want to.
But she found out that couldn't be done until she's been deceased.
But she's 18 years older than I am, so that makes her almost 82.
So she's 81 right now. She's probably 82 because I turned 64 in September.
But yeah, I've always... I've never been as strange from my mom.
That's good. That's cool.
Yeah.
So that's what I remember about her. Always there for us.
That's a good thing to remember about her.
Yeah. Yeah, it is.
That's cool.
Yeah, and I think she's very non-judgmental.
Because I remember when Debbie was in high school there, she dated a...
one of the people she dated was a black person.
My mom never told my dad because he would have gone through the roof.
Because like I say, when he found out that Chris was pregnant with Bobby Lopez,
who was a Mexican, he just disowned her when we lived in Vista, California.
Oregon, he still wouldn't talk to her or anything for a long, long, long time.
And she was living down in Southern California.
But my mom never did that, so I think she's very non-judgmental and understanding.
And wise.
Yeah.
And my mom's parents were...they were pretty...I would call them strict Mormons.
So when my mom married my dad, and I don't know if I was born out of wedlock or not,
but it wasn't a marriage that my mom's parents wanted at all.
And my dad's parents didn't want it either.
At least his mom didn't.
So part of my life I got raised for a short period of time with my great-grandma Stoker,
who was born on the same day I was.
Oh, huh.
Yeah.
My great-grandma Stoker told them eventually you kids need to move away out of state
Oh, yeah.
when your marriage won't survive because your two sets of parents don't like each other
and you're just continuing to fight each other.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
Which they eventually did. They moved to California.
Yeah.
Wow. But then didn't one of the set of parents moved nearby, too?
Yeah. Grandma Johnson, who at that time was married to my grandfather,
and they moved to California to be close for a son who was your only child.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
Well, thank you for sharing that. Thank you for your time.
Yeah.
Thanks for the questions.
Yeah, it's fun.
We've been having these, and then I share some of it with Catherine,
and she's like, well, what about this? What about this?
And I was like, oh, I need to ask.
So you actually covered a lot of the stuff.
We're like, wait, when were they inactive?
When did they get divorced?
And just a bunch of stuff.
I was like, oh, that's cool.
Yeah.
Like I said, my mom went through menopause, which is part of the reason.
I don't think that was the total reason, though.
Because when she did that, I remember telling your mom,
and I thought, that's not my mom. I don't know who that is.
Wow.
Because her personality was dramatically different.
She was very out of character.
Very, very different.
Yeah.
And now she's back, as I remember.
Yeah.
Yeah, she was quite different than what she had been when I was growing up.
And my sisters, some of them seem to think that, too.
Well, cool. I'll have to call her in-tat with her.
Yeah, you have to be careful.
Well, yeah. No, I'm not going to be like, hey, he said this.
Yeah, no.
No.
Because she was excommunicated.
That was brought about because I went to the bishop.
Let me look back there, because I found something out.
So I'll avoid that bishop.
Yeah.
Yeah, but she's back in full fellowship and has been strong ever since.
That's cool.
That was the source of great sorrow and pain for her mom.
Yeah.
Very, very nice. But her mom was Grandma Davis and Grandpa Davis.
Grandma Davis could be very, somebody that would always harp,
and why don't you do this? And have you done that?
Oh, yeah.
A very giving person, but her and my mom didn't.
It was difficult for my mom being around her mom.
Very difficult for her.
They didn't get along.
I guess now I understand a little better why, like when we would go visit Grandma Johnson
and your mom would be there and Howard would be there.
It always seemed like Howard doesn't talk a lot, and people don't talk to Howard very much.
That's kind of like in my kid brain, that's just what I noticed,
and now I think I understand some reasons behind that.
Yeah, because Howard was...
Yeah.
Once he showed up in the picture, it was my mom and dad were never going to get back together.
Yeah.
So, anyway, that's the whole mother's story.
Yeah.
Well, yeah, I better get to bed, but it's been, thanks, I really, I love this time.
Yeah, I do, too, I like it.
I do, too.
Well, yeah, well, maybe Tuesday, Tuesday at lunch, or do you have, what do you got going?
I don't think I have anything Tuesday.
Tomorrow, I have a surgery, so I'll keep it in your prayer.
Oh, will do, yeah, for sure.
On the gallbladder, so.
Okay, yeah, we will do that.
Mom's going to take him there.
Cool, do you know, is it tomorrow morning, tomorrow afternoon?
Tomorrow morning, you have to be there by 645.
Oh, oh, okay, cool.
All right.
Okay, well, send our best to everybody.
Okay, I went to church today.
Oh, yeah?
Sacrament or everything.
I made it to all three meetings.
Oh, awesome.
Everything.
That's what I was going to say, you've been feeling, still feeling better, still feeling good.
Yeah, yeah, I've even practiced walking without the walker, so to speak,
and I can get down the front steps by myself.
Safely.
I still use the walker to get down the front steps.
Yeah.
Yeah, I've been doing better.
I push the walker ahead and then I walk to it.
Wow.
I practice that a little bit each day.
That's awesome.
Yeah.
That's really good to hear.
Yeah.
So, awesome.
All right.
Okay.
Okay, love you a lot.
Love you, too.
Okay, we'll see you.
Yeah, we'll see you sometime.
All right.
Talk to you probably Tuesday.
All right.
Okay.
Okay, and I get media pictures now on the phone.
Oh, yes.
We will include you and send some of those to you then.
Okay.
All right, thanks.
Okay, yep.
Love you.
Okay, love you, too.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.