PART ONE – February 1962 to August 1971
GRAFFITI (as in “graffito”) n. : a rude decoration inscribed on rocks or walls.
My father was Roscoe Stuart Beall, who was the son of John Gainer Beall, who was the son of Captain James Jesse Beall, who was the son of Josias Bradley Beall. The surname BEALL is an American variation of BELL, a lesser-known Scottish clan.
Roscoe was a corporal, who served many years in the U.S. Army. He was a simple man who lived day-to-day, with no bank accounts whatsoever. Most of his time and money had been invested in a bad marriage. He loved his sweetheart, Norma Carlson, but she didn’t want to live with him. He had three living daughters, and one who died as an infant. He agreed to end the marriage and take his 1950 Hudson automobile as his only property.
My mother, Nora Hendriksen, was the daughter of Danish immigrants. She had six sisters and four brothers. Nora was 35 years old, and the only girl in her family who was still single. Her six sisters were already married with children, and Nora was intent on becoming a mother herself.
Nora was a friend of Myrtle Renshaw, who was Roscoe’s mother in-law. It was probably a coincidence that Nora stopped to see Myrtle at the same time Roscoe was visiting.
Nora was about ten years younger than Roscoe, and Roscoe must have seen something he liked. His interest was finding a companion able to take care of him in his old age.
Roscoe made an informal marriage proposal at Nora’s house on Stratford Avenue one evening. He suggested that life would be easier for both of them if they shared living expenses. He offered no engagement ring, and carried no temple recommend. A quick ceremony before a justice of the peace would have satisfied him.
Nora’s acceptance was conditional. If he wanted to marry her, it had to be in a Mormon temple. After several months of delay, Roscoe got a temple recommend, and a wedding ring. He married Nora in August of 1960. Their honeymoon was a drive to visit various Beall relatives in Oregon and Idaho.
Nora’s physician, John Brown, was mad when he learned she was pregnant. In his opinion, women her age had no business getting pregnant. She miscarried.
I was born in the LDS hospital, in Salt Lake City, on the morning of the twelfth of February 1962, and was named Stuart James Beall. My parents arranged for a pediatrician to amputate my foreskin, using a Gomko Clamp. Routine infant circumcision was a cultural norm in this country.
Roscoe had just purchased a used RCA television set. According to Nora, he was more interested in that television set than in his wife and baby at the hospital. According to my health record book, I was breast-fed for 0 months. Nora preferred the Similac-in-a-bottle method.
Our family lived in South Salt Lake City for the first nine years of my life. Our red brick house was built by my maternal grandfather, Oscar Peter Hendriksen, who lived on the adjoining property at 130 West Crystal Avenue. He died before I reached the age of four, and I don’t remember any encounters with him.
My earliest memories are tied to that house on Stratford Avenue, and the immediate vicinity. The south side of the street was a mixture of homes and business. At the corner of West Temple was the Grundvig Automotive repair shop. Near the center of Stratford was the Judkins sheet metal fabrication shop, and the Paetsch wooden cabinetry shop.
On the north side of the street was TAP Plastics, an injection molding factory. Another factory was located near the corner at West Temple. Between these factories was a dump site for debris from demolished buildings. Behind these factories was a canal, and behind the canal was a large water tower, the Horton Tank, owned and maintained by the City Of South Salt Lake.
James LeVoy Sorenson owned a clothing shop on West Temple Street, near the water tower, where people purchased white temple clothing. Incidentally, that is also where Mr. Sorenson built his first prototype medical device. He would become the richest man in Utah.
I slept in the basement of our house, in a large room shared with my two younger sisters. Had some nightmares, such as toy dolls coming to life and talking to me. Had some dreams that were pleasant, such as the sensation of floating over the housetops around Stratford Avenue.
When I was five months old, my parents took me on a trip to Jerome Idaho, to visit the few Beall relatives still living there. That visit is entirely forgotten to me, marked only by black and white photos showing my parents, Uncle Jesse, grandmother Della, and my older sister Pam.
Interesting how Nora would pronounce our surname Beel whenever she spoke to locals in Utah. Yet, whenever she pointed to photos of Della she would announce, “That’s Grandma Bell”. All our relatives from Georgia and Alabama pronounced our surname Bell.
In 1964, I watched my father doing work in the garage, and wanted to hammer nails and drive screws like he did. My mother wrote, “It is quite a kick to see him ready for bed a book in one hand – a screw driver in the other and a pacifier in his mouth.”
When I learned to walk, I ventured into a neighbor’s yard and discovered Mame McCashland. When she saw me in her yard, she would come outside to visit with me. One day I waited for a long time to see Mame, and walked around her yard looking for her. She didn’t come out, because she had died.
My father Roscoe worked as a mail carrier, until my sister Joy was born. He took medical retirement after a bout with lung cancer. I don’t remember seeing him in good health; rather, he was often gasping, and coughing up phlegm.
In spite of his weakened physical condition, Roscoe was a champion talker. If he encountered another adult who also liked to talk, they could easily pass an hour in pleasant conversation.
At this young age, I was entirely bored with my father’s chattiness. He seemed overbearing, which may have bolstered my reluctance to speak at all.
My father sometimes took me to visit Irvin Luker in Rose Park. Mr. Luker was a watchmaker and jeweler. They tried to entice me to talk, by offering me a cookie. All I had to do to get the cookie, was say thank you. They waited patiently, and asked repeatedly. I didn’t say anything, but they gave me the cookie at last.
When I was about nine, Mr. Luker gave me a refurbished wristwatch he had in his shop.
Roscoe was hard of hearing. He learned to compensate by lip-reading.
In our back yard, I asked if he had seen my twinkle-twinkle toy. It was basically a toy lawn-mower, which made musical sounds as it was pushed.
Roscoe wasn’t reading my lips when he replied, “If you gotta tinkle, you go to the bathroom.”
Our family made several trips through Idaho and Oregon over several years. We visited my Aunt Jewel in McCammon, my Aunt Dovie in Jerome, and my Aunt Winona in Reedsport. The relatives in Jerome were always kind to us, despite their humble circumstances. When we spent the night, all they could offer was floor space and blankets. Aunt Jewel happened to own and manage an old motel in McCammon. How convenient for us!
I recall sleeping in the new car, a Ford Maverick, on one trip, because my father wasn’t willing to spend eight dollars on a motel room.
One year, we rode an Amtrack train to McCammon, where my Aunt Jewell met us. The train ride was supposed to be fun, but I didn’t enjoy it.
My father was not an ambitious man; he did not desire a nice house, luxurious car, or fancy furniture. He did not plan to send his children to college, nor did he encourage me to prepare for it.
When I got into disagreements with my sisters, I would hit them in anger. When my father found out about it, he’d hit me as punishment, and tell me, “You don’t hit girls!”
My father may not have had a favorite child, but he definitely gave my younger sisters the bulk of his patience and understanding. I resented this.
Most of our trash was incinerated in a large barrel in the back yard, until the city passed an ordinance against burning trash.
Water at the Stratford house was taken from a piped well in my grandmother’s yard, next to her garage. I enjoyed drinking copious amounts of water from the garden hose, probably because it was not chlorinated.
The firemen of South Salt Lake City were mostly volunteers. They were summoned to fire duty by a loud siren at the fire station. This noise bothered all the dogs in town, so they whined and howled.
My grandmother was Kamilla Louise Olsen (Hendriksen). She lived alone on Crystal Avenue after her husband died, so it was convenient for my parents to leave us in her care. Sometimes we would walk through the back yard to the Crystal house, or sometimes she would walk over to the Stratford house. There was a gate and walkway between the two properties. I loved picking and eating grapes and raspberries in her yard.
Eight o’clock in the evening was supposed to be my bed time, but it was normally too early for me to go to sleep. My mother either didn’t understand that, or perhaps she was trying to make some alone time for her and my father. My younger sisters and I often ventured from our beds to see what the adults were doing upstairs. When my parents had church socials or adult relatives over at the house, the temptation was even greater. The delight of peeking into the kitchen, risking a possible verbal reprimand, was much better than lying in bed, bored.
When our Grandma Kamilla was babysitting for us, in the dark hours of the evening, we teased her by sneaking up the stairs and calling out, “Grumpy Grandma!”
My sister Bonnie got into the habit of sticking her tongue out at Kamilla, when she wasn’t looking. Wasn’t sure what this meant, but I knew it wasn’t nice. Felt bad about it and ratted on her: “Bonnie’s sticking her tongue out again.”
Kamilla replied, “Well, next time we’ll shake some salt on it.”
She probably didn’t actually intend to shake salt on Bonnie’s tongue, but it sounded like a great idea to me. Followed Bonnie around the house that day with the salt shaker, trying to shake salt onto her tongue.
I recall pushing a toy truck around the TV room at my home, while my mother was reading a newspaper. There were no other toys to play with, and the truck was suddenly no fun. I wanted to learn new things, but my mother wanted to read her newspaper. Tried to engage my mother in conversation, with no success. Tugged on her arm, which made her upset; she was intent on reading the newspaper, and reprimanded me in a sharp tone of voice. Many times I approached her while she was reading the newspaper. Sometimes she read out loud, to swamp out my pleading voice. When she actually did reply, it usually sounded like an incomplete answer.
When I questioned my mother’s rules, which often seemed senseless to me, she ignored me – until I said something to offend her. Then she shouted at me, or slapped my butt, which sent me off crying. When I told her she wasn’t even a good mother, she slapped my face.
My mother accompanied me to the Madison Elementary School building on State Street, for a kindergarten orientation. Before this, I had little idea of what school was about. There was no formal meeting or presentation; it was an exploratory visit to the classroom, with no particular schedule to follow. Following my male instinct, I kept looking for jobs to do, or problems to solve. Put together a simple puzzle, painted with watercolors, cut out pieces of colored paper. Didn’t find anything challenging. Kept asking my mother, “Is this all?” It seemed too simple.
My friend Steven lived next to the cabinet shop, in a house owned by his grandparents, Mr. and Mrs. Sipple. Many of our summer days were spent together, roaming the fields on either side of the TAP Plastics building. During the Summer we hunted or captured grasshoppers.
We collected scrap lumber sticks, from the cabinet shop, which we rubbed on the pavement to crudely resemble swords.
There were some disagreements with neighbors about which “sword” belonged to whom. With our wooden swords, Steven and I chopped apart all the thistle plants we saw in the field across the street from my house.
The empty lot next to the railroad had been a pasture, where my mother sometimes took her family cows. There were lots of ephedra plants along the ditch near the railroad. We called it joint grass, because it could snap apart at the joints. We could also crease or split a section, and blow into it, making a sound similar to a kazoo.
In school, I naturally wrote with my left hand, until Mrs. Hayward the kindergarten teacher, and the classroom arrangement caused me to conform to their right-handed agenda.
Some children liked to chew on the pencils the teacher provided. She collected them after each writing exercise, and distributed the same pencils for the next project. I looked at the pencils with bite marks as less-desirable, or unclean. When one with bite marks was passed to me, I quickly swapped with a classmate.
“I’m not having this one!”
Mrs. Hayward grabbed both pencils, and swapped them again. “Yes you are having this one.”
After walking into Mrs. Hayward’s classroom every school day for kindergarten, it seemed natural to do the same on the first day of my first grade. When I turned into the doorway, Mrs. Hayward caught me and laughed.
“You liked my class so much last year, you want to come back again!”
Near the TAP Plastics building (later Ryder Plastics), someone discarded a huge load of sand. Every child in the area loved to dig in the sand. No matter how nice a sandbox they may have had in their yard, this sandpile was simply the best place to dig. My friend Steven and I decided to dig a tunnel under this sand, so we each started digging from about three meters apart. It was a lengthy project. By the time our two tunnels met in the middle, Steven was bored with the project, and crawled out. He began walking home, leaving me in the sand alone, to clear the last heap of sand in the middle. Then the tunnel collapsed, and buried me completely. The sand had mostly dried out, which was a good thing for a boy trying to get out of it. After I exhaled, I couldn’t move my chest enough to inhale. I got sand in my nose. This is where I had my first panic attack. I pushed and twisted my legs with all my strength until I felt them break free of the sand.
Soon after I received my first coin purse, I exchanged coins with my friend Steven. We had no idea of the value of each coin, but wanted to share so that both of us had samples of each penny, nickle, dime, and quarter. My father caught a glimpse of this, and became fuming mad.
“You give that back!” he hollered, from a distance. He didn’t bother to ask what the exchange was all about.
Steven and I weren’t sure exactly how many coins we traded, but we sadly tried to reverse the trades. It was fine with my father, when Steven handed a coin back to me, but he wasn’t so sure about me handing coins to Steven, and asked if that was right.
My visits to a Dr. Stringham, the family pediatrician, were traumatic. His nurses would stick needles into my butt, and reward me with orange-flavored aspirin tablets. Physicians do not give aspirin to healthy children anymore. Dr. Stringham also squirted into my mouth the famous Salk polio vaccine, which was extracted from diseased pig livers.
Physicians in the United States of America created a polio epidemic with their routine practice of amputating children’s tonsils and adenoids. It took at least a generation of time for ordinary people to figure this out, and much longer for the medical mob to admit their mistake. Meanwhile, pharmaceutical companies were happy to sell their potions to concerned parents, such as mine.
During the development of the Salk vaccine, it was tried-out in the Philippines, where it crippled many unsuspecting Filipinos. Scientists have identified 149 living viruses in it (including SV-40, which is present in cancer cells).
Both my parents used expletives – dammit, shit, crap, and hell – liberally in my presence. Something I heard in church or school must have caused me to carefully avoid these words throughout my life, for it certainly was not a virtue I learned from my parents. For a time, I was in the habit of exclaiming, “God!” It didn’t seem like swearing, until my neighbor Ricky pointed it out to me. From that time, I quit saying it.
The most memorable thing about my first grade in school was a boy named Mark, who had rotten teeth. Mark enjoyed squeezing other boys’ testicles to make them scream in pain. There’s no nice way to say it. He caught me in the boys room a couple of times. I didn’t know what to do about it, but scream in pain. He taunted me in the lunchroom, saying, “I want your weenie!”
It never occurred to me to tell the teacher, or anyone else. Some adults didn’t believe things I said. Fortunately, our teacher Mrs. Dean came into the boys room to apprehend Mark as he was in the act of squeezing a poor boy’s testicles.
Mrs. Dean’s son came to our school playground to teach basic basketball skills. For several weeks afterwords, a large group of us practiced playing basketball. We had no agenda other than fun and basketball practice. We learned about teamwork, and praised each other for every honest effort. It was good clean fun.
Around Christmas, my mother’s siblings (the Hendriksens) would gather their children for a family Christmas party. These parties were usually held at the Unitarian Church in Salt Lake City, where my grandfather had worked. There was always a Christmas Tree with wrapped presents, a piñata, a marvelous dinner, and an assortment of musical performances.
I usually followed LaVaur ‘Sam’ McCashland around the Unitarian Church. One of our adventures involved turning the sidewalk into an ice slide. We kicked the snow powder onto the walk, and packed it over the surface with our leather sole shoes. Then we took turns running down the walkway to our ice slide, where we slid on our shoes.
There was little motivation for me to get acquainted with my older cousins.
The dairy industry designed, produced, and distributed to all public schools, a chart of four food groups. They portrayed dairy products and meats as two of these basic food groups, with milk and cheese considered the most important part of a good meal. Fruits and vegetables were together in one group, and bread and cereals in another. This idea was not based on any serious nutritional study; rather, it was designed to sell more dairy products. Even so, my teachers and parents were duped into thinking that all normal children needed to drink four glasses of milk, and eat two servings of meat every day. The kindergarten class snack was always a half pint of cow milk and one graham cracker.
When school lunches were served, each included a half pint of cow milk; or sometimes chocolate milk. If a child was thirsty when he ate his school lunch, he’d drink the milk – or drink nothing – until allowed to visit the water fountain.
My mother gave me milk to drink with every meal at home. When she had trouble getting me to drink it, she used chocolate milk, or egg-nog flavored milk. Each morning I drank milk; whether it was from a glass, with oatmeal, or dry cereal.
The milk we consumed was purchased from Burton Dairy. They delivered jugs of milk (and other foods) to a tin milk box on the front porch.
The Burton Dairy was operated by a Dutchman named Peter Sparreboom, who also happened to be a bishop of the LDS Burton Ward.
Almost every porch in the neighborhood had one of these milk boxes. Regular deliveries were made twice every week; empty glass jugs were collected from the milk boxes, washed and re-filled with more milk. My mother would leave an order form with money in the milk box, so the milk man knew just how much milk to leave. It’s was a good system, until thieves roamed the area, early in the morning, stealing money from the milk boxes.
Our family loved dairy products, but it caused my father to suffer a never ending battle with sinus and lung congestion. I later learned that dairy products triggered my ear infections, lingering snotty nose, painful constipation, and a case of pneumonia.
One of my school field trips brought my class to a large dairy operation in Salt Lake City. When we got inside the first milk processing area, there was a disagreeable odor which caused several students to pinch their nostrils shut. Most of them got used to the smell. I was the only one who kept holding my nose for the entire visit. Several employees noticed and asked why I was holding my nose.
On returning from another field trip, the bus driver thought it would be nice to detour and visit an ice-cream processing plant. I was excited when I saw the place, because I had been there before. My Uncle Joe Hendriksen had designed and built some of the equipment. All the students got to eat a sample of a Frosty Dog while there. A Frosty Dog was a log of ice cream, coated with chocolate and nuts.
My father simply was not a good cook. In the morning, he liked to feed us oatmeal, grapefruit, or toast with peanut butter and honey. The toast with peanut butter got distasteful to me, and I had difficulty swallowing it. Unfortunately, my father kept us at the table to make us eat every bite of what he gave us. If he noticed I didn’t eat every bite of his toast, he kept me at the table. To get around this, I put the unwanted toast into my mother’s sewing box, which she kept under the dining table. My mother found out about that, and confronted me.
I was standing in the upstairs hall at school near a water fountain, waiting for a drink, when I encountered Clifford Forrest. He pushed into the queue in front of me.
“Butter!” I said to him, for he butted into the line.
Clifford stared at me for an instant, then suddenly shoved me. I stumbled into a girl who was walking past, and we both fell down on the floor. The shock caused me to cry. Crying was the only way I knew how to respond to insults.
Nobody had taught me how to deal with rude people like Clifford. Although my father had been a champion boxer in the army, he never taught me anything about boxing.
Two older girls who were walking by looked upon me with disgust and called me bawl baby. When these girls saw me walking home after school, they chanted “Bawl Baby!”
In the school playground, there was an area my parents called tricky bars which was an assortment of steel lattices, for climbing and simple gymnastics. Two of my classmates there engaged me in a boomerang chase. They found they could tease me by kicking or jabbing me, and then run away before I could retaliate. They were swift, I was slow, and I couldn’t easily catch them. One would hit me from behind while I was chasing the other. I would chase the boy who just hit me until the other hit me from behind, then I’d turn and chase the other.
After some time, I became very angry, and intent on catching someone. I laid hands on Scott Okubo and exclaimed, “Now I got you!”
His laughter ceased, and he bit me. He sunk his teeth into my bare arm, until I released him. There was no blood, but the bite was still painful. I complained to the first teacher I found, who was supposed to be the playground monitor. She in turn quizzed Scott Okubo. Scott’s excuse: “He was chasing me.”
This teacher was bewildered, and told us to return to our class. There was no further discussion of this, or any follow-up, as far as I knew.
During winter, the unionized teachers at Madison Elementary School didn’t want any students to enter the school building until after the opening bell rang. When my mother drove me to school with pneumonia, she told me to explain that I couldn’t wait outside in the cold. We didn’t have a doctor’s note.
When I tried to go inside the school, to wait in the mezzanine, I was turned away by one of the teachers. I tried to explain what my mother told me, but this teacher didn’t understand, and told me to wait outside.
In about a minute, my angry mother came to the door and confronted the teacher, who then took me to my kindergarten class.
School periods were marked by electro-mechanical bells, mounted on either side of the building, and the inside halls. Students who arrived early were forced to wait in front of the school for that bell ring, before they could enter. We listened for that bell to announce the times for lunch, or recess, or a fire drill. Likewise, we did not return to class until the bell rang again.
Two of my classmates and I stayed outside on the playground one Spring day, in pouring rain, with no coats or hats whatsoever, waiting for that the bell to give us permission to return to class. We noticed that all the other students went inside the building, until the three of us were left alone. We didn’t care about the rain. We heard no teachers calling for us. We kept splashing about in the rain until the bell rang, right on schedule. At that instant, we returned to class. We were quite a spectacle, with our clothes soaking wet. The teacher scolded us, and said we should have came back to class when we noticed everyone else going back into the building. I always disagreed with the idea that following everybody else was somehow the best option.
Tuesday afternoons, I’d walk from the school to the church building on Main Street (Burton Ward), for a children’s group we called Primary, where people taught us songs and lessons about Jesus. On the sacrament table was a cardboard model of the Primary Children’s Hospital, which served as a coin bank. Whenever a child had a birthday, he was encouraged to walk up in front of the group, to that bank, and deposit birthday pennies. For my eighth birthday, I was expected to deposit eight pennies.
My mother gave me no spending allowance, but she made sure I had birthday pennies and dues for cub scouts. There was not much extra to spare.
When some of my classmates planned a visit to Taco Bell, I asked my mother for money, so I could buy a taco. She gave me fifty cents, which covered the cost of one taco at Taco Bell. I remember being very thirsty after eating the taco, and had not enough change left to buy a drink, so I drank from the faucet in the lavatory.
On at least one occasion, I remember seeing my parents stock the kitchen pantry from a large delivery of canned goods; each can had the peculiar name Deseret. This was the brand used by the LDS Church Cannery, part of our church’s welfare system. That same year, a large number of Christmas presents were delivered to our house, by two young men I didn’t know.
One of the peculiar things about my school experience was the book bag my mother sent with me. I felt odd carrying it, because hardly any other children carried a book bag. One fine day, my teacher gave her students an enormous amount of paper things to take home: a crafts project, informational pamphlets, an evaluation form, a math test, a spelling test, government forms for parents to complete. I tucked each paper between every finger I had, complaining about the inconvenience of it all. My teacher solved the problem by putting all the items into my book bag.
My mother was an advisor to the young men in the Burton Ward; she sometimes had them over at the house to learn campfire cooking, or other skills. When I saw what great fun these older boys were having, I wanted to be included in some of their activities. My mother told me I was too young, and I’d have to wait until I was older. This made me feel frustrated with being so young, and I often day-dreamed of things I could do when I got older.
Went through a phase, where I wanted to be a comedian. I liked to play tricks on others, and tell jokes. When I made puns, or told jokes to my mother, she didn’t laugh. Instead, she’d tell me, with a straight face, that I was as funny as Bob Hope. Had no clue who Bob Hope was, or if he was funny. Few people laughed at my jokes, but many began to pronounce my name with a certain distrust. The way my parents and sisters said Stuart was a signal that I was distrusted. When I heard my full name, Stuart James Beall, it was a signal I was about to be criticized, or accused of some terrible act. I began to dread hearing that name.
A new family moved into the old McCashland house. They were a large family with young children and shared beds. Sometimes one of them wet their bed, and caused an unpleasant odor to hang upon themselves and their bed-mates. As they came from North Carolina, they had a slight accent which was different from most other residents of South Salt Lake. For these reasons, people spoke unkindly of them.
My sisters and I often played games with these neighbors, walked to school with them, and gathered candy with them on Halloween. We changed into swimsuits, and rode with them to the Great Salt Lake, where the salt made me keenly aware of every scratch on my body.
Jimmy, the oldest boy, became a type of mentor to me. I watched him deliver newspapers with his bicycle, and decided I wanted to do that someday. I was amazed at how he modified a regular clothespin to strike and throw box matches. Fire was a fascination for most boys I knew.
One day, I was in the back yard playing with Jimmy’s sister, and we looked into a basement window by the porch, where there was no curtain. I pointed to my youngest sister who had just walked from the bathtub, stark naked.
I actually bathed with both my younger sisters in the same tub on several occasions, until I was about 5 years old.
My mother was also there in the basement, and saw us looking through the window. She had a fit; it was unacceptable for neighbors to be looking through one of her windows. My mother didn’t complain to me about it, but she complained to my father about it. Together, they decided to construct a tall wooden fence to separate our driveway from the McCashland property.
For the lumber, my father selected a cheap wood called grape stakes. Once it was in place, I enjoyed helping my parents brush linseed oil over the face of it.
I had a difficult time understanding the difference between stories of fact and stories of fiction. Jimmy’s sister found me an attentive listener, and liked to tell me stories, which I later shared with my mother. My mother reacted with scorn, saying, “That’s only make-believe.”
Two other neighbors enjoyed fabricating stories, which I often believed at face value. One of them called me on the telephone, pretending to be a radio personality, with a spelling quiz. When I spelled the word correctly, he congratulated me for winning a certain automobile. When a certain car, from TAP plastics, would drive past us on Stratford Avenue, the boys would point and exclaim it was the car I had won. The actual driver was supposedly keeping the car for me until I got a driver license.
I was somewhat confused at my mother’s scorn for stories, for she told some of the most fanciful stories. She taught us to believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. She told us to put each of our baby teeth under our pillows at night, so the Tooth Fairy could exchange them for money. I caught a glimpse of my father putting money under my pillow once night, when I was supposed to be asleep. He usually left a nickel or a dime. I decided that Santa Claus was a hoax when I located some new Christmas toys hidden in the garage. Sometimes I wondered if Jesus was real.
Each winter, Steven would go on ski trips with his entire family. It was a lonely day for me while Steven was gone. My father was usually too weak to participate in sports, but he allowed us to pretend we were camping, in the yard. My sisters and I liked to sleep on the grass in sleeping bags. I enjoyed it so much, I often rolled out my sleeping bag under broad daylight. I slept outside with several of the neighbors. I also slept on the roof of our house, with my mother. This was not as comfortable as the lawn. My mother tried to be a good sport about it, but she hated the experience of sleeping in a sleeping bag. My father always slept in the house. I also liked to spread blankets over a small table in the house, and pretend it was a tent.
Being outside at night left me vulnerable to mosquito stings. After being stung in my eyelids, they swelled until I had difficulty seeing. Scratching them vigorously didn’t make the itching go away. My teachers at school and church gave me ice packs or wet towels in a futile attempt to reduce the swelling.
Sometimes our sleep-out parties included staying up late on Fridays to watch Nightmare Theatre on a television in the neighbors back yard. We had a fascination with being scared. None of our parents cared to join us for this event, and most of us would fall asleep before midnight. The only such program I remember watching in its entirety was The Attack Of The Mushroom People. It was about a mysterious island where people got so hungry that they ate the mushrooms and transformed into masses of mushroom fungus.
Steven’s family kept cats, and a dog. I sometimes took fish scraps for those cats, to watch them eat. It was natural to want a cat of my own, but my mother hated cats. Befriended a certain stray cat I called Puss-In-Boots. It would come to me whenever I called, until someone poisoned it. Mother grew tired of my frequent inquiries into what happened to that cat, how it died, and who buried it.
My oldest sister Sandy gave our family a puppy, which we kept in a box in the back yard. It was the center of my attention for about a week, when Sandy and her roommate wanted to take it back. My mother agreed, and sent the puppy away.
Had lots of fun at church activities in the Burton and Southgate Ward building. Each month there was a ward dinner, where I enjoyed setting up chairs and sweeping the floor. Sometimes there were dramatic plays, dance shows, or musical presentations. This was where I would play the piano in public. This is where I decided I liked a girl named Gail in one of my junior sunday school classes.
By the church parking lot was a sandy area with a high steel slippery slide where my father took us to play. That was the best slide in the city. One time we found three unfamiliar boys playing on the slide, and my sisters and I were reluctant to go climb on it. My father ordered the other children to get off. They sadly obeyed, leaving the slide for the sole pleasure of the Beall children. One of the boys thus evicted complained to me that, “Your dad thinks he owns the whole church.”
Bishop Sparreboom was very generous with prizes at each ward dinner. He once gave me – and others – boxes of candy, because we had birthdays in the month of February.
One of my junior sunday school teachers was pregnant, and developed a rather large abdomen. I didn’t understand pregnancy when I asked her, “Hey, how come you’re so fat?” She didn’t answer me.
The Paetsch cabinet shop, on Stratford Avenue, left their scraps of lumber in a pile on their driveway. My father often collected the wood; he would burn it in a stove inside our garage, or construct shelves with it. He also collected boxes of sawdust, which he used to help automobiles get enough traction to drive out of ice traps.
Steven and I wandered by the Paetsch place one evening, when we found a can of tar, with a paintbrush, sitting with the lumber scraps. We painted several blotches of tar onto the door and brick wall, just for fun. My father heard about it, and inquired if I had anything to do with it. Steven and I implicated each other, and were sent to clean it up. We appeared before Mr. Paetsch, very humbled, and attempted to wipe off the tar with cotton cloths. Not much, if any tar came off. Someone eventually scraped all the tar from the door and re-painted it, but traces remained visible on the cinder block wall for many years.
Along State Street, by the paint store, was a small patch of pea gravel with a greenish hue. Some of the children had the notion that this gravel was special. One of the older boys figured I was an easy target for a scam, so he approached me with a handful of that pea gravel, as I walked home from school. He said he could sell me some for only one quarter. Did I have twenty-five cents?
I protested, pointing out the similar gravel on the ground. Oh no, he said, his gravel was special. It was different. And he would let me have it for only a quarter. I looked into a coin purse I happened to have with me, and pulled out a quarter. It was probably my cub scout money. I handed it to the boy in exchange for his handful of pea gravel. Later on, I wondered what I was supposed to do with that gravel.
The Madison Elementary School was used as a community gathering place, where people could enjoy a variety of entertainment. In the east schoolyard I enjoyed carnivals and cultural events. Inside the school auditorium I saw many Disney movies, hypnotists, musicians, choirs, magicians, and dancers.
During one of these shows, I was carrying a toy pocket knife, which I obtained from a prize machine at the Grand Central variety store. Such toys were common among little boys. One of my poor classmates, Shaun, was sitting next to me, watching me cut paper with the knife, and rubbing the stock. He desperately wanted that knife, and had nothing to lose by begging for it.
“Can I have it?” Shaun repeatedly asked. I repeatedly refused, losing count of how many times this went on. He wouldn’t accept *no* as my final answer.
Before that event was finished, I gave the knife to Shaun. Asked nothing in return; received no trade, and no favors. Simply gave it to him because it made him shut up.
My first introduction to a musical instrument came at the Madison Elementary School. It was the end of my second-grade year; the children in my class were given a hearing test. After this test, the school’s music teacher, Miss Larsen, visited with my mother. She said I had a musical ear, and suggested I join her orchestra class. She didn’t have anybody to play the acoustic bass, or bass fiddle, so I was recruited. My above-average height may also have had something to do with it.
I enjoyed playing music with this orchestra. Some class sessions were stressful, but I could leave it at school, at the end of class.
Miss Larsen was the first to notice that the ends of my little fingers were slightly bent, in a fixed position, which affected my ability to reach across the neck of the bass. Some would suggest the fingers were double-jointed, but they weren’t.
My mother had little interest in my efforts with the acoustic bass; perhaps she thought it was a passing fad. She had no intention of purchasing an acoustic bass, but she did purchase an Everett piano.
Although my mother didn’t know how to play piano, she wanted her children to learn. She was the first in our family to have piano lessons. After she put us children to bed, I could hear her at the piano upstairs, rehearsing her assignment. After arriving home from school, I sometimes played that piano, as a child plays with toys, strictly for fun. It probably sounded like noise to my father.
I had some music rehearsals with the orchestra during the summer, before the start of my regular third grade year. Since I was already at the Madison school building, my mother also put me into an arts and crafts class.
During one of these classes, we were playing games in the gymnasium. Picked up a large ring, or hula-hoop, which was discarded when another child lost interest. I didn’t use these rings as hula-hoops, because they were too large to swing around my hips. A certain classmate grabbed my hula-hoop and demanded, “Let me see it.”
Let-me-see-it was a flag phrase, used by some children who were determined to take things without returning them. Wanted to be sure he’d give the hula-hoop back to me, so I asked him to promise to give it back. He said “I promise.”
So I released the hula-hoop to him, trusting his promise. I’m not sure what he meant by that promise, but he didn’t return my hula-hoop when I asked for it. He took two other hula-hoops I found in the same manner, and didn’t return them or let me play with them until it was time to go home.
One day, Nora announced she had found a piano teacher for me. I never asked for one. The reality set in when Nora began sending me to Naomi Chipman for lessons.
Mrs. Chipman was a kind woman who glued shiny foil stars to the music pages, and gave me soft chocolate chip cookies to reward acceptable efforts. I loved Mrs. Chipman, but I loathed my mother’s practice requirement.
The bass was for me, Nora said, but the piano was for her. She insisted I practice for 30 minutes daily, and she put a timer on top of the piano to make sure. I would resent it for many years.
One good thing that came out of my friendship with Mrs. Chipman was the gift of a puppy. It was a small mixed breed poodle, which I named Betsy. Betsy belonged to me, and lived 21 years with our family. I first learned about unconditional love from my dog Betsy.
My parents purchased a bicycle as a birthday gift for me. It was a Schwinn three-speed. My father was adamant that I not allow people to ride it. Many of the children in the area wanted to ride my bicycle. Couldn’t please everyone.
There was a certain boy who was mentally retarded, who wanted to ride my bicycle. Didn’t see any harm, so I let him ride it. Then he insisted that I sit on the bicycle with him. I protested, and he questioned me why. Didn’t have a good explanation for him at that moment, so I did it, to please him.
This boy was much older and heavier than I. As he pedaled the bike, our combined weight forced the tires out of the rims. Both tubes were ripped to ruin. The tires may have been damaged as well. Then the boy got worried that he might be asked to pay for the damage. He said “I’m not gonna pay for it.”
My father became angry when he saw the condition of my bicycle, and severely scolded me for allowing someone else to ride it. He was also upset that it cost him about five dollars for the repairs.
When this boy happened to walk down Stratford Avenue again, my father went outside and gave him a tongue lashing. He was so loud about it that several neighbors went outside to see what Mr. Beall was so agitated about.
After I turned 8, I became active in cub scouts. Cub scout dues were fifteen cents a week. The den leaders used this money mostly for craft supplies and award emblems. The trick to keeping a cub scout happy was to keep his hands busy; one afternoon each week, we met at the den mother’s house, for simple games, arts and crafts, and dramatics. One day, we spent time at Bonwood Bowl. Another, we spent time at the Classic Skating rink. Didn’t get much practice time roller skating or bowling, so I was not very good at it. Had a great time trying, and being with the gang. The church building was the location for scouting awards ceremonies. During these ceremonies, each mother was invited to come forward and kiss her son in front of the audience, as he received his awards. Many of the boys – myself included – detested this.
Each year there was a music contest in the Burton Ward building, where people displayed their musical talents. Prizes were given in each age group. I participated by playing piano. It seemed that people were less interested in the piano, because they could hear it played every Sunday at the church. Other instruments got more attention. Kim Eskelson won first prize for a Pete Seeger song he sang with his ukulele; something about Billy Barlow. It was more striking to me the next year, when he again won first prize for playing that very same song.
M’y father’s tastes were usually at odds with mine. While I liked to eat grapefruit with a coating of sugar, he insisted that a light sprinkle of salt was better. He liked to cut my hair, and made it an unpleasant experience for both of us. Rather than turning around me, or bending his knees to get into position to trim a portion of my hair, he twisted my head into the position he wanted, then yelled at me when I moved. Sometimes he used a soup bowl as a guide for trimming. The resulting style was never to my liking. When he took me shopping for rubber winter boots, he pressured me into taking the zipper style that he wanted, rather than the buckle style I wanted. During walks through snow, those zippered boots would slowly come unzipped.
My orchestral involvement continued through my third grade year, which was a mixed class with fourth grade students. The teacher, La Rue Seamons, also happened to play the piano during class.
There was no alarm, or bell, or reminder from any adult as to when I should leave Mrs. Seamons’ class for orchestra; no magic alert in my mind. There was a clock on the classroom wall, but I had no tendency to watch the clock. I had no wristwatch. If I was focused on a class project when orchestra was to begin, I often missed orchestra. This caused Mrs. Seamons to refer to me as The Absent-Minded Professor.
Mrs. Seamons designated a certain spot near her desk as the magic chair. Each day, it was an honor for a student to move his desk into that position when his name was chosen from a stack of cards. The requirements were that the student be present in class, on a good relationship with the teacher, and up-to-date on his or her schoolwork. If these requirements were not met, another student might occupy the magic chair spot for several days continuously.
It seemed that while I occupied the magic chair spot, Mrs. Seamons drew more names of students who were absent, or she would “forget” to draw a new name, or the student whose name was chosen had not kept up with their schoolwork. Mrs. Seamons kept me in the room after school a few times to sing to her friends. She usually invited me to sing The Impossible Dream in which I substituted the word _Pain_ in place hell, because many people were bothered by the mention of hell.
Some of my classmates felt that I was the Teachers Pet.
Bishop Van Ry of the Burton Ward, recruited me and a few of my friends to distribute some advertisements to every house in the Burton Ward area. After we finished the work, he took us to Zissi’s Restaurant for hamburgers and milkshakes. Then he gave us each a dollar. We all felt rich.
The city of South Salt Lake hosted a Fourth Of July Parade each year. Many children decorated their bicycles with crepe paper for the event, and many motor vehicles were fashioned into floats. The parade started at Madison Elementary School, and continued south on State Street. Almost every citizen was there to watch or participate.
For my first appearance in the parade, my friend Steven and I rode our special *Vroom* trikes. After two years of not getting any prizes, I noticed that the judges seemed to favor clowns riding bicycles. My neighbor Ricky got the trophy for best bicycle while he was dressed as a clown. So in 1970, I decided to dress as a clown and ride my Schwinn bicycle in the parade. I was not trying to be a funny clown; I just dressed like one, and was awarded the trophy for best bicycle that year, as entry number 6.
In the Summer, the South Salt Lake Library hosted activities for school children: Disney movies, cartoons, folk singers, story tellers, puppet shows, and book reading. Children on Stratford Avenue would gather on Saturday mornings, and walk to the library.
Steven was in a teasing mood one morning, as he caught me off-guard, and shoved me into a shrubbery. He was delighted when I chased after him, as he ran laughing. We passed more shrubbery along Main Street, where I found opportunity to return the favor. Revenge wasn’t as sweet as I had imagined.
Steven sat and cried. He didn’t bother to chase me. The girls sympathized with him and scorned me. One told me to “pick on somebody your own size.” Steven and I were actually about the same size.
The single most enjoyable experience I had in South Salt Lake was a party for my ninth birthday. It was better than Christmas, because I shared the day with six of my friends: Stanley Orr, Billy Jensen, Steven Pelusi, Stephen Mortensen, Kevin Spencer, and Todd Gansauge. My parents served ice cream and cake, and everybody ate it. Todd’s father brought a six-wheeled all-terrain vehicle, in which we had the most delightful ride, over piles of construction debris.
Nora began agitating for our family to move out of South Salt Lake. Long-time residents of South Salt Lake were slowly moving out into the suburbs. Perhaps Nora was motivated by their example. The time was right for her children to get a fresh start in a new school, where they would benefit from having more children to play with.
According to Nora, she paid my grandmother rent of “what I wanted to pay” for the Stratford house we lived in. It was almost certainly less than the fair market value.
My father didn’t want to move. According to him, he had approached each of Nora’s parents with an offer to buy the Stratford property. He didn’t want his family to worry about rent when he died. The exact dollars of his offer were not revealed to me, but the reply from both my grandparents was the same: “Well, we’ll see.”
stuart james beall 