{"id":85718,"date":"2020-06-07T21:52:45","date_gmt":"2020-06-08T03:52:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/?p=85718"},"modified":"2020-06-10T14:17:30","modified_gmt":"2020-06-10T20:17:30","slug":"a-brief-and-perhaps-somewhat-too-colorful-autobiographical-fragment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/2020\/06\/a-brief-and-perhaps-somewhat-too-colorful-autobiographical-fragment.html","title":{"rendered":"A brief and perhaps somewhat too colorful autobiographical fragment"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>
This building, at the corner of Mission Avenue and Walnut Grove Drive in Rosemead, California, is the chapel that I attended with increasing regularity over the course of my childhood and adolescence, first in the Rosemead Ward and then in the newly created San Gabriel Ward. I\u2019m grateful to Wade Englund for locating this photo for me on Facebook. I recall it being mostly faced with light green stucco as I grew up, and then being changed to white.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Sabbath seems, especially when one is effectively under house arrest, an appropriate day to do personal and family history, and, candidly, I\u2019ve been prompted quite a bit over the past two years or so to get serious about genealogy. \u00a0Here, though, is a short sketch of something that came to my mind this morning:<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

My father grew up on a farm outside of the mighty metropolis of Garske, North Dakota. \u00a0His father had been born in Denmark and then brought over to the United States as a baby. \u00a0His mother was definitely born on the Kj\u00f8snesfjord, a long bay of Lake J\u00f8lster, in Norway. \u00a0She came to America when she was about twenty-two years old.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

In some regards, at least, my grandmother appears to have been a strict Lutheran. \u00a0For one thing, she taught her children that swearing would send one directly to Hell.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

When my father became a teenager, this put him in a dilemma that he related to me many years later. \u00a0It brought home to him in a powerfully acute and personal way the problem of divine justice:<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Living on a farm, he was obliged to milk cows. \u00a0He hated<\/em> milking cows. \u00a0And even when he was older, his father would always tell him \u201cYou can stay out as late as you like, but the cows have to be milked at 4 AM.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Worse, though, was how irritating<\/em> cows could be. \u00a0While you were milking them, they would be continually hitting you in the face with their indescribably filthy tails. \u00a0And just when you had filled the milk pail, they would kick it over, or stick their indescribably filthy hooves in the milk.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

He was convinced that it was impossible to milk cows without swearing. \u00a0It was the only language that they understood.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

But it simply wasn\u2019t fair<\/em>. \u00a0He had city cousins who never had to milk cows. \u00a0Their chances of going to heaven, accordingly, were reasonably good. \u00a0But he had been born on a farm. \u00a0Ergo, he had to milk cows. \u00a0Ergo, he would unavoidably be damned. \u00a0But where was God\u2019s justice in this?<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Okay. \u00a0That\u2019s background for the autobiographical fragment that follows:<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

I grew up in southern California. \u00a0While I was a child and into my early teens, my mother was a marginal though occasionally communicant Latter-day Saint who had been raised in a fairly marginal and economically downscale family in St. George, Utah. \u00a0My father was still a (non-communicant) Lutheran. \u00a0(I baptized him a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints<\/a> on the night that I was set apart as a missionary.) \u00a0He and my uncle owned a small construction company, for which a maternal uncle and a paternal uncle also worked. \u00a0(My other uncles were in farming, trucking, and construction.) \u00a0I grew up, to a significant degree, surrounded by construction people and mechanics. \u00a0So, to put it mildly, salty language was endemic to my childhood environment.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

By the time I was born, my paternal grandfather had died, and my grandmother had moved from chilly North Dakota down to southern California, where all but one of her six children had previously moved. \u00a0(The Los Angeles area had really begun to boom during and right after the Second World War.)<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Where<\/a>
The San Gabriel and Rosemead Ward chapel was demolished some years ago. It was quite a shock to me when I drove by one day and saw this scene. (Thanks to Wade Englund for locating this photograph, too.) I had exactly the same shock one day when I drove to see the house in which I had been raised until I left for college, and saw only an empty lot with a portable construction outhouse on it. The sensation of seeing the sites of one\u2019s childhood erased is a sobering one. The building was still standing, though, in the summer of 1977, because, by invitation, I was back speaking then in my former ward\u2019s sacrament meeting \u2014 my parents had moved to Whittier and I had just graduated from BYU \u2014 when, out of the blue, a young Colorado woman whom I had dated twice at BYU and who was briefly visiting California (but who had found out from my parents where I was) suddenly swept into the chapel with a non-LDS high school girlfriend who was studying at Caltech. The young Colorado woman and I were married the following year.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

One evening \u2014 so I\u2019m told \u2014 my parents were driving with my grandmother, and we passed by the Latter-day Saint chapel where my mother occasionally took me to church services. \u00a0This has to have been prior to 1958, which is the year that both of my grandmothers died. \u00a0I was very, very young. \u00a0I\u2019ve always understood that the chapel in question was the one that I attended as a child and from which I would eventually leave on my mission to Switzerland. \u00a0I can\u2019t confirm that, but it seems reasonable; the chapel had certain architectural design features that were reminiscent of the Los Angeles California Temple, which was dedicated in 1955.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

I was sitting on my grandmother\u2019s lap and, as we passed the church, I apparently said \u201cJesus Christ<\/em>! \u00a0Jesus Christ<\/em>!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cDanny!<\/em>\u201d my grandmother exclaimed in horror. \u00a0\u201cWhat<\/em> are you saying?<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cJesus Christ!<\/em>\u201d I responded. \u00a0\u201cThat\u2019s what the man in there said. \u00a0And he was really mad<\/em>!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

My Lutheran grandmother was, I believe, not a particular fan of the Latter-day Saints. \u00a0And I doubt that her grandson\u2019s outburst while sitting on her lap did much to improve our reputation with her.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 \u00a0 The Sabbath seems, especially when one is effectively under house arrest, an appropriate day to do personal and family history, and, candidly, I\u2019ve been prompted quite a bit over the past two years or so to get serious about genealogy. \u00a0Here, though, is a short sketch of something that came to my mind 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