Friday, April 15, 2011

Working at Heaps-a-Pizza while at BYU

I have nothing but fond memories of your dad. When I think of him I picture him smiling or giggling because I don't remember him in any other mood. He always seemed to be "up" and it helped brighten everyones day. I don't have a lot of stories (at least ones I can tell to his children), but here's one you have probably heard. When we were roommates, he was a delivery guy for Heaps-a-Pizza in Provo, which is now The Brick Oven. At least once a week had us call in an order for a large pizza toward closing time with a fake address. When pizza's was undeliverable and returned to the restaurant, the workers were encouraged to take them home rather than throw them in the garbage. It seemed we always had pizza for breakfast.
Terry was always the mediator with all of our girlfriends. I was dating my now wife when living with Terry. She thought the world of him.
I'll do some more thinking and let you know what I came up with.

Jack

Confrence Cake, Apple pie cake and other yummy recipes Dad loved

FOOD IS A TRADITION

So it's Sunday morning and I was making conference cake for my family
and got thinking about this tradition. Now I'm not sure if it was mom
or dad that started this tradition but I remember loving this. It's
probably why I've done it with my family. But it did get me thinking
about how dad would find and bring home all sorts of recipes for mom
to try. There was one recipe that dad brought home but made himself.

Apple Pie cake!
I remember Sunday evening and dad sending one of us kids down to the
fruit room to get apples. We would peel the apples and dad would mix
up the rest of the ingredients. We would have hot Apple Pie Cake with
ice cream and mom would pour canned milk over hers.

4 cups sliced apples 3/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup sugar 3/4 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp cinnamon 1/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup chopped nuts (optional) 1 egg beaten
1 cup flour 1/3 cup
evaporated milk
3 Tble water 1/2 cup melted butter

Mix sugar, Cinnamon, chopped nuts, and apples. Put in 9x13 baking
dish. Mix the rest of the ingredients and pour over apples. (Apples
will not be completely cover) Bake at 325 for 1 hour.

He also found a recipe for cherry chocolates that he would make for christmas.

He loved to look at the recipes in the news paper and try them. Especially the sweet ones.

More times than not it would rain of conference weekend. But on the
slight chance it was good weather. Mom would pack a lunch (or we would
stop at KFC) and we would head up the canyon for the afternoon. I
remember playing in the river, making boats and racing them. Or Dad
would find a open field and we would play work up baseball with a
plastic bat and ball.

I thank my parents for the good times that make good memories.

Melis

Monday, March 21, 2011

The White Rocking Chair and The Bell in Grandma's Back Yard

The beautiful antique piano we had in our home growing up came with my Great Grandmother from England. It had a self player in it at one time, but as the story goes there was a mouse in it that she was determined to get out. She tore the self player out trying to get to the mouse. Other than the self player being out it was in great condition. We also had an old white wood rocking chair that I for some reason linked with the piano. Therefore I always thought that it was my Great Grandmothers. UNTIL, I beleive that I was home from college with one of my friends that I worked with. I sat down in the rocking chair and proudly told my friend where the chair had come from. Dad was sitting in the room and looked and me and said, "That's not where that chair came from. I stole that chair off some old lady's porch when I was at BYU." I was a little surprised, Not only to haer that it was not my Great Grandmother's and that he actually fessed up to the fact that he ruthlessly took it from some old lady's porch.

I was curious to hear the story from someone else so I asked Arlene if she knew of this. This was her response..."I don't know about the rocking chair, but I do remember him stealing the big bell at your grandma's house. He was the secretary of a club at BYU. For some reason he was suppose to watch it. He did he watched it all the way to Garland. I think he told them that somebody stole it. He neglected to tell them it was him."

This bell in no small thing. It is about 2' tall and solid as they come it has to be 100+ pounds. The bell belonged to BYU or the "BYU Young Men Fraternity" I'm not sure. It has something right on the meatal of the bell. I'll have to check it out next time I am home. I remember thinking someday BYU is going to find out that it is at Grandma's house and someone is going to be in big trouble.

Play Ball...

I think one of my favorite memories of Dad was going to the ball park
with him. I can remember as a little girl him being my coach. (I think
he coached all of us at some point) We would practice at the Garland
Elementry school in the mornings. It seemed like the whole summer we
where at a ball game every night of the week. Wether is be one of us
kids games or the womens games at Garland or Deweyville parks.

Playing ball has good memories. I can remember not being very old and
Dad put me on 2nd base at the Garland Elementry School. There was a
runner on 1st and 2nd and a batter up. All I can remember is the ball
getting hit and holding out my mit. I caught the ball tag my base and
touched the runner. I got all three outs. I think this was the
beginning and end of my ball career, even though I loved the sport.

I remember running around ball parks playing games with the other
kids, getting treats at the hamberger shack and one time, out to
Deweyville, Nate caught a bull frog that dad let us bring home. I
can't remember the frog living very long. I think it escaped to the
field out back.

Melissa

Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Dad burned EVERYTHING even the koolaid

I don't think that Mom left us home alone with Dad very often, but one of the first times she did Dad managed to burn our dinner he was to cook for us. He burned it BAD! So from that day on we were sure that dad couldn't make a thing without burning it...even the koolaid! Poor dad, this carried though until I was at least in High School. I guess that is where he got his love for Taco Time. He gave up on even trying to cook and just took us to there. Then again, maybe he did it on purpose so he had a good reason to go out.

Meg

Memories from Dad's childhood friend Marilyn Burke

It will be difficult to narrow my stories down, but I will try.
Terry and I met in kindergarten. Every day I would take some art object home to my mom after school. One day,
I came home and mom asked me what I brought home today to give to her. I moved aside and standing behind me was Terry. I brought him home to you mom. Isn't he cute?


We were usually in the same classes all through grade school. I used to take pictures with my camera once in awhile. They are black and whites, but I will try to see if I can find them.

In the third grade, I played marbles with the boys. Terry and I would win most of the games. We got everyone's steelies and Ron Thompson really got mad at us for taking all of his.

In the forth grade, Terry had a girlfriend. Donna, he went around the school ground with his arm around her.
I have a great picture of them together.

In the summer, we played with the little goats on Terry's front lawn. They would eat my socks.
We also played around the barn and walked up to the cemetary when we were bored.
There was an old building on the corner above his house where we played and threw rocks at the birds up in the top of the eaves of the bld.

It was very fun each spring to go to the canal behind Terrys on the way to the cemetary. We picked up bags full
of aspergass and took them home to our mom's.

Most of our fun was in Jr. High and High School. In Jr. High we used to go to Mrs Capners to thug watermellons.
This was with Richard, Sue Archibald and myself. Mrs. Capner would stand on her front porch and shake her cane at us to get out of her garden. We did, with the watermellons.

Playing in the ditch at the Jensens house was also fun. Our parents didn't mind. We would float down the ditch for
a few hours.

In the 8th grade, I was sent to the Red Cross clinic in Logan for a week. After I came back, Terry was teasing me that I wouldn't be able to do much with my training. We were walking from Garland across the street from the elementary
school and noticed a car stopped with a man in the car slumped over the wheel. Terry said "Give Him Mouth to Mouth:
You are trained for that now. We opened the car door and he snorted a couple of times and then started talking to us.
We started laughing so hard that we couldn't shut his door. He took off with the door open and that was our red cross work for the day.

Going to the Box Elder Fair was another great event. We both had 4H projects that we entered for ribbons. We usually got ribbons to display. And then there was the Rodeo.

I have 5 or 6 more stories to post, I will enter them in a second e-mail

Marilyn Burke

Memories from Dad's cousin Arlene

There are so many stories I could tell you about Terry. Terry was like a big brother to me, since mine were 10 and 13 years older than I was. When we were younger, Sue, Jody, DeeAnn and I would have sleepovers during the summers. We would always sleep outside and Terry would be outside with us.

When we both went to BYU, we rode together. We made it from BYU to Odgen in 1 ½ hours. That doesn’t seem to be a short time. The freeway didn’t go from Tremonton to Provo. We had to get off in Salt Lake City and go on the back roads. I think we hit about 90 miles an hour, when we were on the Freeway. It was a miracle that we weren’t killed or picked up for speeding.

When I met Bill we always did thinks with Terry, mostly playing cards. We really loved to play pinochle (hopefully I spelled it right), most of the time we would play with my one roommate. When we got married, we decided that my one roommate and Terry would stand in our line.

The night we got married, we went on our honeymoon in my mom and dad’s camper. I think both of them helped to pull all of the labels off the cans of food in the camper, also putting a bushel of apples in the cab and two or three bushels in the camper. Somebody went and got the truck and camper for us that night so we could go on our honeymoon. We left the church in Garland and when we got to the old East Garland Church we stopped. I thought I might have left one of my suitcases home. To our surprise when we opened the door to the camper, there were my roommate and Terry. They said that they just wanted to play cards with us. The just knew that we would all have a great time that night playing cards. After much thought, about leaving them at the old church, and letting them walk home, we took them to Uncle Blaine’s house and left them there.

When we got home from our honeymoon, we were talking to Terry and my roommate, and they told us that neither one of them had any money. So if we had just taken them with us to Logan, they would have been stuck there without any money and no car. They were just lucky that we did find them before we got to Logan.

Terry got a teaching job in central Utah. It was really boring for him, so he would come to Provo on most weekends and stay with us. I remember he had a couple of Dogs. I came home and there were Dogs in our apt.. They had messed all over the floor. I could have killed him.

One weekend we decided to take some people down and see him, and stay the night. We were playing night games in his house and somebody sat on his bathroom sink and pulled it out of the wall. We were so worried that he wouldn’t be able to fix it, I guess he did because we never heard that his landlord charged him to fix it.

There are soooooo many stories of our years at BYU. I really enjoyed his love and friendship during that time.

Arlene

Sunday, March 13, 2011

Karl meets Dad

The first time Karl met dad we went down to Salt Lake with the family to see 'Disney on Ice'. Karl is a cautious person. Our family is a little more, shall we say "warm" than most people he was used to. We had a great time. Our family welcomed him right in. Karl held my hand for the first time and wasn't sure if he was OK with this in front of my family. He hadn't held any girl's hand before, but he faired ok through the evening until we went to leave and he realised that he didn't have any change to pay for parking. So, much to his dismay I asked my dad if he had some money for us to pay for parking. My dad walk over to Karl and gladly handed over a couple buck along with the remark, "I can't beleive I'm paying you to 'park' with my daughter." Karl was mortified! We still laugh about it to this day. Dad was always good with words. Yet another trait I didn't get from him. How did I miss out on all these good traits???

Meg

Monday, February 28, 2011

Reflections of Haylee's birth and blessing

When dad had his brain tumor removed one of the things that it damaged was the part of your brain that helps you decide what is important and what is "nice". It was a hard thing to deal with for the year he lived after surgery. I wasn't around much, but I dare say that it often led to much extra stress. Karl had joined the military and we were in Monterey, CA for his Chinese training. I was pregnant with our second, Haylee. Mom and Dad came out for the birth of Haylee the end of July. She was due July 24th, which is about when they arrived. Dad loved Monterey. He loved to eat there and drive around on the beautiful coast. We spent a lot of time on the warf when dad came to visit. Waiting wasn't too big of a deal until Dad decided that he NEEDED to go home. So I talked to my Doctor. He was a good and understanding man. He generally pushed not being induced, but understood our condition. We scheduled the induction which was a mess, but when they finally got me in everything went smoothly. I was happy to have my dad there for the first few days of my sweet baby girl. He cuddled her and kissed her, but he was happy to go home. He had yearbook stuff he NEEDED to get done.

My mom and dad had driven out and Dad couldn't wait to get home so they bought him a plane ticket and flew him home. Of coarse mom didn't want to drive home alone so she convinced my aunt Sue and Grandma Alta Munns to fly out and drive home with her. Flying was something that Grandma had never done. I was thrilled to have her there to see my new baby. Something I never got to share with her with any of my others. That is the only time she had been on an airplane and she swore from the time her feet hit the ground that she would NEVER DO IT AGAIN! I was grateful she had on this one occasion.

Haylee's blessing was similar. We moved just a month after she was born to San Angelo, Texas. There we stayed with an older lady name Mary Lou Roberts. She had a little one bedroom apartment attached her carport. We got to be good friends with Mary Lou. Casron loved her and would stand at the screen door watching for her. It was a fun relationship we had with her. This was a great thing because Dad did his best to finish off his time as a school teacher. It was a high priority of his and the only time he had off to come down to Haylee's baby blessing was a long weekend in October. That weekend just happened to be stake conference. So we talked to the Bishop and the got special permission to have the blessing at home. Our little one bedroom apt was much too small for mare that about 5 people. So we asked Mary Lou if we could use her house. She was happy to let us use her place. She excitily shared with us that before there were enough members of the church there in San Angelo that her home was their meeting place so had been dedicated as a place of worship. It was a neat experience. Again I was happy to have my dad there for those special moments. He didn't feel very good that weekend, but her was there! It also gave some good friends of ours that lived down in San Antonio, Bruce and Maurie Pomaroy, a chance to see him before he passed away.

Meg

Memories form Uli (our German exchange student)

During my high school year as a German exchange student I lived with the Munns family. From the first night at what was going to be my home for the next ten months (I was dead tired after a 20 hour journey, yet so keyed up, that I kept babbling in rocky English) it was clear to me, that Terry (later I called him „Dad“ and he remained it, even though I haven’t seen my American family for over 12 years now) was the glue, that kept everything together. He radiated a contentment and a sense of delight, that was reassuring.

I often wondered, how he managed to keep calm in the midst of all the teenage drama that surrounded him at home and at school. But even though he sometimes rolled his eyes (or rather he lifted his eyebrows) on something we kids did (the Munns’ had to endure a big part of my not so pleasant teenager-days – sorry for that!), the deep love for his family was always present. At the same time he challenged us to do and become the best we could. He wouldn’t accept excuses, but kept encouraging until we could be satisfied with ourselves – a true father and teacher. Thank you for that!

Monday, February 21, 2011

My writing, His eyes, and THE LIP...

My dad made it very clear to me that I was not a good writer.  Something he was very talented in and I obviously didn't get from him.  He would tell me that I can write more run-on sentences than anyone he knew.  On top of being a bad writer I was horribly slow at typing.  I remember his frustration one weekend night when he took me up to the school to finish typing a paper that I'm sure I should have had done WAY before that day.  I think that he may have taken my rough draft and finished it for me...maybe, I don't remember, but I do remember him being very frustrated.   Despite all my follies I want my kids to know a little more of the wonderfully fun man he was.   So I'm trying to start writing a bit of my memories of him.

One of my favorite things about my dad was his bright eyes typically full of excitement.  One of the funniest things though was his face when he was mad.  He would tuck his tongue between his lower lip and his bottom teeth and push his chin out.  If this was the look you encountered with him You knew that you had done something wrong.  Although you usually knew that you had done something wrong long before you saw the lip.

Meg