A New Home for Two
"The plan was to drive – we had the whole next week to drive up to Pleasant Hill where Ralph had a little apartment. He had found a little apartment for us and he had actually been living there for a month or two. As I was sorting through stuff and getting stuff ready to go, I’d ship it to him. Like I already had pots and pans so I sent those up to him and he put those together and was using them. Just all the stuff that I had and all of our wedding presents, a lot of them we sent up, those boxed up, but there were also some things that were breakable stuff that we put in the car as we were driving up.
"On Monday morning we climbed in the car and headed to Northern California. We spent the next night in Claremont, we went to see his parents for a little bit, but they had arranged for us to stay up with a judge they knew in their ward and she was out of town so they arranged for us to stay at her home. And then, I don’t know if I have these all in the correct order but we stopped one night in Solvang, and we stopped another night at Morro Bay, and we saw Hearst Castle which is there in San Simeon, we stopped at Big Sur, and we stopped at Monterey Bay, and then we got into town on Saturday. This was the first time I would be seeing our apartment in Pleasant Hill, California.
"We just finished up our honeymoon and we got into Pleasant Hill and I saw the little apartment that he had picked out. He’d been shopping at different sales and so on and got some used furniture for us, had a nice bed for us, got a new mattress, all the bedroom furniture he’d got used – and it was in really good shape, we are still using it today, it got a nice dining room set with a table and six chairs and were still using it today – I’ve covered the seats on the chairs several times but 25 years later we’re still using it. He got a couch – which we are not still using – that was like three or four couches ago, so you know he had set it up as nicely as he could it. He was pretty excited that here he was getting everything ready for his wife. So we went to church on that Sunday and then Monday morning he handed me a Pleasant Hill map, he handed me the ATM card, he handed me the checkbook, and he handed me a ward list and said, “See you in 10 days honey.”
"He headed off to fly down to Southern California where he was working. He had been working on a site at Hinkley which is - if you’ve seen the movie, Erin Brockovich talks about the site there where PG&E dropped a whole bunch of contaminates into the soil. This is the site that he was working on. He would normally work 10 days on, four days off. He would be gone for 10 days and so I started in to get all my stuff unpacked.
"Boxes were arriving, things that were sent from Arizona, all the wedding presents. I started to get to know the area a little bit, I had my car so I’d drive around, and I’d be able to figure out what is going on and see things. It was kind of a trail by fire; you just have to jump in a go. So that was just fine, I was married, I was happy. I would see him a whole lot more than I did before.
"A lot of times people would say, “uhhh, that’s so horrible that he’s traveling all the time!” I said, “I’m still seeing more of him then I did when we were dating, cause it was all long distance.” By the time we got engaged we had actually been in the same city for almost nineteen days. That was our courtship, just getting to know each other long distance. It was good to finally be in the same town to see each other on a day to day basis – when he was in town."
"After that first trip down to Barstow, then I drove my car down to Fresno two weeks later and met the two at Rodger and Sue’s house, then I drove down with them to Southern California so we could have our Wedding Reception there in Southern California. My parents and my brother were able to drive over for that, and my sister. We just had a great time at that Wedding reception! Ralph was feeling well, it was Ralph’s mom’s open house there. So we really enjoyed ourselves being together at the reception met a lot of people, I had no idea who they were but they were important to Ralph and so that was good.
"We were in the Pleasant Hill third ward – which no longer exits anymore – we were there about 11 months until we bought our first house over here in Concord. But it was a great ward, lots of young single, couples that were just starting their families or were just newly married – great time to be there. I went into, uhm, after about a month I went in and registered with a temp agency and did some different jobs. In Lafayette, down in San Ramon at the Bishop Ranch office park, and then I got a job working over in Ellinwood which is in Pleasant Hill and was working for Bank of America, and they eventually hired me on.
"I was working in the loan/credit department with people were paying off loans of credit. Nice environment to work in, nice people – haven’t kept in touch with any of them, but some really nice people and it was easy work not too taxing. I would think - should I do something with Music Education? We were planning to start a family in a couple of years so we really didn’t want to – I had figure out that I could not be a mom and a band teacher and do either one of them well.
"I was fine working with the temp agency and working with Bank of America because I knew it was only going to be a couple of years hopefully until we were able to start having a family. I enjoyed our time there in Pleasant Hill, I sang with the ward choir and I can’t remember what my calling was there in that ward, anyways, just a nice group of people. We enjoyed our place there, it was a good location Ralph could walk to BART there at the Pleasant Hill BART station. A lot of times in the evenings I would walk down to meet him. I would get dinner preparations going after I got home from work and then I would walk down to meet him when he was coming home. We enjoyed getting to know each other and to see each other and he was still doing a lot of traveling."
"On Monday morning we climbed in the car and headed to Northern California. We spent the next night in Claremont, we went to see his parents for a little bit, but they had arranged for us to stay up with a judge they knew in their ward and she was out of town so they arranged for us to stay at her home. And then, I don’t know if I have these all in the correct order but we stopped one night in Solvang, and we stopped another night at Morro Bay, and we saw Hearst Castle which is there in San Simeon, we stopped at Big Sur, and we stopped at Monterey Bay, and then we got into town on Saturday. This was the first time I would be seeing our apartment in Pleasant Hill, California.
"We just finished up our honeymoon and we got into Pleasant Hill and I saw the little apartment that he had picked out. He’d been shopping at different sales and so on and got some used furniture for us, had a nice bed for us, got a new mattress, all the bedroom furniture he’d got used – and it was in really good shape, we are still using it today, it got a nice dining room set with a table and six chairs and were still using it today – I’ve covered the seats on the chairs several times but 25 years later we’re still using it. He got a couch – which we are not still using – that was like three or four couches ago, so you know he had set it up as nicely as he could it. He was pretty excited that here he was getting everything ready for his wife. So we went to church on that Sunday and then Monday morning he handed me a Pleasant Hill map, he handed me the ATM card, he handed me the checkbook, and he handed me a ward list and said, “See you in 10 days honey.”
"He headed off to fly down to Southern California where he was working. He had been working on a site at Hinkley which is - if you’ve seen the movie, Erin Brockovich talks about the site there where PG&E dropped a whole bunch of contaminates into the soil. This is the site that he was working on. He would normally work 10 days on, four days off. He would be gone for 10 days and so I started in to get all my stuff unpacked.
"Boxes were arriving, things that were sent from Arizona, all the wedding presents. I started to get to know the area a little bit, I had my car so I’d drive around, and I’d be able to figure out what is going on and see things. It was kind of a trail by fire; you just have to jump in a go. So that was just fine, I was married, I was happy. I would see him a whole lot more than I did before.
"A lot of times people would say, “uhhh, that’s so horrible that he’s traveling all the time!” I said, “I’m still seeing more of him then I did when we were dating, cause it was all long distance.” By the time we got engaged we had actually been in the same city for almost nineteen days. That was our courtship, just getting to know each other long distance. It was good to finally be in the same town to see each other on a day to day basis – when he was in town."
"After that first trip down to Barstow, then I drove my car down to Fresno two weeks later and met the two at Rodger and Sue’s house, then I drove down with them to Southern California so we could have our Wedding Reception there in Southern California. My parents and my brother were able to drive over for that, and my sister. We just had a great time at that Wedding reception! Ralph was feeling well, it was Ralph’s mom’s open house there. So we really enjoyed ourselves being together at the reception met a lot of people, I had no idea who they were but they were important to Ralph and so that was good.
"Saying goodbye to my parents, I remember it was kind of - - - when I said goodbye before when I was leaving after the wedding I knew I would be seeing them in a few weeks, but at this point I knew that I wasn’t going to see them for awhile and that just made me a little sad and these are my parents and I love them dearly. It was a very sad on that trip I found out my dad had just been laid off from the job he had been working. My mom was still working but my dad wasn’t.
"You know lots of challenges with finances and money over the years for my parents. Hard working salt of the earth people. They love Lord but just having like one career that would just kept them in one place was just not their lot in life. As they look back over their life they are able to see – this is why we needed to be here [at a particular city] at this time, and this is why we needed to be here at this time – the Lord blessed them to somehow make it work. But the Lord was able to use them in a lot of different places to bless the lives of people in the Gospel or to in the case of Gabbs to get the land they needed to build the chapel.
"After that reception, the next day Ralph and I – Ralph had a truck he had driven from work – so we put all of our wedding presents in the back of the truck and we drove up to Fresno, picked up my car and then we went on from there to the Bay Area. And here life is good!"
Married Life
"We were in the Pleasant Hill third ward – which no longer exits anymore – we were there about 11 months until we bought our first house over here in Concord. But it was a great ward, lots of young single, couples that were just starting their families or were just newly married – great time to be there. I went into, uhm, after about a month I went in and registered with a temp agency and did some different jobs. In Lafayette, down in San Ramon at the Bishop Ranch office park, and then I got a job working over in Ellinwood which is in Pleasant Hill and was working for Bank of America, and they eventually hired me on.
"I was working in the loan/credit department with people were paying off loans of credit. Nice environment to work in, nice people – haven’t kept in touch with any of them, but some really nice people and it was easy work not too taxing. I would think - should I do something with Music Education? We were planning to start a family in a couple of years so we really didn’t want to – I had figure out that I could not be a mom and a band teacher and do either one of them well.
"I was fine working with the temp agency and working with Bank of America because I knew it was only going to be a couple of years hopefully until we were able to start having a family. I enjoyed our time there in Pleasant Hill, I sang with the ward choir and I can’t remember what my calling was there in that ward, anyways, just a nice group of people. We enjoyed our place there, it was a good location Ralph could walk to BART there at the Pleasant Hill BART station. A lot of times in the evenings I would walk down to meet him. I would get dinner preparations going after I got home from work and then I would walk down to meet him when he was coming home. We enjoyed getting to know each other and to see each other and he was still doing a lot of traveling."
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