Working in Yellowstone Park
"I got a job working at Yellowstone Park. About the first of May, I took a bus up to Butte, Montana and spent the night, and caught a bus the next day to go over to Livingston, Montana then on to Gardnerville, which is right by the north entrance to Yellowstone Park, that is where it leads to Mammoth Hot Springs. I worked there from May until the end of August. I was there for about four months. It was a great experience, the first time out on my own, fortunately there were several other LDS kids that were working up there. So I found a roommate right off that was LDS, and moved in with her, then a month later I moved in with another LDS girl, Norma Brooks, she was just delightful she was a student at BYU and she was from Arizona and she was working for the summer, she was my roommate. They had a little branch out there and we’d go over and attend church there in Mammoth Hot Springs, there were 10 to 15 students that joined those who lived there, and we would go over there to attend church. I was called to be a Relief Society teacher for the summer."
"I started out bussing the tables at the coffee shop and within a month I was a waitress. I was able to [live in the dorms] I were living there by store, they had a place for employees that needed a place to stay there. They would take our rent out of our paycheck and sometimes you could maybe get a negative paycheck if you weren’t working a lot of hours. I tried to work as many hours as I could about 40 hours a week, but it was mostly the tips that you would get as a waitress that you would be making your money on. I came home after that summer with $600 in the bank. That was enough for all of my tuition for the next year of college, because at that point at Utah State it was $184 for each quarter at school. And I had my $600 in the bank and that was what was going to be my tuition for the next school year."
"Another thing that I kind of did while up there that was really kind of fun - my roommate Robin was big into knitting. And she was knitting a sweater. I thought well my mom had taught me how to knit, my mom taught me how to crochet, my mom taught me how to sew. On one of our days off, we took the bus, we went up to Livingston, Montana - she and I went to a craft store, got myself some knitting needles, and I got myself some yarn and a pattern and I started knitting sweaters. For the next several years in my spare time I would knit sweaters I would crochet afghans. In fact when my friends got married I would crochet an afghan for them. I really enjoyed that, I like having my hands busy when I was watching TV or I was just sitting talking with people I really enjoy having my hands busy. I made a sweater for my dad that he wears even now it’s about 30 years old and my mom teases me even now says that he will be buried in that thing that he wears it so often. So he has his brown sweater that I made for him, I made a couple of sweaters for myself that had fancy patterns cables in different cables stitches and different fancy stitches on them. It was kind of fun I also made some sweaters for some other people. Kind of fun and I really enjoyed it."
"It was a very good experience for me to be away from home to learn that I could stand on my own two feet I could make my own decisions mange my own money, I thought that was very smart of my parents to give me that opportunity because hadn’t gone away to college. They gave me that opportunity to go up there and work. It was good for me to have to learn to talk to people because when you are a waitress you have to talk to people, and lot of your tip is based on how well you do talking to people. It was a good experience for me to have to learn to talk to people and to put myself out there and be friendly with total strangers. That was a very good experience. I did get homesick sometimes, but that’s okay, it’s good to learn to miss home."
"I remember, I was working there in Yellowstone Park, it was June 8, 1978 and a young man came up to my roommate and I, and said, “hey I just heard they are giving blacks the priesthood”, and we looked at each other and said, “What!” “yeah I just heard on the news that they’re changing their mind about that” and my roommate and I just looked each other and whoa this was huge, and so we watched the news that night and saw what the news had to say, and then I called my dad to talk to him. We didn’t do a lot of phone calls back and forth because it was kind of expensive, and we didn’t have money for that, but I called my dad to talk to him and I remember talking to him and saying wow this is great. This is so exciting, it was also exciting too, because we knew the Nugent family that was baptized from Jamaica who were black and they had joined the church knowing that he could not hold the priesthood, so this was so awesome and within a couple of weeks they were on a plane to Salt Lake and they and their family were sealed there in the Temple. And Paul Merrill came down from Washington to be there when they did that. So it was just wonderful."
"I started out bussing the tables at the coffee shop and within a month I was a waitress. I was able to [live in the dorms] I were living there by store, they had a place for employees that needed a place to stay there. They would take our rent out of our paycheck and sometimes you could maybe get a negative paycheck if you weren’t working a lot of hours. I tried to work as many hours as I could about 40 hours a week, but it was mostly the tips that you would get as a waitress that you would be making your money on. I came home after that summer with $600 in the bank. That was enough for all of my tuition for the next year of college, because at that point at Utah State it was $184 for each quarter at school. And I had my $600 in the bank and that was what was going to be my tuition for the next school year."
"Another thing that I kind of did while up there that was really kind of fun - my roommate Robin was big into knitting. And she was knitting a sweater. I thought well my mom had taught me how to knit, my mom taught me how to crochet, my mom taught me how to sew. On one of our days off, we took the bus, we went up to Livingston, Montana - she and I went to a craft store, got myself some knitting needles, and I got myself some yarn and a pattern and I started knitting sweaters. For the next several years in my spare time I would knit sweaters I would crochet afghans. In fact when my friends got married I would crochet an afghan for them. I really enjoyed that, I like having my hands busy when I was watching TV or I was just sitting talking with people I really enjoy having my hands busy. I made a sweater for my dad that he wears even now it’s about 30 years old and my mom teases me even now says that he will be buried in that thing that he wears it so often. So he has his brown sweater that I made for him, I made a couple of sweaters for myself that had fancy patterns cables in different cables stitches and different fancy stitches on them. It was kind of fun I also made some sweaters for some other people. Kind of fun and I really enjoyed it."
"It was a very good experience for me to be away from home to learn that I could stand on my own two feet I could make my own decisions mange my own money, I thought that was very smart of my parents to give me that opportunity because hadn’t gone away to college. They gave me that opportunity to go up there and work. It was good for me to have to learn to talk to people because when you are a waitress you have to talk to people, and lot of your tip is based on how well you do talking to people. It was a good experience for me to have to learn to talk to people and to put myself out there and be friendly with total strangers. That was a very good experience. I did get homesick sometimes, but that’s okay, it’s good to learn to miss home."
"I remember, I was working there in Yellowstone Park, it was June 8, 1978 and a young man came up to my roommate and I, and said, “hey I just heard they are giving blacks the priesthood”, and we looked at each other and said, “What!” “yeah I just heard on the news that they’re changing their mind about that” and my roommate and I just looked each other and whoa this was huge, and so we watched the news that night and saw what the news had to say, and then I called my dad to talk to him. We didn’t do a lot of phone calls back and forth because it was kind of expensive, and we didn’t have money for that, but I called my dad to talk to him and I remember talking to him and saying wow this is great. This is so exciting, it was also exciting too, because we knew the Nugent family that was baptized from Jamaica who were black and they had joined the church knowing that he could not hold the priesthood, so this was so awesome and within a couple of weeks they were on a plane to Salt Lake and they and their family were sealed there in the Temple. And Paul Merrill came down from Washington to be there when they did that. So it was just wonderful."
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