Night of Nostalgia, Part 2

I will start Part 2 with the memory of our neighbors, the Mendenhalls.  Their son Johnny was one year older than Jane & I, and their daughter Patti was a year younger than us.  They also had identical twins, Tim & Terry; son Brett; daughter Gina; and son Adam.  This is a picture of their house. Johnny and his wife Lenna (who Jane and I went to H.S. with) still live here.

We used to play at the Mendenhall's house all the time and we would "sleep out" at either their house or our house several times during the summer.  The hill you see in this next picture was behind their house and we would sled down it during the winter months.  This was a very fun sledding hill, but a bit dangerous because there wasn't a fence between this hill and the spillway & canal. (See picture of canal in my last post).

This is a picture of the home mom & dad bought in Spanish Fork after dad retired and had to leave the Power Plant.  Dad always said he retired he wanted to get a house that was halfway between the Provo Temple and the BYU football stadium.  Well, that never happened, but my parents both served as Ordinance Workers in the Provo Temple and living here didn't keep Dad from attending several football games.

Pictured here is the house my Dad and his wife Pat lived in after they got married a few years after mom passed away.  This house was located kind of above the Power Plant.

This is a view of part of Spanish Fork from above the Power Plant.  None of these homes existed when I lived up there.  Of course, it has been over 40 years since I left Spanish Fork so one could expect a lot of change during that time.

We used to have so much fun playing on this pond close to our house.  We would build a raft and pretend we were "Huckleberry Finn".  I remember catching many frogs here too.

This is the Icelandic Memorial built in 1938 honoring the Icelanders who settled in Utah. Many of them settled in Spanish Fork.  We saw this lighthouse-type memorial quite often when we visited our friend Christine as it sat right next to her home.

When I was a child, we attended this church. It is actually not a church any longer, but a reception center.  On the outside, it hasn't changed much over the years.  It is a pretty unique building...built to look like an open book cover.  I wish I could go inside once again, but I am sure things on the inside now would not even resemble at all what I remember from my childhood.

Our next stop on this night of nostalgia was the Spanish Fork Cemetery. This was a great experience for me. I had not been able to visit my parent's graves since Dad's funeral in 2007. I was flooded with many wonderful memories of both of my parents as I stood at their graves. I, like Nephi in the Book of Mormon, was born of goodly parents.  I am thrilled with the knowledge that I will be reunited with them when I have completed my mission here on the earth.  I am very grateful for eternal families. 

Our very last stop in Spanish Fork was to visit our best friend growing up - Larraine Gull Rosenbaum. We had seen her briefly on Tuesday afternoon at Education Week, but could not spend much time talking with her because we were all rushing to our next class.  We were able to spend about an hour with Larraine at her house catching up on all of our children and grandchildren.  After we left her house, I mentioned to Jane that we should have taken a picture of the three of us together but neither of us had thought to do so.

I need to thank Jane for her desire to "kidnap" me and provide me with such a memorable evening. It just couldn't have turned out any better.  Actually, what would have made it even more special for me is if Janice and Gayle could have been there with us.  Hopefully we can all do it together sometime soon!