Life History of DuWayne G. Squire - The Teen Years Continued

I have been blessed to grow up in a home where my parents not only loved each other, but they adored each other.  They have a love that started as teenage infatuation and has withstood the test of time and the test of great trials. I grew up listening to the stories of my parents' courtship and it is fun to read them.

The Teen Years Continued

When I first noticed that Helen had grown up and was no longer a little pest was while I was dating Quinta Nielson and Mont Sanders was dating Helen’s cousin, Afton Wilson. We were going on a date to a high school dance and our friend, John Segler, wanted to go with us and didn’t know who to ask to go with him. We suggested he ask Helen Gubler, who was a friend of Quinta and Afton, and so he did. The six of us went together to the dance and the other activities of the evening. Before the evening was over, John, Mont, and myself noticed that Helen was the best dancer and was by far the most fun to be around. We all became enamored with Helen’s beauty, wit, and flirtations. From then on, we all wanted to date Helen. I immediately decided to start dating Helen, if she agreed. John didn’t appreciate this turn of events and let me know that he was the one that discovered Helen and, therefore, he felt he should have a monopoly on her. Too bad, John! I began dating Helen but John didn’t go down without a fight. He began asking Helen out two to four weeks in advance, so I started doing the same, plus I began taking her on dates other than to school events. John persevered for a time but he began to see the handwriting on the wall. Helen had let me know that between the two of us, she chose me. But that didn’t stop her from dating some boys from her school class from time to time.

                                                           

Helen loved to dance and I am sure she was the most popular dance partner in the school. For instance, back in those days they gave out dance cards listing the 18 to 24 dances planned for the evening. Boys would ask for a dance and the girls would write their name in and tell them which number they had. By the time Helen had danced a couple of numbers, she would have all of her dances spoken for. I soon wised up and would tell her that I was to get every other dance number. I even got greedy and once asked for all of the dance numbers. Bad mistake! I could tell Helen wasn’t happy with that arrangement, so I didn’t make that mistake again. However, being a slow learner, I didn’t make another gross error when I took Helen to a movie and skipped the dance. That was one cool evening—I mean, it got down near freezing. I can understand why Helen enjoyed going to the dances. The two best dancers in the school were my age and they could dance up a storm and Helen was their favorite partner. Needless to say, I didn’t especially like either one of them! However, even though they got the dance accolades, I got the girl!

By the time I was a senior, Helen and I were going quite steady. She did manage to shake me up once in a while with dates from fellows in her age group in the sophomore class.

Helen and I were on the go all the time in my Model A Ford. I remember on one trip we took Thell and Elaine with us to a ball game in Cedar City. It had been cold and snowy weather up in Iron County, and the roads were ice packed. We would drive down main street in Cedar City, and I would turn my wheels sharp and hit the brakes, and we would go whirling around and around for a block or so. Helen’s mother nearly chewed my ear off when she found out about that escapade; she gave me a quick lesson in driver’s education.

During my last two summers of high school, I worked for Reed Wilson on his farm and spent much time in digging ditches, thinning peaches, irrigating, planting tomatoes, strawberries, and a host of other chores. At harvest time, I peddled fruit and melons in Cedar City, Parowan, Paragonah, Beaver, Minersville, Milford, Fillmore, Kanosh, and Delta. I had many experiences while on these trips, some good and many that were not so good, which opened my eyes to the ways of the world—a world from which I had been sheltered while living in Dixie.

An illustration of these experiences happened in Beaver. A lady who was probably in her twenties bought two bushels of peaches. When I carried them into her house, she asked me to set them down and follow her into another room. We ended up in her bedroom where she asked me to sit on the bed while she tried to find her money. While she was looking for her money, she told me that her husband had been stationed in the CC Camp in LaVerkin (the CC Camp was later purchased by E. J. Graff and turned into a chicken farm), but he was now in the military service and had been gone for over a year on an overseas assignment. She continued looking in drawers and around the room, but she just couldn’t remember where she had stashed the money. Finally, she flat out asked if there wasn’t some other way she could pay for the peaches. Being very naive, she nearly had to spell it out for me so I could catch on to what she was alluding to. I stammered and told her that my boss insisted on cash for every bushel of peaches. At that point, she grabbed her purse from the dresser and handed me the money with a great show of disgust. I literally ran out of her house!

On another peddling trip, Reed Wilson sent me with his brother, Dilworth, and a brother-in-law, Carlyle Sullivan. I drove the three quarter ton truck and they drove the one and a half ton truck loaded with pears. When we got situated at Beaver, it soon became apparent that I was to do the peddling and those two were going after the women in the restaurants, telephone office, and any other place they could find them. They were both married and had several children, but it seemed that they chased women and drank liquor all day and all night long.

I sold my truck load of pears, and we loaded it full from the big truck. Since I had covered Beaver, Milford, and Minersville in those first two days, Dilworth called Reed and told him we were not doing very well and that the pears were just not moving, and so he thought it best that we try Richfield and Gunnison over on Highway 89.

Carlyle and Dilworth stayed with the women that night. They told me to get up early and they would meet me at my hotel room the next morning. When they arrived the next morning, Dilworth was with a woman and he told us to go on ahead and he would meet us in Richfield as he and his gal would drive over after breakfast. We took off with me driving the little truck and Carlyle driving the big truck. We stopped at Cove Fort and bought some cookies and such for breakfast. Carlyle said he would go on ahead of me, and so we started up over the Cove Fort cutoff road to Highway 89. The road was a dirt and gravel road with a great deal of washboard roughness. It was very dusty following the truck so I dropped back and opened a package of cookies as I bounced along. I ate a couple of cookies and laid the package on the seat, but, as we bounced along, the cookies slid off the seat by the passenger door. I was in a gentle turn when I leaned over to feel for the cookies. When I straightened up, I was on the rough shoulder of the road in the rocks which caught my right front wheel and pulled me over the steep embankment. The truck rolled completely over and ended right side up with the rear end sitting on top of a spruce tree. The engine was revving up and the rear wheels—suspended in air—were spinning 80 miles an hour. When I came to my senses, I turned the key off and started trying to get out. The cab was mashed flat to the bottom of the window on the driver’s side, and so I opened the passenger door and found that I was about ten feet above the ground. I got out and climbed down the tree I was resting on.

I was sitting on the edge of the road when Carlyle came back. He had noticed I wasn’t behind him by the time he got to the top of the pass, and so he turned around and came back. Soon after, Dilworth and his girlfriend arrived and others began stopping. We had someone stop at Cove Fort to call a wrecker. While we were waiting for it, who should come along but our old neighbor, Walter Segler. When Dilworth saw Walter there, he sent his girlfriend over to stand by me. She was in a pair of shorts with a halter-neck top, and she hung on to me giving the impression she was with me. You can imagine the story Walter told everyone in LaVerkin when he got home that day. He said that I had this little chippie who was nearly naked riding with me and it wasn’t any wonder that I couldn’t keep my eyes on the road. Anyway, it took a lot of explaining when I got home. I am sure many were never convinced I was telling the truth, especially since I couldn’t tell them that the gal was with Dilworth.

The next summer following my junior year, I worked for Reed for a while and then was offered a job on a maintenance crew in Zion National Park. I was making $5 a day for about ten hours work for Reed and would make $8 a day for an eight hour shift in Zion National Park. Dad wasn’t convinced that I should leave a steady, secure job to go for the “bucks” in Zion. If I thought Dad was disappointed in my decision, I didn’t know what disappointment was until I told Reed Wilson I was quitting. He thought he had a lifetime lease on my soul, so he treated me like dirt from that day on for several years to come. He wouldn’t speak to me unless he had to, and he was always giving cutting remarks about the fact that I wrecked his truck and was thus indebted to him. As far as the truck wreck goes, I know that he came out very well since it was covered by insurance, and the insurance company paid for many more bushels of pears than was damaged by the wreck.

I had enough points accrued toward my high school graduation that I only had to attend a couple of classes in my senior year. So, with the money I had earned working at Zion, I was able to do a lot of chasing around and dating. Helen’s folks put a damper on dating school nights which was a very good thing for both of us.

I had determined that I wanted to be an auto mechanic and have a little farm on the side. So, when I graduated from high school, I prepared and saved to go to Dixie College. I was able to live at home because that year Dixie College bought a new station wagon and assigned a driver in Hurricane to pick each of us up who wanted to attend Dixie. We had a full load, and it worked very well to be able to come home every night. I took a schedule loaded with auto mechanics and crafts for the winter.

During winter quarter, I missed a couple weeks of school because of complications following a tonsillectomy. For several years during the winter, my throat would become inflamed and so sore I could hardly swallow. On numerous occasions, doctors had told the folks that I should have my tonsils out. It finally became so bad that I went in on my own. When they looked at my tonsils, they said they were too infected to operate. They gave me penicillin shots for at least a month to try to clear up the infection. They indicated that they were still bad, but they really needed to come out. So they gave me local anesthesia and set me in a dental chair. The Cocaine and Novocain they were giving me didn’t deaden my throat at all. I could feel the cutting as though they hadn’t anesthetized me at all. I was coughing blood all over the doctor and the wall behind him. He had to keep stopping to clean off his glasses. When they finished, the doctor told me that I was immune to local anesthesia as he had tried three or four different types and none of them numbed my throat. He also told me that I was a bleeder and should alert any doctors who planned any future operations. I had lost quite a bit of blood and was very sick for the next several days. On the eighth day after the operation, I was awake most of the night gagging down blood. The next morning, I threw up a bucket of blood and the folks called the doctor. They rushed me to the hospital in St. George where the doctor said the area where my tonsils had been had rotted and sloughed away leaving a hole about the size of a golf ball. They called the college for volunteer blood donors, and a Pete Johnson came over and gave a pint of blood for me. While receiving it, I went into shock, and they stacked quilts on me about 12 inches high. That night the doctor took some forceps and clamped a wad of gauze about the size of a golf ball and had me hold the forceps pushing the gauze in the sloughed-away hole. Before he left me, he told me not to let that come out or I would bleed to death. About 11:00 p.m., I got to choking and panicked. I yanked out the gauze and called for a nurse. When she came in, she really chewed me out stating that Dr. McGregor was at a Lion’s Club meeting and would be very upset at being disturbed. When Dr. McGregor came, he was upset and he chewed me out before clamping some fresh gauze and telling me to keep it in my throat. I survived! I was reminded several times how lucky I was to be alive after that incident.

No wonder my dad is such a tough man!