Mom and I waited a while to try and have a second child. I was attending school and we were living at Y-Mount Terrace--BYU's married student housing. I was working at the Provo Temple laundry. One Sunday evening Mom and I attended a fireside put on by the Stake. The 1st Councilor in the Stake Presidency was Dr. Peterson, who had been my doctor in my childhood. The gist of the meeting was that young couples should not put off starting a family. It was an open question and answer meeting. I don't remember any of the other questions that were asked, but I asked if a couple was justified in delaying having another baby if they knew that they could not afford to have another child at the time. I knew from our experience with Adam, that even with insurance, deductibles and copays would cost us over $5000. We were not likely to have that kind of money anytime soon. We were already strapped as poor college students getting by on one minimum wage income. Even if we had two minimum wage incomes, it would have been hard to imagine having that kind of money. So, I felt justified in asking the question. Dr. Peterson's answer was simple: "Perhaps you just need more faith." It was a stunning response. Dr. Peterson knew my family. He had delivered half of my siblings. He knew that my parents had 12 children on my father's school teacher, single wage earner income. The moment reminded me of my father's council: "Have all of the children that you can, and always pay your tithing, and everything will work out." That's not quite the Dave Ramsey approach. But, mother and I decided to have a second child based on that fireside.
Mother and I have always paid a full tithe, though quite often we had to scrape hard to get it all paid at the end of the year. I was in the bad habit of writing my tithing checks and then holding them in my wallet until we could afford for them to clear. This is a bad practice and we were often having money trouble because of it. During the good times, and they have not been many, I had no trouble coming up with any lagging tithing at the end of the year. The Lord has blessed us more greatly than we deserve and we have never had to go without much. But we knew what it was like to not be able to drive to visit family because our car might not make the journey.
I dropped out of school with the intention of making money to catch up on our debts, before finish up my college. I was working at the Temple, and working at Burger King. We had moved back into the 4-plexes that my grandfather owned. Back then I had the attitude that if I just worked harder, or worked more we would get ahead. Luckily Mother was always supportive and faithful to me. I needed to work smarter. Mom had a friend who was selling electronics and appliances at SILO. RCWilley hadn't yet moved to Orem. When I learned that Mom's friend, Denise Farnsworth, was earning over $16,000 a year as a salesperson, I went in and applied. I had experience in door-to-door sales, and had some retail experience, and I believed that I could do this.
The store manager (Denise told me later) threw my application in the trash and made excuses that I would have to see the District Manager in Salt Lake. I was persistent. But the manager called Salt Lake and told them he didn't want me hired. (I also learned this from Denise.) Salt Lake told me that my application had been lost and that I would need to fill out a new one. So I did. I just so happened that the Salt Lake District manager was promoted to a position in Oregon, and a new district manager came in from back East. He didn't know that the Orem manager didn't want me hired, and he took me on the spot. I studied electronics inside and out, and purchased a couple of electronics magazines. I studied everything I could about selling.
I vividly remember my first day on the sales floor. I was terrified. But I survived, and though my sales volume wasn't high, I could do one thing that earned me a chance with the store manager--I could sell extended warranties. Eventually I became familiar with the products that we had for sale and was one of the best salesmen at SILO earning Salesman of the Month on a few occasions.
What does all of this have to do with John? Well, it was the income from this job that actually helped us to afford to have another child. At this time Grandpa and Grandma Brown were still purchasing health insurance for Mother through Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Idaho. I also picked up insurance through my work. The double coverage meant that we were able to have John without the huge out of pocket as with Adam. Dr. Peterson's injunction to have more faith was vindicated and we were blessed for following it. An added blessing was that shortly after having John we were able to get into our home in Pleasant Grove.
John was born in November, just before Thanksgiving. This is about the busiest time of year for electronics sales. So I was putting in a lot of time at work. It is a time when salespeople do not ask for time off. Grandma Brown had come down to get Mom to the hospital. She had been having labor and didn't recognize it as such. So John was not a scheduled, but an emergency C-section. I got the call at work, went to the back room and collected my things, and headed for the door. The store manager stopped me and asked, "Where do you think you're going?" to which I responded, "To the hospital." Denise or someone else reminded the boss that Mother was having a baby.
John was born at the Orem Hospital on a Wednesday. Mom's stays after child birth have always been five days due to the recovery time from C-Section. I was able to be with Mom the following day, being Thanksgiving and SILO was closed. Mother still complains of the Thanksgiving on which she only got to eat chicken broth. I ate well because Mom had been in the middle of cooking when she realize that she was having labor pain. Grandma was there helping Mom with the dinner. So I got Turkey with all the trimmings. We weren't tempted in the slightest to name John, "Tom."
The next day was Black Friday, the crazy sales day, and I didn't miss that, or the Saturday that followed. I think we brought John home from the hospital on Sunday, though it might have been Monday.
This was a good time in our lives. I was earning better money. I have two healthy kids. And, because I was in sales, I often had morning off at home. So we played a lot. We watched movies together a lot. And eventually we would play video games together a lot. But at this time we played in the snow. We went for hikes and bike rides. We gardened together. I never had weekends off, but Adam and John were not in school yet, so that didn't really get in the way of our fun. Parents don't have to have money to have a great time with little kids. Teens are another question, but we wouldn't have to mess with that for a few years yet.
I don't think we were in the Pleasant Grove home until after John was born. My memory seems to be that it would be the following March that things would start happening on that front. But life was good and Mom and I couldn't have been happier.
My memories of John as a little boy include him playing in the sandbox that I built in our back yard, him losing his drawers playing on the slip-n-slide that we made in the back yard, him sweeping the driveway with a big push broom and looking to see if anyone was paying attention to what a good job he was doing.
John struggled with reading in the early elementary grades. I had not had my teacher training yet, so I didn't know best how to help him. I felt that if I sat him down and helped him (forced him) to focus that he would learn just fine, but that was not the case. I probably did more harm than good. It wouldn't be until 8th Grade that John would take off as a reader. He might have taken off earlier than that, but...
For some reason John's age group in the Pleasant Grove Ward had a rough time in their teen years, and Satan tried to take our precious boy from us. John was spending time with boys who were into some unhealthy practices. When Mother and I felt the prompting to move to the mission field we went to the Temple to pray about it. One of my main concerns was that John and Jeannette both needed strong leaders in the church to help them. I was worried that the programs and auxiliaries of the Church would not be as strong as our children would need. So I asked the Lord about that and received an assurance that if I would do as the Lord asked, we would not lose our children. The Lord made good on that promise. In many respects I think that being in the mission field helped our children gain stronger testimonies of the gospel. I know that obeying the promoting of the Spirit has made a great difference.
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