A Spelling Bee AND A Touch of Class

Here is a double whammy today. More than you asked for . . .

January 1985
. . .We had intended to come back to Boise on Monday morning but in the wee hours of the morning Loyd suggested that we drive down to Provo and spend the day with Susan as Jim and his sister were planning on skiing that day. . . . We got the boys (Chris and Loyd) and took them with us. We taught the children how to play the alphabet game in the car and Loyd said he couldn’t read so he didn’t want to play but he entered into the spirit anyway. Those children are so bright. Earlier in the morning I mentioned to Loyd (the elder) that I would like to take them to P-i-n-n-o-c-h-i-o. Little Loyd looked up and said, "To Pinnochio?" I asked him how he knew for I had spelled it and he said, "Well, it began with a P and ended with an O." Then as we were playing the game, Chris and I were both stuck on finding a J and Loyd (the younger) suggested to Chris that he look up in the sky and find a J for Jupiter. That is a kindergartner!!

May 24, 1979
At 10 p.m. Loyd and I drove downtown to the Idaho Bank and Trust Company where Susan was on a clean-up crew, this to be a nightly job. When she came out to the car she was upset, on the verge of tears, and declared that she couldn’t go back to the filth of the job. The straw that "broke the camel’s back" was the dirty cigarette ashes and the smell of tobacco and this lovely girl could not do it. She said one of the other girls had suggested to her that she should lie about going back to school when she applied for other jobs so she could get one and this also upset Susan and she said, "I just can’t lie." Loyd replied with a bit of sage wisdom when he said, "Susan, it costs more to go first-class!’ and I thought how true that was but also that Susan would always pay the price and she would always be first class.
Years later when she was on her mission this trait of hers was reemphasized when she sent us this poem:
Does it have to be this way?
Do we really have to accept the mediocrity around us?
I’m sick of excusing bad manners, bad intentions and every kind of evil
With a bland "But everybody does it."
It just isn’t true.
"Everybody" isn’t everybody
I still want to be me.
I don’t want to accept second class values
From third rate moralists.
Somewhere out of the confusion of the life that was
And the life that is,
I want to pick up the pieces and build a suitable me.
And if one soul awakens,
Is not the whole world strengthened?"