Shriveled More Often Than Not In Our Pool

**(Picture of Connie and Miki before the pool was finished)

When I turned five, Dad started building our pool. Dad wrote in his life story, “We couldn't even wait for it to fill before we got out there in it. Now here is the hard part to believe about the pool. It only cost us $191.91. We built it out of the income tax return that year. That isn't counting labor. If I counted my labor, it cost us 1 million dollars"

I thought it was the greatest thing he had ever done. He built the house and garage, but they were of little consequence compared to our pool. Miki and I were in the pool while Dad was filling it for the first time and still painting it; we just couldn’t wait.

We had lots of visitors after the pool was finished; mostly the cousins. We had special games we played. Our favorite was “Dibble-Dabble.” One person would jump in with a small twig or matchstick and release it under water somewhere. When it floated to the top and someone saw it, they yelled, “Dibble-Dabble” and jumped in to get it. Then everyone else jumped in to create utter chaos and whoever ended up with the twig was the next to hide it.

We spent hours in the pool, playing mermaids, creating “gorgeous” hairdos by dipping our heads under the water, and flicking our heads back as we jumped up out of the water, creating little geysers. Sometimes there were monsters in the water and we had to stay on the steps so they wouldn’t gobble us up. Some days we’d pretend the brothers and boy cousins were the monsters and then we could leave the steps, but had to make it back before the monsters caught us. The only catch to the game was that we usually “forgot” to tell the boys they were the monsters. It was much more interesting that way.

**(Notice how “deep” the deep end of the pool is! That’s Blaine at age 5 and it’s all the way up to his waist!)
We spent so much time in the pool we were wrinkled more often than we weren’t. Most of the summer we looked like shriveled up prunes. The neighbors often saw a couple of wrinkled mermaids with fancy wet hairdos running across the hot dirt street to Teeny Weeny Market to buy Sugar Daddy suckers with “borrowed” money and rush back hopping and screaming with the searing pain on our bare feet. We’d shriek as we’d jump back into the pool--making mud, but it didn’t matter, it felt so good. That pool was our kingdom. We were queens, and if the boys happened to be in the pool, they were our slaves, and on those rare occasions they had to run across the hot dirt to the store for us. (We would let them buy a piece of candy-a small price to pay for no singed feet).

We had a lot of good times in our pool. It was only two-feet deep in the shallow end and went all the way to four-feet deep in the deep end, but it didn’t seem shallow to us; it was Olympic- sized in our minds. It was our heaven. We watched anxiously each time Dad put the chlorine in the water; he’d grab a gallon bottle and run around the edge of the pool, splashing glops all the way around. It always amazed me that he didn’t fall in while he was doing this because he always seemed to be leaning way over the edge the whole time. We set a portable TV near the side of the pool and spent many nights watching TV as we floated in the warm chlorinated water. Our favorite was to watch The Twilight Zone, staring at the stars and wondering when “the aliens” were coming to get us.

Dad’s Life Story says, “In 1955 I undertook the project of painting and building up around the pool. I built a Bar-B-Q and a waterfall out by it and also built a dressing room. When I filled the pool it took 4700 gallons of water to do it. We got us a 6-quart Ice Cream freezer that you don't have to crank by hand and boy do we enjoy ourselves out there by the pool; dive in and then get out and have some homemade ice cream. Boy is that good.”

We had summer Barbeques and parties. We loved cooking hamburgers and hot dogs on the brick Barbeque Dad built next to the pool. Best of all we loved Dad’s homemade ice cream. We took our turn cranking the handle that turned the metal container filled with cream that would soon be icy and delicious (and somehow, when Dad bought our first of many electric ice cream makers, it just didn’t taste as good as it had with all that hard work and anticipation). Our favorite was when Dad made maraschino cherry and pineapple ice cream, with a gumball hidden somewhere in it. Whoever got the gumball in their serving won an extra helping. Actually, all they got was a gumball because everybody got extra helpings.

We hated seeing the first big Santa Ana (Santana) winds of autumn because it always brought a pool full of leaves and dirt and no more swimming (mostly because who the heck was gonna scoop all that stuff out of the pool? Not us kids!).

Connie Wanna Penny?

**(Picture of Connie and Alta, who were born two-weeks apart)

The Lord has been good to me in blotting out all those traumatic memories before the age of five. That way Mom and Dad could fill in all those years with nothing but wonderful tales of babyhood and I’d have to take them at their word. Truthfully, I can’t imagine how life with a sweet, innocent, highly intelligent girl-child could be anything but a glorious experience. But come to think of it, that wasn’t how the story went; it seems to me there are a few family pictures of a “not-so-sweet” girl-child in action, too.

**(Pictures of Connie in the mud, and Connie being a pain in the rear)

I was told many times about my first contest and what an unwilling participant I was. Because I was two-weeks younger than my cousin Alta, it seems everyone in The Family expected me to do everything she did at least within two weeks. Mom always felt I should go at my own pace and that Dad’s family shouldn’t expect me to keep up with Alta. Daddy felt otherwise; at least on this occasion.

I was about a year old and because I was Daddy’s first child and we were visiting his family, he wanted to show me off; however, I was in no mood for games. It seems Alta stood on her head in front of everyone at Grandma’s house. Whether this was literally accomplished or just figuratively, I was never told, but the fact remains that she DID it! So Daddy, who saw the sun rise and set in little Connie, volunteered her head for “standing on.”

Connie thinks, “Ho! Ho! Nothing doing!”

Daddy says, “Come on, Connie. Alta got a penny for her little trick.”
Connie thinks again, “Hey, I can just take the penny, but no tricks to earn it.”

But Daddy says, “Nothing doing! Stand on your head if you want a penny.” Nothing ever comes cheap, but I still refuse and decide to see if tears would help. Ha! Lots of tears, but still Daddy says, “No headstand, no penny.”

**(Picture of Connie with Grandma Kemsley, the matron of "The Family")

Now there are plenty of tears and Daddy decides to paddle my wee little bottom because I refuse to abide by his child labor laws. Finally, Mommy can’t stand it any longer and comes to my rescue! She doesn’t like seeing everybody pick on poor little Connie and tells everybody to leave me alone and whisks me out Grandma’s front door. Boy, was she mad! I still wanted a penny.

**(Picture of "The Family" at Clifton's Cafeteria in L.A.-Mom standing at the back)

That’s pretty much how she felt about all us kids and “The Family.” She never really believed she fit in and stayed pretty much in the background whenever she could. I didn’t understand her feelings until I had in-laws of my own, and for no good reason, I was a little intimidated by them, too.

3) A New Baby In The House

When Mom was expecting another baby (I didn’t think I was doing such a bad job as the only child, but they had this notion that they wanted to try for another child as good as me, I think) Dad started building us a house. Dad writes:

“We were living in a room that was 9 feet by 11 feet and with our second child on the way, it would have been crowded. I got the roof on and the doors and window frames in and then on my next three days off I was going to wrap the house with the paper and wire so that it could be plastered. About this time we were also wrapping the handball court down at the fire station. By helping at the fire station I thought that I could do the wrapping at my place. I go by the reasoning, that if someone else can do it, I can do it. Maybe not as fast and sometimes not as good, but I can do it. I've felt this way ever since I was on my honeymoon and that guy in the garage fooled me into thinking that he could do it cheaper than I could do it myself.

“On the 10th of February 1949, we moved into our own home. It was just a year and a day after I started work for the City. That must show something. We didn't have anything but a beat up old Ford when I joined, and now we still have a beat up old Ford, but we also have the frame of a house.“It sure took a lot of heat to keep the house warm, and I sure have to give my wife credit again for putting up with the way we had to live. All we had inside was studs and ceiling joists. We could walk right thru the walls anytime we wanted to. We didn’t have much privacy but we were in our own place and all we owed on it was about $1700 counting the interest. The house with the paper on the outside was sure cold.”
Maxine Rose Kemsley came into this world on April 22, 1949, as my little sister. It took me 22 months to gain the status as big sister, and she just pops out as a little sister; no working at it at all. I don’t remember much about her early years except that everyone thought she’d end up going to college with her finger in her mouth. Some of the devices to “help” her quit sucking her finger were pretty gruesome. There were nasty tasting liquids, boards taped to her finger, band-aids, stockings and even a spring wound tightly around that finger, but I guess they all just added to the fun for her. She finally quit when she was good and ready and grew up with some pretty nice teeth.
My memories of Miki (spelling changed from MICKEY because we called her M-i-c-k-e-y Mouse and she hated that) were constant sisterly fights and quarrels. I didn’t like the way she “borrowed” my clothes without asking and then stuffed them under her bed when she was through wearing them. It never seemed to bother me that I didn’t take care of them, but if she didn’t hang them up, I fumed. We usually shared a bedroom and it almost always looked like a couple of rats lived in it. One day mom cleaned our room and swept everything into the center of the room in one BIG pile. We had to clean the pile before we could do anything fun. It was torture, but even after that first time, we still found many piles in our room with a very unpleasant afternoon ahead of us.

We weren’t very good friends through our dating years. Miki was always called “The Pretty One,” while I was “The Fun One.” Some consolation! We switched boyfriends a few times, mostly with bad feelings. Finally I went to BYU and the separation did wonders for our relationship. She went to college, too, and worked for a while and did a lot of growing up. I did a lot of mellowing and after we were both married, we finally became friends. I hate to think of all the years wasted in not “knowing” her, because she is a very special woman. She has had her trials and has always come out on top. I gain strength from her in that respect. Her phone calls, visits, and letters mean a lot to me. Yep, we wasted a lot of good years.

2) Living In Long Beach

Before I was born Mom and Dad shared a little apartment with my Aunt Berna and her first husband Warren Terrill. They didn’t have a sink, so they washed their dishes in the bathtub. One of their most “memorable” meals was one breakfast after Berna had shaved her legs in the bathtub, and then washed the dishes. The menu? You guess it – eggs, brains, and hair.

It wasn’t long before Mom and Dad moved out of the apartment and into a little trailer in a Japanese American displacement park. This became our home for the first year of my life. The trailer park only had one bathroom for about 25 trailers. There wasn’t any hot water and the trailer had one bed in the kitchen if you put the table down and a sofa that made into a bed. They slept on the sofa. One evening it caught fire. They couldn’t get it out the door so they had to chop it up and shove it out. Sometime during the night it reignited and the whole trailer park lit up. After that, they slept on the little table bed.

Again from Dad’s life story:

“Around thanksgiving 1947, we moved out of the trailer into an apartment at 2359 West 20th St Long Beach. This was a lot better than the trailer and was only eight dollars more a month. And we had stepped up in the world, we had an inside toilet.”

When Mom was pregnant with me she baked a chocolate cake for Dad, but decided to sneak a piece of it before he got home. Before long, since she was “eating for two,” she had eaten the whole cake, so she baked another one and helped Dad eat it after dinner.

Since Mom was only 17 years old when I was born, she didn’t know much about motherhood, and although she tried her best, she sometimes felt like a failure. One time she was bathing me on the tiny counter next to the sink in the little trailer. She turned for just a moment to get a diaper after drying me off and immediately heard me crying. I had rolled off the counter and onto a bunch of bottles of homemade root beer. She thought she’d killed me, but I had a tough hide and no injuries. And, who knows, maybe that's why I like root beer!

My own earliest memories are of standing next to Dad while he drove his old pick-up truck. I guess he felt a little crowded as I stood in his pocket, but I guess he liked me a little because he let me do just that. He would sing, “Put Your Arms Around Me, Honey” as we’d go down the street. He says that on my second Christmas, at about 18 months of age, we drove around to look at the Christmas lights on houses, my foot in his pocket, and I would point my little finger and say “pitty.” (Pitty intelligent child, right?). He also says that as I pointed, my cute little finger would start to droop, and as I stood there with my eyes wide open, pointing, I’d be sound asleep.

Alta (my two-weeks-older cousin) told me how, at Grandma’s Pacoima house, we used to steal onions and crawl behind the refrigerator (ice box) to eat them. Frankly, I can’t imagine it, but Mom says it was so.

When I was still young and we lived in our Norris house, and had a phone, Dad called me one day and sang “Dark Town Strutter’s ball” to me. Well, when my Daddy sang, “Gonna come and get ya in a taxi, Honey,” I believed him. He came home from work; no taxi. Boy, was I mad!

1) The Very Beginning

When I tell friends I was born on Independence Day, they usually laugh and say, “You must have come out with a BANG!” A picture comes to my mind of this poor, slimy, pathetic-looking baby shooting across the delivery room - past the doctor, landing on its head somewhere on the opposite side of the room. Maybe that’s why I’ve always been a little kooky…it just might have happened that way. Nonetheless, at 4:10 a.m. on July 4, 1947, Dr. Harold A. Hinckley, M.D. and my Mom both said a silent prayer that it was all over and a tiny baby girl had survived the ordeal of becoming a brand new person.
Mom knew nothing about childbirth at age 17 and thought that when the placenta was delivered, it was my head. Mom was relieved when the nurse told her I was in one piece after all and Dr. Hinckley was probably relieved that now he could go back to bed at that unearthly hour of the morning.
I celebrated my first Independence Day at Long Beach Community Hospital sleeping the day away, while Blaine Reuben Kemsley and Bernice Evelyn Goodwin Kemsley filled out all those forms that would make me theirs. (In 1979, as I read President Spencer W. Kimball’s biography, I found mention that he spent that same July 4th right there in Long Beach on the Pike, eating ice cream. If we’d have known, we could have invited him in to watch me make cute little faces or something. I feel very honored to know that a future Prophet of God was quite near when it was my time to come to earth. It was also a Dr. Hinckley that had helped President Kimball in one of his times of difficulty. A special coincidence.)

Mom tells me that at the time of my birth, she left this world:

“Dr. Hinckley gave me a spinal and then I left this world. I found myself facing a white light, or a white veil, with a light around or behind it. There was warmth coming from the light and I thought, “So this is what it’s like to die”. Then I heard a voice from the veil say, in a very reassuring voice, “Your religion is true, your religion is true, your religion is true.” I wondered whose voice that was and said a prayer that I might not lie about it when I told Blaine. I felt assured that it was the voice of God.

“Then I was floating into a long hall of polished paneling. Other people were around me and they were floating, too. I noticed a man standing at a door at the end of the hall and I was surprised to see him in a suit, with his hair short: I expected to see him in a white robe with long hair. He was pleasant and I don’t know if we talked spirit to spirit, or if he transferred thoughts to me; I don’t think he talked to me. He did smile, and told me I couldn’t go through the door yet. I wanted to go through in the worst way. My eyes filled with tears and I felt I was mourning because I couldn’t go through. I also felt I wasn’t worthy to go through. The man was amused at my anguish as I realized there was something I had to do or say. I then found myself above my body, watching you come into the world. I saw you and knew you were a girl and I knew you weighed 7 lbs 14 oz.

“When I awoke, I told your father about the voice and I asked Dr. Hinckley if he had been married in the temple. He had on a white surgeon’s apron, but I could see his garment sleeve. I asked him if he knew anything of my experience and he said I had had a bad time of it, but he didn’t know what happened. I asked him if you weighed 7 lbs 14 oz and he said he hadn’t weighed you yet. He was amazed when he did and wanted to know how I knew you were a girl.

“I think how strange that as I was trying to get back into the spirit world, you were trying to get out. I wonder if we passed as spirits in that hall.”

The most important thing to me was that she was supposed to return to life and be my mommy. I guess she knew right off that motherhood was going to be no bed of roses, but she did all right. Dr. Hinckley was amazed that she knew all about my birth, and was accurate about my weight, but since he was also of the Mormon faith, he didn’t question her knowledge: he’d seen miracles. She had great faith in him.

The night before my birth, Mom and Dad bought a lug of apricots so Mom could can them. Guess what Dad did while Mom and I stayed comfy and cozy in the hospital? He got 20 quarts of jam out of those apricots.

Dad wrote in his life story:

“When we brought the baby home, we found that she had a rupture above the navel. and we kept it taped for the first year of her life. (*picture: Notice the tape on my tummy)

“Bernice and I always went to a lot of shows. Well Connie started young too. We took her to the show at the ripe old age of 8 days. (*picture: We stopped by the pony track on the way to the movie)

She even had a pony ride the day she was three weeks old." (*picture: Mom looks so happy to have me riding a pony so young and I was just "thrilled!")