More about Margaret

(written late Thursday but posted on Friday)

When you are young, or at least, when WE were young, who you played with was very much determined by how old you were. Like "How old are you?" was practically the first question out of any child's mouth when meeting someone new. It mattered.

So, as a very young child, though I aspired to play with Arlene and Margaret, I was supposed to play with Marie, because she was closer to my age. So I played with Marie the most, if we split up into pairs to play. Honestly, Arlene and Margaret were more tomboys, and Marie and I were a bit prissier, so it made sense.

But often, we all four played together. We played on the farm machinery. We played on the haystacks. We played in the "rooms" in the corn. We hoed beets and vegetables together, which isn't exactly playing, but we had some great conversations while working. We moved the cows together. We held baby chicks and kittens and puppies together.

Once, a man was hauling a purple trailer on Highway 36, and the trailer got a flat tire. Uncle Clyde, seeing that the man needed help, went out and offered to help him. The trailer was hauled into Uncle Clyde's yard, and the man was supposed to come back and get it. But he never did. So we had sleepovers in it, and we called it "The Purple People Eater." We played crazy bridge and spoons in the trailer. Some of us told ghost stories. Some of us covered their head with the pillow and plugged her ears and begged them to please stop--maybe you can guess who.

We slept outside on our lawn together, in a row, under the full moon. Some of us got freaked out scared--maybe you can guess who.

There came a year when I was quite young that Margaret got rheumatic fever. Let me tell you about rheumatic fever:

"Group A Strep is a common cause of illness in children. Usually the disease is as mild as strep throat, but strep can also cause serious illnesses, including toxic shock, “flesh-eating disease,” and rheumatic fever, a serious form of heart disease. Preventing rheumatic fever and other complications is one of the major reasons we treat all cases of strep with antibiotics.
During the 1960s and 1970s, rheumatic fever was a major worldwide problem. When it seemed to disappear, people thought it had become a disease of the past. After its resurgence, we learned that rheumatic fever comes and goes in waves. It can cause serious illness wherever strep throat occurs."
Or read more about it here.

What this meant for Margaret was that she missed a year of school, and so she ended up in the grade between Arlene and I, although she was three months older than Arlene.

What this meant for me was more time with Margaret! It was lovely for me, having Margaret the year above me, and Marie the year below. I was not exactly the best at having, making, or keeping friends in junior and senior high school, but I always had my cousins. And they always shared their friends with me. I am so grateful for them, and for Arlene. They were the best. 

Here are some pictures of young Margaret:

All of "the Conrads", as we called them: Ruth, Harold, Margaret, John, Marie and Perry in about 1966, is my guess.

Margaret in about 1969 or 1970 ish

The end of high school sent us all off on different roads. Margaret went to nursing school in Alberta. I went to BYU, as did Arlene and Marie. We would get together in the summers. Margaret decided to serve a mission. She was called to the England Bristol Mission. That was where she first met Clarence. They were on a train, and the elders spied the sisters. So they took their name tags off and went to have a good flirt with the sisters, to see how they would react. They did not flirt back. They were annoyed by these young boys. (When girls were 21 or older, and boys were 19--at least, back in OUR day, the sisters saw themselves as much older and wiser than the elders.)

When Margaret returned from her mission, she came to BYU. By then, Arlene and Michael were married and living in Taber, freezing poor Michael more than he knew a person could be frozen. Margaret, Marie and I drove to Provo with three of us in two cars. Margaret had no place to stay and her big old boat of a car. I had no place to stay and my new red Datsun pickup that my Dad bought and so I really shouldn't call it "mine." Marie had a contract at Park Plaza (which is still Park Plaza today.) Margaret and I had to scramble to find housing. She found housing really close to campus in what was then called Moon Apartments. I was not so lucky--I found housing in South Orem, pretty close to where I live now.

Margaret was chagrined to find in her ward that same obnoxious elder from her mission, that Elder Kemp. And then I believe they were assigned to the same FHE group, so she saw a lot of him. She gradually decided he was maybe not so bad--he was at least okay to set up with me, since he was my age, but clearly too young for her. "Myrna," she said, "Let me set you up with this elder from my mission." "What's his name?" said Myrna, the name snob. "Clarence Kemp," she said. That sounded like an old man's name! (And--he was named after his father, who was an old(er) man, so I was not wrong.)  I declined Margaret's set-up offer. I met him for the first time at the Weekend Movie, which was held in the JSB. Margaret and her roommates, and Clarence and his, were playing cards together while waiting for the doors to open. He was kind of cute--too bad I said no to her, I thought for a fleeting second--but then, pretty soon, Margaret decided she liked him herself.

They didn't really date at that point--they just did things to each other. Like, he would play a trick or a joke on her, and she would play one on him. Like, once she made some beautiful chocolate chip cookies for him, only laced liberally with cayenne pepper. Things like that.

Here is a picture of Margaret and Marie in my apartment with Arlene and Michael and baby Jenna in February 1979. Arlene and Michael were escaping the cold and moving to San Diego. (Do you love the wood paneling and the rust colored shag carpet? So nice.)

Marie, Margaret, Michael, Arlene and Jenna

That summer, Marie stayed for summer school at BYU. Margaret and I went home with just two of us in our same two vehicles. We started to look for summer jobs. I got hired at the Canning Factory, as a payroll clerk. Margaret got hired to be a cook for a highway crew. We had about a month before our jobs started, so we decided to go to San Diego and visit Arlene.

We had never imagined doing such a thing--driving all the way from Alberta to San Diego, just the two of us! Our fathers took some convincing, but then they allowed us to go. We would take my little red truck. We stopped in Provo and visited Marie, and then we drove as far as Saint George. We stayed in the Motel 6 for a night, and did some exploring in that area.

Then on to San Diego, where Grandpa and Grandma Lund took us on a sight-seeing drive, and Eugene was drifting all over the road pointing out this and pointing out that, and soon a police car stopped him to see if he was drunk, and Kathleen leaned in and said, "Oh, no! He would never drink! We're Mormons!"

Grandpa Lund took Arlene and the baby and Margaret and I to the zoo. A, M, J and I went to Knotts Berry Farm. Margaret and I met my friend Renee and her friend Machaelle at Disneyland one day, and on a Sunday, we went to the Los Angeles Temple grounds and visitor's center.

Me, Jenna and Margaret in June 1979 at the San Diego Zoo

Arlene, Jenna and Margaret at Knott's Berry Farm in June 1979

My former roommate and friend, Renee Partida and her friends Lori and Machaelle and Margaret at the Los Angeles Temple

I think I already told, in 2016 when Clarence died, about how when Margaret and I were driving home, she felt like it would be really important to stop in Rexburg, Idaho, and see Clarence, who was living with his brother and working as an engineering intern in the same company his brother worked at. She had been talking about Clarence A LOT on our drive, and realized that she was in love with him, and wanted to determine if he could possibly feel the same way. So long story short, they discovered that they really did like each other, that the feeling was mutual--that from her first impression of him on that train on the way to Merthyr Tydfil a few years ago to the summer of 1979, her feelings had changed, and she no longer found him annoying, but instead she totally liked him a lot. So that happened. And honestly, my most memorable part of our trip to California was being there in Rexburg, the third wheel to this young couple who were clearly in love. It was lovely to see how they loved each other. 

And then they got married in early 1980, and Bruce and I, who were dating or engaged without a ring, or whatever, went to their wedding breakfast, and then we got married ourselves a few months later. 

I already posted, in 2016, pictures of the visit Margaret and Clarence made to California when we lived there. And the story about going to Tijuana? I think I did. That was when they only had one child, Jeffrey.

It was hard in those pre-internet days to stay as connected as we can now. We saw each other when we could! We didn't often live in the same places, and that is a hindrance, too. When we lived in California, they lived in Utah. Here is a snap of Margaret and the kids at their house in Utah, before they moved to Evanston, probably 1986.

And I already posted, too, about that time in 2008, when "the Conrads" decided to have a family reunion because they had a lot more notice about Harold's impending death by cancer, so they all wanted to get together while they could. And my brother got wind of it and decided to crash the reunion, and so we all decided that if he was going to crash it, so were we! (We only crashed for one day of it. We just felt like they were an extension of us, almost, so if they were ALL going to be together, then we for sure needed to see them. So glad we did that! Love those cousins so much!)

I am sure I have a picture like this, only where Margaret is smiling instead of saying "OH!" Ahaha. I love my goofy Margaret!

At Clarence's burial in September 2016: Josie, Mary, Me, Becky, Margaret and Ruth. Not to make light of serious things, but  today Margaret said to me "I'm sorry, I am not very good at having family reunions." And Becky said, "In the Kemp family, we have a saying: Whoever is in charge of the family reunion is whoever is having the next funeral."