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Our Courtship and Honeymoon by Dixie LaRue Almond Smith | |
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Dixie's Childhood memories
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THE DANCE The place where we met was a Gresham Branch Gold and Green Ball which took place about March of 1948 in the upstairs of an old Oddfellows Hall. The makeshift hall with it's rough floor had been decorated as best we could. I with the other girls in the Branch was to take part in the floor show. I was going to the dance with Stan Nuffer, one of the boys in the Branch. The dance was on the Saturday night of an Oregon District Conference weekend. Missionaries from all over Oregon district were at the dance so they could meet the people they were to stay with during the weekend. Kermit's folks, who lived in Estacada 18 miles from Gresham, had been assigned two missionaries. Kermit came to the dance to pick them up and arrived just in time for the floor show. He said when he saw me it must have been love at first sight. He was very much impressed. He got one of the missionaries to indroduce him to me and he asked me if he could have a dance. During our dance he told me he was going to school at Oregon State and that his folks lived at Estacada which I couldn't remember having heard of. When our dance was almost over he asked if he could take me to the Portland Stake Gold and Green Ball the following weekend and if I could get one of my friends to go with Dick Svade, a friend of his, who was also home from Oregon State for the weekend. I was only 16 and shy, and I must admit I was very confused. I told him I'd let him know after the dance... Should I go out with a strange boy? I hadn't had very many dates anyway and I truly didn't know how to handle the situation. By this time Stan was beginning to worry about this stranger's intrusion, so the very next dance, he asked me if he could escort me to the Stake Gold and Green Ball the following weekend. I consented. I can't remember what happened, but Kermit says I never did show up after the dance to give him his answer. THE DATE Determined to see the girl he met at the dance again, he drove to the Northwestern States Mission Home in Portland, 40 miles from Estacada, to find out where the Almonds lived. On Wednesday evening the Almonds had choir practice at their home and just as the choir members were beginning to arrive, Kermit and Dick Svade came knocking at the door. So they stayed for choir practice. Dick Svade couldn't sing a note but they had come for a purpose and were determined to see it through. After all the chattering and visiting choir members finally went home Kermit and Dick presented their business. They gave my mother a box of chocolates and a letter of recommendation from the District President, Elder Keith Sohm. The letter came in an envelope addressed:
The Almonds
Gresham, Oregon,
U.S.A., World,
Glory of God
After all this Kermit found I had a date already and couldn't go with him. However the visit wasn't a complete failure because Dick Svade did get a date with my cousin, Ruth for the dance. My cousins Margaret and Ruth were living with us while they attended school there. I didn't think I would ever see Kermit again and many times during the summer I secretly wished I had gone to the dance with him and gotten better aquainted. Good L.D.S boys were very scarce in the mission field. CARDSTON About 5 months later, the first part of August of the following summer, the Oregon Dixtrict planned a Temple Excursion to the Cardston Temple some 700 or 800 miles away. I went with my family to Cardston after which we planned a trip down through Utah to visit relatives. When Kermit arrived at the Temple with his folks and saw me there, his heart jumped a foot. We spent a very enjoyable week together along with other friends, while our folks were busy each day going through the temple. There weren't many things to do in Cardston and it rained almost all the time we were there, which made mud in the unpaved streets almost too deep to drive cars through. We went to the one show and decided it was too windy and cold to go golfing--the only two things we could find in town. I remember one afternoon in our efforts to have a good time we decided to have a weiner roast. To our dissapointment the stores were closed each Wednesday afternoon in Cardston and we could buy no food. After our failing efforts to buy some kind supplies from a cafe that was open, we decided to raid our folks' food supply. My folks had a few pounds of hamburger and someone else found a loaf of bread and a frying pan. By the time we found a suitable place a few miles out of town it was already beginning to get dark and it was starting to rain with the already strong wind. We found a tree, and after chasing away the wet sheep that were huddled around it, we proceded to build a fire in the rain. We had to hold a blanket over the fire to get it going; we fried our hamburger without any shortening and the pan caught fire and burned them a little. We had no salt and no butter on our bread; but we ate them anyway. It was dark and we were soaked so we decided to hurry home. When we came to Kermit's cabin, we took off our wet shoes, turned on a little portable radio and danced. I can remember one wink he gave me from across the room that went clear down to my toes. Kermit walked me home--the mud in the streets was too deep to drive. After we both returned home to Oregon, I started my Senior year in Gresham High School and Kermit started his second year at Oregon State College in Corvallis, eighty miles to the south. We saw eachother occasionally throughout the winter when Kermit would come to Portland on weekends. I remember I went on the bus to Corvallis two weekends to go to the annual Sophomore dance and a Theta Chi fraternity dance which had a western theme. I dressed as a cowgirl. Just before Kermit was to return to school after the Christmas holidays, he took me to Vancouver to a New Year's dance that the District sponsored. In the excitement of catching a balloon with a dollar in it and all the whistling and tooting that went on at midnight, Kermit stole his first kiss from me so fast I didn't have time to stop him. The following summer we went many places together--to shows, dances, the beach, on hikes and on picnics. I always had fun with Kermit, but I was quite too young and inexperienced to know what I wanted. I knew he liked me a lot and it scared me. I wasn't ready to like anyone that much and I didn't know how to treat him. Kermit says I was like a fisherman who had finally caught a huge fish and then didn't know how to reel it in. Maybe I was scared, but at any rate, I decided the best thing to do would be to break things off before Kermit got any more serious. KERMIT LEAVES ON A MISSION I was rather glad when he left for his Mission to Argentina that Fall--- I thought it was a good way to get rid of him. Kermit says that one reason he wanted to go on his mission was that it would give me time to grow up a little. We decided to write every three weeks while he was gone so we wouldn't become strangers. I must admit it was even hard to write a letter sometimes because I didn't know whether I liked him or not and more than two and a half years was a long time in the future. However, after he was gone about a year and I had been to College that long, and had been going out with many kinds of boys I started to wonder if Kermit wasn't the one I wanted after all. I started to enjoy our three week letters and before he was home, I was beginning to fudge a little and sometimes write more often. I prayed dilligently during this time to know if he was the one I should some day marry. I know I received an answer to my prayers and I felt sure he was the one for me by the time he came home. I was hoping he would want me--he had loved me from the beginning, the night of the Gold and Green Ball almost five years before, and had always thought of me as some day being his wife--and I had been such a stinker. When Kermit came home from his mission in May of 1952, I was going to school at Brigham Young University at Provo, Utah. He stopped for three days in Provo on his way home to Oregon. It was a rather frightening experience to see someone again after so long, but it was wonderful to be together again. ENGAGEMENT AND MARRIAGE Kermit continued home to Oregon to meet his folks and about two weeks later when school was out I returned home to Gresham for the summer. I got home late Saturday night and the next afternoon Kermit drove from Estacada to see me. That evening he asked me if I would marry him. I was happy to say yes. We decided to get married during the summer so we could go to Provo together where he was planning to start his third year of college. He wanted to major in Spanish and I wanted to finish my last year of College for graduation and my Teaching Certificate. During the summer we put up many jars of fruit, salmon, chicken, and string beans to take to Provo. In August we went to Idaho Falls and on August 26, 1952, we went through the Idaho Falls Temple and were married for time and all eternity. After the temple ceremony we started for Grand Teton National park for our honeymoon. We had borrowed Dad Smith's station wagon and our mattress and bed just fit in the back. We found a very beautiful spot in those rugged mountains a long ways from other campers and pitched our tent. We had a gas camp stove, card table, folding chairs, and plenty of good food we had bought in Idaho Falls so our tent was well supplied. We had a wonderful time for 10 days and then started home for Oregon where we had a wedding reception waiting in the new Gresham Ward Chapel. After about a week we loaded our trailer with our jars of fruit and other few belongings and started for Provo where we were to both start a new year of school and a wonderful life together.
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