Bernell Stout's Life History

The Life History

of

Bernell Golden Stout

 

 

     I was born 10 September 1920 in Burley, Cassia, Idaho along with a twin sister, Bernice Evelyn.  My parents were Jahu Golden Stout born 25 August 1889 in Olene, Klamath, Oregon and Sarah Eveline Koyle born 7 December 1889 in Spanish Fork, Utah, Utah.

 

     Bernice Evelyn and I were born in a home up in the orchard in a one-story house which had a bedroom, a front room, a kitchen which was narrow, and a utility room or storage room.  Every time the wind would blow in that house, it would raise the linoleum right up off the floor.  We had a coal stove in the kitchen and a coal burning heater in the front room and they kept a fire in it all the time during the winter time. On the outside of the house was one layer of boards and then a paper and on the inside was just a lath and plaster.  The house was about a foot up off the ground, up on blocks with dirt shoveled all around the bottom.  There was only the one bedroom in the house and Donna and the folks slept in that bedroom and there was a screen porch out on the back we put paste board box all along the outside to break the wind and every time it would snow we would have to brush the snow off our beds in the morning.  We had a lot of quilts on top of us and those old straw ticks and we would bury down under there and sleep with out heads covered up. What ever temperature was outside, it was temperature in that room.  I lived in the house until 1935.  Then in 1935, Dad built a basement house (where Donna and Wayne use to live) and I lived there until I went into the army.

 

     I was baptized 4 November 1928 in the Burley Stake House.  After my baptism I went down to Guy Duke’s, who lived on the north side of the railroad tracks.

 

     One day my parents were talking and they said, “We ought to knock this wall out and make the kitchen one room.”  My parents went to town and I said to Clifton, “Let’s knock this wall out.  Ma said they wanted it knocked out.”  So Clifton and I knocked the wall out.  We had plaster and lath all over.  When they came home they walked in and wanted to know what happened.  I said, “You said knock the wall out.”  We cleaned all the lath and plaster up and fixed it all up and we had one big room.  The wall was still out when we went to a Christmas party at the Unity Ward.

 

      My brother, Clifton, picked up scarlet fever 29 November 1935.  He was down sick first and then I got it just after Christmas.

 

     We sat on the bed all day long.  Clifton got to feeling better.  He had a 22 rifle.  He was sitting on the bed and he got to messing around and as a result, he shot down through the foot
of the bed into the floor with that rifle.  It kind of excited things for a minute.

      My parents built a basement house and moved in 23 November 1936.  Wallace and Arvilla were married by this time.  Clifton had a little bent finger that he broke when he was a kid.  He bought a new rifle and he was down in the basement showing Dad and Wallace how the rifle worked and that crooked finger hit the trigger of the rifle.  The rifle went off sending a bullet through the width of a 2 by 12.  It nearly cut the 2 by 12 in two and the bullet went through the house.  I was outside and I heard the shot.  I was running in circles and scared to go in the house because I was afraid someone was shot. Everyone in the house came running out.  No one got hurt.

     A few years later after Dad got his new home, Clifton was fooling around with another 22 rifle and he shot up through the floor.  Three times and all three houses had his bullet holes.

      When I was in the 5^th grade, it was horribly cold. It was so cold that the folks didn’t let Donna go to school that day so I walked to school by myself.  When I got to Springdale School, about a mile from my house, the building was so cold that they couldn’t warm it up so they sent everybody home.  It was blowing and real cold.  About a quarter or half a mile from home there were some water willow trees in a low place where the water stood.  As I went into the willows, I was real sleepy.  I just wanted to lie down and go to sleep.  I looked up and I could see the house wasn’t very far away.  I thought, “I’ll go home and get in bed and go to sleep.”  I walked on home and when I walked in the house I told Father that I wanted to go to sleep.  I just wanted to go to bed and go to sleep.  He said, “No way.”  He started rubbing my hands and rubbing me and they were putting blankets all around me and walking me around the house and  I said, “What are you doing?  I just want to go to sleep.  I’m just sleepy.”  The more I wanted to go to sleep, the more they were determined they weren’t going to let me go to sleep.  A little while went by and pretty soon Dad asked me if I wanted to go to sleep.  I said, “No, I don’t want to go to sleep anymore.  I just want to go play.”  So they let me go and play.  I almost froze to death this time.

      When we were taking my brother, John, to scout meeting we were riding the horse.  It stepped in the wooden culvert and fell end over end and then rolled right over the top of me and knocked me out.  John had to carry me about a quarter of a mile back home.  They didn’t have doctors in those days that did very much.  I had injured my back and dislocated my hip and the doctor told me I would have to stay in bed until everything healed and also until I could walk.  So I spent most of the time in bed.

     Shortly after that I began having tonsil trouble.  They were going to take my tonsils out.  They gave me ether and I was allergic to ether.  As a result my heart quit beating.  They had an awful time getting my heart started.
 

     That fall or not too long after that, I was playing and a bee stung me in the front of my foot.  I had on some black stockings and I kept scratching until I got blood poisoning in my foot.  My leg swelled up and got real, real black.  They took me to Dr. Dean again to treat that.  He said, “I’m not about to give him ether.  I won’t give him ether again.”  So they strapped me down on the table and strapped my arms and legs and then they went to cutting.  They opened it up and a big gob of blood came out.  They kept me in Dr. Dean’s office, which was over the top of King’s building, most of the rest of the day until they thought I could go home.  Dad carried me downstairs.  I spent three or four weeks in bed as I couldn’t walk.  Ma had me helping her.  I would get down on the floor and push the treadle on the sewing machine while she was sewing.  She taught me how to sew, quilt and do all her knitting.  I did nearly all of her knitting that summer for her.  I had to take Ma to Relief Society one time and they had a quilt on and Ma hollered at me to come and help them quilt, so I did.  That shocked all the women that I knew how to quilt.

      Not long after that was Dad’s birthday.  About the 26^th of August, we went swimming and I decided I wanted to walk on the bottom of the canal on my hands.  So I dived down and was walking on my hands when I had to come up after some air.  I tipped over backwards and I couldn’t get my feet on the bottom of the canal.  I thought if I exhale I can stay down a little longer.  When I did that everything went blank.  The next thing I knew I was out on the canal bank and bent over Clifton’s knee with water draining out of my mouth.  I was trying to gasp for air and that was really painful trying to get air and I couldn’t get air.  Clifton and John were with me but Clifton was doing most of the work.  He had me over his knee, had my tongue pulled out and water was running out of my mouth.  John was just there hoping I didn’t die.  I was about thirteen.

         I also remember one time when Donna wasn’t very old (maybe 8-10 years old) and was throwing sunflowers in a head gate and watching them swirl around when she fell in head first. I grabbed her by both feet and pulled her out.  If she would have gone down through the head gate, that would have been the end of her.

         Another time, my sister Donna and I were riding a horse. As we went past a straw stack, there was a pig buried in the straw and as we rode past, the pig came out of the straw and it scared the horse and it threw the both of us off.  Donna was carrying a milk bottle and hit me in the head with it as she feel off the horse.  A great big old lump raised up from it.  I like to give Donna a bad time about hitting me with a milk bottle.

     My brothers and sister are: Arvilla born 20 November 1911 at Spanish Fork, Utah; Jay Clifton born 3 November 1913 at Spanish Fork, Utah–died 5 March 1989; John Hyrum born 27 February 1916 at Spanish Fork, Utah; a twin sister, Bernice Evelyn born 10 September 1920 at Burley, Idaho.  Bernice Evelyn died 17 May 1922 from the “flu” and pneumonia.  At the same time I was very ill but my life was spared through administration.  Donna Harriet born 12 January 1923 at Burley, Idaho; Violet born 18 May 1926 at Burley, Idaho but when she was six months old, she got quick pneumonia and died 13 November 1926.  The last brother was Leon Koyle born 12 September 1932 at Burley, Idaho.

      We had about a half acre of apple trees.  There were all kinds of good apples.  We had what you called a banana apple that was big and a good baking apple.  We also had a strawberry delicious apple that ripened in August and was a real sweet apple.  I about lived in the orchard.

      While Dad, John and Clifton did the farm work, I herded the cows on a horse.  We had ten or twelve cows.  I would take them up and down the canal banks to where they could get feed.  I would herd the cows all day long.  One day when I was riding the horse, I said, “Whoa” and when I did, the horse stopped and put his head down to eat.  I went over its head and down on the ground.  Another day, I was herding the cows along the railroad tracks when I decided to put a spike in a crack on the tracks.  The railroad crew came along in one of their little cars and hit that spike and tipped them over.  They chased me but did not catch me.  It’s a good thing.  Every time after that, they would sweep the tracks with a broom before they went over them.

      One day when I was going to school, a bunch of us boys decided to take our horses down to the canal and water them at noon as they needed a drink of water.  So about four or five of us got on our horses and went down to the canal from the school.  On the way back we got to racing.  I was going too fast.  I thought I could make the horse go straight but the horse knew where she was going.  She went in through the gate and up to the barn.  I fell off and stuck my arm through a fence cutting that main vein, which made a scar you can still see.  The poor schoolteacher thought I was going to bleed to death and held her fingers on the wound and took me into town to the doctor to have my arm bandaged up.

      I was out of school more than I was in school.  I was sick a lot with all kinds of children’s diseases.

     We had to walk 3/4 of a mile to school everyday to the Springdale School.  When the Springdale School burned, we went to the Springdale Ward.

       In the spring when Clifton was in the 8^th grade, we were out cleaning up the tumble weeds around the school yard.  We had a big pile burned up.  Some of the eight graders went off the school ground and over to the neighbor’s place doing something.  There were four or five girls and four or five boys.  The principal took them in.  He had a wooden paddle with little holes drilled in it.  He gave those kids a licking with that wooden paddle–boys and girls alike.  One girl, when she went home, showed her mother where the principal had given her a licking.  She still had welts on her bottom.  Her father went to school and got the Principal and put him in his car and took him out to Malta, took his shoes off and made him walk from Malta back to Burley a distance of about 35 or 40 miles.  He had to walk home without any shoes on.  The father said, “If you do that trick again the punishment will be a little more severe.”  It never happened again.  This was the last year we went to Springdale.
 

     When I was in the 7^th grade in Springdale in 1934, our principal got mad at Max Hymas.  He sent him out of the room and the principal slammed the door as he went through but left his hand on the door and slammed the hand in the door.  It really banged up his hand.  The principal carried his hand in a bandage for a month having broke one or two fingers.  The kids didn’t get a licking.  Those were quite the days.

      I started school in Burley in 1935 and graduated in 1941 with my sister, Donna.  I was 21 years old.  Because I was so old, one teacher said, “Why don’t you drop out?”  I was determined to get my diploma.  School was hard for me and I did not memorize well but I did it.

      When I first went to Burley High School we had to furnish our own transportation.  They had just started having school buses.  They were trucks with a wooden body built and benches were full length.  It was really cold in the winter.

      After I graduated from high school in 1941 I worked on the farm.  Also during my growing up years, the family went to church in the Unity Ward.

      I went into the army in 1944 and was there until October 1946.  I took basic training in Camp Roberts, California.  Then I came home for six weeks.  I had Thanksgiving dinner three days before Thanksgiving at Fort Douglas, Utah.  Then I went back to Fort Ord, California and from there shipped out to the Philippines.  I left in the spring of 1945 for Lake Leyte.  We went down by Guadalcanal and stopped in New Guinea and then on to Lake Leyte in the Philippines.

      I had rheumatic fever.  My wrist didn’t swell up but it was extremely painful.  It got just like a sprain so I went to the medics to see what they could do about it on sick call.   I was hoping they would give me restricted duty because I was in so much pain.   The doctor said, “We can’t treat it because we can’t put you in the hospital because we need the beds for wounded people.  You report to your captain.”  So I went back and reported to the captain.  He said, “You report to your sergeant in the morning at roll call.”  So I did and the sergeant said, “You have just been assigned to a suicide squadron.”  They said they couldn’t cure it or couldn’t do anything about it.  They put me on a flame thrower.  I said, “I can’t even reach back to turn the valve on.”  The sergeant said, “I will turn it on for you.”  So I took a couple of weeks training how to use a flame thrower.
 

     One day I was sitting on the oxygen pressure tank.  They were regenerating my flame thrower so I could go out and practice burning up a pill box. There was a Japanese suicide guy zeroed in on me.   As I was sitting there on that tank, a bullet hit the tank.  It hit high enough up on the slope of the tank that the bullet ricocheted and went through my shirt and it popped and burned and stung.  I thought I was shot.  I just flipped over backwards and laid there.  I laid there for a little while and pretty soon they hollered and said they had killed the Japanese who was a sniper up in the coconut tree. He had actually been chained to the coconut tree by his own people so he wouldn’t get away.   On that oxygen tank, it had a dent where the bullet had hit.  If that bullet would have hit that tank straight on, that would have been the end of me.  That is the only excitement I had.

      I was somewhere in the Philippines when the war ended.   There was such a wild celebration you had to dig a fox hole and crawl in it to keep from getting hit by your own guys.  The G.I’s were shooting up flares all over the place and firing their machine guns.  It was a wild celebration.  The ship was in the harbor that we were to load on to invade Japan.  That is how close we were to invading Japan.  I was assigned to the second wave to hit the beach in Japan and they expected no survivors.  They surrendered and we went on a peaceful assignment.  We were in Japan within 30 days after the atomic bomb was exploded over Hiroshima.

      We were there about three weeks when they loaded us all up in army trucks and took us over to Hiroshima where they dropped us off.  We drove around and through all that radio active debris.  When the bomb was dropped I was in the Philippines.  By dropping the bomb thousands and thousands of GI’s were saved.

      Japan is quite mountainous and on every sea front they had tunnels back in the mountains with anti-aircraft machine guns.  It would have been awful to try and invade Japan.

      I was transferred to the amphibious engineers 544 EPNSR and we had LCM’s.  We had to ferry LCD’s from one island to the other.  A typhoon storm came up and the boats were bouncing all over and we had to turn around and come back home.

      On our trip from the Philippines up to Japan, we ran into a typhoon.  There was a fleet of ships–ten or fifteen ships in our convoy.  After I came home, I learned that Myron Frost was in that convoy and the ship he was on was sunk and he was drowned.  We got the order to abandon ship.  They pulled into a harbor there in Okinawa and for some reason they lost control of the ship.  They told us to go in sideways into the harbor.  They gave us the order to abandon ship.  Everybody got off in lifeboats.  They then got the ship back under control and we had to get back on the ship again.  Those waves, they were great big waves.
 

     The ship that I could see that was in our convoy was a half mile away.  When it would go over a wave the front end would come clear out of the water.  Our ship, when it would do that, the whole ship would shudder when those propellers would come out of the water with the blades hitting the water.  When it would go over the wave we would rock sideways.  On level water, it is 30 feet from the deck of the ship to the water.  The ship would tip sideways enough that the water would come on the deck.  Then it would roll the other way and then it would be about 70 feet down to the water.   You could hardly stay below deck because of the seasick people and so I stayed up on deck most of the time.

      One night I pulled a real dumb trick in our bunks.  The bunks were four or five people high and I was on the next to the bottom bunk.  Over in the corner of the room was a clearing about 20 or 30 feet square.  That was where the stairs went from one deck to the other deck.  In that corner was a drinking fountain.  Because of the twisting of the ship, the pipe to that drinking fountain had broken and there was water coming out of the pipe.  I looked and saw a whole bunch of water on the floor and it washed back and forth across the floor.  I thought I would play a trick on my buddy sleeping above me.  As the ship was rolling, that water was coming towards us.  I woke him up and said we were sinking and to look at that water.  He raised up and saw that water and he let out one of the worst hollers.  Everybody in that compartment was wide awake and he said they were sinking.  It about caused a stampede.  I about got lynched. I even got to talk to the Captain.  What he said is not printable. That was the last of my practical jokes.

     After we got up into Japan, it was just regular duty from then on.  I was in the amphibious.  When they disbursed, I transferred into the 376 Harbor Craft. I liked it as it was a pretty good deal.  I was APFC but at one time I held the office of the 2^nd Lieutenant but it was just the officer or the guard in charge of the MP’s.  I was just the PFC.  I had the authority of the Lieutenant but I didn’t have the stripes–PFC39937419.  Now that is 50 years to remember that prison number.

      Shortly after I returned from the war, a package arrived at the house that I had shipped to Burley while I was still in Japan.  It contained kimonos and other items from Japan.  At night I could smell that package from Japan and it made me think that I was still in the war.  I got out of bed and was crawling on the floor with my rifle when Dad came in and asked me what I was doing and I told Dad I was looking for Japs and to get down or they will shoot you.  I went crawling through the house and outside looking for them and Dad was just about petrified and he also knew the gun was loaded.  That scared Dad pretty good and that rifle got hid real good.

          Shortly after I returned from the war, Dad and I were out in the field and had just cut down a tree and were cutting it up for our winter wood when Bishop Crane stopped by to ask me if I wanted to serve a mission.  I told the Bishop I would like to but I just couldn’t.  My memory was so bad I couldn’t memorize scriptures.  I wouldn’t make a good missionary.  Bishop Crane said that he felt that I could go on a mission and make a good missionary.  He said I would be blest for my efforts and I was.  I got to where I could turn to the scripture I wanted to find, real quick.  My mission was the biggest blessing that has ever happened to me.  Before, I had quite a bad attitude......an army attitude and an army vocabulary.  My mission turned my life around.
 

          I went on my Mission in  April of 1947.  My mother and I were standing on Temple Square and I saw someone taking pictures so I told mother to turn around and look at him.  That picture, with mother and me, appeared on the front page of the Era.  My mission ended in March of 1949.  I went to the Southern California Mission.  Our Mission Office was in Los Angeles.

      I spent most of my time in Arroyo Grande and Bakersfield.

      While I was in Arroyo Grande, my first companion was an elderly man who was 62 years old.  I thought that was kind of odd that the Church would call him on a Mission two or three years before he retired.  He lost all of his retirement benefits to go on a mission.  That’s how strong he was as a leader in the Church.  He helped me to put my life back into perspective.  He was a good man and a good companion to get me started on my mission.

      We had a contact with a fellow there.  His name was Gene McConkie.  He was no relation to our Mission President, Oscar McConkie.  He grew up in Pocatello as a young fellow.  He had a problem.  He would go out with a priest in the priesthood and they would get drunk Saturday night and then the priest would go and bless the sacrament on Sunday morning and was real religious.  He said, “I can’t go with that.”

      His wife was a member of the Church and they had two daughters.  One, I think, was eight years old and the other was ten years old.  We went to a missionary meeting down in Santa Maria.  President McConkie was there and my companion and I went waltzing up to President McConkie and introduced Gene McConkie to him.

      Gene McConkie said, “I have a daughter who wants to be baptized.”  I said, “His wife is a member but he isn’t.”  President Oscar McConkie said, “Why is the Church good enough for your daughters but it isn’t good enough for you to be baptized?”  Well, Gene McConkie just looked at him and turned around and walked off.  We had to go back to Arroyo Grande which was a 25 mile drive and he was burning all the way.  He was mad and he let us off at our apartment.  He said, “You just as well forget about baptizing our daughters.  The Church isn’t good enough for them.”  We really felt pretty bad about that.

      We never went to see them for awhile.  It was coming up real close to Christmas, when we walked past their house one day, his wife came out and talked to us.  We asked her how things were going.  She said, “Okay.  We haven’t discussed religion.  I am really hurt since President McConkie said that to my husband.”  I said, “It is the truth but he didn’t need to put it quite that way.”

     It was just a few days before Christmas when she came out and stopped us.  She said, “I want you to come in and visit with us tonight as my husband will be home.”  They had some friends that gave them a couple of bottles of whiskey.  When we came he was sitting there and he showed us the bottles of whiskey, neither one of the bottles had been opened.  His wife said, “I know Gene has developed a cold and it bothers him to smoke.  He has quit smoking.”  The evening went along good and about the time we got ready to leave he said, “Well, Elders, the Church is good enough for me and my daughters would you like to baptize us?”  We got the privilege of baptizing them which consisted of three in their family.  There were also two ladies that I had the opportunity to baptize.  That was wonderful as far as I was concerned.

      I had one other good lesson while I was living in Arroyo Grande.  The people were members but they were inactive.  They invited us over for dinner one night.  The man was our barber and cut our hair and that is how we got to know him.  This night the woman was cooking dinner and the man asked us if there was any place in the Bible that said anything about women.  I started to check.  I said, “Yes, there is a place in there that really tells a woman off.”  I told him the chapter and verse and he got his Bible and read it.  We should have been awake and known there was a little problem with the man and his wife.  He took the Bible in and showed it to his wife where it said “to live in the house with a bawling woman was worse than living in the attic on a rainy day.”  We about got thrown out of the house.  A few days later she asked if there was anything in there about a man.  I said, “I don’t think I ought to tell you”.  It said something about building him up.  She said that didn’t help a bit.  We were real good friends and they got over it.

      Shortly after that we were moved from Arroyo Grande up to Pismo Beach which was in the same district but we went a different route.

      We had an experience one morning that was kind of strange.  We went down on the beach one morning.  We went tracting for awhile and were having a bad day so my companion and I decided to go down and walk on the beach for a little while.  We came back and we said, “We will tract this one more block and then we’ll go to our apartment and eat dinner.”

     The first house we came to was a great big house.  It was a beautiful home and we had never had any luck with that kind of a home.  We knocked anyway on the door and the lady came to the door in her bathrobe.  She looked at us and asked us to come in.  We looked at each other and went in.  She said, “What are you people doing.”  After we introduced ourselves, I said, “We are missionaries for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints or more commonly called Mormon.”  She said, “I was lying in bed and saw you two Elders walking down the beach.  Were you walking on the beach?”  We said, “Yes and then we left and came up here.”  She said, “Well, I saw you walking on the beach and I was impressed to open the door as I am looking for the true Church.”  There was no way that she could see the beach from her home.

      Her husband was a doctor in Los Angeles and this was their summer home.  While she was sick she had come up to their summer home and stayed and then she went back to Los Angeles.  She said, “I will look the missionaries up in Los Angeles.  I feel this is the true Church.”

      I spent six or seven months in Arvin which was a little farming community.  I traveled without purse or script.  We had to have $20 in our billfold at all times so we couldn’t be picked up for vagrants.  We lived entirely off the people we taught and I’d say that there were only about three or four nights in the year and half that we traveled that way that we slept under a grapevine.  Every time we did that, we started looking for a place to stay about 4:00 in the afternoon.  We would pick out a house and decide to talk to them and teach the gospel.  Usually by 8:30 or 9:00 we were invited in to spend the evening.  They would give us our supper and give us our breakfast.  We had to leave when the husband left.

      A lot of the times we stayed with farm laborers who went out and picked grapes or tomatoes or stuff like that.  They left at 4:00 in the morning.  We would get up and eat breakfast with them which was usually gravy and baking powder biscuits.

     Then we would go out in the grape field and sit down and do our studying until about 8:00 or 9:00 in the morning.  We would then go and do our tracting door to door.

      We were renting a house when we started tracting without purse or script so we told the people that we wouldn’t need the house anymore.  We also told them we were tracting without purse or script.

      We went out and tracted all day long.  It was about 8:00 at night and we had no invitation in to spend the night.  My companion was Elder Hunt.  He said that there was a home that we had passed about 3:00 or 4:00 in the afternoon where no one was home.  He said, “I feel like we should go back there and see if those people are home.”  I said, “Okay.  It is back there about three or four miles.”  He said, “Yes.”  So we walked back to the house.  I imagine by then it was real close to 11:00 p.m.  There was a light on in the house so we knocked.  A lady came to the door and we told her we were missionaries for the LDS Church.  We told her we were out traveling without purse or script.  She said, “What does that mean?”  We said, “That means that we travel and we stay with the people we teach and they provide us with meals and a place to sleep.”  She said, “Just a minute.”  She went and got her husband.  His shoulders were just about as wide as the door and he had to duck his head to go through the door.  He was a huge man.  He asked us what we were doing.  He then said, “We were in Salt Lake City yesterday and we spent the whole day on Temple Square wandering around and listening to their lectures.  We were quite impressed.  We just barely got home a little while ago and we were sitting here talking about the Church and what kind of system they had.”  He invited us in.  He asked us if we had had anything to eat.  He said, “I imagine you have but have you had anything to eat.”  We looked at each other and said we hadn’t had anything since breakfast.  He asked his wife to fix something to eat and told us we could sleep in their house.  This was on a Friday night.  We sat up most of the night talking to them and telling them about the Church.  They were real interested in it and we had an appointment to come back and visit them.
 

     The Elders took care of the Church in Bakersfield to pay for the rent for the building.  So on Saturday morning, the man took us to the Church so we could clean the church house. Six Elders stayed in a building next to the Church on Saturday and Sunday.

      Before the time for the appointment with this family, I was transferred into Bakersfield.  We told the new missionaries about it but we don’t know what happened.

      While I was working in Bakersfield with Elder Loosli, I was senior companion.  We were visiting a family and the woman would always ask for double copies of the literature which we gave her.  She said she had a sister that lived up in Northern California that she was sending the literature to.  Well, anyway, we went along for four or five months that way.  One Saturday her sister came to our apartment where we were living and introduced herself.  She said she wanted to be baptized.  We said, “We haven’t ever contacted you.”  She said, “Well, my sister has been writing me and telling me everything you have told her and I’ve read the literature and my son and I want to be baptized.”  We called our Mission President and he said, “Baptize her!”  So we baptized her and her son.  I thought that was kind of neat as she was not even in our Mission.  Her sister never did join.  She didn’t want to lose her friends.  She said, “If I join the Church I will lose my friends.  Even if I think the Church is true I wouldn’t join the Church.”

      I met Donna Marie Gilbert two days after she came to Santa Maria.  We met at Branch President Ralph Adams’ home.  She was on a mission in Santa Maria and I was in Arroyo Grande.  We would go down to Santa Maria for our Sunday meetings and that is where I met her.  One week we would go to Santa Maria and the next to San Luis Obispo for our church meetings.  She was in the district three or four months and then she was transferred out.  I saw her when we went to our missionary meeting in December in Los Angeles.  We just said, “Hi.”  We had our pictures taken.  We knew each other and that was all and as far as it went.  About the last six months of her mission she was transferred into Oildale in Bakersfield.  That is just outside of Bakersfield.  We had all our meetings together.  That is where we met just before she came home.  We just got acquainted and talked.
 

     When I came home from my mission, I decided to call Donna from Spanish Fork, Utah and talk to her.  I went to Castle Gate, Utah to see her.  Donna was working in a store.

           Donna said, “He called and said he would be in Castle Gate to see me.”  I went home to change my clothes so I could meet the bus on the highway.  He stayed at our home.

      It was General Conference in Salt Lake in April 1949.  Bernell and I went to Salt Lake City for the conference.  I stayed with a friend of mine.  She also let Bernell stay there.  She had a little girl and another girl staying there.  Melvia was her name.  Her husband was killed in the Castle Gate coal mine.  She moved to Salt Lake City after that.  Bernell and I used her car to go to Conference. 

     Bernell and I went to our California Missionary Reunion and saw our friends.  After we left, we parked in front of the Salt Lake Temple.  It was beautiful and all lit up.  That is where he asked me to marry him.  The next day we went to a jewelry store and he gave me a beautiful engagement ring.  He said, “Take the wedding ring so I won’t lose it.”  When he came to see me he asked my mother if he could marry me.  She said, “Yes.”  Bernell came to see me every weekend.  We were married 11 July 1949 in the Manti Temple, Sanpete County, Utah.

      We lived in a little, white house just behind my parents.  It was a labor house where the Mexicans lived while they thinned beets.  We lived in that house for 22 months while we were building the house we now live in.

      We had the following children: Donnell born 11 June 1950 in Burley, Cassia, Idaho.  She married 19 February 1982 to James Richard Allred.  Jean was born 17 May 1951 in Rupert, Minidoka, Idaho.  She married 26 March 1971 to Layne “S “ Porter.  Barbara was born 28 October 1952 in Rupert, Minidoka, Idaho.  She married 28 September 1980 to Michael Russell Jones.  Brent Bernell was born 11 April 1956 in Rupert, Minidoka, Idaho.  He married 29 September 1978 to Nancy Ann Hooker.  Vicky Marie born 21 January 1959 in Rupert, Minidoka, Idaho.  She married 11 October 1985 to Scott Tyler Johnson.  Our last child was Jerry Golden born 24 December 1962 in Burley, Cassia, Idaho.  He married 3 September 1983 to Debra Lyn Thomas.
 

     We weren’t having very good luck farming so I sold my cows.  I bought a Mac truck and went to Nevada to haul gravel.  I came home to take Donna to shop for groceries and she was a little bent out of shape.  She said I had a little choice to make–get rid of the family or get rid of the truck.  According to Donna, the reason I had to sell the truck was Brent, who was between fifteen and twenty months of age missed his Daddy.  He would run to the door and wait for Daddy to come in.  His sisters; Donnell, Jean and Barbara were teasing Brent telling him that Daddy was home.  Donna would tell Brent that Daddy wasn’t home and also she got after the girls.  They did it three times and so she spanked them and told them not to tease Brent anymore.  He got sick on Sunday and vomited so Donna didn’t take the children to church.  Brent idolized his dad.  He really loved him and missed him when he was in Nevada. 

      I decided to get rid of the truck.  At the time I was clearing $100 a day above all expenses.  I went to work for $1.25 and hour and would come home with $10 a day.  I took the truck up to American Falls to a guy that bought it.

      I went to work for Simplots building cellars.  Then I worked out on contract building cinder block buildings and painting houses.  I was doing whatever I could do for a living and mostly in the summertime.  I would work on highway construction in the area here.  One summer Burley was remodeling all their streets and putting in new sidewalks and approaches.  I put all the forms in for the cement on that.  I did that for four or five years.

      Then I got a job at the sugar factory.  I ran the crane there for a while.  Then I came to Burley.  They had a crane over here in Burley that they would unload coal in the summertime and put in a big silo.  In the wintertime, they would load it back into railroad cars and send it to Twin Falls.  That was a steam operated crane so actually I ran the last steam locomotive crane in Burley which made me feel pretty good.  I then worked for the sugar company until I retired in the spring of 1983.

      While I was working at the sugar factory I was milking cows.  I would get off the job at the sugar factory, then go out and paint houses until it got dark, then come home and milk my cows and then go to bed.

      I remodeled houses, did kitchen counter tops, and one winter, to put a little groceries on the table, I sold sewing machines and traveled around the country.......anything to make a couple of dollars.  I built my barn.  I laid cinder blocks.  I built several buildings, then I would do a little welding.

      When I came home from the army, in October 1946, I was first counselor in the Stake Superintendency of the Sunday School for three or four years.  I went around to all the wards and took care of the Sunday School.  Jim Miller was the Superintendent.
 

      I was ordained a Seventy.  I was one of the Seven Presidents.  I don’t know which number I was in there.  Gene Gierisch was President and had two counselors.  I was one of the Seven Presidents of the Seventy.  I had that job for a number of years.  We had the assignment every Sunday of going in and taking charge of Sunday School for the Geriatric Senior Citizens in the Geriatrics Ward in the hospital.  We would have the Sacrament meeting there and pass the Sacrament to them and give little talks.  Jean and Barbara would go with me and do the music for us.  Jean would play the piano and Barbara would lead.  We did that for several years.  Then the Church did away with that program of having the Seventys in the Stake.  They gave us the option of remaining a Seventy and staying on the program we were on or being ordained a High Priest.  I took the option of being ordained a High Priest and Gene Gierisch remained a Seventy for several years and then they ordained him a High Priest.  But he still went in and took care of the Senior Citizens in the Geriatric Ward of the hospital.

      In the mid 1980's, we did genealogical research extraction for a little while.  I was called on a Stake Mission for a couple of years.  We would go around and teach nonmembers and we had to give our reports.

      In 1953 when I had my thyroid trouble, the doctor came from Twin Falls.  I had Dr. Beamer.  I didn’t have any money.  He asked me if I could pay for the hospital bill.  He came to the Rupert Hospital to operate on me for my thyroid.  While he was operating on me, I was allergic to the antiseptic they gave me and my heart quit beating.  During the operation I could hear the nurse and doctor talking.  The doctor told her to be careful giving me oxygen as it would give me artificial pneumonia.  She said, “He is not breathing.  I have got to give him oxygen.”  After the operation I came to.  The doctor was there checking me.  I asked him if I had artificial pneumonia  He said, “Why, what gave you that idea?”  I said, “Well, I heard you tell the nurse to not give me too much oxygen or it would give me artificial pneumonia.”  He told me my heart wasn’t even beating.  I wasn’t even breathing then.  I came through that operation all right.

      I had a little bit of excitement on May Day of 1975. I was working at the sugar factory in Heyburn and I went over to unlug a cord that we had for the piler and our welders.  When I unplugged the cord it burned up in my hands.  It burned all the skin off, burned all my clothes off and burned my face.  I was in the hospital for two weeks.  I was off work all that summer.

      That  electric cord was hooked to three phase- four forty and there was no disconnect.  It was hooked to the main line.  It was a miracle I lived through it.  I looked down and I saw my body was on fire.  I thought I was backing up to get out of the fire but they said I was running down that steel flume just as hard as I could run.  LaMar Larson and Archie Mills took an angle and came over to catch me.  LaMar said, “Give me your hands and I’ll pull you up out of there.”  He looked at my hands and he about passed out.  He got hold of my arms up to my arm pits and to me it felt just like I floated out of there.  I didn’t feel any pressure.  He said it didn’t feel like I weighed ten pounds.  They put me in a pickup and took me to the hospital in Rupert, Idaho.
 

     One guy at the sugar factory was building a new lab to test the sugar content in sugar beets.  One guy called and said they had a real bad burn victim coming.  They were all ready for me when I got there.  Dr. Dalley treated me.  During World War II, he was in England as a doctor to treat the burn patients that came back in airplanes that were on fire.  He was a real good burn doctor.  To this day I have no scars on my hands.  He really took good care of me.

      In April 1983, we bought a new Buick LeSabre 1983 model.  In March we went to Hickman, California to see Brent and family.  We stayed for two weeks. 

      In May 1983, Vicky came home from her mission to Guatemala.  We went to Jean’s in Provo, Utah.  We then went to Salt Lake City on Saturday night to get Vicky at the airport.

      On Sunday, Vicky gave her report in the Unity 1^st Ward.  On Monday night we went to bed.  About 11:00 I got up and then I laid back down.  I got up again and laid back down two more times.  The third time Donna said, “That does it, we’re taking you to the hospital.”  Donna went upstairs to get Vicky.  When she came down, she took me to the Cassia Memorial Hospital emergency room.

      I had had a heart attack.  When they had me in the emergency room, they had all those electric wires on me.  I was lying there watching the monitor go.  All of a sudden the deal started to beep.  Then all the lights went straight across.  I saw the nurse in the emergency room coming towards me with her hands folded above her head.  After they got me breathing and my heart beating again, she said she was hitting the daylights out of me to get my heart started.  I didn’t remember her hitting me.  After it was over I told her that I was lying there watching the straight lines go across and I said I saw her running towards me and then everything blacked out.  She said my heart actually quit beating. I do remember being in a very bright and beautiful place and hearing Vicky calling my name.  I did not want to leave that place, but I did.  I spent four or five days in the intensive care and about a week on the main floor.

      In the spring of 1984, I had heart surgery.  I had three bypasses.  They had a little problem keeping my heart beating.  Everything worked out all right and I got along fine. 

      In 1984 and 1985 we went to Brent’s in California for Thanksgiving.  In 1986, we bought a motor home and had it one year.  We traded it in 1989 for a 1988 5^th wheel travel trailer.  We lived in it each time we spent the winter in California.  We didn’t go in 1990 because I was in and out of the hospital.
 

     On 6 April 1991, I had a balloon job done on my heart in Modesto, California.  In May 1992, we were coming home from California pulling my 5^th wheel.  We had quite a stressful trip bucking the wind.  I got home on a Tuesday and I started taking nitroglycerin pills quite heavy.  Donna and I went to K-Mart and I got out and walked in and I had to take two nitroglycerin pills.  We walked back out to the car and I had to take two more nitroglycerin pills.  I sat there for three or four minutes before the pain went out of my chest.

      We left K-Mart and headed home.  When I was supposed to turn left I turned right and went over to the Cassia Memorial Hospital.  Donna said, “Where are you going?”  I said, “I think I will just go into the emergency room and see why I have had to take so many nitroglycerin pills.  In about a week I had used about a hundred of them.

     I told the doctor in the hospital that I was taking an awful lot of nitroglycerin pills.  They put me on the monitor and checked my heart.  They said, “Right now your heart is doing all right but the story you are telling us doesn’t sound good at all.”

      On Sunday morning the doctor said, “I am going to call Salt Lake and make arrangements to have you go down there to take an angiogram.  If we can’t get you in Monday, we’ll send you down there on Tuesday, regardless.”  Well, Sunday afternoon they had made all the arrangements.  It was on Mother’s Day.  I was supposed to take Donna out to Mother’s Day dinner but I had Jerry take her out as she wanted to go out.

      Donna and Jerry didn’t get back to the hospital and I was shipped out in the ambulance and taken to Salt Lake without her.  They gave me the angiogram on Monday.  They told me that I had to have surgery on Tuesday.

      Mr. And Mrs. Neal Thomas (Debbie Stout’s parents) brought Donna down to the rest stop in Brigham City.  Barbara, Mike and Michele picked Donna up and brought her on to Provo, Utah.

     The open heart surgery operation was done in May 1992.  The doctor did four bypasses.  I asked him why he didn’t go for a whole bunch like other people who have eight or nine bypasses.  He said I only had four and one of them was completely clogged.  They couldn’t do anything with it so there is a fourth of my heart right now that isn’t working.  The doctor told me that it was the last surgery that he could do–bypasses that is.  I could probably get a heart transplant but I don’t think that will ever happen.  From this second operation I got along much better.  I have the pain there but I knew what to do and so I got along better.  I haven’t taken any nitroglycerin pills since my surgery and I’m doing real good.

      I keep busy.  I keep out of the house.  I’m bothered with my knees but I keep walking around the yard and it makes me feel better.

     
       Last year (1998) I was working out in the garage when I reached up with my hammer and pulled a nail out of the cinder block wall.  I heard a loud pop in my arm, like the sound when you break a carrot, and my arm fell limp to my side.  It hurt like the dickens.  I let it go for a month or more, thinking that it would heal. I was over to Dr. Peterson’s one night, home teaching, and he told me it would never heal but needed to have surgery on it.  About the same time I was once again having prostate problems so in May I had my third prostate operation and my arm repaired.

 

For about the past three years, I have been working on restoring a couple of old tractors, two 1948 Minneapolis Molines and also my own 1955 Allis Chalmers WD.  I also enjoy reading anything and everything about vintage tractors.  I try to stay busy doing some little project out in my shop.

 

—written by Bernell Golden Stout

in 1996 for the Koyle Newsletter and updated July 1999

 

 

 

 

(The following is the article that Dad wrote for the

Second Annual Stout Family Newsletter in 1999)

 

 

Dad-(Great)Grandpa

       I want to thank everyone for coming to our Golden Wedding Celebration.  It meant a lot to Mom and me to have you all there.  Even though I am not much of a party goer, I really did have a good time.  It was so much fun that afterwards I had to go home and get on my breathing machine.
 

       I am so glad we had family pictures taken, too.  Aunt Donna saw our nice big family picture you kids gave us and commented on how nice it was and wished her family had done that before Uncle Wayne had passed away.
 

       I guess you all know that Mom has new living quarters.  That was a hard decision to make.  I was helping Mom do everything; dressing, bathing, bathroom and etc.  When I started to have chest pains again, it scared me and I knew I would be no good to Mom if I keeled over dead and no one there to help her.  I called Jean to see what I should do and she called Brent and together they came to Burley to help me out.  Dr. Joe Peterson, who lives by us and is in our ward, said he would talk to Jean and Brent when they arrived in Burley and he would give them his two cents worth.  He knew Mom’s condition and felt she would do better in an assisted care facility and suggested Highland Estates.  On Monday (Nov. 29), Jean, Brent and Nancy took the grand tour of Burley’s care centers and decided that Highland Estates was the best place in Burley for Mom to get the help that she needed.
 

       There was one little problem, though, there was a two week waiting period.  Nancy called Highland Estates back and told them that we really liked their facility and that we had decided this is where we would like our mother to live and wondered if it was at all possible to get her in sooner.  Highland said that they had a hold on one of the rooms and would be able to let us know Wednesday, December 1^st ,  whether or not we could have that room.  Wednesday morning at 8:30, Highland called and said the other party had decided to wait and the room was ours.
 

       Now we had another problem.  The room was unfurnished so Brent and I went in to Skaggs Furniture and picked out some new things for Mom’s room then had Jean and Nancy come back in to give their approval.  We picked out a new recliner for her, a curio cabinet, recliner love seat, television stand and a new bedroom set.  They are all really nice and Mom said that she likes them.  Skaggs knew our situation and that we needed the furniture delivered that day so that we could move Mom in before Jean and Brent had to go back home.  They delivered the furniture that afternoon.  They were so good to us.  They have even come back and exchanged the recliner for a recliner with a lift on it.
 

       The first night that Mom stayed there was Thursday and Debbie cooked a delicious roast dinner and we all ate together in the formal dining room at Mom’s new place.  It was good to have family there with us as we made this change with Mom.
 

       I got to stay there with Mom for the first three nights but now I go back out to the house after I eat dinner with her.  I go back in about 10:00 in the morning and stay the day with her and eat lunch and dinner with her.  They only charge me $2.50 for the meals.  I can’t beat that.

       It is kind of lonely at the house without Mom but I have been keeping busy going through things trying to decide what to keep and what to throw away.  I have discovered that Mom is very sentimental when I see all the cards and letters she has saved over the years from you kids and from people she knows.
 

       I also have a new fancy breathing machine I have to wear when I sleep at night.  I don’t like it but I guess I had better use it.  It is to help me with my sleep apnea.
 

       Thanks for all your visits, phone calls, cards and letters.  It really does help.

       Be Good!