Aunt June Remembers Glen

Being just 18 months younger than Glen, he was very much a part of my early life. I was just three years old when the folks decided to build the house on the corner of 4th North and 4th West. The house we were living in was 3 ½ blocks from the house Dad was building. Mother said many times she would go out to check on Glen and I, but we were no place to be found. She suspected where we were and started down the street in a near panic knowing that Glen had decided to go over to the new house to see Dad. Her main concern was the canal that we had to pass where she many times found us laying on our bellies trying to catch Penny Bug. He would load me in his red wagon, and off we would go. Mother and Dad seldom went out for an evening but when they did, it was to the Temple. When they would, Aunt Millie was our baby sitter. Years later I asked her how it was to baby-sit us, and she said “as long as I had Glen in my lap reading to both of you, everything was fine. If I let Glen down, he always found some mischief to get into”. She said that of all of us kids, Glen was the most loveable.

The little red wagon was our usual means of transportation. When Mother churned butter, we would always take a bucket of buttermilk down to Aunt Millie. In return, she would give Glen and me a sugar cube, which to us was a real treat. She used the sugar cubes in her coffee, but we never knew that was what they were for. It was just a wonderful treat for us to suck on the three block walk back home.

On the 4th of July we always had home made ice cream. We had to walk the red wagon down to the ice house to get a block of ice to freeze it. It was a wild ride back home for me in the wagon, holding the ice down as Glen ran all the way at top speed so the ice wouldn’t melt. Our reward was a sliver of ice to suck on as we took turns turning the freezer. Glen always wanted to take the last few turns, because he was the strongest.

Mother used to say that Glen and Fred Sorenson got blamed for everything that went wrong in the neighborhood, but that wasn’t fair because they were usually only responsible for 90%.

Glen was a really great brother to me, always there to defend me. One day as we were walking home from school, the neighbor boy made me feel bad. The next thing I knew, Glen and the boy were in the Principals office for fighting.

To Glen, school was an inconvenience; he would rather just have fun. On the first day of Junior High, where Dad taught, Dad got the word that Glen had sluffed school. When Dad came home in a huff and confronted him, he said “I was there Dad; I took the absent list to the office for the teacher.” Too bad he hadn’t noticed his name on the list!

When he got into High School, he struggled. Unfortunate for me, he did have one class he really enjoyed, and that was band. He loved to play his Trombone, and on several occasions when he decided he would rather not bother with school, it was my assignment to carry his trombone home. After he joined the Navy, He and Merlin both graduated when I did.

Glen loved to tease and Loree was usually his favorite one to torment. However, he knew that I was afraid of snakes, so if he could find even a picture of one, he’d chase me with it. One day Glen asked Mother for a bucket, and not bothering to ask him what for, he left. When he returned, he had been over to the canal, and filled it with water snakes. Mother screamed and told him to get rid of them, so he took them out back and dumped them in the garden. Needless to say, I avoided the garden for a good long time.

Our favorite thing to do at Easter time was to walk down to the west fields to a flowing well, where we would find watercress to put on our bologna sandwiches. One year Logan City was working on the water line, so we took glass jars to fill and bring back drinking water from the flowing well. Loree wanted to go with us, and Glen tried to convince her she would get tired, and that he would not carry her back home, but she went along anyway. On the way back, she was carrying a bottle of water, and fell down and cut her knee. When Glen and Fred Sorenson saw blood, they picked her up and ran all the way home.

Another time we were making a tent using a big rock on the fence post. As usual, Loree was the one that had the rock fall on her head, and the blood again put Glen into action. Dad was working about four blocks away and Glen ran all the way; sure she was going to die. But to his disappointment, the cut was only the size of a pea, and all it required was a good washing off.

Through all of his craziness, he was a very kind and caring person. He told me not long before he died that he was glad the Lord let him live long enough to repent.

—June Cottle