A: Well, but I do remember that commissioners and people used to do a lot of things just for money for postage and stationery.

Q: Maybe there was just a job to be done and they did it.

A: And people did it. Yes. I think a lot of people get salaries for other people used to just donate their time.

Q: I wonder why that is?

A: Well, maybe you can call it greed, I don’t know. 

Q: Well, is that what you would call it?

A: I didn’t say that now.

Q: Are you a church going person?

A: No. I just stay home.

Q: So. Some people think this is a Mormon community. Do you have Mormon roots at all?  

A: Well, really yes. I’m not a Mormon, but my mother was. 

Q: Oh really.   What about your father?

A: Oh, he was not a Mormon. No. He wasn’t … he didn’t have any religious affiliation, however, he was a Mason.

Q: Did Elaine become a Mormon?

A: Well, she always was but she was never active until she was an adult and then she became quite active in it.

Q: Was your mother quite active?

A: Well, in a way. Sometimes she was and sometimes she wasn’t. It depended on what she had to do, I suppose.

Q: What made you decide not to become active?

A: Well, I am too much of a doubting Thomas. I ask too many why’s.

Q: A skeptic.

A: How come this and how come that?

Q: Well, I think that is great.

A: And so, I didn’t do well in churches.

Q: Were you asked to leave? And not disrupt things?

A: No. No. I would just leave myself because I didn’t want to stay. And I remember as a little kid I used to.. We had two churches and I used to prefer one over the other and I suppose I wasn’t supposed to go to the one I preferred.

Q: I suppose that was the Baptist?

A: Yes, and so I didn’t go at all. If I couldn’t go to the one I wanted to, I wouldn’t go at all. So I didn’t.

Q: Did you find any problems with playmates or parties or anything?

A: No. As kids, we were a mixed neighborhood but we all got along just fine. Then on Sundays, they would go to their own churches and what not but I played with the Baptist kids as much as I did with the Mormon kids.

Q: So they didn’t have their own sort of social clubs or anything that excluded you?

A: No.

Q: You didn’t have that feeling?

A: I always seemed welcome. When I would come they made me feel very welcome.

Q: Well, great.   Sounds like you had a perfect life.

A: So. The Parks’ were Baptists. Their dad was the minister. And I was a good friend of all three of their boys, you know.

Q: I didn’t know the Parks or had not heard of them.

A: Well, that’s way back, you know. Sixty years, I guess, or more. They were a nice family and the Baldwin kids were Baptist. So was my friend, Walter Shutt, on the corner, Mr. Goodman’s grandson. And, so as kids I don’t think we, the kids I went around with, were too involved in church.

Q: Well, maybe it was just the times that they weren’t so much then as they might be now.

A: I don’t know.

Q: Oh well. So you said Walter Shutt.  There used to be some people named Waltersheid out on the highway, Betty Waltersheid.  

A: No, this was Walter Shutt. Teddy Goodman married a man named Mr. Shutt from….

Q: And his first name was Walter? OK.

A: And so she had a little boy about my age. We were close in age. She named him Walter and his last name was Shutt.   And he and his mother, his mother and father divorced so Walter lived with his mother and his Grannie Goodman and Mr. Goodman. Mrs. Goodman was one of the founder’s of the Moab Literary Club here.

Q: Oh she was?

A: Yes. And she used to always call her husband Mr. Goodman. 

Q: I guess that was the way it was done in those days.

A: I guess so. It was really funny. She would say, “Mr. Goodman, would you do this?”

Q: Were you in the Literary Club?

A: Oh no. I was a little kid.

Q: I thought it evolved into the Moab Literary Club, because they finally lasted a hundred years and they gave us all their minutes. They gave it to the Museum. I thought they turned into just the Moab Women’s Club.

A: I don’t know. I have no idea.

Q: It seems that the Literary Club, supposedly, helped found the Museum.

A: They probably did. But I have never been a club person or a joiner.

Q: You were just a free soul?

A: Yes. I don’t like regulations and I don’t like to be at a certain place at a certain time. And feel that I have to do this, you know. I guess you can call it laziness.

Q: Oh, I don’t think so. It sounds like a free spirit. So you must have evolved some philosophy of life.

A: Well, I don’t know whether I have or you just try to live and let live.

Q: Well, maybe that’s it. Live and let live and you go your own way. But your way led back to Moab.

A: Yes. Oh, I wouldn’t want to live anywhere but here. I really wouldn’t.

Q: So why is that?

A: I just don’t know. I think because I have had such good memories here and a lot of friends and, few of them are still hanging around.

Q: Yeah. I think it is really great. People talk about resale value and I say, “I don’t want to sell. Somebody else’s problem.”