| OCR Text |
Show coRA LEE JOHNSON MARCH 6, 2002 him. She had met someone and they lived in Florida and they lived in California. When she would come home here to Springville to see her folks, she'd always come in and I'd do her hair. So I kept in close contact with her. In fact, the other day I was in to a grocery store and I said, "Is your name Curtis?" He said, "Yes." I said, "Are you Clea Merritt's son?" And I had a chance to ask him about Melba. "Oh," he said, "she's had another stroke and she's gone back to California." She'd stay and visit her children. So I have kept contact back and forth like that a little. But anyway, going back to Florida, as we do you gather in your little groups together, you know, that you like to be with. But it was an experience. It really, truly was. We had a chance, if you wanted to, to bid for a place and I wanted to go to the west coast. I knew then it futile to even say I wanted to go to Seattle cause by that time my brother was in Alaska. BEC: Right. COR: But I wanted the west coast because I thought I would be closer to get home on a leave. So one day I got my papers and they said that I was going to Long Beach, California. And I was fortunate enough. When I was in Florida, I always played the clarinet in the marching band at Spanish Fork Junior High School and Spanish Fork senior High School in their summer band. Both of our bandmasters-the one was Cornaby, I told you, that taught my brother, Hal, how to salute-he'd been a military man in World War I and had been my music teacher. But they taught us military marching. We'd go out on the hard top behind the school and they taught us military marching. So I marched in that band and I had pictures of it. So I marched all the time so when I went to C a 11·~1 orm· a, I went on a troop tram· and 1· t was a troop tram· gom· g through to recruit. And we did marching, exhibited marching. There was all branches of the 34 |
