When I was in fourth grade, I spent a summer with a devout Mormon family in Provo, Utah USA. I would have been either eight or nine years old at the time. What happened was, the man my mother was married to took us to his family reunion in Texas. He and his whole family are Mormon. There was a couple hundred people there and plenty of kids to keep me occupied. I remember doing some fishing, skeet shooting, eating plenty of food and swimming in a big pond they had, it was a fun weekend.
A sister of my mother’s husband, who lived in Provo, Utah, with her husband and their three kids my age, suggested I make the trip back to Utah with them and spend a month getting to know these new cousins of mine. Going to Utah for a month instead of going back to California sounded great, “see ya next month, mom!” They did whatever they had to do to arrange my plane flight home and when the reunion was over, I hopped in their van and made the trip to Utah.
They had a huge house. 2-story with a big white deck that wrapped around the entire second floor. Two big barns, farm animals, miles of farm land, a really long driveway; they had achieved quite a bit. I stayed in their son Nat’s room, down the spiral, metal staircase in the basement, I slept on the bottom bunk bed. His bedroom didn’t have any windows and it was always cold down there - I liked it! They had a tire swing hanging from a huge tree next to the driveway, sometimes we would swing on it from the second floor deck like we weren’t supposed to but we spent most of our time jumping on the trampoline. They had a trampoline, the neighbor had a trampoline, I think everywhere we went had a trampoline. The church didn’t have a trampoline, that I recall, I remember spending several hours at that church that summer - Three Sunday’s in a row.
I stayed with them for a month. During my stay, I was loaded up in a multi-level seat having van with all of the neighborhood kids on Sunday and hauled down to the church. The first part of Sunday was mass, it was longer than any of the other churches I had been to as a kid. Grandma’s church was Lutheran, my mother’s sisters’ church was Catholic, the neighbor’s church was Baptist - By the time I was nine years old I was already familiar with several pews. I never got to go inside the classrooms of the other religions though, whenever cousins of mine would attend their special church training, someone else had to take me home. The church in Utah let me go inside the classroom.
After what seemed like forever, the two hour mass would come to a close and it was time for school. The adults would head off to their classroom, led by their instructors, leaving all of us children behind to be escorted to our own classroom by our instructor. Nat’s classroom instructor grabbed both of our hands and led us up a fancy, half-moon shaped staircase to her classroom, located on the second floor.
As we entered the room, the class was full of pupils my age. I’m going to guess between 10 - 15 kids, all dressed in the same black/white overalls and each with their eyeballs fixated on me. The teacher released Nat’s hand and directed him to take a seat at his desk. I had never been inside a church classroom until that moment. She walked me to the front of the classroom and introduced me to all of the other kids: “Class, this is Arts, he’s going to be staying with the Paulson’s for awhile. He’s going to be here with us on Sunday’s, ok? Everyone say HI Arts!” .....”Hi, Arts!” I motioned a wave-type movement with my hand - “Hi,” I mumbled.
That was the extent of the introduction. She walked me across the room to the second floor window that overlooked the parking lot. The window was small and narrow, a barnyard type window or one you would see on a Victorian-Style house. A window that swings open from the inside and the roof has a flat section just outside the window, maybe two feet wide and one foot deep before the pitch of the roof slopes down. It isn’t a deck or a balcony - It’s just a flat surface of rooftop parallel to the window should you choose to leave it open:
I looked all over the place for an identical style roof - No luck! The second floor windows above the front door in the house pictured above are real CLOSE! See how the roof is flat outside the small windows above the door? The church did that, but just enough to allow the window to swing open/shut and then it continued a steep downward slope. The windows were small like those pictured above also, just large enough for my 8-9 year old frame to pass through the opening. The window pushed open from the inside, I would sit down on the flat landing part of the roof, just outside the window sill so the teacher could close the window behind me and conduct her classroom, that’s where I would stay and wait.
I did that for three consecutive Sunday’s the childhood summer I spent in Provo, Utah. I was allowed to be in the church for mass but when it was over and it was time for classroom instruction, I was banned. After mass, I would grab hold of the teachers hand and she would lead me up the stairs to her classroom. She would instruct the class to say hello to me as she walked me across the front of the room to the window. She’d push the window open and help me hop up to the opening and I’d crawl out onto the roof. Once I was in a seated position and the window had enough room to close, she would close the window behind me and conduct class. When class was finished, about an hour I’m guessing, she would make her way back to the window and knock on it to let me know I needed move so she could open it.
I just waited there. I waited on the roof and did nothing. I don’t remember ever needing to knock on the window to be let back in.
I’m not sure how many years passed before I told my mother about that church. It took quite awhile until I realized how weird that was! It’s still becoming clearer to me actually. That teacher was always smiling and nice to me, as were the other kids, at the time I didn’t think it was a big deal. But I was only 8 or 9 years old, I didn’t understand what child endangerment looked like. Knowing what I know now, that church is frikkin crazy! That teacher was out of her mind - What in the world was she thinking?! There’s about a dozen Mormon kids that are all grown up now that I’d really like to talk to. They all waved at me as I was escorted out the second floor window that summer. They all saw my back as it faced the window while they were taught their religion. I wonder what their memory of that summer looks like? I’m curious to know what this story sounds like when one of them tell it, I know they do - I’m not the only one who remembers that kid on the roof that summer.
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