Getting to know so many wonderful people was one of the things I enjoyed most about moving to Snowflake. Being called to be the Relief Society President in our ward gave me a reason to meet them.
One of my favorite couples was George and Linda. (I've changed their names, since they might not appreciate me telling stories about them.)
George and Linda were an elderly couple that I began visiting the summer of 2008. They lived in a small manufactured home a few blocks west of Main Street, and they knew everything there was to know about Snowflake in it's younger days.
“We used to buy fabric at Ed's (the local grocery store) when I was a girl,” Linda told me one day. My mother sewed all of my clothes, and when she first met George she worried that none of his shirts were long enough, he was so tall, so she decided to make him new ones. She sewed him so many shirts he had a shirt for every day, and I got jealous because she made him so many clothes.” Linda laughed, then said with a smile, “From the first time she met George, my mother took him in and loved him like a son.”
I smiled, too. George was a big, tall, rough tough cowboy, but he was the sweetest man I knew. Linda had suffered from ill-health for many years, and George waited on her like a baby. The previous year she had suffered a stroke early one morning. George called 911, helped the paramedics get her in the ambulance, then followed them to the nearest hospital, 25 miles away in Show Low. He stayed with Linda all day as the doctors did tests and admitted her. Finally, late that night when she was sleeping comfortably, George drove home to Snowflake.
“But I couldn't sleep,” he told me later as he recounted the ordeal. “I tried, but at 2:00 in the morning I finally gave up and got in my truck and drove back to the hospital. I thought I'd do better sleeping in the chair in Linda's room than at home in our quiet house. But all the doors to the hospital were locked and I couldn't get in, so I slept in my pick-up until the hospital opened.”
This particular cowboy's rough, tough edges had been smoothed down by years of caring for Linda until he was as gentle as a kitten. But don't ever tell him that!
“We got married on the front porch of our ranch house,” Linda told me, with a far-away look in her eye. “My aunt moved her piano all the way out to the ranch so we could have music at our wedding.”
“I bet it was a wonderful day,” I said, caught in the spell of imagining a simpler, quieter time.
“It was,” Linda agreed, then she grinned. “But we weren't the happiest couple you ever knew.”
“George didn't get a lot of love when he was a kid, growing up. His mom married a really cruel man when he was a few years old. They moved to Nevada, but his step-dad was so mean she finally sent George back to Snowflake to be raised by his grandma. He didn't know how to be kind, or loving, and after a few years I got fed up with him and decided I wanted a divorce.”
“Really?” I asked in surprise.
“Yes, I did.” Linda told me. “I went to a lawyer and had him draw up some divorce papers, then I took them to the local police chief. Of course, everyone knew everyone in Snowflake back in those days, so I told the police chief I wanted him to serve the divorce papers to George, and then I went home. Well, a week went by and George didn't say anything, then two weeks, and finally I got mad and marched down to the police station and demanded to see the police chief.
“Why hasn't George been served with the divorce papers?” I asked him.
“Because you shouldn't get a divorce,” the police chief told me. “I'm not going to serve him.”
“Well, what was I suppose to do about that? I guessed there wasn't much I could do, so I went home, and we stayed married. It'll be fifty-nine years next month.”
I grinned again. They had been married fifty-nine years, all thanks to a police chief who wouldn't give George his divorce papers. Maybe we needed more policemen like that!
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