I talked to my friend, Frank Stringham. He played the trombone and had been in Granite Youth before. Surely he would have made it. But he didn’t get a letter either. “I heard,” Frank said, “that the letters were delayed. They are being mailed out today.” So there was hope. The next day I was at a track meet. I looked up at the stands and Mom had just arrived. She held an envelope in her hand and she was shaking it excitedly in the air. I raced up the stadium stairs to where Mom was. I torn open the letter. I had made it! And my sister Vera had also made it!
The practices began each morning after the summer vacation started. We arrived at nine in the morning and we rehearsed until noon. One morning we had sectional rehearsals. The cellos and the basses went in a room and we were instructed by a cello player of the Utah Symphony. The other instruments were likewise instructed by Utah Symphony people. After practice, I went to help a man, Jesse Steele, who had been my seminary teacher in ninth grade. We were clearing out an old grocery store. It was a corner market in the Avenues area of Salt Lake. I discovered that living right next door was the cello player who had instructed us, that very morning. I was dirty and sweaty, but I said “hi” to him and pointed out that I knew who he was, that I had been in the sectional that he instructed that very morning. He asked what we were doing. “We are gutting this old grocery store and getting it ready for them to convert it into a laundromat.” He looked at the huge dumpster we had completely filled up. “Sometimes you have to do work like this to be able to support yourself playing music.”
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