Transcription of Interview with Karl Russell Brand
3 April 2011, Taylorsville, Utah
When I was a boy, about 10 years old, we moved from Williams Air Force Base, which is now defunked, to Chandler Arizona, and there my father began the process of building a house from scratch, we dug the footings, we poured the footings, we laid the foundation, we did the plumbing, the rough plumbing, the finished plumbing, the electric, we did everything in that house. I should say my father did everything in that house; I was his ‘helper’. I mixed a lot of mud for brick; we made the cinderblock for the house too. One of our neighbors in the ward wanted to build a new dairy barn, and he wanted to build that out of cinderblock, so dad said that he would make the forms for the cinderblock because he was a welder, and Brother Leslie said that he would cast the cinderblock if he could have some help. I was sent over for the ‘some help’ a couple of times, and that’s about all I ever did. The Leslies did the majority of the work making the cinderblock and I barely learned how to do it.
Dennis Leslie and I were very good friends. He and I played together on our softball team when I was a boy. I don’t remember what position Dennis played, he played in the infield I remember that, first base I think. I started at catcher and ended up in Left Field. Hurt my knees to be down on them I didn’t want to mess my knees up for a game so I didn’t catch. I should have stayed there though, because when I threw the ball to second base, the pitcher better get out of the way. I threw it to third base a couple of times so hard that I knocked Vance Davidson off his feet. So the guys paid attention when I was behind the pitchers plate. I should have stayed there but I didn’t
Anyway, let’s see my fondest memories of my mom and dad. Building the house is one of the fondest memories. I spent probably two years digging a hole that was four feet in diameter and had to go down to bedrock, and I never got down to bedrock. After a while, dad finally had sympathy on me and brought somebody in who had an auger on a backhoe, and they finished the job for me. They went another twenty foot, and I had gone down twenty myself in two years, but it was a very slow painstaking process. Chisel, chisel, chisel, and put it in a bucket and my brothers would haul it up. I didn’t get much homework done.
Those were very fond memories, my brothers and I used to play in dad’s sand for the mortar. We would take his cement and make little cement houses and roads and play cars, and destroy the sand pile. Funny that dad never really got on to us; he said something about it, but he never really got on to us. My fondest memory of my Mother in that house is the fact that she would sit down with us boys and teach us the gospel. This is before Family Home Evening, and she’d choose a subject and we’d talk about it and she’d open the scriptures and teach us out of the scriptures. And we used to have marathon Monopoly games too. We would start the game as the long version, and that silly game could run every day for as long as dad was gone. That was during the summer of course.
Fondest memories in Tempe. That was where I graduated from High School in 1956, and shortly after left on my mission to Mexico. In Tempe, I tried my hand or foot at running track. Found that I did not have wind and couldn’t develop it. I didn’t know at that time that I was slightly asthmatic, but over the years I found that to be the case through visiting doctors. Well, I didn’t know that then so I never could get enough wind to be able to run. I wanted to be a miler I wanted to outshine Rodger Bannister, who was the guy who broke the four minute mile by just a few tenths, but he broke it, and from that time on, man has taken the challenge and really done well with it. Get it way down from sneaking under the four minute like Rodger did to three and a half minutes approximately. So they have really done some amazing things through conditioning and working and the science of doing what it takes to make your body as strong as it can be and I’m really impressed with them. I watched Dwight Stone’s high jump in the Olympics and thought I’d try my hand at that, and one day I was at school all by myself, not another person around, and I set the bar up way high above my head and I ran at it, turned around, flipped over it backwards and cleared with at least a foot to spare, I thought and the bar was set at six foot six. I never could repeat it, I don’t know what I did to do that, but I never could find it to do it again. And nobody ever saw it, that’s what’s really strange. Anyway, those are my athletic things.
School for me was tough. I have learning disabilities that really inhibit my learning the way most people do. I learn more with my hands and doing. Because of that I have struggled all my life to support my family, and I’m so grateful to be through that struggle, to be retired now. And here, pretty soon to have Grandma retired with me. She and I are going to serve a mission; we are going to serve it here out of the house because Uncle Russ is still going to college and he must have that education, with that education, I feel that he is going to become world renowned as an architect, because of his exquisite art talent and his talent for putting shapes and forms together. The projects that he has done in school so far, he has got straight A’s on, and I don’t see any end to that. I’m really excited and proud of him for what he has been able to accomplish. And I’m excited and proud of you too, grandson. You are a great man. You try to keep the commandments; I know that you don’t succeed 100 percent, none of us do, but try is what’s really important, and hanging on to that iron rod – leads to eternal life – that’s what’s important. You need to find a young lady and get married. I won’t select her for ya, but, I’d look close, I’d look for a real good friend, because that’s where love starts. Your grandmother and I are friends first and foremost.
The social pressures, I took care of by surrounding myself with good friends - Friends who had the same goals and aspirations that I had. Larry Judd was one of them. He and I wrote back and forth while we were both in the mission field. He served in Central America and I was in Southern Mexico, so we weren’t very far apart in actuality. We used to communicate. And then when I got home, he was just kind of far apart, and I lost track of him. I still don’t know where he is, or if he’s even alive. That was the most important thing that I feel that I had the sense to do. As teenagers, you really don’t too much sense, I didn’t either, and for me to have done that is remarkable. Pete White was another, and Paul W. Vaulker was another good friend of mine. Paul had a Model T Ford and he cut the body off of that thing, all except the seats and the back end of it and we used to go out mountain goatin’ in that thing. It didn’t go very fast, but if you couldn’t go up forward, you could go up in reverse. We had a lot of fun. He had a can with him every time he would get out of the vehicle, he’d hang that can where the oil would drips and capture the oil and put it back in. We had a lot of fun monkeyin’ around doin’ that. My cousin Katie, Katie Harris, used to come from Iowa when I was in high school. She’d come up and spend the summer with us. Katie and I were first cousins so there was no chance of romance there. We had the most fun going out neckin’ wreckin’, that’s what we called it. I think Jimmy had a Chevy that I… I don’t know… there was a car that had a spotlight on it, and I somehow got a hold of some red cellophane, which is, light passes through it – and when it passes through it picks up the color. Well, cops’ spotlights were red. So we’d go out South Mountain and we’d drive around and see a car parked off somewhere and we’d turn that red spotlight on them. Neckin’ Wreckin’. We had a lot of fun doing that. Katie and I have always cared for one another. When your great grandma Brand died, she came out, which was a great surprise. She’s a sweet, wonderful, young, well old lady – she was a young lady, and I’ll remember her as that young lady – very kind and considerate, sweet, sweet girl.
The first date I went on was with a young lady in our ward. I was afraid to ask her for fear she’d say no. Anyway, I asked her out – I think I took her to a prom or something. She remembers the date better than I do for some reason. I haven’t seen her since, but through word of mouth of others that know both of us, I got word back that she remembers it all. Dating back then was different than what it is today. If you went to a dance, you danced. You didn’t stand in a line waiting for pictures. You didn’t take pictures. If you got a picture, it was a happenstance thing that somebody brought a camera and snapped your picture but that was it. You were there for the dance. And when I went to a dance that’s what I did. And I danced with as many girls as I could. And every once in a while I’d kind of focus in on one young lady or another and try to get to know her better, try to find the right one. Well, that went on for far too long. 27 years old by the time I finally found your grandmother, and I had to wait for her to grow up, cause she’s nine years younger than I am. But what a wonderful life I’ve had with her. She is the apple of my eye. It’s true that I did date exactly 100 girls till I found her, and it’s true that I was dating three girls at one time when I was looking for her ‘till I found her. And it’s true that I have been engaged a couple of times, but I’m glad that I finally found Carol June Crouse, and some of the things that convinced me to ask her to marry me – well the main convincing thing was the Spirit of the Lord, ‘cause I went to Him and asked Him if this was right and I received a spiritual witness that it was. Now before that, before I went to the Lord, I fiddle faddled around trying to find her, and I had a hard time. Even though there were many pretty, interesting young ladies, they just weren’t right. When you look for a wife, I would say, look at her family first – before you look at her, because you are marrying that family as much as you are marrying that young lady. Willard Crouse was a solid man. He was a good, solid man. He didn’t have the problems I had when it came to earning a living. He had been an auto body repairman since the beginning of the automobile. He had worked on all of them. He knew them forward and backwards. He taught me how to paint cars, and that – the painting – was the part that I enjoyed. I didn’t really like the body work as much. Anyway, I spent five years under his tutelage, and I learned the trade. I was nowhere near as good as he could do it. I guess my talent wasn’t really working with my hands. Nevertheless, that’s where I was.
WHAT WOULD YOU SAY TO THE FUTURE GENERATIONS IF YOU COULD SPEAK TO THEM NOW?
First of all, I love your grandfather, and I love you, even though I have not met you yet. I love you. And I will open my arms and welcome you into Father’s Heavenly Kingdom. Keep the commandments so that we can be together. Pay your tithes and your offerings. Stay chaste. And then do all that you can for others.
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