Memores From Ron's Childhood and Young Adulthood

Ron and I (Anna) were having lunch at home and talking about Ron's growing up years. He said, "I had one pair of shoes that I wore everyday for school. My dad and I sometimes go to the shoemaker and measured my feet I wore those and sometimes had store bought shoes for church. I usually had only one pair of jeans and one shirt. My (step-)Mom would make me a shirt and then I would have two shirts to wear.

"We ate everything we grew in our garden; once in a while someone would give us some beef, but most of the time we ate venison and elk that we got hunting and wild turkey. We usually only had to buy a 50 lb bag of sugar, or several fifty pound bags of flour. We did have a cow or two and milked them and had our own milk. We would separate the milk and get cream which my Mom would make butter, cottage cheese or regular cheese. We would give some separated milk to the Hawkins family and they gave us blocks of cheese they made from the milk. It was a trade and no money was exchanged and we had what we needed. We had a few pigs and ate pork meat and fed the pigs the bad milk or left over food. I remember one time my friend in crime and I decided we wanted to paint the pig with black ink. That was not a good idea but we did it anyway and suffered the consequences.

"My Mom would can tomatoes and we'd have bottled tomato juice, whole tomatoes, canned peaches and that kind of thing with our own fruit trees Dad raised. We had chickens so we had plenty of eggs, chickens to eat. We would eat our big meal at lunch and walk home from school for lunch. We all ate together; the hired hands would eat with us. We had a Mexican maid who did the cooking and cleaning for us and helped out with the house work.

"My Dad, Floyd Walser, was a school teacher at the Juarez Academy for about forty years. He was a very strict man and demanded obedience and corrected us as we needed it. I remember one time one of my friends and I set fire to the barn and we ran and hid under my bed in the bunk house. My Dad found me and gave me a lickin'. I was about six years old.

"I used to have to brings the cows in from the upper pasture and down to the corral in the evening time. I was a bit lazy sometimes and a couple of times I'd make the mother cow (who lost her baby calf) think her calf was calling and by wailing like a calf. She would hear me imitate the baby calf and she would come running down to find her young. After about a week of that, she was wise to me and wouldn't come running down like before. I was kind of mischievious then."

"At age eight my father baptized me in the cold water in January in the river in our town. Not too many attended my baptism since it was so cold. But my Dad did the baptism and we walked back to our house soaking wet and cold. There were no fonts in those days at the church in Colonia Juarez. I attended elementary school at the local white building that was first grade to eighth grade. High school was at the Academia Juarez where I graduated and then went to BYU.

I really had to study hard and long hours to make it through that first year. I was not exactly up to speed for BYU college classes. I learned a lot and worked at it. I worked to earn my tuition in those early days and reported to work at four o'clock in the morning. I had very little time to do much of anything else with classes and study time. I worked as a janitor in the McKay building and then worked in the cafeteria at the Cougar Eat in the Wilkinson Center.

"I tried out for the BYU basketball team as a freshman and made it. But there were so many good guys on the team that year and I knew i would not get much playing time and that my study time would suffer. So I quit the basketball team and know it was the best decision to do at the time with the competition of outstanding players who became NBA basketball players, like Nemelka, etc."

Ron finished his first year at BYU and went on a mission to the Western Mexican Mission, which was the west coast of Mexico from Tijuana to Mazatlan, Mexico. "It was about a thousand miles long. After serving in the mission I went back to BYU and roomed again with my brothers, LeRoy, Lee and John who lived downstairs from the Mexican restaurant, El Azteca." I met Connie Jensen in my student ward. My first Sunday in the ward I gave a talk and Connie was in the congregation. She told one of her friends that she was going to marry me someday. We dated a while then married I her December 17, 1966 in the St. George Temple. My parents came out from Chihuahua Mexico and met us there at the temple. We were sealed and afterward took a few pictures then went to have breakfast. We said our good byes to those who were in our sealing and drove back to Provo in the same day. We made our home in a tiny apartment in Provo above a neighborhood grocery store which was walking distance from BYU."