Tom Peacock

I called Tom Peacock in England today. I try to call him every month. He and Lillian lived next door to us in Newton Aycliffe. They were such good neighbors and became very good friends. Lillian passed away on October 21, 2008. Tom misses her so much. They truly had a wonderful relationship. They did everything together and he took such good care of her. She died of Lou Gehrig's disease. We talked for quite away about everything. He told me that Andrew Hancock, the Ward Mission Leader goes to see him about every two weeks. He said the young Elders come every Tuesday night and teach him. He told them that they would never convert him. He always gives them a ride home after the lesson. I think that he really enjoys it and you never know they might do some good. Tom is a very kind person and would do anything for anyone. Grant said if we could pack them up with us when we moved, we would have brought them home to America. Tom has a daughter and daugher-in-law that call him all the time. ( They are Lillian's children by a previous marriage. Tom and Lillian had both been married before and had terrible marriages.) I think that is why Tom and Lillian's marriage was so good. They both appreciated each other and showed it. I can see why Tom would miss her so much.

Catherine "Trina" McLean Jacobsen

My mother was born in Denver Colorado on April 11, 1920. She was the only child of Richard C. McLean and Catherine Marie Hoffman. My grandfather worked for the Highway Department in Nevada. They lived in Wells, Nevada when she was twelve years old. I can only remember her talking about living in Wells and Fernley, Nevada.Her mother died when she was fourteen years old and her father remarried Doralee "Rowena" Brambaugh. They had two girls. Rowena Nevada McLean and Dorothy Kay McLean. My mother was pretty much on her own after her mother died. She lived in Fernley, Nevada at the time of her mother's death. She graduated High School in Fernley and went to Woodbury College in Burbank, California and studied Interior Decorating for a year. While she was at college she babysat for a couple. We have a picture of her sitting outside in the backyard with the child riding a bicycle.
I wish that I would have listened to her more carefully and wrote some of this stuff down when she was alive. She married my father on December 27, 1941 in Gardnerville, Nevada. They lived in almost every town in Nevada, as my father worked road construction. They lived in Fernley when my brother and my sister and I were born. As there was no hospital in Fernley, we were all born in Fallon, Nevada. We lived in Fernley the first five years of my life. My dad was gone and we lived in a little house in Fernley. I mean a little house. My mother had many friends there, as she had gone to school there and I think that was her only comfort.
One story I do remember is that my mother and father we living in an apartment in Reno and my mother was working. She came home one day and my father hadn't found a job and was laying on the bed. She told him that he better get out and find a job because she wasn't going to support him. I guess he realized that she meant it, because he always had a job and he could always find a job.
I have come to realize that my father was a womanizer and drank quite a bit. I don't know how my mother ever survived that other than she had three small children and she hadn't finished college, so she felt she had no way to support herself and three children.
Mom was always at home, she never worked outside the home when we were kids. When we lived in Fallon on my grandparents ranch, Mom sold Avon for awhile. When she sold Avon is when we started to have to help her clean the house. It really wasn't much but it seems like it was to us.
Mom had a very kind and loving personal. She was always saying "if we didn't have something nice to say about someone, don't say anything." She was always for the underdog. She wouldn't let us make fun of some one walking down the street. I loved that about my mother.
My mother was a very moral person. I never doubted that she was true to her beliefs or her morals. I could never understood why she put up with my father. My Father never layed a hand on my mother, but he did verbally abuse her. He was always putting her down and didn't listen to anything she had to say. It was always his way or no way. I often think of the life my mother had to live with my father and wonder how she turned out so good and kind. She had a very unhappy marriage and I think a very lonely and unhappy childhood. It amazes me that she turned out to be the person that she was. As I grow older I think of her and wish that she could have had the life that I have enjoyed. One thing that my mother did was love her children and taught them good sound principles. I don't think that we ever disappointed her, at least I hope and pray we didn't.

Monday, June 1, 2009

Today we are going to Twin Lakes to spend a few days with Jake and his family. Bobby and Deena Tucker have a cabin there and they said we could stay there. It is a beautiful place. Their cabin is right up in the mountain and looks done over the lake. It has all the comforts of home, shower, toliet, tv, vcr, telephone (in case of emergency), wood stove, plenty of beds. We have rented a pontoon boat for tomorrow, so we can go fishing and just relaxing on the lake. It will hold eight people.
I order a Kindle from Amazon. It is a electronic book reader. I can contains 15,000 books and it is pencil thin. You can order books for $9.00 and cheaper. Deena Tucker has one and I have been thinking about getting one for a long time. Several months, in fact. Another thing about it you can put the scriptures on it. The Book of Mormon and several other church books only cost $3.50. I am excited to get it. It cost $369.00, that is one reason I thought about it for some time, wanted to make sure that I would use it. I do love to read and it also has the ability to listen to the books.

Sunday May 31, 2009

Today we went to Hawthorne for their Ward Conference. I am the Stake Young Women's Secretary. It was a very enjoyable trip and time there. The lady that gave the lesson for the Young Women gave a lesson on Journal Keeping. I realized that I needed to be better about keeping a journal. So I am going to write every week about that things I did that week. I am sure that too a lot of people that this will be very boring. I am doing this for my grandchildren. I want them to know what Grant and I do and what I think about things.
Saturday Grant and I worked in the Temple. We left at 5:30 am and got home at 4:00 pm. When we got home, I took a long nap and Grant went to the church to clean the building. May was the month that the High Priest had the responsibility of cleaning the building. So Grant has gone every Saturday and helped cleaned the building. I went with him once to clean the building. Grant is the High Priest Group Leader in our Ward. We are in the 6th Ward.

I really can't remember much of my childhood. I know that we live in almost every town in Nevada. My father worked road construction and worked for Drum, Dodge, Helms and many more construction companies. I understand that he was pretty good at what he did. If he quit a job he had another one the next day. He was a very hard worker and always provide for us. We never went without food or clothing. We lived in a trailer, the last one was a Spartan. It was 35 ft long and 8 ft wide. We thought that we had died and gone to heaven. My brother and sister and I slept in the same bedroom. There were twin beds, Rick slept in one and Carole and I slept in the other. My mother and father slept in the front room on a hide-a bed. We always had to play outside, so maybe that is why I was a tomboy. I always had little boys that were my friend. I would rather be outside than inside. Besides that there was no room for us to help mom with the dinner. We had to wash and dry the dinner dishes. Carole always picked that time to go to the bathroom. I can remember my mother hated it that we were called transient. It just that we followed my father from job to job.
I remember on place that we lived it was Carson City. I remember that some friends and I were playing in a vacant flied next to the trailer court. When had built a fort and were playing with matches. We started a fire and I ran home and told my mother that I didn't start it. She knew right away that I had something to do with it. I can't remember what happened but I am sure that I got punished for it.
On of my memories when we lived in Fallon and I was going to school at Oaks Park. I had called my mother to come pick me up and she was always late so I started walking home on the old highway by Courtesy Corner. This pick up truck stopped and asked if I wanted a ride, I told him no that my mother wouldn't let me take rides with strangers. He started down the road and then turned around and came after me. I started running and I was crying, this other couples stopped to see what was wrong with me and I told them. The police looked for him but never found him. Needless to say I never walked home again.
My mother always seemed to be late to pick us up. My father always said that she would be late for her own funeral. I cam remember waiting for my mother at the movie theater on main street after everyone had left. I can remember one time saying something to her about it and I remember that she just gunned the car. I guess that I wasn't too diplomatic about it.
We were in the 6th grade when we came to live in Fallon, as my brother was starting High School and my mother wanted us to stay in one school throughout high school. I was a very immature. I was still playing cowboys and Indians with Carole Imelli. Carole lived a fourth of a mile down the road from my grandparents place on the Austin Hwy. We would ride horses. The Imelli's had horses and it was fun to ride in the fields that were around their place. Carole was a couple of years younger that I was. I just remember having so much fun with her and riding horses in the alfalfa fields.
My parents were a little concerned because Carole was a lot more mature than I was. I was always a littler slower in developing that Carole. Which I didn't mind at all.

I saw on a blog where a man wrote his life story for his children, grandchildren and great grandchildren. I thought that would be a great idea. Now, I want you to know that I don't write very well and I write just like I talk but it is important to keep a journal and to have your life story written down. So, that is why I am doing this.
I will begin with where I was born. I was born in Fallon, Nevada on December 18, 1945. I have a twin sister and her name is Carole. I had an older brother named, Richard Louis Jacobsen, but everyone calls him Jake. I call him Rick. I just can't seem to change from what I called him when we were kids. Rick was 18 months older than Carole and I. My father was Bud Jacobsen and my mother was Catherine (Trina) Frances McLean. My mother was a housewife and stayed home with us kids. My father worked construction. That is road construction. He has worked on almost every road in Nevada. We lived all over Nevada. That is another story for later.
When I was born we lived in Fernley, Nevada. There was no hospital there so my mother came to Fallon. She didn't know that she was going to have twins until she was on the gurney. We lived in Fernley for the first five years of my life. I don't remember much about living there, except that my mother told me that one day I was riding my tricycle down the alley and I hit a brick and went head over the handle bars. I landed on a piece of glass, I cut my head and I went home. My mother didn' t know where the blood was coming from, she kept wiping my nose. When she discovered that I had a cut in my forehead, she drove me to Fallon to get some stitches. I still have the scar for that accident.
My father worked road construction and we went to 28 schools from the time I started first grade until we were in the eighth grade. My brother started high school and my mother told my father that we were going to go to one High School and that he could work where ever the job took him but we were going to stay in Fallon. We lived out on the Austin Hwy by the grandfather Jacobsen ranch.