Line upon Line

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I’m quite sure that my grandchildren have no idea that I once worked as secretary to a Private Detective right in the heart of Chicago Land. Or that I once worked for the Chapel of Flowers Mortuary in Ogden, Utah, doing not only secretarial work but playing the organ for funerals!  It makes me curious to know about all the jobs my own ancestors did to make a living.

While pondering the subject of “work,” I remembered something a teacher once said in a Family History class at church: Our descendants would find it very interesting to see a list of all the different kinds of jobs we had worked at during our lifetime. I knew what work my grandfathers had done-Grandpa Reuben Saunders had primarily been a Real Estate man, and Grandpa Jacob Kapp, after immigrating from Holland, had worked for the Union Pacific Railroad in Ogden. I knew that neither of my grandmothers had left their homes to work. But I knew nothing about the work of previous generations. I would have found that information most interesting.

Times were hard when my parents were teenagers and neither was able to finish high school because it was necessary for them to go to work to help support their families. Mother worked as a telephone operator, and Dad as a carpenter at Hill AFB and as a salesman marketing prescription drugs to pharmacies. In 1946, my parents moved from Ogden to a small farming community in Vale, Oregon where Dad became a crop farmer, a dairyman, and eventually a cattle buyer-work he truly loved. For about twenty-five years Mother played piano and Dad played drums in the Kapp Family Dance Band to supplement their income.

Moving to the Farm

My introduction to “work” came as we moved to the farm. Our small farmhouse was set in a weed patch and Mother was determined to clear the surrounding area, haul in truckloads of dirt and make her little patch of earth blossom with green grass, trees and flowers. We all had to pitch in and it took a lot of doing to accomplish this and to maintain it. Dad had two sons to help him with crops, and the milk cows, and Mother had two girls to help with the house, yard, wash, ironing, cooking and other things. My sister Nettie and I hauled countless wheelbarrows full of cow manure from the barnyard to fertilize the lawn and the flower beds, and oddly enough it was one of our favorite jobs and we enjoyed singing duets as we did it.

The farm was a great place to learn to work physically. Dad had a pretty strict division of labor-the men did men’s work, and the women did women’s work, and only in emergencies did we cross over. We had no conveniences like we have now. Each Monday we would haul all of our laundry three miles into town and do several batches of wash at a small laundry that featured wringer-type washers.

Then we hauled it home and, in both summer and winter, we would hang everything out on the lines with wooden clothespins. I still miss the fresh aroma of clothing that has dried in the sun and breeze. When the clothes were dry we would bring them in and sprinkle all the everything that needed ironing, roll them up, and put them in a big plastic bag so we could iron them later at just the right degree of dampness. Thinking about it now gives me a serious case of nostalgia for those farm days. Oh, the lessons you can learn on a farm!

High School

Our parents made a promise to us four children that we would all be able to go to college so we studied hard in high school to earn scholarships and be ready when the time came. My older brother Jack loved subjects like chemistry and math and I tried to follow in his footsteps, but I didn’t relate to those subjects and soon dropped them in favor of typing, shorthand and bookkeeping-I was learning that every person must find his own niche.

My brother Gary had an exceptional talent in art, and my younger sister Ann (“Nettie”) was a musical genius. The three of them later earned degrees in Engineering, Art and Music and have had very successful careers doing what they feel passionate about and have natural talents for. I attended BYU for two years as a Music Education major but marriage and my husband Doug’s three-year service in the U.S. Army Security Agency took us away from BYU and the chance for me to graduate. Still, I eventually came to find the thing that was my passion and have been happily pursuing it for forty years.

Just For the Record. . .

A decade ago, Doug and I made a list of every place we had worked during our lives. His list was much longer than mine, but I kept my list in a safe place and can record it here in case any of our descendants might be interested. I hope he finds his list because it was very interesting.

1950-52. I was an accompanist for Grace’s School of Dance in Vale, Oregon. I played for the tap dancers and the ballet dancers earning 50-cents an hour, four hours a week, which was enough to pay tithing, go to one western movie (12-cents for children/50-cents for adults), buy Junior Mints and one movie star magazine.

1950-1956. I did housecleaning, babysitting and ironing for ward members, Vale, Oregon
during my teenage years.

1952-1956 (summers). I worked on an assembly line at Ore-Ida Frozen Foods processing corn and potatoes in Ontario Oregon, and at Simplot Potato Sheds, grading and cutting potatoes in Payette, Idaho, during and after high school.

1956. I worked at the Chapel of Flowers Mortuary in Ogden, Utah, the summer before college, as a secretary and also as the organist for funerals.

1959. During our first year of marriage, I worked as a secretary at Monterey Peninsula College in Monterey, California, while awaiting the birth of our first child.
                       
1961. I worked as secretary to John Denenk, CPA in Vale, Oregon. I and our newborn son were living with my parents while Doug was stationed in Japan for fifteen months.
                       
1961. I worked as secretary to John T. Lynch, Private Detective, in Chicago, Illinois. We were
living with Doug’s parents during the summer, working to save money for Doug to return to BYU.

1964 (summer). I worked for Temporary Office Services in Chicago where I filled in for vacationing secretaries in different businesses. We were living with Doug’s parents and working to save money for the next year at graduate school.
           
1964-68. I ran a Child Care Service in our home in Bloomington, Indiana, while Doug was in graduate school. This allowed me to be at home with our four children.

1964-70. I also had a Home Typing Business for professors and tudents, in Bloomington, Indiana, which allowed to me to be at home with our four children.

1974-1979. We moved to Provo, Utah, and I continued my Home Typing Business for rofessors and students at Brigham Young University.

1979-2013. For the past thirty-four years I have worked in our home Composing, Publishing and Recording Gospel-Centered Music in Provo, Utah

 I loved the years when our children were small, and I was willing to do any kind of work that would allow me to be at home with them. Typing in my home for fifteen years, at three different universities, was work I quite enjoyed and could do mostly in the evenings when the children were asleep. As the children grew and were finally all in school, I found myself home alone each day for six hours. An exciting new era was about to open up for me.

Finding and Doing the Work That I Love

Maybe it was serendipitous that my left hand suddenly developed a disability that made it impossible for me to type any longer-maybe I’d still be typing instead of writing music–but one day I knew it was over and I pushed my office chair back from my desk and said to myself,  “Now what?” And I didn’t know the answer.

I had started writing simple gospel songs a year or two before this so I turned more and more toward pursuing that interest, but it was painful to play the piano too, and it was a discouraging time as we explored every medical avenue we could think of without finding a diagnosis or treatment for my hand. My desire to compose gospel music was so great that I kept writing in spite of the hand pain. I definitely could not type anymore, and I quit playing the piano in public during the next twenty years. But I had found my passion and I knew I would continue composing no matter what.

I love the advice that President Henry B. Eyring’s scientist father gave him when he realized that his son did not share his passion for becoming a scientist:  “Hal, I think you better get out of physics. You ought to find something that you love so much that when you don’t have to think about anything, that’s what you think about.”  (David B. Burton, “The Blessing of Work,” Liahona, Dec. 2009, p. 2)

That’s how it has been for me these past 35 years. It is no exaggeration to say that words and tunes and rhythms of music are running through my mind constantly and I cherish the quiet times when I can pray and work and focus on what I most love to do. I’ve learned to block out hand pain and hardly think about it any longer-I can play well enough to get my songs written down. I have even, after 20 years, found an unusual way to type, but that is a tender mercy story for another day.

 “I believe in the gospel of work. Work is the miracle by which talent is brought to the surface
 and dreams become reality. There is simply no substitute under the heavens for productive
 labor. It is the process by which idle visions become dynamic achievements. . . . Nothing of
 real substance comes without work.” (Gordon B. Hinckley, Standing for Something, 2000, p. 8)

Janice Kapp Perry:  Composer, author, lecturer