Just before the scheduled move to Salt Lake, on May 23, 1955, Dick found Uncle Kenneth dead of carbon monoxide poisoning in a company truck that Kenneth had left running to keep warm on a job near Fort Peck Reservoir in McCone County. Kenneth was buried in the family plot in Glendive, Montana, next to his father Dudley Howard Bell. His wife and daughter sold the house on Miriam Street, then moved to Billings. Grandma Bell moved back to the Douglas street house in Glendive.
Terry graduated from Custer County High School later that year, and decided to enroll at the University of Utah in an engineering program. The family did not plan to stay permanently in Salt Lake. The house at 704 South Jordan was leased for two years. Mom notes: “We bought a 45’ trailer & moved to S.L.. – stopped a month in Caspar, Wyo.”
The forty five footer was one of the largest trailer houses available at the time, before the advent of "mobile homes." At forty five by eight feet, the seven members of the family each had about 52 square feet or an area about 7 x 7. The allotted space increased slightly in January 1956 when Terry transferred from University of Utah to Montana State College at Bozeman, where he once again became first chair clarinet and concert master in the band while earning his civil engineering degree.
The kids, especially Donna and David, looked on the move to Salt Lake as a great adventure. Like a gypsy caravan, the family left Miles City in a baby blue Lincoln towing the 45 foot trailer, an F600 Ford flatbed truck with a stock rack fully loaded with office furniture and household odds and ends, and Terry's 1948 maroon Dodge sedan towing a Willys Jeep full of "stuff." The Dodge had been a C&H company car that Terry inherited for use in his senior year of high school. The caravan wound its way to Casper, Wyoming where the family paused for a month or so while Dad prospected for uranium with a Geiger counter and a small gas powered core drill that Thayne provided before going on to Salt Lake City.
In Salt Lake, the family found a trailer park on State Street near a high school for Virginia and Pat. No other trailer park in Salt Lake had space for a 45 footer. Pat came home one day with a Spitz mix puppy. "I got her from a kid at school; I came out the front entrance to go home for lunch, saw him holding this little black fuzz ball, tickled her chin - 'Ohhh, how cute!!'
'You want her?'
'YESSSS!'
'Here, she's yours.' Took her home - Mom couldn't say no..........." So Roxie joined the family and pretty much had the run of the trailer house and park. She became so much part of the family that no one seemed to notice that David was missing from one of the first family photos taken after returning to Miles City.
Virginia joined the marching band playing the alto saxophone. Pat took up, among other things, the ukulele. She also learned to do the the Bop. Inspired by the waist up shots of Elvis on the Ed Sullivan show, and a vivid imagining of what could not be seen, Pat brought the house down with an Elvis impersonation singing "You Ain't Nothing But a Hound Dog." The Harmony House, where the school cliques hung out, banned the Bop for the same reason that the Elvis gyrations were never seen on Ed Sullivan. She and her friends went to the Eagles where she remembers seeing "an excellent Elvis impersonator and also Eddie Cochran (Summertime Blues). Virginia and Pat amassed a large collection of 45's which they kept in two green cases and played on a portable record player. David had two favorites: Yakety Yak and Purple People Eater.
Pat also made friends with two new horses."In SLC the land across from the trailer park was a few acres of trees and an abandoned house. For awhile there was a makeshift stable built right next to the creek where there were two horses and a yearling. My 2 friends and I went over there daily to climb up on those horses and ride around inside the fence -- no bridle, saddle, reins; just us and the horses. Don't think anyone in the family knew about that either!! [Well, they do now.]My 'gang' went to the 'haunted' house at night and scared the crap out of each other a lot. Also used it for our illicit smoking. Even though we were careful, it's a wonder we didn't burn the place down." Maybe, had young Terry been there, a different outcome.
The children made friends easily in the park and at school. The trailer quickly became a social center, partly because the family had one of those then relatively rare black and white TV sets. Sometimes kids would be gathered around the set even after Mom and Dad had gone to sleep in the fold out bed in the living room, usually not long after dark since Dick got up in the pre-dawn hours and left for the job site.
Virginia remembers Salt Lake as a time and place when the family became especially close, and not only by necessity forced by the cramped quarters of the trailer house. Because Dick could get back and forth to the job site on a daily basis, he spent a lot of time in the evenings and weekends doing things with the kids. Tall tales told and many games of pinochle played.
On those occasions when he was not snoring loudly in the background, Dick did not hesitate to provide live commentary. On Ed Sullivan: "He was born without lips and had monkey lips sewed on as a baby." Some of Pat's friends bought it hook, line and sinker, having had no experience with Dad's dead pan style. Another crowd favorite, professional wrestling at the Salt Palace, then featuring Gorgeous George (a precursor and inspiration to Mohammad Ali). By all accounts of his neighbors in Salt Lake, his professional persona was quite the opposite of the good natured and friendly man that he was. David's shows came on in the daytime, when Dad was at work: Howdy Dowdy, The Lone Ranger, Superman, Captain Kangaroo and Pinky Lee.
About this time, Dad gave David the name of "Tiger", not because he was particularly ferocious, but because he paced around, inside and out, looking for something to get into. A small creek ran through the trailer park, dividing it in half. One day David dropped a small rubber inner tube (each kid had one appropriate to size) into the creek from a little bridge that was the only way to get from one side of the park to the other, a place he was never supposed to be. The older kids managed to retrieve it, saving him from telling Mom where he had been and how he had lost it.
Salt Lake had one unusually big snow storm that winter. On one glorious day, all of the kids built a snow fort and a snowman who, like Frosty, soon melted away.
Next spring, Dad and Terry moved the trailer across the creek to a shadier part of the park, where the family of Virginia's best friend and Terry's future wife lived. Virginia also had a steady boyfriend. Pat, by her own account, began to enjoy the freedom that comes from being in a place large enough so that every adult does not know who she is and what she should not be doing. Donna started first grade at Wilson Elementary School. Roxie sometimes played with David at building roads.
Soon it was time to reassemble the caravan and move back to Miles City. Dad had some equipment that he needed to move off the construction site. David rode out with him. When they got to the site, the only other person around was Dad's business partner. Dad needed to tow a tractor with mechanical problems. Thane refused to help by riding on the tractor and steering it. He said he did not know how to operate the equipment. Dad could not believe it! "Tiger can do it and he is only four years old." Thane still refused. So Dad put David on the tractor, showed him some hand signals for left, right and stop and away they went.
David did not get to drive on the trip back to Miles City. Nevertheless, there were several memorable events. Like the Great Santini, Dick believed in leaving early and making good time. Each of the drivers (Doris, Terry and Virginia) had been taught (and drilled by Dad). Leaving Salt Lake, Dad and David headed the caravan in the Lincoln towing the house trailer. Terry drove the F600 which had been converted to a semi-tractor to pull a flatbed trailer loaded with the Jeep and the stock rack. Dad told David to look back in the mirror once as the caravan moved north on State Street so he could see that all of the traffic lights behind the last car in the caravan had turned red while all of the cars had passed through all of the lights while they were green. Dad had planned the route so he could time the lights and keep the caravan together.
The route back went over Monida Pass which had a good deal of snow. Near the top of the pass, a gust of wind or an icy patch had caused the house trailer to slip into the borrow pit. Dad did not take very long to pull the trailer out of the ditch. But the snow became heavy and it was late and dark. Dad found a safe place to park everything for the night. The caravan did not continue until the next morning after the storm had passed and the roads were plowed. Even with the delay, the family completed the move, as scheduled, during Terry's Thanksgiving break. He was back in class Monday morning making the 300 mile drive back to Bozeman after leaving the rest of the family in Miles City.
Mom notes: "We moved back to Miles City Nov. 1956 – lived in the trailer till Mar. ’57 then back to the house at 704 South Jordan.” Mom immediately set about reclaiming ownership of the house by repainting the kitchen which the tenants had painted fire engine red.
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