Ora Carpenter Omerza journal, July 25, 1982

25 July 1982

It has been a month since I have written. So many things have happened. On the 26th of June I signed up with the Realtors to sell the house. It was a very hard thing for me to do. After thirty one and a half years in one place it is hard to think of any one else having it. Never the less this is what I had decided to do. The following day they brought two different people to see it. There were others during the week. On Sunday 4 July I went to Madge’s after my meetings to stay with Melanie while Madge gave her Relief Society lesson. I stayed over night so we could look for a house in Mesa for me the next day. The evening of the 4th we went to John’s parents home. They live near a golf course where they were displaying fire works. We took a blanket and sat out on the lawn of the golf course and watched the fire works. It was a beautiful evening. Rather cool evening for July. I enjoyed it very much. Some of John’s brothers and sisters and their families were there.

The next day Madge and I went looking at houses. I came home in the late afternoon. In the evening a fellow came to the door and said he had been here earlier in the day and seen the house and liked it and wanted some of his family to see the outside so they looked it over. The following day the realtors brought others to see the house but I didn’t hear from the other man so supposed he had changed his mind. On Wednesday Jay was here for lunch when the realtor called and said the man who had brought his family to see it wanted it and we could come sign the papers. Even though this is what I was hoping for it completely unnerved me. I felt like crying but pulled myself together and we went over. The terms weren’t quite to our liking so we told them our terms. It went back and forth a few times but on the 10th of July I signed the contract to sell. It will take thirty days to go through escrow so we are waiting for that now. The following Saturday Jay and I went to look at a house Florence and Joe had told me about. It was a nice little house. About my size. It was about 20 years old. The boys didn’t want me to have an old house they would be having to fix up. Jay said they wanted too much money for it. We went from there to Ted’s and John was there. Ted had a house he wanted me to look at. We looked at that and then John said he had a house a few blocks from Ted he had taken on a trade and he would let me have it at a good price. I could live there for awhile and then sell it at a profit. All the boys thought it was a good investment. As of now this is what I am going to do. The past two weeks have been busy cleaning out the closets throwing away some and packing some.

Last week I was packing records. We have some very old records. Some thirty years old. Of course after getting them out to pack all together, I had to see how they sounded after years of not hearing them. Em had some Croatian records. I put one on and it brought back so many memories, when Em and I were young. One thing it reminded me of was once we went to a Croatian dance. Em wasn’t much for dancing but we danced a few times and watched. The Croatians have some very interesting folk dances. We met a young couple there (they were younger than we). The fellow spoke Croatian so he and Em were having fun talking together. The orchestra struck up a pretty lively tune, a polka and this fellow asked me to dance. I’d never danced a polka in my life but away we went and I mean, we had Lawrence Welk beat all to pieces. The fellow was really a good dancer and I was trying my best to keep up. Em really got a kick out of me dancing with him. It always brought a laugh. He told about it for years and laughed and laughed. I told him at least I tried. He was too chicken to ask the wife to dance. He just sat and laughed at me.

I’m sure this one record wasn’t the same tune the orchestra played that night but as I listened I remembered how fast we were dancing and how funny Em thought it was.