Grandpa James Stevens and Grandson Eric Nielsen

00:02 Okay, so first we start off describing what's going on. My name is Eric Nielsen, and I'm recording this interview over a call with my grandpa. Would you like to give your name? James F. Stevens or Jim, colloquially known.

00:24 Yeah, that's just my friends.

00:27 Yeah. Um, so, yeah, we were recording this at 4:28 on December. December 1st, 2022. Um, well, let's jump right into it. Okay. So, Grandpa, where did you grow up and what was your childhood like?

00:48 Lonely. No brothers, no sisters, no cousins. Just had grandpa's one grandpa. And so I was always looking for friends. I got pretty good at making friends. So I born western eastern Washington, Wenatchee. And my dad was working on the railroad as a swishman and brakeman. So then the World War II came along, and the day after Pearl harbor bombing, he went to sign up to go to war. He had only been married to my mom about a year.

01:37 So do you know how. Do you know how old he was?

01:41 I think he was 39, something like that. I'm not sure. But he went to sign up and they said, we can't take him. He said, why? Because you were in the dynamite explosion last year. It collapsed your lung and gave you a limp on your left foot and shortened his ankle. So he said, if we send you to war with the Japanese, you'll be limping across the field instead of running. So he thought, well, what can I do? So he helped ship munitions up in northern Washington state from. They came all the way from Chicago called the Great Northern Railroad. It has a goat on a rock. They still have that. And the munitions went across the United States to Seattle, and they were sent off to the war effort. Yeah. So I lived in. Born in western Washington, lived there till about seven or eight when we moved to California. So your great grandpa was a painter? House painter and decorator. And Washington was pretty tough because it was too wet, moisture, and it rained a lot. And he said, where can I go? And he found out California was booming and a lot drier. So because of that, I traveled a lot almost every year. When school got out, we moved to another place and we finally settled down the North Bay. And I stayed there most of my life.

03:19 So did you get any good friends when you were in California?

03:24 I got good friends once I got to California. And the best were in junior high, high school and college.

03:33 All right, would you like to tell me about any of them?

03:38 Yeah, well, I had a lot of friends. The North Bay ended up being, you know, on the edge of San Francisco. And there were A lot of, a lot of people in school and got into motion pictures. I had two friends that I graduated with that. One of them starred in a. Co starred in Liza Minnelli's first movie called the Stero Cuckoo and she got an Academy Award for it. And that helped him to get a lot of acting jobs for the next couple of years. And then our best looking senior, which they don't do that any one of your books, but he was a handsome guy. He went down there. He starred in 18 films. Co starred. And the last one he did was with Charlton Heston, the actor who played Moses in the ten Canals. So. But they told me that Hollywood kind of difficult place and you gotta do favors and stuff like that to get keeper, you know, job. And they, they came home, they didn't, they didn't like the scene. This county south to where I went to school was, let's see, we're in county, and that's actually Marin County. That's actually where I went to school in Marin County. And that's where George Lucas built his walker, his ranch. What do they call that? Starwalker Ranch or Skywalker Ranch. Yeah, that's where all, all these great movies are created for Lucas. George Lucas.

05:21 Awesome.

05:22 Yeah. Yeah, it was cool.

05:25 What was that friend's name again?

05:27 Huh?

05:28 The friend who went into Hollywood, started 18 co starred. 18 movies.

05:34 Yeah. Gus Lincoln Senior, he got about 18 movies in. And my other good friend went, got his money together and he bought a TV station in North Texas. Texas. And that's where he passed away.

06:01 What were their names, your. These two friends?

06:05 Oh yeah. Wendell. W E N D E L L. Burton B U R T O M and Lawrence. Please call Lawrence Driscoll. D D as in dog R I S C O L L. Awesome. And then when I started picking up a little guitar and playing when I was in a sophomore in high school and I was a cheerleader with the other guys and a couple girls had a great time with that. And I played basketball in high school and ran track when I got to college. Everybody's a lot taller than I was, so I thought, what else can I do? Well, my PE teacher taught me a lot of wrestling. He was a wrestling coach. But I never went out for wrestling at the same time as basketball. So when I started college, I went ahead and joined the wrestling team and I wrestled for four years, had a great time.

07:11 Hmm. And is that what. And when did you carry that tradition onto your kids? Wrestling?

07:21 When, when they start wrestling, I mean.

07:24 Yeah. So yeah, I personally know from Freshman.

07:29 Year in high school.

07:30 Ah. But sorry, I was gonna say from my. Like, my personal knowledge of our family history. Wrestling is big. When did. Oh, yeah, yeah. When did you. Well, how did you meet Grandma?

07:48 How did what?

07:49 How did you meet grandma? Start your family?

07:52 Oh, I went to BYU for a summer session, and I took History Utah. And the man that was teaching it wrote the official seminary book for seminary instruction for the history of Utah, Brother Barrett. He was great. I mean, he knew. He knew everything. And. And then I met your grand. Your grandma at a dance, and my roommate introduced me to her, and so we kept dancing. Kept dancing, got to know each other better.

08:29 Awesome. So can you tell me about one of the most important people in your life?

08:39 My parents, for sure.

08:41 Mm. What were they like?

08:45 Oh, well, let's see. How long did they live without you ask?

08:50 No, what were they like with you growing up and.

08:53 Oh, well, my dad was busy painting, and eventually he was following the jobs from the Bay Area down to close the Mexico belt border in San Diego area. And I. They would do a number of homes, you know, like. Like, I live here in Utah. Just. They build, you know, 100 homes, and then he would stay there and paint. When the job was done, he go to another area. And so I saw a lot of California.

09:28 What about your mom?

09:31 Well, let's see. My grandpa, he really didn't want her to get married because she was helping hand in the farm, so. Yeah, but he did. He met her and he asked her marry him, so she. I didn't come along till. See, they got married in 1940. It took six years to have me come along, so. But it was war years, and there's a lot of disruption in life. You know, a lot. A lot of people put off having children because they didn't know if they're going to have the Germans invade their country or the Japanese invade the country. So. Pretty scared. So she's raised on the farm. In fact, I got. I saw. You know, I could look up real estate for sale on the web, and I looked up my old grandpa's farm, and the farmhouse is still there, and the one. And that's the one your grandma and I went to one time in the winter and stayed with my grandparents and cut down a tree and I mean, in the woods there outside Seattle. So the building is still there, but the land. The land. One acre is all is left of the farm and that building. And it's for sale for $1.2 million. Oh, dang. It was built in, like, 1890s. Yeah.

11:01 Yeah.

11:01 And then my grandfather was from Michigan, moved out to Seattle area. That was where I'm going. And my great grandfather, I should say, and he invited his son to come out with his wife and buy some property in Seattle. So his son did, and he built a small little two bedroom house in Ballard, Washington. Well, I just found out within the last year at Ballard, Washington. Today is like a rich area in San Francisco. And its value for the. For the house and the property is 6.2 million. So all that I could have inherited, I didn't get. So. Yeah. Huh.

11:52 Are you going to continue?

11:54 No, go ahead, go ahead.

11:56 I finish the story if you like. I'm sorry. Sorry.

12:01 Are you all done?

12:03 No, no. It sounded like you wanted to add something else to the story.

12:09 No. Well, if my ancestors had kept that area up in Seattle, I would have inherited millions of dollars and I wouldn't be stuck here in Utah. And your. Your mom would have a different life.

12:28 Yeah.

12:29 Yeah.

12:29 So would I, for that matter.

12:32 So anyway, it's. It's good. Then when I got through college, well, I decided to be a teacher about freshmen in high school. I thought, I really like that. I like high school, I like kids, and I like being around smart people smarter than me. And so I chose to teach. Made that decision probably as a freshman in high school. And then my best friend and I went to the same college. We both graduated together. And four years later. And I just enjoyed college. It was just really challenging. And I made a lot of friends, had a lot of good experiences.

13:16 Yeah. Okay, next question. Would you like to share some of the most important lessons that you've learned throughout your life?

13:28 Lessons I've learned from life that would be probably don't take too many risky situations like. Like your grandma and I invested some money out there to build a house in Utah, and then we lost it. So it got taken because people were dishonest with us and we were gonna buy a house there and sell it right south to where you guys were in Ksville. Is it Ksville? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And now we lost that deal. We did buy up in Rexburg. You bought a four, not a Triflex, but anyway, four apartments, you know, two on bottom, two on top. And your dad came over and helped me to put in a sprinkler system and some other things when he was going to school there. And so that worked out pretty good.

14:32 Oh, cool. So how about when you became a father? Like, when did you start a family after you met grandma?

14:47 Later than most guys, I think. I was 27 maybe because your mom was our first child. And so as soon as we could have a child, that was great.

15:07 What was that experience like, transitioning from just a man to a father?

15:15 Well, it puts a lot more responsibility in your life and means you're taking care of someone beside yourself. So it was kind of unusual for me because I liked having a lot of kids around because I didn't have any brothers or sisters or cousins when I was growing up. So now I can see how the brothers and sisters, my grandchildren, just have a great time with each other.

15:45 What was my mom like when she was growing up? Do you have any favorite stories ever?

15:53 Well, let's see. She kind of took charge in the house. I do the outside stuff like mowing lawns, gardening and big things. And she's real good at the house inside. We worked together on our first house, painted it, you know, and added stuff to it, had a garden. And we just continued to do those kind of things and bought another house. And that's when we just sold a year ago just on Runner Park. So now I'm in another house, which is, it's interesting. Our house was 20, 20 square feet, two story. This house is twice as big. Yeah.

16:46 So yeah, I know you're a convert to the LDS church. Can you tell me about the story of how you came to religion and spirituality when you didn't grow up with that?

17:04 Okay. Well, I was raised a Protestant and I was baptized today in the Disciples of Christ Church. And it was a church that my dad's cousin was a minister in that church. And so I got baptized. And then when I was 14, the missionaries knocked on the door and my mom called me and said, hey, we got some missionaries going around. What kind of missionaries? They're Latter Day Saint or Mormon missionaries. Now my mom had grown up with a family nearby on another farm and they were lds and so she was familiar with Mormon church, but I wasn't. So these two nice, good looking young men came over and tossed the Gospels and I go, yeah, that fits me. So I got baptized again in the LDS church. And when I first got baptized when I was 8 years old in the Protestant church, we went to a basement in a building in the city and they had a big area to baptize, but it's freezing cold. So. So I said, oh my gosh. So then when I joined you saint church, the water was warm. So I told my parents, that's true church.

18:22 Awesome.

18:24 Then I started. Ms. James asked me if I could introduce somebody, somebody else to the gospel And I got three people within a month to join the church.

18:36 Dang.

18:36 They're friends of mine in high school. And one girl, she tells a funny story. She's still a friend of mine, you know, she's there in California. She said, I thought you were. Asked me out for a date. And I said, well, it was sort of a date, but it was with the missionaries. We always laugh about that. But from that, her mom, her brother, and her husband joined the church. So I brought a whole family in. That was cool. And her mother became a great organist in the church. But that was funny. Told me that a few years ago. And then I met a lot of really great LDS people there in California and helped. I helped in California for a while. They would let the members build their own church, right? Well, you got to follow the rules about buildings, but you'd hire a general contractor, and then the church would send a contractor out and oversee everything. So follow the rules. But then the unions didn't like that, and so they made a law against church owners building their own church. So we had to hire like you do out in the world. Now he's hire a contractor, and he hires his people. They follow all the rules, make it right. So I got to work on that in Novato. Then when I went to college, I lived in Petaluma, and they were building a chapel. So I went up and helped build that chapel, too. I thought, maybe I should build building this year. But I didn't have my. I didn't slam my finger with a hammer too often.

20:16 And have you ever had any profound religious or spiritual experiences? And what do you think they've taught you?

20:32 Well, I had a miracle. I think it was a miracle for me. So when I was in this summer that I was searching for work for. For school, schoolwork, I had kidney stones, and they were very painful. And so my doctor, who was the Latter Day Saint, he sponsored me and sent me over to ucsf, which is University of California, San Francisco. They had a big hospital, and I. He sponsored and paid for my. My operation. But it was in August, and. And while my friends were interviewing for jobs for teaching in September, I couldn't get out there. And so the day I got home, I mean, I was really tired and sore. I get a call from the district, and they said, hey, we've got somebody that needs a history teacher. And, you know, they want to talk to you. So that was exciting. So the next day I interviewed, and the next day they called. So I got my first teaching job, and that's That's a job I stayed with for 40 years. Oh, my gosh, that was a miracle because all my friends had been hired to teach, you know, and I got hired, like, five days before school started. Yeah, that's crazy. That was scary.

21:56 Yeah. So what would you do if you could go back and relive your younger years or like, childhood or teenage or college?

22:13 Well, I did well in school. I enjoy my high school. It's great. I was a cheerleader as a senior, and I ran, pursued by president, and I played basketball through high school. My senior year, I was gonna. I was ready to go. I missed my junior year because of work, and all of a sudden I got a job again. And my dad says, you gotta earn your own money for college because I don't have that kind of money. So I made the basketball team. I went up against the kid who played the year before, and I hadn't played the year before because of work. I had to get money. And so my senior year, I go out and I have to go one on one with this kid. And I made 10 shots in a row, one on one. And wow, did I feel good because he played the previous year. So I was all set to go, and then my dad says, look, I don't have any money to send you college. You got to work. So I quit the basketball team, which I loved basketball, and I went to work. And then when I got to college, I. You know, these guys are. I mean, the guards in high school were like, 5, 8, 5, 9. The guards in college were like 62 and 6, 3. So I go, oh, gosh, what am I gonna do? You know, I'll never make it. And so I kind of remembered. I wrestled in high school some. I took some judo my senior year. And I thought, well, maybe I can make headway with that, you know, because I knew some stuff already. And so my. One of my PE coaches there, he was the wrestling coach at Sonoma State University. And so I wrestled for four years, enjoyed it, and then I'm right and coached it for 40 years in junior high and high school. When I got to the first, second year in junior high, the JC Junior College coach, Kim Dyson. Hey, why don't you go ahead and promote the district here to promote a wrestling program because we just have PE wrestling. So I went to school board presented a reason that be a good sport for boys, especially girls, but. And what it did is I did that. And then I coached a few high schools there in the Snow county. And the JC coach was excited because when we did that, it made his program better, you know, because I could go to high school wrestling. Four years goes to JC and all. He's got four years of wrestling under his belt where in the old system there was no high school wrestling. And he just grabbed people that were, you know, maybe not. Maybe didn't make the basketball team or maybe you don't need always have a small team. And then JC won a state wrestling. So he. So he and I went to school board, made a presentation. They liked it. And it really involved probably about two, 200 guys. And then we started girls league. And that just got bigger, you know.

25:28 Yeah, that's awesome.

25:31 It was awesome for me because I liked, I really like coaching wrestling. But I did coach some junior high basketball because I played a lot of basketball too, before wrestling came on. Yeah.

25:44 So what did you do for jobs during high school?

25:50 Boxing, Groceries at the local store. And I didn't like the boss. He was kind of crabby. And finally I left that one. And then I would do. I used to go out and advertise. I would clean inside and outside homes, you know, the windows, through the windows. They do wash cars. I had a paper route from the paper route was people would move and they didn't pay their bill. And then I had to pay it. I mean it was a bad deal. I didn't do that too long. Yeah. So I did immode bonds. I got pretty good at that. And the market job didn't work out too well. But, but, and then I go out during the summers after I go out and help my dad paint. So I got, I got to work on a right across the road from Skywalker Ranch that George Lucas still has there. This, this man built a four, let's see, a four million dollar home. But that was in 1965. That house is worth about 40 million now. Still there, big four bedroom right across the road from Skywalker Ranch. And the man that owned the property was the great grandson of the Mexican who was given the land by the king of, of Spain. Oh, goes way back. Yeah, the Spanish are, you know, up there.

27:25 Yeah. So speaking of the 60s, what was it like growing up during like the Vietnam War and the civil rights movements?

27:36 Yeah, see, I became a history major, so all that stuff was fascinating, you know. And so I didn't just watch the news, I read about what was happening, what happens that you don't see on the news. And like John Kennedy was shot, President Kennedy. And we were decorating for a dance, a senior dance. We were in charge of It. I was out of. Got out of class to do that. And so I needed to go to my car to get something. So I run up the parking lot and I turn on the key, and first words out of the first says, president Kenny had been shot and killed in Dallas. So I ran down to the kids in the gym. I said. I said, we better go back to our classes and tell everybody what's happened. And that was just a random thing I did. And so at lunchtime, wow. You know, hundreds of kids crying on the campus. I remember that. And the Vietnam War. I. I had seven classmates that were killed over there. Some of them, one of them was a fellow scout from the scout troop, and he had a life saving award because a baby fell in the backyard pool. And he dove in, save that baby. And just a good guy. He was only there a week and stepped on a landmine. He was gone.

29:11 Oh, my God.

29:12 Yeah, a lot of people, a lot of our soldiers were killed in the first week when they go over there. You know, it wasn't like training. It's a real thing. So. Yeah, I lost a lot of friends to that.

29:27 Would you mind? I mean, I feel like I should get that guy's name.

29:33 Huh?

29:34 Do you remember. Do you remember his name?

29:36 Michael Tandy.

29:37 T A N D Y. Michael Tandy.

29:39 Just a nice kid. He was the first soldier killed from the bottle, which was this town I was in the city of. And then they, you know, they had a casket and flag drape, and they had a horse pulling the wagon and all that. And I given the names to your mom. She can do some rubbings for me on the Vietnam Wall. So. Really depleted my generation. Terrible. And when I was growing, when I was growing up, 1950, the Korean War starts. And I got confused because I saw Koreans killing other Koreans. And I asked Ben, Dan, what's going on? You know, I know it's confusing because, like, In World War II, Germans fighting Americans, Japanese fighting Americans and so on, the Koreans killing each other. And I didn't understand communism. I got confused of who was what. Army was army for freedom. So let's see. I didn't know anybody from that war, but I got confused with soldiers were shown having a battle. I'm like, why are Koreans killing each other? It was like a civil War. Yeah. So Martin Luther King, I was all for him. He's a minister, you know, and the South, I. I read a lot, but I did a history course, History of the South. I learned so much about slavery, civil rights, all that stuff. And it was Hard to see people being treated badly, you know. So then Martin Luther King gets shot and killed, and then John Kennedy, and then Bobby Kennedy, John's brother got. He was running for president. He got shot in killing. Killed in la. So it was a lot. There were a lot of shootings. In fact, there's a singer named Dion D I O N. He had a hit record, Nose K Abraham, Martin and John. And it was about Abraham Lincoln getting shot, Martin Luther getting shot, and John Kennedy getting shot. And then Bobby came to get a shot. So it was terrible. You know, that was tough about the 60s. And then I almost went. I almost went to war and got drafted. I did go to Oakland on a bus, took my physical and did all that. And then they changed the way they choose people. And I got a really high number. That was. So far, I didn't. We'd have been a world war yet for me to get recruiting, but losing friends was tough. Yes.

32:32 Dang. Um, so, yeah, I guess move to the final question. Thinking about the future generations who might listen to this recording. What would you like to tell them? Is there any advice you'd like to share with them or any final stories?

32:59 Gee, I know that right now I'm really disappointed in crimes that are being committed in America. I'm glad that the people of south and black people of color got free of that old slavery thing because people were treating them like slaves, even though the Civil war was over 100 years ago. But then I took the history of black people in college and you go in the cities and into the black areas, they were just being mistreated and they didn't have any income, so they started crying. It's difficult. You know, any person of color or anything can. Can rob and steal and stuff like that. But after World War II, they built some huge apartment buildings in the big cities and they put mostly black people in those. Sometimes they didn't have. They rent. But the kids, unfortunately, were influenced by the older kids to get out in the streets and start doing some. Some bad stuff. And so it put a lot of black men and some women in prison for a long time. And that's. That was a sad, sad deal because if they can raised in a solid home with both parents and not influenced by other problem kids, they would be. They'd be okay. Yeah. Yeah. In fact, when I was a senior, I was asked to leave school for a week and go to a blue camping program in the hills around San Francisco. And it was for children of color, and it's from a school and they were put in tenements, their parents lived in tenements. And those kids, I mean they were really a lot of fun. But I knew that some of them in the future will be dead or in prison, you know, because the gangs had so much influence on them. It was hard to be not a gang member because they'd do all kinds of things. In fact, some gangs in LA and so on, to be a gang where you got to go out and shoot somebody, that's how you become in the gang.

35:27 Yeah.

35:29 And then when I taught junior high Santa Rosa, we had a lot of Latinos come into the area for work and their kids, you know, grew up in the area, but they couldn't get away from like the gangs in Santa Rosa would recruit them. So I had a kid that was. He got into a gang and he had to shoot somebody. And he was walking down the street one day and the four guys jumped out of the car and took their bats and killed them. And we found a little, one day over the summer, they found a little eight year old boy had been murdered. The fields on Comstock. It was just tragic, you know. Yeah, the gangs had ruled a lot of, a lot of things. I went, I was going off campus to run an errand. I see these three kids jumping over fences to cut out the school. And they were going over and I yelled at them and so I went into the street and I parked. I said, hey, get back to school. And they went back over the fences, you know, either. So it was, it was just that kind of neighborhood. I had a kid bragged to me how his family ran across the freeway, jumped the fences to get in California from Tijuana. They found a little 8 year old boy dad in our field PE fuel during the summertime. And it was just. I liked the kids that I was working with, but the bad kids were difficult, you know, and so some of those went to juvenile hall and maybe later out of prison.

37:13 Yeah. Okay, well, love you. Thank you very much for your time. I said, I love you. Thank you very, very much for your time. This has been awesome.

37:27 I told your mom here. They got to Utah, Salt Lake and the day we got here, they're starting to talk about murders on the streets and robbery and BLM parade was going down Provo Avenue. A guy runs up to a truck, jumps on the bumper and shoots a man through the window, kills him. I told your grandma, I said, wait a minute. That's what goes on in California. What's, why is that happening here? I used to call this Place, Happy Valley, you know, it's changed because there's a lot of crime and a lot of people that. A lot of people here now have come from California to get out of the expensive cost of living there. But moving into a city, not just a community, it's a city and it's crowded and there's crime on the streets. There's drugs and also right here in Salt Lake. So, yes, interestingly enough, I felt safer in my community out in California than here in Salt Lake because every night, Every night I'm reading about or watch the news about somebody shot somebody or arrest for fentanyl or drugs. You know, it's just. Yeah, it's. It's just they. I think a lot of people on. On the lam or on the run will come to Salt Lake and have friends or relatives to stay with. And, you know, they're coming from another state. So difficult. Like right now, I'm looking out in the mountains here. I can see the Seven Peaks of the Wasatch. And it's huge. We're only about maybe 30 miles across the valley. I can see this big range. Looks beautiful. But what's in the valley is a problem. The church, of course, is dealing with it. You know, the crime. Yeah. Okay. Well, that's my.

39:36 Yeah, awesome. Thank you very much.

39:40 Yeah. Yeah. And I do know the one thing I didn't like was when my. My dad would pick up sticks and these co pickup sticks when you go somewhere else. And he had to follow the work. And I went all over California. I went to Reno one time, froze up there. He went all over California for working, and I had to go with him. And so I lived in a trailer. I didn't get to live in a house very often. Finally bounced me when we got to Marina county and got a job. He says I'm gonna do my best to stay here. So you can go the same junior high in high school and maybe college, you know, I'm glad he did. I had a good group of friends for a long time, and I still did. Yeah.

40:24 Yeah. Awesome.

40:26 Okay, well, listen, you give your mom a hug.

40:30 Will do.

40:32 Thump your brother on the head. Just the Eric. No, Ethan.

40:40 Yeah, I mean, Ethan's out on his mission currently.

40:44 I know. Well, something on the head may soul.

40:46 Oh, actually, speaking of which, the recording is going to shut off in about four minutes.

40:52 I'll have to send you some videos. Yeah, I'll refer you some videos on the web. Then watch this move and use it on your brother Ethan.

41:05 Yeah. Okay. I love you so much.

41:08 Okay. Love you. Thank you very much.

41:10 Thank you. Thanks for all the time.

41:12 Okay, give him a hug.

41:14 Will do. Okay. Love you, Grandpa.

41:17 Bye.

41:17 Bye. You have a great day.

41:18 Bye.