No doubt about it. The LDS church is a different organization from when I began attending it when I was about 7. I remember things that haven't been done in years:

Blessing the sacrament with right arm to the square: When I was a kid, priests blessing the sacrament would kneel and raise their right arm to the square when they blessed the sacrament. I don't know when they quit, but a man named Brent B., who later died tragically in an accident at US Borax and Chemical, still did it whenever he blessed the sacrament in the early and mid-1970's. We had quit by then, but the bishop never corrected him. He was from one of those totally LDS hamlets in the backroads of Arizona, and I can only imagine that they were frozen in time.

Senior Aaronic priesthood: It used to be that adult convert men had the Senior Aaronic priesthood, actually going from deacon to teacher to priest, like the kids. There was a lot of pride among the senior Aaronics. My dad really loved it. There was no hurry to get them and their families to the temple, and generally you became an elder only by attrition, anyway. My father never made it to elder. I remember when they changed, though. They came out with the thinking that people had to get to the temple sooner rather than later, and ginned up the "prospective elder" program. Is it still like that? I have no idea.

Sacrament meeting in junior Sunday school: The kids were served up sacrament in the opening exercises of junior Sunday school, and it was always blessed by the senior Aaronic priesthood men. That was about their main mission.

Cry rooms: Any and all respectable LDS meeting houses had a glassed mezzanine where mothers could look after the kids while watching and listening to the talks.

Public announcement of excommunications and disfellowshipping: Fortunately that changed when I was still in high school, and for many years the bishop would have the elders/high priest stay behind after opening exercises in priesthood, and chase out the Aaronic priesthood. Then they would publicly announce an excommunication or disfellowshipping, but only to the Melchizedek priesthood guys.


Anyway, enough of that, but that's a start. Anyone remember other long-past stuff we used to do?

I remember going in there as a toddler with my mother and my crying little sister. Actually seemed like a good idea. They had the sound for the talks coming in through a speaker and the room was soundproofed so that the people in the chapel wouldn't have their ears blasted by half a dozen wailing babies.

It was a practical and effective way to make the worship service a bit more tolerable. No doubt it added a few thousand dollars to construction costs...so it had to be cut obviously. More money being invested in the local congregations means less money for the GAs and their cronies and relatives to play with and we know they don't like that.

Of course, as recently as the 1990s they were still doing the Freddy Krueger routine in the temple (throat slitting and disembowelment gestures as "penalties"). Now, if you tell some young Mormons in their thirties about it they'll often deny that any such thing could ever have been part of the temple ceremony and will accuse you of being a nutty conspiracy theorist when you insist that it really happened.

Do they still do the "daddy daughter dates"? When I was a youngster, I remember my dad and sisters participating in that program. Sounded like fun and there was always ice cream and stuff. Nowadays, it's easy to imagine people putting a pervy spin on something like that.

They used to also have those "gold and green balls" which were intended to be elegant dance events, where people would dress up and have a Mormon version of a debutante ball. My memory of it is fuzzy as it was already being phased out when I was in my teens.

Stake dances? Do they still do those?

This is actually from my Grandpa's era. IIRC, he said that 36-month missions were standard and missionaries were required to go out "without purse or scrip"--meaning that they had to rely on the kindness and generosity of strangers and/or do odd jobs to support themselves out in the mission field. Something like that would probably be impossible these days.

My EX went to the Franco-Belgian mission for three years, from '63 to '66. He had to learn the language on his own in country. There was no MTC back then.

The Catholic church had them, and others as well I'm sure. Kind of a hallmark of the post-war baby boom. The one in the church I went to as a child is now a small chapel.

Having seen "cry rooms" in other churches, I remember asking the mishies why the LDS people didn't have one, as screaming babies made it difficult sometimes to hear the speakers, which I found annoying. When I was a young mother, the polite thing to do was to remove your vocalizing child from the premises ASAP, out of courtesy to others.

I was told, by the mishies, that "They need to learn how to behave, not be rewarded by getting out of church." (But I would learn later that some parents did, indeed, remove crying children from church, beat the living daylights out of the kid in the car, let them cry it out, and then drag the kid back to church.) More often than not, all it took after that was the stink-eye from the parent, and the kid would shut up.

Tiny babies and small toddlers WILL cry, and it is only kind to provide a place where their howling will not irritate other people. Either that, or provide a nursery to leave them in while the adults attend church.

catnip Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Having seen "cry rooms" in other churches, I
> remember asking the mishies why the LDS people
> didn't have one, as screaming babies made it
> difficult sometimes to hear the speakers, which I
> found annoying. When I was a young mother, the
> polite thing to do was to remove your vocalizing
> child from the premises ASAP, out of courtesy to
> others.
>
> I was told, by the mishies, that "They need to
> learn how to behave, not be rewarded by getting
> out of church." (But I would learn later that some
> parents did, indeed, remove crying children from
> church, beat the living daylights out of the kid
> in the car, let them cry it out, and then drag the
> kid back to church.) More often than not, all it
> took after that was the stink-eye from the parent,
> and the kid would shut up.
>

I was spanked in the women's nursing lounge, with great frequency. Initially I was dragged out and later as a "member" I was arm pinched to be directed there. My mom carried a rolled up leather belt in her purse. Half of the time, I was misbehaving, but I was also punished for being clumsy. I would spill the water when passing the sacrament tray. I once dropped it on some older folks and she got me by the ear. She didn't even wait for the deacons to walk up to the mantle. I was spanked good for being irreverent, then another spanking for screaming during sacrament.

Probably why I was a terrible Mormon. I could never understand the ever changing unwritten rules. I was always doing something wrong; mostly unintentional.

The Lutheran church I grew up in had a nursery,staffed at every service. Kids too young for Sunday school were there while the parents went to church. Confirmation kids with adults to supervise were the staff.

For the most part we never went to the actual church service until Confirmation age (7th grade) when we were expected to start participating in the adult functions. Most kids went to Sunday school while their parents were in the church.

Then off to coffee hour between services, followed by the great parking lot swap out as the 9:15 people left and the 10:45 people arrived. Not that we participated in that, we could throw a rock from our house and hit the parking lot.

This is a little tangential, but I remember what I wore to church back in 1970. I wore an orange shirt, ascot, and striped flare pants. To church. And nobody had any problem whatsoever with it. I go to bless the sacrament, preside in meetings, the whole nine yards.

More on track, I remember Relief Society bazaars, the old Relief Society magazines, and ward banquets that were, well, affairs to remember.

I also remember how on Mothers' Day the bishop would present potted flowers to the mothers in the congregation that were essentially fertility prizes. You know- the oldest mother the one with the most children, and so on. I was quite young then, but looking back I realize how it must have devastated the women in the ward who did not have children.

"I wore an orange shirt, ascot, and striped flare pants."

I remember those days (barely) and can see you now in my mind's eye. It was a gorgeous period of colorful clothing. So many men looking as if they had stepped out of some Peter Max artwork of the period. Hippie times!

Then in TSCC the hammer came down, from the deploring, reactionary squares at the top -- the beard ban being just one example.

started after I left. It had always applied to missionaries (as a kind of uniform), but not to civilians.

It's so cult-like...and yet no matter how many cult-like things they get up to, they still get all defensive when you correctly point out to them that they are indeed in a cult and definitely behaving like members of a cult.

When I was in my teens, there was a lot of variety in clothing worn to Church. Very few guys wore white shirts. Striped shirts, yellow shirts, pink shirts, pastel green shirts...

But then everyone found out that God revealed the true and correct dress code to a bunch of IBM executives sometime in the 1950s, who then revealed the true and correct dress code to the leaders of the Mormon church. God does work in mysterious ways.

Wow that is really cool! And the church actually sounds like fun back in those days with a lot of activities (minus the fertility prizes of course).

How interesting that you used to be able to wear mostly what you wanted and yet it is so strict now.

Thanks for the look back!

sacrament gems, road shows, dance festivals that went all the way to June conference and the finals. Seventies in the ward. My dad was one and they were supposed to help the missionaries. My dad never did. M Men and Golden Gleaner awards. I worked hard to get mine right after I got married in 1970.

Those were actually enjoyable activities. Correlation killed all of it.

Those old 2 and 1\2 minute talks in Sunday School were better than High Council Sunday.

Bandelos!!

I think that NormaRae still has her bandalo.

Primary one and Beehive one and I had every jewel/token you could get, including one each month for 3 years for perfect attendance. so ask me if I get pissed when people tell me I was never a believer anyway. I would have jumped off a cliff back then if David. O. McKay had commanded it. It's by sheer luck that I was able to figure it out. Well, that and in the words of the Comrade in chief, "I have a really good brain." Haha.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/23/2019 02:51PM by NormaRae.

I'm sorry I don't know how to spell bandelo. I don't recognize it as a real word, but sadly it is. The Girl Scouts have a bandelo. Is that what a lord mayor wears around his or her neck?

Someone asked why jr. SS kids under 8 should take the sac. being as they weren't members, hadn't been 'tized, etc.

Answer: they need to become accustomed to taking the sac, even if most ppl who aren't members aren't encourage to partake;


IOW, indoctrination, pure & simple.

Today (I don't remem how the timing worked) I don't think most wards have enough PH kids to fill both assignments (adult & jr.) to do this anyway.

Another Mormon 'essential' down the memory hole!

Practice hymns in the opening exercises of Sunday School. They were great for me when I joined the church at 13. I loved to sing and this taught me a lot of the hymns I wouldn't otherwise have got to know.

Congratulations, Gemini, if you received the Golden Gleaner Award! Those were a lot of hard work, and I don't think anyone in our ward went the distance to get one. How sad to work so hard to get an award that no longer exists.

I had forgotten about sacrament gems!

I remember singing a lot, in trios, quartets, choirs.

Does the Mormon cult still have "Saturday Night Dances? The Mormon think that all they need to do is shove single people into a gymnasium, turn out the lights, play music, and--presto--they will hook up, like bodies without a mind. I used to think that was barbaric, and centuries behind the times.

Ward and Stake and Regional YW/YM or Mutual or MIA or whatever they called it, were always creating co-ed activities, to get the genders together. Remember the one-act plays? In one of them, I was was forced to kiss my romantic lead, who happened to be someone I had crushed on for years, but we were still sweet, innocent beach-buddies, and weren't ready to take it to the next level, yet. I was so embarrassed!

My friends and I were late-bloomers, interested in school and fun, outdoor types, at heart. The sex-oriented Mormons were always pushing us into relationships that we weren't ready for--and with strangers. When there weren't enough boys to go around for the Gold and Green Balls and other dances, our YW president would recruit men from the university ward. My friends got set up with the 26-year-old son of a Governor, 2 GA's sons, a genius rocket scientist (age 28, and nerdy in an adorable way), and other Mormon returned missionaries, who later became rich and famous as Mormons. What were these older guys doing with giggling teen-aged high school girls? The Governor's son tried to ask all of us out, and would send identical poems to several girls, with their individual names inserted. Another guy smoked and drank (gasp) on the sly. When I graduated from BYU, with no engagement, I was railroaded into a marriage with a stranger, who no one knew very well, but who looked nice and shiny on the surface, and was the relative of an important GA. I had qualms, but didn't dare back out of the wedding, with 250 guests.

I wonder if the Mormon cult still interferes as much in the dating and marriage choices of its members? There's a poster here, Cl2, who had interference, which turned out very badly.

My institute director in the student ward, and other ward members pushed me really hard into that awful marriage. I had been in love with an Atheist, for years, but my parents wouldn't allow me to date him, anymore. I wanted to go on a mission, instead of get married to the man they chose for me. At least, it would give me more time, I thought. My bishop (a wealthy businessman--aren't they all) told me that God wanted me to get married, instead, and start having babies, right away. I was 23, and an old maid. The man I would always love was a continent away, and years away, and he didn't want children. I was in a very bad place, and when you're down, that's when the Mormons kick you. I caved under the pressure, and got married in the temple, and he beat me, for months, until I had to run away to save my life. I was never the same after that. PTSD.

Does the Mormon church still blame the victim? From what I read, the answer is yes!

Dating way too early (My first date was when I was in the sixth grade, with the bishop's son), and forced blind-dating, forced dancing, young engagements and "waiting for the missionary," hasty marriages between youngsters who weren't ready--I wonder if the cult still does all that?

Saturday night dances continue; girls and boys need a "dance recommend" from their bishop to attend one. Perhaps that was always true.

Needless to say, some of the, shall we say, "unrestrained" music, moves, and outfits that are thrilling to today's young people are banned.

Not detracting from your life view, but I can testify that some teenage girls actually enjoyed dancing with the Joe Sh-Mo teenage boy they met at those "forced" Stake Dances.

No, no, we weren't snobs. We were shy, if anything. There were Mormon boys that we liked, but they never went to the dances, and escaped the blind dates, too. I was lucky, because I usually had a date with one of the nice ones, which took us off of the dance hit-list. All of us were Joe-Shmo-types, when we were teen agers.

I know that there were no "dance recommends", because we really did have a few creepy stalker-types at those dances.

Oh, I had forgotten about the Daddy-daughter dances!

My TBM father was a distinguished gentleman-professor-business man. He was formal and serious, and not the huggy-daddy kind of person. I worshiped him! He taught me to play tennis, ski, swim, play all the sports, high jump, grow a garden, catch and clean and cook a fish, shoot guns, build things out of wood, fix a bicycle, play chess, speak Spanish, help him with simple car repairs. He was an amazing teacher! He took us boating, camping, hiking and traveling, and even to Europe. He was a prince among men, and there was never a better father!

I could tell my father didn't want to take me to the Daddy-daughter dance (he was not able to be fake), and I wasn't hurt, because he didn't like to go to dances with my mother, either. My TBM mother forced him into it, and we got all dressed up, and my mother was thrilled. I was neutral, and a bit awkward. On the way to the dance, my father said, "How about we go out for ice cream, instead." We went to the ice cream parlor, and we talked about bicycles, business, current events, our next trip, and everything else under the sun. We had the best time! I'm sure my mother found out, through the ward gossips, but no one ever said anything about it to us.

Yes, I remember our ward raising money to add classrooms onto our old ward house, in California, and, yes, the money belonged to the ward. There were bazaars, bake sales, and an honest-t0-goodness Halloween carnival. The men would do actual labor on the building. One friend fell from a scaffolding, hit his head, and became partially blind. My piano teacher fell and broke his back. When the ward was "combined" with a distant ward, the building ended up being sold to the Scientologists.

We lived about a half-mile from the ward house, and we kids liked to walk to church. The quickest route was through a street where Black people lived. My brother and I were forbidden to go on that street! Of course, I always went the shortest way, and thought that rule was ridiculous. One time, my parents found out my brother went on that street, and he was spanked for it! I never confessed, though.

Youth conferences, and we would stay in the barracks that the migrant workers used during harvest season.

Hay rides, but the kids got too rowdy.

Ski trips! Back-to-back bishops both had sons my age, who loved to ski. The ward would pitch in with the stake, and rent a bus, sometimes two, and we would leave before dawn, and return before midnight. We were a close-knit group. We dated each other, and continued our friendships at BYU. The girls were roommates and dorm-mates, and we were each other's bridesmaids.


I have a hard time making friends with Utah Mormons. Maybe it's because these old TBM friends are still my main friends NOW. Maybe the friendship bar is set too high. We have each other's backs. We aren't competitive or judgmental of each other.

What a wonderful memory to have of your father!

Hopefully, the fathers on this list take heed of this little gem.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/22/2019 04:42PM by Heidi GWOTR.

Old old building I went to as a kid and had the bishops pictures on the wall going back into the early 1850s. There use to be old steam heat coming out of radiators. It would clink and clank and was really annoying. And of course no such thing as air conditioning. Oh it would get so stuffy and hot in the summer, it was awful.

I remember quiet a number of the old timers born in the 1800's. One pair of spinsters lived in an original old wooden house across the street from mine, they always wore 1950 style wigs and clothes from before WW2. There were other very old women down the street who were straight from the pioneers and had the original names of the city founders.

I remember the same building and old ladies - one of them was my Grandma.

I loved the old buildings better than the newer ones.

They had more charm and character.

Throwback to yesteryear.

I played Bob Dylan’s “Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” at a Youth Conference Hootenanny at the University of Illinois. We lived in Chicago, and our group from the ward drove down there and got to stay in the dorms. Late 60’s, what’s the chance of that ever happening again?

My parents joined as converts in the gleeful, social years of the church during the early 70s. My parents drove not once, but TWICE to SLC for spring GC. They drove a camper and stayed in a KOA near Kaysville. They stood in a big line without tickets and got squeezed into the tabernacle just as the session began. What really impressed my goofy Dad was that SWK took the time to walk down the aisle after GC and shake everybody's hand. Of course, I was tied up in a stroller in the glass encased crying room with my Mother for the session.

My mom used to teach the genealogy class. There were microfiche machines and other indices that are now obsolete.

Is name extraction still going on?

Yes, Now they call it indexing.

cludgie Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Senior Aaronic priesthood...

Maybe they discontinued that when there stopped being enough adult male converts or returning lost sheep to form quorums.

NOT THAT I'M CONSIDERING NOW, HA HA...


I wonder what they currently do with recent or returning adult males?

The roadshows were a major production when I was a kid. My mom was stake drama director for several years, and was in charge of some of them. She was gone a lot doing that, but she loved it.

The daddy daughter dances were still a thing. Ward potlucks to raise money for building fund was another. It didn't come from SLC at that time, we had to raise it at the local level to make improvements to the building.

I know I wasn’t a member until way late (2012) but I remember when the missionaries had flip phones even back then. Maybe it was budget but you would think not,with how much money goes into the church from tithing and offerings. I thought it was probably to keep a grasp on how much access to the outside world they had but I was visited recently and they suddenly had smart phones either iphones or galaxies and they had internet access so maybe it really was budget all along.

I had the 4-year-olds. One of the kids, who was one of my favorites, though rather naughty, wouldn't let go of the bread tray when he was passing it to me. All of a sudden, he let go and the bread went flying everywhere.

I remember one of the older buildings having a cry room. It was the place we attended when I was very small and before we moved. It is the building in Brigham City that has a stained glass of the "first" vision. I know the building is still there and I'm fairly certain the stained glass is too.

I still have my bandelo in my cedar chest.

We had to have bishop interview for our dance cards. They were just like yearly interviews and half year interviews with all the masturbation questions, etc.

We won a shetland pony at the RS bazaar one year. We were one of the only 2 families in the ward who owned a farm. The other farmer was the one who put up the shetland pony for a prize. We walked to the bazaar and on the way home my dad said we couldn't keep the horse. My little sister laid down on the sidewalk and started screaming. Well, we had Mr. Ed for years and years. He just wandered the farm and bucked us off when we tried to ride him.



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 01/22/2019 08:18AM by cl2.

The church activities described here sound as if they at least had the possibility of being fun....and more like a normal church.

If that all ended in the mid-70's that when more and more women joined the workforce and I'm guessing they no longer had time for all this social stuff and bazaar-running.

Can anyone tell me when Correlation began?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/22/2019 10:30AM by mel.

Correlation officially began in the 20s, but all the fun stuff was taken away by the mid 80s. Here's a good article on it https://slate.com/human-interest/2012/04/mormon-correlation-the-bureaucratic-reform-policy-that-redefined-mormon-culture.html

I grew up in Northern Cal. When I left in the late 80s I would say that 90% of the women were SAHMs. My mom was one of a handful who worked. So, that was not the reason. I think it really all comes down to $$$.

Funny!

Did your sister apply that lesson successfully through her life--scream loudly and persistently and she will get her way?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/22/2019 10:30AM by mel.

How funny about the Shetland pony. That was a nice win from a RS bazaar!

Reminded me of when my oldest brother arranged for a trade of one of our mother's French poodles for a Shetland pony during summer vacation. Mom and dad was at work when that happened. Brother called mom, and she okayed the 'deal.' When our parents came home that night from work, we were down one dog, and had a Shetland tied up to a pole on our little farm.

Mr. Ed is a good name for a pony. We named ours Honey. She had a colt after we had her for awhile, and I named the colt Misty after the children's book that was popular at that time.

Honey had the run of our farm too after she got acclimated. :)

As a teenager in the early 70's I remember having to go with my father, on at least three occasions, to help with the sugar beat harvest on the Mormon owned land. The adults worked the machinery and the youth walked behind and picked up beats that didn't make the truck. I'm really surprised no one was killed or seriously hurt since no one had any farming experience. I remember how much I hated having to go.

The Penny Parade to raise funds for the LDS children's hospital in Salt Lake, even though we were in the UK.

The bandoleers we wore with badges glued on them.

YES!!! and Yes!!! I don't have my bandoleer anymore.

Mine's been gone since high school. Our family hotel burned down and everything with it on the day my parents divorce was finalized.

What I miss more are family photos.

I remember all of that. In our old super-cool church, the cry room was off the court yard. They piped the services in there, but no one could hear it because it was full of crying and playing toddlers. We used to fight for who got to take my little brother to the cry room.

And yeah, the senior Aaronic would pass the sacrament to the Jr. SS, but I think they also passed in Sacrament Meeting on Fast Sundays. That was when we went to SS in the morning and Sacrament Meeting in the afternoon.

I had forgotten all about the Priests kneeling with their arm to the square when they blessed the sacrament until you mentioned it. Yup. they did that.

They used to call families to live off their food storage for a week. If your family was called in sacrament meeting, the mothers would sneak to the store in the middle of the night for fear someone from the ward would see them shopping.

Do you remember the sacrament gem and 2-1/2 minute talks?

How about Green and Gold Balls (dances)?
How about Rebaptism? Brigham Young, JD
How about the altar in the locked room at the top of the steps on the third floor of the old 5th ward (Mormon) chapel (on Park Street) in Jacksonville, Florida? Now defunct.

How about requiring Deacons to be married? JD
How about tithing being taken off of your INCREASE? D&C
How about barley for man? D&C
How about Road Shows?
How about hymns that aren't pablum?
How about wine for the sacrament?
How about more dances with violins and wine in the basement of the temples?

How about no more John D. Lees being murdered for BY's absentia?

Oh, and one more thing: How about an apology to my mom for her recipe given to the Relief Society in Brigham City, Utah, 1977, which said recipe included 1/2 cup Good Bourbon, for which she was shunned and still served her dessert to 48 Sisters who took nothing home to their husbands. Huah!

How about many other problems that led many of us to question the religious authority because of their 'deviation' from the 'truth'? Ogden Kraut

That's what I remember the day I left Mormonism. If the leaders would have just kept their hats on, stared down the barrel, they might have had me for life. Too bad, I love living like a devil and loving like an angel.

Cake

Prayer meetings held immediately before Sacrament meeting and auxiliary meetings.