Dad’s Story, part 7, Enter a Pretty Girl

Sometimes Dad would recount how painfully shy he was as a boy around girls. He spoke of one he liked in high school, walked with her, but would never venture a word. That reticence is something he apparently overcame once Betty Allison came into view.

Betty Allison, sweet 16 or thereabouts, the new focus of a man with a camera.

While we were in Saratoga, I went to church (we had no CCC work on Sunday). The man who taught Sunday school ran the local theater and if you came to his class you got a ticket to the theater for any time during the week. (The theater was not open on Sunday.) A friend said that I should go with him to the Presbyterian Church as there were some cute girls there, so I agreed to go with him if he would go with me.

It was there that I met Betty Allison.

I went to a party at the Saratoga Hot Springs Park where Betty attended. Then we went to a church outing at Gold Hill where we got better acquainted. After that we were together whenever there was anything going on.

(Above) Page 1 of Dad’s first photo album (of very many over the years). Click on it for larger view.

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(Below left) Dad at church, in a tie.
(Right) The big hat. Contest over!
(Bottom) The picnic, with good sport Janice, arm around Betty.

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(I’m quite amazed myself to have come across these photos.)

Here’s my mother’s recounting of their meeting, including things Dad couldn’t know at the time, or would never say.

I met Hyatt Moore ii in August 1935 in Saratoga, Wyoming. He visited my church as guest of our mutual friend, Billy DeBarthe. They were both in the Civilian Conservation Corps in Saratoga and had agreed to visit each other’s churches. A couple of Sundays later, my good friend Janice Wagener and I were at the church early, standing in the vestibule, looking out the window. Down the street we saw Billy and Hy (I never called him Hyatt) walking toward the church. Both of us thought Hy was rather interesting and attractive, so we made an agreement right then that both of us would “set our caps” for him, no holds barred, and whoever was ahead at the end of a month could have him, the other girl having to give up. A week or two after that, Janice’s mother gave our Sunday School class a party—a picnic at the Saratoga State Park. Hy was there when I arrived and he was wearing a borrowed cowboy hat, the biggest I’d ever seen. He put it on my head and I was sitting on the bumper of a car when Janice got there. She told me later that when she arrived she realized the contest was already over.

More from Betty next time, and the pre-proposal.