Early Days

After their marriage Maurice Earl and Mary Maud lived in a small house on a corner about two blocks north of Main Street in Lovell. The house was divided into two halves. A younger couple lived in the other half. Some days when Mary M. sat out on the front porch with the other young wife the girl would sit watching her friends going down the road to the town pool with a very intent wistful look. She was young enough to want to still be having fun with her friends but couldn't do the same things anymore since she was now a wife and mother.


Mary continued working in the Hospital, and Maurice worked at the Sash and Door Mill. One day he came home from work with his hand behind his back.

"What did you do - cut your hand off?" Mary asked.

"Just about." He answered. It was actually about a 1" cut in his wrist with 4 (large) stitches in it. Mary says that at that time if a cut was on the face it would be closed with smaller stitches so that it'd heal with less of a scar but the stitches were a little bigger on cuts on other parts of the body.

One day Mary came home from work to find 'the whole side of one wall gone. Maurice was installing a bigger window and took out the whole wall to do it. The window didn't take all that space so he built the wall back in around the new window.

Their first child Nancy came along 10 months after their wedding. She was a cute, chubby baby with curly blond hair and was the darling of Maurice's family.

One day Maurice's mother May Asay came to him and said that he should give Nancy to her. "I'm all alone," she said, "and you can have more children."

He told her, "No - You raised your children, I'll raise mine."

Maurice worked for the Sash and Door Mill for about 2 years and then worked a year as the City Police Chief - a job he found to be totally thankless. On one occasion he stopped a man who had been beating on his wife right out on the street. As he was preparing to haul him off to jail the woman got mad at him for taking her husband away. On another occasion he came across a toddler bawling his eyes out - sitting alone in the family car outside the bar. The little guys eyes were swollen and about crusted shut, and his sleeves were soaked up to the elbows. Maurice took the baby into the bar and handed him to his parents. The bartender promptly threw them out and they got mad at Maurice for interfering.

After the Police Chief job he went to work for the Railroad as a 'Car Toad'. It was his job to check the packing on the wheels on the cars the RR dropped off at the refinery outside of town and oil them.

Maurice and Mary recently were given a picture of a new great grandchild which they would like to share with every one.

This is Whitney Kay Asay's little girl, Akira Kay. We'll have better pictures to share after October we think.