Annette’s dad married Mary in March 1992. In June/July 1992, they bought the house at 1082 E. Windsor Drive in Provo. The house had a basement apartment (bedroom, bathroom, kitchen, and a living area). They offered the apartment to us. We decided it would be nice to live close to family.
Rachel (Annette’s sister) and Robert were in Jerusalem just finishing a semester abroad. They were coming back to Provo and looking for a place to live. Michel and Mary offered the basement apartment to them as well and told both couples we would have to bid on the place by telling them how much we would pay for rent.
Annette and I bid $330 per month and won the bid.
We moved into the apartment in August 1992.
We asked for and received permission from our BYU ward bishop to continue attending the same ward even though we were not technically in the ward boundaries. However, BYU did not have a ward boundary that covered our location because it was not really considered a place where students would live.
The kitchen sink had a garbage disposal. Neither Annette nor I had ever lived in a place with a garbage disposal. So, this was a novelty for us.
One day, we noticed that our kitchen had a new odor. Over the next day or two the odor got worse. Finally, we narrowed down the source of the odor … it was coming from the garbage disposal.
I disconnected the plumbing and removed the disposal from the sink. I could see something was caught inside of the disposal. My hands were too big to reach inside the disposal. I used a screwdriver to dig inside and was able to extract … chicken skins that were decomposing and rotting. No wonder the kitchen smelled like a dead animal. We had eaten chicken the week before
We were able to get all the chicken skin pieces out. Annette had to put on rubber gloves so she could reach her hand into the disposal to get some pieces. We reassembled the disposal.
Someone told us we could put lemon quarters in the disposal and run it to eliminate the odors. We did. It worked.
And that is how we learned we should never put chicken skins in the garbage disposal!
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