Norman had no warning. He was twelve years old, in sixth grade, when Ivan and Gayl divorced in 1960. Looking back, he remembered hearing them argue in the months before — a few times, loud enough to register — but nothing that prepared him for the end.

Ivan left. He turned up in Louisiana for a while, doing chainman work on a land survey crew — not licensed, just hired muscle. Norman’s understanding was plain: “He didn’t want to pay support.” Ivan would occasionally come back through Idaho Falls and call; Norman would see him for a few hours. There were no letters.

Gayl borrowed money from her parents, Hi and Velda Lovell, and bought a house at 209 Second Street in Idaho Falls for about five thousand dollars. The house had a living room, kitchen, and bathroom on the main floor and three rooms in the basement: Van took the open room at the foot of the stairs, Norman took the smaller room with the closet under the stairwell, and there was a full bathroom across the hall. Gayl took the main-floor bedroom. The house came with a garage-and-shop out back, and two longtime neighbors on either side — Elmer Beale to the left, the Nielsen family to the right.

Gayl kept working nights at the Idaho Falls LDS Hospital. Her friends were nurses, a hospital receptionist, and Deline Winchester, who lived out in Lewisville and whose son Doug was a year older than Norman. Around 1962, while Norman was in eighth grade, Gayl met Mike Richins and eventually eloped with him to Elko, Nevada.

The Second Street house became the family’s address through the rest of Norman’s adolescence. It was the house he came home to from high school, the house he left for Idaho State, and for years afterward the house he returned to when he came back to Idaho Falls.