LDS leader has fond memories of growing up in the Salt Lake area

His family enjoyed vacations together in California, near Venice and Santa Monica. "We were really a close, though extended, family."

Many Latter-day Saints have heard President Monson tell a Christmas story about his own toy train, and giving a train car to a less-fortunate friend in the neighborhood.

Another Christmas story he wrote about involved two rabbits that he gave to a friend who — when asked what his family was having for Christmas dinner — said he didn't know and had never tasted chicken or turkey. He shed tears as he put two of his own rabbits in a bag for his friend, "but there was a warm feeling in my heart (later) ... when he told me this was the best Christmas dinner he and his family had ever had."

At age 12, President Monson moved on to Horace Mann Junior High. At the time, his father was general manager of Western Hotel Register Co., a printer of hotel registers, menus and other types of printing. After school, his job was to go by each cafe and pick up a copy of changes for the next day's menu so the new one could be printed at the shop, 740 S. Main.

As a teenage boy, he started taking interest in girls, writing that, "During this period of my life I was much impressed by the actions of my mother and father. It didn't dawn on me that they rarely attended church. We would always travel on Sunday to the homes of extended family."

He remembered his first talk in church, a 2 1/2-minute speech about the story commemorated by the Seagull Monument on Temple Square. As a young deacon, he remembered speaking on the Word of Wisdom. One church leader told him it was a fine talk, and added, "You have the ability to deliver one without reading it." The boy took his advice seriously and from that point forward never read a talk.

One day, his father told him they would attend priesthood meeting together to hear Elder LeGrand Richards, then a member of the Quorum of the Twelve, speak. "This was one of the only times in our lives when we went to such a meeting together," he wrote, adding his father's influence on him came in other ways.

Each Sunday, his father would pick up his uncle, who was disabled, and drive him around the city. "Dad never wanted any thanks or commendation for this type of gesture, but his lesson was not lost on me," President Monson later wrote.

"Mother also taught me lessons relative to the Golden Rule, rather than by preachment." He remembered a man named Robert whose home was demolished in the name of city progress, leaving him with no place to go. His grandfather Condie gave Robert a key to a house he owned and never charged him rent to stay there. "From that day forward, Robert became almost a member of our family."