He wrote of a childhood filled with evening games in the neighborhood, including "kick the can" and "run, sheepy, run." He loved books and would walk three times a week to the Chapman branch library in west Salt Lake, where he found a world opened to him beyond his own neighborhood.

Summers were spent with extended family during long vacations at Vivian Park in Provo Canyon, where he slept inside a screened porch and took in the sounds of the woods. He learned there a lifelong love of fishing, and with plenty of company to share the time, they hiked, went swimming, played softball, shot arrows and had mud fights. He wrote later that "those were happy years, dream-filled years and are remembered with nostalgia and a few tears."

At other times in the year, he remembered his parents were "busy in bridge clubs and social activities."

As a boy, his home was always cold in the winter, and he would retrieve the morning newspaper and read the headlines — the first phase in a love of newspapering that would continue throughout his life.

During his final year at Grant School, he spent time in the library, looking out the window at the pigeons on the ledge, which started a lifelong interest in raising the birds and would blossom into a teenage hobby. "My father saw no good in raising pigeons and never provided a word of encouragement. He felt they were costly, impractical and a waste of time," he later wrote.

But a friend's father noticed the boy's interest and installed a window in his pigeon coop. "I had never before experienced such a sense of gratitude for something which another person had, on his own, done for me. I was most appreciative."

He wrote of an invitation by his schoolteacher for students to write about what they believed their future vocation would be. The list was to be placed in a time capsule for a monument at the City-County Building. He wrote that he wanted to be a cowboy.

"When I went home from school for lunch, I told my mother of this activity." When he told her what he had written, she scolded him and told him to "'go back and change that and tell them you want to be a lawyer or a banker.' Dutifully, I returned and told the teacher I wanted to be a banker. I never would become much of a cowboy, but I did become a director of Commercial Security Bank" and an officer in several other local businesses. As a boy, President Monson sometimes spent weekends with extended family members on their farms in Granger. When his parents came on Sunday to retrieve him, they would enjoy a giant freezer of homemade ice cream. Other favorite visits included his aunt's home in Murray and other family members in Bountiful.