Blogging My Autobiography - Chapter 13

Junior High was such a jumble, I thought I would wrap up these years with a little gumbo of memories.

Paddling in Junior High, otherwise known as corporal punishment was a common way of getting our attention. In my youth, spanking, whipping with a belt and paddling with a variety of instruments was an acceptable way of disciplining a child. Today, that activity is limited to consenting adults in a certain fringe element of society. In 7th grade we had two noted paddlers in our school, Mr. Simmons, the gym teacher and Mrs. Anderson aka Yardstick Annie, the math teacher. Mrs. Anderson’s tool of choice was the yardstick, hence the name. These were the real thing, not the little flimsy things you see at the local hardware. 1/8“ hard pine across your hand, shoulders or butt. Though I never saw it myself, it was said that she broke them regularly. Oddly enough, she was partially responsible for me marrying Blondie but that is another story. I was never the recipient. Mr. Simmons was different, he had a paddle made out of hardwood that had holes drilled in it so that it would raise bigger welts. The benefit of gym was that he could contact bare flesh. I received one paddling because I didn’t much care for gym. It changed my mind immediately. He called the paddle the Persuader. It was good at it’s job. In truth, I had no issue with the paddling. I have no acrimony towards either of these teachers. They were just teachers who relied on force instead of more effective methods.

Bullies and how to deal with them was always an issue for me. Being so large, I was naturally challenged my any number of boys at that age. Generally, I was shy, awkward and not very forceful. However in 9th grade that began to change. There was one kid in my gym class that was supposedly a tough guy. He was what we called a greaser, with his hair combed back in a pompadour. Me, I was a ”beta“ we wore button down shirts and combed our hair more like the Beatles. This kid decided the my friends and I were prime targets and harassed us all the time, especially in gym. Much like Fargas in ”A Christmas Story.“ We had an intramural wrestling tournament that year and everyone had to participate. I lost in the first round and so went into the loser bracket. He went in to the winners side. We each won the rest of our matches and were paired in the final match of the day. I could see him licking his chops. What he didn’t know was that I found I liked wrestling and was probably far stronger than he was. We went at it, each getting a couple of points. I scored a takedown and got him on his back in what’s called a cradle. I rolled him up on his shoulders with his knees touching his nose and leaned on him hard. ”You’re breaking my back,“ he whined. ”Then stay away from me and my friends,“ I breathed back. ”I will break your back if you don’t“ That got a grunt of acquiescence and I released him. Sometimes you have to bloody their noses to get them to stop.

When I was in the 8th grade, English style and swinging London were becoming the rage. My mother, being English, was caught up in the fad and bought me a pair of yellow plaid slacks for school. They were banana yellow with a black plaid pattern woven in. I thought I was the height of style until I went to school. Here I was, walking down the hall like John Travolta thinking that all the girls would look at my hip hugger yellow slacks. I failed to notice the whispers and stares completely. In fact I wore them several times until one day I took them out of my closet put them on and looked in the mirror. OH, MY, GOSH! I didn’t have the sleek muscular legs I thought, I had legs that looked like overripe Chiquita Bananas. Face flaming, thinking of the times I had worn them and the odd looks I had gotten, I hung them back in the closet and never wore them again.

My first crush was named Suzanne. She was tall, had long legs and a curvaceous form, mature for her age, blonde of course. My taste in women has never really changed, has it? I would call her from work at the dentist office, where I was often alone and make small talk like, ”Do you like hairy, muscular legs?“ It makes me cringe a bit to think about it. Amazingly she was nice to me and would actually talk. We had some nice talks, in particular about the theater, movies and music. My dad was working at the Queen during junior high and I got to go to the movies every Tuesday. Always sat 4 rows from the back on the left aisle with a cherry Coke and popcorn. So I was up on the movies and could make conversation around that and music. I am grateful to her for listening to a silly boy and making me feel a little more like a man.

As an aside, the cherry Coke was a real one. Real Coca Cola with real cherry flavoring, made to my taste. I know, I made them myself. The popcorn was covered with all the butter I wanted but not too much salt. Halcyon days, halcyon days.

I sang in the school choir in 9th grade. It was actually cool, because one of the coolest guys in school sang in the choir and he actually had his own band! He had a beautiful baritone and generally sang bass with me. My voice changed in 7th grade, so I could hit the low notes. My teacher would praise me for being able to do that, which also made me feel good. Even the cool guy liked that I could go low. We sang all over and we were actually good enough to sing on TV. KUED public TV and we sang live. We went up to the University and sang on a Sunday evening. We sang the Battle Hymn of the Republic, Mormon Tabernacle Choir arrangement. My mother sang on the Emmy Award winning recording with the Philadelphia Philharmonic, Eugene Ormandy conducting. We sang our hearts out with the cool guy singing the baritone solo ”In the Beauty of the Lilies“ and then the sopranos blew it, they went flat on the final note. We heard the tape and everyone hurt for the sopranos. Our teacher didn’t say anything. He didn’t need to. We went to class the next day and practiced just like any other day. He saw our expressions and knew that was punishment enough.

So ends junior high. In the 7th grade, I was being paddled and having farting contests with my friends (7 in a row, it was a record). By the 9th grade, I had given up banana pants and had my first crush. I learned to deal with bullies and how to talk to girls. We were growing up and gaining sophistication. Soon we would be sophomores in the big school, get our drivers licenses and take giant steps towards becoming an adult. We thought we knew it all and were excited to test that. Junior High is humbling to look back on, we had enough faith in the future to ignore zits, growing pains and yes, banana pants to look forward to life.

Blogging My Autobiography - Chapter 12

The Boy Scouts changed my life. What, you say? Boy Scouts? Don’t they just camp, run around in little uniforms and do good deeds? Let me change your mind a little bit. The Boy Scouts build men. Men who are self reliant, success oriented and leaders. Camping teaches self reliance, good deeds create good leaders and the uniforms are chick magnets, no matter what anyone says. If not for Boy Scouts and the men I associated with in that organization, I would likely not be where I am today.

My grandfather laid the foundation for my maturity and my scoutmaster Jack and advisor Grant framed up the house and made it more livable. In the Boy Scouts, under their tutelage, I was allowed to believe in myself and succeed with no one else looking over my shoulder. I earned every rank and every merit badge because I wanted to, not because they or anyone else pushed me. I was encouraged, though with rewards and other positive reinforcements. Grant developed a tradition that if you earned 3 merit badges in a month or moved up a rank, say from First Class to Star, you got to attend a special afternoon at his house making hoagie sandwiches and talking about whatever we wanted to. He would set up a spread out on his patio with a parachute for an awning. I always liked the parachute, it was cool to think that we were under something that soldiers had used to jump out of airplanes with. The spread was always great and we could eat as much as we wanted, which was key for me since I was growing 6 inches a year and adding 30 pounds during the same period. I was always hungry and this was one time when I was filled. The other cool thing he had was books. Hundreds of them. They were classic scifi, adventure and cowboy books. I read all of Edgar Rice Burroughs from Tartan to John Carter of Mars, maybe 20 books in all. Zane Grey was a favorite as well. I do remember Riders of the Purple Sage as a man’s book all about honor and redemption. After I would finish a book, I would bring it back and we would discuss it. That may have been the best thing of all.

Jack was just a ball of fire with tons of enthusiasm. He touched all of us and made us want to succeed just to get a little extra approval. While Jack was scoutmaster, we had about 80% of the boys get their Eagle and Duty to God. I am proud to say that I was one of them. Two of my brothers got their Eagle and my son got his as well. Will my grandsons follow in the tradition? I certainly hope so, they need to have the experience of success early as well.

Scouts was not just badges and advancements. There was camping and fishing and other outings. Scouting is mostly outings. We went to the home of the one guy in our town that was a big game hunter and watch slides and 8-mm movies of his adventures in his trophy room. He told great stories and I remember that the screen was flanked by a huge pair of bears, one polar and one grizzly. You could actually touch the claws and hair. They were massive and scary but awe inspiring. I am not a hunter, but this was a special experience. We sat on stools made of elephant’s feet. I remember the rough hair on the hide and thinking these really were mammals. Only mammals have hair.

Camping was also an experience with Amethyst Lake in the Uinta Mountains being my favorite. Amethyst Lake was just that, a blue-green gem nestled in a gigantic granite cirque at about 9000 feet. We hiked 9 miles from base camp in Christmas Meadows, up a trail that opened into a large alpine meadow filled with flowers. A creek ran down the center, beginning in a waterfall that tumbled down a cliff face about 50 feet. The lake was the source of the waterfall and you had to hike around the shoulder of the cliff to get to Amethyst. We thought it would be great to camp near the lake in the riparian zone that inevitably surrounds these lakes. It was all very idyllic and fun. The sun shone, we fished and caught rainbow and cutthroat trout. One of the guys got a fishing pole up the nose, but that was the extent of the daytime drama. Night, well that was another thing. Campfires, cooking in the cold and freeze dried food with fish was the order of the day. Some of us brought a tin foil meals which wound up being burned and undercooked. I learned that coals, not flame cooks the fastest and best but too late to satisfy my never ending hunger.

After food, we talked, toasted marshmallows and then retired to our sleeping bags. I brought a waterproof poncho and a ground cover figuring that would be enough. The sky was clear after all. Weather changes in the mountains very quickly and it did this night. Soon the wind was howling around that cirque, tearing at our little covers and sleeping bags from every direction. Then, it began to rain. Wind driven sheets of water that immediately soaked everything and chilled us to the bone. I had dug little trenches around my bag to keep the water from pooling under me and that helped but not enough. At least I didn’t lose my poncho in the night like some did. As the lightning flashed I can still see one of the boys frozen for a second reaching for his poncho as it flew away in the wind. The water encroached and I retreated to the center of my bag, seeking the one square foot of dry bag left. Needless to say, sleep never came. In the morning we were up early, warming by the fire, trying to dry out our gear for the trip back to base. I tried to clean my cooking kit with sand like they say you are supposed to. Cold water and sand do not cut grease, they merely make the grease sandy. As we were moaning about the storm and spending the night in our “sleeping pools,” we said, “Where is Reed?” Reed was my best friend, so skinny that if he turned sideways he would disappear. After some looking, we found him, fast asleep in his DRY sleeping bag. Why was he warm and dry and the rest of us were not? I think he picked a place where water would not pool and secured his cover a lot better than the rest of us. He said that he didn’t know why, but I really suspect he was the best scout that day of all of us. He followed the motto to the letter, “Be Prepared.”

The next time we went to Amethyst, we camped in the trees where there was cover, a break from the wind and places to secure our cover. We learned the lesson well. I even went there later and lived off the land for a week when I was 17. I only took fishing gear, cooking utensils and some spices. All food was local. I know that I can survive anywhere with my backpack, my fishing rod and the Boy Scout handbook and field manual. That’s self reliance.

Blogging My Autobiography - Chapter 11

Being a teenager is a lot like being an alien. The planet seems off kilter, you are not sure you can breathe the air and people really look funny. Looking back, I compare it to spending time in New York, visiting is fine, but living there would require a serious adjustment. So it was with me. I was an alien in New York and had to adjust.

I was afflicted by various plagues early on during my visit to this new planet. First was the growth plague. By the time I was 14, I was 6 feet 4 inches tall, weighed 200 pounds and wore size 13 shoes. Some folks gave me the name Snake, because I had so much lying on the ground. This plague caused massive rerouting of my neural pathways leading to disorientation and lack of physical control. I would trip over a line drawn on the ground because I was so messed up. Of course there were quality of life issues as well. People looked at me funny and cracked jokes. There is no cure for this malaise. The only people who avoid it are short people. So, would I go through it again, absolutely. It would be terrible to be short and then I would suffer from Napoleon Syndrome and that is forever.

The second plague was acne vulgaris and I gotta tell you it was vulgar. When you have a nose as big as mine and the surrounding tissue swells to the point where the nose begins to disappear, you know you have a problem. I must say that I was unhappy, but more importantly, my mother was unhappy that her son looked like he had been covered with mozzarella and pepperoni then shoved into the oven. It was a nickname I heard around school, “Pizza Face.” I like pizza but I didn’t want to look like one. So my mother sent me to the dermatologist and what did he do? Put my face in an oven! Of course he had to prepare the toppings by lancing, squeezing and popping all of them. He then assaulted me with a miniature cheese grater that was supposed to remove the blackheads so they would not turn into pepperoni or mushrooms for that matter. After that, into the oven, otherwise known as a light booth to bake my face until it was well and truly done. Now, people pay money to go into these booths and get a tan. For me, it was just the old slash and burn. I did have a good tan year round, though.

The third plague was facial hair. Normally this is not an issue, but combined with the previous plague, it was death by a thousand cuts. Shaving over zits with a razor was an adventure to be sure. We did not have cool Turbo Razors in those days. My first razor used a flat blade that you inserted by twisting the bottom until the top opened and then placing a blade the size of two postage stamps in the top and closing it. BIC razors came out later with two blades. That was death by TWO thousand cuts. During this plague, my best friends were tiny pieces of toilet tissues and then Styptic Pencils. The Styptic Pencils stung like a scorpion but stopped the bleeding. I learned that pain was necessary for results from this plague.

Body odor was the fourth plague and it was terrible. When I started sweating for real, my mother bought me Mitchum’s Deodorant. In truth this was actually an early form of super glue. If you put your arms down before it dried, well, it played havoc with your armpit hair. Just think of someone grabbing your hair and pulling it all out by the roots and you have the idea. After using that for a while, I found something a little more manly and less painful, Brut Spray On. Which I used until I found Old Spice which I use to this day. Now I don’t have to dance around the bathroom flapping my arms like a chicken while my parents or brothers pounded on the door yelling, “Hey, what are you doing in there?!” So, why would a 14 year old boy care about how he smelled? Well, because of the fifth plague, girls.

Actually it was two plagues in one, peer pressure and girls. There was a lot of pressure, both internal and external to catch on with a girl. One of my friends, Dave always had a girlfriend. Of course he was relatively short and was not afflicted by the above listed plagues. However, it put pressure on us, his “buds” to find our own “women.” At that age, no girl would have anything to do with a tall, clownish boy with a face only a pizza chef could love. However hope springs eternal and that didn’t keep us from trying, fumbling our way in the dark. In this way we fought the plagues, all of them with the faith of youth in our hearts.

Blogging My Autobiography - Chapter 10

Childhood ends when you go to Junior High. You are then a teenager or “tween” as we now call it. Between childhood and teenager land. Closing childhood was actually a good thing for me. I enjoyed it, playing and being carefree, especially during the summers. Summers now meant work and my own money. It also meant that I had more freedom to make my own choices. The summer between 6th and 7th grade, I worked at my first job for about 3 weeks, bunching radishes for Charlie Bangerter (related to the Bangerters that owned the orchard, but different). Bunching radishes is tough work. You are on your knees in the sun all day, pulling radishes and bunching them up using a rubber band. We were paid 8 cents per bunch. If I bunched 100 bunches a day, I could make up to $8.00 per day. Big money for a 12 year old. I never made that plateau. I think I managed about 50 or so a day for the three weeks I was there. Charlie was a crotchety sort and yelled a lot which I didn’t care for. If I was slow or didn’t pick as many as he thought I should he was on me, telling me that I was lazy, worthless, etc. The other boys would snigger or cower, depending on who they were. I worked hard, but it was back breaking and hot. I do remember listening to the radio, a cool 7 transistor model, all the time. “I Get Around” by the Beach Boys was big that summer on KNAK, my favorite radio station. It lifted my spirits then and still does to this day. The Beach Boys were important to me, I loved the harmonies. After 3 weeks I had had my fill and went home. Besides the other thing that would affect me for the rest of my life would occur soon.

My little brother Alan was born that summer. He was 12 years younger than me and, since my mother worked, he became my responsibility for a large part of the day. I learned to change his diaper, feed him, bathe him and rock him to sleep when he was upset. I am very grateful for that experience, because it taught me to be patient and caring towards someone who couldn’t take care of himself. That’s a key lesson to learn when you are 12. Surprisingly, I didn’t mind it either. He was a sweet kid and ran me ragged as soon as he could walk. He jumped off of things that I would never even attempt at 12 or 13. He would just climb up on something and announce to the world that he was going to “Leap!” and then do it. Disconcerting as I was supposed to be responsible for him. The experience with Alan made me a better father when I had my own children because the willingness to sacrifice for a child was already there.

That summer I joined the Boy Scouts and that would also change my life as I met two men who would have a profound impact on me over the next several years. It was a changing of the seasons that summer in more ways than one. I was growing up.

Blogging My Autobiography - Chapter 9

Christmas as an adult is entirely different than Christmas as a child. At least for me it was. The way some adults are, the child has never left them. At some level, I envy that and wish it were still so for me. When I was a child, I couldn’t sleep a wink on Christmas Eve. In truth, next to Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve was ever my favorite day because of the anticipation. At the time, of course, I didn’t realize this, I just knew that I really could hear the reindeer on the roof and if I dared I could actually see Santa in our living room. In fact, that did happen to me one year when I was almost 10.

Christmas Eve and all the presents are out. Mom and Dad are relaxed with hot chocolate in their hands. My brothers were milling about and I was staring into the fire, daydreaming of the next morning and what it would bring. Just to interject, here, daydreaming was a favorite pastime for me. It did get me in trouble a lot at school and at home. Dreams were not encouraged, which I know now is a bad thing. Children should have dreams. Anyway, I was dreaming my Christmas dreams and all of a sudden, my father said, “Do you hear that?” Well I was deep into the flames and didn’t, of course. Then he said it again. This time I listened and sure enough, there was a faint jingle of bells outside. Still in a bit of a stupor, I didn’t realize what was happening. All of a sudden, someone pounded on the door and I hear a voice bellow, “Merry Christmas!!” Bells were ringing and my Dad leaped up to get the door. He said, “I wonder who that could be?” And opened the door. In bounded a man with a beard and a red suit....Santa “Ho, Ho, Ho!” rang through the house. My brothers were delighted and ran to him. Me, I hid behind the piano in our living room. Later my Dad said that I was white as a sheet. You see, I was at the age when the existence of Santa Claus becomes a question. To see the man himself, in my living room, knowing my name and giving me presents was overwhelming to say the least. He stayed and played the piano, sang funny songs, handed out gifts to everyone and asked us if we had been good boys. Then he left as suddenly as he came, disappearing into the night as if he had wings or a sleigh that could really fly. I know, I looked.

It took me a long time to figure out what happened. I really didn’t know until some years later when my Uncle Bert told me who came to our house that night. Seems he was one of Santa’s helpers and he was the helper that appeared that night. My Uncle Bert was one of my favorite relatives, he was my Grandpa Ted’s brother and sure enough, had the twinkle in his eye that they all did. That made him the perfect Santa that night and in my own mind, the perfect one forever.

I think the primary thing that separates Christmas as an adult and Christmas as a child is the amount of work that a person has to do. Adults have the responsibility of getting the tree, getting it flocked (in our case) decorating it and the house, taking care of the presents and paying for it all. I seem to remember my father grumbling quite a bit, especially about the flocking. My mother was very faddish about her trees. They had to be the latest and greatest. We used a number of innovative methods to decorate our trees, from icicles to flocking to a rotating color wheel that lit up the first aluminum tree on the block. I suspect that my father liked the aluminum tree because there was no flocking involved. Flocking meant that he had to set up the tree in the basement, cover the floor and walls with newspaper, fill the flocking gun and spray this white or pink goo all over the tree. Being my Dad, he was very grumpy if it wasn’t just so. If the gun clogged up, then I was outta there because a world of hurt was gonna come down on whoever was nearby. The tree had to dry at least a couple of days or it wouldn’t survive the trip up the back stairs, at least not with all the flock intact. Once we did get it upstairs (I was usually involved in this task because I was the oldest), decorating was the order of the day. Lights at the time were large, not these little lights we have now. They were also wired serially, so you had to check them all if the string went out. It wasn’t so bad though. We maybe had 50 to 60 lights on the tree and checking them was a matter of flicking them to see if they came on. Sometimes the filaments would reconnect momentarily and then we knew that was the one to replace. Now of course, I have 1000 lights on my tree and a specialized checker to see if they all work.

Once the tree was up I loved to lay under it and revel in the color and sparkle, the smell of pine in my nose. I especially liked the bubble lights. They changed endlessly as the light heated the liquid up. A long chain of small bubbles at first, snaking up the tube, followed by the bigger bubbles, each one different and exciting to my eye.

My parents did go all out on Christmas and that was a good thing. They also tried to hide the presents from Santa, which never worked. We always found them. The attic was a good place at first but we found them there too. I remember getting the ladder and climbing up into the attic to see what was there. The attic was cold but the presents seemed to have a special gleam about them, knowing they would be arrayed on the fireplace on Christmas morning. I was never disappointed in anything I got because I got what I asked for, even the Western Flyer 3 speed bicycle I wanted so badly. It was black and the first multispeed bicycle on the block. A 26 incher, which was a big boy’s bike. I tinkered with the shifter for ages to get it to work right and learned, the hard way, how to mount a bike that large. The cross tube was a cruel mistress, I can tell you. My parents did well by us on Christmas, no matter what the circumstances. I have tried to do the same for my children, even though they think me a Grinch.

Blogging My Autobiography - Chapter 8

My mother is English. She came to this country when she was 21 and married my father. I came along shortly thereafter. She had survived World War II in England, listening to the bombs at night, huddled in a shelter. 6 years after the war ended, she came to the US, got married and had a child all in the space of just over a year. A person in that situation would yearn for some familiarity, probably. Some connection to home, though home was difficult, even 6 years gone from the war.

One connection that my mother had was to a friend in England named Alice. My recollection of Alice is pretty sketchy, but I remember her as very upbeat and kind. She seemed to have a lot of energy and lifted my mother when she was near. So how do I know Alice if she lived in England? Well she came to visit one year and spent the entire summer with us. The Summer of Alice was a summer of travel. My father was working as a civil engineer down in the southern part of our state and so, of course we had to drive down and visit him. That was not the only place we went, though. We went to Yellowstone as well, driving our 1953 Chevy the length and breadth of the Intermountain West. The Chevy was cool because my grandfather had built a bed for us in the back. He took a piece of plywood and made removable legs for it. This was placed in the back seat, the legs on the floorboards, creating a large flat surface that a mattress could be laid on. My two brothers and I could then either sleep or look out the window as we chose. It was quite comfortable. No seat belts or car seats for us!


It was on a dirt road near Moab where the seat belt issue was tested for us on this trip. We were headed out to see my father in a remote area. The only way in was on a dirt road that wound around the side of the mountain, up canyons and down until we got to the camp where my father was working on a huge pipeline to bring water to this arid area. Similar, I suppose to his great grandfather working on the Canal 80 years before. Dirt roads out here need to be able to deal with the sudden thunderstorms that are prevalent in the summer months. They can drop 3-5“ of water in 15 minutes. It’s basically like God emptied a big bucket over your head. That amount of water will wash away almost anything in it’s path unless it’s channeled. So, every road has a barrow pit or deep ditch on the uphill side to keep the water from washing away the road itself. These ditches can be up to 3 feet deep and 4-5 feet wide. If you don’t pay attention to them, they can pull the car right off the road. My mother was never the greatest driver. In England, you just got on the bus or train or walked wherever you needed to go. She was not well equipped to handle a dirt road in the middle of nowhere. We were driving along and she was nervous. Alice was trying to talk and stay calm herself. We were somewhat lost as well and that added to the pressure. She was driving along, looking for landmarks and the right front tire slid into the ditch. The car jerked right and smacked into the mountain which in turn generated a flurry of English epithets from the ladies in the front seat. Then the realization hit my mother, ”George is going to kill me.“ I knew she was right. I could see his face when we met him, all screwed up and asking what happened. Alice, though was starting to laugh at the predicament and soon my mother was also. We were able to back the car out of the ditch and finally found my father. When he was told what happened and Alice started to laugh again, he had to laugh also. The car was not hurt (they were really tough in those days) and everyone was fine. It became the story of how Audrey Hit the Mountain.

Yellowstone, one of my favorite places on Earth to visit. Old Faithful, Big Thumb, Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, Mammoth Springs and the Handkerchief Pool these are all great to see, though the Handkerchief Pool is no longer called that. It was called the Handkerchief Pool because the rangers would demonstrate the convection currents in the pool by asking for a dirty handkerchief which everyone carried at that time. Kleenex was not that portable. They would drop the hankie into the pool and wait for a few minutes. The hankie would sink into the water and then reappear 5 minutes later, clean as a whistle! It was miraculous. Maybe they changed it because some hankies clogged the pool, I am not sure.

Bears were always a big thing in Yellowstone. I had a close encounter with a black bear on this trip. Back then, the bears would line up by the side of the road and people would feed them from their cars. My mother was leery of this and would not let us roll down the windows very far. Of course the bears came closer than they might have to get the goodies. I timidly held an Oreo cookie out of the window, which a bear promptly swiped away from the car, nearly taking my fingers with it. Well, that was the end of that and we rolled up the windows tight until the bears wandered back into the woods. Alice could not stop talking about the bears, she had never been so close to wildlife. My grandmother told me a bear story also. She went to Yellowstone every year for 50 years. She told me that they used to have an amphitheater where they would dump the leftovers and garbage in the center. At dusk, the bears would gather at the edge of the amphitheater. The rangers would tell everyone to remain very still and the bears would pad down to the garbage and start to forage. Of course there were fights among the bears, which was very exciting according to my grandmother. They would mark the trees around the amphitheater and if one marked above the other, there was a fight for dominance. Life was lived in those days, without seat belts on the edge of danger and no one thought it was a problem at all. I sure didn’t, I thought it was all very exciting.

Blogging My Autobiography - Chapter 7

Elementary school brings a lot of pictures to my mind, the first of which is the blanket I slept on in kindergarten. I am not sure of the color, exactly, but a red and white checker pattern comes to mind. I liked kindergarten, it was fun and my teacher Mrs. Beeton was nice. I remember that we had graham crackers and milk for our snack. I also remember that it was not enough. They say that everything you need to know you learned in kindergarten and that may be true. Either that or I am a slow learner. What I took away from kindergarten was that you can’t leave your graham cracker in the milk too long or you will never get it back. I think that is pretty deep, actually.

Mrs. Ainscough was my first grade teacher. Nice enough person, I suppose. She was distracted as she got married in the middle of the year. What did I learn that year? Nothing of import obviously, because my memories end with Mrs. Ainscough’s wedding.

The only picture that is in my brain from second grade is my math workbook in the trash on the last day of school. Mrs. Nielson, my teacher threw it in there. What did I take away? Ultimately that criticizing is the worst thing you can do to a child. It makes them feel stupid and they start to believe that nothing is possible for them. I never wanted that for my children, though I am sure I slipped a few times.

Third grade was Mrs. Hayes. She was wonderful and even liked me, I thought. She made me feel I could actually accomplish something. I always got good grades in her class. The picture I have in my head is of her, with her brown hair up in a bun, smiling down at me. The key lesson from third grade is that Mrs. Nielson was wrong. I can amount to something.

Fourth grade was not happy because my teacher was not happy. I don’t remember her name which is sad. Where is the lesson here? If you are unhappy, no one else around you will be either and you will wind up a spinster 4th grade teacher, unhappy in your surroundings.

Fifth grade is fuzzy in my mind now. The only picture I have in my head actually has a soundtrack. Frank Valli and the Four Seasons singing while we all tried out dancing with the opposite sex for the first time. Actually, it’s more than a picture, it’s a movie shot. A medium high dolly down with a left to right pan. What is that, you say? Well, the camera would move in this path:
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The the setting is a playground with the school in the background and a forest of tether ball poles, around which children swayed awkwardly for a few moments and then fled, too embarrassed for words. My best friend Diane left me to be friends with another girl. She was lured away because boys were just so, weird. The lesson here? Well, you can never trust a girl of course! I now understand Harold Hill in the Music Man. The sadder but wiser girl for me......

Sixth grade, now that was a time. Mr. Berg was my first male teacher. He had blonde hair combed back in an enormous pompadour. He would brush his teeth noisily in the sink at the back of the room every morning. I mean, that was the sink we cleaned our water colors in! Yuck. He sent me to resource for not living up to my potential. I was bored and reading Scientific American under the desk. I asked for a subscription when I turned 12. He actually did me a favor by sending me out. Resource was fun and we got to play with musical instruments in the multi-purpose room for a couple of hours. I tried my hand at the clarinet and could get a good sound out of it right away. Just had to learn the fingering which was not as much fun but OK. I quit for a stupid reason, the clarinet was NOT a rock and roll instrument and I wanted to play rock and roll. I mean Benny Goodman played the clarinet! I called it honey dripper music. Little did I know that Robert Plant from Led Zeppelin would form a group called the Honey Drippers and record two best selling albums of old swing tunes. They even used clarinets! What did I learn here? Stupid is sometimes smart and what’s cool now may not be in the future.

I was a stranger in a strange land through most of elementary. There was only one other boy taller than me and he was much more popular. No one read science fiction but me and my friend Reed. I was good at tether ball and four square, but lousy at baseball. Girls were ever a mystery, teachers even more unfathomable, pickles tasted better when you skipped school to go home and eat them and nothing beats a crystal rocket radio in your hideout made of weeds next to the fence.

Blogging My Autobiography - Chapter 6

We have a couple of high schools in our area who have interesting nicknames for their teams. Most schools are Eagles, Tigers, Titans or Vikings or similar. All either predators or some type of warrior. However, there are two here who are Farmers and Beet-diggers. Go Diggers! These could easily be the name of a high school in my families small town. It’s still so small that they don’t have a high school of their own. I kinda hope it stays that way. Rural with working farms that might grow a few sugar beets.

Beet sugar was a big business in the late 1800s and early 1900s here. It was the only way to get sugar. We have a big lake here, but sugar cane needs more moisture than even the Canal can provide, so sugar beets it is. Why all the talk about sugar beets? Well, it was a favorite thing of mine in the fall. You would walk a field after it had been harvested and pick up a beet, flick open your pocket knife (I have always carried one, another farmer thing) and cut out the sweet center. You could chew it as you walked along, crunchy sweet, until all the sugar was gone and then spit the left over fiber. That became another game, who could spit the longest distance. I usually lost. Never was a very good spitter. Too much saliva and didn’t get a good enough seal to create the pressure required. Some folks made it into an art form and could spit long distances. I envied them.

It seemed that I rarely rode in a car when I went up to visit my relatives. I walked everywhere. Still like walking and walking fast. I would walk up to my Uncle Delbert’s store for a few groceries for my grandmother some times. That was a good thing, Delbert had a huge rack of penny candy and I usually could finagle a penny or two out of Grandma Grace for a stick of licorice or bubble gum. I do want to mention the licorice sticks. I thought they were cool, about the length of a small cigar with a stamp in them that flattened out the tube about a third of the way down. S&H, that’s what was stamped there. It added to the allure. Double Bubble chewing gum or sometimes Beemans (licorice again) or Clove gum. Double Bubble was nice because it had a mini comic book inside.

Other walks included hunting asparagus in the ditches that ran everywhere or walking up the road to Uncle Frank’s dairy for a couple of quarts of milk. This was real milk, fresh with cream on the top, right out of the cow bottled in a Mason jar. Sometimes still warm. I did learn how to hand milk a cow, but mostly it was done by the pumps you see today. hard to milk 200 head twice a day by hand. My Uncle Frank was a real interesting fellow. He laughed a lot and was mischievous like some of the men in my grandfather’s family. Could have been a brother instead of a brother in law. Married my grandmother’s little sister, who is a pistol to this day. My grandmother always complained that he got all of the family land and I guess she was bitter about it. In the end, Frank’s son was the one who re-assembled the Ranch, as it was called and put it in a trust forever. Frank the in-law saved our ancestral lands from development. Ironic, huh?

Sometimes family traditions are big and sometimes they are small. Two of my favorite traditions as a child were church mints and the Cemetery on Memorial day. Church mints were what my grandfather called the little pink peppermints he always seemed to have in his pocket at church. He called them church mints because they were the perfect thing to give to a child who has been sitting too long in church and needed a distraction. These mints were not the normal hard candy, rather they were softly crunchy and pretty strong. Maybe he got them from Delbert, I don’t know. What I do know is I will have church mints or a reasonable facsimile there of for my grandchildren. Why is this a family tradition? Well, my great great grandfather Edwin did the same things with his peppermints. He shared them with his grandchildren, which included my grandfather. i hope to carry this tradition on to the next generation, more than 100 years from the original “church mints.”

Nothing like a cemetery filled with flowers in May. Cemeteries for me are places where treasures are buried, pun intended. Treasures in the form of stories and lives that seemed fantastical to me as a small child. It didn’t hurt that my Grandma Grace was telling the stories, either. She had a love and a knowledge of the people buried there like no one I have ever known. She would walk me around the graves, telling me little tidbits about the mortal lives that were buried there. This person like this person over here but they married other people or this person went off to war or this person loved to dance, etc. It was all very insider only information and I loved it. Still love it to this day. Which is why I love family history and ultimately why I am writing this blog. It all started in the Cemetery with my Grandma Grace. She made those people live in my head and as I have grown older, I wanted to know more. I also realize that I never wrote anything down that my Grandma Grace said. What a loss. I wish I had her back for a week or even a day so I could find out what really happened. Did Great Great Grandfather William really shoot an Indian’s dog from so far away that the Indians couldn’t tell where the shot came from? Why did he rescue the little Indian girl? How did my grandfather feel when his father was killed blowing up tree stumps on a friends farm? Most importantly, who are all these people in the old photographs you saved? I miss her tremendously.

My heritage is rich and varied. My family, in my little town, made it live for me. I hope these words will help make it live for my children and children’s children.

My Great Great Grandfather Edwin summed it up:


In the evening of life when our sun is low
And our thoughts turn back with a glimmering flow
to the years of toil and poverty’s stress
And ask if our lives have been a success.
And the answer comes in the multiplication
Of the second, third and fourth generation

I can tell you Grandfather, your “multiplication” is still persevering.

Blogging My Autobiography - Chapter 5

My ancestral home in this country is a small town in the Western US. My family founded the town and has lived there continuously since about 1860. Going back further, most of my ancestry is Irish, with a little Scottish, English and Jewish, oddly enough. Most of the family in my little hamlet is extended family, but that’s OK. I grew up with a LARGE extended family. Our reunions, on my father’s side, easily topped 1,000 people. These reunions were very important to me, as was the association with my cousins and my father’s cousins. They would be my first cousins, once removed. By way of explanation, a removal is a generation back. First cousins, second cousins and so forth are in the same generation as you (or me, in this case). A second cousin would be my grandfather’s brother’s grandchildren. Hopefully that confuses you as much as it confuses me. My wife knows these things instinctively, so I am sure she will correct me if I am wrong.

My father had 52 first cousins. The product of farm life. You didn’t hire hands, you created them and they were working as soon as they were out of diapers. These are salt of the earth people. They were generally poor families in England or Scotland who came here for faith and a better life. It was hard for them, coming from such a cool, green place like England to a hot, dry place like the American West. They walked or rode across the plains and over mountains for months to get to this arid place. it made them tough but they appreciated the good things as well.

I love all my cousins, first, second or third. They were my playmates and baby sitters when I was young. We would roam the fields of our little town, making up games and stories as the mood took us. There was one place across the street from my Grandma Grace’s house called the Forest. This was really a windbreak planted by my great, great grandfather when he started the farm. It had grown over time into a grove of trees that had little hollows lined with grass and shaded by big cottonwoods and poplars. One day, we were in the Forest, telling stories and my Dad’s cousin told us a story about dragons and how they rode the wind. These dragons were not the noble creatures you read about now in popular fantasy, they were slimy and mean and wanted to eat you, diving in from the trees above. The wind was blowing that day and the trees moaned in the wind, creating the sound of dragons and bats and other nasty flying things just waiting to eat or bite you. Even now the wind in the trees sends a little shiver down my back, half from excitement, half from fear with a dash of nostalgia to give it all the right flavor.

All these fields and trees needed water, which was supplied by a network of ditches fed by The Canal. The Canal was the product of many men digging with anything they could find in order to earn a share of the water. One of my great grandfathers hocked his wife’s wedding ring to buy a spade, which is a short shovel, so he could dig for his share of the water. It’s amazing to me what they did in order to achieve their goals. The sacrifices they were willing to make, would we make them today? That thought runs through my mind. More tomorrow on these people and the town they built.

Blogging My Autobiography - Chapter 4

Grace, Ted, Esther and Billy. These are the names of my grandparents. My grandma Esther was married four times and I knew 2 of them. My blood grandfather I didn’t know but one of my brothers is the image of him. The grandfather of my childhood is Grandpa Billy. He passed away when I was 5 years old. I remember him well, though. He was a good man, British through and through with that sly, dry British wit. He would do magic tricks for me like make a coin disappear and then reappear from my ear or nose or mouth. It seemed to me that he laughed a lot and didn’t get overly serious. He also had a turquoise Plymouth with plastic covering the seats. This was a good thing when hauling a young boy with a propensity for car sickness. I don’t remember losing my lunch in the car, but I do remember that he pulled over so I could puke my guts out on the side of the road. When we were done, we were off with a laugh. My Grandmother Esther laughed a lot too, with Billy. Not as much in the time after he died. He was good for her I think.

Grandmother Esther was a salty sort, having grown up in the lower areas of an English seaport. It is true what they say about sailor’s tongues. Her father was a sailor and she could keep up with anyone in the “salt” department. It made me laugh as a child, the way she just spoke out about things and in many ways treated me as an adult. Probably the first person to do so. The scenes that come to mind are later in life for her. She loved to go fishing and would often take me with her to the river and reservoirs near her home. I do remember her bemoaning the differences between men and women when nature called while out in Nature. See the explanation above around “salty.” I remember staying with her overnight many times. One scene in my minds eye is me sitting at a little table in her kitchen. She was bustling about and Grandpa Earl (No. 4) was sitting at the table with me eating canned potatoes cold from the can. He ate them with such relish that I wondered what they tasted like. He gave me a bite and I love them to this day. Cold, with a little salt, thank you.

My other grandparents, Grace and Ted were as different as people could be. She, always in charge with a mouth that never stopped, except once that I remember. He, quiet, humble, with a wink that made you see him as a young man who knew how to have fun. I loved them a great deal. When I knew they were coming, I would sit by the picture window in our front room and look for the truck, the Chiseler or the Black Buick to roll up. Then I would run to greet them and was always rewarded with a hug and a smile and often a little treat, just for me. Even better than them coming was going to their house which sat on 2.5 acres of land in a small rural community. I was related to everyone in that community which we will talk about in another chapter. Their house was wonderful, with secret passages, a big dusty barn to explore, trees to climb and chores to do. Somehow they made the chores fun. I remember a cultivator they had. It was simple, just a steel hoop with spokes attached to two large wooden handles and a small hoe behind the wheel. I would run all over with it, even through the garden as long as I stayed between the rows. The earth was sandy out there near the lake and turned over easily so that even a small boy could kill the weeds with his mighty cultivator! My Grandma Grace would often be out there with me, picking vegetables for that day’s meals and talking to me, always talking. She was full of stories and gossip and, being the town postmaster, knew everything about everyone. I loved just hearing her talk. She had a sharp tongue, though so you had to mind your P’s and Q’s as she put it. Otherwise you were on the receiving end of that weapon and it was not pleasant. I think it is a genetic thing, because my daughter has the same edge on her tongue, though she controls it much better.

The only time I remember her stopping was late in her life. My Grandfather was out in the yard, in his walker, raking leaves. I was a teenager by this time and was helping with the yard work, mowing the lawn. My Grandma Grace came out and started to lay into my grandfather. He took it for a while and I could see his frustration building. Finally he turned to her and said, “Shut up, woman.” She stopped in mid word, closed her mouth and turned back into the house. I was shocked and amazed by this turn of events. I looked at my grandfather who had gone back to raking leaves, who gave me a sideways look and then a wink. I learned volumes that day about their relationship and cemented my understanding of my grandfather. He was not only kind and gentle, he had a strength that ran deep. He was always doing work for other people, much to my grandmother’s chagrin. She would rather he put his energy into their lives and place. He would rather serve, like his father who often let his own fields lie untended while he helped others. My grandfather was a boys dream. He was the deputy sheriff and then the fire chief. I don’t remember him as a lawman but I do remember the fire station. There were fire engines, a pole, sirens and even an old Dalmatian named King. Heaven for any young boy. I was allowed to slide down the pole and even sound the siren when I visited there. The men would be sitting around talking but their hands were always busy, polishing, fixing or lubricating some fascinating bit of their equipment. I watched and learned how men talk to one another there.I also learned work from my grandfather. He was in charge of his county’s booth at the State Fair. A couple of years, I was allowed to go help him set up, even getting out of school to do so. One year, television cameras were there, taking pictures of us working and I worried that my teacher would see me. Grandpa Ted just laughed and said he would talk to her if there was a problem. He and I just chatted about what was going on in my life. Mostly I chattered and he listened, all the while, he was setting up displays, making sure every apple, pear, squash or pumpkin was polished and set just so. To this day I do a better job while I am talking to someone which is convenient, since all I do is talk on the phone.


We are the sum of those that create us and teach us. My grandparents all helped create me, I have each of them in me, the gift of gab, the boyish wink, the laughing magician and yes, even the salty tongue. I love that I see each of them in myself and am grateful for all their influences.

Blogging My Autobiography - Chapter 3

Summertime. For most people the word conjures up a lot of good memories and feelings. My preference is Winter and Fall, but as a child, Summer brought some special opportunities for play and mischief. When I was 5 years old, we moved to what would become my childhood home. The street was about two and one half blocks long and had 13 houses on my side of the street. There are 14 now, but one of those is relatively new. It was built on land that was part of an orchard that surrounded the neighborhood. What a great thing the orchard was! We could climb trees and, depending on the season, eat cherries, apricots, pears, peaches and apples into the fall. Many times I ate myself sick, mostly on green pears. They were so crunchy, I still like them that way. I am sure that old man Bangerter would have been upset with us if he had known, but maybe he did and tolerated us kids in the trees. We didn’t eat that much and I still have a healthy love of fresh fruit. I can tell which trees are which, even today because of those experiences.

Other things grew in the orchard, and rhubarb was one of them. We would break off a stalk and chew it. It was sweet and very sour at the same time.

Climbing trees always has an element of danger. One day that I remember quite vividly, my friend Diane and I were climbing in our favorite apple tree. It was a large one, right on the corner of the orchard and you could see a ways down the street from it’s heights. We got a little too high and Diane slipped, losing her balance and falling to land on her back at the base of the tree. I remember her falling, her long blonde hair streaming around her face which held a look of abject terror and complete surprise until she hit. I have since seen many movie scene where people fall off of our out of buildings, trees, etc. This looked exactly the same way, all in slow motion. After she landed everything seemed very quiet. I asked her, my voice quivering, “Diane, you OK?” She blinked once, then twice and managed to say, “I think so.” I climbed down as quickly as I could and she managed to roll over and breathe easier. Never broke a thing, just had the wind knocked out of her. We can thank the soft earth around the tree and the thick grass that grew in the orchard. Thank heaven, Bangerter was diligent about his plowing.

Summer also brought games of kick the can that lasted into the late twilight. It was the best time to play because you could hide closer to the can. Other activities included sleeping out. As in sleeping out under the stars. Inside the house, it was often hot and close. Being a person who prefers it cold, sleeping outdoors was a welcome respite. We would all gather out sleeping bags and set up some old army cots. The cots were the ones that had legs that looked like an X when they were opened and you stretched the canvas with two cross bars on the end. Quite comfortable once you got them stretched. We would then lay on top of our bags and stare at the stars. You could see them from my backyard in those days. They were brilliant and all the constellations were known by us. Sometimes we would make up our own stories about the stars, just like kids did for thousands of years before us. It was a quiet time I relished. One time, I swear, we say a UFO. No star moved that fast and no planes made right angle turns like that. Believe it or not!

No description of summer in our neighborhood would be complete without Chilleroos. Chileroos were the brainchild of my next youngest brother and his friend. We all participated. Chilleroos were made from Kool-Aid and I think Jello flavoring, frozen in a paper cup. I don’t remember the recipe exactly, but they were tasty. They came in a couple of flavors like cherry and lime, and one year we made multilayered Chilleroos. We walked the streets with the frozen goodies in our wagon on hot Saturdays when people were working in their yards and made a killing. It was all about delivering a good product and the right time. Nothing chilled like a Chilleroo on a warm summer afternoon. 25-cents a pop!

Blogging My Autobiography - Chapter 2

Sometimes, for a child, disappearing is very desirable. At least for me it was. There was always a fair amount of emotion floating around the house, given my mother’s erratic nature and my father’s need to control that behavior. From the first, their relationship was contentious and continued to be so their entire lives. I remember people saying to me at a young age, “Your parent’s are like oil and water, they must somehow balance each other.” Looking back, they didn’t balance so well and me being the oldest many times got caught in the middle. It is no wonder I wanted to disappear. One night, I did.

My mother worked a late shift at the ice cream store near our home so my father had us kids for the night. He sent us to bed around 7 at night. I slept in the basement so, in my bare feet and pajamas, walked down into the basement and climbed into bed. Another normal night. What motivated me from here on out, is unclear, but I went back upstairs after a little while and determined that my father would be angry with me if he found me. He was often angry and I really wanted no part of it so I disappeared. I hid, as far as I can remember, behind a swinging door that led into the kitchen and stayed there. Evidently, my father heard something and went to check on us. My brothers were in bed but I was missing. He started looking for me, calling my name. Of course, this made me want to be even more unnoticed, so I endeavored to make myself small behind the door. My bare feet, which were always big, stuck out from under the door. I worried that people would find me if they could see my toes, so I turned my feet out so they couldn’t be seen.

By this time my father was getting pretty worried and one of his friends from England, where he served his mission, came over and they started looking. Pretty soon it escalated to the neighborhood and the policeman who lived next door. All told, maybe 20-30 people were looking for me at the peak. 3 hours had passed and it was 10 o’clock. It was decided that everyone would kneel down in my parent’s living room and pray for my return. They knelt, prayed and my father’s friend said, “I know where he is.” He walked over to the door, pulled it away from the wall, and pulled me into the living room.

There were of course a million questions. I sat on the couch with all these adults in front of me asking me where I was all this time. I told them, “Behind the door.” The English friend said that was impossible, he had looked behind that door half a dozen times and I was never there. It was the only answer I had. To this day, if I was somewhere else, I don’t remember it.

I wonder what happens to kids who live in emotionally charged households these days. Do they just want to disappear like I did? How does a child disappear and not leave their home? For me, I just willed it so and no one could find me. Even if I was in plain sight.

Blogging My Autobiography - Chapter 1

So, it’s NaBloPoMo and it’s my first time doing this. I must admit that it is somewhat daunting, but I am committed now and it dovetails with a project that I have been thinking about for some time, my autobiography. When I was 12 in 7th grade English, my teacher, Mrs. Winmill asked us all to write a 3 page autobiography. I wrote it very carefully though at the time I wondered what I really would have to write about. As I got started, I found there was more for me to say than I could in 3 pages, so I condensed it and submitted the paper. Mrs. Winmill gave me an A on the project and told me that I had talent, I could write. It was a watershed event in my young life and from that time forward, I wanted to write and take pictures for a living. Unfortunately I believed other people as I got older and tried accounting, teaching and other things until I fell into computers. Computers were a choice, but not my heart’s passion. So, this month, you will be reading my heart’s passion and seeing some old photos from my childhood and teen years (scary, I know). The format will be 10 days childhood, 10 days teen years and 10 days for adulthood. Safire, my daughter, asked me how I was going to organize it and we came up with the chaptering. Thanks, Sweets!

My earliest memories are of playing around the house and at times in the fields around my grandparent’s home. These were pleasant places in a rural or semi-rural setting. Warm days in the summer and cold in the winter, bucolic in the small town I lived in and in the one my grandparents lived in. In front of our house on Redondo, there was a big porch. All of the homes in this neighborhood were little brick boxes with large porches. As children, we made up our own games and generally ran the street with no fear. This game involved a dare, who would go under the porch. It was dusty and dirty and I knew somewhere that my parents would not be happy if I brought any of that home on me or in my pants cuffs. However, I went in anyway. It was dark, with rays of light poking through the crossed slats that blocked out most of the area underneath. The smell was moldy, earthy and redolent of things that were either dead or maybe fed on dead things. We crawled in and I looked up at the light and tasted the dust I saw floating there. After a while more kids came in and we thought this would be a cool place for a clubhouse. It was private and we could hide from our parents here. Just as we were getting settled, one of us heard a rustle and looked down......

SNAKE!!!!!!

My eyes locked on the slithering creature as it wound it’s way towards my hand and I decided this was no good as a club house. The other kids were screaming and crawling to the exit with all speed. This kicked up more dust and I lost track of the snake. Frankly, I was not interested in where the snake was by that time, I just wanted out from under the dusty porch and into the sunlight. When we were all out, we wondered what type of snake it was and how big it really was. Truth be told, it was a garter snake and about a foot long (in my memory), but it grew in the telling as snakes in stories always do.

See you tomorrow.

Photowalk October 2008

For this photowalk we went to Gardner Village, which is a historical village on the Jordan River west of here. It has a large mill building that houses a restaurant and general store now with a little village that has a number of crafty or sweet shops. Usually not my cup ‘o tea but nice. What I didn’t know before I got there was that it was decorated up for Halloween. Halloween here is a funny thing. It’s the one day where all the uptight people in this valley feel like they can cut loose, dress up crazy and be someone else. I suppose I could be wrong here, but it’s as big as Christmas! People go all out and even decorate their houses! I can barely decorate for Christmas. I know, I am a Grinch. I get told every year, but that’s another post.

I was skeptical of what I would find there, but was surprised at the number of opportunities to take pictures. I also learned more about my camera, which was awesome. I love my camera. Witches were there in abundance and I did take some pictures of them. As well as some of the eats available. I found my eye drawn to things I would not normally see, but when I looked, things leaped out at me. So, here are a few pictures that you may enjoy.




More available on Flickr here.

Trip to Philadelphia 2008

Ah, Philly! Home of Liberty and Cheese steaks. I treasure both of these items. Liberty because the freedom to choose is the most precious gift you can receive and cheese steaks because they are simple and beautiful at the same time.

Last week we spent 3 days in eastern Pennsylvania with Safire, Juice and the kids. For the blow by blow account, check out Safire’s blog here. She is a much more entertaining writer anyway. For myself, I want to write about the aforementioned blessing and pleasure. Blessing first.

My son told me to spend some time in Independence Hall away from the crowd and just soak in the feeling there. I must admit that there was a unique spirit about the place, similar to a church but different and more than most of the other non-LDS churches I have been to. When I go to church, there is a reaching of the soul towards something warm, comforting and strengthening that is always rewarded. At Independence Hall, I looked for that feeling and found it there as well. Perhaps it was the lingering touch of the hand of God that I felt, or perhaps it was a place where the veil is thin and those spirits who worked and prayed and argued there were still near. Or perhaps both. I could, if I closed my eyes see them there debating our futures and I wondered if they felt the import of the moment. Certainly they were passionate about it, most revolutionaries are, but I wondered if they ever stopped to ponder. Maybe George Washington did or Thomas Jefferson.

Liberty, the ability to choose your way in life, is God’s greatest gift. If we make choices, we learn, we gain experience, we mature, we become more than what we were through those choices. It’s the way we grow. It’s why we are here on this earth. Those men gave us the right to choose, they planned on it and had faith that we would choose correctly given the opportunity. Generally we have. Lately, though, liberty has been taken for granted and perverted into victimization. We have all become victims because we choose not to choose. It’s always someone else’s fault, no choice of ours is ever bad. I guess if you think about it, no choice is ever bad if we learn from the choice. But to blame it on someone else is to deny the greatest blessing of Liberty.

Whew! What a rant! I should save that for a talk when I am a General Authority. (which is like Outkast becoming the next Republican ticket, possible but not likely. Though they could be better than McCain-Palin, who knows?) You can say you read it here first.

On to cheese steaks!

I didn’t make it to any of the big ones, like Jim’s or Tony Luke’s but we did get one at the Cocoa Grill in Hershey, PA. It was quite good, though different. A cheese steak is the following: Soft, white hoagy or submarine bun, very thinly sliced steak grilled on a flat top griddle, grilled onions and provolone cheese. you will sometimes see a pepper steak which has grilled bell peppers in it, but that’s not Philly. Maybe it’s a NY or Chicago thing, I have seen them there. Like I said earlier, simple but goood. The one we had at Cocoa’s had savory marinara sauce on it. Interesting and quite tasty, but not what I was looking for. We have a good cheese steak place here in ol’ SLC on 9th South, but it’s not the same. Gotta have one in Philly. I have had steaks in KC, pulled pork BBQ in Memphis and a hot dog in Chicago (at Wrigley Field!) so I must have a cheese steak IN Philly. Sigh, maybe next year.

Post script:
Had Hershey’s chocolate in Hershey, PA. Tastes the same. The ride (except for the cows) was fun and the store was cool. They only chose cows because it’s tough to anthropomorphize cacao beans and most people don’t know where chocolate comes from. Milk however is a different story. It comes from the carton.

Views from the Porch - FIRE!

Ah, the smell of burning sage and scrub oak! It takes me back.

Back to burning eyes and throat, coughing and other stuff that never really bothered me when I fought forest fires back in “the day” as Safire, my daughter puts it. The last year I worked for the BLM was 1975, more than 30 years ago. AAAWWWGH! I am getting old.

So what takes me back, you say? Well we have a large fire about 2 miles from our house. It has burned close to 1000 acres by now and filled the valley with smoke. Safire caught it and Blondie was yelling at me to come see the fire. Since I am an “old hand” I was slow to come up from my office, it was a work day after all. By the time I got there, it was growing very rapidly. I predicted it would almost reach the peak and it did in about an hour. Every so often the fire would hit some thick brush that had more sap and a puff of black smoke would rise out of the grey-white mass. At the bottom you could see flames that I would judge were 30 to 50 feet tall. We could see in the distance all the fire trucks and then pretty soon the US Forest Service bombers and helicopters showed up and started dumping slurry or bentonite retardant to stop the blaze.
I think it’s funny the way municipal fire fighters work a range or forest fire. They want to squirt everything. We did our work with dirt and a little trombone sprayer. Of course we had the bombers as well, but only on the biggest fires, like this one.


I had to get back to work, but it was an exciting lunch watching the mountain burn. Now I have to stare at the blackened mountain all fall and winter. We normally have some nice color on the mountain in the fall, but that is gone now. Ah well. With the destruction comes new life and greenery. It will be back next year.



I have posted all the pictures at Flickr, if you want to see the rest.

Pay it Forward Winner ~ Charayne!

So, we rolled the dice at random.org and guess who the winner was? Charayne! Twice in a row. I figured it was karma, so Charayne gets the Food Network gift certificate.

I loved all of the descriptions and they all made me drool. Of course, at my age that’s not tough, but still......

So, Charayne, I will be in touch shortly and now it’s your turn to create a contest and pay it forward. Have fun!

Babypalooza! - Grandpa Perspective

When all your kids leave, your life changes. You kids still cost you money, but you give it gladly. your life takes on a quieter demeanor, at least at home. I am used to going down into my office at 7:30 am or 8:00 am and working in a quiet fashion until I come upstairs for a quick bite. Nighttime is also quiet. Sometimes too quiet. It’s part of the reason that I work late, I think.

Well, with babypalooza on Wednesday, that all changed. Kids running the racetrack in our kitchen and living room, babies crying, playing in the sprinklers, talking to your kids about their lives while the maelstrom whirls around us. That is the real payoff in life. I loved it, even though it was a bit tiring.

Then there are the pictures. Safire, my daughter on her blog has posted some but here are the ones that she mentioned. So cute!! I love how they all sort of lean and grab onto one another and then of course there are the older ones, posing for all they are worth. Here is a little movie of all the pics, I hope you like them!

The Time Limit

Safire, my daughter informs me that I should publish a time limit to this contest. If I don’t no one will post and we will have only one winner. So, the contest ends on Sunday, August 24. Winner to be announced Monday. So far, Laura has the inside track for the goodies. Oh, and did Safire say I am pretty generous? As in a nice gift card from foodnetwork.com?

The Contest - The Next Food Network Star

Soooo, we have a winner?!

I never win anything (except for a 6 pack of Coca Cola from KNAK (Kay-Nack) radio when I was about 16) so this was a complete surprise. I just like to read the blogs and see what everyone is doing. I never expected this to fall to me. So, here is the contest for the 6 people who actually read what I write here.

The Food Network is my favorite network. Not, ESPN, not SciFi, not HBO, Food Network. I like a show there called The Next Food Network Star. It’s sort of an American Idol for foodies (yes, trekkies, yuppies and now foodies). The winner gets a show and becomes a celebrity. We will have our own Next Food Network Star contest here. You have one meal to cook to impress the judges and make your audiences mouth water. What do you cook? Tell me what and why you think it’s delicious. We are all looking forward to your descriptions.

The winner will be chosen at random as we have done before, but be descriptive, people! Make us drool! The winner will receive some cool food related items.

Robert