April 1, 2010

Do you have a good April Fool’s story?

I kind of remember a story from an April Fool’s joke that was pulled on my mother when I was very young. It however turned out a major backfire to the perpetrator and the rest of us as well. Someone switched the sugar and the salt (a standard joke I believe) and mom was so kind to make a double batch of cookies for us. Well since the usual proportions were a bit backwards and the salt was so strong we thought that we had dipped the cookies into the Great Salt Lake before eating them. Needless to say one bite was too much and we had to throw away the entire double batch of cookies. Yes it was a pretty salty ole’ April Fool’s Joke.

There was one other Aril Fool’s joke that was pulled on me much later in life that just came to mind. When was working for Kara Chocolates we use to cover Oreo cookies with white and milk chocolate. One year the ladies gave me a couple of them to try on April Fool’s day but I didn’t really get the connection until after I had eaten the cookies and wondered why they had a slightly minty taste to them and the creamy filling was way off. Later after downing both of the cookies even though something didn’t feel quite right and their laugher had burst forth into a mighty choral applause I realized the white filling was actually TOOTH PASTE.

Mar 31, 2010

What were some crazy names or nicknames in your school?

I must admit I am sure we had nicknames in school but I don’t remember any of them. Sorry to end the month this way but I really don’t remember.

Mar 30, 2010

Tell of a nickname given to you by friends or classmates. How did you get it? How did you feel about it?

I don’t remember any nicknames given to me by classmates. The only nicknames that I had and, I think I have written about these, were Kentucky Pete given to me by Uncle Mont and Wilbur by cousin Jack Skewes. Mont because of my name Kent, the short version of Kentucky Pete. Jack came up with Wilbur and I have no idea why or how but that was what he called me for many years. It finally disappeared after I was married. I always liked both of them I guess because it meant to me that they liked me.

Mar 29, 2010

Name your best school friends.

Wendell Moon, Lee Moon (cousins), Douglas and Donald Hansen ( brothers), Max Wimmer, Russell Conn, Chuck Wilkins. They were with me through most of my school years. Actually the only ones that were not with me every year of my school years were the Hansen brothers that moved in to Duchesne when I was in 3^rd or 4^th grade. Lee and Wendell lived just off the hill from where we lived and Russell, Max and Chuck all lived in town. We were friends because we all went to school, primary, church and scouts together. Other friends from school who lived further away were Alan Potter, Wayne Robb, Randy Brady and Kevin and Mike Wilkinson. I was very lucky to have a lot of friends during my youth.

Mar 28, 2010

Tell about an experience at the doctor’s or dentist’s office.

Since I just had the doctor’s story I guess I’ll have to come up with a dentist story. We always went to Roosevelt to the dentist office to where we had our work done by Dr Mantyla. I only remember basics from those experiences. We had the usual checkups and drilling and filling. I always hated the shots for the deadening procedure but I always loved the ice cream cones we had after it was all over, when we were not still so numb that we couldn’t taste the ice cream.

Mar 27, 2010

Tell of a childhood illness.

I had the usual measles and mumps. With seven children in the family how can you avoid it? I also had a bladder infection.

Here is the story from my history.

Kidney Disease and a trip to St. Marks Hospital in Salt Lake City.

When I was 10 or so years old, I don’t remember specifically, I was out in the barn and had to use the bathroom so as we always did when out in the barn yard or camping I just went number one in the gutter where the cows always let go while we were milking. I was scared this time though because it came out red with blood. I told mom about it and we were soon on our way to the doctor’s office in Roosevelt. It wasn’t long after we got there that I was then admitted into the hospital in Roosevelt. I was in the hospital for several days as various and sundry tests were ran and with no closer clue as to what was wrong. I didn’t have any more issue of blood but they were running tests none the less. Finally it was determined that I would need to go the Salt Lake City for more tests since their equipment was much more up to date. So on a Wednesday night I spent my last day in the hospital at Roosevelt before mom and dad would come get me to take me to Salt lake City. I was asked by the nurse that night what I would like to drink and my answer was the standard “7-Up” since I knew Pepsi and coke had caffeine in them and mom had always taught us not to drink them for that reason. The nurse however informed me that I had had 7-Up all week and it was time to have something different and so she brought me a Pepsi. I obediently drank the Pepsi and then tried to go to sleep but instead all I could do was vomit all night. I am sure that it wasn’t caused by the Pepsi but rather my mind, however, it left such a lasting memory that I have never been able, nor even tempted, to ever drink either of them again. Well my parents came on Thursday and I was taken home. I remember it was night and I anxiously looked for the lights of the house as we rode toward Duchesne on Highway 40. It was really a special moment when I could see the lights from the front porch.

The next afternoon we traveled to Salt Lake City. It took forever at 50 miles per hour to go from Duchesne to Fruitland to Strawberry Valley and then Heber and finally down the canyon into Salt Lake City. I recall that it was in October because I counted over 250 cars and trucks, mostly trucks, going up the canyon out of Salt lake as men and boys were headed to the mountains for the start of the deer hunt the next day. I was admitted to the St Marks hospital and remember being in a room where 8 beds were set up. I was the only one n the room. The next day I was not alone as the room was filled with boys that had been involved in various accidents while deer hunting, a couple of them had been shot with 22 rifles. Monday morning they came in at 7 am and started giving me drugs to knock me out prior to some exploratory surgery on my bladder. I was brought back to me room to wake up and I still recall how puzzled I was in the fact that The Lone Ranger was on TV so early in the day. It was always 4 PM or later out in Duchesne. Little did I know until I looked at the clock that I had been under all day. That spinning of the room that occurred just before I checked out had put me to sleep for an entire day. I don’t know if they ever figured out what was wrong but it never happened to me again for which I have been very grateful since it really hurt to do a number one after they had finished their exploring that day in the hospital.

Mar 26, 2010

Did you have any other good stories about being injured.

Yes,I was hit by 12000 volts of electricity that entered through to pair of gloves and exited through two small holes below my knee cap. It entered my finder at the knuckle on my left hand, not the same finger this time,0 and went out my right knee. I was putting wire ties into a machine that had the electricity safety switch bypassed while we were working on it and I forgot to take the bypass off before reaching in to tie wrap some wires back to the main frame. I saw it come at me from about 4 inches away from my finer like a lit match. It literally looked like a match burning sideways. When it hit my knuckle all of my muscles contracted and since I wasn’t actually holding onto anything It curled me up into a ball and I just rolled away from the machine. I did have to stay overnight in the hospital for observation to make sure that no blood clots formed in my veins. It was a DC voltage meaning direct current which travels along the skin or surface of the body and thus wasn’t likely to cause problems in the veins. (AC or house electricity would have killed me since it travels through the body using the veins as conductors of the electricity and thus bakes the blood.)

Mar 25, 2010

Did you ever need stitches?

Only during surgery or my adult life. Surgery because I had my tonsils removed when I was 11 or 12. In my adult life because of an accident with a Hepa filter where my finger was sliced open bythe sharp metal on the top of the filter. (These filters were used at Signetics and measured about 6 to 8 feet long, three feet wide and tow to three feet tall. We were pulling one on a dolly and the other tech started to pull before I was ready and I had my finger in one of the holes on the filter itself where the metal was cut with holes to allow air passage. It laid my finger completely open and as I think about it now that was the same finger that later got broken and now has a wart under the finger nail.

Mar 24, 2010

What bones have you broken and how?

I have only broken one bone and that was on my right hand, second finger. Reached up to catch a soccer ball while watching one or two of you play soccer. The ball hit the long finger and bounced off. I didn’t know it was broken only that it hurt. It is still bent due to that break.

Mar 23,1 2010

Which chores did you dislike the most and how did you get out of it?

Dishes, teasing Leesa. Enough said. The story was either written in an earlier post or I have it in my life stories collection.

Did you have a favorite chore?

Chores are named chores because of their very nature of not being fun. So, no, I really didn’t have a favorite chore. I just did them.

Mar 22, 2010

Describe some outside chores.

After the incident with Leesa and the dishes, I began milking and feeding the cows. That involved going down into the field or pasture where ever the cows were and bringing them up to the barn. I would then take the three milk cows into the barn where we would lock them into the stantions, hobble their feet (being sure to lock the tail in with the hobbles), the using a one legged T stool to milk them each by hand. We had one cow that would only allow us to milk her with the milking machine, that is until I got tired of always having to wash the mlker and began to milk her by hand as well. It was actually easier. After milking the cows and straining the milk to remove the hair and other incidentals that would fall or slash into the bucket, I would let the cows out and go feed them. That included a walk to the stack yard some 50 yards or so from the barn and getting two to three bales of hay off the stack and then spreading them along the manger. I would then carry a half bale over to the horses, about 50 feet away, and when we had pigs would then slop the pigs(pull a bucket of sour milk from a barrel and put into their trough and yes it smelled like sour milk). Then I would go back to the barn and wash out the manure trough and then take the milk into the house. When the cows were giving a lot of milk we would also have to put it through the milk seperator and take the cream only into the house and carry the rest of the milk to the pig pen and add to the barrel. After the milk was to the house the I would get two buckets of hot water and carry it back to the barn where we would fill the tubs and wash the milking equipment. The milk seperator took a long time because it involved pulling apart the center section and cleaning each on the fifty cones one at a time. It usually took an hour to an hour and a half to milk the cows.

Other chores included carrying the coal to the furnace. I got to where I could carry 4 five gallon buckets loaded with coal into the house and down the narrow steps to the furnace. I had to do that at least once a day during the cold season while the furnace was running. I then would carry the bucket of clinkers that I would remove from the furnace, with the clinkers that dad would remove each morning, and carry them out onto the driveway where we would spread the around on the dirt road.

I also would mow the lawn with a push mower, later we got a gas one, and the rake up the grass clipping. We had a huge lawn and it took a long time to do that as well.

During the summer I also had irrigating duties, as well as cutting, raking, baling, hauling, and stacking the hay in the stack yard. Then there was the seasonal chores of washing out the bottles before canning and helping to pick, wash, cut and can the fruit. We had apples, apricots, pears, and cherries that we would can each fall.

The other main chore that I had were the usual cleaning the room, and taking the garbage to the big 55 gallon drum where we would burn it.

The summer time also included planting, weeding, watering and harvesting the garden.

I hated to weed and still do but the Clement weeder helped a lot. It was a blade on the front of a triangle assembly with a single wheel that allowed you to psuh it just under the ground and cut off the weeds. It was invented by Uncle Lyle Clement.

Mar 21, 2010

Describe some household chores you had as a child.

In my early years , prior to 8 or 9, I had the usual indoor chores. Every Saturday was wash day. We had an old washer ringer combination washing machine as seen in this picture with the blog. (That is the actual washer we used, mom gave it to me for photography.) We would do a lot of loads that day which included the loading of the washer, adding some homemade lard soap (MADE FROM COWS FAT THAT WE SAVED FROM SLAUGTERING OUR OWN BEEF, melted in a big copper kettle over an outside wood fire, and adding lye, I couldn’t tell you anymore than that) and then letting the washer do it’s thing for a half hour or so and then, after the rinsing, pulling the clothes out one by one and putting them through the ringer and into a wash basket. In the summer we would then carry them out to the clothesline and hang them up to dry. Later we would go back out before dark and take then in and fold them before taking them to our rooms to be put away. This took most of Saturday to accomplish.

I also helped with the dishes. We were assigned to set the table one time, then clear the table, then wash dishes or dry dishes and put them into the cupboard. There were four units to the project and we would do something different each time.

Later after Uncle Clair went on his mission in 1965 or 66, I took over making bread for the family. This meant coming home and mixing a batch of bread and baking it. It took usually till nearly 10 pm before it was done each time. However the fresh bread was always worth it. I would do this 2 to 3 times per week.

Saturday night at around 11:30 pm was always a time to hate chores. That was when mom would finally be ready to mop the kitchen floor and we were asked to help. I don’t think that mom ever went to bed before midnight but Saturday night the mopping had to be done before midnight so that we were not working on the Sabbath.

More on chores tomorrow.

Mar 20, 2010

What do you remember as your favorite time of the year? Why?

It would still have to be Christmas time. First because it meant that we would have a couple of week off from school and next, well, it was Christmas. I always loved Christmas and the chance to be able to be free of school work for a few days and to be with family during that time as well. It was hard to get to sleep because of the excitement surrounding the next morning also. With all of these things put together it was of course my favorite time of the year.

Mar 19, 2010

If you ever hitch hiked explain.

I hitch hiked one time in my life to date. It was on a very cold day in January in 1972. Lynn, Leesa and I were returning to Snow College after the Christmas break. We were in the old blue Chevy truck and had gone from Duchesne across Indian Canyon to Soldier Summit. The traffic was backed up for miles which we learned after crossing over from the Emma Park road intersection to Colton. There is an ara just after Colton near the turn to Schofield where you can see for several miles and it was nothing but taillights all the way. We slowly crept along until we had crossed Soldier Summit and headed toward the Tucker Rest Stop. But prior to getting to the rest stop the truck died and we couldn’t get it started again. I finally got out and hitched a ride to the café around the corner from the rest stop. I called our Bishop in Ephraim and he drove up from Ephraim to help us. He drove right past me as I stood in that outside phone booth waiting for him. There were three inches of very cold water standing on the floor of the phone booth as I stood there for about two hours waiting for him. He finally arrived with Lynn and Leesa as they drove the truck up to the booth. He apparently didn’t realize I was waiting in the phone booth and had driven past me until he found them. Now for the final kicker, I was wearing my very old worn out pair of tennis shoes and my feet were very cold.

Mar 18, 2010

Tell me more about your college years, or your work experiences in early adulthood.

My two years of college were fun and hard. The first year of college was a bit of a lonely time in a way and a mixed up time as well. I was there with a brother and a sister but they had been there a year already and had their friends and activities pretty much already set so I spent a lot of time by myself in my room studying or on my bike riding around Ephraim. It was still fun though in that I was in the electronics program and soon had friends there as well as in the general ed classes too. The second year was totally different in the fact that Marie was there for the first part of it and then I was engaged and she was at home and I spent 10 to 16 hours a day in the electronics lab for the last half of the year so I could graduate and begin raising a family.

My first three years in the workforce were with a television repair service. I had many experiences there which taught me a lot about working with people. I enjoyed my years with American Television and there are several stories that I have written and many that I will still write for my personal history.

Mar 17, 2010

What memories do you have of St. Patrick’s Day in your childhood?

I remember the usual stuff like hiding your green so when you got pinched you could pinch back. O course it wouldn’t really be hidden it would just be in a place where it wasn’t easily seen unless you looked for it because if it was actually hidden then you really got pinched or punched depending on whom you pinched. It seems too like I forgot plenty of times as well until the first pincher came along and then I quickly had to find a green piece of paper to pin to my shirt. I don’t remember much from school but it seems like we did often cut out shamrocks for the room decorations.

Mar 16, 2010

Tell your major and how you choose it.

My major in college was Electronic Technician. I chose it because of a love for electronics that began in high school in a chemistry class where I built an electron cell.

I then went to snow College and started in the electronics program there and really enjoyed it as well. I probably enjoyed electronics because of a natural curiosity to take things apart and put them back together again. Then there was the time in the barn while doing chores that I fixed the old Zenith radio and didn’t have the slightest idea of how I did it. I worked in the field of electronics for 18 years and then things started to diversify due to Signetics moving out of the county. I did chocolate making, insurance, cabinet finishing, and finally working at Provo craft doing what I had really done since 8 years old, a photographer. I never wanted it to be my vocation and yet that is where I am at now and loving it.

Mar 15, 2010

If you went to college tell which college you chose and why?

I went to Snow College and on my mission and back to Snow college for my last year of education. I was young enough when I graduated from Duchesne High School to go a to full year of college. Snow had given me a scholastic scholarship plus Lynn and Leesa were both there that first year so it was a logical place to go. (Not counting the fact that mom graduated from there as well as Stan and Clair too.) It was a small college also and that would allow me to fit in better after having attended a small school during my youth. I liked Snow and really enjoyed the two years that I was there before graduating with an Associate of Applied Science degree in Electronics. I went to work right after school and getting married using that degree to jump start my career in TV repair and equipment maintenance. After that it was just OJT in other jobs and professions.

Mar 14, 2010

Do you remember your first pizza?

NO! I must have had it sometime but I don’t know when. In fact the first pizza’s I really remember were after my college days. You see Duchesne, Roosevelt, Vernal and Ephraim were not good places for pizza establishments because we all pretty much ate hamburgers and fries with milk shakes or drinks. I really have no idea when I had my first pizza, it was probably on my mission.

Mar 13, 2010

Did kids ever tease you and why?

I think that I have answered this question several times already just explaining other experiences like the hair cut and the physical size. Other than that I pretty much liked everyone and they must have liked me. When you start out in elementary with about 25 kids in your class and you grow up with them and graduate together all of those teasing things get over long before you get very far into school since you can’t just go and get a different set of friends. They are all your friends and really pretty good friends at that. Now we were joined in about the 8^th and 9^th grades by another 20 or so kids but we got to know them pretty quick as well and didn’t really get treated poorly by them either. I was very fortunate to have grown up with a bunch of youth that I can still call my friends today. (Some of them are even my Facebook friends now as well.)

Mar 12, 2010

What was your favorite movie and why?

As you can tell from the movie’s I remember those must have been my favorites. However my most favorite part about the movie’s that I did get to see was not the movies at all it was the Nickle Lollipops. I always bought two or three, not that I ever really liked them I just liked getting a free one every so often because the whole point of those suckers was the occasional; one that would have a free sticker inside the wrapper. I think I actually got a few of them so that was probably why I kept get them. I even remember occasional times getting a free one with a free one, now that was the real jackpot.

Mar 11, 2010

What was the first movie you ever saw and who starred in it?

I think it must have been Old Yeller. “Directed by Robert Stevenson. With Dorothy McGuire, Fess Parker, Jeff York. A boy brings a yellow dog home. The dog loves the family as much as they love it.” OK so I cheated and googled the cast.How can I be expected to remember who starred in the movie I was crying to hard to remember anything but the loss of the dog. Later I saw “Where the Red fern Grows”. Another very sad dog story and I have been marred all my life because of it. I still can’t watch those movies. I also remember “Bambi”, “PollyAnna” and other tear jerkers. I needed to have seen some funny movies I guess but we were lucky to even have a movie theater in town and real lucky to get to go to a movie.

Mar 10, 2010

What radio programs or stations were your favorites?

Finally an easy question. I can only choose from one because that was the only station we could get in Duchesne or the Uintah basin for many years. It was KOMA out of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Apparently the signal “skip” from back there was just perfect for the Uintah Basin. The main thing that I remember listening to also was the Dodgers baseball games. KOMA for some reason was the station that transmitted all of their games across the nation. I can’t remember listening to much else even though I most likely did since I eventually had a collection of 3 or 4 old radios that sat up in our attic for years. I was going to have a room of antiques but eventually was forced to get rid of them so the only one I got to keep was the big Zenith radio that we used in the barn to play music while we milked the cows and washed the milking tools. We even tuned into Greenwich time clock with it and listened to the tick tock of the station which is all it did except on the minute when it would say the time. Now that was fun only because of the novelty of being able to do it due to the age and bandwidth selectors of that radio and the fact that the signal from there must have also had the perfect skip.

Mar 09, 2010

Tell of a difficult or term paper assignment.

What, I can’t remember anything like that, I put all of those bad memories to rest a long time ago. Here again I believe the poor author of these questions must have had a pretty bad experience in school or watched a lot of other sweating out assignment given by her in class. I really do not remember the essays even though I do know that I had plenty of them to write and was never very good at it, especially the English part of it as you can tell evidenced by my writing skills here. In fact I hope you teachers in my family will please give e a little slack and if I ever am tempted to publish these stories I only ask that one of you do the corrections before it goes to press. (Either that or talk me out of it.)

Answering these questions has been like trying to write a term paper so maybe it is coming back to haunt me for not learning how to do it way back then.

Mar 08, 2010

When on car trips, did you play car games?

Wow I really don’t remember anything other than asking or listening to someone else ask “Are we there yet?” or “How much longer?” I am sure we must have done some games but the thing I really remember best is being squashed into the car. With 7 children plus mom and dad there wasn’t much room to move so most of the time I sat there as the second youngest squashed between two other siblings. Mom and dad in this day and age would have had to by a bus to put in enough car or booster seats. They would also have had to install a lot more seat belts, Oh wait, there were no seat belts, period, until I was in High school.

Mar 07, 2010

What was the naughtiest or meanest thing you remember doing in school? Were there consequences?

Wow the author of these questions must have had a pretty bad childhood since so many of the questions are asking about negative things dealing usually with behavior. Maybe the author is really a retired school teacher as well. The only naughty thing that I probably did in school was pull the girl’s hair or something like that. I really couldn’t be bad since I knew that my mother was an employee of the school and was not very far away at any given moment. While I was in grade school she was a teacher there and when in High school she was the librarian and taught occasional classes. Dad was also an employee of the school district for most of my school days even though he wasn’t always around the ones in Duchesne he knew all of the faculty at each of the schools so I really didn’t want to draw negative attention there either. For the most part though I was probably never in trouble because I had been taught to respect the teachers and faculty and to be good. The biggest reason however was most likely because I was the smallest kid, other than Ralph Mecham, and I had received my only beating in 6^th grade and didn’t care to repeat it.

Mar 06, 2010

Tell about how you spent your Sundays.

Sunday had a little more standard routine. We got up and milked the cows before going n and taking a shower and going to Priesthood meeting at 9 AM. We would then stay until 10 and go to Sunday school until about noon as I recall. We would go home for the afternoon and basically take a nap and then get up around 5 pm and milk the cows before going in and cleaning up, getting dressed and going to Sacrament meeting at 7 PM until 8:30 PM or so. We would then go home and have supper, usually the bread and milk I have talked about earlier or onions and salt with the bread and milk. Sometimes I would go with dad on his High Council assignments to the various small wards in the Stake so getting home would be a little later and leaving for Sacrament meeting, the few times that I went at night, a little earlier. Once in a while we would also have Family home Evening after getting home from Sacrament meeting. Most of our FHE’s were on Monday nights.

Mar 05, 2010

Tell about how you spent your Saturdays during the school year.

Most of the time I sent Saturdays either doing scouting, doing the wash with mom, or doing extra chores like cleaning out the barn. I really don’t remember a whole lot about Saturdays other than getting up a little later, 7 instead of 6, to go out and milk the cows. Then after breakfast we usually had to take our dirty clothes up to the back porch where we helped mom do the wash and hang out the clothes on the outside clothesline in the warmer months and inside drying racks in the colder months. Then on some Saturdays I would go out to the barn and wash out the gutter where the cows always had to go while we were milking them. If it wasn’t cleaned out every week then it became pretty rank and you couldn’t sit next to it while milking the cows. (A slight design problem on the cows I believe.) Of course it was also that way on goats also even though goats didn’t get quite as much relief when their load was dropped since it was a lot smaller that what a cow could produce. I never had to milk the goats actually since we had sold them before I got very old but I do remember dad milking them quite often as I watched. In the spring some of the Saturdays were spent plowing and planting the garden. Needless to say there was always something to do around the farm and occasionally I would get to go hunting rabbits with my friend and our .22 rifles. I do remember a couple of times that we would go arrowhead hunting as well with Mrs. Rasmussen, our neighbor, since she really was good at knowing where to go. We also spent a couple Saturdays with her finding petrified wood as well. So it wasn’t always work just most always.

Mar 04, 2010

Did you ever get in trouble for saying a bad word?

It only happened maybe once or twice and after that it was easier to withhold the word than it was to get the soap out of my mouth. Mom did strictly believe in using soap to wash out ones mouth for saying a bad word and I didn’t like the taste of it at all. I still puzzle to this day why Clair had a swearing problem but he must have been able to evade the soap treatment or just liked the taste. He even was told by dad that if he would stop then dad, a hardened rancher, would also stop. None of us knew about that challenge until we were listening to Clair as he spoke at dad’s funeral. He said then “I wish I would have stopped then.” Clair, as far as I know has not sworn for many years. So, yes, I must have said a bad word even though I can’t remember what the word was, I can remember the taste of soap. Even now if a word happens to slip just as it did when the truck pulled in front of me when I was going 50 miles an hour straight to ward where he was pulling, I feel bad and wish that I could take it back.

Mar 03, 2010

Did you ever pretend to be sick to stay home from school.

You kidding? I wanted to be to school, at least in the later years because I could get to see and talk to Marie. Now when I was in elementary there might have been a time or two even though the only time I remember being sick to stay home from anything was for Stake Conference when the afternoon session was being held in Altamont and I had already been to the morning session in Duchesne (Yes, we had two full two hour sessions back then on Sunday, one at 10 AM and one at 2 PM) and just didn’t want to spend the rest of the day in church, let alone travel for a half hour to get there and a half hour to get back.

I did have one day that I wished that I had stayed home from school however. Mom had been riding me about how my hair was getting to long and was starting to curl up on my collar. I had a pretty full head of hair back then and it was always pretty straight until it got to the collar and then it would start to curl. So after mom left for school at 8 and the bus wouldn’t get there until 8:30 I figured I had plenty of time to cut my hair. I worked on it frantically but basically I really couldn’t bend my arm around and get it going the right direction to get the back of it like I needed to do. Well needless to say the bus came and I was still trying to cut my hair but I didn’t want to try and run to school that morning on foot for the 2 and ½ miles so I dropped everything and had Leesa tell our bus driver Jinks Ivie to wait a couple of minutes. He still just about gave up but I made the bus, got to school and got teased for my haircut the rest of the day. I gladly let Dad fix it up that night even though I knew he would cut it a lot shorter than I had wanted when I started that morning.

Mar 02, 2010

Tell about a school principal you remember.

I think the author of these questions may have asked this one since you remember principal’s best by the number of times that you are sent to their office or the number of times they interact with you for positive reasons. I had to go back to my yearbooks to even figure out who my principals were and had only remembered one and he was principal during my senior year and was married to the lady who taught me to swim so I remembered him because of the church and scouting association as much as the school association. My principals were in 7^th and 8^th grades: Mr. Rogers, 9^th grade: Mr. Browning, 10^th and 11^th grades: Mr. Griffith and in 12^th Grade: Mr. Caldwell. I remember Mr. Roger’s a little, Mr. Browning not at all, Mr. Griffith a little now that I look at his picture, and Mr. Caldwell very well. We must have been pretty hard on principals since they only lasted one or two years. Duchesne was a small school that was used for resume reasons for most of those men. Mr. Caldwell on the other hand was there for several years I think because he became a part of the community and wanted to stay there and eventually also became the Superintendent of the Duchesne County School District. I was also good friends with them probably because of their son that was only a year older than I as well and we went to the same ward all the time with their family.