Tell about a bike you had.
I had an old one sped bike that was made for boys. It was red in color as far as I can remember and probably older than me but I rode it for a lot of years and was always so excited in the late summer when I could ride it all the way to the top of the hill coming out of Duchesne onto Blue Bench where we lived. It was a pretty good steep hill and was always a challenge to ride a bike form the bottom to the top without having to get off and walk part of it.
Describe a few of the favorite hairstyles of your youth.
Long hair with curls bringing the end of the hair flipped back up, however it was only on the girls until the late sixties when the flower children, hippies, started wearing it long on the boys and the girls. The boys hairstyles were neat and kept somewhat short and well off the collars and out of the eyes. Then in the summer it would be buzzed as short as the clippers could shave it without actually shaving our heads. It was much cooler for the summer but required wearing a cowboy hat whenever we were outside to avoid getting the tops of our heads sunburned. The girls styles look much lie the styles that today’s cowgirls are often seen still wearing with the hair ratted up above their heads.
Did you go barefoot in the summer? If so, relate an experience about stepping on something.
Only between the house and the canal and even then we often wore old tennis shoes due to the rocks and stickers. I did step on plenty of them when we went barefooted but we also didn’t wear them in the canal as we swam so the areas of the canal where it was sandy on the bottom it felt pretty good but other times when we landed on the rocks it didn’t feel at all great. I do remember coming back through the barnyard a couple of times though and stepping in fresh cow manure not because I wanted to but there was no where else to step. That didn’t happen but just a couple of times since the smell of the manure would stick to you for hours, it was bad enough always coming in from doing the chores smelling like a cow as to have to do it on purpose.
Did you ever make mud pies?
Lots of times and as I got older I got pretty good at making them and then using them to dam the ditches and make the irrigation water go where it was needed. Of course by then I was using a shovel instead of a spoon to collect the mud from the sides of the ditch. I never did eat any of them that I can remember nor did I offer them to anyone else to eat, we just played with them in the mud.
Did you ever go skinny-dipping?
Yes, but only once that I can recall. We had been hauling hay from the field to the stack-yard out beyond the barnyard. It was a very hot muggy day. We had worked most of the day and had hay leaves that had stuck to practically every part of our body especially the uncovered parts like our necks and wrists. However many of the leaves had also worked themselves between our clothing and skin and become pasted to our skin with the sweat. I think dad must have been thinking of mom when he suggested we go up to the canal behind the old slaughter-house and get into the canal to clean up before we went to the house. So we went up to the canal and took off all of our clothes and jumped into the 2 feet of water running in the canal. I remember it was a really sandy part of the canal and we would lay down in the water to wash ourselves off and it seemed a bit funny because we came up covered with almost as much sand as we had lost in hay leaves. However the warm water was really refreshing and it felt great just to cool down a little in it. The water was always warm toward the end on the day and cold in the mornings since it came from the river several miles away and would warm up from the sun during the day and cool off during the night but there was always a delay by the time it got to us. The best time for swimming was just after sundown since the warmest water was flowing past the house at that time if the day. It was a pretty fun experience and it was far enough from the house that there wasn’t a real threat of our sisters coming past to see us.
Did you have a special nature place you went to explore?
Yes, our farm. It was a learning place no matter where we went on it. Part of the time I spent up above the canal going past beehives that were there and also lifting up the rocks to look for scorpions and other wild creatures. Part of the time was spent exploring along the canal and watching for deer, rabbits and coyotes. Some of it spent down by the springs and the resultant marsh where we had to be really careful how we crossed it or we could sink into mud to the tops of our shoes. Then the one other spot of the most visits was the pond and rock pit next to it. In fact recently on a trip to Duchesne I wandered down there again and was amazed to find that the rock pit was filled with water as well as the old pond. We use to dump our trash into that pit so now there are lots of pieces of old things in and under the water. It is no longer used that way and a lot of it was covered over when we did use it but I was surprised to find water in it now. Generally with a farm you didn’t need a spot or special nature area because the whole thing was just that in reality. I grew up seeing porcupines, badgers, rabbits, coyotes, deer, elk, bear, bullet or chicken hawks, eagles, and numerous varieties of birds without ever having to leave the 40 or so acres of the farm.
Did your father ever make a special gift for you?
I don’t remember dad ever making a special gift for me but I do remember when he made special gifts with me. There was one Christmas in particular when I wanted to make a pencil holder similar to one I think that I must have made in school out of a piece of wood from a tree limb. So dad helped me go down by the pond and find a cedar tree from which we could cut a limb and then showed me how to cut it into pieces and how too take off the bark and drill the holes and then varnish them. They were fun to make and I spent many other hours learning things like that from dad. I went with him a lot of times to work during the summers and was able to help him repair various things in the schools and from that learned a lot of skills as well. Dad was a good teacher nit only by instruction that was planned but also by spur of the moment teaching and instructing while doing work around the farm. He was also very patient so it was not a problem to him when we made mistakes, he simply showed us again the correct way until we learned it.
Relate your family Father’s Day traditions or tell me more about what kind of person your father was.
Since I don’t really remember much about the traditions of Father’s Day, (which was not made an official holiday until around 1978), I will write about my father. Dad was a very hard working person. He was also very loving and full of humor. A letter from Mom to Dad the day after his passing best explains it.
“Jan 29, 1978
Darling, today as I rode to fast Meeting, a bluebird streaked across the street in front of me – suddenly I realized that this miracle of spring enjoyed by both of us would be seen only by me this year. Then tears started as they o so easily now. So many things have had meaning in the sharing and now I must see and hear alone, but you are in my thoughts and I feel our love so strong that it makes the experiences so dear to my heart. If only you could know how many people have expressed their love for you and your family. Friends are so precious and ours have been just wonderful. Your love of life and fun and that irrepressible sense of humor have made our lives happy. Tonight we miss you terribly but we have been happy thinking and talking about those wonderfully shining memories. You’ll always be so close to us- guiding us, keeping our family close through the biding ties of love and caring that have been your special gift to all of us always. Goodnight dear.”
Tell about some good advice your father gave you.
Dad was a rancher growing up and even though his parents were LDS he picked up the habit of smoking. When mom came along when he was 32 she was able to change his ways and he gave up smoking. Well his advice to me was to never start but if I wanted to he wanted to be there with me. His knowledge of what it was like and that I wouldn’t really want to get a habit like that was enough for me to never make it even a temptation.
Tell a favorite memory of your father.
The favorite memory of my father that comes to mind right now is each morning when he would come down to my room and wake me up. He let me sleep a little longer while he went and brought in the coal for the furnace and then he would tell me to get upp again and with the door open begin clinkering the furnace, in other words affair amount of noise. I would then get up and we would go out and milk the cows and do the rest of the chores together. He never sent me out to do them alone but was always there to help me each morning. At night I usually did them by myself since he was still at work when I would need to do them.
Where did you go to swim and what kind of suits did you wear.
First we wore swimming trunks that were fairly short and tight on the legs. We would have considered what we wear today as boxer shorts back then. I went swimming nearly every afternoon in an irrigation canal that ran above our home. It was about two feet deep in the deepest spots and the most popular thing to do was to float on inner tubes in the canal. We would sometimes just hang on to the tubes and paddle our feet but the canal wasn’t deep enough to do that without slapping your toes on the rocks every so often. We would usually carry the tubes about a half mile to the bridge and then jump from the bridge into the water with the tubes under us. (Don’t think that we were super brave jumping from the bridge because it was only three feet or so above the water and we couldn’t jump from the upstream side since our tubes with us on them wouldn’t fit under the bridge. If we really went to a swimming pool then we would have to travel for a half an hour to the Roosevelt city pool or 45 minutes to the Price city pool. It wasn’t until I was out of high school that we had Starvation lake to swim in just upstream from town.
How did you learn to swim?
By going with Beverly Caldwell, a professional lifeguard, nearly everyday for the summer after graduation. We went to Starvation reservoir , Roosevelt and Price city pools with her coaching my every move until I learned to swim well enough to earn my Swimming and Lifesaving merit badges for scouting.
Relate your happiest memory of your youth.
Wow, how do you take so many happy memories and try to chose just one. I suppose that if I did try I would probably end up with a conglomeration of several as one.
There was one memory that might not be considered as extremely happy but a good memory none-the-less. It was one time when Lynn and I went to help Uncle Mont drive the sheep from the Indian Canyon ranch to town. I was on a horse the entire day and knew it had been a lot longer than I was used to doing. It was a lot of fun though and something that the older brothers had a lot of chances to do before I was old enough to do it. I think it was actually the last year that Mont ever moved the sheep down the canyon with horses.
Tell a childhood memory about a death that affected you.
The first one would have been President Kennedy’s murder in November of 1963. That affected us since he was our President and we didn’t really know him other than what we saw of him on national TV.
However the first one probably affected me the most was ‘”Nana’s” funeral in December 1963. She was my grandmother Poulson and I used to go to her place everyday after school until mom or dad would come to pick us up. I loved her and missed her an awful lot.
Tell another memory about a parade.
I will tell about parades here in Mapleton this time. They were much the same as those in Duchesne, again small Utah town with small Utah town traditions that persist to this day. The Mapleton ones were a little different however because they always ended at the city park and had activities all morning including breakfast, games and displays. There were also dances at night on the tennis court by the park with talent shows also held during the day. Loren won a bike at a raffle one year at that celebration.
If you were ever in a parade, tell about it.
Duchesne was a small Utah town with small Utah town customs and with that were traditions around some of the holidays. I remember a parade every year from the time I was very little and riding either in a small red flier wagon, on a trailor or on a bicycle. We always wore pioneer style clothing and it was always the primary that hosted the parade. Later during my high school years I would ride on a hay wagon with the school band. We didn’t have a marching band because we didn’t need one since the school was too small for a football team and marching bands were not used for basketball half time entertainment.
What was your first purchase using you own money?
Candy and or treats. I was young enough to not really earn enough money to purchase anything huge but I sure had enough to get candy on the way to primary after school let out. During the summers when I took summer school then I would stop and buy an ice cream cone or something to eat while riding home on my bike.
Tell about other paying jobs you had as a youth.
Actually I guess my first paying job had to have been the money I received from selling milk to neighbors. I sold about 8 gallons a week at 50 cents a gallon. Dad let me keep the money even though he did part of the milking as well. I used some of that money earned to help buy my first camera as well . mom and dad paid for most of it instead of paying for a senior trip.
What was your first job?
The first job where I was hired by someone was at the Texaco station at the west end of Duchesne. The owner was Carl Wilkerson and he became a very good friend by the end of that summer that I worked at his station. There were several instances where he stood behind me on decisions that I had made for the safety of his station even to the point of not standing behind his own son who was abut three years older. He had come in with a bunch of his friends drunk one night and tried to take the land water rover for a spin around the station so I called the police and then Carl. His son was pretty mad at me but his dad was madder with him since he should have known better.
How much did you get paid?
I don’t remember but it was probably around 3$ per hour.
Share a horse-riding story.
Blue and the ditch not jumped
As a youth growing up I was the one in the latter years after the rest of the boys had gone on missions that was left to help Dad with the chores. We lived on a medium sized farm but one that seemed very large to me at the time. Chores meant feeding the cows, horses, chickens and other farm animals that we might have. It also meant bringing the cows to the barn and milking one to three of them by hand each morning and night. Dad would always help me in the morning and I would usually have them done before he got home from work at night. Each day we would have to go and bring them in from the bottom parts of the farm. I quite often rode the horse but remember many times when dad and I would walk down and bring them home on foot. Well there was one particular summer day when I would have been better off having walked rather than riding our horse “Blue”. Blue and I were pretty good friends and I never had much trouble catching her to go for a ride and I enjoyed riding her. I was lazy though and would seldom take the time to put a saddle on her. I would just put the reins on her and then jump up on her and ride bareback. That worked a lot easier than putting on a saddle. (I would saddle her if I planned on taking a rather long ride up on the bench.) This particular night however it was a short ride to the bottom pasture where we would bring the cows back to the barn to milk them. We also had the irrigation water that night which was one of the reasons I chose to ride rather than walk. Well as I loped her down to the pasture we came near the ditch with all of the water. I expected for her to jump the ditch and readied myself for the jump instead she decided to lower her head and stop for a drink so I slid right over her head and landed in the water. I should have walked because I would have been drier in the long run.
Do you remember a favorite snack you liked to make?
My most favorite treat was to go home after school and to get the blender out. I would then go to the fruit room for a bottle of peaches or pears that we had canned at home from fruit that we had grown on the farm the year or two prior to that. I then opened the bottle, poured all of the contents into the blender, added some ice cream (if we had any), or cream and sugar if there was no ice cream, then blend it all together. It was an instant hit with the stomach and the after school treat need was filled.
| Sister Gilbert/memorize Apostles |
In Sunday School when I was somewhere around 8 years old I had a very special teacher by the name of Sister Gilbert. Her family owned the Dairy Queen in town and was one of my favorite places to visit since it was only a block and a half from Grandma Poulson’s. One day in class Sister Gilbert challenged us in the class to memorize the Presidency of the church, The Quorum of the12 Apostles, Church Patriarch, The Assistants quorum of the 12 Apostles and then the Presiding Bishopric of the church. She also challenged us to memorize our Stake Presidency and Patriarch. To the first person to pass it off she would give a silver dollar that she had gotten in her Dairy Queen business. A friend of mine by the name of Jon rode the same bus as I did each day to school so we decided to take her up on the challenge. I remember working really hard to memorize each name specifically correct. The day I went to church early to pass it off I found out that Jon had also gone early that day and was at that very moment in passing it off. Sister Gilbert gave me a chance also even though Jon had done it correctly and basically won the silver dollar. I also passed it off correctly so she gave me a silver dollar as well. I can’t list them at this time but there were names in that group such as “O Leslie Stone” and “Hugh B Brown” that seemed to stick with me quite easily through the years.
I have always treasured that Silver dollar and for years it was the only one that I had until one day I was doing chores and had climbed the hay stack to feed the cows./ Our baler made the bales round so the stack was a in huge triangle shape which was fun to slide down after pushing a bale off with which to feed the cows. This day however was a little different because as I slid down off the stack something hit me in the back. It was a silver dollar. We asked several possible people who might have lost it but never did find out who the dollar belonged to so I ended up putting it with my other silver dollar from Sister Gilbert. Years later after Lynn had gone on his mission we were going through my coin collection and I discovered that Lynn didn’t have a silver dollar so I gave the one to him that I had found on the haystack. I still have the other one to this day. It reminds me of the dedication of a Sunday school teacher who knew how to catch the interest of her students and help them to learn valuable lessons at the same time as they were in reality building testimonies of the Prophet and the Apostles.
