An incident referred to but I had shared it

I wrote that I had already told this story in the blog but apparently I haven't. So I decided to add this one just so you understand what I was referring to in that blog.

A Quarter for a daring feat: Climb down into the well.

I don’t know for sure how I survived my Cousin’s visits each summer. There seemed to be a favorite member of our family that they would always pick on and that person was me. This particular story also deals with one of those pranks.

Jack Skewes has always been one of my favorite cousins and I don’t know why because one of my earliest memories of him was when he challenged me to climb down into our well house. The well house was a cement box that about 8 to 10 foot deep and five foot by 6 or 7 foot wide. It was below ground and housed the pump and water tank that was the storage for the water when first pumped out of the well. It was a very dark place especially after the wooden lid was placed over the hole that was the access to the well house. Black Widow spiders seemed like the place a lot better than I did and for years I can recall on several occasions finding them in that hole along with other various species of spiders. I accepted the challenge because, well, I was trusting and he offered to give me a quarter which was more valuable than a bucket of gold to a young man of my tender years. I remember the fear that I had as I climbed down the wooden ladder that allowed access to the pump and the tank. I was almost to the bottom and victory when the wooden lid was slipped back over the entrance and I was submerged in total darkness with all those spiders ready for a hearty meal of a young man’s flesh. I quickly climbed back up the ladder only to find that the lid would not moved. Jack had put a heavy rock on the lid so that it wouldn’t move. My memory from that moment on was probably something that I have shoved deep into my subconscious memory bank since I have no recollection of how long I was in there before he had pity on me and removed the rock. I don’t remember if I cried but suspect that I probably did since I was not very brave nor have ever been since that time. I am sure the spiders were probably just as scared as I was as well but that wasn’t in my mind either. So why is he a favorite cousin, well, probably because he has also been there most of my life as a good friend as well as a cousin after the “rock on the well lid” incident.

Another version:

All for 25 cents

I have told in other stories about the fact that I had cousins from Bountiful who would spend their summer months in Duchesne living with Nana (Grandma Poulson) and often staying or visiting with us as well since we only lived a couple of miles out of town and were on a farm no less. I have also explained that I was often the target of pranks that they would devise in my behalf sine I was four years younger than my next older brother and 10 years younger than my oldest cousin.

It was my oldest cousin that pulled this prank on me and has since changed my life forever. (At least I like to blame it on him and hold no malice in so doing since we have become very good friends and I have gotten revenge many time over by taking his picture at every event we have ever attended just because I knew he didn’t like it either.) I must also explain that even though I did get an allowance of 10 cents or so once a month and maybe even more often, that to me at that time 25 cents was worth an awful lot. Candy was still sold for a penny a piece and so 25 pieces would go a long to satisfy a sugar need. I probably didn’t get to have all 25 pieces though since mother was very strict about our paying tithing first and so 3 cents would most likely have gone into my little yellow tithing bank. We also got our water from a well. The well house wasn’t an above ground building but rather a cement lined hole in the ground with a cement top minus room for a hole where the ladder would lean and we would gain access to the tank and pump below at about an 8 foot depth. It was very dark inside and consequently a handy spot for Black widow spiders with their lovely red hourglass marking on the bellies. I hated the well since you could barely move around the tanks and work in it. My cousin must have guessed that fact and thus dared me one day to go into the well. It took some convincing but the quarter that he offered finally made me bow into the pressure. He removed the heavy rock that was on the wooden lid of the well house and then the wooden lid as well so that I could climb down into the well. He watched as I went all the way to the bottom of the ladder and then kindly replaced the wooden lid complete with the heavy rock. I have absolutely no recollection of the length of my duration in that dark spider infested hole but was sure at the time that every black widow sharing it with me was headed my way to teach me about the importance of not invading their space. I did finally escape their vengeance unbitten to receive my 25 cent reward but to this day am a bit claustraphobic in caves and dark abyss where black widow spiders not only try to get revenge for my invading their domains but revenge for all the black widows I have killed so that they wouldn’t invade my domain either.

Jan 21, 2010

Did any relatives ever live with you? If not, then relate another memory of cousins, aunts, or uncles.

Steve Clements was one of the cousins on my mother’s side of the family that came to stay with us. He came one year when Clair and Stan were headed off to the Boy Scout Jamboree in Colorado that year. We had all gone down to the church in Duchesne to see them off and Steve had gotten up on the chain link fence and as he jumped off the fence caught him and ripped his pants wide open. He stayed right next to mom after that with his back next to her skirt so the rip wouldn’t show. Later in that week we were playing in our playhouse that was ten foot by 8 ft and 8 foot tall. I can’t remember who set the trap but someone had put rocks above the door and so when Steve came out the rocks fell on his head. It was just not his lucky week. I also don’t remember him ever staying with us again.
Steve was from Mapleton and one of my favorite vacations was to their home for a week while mom and dad went to Arizona with Grandpa and Grandma Hansen. I remember hearing the siren on the fire station going off everyday at precisely noon. We also rode our bikes along the canal road and as I have lived here I I have been able to figure out in my mind that we rode past the area where Marie was living at the time. I have always had a special place in my heart for Mapleton because of that trip. And the siren still goes off everyday at noon.

Steve and his sisters

Patsy, Suzette, Sherry Clement, Carol Pepperdine and Steve Clement

Steve and his family, there were a number of children in his family though that are not in this image.

Jan 20, 2010

Relate an experience or memory of a cousin. I believe I have told about Jackie and the well ( I hadn't told about the well so I added it later in another blog) so I will tell a story about Lynn and my cousin Charles, Jack’s younger step-brother who often stayed with us during the summers for a week. I think that the Skewes brother’s must have had it in for me or I was just young enough to have fun teasing. This is how I have recorded the incident in my life’s stories. The picture of the barn kind of shows where the incident was played out in my dream. The sheds are right directly behind the barn and the trees were to the left up on the canal bank which you cannot see. Due to the canal being put into a pipe all of those trees have died since my youth.

Alive or dead dream tied to bed When growing up I lived on a farm in Duchesne, Utah. Our home was the last one at the end of the road on blue bench about two miles from town. It seemed like a long way when I was young and now it is hard to believe it is really quite close to town. My cousins from the city (Bountiful) would come to visit us each summer. (The city meant they were from the Wasatch front where houses didn’t seem to end from one end of Davis County to the other end of Utah County.) They always enjoyed coming to Grandma’s place in Duchesne for the summer and often staying with us during a good share of that time as well. However they were full of pranks and I as the younger and probably bothersome part of the equation would often end up on the wrong end of the pranks. One summer morning prior to awakening to the activities of the day I remember dreaming about playing Cowboys and Indians. That is something now that I hardly dare to even talk about considering political correctness and lawsuits but was a very real part of my childhood. Later in my teen years I came to love the Indian people very much as we had with us during the school months a foster sister from the Navajo nation. This dream however had me high above the sheds behind the barn in the old cottonwood trees that stood so tall there along the canal bank. I was one of the unfortunate ones that got hit by one of the arrows and lost my balance falling from the tree onto the top of the straw covered shed. You see the shed was made of large logs laid next to each other on a wooden log structure then covered with one to two layers of baled and loose straw. The top of the shed was quite bouncy and soft so landing on it didn’t hurt but I remember laying there trying to determine if I was dead or alive. I just couldn’t figure out why I knew about everything that was still raging around me in this war but I couldn’t move either and so I was somewhat perplexed. The roof of the shed seemed to be moving also lightly tossing me back and forth as lay there mortally wounded. Well my dream ended and I awoke to still being very much alive but unable to move in my bed as my cousin Charlie Skewes and brother Lynn had tied me into my bed with bailing twine and were in the process of moving my bed and I into the clothes closet. No wonder I was not only unable to move from where I lay but the shed was moving also since the real world and my dreams had crossed paths that morning. I still don’t remember how I got out of the bed but I suppose if nothing else my mother probably persuaded a couple of pranksters to release their prey. This is the barn that stands in the yard and the shed is behind it. You can see the trees, barely over the roof, that are still alive that would have been near the ones that I dreamed I was climbing.

In this image taken in July of 2009 you can get a little better idea of where things played out in my dream. The old tree stumps in the foregrond bottom left of picture are the stumps of the trees that I dreamed I was in before being shot. If you then look to the left end of the barn you can see where the sheds started and then were probably 30 feet or so in length. That is the shed that I dreamed I fell onto the straw covering the shed after I was shot. (The landing would have been as soft as landing on a mattress.)