Feb 28, 2011

I will catch up on the blog soon but have enjoyed being preoccupied by the latest grandson Alex. He is such a joy.

Alex is here 2/21/11

Born at 14:08 hours (2:08 P.M.)
7 lbs 14 ozs
20 inches long
LOTS of sandy red hair (like grandpa's was in his younger years) See below.

And he gets the prize for the best first "bad hair day".

Feb 20, 2011 Another Video Chat

Got to talk to Kasia, McKinsey and cousin Emily.

Decided to do a couple of screen shots with them posing.

Looks great don't you think!!

Feb 17, 2011

Do you remember how much things like gasoline, stamps, and food costs? During what years were these prices valid?

Candy bars cast 10 to 15 cents. Gum and lifesavers were 5 cents each. A movie coast fifty cents with candy succors for 5 cents but there was a catch too. If you got the succor with a star inside the label you got get a free one. Gasoline cost around 35 cents a gallon. I remember in Texas in 1971 when we would drive a mission car and gas up every other week for 19 cents a gallon and it was over a dollar a gallon by the time came home in 1974. There was a reason that a lot of candy was called penny candy and that was because it only cost a penny. It was fun to get a small allowance because it didn't take much to get candy and treats. The cost of a First Class US postage stamp in 1960 was 4 cents. It was raised to 5 cents in 1963. It went up to 6 cents in 1968.

Feb 16, 2011

What were some of the best experiences in your early years?

I would consider the relationship that my parents had with each other as some of the best experiences in my youth. There was never any abuse by him to her. They loved each other and showed us that they did. Dad always respected her and they worked together to raise us.

I had some very wonderful siblings to play with which we did a lot of too. From games outside to games inside and games with friends and neighbors. There were a lot of those special experiences. We did a lot of work together as well which also made them special.

Then there were many other experiences as well. I had great experiences with my Uncle Mont at the ranch in Indian canyon. I still remember riding a horse from the ranch in Indian Canyon to Duchesne seven miles down the canyon. We were herding sheep down to town where we would put them into a corral there. Mont was always very funny and fun. He loved to eat a raw egg just to get a reaction from you when eating breakfast. he always called me Kentucky Pete.

I had special cousins and was  actually around the age of their children. Lori and Chris Poulson were a couple of my childhood playmates since they lived next to grandma Poulson. We loved to go to Grandma's and play between the two homes. We also spent quite a lot of time playing in grandma's shed. It was like a playhouse to us.

I had special scout leaders in cub and boy scouts. Sisters Wimmer and Hansen did a lot of hard work to give us great experiences in cub scouting. Then Brothers Hansen, Hooper and several others that worked hard to give us great scouting experiences. I went on several camping trips into the Granddaddy Basin lakes. They were always there to give us support in whatever we needed to do to earn merit badges and rank advancements.

I am writing my history in story form and will have more specifics about these experiences.

Feb 15, 2011

Have you ever been hospitalized or had surgery? What for?

Yes. When around 8 years old. I was bleeding when i urinated. I went to the hospital in Roosevelt for 1 week and the went home for one night and out to ST Mark's hospital the next day. Dad and mom took me in our car. 


I learned that I hated Pepsi just before I left the hospital in Roosevelt. Actually mom had taught us never to drink it and so I had asked for 7 Up every time they brought a drink to me that week. Finally the last nurse felt that I had been having enough 7 Up and brought me some Pepsi. I got sick and threw up all night and have never had it since except when given it to me wrong but I only take one taste and recognize the mistake and can't finish it.  


I remember counting over a hundred and fifty cars coming out of Salt Lake city headed for the deer hunt. It was the friday before the deer hunt.  I was then put in a room with three other empty beds. By the evening of the next day I had three roommates that were all hurt during the deer hunt. I went into exploratory surgery the following monday.  They came in and gave me something to put me out. I remember the room spinning around pretty fast before I finally went under. I woke up and was watching Zorro.  I also remember my confusion at wondering why a show I always saw in the afternoon showing at 7:30 in the morning in Salt Lake City. Well it wasn't and I had been out the entire day. It also really hurt to urinate but they still never found any problem. I have never had a problem since then.

Feb 14, 2011

Did you have any childhood diseases or health problems?  Any stitches or broken bones?

When I was three I had a disease the same as Clair had when he was younger.


Here is the description as given on the internet.
Perthes disease is when the ball of the thighbone in the hip doesn't get enough blood, causing the bone to die. Symptoms: The first symptom is often limping, which is usually painless.


I had to have a brace that connected to my hip and foot on my right leg. The brace kept my leg straight and pressure off of my joints. I remember trying to climb the stairs. If you want to know what it was like then the next time that you get to a set of stairs hold your leg straight and swing it up on the next step then lift yourself up onto the step in whatever method you can use. I usually leaned against the wall to help.


Other than that I had the usual diseases for the time but don't remember them. 


There was a side effect to the perthes disease however. My feet were turned out and I would wear shoes out on the side. So I had to wear corrective shoes specially made by a person in Provo. I wore them until I was 19 and left for my mission. 

Feb 13, 2011 Video Chat

I love to talk with my grandchildren on the computer. They live in Arizona, Texas and Colorado. I just don't know why I haven't figured out that I should do some screen captures of them while we are talking. I did it tonight and they are just fun. Thanks Hallie and Leilah for being so cute.

Feb 14, 2011

The next question from the book was more about pets that I already included in the ast post. So since my mind has been heavily upon the experiences with David Nemelka that I have had I am posting a story from my history that took place while he was a Scout Committee Chairman and led to the event where we had 14 Eagle Scouts at one time.

Scout Camp of 1992 - 400 MB's

In 1986 I attended Wood Badge at Camp Maple Dell and learned some very important leadership principles that I later used as I was asked to be the Scout Master of Troop 66 in 1988. However I was asked in 1989 to be an Assistant Scout Master (specifically the Quartermaster) for a Junior Leader Training Course known as Timberline in the Utah National Parks Council where I was Scout Master.  A cousin Mark Poulson was the Course Director/Scout Master and had asked me to participate and to bring Ben along as a Junior Staff Member. I became very involved in Timberline at that point and 16 years later finally retired from involvement on the District, Council and Area Junior Leader Training Staffs. I expanded my leadership knowledge through participation in this area of Scouting. It not only helped me with leadership in the council responsibilities it also helped me in my troop responsibilities.

After I had participated in Timberline for about three years I decided to put the principles to use in my troop. I had been Scoutmaster for over four years and from the knowledge that I had gained decided to put together a summer camp that would not just give the boys a good experience but jump start them in a huge way toward their Eagle Rank.

I had a number of boys in the troop that were 12 and 13 years old but had a lot more in the ward that were still not Eagle Scouts. I decided to use these older boys for my staff and then put together a camp where we would specifically work on just merit badges. I used the Patrol Leader’s Council at the end of the summer prior to the year that I wanted to do this and we decided on 20 to 25 merit badges that we could do during the year. My plan was to work on the badges during troop meetings from October to July and we would concentrate on the requirements that included paper work and research at home. Then in the end of July we would do a summer camp at Bristlecone where we would work on all of the rest of the requirements that required we be in the outdoors to accomplish. So it began in October and we studied, as I remember, about 25 merit badges. Over a few weeks we decided to limit them to 22 merit badges. We spent troop meetings late at night one month doing astronomy since there was a special event occurring that spring where three planets were lined up very close to each other in the night sky. My home at that time was still far enough away from the city lights that we were able to see the stars and planets clearly. We also did other special projects to help do the other merit badges.

We still held our monthly campouts and had great participation in them from all of the boys in the ward. We prepared by using the patrol method and continued to build up our camping equipment.

Finally we were ready and went to Bristlecone early on Monday morning. I had three adult assistants. There were 20 boys and we had put them into three patrols. I took an old motor home that had been lent to me by Dave Nemelka for use in the scout camp. After I had driven it down into Bristlecone I worried that I wouldn’t be able to get it back out the steep road to get home. We did make it but had another vehicle chained to it to help get enough power to climb out.

At Bristlecone Varsity Teams form Carbon County had used a number of trees to build villages off the ground. It had killed a lot of the trees and so each year they would cut down some of the dead ones and make shorter logs out of them. There was an old log cabin where we set up our camp. We kept all of our food in it to help keep it from predators. (It didn’t help as skunks could still get in and did so during the week.) However the trees that were cut down were just down off the hill from the cabin so we pulled them up out of the trees and lashed them together for our tables for the week. We built three of them, as we needed one for each patrol.

During the week the 16 and 17 year old boys acted as merit badge counselors for the camping part of the badges. We did merit badges like hiking, bird study, camping, and other easier ones like basket making and leatherwork. It was fun and I still specifically remember studying an ant farm in a tree and others on the hillside in mounds. We did bird study and did a number of hikes around the hills. We looked for wild animals and even spotted a large herd of Elk that we watched during the week. We did a mountain top patriotic experience and then did all the normal camping stuff which helped us to complete the cooking merit badge as well as others. I can’t remember all of the badges we did that week but I do remember the last hike required for our hiking merit badge.

On Thursday morning we left early for our “20 mile hike”. We had all of the maps of the area known specifically as the Kyune Quadrant. (I learned a lot about the area that week especially of the history of the railroad that winds through the canyon.)  We went east from camp and wound down off the mountain headed toward the Price recreation campground area. I had never been to that area but knew that it existed.  I had different boys leading us to the area by the use of the map and compass skills we had been developing. One leader went with me, Orin Bawden, and he became a key player toward the end of the hike. We stopped and had snacks along the way and had our canteens of water. It was a hot summer day but the first part of the hike was even somewhat cool as we were hiking at 9000 feet elevation. We had a great time and even ended up on a nature trail that led us right down off the hill into the park. We filled up our canteens, rested and the first 6 miles was over. We then left the park following the road down to highway 6 that runs from Spanish Fork canyon to Price. It was three miles to the road and just as we were getting to the junction of the roads we met a US Forest Service Fire Fighting truck headed up to the park. He stopped and got out his hose and sprayed the boys. It got them soaked and I was worried about them hiking in wet shoes but they thought it was great and really had a good time. We left there following Highway 6 up to the rest stop at the top of the canyon which was another three miles. We practiced our hiking skills that we are supposed to use along highways. I went first and Orin followed at the end. There were parts of the hill where we were spread out several hundred yards. I tried to keep a slower pace so that we could keep the boys closer together but it didn’t always work. ( I learned over the years that no matter how fast or slow the leader goes that there will always be boys who keep up at the front and boys who will lag as far behind as possible whether it be a short five mile hike or a long 20 mile one.) I had planned on filling our canteens again at the Kyune Rest Stop at the top of the hill near the highway before we continued up the hill to the camp. It was at least a 1000 foot climb over 7 miles to return to camp and I knew we would need water for the afternoon part of that hike. I was sorely disappointed when we got there and no water was to be found. The water I had remembered being there years ago had been taken out some time earlier by the state road department. So it was early 1 pm and we had the heat of the afternoon to walk up the dirt road back to camp. I have said many times since then that I would go the opposite direction if ever given the chance to repeat that 20 mile hike. At least that way we could get water for the last 6 miles.

At that point I knew the boys couldn’t get lost and decided to let them go as fast as they wanted since the sooner the lead boys got back to camp the sooner we could have the other scout masters bring water to us. I stayed behind with Orin as we were already having a couple of boys that were resisting the rest of the hike. Two boys in particular were really struggling to make the hike. Orin had kept most of his water and ended up walking about 100 yards and then telling them they could have a little water as soon as they got up to him. After about three miles it became evident to both of us that we would need more water, and faster than we had planned. I started hiking faster and told Orin I would go to camp and bring back water. I had hiked another three miles and passed several of the boys who were starting to also struggle. By the time I had reached the top of the hill a half mile later I was met by one of the leaders in a vehicle with more water. I relaxed my hiking at that point and he took the water to the boys as he went down the road. I was surprised to later discover that Orin and the two boys that had the hardest time were only about a mile behind me at that point. Orin’s 100 yard method had worked pretty good even though he was out of water before our other leader got to him. There were also boys that had been back to camp almost a half hour before I got there. We all had some blisters and some had some real bad ones form hiking in their wet shoes but it ended up being the highlight of the camp that week.

Friday night we were joined at camp by three other adults (Tom James and David Nemelka were two of them) who were members of the Scout Committee and the adult leaders wives. We had a great patriotic camp fire, great dutch oven food and retired an American flag. Then we went to work the next morning  making the camp official and the merit badges official. Several of the boys had written reports during the week to finish up the paperwork parts that they had missed at various times through the year when they had missed troop meetings and others were still doing them that morning. The troop committee then held a long Board of Review as we had to get each boy through the process. They would each meet with me in my tent and we would make sure that they had finalized all of the merit badges and then they would meet with the members of the troop committee that had come up. I had a spread sheet with all of the merit badges requirements and the boys names so that I knew where they were. We had a lot of work to do that morning and while some of the boys were completing requirements the others were breaking camp and cleaning up form our week.  It ended up being a great success in that we completed 400 plus merit badges for a combined total of 22 boys. I was thankful for all of the help that had come with me and I was very impressed by the boys who had acted as the counselors during the week. They had each prepared well and in so doing had passed off a lot off the requirements for themselves.

I had been successful because I had used the principles of leadership that we had been teaching in Timberline. The principles of sharing leadership, knowing and using resources and counseling were especially useful that week and I will include other stories from the week to illustrate that later in my history. 

Feb 13, 2011

How many pets did you have? Which one was your favorite?

I had several pets or at least we did as a family. Many of them I don't remember their names but one of the earliest was a large black dog that was very protective of us. The story is told of him walking between Marsha and the hole to the septic tank that was being dug out in the field.  I don't know when that dog died or why but it was probably poison that had been left by neighbors at the edge of the fence between our properties. We lost a number of dogs to that.
The three pets that I remember best were a small black female day named PeeWee, an old grey cat named Smoky, and her kitten named Flame. PeeWee was brought home as a pup and died at an old age of at least 15 or more. I was married before she died. She was a fun dog to have and didn't have pups until she was actually several years old. She had two pups that lived for some time and I don't really remember what happened to them. PeeWee used to go for long runs or adventures and one time didn't come home for several days. When she did she was walking on three legs. She had been apparently caught in a trap and finally chewed off her leg to come home. Dad took her to a vet in Roosevelt and he removed the leg to the shoulder. She was with us a lot of years after that. I still can see her climbing the hay stack with just those three legs and sitting on the top looking across the valley and watching the traffic (I Guess) on Highway 40.  She could run pretty fast on those three legs and the front one that was left became very large and strong. She would stand along by the cows when I milked along with the cats and lap up milk as I squirted it on the cement floor for them. 
Smoky was a pretty special cat. She and Flame were around for a lot of years even though I believe they disappeared before I left for my mission. Smoky was a very good hunter and kept the mice from over-running the barn and stack yard. She gave birth to a lot of kittens. Smokey may have been one of the 27 or more cats that we had on the farm at one time. We ended up having to take many of them to the ranch. Smoky and PeeWee and their off spring were all outside pets. Mom would not allow pets in the house even though we did sneak PeeWee into the basement room several times and occasionally I would take Smoky in so she could catch some mice in the basement for me. She was so scared though that it didn't really work very well. Smoky loved to have you rub and pet her though as she sat on your lap. She would purr quite loudly at times as well while petting her. 
These were all special pets and I loved them a lot. I guess that is why when Pookie was brought home I let him stay since he was the male version of PeeWee.

Feb 12, 2011

What was your favorite toy?

I don't remember a favorite toy. I remember toy trucks that we played with in the tractor tire full of sand. And small cars that we used in it also. I had lots of fun. 
Today though I think that I need to comment about something that I thought about during conference. There was a talk about changes in culture from my generation to today's. Then he said to go out and do things except maybe play computer games and facebook. Then the thought suddenly came to me that one of the culture differences are in those very games that are played by these two generations. We played "No Bears are Out Tonight" and other games outside requiring interaction with each other while today they are often playing computer games which requires communicating only with the computer. It was just a thought but as you think about it there is a lot of differences in the two cultures and these games may just be a part of the problems in the dating world of today's culture.

Feb 11, 2011

What was the climate of the area where you grew up?

It was typical Utah climate. Hot in the summer, great in the fall, cold in the winter and again great in the spring. Here are a few examples. I remember going out in the winter when it would be cold and starting a fire in the small wood burning stove to get enough heat to o the chores. One particular winter however was almost too much for that little stove when it got down to -33 degrees. Not all of our winter's were that cold but just about every winter we would have to connect a welder to our water pipes going out to the barn to thaw them out so we could have water for the cows.
Then there some pretty wet springs. There were three or four years when our road leaving the farm would wash out where we drove from the canal to the top of the bench. It was pretty muddy when it would wash out. One year we even had to walk a half mile into the yard since we couldn't get into the end of the road.
I always loved the summers until we had to haul hay in the midst of the heat. I loved the heat when we got to the canal and started to swim but that was usually the only time.
Fall however was the perfect season, other than school starting again. The fall colors were always so pretty and the weather was usually so good. It was a good time of the year because the hay was all in the stack and the irrigating done for the year. there were the different fruits to can but they were always so good to have later through the year.
I grew up in a special place that will always be close to my heart.

Feb 10, 2011

Who pulled your teeth when they were loose? How was it done? How much did the tooth fairy leave for a lost tooth?

This is a painful subject. Dad pulled the first teeth with a pair of pliers. I soon learned to tie a string around it and a door handle and then slam the door. Not much better but at least I had control. As far as a payment for the teeth it was a dime or if lucky a quarter. As far as one that got lost it was nothing. we kept good track of those teeth until the fairy paid up which was usually the very night we pulled the tooth.

Feb 9, 2011

Do you remember having a favorite nursery rhyme or bedtime story?
What kinds of books did you like to read?

I remember having many nursery rhymes somewhat committed to memory in my childhood and although I don't really remember having them read or told to me they were obviously very much a part of my early childhood. Mother loved to read when she got a chance and I am sure she read to us a lot or told us the stories a lot.
As far as books that I liked to read, well , I wasn't much of a reader even though I did read a lot of books in my youth. They were mostly westerns in origin and adventure in plot. I did read some church related books that had been given to me through the years and would always order books through the readers book clubs at school. I must admit however several of them were never read. I guess that is why I was somewhat excited when some of my children took to reading very heavily. I always wanted that kind of drive but never fully had it as part of my young life.

Feb 8, 2011

Since I just made an entry about best friends I feel it appropriate to add another story of another of my best friends in life from my history short stories collection.

Truly A friend: Dave Nemelka

I was in a ward with the Nemelka’s for several years after a ward boundary change placed us in the boundaries of the Mapleton 1^st Ward. After the ward change I was called to be the Scoutmaster of Troop 66 in that ward. I ended up being the Scoutmaster for 5 years before being called into the Bishopric as second counselor.

While I was the Scoutmaster I worked hard to take the boys to the Eagle Rank. I planned the program so that I could take my sons to that rank and thus along with them the other boys. One such boy was Mike Nemelka son of David Nemelka. Mike wanted to be the youngest scout to reach the rank of Eagle. I had a lot of the other older young men nearly to their eagle rank but some had stalled and so I had a number of them that were close but not yet there. Anyway I took  Mike and planned a program that would get him to the next rank as soon as the time was done. We went hiking and camping and even had the father’s go one time when I couldn’t just so we could keep them on track.

There time flew by quickly and one time I arrived home to find a Motor home parked in the driveway with a note in it that it was given to me. Well Dave later explained that he had bought a new one and would like to give that one to me. Well I decided to use it primarily for scouting. We took it out to the sanddunes and up to Fairview for snow caves. I used it for a place to put sick boys and a place to haul several of them at times. Now I wouldn’t be able to use it since everyone would have to have a seat belt. I took it to Bristlecone camp for a summer camp one year where we worked prior to the camp for nine months to get twenty merit badges ready so that we could compete the outdoor requirements during one week. On Friday night of that week Dave and the rest of the troop committee came up to camp and we had a very large Board of Review to complete the last part of the process. Dave as the committee chair was not only there for that camp but would give updates each week in Quorum Meetings. We did a number of eagle projects and worked on merit badges as often as possible. Finally the day came and we had 11 boys ready to receive their Eagle rank. And Mike was the youngest of them having reached the goal right on schedule. We had a live eagle at the eagle Court and everything planned in such a way that it only took an hour to get all of the program completed.

The scouting program wasn’t the end of Dave’s help either. Later after Signetics had shut down and I had worked at Kara Chocolates and then began working as an Insurance Agent he came to me after church one day and said “You are hardly the kind of person to sell insurance, you are too honest”. We later had several discussions and one evening he gave us a car that we badly needed. His children had bought a new car for him and so he passed his on to us. We used that car for several years before an accident on the freeway totaled it and we had to get a new car.

He also helped me to learn the internet and at one point was even involved in starting a company called OWOL or One World On Line. It was a multilevel company that established web pages on line and helped me to get my photography business started. I have greatly appreciated all that he has done for us over the years and his gracious friendship. He helped us out more than once just when we were needing it most and gave renewed meaning to being there when the Lord needed someone to work through to give us aid.

A final tribute to a wonderful life and friend.

On February 8, 2011 Dave took his life after battling some apparent brain disorders for several months. I will miss his calls and queries about my family and how they are doing. It is hard for me to understand the stress that must have taken over his mind after literally years of helping others to avoid that very process. He was very kind and was also very smart. He took me with him on several scout activities with the boys and was always a great example to them. I will always cherish his memory and the memories of the many talks that we had through the years. I know there were many nights that he was up all through the night counseling others and then after sleeping a few short hours was into the shower taking a long shower while talking on the phone helping someone else or planning something else that would benefit many others in their lives. I know because I spent some of those hour and shared was on the other end of several of those early morning shower calls. He couldn’t let his mind rest and possibly that was the final cause of his unrest. I truly grew to love that man and did not always totally agree with his views knew that he would listen to my counsel as well as giving counsel to me. Recently a young man was killed in a traffic accident leaving football practice. The fellow had almost completed his Eagle and Dave and I spent quite a bit of time discussing the possibility of presenting that Eagle after completing his Eagle project which was the only thing he hadn’t completed. I couldn’t quite feel that was right and after discussing it with Dave he finally understood my concern and knew there was a better way to honor the life of that young man. Thank You Dave for all of your love. A child is not only raised by a village but a village will never forget those who were so instrumental in the growth of many of those villagers.

Feb 7, 2011

What kinds of things did you like to do? What were your favorite childhood games to play?

I have mentioned already the games that we played so I will not address that part of the question. Don and I however probably had one thing that we did the most. We both owned .22 rifles. My rifle was a single shot and he a semi-automatic. I have also told how rabbits and wood chucks were a menace to the farm so he and I would often go for a rabbit hunt after school or after work during the summer. We lived out on the end of the road below blue bench so the rabbits were as close as the hill above the house where we had to watch closely where we did the shooting. However when we would go up on the bench and over to the big draw (Hammond 's Hollow I think it was called) we could see a lot of rabbits and shoot pretty much at them in any direction except toward the valley. The rabbits would run across the small draws and hills of the big draw allowing us some challenges as they could crest the hill and go down into the next draw really fast. They would also cross over the draw and go up the other side which made them much easier to follow and shoot.
I look back at it now and wonder how I ever really enjoyed it but at the time it was fun, plus I suppose we did help control them since there was a lack of natural predators besides us. I learned to be a fairly accurate shot and would often use only one bullet while Don would go through several. With his semi automatic he would just pull the trigger and hope to get one by following the trial of where his bullets were kicking up the dirt. He did aim but just not before he started to pull the trigger. I had to aim since I had one shot and then would have to reload. It was good exercise for us to since we got to where we could run up and down those hills fairly rapidly. That may have been why I did as well as I did in cross country and 880 yard dash in the track and field events.
I also got to be pretty good at shooting but regretted it once when I was trying to scare off a dog that had come around the farm and I aimed below it as it ran up the hill. I didn't guess it would hit a rock and bounce up under the dog and end up killing it. I always felt bad about that even though my intent was not to kill only scare. It tend to help understand why shooting toward rocky areas was always very dangerous and so I avoided it after that.

Feb 6, 2011

Who were your best friends in your early years? Did you ever have sleepovers or campouts together?

Besides my siblings my other best friends were Max Wimmer, Don Hansen, Lee and Wendell Moon and the Weber's. For the most part Max was my best friend when I was in elementary school along with Chuck Wilkins and Russell Conn. Then when Hansen's moved to town I started playing with Doug and Don. Don eventually became my best friend in High School and we spent a lot of time together.
I never really had any sleepovers when I was young that I can remember. However Don and I did do some camping when we were in Scouts.

Here is what I have written about that experience.

Don and I and the garden tractor campout.

When I was new to scouting I had a den leader named Donna Hansen. Later her husband Ray became my scoutmaster. They had three sons. One who was my age and in my class during the school years, and one a year younger in Marie’s class. They became close friends during those years of scouting and Don became probably my closest friend of the two. So Don and I did a lot of rabbit hunting and scouting events together. When we were about 14 years old we needed more campouts to complete the required camping merit badge so Don and I struck onto a plan to take the small garden tractor that dad owned and pull the trailer that goes with it up onto the bench and find a place near the canal where we could easily set up a camp and spend the night. We had a great time after we set up camp and made and ate supper. We decided we needed and easier way to cross the canal (which we could easily jump) so that we could gather firewood and other things fo camp. So we set out to building a foot bridge over the canal. There were always a lot of cottonwood trees growing along the canal and always a lot of dead and downed ones that we could cut up for firewood. This time however we got a couple of the bigger trunks and cut them so that they would span the canal. We then added smaller ones and laid them crossways of the tow logs to make a crossing. After we had lashed the end ones to the two logs then we just laid the rest into place and then covered the logs with dirt taken form the sie s of the canal complete with the grass so that it would not just be a muddy mess. It didn’t take us long to build the bridge so then we also made some other camp gadgets like a tripod for our fire from which we could hang our water pots for heating.

We did a number of other small gadget as well. When we did finally go to bed it was fairly late but we had been able to have a great night. Well the canal was actually about 35 00r 40 feet below the level area where we had driven the tractor to before we commenced setting up camp. During the night we were awaken by the sound of the garden tractor being started and discovered our means of transportation of our equipment that we would be hauling back the next day was being stolen. We quickly got up and ran up the hill to find my brothers being the misfits who were thieving the tractor. It was quite fun and I don’t remember if they took it home that night or if we succeeded in stopping them but we must have stopped them because it wasn’t a traumatic enough of an event to set it deeply into my memory. It was always fun being the youngest brother however because of things like that which were always done by older and wiser brothers, well at least smarter (smartelic that is) ones than I. 

Just as a side note. That bridge remained there for a number of years . It was above the canal enough that it never caused junk to lodge and create a dam that would have made the canal wash out the side of the hill upon which it ran. It was eventually removed as the ditch company went through and dug out the canal to make it deeper.  It was a reminder for a lot of years that we were able to create a camp and make it useable and still be smart enough whether through dumb luck or actual planning of something that could be used for years to come. The grass continued to grow watered only by rain but still made it a very crossable bridge.

Of course these were all boys that were best friends but Marie Behrmann probably took the number one spot for the last several years of school. I was very blessed with good friends and enjoyed my experience while growing up with them. And growing old now with Marie.

Feb 5, 2011

BYU Pow Wow: He didn't come after, was at home

One of our annual events in Scouts was to take the boys to the BYU annual Pow Wow. It was always a fun three weeks and it only took me a year to realize that I would need a rather strong incentive for the boys to get them to complete all three badges by the time the Pow Wow ended on the third Saturday. I decide that I would treat them to pizza on the way home from that third week if they gave me all three badge cards completely signed as passed off as we would meet at the vehicles. I don’t remember having to ever leave anyone out of that pizza trip. However there was one year when I was waiting for the last boy and he never came to the car. I was of course starting to get worried when we decided to call his parents and see if they would know where he might have gone. As it turned out they had come and picked him up after the first hour because campus security had caught him stealing something in the bookstore. Needless to say it ended up being a good lesson for the other boys and for myself in watching them more carefully after they left for class. The only way I could really do that though was to have them sign up as buddies so that they would have a person to help keep them on course. The yong man also learned an important lesson that day in the fact that he not only never finished the three badges he was also embarrassed when the security only called his parents and would not settle for anyone else that day. I was glad they did because the lesson was learned.

Feb 4, 2011

Building the family shed

Shortly after we built our house in Mapleton in 1983 I decided that I needed a shed to put garden equipment and other storage items into for increased use of the storage in our home. It was actually a couple of years I think but memory has a way of squashing years together the older you get and it takes some real research to get an accurate time table. Anyway I spent several weeks pondering what shed I would like to build and went to several sources for ideas. The best idea though came form a book called Backyard Builder if I remember it correctly. I saw several sheds in it and did some preliminary drawings to get a better idea of how I could do it. I even took it to Signetics to work and talked with other technicians about it. Finally I came up with a plan. I would build it 20 feet long and 10 foot wide. Why those dimensions I am not really sure now but I remember I wanted to have plenty of room because I was sure it would fill up rather rapidly.
I decided to put the flooring of it on a foundation of 6 buckets filled with cement. No logical reason just didn’t require as much digging or cement. I also wanted to be able to move it if needed since I was building it only three feet from the property line. (It looks like a lot more room than that but that is because the city just hasn’t built the road that they said they are going to build in the future and thus required more footage from me when we asked for a building permit for the house.) I then placed 6inch by 10 inch boards on their side to create the floor. As I built the sides of the shed Marie’s dad Verl brought me some metal strapping material and suggested that I put them on the outside of the framing to help make the structure more solid for earthquake protection. I was a little surprised by that suggestion but through the years have thought about it many times and learned that there was some pretty sound wisdom in his suggestion. It has become my backup living quarters if there should be an earthquake and the house be damaged to where we could not live in it. It would be easy to heat although I would need to add some insulation to the interior walls and a better door but if needed in a pinch we could set up a fairly comfortable home in that shed. Each of the children helped as much as they could with Ben probably adding the most since he was the oldest. I think though that building the shed actually did more for the children than I first thought. I knew I was going to get a shed out of it and in fact it has been a very good investment since I am able to house all of the camping supplies in it as well as several barrels of hard wheat for storage. I gained something else though that has become more apparent over the years and that is the fact that the boys seem to be unafraid of jumping into any building project and doing it themselves. This has been real evident as they have gotten their own homes and done most of the remodeling themselves.
It has changed over the years from housing the garden tractor, lawn mowers and bicycles to more camping gear and misc other storage. In 2008 I added a piece to the south side of it to store the riding lawn mower and 4 wheeler that we use to clean the driveway and entertain the grandchildren. It has always been a good investment but now I need to build another one to house the garden equipment and things that we when we have parties by the fire pit.
I could probably fill it up pretty fast also.

Feb 3, 2011

YW 4^th Year Hikes

4th Year Hike: Box Canyon Les Long

I have had the opportunity to be a Priesthood leader for several years as my girls were growing up on one of their yearly Young Women activities. It is a requirement for their certifications for the fourth year at Girl’s Camp that they go on a separate hike from the week long girl’s camp. So either their ward or the stake as a whole will get all of the girl’s in their fourth year and plan a special hike for them. Typically the girls go on one 4^th year hike but Tia had a leader , Wendy Dahle, who was a camper from her youth and taught Tia to love it as well. So Tia went on at least 8 of them and I went on 7 of them with her and still regret having not been there on the other one when she went to Green River Lakes in Wyoming with Bob and Wad (Bob Dahle and Dennis Wadsworth). 

The first year that I went I was able to go with a great camper Les Long as the other Priesthood leader. I have long respected his ability when it came to camping and enjoyed that camp with him. We traveled to the Boulder Mountains in Southern Utah. On the south side of the Boulders there is a canyon called Box Canyon which starts near the top of one of the main tributaries and goes 8 miles before you can get out of the canyon.  We start at the top and then take all of the cars to the bottom of the canyon and then drive back in one canyon and after the hike we take one car back to the top and pick up the other car and go back to the bottom. 

So we started at the top and all of the girl’s waited there for us until we got back in the one car. We then took a picture of the group and started down into the canyon.

It was a narrow trail at the start that often crossed the stream and then later went to the side as the canyon opened up into a larger base.  About four miles into the canyon we stopped to camp for the night.  The trail also went down for a long part of it in sand which made the going pretty hard especially with a heavy backpack. Several of the girls really struggled and would stop quite often making it harder to get to where we wanted to camp four miles into the canyon.

We were able to enjoy a relaxed evening after we set up our tents and had supper.

We had a good nights rest as far as sleeping on the sand allows anyway. We woke up and started breakfast and then as we were packing up to go it started to snow. The girl’s were ready to go in record time and they hiked out without hardly even stopping. I was so impressed by their speed but I guess when it’s snowing on you and you know you have to go four miles to get out of it then you can dig deep for the ability that is already there and make it happen. It was a great hike.

4th Year Hike: Box Canyon and the scouts Danny Raymer

This was a fun year for hiking because of the difference in attitudes caused probably by harmones. We went down a day earlier on this trip to Box Canyon and decided to stay over one extra night so we could go into Escalante and receive the training for wilderness hiking provided by the Forest Service there in town. We went to the training and enjoyed the sites that were in that small southern Utah town. Then traveled back up the canyon to a campground near the start of Box Canyon.  We started to set up camp and decide where all of the girls and leaders were going to be during the night. About halfway through the setup a carload of scouts drove into the campground. I could tell that it was a group of boys that were varsity Scouts and thus the same age as the girls. I went over and talked to one of the leaders who looked very familiar to me and as we talked I realized that I had worked with him in Varsity Scouting several years earlier. He was from American Fork and his boys were indeed Varsity Scouts. We decided that it would not work to well to have them in the same camp so Brother Kitchen decided to take his group to another camping area.

We did our usual activities around the campfire that night and then retired to bed. Well around 1 AM a couple of boys showed up in camp and little to their knowledge did they realize the quick plans they had made with the girls to came back when the leaders would be asleep wasn’t a real smart thing to do. We caught them fairly quickly and very soon after that their leader showed up in a car and told them to get back to camp. They started to try to climb into his car and he mearly stated “You walked here, you will walk back.” It was around a mile away from our camp.

The next morning we were eager to get into the canyon so we could spend a relaxing hike and several hours at our campsite halfway down the canyon. We shuttled the cars down and back and were just getting ready to start into the canyon when the boys showed up and were also going to hike through the canyon. They still had to shuttle their cars however so we were quite a bit ahead of them when we started into the canyon. The girls were hiking pretty good except for a couple who just couldn’t hike through the sand, it was so hot and difficult. About an hour later the boys however caught up with our group and then those girls didn’t seem to have a problem at all. They chatted with a couple of the boys and we hiked right along until we got to out camp without a word of a problem the whole time. It took us about an hour though to get the boys to move on down the canyon after we had stopped.

We had a good evening and did some hiking up some of the side canyons and I took lots of pictures. The next morning was just opposite of the last time we had been in the canyon and was somewhat hot. Again the girls were having a difficult time hiking out that morning. We had gone about 3 of the 4 miles and the boys showed up. They gallantly took over the backpacks of the struggling girls and we hiked on out to the end of the trail where their bewildered leaders had been wondering where they had gone. I think they had a pretty good idea however. They had actually spent the night at the end of the trail at the request of the boys.

Well the girls talked to the boys while we went and retrieved the other vehicle and then we finally pried them apart so that we could return home. I found out several years later that two of the girls and two of the boys had continued relationships for a couple years after returning home. I don’t know however if any of the relationships continued into a marriage relationship. I still remember one of their young men though that I had a great deal of respect for after that hike. He had one leg that has been removed due to cancer and hiked with an artificial leg the entire distance. It was obviously not easy but he never ever complained either.

4th Year Hike: Green River Lakes

The second time that Tia went into the head of the green river in Wyoming I was lucky enough to be able to go. I knew it was a beautiful area because Tia had shown me some of the pictures that she had taken the first time when she went in two years earlier. It was a long drive into Wyoming to get to the trail head but only about a mile and a half back into the camping area. We ended up hiking a good share of that in the rain also. This was my first time into any of the lakes in Wyoming and it was indeed a very beautiful area. The hike went well and the other Priesthood advisor was my brother-in-law Scott Jeffers who had brought horses along to carry in some of the gear. I personally had all of mine in my backpack but was glad we had horses to help a couple of the girls that had problems with their packs.

We set up camp on the first of the two lakes reminding the girls to hang their food in between two trees since we were in bear country. I never saw or heard a bear the entire trip but was always glad that we were cautious anyway. It was actually the second lake that we hiked to but the first one at the base of the mountains, truly where the river started. After doing all of the setup of the camp we had some time to do some hiking around the second lake and just having some fun. It was early in the year and luckily before the season where the mosquito’s were hatching in full volume.

We had a campfire and spent some time around it before retiring to bed.

The next morning, after a rough sleep on the rocks, several of us went for a hike around to the other side of the second lake. We saw a moose and I was able to take several pictures of it and we seemed to have hikes almost the entire trail back to the parking lot where we had started the day before. We had to hike clear back to  camp and pack up then walk back out. It was along walk but well worth it. There were no real problems on this hike but it did seem like the trail back was a lot shorter than the one going in the night before in the rain.  I was glad that I was able to be on that hike with Tia as well as all of the others that I did with her through the years.

4th Year Hike: Days Fork

When we did the Days Fork hike, up Hobble Creek Canyon, the Stake had asked that we keep all of the hikes within the Utah County area that year. So Marie, Brother and Sister Dahle and Sister Jones and I decided to try out first a hike that I had heard about form scout troops. Wendy Dahle also had known about it and wanted us to hike it so that we would know if it would work for the girls. Well we went up early one morning and I really enjoyed the hike. Going up I was quite concerned about Bob Dahle though since he was way behind the rest of us. He commented however that we were not to worry because even though he was slow he was steady. Bob was quite over weight but did indeed make the hike on a slow but steady pace. (That was a lesson that would serve me later in years when I was out of shape and asked to climb a mountain with a stake group.) It was a beautiful hike and we decided that we would take the girls on it in a couple of week following that day.

Well we did and it was a fun but rather hard hike after we put on back packs full of camping gear. I don’t remember how many girls we had with us but it was probably around 8 to 10. We hiked up to the top where the trail crossed over the ridge and then part of the way down the other side when we started to find water again before we stopped for the night.  I had a number of the girls begging me to stop but it wasn’t until the hike was over the next day that they were glad I had left all of the last days hike on the downhill side of the event. We did experience something that last day though that we had not experienced on the hike as leaders two week earlier. This time as were going down the trail we came to a part of it where an elk had died and there were flesh worms strewn along the trail for several yards and we had to get off of the trail to get past and even then we were unable to miss or skirt the smell that accompanied it. I doubt any of the girls will ever forget it. Another year, another hike and another special experience teaching young women how to hike and camp. Each time I was able to do it with Tia and that made it even more special.

4th Year Hike: Wardworth

Tia had been called as a Stake leader this time and was asked to plan the hike with any help that she wanted. So she came to me and asked me to help decide on a place to go. We decided to go up to Wadsworth in the right hand fork of Hobble Creek. It was near the Days Fork area only a little higher and went to the left side of the canyon rather than the right side where days fork was located.

We decided to use some help also from someone who would become a new member of the family. Hayden was dating  Cheyenne Palmer from Payson and we asked her to go along and do some things to help us stress first aid. Hayden also went as the second Priesthood advisor since we couldn’t find anyone else. We had with us that year a young women that we knew to be very hard to work with and one who didn’t obey the rules very well but she was a hard worker to some degree and we found out that it would play into our favor later on.

After we set up camp about a mile and a half from the start of the trail we had decided to take a hike further up the canyon so we could do some compass work and also teach the girls some tracking skill’s. Hayden and I left first leaving a trail that was quite obvious at first and then difficult to ward the end. The girls did a pretty good job until they were almost where we were hiding but when they found it difficult to find anymore tracks they were about to give up thinking we had fooled the and gone back to camp. We finally stood up to show them we were even close enough to hear them talking. It was a good chance to teach them that people, especially children, will hide so they can’t be found because they are scared that they don’t know the searching person or that they will get into trouble for it somehow.

We then started back down the trail with Cheyenne about in the middle and Tia and I at the first with Hayden following up at the end. At a certain area in the trail that Cheyenne had picked while hiking up she faked an accident and went rolling down the hill. (She later admitted that she wasn’t sure she was actually going to be able to stop before going all the way to the bottom. I was down the trail a pretty good distance and Hayden was a good distance as well. So the girls had to go into action, they called for us to do it. I called back and told them to get down and help her till I got there. So our problem girl, who is also a born leader, started to get things done and to get help down to Cheyenne. We were able to get her back up to the trail and she did a great job faking a hurt ankle. I helped the girls fashion a makeshift stretcher and they carried her back the ½ mile left to camp. About twenty yards before camp she had them stop, then she jumped off the stretcher and walked on into camp by herself obviously not hurt at all. The young lady really got mad then and all I could do was laugh. She calmed down and the with all of the girls around we talked about what had happened and what they had learned from it. The young lady then commented I was wondering why Hayden wouldn’t help us when it was his girlfriend and he should have been right there.  It was a good camp.

4th Year Hike:  Big Springs

Big Springs was a little bit different hike from the others in that we only carried the packs for 1 and a half miles to where we set camp and then hiked to the top of the pass overlooking Utah Valley. So it was a tough hike but luckily without backpacks. There were also some girls that struggled just to get to camp who elected to stay behind and not go to the top. Another girl had major problems just getting to the Big Springs camp area and Tia and Hayden had to take her back to the main camp. They then hiked back and caught up to the rest of us before we had gone hardly another mile. I struggled to make the top myself and Hayden and Tia were both there long before I made it. Another girl decided to stay in the bowl just below the ridge rather than try to make that last 100 foot climb. Sister Allen made the climb all the way to the top and we had about 10 girls also make the total distance.

We stopped and took some group pictures at the top and stayed there for several minutes while enjoying the view over Utah Valley. The top is just behind the Rock Canyon camp area East of Provo. We met a group of scouts who had hiked up form that area and were headed down into Big Springs. They had full back packs on as they were hiking. On the way back down from the top we all slid down on our coats on the snow banks. Sister Allan was headed straight for a stump and I was able to stop her before she got there. It was a pretty good hike and had one other surprise for those who did the climb. There is a large pine tree that smelled just like butterscotch that we were all surprised with as we stood close to it and took a deep smell of the bark.

4th Year Hike: Rocky Ridge

This year the hike was incorporated into the Stake Trek over Rocky Ridge. I suppose it was probably harder in many ways than most of the hikes in that it was a lot longer but maybe a bit easier in that they didn’t have to put on back packs. Pulling a cart probably made it more challenging in the long run. We had a three day event where we went to Martin’s cove one night then to 6^th water the second night. The actual hike was when we went from 6^th Water over Rocky Ridge which was a 21 mile trek with the hand carts. This was a good hike and as usual on a trek it was a very spiritual experience.

The one interesting thing that came from this year was that I was asked to take pictures on this trek for the stake. Another member of the stake had a Canon 60-D Digital camera that he had me take since he was going to be doing video during the trek. So I took my Canon A-1 and 40 rolls of film and then his digital camera and one card. I exposed 16 rolls of film and then added to that 800 images with the digital camera. It was a camera where I could also change lenses as I did on the A-1 and it was an experience that would change my life in photography forever. I went home form the trek and ordered my first Canon 10-D digital camera and have not used the film cameras since that time.

Feb 2, 2011

Carving Staves

When I first became a scoutmaster I was introduced to Bill Birch and Chuck Loveless who were always telling stories and carving bolo’s while telling them, they could keep boys spellbound for hours. Anyway I decided that I wanted to learn as well and so one day began carving and much to my dismay it looked nothing like a face that they would carve, but through perseverance I began doing a pretty good job especially since I used one of theirs to copy the first time after that failed attempt. Later though after making over a 100 of those faces I decided to try doing ones on a stave. I had wood burned staves several times but had never carved on one. However the things that I had learned with the small pieces still applied here and I was able to have as much fun with them as with the others. I ended up carving over 30 staves and possibly more. I would give most of them away to the leaders that were helping me. I often have people whom I have given a stave tell me that they still have it and I often have forgotten that I had even given them one. I carved one stave with animal faces since we had been living with a bear near camp that year. My first face however was done because of a bad day that Tia was having at girl’s camp. Marie had gone to camp that year with her and I took Loren and Brittany and we stayed near the area in a motor home that had been given to me by Dave Nemelka. I took both of them into camp with me each day and would help the Sister’s with whatever they needed. Britt loved it but told one of the girl’s that Tia was her secret friend and that ruined it for Tia. Well that made Tia mad and she was mad at me so I went to the road where I had seen some wood that had been pushed over as they cleaned the road earlier that year. I took a long one from the group and stripped the bark from it. It was a very hard wood and not like the aspen that I had been carving to that point which was quite easy. I went ahead and carved it anyway. She liked it and it made a hit with the other girls and leaders so for the next 12 years as I attended girls camp each year I would do several staves and give to the stake leaders. It was a lot of fun.

Second Version

Carving Staves

Having been involved in scouting for many years I have had the opportunity to see many talented men at work making life interesting for young men and consequently their leaders. Two of these men were Bill Birch and Chuck Loveless. They would have a booth and sit there carving faces out of wood. It seemed so easy watching them that I had a great desire to do it as well. I had seen samples of work that other men in the council had also done after seeing Bill and Chuck. So I tried it and needless to say my face was not very good. So I set out a plan for how to accomplish this goal. I figured that if I took the one I had received from Bill for a training day that I had attended that he was teaching on how to teach scouts then I could copy it and learn to do it that way. Well that worked and I soon had discovered that my problem the first time was in not making the cuts deep enough. I then began doing my own often being asked how I decided what to carve. My answer was simply “I carve until I see what was in the wood and then I am finished. It seemed that as I carved certain characteristics would emerge from some of the cuts and that would direct my next slice. It was really quite a lot of fun. I did over a hundred of these faces including one of my Bishop B ray Anderson that I did on a ward campout. We were sitting around the campfire and I started carving and one slice reminded me of one of his facial characteristics so I looked at him closely and completed what seemed to be a fairly good likeness. I had done quite a lot of these often carving while sitting listening to lessons at camp and while watching soccer games. I also cut myself several times before I learned how to keep my knife sharp and the blade away from flesh. After a few years I was out in the woods looking for a suitable stave for the week and after finding a good one went back to camp. (I would go out and find Aspens that had fallen during the winter and cut off branches for a stave.) That way I would have fresh wood to work with that made for easy carving. I would do the same for wood to carve the faces from while at camp. This particular year however after having removed the bark there was something in the wood that made me want to just carve a face in it instead of cutting off a piece. Well that led to several years of carving staves. I ended up carving faces of people or animals or other things like bear claws and scout symbols in the staves. Then at the end of the week would give it to an assistant scoutmaster or the senior patrol leader. I ended up even doing this at girl’s camp after doing a stave for Tia the second year that she was at girls camp. I have done well over 30 such staves since learning to carve and have really enjoyed watching what came from the wood on each stave.

Feb 1, 2011

Some scout camps I was not proud to have claimed to have been a part of it.


Eggs Don’t Break

I went on a number of camping trips as a young scout and have numerous pictures taken while on some of those camps. One camp however does not have any pictures of it in my collection but there is a very poignant one in my memory. Young people can be so mean even to their best friends or to the guy who is just being picked on that day. This camp was one held just a couple of miles up the Duchesne River from town. We had gone up Friday evening and Saturday morning we had played a number of games in the filed next to the trees where we had set camp. We had finished playing games that morning and for some reason had gone back to camp. It was probably to clean up and get ready to go home. Someone however began an egg fight of sorts. It was touted that raw eggs wouldn’t break when thrown just right. Now I don’t remember who suggested that or why Gary Foy was the chosen target but I do remember how badly I felt as I watched some of the other boys start to throw the eggs at Gary. He promptly got mad and climbed over the fence threatening to walk home. That was probably the fuel needed for the other boys to throw the eggs at him even more. I still have minds eye a vivid movie of an egg hitting Gary as he topped the fence and then it bouncing off and falling to the ground without a crack. That apparently proved the point and to the energizing of the group a full volley of eggs soon followed. Gary was luckily out of reach by then and many of them bounced off the ground while others simply broke on impact. He did carry a large goose egg though where the first one had made it’s impact. I have often felt very badly for this incident even though I did not participate in the testing of the theory. Gary was one of my friends and I remember being mad at the group for testing it out on him but they didn’t seem to be too worried about it. Gary later fell away from the church for several years and after a divorce from his high school sweetheart and being married to a waitress from a bar that became converted to the church he finally returned into full activity. I have often wondered if that incident could have been one of those critical points in his life that caused him to turn away. I was glad when I heard he had been baptized and returned.

Jan 31, 2011

Skunks: All in One

I decided to write a number of stories in one since they all have a common disliked animal, a Skunk.
My experiences with skunks started at an early age as I became very familiar with the common scent they put off. Each time as I would try to go to sleep at night, when their scent would filter through the air, I would little understand the very personal relationship I would develop with them over the years.
I first recall the call from dad to the older boys to get the .22 rifles because they had seen a spotted skunk, known as a Civit Cat, as they were driving toward the house from town. The Civit Cat was dreaded because it could go through a hole in the chicken coop no larger than their very head which was probably no lager than a quarter and at most a 50 cent piece. When they would get into the chicken coop they would kill the chickens as they slept and suck their blood from a small hole or bite in the neck of the chicken. I remember a lot of chickens that we lost that way. Then there were the striped skunks that were much larger and more plentiful. They wouldn’t kill the chickens but they would eat the eggs so they were also hunted and destroyed.
One of my first memories of skunks, when I was actually involved with them, came when I was around 11 or 12 years old and went with my father and brothers to haul hay at the church farm in Utahn. Since I really wasn’t big enough to lift the bales my job was to turn them over making it faster for the ones coming behind to pick them up and put them on the trailers. When the trailers had gone to the stack we were then free to play for a few minutes. Well that was where the trouble came because several of us younger kids spotted a skunk and happily went to throw rocks at it. We didn’t get close enough to be sprayed cause we were to smart for that. However we were to dumb to really be considered smart since we would chase after it through the field where it had sprayed and thus the scent was transferred to our clothes anyway. We ended up riding home in the back of the trucks.
I was around 16 when I was mowing the hay and carried the shotgun on the tractor with me since the favorite place for a skunk to hide was in the tall hay. As we would mow the hay from the outside of the field toward the middle the skunks would simply move into the still standing hay in the middle of the field and then as the area became smaller they would then venture out and run across the field. It was at that point that we would use the shotgun to kill them. This particular time though was my first in using the shotgun verses the .22 rifle. As the skunk ran from the hay it headed directly toward the stack yard. I didn’t see it until I had turned the tractor and headed in the direction of the stack yard. I quickly stopped mowing and pulled the shotgun from it’s case on the tractor and headed for the stack yard. I got there just as the skunk was headed into some tall bushes at the top of the stack yard. I quickly pulled up the shotgun and pulled the trigger. I didn’t know if I had hit it so I pumped another shell into the chamber at which time it fired again. Ihit the skunk both times and never forgot the surprise I felt as the second shot fired. I hadn’t meant to fire but as I pumped the new shell into the chamber I had forgotten to move my finger from the trigger area and promptly pulled the gun forward thus pulling the gun into the trigger finger. That was the last time I ever pumped a second shell into the chamber with my finger still near the trigger.
Then when I was 17 I was hired by Mr. Wilkerson to work in his Texaco gas station from 10 pm to 6 am every day of the week for the summer following graduation till I left for college. Since it was past 9:30 pm as I would leave for work I would often walk out to the track parked in the driveway without the use of any light. I knew my way to the truck so why use a flashlight? Well I found out why in a hurry one very dark night as I went to the truck parked out near the garage. Our garage was built back into the hillside and was covered with dirt. Inside the left side of the garage we had a small chicken setting on some eggs in a brooder. I just happened to walk out there as a skunk was headed into the garage for an evening snack of eggs. I must have nearly stepped on it since the spray I got was a direct hit with the yellow stuff. It didn’t take long for everyone in the house to figure out something had happened either so they were already after the gun and had the porch light on by the time I ran back to the house. I was not allowed into the back porch but was handed the gun through the door. I was also given a flashlight and then walked back out to the garage. I Turned on the light and then got down on the ground so I could see under the brooder to find the skunk. It was near the hen and I quickly fired. The bullet the broke a bottle that was stored at the back of the garage. I fired four more shots each at from a different angle since I kept hitting those blasted bottles and not the skunk. When the shooting was done and the air was cleared I discovered that I had hit the skunk all five times. The bullet had passed through the small skunk and hit the bottles in the back of the garage each time. I to this day don’t know why the bottles were being stored there but it didn’t matter since I had wiped out all of them with the one skunk.
You would think that getting married and moving to the city would have then stopped my mixing it up with skunks but, no, it continued. I didn’t move to a big enough city but rather to a small farming community near the city. A member of our church ward some years later gave us some of their chickens. They got a new batch every year and would give the others away to anyone they felt could use them. We had room to put in a small chicken coop and run. It was in that chicken coop that I had another run in with skunks. My neighbor, Gary Reed, was also raising some chickens in his yard and was equally concerned with the problem we had been having with skunks during the summer of 1986. So one night he called me and said he had just seen a skunk go into my coop. I quickly grabbed the rifle and he took out his pistol which he carried concealed in his boot. We opened the door of the coop so that we could shine a flashlight in to where the eggs were laid. We could see the skunk but he could care less and began to eat the eggs. It was then that I spotted another movement in the chicken run and saw another skunk headed for the eggs. He was a big one and so I aimed and fired even though I couldn’t really see the sights on the gun very well and he was on a dead run. The only problem was the dead run was too fast for me to make him dead before he entered the coop and jumped into the laying area. Now I had two skunks and worse they were fighting for the eggs. Gary and I decided the only thing to do was shoot them so he held the flashlight and I shot both of them inside the egg laying box. Well the box was built so we could be enter from outside of the coop. So the next job was to get them out and buried before the smell became any worse. That took some time but we were able to get it done and then went back to our houses. Little did I know what had happened in there, all of the windows were open. (I mean what else do you do on a hot August night when the house is not air conditioned?) It wouldn’t have been quite so bad had they been closed., It really wasn’t too bad for me because I only had to put up with it for one night and then early the next morning I left for BSA Camp Maple Dell for 8 days of Wood Badge training. (Marie however had to put up with it for several days until the stench finally cleared out.)
That however wasn’t the last of it for me that week either. I didn’t know that skunks loved scout camps as much as chickens because of all the free food they can dig from a fire pit at night after the boys are in bed. I didn’t discover it either until about Wednesday of the next week as I was sitting up late at night working on my Ticket for Wood Badge. A ticket is a set of goals that you will complete within two years of your week long training. It was 1 AM and the lanterns hanging from the rafters of the pavilion had all ran out of propane and gone out. So I sat at the table with my flashlight between my teeth working on my goals. I heard a faint noise coming from the direction of the fire pit and shined my flashlight out to see what it was. Yep, You are thinking correctly because it was a big skunk. Well I wasn’t too worried about it since I didn’t have any chickens or eggs to protect so I just quietly sat there watching it. I could have done that all night rather than risk moving and giving it a reason to be defensive. I Was OK also until I noticed some small eyes reflecting back the light from my flashlight further down the trail leading to the next camp. It was another skunk as if one wasn’t enough. I watched still in silence so as to not disturb and due also to pure curiosity of what might happen next. It didn’t take long to find out what would happen next since the approaching skunk was clearly the boss out of the two. He approached until he was about 10 feet away from the first skunk. He then ( I guess it was a He, I didn’t bother to check it out too closely.) raised his front paws off the ground and stamped then back down a couple of times. The first skunk finally paid attention to it but still wasn’t intimidated by it. So the second skunk repeated the act and then charged toward the first one at full speed. I too was then reacting at full speed because the first one was running directly toward me and it didn’t take much time for me to get on top of the table at which I was sitting. The skunk continued my direction passing between the legs of the table onto the pavilion behind me. The second one then stopped at the fire pit and began to did around for what really was never there, food. We were obedient when told not to put food in the fire pits and I was glad we had obeyed even though we were not told why. I then had a bigger problem though because the first skunk also stopped and now I was between the two of them. I would turn my light toward one and then the other making sure they were not going to take there dispute between them to another level which might include me. Finally to my relief the first one wandered off the pavilion and went around each of our four tents. He went into the one where my companion and I were staying but at least didn’t linger longer as a young adult might who is being fed on Sunday after church. I then put full attention to the one in the fire pit and began making small noises to scare it off. It took several minutes but he finally decided that the light near him must have been accompanied by something else which might pose a danger to him. He wandered ever so slowly away from camp into the trees and I then moved ever so quickly to bed. Later in the week on the Saturday morning as we were getting up for the last time at camp we were greeted by the smell of an outraged skunk coming to us from the direction of where the Bear Patrol was camped. Sure enough one of them had upset a skunk as he was headed to the bathroom that morning. I was just glad it wasn’t me.
Well you might think that the incidents would come to an end but no I am going to be destined to have to put up with skunks all of my life I fear.
About a year and a half after going to wood badge I became a scoutmaster. As part of my yearly routine I would take my scouts on an emergency preparedness camp. They would have three minutes from the time I got to their door to have their bags into my vehicle. Consequently we would do these without tents. One year as we were well settled down before 1 am I was awakened by movement under the cot I had taken to sleep on that night. It was low to the ground and had maybe three inches to spare after I had settled onto it. I then became aware of a small skunk emerging from under my bed. My son Jeff was laying next to me on the ground and so the little fellow had to cross over the top of Jeff. Well he had apparently learned from some of those young Adults I spoke of earlier and decided to linger longer. He went along the sleeping bag until he came close to Jeff’s mouth. I figured it was headed in to steal a kiss but rather jus t sniffed his face and then moved on around the camp. I was really hoping no one would wake up because I knew what would surely happen if they did. It did awaken Jeff but he had seen it close up enough for one night and was plenty ready to be obedient to my command to not move or make any noise. When we told the boys the next morning my fears were confirmed because they were all mad at me for not getting them up so they could have chased it.
Scout camp was not the only place where skunks liked top follow me. One year at Girl’s camp I had set my 10 foot tent over a cement table under the trees and then used my cot to the side of the table. I could cook and have everything that I needed in my tent. There was one minor problem in that the door would not shut on the tent. That didn’t really bother me though because I had used it that way for many years. I did happen to wake up though the first night around 1 am to find a skunk wandering around my tent, on the inside of it of course. I lay there quietly until it became evident that it might jump up on the table to secure some of my food. I never leave food out but that doesn’t stop the smell from making an animal think that I had. So I started to make some little noises so that it would get the idea that the place really was inhabited by a living, moving threat to his well being. He got the idea after a few anxious moments on my part and left through the door of the tent where he had entered. Well not to be outsmarted the next night or visited I went to some elaborate means to ensure that my door was inaccessible as I stacked chairs and other pieces of wood across the front of the door. It was around 1 am when I again woke and to my surprise I was outsmarted by quite a rascal of a skunk. Since he couldn’t get in through the door he instead was in the process of pushing under the edge of the tent and was almost half way inside. I didn’t hesitate to let him know of my displeasure in being outsmarted and luckily he was able to reverse direction before making it inside where getting him out would have been somewhat of a disaster. The following night I left the door open and moved all the food out of my tent and slept well all night as well as every night for the rest of the week.
Then there was the time in 2004 when I was at Mountain Dell as a Course Director for the Deseret District Timberline Course. I only had the one troop so most of the day to day activities I left up to the Scoutmaster and would spend a lot of my time cleaning up the rest of the unused camping areas. Then part of the time I spent sitting at a table under the trees near an electrical outlet doing reports and pictures of the camp on the computer. I left the Camera by my side and had several neat opportunities to photograph the wild animals that became use to my presence. I photographed curios chipmunks that ran out on the limbs at eye level to look at me. I photographed a young buck that was only 25 yards away from me and totally unaware that I was near him. I photographed a mink as he ran up and down the trunk of the tree near me. And I even photographed, WHAT WAS THAT, it ran from under the table where I was sitting and headed across the road, Yes it was a skunk of course. I hadn’t seen him approach from behind me and thank goodness was unaware that he was running past my legs until he was well past the dangerous confrontation point. I had seen skunks but he was by far the one I had been the closest too.
And last of all this year ,2005, at the same camp and only a few yards from my close encounter of the prior year I witnessed a skunk early one morning looking for food at the pavilion several yards away. I tried to photograph him but it was still a bit too dark. I didn’t see him again until two nights later when I again awoke around 1 am and could see in the brightly moonlit night that same little skunk trying to force his way into my tent trough the hole formed by where the three zippers met at the bottom of my tent. I of course had learned from prior experience not to have any food in my tent and knew there was no need for him to get trapped inside with me so I made plenty of noise to let him figure out he was an unwanted guest. He got the hint and wandered on up to the camp staff boys tents where he was able to get some treats that night. I know because I heard the dreadful tales the next morning from youth and adults.