A few memories of my father Kermit.

Share some memories you have of your father, Kermit Poulson.

Where to start.

My father was a played a big part in my life. I was with him when he went on church assignments. I was with him when he went to work in the summer months when I was out of school. I was with him doing chores and tasks around the farm. I was with him at church socials and firesides. I was with him at Family Home evenings and singing around the piano as a family. I was with him after school while he finished up work at nights after I had gone to primary. I was with him when skinny dipping in the canal after we finished hauling the hay one hot summer afternoon. In other words I was with dad every chance that I could.

Dad was a hard worker and taught each of us to also work hard. (It was probably a compliment to him as much as to me when on March 2 2019 I was told by one of my student employees at BYU, while we were cleaning up the Marriott Center arena, that he hopes he can climb and move as quickly as I do when he is as old as me. I told him he could if he wanted and he exclaimed probably not because “I don’t have the same strong work ethic that you have”.) I spent many a summer cutting, raking and baling hay on the farm under the instruction of my father. He taught me how to plow a straight row and how to keep the rows straight for the entire field. He taught me how to stack hay on a wagon and again in the stack-yard.  I learned how to irrigate from him.

I used to ride my bike to town a lot during the summer when I attended summer school classes. One day as I left the high school and crossed the street I was going a bit fast and while trying to make a turn onto the sidewalk I was unable to miss a red water fire-hydrant. The bike took the worst of the consequences as it bent my front forks so that I couldn’t turn it without hitting the frame. I then walked to bike the three blocks to the bus garage where dad helped me to straighten the forks. I can’t remember how I got home that day but dad probably took pity on me and loaded the bike in the truck for the ride home.

When I would work with him in the summer months I loved to be there on the days that they would refinish the basketball courts in the gymnasiums at other schools in the district. The part that I remember the most though is how I would wonder where dad and the other workers had gone after lunch. We would go to another part of the school and sit down to eat our lunches. After we were done they would all lay down on the floor and take a short nap and well they would wake a short time and go back to work and I would wake up over a half an hour later. Of course I wasn’t getting paid to be there and didn’t have a significant part in the work so it really didn’t matter that I hadn’t gotten back to work as quickly as they had. But I was always amazed at how they could lay down, sleep and then get up so soon after they had started their naps.

When I would go with him to church assignments at other wards in the stake I would be there while he gave talks in Sacrament meetings and learn the gospel from him many times without realizing it. A by-product of those visits was all of the friends that I made in the other wards as well. It was always just me and him in the truck traveling to the other wards in Fruitland, Altamont, Utahn, Heber and Tabiona. I loved those times and really have no idea if any of my siblings ever got to go with him on those trips at other times. Later as a teenager Dad was called into the Bishopric so he would go to our firesides and mutual. He was a great scouter but most of his time in that calling was when I was still a cub scout and younger. I do have an award that was given to him for his scouting service. When I was primary age I would walk to the church from school and then over to the school garage afterward and ride home with him after work.

The skinny dipping incident came after a particularly hot summer afternoon as we completed hauling the last load of hay to the stack. We were all covered with small hay leaves that come off the bales of hay as we buck them up on to the wagon and again onto the stack. We were all so sweaty, sticky, and covered with the itchy leaves that dad had us go to a sandy area of the canal behind the old slaughter house. The canal ran behind our home, the stack yard and then the slaughter house. We all stripped all of our clothes off and jumped into the water. It was so refreshing and we were able to replace all of the hay leaves with sand from the bottom of the canal as we stirred it up with our hands and feet. It felt so good. I was always glad that my sisters were not part of the hay hauling crew that day or it wouldn’t have happened.

Irrigating was always kind of fun. Dad taught me how to open three or four cuts (openings in the ditch) and then help guide the water down through all of the field. Sometimes it took a quite a lot of making new little and sometimes big ditches down through the filed to move water to parts that were dry. I loved being in the water because it didn’t take much of a splash to cool myself off from the summer heat. The irrigating through the night was not so much fun however since we never knew when there might be a skunk out and roving along the ditches. They never seemed to be afraid of us as much as we were afraid of their smells.

I learned how to drive also on a tractor as I would guide it down the rows as a 7 or 8 year old. Dad would make the turns and then slow the tractor to its slowest speed and jump off to help buck the hay while I guided it through the rows of bales. When we got to the end of the row he would climb back on and make the turns to start back up the next rows repeating this process until we had the wagon loaded. He would then drive it to the stack and back to the filed to start the process over. There was one particular experience that dad and I had with the tractors that had my dad as white as a ghost during the experience. I was a young teenager when this happened and was a little more experienced in driving a tractor but as I was pulling another tractor that dad was driving down an incline from our yard to the fields I remember looking back to see if his had started yet and pressed lightly on the brakes. Dad had the bucket on that tractor that we haul manure from the barnyard with so it had some three foot long spikes welded to it and sticking out in front and the bucket was lined up right with my back. I was able to get my tractor going fast enough as he was rolling toward me to take the slack out of the chain and put myself out of range of the spikes. It was close enough though that dad was scared pretty well. The next time we had to do that the bucket was raised well above the height of the other tractors seat.

We had fairly regular Family Home Evenings Sunday nights following Sacrament meeting. We all took our turns teaching the lessons with mom’s help usually. However the funnest part for me and the best memories come from when we would all stand around the piano and mom, Alma or Leesa would play songs. I loved to hear dad sing with his deep base voice. A couple of the songs that I remember him singing was “The Deep”, (can’t remember the exact title). Another was “No Man is an Island”. He taught by example a great love for singing.  He was a musician and had played in a band with his sister and a cousin for years around the Uintah Basin. He played the Alto Sax that I now have.

Dad loved horses and we always had one while I was growing up so I learned how to ride with or without a saddle. The only times I ever fell off however were when I didn’t use a saddle and my horse decided to spook or stop for water at the ditch. It was fun to always have a horse to go riding in the country around our farm plus it made it easier to go get the cows from the pasture when it was time to do the milking chores.

So there are a few of my memories of experiences with dad. I love him very much and am so thankful for the direction and love he gave to me while growing up. Dad passed away just a few months after our second son Jeffery was born. Dad was going to come and babysit Ben while Marie was in the hospital but had strokes just two week prior to Jeff’s birth. When we went to Roosevelt to the hospital just after the first stroke the nurses thought that we were coming so Marie could deliver the baby. We just went to see dad instead and Jeff was born on Halloween just two weeks later. Dad passed away about three months later. So when mom passed away just one week before Jeff was to be married he felt as though he had been really picked on and I guess he kind of was in a way.