Mar 05, 2010

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

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

Mar 04, 2010

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

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

Mar 03, 2010

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

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

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

Mar 02, 2010

Tell about a school principal you remember.

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

Mar 01, 2010

Tell about being in a school play or program.

It was called “The Man in the Bowler Hat” and it was in my senior year. It was a play that we did for Drama and we were in a regional competition performimg it at Uintah High School in Vernal, Utah. The basic plot of the play is having a man in a bowler hat sitting at the right of the stage on a director’s stool. All he does is sit there until the very last scene when he yells something to the effect “that’s pretty good let’s go from the top one more time.” So you are probably thinking that I was the man in the bowler hat but I wasn’t. I had a part that required that I be tied up by the bad guy and had to try and wiggle around to avoid him while tied to the stool. It was even toward the last of the play just prior to that line by the man in the bowler hat. Well I had tied myself to the stool so I could get out but as we were doing the play on stage for the competition during that part I wiggled a little too well and fell over backwards onto the floor with my hands still tied to the stool behind me. It must have looked pretty good because as I remember we won the competition and that of course could have been the only reason for our success. It actually hurt pretty bad but I couldn’t let on during the play and the rest of the cast really did a great job making it still fit into the script but I won’t forget the fall, ever.

Feb 28, 2010

Tell about other pets you had.

My other small best friend pet was Smokey the cat. She had many kittens but only one made my memory and that was Flame. Both of them were good at catching mice and proved to be very good cats to have on a farm. Smokey loved to have you pet her and would purr very loudly as you did. I know of a lot of people who either love dogs and hate cats or love cats and hate dogs but because of my two lifelong pets I love them both. I can’t leave the subject of pets however without mentioning the large pets. I made reference to them in the story of Pee Wee and that is our horses Blue and Beauty. We did not have them at the same time but one after the other. They were both small horses that I could easily swing up onto their backs and that was the way I usually rode them. I would put a saddle on them if I had time to go for an extended ride but it was usually to ride down to the pasture to bring the cows in for milking. Both times I was thrown from them however was when I was riding bareback. I had some very wonderful animal friends while I was growing up and I do love them all.

Feb 27, 2010

Tell about the best pet you ever had.

Pee Wee was always my best friend and my best pet. A lucky little dog that survived being poisoned when just a pup and dad was able to feed her the lard or whatever it was that he gave that made her survive the poison. Anyway she was always with me when I did chores and always with me when I was walking down to get the cows or riding our horses Blue or Beauty to get them. She was also always to the side of me under the cow licking up milk that I would squirt from the cow onto the cement for her. One year she came up missing for several days and we thought that she had been killed or poisoned. Well she showed up early one morning walking on three legs and a stub. She had been caught in a trap and had to chew her foot off to be able to come home. Dad picked her up and took her to the vet in Roosevelt where he removed the rest of the leg up to the shoulder. She lived for a lot of years after that and was able to still keep up with me on three legs. She loved to climb the haystack, which was made from round bales of hay, and sit on the top watching the traffic over three miles across the valley. She was a good friend. Pee Wee finally had one set of pups when I was in High School. She had two that I remember Pedro and Sparky and they were both very cute pups. I don’t know when Pee Wee died but I think it was while I was on my mission or at college. She had been my friend from early in my childhood until after I had left home.

Feb 26, 2010

Tell about a favorite restaurant or public place you and your friends liked to gather.

It was definitely the Frost Top at the west end of town near the Texaco station. I never got to gather there very often since I lived outside of town two miles and had plenty of chores to keep me busy while the others in town were at the Frost Top. It was usually after Mutual when I might get to go over to the frost top and get a shake or a malt and a hamburger with fries. There was also a pin ball game there that we played once in a while. It was always obvious who spent the most time there because they could win pretty well each game on the pin ball game. Needless to say I didn’t play it well at all.

Feb 25, 2010

Did you or your friends have a secret hideout?

I did not have any secret hideout as a youth and thus really have nothing to write about today. In fact I guess the only “hideout” I could possibly claim were the snow caves we made under the trees at the top of the hill where the snow would drift over the top of them creating a cave or hideout of sorts. It wasn’t my friends that shared it with but rather my brother and sisters and yes they were friends as well.

Feb 24, 2010

Tell about a great victory or personal success story from your school days.

I think that the one greatest victory for me was not a victory as far as the race that I was in at the time but it was still a victory none the less personally.

It was my senior year and in the fall. I was running on the cross country team and was basically the second fastest in our school. We had several races and I had done pretty good all year. A 4 minute mile had recently been accomplished in world competition but all we wanted was a five minute mile average for three miles.

Well it was a race in Price that I want to write about here. It was on a golf course that had a lot of rolling hills to it and we had to run around it twice. I knew it was going to be a rough course and even worse than the one we ran in Tabiona where we ran up a hill for the first part of the race but here it was up and down and up again so that you were having to use up a lot of energy during the entire race. Well I had kind of just ran a standard race for the first round trying to conserve as much energy as possible but trying to not fall to far back. However Coach Josie shouted that I was in 25^th place as we ran past the starting gate at the end of the first round so I knew I had possibly waited too long. Well I kicked it in and started to run much faster yet trying to keep an even pace knowing that I knew what the course was like and tat I could run it OK. I can recall quite vividly the other boys that I began to pass as I went around the second time. It started to hurt and my lungs began to burn but I knew I had to pass as many as possible. I kept going and slowly passed all but four other runners by the end of the race coming in 5^th place overall. I may not have won the race but I passed 20 others on the last lap that had been ahead of me the entire first lap and that for me was quite a victory.