June 4, 2010

Tell about hotdog or marshmallow roasting.

My father made an outdoor fireplace in our yard down in the area where our apple trees were planted. It was only about 150 feet from the house so it made carrying items of food easy to take to tables near that fireplace. We use to do a lot of summer meals at that fireplace and I have a lot of memories from roasting hotdogs and marshmallows to cooking hamburgers and dutch oven dinners in and around that fireplace. I remember one time when dad decided that he hadn't built it quite right since the fire was about 25 inches or so from the heavy metal plate that he had placed at the top to cook hamburgers and stakes. So he put a bunch of bricks in the bottom of it and then built the fire on top of them and it really worked a lot better. It was always quite cool to me how when the fire was burning all of the smoke would go out the chimney and curl it's way up into the air. Sometimes it didn't but most of the time it did. We held a lot of family, school and church parties around that little fireplace and it was really a lot of fun. That might even be what made Ruth decide to marry Clair because she came to meet the family and we had dinner by the fireplace and then Clair played the guitar and sang to us or rather sang to Ruth while we listened. He proposed after that sometime and she said yes so it had to be the romance fireplace. We later went hunting petrified wood and found two large 4 foot long stumps that we placed by the trunks of the apple trees upon which people could sit while eating. Then dad also made a large grape arbor and put tables inside of that where we could sit around them. It was really a lot of fun.

June 3, 2010

Did you ever sleep under the stars?

Many many times. Our favorite place to sleep during the summer was out under a large grape arbor that we had in the yard and we didn't use a tent. The only problem was usually just before dark when the mosquitoes were the worst. It was always cooler out there though than in the upstairs bedrooms where we slept so it was worth battling the bugs. We also lived out on the farm with no yard lights so the milky way was always so easy to see and the stars were so bright. It was always easy to see the big dipper that was my favorite constellation in the sky. It was also never a challenge to find the little dipper and the North Star. I have always loved sleeping out under the stars.

June 2, 2010

Describe a place you liked to be alone.

There were a number of places where I liked to go to be alone. One of them was on the back of a horse riding around the lower part of our farm and upon to the hill. I would sometimes also walk there as it took quite awhile to reach one of my favorite places. There was an old homestead up just below where the Duchesne airport was located. None of the buildings still stood but the foundation of the old home was still there. I don't know why it fascinated me so much but it was a place where I often went. Just below it and to the left was the start of a draw that had a lot of fossils in the rocks. It was fun to go there as well and search for new ones that I hadn't already located. That was also the area where I would go rabbit hunting with Don but the times I was there alone was a lot of fun.

June 1, 2010

Tell about a special person that lived in your town.

I changed the question a little to the word special from strange. The reason is because my small town was filled with special people and one of them was Sister Gilbert. She was a very special person and we loved her very much as she was always very kind to each of us. She and her husband ran the local Diary Freeze. There is a special part of this history growing up with her as one of my sunday school teachers. Here is the story.

Sister Gilbert/memorize Apostles

In Sunday School when I was somewhere around 8 years old I had a very special teacher by the name of Sister Gilbert. Her family owned the Dairy Queen in town and was one of my favorite places to visit since it was only a block and a half from Grandma Poulson’s. One day in class Sister Gilbert challenged us in the class to memorize the Presidency of the church, The Quorum of the12 Apostles, Church Patriarch, The Assistants quorum of the 12 Apostles and then the Presiding Bishopric of the church. She also challenged us to memorize our Stake Presidency and Patriarch. To the first person to pass it off she would give a silver dollar that she had gotten in her Dairy Queen business. A friend of mine by the name of Jon rode the same bus as I did each day to school so we decided to take her up on the challenge. I remember working really hard to memorize each name specifically correct. The day I went to church early to pass it off I found out that Jon had also gone early that day and was at that very moment in passing it off. Sister Gilbert gave me a chance also even though Jon had done it correctly and basically won the silver dollar. I also passed it off correctly so she gave me a silver dollar as well. I can’t list them at this time but there were names in that group such as “O Leslie Stone” and “Hugh B Brown” that seemed to stick with me quite easily through the years.

I have always treasured that Silver dollar and for years it was the only one that I had until one day I was doing chores and had climbed the hay stack to feed the cows./ Our baler made the bales round so the stack was a in huge triangle shape which was fun to slide down after pushing a bale off with which to feed the cows. This day however was a little different because as I slid down off the stack something hit me in the back. It was a silver dollar. We asked several possible people who might have lost it but never did find out who the dollar belonged to so I ended up putting it with my other silver dollar from Sister Gilbert. Years later after Lynn had gone on his mission we were going through my coin collection and I discovered that Lynn didn’t have a silver dollar so I gave the one to him that I had found on the haystack. I still have the other one to this day. It reminds me of the dedication of a Sunday school teacher who knew how to catch the interest of her students and help them to learn valuable lessons at the same time as they were in reality building testimonies of the Prophet and the Apostles.

May 31, 2010

Do you have any good bedtime stories?

I do not, unless maybe you read some of the past stories. Other than that I cannot think of anything right at the moment.

May 30, 2010 Gabriel Thomas Poulson 6th Birthday

Happy Birthday Gabe.

Is there anything you have now that you have kept from your childhood?

There are several things. I have an old upright Zenith broadband radio, my father's old .22 rifle, a couple of other old radio's that were antiques (actually I don't have those radio's anymore since no one thought that they were worth keeping around so I was talked into taking them to Deseret Industries.) I still have my father's old ammo box converted into a photo paper exposer. It was used to transfer the negative to the photo paper. I have a number of my old books as well and several of my model cars and trinkets from my youth. There were a lot of things that I loved as a child and have a great deal of meaning to me.

May 29, 2010

Tell about the closest friend you had during your childhood.

I had two close friends, one boy and one girl. You have heard a lot about both of them throughout these stories. The boy, Don Hansen and the girl, Marie Behrmann, your mother. I spent lot of time with Don hunting rabbits and doing scouting. Then I spent a lot of time with Marie as I had a chance to at church functions and school activities. I really didn't have a lot of free time since I had chores and work to do on the farm for a good share of each day when I wasn't in school. Don likes Marie as well so we spent a lot of time as a trio also much to Marie's dismay but she put up with him.

May 28, 2010

Did you play a musical instrument?

I played two instruments. The Alto Saxaphone and the Trumpet. Dad played the Sax for a lot of years in a dance band with his brother and sister. They played throughout a lot of the basin. Anyway I played dad's old Sax from 7th grade until 9th at which time I shifted to the trumpet for two years and back to the Saxaphone for my last two years. We played at the basketball games (Duchesne didn't have football) and then had special bands such as a dance band that we played with in competition and then played for the drama plays. It was really a lot of fun.

May 27, 2010

Share a special memory of Memorial Day.

I have a jumbled memory that is probably a composite of several trips to Holden. However I do remember going to see Uncle Mark and Uncle Hart that had fought in the Koren war. One of them had lost his legs and the other had also received many wounds that I do not remember what they were. Anyway we went to Holden where my father had spent the first four years of his life and where his parents were buried. While there tough I remember listening to Uncle Mark's stories and how fun he was to listen to that day. I also met some of my other relatives that knew their names but had never seen. It was a special experience.

May 26, 2010

Tell about Memorial Day traditions in your youth.

Grandma always had beautiful flowers by the time it was Memorial Day so we would go cut several bunches of them and take them to my Grandmother and Grandfather Poulson's graves in Holden. It was always a very long day and we would then go to Centerfield to do the graves there as well. In my teenage years I think it was getting harder on dad to travel so we didn't do it nearly as much as I had remembered earlier. There were a few family relatives in the Duchesne Cemetery that we would also take flowers to so that we could decorate those graves.