June 15, 2010

Relate your happiest memory of your youth.

Wow, how do you take so many happy memories and try to chose just one. I suppose that if I did try I would probably end up with a conglomeration of several as one.

There was one memory that might not be considered as extremely happy but a good memory none-the-less. It was one time when Lynn and I went to help Uncle Mont drive the sheep from the Indian Canyon ranch to town. I was on a horse the entire day and knew it had been a lot longer than I was used to doing. It was a lot of fun though and something that the older brothers had a lot of chances to do before I was old enough to do it. I think it was actually the last year that Mont ever moved the sheep down the canyon with horses.

June 14, 2010

Tell a childhood memory about a death that affected you.

The first one would have been President Kennedy’s murder in November of 1963. That affected us since he was our President and we didn’t really know him other than what we saw of him on national TV.

However the first one probably affected me the most was ‘”Nana’s” funeral in December 1963. She was my grandmother Poulson and I used to go to her place everyday after school until mom or dad would come to pick us up. I loved her and missed her an awful lot.

June 13, 2010

Tell another memory about a parade.

I will tell about parades here in Mapleton this time. They were much the same as those in Duchesne, again small Utah town with small Utah town traditions that persist to this day. The Mapleton ones were a little different however because they always ended at the city park and had activities all morning including breakfast, games and displays. There were also dances at night on the tennis court by the park with talent shows also held during the day. Loren won a bike at a raffle one year at that celebration.

June 12, 2010

If you were ever in a parade, tell about it.

Duchesne was a small Utah town with small Utah town customs and with that were traditions around some of the holidays. I remember a parade every year from the time I was very little and riding either in a small red flier wagon, on a trailor or on a bicycle. We always wore pioneer style clothing and it was always the primary that hosted the parade. Later during my high school years I would ride on a hay wagon with the school band. We didn’t have a marching band because we didn’t need one since the school was too small for a football team and marching bands were not used for basketball half time entertainment.

June 11, 2010

What was your first purchase using you own money?

Candy and or treats. I was young enough to not really earn enough money to purchase anything huge but I sure had enough to get candy on the way to primary after school let out. During the summers when I took summer school then I would stop and buy an ice cream cone or something to eat while riding home on my bike.

June 10, 2010

Tell about other paying jobs you had as a youth.

Actually I guess my first paying job had to have been the money I received from selling milk to neighbors. I sold about 8 gallons a week at 50 cents a gallon. Dad let me keep the money even though he did part of the milking as well. I used some of that money earned to help buy my first camera as well . mom and dad paid for most of it instead of paying for a senior trip.

June 9, 2010

What was your first job?

The first job where I was hired by someone was at the Texaco station at the west end of Duchesne. The owner was Carl Wilkerson and he became a very good friend by the end of that summer that I worked at his station. There were several instances where he stood behind me on decisions that I had made for the safety of his station even to the point of not standing behind his own son who was abut three years older. He had come in with a bunch of his friends drunk one night and tried to take the land water rover for a spin around the station so I called the police and then Carl. His son was pretty mad at me but his dad was madder with him since he should have known better.

How much did you get paid?

I don’t remember but it was probably around 3$ per hour.

June 8, 2010

Share a horse-riding story.

Blue and the ditch not jumped

As a youth growing up I was the one in the latter years after the rest of the boys had gone on missions that was left to help Dad with the chores. We lived on a medium sized farm but one that seemed very large to me at the time. Chores meant feeding the cows, horses, chickens and other farm animals that we might have. It also meant bringing the cows to the barn and milking one to three of them by hand each morning and night. Dad would always help me in the morning and I would usually have them done before he got home from work at night. Each day we would have to go and bring them in from the bottom parts of the farm. I quite often rode the horse but remember many times when dad and I would walk down and bring them home on foot. Well there was one particular summer day when I would have been better off having walked rather than riding our horse “Blue”. Blue and I were pretty good friends and I never had much trouble catching her to go for a ride and I enjoyed riding her. I was lazy though and would seldom take the time to put a saddle on her. I would just put the reins on her and then jump up on her and ride bareback. That worked a lot easier than putting on a saddle. (I would saddle her if I planned on taking a rather long ride up on the bench.) This particular night however it was a short ride to the bottom pasture where we would bring the cows back to the barn to milk them. We also had the irrigation water that night which was one of the reasons I chose to ride rather than walk. Well as I loped her down to the pasture we came near the ditch with all of the water. I expected for her to jump the ditch and readied myself for the jump instead she decided to lower her head and stop for a drink so I slid right over her head and landed in the water. I should have walked because I would have been drier in the long run.

June 7, 2010

Do you remember a favorite snack you liked to make?

My most favorite treat was to go home after school and to get the blender out. I would then go to the fruit room for a bottle of peaches or pears that we had canned at home from fruit that we had grown on the farm the year or two prior to that. I then opened the bottle, poured all of the contents into the blender, added some ice cream (if we had any), or cream and sugar if there was no ice cream, then blend it all together. It was an instant hit with the stomach and the after school treat need was filled.

June 6, 2010

Did you ever go on a snipe hunt?

One of the greater parts of camping that I never experienced until I was an adult and then only from watching others go on it. Snipe hunts were actually started by Baden Powell so it has been a part of scouting for many years but somehow it wasn't a part of my youth scouting. However the Snipe hunts that Baden started were never like the ones conducted in today's world. His were instructional activities conducted at night.