Oct. 9, 2011

Cub Scouting with Burt Danenburg/button

Scouting has been a major part of my life and especially in my adulthood. It seems as though this was a direct result of the scripture that says to raise a child in the way he should go when he is young and when he is old he will not depart from it.  I was raised in somewhat of a scouting environment. My grandfather Hansen and my own father were active as an adult scouters and even presented awards for the activity as scouters. Grandpa was presented the Silver Beaver award in 1940 and I received the Silver Beaver award in 1992. My main activity however started at the age of eight as a new Bobcat Scout in Cub Scouting. In our District at that time we would often hold huge pack meetings where every cub scout unit in the district would come to the stake center and be a part of the activity. It was a huge affair each time and I quickly learned that I had better shine my shoes and wear my complete uniform. We had inspections each time where the District Scout Executive would  have us all line up as dens in our packs around the cultural hall prior to any activities and he would then personally conduct the inspections.

Well this one meeting I was particularly aware of how shined my shoes would have to be and spent over an hour shining them as I got ready for pack meeting that night. I can still feel the anticipation that I felt as I went to the church and met with my friends in the den and pack. We lined up and as I remember I was lined up with my den and my parents were right there behind me. My mother and father were good friends with the District Scouting people as I remember and we often had parties at our home to which they were always invited. My Danenburg was no different and I am sure the event that took place that night for me may have even been discussed with them prior to the event. I was smartly standing at attention as he came down the row. My shoes were very shiny and I felt everything was in top shape for the inspection.  Was I ever wrong!  I was indeed pretty ready but I didn’t have one of the buttons on my shirt buttoned and what came next I really wasn’t ready for at all. As Mr. Danenburg  approached me I remember the anticipation and as he inspected me every thing was going well until he saw that button. Oh yes the shoes were shined and he had noticed so I was glad that I had spent the time on them but that button was of such small significance that it never even crossed my mind to need to button it. I still remember how he took the button in his big hand (He was a huge man and probably weighed 300 pounds as far as I could tell at that age and to look up into his face required my neck to bend clear back to my shoulders as far as it could, I was also sure he was no less that 6 foot 3 inches tall.  Anyway he took that button in his hand and said to me. Do you want this button? I replied “Yes” and t that moment he took out his pocket knife and quickly removed it from my shirt and handed it to me. I was shocked and as I turned and looked at mom he then said to me, “Well you can have it if you will sew it back on when you get home.” And then I am sure he must have winked at my mom as he said; “And don’t let your mother do it for you.” I don’t remember any of the rest of the activities that night or even if our pack won an award for the inspection but I have never forgotten to button the pockets on my shirt ever since. I am glad now for the training he gave to me in that one little moment of my youth and have always been very careful to point out to my scouts the need to always look sharp when wearing the uniform, but as of yet, I have never cut off one of their buttons.

Oct 8, 2011

Creamed Cookies   Childhood

This is one of those stories that will have to be verified by my mother’s journal. I don’t remember my age but do remember that Clair quite often would cook different things after he got home from school. He was the family bread maker for most of his teenage years. (By bread maker I mean not earning money for the family but literally making bread after school each week for the family to eat.)  That particular job later fell to me as Clair went on his mission.  I did it for the family from about age 12 to 17. I must admit that toward the end of high school I didn’t do it very well since activities with school seemed to take over my life. I was also the main person doing chores in the evening and would generally have them done by the time Dad got home from work to help so that took the time I used to make bread as well. Anyway the reason for that little entrance into this story was to explain how I also picked up the bug to cook from Clair.

I loved coming home and watching him make cookies and then especially to eat them later. So when I was still under 10 years of age I began cooking as well. This particular event however shows how the recipe books can sometimes be very misleading to young chefs. I was making sugar cookies as I remember and had most of the ingredients into the batter when the recipe said to cream the dough. I looked at the recipe for several minutes but could not find anywhere that it said how much cream to use. I was very familiar with cream because I loved to scrape it from the top of the milk and pour it over my cereal for breakfast. It was just something that we always had since we raised and milked our own dairy cattle. But that recipe just didn’t give any indication of how much cream so I finally just added a cup since the recipe seemed to call for round numbers of ingredients like a cup of milk or half cup of water etc. It seemed to be very runny at that point and I really don’t remember what I did as far as trying to get it more stiff and I may not have done anything since I do remember the cookies were very flat and all together as one large cookie when I pulled them from the oven.  Later when mother got home from school she explained that creaming cookies meant to mix the ingredients all together into a smooth mixture.

Well, how was I to know?

Oct. 7, 2011

Accident : On the way to a family Dinner

In a bid to keep the family close after our three oldest boys were married we decided to have dinner each Fast Sunday at one of our homes. We rotated homes as best as we could and on this particular day it was to be held at Ben’s home in Orem.

 For some reason that I don’t now remember we had one of Ben’s cars here in Mapleton so we decided to have Tia and Loren drive two separate vehicles and Marie and I would follow in the third, our family car given to us by Dave Nemelka a coupe years earlier. Our car was a Lincoln Continental and we had been having trouble with it for several months with it overheating and leaving us stranded. We had taken into the dealer several times, had the engine replaced after the radiator had blown on it when we were traveling to Mesa to photograph a wedding. We had not been able to depend on it after the repairs since that time. Tia and Loren left several minutes before we did and Marie and I left without Brittany since she was sick that day.

As Marie and I were traveling west out of Springville we got a call from Tia that Loren had been in an accident near 8^th North in Orem. She couldn’t tell if he had been hurt since he had gone down into the median and she was on the right side of the road. The traffic was very heavy due to it being the weekend after Thanksgiving and everyone was traveling home from vacations.  I, of course was worried about Loren and wanted to get there as soon as I could and the traffic seemed to be willing to let me since everyone was going in excess of 80 miles per hour.

As we approached Orem Ben called and I told him about Loren and then as we were getting close to 1300 south in Orem I was still on the phone with him and suddenly as we went under the overpass the traffic was coming to a rapid halt. I barely had time to react and avoid missing the car in front of me but the car behind me did not react and slammed into the back of our car and then pushed me into the car ahead of me. We made a little dimple in his bumper where apparently a rock was caught between our bumpers. However the car behind was badly wrecked and the air bags had deployed and injured the lady in the passenger side of the vehicle. I had mentioned to Ben just before it happened “and we are going to be in one too.” I had no more than gotten that out before the wreck occurred and he could hear it over the phone.

He and Jeff then jumped into a car and came down to see what they could do to help us. We emptied everything from the trunk of the car which just didn’t happen to have my camera’s in it since I had put them into the backseat as Brittany had not come with us and it was therefore open. Had they been in the trunk I am sure to this day that they would have been destroyed as well as the car, which was totaled. We rode with Ben and Jeff after completing all of the reports with the Highway Patrolman. (He just happened to be one of my former Timberline Staff members and we enjoyed talking for the few seconds that we had in between business.) The Highway patrol was busy as there was the accident with Loren, our accident and the three others within a few minutes after that a little further down the freeway on both sides of the road.  We had found out from Ben and Jeff that Loren was OK and the car would have been since ha had barely hit the truck in front of him as he headed for the median. Two inches and he would have cleared it. It did some damage to the Saturn but due to the construction method of those cars it only shattered the front right fender and came to about $500 dollars of damage.

It turns out that Tia would also have been in the middle of it except she had just changed lanes and Loren was trying to when the vehicle ahead began stopping leaving him only enough time to move to the median to prevent getting hit from behind.

We had an interesting family, late, family dinner that night at Ben’s. He also ended up having to take us home since we were unable to get a rental car until about three days later. The van served as our vehicle for the next few days.

Jeff had also been doing some message therapy work on an insurance adjuster prior to the accident and had explained how he always felt bad because he would see people always getting the worst settlement from their insurance simply because they didn’t know any better. He had explained to Jeff the steps to getting more and when it came time for us to replace the Lincoln we had been offered a little over $4,000.00 for it when it would take nearly $6,000.00 to replace it with a comparable vehicle. As it turned out we were given a little over $7,000.00 and were able to buy our Toyota Camry for about the same amount. I knew that the Lord and been watching over us since there were so many other possibilities of what could have happened to Tia, Loren, the camera’s and even Marie and I and Brittany had she not been sick. It took four months to get a replacement car

And the insurance covered a rental car for that period of time as well.  Plus due to the condition of the Lincoln we had also had several occasions to rent cars and drive them long distances which helped us to know the type of car we would want in the price range that we could afford at that time. We were also relieved to actually no longer have the Lincoln problems that had been plaguing us for the past year and a half prior to the accident. The Lord truly was watching over us in more ways that just preventing injuries to us and other family members.

Oct 6, 2011

With Clair: 2 yr old drowned in canal

When Clair worked for the State of Utah as a Highway Patrolman I enjoyed going with him as often as occasion would permit. That didn’t happen much since our visits to Duchesne were often very few a year when the children were young.

I remember one occasion though when I went with him on a search and rescue as it were for the Highway patrol. He had been called and told a young two year old was missing in Fruitland. It was Dan Young’s grandson. We left Duchesne and traveled to Fruitland as Clair told me that these kind of calls were often not the best to have to go on since they often ended with a great tragedy to the families involved. We got to the home of Dean some time after other members of the Sheriff’s dept and other law enforcement agencies had started looking.  We looked at Dean’s place and saw that the canal in front of his yard just a few feet from the home was full of water. It was irrigation season and he had the water that week. We looked around the canal for signs but didn’t see anything and decided to go out to where the rest of the search team had gone so far. We followed the canal until it emptied into a ditch that was going onto one of the fields. We had no sooner arrived than a member of the team reported that he had found the child in one of the head gates that let water out onto the field. He had drowned and apparently been gone for some time as they were not able to revive him.

They carried him back to the home and there allowed the mother to take the child in her arms and look at him for the last time on earth. She would not let go of him and was taken to Roosevelt to the hospital with him in her arms. Clair explained to me on the way home that it is a mistake to give the child to the mother since the grief is so great that they can’t part with them but that at some point of time it has to be done and is usually better before they get to hold the child after it has died. I was thankful that I had never had to bear that kind of grief even though my testimony of life after death is very strong and I know that the child is forever going to be with Heavenly Father in His Kingdom because he passed form this life before the age of accountability.

I have often thought of the mother though and realized that she will blame herself for many years for having let the child out of her sight for those few seconds that it took for his curiosity to put him in danger of the canal. I have also thought each time though about the fact that we can never always prevent an accident and have to have the faith that no matter the outcome our Heavenly Father is able to know what is happening and will take care of the child whether it be in life or in death for He is the child’s Father as well and has a greater love for him than even we can understand at this time.

Oct 5, 2011

American TV: jumped from the roof of the house

I had a number of different experiences as a Television Repairman.  Some of then fairly normal while some of them not fairly normal. There were many potential ones as well that I only worried might happen since I often would have to carry large TV sets from a home to the van and later back into the home. (Those were the sets that required repair in the shop.) 

This particular time though had to do with the more dangerous part of the job since an antenna repairs always required myself to be either on a roof or in an attic where several different dangers were always present. This time I was repairing an antenna with the help of another technician. We had both climbed up onto the roof and he had gone first. It was in the early winter and there was some snow on the roof which didn’t seem to present to bad of a problem as he was able to fairly easily retain his footing. That is until I was on the roof below him. I had just taken a couple of steps up when he started a rather quick decent down the roof and was headed straight for me.  I knew that if he hit me we would both land on the ground and I would most likely be on the bottom. Since I had no time to step onto the ladder I just simply turned and jumped as far out onto the lawn as I could so that I wouldn’t be under him when he landed. I don’t remember where he hit or how he landed since my mind was fully engrossed in my own decent. I do remember that it was luckily an older home and thus quite small so the roof to the ground distance was only a little over 9 feet or so.  Neither of us were hurt in the fall and we did return to the roof and make the repairs but as I remember we also tied ropes over the roof to us so that we had something to steady us as we climbed and worked.