Oct 16, 2011

Happy Birthday !!!! HAYDEN !!!!! #32

Cabinet Making at Anderson’s Cabinet and Mantel.

Hayden returned home from his mission in December of 2000. Prior to going on his mission there was a young lady that was friends to Tia that had a very strong attraction to Hayden and had let him know before and during the time he was serving. So after he had come home she of course with  her family came to see Hayden the day that he gave his Homecoming address. A couple weeks later as we discussed things that he might do for work Anderson’s name came up so he and I went down to see Bret, Rachel’s father and owner of the cabinet shop. I hadn’t really had any steady work either and was not making enough from my photography to make ends meet so when visiting with Bret he decided to ask me if I could work for him. He needed a finish carpenter and asked if I had ever done anything like that. Well I had but it had been years before in High School shop class and also the tinkering that I did with my Shopsmith at home.  He had me watch him spray a cabinet and then asked me to do it also. Well needless to say things didn’t go as we had planned that day and I walked out of there with a new part time job and Hayden without one.

I worked for Bret for three years after that until I was forced to go to another job since the part time work wasn’t even enough to keep us on top. However while there I learned a lot of good skills that I have never regretted having learned. There are numerous stories that I will share in more detail later but a short list of things that I learned were not only to spray varnish cabinets but also how to sand them and enjoy it. I hated the sanding part of the jobs in High School but luckily for me the years between High School and working for Bret had allowed for many new tools to be developed and the use of such tools has made sanding a much easier job. I also learned how to work with an alcoholic who at times would yell at me to go home because he could do what needed done and I should be home with my family. I learned to love him and really enjoyed working with him when he was sober. He was a master craftsman when not on  the juice and I learned a lot of skills from him. I learned how to mix paints to come up with special color mixes for very picky ladies building new homes. I learned how to design, make, finish and install cabinets. I only regret not having completed being able to make a set of cabinets that I had designed for my den. I did many of the office duties such as keeping track and submitting the time sheets for the entire shop. (Six employees at one point in time.) Ordering the shop supplies became one of my regular duties.  I learned how to strip old cabinets and refinish them. (Now that was one part I really didn’t enjoy.) And I even learned how to communicate with Mexicans who knew no English while I knew very little Spanish. They became very good friends however and I miss working them. I had even discussed with them the possibility of traveling with them to their home in Mexico but was never able to afford to do it.

I enjoyed my few years with Bret and learning how to do cabinetry work.

Oct 15, 2011

Ben and Cory mix-up Dad’s

When we were young we would often, during the summer, go swimming in the canal that ran above the yard past our home in Duchesne.  As I started to get interested in photography I took pictures of various things around the yard, which of course included events such as the swimming hole.  (It was a good thing I didn’t do it when I was younger because the swimming hole use to be behind the slaughter house and that’s where dad would take us after we had been hauling hay so that we could all take a skinny dip in the canal to get cleaned off of the hay leaves and sweat. And when I say skinny dip I mean all of it off for all of us.) Anyway to get to the point of this story of boy’s mixing us up I am sharing this part of the story because they were not the first to do it. In one of the pictures of the swimming events I had sneaked up to the bank so Lynn and Leesa could not see me (or I would have gotten wet) and took a picture of Lynn and Leesa splashing each other as they were in the water. Several years later as we were looking at some of the slides I had taken we happened upon that one and everyone thought it was Leesa and I in the canal playing but I knew better and had to explain that it was Lynn because the picture was part of my collection of pictures that I had taken during those teen years. Well later after several years and we Lynn and I had both married and we had both had children there were two separate occasions where Cory and Ben had mixed us up as dad’s. I remember the one best where Lynn and I were standing inside a new garage that Harold Gividen (Lynn’s father-in-law) had recently been building. We were talking about the shop area and as we were standing there Cory came running through the door into the area where we were and came up to me and grabbed me around the legs and then looked up into my face. It was then very obvious that he wasn’t sure he had made the right connection and as he looked at both Lynn and I there was some puzzlement in his face and he couldn’t be sure which one was dad. He did finally decide a few seconds later that he indeed was hugging the wrong dad.

Lynn and I looked a lot like each other and there have been numerous occasions through out my married life where I knew instantly here in Utah county who had attended one of Lynn’s classes at Snow. They would look at me trying to get the courage to ask if I had a brother at Snow since I looked so much like one of their professors that they had been in class with while attending there. I have even been asked the same question when shopping in stores in Ephriam. I can always tell when a checker at local stores ahs attended his class because when they would see the name on my checks they were a little less hesitant to ask.  It has actually been quite fun for me at times as I would question them as to where Snow College was or where Ephraim was located so that they would almost become embarrassed by having even asked the question.

Lynn has been the one that I have always reminded people of when they would meet me and already knew him. However now as I am getting further along in years I have hed people ask if I am related to Stan or Clair because they could see such strong characteristics in me that would remind them of my brothers. And now even I will often hear myself speaking just like them or doing things just like them. I would think it was because I grew up as the youngest of the brothers and would most likely have mimicked them as I saw what they would do but many of the things that I do now are things that I cannot ever remember seeing them do since I am sure they are traits that they have even developed after having left home. They have even commented that they also have found themselves sounding like me and noticing similarities that are so close to each of us. Well there may be some things that you learn as children in families but I am starting to realize just how much we really do learn from our siblings and I am ever so thankful for such wonderful role model as my brothers have been for me.

Oct 14, 2011

American TV: Between it and Signetics

After the day that I quit American Television Service and spent the remainder of the morning and into the afternoon walking home there was a period of two months that I was without employment.  We took a family vacation with Marie’s family to Colorado to Verl’s home area and on the way spent a little time stopping to see some of the wonders of nature that exist in Utah. I have pictures of Jeff and Ben in holes of rocks and to this day do not remember where we saw them other than it was between here and Colorado. That vacation was only one week of the approximately two months that I was unemployed. Verl let us go rent free until I was again employed and we used the savings we had put away to pay for bill and food during that time. I will always appreciate Verl for giving us the help. My mother also helped as she could with some money for our needs.

I had applied at the Employment Office in Provo and had to send in weekly surveys stating where and when I had applied for jobs and what I had done during the week. It was a terribly difficult thing for me to do since I had always been employed and didn’t like the fact that the government didn’t trust me, but I knew it wasn’t the government at fault just the freeloaders of the past and present who proved that the government had to ask those questions.

I applied finally at Signetics and in the interview with Aagie Olsen, the Maintenance Supervisor, I was asked a number of questions that I felt I had really bombed out on since it had been three years since I graduated in Electronics from Snow College. Aagie then asked if I had any questions and when I asked about what type of equipment that they repair I was simply told: “Nothing you have ever seen before.” He was right I had never seen anything like them, evaporators, masking machines, furnaces, and later Ion Implanters and Series 10 Plasma machines. I have also always appreciated Aagie who gave me a chance to work probably based more on my willingness to work than on my knowledge of electronics. I didn’t realize it at the time but when he said “we will train you on the equipment” it meant more than just doing electronic repair but would also include drafting, plumbing, carpentry, janitorial labor, supervising, design, and a host of other jobs that just don’t get covered in a two or even four year degree in college. Life is like that though, you train in a little area and then get a job where you become trained on what you really have to do on that job and it isn’t ever just one thing or at least hasn’t been in any of my employment histories. 

Oct 13, 2011

American TV: antenna and lightning don't mix

Just after getting married Marie and I moved into her father’s home in Mapleton. I then began looking for work and interviewed with several places in Orem and Provo. Carl Haupt of American TV hired me in the summer of 1975 and began training me on various parts of the television repair industry. He once told me he had hired me not because of my electronics training as much as the fact that I had been raised on a farm and probably knew how to work.

He trained me specifically to be able to install antenna’s for TV’s. I learned how to install them in attics even though they lost a lot of reception inside an attic. I learned how to install them using large poles on top of a roof.  I learned how to attach them to chimneys and other things that would be found on the top or near the top of a building and then how to get the most gain from the antenna by directing it toward the nearest TV tower.

I had installed them on a number of building and inside many attics before actually experiencing the following two events.

The first was about a time I had gone to install an antenna on a roof near Park City, Utah. I was by myself on TV calls that day up in Heber and Park City. I had a call to go to a home near Park City that should have had good reception but didn’t. Usually that meant nothing was wrong with the TV but that there would be something wrong with the antenna. It was as I had usually discovered up in that area of Utah in that the antenna which the owner had installed was designed for low band reception known as VHS but the transmitting towers in that area only transmitted UHS signals. I then had to remove from a trailer home the antenna was designed for VHS reception and replace it with a UHS antenna. The only catch to this otherwise routine job was that as I started to do it and had placed my ladder against the metal exterior of the trailer home I noticed an electrical storm approaching from across the valley. I figured that I had plenty of time since it seemed to be several miles away. I worked quickly but soon found that it was a very fast approaching electrical storm. I barely completed the job and got the ladder back onto the truck before lightening was sticking on a few seconds away from the home. I felt somewhat (but not totally) better when I was able to get into the truck as the storm moved quickly past me and further up the valley. From that time forth when I was putting up antennas I always made sure it was a good day or I rescheduled it for another time.

The second incident with antenna installation that I will write about here concerned an installation inside an attic. I had several interesting experiences that I believe I have written about before but this one was one where I learned a valuable lesson about myself and how I truly feel about close walls and heat. Carl and I were working on a motel in Heber that was only one story tall but built on a piece of property that required that the rooms be built on a different level of ground every couple of rooms. So the attic had about a foot and a half of clearance until I would get to where the new level of room and been started and then I had basically nine or so inches of room to squeeze through into the next section of attic. I was a lot smaller than Carl so was elected to be the one in the attic to pull the cable from room to room until we were able to repair the room that had lost reception. As I recall it was about 11 or 12 rooms from the end of the building where I had to go in to gain access to the attic. It was also an early summer day and the weather was very clear making the area in the attic somewhat hot by the time I was able to complete the job. We had started early but after driving to Heber from Orem a good share of the cool part of the day was fleeting quickly.  I went into the attic which was full of itchy insulation made from fiberglass that had been blown into the attic. This required that I also wear a respirator to protect my lungs which only made the process a lot hotter since I was re-breathing my own hot air most of the time. I made it with relative ease to the room where I had to drill a hole in the header of the wall and  lower the cable down into the wall. It took Carl a few minutes to fish the cable from the wall and each passing minute I found myself getting more and more anxious to retreat from that very hot attic. I was finally able to turn around and start to go out and by then was almost to the point of just knocking a hole in the ceiling of one of the rooms to allow me to get out. I also seemed to be getting stuck a lot more as I pushed myself, my tools belt and the drill between the narrow opening at the end of each of the rooms where the attic level was shifted. That 9 inch hole felt little larger than 3 inches as I would look at them before trying to pass through. There was only one thing that kept me going though and that was the knowledge that I had been through that spot once already and knew I could at least fit through it again. I was nearly totally exhausted as I climbed into the cool fresh outside air and didn’t go back in the attic again. I wasn’t sure I could have even forced myself into the situation again since I knew what it was now like.  I found myself however facing some of those same fears years later as I took my children into a cave called the Nutty Putty cave west of Utah Lake. I was scared again and knew that even though I had my children with me there was a limit to just how small the opening around me would be able to get before I would halt the activity and return to safety of the fresh air outside. I don’t think my children ever realized my dilemma but they will probably recall upon reading this story that I never took them a second time to that cave.

Oct 12, 2011

Ten years without Health Insurance 1995-2004

For the first three years of our marriage we had some health insurance coverage that we bought since the place I worked did not provide insurance. If I remember correctly it only cost around $600 to have Ben and by the time we had Brittany it was several thousand. When I went to work at Signetics the coverage was excellent and covered probably all but about $600 of the cost for Briittany. I am roughly remembering these figures and could be off by some degree. The whole point of it is though is that we had excellent coverage while I was employed by Signetics and when they shut down in 1993 it would have cost me nearly $800 a month to stay with their medical plan. We found a new plan with IHC but it still cost around $400 a month and as I went from working a $12.00 an hour job to $0 for a time I finally had to drop all health insurance. We then went from 1995 to 2004 without any insurance. This was the period of time that we sent three of our four sons into the mission field and because of the Church Insurance were able to get coverage for them in the field. But at home it was a bit different story. This was a period of our marriage when we recognized some of the Lord’s greatest blessings in our behalf. Both Jeff and Hayden had to have surgery on their ankles, Jeff was paralyzed for a short time due to a soccer accident, Loren was diagnosed with Diabetes and not a whole lot else. In other words we were really blessed since all of the children played soccer during this time and could have sustained major injuries. Then when it was time to do the surgeries on the ankles it was performed by the father of one of the other soccer teammates and he didn’t charge us anything. We had some cost with the anethiesist but it was still less than $1500.00. When Loren was diagnosed with diabetes however we saw blessings come in another way in that in 2 days we were able to secure health coverage that would cover his hospital stay in the ICU. I look back and think about all that could have happened and realize that when the Lord promises to open the windows of Heaven he does it in ways that we usually don’t recognize that are not always tied directly to money but rather are tied directly to good health and welfare for our families. He has certainly blessed us through the years and this particular set of years it becomes very apparent that there are other ways that He does it for us.