Nov 23, 2011

Christmas Tree Fund Raisers Verl's old yellow truck

For two years our scout troop decided to cut Christmas Trees for fund raisers for our summer camp. We got permits for cutting trees in Indian Canyon in a small canyon called Grassy Hollow. We got up early and drove up the canyon. Verl Behrmann was the father of one of the younger scouts Paul and also the father of the girl that I really liked in the ward. I decided to ride with him in his old yellow ford truck. There was one place going in where we had to cross an area on the road where water crossed the road and had formed a dangerous crossing. The road also took a fairly sharp turn o the left going up the canyon. It was pretty scary going over it but we made it OK and continued up the canyon. We spent most of the day looking for just the right trees, cutting them down and hauling them back to the trucks. We also ate our lunches up there and by the time we were ready to go home we were pretty tired. Well I rode down with Verl again and when we got to the icy crossing I really wasn’t to concerned since he had gotten over it that morning. I was soon to be proven quite wrong however because as we started t go across the truck started to slide to ward the downhill side of the ice and the creek below it. The edge dropped off fairly rapidly and so did the truck as it turned backward and slid into the hole perfectly filling it up with a yellow truck. Paul was sitting in the middle and as the truck came to a stop his head kept going backward and cracked the glass behind us. We only dropped the length of the truck but that was plenty. I do not remember who we rode with as we went back to town and I didn’t go back up the next day, Sunday, with Verl and the tow truck to get it out but it apparently went OK because the truck was still for quite a few more years. 

Nov 22, 2011

Teasing Leesa

 Children that are siblings can be very mean to each other just in the name of  fun or at least it starts out that way most times.  This particular incident I will never forget because I was just teasing Leesa but she certainly didn’t see it that way.

As a youth and the youngest son in the family, born between two girls, made me the one who had to do dishes when I would rather be working outside or so I thought. The older boys were always out doing the chores milking the cows and feeding them as well. There was also bringing the coal into the house and taking the clinkers from the furnace back out. It really sounded fun to a yong boy stuck doing dishes. Well one day my assignment was to clean off the table and Leesa was washing the dishes and Marsha drying them or at least that is the way I think it was. Anyway I don’t remember what led up to this but I really didn’t feel like doing dishes but I was going to make the best of it by teasing Leesa. It worked pretty well apparently because she had finally hit her limit and turned and threw the old ceramic sugar bowl lid at me. She is a pretty good shot because it hit me in the head and so I just slumped down to the floor and closed my eyes and played like I had been knocked out. Well Leesa, being the very tenderhearted sister that she was, went crazy thinking that she had really hurt me and maybe even killed me. I stayed there long enough for her to freak out really well and then I started laughing really hard. It became obvious really fast to her that I was OK but that then just made her mad because she had been so worried about me. I think I did end up with a pretty good goosebump to show for the fun. I don’t remember the punishment but I didn’t have to dishes again that I can remember and instead I began carrying buckets of hot water to the barn,washing the milking equipment,  milking cows even in the coldest of weather, hauling hay, feeding the cows and horses, hauling in 4 large buckets of coal at a time into the basement for the furnace, carrying out the buckets of clinkers and of course cutting, raking, baling and hauling the hay. Needless to say what I ended up doing alone for over four years after the boys were all gone  (missions, marriage) was a lot harder than doing the dishes. Maybe that was pretty good punishment after all. 

Nov 21, 2011

Steven Clement's visit to Duchesne, rock palyhouse, fence at church

 Steve Clements was one of the cousins on my mother’s side of the family that came to stay with us. He came one year when Clair and Stan were headed off to the Boy Scout Jamboree in Colorado that year. We had all gone down to the church in Duchesne to see them off and Steve had gotten up on the chain link fence and as he jumped off the fence caught him and ripped his pants wide open. He stayed right next to mom after that with his back next to her skirt so the rip wouldn’t show.  Later in that week we were playing in our playhouse that was ten foot by 8 ft and 8 foot tall. I can’t remember who set the trap but someone had put rocks above the door and so when Steve came out the rocks fell on his head. It was just not his lucky week. I also don’t remember him ever staying with us again.

Steve was from Mapleton and one of my favorite  vacations was to their home for a week while mom and dad went to Arizona with Grandpa and Grandma Hansen. I remember hearing the siren on the fire station going off everyday at precisely noon. We also rode our bikes along the canal road and as I have lived here I I have been able to figure out in my mind that we rode past the area where Marie was living at the time. I have always had a special place in my heart for Mapleton because of that trip. And the siren still goes off everyday at noon.

Nov 20, 2011

Roping a yearling calf in the barnyard

If you have ever done anything dumb  then you can relate to the story I have to tell here. I grew up on a farm and farm boys are supposed to be able to do all these things with animals like break horses and rope calves and throw them down on their side and tie their feet and well you know all those things that cowboys do sometime.

Well I was a cowboy. I had cowboy boots and cowboy shirts and even a cowboy hat. I had even roped things standing still such as posts and tree stumps. I cut, raked, baled and hauled hay sometimes completely by myself. I irrigated the fields and rode a horse down to the pasture to bring the cows into the barn where I would there milk them by hand. I would drink milk that had not been pasteurized nor homogenized. In fact there was a usual thing that happened at least once a week and usually every day where the cows would let go of their bowls while I was milking and specs of green stuff would splash into the bucket. I would pour all the milk into a cream separator and the only thing between it and the milk going into the fridge was a piece of specially made paper that would strain most of the stuff out of the milk. I loved eating cereal with straight thick cream from off the top of the bottles and having butter made from the rest of it for spreading on our bread. Then there was the buttermilk we made and well I didn’t drink much of it cause I didn’t like it but I did eat the homemade cottage cheese on lettuce with miracle whip on top of that. Yes I was truly a cowboy that did everything that cowboys did except smoke and drink, that was never a temptation. I had also killed and skinned our own beef with my father and walked past the stinky guts that rotted outside of the slaughter house. I even went rabbit hunting and shot at coyotes (never hit any that I know of) except for the rabbits I did hit plenty of them. I cleaned out the barn and killed chickens and turkeys for meat. Gathered and washed eggs and fed the chickens. Learned how to do animal sounds that would get any mother animal wondering if I had her offspring. Yes I was a cowboy or was I a farm boy.  Well in a ploy to be a real cowboy I took the rope out into the barn yard one afternoon before doing chores and roped one of the yearling calves. No I didn’t succeed the first second or even third time. It was a lot harder than I had always thought it would be for me. However I did finally succeed and then suddenly realized I had made a huge mistake. The calf was bigger than I had figured and the power in it’s legs much stronger than I could have imagined. I finally got it to go on one side of a post for the shed and then was able to finally get it tied down. It took me a lot longer to finally get the rope off of it’s neck but I did finally manage to accomplish it. I hadn’t ever thought about the fact that as a calf backs up the rope only gets tighter around it’s neck. Needless to say I never tried to be a cowboy again by roping another calf.

Nov 19, 2011

Chain Gang at The Football Game

I attended Snow College on a scholarship after graduation from high school in 1972. I enjoyed Snow and had a very good experience the two years that I was there earning my Associate of Applied Science degree in Electronic Technology.

I also enjoyed the sports but never participated in any of the intramurals. I did however have fun a couple of times as I was invited to be one of the members of the chain gang during the football games. I still really don’t understand why guys will beat themselves up like that but must admit it was fun being that close to the action on the sidelines. I did have to drop the chain and run several times to prevent getting smashed. The one thing that I remember really shocking me though was the foul language used on the sidelines by the opposing team and probably ours as well. (I didn’t hear theirs since the chain was on the opposing side of the field.) The worst however was when the BYU JV team played Snow. I didn’t even know BYU had a JV team but they did and their language was the worst. I lost a lot of respect for football players and BYU standards that day. But of course had to realize that this was only a very small percentage of the people attending BYU.