May 2, 2010

How much do you remember paying for an ice cream cone?

We always referred to them as Dime Cones or 10 cent cones. It was a real treat to get an ice cream cone but my favorite ones were the ones we got in Roosevelt after every visit to the dentist Dr Mantyla. He would always give us a free ice cream cone certificate after we had been to have our cavities filled. It seemed kind of strange to have sugar right after going to the dentist but it would keep bringing patients back to him. That wasn’t why he did it I am sure but does seem strange. They were always good to eat though.

May 3, 2010

Did you have a treehouse?

No, but I had plenty of trees to climb and play in as we had an apple orchard as part of our yard.

Here is a story about one of those trees.

Climbing the Green Ash tree in the yard.

Boys just love to climb and trees were made just for boys who love to climb no matter how dangerous that might be to the boy. Well we had many trees around our yard because mom liked trees or Nana did earlier that that. There were two trees though that were my favorite ones, a green ash tree and a Red Delicious apple tree. The apple tree because I could climb up it’s trunk and into the top branches when they were loaded with apples and then slide down the top of the branches to the ground, a round trip sort of thing. I di that countless times and maybe that was why it seemed to have grown so old when I returned from my mission. The green ash tree however was a different sort of challenge. It had a trunk that went up for several feet before the first branch so I had to shinny up that distance before being able to climb onto the branch and rest. It seemed like that branch was 100 feet off the ground because my first tow or three years attempting the climb always ended in failures due to the distance of that first limb. I did finally conquer the methods and talents and skills necessary and had many successful climbs. I returned a few years ago with these memories in my mind and I was shocked at how low that first branch was to the ground, well it must have dropped twenty feet through the years after I had stopped climbing, or else my perspective had changed as I grew taller. You can probably guess which was the real thing.

May 1, 2010

What were May Baskets made of and what did they contain?

Apparently this part of the tradition didn’t make it into Duchesne. I didn’t even know what they were but guessed that they were simple woven baskets full of flower blossoms. Well I went to the internet and there are some pretty simple ones and of course some very elaborate ones. However they do contain one common thread and that is to fill them with flower blossoms.

The following is a poem that I found about May Baskets.

May-Baskets

by Evaleen Stein

Let us take our baskets early 
 To the meadows green, 
While the wild-flowers still are pearly 
 With the dewdrops' sheen.

Fill them full of blossoms rosy, 
 Violets and gay 
Cowslips, every pretty posy 
 Welcoming the May.

Then our lovely loads we'll carry 
 Down the village street, 
On each door, with laughter merry, 
 Hang a basket sweet.

Hey-a-day-day! It is spring now, 
 Lazy folks, awake! 
See the pretty things we bring now 
 For the May-day's sake!

April 30, 2010

Tell about a May Day tradition.

There was only one May Day Tradition that I can recall. Every year the fourth grade class in our old elementary school would do the dance around the May Pole. Even though e were not old enough to participate we practiced every year from 1^st grade on until it was our turn in the fourth grade. It was a dance where your would hold a ribbon that was tied to the top of a tall pole and by weaving in and out of the other dancers you would weave the weave the ribbons into a beautiful circle around the pole. It was a pretty neat thing that at the time seemed to be pretty dumb. Others must have felt that way as well since the tradition as far as I know ended a couple years later when the new elementary was built and our old one torn down. Maybe they did it still after that but I cannot recall ever seeing it done again after that. I do not even know if any you ever had it occur in grade school with you.

April 29, 2010

What childhood fear do you remember?

It was a fear of bulls and was well earned. I remember so vividly going out to help dad kill a beef for our families meat for that year. I went after I had heard him fire the .22 rifle knowing that meant he had shot it and would soon be needing my help as we would drag it over to the slaughter house to skin it and prepare it for cutting and freezing. As I rounded the corner of the barn I was shocked to see dad clear the pole gate with very little effort even at his age of around 55 or so. (Now that I am 56 I can see that it wasn’t as big of a shock as I had thought it was and that I could even do it if I was given the motivation that he had.) The bull was right on his heals charging him at full speed. I was glad that he was as close to the gate as he was or I would have had a whole different scene in front of me. The .22 didn’t do what it was suppose to have and it was not because dad was a bad shot, it was because the skull was a lot thicker than imagined. It only took another three shots to finally bring it down. I had helped dad several times as we did that same thing every year but that was the only time that I remember a bull that was so hard to bring down. I was actually pretty glad to see him go because I could never trust him and hated being in the same field with him. I was glad when dad had chosen him for the year’s supply of meat.

April 28, 2010

Do you have a story about a big surprise?

I have to leave my childhood for this one since the biggest surprise of my life just took place a few weeks ago. Provo Craft was sold to Bank of America and we were told that we would receive a reward or bonus for our years of service to Provo Craft. Since I had been there longer than 5 years I received $15.000.00 dollars. It was taxable and we were told that if we wanted to change our deductible amount we would need to do it before that night. Well I didn’t find out for two days what my amount would be since I didn’t know about the 5 year part at that time so after taxes I netted $9,151.00. (A second big surprise but it was still a wonderful blessing.) It was followed that Friday by another surprise as I was asked to attend a party that was being hosted by the four original owners of Provo Craft and asked to take photographs for it. I was told they had money budgeted to pay for it but after what they had done earlier (they were the ones that gave the bonuses not Provo Craft) I told them I would do it for them at no charge that they had done enough all ready. Well that night as we arrived they were no where to be found then I discovered that they were in another room meeting with each person individually and handing out checks to everyone who had touched their lives due to Provo Craft association. There were employees that had been gone for PC for several years. It was a great reunion. I would tell the amount of the check but was asked to keep it a secret but they were true to their word in that “it would be worth our time” to attend the party. They touched our lives several times over and that night was a very special evening as we got to visit with many of our friends who had been a part of our Provo Craft experience.

April 27, 2010

The question for today was answered yesterday. It was what did I do with what I stoe and did I get caught. So I will just put in another story today.

This story has to do with Tithing Settlement and one very special one in my adulthood.

Some of you may have been present when it happened.

Tithing Settlement $4,000 due

It was this time of year in 1983 (Christmas Time) when we had only been in this home for about 6 months when it came time for Tithing Settlement. As I was preparing my records so that I could go to Tithing Settlement I was thinking for some reason about the things that Mom and Dad had always taught us about paying tithing. Mom always felt that we should learn to round up instead of just paying an exact tenth since that would help cover things that we might have forgotten to pay tithing on during the year such as gifts and other things. As I was thinking about the gifts part my mind suddenly remembered the parcel of land that had been deeded to us that year so that we could build our house. I was suddenly sick since I had always had tried to pay a full tithe. I remembered talking with a convert to the church in Texas while I was on my mission who was then a Seventy in the ward. He told me how that principle of the gospel had been hard for him to accept but once he did he had been blessed so many times for following it that he wanted us as missionaries to use him as an example when teaching investigators about how true the principle really was for him and would be for them. It has always interested me how some things seem to stick in your memory and that one had even though I had always believed in tithing and never had a problem with it in my life. Then as I struggled with this new problem the thought of that good Brother in the mission field came back to me with great strength and power. I knew I would need to pay that tithing but also new that it would be $4,000.00 and I didn’t have anywhere near that amount that I could pay that day. I really didn’t know what I would do but decided to tell the Bishop and see what he would suggest to me. So we went to tithing settlement and as the children finished declaring that they had paid a full tithe and Marie then did so as well then I told the Bishop that I could not declare it since we had forgotten to pay tithing on the land. He then asked it’s worth and I told him $40,000.00. He then suggested that I start next year and pay $400.00 per year for ten years until I had it paid. He stated that he felt the Lord would feel OK about that. So for ten years I faithfully paid an extra $40.00 per month for ten months of the year until the 10 years had passed. The interesting part of this story is that at the end of that 10 years Signetics shut down and my ability to pay the extra ended with the loss of that income and the lower earnings that I ended up making for the next ten years. At the end of that period I ended up going to work for Provo Craft and for the first time since Signetics shut down once again had a steady income.

April 26, 2010

Last early bird.

Did you ever take something that wasn’t yours?

Yes and got caught. It was from my family’s tithing bank. I didn’t think I was stealing because I replaced the money with a same amount. I was just collecting dimes so I would take the dimes and put nickles back instead of the same value. Mom however helped me to understand that it still wasn’t right without the other person’s permission. It was easy to do because we all had a separate small bank that was together with all of the other ones in the same box. I didn’t do it anymore after that. It is interesting to note however that the dimes that I did collect over several years I took into the bank for safe keeping not realizing that they would just put them back into circulation. When I went to get them they explained that I would have needed to put them into a safe deposit box. It was 1964 and that year the US government cheapened the dime by sand-witching them. The put zinc in the center then silver on the outside. The value of the dime and also quarter’s were far less after that and I wished many times over that I hadn’t taken those several rolls of dimes to the bank.

April 25, 2010

I am doing a couple early since I may not have internet access the next few days while on assignment in California.

Tell about the first time that you were ever behind the wheel of a car?

I think that this should have been stated as “behind the wheel of a vehicle”.

I drove the truck many times before I was legally able to drive simply because we used them in farming a lot. I was never out on public roads behind the wheel until I was 15 and in Driver’s Education but I drove a tractor and truck for several years prior to that from about the time that I was 8 or 9.

I do remember though in Driver’s ed going with Coach Josie in the cars from Duchesne to Altamont and Roosevelt. We mainly went to Roosevelt because it was large enough to give us a little feel for city driving. I had problems also regulating the speed up and down the hills. When driving the tractor it was mostly on level fields and up to the yard, not much need to constantly pushing and lifting your foot on and off the gas pedal. It didn’t take very long though to get use to it and I didn’t go home crying as Leesa had after her experience driving with Josie. She was a year ahead of me and he use to make her so scared of driving that she would come home crying and that made me a little nervous to do it a year later but my previous experience behind the wheel made it a lot easier for me.

April 24, 2010

I am doing a couple early since I may not have internet access the next few days while on assignment in California.

Where were your best hide-and-seek places?

Around the side of the lawn behind the hedge which hid the clothesline from plain sight and around the back side of the house. We played what are now referred to as night games very often during the summer months. We would wait until it got dark and although we had different names for different variations of the game it was pretty much hide and seek. The variations were “Kick the Can” where you had to get back to the starting point and kick a can that was sitting there before you got touched by the person that was it. Then there was the game of “No bears are out Tonight” which was one that generally was a bit more scary since we really did have bears out there and pretending they were there was almost too much. Again you had to get back to the starting point before the bear touched you and you then also became a bear until only one person was left. The reason I liked the back of the house so much though was because it took long enough to get around it without making noise that you usually won by default, everyone else was captured by the time you made it around without making any noise. Plus you were coming back from a totally different side from where they heard you run off from.