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.

June 5, 2010

Did you ever go on a campout? Tell about it.

I went on a lot of campouts during my youth. I did a lot with the scouts, a lot in the from yard or around the farm and even did one with a summer biology class where I saw my first flying squirrel. I slept on the ground many times and didn't seem to have much problem with it. I slept near lakes and rivers and had many wild animals come around during the night and really quite enjoyed all of those times. I did not however ever go on any campouts during the winter so when I was a scoutmaster and took the boys up on the bench above Mapleton you can only imagine the fear and trepidation that I was feeling as I slept in the cold for the first time. Well I have now spent many nights in the snow as well and love the fact that I know I can be comfortable any time of the year camping in any kind of weather. I may not enjoy some as well as others but I can do it.

June 4, 2010

Tell about hotdog or marshmallow roasting.

My father made an outdoor fireplace in our yard down in the area where our apple trees were planted. It was only about 150 feet from the house so it made carrying items of food easy to take to tables near that fireplace. We use to do a lot of summer meals at that fireplace and I have a lot of memories from roasting hotdogs and marshmallows to cooking hamburgers and dutch oven dinners in and around that fireplace. I remember one time when dad decided that he hadn't built it quite right since the fire was about 25 inches or so from the heavy metal plate that he had placed at the top to cook hamburgers and stakes. So he put a bunch of bricks in the bottom of it and then built the fire on top of them and it really worked a lot better. It was always quite cool to me how when the fire was burning all of the smoke would go out the chimney and curl it's way up into the air. Sometimes it didn't but most of the time it did. We held a lot of family, school and church parties around that little fireplace and it was really a lot of fun. That might even be what made Ruth decide to marry Clair because she came to meet the family and we had dinner by the fireplace and then Clair played the guitar and sang to us or rather sang to Ruth while we listened. He proposed after that sometime and she said yes so it had to be the romance fireplace. We later went hunting petrified wood and found two large 4 foot long stumps that we placed by the trunks of the apple trees upon which people could sit while eating. Then dad also made a large grape arbor and put tables inside of that where we could sit around them. It was really a lot of fun.

June 3, 2010

Did you ever sleep under the stars?

Many many times. Our favorite place to sleep during the summer was out under a large grape arbor that we had in the yard and we didn't use a tent. The only problem was usually just before dark when the mosquitoes were the worst. It was always cooler out there though than in the upstairs bedrooms where we slept so it was worth battling the bugs. We also lived out on the farm with no yard lights so the milky way was always so easy to see and the stars were so bright. It was always easy to see the big dipper that was my favorite constellation in the sky. It was also never a challenge to find the little dipper and the North Star. I have always loved sleeping out under the stars.

June 2, 2010

Describe a place you liked to be alone.

There were a number of places where I liked to go to be alone. One of them was on the back of a horse riding around the lower part of our farm and upon to the hill. I would sometimes also walk there as it took quite awhile to reach one of my favorite places. There was an old homestead up just below where the Duchesne airport was located. None of the buildings still stood but the foundation of the old home was still there. I don't know why it fascinated me so much but it was a place where I often went. Just below it and to the left was the start of a draw that had a lot of fossils in the rocks. It was fun to go there as well and search for new ones that I hadn't already located. That was also the area where I would go rabbit hunting with Don but the times I was there alone was a lot of fun.

June 1, 2010

Tell about a special person that lived in your town.

I changed the question a little to the word special from strange. The reason is because my small town was filled with special people and one of them was Sister Gilbert. She was a very special person and we loved her very much as she was always very kind to each of us. She and her husband ran the local Diary Freeze. There is a special part of this history growing up with her as one of my sunday school teachers. Here is the story.

Sister Gilbert/memorize Apostles

In Sunday School when I was somewhere around 8 years old I had a very special teacher by the name of Sister Gilbert. Her family owned the Dairy Queen in town and was one of my favorite places to visit since it was only a block and a half from Grandma Poulson’s. One day in class Sister Gilbert challenged us in the class to memorize the Presidency of the church, The Quorum of the12 Apostles, Church Patriarch, The Assistants quorum of the 12 Apostles and then the Presiding Bishopric of the church. She also challenged us to memorize our Stake Presidency and Patriarch. To the first person to pass it off she would give a silver dollar that she had gotten in her Dairy Queen business. A friend of mine by the name of Jon rode the same bus as I did each day to school so we decided to take her up on the challenge. I remember working really hard to memorize each name specifically correct. The day I went to church early to pass it off I found out that Jon had also gone early that day and was at that very moment in passing it off. Sister Gilbert gave me a chance also even though Jon had done it correctly and basically won the silver dollar. I also passed it off correctly so she gave me a silver dollar as well. I can’t list them at this time but there were names in that group such as “O Leslie Stone” and “Hugh B Brown” that seemed to stick with me quite easily through the years.

I have always treasured that Silver dollar and for years it was the only one that I had until one day I was doing chores and had climbed the hay stack to feed the cows./ Our baler made the bales round so the stack was a in huge triangle shape which was fun to slide down after pushing a bale off with which to feed the cows. This day however was a little different because as I slid down off the stack something hit me in the back. It was a silver dollar. We asked several possible people who might have lost it but never did find out who the dollar belonged to so I ended up putting it with my other silver dollar from Sister Gilbert. Years later after Lynn had gone on his mission we were going through my coin collection and I discovered that Lynn didn’t have a silver dollar so I gave the one to him that I had found on the haystack. I still have the other one to this day. It reminds me of the dedication of a Sunday school teacher who knew how to catch the interest of her students and help them to learn valuable lessons at the same time as they were in reality building testimonies of the Prophet and the Apostles.

May 31, 2010

Do you have any good bedtime stories?

I do not, unless maybe you read some of the past stories. Other than that I cannot think of anything right at the moment.