Oct 21, 2011

Meeting the son, of a scouting friend, at BYU


I had an interesting time serving at BYU for the years from 2006 to 2009 in a Bishopric of the 166th Ward. During that time was able to get to know a number of wonderful youth and leaders. I would always try to be friendly and get to know each of them and their friends. One Sunday was particularly interesting as I was doing the tithing following our main church meetings I had need to ask Bishop some particular questions so I went to the 7th floor where his office was located to ask him the questions.
There were tow of our Sisters sitting there waiting for their turn for an interview and with one of them an obvious boy friend or wanna-be boyfriend I wasn’t really certain. Anyway we had been talking and I discovered that the young man was from Highland and so we talked about friends that I had who were also from Highland, Utah. One of my dear scouting friends was from there. Ren Smith was blind and had been involved in scouting the entire time that I had known him. I had seen him at various council functions and gotten to know him through those meetings. His Brother, Fred, and I had also served with Doug Binks on a Timberline course as assistant scoutmasters together for a couple of years. Ren later asked me to serve with him on a scout woodbadge course as a coach counselor in 1999. He was a Buffalo from woodbadge and so was I which even made it more fun to serve with him and he also broke protocol and asked me to serve a CC to the Buffalo Patrol. I was more than excited to do so. We had a great course and I got to love each of the men in the patrol. There were 12 Buffalo in that course that year as several of the staff were also from the Buffalo patrol of years past.
Well back to the story of this young man. We found out that we both had scouting connections with Ren through scouting and he made the comment that his dad had gone through woodbadge with Ren as the Scoutmaster. Well I quickly put two and two together and figured out that his father had been at that woodbadge course where I served with Ren. I knew that men were only allowed to be a woodbadge Scoutmaster one time so I had to have been there with his father. Then when I told the young man that I had been there and served as the CC for the Buffalo patrol he told me that his father had been a member of that patrol. I asked his fathers name and sure enough he had been one of my patrol. I then remembered a story that his father had told me and related it to him and he confirmed that indeed that had happened to them, The story was of a night when his father awoke to see a young lady standing next to his bed near where he was sleeping. She was dressed in white and simply stood there looking at him for a few moments before leaving. It had wakened him so much that he laid there wondering why she had been there and then decided to check the house. He went down to the kitchen and found the dishwasher had stuck in the dry mode and was so hot that he couldn’t touch it. He quickly turned off the breaker and let it cool down. He related to me that he was sure that had he not found it at that time that there would have been a fire shortly after since the door was so hot that he couldn’t touch it and that the counter was even getting very hot. He was sure that the young lady had been sent to warn him of the danger that he and his family were in at that time. Well the young man then related to me that his sister had also been visited by a man in much the same way but they never did discover why he had been there. It was not the same day as the visit to her father but later.
Well the young man called his father as we talked and asked if he knew a Kent Poulson and he said that he had known me at woodbadge and was his Coach Counselor. The world is so small at times.

Oct 20, 2011

Furnace treachery or Mapleton White Church Boiler about to blow it’s top.

I was recently reminded about this incident as I was talking to a fellow who repairs LDS church buildings. We were discussing the old white church in Mapleton where my wife, family and I had spent many years attending church. I had served as an Elders Quorum counselor, Bishops Executive secretary, 1st and 2nd counselor in bishoprics and as Primary teacher of the 8 year olds, Webelos leader, Cubmaster and Scoutmaster.
The story that I was reminded of was when I was actually serving the second time as a Counselor in the 1st ward Bishopric. (Well actually the first time as counselor it was in the 4th Ward Bishopric but in the same building.) Anyway we met at a very early hour of 6:30 A.M. in the south east corner of the building. One wintery morning we were meeting in Bishopric Meeting and were surrounded by a most unusual smell. There were tow other Bishoprics in the same building and after noticing the smell were suddenly alerted by a loud knock on the door. The Bishopric meeting nearest to the boiler room were there to tell us that we needed to evacuate quickly as the furnace was malfunctioning. We quickly gathered up our things and went outside. As the maintenance men got there and went into the furnace room they found that the boiler was extremely hot and almost at the pressure where it would explode. It would have done so in only a few minutes after their arrival had the not been able to turn it off and allow it to cool down. We didn’t hold church that day and in fact for the next couple of months through January and February we met in the Elementary school across the street. The furnace was completely replaced and much of the distribution system for the heat had to be changed. It was another reminder of how the Lord protects his Servants as they serve him diligently. Had the boiler exploded it most likely would have injured if not killed the Bishopric meeting nearest the Boiler Room and according to local experts would have blown a hole in the church that would most likely have extended through all three levels above the boiler room. That is a beautiful old church with a lot of special history including the baptismal font located in one of the basements that as long as I have been there has never been used.

Oct 19, 2011

Deer hunting on Maple Mountain by myself

As a young boy I always watched as my older brothers would leave with my dad for the ranch in Indian Canyon. It would be an October evening and they were headed off for the deer hunt. They would go to the ranch cabin and stay overnight then leave early the next morning on horseback and climb the hills above the cabin where the hunt would begin. I was not yet 8 years old but never the less very anxious for my turn to join with the others. Well it happened after I turned 8 and dad said I could go that night. I remember not sleeping real well because we were on the cabin floor and I was just too excited to sleep anyway. It was a long time before 5 A.M. rolled around and everyone started getting up, fixing and eating breakfast and getting the horses ready for the ride.

We left before it got light and started across the old canyon road and up the canyon across form the cabin. I was on the back of the horse with my dad and it was pretty hard staying on that big old horse as it climbed up the hill and followed the others who in the lead. It seemed like it was forever before the sun came up and everyone started to head just a little different direction to the heads of the canyons where the deer would be walking back form the fields into the hills. It was actually a pretty boring day and dad and I didn’t see any deer. We could hear shooting but that was not anywhere around us. Finally it was time for lunch and dad got off of the horse again as he had many times that morning and found an old tree to sit under while we ate our lunch. It just happened to be a Pinion tree and so I was content just getting the pine nuts out of the cones and eating them. I don’t remember Dad and I getting a deer that day even though others did. I am not really sure that it mattered to dad that we didn’t either since he seemed to just enjoy the day in the mountains, well foot hills around the ranch where he had spent so much of his life. Well this was the first of a lot of deer hunts to come in the future. I would continue to go deer hunting for the rest of my growing years until I left for my mission. I even got one my senior year the first time I was legal to carry and use a rifle. 

That is another story however and this story takes place after I was married and moved out to Mapleton, Utah. I grew up having hunted all those years and must have thought it my duty to do so each year as the hunt would come around. So the first year that I was married and living in Mapleton I was alone for the first time in my life and didn’t know where to hunt.  So I went somewhere close to home up Maple Canyon to hunt on the north side of Sierra Bonita mountain or what everyone refers to as Maple Mountain.

I got home from work early, put on my mighty orange clothes, told Marie goodbye and headed off to do my duty and get meat for my family. I drove to Whiting Park in Maple Canyon. Got my rifle and locked the car and started up the nearest ridge on the East end of the park. It was a pretty tough climb and pretty darn steep. I didn’t see any deer but just kept to the ridge and kept climbing. I was probably tow hundred yards up the mountain when I went around the edge of the hill and saw a number of doe running up the mountain to the west of my position. Then here he came, one of the oldest darn bucks I had ever seen. He was almost a grey color and had a huge rack on his head, probably much bigger than the one I had shot when I was a Senior in high school. I was panting pretty hard from the climb but had no time to stop and rest as he was heading up the hill at a pretty good speed. I pulled my rifle to my shoulder and sent a round in his direction and no where near him apparently since he just kept jumping only now with even more speed. I pumped another round into the chamber and sent a second round his direction with the same results. To this day I wish I had been using a camera because at least I would have had proof of his age and color. Well I now knew there were deer on that mountain and a big one in the mix but he was now out of sight and I would have to go after him even further up that steep ole mountain. I probably spent another hour before I knew that I would need to get down or be hiking in the dark. I started down but was now a long way from the ridge and ended up just heading straight down and eventually into one of the canyons. I didn’t realize how much brush would be jammed into that small canyon and how many times I would have to hike up and around a jam to thick to even crawl through. When I finally reached the park and my car I was lucky to still have my rifle with me since there were several times I would have been much happier leaving it in the bottom of the ravine. It was a rifle my father had always carried though so I carried it back knowing it meant far more to me than I could explain. I came off that hill with no big trophy buck but was glad I did since I would never have been able to pull one of them down that hill.  I never went hunting alone again and in fact there were probably only a few hunts that I ever went on again. I’ll relate them to you later or earlier depending on where they line up in my book. 

Oct 18, 2011

Signetics: A climb up the mountain of broken nerves.

As a young man I suppose I had ambitions to an extent of climbing the corporate ladder. I was a hard worker and being a white natured person (white comes from a definition of characteristics as to your personality) I was always one for working hard and playing fair. Well I worked for a company called Signetics and had gone in four short years from being a technician to a supervisor on day shift of the technicians in what we called Thin Film. Signetics produced electronic parts called “integrated circuits” or “IC’s” for short. The thin film area worked with some high tech evaporation equipment that layered thin films of aluminum and other precious metals such as gold and platinum onto the surface of the substrates from which the IC’s were created. As a supervisor of the electronic technicians I had counterpart supervisors in the production and engineering groups.

Each day I would have a meeting in the morning after I got in to work. So I would go in early enough to get an interface with my counterpart on Graveyard shift and then would be able to assign my technicians to take over on unfinished jobs from that shift and also assign new jobs that might come to us. I would then go to the meeting with the other two supervisors and would get their priorities and other information that I would need to send my techs to the most needed equipment and put two or more on ones that might need to be back in operation even quicker than the rest.

This worked out really well until there was a new production supervisor level that was created and  new supervisor put over my counterpart in production. Instead of him allowing his supervisors to have time to know what had taken place during the night he would come in a half hour or more before them so that as soon as they got there he could jump on them as it were for not having things going properly for their shift. It seemed to me to be intentional belittling efforts on his part to intimidate his people into better work. All it really did in reality was scare them into stupidity and actions that were totally reactional rather than planned. So for me it meant that they would be after me to have all of the equipment up and running before they could be there. I always was in a lot earlier than any of them so it was as though I had been there all night as far as they were concerned. We operated this way for several months and for me it was very stressful.

One day when I came in we had a number of large pieces of equipment down. I had assigned my crew to the machines of which we were only able to put one per machine and I personally was working on two pieces. The supervisor had come in and as usual jumped all over his lower level supervisors as soon as they came in and in turn they jumped all over me. I had explained several times over the next hour or so that I had everyone working on machines and that I was working on two as well as trying to get around to help each of the others as often as I could. Well the supervisor came to me once more and since I wasn’t really feeling well that morning anyway I was suddenly put over the edge of my capabilities. My nerves snapped and I began uncontrollable crying. I quickly left the fabrication area and through somewhat inaudible speaking informed him that I was leaving. I went to my car and drove the 25 minutes to my home still in somewhat uncontrollable crying. (I hadn’t cried for many years and so this was also very embarrassing for me.)

When I arrived home I walked into my house and grabbed my camera and left. My wife meanwhile was first shocked to see me home and second understandably worried where I was going and what I might do. I walked east from my home toward Maple Mountain. It was about a mile and a half to the base of the mountain and from there I began climbing one of the ridges. I didn’t know what I was going to do but I did know I was going until I couldn’t go any further which ended up being about half way up the face of the mountain. Maple is very steep and my knees finally said it was time to stop so I did and I turned and sat down and just looked out over the valley. By that time I was again in control of my emotions and could begin to think about what had happened and why. I spent a couple of hours on the mountain taking occasional pictures and doing a lot of evaluating. I now knew what my limits were emotionally and that came in very handy many times since that day. I also learned that maybe the corporate ladder wasn’t for me because I had many things in my life that were much more important, namely a wife and children. I decided then to never get to that point again where I couldn’t control my emotions. Rather I would leave the situation long enough  to calm down and get a better hold on the real needs at that time. I then went home much more in control and much better off having had that experience.

When I arrived home I was able to tell my wife what had happened but she was already pretty well aware of the situation because she had been receiving calls from both of my supervisors, the thin film supervisor and the Maintenance supervisor over the entire department. I was asked to call as soon a s I got back and I did and at that point was asked to go into the office the next morning to discuss the situation with all of the supervisors. I told him that I didn’t think I could yet but he gently encouraged me to do it and so the next morning I went into his office and met with my immediate supervisor and all of the production supervisors. It was a meeting for them to get their operation in control as much as it was for me to explain what had happened and why. We met for over an hour and then the maintenance supervisor excused everyone except me. He then looked at me and said, ”Now you know why they make all of us at this level have physical and mental exams every year and the company pays for them.” He then told me to go home and relax for however long I needed and when I felt like I was ready to return then do it but not until I felt I was fully ready. He said that I would receive my regular pay and not to worry about that part of it. I returned a full week later and at that time expressed my concerns to him that I really wasn’t mentally able to do the supervisor job on dayshift and was allowed to then go to graveyard shift where I was supervisor there for several years and later a regular technician again because that was really where I felt the most useful and by then had experience that would allow me to help other techs with problems and get equipment up and running faster. I was there until the plant was shutdown 7 years later.

It was a valuable experience and there have been a few times since then that I have felt close to that same situation and taken actions to leave and cool down or just get out. I even left a job one time due to the fact that my bosses were putting the same pressure on me and I knew I had to get out or crack again and I had determined that if possible that would never happen again. I have never had a desire to climb a corporate ladder again but rather to be satisfied with doing my best and putting my family first. They were my corporate ladder that was really worth climbing.

Oct 17, 2011

A Stolen First Kiss

I hesitate sometimes writing about some of the events of my life since it really shows how human I am and some of my weaknesses but it is for that reason that I write concerning this particular event of which I remember only a short part. Maybe by reading some of these my young friends and grandchildren may be able to side step such temptations.

I was a senior in high school and was also very infatuated by a beautiful junior girl named Marie. She and I had actually liked each other for several years and I had officially started dating her when she turned 16 just a year and a few months before this event. We were in the same LDS Ward and so we had lots of chances to be with each other. I guess in today’s terms we were “Hanging Out” as often as circumstances would allow. We spent time together at MIA (Young Men and Young Women’s activity night) on Tuesday nights and never missed a fireside or sitting by each other’s side during them. I am sure there were other cute girls that I could have sat by but this one was definitely my choice. I also remember the often given council at these firesides, church classes, parental suggestions and advice that asked or suggested that we date many members of the opposite sex so that we would know better the person that we would like to marry. Well being young and stupid as we often are in our youth and having liked several girls throughout my youth in elementary I felt it OK to see this young lady as often as occasion would permit. I think back on the temptations that were created by so doing and am very grateful for liking a young lady that had very high standards and wouldn’t compromise them.

So now on to this stolen first kiss episode. We were going to a school dance one night and I don’t even remember which one but for some reason after I had picked her up from her home, only two small blocks form the school, we went to my home about two miles from the school either for me to change my clothes or for some other reason of which I have no recollection. That two miles however included a drive across part of blue bench where there was no lighting, other than the stars and the moon which was probably full that night, before dropping off a small hill to the rest of the road along the canal below which I lived. We were returning from my home to town and the dance when I decided to stop the car (there is a Stake Center very near the spot now) and steal a kiss from this beautiful girl that made my heart skip so freely every other beat when I was around her. I remember well that it was my senior year because I was wearing something that had been totally foreign to my style throughout my life. I had just received my Senior Key and I never wore necklaces of any kind. I had to be toward the end of the year since we didn’t get them until we were about to graduate and I was wearing it on a chain around my neck. I suppose I felt it was time for a first kiss since I would shortly be graduating and going off to college and then on my mission so I might never get to kiss the girl that had been so much a part of my life for the past few years. Well Marie was wearing a very beautiful knitted sweater. Now I would never have remembered this since I seldom notice what others are wearing and have not really felt the need to memorize what they were wearing except that this particular time that was not the right thing for her to have on while I tried to steal a long and lasting kiss. I pulled the car to a stop along this stretch of dark lonely road and of course she wondered why so it didn’t take me long to let my intensions to be known as I leaned over and stole the kiss. In those days cars seldom had bucket seats and seat belts were not yet popular so she was sitting very close to me as she most always did. It wasn’t a very long or lasting kiss except in my memory, because about that time the Lord sent the needed interceptor along as a car drove up over the crest of the hill so that it’s light were directly on my parents car and well into our eyes. I have no idea to this day who it was but I remember well the fact that we couldn’t just swing back into our seats as though nothing were happening because the loop holding my senior key to the chain around my next had ever so slyly hooked itself through one of the strands of that lovely knitted sweater so that she and I became somewhat inseparable. I was probably a fairly bright red color by the time the car passed and it wouldn’t have been due to the fact that the tail lights of the car were red either.  It only took us a few minutes to finally separate ourselves but the memory of the moment lasts to this day. I can’t remember much of the rest of the evening or even when we had our second kiss but I will actually cherish that memory for it put into my mind the lasting memory of kissing my future wife for the first time. Now I am lucky that she ended up being my wife and we have had many kisses since that time. She will often come up to me when I am busy working on pictures or something where I am very involved and give me a very passionate kiss and then I want to continue with more but she puts me back to work just to painfully wait for the chance to steal another kiss.

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.