Our Oregon farmhouse had electricity but no indoor plumbing. Well, technically, we had running water and a sink and a drain in the kitchen. That qualifies as indoor plumbing, I guess.
At first we had a hand pump to get water into the house. Later I think there was an actual faucet at the kitchen sink.
I recall Saturday night baths in a big metal tub on the kitchen floor with water heated in pans on the stove. Being one of the younger ones, I assume I normally bathed in used water near the end of the process. No problem then. Hey, I was a little boy. But I hate to think now of what that really meant—water that was no longer as warm as when it started out, water that was less than clean, water that was . . . .
Since there was no toilet in the house, we used an outhouse that moved from time to time to different spots around the yard. When one pit became filled, a new hole had to be dug, the old one covered up, and the outhouse placed over the new hole.
I can't imagine such an arrangement encouraged potty training in little boys. And wintertime trips to the outhouse were less than exciting, if we even bothered to trek all the way across the yard to the outhouse.
I was nine years old, nearly ten, before we moved to Idaho and to a house that had a bathroom with a toilet, a tub, and a sink. The modern era had begun.
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Monday, March 30, 2009
Marshmallow
A story about our family's first car, written in Bountiful, Utah, during August 1980 and originally published in the November 1981 issue of the Family Journal.
The year we were courting [1972], Claudia's parents loaned her their 1965 Volkswagen Bug so Claudia could travel the eight miles from Provo to Springville, where she would be teaching second grade.
In August of that year, about a month after we had decided to get married, we visited her parents in southern California and helped them drive the car back to Utah. As we were traveling along—her parents in their blue Colt station wagon and the two of us in the little white Bug—we decided the car needed a name. Especially since it was going to be a member of the family for the next year. So we talked about some names. We hit upon Marshmallow, and it fit, and the car had a name.
Marshmallow was already seven, going on eight, when he came to Utah. He had come from Germany originally, and Claudia remembers going down to the dock in Los Angeles or Long Beach to watch him come off the boat.
We were married on November 22, 1972, the day before Thanksgiving. It was a joyful day. From the Provo Temple, where we were married, Marshmallow ran us all over Provo and Orem and on to Salt Lake. There were pictures outside the temple, a wedding breakfast, several errands, a nap we were way too excited to take, an abortive attempt to get the train of Claudia's wedding dress out of her locked apartment, almost forgotten corsages, a borrowed tux picked up at the last minute, and rush-hour freeway traffic in Salt Lake, all of which made us an hour late for more pictures and the reception.
We were dog tired by the time the evening was over, so tired that we asked our best man to chauffeur us back to Provo, where we spent the night. He drove, and we slept in Marshmallow's back seat.
Christmas soon came. We had decorated our little basement apartment for our own private Christmas before puttering on down to California to visit Claudia's family. On our trip, somewhere between St. George and Las Vegas, Marshmallow got sick. He would backfire and sputter and cough and never exceed 45 miles an hour. Knowing absolutely nothing about cars, I decided not to say anything to anyone in Las Vegas for fear they'd put in a new engine. I'd seen that trick there before.
So just out of Las Vegas, with hours of night travel still ahead of us, we pulled over to the side of the freeway and I checked the spark plugs (I did know what they were), because it sounded like only one of them was connected. We prayed a little prayer and pulled out into the midnight desert, with a lot of faith and silent prayer, full of the daring of youth, maybe a little stupidity, and long hours later finally reached San Gabriel. It took Claudia's father five minutes to tell us there was simply no way we should have been able to make it. The distributor had come loose.
Back in Provo, after the holidays, we settled into the routine business of living happily ever after. Claudia drove Marshmallow to Springville every morning to teach her little second graders. It didn't cost us much because Springville is close to Provo, and Marshmallow got excellent gas mileage, and a gallon of gas in those days was only 25 cents.
That winter was a cold one, and though Marshmallow liked being with us in Utah, he didn't really like the cold. Probably some mornings he wished he were still in sunny California. A lot of mornings he simply wouldn't start: the cold was too much for him. I would bundle up and go around the corner and knock on the door of my former roommates' apartment and ask them to come help me give Marshmallow a push.
"What? Again?" they must have thought. "This is the fourth time this week."
They exaggerated, of course, because it was only Wednesday. But they were good sports, and so was Marshmallow, who actually was very easy to start with a little push—unless the street was too slippery or unless we forgot to turn the key on.
Fortunately, winter finally gave way to spring, and Marshmallow decided he'd stay with us. In April Claudia's parents came up for general conference. While here, they agreed to let us have Marshmallow for good. He'd only been on loan before. That was a generous gift and a great blessing to us.
I think it must have been hard for them to let him go, because Claudia's dad used to give him a bath a couple times a week and otherwise treated him with the tenderest care, probably doing things for him that to this day I still don't know you do to cars, while I grew up in a family that washed the car once a year whether it needed it or not.
A few weeks later Marshmallow became a moving van. We were moving across Provo, and our every earthly possession was hauled to our new house in a couple dozen separate trips back and forth. Fortunately, we didn't own any big furniture yet, except for a maple table that we couldn't fit into Marshmallow and had to come stuffed into the trunk of a real car.
In those days the speed on freeways was 70 miles an hour, which didn't really do us a lot of good because Marshmallow couldn't really go that fast unless he was going downhill. Then the government came along and decided that 55 miles an hour was a better speed—it saved lots of gas and lives and those kinds of things. Marshmallow felt better when all the other cars didn't zip by him so fast and he could stay with the flow of traffic.
Sometime after he became our car, Marshmallow's gas gauge broke, and we could never tell how full his tank was, and we ran out of gas a few times.
He also had a horn that mostly wouldn't work. There was a loose wire that when touched to the ignition would sometimes produce a semblance of a honk—if you knew that's what it was supposed to be. Every year at safety inspection time they would try to make it work, and it kind of did, enough to pass inspection, and then Marshmallow would spend the next 51 weeks waiting for his horn to be fixed again.
For almost two years I commuted from Provo to Salt Lake, 47 miles one way from my driveway to the parking lot at work. I was in a car pool and only had to drive Marshmallow every third or fourth day. He was a faithful and roadworthy car during the whole time, except that in the winter he was awfully drafty, especially for whoever sat in the front passenger seat.
Our first three children—Michael, Rebecca, and Rachael—were all born in Provo's Utah Valley Hospital. Marshmallow had the high honor of delivering their laboring mother each time to the hospital and three days later of hauling Mama and the new baby home. Of course, we lived only five blocks from the hospital, but they were some of the most joyous trips he ever made.
When Michael Adam was our only little one, just as parents of multiple children do, we would sometimes confuse his name with Marshmallow's. More than once I came up with "Marshall Adam."
Our second Christmas found us in California again. For the trip Marshmallow's back seat became a nursery, as we hauled every conceivable thing we'd need, and some we didn't, for a four-month old baby. Michael Adam's yellow plastic tub, lovingly filled with blankets, was his crib for the trip. This was in an era before seat belts or infant restraints. I think Marshmallow had seat belts, at least in the front, but it never occurred to us to use them.
Of course, as each new child came along, the car got more and more crowded, and we packed more and more strategically for each trip.
Finally, with child number four on the way, we faced the fact that Marshmallow was simply getting too small for us. And, as happens to us all, he was getting along in years—pushing twelve. And he had hauled people around for an impressive 170,000 miles. In the four and a half years we had him he had never given us much trouble—nothing more than rough starts on a really cold morning or letting us run out of gas every so often.
So we bought a new car in late December 1976, a green Dodge Colt station wagon, just like Grandpa Lange's blue Dodge Colt station wagon, except ours was green and newer. Try as we might over a period of several years, trying different names, we never did find one that fit our new car like Marshmallow fit our little Bug. So our second car was always simply "the green car."
We couldn't bear the thought of letting Marshmallow out of the family, so we gave him to Claudia's brother David, who was back from his mission and a student at BYU.
About a month after Marshmallow moved back to Provo (we lived in Salt Lake by then), Marshmallow got really sick—like he threw a rod or some such thing, and had to have his whole engine rebuilt for $400. Later David had him repainted a cheery yellow, the color Claudia always kind of wished he were, and he was no longer our little white Marshmallow.
The year we were courting [1972], Claudia's parents loaned her their 1965 Volkswagen Bug so Claudia could travel the eight miles from Provo to Springville, where she would be teaching second grade.
In August of that year, about a month after we had decided to get married, we visited her parents in southern California and helped them drive the car back to Utah. As we were traveling along—her parents in their blue Colt station wagon and the two of us in the little white Bug—we decided the car needed a name. Especially since it was going to be a member of the family for the next year. So we talked about some names. We hit upon Marshmallow, and it fit, and the car had a name.
Marshmallow was already seven, going on eight, when he came to Utah. He had come from Germany originally, and Claudia remembers going down to the dock in Los Angeles or Long Beach to watch him come off the boat.
We were married on November 22, 1972, the day before Thanksgiving. It was a joyful day. From the Provo Temple, where we were married, Marshmallow ran us all over Provo and Orem and on to Salt Lake. There were pictures outside the temple, a wedding breakfast, several errands, a nap we were way too excited to take, an abortive attempt to get the train of Claudia's wedding dress out of her locked apartment, almost forgotten corsages, a borrowed tux picked up at the last minute, and rush-hour freeway traffic in Salt Lake, all of which made us an hour late for more pictures and the reception.
We were dog tired by the time the evening was over, so tired that we asked our best man to chauffeur us back to Provo, where we spent the night. He drove, and we slept in Marshmallow's back seat.
Christmas soon came. We had decorated our little basement apartment for our own private Christmas before puttering on down to California to visit Claudia's family. On our trip, somewhere between St. George and Las Vegas, Marshmallow got sick. He would backfire and sputter and cough and never exceed 45 miles an hour. Knowing absolutely nothing about cars, I decided not to say anything to anyone in Las Vegas for fear they'd put in a new engine. I'd seen that trick there before.
So just out of Las Vegas, with hours of night travel still ahead of us, we pulled over to the side of the freeway and I checked the spark plugs (I did know what they were), because it sounded like only one of them was connected. We prayed a little prayer and pulled out into the midnight desert, with a lot of faith and silent prayer, full of the daring of youth, maybe a little stupidity, and long hours later finally reached San Gabriel. It took Claudia's father five minutes to tell us there was simply no way we should have been able to make it. The distributor had come loose.
Back in Provo, after the holidays, we settled into the routine business of living happily ever after. Claudia drove Marshmallow to Springville every morning to teach her little second graders. It didn't cost us much because Springville is close to Provo, and Marshmallow got excellent gas mileage, and a gallon of gas in those days was only 25 cents.
That winter was a cold one, and though Marshmallow liked being with us in Utah, he didn't really like the cold. Probably some mornings he wished he were still in sunny California. A lot of mornings he simply wouldn't start: the cold was too much for him. I would bundle up and go around the corner and knock on the door of my former roommates' apartment and ask them to come help me give Marshmallow a push.
"What? Again?" they must have thought. "This is the fourth time this week."
They exaggerated, of course, because it was only Wednesday. But they were good sports, and so was Marshmallow, who actually was very easy to start with a little push—unless the street was too slippery or unless we forgot to turn the key on.
Fortunately, winter finally gave way to spring, and Marshmallow decided he'd stay with us. In April Claudia's parents came up for general conference. While here, they agreed to let us have Marshmallow for good. He'd only been on loan before. That was a generous gift and a great blessing to us.
I think it must have been hard for them to let him go, because Claudia's dad used to give him a bath a couple times a week and otherwise treated him with the tenderest care, probably doing things for him that to this day I still don't know you do to cars, while I grew up in a family that washed the car once a year whether it needed it or not.
A few weeks later Marshmallow became a moving van. We were moving across Provo, and our every earthly possession was hauled to our new house in a couple dozen separate trips back and forth. Fortunately, we didn't own any big furniture yet, except for a maple table that we couldn't fit into Marshmallow and had to come stuffed into the trunk of a real car.
In those days the speed on freeways was 70 miles an hour, which didn't really do us a lot of good because Marshmallow couldn't really go that fast unless he was going downhill. Then the government came along and decided that 55 miles an hour was a better speed—it saved lots of gas and lives and those kinds of things. Marshmallow felt better when all the other cars didn't zip by him so fast and he could stay with the flow of traffic.
Sometime after he became our car, Marshmallow's gas gauge broke, and we could never tell how full his tank was, and we ran out of gas a few times.
He also had a horn that mostly wouldn't work. There was a loose wire that when touched to the ignition would sometimes produce a semblance of a honk—if you knew that's what it was supposed to be. Every year at safety inspection time they would try to make it work, and it kind of did, enough to pass inspection, and then Marshmallow would spend the next 51 weeks waiting for his horn to be fixed again.
For almost two years I commuted from Provo to Salt Lake, 47 miles one way from my driveway to the parking lot at work. I was in a car pool and only had to drive Marshmallow every third or fourth day. He was a faithful and roadworthy car during the whole time, except that in the winter he was awfully drafty, especially for whoever sat in the front passenger seat.
Our first three children—Michael, Rebecca, and Rachael—were all born in Provo's Utah Valley Hospital. Marshmallow had the high honor of delivering their laboring mother each time to the hospital and three days later of hauling Mama and the new baby home. Of course, we lived only five blocks from the hospital, but they were some of the most joyous trips he ever made.
When Michael Adam was our only little one, just as parents of multiple children do, we would sometimes confuse his name with Marshmallow's. More than once I came up with "Marshall Adam."
Our second Christmas found us in California again. For the trip Marshmallow's back seat became a nursery, as we hauled every conceivable thing we'd need, and some we didn't, for a four-month old baby. Michael Adam's yellow plastic tub, lovingly filled with blankets, was his crib for the trip. This was in an era before seat belts or infant restraints. I think Marshmallow had seat belts, at least in the front, but it never occurred to us to use them.
Of course, as each new child came along, the car got more and more crowded, and we packed more and more strategically for each trip.
Finally, with child number four on the way, we faced the fact that Marshmallow was simply getting too small for us. And, as happens to us all, he was getting along in years—pushing twelve. And he had hauled people around for an impressive 170,000 miles. In the four and a half years we had him he had never given us much trouble—nothing more than rough starts on a really cold morning or letting us run out of gas every so often.
So we bought a new car in late December 1976, a green Dodge Colt station wagon, just like Grandpa Lange's blue Dodge Colt station wagon, except ours was green and newer. Try as we might over a period of several years, trying different names, we never did find one that fit our new car like Marshmallow fit our little Bug. So our second car was always simply "the green car."
We couldn't bear the thought of letting Marshmallow out of the family, so we gave him to Claudia's brother David, who was back from his mission and a student at BYU.
About a month after Marshmallow moved back to Provo (we lived in Salt Lake by then), Marshmallow got really sick—like he threw a rod or some such thing, and had to have his whole engine rebuilt for $400. Later David had him repainted a cheery yellow, the color Claudia always kind of wished he were, and he was no longer our little white Marshmallow.
Sunday, March 29, 2009
Prophecies do come true
I served the last eight months of my mission in the port city of Maceió, the capital of the state of Alagoas, in northeastern Brazil. I was president of the Maceió Branch, a small congregation of the Church that had maybe fifty or sixty members, about twenty of them active.
One Sunday evening while I was speaking in sacrament meeting, I felt impressed to tell the branch members that someday they would have a stake in Maceió. As soon as I said it, I thought to myself, "What in the world are you saying, Elder Cleverly? That could never possibly happen."
And there was every reason it couldn't happen. The elders were taken out of Maceió and the branch was closed when I left Brazil in December 1970 to come home. During much of my earlier mission, down in Rio de Janeiro, I had labored in branches where every month my companion and I baptized and confirmed an individual or an entire family. That did not occur in Maceió. I sometimes felt in Maceió like the missionaries in the Book of Mormon: "And, as it happened, it was their lot to have fallen into the hands of a more hardened and a more stiffnecked people" (Alma 20:30).
And a final reason: Perhaps as high as 90 percent of the city's 200,000 people were either blacks or of mixed lineage, and the gospel was not being actively preached to them at that time. That situation happily changed in June 1978 when the First Presidency announced President Spencer W. Kimball's revelation extending the priesthood to all worthy male members.
Just over eleven years after I returned home from Brazil, I read in the Church News that in January 1982 a stake had been organized in Maceió. I cannot describe the joy I felt at learning that happy news. A miracle. And yet, why not? We still believe in miracles. We believe that God moves in His mysterious ways His wonders to perform. We believe that He will hasten his work in His own time. We are simply grateful to be a small part of it and to see it happening.
When Claudia and I attended church in the Farol Ward of the Maceió Brazil Stake on April 28, 1996, there were then three stakes in Maceió.
One Sunday evening while I was speaking in sacrament meeting, I felt impressed to tell the branch members that someday they would have a stake in Maceió. As soon as I said it, I thought to myself, "What in the world are you saying, Elder Cleverly? That could never possibly happen."
And there was every reason it couldn't happen. The elders were taken out of Maceió and the branch was closed when I left Brazil in December 1970 to come home. During much of my earlier mission, down in Rio de Janeiro, I had labored in branches where every month my companion and I baptized and confirmed an individual or an entire family. That did not occur in Maceió. I sometimes felt in Maceió like the missionaries in the Book of Mormon: "And, as it happened, it was their lot to have fallen into the hands of a more hardened and a more stiffnecked people" (Alma 20:30).
And a final reason: Perhaps as high as 90 percent of the city's 200,000 people were either blacks or of mixed lineage, and the gospel was not being actively preached to them at that time. That situation happily changed in June 1978 when the First Presidency announced President Spencer W. Kimball's revelation extending the priesthood to all worthy male members.
Just over eleven years after I returned home from Brazil, I read in the Church News that in January 1982 a stake had been organized in Maceió. I cannot describe the joy I felt at learning that happy news. A miracle. And yet, why not? We still believe in miracles. We believe that God moves in His mysterious ways His wonders to perform. We believe that He will hasten his work in His own time. We are simply grateful to be a small part of it and to see it happening.
When Claudia and I attended church in the Farol Ward of the Maceió Brazil Stake on April 28, 1996, there were then three stakes in Maceió.
Saturday, March 28, 2009
Not a good hiding place
Halloween is an odd sort of holiday to celebrate. It was, however, a favorite time for us little kids—with its dress up and make believe and candy and other treats. And, at our house, a big kettle of Mama's homemade chili. She made it for Halloween, as far as I know, every single year. And often served it with cider or pumpkin pie.
Our costumes were simple ones, made from whatever was at hand—ghosts made out of old bed sheets, or hobos out of patched clothes, or cowboys out of bandannas and holsters and cap guns that we might use any other day of the year to play cowboy. And that was fine for wearing to school on Halloween day, but it was always cold on Halloween night, so we had to wear coats over our costumes when we went out trick-or-treating.
We received a really nice treat the Halloween I was seven. My only sister, the ninth of my parents' nine children, was born on Halloween. Her name was Jackie. I do not remember why my parents chose that name for her—it seemed like forever after she was born before they settled on her name—but I rather doubt it had anything to do with Jack-o-lanterns.
Growing up on a farm, there were not a lot of neighbors close by, especially within walking distance, so someone older in the family, a parent or an older brother, would drive us in the car to go trick-or-treating to the few nearby neighbors. We used to get very nice treats from them, home-made doughnuts or full-sized candy bars or colored popcorn balls or other goodies, not the little snack-sized things common today.
One year, while we still lived on the farm in Oregon, when I would have been perhaps eight or nine, I hid my paper sack of goodies inside the oven, thinking that would be a good place to store my cache away from the searching eyes and fingers of others who might want to share my loot. It never occurred to me that someone might heat up the oven without checking inside first. And, of course, that's exactly what happened, and I was one sad little boy.
Our costumes were simple ones, made from whatever was at hand—ghosts made out of old bed sheets, or hobos out of patched clothes, or cowboys out of bandannas and holsters and cap guns that we might use any other day of the year to play cowboy. And that was fine for wearing to school on Halloween day, but it was always cold on Halloween night, so we had to wear coats over our costumes when we went out trick-or-treating.
We received a really nice treat the Halloween I was seven. My only sister, the ninth of my parents' nine children, was born on Halloween. Her name was Jackie. I do not remember why my parents chose that name for her—it seemed like forever after she was born before they settled on her name—but I rather doubt it had anything to do with Jack-o-lanterns.
Growing up on a farm, there were not a lot of neighbors close by, especially within walking distance, so someone older in the family, a parent or an older brother, would drive us in the car to go trick-or-treating to the few nearby neighbors. We used to get very nice treats from them, home-made doughnuts or full-sized candy bars or colored popcorn balls or other goodies, not the little snack-sized things common today.
One year, while we still lived on the farm in Oregon, when I would have been perhaps eight or nine, I hid my paper sack of goodies inside the oven, thinking that would be a good place to store my cache away from the searching eyes and fingers of others who might want to share my loot. It never occurred to me that someone might heat up the oven without checking inside first. And, of course, that's exactly what happened, and I was one sad little boy.
Friday, March 27, 2009
Pilgrimage to Nauvoo
One of our favorite places to visit is Nauvoo, Illinois, an incredible place of beauty and history and spiritual refreshment. The city served as headquarters of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for a brief period in the early 1840s and over the past half century has been restored to allow modern visitors to imagine and experience and feel what it must have been like to be there when Joseph and Emma and thousands of others of our spiritual forebears walked its well-planned streets. Today a magnificent temple of the Lord overlooks the city and the wide sweep of the Mississippi River as it bends around the city, reminiscent of the first temple started by the Prophet Joseph and finished under the direction of Brother Brigham, his prophetic successor.
Through the years members of our family have made various pilgrimages to Nauvoo and Carthage and the kindred historical sites scatted across northern and western Missouri and the pioneer trail that headed westward across Iowa, Nebraska, and Wyoming to the Great Basin in the Rocky Mountains that today is Utah. The best way to experience these sites is a road trip. This account of our trip in May 2007 is adapted from an account originally published in the May 21, 2007, issue of the Family Journal. For some of the travelers in our party, those who had recently married into our family, it was a first time to experience this trip.
On Friday evening, May 4, we left on our grand adventure to the Midwest. Talmage, Louise, Paul, Eliza, and Peter traveled in our minivan. Chris, Camilla, Sam, Claudia, and I traveled in a rented minivan. The rental was our son-in-law Robert Hodson’s Mother’s Day gift to Claudia. Camilla had graduated that morning from the University of Utah with a bachelor’s degree in teaching French. More than 7,000 graduates received degrees. President Thomas S. Monson, an alumnus of the University, was given an honorary doctor’s degree and was the commencement speaker.
It was raining as we left Bountiful, and rained or snowed off and on all the way to Rawlins, Wyoming, where we spent the night in two adjoining rooms in the TraveLodge.
There was snow all over the ground when we woke up Saturday morning, but the roads were clear. We continued east on I-80 through the rest of Wyoming and into Nebraska. In the mountains between Laramie and Cheyenne, we drove through a blizzard, and that was pretty scary.
Somewhere near the Wyoming–Nebraska border, we suddenly came upon a stretch of highway where hail had covered the road for a mile or so, and we saw all kinds of cars off the road, a couple upside down. And that was pretty scary too.
At Kimball, Nebraska, we stopped for lunch at a Runza drive-in, which are dotted across Nebraska and the fringes of neighboring states, famous for their Runza burgers. We kept encountering thunderstorms off and on all across Nebraska with threats of tornado warnings nearby. Just before we reached Lincoln the rains dumped down so hard that our windshield wipers on their fastest speed weren’t enough to allow us to see the road. The freeway traffic slowed to about 30 miles per hour.
At Lincoln we exited I–80 and took Nebraska highway 2 heading southeast toward Nebraska City, where we crossed the Missouri River for the first time into Iowa. After a few miles, we entered Missouri, where we stopped for supper at a Subway in Rock Port. We arrived in Kansas City about 9:30 or 10:00, where we stayed with Jim and Arlette Fedor. Jim used to live in our ward in Bountiful and now works in Kansas City as a graphics artist or designer or some such thing for Hallmark. Arlette works for the U.S. Postal Service as a mail carrier.
The GPS unit our son-in-law Cade Hoff had loaned us, which Mom nicknamed Helen, was very helpful in getting us to unknown destinations, although a few times it tried to lead us astray.
We attended church with the Fedors Sunday morning. It was the first time we had ever heard announced in a sacrament meeting what to do if tornado sirens went off during church. We were supposed to gather in the north hallway. We thought that was going to be one crowded hallway with a whole ward huddled in it.
In the late afternoon we visited the visitors’ center at the temple site in Independence. The heavy rains continued. Then we drove to Liberty and visited the visitors’ center at the Liberty Jail. That is always a moving experience and increases our appreciation for what the Prophet Joseph Smith had to suffer there.
We had a delightful stay at the Fedors' place and greatly appreciated their hospitality.
On Monday morning we returned to Independence to visit the Community of Christ temple. The building is interesting, but it surely has a different spirit than our Church sites. We then headed north to Far West and visited the temple site there. We tried to continue north on the same road, but a few miles north Shoal Creek had overflowed its banks and completely covered the road as a result of the rains all weekend. So we had to backtrack south and further east to travel on to Adam-ondi-Ahman.
At Adam-ondi-Ahman we encountered a turtle that tried to terrorize Eliza.
Adam-ondi-Ahman is a beautiful, peaceful place. After visiting the sites where scenes from the beginning of the earth occurred and other events from the ending of the earth will yet occur, we drove to Jamesport, where we ate at an Amish restaurant that was quite good. We bought two pies, an apple and a gooseberry to eat when we were in Nauvoo. It was the first time any of us had ever had gooseberry, and we decided we didn’t like it all that much, although it was tolerable if eaten with vanilla ice cream on top of it.
After we crossed over the Mississippi River into Illinois, we drove the fourteen miles up the scenic river road to Nauvoo as the sun was setting off to the west. The Nauvoo Illinois Temple was very impressive as we drove into town. We had a room in the Nauvoo Inn and Suites that accommodated all ten of us. That evening we watched the first game of the Utah Jazz and Golden State Warriors on the TV in our motel room. The Jazz won.
On Tuesday morning we began our visit to Nauvoo with a horse-drawn wagon tour of the historic sites. That gave us a good overview of what to see. This was the first time that Louise, Chris, or Paul had ever been to Nauvoo or to any of the other Church history sites we were seeing on the trip.
The sites we saw on Tuesday included the garden with the women’s statues, the Scovill Bakery, the Family Living Center, the Cultural Hall, the blacksmith shop, and the brick-making place. In the evening all of us (except Chris, Camilla, and Sam) went to see “Rendezvous in Nauvoo,” put on in the Cultural Hall by the missionary couples in Nauvoo.
After the show, we walked down the Trail of Hope as the sun was setting over the Mississippi. From earlier visits to Nauvoo, we remember this street down to the bank of the Mississippi River being called the Trail of Tears because of the Nauvoo Saints' lining up along this street as they waited to be ferried across the river to Iowa as they were forced from their beautiful homes while it was still winter.
Back in our motel we watched the movie Second-Hand Lion that Talmage and Louise had brought on a DVD.
Wednesday morning Mom and I went through a session in the Nauvoo Temple. David Wright, who used to work with me at Church headquarters, is the recorder of the temple, and he took us up into the bell tower after the session. Mom only went half way up. I went all the way up, where I could see a gorgeous, panoramic view in all directions, including west across the Mississippi into Iowa, and east across the prairie fields of western Illinois. At noon Talmage, Louise, Chris, Camilla, Paul, Eliza, and I did a session, and Mom stayed in the motel with Sam and Peter. We did not see David this time, and the others did not get the tour of the rest of the temple. Afterward we got lunch at Zions Mercantile.
That afternoon we visited the Browning home and gun shop, the post office, John Taylor’s home and print shop, and the drug store. We ate dinner at the Thyme and Seasons restaurant in our motel. We took pictures of the temple and watched game 2 of the Jazz–Warriors series. The Jazz won again.
Thursday morning we checked out of our room and visited the Smith family cemetery, the Prophet Joseph’s Red Brick Store, the Seventies Hall, the school, took a carriage ride to Inspiration Point, and ended up at the Land and Records Office, where Paul found information about ancestors who had lived in Nauvoo.
Thursday afternoon we drove to Carthage and visited the jail there where the Prophet Joseph and his brother Hyrum were martyred. We ate a late lunch at the nearby Dairy Queen and then drove across the state of Iowa to Council Bluffs, where we stayed in a Quality Inn and Suites. What took the pioneers months to cross Iowa in the late winter and early spring of 1846, after they were forced to leave Nauvoo, took us only hours by car.
Friday morning Talmage, Louise, Chris, Camilla, Paul, and Eliza went through a session in the Winter Quarters Nebraska Temple. Mom and I tended Sam and Peter and arrived at the temple about the time they finished their session. We went through the Winter Quarters Visitors’ Center and then crossed the Missouri River back over to the Iowa side to visit the Kanesville Tabernacle in Council Bluffs, where Brigham Young was first sustained as President of the Church.
We ate at another Runza and then spent the next six or seven hours driving across Nebraska to Scottsbluff. We stayed in a Comfort Inn and got a late supper from a Sonic drive-in, one of the few places we could find still open. About twenty miles before arriving in Scottsbluff, we saw Chimney Rock, an important landmark along the pioneer trail. It was lit up with floodlights so we could see it in the dark.
Saturday morning we visited Scott’s Bluff National Monument. The Oregon Trail, the California Trail, the Mormon Trail, and the Pony Express all passed through this area. We then drove to Casper, Wyoming, where we stopped for lunch at a JB’s restaurant. We drove another hour and came to Independence Rock, another important landmark along the pioneer trail. Everyone (except Mom and Sam) climbed to the top. We then went a few miles further and stopped at the Mormon Handcart Visitors’ Center, where we saw Devil’s Gate and Martin’s Cove. Everyone (except Mom and Sam) took handcarts and went up to the cove. A rattlesnake terrorized Eliza.
Saturday night we arrived again at Rawlins, where we had stayed the first night of the trip, and stayed in a dump of a motel, an old, dirty, bug-infested EconoLodge in the wrong part of town. Actually, we decided everywhere in Rawlins was the wrong part of town. We ordered in pizza from the local Pizza Hut for a late supper.
We arose early Sunday morning, which was Mother’s Day, and got out of town as quickly as we could, even before the motel opened its free breakfast. Four hours later we arrived in Bountiful.
This account outlines basically what we did and saw. It does not capture the feelings we had or the associations we enjoyed or the things we learned. From my perspective, it was one of the nicest vacations we’ve ever taken.
The trip was over, but the memories will linger for a long, long time.
Through the years members of our family have made various pilgrimages to Nauvoo and Carthage and the kindred historical sites scatted across northern and western Missouri and the pioneer trail that headed westward across Iowa, Nebraska, and Wyoming to the Great Basin in the Rocky Mountains that today is Utah. The best way to experience these sites is a road trip. This account of our trip in May 2007 is adapted from an account originally published in the May 21, 2007, issue of the Family Journal. For some of the travelers in our party, those who had recently married into our family, it was a first time to experience this trip.
On Friday evening, May 4, we left on our grand adventure to the Midwest. Talmage, Louise, Paul, Eliza, and Peter traveled in our minivan. Chris, Camilla, Sam, Claudia, and I traveled in a rented minivan. The rental was our son-in-law Robert Hodson’s Mother’s Day gift to Claudia. Camilla had graduated that morning from the University of Utah with a bachelor’s degree in teaching French. More than 7,000 graduates received degrees. President Thomas S. Monson, an alumnus of the University, was given an honorary doctor’s degree and was the commencement speaker.
It was raining as we left Bountiful, and rained or snowed off and on all the way to Rawlins, Wyoming, where we spent the night in two adjoining rooms in the TraveLodge.
There was snow all over the ground when we woke up Saturday morning, but the roads were clear. We continued east on I-80 through the rest of Wyoming and into Nebraska. In the mountains between Laramie and Cheyenne, we drove through a blizzard, and that was pretty scary.
Somewhere near the Wyoming–Nebraska border, we suddenly came upon a stretch of highway where hail had covered the road for a mile or so, and we saw all kinds of cars off the road, a couple upside down. And that was pretty scary too.
At Kimball, Nebraska, we stopped for lunch at a Runza drive-in, which are dotted across Nebraska and the fringes of neighboring states, famous for their Runza burgers. We kept encountering thunderstorms off and on all across Nebraska with threats of tornado warnings nearby. Just before we reached Lincoln the rains dumped down so hard that our windshield wipers on their fastest speed weren’t enough to allow us to see the road. The freeway traffic slowed to about 30 miles per hour.
At Lincoln we exited I–80 and took Nebraska highway 2 heading southeast toward Nebraska City, where we crossed the Missouri River for the first time into Iowa. After a few miles, we entered Missouri, where we stopped for supper at a Subway in Rock Port. We arrived in Kansas City about 9:30 or 10:00, where we stayed with Jim and Arlette Fedor. Jim used to live in our ward in Bountiful and now works in Kansas City as a graphics artist or designer or some such thing for Hallmark. Arlette works for the U.S. Postal Service as a mail carrier.
The GPS unit our son-in-law Cade Hoff had loaned us, which Mom nicknamed Helen, was very helpful in getting us to unknown destinations, although a few times it tried to lead us astray.
We attended church with the Fedors Sunday morning. It was the first time we had ever heard announced in a sacrament meeting what to do if tornado sirens went off during church. We were supposed to gather in the north hallway. We thought that was going to be one crowded hallway with a whole ward huddled in it.
In the late afternoon we visited the visitors’ center at the temple site in Independence. The heavy rains continued. Then we drove to Liberty and visited the visitors’ center at the Liberty Jail. That is always a moving experience and increases our appreciation for what the Prophet Joseph Smith had to suffer there.
We had a delightful stay at the Fedors' place and greatly appreciated their hospitality.
On Monday morning we returned to Independence to visit the Community of Christ temple. The building is interesting, but it surely has a different spirit than our Church sites. We then headed north to Far West and visited the temple site there. We tried to continue north on the same road, but a few miles north Shoal Creek had overflowed its banks and completely covered the road as a result of the rains all weekend. So we had to backtrack south and further east to travel on to Adam-ondi-Ahman.
At Adam-ondi-Ahman we encountered a turtle that tried to terrorize Eliza.
Adam-ondi-Ahman is a beautiful, peaceful place. After visiting the sites where scenes from the beginning of the earth occurred and other events from the ending of the earth will yet occur, we drove to Jamesport, where we ate at an Amish restaurant that was quite good. We bought two pies, an apple and a gooseberry to eat when we were in Nauvoo. It was the first time any of us had ever had gooseberry, and we decided we didn’t like it all that much, although it was tolerable if eaten with vanilla ice cream on top of it.
After we crossed over the Mississippi River into Illinois, we drove the fourteen miles up the scenic river road to Nauvoo as the sun was setting off to the west. The Nauvoo Illinois Temple was very impressive as we drove into town. We had a room in the Nauvoo Inn and Suites that accommodated all ten of us. That evening we watched the first game of the Utah Jazz and Golden State Warriors on the TV in our motel room. The Jazz won.
On Tuesday morning we began our visit to Nauvoo with a horse-drawn wagon tour of the historic sites. That gave us a good overview of what to see. This was the first time that Louise, Chris, or Paul had ever been to Nauvoo or to any of the other Church history sites we were seeing on the trip.
The sites we saw on Tuesday included the garden with the women’s statues, the Scovill Bakery, the Family Living Center, the Cultural Hall, the blacksmith shop, and the brick-making place. In the evening all of us (except Chris, Camilla, and Sam) went to see “Rendezvous in Nauvoo,” put on in the Cultural Hall by the missionary couples in Nauvoo.
After the show, we walked down the Trail of Hope as the sun was setting over the Mississippi. From earlier visits to Nauvoo, we remember this street down to the bank of the Mississippi River being called the Trail of Tears because of the Nauvoo Saints' lining up along this street as they waited to be ferried across the river to Iowa as they were forced from their beautiful homes while it was still winter.
Back in our motel we watched the movie Second-Hand Lion that Talmage and Louise had brought on a DVD.
Wednesday morning Mom and I went through a session in the Nauvoo Temple. David Wright, who used to work with me at Church headquarters, is the recorder of the temple, and he took us up into the bell tower after the session. Mom only went half way up. I went all the way up, where I could see a gorgeous, panoramic view in all directions, including west across the Mississippi into Iowa, and east across the prairie fields of western Illinois. At noon Talmage, Louise, Chris, Camilla, Paul, Eliza, and I did a session, and Mom stayed in the motel with Sam and Peter. We did not see David this time, and the others did not get the tour of the rest of the temple. Afterward we got lunch at Zions Mercantile.
That afternoon we visited the Browning home and gun shop, the post office, John Taylor’s home and print shop, and the drug store. We ate dinner at the Thyme and Seasons restaurant in our motel. We took pictures of the temple and watched game 2 of the Jazz–Warriors series. The Jazz won again.
Thursday morning we checked out of our room and visited the Smith family cemetery, the Prophet Joseph’s Red Brick Store, the Seventies Hall, the school, took a carriage ride to Inspiration Point, and ended up at the Land and Records Office, where Paul found information about ancestors who had lived in Nauvoo.
Thursday afternoon we drove to Carthage and visited the jail there where the Prophet Joseph and his brother Hyrum were martyred. We ate a late lunch at the nearby Dairy Queen and then drove across the state of Iowa to Council Bluffs, where we stayed in a Quality Inn and Suites. What took the pioneers months to cross Iowa in the late winter and early spring of 1846, after they were forced to leave Nauvoo, took us only hours by car.
Friday morning Talmage, Louise, Chris, Camilla, Paul, and Eliza went through a session in the Winter Quarters Nebraska Temple. Mom and I tended Sam and Peter and arrived at the temple about the time they finished their session. We went through the Winter Quarters Visitors’ Center and then crossed the Missouri River back over to the Iowa side to visit the Kanesville Tabernacle in Council Bluffs, where Brigham Young was first sustained as President of the Church.
We ate at another Runza and then spent the next six or seven hours driving across Nebraska to Scottsbluff. We stayed in a Comfort Inn and got a late supper from a Sonic drive-in, one of the few places we could find still open. About twenty miles before arriving in Scottsbluff, we saw Chimney Rock, an important landmark along the pioneer trail. It was lit up with floodlights so we could see it in the dark.
Saturday morning we visited Scott’s Bluff National Monument. The Oregon Trail, the California Trail, the Mormon Trail, and the Pony Express all passed through this area. We then drove to Casper, Wyoming, where we stopped for lunch at a JB’s restaurant. We drove another hour and came to Independence Rock, another important landmark along the pioneer trail. Everyone (except Mom and Sam) climbed to the top. We then went a few miles further and stopped at the Mormon Handcart Visitors’ Center, where we saw Devil’s Gate and Martin’s Cove. Everyone (except Mom and Sam) took handcarts and went up to the cove. A rattlesnake terrorized Eliza.
Saturday night we arrived again at Rawlins, where we had stayed the first night of the trip, and stayed in a dump of a motel, an old, dirty, bug-infested EconoLodge in the wrong part of town. Actually, we decided everywhere in Rawlins was the wrong part of town. We ordered in pizza from the local Pizza Hut for a late supper.
We arose early Sunday morning, which was Mother’s Day, and got out of town as quickly as we could, even before the motel opened its free breakfast. Four hours later we arrived in Bountiful.
This account outlines basically what we did and saw. It does not capture the feelings we had or the associations we enjoyed or the things we learned. From my perspective, it was one of the nicest vacations we’ve ever taken.
The trip was over, but the memories will linger for a long, long time.
Thursday, March 26, 2009
My first road trip
This is an account of a family trip to northern California to visit my oldest brother and his family in Sacramento. It is the first road trip I remember taking. We left late Thursday, December 26, 1957, and returned home late Thursday, January 2, 1958. Although I distinctly remember the trip, I am indebted to my mother’s diary for some of the specific details.
I have always loved to travel. Especially if it involves a road trip. Few things are more thrilling than the prospect of the open road stretching out there before me.
My earliest memory of a vacation, other than visits to relatives somewhere in northern Utah or eastern Idaho, was a car trip to California during the holidays when I was eight years old. I guess this was technically a trip to visit relatives because we drove to Sacramento to visit my oldest brother Lyle, who was in the Air Force, and his wife Barbara and their two sons. Stanley was three years old. And Terry was about twenty months old. I did not remember that Barbara was so very pregnant, but a little more than three weeks after our visit she gave birth to their third son, David.
But the trip counts in my book as a bona fide vacation because it was to a part of the country we had never been to before.
We left in the middle of the night the day after Christmas. My parents and the five youngest children (thirteen-year-old Gene, twelve-year-old Ray, eight-year-old me, five-year-old Dale, and fourteen-month-old Jackie) made the trip. Jerry and Kay stayed home to tend the farm, milk the cows, and who knows what else.
We drove though the night down through eastern Oregon into Nevada. Ray, Dale, Jackie, and I were bedded down in the back seat. Mom wrote in her diary that she drove from Lovelock to Reno and noted that the roads were good all the way except a few icy spots at McDermitt, a tiny little town on the Nevada–Oregon border.
In Reno, where we probably did breakfast, I remember a sign arching across the street proclaiming Reno as “The Biggest Little City in the World.” We continued from there up and through the Sierra Nevada Mountains, over Donner Pass, and down the other side toward Sacramento. There was a lot of snow, a lot more than I was ever used to seeing.
As we approached Sacramento we were on a freeway, the first time I had ever actually seen one, and I thought it was pretty awesome. I found the freeway exits a novel bit of ingenuity and can even remember to this day, fifty years later, that we took the Watt Avenue exit off the freeway to find Lyle and Barbara’s place somewhere near McClellan Air Force Base.
We arrived at Lyle and Barbara’s place midmorning on Friday, December 27, and pretty much just chilled out for the rest of that day. Lyle was out on a flight when we arrived and came home a few hours later. If my memory serves correctly, it seems it was always grey while we were there, either grey and foggy or grey and overcast, but a lot of grey.
Over the next few days we visited various sites around the Sacramento area. One day we went to the zoo and saw all kinds of animals and birds. I probably had never been to a zoo before. Another day we visited the state capitol. Another day we went out into the surrounding countryside and saw orange, lemon, and grapefruit trees just loaded with fruit. And I think we actually saw the sun that day. We went to a dam and saw a prison and stopped by the air force base and watched jets take off. These were all marvels to an eight-year-old boy.
On the last day of 1957 we drove to San Francisco. My mom’s diary account detailed the events of the day (with her spellings and punctuation a bit standardized):
“We headed for San Francisco on highway 40 through Vallejo, San Pablo, El Cerrito, Albany, Berkley, and down by Alameda and the outskirts of Oakland then back across the Bay Bridge (toll for 25¢), 8 miles long, to San Francisco, and drove up Nob Hill and went to the naval maritime museum then parked on the bay and saw some big ships come in and leave and saw Alcatraz, then we drove along the docks and Fisherman’s Wharf, through Chinatown, past the Keizer Stadium, saw the mint, rode through residential area and business district, then we to Golden Gate Park and went through the Steinhart Aquarium, then we went down and parked on the Ocean and watched the tide and the kids got some seashells and put their hand in the Ocean, then about dark we went across the Golden Gate Bridge, 25¢ toll, and went up highway 101 to San Rafael and had a hamburger and milkshake and fries and donuts at a drive inn, then we got lost and went to San Anselmo and Fairfax then came back to San Rafael and down around San Quentin and across the new Richmond Bridge (75¢ toll) and back up highway 40 home.” That one long sentence was indicative of what the long, busy day was like.
That New Year’s Eve was my first sight of the Pacific Ocean. I had never seen an ocean before, and I remember playing along the cold, damp, gray beach, and sticking my hand into the cold water and chasing the waves and looking for sand dollars and seashells. It was a glorious outing.
We ushered in 1958 by spending New Year’s Day resting up from the previous day’s adventures and watching the Rose Parade and bowl games and eating and visiting and playing games.
The next morning we piled back into our car, our 1957 red and white Dodge, and headed for home. Mom mentioned in her diary that we stopped and bought a bag of oranges and 12 pounds of bananas for just a dollar. We left Lyle and Barbara’s place just a little before 10:00 in the morning (Pacific time zone) and got back to our house in eastern Oregon about 10:30 that night (Mountain time zone).
There was a lot more snow going home. As we started up toward Donner Pass, we had to stop to put chains on the car, although in the end we didn’t really need them. As my predominant memory of Sacramento and San Francisco was grey, my memory of the ride home was white from all the snow on the ground and in the air.
It had been a fun, vision-expanding trip for an eight-year-old farm boy. I had seen and experienced all kinds of things previously beyond what I knew about my limited corner of the world. And it undoubtedly fueled my later desires to explore the big broad world out there at the end of some road.
I have always loved to travel. Especially if it involves a road trip. Few things are more thrilling than the prospect of the open road stretching out there before me.
My earliest memory of a vacation, other than visits to relatives somewhere in northern Utah or eastern Idaho, was a car trip to California during the holidays when I was eight years old. I guess this was technically a trip to visit relatives because we drove to Sacramento to visit my oldest brother Lyle, who was in the Air Force, and his wife Barbara and their two sons. Stanley was three years old. And Terry was about twenty months old. I did not remember that Barbara was so very pregnant, but a little more than three weeks after our visit she gave birth to their third son, David.
But the trip counts in my book as a bona fide vacation because it was to a part of the country we had never been to before.
We left in the middle of the night the day after Christmas. My parents and the five youngest children (thirteen-year-old Gene, twelve-year-old Ray, eight-year-old me, five-year-old Dale, and fourteen-month-old Jackie) made the trip. Jerry and Kay stayed home to tend the farm, milk the cows, and who knows what else.
We drove though the night down through eastern Oregon into Nevada. Ray, Dale, Jackie, and I were bedded down in the back seat. Mom wrote in her diary that she drove from Lovelock to Reno and noted that the roads were good all the way except a few icy spots at McDermitt, a tiny little town on the Nevada–Oregon border.
In Reno, where we probably did breakfast, I remember a sign arching across the street proclaiming Reno as “The Biggest Little City in the World.” We continued from there up and through the Sierra Nevada Mountains, over Donner Pass, and down the other side toward Sacramento. There was a lot of snow, a lot more than I was ever used to seeing.As we approached Sacramento we were on a freeway, the first time I had ever actually seen one, and I thought it was pretty awesome. I found the freeway exits a novel bit of ingenuity and can even remember to this day, fifty years later, that we took the Watt Avenue exit off the freeway to find Lyle and Barbara’s place somewhere near McClellan Air Force Base.
We arrived at Lyle and Barbara’s place midmorning on Friday, December 27, and pretty much just chilled out for the rest of that day. Lyle was out on a flight when we arrived and came home a few hours later. If my memory serves correctly, it seems it was always grey while we were there, either grey and foggy or grey and overcast, but a lot of grey.
Over the next few days we visited various sites around the Sacramento area. One day we went to the zoo and saw all kinds of animals and birds. I probably had never been to a zoo before. Another day we visited the state capitol. Another day we went out into the surrounding countryside and saw orange, lemon, and grapefruit trees just loaded with fruit. And I think we actually saw the sun that day. We went to a dam and saw a prison and stopped by the air force base and watched jets take off. These were all marvels to an eight-year-old boy.On the last day of 1957 we drove to San Francisco. My mom’s diary account detailed the events of the day (with her spellings and punctuation a bit standardized):
“We headed for San Francisco on highway 40 through Vallejo, San Pablo, El Cerrito, Albany, Berkley, and down by Alameda and the outskirts of Oakland then back across the Bay Bridge (toll for 25¢), 8 miles long, to San Francisco, and drove up Nob Hill and went to the naval maritime museum then parked on the bay and saw some big ships come in and leave and saw Alcatraz, then we drove along the docks and Fisherman’s Wharf, through Chinatown, past the Keizer Stadium, saw the mint, rode through residential area and business district, then we to Golden Gate Park and went through the Steinhart Aquarium, then we went down and parked on the Ocean and watched the tide and the kids got some seashells and put their hand in the Ocean, then about dark we went across the Golden Gate Bridge, 25¢ toll, and went up highway 101 to San Rafael and had a hamburger and milkshake and fries and donuts at a drive inn, then we got lost and went to San Anselmo and Fairfax then came back to San Rafael and down around San Quentin and across the new Richmond Bridge (75¢ toll) and back up highway 40 home.” That one long sentence was indicative of what the long, busy day was like.That New Year’s Eve was my first sight of the Pacific Ocean. I had never seen an ocean before, and I remember playing along the cold, damp, gray beach, and sticking my hand into the cold water and chasing the waves and looking for sand dollars and seashells. It was a glorious outing.
We ushered in 1958 by spending New Year’s Day resting up from the previous day’s adventures and watching the Rose Parade and bowl games and eating and visiting and playing games.
The next morning we piled back into our car, our 1957 red and white Dodge, and headed for home. Mom mentioned in her diary that we stopped and bought a bag of oranges and 12 pounds of bananas for just a dollar. We left Lyle and Barbara’s place just a little before 10:00 in the morning (Pacific time zone) and got back to our house in eastern Oregon about 10:30 that night (Mountain time zone).
There was a lot more snow going home. As we started up toward Donner Pass, we had to stop to put chains on the car, although in the end we didn’t really need them. As my predominant memory of Sacramento and San Francisco was grey, my memory of the ride home was white from all the snow on the ground and in the air.
It had been a fun, vision-expanding trip for an eight-year-old farm boy. I had seen and experienced all kinds of things previously beyond what I knew about my limited corner of the world. And it undoubtedly fueled my later desires to explore the big broad world out there at the end of some road.
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Why there is no Interstate 50
The Interstate highway system is one of the great public works of all time. I have had a long fascination with the system, what it has done for America, and the places it has taken me and my family.
I figured out years ago that the numbering system has even-numbered routes ending in zeros (such as I-10, I-20, I-80, I-90) running east and west across the country and odd-numbered routes ending in fives (such as I-5, I-15, I-25, I-95) runing north and south. Other even- and odd-numbered routes, oriented basically east-west and north-south respectively, fill in the rest of the system.
So one day, several years ago, I was studying a highway map of the United States and was surprised to find no Interstate 50 anywhere in the country.
"Why is there no Interstate 50?" I asked one of my daughters who was sitting nearby. The question was genuine.
I did not yet know, but found out from subsequent research, that when the new system was imposed on the country, overlaying the old U.S. highway numbering system, it was decided that duplicate numbers from the two highway systems could not co-exist in the same state.
The east-west even numbers of the old U.S. highway system increase from north to south (U.S. 30 is farther north than U.S. 50, for example). The east-west even numbers of the new Interstate system decrease from north to south (I-80 is farther north than I-10). The duplication would have become a problem in the middle latitudes of the country, where 50s and 60s could likely run through the same middle states. So, the people who think up these things merely decided never to construct an I-50 or an I-60. End of story.
And that is why there is no Interstate 50. Or 60.
This realization, coupled with my love of a good road trip, and reflecting my lifelong desire to find joy in the journey, led me on the evening of Christmas Day 2005 to dub my very first blog Interstate 50. I have started many other blogs since then, many of them dedicated to some piece of our family history, and I have discontinued some, but Interstate 50 continues to be my public, face-to-the-world, all-purpose blog.
I figured out years ago that the numbering system has even-numbered routes ending in zeros (such as I-10, I-20, I-80, I-90) running east and west across the country and odd-numbered routes ending in fives (such as I-5, I-15, I-25, I-95) runing north and south. Other even- and odd-numbered routes, oriented basically east-west and north-south respectively, fill in the rest of the system.
So one day, several years ago, I was studying a highway map of the United States and was surprised to find no Interstate 50 anywhere in the country.
"Why is there no Interstate 50?" I asked one of my daughters who was sitting nearby. The question was genuine.
I did not yet know, but found out from subsequent research, that when the new system was imposed on the country, overlaying the old U.S. highway numbering system, it was decided that duplicate numbers from the two highway systems could not co-exist in the same state.
The east-west even numbers of the old U.S. highway system increase from north to south (U.S. 30 is farther north than U.S. 50, for example). The east-west even numbers of the new Interstate system decrease from north to south (I-80 is farther north than I-10). The duplication would have become a problem in the middle latitudes of the country, where 50s and 60s could likely run through the same middle states. So, the people who think up these things merely decided never to construct an I-50 or an I-60. End of story.
And that is why there is no Interstate 50. Or 60.
This realization, coupled with my love of a good road trip, and reflecting my lifelong desire to find joy in the journey, led me on the evening of Christmas Day 2005 to dub my very first blog Interstate 50. I have started many other blogs since then, many of them dedicated to some piece of our family history, and I have discontinued some, but Interstate 50 continues to be my public, face-to-the-world, all-purpose blog.
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
"All these things shall give thee experience"
My wife Claudia wrote this experience in early 1974, when our first child was still less than six months old.
Elder Boyd K. Packer once said the only significant lessons he has learned in life have been taught by his children. I too find Michael Adam is one of my best teachers. I would like to share something I've learned from him just over the past two or three weeks.
A couple of weeks ago he learned how to roll over from his stomach to his back. To watch him struggle though just tore my heart out. He wasn't sure what he was doing—it was all so new to him—and sometimes he would get so frustrated at his struggles. I wanted so much to pick him up myself and turn him over—to save all that trouble and heartache—but I knew I couldn't. The struggles made him strong, and he couldn't learn if I did it for him.
It occurred to me one day while I was watching him try that our earth life is but a type and shadow of eternity, a testing ground, and that parents have a very similar relationship to their children as our Heavenly Father has to us. With all this in mind, it came to me that the Lord watches over us too and sees our struggles. But like parents here on earth He sometimes has to just let us struggle so we can learn more effectively through our experience and grow stronger.
"Know thou, my son, that all these things shall give thee experience, and shall be for thy good" (D&C 122:7).
"My son, peace be unto thy soul; thine adversity and thine afflictions shall be but a small moment; and then, if thou endure it well, God shall exalt thee over all thy foes" (D&C 121:7-8).
How well the Lord has said it. And realizing my own love for Michael Adam, I now have a deeper understanding of the Lord's love for us and of why He gives us trials and tribulations. I am very grateful for these things and for a loving Father who would care to give us these learning experiences that we might grow.
Elder Boyd K. Packer once said the only significant lessons he has learned in life have been taught by his children. I too find Michael Adam is one of my best teachers. I would like to share something I've learned from him just over the past two or three weeks.
A couple of weeks ago he learned how to roll over from his stomach to his back. To watch him struggle though just tore my heart out. He wasn't sure what he was doing—it was all so new to him—and sometimes he would get so frustrated at his struggles. I wanted so much to pick him up myself and turn him over—to save all that trouble and heartache—but I knew I couldn't. The struggles made him strong, and he couldn't learn if I did it for him.
It occurred to me one day while I was watching him try that our earth life is but a type and shadow of eternity, a testing ground, and that parents have a very similar relationship to their children as our Heavenly Father has to us. With all this in mind, it came to me that the Lord watches over us too and sees our struggles. But like parents here on earth He sometimes has to just let us struggle so we can learn more effectively through our experience and grow stronger.
"Know thou, my son, that all these things shall give thee experience, and shall be for thy good" (D&C 122:7).
"My son, peace be unto thy soul; thine adversity and thine afflictions shall be but a small moment; and then, if thou endure it well, God shall exalt thee over all thy foes" (D&C 121:7-8).
How well the Lord has said it. And realizing my own love for Michael Adam, I now have a deeper understanding of the Lord's love for us and of why He gives us trials and tribulations. I am very grateful for these things and for a loving Father who would care to give us these learning experiences that we might grow.
Monday, March 23, 2009
49th State Hawaii Record Company
There comes a time in every child's life when he realizes he knows more than his parents. Or thinks he does. It's a part of growing up.
Sometime after we moved to the new house just south of Nampa, which occurred in December 1964, we had a 45 rpm vinyl phonograph record, one of the small ones with a doughnut hole in the middle, that was put out by the 49th State Hawaii Record Company. I do not remember what song was on the record. All I remember was that it bothered me that the label claimed Hawaii was the 49th state, when I knew full well that Hawaii was really the 50th state.
My mother was certain that Hawaii was the 49th state, and she had proof in hand, and none of my teen-aged arguments to the contrary could convince her otherwise. Remember, this was in an era before the Internet, and it was not a simple task to amass proof that Alaska was really the 49th state (admitted to the Union on January 3, 1959) and Hawaii the 50th (admitted on August 21, 1959). The encyclopedia we had was no help; its entries on Alaska and Hawaii still referred to them as territories. The public library was no help; its holdings contained nothing so recent as a current event.
Nothing I could come up with would carry the point. My mother was firm in her belief that Hawaii was the 49th state. Neither of us budged, and our friendly impasse finally faded away, neither of us convincing the other, neither of us conceding defeat.
Sometime after we moved to the new house just south of Nampa, which occurred in December 1964, we had a 45 rpm vinyl phonograph record, one of the small ones with a doughnut hole in the middle, that was put out by the 49th State Hawaii Record Company. I do not remember what song was on the record. All I remember was that it bothered me that the label claimed Hawaii was the 49th state, when I knew full well that Hawaii was really the 50th state.
My mother was certain that Hawaii was the 49th state, and she had proof in hand, and none of my teen-aged arguments to the contrary could convince her otherwise. Remember, this was in an era before the Internet, and it was not a simple task to amass proof that Alaska was really the 49th state (admitted to the Union on January 3, 1959) and Hawaii the 50th (admitted on August 21, 1959). The encyclopedia we had was no help; its entries on Alaska and Hawaii still referred to them as territories. The public library was no help; its holdings contained nothing so recent as a current event.
Nothing I could come up with would carry the point. My mother was firm in her belief that Hawaii was the 49th state. Neither of us budged, and our friendly impasse finally faded away, neither of us convincing the other, neither of us conceding defeat.
Sunday, March 22, 2009
My period of inactivity
There were four LDS wards in Nampa when our family moved there in the spring of 1959. We lived in the Nampa Second Ward and met in an old meetinghouse built in the 1920s on the corner of 14th Avenue South and 4th Street South.
According to Mama's diary, we all went to church on Sunday, March 8, for the first time in the Second Ward. Sunday School in the new ward was a frightening experience for me. In the Owyhee Ward I had been in a class that was still in the junior Sunday School, but in Nampa I was sent into the senior Sunday School and by mistake was put into the class just older than the one I should have been in. When I realized the mistake the following Sunday, I vowed never to return again. Somehow my parents let it go, and I persisted in my inactivity for a couple months.
Then Grandma Batt came to visit. She had recently become widowed and was dealing with major life-changing events in her own life, similar I suppose to what I was going through by losing my Grandpa and moving to a new home and attending a new school and being in a new ward. Sunday morning brought the show-down. To Grandma it was unthinkable that a nine-year-old would be anywhere but in Sunday School on the Sabbath. I was the fortunate one because she won.
Mama wrote on Sunday, April 26, that "Mother and all the rest of us went to Sunday School at 10:15." That was the first time any mention of my going to church appeared in her diary since the Sunday in early March.
What a pivotal period that was in my young life. I shudder to think how different my life might have been had I continued not attending church during those formative years. A scary thought.
According to Mama's diary, we all went to church on Sunday, March 8, for the first time in the Second Ward. Sunday School in the new ward was a frightening experience for me. In the Owyhee Ward I had been in a class that was still in the junior Sunday School, but in Nampa I was sent into the senior Sunday School and by mistake was put into the class just older than the one I should have been in. When I realized the mistake the following Sunday, I vowed never to return again. Somehow my parents let it go, and I persisted in my inactivity for a couple months.
Then Grandma Batt came to visit. She had recently become widowed and was dealing with major life-changing events in her own life, similar I suppose to what I was going through by losing my Grandpa and moving to a new home and attending a new school and being in a new ward. Sunday morning brought the show-down. To Grandma it was unthinkable that a nine-year-old would be anywhere but in Sunday School on the Sabbath. I was the fortunate one because she won.
Mama wrote on Sunday, April 26, that "Mother and all the rest of us went to Sunday School at 10:15." That was the first time any mention of my going to church appeared in her diary since the Sunday in early March.
What a pivotal period that was in my young life. I shudder to think how different my life might have been had I continued not attending church during those formative years. A scary thought.
Saturday, March 21, 2009
An early lesson
I started school in Adrian, Oregon, at the end of the summer in 1955. I was six years old.
Adrian was a little farming town of maybe a hundred to two hundred people. The edge of the town was within a stone's throw of the Snake River. Besides its few dozen homes, Adrian had a post office, a couple of general stores, a feed store, at one time a movie theater, and a railroad track. Its prominent feature, however, was the school. One building housed grades one through eight, and a second building housed the high school.
I remember an early lesson I learned right the first day or maybe first week of school. We were talking about day and night and the turning of the world and such cosmic things. Our teacher, Mrs. Comer, asked if anyone knew how long it took the earth to rotate once. I answered that it turned around so fast we couldn't even tell it, millions of times a day, because that's what my older brother Ray had told me. I found out it only revolves once a day and that I couldn't believe everything Ray told me.
Adrian was a little farming town of maybe a hundred to two hundred people. The edge of the town was within a stone's throw of the Snake River. Besides its few dozen homes, Adrian had a post office, a couple of general stores, a feed store, at one time a movie theater, and a railroad track. Its prominent feature, however, was the school. One building housed grades one through eight, and a second building housed the high school.
I remember an early lesson I learned right the first day or maybe first week of school. We were talking about day and night and the turning of the world and such cosmic things. Our teacher, Mrs. Comer, asked if anyone knew how long it took the earth to rotate once. I answered that it turned around so fast we couldn't even tell it, millions of times a day, because that's what my older brother Ray had told me. I found out it only revolves once a day and that I couldn't believe everything Ray told me.
Friday, March 20, 2009
Increasing our fast offering
During fast and testimony meeting on Sunday, February 1, 2009, a thought came into my mind: In these tough economic times, when so many people are unemployed and there is increased demand on the Lord's storehouse, I should increase the amount of the fast offering we pay each month, perhaps even doubling it, since we have been and continue to be so blessed temporally.
We had been paying $30 a month and, in counsel with Claudia, I decided to increase our offering to $50 a month.
A month later, on Sunday, March 8, our stake president counseled members of the stake during the general session of stake conference to increase their fast offerings. There is some question, as I discussed his talk with other ward members, whether he said to increase it or to double it. To those not in a position to increase their offering, he invited them to increase their service.
My response to President Cory Hanks's counsel included at least two thoughts: First, I was grateful that I was sufficiently in tune with the Holy Ghost that the Spirit had whispered the same message to me a whole month earlier. And, second, perhaps doubling my fast offering, in my case at least, meant doubling my offering. So, we will now pay $60 a month.
Many prophets through the years have counseled us to pay a generous fast offering. I particularly resonated with President Spencer W. Kimball's teachings decades ago when he said, "Each member should contribute a generous fast offering for the care of the poor and the needy. This offering should at least be the value of the two meals not eaten while fasting.
"'Sometimes we have been a bit penurious and figured that we had for breakfast one egg and that cost so many cents and then we give that to the Lord. I think that when we are affluent, as many of us are, that we ought to be very, very generous. . . .
"'I think we should . . . give, instead of the amount saved by our two meals of fasting, perhaps much, much more—ten times more when we are in a position to do it' (Conference Report, Apr. 1974, 184).
"Fast offerings have long constituted the means from which the needs of the Lord's poor have been provided. . . . If we give a generous fast offering, we shall increase our own prosperity both spiritually and temporally" (Spencer W. Kimball, "Welfare Services: The Gospel in Action," Ensign, Nov. 1977, 76–78).
And the prophet's prophecy and promise: "Let's do these things because they are right, because they are satisfying, and because we are obedient to the counsels of the Lord. In this spirit we will be prepared for most eventualities, and the Lord will prosper and comfort us. It is true that difficult times will come—for the Lord has foretold them—and, yes, stakes of Zion are 'for a defense, and for a refuge from the storm' (D&C 115:6). But if we live wisely and providently, we will be as safe as in the palm of His hand" (Spencer W. Kimball, "Welfare Services: The Gospel in Action," Ensign, Nov. 1977, 76–78).
We had been paying $30 a month and, in counsel with Claudia, I decided to increase our offering to $50 a month.
A month later, on Sunday, March 8, our stake president counseled members of the stake during the general session of stake conference to increase their fast offerings. There is some question, as I discussed his talk with other ward members, whether he said to increase it or to double it. To those not in a position to increase their offering, he invited them to increase their service.
My response to President Cory Hanks's counsel included at least two thoughts: First, I was grateful that I was sufficiently in tune with the Holy Ghost that the Spirit had whispered the same message to me a whole month earlier. And, second, perhaps doubling my fast offering, in my case at least, meant doubling my offering. So, we will now pay $60 a month.
Many prophets through the years have counseled us to pay a generous fast offering. I particularly resonated with President Spencer W. Kimball's teachings decades ago when he said, "Each member should contribute a generous fast offering for the care of the poor and the needy. This offering should at least be the value of the two meals not eaten while fasting.
"'Sometimes we have been a bit penurious and figured that we had for breakfast one egg and that cost so many cents and then we give that to the Lord. I think that when we are affluent, as many of us are, that we ought to be very, very generous. . . .
"'I think we should . . . give, instead of the amount saved by our two meals of fasting, perhaps much, much more—ten times more when we are in a position to do it' (Conference Report, Apr. 1974, 184).
"Fast offerings have long constituted the means from which the needs of the Lord's poor have been provided. . . . If we give a generous fast offering, we shall increase our own prosperity both spiritually and temporally" (Spencer W. Kimball, "Welfare Services: The Gospel in Action," Ensign, Nov. 1977, 76–78).
And the prophet's prophecy and promise: "Let's do these things because they are right, because they are satisfying, and because we are obedient to the counsels of the Lord. In this spirit we will be prepared for most eventualities, and the Lord will prosper and comfort us. It is true that difficult times will come—for the Lord has foretold them—and, yes, stakes of Zion are 'for a defense, and for a refuge from the storm' (D&C 115:6). But if we live wisely and providently, we will be as safe as in the palm of His hand" (Spencer W. Kimball, "Welfare Services: The Gospel in Action," Ensign, Nov. 1977, 76–78).
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Following priesthood counsel
Our older son Michael had decided to quit school after his first semester at BYU, which meant giving up the second half of his full-tuition scholarship, to get a job to earn money for his mission. The idea was originally his, but we felt comfortable with it, particularly because there seemed to be a lot of compelling reasons why that course seemed to be a good idea: He was starting his college career with about a year's worth of advance placement credit. He was wondering about getting too far along in a major like computer science before leaving for two years. He was even having second thoughts about his major. He had exhausted his own funds from his summer job and wasn't sure where to get the money to pay his room and board for another semester. He had a job opportunity that seemed promising. His mission would mean more to him if he had more of his own funds invested in it. Etc.
A lot of good reasons . . . except for perhaps one: Apparently the Lord had other plans in mind.
It happened something like this: On the afternoon of December 17, 1991—the Tuesday of finals week—I received a phone call from F. Michael Watson, our stake president, just before I was getting ready to leave my office. He said he had been thinking a lot about Michael and didn't think it was a good idea for him to drop out of school and wondered if it were too late for him to reverse his decision.
"I don't know," I replied, "but he'll be home sometime this evening, and I'll talk it over with him and see what he thinks."
The reason Michael was coming home from Provo that particular night was a job interview the next morning for a six-month position as a full-time data entry operator (the same job he had had part-time while in high school).
Michael came home after I had gone to the stake center for my regular Tuesday meetings there. Without telling him why, Claudia had him phone me there. I told him he needed to come down to the stake offices so the two of us could talk with President Watson about his future plans. He arrived shortly, and we went in to visit with President Watson, who began something like, "Michael, this has been weighing heavily on my mind the past few weeks, and I feel very strongly that you need to stay in school."
I was surprised at how forceful his counsel was to Michael. He continued by saying that means could be provided toward his mission to compensate for the income he wouldn't be earning by staying in school and that he shouldn't worry about finances.
Needless to say, Michael and Claudia and I were up late that evening discussing this sudden turn of events, trying to help him decide what to do. We happen to believe rather strongly in following inspired counsel from a priesthood leader, particularly under the circumstances this counsel was given and without our even seeking it.
As we talked, we were amazed at the number of seeming coincidences that made this change seem the right direction to go. For example, the timing of President Watson's telephone call. Or the several steps Michael needed to take to leave BYU that with only three days left in the semester he had still not taken. Or his resident assistant's continuing to forget to bring by the forms Michael needed to sign to leave Deseret Towers. Or Michael's bishopric forgetting the previous Sunday, the final one of the semester, to include his name in the list of people being released from their callings because they wouldn't be in the ward after the holidays. And so on.
By the next morning both he and we knew the right decision was for Michael to stay in school for another semester. I'm certain we don't understand why he is supposed to continue at BYU. Perhaps we may never know. But subsequent events have already proved that it's the right decision.
A single example from among many: Ten days later, as I was preparing for our visit with the bishop at tithing settlement, I discovered that somehow I had miscalculated the final tithing I owed for the year. I had planned a final payment at tithing settlement that would have put us, even with a generous rounding upward, about a thousand dollars beyond what we actually needed to pay. Now, I keep a fairly meticulous budget, and I still have not been able to figure that one out on paper. But I know it somehow computes in the currency of heaven. A thousand dollars was the amount we were still short on completing the payments for Michael's room and board for the rest of the school year.
"Wherefore, dispute not because ye see not," the revelations say, "for ye receive no witness until after the trial of your faith" (Ether 12:6).
And, of course, the Lord's promise, "Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, . . . and prove me now herewith, saith the Lord of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it" (Malachi 3:10).
A lot of good reasons . . . except for perhaps one: Apparently the Lord had other plans in mind.
It happened something like this: On the afternoon of December 17, 1991—the Tuesday of finals week—I received a phone call from F. Michael Watson, our stake president, just before I was getting ready to leave my office. He said he had been thinking a lot about Michael and didn't think it was a good idea for him to drop out of school and wondered if it were too late for him to reverse his decision.
"I don't know," I replied, "but he'll be home sometime this evening, and I'll talk it over with him and see what he thinks."
The reason Michael was coming home from Provo that particular night was a job interview the next morning for a six-month position as a full-time data entry operator (the same job he had had part-time while in high school).
Michael came home after I had gone to the stake center for my regular Tuesday meetings there. Without telling him why, Claudia had him phone me there. I told him he needed to come down to the stake offices so the two of us could talk with President Watson about his future plans. He arrived shortly, and we went in to visit with President Watson, who began something like, "Michael, this has been weighing heavily on my mind the past few weeks, and I feel very strongly that you need to stay in school."
I was surprised at how forceful his counsel was to Michael. He continued by saying that means could be provided toward his mission to compensate for the income he wouldn't be earning by staying in school and that he shouldn't worry about finances.
Needless to say, Michael and Claudia and I were up late that evening discussing this sudden turn of events, trying to help him decide what to do. We happen to believe rather strongly in following inspired counsel from a priesthood leader, particularly under the circumstances this counsel was given and without our even seeking it.
As we talked, we were amazed at the number of seeming coincidences that made this change seem the right direction to go. For example, the timing of President Watson's telephone call. Or the several steps Michael needed to take to leave BYU that with only three days left in the semester he had still not taken. Or his resident assistant's continuing to forget to bring by the forms Michael needed to sign to leave Deseret Towers. Or Michael's bishopric forgetting the previous Sunday, the final one of the semester, to include his name in the list of people being released from their callings because they wouldn't be in the ward after the holidays. And so on.
By the next morning both he and we knew the right decision was for Michael to stay in school for another semester. I'm certain we don't understand why he is supposed to continue at BYU. Perhaps we may never know. But subsequent events have already proved that it's the right decision.
A single example from among many: Ten days later, as I was preparing for our visit with the bishop at tithing settlement, I discovered that somehow I had miscalculated the final tithing I owed for the year. I had planned a final payment at tithing settlement that would have put us, even with a generous rounding upward, about a thousand dollars beyond what we actually needed to pay. Now, I keep a fairly meticulous budget, and I still have not been able to figure that one out on paper. But I know it somehow computes in the currency of heaven. A thousand dollars was the amount we were still short on completing the payments for Michael's room and board for the rest of the school year.
"Wherefore, dispute not because ye see not," the revelations say, "for ye receive no witness until after the trial of your faith" (Ether 12:6).
And, of course, the Lord's promise, "Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, . . . and prove me now herewith, saith the Lord of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it" (Malachi 3:10).
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Really stupid things
Sometimes we do really stupid things.
I recall a story from my dad's childhood in northern Utah. His family lived on a farm in south Davis County in what is now North Salt Lake and Woods Cross, and the Bamberger train, the interurban rail line that during the first half of the Twentieth Century ran from Salt Lake to Ogden, passed right in front of their place. There was a Bamberger stop in the area known as Cleverly Crossing (as depicted in the early photograph below from the Utah State Historical Society). Dad and his brothers and sisters used to ride the Bamberger to Kaysville, where they attended Davis High, the only high school in the county at that time.
The story handed down from my father is that on a winter's morning, while waiting for the Bamberger to arrive, he licked the cold rail, probably on a dare, and his tongue stuck to the cold metal. With the train approaching, he did the only sensible thing a person in that predicament could do. He yanked his tongue away from the rail. That must have really hurt. And I doubt he ever tried that trick again.
My own really stupid story was not as life-threatening and may actually have been repeated more than once. I too grew up on a farm. We had cows and used electric fences to keep them in, except that cows, despite their being stupid beasts, always seemed to figure out how to get out anyway. It came as a shock to learn that if you pee on an electric fence, you feel it throughout the entire body. Not a pleasant sensation.
I recall a story from my dad's childhood in northern Utah. His family lived on a farm in south Davis County in what is now North Salt Lake and Woods Cross, and the Bamberger train, the interurban rail line that during the first half of the Twentieth Century ran from Salt Lake to Ogden, passed right in front of their place. There was a Bamberger stop in the area known as Cleverly Crossing (as depicted in the early photograph below from the Utah State Historical Society). Dad and his brothers and sisters used to ride the Bamberger to Kaysville, where they attended Davis High, the only high school in the county at that time.
The story handed down from my father is that on a winter's morning, while waiting for the Bamberger to arrive, he licked the cold rail, probably on a dare, and his tongue stuck to the cold metal. With the train approaching, he did the only sensible thing a person in that predicament could do. He yanked his tongue away from the rail. That must have really hurt. And I doubt he ever tried that trick again.
My own really stupid story was not as life-threatening and may actually have been repeated more than once. I too grew up on a farm. We had cows and used electric fences to keep them in, except that cows, despite their being stupid beasts, always seemed to figure out how to get out anyway. It came as a shock to learn that if you pee on an electric fence, you feel it throughout the entire body. Not a pleasant sensation.
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Swimming
When I was a boy we lived within a mile of the Snake River, which curved to the south and west of our farm in a great bend that gave the area its name, Big Bend. We never went swimming in the river. Mama always warned us of its treacherous undertows and currents. Plus I always secretly knew it had snakes swimming in it, and snakes and I respectfully kept our distance, thank you.
We did swim, however, in a swimming hole a quarter or a half a mile south of the farm house. The swimming hole was at the junction of a couple of drain ditches and had a culvert, a small, moss-covered cement thing, we used to slide down into the water, a welcomed relief on a hot summer afternoon. (I visited the spot after I was a grown-up and was utterly amazed at how much smaller it was than when I was little.)
At other times we would drive to a place called White Rock, located somewhere on the Owyhee River, a much smaller and evidently less treacherous stream, since Mama let us swim there.
Sometime in the summer of 1955, just after I turned six, I nearly drowned at White Rock. (Mama mentioned in her diary our going to White Rock three times during the summer of 1955: July 23, July 25, and July 28. She did not mention my near-drowning, but she did record on July 28 that while up swimming she shut her little finger in the car door and "it sure hurt.")
Anyway, back to drowning. I was wading along the side of the river in shallow water, stepping among the rocks that covered the bottom in the spot where I was. Some of my older brothers, swimming farther out in the stream, had seen some fish and were trying to catch them with their hands.
The next thing I remember was standing or sitting on a rock that was slippery, with my body mostly under the water, when a fish splashed right in front of my face, just inches away. It startled me enough that I lost my balance, and I slipped out into the water, my head underwater, and I started drifting downstream. I didn’t know how to swim, and I don’t think anyone had noticed me go under. It seemed like I floated along underwater for the longest time, as my brief little life passed by, although I was probably under only a few seconds.
As I floated by my brother Kay, who was thirteen, he saw my foot in the water. As he grabbed for it I remember his yelling something like, "Hey, here's that fish!" And he pulled a coughing, sputtering little brother foot first out of the water.
The whole experience scared me terribly. For years I had a great fear of any water I couldn’t see the bottom of, such as a lake or a river. A few years later, when I was a teenager, this fear kept me from earning the Eagle rank in Scouting. By the time I quit Scouting, I was only two merit badges short of Eagle—swimming and lifesaving.
By the summer of 1967, just after I graduated from high school, I finally worked up the courage to try water skiing for the first time. And I actually survived.
We did swim, however, in a swimming hole a quarter or a half a mile south of the farm house. The swimming hole was at the junction of a couple of drain ditches and had a culvert, a small, moss-covered cement thing, we used to slide down into the water, a welcomed relief on a hot summer afternoon. (I visited the spot after I was a grown-up and was utterly amazed at how much smaller it was than when I was little.)
At other times we would drive to a place called White Rock, located somewhere on the Owyhee River, a much smaller and evidently less treacherous stream, since Mama let us swim there.
Sometime in the summer of 1955, just after I turned six, I nearly drowned at White Rock. (Mama mentioned in her diary our going to White Rock three times during the summer of 1955: July 23, July 25, and July 28. She did not mention my near-drowning, but she did record on July 28 that while up swimming she shut her little finger in the car door and "it sure hurt.")
Anyway, back to drowning. I was wading along the side of the river in shallow water, stepping among the rocks that covered the bottom in the spot where I was. Some of my older brothers, swimming farther out in the stream, had seen some fish and were trying to catch them with their hands.
The next thing I remember was standing or sitting on a rock that was slippery, with my body mostly under the water, when a fish splashed right in front of my face, just inches away. It startled me enough that I lost my balance, and I slipped out into the water, my head underwater, and I started drifting downstream. I didn’t know how to swim, and I don’t think anyone had noticed me go under. It seemed like I floated along underwater for the longest time, as my brief little life passed by, although I was probably under only a few seconds.
As I floated by my brother Kay, who was thirteen, he saw my foot in the water. As he grabbed for it I remember his yelling something like, "Hey, here's that fish!" And he pulled a coughing, sputtering little brother foot first out of the water.
The whole experience scared me terribly. For years I had a great fear of any water I couldn’t see the bottom of, such as a lake or a river. A few years later, when I was a teenager, this fear kept me from earning the Eagle rank in Scouting. By the time I quit Scouting, I was only two merit badges short of Eagle—swimming and lifesaving.
By the summer of 1967, just after I graduated from high school, I finally worked up the courage to try water skiing for the first time. And I actually survived.
Monday, March 16, 2009
My earliest memory
Water is a part of my very earliest memory. We were out on a lake in a small motorboat. It started raining, and I must have been absolutely terrified. All I can remember is water. Water everywhere—water in the vast lake, water falling out of the gray sky, water spraying on me from the noisy motor. And, most likely, water streaming out of my bawling two-year-old eyes.
According to my mother's diary for July 1, 1951, we were with my grandparents on an outing at Jenny Lake in Wyoming's Teton National Park. That would have been two and a half weeks before I turned two.
According to my mother's diary for July 1, 1951, we were with my grandparents on an outing at Jenny Lake in Wyoming's Teton National Park. That would have been two and a half weeks before I turned two.
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