My guardian angel?

Today we will go off to some fun and some not so fun but quite interesting thing or more specifically situations in my life.

When I was around 14 years old I went on a train ride to visit my uncle Steve and my grandparents in Victor for part of the summer. I had just gotten a new pair of cowboy boots and as they were not very easy to come by in those days as my father was only earning about $400.00 a month, oh well when I got to the farm or ranch as my grandfather was still working for the banker we were working on picking up some that had been mowed and baled. Well we had filled the wagon and were on our way back to the haystack as we would put the current load on top of the stack then go back for another load. On the trip my uncle turned the tractor to sharply and me stand on the back of the tractor got my boot heels stuck in the connector pipes and the heel of my new boots was torn off. I was so distraught about this that I cried for the rest of the afternoon. Well when we got home that afternoon, earlier than usual as I was so distracting to everyone my grandfather gave me a pair of moccasins and told us to go fishing while he went to town and had my boots fixed.

Well this sounded fun and we got some fishing gear and went to the best stream my uncle knew about and spread out to fish, he went down stream as it was easier than climbing upstream and I just found a good place to sit and cast my line into the stream. I was near this old dead tree and naturally sat down with my back to the tree. I had made several casts and was about to pull in the third rainbow trout when I heard my name called, no one was around so I looked both directions and didn’t see anything then I started to reel the fish in again when I heard my name again so I stood up and started to walk around the tree.

As I got behind the tree, it fell over the spot where I had been sitting and destroyed the fishing rod. There was still no one around that I could see and at the time was just angry that I had been stupid enough to loose my or my grandpa’s fishing rod and reel and the fish I had not yet landed. Now, I realize that the person I heard must have been my guardian angel. My grandpa had gotten my boots fixed as well as if they were brand new but I was smart enough to know which the damaged boot was.

A few weeks before that happened I had been in school and the football coach had been teaching the science class when a bunch of us boys had found a dead frog and were teasing his, the coaches daughter, with it saying we were going to put it in her soup and things like that. Well we thought it was funny but not the girl and definitely not her father, the coach, so he had us stay after class to be punished in the funniest way.

He had each of us take off our shirt and get a rubber band from his desk and we had to go around the room snapping each of the bellies and then stand while everyone else snapped you so you could then start out on them. This way he didn’t have to touch us but got the punishment done. It hurt like crazy but we just laughed to make him even angrier at us to the point that he sent us to the principals office were we just told of what had happened and the principal, Mr. McFarland just sent us home.

As I looked at my belly that evening while in the shower I wondered who got the worst end of those rubber bands and decided it was just to funny.

Explanation.

She's always happy! I Love her so much. Actually both, but mostly Diana.

I must apologize to all if you thought my life was all fun and games, but I started out to tell my life story, and I am not crying in my beer as I know that there is no-one harder on oneself than si mismo (you yourself) but I started to tell my life story and I must be as honest as possible, even if I did say that I cannot tell the truth, er I mean a lie. I don’t want anyone to think that the rest of my life is all doom and gloom as it isn’t. Would anyone want me to skip over the bad parts? Well so much for my explanation.

Now I was talking about the town I graduated hi-school from. We moved to Othello in 1961 and my parents have never left while I am a globetrotter and like to move from one place to another in the USA.

There were 2 sets of twins in my age group in Othello and who were in my class. There was Debbie and David Fale, and there was Kristy and her sister Debbie whose last name I cannot remember for the life of me even if I can remember all things as if they happened earlier today. Anyway I remember both Debbies to be so dry and stuck up they remind me of prunes and David was a jerk, but I always wanted to date Kristy as she was such a nice person to me, but I was afraid of what her sister Debbie might say to me. I think I was never able to forget the little girl in Stevensville until I met Diana and then I forgot everyone else. But now we know where Kristy Dawn got her name.

Kristy was my idea and Dawn was a really fat friend to Diana who used to always be high on marijuana I think can’t be positive, she was not known to me personally.

Another story of Othello tomorrow.

What happens now?

While I lived in Stevensville I had a couple things happen to me that I might not have enjoyed had I not lived there.

First: I got to meet one of the first pilots of the “Thunderbirds” who lived in Stevensville and used to fly over and waggle his wings for his wife and family.

Second: I found out about my sense of art, I could not draw at all; however, I was a great painter at that time. It just held no interest for me. My teacher told my mother how great she thought I was. As everyone who knows me can say, I have never had an interest in painting. My parents would often buy me paint by number picture for my Christmas present and it seemed that my father would always paint them in the end.

Well it is on to Othello then. When we moved to Othello my father’s sister, Doris and her husband Joe and family moved over with us, but Joe was always trying some get rich quick scheme and shortly left his family in Othello while he went to Seattle and finally moved back home. After a few years my father’s parents moved over from Victor to be with us, so I guess that my father has a great sense of family and seemed to always have some of his family around him. I wish I was as close to my brothers and sisters, but they all seemed to think I was mean and no matter how much I would beat them I couldn’t’ seem to convince them otherwise.

After moving to Othello I had a great many experiences so we will be here for several months, er maybe hours. No days.

At first I started in the sixth grade at Lutacaga school and I loved it as it was only 1 block from home where Stevensville was about three on the railroad track which always seemed to change in the middle of the day so I had to climb up this tremendous hill both ways. Anyway I also loved it as there was no little girl who was out to get me with everything I tried to, whether I was mean or nice which I naturally am.

In this school I could always look forward to junior hi-school next year. Now junior was right next door to the grade school junior is also what they call middle school these days.
I was so excited to get into hi-school hat the junior didn’t seem to matter until I talked to the principal’s son and then I got severely beaten, I wasn’t very large in those days and had no knowledge of how to fight. One day I went home crying and my mother was concerned and wanted to know what had happened. Well I decided to say that Mr. McFarland had spanked me. The principal was Mr. McFarland who died while serving the school a couple years later, I’m sure while spanking some poor soul, LOL. Anyway my mother went to school to find out why I had been spanked, against my wishes. Well when she got home I really got spanked with that old gun but she had drilled holes in to make it sting worse. Well they never did figure out exactly why I was crying that day. Did I learn a lesson not to speak falsely? Not on your life.

Well it is getting late and I need to go to bed talk at you later. Why am I writing today, well it is because Diana bought a new keyboard as she needs to do some keyboarding work tomorrow and my finger is feeling somewhat better so I removed the wrapping today.

Short story...

As I was at the doctor today, before I left and after having my little finger x-rayed, the doctor told me that all I had to do was bind my fingers and ice them every two (2) hours for 15-20 minutes. I askd if she were sure and didn't she want to make a prosthesis for it. She laughed and said "what are you trying to do, whittle your self away?"

Not real often...

I apologize in advance as I am going to stop writing for a few days as last night I did something to hurt my little finger, so now I am using the on screen keyboard and it is taking me such a long time to write this short note.
Also, due to my bound state I knocked over a soda and spilled it all over the keyboard which no longer works very well.
See ya soon…

Who knows where all this will end? I do.

As we look at the times in Stevensville we remember little things such as the time my youngest brother fell into the canal that ran beside our house and guess who ran, jumped in and saved him? Well it wasn’t me, he was a spoiled brat. My little sister, Connie, did the heroics that day. I just stood and watched as I liked to do when my mother sent us out to cut the throats and pluck the chickens we owned. At this time my brothers and sisters got fed up with me and complained to mom, well that got me in trouble with mom and them in trouble with me. Actually the railroad tracks were quite level through our little town and one day after I had gotten in trouble for something quite unreasonable in my eyes, I had decided to run away from home so I went upstairs to my room, pack my clothes in a bandana and set off for a friends house along these tracks. Well the next road crossing was about two miles from our house and so I walked a long way before my mother picked me up and for once had a talk with me instead of using physical violence. Well I had started to turn back home several times as I got hungry or cold, walking along the tracks. I remember once having to get way off the tracks as a train was coming along and I sure didn’t want to get run over, I can imagine having my legs cut off as the train ran over them, funny now but that was my thoughts exactly at that time. I love my mother with all my heart these days, but it was with a great deal of help from my sweet wife that I finally came to this conclusion. I carried a grudge for a long time and certainly came to my present thoughts after a lot of struggles. I hope my children can come to the same thoughts sometime during their lives. While we lived in Stevensville there was a family by the last name of Brinkerhoff who lived in our ward. When I first started my mission I met an elder whose name was Elder Brinkerhoff who was from Stevensville but he did not remember me and I certainly did not remember him as he told me of the fate of his parents who had both been killed in a car wreck on their way home from a stake party in Missoula. While we lived in Stevensville my father worked at several jobs; as a fireman during the summer up in the hills around the Bitterroot Valley of Montana, as a local truck driver for a logging company, as a foreman for a lumber cutting mill way up in the mountains above Lolo, Montana. Finally when there seemed nothing of good report in Montana dad started looking for a job out of state and this is how we finally moved to Othello, Washington where a great deal of learning came along with a lot of work. Othello happens to be unique in the fact that it is the only city in the world with that name. When we moved to Othello my parents had 2 girls and 4 boys and I thought we had taken everyone; but, to my surprise, my mother had two more girls to even up the odds. We moved to Stevensville when I was between my 7th and 8th year of life and we moved from Stevensville to Othello, WA just before I turned 11 years old, so much for me remembering all things. There were many things that happened to me while I lived in Stevensville but I remember so few of them. I think my troubles started here when shortly after I started the first year of school and I was walking across the school yard by myself and I saw this great throwing or skipping stone. I picked it up and threw it at nothing; I just threw the rock and the next day when I went out to recess, I was accosted by a young girl with a black eye and tree of her older brothers, they accused me of deliberately throwing the rock at her and giving her a black eye. The youngest brother wanted to give me a black eye right there and each got wiser and more hurtful as they finally got to the oldest, who suggested that no one touch me but that they would all go to their classmates and convince everyone how despicable I was. This meant that all the time I lived in Stevensville, I was treated very poorly by everyone except the kids from church and even some of them could be very snooty towards me. I got to wondering why no one liked me as I was a great guy, I thought and as my father kept telling me. So why was I having such a hard time of it. I thought of the little girl quite often and wondered if I had actually given her that black eye or if she and her brothers just wanted to be mean to me. I thought of her quite often as she was a very pretty and popular girl, always invited to the best parties and her parents were quite wealthy so everyone just naturally liked her and her brothers. Well tomorrow it is on to Othello… we keep getting closer to my wedding.

As we get older...

There are no easy ways to remember the next story; you see my mouth would not open so it is hard to tell. When I was about seven I remember hearing about all the ice cream they would serve a boy after he had his tonsils out. I think my mother told me the stories but we shall not cast stones. I went into the hospital ready to eat a lot of ice cream and came out the next day without eating anything at all. Why – I’ll tell you why, they couldn’t get my mouth open for the tonsillectomy operation and so they thought I would have to try again in about a week. I went home and commiserated with my dog Spot for several days. The next time I went in they were waiting for me, with a wooden wedge to put between my teeth before they gassed me and you know what, they could not get my mouth open any wider than that wedge had fit into my mouth, but they did the surgery anyway. Do you remember all the ice cream I was promised I kept asking for it and when they finally brought it I could not eat it as my throat was so sore. I learned not to believe anything I was told when going in for an operation in the future.

Oh, back to Victor for one last story which happened about the same time as old bossy and the cow pie and then on to my baptism.

Steve and I were doing some cleaning up around the house, a new place to live even if it were two million years old. But we were cleaning an old closet that I assume no one of my family had been in before. Well we found an old thirty-thirty bullet (I assume) that looked as good as a bullet for our cowboy guns. The trouble was that it did not fit in either of our revolvers and it would not fit in my rifle but it did fit in Steve’s rifle which later became my own rifle. So we took that rifle out to the shed and practiced shooting it at each other, at Indians, at deer and finally at a moose when it fired out the end of the rifle blowing up the entire barrel so that it was no longer any better than a sawed off shotgun with curly ends. Neither of us wanted this thing as it would be evidence of what we had been doing that day and Steve told me that his parents would notice his missing gun so he decided that my rifle was now his.

Now we go on to my baptism and the fun that we had there. We lived in Stevensville and our stake center was in Missoula but we went to the Hamilton Chapel as it was the closest (by five miles) chapel that had a font. Before we went to the chapel we stopped at this tire store to get a tire fixed and while my father was talking to the owner of the shop I was out back in the shop playing with the machines which seemed like great fun until I happened to turn one on and got my finger terribly pinched o I went running to the car and would not come out until we got to the chapel and never went into another shop to play for many years.

My father was able to baptize me and after the baptism I figured that this was a great place to swim even if not bigger than a very short pool or pond it was bigger than my bathtub so I started to swim and my father had to catch me a haul me out where I got the worst tongue lashing I think I ever got from my father. When we got home I had to go out to find a switch for my mother who had also seen what I had done and her punishments were always physical where I seem to have gotten my ideas on raising children.

You think your life was rough, remember the troubles that you had with grandma and then think of the fact that I was always trying to find the smallest switch at which time I was sent out to get a bigger one and if that didn’t work my mother would use the old gun butt that she had drilled holes in. I think the worst punishment was always trying to find a switch big enough to satisfy my mother and yet small enough not to hurt to much.

On we go to the better parts of my life in Stevensville. I remember going on trips with my father when he had a short trip or when we went on a family trip. He was always sing goofy songs to us or teaching us new games to play while traveling in the car.

One time we went to see Old Faithful Geyser in Yellowstone National park. We saw the geyser and we saw the bears that stood in the middle of the road and stopped traffic for as far as one could see. No one was smart enough to throw a fish off to the side of the road. Oh well we got to see the bears wrestling each other and then we got to see the warden come up and shoo them off or shoot them with a tranquilizer gun and then pull them into a cage where they could be safely carted up into the high country. Another time we got to go to Salt Lake City for the July 24th celebration where we saw all kinds of marvelous things including the prophet David O. McKay who was the prophet almost my whole life as a boy, teenager and young man. Another time we got to go to Disneyland were I found myself to short to ride on most of the rides while my older sister was just barely tall enough, if ever there was a time when I wanted to be a transvestite it was here when I could have used a good pair of high heels. We were always traveling from Montana to Idaho to visit my other grandparents or my mothers parents, most of the time during the winter when there were no seatbelt laws and we would get down on the floor boards and lie close to the muffler where it was the warmest.

And now I will take a rest, see you again tomorrow… Just you wait until I get to my married life and start talking about you. Are you scared yet?

One day at a time...

As we try to remember all things in our life there is a whole lot that seems to go by the bye and bye, but remember, I remember all things as if they happened earlier today! What was it that Diana said I should remember to bring home? Oh, it was myself without any problems… Is there a good way to tell her that there are always problems? Now on to the history of my life. Before we moved to Stevensville each of my fathers brothers and sisters had moved to Victor with their parents to make the dairy farm work and one by one they had all left saying there had to be more money to be made in other than the dairy. You see my father and his father had tried to grow their own alfalfa hay to feed their cows as this would save money, they later found that hay grown in Idaho would produce a great deal more milk than hay grown locally in Montana. When everyone else had left and they had had to sell the farm, my father and grandfather started working for a beef rancher who was also a banker and a state representative. We lived in this man’s secondary house which had little heat, if any. At last my father decided to make a stab at something other than staying with his parents so he went off to drive truck as I said earlier for “Mayflower Moving Company” just to find out that they were as poor as the dairy industry and cattle ranching in Montana. Anyway we had to move out of the secondary house and find another place to live. Guess where, I’ll bet you didn’t think of Stevensville. If you did you were completely right. I thought it was named for my uncle. While we lived here there were a few things of note: First, I remember going to visit my grandparents and having my aunt Renae and my older sister Sandra make mud pies and then hold me down on the edge of the sidewalk and beat my head on the ground until I agreed to eat the blasted things. Oh well, at least they were not as bad as the cow pie I mentioned earlier. But they were still very awful and I’ll bet my aunt still has to look to find out how to make ice, I know my sister does.

I had a long day today so I will tell more tomorrow, if you care – dare to read on.

Jocelyn kisses Grandpas head

Years and years

As I was born In Idaho Falls, Bonneville, Idaho, USA, I was a carrot according to my father. He would always call me a carrot or carrots. I THOUGHT Idahoans were all Spuds not carrots. Oh well, I will never figure this one out.
While we lived in Victor, Ravalli, Montana, we were in multiple wards and I never figured out which I liked the best as we were switched so often, er maybe it was because I was so young. Anyway we were first in the Stevensville ward, and then in the Corvallis branch were we helped to build a chapel and helped to make it into a ward. Before we built the chapel we met in a Moose or an Elks lodge, why the hoofed Animals are used for clubs I don't know. But we used to have to go early and pick up beer bottles and sweep the floor of all the used tobacco products, and my mother wondered why I smoked – one would think it should have turned my stomach.
Oh, I was talking about my Uncle Steve's horse. Well we had to learn to ride him while he tried to scratch his sides and back on trees and on the lower branches. He sure liked to scratch himself a lot. While we lived in Victor I remember only one friend, Freddie Simon, who used to smell like the Mink farm his parents had. In my mind minks are as bad as rats. They always smell and they like to steal everything one left lying around.
We moved from Victor to Stevensville sometime around my third or fourth grade years. I was about three or four then, I think.
While we lived in Stevensville, we lived by this amazing railroad that went uphill toward the school and sometime around noon it switched and made us crawl back uphill on the way home. On the railroad track school was only about two blocks from home, even though it seemed about ten miles, and it was always snowing. If we had to go by way of the road it was both twice as far and instead of enduring the snow we had to fight with the mud bogs. We always got home either wet and cold or wet and dirty.
We moved to Stevensville to get away from my grandparents, who always treated my uncle Steve better than they treated me and I did not think very good things about this fact. Steve was about six months older than me and about six months younger than my older sister Sandra who was a year older than I, so I will never understand, why the favoritism. As if he was their youngest...
Actually, we lived in Victor while my father and grandfather owned a dairy farm and then moved to Stevensville when my father started driving truck for Mayflower trucking. While we lived in Victor I remember about three tales that need to be expressed before we go on to the times in Stevensville.
First, I remember my father needing to move some equipment from one location to a field about two miles away. I was about six years old and my mother was busy doing something that precluded her from helping at that time so my father , trusting god old carrots asked me to drive the smaller tractor from one place pulling a manure spreader (that had steal wheels with iron cleats on it to make it grip the ground better) to the lower forty field to help him out. Well I was so proud that I was trusted enough to be asked to help in this way, my chest stuck out so far that I could not even see the ground. Well we started and I got too far behind so I decided to catch up and as I got closer to the field, I was going too fast and turned too sharp and believe it or not the rear wheel of the tractor I was driving hit the fence post, jarred me loose and I fell from the tractor allowing the rear wheel if the tractor and both wheels of the manure spreader ran over my stomach and kept going into the field. I remember jumping up, seeing my father getting off his tractor and the manure spreader going as if to war. So I started chasing the tractor and my father yelled at me telling me to lie down in case there was something wrong with me. Finally I remember spending a week’s vacation in the Missoula, Montana hospital with the doctors pumping all the spaghetti I had eaten for lunch out to inspect for blood. I thought this a real waste of food.
Second, earlier in my life I remember riding my bicycle down the road without using my hands as there were no handgrips anyway. Well I hit a rock on the road, fell hitting my lip on the edge of the handle bar were there was supposed to be a hand grip and cutting my upper lip and leaving a scar that I am embarrassed to show anyone till this very day.
Third, while Steve and I were chasing cows in the corral we would climb on top of old Bossy, a Holstein cow, and act as if we were riding a horse. The reason I remember this so well was that I was on Bossy while Steve was shooing her so that he was herding. Anyway she decided to get up and in so doing she dropped me into a big cow pie which was the worst I ever tasted.
Tomorrow it is on to Stevensville…

First story! As it appears to me.

I am now going to do the thing that I have put off for many years! I am going to write my impressions of myself and of my family.

This is something that I have wanted to do for many years and it is time now that I work on it. Do not expect that I will say anything about you at any time. Do not be surprised if I do; however, do not expect that I will say anything good about you.

I remember my entire life as if it were to have happened earlier today so one can expect me to always be truthful about all things. If you seem to remeber the thing differently than I, well just remember that I cannot tell the truth, er I mean a lie.

The day that I was born was a very nice warm day with the sun shining over the doctors shoulder so as I was born all I could see was that big yellow bald spot.

Now, the first few years of my life were so boring that all I could do was to eat, sleep, and dirty my diapers so I will not bore you with these trivialities.

The thing that I remember most was my first two years in the Victor, Montana school district. The first year was taught by miss Monstrosity. she had to be at least 112 years old as it would take a person at least that long to get that ornery. While she was teaching trigonometry she used to come behind each of us boys and beat the back of our necks with her yard stick if we questioned anything. We must not have done our homework if we had to ask such simple questions.

The second year was taught by the most devastating woman that I can remember up until I was married, This Lady was so agreeable that we all tried to find a way to get to help her with cleaning the blackboards and the erasers. I remember how we boys would try to be tthe first who got to kiss her. As it happens I was the first who was kissed by her as I was told one winters day that if I would stick my tongue on the merry-go-round bar I would be the bravest of all. Well, they were all jealous as can be when she found me stuck to the merry-go-round and after using some warm water to get my tongue loose she took me in and kissed me better while I was getting warm.

Between my second and third grade years my uncle Steve was fortunate enough to be given a pony of his own and I would get to ride it if I was a good boy and would do most of his chores for him. We would ride the horse up and down the hillsides as we wandered between our parents pastures trying to herd the cattle. We would play marshall Matt Dillon and I got to play Chester. Funny, now that I look back on it. Chester was the gimpy fellow who could not walk staight. We would ride down to the river and skinny dip. Seems this was were I learned to swim, there at the river and at our local pond. It was far more challenging at the river as there were always swirls in the water that could cause a person to drown.