Trip to Mexico

In Junior High I took two years of Spanish. As I look back I realize that I was a terrible student. I had the basics of the language but never really applied myself to really learn how to speak well. Mrs. Finlayson who happened to live in our neighborhood, was my teacher. At the end of the second year Spanish students from across Utah had the opportunity to take a week-long trip to Mexico. I was able to talk my parents into sending me. I was over the moon with excitement.

I was the only one from our school going which meant that I didn’t know anyone except for Mrs. Finlayson. The Monday after school was out for the summer we met the bus at a rest stop on I15. Yes, we rode a bus all the way to Guadalajara Mexico but I didn’t care it was such an adventure.

The first day we stopped in Hermosillo. As we were entering Hermosillo we saw some little kids standing along the roadside holding these huge lizards that they had caught and were trying to get us to stop and buy them. I was amazed at how different it was from Utah. I recall all of the warm and friendly people that we met who were so welcoming and wanted us to enjoy our visit.

The second day we stopped in Mazatlan. Our hotel was right on the beach and this was the first time that I had seen the ocean. My roommate and I got up early the next morning, put on our swim suits and headed to the beach. It was early so no one was there and we had the whole beach to ourselves. I was beyond thrilled to actually swim in the ocean. As we were about to dive in the waves this old man came running up to us and told us that we could not swim there. We didn’t fully understand what he was saying but he made himself very clear that he wouldn’t let us get in the water. Reluctantly we just walked along the beach picking up a few shells then went back to the hotel. As we walked in the front door we were met by the desk clerk who was shocked at seeing us in our swim suits and she explained to us that there was a huge sign that said “No Swimming – Extreme Undertows” We had walked right past the sign and had no clue.

The next day we went to Guadalajara where we were placed with families who welcomed us into their homes and let us see what it was like living as a family in Mexico. The family that I stayed with were really cool. I recall that after dinner we sat around the kitchen table and talked and they got out a guitar and taught us some songs. It was really fun. As I look back I now realize that they were actually quite an affluent family and there was an entire different class of families in Guadalajara but this family couldn’t have been more welcoming to us.

Our next stop was Mexico City. We spent several days in and around Mexico City. I was fascinated with Teotihuacan or the Mayan Temple of the Sun. I couldn’t believe that I was actually walking in the same location that the Mayans had so long ago. I recall being struck in awe of the stories of

sacrifices and actually seeing where it was performed. I loved Mexico City! It was the biggest city I had ever seen and I was actually there. We went to the bazaars where I haggled for a few souvenirs for the first time in my life, I thought I was pretty shrewd until I realized that the little statue I bought was not authentic but a cheap replica that was in almost every other shop in the bazaar.

I recall being impressed when they took us to see where the Olympic Games had been held in Mexico City. I think we were supposed to be seeing the University but to me it was all about the Olympics. I had watched the Olympics on TV and can still remember Tommie Smith and John Carlos raising their fists in the air while standing on the winner’s podium and I was there. Even today when I see pictures of Mexico City I recognize places that I visited.

We rode a train from Mexico City to the US border. This was my first time on a train and I really had a great time. I made my way to the very back to the caboose and sat on the platform watching the countryside fly by. I was totally enthralled by the vast empty desert landscape. From the border we again took a bus back home.

As I look back at my 14 year old self and this trip I believe that this was the beginning of my wanderlust that has propelled me to live and travel all around the world. I’ve actually lived on every continent except for South America and of course Antarctica. Writing about this experience was quite fun as I have thought about things that I have not thought of for years.

Family Reunions

Growing up family reunions were something that I looked forward to every summer. We always have had a very close family and getting together at a family reunion was like hanging out with your absolute bestest friends that you haven’t seen for a whole year. We always had two reunions that we went to. The first was Grandma Golding’s brothers and sisters families, the Hamblin Reunion and the other was my mother’s family’s reunion the Golding Reunion. We would meet at various locations depending on who was putting the reunion on that year, but mostly we met at Avintaquin

Campgrounds just off of Highway 191 between Castle Gate and Duchesne. We always had quite a large group show up. My guess is that there’d often be 40 -60 of us. For us kids that things that we looked forward to the most were the games. We would have a softball game, horseshoes, and box hockey (we’d through horseshoes for hours and hours, often into the night). Sometimes someone would bring a barrel with a saddle on it and the barrel would be tethered by four ropes and tied to trees; we’d sit on the saddle while cousins would pull on the ropes trying to buck us off. There was always a huge potluck lunch followed by a cakewalk. In the evening we’d have a bonfire where we’d roast hot dogs and marshmallows. We loved sitting around the fire telling stories and singing songs. Every year we’d beg Uncle LaVell to sing his name song. Then Sunday morning we’d have a Priesthood meeting followed by a Fast and Testimony meeting. It was always sad to see the various families slowly begin to leave. Some I’d see again quite soon others I knew I wouldn’t see until next summer.

Early Memories of Working With Dad

At the time I did not understand what a huge influence my dad was in helping me become the man I am today. In fact even that statement does not describe how unaware I was in regards to the relationship that would develop between me and my dad. I have three distinct memories of the earliest times where I went to work with dad.

While still living in the Pink House in Spanish Fork, which would have made me 6 or maybe 7, I had a day off of school and dad took me with him to work. We were working on a fourplex apartment in Orem. Besides playing on the dirt hill with my orange dump truck and picking up scrap wood and nails I remember two distinct things. The building was two stories and they already had the walls up on the first floor and I was able to help dad put on the subfloor. He would roll up the floor joist and I’d hold it steady while he nailed it in place. After a long morning we had the floor on and I remember sitting on the edge next to dad with my feet dangling over the side and eating my sandwich thinking how cool it was to be sitting there on the floor that we had just built. This fourplex is still there at the corner of 1854 South Columbia Lane in Orem.

Another time I recall going to work with dad at around the same time was another fourplex apartment at 1350 South 800 East Orem. This time we were finishing up getting all of the blocking in place before the dry wallers came in to hang the sheetrock. I had gone around the whole project gathering up all of the scrap wood that I could find and dad used the scraps for the backing. This was a Saturday, oh the many Saturdays I spent working with dad, and we pretty well had things finished by noon and just as we were ready to leave one of dad’s friends stopped by and they got to talking. I think that I remember this time working with dad because it was Saturday after all and we were done but dad talked and talked and …talked. I was kicking dirt clods and sitting in the truck listening to the radio all the while my Saturday was wasting away.

The last of my earliest memories of working with dad was going with him as he worked on our house in Edgemont, 764 East Crestview Avenue Provo to be exact. I was able to help with everything from digging the basement to poring the cement for the sidewalks to planting the grass.

I recently had a chance to take Dena, Jessica, Molli and Delene to Provo to visit mom and dad’s graves. This trip was especially memorable because after saying hi to mom and dad we drove around Provo and Orem where I showed them some of the homes and buildings that I had worked on with dad. He definitely left a wonderful impact on the landscape of Utah Valley. The more I showed them around and told stories of what we did here and what we did there the more I came to realize the impact that working with dad left on me. I can never begin to express how learning the value of a good day’s work effected my life. Dad taught me that through hard work, perseverance, learning, studding, and sacrifice I could achieve my dreams. I am now 61 years old and since I was 16 I have never ever been out of a job. I have always worked and worked hard at whatever endeavor I have been engaged in. I hope that I have in return passed these values on to my children.

Eileen's Elbow

Shortly after moving into our new house in Edgemont mom and dad were away and us kids were home alone. The lawn in the backyard had not been planted yet and dad had his tools out so that he could work on the yard, this included his wheelbarrow. This was a big heavy duty wheelbarrow that he used for work. My sisters and I had seen him give us rides around the yard in the wheelbarrow so I thought why not give my sisters a quick spin around the backyard? Eileen climbed in and off we went. I was about 9 which would have made her about 5 – 6. She was so small that for her to be able to see she held herself up by hanging her arms over the side. Well, the wheelbarrow proved a bit harder to control than I had anticipated and before I know it we crashed dumping Eileen out, trapping her arm under the edge of the wheelbarrow breaking it at the elbow. We didn’t want to get into trouble so when mom and dad came home we told them that she fell down breaking her elbow. Mom took her to the emergency room to get it set and in a cast. They got home and Eileen was lying on the couch when there was a knock at the door. We answered and found two policemen who wanted to speak with mom and dad (they seemed huge in their uniforms and I was scared to death). Apparently the ER doctor didn’t buy mom’s explanation about how Eileen broke her elbow because that particular kind of break is usually associated with child abuse so he contacted the police to follow-up. Needless to say dad did not take too kindly to having the police show up at his door because we had lied to him. Yea, I got a whoopin… (I deserved it too)

Our New House in Edgemont

After a year of anticipation we finally moved into our new house in Edgemont. Dad had made a deal with his bosses to purchase a building lot in a new development that they were developing. Moving away from Spanish Fork to this neighborhood was a big deal! He was one of the first to buy a lot in the newly created neighborhood. When we moved in there were only 4 other homes on the whole circle. Our house was surrounded by alfalfa fields. There were rabbits everywhere and we could always hear the song of a Meadow Lark singing “Utah is a wonderful place to live” (at least that is what Mom told me they were singing)

I remember standing with Mom and Dad in the gravel road in front of our lot and Dad picking me up in his arms and telling me that this is where we were going to live once he finished building our home. He talked about how fun it was going to be to sit on the balcony and enjoy the panoramic view of the valley.

When Dad was ready to get his building permits the blue prints were not quite ready but he was good friends with the building inspectors in the city offices and because he was so excited to get started he took a piece of sheetrock that he had drawn up his house plans on into the inspectors office and talked them into issuing him a permit so he could get started with the promise that as soon as the blue prints were finished he’d bring them in for official stamps.

Dad was thrilled to be working on his own home. He worked every evening and every weekend. He borrowed a bulldozer to dig the foundation and did everything he could on his own. The things he couldn’t do himself like plumbing and electrical he’d work out deals with friends to do the specialized work on his house and he’d help them with one of their projects.

My favorite Saturday afternoon’s that summer was spent with Mom and my sisters taking a picnic lunch to our Dad while he was working on the house. After eating us kids would play and play. I vividly recall how Mom kept freaking out as us kids would run around on the subfloor before there were any walls. She was sure one of us would fall off the edge or down the stairwell. We loved the huge mounds of dirt. We’d make roads and little tunnels and play like we were driving our toy cars up, down and all around the hills. We’d climb to the top and slide or roll all the way to the bottom.

After months and months of hard work it was finally finished to a point that we could move in. I still remember the smell of the new house. I loved the soft carpet and the large snack bar in the kitchen that we could sit around as a family and use as our table. Mom and Dad even had a bathroom with a shower in their bedroom. Everything was wonderful and new and we were all so excited.

Mom and Dad were proud of their new home and grateful for all of the good friends who helped make it a reality. 35 years later when helping Mom and Dad pack up as they were getting ready to move out Dad made the comment to me about how grateful he was to his father. He went on to explain his thoughts saying that even though his father and brother had not helped him build his house at all grandpa had given him the skills allowing him to build our home and he felt blessed.

Summer Time with Cousins

Growing up my closest friends were actually my cousins. To me cousins were such an intricate part of my life that most of my fondest memories involved my cousins on both sides of our family. Mom was very close to her sister, Aunt Joy to me, so it was only natural that Mark and I spent a lot of time together whether at my house or at his. I loved the time we spent together. I recall that we took two tin cans and connected a long string between them and tried to make walkie-talkies out of them. Even though it never really worked we sure were good a pretending that it did.

We had a blast when Mom and Aunt Joy would send us to the movies in Price. They even gave us enough to buy a treat. We would go to the matinee double feature. One summer I remember going to see Hercules several weekends in a row.

Once when we were staying with Uncle LaVell we decided that we wanted to go out to the farm for the day and ride horses. Well, no one would take us so LaVell told us that we could walk if we wanted. We were 10 years old and it was about 5 miles up the road and out across the desert. We did it! It took all day (which in hindsight was probably why LaVell told us we could go) We played in every mud puddle, nook and cranny and even stopped half way and ate a sack lunch that we packed while drinking water from our canteens. We were so grown up! I loved, loved, LOVED hanging out with my cousins all summer long.

Going to "The Office" with Grandpa Leifson

One regret that I have is that I did not have a better relationship with Grandpa Leifson. As a result the memories that I do have of being with Grandpa stand out all the more for me. I recall staying with Grandma and Grandpa overnight one time when I was 6 or 7 years old. As I was in their kitchen I found a handheld knife sharpener and of course having never seen something like this before I had to give it a try. After drawing the knife across the sharpener a couple of times I became more and more confident and started to move faster and faster. Alas a bit too much faster, because before I even realized what had happened as I lowered the knife across the sharpener I missed and instead drew the now sharpened knife across my thumb. There was blood everywhere! Grandma thought I had cut my thumb off and in her excitement I distinctly remember her exclaiming that if I had cut my thumb off that it served me right for messin with things I shouldn’t be messin with. She wrapped a kitchen towel around it and took me to the doctor for stitches. She was so mad at me that she scolded me all the way there and back. I was scared to death and thought I would never have a thumb again. I still have the scare to this day, over fifty years later.

The next day was Sunday and Grandpa felt sorry for me so he took me to The Office with him. I was thrilled! As far as I knew he was a carpenter and I didn’t know Grandpa had an office. We got in the car together and drove downtown and when we parked I was confused because there were no offices there that I knew of. We walked around the corner and into the cafe where Grandpa sat me down on a bar stool and ordered me a chocolate milkshake and him a cup of coffee. When I finished my shake he gave me two quarters for the pinball machine. I had never seen a pinball machine and playing it with my thumb all bandaged up was a challenge. I will always remember playing there in the corner of The Office with Grandpa sitting on his bar stool sipping his coffee waiting for me to finish. This was the only occasion that I ever spent time one on one with Grandpa and I will always cherish this memory.

Playing in the Park

Cousins are awesome. At least ours were. Some of my most fun memories growing up involve my cousins. I recall a time while living in the white house in Spanish Fork that Aunt Joy came to visit and we took a picnic lunch to the park and we played and played. The swings were so fun. We would see how high we could get with the dream of going so high that we would go all the way around. We would get as high as we could then jump out and have competitions to see who could jump the farthest. We’d draw a line in the sand marking the best jump and try to better the mark. In addition to the swings the park had a huge slide. It was one of those big all metal slides that had a hump half way down. We would stand on the platform at the top and wind up swinging back and forth on the bar a couple of times to build momentum and launch ourselves down the slide often barely making contact with the slide until we were almost past the hump in the middle.

I now wonder how we survived “playing” in the park! Well, we almost survived. On this occasion when it was time to go we were all heading for the car, that is all except for Lois who wanted to go down the slide one more time… I didn’t see what happened but I understand as she went to launch herself down the slide she slipped and fell from the top of the slide breaking her arm. The doctor’s office was just down the street so while mom took her to the doctor to get her arm set and put into a cast we all got to play some more. Needless to say Aunt Joy didn’t let us back on the slide. This was the first time that one of us broke a bone and we all had fun signing her cast. I went on to break my arm, wrist and collar bone and of course there was the time I broke Eileen’s elbow, but that’s another story.

The Rocking Horse

I am not sure when he did it but dad made a little rocking horse for me. It was wooden and painted white with a black main and in my mind it could fly like the wind as I rocked back and forth. I spent hours on my horse was really able to get that horse rockin. I would lean back with all my might and have my horse tilting back to the point that we were all but toppling backwards onto the floor then with a jolt I’d fling myself forward as if I were racing down the country side then leaning back again I’d rock back gathering all my strength and rocket forward again over and over. I would scoot across the living room, down the hall and into the kitchen around the table and back again. My imagination was ever leading me up and down the paths and fields of grandpa’s farm. I loved going to the farm in Wellington where I’d ride behind my dad on a palomino named Devil as we explored the places on the farm that I was not allowed to go alone. I was in heaven spending that time with my dad.

On Lois’ 7^th birthday I decided that as a mature 8 year old that I was getting too old for my old friend the rocking horse, so with much fan fair on my part I wrapped it up in a blanket and that evening when we were exchanging gifts I dragged it down the hall and presented it to her. I felt as if I was giving her the most magnanimous gift that she could ever receive and she was thrilled. That rocking horse was handed down to each of my siblings and was a part of our home for as long as I can remember.

Milk and Cream

There are not too many things that I remember about meals on the Farm. But I do remember having breakfast with Grandpa Golding. He would fry up some bacon and eggs then he would take a slice of homemade bread and lay it face down in the bacon grease to let it fry for a few seconds. It was so good. For weeks after going home I begged mom to let me soak my bread in bacon grease before I’d eat it…she wouldn’t go for it.

There were always several cows on the farm that needed to be milked morning and night. All of the milking was done by hand. I used to love sitting with Uncle Floyd or one of my cousins, usually David, Keith, or Danny as they milked. We would try and squirt milk into each others mouth right from the cow’s tit or into the mouth of a cat that was always there with us milking. After milking the cows they would put the milk from their milking bucket into a 25 gallon milk can and carry the milk down to Floyd’s basement to ran it though the separator. The separator had a large basin on top that the raw milk was pored into. The basin had a cheese cloth filter on it to clean out anything that may have made its way into the milk while the cows were being milked. The side of the separator had a handle that we had to crank. It spun a gyro inside the separator that had to spin at a specific speed in order to separate the milk from the heavier cream. The cream came out the top spout and the milk came out the bottom spout. I loved to help…of course I didn’t have to do it every day like my cousins who lived on the farm all the time did, for me it was something new and exciting.

I recall being able to have a nice tall cold glass of milk with Grandpa Golding with our breakfast. It is interesting how some things are as vivid as if it had just happened and for me a nice cold glass of milk takes me back to sitting at the table with grandpa eating breakfast.

I also remember taking the cream and churning butter in the kitchen with Grandma Golding. Oh, we

were so excited to have a turn cranking the butter churn and see the paddles stir the cream inside the gallon sized glass churn. The thing was it took forever and ever…and ever and it did not seem as if anything was happening. It did not take too long for us kids to grow board and try to wander off to more exciting endeavors, but mom and grandma kept us there until it was finished. The butter was quite different than I was used to. It was very sweet and creamy. As I think about it, I actually think that I was used to having margarine and the butter was different than I expected it to be. I remember taking some home with us and how we made it last as long as we could.

Another thing I remember doing with the cream was that on one occasion we were visiting the farm in the winter, it was so cold and snowy and us kids were not able to spend very much time outside. Late in the afternoon I got all bundled up and went out with Uncle Floyd and down to the pond. The pond was frozen enough for us to walk on. Along the edge of the pond we chopped up some of the ice and put it in a bucket to take back to the house. Later that night we used some fresh cream and the ice to make some home made ice cream. We each took a turn cranking the handle of the ice cream maker. It took a while but I will never forget how amazed I was when we took the top off and there was so much ice cream inside, and it was so good. I wanted to help licking the beater inside but my older cousins beat me to it. We all sat around in Floyd’s house enjoying the ice cream and each others company as we talked, listened to the record player, and told corny jokes.

Gathering Eggs

When we went to the farm there were always certain things that we would do every time. One of the funniest things to do was gather eggs. Grandma and Grandpa always had a bunch of chickens all over the place. They roamed freely around the yard, as far as I can remember they did not have a chicken coop. We would make a game out of seeing who could find the most eggs. The chickens would make nests in and around the hay stacks. So we would climb around on the stacks of hay searching for the hidden nests. Often we would get in trouble for getting on top of the hay stacks because it was dangerous. To us kids the adults were just being a pain, because of course we knew how to climb without falling off or knocking them over. Once we found where the nests were we would watch them every day and collect the eggs.

I remember having breakfast with Grandpa Golding where he would fry up our eggs in bacon grease. Even thought I don’t remember ever having bacon there was always a can of bacon grease sitting near the stove. Then he would take his slice of homemade bread and put it in the pan of hot bacon grease to fry up a bit. Then the egg went on the bread. Oh, that was good.

Yellow Submarine

When I was 8 there was a movie that I wanted to see more than anything. This movie was the rave everywhere. It was The Yellow Submarine by the Beetles. All of the kids in school either had seen it or were making plans to see it. My opportunity finally came when a couple of my friends and I made plans to ride our bikes across town to the movie theater for the Saturday matinee. The problem was that mom was not too comfortable with me riding my bike all that way alone…without her. We negotiated an arrangement…well actually I begged until she finally gave in, somewhat. We agreed I could ride my bike on one condition. That being that I would walk it across the road when I got to an intersection. My friends met at my house and with my money in my pocket the time came and we were off. I stopped at the first intersection and walked my bike across the street, however my friends didn’t. I almost caught up with them when we arrived at the next intersection. Again I walked across the street with my bike, and again my friends didn’t and I found myself alone trying to catch up. By the time I made it to the next street I decided that it wasn’t worth it and I followed my friends across the street while riding my bike. We were sailing along with visions of the Beetles foremost in our minds when all of a sudden there she was, mom. She had followed us too see if I would indeed walk my bike across the intersections as agreed. As soon as I saw her I knew my goose was cooked. No matter how hard I begged I had to put my bike in the back of the car and go home to spend the rest of the day in my room. I didn’t mind spending the day in my room as much as I was devastated by being embarrassed in front of my friends and I never got to see The Yellow Submarine. In fact, to this day I still have never seen the movie that at the time I would have given anything to have had the opportunity to see. It turns out that I did learn that when I made a deal with my mother that I needed to keep it not because she could find out that I didn’t keep it but because I knew that keeping agreements was the right thing to do. Lesson learned!

Super Heros

Our pink house on Center Street was a two story house. The stairs going up to the second floor was in between the living room and the kitchen. On TV one of our favorite shows was Superman. He was totally awesome. The neatest thing that Superman did was to fly. He could glide through the air with his cape flapping behind him in the wind. Our imaginations were vivid and we played all kinds of games. I recall playing on the bare wooden stairs leading up to our bedrooms. The girls and I, ok mostly me, would take a bath towel and using a safety pin would transform the drab bath towel into our very own Superman’s cape. We would climb as far up the stairs as we dared then would jump with all our might flinging ourselves as far down the stairway as we could dreaming all the while that we were leaping over tall buildings with a single bound.

Faster than a speeding bullet.
More powerful than a locomotive. Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound.

Look! Up in the sky!
It's a bird. It's a plane. It's Superman!

Yes, it's Superman - strange visitor from another planet who came to Earth with powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men. Superman - who can change the course of mighty rivers, bend steel with his bare hands, and who, disguised as Clark Kent, mild mannered reporter for a great metropolitan newspaper, fights the never ending battle for Truth, Justice and the American Way.

Other times the stairway would become a war zone as I would setup all of my plastic Army men with the trucks and artillery pieces strategically placed. It still makes me smile as I can hear dad yelling at us because we had not picked up after ourselves and he had stepped on an Army man in his bare feet.

Learning to Ride My Bike

One day mom packed all of us kids into the car and took us over to Uncle Duane’s house which she often did. I can still see in my mind the route we’d drive taking the back roads from Spanish Fork to Springville. Back then the freeway had not arrived in our valley and the only way from town to town was State Street that wound from one town to the next then straight through and on again to the next. We loved going to Uncle Duane’s because they had a big back yard full of gardens and fruit trees. To me the backyard was a wonderland where I’d play and play. We climbed trees and threw dirt clods at anything that moved and when nothing was moving we’d have contests trying to knock over old tin cans that we would place strategically through the gardens.

Every fall Uncle Duane would invite us over to pick apricots and cherries stating that he had more than he could ever possibly use. He was a kind and loving man I will always remember how much mom looked up to him and truly loved her big brother. We always left with a basket full of tomatoes, cucumbers and zucchini squash. On this occasion we came home with what to me was a real treasure, a brand new, at least to me it was brand new, bike that my older cousin Steven had out grown and he handed down to me. It was perfect for a 6 year old little boy. At least that was what Uncle Duane said when he gave me the tiny bike. It was blue and had solid tires like a trike but it was not a trike it was a bike, and it was mine. Mom and dad even went to town and bought me new sparkly blue handle bar grips with white and blue streamers dangling from the end of each grip. This not only was totally cool but I really think it made the bike faster… just sayin.

One of my earliest memories that I recall fondly is dad running up and down with me as he struggled to help me to master the challenge of balancing on those tinny tires. The sidewalk in front of the Pink House had a crack in every single section. No not just a crack, but a crack that went from side to side and with one of the slabs always at a slant with one corner at least two inches lower than its mate causing quite a perilous outing until I learned the smoothest course over the path. However, it did not take long before I figured out how to sleekly traverse the rugged sidewalk. Before long mom and dad came to quickly understand that my world was gradually becoming larger and larger.

To me the thrill of my newly discovered freedom was so exciting that I yearned for more and more and I always pushed the envelope of my boundaries to the extreme. I will never forget the exhilaration I felt the first time that I rode my bike all the way around the block all by myself. I knew I was real tuff stuff and I told everyone that would listen about my conquests.

One afternoon mom had restricted my boundaries to no more than the houses on either side our hour house which stood on the corner of 4^th and Center in Spanish Fork, to us kids always referred to affectionately as the Pink House. As I rode up and down the sidewalk I decided that if I meandered into the driveways I could extend my route and get more mileage out of each leg as I navigated back and forth up and down our street. As I rounded the front of a truck parked in one of these driveways I was looking down the sidewalk instead of paying attention of where I was going, and I according to mom I was always going too fast while not paying attention, when the next thing I knew I was flat on my back writhing in pain on the grass next to the concrete staring up at the truck. When I touched my forehead my hand was covered with blood. I instantly knew I was dying. There seemed to be blood everywhere and my head was numb with pain but it is interesting that even now I recall that my greater fear was that I had strayed from the sidewalk and I was going to be in trouble! Apparently the truck in the driveway was a utility truck with doors on the side that would lower granting access to tools and providing a nice working area. Yup, I had not seen the lowered door and had ridden right into the edge driving the corner deep into my forehead.

When I got home mom calmed me down and cleaned me up then took me to Dr. Moody to get my forehead stitched up. I do not recall getting into very much trouble when dad came home. I wonder how much of that result was mom intervening on my behalf. I think she felt as if I had been in enough pain and that I’d learned my lesson. On my part I don’t know how much of a lesson I learned because growing up I remember to always have a cut, a scrape, or a broken bone and continuously sported a bruise from bumping and bouncing from one adventure to another. On time mom commented that she hoped that I didn’t go bald because of all of the scars that surely must be accumulating on my scalp.

My Tongue Will Stick If It's Cold Enough

When I was about 5 – 6 I was playing on the side of the house. It was a cold wintry day. I mean cold. My friend had told me that if a person stuck their tongue on a flag pole that it would get stuck. Well being the curious youngster that I was I decided to put it to the test, I stuck my tongue on Dad’s truck and…it stuck! I was so scared that I yanked back tearing my tongue loose. I cried and cried. When Mom and I went back out to see what happened I swear that I could actually see skin still on the side of the truck.

Tadploes, Frogs, and a Fish or Two

One day I came home with a fish. I swore up and down to Mom that I had not been playing by the river which was strictly off limits. The truth was that I had been playing in the swampy ponds that were by the river not actually in the river itself, so I was telling the truth…right? I loved those ponds. We played there hunting for huge bullfrogs, tadpoles, and yes we even caught a fish or two with our bare hands. When we were playing there the world was a whole lifetime away.

My Horse Ride

Down below Robert’s house there were not any houses. Starting at Robert’s house we could go on a trail that led to the river bottoms. At the end of the trail there was a barnyard, well in reality it was a coral with some horses in it. At the side of the coral was a lean-to that covered the hay for the horses. We wanted to ride those horses something fierce, but we couldn’t figure out how to get on them, remember that we were eight years old. I came up with the idea that Robert would be on the ground and I would climb on top of the shed. Robert would then coax the horses over by the lean-to. When they got close enough I jumped on the back of one of them. I only vaguely remember what happened, all I knew was that I was air born and landed on my butt in a mud puddle. Robert laughed and laughed. He was supposed to go next but he never had the nerve. The interesting thing was that I fully expected to be able to ride around the coral on the horse. In our minds it didn’t matter that I didn’t have reins to guide the horse we were in a coral right…what could go wrong, how naïve we were.

22 Shells

My best friend in the whole world was Robert Waters. One day I found some .22 shells in my Dad’s truck. Of course I took them, but I was “smart” I only took a few so that Dad would not notice that any were missing. (Do you really think that I got away with that one?) At Robert’s house we took the shells and were playing with them. We often would take caps and hit them with a hammer they would pop. If we hit a whole roll of the caps instead of just one at a time it would really make a nice bang. So with this in mind our thoughts naturally went to our 22 shells. After spending a little time experimenting we found that if we laid the shell on it’s side on the sidewalk and lightly hit with a hammer that it would go off making a much bigger bang than caps would. I had no concept that it was as dangerous as it actually was. We thought that as long as we “aimed” the shell away from us nothing bad would happen. And as long as I was there nothing did happen. The problem was that later that day Robert got into his Dad’s shells and took some so that they could continue to play. They were hitting the shells with a hammer and the bullet bounced off of a rock and hit his brother in the shin. It did not hurt him badly but…. Later that night my Dad had a sever talk with me. In retrospect I am surprised that we lived to see the sun come up the next morning.

The Tire Swing

After selling the pink house and while waiting for Dad to build our new home in Provo we lived in a rental house was on the other side of town and was located on about 500 South and 50 East. This

house was not a great house, in fact it was kind of run down as I look back at it, but all in all it served it’s purpose and gave us a place to live.
To us kids one of the coolest things about the house was a big old tree on the backyard. It was a scraggly sad looking excuse of a tree. But, it had a big branch that Dad decided to hang a swing on. One day Dad came home with an old tire that he decided to make a tire swing out of. He took a razor knife and a hack saw and after cutting it and then turning it inside out he made a swing seat out of it. He then took a rope and hung it from the branch.
We played on our new swing from sun up to sun dawn. We soon became the coolest kids in the neighborhood. We could really get high as we flew back and forth. We would take turns jumping out and seeing how high and how far we could jump. We would use our imaginations envisioning us sailing through the air like an Olympic athlete. Then one day I was pushing one of he kids in the swing and without any warning all of the sudden the rope snapped sending the one in the swing bouncing like a ball across the backyard. Once it broke we never put it back up again.

Grandpa Golding and Dad's Shoes

One thing that I regret is that Grandpa Golding was older when I knew him and that I did not get a chance to get to know him very well. The grandpa that I knew was an old man who was struggling with Alzheimer’s and dementia. On one occasion grandpa came to stay with us for a while. He woke up one morning and was disorientated. He did not understand what he was doing. He noticed that Dad had a pair of shoes by the back door and thought that he had gone off to work without his shoes. So grandpa decided that he had to go take them to Dad. With shoes in hand and only partially dressed, off grandpa went up the street to

find Dad and to help him out. I remember following him up the street trying to convince him that it was alright and that he should come back home with me and let mom help him. Finally Mom caught up with us and together we were able to get him back home. From what I have heard Grandpa Golding was quite a good man. I do regret not being able to get to know him better.

Getting My Tonsils Out

When I was in first grade I had a hard time with my health. I missed a great deal of school during first grade year. I don’t remember missing much school though. But I do remember being told that I needed to have my tonsils out and going to the hospital. I am not sure if it really was a hospital or not. It was in Spanish Fork at about 500 North 150 West. It did not seem like a hospital. The thing that I do remember the most about the whole thing was that after it was all over and I was home recuperating Grandpa Leifson came by and brought me a my very own pineapple milkshake. This was something that was very unique. First to have grandpa pay that much attention to me was really nice and then to have my very own milkshake was totally cool. I don’t think that I had ever heard of a pineapple shake and to have my own was tremendous. I also recall that mom made me some homemade popsicles, cool aid in an ice cube tray with a toothpick in it. A six year olds dream comes true.

Riding Tractor With Dad From Birds Eye

Some of my fondest memories revolve around helping my dad. One time we rode up Spanish Fork canyon to a small town of Birds Eye. In reality Birds Eye was five or so houses and a few farms up in the mountains. Dad’s friends, Earnest Roach and his son in law Hyrum Otterson had a dairy farm in Palmyra. Dad worked for the Roach’s when he was a teenager. They would thin beets, haul hay, and do just about anything that needed to be done. In many ways Earnest had a strong influence on Dad growing up. Besides their farm in Palmyra the Roaches had a farm up in Birds Eye where they grew alfalfa and grazed some cows. Dad had volunteered to go up the canyon and bring back a tractor that they had used up there for the summer. Winter was coming and they needed the tractor back in the valley before it snowed and it became trapped for the winter. The cool

thing was that I was able to go with him. I sat on the wheel cover and we drove it all the way back home again. We drove slowly on the shoulder with the blinkers flashing. We talked and talked all the way home. Once we got to Spanish Fork we stopped at Glades Drive-in and had lunch. After lunch we finished the trip on out to their farm in Palmyra. It was an awesome day!

All That Effort For Nothing

I was always coming up with one scheme or another. I decided that I needed some money. So I took a big chunk of steel that dad had. It was actually a piece of railroad rail that was about ten inches long that dad used as an anvil. A friend of mine and I put it in my wagon and pulled it to a Swenson’s metal salvage company on the outskirts of town. We had to have pulled that wagon a mile. There were not any sidewalks so we pulled the wagon on the side of the road past the county fairgrounds. When we got there they weighed it and told us that it was not worth anything. We were totally disappointed. But, come to find out the man who was helping us kept snickering about these two eight year old kids who came dragging this hunk of steel in a wagon and wanted to sell it. To make things worse he knew dad. He knew that this was something that dad would not want me to sell so he wouldn’t give us anything for it. We had to drag it all the way back home. That night dad asked what I had been up to that day. He laughed and laughed and figured that taking it all the way there then having to bring it all the way back again was punishment enough.

Sunday Night TV

TV on Sunday nights was the best! I have so many good memories of sitting in the living room of the pink house and watching TV with the family. I remember shows like Bill Cosby when he was a coach. But my favorites were Bonanza, Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color, and Kennecott Copper Theater. Kennecott Copper Corporation sponsored a movie every Sunday night. They had great movies. Instead of commercials they would show clips of things about the copper mine and the refinery. I was impressed by the size of trucks, especially the tires. They would show a man standing next to a tire and he would have to stretch to reach the top of the tire. I could not hardly imagine something that big. We would play with our trucks in the back yard and pretend that we were driving one of those huge trucks.
I remember watching a movie about a person who had the tenacity of an ant trying to move a rubber tree plant, I loved it. There was also a movie about a man who was duped into being a scout master for his girl friends son. They got into a lot of trouble when they went on a campout, but in the end everything worked out. I also remember watching Follow Me Boys, another movie about the Boy Scouts staring Fred McMurry. I honestly believe that this was where I came to love movies.
I remember sitting on the floor with a bowl of popcorn. Mom would pop it in one of her pots on the stove and we all got our own bowl. Dad loved popcorn, as long as I can remember he would sit with a big bowl on his lap and watch TV. I recall him teaching Jock to catch a popcorn cornel as he threw it to him.

Walnuts

On the west side of our house we had a large black walnut tree. It was too tall for us to climb and I don’t remember it as being an attractive tree, but one cool thing was that we could go out side almost any time and pick up walnuts off of the ground. We would spend hours cracking and eating walnuts. The nuts were covered in a husk that was fairly easy to remove but the inside of the husks were messy from lying on the ground so long. We would use dad’s old hammer or in a pinch we would find a rock to crack the small hard shells. It took a while to

develop a soft enough swing to not totally smash the nut but hard enough to still brake it open so that we could dig the nut out of the shell. Mom would use the nuts we harvested to put in some homemade fudge or crumpled on top of a freshly baked chocolate cake. To this day I love chocolate cake with chocolate frosting and some walnuts sprinkled on top.

Canning Venison

Mom used to do all that she could to be frugal. We would can and save everything. One thing that I remember is that when dad would come home from deer hunting, mom would take the fresh venison, season it then put it in pint size jars and preserve it. Mom processed he meet by cutting the meet into chunks and putting the jars in a pressure cooker and cooking it. We thought that having deer meet sandwiches was a real treat. Mom would take the meat from the jars and grind it with the hand crank meat grinder. I would help her. We would clamp the grinder to the kitchen table then it was my job to crank the handle. We would then mix the ground up meat with a little salad dressing, I did not discover mayonnaise until I was an adult, in our house we always only used salad dressing. We thought that it was a special treat when we would add pickles to the grinder as well. Those sandwiches were wonderful with a handful of potato chips and a glass of cool aid.

The Refrigerator

I have to mention our refrigerator. It was an old used Frigidaire and I will never ever forget it. The handle was broken so we had to use a Philips screwdriver to open the door. We would take the screwdriver and stick it in the hole while pulling on the handle. If you positioned the screwdriver just right you could push on the latch with the screwdriver and the door would come open. Mom and dad liked it because it was hard for us kids to open the door. One of my greatest accomplishments as a child was the day that I finally figured out how to open the refrigerator all by myself. Mom and Dad did not get it fixed partly because they could not afford to, but there was the added advantage that it kept us kids out of the fringe.

Hanging Out the Wash

I remember helping mom do the wash, at least we thought we were helping. We had an old wringer washer. Mom would have to fill the tub with water and let it wash then she would drain the water, fill it again, let it agitate for a while to rinse the clothes. After rinsing the clothes she would then take the clothes that were dripping wet and run them through the ringer. When I was lucky it would be my job to crank the wringer. We had to be careful feeding the cloths into the wringer so that our finger would not get caught and drawn into the wringer. We then

would take the clothes that were flattened from going through the wringer, put them in a basket, and take them outside to hang on the clothes line. I remember the sheets flapping in the breeze. All of our clothes would be stiff from drying in the sun. I even remember running out to gather the wash because it was beginning to rain. One of the most exciting days of our time in the Pink House was the day we got a brand new dryer. We were all amazed at how fast it worked and how easy it had become to do the wash.

Apple Fights

In the back yard we had a vacant lot between us and our aunt Thora’s house. In the back of the lot were two old apple trees. As kids we lived in those trees. We would scrape together pieces of scrap wood from around the house that dad may or may not have been using and we built what we imagined was a tree house. In reality we just mailed pieces of wood to the tree trunk for steps so we could climb up into the branches easer. We put a few boards that were long enough to reach from limb to limb up so that we could sit up there without falling out. Mind you we moved from this home when I was seven so this tree house must have been quite amusing to our parents, having been built by a bunch of seven year old children.
This is where I learned to love green apples. From experance

I learned how long to wait in order for the green apple to become nice and sour, and when they would have lost their bitterness. Even to this day give me a fresh green apple and a salt shaker and I will be in heaven.
Another use for the little green apples was to have apple wars. We would divide up into teams and have apple fights. We would use garbage can lids as our shields. We would sit with each team in our tree with our shields in place where we would plot for hours trying to come up with strategies the get a good shot at the rival team. One stratagy was that we would send a decoy off to one side of the tree on the ground hoping that our foes would expose themselves to us from an unexpected angle. It was really fun in the late fall when we would use the rotten apples from off of the ground. The challenge was to gather up the apples without getting hit by the other team who were waiting for us to expose ourselves.
It is amazing to me to remember the fun times. We were always playing one thing or another. We never watched TV. We would play for hours and never go in the house until lunch or dinner.

The Garden

We had a wonderful garden on the side of our house. Our house was on a corner lot and we loved that house. The garden was in the front of the yard on the corner of the lot. I remember dad going out and irrigating the yard. He would put canvas in the ditch that ran infront of our house with a 2x4 under it to hold it up and a rock on it in the ditch to hold it in place. The water would flood over the sidewalk and onto the lawn. He would start on the east side of the lot and work his way westward toward the corner. He would finish up with the garden. I remember the peonies, iris’, and the daisies the most. In fact when we moved to Provo we took many of the plants with us.

The Magic Tree

In our front yard we had a magic tree. This tree was indiscernible as a tree. It was covered with grape vines to the extent that to us kids it did not look like any tree we had ever seen. In the fall we would have wonderful concord grapes that mom would make into juice. But the most amazing thing about that grape vine was that occasonally it would drop a beautiful golden pair on the lawn. For breakfast we often had oatmeal. At the suggestion of mom, we would run out side in the morning to look to see if the magic tree had given us a sweet delicious pair that we could cut up and put in our oatmeal. The fun thing was that we really believed that it was magic.

Growing Up Me

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