Hike

I was a scout in a small troop in Utah. 525 we are the best alive. 525 we are the only ones to survive. 525 is the troop that flies. We had lots of other yells that we used when we would go to scout camps and jamborees. You mess with one bean you mess with the whole burrito. We went to several different scout camps including Steiner in the High Uintahs and Thunder Ridge down in the lower part of the Wasatch mountains towards Fish Lake. At Thunder Ridge all of the camping was done in tents. My scout leader would come with his Tee Pee that we would help set up and then we would set up a line of two man tents usually it would take six or seven tents for all of us. To set up a Tee Pee one had to set three main poles first once those three were leaning against each other and not moving one direction or another we would add poles until all sixteen or so poles were up in a circle. There was a rope that was attached to one of the first three poles and that would be weaved a certain way to keep all of the poles together. The way it looked without the canvas covering was similar to a hourglass with one side very big and the other side very small or a funnel that was upside down. With all the poles in place the canvas was put in place. This had a small hook rope attached to the top corner of the canvas that went over one of the poles and then we wrapped all of the poles with the canvas. We had to make sure that the canvas was snug against the area where all of the poles met. Where the canvas came together there was a gap at the top and that was where the smoke would leave with a fire in the middle of the Tee Pee. The entrance was held open by foot long sticks that were straight they held the canvas similar to the look of the lace on a shoe going straight across. We set up an entrance to our camp and had a flag that we would run up a pole every morning and take down every night. We had to set up our cooking area and rope off our chopping area. Scout camp did not have a cafeteria so we had to bring up all of our own cooking gear and food and we had to gather all of the firewood that we would use for the entire week. Because we put the fire in the same place every day by the third day the fire pit was so hot that just putting new sticks on the area and blowing a little and the fire would start again. There were bathrooms and maybe there were showers but we never used those. Thunder Ridge is set in a high mountain valley surrounded by aspen and pine trees and scrub oak. There were trails everywhere leading from one point to another. Some led to the scout craft area, others to the main lodge, still others led down to the lake which was about three quarters of a mile away. I took lifesaving, canoeing, and rowing in the lake. The lake was cold being snow fed it never seemed to get above freezing but I am probably exaggerating a bit as I never really knew how cold it was. It was also not as cold as the lake at camp Steiner. I had to hike to the lake and back again twice a day and It always took a while to walk the trail and get to the lake. Sometimes I would run so I would not be late. The scouts that ran the lake front did a good job of keeping us active even if the lake was pretty small. My favorite thing to do was swamp the canoes. All this meant was capsizing the little vessel filling it with water and then with your boat buddy picking it up out of the water and draining the canoe then getting back in, all while treading water in the middle of the lake. Well one day after our water sports activities for the day a few other scouts and I decided to take a different trail back to camp. It took us up the side of the mountain to the east rather than the trail which went mainly south. We wanted to see what we could see and since we were at eight thousand feet we thought we could even hike up to the ridge which did not look that far away. Not that we could see much of the ridge with all of the trees in the way. We went up the trail and kept on going higher and higher we went and then as it got closer to dinner time we should start heading south towards the camp but with all of the trees we were not sure which way was south. we walked on for another fifteen minutes and felt totally lost. We could not go back because we did not know which way that was. we knew that we had to go down the mountain but we didn't know if we had gone to far past the camp and we would just end up going down for a long ways. We saw a clearing a little higher up the mountain and decided to go to that and then look out and see if we could gather our bearings. We went up and then looked out over the entire mountain valley. It was pretty amazing to see all that we could see. We saw the main camp area and did our best to figure out how to get to it. We made it late to dinner. Probably the only time a scout has ever been late to a meal.

No Bears

I always liked going to my grandmother's houses. At my mom's mom's house we would play outside, inside, through the chicken coup, and in the trees. When we had a large gathering of the cousins at the house my older cousins would be forced to play with us. Their mothers, my aunts, would require the teenagers to be nice and get all of the younger cousins involved. My mother is third youngest so she had a lot of brothers and sisters that were already married. She has some nephews and nieces that are almost the same age as she. These cousins were the cool cousins. The ones that I wanted to be like. They could climb all of the trees in the yard and they could outrun all of the younger cousins. Some of them could drive. I was jealous of their secret meetings as they would talk with cousins that were close in age while I was relegated to talking with cousins my own age. Now don't misunderstand, I loved and liked all of my cousins. I never had a dull moment playing with the cousins that were the same age as me or even with my brothers and sisters who were also close in age with me but I can't say I didn't want to be a part of the older cousin group. Josephine, my mom's oldest sister had eleven kids by the time she was done with most of these several years older than me. Elwin, my mom's older brother had six or seven kids again with most being older than me. Ivin, had four kids, all older than me although the youngest was only two years my senior. Margaret and Lynn both just older than my mom had kids my age and Gayle who was just younger than mom had kids who were also my age. When we all got together grandma's house there was never a quiet place and we all liked it that way. The yard would be so overrun with people that if we got bored climbing trees or chasing each other across the lawn we could easily go inside and play a board game or if the chess board was available we could play that. If we were playing chess, Elwin or Grandma would usually come over and help us play. Sometimes they would play chess against us. This is how I learned to lose. Grandma, Elwin and my other aunts and uncles would play chess with us and beat us every time. They would help us understand how each piece moved but even in teaching the rules they never let us win. The most frustrating thing to hear from Elwin was, "Are you sure you want to move there?" We would over think it every time. I don't think in all the chess games I played with Grandma or Elwin or any other aunt or uncle I ever won a single game. For that I would have to play with the cousins my own age or those younger than me and sometimes I would lose those too because grandma or Elwin would help them, just to make it fair, as they put it. In grandma's house it did not matter who was playing the game from toddler to senior from aunt and uncle to cousin everyone played to win. Grandma was notorious for playing games like "Sorry" or "Trouble" or "Uno" with the littlest of her grandchildren and beat them all and if any of us pouted or cried because we lost she would explain that games are meant to be played to win and not meant to be fair or for someone to let someone win just to be nice. Now the older teenage cousins knew that eventually they would get told that they needed to play with the younger cousins. Josephine would recommend a game called "No bears are out tonight." This game is quite simple. One of the older cousins was the "bear" and everyone else was the kids. The "bear would hide somewhere in the trees around one side of the house and everyone else would line up along grandma's garden. We counted to ten and then we started to walk towards the side of the house where the bear was hiding. We would chant, "No bears are out tonight. Daddy shot them all last night." We would chant this over and over and over again while walking towards the "bears" hiding place. The "bear would eventually jump out of its hiding place and growl and chase us back towards the garden and safety. If the bear touched us we were out. Once those that did not get touched got back to safety the "bear" would hide again and the process would be repeated until everyone had been tagged by the "bear". The last one tagged became the "bear" in the next game and all would line up at the garden to start the game again. We usually played this game at dusk and as it got darker and darker it became harder and harder to see where the "bear" had hidden. This also made it scarier and scarier as we walked up from the garden, through the grass, up the hill created by the ditch and then to the side of the house with all of the creepy shadows and outlines of the trees at the side of the house. I would squeal in delight with the rest of the younger cousins as we played well into the night. As I got older and became one of the older cousins I got to be the "bear" and terrorize my younger cousins and siblings. Maybe tomorrow a "bear" will chase me again.

Weenie Roasts

Uncle Lynn is my mom's older brother. He lived close to grandma's house so I would see him all the time when we would come to visit. Lynn was always taller than me. Lynn had three daughters that started at the same age as me and went down in age almost matching with my two younger brothers. My cousins were used to coming to grandma's house all the time to help with whatever needed doing and Uncle Lynn was the one to do most of the plowing when grandpa didn't want to get on the tractor. When we would go to grandma's in the summer time even when we were little we had responsibilities to do small chores around the house and the yard. Grandma's yard had a lot of trees; walnut trees, cherry trees, willow trees, poplar trees, and other bushes and trees of which I do not know their names. In mid summer one could hide in the shade of one of the many trees. Because there were so many trees there were always broken branches or dead branches and sticks that had fallen from the trees. Lynn would come over and ask us if we wanted to have a weenie roast for lunch. We would all cheer because that meant that Lynn was going to light a fire. This also meant that Lynn was going to get out his old five gallon metal milk jug and make root beer. First the work that didn't amount to work because it meant we would have a fire was to clear off the yard of all of the dead branches and make a big pile underneath the oldest and biggest walnut tree. Now if you have not been around walnut trees they drop a lot of nuts. The husk of these nuts is green and as they ripen on the branches or as they fall to the ground the green turns a dark tan when the husk is removed there is a layer of black that is so dark it will stain anything. Our hands would be black from gathering the walnuts that had fallen from the tree. The branches tended to have some of this black on them as well so gathering the sticks meant getting dirty. I liked to get dirty and I never worried about having clean hands or even a clean face. As we gathered up sticks we would also gather up the fallen walnuts. I would find an old brick or a large rock and take the walnut over to the cement walk that came out the side of the house. There I would smash the walnut with the rock or brick and try to fish out the edible part of the nut. Sometimes I would get large pieces to come out all at once but most of the time we would get little pieces mixed with the shell. I didn't care I ate what I could and spit out the rest. Being thus distracted from gathering the sticks I would have to be chided to go back to gathering the branches. With the branches all gathered into the designated spot under the old walnut tree, Lynn would tell us to go get a green willow switch. The willow made the best sticks to stick the hot-dogs on because they were long and straight. The only draw back was that if I picked a willow switch that was too skinny the hot-dog would cause the stick to curve so it looked like a fishing rod bent from the weight of a catch. Lynn always carried a pocket knife with him and so he would trim off any leaves or small branches on our sticks and then he would whittle down one end to a point. I always wanted to whittle the point by myself but he would just smile and then do it for me. When I got older he would let me borrow the knife but I always used the knife in his presence and gave it right back when I was done. Lynn and my dad were very good friends. They two would be the ones to make the root beer. It is a fairly easy process to make root beer. They would go to the store and pick up the root beer extract, five pounds of sugar, and dry ice. They would take the five gallon metal milk jug and put about a gallon of water in then add the sugar and the root beer concentrate. Once that mixture was stirred and the sugar dissolved they filled the jug up with water to about four and a half gallons. Stirring that one more time they then added the dry ice. Now it is always a mystery as to how much dry ice one should add to get the right consistency. I think they would get between eight and ten pounds of the stuff then break it into smaller pieces and then put it into the jug. The dry ice would cause the water to bubble and boil like a witches brew. We always wanted to breath in the cloud of white that it produced. Lynn would put the lid on the jug at an angle so that the gas could still escape while still covering the contents. I always asked what would happen if he put the lid on all the way and he said it would make the milk jug explode. We never tried to do that although when I got older I did make a few dry ice bombs using two liter bottles and those definitely exploded so he was speaking the truth. The root beer takes about forty five minutes to get fizzy and carbonated so in the wait we would start the fire to get it ready to roast our hot-dogs. Lynn seemed to always be the one to start the fire. He would not bother with trying to build a log cabin or a tee-pee fire he would just push the pile of sticks and branches that we had gathered down a little and use some newspaper and bark or some old weeds and light the fire. I would get to close to the fire and be asked to move back and I would for a minute then I would creep back up closer to the fire again. Even though it was mid summer and hot outside I always loved the feel of the fire and watching as the branches slowly caught fire and then burned. The fire would grow with the red and orange flames licking the sky. Some times the pile of sticks were so high that they would almost touch the large branch of the old walnut tree but the flames never did any harm to the branch. Grandma and mom and the other aunts and cousins would all gather around. The uncles would bring out a table for which to put all of the fixings and we would run to get our sticks and grab a weenier to start roasting. We would stick it close to the glowing coals down at the bottom of the fire. Sometimes the fire would be so hot that we would hold one hand out with the stick while protecting our faces with the other hand, peeking occasionally to see if the weenier was done. The lunch always seemed to start later than expected but no one cared. A clock never factored into the time spent at grandma's house or playing with uncle Lynn. He would eat the walnuts we shared with him even if they had a bit of the shell mixed in. Lynn was always taller than me.

Sandwich

Maggie and I got married at the young age of twenty one. I had a lot of habits and she had a lot of habits that took some time getting used to. I had just returned from a mission to Paraguay. I was around missionaries for the past two years and I before that I was used to a house that was a little chaotic with eleven people all under one roof. Maggie had been more independent than me. Maggie had gone to Guatemala and taught English at the University of Guatemala in Guatemala City. Maggie was also finishing up her degree in Archaeology at BYU and I was just starting my own college career. So we had both built in habits about things like what time to wake up, exercise, what to wear, how to make the bed, how to wash to dishes and many other things. I was used to a loud house and she was used to a quieter one. I was used to plopping in front of the TV after finishing my work and she liked to read a book. Luckily for her we did not have a TV when we first got married. Because we only lived an hour from our parents home we would go home to visit often. If neither of us were working on a Saturday then we would plan a trip down to the parents house. We usually would bring our laundry along for the ride. Quarters wanted to be spent on other things beside laundry. The first weekend after we had gotten back from our honeymoon we stayed at Maggie's parents house. Maggie was ill and I could not figure out what to do with her. I walked in the door of my new in-laws house and basically asked mother-in-law to fix her. Maggie always says that it looked like I was returning her and saying to take her back. I of course was not I just knew that I did not have the ability to cure whatever ailed her and Mom's always know best. That day I sat in the study with Grandpa and watched TV while Maggie, her mom, and her two younger sisters talked in the kitchen. I was still a little uncomfortable with my in-laws so I stayed pretty quiet. I learned from that and many other visits that my in-laws also have certain habits about how things should be done. Every time we came home They were watching me. The in-laws were very nice but I could tell I was still being vetted as to my abilities as a husband. I think that it takes parents longer to get used to the fact that they have a new son or daughter than it does for the son or daughter-in-law to get used to new parents. This is probably because before coming into their family I had parents and I had a certain expectation about what parents do so adding another set was not so difficult. In the parents case they can't discipline their new son or daughter-in-law and they can't discipline their own son or daughter anymore. I think this will be just as difficult for me when my kids are newly married. One weekend while visiting the in-laws it was time for lunch. Now lunch consisted of grabbing all the different chip bags from off of the refrigerator, the bread from the bread drawer, and the meat, lettuce, tomatoes, and condiments from inside the refrigerator. These were all placed on the counter. Everyone gathered around the counter and we had a prayer. After prayer it was time to make your own sandwich I stepped up next to my father-in-law and grabbed two slices of bread and set them on the counter, I grabbed the mayo and mustard and put those on my bread and set the bread back down on the counter. I grabbed some meat, lettuce, tomatoes and I think there was some cheese and started to put these on my bread when my father-in-law handed me a plate. Now in my house making sandwiches was a task, especially on a Saturday. There were eleven of us so eleven sandwiches were needed. Mom would take one loaf of bread and lay them out in pairs on the counter. She would then get the mayo and put that on all of the sandwiches then following the same order would add the mustard, meat, lettuce and tomatoes if we had them. Then it was just a matter of putting the other slice of bread on top and everyone coming and grabbing their sandwich. In my father-in-law's house when making a sandwich one did it on a plate. Not on the counter!

Edge

I am a scouter. I was a scout and earned my eagle rank back in 1994. I was asked to be the scout master again in Overland Park, Kansas. I accepted the responsibility and needed to go and get a new uniform from the scout shop. The scout shop was just a few miles away located on the Missouri side of the Kansas City metropolitan area. Instead of just me going to the store we all piled into the car. We got Ella and Patrick into their car seats and booster seats and buckled for the ride over to the scout shop. We always tried to do things together. Maggie and I would almost always do the grocery shopping together and take the kids along with us even if it was harder to have then in the carts or running around the store with us. Well this was no different. We arrived at the scout shop and went inside. I found the uniform that I needed. The challenge with a scout uniform is that once one has purchased the shirt one must buy the patches that go with it. So we had to find the appropriate council patch, unit numbers, leadership patch, and all of the knots that I had earned. Knot patches are worn to signify certain awards received as a youth and as an adult. For example I have one for earning the arrow of light award and eagle scout award. These are youth awards but are represented on my uniform. I also had a knot for specific training. I would continue to earn knots as I continued to work in the scouting program. I also have a patch that says "Espanol" which just means that I speak Spanish and can help scouters who speak that language. Once we gathered up all of the required patches and knots and book we went to the front and purchased all of the items in the basket. I gathered up the two runners and headed for the door while Maggie paid for the purchase. When I got out the door Patrick and Ella wanted to look at some water streaming out of a large cement pipe that went under the parking lot of the scout shop. The drop was about ten feet from the top of the parking lot to the water. Patrick went over to the top of this pipe and looked down. I being the protective father admonished him not to get too close to the edge. Patrick said he wouldn't and then proceeded to get closer to the edge. He was trying to look into the large cement pipe by laying on the ground and sticking his head over the edge of the top part of the pipe. He lost his handle on the pipe or stuck his body too far out over the edge and flipped over the edge to the water ten feet below. Now the water was a little deeper right as it came out of the pipe where the water had pushed the dirt away but there were rocks, cement and other scary things to land on. I watched as if in slow motion as Patrick went over the edge and fell to his death in the rocks and water below. I am sure I screamed as I watched in horror as he fell. He landed in the only safe spot between the ricks and cement and other scary things into the deepest part of the water. After splashing in the water he looked up at me with his eyes wide. I asked if he was okay as I traversed the steep hill to the side of this drainage ditch down the ten feet to help him out of the water. He was soaked. He had no cuts or bruises. He was just shocked from the fall and I was just grateful he had not hit any of the rocks or cement or scary things. I said in as nice a tone as possible, "See, I told you not to get to close to the edge." Maggie was coming out of the store and found Patrick all wet and Ella just waiting. Maggie probably thought of many things to say about my horrible parenting but held off. We stripped Patrick of his wet cloths and I gave him my shirt to wear until we could get back home. I laugh about the experience now but that day I think that some of the rocks jumped out of the way when they saw a little boy falling from the top of a large drainage ditch.

Walking to school

Dad had been injured and was laid up at the University of Utah hospital for a very long time. Since mom wasn't going to leave him for any length of time we stayed at grandma's house in Bountiful, Utah. Since it was during the school year (just after Halloween) mom went and signed us all up for school. My older sister Chelly was in fifth grade, I was in third grade, my younger brother Sam was in first grade and my younger, younger brother was in afternoon kindergarten. The school was about half a mile away from grandma's house so we had to walk to school. The school was an old red brick building multiple stories tall with a huge smokestack on one side of the building. Most of these older buildings were heated using boilers. Boilers are basically what they imply, huge tanks of water are heated to boiling and the steam is then transferred to pipes through the building and into radiators in the individual classrooms. To heat up a room the radiators needed to be opened and then the hot steam would circulate through the pipes. The pipes would get hot and that in turn would heat up the room. I don't think there was any way to actually regulate how hot a room got when the radiators were on it just got hot. The desks in the room closest to the radiators would usually get too hot and the desks furthest away would usually be too cold. I don't think that the middle of the room was any better. The one benefit to a radiator was that when we came in from recess and the cold or snow we could easily dry all of our coats and gloves and hats as they would be hung on top of the radiators. I did not enjoy the school. Chelly did not enjoy school. Sam did not enjoy school. Matthew liked school. For me school was not fun because we had been put into the school in the middle of the year. I was new and everyone else already had friends. I was temporary. Once dad recovered we would go back to our home in Duchesne, Utah. All of this contributed to my lack of desire to do much of anything at school. The teacher tried to be helpful but I was not used to her rules or way of teaching. My family was still trying to get back to a semblance of normality with dad still at the hospital and us living out of suitcases. Grandma's house was always fun to visit but living there was difficult. Visiting dad in the hospital was also difficult. A head injury like my dads had no other visible effects. He had a small bandage on his head but his body functioned like normal he could walk, move his arms and legs, speak and hear us just fine but he could not leave the hospital. He had to stay so that his brain could heal and to make sure there were no other places where blood had pooled after the injury. Dad eventually recovered in every way except for the loss of his sense of smell, that has been gone ever since. It was winter time and Bountiful gets a lot of snow. We would wake up to six or ten or even fourteen inches of snow and sometimes more. Even with all of the snow the schools did not close and we still had to walk. We would leave the house and Chelly would lead the way. We would make a trail out of the front door and across the front yard. We did not try to stay on sidewalks as most were not cleared anyway. We created our own paths as we walked towards the church that was across the street from grandma's house. We went through the parking lot of the church down the street two blocks and turned right. We walked next to a city park for three blocks and turned left and the school was just a half block in on the right hand side of the street. Our jeans would be wet up to our knees, our shoes and socks or our boots and socks would be wet, our gloves would be frozen and we probably looked like Eskimos. We bonded to the snow just as much as we bonded to each other. Every day we got up and walked to school.

Shoveling Snow

I love the snow. I know I have said it before but I really do enjoy everything about snow. When I was a teenager, I worked as a Janitor for Snow College. I had started at thirteen with my older sister. We went into work every night from ten til midnight even on school nights. My sister and I were each assigned a building to clean. I was responsible for the science building with all of its taxidermied animals in a case along the wall of the main floor. The science building was three stories tall and my job was to start at the top and sweep out all of the classrooms to the hallway, sweep all of the hallways and then mop the hallways. Along with this I had to wipe down all of the chalk boards, take out the trash from all of the receptacles (professors would leave their trash bins outside of their office doors in the hall), and clean and restock all of the bathrooms. The chalk boards had six surfaces that would slide up and down as they were used. Occasionally there would be a note on one of the boards to please not erase as it was a math proof that was being solved. Those proofs usually took up three or four of the surfaces available. I constantly wondered what they were trying to solve as I was only thirteen and I didn't understand these advanced equations. When I got older I would come to loath these proofs. A teacher could assign for homework just one or two problems and it would take hours to complete. As I got older I continued to be a janitor and come in every night but in the winter time I was asked to work a little more. The daily janitorial staff showed up to work around six every morning but if it snowed they would show up at four in the morning. The main janitor had a list of additional workers needed to shovel the snow. I and my two younger brothers became a crew. My mom would get a call about four thirty in the morning and she would come in and wake us up. We all shared a bedroom so it was an easy thing to do. We would all get up and dressed then go down stairs and grab our coats, gloves and hats and head out the door. We were usually assigned to work the west campus of the college so we would start walking the four blocks to get to our area. We were asked to show up by five and clear the sidewalks. We never had any supervision and we always worked together. We grabbed the shovels from where they would leave them next to the building and get to work. If there was only an inch or two the work went quickly with each of us taking a walkway and just pushing the snow to the other end. There were hundreds of yards of sidewalk on the west campus so if we were feeling spry we would even run as we pushed the snow. If there were more than three inches, and sometimes we had more than a foot of snow, we would walk together one in front of the other. I would usually be last in line. The first brother would clear the middle of the sidewalk and the other brother and myself would push the snow off of the edges of the walk at an angle. This was always easiest when there was too much snow to do the walk on ones own. Sometimes it was still snowing when we started so we would shovel once in one direction and then have to come back the other direction and shovel again. If the snow was really bad or if they needed additional help on the main campus they would let us know and we would walk the five blocks up to the main campus and we would shovel up there. It was a lot harder at the main campus because there were a lot more stairs that had to be shoveled. To do the stairs one would start at the top and work down to the bottom. The challenge was that as one got closer to the bottom of the stairs the more snow one was having to shovel. Once the two hours were up we were usually sweating in our coats from all of the work and starving from the lack of breakfast. with two hours of work in we would trudge back home we had to get our own driveway shoveled before we went inside to eat.