Make Mine An Android, Please

Nik talked me into getting a smart phone the other day. I had been hanging onto my old Samsung slider for some time and the keypad was "losing touch" shall we say. Nik is like my Uncle Larry, a gizmo guy. Give him a new anything and he has it figured out end to end within 24 hours. All I want is something that remembers phone numbers, can be used as an alarm or calendar, and fits in my pocket.

The good thing is that my kids know me pretty well by now, especially when it comes to this kind of stuff. Sometimes I actually get a little ticked at how well Kyle knows me, but he's almost always right. That actually makes me a little ticked, too, but what can you do?

We walked into the Sprint store which was manned by no less than 11 sales people. I've waited for almost an hour before at a rival store just to get someone's attention to ask a basic question, but with Nik along, you only need a sales person to ring up the purchase.

Nik: "Mom, there are two kids of smart phones, IPhone by Apple and Android by Google."

Mom: "Do they have them in some pretty colors?"

Nik: "These over here come in 3G and those over there are 4G. G has to do with speed."

Mom: "This one is too fat and that one is too ugly."

Nik: "This one is a slider. You turn it sideways and it has a qwerty keyboard for typing."

Mom: "That's quirky, not qwerty. Why in the heck would somebody re-arrange the danged keyboard and who has fingers that small anyway? What is the matter with people?"

It went like that. I ended up with a 3G Samsung Transform Ultra, a $50 rebate, and a qwerty keyboard that I tried and will probably never use again. I came home, went on Ebay and ordered a lovely blue Hawaiian-flowered case and can tell I'm going to have to order at least one spare battery. It's been three days and I have a headache from looking at the screen learning how to download apps and create groups, change settings, etc. I start to panic when the battery gets near 70% power. It's almost like one of those simulated pets where you stay up nights making sure you feed and play with it so it doesn't die. The screen is so sensitive that I had to take off one-touch dialing because I was calling people randomly. Ring..."Did you call me? No, I thought you called me. Sorry, new phone...." (If you are one of the few people I haven't "pocket-called" yet, please accept my apology in advance.)

One of the greatest features is that I now have Voxer and can talk to my daughter in Canada for free. It's sort of like a walkie-talkie setup. Nik set us up on an app called GroupMe; all the family were invited. It was fun for the first while, but then it became sort of like a wild Facebook; every time anybody said anything, everybody else got a notification. People were clamoring to get out of the family. Too much of a good thing....

I can't wait to Vox my grandson, Carver, and tell him GRANDMA HAS A TRANSFORMER PHONE!

The Oxford Cemetery

The year Morley Weyerman was the Seminary president and I was the VP, our kind and humble Seminary teacher (Blain Morgan) sought to do more than teach classes. He wanted us to learn through hands-on service, so he contacted area church leaders about a service project. Someone suggested the Oxford cemetery could profit from some care. That was a real understatement. The only way you could tell it was a cemetery rather than a field of sagebrush was if you happened to stumble over a headstone.

We met with Brother Morgan and set up a plan. I'm not sure now how the ball got rolling but people were contacted and a date was set. On that magic day, half the townspeople from Clifton and Oxford (and maybe Dayton) met at the cemetery bright and early in the morning. There were shovels and rakes and gloves and trucks and tractors...my dad's included. While Dad and Kenny Kendall's dad and perhaps Cluff Kendall were busy with their tractors doing the things that tractor drivers do, the rest of us were loading up weeds and junk and rocks in the backs of trucks. Dozens of people spent quite a few hours clearing the area, and when we were through, it looked amazing.

Every time I take Highway 91 from Clifton to Downey, I glance over at the lovely Oxford Cemetery and feel a little swell of happiness in a job well done. One man's attempt to teach some young people the value of service obviously worked. Thank you, Sir.

Mom

My mom passed away last night (Tuesday), two months shy of her 95th birthday. A more wonderful woman was never born. Here's a recent photo of her with me and my son Nik and her great-grandson, little Teddy:

Look it up!

Kyle's always asking me how to spell words. "Mom, how to you spell subconscious? How about articulate? What does symmetry mean?" Sometimes he wants to know, and sometimes he's just testing me. We do this with old country songs, too, but he's as good as I am with those, sometimes better. (It remains a mystery to me how someone can like both screamo and old country music.)

While not flawless, I'm a pretty darned good spellur (sic). The reason why is that whenever we asked my parents how to spell a word...and I mean every darned time...their response was "Look it up!" The Bible may have had a semi-permanent layer of dust on it, but the dictionary did not.

Webster was considered so valuable that the way you knew you had crossed the Rubicon into being an adult is you were gifted your own dictionary. Mine was brown and leather-simulated. It had little tabs with the letters on so you could tell right off where to start looking. From the side, with the book closed, you could see little red dots on the paper, like you can see gold edging on a Bible's pages.

Every so often someone would come through Clifton trying to sell sets of Encyclopedias, aka Encyclopedia Britannicas, two dozen or more hard-bound reference books to a set. Only the rich or the desperate-to-please made such a purchase. We just always wanted them to give their spiel and leave because we knew they were beyond our means and imagined how uncomfortable our parents must have been to not be able to purchase something so obviously "good" for their family, a fact no doubt stressed by the salesman. (That may be why I have such an aversion to people arriving at my front door trying to sell me something.)

Having a set of those encyclopedias these days must, ironically, be something of an albatross. Even the most basic computer now comes with more built-in capacities than even the top-of-the-line sets used to contain. I've wondered more than once where all those sets are now...tucked in somebody's basement, in 1,000,000 landfills, ballast in some ship? I inquired of the internet and discovered that you can donate them to "Books for Africa" though I have no idea who would pay to ship them there. You can also donate them to the Salvation Army who, for all I know, may send them to Books for Africa.

It's something I don't have to deal with, and Yahoo for that!

The Spider Pit

That's what I thought it was, but my parents called it "the cellar". It was out west of the house and had a couple of steps as an entry way, descending to a wooden door secured by some kind of latch. Inside were shelves lined with my mother's hard summer work. Even as a child, I thought the space felt very cramped and terrifying. I have vague recollections of a pull-string light bulb...giving the same effect as being interrogated by the FBI in Alcatraz.

It felt to me like you'd envision the walk into hell, accompanied by lurching spiders. Frankly, I'd almost rather starve to death than go down there, but if someone went with me, I would make a quick trip. One time I tripped and fell and skinned my knee on the steps and ended up with a big infected sore that made me gimpy for a good week. I was probably less than 8 when the cellar disappeared or went into disuse. Thank goodness!

At some point, there was a cellar dug under the porch in the "old" house, or perhaps it was the area cleared out by Bill Taylor and Dad when they ran plumbing under the house somehow. I have no comprehension how they ever did that. The door to the in-house cellar was level with the floor and pulled up with some sort of handle. If anything, this cellar was scarier than the outside one. For one thing, it was smaller and totally without light. I never went down there without gloves and once saw a spider that was unlike any I had ever seen before, and twice as big. It makes me shudder now just thinking about it. We weren't allowed to scream, but you can darn well bet I was screaming like a banshee inside!

(p.s. 2) A funny thing happened tonight. Marty found a spider in the back room, huge he said. He got some Raid and talked Teelay into helping him. When Marty sprayed the Raid, the spider disappeared. Teelay let out a girly-girl scream and they both ran out of the room. She thought maybe she felt the spider on her arm, though no evidence. They rounded up a flashlight and bravely returned. Marty told Teelay that he was going to lift the cooler where he saw the spider and she was to shine the light. Kyle walked in just then and went to see what all the fuss was about. I heard him say, "Marty, quit being a wus and face the spider like a man!" About 15 seconds later, Teelay let out a blood-curdling scream. Apparently Kyle thought it would be funny to grab her from behind and spook her. It worked. It wouldn't have been half as funny if the incident had happened in my own room. And no, they didn't find the spider but I'll bet he's long gone.

(p.s. 3) I looked up the meaning of banshee and it's "a fairy woman who begins to whail if someone is about to die." So now we know.

The Loading Place

If you stay on the road past the Clifton cemetery, you'll end up in what used to be called "The Loading Place." I'm not sure if it's all private property now or if there's still even access there but it was, at one time, a hub of summer activities, most significant of which were dutch oven dinners. I'm not so sure it was as fun for the Moms, but they never let on.

After milking, the family (plus any friends or other family who wanted to come) would load up in vehicles and head up the canyon. During the driest part of the summer, the vehicles not in the lead would set their pace well back, so as literally not to eat dirt. If you drove up past the Loading Place, the road would have such deep ruts that you just followed in them and hoped the heck nobody was coming from the other direction. Even farther on up, there was one point that had a little gully, sometimes water-filled, guaranteed to high-center any car, and sometimes even trucks.

At one point, we would come to a barbed-wire fence, usually closed. I recall getting out to open and shut it myself, and memory tells me that it took at least a tough farm girl to operate. The first time I heard Michael Martin Murphey's song "Cowboy Logic", I knew the answer to his query "If you see three men in a pickup truck, dressed alike from boot to hat, could you tell which one was the real cowboy, just from the way he sat?" before I heard it the first time.

Sometimes when riding in the back of the truck, if you hung out a little too far, you would get whapped in the face by a small branch. (I can smell the crisp summer canyon air in my mind right now.) As soon as we arrived at the Loading Place, the dads would gather firewood and make a fire, the moms would haul out the copious amounts of chicken and makings for fried potatoes in the dutch ovens, and the kids would wander around looking for sticks or bugs or those white berries on the trees called "kisses", because if you squished them on your cheeks, they gave you a little wet kiss. Still waiting for the food to cook, we would wander a short ways up the trail to an open artesian pipe that offered the coldest water you could ever imagine. The older kids would often take a shortcut to the pipe, but I was pretty convinced there might be a bear hiding in wait so I always stuck to the road.

When the food was FINALLY ready, we would all gather around the campfire, sitting on logs, eating, visiting and playing. And trying to move out of the smoke that somehow seemed to follow no matter where you sat around the fire. Why is that? The dutch-oven fried potatoes were so good that I honestly don't remember if we even had dessert and to this day actually consider them a type of dessert.

Finally someone would begrudgingly mention it was probably time to go home. The drive home was always at a more leisurely pace, perhaps because it was a little harder to anticipate the road curves in the dark, but more likely because we all wanted to savor the memories. And, oh, there were a lot of good memories made in the Loading Place!

One drawback to these canyon picnics was that sometimes a tick latched onto your body. Mother was vigilant about checking for ticks. It was considered potentially-fatal if its body broke off and left the head in your body. It must have happened, and I don't recall any deaths, but the threat was always there. The removal was accomplished by one of three methods (perhaps a combination of them): put a hot hat pin on it until it backed out, put a hot match on it until it backed out, or smother it with rubbing alcohol until it backed out gasping for breath.

AND HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO SON, VINCE, AND GRANDSON, MARTY!

The Big Giraffe

I was watching a favorite tv show recently, Antiques Roadshow. A woman had brought in an old occasional table. It got me thinking. Is it so named because it's occasionally used, or because it's used for special occasions, or because it's occasionally used for special occasions? Wiki doesn't seem to know either.

In seventh grade, a teacher said something about a chest of drawers. Up until then, I always thought they were called "chester drawers", though personally I never knew anyone named Chester, other than Matt Dillon's deputy, but I assume he would have kept his drawers in a chest.

A coworker years ago was talking about how her brother's son would never go downstairs because he was scared of something down there...a big giraffe. Come to find out, he misunderstood when his grandmother told him not to go downstairs because there was a "big draft" down there.

And off the record, why is it called a funny bone when the only time you know you have one is when you're in waves of pain?

Over and Over and Over

The generation gap continues to live on. Kyle and I went somewhere the other day, which frankly is rather unusual. There was music playing in the business and one song came on that sounded like a stuck record. For those of you too young to know, a record was the grandfather of the current music cd. Now and then, the surface of a record would get scratched, and the same refrain would play over and over til it made you crazy enough to get up and fix it. This is how the music in the store the other day sounded to me. When I mentioned to Kyle that somebody needed to go "fix it", he informed me that scratching records weren't really an issue these days and that the actual song itself was recorded to sound like a scratching record. Now, isn't that sweet?

Yesterday I heard somebody's cell phone ring; they had it programmed to sound like a phone ring from days of yore....rriiinnnggg.

We have come full circle. Can polyester leisure suits be far behind?

3 times

I've cooked two times this week, which is kind of a record. To top it off, I made enough for leftovers. Kyle usually gets his own grub but did sit down and eat with me Monday night. We had mashed potatoes, gravy with turkey and fresh corn on the cob. Teelay had already eaten something. Tuesday night I warmed up the leftovers. Tee wasn't hungry, so I made two plates and took one to Kyle in his room. Wednesday night Jason came over to see if we could get my lawn mower started so I cooked up a double batch of Alfredo Tuna Helper, and yes, that is considered home cookin' at our house. Thursday I came home from work for lunch and warmed up some leftover Tuna Helper. There is still enough for another two or three rounds, but leftovers become unwelcome fare after Day Two. That includes Thanksgiving, but there's usually never any of that left over. I have a good recipe for Thanksgiving leftovers that involves turkey, stuffing, pie crusts, cream of chicken and cream of mushroom soup and a goodly amount of gravy slathered on top; let me know if you need a copy.

It all reminded me of the Lionel Richie song "Once, Twice, Three Times a Lady, so I looked up the lyrics. If you insert "leftover" in place of "lady", you'll see how that might work:

Thanks for the times

That you've given me.

The memories are all in my mind

And now that we've come

To the end of our rainbow

There's something

I must say out loud.

You're once, twice

Three times a lady.

Yes, you're once twice

Three times a lady

And I love you.

When we are together

The moments I cherish

With every beat of my heart

To touch you, to hold you

To feel you, to need you

There's nothing to keep us apart.

You're once, twice

Three times a lady

And I love you

I love you.

(Unless you're served thrice)

95

Dad would have turned 95 years old today.

I was reminiscing about things he used to have and do that bring back fond memories. Like:

Shaving soap in a dish, with the bristle brush

The smell of Old Spice aftershave

Suspenders (though Nik wears some now)

Oxblood shoe paste, probably going by a different name now. Sometimes he would "let" one of us polish and shines his shoes, and we considered it an honor.

Bolo ties...my grandson, Carver, wore one of his great-grandpa's bolo ties to Western Day in Cardston last month.

Sleeveless open-mesh t shirts, known now as "wife-beater shirts", an awful moniker.

Hats. Dad had one for every occasion and the dressy ones usually had a feather of some kind.

Leather gloves. If my dad had one splurge (besides malts in Downey), it was leather gloves.

Denim. After he passed away, there was a shirt hanging on a hook in the hallway at the top of the stairs. I buried my face into it to see if I could smell him, but he had washed it. It has since disappeared. My dad wore a lot of denim.

Haircuts. Even when he didn't have much hair left, he still drove to Preston to have it trimmed regularly.

Flippers and whip-cracking. The whip cracking was usually used as a noise-maker to get the cows rounded up. He didn't use it nearly as often as he used his flipper. If they had an Olympic event in flipper-flippering, my dad would have lead the team. He could shoot a fly off a cow at 30 yards. My dad's cows were pretty well-behaved, as cows go, and it's quite likely that's because they knew his aim with a flipper was deadly. He used to make his own flipper out of wood and medical tubing, but after he didn't have to spend all his money on us kids, he bought himself a real manufactured flipper. He was like Chuck Norris with that thing.

Thistles. Dad hated thistles almost as much as he hated Utah fishermen. Well do I remember the many times we would all grab our shovels and make human swaths through the fields to take out the thistles. Now and then one would have the audacity to show up in our yard, but it never lasted long enough to grow up. I was grown up myself before I realized that weeds could actually grow in gravel. Dad was always hauling gravel from his gravel pit into the yard, so it was everywhere. I thought he did it to prohibit weed-growing, not realizing his ongoing every-day battle to extinguish weeds. He got a good laugh when I told him that.

When Dad was waiting to go do chores or milk the cows, he would often sit with his head in his right hand, elbow to thigh. He wouldn't go out one minute early or one minute late, so this was his waiting posture. I always thought it was that he was dreading having to keep up the routine, and thinking back, it makes me a little sad.

Eye twitching. When Dad was really tired or really nervous, or somebody was visiting and he wanted them to leave but didn't quite say it, his eye twitched.

Handkerchiefs. Since Dad never needed a tie for Christmas or Father's Day, we defaulted to those big red or blue paisley-patterned handkerchiefs he always kept in his back pocket. Another default-gift was those flat carpenter pencils that he sharpened with his Schrade pocket knife. He must have had more of both than anyone could ever use, but he always acted delighted with our gift.

If it's true that necessity is the mother of invention, Dad was the father. He was so creative that he could have taken out a few patents...if he hadn't been so busy farming. He was also very very organized, as exemplified by the little cabinet behind his shed door. It had probably 20 cubbie holes, each filled with a different type nail, nut, or bolt, all labeled. They NEVER got intermixed.

Anyway, Happy Birthday, Dad!