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!

Old Blue

Well, this blog entry has been delightful. It took the assistance of Bill Taylor, Alan Taylor and Johnny Gailey to fill in some blanks.

My dad had an old 1948 Chevrolet pickup. It's value was mostly sentimental. When he replaced it with the Chevy Apache pickup sometime in the mid-sixties, he took the '48 up to the Dry Farm (long before public landfills) and parked it in the ravine. It was too special to mix with the regular throw-away stuff, and there it sat until Johnny Gailey came along. I tracked Johnny down in Clifton just as he was walking in the door the other night. His wife handed the phone to him and off we went. I could tell he had fond memories of Old Blue. He said Dad had removed one of the wheels after he drove it in the ravine just to keep people from doing something stupid with it. That sounds like Dad. Johnny said he kept the blue color but dolled it up with some metallic paint. He replaced the flooring in the front, cleaned it up, fixed a few things, then drove it around for several years. My favorite part was when he said he fixed the broken speedometer by removing the gizmo and installing a match stick for the speedometer dial. He said he's kicked himself over and over for selling that truck. Apparently it went through several owners before it got to Gary Garner who sold it to some fellow in Sugar City. It's highly possible that Old Blue might be listed on Ebay like this version of the same vehicle (and I hope they haven't removed the ad before this posts: http://www.ebay.com/itm/Chevrolet-Chevy-Pickup-Truck-1948-48-Stereo-Radio-USA-630-USB-MP3-In-240-Watts-?cmd=ViewItem&hash=item19d037327a&item=110867460730&pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0#ht_3227wt_1022

Apparently back then, you only needed one tail light and it was on the driver's side. Bill said that they figured if you couldn't see it with one tail light, you weren't going to see it anyway. HA HA. That's probably true. Also, you didn't start the engine with a key. You turned the key, then stomped on a starter switch mounted on the floor. Now, I remember vehicles with a floor button for dimming the headlights, but I'd never heard of the starter thing. On rare occasion, even now I find myself stomping my left foot on the floor to dim my headlights, sort of like throwing your arm out to catch the long-ago grown up kid as you apply the brakes.

The '48 did not come with signal lights, either. To turn left, you stuck your left arm horizontally out the window. To turn right, you indicated by sticking your left arm out the same window, only you bent it at the elbow and sort of pointed your hand to the right. Nobody had backup lights on their vehicle. The single red bulb on the back was for night-driving and braking only. The light got more intense when you applied the brakes so you'd know to slow down should you be following. Since everybody in town knew where everybody lived, signaling wasn't as big of a problem as you might think, and it was often omitted in the winter when it was too cold to keep the window down. Also, there were no cute little windows that you could bend to get a little breeze in your face, though there were some vents you could open and close from the outside for a little air movement, highly inconvenient and not too effective. Something I did not remember was that the windshield was in two sections split by a vertical divider.

The Wave

I live on a corner lot and often sit out front on my park bench in the summer, watching the world go by...one car at a time. In the evenings, and occasionally in the mornings, there are people walking by, sometimes in twos, sometimes in the accompaniment of dogs on leashes. There's an older couple who pass by in the mornings before it gets hot. We say "hello" and wave. He has a longer stride, so I'm guessing she actually gets more exercise. One neighbor down the street a bit has a big Rin-Tin-Tin kind of dog, not sure if it's male or female. We exchange waves. Another neighbor down the street had two grey dogs that looked like a mix between a poodle and a schnauzer, sort of like Pete and RePete. We either wave or have the same small conversation every time. A couple of years ago, there was just one grey dog, and this week when she walked by, she was not accompanied by a dog at all.

There is one amazing woman who mesmerizes me. A few years ago, before my knee issues, I would go to the nearby high school track and walk a few rounds. This one woman, who is probably my age or older, would appear and move about with Olympic-type speed. She is bronzed and has not one obvious ounce of fat on her body. There was an old movie called "Walk, Don't Run" that included an Olympic speed-walking competition. This woman could have won that contest hands down. I read where a regular walking pace is 3-3.5 mph, 4 mph being a brisk walk. This lady goes about 4.2 mph, I'd guess. She speeds by the house, speeds 'round the track several times, then speeds up and down the bleacher stairs for a while. (I believe coaches have football team members do these "ladders" as punishment.) Then she heads home, still at the same pace. There is always a bottle of water in her hand, and it's not unusual to see her pulling a couple of her grandkids in a little wagon behind her. None of it slows her down one bit. When I can catch her eye, I wave. Once she even slowed down just enough for me to have time to tell her she's amazing. I'm jealous of her knees mostly.

I like the wave you get (and give) after someone stops to let someone else into busy traffic. It's like you suddenly have a best friend.

In the countryside, waving is not unusual. I remember riding in the truck and watching Dad wave. If you were someone he knew but weren't particularly his forte, he would do the only-forefinger wave, keeping hands on the steering wheel. This is also the wave used for complete strangers, sort of a reserved greeting. A little more familiar-person wave would be the keeping-hands-on-the-steering-wheel-but-lifting-all-but-the-thumb-up wave. If it were someone he really liked or hadn't seen in a while, he would do a type of salute, even tipping his hat occasionally. That's when I knew we had passed someone really special!

This was back before the middle-finger salute was invented.

Like a kid following a puppy

I have a case of the wandering mind, one thing leading to another…

I decided to iron, plugged in the iron and grabbed the spray bottle and went to get the clothes in the bedroom that needed to be ironed. Noticed the trash basket in there needed to be emptied, dumped it in the big trash, tied the top and took it out to the garbage can. I noticed a weed in the rose area, pulled it out and noticed a few more, went to throw the weeds in the garbage can and saw that the mailman had been by, I turned on the water to catch a dry spot in the lawn, got the mail and took it in the house. There I noticed the licorice sack on the table was left open and grabbed that, went to find a twist tie and remembered the dishes needed to come out of the dishwasher. Then I realized the clothes needed to come out of the washer and put into the dryer, and when taking the clothes out of the dryer I remembered, THE IRON IS ON!

In case you're wondering if I snared this story off the internet, nope. It really happened right here at home.

Who?

I told Kyle recently that Whitney Houston had died. He said, "Who's Whitney Houston?" I kid you not. Shortly thereafter I mentioned Howard Cosell and his announcing style. He said he'd never heard of him either.

Kyle and I were sitting here watching a Jazz game the other night (a real nail-biter) though the Jazz won, when the cameraman shot a closeup of Gordon Hayward. I mentioned how he looked a lot like Opie. Kyle said, "Who's Opie?" I said, "WHO'S OPIE???" He said, "I've never heard of him." I said, "You know, the show with Barney Fife". He said, "Who's Barney Fife?" I said, "Oh my heck, remember Richie Cunningham?" Yup. He did it. He said, "Who's Richie Cunningham?" I said, "No chance you'd know Otis then either, huh?" He said, "Otis who?" He didn't remember the Fonz but had heard of Gilligan, though he'd never seen the show.

I told him that is like his kids one day asking who John Stockton and Karl Malone were. He said he didn't have any kids. I asked Teelay and her friend if they knew who Opie or Richie Cunningham were. Strike out.

If I know what a mosh pit is and send a thousand texts a month, shouldn't they be required to know who Opie is? Just a thought.

In Case You're Planning a Summer Family Vacation...

In the summer of 1985, having been married for 15 years and never having taken a vacation, we planned a trip with our five children (ages 4-14) from Vernal, Utah to Lake Louise, Canada. We rented a 32-foot camper to pull with our dual-tank Chevy truck which already had a regular camper in the truck bed. This was when gas was about $1.20 a gallon. If you’ve ever seen that old Lucille Ball/Desi Arnaz movie “The Long Long Trailer”, you can just call me Lucy.

The truck only had one long seat, so we traded off on who sat in the front with us and who got to enjoy family togetherness in the truck camper. Basically, it went like this: We drove until somebody was crying loudly enough for us to hear it, then we pulled over. For some reason, I was the main driver, except for when we had to back into a campground spot.

I was terrified that one of the kids would break something in the trailer, so I was like a camper Nazi, "Don't touch that! Don't do that! Keep that out of there!" When we stopped off in Idaho Falls to eat some fast food. Jason & Jared got horsing around and Jared chipped a front tooth on one of the propane tanks on the camper. We just kept going...VACATION BOUND OR BUST! We stopped in at a cute little store near West Yellowstone and bought ice cream cones, scooped with their patented rectangular ice cream scoop.

The original plan was to pull off the road the first night in Yellowstone and just enjoy the trailer. The problem was that the Rocky/Bullwinkle crowd had built curbs all along the roadside to prevent such camping. Keep in mind, this was the week of July 4th and we hadn't even conceived we would need a reservation to camp. We stopped in to see Old Faithful and get some more ice cream. Thankfully we were all too terrified of the walkways to get close to the hotpots. (We may have been crazy but we weren't stupid.) The most interesting thing about Old Faithful was that we spotted our next door neighbor's vehicle in the parking lot, though we didn't spot them.

We got the last parking place in some campground and took off for Canada the next morning, passing through Wyoming to buy fireworks. The reason that we didn't get to Canada the second day was that Montana was in the way; there is a reason it's called Big Sky Country. We decided to take a back road, thinking for some reason that the main highway might be too crowded. Jason kept holding up signs about needing to get out and go fishing. He also held up signs about needing to use the bathroom, wanting to eat, or that Sherry was crying. Occasionally he would light a ladyfinger firecracker and throw it out on the road, scaring us out of what was left of our minds. Every time he would swear it was the very last one and every time, he was flat out lying! We would swab the deck a couple of times a day to get rid of chips and red punch. (That was before scientists warned us about children and red punch.)

Both tanks were on fumes when we pulled into Buffalo. We stopped to eat, gas up and use the facilities. On the way out of town, one of the truck tires blew out, sounding like a musket shot. I still shudder to think of what could have happened had that occurred any other time that day; we had driven almost 6 hours without seeing one other vehicle. Somewhere south of the Continental Divide, we gave up and camped in the Montana wilderness for the evening. During the night, a spider bit poor little Nik on his cheek, resulting in swelling that closed his eye shut.

When we arrived at the Canadian border, a man came out and asked us where we were from and if we had any booze, rifles or fireworks. No, No, and Yes. He also commented on how some people from Vernal had just come through a few vehicles before. Turns out they were our neighbors. He didn't ask for our passports, because back then Canada was considered an extension of Idaho or Montana rather than another country, and regular people didn't carry passports anyway. He said we had to turn around or leave our fireworks with him, to be forfeit if we didn't return for them by nighttime. That put a real crimp in our travel plans, since we had invested a week's wages on them. What we did was leave them with him temporarily, but crossed the border just so we could say we had. I'll never forget pulling that long trailer up the road to St. Mary or Martha's Lake by Waterton Park, where coincidentally my son-in-law now works.

.

The gas pedal was to the floor and we were barely moving. Since it was straight uphill, the gas tank register sunk like a rock. For once, everybody was quiet; nothing like fear to silence the crowd.

We were happy to see a KFC and decided to get lunch and eat it by the beautiful lake. Since we weren't going to be able to make it to Lake Louise, this was a decent option. We went into KFC, but they didn't have any of the regular stuff. The only thing we recognized was chicken and rolls for $15, (roughly the equivalent of $150 today), so that's what we had for lunch. We walked through the little town of Waterton, had ice cream and purchased some souvenirs. I bought a wooden plaque with a gold deer on it labeled "Waterton Park". The kids got candy and some little plastic faces where, if you put your fingers inside them, they made all sorts of wacko expressions. Jason says he still has his somewhere. (Incidentally, when we got home, I noticed that all our souvenirs were stamped "Made in Japan.") We drove back across the border, got our fireworks and found a nice campground with laundry facilities. Do you know how nice it is to have laundry facilities?

The next night we made it to Deer Lodge, Montana. It was packed and we ended up camping next to some mountain men in teepees. They were probably as unnerved by us as we were by them. Personal fireworks were not allowed, but the town had a small display of its own. By that time, I did not care either way. Two days later, we were pulling the camper up the hill between Heber and Duchesne when the truck overheated. Jason got out and fished in a stream til the motor cooled off, and we finally limped back into Vernal. Vacation accomplished!

The next day I tallied the trip and realized we had averaged six miles to the gallon. We could have driven the kids to Disneyland in our car, stayed in a motel and had enough left over for a trip for the two of us to Hawaii. I kid you not, but who wants to have fun on a vacation anyway, right?

Our neighbors returned a few days later and told us about their wonderful spontaneous trip to Lake Louise.