Recently my daughter(s) challenged me to list 6 little-known things about myself. Liz promptly told me that we don’t have to respond to any such demand, which leaves me puzzled as to why.
But being ready to brag at the drop of a hat I thought I would take a stab at it. Since it is supposed to be things they might not know, I thought I’d focus on the days before even Angela became fully sentient.
1. Fire: Before I was old enough to go to Kindergarten, Brent Baker and I were playing in a lot about half way between our homes. There had been a lot of big cottonwood trees there, but some time before they had all been felled, leaving a tangled “jungle” in which we loved to play Tarzan. This particular time, Brent had a little box of matches he’d swiped from his sister’s purse (she smoked!), so naturally we lit a campfire. We didn’t bother to put it out, or more probably didn’t know how, nor even that we should. That night at bed time there was an orange glow down the street, and the city volunteer fire department spent a lovely evening in training for real fires. And that was the end of the wood lot, which made us sad. What made us happy was that nobody even suspected two cute little tow-headed pre-schoolers had anything to do with it. So that should make Mark and Joe feel better about the fire on Candy Loop.
2. More Fire: When I was about 8-10, Brent Baker and I repaired to the old horse sheds behind his house to try to figure out how to smoke. His older sister gave us the makings because not only did she smoke, she only had about a dozen cards in her deck of 52. Those old horse sheds were made of cedar posts, with bales of straw for a roof. They were probably about a hundred years old and the bales of straw were down to about ¼ of their original height; and they were dry, dry, dry! In addition, they had never been cleaned out, so there was a deep layer of “compost” under them. Horses, you know, leave a lot more fiber than cattle, or goats, or other ruminants. Anyway, we had a little fire so we wouldn’t have to strike one of our few matches for every light. We never did figure out how to smoke, because nobody had ever told us that you inhale. Good thing, too. So we eventually gave up and stomped out the fire (See? We were getting better.) But ancient beds of dried compost are resistant to stomping, so late that night there was an orange glow through the block, and the city volunteer fire department spent a lovely evening in training for real fires. That time it came out who done it. And after that I didn’t play around with Brent Baker much.
3. Skinny Dipping: When I was 12 I started working summers on farms. My first job was driving the hay truck for my older brother while he and his partners walked along picking up bales and throwing them onto the truck. I could do this at 12 because it was only driving in a big field and you drove it as slow as it would go. The most important thing was to avoid driving over bales of hay (that would rock the truck so much that bales fell off and they had to be thrown back on. Plus, it usually broke the bale you ran over.) I got paid ¼ cent per bale for doing that. Later, I worked for my cousin and then for a farmer in Meadow named Bushnell. His son, Cleve, was my age, and we did the walking and throwing while his younger brother drove. The Bushnell farm was West of meadow some distance, near the old volcanoes, and one of the attractions of the volcanoes was a hot spring. It was just a deep pool, about 30 feet across, with shelves of stone every few feet as it went down, and was known to drown careless divers who got stuck under those shelves. It was pretty muddy and a long way away from everything, but we often went there near sundown and skinny-dipped for a while to get all the dried sweat and salt and dust off us. It was nasty smelling water, full of minerals, and nothing lived in it except those big “bargemen” water bugs, which are the only water bug that will bite. The biggest thrill was that sometimes somebody else would go out there, and we only had a very short time to get decent before their headlights would reveal us.
4. Girls: After my junior year of High School I went to band camp at BYU, even though it meant I got fired from my job with the Kimball Ranch. What a great place that was! I never even thought about any other college after that. I only applied to BYU, staking my entire college future on that one application, and was delighted to go there the next year. The summer after my senior year I went to work for my father at Big M service (a Conoco station), where I worked 12 hours a day, 7 days a week. Dad was good to work for, paying regularly and generously, but he insisted that you WORK!. It made it so that with my music scholarship I didn’t have to work while I was at college. BYU has orientation week for freshmen the week before classes start and for the next 3 years I always told Dad I had to be there for it. The draw was that there was a nice dance every evening of orientation week. The girls were dressed to the 9’s and the guys all wore suits and it was just a big musical round of dancing every dance with a new partner. After a summer of working so hard with never a break, it was a little hard for me to be there with so many pretty girls, but I sure loved it. I’m sure I embarrassed myself pretty regularly since at that time I didn’t know how to talk to girls. I still associate BYU with crowds of beautiful girls wearing very nice, long dresses, even though I married a girl with exceptionally nice legs that I saw marching in modest shorts.
5. Librarian: I spent most of my time in the Marines at the Recruit Depot on San Diego harbor. I was a computer programmer by training, but only an operator in fact. We worked Mon-Fri, 8-5 for the most part, with occasional other duties such as mess duty, riot control, annual rifle qualification, etc. One of the programmers who graduated in the class 2 weeks ahead of mine got himself a job in the Depot Library, and when he was transferred he recommended me. So I got a call from Mrs. Cross, the library’s director, who offered me the job. I was surprised to be offered it because I hadn’t applied or anything and I didn’t really have an urgent need for a paying job. But it was too good to pass up. The job was 5-9:00, 3 evenings a week. I was told I could sort the books on the shelves if I wanted to, or I could read, but it was critical to properly check out the books and process the returns. Checking out was : Check ID and write name on the book’s card, stamp the date on the book’s card, stamp the date on a Due card and put it in the book, File the book’s card. It was not that difficult and I was surprised when Mrs. Cross told me I was the only librarian she’d ever had who didn’t make mistakes. That was good because what I did most of the time was read whatever suited my fancy. I worked there for about a year – until I got out of the Corps. By the way, I got a phone call one night for a “Commander Cross”. I was surprised that Mrs. Cross answered the call. She was a Navy officer and I had thought she was a civilian. A commander is equivalent to a Lieutenant Colonel in the Marines.
6. Mailman: After I finished with the Marine Corps, I went back to BYU to get a degree in biology. The GI Bill helped a lot with expenses but it was still tight so one year I dropped out and took a job with a bank in SLC. I really hated that job, so late in November I quit and Liz and I took our two sweet babies with us to Chicago for a month – until classes started again. Liz’s parents were very nice to put us up. Since I still needed to work, Liz’s mother lined up a job for me assembling Christmas fruit baskets at minimum wage (If I remember correctly, it was $1.75/hour at that time). I didn’t much like that idea, and after a flash of brilliance, I called the local post office and landed a job as a 30-day Christmas mail carrier. So I spent the month of December walking around the neighborhoods in suburban Chicago with a big leather bag over my shoulder. It was cold, but I loved it, and I made a lot more $$ than I would have making fruit baskets. Then I went back to school in January.
So, did you know any of that?
