Forgotten and Newly Found Pictures of My Dad

My dad's favorite holiday was Christmas, no exceptions. I always remember his buying for everyone and watching us with a broad grin while we opened presents in the static excitement of a Christmas morning amid the smell of pinion pine and the Christmas sounds of Frank Sinatra or Perry Como.

The picture at the right shows my dad when he was very young, Christmas 1955--only a few months away from the tragic loss of Grandpa Cles. Grandpa Cles died when he was only 48, leaving my dad with the responsibility of the farm when he was only 22. That is the age I was when Cles was just a newborn.

Christmas for dad wasn't just getting gifts for family either. One morning after we picked up newly wrapped grain-fed beef we had raised, my dad sent me to the basement. He told me to pick up some steaks, roasts and hamburger for some families that were in need.

I came back with a couple of chuck roasts, chuck steaks and a few rib steaks. I never liked rib steaks when I was young. They had the bone, making this cut of beef one with less meat--in my opinion--and more fat, the last item actually added to the value of the steak, but I always hated the texture of it in my mouth.

When I came up stairs with the beef, dad looked at me with a disappointed look. "Leave the rib eyes and hamburger, but take back the chuck roasts and chuck steaks and bring some T-bones and tip roasts and sirloin steaks.

I spent the next hour or two visiting two families with my dad. One family was a distant relative, a mechanic who always had done work for us. He had a devastating stroke that forever changed his life and that of his family. And even though I don't remember who the second family was, I do remember how excited they were to have the meat. Both families received three good sized packages of steaks, a several of packages of hamburger and two large, quality roasts.

My mom labeled the picture at the right as Christmas of 1960. It was one that was fun for my dad. He was proud of the stereo in the picture, the old Webcor. It had a great sound, although it did not look very fancy at all. There were two speakers, with long connecting wires that pulled out of the console. You could place the speakers at far corners of the room to get a quality stereo effect. And it sounded very good.

I played my first rock albums on this stereo: Rubber Soul by the Beatles, If You Can Believe Your Eyes And Ears by The Mamas & The Papas, Red Rubber Ball by The Cyrcle, and Yesterday and Today by The Byrds.



The picture at the left shows why I never took my own children to Yellowstone Park, except for once or twice. It is the place we went on a vacation every year. We stayed the first night in Lava Hot Springs. Jill, excited about going on a trip, would throw up after arriving in the hotel, and then we would go swimming in one of two pools that were there at the time. One pool in particular had this incredible place where you could buy corn dogs.

This picture also shows Old Faithful when the parking lot was much closer to the geyser. In those days, steam came from two other small spots, and when the geyser erupted, a bit of water also shot from those small mounds of sulfur-stained soil. The car in this picture is the second family car I remember, our Oldsmobile 88.

At the left of Jill, the chrome "rocket" part of the fin and tail light folded down to expose the gas cap. The transmission in the Olds was a push button automatic. My dad let me sit on his lap once while he was driving south on the highway with the entire family. Grandma Liza was in the front passenger seat, something I am sure irritated my mom. Mom and the girls sat in the back. While driving fast on the highway, and while I sat on dad's lap, I pushed the reverse button on the transmission, not a great thing to do for a car.

To put the cherry on the top of the cake, mom was washing the car on the front lawn of the ranch some time later. She pulled open the passenger door and was cleaning the floor mats and dash and windows. Trying to hurry before dad came in from work, she jumped in and pulled forward, putting a large dent in the passenger door when she hit a post that was part of the clothesline.

Mom sat in seclusion, trying to think about how to tell dad the news. She didn't see him come in from the field. I ran and told dad the news as soon as he stepped out of the truck. I still remember the glint in my mom's eye when she looked at me. I didn't want to cause trouble, but I did. I just thought I was helping her out by breaking the news for her. It would have made me angry as a teenager or an adult if a child had done that to me.

In spite of the two things that happened to our Olds--the damaged transmission and the dent, when Grandma Liza traded cars, she was able to get a better "trade-in" deal with our Olds than with her '56 green and white two-tone Century Buick.

I wish I had that Buick right now. The engine was huge, over 450 cubic inches. It had dual exhausts, and you could hear it from at least four blocks. It embarrassed me when I was young, but it would not have been fun to have now, because you could not afford to drive it. Not only did it require premium fuel, but it also would get 4 or 5 miles to the gallon at best.

It is much cheaper to listen for a Harley while driving through Idaho Falls during the summer. The sound is not as loud, but it is a "cool" sound that costs me nothing.

Thanksgiving was also a holiday that was very important for my family. There were always a lot of people there, cousins and aunts and uncles I rarely saw during the year.

And there was always a picture, sometimes several. On this particular Thanksgiving, I have a picture of me with my parents, one of me with my cousins Steve Burns and Stan Palmer, one of only my parents, and one of Grandpa Cles and Grandma Liza--all from these backdoor steps. Whenever we visited grandma, it was this door we entered. We never used the front door. And I only remember salesmen knocking on it.

The car at the left is Uncle Jenk and Aunt Sara's Pontiac. It was a great car too. Things I remember about Uncle Jenk were some things he said and did every year.

"Stop passing and start eating," he would say when relatives kept passing food beyond six or seven minutes into the meal.

And he had an outrageous sense of humor. He was so much fun. Uncle Jenk also hated the picture thing. And he sometimes would say something like "let's pretend we did it and don't." I never figured his hesitation until years later. His nose was badly disfigured for some reason, and that is most likely why he didn't like those photographs, but I wish we had more pictures. I do not remember him for the nose. I remember how much fun he was. And I remember how he made us laugh with his teasing and his jokes.

I also remember my dad telling me about a visit that Uncle Jenk, Aunt Sarah and their family made at Snowville when my dad was young. Tom, their oldest son, told my Grandpa Cles, Grandma Liza and dad and Janice the details about how his dad took care of the muddy front car window on the way to Snowville. At that time the road was not paved.

There were no push button window washer units in cars with cleaning fluid. Uncle Jenk had a creative way of taking care of the problem. It involved his standing on the hood of the car.

The picture at the right shows me with my dad while feeding cows. I went with Grandpa Cles and dad when I was very little, and that tradition continued. During elementary, I grew to dislike it.

Working all day in snow feeding cattle was not fun, because at night on the way back to Malad from the ranch my feet would have that tingling itch that your feet get when they get very cold. They were like that every time until I was in high school. By then you could find warm winter boots, but at times, even with the best boots and warm socks it was still that way. It was cold on the ranch in winter. And it embarrasses me now that I even write about it, because dad did this much longer than I ever did, and I never heard him complain even once. And when I was in school, he did it alone after Grandpa Cles died.

Dad would pick me up at the east door of the gym after basketball practice every Saturday, and we would leave around 10: 00 or 11:00 a.m. It was late when we returned in the evening. Those practices did not last very long for elementary boys, and when I didn't have one, I would help dad load hay. He would let me lift bales until I was older and could show that I could lift them easily. The wild hay bales were only 50 pounds, but the alfalfa bales were easily 70-85 pounds and had wire instead of plastic that held them together.

By the time I was in junior high, I was lifting the wild hay bales easily. The alfalfa bales came later, as soon as I could lift them. The hard physical work on the farm was the reason why my classmates and I were able to do so well in sports. We didn't need a weight room to work out to condition ourselves for sports during and after school. The strength we developed came from life on the farm. And hard work taught me a lot about character too. As hard as it was, I will always miss the drives to the ranch with my dad, and I will miss spending the day with him like I did. Isn't it sad that you never miss something like that, until it is only a memory.

The picture below shows a lot of things that are really fun memories. Fishing was very good that day. At that time we either went to Crowther's Reservoir or Deep Creek.

On one trip, when I was this age, dad and I were fishing at Kid's Pond or a reservoir in St. John. At that time we always fished from the bank, using corn or worms or salmon eggs. At the end of that day of fishing, I heard screams and laughter.

A classmate of mine Lonnie and his younger brother Danny carried their stepsister Mollie to the water's edge near us. Her face was red and flushed with anger. They threw her into the pond.

At first I was disgusted. They were scaring away the fish, and then Mollie came out of the water, hair matted down and her face still red, but she was like a Greek Goddess. I noticed Molly's T-shirt. There was nothing under it except for skin. She was a senior, and although quite short in height, she was a total babe--an Idaho teen who would have made Dolly Parton look like a little girl.

As soon as I saw the magnificent "view," I looked straight ahead and pretended the event had never happened. My face was as red as a summer sunset, and my ears were even a brighter shade. My dad cackled.

"Let's go Jonie." He smiled and gathered the gear together and laughed to himself repeatedly. We had not caught a fish the entire day, not even so much as a slight nibble on the end of the line, but my dad continued to grin and laugh all the way to the white Chevrolet pickup, the one in the picture above.

"Today Jonie's finally become a man." Dad said that at least five times on the way home. He would watch me turn red again, and then he would laugh himself silly and slap his leg. He told everyone at home the story when we arrived on South Main, and they all laughed. My sisters laughed too, although they didn't know what was funny.

My dad told the "And that's when I knew Jonie had become a man" story until I was 35 years old at every family gathering. And people laughed, even though they had heard the story many times at earlier dinners. They laughed, because I probably still turned bright red every time he told it.

The stock rack in the back of the truck was made from heavy steel, so it made it practical to haul a bull or horse in the back of the Chevrolet without a problem. But what I liked best about that gold colored rack was the weight advantage. It gave more traction. And by the time I was in junior high and high school, I squealed the tires on the truck whenever I could. It had a large V-8 engine for the time, either a 327 or 283. I can't remember which one it had, but I do remember seeing the smoke in the side mirrors and listening to the tires squeal as I smiled with teenage joy.

Our Weimaraner Dutch is in the left of the picture in the shadows. On one trip to the ranch when the rack was not on the truck, a car passed us honking and pointing at the rear of the pickup. Dad was afraid we lost some 2 x 6 inch long planks we loaded into the back. We put sacks of grain on top of them and to secure them, and we also tied a red flag at the rear of the planks which hung some seven or eight feet out the back of the Chevrolet.

When we looked back, Dutch balanced at the very end of planks at least six or seven feet behind the pickup's rear bumper, his nose pointing straight ahead. He looked like Underdog, the canine superhero, riding a surf board. We stopped and loaded him into the front of the truck.

The picture above also shows a great view of the back of the house on South Main.


The picture at the left is of dad, just returning from a trip to Hawaii. It was at this time--the spring of 1978--that I did my student teaching assignment at the high school. My sister Ann's class did a senior trip in Hawaii, and mom and dad went with the group as additional parent chaperones.

I do not remember what dad did with his hat, but I eventually ended up with the small bag under his arm. I used it to carry CD's or small electronic equipment to school. Hanging from dad's arm is also the picture he and mom bought in Hawaii, a carving on a boat on blue slate. When dad wrote the check, he was talking with the artist and he signed it only as Jon. We always laughed at that, and wondered what the artist thought when he sent it to his bank. But Ireland Bank didn't have a problem with it. They just thought it was a thing we could tell a story about in the future. Dad kept the check out and showed it occasionally when he told the story.

You can tell Cles missed his grandpa by the way he he is leaning against him. Lydia didn't like being held by anyone except for mom. Both my kids are wearing coats that I remember they had, and mom is wearing the jacket I bought for her. It always looked so cute on her.

Whenever I told her that, her eyes would flash. "I don't want to be cute." Her eyes still have that flash in them now, but they have become a deeper brown with the years, making them even prettier. When she was young and she would get angry, they were the color of a perfect onyx stone, especially when she was really ticked.


The picture at the left shows the ranch when the house had just had the new blue aluminum roofing installed. I always hated the pink color of the siding. But my dad always had the yards looking green and beautiful. He was as fussy about it as he was about his fields.

We called the buckskin-colored mare Sally. My sister Ann named her. I'm not sure why she selected the name. Sally was a good mare, but when we returned to the ranch after climbing the steep mountain to a pasture overlooking the north shore of The Great Salt Lake, the saddle would begin sliding down toward her neck. Eventually you would have to dismount and lead her until the slope was not as steep. If you didn't get out of the saddle, it would slip clear to her ears.

The picture at the bottom shows the first dear I shot when I was in junior high. I was in the seventh grade. The old 25.20 lever action rifle is what I used. Dad used a 30.06 with a scope.

We had been hunting all day in the hills west of Malad. It was the same place the Wards had hunted for a very long time.

The name we used was the West Hills, and it was on the Daniels road leading to the current reservoir. When you see the old dam, an abandoned cement structure is the only evidence of the earlier reservoir where underground faults would not allow water to rise above a certain level. If you drive west on that road as far as it goes, that is where you would find the place where we unloaded the horses from the blue '64 Chevrolet two ton truck in this picture.

We had been hunting all day, and I had had all the fun I could handle. I hated horses. It was cold. I was tired since the day began at 4:00 a.m., and it was just starting to get dark.

At the top of a short ridge above a small grove of Quaking Aspen, dad looked at me before throwing a large rock.

"You better get off your horse and get your rifle. We always find a deer in this patch at the end of the first day like this." He tossed the basketball-sized rock down the hill. It rolled and crashing into the grove. But the crashing sound didn't stop.

My heart started to pound before the dear broke into the clearing. Dad fired off a shot and hit one of the animal's front legs before I was able to get off Pansy the buckskin mare I rode. She was skittish from the sound of the rifle shot, and she turned and spun a bit, but I grabbed my rifle and ran to my dad's side.

Dad turned to me. "You'd better hang on to the horses, or they'll run off." I ignored him and started shooting. Dad grabbed the reins just before the horses ran. I hit the large buck on the third shot, and the deer fell to the ground and rolled, a small dust cloud rose above the purple sage and dry grasses.

Dad was so proud of my having shot the deer. That year students in grades 7 through 9 reported their success of the hunt in the no-picture junior high newspaper called Dragontales. I was proud to share my information, a five pointer: four on either side with good sized pointers on the horns above each ear. It was one of the largest shot by any student that year.