A Day in Logan With Aunt Connie

There is nothing like putting your hands in the air when you ride a roller coaster, and for some reason or another, they sometimes do this when they ride with grandma in her Turbo VW Bug.

In the event that there is not enough excitement, you just give the kids some more Bug Juice, a wonderful fruit drink with 10% fruit concentrate and 90% sugar.

Yes, Bug Juice does the trick, helping the little ones appreciate even those small rises in the road that they would normally never notice as they stick both arms in the air and squeal.
Tiny flailing arms and voices are so loud that their faces are red, and if they had taken the picture, you would have seen the blood vessels in mom and Lydia's neck beginning to throb.

All joking aside, I wish I could have been there that day, but my sweetheart let me stay home to prepare for the next trip we would take later in the week.

The trip to Logan was fun for the entire group of grandchildren. Jack had been coaxing to see Connie and her kids for several months.

In the event that Tommy and Anna would have forgotten the trick with holding hands in the air, Jack would have reminded them to "get their act together."

I was always paranoid about a trampoline, and jumping on one was something I threatened my children not to do. Jumping on some neighbor's tramp was the possible cause of everything bad: fractured necks, sprained ankles, twisted knees. "Don't let me catch you jumping on one of those!"


My worries and concerns made the activity more fun for my children. Not every child's eyes glow with ultimate joy as they spring into the air, but mine son and daughters did, and if their adventures ever cost them pain, they never admitted it openly, not even once. But trampolines would become a family tradition.

For Lydia it was a beginning. This kid took her on a date in Salt Lake City, and when they returned that evening, he looked at me and said, "Do you want to see what we did today?" He took the VHS tape he had in his hand, turned on the television and pushed play on the video machine.

I found myself grinding my front teeth together and gripping my fists tightly as I watched my little girl jump from a plane, strapped to a trainer of course, but my leaving the room was not necessitated by nausea. It was fear. I was afraid of going to prison for doing what I wanted to do to that kid. I was afraid of experiencing the terror that I remember while watching this 50's horror movie where a man--gentle and kind--lost total control of two hands that led him to do horrific things. Suddenly I became those hands, so I left the room, and the unsuspecting boy left my home without my saying goodbye, but he left without having red marks on his neck like Clint Eastwood had in his movie entitled Hang 'em High.

Then I let loose "The Furies" when I heard the young man leave. Lydia never jumped from a plane, a car, a train--that I know of--in those years after high school. She just jumped from bridges and cliffs into cold river water.

Now she is a parent of two beautiful children. And she is a wonderful mom, but in those innocent brown eyes of my Tommy and Anna, I see my Lydia standing with these eyes that sparkle when they jump with voices that sing screams of ultimate joy at the effects of gravity.

I never jumped from planes or bridges, but there was this haystack in Malad with an adjacent stack of loose wild hay that was fun, and then there was the second story window of a church where my friend Randy and I would hang for a few minutes before falling to the ground. We would laugh hysterically at the numbness in our legs.

When adults caught us doing it, well, it would never happen again from that spot, but at the right of the tall steps, we and several other friends jumped again. My friend and I still have the memories, and we both have bad knees too. Whether football did the trick or our jumps, no one will ever know for sure.

At the edge of the last pine tree at the left, you can see the second story window, probably fifteen to twenty feet from the ground. The top of the tall steps in the front were a bit less of a challenge, but it became a favorite spot too.

The old church had this neo-gothic design in the windows, and just looking at it brings back memories--the hidden door behind the huge pipe organ in the chapel, the gymnasium and stage in the basement, the friends and classmates who experienced everything there like I did. There were swimming trips to Downata in spring and summer, riding inner tubes on snowy mountains in winter, and watching the leaves turn on trees in fall. Those large, ancient trees are not visible in this picture, but they were old when I was a child, and I think at least one of them is still there.