The Summer At Utah State

In order for Ann and me to finish our graduate degrees at Utah State, we attended one summer session on campus. The picture shows the inside of the quad where children played, while parents were either at class or studying.

Our Macintosh computer was the cutting edge at the time, and I did not want anyone around it at all--especially given the fact that Ann and I needed it in order to complete papers for class. The rule was not to have anyone in the apartment when Ann and I were in class.

One day I left something sitting on the kitchen counter, so I made a quick walk back to retrieve it. I ran inside, but the scene was an interesting one. There had to be at least 40 children in the kitchen. There had been this muffled roar of all of them talking at the same time, and when they saw me, they all ran out the door. My three children had told them how Ann and I did not want anyone there when the two of us were not home.

The other children were mult-national, some from India, China, Africa, Iran, Iraq and even a few foreign countries where people actually spoke English.

A few of them could not say or understand a word of English. Whenever I returned home from class, Cles and my two girls would wave and shout, "Hi dad!" Before long the children of the entire complex began doing that. I was talking with a group of fellow graduate students one day after an English class. Seventy to eighty children were playing on a large grassy area outside a classroom building. Suddenly I heard them all shout in unison, "Hi dad!"

The children were multi-national and represented a number of different races. Those graduate students had the most stunned looks on their faces, and in their eyes, I could hear the voice of Ricky Ricardo, "You've got some splaining to do."