Fun Family Stories From the Past

The rifle my Grandpa Cles used was interesting for a number of reasons: for a beginning, his initials--J.C.W.--appear in the wood, and secondly, drips of paint used to paint the old house entryway at the ranch appear in running stains on both the metal and the wooden parts of the gun. It was this rifle that grandpa used once when he heard a noise at the ranch in the chicken coop. He shot a coyote. And it was this gun that he used during a deer hunt when he and my dad were riding through some brush. The two of them rode up to a deer that lay hiding, and grandpa pulled this rifle from the scabbard and shot the four point buck while in the saddle.

I shot my first deer with this gun too, and my dad laughed, because he maintained that the rifling in the barrel was so bad in the old gun, that the bullets came out end over end. But this blog is not about my grandpa's gun.

My grandfather was very particular about his horses and his tack. Dad told me that there was a young man who loved to ride my grandpa's horse and use his things. Grandpa warned him once. It happened again the next day. When the boy entered the barn the next time for another ride, grandpa was waiting for him with his lasso in hand. He threw it over a beam, and looking at the young boy he said, "You know what I do with horse thieves?" After a hasty exit, the young man never returned again. But this blog is not about my grandpa's horses and tack, and it's not about horse thieves either.

My grandparents bought a house in Malad, because they didn't want my dad and Aunt Janice riding the bus. I can understand that, even though my bus ride in Malad was less than two miles. For me as a first grade student, the terror began while waiting for the bus to arrive. Jimmy, the son of a telephone repairman, filled a squirt gun with lighter fluid and then rigged it to shoot flames when he squirted the thin stream through the flame of his lighter. Buck just intimidated us and was mean, and for a first grader, that was absolute terror. When I stepped onto the bus, the real adventure began. Before sitting down, a high school student would pick me up and throw me, and after landing on another high school student, he would pass the favor on to someone else. I was a human volleyball, except the white piece of sports equipment, that was me, cried and screamed obscenities and used nasty hand gestures that only made the older students laugh and enjoy it even more. The ride from hell lasted at least 40 minutes, if you don't count loading more perpetrators and victims. As a first grader, you hoped someone else could take your place, but this blog isn't about my bus ride either. It's enough to know that riding a bus was justification for living in Malad close to school.
In the late 40's, my Annie's family moved to Malad and into the house next door to my grandparents. At that time, David and Dennis were about the age of Jack and Tommy. One day my grandpa heard the chickens making a lot of noise, and given my grandpa's history of knowing what that meant, he ran to see what the problem was. He swung the door open, and found David and Dennis, one squeezing and choking the neck of a chicken, the other looking at the panicked bird's butt. They put the hen down. "What are you doing," my grandpa asked.

"We just wanted to see where the eggs come from," answered one of them. Dad told me how grandpa enjoyed David and Dennis, because they were "fun" little boys, who were full of life. Dad told me how my grandpa laughed over what they were doing that day.

The photograph at the right shows my Annie's family while having fun. The 50's were a great time to grow up in Malad. Fun was about being outside and enjoying life, whether fishing at a local reservoir, playing hide and go seek on a summer evening with neighborhood friends, or just having a simple picnic somewhere in the foothills or at a campground at Power House, the canyon in a range of mountains overlooking Malad on the northern side. There was always something to do, not because there was never anything to watch on the three channels of black and white television, but because being outside was simply more fun.

This picture shows David and Dennis, at least seven years after "chicken thing" happened. They still had that "fun" glint in their eye.

Just after moving to Malad, my Annie's family had an encounter with my dad. At the conclusion of each fall, those who "lettered" in a sport went through hazing that then was not only legal, but it also had a name: "M" club initiation. The traditional ritual dictated that the "master," who was already a member, gave the "goat," who was about to be tested, the choice of what house to visit. The task was to knock on the door, and as soon as someone answered, the "goat" was to enter the house, find the bathroom and shut the door and flush the toilet before leaving the house. It was against the rules to say even one word to the person who answered the door. You walked in silently. Breaking the rules meant not becoming a member of the school's club. Dad chose his new neighbors for the toilet flushing thing, thinking everything would be alright. It happened shortly after Stan and Erma's move to Malad from Northern California.

My Annie's family had just moved from California, and Grandma Erma was in the late stages of pregnancy while carrying Marvin. When dad knocked on the door, she called the local police.























Dad told that story for years, but I had no idea who the neighbors were, until Ann and I were at dinner one Sunday with Stan and Erma, my Annie's parents. Ann's dad brought up initiations, and I told my dad's story, explaining how horrible it would be to have to do that. Erma immediately told how frightened it made her when that happened after returning to Malad from California. I will always remember the smile Stan had on his face while watching me seeing Erma's reaction.

Once while riding in a car with Stan and Erma in California while attending David's wedding in LA, we were in a rural area. Stan ran a red light. Erma was riding in the back seat. Erma spoke up immediately. She shook her head in disgust. Stan ran three more, and each time Erma became more disgruntled and referred to Ann's dad as "Stanley." I glanced out of the corner of my eye and saw his smile, just like he did at dinner that day. It was fun to watch him tease Erma, just like I do my Annie, although I am more of a nuisance. They were fun people, and I wish my children could have known Stan as well as they knew Erma. Both were so much fun. My children enjoyed visits to Erma's house to find a fresh chocolate cake and puddings in the fridge in individual bowls. They would have loved Stan's "Thomas" sense of humor.