Grandpa Black Jack

This is my Grandpa Williams. It is interesting to look at the picture, because the hairline and the eyes and his chin remind me so much of Cles. When I look at the picture, I see my Uncle Brent, although the picture reminds me of all my uncles except Jack. My Uncle Jack inherited so much of my grandpa's outspoken nature, that maybe there wasn't any room for the rest.

My mother tells me that my naughty sense of humor is like how she remembers her dad. She always refers to him as daddy, even now that she is over 70 years old. She and her brothers and sisters truly loved him and cherish his memory.

I remember going pheasant hunting with my dad, grandpa, Uncle Rick and my grandpa's hunting hunting dog Duke.

We were walking through this long field. The dog was on the scent of some birds, and he began running back and forth in a zig-zag pattern with his nose on the ground and his lopped-off tail wagging maniacally. Finally the dog was starting to get out of range of any potential shot.

"Duke, come back," my grandpa yelled. The dog kept running. "Duke!" The dog kept running. "Duke, you --"

The euphemism grandpa used as a name for the dog is what offends men, especially those who do not like someone talking badly about their mother. In the fifties the word caused men to fight. But a dog would find no offense, because the offensive word is what you call a female dog, and Duke, well he was a son of some female dog. So I don't think he would have found offense, even if he knew that people found it offensive.

After the last words my grandpa yelled, there would be a blast of a shotgun. Then there was a yelp. And the dog would return the fifty to sixty yards he was to grandpa. Grandpa would cuss him, and then the ritual would start again.

During that trip, it happened at least three times. I am sure that grandpa was just training the dog, and the shot from the blast never broke the skin of the dog. It just stung a bit.

I know it probably stung, because some friends of mine once had a girl's father do the ritual on them. And a Utah hunter once pelted me with a blast he made at a dove. Not even when I was 18 and a lean, mean football playing machine, should I have been mistaken for a dove, not even on opening day. But Utah hunters go blind at any movement during a hunt. It's kind of like what scientists say about the T. Rex. Movement is bad when one is around. Utah hunters are the same way. I'm just glad the hunter used dove shot on me, or my backside would be hanging in the den of some idiot's wall.

I also remember hearing some sayings grandpa used. Describing a wealthy sister who was particularly miserly or tight-fisted with her money, he described her like this: "The only thing she lets go is the air she breathes, and she takes that right back." On another occasion, he described her manner as being as tight as "the bark on a tree."

The old chief of police in Malad was an interesting man. He was very tall, and in Malad it was so rare to see tall people. Malad called him Tall Bill. His wife not only was not tall, but she was also very heavy. They had a garden at the side of their house, and when she pulled weeds, she bent over far enough to grasp even the shortest of unwanted plants. The problem was that she always pulled weeds in a dress, and she always bent over facing the road that was part of a very busy intersection in town, five points--meaning that five different roads converged there.

My grandpa always blamed her for the frequent fenderbenders and unattentative drivers who drove by when she pulled weeds.

Grandpa Williams loved to hold me, and he would tickle me until I couldn't breathe. I guess I inherited more than just his sense of humor.

He had a lot of tough breaks. His mother died when he was an infant, and his sister helped raise him. The family did not have much money, and my mom's family also struggled financially. All of the brothers and sisters learned to work and earn money to buy their own clothes. And they didn't often have the money to do a lot of things that most young people take for granted.

I wish I could have known him better. He died in a horrible accident in Garland, Utah. He drove a green Chevrolet two-ton truck for a living and hauled wheat or anything else people needed moved. After unloading a load of wheat, people found him crushed under the bed of his truck.

The day it happened, I was in Mrs. Harley's class in school. Just before recess, she stood up with her arms folded across her chest. "I'm going to excuse everyone to go to recess now, except for Jon."

"Oh, hell, what have I done now," I thought to myself. And yes, we were farm boys who spoke like that, because our fathers, our uncles, our grandfathers, and even some of our mothers spoke that way, and so I did too.

Everyone left. "Come her Jon." I really thought I was in trouble.

She sat me on her lap. "You know Mrs. Williams our music teacher?" I nodded my head yes.
"Her husband died today."

It took me a second to realize she was talking about my grandmother, the music teacher, and she was talking about my grandpa. It shocked me. And then I was shocked again. My teacher began to cry.

"You are such a brave little boy." She hugged me, and I felt her tears on my shoulder. I will never forget that horrible day, but I will never forget what an incredible lady my teacher was either.

My Favorite Christmas Pictures--Both Sad and Glad

When the Bon Marche in Ogden was still there, in the same spot where the downtown mall once was, it was the place you shopped. My family went there every year at Christmastime for the annual Santa picture.

I am in the second grade in this picture. My sister Ann was too young, since her birth was on November 10. This is most likely four to six weeks after her birth.

Maybe most people don't count my gift as legitimate, since I did get the money by "keeping the change," but I could have spent it on myself. All of you know my passion for music, and really until my mom started buying me cassettes for dating one of the classmates my mom liked, I didn't get a lot of music, except at Christmas.

My biggest haul was at graduation in May of 1971. I scored Woodstock, a multi cassette selection that was quite expensive, David Crosby's exceptional first solo work If Only I Could Remember My Name, and at least three other ones I can not remember.

The picture below is when I was in the seventh grade. We were living in the Spencer house, a home owned by Myron Sorenson. We were only there until the house on Bannock Street was ready, but there are some fun memories here, if I don't remember the strange way I combed my hair or the way my mother dressed me. The Jantzen sweater is something that would really make me feel odd, if I were not secure in my sexual orientation.

Julie Cooper is at the left in this picture. The people who previously rented the house were notorious. They had at least three to five children. One night the husband walked into the Dude Ranch Cafe with a shotgun. His wife was having an affair with this creepy old businessman from Malad who ran a gas station. His family were thieves as long as I can remember, but I don't remember any of them being able to steal another man's wife, since they were not only ugly but also smelled really bad too.

It became a hostage situation. Local law enforcement intervened, they threw the husband in jail, and that night he hung himself with his own belt. That family lived in the house, until they didn't pay their rent. When Sorenson's had them leave, they played some tricks--pouring a can or cans of Franco American Spaghetti down the stairs, shooting an arrow into the wall, and those were just of few of the things they did.

Sorensons cleaned, painted and spackled the walls. We moved in to become the first ones there after the whole thing erupted in Malad. When my parents went anywhere and I had to babysit my sisters, I searched the whole house to ensure we were safe. I had an upstairs room above the front door with a huge window, a wonderful room; however, I was so frightened about the whole history of the man who killed himself in the jail that I couldn't sleep well. My mother noticed that I did not move during the night. When she would wake me in the morning, I would be in the same spot on the bed.

On the lighter side, I teased my little sister Ann. The picture above shows how old she was. I would start by calling her Quackie Whacky, chanting it like some strange mantra. Just when I could see the rage bubbling up into her eyes, I would put my hand on her face over her mouth and fingers split on both sides of her nose ala Spock's Live Long And Prosper gesture. With a gentle push, she would fall to the floor. She would race to the kitchen, opening the knife and fork drawer. Utensils would spill onto the floor with the force of her tiny rage. Within seconds she would emerge with the turkey carving knife, like something from Hitchcock's Bates Hotel.

While chasing she would slash the air with the knife, all the while I am running and chanting "Quackie Whackie!" repeatedly. Jill falls to the floor or runs to her room and cries.

One weekend, when Grandma Liza was tending us, I said one thing that upset Ann. I didn't notice her dash to the kitchen. She emerged, knife in hand and eyes rolling back into the back of her head while she makes these horrific sounds while stabbing at the air. Grandma tackled her before I ran even three feet. Grandma took the knife.

"You little maniac, bless your heart."

Those were the only words she said, and she didn't tell my parents about the whole thing either. Ann cried for days--the thought that Grandma Liza believed she was a maniac.

There were times when I thought this story was funny. After being a grandparent, I am not sure.

This picture is the saddest one I have, Christmas 1955. It is Grandpa's last Christmas before his massive heart attack in February of '56.

This picture explains my paranoia about toys that have batteries. I had this large tank which is in front of me. It moved forward and backward, and it shot these large shells. The rubber tracks were incredible and made the toy so authentic. The Fighting lady shot depth charges, shells from a turret on the front of deck, had a landing boat on the back, and there was even a jet that would go into the air. It was spring-loaded. The helicopter was incredible too with large rotating blades and a chain that could retrieve things with a hook. The batteries drained into the toys and ruined them a few days after Christmas.

The Christmas was still fantastic. I still remember the toys. And that is only a small a part of it.

Mom always had a large family dinner on Christmas eve. There was usually turkey and ham and all the good things we had at Thanksgiving too, like Christmas pudding.

In the picture at the bottom, you will notice that I had the same pajamas, my Christmas ones. That was a tradition at our house. Here I am praying fervently for an army tank, a battleship, a helicopter. It's too bad we can see what we really need in life, because I would have prayed for better batteries.

I Was A Music Nerd (And I Probably Am Still)

I am in the picture below, the second person from the left with my beloved baritone sax.

Every fall our band director Mr. Castleton would have us begin marching to prepare for the Homecoming Parade, The Eastern Idaho Blackfoot Fair and some parade in Logan, Utah. Our teacher was a perfectionist, he wanted straight lines, he demanded everyone be on the same foot at the same time--the old left foot, right foot, left foot drill--and most importantly, he expected what we played not to make people feel confused. Some high school bands seem better suited to a "name that tune" activity without time limits.


In the fall it was often very cold. Homecoming was usually in October, and since Early Morning Band Class began every day at 7:45 a.m., it was sometimes so cold that you almost thought your fingers would freeze to the instrument. This picture was in the fall of my senior year. I was wearing my David Crosby-Woodstock jacket with the ten inch fringe. I still love that coat. It hangs in my closet still, and if I ever lose 100 pounds and cut both arms off, I just know it will fit.

Marching would begin again in early summer, when he prepared us to participate in The Days of '47 Parade in Salt Lake City on the 24th of July. That was the most difficult one. Temperatures were rarely under 95 degrees, and we marched from Temple Square to Liberty Park.

That might not seem like a considerable distance. I think it is now. But if you imagine walking it with a baritone saxophone around your neck, you understand why it was not an easy stroll to the park.

The best part of that day was the time we spent at Lagoon--Utah's premier amusement park. Each year after the the parade we all had free passes. It was fun being there with friends and classmates, fellow music nerds.

During the year we also prepared for Music Contest at district, regional and state competitions. During my freshman year of high school, I played in the saxophone quartet which earned the highest ratings at every level.

Practice was only part of the secret.

That wise old Mr. Castleton had methods in his madness. Paul Willie--a fantastic alto player--played alto; I played baritone; Elsie Hubbard, a true virtuoso, played tenor and Margaret Evans played second alto. The incredible move was having Margaret play.

Elsie would have practiced for hours longer, just because she loved music.

Paul and I loved music too, but Margaret was not only a high school cheerleader, but she also cheered on the squad at Stanford University. She came in short cutoffs every day. I will not spend a great deal of time with semantics here, but the word "short" can never be truly understood by anyone who has not seen Margaret in a pair of those Jeans. Helen of Troy launched 1000 ships. Margaret could have done that and more.

Paul and I loved practicing. After hours of dedication, I soon realized I had mastered the skill of multi-tasking. I could stare at Margaret's magnificence and read the notes of my part at the same time.

The picture at the left shows just how arrogant I was my senior year. In addition to my hippy jacket I mentioned earlier, I had these incredible fringed mocassins. It was difficult posing for a picture and being so cool at the same time, but I have Margaret to thank for that-- she helped me learn how to muti-task.

Some Asses I've Met In My Life

My senior year in high school, the "M" club did a fundraiser that was a novel idea at the time: Donkey Basketball. The event was fun, but it was also a different experience.

The donkeys were not these nice, peaceful animals--they bit, they kicked, they ran without warning and then dropped down, so that you slid down their neck to the floor, and they bucked. Hitting a hardwood floor was not painless, yet it happened a few times, and it wasn't that bad. I wouldn't want to experience it today.

In this picture, I take a shot at the basket and almost made a basket. It was a long shot from the side, and it rolled around the rim and went out. The whole thing was not about scoring baskets. It really was a lot of fun.

On the trip to Greece, my Annie took several pictures that did not put me in the best light, figuratively speaking of course. There was plenty of sunlight on that trip. The day we landed at the Athens airport, it was 104 degrees.

The Greek who owned the donkeys kept looking at me while we went up the hill, the donkey gasping for air and stumbling from exhaustion.

"100 kilo?" he asked. And then he raised the number before saying something in Greek to his other associate. It was all Greek to me, but I figure it was something like, "To many tacos tubby."

Over the years I found four principals who actually had some character and backbone--Lana Haroldsen at Rigby, John Lewis at Rigby, Travis Mitchell was another one I liked as well.

The rest could have been included in this blog with picture and dirty tricks, but I decided against it because of the quote at the bottom of my page--Illegitimi non carborundum.

Life On The Ranch

I am not sure whether this picture is of the ranch or not. There are several other photographs I have where my dad has the same clothing, and it appears to be at the ranch. I just do not recognize the buildings in the background.


But I have to remind myself that those pictures taken were during the late 30's and early 40's. There are not personal memories of the ranch that I remember until the late 50's, ten or twenty years later.


Dad always told the story that he drove the pickup to school in Snowville when he was in the third grade. My mom told me it was later, but I do remember that it was that early. School officials contacted my grandfather and asked him not to send my dad to school alone in the truck, but my grandpa told them that it was hard not to have him do it, since he drove it around on the farm any way.

My dad always told me that story, whenever I thought I was too young to drive the truck anywhere. I remember driving the blue wheat truck on the Interstate between the fields in what we called Nineteen and the ranch while hauling straw from the harvested fields.

I used the old Allis Chalmers tractor to load the truck with straw before returning with a load to the ranch, where I unloaded it in the stack yard by raising the hoist and jerking forward, so the load of loose straw from the Foster piles would slide out easily. In another picture from an earlier blog, there is a picture of the combine with the Foster Wagon in the background. It was that wagon that formed those large loose mounds of straw.

After the straw slid out, and there were usually four full Foster piles in the truck since the stock rack was up to load the truck with more feed, I would--with the hoist still partially up--put the truck in reverse and push the straw backwards into the area where we dumped the piles. The straw was all in a spot where we could feed the cattle when the snow covered the fall grasses.


Again, I not only used the tractor in the field to lift the piles and load them, but I drove the truck, able to shift through all four gears. I also learned how to use the double axle while shifting. My dad taught me how to do it, and working all day hauling straw helped me retain it. The drive on the Interstate was about five or six miles. The traffic then was not busy at all, but I did on occasion get strange looks from drivers of trucks and cars on the way to the ranch.

I did this job while dad did other work that I was too small to do like lifting heavy things. That would come later. And I will never complain, because it gave me a decisive physical edge on the football field. Farm boy weight training--I believe even today--was far better than the stuff they do now in weight rooms all summer.



This picture shows what was then the new "grainary." I can not find the spelling for it, but that is what we called it, and I tried to write it with every vowel in the final syllable, but then again, both the spell checker and my dictionary never grew up in Malad and Snowville.

The storage available was 10,000 bushels of wheat, a considerable amount then. Later my dad put in three additional ones, each with 6,500 bushel capacity. There were others as well.



This one stood high in the air. I always hated it. The ladder was at the side. Dad always told about Grandpa Cles, climbing to the top and dangling about while he greased the "elevator leg" at the upper right, leaning over and hanging precariously at the edge.



I never realized until later that my dad was as frightened by heights like I was. He never used the word "frightened." Dad always said it bothered him a bit. Grandma Liza had a horrible fear of heights. Once dad had me climb to the top with him, wanting to show me specific things we had to do with the shed. Two thirds to the top, I was dizzy and started to lose my grip on the ladder. Dad noticed I was going to drop. He climbed quickly, so that he was behind me on the ladder, both arms keeping me secure. We climbed back to the ground.

The old barn below was on the ranch when my Great Grandpa Ward purchased the tract of land in 1926. At the time it was the largest land deal in the history of the state of Idaho, and it included our ranch, land the Ward Boys--as my father called them--ran their cattle on during summers, and Rulon's place as well. My dad told me that Bar M Company built the old barn in the 1800's. That was the livestock company that Charlie Russell depicted in his picture The Last of the 5,000. Supposedly, the harsh winter in Montana one season bankrupted them. The picture shows a starving Texas Longhorn surrounded by wolves. The ranch was only a part of what they used for their livestock.


I remember how interesting it was inside. There were wooden sliding planks that slid shut on the inside. When I was young, I thought that it was to keep out bad weather, and that could have been too, but there was also an old rock building where settlers from the area would always gather in the spring when Native Americans were making their trek throught the area. This old building had small openings where a person could fire a rifle. During the fifties, my dad pushed the building down with a bull dozer. It became a spot where rattlesnakes collected.



The spring above the ranch was where Native Americans camped historically, or at least that is my theory. Before a huge flood, there were all kinds of arrow heads we could find near the spring. As I remember, they needed to heat the rock and expose it to water during the chipping process.


There was a huge spot where you could pour sacks of grain--either rolled barley or oats--into a storage area with a lid. Three stalls with small troughs for horses were also there. We saddled and unsaddled horses here until we bought Rulon's place. There was a barn on Rulon's. At the right side of the picture is the barn section where on the inside a small corral was. My Grandpa Cles broke horses in there. My dad told me only one horse was able to get my grandpa off him. And the horse did it my trying to roll over on its side. Dad told me that grandpa just stepped off as the horse knelt and began to roll.

At the back was a large corral where grandpa penned the wild horses he roped on Sundays. The large Holmgren ranch north and west of our ranch had over 80 sections of land, and at one time there was a herd of wild horses. Some were from old abandoned army stock. Holmgrens did not like them on their ranch, since a horse eats a great deal more grass than a cow, and in desert country where we ranched and farmed, that was not good. They did not mind grandpa roping them. It was a better way to get rid of them.

The best ones were kept on the farm, and Grandpa Cles sold the rest.



This picture shows what the fence was like, although this one was certainly meant for sheep. The one behind the barn had taller, sturdier posts, but like those here, they were planted close to each other and joined by wire and made even more stable with long pine poles or even discarded rusty pipes from the waterline that had been replaced with newer pipe.



Dad always told how he and his friends crept close to the fence to get a look at the wild horses. They would squeal a high-pitched scream, their ears layed back and their eyes wild with rage. The horses with teeth bared, would bite at them and even strike at them with their front legs.

I heard one person from Malad tell a story about buyers who bought a truckload. On top of the Holbrook divide, a horse reared and pawed its way partially over the top of the truck's cattle rack. It was striking and scraping the top of the cab with its front legs. It frightened both men, but it scared one more than the other. He soiled his pants.


This picture at the right shows the cedar post corral at the ranch. Dad is at the left, and Janice is in the wooden high chair that Cles and Lydia sat in occasionally at the ranch.




I would imagine that the reason they used a fence like this was for sheep, an animal that can crawl though almost anything. And the family made its money on sheep in the beginning.


Dad told me once that Great Grandpa Ward and his brother were fist fighting once in a corral like this on the ranch in Snowville. They were in the seventies at the time.

One story a man from Pocatello told about Great Grandpa Ward was that while tending sheep in the mountains south and west of Poky, grandpa handed him a rifle. The man was eight or nine at the time. Grandpa picked up a club, telling a boy that he would crawl into the bushes to drive out the bear. The boy was to shoot it when it came out into the open.



Our family was interesing. The fact that they were rough and original makes me proud to say that I am a Ward, but it just isn't that, they worked hard and they were noted for honesty and character--at least those from the Jesse Nicholas Ward clan. That was my Great Grandpa Ward. The members of the family who settled in Cherry Creek were much the same way, but we never liked the one who was Great Grandpa Ward's partner--the religious but dishonest one.

My dad was an exceptional farmer. The ranch always looked like an oasis, and the land was in good shape. Unless there was a severe drought or other adverse conditions, we had very good crops.


But one thing dad always did was keeping in touch with government programs that would help to control soil erosion, a problem that damaged a few sections because of the severe storms and the nature of the land. The mountains were high, and the plants--due to desert conditions--were sparse, so water from storms would run fast making deep cuts in the fields.


This picture shows the dams we built to prevent erosion. After one of those severe storms, dad and I wanted to see how they worked. My Annie came with us. She took my hat for the picture, and as we walked toward the truck, a rattlesnake "lit up." That sound still raises the hair on the back of my neck, whether in a movie or on a television show. Even thinking about the sound evokes a shudder in me. I killed many snakes, but this one crept under the truck. Dad pulled forward, but when we looked for it, it had crept back into the thick winter wheat. This picture is at the field we called Nineteen, the best land on the farm.


This is another view of Nineteen, before the dams. Dad and my sister Ann are on horseback--dad on Old Black and Ann on Pansy. Both animals had the same mother, a mare that was of those wild horse roots I talked about earlier in this posting.

The buckskin Pansy was horrible. If the saddle cinch was to tight for her liking, she would groan, kneel down and roll slowly until you would step out of the saddle. And she would bite too. Pansy would walk up ever so gently, smell your hands and arms, and as soon as she was close to your stomach or side, she would bite. One of her little "love tokens" left a blood blister. I told dad once that I was going to strap old deer horns we had in the barn to her head and turn her loose during the deer hunt. In Utah, having antlers--whether real, imagined, or duct-taped on your head would have been fatal, for man or beast.


The scene in this picture certainly happened after moving cattle to Nineteen. With fields in summer fallow and without crops, plenty of pasture was available. There was only one problem: water. Without a well or a waterline from the spring at the ranch, we always had to haul water to fill a storage tank positioned below a truck ramp and above a cattle trough.

I did that job often when I was very young. It was not complicated. We would load the large white water tank in the back of the wheat truck after taking out the end gates, used to haul wheat. Placing railroad ties and some planks at the on the sides kept it from sliding out when we raised the hoist a bit to make the water drain well.

We would put a garden hose to fill the tank. That took a good portion of the day, so often we did it during the night. That way we could take water twice, once early in the morning and a second time in the evening before sunset. The drive to Nineteen "Holler," the word our family used for hollow, was only about thirty minutes from the house--five to six miles on the Interstate and a three or four more miles through a series of three gates along gravel and dirt road that led to the fields.

Arriving at the trough, you would drive up to the top of the ramp, back down slowly toward the storage tank, and raise the hoist before putting the truck in gear and turning off the engine.

After taking the lid off the top of the tank in the truck, you put the large hose in the bottom storage tank. After turning the valve counterclockwise, it took about twenty minutes to unload the water. There was a float on the trough that regulated the level, but sometimes sediment would create a problem, allowing all of the water to run out on the ground: a reason why we also took two loads of water to cattle a day. Although the float would fail to work occasionally, it was a risk to have thirsty cattle in the heat of the day.



The picture at the right shows the front of the old house. Grandpa Cles built this part, which was the kitchen and porch areas. The living room and bedrooms were there earlier. I have no idea how old that part was, but the nails had square heads, and it was extremely old even in the early 50's.

You can see the gravel around the foundation. Planks keep the gravel in place and prevent it from getting onto the lawn area. I always thought that the gravel was just a walk area, but in this picture it appears to be set up to allow water to run away from the house and to prevent animals from burrowing under it.

At the right side of the picture was a metal sheet in place, large enough for a person to crawl under the house. Given the little "critters" that slithered and crawled in the area, nothing could have persuaded me to do that.

When I was in high school, a skunk went under the house. Occasionally during the day or night, something would scare the skunk and the horrible smell would rise into the house. Dad had an idea, he built a small fire near the manhole at the side, and with a gasoline lawn mower, he blew smoke into the house. Instead of smelling like skunk, we now smelled like trappers in fresh tanned leather on the frontier. A week later, the skunk returned. Dad bought mothballs. They told him that would drive the skunk from under the house. And yes, everything and everyone then smelled like mothballs. I don't remember how many boxes we used to throw into the crawl space, but the smell still makes me sick. The skunk smell would have been better. By the end of the summer, the skunk left. I suppose life was too busy in his home under us for any creature to be happy.


This is a picture from the late 50's. I am guessing that I was eight or nine. Relatives sometimes visited us. Aunt Rochelle was here on this day. Kim and Penny are at the left. Aunt Rochelle had measles when she was pregnant with Kim. The family always felt it affected him physically. Kim had vision problems and was extremely frail as a child.

But it didn't keep him out of the Nam. The draft and draft boards were merciless in those days. If local boards didn't like your family, there was no such thing as a 4-F rating, which a person with disabilities would get.

The Viet Nam experience must have affected him, although I didn't see him much when we were in high school. He was the same age as I was.

When I returned from Germany, having been there from '72-'74, Kim was in a fatal car crash. He was driving with friends in his new pickup truck. The circumstances were very strange.

Members of the family talked about drug use and even his having sold drugs. Aunt Rochelle had me speak at Kim's funeral. I think they buried him in Samaria. Seeing Kim at the viewing will always haunt me, his thin face bruised so badly.

I hate those funeral viewing things. The whole tradition seems so barbaric. Personally Iwould prefer a Viking sendoff. You put my body in a Viking boat, surrounded by wood soaked in tars and fragrant but flamable oils. After setting the boat adrift and letting it go forty to fifty feet into the lake, archers fire flaming arrows while Swedish babes in braided pig tails weep. That's my idea of a viewing.

This picture also shows the gravel below the window, but it also has the plank set further from the house. It explains why I thought it was just a path. That is what we used it for when I lived on the ranch. My guess is that over time the gravel spread a bit into the lawn, and we placed the plank further away.


Trees surrounded the house, providing it with incredible shade from the summer heat. The lawn also had a thick stand of small-leafed clover. I still miss that look. We even had that on Bannock Street. Today no one wants clover in their lawn. Even if you had it, it would disappear as soon as you put Weed & Feed on it.

This is a picture of the west side of the house. You can see the cellar. It is also the "old" section. Dad is in the picture, and I am pretty sure that Grandpa Cles is behind him. He looks so young in this picture. Again, I am guessing that someone took this shot in the late 30's or early 40's. It is about fifteen years before my grandpa suffered a fatal heart attack at the age of 48. Hard work took its toll. And filterless Camels did too. I miss him still. He was the most incredible grandpa.

You can see the trees in this picture, mostly poplars reaching high and wide into the sky. They were huge by the time I was a young boy.

I still remember the sound of summer breezes in the leaves. It sounds like waves washing on a Pacific beach. And I remember the night wind that would come down the ravine where the spring was, billowing the curtains ever so gently and cooling the house, heated by the summer sun and cooking.

The final picture on this posting shows my dad. I am almost certain that this is the back of the old house on the ranch, but the porch and cellar seem a bit different.

Aren't Those Free Trips With Students Fun?

Ann and I stayed in Berlin on our first exchange. The host was Freddy, and his wife Gidda--although I can not remember how to spell her name. I think you spell it B I T C H.

They did nothing for our group while we stayed there--at least not in the way other Germans did for us on subsequent exchanges when I asked about the possibility of taking my students on field trips, like riding a train to Austria to visit Vienna or Salzburg. I didn't expect them to do any extra work and I certainly did not expect them to pay for our trip. We just needed to know where to go to get tickets and information.

Whenever we arrived home from attending school and supervising exchange activities, we would eat with the family before going to bed about 10:00 p.m. or later. On one night at the beginning of our stay there, Gidda had left the windows open in the basement room we were in, letting in masses of mosquitoes.

The next morning I looked like the elephant man, bites over my arms, face and anywhere else not covered by the traditional German down comforter. My Annie's face was swollen with bites. I asked Gidda about it at the breakfast table. She smiled. And I asked her not to open the window.

On the following evening, we found the same thing. When we turned off the lights, you could hear the little angels buzzing about in the room. Gidda smiled again the next morning at breakfast. She even asked us how we slept. The third day was different. After Abendbrot--the traditional evening meal of open-faced sandwiches, Annie and I went to the mosquito den for another night's sleep. The windows were open. I went up stairs and asked Gidda for a magazine. I chose what I hoped was Freddy's favorite and returned to our basement room. She came downstairs almost immediately to see what the noise was. Already fifty or sixty squashed bugs were on the walls, some still weighted down from the previous night's meal. They were especially fun to swat, leaving little splotches of red. Her hands were on her hips. She wasn't smiling any more. I killed every bug I could find. It was my turn to smile, and I did it well and enjoyed it.

The windows stayed closed after that. I will always regret not asking her, while she stood angry in the doorway, if she liked apple pie. I would loved to have said to her, "How do you like them apples!"

The picture at the top was one taken by Freddy while we were at the German/American Friendship Festival. Can you smell the irony? He boasted about what a crack shot he was while standing at a shooting gallery at the festival. He tried first but did very poorly, only hitting a few targets, but he was not satisfied until he saw me do it. He probably thought that I would be unable to hit anything. He was wrong, not only did I hit all the targets, but I also won prizes for his two children. I was never in the army like Freddy was, but I knew how to shoot a gun, and I was a very good shot. Freddy did not like that at all. And the more excited his children were about the stuffed animals and about how well I shot at the gallery, the grouchier he seemed to become with everything and everybody. I kind of enjoyed it. The picture at the top is one that Freddy took with my camera while all of us were at that festival. You can tell two things by the way we reacted in the picture: it was the end of a miserable couple of weeks staying with Freddy and Gidda, and we had had all the fun with them we could stand.

One day Freddy told me he wanted to have me taste some "apple juice." He filled one extremely large glass. I drank it. He filled it again. And then he filled it again.

Then, while smiling at me and watching closely, he asked me to go with him out into their "garden," the small area behind a German's house where they plant flowers and other ornamental plants. I fell to the floor, dizzy from drinking his "special apple juice." He really thought it was funny, but it did not amuse my Annie.

The "apple juice" not only had alcohol in it, but it was a very high content of alcohol, even though I could not taste anything strange about it.

Over the years I tried to keep in contact with the Schelds, while I exchanged with Gustav Heinemann Gesammt Schule, another school in the southern part of the city. One time Gidda brought in strawberry desserts and placed them before each guest, and with me she took a spoon, and in front of all of the dinner guests, took out three large Strawberries and put them in another person's serving. Mine was already noticeably smaller.

I did not return for a long time.

Freddy once did a Fulbright Exchange in Malad, and his daughter came to visit one spring. She went to school for three or four weeks, and since she was there during the same time as my Berlin Exchange group from a different school and part of the city, I invited her participate in all of the activities, like going to California and Yellowstone Park.

Before the girl left to return to Berlin, Ann and I invited her to our home for a meal. We put on an incredible dinner, and then we spent the evening driving her around Malad Valley, seeing places she saw as a child and even visiting with a teacher the girl had had for a year, while she was in Malad as an elementary student when her father did his Fulbright Exchange there.

On my next trip to Berlin, I called Freddy and Gidda, and when they asked me to visit, I went although I was not thrilled to go there.

They were completely different that last time, and they mentioned numerous times how thankful they were for what we did for their daughter while she was staying in Malad for those four weeks. It was a nice way to say goodbye, and that is how I remember them now.

Riding The Train To Happy Town

Starting on the top row, from left to right, is Grandma Williams, Grandpa Williams, my mom, Jonie, my dad, Grandma Liza, Grandpa Cles.

On the bottom row, from left to right, is Great Grandpa Evans, Great Grandma Evans, Great Grandma Thomas, Great Grandma Ward & Great Grandpa Ward.

Great Grandma Ward was blind. I always remember being frightened of her, and that was silly, because my Grandma Liza always said how kind she was.

Great Grandpa Ward did not live much longer after this picture. I would liked to have known him.

He drove a Packard, a very expensive car at the time. When people in town laughed at him when he hauled a few sheep to the barn in it, he told them since those sheep paid for that car, they should be able to ride in it.

They also told the story about his filling his car with gas. He would take off the gas cap, light a match and look down into the tank to see how full it was. He grew up during a time when they used horses for riding and for teams to pull wagons and machinery.

Great Grandma Thomas is the one who always made the breakfast biscuits. I think that her mother was the one who showed her how to do it.

The Evans crew is an interesting one. I never knew Great Grandpa Evans. Even as a child I remember Great Grandma Evans. We would visit her once a year, probably on Mother's Day.

My dad hated her. And he always told the same story each time we went for a visit. One year at Christmas, she visited my mom's family, and they brought boxes of breakfast cereal for gifts.

"She's a bitch!" my dad would say.

We were there after church, still in our church clothes. You never wanted to get on my dad's nerves when he was hungry, when he was harvesting grain, when he was tired.

My mother would correct him. "No, she's an old heifer."

My dad would look at my mother. "I have raised beef cattle all my life, and I know a bitch when I see one."

Each time we visited Great Grandma Evans, the same ritual happened.

Years after her passing, the younger generation coined a new word, "bitchin.'" It was another way of saying that something was cool.

But whenever I heard it, it reminded me those Sunday visits with Great Grandma Evans.

Grandpa Cles died when I was a little older than three, but I remember him very well. And I still miss him.

Grandpa Williams died when I was in the third grade. I wish I could have known him. My mother says my "naughty" sense of humor reminds me of him.

I did, however, know my two grandmas.

My Senior Year

Just as school was about to end in late spring of 1970, my dad and I returned from the ranch one Saturday night. I had been working on the D-6 Caterpillar all day, pulling about twenty-four feet of an implement called a digger.

In a field we called "the bottom," there was always a lot of heavy straw, especially from the large straw piles that an attachment dropped that we pulled behind the John Deere Harvester. It appears in the picture below behind the combine.

The implement not only collected a lot of the straw--both large stems and chopped pieces--but some grain kernels also collected in the piles that came out of what they called a Foster Wagen.

In the spring, it was difficult to farm through what the cattle left behind, so we would burn as much as possible while we were plowing the field with the digger, a plow with curved shanks and blades that tore and turned over the damp soil and prepared it for the next crop.

There was no cab on the tractor--no protection from the dust or soot. It was very uncomfortable, and not only did dust cover me at the end of the day, but the burning straw also dusted me with a heavy, black covering of soot.


It was just getting dark on a Saturday night. Dad and I arrived in the '63 Chevrolet pickup. I stepped out of the truck, but as I did, I noticed that a carload of girls from my class slowed down and were driving by our house on Bannock Street. I heard some laughter. Their car stopped.

Without waiting a minute, I walked briskly across the lawn to get to the sidewalk that led to the back of the house. I wanted to hide.

I was completely covered with dirt and soot. I looked like one of those actors in old movies where white guys painted their faces and tried to sing songs about the South.

I didn't make it across the lawn. I heard my dad's voice.

"Jon, I think they want to talk to you." When I turned around, my Annie was standing behind me. My dad had a wide grin on his face.

Ann asked me to go with her to a party her friends were having, and that is how we began dating. The picture at the top was what she looked like--except for the yearbook hairdo--when we dated. And that date began a series of dates that lasted until mid January.

When we went to a school dance together around my birthday on October 27, 1970, my dad had just had Perry Ward install my cassette car stereo. It was a Sony, and a cassette player was the "new technology."

I was playing Buffalo Springfield's Greatest Hits album entitled Retrospective. Not only did my Annie know the name of my favorite band, but she named all of the musicians: Stephen Stills, Neil Young, Richie Furay, Bruce Palmer and Dewey Martin. Knowing the drummer Dewey was amazing.

I knew she was the girl for me.

My Annie With The Chocolate Chip Eyes

I will always remember my Annie with a Dutch Boy haircut and dark brown eyes. In autumn of 1959 or 1960, J. Verlo Rose and I stepped off the school bus to attend primary at the Malad Second Ward.

My friend turned to me immediately when he saw the Smith twins--Marilyn and Marlene--and Ann.

"Let's play kissing tag!"

He exited the bus quickly, chasing the two blond twins.







He eventually grabbed both of them. And I caught my Annie, her eyes sparkling with fury, mouth screaming with anger, her arms twisting and pushing me away.

But I still kissed her. And I still remember how she screamed into my mouth.

It was not the kiss with which you judge all other passionate moments, not for her and not for me, but the memory still makes me smile.

The Picture on the Dumont TV

The picture of Grandpa Cles and Grandma Liza was one I always remember. I will never forget either one of them.

Grandpa took me for rides in his blue Oldsmobile. I sat on his lap and held the wheel, always looking at the emblem at the center: a jet or rocket circling a planet, so it looked almost like a ring was around it.

Grandpa taught me what a meadow lark sounded like while riding with him in his car through the meadows in springtime.

When I went with him and my dad to the haylands, south of Malad, I hunted for frogs in the small stream that flowed from wells on the Leonard Clark property. It was here where we bought meadow hay for years. Leonard was honest, and he became a trusted friend of our family.

I remember lying down on the road and looking down into a culvert, while waiting for my grandpa and dad to load hay on a truck. My dad kept telling me to get away from the water. He was afraid I would fall in and drown, although the stream was only a four or five inches deep.

Since I thought the same protective way about both my children and grandchildren, I am sure he thought I would fall into the water, get trapped in the aluminum culvert and drown before he could get to me. My grandfather would tell him to relax and that nothing would happen.

The funny thing is that my dad told me the same thing when I was raising my own children. I guess "relaxed" is what you do with grandchildren, letting the "little ones" experience life without instilling phobias in young minds.

Our Hometown--Our Camelot--means "sick" in French.

Would you believe that our hometown of Malad received its name from French trappers who became sick when they drank water from the small winding river in the valley? But even during the years when so much anti-French sentiment appeared in our country, when French Fries became Liberty Fries and even French Toast had some goofy people upset , no one seemed up in arms that they lived in a town that French people in the 1800's called malad, because it made them sick.

You would think those Frenchmen could at least have given our town a noble name like Teton, but we won't go there.

South Main Street was a busy part of town during the 50's, an innocent time before an Interstate 15 or even a state highway.

Both roads eventually appeared a mile further east. All traffic at that time--whether going north to Pocatello or south to Salt Lake City--passed along that road.

This was the front room of our house at 285 South Main Street. We posed for a picture in the front room of that house on my youngest sister Ann's first birthday. The window at the right faced South Main Street. A wide covered porch extended about twelve feet across the front of the house.

The old Webcor stereo is at our left in the picture. Two speakers could be lifted out of the console and placed widely apart in a room, creating a better effect with the sound. It had an incredible sound at one time, but baby sitters eventually ruined the needle, making it a record destroyer.

I played my first four albums on this stereo, Revolver by the Beatles, If You Can Believe Your Eyes and Ears by The Mamas & The Papas, Red Rubber Ball by the Cyrcle and Younger Than Yesterday by the Byrds.

My dad would tell the baby sitter not to touch the stereo. Within 30 minutes of my parent's leaving, the teenage girls would have one of us--one of my sisters or me--putting on some of my parent's best records.

I remember how angry my dad was when he discovered the scratch on his Sinatra LP entitled Where Are You?

At our right in the picture, is the old DuMont black and white television. There were only three stations at the time. My sisters and I looked forward to Friday nights when Fireman Frank, a Salt Lake City television cartoon host introduced Nightmare Theater at 10:13 p.m. At our right in the picture, is the old DuMont black and white television. There were only three stations at the time. My sisters and I looked forward to Friday nights when Fireman Frank, a Salt Lake City television cartoon host introduced Nightmare Theater at 10:13 p.m.

If Grandma Liza watched us, there was no problem. She suffered through the silliness past midnight.

But if Grandma Williams tended us, it was a different story.

Fireman Frank's eerie introduction, including the loud mentioning of the words Nightmare Theater and the maniacal cackle, always brought the same response from Grandma Williams.

"Oh my hell!" she would shout while running hell-bent for the television, gasping and holding her hand over her heart as if having a heart attack.

She used that trick whenever her music classes became noisy in school frequently too. What always shocked me was that it worked so well. Students would look at her, horrified that they caused her intense pain. I felt intense embarrassment.

On the top of the television are two things: my mom's flower I will always remember and a picture of Grandpa Cles and Grandma Liza.

There were no blossoms on that houseplant, just these green, long narrow leaves with light green and yellow markings.

I used it for a jungle for my army men.