Art Conrad

So it turns out the grandfather Kelli really needs to know about is my grandfather, Arthur Conrad. Here are excerpts from the Taber history book that was compiled in 1977. I think my parents wrote the article on my dad's parents. Here he is...out standing in his field...Arthur Marion Conrad was born at Provo UT on May 24 1882. His family was good friends with the Muhlestein family who lived a few miles away. Art walked to school with the older brothers of young Ida, never imagining that one day she would be his wife! He teased her terribly, and she thought he was a bully.

Like most boys then, Art only went to the fourth grade, because he was needed on the farm. Ida on the other hand completed 8th grade and also BY Academy where she studied to be a teacher.

As they grew up, Art began to take notice of Ida -- teasing was far from his mind. They began courting. One afternoon in December 1911, Art took Ida for a buggy ride. They decided to get married, and they might as well do it now! So Art turned the horses in the direction of the Bishop's house, where they were married (Dec. 28, 1911). (Don't get panicky, people: he was almost 30 and she was almost 26. And I guess you didn't need to buy a license in 1911.)

They farmed in Provo Canyon and were very happy, but it wasn't very profitable. They had learned from Art's brother Milt that Taber, Alberta, was a "booming" community, a great country, with great opportunities. So in the Spring of 1917, Art and his two brothers Lewis and Warren came to Taber by train, with all their livestock. At each train stop, the brothers had to feed and water the animals. Once a horse escaped, but the train could not wait. Art chased the horse on foot, saddled and bridled it, and rode fast across country to catch the train at the next station. The horse must have learned its lesson, for they traveled on and arrived in Lethbridge with no difficulties.

Art worked for his brother Milt on his farm south of Taber, and waited for the arrival of his family. Ida, along with sons Clyde and Arnold, arrived in Canada in July 1917, as did Aunt Emma and Aunt Leona and their children.

When Art began to work for Canada West Coal Mines, he moved his family into town. The children went to school in the South Side School. The children dreaded walking home from school because there was a bully who teased and annoyed them. Art was working night shifts at the coal mine, and was tired of waking up in the afternoon to the sound of his sons running home (clatter, clatter, clatter) on the boardwalk with the bully in hot pursuit. Art threatened that it must not happen again. The next afternoon was as usual, until Clyde saw his father in the window, so he turned and socked the boy, and Arnold joined in the fray. There was no further trouble from that has-been bully!

After the coal mine closed, the family moved west of Taber onto a farm they had purchased. One year, Art broke his hip while breaking a horse. This was during the depression, and things did not look good for the Conrad family. They were left with only $15 to see them through the winter. Ida said, "Barring any sickness, we can make it" and they did. (In an interview, Grandma said how silly she was for not letting the Bishop know how bad it really was, and that she was too proud. She was quite stern about warning us girls, who were interviewing her, about NOT being so proud; being ready to let people help sometimes.)

From the farm, the children had a 1.5 mile walk to school every day. And Ida had to take the cattle a mile, every day, to the artesian well for water until the pond was put in at the farm. Art farmed there for 34 years, until he passed away (April 21, 1960 -- when I was 2 years and 4 months old. And I totally have no memories of him.)Here is Art (bottom right with the prominent ears) and his brothers, surrounding their father. All the boys would move to Canada except Charles, the one in the middle behind their dad. Warren is behind Arthur. The youngest brother is Lewis, and behind him is Uncle Milk, as I used to think he was. Him I do remember! And Lewis is the interesting one, because he was divorced (pretty scandalous back then) and later murdered. Indeed.

Art, on the other hand, died the way that my dad always wanted to (but didn't): he died, as my dad would say "with his boots on." He came in from working, sat down in a chair to take off his boots, and died. What a way to go. Just a month shy of 78 years old. Dad always wanted to work until he dropped, but he got a stroke instead. You don't always get what you want; you get what you need instead.

Buckshot!

Bruce's Uncle Buck passed away last week, and his funeral was today. He was a handsome and charming man, and although pretty quiet, could be very funny. I just wanted to preserve some of the stories I heard about him today.

First of all, his name...Bruce told me "I don't even know what my Uncle Buck's name really is." I looked up the obituary and found it is really Joseph Wesley. Uncle Tommy and Grandma each told different stories about where the Buck came from, but basically, his kin in the backwoods of Florida thought from childhood that his very dark eyes looked just like Buckshot. Uncle Tommy was the youngest, and he often wondered why all of the kids had normal names, and then there was Buckshot--which later got shortened to just Buck. (They didn't know anything about Buckshot, the Calgary TV personality on one of Canada's longest running children's shows, I guess! Here is a picture of THAT Buckshot.) One day when Uncle Tom was at work, his secretary called and said "There is a Joe Duggar on the phone who wants to talk to you." Uncle Tom said, "Joe Duggar...Joe Duggar...I don't know any Joe Duggar. Ask him what company he is with." The secretary asked and he said, "I'm not with ANY company; I'm with HIM--I'm his brother!" She called Tom back and told him that, and Uncle Tom said, "Oh!!! Joe--Buck! Yah, he is my brother!"

Uncle Buck was very handsome and had an eye for the ladies. When he was about 18, he was at a fireside at a member's home in Florida. He got up from his seat and went into the kitchen. Tommy, an observant 14-year old, noticed that a moment later, a really pretty girl got up and went into the kitchen too. "I wonder what they are doing..." he thought. So he waited a moment, and followed them. He walked into the kitchen just when they were in the middle of a kiss. "Hey, you're kissing!" he observed, "I'm going to go tell everyone!" "No, you don't," Buck cautioned his brother. "Please don't tell," the girl said, "I'll be so embarrassed." "Well, I'll tell you what, " Tommy said, "You kiss me, too, and I won't tell!' And so she did...and Tommy said he found an awful lot of girls to kiss by following his three older brothers around and blackmailing kisses out of the girls.

But when Uncle Buck came to SLC and met his Liz, she was the only girl for him. They were married for 58 years before she died a year ago January, and he cared for her tenderly during her several years of declining health. But, his son Rick said, he still liked to look. One day after Liz had died, they were walking down the street, and Buck poked Rick and whispered, "Rick, look at that!" Rick was like, "Look at what?" Buck motioned and said in awe, "Look at that!" "Dad..." Rick said hesitantly, "That's a guy." "Well," said Buck eying the beautiful hair and swinging hips, "that's okay, as long as he doesn't turn around!"

Even though Buck was slowly losing his life from an untreatable kind of cancer, he still went to see his doctor every month. Every month, he would plunk down that $25 co-pay. His weight was the same, his blood pressure was the same, his heart rate was the same...everything you could measure was the same every month, and yet he kept on going and paying his $25.00 to do so. Why? Because, as Rick explained, Buck's doctor was a beautiful woman, and I guess it was worth it to him to see her and talk to her once a month, even though there was not really anything medical that she could do for him. I guess just seeing her and listening to her voice was worth the price of a co-pay.

When Buck was in hospice for the past few months, he had a lot of pretty nurses. He loved them all. But the medication did funny things to his brain, and he was often yelling at the nurses. He told one of them, "If you weren't so pretty, I'd kill you!" One day he called his son Rick and whispered, "That pretty nurse with the black hair...she is in bed with me!" "Well, don't you want her there?" asked Rick. "No, I want her out!" "Well, tell her to get out...just push her out," advised Rick. His dad was silent a moment and then said, "She wasn't really there. It was just her hair." Of course, Rick knew it was just the medication talking. When his dad was lucid, Rick told him some of the mean things he had said and done to the nurses, and Buck felt really bad, because he was always a gentleman. "Please go and find the nurses and apologize for me," he asked. But instead, Rick rounded up the nurses and brought them to his dad, and Buck apologized profusely. He loved them all, and never meant anything mean. Of course, they knew it was the medication affecting him, too.

At the funeral, there were a few really hilarious things. Grandma talked about how her brothers would use snakes to keep her from following them--they would say she had better turn around and go home, or they would throw a snake at her. And she would turn around, but they would still throw the snake anyway, and it would land on her back. Eww! (Later, at the cemetery, she told about them squirting milk from the cow directly into her mouth, and how that made her hate milk. Uncle Tom said incredulously, "I loved milk straight from the cow!")

Rick got up to speak, and he looked around--didn't see a clock--and said, "Hey, does anyone know what time it is?" Chuck called out "I don't know. You made me turn off my cell phone!" Everyone laughed, and someone else called out "It's five to one." "Oh good," said Rick, "There's still time for me to talk. My dad told me that if his funeral lasts more than an hour, he's getting up and walking out. And I really don't want to see that happen today!" (And then Rick probably gave a 20 minute talk--but it was all really good--and I noticed that Uncle Buck stayed in his coffin the whole time.)

Rick talked about all the times he almost killed his father: like one time he gave his father a new truck for Christmas, and "hid" it in the neighbor's garage. Walking across there to find his gift, Uncle Buck was expecting a dog or a cat or something, and when he realized it was a truck, he was so shocked that he fell down in the driveway and could hardly get up--Rick thought maybe he gave his dad a heart attack. And then one time recently, his Dad was feeling really awful, and Rick said, "Well Dad, Mom had some morphine. I'll find the bottle and give you some." Buck said, "I don't want to take any of that unless you take it, too." So Rick got out the morphine, and gave one to his Dad. But Buck wouldn't take it first, unless Rick did, so Rick had to take one. Rick said, "I felt fine after I took it. But the next day, my sister had to rush my dad to the hospital! I thought I had killed him. But the doctor said, no, there wasn't enough morphine in that pill to even take the pain away from a mouse."

At the cemetery, Uncle Tom said that a few weeks ago he was with Rick visiting Buck in the hospice, and Rick said, "I think Dad is going to pull through this time." Uncle Tom looked down, and noticed that Rick's chair was on the air hose, so Buck wasn't getting any oxygen. Then Rick shifted his weight in the chair, which took the pressure off the hose and it started hissing. "What's that noise?" says Rick. Tom said, "Well, Rick, that's the air hose that you were sitting on...I think that maybe now your Dad can breathe." And Rick said, "Oh, my gosh! I hope I didn't kill him."

Noble and Brave and True

When we were skyping with the Heisses on Sunday, Nancy said that her branch sang the "glorious name" song for father's day. But she thought that the song was kind of old, and used words to describe their fathers that no child today would really use. "Who describes their dad as noble and brave and true?" she wondered. So she asked the primary children to think of words they actually use to describe their dads. One child put up her hand and said "Weird." "Weird?" Nancy asked incredulously. "Yes, my dad is weird!" the child insisted. "Okay, I 'll write that down," Nancy (aka Sister Heiss) said, "But I am not sure that we would really want to get up in front of the whole branch and sing about our fathers being weird...any other ideas?" Other children suggested adjectives, and then the first child put her hand up again and said "Helpish. My dad is helpish." "Helpish?" queried Sister Heiss. "Yes, he likes to help." "Oh...helpful...I 'll write helpful down."

I thought that was so funny, and since Nancy didn't blog about it, I did. I can't remember what words they really ended up singing...but Nancy's story really made me think about the words "Noble and brave and true." And now this is going to turn into a post about Patrick, which may seem rather odd, but I think it will all make sense in the end. You see, Patrick's name means nobleman (I blogged about names in Dec. 2008) so the word "noble" made me think of him.

When we moved to Utah in the summer of 2000, it was really hard on Patrick. While Josie had Stephanie literally waiting to make friends with her (she came in the morning before Josie was even awake) and Amanda and Danny quickly were added to her retinue of friends, Patrick struggled. Since school was not in session, there wasn't a really good method for finding friends except at church, and Patrick and the boys at church didn't really click. I tried inviting one of them, Jared, for a play date, and that ended rather quickly when a bird conveniently pooped on Jared's head while the boys were out in the sandbox under the apricot tree. Thankfully, Patrick had his cousin Andrew and Andrew's step-brothers Jacob and Jimmy just a short drive away in Provo, and Auntie Judy liked him to come over a lot because he was a really great peace-maker, and they all got along better when Patrick was around. And a boy named Tyson who was about three years younger than Patrick started playing with him towards the end of the summer, too, so things were bearable. Not great, but bearable.

It was so bad for Patrick that when I interviewed for a full-time job at BYU (the one that I got the next year, in 2001, and still have) Patrick told me ,"Mom, you can't work full time or I will just die." And I knew that he meant it. He was having a very hard time. I made up my mind that I would turn the job down if it was offered to me. Janet called me with "bad news" that they had chosen an internal candidate, and I told her that it was actually good news, and why it was.

But things got better for Patrick. He met Garion. And he got to know Brian, who was a year younger, but he came to be a good pal for outdoor stuff. And Garion was a great pal for indoor stuff. Garion lived in our neighborhood, too, but since his family did not go to church, there was not really a way for the two boys to meet until school started in the fall. When Patrick started to do things with Garion, I found out that Auntie Judy knew his family well, and she had only wonderful things to say about them.

And we found out first hand that they were fabulous people. Once I started working full time at BYU a year later, I don't know what my kids would have done without Jo Ann, Garion's mom. She would always allow them to come over; Patrick was always allowed to bring Josie. Since there were only boys in Garion's family, Jo Ann would let Josie just hang out with her sometimes, cooking or sewing or doing other girl stuff. Their house was a safe haven, a home away from home. Jo Ann would do a fun Halloween dinner every year, and always invited Patrick and Josie for that event.

When Nancy was struggling about what to do about school one year, Garion's dad, Vernon, was an answer to prayer for Nancy. She was really upset, so rather than call Garion's house to ask for Patrick to come home, she decided to walk over and get him. Vernon answered the door, and not knowing the controversy brewing inside her head, said "Hi Nancy, how are you? How is school going?" She said something about how confused she was, and he said "You know, you could just go to UVSC to finish school, and work on college and high school at the same time. That's what I would do if I had it to do over." And Nancy came home a happy, changed person, because what Vernon said was exactly what she knew she needed to do.

Just as we were really happy that Patrick had found a good friend, a kindred spirit, in Garion, his family were happy that Garion had found Patrick. Jo Ann said to me one day, "Let's promise that we will never move away from each other until these boys are grown up. They need each other!" And I promised her that we would not move.

Garion and Patrick both took French in junior high, and I wanted Patrick to take band like Garion did, but he really didn't want to. Garion was learning to play the saxophone. One day at our house he commented, "I really suck at the saxophone." And Nancy said, "Well, that's the problem Garion! You are supposed to blow!"

Patrick and Garion had a lot of fun through the years with Garion's many and various uncles. One was really into geology and took the boys out looking for geodes and hiking around looking at rocks. Others were into games like Magic and other board games that I can't remember the names of. Sometimes Jo Ann would call me and say "I hope it is okay if Patrick stays longer. They are in the middle of a game and it might be hours longer!" I liked the way the men and the boys all played together, and sometimes a girl or two like Nadia would join them. Just lots of good clean fun.

Patrick faced some major sorrows in this time. Craig H, a good Canadian friend's death upset Patrick greatly. And then Grandma C. died in 2003, and Patrick had to be a pall bearer. That was really hard for him. When he faced his fears about death, Garion was there for him, a true blue friend. And when Garion was having little and big arguments with his parents, particularly his mom, he would show up at our door and come in and rely on Patrick to help him calm down before he would go back home to work things out at home.

And then came that fateful day in April 2004. I think April 21, but I could have it wrong. Just a few days after Garion's birthday, which is April 18, on a Monday morning, we were getting ready for school, and heard sirens coming really close. As the kids went to school, we realized that the ambulance was at Garion's house. Jo Ann didn't have good health, and there had been ambulances there before...we hoped it wasn't too serious...and went on with our day.

After school, Patrick calls me. "Mom," he says, "Garion didn't come to school today. And Elise told me that his mom died." "WHAT?!" I said. "How can that be?" "Mom, I need to know if it is true." I told Patrick I would call Shannon G. and find out. I dialed her number, and when she answered, said "You know that ambulance went to C.'s house today...what happened?" "Oh, dear, well...she died! Jo Ann!" and went on to explain what had happened. Jo Ann had not been feeling well, and had sat in a chair and died while her husband was getting the boys ready for school. I called Patrick and said "It is true, Patrick." He was so sad to hear that.

That night, Josie and I took some cookies and went over to see the family. We had a good chat with Garion's grandma and offered our condolences to Vernon and the boys. Patrick was not yet ready to deal with it. What do you say to your best friend when his mother has just died?

But the next day after school, Patrick was ready, and he knew what to do. He was noble, and set aside his own cares, brave in the face of death, something that he is "not a big fan of" and true to his friend. From that day on for literally months, Patrick was a rock of strength for Garion. Their friendship grew so much as they faced that trial together. As Vernon began piecing his life back together, sometimes we got to have Garion at our house for weeks at a time, and we feel like he is almost a third son. I think that he is as close to Patrick as a brother.

Sometimes I would get really tired of living in Utah...but always in the back of my mind, that promise to Jo Ann about letting these boys grow up together was there. I think their friendship was something that was meant to be.

At testimony meeting in May of 2004, as the first counsellor in the bishopric and "in charge" while the bishop was away, talked about fulfilling his responsibilities to this family who had lost their mother, he talked about how whenever he would feel the need to stop in on the family, "Patrick Layton was always there," and how impressed he was with Patrick's love for his friend. (He also mentioned Nadia, because she was a real trooper, too.) And a couple of years later, in Relief Society, during a lesson on friendship, Cyndee C. put her hand up and mentioned the great example of Patrick in his love for his friend Garion, and how he was just his friend and a good example to him no matter what, which is the kind of friend we all should be.

So, there you have it. Noble and brave and true. Those words might not work for those weird and helpish dads in Egypt, but I think they describe Patrick perfectly.

Color Me Indian

Given that my dad was 42 when I was born, and lived to be 85, I only knew him for slightly less than half of his life! So much of what he was happened before my time. I know that he was interested in many things, like electronics, and flying, and cabinetry. He build beautiful built-in closets and drawers in all the bedrooms in the house at the farm. It was hard for me to think of that house going out of the family mainly because of the built-ins that would have to be left in the house. And of course, by then, Dad had been visited with the stroke, so would not be building anymore. Dad also was really into photography. Although I remember the house with just a cellar very vaguely, I don't have any memories of the basement begin built; but I do know that when it was built, Dad had a dark room down there. At some point in my childhood, the photography equipment got put away, and that room was called "the fruit room" although it probably had more vegetables in it than fruit!In this picture, taken in March 1958, you can see my daddy and me...in COLOR! This is the first roll of film in color that our family had. There are individual pictures of each of us, and a few of different people holding the baby, who happened to be me. You can see my dad's coloring well in this picture, although sad to say, the color is fading...every time I look at these pictures, they seem more washed out. Color film still had a ways to go in 1958. I think color film must have been, as Josie and I would say "bahut mahengi" = very expensive. Judging from my photo album, our parents didn't buy color film again until 1962.

I wanted to share this story, famous in our family, of a conversation that took place between my Mom and my sister Colleen. I remember that they were sitting in the car in Taber, and someone must have pointed out some Indians. (Aside for my children: we still used the term "Indians" in Canada when our generation were kids. Some time between then and when you were growing up in B.C. in the late 80s, that word was pretty much gone and "First Nations" used in its place. Now it is almost shocking to hear the word "Indians" used to refer to Native Canadians, I know. But then, it was normal.) The conversation, in my hear-say memory, went like this:

Colleen: Mommy, what's an Indian?
Mom: Well, they have black hair.
Colleen: Like Daddy?
Mom: Yes. And they have brown eyes.
Colleen: Like Daddy?
Mom: Yes. And they have brown skin.
Colleen: Like Daddy?
Mom: Yes.
Colleen: Mommy, is Daddy an Indian?

What was funny was that our Dad really IS part Cherokee--but I dont' think he knew about that then. He isn't very much Cherokee, but if you look at him, you can see that many of the traits of that part of his ancestory were preserved in him.

Father's maxims

Here I will record sayings or poems that I associate with my dad:

"Nixie Narn, go to the barn!" -- apparently said by my grandma when she would ask my dad to go out and do his farmyard chores. She called Dad "Nixie" when he was little. I think--without having definite evidence--that my grandma really secretly wanted to name my dad "Nicholas" after her father. But it seems that Grandpa Conrad had the upper hand in the naming department, even naming his daughters after old girlfriends! So Dad was named "Arnold Muhlestein" when Grandma probably wanted it to be "Nicholas Muhlestein" and she called Dad "Nixie". Hah--take that, Arthur!

"I think that I shall never see / A poem lovely as a tree" -- this was a line my Dad often quoted. It comes from the poem "Trees" by Alfred Joyce Kilmer. Dad was a tree planter, grower, grafter: a lover of trees.

"It's all in the attitude!"-- I probably heard this every day, or several times a day, for most of my growing up years. This was because I often had a bad attitude, and I needed to hear this. However, I didn't think I needed to hear it, and I HATED to hear it! It would usually make me more angry and cause my attitude to become worse temporarily--but in the long run, it worked, and I firmly believe as my father did, that it really IS all in the attitude. As one of my favorite books "Man's Search for Meaning" expounds, we can't always choose the situations we are in, but we can always choose the attitude we apply to them. ("We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.") It is the one freedom that can't be taken away, really, the freedom to choose our attitude. And a good one makes all the difference. Thanks for the tip, Dad. I finally got it!

"We get too soon old, and too late smart" -- a Pennsylvania Dutch proverb. Life is so short, and the longer we live, the more we realize we don't know! Are we ever as smart as we should be? I don't know... I remember there being some sort of plaque with this statement on it, I think in our utility room.

"A rose by any other name would smell as sweet"-- This comes from Romeo and Juliet. Dad would say it whenever a discussion of names was going on, like it did every year when we had a new litter of kittens to name. It didn't really matter to him what the names were. When we were naming our children, Dad would have the same phrase to quote. What matters is that people are loved, that people try to be good, not what their names are.

Does anyone remember other things Dad/Grandpa would habitually say to add to this list?

Daddy memories: Part the first

With the Conrad reunion at the old family homestead up Provo canyon fast approaching, Kelli has asked all of us to think of memories of my dad that she can distill into a ten minute talk. Probably Nancy alone has given her enough material...but I will try to talk about my dad from an earlier point of view. I first met my dad when he was 42 years old, because that is how old he was in 1957 when I was born.

Dad was born on September 8, 1915, in this house, which still stands in Provo, Utah:

The house belonged to Dad's grandparents, the same Conrads who owned the homestead up South Fork of Provo Canyon.

I am a bit embarrassed because my early memories about my Dad tend to be more about me than about him--perhaps that is how all children's memories are, or perhaps I was overly egotistical.

Handsome

I always thought Dad was fabulously handsome. He had black hair, brown skin and brown eyes, and I found him quite dashing. I did not have quite that high an opinion of my mom, however. Sometimes I wondered why he, being so handsome, had ever married her. Rude, I know. Once, before I was going to school, so at about age four or so, I was at a funeral with my parents. Someone I didn't know was talking to my dad while I was hanging onto his hand. Suddenly, the person said, "And is this your daughter? She looks just like her mother!" And I was stunned, horrified. I always thought I looked like my dad...everyone always said how cute I was, so I MUST look like him. And I was the only child to have his beautiful brown eyes! I stared at the speaker in shock. My dad nudged me and said, "Say thank you, Myrna." And I was just speechless, incredulous. I didn't say a word. How could I possibly THANK this person, when I was OFFENDED? Dad was irritated with me when I wouldn't say anything, and when we met up with Mom, he complained about my ill manners. But at least I had the manners not to explain to my Mom that I just couldn't say thank you because I was so horrified to think that someone thought I looked like her! As I get older, I don't mind looking like my mother, who was a beautiful person, and think I am a nice mix of both wonderful parents.

Here is a picture of my handsome dad, surrounded by some of the girls who loved him:
L to R: Priscilla, me, Dad, Nola, Arlene and Kerry in front.

Tasty

My dad tasted so good! (I recently found out that my brother thought so, too--maybe I learned from him to lick my dad's hands in church!) I loved to lick Dad's hands. They tasted so yummy and salty. I tried mom's, too, but they just weren't yummy like dad's were. I would lick one hand all over, and then lick the other all over, and when they were dry, start all over again. I guess my dad was willing to endure a lot to keep me quiet in church! I can't imagine sitting still and letting my kids lick my hands!

Mice

I really, really don't like mice. I have very early memories of being in the kitchen at the farm when we still had the trap door leading to the cellar, before they dug the basement, and Dad going down to empty mouse traps and bringing the residue upstairs. I think he made Bruce do it sometimes, and he would tease me that I should go and do it. I was scared of the dark, too, and the cellar was a dark, dark hole in the ground. And to think that it was full of mice!! Oooh, super scary! Later in life, when I was nine or ten, I took some lemonade out to the haystacks for dad, my older siblings and cousins who were stacking bales. Dad found a mouse nest, and wanted me to carry it back to the yard and feed it to the cats. I started crying really hard because I didn't want to do it. He was annoyed with me, but he put it inside a paper, and made me carry it and I remember crying (wailing, really) all the way back to the yard, so loud that mom came out of the house to see what was the matter. I didn't like mice, but I didn't want to feed baby mice to cats, either.

Music

Dad's one musical claim to fame was that he could lay down on the floor by the piano, and play Peter Peter Pumpkin Eater with his toes. Other than that, he left music up to mom. Here is a picture from 1993 of Dad and Mom, him letting her participate in making music, while he just sits back and enjoys it.
Mom liked to have us children sing together while she played the piano. When I was about four or five years old, we had been asked to sing in church. She had chosen a song that I still love to this day, although we never hear it anymore. It was called "Let the little children come."

Favored little ones were they,
Who towards him Jesus drew!
Who within his arms he took
Just as loving parents do,
Christ the Lord 'Our living head'
This of little children said,
"Such shall of my kingdom be,
Suffer them to come to me."
Listen to the Savior's plea,
"Let the children come to me."
("Let the Little Children Come," Sing with Me, B - 14)

It was in the Green Book we used in Primary and Sunday School, and apparently reprinted in "Sing with Me" as well.

Colleen, in all her nine year old wisdom, had decided that she did not have as nice a voice as the rest of us, so one day when we were rehearsing, she refused to sing. Dad kept demanding that she sing, and she was just as determined not to. So Dad took off his belt, and he let her have it. (Now, please do not judge my dad harshly. He was born in 1915, after all. He went to school at a time when TEACHERS could whip a child--on the bare behind, in front of all their classmates. And in his time, fathers taking off their belts and whipping children was normal behavior. Not very nice behavior, but perfectly acceptable in the social climate of the time.) Colleen was, of course, sobbing in a state of great unhappiness. And me--I was MAD. MAD, ANGRY, FURIOUS! Dad had sat back on the couch, and I rushed right up to him and bit his leg on the fleshy part of the calf as hard as I could. It was winter time, and Dad was wearing his thick work pants, his long cotton underwear that went to his ankles, and thick wool socks that went up to his knees. I still remember him pulling up this and pulling down that to see my beautiful bleeding bite mark which had gone through all those layers. He was too shocked to even think of spanking me (a person who thoroughly deserved it) and I had no qualms about telling him off for using his belt on Colleen just because she wouldn't sing. I do not think that I can remember him ever taking his belt off for that purpose ever again.

Biting

But I had not really learned about not biting. Biting can be really effective, don't you know? I remember one day that Dad came home from working in the fields, and he was in a very happy mood. He picked me up and swung be around, and then was holding me close to him. And I remember thinking "I wonder what he would do if I bit his nose?" And so I did--I didn't bite it really hard like I had his leg, because I wasn't angry; I was just curious about what his reaction would be. Well, let me tell you, he was surprised! He was so not expecting that! He was pretty mad, too, but mostly just surprised! But he didn't try to spank me for it. I guess he had figured out by then that I was an odd little person.

Fishing Fun

Dad was a very fun person. He liked to do things. He would take us to the canal and swim with us. He would play baseball (one-a-cat in its reduced form, we called it) and take us ice skating on the pond. He would take us fishing and canoeing. One year, Mom and Colleen were at girl's camp, and Dad borrowed my cousin John's canoe (that John had made in shop class) to take Bruce, Arlene and I to the lake to do some fishing. Here is a picture of the canoe-that-John-built, with Margaret and Marie sitting in it.

In our case, it would be Dad and one of us kids sitting in it, since only two could go in the canoe at a time, in order to be safe. Another really good safety rule was "Don't stand up in the canoe." When it was my turn to go out on the water with Dad, he got a hard nibble on his fishing line. He thought it was a good-sized fish, but he was having trouble reeling it in. So he broke one of the rules (the "Don't stand up in the canoe" one) and stood up, leaning way out to follow his fishing line. Capsize! We both had on life jackets, but I thought I was drowning. I screamed and screamed and grabbed onto Dad and tried to climb up him to get out of the water, effectively pushing him under. Lucky for us, Wally Beckman and his boys were out on the lake in their boat, and Wally hauled me off my dad and into his boat...and then dad was able to push the canoe a couple of feet where he could STAND UP. I realized that we were in pretty shallow water and was MORTIFIED!! I nearly drowned my dad, and if I would have just calmed down, we could have just walked out of the water.

It's true!

There is a legend in Samoa that if you stand on a certain cliff and sing a certain song, a turtle and a shark will surface in the water, coming out of the water because you sang. And legends, of course, aren't true, or they wouldn't be called legends. Well, Hah to all disbelievers, because this legend is true!! How amazing is that? Check it out: http://byunews.byu.edu/archive09-Jun-samoa.aspx

I'm a Reference Librarian...

Sometimes you get to do some fun detective work when you are a librarian. I got to do this a lot more when I worked in public libraries, but yesterday I had a lot of fun sleuthing something out, and it reminded me that I love this part of being a librarian.

At about noon, my friend Virginia came down from level six, where she is a cataloguer. She brought a print-out of some song lyrics. Her sister Wendy, who is married to a general authority, was preparing a talk and wanted to use some lyrics that she remembered from her youth. She remembered part of the words to the song, and she remembered that one time their next-door neighbor Nena sang the song in church. (This was in Raymond.) Virginia had used the part of the lyrics that Wendy remembered and had already thoroughly searched our library catalog, LDS.org, and google. She got no hits anywhere except google, one of which led back to LDS.org, to a New Era article from about 20+ years ago, and one to someone's blog.

I asked Virginia who had played for the neighbor back in the day, and Virginia said that SHE had done it. She didn't have the music herself, and she could vaguely remember reading who the composer was, but that memory was long faded. She said that Wendy thought it might have been Laycock. The Laycocks are also from Alberta, but Harold and Ralph both ended up as professors in the School of Music at BYU, and at least Ralph is now deceased; I am not sure about Harold.

The blog that came up talked about a pageant in Southern Utah called the "Voices of San Juan," and I read the blog, and initially, that seemed like a pretty hot lead. I looked up San Juan County, sent an e-mail to one person, who e-mailed me back with the contact information for someone who might know about it. She also contacted me immediately and suggested that I get in touch with the City of Blanding. I decided to call their library. The librarian called me back after taking some time to do a little research herself, and gave me the phone number of the woman who heads up the pageant.

I called her home. A little boy answered. "Who IS this?" he wondered. "I am not someone you know," I replied, "But I am calling from a library and I need to talk to your mom." "MOOOMMMM!" he yelled "MOOOOMMMMMM IT'S SOMEONE FROM A LIBRARY FOR YOOOOOUUUUU..." several times. In the distance, I heard a daddy-sounding voice say "Is the phone for mom?", more yelling from the little boy, and finally an apologetic mom's voice. I was just laughing, he was so cute and funny. I told her what I was looking for, and she actually sang the first line of the song to me, but said that they don't use that in the "Voices of San Juan" pageant; but she knew that it was used in the Oakland Temple pageant.

Which led me right back to the other internet hit...the New Era article, which had also mentioned the Oakland Temple Pageant. I started cruising around trying to find out more about that pageant, which is now discontinued according to LDS.org, and found an accountant who sang in it in 2006. I fired off an e-mail to him, but he didn't respond immediately like the people in Southern Utah. I am sure that, being in Oakland CA, he gets a few more business e-mails than the people in San Juan County, UT!

When I couldn't really go anywhere else with the Oakland pageant idea, I decided to go back to Wendy's idea that a Laycock might be involved. I googled Ralph to see if there might happen to be some kind of list of his compositions. There wasn't, but there was an obituary, which happened to mention Ralph's involvement with the Oakland Temple pageant. Pay dirt! I actually knew Ralph's daughters Kathryn, who had been my next-door neighbor one year at BYU, and her sister Claudia, who spent a lot of time with Kathryn, as did I. How to contact them to ask about this? Kathryn I knew was married to someone named Little, but which Little? And Claudia is now a judge...so I looked up Claudia's office in the phone book, called and left a message on her secretary's phone. But Wendy needed this question answered ASAP...and it might be who knows when before Claudia could return my call. What next?

Of course! Grant! He is Harold's son, and he might be able to give me Kathryn's phone number. So I called Grant, who works on level 2 in the library, and told him I was loooking for a song that might have been written by a Laycock, and I think it might be Ralph. Grant said, "Well, it might have been my dad, too." And I said, "But there is a reference to the Oakland Pageant, so I am thinking it might be Ralph." Grant said, "Oh, yes, that would be Uncle Ralph...well, I don't have Kathryn's phone number, but I think my brother does. Let me call him, and I will call you right back." Minutes later, he called to say, "I don't have Kathryn's phone number, but I have Linda's number. She's another one of the sisters." (Ralph had five daughters.)

So I called Linda. Thanks to Alyn, my San Juan contact, I could now sing the first line of the song to Linda, who immediately recognized it. "But I don't think my dad wrote it," she said. "I think he arranged it for the pageant, but someone else would have come up with the melody, and I know that he didn't write the lyrics himself. I don't know who did. But I know that Mom would know. She is in California visiting my sister Jolayne. Can I give you their number, and you can call them there?"

So in a few minutes, I am talking to Jolayne, singing my one line, and she, too, immediately knew the song. And she didn't even have to ask her mom about it. "My dad would have got just the melody line and the lyrics from Whit Groo," she said, "Although I don't think Whit wrote the lyrics...he usually collaborated with someone, but I can't remember his name."

"Whit Groo!" I exclaimed, "Isn't that Gayle and Pam's dad?" "Yes it is!" Jolayne exclaimed, "And I was roommates with each of them at different times!" "They are in my stake," I said, "I know both of them really well. I will call them about this." Then Jolayne and I had a nice chat about how I knew her sisters back in the day, and how we are distantly related, the Laycocks being related to the Redds who descend from Hans Ulrich Bryner, the cousin of our own Anna Caroline Wintch.

So, after reaching out to Oakland California for answers, now I was back to looking in my own backyard. Gayle is on the music faculty at BYU, so I called her office. No answer. Pam teaches junior high, and school is out, so I figured she would be home. She answered on the second ring with her chipper "Hello." I explained what I needed, and she immediately answered that she thought the song was a collaboration between her dad and Ira Young, the person he usually collaborated with, and that Ralph Laycock would have done the arranging for pageant use, and that she had the music, knew right where it was, and if Wendy would like to borrow it, she could.

I went upstairs to Level 6 and gave the information to Virginia, who was so happy she hugged me! She said, "I didn't expect you to figure this out so soon! You're good! I was thinking we wouldn't know until Monday. Wendy is going to be so happy!"

Happy patrons. That is what a library is all about. :o)

Let us gather in a circle and kneel in family giggles...

Thanks to Nancy for helping me to think of something to post. This is a flashback, and it isn't even Friday, but I have a few moments so here is the memory...

The summer that I was thirteen, my brother's friend Marie Christine came from France and lived with us for the whole summer (while he was on his mission). The four of us girls had so much fun together! I could talk about a lot of interesting things from that summer, but what I am going to talk about is a particular family prayer.

We had gone to Raymond for the day to visit the Navratil, Garrett and Hancock cousins/aunts/uncles. The Navratils had baby kittens that were the right age to give away, so we coaxed and pleaded for one. We had our own kittens on the farm, but these were younger/cuter/better. I think Dad caved in for Christine's sake. We chose a kitten, and got in the car and drove home. The kitten cried and cried, hence the name we chose for her: La Pleure.

When we got home, someone sat and pet the kitten until it fell asleep in the corner of the couch. Dad announced it was time for family prayer. We knelt down, sort of all leaning up against the couch. Dad was on the end closest to the door, with Mom beside him, then Christine, Colleen, Arlene and me, right in front of the sleeping kitten. Dad was saying the prayer. In the middle of the prayer, La Pleure woke up and started to quietly walk up and down the couch. She walked just close enough so that her tail would flick each person on the nose as she went by. She would walk and flick from me to Arlene, Colleen, Christine and then Mom, flick her nose, and then turn around and flick noses back to me, then turn around and flick noses on the way back to Mom. Over and over again. And besides that it was really funny, it tickled!

We were giggly girls at the best of times, but this was prayer time, so we were trying really hard to stay serious, but one of us started to shake and gasp, and the others felt it, and soon all the females in the family were shaking with silent giggles and occasionally letting a giggle escape, and Dad was getting irritated. He kept praying, but his tone of voice started to change. As he got close to the end of the prayer, what do you think La Pleure did? She curled back up in her corner of the couch and closed her eyes. So when Dad opened his eyes to find out what all the smothered giggling was about there was nothing to see but Mom and us four girls all about to burst from holding back!