Taber Trip and High School Reunion

Well, as my entire family knows, I HATED High School. Totally did not want to be there! I just always felt so awkward and friendless. I mean I had people that I was friendly with, but not any die-hard, loyal friends who just loved me to pieces. So, when my tenth year reunion rolled around, I had no desire to attend. Same with the twentieth. I don't remember even knowing about the thirtieth. So, after forty years, I figured, why not? How bad could it be?

Facebook had made it better...I have been Facebook friends with some of my high school "friends" for several years. The first one was Evelyn Iskov. I found her by accident on FB. The West family, who were great friends of our entire family--their youngest daughter Barbara who is probably at least five years younger than me--well, her daughter Blaire grew up and married a CONRAD. So, I asked Barbara who his parents were, and that was when I found out that my second cousin Brian Conrad had married Evelyn Iskov. I had no clue! I had always liked Evelyn--we had a good relationship in classes we had together, though we were not "friends" exactly.  So she and I became FB friends. Through her I found Marilyn McCullough and Jill MacMurchy. My high school relationship with Marilyn had been about like with Evelyn. Jill and I had been really good friends in elementary school, then went our separate ways in high school. I don't even think she and I had any classes together.

Linda Jill MacMurchy in Grade Four

Jill Jespersen as a grown-up

Through them, I found Bev Pauls. She was another of my Dr. Hamman elementary friends. She and I had interacted more in high school because we both were musicians. In fact, she had played the trumpet part for an arrangement of "Don't sit under the apple tree" that Arlene, Marie and I did when we sang for the Canada Games.

Beverly Pauls in Grade Six

Beverly Pauls Bellamy and her husband now. They are huge supporters of the Lethbridge Symphony Orchestra.

And then one day I had a friend request from someone named Heather Russell. I had no clue who that was, but she was also friends with Bev, so I asked Bev who she was. "Heather Wilkinson" Bev told me. I could not remember her at all, but I said okay to the friend request. Then when Bev posted a picture of our high school graduating class, I remembered Heather. She had moved to Taber later, and was just a really nice girl. She was really likeable.

Bev is in the middle of the front row in the pink dress.  The last three girls on the right in that row are Heather Wilkinson, Jill MacMurchy and Laurel Fujimagari.

I am not in this picture because I graduated early and was in Utah when this picture was taken in June 1975. My parents asked me to PLEASE come home for graduation, but I was like "No. Are you kidding me? I don't care about it at all!" So my parents went to my graduation, and my mom cried because I was not there. I am sorry, my mommy! I supposed I would have lived through it, had I gone.  Anyways, looking at this picture reminded me of Laurel--and of course writing my family history-ish stuff did, too. So I looked for Laurel on FB, too, and found her, and now we are FB friends, too. She was always really, really smart, and she is a lawyer in Calgary. No surprise.

So, since I actually talk to both Bev and Heather quite a lot on Facebook, and they were both going to the reunion, I thought...why not go? So when I was in Alberta a month ago, I tried to pay the registration fee--went to Jill's house but she was not home--and then left the money with Colleen, and she paid Marilyn, who works in the local clinic.

When we got to Taber on Friday, we first went and hung out with Abra and kids for awhile. Bruce wanted to have corn on the cob while here, so we walked over to the corn fest and everyone had corn on the cob. Well, not Malachi. He had gone swimming. The rest of us did. Except for me. Because I don't eat corn on the cob. Two reasons. I don't like the mess and I always get corn stuck in my teeth. And I don't like it enough to want to put up with those things. So I just had fries, and they ate corn on the cob. And we took these pictures:

Deklan, Abra, Piper and Bruce

Bruce, Deklan, Abra and Piper

And guess what? Abra took pictures with ME in them! So, evidence that I was there, too!

Bruce peaking through the corn husks. Isn't this a great picture of Deklan? Me and Piper look okay, too.

Then we drove out to Grassy to take all our stuff into Colleen's house, and to get ready to go to the reunion. I was a bit nervous because forty years and I was not sure if anyone there would be happy that I came. Like, did anyone care that I had not been there for reunion 10, 20 or 30? Did anyone even notice I wasn't there, let alone care? I don't mean that rudely--I just mean that I didn't really belong to a "group." I mean, they all probably thought that I was stuck up because I mostly hung out with my family--I know that some people did think that.

Oh yes! On the FB reunion page, I had "found" Dorothy Anderson Burrup, and she and I had been talking a tiny bit. We both live in Utah, and so we joked about driving so far to see each other. And actually, as we drove up to the Taber Legion, the first people we saw were Dorothy and her husband getting out of their car. Utah plates. Dorothy actually looks pretty much the same as she always did. Dorothy and I go back a long ways. We were in the same ward from birth, and we were best friends in Sunday School and Primary. Our dads were in the bishopric together, her dad as bishop, mine as a councilor, and so we got together outside of P and SS as well. In about grade two or three, they changed the ward boundaries. Dorothy was put in SECOND WARD. I was still in Third Ward. I thought I would DIE. How would I survive at church without her? Well, I survived, but never had such a close church friend again. Almost...Joan West was a good church friend, but she was a year older, so it was not quite the same. And also, since Dorothy and I did not go to the same elementary school, the ward boundary change also affected our friendship in general. When we were in the same school again in junior high, we just did not get back together again. I mean, we were friends. But she had better friends. I had my sister and my cousins.

So, we talked to Dorothy and her husband Jay, and Bruce and Jay hit it off, and we found a place to sit, and Bruce and Jay sat and talked, and I went to "work the crowd." Other people were greeting their high school besties, and I just decided to talk to everyone. "I work the crowd at international music events, so why not here?" I said to Bruce.  So I went and looked at name tags and talked to people. I think I almost talked to everyone. Most of the people I remembered, though a few--I just have no clue! Harvey Hall? I didn't remember his name or is face, and still don't, but he remembered me. I totally don't remember him. Kent Anderson? "Beaver!" Jody Wenbourne said, "We called him Beaver, don't you remember?" Nope. Totally not at all.

At our table, there was (were?) Dorothy and Jay, Nola Jensen Williams and her husband David (both Taber people who married each other--David's sister Ladene is our age, but she lives in Tonga, so she was not there. His sister Peggy is married to Kevin Torrie, LeRon's brother), Tona Holman and her husband Steve Kutanzi, Lyn Valgardson Schritter, and Jody Wenbourne Johnston (I think Johnston, not sure).

Here is a picture of Tona from Grade Six. She and I are Facebook friends, too, but she is another person I have known my whole life, not just at school. I am FB friends with her sister, too!

Tona Holman Kutanzi in Grade Six.

I took a picture of Tona with Mrs. Hazel West, our drama teacher. Mrs. West was my friend Joan's aunt. She is from England, Mrs. West is. She was a ballet dancer and actress and singer--a triple threat--on the stage in London. She met her husband Russell when he was stationed there with Canadian forces during the second world war. Mrs. West talked to my husband, and was so excited to see me--we got along really well, and also she was mom's friend. She came over to our table, so Bruce took a picture of Mrs. West and I, and I took one of her with Tona.

When I was a young girl, my friend Joan's dad Allen West was my home teacher, along with Doug Miller, who was an Alberta politican and the owner of the only theatre, the Tower Theatre, in Taber. One day, Doug called Allen about home teaching. He thought. He called, a man with a familiar voice answered, Doug said, "This is Doug Miller. I have home teaching appointments made for tonight. I'll pick you up at seven." But when he went to pick up Allen, he was not ready. "You didn't call me," he said. Doug determined that he looked up Allen's phone number in the phone book but instead read his brother Russell's phone number. So they went over to Russell's and sure enough, he was ready and waiting to go! So that is my story about Mrs. Hazel West's husband. He is 94 years old now and doesn't like to go out much anymore. She is 91! Don't you think she is a well-preserved 91 year old?

I also took a photo opportunity with Malcolm Edwards, our chorus teacher. He was from England, and was such a GREAT teacher! I learned from his little speech at the reunion that he taught at Myers from 1971 to 1979. He is 71 years old now, so that means that when we graduated in 1975, he was only 31! And he was a father of two little boys. He was there with his wife Kathryn, and she was really nice, but she definitely was not the same Mrs. Edwards that I knew 40 years ago, and she also seemed to be about the same age as the Mrs. Edwards I knew was 40 years ago. Mr. Edwards left Myers to get his PhD and then taught music at the University of Calgary. (I have talked to him via e-mail about music stuff since we are all in the music business.) He has now retired from the U of C but is teaching at St. Mary's University. Here we are together:

Me, Mr Edwards, Mrs. Edwards.

The biggest surprises for me were things like how tall Arnold Pauls is! He was 5'8" at graduation, and is now 6'6". Most people looked very much like themselves, and everyone was really nice, so I was really glad that I went.

Question 19: If you went to college or a vocational school, what school did you attend? (Part One: BYU year 1)

--Describe what memories you have of those years and what subjects you studied. (With apologies in advance for poor picture quality, and thanks to Nancy for her efforts to make the pictures look better.)

The school I attended was BYU -- Brigham Young University.  After my brother Bruce and my sister Colleen went to BYU, I really didn't seriously consider going anywhere else.

When Arlene was at the University of Calgary for one semester (as a linguistics major), I visited her there and went to class with her, but I did not like it. In those days, people were allowed to smoke in class, and there was seriously so much smoke in one of her classes that it was hazy. The professor had the class watching a couple of film clips, and I kept feeling like I needed to clean my glasses. It was also smelly and I just did not like it.

Then Arlene transferred to Ricks College, so I also visited her there, and again, I did not like it. It was so cold and windy! No improvement over Alberta weather (and no chinook winds to warm things up from time to time) so I could see little point to going to school there. So, BYU it was.

I finished high school early. I turned 17 on Dec. 12, and a month later, near the middle to end of January 1975, I graduated from high school. I had been going to head right off to BYU, but for some reason I did not finish all the things I was supposed to do (probably scared), so I just took some time off. I spent part of the time in Taber, just relaxing at home and doing things with the Taber Young Adults.  One activity we did was driving to Edmonton for a Young Adult Conference. It was my first time in Edmonton, and it was 60 degrees below zero while we were there. SO COLD.

Then I spent some time in Salt Lake City, living with Don and Mary and helping out with all the children. And totally having a crush on a young man down the street. He (JS) was older (like 22 or 23) and attended the University of Utah. So that meant that I started to consider the U. But that young man decided to go on a mission, which thrilled his parents and made his mother not like me just a bit--I think she worried he would changed his mind, but he didn't. (I was never any threat to his decision to serve. I was merely a distraction, not a serious interest.) So...that meant that I was back to thinking about going to BYU.

So that is where I went. Those were the days, my friend! I did not even take the ACT until I was admitted and my first semester was well under way. I didn't even get the results--I didn't even care about the results. It was just something on the list that I had to do.

So, my first semester--the first order of business was to find a place to live. Arlene was transferring from Ricks College to BYU, and her boyfriend Billy was also coming to BYU, and none of us had places to live. Somehow, I found a place in Pinegar apartments, Arlene was just a couple of blocks east and Billy a couple of blocks further east. We all found places somehow, though I don't remember the process. My address was 590 N. 200 E in Provo, and this building is still there and still looks exactly the same.

In front of my apartment: my brother Bruce, Renée, Mom and Dad. You can see me peeking through the window. I would not come out because I was sick and I looked terrible. I know I really did look terrible, because I eventually came out and was in a picture, and I really did look terrible. I look much better through the glass! My photo album says "Bruce was here from France for April Conference 1976." So this picture was taken then.

I started out in the apartment on the bottom floor, north end of a four-plex. It was kind of grungy and dirty, so my mom and I were scrubbing everything, and this really nice Chicana girl from next door came over and talked to us. We got along with each other immediately.  But I was the first one in my apartment, and I didn't even think about moving. Until the next girl came. Her name was Lara. And she was...different? In a way that made me feel very uneasy. So, when Renée from next door (bottom floor south) was also creeped out by Lara, she suggested I move to their apartment--there was just her and her good friend Janet there so far. So, I asked for and got permission from Brother Pinegar to move, and so I did.

A couple of girls from Alberta moved in to the bottom north apartment--one from Lethbridge and one from Diamond City--but they got creeped out and moved, too. (Things were a lot more loose then than they are now!) Finally, some really nice girls moved into that apartment, and we were good friends with them. And I am not even sure what happened with Lara--maybe they were just so nice to her that she couldn't stand it, and moved away herself? I just don't remember! Seems like she was not a presence there anymore.

So here are the next door friends:

Chris Brown, Susan Brand, Kathryn Laycock, Roxanne Wright

Susan Brand was a theatre major. She and her boyfriend were totally theatrical all the time, but really very nice. Kathryn Laycock Little, the daughter of BYU music faculty Ralph Laycock is part of the Redd line that the Torrie family is connected to. Louise Hancock was a distant relative on our Hancock line. Roxanne Wright and Chris Brown were just sweet, sweet girls. We loved all five of them.

Kathryn is the only one that I am kind of in touch with--we have chatted on Facebook a few times. She was once a BYU Young Ambassador and is now a theatre director around the valley. Many of Josie's friends from High School and YA had Kathryn as their teacher in a program called "Acting Up." Back in the day, we also saw a lot of Kathryn's sister Claudia. Claudia is now a judge here in the district court. 

In my apartment, there was Renée Partida from Chino, California.  She and I were both not the world's best students, way too interested in having a wonderful time and not so interested in doing well in our classes! Janet Ferguson was from a wealthy family. She grew up in a gated community near San Francisco when gated communities were rare and only for the super-rich. BUT her dad was mercilessly parsimonious, and Janet paid for every single thing she had. She worked as a waitress at J.B. Big Boy's to put herself through college. By the time I arrived on the scene, she had graduated and was about to start her first year of teaching at Joaquin Elementary School, across the street from where my dad's cousins Annie and Bertha lived. (Their house is still standing, the only old house surrounded by apartments.) Joaquin has since been demolished, and a very large and well-lit apartment building that we call "the great and spacious building" stands in its place.

We would walk Janet to work some mornings before any children got to school and stop and play on the playground equipment. Sometimes, I went as a volunteer to help in Janet's class--special education--especially if they were going on outings because she could always use an extra pair of hands.

Janet on the Joaquin School merry-go-round

 Janet was in our stake relief society presidency. She was very mom-like, but at the same time, needed mothering herself. Once, she was driving home to San Francisco and got in a car accident--that same stretch in Nevada where we know of soooo many accidents. She called her wealthy father and he was like "Your problem." When she got back to Provo, she was on the phone BEGGING him to just loan her the money to pay for the damage to the car and she would pay him back her next paycheck. WE knew she would--she was so careful with money, that sometimes she did not cash one check before the next one came. So Renée and I asked OUR parents to help Janet with the money she needed, and they did.

The next person to join us was Cindy Horton from Ada, Oklahoma. Cindy had very white skin with lots of freckles and blue eyes and a distinct southern drawl. She was on a Native American scholarship! She was, like Renée and I, a slacker when it came to school work. Cindy was very sweet and mostly I liked her, but I shared a room with her and AAAGH! She chewed ice ALL THE TIME. As in, if she was awake, then she was chewing on ice. Not sucking. But ice cubes in mouth, crunching them. All the time. Fridges did not have crushed ice makers. They had no ice makers at all. Ice cube trays. Ice. Crunch, crunch, crunch. Drove me NUTS!

Also. Cindy had very strongly defined ideas about right and wrong. So, when I made an apple pie the way my mother did, grinding up the apples instead of slicing them, that was "WRONG." "You are doing that the wrong way," she would say. That kind of right and wrong. That also was a little hard to take.

Cindy with my little cousin Jonathan Conrad, son of Burt and Kathi

Last of all, for one semester, we had two Arizona roommates, Karen Gardner and Kathy Tenney. Karen was second in a family that had eleven daughters and one baby son. She was engaged to Mel White. So, basically, he was our seventh roommate, because he was there more often than he wasn't there. Kathy and Karen were best friends. Kathy was going to a beauty college in Provo.

My roommate Kathy cutting the hair of Billy, Arlene's boyfriend. He was a hockey player and had lost his two front teeth in some hockey violence, so in this picture he is pushing his fake front teeth out because he was awesome like that.

Back: Karen, Mel. Front: Cindy, Kathy, our friend (First Name?) Baldwin and Janet holding me up, and then Renée.

I skipped over talking much about Renée--I know that at some point in the past, I wrote about our experience being chased at night by motorcycles. That was scary! I am not sure how to find it--I really need to index my blog! Renée was my bestie, and I loved her so much. We are still in contact over Facebook. She lives in Morro Bay, California.

Renée's job was for Provo School District. She rode on the bus for handicapped children, and also worked in the school for handicapped children which was held in the building on lower campus that is now the Provo City Library. Only it was super rundown back then.

Renée walking to work at lower campus, now Academy Square Library. (This is just a random house in the background.)

One of the children in the class Renée worked with was my second cousin Marilyn Muhlestein, daughter of Herrick and Joyce. Herrick was my dad's double first cousin since their mom and dad were siblings, as were their dad and mom, if that makes any sense. (Ida and Hyrum; Art and Mary Elizabeth). The driver of the handicapped bus was Marilyn's uncle and also my dad's double cousin Tell Muhlestein. Tell actually died, if not that year, one of the years I was at BYU. His funeral was totally awesome. But he was also pretty fabulous while he was alive! Renée loved working with him, and I was really happy to get to know him.

Marilyn was pretty fabulous herself. One time, Renée and I went to help when the handicapped children went swimming. When we were getting dressed, Marilyn watched me struggling with tying my shoes (I was a slow learner in that respect!) and then she showed me how it was to be done. Marilyn's best friend was a little girl named Shanna. Darling kids.

Marilyn is behind Shanna, who is protecting her from the evil eye of my camera.

 Here are some pictures of my first apartment:

The view from the kitchen into the living room with its lovely purple carpet. My electric piano which I later sold.

The bedroom I shared with Cindy. That is my corner. The beds were built in which could be a bit annoying because no possibility for re-arranging the furniture. And I had been known to arrange the furniture even between levels of the house at home--much to the annoyance of my parents!

Me standing in the living room wearing the outfit I made with fabric that my sister-in-law Marie Christine had brought me from France several years earlier. I finally finished it! And I WISH I HAD KEPT IT. I didn't. AARGH! Picture taken in October 1975.

I also had good friends in Arlene's roommates. Here I am with my favorite of her roomies, Irene Ball from Long Beach, California.

Irene Ball and me.

The important thing to know about Irene is that she was really, really blind. She had had several surgeries on her eyes as a baby, and wore really super thick glasses. BUT she got contacts in early 1976! And she was so pretty. No one had realized her prettiness, due to her glasses hiding so much of her face. Irene worked in the laundry room in the PE Building (because we had to wear university-issued PE attire) folding clothes. One day, her co-worker said, "I am going to put a note in this extra large T-shirt that says 'this T-shirt was folded especially for you by' with my name and phone number. You should do it, too!" So, shy Irene, totally out of character, did so. Then, utterly embarrassed with herself, she went through the pile and took her note out. But after she folded a few more shirts, she got the feeling to put the note in a particular shirt, so she did. And then left work, and though she felt embarrassed about it, it was no longer possible to find and remove it.

One day, she got a call from a young man. "This is Bruce Nordgren," he said, "Thanks for folding my T-shirt." And he asked her out! She came home on cloud nine! She had had a wonderful time, and they had talked so easily and it was all so perfect! But then he did not call her back. Months went by. She had given up hope. And then he called again and asked her out. He told her that when he got the note in the T-shirt he was engaged to a girl who was on study abroad in England. But he was intrigued with the note and asked Irene out even though he knew that, as an engaged man, he should not have done so. And then he had a way better time on the date than he expected to, and could not stop thinking about Irene. So he waited for his fiancee to come home, and then they broke up officially, and THEN he called and began to get to know Irene better.

And they are still together today. I just found Irene on Facebook, and there is a picture of her, and Bruce Nordgren comments: "Irene, you are the most beautiful woman in the WORLD!!!!!!!!!" And knowing that he said that in 2015, 40 years after they met in 1975, makes that a really sweet love story, don't you think? I do. I love their "meeting" story!

I almost completely bombed my first semester at BYU. Like, for example, my geology class. I was failing it. One day, the teacher asked if the students whose names he called would please come and see him, and he called my name.  I went to see him. He said, "You are failing this class." I said, "I know." He said, "Why didn't you come and talk to me?" (Honestly, I didn't know that I could. In High School, the teachers were always saying, "When you go to University, kid, you are on your. own. The professors won't care about you." I believed them. My geology professor shocked me by caring!) He said, "It is too late to help you get a good grade, but we CAN keep you from failing." So I got a D. Which was better than an F.

I was also taking a class from Keith Karren. Keith was from Taber. He had worked for my dad. He was an awesome teacher --Health, which was at the time a required class at BYU--but embarrassing. One day I passed him in the hall, walking along with his rather good-looking TA, and he pointed out to the young man that I was in one of the classes he TA'd for, and also that he had known me since I was a baby sitting in a high chair. You know, the kind of embarrassing things that I am guilty of saying now that I am the old lady! And if I was ever late for class, he would stop the lecture and watch me walk in, and then say "Glad you came to class today, Myrna. You know, I have known this young lady since she was in diapers!" Just the way you want to be introduced in your college classes. So...sometimes if I knew I was going to be late to class, I would decide to NOT go rather than to be late.

I was at BYU for one thing, and one thing only: I wanted to get married. I wanted babies! I was so boy crazy it was ridiculous. And I was only SEVENTEEN! I got a job cooking dinner for a bunch of the guys on the BYU hockey team. I was nuts about one or the other of them from time to time--Scotty, Bucky, Mike--those three. Sometimes they were nuts about me. We were all pretty much nuts, okay? I was at a BYU devotional with Mike, and he handed me a stick of gum, and I began chewing it, and my tooth came apart in the gum. That was a weird feeling! (That is how I got my gold molar!)

And lest you are all laughing about the cook part, I was a really good cook at the time. I slowly learned over years of cooking to burn everything! But back then, I was pretty good! It takes lots of practice to get as good at burning things as I am now!

I took a bicycling class for a required PE class. I could not ride anywhere without getting motion sickness. One time, we rode out to Utah Lake, and I got so sick, our teacher had to flag down a school bus and put me on it--all green and with the lovely lingering scent of vomit--to ride back to Provo High since I was incapable of riding my bike anymore myself. (My teacher rode double-biked back.)

So. I got such bad grades and I was head over heels over Mike the hockey player, who was from Cardston, and I just wanted to go home and stay home. I imagined that Mike would propose to me--barely 18-year old me--and we would get married and life would be oh so peachy. My mom and dad said "You idiot! Go back to school and do better this semester!" Only not in those words.

So I went back. And I was so mad about being there that my mind set was, You can make me come here but you are a thousand miles away and you can't make me go to class! So I basically did not go to class. Except for American Heritage's then-equivalent (US History for International Students) which I went to only because I hated it too much to want to ever have to repeat it. So I got a C- in that class and straight Fs in the rest. That was the semester I got put on Academic Probation.

That is so embarrassing! BUT--I have my PhD now so--there is always hope! If there was hope for me, there is hope for ANYONE! Am I right?

Socially, it was wonderful. I had felt out of place my whole life, always being best friends with my sisters and cousins and feeling socially awkward among others. Always on the edge of being in a group of friends, but never really a part of a group. At BYU, I had lots of friends. My roommates and a lot of girls in our building. Like Sharon Peigan Tailfeathers (from Calgary) and Marlena Martinez (from New Mexico) and a girl named Bonnie from Virginia who was always complaining that people in Utah are "too cultured." There was also a girl upstairs named Vicki from Cave Creek, Arizona, and she DID. NOT. LIKE. me. But by the end of the year, we were fast friends, and spent the next year as roommates. I am actually not sure how that happened, the enemies to friends thing, but I am glad it happened! She was a lovely person.

I was a volunteer usher for the Music Department. We had to wear formals to usher, and all of the concerts were Best Dress. Men in suits, women in elegant dresses. No casual wear at all. I loved that volunteer work! We only were paid in perks: free admission to all concerts, and we got to attend receptions for artists, which meant free food! Plus hobnobbing with famous musicians.

I was in BYU Women's Chorus singing second alto although I should have been a soprano. The director told me so--but I had started singing alto in Grade Five, and it was rather a habit by the ripe old age of seventeen.

A David Post

 I wish that I had individual pictures of each of the pictures in this collage. David did such a great job as Linus in "You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown" as did all of the cast members in their respective roles. Such great characterizations! I am glad that I got to see the show twice, once on opening night, and again on closing night. David got lots of family support: Bruce and I on Friday, then Aunt Judy and Uncle Wally on Saturday, Rosie and her friend Christine on Monday, Josie and Patrick on Thursday, and on Saturday me and my friend Dot, Carlie, Debby and her son Thomas and all three of Marianne's children. Those are the ones I know about.  Anyways, it was a great show, and I am glad I could go. (David is in the red striped shirt, in case you are not sure.)

A Patrick Post

You know, sometimes I neglect giving attention to Patrick. Probably true for much of his life...good thing he had those five years of attention before Josie was born...but still, he was often upstaged by events in the lives of his older siblings.

I remember how Grandma Lund would go to EVERYTHING that Jenna was in--every dance or stage event or singing event--and she was just thrilled about Jenna's accomplishments. Meanwhile, Lance was also accomplishing things, only his accomplishments were sports. GL was not very sporty, so it was hard for her to go to L's events and show the same enthusiasm she showed for J's. Or even to go.

I feel like I do that to Patrick. I go to every show David is in--I went to Guys and Dolls THREE TIMES for example. I went to Josie's YA show that many times, too. But I have only been to ONE game of ultimate disc in the many years that Patrick has been playing. I SUCK!!!!!!

So, I made up my mind that I would go to his tournament on Saturday, and stay for ALL of his games, so from 9 AM to 2 PM. That was my plan.

I meant to be out the door by 8:50, but I kept doing this and that, and soon it was past nine, and I still had not left yet. Josie was supposed to be going to a wedding, which was being held at the amphitheater at Mirror Lake.

I had no clue where that even was. So, I called to Josie to tell her that I was leaving and was she sure her ride was coming? Because Dyllen, the bride, had arranged that another friend would pick Josie up and take her to the wedding.  Well, Josie called her ride, and literally, just as I was going out the door, she called up in some dismay to say that he had LEFT WITHOUT HER.

Which made me wonder "Where IS Mirror Lake?" and I looked it up and it is ONE HOUR AND 45 MINUTES AWAY. By now it was 9:30. The wedding was at 11:00. Josie had an hour and a half to go a distance greater than that and no ride. So, chagrined because Josie was upstaging Patrick yet again, I texted him "Emergency. Can't come." And had Josie text him the details.

As usual, he was a gentleman about it. But I felt bad.

I felt especially bad because I figured we were going to drive all the way up there and miss the wedding, since weddings are not very long really, and then drive back and get back about the time that Patrick's games for the day were over. I felt like...a bad mom to Patrick, and a good mom to Josie, but a bad mom to Josie because I was feeling just a little bit resentful.

Well, the Gods of Travel were smiling on us...even at the spot where the highway went down to one lane, with the two directions taking turns depending on the cues from the flagmen, we got there just in time to be the last car going in our direction, so we didn't have to stop. The GPS told us that, once we got to Mirror Lake, we would have to leave our car on the Highway and hike in--(to exactly where?) but we drove in, and after wasting a great deal of time (because are there any signs that say "amphitheater"? No, there are not) and after asking three people, and being a bit mystified, Josie spied John, the groom, through the trees, and scurried off in that direction, and even though we were a half hour late, we were ON TIME. We sat down and five minutes later, the wedding was underway.

John and Dyllen surrounded by nature on their wedding day.

So it worked out in the end. I missed Patrick's games, but Josie did not miss Dyllen's wedding. We got there safely and back home again safely.

So, that meant that this morning, even though I had VT appointments scheduled before church, I got up and ready early and went to Patrick's first game this morning. I could only go to one, but I was there. I almost missed it,  because I went on the field and made a bee-line for the yellow shirts, and got myself all settled to watch...but none of the guys looked familiar. I asked the girl near me where I could find the Kill-joys, and she said they were wearing their white shirts today! Even though when Patrick and his friend Craig (who had stayed a couple of nights at our house because of the tournament) had been wearing yellow when they left this morning!

So, I thought I would attempt to capture the action on the field. And I pretty much missed all the best photo opportunities of Patrick at his best. Like, someone would step in the way, or the players just moved too fast for slow old me. But here are the best of the pictures I took:

Patrick is #4. The other team (the Fort Collins Colorado Hops) were lucky because they got the shade of those big trees to rest in. Our players had a canopy, but it was not very effective.

Patrick happened to turn around so I go the front of him.

The back of Patrick

Side view.

I do not even know how I got a close-up shot like this. Go me!

All these guys chasing that one white disc! (Keep your eye on #4!)

Patrick is on the left.

How does your garden grow?

Pretty good this year...and also pretty bad. All depends on which plant you are talking about...

All eight tomato plants have fruit and are growing strong and healthy.

Here you can see the whole row.

The leaves of the yellow rose are getting chewed up pretty badly again this year, but it is otherwise healthy

We had lots of volunteer portulaca, and it is doing great! The marigolds and begonias are not doing so well. Marigolds keep just dying on me this year.

Saddest of all, all three of my cucumbers are dying. One is hanging on to a vestige of life, but the others have just decided to die. I don't know what I did wrong! My friends who have theirs growing up instead of out have a thriving crop. Mine...not so good.

My pepper plants are doing great! (At least....they were...I was away for four hours today, and when I got home the tallest one didn't look so healthy. I gave it another drink...it is pretty hot the last couple of days...and I hope that helps!

The pink rose and the begonias in the planter are doing great! Some leaf damage on the rose, but not so much as on the yellow one.

The grape tomato and the geranium are growing well. So is the random ground cover. What is that, anyway? I do not know.

You can see my best impatiens plant and my best marigold and once again, all the portulaca that is thriving.

This year, instead of watering via spray, which wastes a lot of water, I have been hand watering just the individual plants. It has worked well and it also keeps the weeds down, since I am not watering them.

I remember when we first moved to Raymond, our building was next to a tiny house on a lot of land where lived two brothers who did everything in their huge garden by hand. They had no tiller. No tractor. They dug it up and fertilized it and weeded and watered it all by hand, and what a beautiful huge garden they had! I figured that I could take the same approach given how small my garden is. So far, so good. Except for the cucumbers. I am sad about them.

Question 18: Who were some of your friends in school?

Explain what your friends were like and what they are doing today if you know that.

I am getting hopelessly behind in blogging because I am SEWING again! I bought a new sewing machine months ago. Six or eight months ago. But it was brand new, so I had to set it up from scratch, and I was scared. I always used my mom's sewing machine, or bought an old, used machine that was already "broken in" and this new one scared me. I didn't get a super fancy one because I wanted to actually be able to use it, but it still scared me. I am working on a Snow White costume for Miriam. This is all because of the yellow skirt that I bought for the wedding that wasn't. I didn't know what to do with the skirt, but it looked like the perfect skirt for Snow White. I am having so much fun and also a little bit of frustration.

To add to my torment, I have SEVEN really good books waiting to be read. SEVEN. When am I going to read? When am I going to blog? I have to SEW!!!!

Plus, I am doing the HIIT program, more or less, every morning, toning my muscles; and taking a walk every night. Tonight I walked past Marge Bitter's house. She is 93. I didn't even know for sure where her house was, but now I do. She was sitting on her porch and called out "Can you help me?" She needed to take her garbage cans out but they were too heavy for her. I am glad I was walking by...I can walk by there every Thursday. I will tell her so on Sunday. (She usually has grandkids living in her basement, or great-grands, but about now they have all moved away. I did not know that. Now I do.)

So...question 18.  Who were my friends and what were they like. School friends specifically.

In elementary school, my friends revolved around the kids who rode on my bus. We sat together on the way to school and on the way home, so at school, we gravitated to each other as well. But actually, since I lived on a farm, once we were home from school, we played with our family. So I would say that all through elementary school, my best friends were my sister Arlene and my cousins Marie and Margaret. I never had a friend over after school ever. I never went to a friend's house after school ever. I know this is really different from the experience of my children. Playing with a neighborhood friend after school was normal for them. For me, just my sister, and infrequently my cousins--my uncle would usually tell them no about playing with us after school, but we almost always played with them on Saturdays.

During the months of "summer holidays" as we called July and August, then we DID play together almost every day. We made a club called The Four Seasons because Marie was born in Spring (May 18), Margaret in Summer (barely, or almost--June 20), Arlene in Fall (Sept. 21) and me in Winter (well--it was already winter in Canada, although the actrual factual date for winter is later than my Dec. 12 birthday). We played in the haystacks and the farm equipment, and the old airplanes (our dads both had one), and with baby kittens and baby chicks (at their house), and dug up mice nests, and climbed trees.

Arlene had close school friends who called her and tied up our party line, much to the annoyance of my parents, since Dad was the president of the rural phone company, and he felt he needed to set an example. Arlene's friend Pat would call, and then Arlene, Karen and Jeannie would all pick up and they would have a four-way conversation that could last a long time! I did not have these kinds of friendships.

I am going to my 40th year High School reunion in a couple of weeks. I guess I will find our where people are and what they are doing then!

Question 17: What subjects did you like the least? Explain why.

Well. When I started school, I just liked everything. The fact that I was a big girl and going to school was totally awesome. It had been boring, being the only child at home, going to my mother and saying "I am bored" and having her list all the work I could do to stave off boredom!

But I did have one problem at school: I could not hold the scissors properly. Here is a random internet hand demonstrating the proper way to hold scissors:

I could not do this. My mother had tried to teach me, and I am sure my sisters did, too, but I just could not grasp the concept at all. So I invented my own way of doing it, and it worked for me. This was an important skill for a little girl whose favorite activity was playing with cut-outs. Those were the paper people we cut out of old Simpsons Sears and Eatons catalogs.  When the new catalogs came, and mom passed the old ones to us girls for cutting out--that was a happy day!

Unfortunately, cutting is also an essential skill in Grade One, but in school, they like you to do things "the right way" and not some made-up way. Thus ensued frustration for me (didn't she know that I had tried to hold the scissors "the right way" for YEARS. Like maybe three years. I don't know. It felt like many years to me!) and for Mrs Ellingson. Because just as stubbornly as she insisted that I must learn to do it "the right way", I stubbornly kept on doing it my own way.  And guess what, I WON! She eventually gave up trying. Because after all, my way was working for me. I was fast, neat and accurate with the scissors.

Here is my hand all ready to cut:

You will notice that I do not put my fingers through any of the holes in the handle of the scissors. I hold on to one side, and use my thumb like a lever to move the other side. It may be weird, but it works for me.

My cutting skills were brought to my attention last Saturday. I was sitting in the living room with Primary music stuff literally everywhere....that is the way I do projects, just spread them out all over the floor and sit on the floor and do whatever I am doing. My nephew Michael then texted me and said " Might stop by for a bit..." which is not super definite. So I just kept on making my huge mess.  Then I got a text from Angelynn, and it said, "Are you home?" I said, "Yes." She said, "I am walking over right now to meet Michael." Okay. Well, I said okay to her, but I also looked around me at all my papers in need of cutting and said, okay to them. Now what? I was definitely going to be having company. But I also really needed to get all my cutting done. So I continued. Angelynn got there first, and she found a tiny place to perch and was talking to me while I worked. Then Michael joined us--he had been downstairs talking to Patrick for awhile--and sat in the video chair and we visited and I cut, and then suddenly they were both intrigued by how I hold the scissors. They had to look closely, and then try holding the scissors my way. They found it awkward! I told them I got that same reaction a lot at school!

Miss Nishima tried to "fix" my cutting again in Grade Two, but again, she gave up because though it might look awkward to others, and while it might be awkward to others to hold their scissors like I do, it works for me, and I have good cutting skills.

My most hated subject in school was P.E. or physed as we called it. Physical Education was the correct terminology.  I sooooooo sucked at anything sports related. There are balls in P.E. classes. Balls are intended to hit me in the face, apparently. That is what they do best. (Patrick did not believe me about this, but when he was on the UVU junior volleyball team while in high school, he witnessed it! Balls just leave courts and smash into my face. It is like my face is a ball magnet.) The only parts of P.E. that I liked were the parts that were generally hated by everyone else: calisthenics and dancing. I could do exercises. I could dance. I could not hit or catch or throw balls.

Dodge ball was a frequent choice in P.E. class. For a ball magnet like me, the only good thing about dodge ball was that I would get hit early and get to sit out until we started a new game. When the weather was good, we played baseball. Two people would be chosen as team captains and they would take turns choosing who would be on their teams. I was so bad at baseball that I would be chosen dead last. The most unpopular people. People who SMELLED. They all got chosen before me. Because everyone knew that I was useless on their team. I knew it the most.

I was plagued by the P.E. problem all the way through Grade Ten, which was the last year I was required to take it. Fortunately, by then my teacher had been Mrs. Lois Duffee for several years. She had been my homeroom teacher, and she knew me well. She and I liked each other. And it was clear to her, having tried to teach me P.E. for three or  four years, that I just sucked at it. I just did. So, in Grade Ten, I would go to P.E., she would mark me present, and then I would go to the library and read or write stories or do homework. In exchange for this, she gave me a C, and we called it good. Thank you, Mrs. Duffee! Because you know what, it is okay to be uncoordinated and to suck at sports, and we both knew it, but the other students were less than kind, and I had been the butt of jokes for years. Like since Grade One. So, bless you Mrs. Duffee, for allowing me a respite from the teasing. Thank you.

Associated with P.E. was recess, where the same sorts of activities occurred. Running and involving balls. The worst, absolute worst, part of recess was Red Rover. Here is a random internet picture of children playing this most hated of games:

In case you need a description of Red Rover, here is what Wikiipedia has to say about it, though edited by me a bit: "The game is played between two lines of players, usually around thirty feet apart. The game starts when the first team, calls a player out, using a line like "Red rover, red rover, send [name of player on opposite team] right over", sometimes sung. The immediate goal for the person called is to run to the other line and break the chain (formed by the linking of hands). If the person called fails to break the chain, this player joins the other team. However, if the player successfully breaks the chain, this player may select either of the two "links" broken by the successful run, and take them to join his original team. The other team then calls out "Red rover" for a player on the opposing team, and play continues."
"Red Rover, Red Rover, let Myrna come over!" You see, I was small in stature, and so I would get called way too often because I could not break through the chain anywhere. And I also was a weak link in the chain, because almost anyone could break though by hitting my arm hard. I would go in from recess with sore arms from being a broken link and sore legs from running and a sore midsection from slamming into other people's arms. I totally hated that game.

In general, due to my clumsiness, if I did attempt to play at recess, I would fall and get hurt. This is what I wrote about that in my "Treasures of Truth" book:  "The worst thing about Grade Two was that I was so little, and would always fall and hurt myself. My friends would always say, "Oh, better take her to Arlene!" At first, Arlene didn't mind, but it happened so often that she got really mad, and told me to quit bothering her. After that, every time I even scratched myself, and everyone would say, "Let's take her to Arlene," I'd cry 'cause I was so scared, and say "No, please don't take me to Arlene!" But since I was crying, they'd drag me to poor Fi. (This was my nickname for Arlene.) I was very little and couldn't make them leave me, 'cause they were bigger!"

The other bad thing about recess was the cold. It had to be -20 F before we could have an indoor recess. Teachers said that we needed to get exercise, and that was true, but it was too cold for people like me. I was a huddler. Huddle as close to the building as possible for warmth. We got our exercise by shivering.

We were lucky in Alberta, because swimming was a part of our curriculum. We were bussed to the pool for several weeks each year in elementary school to swim and/or learn to swim. This was a much loved part of the school year. Even I was excited, the first year! However, my small size again got in the way. At the shallowest part of the pool, if I stood on the tips of my tippy-tiptoes, I could barely keep my mouth and nose above water. There was no relaxing for me--others could do the beginning to swim exercises, and then just stand and relax when it wasn't their turn. For me, every single moment was an effort, and I was soon completely terrorized. As I got taller, you would think it would get better, but by then my inability to float was making itself apparent (my cousin Harold could not float either, but he at least knew how to swim under water) and then my general lack of coordination and complete lack of confidence meant that I never learned to swim. And so the teasing ensued. And so I hated it.

In Grade Five, though I LIKED scienc class with Mr. Wentz, he MORTIFIED me. He held up my science notebook as a bad example. He turned the pages and showed all the class how this person had scribbled out words instead of erasing, and how this person had such messy writing. He did not say my name, but I knew it was mine. I was so ashamed and embarrassed to be the bad example.

My writing was horrible. We had a whole class devoted to learning penmanship, beginning in Grade Four. Cursive writing was introduced in Grade Three, but by Grade Four, we were being taught it earnestly. Mrs. Grace Shaw was the writing teacher. She was appalled by my messy, terrible penmanship. I smeared ink all over the page and all over my hands, and my writing was illegible. "Your sister Arlene had the best writing of anyone in my class!" she would say, "You should go home and ask her to help you." Even my mother despaired of my writing.  I had to do the same thing with writing that I had done with cutting: invent my own way of doing it. By junior high, I had come up with a way to print-write, and my writing was neat and legible.

I loved math all the way through elementary school and into junior high. I have mentioned that Lyle Keister was the math teacher for grades seven and eight, and I really liked him. He was a kind and good teaacher. But sometime in grade eight, I stopped paying attention. I thought math was easy, and I had it nailed, or something. But one day I woke up from my daydreaming and realized that I. Had. No. Clue. Mr Keister talked to me about it, "What is happening to your math grade?" he asked all concerned. I don't know. I just stopped listening for too long, and was lost. I went from A to C that year, and then baredly scraped by in Grade Nine. Mr. Thompson, my math teacher that year, assigned a geometric design that counted for 50 points. Mine was fabulous, if I do say so myself. I kept it and had it for years but I don't know where it is anymore, or I would take a picture of it. It took me hours to do, and it was all color coded in greens, pinks, purples and blues with my lovely Laurentian pencil crayons. And I colored hard, so that the fill was complete. It was actually really gorgeous. And I got 100% on that assignment, thus saving my math grade!

Math in Grade Ten, fortunately my last required math class, was a nightmare. Mr. Baldwin was a very large obese man with a great big beard. If you asked a question, he would invariably shake his head vigorously in disbelief at your stupidity and sigh heavily before saying the same thing he had said before in exactly the same way. Which was no help. He also called on people to write their equations on the board, which was wonderful public humiliation for people whose equations were almost always wrong. I barely passed that class, but a pass is a pass. Onward and upward!

I am seriously SO THANKFUL I grew up when I did. I would not SURVIVE today's education. I would be one of the children left behind by the No Child Left Behind act. I have done JUST FINE without math, thank you very much. You can call me Dr. Layton, all you math geniuses.

Science was sometimes a problem for me, not because of the subject, but sometimes the teacher. I submit to you Frank Sudol as an example. While I liked him as a person, as an actor, as a director of school plays, I did not like him as a teacher. What a waste of time. First of all, he loved to gross us (the squeamish people) out by feeding live mice to the owl or the snake. And then he would sit and talk, mostly with the boys, about whatever. Maybe sometimes it had to do with science? But mostly, not.

Unknown woman in Saskatchewan (where Mr. Sudol moved after Taber) and Frank Sudol

 Mr. Sudol loved attention. You can imagine, I am sure, that he would make a wonderful Cowardly Lion in the Wizard of Oz or a wonderful Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof. And you would be right. He was a stupendous actor. He was also, apparently "Frank as the Dean of Woodturners, Frank as President of Christmas Tree Growers, Frank as Involved Citizen and advocate, Frank as Artist, Frank as Schoolteacher, Frank as Naturalist, Frank as Friend, Frank as Husband and Father"--this from a talk at his funeral.But he was not my idea of what a science teacher should be. I hated his class. Loathed it. All I learned was...nothing. I already knew that live mice were caught and eaten by their predators, thank you very much.

The other class I hated was Social Studies with Mr. Peter Lenz. He was another teacher who could have had "It is all about ME" stamped on his forehead. I went to his class only because I needed to be marked present, since our presence was a large part of our grade. He mostly read to us from Playboy. "Playboy is a very intellectual magazine," he would say. "Since you are too young to read it for yourselves, I will read it to you. It is a very important part of social studies." And he also spent a great deal of time talking and laughing with the boys in the class about inanities. Waste of time.

So really...I think those were the only things that I hated about school. Besides unkindness and cliquey-ness. The subjects themselves, I liked just fine. Except for P.E. always and Math after Grade Seven.

Question 16 (Part 2: Junior and Senior High School): What were your favorite subjects in school? Explain why.

I actually wrote some things about these grades, and they are in my "Treasures of Truth" book. But, truthfully...besides listing what classes I took and who my teachers were, there is not much about what subjects I liked. All of my writing is about people and relationships. So, clearly, those things were important to me. But since I do know who my teachers were, I can list those. Some people like lists; some people find them boring. So read them, or skip over them. Your choice.

Grade Seven
Homeroom: Mr. Bill Duffee
Social: Mr. Chuck Wallace
Science: Miss Gladys Barrie
Health and Sewing: Mrs. Caroline Robinson
Cooking: Mrs. Miriam Thompson
Math: Mr. Lyle Keister
Physed: Mrs. Nancy (Kettles) Shotz
Lang & Lit: Miss Margaret Enns
Drama: okay. I have listed John Wallace. Who is that? I think that Chuck Wallace taught that, too.
Band: Mr. Milt Iverson

I know that I still liked math at this point. Mr. Keister was a good teacher. He was kind but had high expectations. Miss Enns had come to our school after teaching for many years in India.. She was an okay teacher, I guess, but it was easy to upset her, which meant some of the boys made that their daily ambition. I think she only lasted at our school one year. I loved Mrs. Robinson, who had been my Sunday School teacher, and who named her youngest daughter Myrna during the time I was in her class. (That Myrna grew up to be Myrna Purser, who is the mother of one of Josie's friends--a girl named Alex Purser.)

Grade Eight
Homeroom and Physed: Mrs. Lois Duffee (Mr. Bill Duffee's wife)
Social: Mr. Eldon Litchfield (aka "the colonel")
Science: Miss Gladys Barrie
Math: Mr. Lyle Keister
Lang & Lit: Mrs. Nadine Nielsen
Music: Miss Anne Walker
Band: Mr. Milt Iverson
Cooking: Miss Darlene Herget
Sewing: Mrs. Deveney (Platt) Walters

See, my favorites are about people, not subjects, really. So, I really liked Mrs. Nielsen. I actually came to consider her a friend. And of course, I have always liked language and literature! Miss Walker was hard to like, so while I would normally like music, not so much in Grade Eight. I liked sewing, but I ran into a problem with Mrs. Walters. My friend Shannon Pickett was in my class. Shannon had really, really bad eyes, and she happened to choose rather bumpy fabric. Between her blindness and the fabric, she was having trouble cutting out her pieces. So I cut them for her. and Mrs. Walters tried to stop me, and I refused to stop and then gave her a piece of my mind about how unkind she was being to Shannon. Because she did indeed say super rude and unkind things.

Grade Nine
Homeroom: Mrs. Dora Brown (who was also in my ward)
Social: Mr. Eldon Litchfield
Science: Mr. Frank Sudol
Lit: Mrs. Laurie Chomany
Lang & Reading: Mrs. Sally Chant
Drama: Mrs. Sharon Jones
Sewing: Miss Loya Stonehocker
French 10: Mr. Ron Murphy
Math: Mr. Joe Thompson
Physed: Mrs. Lois Duffee

I totally loved drama with Mrs. Jones, who was young and pretty with waist-length blonde hair. We did a play which I had the script of for years--something about a bride. I was not usually one chosen for a major part, but when we did the auditions, I was really good, so I got the part of the bridesmaid. It was a silly comedy. I know that Heather Addy got the lead, as the bride. I don't remember who else got what parts. But it was fun!

I don't even remember what class I gave up in order to receive permission to take French a year early, because it really was only for high school. But I got to take it, and I loved French. Oh...I gave up band!

Grade Ten
First semester
Typing: Mr. Aruthur Anderson (my friend Dorothy's dad)
IMC: Mrs. Dorothy Holtman
Driver's Ed: Mr. Ron Murphy
Math: Mr. Don Baldwin
Social: Mr. Peter Lenz

Second semester
French 20: Mr. Ron Murphy
Bio 10: Miss Anne-Marie Bullis
Physed 10: Mrs. Lois Duffee and Miss Julie Kovaks
Art TA: Mrs. Dora Brown (with Margaret Toth and Carole Ohashi also as TAs)
English: Mr. Bill Morrison

I loved working in the IMC, which I did with David Cichy's older brother--Ed Cichy. Ed died young, probably about 30 years ago. That was pretty much the only class I liked that semester. We ran off papers for teachers--there was no such thing as photocopying. We used a mimeograph machine or spirit masters on the machine that printed in purple. We did have a xerox machine that was used rarely--super expensive to use. We ran off SO MUCH MUSIC. Blows my copyright conscious mind now!

This is a spirit duplicator. It used alcohol which wet the purple pictures and transferred the image to the paper.

This is a drawing of a mimeograph machine, which used black ink which stained badly, so we had to be soooooo careful.

 I pretty much liked all my second semester classes. Mr. Morrison had asked me if my sister was Colleen or Arlene Conrad. I said they were both my sisters. He said, "Well, if you are like Colleen then I am going to LOVE having you in my class. But if you are like Arlene, then I won't like you at all. She talks to her friends too much." Mr. Morrison helped to stretch me as a reader. I loved his class. By the way, he was a black man. The only black people I knew were teachers. I grew up totally respecting black people, because I thought of them as intelligent and educated people. (Mr. Mathis, brother of the singer Johnny Mathis, had been one of the music teachers at our high school, but he left before I got there.) The whole US race problems were an unfathomable mystery to me--we would hear about lynchings by the KKK on the radio, and I would think of Mr. Morrison and Mr. Mathis and think...why???????

Grade Eleven
First Semester
French 30: Mr. Ron Murphy
Sociology: Mr. Ron Murphy
Drama: Mrs. Hazel West (aunt to my good friend Joan)
Music: Mr. Malcolm Edwards

Second Semester
English: Mrs. Hazel West
Socail: Mr. Eric Johnson (he grew up in my ward, son of the town pharmacist)
Drama: Mrs. Hazel West
TA at Central School: supervised by Mr. Dave Oswald, the vice-principal and school librarian

I will share what I actually wrote at the end of Grade Eleven about Grade Eleven. Words in (parentheses) are added by me today:

"I really hated school when I first started this year. I had just gotten out of the hospital after having a tonsillectomy, and I felt just terrible for months, and I couldn't talk right. I had the grossest--in size--set of tonsils in Dr. Wolfe's history. Half my mouth was gone when he was finished with me. (Actually, he kind of botched that surgery among others and later lost his surgeon's license. He took out most of my soft pallet, so I had to relearn to talk and to swallow. To this day, I swallow weirdly. Apparently, all my children learned to swallow incorrectly because I was their example. They CAN swallow normally, but learned to do it wrong; whereas, if I swallow normally, liquid including chewed-up food goes up my nose.) I had lost 20 pounds--down to 85 lbs!--which made me super-skinny and very self-conscious. The first semester, me and Ann Bareman had two classes together, and we had a really neat relationship. If it hadn't been for Ann, and Margaret and Marie (my cousins--Arlene had graduated), I know I would've quit school. I mean, I had to re-learn to talk, to breathe, and to swallow. It was rough!

I really enjoy drama. The first semester our class prepared a light show using transparencies and music: Jesus Christ Superstar, Morning has Broken, Day by Day, In Dulci Jubilo, Joy (Jesu Joy of man's desiring, but the Apollo 100 version.)  Everyone really liked it--although when all the lights went off, the kids in the gym screamed and acted really rude. Kids will be kids!

This semester, we are preparing an end of year assembly. I am in charge of the black light end of it. In the process of preparing this assembly, I have even bought a piano! (This piano was the one we had in High River. Our class painted all the hammers in flourescent paint--green, yellow, pink, orange--and then someone--I think Ronalee Bennett--played "The Entertainer" on it, and it was a very cool effect with the black light.)

This year, I participated in the school musical, Calamity Jane. I didn't really enjoy it--it was rather a bore--but it was a good experience.

Working at Central this year is really fun. Since I work in the library, I know almost everyone. Today (June 7th) was Central Trackmeet. I helped with the seven year old boys. It was really fun. I just love kids!"

Grade Twelve
First Semester
Social 30: Mr. Don Ferguson (such an awesome man. The Junior High in Taber is named for him now.)
TA Central: under Bessie Hamman and Caroline Robinson
Drama 30: Hazel West
Occupations 10: by correspondence from Alberta Education
English 30: by correspondence from Alberta Education

I wrote NOTHING about my classes. Only about hockey players. Taber had gotten a hockey school, and we had Junior A players from all around the country, all attending our high school. I had crushes on several of them. One of them, Greg Koper, was also an accomplished Ukrainian dancer, and he did the choreography for the school play, which was Fiddler on the Roof. I was not in the play, because I graduated early, but I came back and did the make-up for the play. I was an excellent make-up artist back in the day. I did all the character make-up, not the straight make-up. So warts, facial hair, ghostly apparitions--that was my responsibility. So, my two favorite characters, the ladies in Tevye's dream sequence were mine to create faces for.