The Adventures of Thotman

Who says there were no "wonder years"?

Today is October 7 2009,  41 years since my neighbor was shot and killed in a rice paddy in Viet Nam. I was 14...he was 20 and each year since then I recall his funeral where his picture sat on top of his closed casket at Berg Mortuary on Provo's Center street...Oh my, the emptiness that comes each year as I try to honor him with something, a visit to the WALL 41W line 23  ...either in real life  or via the cyber wall which helps me recall the letters I often touch when I find his name in stone...or the telling somthing about him to some total stranger who probably couldnt care less...

He was a member of the 25th infantry...more specifially the Second Battalion, 12th Infantry, Bravo Company. He died just 5 miles NE of TRANG BANG which is just five miles north west of the CU CHI military base which is about 8 miles north west of Saigon(Ho Chi Min City) ...Each year I look up his name and discover a little more about his last two months on this earth...from his arrival in Nam in August to his death just 2 months later.   

Aaron was a roly-poly kid with a scruffy little beard and a penchant for spinning a yarn to those of us naive enough to buy it all...how often we played "army" in the woods north of Provo along the river, rode bikes to the canyon or floated the rapids thru the river bottoms.  

THIS YEAR after looking up Trang Bang on Google to locate the appx area of his death...I came across the eight weeks of NEWS published by his 25th Infantry division in the "TROPIC LIGHNING NEWS".   From the first of August ... http://www.25thida.org/TLN/tln3-32.htm#v3n32p6a  

thru the week before he died...   http://www.25thida.com/TLN/tln3-40.htm  ...the pictures are HAUNTING

Especially interesting to me was the mention of his company in late August...the White Warriors of BRAVO and Charlie companies..  http://www.25thida.com/TLN/tln3-35.htm#v3n35p6d   

Learning something more about him and telling someone seems to be such a meager form of rememberance...but his parents are gone...his sister and brother old now...not really wanting to re live the pain.  And so I take the time each year to think about my friend...to try to honor him in some small way. Getting out a Machette he once owned, and My telling you may be all anyone does... 

I once wrote a blog about him...this year..I just looked at google maps...read the 25th division news for 8 weeks...revisited the cyber wall...and laughed about our last joint family vacation together...especially our midnight stroll thru the streets of Elko NV in the shadow of the STOCKMAN'S Casino lights...  

He was always so good to me. 

My blog about him...from a few years ago...called DEATH of a SOLDIER.   http://thotman.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!90B6042A632BD161!108.entry

As I drove up 400 east today I passed my alma mater, Orem High School.  In the parking lot a brand spankin' new High School is nearly completed. I realized that if I did not stop, I might never walk those halls again in my life, so I pulled over into a new parking lot where the west lawn used to be and entered in the north Northwest A-hall doors, near the little theatre where we were initiated into the National Honor Society. I turned east into E-hall finding  my old calculus class, my physics class and Al Davis's E-20 recreation class and life learning lab.  Funny how things had changed so little. I came to my sophmore locker E626 at the intersection of the middle cross hall... that I shared with my best friend ever... Brent (see blog 54)  I stood there looking at it for nearly a minute thinking back on the day we first arrived there and dialed the combination, making it ours for the year. I peered out the east door of E hall, and to my surprise an old classmate of mine REED was there on the sidewalk directing a maintenence crew. When he saw me he smiled and asked if I had seen the NEW SCHOOL...mostly I am just interested in seeing the OLD one I laughed.  I then walked back down to the cross hall and walked south to D hall. I turned right toward A hall and walked past Lindstroms class, Morris' class and the library. I even looked in to see that there was no longer a table where I spend my study hall hours during my senior year.  I got to the student lounge where the tables and chairs had been replaced with permanent benches...otherwise things were nearly IDENTICAL to what they were when I used to play chess every lunch hour when I was a junior.

 

I walked back down D hall to the east and exited onto the patio like entrance of the NEW Basketball arena, which has replaced the Boys A-gym as the coluseum of the mighty Tigers.  I turned back to see Mr Delaneys and Mrs Hendersons classrooms then thru cross hall to C hall where I had Allred for history and Sondrup for health..and where I used to sit with Laurie my junior year flame.  As I walked down C hall I noticed that the out door garden between B and C halls had been covered and converted to a dance recital area...arriving at A hall I turned left and walked past the offices to the Auditorium where pictures of all the student body presidents since 1956 hang above the trophy cases in the main school entrance.  I walked past the teachers lounge and thot about Al DAVIS (see blog 40) and walked into the lunch room as I did so many times in my three years at OHS.  I recalled the best christmas dance ever when I was a senior...I took Mari and it was snowing.  The lunch room had been magically transformed into an elegant setting with magnificent decorations and the perfect charm and music.   I walked across to the enterence to the auditorium and put my hand on the chair where I sat during that sixth grade field trip to see the Unsinkable Molly Brown.  It was on that day that I caught the High School bug and longed to be there as a student.

 

I walked out the band room door behind the auditorium, only to notice that they had added a new band room onto the east end of the lunch room...hmmm The open cement patio area between the school and the GYMS were we gathered to sigh year books and load the busses was part construction zone and part....oh wow...the drafting room, the metal shop and the auto mechanics shop were GONE, replaced by the NEW building...and A-GYM was demolished except the entrance over to the B-gym wall...First I went over to the wood shop and peered in the door much as I had that day when it was my FIRST high school class...I then walked around the end of the  Gym building, and followed a small corridor which traveled roughly thru the middle of where the  old main gym floor used to be..gone were the locker rooms...I paused just a few feet from where my old football locker used to be, and where the tape room guarded the confines known only to the athletes...then I walked around one arm of the new building to the track and the bleachers west of the football field.   I found my way thru the fence on the south end near where the ticket booth used to be, and walked along the field on OUR side reliving days on both sides of the track...cross country runs, pep rallys, repelling from the bleachers, and walking around the track when breaking up was so very hard to do...I then went .north towards the new basket ball Arena. I poked my head in the door to see them refinishing the floor. It wasnt there when I was a student so seeing such a beautiful basketball facility, built right on the lawn where we used to get in shape for SKIING in recreation and where the girls used to do archery was a new experience.  It is just beautiful...  

 

I walked back west down E hall to A hall then turned right to cross the drive way and entered the seminary building.  I looked into Bro Smoots classroom then walked in and sat down at my old desk in Bro Lant's room...and recalled that year of 4th period seminary with 8 others ... and some of the best discussions you can imagine about life, god and finding happiness in this existance. After a few minutes I got up and walked back thru the seminary building to places where I had spent any time at all... I exited near my van and looked back on the building that in a few months will be leveled and replaced by the new one now being completed on South Campus.   its strange how an hour strolling thru the memories as high school student can make you want to be younger than you are... What I would give to laugh today like I did then...to be that carefree and optimistic about the future.  Ah but then it has mostly turned out as wonderfully as I thot it would back then.  As I backed out and drove away it was like I was leaving a hallowed spot...where my soul was free to learn and love and discover who exactly I am... I kinda miss the rush those days brought me...well back to life...theres work to be done..places to go...people to meet...

 

Memories of my father CONTINUED----------- PART II

Dad made sure I witnessed a lot of baseball, football and basketball magic. I especially liked it when Nemelka and Congden and Limo and Cosic dazzled us with their wizardry and hustle, defined best when they ran four or five rows into the crowd, shot from the top of the key, or passed the ball behind their backs... without even lookin'.

 Tho, dad didn’t like staying up until 2 am, he seemed not to mind getting UP at 2 am…especially when it meant a day of fishin’ down near Loa, at Forsythe reservoir or in the Bicknell bottoms, we would drive for 3 hours so we would arrive before the sun came up and fish until our hearts were content. I can’t even tell you how many hundred nights we spent fishing the Provo river.

 

 

 

 I play the piano. Mom took me to lessons but dad made me practice.  He would come home from grocery shopping and sit down to listen to me. Play me a concert he would say as he named some of my most recently learned songs…like Ebb Tide or Ally Cat or Cherish.  After I finished playing the piano, we would watch a TV movie, play cards, chess, checkers and gamble RED Twizzlers licorice or Cherry nibs until one of us owned them all or ended up eatin’m.    Sometimes we would go to the Movies at the Uinta, the Academy, or the Paramount. He liked war movies, comedies, and westerns, and he liked Cary Grant a lot.  He also loved to go shoot pool, he liked rotation, and I liked 8 ball, because when we played 9 ball or rotation, he was TROUBLE, with a capital T and that rhymes with P and that stands for Pool…(I think mom took me to that play when he was working away from home once) 

 

We liked to go hiking too. Whether it was climbing to the top of Timp, or to the Y, then on to Maple flats, We always had a great time. After arriving at the summit, we would sit enjoying the view and talk for hours.

 

COS bought me my fist skis, but NOT my golf clubs, which he made me earn, …  Well, he did by me my first real golf bag and donated the canvas for the first one I made.   He loved to Bowl with me or pot bowling with the boys at Regal Lanes. He bowled for the letter carriers team and had a 178 average.  When I really got into bowling, I would roll from 25 to 50 games a week at 3 for a dollar…and to earn money, he taught me to keep score for the major tournaments at Regal where I would earn 2 dollars to score 4 guys for 3 games. He taught me that you don’t add 19 but instead, you ad 20 and subtract 1)...

 

We would go shooting in the west desert out along the ole pony express trail then drive down thru skull valley clear to Delta or go looking for fossils or out thru the sand dunes…not with ATVs or to picnic, or to celebrate a holiday but to learn the geology or history of  where we went….Dad LOVED   “I don’t know roads”…We went down hundreds of roads just to see where they went.

 

Work…COS decided that everyone needed to learn how to work…and so he made me work!   Mowing the lawn, taking care of the flower beds, cleaning along fences or ditches He always bought REEL mowers rather than rotary types because they were self propelled. In those days it took him an hour and a half to mow our lawn….It took me an hour and ten minutes. He would mow meticulously around the trees, flowers on the ditch banks and trim along the sidewalks. He would leave me a list of jobs EVERY DAY which started with his nick name for me RUSH, long before Limbaugh  The only thing that made him mad is if I didn’t have those jobs done BEFORE he got home from work.. Even if I had only one more pass to finish the lawn, he would not be happy.  Get it done EARLY he would sternly reprimand me. .  When I got to be 18 he bought a riding mower and I got a full time Job in addition to school, which meant I semi retired from the lawn mowin’ business.  .

 

I loved working WITH dad. We had 4 hour irrigation turns at 9 am. 5 pm or 1 am, we would set up the boards with rebar pegs to direct the flow of water and flood the entire place. I loved playing in the water as a child almost as much as I liked leanin’ on my shovel with dad and just talkin’ while we watched the flow (as if he ever stood still that long, he would be scooping water onto the high places or hooking up the pump to pull more water from the ditch.   

He bought a hay baler from Simon Benson on the rock canyon road, and I began a five year odyssey of balin’ hay for dad and the neighbors. I learned that with each click I would make a quarter, and I often heard as many as three clicks a minute.  I am a businessman today, rather than an hourly worker or a salaried employee, because of the lessons I learned about finding clients and getting paid for what I actually accomplished, or doing accounting in my head a click at a time. while baling hay with my dads old Allis Chalmers tractor and that International 45 model open top bailer.

 

I developed a mechanical mind, and learned how to fix broken hearts and the crack of dawn because of the opportunities my dad provided me.   We always had time to visit my fathers friends…The Jameses, Cliff, Beaver, Irvin and Muriel, Nathan, Kamel,  Sweed, Clair, Wally, Charlie, Danner, Murdock , Ted, Van, or Uncle Jack and a host of other NEIGHBORS, or those he knew from his many years in Provo. 

 

We added onto the house, built his barn, picked cherries peaches and pears at the orchard he bought from Cliff on the S-bend of the canyon road, or apples and plums in his orchard behind the house. He loved growing a garden, between the trees, before he decided to surround the trees with lawn. Once when the garden was in full production, our Neighbor’s (Howard Stutz) cow got out after we had just irrigated,  and it walked down one row of dads garden eating every cabbage plant in the row. When  dad saw what had happened I expected him to blow a gasket, but he liked Howard, so he just said He trusts his cows too much… he needs to have a better fence…and  I never have liked cabbage all that much anyway.

 

 

 

 

What dad DID like was flowers and trees, although he cut down that weeping willow without even sheddin’ a tear,  and he didn’t much like spraying three or four times a year, even tho Jack was good enough to let us use his sprayer for the fruit trees, I used to drive the tractor and he would walk around with the nozzle spraying for aphids, worms and coddling moth,  then hit the flower beds to get the ants. ..My dad was an ant’s worst enemy. He could spot a bug from a hundred yards and sprayed and dusted with cloridane and cleaned constantly to make sure there was NOTHING to attract them. 

 

He was a Petunia man, a Marigold man, a Snapdragon man. He liked roses, especially the climbing kind, and irises of all colors. He liked Columbine, and Tulips, and Lilies and Chrysanthemums, and Sweet Williams, and Butter Cups, and Blue Bells and Pinks and Zineas which he pronounced ZEENYAS…(did you know you can tell if a man is from Missouri by how he says the word Greasy…if he’s from St Louis he will say GREEEZZY) …but he wasn’t much for Gladiolas  or Peonies . I recall times when he worked construction away from home he would bring me back little sawdust flower boxes that you punched with a pencil and watered until they sprouted. One year I used the Marigolds and Zinnias he’d brought me, for the flower show and won a 1^st place  ribbon, which he said wasn’t near as pretty as the flowers.

 

We mucked out the barn, hauled hay, painted fences and the gable ends, went to the auction, and hauled coal for our stoker furnace. We pruned, fixed fence, fed the cattle and horses, pumped water with the pitcher pump, picked fruit, hauled hay and put it into the loft. We mowed, raked and bailed alfalfa, mowed the orchard, sickled anything we didn’t like , picked up rocks EVERY YEAR from the same ground. (I think he grew them), cleaned ditch, picked up fallen fruit, trimmed the shrubs, weeded and raked the rock driveway, swept the blacktop,   plowed and shoveled snow, raked up from the irrigation or leaves in the fall...Clean out the furnace, made tons of trips to the dump, polish my shoes, hose down the parking area, water the flowers, move the hoses. We washed and waxed our cars, and detailed the inside. And when our work was thru, he wanted to help mom with her dusting vacuuming, even washing the ceilings or walls when they needed it.  .   .

 

Clarence was a voracious reader… he read all the time, National Geographic, Newsweek, or Time, cover to cover and ALL the back issues and TONS of books and he loved the history channel.  He knew politics but was not political…he was spiritual but not religious… he was extremely intelligent but knew how to shoot the breeze on any level…from highly educated people to the mentally handicapped. but  NEVER disrespectfully…The only ones he avoided were the self righteous and relatives.. which lead to his being afflicted with the DENNY”S virus…or better said a victim of the Denny’s principle…That means if I or a family member told him anything he wouldn’t believe it or would ignore it completely, but if he heard the exact same advice from a wino or some homeless guy at the counter at Denny’s it was gospel truth and he would act on it immediately.

 

He was as comfortable talking with a professor as he was with our mentally challenged neighbor Dennis Ferguson,  He never demeaned or made fun of him, but he had a hard time to keep from laughing when  he talked to ole FERG at Sambo’s and asked him what he was doing….. Teachin’ the Police, Dennis said, Oh y’are huh?  dad nodded,  what are you teachin’m?  How to duck bullets, Fergie  proudly proclaimed. Dad with his poker face asked, and HOW do you do that?  Dennis bobbed his head up and down in a jerking motion, to illustrate. Well, I hope they learn how before someone shoots at them, dad said, bearly able to hide his delite.  - He liked people a lot, and he had totally mastered the art of shooting the bull.  

 

 

Now to finish up, if you are like most people,  you are at least a little curious about my dad’s religious views, …..so I will share them with you as much as I know.. He believed in God. I  learned this after he took me to the funeral of Tom James young son who died in a horribly tragic death with some kind of explosive at a bus stop…On the ride home after we had expressed our sympathies and heard Tom share his convictions about seeing his son again after this life, …I asked dad about his view of being with loved ones after this life…It was a good conversation…he knew a lot, and he made sense- mostly he didn’t believe life just ended…but that there must something beyond…he wondered out loud HOW  something so complex and wonderful as PEOPLE or the love between them could just Vanish…It made sense to me. And I think he mentioned wanting to see his mother again someday. …And to this day I think such thots are at the foundation of my hopes….

 

When  my horse Prince died…I understood his feelings about the sanctity of  LIFE…I  think I have wept  only at the death of my grandfather, my father, my uncle Jack,  when Aaron Ferguson got killed in Viet Nam…the first bird I shot with a bb gun…and over a little kitty dad accidently backed over and yes.. PRINCE…dad knew how much I loved that colt, born the day after the last snow melted…He was becoming a magnificent horse…but he must have eaten  something that stopped up his digestion and he died on a cold November evening a day before it snowed.  After dad paid a lot of money to have the vet come twice…Prince died… he came to tell me the bad news… I understood in his eyes that he was hurting too…maybe he hurt more for ME than for the loss of  my horse, but I sensed a deep pain in dad…I knew I was not alone in my sorrow.

 

 

After I received my mission call to Italy, despite him saying  that he did not want me to go on a mission, I arrived home one evening to find him sitting in the family room with my Stake President and his first counselor. I could see by the look on their face that something wasn’t right and they confirmed it when they told me they had been on the phone with one of the Apostles, Spencer Kimball and that I would not be allowed to go on my mission without my fathers approval, and since he had not given that approval, my mission would be cancelled.  I was devastated,  it was as if I had been smacked up side the head with a two by four.

 

As President Call left he asked me to come see him that evening and shortly there after to avoid a major conflagration, I left as well. My stake president said that I had until the day I was to enter the mission home in SLC to see if my dad would change his mind…If not, he said you will have to wait until you are on your own and you can re-submit your papers but you will probably not go to Italy.  The pit in my stomach was bottomless.  I went up on the squaw peak look out and just cried. When I got home at 1 am Dad and Mom were talking in the kitchen. She said to him, we had a deal, and you are braking your word. You said you would allow him to be raised in my faith and this is part of that.  We argued and finally just went to bed…for three days it was like walking on pins and needles, a darkness hanging over me… I was so blue I couldn’t eat…At 6 am on Saturday morning he called from work…he said to mom, I didn’t understand that it was this important to you two, I haven’t been sleeping , and I think I made a mistake. Tell him he can go…YOU tell him she said, and make sure Dick Call knows…Now Dad had known Dick Call for years and liked him, so when he came home he told me he would not stand in my way and Phoned President Call. Dick, This is Clarence, Listen I have been thinking about this mission, and I think I have made a mistake. If it hasn’t gone too far I would appreciate if it we could not stop the mission, and just let him go. 

 

President Call listened and told him he would make sure things were on track. My Father was a man of convictions, but he was NOT a prideful man.  It was hard for him to have me leave. He was my postman in the Language Training Mission (LTM)  which was in some ways pretty hard, I’m sure for both of us.    I would see him every day but we couldn’t really talk.  He would enter Iona house and say, ..Porto la Posta, ...in perfect Italian, Hand letters to those who were waiting and put the rest in the box.  He would nod at me and leave. Once he asked “how are you doin’?” not too good I said…I was really, really homesick.. It was your choice he said as he walked away to finish his route.. 

 

When I flew out for Italy he came to see me off. He gave me a hug and shook my hand and told me to do a good job and look out for myself. When they got home he lie down on the bed and my mom put her head on his chest…he was sobbing...obviously he was missing me as much as I missed him and far more than I ever knew.

 

In the two years I was in Italy my father only wrote me THREE letters, and they all came when he read in my letters or heard in my tape that I was in trouble, homesick beyond description, having a crisis of faith or in deep depression… John Michael Murphy sings a song about a soldier getting letters from home.  First he describes his MOTHERS letters where she says they miss him and that dad sends his love…when he holds it up they laugh and then go back to work…when he gets a letter from his girlfriend he tells them she says hello but doesn’t read the good parts and they laugh and go back to work…when he got a letter from his dad, he read them but no one laughed, because you don’t laugh when a soldier, or a missionary cries…, Especially when the expression of Love there comes in four words.  I’m proud of you.    

 

I never remember my father ever saying “I love you” in just those three words, but he said it in a hundred other ways.  By his times of generosity or his interest in what I was doing, or when I would overhear him telling his brother Ken about me while they talked on the phone.  

 

After I got home we had a good relationship.  But honestly, he was not nearly as unhappy when I moved out the next time…he didn’t miss me coming and going at all hours, being gone on trips for days at a time, or waking him up when I came in from dates at well past 2 AM…. In fact I think he liked it when I got married and moved out, mostly because,   He liked my wife.., and he loved the kids and always talked about them and wanted to know what they were doing.  I learned how critically important  those unexpressed feelings are for both a father AND a son.

 

He was curious about when Melinda’s band was playing or how Allison’s job was working out, or how Andy or Cynth were fixing up their houses,  or who the triplets latest boyfriends were…yep, curious but never nosey. …he love it when they went to see him,  just  to watch games on TV  or just to visit a while..  He always asked about what I was doing, even when I had just landed on real life Boardwalk and the other guy had five hotels on it.    He loved a good joke or prank. His laugh was fun loving and ended in what was almost a long joyful sigh.

 

 He was until the end a kidder,   joshin’ with the nurses and doctors…when one of them asked him “whats your name?”..he said what he often said to me as a child when I watched him shave  “Puddin tame..ask me again and Ill tell you the same!” ..  The poor nurse didn’t know what to think…he just grinned.  When they asked him if he knew where he was, he said.. isnt this Las Vegas?  And when they said  LAS VEGAS?.. he smiled and added. Yeah, Sin City,  he’d confirm it with a perfectly straight face…until they left., then he’d grin ear to ear.  

 

Two years ago on Father’s day I planned to take my dad up to Wallsburg so we could see the Erickson’s miniature city of antique tractors, motorcycles, narrow gage trains, trucks and autos in that small townscape complete with soda fountain, mechanics shop, school house and filing station.  I called dad to see if he was up to a road trip. I could hear in his voice a concern I seldom heard.  I’m hurting pretty bad he said. My chest, shoulder blade and left arm are just killing me. All signs of a heart attack, or a least severe angina. Have you taken your Nitros? Three of them he assured me. Oh, and a pain pill. For  the last 8 years he starts hurting, takes a nitro rest, then goes back to work as soon as the pain stops.

Do you want me to come take you to the ER? OhNo, I think it will let up soon he said. Your mom’s at church… Well call me if you want me to take you,  reminding him of my phone number.  Ten minutes later he phoned. Come get me, I think we better go get this checked out. In minutes I was pulling up to his house. Before I even stopped he was coming down the sidewalk.   

 

He played back seat driver all the way to the ER, probably because he had taken MOM to the ER  the prior Wednesday for the same thing.  When we arrived they took forever to check him in...if he had been having a heart attack he would have been dead...and I saw him getting pretty ticked off...finally they led him to room 13...bad luck he smiled as he entered...As we walked into the main corridor my second cousin saw us and became our personal ER tour guide and nurse...she took very good care of my Father...and soon had him hooked up to a billion leads ..I could see from the monitor that my dad's heart was racing..160+ beats per minute...by 11 am he was undergoing an EKG and the pain he was feeling was off the chart...every time the wave of pain came he winced...finally our family nurse gave him some morphine and an hour later a doctor showed up.  

 

By then his heart had snapped back into a normal rhythm and the pain was half what it had been...after the doctor came in and they discussed fathers day, the potency of his nitros, his abnormal heartbeat...and his cardiologist...we were left to just pass the time until the next EKG...during those two-three hours I had about as substantial a conversation as I had had with him in years.  Finally at 3 pm it was realized that his heart was beating normally, ..that the pain had gone and he was telling the staff that he was going to go home...The  Doctor came and gave him his card...told him to get an appointment as soon as possible with his cardiologist ..and left...my dad got dressed and we headed home... A strange way to spend a fathers day...

 

When we had finished dinner  that Sunday, Mom called...Dad was feeling a lot better, and was already trying to schedule his appointment with his cardiologist on his answering machine...(then I knew he was feeling like himself)...... 

 

Everyone has asked me if I enjoyed my fathers day...even my kids...but of course I did...and the day after... and the day after that...life really is good...sometimes its the stuff that happens out of the ordinary that makes a day so memorable...  I just love talking with my father...I have noticed over the past three days how many times being a son, and a dad brings me into the lives of others.......and has shown me again just how lucky I am to have, ..and to be...a dad.      I have been thinking how much dad loves to be reminded of the past, seeing all that old stuff getting in touch with his memories.------.I got musta got that gene from HIM….

 

He has evolved over the years from a good fences make good neighbors kinda guy…to someone who would buy a snow plow so he could plow his own snow and his neighbors too…as long as the driver…(that would be me)…was ok with it.. 

 

HIS LAST DAYS.  After COS came home from the hospital in November, he realized that the roses he was trimming when his legs started to hurt him were only partially pruned, so once he regained enough strength in March, he decided to finish that job. He pulled his chair out next to the center of the roses on his driveway and began a very slow process of pruning each bush from the comfort of his white plastic lawn chair. He still visited with the boys at McDonalds, took the bus out to Wendover, visited with his neighbors, contined his somewhat established daily routine,  and watched over everything in his world.  Friday April 10, he asked mom to take him to the hospital, where it was discovered that his heart was working at 15% efficiency down nearly 10%...and that his heart was filling with fluids. They gave him meds to reduce the water, and took fluids directly from his lungs, but the buildup returned. Over the week his need for oxygen steadily increased until he decided that there wasn’t anything else that could be done. He was moved to the top floor of the hospital on the last day of his life, into a nice open room with a big southern window where he could look out to see the mountains east of Provo. I looked out and told him all the buildings I could identify in the city as he rested. At the foot of his bed, there was a white board. On which I wrote the words..  Hi Cos! You’re the best!....Later in the day he was struggling a bit to breath but his eyes were still alert, so I wrote  Thank you for EVERYTHING…he was starting to feel pain in his arm so he motioned for the nurse and asked for some pain medication.  At about 7 PM  she brought him  his meds and something that would help him sleep. Before I left at 9 30 pm I wrote again on the message board 

 

If you leave before I return, please remember that I love you.

 

I sensed that it would be the last time I would ever see him so I sat and talked to him put my hand on his head a held his right hand…(His hands…The thing that drew me to his casket today were his hands. I can’t even imagine how many times he used them to make my life better.   I left  to check on mom since she had been with him all day up until 6 pm.  I told her he was sleeping, but that I didn’t think he would make it thru the night.  She woke up early to go see him and was on her way to the Hospital when the nurse called her and informed her that Dad had just passed away.  When she arrived she phoned me, and told me he was gone. She read the note on the board and wondered if he had seen it..  Of course he saw it, you can’t leave that room without reading it I told her.  It was then she said… I wish I could have talked to him just before he died.  I think it is strange how people assume that the dead  have someplace they must go right after their passing. I said when you die will you be in any kind of hurry to leave the place you left your body?  No…Well then if I were you I would take this time to say anything you would like to say to him. I am certain he will hear you, and tho he wont be able to respond verbally. I think he will depart feeling better about leaving and I think you will feel better too, for having said what you want him to know.

 

Preparing for this funeral has been a very moving experience. Revisiting photos, and remembrances, and talking with friends and family.  Clarence was a good man. I think most of you who knew him understood that.  He was a grateful man, a generous man, a playful sort who liked people, and loved to visit.     

 

 

I HAVE REALIZED THAT EVERYTHING IN MY LIFE IS IN SOMEWAY INTERCONNECTED AND NEARLY ALWAYS THOSE CONNECTIONS RUN BACK THRU  MY ASSOCIATIONS WITH MY DAD or  MY MOM..

 

He didn’t much believe in Coincidence…so today when Jon Pfunder told me about the time he had seen my dad returning from turning down the water in his irrigation boots, walking down the road toward home, with four DEER following him in single file almost like pets I got this chill that came over me…. The events of yesterday morning took on a feeling of a good omen. As mom looked out into dad’s perfectly manicured back yard, TWO deer came up over the hill onto the lawn. One of them ran around by  his bedroom window, while the other peered into the living room window When mom came to the window, it stood there and looked at her for over a minutes (which is a lot in deer time)  before they both bounced off to the east toward the mountain…It was for her almost like his voice saying…I’m here, I’m ok…..AFTER the funeral we returned home and the tree in their front yard that yesterday seemed lifeless, had burst into full bloom with brilliant blossoms of red.  I recall how happy such things made my dad. He would get so excited when his flowers bloomed, or when he saw a deer or even a squirrel.    He appreciated the beauty of such events, ..He loved life and lived it with a purpose. To fashion everything he touched in his own very particular image, and into what he understood life was supposed be.

 

You see its only been a week,   … and already

 

There’s a somebody I’m longing to see… I hope when that happens,  it turns out to be ..

 

Someone who WATCHED over ME.

 

 

An expanded version of - Memories of My Father - as I recalled them at his Funeral.

 

 

Nearly 79 years ago (July 28, 1930 at the beginning of the depression) an 8 year old boy and his 6 year old brother sat on a large cement step in front of an evangelical boys home in St Louis, It was after dinner and they sat watching the corner down the street where they had seen their Dad turn the day he had dropped them off when he could no longer take care of them after the tragic death of their mother.  According to a friend who entered the orphanage the same day, nine months into the depression, they sat there waiting for him to come back around that corner to take them home… The younger one, Ken playing with a toy car, Clarence sobbing as they sat on that step,  night after night they waited, watching that corner until dark. Then someone would came and ushered them back into the home to go to bed.

 

It took over a year of what he didn’t know was mandatory separation,  until he realized that their father would not be coming around that corner, and that “the home” would be his residence for a long, long time…It turned out to be , the next 10 years.  Dad said that he felt a tremendous obligation to watch over his brother, an enormous responsibility, and it shaped his life. . I have  pictured two little boys sitting there in that busy St Louis cityscape at dusk waiting...waiting...waiting.....gradually losing hope....wanting more than anything to have that simple blessing I have enjoyed all these years without really understanding how precious it is...I always knew that  my Dad would be there to take me home. (He learned when he was 70 that his father wasn’t allowed to visit for many months and then only monthly or semi monthly after that, and what he had thot was abandonment actually wasn’t.  Records showed that his father had come every time he was allowed to and even paid for their stay when he had a job. This gave my father a completely new outlook on the evangelical childrens’ home, AND his father)

 

In those days he learned order and discipline, organization and how to do hard work.  He was educated in readin’ writin’ and ‘rithmatic with a heapin’ helpin’ of the bible which, he said, was pounded into him by the evangelical sisters who enforced a discipline with a meanness that few of us would believe. Had it not been for MRS SHIPEY his fifth grade teacher I don’t know if he would have ever been the man he was…she truly loved my father and instilled in him any of the self worth which those days provided. She was a woman he talked of often and who kept in contact with him thru out the years, following that one year she was his teacher.

 

 

He worked on the farm there, went to school, and participated in sports, joined the scouts and grew up. I would like to tell you a lot more about his feelings and thots about growing up at the “home”, but the truth is I only recently learned much about it myself. In fact it was just last December after his near death two days after Thanksgiving, when after having his heart shocked three times the doctor said to me, “I have seen this many times and you have about one to two hours with your father…I sat there in the hospital and just talked to him, telling him how much I loved and appreciated all he had done for me. After a couple of hours he opened his eyes and I asked him how he felt. “Good! The pain is gone, let’s get out of here!”  From that moment he began a short five month recovery.

 

Once he was back home he told mom to go get his picture albums and we sat and talked about each and every picture in his seven albums.. I had only seen one of them in my entire life, and that was the day he moved from the his home on 3700 north  to their new house on the edge of the hill where he watched over the place he had called home for 58 years. SO what did I discover?   Well,… That his mom and a half sister I never knew he had had died of  pneumonia …That he worked on a hay baler when HE was a kid TOO.. That he had a step mother his father married  after he left the home…That his boat motor is EXACTLY the same model as the one I bought at a garage sale for 10 bucks.(he told me it wasn’t any good and that I should get rid of it)…That he lived in an apartment with friends after he left the home and went in the Marines when he was 21 as did his brother Ken. He talked about his war buddies,  Mrs Berry the missionary lady from Provo community church who invited him to visit after the war…He talked about  how his brother Ken loved animals and cared for them at the home…all about his scouting and sports adventures,  his war adventures and his many many jobs,  bosses and friends. How Mrs Shippy let him drive her car after he left the “home” and I saw pictures of a whole bunch of his girlfriends and he even showed me a letter he got after attending his fathers funeral…..from his father. Written the day before he had died.. I also saw about 15 pictures of my grandfather that I had never seen. Before that, I had seen only one or maybe two.

 

 

Some men speak with words, some men speak with their eyes, still others speak by their actions. Clarence, or COS as I have called him interchangeably with DAD  for the last 30 years, spoke by WHAT HE DID.  He was never one to boast or overstate himself, in fact he was probably one of the best at the art of understatement of anyone I knew He abhorred boasting, arrogance or self righteousness.  . Once when he accompanied me on a sales trip to Mesa Arizona he heard me tell the buyer for the largest school district in the state about our company.  When she asked if our company was a big corporation, I drawled…”heck, we’re just a couple of farm boys who decided to make a little pizza.”  I could see he liked my reply by the smile on his face.   He believed that under-statement usually had people assuming much more than reality.  I found however that with my father, there was always WAY MORE than he ever said, or than ever met the eye.

 

I had calculated that he became a Marine when he was 21. What I didn’t know, was that his father would not sign when the war first started… so he had to wait.  Dad said he probably would have been killed as so many of the first enlistees were, had his father complied with is wishes.  For Many years, the only reason I knew he had been a Marine was because he kept his Marine pins and hat emblem in his watch tray on his chest of drawers, and his knife, canteen and belt sat on the shelf above his tool box, before he let me use them when I was a scout.

 

People often ask me how and when dad arrived here, (see life sketch) married mom, a Mormon girl, and ended up in Happy Valley for life.   After Dad enlisted in the Marines, he went to San Diego for boot camp.  While he was there he met an older woman from Provo, a missionary from the community church to the soldiers, Ruth Berry. She told him that after the war he was invited to visit her in Provo, so after he got home to St Louis, he decided to get in touch with her and she asked if he could come out to Provo to help her with a business she planned to create, I believe it was to be a retirement home. It didn’t work out but she asked if he wanted to live in her upstairs apartment and use his GI bill to go to BYU, which he did.  He lived just two blocks north of what is now the Marriott center in a white house with three red brick colonial fire place chimneys on the outside end walls, which she called Berry-Muir. She sold the house to the James Family in 1948 and it is said that Clarence went with the house. He loved the James’s.

 

Mom, Deaun Ashton, who he always called kiddo,  lived just One block west of the Marriot center just to the south of the BYU Baseball field, about 3 or 4 blocks from where Dad was living.  They had crossed paths at Cluff’s market, but she hadn’t paid proper attention to him so when they met at a dance he asked her out and as they say, the rest is history,  by the next year they were married. They lived for a while in the lower apartment at the James’s house before they built the home where they lived for 50 years in the riverbottoms on a piece of the old Stubbs homestead that my grandparents gave them. I was born 4 years later.   

 

In the ATTIC--- Most of  you knew my Dad from when he lived in that little house he build on land right next to where my mother’s mother was born and grew up.  He built and landscaped it with his own hands and tended it until just 8 years ago, Our Modest brick rambler, was home, complete with all the common elements...hallway, garage, and a basket ball standard on the east side of the driveway, near the Summer Queen apple tree.  As a small boy there were a few unsolvable mysteries in my life...Was there really a chipmonk that kept a pipe in the box elder tree as he had told me?.…

 

(Digression) Dad smoked until I was 8.  I remember the day he QUIT a two+ pack a day habit, cold turkey, I saw him throw away his cigarettes, two trips with his arms full,  he just dumped them into the ash pit, He never smoked another cigarette. I think it was the cause of his heart problems though.  After that he said he didn’t cough as much in a year as he did in an hour before he quit. I used to hear him in the kitchen coughing when he made his lunch, or  while he got my breakfast when he was between jobs…the difference between when Mom made me breakfast and when dad did was that he always made my eggs sunny side up…hers were over easy. 

 

….another mystery was why my pony ALWAYS wanted to bite me, and yet another was WHAT was thru those two trap doors (actually not so romantic...they were simply framed access panels) in the ceiling in the hallway and at the back of the garage. They were storage places…, my father had made our attic a place to store seldom used items and keep them out of the way.

 

But as a small boy, as I looked up there I could only imagine its mystery!!  Was it a place where some bandito or boogieman or the UKIDUKE was hiding out?  A secret passageway into a another universe (we didn’t have the word wormhole back then)...maybe, it was where the stairway to heaven began. The Garage attic actually contained suitcases, Christmas decorations, and twenty to thirty boxes of such things as my parents’memories, books, even clothes that held some meaning.  The Hall attic had fewer boxes but those, I later discovered, contained boxes of letters, newspapers articles of note, and a few trinkets...it may have even housed an envelope with a few hundred in emergency cash. 

 

And so it was when I was 11, that on a day when my mom and dad were gone, probably visiting my mom’s parents down the street.  I got out the ladder,  pushed the "lid" away, and climbed into the unknown.  What I found was almost a disappointment...every box was marked with the contents and a date...seeing the passage between the two parts of the house was just a tiny opening, I had a "ford moment", when the light comes on - I understood why there would need to be TWO exploration expeditions into each opening..  and since I was UP there, ..I crawled around with my tiny flashlight in my mouth, carefully avoiding putting my feet in the spaces where the insulation was...first so I wouldn’t ITCH...and second so I wouldn’t crash thru to the floor 8 feet below...sheet rock as any true "hut" builder knows, will NOT support anything, especially not a boy who should not be up there creating havoc in the attic in the first place...

 

 

As I started to go thru the boxes I realized that my adventure was turning out to be extremely boring...  Suitcases with sewing patterns, recipe books, instructions and warranty materials, WHAT?...why are there boxes of KERR jars up here?...I guess the fruit shelf was full.  I rummaged thru some boxes of Botany and Horticulture books from my fathers days in college...and moved on to the last two boxes on the east wall...the first was a small box that had been taped closed....the second one larger with the four flaps interfolded... I pulled the tape off the first one and opened it....there were Six books..."Normandy High School 1940...Lincoln High School 1946...my parents YEAR BOOKS... My flash light was still pretty bright as I explored the other contents...my dad’s letterman’s LETTER...a Green N...there were a few pictures of friends and

other people I didn’t know...some love letters, (oh my heck) and a few shriveled flowers...I spent about a half hour looking thru the books to see their pictures from so long before (at the time just 18-23 years)  I saw pictures of my dad playing basketball and baseball, of my mom with her friends...and wow, they looked so cool when they were young.....Who'da ever thunk it?... 

 

After I had exhausted my curiosity about that box, .I turned to the next one...and pulled open the flaps...only to find some shoe boxes neatly stacked in the corrugated box. the first one I opened made my eyes pop out...it was a JAPANESE flag ...with rust stains on it...and stacks of Japanese money....and other items clearly from Pacific Island culture...one shoe box contained  a bunch of Marine Corps stuff, buttons, belt buckle, insignias, ribbons, official looking awards, ..Marksmanship insignias...I fingered each and everyone of them... another contained an ammo belt...and the same names on some of the boxes as were written on his scabbard ---names of the islands where he had fought the Japs,  carved into it.., Treasury Islands, Peleliu, , Okinawa...I then opened the bottom box...it was full of black and white photos...of beaches filled with dead bodies scattered about, and flags like the one I had just held... lying on the sand.  There were pictures of the wreckage of landing craft...gory battle scenes...others of crashed planes...big artillery guns....living quarters...friends...other marines either in photos showing serious battle fatigue, or other pictures of them shirtless playing baseball or volleyball with weapons and helmets nearby...I kept going back to those scenes of death and destruction. HAD MY DAD BEEN THERE? ...Oh, my gosh!  Later that year I told him what I had discovered,  and asked him if he had taken those pictures.  (of course, he had)...he laughed and said, no I bought those from a guy...oh...I didn’t know whether to believe him or not...he changed the subject abruptly, letting me know he wasn’t going to say anything more,  and nothing more was said...

 

When the roundabout replaced most of his front yard,  and claustrophobia set in.  He needed his space! That’s why he bought the house on the hill where no one could obstruct his view with a Garage Mahal, or a supersized McMansion.  But on his little spread in the riverbottoms, ,  he gardened and tended a few cattle and horses and he watched over mom and he watched over ME. 

 

My earliest memories are countless, but I would like to tell you some of those I treasure most. When I was 6 he gave me my second baseball mitt, it was the real deal. I still use it today when I have a chance to play ball.  He left it on my bed with a bat and ball. He had tried out for the Cardinals at 20, and could have entered their farm system, but chose instead to enlist and join the war effort.   Baseball was one of his great loves. He took our irrigation canvas and painted a square on it with white paint, so he would have a target to throw at, and would hang it against the west fence then from our bucket of baseballs, he would throw hundreds of pitches as I learned to hit. I can’t describe the joy I felt the first time I drove that ball over the middle fence and the ball rolled half way out into the big pasture…which means it rolled to a stop just about in the middle of what is now this church’s west foyer, as I calculate it based on the only two trees over there>>>> that are still standing from all those he planted.  

 .  

 

Dad was not LDS.  Before my mission, I told him I would somehow get him into the church and so true to my word, (pointing at the casket)….I  think this hour of his funeral will be the most time he will have spent in a chapel since the day I was blessed 54 years ago. The reason we decided on having his service at the Edgemont 1^st ward building is because this is the very land where he lived and worked for so long.

 

After he sold our house, I came one day to take pictures of it before they knocked it down.  While I was standing by the white fence between the church parking lot and middle pasture snapping pictures of “the place”    COS came down the street in his white pick-up truck and drove down the road east of the house, turned  around and parked  along the new west sidewalk just where our coal shed and the old storage shed  used to sit over the ditch.   He didn’t see me but I watched him thru the telephoto lens as he just sat for the longest time watching them remove the doors and windows from the house…that was the day before they knocked it down.  When they demolisihed Wilf’s and Zelta’s home up the street,  he said to me,  it is a damned shame that they can tear down in 15 minutes something that has taken a man a lifetime to build…Our little home represented  a lifetime of love and labor, in fact it probably symbolized to him the man he was. .

 

Dad made living here an adventure for a little boy growing up!  In the HUGE box elder tree a ¾ pipe had grown into the tree in a limb about ten feet up.. when I discovered it while climbing that tree with our retarded neighbor boy, Dennis Ferguson, we asked dad what it was, he told us it was the “chipmunk’s pipe” a descriptor that Ferg probably still uses to this day. 

 

Clarence was a kid at heart, he loved to antagonize the neighbors to our east  Raymond, Melvin, and Dennis  were the recipient of many  an APPLE, Snowball or rock in the various “apple wars” between Dad and I and two or three of them.  He especially liked to bounce a rock off of their barns, or the outhouse roof when he knew it was occupied. I think he liked to hear them cuss him, but they all loved going with him to see Krusher Kawalski or Karl Von Brock fight Ox Anderson and Bill Melby at the “wrassles” or just out to the café for a cup.

.

Whenever I went with him in his pick ups, he always kept his Marine blanket folded on the seat. Once we came upon a wreck in Orem when I was eleven. We were the first on the scene and he put his blanket over a lady as she lie there on the sidewalk to keep her warm before the ambulance arrived.  I remember him soaking that blanket in cold water in mom’s Maytag suds saver to get the blood out when he got it back, almost as vividly as I remember sitting next to that moaning lady as she lie  there  with  blood pooling up by her head  and soaking her gray hair.   I was just doing what dad asked me to do, to keep talking to her, so she wouldn’t go into shock… telling her it would be ok .  He told me later that she had died…in a way that I could deal with it emotionally.

 

 

Clarence was a Carpenter and worked hard at any job, I remember him coming home from work at 6 pm after a 12 hour day driving pilings on the 6^th south bridge ramp in SLC so dirty that when the bathtub drained the dirt was sticky thick up to where the waterline was and tho exhausted he seldom asked me to clean it. He never left anything dirty. He was a white glove Marine,  neat as a tack, and insisted that everything be clean and kept in order like a footlocker.  Just to illustrate…

 

Sometimes in the summer Mom would take me and a friend to SLC to play while she would shop and visit friends in Salt Lake for three days.  One year we went with my Aunt Leora Calder, and my cousin Keith. We played golf, went to movies, swam at the Motel 6 pool, bowled, and had a great time.  In a conversation  about Dad who stayed home worked and batched it for three days,  Leora said to mom that she would probably find the house in shambles when we returned, My mother shook her head and said NOT A CHANCE.  In the end they had bet twenty dollars whether that the bathroom sink and the bedroom would or wouldn’t be a mess.  My mom completely sure that the porcelain would glisten and the bed would be made, shoes and sox in the closet and the dishes washed and the sink clean.  I can still remember my mother taking that twenty dollar bill from Aunt Leora when they peered into the sink and could see their reflection on the pop up drain at the bottom of the sink, and not only was the house clean, bed made and the kitchen floor waxed, but dad had installed a new carpet runner in the hallway.  He required that I be just as neat as he was…truthfully, that has always been an mpossibility.  I recall how ordered he was. Once he had a box of nails that were all mixed up, so he dumped them out  on the garage floor and had me sort them all and put them in the ten separate sections in his nail box, teaching me the difference in sizes, and shapes of  box nails, common nails, double heads, finish nails, horse shoe nails,  cement nails etc….If he opened one of my drawers and it was a mess, he would dump it on my bed and have me put stuff back all folded and organized. Dad always insisted that my clothes were hung up, my shoes polished or waxed, (in fact I got some new Kiwi shoe WAX and polished my shoes today in his honor)  sox tucked neatly inside them and my bed was made.    When I was 45, after an embezzlement, our business moved out of our buildings where we had 41000 sq feet of space AND an outdoor equipment bone yard, I was forced to move some of it into my back yard. When he saw all that equipment stacked there, he asked me how I could live with all that stuff cluttering up the place. …I just sighed and said--.Dad, I’m rebelling!!

 

Kids remember most special gifts their dads gave them, usually a first bike or some electronic gadget, for me it was TWO bikes, my red Schwinn, and my first three speed that came with the 1964 ford pick up he got after his terrible accident at the point of the mountain where he rolled the 57 Chevy pick-up four times… was thrown out and lived to tell about it…

 

I still remember him walking up the cement driveway border wall that day when the police car dropped him off …he walked past me, brushed his fingers thru my hair, and said to mom…take me to the hospital I was in a wreck and I am really hurt.  It turned out better that time than this last time he asked her to do that.  It was a life changing experience. To rehabilitate his legs and hips, he took a job with the post office where he could walk every day.

 

But, I do digress, Lets see…  My best present from dad was when he brought home the best little Shetland pony ever….. Jack had bought TEENY from Cliff Brererton for Keith and Jim (my cousins) and when grandpa wasn’t riding him to irrigate.. I loved to ride that pony even if it did throw me off like clockwork. (grandpa would say, “ah get back up there, and show him whose boss!)  One day I was headed home from Grandpa’s, as I rode toward home, I  could see my dad with TONY a stout little PINTO pony.  He was standing beneath the Summer Queen apple tree with the curry comb combing him out…As soon as I could make out exactly what it was, I broke land speed records and my bike got parked for months. Instead I rode that little Injun pony….. everywhere!

 

Dad even built a two wheeled cart bought a harness and taught Tony to trot…Then he worked a deal with ole Hen’ Jones to buy his four wheel buggy and dad bought Smokey, HIS Shetland pony, and we would hitch them up and go ridin’…sometimes twice a week, for hours.  I don’t think there is a ditch bank in all of Provo or Orem that has asparagus or sunflowers on it that I haven’t ridden past.  That led to pony shows and awards and ribbons and trophies.  I think he would have taken up Shetland chariot racing after we saw them at the last pony show at the old Provo fairgrounds.  If he had seen them when I was four years younger we might have gone the Ben Hur route. But I had started thinking about cars and girls…He said he’d lost his ridin’ partner, and I had outgrown the Shetlands.

 

It was time for a car and a HORSE. Both, he and mom gave me the money toward the purchase of my first horse, Tawny, a Mustang mare I got from the Faulkners, and she was about 5 months from having a colt, Prince, and later she had a little philly, I named Ginger. I was riding Tawny the day I got hit by a car on Carterville road just north of where Orem center comes over the hill. Fortune smiled down upon us and luckily neither I, nor my horse, nor Ted McCallister’s daughter Judy was killed..   

 

When I wanted a mini bike dad wouldn’t buy me one, so I bought a USED one from George Garner up where the fox and peacock pens used to be. Today it’s where the boys’ school is, about 4600 N.  Univ. Ave.  Anyway,   I brought that piece of junk home and  Dad suggested I  convert his grape arbor and picnic table into a work place to repair it....(but you had to put every tool, bolt and nut away every nite). When I got it going he was very pleased, probably because I had learned enough to help keep his David Bradley garden and snowplow tractor running. He would ride along on his bicycle sometimes when I went over to the Lutheran Church parking lot to ride it. We would ride round and round and round that parking lot…If I had a dollar for every lap around that lot we took, I’d be a rich man.

 

Dad really did watch over me… maybe it is because no one watched over him. There were so many times when he surprised me. I recall once sitting at table #4 in the Edgemont elementary school lunch room. That was where I was sitting the day Karl announced that President Kennedy had just been shot, where I  held hands with Diane Baum,  my first real crush. And that is where I buried my head in my arms so no one would see me crying when Greg told me that he was no longer my bud, and that he had decided to invite Keith to the BYU basketball game instead of me.  Ah, how it hurts when the world of a 4th grader comes crashing down like a shattered backboard.

 

In 1965 there was nothing imaginable that was more important than attending that BYU basketball game except rooting for the Cardinals to win the World Series.  I had not only lost my opportunity to see John Fairchild, but also the chance to go out on the catwalk that led to the press box where Greg's dad worked during the games. I was devastated!

That night as I sat eating spaghetti at Clair's Café where dad and I often met mom on her lunch break.  As I sat stirring my food, my sadness radiated from me. Clair laid an old BYU basketball program down in front of me. That was the last straw. I burst into giant crocodile tears and spilled my heart out right there on the counter. I told him how I had lost my chance to see the game from the overhead press box, how my friend had taken someone he liked more than me, and worse how he told me we were no longer buds. Then I sobbed, that I just didn't think I would ever recover and asked how it could have happened after I had planned to go for three whole weeks.

My dad listened without a word as Clair tried in vain to console this distraught, little eleven year old. You see he could say that stuff, Clair had seats at mid-court 7 rows back on the Public side of the field house, and went to every game, after leaving his café a few minutes early on game nights. That night as we left, he whispered something to my dad, and on the way up University Avenue, instead of turning up Canyon road, we pulled into the field house parking lot, walked over thru the snow to the field house ticket windows and dad bought tickets for the game. 

That night we watched the game from the rafters on the north east side, but dad took me down onto the track on the south side of the court so I could touch the players as they came off the floor for half time, and so I could see how gianormous a 6’ 11 inch guy really is.  He bought me popcorn that came in a blue Y yell horn and we looked out on the crowd and saw lots of people we knew. The highlight tho, was when Craig Raymond came down on a fast break and smashed into the chain link wall at the end of the court. And his sweat came showering out over us, dad might not have liked it much but for ME it was heaven! I swore I wouldn’t ever bathe again….I had at that very moment been baptized a cougar fan for life.  I got to not only see that game but Dad and I went to MANY games after that.  In the fall he would always drop me off at the football games so I could slip thru the fence from Stadium Ave as part of the Knot Hole gang, just a bunch of kids who sat near the end zone. . He took me to see fast pitch softball games at Harmon Park too. The most memorable was the second game of a double header when I was 12 or 13, when Morris Motors played Christensen Construction from SLC. It was midnite when the game went into extra innings and dad, tho he had to go to work at 6 on that Saturday morning, wanted to see the end of that game. When the player dad said would get the winning hit for Christensen’s team, FINALLY hit the ball out of the park, over the street, RIGHT OVER OUR TRUCK over the house and into the back yard of the house west of the park, Dad looked at his watch and exclaimed, its nearly two o’clock what are we doing out so late!

 

 

I have known LouDean Since the seventh grade, I have known Paul since I was a sophmore at Orem High. They married Just out of High School and began life in business as they raised a wonderful family of 12 boys and 2 girls. They are Utah Valley's premere locksmiths, and I have often joked that they wont let their kids use their last name until they can break into a car, and cut a key for it.  So it was heartbreaking to hear of the death of their second son Rod at only 33 years of age.  Last night I went to the viewing at the local Mortuary.  I was one of the last to visit for the evening, I looked across the room to see Paul, his hair now silvery gray, and his lovely wife who looked as if she had aged ten years in just the last week, standing near their sons casket along with Rod's wife who held his 15 day old son in her arms.

 

Between Me and Rod who I could see lying there peacefully in his casket, stretched a line of 13 siblings in decending order of age, with a noticable gap between the oldest Sid and the third son, Jake.  Little Reuben the youngest gave me a long hug. I dont think he has grasped the finality of Rod's death, but is keenly aware of the deep sense of pain everyone else is feeling. I then talked with Jenessa, Rhett, and Dane who is just 20. They worked with Rod every day in their family business and were struggling to keep it all together.  When I got to Jed, I just ached for him, he is the one who has been preparing to buy the business and has been Rod's apprentice for the last 7 years. Next to him was Nanette the oldest sister, then Neil, the youngest of the 4 "Electrician Brothers" as I call those who do not work in the Lock business. Next to Neil stood Luke who recalled wiring a building for me, his first real commercial job. Sorren was there in his Navy Blues, a year returned from the service, then Austin who had to fly in from London where he works in a security business.

 

Then I got to Toby, he married my next door neighbor, and lived in that house next door for a year before they moved to St George.  I thinkToby is the most like Rod. I really like him and know him probably better than any of the other brothers.  Toby will mourn his brothers loss more visably than the others, and will be, like Rod would have been, the one who trys to comfort those who are hurting the most.  Next to Toby stood Jake, third of the 4 oldest brothers who had a very special bond.  Sid stood a ways off, creating a space where Rod should have been standing. Sid has returned to the business and has been working the counter and the store while Rod ran the mobile part of the business.  Each of them spoke of Rod with such respect and love. I cant tell you all the thots and memories that went thru my mind as I recalled the many years of lock and key work they had all done for me...or All my converstations with Rod...filled with humor, kind words and his wry smile.

 

I am an only child, and while attending a funeral once I heard a woman who had lost a son say to my mother, well, I have five boys, you only have ONE, I havent lost EVEYTHING as the loss of your son would be.  That may have some merit, but in reality its not just about what we keep but about what is lost. Like a 16 piece puzzle... when a piece is lost, the whole puzzle suffers.  The hole in each heart left by the missing piece is a constant reminder of what could have been,  that in someways makes it harder than if the entire picture were missing.  The only positive is that we have wonderful memories, vivid pictures, and individual interlocking experiences with the lost piece that enable us to see the ENTIRE Picture clearly, and even see the missing pieces better because of what sorrounds them. As one country song says, its hard to tell where I end and where you start.  So it is with each member of a large families, its hard to tell where one ends and where another starts... I am fortunate to have been friends with not only Paul and LouDean, but with each of the other pieces of such a wonderful puzzle.  

 

Unfortunately life has a way of removing pieces of our puzzle of life, one piece at a time. Sometimes in an untimely manner, at other times it's as it should be, where children outlive their parents and older siblings who have lived to a ripe old age.  There is nothing that can really be said to those who are confronting a missing piece of their life. Luckily for us, our puzzle of life increases in size and beauty with new pieces, spouses, nephews and neices, grandchildren and great grandchildren that somehow fit perectly. Oh, they never fill the space or replace a lost piece, but expand our view so that hole in our heart stands out less and gives way to the hope, that the piece is only lost temporarly and is just somewhere else, waiting to again be part of that still beautiful Puzzle we call family.

 

So, to Paul and LouDean, Sid, Rod, Jake, Toby, Austin, Soren, Luke, Neil, Nannette, Jed, Dane, Rhett, Jenessa, and Ruben. I love you all