Tuesday, July 31, 2012

Disneyland

Disneyland was so much fun, at least for me.  Mom didn't have such a good time, and it was her Birthday!  The antibiotic the doctor gave her for strep throat hadn't had time to work yet, but she was determined to go with us so we could still enjoy our vacation.  Even without being sick taking six kids to Disneyland would be stressful, especially when Julie was only five and Sharon three, and the rest of us wanted to go three different places all at the same time.  But mom was a trooper, and she kept up. 

I enjoyed the rides, but my favorite part of Disneyland was the park itself.  It was like being in a different world!  I loved walking down the quaint main street with its different shops and hanging flower pots and colorful signs.  There was one shop that sold hats, and I just had to go inside. 

“Please,” I begged mom as the rest of the family kept walking.  “Can’t I go in here for just a minute?” 

Mom could tell I really wanted to look at the hats, so she finally asked dad to take the boys and the Sharon over to the candy shop next door while she and Linda and Julie went into the hat shop with me.  I was so excited!  After dressing up in old fashioned costumes for our road show the previous spring those hats thrilled me.  I found a huge baby blue hat covered with roses and netting, just like in the old movies, and had to buy it for myself with my babysitting money.  It meant I didn't have any money left for other souvenirs, but who cared?  That hat was wonderful!

Next to another shop we found a lady who was drawing pastel portraits of people.  We stood behind and watched for awhile, and she was good!  Mom usually didn't spend money, especially not on frivolous stuff, but she was enamored with those portraits.  Maybe it was because she was sick and her defenses were down, maybe it was because it was her birthday, I don't know, but she suddenly mom turned to dad and said, “Let’s get the kids portraits drawn.”

It was so cool!  The artist was fast, she spent less than five minutes on each of us, so we didn't have to sit still too long.  That was good because after all, we were in Disneyland and there were a lot of distractions.  The portraits turned out wonderful, and mom kept them hanging in our house until we all grew up.  I sure wished I could draw like that.

We spent the whole day at Disneyland and went on every ride, but left when it got dark.  Mom was exhausted, and so were the little girls.  We older kids wanted to stay until the park closed, but it was mom's birthday and she was sick, so we tried to be understanding.  Aunt Eloise had a birthday cake ready when we got back to her house, and she had candles for both mom and me, since my birthday was the next day.  I always loved having my birthday next to moms.  It made my day seem that much more special.  We ate cake and visited for a little, but it was already late and we were tired so we didn't stay up very long.  After all, we were still only at the beginning of our vacation.  Tomorrow we would travel up the coast to San Francisco, and have another adventure.

Monday, July 30, 2012

At Aunt Eloise's House

By the time we got to Aunt Eloise's house on Tuesday night Mom not feeling good at all.   Monday, as we packed for our super cool trip, mom thought she was tired from all the work it took to get a family of eight ready for a two week vacation.  Tuesday as we drove from San Diego to Los Angeles, stopping at a beach to swim and picnic, she assumed it was trying to keep the sand out of our lunch and Julie and Sharon, who were only four and three years old, from drowning in the ocean that was giving her a headache.  But by the time we drove into Aunt Eloise's drive way and happily invaded her house mom knew that something else was going on in her body.  She was sick!

Aunt Eloise could tell mom wasn't feeling good, as well.  Aunt Eloise was mom's big sister, ten years older than her.  Mom always told us about Aunt Eloise fixing her hair as she combed ours.  When we cried because of a snarl mom would tell us that Aunt Eloise used to say, "It hurts to be beautiful!"

Aunt Eloise moved to Los Angeles to become a beutician when she grew up.  Eventually she married Uncle Eddie and established her own beauty salon in Beverly Hills.  We thought she was famous!  As a matter of fact, she did tell us about some of her famous clients, like Linda Carter (who was Wonder Woman), and we were so proud of her! 

We didn't often get over to California to visit Aunt Eloise, but when we did it was exciting!  I vaguely remember the first time we visited.  Mom took Keith and I on the bus while dad spent a week in the Army reserves.  Keith was three and I was two.  We were pretty good on the bus ride over, but Keith was getting kind of antsy towards the end of the trip.  A nice older fellow asked mom if he could give Keith a piece of gum to help settle him down, and she agreed.  It worked.  Keith loved the gum and soon fell asleep on the seat next to mom, but when she woke him up to get off the bus in L.A. she discovered the gum had fallen out of his mouth and was stuck in his hair.  What a mess!  Aunt Eloise had to cut his hair to get it all out. 

The other thing I remembered from that trip was the sweet little purse and M & M's Aunt Eloise gave me as a present.  She was the spoiling kind of aunt.  I also remember one night when Aunt Eloise ordered Chinese food for dinner.  They delivered it to her house in white paper boxes, and it was so amazing to me!  There were even long pieces of wood for the grown ups to use to eat, and fortune cookies in the sack with the dinner!

On this trip, however, we didn't order Chinese food.  We did play in Aunt Eloise's back yard, though, which sloped down a grassy hill to a small creek that ran along the back of her property.  It was such a pretty place.  Aunt Eloise spent the evening trying to help mom get feeling better.  Mom's head ached, her throat was sore, and she was burning up with a fever.  Aunt Eloise called her own doctor to come look at mom's throat, and sure enough, she had strep.  He gave her some antibiotics and told her they should start working in 24 hours.  Mom went to bed early instead of staying up to visit with her sister.  So did the rest of us.  This was only the second day of our vacation, but we were already exhausted from swimming at the beach, and we were super excited for tomorrow, because we were going to go to Disneyland!

Sunday, July 29, 2012

Our First Trip in the Camper!

Dad finished the camper in the middle of the summer.  It was awesome!  There was a bed above the cab of the truck.  A second bed rested on this during the day, and at night it slid out to rest on brackets, filling the whole top of the camper with two double beds.  Below that dad had built couch seats against both walls.  During the day a table sat between the seats.  At night the table was lowered, turning the couches into another double bed.  Mom had made vinyl seat cushions for the couches and the beds, and they were amazingly soft and comfortable.  Six of us could sleep comfortably on the beds, but since there were eight in our family one of the boys usually slept on the seat in the cab, and Sharon was so little she had room to snuggle next to mom and dad on their bed or sleep on the floor  between the refrigerator, sink and stove.  Our camper was crowded, but cozy.

The first of August we took off on a two week trip to test the camper out.  Dad had planned for us to leave early on Monday morning, but it was late afternoon before everyone was ready and the camper packed.  We were going to go to California, Oregon, Idaho, Wyoming, and Utah, and the first leg of our journey was to San Diego.  It was after dark before we got to the State Park in San Diego where we were going to spend the first night.  That was disappointing because we were all so excited to see the ocean. 

Dad pulled into our camping spot about 10:00.   He and mom made out the beds while we kids used the park restroom and changed into our pj's, then we spent our first night in the camper.  Linda and I slept on the bed above the cab.  We were in a space that was only about two feet high, and it was kind of claustrophobic, but I chose to sleep next to the long window in front, plus there were small windows on each side, and that helped.  Dad had put metal bars in front of the windows to keep us from smashing through the glass in case of an accident, but he showed us how to pull the bars out if we needed to.

Next morning we woke up early and excited.  As soon as I was dressed I opened the back door of the camper and hurried out to see the ocean, but it wasn't there.  The state park we were camped in was actually on top of a bluff, and the only way to get down to the beach was by climbing down a long flight of metal stairs that meandered along the face of the cliff.  I found the stairs but was too scared to go by myself, so I ran back to the camper and talked Linda into coming with me.

It was still early in the morning.  There was a mist, almost fog, hugging the beach, and it was cool and salty.  How exciting for dessert rats like us!  We carefully climbed down the stairs and found the beach,  which was wet from the outgoing tide.  It was beautiful! 

We didn't stay in San Diego too long that morning.  The plan was to drive on up the coast to Los Angeles that day, stopping at a beach along the way when it was warmer so we could go swimming.  Mom made breakfast while we explored the state park, then we ate and packed up.  While mom and dad finished storing the lawn chairs and other equipment Linda and I walked over to a little convenience store to buy postcards.  They also sold candy and chips, and I discovered they had a brand new kind of snack I had seen advertised on television.   Fun-yuns! I bought a small package to share with Linda, and we ate them as we walked back to the camper.  I'll never forget how exotic I felt, walking through a California mist, eating a brand new kind of snack, and hearing the ocean crashing against the shore far below us.  It was so cool!

We were off, driving up the coast by 8:00 that morning.  By 9:00 the sun was shining warm and dad began looking for a good place for us to go swimming.  At each public beach he would tell us to look out the windows as he drove through the parking lot to see if this was a good place.  Each time we watched excitedly, but told him it wasn't a good beach, so dad drove out and on down the highway.  After about an hour of that dad finally got frustrated  and asked what was wrong with each of the beaches we had already passed.  He was pretty cross when we explained that we were looking for a beach without any people.  Dad drove in and parked at the next beach without even asking for our opinion.

We spent the rest of the morning swimming and playing at that beach, eating sandy sandwiches and chips at lunch on a blanket mom spread out on the sand.  Keith went body surfing, but the rest of us mostly just jumped over waves and splashed around, not venturing too far out into the surf.  Sharon and Julie were too little to really get in the ocean much, the waves pushed them down and tumbled them around and it wasn't much fun, but they enjoyed digging and letting Phillip cover them with sand.  We had a good afternoon, and it was hard to get us to leave, but we finally packed up our blanket and cool chest, washed off and changed in the public bathroom, then climbed back into the camper to drive on up to Los Angeles, where we would spend the night at Aunt Eloise's house. 

Saturday, July 28, 2012

Dad, the Builder

Dad enjoyed working with his hands. By day he was a school administrator and worked with kids minds, but at night and on weekends and holidays he physically worked.  We benefited.

Dad built our house in 1962.  It was perfect for a family with four young children, but by1970 there were six kids and two of us were already teenagers.  For awhile dad gave up his office and Keith slept there, but that left Phillip either sharing a room with his sisters or all of us girls in one bedroom.  We needed to do something else, and dad had the solution.  He added two bedrooms at the back of the house.

When dad built our house he put linoleum on the floors in the bedrooms.  It was easy to clean, but not very pretty or soft on the feet.  When the addition was finished dad and mom decided to carpet all the bedrooms.  It was so exciting!  Mom chose the most beautiful blue green shag for our rooms, and I felt like a queen living in such a beautiful house.

Carpets can be tricky, though.  Grandma Johnson was finally able to come home from the hospital  the first of the summer, but she wasn't well enough to live alone so she came to stay with us.   Grandma was able to get around a little bit using a walker, but she hated to be a bother.  The second night she was home she decided to get up and go to the bathroom by herself so she wouldn't have to wake up mom.  Somehow her walker got caught in the new shag carpet and she fell, breaking her hip and sending herself back to the hospital for another stay.  Poor grandma!

Once the addition was done dad got another idea.  He wanted to be able to take our family on special vacations, but it was too expensive for all of us to stay in hotels, and camping in a tent with so many people wasn't a good alternative, either.  What we needed was a camper, but they cost a lot of money.  So dad built us one.  He bought a large pick-up truck, designed how he wanted the camper to look, then began to build.  The shell was made from ply-wood (this was a heavy camper), he bought a sink, tiny stove, and refrigerator, and mom made cushions out of foam pads covered with  vinyl for the couch/beds.  When it was done, our camper looked just a store-bought one, and was very comfortable.  Dad was amazing!

Friday, July 27, 2012

The Accident

I was thirteen in eighth grade.  That sure seems young.  I guess it's because my birthday was in August, so I was always one of the youngest kids in my grade.  If I had been born a month later I would have started school the following year and been one of the oldest.  I never really thought about it before, but perhaps that explains why I always felt so naive and juvenile compared to the other, more sophisticated kids in my class.  Interesting.

Anyway, I didn't really enjoy eighth grade much more than seventh.  I wasn't afraid of getting lost on campus anymore, but I still worried about drugs and bad people.  Then in April I found something even worse to worry about.

Seventh hour had just ended, and I was gathering up my books, getting ready to walk home, when mom walked into my classroom.  She had come to pick me up, and I could tell by the look on her ace that something was really wrong.

"Grandma Johnson has been in a bad car accident," she told me as we walked down the hall leading to the front street.  "She's in the hospital, and I need you to watch the kids so I can go be with her." 

I didn't even want to ask how bad grandma was; from the ashen color of mom's face I could guess; but I had to know.  "Is she going to be OK?" I whispered.

"We don't know," mom answered slowly.  There were tears in her voice, but outwardly she was calm.  That was one of the things I admired most about my mother.  She might break down after the emergency was over, but when something bad happened she was like a rock.  Cool, calm, clear thinking, she would take over and do what needed to be done without hysterics. It made my world secure and took away the fright.  If mom could handle it, so could I.

That was one of the longest afternoons and evenings of my life.   Dad came home and went to the hospital to be with mom and the rest of her family.  I took care of the little kids, got something for us to eat for dinner, and waited for the phone to ring. 

Late that evening mom and dad came home, exhausted, worried, but still calm.  Grandma had been in surgery all afternoon.  The accident had been bad, the car smashed beyond all recognition.  Grandma had been riding with a friend.  Grandma's friend had pulled out to make a left turn without seeing the car coming down the street.  It slammed into the passenger side of the car, where grandma was sitting, doing close to 45 miles an hour.  There was no way grandma could have escaped without multiple broken bones and internal injuries.  She was, after all, 70 years old and no spring chicken.  But so far she had surprised all the doctors and was still holding on.  Now it was just going to be a waiting game to see if she made it through the night.

Things were still the same the following morning and grandma held on during the coming days.  No one could believe it, especially not the doctors, but little by little grandma recovered.  Each day mother would wait for me to come home from school, then go down to see grandma in the hospital.  At first I babysat, but when grandma was moved to a regular room I was able to go with mom.  It helped to see grandma and knew that she was getting better, but the fear didn't go away.  I had grown up, in a way, but I was still too young to handle my new wisdom. 

In a matter of minutes I had discovered that life is fragile.  No matter how secure and settled it feels, life is always just a heart beat away from dramatic change, and there's nothing any of us can do about it.  I knew that now, and it scared me to death.  Every time mom left to go somewhere I wondered if she would come home.  I hated it when she and dad both went someplace at night.  I was so afraid I would never see them again.  For months I struggled with irrational fear, making it hard for mother to do any of the things she needed to do because I hung on her and begged her not to leave.  She was awful patient with me, but it must have driven her crazy.

Eventually enough time passed without anyone dying and I grew out of that fear, but the wisdom remained.  I forget sometimes, but whenever I hear about someone having an accident I am reminded just how tentative a grasp on life we really have, and how our whole world can change in an instant.  When I remember it makes me stop and take time to appreciate where I am right now, and to be grateful for time to love, laugh, and enjoy my family and friends.

Thursday, July 26, 2012

Road Shows and Bryce and Zion's Canyons

It's funny how important time gets the older I am.  When I was a kid I didn't seem to notice it nearly as much.  When the decades changed from the 60's to the 70's I don't know if I even cared.  The only thing I remember is being glad that the era of the hippies seemed to be slipping away and fashions were getting prettier.  At least, I thought so.

I was 13 when 1970 began, in 8th grade, still reading books as I walked to and from school and during lunch, but beginning to grow up a little bit.  Lime green was my favorite color, and I dreamed of owning a green Volkswagen Beetle some day.  The closest I got was a huge pair of round, lime green sunglasses which I proudly wore everywhere.  I thought they made me look like Audrey Hepburn.

Back in those days our church used to put on Road Shows each year.  They were so much fun.  Each ward would write, practice, and then put on a fifteen minute musical play for everyone in our community.  There were so many wards in our town it took two nights to put on all the shows.  They were called Road Shows because on the nights of the performances we would travel from church to church, performing our show.  Audiences at each building would get to see all the different ward's plays, and it was a lot of fun.

1970 was my first chance to be in a Road Show, and it was exciting.  I was young, so I didn't have a very big part.  I was just one of the townspeople who sang and stood around.  I think our play was based on the song "Henry the Eighth" by Herman's Hermits, although we changed the words around to fit our story.  I got to wear a long princess dress and I thought I looked so pretty.  I had a cousin who was a beautician, and she fixed my hair special for the Road Show, putting it up on top of my head in big sausage curls and braids.  She used starch to to keep the curls in place so my hair-do would last both nights, and it worked.  The curls were as stiff as cardboard and lasted a lot longer than two days.

I didn't wash them out because early in the morning on the day after our Road Show the youth in our ward went on another Super Activity, this time to Bryce and Zion's Canyons in Utah.  Mom and dad both went this time, and we had a great time. 

I suppose there must have been about 50 youth in our ward, so it took a lot of adults to drive and chaperon all of us.  This time the plan was to take the girls to Zion's Canyon for the first day and the boys to Bryce, spend the night at motels at each place, then switch on the second day and spend that night at the other motel.  Both canyons were beautiful and staying in two different motels was very exciting, but for me the most memorable part of the trip was stopping at Glen Canyon Dam on Lake Powell as we came home.  We took time to tour the dam, riding in an elevator all the way to the bottom to see where the electricity was made.  Sister Reheise, one of the mom's in our group, was deathly afraid of elevators.  Her face was almost the same color as my green sunglasses by the time we got through with that tour.

Being a kid on these Super Activities was certainly a lot easier than being an adult chaperon.  All I had to worry about was which car I would ride in and having enough money for souvenirs.  The poor adults had to keep track of all of us, keep us out of mischief, and make sure everyone was having a good time.  Kids can be pretty dumb, both girls and boys.  I remember two of my friends running from room to room on this super activity, knocking on doors, then hiding.  They thought they were so funny.  Thank goodness we've grown up, although that means I'm the adult chaperon now, and it's my kids who are being silly.

Wednesday, July 25, 2012

Ironing Gossip

You know what?  I sure am glad someone invented permanent press and wrinkle free material.  I know we still have some clothes that need ironing, but it sure is a lot better than it used to be. 

I remember when mom first taught me how to iron.  She started me with handkerchiefs, (what in the world we did with so many of them I really don't know), and it sure took me a long time to figure out how to do it right.  I couldn't seem to get coordinated enough to hold the cloth with one hand and the iron with the other, and press the handkerchiefs flat without creating more and more wrinkles.  What a pain!

Mom ironed every Saturday afternoon.  It was part of our routine.  I suppose she did the laundry all week long, as needed, but any clothes that needed ironing were sprinkled with water, rolled up, and put in a green plastic bag mom kept in the refrigerator, waiting to be ironed later.  Thinking back, it sure seems like a weird thing to do. 

On Saturday, after the regular housecleaning was done, mom would take out the ironing bag and she would iron.  I'm sure it was not one of her favorite jobs, it seemed to take all afternoon sometimes, but she never complained.  In fact, I remember it as being one of our favorite times of the week.  Mom would visit with us, listen to our stories, and let us tell her all about the things we were doing.  She knew how to ask the right questions, I guess, and she was a good listener.  She was especially good at getting my older brother, Keith, to talk.  He was a teenager by this time, but he enjoyed gabbing with mom as much as the rest of us, and I loved listening to them talk.

The older we got the less ironing there was to do, (double knit fabric was beginning to come into style, ugly but easy to care for), and there was less time for gossiping around the ironing board.  Mom made up for that in other ways, but you know what?  I miss those days.  I guess ironing for hours was a good thing, after all.

Tuesday, July 24, 2012

Hiking to Havasu Falls

The summer of 1969 not only saw men walking on the moon and our family spending a whole month at the cabin, it also was the summer I hiked down into the Grand Canyon, killed my feet, and got to ride in a helicopter.  It was quite the adventure.

I turned 13 in August that year and became a teenager.  I always thought that would make me grown up, but I wasn't very.  In fact, I was as scared about hiking in the Grand Canyon as I was about going to girls camp, which I had to do again that summer, this time without my mother.  At least dad was able to go with me down into the Grand Canyon.

Each summer our ward took the youth ages 12 to 18 on a super activity.  We earned the money to pay for these activities by putting on bar-b-que chicken dinners for civic groups in our city.  We catered good dinners, and we made lots of money.  Since dad was in the Bishopric he always helped with the dinners, which meant our family helped too, and we really enjoyed working together and learned a lot at the same time.  But being in the Bishopric also meant dad went on all the activities, so I had to go too, whether I wanted to or not.  Hiking 12 miles down into the Grand Canyon was one activity I had no desire to do.

The plan was that the girls in our ward would drive up to the Grand Canyon early, early Monday morning so we could start hiking about 9:00 am.  We would camp down at the bottom until Wednesday morning, when a helicopter would fly down to take us out at the same time they took the boys from our ward in.  We girls would drive home and the boys would stay until Saturday, when they would hike out.  It was a good plan; no one would have to worry about boys and girls camping together, and hiking down would be easier on the girls while the boys could experience the thrill of hiking up from the bottom of the Grand Canyon. 

We were actually hiking down into Havasu Canyon, on the south side of the Grand Canyon, to camp at a place called Havasu Falls on the Havasupai Indian Reservation.  These falls are famous world wide, and are absolutely beautiful.  Havasupai means 'the people of the blue green water', and that is exactly the color of the waterfalls.  The water has so much limestone in it that it has formed pools and natural dams under the falls, making the most awesome swimming pools you've ever seen.  Bishop Brinton, the leader of our ward, had hiked down to Havasu Falls before, and he was excited for us to get to have such a neat experience.  Most of the youth in the ward and the adults were also thrilled to get to go on such a great activity.  I was scared to death.

First of all, I hadn't had great experiences hiking in the past, especially not the previous summer when we had to go on a four mile hike at girls camp.  I thought I was going to die before it was over.  Second, I hated wearing closed in shoes, they always gave me blisters.  I had spent my life either going barefoot or wearing sandals, so I didn't even own a pair of hiking shoes which was a must for going on such a long hike.  Third, I did not like being away from home, and even though dad was going with us I was still really apprehensive.  But it didn't matter.  I was going and that was that.

The week before the activity mom took me to the store to find a pair of hiking shoes.  I couldn't find any.  Hiking boots were expensive and they hurt my feet.  There were no such things as running shoes or good athletic shoes at the time, and tennis shoes were too flimsy for hiking.  Mom ended up buying me a good pair of sturdy oxfords, thinking I could use them later as school shoes.  I still remember how ugly those shoes were.  They were white and light brown, stiff and hard, and I did not like them at all.  Dad told me to be sure to wear a pair of nylons under my regular stockings and then he assured me I wouldn't have any problems at all.  Right.

We got up about 3:00am on that fateful Monday morning, grabbed the sack lunches mom had prepared for us, kissed her goodbye, and drove over to the church where everyone was meeting.  After loading all the girls and their luggage into cars we took off for the Grand Canyon.  At first everyone in our car was excited and chattering, but within an hour or so the only people awake were dad, who was driving, and me who was too scared and anxious to close my eyes. 

We got to the trail head at the rim of the Grand Canyon in good time.  Here we met the Indians who were going to pack our sleeping bags and equipment down to the camp grounds.  Once their mules were loaded we all gathered at the trail head for a prayer and final instructions.  Our leaders made sure everyone had their sack lunches, full canteens, and that we all knew the rules of staying together, not horsing around, and keeping back from the edge of the trail.  Then we started. 

The first mile of the trail was straight down.  It wasn't exhausting walking, like the hike up the mountain last year at girls camp, but it wasn't long before my legs felt like quivering jello.  It's funny what different muscles we have to use to walk down a steep canyon instead of hiking up.  It actually didn't take us that long to get to the floor of the canyon, maybe an hour or so.  We stopped there for a long break, eating some and drinking.  I was being as careful as I could with my water, remembering how I'd run out on our hike the year before and thought I was going to die.  It helped, too, having dad with me.  He had two extra canteens hanging on his belt in case some of us needed more water.  The bad part was my feet.  I already had blisters on both heels, the sides of my feet, and one big toe.  Oh, they hurt, but I didn't want to complain so I kept going.

The rest of the hike was on the floor of the canyon.  It wasn't difficult walking, but it was far.  I have never been so happy when we finally saw the beautiful green trees nestling at the foot of some huge, red cliffs.  We all thought we had made it to the river and the camp ground.  It was actually only the village of Havasupai, and we still had two more miles to hike, but at least we knew the end was in sight.  My feet were hurting so bad by this time I didn't think I could take another step, but I knew if I stopped or took my shoes off I'd never get them back on again, so I just kept on putting one foot in front of the other, and prayed for the end.

Eventually we did get to the river, and it was amazing!  Havasu falls fell over a high, high, cliff, splitting into two waterfalls crashing down into cool, clear pools below.  The campground was below the falls and we were sure glad to reach it.  I dropped down onto the ground in agony and fumbled to untie the laces on my scuffed and dusty oxfords.  It hurt like crazy just pulling them off, and then I had to peel the socks and nylons off my poor, blistered feet.  And I am talking about blisters!  The ones on my heels were huge, they covered the whole back of my feet.  The side blisters had blisters on top of each other, and I even had blisters on the soles of my feet.  Man, did they hurt!  Dad sure felt bad when he saw how bad my feet were.  He was upset that I hadn't told him my feet hurt while we were hiking.  He had bandaids and mule skin with him, and maybe could have helped if he'd known.  I was just glad to get those awful shoes off. 

I spent the next two days hobbling around camp barefoot.  I went to the pools a few times, and soaked my feet in the cold water, but most of the time I stayed at camp.  It was fun, and beautiful, but I wasn't in much of a mood for enjoying camping.

Wednesday morning we packed everything up and I endured putting my shoes back on.  My blisters had heeled a little and dad had doctored my feet pretty good with mule tape and bandaids, so I was OK. 

Pretty soon we heard the whirr of the helicopter overhead, and we watched in anticipation as it settled down into the canyon and landed not too far from our camp.   Out tumbled a bunch of excited boys.  As soon as they had unloaded their gear the girls stuff was put on and then the first group of girls climbed on board.  Maybe because I was one of the younger girls I got to be on that first flight.  It was so exciting.  I don't know why I wasn't scared about flying in a helicopter, maybe because I had dreamed of getting to fly for so long I just didn't care if it was on a helicopter or an airplane, but I wasn't nervous, just excited.  It was sure noisy in the helicopter, and amazing how close the whirling blades were to our heads as we climbed in, but what a thrill when the copter lifted off the ground and flew up into the air.  It didn't take more than a minute for us to be flying over the little village of Havasupai, and then just another couple of minutes to cover the ground to the edge of the canyon before we were settling down on the top rim, not far from our cars.  And then it was over.  Amazing!

The trip home sure seemed a lot longer than the trip there.  We stopped in Flagstaff to get some dinner.  I remember how good the fries and strawberry shake tasted after eating canned beans and hot dogs for three days, but our car sure got quiet quickly once we were back on the road headed for home.  Everyone fell asleep except for dad, even me. 

Mom was happy to see us when we got home, and it was fun telling  about the falls and camping in the bottom of the Grand Canyon.  It was even more fun on Saturday when Keith got home and we got to rehash all of our stories again.  But it took a long time for my feet to get feeling better, and I never did wear those dumb oxfords to school.  I was very happy wearing sandals all year long, even during the winter.  Cold feet are lots better than blistered feet.

Monday, July 23, 2012

The "Thump" in the Attic

             Dad and the Jones's left to go back to the valley about 5:30 Sunday afternoon, leaving mom and us kids to spend our second week alone at the cabin.  Mom was being a really good sport that summer.  It was quiet that evening as we ate supper and mom read aloud to us.  Suddenly, we heard a loud thump.  It seemed to come from the bedroom, and Phillip jumped up and ran in to see what it was.  He turned on the light and looked all around, but everything seemed normal.  Shrugging, he came back into the front room.
            “There’s nothing in there,” he said as he climbed back on the bed.  Mom had just begun reading again when, “thump, thump!’ we heard the noise again.
            This time we all trooped into the bedroom to see what was going on, but we couldn’t find anything out of place.  I'll  have to admit we were getting a little spooked by that time, so we really jumped when there was a “thump” right over our heads as we stood in the kitchen doorway.
            “What is it?” cried Julie, who was only four years old.
            “It’s probably that bear Keith warned us about,” I suggested sarcastically.  After all, only three days earlier he had tried to ruin our slumber party with his bear stories and throwing rocks on the trailer's roof.
            “No, it isn’t,” mom assured Julie, with a warning look at me.  “I bet it’s a squirrel on the roof or something.”
            “Nothing on the roof would make a noise like that,” Keith corrected her.  “That noise if coming from the attic.”
            Linda screamed, and Julie and Sharon began to cry.  Mom hushed them, and assured all of us that if something was in the attic it was probably just a big mouse.  “Remember, they are more afraid of you than we are of them.  Nothing is going to hurt us,” she promised.
            Keith and Phillip both agreed with her, and Phillip called Linda a scaredy-cat.  That didn’t go over too well, and soon mom had her hands full trying to get us settled down and in bed.  Julie begged to sleep with mom and Sharon in the bedroom, (Sharon was only two) but Linda got mad because there wasn’t room for her on the double bed as well.  Mom told her she could sleep on the floor next to the bed, but there was no way Linda wanted to do that!  Still, she refused to sleep with me out on the back porch.  In the end, she put the old ironing board we had bought at a thrift shop in Young on two chairs at the foot of mom’s bed, determined to sleep there.
            Linda soon found out that an ironing board wasn’t very wide and didn’t make a good bed, especially for a nine-and-a-half-year old girl.  Finally she gave in and slept on her regular bed in the front room, but she wasn’t happy about it.
            All during the following week we kept hearing the "thump" from the attic.  Mom got so tired of it that she took the broom and thumped back.  She was amazed when whatever it was thumped right back at her. 
When dad came up that weekend he climbed up on the ladder and shined a flashlight into the far corners of the attic.  Sure enough, he saw a big white rat hiding in a nest up there.  Keith and Phillip wanted to take the twenty-two and shoot it, but dad didn’t think that was such a good idea.  Instead, he set a big trap and put out mouse poison when we went home.  That was the end of the “thump”.

Sunday, July 22, 2012

Poker on Sunday?

I was pretty sad on Monday when dad had to take my cousin Tina home because she broke her little finger.  I had looked forward to spending a whole week with her at the cabin.  At least Janice, Linda's friend, was still there.  Dad came back on Friday afternoon, and Janice's mom and dad drove up to get her on Sunday.  
We had fun showing them around the cabin.  They stayed all afternoon, putting off the time when they would have to return to the heat of the valley.  As usual during monsoon season, rain clouds built up in the north-east during the afternoon, and we all hoped it would rain so hard they wouldn’t be able to leave.
            We spent the last hour or so of the afternoon in the cabin, visiting.  Keith and Phillip were playing cards at the table, and they were looking pretty bored.  In the evenings we would all play Rook together, but when there were only two players they usually played War.  It kept them busy, but wasn't very difficult or exciting.   
            Mr. Jones was sitting next to them.   After awhile he asked, “Would you boys like me to teach you how to play poker?  That would be more fun than what you’re playing?”
            Mom and dad looked at each other in consternation, but before they could think up a polite way to stop him Mr. Jones had picked up the deck of cards and was dealing out a new hand.
            Just then the electricity in the cabin went off!  It often did when there were storms in the area, that was part of the charm of being at the cabin.  Unless mom was cooking something in the kitchen we didn't really need electricity, and it was fun to get out the candles and pretend we were pioneers.  This time it wasn’t even dark outside, although it was dusky in the living room without the lights. 
            Mr. Jones looked up in surprise and chuckled.  “I guess someone up there doesn’t think playing poker on Sunday is such a good idea, do they?” 
            Everyone laughed,  but it was kind-of strange that the lights would go out just at that moment.  They didn't stay out very long, and the thunderstorms passed by without hitting us, but still we wondered. 
            Soon the Jones’s had to load up their car, dad put his stuff in the truck since he had to go back home to work, and we said  our goodbyes.  As they drove away I had a funny feeling in the pit of my stomach.  I were going to miss Janice, and it was always hard to say goodbye to dad though I was really glad he was letting us stay up at the cabin for so long while he had to go down to the valley and work.  But I felt funny.  It was almost like I was afraid of being alone, even though I hadn’t minded before.

Saturday, July 21, 2012

Men on the Moon and Tina's Broken Finger

1969, the summer we stayed up at the cabin for a whole month, was the summer Apollo 11 landed on the moon.  We watched it, sort of. 
My cousin,Tina, and Janice, Linda's friend, came up with us to stay for the first week.  Friday night we had our Super Slumber Party in the trailer.  Saturday we explored around the cabin, swam in the creek, and played games after dark.  Sunday, July 20th, we went to church in Young. 
At church everyone was talking about the incredible events happening up in space.  The news was that the astronauts on Apollo 11 would walk on the moon that evening and it would be televised live on TV.  Of course we didn't have a TV at the cabin, but our friend, Jedie Flake, invited our family to come over to his ranch to watch this historic event.
That afternoon we hung out downstairs, goofing off and shooting the breeze.  Keith liked being the oldest, and he especially liked showing off when girls were around.  He scrambled up onto a branch of the tree we climbed through to get down to the creek.   Tina and I sat on logs under the tin roof of the old shed.  Keith flirted with Tina while I listened, bragging about his girl friends and all the cool stuff he could do.  We ate it up.  After all, Keith was a year older than us, funny, and very cute, (even if he was my brother.)
After awhile that grew old, so Keith found a football and tried to impress us with his throwing skills.  There was a big, grassy open area back behind grandma and grandpa's cabin.  The grass was kind of wet from an earlier thunderstorm, and it was muddy and the ground uneven, but Tina and I weren't really running after his throws anyway so we didn't fall down too much.  Keith got tired of just tossing the ball after awhile, so he backed way up and threw a really long pass to Tina.  She caught it, but the ball jammed into her pinkie finger and pushed it all the way back.  It hurt really bad!  We ran upstairs to our cabin and showed Tina's finger to mom.  It was red and already swelling.  Mom didn't know quite what to do except to fill a glass with ice and water and have Tina soak her finger, hoping that would take the swelling down.  It helped a little, and between that and taking a couple of aspirin her finger didn't hurt too badly.  Whenever she took it out of the ice water, though, it was so painful she had to put it back in.
About we drove down to the Bar –X Ranch.    Jedie and his family welcomed us into their house and we all settled around their small television set to watch the moon landing.  They had a couple of little kids who weren't any more excited about what was happening than Julie and Sharon, so they played on the floor while the rest of us sat, glued to the TV screen, excitedly waiting to see what the moon looked like. 
The reception wasn't very good up in the mountains in the first place, but we didn't mind the news casters fuzzy black and white faces as long as we could hear what they were saying.  Finally the commentators at Cape Canaveral faded out and the first live pictures of men on the moon were shown all around the world, but all we could see was a screen full of little white dots.  We could hear the astronauts talking, and the commentator at Cape Canaveral explaining what was happening, but all we saw were snowy shadows!
When Neil Armstrong  said, “One small step for man, one giant step for mankind,” we knew that a man was walking on the moon, but we wondered if the rest of the world could see him, or if everyone was watching fuzz like us. Of course it was still exciting, but it was sure a let down.  I don't know what I had been expecting, something like we saw on the movies I suppose, but I thought the real thing was actually kind of boring.
Later, as we drove back to the cabin through the dark forest, Tina and I looked up into the sky and gazed at the moon.  It was big and bright that night, shining down on the world with all it’s might.  It was hard to imagine that at that very moment a small space ship was standing on the moon, and that people were inside, so many thousands of miles away from home.
The next morning dad took Tina back to Mesa with him.  Her finger had never stopped hurting and she wanted to go home.  I was sure bummed out about that, but I understood.  I could still remember how bad my arm hurt when I broke it up at the cabin six years earlier, and knew she wouldn't have any fun staying. When dad came back at the end of the week he told us that Tina had gone to the doctor, and found out  her finger was broken.  No wonder it had hurt so bad.

Friday, July 20, 2012

the Slumber Party in the Trailer

We spent a whole month at the cabin during the summer of 1969.  Dad couldn’t take that much  time off from work, but he drove us up and got us settled, then went back to Mesa to work during the week and drove back up on weekends.  
Linda and I each invited a friend to stay with us.  Tina, my cousin, came with me, and Linda’s friend Janice came with her for a week.  We wanted to do something really fun, so we asked mom and dad if we could have a slumber party in grandma and grandpa’s old trailer. 
Originaly the trailer was attached to the back of grandma and grandpa's cabin.  Eventually they had got around to building a real kitchen and the trailer was pulled aside.  It was old but still usable, so it was parked next to the hill at the foot of the trail.  It wasn’t used very often, but it was still hooked up to electricity.
Mom and dad said us girls could stay in the trailer if we wanted to, so we excitedly began making plans for the coolest slumber party of our lives.  Keith and Phillip also began making plans. They began by telling us stories about the Mogollon Monster and all the wild animals that lived in the mountains.  Keith spun a tail about the night he slept in the trailer and a bear or something climbed on top and scared the death out of him.  He warned us to keep the lights on and not to go outside after it got dark.
We laughed at his warnings and were in high spirits as evening fell and it was time for us to take our blankets and pillows and go down to the trailer.  It was pretty dirty inside.  Daddy-long-leg spiders climbed through the dust and mouse droppings, and it took some time for us to sweep everything out and get the trailer clean enough to stay in.  Then came the problem of where we would sleep.  The little bed wedged at the back of the trailer may have been big enough for four kids when we were little, but it was too crowded for four big girls now.  Finally we decided to pull the top mattress off the bed and put it on the floor for Linda and Janice.  Tina and I got the bed. 
We had a great time telling stories and gossiping for the first few hours.  When it got dark we turned on the single light bulb that hung down from the ceiling above the bed.  As the night drew on we began to get sleepy and ran out of stories to tell.  It was then that we noticed the intense quiet of the woods all around us, and we began to feel nervous.  It was just about when we heard a rattling thump on the roof over our  heads.  The younger girls screamed but Tina and I laughed.  “It’s nothing,” we reassured the little girls.  “Probably a pine cone dropped on the trailer or something.”
            We wracked our brains for something new to talk about and then filled the trailer with laughter and girl talk for half and hour or so more.  Eventually the stories began to peter out again and the little girls started to nod off to sleep.  Suddenly a big thump rattled the top of the trailer, and it was followed by another thump, thump, thump.  Janice and Linda screamed and jumped up onto the bed.
            “It’s OK,” Tina and I assured them.  “Don’t scream, you’ll wake up Keith and he’ll think we’re scared.”  Carefully, we parted the curtains of the window above the bed and looked out into the black night.  There were no lights on in the cabin above us. 
            “We want to go upstairs,” Linda and Janice whimpered.  “We’re scared!”
            “Are you going to walk up there in the dark?”  I asked.  “I don’t want to go out there.”
            “We have the flashlight,” Linda said, but she didn’t really like the idea of walking up the dark trail with just that little pin prick of light, either.
            “We’re safer here in the trailer,”  Tina agreed with me.  “What if there is some kind of animal outside.  I’d rather stay in here.”
            “Ok,” the little girls finally agreed.  But they stayed on the bed with us. 
            Again, we found things to talk about and time slowly crawled by until the little clock above the bed said it was almost .  Then suddenly, thump, thump, thump.  The roof of the trailer rattled with the sound of something bumping all over the top of it, and the light bulb swent out!
            This time everyone screamed!  I grabbed the flashlight and  turned it on.  Linda and Janice were shaking, holding each other in terror. 
            “What should we do?”  Tina asked in a whisper.  “Maybe we’d better try to get upstairs?”
            I stood up on the bed and reached in the dark for the light.  Finding it, I carefully twisted the still warm bulb tighter into it’s socket.  Immediately, bright light filled the trailer. 
            “It was only loose,” I giggled nervously.  “See, everything's OK.”
            Linda and Janice were still shaking, but the bright light helped to calm them down.  None of us wanted to leave the safety of the trailer to walk up the dark hill, so we snuggled down on the crowded bed and kept on talking.  At last, the little girls fell asleep and Tina and I drifted in and out until morning finally dawned.  Our necks were stiff, our legs cramped, but we were alive!
            Gratefully I switched off the light-bulb that had kept us safe all night, we piled our blankets and pillows into our arms, and we trudged up the hill to the cabin.  There we found a smug looking Keith and Phillip,  wanting to know how we had slept.
            “We slept fine,” we told them shortly. 
            “We saw that you kept the light on all night,” Phillip accused us.  “Were you scared?”
            “No,” I answered for everyone.  “We were just having so much fun we never stopped to turn it off.”
            “Right,” Keith scoffed.  “How come we heard you scream?”
            “That was just Linda and Janice,” Tina retorted.  “Some pine cones fell out of the tree and startled them, but we weren’t scared.”
            “Are you sure it wasn’t a raccoon, or a bear crawling around on the roof?” Phillip wanted to know.
            “How do you know there was something on our roof?” I demanded.
By this time Phillip and Keith were both grinning wickedly.   We soon figured out that they had made the noises in the middle of the night by throwing rocks on the trailer from the top of the hill. We were sure glad we hadn’t given in and run up to the cabin!

Thursday, July 19, 2012

Growing Up With A Famous Dad

There were lots of good things about having a well known father, and a few bad.  Dad was the assistant principle at Mesa High School for most of my growing up years.  In a small city that meant most of the people I came in contact with during my school years knew, respected, and liked my father.  This filtered down to me, and I think I was treated better than other kids with anonymous parents.    I've remembered this all my life, and tried to do what I could to have my kids teachers know and respect me, hoping it would also make their school years easier.

Dad used to take us with him to the school football games in the fall.  For years he was in charge of school activities, so he needed to be there.  He would take Keith and Phillip and Linda and I, settle us in on the bleachers,  then roam around the field, coming back to check on us once in a while.  When we were lucky dad would even splurge and buy us a couple of root beer to share.  It was so much fun to sit in the bleachers, drinking our pop and listening to the band play.  I didn't actually watch the game very often, but it sure was fun to watch the cheerleaders and the people.  It's against our religion to smoke, and I never knew anyone who did, but I sure did like the smell of cigarette smoke in the cool evening air at those games.  It's funny how good that smelled, but how nasty cigarette smoke is when you are close to someone who is smoking, or the smell of stale cigarette smoke in a hotel room or car.  Perhaps it's because it was such a faint smell when we were outside, or maybe it's just the happy memories it evokes.

Sometimes Dad would take us to basketball games at the old Jack Rabbit Gym.  I can still remember the high pitched squeak, squeak of tennis shoes running across the polished wood floor, and the laughter and music of the band.  After those games there was always a dance, and dad would make sure things were set up first before running us quickly home so he could get back to supervise.  I was always proud of dad when we were at school functions.  Dad stopped to talk to everyone, which sometimes got pretty boring when we were waiting for him to take us home, but he was so popular it made me feel like someone special, because he was my father.

Not everyone at the high school liked dad, though.  Perhaps because he was so nice and easy to get along with he was given the job of being in charge of school discipline for many years.  This meant that whenever a student got in trouble dad had to sort it out.  Invariably, there were some students who blamed dad for their problems. 

One Friday night dad took Keith and Phillip on a Father's and Sons outing up to the mountains.  Mom and us girls were left home by ourselves.  It was about 10:00 when all of a sudden there was a terrific explosion in the front room.  It scared us all silly, of course, and Mom ran to see what had happened.  We had a mail slot next to our front door where the mail man pushed our letters through.  Someone had snuck up to our house and dropped a cherry bomb through the slot.  It exploded on the floor of our entryway, making a mess but not really damaging anything, thank goodness.  It turned out one of the kids dad had disciplined was so angry he wanted to get revenge.  Mom got a phone call from this boys father later that night, calling to see if we were OK and assuring her that his son was going to be punished.  Shes sure felt sorry for that boy after talking to his dad, and could almost understand why he got into so much trouble.

Years later Dad met that boy again.  He had grown into a fine young man, who apologized over and over for being such a knot head.  I like to think maybe the way dad dealt with him had something to do with his turning out OK.  In fact, dad made a difference for a lot of kids.  It was always fun to meet people who went to Mesa High and have them find out who my father was.  You could tell by the look on their face if they were the kids who knew dad from the activities or from being sent to his office. 

When dad built our double house in Gilbert and we moved into the new ward I stopped by our new Bishop's office to introduce myself the first Sunday.  Mom and Dad weren't there yet, so I told Bishop Price about them.  He got a funny look on his face, then asked, "Is your dad the Ralph Russell who used to be assistant principal at Mesa High School?"

I told him yes, and then he grinned this great big grin.  "Oh boy," he said.  "After all these years, now I get to sit on this side of the desk and he'll have to listen to me!"  Apparently he had spent more than a few occasions in dad's office back when he was in high school.

Sunday, July 15, 2012

7th Grade PE

My least favorite class in 7th grade was PE.  I was never very coordinated, so sports and I didn't mix too well.  Most of that year our PE class was held outside, playing softball, kickball, basketball, or volleyball, but once in a while we would have class in the weight room, exercising. 

One rainy day we were inside, learning how to do the hop-skip-and jump, what they call the triple jump now.  After watching the teacher demonstrate how to do the jump, each of us had to take a turn.  The weight room was large, but not that large. We started at one side of the room and ended up on the opposite side.  Stacked against the walls were mats, exercise equipment, and dumb bells, bars and weights. 

Since my last name began with a letter at the end of the alphabet it wasn't until the end of the hour before I got my turn to try the hop-skip-and jump.  Most of the other girls had already had their turn and were sitting around on the mats, visiting or napping.  A couple of girls were trying to lift the weights or dumb bells.  When it finally got to my turn I stepped up to the beginning mark, ran the required number of steps, then hopped, skipped, and jumped, right into the dumb bell that two girls were lifting at the same time.  My forehead smacked into the heavy weight with a sickening thud, and I fell backwards onto the floor.

The girls exclaimed loudly and dropped the weights.  The PE teacher rushed over to my side to help me up and see if I was OK.  The rest of the class gathered around, and I was so embarrassed!  It never occurred to me to be mad at the girls who'd been horsing around with the weights.  I just felt like a fool for not looking before I'd jumped.  My head felt like it was splitting open and a huge goose egg was already popping out on my forehead, but I told the teacher I was OK because I didn't want any more attention.  I think she made me put an ice pack on my head for the rest of the class period, but I wouldn't go to the nurse or lie down or anything.  PE was my last class of the day, anyway, and since it was raining mom came to pick me up so I didn't have to walk home, but my head sure did hurt the rest of the day.  That knot seemed to stay on my forehead for days and days, and when it finally went down I could still feel a little bump where it had been.  I think it's still there. 

It's funny, you know.  I've always thought it would be so cool to be the heroin in a book, to have something really dramatic happen to me and have everyone else fuss over me and think I was cool.  But when I finally got my moment in the spot light, I didn't want it.  Go figure.

Walking and Reading

Although I never was part of the hippie crowd, I didn't really hang out with the good kids, either.  I had acquaintances, girls I talked to in class and church, but no really close friends during those years.  It seemed to me that all these girls had their own best friends and I was just the hanger on the outside; everyone seemed to like me but I wasn't any one's best friend.  I was OK with that, I never wanted a best friend, but it made lunch time kind of lonely.  Sometimes I hung around with 'the group', but mostly I just quickly ate my sack lunch and then excused myself.  I had discovered the school library, and it was my hangout.  I could go in there, find a table all to myself, and read!  That I liked. 

I loved reading.  When I was young it was the Nancy Drew Mysteries or the Little House on the Prairie series and classics like Heidi and The Secret Garden.  As I grew older I started reading books mom liked and soon found myself hooked on Agatha Christie murder mysteries.  Oh, those were fun!  Once I got into a good book I hated to put it down until I'd found out who done it, so I'd read on my way to school, all through my lunch hour, and as I walked home after school.  I got pretty good at walking and reading at the same time, developing a sixth sense for curbs and driveways and crossing streets.  It's a good thing most of the walk from our house to the junior high was on residential back roads, and I only had to cross one main street.

Still, once in a while reading while walking got me into trouble.  There was this one day, during lunch hour, when I had finished eating and was heading to the library.  I was in the middle of a particularly intense murder mystery, but I decided I would stop and go to the bathroom before I went to the library so I wouldn't have to stop reading until the bell rang for my next class.  I started across the middle of the big hall, reading while I walked.  The bathrooms were just before the library, first the girls, then the boys.  Spellbound, I walked across the hall, turned a page, blindly grabbed the bathroom door handle, tugged it open, and walked in, focusing on the mystery in my book.  Once in the bathroom I lowered my book, looked up, and to my horror realized I was not in the girl’s bathroom.  It was the boys!  Thank goodness there were no boys inside, but that didn't alleviate my horror, or the embarrassment of having to turn around and walk out of that room.  Actually, I think I ran, hoping against hope that no one would be looking and see me come out.  I guess no one did, at least no one said anything, thank goodness.  It didn't cure me of walking and reading, but it did make me look up more often.

The Hippie Generation and Me

On the first day of Junior High I found my home room without too much trouble: after all, mom had taken me to explore the school the week before and I still had the map and my class schedule clenched tightly in my fist.  This was my core room, the class where all announcements and paperwork and school related things would be taken care of.  This class was longer than the rest, and the teacher was supposed to be our friend and mentor, helping us new kids feel safe and at home.  It didn't happen.  I can't remember my teacher's name, but he sure was scary.  He was tall and bald and kind of gruff, not at all cushy and homey. 

My teacher assigned us seats as we came in, alphabetical order, and I found myself sitting behind the most beautiful girl I had ever seen.  She had thick, long, wavy strawberry blond hair, she wore the shortest skirt I had ever seen, and she smelled like the perfume department at Super X drugstore.  I overheard her talking one day and discovered she wore 'white shoulders' perfume.  I've hated that scent ever since.  I often overheard her talking to the boys who hung out around her desk and soon figured out that this was not a "good girl".  She liked to talk about the parties she had been to the night before, and usually she was whispering about alcohol, drugs, and making out.  To a sheltered, naive little girl like me she was a monster!

This was the 60's, and although Mesa was a conservative town the hippie generation was slowly making its way even into our world.  Dad had talked with us kids the year before about drugs; he knew what was going on because he was an assistant principle at the high school.  It scared me silly to think I would be around kids who did that kind of stuff, and I used to have nightmares about people putting LSD in my milkshake, or injecting it into the jelly filling of donuts they sold at the concession stand in our school.  Silly, I know, but it frightened me.  I suppose we worry most about things that never happen, and in all my years no one ever asked me if I wanted to do drugs, or even smoke or drink.  I didn't hang around the kids who did, so I never had to deal with that, thank goodness.  I suppose I was what everyone called "a goodie two-shoes", but it sure made my life easier.

7th Grade


Labor Day, 1968, was the worst day of my life!  I hated it!  I never could understand why the stupid people in charge of running our schools would want to go and ruin a perfectly good holiday by making it the day before school started.  How could anybody enjoy the holiday with that hanging over their heads?  This year was worse than ever because I was starting junior high the next day and I was scared silly!

Junior high meant going to a new, huge school with all kinds of new kids, new teachers, and tons of classrooms.  I was sure I would get lost or forget which room I was supposed to be in, and my imagination ran wild envisioning the horrible things that could happen to me in such a huge place. 

We always had a picnic at Grandma Johnson's on Labor Day.  I loved getting together with my family, but not on this day.  I couldn't figure out why my brothers and sisters and cousins weren't sick to their stomachs like I was.  They might not be ready for the summer to be over, but they were all happily looking forward to getting back together with their friends and discussing their new grades and teachers while they ate hamburgers, munched chips, slurped pop, and licked the inevitable ice cream cones Grandma always provided for the last day of summer.  I couldn't eat a thing because I felt like throwing up.

There was no way I could go to sleep that night.  Just like on Christmas Eve, but for opposite reasons, my eyes were wired open and the hours crawled by like years.  Whenever I did drift off to sleep I would startle awake ten minutes later afraid I was late, only to realize I still had hours to go and was unable to fall back to sleep.  That was the longest night of the year.

Mom tried to make the first day of school fun, I'm sure, preparing a special breakfast and helping us find book bags, clothes, shoes, notebooks, and all the other stuff we needed.  She drove me to school that first day, although from then on I walked.  This was my older brother Keith's second year in junior high, and he knew where everything was and what to do, but that didn't help me at all.  I never saw him after we got out of the car; Keith was swallowed up in a group of laughing girls and boys headed to their lockers.  I was left, standing on the curb, wishing I was invisible or dead, or anywhere besides junior high