Lessons I've Learned The Hard Way ...

 

The strongest fences in our lives are the ones we build ourselves. 

Not to get all pretentious here, but I’ve had a lot of interesting experiences over the last ten years, and I want to share some principles that guide my life I’ve learned from those experiences. There is also a story behind every statement. I may even share those stories sometime …

1. Sometimes we don’t see our personal prison until we’re out of it. Comfort zones aren’t always helpful, especially when they keep us from progressing. Relationships, careers, or where we live can all be barriers to being a better person.
2. Find someone you can love wholeheartedly, passionately, and without fear of rejection. Love someone who loves you for who you are now, but makes you want to be a better person. Love and be loved unconditionally. If you already have that someone, hang onto them for dear life.
3. Like what you do, but realize a career doesn't define you as a person. If you don’t love everything about your life now, find at least one thing you can love - exercise, a hobby, the arts, whatever it is that helps you transcend drudgery for a while. Life is too short to never find anything that makes you truly happy. I like teaching, but I don’t love the politics that go along with it. I’m lucky to be in a place now where I'm happy and engaged with my work, but there are many other things that make my life good as well.
4. Appreciate beauty. This is a lot of good in this world. Recognize the ugliness and change it if you can, but don't let it define you.
5. Fear sucks. Don’t be afraid of your feelings. Accept them, and if they’re negative, channel those feelings in productive ways. Recognize depression and deal with it.  I once reached a point where getting out of bed in the morning became a challenge. That was no way to live, so I did something about it. Mostly, I found reasons to get out of bed – my job, my kids, and the people I loved most. Don’t be afraid of trying new things. Don’t be afraid of trying old things in a new way.
6. Don’t trust anyone who says he or she knows what God - whichever one you happen to believe in - wants for your life. Organized religion is mostly bullshit and is usually just a means for people to exploit and make money off of others. For a long time, I believed there were people who were more insightful or inspired about myself than me, because they claimed to have a closer relationship with God than I had. I finally realized that nobody knows me better than myself. Depending on others for guidance because they claim to be more inspired is an invitation to disaster. It’s your life. Live it your way, but always strive to be kind. Be true to yourself, and accept, respect, and trust yourself. Don’t worry about what most others think or say about you; you can’t really do anything about it. Care what your loved ones think of you, but realize even they don't always understand where you're coming from. 
7. Accept others for who they are, but don’t be anyone’s doormat. Recognize that otherwise good people sometimes have bad days. None of us are defined by who we are at our finest moment or at our worst moment. Most of the time we're just doing the best we can. Be patient, but don’t accept being treated less than how you deserve, whether it’s by friends, family, employers, religious leaders, or anyone else. It took me a long time to realize that I didn’t have to put up with being treated poorly just because I had invested time and emotional energy into a relationship.
8. There are crazy and/or mean people out there who enjoy hurting others. Learn to deal with them. Even better, avoid those people altogether if you can. Sometimes bad people put on a good front before you realize who they actually are. Some of the worst people I’ve dealt with in my life have had advanced degrees or have been religious leaders.
9. Be grateful. You’re blessed (or lucky) every day in large and small ways. Be grateful for the good things, because it could always be worse. 
10. Knowledge matters. Education matters. Experience matters. Ignorance is not bliss.
11. Intentions don’t matter. Actions do.
12. When you're gone, you're gone. Live a consequential life that influences others for the better. Give people a reason to say good things about you years after you've shuffled off this mortal coil.

The Wild, The Innocent, and The Eagle Mountain Shuffle*

*with apologies to Bruce Springsteen.

I drove to Eagle Mountain yesterday. I’ve been meaning to go back for a long time. I spent an hour there a little over a year ago — for the first time since 2011 — because I wanted to show the love of my life where my marriage fell apart, among other things. She wasn’t impressed with the place. My lady saw cheaply built houses spaced too closely together, and a remoteness that is frustrating until you get used to it, and then it’s kind of nice. And that was pretty much the only time I had been there until yesterday, with a few exceptions. I have a lot of unresolved issues that involve Eagle Mountain, and I went there thinking I might get some closure. I spent nearly six years in that little town, and I still think about my time in Eagle Mountain a lot. Every time I listen to John Mellencamp’s or Bruce Springsteen’s later work, it takes me right back there.

 I took my camera with me yesterday because I wondered if I could find any beauty in Eagle Mountain. I don’t know if I did. I spent several hours walking old routes that I took with my faithful pug, Waylon, years ago, while I took a few pictures. I’ll let the readers of this post decide for themselves if I succeeded.

My life wasn’t all bad in Eagle Mountain. I had a good job and worked for a principal whom I liked, which is increasingly rare for me nowadays. My kids attended the same school where I taught, which gave me the opportunity to see them everyday at work. I owned a house there, and my kids lived with me under the same roof, instead of seven hundred miles away as they do now. There are still people in Eagle Mountain who I consider friends. I had a period of stability there (outside of the shittiness of my marriage) that I have only recently regained. I hiked and biked in Eagle Mountain – which I loved because I didn’t have to worry about some idiot running me over, as I do here in the big city — and enjoyed the quiet and small town quality of the place.

However, for me, Eagle Mountain is haunted by memories that still make my heart ache for the loss of living with my kids full time, and haunted by the ghosts of what might have been had I been smart enough to see the trap I was creating for myself with the predominant culture. For the sake of marital and community harmony, I tried living a lie in Eagle Mountain and pretending that I liked it, and it didn’t work. God, I not only tried to be active LDS (although I never did get used to some Eagle Mountain LDS people claiming they lived “a higher law,” which apparently meant disbelieving that evolution was a thing, and that white shirt, tie, and clean shaven were what God required), I also pretended to be a conservative. You can stop laughing now. 

As I wrote earlier, my marriage ended there (although it was a long time coming), and the results of what my ex falsely claimed about me caused some sanctimonious school district people in the most Mormon county in the state to decide I was no longer worthy of working in a school district that, in many ways, is an extension of the LDS Church. Basically, they made my life so miserable in the district that I quit.

I wrote years ago that the former HR director of Alpine District thought he was the stake president of human resources, rather than the director, and he treated anyone as persona non grata whom he didn’t feel was living LDS standards. I say that with full confidence of it being true, because every time this person opened his big, fat mouth, the only thing he talked about was his LDS Church calling. He also vigorously pursued people for doing things in their personal lives that in most other school districts would not have been relevant to their employment. Yes, Mr. Spencer was a piece of work, but he was not an anomaly. The whole district reflected LDS Church guidelines in dress and behavior. I say that without bitterness now — although it took me years to get rid of that bitterness.

I didn’t mean for this post to turn into an LDS Church bashing session, but as I write I realize there is no way around it. The LDS Church created the culture in Eagle Mountain that made living there unsustainable as long as I was an active member of the church. The attitude of LDS leaders and the edicts they issued — let’s be honest, the bullshit they spouted and the herd instinct of the members there — made life miserable, and when that bullshit encompasses every aspect of your life, both professionally and personally, it’s a big deal. The LDS Church set the agenda for the area and everyone followed more or less blindly, just because there weren’t any alternatives for a social or spiritual life. As a post Mormon, I can see clearly how abusive and coercive the church is, especially in Eagle Mountain. And as it turned out, when my ex decided she was done with our marriage, she used the church as a cudgel to beat me with.

So yeah, I have some issues with my past in Eagle Mountain. Strangely, after walking around familiar places yesterday, I think I could live there again. I am no longer religious, so I wouldn’t have to deal with the hypocrisy and the sanctimony of the predominant culture. I could ignore it and just ride my bike and go for walks and appreciate the tranquility without worrying about what my bishop thought or what the stake president preached in church last Sunday. Hell, maybe I could even get another dog to follow me.

Honestly, my life is happier now. I have a great girlfriend who loves and cares about me, and provides very little drama in my life. I see my girls, but not nearly as often as I would like. I work for a principal who doesn’t suck. I now drive a vehicle that gets me where I’m going, is paid for, and doesn’t embarrass me. It’s twenty years old, but what the hell, I like it anyway. It’s been a while since that happened, and it’s because of what happened in Eagle Mountain.

Unfortunately, having the most important things in my life — time with my girls, my job, and my house — stolen from me will hurt for a long time. And I’m not sure closure is even possible, because that would require ignoring my feelings about the worst experiences of my life. I do realize I still have to live my life, however. Living in the present is more important than living in the past, no matter how much pain I endured when I lived there. Guess I’ll just have to call it a draw between Eagle Mountain (and all it represents, which is the main thing) and myself.

Anyway, here are the pictures where I tried to make Eagle Mountain look purdy, along with pictures of where I used to live …

From one of my old biking routes.

This is the place … maybe.

It can be pretty, if you look at it just right.

Where I lived.

It looked better when I lived there. It had trees and a fence. Ugh.

   

My route when I walked to work. There were fewer houses then. I think I actually made this look pretty.

"Sometimes you eat the bar, and sometimes the bar eats you ..."

September 2007. Lucky to be alive.

The title is a Sam Elliot quote from one of my favorite movies, The Big Lebowski. A clip from YouTube is posted below. It pretty well sums up my story in this blog post. Sometimes, when you least expect it, death comes up and narrowly misses biting you on the ass. That happened to me nine years ago this weekend...

In September 2007 my life was pretty good. I was forty-three years old, I owned a house in Eagle Mountain, UT (not the greatest place in the universe to live, but at least the mortgage company and I had a roof over my head), I had three amazing daughters, a minivan and an ancient SUV, and I had a job I liked that was a five minute walk from home.

Despite all that, things weren’t quite right. The previous summer I had acquired my first strep infection in over thirty years. It put me flat on my back for nearly a week and I never felt like I completely recovered. I was tired and weak most of the time, and any sort of physical exertion gave me shortness of breath and dizziness. During my first walk to work of the new school year I had to stop every few minutes, lean over with my head between my legs, and try to catch my breath. Clearly something was amiss.

On Saturday, September 8, my family and I were visiting my in-laws at their home in a hilly area on the upper east side of Provo, UT. Because I was bored and because my optimism overcame my common sense, I decided to go for an afternoon walk. I started out on a route that I had walked a thousand times before. It was a strenuous route, but not overly so; in previous years, when my kids were younger, I usually carried one of them over my shoulder or under an arm while I hiked the area. 

However, on that warm September afternoon I thought my walk was going to kill me. I had barely gone half my usual route before I had to turn around and go back to my in-laws’ house, because I literally couldn’t catch my breath. My face was pale and I had broken out into a cold sweat before I even walked through the front door. I flopped into a chair and basically scared everyone in the room to death. My in-laws insisted I take an aspirin in case I was having a heart attack. I asserted that I wasn’t, but I couldn't move from the chair for the rest of the afternoon.

The next day was Sunday and I felt awful. I spent all morning and most of the afternoon prostrate on a couch in my man cave, too exhausted to move. I don’t remember much about the day other than my kids were in and out checking on me, and I had no energy for even the most basic life functions, such as eating or bathing. 

Finally my ex-wife — to her credit — told me she was taking me to the emergency room. She called a neighbor who was a nurse and he told us that the hospital in Provo had the best cardiac care unit. The Provo Hospital was thirty miles away, so my ex arranged for her parents to meet us at the hospital and pick up the kids.

As soon as I described my symptoms the admitting nurse moved me to the head of the line for treatment, in front of other people with obvious bloody bodily injuries. The admitting physician was — coincidentally — an old high school acquaintance, and when I reported what I was feeling, he immediately admitted me to the hospital for testing. I remember being wheeled to my hospital room in a wheelchair and thinking that I could have walked to the room myself, although in reality there was probably no way I was capable of actually doing it. The delusions of a very sick man, I guess. The rest of the day is kind of a blur. I remember a visit from my ward elders’ quorum president — the only LDS Church leader to actually care, which is a story for another time — and not much else.

The next day, Monday, September 10, was hell. I remember lab techs hooking me up to a bunch of monitors and trying to jog on a treadmill. I couldn’t do it, which devastated me so completely that I broke down crying. I had always prided myself on being in reasonably good physical condition, so my inability to do something as simple as jogging on a treadmill scared me badly. The lab tech injected me with a drug that caused my body to react as if I had been able to complete the stress test on the treadmill. That medication made feel terrible — severe muscle cramps, shortness of breath, and nausea — and it was about that time my dad called. I told him what was going on and I think I scared him badly.

I honestly don’t remember much that happened after that. They wheeled me to an operating room where they injected dye into my cardiovascular system. A cardiologist found a blockage in one of the main arteries of my heart. The blockage was nearly one hundred percent (I found out later that a strep infection can cause plaque that already exists to expand rapidly.) The doc ran a catheter through an artery in my groin and opened the blockage, and then inserted a stent. I woke up the next morning to a few stitches in my groin, news stories about the sixth anniversary of 9/11, and a brand new, expensive piece of metal in my heart. A cardiac therapist told me to take it easy for a few weeks, but I actually felt better than I had in months. 

So that was my brush with death. Apparently I was a few days away from a major cardiac event due to the blockage in my heart. There should be all sorts of life lessons I could impart now, such as the temporary nature of life and how easily it can slip away, the inevitability of death (which I rediscovered less than a year and half later when my dad unexpectedly died in his sleep), and how easily and quickly things can potentially change for the worse. All of that is true, but the biggest lesson I learned is that I am sometimes one lucky sumbich. 

My belief system has changed a lot since September 2007, but I still think that there may be some primordial universal force that occasionally smiles on us and blesses us with good fortune. I don’t know why that happens; I look at places like Syria and the people fleeing the carnage there and wonder why them and not me. I’ve had a lot of really lousy things happen in my life since then, but I am still amazed that I lucked out so completely that September day, when I could have keeled over and left my kids without a father. I like to think they still need me; maybe they're why I'm still around.

Whatever the reason, I’m glad I’m still here. Despite it’s challenges, my life is good. I’m living more authentically (another phrase I hate, but I don’t know how else to say it) and I’m finding out what it’s like to actually be loved for who I am and appreciated for the talents I have to offer. 

It’s a good feeling.

Back to the Hairy Liberal Curmudgeon

Eight years ago I started a blog. I did it because I was very opinionated — I was a liberal living in a conservative small town in the heart of a conservative county in a conservative, reactionary state — and I didn’t feel like I had an outlet to express my opinions. I also worked in a conservative school district that had many heavy handed, unnecessary policies that were rooted in the predominant, reactionary religious culture. In other words, I was stuck in Crazy Mormon Town without a voice, but I needed one for my own emotional well being. I love to write, so blogging seemed like a natural solution to my problem.

My ex-wife suggested I name the blog “Hairy Liberal Curmudgeon.” I didn’t realize at the time that the word “hairy” would attract Google attention that I didn't necessarily want, but it did eventually amuse me that people searching for photos of hirsute guys or women would inadvertently land on my daddy blog instead, and be subjected to my rantings. I blogged about a lot of different things — politics, religion, education, my family, and the strange community where I lived at the time. My blog was way more popular than I ever expected it would be, especially after I used my Facebook page to publicize each new blog post.

I loved to blog. As I look back at my old posts, I’m embarrassed by some of my more boneheaded blogging, but I also like the posts that still ring true. Through my blog I dealt with some difficult events in my life; death, divorce, loneliness, and unemployment were all topics that I tackled at various times. Some of my blog posts caused me some personal problems and in hindsight, I — maybe — should have been a little more discreet. I don’t regret blogging though, and I sometimes wish I still blogged more frequently. The ideas are still there; the energy and ambition aren’t.

All of that navel gazing is my way of saying that I am reviving my original “Hairy Liberal Curmudgeon” blog, and I’m using Blogger as the vehicle for publishing it. Wordpress is probably a better format, but I kind of like the symmetry of going back to Blogger. If nothing else, it has a retro, old-school look that screams 2008.

Anyway, I’m hoping to publish something that’s actually meaningful here soon. Stay tuned.

Thus Sayeth The Lord ...

I rediscovered this picture today. It was taken in Provo, UT, in my former in-laws’ backyard during the summer of 2006. The photo presents a very placid, serene picture of me playing with my kids. In some ways that’s exactly what was going on, but oh boy, the story behind the picture … this was the day I found out how hypocritical and sanctimonious some LDS Church leaders are, and realized how negatively their actions had affected my late brother Phil’s life.

Phil had died four months previously, on March 15, 2006. I was still trying to cope with my grief over his death when the picture was taken. On the day that the picture was taken, July 10, 2006, we were visiting my ex-wife's parents in Provo. My ex-wife's sister was there as well. The adults were visiting in the kitchen that morning, while the kids played outside. My ex-wife's distant cousin came up in the conversation, and someone casually mentioned that, thanks to the intervention of an LDS General Authority, that cousin had been allowed to go on an LDS mission, even though he had fathered a child outside of wedlock.

My curiosity was piqued, because the LDS Church cancelled Phil’s mission call in July 1984 when someone claimed Phil was the father of her (then unborn) child. Local and general LDS Church leaders (including an apostle) told Phil he was obligated to financially support the girl and her baby, even though there was absolutely no proof that Phil was the father. The leaders cancelled Phil’s mission call because of that alleged obligation, and because of an LDS Church policy that said anyone who had fathered a child outside of marriage wasn’t allowed to serve a mission. When I questioned one of those leaders about the situation, he told me “girls just know who the father of their baby is.” The baby still hadn’t been born when I asked that question.

A paternity test later determined that there was no possibility Phil fathered the kid, but because of the “inspiration” of a handful of men (who believed God spoke directly to them), Phil’s life went into a tailspin from which he never recovered. The LDS cultural stigma of having a cancelled mission call was more than Phil’s self-esteem could bear, and he ended up marrying the first woman who was kind to him. Unfortunately that woman had borderline personality disorder, and made Phil’s life a living hell for the next twenty years. Phil was never able to break away from her and it ultimately cost him his life. Whenever Phil tried to get away, she played the “I loved you when …” card, which, along with the stigma of ending an "eternal" marriage, worked on Phil.

So I asked who the General Authority was who allowed the cousin to serve a mission.

According to my former mother-in-law, LDS General Authority Hugh Pinnock ensured that the cousin was able to go on a mission, even though the cousin – unlike Phil – had actually fathered a child outside of wedlock. Fortunately for the cousin, he lived in the same wealthy neighborhood as Pinnock, so Pinnock pulled a few strings and the cousin went happily on a mission.

Hugh Pinnock was one of the LDS leaders who cancelled Phil’s mission call. At the time of my brother's call, Pinnock had responsibility over the area where my family lived, and he, our stake president, and an apostle, were the leaders who dealt with Phil. According to The Mormon Murders by Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith, Pinnock was a pompous, sanctimonious prick who was better known for inadvertently aiding Mark Hofmann in scamming money from a bank to purchase nonexistent LDS Church historical documents at just about the same time he was dealing with Phil. So much for Pinnock’s divine inspiration and powers of discernment.

When my mother-in-law said that, I thought my head was going to explode. I didn’t know whether to be angry or to cry. Pinnock’s hypocrisy was almost more than I could stand. I managed to say that Pinnock was the guy who cancelled Phil’s call. My former sister-in-law responded sympathetically, “Boy that guy (meaning Phil) couldn’t catch a break.” I didn’t know what else to do, so I walked outside and played with the kids. I couldn’t be in the kitchen any longer. I felt like someone had hit me in the head with a baseball bat.

And that’s when someone snapped that picture.

In the years since, I haven’t ever really gotten over the anger I felt about that bit of information from that seemingly innocuous kitchen conversation. My mother-in-law didn’t know the significance of what she had told me, and I don’t have any bad feelings for her that she said anything. It just was what it was: another nail in the coffin of a “testimony” of the “truthfulness” of the LDS Church.

To someone outside of the Mormon bubble, the belief that LDS leaders are always inspired by God sounds very cult-y, and it probably is, especially when he or she looks at the LDS Church’s policies on gays, women, and – until 1978 – African Americans. Also in the years since, I’ve learned a lot about LDS Church history, and how truly despicable most of the early leadership was, especially Joseph Smith. They basically believed that as long as they said, “thus sayeth the Lord,” they could get away with whatever they wanted, including murder and misogyny. Not much has changed since.

My brother’s life and death are a sad part of that legacy.

Dear Phil ...

3/14/16

Dear Phil,

Ten years ago tonight you left us. Cardiac arrest brought on by an overdose of narcotics, and I’m still not sure exactly how it happened. I have my suspicions, but I guess it really doesn’t matter now. The point is you’re gone, and you’ve missed a lot.

My girls still talk about you. Susan remembers you; she was a few weeks short of her sixth birthday when you died. She remembers you were planning on coming to her birthday party. Caroline and Grace were too little to remember you when you died; Gracie was only twenty months old. But they love to hear stories about you, and I have some good ones. One of their favorites is about you flipping off the evangelical Christian protestors outside a Bruce Springsteen concert in Denver. I called it the patented Phil one finger salute. I like the story too. What were those people thinking, anyway?

Phil after the Springsteen concert, September 1985

My girls are awesome, Phil. You would be very proud of them. Susan has your attitude and smarts. Caroline and Grace have your twisted sense of humor. They’re great kids and I wish you were here to see them. Their mom moved them away from me a few months ago and that still stings a little. But I call them every night and I see them as often as I can. In my heart I hope you are able to check in on them for me sometimes.

Susan and Phil, November 2000

A lot of stuff has happened in our family since you left. Dad and Ray have passed away. Kind of hoping they’re with you and Mom. It would be cool if they were. I got divorced. I’m back to being a principal and I have a great job. I get to help kids who really need it. It reminds me of the stories I heard from your cop friends about you the night of your viewing, only happier. Apparently you never met a kid on a call that you didn’t feel compassion for and want to help. One of your friends called you Officer Sugar Bear. That made me smile on an otherwise very unhappy night. I like to think you would be proud of me for doing what I’m doing.

Officer Sugar Bear, WVPD

A few months before you died you called me expressing a lot of regrets about things that happened when we were growing up; stupid fights, unkindnesses, etc. I think about that conversation sometimes. I was telling a good friend a few nights ago about that phone call. I wish I could talk to you about it now and let you know that everything is okay. I told you that then too, but I’m not sure you understood. Those “hurts” you thought you did to me were just a part of growing up fourteen months apart. It makes me smile and feel a little sad that you regretted not working a shift at Day’s Market for me when we were in high school when I wanted go chase some girl. I didn’t even remember that incident, but you did; just a symptom of the world famous Rasband over-active conscience. Now that I’m pushing fifty-two, I really do understand that life is too short and precious to be spent on silly regrets about things that don’t matter.

Speaking of over-active consciences, I have some profound regrets about you, Phil. I feel like you were hurt badly by people who should have helped you, and I was too young to really understand how adversely that affected your life. People who were supposed to be your religious and spiritual leaders did you a huge injustice. I regret that I didn’t step in and push harder when you needed me most, when someone you trusted was isolating you from the people who could have made a huge difference in your life. My mind tells me that there was only so much I could do, and that I couldn’t rob you of your free will, as much as I wish I could’ve. My heart tells me I should’ve done more. Stupid heart. It’s probably right.

Anyway Phil, you’ve missed a lot. There is some damn good rock and roll we could be listening to. Bruce is still going strong at sixty-six and touring away. Caroline texted me this afternoon to tell me that he is going to be in Seattle next week. I imagined what it would be like to head up there with you, pick up the girls, and take them to their first Springsteen concert. Instead you're dead and I have to work. I know you could’ve come up with even more colorful adjectives to describe Donald Trump than I have, too. Susan would have appreciated that.

I miss you Phil. You were a hell of a guy and a damn good brother. I miss your laugh and your no bullshit attitude. You left an incredible legacy to the people who knew and loved you. And I hope you finally understand how much you were loved.

Love your bro’,

Rich

The Big 2-0

Adams Elementary, Logan, UT, February 14, 1991

This month marks the twentieth anniversary of the official beginning of my career in education. In January 1991, I started Level II classes in the Elementary Education program at Utah State University.  Although I didn’t get my first real teaching job until August 1992, Level II was my first taste of what would eventually become my livelihood. I was actually working in the public schools, and had a few instructional responsibilities.

Starting the first week of January, I drove twice a week to Sunrise Elementary in Smithfield, a small town north of Logan, to observe and to work as a quasi-teacher’s aide for a practicum class. I worked in the classroom of a fourth grade teacher, Terry Olsen, who was very enthusiastic and had a lot of fun with his students. He was a big influence on me. After four weeks I moved to Adams Elementary in Logan, right next to Adams Park, where I worked in a second grade class for another four weeks. Good times.

Looking back at Winter Quarter 1991 makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. It was something of a milestone in my life. I was finally progressing in my academic career, which had felt stalled up to that point. I’ve been rereading a journal I kept during that time, and it has been quite entertaining. My outlook on what I was committing myself to for the next thirty years was awfully naive.

That winter was also an interesting – if tumultuous – time in the U.S. The build-up to the first Gulf War was occurring, and the war would start on January 16, 1991. The night the war started I was sitting in the Salt Palace arena in Salt Lake City, waiting for a Paul Simon concert to begin. Paul came out fifteen minutes late because he and his band had been listening to the first President Bush address the country. I also remember listening to war news on the radio as I drove to Smithfield. That was the era when we all learned about Scud missiles and other slightly surreal words, like Kurds and Basra.

A disconcerting thing happened to me that morning of January 16th. I had an early morning class on campus, and as I scraped the ice off the windshield of my car – it’s too cold to walk very far in Logan during January – I managed to scrape the skin off of one knuckle as well. I didn’t think much about it until two days later when my hand began to swell and a red streak started making its way up my arm. I went to the campus infirmary in the student center and found out I had a raging case of blood poisoning. The doctor lectured me about the severity of the red streak. I’m just grateful I was smart enough to go to the doctor.

So here it is, exactly twenty years later. I’m now doing pretty much what I expected to be doing back in 1991. I’m occasionally nostalgic for those seemingly care-free days, but then I read something I wrote back then and think to myself, “Gosh, I was an idiot.” 

I hope I won’t feel the same way when I read this blog in another twenty years.

Drawing the Olsens

Christmas Day 1982. Kind of a punk.

I’m sitting here in my classroom after school, watching my daughters – Caroline and Grace – entertain themselves by drawing until it is time to go home. It’s been a long week and I’m not feeling especially motivated to correct papers or record scores, hence the blogging. I’m also feeling kind of blue, and thinking about the past. I have my iPod blasting a playlist of my favorite songs from 1982, and Bruce Springsteen, John Mellencamp, Bob Seger, and The Who are entertaining me …

I’ve mentioned it here before, but this year has the same calendar as 1982. I look at my daughters as they lay on my classroom floor coloring their pictures, and realize that they’ve never seen a year that begins with the number 19, let alone understand that 1982 was a real year, where both of their grandparents – my parents – were alive, healthy, and not that much older than I am now. My brother Phil was a senior in high school, and my one complete semester at BYU – I went there briefly again in ’85, just long enough to get my Spanish credits - was dragging to an exhausting and inauspicious end. My buddy Don and the rest of my friends were still single and ready to cat around every night. I was living at home with my parents and younger brothers, and driving to BYU every morning with my cousin.

There are several memories from November and December of 1982 that I still hold near and dear, twenty-eight years later. I remember lying in bed every morning that winter and listening to my parents quietly visiting with one another while they ate breakfast together, before my dad went to work. Joe and Vera genuinely enjoyed one another’s company. They usually had the radio tuned to KSL so that they could listen to the news while they ate and talked.

Joe and Vera, Christmas 1982. Best parents ever.

As I watch my daughters draw, and I look out my classroom window at the dark storm clouds gathering, one memory from the second week of December 1982 especially stands out. We’d had a large snow storm during the night, which had dumped nearly a foot of snow - I know, big surprise that it snowed in Heber in December. Anyway, the snow made Highway 189 through Provo Canyon treacherous. This was back in the day - boy I sound like an old fart - when the road through the canyon wound along the bottom by the river, instead of following the contour of the mountainside like it does now. It was a winding, two lane road, and was especially dangerous during a snowstorm. My cousin and I opted not to go to school that morning.

Since I was already up and dressed, I decided to make myself useful. After shoveling my parents’ sidewalk and driveway, I took my shovel and walked down Center Street a block to Clarence and Hope Olsen’s place. Clarence and Hope were an elderly couple - they had to be in their eighties - who lived with their adult son Joe, who was mentally retarded. Joe Olsen was a neighborhood fixture, standing beside the road for hours and watching the cars go by. When I first read the book To Kill A Mockingbird as a teenager, before I saw the movie, the Radleys reminded me of the Olsens (not that Clarence was comparable to the mean and cruel Mr. Radley), and Joe Olsen was who I pictured as Boo Radley.

As a teenager, I spent many hours in boring church meetings entertaining myself (and friends and family) by sketching various members of our LDS ward, especially Clarence, Hope, and Joe. It sounds cruel and disrespectful now, but at the time I didn’t mean it that way; they were just really interesting people to look at, which meant they were a lot of fun to draw. I never cartooned or caricatured them, I just sketched them as they appeared. Which was probably bad enough. Clarence and Hope were both quite feeble - I think Hope was a little senile at that point - although Clarence still worked in the insurance sales office that stood next to his house.

When I got to the Olsens it was still before eight o’clock in the morning, and the house looked quiet. Even then, I think I figured I owed them some compassion; I don’t think they ever knew that I drew pictures of them, but even so, I wanted to do something kind for them. I had their sidewalk and driveway shoveled before anyone was awake in the house. My goal was to escape without the Olsens knowing who had shoveled them out.

I wasn’t fast enough. As I was putting the finishing touches on the sidewalk, Clarence’s stooped figure emerged from the house. I remember Clarence, despite his advanced age and the proximity of his office to his house, was dressed in a suit and tie. At that point in his life, Clarence was slack-jawed and a little difficult to understand when he spoke. However, he seemed grateful and muttered his thanks, which kind of embarrassed me. I didn’t want the Olsens to know I’d shoveled their sidewalk; it was a lot more fun doing it anonymously. It wasn’t a big emotional moment anyway; Clarence didn’t throw his arms around me and tell me how grateful he was. He just mumbled thanks and I told him he was welcome.

I returned from an LDS mission in late 1984 and was a little surprised to go to church and see both Olsens still living. Joe was no longer with them; he had been institutionalized after Clarence and Hope were no longer able to care for him. Not too long after my return both Clarence and Hope died. A few years later Joe met a tragic end when he got separated from his group while on an outing in the mountains near Kamas. Joe spent the night in the mountains and died of exposure. It’s a sad story, but sometimes that’s how life is.

1982 was a long time ago, now. The music from that era brings back a lot of memories, both good and bad. My parents and brother Phil passed away a few years ago. My buddy Don hasn’t been in touch for quite a while, and I’m a little worried about him. I still see other friends that I grew up with, and I’m grateful for their continued friendship, although we don't always see eye-to-eye on some things.

Anyway, I like watching my daughters draw. I’m glad I passed that on to them. I just hope that they’ll shovel the snow once in a while as well.

Haunting The Cemetery

October 31: All Hallow’s Eve. According to the ancient Celts - and to Susan, who reads a lot and has a flair for the dramatic - this is the day when the veil between the living and the dead is the thinnest; the day when spirits walk amongst us and can only be appeased by gifts of food, or fooled by dressing up to appear like them. In honor of Samhain, I took the girls to Heber today. Actually, that’s not true. I took the girls to Heber because I was feeling nostalgic, and because I wanted to get out of Happy Valley for a while. Too much Happy Valley makes a guy blue, sometimes.

We went to Heber with the intention of visiting some elderly relatives. Unfortunately, no one we wanted to visit was home. Maybe I’ll call first next time. Anyway, we ended up at one of our favorite haunts - ha ha - the Heber Cemetery. The cemetery is a peaceful place, and we enjoy visiting there. The girls enjoy running around the headstones, and I enjoy remembering and contemplating the lives of people who have gone on to - hopefully - greater things. There is also a lot of history to be learned in the graveyard, if a person knows where to look.

Here are some things we saw there today:

 The first stop, as always, is my parents’ grave. My mom really dug Halloween; she used to dress up as a witch and tell spooky stories to any group that would have her, especially cub scouts. One year she did such a good job she made one little guy scream and cry.

Of course, we had to pay our respects to my brother Phil. Phil was always good for a laugh on Halloween. I remember one Halloween thirty years ago he and I and a couple of other guys took a can of shaving cream and some firecrackers and ... actually I probably shouldn’t tell that one, if only to protect the guilty.

Here’s a view of Mt. Timpanogos from the Heber Cemetery. As I’ve said before, you can never take too many pictures of Timp.

One year Mom and her best friend told Phil and me that if we went to the cemetery, ran around this grave three times, and asked it what it was doing it, it would say nothing at all. Of course Phil and I did exactly that, and the headstone literally said nothing at all. Ever since I told the girls about that trick, they like to hang around this headstone. I got my girls to do the same thing last Memorial Day.

There are some interesting old headstones in the Heber Cemetery, carved out of various material.  In the good ol’ days, people used whatever was available. One of the most common materials was sandstone. It doesn’t hold up very well; there are a couple of old sandstone headstones that are virtually unreadable. This isn’t one of them; even after over a hundred years, the care that went into making this one is still evident.

Here’s a headstone the girls found today with the famous Utah pioneer clasped hands. There is some deep religious significance* to the hands that escapes me right now. It does look pretty cool. And why don't parents name their children Lowerina anymore?

 Here’s a headstone I’d never noticed until today. I really like the cross and the crown. I’m not sure what the exact significance of it is, although I can probably guess.

This is a detail, in black and white, of that cross and crown. Again, very nice work, especially when you consider that the whole thing was carved by hand.

 An autumnal view of Heber Valley, taken from a hill in the north east corner of town. I was raised here, and I love this valley, but every time I visit I always think of the old Charley Pride song, “Wonder Could I Live There Anymore.” Things have changed so drastically that it isn’t much like the place I grew up in now.

A few months ago I ranted and raved about the audacity of someone changing the name of Clyde’s Billiards to “The Spicy Lady.” I thought the name sounded more like a brothel than a cafe. Well, the place isn’t named The Spicy Lady anymore; it is now The Angry Bull, which to my ears sounds only marginally better. Nice Halloween decorations, though.

And that was the end of our Heber trip. It was a quick one; only three hours. The Wife needed us at home, and I promised I’d be there by five. It was time to leave anyway; too much nostalgia just makes me sad and grumpy, which is why we went to Heber in the first place.

* I just found this website that explains nineteenth century headstone symbolism. Both the clasped hands and the crown and the cross are explained there.