Thinking About Mom

Kind of a bittersweet anniversary today, one that I usually don’t think about much anymore. Today, however, it’s on my mind. Thirteen years ago today - February 16, 1998, Presidents' Day that year - we lost Mom. She’d been an invalid - wheelchair bound because of a stroke - for nearly two years previously, so it was a relief for her to go. I guess I'm thinking about her today because I would love to have a chat with her. I could use a dose of her common sense and wisdom. I’m mildly irritated that I can’t pick up the phone and call her. I thought T-Mobile had coverage everywhere.

My mom was well known for many things. She was the happy, friendly lady behind the counter at the Dairy Keen. She was the enthusiastic referee or line judge at LDS Young Women’s volleyball and basketball games. To the people who knew her, she was always Vera, never Mrs. Rasband or Sister Rasband. Her most famous creation - other than her children - were her chocolate chip cookies, otherwise known as “Veracookies” to friends, neighbors, and my college roommates. She always made sure there was a bag of cookies in the freezer for me to take back to Logan when I came home for the weekend. When I started teaching school in Heber, Mom’s sour cream sugar cookies were my students’ preferred treat for Halloween and Valentine’s Day school parties. I had students from miles around show up at our house on Halloween night just for a second (or third) cookie.

My mom was the yang to my dad’s yin; they brought out the best in each other. Mom was outgoing, friendly, and optimistic. My dad was quieter (until you got to know him), reserved, and more of a pessimist. I could take a road trip with Mom and have an interesting, entertaining conversation all the way to our final destination, even if the destination was seven hundred miles away. I could take a road trip with my dad and ride in comfortable silence with neither of us saying a word for hundreds of miles. It’s interesting to look at my brothers and sister and see who inherited which trait from my parents. I think I’m a weird mutation of some of their best and worst qualities; sometimes I can talk your ear off, other times you’re better off not bothering me.

My mom’s greatest attribute was her faith that things would always turn out all right. I remember after her stroke, when she was completely paralyzed on her left side, she tried to persuade me to take her out to the car and let her go for a drive, never mind that she couldn’t use her left arm or leg, and her peripheral vision was gone. Mom just knew that if she just had the chance, she could relearn to drive a car.

In many ways, Mom isn’t really gone. I see reminders of her everyday in my daughters; Susan’s athleticism, Caroline’s smile, and Grace’s small stature, funny personality, and penchant for waking us all up in the morning with her singing, all came from their grandma.

So that was my mom. I’m sorry my daughters never got to meet her in this life, but there are enough reminders of her in themselves - and me - that they know her anyway. I’m grateful for the legacy of kindness, happiness, and optimism that she left. If I can leave a legacy half as good when I depart this veil of tears - sorry for the cheesy language, but that phrase always makes me smile; it would have made Mom gag - I will have accomplished something.

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.

Acting Principal

When my boss is out of the building, I have the dubious honor of dealing with the discipline problems that can’t be handled in-class. The older students aren’t much fun under these circumstances; their issues most often involve threatening other students or actual fighting, along with defiance or disrespect to their teachers. Oh, and the girl fights. There's nothing quite like the animosity that can develop between sixth grade girls to keep life interesting.

On the other hand, the younger kids are usually a hoot when they get in trouble. Case in point: this morning the school secretary called me to the office because a kindergarten teacher had kicked a student out of her class, and the student was waiting for me in the time-out room. The time–out room is a small room across the hall from the principal’s office; the room is painted a soothing forest green and isn’t much bigger than a walk-in closet.

As I entered the office the secretary warned me, “She’s cute but don’t let that fool you.” When I walked into the time-out room I found that the secretary spoke the truth. Waiting for me was a little girl straight out of a Norman Rockwell painting: tiny, pigtails, freckles, an impish smile, and feet that didn’t quite touch the floor from the chair where she was sitting. I asked the miniature miscreant her name and what she had done to end up in the principal’s office. The diminutive delinquent – whom I’ll call Sarah, which isn’t her real name, of course – told me that she teased another little girl named Eve. Apparently Sarah thought the similarity between Eve’s name and Christmas Eve was pretty funny. Sarah had also refused to sit on the rug with the rest of her class when her teacher asked her to, which was the main reason she was no longer in class. I had a hard time keeping a straight face with this runty wrongdoer.

Sarah chattered away about various misdeeds she had perpetrated in class, and I began to sympathize with her teacher. I finally asked the tiny terror what her parents would do if they knew she was in trouble at school. Her eyes widened and she whispered, “They would be mad.” I told Sarah that we were going to call her parents. It sounded like there would be consequences at home for getting in trouble at school, which is a good thing. However, my calling her parents didn’t seem to faze Sarah, and I soon found out why: no one answered any of the numbers I dialed. This crooked cutie knew no one was home.

I gave Sarah the standard speech – obey your teacher, how would you feel if someone teased you, blah, blah, blah – but I could tell by the small smile on Sarah’s face that I wasn’t getting through. I took Sarah by the hand – mainly because I was afraid she might make a run for it in the other direction, and the last thing I needed today was to put out an APB on a fugitive kindergartner – and led her back to class.

When we arrived at Sarah’s classroom, I asked her teacher to come out into the hall for a private talk. I reassured the teacher that Sarah would behave (although I privately had grave doubts about the truthfulness of that assertion), and told the teacher to keep Sarah in from recess. The look on Sarah’s face told me that she was still bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, and more than ready for round two with her teacher. Suddenly, inspiration struck and I uttered those same four simple words that weary parents have told their obnoxious offspring every December for hundreds of years: 

“Santa Claus is watching.”

Sarah’s face fell, and she quietly returned to class. I congratulated myself on my cleverness.

Sarah’s teacher told me later that my words of wisdom guided the bitty bandit’s behavior for all of five minutes.

A Different Country

I watched The Last Detail last night. The Last Detail is a movie made in 1973, and stars Jack Nicholson, Otis Young, and Randy Quaid. It tells the story of two career navy guys, Nicholson and Young, who are assigned to escort a young enlisted man, played by Quaid, to the brig. Quaid’s character made the mistake of attempting to rob forty dollars from a charity box. Quaid’s character is also incredibly young and naive, and Nicholson and Young are appalled at the unfairness of his sentence. Quaid received his harsh sentence because the charity he robbed was his commanding officer’s wife’s favorite. Nicholson and Young decide to show him a good time on their way to the brig, where Quaid is to serve eight years in the old Portsmouth Naval Prison.

And that’s basically the plot of the movie.

I hadn’t seen The Last Detail in a very long time, but I had it on my computer hard drive so I decided to watch it, which is why and how I end up watching most movies anymore. The Last Detail isn’t a classic, but it holds up well as a portrait of America in the early 1970s, mainly because it was filmed on location all along the northeastern seaboard, from Norfolk, Virginia to Portsmouth, New Hampshire. The people and places in the background of The Last Detail are real, not CGI. Also, The Last Detail stars Jack Nicholson, and everything Nicholson did between Easy Rider in 1969 and One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest in 1975, is worth a look.

The Last Detail isn’t a movie for everybody. The language is raw - it is about Navy guys, and the incessant use of the F-word caused quite a stir back in ’73 - and there is also some violence and sex depicted in the film.

What appeals most to me about The Last Detail is its realistic depiction of America circa 1973. 1973 America was almost a different country than America 2010. If you hadn’t lived during that era, it would be hard to explain to you how different Watergate-era America was from today, but being blessed (or cursed) with a good memory, I remember a lot about that time, and The Last Detail is very accurate:

• The cars in the movie are all pre-fuel crisis, American-made, steel constructed, behemoth gas guzzlers. They remind me of the cars my dad, grandpa, and uncles drove when I was growing up. I miss those big cars. They made the demolition derby at the Wasatch County Fair back then a lot more interesting than it is now. It’s hard to get excited about watching a 1987 Ford Taurus fall apart.

• The characters in The Last Detail are all throwbacks to a completely different time, from the redneck bartender who inspires one of Nicholson’s greatest lines (“Call the shore patrol? I am the m*th*rf*ck*ng shore patrol!”) when the bartender hesitates to serve a beer to Young (because he’s black) and Quaid (because he’s underage), to Nicholson’s old-school hedonistic character (booze and broads are his vice) Billy "Badass" Buddusky.

• I smell cigarette smoke when I watch The Last Detail. Seriously. The movie takes me back to an era when quite a few people smoked, even in small town, Mormon Utah. I remember being a nine-year-old sitting in a barbershop in Heber and every adult male there, except for my dad and the barber, was smoking. The movie also evokes memories of a snow sledding outing with my best friend and his older brother, who smoked and swore as he drove us up to Lindsay’s Hill in his old truck. It was sort of like going sledding with Billy Buddusky. That’s actually a pleasant memory, and one of the reasons that smoking doesn’t bother me as much as it seems to bother other people.

• Watching The Last Detail makes me cold. The movie takes place during winter, and it reminds me of all the old, drafty buildings we used to shop in (and live in) when I was a kid. It doesn’t seem like there were many new homes in Heber when I was growing up, certainly not like there are today. Most of the stores - except for the new Safeway, which replaced an old building that had burned down, and the brand new Day's Market that opened in '73 - were in old buildings, as were the library, movie theaters, and schools.

• Finally, although politics never come up in The Last Detail (Buddusky seems happily apolitical; he’s too busy chasing women and whiskey to worry about Watergate, and I can’t even imagine what his reaction to Don’t Ask Don’t Tell would be), it’s gotta be hard for politically aware people in their twenties and thirties today to imagine  how universally despised the President of the United States - Richard M. Nixon - was. Ol’ Tricky Dick Nixon - despite any good things he accomplished, like establishing the EPA or saving Israel during the 1973 Yom Kippur War - didn’t stand a chance because of the innate corruptness of his administration.

I could go on and on about the differences between 1973 and 2010, but I’ve made my point: things change, not always for the better, but not always for the worse either. Movies like The Last Detail don’t get made very often anymore. Only Clint Eastwood seems to make the same type of movie now. There isn’t anyone to really cheer for in The Last Detail. There aren’t special effects or big explosions. The underlying message is the unfairness of life and the dehumanizing effect people wielding too much unchecked power have.

The Last Detail is a realistic depiction of an era when mores and expectations were a lot different from what they are now. Whether that’s good or bad is up to you to decide.

Here's the original movie trailer for The Last Detail:

Thank You and Happy Veterans Day, Sergeant J

Kind of a preachy blog post today. Normally I try not to preach; it makes me feel hypocritical in a major way. However, what I have to say today is near and dear to my heart, so I’m gonna preach:

I have two little girls - stepsisters - in my class this year. Their father and step-father, Sgt. J, is a master sergeant in the army. In September he was severely injured by an IED - what used to be called a booby trap - in Afghanistan. Sgt. J’s job in the army was to actually defuse IEDs. For the last two months he has been recuperating in various military hospitals between here and Afghanistan. Tomorrow (on Veterans Day, no less) Sgt. J finally gets to come home. Like other returning Iraq/Afghanistan veterans in our area, Sgt. J will be escorted by the local fire department, and the main road into town will be lined with American flags. My class, along with several others, will be waiting by the roadside to cheer and demonstrate our appreciation as his entourage pulls into town.

I’m proud to teach this brave soldier’s children, and proud that he lives in our town. America wouldn’t have survived over the past two hundred and thirty-four years without men and women like Sgt. J and his family, who are prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice. I honor our country in a million little ways, but compared to heroes like Sgt. J, my efforts seems pretty inadequate.

This Veterans Day, let’s truly remember and appreciate Sgt. J and all the other brave men and women who have served - or are serving - our country. No other country in the world offers the freedoms and opportunities that we have here in the USA. The men and women serving in the military are prepared to lay down their lives to safeguard those freedoms and opportunities.

As the holiday season nears, let’s not forget we’re still fighting two wars. It doesn’t seem like a day goes by that there isn’t news of someone being injured or killed in Afghanistan and Iraq. There are also hundreds of thousands of servicemen and women who won’t be with their families on Thanksgiving later this month because they are sacrificing that time with their families to serve our country. 

Let’s not ever take any of them for granted.

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.