One of my brother Ray’s greatest contributions to my life was introducing me to the magazine Famous Monsters Of Filmland before I was even old to read it by myself (Ray used to read it to me.) “Famous Monsters,” as we affectionately nicknamed it, was all about the great Universal Studios monster movies of the 1930s and 40s - Dracula, the Wolfman, the Mummy, and of course, Frankenstein. The magazine contained photos and articles about cinematic classics - a least in my eyes - featuring those monsters, as portrayed by Bela Lugosi, Boris Karloff, and Lon Chaney, Jr.
We also actually got to watch those classic monster movies on Nightmare Theater every Friday night at 11:30 on Channel 4. My mom used to sit up and “watch” - actually doze - with me while Bela Lugosi snuck into a victim’s bedroom in the original 1931 version of Dracula. I had to smack Mom’s leg and wake her up when that happened, because it gave me the creeps:
Our favorite place to buy Famous Monsters Of Filmland was Palace Drug on Main Street in Heber. Palace Drug had an awesome selection of magazines, comic books, and paperback books. Here’s a photo of it from 1968:
The old Palace Drug - before it was remodeled and expanded in 1974 - was long and narrow, with the magazines in front, a marble soda fountain running along one side, and the pharmacy in the back. There was a large window by the magazine area, an awning to block the sun shining through that window during the summer, and black and white tile on the outside of the store. There was also a large orange Rexall sign above the awning.
By the summer of 1972 Ray had outgrown Famous Monsters, but because he had me hooked, I started buying the magazine myself. I mowed my parents‘ lawn to earn the enormous sum of seventy-five cents that each issue cost.
One warm August evening I convinced my mother to take me to Palace Drug because I just knew the latest issue of Famous Monsters had to be there. I ran into the store, turned to my left toward the magazine rack, and this is what I saw:
I happily bounded back outside. Mom took one look at me and knew why I was so happy. She handed me seventy-five cents and said, in mock exasperation, "I was afraid it would be there."
She was teasing me of course. I knew that, because I knew that Mom was an avid reader of Batman and Superman comics back in the early 1940s when she was a kid. I was just grateful I had a mom and an older brother who broadened my horizons.
Not many eight-year-old boys could brag about that.
I have a friend named Bernie McGuire. Bernie is an amazing man; an attorney by profession, he specializes in Social Security disability cases. There are literally hundreds of people who know Bernie and admire him for a variety of reasons; Bernie has a great sense of humor, and he’s a babe magnet, among other things. Bernie is also an inspirational guy; he has a great attitude about life, and his resiliency knows no bounds.
Did I mention Bernie is quadriplegic? He is, and what happened to Bernie could happen to anyone.
Let me take you back to the last Sunday in October 1981, the twenty-fifth to be exact. It was the first Sunday after the time change back to standard time, which is a factor in this story. Other than the time change, it was just a typical Sunday. Bernie and I were in the same LDS ward. I’d known Bernie for the previous ten years, and he was a fun guy to hang out with. That particular Sunday he and I decided to skip Sunday School. We were loitering in the foyer outside the chapel and noticed that my mom, who was the Relief Society President, had posted sign-up sheets for enrichment night mini-classes.
Let me stop right here to say that this story doesn’t have anything to do with what happened to Bernie, but it is a good example of Bernie’s sense of humor. I’ll get to Bernie’s accident later
Anyway, there was a man in our ward whom I’ll call “Roy Jones” (not his real name, of course), who was the ward character. It seems that every LDS ward had to have one back then; it was required. Roy was in his late fifties, divorced, very obese, seldom bathed, and wore the same ill fitting ten-year-old dark blue polyester leisure suit to church every week.
What Roy was best known for was his OPD - obnoxious personality disorder - which isn’t a real mental illness, but ought to be. Roy was on disability, so he had lots of free time to bother people. The conductor of the Heber Creeper once kicked Roy off the train at Bridal Veil Falls because he was making such a nuisance of himself, and Roy had to find a way back to Heber on his own. Roy used to accost people in the supermarket where I worked after school, and follow them around the store talking to them as they vainly tried to escape from him. Roy was also infamous in our LDS ward for holding forth during testimony meetings for anywhere from twenty minutes at a time to most of the meeting.
Bernie and I saw those sign-up sheets on a table outside the Relief Society room door and had the same devilish thought at the same time: wouldn't it be hilarious if we signed Roy Jones up for every single one of those classes? We gleefully did, and then I forgot about it because of the events that happened later that evening. A few days later I heard my mom frantically talking to one of her counselors on the phone about how the bishop was going to just have to tell Roy that he couldn’t attend the classes because they were only for Relief Society sisters. Listening to my mom gave me the one good laugh I had during a rotten week, and I confessed that Bernie and I had signed Roy’s name to her lists. She was so relieved she forgot to be mad at me.
So, that was Bernie (and me too, I guess).
Later that evening, Bernie and some other guys from our ward were driving down a dark country road to toilet paper the house of a girl who Bernie liked. The time had changed the night before from Daylight Savings to Standard Time, so it had gotten dark early. October 25 was the girl’s birthday, and toilet papering her house was Bernie’s way of letting her know he cared. Bernie was driving, and they didn’t notice that there were horses standing in the road at the bottom of a hill until it was too late. The car hit the horses at the knees, bringing them down on top of the car and breaking Bernie’s neck. I remember hearing ambulance sirens - we lived right next to the hospital - but not knowing what was going on.
The next morning Mom woke me with the news about Bernie. I felt sick inside, and felt even sicker when I got to school and saw he really wasn’t there. I remember trying to talk about the accident with our choir teacher - a really good lady, and one of my all-time favorite teachers - but she was too upset to speak about it. Later that day, my brother Phil and I, along with one of the other kids who was actually in the accident with Bernie, went to the salvage yard where the remains of Bernie’s car were stored. While looking at the shattered windshield and caved-in roof of the car, which was splattered with gore where the horses landed, I came to the realization that it could just as easily have been me in that car.
Confronting my own mortality as a seventeen-year-old wasn’t an easy experience. I’ve had a few of my own brushes with death since, but that was when it really hit me I wouldn’t be on this earth forever. However, if I wrote here that on that spot in that auto salvage yard on that autumn afternoon I swore to live each day of my life as if it were the last, I would be lying. I was seventeen, for crying out loud. Seventeen-year-old brains don’t think that way.
What Bernie’s accident did for me was give me enough perspective on life to realize that the cliquish, kind of mean-spirited way that most high school kids live their lives was not the way to go. Since then, I’ve tried to be kinder to and more accepting of everyone who crosses my path, because you never know what life holds in store for you or anyone else.
Bernie never physically recovered from that crash, but he has done some incredible things with his life, such as graduating from law school and having a successful law practice while sitting in an electric wheelchair. I heard he even once bungee jumped. However, the greatest thing Bernie has accomplished - in my eyes at least - is teach by his example that no problem is insurmountable as long as you’re breathing and have a functioning brain. When life gets overwhelming, I stop and think about Bernie and what he has accomplished with his life. It puts my troubles into perspective. Bernie will be the first to tell you he didn’t do it all on his own. He had the help of an awesome family and good friends who didn’t let him down. Like I said, Bernie is an amazing guy, and I’m glad he’s my friend.
Here’s a ten minute mini-documentary of the man himself that someone posted on YouTube. It’s definitely worth checking out.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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:
The old Palace Drug - before it was remodeled and expanded in 1974 - was long and narrow, with the magazines in front, a marble soda fountain running along one side, and the pharmacy in the back. There was a large window by the magazine area, an awning to block the sun shining through that window during the summer, and black and white tile on the outside of the store. There was also a large orange Rexall sign above the awning.
