Everyone needs a woodpile in their life.

Everyone needs a woodpile in their life.

The original title was, every boy needs a woodpile, but this is a universal principle that applies not only to a boy, but to everyone. 

When we moved to Lander and moved into our house on Capitol Hill we had a very unusual house. In the back part of the structure there was a storage room, which was a log cabin of one room with sawdust around the outside of the logs and then a framed wood exterior wall to make it match the rest of the house. We used this as a storage area.  It was ideally suited for the storage of potatoes and carrots and bottled fruit, because of the insulating properties of the sawdust layer around the logs.  No matter how cold it got outside, it never froze in the storage room. The ceiling was low and the log roof was also covered with sawdust, at least two feet.

We used this storage room off the back porch, which was my bedroom for about two years, until my father decided to make it into another bedroom.  My bedroom was on the back porch and was about 5 feet wide and 10 feet long. It admitted an army bunk bed and not much more.  There were three doors into my back porch bedroom. One door from the kitchen, the next door led to the storage room mentioned above. The remaining door opened to the back yard.  There was no lock on that door, but there was a two-inch diameter hole in the door, which admitted a chain.  When we went away we locked the door using a padlock and chain.  

There was no heat in my bedroom.  I slept there summer and winter.  Sometimes it got below zero at night in the winter.  I just piled on more blankets. The cold air would come through the hole in the door.
Thus, it was decided that the new bedroom would be mine.  During the summer we went into the storage room from above through a window high in the gable of the frame shell that housed the log cabin and removed the roof and all the sawdust and then dismantled the log cabin by throwing the logs out the window in the gable. We stacked the logs in a pile in the back yard. There were a lot of logs.

Once we got the logs out we had to make a bigger doorway into the room. We plumbed the room for gas so that there would be heat in the room.  We then poured concrete for a floor and I put tile on the floor.
We next put insulation in the walls, installed two windows and made a small closet in the southeast corner of the room.  We then put sheet rock up and then knotty pine paneling on the walls and the closet. I painted the ceiling robins-egg blue.  We installed a light fixture in the center of the ceiling and moved the bunk bed into my room. It was done.

Now we had a large pile of logs in the back yard.  We spread the sawdust on the garden and tilled it into the soil.  We had a sawhorse that was left with the house as well as a one- man and a two-man cross cut saws.  I would place the log on the sawhorse and cut the logs in 14-inch lengths. 

After the log was cut into stove length pieces, I took a double-bitted axe and spit the log into pieces for firewood. The cross cut saws were long and one could not really move them at a rapid pace through the log.  It worked well if there was someone on the other end.  Then we could saw through the log very quickly, but if I was the only one sawing, the saw would whip and bind if I sawed to rapidly and so I had to approach the task slowly and methodically.  This made the task most distasteful.

Every afternoon after school, I would walk home and spend an hour or two sawing wood and chopping firewood.  I got some help from my brothers, but I was assigned as  the main worker. I did not enjoy this activity. I found no pleasure in this type of woodwork. It was my assignment and dragging my feet only prolonged the agony.  I finally was able to accomplish making firewood of the whole stack of logs.

One day my father came home and asked me to help him move the firewood.  I do not remember whether we loaded it into a trailer or on a pickup truck. There was a widow who lived across the street from the grade school. We took all the wood down to her house and made a large stacked woodpile. All of my hard work, which was done, was to be given away. I did not know that we were not going to be burning that wood in our stoves.  We were going to be installing gas heaters in our home, so we would not need the wood any more.

The point of all this is that every one at some time in their lives will have to do something that they do not like to do and after they are finished may not be rewarded as they think they ought to be or see their work that they did not enjoy come to naught.

Much later in my life I had the opportunity to experience a similar situation. We owned a house at 175 Wyoming Street. There was a dilapidated garage on the property. It needed to be torn down. I asked my son to tear down the garage and then stack the boards and cut them into fireplace lengths, to be hauled down to our house to be burned in our fireplace.

There was a member in the little house on the back of the property. She was anxious to get the woodpile moved.  She talked to me on a number of occasions.  She was impatient. I replied that I was not in a hurry; I was raising a son not tearing down a garage.  My son learned the lesson that I learned. Everyone needs a woodpile in their life, it teaches one lessons that are invaluable later on.

Work and me

Work and me

As a descendant of Adam, I inherited the mandate, by the sweat of thy face thou shalt eat thy bread all the days of thy life.

I was very fortunate to grow up in a home where I was taught to work and the value of work.
Growing up my mother taught me to wash the dishes, dry the dishes and clear the table. When I was a little older I was taught to scrub the floors and wax them on my hands and knees.

I was also taught to wash the clothes and later was allowed to iron.  First to iron the flat ware and the shirts. I learned how to press suit coats and trousers.  When we had holes in our socks, I darned the socks.  I learned how to do Bargello embroidery on towels.  My grandmother Stucki taught me how to repair runs in nylon stockings and to make rag rugs.
We were expected to make our beds each morning and to vacuum the rugs weekly.

When I was old enough I mowed the lawn with a push mower.  We were also expected to edge the lawn with sheep shears by hand.

In the winter I shoveled the walks.  I occasionally earned a little money  by mowing the neighbor's lawn and also by shoveling snow in the neighborhood.
We had a paper route delivering papers once a week for a free paper, which we deliver to every house and was called the Monitor.  The nice thing about that paper was that we did not have to collect for the paper. We were paid a small amount to deliver, but it helped.

I then got a paper route for the Rocky Mountain News.  This was an early morning paper. The route was about six blocks from our home and up hill.  Every month I would have to go to every house that I delivered papers to and collect the money.  I would then have to pay for the papers that I got and the got to keep what was left over.  If someone was not happy with the way their paper was delivered and complained to the paper, then I got docked a fee, so I learned to deliver the paper on time and put the paper where the people wanted it delivered.
If there were no complaints for a certain period of time, I was rewarded with a U S Savings Bond.

I earned enough money to buy a used Schwinn bicycle, which I used to deliver the papers.  I would fold the papers a certain way, then load them into my paper bags attached to the handle bars of my bicycle.  I got good enough, that I could ride down the middle of the street and throw the paper onto the porch of each house.  They also rewarded the carriers if they were able to get a new subscriber.  We called this a start.

I had some apartment houses on my route.  I would have to put the paper under the door or in a box or place where it would not be taken.

My father had a garden, which we would have to dig up by hand and then rake, hoe furrows for the seed, plant and irrigate and weed. At first we planted the garden in our back yard. My father contacted the owner of a vacant lot two blocks from our house and obtained permission to plant a garden there.  When we would harvest the vegetables, we would take a portion downtown to the owner's store and give him that as payment for using his land for our garden.

I also had a paper route for the Denver Post, which was an evening paper.  I delivered it after school.

When we moved to Lander, I got a job after school sweeping floors at J. C. Penney store. During the holidays I would help out as a sales clerk.  My wages at that time were fifty cents per hour.  June 1949 to Jan 1950. Dec 1950 to Jan 1951. Dec 1951 to Jan 1952. and June 1952.

1950

At one time I worked at the Lander Creamery where I candled eggs.  The eggs were locally produced at an egg farm.  They were sent to be processed at the creamery. The cracked eggs and those that had blood in them we cracked the shells and put the liquid in five gallon cans.  These eggs were sold to the local bakery to be used in making cakes and cookies.

June 1950-Sept 1950 and June 1951-Sep 1951
During the summers I worked for my uncle Howard Thirkill on his ranch in Eight Mile outside of Soda Springs, Idaho. I would drive the stacker team and occasionally stack hay. I mowed and raked hay and milked cows and ran the milk through the cream separator. I got to feed the chickens and gather the eggs and slop the hogs. I learned how to do farm work. My least favorite job was to clean the horse and cow manure out of the barn and put it into a pile to be later spread as fertilizer on the fields.

After I graduated from high school I got a job working for the lumberyard unloading 2x4 studs from a boxcar. June 1952

I next worked with the Bureau of Land Management spraying Halogeten weed.  That job did not last the whole summer. June 1952 and July 1952

Then I got hired by the Forest Service to clean rocks off the loop road above the sinks. It was during this time that I fought fires. There was the Dishpan Butte fire and the Wiggins Fork fire. July 1952 to Sept 1952
 
At the end of the summer I went to Ogden to live with my great aunt Alta Lowe.  I helped her with the yard work and her housework.  I shoveled snow off the walks and would occasionally baby-sit the grandchildren.

The next summer I worked for the Forest Service doing trail work. June 1953 to September 1953

When I got back to college, I was employed in the chemistry department from September 1953 to December 1953.

When I got back from my mission, I worked for a private lab analyzing uranium samples. 1957.
I got a job at BYU working for a chemistry professor. 1957

The summer of 1957 I worked again for the Forest Service from June to September. And again from June to August 1958. The summer of 1958 I went back to Lander and worked again for the Forest Service until I got married. 

We moved into our apartment and I got a construction job with Bowers construction company building a school during August and September.

After I started medical school I got a job at the University of Utah during the Christmas break 1958-59.

I had an early morning paper route delivering the Salt Lake Tribune from March until October in 1959 and worked the summer (June to September) running a refreshment stand on the Salt Lake Country Club golf course.  I quit to go back to medical school.I quit the Tribune when school started.

During the Christmas break of 1959, I worked at the main post office sorting mail.

From March 1960 to January 1961 I also got a job as an on call lab technician at the Veterans Hospital running chemistries and typing and cross-matching blood.

The next summer June to September I worked in the pathology department at Holy Cross Hospital helping with autopsies.  

The summer of 1961 I worked in the immunology lab at the county hospital.  My paycheck had printed in big red letters "Taken out of the poor fund".
I also sold my blood to the county hospital.  The blood was used as a standard O positive cell for research.

During my senior year in medical school, (November 1961 to June 1962) I worked in the obstetrical department at LDS hospital every third night helping with deliveries and caesarian sections. By the time I had finished at the end of the year, I had delivered or helped deliver over 500 babies.

After I graduated from medical school I was employed as an intern at the Dee Memorial Hospital in Ogden, Utah.

The next year I was a resident physician in pediatrics at the university of Utah affiliated hospitals.  I also worked one night a week at the Dee hospital emergency room to supplement our income.
I was a resident for two years.  My cousin Rodney was an insurance salesman.  He needed some of his clients to have physical examinations so I was paid to do them occasionally.

At this time I moved to Lander and began to work for myself.  This was interrupted by a two-year stint in the Navy, where I worked as the base pediatrician and took call at night on the obstetrical floor delivering babies.

I have worked since as a self-employed physician.  I enjoyed working in every capacity.  I can honestly say that I enjoy working no matter what manner of work I have been engaged in.  I find that work has been rewarding both monetarily and mentally. Although the majority of my work has not been physical, I do enjoy physical labor.  I like to get tired and use my muscles.

Litigation and me

I do not like contention. I learned early in my life that strife was counterproductive.

When I was in grade school I got into a fight with another boy.  I do not remember what it was about.  We were on the playground and we started hitting each other with our fists. I was stronger and took him down in a wrestling hold and sat on his chest and beat him in the face with my fists. Then I started to cry and felt bad.  I did not get reprimanded for this action, but I never did fight again at school.

My brothers and I would occasionally disagree, but I do not remember really fighting with them.  Perhaps that was because I was a lot older than they.
I always felt uncomfortable in confrontational situations.

My first malpractice case came as the result of a baby that died.  The mother was not married and she had a rather long labor.  In retrospect I would have delivered her by C-section, but I thought that she would progress faster than she did. I applied a mid forceps and she did not push effectively. The baby was depressed at birth and required resuscitation.  I called Primary Hospital and had the baby transported there and the baby died. I told the mother that if it would make her feel better she could blame me for the death, and that I was extremely sorry. The father of the baby was not a member of the church and later married the mother who was a member of the church.  Someone from Primary Hospital encouraged him to sue me for the death of the baby and he went to Gerry Spence[1] and they initiated proceedings.  When they found that I carried only $100,000 liability insurance, they were furious. They told me I needed at least ten times that much.

They initiated a lawsuit for the mother, the father of the baby and the baby so they could get $300,000.
 
I had to initiate proceedings against my own insurance company in order to get them to pay the litigants. Of course this was only done on contingency fee. We settled the case and the father of the baby went out and spent the money and soon had nothing to show for it.

Over time the mother went on to have more children. She and the family went to the Lander clinic for their care. One day one of the children got ill and ended up in the emergency room.  The doctor from the clinic said he wanted to do a spinal tap to rule out meningitis. The mother was concerned and did not want to have the procedure done.  I received a call from the mother. She wanted a second opinion from me. I was surprised that she would even consider asking me, because of the previous situation, even though I had taken care of her as a child.  I may have even delivered her, I cannot remember.

I think that someone said that I should not even see the child, but refuse to go. I did go up and examine the child and did not find a reason to do a spinal tap and told the mother my findings. She seemed relieved and took the child home. The child improved and the mother approached me about taking the family as patients in my practice. I did not refuse her request and the relationship was restored much to the displeasure of the father.  The parents were separated for a while, but I hear that they are back together.  The children liked to come to my office.

The second lawsuit was about an Indian child who contacted Hemophilus Influenza meningitis.  I had seen the child in my office and examined it. I did not find anything worrisome and sent them home without treatment.

A day or two later the child was seen by the physician's assistant at the Lander medical clinic.  He also did not find any serious illness and sent the child home with no medication. During the night the mother took Peyote and the following morning the child was very ill and was running a fever. The sister of the mother saw the child was ill and insisted that they go to the emergency room. The mother took the child to the emergency room. I was passing through the emergency room to make my hospital rounds and saw the child and made the diagnosis of meningitis just by looking at the child without any examination. I did a spinal tap carefully and drew blood cultures and started the child on Chloromycetin or Rocephin, I can't remember which.

The child responded to the medication and was soon out of danger and recovered. Unfortunately there was brain damage from the infection. The mother took the child and moved to Arizona where an attorney was contacted and a lawsuit was instituted.

They subpoenaed the records and they decided to sue the Lander medical clinic and me. Because she and the child were American Indians the case was tried in Federal court and the trial was held in Cheyenne.  They also sued the hospital.  They were after a lot of money.  The trial was over a week in length and interrupted in the middle and we had to return to Cheyenne because of a continuance, but I did not know what the reason was for the interruption.  I was called on to testify in my own behalf.  During the cross- examination, I broke down and cried. The plaintiff's attorney asked me on what kind of doctor I was and I replied that I was a good a doctor as I would want to go to. The plaintiff's attorney did not like that and tried to get me off the stand, but I composed myself and was able to finish.

In the end the plaintiff's attorney was begging the jury to award the mother and child some compensation, but I was found not negligent and the attorneys for the plaintiff had to pay their expenses.  I was disturbed that they were not responsible for the court costs as well, but my attorney would not press that issue, so each party to the lawsuit had to pay their own court costs.  I suppose that he felt sorry for the other side.  The insurance company had to pay out $50,000 for my defense.

The next lawsuit that I was involved in came close to the time that I retired and involved another case of meningitis.

I remember well the circumstances.  The mother was a flaky woman.  She called into labor and delivery with complaints of early labor.  Because of the circumstances she was transported to Denver, Colorado for her delivery. She had a group B Streptococcal infection and was treated for that in Denver.
The baby was treated for about a day and then, because they felt that the baby was not at risk, treatment was stopped.  Because the baby was early, they transferred him back to Lander.  We had the baby in the nursery for a short time.  Then the baby began to have seizures.  I called and consulted with the Pediatric unit that sent me the baby. They were not helpful. I drew cultures and agreed to postpone antibiotic therapy until a diagnosis was established against my better judgment that this was the correct thing to do. They came back and transported the baby back to Denver where it was determined that the infant had group B Streptococcal meningitis and sepsis.  

The mother was a welfare case as well as the baby. The baby had a poor outcome and was mentally retarded. The mother got a lawyer from Riverton who was said to have stated that he wanted to make sure that I never practiced medicine again. 

A lawsuit was instituted and the insurance company assigned me the same lawyer, Rob Shively, that defended me in the previous case. Depositions were taken and the doctors in Denver claimed no responsibility and pointed the finger at me.  They should have treated the baby with parenteral antibiotics for ten days before sending the infant back to Lander.  I was lulled into a false sense of security in thinking that the baby was not infected.  We call this a mindset and it happens to every one at one time or other in their lives.

I sold my practice and then left on our mission to Germany with the lawsuit still pending. I told the lawyer to settle the case, because I did not want that to hang over my head while serving the Lord.

The litigants were after all the money that they could get and more. The settlement offer was refused and I was called back to Lander for the trial.  The area presidency was not particularly happy to have me leave, but I needed to go for another reason. I arrived back in Lander only to have the attorney call to tell me that the lawsuit had been settled the day before the trial was to start.
The real reason for my coming back to Lander was the following: I was staying with my mother and father. Dad complained that he was not feeling well and had abdominal pain. I examined him and made the diagnosis of acute abdomen and felt he might have appendicitis.  Dad had a very high pain threshold and would not have sought medical care expeditiously.

I took him to the emergency room and got the surgeon on call, Dr. O’Connor to examine him. He agreed that dad had an acute abdomen and dad was taken to surgery where he was found to have a gangrenous gall bladder.  He would not have survived had he not had the surgery at that time.  Thus the Lord used the circumstance to bring me home to give my father about seven more years to be with my mother.

The settlement was for a large amount.  The State of Wyoming took the money that welfare had paid in hospital and doctors fees from the money that was granted in the settlement and then put a large sum in trust for the care of the child.  Of course the attorney got 50% and earned more money than I did in a year. He got his wish. I retired.

I do not remember how much the insurance company paid out, and in the eternal scheme of things, it really doesn't matter. I tried to do what was right.  I maintained my integrity as well as I knew how.  One will not be perfect in everything that he does.  As long as you do the best you can under the circumstances, then let the consequences follow, as they will.  They may not always be happy consequences for us in this life, but we have eternity before us.

The following is my account written at the time:

I had not wanted to go back to Lander to interrupt my mission. I felt it was not in the best interests of the mission, and knew that there would be calls from the mission presidents that I needed to take and business that needed attending to. I had scheduled a trip to Lithuania to search out medical facilities and physicians to take care of the missionaries’ medical problems. I had the impression come to me that if the case was not settled and went to trial that I would win the case and that the plaintiff would not get anything. This was later confirmed again as I was pondering the case.

The area presidency was not too happy and when I approached Elder Hancock. He said that I would have to get permission from the missionary committee to return home. He asked me to write a summary of the case and send it to him and he would foreword it with his letter to the missionary committee. I also notified Dr. Harris of the situation. When we first came last year I let Dr. Harris know that there was a suit pending and that I had instructed the attorney to settle it if he could. It was not that I had done anything wrong, but that the circumstances were such that if one were skillful one could make it appear as though the child’s condition was all due to a failure to treat on my part. The insurance company was rightfully indignant that I seemed reluctant to have the case tried. It is legalized extortion of the insurance company. I think that I made the insurance company a little mad and they responded with a letter that said that if I didn’t come home for the trial, I would have to be financially responsible if the case was lost.

I did have some trouble getting a flight home, because all the flights on Saturday and Sunday of last week were booked and I had to be waitlisted. I initially thought of flying into Salt Lake and driving up to Lander, but I was too worried about spring snowstorms on South Pass. I just told the travel agent to book me into Riverton and so we had to go with United instead of Delta.

The missionary committee sent Elder Hancock approval for me to go to Lander for trial and Elder Hancock told me to keep in touch with Elder Busche and let him know if I really had to go and the case was not settled on Thursday. It was not, and I got a flight out on Saturday instead of Sunday as was originally planned. The flight was in business class and was really nice. I slept for about 2 hours on the flight to Chicago. The flight from Chicago to Denver did not have business class and so they put me in first class. When I got to Denver, I looked on the board and it said that the 12:30 flight from Denver (to Lander) was delayed and so I thought that if I could get on that flight I would not have to wait until 5:00 to get out.

I went to the counter and the girl said that the flight was delayed, but that she would get me changed. As it was we didn’t get out until 3:30. I was on the flight with Sage McCann and Samrine Hasan. The flight was full. When we got to Riverton I called and Glendon was supposed to come and pick me up, but hadn’t left yet so I rode back to Lander with Dr. Hasan and her daughter. I got to Lander before the flight was scheduled to take off from Denver. I stayed up until mother and Dad went to bed even though I wanted to sleep. The luggage did not come on my plane, but they brought it from Riverton and delivered it at the house at 9:30 just after I went to bed.

Shirley and Glendon were there when I arrived and left the next morning at 4:30, but I didn’t hear them. I took Dad to church the next day, because Mother was not feeling too spry. I shocked many people by being there at church on Sunday. Many expressed the sentiment that they missed us and that it was good to see me and wondered where my companion was. I took the time in the afternoon to visit Donna Milne and Dr. Mossbrook and take them some cheese that I had bought in Germany to give them.

On Monday I went to check with some people and do some business and get Dr. Whiting to fix the crown that had dropped off my tooth. I had called and got an appointment with a dentist in Bad Vilbel, but another missionary called and asked who she could go to and get a broken tooth fixed and I gave her my appointment and never got back to get it fixed. While I was sitting in the chair (at Dr. Whiting’s office) Rob Shively called to tell me that the case had settled and that I could go home to Germany.

Monday after supper Dad complained that he had a pain up under his ribcage on both sides. I felt his stomach and he was tender in his epigastrium, so I told him to take some Pepcid. It did not help and he vomited twice that night. The next morning he was not feeling any better and still there was not any point tenderness but I took him to the hospital and had some blood work, and EKG and an x-ray of the abdomen. His white count was up just a little, but everything was normal. He still continued to have pain and denied any diarrhea.

When I got up on Wednesday morning he was still having pain so I examined him again and he had tenderness in his right lower quadrant. I called the hospital operating room and told them that my father was coming in to be operated on for appendicitis. I took him to the emergency room where his white count was 15, 700 and Dr. O’Connor did his surgery and Dr. Gillis gave the anesthetic. They found no diseased appendix, but a gangrenous gall bladder. I was able to visit him after he got to his room in the intensive care unit and then I left to drive with Wally West to Salt Lake City. The pass was closed so we left at 7:30 after it was opened and got to Salt Lake about midnight.

---

[1] Gerry Spence was a famous lawyer who got his start in Lander, Wyoming.  He was a partner of Art Oeland (Betty Kail’s father) when he first started into the practice of law.  He later went to Riverton and was there for a while until he moved to Jackson, Wyoming.  He specialized in personal injury cases and would use his skill to get huge settlements from the insurance companies.  He cost State Farm Mutual so much money that they put him on a retainer so that he could not sue them. I could tell much more, but I will leave it at that.

Parenting

The following was something that I found on a Zip Drive that I transferred to my computer. I think it is as applicable today as when it was written on 10 September 2000.
   
    I believe that it is the parent's responsibility to provide a nurturing environment for children.  Because of the various levels at which this is, and must be accomplished, there is not a set standard that every parent is expected to achieve.  It must be commensurate with that which the person knows and is capable of doing.  There are also different levels of interaction between parent and child.  Because of the difference in personality between the parent and the child the same action on the part of the parent might produce different responses with each child.  The child might expect the same thing done to him as was done to his siblings and usually will be happy if he receives something different if it is to his advantage, and he perceives it as a sign of favoritism on the part of the parent.  However, if the parent treats the child differently in a way that the parent thinks is best for, and best meets the child's needs, and the child does not appreciate that response from the parent, then the child thinks that he or she is not being treated with fairness.

    In the main, I believe that most parents try to be just and fair with their children,  There are some who have pets, or prefer one child over another, but this is generally not found among the parents that I know, even though some of their children may accuse them of that.

    I am struck by one example of a Latter-Day-Saint school teacher that occurred in my residency training.  The father and mother in some unexplainable way singled out one child out of their large family to be the "whipping boy".  At an early age they made a jail cell out of a play pen and put him in a corner for all the children to despise.  They used to throw him food scraps from the table to feed him.  He was beaten and abused until his arms were broken so many times that they were deformed.  I do not know what happened to this boy, but I suppose that he will never recover from the maltreatment in this life.  I am sure that some children perceive their treatment by their parents to be as horrible as this, but I doubt that there are many cases as blatantly biased.

    It takes extremely wise parents to fulfill the needs of each child as an individual, without appearing to favor that individual in the eyes of the other siblings.  If one had to ask the question, "How are my actions perceived by all my children?", he or she would be certainly bound by inaction.  The fact that sibling rivalry exists is not a reason to postpone what one perceives as the best thing to do for one of his children.

    It is the parents role to teach as the Savior did.  As long as we don't go back on our promise to provide to the first workers in the field, we are free to reward the last workers the same as the first, even though the labor has been different.  We as humans are so concerned that no one gets more than what we think is merited.  It seems as though we cannot look into the celestial sphere and rejoice that all are there.  The parable of the prodigal son provides so much insight into human behavior in this regard.  We all want what is due us.  Most of us are envious when other people's needs are met, even though we still have plenty, but must continue to toil.

    I have also noted in the rearing process that although the child wishes and fights for a certain independence from the parents, he is only willing to have that independence he is willing to have, when it is to his advantage.  When the child is reluctant to take upon himself the consequences of the decision, then asks the parents for permission.  If some problem comes up then it is easy to say "Well, you said it was alright!"  A wise parent will follow the counsel of Joseph Smith.  Teach them correct principles and let them govern themselves.
 

Guns and me

Or the true story of how I shot the hole in the piano

When I was growing up In Denver, I was too young to join the Boy Scouts.  They had an organization for boys in Denver that was called the Highlander Boys. They wore uniforms and met once a week and drilled and marched and learned about the military.  As part of the training they had use of the rifle range in the basement of the building that we met in.  I learned to shoot a 22-gauge rifle and we would shoot at paper targets.  I learned to hit the target fairly well. The NRA had a program that would give medals for certain proficiency.  I received the pro-marksman, marksman, marksman first class, and sharpshooter medals.  I used to wear these medals on my Boy Scout merit badge sash.

 

Because I wanted to join the ward scout troop, I quit the Highlanders.  I was still interested in shooting, so I asked for a 22-gauge rifle for Christmas.  We got the gun the Christmas before we moved to Lander.

When we got to Lander we went rabbit hunting with Norbert Ribble, an employee at the weather bureau.  We would go out to Lyons Valley and hunt cottontail rabbits.  We did not have a car and so we had to depend on Norbert for transportation.

My father bought a 30-06 hunting rifle when we were in Denver and bought a new stock for it, which he finished himself. He hunted antelope in Wyoming.  After he moved to Lander he would hunt deer, antelope, and elk.

Each year I would buy a fishing license.  In those days one could buy a combined license that would allow fishing, hunting for deer or elk and bear.  I got an elk license one year, but I never killed an elk.  We went hunting above Louis Lake and all I shot was a snowshoe rabbit.

My father wanted to go pheasant hunting one year.  We did not have a shotgun.  Dad's friend Joe Yack had a shotgun.  We arranged to borrow the shotgun from Joe and he brought it to the house the day before we were to go pheasant hunting.

I was sitting on the couch or a chair on the north side of our front room. I took the shotgun in my hands to look at it and to make sure that the gun was not loaded.  This particular gun was a pump action gun.  In order to get a shell in the chamber, one had to pull the pump lever toward the trigger end of the gun and the chamber would open, eject the shell and place a new shell into the chamber.   I checked and there was no shell in the chamber.  As I moved the pump lever back into the locked position, the shotgun discharged firing the shot into the front of the piano.  The safety was on and I did not touch the trigger. 

The piano was on the south wall of the living room up against the wall separating the living room from my parent’s bedroom.   Martell had just walked in front of the piano just before the shotgun discharged.  My mother and my brother Glendon were in the bedroom behind the piano making the bed.

The buckshot from the gun blew a nice round ragged hole in the piano and went through the sounding board of the piano and out the back and through the wall of the bedroom and shot dropped on the floor in front of mother and Glendon.

 

Needless to say, I was upset and did not want to have anything to do with the gun after that experience.  My mother said that we should not reveal this to my father, but wait until a later time.

We went pheasant hunting the next day out behind the State Training School.  There were a lot of pheasants in the fields where they had farmed and left some grain stubble.  Dad was in front and Martell, Glendon and I hung back.  Dad pumped the shotgun and the gun discharged in the same way that it had for me.  Martell said, “That is just what happened to Laurence!”  Fortunately Dad did not hear that and I motioned to Martell to be quiet.

We finally did tell Dad, but he could not be too critical, because the same thing happened to him.  Until we got the piano tuned, the strings that were hit by the shot were out of tune when the keys were hit.  Dad took the gun back to Joe and we never had a shotgun in the house that I remember.

I do not remember what ever happened to the 22-gauge rifle. 

Fortunately, in this instance, no one was hurt or injured except the piano, but they could have been.

As I went through the next years, I saw a number of not so fortunate incidents.  When I was an intern at the Dee hospital, a young man and his sister were frightened when their parents were away and got a rifle from the gun cabinet and it discharged while the young 16 year old boy was holding the gun hitting his sister in the back and leaving her paralyzed. 

I was in the Dee emergency room when they brought in a man who had been deer hunting riding a Tote Goat[1].  A hunter mistook him for a deer and shot him off the machine.  He was hit in the leg and had his femur shattered.  He was fortunate not to have bled to death.

At that time there were more hunters in the field in Utah[2] than there were American infantry soldiers at Omaha beach in Normandy during the D-day invasion[3].  Hunting is a dangerous thing to do even though the hunters are not trying to kill each other.

We did not have a gun in the house after our marriage and after my medical training I never did go hunting. 

I took care of a patient in my practice, who lost his eye sight in one eye by someone shooting at him with a BB gun.  I received a great deal of criticism, when as stake president, I spoke in stake conference about hunting and killing animals after President Kimball gave his conference address on “Don’t kill the little birds”.

There is a great deal of debate at the present time about guns.  We can read about a people in the Book of Mormon who buried their weapons of war.

Perhaps we ought to rely more on the Lord for our defense that the arm of the flesh.

---

[1] The Tote Gote is an off-road motorcycle that was produced from 1958 to 1970. It was developed by Ralph Bonham, who is credited with inventing the off-road motorcycle. Bonham created the Tote Gote to relieve the exhaustion of walking through the Utah mountains while hunting. First called the "Mechanical Goat", it was renamed to refer to its ability to "tote" (carry) deer out of the woods while climbing inclines with the skill of a mountain goat.

[2] More than 52,000 hunters expected afield for Utah's most popular hunt (DOWR Utah website).

[3] 43,250 infantry (Wikipedia).

Music and me

Recently I received an e-mail from my friend John Frank in which he detailed his experiences with music in his life.  For my children and grandchildren I wanted to explore the musical experiences in my life, which were and are an important aspect of my time here on earth.

My father liked music and so did his brothers and parents. I liked to hear my father and his brothers sing together. I can remember riding in a car and listening to the singing when I was quite young.

I do not remember the first time I sang, but when we lived in Cheyenne and I was in 4th grade, I had a part in a class play. I was the rich man who wanted to buy a pair of shoes. The teacher wanted me to say the part, but I guess I sort of sang the words, so she put them to music and I sang my part. We put on the play for the school and then went on to perform the play for the high school.  This started my entry into music.

When we moved to Denver I sang in the ward choir.

My voice was a high soprano. I sang in a choir in junior high school, but my voice was so high that I could sing the soprano part an octave above the written part.

About this time my parents bought a used piano. This is the same piano that Mary Ellen has in her home.  It is the same one that I shot a hole in with a shotgun. But that is another story for another time.

I took piano lessons with my brothers. The piano teacher was Lela Higginson.  I would baby sit her children as partial payment for my lessons.

My uncle Merrill had a Saxophone that he gave to us and I joined the junior high school band. They did not need a Saxophone in the band, so the band director Mr. Kenneth Sizer asked me to play the Clarinet.  During the summer, I took private lessons from him.  We eventually bought a metal Clarinet.

I would bring the clarinet music home with me to practice.  We did not have a music stand, so I would use the handles of the gas stove to hold up the music while I would practice in the kitchen.

I spent more time practicing the clarinet than I did practicing the piano, so the piano teacher dropped me as a student, but my brothers and I learned to play a trio on the same piano.  We played ”We Three Kings of Orient Are”.

The year that I was in ninth grade, my voice changed. I could no longer sing soprano, so I became a bass. My range was from a C above middle C to a G two octaves below middle C.

During this time we moved from Denver to Lander during the middle of the school year. I was in the high school band and the choir as well. We had a good music teacher, Caryl Alexander.  He taught band and choir as well as other classes.  I started out in the third clarinet section, but by the end on the year I was playing second clarinet.

I was very interested in performing, so I tried out to sing in the district music festival. This was held in the spring of 1949 in Thermopolis. I competed singing, "I walked today where Jesus walked".  Lucille Farthing accompanied me on the piano. Our choir and band also performed. I do not remember if our ratings were outstanding, but I do remember that I was not pleased with my vocal solo performance.  I said that I would do better the next year.

 

I decided to buy a better clarinet than the metal one that I had, so I cashed in my savings bonds and raided my savings account and bought a LeBlanc ebony clarinet for $350 from Les Parsons, who had a music store in Casper, Wyoming my junior year of high school.  I still have this one today.  I also bought a crystal mouthpiece, which unfortunately got chipped later and became unusable.  The tone achieved with this mouthpiece was superior to any of the hard rubber or plastic mouthpieces on the market.

I took vocal lessons for a short time when I lived in Lander. I continued to sing and play the clarinet during the rest of my years in high school. I sang and acted in a musical performance "Rings In The Sawdust".

 

I sang in the district chorus and played in the district band.

During my senior year I was first chair first clarinet in the band and also in the district band and in the all-state band.  I was in the district chorus as well as the all-state chorus.
I was first clarinet in a clarinet quartet from Lander and we were allowed to compete in the state music festival in Casper.

The band took first in then state competition as well as the choir. I also entered the district competition in solo voice singing "Run Mary Run". I also played a clarinet solo and was privileged to compete in the state competition.

About this time my parents bought a 45 rpm record player.  Then they also purchased a number of records.  I wanted to have my own music so the first record that I bought was the 1812 overture by Tchaikovsky.  On the reverse side was the Capriccio Italian also by Tchaikovsky.  We did not have a classical radio station so we played the records more than we listened to the radio.

The high school also had a dance band and I played the clarinet and saxophone in the dance band.  We also had another band that played German music.  The book that we played from was the “Hungry Five”.

A classmate of mine, Ruth Chapman and her brother formed a dance band.  My friend John L. Frank and Stan Brooks, who later married Ruth, were in the band.  We played music for the dances in the outlying farming communities, such as Crowheart and Pavillion and Ft. Washakie.  I played the clarinet and the saxophone and John played the trombone.

When I went to Weber College, I played in the band and sang in the men's chorus and played in the Ogden Symphony Orchestra.

When I went to Weber I took voice lessons from the choir director and sang in recitals.
I was in the men's chorus and sang in some impromptu quartettes

Weber College put on an operetta once a year.  The first year was the “Song of Norway”. I played in the pit orchestra for this production.  The next year I tried out for a singing part in the “Merry Widow”.  I played the comic lead, an old man who was a sugar daddy. That is grandpa on the left front in both photos.

 

In the spring of 1954 I tried out for the all-church orchestra, which was to play in the Salt Lake Tabernacle in June for the MIA conference.  I auditioned for Crawford Gates and was offered a place in the orchestra competing with music majors from the University of Utah and BYU.

At this time the Ogden Symphony invited Maurice Abravanell to be the guest conductor for a concert featuring Beethoven’s Eroica (3^rd) symphony.

I took my clarinet with me on my mission. I played my clarinet for Peter Osthoff and his mother and brother at Christmas time. While in Hildesheim I bought a Ukulele which I brought home with me and would play for my own entertainment. I played for enjoyment until I was transferred to Berlin where I was appointed the leader of the mission dance band. We practiced and played mostly American popular dance music. I had my parents send me my Saxophone. We went over to East Berlin and I purchased the instruments necessary to equip those who had not brought their instruments with them; Alto Sax, French Horns, another clarinet and a couple of trumpets.  I learned to play a few pieces on the trumpet.

When I was in Flensburg on my mission we interested a few young men to join some impromptu jam sessions.

In Goslar my companion Duane Bishop and I joined the community choir and rehearsed and sang with them in concert in the Kaiser Pfalz.

When I returned from my mission and attended BYU, I did not play in the orchestra or sing in the choir.  The German class formed a choir to sing in German. We practiced Handel’s Creation, but I do not remember performing. I also had a bock flute or recorder and we played quartettes.

I was pleasantly surprised to learn that the young lady that I had asked to marry me (Alice) could play the piano.

While in medical school I sang in a quartette with other members of my class. Two of the members sang in the Tabernacle Choir.  We sang once a year at the medical school family night.  I played my clarinet and ukulele for my own personal enjoyment.

After medical school I was busy, so I did not perform much.  We moved to Lander and one of the first purchases that I made was for a 33 1/2 rpm stereo record player and changer.  We began acquiring records and that was the main music in our lives.

We then moved to the Naval Air Station at Lemoore California.  Alice bought me a Christmas present of a baritone ukulele.  I loved to play that instrument and since we did not have a piano I played the accompaniment for the songs that we sang at family home evening.

We moved back to Lander and during the ensuing years I played clarinet duets with another man in Lander.  We bought a grand piano and we offered piano lessons to each of our children.  Alice even took piano lessons and became proficient so that she even accompanied me when I sang solos.

Each of our children was encouraged to play a musical instrument other than the piano and one played the French horn another clarinet another the saxophone another the flute another played the trumpet and two were percussionists. We even had a trombone.

We continue to acquire high Fidelity records.  We have a number of compact cassette classical music recordings and then we have a collection of CDs.

After we moved to North Salt Lake, I continued to sing in the ward choir and was privileged to sing in a community choir for the 24th of July celebration in the Tabernacle at Temple Square (2009). My voice had changed from earlier years so that I could sing tenor as well as bass.  In the last couple of years I have developed a hoarseness, which the doctor has diagnosed as an old floppy larynx.  So my singing for performance has gone by the way.  I still have my clarinet, a saxophone, the trumpet, and a trombone in addition to the recorder (bock flute) and a chromatic harmonica that I picked up in Berlin when I was on my mission.

My children gave me an iPod so that I can have music wherever I go and now I have that same music on my iPhone.

I love classical music.  I listen to it in the car where I can find two different stations that broadcast classical music.

When I was the age of most of my grandchildren I did not have as much appreciation for classical music as I do now.  I hope each one my grandchildren will develop a love and appreciation for good music.  It will enrich your life as it has mine.

Love,

Grandpa