Information for PC Lind Reunion

We (Uncle Marvel & Aunt Junelle's family) are hosting the PC Lind Reunion on June 17th and 18th at the Heber Valley Camp directly east of Heber, Utah.  For directions, please click here.  There is no cost to stay at the cabins, but please contact us at mnjlind@gmail.com or at 801/878-9977 before June 15th to reserve a bunk for the night.  The bunks are plywood, so bring foam pads, air mattresses, sleeping bags, etc.

You are welcome to arrive any time after 2:00 pm and the camp rules can be seen by clicking here.  We will be staying at the Eliza R. Snow camp #1.  Interior photos of the cabins can be seen by clicking here. A map of the Heber Valley Camp can be seen by clicking here, but you will be given a copy of the map by senior missionaries located at the Welcome Center (entry gate) to the Heber Valley Camp upon your arrival.  At our campsite the pavilion is equipped with 2 refrigerators, sinks, grills, etc.  The pavilion is also equipped with indoor restrooms (with hot & cold water), but you will need to provide your own towels, soap, shampoo, etc for the shower.

We've made time in the schedule on Friday afternoon to visit the Legacy Lake Waterfront, please click here for more information and pricing.  Please note that we need to schedule tickets (and pay) at least 10 days prior to our check-in.  Which means that we need to know before June 6th if you want tickets for the Legacy Lake Waterfront and we need the money to pay for the reservations.  It should be noted that campers without prior reservations are welcome to check with their camp hosts upon arrival at camp and purchase any available tickets.  It is free to go to the lake and watch the other campers, you only need to pay if you want to be involved in the water activities at the lake.

If you would rather go for a hike, the Heber Valley Camp website has hiking information: Hike Route Sampler - hiking suggestions that originate in each camp, Hiking Trail Descriptions - a brief summary of what you will see on each trail, Hiking Times - a chart showing the approximate time it takes to hike from various locations around Heber Valley Camp, and Hike Plan - a required form that establishes a contact person while campers are on the trail.   The Heber Valley Camp trails host is to available to help campers plan hiking routes and advise them of any special situations. Our camp host can help you contact the trails host once you are in camp. 

There is also a sand volleyball court near our cabins and the camp hosts have a volleyball we can use.  We will also have a game of horse shoes set up.  We also have the option of doing a service project for the Heber Valley Camp.

Dinner will be served at 6:00 pm.  We will provide meat and homemade root beer.  Please bring potluck to share.  After dinner we will have a campfire, with time to visit and play games.  Quiet time in camp is designated from 10:00 pm to 7:00 am.

We will provide a full hot breakfast on Saturday morning at 8:00 am. 

We've made time in the schedule on Saturday morning to visit the Challenge Course, please click here for more information and pricing.  Please note that we need to schedule tickets (and pay) at least 10 days prior to our check-in.  Which means that we need to know before June 6th if you want tickets for the Challenge Course and we need the money to pay for the reservations.  It should be noted that campers without prior reservations are welcome to check with their camp hosts upon arrival at camp and purchase any available tickets.

Lunch will be at noon and we will provide a make-your-own layered taco salad.  Please bring potluck to share.

After lunch we will need to clean up the camp as directed in the Check-in/Check-out form.  There is also time for hiking, volleyball, visiting, horseshoes, etc.  We need to have the camp cleaned and inspected by the camp hosts before we leave.  We need to check-out before 5:00 pm on Saturday.

We look forward to seeing everyone there, please contact us at mnjlind@gmail.com or at 801/878-9977 with any questions.

• Please RSVP to Marvel & Junelle and let them know if you'll be able to attend before June 15th.  
• They also need to know if you will need a bunk for Friday night before June 15th.
• Money for reservations at the Waterfront and the Challenge Courses are due to Marvel and Junelle by June 6th.

The Old Ford

1919: L-R: John P. Lind, Lynn Clark, Philbert, Oscar & Laurence

On the ranch, in the shed below the road was an old 1916 (?) Ford Touring car, which used to belong to Grandma (Emma) Lind.  I think that it was the one that Uncle Oscar bought and after his death became the property of Grandma.  I don’t know if she ever drove it, but none the less it belonged to her.  Anyway many a happy hour was spent as a young boy as Doug and I pretended to drive the dusty old car.  It had a fold down top on it, four doors and two leather seats, the top was never put down.  I don’t remember if we were ever bank robbers, but we would chase the bank robbers and try to catch them.  Sometimes I would even get to pretend drive and that was very exciting.  We would get to go to many different places on exotic vacations, anyplace that our minds could think of to go.  It was a wonderful old car.

When Oscar was about 16, Dad told the boys they could have the old car if they could get it running.  Oscar and Dwain were the chief mechanics, Doug figured he was as good of help as they could find and Me, I was a good shade tree mechanic, most of my ideas went by unheeded.  After all I was only eight or nine and to older brothers didn’t know much.

The car was pulled out of the shed and work on it started in earnest.  First we got the motor running, because if the motor doesn’t run you can’t go very far.  After the motor was running and bands in the transmission were going, then we decided what to do with the body of the car.  It was decided to strip it down and make it into a pickup type vehicle.  The body was cut off behind the front seat, the back seat and the top were discarded.  A wooden platform was built on the back behind the seat that we could sit or stand on, so now we were ready to try it out.  The tires were no good as they had rotted while sitting in the shed, so the maiden voyage was made on the rims.

One of the interesting things about our “hotrod”, was that it had a Ruxstell gear in the differential.  This was kind of a low speed gear when you pulled on the floor mounted shift lever, giving it a two speed effect, high and low.

After we got tires on our auto, we were able to drive it all over on the roads at the ranch.  Oscar even taught me how to drive it, which I really appreciated.  We took it fishing, coyote hunting and one time we even decided to drive it to Grouse Creek to the 4th of July celebration.  There were about six of us that piled on to it and we were off.  Dwain was the chauffeur for us on that eventful day.  We putted down the road and up the mountain, as we started down the other side everything was going fine.  We came around Lower’s Curve and down to Poison Creek, as we were going down the grade by the creek, it started to pick up speed.  Dwain pushed on the brake and nothing happened, he tried everything he could think of, nothing worked.  We might make it around the gentle curve 1/4 of a mile ahead, but there was no way we could make it around Scott’s curve on ahead and we would go off the grade and down the hill.  The only alternative at this point, was to try and go up over the bank on the left and up the mountain.  Dwain grabbed the Ruxstell gear lever and gave it a hard pull, as he did this, every thing on the car seemed to work.  The sudden jerk almost threw us off, but we had been saved from serious injury or worse.

We went on to Grouse Creek and spent the day visiting with our cousins and friends.  The rest of the day was relatively uneventful.  The trip home was made in good order.

Oscar and Dwain went into the Army in World War II, Dad, felt sorry for a family with several boys in Moulton and gave our car to them.  They got it running and had lots of fun with it.  Us boys were really not very happy campers over the situation, but all turned out well in the end.

Strength Of The Lind Brothers Remembered

1917: Back L-R: Herman & Raymond; Front L-R: Oscar & Philbert

In 1966, Junelle and I and our family moved to Heyburn, Idaho, where we became acquainted with Elmer Heiner.  He was raised in Oakley, Idaho and was well acquainted with the John Peter Lind family of Lynn, Utah.  He was about the same age as my father, Philbert and Uncle Raymond.

I was visiting with Elmer one day and the topic of the conversation became centered around the strength of the Lind Brothers.  He was telling me how strong they were.  He said that on occasion, he would haul grain from Lynn to Oakley with horses and wagon.  On one trip that he made, he had spent the night in the Lind home.  After eating a hearty and delicious breakfast that Grandma Lind had prepared, he started for the corral and barn to get his team ready to leave.  Dad and Uncle Raymond said that they would go and help him.  As they approached the corral, they saw there was a yearling heifer in the stackyard.  Dad ran the heifer down and caught her, Uncle Raymond picked her up around the legs, carried her to the corral fence and lifted her over the fence  into the corral.  Elmer said the heifer probably weighed at least 400 pounds.  His comment was, “I would never have believed it if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes.”

On another occasion, two men were trying to load a fifty-five gallon barrel of oil into the bed of a pickup.  They had a plank they were trying to roll the barrel up into the bed of the truck.  They would almost get it in and it would get away from them.  Uncle Raymond watched them for a while, then said, “If you will move, I will help you load your barrel.”  He walked over to the barrel, picked it up, and lifted it into the pickup.  It weighed about 450 pounds.

Some deer hunters borrowed a horse from Dad to bring a deer they had killed off the mountain.  After they left, Dad said, “Let’s go for a ride and see if we can find a big buck.”  We rode over the mountain to Chadwick Basin and Kimball Creek, we didn’t find the big buck, but we did find the two hunters trying to load the buck they has killed onto the horse.  They were really struggling, Dad offered to help them.  He picked the buck up and threw it over the saddle and tied it on, the hunters looked dumbfounded.

Our Trip To Yellowstone

In 1940, after the alfalfa hay was all in the stacks and the fields watered, our family (Philbert’s) and Uncle Raymond’s went to Heglar Canyon, east of Malta, Idaho to buy timber to build two A frame derricks.  After talking to the man who ran the saw mill and making arrangement to get the timber, we headed towards American Falls.  When we got to Highway 30 at Cold Water Camp, Idaho, they stopped to decide what to do and which way to go.  All of the older kids wanted to go to Yellowstone Park.  The folks, said they were not prepared to go to Yellowstone, they didn’t have enough ready cash to make that trip.  We had all of our camping gear, so the kids didn’t see why we couldn’t go.  It was finally decided that we would go as far as Blackfoot and see if they could cash some checks and if they could, we would go to the Park. 

Just outside of Pocatello, Uncle Raymond’s car overheated and stopped.  We received permission to camp in a freshly cut alfalfa field.  There were a lot of trains running on the railroad tracks, just across the road south of us.  There was an airport just north of us, they were training pilots, just prior to World War II.  They flew just as long as they could see in the evening and started as soon as they could see in the morning.  We, Country Kids, had never seen so many planes or trains.  We lay on our stomachs with our hands under our chins and counted the cars on the trains as they went by.  Between the planes and trains and kids counting, I don’t think any body got much sleep, but we had fun.

In Blackfoot, Dad and Uncle Raymond both got them a hair cut from Wayne Bird, who had lived in the Junction Valley some years earlier.  He was glad to cash a check for each of them, so we were off on our great adventure.  I don’t know how Aunt Mildred made out, Nila was only a few weeks old and they didn’t have disposable diapers back then.  At night they would pull the cars side by side, away’s apart, we would lay out our beds between them.  Dad and Uncle Raymond would sleep, one on each end, Aunt Mildred slept in the car with Nila, I don’t recall where Mother slept.  We kids just slept and didn’t worry about a thing.  Our meals were cooked over the campfire.

As we left Yellowstone, we drove through the Tetons and down through Jackson Hole.  When we arrived at the Snake River, we were amazed to see the bridge we would have to drive on to cross the  river.  As I remember it, it was just planking on poles driven and used as piles.  Two sets of planking about three feet wide, with a gap of about three feet in the center.  There were no guard rails on either side.  The road going down the canyon was under construction and very rough.  I don’t know how many were afraid to cross this bridge, but I certainly was.  I remember putting a quilt over my head and praying that we would be safe.  If we were going to fall in the river, I didn’t want to know about it.  The dad’s were good drivers and made it across safely.

When we got to Alpine, Wyoming, we camped for the night.  Some of the kids soon found a pretty black and white animal.  We were busy chasing it, trying to catch it.  When people saw what we were doing they started yelling, telling us to leave it alone.  We chased that scared skunk through a fellows campfire, upsetting his coffee pot in the fire.  The man wasn’t happy at all with us, our folks, well, they were grateful that we didn’t get sprayed.  We did have a good time on the trip.

My Baptism

As I was coming up through the classes in Primary, I was taught the importance of Baptism.  I remember looking toward the time that I could be baptized and become a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  The time was nearing that I would turn eight years of age and would be old enough.

The 28th of June was a hot summer day, we were putting up hay on the Lower Place, Uncle Alex’s old place.  We were stacking hay near the old curved shed, it was my job to drive the derrick team.  One of the difficult things about driving the derrick team, especially for an eight year old boy, was that the team soon learned how far they could go, before the big spring on the over shot stacker would yank them backwards.  The horses didn’t like to be hurried up to the end of the trail and then suddenly be pulled back by the spring.  The man on the stack would yell for the hay to be thrown back farther.  I would try to hurry the horses to throw the hay, but they would hurry only so far.  Uncle Raymond’s family was working with us, putting up the hay.

When the noon hour came, Mother and Aunt Mildred brought dinner down to us.  We sat in the shade of the haystack and ate our dinner.  I don’t remember what else we had to eat, but we had watermelon for dessert.  When we finished eating, Uncle Vance’s family came, he was our Bishop.

Daddy and I went into one of the buildings and changed into our white clothes.  We all walked down to the creek, by the bridge.  There was a beaver dam under the bridge, backing up the water.  Daddy and I waded out into the water, which was pretty chilly.  Daddy baptized me and when I came up out of the water, I was probably more frightened than cold .  My cousin Gordon, who was standing on the bank said, “Do it again.”  I certainly didn’t want to do it again and was angry at him for even suggesting such a thing.

The baptism accomplished, we walked back up to the shed, changed into our working clothes and went back to work for the afternoon.

The following Sunday, 7 July 1940, I was confirmed a member of the church by my father.  I have often thought since that, even though I was baptized in the creek on my birthday, it was just as valid and binding as if I had been baptized in a font in a church.  A very memorable occasion.