Fun at School

L-R Back: Marilyn Lind, Barbara Baker, Vonda Bird; Front: Dwain Lind (kneeling), Marvel Lind (standing), Noel Nelson (standing), and Doug Lind (kneeling).

When I was in about the third or fourth grade, and Douglas was in sixth or seventh grade, we had been having our lessons as usual.  During the noon hour, about six horses came down the lane by the school house.  Doug was in an adventuresome mode, as he generally was.  I don’t know who made the suggestion that we run the horses into the school yard, but the gate was opened and the horses were run into the school yard.  Doug said, “I’ll get up on the fence in the corner and you crowd the horses into the corner,” which we did.  Doug jumped off of the fence onto the back of one of the horses, I don’t know whether he got hold of the mane or not.  The horse was very startled and started running and bucking.  Doug didn’t stay there very long, but it was very exciting while he was there.  Laurel Hill, the teacher, was a little agitated and made us turn the horses out in the lane again.  I don’t know if any thing was said to the folks or not.

Christmas in Lynn

L-R: Philbert holding Virgene, Aunt Julia, Ellen, Aunt Otilia, & Uncle Lawrence

Christmas was always an exciting time in the Lynn Valley.  I don’t remember as much as I probably should, but none the less we always had a good time.  One of the things we liked to do was to go caroling, we would get on a bob-sleigh and go from house to house and sing Christmas Carols.  We enjoyed doing this and the people whose houses we went to seemed to enjoy it also.  When Laurel Hill was teaching we took Dad’s horses and bob-sleigh, sleigh bells were fastened on to the harnesses.  Simon Baker Jr. was driving the horses.  We had quite a caravan, we had a big sheet of iron hooked behind the sleigh, it was about four feet wide and eight feet long, the front of it was curved up so that it would ride over the snow.  We also had some individual sleds tied on behind and we took turns riding on them.  When we got up by the reservoir, Laurel, tipped her little sled over and hit her forehead on the edge of the big metal slide and when her head started to bleed, we were sure she was going to die.  Needless to say, this stopped our fun afternoon.

The ward met in the school to hold church activities so it was kind of hard to remember which activities were church and which were school.  We used to always have a Santa Clause party and Santa would come with presents for the kids.  We would always try to guess who Santa’s helper was, Aunt Julia was always a dead give away because of her thumbnails which were short and squatty.  We didn’t have electricity, so everyone would bring a lantern or a lamp, or both, to light the school.

We had grades one through eight in the school and everyone would help decorate the room.  Mostly it was paper chains that went crosswise from corner to corner, pulled up in the center and a large bell hung in the center.  The chains would also loop from window to window.  The school program would consist mostly of stories or poems given by the children.  Some years we would put on a one act play.

The folks would generally make their last trip to town to get supplies for the winter sometime before Thanksgiving, then we would be snowed in until some time in April when they would plow the snow out of the road.  One year not long before Christmas, Douglas and I had gone upstairs to bed.  There was a knock on the door and Dad went to see who it was, it was Clement Simper, he said that he was going to Burley tomorrow and wondered if Dad needed any thing.  Dad told him that he had a coaster wagon layed away at Western Auto and he wondered if Clement would bring it home for him.  The next night we had gone to bed and there was a knock on the door.  It was Clement with the wagon.  A few days later the road was still open, so Dad and Mother decided they would go to Burley.  Doug and I stayed home, after the folks were gone, we decided we would find the wagon.  We hunted in the basement, in the garage, the granary, the sheds at the corrals and all the small building, but we couldn’t find any wagon.  Christmas morning when we went down stairs to see what Santa had brought, the wagon was under the tree.  Years later, I asked Dad where he had hid the wagon.  He said he knew we would be looking for it, so he had carried it up to some tall sage brush between our place and Uncle Raymond’s and hid it.

As I mentioned, we didn’t have electricity, so when we, Uncle Raymond and us, decorated our Christmas Trees, we put candle holders on them with candles.  We only put about six or so candles on ours, and when we lit the candles, Dad would have a big bucket of water handy, to put out the fire if one started.  Uncle Raymond had a lot more candles on his.  They were the most beautiful sight I had ever seen when they were lit.  We had our tree up from December 15 to January 6.  Santa’s helpers would come again New Year’s Eve and leave candy and nuts again.

Deer Hunting Memories

I was in the 2nd grade when Laurel Hill came to teach at the Lynn School and she began to live with our family.  It was probably that fall that the following incident happened:

One clear crisp Saturday morning in October, the family was making plans for a day of hunting.  Mother invited Laurel to go along with her for the day.  I was riding behind Mother on her saddle horse and Laurel rode alone.  We rode up on the West Mountain through Uncle Laurence’s pasture, high on the mountain near the River of Rocks.  We were riding along up Deep Hollow and I was the first to see him.  I said, “There he goes, Mum!”  She moved quickly from the saddle, pulling the old lever action 32-20 rifle from the scabbard hanging from the side of the saddle as she stepped down.  She moved back, took careful aim and BOOM, she got him with one shot!  She had learned to ride, hunt and handle a gum during her growing up years in Grouse Creek.  I was so excited and yelled, “Ya’ got him, Mum, ya’ got him”!  We rode over to take a closer look at our prize buck.

Then came the job of preparing him to take home.  All that Mother and Laurel could find to cut his throat was a little pen knife of Laurel’s with a tiny 1-1/2 inch blade and so they took turns hacking away at the bloody throat to let the big animal bleed out.  By the time they were ready to load him onto the horse Dad came along the mountain to give a hand.  We really went home that day with bragging rights!  He turned out to be the only deer bagged by the family that day.  It was really an exciting experience for a little boy of seven. 

Mother always shot left-handed and preferred to carry the old pump-action twenty two.  In the 1960's Dad bought Mother a new left-handed bolt action rifle, which later became mine, being another “lefty”.

1964 Deer Hunt at hunting cabin

Through the years, Deer Season was always a gathering time for friends and family at The Ranch in Lynn.  The folks build the little family hunting cabin on the west mountain in 1954, so our dear friend, Dr. LeRoy Wirthlin of Salt Lake would have a nice place to stay when he brought his friends and family out for hunting season each year. He had covered several medical issues for our family while refusing any payment.   He’d drive out in his old Packard car loaded down with hunting gear, supplies and his sons, to meet his friends at the cabin, Steve Buckmiller, Bob Stewart and Abinadi (Bin) Tolman from Brigham City.  To them it was ten days of hunting bliss with no phones to interrupt their solitude.

One of my favorite memories of deer season and gathering at the ranch was in October of 1996.  VaLayne brought her little boys and came to Idaho.  Ellen invited us up to the ranch for the Friday night Dutch-oven dinner with the request to bring Mother along, by then in her 93rd year.  That afternoon we drove up to Lynn.  We sat in the old family kitchen, Mother in her favorite old rocking chair in front of the kitchen window.  A fire burning in the old fireplace and surrounded with love, laughter and great hunting stories.

As we drove down through the valley that evening, bright lights flickered from all the homes and yards. The roads were filled with cars and trucks pulling horse trailers coming in.  The valley had come to life once again.  Hunting season was in the air. It was a fun ride back to Burley as we sang old songs and reminisced.

Just ten days later Mother passed away suddenly at her little home in View leaving a pot of homemade soup simmering on the stove.

The Porcupine - "our best pet"

The porcupine was probably the best pet we ever had.  I don't remember that he had a name, maybe "Porky."  My older brother, Oscar, brought a gunny sack to school one day.  After school he was going to Buck Hollow (on the East Mountain) to see Heb (Heber) Simpson.  Heb kept his sheep in Buck Hollow and Oscar was going to go see if Heb had any leppy lambs he could have.  Leppy lambs have been abandoned by their mother and need to be bottle-fed to survive.  The sheepherders don't often have time or supplies to bottle feed the lambs and so will give them away.  Oscar was riding his horse toward Buck Hollow and noticed a mother porcupine walking with two baby porcupines following her along.  Oscar got off his horse, picked up one of the baby porcupines and put it in his gunny sack to bring home - but didn't go to get any lambs.  I remember that night when Oscar pulled a little black ball about two inches long out of the gunny sack.  We could hardly believe what it was.  I think my parents were tickled about having a porcupine to raise.

My sister Ellen was about four years old and she donated her "Betsy Wetsy" baby bottle to the cause and we fed him with cows milk.  When we first got him, he had black coarse hair - kind of like horse hair.  As the porcupine got older, his hair grew to about one inch long and then the quills started growing up through the hair.  After the quills grew in, we couldn't pet him like we had before.  He liked to be petted on his head.  We would hold out our index fingers a few inches apart and the porcupine would come over and put his hands on your fingers.  Then we could lift him onto our laps and pet his head.  He was a very good pet and never tried to strike us.

I don't think Uncle Raymond was "tickled" we had him.  Uncle Raymond had just planted a row of pine trees and our porcupine liked them.  He'd climb up in the trees and nibble on the bark.  Uncle Raymond would bring him back to us in a bucket every now and then.

Laurel Hill was our school teacher and she began planning a pet show at school.  Our porcupine was about a year old and we wanted to take him to the show.  After school, we decided we didn't want to take the porcupine home and we'd play with him the next day.  So we walked around the school yard checking the fence.  We plugged any holes in the fence, so he would be safe and stay put.

The next morning we found him laying dead in the road.  He was in the middle of the road where there is the main road through the valley and then it branches off and goes over the mountain to Grouse Creek.  We were so sad.  We'd left him at school and he'd been trying to come home when he got hit.  Before school started that morning, we held a little funeral and buried him in the school yard.  We found out later that Curtis Nelson had been in Burley that day and was on his way home that evening and ran over our porcupine in an unfortunate accident.

Through the years, we had lots of wild animals as pets: coyotes, bobcats, owls, deer, and lots of lambs - but the porcupine was our favorite.  I think we tried more kinds of wild animals as pets than anyone else did.  The Baker's had deer pets.  Uncle Raymond's family didn't have wild animal pets, but one year he had the Brownies write us a note at Christmas time asking us not to chase Uncle Raymond's geese.

Cora's Trip Scrapbook

In 1941, Mother went on a trip with Laurel Hill, her mother, sisters and some cousins.  Laurel was the school teacher at the Lynn School for several years and boarded with our family.  Mother and Laurel were good friends.  Laurel's brother, Jack, was on a mission in Missouri and joined the vacation for several days.  I really didn't realize that she was going anywhere until right before she left.  Things at home didn't change for us, but I got to do all the cooking while she was gone.  When she came back she told us stories and showed photos of the things she'd seen.  I think her stories are what gave me the desire to see the places she told us about.

The last few years Paula has been scanning family photos and we found many photos of Mother's trip.  She asked me questions, but I couldn't remember much information about the trip.  Recently, we were happy to have the opportunity to borrow the scrapbook that Mother put together about the trip.  We scanned the scrapbook and you can see a copy of it, and relive her adventures, by clicking here.