Cars that Go Fast

Wilbur knows how to make cars go fast.

Being Charlene

I’ll never forget the “Charlene” argument between Petunia and Prudence. We were living in Jefferson Hills at time. Petunia was probably eight and Prudence was six. Both girls were setting up for a game of imaginary play. But one issue of great moment had to be resolved before the play-story got underway: should Petunia be graced with the play-name of Charlene, or should this honor rest upon Prudence? Both girls discovered that currently they both had Charlene as their favorite name.

Petunia is an oldest sister, a leader, a red personality, and as a eight year old was used to having her own way. She could be unscrupulous in getting her own way too. Prudence never has liked contention and learned the art of compromise at an early age. Although, Prudence will only push so far before she digs here heels in and refuses to budge. Dynamite won’t move her when that happens. I was interested to find out who would get to be Charlene, or if play would completely break down because the question could not be resolved amicably.

Memory is hazy as to who ended up being named Charlene. I think it was Petunia for half the play and then Prudence became another sort of Charlene after a while. But play went on. Evidently, having some play time was more important than winning over the name.

It tickled my funny bone that both girls liked the name Charlene at that age. Sometimes, Kids are so funny about what they like. Did the girls like the name Charlene because we used to watch The Barbara Mandrell Show and one of the three Mandrell sisters was Charlene? What was it about that name that made it seem so pretty? The fascination with the name Charlene wore off years ago. I don’t have any granddaughter so named. I glad about that since I don’t care for the name much. But for a little while, it was fun to watch the girls have a distinct name preference. And it was fun watching them resolve the earth-shaking question of who got to be Charlene.

Mom's Influence

Because of my Mom's influence:

1) I always wash my hands after petting the dog.

2) I firmly believe in the value of education.

3) I don't automatically assume that the doctor is right.

4) I like to save money making my own clothes.

5) I value good nutrition.

6) I don't have a subservient bone in my body.

7) I learned to pick my friends on the basis of what kind of people they are, not what religion they are. When I had a church calling serving with a woman from Utah who fussed and fumed about her kid's lack opportunity to make friends with other church members here, I have to admit to a certain amount of disgust. Growing up, I knew kids who were members that I wouldn't want to be friends with and kids who were nonmembers that were great friends. I found that this observation held true for my kids also.

Influences

Because of my Dad's influence:

1) I frequently preface my statements with the words, "Actually,...." or, "Well, actually..."

2) I love rocks: all kinds of rocks and fossils too.

3) I sometimes correct Wilbur. For example, Wilbur will say, "Last February 12." I will say,"Actually, it was the 11th of February at 4:27 p.m..." Wilbur will then say, "Thank you, Sid."

4) I always carry matches in my backpack, even for a day hike. This probably saved my life once.

5) Hunting something for its rack or horns just does not compute for me. When you hunt, it's because you need meat. You don't want the meat, you don't hunt. Period. Only a scumbag kills something if he doesn't need the meat.

6) I love to read.

7) I love high school football and basketball.

The Line

TV has finally crossed the line. Last night I watched an episode of Psych on USA, a program I enjoy watching for the laughs. In last night's episode a character in the show swore, saying the word “Christ.” I won’t be watching Psych again. Period. I haven’t watched NBC, ABC, or CBS for years. In my youth, during the Cretaceous Period, these were only three networks available. These networks plotted a determined march to the sewer decades ago. Their gradual but steady normalization of casual, perverted sex, crudity, filthy language, blood, and violence left me queasy, so I pulled the plug on the big three networks. Now it seems that USA has joined the lemmings' marching to the latrine.

Every year or two, the networks introduce a few more filthy words and deeds. Apparently, networks can’t introduce too much of their repulsive agenda to their viewers too quickly. Like an offensive odor, the networks’ introduction of the crude,vulgar, and violent starts with a small whiff. As the viewing public becomes accustomed to the stink, the entertainment industry imperceptibly adds more and more filth to its programs. The stench increases so gradually that many people don’t realized how disgusting it has become. In the past couple of years, USA introduced “ass” to the mainstream viewer. I guess using the Savior’s title as a curse is this year’s step further into the septic tank. I predict the f-bomb will be introduced within the next couple of years and Heaven, or maybe Hell, only knows where TV will go from there. I won’t know because I won’t be watching.

I see clearly what the entertainment industry is doing. What puzzles me is WHY it does it. I’m fairly certain there is no positive correlation between how crude, crass, violent and disgusting a program is and its rating. WHY is the entertainment industry so determined to pursue its repulsive course? Here are two of my thoughts on the reasons:

1) The entertainment industry is so full of filthy acting scumbags and low-lifes that it believes it is portraying the ordinary world.

2) The industry wants to sink the nation to its level. I’ve noticed slime-balls feel much more justified in their behavior the more they can get others to participate in the behavior too.

***NOTE TO THE ENTERTAINMENT INDUSTRY****

Most people in this country are relatively decent. I know this fact is disappointing for you, and you are working on changing it. If you succeed, the results will not be as fortuitous for you as you think. Have fun swimming in the cess pool. See where it gets you and your families. I’m grabbing some good old homemade soap, a clean towel that was dried in the sun on my clothesline, and hitting the showers.

Fiasco

I couldn't resist telling this story that my friend Eloise shared with me. A few weeks ago Eloise went to the wedding of her husband's relative. The bride and groom had been shacking up for a while and then decided to get married.

The wedding was supposed to begin at 7:00 p.m., but by 7:30 the guests were still waiting. The flowers, which had been ordered the morning of the wedding, had not yet arrived.

The mother of the groom put the time everyone spent waiting to good use though. She had a hurried and whispered conference with each member of her side of the family adjuring them NOT to eat any of the wedding cake because the woman who made it lived in a filthy house with over 20 animals.

The cake wasn't too appetizing anyway because it had been made the morning of the wedding. Like the florist, the baker must have got her order at the last minute. The cake was supposed a be an ornate one with multiple tiers. But the cake maker had not frozen the cake for the decorating job. So the frosting was smeared all over the cake and littered with cake crumbs. Their were little blobs all over the cake that were supposed to be flowers.

Since the wedding started late, it ended late. It was raining and the sun was setting. The bride and groom wanted pictures. Guests were hungry and freezing in the dark and the rain. Every so often, the guests went into the building to warm up. Most of the guests left before the reception started.

The next morning Eloise got word that the groom was furious with his family for not staying to help with the clean-up after the reception. The groom's mother asked him, "Did you ask anyone to help you clean up?" "Well, no." he replied, "I just thought they would!"

Don't you want to be a mouse in a corner to see what their first Thanksgiving Dinner is like?

Hike to Cabin Lake

Vacation in Hermione's backyard

Cedar Forest

It felt like a cathedral.

Kootenai Falls
No swimming but the water was the most beautiful blue-green color and the falls were breath taking.

Libby Dam

We had fun! We went sightseeing to the Libby Dam, Kootenai Falls, and Ross Creek Cedars. We walked across a swinging bridge across the raging river. We went hiking two and a half miles up hill around fourteen switchbacks to a mountain lake where I attempted to catch a fish. (Try using a fly rod with a 15 mile an hour wind blowing toward you and see how far you get.) We ate out and we biked across two bridges to a fabulous city park along a huge river. Kristy's town knows how to construct a park!

Popcorn

With the start of the NFL pre-season games, I started reminiscing about a big silver popcorn bowl, and an old, beat up blanket on the living room floor. It occurred to me as I thought about the popcorn parties, that we inadvertently trained our kids to like sports. Wilbur would come home from a day at work. He would take a hot bath because he was out in the cold weather all day long “playing in the mud,” in his words. Then, he would pop the popcorn. I would tell the kids to spread out a blanket. The reason for the blanket was to protect the living room carpet. I don’t know if the blanket really did offer protection, but it made me feel better about chowing down popcorn in the living room. In the fall we would watch the Pittsburg Steelers playing the Dallas cowboys or whoever else was playing that week. Or after November, the Lakers would be playing the Celtics while we all crammed popcorn into our mouths. That popcorn must have sent the subliminal message to the kids that sports were gooooood.

Football and basketball were our sports of choice. We never watched baseball: partly because, in my never-to-be-humble opinion, baseball is twenty minutes of action stretched over four hours, and partly because the baseball season is in the summer. Popcorn popping in the summer was rare. When the kids were young, Wilbur’s summmer hours were from “can see to can’t see.” He wasn’t around very often to pop popcorn, and he doesn’t seem to like baseball as much as basketball and football. For the rest of the family, the cool evening was a great time to lounge outside on the patio or read a book out loud that we checked out of the library.

With the first NFL game, though, the popcorn popper would start. I would have liked to post some pictures of the family crowded around the popcorn bowl. It's funny how we didn't always take pictures of the normal, everyday thingas we did. Popcorn popping and eating on a game night happened often and was delicious.

Glacier Without All the People

We went camping this week to an absolutely beautiful place. I would tell you where, but I swore an oath of secrecy. It was like Glacier Park without all the people. I was sick that neither of my cameras were working, but a friend took some pictures. Being in the middle of such incredible beauty does something for the soul.

We were annoyed by rain but had some beautiful weather too. Wilbur and I tried a hike we saw on the map. The area was so lush and green and had so much grass that Wilbur's eyes were streaming and his nose stuffed up alarmingly. We had to turn back before an emergency situation developed. We are thinking about coming back some September when the grass seed has settled down.

Awesome

I would blog about the family gathering together in July, but there is too much to say. Floating the river was the activity that I enjoyed the most. Seeing everyone was AWESOME!

July 3rd Hike

Wilbur expresses his enthusiasm about hiking

The destination

Looking east from the top of the park.

Exotic mushroom species found along the wayA resting place at the park

This bridge ain't big enough for the two of us

Albino shootingstars

The Elkhorn is closer than you think

Open House

We contracted with a cleaning service from the far North to assist with preparing the house with the event. Summer is the service's off season.

The two VIPs arrived accompanied by their own paparazzi.

A famous floral designer from a secluded bay in Canyon Ferry created the table decorations.

A number of very distinguished guests graced us with their company.

I Remember Stacy

Here are a few things I remember about Stacy:

• She HATED to go to sleep. Remember how she fell asleep eating ice cream at Michelle's reception?


• She wasn't even completely delivered when I saw her looking around the room.


• She called her plastic swimming pool a pond.


• She smiled at me when only about two days old. She had kept her parents up all night. We gave her a bath and a drop of formula. Her mother went to bed. And while I was holding her before she drifted off, she started moving her mouth. Surely, I thought, she can't be trying to smile! Then, she gave me the biggest grin you ever saw.


• When she was five: if it wasn't pink, forget about her wearing it.


• It never ocurred to her that someone didn't like her and that she wasn't "A" O.K.


• When she was about three months old, she rolled everywhere. She LOVED paper and tryied to stuff it in her mouth whenever she could.

• She used to call for me, "Grrrrrrrrandma!"

Memorial Day

Dad served in the Army Air Corps during World War II. Because of his bad eyesight, the service didn't want him at first. By 1943. he was drafted and sent to Fort Douglas, Utah. There he met and married Mom. Bad eyesight or not, he and another man tied for the top marksman score of the enlisted men.

After basic training, he was assigned to a unit that employed the very first primitive computers. The purpose of the computers was to keep track of troop movements. The computers were BIG (think room size or bigger) and used punch cards to operate them. The soldiers in Dad's unit received a commendation for how efficiently they did their work.

The young man who had never left the state ended up seeing the South Pacific with this computer unit. Dad said he traveled on a ship across the pacific and was never sea sick a day. But in his 60's he went on a tourist fishing boat off the coast of California, and he was sicker than a dog. That disgusted him. Dad was in the Philippines, New Guinea, an island named Helmaherra, and probably lots of places he never told me about.

Now, I wish I had thought to ask him more questions. To find out anything, I had to ask him questions. Dad never volunteered information or conversation. One thing I would like to know is: what was he doing when he found out about the surrender of the Germans and then the Japanese?

His service in the armed forces was important, and I am proud of him.

Star Trek

On Saturday afternoon I had a yearning to watch Star Trek: The Next Generation. I wanted to cook chicken and dressing casserole, pull out a blanket, and curl up with dinner in front of the episode where Sean Luc Picard first learns about the Borg. I wanted to use the Enterprise’s transporter beam and transport all my kids home for just an hour while we watched the show and ate dinner on the blanket. I wanted to remind everyone NOW are the good old days.

For Granted

A lot of kids take their parents for granted. On Monday circumstances brought home to me how I took my kids for granted. Wilbur and I had a family over to dinner. The family has a ten year old boy. The main purpose of the evening was to teach the ten year old to ride a bike. After an hour and a half, he could balance while he pedaled two or three times before trying to catch himself with his feet. I gathered that to him tipping over on a bike was the equivalent to falling off the edge of the Grand Canyon. Every teeny bump or scrape prompted an anguished cry of "ahhh!" or "owww!"

Even though our family only had two tough males, it had five tough, reasonably physically fit females. It might have taken ten minutes to help our slowest learner figure out how to ride a bike. Don't ask me who the slowest learner was because I don't remember.

Petunia was the most cautious. I do remember that. At age seven Wilbur announced he was removing her training wheels. The wheels came off, and off she rode without a stutter. She hadn't needed the wheels for months, maybe years. If memory serves, Prudence mastered bike riding at four or five. After Orville was born my memory began to overload and started to short circuit, so I don't have a clear recollection about Hermione and Eglantine. It seems like age five saw them careening off down the drive on a bike. They can correct me if I'm having a brain cramp. It might have taken one of them as much as ten minutes to put together the balancing and steering before mastering bike riding.

I clearly remember Orville demanding his father remove his training wheels at age three - a couple weeks before his fourth birthday. Disbelief made that bike riding event memorable. He'd had the bike for just a few minutes before he said, "I don't need training wheels. I got this."

I thought all kids could master bike riding in ten minutes or less. I assumed all kids could "tough it" through a skinned knee or scraped elbow. After Monday, I realized I was mistaken. I was blessed to have kids who were talented, tough, and fit.

Elk

Yesterday these elk paid a visit to the old mine next our house. These bull elk shed their racks but are starting to grow new ones. We have had elk visit before. Max decided to chase one once. The cow elk stared at him as if to say, "Surely, you jest!" Then, she started after him. Max has sworn off elk chasing since then.

Lessons from Mom

Miller women. Mom is the little girl.

My mother was born in Sugarville, Utah January 22, 1923. She was the last of ten children. Idyllic did not describe her childhood. Pumping of ground water in the area caused the loss of the family farm. When Mom was young, her father developed terrible asthma from breathing all the dust and chaff on the farm, especially during harvest. Because her Dad couldn’t stand to feel short of breath, the doctor prescribed adrenalin shots which eventually damaged his heart and caused his death when my Mom was nine years old. As if the loss of the farm and her father’s death were not enough, the Great Depression hit in the middle of all this upheaval. Mom’s family was essentially homeless, moving from one of her brother’s homes to another, staying until a brothers’ family was too stressed. Then they would have to pack up and move in with another brother. Rejection was an issue. Changing schools every few months was a constant for Mom until her mother (Grandma Miller) moved into care for an old man who eventually became Mom's stepfather. Not surprisingly, Mom carried emotional scars from all this.

However, my Mom learned some important lessons and taught me some very valuable lessons:

1) Personal Hygiene. This may seem like a no brainer. But I’ve seen people who didn’t learn this lesson growing up. If you don’t know this, it doesn’t matter what else you do know. You cannot get along anywhere, including the work place. No hygiene, no life.

2) Moral Purity. I remember Mom saying, “A guy who is trapped into marrying a girl because of a pregnancy always resents the girl and never respects her.” Although it doesn’t seem reasonable for males to feel this way because unwed pregnancies involve two people, not just one, reality is reality whether it’s fair or not. Mom was dead right for most unwed pregnancy situations I’ve seen. I’ve seen high school classmates of mine who ended up in the situation of an unwanted pregnancy and “had to get married.” I’ve noticed that usually they didn’t stay married, and the ones who did have to contend with a man who resents them. Yuck.

3) “Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive.” She quoted this to me when I was a little child and lied to her. Then she explained what it meant. I had a couple life situations that taught me life is so much simpler and just plain livable if we are honest. She told me how as a child she lied to her mother once. Her mother said, “Is that a damn lie or a true lie?” Mom responded, “It’s a damn lie.” I always got a kick out of that story.

4) Look for a guy who has clean hands. Dirty hands, dirty guy, unless he’s been working on a car.

5) Integrity. As a teenager I remember a leader calling me up and asking me to do something I did NOT want to do. Because it was easier to be agreeable I said I would do it, but I had no intention of doing it. Mom somehow knew I wasn’t going to do the assignment. She said, “If you are not going to do that, call her up and tell her right now. Then she can find someone else.” She explained to me that it is disgusting conduct to tell someone you will do something and not keep your word. She explained if you tell the person up front you will not be doing the job, they can find someone else who will. But allowing someone to depend on you, and then letting them down was despicable. This is why I do visiting teaching, even when I don't want to.

6) Take care of your possessions: try to make them last a long time. Mom’s Mom once said of a neighbor, “Her husband can’t bring enough in the front door because she is so busy throwing it out the back.” I feel a lot of guilt with this lesson. But these days an iron is not built to last a lifetime like it was during the Great Depression.

7) Have a place for things and put them back in the place. Then, you don’t have to spend your valuable time looking for things. I’m still trying to implement this one. I have been frustrated more times than I can count by it taking more time to find a tool to do a job than it would take to do the job itself. Unfortunately, I have my Dad’s intense focus that tunes out everything, including where I set things down.

8) Change your sheets once a week. I LOVE clean sheets, especially if they’ve been hanging on the line! Sometimes, I’ve noticed people who don’t change sheets very often have sour smelling bedrooms.

9) If you want to be treated well, dress well. “Well” in this case meant clean, appropriate, clothes and well maintained hair and general appearance. I learned this advice was accurate through experience. Once I went refrigerator shopping with a friend. I was wearing a professional looking dress because I had been somewhere. MY friend did daycare in her home and was wearing t-shirt and jeans. All the salesmen addressed themselves to me. It was my professional-looking dress. Another time before I went back to college, I needed to research county court house records because of trouble with neighbors regarding our road easement. Remembering the refrigerator shopping lesson, I put on my suit and drove to Boulder. The court house employees must have thought I was an attorney. They treated me like one, anyway. Mom knew what she was talking about.

10) Get an education, be prepared to support yourself. You never know what could happen. As a child, Mom lived this. As a young adult, she did this, becoming a Registered Nurse. As a mother she taught this. As a grandmother, she was a champion of education, especially for women. When it came time for Petunia to go to school, we knew we couldn't completely finance her college education. In passing, I mentioned this to my Mom. She irritated me by continuing to bring it up all during Petunia’s Senior year. She told me Petunia’s college education was a must, which I agreed with. But I didn't know why she continued to ask about it every time we talked and why it was her business. Finally, I told Mom that Petunia was getting college loans, and Mom didn't mention it again. In talking to one of my sisters, I learned my Dad had inherited some money from his brother and Mom was going shake him down for some of the bucks, if Petunia needed it to go to school.

Mom could be ornery, and all her daughters have some of this orneriness. But I've decided orneriness has its place. No woman-beater or child abuser ever was drawn to any of her daughters. Lucky for the abusers. I learned some first-class things from Mom!

The Newspaper

Since I am chiefly famous for my inability to remember to straighten my collar before appearing in public, I welcome a little positive recognition. But why, why, WHY did the reporter go to the high school annual published my Sophomore year and use my geeky, homely Sophomore photo in the newspaper?