I was shaving a few days ago when my train of thought turned to my father and how much I owe to him.  It started with me thinking how how wiry but well-muscled he was...never an ounce of fat on him...until the day he died.  That was because he worked at a job that was physically demanding every day...for an entire career.  They called those jobs "blue collar", and I think the implication was "less intelligent".  But my dad was no dummy...though he received only a high school education (actually pretty good in his time), he was sharp mentally, and I experienced that in many informal debates we had (some people would call them arguments) as I grew up and became mister smartypants. 

I think, however, that he wanted more for his children, and this made him a target for every travelling encyclopedia salesman that happened down our dead-end street.  Our shelves had The Book Of Knowledge (22 volumes, NOT in alphabetic order...you had to look your topic up in an index); The World Book Encyclopedia (24 volumes, more traditional alphabetic arrangement, and most impressive...a graphic of the human body with several systemic overlays); Lands and People (7 volumes, each one covering a different continent I think...pretty much what it sounds like); and a science encyclopedia whose title I forget (10 volumes, I don't remember how it was arranged...I rarely used it).  The point being, he wanted us to have resources he didn't have, and trusted that it would lead to opportunities beyond "blue  collar".

When Dave and I were in the 4-6 range, he would lay down with us for a Saturday or Sunday afternoon nap, and read to us stories  out of the set "My Book House", a 13 volume set of classical stories arranged in order from younger to adolescent audiences.  We loved his reading, the idea of which was to get us to sleep.  Invariably he would fall asleep before us (he worked so hard), and we would peacefully sneak out to other delights. 

He could also be very persistent in encouraging us to do our best, in spite of our lesser aspirations for ourselves.  I remember that after my first year in little league ( he was my assistant coach that year)  my batting style was such that the bat becoming acquainted with the ball was extremely unlikely,  based on the few chance meetings I gave them.  The next spring there was a day where, in our front yard, my dad pitched relentlessly to me two mostly deflated rubber balls (large enough to make contact likely, heavy enough to make distance unlikely).  I remember being so frustrated I was in tears, and my mom was worried that he was engaging in some kind of emotional abuse, but we kept at it all morning, and by the end, my muscle memory had kicked in, and I became a middle-of-the- order hitter for the rest of my baseball and softball experience.  Maurine and Michelle could tell you some tennis and tether-ball stories as well.

I also remember Dad was at every concert I ever played in...and I am sure some of them weren't all that pleasant. He was my Scoutmaster for two years, and I remember being so proud of him leading us.  He was great on the adventure side..we came to know such camping areas off the beaten path as Rock Canyon (before the temple was there) and Squaw Peak; Mercur (on the west side of Utah Lake, kind of by Tooele), an abandoned mining camp from the 19th century; and Goblin Valley, the closest I got to the delights of southern Utah.

He could be hilariously goofy at times (check out the photo I added to the December 25, 2017 entry for an example), and had a quick wit, matched only by my Mom's.

Anyway, I was just so grateful I was reduced to tears...good tears...for the man that was my father.  I miss him.  I look forward to seeing him again. 

         

Jackman Family Reunions at Salem Pond 

One of my earliest and best memories is of extended Jackman family reunions every summer at Salem Pond, a lovely body of water adjacent to the (then) small community of Salem, Utah, nestled neatly between Spanish Fork and Payson. 

When my parents lived in Spanish Fork they were regular customers of a rural grocery store there known simply as Sam's.  They knew every employee there, including the owner, on a first name basis. I remember them going to the meat counter to have the butcher, a small weathered man who went by the nickname Short, cut their meat to order.  They had a whole section of "penny candy", and we each were usually able to get our own small bag with a few treats in it.  Sometimes we could also talk my folks into a nickle hand-dipped ice cream cone from a chest cooler that had four five-gallon tubs of ice cream.  The selection wasn't Coldstone or even Baskin-Robbins, but we thought it was amazing to have that many choices.  Among the frequent flavors were chocolate, Neapolitan, strawberry, banana nut, butter pecan, and, of course, vanilla.  They also had a separate freezer case with other frozen treats, and this is where I became acquainted with Sidewalk Sundaes and Dreamsicles...but I digress

As I was saying, the reunions were every summer and drew numerous adults, teens, and children, sometimes from amazing distances.  It lasted two days, Saturday and Sunday.  On Saturday there were many contests, always a talent show/entertainment program, and so much good food as you kind of marauded from table to table filling your plate with whatever looked good.  I kind of suspect this is the place the Yogi Bear cartoon iea was hatched.  They also had a wonderful set of tire swings where it seemed like you could swing so high you could touch the treetops.

Saturdays were for fun, Sundays were more spiritual.  A Sacrament Meeting was held (I assume, but don't know, it was authorized by local authorities) where there were always enough Aaronic Priesthood bearers to prepare, bless, and pass the Sacrament.  After that, the adults had a business meeting where they discussed genealogy and probably planned the next year's reunion, that type of stuff. The kids were turned loose during this time to kind of fend for themselves.  It was assumed the olders would keep track of the youngers, especially keeping them from dangerous spots.

My mother knew me pretty well, and my attraction to water.  There were a series of three small ponds that held small fish, starting at the top of a hill, and kind of forming a chain down the hillside, connected by a series of small streams, the last of which emptied eventually into Salem Pond, and I guess I had a reputation for getting myself all wet in one or another of them every year.

This particular year ( I think I was four at the time) she had come well prepared with two changes of clothes.  The first time I got wet, she patiently changed me into one of the dry sets, with a warning not to get wet again.  That lasted for maybe ten minutes before I was up getting wet again (what good is water if you can't get wet?)  This time she not-so-patiently changed me into my last set of dry clothes, with a warning that sounded more like a threat of the consequences if I got this last set of clothes wet.

I am not certain how long that warning lasted, but I know it was not to the end of the business meeting.  That meeting was interrupted by what started as a twitter of laughter that grew until it drowned out the speaker, as more and more folks' attention was redirected to the lowest pond, where I was playing happily, as naked as a jaybird, ,in the middle of the pond...my clothes folded neatly on the shore, I having precisely obeyed her order.

I don't know what my mother's initial reaction was...frustration, embarrassment, or any other of a number of reasonable responses...but she got over it soon enough to tell the story on me for many of my growing up years, and into my adulthood. 

As earlier promised, I will recount a few memories of some of my growing-up period.  It will not have many pictures, as most of my photo archives are at home, and most of my activities, at least the ones worth mentioning, occurred at times and places where there was no camera.

In 1956, my family moved to Orem, Utah from Spanish Fork when I was only three years old.  I don't remember much about the Spanish Fork years except that I was terrified, from an early age, of some formless tormentors I only knew as eeeeeeees (plural...singular would be eeeeeeee).  Later we figured that must have been because whenever Michelle and/or Maurine were scared they would shriek "eeeeeeeeeeee!"

Orem in the late 50's was a great place for a kid to grow up.  We moved to a new neighborhood where we were the first occupants of our home, and construction was going on all around us.  Our home, like most homes in that period, did not come pre-landscaped with a sodded lawn and half-mature trees.  My father had to clear our front and back yard of several tons of "Utah potatoes" (rocks that seemed to infiltrate the soil from the surface to a foot or more deep) before he could plant much of anything.  These he moved to a "temporary" location on the south side of our back yard that became known as "the rock pile" (sounds like the title of a B prison movie).  I and many of my chums will be  forever grateful that it was not as temporary as originally hoped, as it became a great location for many of our early games of playing with toy soldiers (including our dandy lion armies), cowboys and Indians, war reenactments, geological study, and other forms of childish diversion.

Another fertile location for young imaginations were the numerous home construction sites.  There were many places near our neighborhood that smelled like lumberterias as the workmen would cut the larger pieces down to the sizes they needed.  We often found in their scrap piles pieces of wood that could be used to construct boats suitable for the irrigation canal nearby.  There were also chunks of sheet rock that could be used to draw four-square boundaries or other markings on the black top of our dead-end road.  And of course, some of the round plugs, called "slugs",   cut out of the electrical boxes were round and  a dull silver color, and resembled various denominations of coins (nickels, dimes, and quarters).  It was considered a bit of good luck to find any quantity of those.

Finally, our neighborhood road ended at the edge of an old sweet cherry orchard.  That meant, of course, trees for climbing; there was a gentle old horse that we never tried to ride, but did feed handfuls of green orchard grass and sweet clover to; and there was irrigation.  Two times a week water was turned down a shallow irrigation ditch that bordered our property on the north, and watered our garden and flooded our back lawn...many great times, and wild dewberries and asparagus to beat the band.  The most attractive feature, however, was the canal that fed all these smaller ditches and was the source of a more or less constant siren song leading little boys to its banks.  More on that later.             

I know I said I would do stories from my own growing up and from our children, but I couldn't resist this.  This is a picture of "Aunt Merline" (Stradling) when she was a child...one of Rose's sisters who had a role in raising my Uncle Bill (see posts from early 2017):  Merline is on the viewer's right, sister Myrtle in the middle.

Also this came up last week about one of my Grandma Montague (Estella Gertrude Jackman Montague) about one of her loveliest sisters, Amy Diantha...very poignant:

 Amy was my Grand Mother. Sadly she passed before I was born. My father is John Sherman Dean.. He told us that he was really sad when his mother passed. He was only 10 yrs old. He also said she was born with the ability to see the future. She was clairvoyant. I too have some of her abilities. I would of loved to know her personally I look at her pictures and I see a strong lovely woman.. When my Grandpa asked her to marry him, she told him, She would marry him but will never live to raise him a daughter. She had 3 boys and then Amy came along and my dear Grandmother passed.... I am sure she was so sad....