While in junior high school, I was the editor of the school paper one year, I guess in the 9th grade. And when I went down to high school, I kinda wanted to get back on the paper, but I was too shy to even go in and ask about it. I just didn't dare.
While we were in Logan, they were shuffling schools around. When I went to the 7th grade, they sent us down to Butthead to the old Brigham Young Academy, which was the school my Dad had gone to college in. But then the next year they decided that the BY Academy would much better handle high school students than the junior high students so then we went up to what had been the high school and the high school students went down to the BY Academy, which became Logan High. And Logan High was an absolutely beautiful campus, something that 7th and i8th graders didn't appreciate. The schools were great; we had a good time. It had a small creek running through behind the school and there was a big football field and baseball field; lovely old trees and lots of lawn. It was just really a beautiful campus and I just loved it there. The school had student body presidents and school council of selected kids and it was so neat because the students were given lots of responsibilities to plan the assembly programs and plan for various things and I remember getting very involved with a lot of the school elections. In walking home from a rehearsal one night I lived a mile from the school and it was cold: one of those crisp and cold nights. It was so crisp that everything just sparkled. It was a gorgeous night! I don't think I've seen one so pretty! Course I thought I'd freeze to death, but it was really pretty!
When we were in Wellsville my parents started giving me lessons on the piano which my grandmother had and I think someplace along the line we had sold the organ - I don't remember where - so I took piano lessons for, oh I don't know, maybe six months and then they couldn't afford it anymore because my Dad was out of work and everybody was out of work. There was just no work available. So anyway it got me into music a little bit, and when we moved to Logan, my mother arranged for me to have violin lessons. They bought an inexpensive violin and I took violin lessons and the junior high school taught classes so that didn't cost anything. So I eventually joined a school orchestra. I remember playing for graduation in junior high school and at that time there were quite a few chapels being dedicated around Logan because Logan was growing fast and they were building a lot of new churches. Somehow or other they kept having the junior high school orchestra - and I'm sure we must have been terrible, but they would have us come and play for an hour before the dedication ceremonies began. I heard President Grant several times speak at various dedications and he would always stop and shake hands with all the students. It was always impressive, very interesting.
Finally in Logan my Dad got a job with a construction company and they were building a road through Zion's Canyon from one highway to another. And they were tunneling out - it was going to be the longest tunnel in the world at that time. I can't remember now, it was a mile and something - a mile and a half or a mile and 7/8ths.
The history of the Zion-Mt. Carmel Tunnel is interesting. It was in 1919 when a Congressional bill designating Zion was signed into law. In 1923 a search began to find a way to open Zion Canyon to the the magnificent land of the other side of the mountain. This was a giant challenge for the times. Imagine boring through the solid rock with the equipment available in those days. July 4th, 1930, the tunnel and highway were dedicated, linking Zion Canyon to the land east of the park and making it easier to visit the other parks located on the east side of the park.
He lived down there for several years and my Mother would go down and live with him in the summer time and would leave Evan and I at home and I would cook and Evan would work and then we'd make maybe one or two trips down and see him and visit and then we'd come home again. They trusted us enough to leave us. (giggle) And on one trip we were down there, Evan had taken a girlfriend with him and he and I and this girl were in Zion's Canyon driving around and it started to rain. It just poured! We happened to look up at the tops of the mountains and Zion has so much color in it and as we looked, we could count seven or eight different colors of waterfalls falling off of the tops of the mountains. It was so neat and so impressive to look at! And we visited the Indian - they weren't villages, but they were like little caves they built - they didn't really look big enough for more than one person to sleep in. They are about half way up the mountain so that was neat.
My family was not very active in Church so on Sunday afternoons frequently, we'd all get in the car and take guns and go out by the Logan river and practice target shooting. I got so I was pretty good. They'd take the spent 22 shells as they'd shove them out of the magazines of the guns and stack them up on the rail or bridge about six or seven high and shoot at them; they're not a very big target! I got so I could shoot them down pretty good. And then they'd take the shotgun shells that had been used and pinch the tops together and they'd throw them in the river and they'd use the for target practice to see if they could sink them. I was a pretty good shot!
My Dad got the last laugh on my brothers one day, though. We were coming back and they saw a mud hen in one of the ponds on the side of the road so they all had to try to shoot the mud hens.
And you can't shoot mud hens; they just dive too fast. Dad finally got out and he was fast enough that he shot the mud hen and he just crowed over my brothers for weeks afterwards. Such a fun time; we did a lot of things together.
We never went to Church together that I can remember of. It seems like to me that I was the only one that ever went to Church. Once in a while my brother, Sam would go, but nobody else ever went.
My brother-in-law, John Rentmeister was working on a bridge I think, down in El Paso, Texas and a big 12X12 timber fell down on him and slid down his back and broke his back. He was in the hospital down there for months and months. Finally he and Helen moved back home and they rented one room from Mother and Dad and they lived with us for probably a couple of years while John recuperated. He was in a very heavy body cast that he had to wear except when he was sleeping and he walked with two canes and during this time he had a hard time trying to keep busy so he eventually bought some yo-yos and that was the first time they came out. He got so good with that yo-yo - he could do all the tricks that anybody ever did.
While we were in Logan my brother Sam had a hemorrhage and ended up in the hospital. Dad and Wallace and Sam had been working out at the Bear River Dam and Sam had been high up on the dam when he had the hemorrhage. He finally made it down to ground level and they brought hi to the hospital in Logan. we were told that they wouldn't know for 78 hours whether he would live or not. anyway, Sam finally pulled through, much to our relief.
Of course while I was in Logan, I was still having arthritis periodically. My fingers would swell up, one finger or the other, and get so sore and ache and ache and ache, and my knees would. My mother would take me to different doctors and they would try various things or diets. I remember Evan was having some problems too, and they took us to some doctor who gave us some shots. And those things made you so - oooooooo - you could taste the shot immediately. He'd put it in a vein in your arm and you could taste it almost the minute the needle went in. And then it made you woozy for a while afterwards so somebody always had to be there with us. And your eyesight would go haywire. Somebody either had to be with us to guide us home or they had to be there with a car to take us home. That was not pleasant!
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