Category: Uncategorized

“PLEASE… JUST LET ME TRY”

I was inspired by Thotman’s wonderful blog, “A simple philosophy” which he posted a week or so ago.  It reminded me of an experience I had years ago while my dad and I were pulling mobile homes.  I had left the story as a comment in Thotman’s space.  He thot that it was worth blogging.  My words here are nothing special, but my experience back then, and the lesson I learned from it were memorable.  So here is another work story from long ago.

17 years ago, I spent a year pulling mobile homes.  Mostly, I was hooked on to a new unit from the factory headed to the dealer’s lot.  But occasionally, my mobile home toter was strapped onto what we called "a secondary".  These used (usually old) mobile homes were always alot more work to move, because they were old, had tire and axel problems, and because we had to deliver them to somewhere besides a nice dealers lot. 

I was attached to the nightmare of all nightmares.  It was an old run down mobile home which needed to be delivered to Stanley Idaho.  Actually to a remote outpost for some sort of camp in the mountains around Stanley. 

The road up the mountain was like a sidewinder snake.  I could see the back of my house from the cab of my truck as I made the sharp turns.  Finally, I arrived at the destination.  That was worse.  The small crew got the man in charge for me.  We walked through the trees and over a creek, and up the side of a rocky mountain side to a plateau to the place where he wanted the house placed.  There was no road, not even a trail or foot path. 

I told him no way.  I can’t take my truck up through there.  Eventually I convinced him that I had gone as far as I would with that load.  He then asked me to just stay and give advice as he and his crew pulled it up with his tractor.  At least it wasn’t my truck being ruined, so I agreed. 

His little tractor was too small to even carry the weight of the house.  Let alone pull it up the mountain.  And his crew told him so, in no uncertain terms.  He patiently listened to all of our objections while he brought his tractor over to chain up. 

As he chained the mobile home hitch to the small backhoe bucket of his tractor, we all told him again that his tractor is too small,  the mountain side too steep, too rocky, too …  He stopped us all with one request… "You may be right, but please just let me try."  We started cooperating with him.  And I wasn’t the only one who stood in amazement as he repeatedly lowered the outriggers of the tractor and pulled the house three feet at a time to where he wanted it. 

For my entire 4 hour drive home I thought about what I had just witnessed.  It was impossible, but he had placed that house where he wanted it about an hour after he said, "YOU MAY BE RIGHT, BUT PLEASE… JUST LET ME TRY.  Maybe I’ll go try something impossible today. 

Providing

            Since my work is always trying to dominate my life, and it tries to push everything else important to me out of its selfish way, I have given how I provide for my family a lot of thought lately. 

            It is interesting to me how we get our various jobs in the first place.  I know from studying my family’s history that many had little choice of what they did. 

My Scottish ancestors had no choice but to work the coal mines.  For several hundred years, the law prohibiting families to move away from the mines amounted to slavery.  As families, they had to work long days in the mines for barely enough to eat.   

Many of my ancestors followed the sea.  This was in an era when being a sailor was as common of a job world wide as working in an office at a computer is now.   

Even in the old country, farming has been part of our family work ethic.  My Danish family were quite self sufficient and comfortable on their farm.  They moved to the United States following a religious movement more than to seek better opportunities. 

My Tillack family, who lived in Germany, were seeking better opportunities.  They sold their farm and chased after the Australian gold rush in 1855.   

After gathering to North America, most of my family took advantage of the most available work opportunity in the west… farming.  Hard times in this profession, has over the years, spun my family into other directions.  My grandpa Tillack told me of what great losses he experienced in Alberta, Canada during the Great Depression.  His sweetheart waited for him to finish barber school so they could have a future together.

My Grandpa Haroldsen saw to it that each of his children had college educations so they could choose to do what they wanted.  My dad’s aspirations were in a specialty of agriculture… the egg business.  For the time and era, the egg business which he built up was cutting edge modern.  This is where my parents raised their family.  This was the life I knew as I grew up.  I loved the egg business more than my other siblings.  And I planned to carry on in the family business with my father.  But not long after I was married, the economics of the business change very quickly.  Instead of family sized farms producing and distributing eggs regionally, the egg business was taken over by large national corporations.  The future was national distribution and marketing.  Now any farm with less than a million birds was considered a small unprofitable farm. 

My dad and I started a new career in driving.  This time instead of driving egg and feed trucks, we drove trucks pulling oversized loads… mobile homes.  Again, like my ancestors, our choice of work had more to do with what work was available at the time then it had to do with what I really wanted to do.  After all, I had a young family and I felt the weight of responsibility.  After a year of pulling mobile homes throughout the Pacific North West, I decided that my responsibilities to be at home at night with my young family was more important than my developing career as a truck driver. 

So I was soon back in the egg business, working for one of those large egg companies who had helped gobble our family egg farm’s market share, and my dad started a new career as a bus driver.

So that brings me to here and now.  I’m still in the egg business, working for a large national corporation.  But in my long work hours, when I can think about such things, I wonder, if I had it to do all over again, what would I CHOOSE to do to provide for my family?  Is it too late to change careers?  I can’t really afford to start over in the salary scale.  As my children choose and prepare for careers of their own, I pray that they look at it very carefully and that they keep their options open. 

I think if I could do things over now, I’d live anywhere my Beautiful Wife wanted to instead of where my job is.  I’d spend my work day writing something.  I don’t know what you can get paid to write.  I know that I have read a lot of very poorly written technical manuals.  Maybe I could write a troubleshooting guide for the fancy egg processing equipment.  I know I would have paid a million bucks for one of those a few weeks ago.              

            I know this is a broken record from me, but my work came in like a tsunami and swept away my daily life once again.  I have a list of blogging friends saved in my web browser favorites.  A few weeks ago, I was about half way through that list, as I visited my friend’s spaces and enjoyed what they had to share and then making comments to their (your) blogs.  That’s when I discovered the mountainous wave of work problems sweeping toward me, causing me to abandon my family life, computer, sleep, religious life, and everything else but trying to survive the flood of work problems which I am required to do to provide for my family.

            A work problem snowballs very quickly here.  The type of processing plant I manage is one where if we have a problem with anything in the processing side of the business, our producing side won’t stop and wait for us to do what we have to do to get things going again.  It’s like a wreck on the busy city freeway system during rush hour, where the cars just continue to back up and jam behind the original problem.  Every time this happens in my processing plant, where a million eggs a day flow through the process and out to consumers, I think of the old comedy “I love Lucy” where Lucille Ball is working on the chocolate candy assembly line, wrapping the candies as they pass by her on the conveyor belt.  The chocolates come faster and faster until she is frantically trying to keep up by eating some of them, stuffing them in her pockets and throwing them in the air.

Well, this latest breakdown was a real bugger to fix.  Our egg grading and packing process is amazingly automated where the million eggs a day are never handled by human hands.  They are gathered, washed, dried, candled, graded, packed, and boxed all by machines.  The electronic technology in this process is amazing.  Computers control the speed to the belts which carry the eggs.  Computers identify each egg as they leave the washing and drying stage of the process and enter the candling phase.  Through electronics, our machines can see a dirty egg that needs to be sent back to the washer, and send it there.  Our crack detectors can find and remove any egg with the slightest crack in the shell, even those imperceptible to the human eye.  The accuracy of the twelve scales which weighs those million eggs a day is accurate to one tenth of a gram.  Packing machines place the eggs, small end down to preserve quality, into the many different types of packaging material and then those machines code date and close the pack before sending it to the caser where they are place with robot precision into the shipping carton.  These boxes are sent down another conveyor though taping machines before being palletized and loaded onto the trucks for delivery into the human food chain.

When running well, our processing plant can pack about 140,000 eggs per hour.  That works out to just over 7 hours a day to do the job.  But with all these electronics, when something goes wrong, it can be a nightmare to find and fix.  There are many computers working together to make this process work as I have very briefly described it.  Besides the many PC’s, there are literally hundreds of electronic circuit boards, even more sensors, hundreds of feet of special shielded computer cables, and miles and miles of wiring, relays, servo motors, and the list goes on.

Sometimes when the process breaks down, it is hard to find a fix the problem.  It could be something as simple as a single wire shorted or a sensor malfunctioning.  But which one?  Often there are thousands of possibilities… tens of thousands.  And the whole time we are working on the problem, those eggs are backing up like that freeway traffic jam.

Two weeks ago, the day after taking a day to go up and play in the snow with my Beautiful Wife, this marvelous machine of modern technology became an unending night mare of torture and misery.  It took us two full days and nights to find and fix the problem.  The residual problems of over loaded egg belts and related problems kept me at work almost continually for the next two weeks. 

I’m home today, away from the processing plant for the first whole day since that little ski trip I took with my Beautiful wife.  I’ve enjoyed my family immensely today.  Things are good at work again.  And my day of rest has been heaven sent. 

This is not the next story I wanted to tell, though it’s closely related.  But first I want to go back and catch up with all my friends.  That will take a day or two… I’ve got at least two weeks to catch up on… for some of you it’s been even longer. 

Life is good again.         

This time of year does it to me every time.  As the weather warms (above zero is warm isn’t it?), and I start thinking about switching from a coat to a lighter jacket, memories of this time in yesteryear occasionally drift into my consciousness.  These past few evenings, as just the right chill is in the air, my senses can taste and smell the time when nothing excited me more than the anticipation of the cold night air blasting through my hair as I straddle two wheels and a noisy motor.  With the twist of my right wrist, I was thrust toward the edge of the light beam which danced to the beat of the rough gravel road leading away from our farm.  The sound of the twin cylinder 2-cycle engine drowned out noise of the tires popping over loose the rocks and splashing through the shallow mud puddles.  My nose experienced a combination of gas, oil, and dust, all tempered with the mellowing effect of the melting snow and moist cold air. 

            It was a great time and place to be 16 years old.  My imagination back then was as vivid as it is now.  In fact, when I first experienced all of these senses and emotions, it WAS in my imagination.  

            My two older brothers got me dreaming of exploring every rook and rill within a hundred miles of our farm.  About seven years earlier my oldest brother, Brian, had bought an old used motorcycle as transportation for an early morning sprinkler pipe moving job.  He spent more time pushing his Montgomery Ward 200cc motorcycle then he did riding it.  And so my parents reluctantly allowed him to buy a new motorcycle. 

I would guess the reason he chose a Suzuki had to do with who the nearest dealer was in our rural area.  But my parents were very no nonsense when it came to such things, so it was a big deal to have something that would be fun to ride on around our home.  I was probably only about ten years old when Brian bought his Suzuki 350cc street bike. 

First Brian, and then my next older brother, Keith, ran that motorcycle everywhere.  And I do mean everywhere.  I remember riding on the back of that motorcycle even in the winter time on snow packed and drifted roads.  More than once we were stuck in snow so deep that the top of the seat was level with the drift.

Keith didn’t seem to know that it was a street bike.  After Brian had left home, Keith took that “Street bike” many places where even a dirt bike should never be taken.  Evel Knievel must have been his idol. 

So finally, after about 6 or 7 years of the Suzuki 350cc street bike taking this kind of abuse, I had my chance to try my hand at motorcycle madness.  Actually, I found the motorcycle buried to the seat in mud and water in a neighbor’s irrigated field.  I don’t know how Keith could have made it so far into the field before sinking out of sight.  Both of my older brothers had perfected the skill of running the motorcycle as a snowmobile and I guess Keith was working on his jet ski abilities.  But now there was no rescuing that now dead motorcycle until the water subsided and the deep boggy mud dried a bit.

I didn’t really know how to fix a worn out motorcycle, but I did know that after being submerged in mud and water for a week, the engine should probably be taken apart and cleaned up.  One thing leads to another and before I knew it, every component of that motorcycle was disassembled and strewn throughout my work shop.  Through the winter months, I spent my spare time working on “my” motorcycle. 

After I did everything I could think to do, a college student who worked part-time for our farm came to my rescue.  Dennis Maughan was older and wiser in mechanics than I was.  And best of all, he was willing to help with advise and even a helping hand once in a while.  Before we were finished, we had completely rebuilt the engine, over hauled the carburetor, and repaired and replaced massive amounts of wiring. 

So this brings me to the part of my story where I started.  It was early spring-time and I was still spending most of my free time, which was mostly late at night, doing the finishing touches on my “new” motorcycle. 

Finally, about 10:30 one night, I declared it finished.  I pushed my new pride and joy out into the cold night air, through the shallow mud puddles and over to our farm gas tank.  Under the dim yard light, I overfilled the tank, spilling some gas on the ground and a little on myself.  Within moments, I was straddling the seat while kicking the starter with my left leg as fast and furious as possible.  A 16 year-old has pretty good stamina when his adrenalin is pumping.  I probably kicked that starter a thousand times that night.  Every once in awhile I would stop and make some adjustment to the carburetor. 

Once I popped off one of the two sparkplug wires to test for a spark while kicking the starter over.  The powerful jolt I felt renewed my adrenalin and assured me that there was plenty of spark to fire up the engine. Sometime around midnight I finally gave up on that greatly anticipated ride into the dark night air. 

The next day I took the carburetor apart and went through everything I could think of once again.  Following the repair manual, I checked my float level the best I could with out having any special gages and then put the whole thing back together again.  Again that night I continued my ritual out in the yard of straddling the motorcycle and giving my left leg a workout that would make Richard Simmons weary.  Again, all I could get the motorcycle to do was an occasional back fire and a lot of gas smell. 

The next day, I called the motorcycle shop to ask for advice.  Though I didn’t realize it, because I was a self centered 16 year-old, the mechanic was unbelievably patient with me as I rehearsed everything I had done and tried to get my motorcycle to go.  The conversation went on for maybe a half an hour.  I clearly remember the very end of that conversation.  After answering all my questions about how to adjust the carburetor, he finally asked in exasperation, “Well do you even have compression?”

I was confident in my answer, “Yes, I know I have good compression… cause it keeps backfiring and it almost breaks my leg with how hard it kicks.”

“Oh, it’s backfiring?”

“Yes, all the time.”

“Well, are you sure you have the spark plug wires on right?”

“What do you mean?”

“Is your firing order right?  The wires have to be on a certain way.”

A light bulb lit up in my brain.  And suddenly I knew that must have been the problem.  In an effort to bury my embarrassment, I thanked him for his help and ended the conversation as quickly as possible. My motorcycle was partly dissembled back in the shop and I had to finish up my farm work before working on it again.

That night after supper, I reassembled the motorcycle like an expert mechanic.  I had put that carburetor on and off so many times now that I didn’t even have to think about what I was doing.  It was the easiest thing to unplug the two spark plug wire and switch them as instructed by my telephone help line.  After installing all the covers I excitedly pushed my motorcycle out into the crisp night air once again. 

First kick, the motor roared and my adrenalin soared.  Finally, I actually experienced the rush of speeding down the dark rocky road in the cool crisp air. 

I wasn’t as crazy as my brother, Keith, on that motorcycle.  But I think I did see every rook (a kind of crow) and rill (a very small stream) within a hundred miles of our farm in Southeastern Idaho while riding that motorcycle. 

I had a few close calls while learning that to other motorist, motorcycles are invisible.  

Once I took it up on the Menan Butte.  This is an old volcano which I felt a special attachment to.  On the face of this butte, was painted a giant “R”.  While growing up, I could look out our front window and admire “MY” mountain.  As a little kid, I thought the R stood for Ron instead of Ricks College. 

As a Boy Scout, I had done my share of climbing around on the face of this butte and even going down into the heart of it.  Inside was a meadow, maybe a mile across… perfect for camping.  But one thing I had never done was to explore the back side of the butte. 

That was on my mind now as my motorcycle climbed the steep trail which wound up the face of the butte.  I was familiar with the look of the meadow as my motorcycle surfaced on top of the rocky ridge which was surprisingly round like the real volcano it was.  There was a trail which ran down through the center and then up the back and over the rocky ridge on the other side. 

Like I said, I had never explored the backside, so that’s where I was headed.  This was in the evening just as the sun was setting.  And I was headed directly west into disappearing sunlight.  As I approached the steep trail which went straight up the back, I gave the throttle a little extra twist to make sure I wouldn’t stall part way up.  So my speed was faster than it should have been when I rounded the top. 

But my biggest surprise was that the top of the ridge didn’t really “round”.  It just dropped straight off into the longest, steepest loose gravel trail I had ever seen.  I found myself bombing that steep hill on my motorcycle much like my father told of bombing the ski hill of his youth.  I seriously believed that at any moment I would tumble over the top of my handle bars and become a tangled mess of bike and body rolling down the face of the ridge.  That didn’t happen, but despite locking up my brakes and even sliding my motorcycle sideways on the rocks, I continued to pickup speed. 

Locking my brakes and sliding sideways had stalled out the engine, but as I neared the bottom of the trail where it started to flatten out a little, my back tire hit a large rock, which spun the motorcycle back to face the trail straight on.  I let go of the brakes and the momentum started the motor back up.  Just as I sped away, I saw some people standing at the bottom of the butte staring at my dare devil feat.  I didn’t want to appear like I had be out of control with my bike, so I just gave it the gas and sped away as if that was my plan all along.  I don’t know what they said about me, but I expect that “stupid” and “idiot” were adjectives being freely thrown out as they discussed what they had just seen. 

Well, tonight as I step out in to the cool crisp evening air this and other fond memories of motorcycle madness give me a little shot of adrenalin.  Maybe I’ll see if I can find an old worn out motorcycle to fix up.  Something I could work on in my garage on these cool winter evenings.                 

“Who Ever Heard of Such a Thing?”

            My little family is well connected to each other.  Besides our house phone (landline) My Beautiful Wife and I both have cell phones.  Our three oldest children, who don’t live at home anymore, all have their own cell phones. And our next two oldest, who still live at home also have their own cell phones.  One, two, three… yes that’s right, not counting our landline, my own little family carries around seven different phones. 

And now Brittany, my oldest child who doesn’t have a cell phone has secured a job and steady income.  The number one thing on her “Got to have list” is…. Orlando Bloom.  Well, her dishwashing job won’t do much for that dream, but the next thing on her list is a cell phone.  My Beautiful Wife, who is also a very nice mommy, has helped her go shopping online (the only real option in Delta) for her new phone.  That will be EIGHT cell phones in just my own little family.  Isn’t there a limit to how many can sign up on the family share plan? 

            I think back to the stories told by my own parents.  When they married in 1950, they built a small house on the farm.  It was next to Grandpa and Grandma’s home.  My dad had graduated with a degree in Agriculture.  He planned to bring new ideas to the family farm and help move it into the future.  A few years later, my parents felt they needed a phone installed in their home, instead of having to go over to Grandpa’s house to make phone calls.  At just the suggestion of it, Grandpa Haroldsen hit the roof. 

            “TWO PHONES ON THE SAME FARM?  WHO EVER HEARD OF SUCH A THING?”

            What would my Grandpa think of us now?  Besides the constant work related phone calls I get, I use my cell phone while I’m out and about for just about everything.  While running errands, it’s quite a handy tool…

“Honey, was that whipping cream or sour cream that you wanted?  What kind of bread do you want?  They don’t have that video in stock… this is what I’ve found so far…” 

While in the big stores and malls, our cell phones work like walkie talkies…

“Where are you?” 

“I’m over here in electronics.”

“Meet me up at checkout by the drinking fountains.”

I also use my cell phone to make frequent visits with my parents who live almost 400 miles away.  My children, who are depending on me for transportation can find me anywhere to ask for a ride.  So that frees me up to hang out at my Beautiful Wife’s work at night or just about anywhere else while waiting for the “I need a ride” call.

            And that’s just how I use my basic, no frills phone.  The other cell phones in our family are much fancier.  They can do almost everything except put you to sleep at night.  Oh, wait a minute.  Brittany’s new phone is like an ipod.  So it can sing you to sleep at night as well. 

            Last week a Canadian blogging friend, Carol, told of working as a telephone operator.  Telephones have a rich history in Canada.  In fact the telephone was conceived in Canada the by Brantford, Ontario resident Alexander Graham Bell.  Before the start of World War 2, Canadians made more phone calls per capita then the citizens of any other country including the United States.  Even the first long distance call ever made was placed in Canada. 

So all this history got me thinking about the stories of when my mom was a telephone operator.  It was back in the late 1940’s.  She lived in Vancouver, B.C. and a friend told her that B.C. Telephone always had openings.  So my mom went in and applied for the job and was hired. 

First she had to go through three weeks of training.  Before a new hire could be trusted to deal with the public, they had to learn what they could say to them.  No conversations were allowed.  The learned responses were phrases like, “Number Please?  Thank-you.”  One moment please.”  These learned phrases were the only words allowed from an operator. 

Also, the new operator had to learn how to physically make all the phone line connections.  Every phone in the system had a number which would light up when the caller picked up their receiver.  In a large city like Vancouver, that meant thousands of lighted numbers flashing at the operators.  The new recruit needed to practice spotting the customer’s numbered light, asking for the number to be connected to with only the approved phrases, and then making the connection by plugging the two cords into the correct sockets.  If the line being called was busy, the operator would know because she would touch the end of the plug to the socket before plugging it in all the way.  If the line was busy she would hear a noise.  The operator then had to manually ring the number being called.  Since this was done manually by the operator, she had to remember to keep ringing until someone answered, even while fielding another call.  When someone made a payphone call, the operator would ask the customer to put the correct change into the payphone.  Then she listened and counted the “Dongs” as the coins went in.  When the correct number of “dongs” came through her ear phone, the operator would then say to the pay phone customer, “Go ahead.” 

This was back before any uniform numbering system was implemented, and B. C. Telephone numbers included a community or area name, followed by a four digit number and ending with an R for right or an L for left.  My mom’s home phone number back then was Dexter2831R.  There were hundreds of telephone operators who worked for B. C. Telephone alone.  Vancouver alone had a dozen telephone offices and there were about 30 operators who worked each shift in each office. 

Imagine all the work it would be to manually take and switch all the calls today.  My family alone would require a dedicated operator.

In the only pre 911 call my mother ever received, a very panicked woman told her that there was a dead man in her basement.  Of course my mom couldn’t actually talk to the lady, so she replied as trained, “One moment Please.”  She then referred the call to her supervisor who could get the lady some help.

As the telephone has evolved, so has our culture because of it.  For example, 100 years ago when phones weren’t common in every home, the suitor made formal visits to a young lady’s home.  Under the scrutiny of her parents, the young couple sat in the parlor to do their visiting.  Then along came the telephone.  Now the parents could only hear her side of the conversation as the two young folks got to know each other.  Innovation made phone cords long enough that they could stretch around and hide the caller in the closet.  Then only the partyline of neighbors could eaves drop. 

Now my children have camera phones with text messaging.  They can communicate almost anywhere or anytime.  Our dating culture and social interaction don’t even resemble what it was like in my youth.  What would my ancestors think?  If my Grandpa Haroldsen saw all of this, he would hit the roof as he snorts, “WHO EVER HEARD OF SUCH A THING?”   

Another Ski Story

            As I was talking to my father the other day, and telling him about my most recent ski adventures with Thotman and some of my family, he told me his own ski story.  After hearing him describe his skiing experiences, I now don’t wonder he didn’t take us all out skiing when we were young.  His story goes like this.

            Back in about 1948, my dad’s (Norman) recreational experience had to rotate around the family farm.  My Grandpa, George, didn’t take much time out for such frivolousness.  Almost any recreational temptation, which he would succumb to, had to with fishing in the summer time.  In fact my favorite photo of Grandpa Haroldsen is of him sporting his catch along side the riverbank, while on a rare fishing trip to Island Park, Idaho. 

            My dad tells me that as for skiing, his experience amounted to standing in tow behind a car on the poorly plowed county roads around his home.  So when his big chance to really go skiing came up.  Norman got bold and asked for the unthinkable, a day off from work.  That might not have been so unreasonable, but he had been away, going to college for the fall semester, and he would only be home for a few weeks for the Christmas break.  His father, George, thought that his youngest son needed to pitch in and make up for lost time while he was home for the Holidays. 

            Norman’s buddies were headed to the ski slopes.  A place one or two hours away (depending on the roads), called Pine Creek Basin, was the closest ski resort.  As ski resorts go (by today’s standard), it wasn’t much to look at.  They had a rope tow to pull the skier to the top of the slope.  Like I said, the only thing nineteen-year-old Norman had ever done on skis before was to tow behind a car on the snow covered roads around his home.  So when the rope tow had finally done its job and Norman was looking down the treeless opening of the mountainside, he didn’t have a clue what to do next. 

            Peer pressure is an amazing thing.  It can cause an other wise normal healthy individual to risk life and limb.  Norman had to keep up with his buddies, so when they pushed off at the top, so did he.  Not only did he keep up to them, but he passed them the first time they turned to switchback across the slope.  Norman didn’t have a clue how to turn on skis, nor did he realize that switching back and forth across the hill side was how to control his speed going down.  So while his buddies were cutting diagonally across the top of the hill, Norman headed straight down the middle.  Now the only thing slowing him was the wind drag as his speeding bullet body hit speeds of 10,000 miles per hour (as he describes it). 

            Now all that is bad enough, but Norman had one more disadvantage on this his début on the ski slopes.  Ski equipment in those days was nothing to brag about anyway, but what little break away protection designed into the ski bindings were apparently broke.  Normans fantastic high speed ski run down the mountain paled by the even more fantastic high speed crash at the bottom of the hill.  Legs, arms, body, and skis flew everywhere, but when all came to a stop, those skis were still nailed to the feet of this now human pretzel.  Ski patrol came to pick up the pieces with their toboggan.  And Norman was just thankful to still be alive.  Or was he?  Now he’d have to face his dad while on crutches.  There would be no extra projects that he could help with during this Christmas vacation.  No help feeding the cattle or other winter chores.  He couldn’t do anything but lie around the house and wait to go back to the winter/spring semester of college.  And that would be on crutches of course.

            Dad said, that was the last time he ever went skiing.  I wonder why?  A little thing like a brush with death and then months of pain and suffering while his legs healed… followed by years of ridicule from his dad as he mocked Norman’s original request. 

“Just let me have this one day to go skiing and then I’ll help you everyday after that.”

It’s a small wonder I my dad didn’t take us skiing when I was growing up.     

            I’m not the storyteller tonight.  My Beautiful Wife, Treasurechest, and Thotman, have both done a wonderful job telling the story on my mind today.  I’d like to relate a few of my observations which neither one mentioned though. 

            Prior to rendezvousing at our designated meeting place, Thotman phoned me to tell me he’d be just a few minutes late.  He needed to make an unexpected rescue mission.  He had found someone stranded, out of gas.

            After meeting up with us and while we were fitting my children’s boots to skis and getting everything packed up in Thotman’s “Ski Van”, I noticed the tow rope permanently attached to his vehicle.  Other rescue items are stashed away as well.  He was equipped and ready to help anyone along side the road in need.

            I loved how comfortably Thotman engaged my young children in direct conversation.  They loved the obvious respect and attention he gave them individually.  Once we were on the slopes, for several hours, his whole attention was focused on making this new experience, a great experience.  Just one example is when he took Cory up on the ski lift and then skied down backwards while leaning forward and holding Cory’s ski’s in the right position to teach the “Snow Plow” method.

            I would have to say that Thotman’s energy level during the whole day was on a “Super Hero” level.  His energy seems to build as he interacts with others like a snow ball growing as it rolls down a hill. 

            We had enjoyed the fabulous ski lessons, and engaging in meaningful conversation all the way down the mountain (telling and listening to jokes with the children).  After our Chucky Cheese extravaganza, and while driving back to our original rendezvous point where our car waited, we were now quiet thinking about our just completed adventure. 

Thotman was now busy on his phone.  He had many more friends to check on… kind words to leave… help to offer… plans to make. 

I thought back to a comment he made to me up in the mountains while we were loading our equipment back into his ski van.  First he laughed, it was an under your breath teasing sort of laugh.  Then he jabbed at me with his words.  “A rich man’s sport huh?”  He was referring to my blog back a month ago when I had used the excuse for never trying skiing.  I had written that, “I knew that skiing was a rich man’s sport.” 

This was the second time I had gone with him.  This time I had many of my family with us.  Thotman had extra ski equipment, and he knew where and when to go so we could learn and practice without ever buying a ski pass.  The cost was gas to drive up the mountain. 

            Earlier in a comment to my first ski blog, Thotman quoted the classic Christmas movie, “It’s a Wonderful Life” … ‘he who has friends is truly rich…  so maybe it is a rich man’s sport’ he had commented.

            I’ve learned that Thotman is a rich man.  But that has nothing to do with money.  I’ve also learned that I am much richer than I ever thought I was.  And that has nothing to do with money either.  Yes, skiing is a rich man’s sport.  But that has less to do with money than I had ever thought.                     

So as the year 2006 comes to a close, and as I look back at how life went for me this past year.  I have to say, it has been a very lucrative year for me.  I feel very rich.  If I have a goal for this new year, it would be to increase my wealth.  Blogging has added immensely to my fortune in 2006.  Thank-you friends.  I am a rich man.

Gremlins

            In my sister’s blog, “The Greatest Gifts” at mitchowl,  she tells a family story which I have to respond to.  In her story, she tells about doing something for our father, which she describes as a wonderful gift to him.  But she probably doesn’t realize that it also became a “Greatest Gift” to me as well.

            Like everyone else in our American culture, I love the many Christmas movies which have replayed from year to year.  From “It’s a Wonderful life", with Jimmy Stewart to the more modern “Santa Clause” and “Elf”, Christmas movies are fun to watch as part of the festivities of the season.  But my all time favorite Christmas movie is a short story told in a BYU production which was made in 1978. 

The movie, “The Gift” is only 18 minutes long.  Set in the depression of the mid 1930’s.  A twelve-year-old boy who has very little money decides to get up early on Christmas morning to do the farm chores for his dad. 

I love this movie because it tells the story of my sister and I, when we lived on our family egg farm a decade earlier (than when I first saw the movie). Like my sister said in her blog, it didn’t happen at Christmas time, and we didn’t even intentionally start out thinking, “Let’s do this as a gift for Dad.”  But that’s how it turned out, and in the process, it has become a lifetime favorite memory for me.  So I am the one who really received a gift back then.  Thank-you, sister, for hating early mornings, and pulling me into what became one of my favorite night time pastimes. 

Here is my version of the story.  

Sometimes Dad had problems, so when we got home from school, we found that we were way behind on the work.  On these “bad days” the last thing to be done was the egg gathering.  Sometimes part of it wouldn’t get done at all.  Then we would have to get up by 4:00am to gather before school the next morning.  We didn’t like this very much.  In fact on one such occasion my sister told me that she’d rather do it herself the night before.

So that’s what we did.  After coming in late one evening, after one of “those bad days”, and after having supper, we told Mom and Dad good night and went downstairs to bed.  Then we went out the basement door and back to the green house.  (We called it the Green house because we originally used green flats to gather the eggs in that particular chicken coop.  We also had chicken coops named the Red house, and the Yellow house.  But the name Green house was the only name that stuck.)  The lights were off now in the coop but we had a flashlight. 

It took hours to gather that building in the dark with just the two of us, and with only a flashlight to see what we were doing, but we worked harder then ever at it, and we finished sometime in the middle of the night. 

At 3:50 AM, Dad came down to get us up to help gather the green house.  We got up and went down to the farm with Dad to get started.  As we went inside the coop, Dad looked at all the eggs on the carts in front, and at the empty gathering trays under the chickens with amazement.  We reacted just as shocked as he was, not admitting to any knowledge of how the work had been mysteriously done during the night.  After a minute of looking around, Dad shrugged his shoulders and said, “It must have been gremlins that did it.”

That was so fun to do that frequently after that, “Gremlins” worked at night unexpectedly.  One time was a major undertaking.  One of my older brothers, Keith, was married with a family of his own.  He worked part time on the farm along with his college job.  We were buying egg cartons by the railcar load out of Macon, Georgia.  But the nearest railroad siding, where we could unload was in town, about four miles away.

One Friday evening, Dad spotted our rail car load of egg cartons parked on the side rail.  There were between 1000 and 1500 bundles of cartons to unload.  On a truck we could get about 100 bundles.  Dad took my older brother, Keith, my younger brother, Warren, and me over to load up a truckload just before dark.   It was a lot of work to unstack the cartons from the rail car, carry them over to our truck and restack them in the truck.  We then drove the truck home and we were then only half done handling that load of cartons. 

Unloading was harder, because every bundle had to be lifted up into the second floor of the green house, which was now used for carton storage.  After getting back with this first load, it was getting dark and too late to unload it.  So Dad arranged for Keith to come back at 4:00 AM to help us finish unloading the rail car. 

In no time Keith, Warren and I were making plans.  Dad finally went to bed at 10:00 PM.  At 10:30 PM we felt it was safe to start.  We went to the farm and unloaded the truck that Dad had brought in.  Then we took two trucks back to town.  As we went past Dad’s open bedroom window we shut off the trucks and coasted so Dad wouldn’t wake-up.  In town we loaded both trucks by Lantern light, working like mules as fast as we could. We then went back to the farm, coasting past Dad’s bedroom window with lights and engines off. We unloaded and went back to town to load up again, and then back to our farm again. 

All night we worked like our lives depended on it.  At 3:30 AM we still had 2 trucks to unload.  Finally we finished and Keith split for home.  Warren and I slipped back in the basement door and to our rooms.  We could hear Dad moving upstairs.  I didn’t have time to get undressed as dad approached my room, so I just got under the covers to hide my dirty work clothes.  Dad came in to wake us up.  I followed Dad down to the farm and was shocked along with him that everything was already done.  Again, Dad said, “Gremlins must have done it.”  As always it made a dreaded job fun. 

            So what started out as a way for my sister, who hated early morning chores, to not have to get up at 4:00am, became a pattern of giving our dad a needed break from his “Bad days” on the farm, and of giving us children a feeling inside that can only be experienced by giving of ourselves.  Thank-you Sister, for including me while learning a wonderful lesson of life. Because I watch that Christmas movie, “The Gift” every year, I always think of those Gremlins of our youth.  And I realize that we, the givers, were really the recipients of the gift.  And It is a gift which I will cherish my whole life.