:Family Matters

April 27, 2010

Having been promised great and dreadful things to come due to a “serious” storm front moving across the great state of Utah I awakened this morning not to howling winds but a sunny sky and quiet outside. How nice! Yesterday was another straighten up the fallen as it was also trash day and once again our tipped over containers dotted the landscape which meant I again went into battle to reclaim what was mine before it slid on down the block which I am sure was the intent as ours had already abandoned the spot where I originally left it to make it’s way past the driveway where it paused for a few seconds in front of the mailbox thus allowing me just enough time to raise it from it’s prostrate position. Thank goodness the wind didn’t come up until after the trash man came and here I must leave it to your imagination to picture the grim result of flying debris all around the neighborhood if we had been caught with our cans full, if you catch my drift. Yuck.

Oops. Spoke to soon. Wind came as promised. Up North there was a gust strong enough to blow a semi over. We have been colder than normal by about 20 degrees this week which means that the plants I so optimistically purchased two weeks ago are on hold in the garage as the temperature at night keeps dropping into the 20’s and while I trust in the Lord with all my heart I also realize that he is not likely to perform a miracle in my behalf if I knowingly choose to ignore the effect of cold temperatures on tender plants.

Here’s a bit of trivia from the past. I found a little card with a handwritten note from mother that is dated June 26, 1962. It reads:

Dear Joanne & family,
Barbara says I should tell you about my success in getting rid of the bugs in the kitchen. We still have some of the little fellows but the population has greatly decreased. I got a pkg. Or box of D.D.T powder. I have sprinkled this dry under the drawers in the kitchen. I’ve sprinkled it on the shelves and put paper over the top. This keeps dishes or food from coming into direct contact with the powder. It is quite inexpensive and the most effective thing I have found.
Grants are coming this next weekend. We are planning a picnic in the park for Sunday.
Hollis is ready to be baptized but hasn’t gained the consent of his parents yet.
We got the car back Sat. It was a $750.00 job. It looks like new. We had $50.00 deductible insurance. I’m fast becoming an insurance believer.
Daddy is just about ready to plant beans. He wants to cut the grass fro hay down at Mt. Sterling this week too.
We are cleaning, sewing, ironing, gardening etc. Darlene does the milking in the evening.
Snort is having trouble with his feet again. This is the first time in quite awhile tho.
Fairbourns have had their closing out sale. They plan to leave next Monday on a trip to Ariz & Utah job hunting, I guess. Winters are going to the Temple. They are leaving this week.
Love, Mother

p.s. We are still talking Utah in August.
Nellie Juanita Waddington Gano

I believe this picture was taken around the time the above letter was written which would put mother somewhere in her middle 40’s. Sadly, although none of us knew at the time, she would be with us for only three more years. I have been taking a family history class at church and one of the things we are supposed to do is get all our materials i.e. letters/pictures/certificates together in one spot. This is a good idea and will no doubt be accomplished if the Good Lord is willing and I live long enough, which I will have to as I am so disorganized that it will take at least that long to go through all my boxes and the only hope for success I have is to live to a very old age. . . . AAR(At Any Rate) I keep turning up stray letters and pictures which I shall in turn share with you. Please return the favor and write what you remember about your years at home as a Gano Girl. We are rather unique you know! No one knows our story but us. Scary thought that, isn’t it.

P.S. They did come to Utah in the summer of 1962 to attend my graduation from BYU.

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Ford I Gano History – Tape 5

As I finished up that year of driving for Pendley at Oak Creek, I went back to school again. When I got back there that year, I was given another part time job, this time, well for a while I worked in the dining hall, like I had finished up the year, when I’d left the a year before after my freshman year. And roomed in East Hall with my old roomie, Norris, I had a lot more fun that year than I did the first year because I had more or less got acquainted, and I wasn’t afraid of the girls so much. The girls who lived in the new dormitory that they called West Hall (I was in the East Hall – it was for boys only). I guess it was kind of the location of the dorms on the campus there. Anyway, the two dorms would share parties together, and dances and one thing or another. I got acquainted with, I had a few dates that year, dances at the dormitory the girls would hold or the boys would hold, inviting one of the girls from across the hall. So I got acquainted with several of the young ladies there, and also got to meet them in the dining hall there, whenever they came through behind the counter for the their meals. Many of the girls didn’t like eating in the dining hall, they said that the meals were not their kind, so they went off campus to eat sometimes. Usually up to the corner café that was not too far off, and cooked according to the strict regulations of the head residents around the dining hall.
I was a sophomore that year, I was a year behind all my roommates who formerly I had been in the freshman class with. But nevertheless, very glad to be back and enjoying the times there at the school. I worked harder on my studies, and was able to get a B average that year in my class work. I got acquainted with the professors also, learned to like them, learned to enjoy them, learned how to cooperate with them in getting the lesson prepared. That really helps, you know. I didn’t go out for football, so I had time for a few extra-curricular activities that I mentioned.

We went on parties together; usually there was a gang of about four boys and four girls. Well, wait a minute, we couldn’t get everybody in one car; usually a gang that went out and which all got in one car, and we’d all go out for Sunday picnics, and by the way, I went to church every Sunday morning. I wasn’t going to a Mormon church, that was for sure, but I enjoyed my opportunities down there, and met my wife at one of the meetings there at church, one of the youth meetings that they had in the evening. I met Nellie, your grandmother (your great-grandmother, for the kids).
We had several outings that year, several picnics I should say, when East Hall had their dances, they would invite somebody, and Nellie used to always invite me. Then when the West Hall had their dances or parties, then I in turn would invite Nellie. We would do more than just go out there on hills. There were several school activities that we got to travel along on, and enjoy the scenery around that area, and so forth and so on.

I made it through my sophomore year without any further ado. At the end of the sophomore year, my mother had, through my sister Paula who lived in San Diego, had made acquaintances with a politician over there who did lots of traveling and had lots of friends, and he had a person he knew who had a big farm. My mother asked him to try to get me a job over there in San Diego. So he did that. He made arrangements for me to come over there, and I went over there, between my sophomore year and the following year. That year, the reason I did, was that I thought it would be a good experience for me as I was majoring in agriculture, or wanting to, which by the way, they could not (let) me, I could not enroll as a major in Agriculture at Tempe. I had to enroll in another course that they did have, and that was Orcharding. They did have Orcharding, and since I was acquainted with orcharding, I enrolled in horticulture.
Anyway, I worked for this rancher over there at the Harry Empe farm. It was rather a large bean farm, and wheat, up the coast from San Diego, maybe 40 or 50 miles up the coast; Ensenito. There I got a job with Harry Empe for $2.50 an hour, and board and room. My job there was completely different from the one over in Oak Creek, and I got a chance to learn to drive a Caterpillar, pull heavy equipment with a ‘cat’ instead of a team of horses, although Harry had a team of horses also. He assigned me, since I had grown up on a farm, he assigned me the job of hooking up his team each morning, which I did at 6:30. I had to have that team hooked up, harnessed and hooked up and ready to go before breakfast. So that got me up pretty early every morning in the summer.

Now I did not get to go to church, while working out there that summer, because I didn’t have any way of getting to go into town. The Empes did not go to church either, or if they did they went in Ensenito, and my sister lived in San Diego. I never made it into San Diego more than 2 or 3 times all summer long. But I stuck right there with that job, $2.50 an hour, board and room.

They were amazed that they could find anybody who would not go to town to get
soused, and come back and work it off the next week. That’s what my roommate did, that summer that I was working there for Harry Empe. Along with the beans he grew a lot of wheat, and this had to be taken care of. Or cut, and sacked up, piled up I should say, in the summer time when it was time to harvest. It was put up with a binder in little bundles, and then later on when it was combined, they would throw it up on the wagon and take it over to the thresher, which was a stationary threshing machine located at a different place. Now that’s when I got the job of driving the horses. I hooked them up to the wagon, and I always got at least a ride on the wagon, and I didn’t have to go walking along throwing up those bundles, those sheaves of wheat onto the wagon. I had to stack them up as they came up, in order to get as good a load on there as I could.

I didn’t mind doing that, the team had one balky horse, which was a little hard sometimes when I got a heavy load on there, trying to make them start up the side of the rolling coastal farmland there that Harry Empe’s place was located on. But I also got acquainted with driving a Caterpillar tractor, and did some plowing with it, and discing and everything else, which enabled me to avoid the heavy work. Although I did help throw sheaves off of the wagon there on to the threshing machine. The thresher there would gobble up those old sheaves just as fast as you could throw them into it, which kept two of us busy up there on the wagon. Then off to the field they would go to get another load, and them there at the thresher got to rest until we got back.

Now, the heavy work came that I got that summer was when we started trying to bail up those piles of straw that were out there in the field. Of course you’d pile up a big old pile of straw as high as you could get the thresher machine to pile it, and then come along with a bailer and bail it up. When it was bailed up it was stacked up alongside in a pile. In order to get it from the unstacked pile over to the mountain you might call it (I used to think it was a mountain), you had to use a man killer derrick. It had a great big old grab hook on one end of it, and it had to be pulled over to the piles of straw, sunk down into it, piles of sheaves (at that time it had been put into piles of sheaves), then pulled over, raised by the derrick up into the air, and the derrick was operated by a team of horses.
Now I wish that all that I had to do was drive that team of horses around there. But it wasn’t because the team of horses was hitched so that all they had to do was to follow a pole out in front of them, which was attached to a winder-upper that took care of pulling the sheaves up out of the stack as high as you could get them with the derrick, and then swung around and stacked them into big stacks.

I’m anxious to leave this Harry Empe place, so I’m not going to try to recall everything I did there, my memory kind of fails me sometimes and I just can’t bring it back to mind. But I do want to get back to my Junior year in College, which was the one I was headed for when I finished that summer’s work on the coast there. Mr. Empe did pay me a little extra salary though, because I was the only one that ever could do any work. He told me when he paid me off, he said “you did more than any two of these that I find when I go into town to find somebody to help out. So I’m going to pay you a little extra for your work here this summer.” I enjoyed that, and I took it without objecting any at all.

When I got back to school that year, which I did just in time to enroll in my Junior year, I was not much worse for the wear. I’d spent part of my salary from the summer for clothing that I thought I ought to have as an upper class man in school, and most of it went in for books in order to get me back in to the scholastical enterprise. I still had my job in the dining hall, dorm, which I never did mind having because, well, sneak a piece of pie as I was bringing it out of the pantry into the serving tables there. But I had to hide the saucer on which it was placed underneath a saucer that had pie on it. I guess somebody usually wondered how come they got two saucers under their piece of cake or pie or whatever. I enjoyed all that work, and it was work too, but I enjoyed most was that I was given the opportunity to be a tutor, a laboratory assistant to a professor in the science department. Mr. Mortenson was a very, a man that I really admired all the time that I was there. I found out later on that he was a Mormon. It didn’t mean all that much to me at that time, because of course I wasn’t, but as a lab assistant, I had a choice operative procedure of writing up the lab techniques for all the classes that we had.

An interesting note for that year was that I had Nellie in one of my classes. I think she was a junior, but she had neglected to take all of her lab courses when she should have, so she had to take this extra class when she was a junior. So I had the pleasure of tutoring Nellie Waddington in my biology class. I like biology, and I liked to teach it. Professor Mortenson took care of all the lectures of course, in a different area from where the lab was located. But in the lab area, I had a big blackboard, and large desks for the students to sit by, where they could do their extracurricular activities. By that I mean that sometimes they had to draw and list all the names of creatures we were studying, and so forth and so on. Sometimes they had to draw pictures of them. Nellie was not really interested in Biological items, in biological study. So she didn’t get very high grades in that class. In fact, we had to give her a C, Professor Mortenson did [unintelligible for next sentence or two].

She told me, many years after I got married to her, that I had picked on her, using my upper class man rights to not listen to her what she had to say and one thing or another. I didn’t know for sure that I was going to marry Nellie later on. In fact, when we made a scientific study with a bus trip, led by the geology students (I was one of the geology students, and I enjoyed that very much – I enjoyed that bus trip, too) I wasn’t necessarily courting my future wife at that time. So I had the chance to flirt around with some of the other girls on that trip. I think it made Nellie a little bit offended because I did. We saw some very interesting places on that bus trip, with that group of students. I imagine there were at least 30 of them that took the bus down to Carlsbad Cavern.
We studied that part of geology as you saw it from the field, as well as the great sand flats in New Mexico. Those were really something to me! Boy, piles of sand, they looked like a desert, great high mountains of sand! Well, the interesting part of the trip was we got to go into the Carlsbad Cavern cave, and visit all the great things that the science of ages told us there in that cave. The guide that supervised our trip there in that cave was a very capable man in describing, telling all about the way that cave had come about over the millions of years it had been in the process of developing. We went down more than two miles into the earth to see all the stalactites and stalagmites. In the great cavern where we finally stopped for that trip, and there in that cavern was more or less around the giant stalactites…
[end of recording]

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July 5, 2009

Today was fast and testimony Sunday at church. Our dear sister Maza who is 94 years old made her careful way to the stand with Brother Brooks who is in the Bishopric rising to go to her aid when she reached the steps that lead up to the podium. What a sweet testimony she bears of her love of our Savior and the truthfulness of the Gospel plan. She has become a beloved member of our ward since her arrival here three years ago when she came to live with her daughter Jean after the death of her husband Ben. She told us, “I don’t know why I am still here. I miss my Ben so much. We were married for 65 years. There is so little I can do now but I believe that I am here because Jean needs me to be with her”. She then briefly explained that her daughter has struggled since she was a young girl with various life threatening illnesses. Then with a twinkle in her eye she told us that she takes a walk every day. Five blocks up and five blocks back. “Do you know what is the best part?” she asked us. “When I open the door and step through I can feel Ben’s presence. He is there with me as I walk and I love it.” The frailer her body becomes the more her sweet spirit shines through. What a beautiful example she is to us all.

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We had a very quiet day as we celebrated the birth of our nation yesterday. It’s not that there weren’t plenty of activities to take part in, its just that for us it is now easier to stay in our house where the air is cool than it is to be in place for the parade which begins at 9:30. Time moves more slowly for we old’uns. Nope, I’ll take that back. Time moves at precisely the same speed it always has. We are the ones who no longer react to it in the same way. But even so I still can’t help wondering how we got to July so quickly. Makes me think of John F. Kennedy who died at the young age of 46 of whom it was said, “Johnny, we hardly knew ye” which is precisely how I am feeling about the year 2009. It’s fled so fast I feel as though I’ve hardly had a chance to know/live it even though I have been here every day, and here it is half gone.

I can’t help but envy my niece Helen whose entry on her facebook site states that she is watching the Stadium of Fire fireworks from the top of the Y with her 11 year old son. An earlier posting states that climb was a little harder this year than she remembered it from last year. Which makes the point for me that, as the poet Robert Herrick says, “Gather ye rosebuds while ye may. . .” Or as the scriptures say, “To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven” Ecclesiastes 3:1 I’ve been thinking about this today as I realize that for MGH and therefore for me our days of waiting alongside a curb for the parade to come by are in our past. We’ve been there done that many times over and yet I think about the times we did with wistfulness even if those parades weren’t much more than a decorated lawn mower or two with the tail end being brought up by children with red white and blue crepe paper wound over and around the spokes of their bicycles.

Even so it meant a lot to me just to be there with the rest of the community as we watched “Old Glory” pass by carried with measured steps by fresh faced young men in the uniform of our armed forces. What a privilege to rise and stand with hand over heart as they passed. To reflect, if only for a few moments, on just what that flag stands for. To watch the veterans of former years march by proudly wearing the uniform of the country they loved enough to fight for her freedoms—each year growing just a little older and more frail, but there anyway in support of the day set aside to honor our country and its birth. To end the day with friends and family gathered to watch the fireworks and slap away mosquitoes.

I like seeing the American flag fly in front of our house, put there by the Boy Scouts of our ward who, for a small yearly fee, see that it is in place each holiday. They and their leaders are up early to set the flags in place and if I am quick enough, which I wasn’t this year, I can watch from my window as they ride in the back of a pick up with the rolled up flags beside them as they follow the colored circles that mark the spot in the curb where a hole has been drilled in which to place the flag pole. (In case you are wondering, which you probably aren’t, each year has a different color so they know who is entitled to this boon on any given year.) The flags are usually up from sunrise to sunset but this year they went down early as we were doused with rain showers off and on throughout the day. Of course, as soon as the flags went down the clouds went away, but that’s life. (I’m still trying to figure out if there was a message here but, if there is one it is a principle MGH has followed his whole life and that is never let the weather stop you from doing what you had planned. I, however, am of the ‘fair’ weather persuasion which for the life of me I can’t tell if I was born that way or acquired this trait as I got older. All I know is that if attendance at an activity were up to me and I perceived the weather as not being cooperative I would shrug my shoulders at the lost event and find something else to do.)

We didn’t even try to grill outside preferring instead to have our ‘picnic’ in the house with MGH enjoying his microwaved hot dog served on a tray (a cookie sheet which has been drafted for this purpose) along with corn on the cob as well as the other accoutrement’s that accompany this traditional meal. With his feet up in the air as he sits in his recliner (if he doesn’t spend most of his time with his feet up they swell and become painful) he makes the best of his much reduced physical capacity. Sigh. As for me, I enjoyed the smell of barbecuing that drifted across our neighborhood as I watered my plants in the late afternoon. A poor substitute, I know, for the real thing but still I was glad that others could still do so. Sherman and crew fled the heat and came up to our cooler air and invited us to come spend the day with them which we appreciated but regretfully declined. (Do you remember how Anna in the musical the “The King and I” sings,

When I think of Tom.
I think about a night.
When the earth smelled of summer
And the sky was streaked with white,
And the soft mist of England
Was sleeping on a hill-
I remember this,
And I always will…

There are new lovers now
On the same silent hill,
Looking on the same blue sea,
And I know Tom and I are a part of them all,
And they’re all a part of Tom an me.

Hello young lovers, whoever you are,
I hope your troubles are few.
All my good wishes go with you tonight,
I’ve been in love like you.

*Be brave, young lovers, and follow your star,
Be brave and faithful and true,
Cling very close to each other tonight-
I’ve been in love like you.

I know how it feels to have wings on your heels,
And to fly down the street in a trance.
You fly down a street on the chance that you meet,
And you meet-not really by chance.
Don’t cry young lovers, whatever you do,
Don’t cry because I’m alone;
All of my memories are happy tonight,
I’ve had a love of my own,
I’ve had a love of my own, like yours-
I’ve had a love of my own.

Life has been good to MGH and me ‘all of our memories are happy tonight. . .’ At this point neither of us knows how much longer we will remain here, only that the time grows less with each passing day. But what adventures we have had along the way and what joy it brings to think of our family, ever expanding and growing. If excitement has left our lives it is replaced with contentment and we wish all well but that isn’t to say we still wouldn’t enjoy doing a few more things if we could and who knows, perhaps we yet will!

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Was wondering about some family health questions. I was just diagnosed with gestational diabetes, and so I was wondering if there is any family history of diabetes. Thanks.

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We are currently working on getting Aviendha to sleep in the big girl bed so we can have the baby sleep in the crib. When she sleeps in the crib she sleeps the night through, but when she sleeps in the big bed she wakes up somewhere around 2 and throws a giant fit. Sunday night she woke up at 2:45 and was screaming at the top of her lungs at the bottom of the stairs. I got up and flipped on the light and told her to come upstairs, and as I looked down the stairwell, I saw a big scorpion low on the wall. I ran down the stairs (difficult in my current condition) and snapped her up, and Sherman came behind and destroyed the scorpion. I am truly TERRIFIED of scorpions and all kinds of spiders, so I was in a total panic about that bug. Next day: We are playing outside, and go over to the neighbors for a while, come home and take our shoes off, only to find a spider hanging out on Aviendha’s toe!!! Double freak out. I screamed and killed the spider. Aviendha calmly replies “buga?”

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I went shopping with Aviendha yesterday, and she was so funny! She needed some summer clothes, so we were in Wal-Mart and she was in the cart. I was (foolishly) asking her opinion on the clothes I had picked out, and much to my surprise, the clothes she liked she put in the back of the cart, and the clothes she didn’t like, she promptly THREW to the floor! Although in retrospect I shouldn’t have let her do that, I was laughing so hard and enjoying her little personality so much, I let her. She got down and went to the hat rack and picked out a baseball cap and put it right on. I tried to interest her in a hat that would shield her neck from the sun, but no, she wanted the baseball cap like daddy! She was so pleased when she got home to tell daddy all about her hat, and she tried on daddys hat and he tried on hers, and all was well. She adds an a or an e to almost every word, so hat comes out hattie.

We have decided to name the new baby Elmindreda Mary Andrus, and we will call her Ema. Well, at least I will, Brooks and Sherm may call her Min. It’s along the same theme as Aviendha Victoria Andrus, the initials spell the nickname (Ava), and they are sisters in the (very wonderful) Robert Jordan books.

I was interested to see the names of Joann’s and Devon’s mothers, who both happened to have some important date in May. When I put Elmindreda Mary up against Nellie Juanita and Berth Sylvira, it really doesn’t sound so strange!

P.S. Aviendha’s Birthday is June 8th, she’ll be 2.

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Life in Beaver Dam this Spring has been good for our little family. We have been able to spend more time together without the horrible Maverick time-sucker, and so we are getting some things done around the house. Sherm has been working on “Sherm’s Sidewalk Show,” his album of tunes that he wrote way back in 1999ish. If you want to hear it, it’s on BA’s FTP, and I’m sure if you ask him he’ll help you get it. BA is the lyric writer on a couple of the songs, my favorite being “Gin and Tonic Man.” It has a fabulous bass line. We have an area of the basement devoted to recording and playing music, but it was mostly unused untill lately. I’m really glad to she Sherm back doing what he loves, at least some of the time.

We also have been working on an outside play area for Aviendha. We have a very large yard, although it is mostly weeds and rocks and red sand. Our downstairs has a covered patio, and off the patio is our side yard. Yesterday we purchased a big Trampoline, and set it up in the side yard. Aviendha already has a sand play area out there, and then we are going to put the blow-up kiddie pool out there too, so she will have lots of things to do while playing outside. She loves to play outside, is always begging to go out, and now she loves to put her shoes and socks on, because that means that she can go out whenever she wants. She knows the names of all the neighborhood dogs that come to visit, and as we sit outside and watch her play, it’s not uncommon to have Bubba, Buddy and Mesa, all three black labs of some sort, running and playing, baby girl trailing along after them yelling, Bubba, Buddy, Mena!!! She gets knocked down constantly, but usually doesn’t mind a bit. She just gets right up and keeps going. Her dad says, “Just rub some dirt on it.” The dogs usually have on jewelry of some sort before she is done. We’ve seen mardi gras beads, name tags and stereo cords, to name a few.

I am 31 weeks pregnant, and I am now counting by the weeks, as I get more and more miserable. Teaching high school and middle school students is not the best thing for your self esteme while pregnant. I get comments on every piece of clothing I wear, the state of my hair, my acne, and my general size. Yesterday I wore a pink shirt and got called a giant bottle of Pepto Bismol all day long. This morning I was greeted by “What are you wearing?” My answer is generally “Clothes.” Honestly, I can’t wait to get out of this profession, if only to escape the continuous criticism of the teenage style police.

Weeding and gardening went from possible to almost impossible in the last few weeks. Forget weeding, and shaving my legs, and reaching my toes, and sleeping comfortably, and wearing normal shoes. Instead, lets welcome strectch marks, itchy belly, constantly having to go the bathroom and not being able to climb the stairs without multiple breaks. I know DeVon knows how that one feels! For the rest of it, I’ll have to be satisfied that the women understand.

I’m playing in church at my Grandma’s ward in St. George this Sunday with a student from the High School. We are playing an arrangement we wrote of Sweet Hour of Prayer and Poor Wayfaring Man of Greif. That should be fun.

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I am inspired by all of your wonderful posts and I wish I has something interesting to say, but I don’t. Life is just flying by. Springtime motivated me to get out in the yard and put in some desert plants and weed. A great thing about living in Beaver Dam is that I just piled up all of my leaves and torched them. Sherman was surprised when I knoked on the window and pointed outside to a 10 foot tall fire in the front yard. I am getting very large and pregnant looking, but this pregnancy is better than the first…I’m not counting by the day, only by the month. I’m due at the end of June, so a few more to go. We haven’t decided for sure on a name, but Brooks and Sherman love Elmindreda. What do you all think???

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