Kane County: I was born in Panguitch, Utah on September 20, 1952 to James A. and Wilma Justet Worthen. I have four sisters (Vicki, Cheri, Christine, and Pam) and one brother (Dan). My birth took place at the old hospital near the current high school. Dad had quit his job at the iron mines west of Cedar City, moved his family to Mt. Carmel and started trapping career for the government. I believe there was a move to Orderville sometime in there. When I was about two years old, the school district was about to close the elementary in the town of Alton because they didn’t have enough children to justify it. They offered dad a house free of rent with utilities if he would move and enroll the kids in school. At that time he had three children that were school age. Alton was where I can recall my earliest memories. I remember the old house was cold in the winter and our only source of heat was the wood cook stove in the kitchen. Early mornings were spend jumping out of bed and rushing to the stove to catch some warmth. I recall waking-up to about four or five inches of snow on the living room floor one morning. The door had a gap at the bottom and the wind blew the snow into the house. Another time I remember dad having to shovel a tunnel to the front door because the wind had drifted the snow clear to the eves of the front porch. The house was located on the southeast end of town. I can also remember all the doors had glass door knobs. There are a couple of incidents that I recall very vividly. Once a hobo (that’s what they called homeless men at that time) came wandering down the street and mom offered him breakfast. I remember it because he call pancakes, “pincakes,” and us kids thought it was so funny. Another time I recall someone’s bull got out and was wandering down the street knocking over barrels and whatever he could find. Mom ushered us into the house for fear he would charge one of us. I also remember being in the kitchen watching mom make home-made fudge – the family favorite passed down from grandma Worthen. She was cooking on the wood stove and I pulled over a stool to stand on it so I could watch the candy boil. I bent over too far and fell off the stool spraining my wrist. Mom was mad at me for getting that close to the stove, but gave me the loving attention a little kid needed when he was hurt.
When I was three my tonsils became inflamed and had to be removed. A short while later mom and dad went to Orderville to visit some friends and hired a baby sitter to watch the kids. My tonsils were bleeding and I vomited blood all over the floor. The baby sitter called mom and she and dad returned promptly. They took me to the Panguitch hospital and the only thing I can remember was looking over and seeing dad with a tube running from his arm into mine. He was giving me a transfusion. Mother used to say that it was from his blood that I got my teasing streak.
Dad hunted lion that killed sheep in those days and always had 10 to 15 hounds and usually a litter of pups. One bunch of pups in particular that I recall was from a plot female and us kids each selected one as our own. Christine named her pup “Ollie” because he was big and fat. Once, she came up missing and was found snuggled up in the dog house asleep with the pups.
We moved to Glendale when I was four and lived across the creek on the southwest side of town. The house was an older two story dwelling at the mouth of a small canyon. Dad milked the neighbor’s cow for half the milk. I remember many times walking down to watch him milk the cow carrying a tin cup. He would usually show me the star on the cows teat (squirting me in the face when I bent over), then fill the cup up with fresh warm milk. This was one of the highlights of the day. While we lived in Glendale, Dan got the trapping bug. Dad got him a couple of muskrat traps (small with only a half spring), and the first thing he did was catch his fingers. Bound and determined to catch something, he went a short distance up the canyon above the house and set his traps. He and I would hike up every afternoon after he got home from school and check them, and always walked back home empty handed. One afternoon he finally caught something, a porcupine! I can’t remember how we let it loose, but I do remember running all the way home to tell everyone what he had caught. Dan was about seven years old at the time. In 1956, dad applied for a transfer from Kane County to Parowan where we spend the rest of our youth.
Mike 1st Grade 1958
Parowan: The Butcher Home: Our family moved to Parowan in 1956 and rented Ray Butcher’s home on the west side of town. We had a chicken coup in the back yard and the dogs were tied up beyond, near what the town residents called the “old hallow” but pronounced it “haller” (it's that southern Utah slang). It was the old creek channel that went through town before they diverted it to the south side of town to avoid floods. The old haller was ideal for kids. It had high sage brush for building forts and playing hide-and-go seek. We always had several neighbor kids at our house playing something. We had chickens and every morning my younger sister Pam and I would race out to gather the eggs. One morning mom sent us to get the eggs and I ran ahead of Pam, telling her I was going to gather all of them before she got there. I did leave one egg for her to pack back to the house. Upon see there was only one left, she picked it up and cracked it over my head. I let out a blood curdling yell and went to the house bawling. Pam was running beside me apologizing, saying “I’m sorry, but if you hadn’t taken all the eggs I would have hit you with it.” Mom and dad started to laugh, which made me all the madder. I expected them to promptly spank her for doing something so terrible.
Pam, Christine & Mike around 1958
Up to the time I had to go to kindergarten, I would get to accompany dad around the trap line. I remember traveling with him, standing on the seat next to him with my elbow rested in his neck, asking him if it was time for lunch yet. The first coyote I shot was in Buckskin Valley, not far from the west road that leaves the highway. Coyotes had been killing Revere Robinson’s sheep and dad set some traps to capture the coyote and stop the killing. When I was with him he caught the coyote and I shot him with dad’s old Winchester model 71 .22 caliber rifle. I was four years old. When I started kindergarten, I came home a few weeks after school had started and announced to mom that I didn’t need to go anymore, that I wanted to go with dad around the trap line. I was pretty hurt when she told me I had to go to school. From about this age on, I spent all my spare time with dad trapping, calling coyotes, or hunting mountain lion and an occasional bear. I considered myself the luckiest boy in town and was, because none of the other kids ever got to spend so much time with their father doing such exciting things. Most of Dan and my friends would jump at the chance to go with us when dad had a short day. Little did I know that these trips with dad would have a huge influence in my entire life.
While we lived in the Butcher house Christine, my sister just older than me, contracted bells palsy - a virus that paralyses the left side of the face and can last a few days to several years. It scared mom and dad near to death and they rushed her to the Primary Children’s Hospital in Salt Lake City. The rest of us kids stayed with our neighbors, Chester and Mary Stubbs, for a few days until they brought her home. I had never seen my dad and mom so scared and remember how worried I was. Vicki, my oldest sister and second mother, was always there giving us kids comfort and reassurance. Christine slowly recovered with very little after effects and everything returned back to normal.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment