MIKE AND A FEW MORE MEMORIES OF YOUNGER YEARS

Our family loved to fish and I remember many times going with the family to the Yankee Meadows, Paragonah Reservoir, Panguitch Lake, Asey Creek or the Mammoth.  One of my earlier memories when we lived in Glendale was going to Asey Creek in the late afternoon after dad got home from work.  Mom would make tin foil dinners - usually hamburgers, potatoes, onions, and carrots wrapped in tin foil and cooked on hot coals.  As evening approached, dad would take his fly pole and start fishing as the fish started to jump.  Many times I remember following him with the fish sack (either a gunny sack or a cloth meat sack – kind of like the old cloth flower sacks but with heavier material).  As dad caught fish, I’d put them in the sack and drag it along behind. One particular afternoon a thunder head rolled in and started to lightning in the distance.  Dad was having good luck so was reluctant to quit.  He had been standing on one bank of the stream and moved about 50 feet when a flashing bolt of lightning hit where he had been standing.  That was all it took and we returned to the truck and went home.

Dad spotted an old wooden boat at Panguitch Lake that had been sitting under water for at least a couple of years.  He decided no one was going to retrieve it and was able to get a rope on it and drag it out.  He left it on the bank for about a month to dry and see if anyone was going to claim it.  When dad decided no one wanted the boat, he took it to home and tarred the bottom then launched it up at the Yankee.  It was more for us kids than anything.  We didn’t have a motor so we got a set or oars and we'd paddle out and set anchor (a rock with a rope tied on it) and fish.  We had a bucket to bail the water out as it leaked into the boat.  We left it up there and all the kids in town used it, kind of a community boat.  One time we were out on the Yankee and Cheri decided it would be good to troll for fish.  So, she made Dan and I man the oars and paddle her up and down the lake while she fished.  If you knew Cheri, you knew we had no choice.  Cheri loved to fish probably more than any of the other kids, if that was possible.  Once dad took us to Paragonah Reservoir in the early summer. We were fishing down by the dam and Cheri hooked a big fish.  She got it just about to the bank and I made a grab for it.  The movement made it dart out of my reach and broke the line.  Boy, she was mad and claimed I scared it off on purpose.  She had no sense of humor when it came to fishing.  We didn’t have much money for fancy fishing poles or reels and we’d use the old type that would only wind, they didn’t have the casting option.  So to get the baited hook out in the water, someone would have to take the hook and line and go back 25 to 30 yards behind the person to cast.  You’d have to hold the baited hook flat on the palm of your hand while the caster would attempt to get it in the water with one cast.  Needless to say, once you got it in the water you didn’t wind it in unless you had a fish on, if you did you’d get a good cussin’ from dad.

When I was about 10 years old, dad taught me to howl like a coyote and he and I howling together were pretty good.  Two people howling can elicit better responses from coyotes.  In the springtime the airplane would come from Delta to assist with coyote problems.  Dad would let me miss school to help him locate coyotes by howling with him then direct the airplane to the spot where we believed the coyotes to be.  One time we were out by Lund and the airplane lit on a clay hard pan just north of the Lund highway.  The pilot, Darwin Mabbit, asked me if I’d like to take a ride in the airplane.  I remember my eyes getting big and thinking, boy if my friends could only see me now.  He took me out by the town of Lund, down the railroad tracks and buzzed a jack rabbit to show me how the gunner would shoot a coyote.  From then on I was hooked.  (Side note:  Some 30 years later Darwin was killed in an airplane accident hunting coyotes by Delta, and I was the Regional Director for the federal trapping program at the time.  It was pretty tough because I had known Darwin since my childhood).  Once when I came home from school, dad asked if I wanted to go with him the next day.  I thought he was pulling my leg because I had school, but he was serious and I later found out why.  We went out by the Horse Hollow road that goes between Highway 36 and the Lund Highway, in some rolling hills.  Dad had found a coyote den in a rocky out-cropping and couldn't dig it.  He had suffocated the coyotes and had to account for them in his reporting.  So, he tied a rope around my ankles and I crawled down the hole and retrieved the coyotes.  On the way home he said, “Now don’t tell your mother you crawled down a coyote den or she’ll have both our hides tacked to the shed.”  Needless to say I never her told her until years later.  Dad taught me to read animal sign (tracks and such) and I remember many times riding on the back of old “Jug Head” with dad hunting dens in the spring, watching for coyotes tracks, or him driving slowly down a two track road with our heads out the window watching for tracks crossing the road and paying attention to the general direction they were heading.  It got to where I’d dream of tracking coyotes in my sleep.  In my later years in Idaho, one of the trappers said that I could track an ant across a rock – a tribute of many hours spend with dad on the back of his horse hunting coyote dens.

Dad’s job didn’t pay all that well – pretty much poverty level and mom had to work most of the time to make ends meet.  Later on when I was a teenager, dad started to take duds to hunt lion that helped out.  Anyway, our Christmas’ were pretty scant, but us kids never knew it.  I remember when I was about 8 or 9, I asked for a new bicycle.  Come Christmas morning, there was a bike for my sister Pam and I to share.  It was a girls bike and I didn’t think anything of it.  It lasted a few years and wore completely out.  But one day it dawned on me.  My older sisters had an old girls bike they wore out and it disappeared.  Then I got looking at our bike a little closer and noticed it looked a lot like that old bike.  Dad had put new bearings in the wheels, bought new tires and a seat, and painted it.  Most Christmas’ were pretty meager.  We’d usually get one toy from Santa and the rest a few clothes – something we needed.

Winter times were hockey time.  All the boys in the neighborhood would get together, sneak up to Howard Joseph’s pond, turn some water in the dry pond to let if freeze up, then we cut willows for hockey sticks and use a tin can for the puck.  Once in a while someone would take us out to Rush Lake to ice skate.  I remember one of the boys got the can right above the eye and took stitches.  Boy was he proud of that.

We had fun at the Parowan house.  We raised a calf from the milk cow each year, and when they got to be about three to four hundred pounds, we'd get a few friends and have a rodeo, unbeknown to our parents.  Once when Gary Jones was over we cornered the calf (about 300 pounds) in the barn and put a bailing twine around his chest so we could hold on, and we’d climb on to see how long we could ride him.  Gary got on once and the calf started to run straight for the wall, turning just as we got there.  Gary was launched like a spear, straight into the wall.  It knocked him out for a few minutes and scared us half to death.  We didn’t dare tell our parents for fear we’d get a spanking and put to work picking up dog bones (the worst punishment a kid could get).  This was probably when I was about 8 or 9 years old.

One year Gary and I both got BB guns for Christmas.  I took my gun over to his house to show him and he had one just like it.  We decided to walk to my house and were shooting cans, rocks and the likes, then we spotted a street light…  It was more temptation than two boys could resist.  We both took aim and shot it out.  By the time we got home, the whole town knew.  We both got in big trouble on that one and lost our guns for three months.  In addition, we had to talk to the mayor and tell him we were sorry and he came up with odd jobs for us to repay the city for the cost of the bulb.  That was the longest three months I can remember.

Across the street from our house was a cement ditch build for irrigation.  It was a small ditch and in the summer when the water was diverted above it to another ditch, it would still run a little water from the head gate.  The bottom of the ditch was mossy and slick.  When our friends came over we’d take turns sitting in the ditch to block the small amount of water.  After a few minutes the water would build up behind the person sufficiently to shoot them down the ditch for about 20 yards.  One time one of the bigger kids was in the ditch and we decided to get as much water build-up as possible.  Two of us stood in front of him holding him in place until the water was just about to run over its bank behind him, we jumped out of the way.  The built-up water shot the kid clear down the ditch to where the fence crossed it.  The fence had a wooden pole on the bottom stretched across the ditch so livestock couldn’t get under it.  He smacked the pole with his forehead.  It didn’t knock him out, but he had a whopper of a goose egg.

My older sisters always had boys hanging around drawling.  Cheri had a boy friend we didn’t like at all, he wouldn’t play with us or do anything fun.  Once when he came over Dan and I snuck behind the coach where they were seated, smooching.  Then we’d take turns letting farts.  Cheri finally figured out we were back there and grabbed the broom handle and whacked us.  She was so embarrassed.

One of Vicki’s boyfriends showed me how to make a sling shot and throw it in a figure 8 action.  It was surprisingly accurate and would really sailed a rock out there.  I got pretty good and spend hours practicing.  Once I was out in the fields west of our place.  I found a pretty good rock and decided to see how far I could throw it.  There were some cows in the middle of the field and I didn’t think I could throw it that far, so I wound up and tired.  The next thing I knew a cow dropped.  I had struck her in the head.  It scared me half to death.  I ran over to it and it finally stumbled back on her feet.  I never told anyone about it.

Mom hated to clean up messes, especially if the mess was caused by carelessness.  I remember at the supper table if Dan or I spilled our milk we’d get a sharp wrap on with the fly swatter or the broom handle.  When we, being boys and liking to tease her, would spill our milk by mistake, we’d yell ”DUCK, SHE GETTING THE BROOM”, and jump under the table like we were in combat.  I think it made her all the madder.  I remember one of the girl’s boyfriends (I can’t remember which one) sure looked surprised when we hit the floor.  The kid sat there bewildered, wondering what the heck was going on.  Mom's natural reaction was to grab for something to hit us with and caught herself in mid motion.  She got all red.