Another Birthday

Thursday, August 16th was my birthday. That is the day I scheduled to get my lap band filled at the hospital in Blackfoot which precluded any significant birthday meals because I am now on a liquid diet for four days. I was blessed to hear from each of our children wishing me happy birthday. But I told Dad all I wanted was to visit the King Tut exhibit at the Museum of Idaho in Idaho Falls. There were many beautiful and fascinating items on display and I thoroughly enjoyed it. This also gave us the opportunity to visit and stay overnight with Leslie, Matt and boys. Dad helped Matt fix a lawn mower that needed a minor repair but Matt didn't have the right tools. We had fun with the boys, especially with little Jaxon. Dad watched the modern day version of "The Three Stooges" movie with the older boys and had a lot of laughs that brought back memories of the originals back in the late 50's and early 60's. Talk about mindless humor! We also were impressed with their new lawn, landscaping and garden. In fact, that evening for dinner Leslie fixed fresh corn on the cob from the garden that was delicious (so everyone said while I had my liquid dinner). Highlights of the museum follow:

A Welcome Break

After the stress and frustration of dealing with the hostile neighbor and the disappointment of missing out on visiting the Ockeys at Palisades, we went with Gene and Lynn to Willow Flat Campground on the Cub River near Preston, Idaho to relax a little and settle nerves Tuesday, August 7th through Saturday, August 11th. We found a very nice campsite beside the creek.

The first couple of days we took dune buggy rides and Dad and Gene tried fishing on the creek down the canyon with little luck. In the evenings we played pegs and jokers and then sat around the campfire visiting until bedtime. We celebrated our 44th wedding anniversary very quietly on Thursday. That was about the day when Idaho Fish and Game came and planted fish just above our camp. Dad caught a quick few and we had a delicious fish fry one evening.

Gene and Lynn left for home on Friday but before they left we hiked to the main spring that feeds the creek. It was a beautiful hike, considering the drought we are experiencing this summer, that was reminiscent of some of our hikes in the Canadian Rockies three years ago.

Brink of a Waterfall

The Spring

After Liljenquists left we took a hike up to the secondary spring that afternoon. It was a steep trail that had been traveled very little up closer to the spring but it was again fun to see a significant flow of crystal clear water running out of the mountain. There were also some pretty scenes along the trail but not nearly as many as the previous day's hike.

Upper Part of Trail

The Spring

That afternoon we took a dune buggy ride up the "German Dugway" to the Paris Flat at the top of the mountains. The road was extremely rough and rocky and we had trouble passing several four-wheelers on a very narrow road on the way up. Neither the road nor the ride were as easy and scenic as we remembered from several years ago. Maybe it's what the four-wheelers have done to the road but I don't think we'll do it again. On Friday night a storm came in and it rained most of the evening and night. It's too bad that we got no rain back home from this storm where everything is burning up from the incessant hot, dry weather. There are also so many forest fires in the state that the sky has been very hazy now for several days. After a cool, wet spring we hope we can see some relief soon.

50th Class Reunion

The evening of Saturday, August 4th was Dad's 50th Senior Class Reunion from Marsh Valley High School. We went with Gene and Lynn. Thirty-three out of his graduating class of seventy-six were in attendance. It is known that at least eight classmates have passed away. Although some traveled from far across the country it was interesting to note that many still lived in their original home towns or nearby. We had a delicious meal and were taken on a tour of the buildings. Dad's class was the first class to attend all four years at this new high school prior to graduation. He could hardly recognize much of the facility now because so much has changed or been added. He also commented how the cliques of jocks, cheerleaders, popular kids and etc. seemed to melt away with the years to where all are on a much more equal footing. In addition, Dad was a late bloomer at only about 5'4" tall at graduation, shorter even than many of the girls in his class, which didn't help his social life either. However, we conversed freely with all that were there while in his high school days that would not have happened.

1962 MVHS Yearbook Pictures (It is appropriate that Gene and Dad appear next to each other as they were/are like brothers as well as best friends.)



Group Picture


Catching Up On Old Times

Delicious Buffet Dinner

Dad's history as submitted for the reunion follows:
Home/Family/House (Kids, # & accomplishments, etc.)
As many of you know I came from rather humble beginnings. As the eldest in my family of four siblings I lost my Dad at seven years old and the need to help my Mom with chores and later in high school running our small business to support our family left me out of many high school extra-curricular sports and activities. However I was eventually lucky enough to marry Bonnie Carson from Jerome, Idaho. We met while both were attending ISU. She is beautiful and the love of my life and has been an amazing and wonderful wife and mother. She is five years my junior and I have occasionally been accused of robbing the cradle. Nevertheless we've had seven children including a still-born son (Lenn), four daughters (Laurie, LaRinda, Leslie, Lindsy) and two sons (Leon, Lance). Both sons served foreign LDS missions. All are now married and we currently have twenty-one grandchildren, three of whom have also recently married. We lived in Salt Lake City for eight years out of school at ISU then moved to Pocatello where we lived for twenty-two years. We then built a home near Inkom on the property where I grew up on Indian Creek and have been here for thirteen years. As our family grew we have always both worked and played together enjoying camping, boating, primarily on Lake Powell, fishing and four-wheeling on little-traveled mountain roads in our dune buggy which we've owned for many years. In fact nearly all of our children learned to drive a "stick shift" in that beloved little car. I must include in family a lifelong and cherished friendship with Gene Liljenquist in our class whom I consider more a brother than just a friend. We became friends even before starting first grade in Inkom and have maintained this friendship all these many years. We have vacationed with he and his family many summers, taken cruises together, meet regularly with other friends for Friday night dates, etc. Three summers ago we even traveled for three months with Gene and his wife to Alaska and back in our RV's and had the time of our lives. This past two winters we have spent four of the winter months traveling to and from Apache Junction, just east of Phoenix, Arizona where we have lived most of the winter. There we have made many new friends from much of the Midwestern US and Canada in the RV park where we stay. We have learned to explore and love the desert environment "in winter only" which is a nice break from the cold and snow of Idaho.
Work/Employment
Out of school I worked for a few months engineering for "Ma Bell" in Salt Lake City. I then took a job as an electronics engineering technician for a small company called Telemation that designed and built broadcast television studio equipment in Salt Lake where I stayed until we moved back to Pocatello. There I first taught in the Electronics Program at ISU Vo-Tech for three years. I then took a job at AMI Semiconductor in Pocatello where I worked the next thirty years in several occupations. First as a production line maintenance technician, then engineer. I then took a position managing the R&D lab followed by work as a system administrator in the IT department. For the final twenty years I was a software engineer. A close friend coworker and I initiated a new factory automation department within the company and designed from scratch, developed and deployed the factory automation system used by AMI for a number of years and which currently runs the Pocatello fab now owned by ON Semiconductor. This same system was also ported to support a semiconductor fab in Belgium and the company's test facility in the Philippines. Three years ago I retired but was called back for a three-month contract to work in our Belgium fab last summer. My friend, Dave Gardner and I were both invited and our wives went with us. We enjoyed getting better acquainted with the European culture and touring around Western Europe on weekends.
Personal Goals/Accomplishments
Our greatest happiness in life has not been so much in material possessions but in our children and grandchildren. It is in their accomplishments, education, talents and the manner in which they manage their lives and families that brings so much pride and joy. We are so proud of each one. We also had the opportunity to sponsor a vivacious young lady from Warsaw, Poland as a foreign exchange student during our youngest daughter's senior year in high school. That was a memorable and fun experience and we still have occasional contact with her where she is currently living in Perth, Western Australia. Our youngest daughter was blessed with both height (6'4") and athletic talent and was offered full-ride scholarships in both volleyball and basketball from BYU as well as offers from universities in several western states including ISU. She played volleyball at BYU for five years and married Ben (6'8"), an older brother of Noah Hartsock, who just finished his basketball career at BYU last year.
Church / Civic contributions:
Between my first and second years of school at ISU I served an LDS mission in Brazil. Last November Bonnie and I had our first opportunity to return to Brazil on a cruise we took with friends that originated in Milan, Italy and ended in Sao Paulo, Brazil. We visited several coastal Brazilian cities including Recife where I had been assigned for the final three months of my mission. There we had the choice opportunity to renew friendships with several members of a cherished family we had converted. It was incredible to see how the LDS church had progressed from one small branch just building their first chapel in 1964 to six stakes and a beautiful temple today. Bonnie and I have served in a number of church callings through the years and we are currently planning to serve a "senior" mission within the next couple of years, hopefully to return to Brazil.

Time With Ockey Family Preempted

We had every intention to spend at least part of the first week of August with Laurie, Evan and family as stated in the last post. We also have an old friend and neighbor, Dorothy Bowcut, from back in our days living in Salt Lake City who lives near there we wished to visit. Neither happened because, with utter disregard for our plans, a neighbor rudely demanded that we had a legal obligation to build half of a fence between our properties by August 2nd or he would release over twenty head of cattle to roam freely over our yard and property with the associated mess and damage if "our" half was not completed. This was not our first conflict with this person but we soon learned we had no legal obligation to do so and even had there been we would have had six months to comply. He was so informed via registered mail on July 30th which included notice of his liability if he made good on his threat. We had already installed all the posts around the entire boundary between us several years ago to mark property lines. I asked Dad what would Christ do so he gave in a little and we cleared the brush along half the fence line as a good neighbor gesture. Several people we contacted, including a law enforcement officer, knew this person to be one likely to follow through on such threats. So, although Dad felt we should stand our ground with a bully, we had to stick around home just in case until the neighbor completed the fence and turned the cattle into his property which didn't occur until that weekend. It's sad that with a different approach we would have probably been more willing to help and we missed the opportunity to share time with our daughter and her family. Why do some people have to be that way?


Typical Initial Growth Along Fence Line

After Ten Hours Under the Hot Sun of Clearing Brush



Dune Buggy Repairs

Most of the last half of July was spent in one way or another making necessary repairs to our beloved little Dune Buggy. One evening I helped Dad remove the engine and the next day Gene, Dave and Lance came out to help remove and tear down the transaxle. Lance was returning home from work and was still in uniform. We then called a shop in Orem, Utah called Parts for Imports where Gene had done business earlier to see if they could rebuild the transaxle. They said it would take a week so we took the unit there and dropped it off. They have a very good mechanic named Duane who was the original owner of the business and has worked on old air-cooled Volkswagens for over fifty years. We stayed overnight and visited with the Ockeys, the O’Donnals and Leon and Chrissy. Chrissy had just had surgery to have her tonsils removed and cosmetic surgery on her lip. She was still in a lot of pain at the time but is doing much better now. While waiting for the rebuild Dad tore the front end off the buggy to fix a broken gas gauge that had failed several years ago. During that week we also got to tend Taylor for two days. While she was here she got to feed and ride one of the horses kept in our pasture by our friend, Linda Burrup. She even got to ride in a “little girl” saddle that was just her size.

Taylor also helped me pick and snap beans from our garden. It was fun having her overnight. After a week we made a flying trip on a Friday to Orem and back to pick up the rebuilt transaxle. Back home the next morning Gene, Lance and Gene's son-in-law, Jason Atkinson, came out to help extract the unit from the trunk of "Little Blue" then install it followed by the engine. Although the transaxle went to Orem in pieces and fit easily it amazed everyone that the completely assembled unit with axles and reduction gear units attached fit in the trunk with the lid closed. Once the transaxle and engine were back in that left Dad with a few details to put the car completely back together the following Monday. It sure felt good to have our little buggy back in running order with plans to join Laurie, Evan and family in the next day or two where they are vacationing at the Ockey family cabin near Palisades Reservoir on the South Fork of the Snake River near the Wyoming border.