Were my Dad a religious man, I would have no doubt been a Lutheran, but

since he wasn’t and my Grandparents on my Mother’s side and my Mother

were Reorganized Latter Day Saints, it seemed logical that this first

born would receive instruction in that brand of Judeo-Christianity.

As you could tell by reading chapter one, I spent very little time

thinking seriously about religion, right? Wrong!

In spite of all of the foolishness I did think a lot about religious

stuff from the age of 14 on....but one must remember, that a good RLDS

will have her child dunked in the waters of baptism by the age of 8,....

so I was!

All I can remember about it was how darned cold the water was down there

in the tank in the basement of the Moorhead RLDS church back there on the

12th day of June 1949.

I didn’t know anything, didn’t believe in anything, didn’t even know what

was going on other than it was one of the few times I ever saw my Dad in

church!

We went to church regularly and I got a good dose of memorizing quotes

from the Doctrine & Covenants about how “the fields were white and ready

to harvest”, but like I said in chapter one, it wasn’t until I was

confronted by this 13 year old girl that I realized that I didn’t know

anything about Christianity, just Mormonism!

I only remember going to one church camp and a few Zion’s League parties,

but I would say that I probably received more religious training from

Garner Ted Armstrong on the radio late at night as I was driving home

from a date than any where else!

I presume it was a combination of that, and Mormonism as to why it was so

easy to get involved in the Identity Movement, but I am getting way ahead

of my story.

I remember getting into discussions in school history class about the

various ways the Indians got to the Western Hemisphere. Of course I was

taught that RLDS kids know, but the teachers don’t! In fact, from day one

you are taught that you belong to the only true church on the face of the

earth and all the others are an abomination to God! What a load for a 8

year old to take with him to school!

After I got out of Barber College in 1960, because I was around my RLDS

Grandfather, I decided to read the book of Mormon in my spare time

between customers. I was well versed in how the RLDS church says that the

book came about, but had never read it.

My experience was one of surprise to me because I hated to read. In fact

during my four years in High School, I only had to give two book reports

and I managed to give them on the same book, because one time it was in

9th grade and the next time it was in 11th and I had different English

teachers those two years so they didn’t know what I was doing.

I couldn’t put that book down. I had a terrible time cutting hair for

about a week because I stayed up all night reading. It would make me

disgusted when a

customer would come in for a haircut because I would have to put the book

down. I was impressed and believed it totally. n fact, I believed it so

much I organized some of my friends and once a week instead of tearing

around and such we would meet and study the book. That is until I ran

into my first situation with Mormon hierarchy.

I was called on the carpet by the Priesthood and informed that since I

wasn’t in the Priesthood that I couldn’t do what I was doing. This was a

real shock to me and a let down because, being obedient to my spiritual

leaders, I turned it over to them and they didn’t follow through and the

classes dissolved.

Later on I was summoned to the District President’s office and informed

that several had informed him and he admitted himself that he had

evidence, that I was to be called to the Priesthood, but he had checked

and found that I wasn’t paying my tithing and something about me having a

dance band and not being in control was going to cause him to hold up on

the call until I got my act together and then he said, “If you ever tell

of this conversation I will deny it.”

I learned early on the importance of having a tape recorder on oneself.

My view [back in those days] was that if the B of M was true and if I

could get 10-15 kids to study it and if others had evidence as well as my

own testimony about the call then maybe God knew what He was doing and

these hypocrites who were more interested in checking your bank balance

might have been out of line with God’s will.

Now days, I see it was all a joke!

This early on caused me to think that these ’Callings’ were a fake. I did

believe back at that time that some were really called,....I don’t think

so anymore.

I didn’t enter into any real detailed studying at that time. No crash

program. Just gradual learning more and more. Asking a lot of questions

and getting darn few answers that satisfied me. My studies included

Doctrine & Covenants, Book of Mormon, Church History and hardly no Bible

other than the Bible verses that seemed to point towards Mormonism.

Business wasn’t too great and I thought that next to moving to

Independence, Mo. where the Garden of Eden was and where Christ was going

to land when he returned the next best place would Lamoni Iowa. We were

there only two months, I think. Nearly starved to death and discovered

that the RLDS second largest stronghold wasn’t anything to get very

excited about spiritually.

There was a double murder and suicide right on the church campus and

about as much anti-Mormonism as pro was being taught and I just wanted to

get out so we went back to Moorhead, Iowa.

What studies I did, caused me to see more and more discrepancies and

since ‘God is not the author of confusion’, Saul of Tarsus tells us, then

what was going on? Just the fact that the differences between the RLDS

and Utah churches were taught and it seemed like the differences in most

part stemmed from statements of Joseph Smith in the latter part of his

life. So it was quite easy for an RLDS to just write off what was done

from 1840 on and chalk it up to the idea that Joseph had fallen from

grace and the last few years these ‘revelations’ were of man, instead of

God.

When one starts working himself backward in history you wonder where it

is going to stop. I have known several people who have embarked on the

same trip as I, and shortly after getting their feet wet, could see where

they were going and jumped back on shore. I was so indoctrinated with

the idea that there was a ‘One and Only True Church’ that if the RLDS

wasn’t it, then I wanted to know where it was and join it.

Suddenly, a shock...my Grandfather died! It was April 18, 1966. Little

did I know right then, that something that had taken place back in 1925,

would have such an impact on my life.

One day my Grandmother asked me if I would like to have Grandpa’s shoe

box full of church papers. Of course I said yes, and as I lay upon my bed

and read through the material I came to a little blue pamphlet written a

Daniel McGreggor and autographed by him. I discovered later that he had

been RLDS and had discovered very disturbing information and had printed

it in this booklet and traveled around giving them out to RLDS folks. My

Grandfather never left the RLDS church, but he always kept this little

booklet which now was in my hands. It was a simple message. It just

proved without a shadow of a doubt that man had changed the original

revelations and changed them in such a way as to give power to men that

the God of the Bible or Book of Mormon didn’t allow or even hint at. I

wasn’t thinking clearly at the time and it made me so angry that I

remember throwing this booklet clear across the room and yelling after

it, “How dare you say that about Joseph!”

The booklet lay there in the corner for two weeks and then I picked it up

to shove it into a drawer and I noticed something else in it and I got

angry again. Well, after one or two such sessions, I read it all the way

through and couldn’t refute it so I contacted the Church Historian in

Independence, Mo. and asked if it was possible if these things were true

and he not only assured me that they were but got out a bunch of books

for me, to prove it to myself.

The changing of the revelations took place between 1833 and 1835 and the

only church I knew of that taught this theory was the “Church of Christ

(Temple Lot)”

So we contacted them and this began a series of many months of visits and

very detailed letter to us and from us. Doctrines were discussed and to

my satisfaction [at that time] questions were answered. Something that

happened at one of their meetings confirmed to me that they had something

that the RLDS didn’t have. They had a guest speaker (one of their

Apostles from Canada) who at the closing of the service while the

congregation was still singing the closing hymn stepped over to whisper

something into the ear of the Pastor. A confused look came over the

Pastor’s face and the services came to the closing prayer and we were

dismissed. After dinner, I was told that their Apostle had it made known

to him that I was to be called the office of Elder and what had caused

the concern was that I didn’t belong to the Temple Lot church. I was

still RLDS at this time. Apparently they too, couldn’t figure out that

God could choose who He wanted with out them fitting you into a certain

pigeonhole that they had created.

As study went on and it came time to make a decision, a I indicated that

I wanted to switch churches something strange took place. All of a sudden

we had to do an ‘Authority Search’. The very nature of the Restoration

Movement teaches that all other churches are wrong and that no one has

authority to minister for God unless they receive the ‘restored’

authority as it was passed from John Baptist, Peter, James & John to

Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery, Since that authority had been absent

from the earth for 1,200 years. Now the problem was to make sure that the

one who baptized me into the RLDS church was baptized, himself, by

someone who received his authority from one of the early church people.

Well, what started out to be similar to a title search mixed with a

genealogy microfiche man hunt, ended up with them saying that they just

couldn’t be sure and thought it would be a good idea if I was re-

baptized. All I wanted to do was switch, not fight, so I consented!

That took place on January 1, 1967, in Independence, Mo.

I thought it interesting that when I notified the RLDS church that I

wanted to drop my membership that I had all sorts of big-shots coming to

visit me and try to make me change my mind, but three months later when

my wife, after extensive study on her own came to the same conclusion and

requested her name removed as well, there was no problem!

We had studied the RLDS inside and out. The early church had no

President, nor First Presidency. Neither did the church in 1830, but

after the revelations were changed, the there was authority to create

something that wasn’t in the Bible or Book of Mormon church. Men being

High Priest in the New Testament church of the Bible or Book of Mormon

was not in the revelations. Three heavens, Three Nephites, Three Gods,

Three Jerusalem’s,.....it was all getting too confusing!

One of the things that I found that I couldn’t believe in the RLDS church

was the Crystal Ball mentality or the Astrological type forecast of the

patriarchal blessing. Talk about something ruling your lives.

I think that one of the main characteristics of a cult is the belief that

they are the only church that is right and all the others are wrong. Out

of all the various beliefs of the many churches I have attended in my

life I think this ‘Only True Church’ is the most dangerous.

Even after I finally got out of it entirely, (and I am getting ahead of

my story again), I still had it in my head that there was a ‘True Church’

out there somewhere and I desperately wanted to find and join it. That

concept eventually got so saturated into me that I began to think that I

was the only one who knew the truth and that everyone else was wrong. It

was nothing but a direct seed planted in the mind of a young by an RLDS

church tract that had grown to it’s maturity.

I have come to the conclusion that there is no true church, in fact, I

believe it is a concept that is all a farce. But belonging to a church

that realizes it’s limitations may be, to a certain extant, necessary

because it fills a need in those of us who are not strong enough to

handle life without a crutch.

Enough for digressing. Let’s get back to the Temple Lot church. I had my

little card and my little list of how to conduct funerals and marriages

and my little arsenal of books that proved that the RLDS and UTAH church

were wrong and I was set.

I was invited to accompany an Apostle on a missionary trip to Tennessee.

It was my first time out and I wanted to make a good impression, so I

studied very hard and delivered a sermon on the subject,” Our body was

the temple of the Holy Spirit”. After my talk, all hell broke loose with

the Apostle because he apparently had used verses that I had quoted to

prove the need for a Literal Temple of stone and brick. We finally got it

patched up because what I said and what he said I said were two different

things, and this time I had a tape recorder on me. When I played it back,

it was end of discussion time!

The Temple Lot church was so obsessed with a temple building and the fact

that they owned the land for it that they missed some very main points I

felt. Nevertheless, as time went on at a conference in Independence, Mo.

I was called by revelation to the office of ‘Seventy’. I was asked what I

felt about the call and even though it is a prestigious office and

desired by some I said, “How can it be of God since there is no such

office?” That upset the troops, but it’s true!

We were all a prayer and fasting bunch. One time my wife and I had a

mutual experience that to this day I can’t explain. We were all to gather

and spend the whole forenoon in prayer and fasting prior to the business

meeting in the afternoon.

While knelt in prayer with my eyes closed, all of a sudden a bright light

like someone had been standing right behind me with a strobe light. It

was so bright that even with my eyes closed I still saw the light. I

remember turning around and looked right into the face of a man who was

knelt behind me praying with his eyes closed who wasn’t even aware that

anything had happened. I turned back and closed my eyes again and then

had what seemed to be a dream, but I was awake! I saw the Temple Lot as

from a distance and the clouds getting darker and darker until you

couldn’t hardly make it out. Then from the sky came that same burst of

bright light and it came down like slow motion lightning and just before

it hit the Temple Lot Church, it ;flared out as if there was an invisible

dome over the church and the light as hard as it tried could not get in

side. Now I don’t remember a voice, but was made to understand in my mind

that God was trying to get through but something dark and wrong inside

the church was preventing it. I was so amazed by this that I suggested to

my wife that we get out of there for a while. This we did and after we

had got out to the car and drove a ways she said that something strange

had happened in the service and that she had seen a bright light. Well,

then I told her what had happened to me and we went back to the service.

By the time we got back in there they had switched to a Testimony service

and I stood to reveal to them what had happened. Then the second most

puzzling thing happened. As I stood there with tears flowing down my

cheeks in pleading with these people, all of a sudden, it was like I had

stepped back a couple of feet and could see myself and I had a clear

glass cylinder around me and no one could hear me. Needless, to say, I

thought someone was trying to tell me something and after several visits

and letters of correspondence trying to make sense out of all of this, we

left the Church of Christ (Temple Lot), first as a priesthood member and

then as a general member!

Remember, I still had this idea that there had to be a ‘true’ church

somewhere, and I was convinced because of the Book of Mormon, that it had

to be in Mormonism somewhere. There are several smaller groups in

Mormonism and we investigated them all and ended up without any church,

but held onto the Book of Mormon, fully convinced that it was true and

that bringing it forth was Joseph Smith’s ONLY job or calling and that

everything he did from that time that the manuscript went to the printer

was man made!

About this time, I was introduced to tapes of a Pentecostal preacher from

North Carolina. This in turn, led us to a church group in Illinois.

Later, we became involved in a Pentecostal church in Marshalltown, Iowa

and that preacher convinced me that the Book of Mormon was false, and

thus the last of Mormonism was gone. What I had traded it for proved to

be worse. I thought things in Mormonism were illogical, but looking back

on it now, Pentecostalism was strictly a ‘take it on faith’ sort of deal,

because not only was it not scriptural, but it didn’t even make sense.

I have to admit that they we friendlier people than I had ever

experienced in Mormonism. When you leave Mormonism, not only do you lose

your belief, but you leave most of your friends, because just the nature

of Mormonism causes you to have very few friends outside of the cult. So,

when you forsake it, you find yourself friendless. In our case even the

majority of the relatives were Mormon, so not only friends but relatives

turned their back on us. Do you see, even though the teachings of

Pentecostalism were off base to me, it was so good to have a friend or

two that I tolerated it for a while. When it came to the point that they

felt that there was something wrong with me because I couldn’t ‘talk in

tongues’ and they were trying to force feed me that Henry Kissinger was

the Anti-Christ, I just had to get out.

Now, where do we go? I had an opportunity to buy a business in

Northwood, Iowa and did it. I made up my mind that the whole religious

thing was a joke and I was through with it. I packed up my books and the

next four years concentrated on my business. My wife got involved with

the Lutheran Choir, but I stayed clear of the whole darned mess.

I was interested in only one thing pertaining to religion and that was a

minister who sounded a lot like the good old days of listening to Garner

Ted Armstrong. His name was Sheldon Emry.

Beings that he reminded me of Armstrong, I attended one of the Armstrong

churches in Albert Lea, Minn. but it didn’t fill the need. I had to find

out more about this radio minister, Sheldon Emry.

At this period in time, I moved to Southwest Iowa, just to get out of the

cold Iowa winters. Much to my surprise, my wife had moved too many times

and been involved in too many religious adventures and when the time came

for her and the kids to move down, she said “NO”! and sent instead,

divorce papers!

In this new town, all alone, the only person who showed any interest in

being my friend was a Pentecostal Preacher. (Here we go again) I finally

convinced my wife to come back to me and move down and we got ;back into

;church things with this Pentecostal Church.

All of the time I was involved in the Pentecostal church, I was listening

to the Sheldon Emry tapes and it was just a matter of time when the two

doctrines could clash!

I discovered that this Sheldon Emry’s radio church in Phoenix, AZ. had a

branch in Omaha, NE., so we started going there. Then I attended one of

the Emry conferences and from that got invited to another conference. I

took my video camera to that conference and after the meetings, so many

wanted copies of his talks, I decided that this might be a way of

ministering by sharing the messages, so we went into the video taping the

conferences business.

To my surprise, what I thought was a religious group, I discovered

speakers on all sorts of subjects were showing up at these conferences.

Some of the speakers were very controversial and when these tapes started

showing up all over the country, with my name on it, I started to get

‘set-up’ by people of the press. Out takes from videos were shown on TV

and I was presented as being responsible for what they said, whether in

or out of context and thanks to the press, I finally was harassed out of

business. This was the last straw.

I tried to sell the house and move to Arizona. We had checked with

Chambers of Commerce all over the country looking for a place to move

that would be good for my wife’s arthritis and once we found it I am here

and she and the kids are back in Iowa because she has had it and wants

nothing to do with me anymore. (I can’t blame her for that).

Some more needs to be said about the Identity days (that is what the

press refereed to the Emry sermons), because I don’t know what you kids

were told about it.

The Identity movement is very Anti-Black and Jew have Blacks and Jews

for customers. I don’t believe in racial mixing in marriage because of

the possibility of genetic problems, such as diseases that are common to

one race affecting the children of the mixed union. I don’t want anything

to do with the Jewish religion, because I have studied it. Enough said!

This doesn’t make me to want to go out and kill Blacks and Jews! However,

I saw a lot of people in the Identity Movement that felt that way. The

strange thing was that at about the same time that I was seeing that it

was wrong and I was thinking of getting out of it is when I was attacked.

I made a statement at the same time that I thought our nation was in

danger and great stress if we made a ;National Holiday for Martin Luther

King. At that, the people in Red Oak, nearly went crazy and started

writing letters to the editor against me, my children were harassed in

school not only by ignorant children, but by the teachers as well. I

received obscene phone calls, and orders to get out of town, threats of

physical violence to me and even death threats.

Also, at that time, I had an impostor come to my door claiming to be from

the IRS and flashed a badge of some sort, accused me of being a tax

protester and informed me that my name had come out on their computer

print-out. I checked with a Mr. Sam Davis with the IRS in Atlantic, Iowa

and he told me he didn’t even know me and assured me that He didn’t know

of any agent in our part of the state. It looked to me that someone was

going to get hurt and I sure didn’t want my kids involved in this, so

this is when we got you kids out of the public school system. I contacted

the local police, the county sheriff, the local representative of the

highway patrol who lived just up the street and was a customer of mine

and I contacted the Omaha office of the FBI. Now the purpose of all of

this was to invite them to view any or all of my video tapes, of which

the media said was so bad. Not only that, but the law had made some

mistakes in the recent past months in killing of a person in Nebraska who

was accused of some of the very same things these people in Red Oak were

accusing me of!

I sure didn’t want some trigger happy cop tearing into my family with M-

16’s.

The local people who were most likely to have been involved in this never

even responded to my letter, but three different FBI agents came to our

house once and asked what this was all about and if they could help!

After a long and friendly visit, they invited me to their office if we

had anymore trouble and I invited them to drop in if they were in the

area. I honestly believe that I was instrumental in calming down some

people by my visits with these agents and I, if anything was working with

them in trying to eliminate a blood bath at my house! I felt as long as

he still had some sort of freedom of speech that I could have an opinion

without having to have my family and my life threatened.

One time a Lauri Jewit, from KWWL TV in Waterloo, Iowa got some of my

video tapes under false pretense and harassed me personally on her TV

show. A Tom Ginsberg, wrote a slanderous attack against me in an A.P.

release which cause me great trouble. He even called me and told me he

was going to do it and informed me that the press could make or break

anyone they wanted to. What this smart ass did next was to call the

Department of Revenue and suggest to them that I wasn’t paying sales

tax,....which of course was a lie but it got me in trouble with those

people for a day or so until they checked in their computer.

But, as big a creep as he was, his timing wasn’t the greatest because

when he called me and threatened me, I had the phone call recorded and

have it to this day, and guess who just happened to be sitting there

visiting with me and picked up the extension phone and listened to him?

Two agents from the FBI. Ain’t it great?

I don’t know if the agency made some phone calls or what, but right after

that, things calmed down but the damage had been done and in their weird

way in Red Oak, these very patriotic people decided to starve us out by

boycotting my Barber Shop. It worked, and after a few months of having my

business drop by 75% we decided to get the heck away from those

despicable people. Why your mother wants to continue to live there only

can be guessed at. I think that she has such a hatred for me that she

feels comfortable in a town that hates me as well. She is in friendly

territory, so to speak. I just think it is the most unfair thing to pull

on the two girls, to be forced to go to school in a town where they are

harassed and where their father is ill spoken of all the time!

I want to close chapter two out with a few observations. I think Doctrine

is one of the most dangerous things you may ever come in contact with

because it causes strife. Doctrine is quite often mistaken for religion.

I think that the Bible is a compilation of allegories, mythology, wishful

thinking, folklore, Jewish philosophy,....some of it is good advise and

some of it is destructive.

I think if you feel you must read it, it could be read and studied as one

would the Koran. I don’t think it can be trusted as the infallible word

of God. Even if it started out as that, it has been tampered with too

much by man.

When I consider what designing men under the view of the press and the

skeptical eye of relatives and non-member neighbors, did to the Book of

Commandments and early revelations of the Mormon Church, think what could

have been done behind wall of a synagogue or monastery to what many call

the “HOLY” Bible!

It appears to be a book written about the Jews, for the Jews and by the

Jews. Which creates a history for them, as well as a threat to the rest

of the world’s people to leave them alone or their God will get then and

punish them, because they after all are ‘God’s Chosen Race.”

It puts them in pre-eminence above all other races. I was called a White

Supremacist for making these views and opinions, and yet I defy anyone to

read the Bible and not see that it teaches Jewish Supremacy. If believing

that one race is superior to another is wrong then the Bible is wrong in

it’s racist teachings.

The Book of Mormon, I have very little explanation for. It seems that it

is a copy of the Bible. An attempt to parallel the Bible just closely

enough to make it seem legitimate while at the same time laying the

ground work for a new religion. The carry-over of errors in translation

from the King James into the text of the Book of Mormon should be enough

to show anyone it is a fraud!

As far as the Baptist, Pentecostal and ;such, their Babbling, Raptures,

Future Anti-Christs, Kingdom Postponement theories and Spook under every

bed, can the most part be blamed on the Bible. But under investigation,

fall even short of being doctrine taught in the Bible. Man’s twisting and

bending of verses cause these false doctrines, but those who will not

study will fall for them.

In the Identity Movement, the very thing they hate, they promote to the

limit. They have a hatred for the Jews and yet their promoters preach St.

Paul, who was the author of much of the Jewish philosophy that is found

in the Bible. To be Anti-Paul is unthinkable to the Identity people. And

yet the main oppress to their doctrine is that character inn the New

Testament, called Saul of Tarsus!

So what is the end result? The Baptist do nothing about corrupt

government because they think they are going to go in the Rapture and it

is God’s will to let the devil have the world for a while anyway.

The Pentecostals fall into the same category. They have an edge though,

as long as they can talk in tongues then can live an immoral or crooked

life and feel that they still have the Holy Ghost. That is as illogical

as sinning all Friday night and then going to confession on Saturday

morning and having the slate wiped clean by some priest, hiding behind a

sliding window.

Some of these people have stood out on a hillside after selling at 10

cents on the dollar all their belongings in hopes of flying off in the

Rapture that isn’t even in the Bible.

The end result of the Identity Movement if carried to the limit, one will

go out and purchase an M-79 or a mini-14 and go out and kill blacks, Jews

and whites who race mix and who do not believe as they do.

Where do I stand today? What have I learned?

I still have a lot of unanswered questions and maybe it will be

beneficial to mention them here.

Was the man Moses a real person or like the name implies, a Mosaic of

heroic religious leaders, statesmen, etc. mixed with folklore and a bit

of wishful thinking? Did the creators of the Bible want to make a history

and a hero for their race and just concocted this man Moses out of their

minds?

Another of these great leaders is Abraham. Now if he was such a great

obedient man of God, then why would he drag his kid up the hill to Murder

him when he had just been told that he would be the father of many

nations and this was his ONLY heir? Besides that, this perversion of

cutting off part of a baby boy’s penis when this God (who does not

change) said not to cut the flesh. Do you believe this is of God or is

this just a Jewish philosophy book?

Then their is the resurrection! Nearly everyone wants to believe in a

resurrection....they want to believe that they are going to live forever.

I am inclined to believe that what ever it is that makes our hear beat,

whether you want to call it God or Spirit of God, is the same power that

makes a pig’s heart beat.

I don’t believe that there is some invisible man in side my body that

will keep on keepin’ on, after my flesh body goes to the grave. I don’t

believe that this invisible man is going to fly off to heaven (where ever

that is) when I die! I have even debated the subject of heaven,

suggesting that perhaps it is a 4th dimension right here on earth that we

can not see.

Many teach a physical resurrection and yet when you pin them down and

they see that they are talking to someone who is blind or crippled, they

say, “well, I believe we will be resurrected with a perfect body.”

That is somehow supposed to make that poor soul feel better and look

forward to death. Never mind that it was this God of Love that put you on

this earth like that. Mormonism teaches that when you die that this inner

man flies off to any one of several heavens and after thousands of years

(for some) of being totally free of the hindrance of the physical body,

they will be rewarded with another physical body of flesh and bone (no

Blood) and get on with eternity. Sounds like zombie time to me! However

the Bible says that the life is in the blood, so what sort of creature is

religion teaching that you will eventually become if you are a good

little boy & girl?

Then there is their devil. This creature is supposed to have been created

by God. And everything that God created was “very good” the bible

says,...then

what sort of a God are we talking about here? God is supposed to be all

knowing and all powerful and yet it seems to me that this God created a

devil to torture, tempt, starve, mutilate his creatures, at random,

whether they were good or bad. And all we see this God doing is NOTHING!

Let’s compare this Heavenly Father with an earthly father: If an earthly

father would do only 1% to his own children as what this Heavenly Father

has done, through this devil or directly, he would be put in the electric

chair and the populace would cheer at his death!

What about this God who sat on his spiritual Omnipotent hands and watched

as all these little boy babies were slaughtered so that Moses could

emerge the one and only?

What about this all knowing God who couldn’t plan ahead a way to come

into the world as a baby, without having, who knows how many, boy babies

murdered so that Joseph would take Jesus to Egypt, (so the scriptures

could be fulfilled”)?

What about today? What about this God who allows all of this war and

famine and the starving of little children and the maiming of them and

people fleeing before tanks and flame throwers when he could with a flick

of a finger stop all of this carnage, if he wanted to. It must be quite a

spectator sport from up there in heaven.

Don’t tell me he is a personal God who lives in your heart! I don’t

believe it!

Are all people called to a priesthood, or just some select few, make

mini-gods of themselves?

Look what Hollywood has done to our people. They teach witchcraft,...but

what if there are no such things? They teach devil and demon possession,

but what if there is no devil?

They make movies about dying and going to heaven,...but what if there is

no heaven?

I think what we are seeing on the screen is “BIBLE;THE SEQUEL”. I think

the same people who wrote the Bible are developing credence for it in the

movies.

I am just as inclined to believe in an Easter Bunny and Santa Claus as I

am a Devil.

I think we can say something similar to the Christian Priests of today,

like Elijah asked the Baal Priests of long ago....where is your God? Is

he on a trip? Is he asleep? Why doesn’t he care about the suffering on

HIS planet?

And what about the Biblical view of marriage? Marriage because of our

biblical hang ups and up-bringing has turned into a dream come true for

the lawyers. The very people Christ spoke out against.!

Well, what does one do? In my opinion, I could be just as comfortable

attending church at a Utah LDS church service or RLDS church service, as

an Assembly of God service, if they would stop force feeding their

doctrine. If some how you can let their doctrine fall off of you like

water off a duck’s back then I think it probably wouldn’t be any worse

than watching TV on Sunday Morning.

Now this is speaking from an adult standpoint. As far as whether you want

your children brainwashed by their foolishness is up to you. Be careful,

because it could fall into the category of spiritual child abuse. It was

for me!

It is desperately important to have moral fellowship. The worse the world

gets, it is more and more important that you and your family grow up in

the surroundings of people who have moral standards and an honest concern

for your well being. Knowing that there is some group or even one person

who cares about you and your problems can make the difference between

keeping on and suicide. In a church group, you can usually find someone

who has it tougher than you and that in most cases will help you out of

your problems, by helping someone else. Some churches will fill your

need. My need has changed over the years. I started out ‘needing’ to get

answers. No one could fill that need. Now I desperately need to be loved!

Songs in churches quite often teach doctrine that go contrary to your

thinking, but often times the songs are uplifting and cause no harm that

I can see. Prayers do no harm that I know of, other than passing the buck

onto a fictitious God to do something for you that you (if you had a

little ambition could do yourself.

Prayers may sound illogical, but if they are sincere they reveal to you,

the heart of that person, and that allows you to help them if you are so

inclined.

Most church services are uplifting, if you are down. I would recommend

that you stay away from the Sunday School classes, for these are designed

for indoctrination or debate. Not Healthy!

Some pass the test by their kindness and their concern...other just pass

the plate!

My recommendation (if you feel you must attend church) is to seek out a

church in which you can serve your fellow man, not just be a donator and

as pew warmer. Over look it’s doctrine. If such a situation is not

possible and they insist on shoving their doctrine down your throat or

that of your kids, then run, don’t walk to the service clubs in your town

and work there. Clubs like the Optimist and Lions do more for mankind

with out the religious junk than most of the churches anyway.

If it is nothing but Scouts, or PTAS or softball or bowling. What ever it

takes to do things with your family and other families.

Whether there is a personal God, or a Creator God who set this all in

motion, revealed his laws or nature and then let us work this out or

whether there is no God at all, my suggestion is to live as good a life

as you can and please try to benefit from the mistakes of your father.

Be good and honest. Live a moral life. Raise your chidden in a moral

surrounding. Don’t do anything to hurt your children or to bring shame to

them like I have done. Do everything in your power to hold your marriage

together, because losing your family is like losing your life.

I love you all, very much. Please forgive me!

The most remote from this point in time is remembering at the age of Two

crawling into and squatting in the overflow tube in the dam in the feed

lot on the farm in Moorhead.

I remember squatting there and looking at the corn fields out one end and

watching my Dad in the feed lot with the cattle and hogs.

Years went by before I can remember with clarity but can not put an exact

date on. For example, the Wednesday and Saturday nights when we went to

town and went to the movies and the Bank Night and the fire in the

theater and waiting for the cream check.

I think I know now why some people return to their home town later in

life. They are wanting their children to have the same fun that they had

when they were kids. Really, I think they want to escape the problems of

life and relive the running up and down the streets like in their

childhood.

I will forever remember like it was last night, the night the stars fell.

I remember standing out by the big tree and the back door of the garage

and looking at the sky towards town and watching them streak across the

sky. I didn’t realize that it was a meteor shower and wouldn’t have know

what that was anyway at that age and was awe struck about it for years.

In fact, I remember lying flat on my back and watching the clouds change

shape in hopes that “GOD” would show me a sign in the heavens as to what

I should do with my life. You see, at a very early age I believed in a

“GOD” in the sky who was in charge of everything and that everything

would work out all right. I don’t know where I got such an idea but I

suspect it was from some RLDS Sunday school teacher. Suffice it to say

that I do not believe everything is turning out OK and it doesn’t seem to

be all under control. From my perspective, I see my marriage and His

created world a mess and out of control.

This isn’t going to be a religious paper and this bit of news will be a

great relief to my children I am sure, but there shall be references from

time to time about it because it is my life, such as it was, that we are

looking back on. OK?

Later on in this I am going to list some ailments that I have had over

the years that perhaps will explain why you kids have some of the things

you have.

But for now lets think about some of the fun things. I fear that I have

given the impression that there were no fun times and that just isn’t so.

I just get sad when I think about them because I have the feeling that I

have been the cause of my children not having the fun that I had as a

child. A miserable SOB such as me should have never had any children and

yet I have four of the best kids any man could ever hope for. Beauty,

wit, kindness, feistiness, sweetness, integrity, patience, power,

strength, wisdom, ability, guts and the ability to have fun. Healthy kids

with a mind of their own. I love them more and more as each day goes by.

Something I want to do in this “WILL” is to will to you information about

where you came from. In other words, give you as much information I can

about your ancestors. This will require a lot of work from my mother. I

don’t know if she will even want to help. She hasn’t spoken to me now for

four years and I haven’t a clue why. Your mother’s side of the family I

will not touch on because of my lack of knowledge of it and my total lack

of caring about it in the first place.

I consider you to be Johnson’s and you always will be. I suggest that

sometime in your life that you attend a Johnson Reunion just to see who

you came from. I am sorry that I never took you to them but there was a

very good reason that I will touch on in a later part of this “WILL”.

As you can tell, this is being directed mainly to my four children, but I

suppose someone down the road of time might get some insight from it. I

can’t picture in my mind, grandchildren. I picture myself as 17 or 18

years of age and I am 48. I ponder these next ten years knowing that my

Dad died at 58. I used to imagine old age with my kids coming to visit

and holding my grandchildren, but that has left me and I don’t see very

far in to the future anymore.

My teenage years were the best. I had a lot of fun, probably too much

fun. But I remember things as a little kid such as birthdays and how we

liked Christmas at Grandpa Wilson’s because of all the gifts. All we ever

got at Grandpa Johnson’s on Christmas was a nice dinner and a $2.00 bill.

I think my folks felt sorry for us so they would bring a few presents

from our house for us to open over there so we weren’t too disappointed.

I am making this sound like were greedy little brats, and maybe we were,

but the contrast between the two Grandparents was so striking that any

normal child would have desired Christmas at the Wilson’s over the

Johnson’s.

I remember a movie I saw of Hopalong Cassidy, about a bed that killed

people and I have had a fear of canopy beds ever since. I remember seeing

a movie where the character “Rocky” had to go to the electric chair and

it about scared me to death. Speaking of the electric chair, about that

same time the Rosenbergs were put to death and I remember as a kid when

we heard about them throwing the switch, I wondered if our lights would

dim because of the loss of current.

My favorite movie character was Lash Larue the cowboy who had a long

serial for kids at the movies each week.

I don’t remember at what age I realized there was no Santa Claus but I do

remember being disgusted at my Grandma Wilson for pushing it at me after

I knew it was a lie.

I remember one Easter! Easter egg hunting was a big deal around our

place, even the coloring of the eggs at a later age, but the hunting for

them out in the yard when the weather was good and hunting for them in

the house when it was too cold or wet. I remember, as if it was

yesterday, the Easter when on that sunny, cool, Sunday, I was standing

out by the front gate and my Grandpa (I called him Gramp) yelled out,

“Paul, did you see him?” he was talking about the Easter Bunny. I of

course said no.....and he said, “I just saw him run over the top of the

hill!” Well, I was excited, of course, and then my uncle Jesse who was

standing there said,...”How old are you Paul? Do you still believe in an

Easter Bunny? I guess that explains why I never wanted my children to be

taught such stuff, because I remembered how disgusted I was to find I had

been lied to by those I loved.

I remember how I was so conscious of my looks at a young age. I don’t

recall who said it, but someone remarked about my ‘bucked teeth’ and sure

enough, I have photos to prove it. But it bothered me for a long time.

Later on I had a terrible time with acne and my brother would call me

pimple face and I hated it, but believe me, I tried everything on my face

to stop them. I would shave with a double edge razor and then soak my

face with rubbing alcohol. I even tried Ben Gay once. Once was enough! I

had a white cream that I would put on at night to dry my face out. Some

times I wouldn’t get it all off and it was very embarrassing to have

someone at school ask me if I was wearing make-up!

The doctors said that two of the worst things one could take if they had

acne was peanuts and Pepsi. Well, it was the fad back then to go down to

the Barber Shop (Crawfords) and get a bottle of Pepsi, take a drink (to

make room) and then get a bag of Planter’s peanuts and pour them in the

bottle, shake it up and then drink the mixture. Guess what my favorite

drink was?

I guess about the time I was born, so was a collie pup, and he became

mine and I named him Skippy. He was my friend, always was there, my

protector and after all of these years I still miss him. How can a 48

year old man shed a tear over a dog that has been dead for 35 years.

My brother, Ray and I built a raft up at the dam above the barn and feed

lot out of some old rail road ties that our dad had got from the railroad

when it closed down. It made a great raft and we spent many an hour with

paddles and a pushing pole having fun on our own private sea. We had a

black cat we nick-named “Sea Go’n Cat” because in spite of a cat’s

dislike for water, every minute we were on that raft, so was she. I can’t

remember when Skippy died, or how, and maybe I don’t want to, because I

fear he was shot by my dad, but I’m not sure.

I remember a dog I had later on that was the best squirrel dog. We went

hunting a lot, but he was no Skippy, and to save me I can’t even remember

his name. Maybe it was ‘Mike’.

I remember that my brother and I fought a terrible lot. Anyway from my

view we did. I remember getting so mad at him one time I shot at him with

my new BB Gun and hit in the little finger. Boy was Mom mad at me!

I threw a brick at him one time too! I will never forget one time Mom

passed out on the sofa and I asked Dad what was wrong a and he said it

was our constant fighting and if we didn’t stop it they wee going to get

a divorce. I don’t know if we stopped fighting but the thought of

splitting our family hit me like a ton of bricks and to this day, I can

not imagine life without my whole family. [My brother and Sister don’t

speak to me anymore for some reason].

My Dad loved basketball and I wanted to play the sport to please him in

the worst way, but I was too short and just wasn’t that much in control

to play the game. I finally just gave up on the sport but most people

never knew the real reason. I was embarrassed to death to take mass

showers after the game. I guess I was afraid I was too short in that

respect also and just didn’t want the ridicule!

I did learn to play the trumpet, and I think pretty good too, but my main

thing was to see I could imitate Perez Perado in his “Cherry Pink and

Apple Blossom White” and Clyde McCoy in his “Wah Wah Blues”. These were a

couple of songs my Dad liked and I look back on it now and see that I was

desperately trying to please him. I don’t ever remember my Dad ever

hugging me or putting his arm around me. I was such a brat I didn’t

deserve it, but some times you have to give love even to those who don’t

deserve it, because it might help them to grow up!

I loved the sound of the song “Taps” and would take my trumpet with me

when I would get the cows. I’ll bet the neighbors wondered what was going

on when every night around 4:30 this kid, his dog, and trumpet would show

up on top of the hill and play taps as loud as he could.

I am a product of the Rock & Roll age. I was there as a teenager when

Bill Haley came up with “Rock around the clock”. I was in high school

when Elvis Presley had “Heartbreak Hotel” and “Don’t be cruel”. It was a

whole different world after that. I used to stay up listening to KMNS

radio out of Sioux City, with the radio and my head under the blankets

with a pad,pen and flashlight writing down the top 20 songs of the week.

If I could have only grown sideburns like Elvis. If I could only sing

like Elvis. It sounds stupid now, but he had such an effect on kids my

age it is difficult to describe. I remember my Dad took the radio out of

the barn once because he got so tired of hearing “All Shook UP”! He said

the cows wouldn’t give milk with that racket on. From where I was

sitting, it seemed to me that I was ‘Taking’ the milk, they weren’t

giving it!

In spite of the fascination with Rock & Roll, when at the teen dances, I

refused to jump and jerk to that stuff. I liked the slow dances and some

of the fast dances where held on to the girl.

In fact, later on I formed a band and got much more enjoyment out of

playing at the dances than dancing at them. We had some really wild times

at the dances. We played at a dance in Ute, Iowa one New Years Eve, which

was just a drunken brawl. I never drank a drop, but boy was the crowd

drunk. In fact, I never drank or smoked while nearly everyone around me

did. I suppose it was my RLDS teaching that kept me from it. I kept from

smoking mostly because I got so tired of hearing my Dad nearly cough his

head off every morning while he was having his cup of coffee. I never

needed to be awakened in the morning to go milk, because I had already

been awakened by Dad’s coughing. I didn’t want to do that!

One of the dances we had was for the 4th of July at the State Park south

of town. We decided to have a fireworks display and then the dance. You

could buy fireworks in South Dakota, so off to Sioux City we went. But,

before we left, people found out we were going and started giving us

$5.00 for the display and an extra $5.00 for their own kid’s fire

crackers. Well, that afternoon we ended up at a fireworks stand with

over $500.00 to spend. Back in those days, that bought a heck of a lot of

fire crackers. Well, to make a long story short, on the way back to Iowa,

I got picked up for speeding and in spite of how guilty we looked, the

patrolman did not check for fireworks even though it was the 3rd of July.

I didn’t mind paying that fine at all and losing 3 points, because if he

had discovered the fireworks, it was their policy to throw them in the

Missouri River (we were told) and the fireworks display would have been

ruined.

I loved to ski. In fact, I liked to do a lot of things before I started

barbering and as soon as I began working I realized that all it would

take was a sprained ankle or a broken finger and my income would be

stopped, so I just quit the things that I was afraid I might get hurt in.

I built my own pair of skis in shop class and sent away to Sears for ski

clamps and poles. I was sure proud of my skis. I got some of my greatest

scares flying down that hill, just South of the barn. One time we put

chains on my car, got a long rope and went down to the baseball diamond

which was covered with snow and proceeded to go around and around just as

fast as I could pulling a skier behind me. Our fun was ruined when some

one hollered at us from the highway saying he was calling the cops

because we were ruining the baseball field.

I only water skied once and I loved it. Never knew anyone who had a boat,

so was out of luck on doing much of that.

In school we played softball a lot. I guess I enjoyed that about as much

as anything. Every recess it was out to the diamond. I remember one time

there was a pop fly. The pitcher (who was the biggest kid in the 6th

grade) and me (the smallest kid in the 5th grade) both yelled “I’ve got

it” at the exact same time while looking up we ran head long into one

another. I remember being embarrassed nearly to death because I cried.

Later I learned that I had popped a cartilage out of my knee. I guess

that will make most anyone cry. I had to take radio wave treatments for

that injury. It wasn’t until I was in Basic Training doing the Crab Walk

that my knee popped out again and the drill sergeant thought I was faking

and made me walk to the hospital to have it checked. The hospital was two

miles away.

Much of my teen years and later was revolving around cars. I loved cars

and the faster the better. I think this came from a show my folks took me

to in Onawa. It was a daredevil show staring Joey Chitwood. He had all

white 51 fords (I think) and they would jump ramps and such and it just

lit a fire in me.

As soon as I could, the next day, my brother and I built ramps and we

came down the hill on our scooters, wagons, bikes and everything you

could think of with wheels. Later on that day I rigged up some bailing

twine from the yard gate to the fence post that went down into the corn

field and made it adjustable so that I could pole vault the string and

move it up an inch each time. Later on in the day, we were back being

like Joey Chitwood and I set the ramp higher than it had ever been and

went clear up above the chicken house to get a real run at it. As I flew

through the air, on my bike, thrilled to glory, both arms were cut at the

biceps as I rant right into that bailing twine that I had forgotten to

take down. Needless to say it yanked my feet off of my pedals and when I

came down, I wish I had been riding a girls bike. I don’t ever remember

since, such pain as I felt at that moment. I still have the scars on my

arms. And to this day I have pain in the other place too!

I was just thinking about snow skiing again. You know, I can still spell

the odder of soaking wet gloves and mittens on the oil burner. When I

would come in from skiing, I would be on the verge of frostbite. Off

would come the gloves and boots and I’d kick my nearly frozen feet up on

that oil burner and after a while come back to life again.

I liked this girl and she invited me to hay ride that her church was

having, and I got one of the biggest shocks of my young life after the

hay ride when we got back to her church. I had been taught Mormonism and

that I belonged to the only true church on the face of the earth and that

we had all the answers. You can imagine my shock when we ere having hot

chocolate and cookies and a Bible Quiz and she knew all the answers and I

knew none. It embarrassed me into a life of study and questioning just

how much of a true church I belonged to. I was 14 at the time, dating,

shouldn’t have been, but my folks were very liberal on that, and

shouldn’t have been.

My folks had a 1950 Chevy and I was allowed to take the car on a date

even though all I had was a learners permit, because I was only 14. One

night, I had taken this girl to a movie in town and had to have her home

by midnight. I was about 2 miles from her farm home, and we both went to

sleep. Needless to say, when I woke up the Chevy was plugging right along

in the left hand ditch, taking out fence posts, woven wire and three

strands of barbed wire. I slammed on the brakes and we piled out of the

passenger door and ran onto the road. I knew exactly what time it was

because they we playing the national anthem on KMNS like they always did

at midnight. About that time someone came down the road, stopped, asked

if we were all right. He went back to his car, got a chain from his

trunk, hooked it up and pulled the car back onto the road, packed up his

chain and drove off. To this day, I don’t know who he was! Now it was a

strange night anyway, because when I picked her up at 7 PM it was cold

and snow was on the frozen road. During the evening it had started to

warm up and the road was a sloppy, wet muddy mess. I knew I wouldn’t be

able to get down her lane and back out, so I parked the car at the top of

the hill and walked her to her house. I was late and knew I would be in

trouble so I ran as hard as I could up her lane and jumped in the car and

took off for home. I always had trouble with nose bleeds and when I got

too hot or too excited, it would just start bleeding. Well, it was

dripping and in the dark I thought my nose was just running because of

the cold, so I grabbed my handkerchief and my white coat sleeve too, part

of the time, and headed for home. When I got home, I parked the car in

the garage and got into the house. I noticed that I had blood all over my

clothes. I just went to bed and the first thing my folks saw in the

morning was a banged up car and my clothes all bloody. It took all of my

courage to go down stairs that morning to face my Dad. I guess that they

were so relieved that I was in one piece that I didn’t even get so much

as a bawling out. I remember taking the car to school shop class to pound

some of the dents out and I remember setting some new fence for that

farmer, but the best part was not getting yelled at! Another thing, this

convinced my Dad, that as soon as I was old enough to get a license, that

I was going to have my own car!

One other hay ride I went on was a tragedy and it really tells you

something else about my Dad. I had received a real nice 17 jewel Waltham

wrist watch for my graduation present, went on a hay ride the very next

night and lost it. Apparently, the band broke and it dropped off. I

remember walking the whole next day, retracing every foot of the trail we

went on that night, but no watch was to be found. No words can describe

how bad I felt about losing my graduation present, but my folks didn’t

yell as me, but I knew they were hurt and yet it was a situation that

nothing could be done to make it right, other than to say I was sorry.

Every kid has a special friend. I was lucky to have several. Some of

these kids weren’t liked much by the other kids, because their parents

were poor, or they were too fat, or sort of rebels, but I liked them and

we had great times. I had one friend who was a bad influence, but the

others were just great kids.

There was this loner that I befriended who came out of the thin air one

day when 6 kids were going to beat me up and said “Six against one isn’t

fair, how about us two against you punks!” Needless to say the punks ran.

And I knew I had a real friend!

Another friend was a little crazy, but always stood by me no matter what.

We did a lot of double and triple dating and always had a lot of fun but

nothing could compare to what we did together on Halloween. It is because

of the stupid things that we did, that causes me today to be opposed to

my kids being involved with Halloween.

The trouble with Halloween is that each year you try to out-do what you

did the year before. Now, that can only mean that eventually you are

going to break the law or break something. One year we took a wagon apart

and re-assembled in on top of a store in town. It was a heck of a job and

required more work than any of us would have wanted to do in a real

paying job, but what we learned later on that week was that we had

accidentally (and I use that word loosely) caused $4,000.00 damage (they

said) to the roof. And to this day I never told anyone who was in on it.

The only thing about it that I am thankful for is that I didn’t do any of

the damage, because I was the ‘lookout’ for the city cop, and not on the

roof.

We used to carry bales of straw in the trunk of the car so that, if and

when the city cop would start to chase us we would block the street with

the bales. Kind-of-dumb, huh?

One Halloween we got into a lot of trouble because we were dating girls

in Logan and we decided to “Trick or Treat” Logan for a change. We found

this hayrack behind the Methodist church were they apparently had parked

it from an earlier hay ride that evening and thought it would be all

kinds of fun to park it behind the Catholic Church. As we were rolling it

down the street it went out of control and ran over some of the bushes in

front of the Catholic Church and slammed into the front door. We ran for

our lives!

Since we didn’t have the fun we hoped for in Logan we stopped on the

outskirts of Mondamin on the way home and walked into town. We noticed a

bunch of kids gathered in an alley so that is where we went too. We

talked for a while and then someone yelled “COPS”, everybody scattered

like chickens but us four guys!

We all backed up against the wall of the building and just froze there in

the pitch blackness. There we were standing not saying a word for a long

time and finally I said, “do you suppose it is safe to leave?” At that

moment a bright flashlight came on, aimed right at my face and a deep

authoritative voice said, “I don’t think so boys!” Little did we know,

the Town Marshal was there in the alley with up all the time.

He marched us to the police station, and put two of us in one cell and

the other two in the other cell and closed the door so we couldn’t even

see the other two. I don’t know how long we were there but it was long

enough that I made up my mind I never wanted to ever be in jail again.

When they finally brought us out to the Mayor, he asked us our names and

what town we were from and our phone numbers. We tried to change the

subject several times and tried to be so nice and all that crap, but he

wasn’t buying. Finally, he had heard all he wanted to and informed us

that he knew that we hadn’t done anything yet, but we were from out of

town and it was past midnight and we were in his town and up to no good!

(He was right)...so he asked us, if he let us go would we go straight

hope and go to bed. We were shocked that we might get off that easy, so

we assured him that we would and he asked us how long we thought it would

take for us to get home and we said we could be home by 1:30 AM (it was

1:00 AM by then). He told us he didn’t want us to get a speeding ticket

because the Logan police were looking for a car full of kids because of

some vandalism to a church and the police were out in force, so he said,

“Take your time and be home by 2:30 AM.” We all agreed that would be

easy to do. Then he threw in the clincher. He said, “I have your phone

numbers and at 2:30 AM sharp, I am going to call each one of you and if

you are there to answer the phone all you have to do is give me your

name, and I’ll hang up...but if your folks have to answer the phone

because you aren’t home I’ll have to tell them why I am calling.” Well,

we took off for home and at 2:30 AM all four of us dummies were standing

by our phones with our hands on the receiver ready to get it on the first

ring so our folks wouldn’t wake up and the Mayor of Mondamin was in his

own bed grinning himself to sleep!

I think one of the most frustrating things in being a father is

recognizing various traits in your children that are obviously from your

gene pool. I mean, things that leave absolutely no doubt as to where the

kid got the idea. As I go through some of these things, I hope my kids

are smarter that I was, so they don’t make the same mistakes. For example

back in the James Dean and Presley days, it was cool to never smile at a

girl. You were to be cool and always look like you didn’t care or were

hurt or about half mad all the time. Because of that stupid thinking, I

doubt that I smiled at a girl once in 5 years. Always had to act like the

tough guy. And of course nothing could be honest or above board. It

always had to be some sort of con-job with the girls. Everyone was trying

to out do everyone else.

Setting records was a big deal, whether it was how fast you could drive

to Onawa or who had the best drag race car or even MY record! Out of my

group of friends, I was the only one who successfully went steady with

three different girls in three different town all at the same time. It

was one big game of deceit and frustration, and of course excitement!

Back to younger days. I remember as a little kid, we were parked in front

of the Post Office (two doors up from the bar) on a Wednesday or Saturday

night. I had received my 15 cents allowance earlier in the day and

unknown to me my Dad was as broke as could be and my Mom ask me if I

would give Dad my 15 cents so he could go get a glass of beer. Even at

that young age I thought that was stupid, but the 15 cents was no big

deal to me and I didn’t realize that my dad was an alcoholic and was in

that bad of shape.

My very favorite food was ‘stringy meat’ as I used to call it. By that I

meant roast beef, with white cake with coconut frosting with pear halves,

for desert.

When I was very little, I used to ride with my Dad while he did field

work. It was fun to ride on the tractor, but it was more fun to drag your

bare feet in that cool, freshly turned soil. So, every chance I got I

would ride behind something, dragging my feet. One time I was riding

behind a drill, which is a big piece of machinery that is pulled by a

tractor and is used for sowing oats or wheat in narrow rows. It has a

board across the back of it for the farmer to step up on so that he can

put more seed in the hoppers. I was just riding along one day sitting on

that back board, dragging my feet, when the machine stopped. My Dad had

just stopped for some reason, but I stood up, looked down into where the

grain went, thought it was plugged up and stuck my hand down in there to

‘un-plug’ it and since I was way in the back, my Dad couldn’t see me and

when he took off again, the machine grabbed my finger on my right hand

and nearly pulled it off. To this day my finger nail has never grown

normal.

But that wasn’t my only close call. I was riding on the back of Dad’s F-

20 tractor while he was plowing and fell asleep. When he hit a bump I

fell off and at the very second that he hit the bump, he also lifted the

cutting blade of the plow, just passing over me by an inch or two. As it

was, the wheel ran right over my stomach, but if I had fallen off one

second earlier, I would have been cut in half.

That wasn’t my only “close call” but I’ll tell you about my car

adventures later.

One time we had a real heavy rain and it washed out our bridge that we

crossed to get to the main road to town. Dad rigged up a rope and pulley

system with our mailbox so the mail man could put our mail in the box as

usual and then we (on the other side of the creek) could pull the mail

box over, get the mail and then return it to the other side for the next

day’s mail. Later, Dad built a cable bridge. We called it the swinging

bridge. It was the neatest thing in the county and I doubt if there was a

person in the county who didn’t know about it. It dipped down as you

crossed it and nearly scared people to death when they would suddenly

drop into the creek on that bridge, and then climb up out again. It was a

great way so scare girls too!

I was just one disappointment to my folks after another. It seemed that

so many things just went wrong and I guess it was just because I wasn’t

thinking.

Here is an example; I don’t remember who bought me the new rod & reel but

one day I went fishing in the creek all alone and a fish took my hook

down to the bottom and then got away or at least got it tangled in some

brush or a limb and I couldn’t get it out. No matter how hard I pulled

nothing would give, and then something did....I did! I was standing,

barefoot, on that slick clay dirt and fell in, way over my head. I wasn’t

much of a swimmer and I was scared silly, so I dropped the rod and reel

and scraped and clawed the bank and finally saved myself from

drowning...but lost my brand new rod & reel!

When I was in the 7th grade, a girl I was in Band with came down with

Polio. No one back then knew what to do about Polio but they were going

to make sure no one ever went swimming where she had and they had a shot

to give to everyone who had been around her. Well, as it turned out the

swimming hole had nothing to do with it and neither did the shots but

people were so scared that they lined us up at the Drs. office and since

he didn’t read the directions, he gave us a triple dose at one time

instead of three different shots spaced out over a month. The effect on

us was to cause our muscles to draw up and get hard and stiff. As kids

began to react to his mistake they suggested that we start running, or as

least walking to get the poison he had shot into us circulated throughout

our system. Many of us elected to ride bicycles instead. We rode to other

towns. We were so tired we thought we were going to die, but the minute

we stopped, our muscles would start to draw up. I can’t remember how long

it took for that to wear off, but it was one of the worst things that

ever happened to me and possibly the closest to being killed by a doctor

I ever want to get.

Things that kids today don’t even think of, were common to us, for

example; we would help Mom butcher chickens. I would shoot the roosters

in the head with a 22 rifle and cut the head off. Mom would drop them

into boiling water for a while and then we would pick off all the

feathers. Mom would then cut them up, gut them and the next thing you

knew we were having fried chicken and mashed potatoes.

The smell of burning feathers sort of turned you off, but the smell of

burning corn stalks in the fall was such a great smell that it made up

for it. Dad would rake the stalks up after picking corn into long rows

across the field and we would go out and light them on fire and you could

smell that wonderful fragrance all over the state of Iowa. This was

before we got the idea to plow them under instead.

My favorite subjects in school were science and world history. I never

did understand Math! And I couldn’t spell worth a darn.

I think it is funny the things you think of when you begin a task like

this. I remember the first girl I ever kissed was Bonnie Brown. I

remember the first girl that I ever had something like a date with was a

girl from Texas I met at church camp. I was so bashful it was terrible

and yet I wanted to give her a good night kiss, so in the dark and in all

the frustration and confusion, I hit her in the stomach just as hard as I

could.

A job I liked after school and on Saturdays ands Sundays was to get the

tractor and hook up the drag and smooth out the mud ruts in our dirt

lane.

I remember many an hour playing in the clay bank. I don’t know how many

spoons of Mom’s that we lost, but boy was it fun building roads and

digging caves. The biggest cave we ever dug was actually more like a

tunnel back from the gas barrel. We dug just so far back then thought it

would be fun to dig straight up so we could ‘escape’ into the chicken

house. What we didn’t think about was that the floor of the chicken house

consisted of a 6 inch thick mat of chicken droppings mixed with lice.

Guess what a nice surprise that was to finally break through and see the

light of the inside of the chicken coop and then have all of that drop

down onto you.

Back then the telephone party line was the thing of interest. Everyone

had a different ring and if you were inclined, you could listen to your

neighbor’s phone conversations. Of if you needed to use the phone and

someone was talking you could ask them for the phone. I think it is

amazing that after all these years I still remember our farm phone

number. It was 3080!

Then came TV. We would run down from school to Gramp’s Barber Shop nearly

every night that we didn’t have to go home on the bus. Drop off a few

things, and then head for Herm’s. He had the TV/radio shop in town. He

had a 12” round Zenith TV down at his shop that us kids could sit and

watch this new thing. I think, my folks were the third family in Moorhead

to own a TV and I remember well the time when that great big 12” set was

installed in our living room. I was thrilled to see a test pattern. I

remember how difficult it was to pick up the signal and we had to have

the antenna way up on top of a high line pole. Things weren’t much under

control then like now and during the summer months, stations would come

in from all over the country. I remember one Summer day when the weather

was acting real strange, that I picked up TV stations from Denver, North

& South Carolina, Jacksonville, Fl. and Midland/Odessa, Texas as well as

places close like Minneapolis, Chicago and Kansas City. Try to do that

today!

I can’t remember the order of these diseases but I had a lot of trouble

with my sinus and I remember having to have them drained. I remember

sitting under a Vick’s tent many a time. And I remember being sick with

Chicken Pox, and then with Measles and then with Mumps. I remember also

laying in bed for a long time doing my home work because I was too sick

to go to school. It was quite customary back then to take out Tonsils. I

had mine out, kicked a nurse in the stomach for taking my clothes off and

went home the same day. For the ordeal, I received a pull/push coaster

scooter that I had a ball with.

I hated milking cows, and remember the day Dad got a milking machine.

What a help that was! It was more to clean up but a life saver. Carrying

the 5 gallon buckets of separated milk for the hogs just about broke my

back and grinding corn was terrible, hard, cold, dusty work!

My Dad built me the neatest silver racing car and I about wore it out

before I outgrew it.

I also think back before TV and remember radio shows like the Green

Hornet and Innersanctum. When that squeaky door began to open, cold

chills would run down my spine and here I am still thinking about it

after all these years. I remember the family down planting the garden and

they had let me stay in the house to listen to the Green Hornet and I was

planing on staying in the house and try to get out of planting the garden

and just as soon as my show was over, the next thing I heard was that

squeaky door and out the door I went to help in the garden.

It was so very hard for me to study because just the very least thing

would distract me. I would be reading a chapter out of a school book up

in my room and all of a sudden I would realize that I knew what they had

said on TV downstairs but I didn’t know a single thing that I had read. I

think one of the worst things that could have ever been to hinder my

school work, was to have my room directly above the living room where the

TV was.

I remember how hot it was in those upstairs bedrooms in the summer and

until we opened the registers, how cold it was in the winter before

going to bed.

My brother and I used to make a home made telephone by running a string

between two soup cans. He had the bedroom to the South and I had the one

facing the East. It is amazing how good you can hear over a string and a

tin can.

We built a cable swing out in the woods just South of the house and spent

many an hour riding on that #9 wire by hanging from a broom handle. So

many things like that were so much fun and so easy to make and do. I am

sorry for my children’s sake that we ever left the farm.

We always had a bird problem in the garage and barn. I remember one time

I was going to help out by going up into the hayloft and shoot sparrows

with my 22. What I didn’t realize was that each time I missed, I blew a

hole in the roof. Dad was real happy about that!

We got tired of there constantly being bird droppings on the car as it

sat in the garage, so one time Dad left the car out and put the tractor

in the garage and left it running and shut the door. In an hour we went

out and shut off the tractor and picked up a bushel basket full of

sparrows. Then we put the car in the garage and that ended the droppings

on the car!

Dad invented a spear-gun for fishing. When it flooded, we went to the

Brown Grade and as the water was going over the grade a fish would once

in a while flow over the road too. That is when Dad would nail it with

his spear-gun invention.

I wish I had a dollar for every hour I spent in the old tire swing. You

could twist that swing up so tight that when you let go you would get so

dizzy that you literally would fall to the ground and your head would

just sway.

We thought we had everything a kid could want and then Dad got another

farm and on it was on old country school house. Behind the school house

was a full size merry-go-round. Dad somehow brought it home and set it in

cement and us kids had our own play ground,...boy it was neat!

There was a kid, Norman, who had a 1948 Ford and if you would be at a

certain place at a certain time and would pay him 50 cents, he would take

you to Onawa, the county seat and he would drop you off while he saw his

girl friend. Then you had to be a certain place at a certain time in

Onawa and he would pick you up and bring you home. Well, one night back

in the late Fall of 1956 when I was 15, I stood there at the Ford Garage,

waiting to be picked up and brought back home and got to see them unload

and take the canvass covers off of the 1957 Ford Fairlane 500 brand new

cars and as I watched them roll off the trucks and watched as they were

driven into the show room I at that moment fell in love with the 57 ford

and I guess to my dying day will love the looks of that car. I had a job

during the Summer between my Freshman and 10th grade year and made

$300.00 painting houses. When school started, I informed my Dad that I

wanted to buy a $300.00 car. He took me to the Ford garage in Pisgah and

we got a $150.00 1949 Ford V-8. It was a beautiful car, but I wanted a

newer one, but Dad said that by the time I got insurance, license and gas

for it the remaining $150.00 would be gone. He was right!

I never did get an Iowa Driver’s license! All I ever had to take was the

learner’s permit test and they let me slip by with a eye test from then

on.

That 1949 Ford lasted less than 24 hours. It wouldn’t start the next

morning and my Dad was so mad that he took it back and demanded another

car. That is how my first car, actually was my second car! It was a 6

cylinder business coupe and a lot of fun! Not much of a car, but enough

of a car for me to tear around in and that way I wouldn’t be wrecking

Dad’s car anymore.

I managed to keep that car for about a year and then while acting like a

fool, [I came into town just as fast as I could and speed shifted into

second and accidentally shoved it into reverse and blew my

transmission]....and you know what? Dad wouldn’t help me and I didn’t

have any money so the car just sat until the next Spring when I could get

a job and some money. I can’t remember, but I would imagine that my

social life went to pot during that time. Louie Moore let me work at his

Texico station cleaning up and pumping gas in exchange for fixing my car.

After painting it, and making a mess of it, I finally junked it out and

bought my dream car. A yellow and white 1957 Ford Fairlane 500. 245 HP,

with 312 CU. IN. V-8 and it would fly!

I was bad, terrible, wild and dangerous, but nothing like this older kid

from Pisgah. He was a drunk and always getting into trouble with the law.

He had a car just like mine, same color and all. Only difference was that

his was an automatic and a 4 door, where mine was a three speed and 2

door.

I finally got tired of being accused of everything he did, so I went up

to the hardware store where they painted tractors in the basement and

changed the color of my car to all white with a red stripe instead of a

gold one like it had before. I removed the hub caps and painted the

wheels red like the stripe and loved it.

Well, one day with car full of kids that I had just picked up in Logan,

on my way to the Moorhead local celebration, I was coming through Pisgah

about 45 MPH and suddenly I noticed a car stopped right in the middle of

the street.

I mean straddling the white line. I had about one second to make a

decision. I knew that I would hit him even if I hit my brakes and I

looked to the left and saw two cars coming at me in that lane so,....I

shoved it into second and punched it and passed him on the right. It

would have worked, but....what I didn’t know was that this was a mechanic

who was test driving a car and had just backed out of the Chevy

dealership and noticed that the directional signals weren’t working. He

didn’t even see me and at the very same second that I was along side him

passing him on the right, he decided to pull back into the garage and fix

the signal.

Well, he hit me and slammed me so far to the right that I ended up

shearing off the tail of a brand new demonstrator Chevy, then I skidded

about another 30 feet or so, let up on the brakes, rolled another 30 feet

and stopped. I couldn’t roll down my window all the way and my door

wouldn’t open. I was late, my newly painted car was wrecked and I was

mad! So I did the typical immature thing and slammed it into reverse and

burned rubber back about 30 or so feet and got out on the the passenger

side. After about 45 minutes of waiting for a patrolman, I got a ticket

for reckless driving and passing on the right. Nothing I could say would

change his mind, because when he got out his tape measure, I had a total

of X many feet of skid marks and that equaled on his chart that I had to

have been going 72 miles an hour when all of this happened. What I didn’t

realize and couldn’t convince the patrolman of, was that, hard as it may

be to believe, my skid marks and my reverse burning rubber marks matched

and over lapped and it did look like a long skid mark, but it wasn’t.

I got the ticket anyway! I found out that the patrolman and the Chevy

dealer were old buddies from way back and they were sitting in his office

having coffee while I was out front scared sick. I felt like I got a

little even though because it was 93 degrees out that day and the Chevy

dealer was leaving on a two week vacation to Arizona and the demonstrator

car he was taking on the trip (the only car on the lot that had air

conditioning) was the one that I just ripped off the ass-end of!

It seemed as if school was just some where to go but my life was cars.

Grls went along with cars and a crazy kid because of the excitement I

suppose. A 52 Ford, 54 Chrysler, 56 Ford, 60 Falcon convertible, 61

Starliner and several others were bought and sold, but I couldn’t stand

having lost my 57 Ford in that wreck.

So, I bought another 57 Ford. This one was a 4 door, and I painted it the

same as the first one. It would go like the wind like the other one and I

did a terrible lot of drag racing with it. We had a quarter mile strip

going towards Soldier, but I preferred the half mile strip going towards

Pisgah. There was a strip that was two miles straight as an arrow south

of Pisgah too and every night coming back from a date in Mo. Valley,

Logan, Magnolia or where ever down that way, I had to come through that

straight-a-way. Came through it I did, about 1 AM a white streak at 130

MPH+...57 Ford speedometers only went to 130...they would go faster than

that!

57 Chevys were tough in those days. They were designed to haul hard and

fast up to about 80 MPH. No Ford could beat them in a quarter, but I

could cream them south of town in the half mile. We would be going at the

max about 80 MPH in second gear by the end of the quarter and then I

would shift into high and that 245 engine would just make that Ford

lunge, and at that speed the rear tires would chirp!

Back in those days we would cut hair until 9 or 10 PM on Wednesday and

Saturday nights. About 8:45 the Chevy guys would start gathering at the

Barber Shop and as soon as I could get out of there, off would come the

breather and out to the strip we would go. If you don’t know what I’m

talking about, just take my word for it that it was fun!

One of the saddest days of my life was when three of us guys in the RLDS

church decided to get together in Persia and try to figure out the book

of mormon. (I didn’t know back in those days that it couldn’t be figured

out), but anyway, we gave up around 1:00 AM and I started my long drive

home.

On the way it started to pour down rain. Just as I was going over the top

of a hill on a black top road which was very slick with water, I spun

out. I wasn’t even going fast this time. Instead of going into the ditch,

I turned 180 degrees and of course when that happened the engine died and

there I was coasting backward in the pitch black with a down pour and all

I could do was turn around in the seat and try as close as I could to

keep in the road with the only light to guide me being an occasional

lightning flash. By the time I got to the bottom of the hill my right

rear wheel went off the blacktop and it dragged me down into the ditch.

Pretty soon I hit something and it swung the car 45 degrees to the left

which put the front of the car facing the road and then I fell backward

and down onto the tail lights. I had fallen backwards into a dried-up

river bed which wasn’t too dry at the moment. Just the second I hit, I

reached up to unhook my seat belt and get the heck out of there because

since it landed on it’s tail, I was afraid of the gas tank exploding.

Just as I unhooked the seat belt, I heard a noise and a terrible feeling

of fear swept over me. I realized that I wasn’t done falling yet. I

immediately hooked the seat belt back up as the car flipped over onto

it’s top (wheels up) and wiped out a large tree in the process. Then I

bailed out of the seat belt and of course since I was upside down at this

time, when I did, I fell to the ceiling. I got the door open and

scrambled, clawed and kicked all the way to the blacktop and while I was

down on my hands and knees, mud from top to bottom, along came some kids

I knew and they loaded me up and took me home. I didn’t receive a

scratch, but it was the end of my second 57 Ford!

Now that I told you how it ended, I will tell you how it could have

ended. We had a hang-out, called Barnes Cafe in Soldier. It was about 11

PM one night when we decided to head for Moorhead. There were two car

loads of us. Ed Youkims had a 1960 black Ford with a real hot engine and

I had my second 57 Ford. Just as we left, he passed me and yelled “race

you to Moorhead”.

I punched it and rode right on his tail for about two miles. I figured he

had it to the floor and it felt to me that I still had some to go, but

each time I got in the left lane to pass him, [when I got out of his wind

break], I couldn’t get around him. Now a few miles South of Soldier,

there is a gentle turn in the road to the right and most people don’t

even think about the turn, but when you are going 130+, side by side with

a 1960 Ford and you are on the outside of that turn, you think quite a

bit about it. I couldn’t get around him and then the most scary thing

you can imagine happened. He started going out of control and the rear

end of his car skidded three different times and hit the rear end of

mine. It scared the heck out of me and I couldn’t do anything about it,

but it scared Ed too and he let up and I shot ahead of him and when we

got to Moorhead in one piece we had a good laugh about it, but I think to

this day what could have happened. One thing for sure, you kids would

have never been born to a father who rolled and went end for end 40 times

back in 1960!

Speaking of scares,....I was telling you how I got a job to buy my first

car. Well, I worked for John Ballentine for four years during the summer

painting barns and houses. In fact one time we painted a circular

irrigation system and the only way to do that is to go out into the

field where it is and one guy with a spray gun gets on one side of the

pipe and the other guy gets on the opposite side and spray paint into

each other face all day.

Before I ever got to spray paint my job was to get the surface ready,

which meant scraping and sweeping it down with a stiff broom. One day, I

was on the opposite end of the barn from what they were painting, getting

it ready and was about 25 feet in the air on a ladder. A haymow door had

been open for years and hooked back to the side of the barn. I had to

unhook it and clean behind it so they could paint both sides of the door.

I reached up and flung the door shut, and behind the door was about 50

BATS. Now you picture what you would be doing if you were 25 feet in the

air with 50 bats attacking you and all you had was a broom! You guessed,

it, I think if I could have maintained those moves Liz Taylor and Zsa Zsa

would have been fighting over me. The guys ran over to help me and shot

the bats out of the air with the spray guns set on ‘stream’. It was like

being in a shooting gallery, and now you know why I have gray hair!

One time I saved Jonnie Ballentine’s life. He and I were on top of a barn

spray painting the roof. We had used a 40 extension ladder but it wasn’t

high enough so we put it in the back of a pickup. That got us up onto the

top of the main roof, but we still had to get onto the top of the cupola.

He got on one side of the roof and I stayed on the other side holding his

hose so it wouldn’t be so heavy for him and he noticed a spot that he had

missed so he stepped back down toward the edge and stepped into wet paint

and went down. I immediately fell down and hooked my feet on the opposite

edge. That stopped his fall and he was able to pull himself up. With his

weight, we both could have been hurled 60 feet to the ground and we knew

it and were both very thankful to be alive at the end of that day!

I probably saved another kid’s life once or at least kept him from being

hurt real bad. Jim Gray had just got a scooter and wanted to know how

fast it would go so I told him I would follow him out onto the highway

and check him with my speedometer. A good stretch of smooth highway was

the new concrete out past the cemetery, so that is where we went. There

was a big German Shepherd dog that always chased cars out that way, but

we forgot about that. I told Jim to stay in the right lane and that I

would stay back quite a ways and in the left lane in case he tipped over

or something. Down the road we went and he was topping out at 45 MPH and

out of the driveway came this dog running as fast as he could right

toward Jim. Quite often in an emergency you don’t have much time to

think. The speed Jim was going he knew that if that dog hit him that he

was a goner! Jim started creeping into the left lane and when he started

to do that, that is when I saw the dog. I slammed it into second and just

as the dog was in the right lane leaping in mid air to attack Jim, I

caught him with the front of my 57. I needed a new grill, and had to go

tell the farmer I had killed his dog, but Jim was still alive.

We used to make rubber guns to play with. We had pea shooters that we

shot soy beans through too. I tried to make a bow and arrow once but that

is hard and requires a certain kind of wood. We used to shoot marbles way

into the air by sticking a fire cracker in an iron pipe and then placing

the marble in the pipe. I built all sorts of furniture in shop class at

school. As far as school work, I just couldn’t get Math and I shed many a

tear because I just was such a poor speller and couldn’t help it. I could

memorize how to spell certain words, but even to this day I have a

terrible time. I am so thankful for ‘spell checker’!

Through the years I have had some real strange things happen the Barber

Shop. I will tell you a few of them; There was a boy about 13 who was

adopted and very rebellious who was brought into my shop one day and

slammed into the chair by his step father. I was told to shave his head.

The kid naturally didn’t want that and the father was so out of control

about it, I took the chair cloth of the kid and said that I wouldn’t do

it. The dad just went to another barber and made the kid get his head

shaved and the next morning down at the sale barn they found the boy. He

had hung himself, (they said), all because of the haircut, but I always

wondered if that crazy step dad didn’t murder that boy!

When I was going to Barber School, I had a drunken Indian jump out of the

chair and pull a switch blade on me. I don’t know why to this day, but I

just calmly set my clipper and comb down and turned and walked away from

him expecting to get a knife in the back at any moment! I walked to the

back of the school by the pop machine and about that time the instructor

grabbed me and informed me that he never wanted to see me ever walk away

from a customer again. I told him, to take the switch blade away from him

and I would go cut his hair. The instructor had not seen that part of the

deal and when he heard that, he went down the isle and literally grabbed

that Indian by the collar and the seat of his pants and ran him down the

isle and threw him out the front door into the street.

Only twice did I ever cut a customer bad. Once in barber school, I was

shaving a guy and just as I was going over his chin, he coughed! Guess

what happened? He was a drunk and just calmly said, as I was mopping up

the blood that was spurting out of his chin...”Am I going to live?”

The other time in Iowa City, I was working on a Mormon Missionary and he

got so excited that I knew something about what he was talking about that

he turned quick and I cut his ear real bad. He bled for a long time, but

as long as we talked about religion he wasn’t going to complain.

Just a couple of months ago [1989] another Indian threatened to slit my

throat with a razor. It gets sort of crazy in a Barber Shop from time to

time.

One day this nut came in and said he was an angel and that he knew that I

was a ‘reformed Mormon’ and that if I would go with him and turn myself

into the sheriff, that he would speak in my behalf and things would go

better for me.

I told him to step outside and that I would get my coat and go with him.

As soon as he stepped out the door, I locked it behind him and that was

that!

I was working one day out here in Arizona and a man walked in and sat

down to wait and I said, “I’ll be with you in a minute.” When it was his

turn he got into the chair and I said, “I want to look up your record

card to see how I cut it last time, but I can’t remember your last name.”

He gave me the strangest look and said, “You’ve never cut my hair

before”. Well, I knew that I had, so I thought that I probably cut it in

the other shop on top of the hill and he doesn’t realize that I have

moved to a different location, so I asked him his last name and sure

enough, I didn’t have a card on him. I am sure by this time he thinks I’m

nuts. I knew that I had cut his hair. I figured, this guy must be from

Phoenix, because I had worked there for 6 months, but he said he was from

Oregon. The more I worked on him the more convinced I was right about

working on him before. Because of asking him about Phoenix, he asked me

if I was originally from Arizona and I laughed and said, “Heavens no, I

just got here from Iowa!” He turned around in the chair, gave me a real

good looking at and said, “The yellow and brown house with the barber

shop in it in Red Oak.” I said, “YES!” and then things started to fit

together. He was a good friend of Bill Rea and Bill had brought him in

[one time], nearly 8 years earlier to get a hair cut. He was in the chair

for approximately 20 minutes and we hadn’t seen one another since. He was

just visiting Bill. And now this time he was just passing through Kingman

and out of 10 different shops in town, he just happened to stop in mine.

What do you suppose the odds of that is? What do you think of my memory?

I must close this down. I am planning on making this booklet a three

chapter effort and this is the end of chapter one.

I remember Gramp one day when we were cutting hair together and one of

his regulars who had got his very first haircut from Gramp, got into my

chair. This wasn’t unusual and it was what Gramp wanted to happen,

because he was wanting to retire and gradually leave the customers to me.

But this particular customer leaned toward me and whispered, “Don’t cut

it as close as Glenn!” He didn’t say it loud or make a big deal out of

it. The problem was that from the time that he got his first haircut up

on the kid seat, Gramp had never asked him how he wanted it, he just cut

it. Now there I was in the shop and asking all the customers how they

wanted it cut and most of them would reply, “Cut it just like Glenn!”

But this customer didn’t want that and had never had the heart to tell

Gramp that he didn’t want what he had been getting all of those years.

When the day was over, Gramp gave me a real bawling out for ‘cheating’

that customer by not skinning him up the side so that the haircut would

last for 5 weeks. It was one of the hardest things in the world to tell

Gramp that the customer had specifically asked for it to be cut that way.

You could see the look in Gramps eye, it was like he was saying to

himself “Have I been doing it wrong all these years?”

It hurt me to tell him that, and now as I look back over my childhood, I

wonder if I did the childhood wrong! Maybe the wrong was what I am going

to talk to you about in chapter two. Maybe the wrong was in what will be

in Chapter three! Right now I feel that someone has said, “you did it all

wrong and there is no way to fix it”....Well, it is obvious that

something went wrong and I will let you judge as you read chapter two.

I love you and wish you all the fun in life that I had in my earlier life

and wish I could live it with you.,

Love, DAD!