Fleeting Memories

I remember as a young elementary school student that we used to do some things that were to help us become readers. I was never a good reader, but I remember some of the activities. There was one that you would see a picture like a ball, book, bat, and other items and then on the other side of the paper were words that matched the pictures. I think back about that now sometimes and can see it is pretty much how my minds works. The problem is that now there are still pictures on one side of the page, but many of the words are not there to match up with pictures. I see people and I know them and can tell you somethings about them, but I often don’t have a name to match up with them. In my mind I know many things, but often have trouble expressing verbally what my mind knows or sees. The pictures and the names are not all there. Even if I search my mind and I know all about something I can’t remember the name that goes with the idea or person. It seems that it is the nouns that a...

I have always been blessed with a mind that might seem strange to some, but is able to figure most things out. It seems as though my mind is becoming like a roulette wheel, each of the numbers and colors that the marble passes are like a thought. It would be great if it would just stop and land on a number or color or hop off of the table, even that would be fine, but it just keeps on going around and around. Each of the possible stops is a thought or an idea that is somewhere inside of my brain. I have trouble stopping or completing a thought or idea before it moves quickly to another number or color or in my case another thought. In other words, I have extreme trouble now concentrating on one thought or idea. The only way I can write and keep a thought is if I start writing and then I can always look back and see what it is that I started. So, this is just a short thought and now I can jump off this number, or excuse me it was a color and go on to something else if I can rememb...

For many years I was blessed with the opportunity to run the river, both through Cataract Canyon on the Colorado River as well as the run on the Salmon River. After returning home from one of these runs It was determined that I should go and get the front window of our van replaced. I took the van from our home in Orem to a repair shop in American Fork. I was still wearing my river running shirt and Levis and I’m sure I looked pretty rough, unshaven and unwashed from the trip. I got there and was told it would take about an hour or so to fix, so I left the keys and headed across and down the street a little to McDonald's to eat breakfast. After I had eaten, I filled my soda cup up and started walking around the neighborhood. I walked down one side of the street crossed the road and walked back up the other side. I walked right past the automotive shop my son would run many years later and back across State street to the shop putting in a new windshield. They were still workin...

When I was about fourteen or fifteen, they, meaning the military, started testing the atomic bomb at a place called Frenchman Flat. It was about 60 miles north of Las Vegas. At that time, we lived in Boulder City, Nevada. It is a real curiosity to me that they announced when they were going to set the bomb off or drop it from a plane. The official reason was to make sure that people were completely out of the area. I sometimes thought that it might have been to alert the Russian spies that some people thought were in the area so that they didn’t have to stay up all night and would be able to see the power of the bomb and leave the United States alone. I don’t really know; they never asked me for my input or any one else that I know of in Clark County, Nevada. One morning very early, still dark, my father woke my little brother and me up to go out and see the bomb blast. At the time I wasn’t really all that interested in watching the bomb, but Dad wanted us to see it and so we went....

I had a difficult time with school. I couldn’t read. When I was in the elementary school up through fourth grade, I couldn’t see the blackboard. I seemed to always get things wrong. My parents had taken me to a chiropractor, Millie Bogardus, to help with my eyesight, but she was unable to do anything about my sight. They finally took me to Las Vegas to see an eye doctor, Sam Davis. He checked my eyes and made a prescription for glasses. A week later  we went back and he had the glasses.  I was not all that excited about wearing glasses. I was afraid that I would be called "four eyes," and I was, but for the first time in my life, I could see. I had never seen leaves on trees or blades of grass or birds in the trees or flying. It was marvelous to be able to see, and I was willing and ready to fight anyone who called me "four eyes." I thought it was funny though that sometimes a guy would say, "Take your glasses off and we'll fight." Why in the world ...