Fleeting Memories

448 East 100 South Orem, Utah Behind our home in the southwest corner of the yard at 448 east 100 south there was an enormous pile of rocks. I think that at one time it was someone’s idea of a rock garden, but it looked like a pile of rocks put there for convicts to break up with sledgehammers. Joy said that we had put all those rocks there from the garden area. At that time the city would pick up anything you didn’t want from in front of your home. It was one of the services that they provided every spring. A couple of our children wanted me to build a playhouse for them. They were told that they needed to move all of the rocks to out in front of the house. I didn’t think that they would or could do it, but to my surprise I heard large rocks being put into the wagons and taken out front of the house for the pick-up that the city was going to do. It was not just our children, but all of the children from the neighborhood. There were several wagons and they were like little wo...

Carl James Stubbs (Jimmy) I really like bologna, a slice of cheese, white bread, and mayonnaise. I always have. It is one of the reasons I liked going to my parents’ home as an adult. They always had white Wonder bread, stacks of bologna and lots of Kraft cheese. This continued even after my mother passed away. Luckily for me, my dad didn’t hide these items when I came to visit. I could have several sandwiches during the day, and I did. When we would take trips as a family, my mother would pack white bread and bologna, and we would eat it without the cheese and mayonnaise. It was wonderful. I still think of those trips and how the bread and bologna tasted. It must be real comfort food for me. The first time I remember bologna was when I was very small. I would help my mother fix my father’s lunch. She always made Dad a lunch to take to work. She would spread mayonnaise on the bread and then put a slice of bologna on the bread. My job was to trim the extra bologna from the e...

I have had what I consider an exciting and enjoyable life, at least for me. I have enjoyed all of the jobs I have had and have been grateful for all but one of them. I enjoyed the money from BYU, but I did not really enjoy the job. I never got to see the students, only their work. I loved teaching, river running, grocery stores, lawn care, and other jobs that I have had during my life. Jim and Joy Stubbs  We have always had adequate income for our needs and most of our wants. I fear that I did not spend enough time with my family. I have always worked since I was in about second grade. I am retired and do not have any job, and the only good thing is that I am with Joy now. I get up in the morning and often have trouble getting my body to work. I sometimes think that this is most likely my last day, and I will not wake up in the morning, but then here I am again. Because of the pandemic, I can no longer go swimming each morning. Swimming seemed to get my body moving and ...

When I started school each year, I knew that there would be a mail-order that would come from Sears. There would be new blue jeans, shirts, socks, underwear, belts, coats, and many other items. My shoes I always got from the Men’s Store owned by Gleason. It was next to the only bar in town at the time. It made it just a little exciting to be so close to that iniquitous place. Carl J. Stubbs at work with Robert Stubbs visiting  I worked as a kid in the grocery store. Often, I would just deliver groceries in a couple of paper sacks that were more substantial than they are today. I always got to meet people and often stopped to talk to them. Sometimes when I got back to work, they asked me what took so long, and I just shrugged my shoulders and said they wanted to go over the register list with the groceries. When I went to college, I would work there in the summers as a clerk to make enough money to go back to school. People would call in their orders, and we would fill them ...

When my parents married, they were pretty young. My mother was seventeen soon to be eighteen, and my father was nineteen, soon to turn twenty.  At that time men were not of legal age until twenty-one, but women were considered adults at eighteen. They had to get permission from their parents to marry. I think that may have been difficult for them, but they never said that it was a problem. They both lived through World War II and the challenges that it brought. There was not an Air Force at the time; my father was in the Army Air Corps. He flew the P-38 Lightning. He flew his missions out of France and Germany as the Allies moved east. He was in Germany after the war was over in that theater and helped the people who had been treated poorly in the towns. Many were refugees from the concentration camps that the Germans had, and the people were in need of food, clothes, and shelter. Leonard Smith Stubbs and Rose Carolyn Higgins Stubbs I am grateful to my parents who were ...

Since this Pandemic and the fact that Joy and I need to stay isolated, our hair has grown. I now have tangles in my hair, especially in the morning. They are also sometimes called rats. I understand that they used to sell rat combs or picks so a person could stack their hair up high and then smooth it out. Well again I have strayed from the topic, but not the ideas. My brain has rats in it or tangles which are becoming more obvious, at least to me, and probably everyone I talk to. The problem is that they are not thereby design, and I am unable to smooth them out so they are beautiful. Because I am over sixty-five and have existing physical problems, I am told that when they start opening things, I am still in the red zone. It doesn’t matter what everyone else is on, I am stuck in limbo which is what I call our personal financial status right now. I think that it is really Venmo, but I don’t really understand it. I know that the money travels electronically, and then when it arri...

Joy said that the titles for this and the last writing are sexist. I apologize to any I have offended, and if you were not offended, I will try to get around to you later. I really don’t want to offend anyone; the titles are just thoughts going through my head. Carl C. Stubbs Joy and I were married June 23, 1967 and Carl Christen Stubbs was born fourteen months later. I was worried that we might never have children. I thought that it would just happen immediately but it took five months to get pregnant. The day for his birth finally came, and even though husbands were not allowed to be in the delivery room at that time, I was allowed to be there with Joy as Carl was born. How blessed we felt. He was a healthy strong baby boy. He was always there with me when I worked on projects. When he was very small, he helped me fix the interior of an older van we had purchased. It had been a bread delivery van. He was able to look and see what needed doing. He helped me tar the roof of o...

I have known my wife since she was eight years old. I was not that interested then because she was four years younger. When I was a senior in high school, she was in Jr. high. We attended the Jr-Sr High School in Boulder City, Nevada so we were acquainted that way. We also had seminary together. Her father was my bishop and teacher in school. I had liked him a lot as my Scoutmaster until I got into high school and he was my bishop. Our relationship went south while I was in high school. If it hadn’t been for her mother and her grandparents, we most likely would not have been able to date. Her father never told her that she couldn’t date me, but he did tell me once that we would not be a good match. Just Married Joy and Jim Stubbs Just prior to going on a mission my good friend Rulon and I spoke at a fireside. At the fireside were a number of young women who were just fifteen and not old enough to date. They would be old enough to date when I returned in two years. I did date ...

I have been blessed to be the father of four beautiful daughters. Our oldest child is a boy and after his birth, I though that I wanted all boys, but the next child was a beautiful little redhead, and I wondered why I would ever want any more boys. Anna Joy Stubbs Kendall Anna Joy Stubbs is beautiful. She had brilliant red hair and blue eyes. She got cheated out of some attention in her first years because she was a twin, and her twin required so much help and time. Anna was so smart and fast; she absorbed everything that came around her. She was considered a bit of a problem by her kindergarten teacher. When the teacher was trying to teach the class how to read, Anna would tell everyone what the word was. The teacher had her sit outside the classroom on a step by the coat hangers. We spoke to the teacher and that ended. I felt bad that she had been removed from the class because she could already read. Anna is now a school teacher and is featured in her district circular. ...

Her name was Gracie. In dog years she lived longer than most, but not long enough for those humans around her. She came to our home by way of Colleen Harrison, a good friend of Joy’s. We found out later that she had purchased Gracie from a dog mill. She had spent her first month or two in a cage some place in Missouri or some other God forsaken state. It was at the time that our daughter Rachel had been sent unwillingly to the rainbow bridge, and Joy and Colleen thought that it might be good for Julia to have a little dog for a few days. The dog was left at our house for a few days and she never went back to Colleen. We paid for her and then took her to the vet to work on many of the diseases that she had contacted at the dog mill. She was with Julia and the rest of the family until Julia went to college. She couldn’t have pets at college, so we, her parents, ended up with three gold fish, two cats, two dogs and a partridge in the pear tree. They all had names, but the only o...

I saw a movie some time ago with John Candy and Steve Martin called Planes, Trains, and Automobiles. It was funny, but also frustrating to watch. It seemed that everything was going wrong for Steve Martin trying to get home. I think that my life recently feels much like that film. The last week has been a very difficult for me and for many that I love. I am usually at peace and pretty happy. Right now, I see my family members struggling with life and the problems that it brings. I have many drawers in my mind, and most of them hold happy peaceful thoughts, but there are some that hold only sadness, pain, or misery. Those latter drawers I have closed and marked them to stay closed, but sometimes somehow some of those drawers are ripped open, and much like Pandora’s box, they cause pain and misery. I slam the drawer closed, but it is too late, and the memories, thoughts of sadness of times gone by rush out. I want so badly to take care of each of our children, but I am not able to...

If this pandemic continues much longer and my hair keeps growing, it will look like I could be easily mistaken for a great composer, artist, or playwright. I have always enjoyed plays, musicals and some operas. Joy and I have attended many of them over the years. One that I saw in Las Vegas before we were married was Flower Drum Song with my parents. When we were first married, we were able to attend some at the DeJong concert hall at BYU, and later many plays at the Hale theater. We were able to see some at the University of Utah. Our daughter-in-law, the beautiful Kathleen Kenny, was at the U and was in a few plays. She was always great. Our son Nate was in a couple at the U also. One was the Elephant Man , and another was Butoh Macbeth . He was very good. He had gotten his start at Lakeridge Jr. and then Orem High as well as at the Scera Shell. I got involved in one of the plays at Lakeridge when they started to close the curtains. They got caught on a piece of scenery and sce...

As I was reading the paper this morning, I came across my favorite part, which is the comics. While reading them I read “Buckles,” one of the ones I like the most. Buckles the dog was laying down and is asked by his owner if he had to sleep all day. The reply was that he didn’t sleep all day, he only slept half of the day and then laid around the rest of the day. That is kind of how my life has become, being closed in and not able to go anywhere. I questioned what it is that I do all day. I sleep a lot and then I watch TV. Sometimes I write a little if I can think of something to write. As I said, I watch a lot of TV. I like NCIS, NCIS Los Angeles, NCIS New Orleans, and other detective-like programs. As a very young man of about six, I spent a lot of time with my grandfather in California. He had a TV and there were some children’s programs that played during part of the day. I really liked Beany Boy . There was Beany Boy who had a cap with a propeller on the top, Cecil the ...

I sat down at the computer today to write, and I couldn’t think of anything to say. I remember the first time that I felt that way was when I was about eight years old. I had been to church and had accepted an assignment to talk in sacrament meeting. It was to be a two-and-a-half-minute talk. I’m sure it was alright at the time I accepted it, and I’m sure that the teacher knew I could talk for two and a half minutes without a problem. I had demonstrated that in class, because I wouldn’t stop talking. Rose Carolyn Higgins Stubbs and her boy Jimmy Stubbs  The morning of the talk arrived, and my teacher called my mother about the assignment I had accepted. My mother came into my room and asked me about the talk. I had totally forgotten. It was almost time to go to church and I didn’t have anything prepared. I was still in bed and my mother gave me a whack across my backside. She said, “You are going to give the talk. I don’t care if you just get up and say I’m Jimmy Stubbs, ...

One of the first things I learned in school was the Pledge of Allegiance. I went to first grade in Bullhead, Arizona, and my teacher was Mrs. Fogo. We would all meet outside on a flat dirt area in front of the school and sing the National Anthem and then all say the Pledge of Allegiance. We would have calisthenics, a fancy name for exercise, and then go into the classroom for the day’s school lessons. This was the procedure every day we went to school. I remember many years later when crossing the BYU campus at eight in the morning or five in the evening they would play the National Anthem, and everyone was supposed to stop and face the nearest flag and not keep walking. This happened every day without fail. Orem High School had the National Anthem and then the Pledge of Allegiance at the beginning of school every Monday. It is interesting how we all become accustomed to things happening in an organized way without a lot of change. One time a student stood silently, but did not...

When I was about thirteen years old, I got to go on a Scout troop trip to Mt. Whitney. I was one of the younger ones and excited to go for a few days. We were going to hike up to a place called Peanut Lake. It was quite a hike. The mountain was right next to where the Scoutmaster’s brother lived in California. Our Scoutmaster was Bert Whitney and his brother that lived very near the trail head was Howard. Ellice Henrie Whitney One the way there I had ripped out the whole backside of my Scout pants. It was pretty bad. I had torn them out along the seam. When we got there, Howard’s wife Ellice said she would sew them up for me. We went to the back room, and she had me go into the closet and hand my pants out. This was alright, but a little embarrassing. I took my pants off and handed them to her with the door just barely ajar. I think that she thought that it was funny about how timid or embarrassed I felt. She took the pants to the sewing machine and was able to fix them quick...

For a number of years after I retired from Alpine School District in 2000, I read with children at Cherry Hill School. I enjoyed it, and it gave me an opportunity to see young children that could not read well in second to fourth grades that needed help learning to read. Some of them were anxious to learn, and some were intimidated and maybe a little embarrassed to be pulled out of class to go to the trailer to learn to read. I had a lot of trouble reading up until I was in high school. That may have been one of the reasons that I wanted to do it. I knew of the problems that those that can’t read face. I worked in that program for two years. They stopped the program for some reason, possibly lack of funds to pay for it. All of the people who sat with the children to help the students were volunteers, but the director had a paid position. I’m not sure how much I helped anyone else, but tutoring helped me. During that time, I worked with four students each year. The next year one...

One of the areas that I was first assigned as an assistant principal was with those that worked in the counseling office. There were not enough counselors for the number of students that we had at the school, but all of the schools in Alpine School District were facing the same problems. Orem High had four counselors and one secretary. They were overworked and had a difficult time with all of the reports that were always being required. One of the most arduous times of the year was during registration. Students would sign up for a class and then decide that they wanted to change to a different one. It was often because that was where their boyfriend or girlfriend was going to be, but the counselors just kept going to get the job done, like the energizer bunny. When a student decided to change what class they were taking there was a five-dollar transfer fee that was charged for the change that was made. This was all fine, with the district and the school. This did not keep stude...