Fleeting Memories

My new life started when I showed up at Orem High School at the end of August 1992. We had been on vacation a couple of weeks before that eventful time. I walked into school and went to my classroom, good old D-2. There I found two student teachers. They said that they were to take my class, and the principal wanted to see me in his office. I really didn’t know what was going on, but I went down to his office to see John, the principal. He asked me to come in and sit down. He said that he had heard that I was taking some administrative classes at BYU. I told him that I had been. He said simply, “You have a new job.” I was to be the assistant principal on special assignment. My office was two doors down from his, and I should go and get started. It was a surprise to me, because I hadn’t applied for an administrative position in the district. I just wanted to work for BYU. I didn’t know what he wanted me to do, so I asked him. He indicated that I was going to be over all of the voc...

From the time I was a sophomore in high school until the summer after I graduated, I worked at the Frosty Freeze in Boulder City, Nevada on the highway that went through town. There were other jobs that I had at the same time, but the Frosty Freeze was a fun job to have in the evenings. I usually closed up after eleven at night. The Frosty Freeze is where I first heard of flavored chipped ice as a drink. We would freeze a mixture of concentrated flavored drink. We used a Kool-Aid type powder with a lot of sugar. When it was frozen, we would bring it out of the freezer and begin to chip it up with a tool that had four metal-like spears coming out of a handle. Well, when I say we, I mean me. I was the one who had to chip all of the flavored ice in a five-gallon bucket, to be ready to dip out and served. I can remember getting a blister on the palm of my hand from chipping. I always hoped that no one would like it, and then they wouldn’t sell it any more, but everyone liked it; I ev...

I was the faculty advisor for the yearbook class. That means I was the teacher and responsible for making sure that the book was completed and ready to be passed out during the last week. It was a fun class. We had a great darkroom which was necessary for yearbook production prior to digital photography. We met during the lunch hours. We had three lunches, one after another. That enabled the students to go to lunch and still have someone there during all lunches to help sell the yearbooks. The Yearbook staff was also responsible for making activity cards during the lunch times. One year, as it was getting time to distribute the books, each of the yearbook students were given an excuse slip to miss the whole day to get ready to pass out the books. This was how we were able to get the books to the right tables that were set out with each letter of the alphabet so the students would know where to go to get their books. One of the teachers refused to let one of the yearbook student...

When we first started getting computers at Orem High School, the library got about nine or ten just to be in the library. That was a really great thing. After a few weeks, this announcement ended up on the library door and on the main office door “Whoever is taking the balls of the mice needs to replace them.” The old mouse on the first computers had a ball that rolled around on the mat to make it work. After a good laugh in the principal’s office, it was determined that because I was friendly with her and was the newest administrator, I should go and talk to the librarian. She was a good friend. I explained to her that many people were taking her signs in a way she had not intended and recommended that the signs and announcements to each class be ended.   Another story coming to mind is about the marble machine that my father made. The marbles would run from the top down a zig zag route to the bottom. All the young grandkids really loved it. Many of us who were much older lo...

I didn’t really go far in the Scouting program, but I do remember the Scout law. I often used it in the classroom. At some point during the school year I would give the classes a test with an answer sheet to fill in the blanks a,b,c,d, for the answers. When it was time to start the class, I would tell them to clear their desks and get out a pen or pencil. I would then pass out the test and an answer sheet. I would give them time to finish the test and then I would collect them all. After school I would go down to the workroom and make a copy of each answer sheet. The next day I would pass them back to the students and have them correct their own tests. I would read out the correct answers while they checked their sheets. I would then look at the copies I had made and staple them to the original answer sheets. The next day I would pass both sheets back to the class. I asked them to look over the two answer sheets. I wanted them to see for themselves if any answers had been chang...

This is a story about two fathers that I observed and had the opportunity to meet during the time that I had their daughters in my geography class. At the end of a term I had passed out a slip of paper with each students’ scores on it and allowed them to figure out their grades. Most of the students wanted to figure out what they were going to receive for the term. I had already gone through and figured out all of the grades, but it was a good check for the students to also figure out their own grades. Once in a while they came up with a different grade than I had, so we would then go over them together to make sure the grade was correct or change it to make sure it was correct. There was one particular student that didn’t like the grade she had earned. She had come up with the same grade from her scores that I had, but it wasn’t the grade that she wanted. The grade was an A- not an A. The next day her father came to school early and wanted to see me. This was all fine, I sup...

This all began with a family trip for a particular item at yard sales, or garage sales, which ever may appeal to you individually. While looking around at several stops, I came across a programmable mechanical parrot. You could turn the switch on at the bottom of the stand, and it would record. You could turn the switch around, and it would play back what had been recorded when ever a sound was made near it. You can still buy this bird "Pete the Repeat" on ebay  I took it home and we all played with it for a while. it was a lot of fun. After we had it for some time, I took it over to school, and Vance and I would say things into the microphone and then turn the switch and make a noise and listen to it play back what we had said. We thought it would be fun to record something and put it in John’s office. John was the principal and my boss, but it still sounded like fun so we did it. I said into the microphone “Hi Baldy.” John was not totally bald, but was concerne...