#52 STORIES OF ME...week six

I used to know the story of how my Grandpa and Grandma Huggins met.  I do know they went in a buckboard wagon from Riverton, Utah, to the Manti Temple to be married in the 1890's..   However, I haven't read Grandma's journal for several years, and when I tried to locate it I was not as successful as I imagined I would be.  No other details come to mind but that one.

If I ever knew the story of how my Grandpa and Grandma Crane met, I have definitely forgotten that one.  I know Grandma was just a little bit of a woman, girl really as it was the day before her 17th birthday.  Can't remember much about Grandpa Crane other than my mother used to be in awe that he was SIX FEET TALL!  Well my mother's husband was 6 foot 2 inches.  So, Grandpa Crane's height was only a little above average, I would suspect.

But, I DO know the story of how my parents met.  I read an article a few years ago about writing family history.  The advice was make the story live!  Put in details, snippets of conversation, and draw the characters out in word with enough description of the senses: scent, sight, color, etc., to make the whole piece interesting.

I thought to myself, I can do that!  I was writing the February issue of the Nichols Family News newsletter and decided to try my hand at something a little more creative.  This was the result...I hope you can see the broad strokes as well as the little wisps of feathering descriptions which describe this rather romantic little vinette.

(Again, I apologize for the change in font and typeset.  I imported the picture and the copy from the Nichols Family Newsletter, February 2012, and this is the result--without any way (that I know of on this STUPID WINDOWS 10 software) to rotate the picture or standardize the print.

IN THE BEGINNING….

Melvin R. Huggins  (Meb)

and Maude Marie Crane  

Summer 1922

He spotted her as soon as their horses moved into the clearing at the sheep camp.  You might think it would be the tantalizing smell of food—and sharp appetite—that drew his attention to the long table set up in the shade.  But it wasn’t.  It was the pretty girl with the short dark hair and the snapping brown eyes who had caught his interest.  Meb Huggins leaned over in the saddle and, pointing to the young woman who was filling huge platters with meat, simply said to the other sheep herder who had accompanied him into camp, “I’m going to marry that girl someday.”  Milt Crane laughed.  “That’s my cousin Maude,” he said.

It was 1922.  Nineteen year-old Maude Crane and her sister Alice were the cooks for their uncles’ sheep outfit that summer.  Alice was only two years older but the two of them were already skilled at putting on a big meal for a lot of hungry people.  Of course, there were some challenges at having to cook everything over an open fire, but the two young women were more than just average cooks.  And the men employed by the Crane Brothers appreciated the welcome change from mutton stew and whatever other simple food items they could prepare in their small sheep wagons at campsites all over south-western Wyoming and south-eastern Idaho.  These sheepherders were moving all the herds of sheep to the summer range, so their time in the main camp was also a welcome respite from the solitary lives they had lived all winter with only the sheep for company.  For most of the young men, it was also an opportunity for card playing and contests of physical strength as well as the satisfaction of a “home-cooked” meal.  For Meb Huggins that summer day, it was the start of a life-time love affair with the pretty girl who later became his wife.

SOME ELEMENTARY SCHOOL MEMORIES #52 STORIES OF ME....(week five)

Here are some memories of my elementary school years.  I first wrote them a few years ago as a Back to School project I did for my grandchildren.  Every year I try to do something to celebrate their return to school, and after several years of a new shirt, then school supplies to use only at home, I decided I would write some of the things I remembered about the specific years corresponding to the grades my grand people were in that year.

The following is the letter to all of them and my memories for grades four and six in elementary school.  Long...but may be interesting.  I'll include the rest in a different blog or else this one would be   B. O. R. I. N. G. !

Dear Nichols Kids—2^nd Generation!

Once again it is time for school bells to be ringing with the promise of fun, frustration, and friends to make every day at least interesting, if not downright outstanding. School is a terrific springboard for the rest of your life whether or not you think you are never going to use all those useless facts for which you have to be tested.  Surprise!  Those very same “useless” facts or parallels to those “useless” things are going to pop up all through your life.  So, just remember that everything you’re doing now is a preparation for the future.

I loved school!  That’s the bottom line.  I looked forward to going back each year and was excited about learning new things.  As I got older and those new things were trig functions and memorizing lists of species and identifying smells in the chemistry lab, I truthfully didn’t enjoy the classes as much as the ones where we learned about people and places and language.  I was really keen on grammar, though!  But for the most part, I just enjoyed being in a classroom where a really good teacher opened new vistas, even in subjects I really didn’t care for.

The preparation for my own school years, and the preparation for the school years when your parents were growing up was pretty similar—purchase supplies from the lists prepared by the teachers and get some new clothes.  Then label everything and choose what you wanted to show up wearing on the very first day. 

School began the day after Labor Day for most of the years I went to school.  Even though it was still warm—even in Rawlins—the girls usually chose one of the new winter sweater and wool skirt outfits. There seemed to be a secret competition as to whose new school clothes hit the mark best. By the second day of school we had shed those heavy clothes for cooler duds until the temperature warranted all those great winter clothes we had picked from the Sears catalog or JC Penny or Ferguson Mercantile in downtown Rawlins.  My mom and I didn’t usually shop for my school clothes at Smyth’s Department Store.  That was where the name brands like Ship and Shore, White Stag, Jantzen, and Bobby Brooks were sold.  (Now I can afford them at WalMart!  Who knew I would one day be able to wear those coveted labels?) Still I loved looking at my new supplies and just knew I was going to look soooo cute in my new outfits.

But this year, for two reasons, I decided to leave the shopping to you and give you a different kind of Back to School experience.

First, it has been a very hectic summer with my schedule at United.  Rarely home and while away only minimum layovers.  My time has been very limited to go wandering in the stores looking at all the array of school supplies available.  There are hundreds more things to buy than when I went to school over 50 years ago.  That’s a lot of shop-time and decision making I didn’t have this year.

Second, since I am in the latter third of my life I thought you might like a peek at what I was doing the same grade/year you are in school right now.  So, I am giving you MEMORIES this year. 

When I first decided to do this, I was just going to send to each of you only the pertinent memories for your school year. Then I thought maybe you might like to learn what was going on in my life for the school years the other 2^nd Generation Nichols Kids are experiencing in 2015/2016.  This will be long. And you may choose to read only about your corresponding school year, but, either way, I hope you enjoy a glimpse into the past.  If not now, you might get pleasure from this letter sometime down the road when you are more interested in Momma G’s life. Like after I am dead and gone.  Ha Ha Ha!  Your parents are sure I am going to live forever!  But I’m not….

So here we go blasting into the past for our school age NK2G.  In the following pages is the hot skinny on what some of life was like for me the same years of school (or not) that you are in now.  I hope you kind of get a kick out of some facts about myself you probably would never have known otherwise. If not, keep this in the back of your drawer and share it with YOUR kids someday.  They may enjoy hearing about the woman you called Momma G.

Much love to you all…

Georgia Carol Huggins Nichols-Bateman

Briggs: Fourth Grade

Jeremy and Orion:  Sixth Grade

Cameron:  Freshman

Mackson:  Junior

Chardonnay:  Senior

Cheyenne:  One year after HS graduation

Savannah:  Two years after HS graduation

Fourth Grade  1955-1956:   I attended Mountain View Elementary School in Rawlins, Wyoming, just a few blocks west of where I lived. It was one of three elementary schools in Rawlins which looked exactly the same and had been built about 1950.  The second was Sunnyside in the northeast section of Rawlins. The third one was Pershing on the south side of the railroad tracks where all the Hispanic kids went.  The kids in the middle part of Rawlins went to an old stone building called Central School which housed both elementary grades and Rawlins Junior High.  (I went there for seventh grade.)

Fourth grade meant an anticipated move to the big kids’ part of Mountain View School.  One of the secondary entrances to the school marked the division between the lower elementary grades and the upper elementary grades.  Why, just the year before in Third Grade my classroom was the very last one for the little kids, now I was in the very first classroom past the big double doors.  There was NO reason for any younger student to be in our part of the school.  That alone meant I was growing up.

My sister Beth and her oldest child Corinne had lived with us in 1955 while her husband Shirl served as a doctor in the Navy. That summer, before I began 4^th grade, we took a long road trip to Seattle where Beth and Corinne boarded a Navy ship so they could go live in Sasebo, Japan where Shirl was based following his duty at sea.  On the way back to Rawlins, my dad took us to Portland, east through Idaho, and then after Yellowstone down to our home.

My teacher in 4^th grade was Patricia Jerry.  I liked her a lot.  She had brown hair, was probably in her late 20’s or early 30’s and wore penny loafer shoes with nylon stockings.  Never high heels, but always a wool sweater and skirt.  Her glasses were wire-rimmed, and I don’t ever remember seeing her without them.  It was a good year. There were two classes for every grade, and for this year my cousin George Huggins was in my class again. 

I don’t know if this is a national thing or not, but just like your parents learning about their own state of Colorado in the Fourth Grade, I learned about the state of Wyoming.  I still have in my school memory box downstairs a project I did about Wyoming.  It was a homemade paper scrapbook I had made with pictures of Wyoming and tidbits of history I gleaned from tourist brochures and maps of the state.  I titled it “TOURAID PREPARED ESPECIALLY FOR WYOMING” and got an A grade with this comment from the teacher…”Excellent”.

I missed the last three days of the fourth grade because I had the mumps!  What a bum time to be ill as school was over the third week in May.  Not only was I housebound, but in those days (the 50’s) we had to stay in bed the whole time of recovery, too.  At first I didn’t care because I was so sick, but as I started feeling better, I hated lying in bed, looking out at the beautiful spring of the year—just beyond the windows.  School was over.  I wanted to be up and doing.

”Sixth Grade 1957-1958:  This was the last year for elementary school, and I was still at Mountain View.  (There was no Middle School then.  Seventh and Eighth Grades were Junior High and went to a different part of town for school.)  Our classroom was waaaay down the hall from fourth grade, next to the last set of doors that went outside to the playground on the north side of the building which we always used and never went around the building to the west side with fourth and fifth graders.  We had our own “baseball field”, a section of rocky dirt that we managed to scrape out a rough diamond with home plate and three bases.  We played practically every day, and I was a fairly good player who could hit the ball better than most girls.  But there was NO power behind that swing, and I was usually “out” by the time I reached first base.  Sometimes our recess times (15 minutes both morning and afternoon—and we HAD to go outside) were spent in small gaggles of girls, gossiping about the boys and the boring school work we had to do.  (I didn’t confess out loud I didn’t think ALL the school work was boring.  Plus I always got my work done in school and never had homework—until the seventh grade.) 

My teacher that year was Marilyn Waldron.  She was a young married woman—probably in HER 30’s, too—but the difference was that she was NOT a widow.  In our school system only single or widowed women could be teachers.  No one who currently had a husband, and goodness no—not ever a divorced woman!  But the long-time 6^th grade teacher I was scheduled to have as my teacher got sick and left just before school started.  Miss Ashcroft, now Mrs. Waldron, began teaching again, and the other teacher never came back.  That was all right with me.  I loved Mrs. Waldron.  She was always pleasant, easy going, and I don’t remember ever feeling like school was hard in her class. 

This was the year the girls separated into groups of “mature girls” and those who were still on the childish side.  I was one of the latter.  For the life of me, I just didn’t know how to get along with the boys—now that they were no longer just people who were classmates we could be friends with but potential boyfriends.  And, this was the year I began to go through a really UNATTRACTIVE stage which lasted at least another half dozen years or so. 

My compensation was a solid friendship with Anne Campbell who lived a couple of blocks away from me.  We walked together to and from school every day—including for lunch because EVERYBODY had to go home for lunch—talking the whole time and then extending our visit for half an hour or so on the corner before we went our separate ways after school every day.  Then when we got to our homes, we called each other on the telephone.  We often spent the night at each other’s houses, and my dad invited Anne to go on day trips and even vacations with us.  We always had a lot of fun together.  Their family had fun board games like Scoop and the early edition of Careers and some others.  At my house we still played dress up, and my mom always fixed us terrific breakfasts and treats for when we were playing down the basement.

1958 was when the Hong Kong flu came around for the first time.  There were only three people in my class who did not get sick.  I was one of them. “Sickly” as I was with frequent strep infection and bouts of croup, it is a miracle to me that I never contracted that disease.  Most kids were out at least two weeks with this illness, and our classroom frequently had only half in attendance over a period of several weeks that winter.  It was a lonely time for those of us who were at school.

In the spring of that year we all marched down to Sunnyside Elementary School for Field Day.  This wasn’t an annual event for the end of school, so it was exciting to receive permission to get together with all the rest of the sixth grade classes and play outdoor games all day long.  My mom packed my lunch for me where I found a package of Twinkies for my treat.  We didn’t have this kind of junk food often, and I LOVED them!  They weren’t chocolate like most other treats, and the cream wasn’t too sugary either.  The cakes were longer then, and they also had a short shelf life staying at the grocery store only seven days maximum.  At the end of that wonderful day, I sported one of the worst sunburns I have ever had in my life.  Ouch!  But it was worth it, and a great end to my elementary school years.

MAKING AND ACHIEVING GOALS #52 STORIES OF ME (week 4)

QUESTION:  WHAT WOULD YOU WANT YOUR FRIENDS AND FAMILY TO LEARN ABOUT MAKING AND ACHIEVING GOALS FROM YOUR EXAMPLE?

        
First off,  A CONFESSION:  I AM LAZY!




I think I might have been born lazy, or maybe it just happened because I was the youngest and most-doted-on sibling with seven older sisters who spoiled me rotten.

Because I was the baby and very much younger that most of them, they did the chores, they did the holiday meal banquets with my mother, and most of them reminded me OFTEN that I WAS the baby.  I didn't have to worry about doing anything but sitting there watching them as the family's work got taken care of.

Oh, I was good at my homework, but as I got older and really had to bring school work home I usually procrastinated until just about bedtime before I did it, and then stayed up late to finish because I NEVER went to school with an uncompleted assignment.  My major papers were always done at the last minute, and even though I got A's on most of them, I always secretly wondered how much better they would have been if I had just begun a little sooner and been able to develop that terrific kernel of an idea I had.

My mother tried sooo hard to help me get over that huge hurdle in my life--laziness.  Mostly with my daily piano practice which lasted an hour.  She would encourage, cajole, beg,  and plead for me to do my piano practicing early in the day so I could have the rest of the day FREE and not have that hanging over my head.  Same with my daily chores--which were NOT hard, just annoying because I would rather be reading a book. 

Oh, I always had a clean bedroom.  The obsession for being tidy with everything in its place far outweighed my laziness in that respect.  Even when I was in college.  I was the one who made sure that the "Duty Wheel" was operating and our apartment had been cleaned and always looked fresh and welcoming--at least in the communal space of the living room and kitchen.  I didn't like it that the other girls' rooms were a pig sty.  As long as mine didn't, okay by me.

Sometimes when we had a particular nasty job to do around the house, my mother would suggest that we make a game of it.  There was a popular television show at the time called--believe it or not!--BEAT THE CLOCK!.  I loved to watch it, and see all the crazy stunts that had to be done in a certain amount of seconds.  That was fun to have my mother turn on the kitchen timer and see if we could BEAT THE CLOCK!  It kind of stuck and, unbelievably, I still do it for myself now and then.   (Currently I am organizing the basement after taking all the Nativity sets downstairs for another couple of years of storage, and that one hour timer makes its way right downstairs with me. The sad part is there are some days I turn the clock to the 60 minute mark OVER AND OVER AND OVER yet it seems like there is little progress in what I have done so far.)  I tried this little "game" with my kids.  It usually went over pretty well with them--and there was always the "Bribe Basket" at the end for their reward.  However, I have one child who told me that she would NEVER use the timer on her kids--she HATED it!  

                                  

Then I graduated from high school.  My mother begged me to complete some of the projects I had started over the years and never finished--except for my Primary Home Builders' projects each year which I had to complete in order to graduate from Primary.  (They were a cross stitch sampler (now framed and hanging in my family room) when I was a Lark, a crocheted doily when I was a Bluebird, and a knitted hot pad when I was a Seagull.) 

The rest like an iron stool which I was supposed to weave with wicker ropes--whatever you call them!--I hurriedly put together or arranged more neatly in my closet to make them LOOK finished.  Then I took off for BYU, with the stool in my car to personalize my apartment.  After college graduation I took off for Denver--still with that stool, met Ross a couple of weeks later, got married the next year, and in no time at all had a baby and a full-time job as wife and homemaker.  

Those first few months after Harold was born, I had good intentions of getting things done on a regular basis.  But, it seemed so overwhelming!  I am not sure when I hit upon the idea of managing my time better.  Was it a Relief Society lesson?  Was it the momentous occasion in my life when Daryl Hoole came as a guest speaker at a Stake Relief Society event?  Who knows....so many years have passed since those early days when I had no plan and couldn't seem to get around my own laziness, though I desperately wanted to be productive.  It seems that I would let any little thing distract me from the job at hand.  

Oh, I wasn't a slob.  And you might have even thought I was pretty good at getting things done.

Then I began writing TO DO lists and found out I loved to check items off.  It was like having a star chart of my own!

Well, over time the daily repetition of items to be done gradually turned into a routine--one that I was afraid to break because I imagined that lazy dark angel would perch on my shoulder once again.  In fact, you might have seen me as rigid and unable to adapt.  Everything just simply HAD to be done--everyday.  No excuses.

Actually there was a lot of sense in that, as well.  Eight bodies, 16 feet, and everything that went with  that can cause  a lot of dishevelment in a house.  There had to be structure.  And, there was.  Bottom line:  I was able to accomplish a whole lot that needed to be done when I set goals and saw myself through to the finish.


  
When the kids wanted to achieve certain goals we often made a "meter".  For example when Harold wanted to earn money for a camera, we made a CAMER-A-meter.  Sometimes the meter was more graphic to tell a story: as in the time Ross promised Brice a trip to Burger King in Sweden (THAT was huge!) if he improved in one of his school subjects that was below par.  Ross made a little poster with the picture of a roller coaster on it.  The roller coaster car was what marked the progress as it chugged up the track to the top of the hill--and then DOWN to the prize.  Very clever!


So, after that "William Makepeace Thackeray side bar, here is what I would hope my kids learned from watching me (and my helping them) make and achieve goals.

STAR CHARTS are great tools. 

"TIMERS" make a job a game when you compete with the BELL.

"CHECK LISTS" can force a focus on the priorities as long as it's purposeful and not just "checking it off".

So are "METERS"  to measure incremental progress.


Today Louis didn't have to leave for work until much later.  And I was waiting for a call from the Crew Desk for an assignment.  So....I didn't get up either and jump on the "let's get that job done" bandwagon.  Instead, we had a good gospel discussion, planned a little two-day trip we'd like to take on my next days off, and went to Pinocchio's for a Valentine lunch treat.

You know what they say:  "All work and no play...."  But I burned FIVE hours I'll never get back!

AN EARLY VALENTINE!

I received the following text this morning from Burgandy.  Out of the clear blue....and this is all it said. 

I don't remember the occasion she notes, but this message couldn't have come at a better time as I was feeling pretty down before I read it.   Just thinking about a lot of things that are either not going well or that still have to be surmounted in the next few weeks. 

Her words recall one of just a handful of good parenting moments I had over the years.  But it was enough....

Life is full of surprises!  And this early Valentine was one of them which made a glad heart.

Thanks, Burgandy!

One day when I was driving the blue truck (and I still wasn't good at driving a clutch), I was turning off Leyden Road onto 80th.   There was a steep incline, and a car was behind us.  I was so scared that I was going to roll back into them, I may have been yelling out of frustration.  But you were calm and encouraged me that I could do it.

Every time I feel like I can't do somethings, that day always comes to mind. Thank you for that day of patience and encouragement!

JUST A THOUGHT....

I was studying Stanley G. Ellis’ October 2017 

General Conference talk the other morning and was

struck by this profoundly true aphorism. 

We all have challenges in life, and most of them are

hard.  But if we keep in perspective that is what

makes us stronger, we will keep them in the

right angle of our growth.

“Hard is constant….The variable is

our reaction to the hard.”

SOLUTION....

Louis and I have lived at Sweetbriar in Johnstown for 15 years.  From day one, there has been a running battle between us about end of day wind-down. 

Louis likes to have the TV on as he goes to sleep.  Not really watch it, just listen to it.  I HATE the sound of the TV when I am getting ready to go to sleep, BUT because I can sleep with noise and lights I have just resigned myself to the fact that's what bedtime includes.

I like to read a bit before I turn out the light to go to sleep.  Used to be a chapter.  Now I am lucky if I get even a sentence or two before I am gone to "a la land".

Trouble is that when I am home, Louis doesn't like the light on when he is trying to go to sleep.  (Yet the TV assaulting our sensibilities is okay?  There's something wrong with this picture.)  He can have the TV on, but I can't have the light on.

I tell you we have exchanged cross words over it, bickered over it, and had downright battles over it.

The arguments always end when Louis says he DOESN'T CARE if the light is on.  Oh, but the first time I crawl into bed with a book in my hand, he inquires how long am I going to have the light on as he has to get up for work in the morning.  So, in frustration I either get out of bed and go up to the big chair in the loft or get out of bed and turn the wall switch off which controls both our bedside lamps.  He also says that I go to sleep and then get mad when he tells me I am asleep and I swear to goodness I am NOT!  He says he doesn't want to get up and go turn off the light when I go to sleep.

I tell him to turn his lamp off with the switch, then when I am done reading--if I get that far--I will turn my lamp off.  No....he doesn't like that.  He wants to come into the room and switch the light on EVERY time.  He doesn't like having to go across the room and turn the lamps on separately.

So, the last few months we have come to a better truce.  Only now I can't see to read.  The lamp doesn't give off enough light for these old eyes to pick those black marks off the page.

I tried a flashlight.  Too hard to hold and read at the same time.  Found a battery powered light in my drawer about the size of an old Walkman which I clipped to my clothes and tried to use at one time while reading in the car.  That was also unsatisfactory.

Then I was at Wal Mart the other day and happened to walk by the aisle with lamps.  Voila!  A clip-on, gooseneck high intensity lamp.  I nearly ran to the check out so I could get home and try it.

It's perfect!  The answer to our light on/light off dilemma for all those years.  I clipped it to the headboard where I can turn the flexible neck so the light--THE. HIGH.  INTENSITY.  LIGHT--shines right on my reading material away from Louis' side of the bed.  And, when my eyes start to droop there is a little switch on the cord that turns the light off without my having to get out of bed and walk across the room to the wall switch.

Cost of the lamp: $7.99 plus tax.  No more wrangling about having the light on:  Priceless.

Ain't life grand after all....!