Forty-five years ago this evening Nina and I were married at the New Haven Branch of the LDS Church in New Haven, Connecticut. We had met on a blind date about eight months earlier and within a couple weeks we began talking about getting married. I don’t think I ever formally proposed, but by Christmas time we were busy making plans.

I was going to the Air Force’s Chinese Language School at Yale University in New Haven. I reported there in late September, 1963 and met Nina in late October. The school finished at the end of the first week in June and I had to report for further training at Goodfellow AFB in San Angelo, Texas on June 22nd. Nina was a senior at Hambden High School and her last class was on June 12th.

We were married by the Branch President on Friday, June 12, 1964. We had a small wedding reception at the Branch Meeting House and Nina and I spent the night at a nearby very nice motel (we watched Jack Parr on TV that evening). The next morning we left with my mother and my Aunt June to go to San Angelo.

We drove through Washington, D.C. (it was an incredibly hot day), then on to Texas with a couple of stops along the way at night. One evening we stayed in a motel in Tennessee that had a number of  log cabins for their rooms.

Mother and Aunt June helped us find an apartment in San Angelo, and then they left to go back home (mother to Soda Springs, and Aunt June to Tooele, Utah).

Our first apartment cost $35 a month and was located in downtown San Angelo above a dry cleaning establishment. It was a two-room apartment and we were very excited to set up housekeeping.

It’s been a good 45 years since then. We have been blessed with wonderful children and they’ve found outstanding spouses. Life has been very, very good. I definitely “married up” and have never had second thoughts. Happy anniversary, Nina, light of my life!

Who knows! This might be posted in enough time for me to have a normal bedtime….

1. Things never break all at once. A piece on the steering mechanism on the lawn tractor broke on Monday. When I took it apart, my dad had apparently fixed it once before. The part could be put back together, which I did, but the hood was very precariously attached. I went through my bucket of nuts and bolts and found a bolt that would work, but no matching nut. I was off the Ace Hardware to buy a nut. (As I left the house, I texted Nina to tell her where I was going. She responded, “A peanut?”). I got back, securely attached the hood, and headed out to mow between rainstorms. I got the front partly finished when the steering part broke for good. The mower store had the part, but it needed a nut. Once again, no matching nut was found at home. Another trip to Ace Hardware. Of course, buying one nut is weird, I’m sure I’ll need another nut of those sizes sometime again in my future. The nuts and bolts bucket has been resupplied.
2. We’ve certainly had a lot of rain. The paper said we had a record amount of rain over the past weekend. We never get long-lasting rain here in Pocatello. We get storms that blow through. However, on Sunday we had a rain that lasted all day and well into the night. I’m pretty sure if I looked closely, I probably would have been able to see the grass grow. By the time it stopped raining, and the mower was fully fixed, I had to mow grass about four or five inches tall.
3. Someone said something about all the rain. I remarked that I was getting worried about something starting to grow on the top of my head. “Fungus, or algae?” he asked.
4. Nina got rear-ended last Friday. The result was a couple of small dents in the back bumper that really should get fixed. The guy handed over an insurance card in someone else’s name, claiming it was his girlfriend. While the whole story isn’t in, yet, he probably doesn’t have any insurance. Some states have started requiring insurance companies to feed insurance info into a database so that the police can verify insurance information at the time the accident is being investigated. We need that here in Idaho. There are just too many untrustworthy people.
5. We’re in the midst of planning The Big Trip East. We’ll go from here to Connecticut and back with the main purpose to be at our granddaughter’s baptism on June 20th. Is it safe to put on my blog that we’re out of town for a period of time? Will someone look and decide to break in? I’m thinking it’s safe, but there are just too many untrustworthy people.
6. For two months in a row we’ve gotten our Home Teaching done before the middle of the month. That’s scary. Tradition is definitely being broken.
7. I’m always surprised at how many people cannot follow written instructions. I’ve been assigned as part of my High Council work, to conduct a preparedness survey for the Stake. The survey was to be conducted in each Ward or Branch in the Stake last Sunday. Good instructions were included on each survey form. Also on top of the package was instructions on what to do with the completed forms … which was to call me to arrange for me to pick them up. The instruction even included my phone numbers. No one called. Of the nine Wards and one branch, not one called. I had to call them. One person said, “I didn’t know what to do with the surveys, so they’re locked up in the office at the Church building. Can’t get them until Wednesday.” When I told him the instructions on what to do with the forms was on top of the package, he said he hadn’t read it. My amazement continues.
8. Last Thursday I went to Montpelier to a meeting of all the community organizations. My part was to do a ten minute presentation on how they might use Google Calendar to be able to have a comprehensive master calendar for the city. I was first impressed by how many organizations were present at the meeting: 17 different community organizations from Little League Baseball to Enough is Enough, from the Arts Council to Parks and Recreation. I was then impressed by how much energy and interest there was about getting a comprehensive community calendar together. Every organization said that they’d build a Google Calendar and a woman who works for the City volunteered to do the master calendar consolidation. I think this might actually happen!
9. Saturday afternoon my siblings, Nina, and I went over to Soda Springs to celebrate my parent’s 65th Wedding Anniversary. They were married in June 7, 1944 in the Salt Lake Temple while dad was on leave from the Army. D-Day was the day before the wedding. A couple of weeks later dad left on a troop ship for Europe to see duty in France and Germany. Mother was pregnant when he left and dad was notified by telegram the following year in March when I was born. His unit was poised to cross the Rhine River the day he got the telegram. Sixty-five years is a remarkable feat and definitely needed to be feted.
10. Today we had a mostly sunny day, the only day this week forecast to be partly sunny. If it’s raining on Saturday, I probably won’t go to the Farmers Market. That activity has resulted in a couple of sales, but definitely hasn’t been the market I was thinking it would be. I’ll have to rethink how to do this next year for sure.

Hope your week has been good for you, too!

I learned yesterday evening that a classmate of mine died in Boise last Sunday, May 31st. My first memory of her was in third grade. As the teacher went down the roll asking each person what name they wanted to use, Mary Kaye replied that she wanted to be called “Kaye”. When the teacher got to me, even though up to that time I had been called by my middle name “Kay”, I had to be called something different. Can’t have two people by the same name in the same classroom, I guess. That year I was known as “Roland” in the classroom and “Kay” everywhere else, including the playground. We were in different classrooms in the fourth grade but back together in fifth. By that time she was using “Mary Kaye” as her name and that’s how she remained through high school and graduation.

I’ve not seen her since then and was surprised to learn that she had been very sick for a while and had passed away.

It looks like I’ve gotten to the age where any of us in the Soda Springs High School Class of 1963 can go at any time. Bummer.

Rest in Peace, Mary Kay Isle!

I know … a day late….

1. Even though this is a day late, I did put a couple of other blog entries out yesterday. But then I totally forgot it was a Tuesday until I was driving to Georgetown to attend the City Council meeting and then it was too late. I barely get cell phone reception in Georgetown.
2. Speaking of City Council meetings, the one in Georgetown is always interesting. Lots of people show up and the meeting seems to me to be a showcase example of small town interactions. Last night’s meeting agenda included a complaint about someone with too many horses on their property and not keeping their geese penned up and a complaint about a yard that seriously needs to be cleaned up. Interestingly enough, no names were used. Everyone on the council and in the audience (except me) knew who was being talked about.
3. I could never charge enough money for the garden beds I build to pay for my labor. Either that or I have to decide that my time is worth around a dollar an hour. There’s no way to do these things fast and have them look as good as I want them to look.
4. We were at the Boise Temple on Saturday for my cousin’s Big Day at the Temple. Her husband was receiving his own endowment and then the family was being sealed. As I was sitting in the lobby waiting, in came a couple from Pocatello that I know fairly well. We chatted for a couple of minutes and they went to a different sealing. When we saw each other on Sunday we remarked about how often it happens that we are out of town and run into someone we know.
5. That reminded me of a time when Nina and I were in Salt Lake City sitting in a small cafe in one of the malls in downtown Salt Lake. A fellow walked past where Nina could see him and she said, “That looks like Tom Mooso!” He heard his name, turned around, and came back to talk to us. Perhaps twenty years previously we had been in Japan together and had served together in the Johnson Branch Presidency.
6. We have had copious amounts of rain the past couple of days. Driving home from Georgetown the sky provided quite a lightning display. Some of the streaks of lightning went across the entire sky and there were often lightning strikes in front, to the right, and to the left all at the same time. I think the last time I saw a lightning display that spectacular was when we were living in Otterbein, Indiana in 1970 and watched a massive thunderstorm move across the fields in front of the house.
7. One other memorable lightning story. I was flying from Atlanta to Denver and we were routed around a big thunderstorm. The routing took us north of Cheyenne, Wyoming and then south along the front of the Rocky Mountains. The air was very turbulent and the airplane was bouncing around. I had a window seat on the left side of the airplane as we went past a very large anvil-shaped thunder cloud. Hundreds of lightning streaks were flashing around the sides of the cloud and the whole cloud flashed like a florescent light bulb that needs to be changed. It was another marvelous display of nature.
8. We had a group of Rotarians from northern Germany at our Rotary Club meeting yesterday. While my German is still pretty good (or else they were being very, very kind), I can’t think very fast in German anymore. Time to get back to that country for a while and get some practice thinking in German rather than translating. One of the Germans was from Hamburg and knew of the TRW company in Hamburg that I did some work for back in the mid-1970’s. The company still has the same name, but a different mother company than TRW. It was good to know that they were still in business.
9. School is out here in Pocatello. While I was working on the raised garden bed in the garage yesterday I could hear kids all around the neighborhood. When a thunderstorm would come over, they’d all run inside and then reappear as soon as the rain went away. On Monday a neighbor woman and her daughter stopped by to see the upside-down tomatoes Nina is growing. The daughter complained that her brother “won’t play school with me!” I had to chuckle at that remembering that our kids all played school for several weeks after school let out for the summer as they were growing up. Can’t wait for school to end so we can go play school….
10. Since it’s not raining at present, it’s time to go spray on the last coat of stain on the custom 9 ft raised garden bed. I have to do the spraying outside and rain isn’t very conducive. The radar maps show the rain has moved to the east and we shouldn’t have anymore until the thunderstorms wake up again late this afternoon.

And that’s all for (yesterday)….!!

The custom-built raised garden bed is nearing completion. I’ll need to put another coat of stain on tomorrow morning. The other beds I’ve made I’ve used the Wagner PowerSprayer to put on the stain, but because the stain is so thin, it tends to run and to make splotches. So this time I decided to hand stain with a paintbrush. I won’t do that again! It took what seemed to be forever to get finished. Better is to spray on the stain and then use a brush to wipe up the runs.

The green color in the picture is because of the lighting and the reflection from the wet driveway. It really isn’t green!

We’ll be going to the Farmers Market again this Saturday morning. I’m going to make up some small planter boxes and take them in for sale. Hopefully I can sell them on the spot. Pictures forthcoming when I’ve got a couple of them made (maybe tomorrow).

I’m making up a custom-built raised garden bed for a lady in the neighborhood. I stopped over there yesterday evening to look at where she plans to put the bed and to talk with her about whether she wanted it to be painted or stained. She has a teen-aged, delightful, funny, and very autistic son Dane who greeted me and wanted to know my name, how to spell it, and exactly how to pronounce it. Then he said he was going to draw a picture of me and went back into the house.

I went with the lady of the house around back where the garden bed is going, we decided on stain rather than paint, and that the extensions for hanging flowers and such would go on the ends of the bed rather than along one side. Then Dane came out of the house with a piece of paper on which he had sketched my picture. I was actually quite amazed. It really does look like me … from the glasses to the suspenders. The picture is worth preserving for posterity!

The other day a friend forwarded a message purporting to show church signs from Our Lady of Martyrs Catholic Church and Beulah Cumberland Prebyterian Church with their responses and counter responses to each other. The signs read as follows:

All dogs go to heaven

Only humans go to heaven. Read the Bible

Got loves all His creatures, dogs included

Dogs don’t have souls. This is not open for debate

Catholic dogs go to heaven. Presbyterian dogs can talk to their pastor

Converting to Catholicism does not magically grant your dog a soul

Free dog souls with conversion

Dogs are animals. There aren’t any rocks in heaven either

All rocks go to heaven

This funny exchange caused me to look it up on the Internet. First I found the entire exchange documented on Snopes.com where the entire exchange was determined as “never happened.” They suggested that the signs were generated online at a site called Church Sign Generator which led me to says-it.com.

Sure enough, the site once allowed someone to make up church signs and see what they would look like. However, the site doesn’t work anymore! The Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center sent them a Cease and Desist order claiming that the site contributed to fraud because people can use the site to mock up concert tickets.

I was at first amused and then a bit torqued off over lawyers and law suits. Meanwhile, I’m pretty sure that all dogs go to heaven and very few lawyers.

Why be brief?

1. During my growing up years, May 30th was a State holiday called Decoration Day. The holiday was always on the 30th. That was the day we made the pilgrimage to all the cemeteries around to place flowers on the graves of family members and flags on the graves of deceased veterans. School in Soda Springs always ended not later than the day before Decoration Day which made the day even more important. In May 1966 President Lyndon Johnson set the last Monday in May as Memorial Day and the holiday hasn’t been the same since. Now it’s just another three-day weekend with most people no longer associating the day with remembering our war dead.
2. The Big Event associated with that holiday was the Indianapolis 500 race. NASCAR hadn’t been invented and the only other racing to compete with the Indianapolis 500 for TV time was Grand Prix racing with the fall Watkins Glenn Prix being the Big Deal. Today the Indianapolis 500 is a footnote event and Grand Prix has disappeared, I think.
3. A few years ago while on a business trip to Belgium, I took the opportunity to do a driving tour around some of the World War I cemeteries in Belgium. One cemetery I visited was a German cemetery with a very moving sculpture of a father and a mother grieving for their fallen son. That lead me to remember a post about the last cemetery I visited and the graves of soldiers who had died in the last hours of the war. I also posted a number of pictures from Ieper, from the driving tour, and from the American Cemetery in Waregem, Belgium. That caused me to have to go look at the pictures and read the posts once again. So much for trying to be somewhat brief!
4. Nina and I actually tried to go to an Indianapolis 500 race. We were living in Chardon, Ohio and a good friend at the time was a Major Indianapolis 500 Fan. The four of us drove over to Indianapolis and stayed in a crummy motel. We went to the race on Sunday, but the cars made two circuits around the track when the rains came in copious quantities. After a couple of hours of waiting, the race as postponed to the next day. That didn’t work for any of us, so back home we went. Since then the race has been moved to Monday permanently.
5. We spent Memorial Day with our daughter Heather and her family in North Salt Lake. One highlight of the day was swimming in their marvelous pool. Nina got sunburned … I got a bit of color on the top of my head. They have a very nice pool.
6. On Memorial Day morning Nina and I drove to the cemetery where Trevor is buried and where the grave stone also memorializes Traci. I got off at the wrong exit on the freeway which required some back tracking. We got to the cemetery to learn we couldn’t remember exactly where his grave is located. The Really Big Pine Tree by his grave is no longer a Really Big Pine Tree. I’ll claim that as the excuse and I’m sticking to it. This time, though I wrote down the locations as well as made a waypoint in my iPhone with the latitude and longitude. Maybe we’ll have fewer problems next time!
7. Another Memorial Day activity was going to the movie theater to see Night At the Museum Battle of the Smithsonian.  It was a corny, crazy, funny, and satisfying movie. I’d actually like to see it again! The other big movie of the weekend (which was supposed to be the Really Big Deal) was Terminator Salvation, which got tromped by the Night at the Museum comedy. I’ve no interest in the Terminator movie at all. On the other hand, I’m looking forward to seeing Star Trek again!
8. A really stupid event took place in Burma where a guy with no sense at all swam across a lake to “visit” Aung San Suu Kyi, the only imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize winner. That resulted in him being captured and the Burmese government gaining the opportunity to put Kyi on trial and continue her imprisonment. Worse is that the nut case is apparently a Mormon. We’re not imune either to crazies.
9. Bought a bunch of lumber today to use tomorrow to build some garden beds that have been sold. I may come close to breaking even on this venture … no cruise is forthcoming from it, though. Dang!
10. What was supposed to be a fast ten things has turned into a rather lengthy period of time, mostly because I got sidetracked reading from my blog about the WWI cemeteries and looking at my pictures. Now I’m rather nostalgic and am right ready to travel to Europe once again.

That’s my story and I’m sticking to it!