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A couple more things I remember about education week before we move on to other things. There was one summer when the “New Kids on the Block” boy group came out with a new album. They were really hot that year and my kids (especially the girls) loved them. This was in the days when cassettes were still popular and so, just before we left to go west to education week, I bought the latest album on a cassette. Big mistake.

We played that cassette over and over as we travelled west. I’ll have to admit that I never really got tired of it. I liked New Kids also, but I’ll bet we played that cassette 15 or 20 times during that vacation.

Another stupid memory I have of education week was the year I decided to grow a beard. I think we have pictures somewhere of me in a full beard. I got a lot of comments at work and church about it. Beards are funny things. They are a real pain to grow, but after you have it for awhile, it’s not so bad and you actually start liking it. I don’t think I kept mine very long, but one summer, I had one when we went west.

I attended all the classes as normal and than, I think it was on Friday afternoon, after classes were done, we stopped at a store in Provo to buy some supplies for the trip back. This stranger came up to me in the store and asked me how I had liked Education Week. I had never seen her before, so I asked how she knew I’d been to Education Week. She said I had been in a couple of her classes and besides, I was the only guy attending Education Week who had a beard. I thought that was cool and it inspired me to keep the beard a little longer than I probably would have.

Dad

About every other year, in late August, we would all go on vacation to Utah to attend Education week at BYU. We did this many times. I don’t think we got out there every year, but we did a lot of them. We had a big yellow Chevy Surburban with a large area in the back. With the help of Paul Day, we built a playform that fit in the back of the truck. The platform was about a foot off of the floor and we could store our suitcases under the platform and then the kids could play around on top of it. We attached some old carpet to the platform, throw in a bunch of pillows and it was like a big bed. You could lay back there and sleep or just watch the road go by.

The platform made our trips a whole lot better. Education Week really only benefited me and Karen, but I hope the kids enjoyed it, too. They usually stayed at somebody’s house while we went to class. They were nice trips. It took us about 2 whole days to get out there. We could camp along the way or stay in motels. We would sometimes go up to Preston, Idaho and visit the Bodily’s. Their son was a missionary who served in North Dakota when we lived there and for some reason, we had kept up a relationship with his parents. They were an older couple who had a house just outside of Preston. We could usually count on staying one night with them and that saved us money.

There are a few things I remember about the Bodily’s. I remember one of the kids riding on their tractor and having a good time (David or Matt – not sure which, maybe both). I remember the good meals she served us. That was great after being on the road for two days. I also remember that President Ezra Taft Benson who was a prophet of the church was born and raised just across the road from their house. One time Bro Bodily and I were standing out by the road and Pres Benson’s brother came by and stopped and talked to us. That was kind of cool. For someone from Minnesota who never met anyone special in the church, that was as close as I had ever come to meeting the prophet.

Education Week was always fun. I am remembering other things from education week trips. I’ll try to cover those next time.

Dad

One of the few times I really felt good about something I accomplished was when I built the playhouse in the backyard. I was reading the paper one day and they had either an ad or an article (I don’t remember which) that showed the playhouse and listed all the materials you would need to build it.

I showed the article to Karen and said “I think I can do that – at least I’d like to try.” Keep in mind that I’m pretty inept when it comes to making things. I’m more of a thinker than a doer, so actually building something was a real stretch. I took the list of materials and went to Menard’s which is a lumber store a few miles away. They are kind of like Home Depot and I believe they are still in Rochester, although the store I went to is no longer there.

I showed the list to the salesman and they got everything. I was driving the Suburban then, so everything went into the back and I took it home. We picked out a place in the backyard where it could go and I started working on it. I don’t know how long it took, but it was really fun building it. It had two levels with a kind of deck on the second level. You got to the second level via a little ladder that was attached to the wall. You climbed the ladder and then went though a little hatch-way that you could close after you were on the second level. This was so you didn’t fall back through the hole.

Anyway, I think the kids loved it. I remember Kristy played on it and I’m not sure about everyone else. It was there until we moved away from Eyota. The next time I visited Eyota after moving west, I drove by the old house and they had rearranged things and the playhouse was gone. It was probably pretty ratty by then anyway.

There are very few things in my life that I can point to and say “I did that”, but the playhouse was one of them. It’s always cool to actually build something with your own two hands.

Dad

One of things we did which I look back on with fondness was going to school concerts in which my kids participated. I’m not so sure I was that excited about it when it actually happened, but today, I remember them as fun experiences. Every year, it seems, we had a Christmas choir concert. (They might have been called “Holiday Concerts” to be politically correct) You kids probably remember this better than I do, but I remember that each class would take it’s turn and come on stage (or they might have been positioned somewhere around the gym) and then they would sing their song(s).

It was cool because sometimes the kids would dress up in costumes. We would get so excited when we could point out one of our kids. I think all of the kids got a chance to do this several times.

Matt was in high school choir and one year they did a concert. I think they got extra credit for doing solos and for taking part in other types of numbers. Matt and his friend Bryce Dody (I think I spelled his name right) sang the song “It’s Still Rock and Roll to Me” which was done by Billy Joel. It was very cool and the crowd really liked it. I think Matt may have missed a career move there.

Another of my favorite activities was working part-time at KFIL-FM in Preston. Of course, Mike being the program director was a key factor in me getting the job. But, he made me interview and everything. I cut a demo tape of me talking to see what kind of “mike” voice I had. I had worked briefly at KBYU-FM in Provo while I was going to school, so this wasn’t completely new to me. I did the demo tape and he hired me. I mostly worked on week-ends when they needed a replacement. It was a really fun job. I would be a DJ professionally if they paid anything. But you remember how poor Mike was. Most DJ’s are that way. I got paid something like $7.00/hour. But I didn’t do it for the money. I did it because I loved it. It was fun to learn the equipment and say the lines knowing that people all over the area could hear you.

One Saturday night, I particularly remember. Mike had told me we had a ticket (just one) to a “Little Jimmy Dickens” concert that was playing in the area in the near future and I should give away the ticket to some lucky caller. So, a little later, I said into the mike: “I’ll take the fifth caller for a free ticket to Little Jimmy Dickens”. Sounds professional, right? Well, I did not get one call, let alone five. So, I played a couple songs and waited a little while – nothing. So, I got on the mike and said, in effect. “Guess what, folks, we’ve just found another ticket to the Jimmy Dickens concert. Caller two will get the ticket. Hurray and dial carefully.” Well, you guessed it, I got nothing. No one called.

I told Mike the next day that I tried to give away the ticket but didn’t. He laughed and said he would find someone around the station to give it to. I wish, now, that I had taken it and gone myself. But, it’s tough to use just one ticket. Maybe if I’d had two, things would have gone different. Or maybe nobody listens to KFIL.

I worked for KFIL for several years off and on. After I left Eyota and moved west, commercials with my voice played on KFIL for several years. I don’t think there are any today, they kind of died away as thay changed them and got new sponsors. But, I made my mark on Preston and KFIL. Me and Mike, the great DJ’s.

Dad

One of the fun things I used to do during the late 80’s and early 90’s was to DJ for the dances at church. Once a month, we would have what we called “Super Saturday” when all of the stake would get together and have meetings. The meetings lasted most of the day and then in the evening, we would have a dance. I’m not sure if doing the dances was an actual calling or if we just agreed to do it, but Mike and I worked hard on having a nice dance and playing music that the kids would like but was still music that was appropriate to be played at church.

Mike and I would have meetings with Brian Cragun who was over the dances on the stake level. We would discuss certain songs and decide if it could be played or not. If it had any swear words or explicit sex, it was out or sometimes a song would be banned because it was just so horrible. The question we asked was what would the dancers be thinking when they heard this song. Would it be uplifting and good thoughts or dark and/or evil thoughts. Some songs were banned just for the message they carried even though they weren’t bad in and of themselves.

As Hip-Hop got more and more of a hold on American pop music in the Nineties, the job got harder and harder. I was worried that we would get to a point where we wouldn’t be able to play any of the new stuff and the dances would become “oldies” dances.

But, being the rebel that I was, every once in a while, I would have a song that I liked so much that I would violate the rules and play it anyway. One that I really remember was “Money For Nothing” by Dire Sraits. It is one of my all time favorite songs but some of the words are just not appropriate for a church dance. But one week, I played it anyway, just to see what would happen. Wouldn’t you know, a girl (not an adult) came up the stage where I was seated playing the music and asked me if I thought that was a good song for church dances. I told her to go away and stop bothering me. But, I never played it again.

Doing the dances was great. I had all the music and I think the kids liked it. When I quit doing it in the 90’s, Mike took over for awhile. One time after I had left Rochester to move west, Mike told me someone had broken into the closet where we kept the music and had stolen all of the equipment and all of the tapes that we had spent years compiling. I was just sick. All that work, gone. Mike started building it up again, but it would never be the same. I would love to meet the person who took all our stuff. They would have to drag me off of him.

Dad

Karen found a copy of a Visiting Teaching booklet that was put together this past spring. She re-wrote a little about my hospitalization in 1977 and scanned it in for me to include here, even though it’s out of order, time-wise. Thanks again to Karen for her help in writing this story.

A great service was done for our family in 1976-77. Many of my visiting teachers have been outstanding but this experience comes to mind at this time. Not only my visiting teachers, but also the RS president, many sisters in the ward and even people in the neighborhood became involved.

While living in Eyota, Minnesota, Jim/Dad was diagnosed with an old-fashioned type of pneumonia (which is unpronounceable!) shortly after Christmas in 1976. It hit him hard and he was hospitalized for six weeks.

Kimberly Sue was age 13 months and I was expecting another baby, Katy in April. David was age 6 and Matthew, 9. Worry about Dad’s health and recovery, daily trips to the hospital in Rochester to visit him, shoveling snow out of our long driveway during a Minnesota winter, getting back from the hospital in time to pick up my kindergartner (David) from school at noon, keeping food in our children’s tummies and the weariness of a pregnancy all took its toll.

As I look back I was pretty healthy. Guess I needed to be to handle all of that! Visiting teacher Adele Swift called to check on me, arranged for meals and tended Kimmy or arranged to have sisters tend her during visits to Jim. Neighbors like Mr. Anderson, shoveled our driveway. One sister (Nancy Judd) even brought us a TV to use because ours needed repairs. She thought we needed stress relief, l guess!

One of the most thoughtful and generous acts of compassion was Bishop Max Welker called a prayer circle of the priesthood in our ward (or branch) to meet at the church in Jim’s honor. We know that was a big factor in Jim’s recovery. Heavenly Father was looking over us.

The RS president Cathy Reynolds called often to see how we were doing and told me what was going on in the ward to keep me grounded and give me perspective. It’s easy to become consumed with your own problems when husband, daddy and bread winner is out of commission. She shared other members’ happenings which opened my eyes and kept me from looking inward so much.

After 5-6 weeks of hospitalization, it was good to have Jim home. After a while he went back to work part time. Then Katy was born April 6 and soon after he was back to work full time. What a four to five-month period!

It was one of the most beautiful Aprils when Katy was born. Our yard had lush, green grass and we enjoyed warm sunny days. That’s an early Spring for Minnesota.

Or maybe it was my attitude after having family back together and realizing how blessed we were.

Dad

In January of 1981, I applied with IBM to go to a school they offered in New York City. I don’t remember the name of the school, but it was like graduate classes in computer science. The school lasted four weeks and was held in a building on 42nd street right near Times Square. I stayed at a hotel on Lexington Avenue and really had a ball living in New York for a short time. I went to class during the day and in the evening I was able to go to movies and Broadway plays and live TV shows. Two plays that I remember seeing were “A Chorus Line” and “Ain’t Misbehavin’”. They were both very good. I saw “The $25,000 Pyramid” TV show with Dick Clark as the host live. I was in the audience for five shows. They tape five shows at a time with a short break between the shows for the contestants and the host to change clothes and for them to clean up the set. I was there for an entire afternoon. It was very cool.

On thing I did while I was in New York was to go to the Lincoln Center Library which had all the entertainment news. I was able to fill in some blanks on the Top 40 charts that I had been unable to get up until then. I also visited some really great record stores down in Greenwich Village which had 45 records that you couldn’t get anywhere else. I was still into music. And as of this time, I still hadn’t met Mike Sveen.

Halfway through the four weeks in New York, I had the choice of going home for a break or having my wife come out to see me. We decided that Karen would come out. Kristy had been born just 5 months earlier. So Karen came to New York and brought Kristy with her. We spent the weekend sightseeing, me being the big shot New Yorker who knew where everything was. The church had a ward in a building right across the street from Lincoln Center. A Temple is on one of the floors of that building today, but then, it was just a chapel and a visitor’s center. On Saturday night, we got one of the girls from the ward to babysit for us while we went to a show. I have no idea what we saw. Maybe Karen remembers, but I remember taking the babysitter home afterwards (maybe in a taxi, not sure – I didn’t have a car). She lived down right near the World Trade Towers that fell during 911. I remember dropping her off right in front of the World Trade Tower and her telling me she could get home all right from there. It’s amazing what you remember and how much you forget.

Sometime in 1981, we got new home teachers and I met Mike Sveen for the first time and an eternal friendship was born. I’ve already talked about that in the blog post “here“.

Dad

The following was written by Karen. She remembers more about those days than I do, so I am indebted to her for Kristy’s birth information:

OK, we’re in the “modern” days of the 1980s so ultrasounds can detect what the sex of your baby will be so when Kristy was growing inside me we took advantage of this new technology. It’s a girl!

Since we had two K’s in Kimmy and Katy and I got to decide the girls’ names I chose (or we becuz Dad had some input in her middle name) Kristin. No, I was not watching the TV show “Dallas” at the time. Guess there was a Kristin in that series. (note: she’s the one who ended up shooting J.R.)… I went with Kristin for the third “K” (or 4th with my name!) Think it may have been on the list of names for future babies I wrote down as a college student, along with Kimberly. I have an aunt Christine who people said I looked like, but no, Kristin is not an updated version of my aunt’s name. Elaine, as Kristy’s middle name is from Dad’s grandmother or step grandmother’s name. He can correct that. (Dad: She was my grandfather’s wife, but the only grandmother I ever knew.)

I was appalled after I came home from the hospital when I realized Kimmy and Katy had learned what Barbie Dolls were becuz Veryl Firl had taken care of them one of the days while I was having Kristy. Her kids or grandkids must have had some at Veryl’s house; of course she allowed KK to play with them. I’m sure KK were ecstatic. Our household was never the same!

Kimmy (1975) and Katy (1977) were close to ages 3 1/2 & 5 when Kristy was born. So they along with their little friend Megan and perhaps Abby Anderson were our welcoming committee when we arrived home from the hospital. They were so excited for this new baby, they were beside themselves. Trying to remember if all three girls slept in the same bedroom, Kristy in the crib and Kimmy/Katy in my old double bed. Would’ve been a crowded bedroom. David was very sensitive to Kristy and her needs. Whenever she cried he said, “Mama, the baby’s crying!” He’d stand by her bed and watch her and soothe her.

I remember that the December after she was born on Sept. 20, 1980, all the kids came down with chicken pox, starting with David. I didn’t want the baby to get the chicken pox so I said nobody could touch her, else she might get them. That hurt David the most. He wanted soooo much to touch her, hold her, etc. As I looked back on the chicken pox for the 4 older kids, I realized that Kristy probably did get a light case, one on her head and one on her bottom. Thought the head one was cradle cap and thought the bum one was a rash!

She was a cute little blondy, like Katy became. We loved her and spoiled her and pampered her. She could do no wrong! Both Katy and Kristy were born at Olmsted Community Hospital in Rochester. I asked for “no smoking” rooms so I had the equivalent of a private room both times! I took advantage of the quiet and wrote notes about my babies and my impressions during my hospital stay. Wish I could put my hands on those notes.

I was Relief Society president from 1979-83, four years, four months and yadayada days! So Kristy, as a baby, went with me to meetings, visits to the hospital of members of our ward or out of town patients. She “broke the ice” when I’d visit people. First, we’d talk about the baby and then get on to other things. One gal was there in the mental health section and grew so attached to Kristy that she sent her a Raggedy Ann doll she made and a red and white sweater and hat set she knitted. The woman was probably in the hospital 3-4 months.

Seems like Kristy and I would walk to the Lutheran church down the block in the afternoon about the time Kimmy and Katy would be walking home from school. We’d wait for them and all would get excited to see one another.

Dad got to see Kristy’s birth as he did David, Kimmy and Katy. Matthew is the only baby that neither of us saw the birth happen. It was either the south who weren’t up to date or maybe 1967 was too early to allow parents to be part of the birth. We were too dumb as parents to ask for that maybe. Anyway, I vowed never to not see a birth of my babies again.

Also Matthew only nursed 6 months, again becuz I was a dumb mom! The rest nursed at least a year; Kristy a bit longer. With David I learned to use real foods to feed him instead of baby foods like with Matthew. Got a simple little food mill to grind the people food and feed to him. Or cut things into small pieces. Real food is more nutritious for babies and less costly and no chemicals or so much salt. All good reasons. Maybe some of this came about becuz David was born while Dad was at BYU and I interacted with “smarter” people! I continued the practice with the girls when it was time for them to eat as well. They had baby oatmeal but if I remember right most of their diets were real foods right from the beginning.

So now we had a nice family of five children.

Thanks, Karen – Dad

When David was about eleven and Matt was 14 or so, Matt was a boy scout in the ward troop. Since I was the father of a boy scout, naturally, I was called to be the Scout Master of the troop. It turned out to be a lot of fun. This was back when I could get around and do stuff. I was very overweight, which I’ve been all of my life, but at least I could walk and go on hikes and do the stuff that boy scout’s do.

I had an assistant, but don’t remember his name. We decided that summer (probably 1981, but I can’t be sure) to take the boys on a canoe trip. We had to rent canoes and arrange for the boys to bring food to cook and eat along the way. We carried everything with us in the canoes. We spent many scout meeting planning this adventure and trying to think of everything we would need for the trip.

We were planning to be gone three days, I think. We went to a spot just outside of Chatfield where there was an access to the Root River. The Root was not a big river but it offered some challenges. Karen drove with us to the drop off point. Then we put the canoes in the water and we arranged for Karen to pick us up somewhere down river in three days.

Matt went on the trip and I think he had a good time. David got to go because he was my kid, even though he wasn’t officially a boy scout. I remember the Brinkman boys went along, too. There were some other boys and my assistant. So, we had quite a group. The river was quite shallow in places. The canoe would bottom out and stop. We found that all we had to do was step out of the canoe into the river and take our weight off of the canoe and it would bob to the surface and we could get it off the bottom.

We stayed at this little campsite the first night. We had arranged for the boys to work on merit badges during the trip. Of course, everyone got the canoe merit badge, but we worked on camping and preparing meals to eat out doors and several others. I think the goal was for each boy to get at least three merit badges as a result of the trip.

The river was shallow in some places and then in this one section, it was almost rapids. Not quite, but for a group of inexperienced boy scouts, it seemed really fast. I think we had at least one canoe that swamped and dumped all it’s contents into the river. The second night we camped on a sand bar and everybody woke up in the morning with sand in everything they owned.

At the designated time on the third day, we arrived at the pick up point and Karen and other mothers were there. We had had a good time, but we were really glad to see them and get off the river. It was something to talk about for months. I think, by and large, it was a success.  I enjoyed scouting so much that I joined the scout council that met in Rochester and was involved in scouting for a couple years after I was released from the ward.

Dad