Cool Ride for a Nerdy Kid

Ok, so there's always that car that you dream of owning. The car that says "This is me". My '67 Mustang was that car for me. I'm still trying to figure out how I could own a two year old car when I was 17. I remember that my Dad co-signed for me, and I'm pretty sure that he was named on the title, but how cool would this be to own a car like this when you were my age? The car had a huge motor - not the wimpy 289 most Mustangs had and it had a three speed tranny. That meant there was a lot of torque in first gear - an important feature for a teenage kid with rubber to burn. The first thing I did when I got it was to paint the recessed part of the hood black and add a psychedelic painting with the wording "Peace" on the rear deck. It was really just a poster that I got laminated and stuck on the back. There wasn't another car like it in the valley.

We had lots of fun with that car. Janene and I went to drive-ins with it. It was safer for that than the old cars because it had bucket seats. I took all the guys from work fishing in it up to Blacksmith Fork, and most evenings in summer it could be found up at Mueller Park where we went to "shoot the tube". It cost a ton to drive; it got about 8 miles to the gallon. Even with gas at 30 cents a gallon it was a major drain on the pocketbook when I only made two bucks an hour.

This was also the car where Janene learned to drive a stick and the one we took on our honeymoon. We decided to go to Zion National Park for our honeymoon and were going to camp out in the Sears pup tent that I bought when I was twelve years old with my money mowing lawns (25 cents for the front lawn and 50 cents for the back). Luckily, my dad took me aside and convinced me that while it would be a honeymoon to remember, Janene would really prefer that we get a hotel room. I didn't really have the money to do that, and my dad pitched in and gave me his Phillips 66 credit card to use for the trip. After getting married in Cedar City, we drove to Zions, and spent the first night at the Bumbleberry Inn. We found a cheaper place for the next two nights.

After that, it was off to our new life together. We wanted desperately to be independent, so there were lots of times we should have asked our parents for help and we didn't. Thank goodness for working at Robintino's. We always had the soup that was left over at the end of the night, and if there was a dinner made by mistake, it went into the cooler for me to bring home at night. We got so we would only put $1.50 of gas in the Mustang's tank at a time because we couldn't bear the thought of having that much money in the tank when we had run out before payday. When the water pump went out, we thought it was the end of the world. Finally with the Arab Oil Embargo, and Shon's diapers (Imperial Diaper Service), we could no longer afford the cool ride, and we traded it in on a new set of wheels, a Mercury Capri, made in Germany, that got much better gas mileage. My brother has a Mustang in his garage that he has kept for years. I always thought it would be fun to restore one of these with one of my boys, but they grew up way too fast and I never had the time, and I don't think the boys really wanted to do it. Oh, well!

Adventures with Captain America

One of the joys of youth is that you get get to to do totally crazy things. Captain America was one of those things in my life. I chose to take an auto shop class in high school. It meant that I had to take one less class from Orlin Ford. During one year, I took three different classes from the same teacher, Calculus, Physics and Statistical Analysis. Taking auto shop from Ed Schilowsky was a welcome break from the theoretical world and inspired me to create "Captain America" with my friends. We had found an old 1947 Ford pickup truck on a farm. A friend at school said he could sell it to us cheap, and we soon had towed it down the hill to Bountiful High's auto shop. We worked on it there during class time and soon had the truck running well enough to take it home where we removed the body and truck bed. Then it was back to the shop where we cut the frame out and welded it back together with a much shorter wheelbase. In the process, we had to create a new place for the seat, shorten the driveline and add a beer keg for a gas tank. We welded two steel rims together for each rear wheel to create dual wheels.

We named it Captain America after something from the film "Easy Rider" - for the life of me, I cannot remember what. We painted different parts of the motor red, white and blue. The thing could pop wheelies if you dropped the clutch in granny gear. One time when I did that, the weld that held the mounting plate for the clutch and brake pedals broke off and dropped to the ground, leaving me no way to stop the vehicle as I headed down 1500 South in Bountiful. I finally stopped it by sideswiping someones wooden fence with the rear dually. I never was very good at welding.

I drove it up to Janene's house once. Maybe more than once. We didn't have an exhaust system, so that meant no muffler and flames would shoot out the sides where the exhaust manifold should have been. Janene was so embarrassed to have me there. She said she could hear it coming for five minutes and her dad was disgusted with me and not happy that all the neighbors saw this noisy thing park in front of his house.

We tried to make it street legal, but in order to do that, we had to have a title. Being young dumb kids, we didn't know about that part. When we pressed our friend for the title, we got the run around and finally we became aware that our friend probably didn't own the vehicle and had stolen it. By then, we had destroyed a perfectly good truck that belonged to some farmer and figured we would be charged with stealing the truck if we went to the police. There was no choice but to dismantle the vehicle piece by piece and send the parts out with the family trash over a period of time. We dug a hole on the side of our house with the help of my little brother and buried the cab and body. The engine was dropped off the side of a hill on the dirt road going up to Calder's property and the wild ride of Captain America was over, much to the relief of my parents, Janene's dad and all of the neighbors

Things I learned from my Mother

This Mother's Day I have thought a little bit about the things I have learned from my mother. I thought I would share them here.

1. CARE FOR OTHERS.

My mom has all her life had a desire to serve others. This has taken her to a lot of places she would not have ordinarily gone in her life. The first real service I remember was when the Westerman family lived next door to us. This family was a real piece of work with a father who had his paycheck drunk before he got home from work. When the family got sick, my mom went to care for them even though that meant that she would get hepatitis and be sick for years. Later that would be translated into efforts to see that people who didn't look like us enjoyed the same rights we do. She became an advocate for people affected by the nuclear testing of the 50's and 60's. She now can often be found at the food bank helping those who have lost their jobs be able to provide for their families.

2. IT'S OK TO LAUGH ... EVEN IF YOU'RE THE MOM

When I was 11 or 12, I was getting ready for church and polishing my shoes on the white painted stairs. As I pulled the dauber out of the bottle ( shoe polish then was liquid, like paint), about a fourth of the bottle came flying out, and down the stairs. My mother was not very happy with me - and she let me know it. After cleaning up the mess, she sat down with me, took the bottle of shoe polish, and said " Here is how you do it!". As she pulled the dauber out, shoe polish went flying out and all over the stairs. I was horrified. Did this mean I was going to be in even more trouble now that the same thing had happened to her? I looked to her, she looked at me, and she started laughing. We sat there on the stairs, laughing till we cried. That's when I knew I had a pretty cool mom.

3. JOY WITH FAMILY

Things for my Mom haven't been easy. Living life for her has often been one battle after another ( or should I say, one hospital after another). She still has to have regular visits to the doctor where she is given another opportunity to stay on this earth, yet I never hear her complain about how hard it is. All my life I have known that being with her family was a conscious choice. Knowing that my Mom chose to be here with us has affected every part of my life and taught me to appreciate my own children and grandchildren.

4. THERE IS BEAUTY ALL AROUND

Maybe this came from her father, who used to chase sunsets to get the perfect picture . My mother can find beauty in every place or thing. She taught us to enjoy the world that God created and to appreciate it for the beauty it contains. We could go to the desert or the mountains and we didn't have to exploit the landscape to enjoy it. I am sure the idea of taking a dirtbike up a hillside , or speeding around on a four-wheeler never occured to her. She did get caught a few times trying to bring the desert home to her yard. In my garden, I like to grow vegetables. They are so ... useful. I have to have a corner for my wildflowers, though; and that comes from her.

All of these things I have learned from my Mother. There are many more, but those will have to wait for another time. Happy Mother's Day, Mom. I love you.

Don't Laugh - It's Paid For

With the old Impala consigned to the auto graveyard, the search was on for a new car. I was getting tired of walking to work and the lack of a vehicle was causing some problems. I got off work at 2:30 AM or so and then walked home. The Bountiful Police Department took a dim view of long-haired hippies walking the public streets at that hour of the night. Sometimes I could catch a ride with one of the the other guys at work, but when I couldn't, I had to deal with Officer Burningham. I had to be at school at 7:30 for my first class. I usually slept through that one. My English teacher, June Carnes, was frustrated that I could sleep through her class and still get straight A's. I had done all my homework during the summer and was always able to turn it in on time (including the assignments that were extra credit). Janene and I saw an ad in the paper for a clean one-owner with low miles. I took the money from the insurance settlement (which was not near enough to pay off the loan and used $450 to buy this sharp 1958 Ford Fairlane. It had a 312 motor and a shifter on the column. It turned out that Janene and I thought the car was haunted. It had windshield wipers that ran off the engine vacuum and they would quit whenever you really needed them. I found little tiny switches installed under the seat that were connected to the radio such that if you leaned forward on the seat, the radio would turn off. Boy, I wish I still owned this car. It would be pretty cool to take my grandkids for a ride in a real car. Oh, and yes, those are my hippie peace pants.

Here's for you Brother & Sister Rogers

You asked for it. Here is the body Janene fell for. She took this picture when we first met in 1968 at Upper Emerald Pool in Zions National Park. We met during a summer science class on this field trip. Later on this night, we would hold hands for the first time as I helped her over a fence after dark at Duck Creek Campground. I had never done that with a girl before. I think we were both a little twitterpated (to quote Thumper). While we were at Zion National Park during the day, it rained buckets at Duck Creek and all of our tents were absolutely drenched. We all ended up sleeping on the bus - boys on one side and girls on the other. Janene and I stayed up all night and talked - touching toes across the aisle. By morning I knew that this was the girl I would marry. Too bad we had to wait until I graduated from high school three and a half years later.

Wanna piece of this?

You too can have one of these newwest fashion accessories.

Be the first on your block to have one.

When Janene went to get this prescription filled,

they told her this was the last they would get for a long long time.

Now here's the real question -

Do you have your food storage?

Have you got some money out of the bank?

Have you got some water stored?

Do you have a full gas tank?

Just imagine what would happen

if a lot of people got sick - or just called in sick

What would happen?