Forty Year Old Mystery

I don't know why I thought of this last story...perhaps because my last post was about a teacher. There's a mystery that has bounced around in my head for the last forty years or so and I would like fresh insight as to how it might be solved.

Virtually all of my elementary school teachers made a lasting impression on me in one way or another...

My kindergarten teacher's name was Miss Buzzbee. (what a perfect name for a kindergarten teacher!) Aside from her name, I remember that she was very sweet and patient and that she made me feel safe in her classroom. I still remember that warm and genuinely loving smile she gave to me when my mom took me into her classroom on the day before I started school to introduce me to my new teacher. Once she told us that we were going to have some new friends come and visit us that day. I still remember my excitement; I've always enjoyed meeting new people. When they never came, I felt cheated for years until I finally realized that our 'new friends' were named, "Dick" and "Jane" and they had a dog named, "Spot".

My first grade teacher's name was Mrs. Gilliland. She was a stickler for manners and courtesy. It was while in her class that we were first allowed to go and eat in the school cafeteria. For a week, each day before lunch, she would drill us on cafeteria protocol. She taught us that it was inconsiderate to make the cashier and others behind us in line wait while we fumbled around in our pockets looking for our money. Such was her influence that, to this day, when I visit a Luby's, I still have my money or credit card in the upper right hand corner of my tray when I get to the cashier.

It was while in Mrs. Steven's third grade classroom that I first was allowed to write with a fountain pen and we were introduced to cursive writing.

Miss Piggett, my fourth grade teacher was a willowy blond who looked like she was the inspiration for Barbie and was the object of my first crush.

Miss Innis, my fifth grade teacher was fresh out of college. My ability to make her turn red with laughter any time I felt like it made me think that I had her in the palm of my hand. Then I got my report card and discovered that, under the category of conduct, I received an "Unsatisfactory"

My sixth grade teacher, Mrs Harris, was a no-nonsense woman who issued pages of math as a punishment and is probably the reason I can now do long division with the skill of an autistic savant.

Did you notice that I skipped over my second grade teacher? That's because I only remember one thing about her. I can close my eyes and see, in my mind, the face of every single one of my elementary school teachers except this woman. I remember absolutely nothing about her....what her name was, what color her hair was, was she tall or short? Was she skinny or plump?....nothing....my mind is a complete blank.

The only thing I can recall is one day (after a particularly bad day of conduct on my part) She dropped a note on my desk for me to take to my parents, allow them to read how horrible I had conducted myself in class that day, get them to sign it, and bring it back to class with me the next day.

Now, I understand that this was a time predating the Internet and so my teachers could not simply email my mom and dad and tell them how badly I had misbehaved. But, by the time I attended second grade, Alexander Graham Bell was dead and in his grave for the better part of a century...the woman couldn't pick up a phone?

Having a seven year old boy bring one of those dreaded notes to his parents was akin to having a firing squad victim pass out the bullets just before they tied him to a post and put a blindfold over his eyes. Worse, in fact. At least a firing squad victim knows what his punishment will be and that it will be much quicker and relatively less painful.

To make matters worse, the sadistic...(what's the adjective I'm looking for here?....it will come to me....) In any event, the woman dropped the note off on my desk a full hour before I was to go home; meaning that I had a full hour to fret over my fate and try to concoct an alibi (which I couldn't because, unlike her more considerate predecessors, THIS teacher had stapled the note shut so I couldn't read it before I got home!) I was going to find out what I had done wrong at the same time my parents did. Allowing for their reaction, I would have about 30 seconds to come up with a plausible story. I was going to have to call upon all my powers of persuasion and talents in extemporaneous speaking just to survive past dinner time!

I tried to prise open a corner of the note to get a clue as to what it might be all about. No good. The woman had used too many staples. I accidentally tore a corner and quickly tried to smooth it all back into place. Things were bad enough but they would be much worse if my parents saw the torn corner and correctly surmised that I had tried to circumvent my teachers will and read the note before they got it.

Nervous energy consumed me and spilled out of me in the form of fidgeting and drawing doodles on the object of my obsession....the instrument of my doom. I'd had to contend with notes from teachers before but never had I been hemmed in on all sides like this.

After an hour of mental torture, the afternoon bell rang signalling freedom for virtually every student at James Arle Montgomery Elementary School...save one condemned.

That long walk home was too much for me to face. I sat at the street corner, directly atop a storm sewer inlet, and contemplated my fate. I sat there for the better part of an hour before inspiration struck. I looked down and saw the opening to the storm sewer. I casually looked about for witnesses. There was nobody in sight. The only thing that would make me seem more alone would be for the wind to moan and a tumbleweed to come rolling by. I girded up my loins, took a deep breath, and dropped my teacher's note into the storm drain inlet where I was certain it would be transported to the nearest bayou and out into The Gulf of Mexico to disappear forever.

I had bought myself some time. Tomorrow was a new day and hope springs eternal for a seven year old. I felt my old confidence return.

The next day, in class, when my teacher asked me if my parents had signed the note, I told her I had lost it. I smiled inwardly. I knew I was going to have a new note but my bad conduct was almost a day old. Chances are that this note would be written with far less venom and vitriol...maybe she had forgotten what I had done altogether...

My teacher levelled her gaze at me, reached into her top drawer, pulled out that note...that very same note...and placed it upon her desk.

"you mean this note?", She asked.

Did you ever see the movie, "Psycho"? You remember how Hitchcock played that shower scene...keeping his viewers mentally off balance by rapidly, and repeatedly zooming in and out while strained violins screeched in cadence with the camera's movements?

All I can say is that something like this must have happened in his life to give him the inspiration because that's exactly what was happening in my mind as I stared, transfixed upon that note on my teacher's desk.

SCREECH!!!...SCREECH!!!...SCREECH

And it was the same note...not a replica...not a duplicate or a carbon copy. It was the very same note that I had stuffed down the storm sewer the day before without a witness in sight...right down to every crease, doodle...even the tear in the corner where I had tried to read it!!! all there!

And that's it...that's is my only memory about second grade. Now, there might be one or more explanations for my inability to recall anything else from that school year. Post traumatic stress might be coming to your mind. I can buy that.

But I can only come up with two plausible explanations for how my teacher came to be in possession of that note.

1) She lived in the sewer

or (and this is the one I'm leaning towards)

2) She sold her soul to The Devil.

On Judging Not...

I had a history teacher in High School. I won't say his name for reasons that will shortly be evident. But, if I were to pick which of my teachers influenced me the most, this man would be high in the running.

He was a most opinionated man but I learned from him that it is possible to be opinionated and open-minded at the same time. He always preached to us about the dangers of communism in class and so, when he spoke of mormons as communists because, at one time, we had practiced The United Order, I stood up and told him that he didn't know what he was talking about.

You could have heard a pin drop.

The teacher eyed me up and down and then challenged me to back up my claim with a debate between he and myself. He allowed me three days to prepare and it was probably the hardest studying I had ever done in my academic career. We debated, he made his points and I made mine. In the end, he conceded defeat and thanked me for correcting his mistake.

His forearms were heavily scarred...a testament of a battle fought long ago with fire. In learning more about him, I discovered that when WWII broke out in Europe, he crossed the border into Canada and enlisted in the RAF before America was sucked into the war. He got those scars while piloting a Hawker Hurricane during The Battle of Britain. One of the most noteworthy features of that plane is that it took damage very well. In fact, it could still fly and fight while it was on fire, something my teacher found out first hand.

Even though he smoked heavily, the school administrators designated him to be the one to check for illicit smoking in the third floor boys restroom between classes. He felt it somewhat hypocritcal that he should turn in smokers when he, himself smoked so heavily. In the end, he figured out a way to do his job and maintain his integrity. He stood outside the boys room door between each period, coughed loudly and kicked the door for thirty seconds, then entered the boys room to see if he could catch anyone smoking...amazingly enough, he never did.

One of the greatest thing he insisted upon teaching us was to think for ourselves. The quickest way to get a mediocre or failing grade on an essay paper in his class was to parrot back an opinion he had offered. facts were facts, but when it came to opinion, you'd better have one of your own because he wasn't about to lend you one of his. I discovered that the best way to get an 'A' on any essay paper was to offer a well-researched and argued opinion contrary to his.

To say that the man was a hero of mine would be an understatement. Perhaps, you'll understand now why I don't mention his name when I tell you that I specifically went back to my high school after I served a mission to thank him and tell him what an influence he had on me only to discover that he was serving time in prison for child molestation.

The revelation turned my whole world upside down for quite some time. Nothing at all made sense and I wondered, for a while, what I could and could not trust. Thankfully, my father and I always had open lines of communication and in telling him my troubles, he wisely counselled me to keep that which was good in my memory and not dwell upon the bad.

"Every man is capable of both good and evil. In fact, a man cannot go very far in one of those directions without having the capacity to go just as far in the opposite".

That advice has stood me in good stead in my life. The thing is, I don't even know if my teacher was guilty because of the following story I am going to tell.

While serving as an Elders Quorum President, I had occasion to observe behavior in a little girl in our ward who exhibited many signs of having been a victim of molestation. I took my concerns to her mother who immediately implicated her husband, the child's stepfather.

The police were called and the man, who happened to be a friend of mine, was accused, tried and convicted and sent off to serve time in prison. I've designed many prisons and have visited all of them I can attest to the fact that the stories you hear about the treatment of child molesters in prison is absolutely true.

The years went by, the little girl grew up and graduated high school. I happened to be at her graduation and made it a point to go up and speak to her. I wanted to tell her how pleased I was that she had done so well through school and then, I don't know why, maybe because her stepfather was my friend, I broached the subject of her earlier life and expressed hope that she was faring well.

She looked at me with tears in her eyes and told me that it was all a lie. Her stepfather, my friend, had never touched her. In fact, she counted the time she spent with him as some of the happiest times of her life.

She had, in fact, been a victim. But the perpetrators were some men that her mother made friends with and had brought around to the house while my friend was at work. They were going through a divorce at the time and, when I asked about the daughter's strange behavior and expressed my fears, the girl's mom seized upon the opportunity to gain some leverage against her husband.

I felt as if ice water had replaced all of the blood in my body. The revelation that my friend had done nothing wrong and had spent the last five years in hell for it was beyond my comprehension. Worse still was the realization that I had unwittingly played a role in all of this by bringing up the matter in the first place.

All kinds of self doubt raced though me. Was I too quick to judge? Had I meddled where I ought not have? In the end, I realized that I was right about there being a problem, I just naturally assumed like everyone else that the source of that problem was the cliche that we all seem to accept.

A few years after the graduation, I was in Lowes and I spied my friend on one of the aisles. He had been released from prison. He is two years younger than me but he looked thirty years older. He had no teeth. His face was lined and scarred. His hair was thinning from malnutrition...

I went to him and begged his forgiveness for ever doubting him. I asked him to forgive me for the part I had played in his life turning out like it had. I half expected him to spit in my face or hit me or, at the very least, turn and walk away.

Instead, he embraced me and for five minutes we were the strangest sight ever seen in Lowes...two men embracing each other in the electrical department weeping like babies.

Given all of that, I hope you'll all understand why I try and give anyone accused of a horrible crime or sin the benifit of the doubt...and why I always try and keep the good things they brought to me and not worry so much about the bad.

I don't know what Michael Jackson did or didn't do. I do know that all of the jokes about what he might have done aren't very funny...and I do like his music.

The Ride of My Life..a moment of conversion

By the time that the fire department and the paramedics arrived at the scene of my accident, I was over 40 minutes into what rescue workers and trauma center personnel call, "The Golden Hour"; that period of time following an accident where a victim's chance of survival are greatest if they can begin to recieve treatment.

Aside from my wrists being destroyed, I had shattered my pelvis into four separate pieces of bone. I learned a few interesting facts about the human pelvis in the following weeks. I learned that it is a most difficult bone to break. In fact, my surgeon informed me that, if I took a human pelvis and hit it with a sledge hammer, chances are it would stay intact. She also said that it is the most painful bone to break and the shock associated with the pain kills a huge percentage of people who experience a broken pelvis.

At that moment, however, it was an almost ethereal experience for me. While people frantically tried to cut me from my car, I could tell that I had one foot in this world and one foot in the next. I instictively knew that I had to fight in some way to stay in this world but the temptation was almost overwhelming to let go and slip away into the next.

In the time where I knew with an absolute certainty that I was closest to death, I have never been more aware of my immediate surroundings, (even what I could not physically see...it was as if I were somehow connected to all things and everyone around me) and I have never felt more at peace. I knew with an absolute certainty that my existence would go on because, in a strange way, as I lay dying, I never felt more alive. I lost, forever, my fear of death

I have likened the experience to being in a river and holding onto a rope while the current tugged at you. If you let go of the rope, the current would simply transport you away to another place. It was odd, but I held onto my life by concentrating very hard on a spot just below where my throat melds into my chest.

Although I am not a follower of eastern religions,(and I was completely unaware of it at the time) the Hindus refer to this region as 'vishuddha', one of their seven 'chakras', or states of existence and equate this one to being on the 'physical plane'.

I do not now nor did I then ascribe to any beliefs in any religion but my own but I do find it strangely coincidental that I would cling to life by instictivly concentrating upon a spot that some believe to be the spirit's gateway to this physical existence. Joseph Smith once said that all religions have some truth to them. Perhaps this is one of the Hindus.

A rescue worker, a tiny guy with a bushy red moustache broke the rear window of my car and climbed into the back seat. He placed a collar around my neck and began to check me for injuries. He touched my thigh and pain shot through me like I had never felt before. I screamed and cursed at him and told him to leave me alone. He cursed back and told me that he was there to save my life and that he was going to touch whatever he damn well felt like touching.

I didn't see why I had to be the only one with a broken bone that night and so I whipped back with my elbow and gave the mouthy little guy a shot in the face, breaking his nose. The fireman with the jaws of life outside of the car laughed and said, "he told you not to touch him".

My left foot was jammed up against the driver's door of the car and they were afraid that while cutting off the door, they might cut off my foot and so I could hear them planning to cut off the passenger's door and pull me out that way.

"If you do that", I said, "you'll rake my hip over the console and I'll lose my concentration and die". I discovered then that rescue workers, at least those without bushy red moustaches, know when to listen to the people they are trying to save.

They gave me time to try and move my left foot from the door. I won't go into how difficult it is to try and move your leg when the bone it's supposed to be connected to is destroyed but, let's just say that I felt a lot like Luke Skywalker must have felt when he was stuck upside down in the ice trying to get to his light saber before that monster got to him. I can't say for certain but I'm pretty sure that "The Force" had a lot to do with my left foot moving away from the door.

The cut the door away and spread the car apart and then told me to fall out into thier arms. I feared the pain of moving but took a deep breath and leaned out into my rescuers.

I was grateful to learn that their movements were quick, deliberate, and fluid. The pain was inevitable but they lessened it drammatically by thier expertise.

As soon as I was situated on a gurney, four pairs of scissors, weilded by four practiced hands came out and snipped away the arms of my shirt and the legs of my pants. Then, in what was reminiscient of one of those amazing magician, tablecloth, flower vase tricks, they whipped away my clothes leaving me strip stark naked on a gurney beside the busiest freeway in the U S of A! (With all of the traffic stopped to boot!)Continuing with the Star Wars theme, it wouldn't have been so bad if I looked more like Luke or Han or even Chewbacca instead of Jabba the Hut.

I heard a paramedic ask, "Did we make sure that the television crew was far enough away?" I thought, "Yes...please....Lord....let them be far enough away" and I screamed, "Can I have a blanket?" They covered me up and hustled me into the waiting life flight helicopter that had landed on the freeway. I said goodbye to one set of paramedics and hello to another.

The flight from Katy to Hermann Hospital was only a few minutes but it was some of the most painful moments of the night. They had jammed my hip up against the side of the helicopter and all of the vibrations of the ship and rotor were transferred to my broken pelvis and shot right into me.

I began to feel as if I was going to slip away again and I knew I had to do something to take my mind off of the pain...so I began to sing.

If you're ever a passanger in life flight and you ever feel like singing, you should choose a different song than I did. I began to sing, "Abide With Me". That's not a song that instills a feeling of confidence in the life flight nurse who attends you. In fact, it freaks them out.

The nurse yelled at me, "Don't you die! If you die...you die on the ground, not up here!"

It struck me as odd that the nurse should be more concerned with where I die and not if I die and so I felt like this was a nurse whose head deserved to be messed with...so I asked in a feeble voice, "do I go towards the light or stay away from it?"

Excited now, the nuse asked, "Do you see a light?"

Motioning with my hand towards the helicopter's console I said, "Yes, I see a green one and a couple of red ones and there's a pretty blue one that keeps blinking"

She looked at me hard and then began to laugh, "You might very well be the only one I've ever heard of joking while on life flight"

I thought that my rescue efforts were tortuous but that was a pittance compared to what lay in store for me in the trauma room.

A nurse began to try and tug my boot off of my foot causing pain to stream out of every pore in my body. I screamed and cursed in several languages, including a few that I made up on the spot, and told the nurse that they were just a thirty dollar pair of boots...cut them off!.

She finally got the boot off and then, in a strange paradox, whipped out a pair of scissors and cut off my sock. (I still have the sock...if I ever run into that stupid nurse I'm going to make her wear it on her nose for a day)

Red Duke was my attending physician that night and, in his Texas ranger drawl came up and said, "Now Tom, we're gonna have to do some things to you that are apt to hurt quite a bit but we'll try and get them over with as soon as possible. We have to set your leg in traction and so we have to drill a hole in your shin to set a bar in there. We gave you a local anesthetic but we can't do a general 'cause you're still in shock. The local should numb it up a bit but you're still apt to feel it a might when that drill hits the bone". I was half expecting him to give me a bullet to bite down on.

I looked up and there was one physician standing on the gurney with his butt in my face, holding my pelvis together while a second held my foot under his arm and leaned back. A third held up a drill.

Revelation comes to different people in different ways...for me, it usually takes the form of a scripture that I'd read springing into my mind at the appropriate moment.

Just before the drill went into my shin, D&C 19:16-18 popped into my head:

For behold, I, God, have suffered these things for all, that they might not suffer if they would repent;

But if they would not repent they must suffer even as I;

Which suffering caused myself, even God, the greatest of all, to tremble because of pain, and to bleed at every pore, and to suffer both body and spirit—and would that I might not drink the bitter cup, and shrink

The drill bit into my leg and I thought, "Tom is gonna be a good boy from now on"

Small and Simple Things

Joseph Smith once said that all religions have some measure of truth to them. I would imagine that this extends to non-Christian religions as well. If that is so, then I think that I have uncovered what the LDS version of Karma is.

Under Buddhism, Karma is the belief that one keeps coming back to the same life until a much needed lesson is learned and then the soul ascends onto a higher plane in its next existence.

The Mormon version of Karma is that you have to keep doing a calling until you get it right. That might account for the reason I was Elders Quorum President three times.

During one of my incarnations as EQP, I was called into the bishop's office and told that there was a couple who were going through difficulties in their marriage. The bishop of our ward asked me to go to the couple's home and counsel with them and try and get their marriage back on track.

I don't usually argue with bishops but this is one time when I made an exception. Not only did it seem unorthodox...but it also seemed downright dangerous. I had absolutely no training in couples counseling and I could only imagine the trouble that could rain down on my head in particular, and the church in general if I meddled in areas wherein I had no expertise.

The bishop was insistent, however, and so I played my trump card. I made him bear his testimony to me that this was something he felt inspired to do and wasn't just something done out of expediency. He did just that and so I accepted the assignment.

The couple in question had met and married a bit quicker than many people in the ward felt was wise and, now that the shine was off the new relationship, they were experiencing difficulties. The things that most couples work out during a courtship were things that this couple was having to work out after having already taken upon themselves the covenant of marriage.

As I drove to the couple's home, terror over all the possible mistakes I could make and all of the possible problems that could come from my screwing up (and let's face it, I excel at screwing up) overcame me; so I pulled over to the side of the road and said a prayer.

I got to the couple's home and, I no sooner sat down on the couch when the accusations began to fly from both sides. For five minutes, I couldn't get a word in edgewise because of accusations and insults followed by counter-accusations and counter insults.

Finally, they each stopped to take a breath and I was able to speak. I had no idea what I was going to say but, when I opened my mouth, the words just came out...

"Are you having family prayer each night?"

They looked at me like I was crazy, then they looked down and said, "no"

"Are you having family home evening?"

"No"

"Do you each have individual prayer?"

Neither one did.

"Do you read from the scriptures each day?"

"no"

"Do you pay your tithes and offerings?"

They admitted that they did not.

I scoured my memory for seemingly inconsequential things that the leaders of the church had been counseling its members to do since I was a child...things that seemed small and insignificant but that they constantly told us was important. In each and every area, the couple admitted that they were not doing those things.

Finally, I said, "It seems to me that if you were doing all of those things and you still couldn't get along with each other...THEN, we'd have a problem"

I got a commitment from the couple that they would start doing these 'little' things and I would check back in two weeks.

Three days later, I got a call in the middle of the night. It was the wife of the couple on the phone calling me to complain. The husband got on the extension so that he could represent himself.

I interrupted them and began asking the same questions I had asked when I was in their home. Before long, they realized that I wasn't going to budge from my position. They had given me a commitment and I was going to hold them to it.

After a few months, I noticed that the complaining phone calls had ceased. I also noticed that the couple began showing up in church regularly and were much more affectionate and kind to each other than I had ever seen them.

I realized what a powerful testimony had been given to me about the wisdom of the counsel we are given. That these small and seemingly insignificant things are the building blocks for the foundation to a happy home life.

A Really Really Good Man

I posted this blog last year when I transferred all of my facebook notes to my blog. Since it is coming up on Fathers' Day, I wanted to post it again. I also wanted to add a poem that I wrote to my son about a trait of my father's that he shared



A lot of people think that they have the best father in the world. I really did...at least for me. I can't think of a single instance in my life where he treated me unfairly or harshly. I think that he only lost his temper with me once but in his defense, at the time, I was eating the very first brand new car he ever owned...(that will have to be a separate story).


Teenage boys growing up and becoming disillusioned when they find out what a hypocrite their father's been is a cliche I was spared. My father never professed to be anything other than what he was and while he constantly demanded perfection in himself, he was always forgiving of faults and weaknesses in others.

I was told once that, as children, we often model our concept of Heavenly Father after our earthly fathers. If you have an angry and vengeful father here on earth, your concept of Heavenly Father is that he is an angry and vengeful God. It has always been easy for me to envision my Father in Heaven as kind, loving, and forgiving...someone whose first and foremost passion was my own well-being and progress.

When I was twelve, Kevin McCreary stole a pack of his mom's cigarettes and we took up smoking. I got to be quite good at it and could smoke an entire cigarette and only cough up one lung. One day, Kevin left an unextiguished cigarette in his garage and it nearly burned down his house.

Like the very best friend that he was, Kevin immediately fingered me as an accomplice. My father called me into his room and asked me point blank if I had been smoking. I looked him straight in the eye and said, "no sir!". My father looked at me for a second and then just nodded his head and told me I could go. As I turned to leave, he reached out and took my hand. He held it for a moment and then brought it to his nose and inhaled. Then he looked at me again with sadness in his eyes and said I could go.

Somewhat puzzled by my father's actions, I held my hand to my own nose and inhaled. The smell of cigarettes was unmistakable. I looked at him and he looked at me. I immediately became aware of two facts. First, that both my father and I knew what the truth was and second, that my father as a man of honor expected his son to act honorably as well. I knew that he would never call me a liar and that I would not be punished as long as I held on to my story.

But the look in his eyes broke my heart and I burst into tears begging my father to forgive my lie. I was punished for the cigarettes, the lie was forgiven. I never lied to my father again.

He valued my privacy and guarded it more jealously than I did myself. My sister told me of a tithing settlement where everyone in the family was present except me. The Bishop was chatting with my parents and he began to relate to my folks something I had said. My father interrupted the bishop and asked him if I had given my permission for the information to be passed along. The bishop said that it was not something said in confidence but just in conversation. My father told the bishop that, nevertheless, if I had not given my permission, my father did not want to know. He asked the bishop to treat everything I had said to him as if it were said in confidence.

He was the most diligent home teacher I ever knew. A favorite story of our family is one where he was assigned for years to teach a family that never let him in the door. They had one of those screen doors where they could see you but you couldn't see them. Every month my father would come up and knock on their door only to be denied entrance. Every month, before he left, he stood there on their porch with the cigarette smoke wafting through the slats in the door and he would bear his testimony to people he never got to see. When he turned and left, he would often hear them giggling at him.

We moved away for a few years but we came back. On our first Sunday back, my mom and dad were walking down the hall when the door to the bishop's office opened and the bishop came out with a woman who had been weeping. When she saw my father, the woman screamed and threw her arms around him. My mother, wondered who this strange woman was who was crying and hugging my dad.

It was the wife of the couple he had home taught all those years. After our family moved away, their home teaching visits ceased. The woman began to go though some very trying times and one day she was at the kitchen sink and could see my father in her mind's eye standing there and giving his testimony every month. She determined that she would go back to church and get her life in order. In fact, she was in the bishop's office that very day to begin the process. The last thing she said to the bishop before they walked out was that she wished should could meet whoever that home teacher was so that she could thank him. Then she walked out the door and turned to see my father.

Twice in my father's life, he sold everything he owned to serve The Lord. Once when they didn't have very much so that he could take his wife and children to Salt Lake to be sealed in the temple and once when he had quite a bit more so that he could serve a mission in The Philippines.

He wasn't much on sports. He didn't hunt or fish and so I learned these skills elsewhere. What he did teach me was a love of great music and art. We would sit for hours and listen to symphonies and opera and pour over pictures of great works of art. When I visited The Sistine Chapel on my mission my joy was short-lived. It was beautiful and majestic and lovely and yet the experience was empty because I longed to have my father by my side to thrill in the moment with me.

He was always learning. It was rare that I did not see him with either a book of scripture or science in his hand. He loved to share with me the mysteries that were revealed to him as he studied these. Later on, when Alzheimer's began to rip away the knowledge that he had fought so hard to gain, I began to quit coming around as often. It was too painful for me to witness. I think that I shall regret my cowardice for as long as I live.

My father was in bishoprics but he was never bishop. He was in stake presidencies but he was never stake president. He never held public office or invented anything to ease man's burden here on earth. He didn't write any great books or symphonies. He never sang at The Met.

In fact, I can't think of anything my father ever did that would cause one to consider him great. But you know what? That's alright...a lot of men aspire to greatness. Many times, in aspiring to greatness, these men forgot to be good.

The world has a lot of really great men but what we need are a lot of really good men.

My father was a really really good man.

When my eldest son was quite young, there was a physical trait he had that he lamented. As it happened, my father shared that same physical trait...and he also lamented it. I was of a different mind, I was happy to have something that, when my father passed from this earth, would serve as a continual reminder of him. And so, I wrote this poem for my son.

Grandpa's Ears

Aaron got his sense of honor; Jenni, his quiet strength.
Lee got his sense of humor, and Ken knows how to paint
Amy and Valerie have iron wills; Jeremy, a tender heart
Joel and Sarah share a joy for life, and each of you is smart.

Laura and Brian are every one's friend. Gretchen loves to read
Rebekah had his infectious smile, and Rachel's as quiet as he.
Nathan loves worlds of fancy. Melissa is as loyal as they come.
Michael sings like a mockingbird. John Douglas is a dutiful son.

Daniel once proved stalwart, before the earth was new
so in The Savior's plan, our Dan is one of the chosen few
You each got something from Grandpa to see you through the years
but I think yours is the greatest gift, 'cause you got Grandpa's ears.

Now you might think that they're too big, or they stick out too far
but glance in any mirror, you'll see just whose grandson you are
Then maybe you'll try harder, each day you face life's tests
to live your life just like the man who gave you his silhouette.

Aaron might someday sit on a bench. Ken might paint a mural
Your grandpa gave to each grandchild, the keys to conquer worlds
But they say time will tell all things, and I think it will be said
that the greatest gifts he ever gave, sit right there on your head

For when life's trials bow that head, and sorrows bear you down
you'll look and see your grandpa's shadow there upon the ground.
You'll remember him...and who you are...and then you'll dry your tears
and thank your Father in Heaven above, He gave you grandpa's ears.

Disruption at the Drive-In or The Night I Ate the Car

The South Main Drive-In Theater was a mere three and a half miles from our four bedroom house on Brookmeade in South Houston. Drive-In Theaters were invented up in New Jersey where the air actually cools down somewhat on a summer night and mosquitoes are not measured by the width of their wing-spans.

In Texas, they're not such a good idea. Nope, the infestation and the fetid atmosphere combined with the marketing ploy of admission prices per carload instead of per person made a drive-in experience in Houston somewhat like a cross-Atlantic trip jammed into the cargo hold of a slave ship...with an in-flight movie.

Any available space in an automobile was utilized. A standard VW Beetle became a clown car that could hold 12 people:

1 Driver
1 in the passenger seat
1 on their lap
3 in the back seat
3 on their laps
1 in the little cubby hole in back
2 in the trunk. You could fit as many as three in the trunk but then you had no room for the large cake-holder Tupperware tub of home-made popcorn.

The second you pulled into the drive-in and found your place, everyone piled out and went to their pre-arranged areas to socialize and wait for the movie to begin. Adults stayed in the car while teens went to the pavilion near the snack bar, and the kiddies ran down to the front where the ancient playground equipment lay rotting and rusting and festooned with tetanus.

When the movie started, you all jammed back into the car where you craned your neck around the other passengers and strained to hear the dialogue through a speaker that was built sturdier than the black box on an airplane and had a sound quality slightly higher than WWII prisoners of war enjoyed while listening to BBC on their home-made crystal radio sets.

When I was five years old, my father came home one night with the very first brand new car he ever owned. It was a 1963 Ford Fairlane. White with red trim and red plastic interior. It had a steering wheel with a bullet-shaped center that was certain to impale the driver upon any impact greater than 30 miles per hour, no shoulder harnesses, no safety glass, electric windows that were powerful enough to decapitate and side fins that jutted out at right angles that were as threatening as those jagged wheel hubs on Massala's chariot in 'Ben-Hur'




Detroit couldn't have constructed a greater monument to mobilized death if it had super-glued razor blades onto a killer whale.

As my father proudly displayed his new acquisition to neighbors and friends, my mom came out of the house with a Tupperware container filled with popcorn. We were taking the new car to the drive-in.

We all piled into the new car. My brother and two sisters in the back and my mom and dad in the front with me in between. As we settled in and inhaled that new car smell, my mom ran her hand over the newest feature Detroit had come up with; a padded dashboard. In reality, it was the standard metal dash with about a quarter inch of padding and red vinyl covering. The incentive here was to lessen the number of third-degree burns that came from touching a hot metal dash that absorbed solar radiation like a black hole.

As we pulled into the drive-in, dad went up and down the aisles looking for a place to park that would keep his new car free from dings and scratches and still offer us a decent view of the screen. I watched his face beam as he passed cars that honked and let out wolf-whistles in appreciation of the shiny new car with less than a dozen miles on the odometer.

Tonight's feature was a Vincent Price offering, "The Pit and The Pendulum", the only similarity between the movie and Edgar Allen Poe's work being the title itself. If you want to watch it, you can actually view it online for free at www.hulu.com. If you don't have the time for that, the embedded trailer I found on Youtube should be sufficient to give you an idea of the kind of movie that parents took their five-year old kids to back in my day.

As the movie got under way, I leaned forward to move myself as far as possible away from the body heat radiating from my parents on either side of me. My face came to rest on the padded dashboard.

During the course of the movie, Vincent Price's character, who was certain that he had mistakenly buried his wife in the family crypt while still alive, was making his way through the cobweb-infested crypt while his wife's taunting voice hissed out his name. To this day I can't watch a Ricola commercial because the wife's voice had the same sing-song meter to it

"NICH-o-lasssss"

As Vincent Price made his way deeper and deeper into the crypt, I became more and more absorbed into the movie. The violins played with greater urgency and I opened my mouth in engrossed awe....the padded dashboard slipped between my teeth and I unwittingly began to chew upon it.

As Vincent Price came to his wife's tomb, it opened slowly....I chewed with a bit more gusto. A bloody hand crept from the open grave.....my teeth were moving like a sewing machine. Suddenly, the wife's corpse shot from the grave and her accusing voice rang out. "NICHOLASSSSSS!!!!!!!"

I chomped down on the dashboard of my dad's new car and reared back away from the bloody harpie on the screen, tearing a huge chunk of the dash with me.

I have to depend upon information from my brother at this point because I lost conciousness a moment after I tore the chunk of dash from the car. I do, however, remember one over-riding thought before I slipped into oblivion, SWALLOW THE EVIDENCE!!!

My brother and sisters, who were in the back seat of the car and were just as hypnotized by the movie as I was were suddenly and rudely brought back to reality by my father and mother screaming "WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!?!?!?!?" and pummeling me as if they were trying pound the life out of me.

This was the era of the sixties...the Red Menace...McCarthy....in short, paranoia.

Fearing that my parents had been made crazed killers by some mind-altering substance that was slipped into the Kool-Aid we had snuck into the drive-in and were brought to their crazed state by some hidden trigger-phrase uttered by Vincent Price, my siblings tried to escape through the rear windows of the two door Fairlaine while my parents were occupied with killing me.

The neighboring cars, also caught up in the crescendo of this horror movie, saw what was certain blood-lust and mayhem in the neighboring car and began to react as well. People erupted from their cars screaming and falling to their knees begging God to deliver them...which set off the next wave of cars and so on and so on until a full-on riot occured.

From that day, until my father traded in his car. My punishment was to sit in the front seat directly in front of the damaged dash board now covered with red tape, listen to my parents sigh heavily and then look at me and shake their heads.

The Passing of The Old Guard

Lorelei Sinclair just posted on my wall that David Brackman had passed away. I'm still numb with the news. I called into the other room and told my wife as soon as I read it and she came into the office, her eyes were wet and she said, "It's funny, not an hour ago, I was wondering how Dave and Sue were doing".

David and Sue Brackman are an institution in The Katy Stake. I like to brag that I was the first missionary to leave from that area but, in truth, that is nothing compared to the work that they did. Dave and Sue and Aunt Edna were the only mormons in Katy for a long time. They were faithful members of the church when all of Houston met in the old church off of Broadway. Anytime I hear someone complain about having to travel as much as fifteen minutes to get to church, I want to tell them about The Brackmans and Aunt Edna.

Lorelei told me that David wanted to come back to Katy to die. I know how he felt. When Oliver Loving died on the cattle trail, he told his partner, Charles Goodnight, "Don't bury me in a foreign land" Charles Goodnight brought his partner all the way back to Texas to be laid to rest. Those of us up on our Texas history know where Larry McMurtrey got his ideas from in Lonesome Dove. I don't know when or if I'll ever come back to Texas to live but, like David, I don't want to be laid to rest in a foreign land either. I want to come back to Katy.

Anyone who reads this and knows David and Sue, please tell Sue how much we love her and mourn with her...and please tell her that we were thinking of David and she an hour or two before we got the news. It was strange how the thought of them just came to us out of the blue.

Maybe it's maudlin to suggest but we like to think that, perhaps David stopped in to say 'hi' before he went on.