Random Remembrances for the New Year

I'm clicking into historical mode. Watch out. It could get a little dull here.

Let's see. A century ago we had just seen the last full year of the presidency of a great American: TR. He's another who was moulded by both suffering and success. When he was a young state assemblyman, his wife and mother both died within a few hours of each other. That was why he left for a year or two, went out west and worked as a cowboy on a ranch he owned but had never seen.

He spent 11 1/2 months after he left the White House hunting in Africa, bringing back "specimens" for the Smithsonian Institution. When he knocked down a rhino with his double-rifle, it "jumped up like a Polo pony" and he had to hit it again. He often read poetry in his tent at night.

The life expectancy back then was about half what it is today. Cars had been around for some years, but there were almost no paved roads. The Germans had been working for a long time already on developing submarines, but the British were behind, because Queen Victoria had said no gentleman would fight that way. So, in the first year of the war, 1914, the German "wolf packs" sank a lot of allied merchant ships, not to mention their victories over the navies of the day.

But it was awfully risky duty for the German boys. They called their subs "iron coffins," because the number of times they submerged and the number of times they surfaced didn't always come out even.

100 years ago tonight, my Swedish battle rifle (about which I wrote a couple of months ago) was only 8 years old. That old Duchess still shoots very well today.

In 1908 my father's birth was still 20 years in the future. My mother's, 25 years. My Granddaddy Templin was six years old, but his mother was already a young widow with two sons. I believe that my Grandmama's advent was still five years in the future. Nana (the original, not her very worthy successor, my sister Johanna) was still awaiting her earthly probation, I think. Her future husband must have been a child, for he served briefly in the U.S. Army during the Great War.

The newly elected president, William Howard Taft, appropriately called "Big Bill" at 337 lbs., was about to take the oath of office in March of 1909. Actually, 337 was a lifetime record. It had been as little as 270. When he left office in 1913, the comedian Will Rogers said, "We are parting with 335 pounds of pure Republican and love and affection for all his fellow men."

But TR had just been through a very strained period in his friendship with Taft, because Taft was so easy-going that he had allowed a number of the "trusts" (monopolies) to reform after TR had spent six years beating them down. About Taft's reluctance to fight his political foes lest he offend them, someone said, "If Taft were Pope, he'd want to appoint some Protestants to the College of Cardinals!"

TR was a "Progressive." When his fellow Republicans didn't nominate him in 1912, he formed a third party, nicknamed "The Bull Moose Party," and ran hard against both his old friend and former successor, Taft, and the Democratic nominee, history professor Woodrow Wilson. Splitting his party that way killed their chances for success, and Wilson was elected for the first of two terms. But in 1908, lots of Americans had never heard of him.

The famous German pistol, the Luger, was designated the P-08, because it was a pistol ("pistole") which came out in 1908. It might be the only famous thing Georg Luger ever did, but it was certainly enough to make his name immortal among aficionados of military history and firearms.

In 1908, the Springfield rifle had been our army issue rifle for five years (Model of 1903,) but the cartridge it was famous for introducing was not finalized in its design until 1906. It was a thirty caliber. Zero was often pronounced "ought" back then. (.30'06) And now you know the rest of that story.

In 1908 we were looking back only five years to the Wright Brothers' first heavier-than-air flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. But the first "dog fights" - aerial combat - were only six years in the future. Many veterans of the Civil War were still living, and even a few of the Mexican War (1846-48.) Many people then could still recall the use of flint ignition for firearms, but some of them lived long enough that they stood a good chance of being able to read in their newspapers about machine guns being mounted on airplanes by opposing "air forces," a whole new type of major service.

Today, most Americans can't tell you when TR lived. Or Woodrow Wilson. Or "Big Bill" Taft.

Our military aircraft can travel at twice the speed of sound (in some cases) and present no bigger picture on a radar screen than a sparrow. Rockets had been largely abandoned as too inaccurate for military service. Today, we depend on them to hit and utterly destroy targets on the far side of the globe. One of my former students is one of the USAF officers whose job it is to "turn the keys" to fire such weapons. Rocket propulsion carried humans to the moon and back several times over several years, beginning the year I was 18.

We have tens of thousands of miles of paved roads today. The very wealthy can buy automobiles which can approach or slightly exceed 200 mph.

As we entered 1909, no one would have questioned that this was a Christian nation which offered tolerance to other religions. Today, many would remove even the words "In God we trust" from our coins and they would chastise any child for proclaiming faith while in a public school. In 1909, the Titanic was still on the drawing boards. But most of us knew the song the band would play on her deck as she was sinking: "Nearer, My God, to Thee." I wonder whether half of today's Americans would even recognize the tune, let alone know some of the lyrics.

Twenty-nine minutes ago we began the year 2009. More changes are in store for us. But a few of the good old things still endure. Prayer is still an effective approach to problem solving. God still loves and cares for us. He still speaks to us by revelation through living prophets. And you can still buy rifles chambered for the "thirty ought six."

If Mary Can Try Harder, Maybe I Can, Too!

I was touched tonight to read Lynsey's post and then Mary's. They remind me of how really hard it is to be young parents. The tightening of the stomach whenever one of our children falls or gets sick is not really comparable to the worry we feel for ourselves. It's actually worse, isn't it?

I recall so well how hard it was for us to see Joseph (our Joseph, not Ben and Lynsey's poor little fellow) undergo an emergency appendectomy that took 4 hours and 15 minutes because of all the pus that had to be cleaned out of him after the appendix burst. We just sat there in that lobby in the old Madison Hospital holding hands, occasionally talking, sometimes praying, sometimes just thinking.

The next big deal (and it was a BIG deal) was the Strep infection he got in his throat. We dutifully administered the antibiotics until the problem appeared to clear up. We were wrong to stop then, though, as the same strain moved into his kidneys and shut them both down completely for 5 weeks! We learned the hard way that antibiotics are to be used up unless you're told otherwise. We took turns sitting with him at the University of Utah Hospital for 6 weeks. Shayne would stay in Rexburg with the squids while I stayed with Joseph. Then we'd switch off. There were lots of prayers and a few Priesthood blessings, but the sudden turn-around happened on the fast sunday when the Rexburg Third Ward dedicated its fast that day to Joseph's recovery.

I know that the Lord was involved in all of that.

Have you ever noticed the little patch of white hair on the side of Joseph's head? That developed during the fearful rigors of that period. It's always reminded me of what happened to Moses while he was receiving the law up on the mountain.

Then, of course, there came the broken femur during our second stay in Moscow. Shayne had just begun her latest round of chemotherapy and we had our precious friend Carolyn Jimenez (Carolyn Black today) watch the kids while we drove to Lewiston in search of a hairpiece that she could wear since scarves got tiresome. When we got back, Carolyn said that Joseph had jumped out of a swing (at considerable altitude, it seems) and had announced to his Jimenez playmate that he had a broken leg. Sure enough!

He was in traction for about six weeks, as I recall. Then came the fun times of his body cast. I actually look back fondly on the times I would pick him up by the back of his neck with one hand and by the sawed-off shovel handle between his knees with the other.

We could never figure out why his Heavenly Father tried and moulded Joseph so much. Our other children were equally beloved by us, but their trials seemed to be of different natures, usually. The big, physical, medical challenges were almost all reserved for Joseph.

Today, looking back on it all, I can see my boy growing with each of those trials. I can also see him receiving great blessings in the form of good friends, kind neighbors, fine teachers, and faithful Priesthood leaders. A man as fine as Joseph is not made only by his harsh experiences but also by the special blessings which only the greatest spirits can receive to the greatest advantage. His wonderful wife is another example of this. Mary isn't just a keeper; she's one in a million. I love her for who and what she is, and I love her for loving my boy.

Getting Smiled at Like This Helps a Lot

Joseph was born in '76, so this must have been taken sometime in the year that followed. Now what I'm asking you to take note of here is the absolute adoration in little Shaynie's face when she looks at this munchkin. All four of our babies got that look from her. I believe that when you grow up getting smiled at like this a lot it helps immeasurably in getting you to turn out a good person. All four of her babies grew up to be nice people. They all 4 have smiles that make your heart feel better. I rest my case.

Christmas - A Great Opportunity to be Humble

Typically, when voices or circumstances call upon us to be humble, we resist the idea. To be humble is to be put down and to be made little and insignificant in the eyes of others, right? I've felt that way much of my life. I'm not so sure any more.



Years ago I heard a man named Bruce McConkie say that "man cannot resurrect himself or assign himself to a degree of glory after this life." If that's not an exact quotation, it'll do till one comes along. That was certainly the gist of what he said.



His point, of course, was that we need God. We need His constant support, His guiding influence, and His ongoing protection. To believe anything else is to believe that we are self-sufficient and that what we become in this life is all we'll ever be. To believe that God does not exist or that we have no need of His aid is to believe that there is no purpose for our existence and no hope for a betterment of our condition in this life or in a later one.



Life leads us through experiences which, in turn, lead us through thought processes, which, in turn, lead us to conclusions about important questions. Surely, the most important of these questions is "How and Why Do We Exist?" Every religion and every philosophy of men seeks either to answer these questions or to obviate them away by making them appear unimportant. A visitor from some other realm (and that is surely what we all are) will naturally stop from time to time to ask him/herself "Where have I come from? Why do I exist? Is there a purpose to all the widely varied and sometimes horrible experience in this life?" And there is another question I believe we ask ourselves if we are people who have a natural and healthy sense of responsibility: "What is expected of me in this life?"



Have you ever stopped to ask yourself these questions? I think that virtually everyone has asked him or herself these questions at one time or another. Only the most self-centered, self-serving, blithely unaware of the needs of others could be people who do NOT ask themselves such questions. Often, in movies, TV shows, and novels, I'll see someone portrayed as such a person. Sometimes they're strong antagonists in the stories, but often they'll be unnamed characters with no character whatsoever. They are the kind of people who, when told to shoot a hostage in the head unless contacted by a given hour, will carry out such instructions with no more compunction than your or I would feel about killing germs in the sink. Such persons have either never asked themselves those important questions about life, or have long ago ceased to care about what the answers might be.



Great founders of religions, however, are sometimes those who have asked themselves these questions and have sought for the answers until they are satisfied that they have found them. Prince Siddhartha, known today as The Buddha, had led a sheltered life. But when he became aware of human suffering, the natural sense of responsibility which he had brought with him into this life would not let him rest until he believed he had found the answers.



Of course, some religious leaders merely use the natural desire to know the answers to life's important questions in order to lie, cheat, steal, and dominate. David Koresh and the "Reverend" Jim Jones are among such men. The priests of ancient Egyptian deities had to know in their hearts that they were serving false gods who had no power to save and no power to exalt people. They proved this when a new Pharaoh decreed that all other gods and goddesses were to be eradicated and only one god, Aton, the sun disk god, was to be worshipped. This instantly threw the members of the wealthy priest class who served in the temples of the newly "down-sized" gods into a serious tizzy. If no one worshiped the gods and goddesses whom they served, then there would be no donations, no income, no status, and no reason (or ability?) to go on living.



So, it must actually matter whether the answers we find to life's big questions are true or not. It must actually matter whether "our truth" is the THE truth. Too often in the past three decades or so I've heard or read the words of others who seek to avoid individual responsibility for their own arrival at real truth by using such phrases as "my truth tells me that..." or "Maybe in your truth..."



Bovine Excrement!



If we are so weak and so needy that we cannot resurrect ourselves, then we surely need a higher, loving power Who brought us into existence and has a purpose for that existence.



In the early nineteenth century, the east coast of the United States was overrun with preachers of various Christian denominations. They preached Christ, but often they were seen to be particularly unChristian in their attitudes towards one another. Enter Joseph Smith, the fourteen year old farm boy who made an avid search for truth and the answers to life's big questions among the many denominations which so vigorously competed with each other for membership along the east coast that it had come to be called "the Burned Over district." His desire for knowledge of THE truth was so powerful, that, even in the face of pressure from preachers, new converts, neighbors, friends, and family members, he could not bring his heart to align itself with any of these religions.



Even the Bible seemed to be of little help to him, for the various preachers taught conflicting doctrines about what the seemingly important passages of scripture meant.



That's when he read the Epistle of James, Chapter one, verse 5. You ought to read it, too. Find out what that farm boy did about what he read. Find out what the answers were to his fervent questions. But don't even look it up - - Don't even start to search - - Don't even begin to research this topic unless you really mean it! Because, if you find out that God actually revealed His mind and will to someone in these latter times, then you'll become responsible to live your life in accordance with those truths!



I found out. I know what the truth is. Now I'm responsible. I love knowing it. But I feel a great responsibility to tell everybody else about it and to live that truth as well as I can.

Janus's Looking Back Side

We get our word January from the Roman God Janus who had two faces (No jokes, please, ladies.) One looked backwards and the other forwards, just as we all do at this time of year. Already I saw a retrospective on NBC last night about all the great (or thought-to-be-great)personalities we've lost in the year 2008.

I'm looking back a little further tonight. I'm going through all the Christmas photos we've already scanned into the computer and sharing them with you as though you cared, because, as a guy gets older, he begins to think people care about things that matter to him. Strange effect, that, and one which I don't seem to have been able to prevent in the slightest.

I hope to scan all the pictures I've ever taken of my kids into the computer some day. That will be a project of many days and well worth every minute. For now, please let me share with you some of the pictures I DO have scanned into the computer, all of them having to do with Christmas, that most special day of the year, even when it occurs during difficult, sad times. These are my children. Most of you know them. My heart is centred on them and on those who came later.

A Walk on the Wilde Side at Christmastime

LeRoy Wilde

LeRoy Wilde was borne in 1929 and raised as the son of a rancher in the area of Picabo, Idaho. They had lots of cattle, lots of horses, lots and lots of land, and an amazing amount of work to do. He was raised, literally, as a working cowboy. Since then he has worked in road construction, nuclear energy site construction and management, home construction and repair, and the Union Pacific Railroad. This not an exhaustive list, just enough to let you know that he's a pretty special fellow.

When he was a young man he was in charge of a bunch of fellows who moved 300 pound blocks of ice to and fro for the railroad. In those days, he could spend his day, his whole day, grabbing one block with tongs in one hand, another block with tongs with the other hand, and then walking the 600 pounds of ice across the dock or RR car or whatever distance it needed to be moved. Now I have done a good share of work in my time. I've moved 500 pound dollies (hand trucks) of spuds across a warehouse and onto a train. I've bucked bails of hay a few times. I've moved lumber, pulled weeds with tap roots that spoke Chinese, and even done the hardest kind of work I've ever encountered - teaching History with a vigor that left the sweat dripping from my face - but I've never been able to do the things that LeRoy Wilde, my father-in-law can do and has done.

LeRoy has met with his share of life's bumps. The deaths of his parents and of old friends were no doubt very hard for him. But in 2000 he lost a son, Terry, who was only in his early forties. Then, in March of 2007, his eternal companion, Celia Thueson Wilde, died and life became a real burden for LeRoy. He has told certain of us in the family how many times we prayed for him on a particular night when he had planned (and hoped) to slip through the veil to be with Celia again. He doesn't seem to hold our prayers against us. He understands. But he's a very sad and lonely fellow, and I understand a lot of what he feels.

Like our Haeberle/Humphries/Fernandez/Potter bunch, the Wildes love to get together on Holidays or in honor of them when they can't all be there on the day itself. Like our extended family, there is much of laughing and story telling and even some singing and teasing. And, like our family, there are faces which get more than their fair share of camera time. Autumn, the Humphries girls, and the Gridley-Haeberle girls all had to take their turns as the "focus" of the efforts of the family's photographers for several years each. Indeed, none of the above-mentioned ladies has yet escaped that burden, even though they are raising another generation of special faces to be recorded for posterity.

It will probably come as no surprise to you that The Wilde clan has more than its share of such wonderful faces, too. Some of them were in attendance at tonight's Wilde Family Christmas bash at the home of Doug and Teresa Bosen in Pocatello. Those of you so unfortunate as to have found yourselves with nothing to do in the past and who, therefore, have been exposed to this blog before, will probably recognize some of these faces. I'll do my best to label them as to name and function.

Melissa Bosen, about 24 yoa, home for Christmas from her first year of teaching grade school in Utah. She is single, strong in the Church, and heart-stoppingly lovely.

Janae (Wilde) Barela with her son, Philip, already declared by my daughter Autumn to be "the cutest baby ever."

Kelly Wilde, daughter of Larry and Wanda, possessor of luscious hair and this Marine who came home ostensibly for Christmas leave with his family but who seems to have a relationship with Kelly similar to that of a worm with a hook.

Noreen (Reynolds) Wilde with Grandson Adam Beebe.

Sidnie Sanders, daughter of Vicki Wilde, world class beauty and sweeter than the law allows.

A Noble Sacrifice by a Nobody Nobleman

Grand Duke Henri of Luxembourg tried to use his veto against the majority of his tiny national assembly today to stop a lax euthenasia law from taking hold in his tiny country as it has already done so in Holland nearby. For his trouble, the Grand Duke will be made even more of a figure head, having removed even that tiny power of veto which was about his only claim to real power left since Luxembourg became that silliest of modern governmental creations, a constitutional monarchy.

Good old Henri, you see, has noticed that the very young, the very old, and some who simply could not speak for themselves had been euthenized in recent years by the Dutch system. Lest such terrors, so reminiscent of Nazi days, be re-imposed on his tiny duchy, the Grand Duke stood up for what he thought was right and was promptly slapped down. I like to think that, at His bar of Judgement, Christ will have something very kind to say to Henri. What he has to say to those who, for economic or administrative purposes shortened the lives of those who couldn't speak for themselves may be a bit more serious.

Haircut Day at the Pet Shop

A new lady has come to town and she's come to clip dog fur. She swings a pretty good clipper and hasn't left a nick on anybody yet that we know of. This is of some concern, because Mico's tender pink epidermis has often been offended by lesser groomers in the past.

Miss Sadie has a whole knew face. Her face had to be shorn short so that her food wouldn't stick in the fur and cause her to develop anti-social odors. It's a pretty short face, after all, and must needs be inserted pretty deeply into whatever she undertakes to intake. Herewith, a few photographic examples of their haircuts.

I'll also show you Sheryl's piece of 1891 Russian technology and my 1944, shorter version together.

Pssst! Mom likes me best!

Sadie, confident of her place in the little house she knows as "the world."

Miss Sadie auditions for the role of the new mascot on The Black Pearl.

Sheryl's 1891/30 Mosin-Nagant battle rifle with fixed bayonet.

Jim's M44 Mosin-Nagant carbine, folding bayonet fixed.

The Husband Who Cried Wifely Request

No, this is not Sheryl's. It's my own M44, much shorter, but the same basic thing. We don't have pictures of hers yet.

Sheryl turned IL today. That could also be written XXXXIX. She doesn't read Roman numerals, so I should be safe here. Anyway, it was her birthday. A few weeks ago she made it very plain that she wanted a firearm for either Christmas or her birthday. Yes, I know what you're thinking. We're far too broke to buy such extravagant toys. And normally you'd be right. But sometimes stores like Big 5 (spelled V Magnum in Latin, I believe) and CAL (generally not spelled at all in Latin) will have special deals, ridiculously special deals, on certain historic military firerams in order to get people into the store. And we are certainly people!

She was very specific as to which historic firearm she wanted. CAL was selling model 1891/30 Mosin-Nagant battle rifles for a wonderful price which made it almost affordable. I spent the last couple of weeks mentioning to her things like report and recoil. Still she insisted that this was what she wanted. She knows perfectly well that her husband is able to make "reduced loads" which will render both its bark and its bite much more tolerable.

Long story short, I bought it for her yesterday. "But," I hear you ask, "How did you do that when you're so broke all the time?" Well you see, there are these credit cards which come to our house a few times per month, offering us the opportunity to become indebted to people with whom we have not even been properly introduced. Our habitual behavor heretofore has been to tear or cut them up carefully and put them in the trash. But this time we said to ourselves, "Selves! You know we've been pretty good for a long time?" "Yes, we have," we were forced to agree. "And Christmas is coming soon, did you know that?" Again, the truth of this argument could not be denied. "Perhaps we could use this card to get a few things for Christmas." This idea siezed control of our erstwhile rational thought process, and soon we were buying groceries and Russian battle rifles with the darn thing as though we were real people; almost as if we had a right to some happiness. It's truly frightening how seductive a tiny piece of plastic can be.

And so, after a few more purchases, we'll be even further in debt than we already were and we'll be wondering how it happened. That's why I'm writing this record. I'll be able to look back and see precisely when and where we went so wrong when it felt so right.

Another thing to remember! Sheryl asked for this. I did not hint at it in the slightest degree. I know there are those of you out there who believe that the chances of a XXXXVIII year old wife actually expressing a desire to have something like this are somewhere between slim and none, and Slim just left town. But it's all true. Some day, at the bar of judgment, during the great video tape in the sky, when our unrepented sins are being shouted from the roof tops (I really dread that part.) you will see that I told this story exactly as it happened. Then you'll say, "Imagine! Jim got to buy a firearm for his eternal companion and didn't even have to persuade her to want it! If I hadn't seen it with my own glorified, perfected, resurrected eyes, I'd have never believed it." Then I'll smile rather smugly just before having the smile wiped from my face by a public recitation of all the terrible things I did in this life but forgot to repent of. And yes, I know I ended that last sentence with a preposition, but I'm just too tired to care.

The Lump is Benign; the Pain is Not.

Tyson LeRoy Lords demonstrates a tongue without warts or blemishes.

Doctor Holme, my oral surgeon, whom I described earlier as looking like a deacon, called me while we were walking through CostCo today. The lab says the thing he removed from my tongue was not malignant. This does not, however, make it fun to deal with a big hole in my tongue. the bruising left inside the tongue as well as the ragged edge of the removed part, make it almost impossible to talk normally or eat simple foods if they're solid. I look forward to my recovery which he says will take several days more. Sigh...

Of all the Sad Words of Tongue or Pen

John Greenleaf Whittier said it. With a name like that, the kid was pretty much obligated to grow up to be a poet. And these are the words for which he is best remembered, probably because they are both true and beautifully said.

Of all the sad words of tongue or pen,

The saddest are these: It might have been.

Like the sentence invented for the eastern monarch in the oft-quoted parable, the sentence that would be true whenever it was spoken and under any circumstances, the sentence that reads: "And this, too, shall pass away." Yes, it's like that, because it's a phrase that one might apply to anything which didn't work out the way we'd planned. Love affairs, friendships, jobs, careers, financial plans, political aspirations, artistic endeavors - all and any of it. It might have been. The words that often go with such an emotion are these: "If only..." If only I'd tried a little harder on that one occasion. If only I'd been a little more mature. If only I hadn't been so insistent. If only I'd been a little better prepared. If only I had seen things as clearly then as I do now.

Tonight I don't desire to talk about the many, many words of my pen. They have been numerous, possibly too numerous. My tongue, too, has been overworked in this life. Anyone will tell you so. It's time for it to have a rest. And like many a workaholic, my tongue had to be injured to get any time off.

I often bit the inside of my cheek or the inside of my lip or my tongue. This trauma, I have learned in recent months, can develop into big wart-like creatures. There was one on the tip of my tongue for about 7 months until three weeks ago. Then Dr. Hopkin took it off. Discomfort was minor, recovery was swift, and I thought it was a thing of the past. But soon it became clear that it wasn't just growing back together, it was staging a come-back, rather like in Requiem for a Heavyweight. Soon the object which had once been an annoyance the size of a small garden pea was the size of a cat's eye marble and still growing.

So yesterday, at about 9:30 am, my oral surgeon, a young fellow named Holme who has great knowledge and looks like a deacon, surgically removed it and much of the tissue surrounding it, anxious to send it to the lab to find out whether it was cancerous, benign, or just plain weird. But I have been in some considerable pain since this procedure. They assured me that the tongue would grow back. Apparenty it's the only member of the body that does that. I look forward to having all of my tongue again. I can't roll my Rs. All my hard consonants sound like they're being attempted by a foreigner who attends ESL classes while moving slowly and in a drunken stupor. Pride is a terrible thing. I have always taken a great deal of pride in my careful enunciation. Now I sound like Ozzie Osbourne in those commercials where he has to text message literally everything he says so that people will get a clue about what he's saying.

And eating! I long to bite into something hard and crunchy again. Custard, yogurt, and applesause have their charms, but even they cause me a little pain while satisfying very little of my hunger. So please pray for my tongue. We want it to make a come-back in record time. Many thanks to one and all.

Inventing Problems or How America is Losing its Mind.

Joseph in a tree in Moscow with his toy muzzleloader.

Clark Myers sent me an email today. Perhaps I forwarded it to some of you. It was a new story about a boy of 10 who had been arrested and arraigned on charges of terrorism for bringing a $5.96 toy revolver to school in his pocket. He didn't threated anyone with it (How could he? It's a toy!) He didn't even pull it out of his pocket; another kid did.



The boy who owned the little thing liked it because it looked somewhat like the single-action revolvers of the Civil War period which had been his class's subject of history study for some days. I suspect it looked more like an 1873 Colt cartridge revolver than an 1860 Colt Army which loaded with loose powder and ball, but he's only ten, after all , and the essential differences might have been lost on him.



I hope the absurdity of this situation is obvious to everyone. If anyone who reads this thinks even for a second that this is the way for adult authority figures to respond to children with toys resembling weapons, then please resign from the human race right now. There has never been a generation in human history in which the children, especially the boys, did not play at what their fathers and older brothers had to do in earnest. It may be seen as sad. It may be seen as being a self-fulfilling prophecy for children to indulge in such play. But it still happens in everyone's childhood to a greater or lesser degree.



If the people who arrest 10 year old boys for carrying toy revolvers and high school girls for leaving a cake knife in her locked car in the parking lot had been in power in Franklin, Tennessee when I was a child there, there wouldn't have been a single male child left at home in the custody of his parents. We played with cars and trucks. We played with electric trains. But the thing we did most often was play at some form of combat. Cops & Robbers. Cowboys & Indians. World War II. With our toy ships and airplanes the combat shifted to a different realm, but it was still a vividly imagined contest in which it was kill or be killed.



In the fifties, most movies were westerns, World War II stories, or crime dramas. Cold War dramas and "creature features" were also seen on the bill. And in every one of them, good guys employed firearms to save good people from bad people or bad creatures. It never occurred to anyone in legislature or in society back then that we should not grow up to own and use firearms, and always as a force for good.



In our little central Tennessee town, the most honor you could have as a little boy was to be "The Grey Ghost" in play. There was a half-hour show on every week in which this Confederate officer would fool and defeat any number of Union soldiers and save the day for noble citizens of Virginia. I was often Colonel Moseby. He really existed, you know. John Singleton Moseby so dominated several Virginia counties that Union forces called them "Moseby's Confederacy." Sometimes I was the Federal leader who fought for Union and against slavery. I knew both sides, because I lived in the south and my mother's people had fought for the North. We felt enobled to play the roles of people on both sides of American conflicts, because we knew that they had played a part - an important part - in the building and shaping of our country.



Years later, when I would read Stephen Vincent Benet's short story The Devil and Daniel Webster to my U.S. History classes, I tried to convey some of that feeling to them. When Jabez Stone is put on trial for his soul in his own kitchen, Mr. Scratch, the Devil, promises a jury of real Americans. And they are, too! Yet every one was seen by regular white settlers as being a villain of the worst stripe. Traitors, murderers, leaders of massacres, and witch-hanging religious zealots filled his jury box, all with the blue fires of hell still upon them. Surely they would do whatever Satan told them to do. But Dan'l Webster didn't complain. He recognized in each of them a person who had made a powerful contribution to the history of his young nation. Good, bad, or indifferent, they were all Americans and had earned a place in her History.



We used to look upon Americans of consequence as being that way. They were people of decisive action. And we wanted them represented that way. That's why John Wayne, Clint Eastwood, Gary Cooper, and Charles Bronson were our heroes. For those same reasons, Lee Marvin, Jack Palance, Bruce Dern, and Strother Martin were our favorite bad guys. Jack Elam, too! If you saw his crooked gaze in a western, you knew that you were in for a thrilling confrontation between good and evil. Not an unarmed discussion, but a final, decisive confrontation in which good people risked everything, even their lives, to see to it that their society was not dominated by evil persons.



Evil! Yes! People did not hesitate to call bad things bad. Today we are told to be tolerant of "alternative lifestyles" and "foreign religions." So we tolerate them. And what happens? We are attacked in our own streets and in our own places of business. Thousands die in a single day. If some people lose a free, democratic election, they throw organized tantrums in order to hurt people they don't even know, marring their places of worship and destroying their businesses. and professions.



I have known men who remember carrying bird guns and deer rifles to school with them in the morning, storing them in the "cloak room" at the back of the classroom (remember cloak rooms?) and retrieving them at the end of the day so they could hunt on the way home. It was as common as rain and no one thought anything about it. You know how many
"school shootings" they had back then? Yes, you know. It practically never happened. Good people were armed and expected to be so. Good people were expected to oppose that which was wrong. Today, many are afraid even to "allow" them the means of self-defense, let alone of taking an active hand in the fight against evil in their communities. We are becoming a weak, coddled people who seem to expect the police agencies to do that which the Supreme court has said more than once they are not to be held liable to do, namely to protect our lives.



Well, if they are not to be held responsible to protect us, then who is? The only possible answer is "ourselves."

A Cry for Help Was Heard In the Land. And it Came From Me!

OK, people. This is serious! I can't rest, I mean really rest, until I get help with this one. Tonight we were minding our business, watching the 2003 Eloise Christmas movie, when a character named Peabody greeted his daughter, home from school in Europe. The daughter was played by someone with a face I knew. I didn't just know it like you know the face of a sales clerk at the store. I knew her face like I know the faces of my own children. It was powerfully familiar to me. I have spent hours now trying to recall where I've seen her before.

I wore out Google's limited usefulness. Those "filmographies" are a joke. They are far from being exhaustive lists of someone's work. But it did help me find her name. Sarah Topham. She has been in a couple of these Eloise movies, but I've never seen one of those until tonight. She's done a lot of stage work in Tennessee Williams stuff like The Glass Menagerie. She's also done Shakespeare on the stage. Merchant of Venice. That sort of thing.

But those are not the places where I've seen her before. I've seen her in something that mattered, I think. There's something about her eyes that makes me feel that the story or stories in which I first saw her must have been riveting, even upsetting. Or maybe it just entertained me a lot. I just can't remember.

And so I cast myself on the mercy and superior memories of the younger readers and former students out there who might know all and tell all concerning the silver screen or the small one. Who is Sarah Topham? What has she been in other than the things I've cited above? Please help me with this. As they used to say in the College Fund commercial, "A mind is a terrible thing to waste." And mine is just about wasted trying to figure out who this lady is and where I've seen her before. Mille grazie!

Recent Events and Developments

Joseph witnesses Jed's dead center hit.











Well, let's see. What's been going on? I'm sure something has been happening, because the time has been passing, and, as John Archibald Wheeler said, "Time is what keeps everything from happening at once."

It has been my pleasure to come into renewed contact with a number of former students recently. Mindy Timothy started reading my humble blog after she learned of it from my excellent daughter, Autumn Marie Mulverhill. (Don't you love that surname, Mulverhill? It sounds like a Hobbit name to me.) Now Mindy's sister Delsa, who took two or three classes from me, is also reading my silly offerings. I was sorry that I didn't remember Delsa until she said a few things by email to help me recall. Getting old is terrible, and I hope I didn't hurt her feelings.


Just today I ran into a fellow named John Bryant at the new CostCo here in the Pocatello area. He looked familiar and asked my name. (No doubt he remembered me as having hair and that being a much darker color.) He said he'd done the "Youth Legislature" thing with me way back when. Poor John was recently divorced and moved here to help open the new store. He's been a CostCo employee for four years, but I think he was in my classes in the early nineties. Not sure.


One of my all-time favorite students was Will Springer, Madison Class of 2002. He took my History classes in the 2000-2001 school year. We became fast friends and often ventilated milk jugs and other threatening paraphernalia with paramilitary hardware of various types and calibers. It was Will who stepped up to me early on the morning of 11 September 2001 and asked if I'd yet heard of the "airplane hitting the World Trade Center." I hadn't heard. But, during my first hour class, we watched live as the second aircraft hit the second tower. On its seventh anniversary this year the History Channel ran a two-hour special consisting strictly of videotapes taken in real time as those events were happening. It truly was like living it all over again. Some things you don't really get over in this life. You just learn to live with them and the hole stays in your heart. Seeing all those folks being pushed out the windows by the flames and falling 100 stories was about the worst thing I'd ever personally witnessed.


Will is a USAF 1Lt now at Malmstrom AFB, Montana. He's a missilier. He hopes that his wife, Jaime, will "let him" get a new 1911 pistol when he makes Captain. Go, Will!

I believe everyone knows that Mary and Heather are both due to produce new humans in April. I think Delsa might have said she's having one, too. We wish them luck in that endeavor.



Another dear old friend and former student is Jed Lewis. I'm able to attach a photo of him here and also of the one he called "Haeberbuddy," my brother Jacob. These two survived my classes by dint of hard work and great senses of humor. Either that or they were smoking those cafeteria crispitos.











Jane Haeberle, my youngest sibling, master of the pursuit of all things trivial and manager of the gift department at the BYU-I bookstore, was also one of my students at one time. She really was a serious, hard-working student, but taking too many classes from one person can leave psychological scars that are visible in one's speech and behavior decades later. Then, too, she had to endure being accused of being my daughter, a trial actually reserved for Autumn.

My first four children were also doomed to endure my classes. They were all very nice about it, although my mild insanity (it was mild back then) might have embarrassed them occasionally. They all did pretty well at it, too. I particularly recall Hyrum, though, expressing his doubt at some amazing factoid I'd dropped on the class. "Nuh-Uhhh!

I'll get Sheryl to teach me (again) how to scan, so I can at least show year book pictures of my students when I refer to them. Tonight I'll be limited to those of whom I already have pictures in the computer.

Tonight's Memories

Far from being an exhaustive list, this is a sampling of the people and events which make me smile when I sit down to write each evening. If you're reading this, you belong in here whether your picture made it in tonight or not.