The Early Years

I was born on the hottest day of the year, August 1 1955 at Magadan Army Hospital in Washington. My Dad was away completing Officer’s School for the Army Artillery. My Grandmother had recently arrived to be with my Mom and to help with my older brother. They spent the day making jam, and the heat in the kitchen was well over 100 degrees! My mom asked to go outside and sit in the shade and as she got up to leave – WHOOSH the floor was instantly covered with water. Perhaps this was just the beginning of my love of floods because I was legendary as a kid to find and create a dam so we kids could swim in it. It always ended up with some farmer screaming at us as he tore our dam apart to water his crops or garden. Anyhow, my Grandma called for a taxi to take my Mom to the hospital but realizing I wasn’t going to wait caught the neighbor next door as she too was heading to the hospital to deliver her baby as well. I don.t know who was driving or screaming louder but it must have been quite a ride! Army Hospitals are built to treat Soldiers, and Women in labor or kids were not their primary concern, so in order to save space both of them shared a room, and by the time the Doctor got there both babies were nearly here. The Dr. was an Army surgeon and when he realized the situation was quite vocal with his colorful language skills- thus began my childhood relationship with bars of soap. My mom had one single bar for me and my brother that was the nastiest - foulest tasting- gut retching soap I have ever known. My brother and I agreed to have separate ends and mine had way more teeth marks than his did. My mom said that as soon as I was born the head nurse took me away and it wasn’t till later that night that she returned with the cart and gave me to my mom. My mother immediately asked if they had given her the wrong baby. I was dark-skinned, scrawny, and had a ton of spiky black hair, and the neighbor was Native American. Her baby was white, blue eyed, and blond as snow, and the two of them spent the next three days asking every nurse if they had the right ones. Finally the Head Nurse of the Women’s Ward told them that the “Army doesn’t make mistakes” and they were sure they had the right babies. I found out later in life that the Army does indeed make mistakes – they just don’t like to admit it. I spent the next two years living between Salt Lake City and Hyrum Utah. My Dad was finishing Law School so we often went with mother to Hyrum. My earliest memories of Hyrum were of splashing in the front yard on watering day and chasing ducks. I loved it when once a week a dam was built and the yard was flooded. Us boys always got to swim naked and later in life those skills served us well, but that’s another story. I also remember a cow called “Blackie” who loved to eat the wooden shingles from the garage, and my brother and I spent a lot of time using dad’s hammer to pry some off and laugh as Blackie crunched the boards and chewed them up. Later that summer the vet told my grandmother that Blackie had eaten so many nails that she had to go to slaughter, my dad said it was the most tender meat he ever ate-due to my brother and I feeding him shingles. Soon we moved to Logan, Utah so my Dad could join the family law practice, and moving to the “Big Town” opened a whole new world for me, and adventure was just waiting for me on the doorstep!