Vacant Lot

Most everyone in this town would look at this stretch of 25th East between Iona Road and the Yellowstone Highway and see some vacant lots.

Well, not quite vacant, because this map is old, and at the corner of 25th East and Iona is a business: Idaho Monument Company, the gravestone marketer that's relocating from the corner of 25th East and the highway, a few lots out of shot.

Why are the lots vacant? The county and state are working on a road project to widen 25th East and fix the intersection at the US highway, and the houses and business there had to go.

Progress, you say. We have serious need to improve the road infrastructure in this town because of the increased population and the traffic that population brought with it.

I agree.

I also happen to have grown up in a house built by my Dad on the lot outlined in red.

There's a fair contingent of folks around here who want better roads, but don't want those better roads built near where they live.

Guess what?

For better roads, some sacrifices have to be made. Maybe it's part of the family farm, or a beloved tree, or what have you. Or maybe it's the brick rambler your Dad built a bit at a time for his family of eight kids, who really have a lot of fond memories of that house.

It was no longer in the family. Mom and Dad have passed on, and for a while one of their sons owned the house, but they eventually moved on and the house was sold, as houses often are.

When we learned the house had been sold and was going to be torn down, we were sad.

But I got to thinking about the house. It actually talked to me in a dream, of all things. It said it was tired. It served us well, but that it was time to move on. It reminded me that the memories of the people who lived in that house are much more important than any structure ever could be.

We do have a few material souvenirs. As the house was demolished, our oldest brother got permission to go onto the property and salvage enough bricks that all of the siblings could have one. The brick sits on my desk as I write this.

And it's okay.

Of the three houses my wife and I have owned, one is no more, It survived the Teton Dam flood in 1976; when we remodeled the basement we found dried flood mud atop the foundation. It had been built in the 1920s. But it too was tired, and was demolished to make way for student housing for nearby BYU-Idaho. And again, that's okay. That house served us well, gave us comfortable shelter, and convinced us we weren't cut out to be landlords as we rented the basement out.

Progress.

I know everyone doesn't see it that way. It's just how I see it. It's okay. We move on. And preserve the memories we have.

Clock Repairpeople We Are Not

So, Michelle was winding our grandfather clock over the weekend and the itty-bitty suspension spring broke, dropping the pendulum to the bottom of the clock.

Being the intrepid souls we are, we took the clock apart to see if we could fix things. Luckily, we had a spare suspension spring in with the clock paperwork, and we did manage to get that installed after both of us threatened to utter some swear words.

But clocks being clocks, there's more to it than that.

Right now, we're struggling to figure out how to get the pendulum hung from the spring without it interfering with the chime bars, which are kind of essential to a grandfather clock's charm.

Not being total idiots, we've stopped tinkering and are trying to locate a clock repair person to help us go the rest of the way.

And we'll have to buy some more suspension springs, though the one in the clock did last nearly 50 years.

The Magic Wheelbarrow

Witness "The Magic Wheelbarrow," one of a good handful of movies my older siblings made at our house on Hitt Road, using a Super 8 hand-held camera, technology now rendered moot by the phone cameras of the day.

Still, this is fun to watch. I have a minor role as the little kid who occasionally pops in wearing the red coat. I'm not in the main feature, but in some of the bonus material included at the end.

In the thumbnail above, that's my oldest brother Albert, preparing to leap off the top of the house.

Looking at the movies makes me sad just a little bit, as the house was recently torn down to make way for a road widening project. The house looks a lot smaller (Dad did some additions to it over the years) and the trees are certainly a lot smaller than I remember them being.

The House Dad Built

Dad built the house we grew up in. We have a lot of memories of that house on Hitt Road. Earlier this year, the house and a few others nearby were torn down to make way for a wider road.

Our brother Albert Davidson salvaged some bricks from the house, cleaned them up, and gave them to us today on what would have been Dad's 96th birthday.

The mini brick on top was part of a full brick he cut and put in his rock tumbler.

At the party we also watched a bunch of home movies, including one that shows my very young bare bottom. That one will never be seen again.

The movies included glimpses of the old home, growing bigger year to year, images of all of us much younger than we are now, long-lost pets, a few classic cars including Dad's Oldsmobile Delta 88 and his Dodge pickup, trees a lot smaller than I remember them, and a whole lot of love that showed through good times and bad.

Thank you to Al and Serena DeGiulio Davidson , Christine Davidson Harrop , Stuart Harrop , Brad Nielsen , Michelle Davidson , Maaike Davidson , and Randy Davidson for a fun party. We missed Teani-Jeff Davidson and Sherri Davidson , who were not able to attend, and Marina Nielsen who is with Mom and Dad on the other side, watching as we continue our journeys home. 

We Don't Look Half Bad

Thanks to Maaike and Jason, we had a fun cousins party last weekend.

I'm posting two photos because it looks like some of us managed to hide behind the others.

Yes, that one's much better.

 

Glow Worm

I vaguely remember hearing Mom say this little rhyme. I learned today at Marina's funeral that she had it on the fridge. It certainly does sound like something Mom would have.

Marina's funeral was wonderful. And sad. And a lot of other things. I'm still trying to sort it all out in my head.

I did have a distinct impression at the graveside in Iona that Mom and Dad were there to be with the rest of the family. The veil felt thin.

Family photo, taken at the church on Mesa Avenue, which Dad helped build. Paula subbed in for Sherri, who had departed before we took the picture.

Mother Eve and Many of her Faithful Daughters . . .

Tonight as part of our scripture study, we read this from Section 138 of the Doctrine and Convenants:

(Verse 57) I beheld that the faithful elders of this dispensation, when they depart from mortal life, continue their labors in the preaching of the gospel of repentance and redemption, through the sacrifice of the Only Begotten Son of God, among those who are in darkness and under the bondage of sin in the great world of the spirits of the dead.

President Joseph F. Smith, in this section, also noted that among the gathering of the "noble and great ones" called to preach the gospel to those who have passed on are Mother Eve and "many of her faithful daughters who had lived through the ages and worshiped the true and living God."

Marina joined them tonight.

As we read, and as the texts poured in from family with the news of her passing, I received a witness that this is what Marina will be doing -- preaching the gospel to those who have waited long to hear it. And that is a comforting thing.

This is her favorite song. And she can sing it still.

House is Gone

 

The house I grew up in is gone.

I won't admit to being a sentimentalist, but it is sad to see it go. All in the name of road widening and traffic safety.

I remember as a kid asking Dad when we'd ever move, and Mom always said maybe when they widened the road. That was in the early 1980s, so forty some-odd years ago. We all did move on, and now the house has as well.

It was a good house, full of memories, but as Albert says, the house lives on in all of us, as we carry those memories with us. And he saved us a few bricks, guaranteed to have been laid by Dad. So that's neat.

(Photos of the house going courtesy of Doreen Sorenson, a family friend. Photos and video of the house gone, courtesy of Albert.)

Soon

The house we grew up in, in which we lived until I went on my mission in 1993, is being torn down.

When I came home, Dad had built a new house a few streets over, which was fine. Many happy memories there.

But so many more at the old house.

Albert, my oldest brother, stopped by there today to take some photos. The house is a pretty sorry sight, and actually has been for years. I think it's ready for a rest.

Two sheds that Dad built, the small one first on the right, then the "Pioneer House," which included a built-in bed, wood stove for heat, and other little amenities. It had been a workshop and chicken coop for years before that.

Al in front of the house, with the front door behind him. Not an original tree left in the yard.

Back of the house, with the garage on the left, back door and then on the right the extension Dad built on the house I think either when I was very young or maybe before I was born. Big pine tree, or at least the stump of one, where Dad planted it, along with the cobblestone path to the Pioneer House.

Garden patch, where we pretended to weed and played a lot. I buried a sock full of marbles in there somewhere. Never did find them.

Another shot of the back of the house. Dad built a bedoorm here for he and Mom, along with the "family room," with vaulted ceiling and green carpet. I took over the bedroom for a while. It was nice and quiet there.

Brick wall between the two garage doors, with the weeping mortar worn smooth by many of Al's basketball tricks, "running" up the wall to make a shot.

Full shot of the Pioneer House. When he built it, he used windows from the old church on Lincoln Road where we went to church. These aren't it.

House from the front, with the bedroom wing on the left and kitchen/garage on the right. I wish I had a garage that deep on my property now.

 

This Music Played, my Shows Were Over

I tend to open up YouTube as I'm falling asleep and drift off to random music. Last night, however, I was awoken when this tune played.

As I lay there in the darkness listening, I knew I'd heard the song a thousand times before. I couldn't peg it, though. So I played it several times, round about 2 am, and finally drifted off to sleep again, hoping maybe I'd remember where the song came from in my dreams.

Something significant, I was sure.

But nothing.

So tonight it came up in the rotation again. I googled it, and discovered this: Among its many uses, it was used as the theme for the soap opera "The Young and the Restless."

Then it hit me: The melancholy the tune brought me last night stemmed from knowing that the game shows I watched when I was home sick from school ended when "The Young and the Restless" came on.

Little Boy Blue

The plan changed a lot, and that annoyed Isaac.

First, the plan was to drive to a rest stop along I-84 south of Mountain Home Thursday night after work, sleep there, then be ready at 7 am for the grand occasion.

That got scratched. We were leaving later and later, with the final leaving schedule after 7 pm, and added a person, meaning our plan to sleep in the back of Isaac's Ford Expedition was getting a lot more crowded.

So instead we opted to sleep at home, but get up at 2:30 am to make the drive to Boise. Which we did.

And it was worth it:

After 11 years, Randy is out of jail.

I don't want to cause pain by posting how happy I am about this. But according to the State of Idaho, he's done his time and thus is free to go. I can't erase the hurt that what he did caused, but if I've learned anything about sin, it's that sin can and should be forgiven. I don't know all of the details of his journey to this point, but I hope he has found peace with God, and peace with those he hurt.

We didn't get to see him all that much. When we got to the jail, we had to wait an additonal hour for some reason before they let him out. Nobody offered an explanation, but it's clear it's a place that runs on its own schedule.

We (Albert and Serena, Maaike and Amy Staiger, Liam, Isaac, and I) took Randy to Dennys of all places for breakfast. He remarked it had been a long time since he'd eaten anything with a fork, having had to use plastic sporks for the last decade. He also commented that the food had flavor -- the only flavor in jail, he says, is hot -- and that he'd have to remind himself to slow down and enjoy the meal, as he wasn't rushed by anyone to be done in five minutes or less.

We went to the grounds of the Boise Temple, where Albert, Liam and I gave him a blessing. I prayed that he'd find peace, and feel gratitude for the blessings he has, despite the turn his life has taken.

He's now in Prairie City, Oregon, with a friend who runs a dog grooming business. I hope he can find peace there. He plans on coming back this way in June, once he can figure out a way to do so.

Maaike and Albert made sure to bring Bluey -- the teddy bear he got from Grandma Speirs many moons ago -- to help him reconnect with memories. I hope he can, and find roses among the thorns.

I often think of this poem when I think of my brother, and the sentiment still stands:

The little toy dog is covered with dust,

   But sturdy and stanch he stands;

 The little toy soldier is red with rust,

   And his musket molds in his hands.

Time was when the little toy dog was new,

   And the soldier was passing fair;

And that was the time when our Little Boy Blue

   Kissed them and put them there.

"Now, don't you go till I come," he said,

   "And don't you make any noise!"

So, toddling off to his trundle-bed,

   He dreamt of the pretty toys;

And, as he was dreaming, an angel song

   Awakened our Little Boy Blue---

Oh! the years are many, the years are long,

   But the little toy friends are true!

Ay, faithful to Little Boy Blue they stand,

   Each in the same old place---

Awaiting the touch of a little hand,

   The smile of a little face;

And they wonder, as waiting the long years through

   In the dust of that little chair,

What has become of our Little Boy Blue,

   Since he kissed them and put them there.

 

Be a Canadian on A Motorbike

Be a Canadian on a motorbike.

When Dad's little village in the Netherlands was liberated in the spring of 1945, there were no tanks. No bunting or parades of military marching through.

Just two Canadians, dispatched on a motorbike, to tell the villagers the Germans were gone.

Two soldiers and a motorbike. That's all it took for the little village of Sandpoort to know they had rejoined the world of free humanity.

We now live in what feels like equally tumultuous times, when it feels like the voice of the people is choosing evil over good, once again. And sometimes it brings me feelings of despair.

Then I remember those two Canadians on a motorbike.

That's all it took for my Dad to feel free and happy once more.

Maybe I can be a Canadian on a motorbike. This world needs more liberators.

Thanks for Laughing At Me

Aside from Mrs. Barrett tolerating my incessant sneaking of books off the classroom shelves next to my desk, Cecelia Fife had the most influence on me as I developed a love of reading and writing. She read, she corrected, she encouraged, but most of all, she laughed at the silly things I wrote.

My writing career hasn't progressed to the points of the lofty dreams I had in her classroom, but maybe someday . . . 

May she rest in peace.

Guess Who's Got A New Shovel, Then?

 

Posted on a friend's Facebook feed, an homage to the humorous talents of one Michael Palin.

And Palin's Eric Olthwaite is a character who'll always be close to my heart, because Dad loved to chuckle at him and his shovel. And it is a clever story, about the most dull human being ever in existence. That speaks to me on a spiritual level.

Play With Words

Play with words, folks.

Even if you and words don't get along. Dig them out of your head and put them on paper. Doesn't matter if you type them, or scribble them, or don't think they're good enough, or make enough sense, or are in the right order.

Record your memories. If that's the only thing you can do to play worth words, do it. It's a start. Maybe you want to do something more grand. That's always possible. But don't forget those stupid little moments, the sappy ones, the ones that maybe come up once in a while and you think about. If they keep coming back, they want a way out so others can experience them.

Tonight I'm getting a little weepy over a bit of pop-synth from the late 1980s, because a student wrote about how the song made her reconsider the rocky relationship she was building with her parents.  Her dad introduced the song to her, and for a long time she considered it to be one worthy of listening to with a plate of pancakes to catch the syrup with.

But then she got to thinking about it. Listened to it. And reconsidered her approach to her parents, and the lessons these silly, stupid people were trying to teach her.

One of the comments I made on her paper is long the lines of "I wonder why we're so slow to express gratitude?" and the thought came to me immediately: "Hey, dummy. When was the last time you expressed gratitude toward someone else?"

I dunno. I guess a long time. I'd better fix that.

As it says in Doctrine and Covenants 109:

"And as all have not faith, seek ye diligently and teach one another words of wisdom; yea, seek ye out of the best books words of wisdom, seek learning even by study and also by faith;

"Organize yourselves; prepare every needful thing, and establish a house, even a house of prayer, a house of fasting, a house of faith, a house of learning, a house of glory, a house of order, a house of God."

Add to the "best books" "The Living Years," by Mike and the Mechanics. Because a student did, I now will too.

On the Street Where I Lived . . .

Today I learned that when I lived in Tours, France, I lived on a street named for Paul Marie Théodore Vincent d'Indy, a French composer and music teacher whose students included Erik Satie and Cole Porter. Porter was a student for only three months, while Satie, in typical Satie fashion, felt his own compositions were worse after d'Indy's tutelage. D'Indy was also an anti-Semite.

So this kind of started on a sour note. But still, an interesting voyage nonetheless.

In Blois, the street I lived on was named for Honoratus of Amiens, better known as Saint Honoré, and is the patron saint of pastry chefs.

This was my favorite mission apartment. The building it was in was built before Columbus discovered America, and like all of the buildings on that side of the street, was built at the foot of a cliff or hill. You could enter at street level and climb a few flights of stairs to get to our apartment, or from the back you could enter and go down a few flights of stairs.

In Perigueux, the street I lived on was named for Victor Basch, a French politician and president of the Human Rights League of France and an ardent anti-Nazi. He and his wife were killed by Vichy France militia officials in Lyons in 1944.

Maybe this takes the curse off the Vincent d'Indy connection.

In Toulouse, I lived on a street named for Louis François Gaston Marie Auguste de Roquemaurel, a French naval officer and explorer, who journeyed to Antarctica and throughout the islands of the Pacific.

He was a native of Toulouse and donated many of his relics from his Pacific visits to the museum in town.

And lest anyone think stateside is devoid of character, the house I grew up in is named for Minnie Gibson Hitt, an early Idaho Falls banker and the first female head of a bank in Idaho.

The house I live in now is on a street named for the match point concept in tennis. In a neighborhood with many tennis-themed street names that has a grand total of one tennis court, private. So that's a little boring. If not ironic.

From Annatevka to Lynwood

From the "You Never Know, but Sometimes You Do When God Speaks to You through Weird Al Yankovic" files:

Many moons ago, I was chewing on a personal problem. As introverted teenagers are wont, I hadn't talked to anyone about it. But I did talk to God about it quite a bit. Kinda like Tevye from "Fiddler on the Roof," constantly, but quietly.

I talked about that problem for a long time. Sometimes it felt like the conversation was rather one-sided. And maybe I was doubtful a bit that God was listening, or that he cared all that much about the problem I was facing.

I was mulling the problem over again at work one day, using the saw to chew through some bricks. And if you've ever been around a brick saw, you know they're loud. But I had a lot of bricks to cut, as as my mind still does, it wandered from the problem to something else. A Weird Al Yankovic song began playing in my head.

And when Weird Al sang the lyric "You're not perfect, but I love you anyhow," it was as if I heard God's voice not in the thunder, not in the whirlwind, but in the brick saw and the lyric and for the first time in months, I felt happy.

That didn't bring an end to the problem. But it brought some much-needed comfort that to this day, at the right time, makes me tear up whenever I hear this song.

It's not the Tab Choir. It's not choruses of angels. It's God speaking to me through the voice of a man straight outta Lynwood.

King of Nothing

Sometimes I wonder if the things I share with my kids ever get through.

Then tonight I went to YouTube to listen to this song, which reminds me a lot of my Dad, who called himself "King of Nothing" because of this song.



And I see this in the comments below:

Maybe I am penetrating the bureaucracy.

[Midlife Crisis Arriving on Schedule]

This might have been the start of a midlife crisis. And this, its corollary.

Because it’s a shock to suddenly have a kid who is 18 and technically no longer a kid. He can’t buy alcohol, but he can vote. And he’s graduated high school. Signed up to take online college courses starting in a few weeks. Finishing up mission papers. Looking for that first job.

Maybe we could be doing better by him. By all our kids.

There are times maybe I think I don’t know them all that well, that we need to talk more.

There are times maybe I think we’ve talked too much.

I remember this 18-year-old kid as a toddler, following me around our new home in Sugar City. He wasn’t quite two, but I set him to work watering the apple trees. He loved to play with the hose, to watch the water bubble out, and to pretend to put gasoline in his little car with it. When he wasn’t filling the gas tank with my screwdrivers.

I remember him following me around saying “shit shit shit” after he heard his dad say the word in the shed.

I miss that shed.

Oh do I miss that shed.

And that kid.

Never quite believed my mother when she said if she had to do it all over again with her little kids, she’d do it, no hesitation.Maybe this is an inkling of discovering that feeling in myself.

My brothers and sisters, too, are looking to the past. Seeing old photos of us all looking young and wondering when they look in the mirror who these old folks are.

Mom and Dad are gone.

We’re the responsible ones now.

And in a way, that’s a scary thought.

Responsible for our own versions of little us, who aren’t technically so little anymore.

Feeling a little like Buzz Lightyear. Worrying that the hat doesn’t look good.



Not quite at the Statler and Waldorf part of life, but getting closer.

What Will They Do to the Brady Bunch?

Because when you’re a kid and you don’t know any better, I based my general outlook on life on two things:

1. Did I get bullied at school today?
2. What did the Brady Bunch do today?

A good day meant the answer to No. 1 was “no,” and the answer to No. 2 didn’t matter, because whatever happened to the Brady Bunch was bound to be good.

First time I realized a kid could legally be better at something than an adult? When Bobby Brady became a pool shark and snookered Mr. Howell out of 256 packs of gum.



(There was, of course, the unfortunate clothes washer disaster also involving Bobby, but that could be forgiven as clothes washers were complicated devices only mothers knew how to run properly.)



And let’s face it. We all knew Mr. Brady was an architect. The house was as equal a character in the show as Alice and stupid stupid Cousin Oliver. Right down to where Alice, spooked by the unfamiliar unlightedness of the house when the kids started a spook alley, took out a bust of Mr. Brady out of fear. (This is when I learned that ladies could be scary in their own right, what with Alice bashing things with her purse.)



So you have to wonder what HGTV is going to do with the Brady Bunch house – or at least the house used for the show’s exterior scenes – now that they own it.

They want to restore it to its 1970s glory, like only HGTV can, they say in a press release.

What would be fun would be to see some of the Brady interiors show up. But as the Brady house and the house on Dilling Street aren’t laid out exactly the same, doing that might not actually happen.