Rock House and Heber Memories

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THE DRIVING TEST

 

I started driving when I was pretty young. My first memories of driving were sitting on Dad’s lap and “driving” the car or the tractor by turning the steering wheel while Dad did everything else. On the tractor I could actually stand up between Dad’s legs and drive the tractor all by myself. That tells you how small I was at the time. One advantage of owning a tractor was that I often got a chance to do the steering when we were going down the road. The tractor had no cab so I had a clear view of the tires. It was easy to avoid bumps or holes. The tractor also didn’t go too fast so it was a good place to learn to drive.

I graduated from just turning the steering wheel to actually driving the tractor by the time I was ten or so. I still wasn’t big enough to crank the tractor to start it, but if it was going, I could put it in gear, shift gears, drive and not do too badly. There was a deputy sheriff in the Heber-Overgaard area but not until I was about fourteen or fifteen. Before that, it was pretty much left to the parents to decide if kids could drive. I was allowed to drive the tractor by myself from about age twelve on. By the time I was fourteen, I was allowed to drive the car with an adult present or in an emergency. I had done quite a bit of driving by the time I turned sixteen.

In Arizona a person could get their first drivers license when they turned sixteen years of age. To get a driver’s license I had to take a written test as well as a driving test. There was no such thing as drivers education at that time in Snowflake but I was allowed to drive my car to Snowflake to take the written exam and the driver’s test to get my license. The “Driver’s License Examiner” at the time was Mr. Brinkerhoff. He happened to be the Dad of one of my high school friends.

The day I got my driver’s license turned out to be a very memorable day. At the time, our family had a dark green 1960 Volkswagen. It was a car Ted had purchased when he was going to school in Tempe. I am not sure why we had it unless he had traded Dad for the Pontiac Tempest. Anyway, I went to Snowflake to take my driver’s test in the Volkswagen. That was alright with me because it was easy to drive and parallel park and I knew that was usually the hardest part of the driving test. I thought I would have no problem with the driving test. I noticed however when I was driving to school that the accelerator was sticking a little bit. This was a bit of a problem. Every time I pushed the clutch in, the car would rev up because the gas pedal stayed depressed. I had a problem!!! I knew that I would never be able to pass the test if every time I shifted gears the car revved up.

When I got to school I did some quick checking. I found that the spring that pulls the accelerator pedal up when the car is just idling or when my foot was not on the pedal  had broken. I scrounged some rubber bands from the seminary teacher and did a quick partial fix. At least the pedal would partially return to the right position when my foot was not on it. I figured out that I could use the toe of my shoe to pull it all the way back up. I could proceed with the driving test if I could remember to use my toe at the right time.

I may have seemed a little distracted during my driving test because I was concentrating so much on getting the accelerator pedal all the way up before I shifted gears or when I stopped at a stop sign or for a light. I guess I succeeded well enough because I passed the test. Maybe the parallel parking did the trick. I wouldn’t recommend trying this at home but I made it work. I have often wondered what my friend’s Dad had to say at the dinner table that night about the driving tests he conducted that day. It didn’t matter. I was LEGAL TO DRIVE!!!

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THE BEGINNING OF CUB SCOUTS IN HEBER

 

When I was nine years old the Church began to sponsor a Cub Scouting program for the young boys. Since I was nine, I was in the Bear Den. Mom was our Den Mother. I had lots of fun as a cub scout. Each month there was some type of theme and we spent all month working on that theme and then we would demonstrate what we had learned at the Pack Meeting that was held each month. Some of the theme’s I can remember were Indian Lore, Newspapers, Pull Toys, Indian Writing, Nature, Carving and Painting.

For each rank we had to complete certain requirements and get them signed off by a parent or leader. Mom made sure we advanced and got things passed off. After earning the rank badge like the Bear Badge you could continue to pass things off and earn Arrow Points. I managed to earn all the ranks and a bunch of Arrow Points as well. The ranks were Bobcat, Wolf, Bear, Lion and Webelow. Since I started as a Bear, I never did get the Wolf badge but I earned Bear, Lion and Webelow patches.

One of our favorite things to do was to go on field trips. I can remember various parents helping us with field trips. We went to the Petrified Forest, the Holbrook Tribune office, the Post Office and the County Court House to name a few. We also had lots of craft activities. We built at different times, neckerchief slides from bones, treasure boxes, Indian costumes out of burlap, flags, little hinged dogs that were pull toys and a lot of other things.

We put on lots of skits in the pack meetings and had lots of fun competing with the other dens. I can remember one month when we studied Alaska and we made kayaks with wheels and we had kayak races in the gym using sticks with pads on the ends as paddles. We had all sorts of contests between the dens and had lots of fun.

One of the requirements for one of the arrow points was to learn to make fudge. I excelled at that skill. I memorized the recipe and would make fudge whenever I could convince Mom we needed some fudge. Sometimes on cold winter nights when we were all at home Mom would suggest that I make a batch of fudge. I was always ready to do so. Sometimes the fudge “went to sugar”.  I learned that if I beat it while it was still hot, it wouldn’t go to sugar as often. Usually it was all gone before it cooled off. I can still remember the recipe:

2 cups sugar

1 cup evaporated milk

2 tablespoons of butter

2 tablespoon of Karo Syrup

A pinch of salt

 

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BIRTHDAY AND HOLIDAY CELEBRATIONS

 

My birthday is January 5th.  Since it is so close to Christmas and New Years, I didn’t have a lot of “typical birthday parties” when I was growing up. Usually my party amounted to having Chuck and maybe one or two other friends over for dinner where I got to choose the menu.

I didn’t usually get big gifts for my birthday because I had already requested them for Christmas. It was more typical for me to get books or socks or things like that. One of my favorite birthday gifts was a giant ½ lb. Hershey candy bar. I wasn’t too particular about the type. I liked Hershey’s Plain, Hershey’s Almond or Mr Goodbar about equally as well. I got one of those quite often for my birthday. I would eat one square a day and it would last several days.

I don’t have many clear memories of specific birthdays except for my 8th birthday. It was special because it was the day I was baptized. Birthday’s were celebrated in our family but the celebrations were usually small and family oriented.

Probably more memorable than my own birthdays were other celebrations. I especially liked Mothers Day and Fathers Day. Most of the time us boys would go together to get Mom or Dad something for their special days but I remember a few times when I bought a separate gift. One of the common gifts for Dad was a “bread and milk bowl”. His bowls were always getting broken so he needed a new one about every year. Sometimes we got him socks or a box of candy bars. Mom usually got chocolates and cards and something pretty if we had the money. In our family it was the sentiment more than the gift that was important so expensive gifts were rare.

We celebrated all the normal holidays like everyone else. For New Years Eve we usually had an oyster stew supper followed by some table games. One tradition we had that was a little unique was to leave an empty plate out on New Years Eve for the New Year to put something on. When we woke up on New Years Day there was usually some candy or cookies or something on our plate from the “New Year”. Not very many families did that but we did almost every year.

For Valentines Day, we used to deliver the valentines to our friends. On valentines night, we would take the valentines and drop them by the door of our friends and then knock and run and hide and watch them come to the door to find the valentines we had left. It took quite a while to visit all the homes of our friends without getting caught. Later on we just exchanged valentines in school. That took a lot of the fun out of Valentines Day.

For St. Patrick’s Day we always made sure we were wearing something green in a visible place. If you didn’t have green on, other kids could pinch you and did. We took it seriously and those without green got quite a few pinches. You usually didn’t forget more than once. We did more around April Fool’s Day then than now. Aunt Ellen was one who loved April Fools Day. When we were living in the valley, she would show up on our doorstep early in the morning with a pan of freshly baked biscuits. We would dig in only to find that she had put cotton in the middle of the biscuits. What a disappointment but what a good joke as well. If it wasn’t cotton biscuits, it was something else but she usually caught us because she did something before we got to school and realized that it was April Fool’s Day.

Easter was always a special holiday because of the significance of the day and because we got to color Easter Eggs. We would usually buy the small pack that had the colored tablets that were used to color the eggs and we usually colored two dozen eggs. Those colored eggs were the ones we used for Easter egg hunts. By the time Easter was over, the eggs were often in pretty bad shape. We not only hunted them, we also ate them. The Easter Eggs were usually colored the Saturday morning before Easter. We heated the water to boil the eggs and then used some of it in cups to color the eggs. As I recall, you had to add vinegar to the water to get the color to stick to the eggs. I always liked the little wax pencil that I could use to write messages on the eggs before putting them in the dye. We made quite a mess but we had lots of fun working together as a family.

Fourth of July was always a fun holiday. That was when Heber had it’s Rodeo. There were lots of activities around the rodeo. Usually there was an early morning flag raising ceremony. For lunch, the ward put on a Bar-B-Que and we usually ate lunch there because Mom was usually helping with the meal. Then there was the rodeo and at night there was usually a show and a dance. We took in the show.

Labor Day was never a big holiday for us. It simply signaled that school was about to begin for another year. Thanksgiving was a different matter. We usually used Thanksgiving as a time to get wood for the winter. Sometimes Vard, Grandma Scott, Aunt Ellen and Uncle Dick would come to Heber to celebrate Thanksgiving with us. We usually had a turkey with all the trimmings for lunch and we usually got at least a couple loads of wood as well.

Christmas was a special holiday. Quite often we went to Mesa to celebrate Christmas because Vard was down there. It was a time when Dad could take off work and we would stay in the valley for a week to ten days. The older boys would wake everyone up at 4-5am and we would gather in Aunt Ellen’s front room for the “Christmas Tree”. After the gifts were passed out Aunt Ellen would prepare a breakfast for everyone. I was the littlest one in the family then but I tried to do all the things the big kids did. Christmas was a family time and I looked forward for it to come around each year.

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COW TANKS

 

Back when Heber was a young town, someone decided to dig two cow tanks for watering cows and other livestock. Those tanks no longer exist but they were a place where I spent lots of time. The tanks were located just about a hundred yards from our front door. The main street of Heber used to fun right in front of the rock house and past the tanks to the bridge across Buckskin Creek. The tanks were on the north side of the road. They were about one hundred feet east of the little house across the road from the rock house. The tanks had been dug with a bulldozer and they would fill up when it rained hard and the ditches would run. The tanks were probably seventy or eighty yards long and probably thirty or forty yards across. There was a small hill of dirt fifteen to twenty feet high between the two tanks. The one on next to the main road was the one that usually had the most water. The back tank would have water in the rainy season but was dry most of the rest of the year. The water level in the front tank varied from three to five feet in depth depending on the time of year. In the winter the tank froze over and we had to go and break holes in the ice to water the animals. At that time in Heber, the milk cows and some other animals roamed free. They would drink from the tank since it was always available.

Because it was available and because it was wet, and maybe because it was somewhat forbidden, it attracted kids like flies to honey. Mom didn’t particularly like us to play by the tank. She was afraid we could drown. I suppose someone could drown in the tank but it was more likely that they would get stuck in the mud that was about a foot deep and starve to death.

The tank was a constant source of entertainment. One of our favorite pass times was skipping rocks on the tank. There were lots of rocks so you could skip rocks for hours. The other pass time was to throw something in the tank that would float at least for a little while and try to hit it with rocks until it sank. Needless to say, the bottom of the tank was covered with broken bottles, empty cans and all types of other debris. One of the hazards associated with playing in the water or wading in the tank was getting you foot cut on broken glass that littered the bottom of the tank. If you didn’t get stuck in the mud and starve to death, you might get gangreen and have to have a leg or foot amputated.

The tank was a pretty good place to play in the water except for one other thing. There was green slime growing all around the edge of the tank. To enjoy the water you needed to get past the slime. When it rained, the water level in the tank rose and the slime was not so bad or at least it was submerged a little more. In the summer time the tanks presented a constant temptation to boys to go swimming. Most of the time because of the slime, the broken glass hazard or because we were “most obedient children”, we resisted the temptation.

Someone built two rafts made out of 12X12’s with boards nailed on top. The rafts were about 6×6 ft in size. We had lots of poles from the sawmill so it was a past time for the older kids to pole vault out to the rafts (missing the slime) and then pole the rafts around the tank with the long poles, much like the boatmen of Venice. If two people or two groups got on the two different rafts, it was likely that eventually there would be a “battle of the rafts”. The idea was to knock the people off the raft by either ramming it or by upsetting the raft so that the passengers  fell off. Since everyone secretly  wanted to get wet (deep down in their hearts), it was usually not too long before someone was in the water. I was to little to do much rafting but it was fun to watch.

The other common trick was to get a group on the raft and then have everyone run to one side of the raft so that the other end came almost out of the water, then quickly run to the other end. If you did this a few times, one end of the raft would eventually come so far out of the water that it was impossible to maintain you balance or footing on the raft and you just “accidently” fell into the water. Once in the water, it made sense to take advantage of the opportunity to do a little swimming as well or just splashing around since the tank really wasn’t deep enough to do much swimming in unless it was after the rainy season.

If we got wet, someone had to sneak into the house to get everyone dry clothes. Quite often that job fell to me because I was too little to ride on the rafts, but sometimes I was involved. We changed in the garage and Mom was none the wiser until she found a pile of wet clothes in the garage.

In winter we would ice skate on the tank. It was always a trick to know when the ice was thick enough for skating. Most of us didn’t have ice skates so we played our version of hockey in our regular boots or shoes. We had lots of fun until we would hear the ice crack and then everyone had to get off the ice. I guess we lived dangerously a few times! Playing hockey was always a challenge because people liked to throw things on the ice. Playing hockey was like an obstacle course but we had fun doing it. If there was lots of snow, we would also sometimes take our sleds and sled down the hill between the tanks and out onto the ice or just sled on the ice itself. The tanks were ultimately leveled and the area was made into a ball field.

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CHRISTMAS TREES

 

One of my memories of home is the hunting for and cutting down of the family Christmas tree. One advantage of living in Heber and having a father who worked for the Forest Service was that Dad knew a lot of the places where nice Christmas trees could be found. In all my growing up years, we always had a live Christmas tree. Almost no one in those days had artificial trees. Most families in Heber cut their own trees. There were no Christmas tree lots where you could go and buy one.

To cut a Christmas tree we had to have a Christmas tree tag. The tag was usually Christmas red in color and essentially stated that it was a permit to cut one tree. There were no restrictions on where to find a tree. That was a matter of your knowledge of where good trees were to be found or in our case, Dad’s knowledge.

Usually about 2 weeks before Christmas, Mom would mention that we needed to get a tree. The whole family usually went with Dad to select and cut the tree. Sometimes Dad would cut trees for our extended family in the valley as well.

There were different types of trees that could be used for Christmas trees. Those closest to Heber were Pinion trees. We never liked them for Christmas trees because they were not as pretty and did not smell as good as fir trees. As you went up in elevation the next type of trees were Douglas Fir’s. If there was a lot of snow on the mountain, we sometimes settled for a Douglas Fir tree. The very best and most popular type trees we liked for Christmas trees were the White Fir. They were the prettiest and they smelled the best and the branches were in layers so that it was easy to decorate them.

We would take axe and saw in hand and drive up Black Canyon until we got to a place where Dad knew there were lots of trees. Then the hunt was on for the perfect tree. The boys would scatter out looking for just the perfect one. The perfect one had the right Christmas tree shape and had equally spaced branches. There were lots of OK Christmas trees but we were searching for the “Perfect Tree” for our family. It usually took at least half an hour for someone to fine one they thought was the best. Mom was usually the final judge. Dad did not like to cut the top out of larger trees so we had to find one that could be cut off at the ground. We usually had a tree that was six or seven feet tall when mounted in the Christmas Tree stand. Usually the best trees were located on rather steep slopes. When there was snow on the ground and there usually was, it was fun trying to stand up while cutting the trees. Dad usually let us cut the trees if we were big enough. If we had to much trouble, he would cut them for us.

After cutting the tree or trees, we had to drag them back to the car. Since the trees were quite wide at the bottom, we would bag them. We always had gunny sacks left over from the feed we bought for our cow. We would cut open the seam on the bottom of the bag and just slip the bag over the tree from the bottom. The sack would hold the branches in so that we could get several trees into the trunk of the car. Then it was off home where we cut the bottom of the tree trunk off square with a saw and mounted the tree in the Christmas tree stand.

Mom liked to decorate our tree with little pieces of brightly wrapped candy as well as the traditional ornaments. When people visited us or when she had her primary class at our house, everyone got to pick a piece of candy from the tree before leaving. By Christmas Day, the tree was mostly bare of the candy. She also liked to hang the little candy canes on the tree. For most of my life we always had an “edible tree”. A lot of people in town and especially the kids thought our tree was the “best one in town”.

One year our scout troop decided to cut Christmas trees as a money making project. We made arrangements with a troop in Mesa to sell the trees we would cut. We cut about two hundred Christmas trees that year and delivered them to the troop in Mesa. They paid us a flat fee per tree and then sold them for whatever they could get for them. Both troops probably came out OK on the deal. I know our troop did.