One of my playmates as a child was Elsie Bigler. Elsie was my age and she lived just across the street from The Rock House. Sadly, the Bigler home is no longer there. It burned down years later and its ruins have been removed for the most part, but it was there when I was growing up.

I can’t remember exactly how old I was when this incident occurred, but I was probably four or five years old. Mom and Aunt Vera Bigler were good friends so when Mom went across the street to visit Aunt Vera, I tagged along most of the time and played with Elsie. Besides their house, Aunt Vera and Uncle Laurald Bigler had a saddle shop, a big garage, a big barn and lots of places for kids to play. They had a pretty big house and on the back screened in porch they kept their freezer.

Now why Elsie and I were in the freezer in the first place I can’t remember but in opening the freezer we saw that there was a package of frozen hot dogs. It was about that moment that fierce hunger must have struck us. We both just seemed to realize that we were close to death from starvation so we opened that package of hot dogs and each of us took a frozen hot dog out to eat. I am sure that if we had asked permission to have a hot dog Aunt Vera would likely have given us one since we were about to die, but we did not ask permission. We decided to steal the hot dogs and not tell anyone. I don’t recall how the hot dogs tasted or how much our consciences bothered us. I do know that we were found out and Aunt Vera told my Mom, and I got into trouble. I was given a spanking on the spot and sent home to wait for Mom to come home for more punishment. How much punishment awaited me I didn’t know at the time.

It may have been because I was already feeling guilty about getting caught for stealing or it may have been the Lord helping me learn a lesson or in retrospect it might have just been a prank by some ornery older brothers, but what happened next left an indelible impression on my young brain that “stealing does not pay”. In fact, stealing can end up being very painful.

While I was over at Aunt Vera’s playing with Elsie and stealing hot dogs, my older brothers were at home making frosting. Now everyone knows that frosting is made by adding milk to powdered sugar. I knew that and I also knew that I liked frosting very much. I often begged to lick the spoon or the knife when Mom made frosting. I had no idea and didn’t even stop to consider why my brothers were making frosting in the middle of the day and especially when Mom was gone over to Aunt Vera’s, at that. I now know they had decided to play a little trick on me. In addition to the regular ingredients for frosting, they had added a healthy helping of cayenne pepper. When Mom sent me home I was crying, so my brothers offered me a big spoon full of frosting to cheer me up. Realizing I was already a big “sinner” probably didn’t help my ability to resist another sin—that of eating non-approved frosting without permission—so I took a big spoonful in my mouth to eat it.

As soon as I ate it I knew I was really going to die. My mouth was on fire and I couldn’t put the fire out. I started to scream in pain. My brothers thought it was a big joke. Finally Mom came home and washed out my mouth with water and killed the burning sensation but I knew that my burning mouth and the pain I had experienced was a direct result of stealing hot dogs. After all, the scriptures tell us very clearly, “Thou shalt not steal!”

I began high school in 1962. The high school was in Snowflake and was called Snowflake Union High School or SUHS. It was made up of students from Snowflake, Showlow, Heber, Overgaard, Taylor, Pinedale and Clay Springs as well as students from all of the other smaller communities in the area like Linden, Burton and Shumway. I think the total student body was less than five hundred students.

One of the traditions for new high school students was a “Freshman Initiation” that was held a few days before school began in the fall. The seniors did the initiating and the freshmen were the victims. They had us whitewash the “S” on the side of the hill outside of Snowflake. If we did something wrong, they threw us in the cow tank at the bottom of the hill. It was mostly a lot of fun and a big water fight. At the end we all ate watermelon and everyone went home soaking wet. Terry was a senior when I was a freshman so my initiation wasn’t too bad. Some of his buddies sprayed me with the hose but that was about it.

I had become interested in agriculture and so I took Vocational Ag and became a part of the FFA (Future Farmers of America). I also took English, World Geography, Algebra, Seminary, Typing and PE (Physical Education). At that time, PE was a required subject. If you were in band you didn’t have to take PE. If you took Vo Ag it counted as your science class so you didn’t have to take biology. Everyone took English, some type of math and some type of social studies.

We rode the bus to and from high school. We caught the bus at about 7am and got home about 5PM. It took just about exactly one hour for the bus to make the trip although it is only thirty-five miles from Heber to Snowflake. By the time it made all the stops on the way and wound through Overgaard too, the ride took the full hour.

The class I enjoyed most as a freshman was Vocational Ag. We had an excellent teacher by the name of Mr. Angle and he taught us lots of neat things. He would also take us on field trips to visit farms and dairies. He didn’t put up with much guff and required a lot of work but he also taught us a lot.

I never did participate much in extra-curricular activities as a freshman. I rode the bus home and went to work at the store until it closed at six o’clock. I went to a few football and basketball games but they always had a dance (sock hop) after the games and I didn’t get home until almost midnight so I didn’t go to very many games. I didn’t dance much and it wasn’t much fun just sitting around waiting for the dance to get over. I was a pretty good student and got mostly one’s. At that time you got a grade of one, two, three or four in each class. A “one” was the highest grade and was equal to an “A” and so on. I enjoyed most of my classes in school. I made lots of friends in high school and became part of a group that was in Vo Ag and most of the other classes together and we sort of ran around together as a group all the way through high school.

I was not in a lot of clubs in high school, but one that I was quite involved in was FFA (Future Farmers of America). Most of the boys who took Vocational Ag were also members of FFA. At that time FFA was restricted to boys only. Girls were not allowed as members but each chapter had a “Chapter Sweetheart” who was an honorary member of the organization.

To get into FFA we had to go through an initiation as freshmen. That is where I learned about ‘Colonel Puff’. It was a drinking game (with water) that we had to get correct or our cups were refilled over and over again. Some of the boys got quite sick from drinking too much water. I learned the routine fairly quickly and didn’t have to drink too much water. The older boys did lots of things to us that I won’t go into. In the end, we became new members of the club. We could order the blue jackets with yellow lettering with our names on and I was quite proud to wear that jacket. Each year we were in FFA we got a little medal to attach to the jacket just above our name. The first year we were called “Greenhand Farmers,” the second year we were called “Chapter Farmers”. I don’t remember what we were called the third and fourth years.

The FFA has a very formal opening ceremony at the beginning of each club meeting. There were a number of officers (advisor, president, vice president, secretary, treasurer, reporter, sentinel, parliamentarian etc.) Each had a symbol at their place and as roll was called, each gave a little statement about their responsibilities and how it related to the symbol. For example the advisor’s symbol was the owl because it was a symbol of wisdom. Part of what we learned in FFA was parliamentary procedure. I can’t remember many of the rules now, but at one point I was pretty good at it. I served as secretary and vice president of the club the last two years. Our fourth year we went to the state convention in Tucson. We had leadership training, elected state officers and had lots of fun. Our “Chapter Sweetheart” was elected as “State Sweetheart.”

During the year we competed in different contests at FFA Field Days. I can remember competing in soil judging, welding, dairy judging, weed identification, meat judging and there were probably others. I think the highest I got was an honorable mention in poultry judging. Each chapter could have a team entered in the different contests and the contests took two days to complete. At the end there was usually a banquet where awards were given out. Usually ASU and U of A each sponsored a field day and sometimes one of the chapters would sponsor a field day for the schools in the area. Since we were the only chapter in northern Arizona, we seldom competed except at the statewide contests. They were a good excuse for an overnight school trip. Wow! What a thrill to ride a bus for five hours or more? We played crazy eight or other card games on the trips or just talked or slept. Sometimes we got to take the “Big Bus” that had the motor in the back that was usually reserved for the athletic teams. We thought it was pretty special!
The FFA group had some “wild hares,” but most were good guys and we enjoyed each other’s company. There were enough with some common sense to sort of keep a lid on the others. Mr. Angle didn’t put up with much goofing off and everyone knew it so they toed the line pretty well. I learned a lot through FFA and I think my love for agriculture was strengthened as a result of a good experience in Vo Ag. When it came time to choose a major in college it was not difficult for me to choose an aspect of agriculture.

One of the “experiences” of high school life was eating in “Gerty’s Cafeteria”. Gerty was the name of the lady who managed the cafeteria where most of the students ate lunch each day. Most of the students traveled to school by bus and instead of carrying a lunch, we ate a hot meal prepared by Gerty and her helpers in the cafeteria. The helper ladies would put a helping of each food item on a tray. You couldn’t pick and choose. Everyone got exactly the same thing.

As I recall, the cost for lunch was thirty-five cents. If we wanted an extra carton of milk, it cost five cents extra. We could either pay by the month (which my parents did most of the time) or we could pay each day. One of the ladies who worked for Gerty kept track of who had paid and who ate lunch each day. She knew us all by name by about the second week of school. She would mark off one of the days on a card until you had eaten thirty times, then we had to bring her another check for the next month or pay as we came through the line. More than once I had to borrow money from Terry to pay for my lunch.

Gerty’s reputation reached my tender ears when my brothers were in high school. Both Ted and Terry attended Snowflake Union High School before me, but any high school student could relate “ tales of horror” about the cafeteria. Gerty had been the “cafeteria lady” for at least a hundred years by the time I got there. Gerty was known for a “no-nonsense approach” to feeding a bunch of students. Cutting into line was not allowed. If caught, you either went to the back of the line or didn’t eat. No one got extra food until everyone had eaten. You’d better not be critical of Gerty’s food where she could hear you, or you might end up in tomorrow’s meatloaf. Gerty ruled the kitchen with an iron fist and the cafeteria helpers knew it.

Gerty’s food ranged from “really good” to “pretty awful”. Probably the best thing she cooked was her dinner rolls. Her rolls were “really good.” She would paint the tops of the rolls with melted butter so they were served pre buttered. We usually got two rolls with our lunch. A couple of other things she cooked that were pretty good was a sort of tamale pie served with shredded lettuce on top, and she also made a fried bread similar to a sopapilla that most people liked. They were hollow and we could eat them with honey. The only problem with “Gerty’s Cafeteria” was that you never knew what she was serving until you got down to the cafeteria. Most of us didn’t have much time to eat or much choice about whether to eat in the cafeteria or not, especially when we were poor freshmen and sophomores. We just had to eat whatever she served. Most of it was probably nutritious but it wasn’t much for taste. I don’t remember anyone dying from eating the food, but I know there were some upset stomachs from time to time.

By the time we were juniors and seniors, we had learned how to get a little more of the “good stuff” from the workers and Gerty. A little flattery went a long way. If you bragged something up, she would sometimes give you a little more of it or an extra piece.

Thinking back, I suppose Gerty was unnecessarily maligned. She was really a pretty nice lady when you got to know her a little bit and if you obeyed her rules. She had to put up with feeding about three hundred hungry and grumpy kids each day and she had to do it in an hour and a half. She probably really did a good job feeding us with a balanced, if not tasty, diet for a minimum cost. We would never have admitted that at the time. When I smell freshly baked rolls, even today, I think of “Gerty’s Cafeteria.”