Jennifer Hatch, February, Connect hearts

Hi. I thoroughly enjoy being a part of this blog. I may have misunderstood the comments aspect of it, however, and so I'm sorry if my ubiquitious (ooh! I've always wanted to use that word in a sentence!) remarks make me seem a little too desperate for connections. What can I say? It's true -- I am. Anyway, I'm the person with the leaf on my comments signature. Meredith got me me to set a date for a piano recital, Marisa prompted me to travel to the temple -- just to name a couple of the concrete actions I put into place from reading your posts last month. I tried to say a little something to all of you, because I love what you're doing!

I appreciate the words of support here when Nora announced my husband's brain surgery on Monday, March 3. I am happy to report that he is doing extremely well. (Maybe a little too well -- he thinks he's invincible and doesn't like my heightened state of vigilance.) I wrote about his ordeal on my blog. 

This is Tuesday, the day after his surgery. We all got a kick out of the red biohazard bag that holds the hair shaved off the left side of his head. New hair is marching back with a vengeance, Harry Potter-style.


Anyway, my February project was to record some of my father's childhood stories. I was a voracious reader in early elementary school and I vividly remember hoping my dad would present me with a leather-bound book of his tales for me to read by the light of my clip-on headboard lamp. Loved that thing! Maybe I was influenced by the Little House books that were all the rage then (do I date myself?), because I indeed felt my dad's stories -- shared with gusto around the dinner table -- were the stuff of legend, just as worthy of print.

Well, my dad has not written them down. One Memorial Day visit a few years ago he treated us to an impromptu trip down memory lane. My mom supplied me with a spiral notebook and I scribbled away. Sadly, that spiral notebook got lost somewhere between our van and the garage door into the house.

This past Thanksgiving I packed my video camera when we went to my folks', but the house was too full of people and too joyfully chaotic to force a storytelling session. On Christmas my dad shared with us that he was diagnosed with skin cancer. Ooh, how I hate to type the c-word. We hope for a positive outcome, but the urgency to record his stories certainly amplified.

Between my dad's consulting jobs and trips to St. George during February, it took a few attempts to line up our schedules for me to interview him. Our first date was Feb. 13. My dad got called into meetings, but since I had already cleared the day, I spent it with my mother, and that was a lot of fun. I rarely get a day of dining and shopping! Were it not for ProjectsConnect, I could have thought, oh, I'll just bring the camera up the next time we visit as a family -- but because of the accountability here I cleared Feb. 27 to visit my dad and gitterdone.

My dad examines historical photos of Midway residents.

My mother was in the temple that day, so it was just me and my dad. I set up a tripod and he shared stories for nearly two hours. My dad is a fourth generation resident of Heber Valley. Midway, his small home town, has changed more in the last 20 years than it has the rest of his life. The characters in my grandpa's stories were the same characters in my father's stories. Most tales I had heard time and time again, but I learned new things; that my dad spent summers at a timber camp when a preteen; that he became a volunteer firefighter when I was a child because his federal government job precluded him being in public office, and he wanted to serve his community. His grandfather was Wasatch County sheriff, his father was mayor of Midway.

My dad also set the record straight on a few stories. No, it wasn't he who went to the bathroom in the hardware store toilet on display when his carpenter dad was too busy chatting to help him -- it was his brother. Un-huh.

We're not quite sure why, but my grandmother tied my dad to the clothesline when he was a little guy, maybe to corral his movements so she could tend his baby sister inside. One day his brother, six years older, walked home from school in disgust, dragging my dad behind him. Bad enough that Jimmy came to school, but he had no pants! There his overalls were, attached to the other end of the rope.

Some of these recollections made my dad a bit wistful, especially as many painted a pattern of his being left to his own devices. He was sent on construction sites with his dad from a very young age rather than staying at home with his mom. As a toddler he took off on a tricycle, also from a hardware store display, and was picked up blocks away by his sheriff grandpa. Yet he loves that he grew up in a time and place where he was so safe and free to explore.

I loved spending this time with my dad. ProjectsConnect also made me a bit stronger in February. You see, I hate driving in bad weather. Snow especially. Well, I looked at the forecast for our planned meeting on Feb. 27 and could have been deterred. But oh, the accountability! Although it didn't produce great snow accumulation, that day's storm was icy and slushy and foggy and slick. It was a nasty drive that took two hours instead of one, but I did it!

This picture, from 2007, is one of my favorites of my dad for how it reveals his teasing, playful nature. 

I'll sign off with these gems. You know your family repertoire is classy when it includes not one, but two, stories about Kotex: 

1. This story was told to my great-grandfather the sheriff, by one of the jailers at the county lock-up. Vernie Thompson regularly got thrown in jail for being drunk and disorderly. One of these times coincided with her monthly visitor. That morning when the jailer, Albin Hansen, brought around breakfast Vernie said, "Albin, I need Kotex." "Like h--- you will," he responded. "You'll have cornflakes like everyone else."

2. It was standard practice for mothers to send their kids to Coleman's grocery store with a handwritten list for the clerk to fill. Also standard was having to ask the clerk for hygiene products, which were wrapped in brown paper behind the counter. Butch, a contemporary of my uncle's, went on such an errand when he was a small boy. He came back with a box of Kotex. On the list his mother had written "SOS pads." Ha!

My condolences to Nora, her family, and all her Allen cousins. I am so sorry about your sweet grandpa.