However, to review...Dad was undergoing a change of jobs. His position and department with the study of soil and water physics as a professor at the University of New Hampshire was dissolved. Options were on the table, but were less than immediate. Dad accepted an invitation from the United Nations to measure
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So, it may not be a surprise, when I asked my sister to tell me what she remembered about the house, she had three words: "It was stinky!"
As mentioned earlier, thinking of substance abuse spooked me. I remember cleaning the bathroom, wondering what I might find. With a good deal of effort, elbow grease our family cleaned up the house.
It was about four houses houses west of Grandma and Grandpa Gee's home. Now instead of going to visit grandparents cousins, they would live in the same town! We enrolled in school. David and I would be attending Starrett Junior High. I would be in 7th grade, David in 8th. My cousin Mary Ellen (oldest daughter to my dad's eldest brother Laurence and his wife Alice) was to be in the same grade. Mary Ellen played clarinet in the marching band. I signed up for choir, as an elective, with a dynamic teacher, Mr. Hunt. I remember taking Physical Education with Mrs. Groen and being able to jump on the trampoline. It seems like we had uniforms for this class and were asked to take showers.
I remember a history teacher named Mr. Murray and making a diorama and/or play about pioneers in the West. I remember that Mr. Murray (and maybe some of the other teachers) had a paddle. I don't remember the paddle being used. I remember I was allowed to attend the junior high dances (even if I was only 11 during part of the year.) At one of the dances, I remember dancing with Mr. Crouch, my math teacher, and telling him that I thought Greg Ashdown was cute. Greg, in the same grade as my brother, was in the class following the math class I was in. Mr. Crouch made it a point to work to embarrass both Greg and myself, especially if I ever left anything in the classroom and had to return. (Best reason to collect everything on the way out!)
I remember learning in Science that Salt Lake City was overdue 100 years for a big earthquake. I remember in math or science, taking a test. I must have done well. I remember feeling hurt and disappointed to learn a rumor circulating that "Laurene Gee cheats." I appreciated Mary Ellen standing by me.
I remember being a first year Beehive, the first year in our church Young Women group. Each of us had an older "sister." I remember having a teacher named Mary Ann Johnson, whom the older class of young women raved about. I remember Mary Ann standing up in testimony sharing her love for the older class and expressing how loving the class she had now (us) was a challenge. I asked to walk home and cried and cried on the way. When I returned to Grandma's house, I remember my mother sharing with me a poem I love:
“Oh, the comfort, the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person; having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but to pour them all out, just as they are, chaff and grain together, knowing that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and then, with a breath of kindness, blow the rest away.”
I remember a few friends, who also were Mary Ellen's friends, Kelly Cadman, Pam Wilson, Jackie Irene. I remember activities, like a progressive dinner, dances, and a play called "Sadie Shaw from Arkansas" put on by the young people. I was the maid. "Oi oi, Mademoiselle" was a line I remember.
I remember having a party to celebrate my twelfth birthday in early December, where we drove to some hot springs not too far away and returned to drink hot chocolate and eat cinnamon toast. I also remember on 1 December, having my grandfather give to me my patriarchal blessing.
I remember sharing a room with my sister Carma. I remember my little brother James being treated for a lazy eye with glasses and a patch. I remember having a silver tinsel Christmas tree. I remember my brother David having a paper route for the Casper Star Tribune.
I remember working to earn a maroon bicycle. I bought it at Coast to Coast. It had handle bars that looked like a 10-speed bicycle but that it had one speed.
I remember a first day, running in a pre-track practice, doubling over with stomach pains. No more track that year. (I did not know lactic acid and cramps are pretty normal upon exercise that someone is not used to. That issue would be dealt with, with a little more endurance, later.)
I remember a silver tinsel tree at Christmas time.
I want to say Great Grandmas Stucki lived at least part of that time at Grandma and Grandpa's house. Great Grandma Mary Ann Price Stucki was hard of hearing and used a large device, perhaps called an ear trumpet to hear us talk to her.
I remember a Saturday job helping to clean Grandma Pearl's bathrooms and vacuum her front room and other rooms. I learned that at their home a couch or sofa was called a "davenport." I learned how to use a toothbrush to sneak into the tiny corners of things that needed cleaning. I remember deciding Grandma Pearl's standard of cleanliness was very difficult to aspire to, and pleading with my mother to let me stop working there.
I remember taking sewing classes at the home of a friend Pam Wilson, with her mother Shirley. I remember sewing double knit pants with flares from a pattern she had crafted by hand.
I remember pushing the tire swing on the big tree to the south of Grandma and Grandpa's driveway, learning the words from Mary Ellen to One Tin Soldier.
I remember picnics on Grandpa and Grandma's big back patio. I remember that Mike Taylor would walk my sister home from High School. And that he gave her a snoopy figurine holding a globe, planted on our wishing well in the back yard that said, "I think the world of you."
I want to say that it was during our time in Lander that our friends Stephen Shaw and his fiancé Linda Stringer came to Utah, Manti, to be married and sealed in the temple.
After the Fourth of July weekend, 2021, on the way to work together on the Paris house, I asked my youngest brother James what his memories were of Lander. He was three, turning four when we lived there.
His memories: He remembers that we were three or four houses away from our Gee Grandparents. He remembers spending a lot of time at the house. He remembers that Grandpa Gee and Grandma would bake bread really often. He remembers that "Great Grandma (Mary Ann Price) Stucki would read stories to us. He remembers the lilac bush in front of the porch.
"I remember that Steven and I would make bows and arrows out of string. There were a lot of sticks. One of the main things I remember is how we would catch caterpillars. One day I messed up his collection. I stepped on it and made my brother mad or sad. I don’t think I meant to. I remember the honey. I remember the rope swing in Lander. A tree swing on a huge four-foot diameter tree. I don’t remember seeing a rope swing as high up in a tree, ever. I felt a little robbed when the tree was cut down."
Question: "What do you remember doing with your cousin Joseph?"
Answer: "I remember, this was told at Joseph's wedding: when his parents were gone, we lit some fireworks in the house. We had bought bottle rockets, Aaron, Joseph and I, maybe Rachel, one corner of the basement, somehow one of the bottle rockets got lit and went across the carpet and blew up. There was a scorch mark out of carpet and we worked hard to get it out."
He remembered having nativities with our cousins.
An interview with one of my cousins, Mary Ellen:
"I remember that we loved when our cousins came.
I remember swinging on the big swing on the big tree.
I remember playing in Grandpa and Grandma’s garden and eating the raspberries. Grandpa did not like that, because he liked the raspberries.
I remember our friends: Pam Wilson, Kelly Cadman, Marie Erickson, Laurie Millward, Alicia Walser."
Mary Ellen remembered the hay ride and the dances.
I loved Mary Ellen for her adherence to classic, core values, testimony, perseverance and example.
More memories from Mary Ellen:
"Grandpa saw things in black and white.
It was a different time.
Now it is frowned upon to say that something is not correct."
Mary Ellen remembers having family dinner with Grandpa and Grandma every Sunday.
She remembers that they would come over and watch them open up their presents on Christmas Day. She remembers one time they came and waited and waited in the car. It was Wyoming in the winter, so after that, they waited until her parents called, then they came over!
The games Mary Ellen remembers: Playing in the garden, Hide and go seek.
She remembers the bushes and that Grandma had a big yard. She remembers the cottonwood tree, swinging on the other end and going between the bushes. She remembers the cornstalks, the gooseberry and current bushes. The raspberry bushes. Chocolate in the closet. Dipping chocolates. Pecan turtles. She remembers with the ward, cracking shells, and digging out the pecans out at the church. I remember that Grandma always brought a huge metal bowl of orange rolls to every pot luck dinner. People loved them so much they would take more than one.
Mary Ellen told me that perhaps it was Grandpa's deep voice which added to others deciding he was stern.
Here are a few things that Mary Ellen kept that I wrote when I was 11 and 12 (maybe we had an assignment to write alliteration with the letter B?)
Talking to my uncle about the Lander house, it was an investment to him. However, he shared this home with us. It was not perfect. I remember standing around the maybe four foot by three foot heater to keep warm in the winter. I remember my night gown puffing up with the warm air from the basement underneath.
Uncle Laurence and Steven and Carma each talked about the fire in the Petrolane (petroleum) truck one morning when Dad had the truck in Grandpa and Grandma's driveway as he was trying to drive my older sister Carma to early morning seminary.
Uncle Laurence laughed and laughed. (My husband cringed. Liquid petroleum is combustible. More than Grandpa and Grandma's house might have been affected by a truck that caught fire.) Laurence remembers that the truck would not start and that my dad tried to jump start it. Apparently something sparked and caught fire in the engine. Steven remembers Grandma Gee coming out with baking soda to put out the fire. The fire was put out. The house was saved.
Reviewing the memories told me by my siblings, it strikes me, they remembers things that directly affected them. Joy comes to me in remembering the little things, the lilac bushes, the raspberries and gooseberries. I love the kindness that fills me after hearing my cousin talk with compassion about her (and my grandparents.)
It gives me pause to think that my older sister, who I ever
viewed as mature, refined, perfect, admits to being immature, off kilter, and
distracted.
She was fourteen, just like I once was fourteen. I just
always viewed her “fourteen” as being grander and ever wiser than
mine.
It also strikes me as I ponder and listen to my mom and my father's brother talk, that the discouragement and difficulty that I imagined my father to have, the “indignity” of driving a petroleum truck after studying for 10 years may not have been indignity at all. Interesting, as I think about being a student, the blessing and joy that comes after periods of study and research and stress, to think about something less stressful. Applying for work enjoins anxiety. However, the idea, the blessing, of being in a home environment, a place of “grounding” where he had come to, to “gather his bearings” makes perfect sense. I was thinking about going to Paris, what it does to help me remember the heritage I have arisen from. The long winters. The sacrifice of family. Comforts. Luxuries. The blessing of gathering, giving up the short term for the things that will matter forever. I appreciate the long haul of driving. Driving. Driving. The pleasant memory of hearing my father’s voice. The memory of a dream I had during a difficult time, where I imagined myself carefree at a beach, blessed in the security of a father’s perfect refuge.
What do I do regularly to “ground?”
How can I use this blessed recognition to understand how to
be grateful during the times that I am invited to step back, to pull back, to
listen? To reflect. To gather wits, to gather resolve. To
prepare for future trials. That will lead to further growth. Further
accomplishment.
What am I doing to offer wisdom, strength, encouragement, to
others in such a situation? A situation of soul searching. A
situation of soul hunger. A situation of needing reassurance of “words of
eternal life” and “joy of the saints.”
In a way, our Lander time was part of a Progressive Dinner (like we had as Beehives.) Only it was dessert in the middle.
