BOOK SHELF MISCHIEF

I LOVE THAT MY GRANDCHILDREN LOVE BOOKS....MOST OF THE TIME.BODE AND, I THINK, MELANIE IN DECEMBER 2007.
PAISLEY, OCTOBER 2009

Lee's last home game.

PICTURE TAKEN FROM GLENDALE STAR.Glendale Community College sophomore outside hitter Lee Brooks (6) battles with Pima Community College sophomore setter Laura Piccioli (6) and sophomore middle Nicole Zamora (12). The Gauchos won the point and were victorious in three games 25-20, 25-22, 25-22. ( The Glendale Star is the city's newspaper.)

LEE AND HER COACH, LISA STUCK
THE THREE SOPHOMORES, LEE, LEAH BRADLEY, MARISSA YODER.


FRESHMAN POSTERS FOR SOPHOMORE GIRLS

Lee's volleyball career is winding down. (Her knees won't know what to think. They only know how to operate in pain.) Friday night was her last home game and GCC. She was on fire. She played a great game. They won in three. Can I just say that a whole lot more than volleyball has been learned in these past two years. Lee has really done alot of growing up. We are pleased with her. It hasn't been easy but she will finish her commitment in the next couple of weeks. There is alot to be said for finishing what you start. Way to go, Lee. We love you. GOOD LUCK IN REGIONALS.

DID I SAY I LOVED THE FALL?

LIFE IN A BOTTLE: FALL WOODLAND LAKE ROAD AND CORNER OF FOREST DRIVE
FOREST DRIVE

TRICIA~

It is so good to live where there are four seasons. I anticipate all four. But, since I was a child, I have loved the fall the most. I was probably in the 3rd grade when I began to have great affection for the season.

I spent a lot of time believing that the history of our country’s founding all took place between September and November of those years. We must have studied history in the early part of the school year. I could (and still can) envision those patriots in the fall forests making a stand for freedom. I have my best patriotic feelings in the fall…the 4th of July would probably even be second to fall.

My walk to and from school took two paths. One was on the ditch bank which ran past my house and by the school. Or I walked through Uncle Joe’s property and the Nikolaus’s property. If I walked the ditch bank I ended up walking by the Nikolaus’s apple orchard. Yes, I helped myself to an apple….coming and going. The tree I liked best had a red apple on it. It was some kind of cooking apple and it was good. If I walked through Uncle Joe’s property I passed a big oak tree. In the fall there would be acorns on the ground. I always picked up a few to eat. That is an acquired taste. And it takes some skill to get the shell off also. The taste and texture are still in my memory. I asked my sister, Lynne, if she can still taste acorns. She can.

I loved to lie in the grass in front of our house and watch the sky. Show Low, at that time, was a fly way for ducks and geese. I would lay there and see, every so often, the V’s of those birds flying south way up in the sky. (I was really disappointed to learn that our house in Pinetop was east of the fly way. I wanted my children to have that same experience but…nope.)

School starting in the fall was always exciting, too. I loved coloring and cutting out all the symbols of fall, Halloween and Thanksgiving.

When David and I were dating, before his mission, we spent a lot of time up in the mountains that fall. The two fall seasons he was gone I went up into the mountains just to remember being with him. It is one of the reasons we return to the mountains in the fall. That is our time.

We always took our family into the mountains in the fall. General Conference would be the absolute date we went. We did camp during the early fall and had dutch oven dinners with friends or family.

Last year was the first fall without children in our home. For 33 years we had reason to celebrate the beauty and warmth of fall. I am glad that year is gone. I tried to rev up my love for the season but my heart just hurt. But….the good news is….this is a new fall and I am, once again, enjoying the beauty and anticipation that fall brings. The oak trees have put on the most beautiful show this year. And it makes me a 3rd grader once again.




DAVID~

David’s fall was all about hunting season. He always got a new pair of hunting boots. These boots were more important than the a fore mentioned basketball shoes in the eyes of his dad. This was an event for father and son. They went to Sears at the El Con Mall in Tucson and got a good pair. One year they went into the women’s department and got David’s shoes. They were light weight and more narrow and fit his feet better than men’s shoes.

One time he was hunting with his dad and his cousin Burt. (For the most part Burt is called Uncle Burt.) They were hunting deer and they were down in the southern part of the state where those boots were so important because they walked through cactus. David became skilled at stepping on a certain cactus (Lechegua) in skillful ways so the cactus stickers would stay away from his pant legs.

He remembers Burt always wore a white shirt. David was with his dad on one side of a canyon and they could see Burt, in a his white shirt, on the other side. They met up together on top where there were big flat sandstones. David’s dad would bring candy and apples but never anything to drink. Nobody ever brought anything to drink. But this day, as they sat on the rocks, Burt reached down behind a rock and pulled up three bottles of Pepsi. David thought he was magic. They were shaded and so they were cool and oh so refreshing. (Are we all in agreement this is were the Pepsi curse started?) Burt had been out there the week before and planted those bottles for later consumption.

David’s mom would bake a bunch of potatoes and the men would take them out to the camp. They were for breakfast. (Fried bacon, sliced potatoes in the bacon fat and egg) One of David’s favorite camping meal. Supper was usually canned peaches or canned something else. That was because they were dog tired when they came into camp after a day out hunting.

~

When Heidi was about 4 months old (in November) we pulled an old travel trailer with the brown Dodge down near Wilcox to go trapping with Grandpa Merrill, Uncle Rusty and Burt. I do remember being so excited to go camping but loosing that enthusiasm when we turned off the highway into the DESERT. It was just cactus and dirt. But it turned out to be one of our best camping trips. The kids just played and played and played. And they had Grandpa with them and Rusty and Burt were so good to the kids. I remember washing my hair every morning and realizing I could rinse my hair with one cup of water. One day we walked down the little road and found a hill that we turned into a dirt slide. We all slid down it and laughed and laughed until we were just tired out. I remember feeling so free to just be a friend to my children. Just do what they were doing and not worry about one other thing. We walked the trap lines with Grandpa one day. That was cool even if we didn’t find anything in the traps. One afternoon I made biscuits and gravy for those Merrill trappers when they came back to camp. They just sat there and ate that simple meal so quietly and appreciatively. I should have done it every night for them.

GORDON NIKOLAUS

Gordon was a neighbor. He was three years older than me. He was part of a group of boys his age that caused all kinds of trouble. They were “that group of boys” that nobody wanted to teach in Primary or Sunday School.

My parents bought land about 400 yards from Gordon’s house. We were on a small hill near his family’s property. They had a home on an acre and then a field south of there that was 6-8 acres. The field was directly west of my house and his house was NW of my house.

My mom told of a time, after our house was finished and we were living there, that Gordon opened the front door walked through the living room into the family room and to the family room door, turned and stuck his tongue out at my mom, who was in the kitchen, opened the door and walked out. Didn’t say a word. All she could figure was we had built the house over his shortcut and he was going to take it anyway or something like that.

My sister, Lynne, went to high school with Gordon. She was two years older than him. Generally everyone rode the bus to school in Snowflake, which was 20 miles away. On a good day somebody got to take the family car to school. On one such day Lynne and Gordon rode in that “good day” car. As they were traveling home they came upon the bus headed to Show Low and going up the divide at about 5 miles per hour. Gordon said, “let me out, I can run faster than that bus”. So they stopped and let him out and he did. He passed the bus and all of the kids in it. I always imagined the laughter of the kids on the bus as tall Gordon ran past. No, I don’t know when he stopped or if he got in trouble with the bus driver.

There was a fence between Gordon’s house and my Uncle Joe’s house. (Uncle Joe’s house was between my house and Gordon’s house). Sometimes, for what ever provoked reason, wars would erupt. My cousin Greg (Uncle Joe’s son), Chris, maybe Lynne, always my brother Jeff and occasionally me were enlisted to fight off the Nikolaus cousins. That usually meant a throwing fight. We would throw what ever. Sometimes we threw eggs from the chicken coop. (Thinking about that now ~ I am sure Greg got in serious trouble for sending us to the coop.) It was one such time that I hit Gordon right in the middle of his back with an egg. I think that was a turning point in my ability to throw something at a target and hit it. I am sure it didn’t hurt but it sent him running home. He was big and I was small….sort of a David and Goliath thing only with an egg. I felt good.

Our elementary school had great playground equipment. It was in a time that people looked for the next great toy to put on the playground. There was a great set of swings behind the school that had big long chains on the swings. You could go so high. Whoever got to them first got them and you could swing until you got sick of swinging. Somehow, as a first grader, I got a swing. I was just swinging away and loving every minute of it when Gordon came and grabbed the chains from behind and slowed the swing down enough for him to climb on. So there I was sitting with Gordon standing over me. He won. I got off.

Finally, my brother Jeff was walking behind Uncle Joe’s house by the “big apple tree” when he heard noise in the tree. As he looked over he saw Gordon fall out of the tree. He fell flat and knocked the air out of his lungs. He was able to look at Jeff and said, “ggggeeetttt hhheelllppppp”. Jeff took off to find someone. And when he and whoever returned Gordon was gone. I laugh everytime I think of that story. Maybe because it is one of my brother’s many many stories….all of which make me laugh.

THE SCHOOL CAFETERIA

We were talking to our granddaughter, Megan, about her cafeteria in St. David. We talked about the menus for the week. Chicken nuggets, macaroni and cheese, pizza, etc. That is the same menu that my children had. But that is not what David and I ate in our respective cafeterias.

So I asked him if he had memories of his cafeteria which, by the way, was also in St. David. He said he ate there a lot. He lived close to the school but didn’t go home for lunch. He thought that would be because his mom was off doing stuff and it worked out better for both of them if he would just eat at school.

His cafeteria was a building about 30 x 40 and was filled with picnic tables. He is sure that his Uncle Rusty made the tables as well as any other needful piece of furniture in the building. The whole school ate in this building. It was done in shifts. The high school boys would race from their school to the door of the cafeteria. David and his friends would watch everyday. He had one friend whose brother was always a winner and that is why it was a daily event for the younger boys.

We both remember the huge pots and pans in the kitchen. All food was made from scratch. His Aunt Velma, who was Uncle Rusty’s wife, worked as a cook there. I think that would have made David feel so secure to have those people at school with him every day.

He got sick on those stove top cookies that are made from oatmeal and chocolate. They had a day where you could eat all you wanted and he did. And it made him sick and to this day he doesn’t like that cookie.

~

Quansit Hut

My first memories were of the cafeteria being in the gym. It was a “Quansit Hut” building. That was 1st through 3rd grade. I have two very distinct memories. We had lunch pails with glass thermos bottles. I always filled my thermos with milk. I was standing in line to get into the cafeteria and I dropped my pail. I picked it up and it started to leak milk. The girl I was standing by just looked at it. It took me a minute to realize what had happened. The glass inside the thermos broke. I was sad and embarrassed.

The other memory was when I was in the second grade. My teacher, Mrs. Lewis, was teaching us an ice skating song. I had worn two rings to school that belonged to one of my older sisters. While we were starting to sing I thought it would be a great idea to take my rings off and use them as skates on my desk. I was singing away and sliding those rings back and forth on my desk top when Mrs. Lewis came up behind me and slapped me on the back and scolded me for not paying attention. Another very embarrassing moment. As the bell rang for lunch and I hurried and got in line for the cafeteria. I was in line for about 10 minutes when I realized that I was going home for lunch. The incident had shaken me and I just went with the rest of the sheep to the cafeteria. I took off running and made it home in time to eat and run back and not be late.

I loved Thursdays because it was chili beans and whole wheat rolls. That was so good. We would have tuna fish sandwiches on Friday. It was half a sandwich with one white piece of bread and one brown. I would occasionally stuff the whole thing in my mouth. (Just to be stupid.). When we had Lima beans I tried to sit by a friend named Kirk because he liked them and I didn’t and we had to eat everything on our plate before we could leave.

By the 4th grade we were in the new cafeteria. The program was the same. Line up with you class and wait. We were waiting one time and a girl named Jeannie (one of the smart girls who was a smarty pants), who had a very noticeable wart on her leg, got pushed against the concrete step. We picked her up and looked at her leg and the wart was gone. There was just a big round dot where the wart had been. Because she was generally mean to me I wanted to feel some “serves you right” feeling. But she was happy the wart was gone.

In the fifth grade I always took my lunch. I had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, my thermos milk, fritos, a twinkie and an apple. I made my lunch every night. I sat with Dorinda Grote, Jane Hobart, Margaret Sexton, Jeannie Whitten, and Kathy Brannon. They were the smartest girls in the fifth grade. Good grades were easy for them. I had read a book and sounded out the word “extravaganza” and I told them because I was pleased to have done that. They just looked at me as if to say, “so”.


David said they always had fish on Fridays. That was because Catholics eat fish on Fridays. I am sure that is why we had Tuna. He got fish sticks or tuna casserole. David said he cannot think of any significant stories from his cafeteria.

TIME IN A BOTTLE

HIGH SCHOOL: FRESHMAN YEAR

David

When David was a freshman in high school he wasn’t allowed to play football. The school rule said you had to weigh 100 pounds and he weighed 98 pounds (and 5’8”)…with shoes and clothes on. He was crushed. He played his clarinet in the band….”hold that Tiger, hold that Tiger”. That was an embarrassing time in his life.

That same year he did play basketball. His feet hurt the whole time. His folks bought him a pair of shoes from Spouse Reitz and they were hard and hurt his feet. One day his eye caught site of a pair of converse tennis shoes in a garbage can. They were old and worn out and a whole size to small. But he wore them. His feet hurt the whole time and he got bloody blisters on his toes. They weren’t any better than the SR shoes but they were the same, albeit worn out, as the rest of the boys.

(I know this experience of David’s factored into all the quality athletic shoes our children wore through the years.)

Tricia

I had been a cheerleader in the 7th and 8th grade so I wanted to try out for the Freshman cheer squad. There would be an election for 4 girls on the squad. (Keep in mind that there were no sports in Snowflake for girls. Cheerleading was the closest thing to organized sports for girls.)

In Junior High there were about 60 kids that voted for cheerleaders…my Show Low classmates. Snowflake was the high school for all schools within an approximate 45-50 mile radius of Snowflake. So that meant 200 freshman would be voting for the four cheerleaders. That was scary to me. I tried out with a friend from Show Low who had been one of the 8th grade cheerleaders. She was cute and petite and I was tall and scared. The girl that came out before us wore a sweat shirt and when she did a cartwheel her top slid up over her head and revealed her bra. It was sooo embarrassing to me. Anyway, that was no excuse for me doing a lame cartwheel. It was so lame that I pulled a muscle or ligament in the inside of my right thigh. It was something permanent because I had to pop something in that location for years afterwards to stretch that leg.

If you haven’t guessed by now….I lost. I lost by 4 votes. I was so devastated. It took me a bit to get over it.

TIME IN A BOTTLE

HIGH SCHOOL: SOPHOMORE YEAR

David:

David’s family, consisting of his parents, Sharon, him and Denise, moved from St. David (with a school of 90 students) to Orem, Utah (with a school of 2500 students). This was a confusing and unhappy time for David. He thinks he spent a quarter in the Orem School District and then they moved to Sandy, Utah and enrolled in Jordan High School…2500 more students.

Here he did try out for the basketball team. A boy across the street named Phillip Asterland told David he should try out. So he did. He made the first cut but his name disappeared from the list on the next cut.

By early spring of that year they moved to Show Low and he enrolled in Snowflake Union High School. At least the numbers of students dropped by 75%! But it was painful to enter the third school in one year.

His first full day at school he came dressed in Levi’s and a button down shirt, which he said was all the fashion in the Salt Lake area. Some kid asked him, “Are you a cowboy or a surfer?” He said, “Uh, I don’t know.” The kid said, “You look like a surfer to me.” At which time David thought he was going to get beat up.

He got a job at Nicks Market in Show Low and said that that was something to do after school. Basketball season was getting over and when baseball started he realized that there were these studs that dominated positions on the team. (These boys went on to win state in baseball our senior year). So he didn’t even try out. (Can I add here that if the coaches had any idea that David was a pitcher and threw really hard I believe he would have made the team….you always need pitchers.)

This moving around always played into our philosophy of home ownership. We wanted a home that our children lived in from start to finish. None of this uprooting their lives. I don’t think David’s parents ever realized how much this set David back. I have always wondered what choices and decisions David would have made if they had stayed in St. David where he was so well adjusted and in his zone. Of course, this path lead him to me. So we just took his experience and decided what not to do with our children.

Tricia

At the end of my freshman year I tried out for JV Pom Poms. I made it. I made it in part because the PE coach liked my athletic ability…not my dancing. Anyway, this really helped me feel a part of things at school. It was the right place for me. I steered away from cheerleading because I lost confidence in my ability to win in that arena.

My parents divorced the summer between my freshman and sophomore year. That caused a lot of crummy situations. I always felt that I survived the whole thing because I was self absorbed. School, friends, clothes, shoes and boys filled my life. I know that sounds terrible but our family had been dysfunctional for my whole life. So in some ways being selfish was a way of not really realizing that divorce meant or caused. My personality always accepted things as they were. I knew other families were different than ours but we were what we were. So I think when my folks divorced I was able to accept it. And besides that I had my life going on.

That summer before school started mom gave me her Penney’s credit card and I went with some friends to the valley and shopped. I bought a watch, shoes, underwear, nylons and material. I could have brought dresses, etc. but my orientation was always to sew my clothes. So I came home and sewed up a dozen dresses. I loved one in particular. It was made with red dotted swiss fabric. I wore the dots off of it. I wore it for two + years and finally threw it in the fire just to keep myself from wearing it.

One final thing about that year. My cousin, Vickie, was voted captain of our Pom Pom squad. I was upset. I thought I should have been captain. But it didn’t take me long to realize that we would have been in a world of hurt if I had been captain. She organized us. We had fund raisers to earn money for our uniforms, we had practices that required the use of buildings that required getting permission and she organized the girls to create the dances we performed. I would have waited until school started and wondered why we were performing in our jeans.

Autumn is the mellow time.

When David and I first started dating we would go up into

the mountains for cookouts all the time. He had an outfit called

an Hibatchi. It was a small grill made of cast iron that fit

nicely on the tail gate of his truck. We always made hamburgers.

They were sooo good. We ate "old fashioned" doughnuts....the

kind that were bread like with a good soaking of icing.

We did that through the summer and into autumn. I always loved the

fall so adding David to that season just made it better.

I love the "gathering" feeling I get in the fall. I loved it when we were

raising children. It was one place that I felt like I was doing my

best to take care of our family. I mean think about it....we get our wood and

we harvest the garden. We could do those things well.

I, of course, love the colors of fall. Anymore, I really hope that

our children can get up here to take in the beauty of it all. This

year it seems to be taking its sweet time in changing....I'm not

complaining....let it linger. I love it!

GETTING WOOD: It seemed so easy last year.

We decided we couldn't put off getting wood any longer. We actually love that adventure but it did seem daunting this time. But we got our stuff together and took off in the truck and on the other side of McNary we had a blow out.....front passenger side. David got it stopped easily enough. I was impressed! But you should have seen the tire. (this picture is after he took it off and put on the spare and drove us home....I forgot my camera.) The tire was shredded. It went flat and came off the bead and got chewed to pieces by the rim. It looked like it had exploded. But, as you can see, when he laid it in the truck it came back together. Anyway, we came back home, got the jeep and the trailer and took off again.OK, so we are going to get this tree that fell right by this camping spot that we love. We went camping with Jill and John about a month ago and wholaa there was this tree.....so easy

to get. Evidently we weren't the only ones who thought so. It was gone. We were

almost offended because that is our spot so that was our tree.
A note of interest: On Friday David was driving through town and saw two trucks

driving down from the mountain with good loads of wood on them. He said he thought

to himself, "I bet that is my tree." Evidently it was.

What the heck....we drove up past the campground and found half
a dozen more. So David went to work.


I know you can't tell, but these rounds were huge. We brought the dolly and

I pulled them over to the trailer. David finished cutting and he started

helping load. We had to lift the ones in the forefront together. I think they

weighed a 150 pounds. (we plan to rent a splitter and do that once we

have all of our wood...but I don't know....we will need to cut skinner

trees if I have to keep loading.)

Happy TWENTIETH Birthday, Lee.

Somebody said to me that I don't have any teenaged children anymore. Happy Birthday, Lee,

you're not a teenager anymore! I was glad that Lee and Aaron came home for Lee's birthday. This particular weekend (with General Conference) has always been fun because it is always Lee's birthday, too. We were in the mountains listening to the last session of conference 20 years ago when I was due with Lee. We decided to drive the long way home through Vernon. I started having some pretty good contractions and we seemed far from home. But as things go she wasn't born until a few minutes after midnight on the following Tuesday. We thought we were having a boy. When she was all girl we had to come up with a name. It had been stormy the night she was born so our friend who came to our house while we were at the hospital said we should name her Stormy. That is so cute but we took it a step further and because we love the month of October that is what we named her. October Lee Merrill. Isn't that a great name.

Great name for a great girl. Happy 20th Birthday.

October Conference 2009

We were so happy to have family home for General Conference. Thank you, Tim and Connie, Abbey and Mikey and Lee and Aaron. We loved your visit. And we loved being with you to hear the Prophet speak. Lee and Connie on the shores of Woodland Lake.

Tim and Aaron getting the boat ready for Abbey.

Why is a box the best toy?

Grandpa, Mikey and Abbey and Thomas the Train.

OH...TO HAVE A FAN BASE.

I don't remember the last time a had a fan. Maybe I never did....maybe it was David....maybe it still is. Oh, please, let it be David.

These are some of Lee's biggest fans! They are the smallest among us but they understand being Lee's fans. Well, most of the time. They love being together and watching Lee play volleyball is as good a reason as any.

Last spring David and Jeff built a back porch for my sister, Coleen. I got alot of left over pieces of wood. I made four 8x8 squares and brought them home. It took me a while to find the right idea for them. I saw something very close to these in a magazine and copied them.

Bet you didn't have these stored in your garage.

We finished going through Dad's things today and my brother Jeff came over to me with this box....laughing. Growing up we had some big shelves in our garage. Once my dad began taking care of the Little League those shelves were filled with these. By the hundreds.

It is funny that my dad kept some of them. We found two....still in the box.