Expanding Horizons

My religious heritage of being a Mormon stretches back generations in both my mother's and my father's families. On my father’s side, my great-grandfather, Ole Hansen, joined the church in Denmark in the 1860s, came to Utah because of the church, and then returned to Denmark as a missionary. On my mother’s side it was my great-grandfather, David Buttars, who joined the church in Scotland and then immigrated to Utah. I grew up participating in all the church activities, accepting them as a normal, practical part of life. In fact, I viewed those who didn't do the same with a degree of suspicion.

Being always older in spirit and maturity than my chronological age, I chose friends who were normally two to three years older than I. This was partly from choice and partly from availability. Often these friends did not share my background, religious or otherwise. From a couple of these friends, I learned the fine art of smoking. First it was tansy weeds. Then it progressed through dried horse manure to coffee grounds, and finally cigarettes (later as a teenager, even cigars). This experimentation, however, came to an abrupt halt when an overdose of real tobacco from smoking a cigar while pheasant hunting made me violently ill. My mother, sensing I was ill, asked what was wrong and I mumbled in reply something about having eaten poisoned wheat.

Another rather negative influence came from a fellow four to five years older than I who had been in a reformatory when I first met him, went back again, and finally ended up in the state penitentiary. He and another friend introduced me to a small bottle with the words "Old Grand Dad" written on it. The first taste burned, choked, and generally destroyed my gullet. It was during this period in my life that we'd “borrow” an old rusty ten-gauge shotgun that hung in the old shop on the Connor place that was kitty cornered across the street from our house, and a quarter mile east. We’d gather the shells that accompanied the gun and then we’d go shoot frogs along the creek. The shotgun would fall apart each time after we'd fire it and we'd have to reassemble it before it could be fired again. But that was mild compared with the kick it routinely administered to our shoulders as we took turns.

I was full of distasteful pranks. For example, we would capture frogs, push dandelions up their butts and blow them up with air from our lungs so that when we placed them back in the water they could not swim; their little legs would flail without effect and they would only float. Another was to catch sparrows, put a little turpentine on their hindparts and watch them fly acrobatics. Robbing birds’ nests, killing magpies in order to sell their heads for three cents each, and a variety of other reprehensible deeds could also be added to my rap sheet. One of the worst beatings I ever received was the result of staying out in a terrific rainstorm robbing birds’ nests until one o’clock in the morning. Richly deserved, I might add. 

This was also an era of skinny dipping in the old swimming hole where I had initially learned to swim. My brother, Wayne, took me out to where it was over my head and told me to swim. I swam and that was it, no fancy lessons, just the necessity of the moment.

Despite all these hijinks, I attended all my various church meetings throughout my youth. At age twelve, I was ordained a Deacon, later I became a Teacher, and then a Priest in the Aaronic Priesthood. Dates and other pertinent data are a matter of record, so I'll not dwell on them here. Suffice it to say, that even while advancing through these Priesthood offices, I was significantly less than perfect as I struggled with finding out who I was, sampled the evils of the world, and attempted to carve out independence from my parents.

Going to church led to my participation in the Boy Scouts. I advanced normally through the rank of Life Scout, and then redirected my efforts toward girls. I have always regretted I didn't put forth the extra effort it would have required to become an Eagle Scout, but at the time it seemed unimportant and my parents did not push me. I did enjoy two trips to the Teton Peaks Council Boy Scout Camp up on the Idaho side of the Teton Peaks where the scenery was breath-taking. The thing I remember best is putting a live water snake in another scout's sleeping bag; he didn't find it until months later when he wanted to use the bag again and found the dead snake, by that time causing a dreadful stench.

It was also during this period that I developed blood poisoning from a scratch on my left hand, received while playing a game of pick-up basketball. By the time we discovered the infection, my left arm was badly swollen with a black line running up its underside. The doctor insisted I be rushed to the hospital. Once there, the doctor lanced the swelling where it appeared worst, stuck in his finger to open the wound, and began administering penicillin. For years, this was the only scar on my body.

The onslaught of the teenage years brought problems and repeated efforts to be everything, try everything, experience everything, and still to stay within the bounds of the church's teachings. Of course, the contradictions were too great and therefore it was the church's teachings that often gave way to experience. While attending to my church responsibilities, I would still manage to do exactly what the church didn't want. For example, I often slipped away from  Young Men’s meetings, then called Mutual Improvement Association or MIA, on Tuesday evenings to rendezvous with friends and see how many bottles of beer we could drink in an evening. My personal record was sixteen, but that is qualified because I threw up after the first eight. Somehow, my friends and I all managed to get poured into our beds at night and recover sufficiently the following day to allay any suspicions our parents may have had, but didn't voice. 

Among my friends at that time, all from Lincoln, were Kenneth and Dean Prestwich, Gene Mortensen, Bill Blake, and Gary Huskinson. Except for Dean and Bill, some tentative connection with the others survived into the 1990s. Gene Mortensen later served in the mission field with me.  One of my most consistent boyhood friends was Marion Cook, who was a neighbor, but also nearly two years older than I was. We both belonged to the school band. He played the baritone, and I played the trumpet. This musical sharing gave impetus to a friendship that lasted through school until he departed on a mission to Japan.