Yard and garden chores on the Hunt homestead

As early as I can remember, Mom and Dad made sure Merrill and I had chores around the house and yard.
As I recall, the first chores included cleaning our bedrooms, washing the dishes and cleaning the wood furniture in the livingroom with Pledge. Merrill liked to get it done as fast as he could, but I remember wanting to have everthing just right when I cleaned my room. I think Mom was good at making me feel like I had done a good job, which made me want to do even a better job the next time.
When it came to washing dishes, it usually was a battle between Merrill and I -- often a lot of clowning around. I remember that we settled pretty much into a routine: I would wash the dishes and he would take them out of the rinse bath and stack them in the drainer. Once we couldn't stack them any higher -- which became an art -- Merrill would dry the dishes with a dish towel. Remember, this was before dish washers -- at least in the Hunt house. I remember asking Dad about getting a dishwasher and he said we already had several!!! Well, I think I did the washing because I hated it when Merrill would hurry too fast and put dishes in the rinse that still had food on them. When I complained, he would make me wash the dishes. Now that I think about it, he probably did it on purpose so I would wash the dishes. But I don't think I thought of that back then -- I just figured no one could wash the dishes as good as I could and I didn't want to eat on dirty dishes -- especially the silverware (the utensils), we called them silverware though we didn't have any silver-ware! I was very careful to wash every spoon, fork and knife individually so there would be no food left on them to spoil the next meal. When Troyleen started helping to do dishes, I think I still kept washing the dishes and at the same time showed her the right way to do them -- including the right way to stack the dishes in the drainer so we didn't have to dry them. I was pretty dogmatic in what was the best way to stack the dishes and Troyleen would get mad at me for bothering her about "the proper way to stack." It was an art!
Of course, Mom was pretty clever, I guess, because I remember how she would praise me for being so careful in washing the dishes the right way.
The next step in chores for Merrill and I was doing the weeding of the yard.
Our yard was about 30 yards wide (north to south) and probably 70 yards deep (west to east). The house was at the west end of the lot with a driveway on the south side leading to a good size garage just behind and to the south of the house.
The front fence between the driveway and the north corner of the lot was lined with roses, which Dad had grown from sprouts from rose bushes he had found here and there. When he saw a rose that he really liked, he would bring home a sprout that he would plant in the mud under the front house faucet that dripped. The dripping kept the ground damp, and the sprout would be in the shade for more than half of the day. He covered the sprout with a clear glass gallon Ball or Mason jar to keep it humid and warm. If the sprout sprouted roots and started to grow, he would let it get as big as the jar would let it and then transplant the plant. I thought everyone did roses that way.
The job of weeding between the rose bushes was a thorny task -- one that Merrill especially hated. It didn't take long before it became my job. When Merrill got into sports in the ninth grade, most of the yard and house chores became my jobs. Merrill still had to do work with Dad and I on Fridays and Saturdays, unless there was a game. It seemed like we spent most of our weekends working at the apartments just off of North Temple and just west of the railroad tracks in Salt Lake. But that's another story for another day.
When I started doing the weeding between the roses, I was very careful to get all the weeds. I might come in the house with blood on my hands, but when Mom would tell me how good the roses looked without all the weeds smothering them, then I felt good -- but not like I wanted to do it again the next day. I hated it, too, but if I had to do it, I wanted it to look good.
One night, Dad came home with a bunch of tiny pine trees -- about 6" tall. Half were blue spruce and half where ponderosa pine. Guess what Merrill and I had to do? Yup, we got to plant everyone one of those trees along the north border fence and even along the east border. We planted them about a foot apart. After planting them, our job was to keep them watered. I don't think we did a very good job, because later (not sure if it was the next year or later that year), Dad brought home some more tiny trees and we had to replant almost the whole batch.
We did a little better of keeping them watered, and many of the trees actually survived for a couple of years. The ground was so hard that they really had a hard time surviving. I remember that later we transferred some of those trees into the southwest corner spot of the front yard. Some of those grew to maturity.
When it came to gardening, I remember early on being given the chore of watering the garden. I remember keeping an eye on the water running down each row and making sure it got to the end of each row. If the water didn't reach the end of the row or didn't build up enough at the end of the row, the plants toward the end of the row would be stunted or die. So, in everything you do, make sure the water gets to the end of the row. (Do every job you're given the completely if you want to reap the rewards.) Sometimes I would have to repair the rows to get the water to the ends. We would spend it seemed like hours watering the garden. If we left the water running down the rows and went to shoot a few hoops, inevitably the rows would flood and make a quagmire. We had a well with a pump that Uncle Lloyd had put in when he lived in the house before us. If we didn't do the gardening and watering, the garden failed. Also, if we were told to do a chore in the garden, we couldn't play basketball or any of the neighborhood sports and activities until the chores were done. Sometimes when we left to go play before doing our chores, Dad would come Hunting for us with a willow branch!
If we didn't do our chores, we didn't get to play. The neighborhood kids were always complaining about how much we had to work -- spoiling the good times. But still, we played tons outdoors.
One of the most tiring jobs was doing all the weeding in the garden. That was virtually all done by Merrill and me. I really can't remember Dad doing much of the weeding in the garden other than to show us how to do the weeding and how to recognize what were weeds and what were seedlings. This is where Dad's famous quote was used over and over in our youth -- "Get your butt behind you." That was the same phrase whether weeding, shoveling or hammering a nail. But I don't think he used the word butt.
One of the most tramatic experiences of my teen years happened because I failed to do my chores:
When I was a senior at Granger High School, it was a really heady time for me. I was in Concert Choir and Madrigals. I was Lancer Men's president (president of all the male students; yup, they actually had officers like that back then). I was the sports editor of the school paper. I was in the Ushers Club. I was the football manager and we had gone to state for the first time in the school's history. And I had a steady girlfriend. It was a great year for me -- probably the most eventful of my life in a lot of ways (I probably shouldn't say that!).
Well, my girlfriend, Vicki, asked me to Girls Pref dance at school, and it was the first and only time I had ever been asked to a girls pref dance. I was so excited. As it turned out, the night before the dance, the Madrigals had a party where we got up like at 4 in the morning and went bowling and to breakfast. My girlfriend was also in Madrigals -- so I had a great time -- though I was terrible at bowling -- even when I had two legs. I preferred basketball. I think we got home like at 7 in the morning and I went back to bed. I was exhausted!!!! I wanted to sleep all day until it was time to go on my big date that Saturday night.
About eight or nine in the morning, Dad came into my room and said I needed to get up and do my chores. He left and I went back to sleep. He came back a little bit later and woke me up again and told me I had to get up and do my chores. But this time (or maybe it was the third time he woke me up), he said if I didn't get up and do my chores that I would be grounded. Well, I went back to sleep. I didn't think that he would ground me from going on this one huge most important date of my life! But when he came in the last time at about 10 a.m., he was pretty mad!!!! He said I was grounded. Well, I got up finally and did the chores in plenty of time before it was time for my date -- but he said I couldn't go. Because I didn't get up and do the chores when I was suppoed to, I couldn't go.
I begged and pleaded with him -- and I think Mom even went to bat for me -- but he stood his ground. Can you imagine how hard it was to call my girlfriend, Vicki, and tell her that I couldn't go because my dad had grounded me, in my senior year of high school, because I didn't do my chores! She was devastated and mad! She was probably more mad at me than my dad because I could have gotten up and done the chores and then taken a nap.
Doing chores around the house was a big deal. It was a way of helping the family take care of itself. Dad was from a farm family background where everyone had a job and everyone did their part. This was in the 1950s and '60s and though we didn't live on a farm, we still were a part of that heritage. Plus, Dad was always working -- whether it was at Hill Air Force Base or at some other second job or at the apartments or doing church welfare jobs or other church duties. It was Merrill's and my job to help out at home -- to take some of the pressure off.
But there was something else to the whole process of learning to do our chores and the jobs that we were given: We learned a lot about responsibility and about consequences. I learned a very good but terrible lesson about consequences that day in my senior year.
I think I may have learned the lessons of responsibility and consequences, but I'm not sure I did a very good job of teaching those two principals to my kids.
When Nancy and I started our family and lived in Kearns, we had a small garden, about 25 by 30 feet, in the southwest corner of our lot on between the west sideway and the west side of our driveway. We planted a lot of crops there and had a beautiful garden. I think I did most of the weeding -- but maybe Nancy would disagree. One of the reasons we moved was to have a bigger yard. In West Jordan, we had a garden on the east edge of our back yard. It was probably 30 feet east to west and 60 feet north to south. We had some great crops come out of that garden, including a prize-winning giant pumpkin. We grew a lot of tomatoes, some corn, strawberries, boysenberries, raspberries, cucumbers, cantalope, zuccini, spaghetti squash, peppers, peas, string beans. Also, we had beautiful flower beds around the house and yard. It was a lot of work planting all the flowers, the garden and weeding everything every year. It seemed Nancy and I spent a lot of time doing all of that. I honestly don't remember the kids -- especially the boys -- doing much of of anything in the yard, especially not the weeding. I remember Heather and Lena and Jason helping us to plant the garden -- but I don't remember them doing a lot of the weeding. Wait, I do remember Jason doing some weeding a few times. I wonder if it was more than a few? It will be interesting if I'm all wet on this subject.
I remember too many times when Nancy would tell me when I would fight with the kids (the boys) about helping in the yard that it wasn't worth the fight with them, that we just as well do it ourselves, that maybe I was just trying to get them to do my jobs instead of doing them myself. Funny how I remember it. But I remember that I was always working and that the boys were always playing. Am I wrong? I know I always wanted them to be working with me -- but what I was doing wasn't any fun. So I remember sitting on the ground and scooting around and doing the weeding of all the flower gardens. I do remember Heather and Lena helping me a few times. I wonder if it was more than a few?
Then I got too busy to do much of even the weeding -- though I remember Nancy coming in and demanding that I take time to go out with her and weed the flower beds. She just didn't want to fight with the kids about the jobs outside.
Did I teach the kids, especially the boys, about responsibility and consequences? Well, I'm not too sure I did.
But it's a word to the wise that parents have a duty to teach their kids responsibities -- and consequences. How can we do it? Give them jobs to do, even if they are small jobs -- and make sure there are consequences and that you apply the consequences. Everyone needs to learn that they have the freedom to do what they want but that there are consequences to whatever they do -- good and bad.

Church, farming and tomato worms

When I was about 13 years old and living in what was then Granger (now West Valley City)on 4300 West just north of 3500 South, we had a stake president named Wallace Bawden. I actually took piano lessons from his wife, Dorothy, for a couple of years when I was younger.

At one stake priesthood session, he spoke to the priesthood holders about the need to care for the welfare farms, which back then was a huge job done totally by the members. We had assignments all the time: I remember planting tomato plants and corn seeds in the spring, then in the summer we weeded the sugar beets, weeded and spaced the corn and weeded the tomato plants. One year the tomato worms were really bad and we had a special job seeing how many tomato warms we could "harvest" bluck from the vines before they could destroy the plants. At one point it got so bad that the bishop or dad paid us a nickel for every worm we brought home in those gallon buckets. We got really good at spotting them.

Then in the fall we harvested the tomatoes and picked the corn, tossing the corn in a hookshot up in the big truck. The hardest job by far was weeding and spacing the sugar beets. The next hardest job was weeding the tomato plants and not chopping down a tomato plant! That was pretty embarrasing!

At that aforementioned stake priesthood session, he talked about responsibility and how important it was to the success of the church and the welfare farms.
He said there are three types of men (people):
One man says he will do the job or task and does it.
Another man says he will do the job or task but doesn't.
Another one says he can't do the job but then shows up and does it.

He asked which one of the three is the most respected?
Which one keeps the work moving forward?
And which one believes in repentance?
And which one causes the greatest harm to himself, others and the work?

The memory of Pres. Bawden teaching this lesson often comes back to me when I fail to follow through on a task or when one of my kids fails to do what he says he'll do.
My dad as far as I remember was a great example of doing what he said he would do when it came to church assignments.

There is A God -- Church lesson Jan. 8, 2010

Lesson outline:
1. What things testify that there is a God?
a. The incredible complexity of the human body
(Slide presentation)
(Following pictures, received in an email package from Phil Lindhardt, Oct. 2009, captured using a scanning electron microscope.
Incredible details of 1 to 5nm (nanometer) in size can be detected.)


Red Blood Cells -- They may look like little cinnamon candies, but they're actually the most common type of blood cell in the human body - red blood cells. They have the tall task of carrying oxygen to our entire body. In women there are about 4 to 5 million per micro liter of blood and about 5 to 6 million in men. People who live at higher altitudes have even more red blood cells because of the low oxygen levels in their environment.


Split End of Human Hair -- Regular trimmings to your hair and good conditioner should help to prevent this unsightly picture of a split end of a human hair.


Hair Cell in the Ear -- Here's a human hair cell stereo cilia inside the ear. They detect mechanical movement in response to sound vibrations.


Tongue with Taste Bud --This color-enhanced image depicts a taste bud on the tongue. The human tongue has about 10,000 taste buds that are involved with detecting salty, sour, bitter, sweet and savory taste perceptions.


Human Egg with Coronal Cells -- This is a purple, color-enhanced human egg sitting on a pin.


Villi of Small Intestine -- Villi in the small intestine increase the surface area of the gut, which helps in the absorption of food.


Alveoli in the Lung -- This is a color-enhanced image of the inner surface of your lung. The hollow cavities are alveoli; this is where gas exchange occurs with the blood.



Blood Clot -- Remember that picture of the nice, uniform shapes of red blood? Here's what it looks like when those same cells get caught up in the sticky web of a blood clot. The cell in the middle is a white blood cell.


Purkinje Neurons -- Of the 100 billion neurons in your brain. Purkinje (pronounced purr-kin-jee) neurons are some of the largest. Among other things, these cells are the masters of motor coordination in the cerebella cortex.
2. The marvelous variety and beauty of the Earth
a. Slide presentation of Fall Colors at Butchart Gardens, Victoria, BC, Canada







b. Alma: 30:44 -- "... ye have the testimony of all these thy brethren, and also all the holy prophets? The scriptures are laid before thee, yea, and all things denote there is a God; yea, even the bearth, and call things that are upon the face of it, yea, and its dmotion, yea, and also all the eplanets which move in their regular form do witness that there is a Supreme Creator."
c. The ever-expanding knowledge that there is so much more out there in the Universe

(Wordpress google search)


(Milky Way IR Spitzer -- From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

1. What was the scientific belief of life on other planets at the time Joseph Smith spoke of worlds without number that have been created by God?

(CNN) – (Oct. of 2009) Thirty-two planets have been discovered outside Earth's solar system through the use of a high-precision instrument installed at a Chilean telescope, an international team announced Monday. The existence of the so-called exoplanets -- planets outside our solar system -- was announced by a consortium of international researchers, headed by the Geneva Observatory, who built the High Accuracy Radial Velocity Planet Searcher, or HARPS. The device can detect slight wobbles of stars as they respond to tugs from exoplanets' gravity. With the discovery, the tally of new exoplanets found by HARPS is now at 75, out of about 400 known exoplanets, the organization said.

iii. (NPR) (Dec. of 2009) A newly discovered planet orbiting a small, nearby star appears to be a "water world," with a surface that might be covered with liquid water. "This is certainly the first planet around another star which we think is mostly made of water," says David Charbonneau of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass., who led the research team that found the new planet, named GJ 1214b. If you could ride a spaceship to this planet — which you couldn't, because it is 40 light-years away — you would first approach the small, feeble red star that the planet orbits once every 38 hours, Charbonneau says. Then you'd see the planet, bigger and heavier than Earth, and probably enshrouded in an alien atmosphere.

3. How is God “The Great Parent of the Universe”?
a. God is the Great Creator – through Jesus Christ our world and countless other worlds have been created.
b. God oversees his creations c. As our spiritual Father or parent, he wants us to obtain all that He has – to become like Him; and He sent his Son, Jesus, who is like Him, to set an example for all mankind and to make it possible for all men to be saved.
c. Moses 1:39 -- “Behold, This is My Work and My Glory to bring to pass the immortality and Eternal Life of Man” a.
4. What are the two things he wants us to obtain?
a. Immortality – to live forever, which all Mankind have received through the resurrection of Jesus Christ
b. Eternal Life – which is the kind of life God lives, and thereby receive all that he has.
5. As a father, what is it that we want for our own children?
Robert D. Hales (Nov. 2009)
“Some wonder, why is belief in God so important? Why did the Savior say, “And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent”?2
Without God, life would end at the grave and our mortal experiences would have no purpose. Growth and progress would be temporary, accomplishment without value, challenges without meaning. There would be no ultimate right and wrong and no moral responsibility to care for one another as fellow children of God. Indeed, without God, there would be no mortal or eternal life.
If you or someone you love is seeking purpose in life or a deeper conviction of God’s presence in our lives, I offer, as a friend and as an Apostle, my witness. He lives!
Some may ask, how can I know this for myself? We know He lives because we believe the testimonies of His ancient and living prophets, and we have felt God’s Spirit confirm that the testimonies of these prophets are true. From their testimonies, recorded in holy scripture, we know that “[God] created man, male and female, after his own image and in his own likeness.”3 Some people may be surprised to learn that we look like God. One prominent religious scholar has even taught that imagining God in the form of man is creating a graven image and is idolatrous and blasphemous.4 But God Himself said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.”5
The use of the words us and our in this scripture also teaches us about the relationship between the Father and the Son. God further taught, “By mine Only Begotten [Son] I created these things.”6 The Father and the Son are separate and distinct individuals—as any father and son always are. This may be one reason the name of God in Hebrew, Elohim, is not singular but plural….
In matters of personal belief, how do we know what really is true?
I testify that the way to know the truth about God is through the Holy Ghost. The Holy Ghost, the third member of the Godhead, is a personage of spirit. His work is to “testify of [God]”19 and to “teach [us] all things.”20
We are then ready to ask our Heavenly Father sincerely, in the name of our Savior, Jesus Christ, if the things we have learned are true. Most of us will not see God, as the prophets have, but the still, small promptings of the Spirit -- the thoughts and feelings that the Holy Ghost brings into our minds and hearts—will give us an undeniable knowledge that He lives and that He loves us."
6. How can we learn the true nature of God?
a. Understand that He is like us – but perfected and glorified.
b. What would man be capable of if he had a perfect body – and, especially, a perfect mind, using 100% of its capacity instead 10%?
i. What if he had a perfect temperment -- a perfect spirit?
William Shakespeare, Hamlet
"What a piece of work is a man!
How noble in reason!
How infinite in faculty,
in apprehension how like a god."
7. How can we come to know God? How can we establish a spiritual relationship with our Father in Heaven?
a. Believe first that He exists and that He loves us
b. Study the scriptures and learn of Him
c. Pray to Him and want to know him as you would know your own Earthly Father
d. Follow His Example – Live the kind of life his son, Jesus, did.
e. Obey all His commandments as best we can
President Gordon B. Hinckley, Ensign, Nov 2006
Brethren, you look like a shirtsleeve priesthood. You look all dressed in white, ready to go to work. And the time has come to go to work.
What a remarkable sight this is. This great Conference Center is filled to capacity, and our words are flung across the world. This is probably the largest gathering of priesthood men that has ever occurred. I congratulate you on your presence tonight.
I recently listened on television to a concert by the BYU Men’s Chorus. They sang a stirring number entitled “Rise Up, O Men of God.” It was written in 1911 by William P. Merrill, and I discovered a version of it is found in our hymnbook, although I never remember singing it.
The words carry the spirit of the old English hymns written by Charles Wesley and others. The text reads:
Rise up, O men of God!
Have done with lesser things.
Give heart and soul and mind and strength
To serve the King of Kings.
Rise up, O men of God,
In one united throng.
Bring in the day of brotherhood
And end the night of wrong.
Rise up, O men of God!
The church for you doth wait,
Her strength unequal to her task;
Rise up, and make her great!
Rise up, O men of God!
Tread where his feet have trod.
As brothers of the Son of Man,
Rise up, O men of God!
(Hymns, no. 324; third verse in The Oxford American Hymnal, ed. Carl F. Pfatteicher [1930], no. 256)
The scriptures are very plain in their application to each of us, my brethren. … The words of Lehi are a clarion call to all men and boys of the priesthood. Said he with great conviction: “Awake, my sons; put on the armor of righteousness. Shake off the chains with which ye are bound, and come forth out of obscurity, and arise from the dust” (2 Nephi 1:23). There is not a man or boy in this vast congregation tonight who cannot improve his life. And that needs to happen. After all, we hold the priesthood of God.”

Memories of childhood with my big brother

Merrill, left, and youngest brother, Rendall

Several months ago, Merrill's wife and kids asked us to submit memories we had of Merrill -- my older brother.
These are some of those memories -- ones not included in earlier posts.
When the family was living in West Jordan on the hill at Papanicholis’ home, we played a game on the edge of Redwood Road next to our home. We would hide in the weeds next to the irrigation ditch that ran along the side of the road and then run up out of the weeds toward the road as cars approached. We would, of course, stop at the edge of the road, but the cars would swerve fearing we were running out into the road. We did this several times before a man finally stopped his car and scolded us quite severally. It must have been a good speech, because we stopped doing it and realized that it could cause an accident. I felt pretty foolish after. I was probably about 5 years old and Merrill about 7 years old.

Merril Ray Hunt on his 11th birthday
in front of our home in Granger.

When we lived there, Merrill had a great time riding Papa’s sheep that he had grazing in the field across a fence on the south side of the house. I thought it was too dangerous for me! He was a rodeo man! I remember Momma getting mad at him for riding the sheep, but Papa wasn’t too upset about it.
There was a small haystack in the yard. Merrill and I and Steve Bateman played on those haystacks quite a bit. But one time I fell off one that was probably three bales high. I landed on the ground on my butt. The ground was covered with loose straw or hay. It really hurt my back. Of course that kind of fall wouldn’t hurt Merrill, so they wanted to keep playing. But my screaming and crying finally got Merrill to run into Mom and tell her I was hurt. We found out that a layer of bricks had been lined under the loose straw/hay where I fell. The doctor said the X-rays showed my back bones seemed to be shallow or not completely formed. He said I would probably grow out of it. (Actually, it probably was the first undiagnosed sign of Ostogenisi Imperfecta (a form of brittle bones malady).
Before Merrill’s junior year in high school, he went down to Uncle Lloyd’s farm in Sevier and worked for several weeks baling hay with his cousin Ray, who was his same age. They got along great. Sometime during the stay, he fell off the hay wagon and broke his arm just above the wrist. When he came home, the cast was all green from still working with Ray baling the hay. He got back just in time to start football practice. He went clear through practice and a couple of games before the cast came off. Actually, it just literally crumbled off his arm. I think he wore it bandaged and wrapped for the rest of the season.

Merrill Ray Hunt, center, with neighborhood friends Travis
Wilson, left, and Gene Openshaw.

Merrill is mad at Dad for
"accidentally" pulling his
first big hair off his chest.

Every time Merrill and I got into a neighborhood baseball game or football game, Merrill would be the leader and usually he and Gene Openshaw would pick sides. I was always the last one picked – and usually Merrill had to be the one to pick me. In basketball, it was a little different by the time I was in high school. It usually was Merrill and I against the neighborhood – and usually the game was out on our driveway – which had big cracks and crumbling concrete (not cement)! We had the advantage because we knew every foot of that driveway and didn’t have to watch our dribbling. We would try to force our opponents into the bad areas and take advantage of the bad bounces. Merrill was incredibly good at flying down toward the garage and making a layup and instantly ducking below the entrance to the garage. If the garage door wasn’t open, then he and everyone else would fly up against the wooden door, banging against it, and then bounce off and go on with the game. It drove Mom crazy every time we would do it. Eventually she would come out and tell us to open the garage door before we broke it. We never did break the door. If the car was in the garage, Merrill had the “privilege” of backing it out of the way. I was always too young!

Merrill playing catch with Lee at
Liberty Park about 1964.

Merrill was really a good basketball player and could have played in college if it hadn’t been for us going to Harrisburg, Pa., for the summer right after we graduated. Merrill never found out until too late that some junior colleges had tried to contact him about playing for them on scholarship. I loved watching him play sports – so it was natural for me to end up being a manager for the high school football team and then the basketball team.
The highlight to Merrill’s football career, at least the memory that still sticks in my head, was a cold wintry night in Copperton at Bingham High School – where Mom and her brothers went to school. This is in 1965, way before they built that new high school in South Jordan and named it Bingham. On that night in ’65 at Bingham High, Matt Mendenhall, a junior, was quarterbacking and threw a perfect post pass to Merrill that caught the Miners sleeping. Merrill went in untouched for a touchdown. I think we won that game, but I’m not sure – I just remember “the catch.”

Merrill playing on a rec team after high school. He wore
No. 32 throughout high school on basketball team, baseball,
and church teams. 

I remember how especially proud one of the Pep Club members was – her name: Vicki Kershaw! After the game, she had red frozen cheeks but a big happy smile! Her man was a hero!
When Merrill and I were little kids, we had to sleep in the same bed – at least that’s how I remember it. More likely I was too afraid of sleeping alone so I would crawl into bed with Merrill. He didn’t like the dark that much either. I remember many nights in our home in West Jordan on Redwood Road where our room was upstairs, we would have to go down the stairs to go to the bathroom. Going down to the bathroom was not near as scaring as trying to go back up those dark stairs to our room upstairs. I don’t know why we didn’t turn on the light before going down. Many times we would cuddle up in the bathroom, and Mom or Dad would find us there and take us back up stairs.

Besides basketball, Merrill was an amazing baseball player.
He mostly played shortstop and homered many times at
Monroe in church softball play. 

I remember we got into a habit of tickling each other’s back before we would go to sleep. Not really rubbing, just tickling! We would have a contest to see who could tickle the softest. I think Merrill always got the best of those back ticklings.
Here’s a confession: Merrill was a thief! And it was because of me he got busted! When Merrill was 12 or 13, we would go over to a farm nearby and try to steal pigeons roosting in the eaves of the cow pens. Then we found a shed at one of the homes off 3500 South and near Monroe Elementary, which is where Gus Paulos has his car dealership now on the corner of 4000 West and 3500 South. This shed harbored roosting pigeons. We captured several and took them home and put them in our clubhouse/pigeon coop/chicken coop/rabbit pen/submarine. One time, I was stationed at the door of the shed. Actually I was always stationed at the door of the shed because I was too little to do much else. I was supposed to scare the pigeons back into the shed if they tried to escape. I decided I’d use a board to shoo them back into the shed. One time I shooed a pigeon so good he ended up in heaven – I smacked him with the board! I felt so bad. I think it was the next time we went to the shed to capture more pigeons that we heard the owner coming after us and we all

Stan Bawden, with his signature eye patch, relaxing during
our 1964 Explorer HAFB overnighter, which I organized.

started running! I thought it was because I had killed one of his pigeons and we had “stolen” other pigeons. Of course Merrill, Gene and Bruce Sharp were bigger and faster and outran the property owner, but I was too slow. He caught me and I think he also caught Dennis Paxton – a “runt” like me. It was old Stan Bawden – who had to be 80 years old. He wasn’t that old I know now, but he was old but still fast. He took me to Dad. Come to find out, someone had let his prize peacocks out of their pen. I promised him it wasn’t us and that we would ask him before going after any more pigeons. He didn’t care about those stray pigeons – but he wanted to protect his peacocks and other animals. It’s funny, but I don’t remember going over to that shed again. It wasn’t near as much fun when we actually had permission. Mr. Bawden later became a good friend of all of us boys and helped many of us and me personally with merit badges and Scouting. He was a nice little man.
I remember that when Merrill became one of the jocks at school, he didn’t have time to do much with his little brother – but if anyone ever picked on me, he would be there to intervene – if he was around.
One time he saved my life! I was being suffocated by a big bully and Merrill had to pull him off of me! Really! I was traumatized by the event. I still have dreams about suffocating in a tunnel, under water – and I think that event was what triggered it. We were having a snowball fight out in front of Brent Gardner’s home and I must have got Gene Openshaw a good one because he grabbed me and held me down in the snow and I couldn’t breathe. And, of course, I couldn’t break free either. Finally Merrill pushed him off me! I really thought I was going to die! Gene didn’t realize I was panicking and couldn’t breathe!

Merrill Ray Hunt in 1964 in
front of the Juniper that was
always used for backdrop.

Of course it was OK if Merrill wanted to pick on me! One time after school I was walking home and – bang – something really hard hit my bare skin on my left arm! Merrill was riding home with a friend in a Jeep and he had held out his arm to slap me on the arm. But because the Jeep was going so fast when his hand slapped my arm, it really left a welt. When I cried to Mom after I got home, Merrill said in his defense that it hurt his hand bad, too! Ya, right!
Merrill and I liked to play war when we were young. If we weren’t playing football, basketball or baseball, we were playing war. Merrill was always the boss and Gene was second in command – and the rest of us were runts! We used the clubhouse a lot for our fort, bunker or submarine. We actually made a periscope from a toy we got out of a cereal box and plastic pipes we found around the garage. Also, we had several Navy uniforms that we found from Dad and I think from Uncle Silvan. One was a helmet he brought back from Iwo Jima. We were ready for war –- but

Backyard of our home in Granger. Note the "bomb shelter,"
left under willow tree behind garage, that Dad and us boys
built to "save us" in cae of an attack. It became our food
storage cellar and domain of many giant black widows.

mostly just practicing and preparing – remember, we were children of the Cold War years. We thought any time there would be war between the U.S. and the Russians. We had the bomb drills at school and all the Cold War phobias. There was a big ditch across the field behind our house (west). Actually the Midwest Mobile Home Park is now where the field was, and the ditch is where the border is between the trailer park and Pioneer Valley Hospital. That ditch itself was less than a foot deep, but the banks were about six feet deep and about 12 feet across. So we could play all day along those banks and fight off the Germans advancing across the fields. WWII was the war we knew all about – the war our fathers fought in – and it was only 10 or 12 years in our past!

We were like Spartan warriors.

I remember part of the “army training” we did in our backyard involved pretending we were Spartans. I don’t remember which of the older boys introduced the Spartan life to us, but it was a real part of our “training.” We were told the story that in the time of Sparta, the youths were taught to be strong, lean and endure all forms of pain and not sure any pain no matter how bad the pain was. As the story was taught to us, a young Spartan stole a fox and had hidden it under his tunic when he and others were called into formation. While he stood rigidly in formation, the fox under his tunic started biting and eating away at his stomach. Before he showed any pain, he fell over dead and the fox ran away. As part of this “training,” we took turns hitting each other in the stomach – including me. I had strong stomach muscles at the time and endured some pretty good punches even from Merrill and Gene. Of course, Merrill could handle any punches from any of us.

Using a regular bow and an arrow tied to a string, we would
go huntng for carb in the canal north of 3100 South.

One summer the weeds behind Bruce Sharp’s home across from our home got six feet tall – and we made trails throughout the field of weeds. We had a great time – but it was hard on Bruce and Ralph Sharp. Their allergies to the weeds were terrible. But before they had to stop playing in the weeds, we had a great time!
Sometimes we would venture down to the canal south of 3100 South and try to catch fish in the canal. Sometimes we would go with Bruce, and he would take his bow and arrows. Merrill and Bruce would try to shoot carp. We weren’t very good at fishing there in the canal. The area was swampy before the canal was put in, but the whole area now is housing. I don’t think the canal is even still there.