a new shirt and a memory of buttons

I am just over the moon with my new John Wayne style cowboy shirt. I just love it. It's perfect. My sweetheart labored 2 days to make it and years to locate the pattern which she already had.

There are 24 buttons on it. It made me think back to my 2nd Youth Conference as a youth. John Delane Wiberg, my good friend, had a stylish sweater vest on with lots of buttons. The ice breaker prize was who had the most buttons...and naturally he won. The prize was a transistor radio and we stayed up later than we should have, listening to his transistor radio.
Some kid drove up to youth conference in a 1953 Starliner Studebaker, a model I always liked. He probably paid 50 bucks for it. One youth conference I went to showed 7 Brides for 7 Brothers on an old projector from a classroom. The brothers wore this same type shirt that I am wearing in the photo.

I have always liked this style shirt and am happy to now own one. As I struggled to button all the buttons in the new button holes, I remarked that this was a good birth control shirt. By the time you'd get this unbuttoned, the "moment" had passed and you might as well go home. Brigham Young considered buttons to be immoral because you could get undressed to quickly.

The purpose and need for this shirt now is the fact that in 2 days I leave for TREK...It's a spiritual experience in the woods that make us appreciate what the pioneers did for us, regardless of if it's for the spiritual heritage or the building of the nation/community. I will go as an adult child of a family. No, Susan is NOT going on the trek. I'll report back next week...but no pictures since we are not allowed to take any modern technology.

Today I am mudding the dining room walls. After over a week of removing the wallpaper and the horrible thick cement-like glue that remained after the paper was gone (and I ask, "You did want your wallpaper to stay up didn't you? Didn't you?"), it's finally time to make the walls as flat as I can. It was good to have Jordan and family come up the past weekend and really took on the bigger part of the paste removal. We were left with the fine removals.

I didn't grow up mudding walls. In my youth the walls had broken up almond shells added to the mix to make a very textured wall....and by the way, that's the kind of walls we had in 809. Linda Zuro taught Susan to mud one day but she was having too much fun so I made that be "not distaff" and I ended up mudding just about the whole main floor and down the hall to the basement.

My parents converted peaked-roof army barracks (which they bought whole and then floated it down the Columbia River and installed it in Kennewick, Washington) into an apartment house. It formed a U-shape. Our family lived at the whole base of the U, and the 2 sides were filled with apartments. When Susan and I were married, we lived in #1. So when an occupant left, I was always called on to paint. I got so that I could paint a whole apartment in a day. Obviously, that's how my painting ability developed. I also can claim to paint a very fine, very straight line between wall and ceiling with only my faithful, trusty brush, named? what else? My Old Trusty Brush. Somehow I lost him...but discovered his hiding place when we moved to 3830. He had fallen behind the old workbench in the old garage. I was a happy camper when I found it!

I love to paint. I do not love to strip wallpaper or the paste. But I think we are going to be ready to paint tomorrow. At least I hope so. The paint has been purchased so all is well.