Wednesday, January 30, 2019

Things my father told me

My dad was born in Salt Lake City but grew up in Scipio, Utah, a small cowtown in the middle of Utah.  One day Dad knew Jack Dempsey was going to be driving through their town.  He and his young friends decided they would throw rotten tomatoes at Jack as he drove through town and did so.

Jack Dempsey Dempsey --known as the "Manassa (CO) Mauler"--was the world heavyweight boxing champion from 1919-1926. His parents had converted to the LDS faith through missionaries who had met them in W. Virginia. The family moved to a small LDS community of Manassa, CO and then had moved to Provo.   Jack was raised in the church. The boxer later described his own religious beliefs:  "I'm proud to be a Mormon.  And ashamed to be the Jack Mormon that I am."


Dad also told me that there was a canon of some sort in the town which someone  would fire it off at 4am on each July 4th to start off the celebration.  Big event for this little town.

Scipio also had a rodeo on the 4th of July or perhaps July 24th for Mormon Pioneer Day.  My cousin Paul had entered the calf-roping contest for the kids.  He got his calf but he also got his head kicked in by the calf so Paul had to spend the day on the couch with a cold compress.  He did not win his division.

Wednesday, January 16, 2019

my father's dream

     The other day, for whatever reason, I started telling Susan what I remembered about an incident that occur in 1969.  The scene is shortly after my grandfather Frank  S Hatch's funeral
(which I did not attend).  This is what I recall my father relating:  My father noticed that the hole into which grandpa's casket was to be placed - was not quite "square" with the world.  The casket went into the hole anyway. The idea that grandpa's burial site was not "squared up" kept bothering my Dad.  Finally, in a dream grandpa appeared to Dad and told him that it was "alright, don't worry about it".  That was the end of Dad's concern.  By the way:  there is no period after the "S" in grandpa's name.  I distinctly remember a conversation one evening in grandpa Hatch's living room where the question arouse as to why there was no period after the initial "S".  Grandpa stated that there just was no period in his name.  Fun fact.

     By way of recording a long held oral history - one that I've never seen in print but heard repeated verbally: One of my English grandmother fore bearers - probably in the 1840s-1850s worked in an English spinning mill.  Of course this was in prime and proper Victorian days where the women wore long dresses and were modest in every way.  She had a dream one night in which she was to quickly raise her skirts, something which of course she would never do in public.  As it turned out in the course of her work the next day at the spinning mill her dress started to get caught in the machinery.  She immediately remembered the warning of her dream and quickly raised her skirt up high - avoiding injury or worse.  Pay attention to your dreams.  I'm sure she was glad she did.