My lifetime of Memories

I was born in January, (I know this because I was there,) on the kitchen table, when the snow was up to the eaves of the houses. My father had gone down below on horse back to attend to some of my grandfathers sheep herds. I was delivered by a doc that wasnt really a doc, he cared for the animals in the area. When I was a baby my "play pen" was a large box. One day my father came home from work and picked me up and called me his little "Cookie." The name stuck and now I have come full circle and live back in my home town.
Some of my memories are about my bike riding up and down in front of the house outside of the fence. The house faced East and I rode on the North. I loved to play in the red dirt, I even ate it. It tasted real good, nice and clean.
 We had two large trees beside the house and my father attached some bed springs between it for us a swing. He also made us a teeter totter and a merry-go-round out of a wood wagon wheel. We could put our legs between the spokes and push ourselves around. We always had animals to take care of. Our house was in town at the top of what we called Indra's hill. On the next street to the south we would go sledding in the winter. The hill was called Jack Seaton hill. He always had homemade cookies for us, I think I remember he always gave us a drink too, just not sure what, may have been milk or hot choc.
My grandfather had horses, and when we wanted to ride them we would go to his house and he would saddle them for us and then when we were done he would unsaddle them.
We gathered brigham tea from beside the ditch and build a small fire, we used a coffee can to make our tea in. We also threw potatoes into the fire and roasted them. They were wonderful, even the black skins tasted great.
The women of the town always had a quilt on at someone's house and when our mothers would go to the house to quilt and visit with other women, we would tag along. I learned to quilt some but didnt really like it. Most of the time we just played with the other kids that came. I remember playing a card game called "Mark Twain," it was so fun. We spent alot of time on the Red Rock, we would take newspaper and bark from logs and smoke them, WOW, that makes my mouth water.
We moved the house out of town where my father grew hay for his animals, we helped skin the bark off the posts for fences. We would go pine nut hunting in the fall. My father and mother always got a deer and would hang it from the rafter of the house, I remember my mother going out with a sharp knife and cutting off parts for our supper.  I helped skin out a pig, that was neat. I would go swimming in a ditch up at the top of the field and down through a slough into a pond. We also went swimming in different ponds around the area. When they built the new highway...in 1957-8, I fell in love for the first time. His name was Paul Crandall. His father was the contractor building the road. Crandall Construction built a yute pond (Not sure how that was spelled) in the creek bed below town. The pond was deep and had crystal clear water in it and we loved to swim in it.
My mother was a wonderful cook and she made lots of candy. She never owned a mixer so everything was beaten by hand. When she would hold a spoonful of fudge up and let it run back down into the bowl, (this was to help it cool faster) we would run our finger or a spoon under it to catch some. She made candy and took to the primary kid all the time. When I graduated from Primary, they called me to be the sun beam teacher and I remember making cup cakes for my class. We met in what is now the Relief Society room.
We would go out to the base of the red rock behind my grandfathers house and build a big bon fire. The older boys in town would bring old tires and it lit up the place where we could see to play games. All the things we did in town were as a group and it was so much fun when the older boys, the ones I remember the most helping us was Gerald Stock and Melvin Dutton, they would be the leaders for the game Run My Sheepy Run. and Red Rover. The older boys would move Joe Hughes outhouse from his property every Halloween...down to the main street in front of what used to be Angus' store. Sometimes they only tipped it over.
Marion Clark had an old building in the back of his place which we decorated with posters all over the walls. The pictures were movie stars and my sister Linda loved a certain movie star so most of the pictures were of him. When we were still living down at the old place some of us kids dug a large hold at the base of the red rock and covered it with wood and used it as our play house.
There was one girl in town that didnt like me and kept teasing me so I lit into her. She had on a nice dress and I tore it up pretty bad. She was older than me and alot bigger. I had to go down and tell her I was sorry. Im sure I was punished for it.
I used to help herd my grandfathers sheep out to the shearing corral out at Kodacrome. We would stop to eat lunch and my grandfather would make sour dough biscuits for us and we would drink coffee. Mine had alot of milk so I guess you could say I drank milk with a little coffee in it.
One day my oldest sister took a bunch of kids and walked to Hennrieville over the mountain, the highway hadn't been built at that time.  We love to sit on the road at the bend by Wilford Clarks Home, it was the only place where there was a street light, and talk for hours.
I was one week from being 13 when my mother died. That is still as plain in my mind as if it just happened. I was so full of grief that during the funeral I couldnt stop crying. We sat on wood chairs in the chapel, there were no pews at that time and the church building was only 3 rooms.
Every Christmas someone would cut a really tall christmas tree and on christmas eve we would all go to the church and decorate it and everyone that came had to bring a present marked "girl" or "boy" that way everyone got a present.
When my father built a wire cover over his hay, up high, he put an old steering wheel and a car seat up there and we played we were traveling. This we did for hours at a time. My brother and I played marbles alot. You take a spoon and dig 5 small holes, one of them being in the middle of the square made by the other 4 holes. We had one large marble and a bunch of smaller one and we had to flip the large one to hit the small ones and go around the whole square and into the middle hole. The one that got it into every hole was the winner.
I started babysitting when I was nine. There are still 4 families in town that I baby sat for.
When I was sad or unhappy I would go to the cemetery and lay on my mothers grave and cry my heart out to her. It always brought me some comfort.
My greatest wish in this life is to be like my mother, and I'm sure I have let her down alot. She was the most important person in the world to me. I was so thankful I had her singing voice. and so sad that I have lost it and can no longer sing. Even 55 years after her death I still miss her with all my heart and tears come to my eyes when I think of her. Maybe someday I can make her proud of me.