Elusive Treasures

When I started to write this book, I was advised by wise friends not to tell the stories in the first person. However, much of the book is autobiographical, and I felt compelled to write it in first person. I hope it is not a disaster. The various episodes in the book range from absolutely true from start to finish, to a few that start with a real incident but wander off into fiction. One story is entire fantasy.

I was born in 1932 in the old Dee Hospital at Twenty-Fourth and Harrison in Ogden, Utah. Everyone knows that was a bad year in the U.S. and shortly after I was born, they tore down that hospital and built a much bigger one a few miles away. Possibly, they moved the hospital because I was born there, but I never figured out the connection. Later, when I went to Weber College and they moved the school while I was trying to finish a two-year degree, I began to wonder if something about me created some kind of jinx for things. My folks thought they had enough children when I was the third child, but even that went haywire twelve years later when a pair of twin girls came into the home. It was a good family with five of us kids, and they encouraged me to do well in school. I think my dad gave me an allowance, but it wasn't much because he always provided the real necessities-like fishing equipment and hunting gear. Santa Claus helped, too, with BB guns and a bow and some arrows. It was a good life coming out of the Depression with enough money for my dad to teach me the essentials for providing for a family. I learned how to safely handle a gun and how to swim. What else mattered if you planned to survive on ducks and pheasants, deer, rabbits, fish, and a few vegetables you could grow in the backyard? We always had a couple of peach trees too, an early variety and a later one. Everything was planned nicely. Dad was a dentist and could afford to provide some of the best fishing in Utah, Wyoming, Idaho, and Montana. It was great for me and my older brother. I think my three sisters had a little child neglect from a father that was a man's man.