Letter from Neil R

Dear Family November 24, 2010

Once again we come to the end a month and it is time that I wrote a note for the blog. It is always a challenge to know just what to write about, mainly I guess, because at this time of the year there does not seem to be that much going on in my life. Let’s see, I could tell you about my back ache or the leaves coming off my mulberry tree or Brandon taking his scouts for an outing at our house in Myton or the fact that winter is now here or ---.
Yes, last night, ahead of the storm which did not happen at our house, the cold front, which did happen at our house, caused the leaves to decide to detach them selves from the mulberry tree. As they did so the wind distributed a lot of them up and down the street to my neighbors. I’m sure they appreciated my contribution. Anyhow when morning came there was still a pile of them in the middle of the street so I took my blower and rake out and went to work. Soon, with the help of the neighbor we had them corralled and in the bag.
Brandon took the scouts from his Ward, which is in our Stake, out to the Myton homestead for a service project. You know when he was asking me if he could do this I did not realize that these kids all live in apartments and seldom if ever have and opportunity to experience such a large area with out bounds. I guess they raked leaves and could not help but jump and play in them before bagging them. I guess from all reports that they had a ball.
Also included with this note is a story time item that I hope Jerry does not mind me telling. As I was writing it I realized that it was all from my point of view and stories Jerry has told me so if you have a different point of view please let me know and we can make the appropriate change in the future.
In the mean time I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving.
Love You, Neil R


Winter in Buckeye 1957

Winter in Hyrum about 1965

Story Time--Garbage

Story Time -- Garbage
By Neil R

It seems that the talk shows on radio spend a lot of time discussing School lunch programs and the unhealthy eating habits of our school children. While Jerry was here we also took the opportunity to discuss, from days gone by, our school lunch experiences. Now, myself I never did eat school lunch at the elementary nor do I remember what we did for lunch while we attended school at Las Vegas. We however, must have had a lunch period because I can remember the activities we had after lunch. Jerry, however, had lunch room experiences at Myton. As I recall after we returned form Las Vegas Dad worked out here on the front for about three years while the family continued to live in Myton. It seems that Mother either had the opportunity or took the opportunity to work in the lunch room and teach school. When mother taught it must have been the first grade because she got permission to take Jerry to school with her. Jerry was but five or less at the time. So, for how many years I don’t know, Jerry was under the watchful eye of his mother both when she was working in the lunch room and teaching in the school room. Now I know just a little bit about Jerry’s plight due to this situation because when I was in school at Myton Elementary my teachers were living at our house. This put me in an interesting situation where there was not a thing I could do without Mother knowing about it. This is the term my Mother always used on me “Neil, that does not become you”. Well back to Jerry, and we will just talk about the lunch room here and save the school room for another time. It seems in that day, even though they had wonderful food they still had the challenge of getting the children to eat their food. I guess it is because as children we let our eyes do the tasting. As a result a lot of the food ended up in the garbage can. Well it seems that mother would monitor what her son did or did not eat. According to Jerry, mother was continually sending him back to clean up his plate. Well, like I found in life, people, and in this case the children, soon came up with an innovative way to solve Jerry’s problem. One of Jerry’s friends, I guess it was a friend, said to Jerry “Put the food you do not want to eat on my plate”. This is what they did. The friend would discard the food in the garbage and walk out and Jerry with a clean tray would also be allowed to leave and I’m sure mother was really pleased with her son who no longer wasted any of his food.
Now just a little side note, in those days the food disposal unit, as we know it, had not as yet been invented and I’m not sure it’s invention was a good thing, but we did have a disposal available to us. It was called a pig. When mother was working at the lunch room, to help her, in the morning before school I would go to the lunch room and start the fires in the cook stoves and in the evening I would go to the lunch room and get the garbage can which was always full and bring it to our house. What would I do with it? I would feed it to our disposal unit. I must say that pig never did turn up its nose at this offering and he or her was a very healthy pig.


Dinner Time at the Murray’s


Our Disposal Unit

From Anna and Wilmer Murray’s Journal November 2010

Thursday 1, 1979

We went up to the landfill to dump our cans. Visited with Ralph Ive and told him we would call George Merrett about his cat not starting. We went out to Clyde’s, then rushed back to get ready to go the funeral of Allen and June Roper who were killed when their Jeep rolled of the mountain. We forgot to call George,

The funeral was big and a nice one. We saw Garn and Barbara Gilbert and Grant and Syble Peel. He sang, “I need thee Every Hour”. We saw Bernard Winkle, Velma and Ross, Verona, Bud and Doug Holgate, sat by Lola Jones, Mary Dump and Merion Monson.

Don Brokaw called to say they were going to the Temple in Bobbie Kynenston’s place. They will pick us up at 9:30 tomorrow. So I pressed Dad’s robe and packed out clothes to go to the Neil’s or the Darrell’s. Called Ella, she is down with the flu but said
she is better. Then called Darrell’s. Dad said he didn’t want to stay out there but we decided we would. We went to bed early.

Friday 2, 1979

We were ready when Don and Dorelda came and we were soon on our way. We had a good trip out, no storms. We ate our sandwiches as we were going down Daniels Canyon. They ate theirs in Provo Canyon. We went to the 12:20 session and the 2:00 session. They were enjoyable. Then we went to eat and then to the sealing. Superintendent Law was our officiator. He was Superintendent when the Myton School was built. We sealed 160 children to parents. There were two couples besides us. We had just started good when Hallis Hullinger came in with a young couple who had a sealing to perform. So we witensed the sealing of the Spanish boy’s great grandparents. He and his wife were proxies and his step father and Wilmer were the witnesses. During the sealing I had a great felling in my breast, I’m sure it was being accepted. This was while I was proxy for a child. When we were through Brother Law said these dead people could have been right in the room.

We had to wait for our lockers. I got dressed first so went to call Neil. He wasn’t home but Ella said to wait there for him. When I talked to Dad he said lets go home. So we called Ella back, she seemed disappointed. Don would have taken us to Neil’s but Dad is getting like Grandma Winkler, he wants to be home. We arrived about 9:45. Lester called to see if we wanted to kill the lambs tomorrow. I talked to Raija, she and Perry are there. Called Darrell’s, Darrell says they will come next week to get their lamb.

Mother and Dad - Myton

LaVora, Dad and Mother - Orem