My God-Loving Mom breaks the law and finds joy in it; other mothers important to me, presented in the order in which they entered my life

This is Mom, Thora Ann Roderick Hess, the descendant of Mormon pioneers who pulled handcarts across the plains to settle in the Rocky Mountains after being persecuted and driven out of the eastern United States for their beliefs  - which, yes, included polygamy. Mom was born into a hard and sparse life, yet she found beauty all around her - in the songs of birds and the brightly colored petals of flowers and the fluttering wings of butterfies - in all the creations of the God to Whom she was determined above all else to bring her family back to.

When I was small, we would sometimes walk together. Butterflies would flutter around us and honey bees would buzz by to land upon the flowers and suck their nectar. Mom would sometimes pick a flower - dandelions, mostly, because we were in a town and could not pick the flowers that grew in gardens, but I also remember roses, daffodils and tulips in her hands.

And to a child, there was no flower more beautiful than the dandelion.

When Jacob graduated from Wasilla High, she came to visit us. Afterwards, on a beautiful, exquisite day when the temperature rose into the mid-70's for the first time that year, we took her on a drive up the valley to the Matanuska Glacier.

She marveled all the way. "I never thought I would live to see anything so beautiful as this," she exclaimed.

There is a visitors area alongside the road in the park that overlooks the glacier. A nature trail runs from the parking lot through the woods and over a steep drop off. At the entrance to that trail a sign warns visitors not to pick flowers. It is illegal.

We became separated as we walked, she taking her time as the rest of us scurried ahead.

This was not because old age had slowed her. Indeed, when we would visit her in the Salt Lake City Suburb of Sandy where she and Dad spent the final decades of their lives, I would accompany her on her daily walks and I would have to break out of my natural pace just to keep up with her. Even in her mid-seventies, she was a swift walker.

Mom took her time this day just to observe the beauty - and to illegally pluck some of it to take back to Wasilla with her. 

She was so thrilled that I could not tell her she had just broken the law.

Park rangers - here is the evidence of Mom's crime spree - but you cannot arrest her, boys, because she lies in the ground now, alongside my dad and my brother, her son, who, despite her faith, could not be healed by all Priesthood blessings administered in good faith to him.

I wish that I could tell you that Mom's life came to a peaceful and happy end, but it didn't. Her final decade was a long, drawn-out episode of misery upon misery, brought on, I believe, not by lack of faith and hope but because of faith and hope, and the failure of life to live up to the promises of faith devoutly adhered to. 

Yet, when the memories of the misery feel as though they are going to overwhelm me, I do have this photo to look back upon, to remember a day when my mother broke the law; when she was overcome with joy in the sheer beauty of the world that rose and fell all around her.

It is one of the absurd ironies of my life, but I have very, very, few pictures from our early days together of the beautiful woman who became my wife and the mother of my children.

In those days, she almost always refused to let me photograph her. It was extremely frustrating, to have such beauty before me all the time and not be able to photograph it, but that was the situation.

Yet, upon this day, after a rain that fell upon the cottage in Provo, Utah, where we began our life together and made our first baby, the light was so soft and beautiful and she looked so lovely standing in it, under her umbrella, that I begged her to let me photograph her.

Reluctantly, she consented.

I did not do my subject justice, but even so, I treasure this photo. Sometimes, I pull it up on my computer screen and just stare at it for long periods of time. To this day, I have yet to look upon greater beauty than that possessed by this gentle, sweet, woman - loving mother and now grandmother. 

Were it not for this woman, there would never have been a Margie to become the mother of my children. This is Rose Pinal Roosevelt, Margie's mom, with our sons at her camp that borders her corn fields in Carrizo Canyon, on the Fort Apache Indian Reservation, home to the White Mountain Apache Nation.

Near here, she gave birth to my wife under the open Apache sky.

And the corn that is grown here is not yellow, but red, orange and black. The seeds have been with the family since time immemorial.

Margie was very worried the first time she brought me home to meet her mom and her dad - just as I had been when I brought her home to meet mine. Concerning the subject of who I should marry, my mom had been adamant on three issues: she must be chaste - a virgin, she must be Mormon and she must be white.

Yet, when my parents met my brown-skinned soul mate, they saw her inner beauty and quickly accepted her. Margie, too, had been raised to believe she must marry an American Indian, if not an Apache, and so feared the reaction of her mom and dad to meeting me.

They, too, accepted me immediately.

It got a little more awkward in some ways after we got married, because in Apache tradition, a man is never supposed to be with or talk to his mother-in-law. When Margie was growing up, she would see her mother's mother make a quick departure whenever her dad would approach.

So, when I would come around, Rose would have this feeling that she could get up and leave, yet it did not seem right to do so, so - most of the time - she would stay. Over the years, she grew more comfortable with the idea.

As for me, I enjoy being around her, especially when she cooks over the open fire. I would hate to think of it being any other way. Yet I still feel a little funny, sometimes, when I think about how I caused her to break out, just a bit, from the tradition that had formed her.

I share not one drop of blood, either by lineage or marriage with either of these two women, Mary Ellen Ahmaogak on the left and her mother, Kanaaq, Florence Ahmaogak, on the right.

Yet, I include her here because in the year 1995, Kanaaq's husband, Bennie, took me into his whaling crew but in doing so, it was more than that. He took me into his family as well. Kanaaq originally wondered about the wisdom of this, but Bennie was the captain and so she accepted it.

As the season drew on, she began to call me, "my baby boy," and would laugh affectionately when I would come up from the ice and enter the house. She kept a bed ready for me, and the coffee pot hot.

There are no papers to prove it, no ceremony was performed, but Bennie and Kanaaq did adopt me in an Iñupiaq way. Their sons and daughters call me brother, their children, uncle - but they say "Ataata Bill."

After that season, whenever I would show up in Wainwright, Kanaaq would say, "Welcome home, son. Your room is waiting for you."

She would feed me generously, and it was always the food of the Arctic land and sea, such as the bowhead maktak that she and Mary cut here.

There is a much bigger story to tell here and I plan to, down the road a bit.

And if some of you, knowing that when I am in Barrow I most often stay with Savik and Myrna Ahmaogak and that they also treat me as family - as do so many others on the Slope and elsewhere in Alaska - wonder why I have not included a picture of Myrna here, it is because when I am out with Myrna and Savik, I am introduced as "my brother," not my son.

It feels just as good.

I also feel a very strong bond to every whaling crew that ever took me in - George and Maggie Ahmaogak, Kunuk and Mabel Aiken of Barrow, Elijah and Dorcas Rock of Point Hope, the Aishannas of Kaktovik and Nukapigak and Rexford of Point Lay.

A few years after Jacob was born, Mary Fatt, the woman at right gave birth to Lavina and raised her in the Navajo way. So far, I have spent very little time with Mary, but, just knowing Lavina, I know she is a great mother.

Regular readers know Lavina, mother of my grandsons, Kalib and Jobe. Here she is, Friday night, holding Jobe in the Apache cradleboard that his Aunt LeeAnn made for him. The event is a baby shower. I had planned to post images from the shower as part of this post, but I have run out of time.

I will make Jobe's baby shower the subject of my next post.

To all mothers everywhere: Happy Mother's Day!

On a snowy day in Wasilla, I write a bit about my friend, Vincent Craig, who battles cancer down in Arizona

It was a good snowy day here in Wasilla. As I have stated, due to the fact that I have a great deal to do and have worn myself down a bit, it has been my intention to blog light probably all week. So today, I took a few pictures of the snow from the car as I went to pick up Royce's new batch of medicine and it was my plan to post two or three, say something insignificant and then get today's blog out of the way.

But then a request came to me on Facebook from Maridee Craig, the wife of my good friend Vincent Craig, through their son, the filmmaker Dustinn Craig.

With the support of his family and friends, Vincent is fighting a tough cancer. Vincent is well-known in Arizona and elsewhere in US Indian Country for his talent as a cartoonist and a song-writer performer and so Maridee - who is also my cherished friend - asked that I write a little story about him for The Fort Apache Scout, the newspaper of the White Mountain Apache Tribe.

So I did. Although I sat down to do it at about 10:00 PM, I did not actual start to write until a bit after midnight, because I put some of his music on my office stereo and I could not write while it was playing. All I could do was sit there and think, remembering the days when those songs were young and so were we.

I finished writing it just after 3:30 AM. It is now 4:32 AM.

So, although it will make this a fairly long entry word wise, I am going to put what I wrote in here. Few, if any, readers of the Fort Apache Scout will see it here.

I have many old photographs of Vincent in negative form, but it would take some real doing to find and scan them. I did a search in my computer and the only images that I came up with were four of him with his cat, the late Gato, that I took on a visit that I made to Whiteriver in February, 2002, and another of him with his guitar and harmonica at Jacob and Lavina's wedding in Flagstaff on March 18, 2006.

I have better pictures of him, but these will have to do for now:

As so many years have passed, I write mostly in the past tense, but I must stress that the man I am about to write about is very much alive.

I first met him in February of 1976, shortly after I began my three-and-half year stint as the editor, photographer, reporter and designer of the Fort Apache Scout. He was an ex-marine and a police officer working for the White Mountain Apache Tribe. He was a poet and a musician who, in one song, could sing his own words, play the guitar, the harmonica and the Navajo flute that he made himself.

His shoulders were broad and his chest firm and stout. He had a wife and son, soon to be three sons, and he was active in his church. He was quick to laugh, even at his own jokes – because he knew they were funny, yet there were tears in his heart as well, and they would come out right alongside his humor, in his many songs.

One day, he walked into my office with a big cowboy hat on his head, boots on his feet and laid a stack of his drawings and paintings down upon my desk.

As he led me through them, my first thought was, “Wow! Here is the Navajo Norman Rockwell!” I came to realize that I was wrong. This was Vincent Craig, inimitable, a multi-faceted artist of unique talent, creating in the style of no one but himself, with a talent to dive deep into humor, sorrow, and politics all at once.

He showed me two cartoon characters that he had created – Frybread and Beans. So I hired him to do illustrations, cartoons, and stories too. Soon, his Frybread and Beans became famous all across the reservation.

I have no doubt that even if I had not hired him, Vincent Craig would still have gone on to fame as a cartoonist; he would still have created Mutton Man and made him a regular in the Navajo Times, but I am still proud that I was able to give him his start as a professional cartoonist –  even though he sometimes got me in trouble with tribal politicians.

Yet, what I am most proud of is the fact that he became my friend – not just any friend – but a best friend, one whom none other would ever replace, even though we have since become separated by thousands of miles and decades of years.

We both had Apache wives and children of the same age, so we would get together as families, too. Sometimes, my wife and I would babysit Vincent and Maridee’s boys, Dustinn (who is now making his mark in film and TV production), Nephi and Shilo and sometimes they would babysit ours.

We did many things together and it seemed to me that we shared the same kind of bond as did Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid – two popular movie characters of that time period – and I got to see the kind of man that he was.

Vincent has always honored the Elders and in his songs often recalled what they had taught him. He is the son of the late Bob Craig, who, as a Navajo Code Talker, had waded through human flesh and blood on Iwo Jima and had played a vital role in the defeat of Japan.

Vincent wrote a song about his father and this is the poetry that he used to describe him:

“He’s the son of the Four Directions and the child of the Blessing Ways, raised in the loving arms of his mother’s humanity. Wisdom comes to him through the legends of long ago, told by the man who loved the wandering eyes of a little child. My daddy was a code-talking man. With Uncle Sam’s Marines, he spoke on the whistling wind, during the time of man’s inhumanity…”

His desire to be of service to children and youth was strong. He organized the first skate-boarding event ever held in the White Mountain Apache nation.

I once accompanied him and his Apache boy scouts on a camping and hiking trip inside the Navajo Nation. We hiked across miles upon miles of red rock and desert and it grew blazing hot. Some of the scouts thrived in the environment, but others grew tired and wanted to quit. Vincent kept his sense of humor and gentle but determined disposition. He did not scold, he did not chide, but he kept those boys going and when evening came and the air cooled to more pleasant levels, they were proud of what they had accomplished.

Some experiences with youth were hard. There was the boy who had gotten drunk at a new tribal complex that included a small mall, grocery store, movie theatre and swimming pool and had run off into night and disappeared.

In time, a search was launched and Vincent led it. I followed along.

Vincent spotted the body on the rocks alongside the White River at the bottom of the sheer cliffs that dropped nearly 200 feet into the deep canyon cut out by the river just across the highway from complex.

Vincent climbed and rappelled out of sight down the cliff. After he reached the bottom, I felt the vibrations travel up the rope as Vincent removed it from himself and it went slack. Soon, there were more vibrations as he tied the rope to what I assumed was the boy. Then he gave a good firm tug as the signal that it was time to pull the load up. A small number of us began to pull that rope up but the load was so light that I thought perhaps it was not the boy, but only whatever belongings he had taken off the cliff with him.

But it was the boy.

Soon, Vincent was back atop the cliff, lending his calm and knowing shoulder to weeping, shrieking, relatives. Another time, he descended into in an empty shed-sized water or fuel tank to the body of another boy who had died huffing gasoline fumes. A second boy was pulled out alive but brain-damaged, shrieking gibberish, the great potential that he had been born with destroyed. A third boy came out basically okay – but with such a burden to carry.

Once I and enough men to carry a litter followed Vincent on a long hike through darkness along the Salt River and then up the steep grade of one of the many streams that cascade down the cliffs and slopes of the canyon walls. It was a hard hike, because there were many rocks of all sizes to stumble over and we walked through rattlesnake habitat, but a woman had fallen off one of those cliffs, had broken her leg and needed to be rescued before shock overcame her.

Finally, we reached the ledge upon which she lay. She was blond, alert, in great pain but happy to see us.

What followed was a true physical ordeal, but after we got her down the cliff and then carried her in the litter for many hours through the darkness and then into the daylight, Vincent told stories, made jokes – and kept everyone, even the injured lady in good spirits. She even laughed, frequently.

He would often make us laugh: me, my wife, his wife, others gathered together with us at church or other socials as he played his guitar and made his music, but in that music the deep seriousness in his soul did also come through.

Leading in first with his flute in a minor key, followed by his harmonica as he finger-picked his acoustic guitar, this is how Vincent would describe the infamous and tragic removal under Kit Carson of the Navajo from their abundant homeland to the bleakness of the Basque Redondo.

“My grandfather used to take me to the mountains in my youth and there he would tell me the legends of long ago. Between the four sacred mountains we lived in harmony and now you tell me that we’ve got to go, because someone drew a line...

“Hey Mr. President, can’t you see what is going on, they’ve taken the heart and soul from the land, because someone drew a line…”

About the time we would all be fighting tears, he would switch to his tragic-comic ballad, Rita, which begins, “I met poor Rita down by the graveyard yesterday and she told me that she would love me all of the day. And then I told her that I wanted to marry her but she said you’ve got to steal the candy bar…”

Then, nearly 30 years ago, I took my Apache wife and children to Alaska. The visits that I have made with Vincent in the time since can be counted on my fingers – probably of one hand.

In that same time, Mutton Man became popular across the Navajo Nation and Vincent became in-demand as a performer and humorist not only in the Southwest but across Indian Country.

This point was brought home to me one morning when I sat in Pepe’s North of the Border Mexican Restaurant in the Iñupiat Eskimo community of Barrow, Alaska – the farthest north city on the continent. The radio was on, tuned to KBRW. As I ate, I suddenly heard the familiar sound of a flute, followed by harmonica and guitar, and then on to these lyrics, sung in the voice of my friend:

“…because someone drew a line…”

Recently, I learned that Vincent is fighting a cancer strain known as GIST. I have written this article for my old paper, The Fort Apache Scout, at the request of his wife, Maridee, who wants people to know something of the man that her husband is. She wants them to know that he is alive, and that he and his entire family are fighting together as one loving unit to keep him that way. It is the toughest struggle of their lives so far, but it is a struggle of hope.

He has made some performances since he became ill in December, but sometimes he is unable to do so, but not because he doesn't want to. He just needs to work first on his health.

Some misinformation has gotten out there, but there is a fund set up on Vincent’s behalf. Those who wish can donate here:

Wells Fargo Bank

Vincent Craig Donation Fund

Account # 6734185546

To help keep everyone better informed, Vincent and his family recently established a fan page on Facebook.

On February 26, they posted these words, “This morning we had less than 50 fans, and tonight we are up to 662! Thanks everyone for your support, prayers and positivity.”

When I saw the page for the first time this evening, that fan count was up to 2,457. Now it’s 2,458. Well wishes are pouring in.

God be with you, my friend, ‘til we meet again.

I answer a knock upon the door to find two Mormon missionaries standing there, looking back at me; Kalib and Caleb; Breakfast at Family; Talkeetna alpenglow

I was in the bedroom, trying unsuccessfully to log onto an Apple help forum on my laptop, when I barely heard a knock upon the front door. Everyone else was gone, so I went to the door to find these two, Elder Smith of Nevada and Elder Wadsworth of Utah, standing there, looking back at me.

I was not interested in getting into any kind of religious discussion, but, having stood in their shoes, I have a great deal of empathy for these guys, who I know for a fact are really just young men, who want all the things that all young men want, like freedom and female companionship, but they can't have these things for awhile.

I also thought they might like to meet the cats. I invited them in. They posed with Royce.

Muzzy wanted to get into the picture.

He headed toward the missionaries, but this did not please them. In fact, it scared them. They did not think Muzzy was vicious. They thought he would mess their suits up. So I sent Muzzy to the garage.

Elder Smith, Martigny, Royce, Elder Wadsworth. 

Kalib and Caleb on the computer, where the missionaries sat not so long before.

I got up very late today. Very, very, late. It was necessary, though, because I had gotten up very early yesterday and had then worked until very late, not going to bed until about the time that many of the early risers among you were already yawning, stretching as you prepared to leap right out of bed.

How do you do that? How do you leap out of bed in the morning?

Margie had already eaten her oatmeal and so had Kalib, so I went to Family Restaurant by myself.

There was a man there who still reads the newspaper. Sometimes I do, too, but mostly I read it online. By the time the paper version reaches our house, I have usually already read everything in it that I am interested in.

I am part of the reason that newspapers are dying.

And the slow death of the newspapers makes my profession all that much more difficult. But new avenues are opening up. It's just a matter of figuring out how to go down them.

My waitress, who generally knows what I want before I order it. She is very good about not bringing my toast until I have eaten the rest of my breakfast.

As I paid my bill, this guy came walking by, aided by a walker. In my head, I saw how to make a good portrait of him and I decided to ask, but you see that little paper the lady at the cash register is taking hold of? That is the credit card statement that I have to sign.

I did not think the man would move that fast and I figured he was probably going to get in line behind me, anyway, so I sat my camera down, wrote in an extra two dollars for the tip, and signed the bill.

When I turned around, he was gone.

I wonder how he did that? I'm sure no one went out the door. I would have heard it.

I will see him again sometime, but he might not be wearing the "these colors don't run" shirt.

I was busy working away at 3:30 PM, absorbed in what I was doing, when I realized that I had not yet taken my walk. If if I didn't take it soon, it would be dark. So I took it. The sun had gone down, but alpenglow lingered upon the Talkeetnas.

A few days ago, one of my readers left a comment that said my blog makes her glad she doesn't live in Alaska.

I love living in Alaska! If I had to live anywhere else, I would damn near die.

The only thing that bothers me is that ever since I fell and got hurt 17 months ago, it has been one damn thing after another that has kept me from getting out and enjoying the country - except for a few work outings last summer on the Arctic Slope.

But I will get on top of things and I will take you out there and then you will see why I would not want to live anywhere else.

Except for Hawaii, maybe - but just for short periods at a time.

A school bus shoots down Seldon, the glow of the set sun behind it. Now the Talkeetnas are behind me. 

A hard wind blows, glacier dust tears my throat and sinuses apart; I wish it would snow and bury all that damn dust

I took this from my car about noon - the temperature was 36 degrees, warm for this time of year, but the voice on the radio was saying that the wind was 40, gusting to 70, so if you were to have gone and stood out there, it would not have felt warm.

This is all wrong. Wasilla Lake is supposed to be frozen by now. Some years, it has frozen in the second week in October, quite often by the third and almost always by the fourth. In only one other year do I recall seeing the entire month pass without this and the other lakes freezing.

Of course, October has not completely passed and it could yet freeze before the month is over, but I don't think it will.

The ravens were having fun, riding the wind.

They rode it low. They rode it high. It carried them up, it pulled them down.

She appeared on the trail and she shouted at me, but the wind carried her words away before they could reach my ears.

"What?" I shouted back.

She shouted at me again.

"What?" I again shouted back.

Then she really put her lungs into it: "The birds love the wind! They ride it high! They ride it low! It carries them up, it pulls them down!"

The wind grabs the glacier dust and drives it through the air. Glacier dust is extremely fine, like powdered sugar. It is horrible to breathe. And undoubtedly, it has some volcanic ash mixed in with it.

One year, it froze very early, but no moisture came. It did not snow in October, it did not snow in November, it did not snow through most of December, but it got very cold. Day after day of teens and twenties below zero, sometimes 30's and even -40.

And on many of those days the wind tore, just like this. There was no snow to hold any of the glacier dust down, so the wind just picked it up and in the midst of all that cold, blasted it into you.

It was horrible.

Traveling through the streaming glacier dust. I write this with a sore throat, plugged nose and irritated sinuses.

Kalib was in the car with us - with Margie and me, that is. We had been baby sitting him. Fierce gusts frequently broadsided the car. It would rock, it would jerk.

It was windy in Anchorage, too, but not as windy as out here in the valley. On what they call the Anchorage Hillside, though - it would have been fiercely windy.

This was why we went to Anchorage. Every Halloween, they put on a chili feast at the place where Melanie works. Every employee brings in a pot of their own special chili. Melanie wanted her mom to help her as she cooked hers, so she did.

Me, I went off to try to visit a friend who had been severely injured in a snowmachine accident while returning to Wainwright from an ice-fishing trip.  He was medivaced by air-ambulance to Anchorage and then taken to the Alaska Native Medical Center. Also, I finally got that check that I had been waiting for, so I thought maybe I would buy the new Canon G11 pocket camera, because its high ISO, low-light, capabilities are much improved over the G10 that I have been using.

Yet, when the time came, I could not bring myself to lay down $499 for that camera. I really wanted to, but I just couldn't do it. So here I am, at the chili feed - the perfect place to test out the low light, high ISO capabilty of the G11, but instead I used the G10, which is very noisy and grainy at high ISO, but, oh well, so what?

That's Melanie on the left, of course. The fellow on the right is Chancey. A bit over two years ago, he was one of her coworkers at Duane Miller & Associates, but then he left to go be a Mormon missionary.

And where did he get sent? Japan? South America? France? New Zealand?

No. The Mormon Church sent him to Salt Lake City. For two years. To be a Mormon Missionary. In Salt Lake City. But he did get to learn to speak Spanish.

He is not being rehired, but he remembered how good all the DMA chili feeds were, so he came back to eat chili. That vat of chili in the foreground is Melanie's. Pumpkin chili. It is very tasty. "Don't eat too much, Dad!" she warned. "It's very spicy." It was very tasty. I would never have known that pumpkin and chili go well together, had it not been for Melanie.

I did not get to see my friend. They are being very strict about visitors, due to swine flu, and were only allowing two family members to go in with him. I did see his daughter, but not until after the feast. I was able to introduce her to Margie.

He has not yet come to, but he is in stable condition and his prognosis is good. He is just about to turn 70 and still he is shooting about the country on a snowmachine, hunting caribou, catching fish - doing that kind of thing.

Little kids sneak out of church, steal Oldsmobile, go drinking, driving, shoot up the countryside

This is the story that I thought of when I saw Charlie's 1962 Oldsmobile Starfire:

I suppose that it might be an exaggeration to say that we stole the Oldsmobile - after all, it was Randy who drove and his father owned the Oldsmobile. It's just that I was 11, he was 13 but looked ten - too young to drive and his dad had no idea that we had taken the car and certainly had not given his permission, so, in a sense, we had stolen it.

But if you had been with us, you would have understood. It was what Mormons call "Fast Sunday," and if you had ever been a boy forced to sit through such an ordeal as that day - and there was nothing at all fast about it - then you would have wanted to steal a car and go driving in the Montana Countryside, too.

Fast Sunday is the first Sunday of every month and the idea is that you begin the fast on Saturday evening, when you skip dinner. You continue the fast through breakfast and lunch and then break it at dinner. You take the money that you did not spend on food and donate to the church's welfare fund so that it can be used to buy food for the poor.

And when we fasted, it was a complete fast - no food, no water, no juice, no consumption of any kind.

But that wasn't the worst part of it. The worst part was Fast and Testimony Meeting, which came after Sunday School. Usually, the Bishop or one of his counselors would start off by bearing his testimony and after that it was all "open mic." As the spirit struck, people got up to bear their testimonies, and there was always a lot of weeping. There was no time limit and the meeting could last hours.

And Mom always embarrassed me, because she would get up, bear witness for an interminable length of time and at some point would single me out and tell some story that showed what a good, faithful and righteous boy I was.

No boy wants the other boys - not even the other church boys - to think that he is good, faithful and righteous. Mom had no idea about the fights that this kind of thing got me into.

I imagine that when Mom got up and told the story on this particular Sunday, she scanned the congregation, looking for my sweet face and then wondered where the hell I was.

Yep, I was with Randy. We had gotten into his father's Oldsmobile and driven off, two little kids, one of them peering over the steering wheel, trying to stay out of the sight of cops.

Randy came from a poor family, yet somehow he always had money and he was generous with it. So before we headed out of town, we stopped at Safeway and he bought Pepsi, Candy Bars and Twinkies for both of us, then we drove out into the country, drinking and eating.

We broke our fast early that Sunday. 

We drove out of Missoula and past Lolo Hot Springs, down a dirt road that crossed the railroad tracks and then Randy found a place and parked the Oldsmobile.

"I got something to show you," he said.

We got out and I followed him as he opened the trunk. Inside was a .22 rifle and two or three boxes of long-rifle bullets.

We had drank our Pepsi's by now, so we put the empty bottles atop some fence posts, shattered them with bullets, then searched about, found beer bottles - and in those days, one could always find beer bottles laying about anywhere in or near Missoula - put them on the posts and shot them, too.

Then Randy drove us back. He parked the car and we went into the chapel, just as the closing prayer was being said.

Thank God!

There there was another Fast Sunday, a year or so before that one, that also involved Randy, cars and sneaking out of testimony meeting. In this case, the cars were Ramblers, a very pathetic brand of car that was none-the-less popular and there several of them parked in the church parking lot.

The word, "Rambler" was spelled out in the grill of these cars in chrome letters about two inches high that were attached to the car only at the base.

Randy showed me how a well-aimed, swift kick, would knock a letter free of the grill. So after that, probably just as Mom was once again telling the congregation what a sweet and righteous boy I was, Randy and I kicked the R-A-M-B-L-E-R out of every car thus branded.

Afterward, we divided the letters up, he taking one half and I the other.

We stashed them until it was safe, and then each of us took our letters home.

I put mine in my middle drawer, where Mom soon found them. She wondered where I had gotten them and so I told a plausible story.

Unfortunately, the Rambler owners - one of whom happened to be the Bishop - all noticed that they had lost their letters. The next Sunday, the Bishop made an issue of it from the pulpit.

Mom instantly figured it out. For the salvation of my soul, she insisted that I go stand before the Bishop and confess my sin.

I did and it was hell.