Kyo --the latest news.

The V8 with straight pipes is back to normal!

In my last blog I wondered if I should give him a blessing however, I did not want to use my priesthood authority inappropriately . Then a scripture popped into my head from Alma 34: 24 Cry unto him over the crops of your fields, that ye may prosper in them. 25 Cry over the flocks of your fields, that they may increase.

So I reasoned that IF I can pray to prosper in my crops and for an increase of my animals for food why cannot I pray for an animal that gives comfort to my grandson. So I gave Kyo a blessing. Two hours later he crawled out from under the blanket where he had been snuggled to keep him warm for the last couple of days, stretched, mewed, and jumped up on me and started purring. The straight pipes indicated an engine that was idling, but it was a contented purr and he was active again. Over the next two days his activity increased, his appetite increased and the shivering and fever are gone.

Thank you Heavenly Father for the blessing of Kyo in our family.

Today 4 days later he is the playful, bouncy, straight piped purring kitten we acquired. I Thank God for His gift to our family. And yes he climbs up Mount Grandpa and settles on my shoulder out of the way of the rest of the family, snuggles my ear and the purr now roars drowning out most everything. So I would say things are pretty much back to normal in the cat world portion of our lives. He is still skinney but he eats four or five times a day and looks healthy.

That scripture goes on to talk about having Faith, being Charitable, Repentance and having Patience to bear your afflictions and your Hope with be that you will have a rest from all of your afflictions. Love that Book of Mormon.

Dad/Allan

Update on Kyo the cat.

We got sold a sick cat! No wonder the guy that met us at the Flying J in Layton (65 miles from home) took off right after getting his money! The kitten was real playful and loving but skinny.

Friday morning Kristen and I took the cat into the vets and $175 later, two blood tests, a de-worming, and a cillin shot we brought the kitten home and Marilyn and I have been snuggling the cat ever since. He was very active Wednesday, but went down hill Christmas day. Friday morning he hardly could lift his head. The doc said he had a 105 fever and it could be a couple of viruses hence the blood tests.

The V8 needs a little tune up but still runs. He sleeps all day and night. We keep him either inside my shirt with my body heat to prevent shivering or wrapped in a blanket.We are trying to feed him using an eye dropper and high protein food and praying he survives. The vet called and said the two tests were negative and he is guardedly optimistic. James is now watching a video and holding Kyo.

I am going to search the internet for hints on how to heal him. We've got a bit of cash invested and we really like the little guy.

I wonder if it is appropriate to give him a healing blessing.

Keep him in your prayers. This has made me wary of ads in the paper but you pays your fees and takes your chances. There are dishonest people out there. Should have prayed harder.

Dad/Allan

Kyo the CAT Christmas Eve 2008

Did I mention a cat that would sit in my lap and purr?

Well Kristen got a kitten that climbs all over me, nuzzles my neck, sand papers my chin, and purrs! That little guy has a V8 motor with headers and straight pipes! When James is up he occupies Kyo’s time but when bed-time comes, I get the attention. If I sit down the cat climbs up my leg, belly and chest to my shoulder, nuzzles me and perches behind my neck, all the time purring. It is hard to hear with that V8 right in my ear! And I am getting hard of hearing! Eventually he shuts down that V8 and closes his eyes. But if I lean back and touch him it kicks in that V8 aroar all over again!

Last night I thought it would be cute to bring him to bed with me expecting him to curl up at my feet. BIG MISTAKE! I rolled over and turned out the light but he was not ready to sleep! He nuzzled my right ear; then licked my hair; then he nuzzled my left ear! I pushed him down the bed a-ways but he was back in a flash! I finally pulled the covers over my head but made the mistake of leaving my hand out. He nuzzled my hand! And that consarned V8 was throbbing all the time. Finally I pulled in my hand in under the covers but he just walked all over me. He finally decided that I was not going to play, gave up and let me sleep.

Did I say something about sitting in my lap?

In the morning I called him and he answered, crawled out from under the bed, stretched, yawned and mewed “Good Morning” and strutted off to find James. All the time that V8 was running again!

I don’t think I need another cat. This one has decided he has enough attention to share with both James and I.

Happy, the dog, basically ignores him. Unexpected, but very good.

And I still need to walk the dog!

Merry Christmas

Allan

Last night Kristen and I went to Salt Lake to look at a couple of cats she is interested in. We stopped at the Humane Society and she really likes a 6 week old tabby. When she picked up the cat and came close to me to introduce me the kitten climbed out or her arms on to me and started to nest on my shoulder. What a selling job that was! I looked at a 2 yr old tiger who started to talk to me as soon as I entered the cattery. He liked the scratching too. Maybe. We also looked at a pair of 6 month old toms who were not that friendly. They looked a lot like her cats in Truro but....
It was snowing and the driving was not good. That is important because Kristen wants to go back and look at those cats again tonight.
It just started snowing in Orem and has been snowing in Salt Lake for a couple of hours. Radio is talking about several accidents and bad driving. Bottom line we are not going to Murray.
Melissa just took my car to the temple in American Fork to go through with Amber Pardon.
It is predicted to have six to eight inches on the benches by morning. Good night to watch a movie.
We'll have to look at cats another time. Kristen wants one for James who misses his dog Face. I'd like one to sit in my lap and purr. Oh well I need to walk the dog anyway.

My first real job

My first real job was at 14 when I went to work for Curtis (Gus) Phillips’ market garden and green house facility. He had a green- house on Corning Road in Norwich and I would walk the back way through the woods from Mulberry Street past Skunk Pond and Joe Bill’s Cave to his house. In the spring the job consisted of transplanting seedlings from flat to flat depending on the size of the plant. A flat was a box about 12x18x2 that we filled with a mixture of dirt, peat moss and other nutrients. We used a board that had a series of pegs set so that when we pressed it into the flat we knew exactly where to put the transplant. Some of the plants we repotted were tomatoes, lettuce and peppers. In the Spring I would put in 2 -4 hours a day after school and 4-5 hours on Saturdays.

When school let out in the summer we went to his farm in Preston where he had about 15 acres of land he worked. We would meet at the Corning road place, climb into the back of the truck, and ride to the farm. (That’s right no seat belts) There was a building in the middle of the acreage where Gus stored hoes and other tools and the Ford tractor. As I remember it the blade on Gus’s hoe was about 1 ½” deep and the ones we had were nearly 3” deep. Many years of sharpening had worn his blade to that height.

I can remember crawling on my knees thinning carrots and beets to about an inch apart. I used to complete with Louie Phillips who was about 6 or 8 years older than I and much bigger. It was hard but I could mostly keep up with him. We also hoed any thing else that needed weeding. At first one of the Phillips boys would QA our weeding and we soon learned the correct way or were quickly corrected. This was honest hard work and I quickly learned how to do a good job. Peer pressure then was to work hard. Some boys came for a few days but soon left. Our pay was fifty cents an hour and I made $20 for a full weeks work. That was a lot of money in that time frame. I could buy a coke for $0.05

In the early summer we would start our tans slowly keeping our shirts on most of the day to avoid burning. As we became more immune to the sun’s rays we could leave the shirt off longer. After a few weeks nobody wore a shirt at all. We were nicely tanned. When I went into the Navy 3 years later I still had a tan line on my back from working outside with out my shirt. No one was worried about skin cancer or used anything that was associated with the letters SPF.

Because of staggered plantings there was something to harvest most of the time. Gus would fill up boxes on his truck and take them to Norwich and New London to sell to the stores. We were left with Louie in charge. He was a tough boss but we had learned how to work and there was no thought of goofing off. Still today when it comes to physical labor I only know only one way to work and that is to get at it and get the job done. My family yells at me to take it easy when raking or the like. I just do not know how to do that.

At tomato harvest time I would come home with green stains up my arms to the bicep. We picked all kinds of things except things that required cutting such as celery and lettuce. Gus and his boys did that. We mostly did the weeding. The toughest job was harvesting carrots because it generally done after the first frost in the fall, so it was cold, wet and muddy work. I was glad that it only lasted a few days. Gus would plow a furrow beside the row of carrots and then return with the tractor pulling a wagon and we would pull the carrots by hand and then throw them up onto the trailer. It was miserable cold wet work and the least enjoyable part of the job.

One day while we were taking our usual 15 minute morning break someone broke a bottle of coke on the barrel used for trash. When we came back in at noon for lunch we could see where that Coke had eaten away the rust on the side of the barrel. It was nice and shiny. I have since wondered what that Coca-Cola does to your insides.

The biggest thing I learned was the value of hard work and what it cost to support my self. I lived at home and ate there but all my other needs were supplied thru my own labors. Allowance was not a word ever used in my home. If I wanted it I had to earn the means to buy it.

My First Job and other early teen memories

My First Job and associated memories (updated 10 Dec)

As an early teen and freshman in High School (1953) I had a few jobs one of which was riding the Bond Bread Truck selling pastries door to door.

I used to hang out at the corner of Hamilton Ave and East Main St. in Norwich. There were two competing fountain shops on opposite corners Lu's Lunceonette on East Main and Pedace's on Hamilton Ave. Lu's had a pinball machine that cost a nickel a game and depending on score you could rack up a bunch of games. The owner would buy the games from you too but that was defined as gambling and the city shut that down. It only went underground. The store made money from the sodas (real fountain Cokes with a squirt of cherry flavoring) and candy (squirrels made of caramel and nuts and nearly as big today’s bite sized bars and only a penny then), magazines (Car Craft, Hot Rod etc.) and sandwiches (Grinders BLT, Hamburgers etc) that we bought while playing. I soon learned that there was no point to standing in front of a machine, jabbing the flippers, and gently nudging the machine just to build up a score. If you weren’t gentle it would register a tilt quitting and losing that game (and your nickel) and possibly the ones you had won. There were a couple of guys that were real good at pinball. Kinda like the Xbox today. I did not receive an allowance so I had to guard what money I did have carefully. Spending it on the pinball machine or the juke box did not make sense. I could watch and listen and enjoy it just as much.

We hung out at Pedace's which was a smaller scale luncheonette. Jimmy Pedace owned a house about a mile down Hamilton Ave across the street from a large mansion like house the he and his brothers built. Later on I believe he sold the property and a series of high rise apartment buildings were raised there and as I remember it they were rented to senior citizens. The Pedace family were involved in Norwich politics. The cooler (tougher??) guys hung out at Lu's and we were not quite as cool so we hung out across the street.

The usual activity was standing on the corner watching all the girls go by (good oldie song) with friends like Francis Delaney. The only problem was that in this part of town there weren’t many girls passing, mostly cars. To really see the girls we had to go down town and hang out in Franklin Square at the Woolworth’s five and Dime store coffee counter but that is another story and later in life.

From about 14 years old I have purchased most of my wardrobe. As I earned money I spent it on the latest fashions, pegged pants, bopper chains etc. A pegged pant was made as narrow as possible at the cuff and pleated at the waist topped off with a white T-shirt. A bopper chain was a golden watch-fob chain and which attached to your belt by a clip and then draped loosely down the leg to almost the knee and ended back in your pocket. A lot of times we had our lucky rabbit’s foot on the end. Most of the time we just stood on the sidewalk, menacingly twirling the chain around our forefinger and glaring at those who drove by. Oh, the most important part of the attire was the “DA” hair cut. The coolest guy had a pack of Lucky Strikes at his shoulder with the T-shirt sleeve rolled over it to keep it in place. For an example of how we looked just remember the movie “Grease” or the “Fonz” on Happy days. But I digress as this was a little later than the Bond Bread days.

Other entertainment was trading baseball cards, flipping cards and pitching pennies against the wall and talking about cars. Girls were not really a topic yet.

Twice a week the Bond Bread driver would stop and pick up a kid to go with him on his route. He drove an early 50’s panel truck. In this era door to door sales was a common thing. We used to have a Watkins man come to the house with his demo case of high quality spices and other kitchen needs. The Fuller brush man also went door to door selling high quality brushes. I understand that the Watkins Co still markets their wares in this manner. They didn’t repeat visits as my mother never did buy anything.

The Bond Bread man would stop at various homes and I would grab his tray that was loaded with lots of goodies like doughnuts and other pastries and go to the door of the house and ask who ever came to the door if they wanted anything today. Some times we would change the make up of the tray depending on past purchasing history of that customer. We would work the streets off East Main St in Norwich and go as far down rte 2 to Hallville ( a village in Preston) where there was one frequent customer who lived in the house by the mill there. The sales never amounted to more than a dollar or two and usually less than a dollar. For me it was more of a lark than a job and the seventy five cents I got was icing on the cake. This driver would change the price at different places and this didn’t seem right to me so I quit. Shortly after that he stopped coming to our area and I presume that his bosses found out about his dishonesty.

After Marilyn and I married she related a story of how her family would drive from Manchester CT. to the beaches in Westerly RI. When they got to Norwich her father would say “roll up the windows this is a tough town.” Little did either of us know that it might have been me that they observed, twirling my bopper chain and looking tough. If they only knew how much of a façade it really was. I also had a couple of lawns that I mowed using a push reel mower that I would walk to their houses to mow the lawn pulling my reel push mower. I usually got 50 cents to a dollar each. I also had the lawn at home to do but that was just part of the chores to be done at home and it was expected of me and not paid.

We lost Kristen's Husky, Face last week. When he first came to us he wanted only to get out and hunt a real pain in in the rear. But when he came to live with us in Orem for his last days he became very special to our family and especially to me. Since I am usually around all day he transferred his loyalty to me and came begging to be let out or walked or fed or just paid attention to. We have another dog, Happy, who lives to chase a ball (but really hurts the next day) but Face was much calmer. People would stop me when I was walking him exclaiming what a beautiful dog. Face is the one who could get me to take him for a walk. I need that.

This is the link to Kristen's blog. Remember him with us.

Goodbye Face. We will miss you. I am looking forward to seeing you on the other side of the veil.

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I don't wanna beg but.........

In 1986 Electric Boat (EB) Company transferred my job from Groton, CT to Newport RI. Mom and I prayed about whether we should move or get a different job. We were making friends in Salem, CT and the kids were doing well in school so we really did not want to move. After serious prayer about staying in Salem and getting no answer, we decided to change the decision to accept the move and then our prayer was strongly confirmed. This was the first indication that the Lord was involved. He had been involved in the Salem house but that is another story.

Later that day we drove to RI and started visiting open houses looking for at least a 4 bedroom house. We needed that kind of room with 8 children at home. At the first house we visited that Realtor said she had a 5 bedroom house in Exeter with pool, master bedroom suite, and formal living room on five acres at $225,000. Too much! Way out of our budget. We contacted a Realtor and started the search in earnest. After a few weeks of finding nothing in our price range or even close to our price our Realtor told us about a 5 bedroom house in Exeter with pool, master bedroom suite, formal living room on five acres and that the price had just dropped to $205,000. We went to look at it and the listing Realtor was the one who had told us about this house the day we had started looking six weeks before! Déjà vu all over again. We stretched our budget to make a very low offer of $175,000. It was accepted! I think that the Lord was again involved.
However, the house in Salem did not sell so after six months we released the sellers from the agreement telling them that we really wanted the house but it was unfair of us to tie it up with out our Salem house not selling. They took the house off the market and went to Florida for the winter. We made lots of renovations to the Salem house to make it more saleable. When the Salem house finally sold after nearly 9 months on the market we immediately called our Realtor in RI and made the offer again which was quickly accepted. Financing was quickly arranged. We closed the mortgage and moved in April of 1987. Again the Lord was involved.
This house was about 3700 sq ft. in two stories with an 800 sq ft finished basement with wet bar and large family room. It is a center hall colonial with four large bedrooms and a full bath upstairs plus a small sewing room over the entryway. On the main floor there was a formal 14 x 22 living room with fireplace across the east end of the house. The master bedroom was on the back side of the house with full bath and walk thru closet. It over looked the pool, sauna and back yard. Also on the back side of the house was the dining room also overlooked the pool and a kitchen held the northwest end of the house. Off the kitchen and behind the garage was a hall way running to a ¾ bath that served the pool and to the north was a porch that also over looked the 18 x 36 in- ground pool. In the front there was a 14 x 14 den. In all there were five bedrooms 2 ¾ baths for a total of 11 rooms (13 if you counted the large bathrooms). A two car garage finished the west front of the house. The house lot was about 1 acre (rider mower time) with 4 ½ acres behind us and which sheltered us from I 95. Our front yard was on Rte 3 which used to be the main highway from Ct to Providence when I was in High School

In the first few years we had a ward party and a family reunion at the house. We told Mike that we wanted a better dining room table so he said “get me the 5/4 rock maple lumber and I’ll build you one.” When it was finished and fully extended, with 2 18” leaves, it was 11’ long! And it fit nicely in the dining room. The kids loved the pool and when we were not home the boys would use the roof of the porch as a diving board. Arrrgggh!
Kristen started kindergarten in Exeter West Greenwich school system and graduated in 2000 in the same school district. Mike graduated from North Kingstown HS, as the Exeter-West Greenwich Regional School District was just building a High School, but the other six all graduated from EWG. Lots of memories for the kids.
This house was also known as the house with elastic walls. The kids brought friends to stay for a day or weeks at a time. We had more than sufficient to meet our needs so did not mind sharing.
After getting laid off from EB in 1995 I went through various employments until I was able to retire in 2001. Mike was the first to leave and the house really began to get bigger and bigger as each child left. Mom says that she never found the end of cleaning it. We hung on to the house until our youngest, Kristen graduated from High School and then we put the house on the market, but with the expanding industrial area surrounding it had no attraction as a residence and did not sell even at a price that was 2/3 of comparable houses in residential areas. We received one commercial offer and accepted it. However, the town delayed the approval of the proposed new construction so the offer expired after 90 days. Our expanding light industrial neighbor, Ocean State Auto Auction made us a better offer and since it was a bird in hand we accepted that. 20/20 hind sight says we probably could have got them into a bidding war but we were anxious and it was sufficient to meet our needs. We asked and they agreed to rent the house back to us for ½ what the mortgage payment had been so we stayed there until November of 2001. The auction told us that it was time for their planned expansion and we would need to vacate the house. We decided then to move to Utah. Melissa and Amber lived in Utah with their budding families and we had loved Orem when we lived there before so we packed everything up and moved over the 2001/2002 New Years, and Kristen and her pets came with us.
About four months after we moved, our Exeter dream home was bulldozed and is now a parking lot. All we have now are fond memories and some pictures of our home in Exeter. What you see on the leftis what it looks like now. Just a huge parking lot. Life is not fair!

The first one

Hi

This is the initial post to the family blog. It is a learning experience too so bear with me. The intent is to have a place to tell the rest of the family about our past and the goings on of today. Feel free to comment and let me know what works and what does not work.

Dad