When I was about eight years old, my parents took me out of school a few days early to make a trip to Mexico to visit my grandparents and to help move my Uncle Hugh’s family from there to Utah. I remember I had perfect attendance at my elementary school and I wasn’t sure I wanted to miss any school days.

We don’t get to see Cousin Inez very often—perhaps every other year or so. She is older than my brothers and me, so she is more like an aunt to us than a cousin. But whenever we are in Utah, we pay her a visit and are always welcomed as part of her family.

When my oldest brother, Boyd, married his sweetheart, Nancy, I was still in grade school. I had never been to a wedding reception in the United States and was unfamiliar with its customs and, to me, its weird rituals. For example, after the multi-layered cake had been cut by the bride and groom, each holding onto the handle of a gilded knife as if each by himself or herself was incapable of performing the act alone, and it was almost time for the happy couple to depart the festivities, the groo ...

When my family arrived in Monterrey, Mexico, in July of 1957 we might as well have landed on the moon. Monterrey was Mexico’s second largest city and the industrial capital of the country. To us it was a huge, snarling beast, penned in by majestic rugged mountains and high desert wastelands.

My father’s work took him to every major city in Mexico as well as to many small towns and villages. One day in 1961 he received a phone call from his sister who lived in San Diego, California, asking him to help her collect some money from a man she had helped to buy a fishing boat.

Under the direction of Brigham Young, the first permanent settlers arrived in the valley of the Great Salt Lake on July 24, 1847. In Utah, “The Twenty-Fourth of July” is a time for celebrating “Pioneer Day” with parades, marathons, fireworks and a myriad of other festive activities in commemoration of the brave men and women who trekked across a wilderness to find refuge in a desert place that nobody else wanted.

When I was just a boy, I used to enjoy telling jokes and poking fun at people. More than once I was told, “you’re quite a character!” Well, based on that, I figured that “character” had something to do with goofing off and being funny. As the years passed, however, I learned a few things on the subject of “real character.” Many persons over the years have commented on the subject.

The Overland Stage Company was looking for drivers. The three applicants were asked how close they could come to the edge of a cliff while driving a six-horse team at full speed. The first bragged that he could come within two feet of the edge without any fear of going over.

At the conclusion of my first year as high school principal in a small west Texas town, I was handed the proposed outline for the commencement program. It took only a glance to know that I didn’t like it. I informed the senior class sponsor that I would get back with her after making a few changes.

I recently tuned in to the tail end of a broadcast in which I heard a radio evangelist say that if there is intelligent life on other planets in the universe, it cannot possibly be related to us or to our God. Because I heard only his summation of what he had said I did not get the details of his reasoning nor did I catch his name.

Shortly after I arrived in Texas to teach, the Texas Education Agency informed me that I lacked a required course in Educational Psychology. I signed up for a class that was being offered by a state university at nearby Fort Bliss. The first class had barely begun when, in response to a question by the instructor, one of the students said, “The Good Book says spare the rod and spoil child.” The instructor, who held a Ph.D.

I have been privileged recently to attend some emergency preparedness classes being taught by David Sayre and Jo Ann Freeman. “James Wesley Rawles” said David, “tells us to prepare for emergencies by collecting the three B’s: Beans, Bandages and Bullets. Tyler Woods, a preparedness instructor from Texas, tells us to store the four F’s: Food and Water, First Aid, Fuel and Firearms.” So let’s look at these areas in order of importance: Water—It is often said that people can surv ...

Many years ago I worked as a night stocker (sounds a little ominous, doesn’t it?) in an Albertson’s grocery store. I went to work at 10 or 11 p.m. and would get off the next morning at 6 a.m. I would re-stock the candy and nut aisle and operate the cash register for the shoppers who would come into the store at all hours of the night. When I worked in the grocery store, bar codes and scanners had not yet been invented.

I did a double-take as I looked through the May 2012 issue of “Smithsonian” magazine. I realized I was looking at a picture of the little school in Mexico where I received my high school diploma fifty years ago. I borrowed the magazine and, first chance I got, read the entire article. Some space was dedicated to the impact of the Mexican drug wars in the northern part of the country, then the article went on to give a little history of the settlement of the area by American members of the ...

When I became the principal of an alternative school (AEP) in a large school district, I found that drug abuse, gang activity, bullying, violence, sexual activity and disrespect toward legitimate authority were rampant in the campus student population. The disciplinary consequences were weak to the point of being laughable to the students.