Grampa's stories

Welcome back to Grampa’s stories. Now for a change of pace.   I grew up in Salt Lake City. We had a big yard, were members of a swimming club, and pretty much had all the friends and things you could ever want in the city. But my mom decided moving to start a small family farm was part of our future. We were all excited about that at the time. When we first went down to Castle Valley to see the land, nightfall was fast approaching. We stopped at the sales office and were told we could set up camp near the old homestead at the bottom of the valley.  It was dark by now, and we found bats living in the old cabin, so we chose to place our sleeping bags under a canopy of trees. Exhaustion soon overcame anticipation, and we quickly drifted off to sleep. Morning came quickly, and when we awoke, a herd of horses had wandered carefully into our camp and surrounded us. They sniffed our sleeping bags, and snooped around curiously. This was brand new for us, and the horses seemed gigantic...

You have never heard this story. I know that because I was just reminded of it only recently.   It was a long time ago. I had some good friends in high school. We did many things together. Others were just acquaintances.  One fellow with whom I had quite a bit in common was Danny Marks. I went to a small school, so I pretty much knew everyone. Danny worked at City Market with me, too. So we became friends and happened to go skiing together in Grand Junction on occasion.  So I was chatting with Danny on Facebook a few weeks ago. He went to Texas 50 years ago when he left Moab after graduation, and he still lives there now.  He said, “Hey Matt, hope you're doing well. It's official, the government finally released the footage of this cover-up from 1980. Hope you remember.....” Then he sent this video of a person falling off a chairlift at a ski resort one winter.  He said, “The video was a joke, but it could have been you and me when we went skiing in Colorado. Th...

The Fourth of July is a big celebration, and it was for our family when I was a little boy. We used to get all dressed up for the local festivities and either ride on floats or drive with our costumes on our decorated bikes in the East Mill Creek Fourth of July parade. Once I was an Indian. Jeff and Kim were Jack and Jill on a cute little float. Fun times, especially the year that I was king… Some of my earliest memories include entering the contest for king of the East  Mill Creek  Fourth of July parade. I was five years old at the time, and it seems it was held at the East Mill Creek Lions Club. I don’t really remember a whole lot about the contest, except that we were in an auditorium that seemed filled to its capacity. The judges watched the children interact as they were waiting before being called to the auditorium.  One by one, the contestants came to the front of the stage where a couple of questions were posed. The panel of judges asked me to tell my favorite tel...