Youthful Recollections — Part Two
Making Adjustments
I kept my agreement with myself and attended all the church meetings for the six-week time period. The first couple weeks I forced myself to go and I just endured the boring lectures, classes, meetings, hymns, etc.
Then I started studying the other boys. I found most of them found church every bit as boring as myself and unlike me, who was going of my own free will, they went because their parents dragged them there. Once at church instead of just sitting quietly, as I had been doing, they seemed to make the best of entertaining themselves.
In Sunday School class they did all they could to aggravate the teacher. They threw spit wads and erasers at each other and made jokes about the teacher when his back was turned.
That said I just have to relate one memorable event. Around that time Sunday School class was taught by my friend Wayne’s grandfather whose name was True. Nobody liked him very much and the kids did everything in their power to aggravate him. When he was aggravated, he would just scream at the class but we soon discovered that his bark was worse than his bite, and the more the kids could get him to scream the more entertained they were.
I was often late to class, and everything else, and sometimes when I was strolling down the hall to Sunday School class I would hear True yelling at the top of his lungs: “This is the house of the Lord and you’re supposed to be quiet!”
“Not much quiet coming from him,” I thought to myself.
Then one Sunday, True was sick and the class was taken over by his daughter, Gladys. Immediately the kids had a nickname for her and started calling her Glad Ass. I’m not sure if she caught the nickname or not.
Anyway, we made the mistake of thinking that Gladys would be a pushover just like her dad and everyone started horsing around. Then when Gladys turned her back and started writing on the blackboard the kid next to me, named Mark, picked up an eraser and threw it at another kid. Gladys must have had eyes in the back of her head because she immediately stopped writing, turned around and walked toward Mark with a very serious look on her face.
Suddenly the class went deathly quiet. Gladys forced her head about three inches away from Mark’s head and said: “If you do that again you will regret it.”
Then she turned around and resumed writing on the blackboard.
Suddenly Mark sported a giant grin and the whole class lightened up. As a leader of the rebels, we knew Mark was not going to let a slightly built female intimidate him.
A few minutes later Mark got hold of another eraser. He held it in his hand and looked over the room still wearing that big grin. When Gladys’ back was turned, he threw it at another kid.
Instantly Gladys quit writing on the blackboard, turned around and walked toward Mark. She moved toward him and stopped again a few inches from his head. The class was quiet as a tomb wondering what she was going to do. Mark didn’t seem concerned as he was still grinning, but not so much as before.
Then after about three seconds of ungodly silence Gladys grabbed Mark by his two ears and with great force banged his head on the wall behind him about six times.
Then she stopped, turned around and resumed writing on the blackboard.
We were all absolutely stunned. I checked with Mark to see if he was okay. He said it hurt his ears more than it did his head.
For the rest of the class all the boys were perfect angels. The same went for the next Sunday, but when her father True returned things went back to normal.
Anyway, a study of the other boys revealed that they made the best of their time in church as to relieving themselves of the boredom. I wasn’t really into aggravating the teachers even though my constant lateness to everything did manage to do that somewhat. I was not only late to church meetings, but also my school classes.
I remember one day I was so late to Sunday School class that I figured I better sneak in. I went outside the building and found a window to the class and motioned to a friend to open it. When the teacher’s back was turned I climbed through the window and sat in the chair.
The teacher turned around and looked at me and said, “Oh, hi, Joe, I didn’t see you there before. Would you please give the prayer?”
I looked around and then said, “Which do I give? The opening or closing?”
All the kids laughed because I didn’t know if the class was beginning or ending and I was put on the spot.
Anyway, I decided that overall I didn’t want to irritate the teachers and authorities any more than necessary and sought for other ways to do my part in relieving the boredom.
One thing I did was to start a contest to see who could bring the most outrageous thing to eat or drink during the Sacrament meeting without getting caught. I took the cake on the eating part when I brought pork chops and ate them without getting caught, but my friend John Cannon (Cannonball in the story I posted) won the prize on the drink. He brought a large Coke, sat in the midst of the congregation, and drank the whole thing with no straw without getting caught.
My friend Brent tried to match his record and came to church with a large Coke in his inside jacket pocket. To his surprise the Bishop called him to go up front and give the opening prayer. We all watched him as he walked up the isle. The weight of the Coke made his jacket sway back and forth and we thought the Coke was going to fall out and roll down the isle. We thought that would have been the funniest thing possible, but Brent managed to give the prayer and return to his seat without incident.
Anyway, after the six weeks I assessed the situation and decided that with a little improvisation that I could handle attending church and I decided to keep going. I just hoped that the things I would have to do to entertain myself wouldn’t keep me out of heaven.
I discovered that blending in with the other guys who were as bored of church as I was took the edge off dealing with the problem. I made a number of friends who went to church, usually dragged there by their parents, and enjoyed mingling with them after the service was over.
As we were talking before going home, we often had our own theological discussions much more interesting than church services. Some of the questions for speculation were:
[1] Do we still eat after we die?
This was probably the number one mystery to us as all of us enjoyed good food and didn’t want to go without it in the next world.
[2] Then we wondered if we would still maintain our sexual identity and the part it would play in the upper and lower kingdoms.
[3] A lot of people thought Jesus was going to come again before 1970. The elderly Mrs. Jones was always teaching that He would come in 1966. We hoped this was wrong as we all had a lot of fun stuff we wanted to do that it seemed the coming of Jesus would spoil.
[4] We talked about the mystery of how some friends as they got older turned into religious babblers, especially after they went on a mission. Whenever someone came back from a mission the question we wanted answered was whether or not “they” got to him.
I remember my friend Brent visiting me after a rebel friend came back from a mission. He entered the door with a somber look on his face.
“What’s the matter?” I asked.
He looked at me and said, “They got him!”
“They got who?”
“Nels,” he said. “I never thought Nels would go religious on us but they got him.”
“That’s too bad,” I said. “Maybe he’ll shake out of it after a while.”
“I don’t know,” said Brent. “He’s even got that missionary twang when he speaks.
Nels did partially recover but he and others scared us as to what we could become of us if we were not careful.
[5] Older people in general concerned us. It was a mystery to us that they liked the big band music and couldn’t relate to rock and roll. It was a mystery as to why devout church goers were about 30 years behind on fashion and always drove so slowly. We all hoped that was not going to be our fate as we grew up.
During these discussions I must have told someone I believed in reincarnation as one day the Bishop again called me into his office and said, “I hear you believe in reincarnation.”
“Yes” I said. “It makes sense to me.”
“That’s a false doctrine,” he said. “In fact, it is the doctrine of the devil.”
“Is that so?” I asked incredulously. “Is there anything in the scriptures about it?”
“Yes there is,” he said and fetched a Bible and turned to Hebrews 9:27 and read: “It is given to man once to die and after this the judgement.” He put the Bible down and said, “See. This tells us we only die once. That means there is only one life.”
“It does seem to say that,” I said.
The Bishop looked at me again and added, “Furthermore, the Prophet has said there is only one life and we know he is correct because he speaks for God. Now will you accept there is only one life and stop telling people you believe in reincarnation?”
The prophet speaking for God didn’t impress me that much but I did believe the Bible was true and the scripture did seem to indicate one life. Based on that I told the Bishop I would accept the idea of one physical life, though at the time one life did not seem a fair system.
While still in my thirteenth year I developed an interest in making homemade rockets. I was a little like the guy in the movie October Sky except my first rockets were completely homemade including the engines.
On the day after Christmas Dec 26, 1958 my friend Larry Larson and I were completing a rocket engine made of a CO2 cartridge fueled match heads from book matches. I was just finishing tamping the last match heads of the 25th book when it exploded in my left hand in the kitchen.
After the smoke cleared I looked at my hand and saw that it was a mangled mess. I thought I was going to lose my whole hand. Then I wondered about my right and was afraid to look at it. I could live with the loss of one hand, but what if both were damaged? Finally, I drummed up the courage and pulled my right hand up before my eyes. I was greatly relieved to see that it was OK. My mom wrapped my hand in a towel and got a neighbor to drive Larry and I to the hospital. Larry had a couple pieces of metal strike his hand but he was not hurt badly.
After we got to the hospital, they did surgery on me for eight hours. A lot of the work consisted of digging out match heads that were blown up into my wrist and arm. They finally sewed me up with over a hundred stitches.
As I was recovering, I received a lot of visitors. There was one thing everyone said and that was how lucky I was. I didn’t feel very lucky, but everyone said I was lucky I wasn’t dead.
Another thing that just about all visiting adults, especially church authorities, said was:
“I bet this taught you a lesson to never make rockets again.”
I enjoyed tweaking them by replying:
“Well, I won’t be making them until I get out of the hospital. I will be more careful next time though.”
This statement always sent a jolt through their consciousness.
Actually, this was a truthful statement. I did plan on making more rockets after I got out of the hospital. In fact someone brought me a book to read on rockets and my interest was much greater than ever.
Reading this book changed my life in two different ways. First it increased my desire to learn scientific principles and secondly it was the first book I had ever read in my life. I read what I had to in school, but had never read a book through on my own. It took the boredom of a hospital room to force me to start reading so there was a silver lining in the accident.
As it turned out I lost three fingers and badly damaged the rest of the hand. Altogether I had six surgeries over a three-year time period to make a useable hand.
After I got out of the hospital, I built more rockets than ever, but safer ones. Instead of making my own engines I ordered them pre-made from the Estes Company in Colorado. After church I often invited a crowd over to my place to watch the launching of a new rocket.
This kind of concerned church authorities as some thought was leading other kids in a dangerous direction. I had difficulty in convincing some adults that the new rocket engines that were pre-made were safe.
As I now look back, I am surprised I didn’t get thrown out of the Mormon church earlier than I did.
Life is trying things to see if they work. -Ray Bradbury
June 18, 2008
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