Four Events Is Not Enough (Part 5 of 10)

And then track season started. Coach Tripp treated me like I was hot property. Like I was his new secret weapon. My problem was that my shins hurt so much that I could hardly work out. All the indoor workouts had not helped me much. There was one exercise called bounding that was very painful to me and would the residual effects of it remain to aggravate my legs for a while. Coach Tripp had the latest running news at his finger tips. He had me shave the tops of my feet and he taped one or two strips on the top of each foot in a curvy pattern. Then I put on my track shoe or running shoe. It helped a little. But I was mostly being obedient to what the coach wanted. Each time he tapped me up he told me it was like tapping up a thoroughbred horse. My first track meet was the BYU indoor track meet. People from all over the state attended this. I ran the 440 and took 15th in the state. I considered this very good. But first or second place would have been a lot better. Dad was with me that day. He reminisced about putting an antenna on the roof of the BYU Smith Field House many years before when BYU basketball games were broadcast by KSL there. He also took some very good pictures.

Four Events Is Not Enough (Part 4 of 10)

In the off season and while the weather was icy and snowy, we met occasionally inside the building at Cottonwood high school. We ran the halls after school, did calisthenics, and running drills. We wanted to get ready for the track season. Those cement floors were very hard for my legs. But I endured. I had actually developed what are known as shin splints, which are tiny fractures in the bone of the shins. There are very painful and take a long time to get better. I much preferred the outside for running. Even the asphalt roads had more give to them that the unforgiving cement of the school halls. The air was so much fresher and the view was much better. However there was an idea back in the 1970s that running in cold weather would burn your lungs. I dispelled that by doing lots of running in all sorts of weather. Once I even ran home from school with shorts and a t-shirt on and the rest of my clothes in my gym bag. Nothing strange about that, but It was January and there were two feet of new fallen snow on the ground that I ran through. Once I asked my gym coach if I could go run outside in January instead of staying inside that day to play basketball. He practically had me sign a waver that I would not hold him nor the school responsible if I caught pneumonia, or worse, burned my lungs!

Four Events Is Not Enough (Part 3 of 10)

Coach Tripp kept a sign in his classroom window at the school. It had the names of the elite seven runners of the varsity team. This was in a location where everybody in the school could see every day. How I wanted to be on that list. But it was not going to be on there in my sophomore year. The big meet was the region championship meet. As a team we went on a carbohydrate loading diet. This was calculated to start seven days before the region meet. For the first three days we ate nothing but protein. Mom bought me special food, because I couldn’t have any carbohydrates. We also took kelp pills. All this was designed to build our muscles and create a deficit for carbohydrates.. The next three days we ate nothing but carbohydrates. This was to give us energy and the extra carbohydrates would rush into the holes created by eating just protein and give us an extra boost of energy. It might have worked. We’ll never know because Coach Tripp received a call that the Region championship meet was to be postponed one day. By the time we got word, it was too late to alter the diet. We ran a day later and probably did worse even though we had expended so much effort. On the day of the meet though, we all met at the International House of Pancakes for breakfast. Just before we left, Coach Tripp rose to speak. “I don’t know what religion you are necessarily,” he said, “and I don’t really care. But I do know that many of you believe in God. Regardless of how we place in this meet, let’s all go out and really glorify the Lord!” We had practiced many times on the region cross country course at Sugar House Park. Now the real time had come. We didn’t win, but I believe we glorified the Lord.

Four Events Is Not Enough (Part 2 of 10)

I rode my Dad’s bike, which only had one speed. I didn’t ride that to school, but I did ride it on my workouts. It was hard going up hills though. I probably aggravated my ankle doing those hills. I reported to Coach Tripp, every few days, but I was frustrated. I could tell I was being passed by as the cross country team got better and better. I attended the meets as they competed with other high schools. I made friends with many of the runners, Steve and Phil Allen, Bret Parker, Mark Catmull and others. We even had a girl on the team. Since we didn’t have a girl’s team, she just ran in the meets but she didn’t fit into any of the scoring. Cross Country is like golf as far as scoring goes. The team with the lowest score wins. One point for first place, two for second place and so on. The first seven fastest were the varsity and the second seven were the junior varsity, or JV team. At the first of the year, because I had been working out on a regular basis I might have been ranked in the varsity. But with a month layoff, I was going to be lucky to make the JV team.
I went back to the doctor and he finally cleared me to run again. I ran in my first meet at Kearns High School’s course which was in a dry and barren looking field. It had a lot of rocks on the dirt trail and I was so worried that I’d turn my ankle on just one of those rocks. Most cross country courses were in parks and on grass, but could really be on any surface. This was just not a good course for me to jump into. Needless to say I did not do very well. A few days later we ran our own course in practice which was at the Cottonwood Softball Complex, about two miles north on Thirteenth East up from our high school. I had run it before by myself and on this day, I did well. To complete our workout that day Coach Tripp had us run back to the school. I was doing this with three other guys when we ran through a section of Thirteenth East that had a lot of rocks off the side of the road. I turned my ankle again and went down. I soon got up and hobbled around for a few minutes. It was painful but I found I could soon run again in a few minutes. I had injured it just as badly as before. But there was no way I was going to go back to the doctor! This was certainly not the last time I would get injured while running in high school, but I never did go back to my doctor after that. He’d just tell me not to run anymore, ever!

Four Events Is Not Enough (Part 1 of 10)

The captain of the Cottonwood High School Cross Country Team called me during the summer before my first year of high school. He wanted me to go running with him. I met Ray at a near-by park and we ran a few miles together. There were supposed to be others from the team, but none of them showed up. Nevertheless, I was impressed. I met the coach, Ernie Tripp, on the next Saturday when we had another such team workout. He was also the track coach and what a name he had for a track coach, Tripp! After that team workout, we all went to Dee’s Restaurant for breakfast. I had French Toast, but the price I payed for it! Over three dollars! I could have bought a gallon of milk, three loaves of bread, and a dozen eggs and made French Toast for everyone. (I had a lot to learn about restaurants and ordering food.)
And then we had practice right after school on the first day of classes. On that day we ran once around the track and the coach timed us. I stayed right with the seniors the whole way, at one point I was ahead. But as we crossed the finish line together, I turned my ankle and fell to the surface of the track. Coach Tripp gave me a ride home and the next day Mom took me to the doctor. He told me no running for a month. But how was I to stay in shape during that month? I rode my bike several miles each day. And I rode it to school. One day I got to school just as it was time to begin. To avoid being late I didn’t lock up my bike. I figured I would come back and lock it up later, but one thing led to another and I never did lock it up that day. After school I went to the bike rack and in my naivete I was very surprised that it was not there. I spent an hour searching the bushes of the school grounds thinking that some kids had taken it and then dumped it in the bushes as a joke. But it was gone. So much for my first week of not being able to run.

My Sister Julie (Part 8 of 8)

When I was nearing the end of my mission in the fall of 1982, I received a letter from Julie. She explained that the high school was having a Halloween dance. I would be returning home from Brazil on Thursday, October 28 and the dance would be on Friday, October 29. Julie was going to be turning sixteen years old in mid October. She asked me to be her date for the dance. She said, “You’ll be helping me to get into the wonderful world of dating and I’ll be helping you to get back into it.”
Julie and I went dressed as hillbillies with patches on our over-alls and kegs of moonshine. I drove, but it was one of my first times to drive in two years and the other guys (who were in high school) that were with us, made fun of my driving. But Julie and I had a fun time.

Coming Tomorrow: Four Events Is Not Enough

My Sister Julie (Part 7 of 8)

My Sister Julie (Part 7 of 8)
When Julie was fourteen and I was on my mission, I had a Brazilian Companion who saw the pictures of my family. He was charmed by Julie. He even wanted to marry her. One day I was making a recording on a tape to send to my family. My companion wanted to say something to Julie. So he spoke in Portuguese, which was all he knew how to do. I translated, loosely, what he had said, not really translating what my companion had said so forwardly. When my family received the tape, they listened to it. A friend of the family, who was from Mexico was there at the time. He listened to the recording, especially what my companion was saying in Portuguese. He heard my translation and then exclaimed, “that wasn’t what he said.”

My Sister Julie (Part 6 of 8)

Julie was a great babysitter. Parents came to rely on her to be responsible and dependable. It seemed like she was always babysitting someone. And the money she earned was always safely saved away for the future. Later, Julie was a nanny for a family. They all enjoyed Julie so much that the family let our family use their house and yard for Julie’s wedding reception.
But all that was in the future.

My Sister Julie (Part 5 of 8)

For many years a lady kept calling our phone number. She meant to call another similar number but kept getting us instead. Our conversations went like this:
Ring, ring.
“Hello.”
“That you Elsie?”
“You must have the wrong number.”
And then the lady would get upset that she had dialed wrong and hang up. It became a joke for us to call home and try to fool the person who answered the phone into thinking that we were that lady. We’d use that same tone and voice inflection the lady had. Since Julie liked to answer the phone a lot at our house, she got these crank calls the most. I was amazed at how cordial she always was, even though half the time it was one of us goofing off.
Ring, ring.
“Hello.”
“That you Elsie?”
“I’m sorry,” Julie would say, “ you have called the wrong number.”
“Julie, it’s just me.”
“Billy, you teaser!”
“I just wanted to call home and see how things were going.”

My Sister Julie (Part 4 of 8)

Julie grew up with the notion that she was not able to sing very well. However, she over-came that mistaken idea and sang in the Concert Choir of Cottonwood High School. A few years later, when Julie and Karen were roommates at college at Utah State University, they would sit out in front of their house each night and whistle songs together. They would go on like that for half an hour or more.
Karen and Julie were always very good friends. Perhaps being so close in age gave them such a nice bond one with another. Whatever it was, it made them an inseparable pair. Once on a camping trip, they decided to sleep in the orange pup tent. Those two girls made a pathway to their tent and lined it with rocks. Even though we camped there for just a few days, Karen and Julie took great pride in their little “home.”

My Sister Julie (Part 3 of 8)

But even though she did well in piano, Julie’s real talent was in painting. My parents got her into art lessons, particularly oil paints. She painted roses and other flowers and many of her paintings lined our walls in our kitchen, our livingroom, and in other areas of our house. Other people saw her paintings in our home and wanted her to do something for them. Once Uncle Dave wanted Julie to paint a picture of an old bridge he had seen on his mission in France. He showed her a photograph and she created a beautiful painting from it. Everyone knew that painting was Julie’s greatest talent. At one time we were thinking of a musical number that we could all play in Church that would show off the talents of the whole family. Mom and Dad could play the violins, Vera could play the oboe, Karen could sing or play the viola, and Lisa could play her flute. And it was always mentioned that Julie could paint. Or we could do an arrangement of My Country Tis of Thee with Julie on the piano.

My Sister Julie (Part 2 of 8)

When she was in second or third grade, Julie started piano lessons from a young woman down the street named Anderson. One song, My Country Tis of Thee, Julie particularly liked. She played it over and over until she had it memorized. Whenever she walked by the piano she played that song. She could play it fast and she could play it slow, but mostly very fast. No matter where you were in the house, you could hear that song played on the piano and know that Julie was right there.
On a side note, one winter day Julie came home from her piano lesson. She came around the back to come in the house from the back door. There was a very big icicle hanging from the roof of the house which we had not touched. We were trying to see if it would grow big enough to touch the ground. It was very thick at the top but it narrowed down to a very small icicle at the bottom. Julie thought she’s break off that tiny part. She reached out and snapped it off. At that moment, the entire icicle came crashing down on Julie. She required quite a few stitches to get her head taken care of. We all felt so bad. Even years later, dad would go around a house and clear off growing icicles so they wouldn't get too large.

My Sister Julie (Part 1 of 8)

Julie was born in 1966 and was the first child born while we lived in our “new” house. Mom was pregnant with her when we moved from our home at 230 Wilson Avenue to 5145 South 1045 East in Salt Lake City. She was born fifteen months after Karen was born which is the shortest span between any of my siblings. When I was in first grade and Julie was very young, we had the same room. We liked to build houses with blankets and visit our “cousin warms.” Vera called her “Jows” but I called her Julie. Dad called her Jewel. We had a childrens song book and one of the songs was Chu Chu the Big Train. I would sing it to Julie as she was crawling or barely walking, but I would sing it this way, “Ju Ju the Big Train is Coming Down the Track Now.”
Julie seemed to never do anything wrong. Of my parents’ eight children, I’d have to say she is the most obedient. When she was old enough to go to Junior Sunday School, she got a man teacher who was probably just off his mission, named Brother Haws. Julie’s comment was that he stamped his foot if he got upset.
Julie, as she grew up, seemed to have a natural humor. She never tried to be funny but the things she said came out hilarious. She was the funniest person in our family. Once she and Karen were listening to the Story of Ruth in the Bible. They were intrigued by her saying, “I will die were you die, your people will be my people.” It seemed almost natural for them to come up with the additional phrase, “Your sleepy dust will be my sleepy dust.”

Family Vacations In The Blue And White Van (Part 5 of 5)

Dad cooked dinner that night using charcoal briquettes. After the meal he made sure the briquettes were out by pouring water over them. He wanted to use them again the next night so he put them back in the bag and put it on the ground next to some other camping equipment. That night, I woke up in the middle of the night. I poked my head out of the tent for some fresh air. It took me a long time to realize what was going on. Something was glowing a dull red. After a while I got out to get a closer look. It was the coals! And they had come back to life and had burned a hole through the bag. Closer inspection revealed that they had also partially melted the side of the ice chest. I moved the bag which still somehow had one side and a bottom. The camp stove and extra gas in the can were close by. If they had caught on fire it might have been a lot worse. Dad felt bad, but we were all grateful that a melted ice chest was all the damage.
We went on family hikes, and we also went on hikes by our selves. I enjoyed going off into the forest and studying the scriptures for hours on end. On the last night, Dad had us hike to a hill and watch the sunset. He also had us say our prayers up there. So ended our last camping trip before I went on my mission.

Coming Tomorrow: My Sister Julie

Family Vacations In The Blue And White Van (Part 4 of 5)

The first night we all slept in our new large tent. It was big enough for all ten of us to sleep in it comfortably. We teased Lori by making her think that chip monks were in the tent. We each ran our taping fingers up and down the sides of the tent. We were laughing like crazy.
The next morning for breakfast, Karen made orange muffins. She poured the batter right into carefully peeled off, half orange peels. They cooked perfectly over the fire. Karen was always trying out fancy cooking ideas on that trip.

Family Vacations In The Blue And White Van (Part 3 of 5)

Near the end of the summer 1980, we planned a family camping trip before I went on my mission. This was near Bear Lake on the Utah-Idaho boarder. We camped in the mountains on the south of the lake. It was beautiful there and a fitting close to our years of camping together. We would go on one more camping trip all together when I got back from my mission, but we didn’t know that at the time. So this was a special trip.

Family Vacations In The Blue And White Van (Part 2 of 5)

In the summer of 1978 we finally made our delayed trip to California. We visited Linda, Dad’s sister, and her husband, Clint, as well as their children in Escondido. The van was great. Once, while on the freeway, the people in the next car were visibly counting to see how many people we had in the van. Dad let me drive into Las Vegas. At one time, I was driving with the speed of the traffic, which was very heavy, and we were going up a steep hill at 80 miles per hour. The van did what was asked of it. What heart!

Family Vacations In The Blue And White Van (Part 1 of 5)

With every year, it seemed that our light blue, Ford Fairlane station wagon got more and more crowded. We tried to alleviate that by getting a car-top carrier. This was very useful and we were able to store a lot of things on top of the car. However, it seemed we were still crowded. When it was time to go on a long trip in the car, we’d all stake out our positions and get as comfortable as possible. Then Dad would bring out a big ice chest, or a large box. After we’d make adjustments and get comfortable again, then Dad would have us go into the house for family prayers before we left. I reached my full height of six feet, two inches by the time I was fourteen. There was no place in the station wagon that I could sit comfortably. I mentioned this to Mom and Dad when we were planning a trip to California. Because of this my parents changed the plans for that year and we didn’t go to California.
We got a van instead.
My Parents had been looking for a little while. One Saturday in August 1977, we went to test drive a van at Paulos Chevrolet on 40th West and 35th South in Salt Lake. We drove a blue and white van from the model year of 1977. It had a little over 500 miles on it and we took it. It was the newest car Mom and Dad had ever bought up to that time and we were so grateful to have it. There was so much room! We all sat on padded benches very comfortably. Six months later, I took my driver test in it to get my license. My parents kept it until 1991 when they sold it to me. We had it until 2002 when it was 25 years old. In 2001 my oldest daughter, Valerie took her driver test in it too.

A Cold Night On Coon Peak (Part 11 of 11)

It was pitch dark. We looked all over for a flash light. There wasn't one in the Jeep at all. Dave was looking for the jack. The original jack was missing. All he found was a flimsy little jack for a Volkswagen bug. Luckily, he did find the spare tire.
Dad looked around in the back of the Jeep. He found a paper plate. He handed it to me and then turned on the Jeep's headlights. I stood about fifteen feet in front of the Jeep and off to the side a bit. It was my job to shine light back to the area of the left front tire. A small paper plate doesn't reflect that much light, but it's better than no light at all.
Dave placed the jack under the front axle. Dad cranked it up all the way. It was still about ten inches short of even touching the axle! I could tell my dad and Dave were stumped for a while. Then they built a small tower with flat rocks. Dad started up the Jeep and rolled it so the axle was right over the tower of rocks. Dave placed the jack on the top rock and then jacked up the Jeep.
Dave started to un-do the lug nuts of the flat tire. He said to me, "You don't need to shine that over here anymore. I used to work in a garage and I can change a tire in the dark with one hand tied behind my back."
I was tempted to find some rope and take him up on his offer. I thought, sure, I'll bet you never had to use a Volkswagen jack on a pile of rocks to jack up a big truck before!
He took off the tire and dad rolled the spare over to him. I was standing there with nothing to do since apparently my services were no longer required. I noticed for the first time since leaving the inside of the Jeep how incredibly cold it was. The wind was blowing too. It seemed to bite right through my down-filled
coat. I was only wearing jeans. I was chilled way down to my bones. It took a week to get rid of the cold feeling in my legs.
Well, we were done. The rest of the trip down was uneventful. We dropped Dave off at his home and then headed home ourselves.
I never saw the old green Jeep after that. Maybe that event prompted KSL to eventually get a new vehicle for going up to the mountains. But I will always remember the good times I had with it and my dad. Especially that cold night on Coon Peak.

Coming Tomorrow: Family Vacations In The Blue And White Van

A Cold Night On Coon Peak (Part 10 of 11)

Dad woke me up at about 4:00 in the morning. "We're leaving now, Billy."
"Did you finish?" I asked.
"Yes. It looks real good!"
I folded up the blanket and left it on the edge of the cot. Then we walked out to the Jeep. It was still very dark. When I jumped in the front seat, I noticed a man sitting in the seat behind
me. "Hi, I'm Dave," he said. "You're taking me back down the mountain. I've been up here for the past three weeks finishing the TV tower here."
Dad got in his seat of the Jeep and we started immediately. I could tell he was tired and anxious to get down so he could go home and go to sleep.
We traveled the steep road for fifteen minutes while Dave described the hair raising experiences he had while building the tower. Suddenly, Dad found it hard to control the Jeep. He stopped and Dave jumped out. Dave yelled, "The left front tire is flat!"

A Cold Night On Coon Peak (Part 9 of 11)

We walked into another room. There were dozens of smaller transmitters. Each had a thick galvanized pipe going out the top and up through the ceiling. Dad explained, "We have a bunch of FM stations that have their transmitters up here. These are the transmitters for them. There are also other services, mobile telephone, the emergency broadcast system . . . ." Dad went on and on with the list of who had their transmitter up there.
Dad got a cot and unfolded it for me between two FM transmitters. "Well, I have to get to work now. Since you still have school in the morning, you'd better get some sleep. I'll wake you up when it's time to go."
I didn't feel tired. I wanted to stay up and watch my dad at work. I took another look at the cot. By this time one of the men had brought me a blanket. I was instantly tired for some reason. The man and my dad began to leave. I laid down and they turned off the lights. I looked around the dark room. It was contrasted with the red and green lights of the transmitters. They each buzzed their own tune. I wondered about all the radio signals that each was pumping into the air.
I looked at the transmitter closest to me. It was for KRSP FM. I knew that, because someone had placed a KRSP bumper sticker on it. A lot of my friends at school listened to that station. Wait till I tell them I slept next to the transmitter for it!
I lay there for a few minutes, wondering how my dad was doing with the antenna. He had explained that the new antenna needed to be electrically matched to the transmitter. If their characteristics were as close as possible, the maximum energy would be radiated from the antenna.
Dad had a passion for getting the best signal possible. I had seen him risk his life many times to push an antenna a few inches higher on a translator station so as many people of a small Utah town could get a better signal. Now Dad was making sure of the same thing yet on a much larger scale, from Coon Peak.

A Cold Night On Coon Peak (Part 8 of 11)

At any rate, I was glad to be up on Coon Peak. We went back inside and Dad showed me the transmitters. The first one consisted of two panels, about three feet across, and seven feet high. I don't know how far back it went since it was mounted in the wall of the main control room for the transmitter station. Dad said, "This one is on the air right now. If something should happen to it, we have the older one . . ." he pointed to the next transmitter that looked older and larger, " . . .which can take over."
Next to that was an even older one. It was about four times the size of the new transmitter. Dad said, "If worse came to worse, and the standby transmitter went out, we could switch to this oldest one here. But it is only broadcasts in black and white." I thought, it sure would be better than nothing.
It was nearing 1:30 and KSL television was about to sign off for the night. They were playing a tape of the 10 o'clock news. When that was over, the station would sign off and the programming would be replaced by a test pattern. This would stay on all night while my dad tuned the new antenna.

A Cold Night On Coon Peak (Part 7 of 11)

Inside the building it was warm. As we entered I saw racks and consoles of control and test equipment. I also saw the two men who worked up there. They would live up there for a week and then be down at home for two weeks.
We looked around. Some parts of the building hadn't changed from when I was a small boy. The kitchen was still the same as when I first saw it in the mid 1960s with 1950s style table, linoleum, and refrigerator. The food storage was still the same – rows and rows of Campbell’s Soup greeted me, although I was sure they weren't the same cans of soup I saw the first time I came up to Coon Peak when I was four years old!
There were changes though. My Dad showed me a new tunnel that had just been completed. It connected the main building to an emergency power plant. There was a large diesel engine that ran a generator. Dad said there was enough fuel stored up there to keep the station on the air for several weeks if there was an extended power outage.
From there we went back outside. We hurried past the last tower of the old tram. Currently, the car was not on the platform. It was down at its starting place in the valley. The empty platform looked sad. Like it wished people could ride the tram again. The feeling was mutual.

(Pictured: The building that would house the emergency generator – being built)

A Cold Night On Coon Peak (Part 6 of 11)

I was amazed. The buildings and antennas that were once so impressive were dwarfed by the massive new tower. It was so large that you could see it distinctly from way down in the valley. You could even see the large crane that had been hauled to the top of the mountain while the tower was being built. Now, the old television tower looked like a tooth pick in comparison to the new tower. Dad explained that it was built to withstand hurricane-force winds. It was painted red and had some red flashing lights to warn aircraft to stay away. Its slanting legs met about half way up. It then formed a single tower as it rose to the sky. There were great white covers on this tower that shielded the important TV antennas from ice and snow. I suddenly had a wave of pride. My dad was going to tune that!
We got out of the Jeep and quickly shuffled into the building. It was so cold outside. The weather down in the valley was cold, of course, but up here at 9,000 feet it hadn't gotten above zero all day! And that was when the sun was shining. It was now the middle of the night.

A Cold Night On Coon Peak (Part 5 of 11)

Dad turned off the engine and we both got out of the Jeep. We walked to the gate. There must have been five different locks on the chain that kept the gate shut. I knew from my dad explaining it to me many times when I was little, that many other people and organizations used these roads up to the mountains. Each had their own locks. Dad located the right lock for KSL's key and then we swung the gate open. We boarded the Jeep again, dad started it and drove ahead. I jumped out and locked the gate.
We had to repeat this process a few times. Each time, Dad sort of rolled his eyes at the fact that someone had lost the other set of keys and he had to shut the engine off each time we opened a gate. We finally got up a ways so that there were just barbed wire loops holding the gates shut. I hoped out each time and got the gate so dad could just drive through. What team work!
After the last gate, the road was getting fairly steep. Dad decided to lock the hubs and engage the 4-wheel drive. He let me do this since I was already out side. I was honored. He had always been the one to do this before. Now I got to do it. Maybe it was some rite of manhood I didn't know about. We began to climb Coon Peak. It was a clear night. The lights of Salt Lake City blazed below us.
We slowly crept up the mountain. It was nice to see the road. I was glad my dad had fixed the headlight beams so this was possible. It was scary enough to drive up in the day time, let alone the night. At one o'clock in the morning, we arrived at the top of Coon Peak.

A Cold Night On Coon Peak (Part 4 of 11)

Well, eleven o'clock at night came and it was time to leave. I was supposed to get some sleep, but I had homework to finish and things to get ready for school the next day. We got in the old green International Travelall that KSL owned. We called it the “Jeep.” I remember it when it was brand new, but now it was practically ready for the junk heap. So many people had driven it up and down mountains that it deserved to die mercifully in some scrap yard. At any rate, it still ran well and that was what mattered.
As we drove toward the mountain, dad commented that the headlights weren't aimed right. They were pointing way up in the air and he could hardly see the road. He got out and adjusted them with the screwdriver. Soon we left the paved road and drove up always on a dirt road. We arrived at the first gate.

(Pictured: Johnny driving "the jeep.")

A Cold Night On Coon Peak (Part 3 of 11)

By this time, there were only two ways to get up to Coon Peak. You could drive up with a 4-wheel drive vehicle, or you could fly up by way of a helicopter. But in earlier times, there was a tram that an authorized person could ride.
It was the longest tram in the world. You boarded it down in the valley west of Salt Lake. It was just a little car, but all the equipment to operate it and the huge building were interesting. There was a giant counter-weight that went down into a pit as the car went up the mountain. And of course there were wheels and heavy cables that turned and pulled as the little car was hoisted to its destination.
As I remember, the tram car was red and white. As you approached it, inside its building, it had a plug that charged its batteries while it wasn't in use. When you started it going, the plug would just pull itself out and dangle as you went up the mountain.
There were seven towers going up the mountain. The cables were held between those. Between two particular towers there was even a distance of a mile.
It was great to ride the tram. I can remember going up in the car with my mom and sisters once time, and once with my dad, grandpa, uncle and cousins. Those were the days when nobody said it was "unsafe" but unfortunately, OSHA or somebody like that ruled that it was not fit for carrying passengers. It has been relegated to hauling freight ever since. I miss it.

A Cold Night On Coon Peak (Part 2 of 11)

I was one excited kid. Sure it was fun to go to the translator stations, but Coon Peak was the best. That was where KSL had it's transmitter. The translator stations just rebroadcast the signal and boosted it for people who lived in far-off valleys. But Coon peak was the point of origin for the KSL television signal.
In recent years it was renamed Farnsworth Peak, after Philo T. Farnsworth, the inventor of television who was from Utah. But it took a while for that name to catch on. For as long as I remembered, it was named Coon Peak.
Maybe I liked the name because coon rhymed with moon. It was a totally different experience to go up there. It was almost like going to the moon in a rocket.

A Cold Night On Coon Peak (Part 1 of 11)

It was a calm November evening when my dad said, "Billy, would you like to go up to Coon Peak with me tonight?"
I remember with fondness the times I went with my dad to various mountains in Utah and Nevada. The translator stations of KSL needed to be fixed and Dad was usually the smartest, and most able person, so they sent him. That was when I was very young, or during the summers when I was out of school. Now as a busy sixteen-year-old I rarely went with him anymore.
"You bet I do," I said. "But how come you are going tonight?"
"They need me to tune up the new antenna," Dad said. There was a hint of pride in his voice. "It's all finished and now it needs to be matched to the transmitter."
"Wow, that will be fun. Are we leaving right now?"
"No, Billy. We need to wait until later. We'll leave about 11:00 tonight. That way, by the time we get up on top, KSL will be just about ready to go off the air."

My Sister Karen (Part 9 of 9)

(I had this post ready on Wednesday, but due to techniculties, it didn't post until Thursday.)
Karen seemed unstoppable. But then one day in her Senior year at Cottonwood in her orchestra class at school she was carrying her violin and tripped and lost her grip on the instrument. It fell to the floor and was shattered into a million pieces. She didn’t know what to do at first. She didn’t want to tell Mom and Dad because she thought that they would be just as shattered thinking that Karen’s musical career was over. Then she decided to barrow a slightly different instrument, a viola, from a neighbor. She taught herself to play it and even paid for viola lessons herself. When the time came to tryout for the school’s annual concerto night, Karen did so, and made it! She gave a fine performance of the Telemann Viola Concerto along with the full orchestra. That was all supposed to be a surprise to my parents, who were to come to concerto night expecting Karen to play Beethoven’s Violin Concerto or something like that. But Karen eventually told my Dad about the broken violin and her switching to the viola. However, she just couldn’t bring herself to tell my Mom. Mom noticed that Karen wasn’t taking her violin to school anymore, but was taking a slightly larger case with her each day. Mom asked about this. “Are you not playing the violin anymore?” Karen thought briefly and then said, “Mom, I think I’ve dropped the violin.”


Coming tomorrow: A Cold Night On Coon Peak

My Sister Karen (Part 8 of 9)

Back in the 1970s, Dad took Karen to try out for the Granite Junior Youth Symphony when she was ending her sixth grade year. He instructed her to act and think like she was the best and she would be the best. She made it in as the youngest player ever in that organization. She did very well in that through junior high and went on to the Granite Youth Symphony in high school.