Family History

Since it is my sister's birthday...I thought I'd write a blog about her. I'd been thinking all week what I could write, since I told a lot of it before. Then I sat down at the computer to type and was interrupted by CoolGuy calling, "Come and talk to these sisters--it's about Star Valley." I went out to the garage where he's been putting his motorcycle back together for about a week, so the door was up and the bicycling Mormon missionary Hermanas saw him and started up a conversation.

He said he was a member and then it got around to being from Wyoming and one of them said, "My relatives are from Star Valley." She named the name---it was my mom's maiden name. So that's when I was interrupted from the sister blog.

After a bit of unraveling, we determined that she was, indeed, a very near relative. Her grandpa is my cousin. I remember attending his wedding reception when I was about 10 years old. Small world, huh?? So I got out some photos of our mutual ancestor who'd joined the LDS church in Switzerland a century and a half ago and emigrated to Utah. Then, I showed her a photo of her great-great grandfather (and my grandfather) on his mission in England. It was surreal. I told her a few (sanitized) stories about her great-grandfather, my mom's brother and we laughed about the amazing coincidence of stopping by our house this afternoon. She and her companion are not assigned to our ward, they are affiliated with the Spanish speaking ward, so we would not have met in church. And even if we had, it would have been unlikely that she and I would have talked about Wyoming for any reason. Her dad grew up in Idaho, her mom grew up in California and Utah and she is from Cincinnati. Just one of those little serendipitous moments in life.

But, it is still the birthday and so I must write another small segment of her life. This marks 5 years since her sudden, untimely death and I need to reminisce. One of our jobs as children was to "stomp the wool,"which isn't a euphemism, even though it would make a good one for something.

In May the sheep would get sheared. Our dad had about 100 ewes. To a real sheepman, this is a tiny flock. He would keep them on our farm in a near-by pasture during the winter where they were fed hay. Then, the lambing would start in March, for which we used a nearby neighbor's barn, since ours was filled with cows twice a day for the milking, and then in May it was time to shear. After that, he and several other neighbors who also owned small flocks (50-100) would jointly hire a sheepherder and take the combined herd of sheep up into the mountains to spend the summer and graze and get fat, so the lambs could be sold in the fall. These two events--wool sale and lamb sale--were extra paychecks that were important to our parents in those early days of trying to get a foothold in life. After a few years, by the time I was 13 or so, my dad sold the ewes to someone and focused on just dairy cows, enlarging that operation.

So--shearing. These same farmers would hire a shearing band to come one week and they'd set up shop and shear hundreds of sheep for people in the area. The fleeces would be tied up in a bundle with string, and tossed into a large burlap bag that was suspended from a tall wooden frame. I was a little kid, but I think the wool bags were very long, probably 10 feet. Wool, of course, is very fluffy, so after two or three fleece balls were tossed into the bag, a moderately sized child was hoisted up onto the frame, and she would drop down into the bag and jump up and down on the fleeces to pack them tightly. More fleece would come flying in onto your head, but they weren't heavy, so no problem, and you'd stomp them until eventually, you would be standing at the top of the frame again, atop a big burlap sack packed full of wool. You would smell like lanolin and your dried-up, cracked leather school shoes that had been worn all year through the puddles and snow, were greased up and revived for the last bit of school.

The year that she was eight and I was ten--her birthday was the next week or so when she'd be nine--she had been down at the shearing shed stomping wool and had the bicycle. The plan was she would start for home and I would start for the shearing shed. We'd meet halfway and I'd take the bike back for my turn to stomp wool. I started down the gravel road to the shearing shed, and I could see her coming along just beyond our neighbor's house. Then, their dogs came racing out of the gate. They were sheep people--I think they may have owned 500-700 ewes. So their dogs weren't pets, they were herders. Not being pets, they were fiercely protective of their space, and a little girl on a bike was apparently just as threatening as a coyote or a bear, so they charged her. I ran screaming at them, and she pedaled as fast as she could, but there were at least three of them and so they surrounded her and one of them jumped to bite her leg. She kicked out at it and lost her balance as they pushed against her. It knocked her over.

I ran up to her and kicked at the dogs, but they were already leaving since they'd accomplished their goal of preventing her from invading their territory. She'd fallen face-first onto the gravel. Her knees were hurt a little, but her mouth was a raw, bleeding, gaping horror. Just then, a car crunched to a stop. The neighbor's son and wife had witnessed the crash as they pulled out of the driveway and hurried over. I couldn't even say anything, I was crying from being so mad and scared at the dogs, and then after seeing her face I was even madder at those stupid dogs. The couple scooped her up and put her in their car, driving straight to our house. My mom tried to wash off the rocks and dirt. The bleeding was quite extreme, you can imagine--your lips are very vessel-rich. It was obvious that a doctor was going to have to fix this, so Mother just put some ice in a towel and put her in the car and hurried to town.

I don't remember how many stitches she had to have. It was a lot---inside, outside. She also had to have at least one, and maybe a second, surgery to remove scar tissue and reshape her upper lip. It was a huge swollen mess for quite a while. Her birthday was about a week later, and my aunt made her a doll cake and she still has a swollen lip in the photo. Eventually, it was repaired pretty well, because she had really beautiful lips as an adult. In her baby pictures, the thing you notice first is her adorable, Cupid's bow lips. I've seen them again on a couple of her grandchildren.

We hated those dogs for a long time. They couldn't really help themselves, I realize. They were bred to be aggressive and protective. But a few years later, one of them killed one of my mom's pet cats, leaving behind an orphaned litter, so they didn't get any more popular with our family. That same summer of the cat murder, a tourist ran over the dog when the neighbor was moving his sheep herd up the highway to a summer pasture. Secretly, we were all glad.