No Ordinary Life: Short Personal Essays

By O. Paul Mortensen

My life had already been eventful when, in Quantico in 1974, the blinding barracks lights and shrill commands of Platoon Gunnery Sergeant D.L. Bennett shocked me and forty-nine other total strangers from an already short, tense sleep that first early morning of Marine Corps officer candidate school. All hell broke loose and life, as it had been, changed in an instant. This first military experience occurred shortly after I had cheated certain death by miraculously pulling myself from an icy-cold, raging Selway River as a whitewater river guide in Idaho only four months earlier. At the time, I hadn’t known that these two unusual events, and many more as they would unfold, were all necessary experiences in achieving my goal to become an FBI special agent. As I learned in those trying, preparatory years, only fear could prevent me.
“Everything you’ve ever wanted is on the other side of fear.”
George Washington Addair Jr.
Overcoming fear during the next eight and a half years as a Marine Corps officer would toughen and shape me like steel forged by the fires of hell. I later returned to the FBI academy in Quantico where I was awarded the coveted Bureau credential and badge, putting me on an adrenaline rush for the next twenty-two years surveilling murderous white supremacists known as The Order in Wyoming; preventing the Soviet Bloc from developing American agents as spies in Maryland and Delaware; pounding the murder-plagued streets of Baltimore for five intense years taking down violent drug organizations; then back to Indian Country and bank robberies in northern Idaho with more murder, drugs, child sexual abuse, and even healthcare fraud.
I couldn’t take No Ordinary Life to my grave unwritten.

• Language: English
• Publisher: O. Paul Mortensen
• Release date: Aug 21, 2021
• ISBN: 9781005985844

O. Paul Mortensen

O. Paul Mortensen was born in Idaho in 1948 and spent his early years raised on a farm or doing farm work for other farmers. He graduated from Brigham Young University in 1973 with a bachelor of science degree in law enforcement, then later in 1992 from the University of Baltimore with a master of science degree in criminal justice. Mortensen’s thirty-one-year professional career was a combined nine years serving his country as an officer in the United States Marine Corps from 1974 to 1983 and an additional twenty-two years as a special agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, retiring from the Bureau in 2005. Before finally retiring in 2020, Mortensen was a substitute school teacher, a sheriff’s department marine and transport deputy, and a special deputy with the United States Marshal’s Service contracted as a federal court security officer. Mortensen and his wife, Stephanie, reside in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. They are the parents of four sons and have eleven grandchildren.

Book preview

Acknowledgements

Thank you, Stephanie Ann Rodrigues, for finding me against all odds.

You began somewhere on Madeira Island, a Portuguese island in the Madeira Archipelago off the northwest coast of Africa, as well as in Northern Africa, Senegal, Sardinia, Spain, France, England, Wales, Ireland, Scotland, Germany, and Guyana then escaped over dangerous oceans for a better life in the Hawaiian Islands, on the other side of the earth, before restlessly backtracking to California in the hope of a still better life.

I began somewhere in Denmark, Norway, Sweden, England, Wales, Ireland, and Scotland, as well as Germanic and Northwestern Europe then escaped religious persecution for the Northeastern United States, for more persecution with the early Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, before struggling afoot across the barren, western plains to Idaho and turn sod covered in sagebrush into fields of crops.

A dreamer, unafraid of the unknown, I set out in search of my own place in this world, traveling thousands of miles and halfway around the earth to find that place. Finding you during my journey, Stephanie, was a miracle. With faith and love you stayed by my side living hand-to-mouth without a complaint on a most unlikely roller coaster ride along an event-filled track to happiness and success.

Thank you, Stephanie, for entering my dreams and helping me find our place in this world together.

Acknowledgments also go to Elizabeth Beth Petty Bentley who professionally edited and formatted my work. Beth made me work hard to implement many necessary edits, but the composition and storyline greatly improved. Thank you so much, Beth!

Additional thanks to Dorine Currey Rivers for the beautiful cover design, and for her mentoring and encouragement during the final stages of completion.

Introduction

NO ORDINARY LIFE is a compilation of 116 short personal essays detailing specific life incidents around which I also describe in general what I was doing at the time. The essays explain how those events actually occurred: things that I saw, heard, and smelled; the words that were spoken; the women; my hopes and dreams, struggles, failures and successes; situations and predicaments; the miracles; the spectrum of emotions. These are all written the way they went.

I did not pull any punches, as the saying goes. I apologize in advance to any readers I might offend with some of the words written, but those were the words spoken or thought. It is important to me, however, that my wife, four sons and their wives and children, the rest of my posterity, and any friends who read this know where I came from, who I was, and what actual life events shaped me into the man I became.

Many of my memories and documented events are associated with certain, favorite songs playing on the radio at the time. Songs jog memories.

The events I chose to write about are taken from my earliest recollections and what my Dad told me, from my professional log books, from travel vouchers, and from extensive, personal journal entries, also corroborated by newspaper articles. These are the incidents of a very young boy living in a small town to a farm boy and teenager living in austere financial circumstances on the southern Idaho desert; incidents of a college student not knowing what profession in life to pursue to a diligent Church missionary; incidents of a university graduate with a career goal to a whitewater river guide; and incidents of a Marine Corps officer and eventual husband of a special lady who would help me achieve my elusive career goal—becoming a special agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. And the events continued following my retirement from the FBI.

No confidential sources or operational methods were named or otherwise compromised in my FBI writings.

Having earned a master of science degree along the way, I fully understand the meaning of plagiarism. I acquired ancillary information from source material by means of the Google search engine in support of writing about my experiences. The reader can verify my supplemental information and cited sources the same way.

Louis L’Amour was born on March 22, 1908, in Jamestown, North Dakota. He died on June 10, 1988. He was a very popular American novelist and short-story writer of western or frontier, science fiction, and adventure stories still published in many languages today. Many of his works were inspired by his own life experiences.1 His writings grab a reader’s attention and interest from the first sentence. I don’t recall in which of L’Amour’s books I read, but he wrote words to the effect that everyone has a story to tell; it just needs to be written.

I make no claim that my life experiences were any more extraordinary or unique than those of anyone else. No Ordinary Life, however, is my story, and I hope it is interesting.

Polio Paul

I am the second oldest of eleven children, six sons and five daughters, born to Orval Stanley Mortensen and Myrtle LaRae (Severe) Mortensen in Saint Anthony, Idaho, October 8, 1948. They named me Orval Paul Mortensen. My older brother, Rocky S., was also born in Saint Anthony, July 31, 1947. My parents were good, hardworking people. Dad graduated from the University of Idaho in 1949, with a bachelors degree in agriculture education. Dad also served in the United States Navy during World War II, from 1943 to 1945. In southern Idaho Dad farmed crops, taught school, then operated a dairy farm. We were members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, nicknamed the Mormon Church because of the Book of Mormon, a book of scripture believed to be another testament of Jesus Christ.

Poliomyelitis is a Latin term of Greek origin meaning gray, or polio, and marrow, or myelitis, in the spinal cord. People whose spinal cords are infected by this virus can suffer permanent paralysis in their arms or legs, or even death. This virus was a common, severe illness in the United States until a polio vaccine was announced by Dr. Jonas Salk on March 26, 1953. A nationwide vaccination campaign was approved for school-aged children in 1955.2

By 1955, I had finished the first grade and had begun the second grade with my brother, Rocky, attending the Lincoln Elementary School in Rupert, Idaho. Only fourteen months older than me, Rocky had been held back to repeat one year.

I vividly recall lining up single file in the main hallway at school, with all my classmates, to receive the polio vaccine from a female nurse who injected it into one of our upper arms with a syringe and needle. The shot would hurt a little bit, but it was hard to cower away from this mandatory event while among classmates all steadily moving forward to take their medicine. Having been born in 1948 when people were not yet able to be vaccinated against this dreadful virus, I had already been living at risk for seven years.

I’m sure the fear of contracting polio was fresh on the mind of my Uncle Virgil Albert Neilson, who was twenty-two years old when I was born. Uncle Virgil married my father’s youngest sister, Ruby Lenore Mortensen, on September 10, 1946, less than two months after my father and mother were married on July 17, 1946. Where is this all leading to?

Dad and Mom told me that I had been born about a month late and that I did not want to walk until I was twenty months old; this was not normal. They also told me that, when propped upright on the couch, I would inevitably tip over.

The unusual delay in my learning to walk eventually caused a humorous concern with Uncle Virgil Neilson. He thoughtfully nicknamed me, Polio Paul! Uncle Virgil maybe should have dubbed me, Humpty Dumpty! No! I did not have poliomyelitis, but after twenty months it was time to walk. My new baby brother, Thomas Stanley, had just been born on May 28, 1950. I could not let him learn to walk first and embarrass me.

Mrs. Riggs

In 1952, Dad and his brother, Grant, became partners in purchasing 320 acres of land sixteen miles north of Paul, Idaho. In 1953, Dad sold his first farm in Rigby, Idaho, and moved the family to Rupert not very far east of Paul. In Rupert we lived in a modest but nice house purchased by Dad and Mom, located at 1005 7th Street, while Dad cleared lava rock and sagebrush off 270 acres of this land with Uncle Grant’s Caterpillar D6 dozer. The north border of the new farm was Idaho State Highway 24 (SH 24) and the parallel Union Pacific Railroad linking Kimama about two miles to the west, and the small town of Minidoka, fifteen miles to the east. The west border of this farm was the Paul Road or 600 West, running north from Paul until it T-intersected with SH 24. To the east and south were other new farms. Dad would soon purchase another 240 acres immediately west of the Paul Road and clear 120 acres of lava rock and sagebrush. Dad had a new house built on that farm while producing crops, during 1953 and 1954, before moving the family from Rupert onto the farm in 1955. During this time, Dad and Mom were among a group of brave and enterprising pioneers who cleared fertile desert terrain north of the Snake River in southern Idaho and turned it into productive farms now known as the Magic Valley.

Before we moved from Rupert, I recall Mom occasionally gave Rocky and me fifteen cents each on Saturdays and letting us walk to the Wilson Theatre, about four blocks to the east, to watch a matinee movie: ten cents for the movie and five cents to buy five pieces of penny candy.

By then there were two more little boys and one baby girl in the family: Roger David born on June 17, 1951, and Bruce C. born on December 19, 1952, and Cindy Lu born on December 11, 1954.

Favorite songs I recall hearing on the radio at that time were (How Much Is) That Doggie in the Window? by Patti Page, Three Coins in the Fountain by The Four Aces, and Secret Love and Que Sera Sera, both sung by Doris Day.3

Mrs. Riggs: sounds like the Mrs. Robinson story years later in the 1967 movie, The Graduate, doesn't it? Not quite! Mrs. Florence Riggs was not as young and attractive as Mrs. Robinson, played by Anne Bancroft. And I would also be no Dustin Hoffman. I was only five years old in 1954 at the start of Mrs. Riggs’s first-grade class at Lincoln Elementary School. She was a stern, older, Eleanor Roosevelt-looking lady. The scene played out would be only nine years removed from World War II (WWII).

One day during school, I spent my lunch-recess on the playground with Billy, one of my classmates. We were in the northwest corner of the school grounds having such a great time playing and laughing that we did not hear the end-of-recess bell; nor did we even hear the tardy bell. Eventually discovering that it was eerily silent outside, we looked up and over at the school building to find that all of the other kids had gone back inside. Total silence! Shocked, we looked back at each other realizing that we were the only two students who hadn’t gone back to class. As if charged by a jolt of electricity, Billy and I sprang to our feet and did the fifty-yard dash to and up the front steps and through the large front-entrance doors. None other than Mrs. Riggs was standing there waiting for us.

We knew we were in trouble when Mrs. Riggs did not lead us back into her classroom. She instead ushered us into the teachers’ lounge, where she methodically retrieved a large wooden paddle with holes in it, used for only one purpose: corporal punishment in the form of swooping uppercuts to offenders’ rear ends. Mrs. Riggs glared at both of us with a who-wants-to-get-it-first look in her eyes. Looking over at my poker-faced friend and receiving no hope for a delay in our punishment, I looked back at Mrs. Riggs, who was poised to exact justice.

I broke down into tears, hoping that Mrs. Riggs would choose mercy. Her stern look, unbelievably, softened as she ordered Billy and me to approach her. As we obeyed, she put down her ominous-looking paddle; then she wrapped an arm around each of us and pulled us closer. Looking down into our relieved eyes, Mrs. Riggs mercifully ordered Billy and me to be more attentive the next time we played outside during recess and to not be late again getting back into her class.

I do not recall Billy’s last name. I know, however, that I shall never forget the compassion meted out to Billy and me by a lady I now realize was hardened by tough times during America’s early twentieth century: World War I (WWI), the Great Depression, WWII, and the Korean War.

Adults taught children discipline and respect for authority back then.

October 8, 1948

In 1955, my second-grade class at Lincoln Elementary School was taught by Mrs. Connie O’Donnell. Les Baxter and Al Hibbler both had a hit that year with Unchained Melody. Most people now would assume that this great song had not been produced until the legendary Righteous Brothers version of 1965. I also loved the beautiful voice of Gogi Grant as she sang her 1956 hit, The Wayward Wind.4

Incidentally, Washington Junior High School was to the south and directly across the street from Lincoln Elementary School. Both schools would eventually be torn down and a Rupert city park and playground put in where the elementary school stood. Both schools were the old-style brick buildings of that era, with ornate front entrances, hardwood floors, and wide, main hallways. The front walls of these old classrooms were covered by large blackboards or chalkboards, on which both teacher and student presented school work with chalk. At the end of the chalkboard hung the teacher’s long wooden pointer, with a rubber tip, used by her to point at and emphasize a topic of discussion. Along the tops of the blackboards were always two rows of letters of the English alphabet: one row in print form and the other in cursive form, and each letter was displayed in both lowercase and uppercase form. Penmanship, or both printing and cursive handwriting, was taught extensively.

Mrs. O’Donnell spent an hour each morning teaching us excellent penmanship skills—a beautiful art that would virtually disappear in the twenty-first century due to high-tech computers and cellular phones. I am grateful to have been taught that art. In her class, the books we all took turns reading aloud from included those about Dick and Jane and their dog, Spot.

Mrs. O’Donnell was a very patriotic woman, also only ten years removed from WWII. The American flag was revered back then by everyone. Every morning in her class, without fail and prior to any academics, Mrs. O’Donnell had our class stand tall and face the flag on the wall. With right hands over our hearts, we were led in reciting the national Pledge of Allegiance. Afterward and before sitting behind our desks, we were also led in singing the beautiful anthem, God Bless America, written by Irving Berlin in 1918.5 Framed portraits of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln also hung high on a classroom wall.

I do not recall how she came to the topic one day, but Mrs. O’Donnell made eye contact with each student and one-by-one, up and down each row of desks, she required each of us to recite aloud our date of birth. I recall becoming instantly panic stricken when she announced the topic. My anxiety heightened the closer my turn came, as each classmate proudly blurted out their birth date. Though a seasoned age six at the start of Mrs. O’Donnell’s class, I was suddenly made aware that I did not know my own birth date, October 8, 1948. Even the Prince of Wales, Charles, was born in 1948,6 and I’m positive he knew his date of birth. Not knowing mine was an agonizing reality that day. I knew that I was seven years old, but that is not what Mrs. O’Donnell wanted to hear, as her beady, dark eyes bore down sternly on each student. My past few birthdays and Mom’s candle-adorned birthday cakes raced through my mind. How come Mom and Dad never had me recite my birth date, prior to letting me wolf down that first bite of frosted cake? Hell, I’m doomed! I silently realized.

My turn growing direfully closer, I wished that a classmate would not know his or her date of birth. Oh, Heavenly Father, please! I begged silently; but no consolation occurred. Rubbernecking eyes were upon me—especially Mrs. O’Donnell’s dark, ominous peepers. I don’t know, I sheepishly muttered, as I scanned the Uh-oh expressions on classmates’ faces. They all stared at me aghast. I slumped farther into my desk seat as Mrs. O’Donnell pursued me like a she-wolf sensing lame prey.

You don’t know your birth date?

No! I answered, nearly vomiting. How could God allow this to happen to me? my child-mind again silently asked. Mrs. O’Donnell then sprang for my juggler.

Paul, you don’t know beans! she blasted before listening proudly as classmates eagerly resumed shouting out their birth dates.

Mrs. O’Donnell humiliated me before the entire class that day. Was her teaching tactic supposed to build my confidence, self-esteem, and love for learning? I went home that day and learned my date of birth—never again to forget it.

Mrs. O’Donnell and others who’d experienced The Great Depression and world wars must have accepted belittling as a form of motivation. Eventually, though, I would struggle successfully through university bachelors and masters degrees programs.

But back to being a fun-loving boy. Only ten days after my seventh birthday on October 8, 1955, our family fell on economic hard-times. Though eighty acres of wheat and peas and sixty acres of potatoes were harvested by October 18, that day a seven-day steady rain began, immediately followed by five more days of deep-freezing temperatures, and the remaining twenty acres of potatoes and all 230 acres of our sugar beets were frozen solid in the ground. Dad’s partnership with Uncle Grant soon dissolved following their joint meeting with friend and attorney, Ray Rigby. On his own, Dad had to shoulder the resulting heavy financial loss for the next grueling nine years. We would remain on this farm only two more years, in a futile attempt to salvage it.

Spencer

Among the songs playing on the car radio by 1956 were Elvis Presley’s three top-ten hits that year: Heartbreak Hotel, Don’t Be Cruel, and Hound Dog.7

Our farm was in the extreme southeast corner of Lincoln County, within a mile of the Minidoka County line. Thirty-five miles to our west was the town of Shoshone, the county seat. Idaho SH 24 was only 67.5 miles long, running east from Shoshone fifty miles to the town of Minidoka, then back southwest about fourteen miles to Rupert.

Only about thirty miles west of our farm and seventeen miles northeast of the town of Twin Falls was the abandoned Minidoka or Camp Hunt, War Relocation Authority Center (WRAC). This was one of ten such sites in the western United States, where only ten years earlier thousands of Japanese Americans had been interned during WWII. President Franklin D. Roosevelt had ordered them segregated from mainstream America, for national security concerns, following Japan’s military attack on the U.S. Naval Fleet in Pearl Harbor.8 This historical fact would become significant to our family and to me personally as I got older because when I was nine years old, during 1958, we moved into one of the bare-bones barracks that Japanese-American families had been forced to live in.

In 1947, Dad partnered with his brother, Max, and brother-in-law, Bruce Neibaur, to own army surplus stores in Rexburg and Blackfoot. Uncle Bruce was married to Dad’s older sister, Lila. Max soon sold his share to Bruce’s brother, Darwin Neibaur. Then Dad sold out but kept one WWII surplus item: a Willys Jeep weapons carrier that looked like a regular Jeep but with a longer bed for carrying weapons and ammunition. Darwin, Uncle Bruce, and Uncle Virgil all had new farms near our farm.

Since we boys were quite small at the time, Dad hired a man to help during the summer of 1956. No one in the family knew his last name but, according to Mom, Spencer was a black man about twenty-seven years old who had wandered onto our farm from the west along Idaho SH 24, also referred to as the Shoshone Highway. Mom said Spencer was all dusty and dirty from having walked for so long on the then gravel highway, and he asked Dad for work. Dad furnished him a place to sleep in our Quonset workshop, and there was plenty of irrigation water available to him for drinking and to keep clean. Spencer enjoyed eating sweet onions, as if they were apples, and he often asked Dad to buy them for him when we went to town for food. Spencer stayed for only one summer, but he was a good worker. After that summer, he wandered off to another destination.

As I vividly recall, Spencer was very skilled at shooting a rifle, primarily Dad’s .22 caliber rifle. Several times, we older boys went out in the Jeep weapons carrier with Spencer to hunt jackrabbits in the sagebrush. Jackrabbits can run very fast. They can also leap and bound, easily dodging through and blending in with the sagebrush. So it’s very difficult to aim and squeeze off a shot at one of these quick animals before it darts left or right into the brushy concealment. Spencer, however, didn’t seem to have a problem firing off accurate shots. Firmly etched in my mind’s eye is the sight of Spencer, on one occasion, shooting and killing a fleeing jackrabbit, also shooting its four legs out from underneath it in the process. Though over sixty years have elapsed, as of the time of this writing, I will continue recalling that moment in my life.

Because of Spencer, I’ve always liked that name. Stephanie will always argue otherwise, but our second son, Spencer Paul, was named after Dad’s hired farmhand, Spencer.

Potsie Was a Gamble

Sounds like maybe I gambled on winning the love of a cute grade-school classmate, doesn’t it? How could this be, with a name like Potsie? Never happened!

By the start of school-year 1956, I was in the third grade attending Paul Elementary School, in Paul only six and one-half miles west of Rupert. We were still in our new cinderblock home straight north of Paul, near Kimama. This was a very basic, three-bedroom house with one bathroom, a kitchen, and adjoining living room. Dad had purchased a television set while living in Rupert and enjoyed watching the Friday-night boxing matches on Gillette Cavalcade of Sports, sponsored by the Gillette Company’s razors and razor blades. Lawrence Welk, Walt Disney’s Disneyland, and Gunsmoke were other family favorites on TV during this period.

About fifty yards southwest of the house was the Quonset workshop. This building had a semicircular roof, from ground to apex, structured with arching wooden trusses covered by galvanized, corrugated steel, all sitting on a concrete-slab floor.

This workshop was used for temporary grain storage and maintenance of farm machinery. Directly south of the house and east of the Quonset workshop was a large electric pump used to bring fresh, pure water up from the massive Snake River Plain Aquifer about two hundred feet below the ground surface. This large supply of wonderful underground water did then and still does stretch about four hundred miles, from the western edge of Yellowstone National Park, in eastern Idaho, westward to the Idaho-Oregon border.9 The aquifer has enabled farmers to develop farmland far beyond either side of the Snake River, where once only sagebrush could thrive. Being able to pump this water for irrigation and replace sagebrush with such crops as potatoes, sugar beets, grain, peas, and onions is why harsh desert land became the productive farmland now known as the Magic Valley and Treasure Valley. As I previously noted, Mom and Dad were part of that pioneering effort starting in the early 1950s.

Potsie was one of several games frequently played with marbles by many young boys and girls in the 1950s. Taking marbles to school, in homemade denim bags, was common among elementary-aged children during that time. Mothers skillfully crafted them from remnants of worn denim trousers with a nifty shoelace drawstring at the top of the bag, if marbles were not already purchased in bags.

Potsie was played at Paul Elementary School by digging a small hole or pot in the dirt, at the concrete base of the school. Players put an agreed-upon number of marbles into the hole then backed fifteen to twenty feet away from this treasure pot and took turns lobbing their favorite boulder or taw in an attempt to be the first person to land it in the pot and win all the marbles. This may be where the phrase playing for all the marbles came from—only conjecture on my part. For fairness, an agreement among players was reached as to the number of lobs attempted. The winner collected all the marbles to proudly increase the number in his or her bag. Another game during that time was known as Jacks—a popular game played with a small rubber ball and ten, six-pointed metal jacks. The object was to initially bounce the ball off the ground and scoop up one jack then, in the same hand, catch the ball before it landed back onto the ground. Succeeding attempts to scoop up two, three, and so on continued during each interval until all ten jacks were scooped up, again catching the ball during each interval.

One day during a school recess, I joined with two Mexican-American boys in a game of potsie—and I won!! Yes, two exclamation marks! Why? Because Mexican Americans were very skilled at shooting marbles, and it was generally a cold day in hell before a Caucasian-American boy, or gringo, ever beat one of them in this game. So when I beat two of them at the same time, with only one lob of my favorite taw, I felt so proud of myself. Dumping that handful of Mexican-marbles into my bag felt surreal.

This euphoric high lasted maybe fifteen seconds at most, as a lady school teacher patrolling the playground walked around the corner of the school building and into our midst just as I had dumped the Spanish loot into my treasure bag. Quickly assessing the situation from the looks on our three faces, my look being the most joyful of course, the teacher sternly scolded all three of us for gambling. She then did the unthinkable—she made me return my ill-gotten gains back to two champions of the game. Stressing again to the three of us that playing the game of marbles was gambling, that teacher lectured us to never do it again. Had this playground-rover been another thirty seconds later before rounding the corner of the building, where we were gambling, the three of us would have already scattered—me with the loot!

My third-grade teacher that year was Mrs. Fern Zohner, a very nice lady who attended my church in Paul. I don’t think that she would have considered the marble game of potsie to be a gamble.

Idaho Spuds in Minidoka

I turned eight years old, on October 8, 1956, the same day that New York Yankee’s pitcher, Don Larsen, pitched the first and only world series perfect game in major league baseball history against the Brooklyn Dodgers. Larsen’s great catcher was Yogi Berra, uniform number 8. I then had a better, more pleasant reason to remember my birthday. My nine-year-old brother, Rocky, and I were both in the third grade and six-year-old Tom in the first grade, all attending Paul Elementary School.

As already noted, Idaho SH 24 was our farm’s northern border, which also ran parallel to the Union Pacific Railroad, linking the towns of Shoshone, Minidoka, Acequia, and Rupert. Minidoka was fifteen miles east of our 560-acre farm.

The Idaho Candy Company in Boise, Idaho, was organized in 1901. One of its delicious candies, the Idaho Spud Bar created in 1918, is still sold today.10

From 1952 to 1957, the John Deere Company produced the models 60 and 70 farm tractors, initially priced at $2,500 and $2,800 respectively.11 These were large row-crop tractors, designed to pull farm machinery between rows of planted crops such as potatoes and sugar beets.

This must all be leading up to something—something other than Don Larsen’s perfect world series pitching performance.

One summer day in 1957, when Rocky and I were still nine and eight years old respectively, Dad decided to put us to work cutting and raking alfalfa hay, probably in June during the first hay cutting. Dad was faced with this difficult decision, because there was no money to hire the help. The hay field wasn’t just outside the front door of our house either; it was on another farm fifteen miles to the east of ours then about another two miles to the north of Minidoka. Dad had rented another 320 acres of farm ground from Dale Klingler to grow more sugar beets, as well as alfalfa hay for our sheep. Rocky and I were assigned to drive our two John Deere tractors, models 60 and 70, to this farm and cut and rake fresh, green alfalfa. I had the hay rake connected to the model 60, and Rocky had the hay mower blade connected to the power takeoff behind the model 70.

Mom felt real bad knowing that her two young children should be sent away on such a dangerous work assignment; so she made Rocky and me each a nice lunch placed in a brown paper lunch sack, each sack also containing a nice treat—an Idaho Spud Bar.

Three songs playing on the car radio that year were Wonderful! Wonderful! by

Johnny Mathis, Love Letters in the Sand by Pat Boone, and Jimmy Dorsey on that sweet alto saxophone, with his orchestra, playing So Rare.12 Also that summer, Dad took the family to see the epic western, Giant, starring Elizabeth Taylor, Rock Hudson, and James Dean. Dean had been killed earlier in his infamous car wreck, before the show was released in 1956.13

Rocky and I climbed up to the seats of our tractors, the engines popping like the sound of slow-firing machine guns. This is why John Deere tractors of that era were commonly referred to as Johnny Poppers. To me the sound was actually quite intimidating—even scary. I still remember how nervous I felt before climbing into my seat and how afraid I was to tell Dad. Telling Dad was pointless because I couldn’t tell him I didn’t want to do the job. When Dad told us we had to do something, we just did it; that’s the way it was. However knowing that my big brother, Rocky, was tasked with leading the way calmed my fears a little bit.

Perched in our seats, Rocky and I each reached down to the gear stick between our feet and shifted into a low, forward gear. We each then reached to the right, at shoulder level, and grabbed the top end of the clutch stick, which was still in the back position keeping the gears disengaged. Then pushing the clutch stick forward to engage the forward gear, we took off northbound down our dirt driveway to where it T-intersected with SH 24. After slowly rounding the intersection to head eastbound toward the faraway town of Minidoka, Rocky and I pulled back on our clutch sticks to disengage low gear then stepped down on the floor breaks to our left to stop. After reaching down again to slip our gear sticks into high gear, we again pushed the clutch sticks forward and bolted toward Minidoka.

We were each so small and short that we couldn't sit down on our seats and still reach the steering wheels. Rocky and I stood up and grasped the steering wheels to solve this problem. As a result, we were able to either look through or over our steering wheels in order to accurately steer and keep the tractors heading straight along the highway. I adjusted the gas-throttle stick to my right, controlling my speed and hanging back so I didn’t run into Rocky. No turning back now—too late! I thought to myself. Everything was fine, though, because big-brother Rocky was leading the way. At 900 East or nine miles east of Meridian Road, Rocky and I stopped, where SH 24 continued southwest to Acequia and Rupert, and turned northbound on another road crossing over the Union Pacific Railroad tracks into Minidoka. We soon arrived at the alfalfa hay field and stopped our tractors. Rocky and I felt pretty pumped up because we had accomplished what Dad told us to do, without running off the road.

I don’t recall how much of that alfalfa hay field Rocky and I actually mowed and raked. Dad probably finished the job. I do recall, however, that after arriving, we stopped the tractors there in the field to eat our sack lunches. I also don’t recall what all we ate for lunch, except for a can of Shasta soda pop and that Idaho Spud (candy) Bar Mom packed in each of our lunch sacks.

Parents on farms during the 1950s and earlier could get away with having their children work difficult, demanding assignments. Youngsters didn’t talk back or disagree with their parents. Dad would merely task us boys with a difficult job and tell us: Grab the bull by the horns! Sixty years later, however, parents would likely have to answer to state authorities on child abuse or child-labor law violations. But regardless and to my point, at the end of an hour-long ride to the alfalfa hay field that day, the two cans of refreshing Shasta soda pop and delicious Idaho Spuds in Minidoka sure tasted good!

Look, Mom

Jon Carl, my youngest of five brothers and the seventh child in the family, was born July 2, 1957. The same month Tammy, sung by Debbie Reynolds, exploded onto the music charts in a huge way, eventually becoming the number one song that year. A month later Bobby Helms’s My Special Angel became another huge hit.14

Pituophis catenifer sayi is the scientific name of a nonvenomous, constrictor known as the bull snake.15 This snake can reach six feet or more in length, and when happened upon, they are commonly mistaken for rattlesnakes. In a defensive posture, they can act and even sound like rattlesnakes. However, they are otherwise harmless to humans, except for a superficial scratch if bitten. In fact, we were taught as children on the farm to not kill bull snakes because they kill and eat rattlesnakes as a part of their diet, along with other small rodents.

By the summer of 1957, the two or three oldest of us six boys were spending lots of time outside in the fields or in the surrounding lava rock-strewn sagebrush. It was very common to spot a coyote in the distance. That winter, Dad shot and killed five of these crafty meat eaters with his Remington .300 magnum, bolt-action rifle to keep them from killing and eating our sheep. During our wanderings on the farm and throughout the sagebrush we often stumbled upon jackrabbits, lizards, red aunt hills, pinacate or stink beetles, kangaroo mice, and the ever prevalent bull snake. Rattlesnakes were more elusive but still out there, nonetheless. In the air, we saw sparrows, starlings, meadowlarks, killdeer, blackbirds, magpies, crows, ravens, owls, hawks, eagles, and yes, even seagulls. Seagulls appeared out of nowhere, the nearest body of water being miles away, when fields were plowed or alfalfa hay fields were mowed, raked, and baled. They devoured field mice and gophers exposed from their hiding places and ground holes. My brothers and I became very proficient at shooting sparrows and starlings off telephone and power lines with our Daisy Red Ryder BB Gun rifles. Younger brother, Roger, seemed to always be most proficient with this fun rifle. I must also give credit to younger brother, Tom. I’ll never forget one day being chased into and throughout the house by Tom, armed with his loaded and cocked BB gun rifle. At the very moment I was in midair, diving for cover on the other side of my bed, Tom nailed me in the butt with a well-placed BB—and it stung! My main goal, however, was to not get shot in the eye. I gratefully took it in the ass.

Another event is just as vivid and clear in my mind. Feeling mischievous, I walked into the house one hot summer day and sneaked up behind Mom. She was washing dishes at the kitchen sink. I blurted out, Look, Mom!

She startled and quickly turned, becoming more alarmed to see a large bull snake coiled around my arm, its head and neck firmly pinched between my left thumb and index finger. You get that damn snake out of here! Mom demanded.

Completely satisfied with my successful, perfectly executed prank on Mom, I laughed heartily as I turned away and ran out of the house with the unwitting coconspirator. Yes! We also became fearless and very proficient at catching bull snakes without being bitten.

Jackrabbits Got Beet

After moving to Rupert in 1953, Dad went to Hanzel Chevrolet, 405 6th Street, to buy his farm vehicles. He purchased two 1954 Chevrolet, two-ton trucks and a half-ton pickup. The pickup had a spotlight mounted outside the driver-side door. It was controlled by a handle on the inside of the door, just left of the steering wheel. The beam of the spotlight was maneuvered into the desired direction with the driver’s left hand by toggling and/or twisting the spotlight handle to the left or right and up or down.

In addition to his Remington .300 magnum rifle, Dad had a .22 caliber, semiautomatic rifle and a 12-gauge shotgun. I don’t recall the makes and models of the .22 rifle or shotgun. It was probably just prior to Christmas 1957 that Dad sold his .300 magnum rifle so we would have money for Christmas that year. But despite living tough years of extreme financial austerity, Dad and Mom always made sure we kids enjoyed a nice Christmas, had plenty of delicious food on the table, and went to school looking respectable in our clothing. Mom always performed miracles in the kitchen with the barest of ingredients.

I remember vividly that, before selling his .300 magnum rifle, Dad took me with him one day during the summer to shoot up some no-longer-needed dynamite and blasting caps. Blasting caps contained a primary explosive or high-explosive compound ignitable by flame, heat, or shock. This in turn helped to ignite the stick or sticks of dynamite the blasting caps were attached to. A small area at the northern edge of our farm, next to SH 24, remained covered by living sagebrush and piles of lava rock that had been cleared from planted fields. Dad secreted the surplus dynamite and blasting caps at the base of a pile of lava rocks. We then both relocated about one hundred yards away where Dad had also stored one of his truck flatbeds. Dad and I then crouched down low behind the front, upright portion of the flatbed for cover, before Dad opened fire on the blasting caps with .30 caliber ammunition rounds. I watched as Dad fired about ten intermittent live rounds into the fireworks. A white ring of smoke spiraled high into the blue sky, following each blast of dynamite. I am still reminded of this, whenever I see a cigarette, cigar, or pipe smoker puff out smoke rings.

On another occasion, one night during late October or early November of 1957, Dad took me with him to put the .22 caliber rifle to good use.

Jackrabbits during the 1950s on the southern Idaho desert, and probably still today, inhabited the sagebrush in great numbers. They were a source of food for coyotes and predatory birds. Disease also kept their numbers in check, as their overpopulation was cyclic. They nonetheless were always near newly developed crops of potatoes, sugar beets, and other green-leafed plants. They could and did do substantial damage to farmers’ crops. A common occurrence during the early spring each year was for neighboring farmers to unite to round up and kill jackrabbits. Walking through the sagebrush in long human lines, the men and younger boys were spaced about ten feet apart from each other. We then gradually closed both ends of the line into a circle, trapping hundreds of the rabbits into a tight group. They were clubbed to death as they attempted to breach the human circle.

After the sugar beets were harvested in 1957, one night Dad and I got in the Chevy pickup with the .22 rifle and drove into a harvested beet field covered in beet tops and wilted leaves. Sugar beets are a large, broad-leafed plant. Prior to digging up the beets with a harvester, farmers topped them off or separated the large leaves so that only the actual beet got to the sugar-beet factory. Harvested fields were littered with beet tops. And the beet tops were a great source of food for hungry jackrabbits, at the onset of winter.

Dad parked the pickup truck in the field, that night, turned on the spotlight and headlights and illuminated hundreds of jackrabbits nibbling away at the free food. Just like a bunch of silly Bugs Bunnies in a carrot patch, these were a bunch of unsuspecting jackrabbits in the beet patch. These bunnies, however, weren’t hollering out, Eh, what’s up, Doc? They were frozen in place, mesmerized by the bright spotlight beam directed into their eyes. The expression, Deer in the headlights, is sometimes used when someone is described as having a blank stare. Those doomed jackrabbits were no different. They simply rose up onto their haunches and stared blankly into our headlights and the precision-directed spotlight. This enabled Dad to easily shoot them one-by-one with his .22 caliber rifle. After killing over one hundred, we loaded the dead rabbits into the back bed of the pickup for disposal. We knew a man nearby who had a mink farm. He fed the rabbit meat to his mink.

Many jackrabbits got away with damaging farm crops, but the jackrabbits that night got beet.

Clutch Hit in Minidoka

During our fourth-grade year in school, Dad bought Rocky and me new Wilson, Gil McDougald–signature baseball gloves and a bat and ball, starting my love for the game of baseball. But my clutch hit in Minidoka didn’t take place in a baseball game.

Three voices in 1958 really stand out in my mind: Jane Morgan singing The Day That the Rains Came Down, Tommy Edwards singing It’s All in the Game; and one of the greatest entertainers of all time, Bobby Darin, singing Splish Splash (I was taking a bath).16 I recall hearing Bobby Darin’s song for the first time on our car or pickup radio when we were out in Minidoka one night herding sheep. In addition to the Chevy pickup, the family had a new, pink 1957 Oldsmobile sedan; but this nice car soon disappeared.

Bobby Darin’s song and his name will always remind me of the small, railroad town of Minidoka—and Suffolk Sheep.

Suffolk sheep are a black-faced breed developed in England by crossing Southdown rams with Norfolk Horned ewes in order to breed good producers of meat and wool.17 Dad loved Suffolk sheep. For several years, he took us young boys with him to Filer, Idaho, near Twin Falls, to attend the annual Filer Ram Sale. Dad turned this event into an overnighter. We slept outside under blankets and the clear, Milky Way–strewn night sky. This is when I learned how to find the Big Dipper and Little Dipper constellations, including the North Star, which is the very end star of the Little Dipper’s handle. I became fascinated with the solar system our earth was a part of. The vastness of space. The numberless stars and streaking meteors. This fascination would inspire me to write the following poem many years later, on January 10, 2010, after pondering for three years the words to use:

Room for Everyone

You look into space on a clear night;

millions of stars shine so bright.

Your gaze is a single plane;

it’s length is infinite, beyond your sight.

Is there room for everyone?

How many stars align this plane?

How many hide behind the one in sight?

How many there are, we can only wonder;

the number is infinite, into the night.

Is there room for everyone?

It is merely but one plane,

your chosen line of sight;

countless others forever extend,

as you gaze left or as you gaze right.

Is there room for everyone?

Many are the heavens,

which man cannot number;

how many there are, we can only wonder;

the number is infinite, into the night.

Is there room for everyone?

Millions of earths—Enoch bore record.

Worlds without number—Moses was told.

Numberless worlds and numberless heavens,

revealed by the Father; created by the Son.18

Yes! There is room for everyone!

I learned to hate Suffolk sheep or any breed of sheep for that matter.

Dad never had a complete fence erected around his farm perimeter. We young boys were frequently tasked with herding this devious species of sheep, in order to keep them on our own property as they grazed during spring and summer through the prairie Junegrass and sagebrush. Embarrassing for me was when they often escaped into neighboring farm fields. Along with keeping the sheep on our own land, keeping them from deviating into a field of fresh, green alfalfa was an important duty. Eating too much alfalfa on empty stomachs caused gases to expand internally, bloating the sheep so tightly that they died an awfully painful death. Summers were hot and dry. Quite often I found myself near the stench of a maggot-invaded sheep carcass, rotting under the blazing-hot sun.

Back to Bobby Darin and Minidoka. One day Dad and a few of us older boys were herding a small band of Suffolk sheep northbound along the gravel road out of Minidoka. The sun was setting, and it would soon be dark. One of our two-ton trucks was parked farther back up the road a few hundred yards, and Dad wanted it driven to our current location with the sheep. Though still only nine years old, I was told by Dad to run back to the truck and drive it to our location. I couldn’t disobey Dad or debate the issue with him, any more than Rocky and I could refuse to drive the John Deere tractors to Minidoka the previous year. Such impudence wasn’t tolerated in those days. I simply complied and ran back to get the truck. Besides, this was a great way to overcome fear.

The automatic transmission was invented by a Canadian, Alfred Horner Munro, in 1921,19 but into the 1950s manual transmissions were still being operated in many cars and trucks. There were separate brake and clutch pedals on the vehicle floorboard, under the steering wheel column. The clutch pedal was on the left, for the driver’s left foot to activate, and the brake pedal was right of the clutch pedal, for the driver’s right foot to activate. The brake pedal could be gently tapped or pushed down as a brief means to slowing a vehicle. However in order to come to a complete stop without killing the engine or to shift from one gear to another gear, the clutch pedal had to first be pushed completely down to disengage the transmission gears. Also, keeping a vehicle in gear along with setting the emergency brake after shutting down the engine kept it from rolling freely downhill. I was beginning to learn these mechanical concepts by this age. However I was still too young to master such mental concepts as remaining composed under stress.

I got into the truck, made sure it was not in gear, then turned the key over and pushed down on the floorboard starter. With the engine running, I pushed down on both clutch and brake pedals, released the emergency brake, then shifted the gear stick into only first gear before taking my right foot off the brake pedal and applying pressure with it on the gas feed. I then released the clutch with my left foot, and down the road I headed. In only first gear, the truck didn’t advance forward at too high a rate of speed, giving me more control and confidence in catching up with Dad and the band of sheep.

As I got to within about fifty yards of the sheep, the road entered into a downgrade causing the truck to speed up and the engine noise to increase to a higher, more whiney pitch due to still being in low gear. At the bottom of the downgrade, the sheep were all bunched up on the road and to either side of it. As I got closer and closer, the time for me to begin the process of slowing down and stopping the truck became a reality. But as images of Suffolk sheep became larger and larger, I lost focus on the mechanical concepts of operating the clutch and brake pedals together—then my composure quickly morphed into panic. Only about fifteen yards from the band of sheep, I pushed down only on the clutch pedal and froze, disengaging the gears and allowing the truck to coast freely at a higher rate of speed.

Push down on the brake! Turn the key off! Dad urgently yelled to me. Take the truck out of gear and push down on the brake! he continued in desperation. I was so confused and panic-stricken that I remained frozen with the clutch pedal pushed down. Too late! I took my foot off the clutch and slammed the truck into the doomed sheep. The mass of lamb chops obviously broke the truck’s momentum, and because it was still in gear the engine sputtered to a stop.

I don’t recall what Dad said at the moment, but he quickly began assessing the damage I had inflicted on the wall of bleating sheep. At least two had been killed by the blunt impact of the truck’s front bumper. Dad didn’t seem to be terribly angry at me, probably because he knew that my traumatic experience in and of itself had been enough punishment. He quickly determined that the meat of the killed sheep should not go to waste but be dressed out and eaten. Dad did this with his pocket knife then donated the meat to migrant Mexicans lodged at a nearby labor camp in Minidoka.

Other than Dad’s charitable gift to the Mexicans, the two other things I will always remember are Bobby Darin’s smash hit, Splish Splash (I was taking a bath) and my smash, clutch hit against a band of Suffolk sheep in Minidoka.

Windows in Winter

During the spring of 1958, our family of nine moved about four miles to another farm, twelve miles straight north of Paul, Idaho. In Minidoka County, this farm was on the west side of the Paul Road or 600 West. The house we moved into had most recently been lived in for about a year by Uncle Virgil and Aunt Lenore Neilson and their five children. But they had moved another half-mile west into the basement of Callan Phillips’s house, while building a new house on their farm about four miles to the south.

This move confirmed in me the realization that things were definitely not well financially for our family. Dad’s debts had mounted greatly. I remember at age nine, depressingly, that many creditors hounded Dad for money. Even the county sheriff came to our house to collect money Dad owed to creditors. I then realized why our new, pink 1957 Oldsmobile sedan had disappeared.

The house we moved into wasn’t really a house; it was merely a structure we referred to as the barrack. It had been one of many such structures hastily built by the U. S. government to house or imprison Japanese Americans during WWII. It had been relocated to our farm from the Minidoka or Camp Hunt WRAC not far west of us in Jerome County. The first night at the second farm, like fugitives from normal society, Rocky, Tom, Roger, and I slept on a blanket laid down on the concrete floor of the Quonset workshop. Dad and Mom obviously had to sort out how to bed down nine people in this small barrack that had only three tiny bedrooms, one bathroom, a living room, and an adjoining kitchen, where stood an oil stove.

The four exterior walls and roof of this barrack were simply boards nailed to a frame of two-by-four studs and ceiling trusses, covered on the outside by only a layer of tar paper and roofing material. The tar paper was secured to the outer boards by thin, narrow lath boards nailed vertically over the material. The interior walls were drywall, with no insulation. The south end of the barrack’s outer wall had a boarded-up door not covered by any tar paper. The covering apparently had been either torn off or blown away over the previous years. Underneath the barrack, in a shallow crawl space, lived a family of gray feral cats. There was no grass around the barrack, only dirt. Our yard had no trees for shade.

The half-mile road to the barrack, from 600 West, was dirt. This road extended another half-mile west and over a cratered butte to 700 West, to Callan Phillips’s farm. Our farm was a whole land section, a square mile or 640 acres. We farmed about 500 acres, the remainder being hills covered with sagebrush and lava rock. Unlike the first farm, irrigated primarily by sprinkler pipe and from water-filled ditches using siphon tubes, this farm was irrigated solely from ditches with siphon tubes. This required fields relatively level enough for water to flow from the ditches down quarter-mile, corrugated furrows between rows of crops. We lived in this barrack and farmed here for six years, until April 1964. Summers were very hot and dry. Winters were very cold and snowy.

For the first two or three years on this farm, Tom, Roger, and I slept on one full-size bed in the first bedroom on the right, after entering the hallway from the kitchen. The bathroom was the first room on the left, after entering the hallway. Dad, Mom, and whoever was the baby at the time slept in the northeast bedroom at the end of the hallway. The other kids slept in the northwest bedroom at the end of the hallway. Amy Kay was born January 23, 1959. Shirley Jean was born March 24, 1961. Leah Jane was born December 13, 1962. Until we moved again during April 1964, Dad, Mom and ten children lived in this small barrack. During our final two or three years in the barrack, the six boys were in the northwest bedroom, sleeping in two sets of bunk beds, each set three beds high.

The same bed that Tom, Roger, and I initially slept in was just slightly larger than a single bed. We bathed only once a week, on Saturday nights, so we could be clean for church on Sunday. Having only one bathtub made it difficult for up to twelve people to bathe every night. Compounding this difficulty was working on the dirty farm from sunrise until after dark during the spring, summer, and fall. I recall quite often the three of us crawling under bed sheets soiled with farm dirt. Further compounding this predicament was that Tom and I were bed wetters. We either took turns or combined efforts on any given night. Poor Roger, who didn’t have this problem, had to endure it. Mom always had this mattress leaning against a wall or outside in the sun to dry out.

There must be moisture or water vapor in the air, combined with cold, before frost crystals can form or grow. When there is moist air inside a structure and below-freezing temperatures outside the same structure, window frost will form on the inside of a pane of window glass. I’m sure that two bed wetters in the same bedroom added to the cause of moisture forming in our bedroom air, during the cold of winter.

Because the barrack was heated during the winter by only one oil stove, centrally located in the kitchen, Dad kept the heat in the kitchen and living room by hanging a blanket from ceiling to floor at the beginning of the hallway leading to the bathroom and three bedrooms. This made the bedrooms very cold during hard winter nights, so we slept under several blankets to stay warm. I woke up on many winter mornings looking directly up at the window on the wall over our heads, seeing white winter frost on the inside of the window pane. We quickly bailed out of our bed and scurried into the kitchen, in our jockey shorts, and got dressed next to the oil stove as Mom cooked our breakfast. I’ll always remember those windows in winter.

Scars

Thanks to a toxoid vaccination for the tetanus bacterium, Clostridium tetani, contracting tetanus in developed countries is now extremely rare.20 A serious, life-threatening infection, tetanus causes muscle spasms in the jaw, such as lockjaw, as well as in other voluntary muscles of the body. It can be introduced into the body by rusty metal that cuts or punctures body tissue. The rust does not cause the infection; the infection is caused by the tetanus bacterium, harboring in a prime habitat afforded by the rough surface of rusty metal.

A one-hit wonder high on the charts in 1958 by Hal and Herbie Kalin, also known as the Kalin Twins, When, was a favorite song of mine.2

In the summer of 1959, I was ten years old, Tom was nine, and Roger was eight. The bed we three slept in had coiled springs in the mattress. While living on our second farm, I sustained four cuts that could possibly have resulted in tetanus. Two of them happened while sleeping on this mattress. All of the bedwetting must have rotted the outer fabric to the mattress because eventually one of the coiled metal pocket springs broke through the upper surface of the pocket, then the surface of the mattress. I could feel the sharp end of this spring between my legs each night when I crawled under the top sheet and blanket.

On two occasions, I apparently didn’t avoid the spring while rolling over on my stomach as I slept. One night, I received a two-inch lateral cut to my left leg about three inches above the knee. On another night, I received an inch-and-a-half lateral cut to the top portion of my right kneecap. The cuts were perfectly parallel to each other. The scars remain as such to the day of this writing. Those two scars are a constant reminder of that awful, rotten mattress the three of us slept on.

I sustained a third cut while cutting potato seed in our potato cellar. This is a crescent-shaped cut, about one and one-half inches long, on the inside of my left wrist. Rocky, Tom, Roger, and