Where the Deer and the Antelope Play

Ah ha! Dad identified the mutant deer for me! It turns out that they are not mutant deer after all--they are antelope. I should have known that but I didn't even think of antelope. They're cute little guys. Dad solved the mutant deer mystery!

Today was an interesting day at work. As I have mentioned before, my latest assignment is to create some wayside exhibit signs to be placed in front of Stagecoach Inn and the old Fairfield schoolhouse. So today I gave my drafts of the signs to Mark, but he had mixed feelings about them. He said he liked them, but he was acting kind of strange. He was questioning all of my dates and some of the information I put on the signs. For example, on the school sign it said that the state of Utah acquired the building in 1977. He said, "I'm almost positive that it wasn't until 1987." So I had to pull out the newspaper article from 1977 entitled "Utah Accepts Gift of Fairfield Schoolhouse." Then, on one of the photos of the inn, I had the date listed as 1961 and he said, "That photo is actually from 1964--I'm almost sure of it." So, I had to dig through the photos to find it, and written on the photo was "August 1961." It was weird--it was like he didn't trust anything I had written! The weirdest part was when he questioned what I had written about the Fairfield school closing in 1939. I had several references to said closing date--including newspaper articles, etc. He said, "I have always understood that it closed in 1937." I asked him where he got that date, and he pulled out an old binder that had a survey in it that said the school closed in "circa 1937" (circa meaning "sometime in the neighborhood of"). And it didn't have a reference for where 1937 came from. Hmmmm, it seemed pretty darn clear to me that 1939 was the correct date, but he still made me spend the afternoon looking for other sources to back up my findings.

Later in the afternoon he said, "Are you absolutely positive that Mark Twain never wrote about the inn?" I said, "Yes, Mark. I have read through everything he wrote about his trip through here, and he did not mention it."

Speaking of the inn, I had titled the sign: "Stagecoach Inn ~ Carson House" because these days it is known as Stagecoach Inn, but back in the day it was called the Carson House, Carson Inn, Carson's Hotel, and the John Carson House. Of course it wasn't called Stagecoach Inn back then because that would be like calling a hotel today "Car Hotel"--and that's a lame name. As Mark was reading through my text, he said, "Why do you keep calling it Carson's Inn when we need to be consistent and just call it Stagecoach Inn?" I said, "I referred to it as Carson's Inn because that's what they called it in all of the historical writings." He gave me kind of a blank stare, then he said, "Then when did they start calling it Stagecoach Inn?" I said, "I don't know; probably when the state acquired it." Then he was all distraught because he wanted to be historically accurate and call it Carson's Inn, but he thought people would be confused if it was referred to by different names. He was quite upset and was wondering if we would need to change the official name of the park from Camp Floyd/Stagecoach Inn State Park to Camp Floyd/Carson Inn State Park. (But that would cost the state a lot of money to do, so that would be a bad idea.)

Anyway, he seemed kind of mad that I had discovered that the inn wasn't always called "Stagecoach Inn." Basically, what Mark wanted me to tell him all along was, "Hey Mark! I found a page from Mark Twain's journal where he says: 'Tonight we stopped at Stagecoach Inn in Fairfield, Utah Territory, and I enjoyed one of the most pleasant evenings of my life.'" But said page does not exist--and that's not my fault! I was very confused today because Mark is more than happy to go along with the legend that Mark Twain stayed at the inn--which has no historical proof, but then when I was presenting him with the facts today, he demanded proof of everything I had said and seemed upset when I could prove the validity of my facts.

So, in the end, he made me go clean the bathrooms :-( That was nasty.

Raise the Roof

Our neighbors who live across the street and down one house from us have been raisin' the roof today--literally! They took their roof off of their house this morning. It looks so funny!!! They are doing some pretty hefty remodeling on their home, and they took the roof off of their garage yesterday. But today when I pulled onto the street, the main roof of their house was sitting in their front yard! Tonight all of the neighborhood kids have been climbing on the roof that is now on the front lawn. I bet they're hoping it doesn't rain tonight! :-)

Today was technically a work day, but Mark gave me the day to just hang out at home to do some writing for the exhibits I'm putting together for Stagecoach Inn and the school house at Camp Floyd. I love research and writing days when I can just be on my own schedule and not have to worry about driving out there (although I did miss seeing the mutant deer today). Since I was at home for the day, I got to go meet Dr. Rugh for lunch at BYU. She is sooooo nice! She is seriously one of my favorite people in the whole world. We had fun catching up on things, and I got to see her cool new office in the SWKT. She has a sweet view of the whole valley.

I have something random and funny to write about before I head to bed. The other day when Mom, Dad, and I stopped at the Territorial Statehouse in Fillmore, they had a hallway full of pictures of early Fillmore settlers in the basement of the building. One of the pictures was of . . . Susan Black!













Hmmmm, she does kind of look like the pioneer version of THE Susan Black, don't you think?

I'm It!

I know I already did a post today (which, I might ad, you probably shouldn't read right before you eat potatoes for dinner), but I got a blog tag from one of my favorite people in the whole world, Missy Stowell! The rules for being tagged are as follows. I must:

1. Link to the person who tagged you.
2. Post the rules on your blog.
3. Write six random things about yourself.
4. Tag six random people at the end of your post by linking to their blogs.
5. Let each person know they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their website.
6. Let your tagger know when your blog entry is up.

Okay, so I need to write six random things about myself. Here goes:

1. I can only focus out of one eye at a time. (I have peripheral vision out of both eyes at the same time, but I can only focus out of one or the other because of an eye condition called Strabismus.)
2. I want to have a cat named General Sterling Price someday.
3. My mom used to babysit Gerald and Betty Ford's kids (yes, THE Gerald Ford, as in President of the United States).
4. I have never been to California.
5. One time when I was at BYU I met Steve Young, but I was in such awe that I was literally speechless. I shook his hand, but I seriously didn't say anything because I couldn't get anything to come out.
6. When I was little, Dan Rather was on my list of favorite people.

So now you know a little bit more about random me :-) Now I need to think of six people to tag . . .

Mutant Deer and Petrified Potatoes

There is a sign along Highway 73 out to Camp Floyd that says, "Frequent Deer Crossing, Next 15 Miles." And I know it's true because there are always a lot of dead deer along the side of the road. I never get a very good look at the dead ones, but sometimes I see some live ones running through the fields--or running across the road. Every time I see one, I say to myself, "What the heck kind of deer is that?" The deer out by Fairfield look like something you would see on an African jungle safari (not that I've ever been on one, but they look like gazelles you see on NOVA specials about Africa). The Fairfield deer don't have regular horns. From what I have seen, it appears that the males have two horns that point backwards. They totally look like gazelles--only with shorter horns. Hmmm, maybe it is some kind of mutant deer that developed as a result of the nuclear waste that's out at the Deseret Chemical Depot in Toole?

Today at Camp Floyd I got to whip out the power drill (my favorite power tool) and fix some of the artifact display cases in the museum. I know I complained about all of the hard labor that Mr. Riccio made us do when we were preparing for the museum exhibit in the spring, but I must admit that I learned quite a bit from him, and I was able to employ some of my exhibit construction skills today. The coolest part about it was that I got to remove the artifacts from the display cases. There is a cool pocket knife that belonged to one of the soldiers. There are some buttons and other uniform decorations, as well as a lot of bullets and percussion caps. The two artifacts I am not too fond of, however, are the potatoes. Yes, "historic" potatoes. Calling potatoes "historic" is another way of saying that they are shriveled up, dry, nasty, disgusting food particles from 1858 that were buried in the dirt for a long time. I decided today that the potatoes have begun to petrify. I have no idea why we have the petrified potatoes on display in our museum. They are totally gross. They are about 1/8 the size of normal potatoes and they are totally black. Unfortunately I had to remove the potatoes today when I was fixing their display case, so I carefully scooted them around using a long screwdriver. I could tell just by softly touching them with the screwdriver that their consistency is nasty to the max. But, in the end I didn't have to actually touch the potatoes, and the artifact cases look really cool. Mark was very surprised at my sweet handyman skills :-)

I think that the potatoes are probably toxic and I bet if someone touched them their skin would turn black and shrivel up.

Fantastic (?) Five

Sundays will never be the same. Today I started my new church calling which is to teach the CTR 5 Primary class--which consists of 5 five-year-olds. Needless to say, it is an energetic bunch, and by the end of church I am pooped. :-) The kids are really very cute, but I have one rambunctious child who seems to inspire rowdiness in the others. Her name is Nauvoo (seriously, that is her first name). She is extremely smart but very out-of-control. She talks constantly and loudly. Hmmm, I'm going to have to figure out what to do about her. Greg suggested Benadryl-coated candy :-) The other kids are, for the most part, very well-behaved. I totally love the Faragher twins! They are adorable and very sweet and quiet.

Today for primary class we talked about saying "thank you." The kids were kind of bored until I whipped out the bandages to reenact the story of the 10 lepers (only it was five lepers for us). I also had them write thank you notes to people (well, they can't really write yet, so they drew thank you notes to people). Somehow, during the course of the lesson, we got off on the topic of ice cream. Ashley Faragher said, "My dad says that the ice cream man is very mean and that all he wants to do is steal our money and make us fat." :-) I'm sure there will be many good times and funny five-year-old stories in the near future.