Lesters Memories of the Motel

I am always so glad when someone contributes to my lame attempt at an autobiography. I know there are so many things that I'm forgetting so when someone else helps out it adds so much to my story. Lester sent me a letter and obviously he remembers some very different things about the motel in Waterton. Fortunately he and Mickey were there just a year ago so he also forwarded me some pictures. Below are his emails and pictures. If I want to editorialize on Lester's words my comments will be in yellow italics

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Hi Fred:

Thank you for taking the time to write "our" history in such detail. You are saving me a great deal of effort and I am glad to see Peter following along on your blog. I send the other kids to it whenever there is a good story, which is often.

It truly is my pleasure, I'm really enjoying this trip down memory lane. I'm also glad you're having your kids read it since after all, it is for our children that I'm writing this anyway.

Here are some photos you may want to use. Mickey and I took them last year when we went through.

Also, a Ford Econoline van.

This van is in very similar condition to the van that Lester and I knew and loved. The only difference is that our van didn't have any windows in the side.

As far as I remember, our first "solo" restaurant meal where we went totally on our own was an order of fries at New Franks Cafe. I don't think anything else in Waterton is as intact in its 1970 form as New Franks.

I remember that very clearly. We ate a lot of fries at "Franks" didn't we?

A few points, if you want to edit the post.

The gas fitter who was killed was Bud Sloan, and he was Butch Sloan's brother (who owned the Texaco Station next to the Alpine). If he would have stayed where he was working (right next to the wall), he would have been safe, but it looked like he was running away. I remember his chest was punctured by a board and the blood stain on the ground is still vivid in my mind.

The motel is called "The Aspen Village Inn" now (sign attached) and has integrated The Ponderosa and The Windflower (but you knew that).

The photo that I sent before shows the "L" shape nicely that you talk about in the wind description.

When we had the motel it had a flat roof. I see they have now put a peaked roof on it. Other than that it really hasn't change much has it?

Funny how we remember different things. The volunteer fireman siren had pull boxes all around the village, and sometimes they would be set off by kids pulling them. The same gust of wind that lifted the roof set off the pull box right next to the motel.

Also, the roof landed on Frank Goble's backyard garage (next to the gas station, and I can't believe I remember that name). He had a very valuable collector car in the garage...the original Shelby. The photo attached is a recent Shelby, but the one that was in Goble's garage was before Ford bought the name, and the rear window sloped all the way to the trunk.

When the roof hit the telephone/power poles in the back alley, it snapped the pole behind Goble's garage and the massive transformer broke its mountings and fell through the roof of the garage and landed smack dab in the middle of the huge sloping back window of this Shelby. I think those transformers weigh about 300 lbs, so I'm sure it damaged a whole lot more than just a broken window.

I remember that. The transformer went right through the back window. What a shame.

And the name of the gas station is on the tip of my tongue, but it is now a mini-mall.

Again, thanks for writing "our" history.

Love ya,

Lester

This is a picture of the church in Waterton. The picture is taken from in front of the motel.
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This is the parking lot of the Ponderosa motel. The Ponderosa was next door to the Windflower and we bought it a few years after we completed the Windflower. It is a series of separate little bungalows and they also had flat roofs in my day. I learned to drive hauling dirty laundry from all these different rooms up to the laundry room. Only one tiny little ding in the car that I can remember and no one ever noticed (or at least no one ever said anything).

Happy Birthday Lester

Today I would like to pay a tribute to my baby brother. Today is his birthday and he turns forty nine years old. Growing up I can't ever remember a time when Lester wasn't in my life. No one ever called for "Fred", they always called "Fred and Lester". Sometimes they would even call for "Led and Frester". That is just how we were. My earliest memories of Lester were when we lived in Leavitt and we were still in our cribs. I know, that is pretty pathetic that I was still sleeping in a crib while Lester was old enough to play with but I remember it well. We would climb up on the edge of my crib which was bigger than his and then jump into his crib which was smaller. Mine was a steel crib and his was wooden and eventually the floor of his crib broke through. We thought that was pretty cool because then we could climb through the broken corner like we were gophers going in and out of the hole. Dad finally came in and got mad at us but the scary part was that Lester had to sleep on the mattress on the floor and we were both scared for him because he didn't have the walls of the crib to protect him.

Another memory from the same time period was when we would get crayons and jump up and down on the bed (we were out of our cribs by this time) and draw on the wall while we were jumping. We did this long before "Spirograph" had been invented but we got some pretty "spirograph" like images. We got in real big trouble for that one. I remember when I started school. We lived on the farm still and I had to ride the bus without Lester. It was very strange and a bit scary being on my own without him. Sure, my older siblings were on the bus but they went way to the back and pretended they didn't know me. I had to sit on the front seat and I hated it.

Once Lester started school we always played together during recess and we walked to school together (we lived in town at this point) and we did everything together. We road our bikes all over town. One time, in the middle of the night we road our bikes out to an old abandoned farm house and climbed up into the attic. We shone our flashlight on some pigeons and simply picked them up and shoved them into a gunny sack. We took the pigeons home and raised them in a tool shed in our back yard. We raised several generations of pigeons before someone left the door open and a cat got in. The pigeons were all dead or gone and we decided not to continue that venture. I remember climbing on the roof of the school, climbing in the grain elevators, walking the rails of the corrals at the stockyards, we did it all. And then we moved to Waterton in the summers. Our biggest goal in Waterton was to always finish work as fast as we could. We had motels in Waterton and I did the laundry while Lester stripped and made beds. We usually finished up in early afternoon and then we did one of three things.

We hiked into the mountains. Sometimes we hiked on trails but often we headed off trail into the wilderness. We often took backpacks and just rolled out our bags where ever we felt like it and spent the night. We never owned a tent and we never took a canteen. There were streams all over the mountains and we drank straight from the streams. The best tasting water you ever drank. We climbed many cliffs long before rock climbing was a fad and it scares me to think of some of the cliffs we scaled. Many times we climbed straight down the face of "Bears Hump" if any of you know that hike. Of course we never had anything like ropes and carbeeners. One time we were hiding in some bushes on a cliff around the amphitheater while a park ranger was giving a speech to a bunch of tourists. We thought we were petty smart since we could sneak around so quietly and no one knew we were there. If I remember right there must have been more than a hundred tourists. I don't remember what the ranger was talking about but he suddenly stopped and pointed right towards us. I guess we weren't as quiet as we thought. He then told the tourists not to panic but he thought that there was a bear in the bushes and if they stayed calm the bear would leave. I about wet my pants because at first I thought there was a bear behind us that we hadn't noticed. It then dawned on me that he thought Lester and I were the bear. Once we got out of there without getting caught we laughed all the way home. We also used to chase the bears. One of our sisters boyfriends had a massive spot light that you could plug into the cigarette lighter. We would get in the back of his pickup looking for bears. Once we spotted one we would shine the light on him and chase him until he went up a tree. It was great fun and I'm just glad I didn't fall out of the truck and get left at the mercy of those bears. They were quite angry.

If we didn't go into the mountains we went across the street to the swimming pool. The Waterton pool was an Olympic sized pool and we swam all the time. When we got tired of swimming or if it was really cold (that happened often in Waterton) we would go in the showers and spend hours just playing in the showers. In remember one time Greg sent some fire crackers home from Australia. They were huge massive firecrackers. We took some cigarettes that had been left in the hotel and we put the fuse of a fire cracker through the cigarette. We then lit the cigarette and buried the firecracker in the flower bed at the swimming pool and sat back on the balcony of our motel and watched and waited. There were crowds of people and sure enough, the fire cracker blew and about a dozen people about wet their pants.

I also remember the time we would go into the campground in the middle of the night and light firecrackers outside of the tents. We figured we were safe since the guys had to dress before they came after us. And then there were long weekends. We would take the old Ford Econoline out on the Monday morning and gather up the empty beer bottles that were laying all over town. We would fill the entire van with hundreds of cases of empty beer bottles. We eventually got tired of picking up the loose bottles laying on the ground and started collecting the empties people had stacked in neat cases outside their trailers and tents. One time we were in an area of the campground where the only way out was over the bridge. Someone got mad at us and tried to chase us down. He then stood in the middle of the bridge and we were lined up at the far end of the campground. It was a straight road from our van to where the man was so we played a game of chicken. We sped down the road right at the man on the bridge. Obviously he jumped out of the way but if he hadn't we would of killed him. How dumb, but what fun memories. The cops finally tracked us down when we were out in the middle of the Dardanelles and when he saw who we were he called in on his radio. "It's just a couple of locals out making some bucks collecting empty bottles." He did point out that it was against the law to have a blanket hanging out of the back of the van covering our license plate. Ooops!?! Apparently the guy who we nearly ran over reported that we were stealing things from the campground. He didn't know what we had stolen though. Thank goodness no one accused us of stealing empty beer bottles because we were guilty of that.

The third thing we would do is go boating. Dad's cousin, Clark Leavitt had a ski boat that we used often or we would take our Kayak. Fara also had a canoe that we used often. We paddled all over that lake. I guess a fourth thing we did was ride our bikes. We soon got bored with the roads and started riding bikes on the trails. Coming down those mountains got very exciting at times. We had more than one terrifying wipe out. Our cousin, David Lybbert wiped out one time coming down from Cameron lake and he was unconscious for an hour. It was very scary. It kind of ruined the day.

I have so many wonderful memories of my childhood growing up and Lester, you're in all of them.

Again, when I went off to college it was another strange event for me because I was going alone and Lester wasn't there. It just felt so strange. By the time I returned from my mission it had been four years since Lester and I had really been together. I had part of the summer after my first year at BYU and then I was on my mission in August. I left for college in September 1976 and Lester came home from his mission and started school at the University of Alberta in January 1980. We were roommates for a semester and then we were both married in 1981. It is kind of sad that after we were married he moved north and I moved south and we have rarely seen each other since then.

I know it is my own fault but I have not kept in very good touch with any of my family since I've been married. When we lived in Alberta we saw Fara and Jackie and their families often because they were still in Cardston but we rarely saw Greg, Lester or Dixie and I feel a real sense of loss because of that. My only excuse is that they lived so far away and I was so into my career and raising my own six kids that it was difficult to extend beyond that.

Lester I want you to know that even though we have done little together in the last thirty years you are an integral part of me and I do think of you often. I consider it a great blessing to be able to get to know Peter better and he reminds me of you in many ways. Not only because he is so tall but he also looks and acts like you. He is a good man.

Lester, have a great birthday. I love you;

Rosemary Scouts

Today we had planned to hike out to these waterfalls that are supposed to be big enough that you can swim beneath them. It was a five mile hike but when we looked into it we realized that the falls dry up in the summer time. We didn't want to hike five miles in to see a mud puddle and then hike five miles back so we planned a trip to the beach instead. After a full day in the sun yesterday no one was up to exposing too much of our red skin to the sun again so we ended up walking on the beach and having lunch beside the water. It was a great day. I just love being with my kids. We picked out a few beach houses that we think we will buy. Well, maybe it will have to wait until after I make my millions.
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Not long after we moved to Rosemary they called me to be the scout master. This was a problem since I knew absolutely nothing about the scouting program. I did know a lot about scouting however so I accepted the challenge with enthusiasm. To make matters worse, the scout group committee met on the same night as we had scouts. The group committee was the one place I might have received some sort of training to be a scout master but I guess that wasn't to be. As a kid growing up I loved the outdoors. Lester and I used to hike into the mountains in Waterton Park and throw our sleeping bags down anywhere. I seldom worried about trails and we never worried about fire rings or that kind of nonsense. We also never took a canteen since there were many streams and we'd just drink out of the streams. I also don't think we ever owned a tent, we just took our chances. We did have a scouting program in our ward but all they ever did was play floor hockey in the gym. Every Tuesday night we played floor hockey. I hated it. I also never earned any badges but not because I didn't care, it was because I was never given a chance. My scouts were a varied bunch, some loved sports and some hated sports. I didn't want my non-sports lovers to go through what I did so half the weeks we'd play a sport and the alternating weeks we'd do something I loved. We didn't work on badges because I didn't know anything about them but I gave them the kind of scouting experience I had. I remember one week we put aluminum foil in a pop bottle filled with water and Draino (NaOH) and put a balloon over the top of the pop bottle. The reaction produced hydrogen gas which filled up the balloon. We'd then tie the balloon and let it float to the roof of the gym in the church. That soon got boring so we taped a string to the balloon and lit it on fire. When the fire reached the balloon it ignited the hydrogen and made a nice fire ball. We timed it so that the balloon would explode in mid air before it hit the ceiling. I wasn't too worried about black marks on the ceiling or it burning because hydrogen doesn't do that but I didn't want to take a chance. There were times when I was afraid the explosions would attract the attention of the people in the group committee but if anyone came in the gym we had our ropes there and we just pretended to be working on scouting stuff. We also made hot air balloons. If you dip a cotton ball in alcohol and hang it under a dry cleaning bag and light it, it will fill the bag with hot air and it will float. One day when we were doing this it was too windy so we went in behind the church (3) where we were sheltered from the wind. It worked fine until the balloon floated above the church and the wind caught it and sent it for a loop. The balloon stabilized but by this time the bag was on fire. We now had a fire ball flying through the air. I was worried about a brush fire so I sent my scouts running after the fire ball. It landed in Bob Henderson's (11) stubble field and by the time we caught up to it the stubble was on fire. It's a good thing we had a bunch of us there because it took all of us stomping to get the fire out. I swore all of my scouts to secrecy and told them if they ratted me out I'd probably get fired from my scout master job. I don't know if any ever told or not but I never got in trouble. We also went on camp outs which was my favorite part. Looking back we were terribly unprepared but we camped the way I used to camp as a kid. I remember one time we drove up to the mountains and when we saw a likely spot we pulled over to the side of the road, found a good place to leave my car and we hiked into the tree's. We found a good spot by a stream and there we pitched our tents. I think we had tents, but maybe we didn't. Another time we did a winter camp out on lake Newell. We took fishing poles and went ice fishing but I've never been able to catch fish. A couple of the boys caught some nice pike but I didn't. I tied a lot of hooks though. It was a very cold day (below -20) and I couldn't believe it but one of the boys brought a coat with a broken zipper. I might not be prepare like I should but I always brought good equipment. Another activity that I remember well is one night we went out to Leonard Dressell's farm and pulled the kids around the yard behind a truck in the snow. Leonard had the hood of an old car that he pulled behind his truck. That was a lot of fun. I think I even took Kira on that activity. I guess the Lord knows where my heart is because even now, more than twenty years later I'm still the scout master in our ward. My boys now usually make "Eagle" and I know how the badges work but we still go camping and learn how make fires properly. I love it.