Pioneer Day

With Pioneer Day being in two days, I'm going to try to remember as many details as I can about the holiday. However, despite being a Mormon, a Utahn, and a descendant of pioneers, I don't really think of the 24th of July as a full holiday. One problem I have is distinguishing my memories of Pioneer Day from my memories of Independence Day.

2011. After church, I was able to find a PDF version of The Friend online. I used it to copy the Obama-like sketch of President Monson from the cover. I Googled for pictures of President Obama and President Monson; one of the sites of a Monson picture was an anti-Mormon site by someone who had converted, went on a mission, was sealed in the temple, and then apostatized. After finding the pictures, I assembled them together. Then I wrote a blog post. Then I combined my two assembled pictures and posted them on Seen @ BYU. But sadly I don't remember what else happened that day.

2010. I'm thinking this was the day of my niece's birthday party. She got all her gifts from everyone else and my sister was about to have her thank everyone but then Allie reminded her that I had one to give her. I gave her a picture book called Aargh! Spider! She read the book out loud and she kept pronouncing aargh like a pirate. I wouldn't eat cake and my family seemed almost disappointed. I don't remember what else happened this day.

2009. My journal for Friday, July 24, 2009 reads, "Today we had sufficient miles to go out to Culdesac. That was pretty fun. We saw Linda Mock, and Sister Durante. We also found a member, looking for another one, who may be moving into the ward. They own an unprofitable restaurant. Lapwai and Culdesac took our whole day." I believe this was the first time I had been to the small town of Culdesac. We went to Lapwai, the Indian reservation, every Friday. We were there, and I looked at our miles and realized we had enough to drive the extra ten miles to Culdesac. We had a media referral to check on. I drove around to try to find it. We drove by Culdesac's small baseball field. We found the house and met a man outside and asked if the lady whose name we had lived there; she did, but she wasn't available. (It's possible this happened on a different Culdesac trip.) I think we went to the Durantes' house; she wasn't there, and Brother Durante (who was inactive) was unenthusiastic about us being there; he told us his wife (who was semi-active) wasn't there. We visited Linda Mock, not knowing what to expect since she was less-active and we'd never met her, but she was very friendly and let us in. She talked about knowing Sister Durante and working (or maybe volunteering) at the thrift shop in Culdesac. Later we went back to the Durantes' and Sister Durante asked us to call before visiting. I looked at a map of Culdesac to get where we needed to go. There was a closed bridge that prevented us from driving where we needed to. I drove down a road that was more like an alley and Elder Warren was mad because he thought it wasn't a real road, but it did lead out to a bigger road. Then we went to a hotel-like apartment building. We parked and talked to someone who said we could come back and see him but he seemed high. We had the names of two less-actives who lived in that apartment building, so we ascended the stairs and knocked on the doors. Neither answered. I think after knocking on the second one, we decided to knock on another door to see if they knew anything about the people whose names we had. A little girl answered and said, "Come in!" I told her that we would need her parents' permission to come in. Her dad came to the door and said "Hi elders!" He let us in, despite them not having much furniture, and he introduced himself as Kim Fluckiger. He said he was from another Idaho city--I think Donnelly--that wasn't in our mission. He and his wife had recently purchased the Jacques Spur cafe just outside of Culdesac; he told us we could go there for dinner and meet his wife and she would give us dinner. The restaurant wasn't very lucrative. He said they were still thinking about officially moving; the rest of their kids were back in Donnelly. We asked if we could have his phone number and he said their apartment didn't have a phone but we could have the restaurant phone because one of them was often there. We asked Brother Fluckiger if he knew about the less-actives; he said they were somehow related to each other but he didn't know much about them. We left and Elder Warren didn't think we should go to the restaurant because it sounded like they weren't doing too well financially.

2008. My journal for Thursday, July 24, 2008 reads, "I was hoping with my companion not being district leader anymore, I'd be able to write more in my journal. But that hasn't been the case. Elder Duncan is very persistent at planning. Which is good. Today he took the 'Rulers and Majorstrates' entry out of the phone--but he still dances in public. His reason for the phone is it's not professional....He doesn't find Jeremiah 24:2 funny....Didn't seem like Pioneer Day, and I can't believe Allie turned five two days ago. She's so old and it's so sad!" The ellipses indicate that there were parts that I didn't include here, but it was irrelevant to what we did that day. I don't remember what we did. (I should explain the "Rulers and Majorstrates" thing--we had all the numbers for all the missionaries in our district in our phone, and I liked to play with their names and make them resemble scriptural passages. Our district leader's companion was Elder Major, so I used the phraseology "rulers and magistrates" from the twelfth article of faith--"rulers" because of our district leader, and "majorstrates" because of Elder Major.)

2007. Like on the Fourth of July, I had to work this day. All I really remember is my coworker Alice saying Pioneer Day wasn't really a holiday to her because she wasn't Mormon.

2006, 2005. I don't remember. :(

2004. I woke up in the morning and turned on the TV because I wanted to see our ward's float in the Days of '47 Parade. Before the parade started, they showed it waiting to go out, with Bernie Ure sitting on it in his blue Mormon costume (Mormon as in the prophet, not just a generic Mormon). Then we were going to my grandparents' house for Allie's family birthday party. I didn't want to leave because I wanted to watch our ward's float in the parade, but my mom said that we already saw it (the clip I mentioned) and so we didn't need to watch it. We went to the indoor pool at my grandparents' condos. I remember Allie being a very cute one-year-old in a swimsuit. Then we went back to my grandparents' house. My aunt Sue got Allie two small baby dolls, which Allie loved. I think my grandparents got her a little thing that had balls that you would push through holes; the holes had little buttons that were pressed when you put the ball through and made noise, and then the balls would roll down the spiral slides.

2003. I remember standing with David and Ya-ping outside of Primary Children's Hospital, where we would have just seen Allie in the NICU. We watched fireworks in the valley.

2002-1997. I can't remember. :(

1996. I'm thinking this was the year that my family was using sparklers. After mine burned out, I touched the end and it was still hot and burned me. I started crying and went in and got in my bed. I think I started saying things like I was never going to use sparklers again. My mom came in and told me I was "buying trouble."

Others. I have a few other memories that I don't know whether they're from the 4th or the 24th. For one, we were at my grandparents' house during the day and we brought a bag of fireworks and took it in their basement, but we kids weren't allowed to touch it. During the day we lit the snake and a parachute; we kids excitedly went out to try to find the parachute, which had an American flag, a yellow flag, and a Black Cat (brand) flag. Another memory is having the Thompsons over at our house and lighting one of the pinwheel fireworks that you nail to something; we nailed it to a railroad tie that kept our garden up, and it set the grass on fire; fortunately, the hose was readily available to extinguish it. I think it's likely the sparkler incident was the 24th; I'm not sure about the other. I for sure remember a 24th in which we could see the fireworks from Lagoon at our house. These events probably happened between 1994 and 1997.