What It Feels Like To Be 82 Years Old.

    My last post was in February of 2021. Now it is almost June of 2023, and I am almost two years older. Now I'm 82 years old. I decided to try to write regularly during the next few years because I see so many people who have no idea of what it's like to be this old. They seem to have no idea that the things they do now affect how their older years will be.

   I seem to have learned that early in life. When I was fifteen I stopped struggling to gain more yards on the football field, and it changed my life. When I stopped struggling the gang of about five opposing players were able to stop me and pull me down, slowly. I just kind of gave up the struggle, and slowly I went down. I had been worn down from practice every day, and late night practice and games and working in the morning from 5:30 a.m. til I had to rush to get to school. I was tired and my right hip hurt every day to walk, so I just fell.

   When they finally got off me, I stayed on the ground for a while, and got up slowly. My back hurt, down low. I went to the doctor, on Seventh Street, near "F" street, a half a block from the Eureka Theater. He took X-Rays. I heard him talking to someone as I was waiting.

  "He can play football, I'm not going to stop that," the doctor said, "but he needs to know about what could happen."

   So he told me. "You have a curvature of the spine, and if you have a sudden shock in a way you are not braced for could cause your vertebrae to move in the wrong way and cause paralysis." My parents never said anything, nor talked to me about it.

  I listened to him, and told my coaches the next day that I was not going to play football anymore. I handed in my gear and walked out of the field house locker room. Two of the team's coaches tried to talk me out of quitting, and told me about exercises I could do.

   "Too much of a risk," I thought.

   All my life, if I ran too much, and that's not very much anymore, my right hip hurt and still hurts when I walk after a run, but I'm not paralyzed. A doctor took an x-ray a few years ago and said I have an extra vertebra in my lower back.

   I did not smoke, but when I was in the sixth grade my neighbor did go with me into the woods next to my house and we did puff on cigarettes for a few weeks, so much that when I took a deep breath I coughed when I hadn't touched a cigarette in a few days. I stopped that when I felt that tickle in my lungs. It was only a few weeks.

   I also never drank alcohol. My eighth grade students didn't believe it when I said I had never drank a full can of beer. Only the last drops in a can my father had already finished. I never drank enough to ever feel the effects of alcohol.

   Today, I do have the results of running in the San Joaquin Valley. I do have the Valley Fever spores in my lungs.

   My doctor said I would have. "Every runner has them," She said when I went in to see about a persistent ache under my right shoulder blade in January of 2021. "I also need to check you for covid," she added.

This is Stan Stark on his rowbike, a four wheel 
moving rowing machine.

   I never got a positive covid test, but I seemed to be feeling weaker. "It must be because I'm over 80 now," I thought.

   "You did have covid," my doctor said, "You have a post covid marker in your blood." So I did have covid, though I didn't feel the sickness. I had a chest x-ray.

   "You have pneumonia," she said this time. She gave me some pills for that, and after a few weeks she said I needed another x-ray, and a test for Valley Fever. By this time I was 81, and Dorothy said I had fallen four times. I just thought I was weak and let myself down onto the floor slowly. I didn't remember actually falling. But she insisted that I couldn't get up by myself. She even had our grand daughter come and help me up some of those times. My son, who came over to fix me breakfast said I could not go up our stairs. I did obey until I felt stronger. I tried to run, and ride my bikes, but it was difficult. I kept thinking, "It's because I'm over 80," but I did have John Ames come over and give me a Priesthood blessing. He later said I looked really bad, but I didn't believe I was that sick.

  On December 14, 2021 Dorothy and I were set apart as Temple Workers in the Fresno Temple. We bought a new car, so it would not cost so much driving to Fresno, about 90 miles. In the temple we have to change into white clothing. Changing quickly was difficult. I had to lean against the wall to put my pants on, because my balance had not come back yet.

  The doctor called again and said I did have Valley Fever. I needed to take some fungus controlling pills. Once you have the fungus, all you can do is keep up your other health factors and control the fungus. I began to feel stronger, I was over the pneumonia, but the welder at the welding shop said the pills make your muscles weaker. His wife has Valley Fever and takes a much stronger dosage. The welder was right. I couldn't build up my muscles while taking that Valley Fever medicine. But I didn't give up. I kept riding the bikes, and trying to do more. I was through with the Valley Fever medicine in early March of 2023, and I think I am getting stronger.

  So here are the take-aways from this episode. Your mind and the rest of the world are your worst enemies when you start getting old. The obituaries of friends and the movies and TV keep saying that you are almost dead when you are 80. It is slower to recover from illness, but the illness is only part of it. Because the illness makes you tired, you think it is your age, so in your mind, your age is your problem.  If you allow yourself to think your age is your problem, you don't have to try to build back your muscles. If you give in to that, your age does make you weaker. Muscles only build when you work them, so keep working. Keep trying. Keep struggling. The struggle makes you stronger.

   

   

    

   

   

    

Results of Green New Deal Policies

 So now the administration that is all about science had better take notice. The disaster that is Texas and the other central states can almost be blamed on Al Gore, AOC  and the other Green New Deal science deniers.

After being left with the best energy position of any recent outgoing administration, they don't have enough energy to keep people warm because too much emphasis has been placed on renewables, and it is not going to get better by itself.

Sure you can blame it on a polar vortex that broke apart and moved south, but there is more to come. We entered into a Grand Solar Minimum in 2020 and there have been many science articles explaining, describing, and warning of what a solar minimum is, but our political house has been asleep with their own fears of global warming.

They blamed and are blaming global warming on carbon dioxide which has little or nothing to do with the  climate, nor "greenness" of the planet. In fact seventh grade science teaches us that there is an oxygen, carbon-dioxide cycle that has been occurring since the beginning of time. Living animals use oxygen and give off carbon-dioxide. Plants use carbon-dioxide and give off oxygen. Nurserymen pump carbon-dioxide into their green houses to make plants grow better and become greener. The more carbon-dioxide we have on the earth, the greener it is.

In a solar minimum there are less sunspots on the sun, and close to none now. Sunspots cause the sun to give off more energy. The sun is now giving off less energy.

There are two more kinds of events that occur regularly  just as the pandemics that government should prepare for: Volcanic eruptions such as the eruption of Mount Tambora in 1816 which caused an almost entire year of winter. An eruption on that scale would block out the sun and  all solar electric panels would be useless as they are now for the entire year. We now have many eruptions that could send particles into the atmosphere keeping the solar minimum diminished solar energy to a lower level. Those volcanic eruptions can increase.

We could also have a Tunguska event. The Tunguska event was the largest meteor impact in history. It occurred in 1908 and also caused a cloud of debris to cover the earth which also lowered the amount of sunlight that reached the earth.

As in our current winter, carbon based energy, such as natural gas, oil and gasoline are our best defense against these kinds of disasters, and they keep our green plants growing, producing food.  

 

New Year's Eve at the Stark's- By Ammon Stark

Dorothy and two grandchildren celebrate
New Year's Eve 2016.

I was going through some old files (copied transferred and recopied) and discovered this story by our son Ammon. This New Year tradition that he describes dramatically, began in about 1965. I believe it was suggested in the first Family Home Evening book produced by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. We did it almost every year. The last celebration we had at our house was 2016/17 with  two grandchildren.

 This was typed originally on a Mac Classic.

Ammon Stark          20 September 1999
                                       
New Year's Eve

  Our family’s New Year's Eve ritual brings back childhood memories of the paper strips, the brown paper bags, ñ the old clock, the wood stove, and the sound of the pots and pans.
      
Throughout the year, our family collects old newspapers. While most families either throw them  away or recycle them, we hold onto them as if they were  old pictures of your grandparents.  We  gather them, put them into piles and place them into the garage where they collect dust and spider  webs.

        Throughout the year these piles of newspaper get larger and larger until they look like big city  skyscrapers.  Just as skyscrapers loom out of nowhere, our stacks of newspapers stick out like a sore  thumb.  However, they are treasured in our family because of the memories they will bring. 

       There is another important item that our family saves throughout the year.     PAPER BAGS!!!  For as long as I can remember,  my mother collected and saved brown paper grocery bags from  different supermarkets.  Do you remember watching movies w here prized possessions are kept inside  safes or money vaults?  Well, we keep our paper bags inside an old cupboard or in the pantry.  All of  them flattened together to make room for the next one.  Each paper bag is fighting against the other to  have the opportunity to be used in the New Year's Eve party instead of for trash.  This is why when you  go to get a paper bag some will slip through your fingers and fall to the ground.   Then instead of just  bending down and picking it up, you take the easy way and reach over and grab another one.   Meanwhile  as you walk away, if you listen carefully, you can hear the other  paper bags letting their  breath out.   Often times I wonder if all things are happy or disappointed when they are chosen for a certain  job.

       For example, I remember a commercial about two Dalmatian puppies.  One chosen to go live at a  fire station.  In this commercial the one who is left out is disappointed while the other one is snick ering  because he was chosen.  Later in the commercial the Dalmatian pups are grown and the "unchosen" one  was riding in a buggy for Budweiser.   Well, the fire station "chosen" dog hid from the "unchosen" one  who was now working for Budweiser.  I wonder if it is the same with these paper bags.

      These paper bags and newspapers help us remember childhood memories of holidays.  While most  families are able to get together during the holidays, our family has a hard time.  I have always  dreamed what it would be like to have all my family together.  I know that my mother would be happy to see all of us kids together and enjoying everyone.  When the holidays come only some of the family  comes home to celebrate it together.   But those who do come have the memories of their childhood  brought back to them.

       The holidays are finally here.  Christmas is over and we wait to celebrate the new year.   On  New Year's Eve we always have a really nice supper. And as always there is eggnog.  No matter what  holiday it is, there is always  eggnog.  Although those who prepare the meal take a lot of time, nobody  ever seems to remember what they ate for dinner.  Basically the supper isn't what's important, but  what will happen in a few hours is. 

       After we stuff our bellies to the point of wanting to vomit, we go  into the living room.  If we haven't already torn the newspapers we do it now.  The tearing of the newspapers has always been my favorite.  We bring in the dusty old  newspapers that have somehow turned yellow through the months, and we begin tearing them into long, thin strips.  As we do this, we bring in the paper bags to store the newspaper strips in.  I have always thought of it as a war.  You against the stack of
newspapers.  Then you hear the  sounds of the paper being torn.   Almost like the sound of lightning in a thunderstorm.

I thought I had lost the Mac Classics
I had, but I found them under a desk.

        After you  have  torn them into shreds, you pack them like sardine s into the paper bags.  Sometimes the paper bag tears  from having too many paper strips inside.  It is always interesting to see the different types of grocery bags.  The little nephew next to     you may have a Save Mart bag while you have a Grocery Warehouse bag. Then others may have Vons,  Albertsons, or the old Safeway's bag that have almost disappeared. 

        After dinner we always watch a movie.  It may be a James Stewart or a John Wayne , or any  other older movie that your parents love to watch.  My favorite was always John Wayne or Audrey  Hepburn.  Occasionally we would watch Bob Hope or some other movie.  The movie always kept the  excitement down for the little kids. It kept their mind off of asking their parents or another adult what   time it was.

        There is an old clock that we have that sits on the mantle.   Mom and dad have already set the  clock four hours ahead, so it's now about 11:30 p.m. by the clock.  It's really only 7:30.  That's so they  don't have to stay up until midnight.  When the movie is over it is only a short time later until the New  Year.   At least that's what I always thought, until I got old enough to realize that my Mom and Dad set   the clock ahead. We watched the hands closely.   When the big hand reaches the last minute the count down begins. 

       By this time everything is ready.  The pots and pans have been found.  The family members each have   their bag of paper strips. The clock screams out that the new year is here with it's chimes.   And everyone starts to bang  the pots and pans together, creating a band of it's own. Children's laught er, the old wood stove, with its smell of pinewood being burned float through  the air.

      Seconds later the living room is filled with paper strips everywhere.   Everyone is throwing  the paper up.  The pots and pans are creating different tones.  The cheers and yelling of "It's a New  Year" echo through the house. This is the time when the little kids collect the paper and make their mountains to burrow  through like groundhogs.  Or maybe they pretend it's money and that they are Disney's Uncle Scrooge.   Their dreams come true as they pretend that they are rich and can swim through and hide in the  mountains of imagined dollar bills. It only lasts a short while but the memories of the blackened hands from the ink of the   Newspapers and mountains of paper, the wood stove and the clock will last forever.

       We didn't have anyone here this 2018/2019 New year's eve. It was kind of quiet and we went to bed by 10:30 ... Oh.....but we usually did that anyway.

Lynnfield Moody, My Uncle part 2: Another Collection of Pictures From the Past

Lynn and Ruth, 1944

Lynnfield Moody's wife was Ruth. He married her in 1938, so when World War II started he was already married and not a young man. She made the scrap books,  and saved all the pictures and everything I have received came through her. She saved it all, especially during the war. He enlisted in Sacramento, California August 18, 1942 when he was 37 years old. He had been working at a service station. 

Lynn had registered for the draft, October 16, 1940, a year before the United States got into the war, but didn't get called before he enlisted. The way it looked in 1942 he would be better off enlisting instead of waiting until he was drafted. He had no children, so he wouldn't be deferred. When he began to see the headlines and the devastation of war, he decided to enlist.

By enlisting rather than waiting, Lynn was able to enlist in the Warrant Officers branch as a Private. Eventually he became a Sargent First Class. 

Ruth, as many family record keepers do, failed to keep the dates of the articles she archived, so I misunderstood her notes at first, thinking that by September first, 1942 Lynn was a Sargent at Monterey, California. He wasn't. It took longer, but I wanted you to see this picture early in these articles. Lynn is on the right here. He is the Sargent.  

Sargent Lynnfield Moody, on the right inspecting his cooks' work.

Lynnfield Moody's Albums and Scrapbooks

My uncle Lynnfield Moody was a World War II veteran, but he never left the United States. He and his second wife Ruth lived a long and happy life together in Sacramento and Eureka, California.

Lynnfield Moody

When you are a child in a big family gathering like a family reunion the adults often ignore you, because they are so happy to see their brothers and sisters. I often fell asleep as they were talking, but the one voice that came through as I was dozing off was Lynnfield's. My cousin Kenny says that Lynnfield would give him a nickel or a quarter to "get lost," so the adults could talk. Kenny is six years younger than me. I guess Kenny didn't fall asleep so easily when Lynnfield was talking and was probably trying to interrupt and get attention.

Lynnfield had all kinds of stories, but I don't remember any of them. I just remember him talking and talking and me falling asleep.

One year, when I was very, very young,  he showed movies of his and Ruth's travels. They traveled all over and took many, many pictures. The movies were silent and Lynnfield droned on and on and on, so I fell asleep. Even though I fell asleep, I liked it.

But a few years later at another family reunion I heard him make a kind of snide remark while talking about their travels, saying something like, "I have pictures of that..... if anyone's interested."

I don't know if I was the only one who fell asleep when Lynn was telling about his travels, but he talked about them less and less as the family reunions continued over the years, and I missed it. I missed his stories, his movies, and his photographs, and his excitement and enthusiasm.

When my sister Jacque gave me a box of Lynn's albums and scrapbooks and photos a few years ago, after  he died (1994... whoah... that's a long time ago) I wanted to somehow share all those photos.

Lynnfield with his mobile home on one of his trips

There are lots of pictures of people I do not know in them and probably lots of stories I didn't hear, or slept through, but I decided I will give it a try. It worked with Edna's pictures (his sister).... I got a box of hers also, and in the column on the right of this page you can see the stories about those pictures that I wrote. (Scroll down, it keeps going and going.) Some people even contacted me about those pictures, and somewhere around 25,000 people have seen them.

Like Edna, Lynnfield and Ruth didn't have any children..... Well ... Lynn had a daughter from a previous marriage, but no one knows anything about her, even if she grew up or died as a child.

Maybe this blog about Lynnfield and Ruth's pictures can have some kind of similar results ........... Maybe even Lynnfield's daughter or grand children may find it.

Grandma and Grampa Moody exerpt

           Grandma and Grampa Moody left Maine and rode the railroad to San Francisco.

            The City of San Francisco had placed a bounty on rats, so Howard Moody hunted rats, shooting them and turning in the tails for the bounty while they waited a few days for their steamship to Eureka.

    I got the idea of paying for gophers at San Lucas School when I   was superintendent of the district after talking to Grandma Moody on one of our earlier trips from Sacramento back to Eureka.  So when we had a gopher problem I remembered Grandpa Moody hunting rats, and  I put a bounty on the gophers. Gooby (Stan) was one of the best hunters. I bought traps, and he and a few other boys placed and checked the traps. I asked the school board if we could pay the boys. I believe one of the checks to Gooby, who trapped gophers in the 7th and 8th grades, was around $60. I think the bounty was 50 cents for each gopher tail. I kept the tails because often the governing board looked carefully over the payments and questioned me on some of them, especially payments to any family members. I was ready when the question came and showed them the envelope with hundreds of gopher tails. They didn’t ask me about gopher payments again, though I always had the envelope of last month’s tails on the table at    the board meeting.

Grandma Moody told me that Howard got paid 5 cents for each rat tail he took in. I don't  know what San Francisco did with their rat tails, but I kept the gopher tails in my office until after the board meeting and then took them to the garbage secretly, sealed in an envelope so the boys wouldn’t find them and try to turn them in again.  

Grandma Moody didn’t say how long they had to wait for the steamer, but I got the impression that it was more than a few days. While waiting they also helped clean up rubble.

Fluhrer's Bakery in Eureka, California Part 2

      Before I got the job with the Examiner, when I was as young as ten  years old, around 1951, I would often go with my father to work. We got up early, before 5 a.m. He would drive his old 1939 Plymouth to the bakery and park on “A” street. He had to load his truck. For a few  years I went with my father every Saturday and more in the summer.

Dad's truck was like this one.

      When I went with him, my father had a route that covered the Arcata Mad River Bottoms, Korbel, Blue Lake and Trinidad. He had three markets and three restaurants  in the town of Blue Lake. It took about about two or  more hours to deliver the bread, pies and rolls. I usually put the bread on the shelves. It was always packed in wooden boxes then. Sometimes we would get way ahead of time because of my help, and my dad let me go down to the creek that ran under the town. Sometimes I took advantage of him and played around down there too long, but he was always kind to me and was patient.

My father Tom Stark

     We delivered pies to restaurants and the next day Dad picked up the pie tins. Dad's truck was like the one in the picture. One summer day it was hot. We had both front doors of the truck open. The pie tins were stacked high next to where I sat on the side of the engine cover. We went around a corner going up a hill toward Trinidad. The wind blew in from the ocean and out through those open folding doors. It caught those tin  pie pans and blew them right passed me out the door, and they rolled down the highway. It sounded like a tinny explosion. Dad stopped the truck, and we both ran after them. He called that place "Pie Pan Turn" from then on. It was fun.

From the Portsmith Herald
 Dec 21, 1954

      Before loading his truck, Dad usually stopped for coffee at  The Blue Ox restaurant across “A” street from the bakery, the same restaurant Dick Koenig took me to years later. There were a few drivers in there one morning talking about some person who predicted the end of the world that day. Dad's route supervisor was there too. It spooked me a little, but I soon forgot about it.    

      It was December 21, 1954. We went on the route. We got to E & O Market on Highway 299. I was stacking Big Loaf on the shelves and Dad's route supervisor showed up. 

       He was talking to Dad, and WHAM!!!! CRASH!!! BLAMMM!!! It sounded like a freight train had hit the north end of the building. Bottles flew off the walls. Glass milk bottles crashed on to the floor. The smell of wine spread throughout the store, and that supervisor sprinted out the nearest door. Through my mind went that prediction that the world was ending today, but it was an earthquake! Dad told the story over and over the next few days and enjoyed emphasizing and comparing how that tall long legged supervisor galloped out of the building while I finished stacking the Big Loaf then wandered around the building looking at the mess. Dad never said how he felt.

 Back to 1958 on my first days working, I only worked dumping hamburger buns for three or four hours per day, then I would help the same two women take the pastry out of the pans they were baked in and put them in the cardboard trays so they could be wrapped. Then I did other odd jobs. 

This is the sifter. I did the job that this guy is doing for a while.

One of those odd jobs was dumping flour from the 100 pound bags into the sifter like the guy in the  picture. 

At first the sifter would get ahead of me, but soon I got so I could dump it fast enough so that I would have to stop dumping so the sifter could catch up.

Flour would fly in the air and after a few minutes of working hard I would sweat and the flour would be caked on my arms.

I took it as a challenge to keep the sifter full when I worked there. Alan Koenig told me that later, they had flour delivered in bulk, and no one needed to dump it.

I worked dumping the buns and doing the odd jobs for a few months, and then Mr. Koenig told me I was going to wrap bread at Butternut Bakery which was at 4th and Commercial streets a couple of blocks away.

You can get this 8 1/2 X 11 full color book at lulu.com. Click on the button at the top right of this page.

Fluhrer's Bakery in Eureka, California

   

 The Fluhrer’s Big Loaf Bakery on Fourth and A streets in Eureka, California put me (Stanley Stark) through college and helped me take care of my family. My father Thomas Stark worked at the bakery as a salesman and truck driver for many years before me.

My father, Tom Stark

       I learned a lot about work from Dick Koenig and Tony Farlan, Arnold Janke, Don Lorensen, and Chris Tamanovich, my bosses over the years. I was only seventeen when I started to work there, but I already had a family and knew I had to work. 

 It was a day in early May, 1958, when I went down to the bakery and climbed the steps up to the office. They were expecting me. I talked to Mr. Koenig, filled out the paperwork, and he took me over to the little restaurant  across “A” street called “The Blue Ox” for something to eat, which he paid for. 

Dick Koenig

Tony Farlan was there and Mr. Koenig introduced him to me. Tony ordered soup which he pronounced “souwoop.” 

One day a few weeks after I started, I took my card from the rack and was about to push it into the time clock, dreading the start of the work day, when I heard a voice in my mind say clearly to me,  “Stan, you can like this job as well as hate it!” It was a clear, firm voice, and I knew I should listen to it. 

From that moment on I began to like working at the bakery. I left (quit) many, many times and worked other places, but I always loved to go back. In the twenty-four years from when I started until the last day I worked there, I must have left at least 12 times. I never really quit. I was laid off, or I got another job, but I always went back until August of 1982. After that,  I became a school district administrator.

Back at the beginning, I had two jobs in April of 1958. I was seventeen, working for Lynn Paxman who was the distributor of the San Francisco Examiner and also for the Humboldt Times. I delivered the Examiner in the morning and rolled papers for the Times at night.

My father, Tom Stark, who I sometimes went to work with when I was a boy, said he talked to Dick Koenig about me working at the bakery. He said to go to the office and fill out the paperwork, and I would be able to work there.  

But…. My Father said, “You have to write on the paperwork that you were born in 1940 instead of 1941, because you have to be 18!”

I did what he said.

Dorothy and I were married December 27, 1957 only four

Dorothy and Me

and one half months earlier. I was sixteen and she was fifteen. I had been working for the Examiner since I was twelve, and after our marriage I also worked at odd jobs, and finally was hired by the Humboldt times. It hadn’t crossed my mind that my age was a problem getting a job until my father told me.

Dorothy and I both quit high school in December. My mother, Eunice, had signed me up for a correspondence  high school course with the American School which was advertised in many magazines.

   I began working  immediately on the schoolwork and was actually almost done with the rest of high school by  May of 1958, the same year. 

           Tony  became my mentor and my financial benefactor. He never gave me money, but he was my contact. Through the next twenty-four years, on and off, I worked at the bakery, and it was Tony I called. If the times were getting financially tight for me and my family, about May, I called Tony. 

         “Do you need me this summer,” I said, and Tony would always say, “I’ll ask Dick.” A few days later he would call and I, by myself, or with my family would go back from Sacramento to Eureka as soon as school was out. 

But back in 1958 at the beginning, the next day after I completed the paperwork,  I went to work at eight o’clock in the morning.     Since both of my other  jobs did not conflict, I kept them. I delivered Examiner papers from about 5:30 a.m. until 7 a.m., and worked at the Humboldt Times from 12 midnight until two or three a.m., and now I worked at the bakery from 8 a.m. until 3:30.

     My first duty at the bakery was dumping hamburger buns into the slicer.  As soon as the buns went through the slicer they were packed by Eva Minshall and  Eunice  Purcell into cardboard frames and put into the wrapper. It was a mechanical wrapper that clicked and clacked and made a lot of racket. One of the women put the wrapped buns into wooden bread  boxes.

            

  There was a conveyor belt not far from us that was carrying bread wrapped in wax paper out of that room into a room to the east of us. The same as it had been for years, even when I came with my father when I was ten. There were trucks in that room. The conveyor belt went around the corner and down next to the wall  where a shipping clerk would load the bread into wooden boxes, and then he stacked the boxes onto the floor next to the trucks. 

   Though this was my first day of actually working at the bakery for pay, I had been there before, many times with my father.

............These are excerpts from my newest book: FLURHER'S BIG LOAF BAKERY.  Order at Lulu.com.

THE SHOT HEARD AROUND THE WORLD

THE SHOT HEARD AROUND THE WORLD 

Written to my descendants:

 Where were our direct ancestors when the single shot was fired that ignited the war of the American Colonies against England? April 18, 1775 someone fired a shot on the village green of Lexington, Massachusetts when there were 70 American Minutemen and hundreds of British troops lined up or milling around. I’m not sure anyone still knows how they were arranged, but the shot was fired, and from that point on, the Revolution that has changed the world had begun. After the skirmish, or riot, or demonstration was over eight Americans were dead, one British Redcoat was wounded, and forces were put into motion that created the United States of America.

Lexington Green - 18 April 1775

Most of Dorothy and my ancestors were somewhere in the American Colonies at that time. In this little book, I will show you where some of them were, and how they were involved in the war, and how you are related to them. I will only briefly touch on the history. For that you can listen in your American History Classes, and try to place your own ancestors in the scenes as you learn about them. Grandma Stark and I have relatives on both sides of this conflict, just as we do in the American Civil War.

 Our grandchildren will have other ancestors also involved in history at this time period from 1775, when the American Congress declared that there was a new independent nation, to 1783 when the peace treaty with England recognized the reality of the United States of America. These ancestors listed are not all of the ancestors who were soldiers in the Revolutionary War, but only those I have found and feel pretty sure are correct. I know there are more because I haven’t found where some were at that time.

 STARK 

There have been families with the name Stark on American soil for many years before the Revolution, and some of them were directly involved in the war.

Everyone recognizes General John Stark of New Hampshire, the General at Bunker Hill. He was a cousin, but not a direct ancestor. His cousin was also named John and lived in Stafford County, Virginia.

 This John of Stafford County had two wives, Hawson Porter and Hannah Eves. This John was probably too old to be much involved in the war and died before the peace treaty in 1881, when he was 64. (the colonial Starks named many of their sons John, which makes it difficult to identify the correct ones).

Our ancestor Thomas Stark (b. 1759) was a son of the Stafford County John and his second wife, Hannah Eves. Hanna had been hired by John Stark to take care of his first wife’s children. She was their governess, but when Hawson, the children’s mother, died John married Hanna, the governess.

Hannah and John Stark had from 10 to 14 children, but that is difficult to be certain of, because of their desire to use similar names in all of the Stark families of New England. (There were dozens of John Starks, Thomas Starks, William Starks and James Starks. )

Thomas was their second son. His brother James was two years older.

 James did participate in the war.  He  left home when he was fourteen and went to his uncle {or cousin}, General John Stark (the John Stark). James was made a captain in the Boston Tea Party of 1773 and participated in the Battle of Bennington, according to family members.

I cannot yet find any evidence that our ancestor Thomas Stark, the brother of James, was involved in the war, but he may have been, as he was 12 years old when the war began and 19 in 1883 when the war was over. 

So..... it looks to me like we do not have a documented ancestor with the name of Stark directly involved in the American Revolutionary War. 

However we do have an interesting story during the war.

On October 17, 1780 there was a double wedding in Stafford County, Virginia. James and Thomas Stark, the two brothers I have been talking about, married sisters, Jane and Sarah Fristoe. 

Bear and the Cocker Spaniel

I wrote this on the date below after jogging with our dog Bear. He walked up to the house one day in 1990 and just stayed.

 

December 29, 1993

Bear, our dog, has character that a human should be proud to possess. He is part German Shepherd, I think, tall, yet skinny. 

This isn't Bear, but he looked similar.

Yesterday I went running at about 9 a.m. He went with me. We ran about three and one half miles, a loop that is almost one mile on each side. The block we live on. 

He usually goes with me. He likes to run up to fences where dogs are and bark at them, but he doesn't like to fight, and he doesn't like to hurt little dogs. He doesn't back down easily when big dogs come at him, but he avoids them if they are loose.

There are four legs (lengths of road) on this run we go on. We went East first, less than half a mile on Avenue 104, then south for about a mile on Old Stagecoach Road, then west for a mile on Avenue 96, and then north for the last mile on Road 264 back home.

On the second leg about a third of the distance there is a fenced yard with a giant dog and a little dog. Bear always runs the length of the fence at full speed barking, and the dogs bark back. They run at each other and bark like they want to tear each other apart. Even before the big dog was there bear would tear out after the little dog, but one day the little dog got out. Bear didn't even bite at him.

About another third of a mile down this road are two more little dogs. They came running out and barked at bear. The hair on his back lifted a little, but he ignored them and trotted next to me.

At the end of that second leg there is another fenced yard with some big dogs. Bear ran at them too, barking. On the third leg there are more dogs, medium size and little ones. Bear just trots along and lets them bark.

At the beginning of the last leg two dogs came out. They haven't been loose before. One was a small blonde cocker spaniel, and the second was a bigger dog, maybe a part Boston bulldog. The bull ran at bear and bit at him. Bear turned and fought. The bull backed off, and bear turned to trot by my side. The bull came at him again and bit bear on the behind. Bear turned and started chasing the bull and bit him sharply on the back, then let go and trotted with me. The Boston bull chased again, but when Bear turned to face him, he backed off and went home.

The cocker spaniel who had been barking all the time must have thought that he chased Bear off because he kept following, barking. Bear ignored him like he does all the little dogs, but the cocker got closer and nipped bear on the behind. Bear just speeded up and kept in front of him. The cocker believed that he had Bear on the run, I think, and ran up and tried to nip Bear again. Bear looked back and saw him coming and speeded up.

By now we were almost a quarter mile down this leg in front of the house with three whitish grey dogs that look like German Shepherds mixed with wolves. They look mean and Bear used to stay with me when we went by this house, but he decided it wasn't worth the bother because they always come out and fight, so he started running out into a field and then in a large loop to avoid the dogs.

There's one big one that always attacks Bear. If Bear stays and fights then the other three jump in and bite him too. There's a red Irish Setter who also comes out and jumps in when Bear is trying to fight off the big one. So bear usually takes off at

the corner about a quarter mile in front of that house and runs out into the field and makes a huge circle around the house, runs through an orange orchard and meets me on the road almost a quarter mile past the house. The dogs don't run up that far, because then they will be there one at a time and Bear can handle that.

Well, that little blonde cocker spaniel had made Bear forget about this house, and he was just trotting along beside me, looking back at the cocker keeping him a little behind him. The cocker was feeling like he just drove bear a quarter mile away from his corner house, I guess, because when he heard those big dogs start to bark he turned and ran at them like he was going to drive them away too.

By now Bear and I were about a hundred feet passed the house, free from the big dogs attacking Bear. The little cocker ran up to them, barking, and the big one turned him over and started biting. The other dogs ran up. 

It looked like they were going to kill him quickly, but Bear started back. I couldn't believe he would go back to help that little dog who had been annoying him for three or four minutes, and I was sure he wasn't going to help the big dogs. 

The hair on his back stood up, and he ran full speed up to within ten feet and suddenly stopped, realizing what he was doing. He turned back away, and started back toward me, then turned back hearing the yelps of the little cocker. He hesitated for an instant, and then ran close around, trying to draw them off the little dog, but they didn't pay any attention. 

This isn't Bear either. He wandered up like Bear.

He made another pass and bit the big dog in the back of the neck. The big dog let go and ran after bear, but saw who it was and didn't chase. The little dog ran home as fast as he could, and Bear followed him a ways, looking back at the German Shepherds, warning them not to follow the little dog, then he made a big loop across the street, around the dogs, out into the field,  and caught up to me, walking proud as could be.

He didn't want to fight any of them. He loves to bark at dogs penned up, but doesn't like to fight. The little Boston bull dog bothered him, so he bit him and stopped him, but the little cocker was only an annoyance so he humored him, but when the little cocker was in trouble Bear ran to the rescue, hesitated, but went ahead knowing that he could get hurt by those big German Shepherds, but wanting to help the little dog. 

Aug 8, 2000

Bear was killed a couple of years ago while we were jogging. He ran into an orange orchard and came out full speed, chasing a rabbit across the street. He was hit by a car.

Arriving at Martin's Cove

   We got to Missionary Village on Ranch 66 on the first of May 2014. We were happy about our home. It is a two bedroom mobile home about the same as number 6 at our place in Terra Bella, Ca.

This is the rickshaw which we took on our first day of training.

   The next day, Friday, May 2, 2014 was a training session for trek leaders coming from their stakes. There were over two hundred youth leaders. That’s a requirement for any stake or ward. Before they can bring their youth on a trek here, they must send some leaders to participate in a training session. All of the newly arrived missionaries went on the trek also.

    I took a rickshaw in case Dorothy wouldn’t be able to walk the whole way. She wasn’t. I started pulling her up the hills. She was out of breath. We are at 6200 feet. Elder Jensen helped me pull her up the hills for the rest of the trek.

Totally, we went about 9 miles that day. Dorothy walked at least five, but we stopped from time to time, and the last year’s missionaries told stories because the stake leaders that were being trained needed to hear the stories. The stake leaders of their own youth are supposed to take charge of the trekkers. Our job is only to be there for assistance and tell stories if asked. Usually one missionary is in the front and one in the rear.

 The next day was also a training session, but we went to 6th Crossing about 60 miles from Martin’s Cove. It is another Handcart Site, further up the trail. It includes Rocky Ridge, the hardest part of the Mormon/Oregon/California/Pony Express trail, not because it is so steep, but because of the large rocks the wagons and handcarts have to be pulled over.

A handcart with Devil's Gate in the background.

 In 1856, the Willie and Martin Handcart companies landed in Boston and New York and took a train to Iowa City, Iowa. From Boston, the Willie Company arrived first in the Thornton, and were loaded into box cars with benches fastened to the floor. They thought that ride was uncomfortable, but the Martin Handcart company were put into cattle cars without any benches at all.. They had to sit on the floor on the ride from New York.

 Here is one of our first letters, written on the day we reported to the Mission Training Center in Provo, Utah, to our family about our mission to Martin’s Cove:

 "April 21, 2014, "Today we start our training at 10 a.m. 

"We have been studying about the hand cart treks. After Joseph Smith and Hyrum were killed in June 1844, the Saints (members of the church) in Nauvoo were getting attacked more and more by mobs. The mobs demanded that the Saints leave, so they did, straggled out over the plains for years. 

"Brigham Young wanted to help the poor Saints, so he developed the Perpetual Emigrating Fund (PEF). More wealthy Saints donated what they could, and it usually was not much because everyone had to leave their homes, businesses, furniture, and just get out, or leave the Church, or deny that Joseph Smith was a prophet. They wouldn't do that, so they just left their property. They donated their pennies to the PEF. 

 "After a while there was enough to make loans to families to buy wagons and food for the 1300 + mile trip to Salt Lake. Usually they donated in kind, grain, wagons, chickens, etc because the monetary system was not developed. 

 "The poor people promised to repay the PEF as soon as they got to the Valley and could do it. "It was dangerous anywhere in the United States to be a Mormon, so those who gained a testimony by praying and asking God if Joseph Smith really did see Him and His Son, Jesus Christ, and received their answer had no choice but to leave and go west or deny that God had spoken to them, too. Many gave up under the persecution, but thousands were faithful to their prayers and just packed up and left. Some packed their stuff in wheelbarrows and walked the 1000 miles. 

William Henry Jackson's painting of handcart pioneers crossing in front of Devil's Gate. Where the visitors' center now is.

 "Missionaries were sent all over the world, and the poor people wanted to "gather to Zion," but they could not because it cost at least the equivalent (2014) of about $12,000 to come to America. 

 "The PEF was extended to the Saints in England. Persecution increased there too. One person would join the Church in a family and the rest of the family would kick them out, but there wasn't, enough money in the PEF to bring everyone, so faithful families waited years or began to send only one child or one parent to Zion. 

"In 1855 there were crop failures in the Salt Lake Valley and people there hardly had enough food for themselves. Earlier, one missionary going east to start his mission met a man walking to the gold fields in California with all of his supplies in a wheelbarrow and wrote to Brigham Young about it. Brother Brigham figured out the hand cart concept. He said something like this:

Dorothy is pointing to the daily ration of food available.

"

'If the Gentiles (non Mormons) can walk across the plains and mountains for their God Gold, think what the Saints can do for the real God of Israel.'

" That's how the handcart system was started. In about 1854 there were 11,000 Saints in Utah, but 30,000 in England. Sometimes they would even get fired from their jobs there because they joined the Church, so they wanted to come, but the PEF was already in debt.

 "I'll tell you more later as I learn it. To write the story helps me remember it so I can tell it at the visitor centers. "Got to get ready to go to a meeting now. 

" Love, Dad, Grampa, Uncle, Stan, Elder Stark

Mission to Martin's Cove: April 17, 2014 to October 10, 2014

We have been gone on a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and since we returned we have been repairing, renovating and re-renting some of our income property, so there were no posts on this blog since May of 2014. Actually in that last post we were living in the Missionary Village in Muddy Gap, Wyoming and about a month into the mission.

Senior Missionaries have different rules than young missionaries, so I could have written, but just didn't have time, and I slept good every night. (So I didn't need to do something when I couldn't go back to sleep.)

Martin's Cove is between Casper, Wyoming in the north and Rawlins, Wyoming in the south, about an hour's drive from either. There is nothing in between but sage brush, mountains and wind.

Wind is blowing the flags horizontally, on a warm day

Wind is the one thing you first notice in Martin's Cove. It blows in the morning, in the afternoon, at night, when it's raining, when it's snowing, when it's sunny, when it's hot and when it's cold.

Sometimes it blows hard. Like the time it lifted the tents of a company of youth and carried them fifty yards. The young people were camping at Cherry Creek Campground a few miles from the Martin's Cove Visitors' Center.

Sometimes it blows softly, like on a hot summer day when we were out on the trail with twenty-five or more handcarts and over a hundred youth pulling them, reenacting the 1856 trek of the Mormon Pioneers from England who couldn't afford wagons and oxen.

Then........ 1856,  the wind was a killer.

It and the cold, and exhaustion and starvation were the cause of the deaths of at least 139 members of the Martin Handcart Company, in and around Martin's Cove. That's why there is a visitors' center. That's why we were there on a mission: to tell the story of the Martin Handcart Company.

Income Inequality

A recent idea in economic theory is the rise of Thomas Piketty and income inequality as explained in his best selling book, Capital in the Twenty-First Century.

Basically, he says that the United States and European economies are moving back toward the time of the early 20th century, previous to the 1930's where most of the wealth was concentrated in the hands of very few people or the 1% as we have heard  before, especially during the 2012 presidential election.

The problem with his and most economists idea of wealth is that they count the money or property people own, not the way people live.

One thing that could be counted is the number of servants the person or family has.

In the early 20th century very few people, probably only the 1%,  had any servants at all, and the children of most of the 99% had to go to work to help support the family.

As late as the early 1930's most women washed their clothes on a washboard, cooked on a wood or coal fire,  walked wherever they went, and had their children work outside the home, in factories or for the wealthy.

Very few people went to a play, a concert, out to eat,  or traveled more than 25 miles from home. Movies were just beginning.

Looking at the United States and Europe now, instead of comparing dollars and property, compare how the people live.

Just what could the wealthy 1% do in the 1900's or even up to the 1930's that most people in these economies cannot do today?

The wealthy could go out to eat, but everyone in America can go out to eat today, that's one of the reasons the so called poor are overweight.

And servants? Everyone has more servants today than the wealthy 1% had in those olden times: washing machines, dishwashers, microwaves for instant cooking,

 We have cars. Few of them even had  horses.

Communications can't even be compared. Everyone can communicate to anyone they choose, anywhere.

 A ten year old child has all of the entertainers of the world at his fingertips in plays/movies and concerts/music, more than the wealthy 1% of the 1930's even could dream of.

No one in America will ever be as poor as our great grandparents of those times, and the wealthy of today cannot do anything more than most of the rest us can, today.

So even though the money may be concentrated, it can't do much for the wealthy that our science and social programs can't do for everyone else. Many of the poor don't even have to work as much as the wealthy 1% do today.

The whole idea is to make people think they are poor so they will support those who claim to be trying to redistribute the income of those who seem to have more. 

Some Not-So-Hot Facts About Global Warming Research--Global Cooling

Here is an amazing article by Keith Schaefer about Global Warming which I received in an email. This is used with permission and the original article can be found  here 

"Consider this:

"-In 2013, the UK had the coldest spring since 1963.

"-In March 2013, Northern Japan received record snowfall--up to 16 ft thick just south of Aomori.

"-In October 2013, the worst frost in more than 80 years hit Chile and damaged 50 million boxes of fruit for export—damages were over $1 billion.

"-And my personal favourite—an expedition vessel full of Climate Change scientists became trapped in Antarctic sea ice 10 feet thick on Christmas Day 2013.

"These true-life stories are examples of global cooling—from all over the globe.

"In Parts I and II of this series, I outlined the long term cycle of temperature changes on Earth, and how sunspots have had an eerily accurate correlation to earth's temperatures for centuries.  Data strongly suggests that solar cycles have a definite impact on the world's climate.

"And right now, the best data on sunspots also suggest the world is about to enter a time of global cooling.  This doesn't deny that mankind is influencing the world's climate; sunspots' very regular 11 year cycles can temporarily overwhelm a larger context of man-made (the scientific term is anthropogenic) influences.

"But even that becomes somewhat suspect.  Evidence either uncovered or chronicled by a Boston-based research firm, Unit Economics, suggests that government and their scientists, together and independently, have been manipulating data (and caught red handed!).

"The February 28, 2014 research paper by Unit Economics on global cooling goes into pages of detail on how some of the most important—and allegedly impartial—raw climate data has been regularly altered by private and public sector members of the scientific community.

"And that’s really too bad, because people working on questions around global temperature have very few datasets to choose from.

"One is the temperature anomaly dataset developed by NOAA (the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration).   The other is from the Met Office Hadley Centre in collaboration with the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia in England, which is known as the HadCRUT3 dataset.

"NOAA started developing its temperature database in the early 1990s. It was revised once in 1997, and then three times between mid-2011 and the end of 2012.

"NOAA says the revisions dealt with new observations methods, corrected coding errors, and removed unnatural influences from things like changes in how instruments were stationed.

"In short: lots of revisions, little specific explanation. Not surprisingly, people started accusing NOAA of data tampering (google NOAA data tampering)…and when Unit Economics compared the 2008 NOAA dataset with the most recent version, the changes looked like this:

 

"Overall, the man-made adjustments created an additional 2.48°F temperature change over the past 100 years – more than the 1.85°F of total warming the NOAA says has taken place since 1913!

"Sadly for the general reliability of science, the HadCRUT3 dataset is no better.

"CLIMATEGATE

"This HadCRUT3 dataset is the basis of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).  The IPCC ‘s job is to create a “clear scientific view on the current state of knowledge on climate change and its potential environmental and socio-economic impacts”.  That’s a mouthful.

"The IPCC data did show increasing temperatures. Then, in October 2009, someone broke into a British office of the CRU, downloaded 160 MB of data and emails, and posted them online. The stolen CRU emails show prominent scientists discussing ‘adjusting’ data to reduce Medieval Warming Period and hiding very recent cooling trends, and making sure they all agree and aren't stepping on each others' toes. Many of these discussions ended with instructions to delete all records of the conversation.

"Eventually a U.S. Senate inquiry was set up under chairmanship of Edward Wegman, professor of mathematics and statistics, and their report ruled that Penn State Professor and IPCC lead author Michael Mann’s work was ‘statistically invalid’.

"But even all this couldn’t ‘adjust’ away the reality completely: the tampered HadCRUT3 data still shows global temperatures trending lower over the last 15 years.

 

"And there are some basic facts question the thesis that manmade CO2 is causing global warming.  As I said in Part I,  temperatures actually fell during the peak expansion of manmade greenhouse gas levels from 1940-1970.

"Second, if CO2 emissions cause global warming the layer of the atmosphere 5 to 10 km above the earth where CO2 interacts with sunlight should be warming more quickly than the earth’s surface. In fact, temperatures at these levels have been unchanged since accurate balloon measurements became available 50 years ago.

"Third, CO2 levels have cycled significantly over the known history, which stretches back 400,000 years. Our planet has survived CO2 levels roughly half of current concentrations and nearly twenty times higher! That certainly makes the commonly quoted claim that a CO2 concentration above 350 ppm leads inexorably to warmer temperatures seem pretty weak.

"Fourth, atmospheric levels of CO2 increased from just under 300 ppm in 1900 to 397 ppm today, yet temperatures fell through much of that period and have increased by only 0.7°F overall – and that’s based on heavily manipulated datasets.

"And there are some groups, such as the Carbon Modeling Consortium at Columbia University, that suggest human activities in United States may actually reduce atmospheric CO2 levels.  In an October 15 1998 issue of the Columbia University News, author Taro Takahashi, a senior research scientist wrote:

"'We know that we who reside in the United States emit about 6.2 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each year. As an air mass travels from west to east, it should receive carbon dioxide and the East Coast concentration of CO2 should be higher than on the West Coast. But observervations tell us otherwise.

"'The mean atmospheric CO2 concentration on the East Coast has been observed to be lower than that over the Pacific coast. This means that more CO2 is taken up by land ecosystems over the United States than is released by industrial activities.'

"Other tidbits:

"-Sea levels are DOWN by .2 cm (0.08 inches) since 2006.
-The polar bear population is up all across the Arctic—as much as 66% in the last 50 years and 13% in the last 5 years.
-water vapor in the air has been declining—more vapor, higher temperatures.  Less vapor, lower temperatures.

"Again, the current global cooling could be taking place within a larger context of man-made climate change.  But even that becomes doubtful when the most basic, raw, original datasets are shown to be corrupted.  And there is enough serious scientific peer review to question the IPCC climate reports—thanks go to Canadian Ross McKitrick from the University of Guelph and German scientist (and former Global Warming advocate) Professor Fritz Vahrenholt, who wrote Die Kalte Sonne (the Cold Sun) in January 2012.

"There’s a great quote in Unit Economic’s report that puts this all into context:

"'If one accepts the notion that the sun, which provides over 95% of the heat energy to the surface of the earth, has the potential to impact temperatures, it would be logical to incorporate observations and predictions of solar activity in climate models and forecasts – something most meteorologists and virtually all global warming enthusiasts fail to take into account when modeling earth’s climate. We believe this is because solar cycles explain climate cycles on earth too well, leaving too little room for CO2 to influence their models.' Weiss and Naleski, Unit Economics’ 2014 Report on Global Cooling.

"The Real Inconvenient Truth is that there is enough flawed data to question just how serious Global Warming is, or if it's real at all in the short to medium term. Is the hysteria warranted?  Keep your mind open, despite the intense politically correct forces out there who make that a crime on this issue."