My Portfolio

What a grouse weekend! I went to stay at Coralie's house for the weekend, after school on Friday. Mrs Bevan calls me her 4th daughter now as I spend more weekend time at her house than at mine! We all went down to West Beach Surf Lifesaving Club for the Surfie...

Love Lifted Me In the late 1930's , when I was somewhere around seven or eight years old I had a friend named Jimmy Cargill who had an older sister about the same age as my sister Frances. Her name was Neva and, like Frances, she played the piano. But unlike...

The “Cat” climbed the steep West Virginia mountainside as effortlessly as if it were cruising across the plains of Kansas.   Its builders called it a Model D-8 but to the pipeline construction crews it was just a “Cat”.   Whatever it was called it was the most powerful crawler tractor made by...

The spirit of Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn was alive and well in my small hometown of Caney, Kansas during the `40's.  We boys wandered the woods, shooting at, but seldom hitting, small animals with our .22's.  Or, we climbed the “Shale Pit"; skinny-dipped in "Smelter Pond", and tested our courage...

  I graduated from Bear River High School in May, 1962 and had received two scholarships through my activities in Future Farmers of America (FFA).    One was a Union Pacific Scholarship and the other dealt directly with agriculture, as I recall.   My intention was to go to Utah State...

I spent my teenage years at the pool - swim practice every afternoon and 2 mornings a week before school and on Saturdays (when we were not at swim meets).  My goal was to represent the US at the Olympics - 1984.....  200 meter breastroke and either 200 meter Individual medely...

              We lived on Rockland Street in Natick, Massachusetts.  I was the youngest of the first half of a large brood of Cormiers.  Because there were four other children ahead of me, I learned to avoid being disciplined by paying attention to what was meted out to my older siblings.  But, one particular day,I was in...

Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 Turkeys and noise - When turkeys hear a noise almost the whole herd will all gobble at once.  (Click on the audio above to hear the turkeys).   Growing up on a Turkey Farm in Moroni, Utah Normal 0 false false false...

Seeing is Believing                   In the late afternoon of a hot summer day, a friend and I were enjoying the shade of a huge oak tree while we watched the heavy traffic speed along the highway.   We were absorbed in busy conversation when we noticed a car reducing its...

A Trip to the Molasses’ Still   The smell of wood smoke filled the air.  It seemed to have some peculiar drawing power, which caused my curiosity to be aroused.  I gave in the urges to find where it was coming from.  Finally, I spotted the place and on arriving at...

            Moving Out of Cades Cove                    It was the day of our first move and everyone was busy getting their belongings together.   My few homemade play things were fondly stored in a badly worn black satchel.   The main articles of household furnishings...

My family consisted of 10 kids. It wasn't easy for my parents to offer allowances. But, they did whenever they could. So, I would take out trash or rake leaves or things like that to earn my 25 cents a week. Does that count as a first job? Or, I suppose...