Elusive Treasures

About the Book

When I started to write this book, I was advised by wise friends not to tell the stories in the first person. However, much of the book is autobiographical, and I felt compelled to write it in first person. I hope it is not a disaster. The various episodes in the book range from absolutely true from start to finish, to a few that start with a real incident but wander off into fiction. One story is entire fantasy.

About the Author

I was born in 1932 in the old Dee Hospital at Twenty-Fourth and Harrison in Ogden, Utah. Everyone knows that was a bad year in the U.S.; and shortly after I was born, they tore down that hospital and built a much bigger one a few miles away. Possibly, they moved the hospital because I was born there, but I never figured out the connection. Later, when I went to Weber College and they moved the school while I was trying to finish a two-year degree, I began to wonder if something about me created some kind of jinx for things. My folks thought they had enough children when I was the third child, but even that went haywire twelve years later when a pair of twin girls came into the home. It was a good family with five of us kids, and they encouraged me to do well in school. I think my dad gave me an allowance, but it wasn’t much because he always provided the real necessities—like fishing equipment and hunting gear. Santa Claus helped, too, with BB guns and a bow and some arrows. It was a good life coming out of the Depression with enough money for my dad to teach me the essentials for providing for a family. I learned how to safely handle a gun and how to swim. What else mattered if you planned to survive on ducks and pheasants, deer, rabbits, fish, and a few vegetables you could grow in the backyard? We always had a couple of peach trees too, an early variety and a later one. Everything was planned nicely. Dad was a dentist and could afford to provide some of the best fishing in Utah, Wyoming, Idaho, and Montana. It was great for me and my older brother. I think my three sisters had a little child neglect from a father that was a man’s man.