Life settled in to a daily routine which always included some kind of a remodeling project. It was fun to see our ideas becoming a reality. I suppose I should have known that having a dog was inevitable. After all, who has 7 children and 32 acres and doesn't have a dog? But I resisted for a long time and was comfortable in thinking I was in charge even though the subject had come up several times. Wynn thought the children needed a pet and he had noticed that they weren't always comfortable around large dogs, so the answer was definitely to own one. Mrs. Hoffman, one of his school teachers, told him that there were two beautiful collies at the pound. She wanted to rescue them but didn't want both of  them and suggested that he take the other. He asked me how I felt about getting a collie and I said for atleast the fifth time, "I don't want a dog. They take as much work as another child." The subject was dropped again, anyway I thought it was. Then one night we took the children and went to the high school auditorium to a play. We were just starting the intermission when Wynn piped up and said that Landon needed to go to the bathroom. I started to get up. "No, I'll take him," said Wynn. "We'll be right back."  The intermission ended and still no Wynn. The play continued, but Wynn and Landon did not come back. Finally, right near the end the two slipped quietly back into their seats. "Where have you been?' I whispered. "Just ran into somebody," said Wynn. We watched the play again. "Well, you were sure gone a long time," I muttered. Landon was fidgeting next to his dad, barely able to sit still. Then he leaned over and said, "When are you going to tell her about the dog?"  "What dog?" I asked loud enough for the whole audience to hear. "The dog that's out in the car," said Landon.
The rest of the play was totally ignored. The whole family bustled out to the car to see the new dog. The door of the VW bus slid open to reveal and large majestic black, gold and white collie sitting in the doorway. Her long hair shining luxuriously in the moonlight. We named her Brit and that was the last time her hair ever looked like that. From then on she became a farm dog with burrs stuck in her hair and mud on her feet and even occasionally porcupine quills in her nose. But she was a great dog! She had been well-trained and was loyal and loving with the children. She could be a scary watch dog, circling any car that drove down the driveway and snarling at the occupants who certainly thought twice about getting out. I walked out one day to rescue some scoundrels that she had plastered up against their car. They wanted to borrow and jack but were too afraid to move. Brit lived with us for about thirteen years.

Our casual existence in the open air and glorious sunshine made me aware one day that I might be enjoying my socially lazy life a little too much. The children, I thought, needed an outing to the city to see some kind of cultural, educational things. So, I loaded them all into the pink Studebaker, which was the "running" vehicle at the time, and we drove to Salt Lake City. An outing to Temple Square and then a tour of the Lion House seemed like an excellent idea.
I've always been rather lax when it comes to attire and coiffure, but it wasn't until I paraded them through the front door of the Lion House and into those elegant surroundings that I realized how far down the lazy ladder I'd slid. We looked like a field trip from the homeless shelter. I quickly ran my fingers through a few locks and spit on my shirt tail and wiped breakfast off a little face before we took another step into the room. Then I shepherded them all into the back of the tour and hoped for anonymity.
We marched through the rooms listening to the tour guide talk about life on the frontier. I reached out gingerly and ran my finger across the dark rich smooth carved wood of a beautiful chair and thought that the pioneers in this house certainly had it a lot easier than I did. The kids seemed slightly bored as the woman led us out of the toy room and talked about the children in those days not having TV and how they had to make up their own games and use their imaginations. I heard one of mine little dears admit, "We don't have TV." "Well, good for you," said the woman, and she led us to the bathroom where she said, "But can you imagine not having an indoor toilet or running hot water?" I saw four little mouths drop open to respond, and like an experienced rustler, I rounded them up and bustled them right out the door before they could utter another word, then I herded them into the Studebaker and made a clean get away before child services could arrest me for neglect.
Each mile that I drove north, I breathed a little easier and when we pulled down the driveway, I blessed Mink Creek once again for sheltering me from city life, but I also cautioned myself to not let my children grow up uneducated and unaware of the way others live. I knew I wanted to find balance for myself and my children. I wanted them to be comfortable in both worlds, and I think we achieved that.

   Things didn't always go exactly how we had them planned. Wynn did not get hired as a school teacher in Preston, not that first year anyway. His masters degree proved to be a deterrent instead of an asset. Why would the struggling school district hire a master teacher at a higher wage when there were plenty of teachers available with less credentials? So, Wynn had to commute back to Richmond Utah where he got a job teaching at North Cache. He became good friends with another teacher, Craig Thomas, who drove from Preston and they carpooled together. It was at North Cache that he also met Rex Woodward who lived in Franklin.
    One evening, Rex and his wife, Betty, invited us down for dinner. I told the children that we were going to dinner that night with someone Dad knew from work, but I didn't know that Rex's children went to school with our children, so I didn't tell them who it was.  Therefore, they were quite surprised at school when these strange kids came up to each of them and said things like, "See you tonight,"  or "I hope you like chicken and red Jello." And, I was accused of some underhanded scheme to make them make new friends. Life can be so challenging. Even in Mink Creek.

 

 

As "city kids" we were always getting our eyes opened and even our ears. The local dialect of our new neighbors could rival anything Eliza Doolittle could dish out with her Cockney English. The old, local farmers could weave a story laced with improper verb tenses and colored with profanity that somehow didn't seem profane at all. Instead of being offensive, we found the dialogue charming and full of "salt of the earth" wisdom and entertaining as hell. Did I just say that? I think their influence has rubbed off on me. Well, some of it. After living here for 30 years, I still say Mink Creek instead of Mink Crick.  I actually learned to say "crick" when I was a child in Boise, but when we moved to Salt Lake, the other children made so much fun of my speech that I had to quickly learn how to speak "properly," and there was no way I was returning to the local vernacular. We loved seeing Burnell Baird's truck pull down the driveway, or hearing Vilar Ransom's horn honk out in the driveway at 6:00 in the morning. To stop working and share stories with the neighbors is one of the supreme pleasures of a Mink Creek kind of day.

   The children were in heaven that first summer in Mink Creek. We all were. We had no idea what a pleasure it was to live outside. The house was cold and dank and smelled like heating oil, so we passed it by for the clear air and sunshine. The logs for Lynn Nelson's house were spread out beckoning me to peel them, and the ground squirrels were playing hide and seek in them, popping up and down and running around chasing each other. The cats, Spider Monkey and Jemima, looked sideways with bored disdain at the frolicking squirrels. Wynn was absolutely sure that if the cats could just catch one for dinner they would develop an insatiable taste for the little critters. I was amused at his need to intervene in what seemed a natural process which the cats had absolutely no interest in.
   From my log peeling station, I noticed Wynn pick up a rock and take aim at a furry fellow and hoped he wouldn't accidentally hit one of the children. His wound his arm up like a professional baseball player, I actually didn't know he had such a skill, and let the rock fly and by golly he hit that ground squirrel square in the head. I was too amazed to be horrified. He jumped up with glee and ran to get his kill which he then presented to Spider Monkey as if he were bringing the queen a culinary gift on a silver platter. Spider Monkey, looked first at Wynn and then at the dead ground squirrel and then flicked her tail in disgust and walked off.
   Cats were apparently no threat to the ground squirrel population but snakes were, and that first year we also had an abundance of very large blow snakes. Watching a snake eat a ground squirrel is, well, maybe educational is the best word for it. The snake's jaws unhinge and the squirrel gets sucked in by powerful undulating muscle contractions, getting squeezed into that deadly tube until he is no more.
An education in nature is certainly something we've received living a Mink Creek kind of day.

In preparation for that winter, one summer day a good neighbor, David Wilde, pulled down the driveway in a big dumptruck with a load of firewood. We all ran from different corners of the yard and various activities to watch the big truck.Five year-old Landon and 2 year-old McKay stood with mouths wide open and eyes as big as saucers as the old truck began to groan and tip its noisey load. I watched with total gratitude and turned back to my work. Within minutes the work that would have taken us hours was in a neat pile in the driveway and the truck pulled out of the driveway. The kids knew we would be moving it to the stack around the house soon, but for now I let them play. I don't know how long it was before I called them all back together. Hannah, Kate, Josie, Landon, McK..., I looked at them again Hannah, Kate, Josie, Landon, Mc...;I looked around the yard. "Where is McKay?" I asked. No one knew. "What do you mean, you haven't seen him?" It was the worried accusation of a mother who shouldn't have left the general care of a two year-old up to other children who were busy with their own games. We all ran around the yard. We searched the creek, up and down stream. We yelled, calling his name over and over again. I considered the highway and the passing cars. Had I heard any cars stop?  I felt sick. I stopped by the side of that big stack of wood. That was the last time I remembered seeing him, when the truck had pulled in.  "No, it wasn't possible..." I was about to frantically start tossing every piece of wood in the pile when I got a grip on myself and made myself calm down and think. He was a little boy. He was never very interested in the creek unless Landon was with him and he never went up by the road. It was late afternoon. He was probably tired. Our search turned to other directions and that's when we found him. There was a stack of old furniture by the shed that we still hadn't moved into the house. Most of it needed to be repaired in some way and McKay had snuggled into a nest of clothing inside a dresser drawer and fallen asleep. His peaceful face showed nothing of my own anxiety. He was naturally asleep. I was naturally overcome with worry and angry with myself. We were all naturally relieved. Mink Creek has shown me the nature of so many things.

   We had finally arrived home and survived the first winter by the skin of our teeth and only because we had the help of some very good neighbors who certainly had to be wondering if the city kids at the end of the road really had what it took to live in Mink Creek. We were wondering the same thing. We had built Lynn Nelson's log cabin in the front yard right up to the square, which meant that the next step was to start some kind of a roof which we could not do until Lynn decided where to put it. So, freed from that project, we decided to focus our attention on our own abode. We knew now that there were more things that needed serious attention before another winter hit us. Remodeling was going to be put into high gear, well remodeling on a shoestring, because we certainly didn't have any money. Wynn put his arm around me and said,"We didn't buy a farm, we bought twenty years worth of work. Where should we start?"
  Wynn gave a tug on a loose piece of wallpaper in the living room and it began to rip away from the wall, a domino type rip, like a sound wave getting louder. The paper came off in one big piece, it ripped away from one wall, turned the corner and started falling off the next wall. The oil cloth on the ceiling began to sag. You could hear the rumble of an avalanche of loose plaster falling from the lath beneath and suddenly we found ourselves standing under a tent held up by the center ceiling light bulb while a cloud of plaster dust billowed around us.
   "I guess I'll start by cleaning up this mess," I said, and that's kind of how all of the remodelling started, first we made a really big mess and then we worked our way through it.  Sometimes it was a technique we used to motivate each other. I remember one wall we debated back and forth about removing, and one day while I took ten minutes to go down the road and return a neighbor's bowl, Wynn tore into the wall with a sledge hammer and when I got back it was gone. There was just a big pile of rubble to haul out in a wheel barrow. I had a very hard time deciding about some projects. They looked totally different on paper and in my mind than they did in reality. The joke is that I moved the stairway around like most women move furniture, and it's true. The hole in the ceiling for the stairway was cut in three different places and the children climbed up a ladder to their rooms for many months. It was really something to watch two year-old McKay climbing up a ten foot ladder to get to his bedroom. But, by the end of the summer we had made good progress. We removed the lath and plaster and re-wired everything, We were given some water-damaged sheetrock and put it up. We tore off the roof of the lean-to kitchen and built a second story above it. We hauled away the discarded aluminum printing plates from the newspaper in town, cut them into shingles and re-roofed the house. This was something we learned from reading "Mother Earth News." From our hoard of used windows, we replaced the single panes that were letting the snow in and we installed a new woodstove. Then we went to the forest and cut enough firewood to last for six months. We stacked it near the house where it would not be covered by sliding snow and felt like we were prepared for another winter.  If there is one thing we've learned from being in Mink Creek, it is to be prepared for the worst.