Thursday, May 6, 2010

Revisiting Barnwell for ten days. Apr 22 -- May 5

Motivations for this visit were at least two: I had scheduled a trip with President Tony Steven to go to the Cardston Temple; and an unexpected visit to Canada by Preston who wanted to get together with his siblings and make tape recordings of their reminiscences of growing up in Barnwell. Preston came to Calgary to take Sharon and I down to Barnwell, but conflicts arose with motives (1) and (2), and a visit with Grant here in Calgary revealed that he would be unable to come with us, but would bring Sharon down with him when Arlan was able to come on Saturday. Preston returned to Barnwell to a lovely dinner, and I had a very interesting ride down with Tony on Thursday. Bev and Virginia, Preston, Molly and Nadiene met with Tony and I after the Temple session to have lunch in the Temple Cafeteria, and then Tony went back to Calgary while the rest of us traveled to Barnwell.

While we waited for Grant, Boyce, Arlan and Sharon to arrive a day or so later, we visited and taped memories, and played Rook and their finger bidding game to peels of laughter. When Molly, Nadiene and Virginia grew tired, Bev and I watched a BYU series report on the huge project initiated by Jesse of publishing all the Joseph Smith Papers. There were 52 TV episodes, all of which I saw, that were collected, edited, and rendered in readable print, which was then printed side by side with the photocopy of the original hand written documents.

Go to tomorrow's episode two.

4 comments:

  1. This sounds like many good stories from the past were told as you gathered with your siblings.

    On the present day front, I have been to Barnwell and played that finger-game with your relatives. The Pilling family used to call the game "Oh, Hell" around the family but we were told to call the game "Oh Heck" when visitors came to the house.

    I learned this game first from Aunt Erva, whose laughter would bubble right outside of her when she was letting us swear by at least letting us use the world hell in saying the name of the game.

    Keep your stories coming.

    I am out here reading them.

    Arta

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  2. Did you forget how to get onto your blog?

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