Grandparents are awesome

I guess one of the good things about being an oldest child is I have quite a few memories of my grandparents. I had six grandparents.  My dad's parents were Ila Ruby Casto and Janus Wayne Miller.  My grandparents on my mom's side were a little more complicated.  Christina Gregerson and Max Edward Miner married and had 2 children, the youngest being my mother.  They divorced.  Christina married Vernon Pehrson Fawson and Max married Faires Sampson.  This may not be interesting to some readers, but I want my children to have this information and what better place to put it than on the internet?

Today I spent some time looking at the family history prepared by my mom and dad and other family members.  I'm impressed with the gathering and typing and research, all done without www.familysearch.org, ancestry.com or digitalized census.  Thank you family.  My favorite genealogy to look at is the picture pedigrees and personal history.  I love reading the stories and learning about characteristics of my ancestors and seeing the little"profile pics."

Reading about Christie and Vern Fawson triggered some fond memories.  They lived in Grantsville, UT.  Their house was right on main street.  I liked to sit on the porch and watch the cars drive by. These are the kinds of things I did before facebook. The irrigation ditches were right out front.  Each driveway formed a bridge over the ditch.  It was super fun to go to the neighbor's bridge, drop a stick in the ditch and have a sister or neighbor lying on Grandpa's bridge to try and catch it. This game lasted for days.

Grandpa had a few horses and some cows and one big scary bull.  My uncles warned me to watch out for the bull.  He was dangerous.  That's all it took.  I refused to go anywhere on the farm if the bull was  in sight.  One day I looked out the window and saw my Uncle David actually leading the bull by a ring in his nose down the road to the corral.  From that day on my uncle was the bravest most heroic person I knew.

One very exciting day my grandpa let me help him load hay.  He asked me to drive the truck pulling the trailer.  Drive the truck?  I didn't even have a license.  How awesome was that?  Woo hoo!  I was to drive slowly along the field while Grandpa and my uncle loaded the bales of hay.  I was doing great until I turned a corner a little too sharply.  My unflappable Grandpa came running with a decidedly flapped look on his face.  The whole trailer of hay bales almost turned over.  Almost. I got lucky, but that was enough driving for me for a while.

Grandma Fawson was warm and cheerful,  definitely a gusher.  She made me little personal banana breads in empty tin cans.  She kept her flour in a drawer.  In another drawer she kept some books just for me.  Well, they might have been for all the children visiting, but I thought they were just for me. She was famous for making all guests feel like they were home.

Alan Miner, Grandma Fawson, Grandpa Fawson, Mom.  Back row Deana, Don and David Fawson