Retrospection

Retrospection By Hector Lee He is getting old now — well toward eighty. His hair is white and his shoulders stoop, but his heart is still young. Today means little to him and tomorrow less — they are only worthless filling of time between the golden past when life was life, active, virile, objective; — and the end. The problems of mankind no longer con- cern him. When he worries, it is over some matter pertaining to his immediate comfort or peace of mind, which in our indefinite way, we busy ones would call childishness. Yes, he is only a pioneer, just like the one or two you have in your own com- munity. Look him up and get acquainted; ask him what the town looked like a few years ago. It will do you good, and you with be surprised, too, to find out whose old livery stable you have your garage now built over, or that your beautiful flower bed was once so-and-so's hog pen, or per- haps vice versa if you have a hog pen. Not long ago I went to see this vener- able old fellow. I knew that he was eccentric in that he was hard to "get started" on his past experiences, but once he was warmed up he took great de- light in pouring forth a stream of stories about early days in Utah that would be interesting to everyone. With this in mind I began the conversation as tactfully as I could by remarking about the weather being quite cold. "I guess you have seen some winters much colder than this?" I put in after a while, and he admitted that he had. "Do you think it was really colder in those days, or does it just seem so be- cause you had so little clothing then?" I asked; and he loosened up: And then he told about the time when he was just a lad, and he helped to keep the family by working with his dad. His clothes were very scanty — his head and feet were bare, and the other ill-made garments touched him only "here and there." "At last I got so threadbare that 1 didn't have a rag, so father went to town and got a heavy duckin' bag. He laid it on the table and he carved it with a knife, but I got a pair of breeches — queer- est things in all my life. I forget just how they was hung on, but they lasted me that winter — kept me warm till they was gone. "How we lived through them cold winters is a wonder. I declare. Why till I was grown I never had a suit of under- wear. Once father got a buckskin — a lovely piece of hide — from it I got some breeches with pockets in each side; so me in my new breeches was the proudest kid in town; and then (because 'twas all I had) I wore 'em all around. I wore 'em when I went to work; you bet they kept me warm, but once when I was herdin' cows it started in to storm. When that buckskin got moistened up my pants began to stretch. They got so long that when I'd walk the gosh-durned things would ketch. They flopped around my heels and I cut 'em off up high; but pretty soon the sun came out and they began to dry. It didn't take much sunshine till I had an awful time, for when they got a little warm them pants began to climb. Well when them buckskin pants was dry ( I got an awful thump), the darned things made me look like I was always on the jump." Then I asked him about the social cus- toms of early days. He told me of their dances, parties, various "bees" and enter- tainments. "Many's the time I've carried a punkin along with me to a dance instead of paying a ticket," he said. The old gentleman told me that he had worked mixing mortar for the wall around the Salt Lake temple grounds, and had once stood guard on Brigham Young's premises when Johnston's Army was in Utah. I am always glad to talk with these people and get their stories for they are going fast, and with each death there ends forever the reminiscences of a full and eventful life.