2nd Installment

11. Gerald Mosely and I have been friends from the start and truth be known probably long before this life journey began. He was born August 8, 1949 so he was a month and a half older than me. Jerry and I won a silver dollar for being dressed up like clowns and doing cartwheels in the Kiddie Parade for Labor Day when we were about 4 years old. We went all the way through school together and I was blessed to be able to share the Gospel with him. He continues to be my best friend second only to my eternal sweetheart and companion Gail. He lives in SLC and we communicate on a regular basis and see each other from time to time. We just wish that our visits could be more frequent for ours is an eternal brotherhood.
12. I remember going to a Halloween party at the Episcopal Church on upper Main Street in Lead when I was 3 or 4. I went down this slide and at the bottom I was scared to death by a red devil. Whenever passing that church for several years after I was convinced that the devil lived in the basement.
13. When I was 4 or 5 I had to go to the hospital to have all my baby teeth pulled. I was put to sleep with Ether. The smell of Ether was always prevalent at the hospitals when I was growing up and I never liked it's smell. For several years after my surgery I had two recurring nightmares that I had experienced while under the Ether. One involved having the sensation that I was going to be crushed between two big iron beams (like the ones used to build skyscrapers) that were suspended in the air and came crashing together toward me. The other was of being chased by someone or something scary and threatening. In my dream I always managed to escape unscathed. Many times I would wake up in a sweat but the only way for me to escape pursuit was to eventually wake up. I'm glad I don't have nightmares much anymore.
14. One night when I was maybe 6, Mom sent me to the little grocery store on Washington street to buy some bread. It was open until after dark. I got to the bottom of the hill on our street and was about halfway to the store when some older teen age boys jumped out from behind these old garages and scared the crap out of me. I ran home crying. After that I was afraid of the dark for many years maybe until I was 10 or 11. I was also sure that we had monsters in the hallway closets and laundry room that only came out after dark. I was fine during the daytime and I even looked in the closets only to find old clothes and coats. But at night I would have to make a mad dash down the hallway to get to the bathroom and back. (As I am typing this I've been trying to think why I didn't just turn on the lights. You may have thought the same thing. It just dawned on me. The ceilings in that part of the house were like 13 feet high and there were no light switches on the wall. The light hung down by a cord and had to be turned on with a switch near the bulb. I wasn't tall enough to reach the light.)
15. When I was in Kindergarten my sister Becky and I were going to visit the Cox family. There was an icy spot on the cement walk in front of their house. Becky warned me not to walk on it, but I didn't listen. When my feet slipped out from under me I cracked the back of my head open on the ice. For some reason the wound was fairly deep and the doctor said it was very close to my brain. (What brain?) Well I got a concussion, had to have my head shaved, got stitches and I had to wear a full head bandage for a month. Cool. I was quite a novelty at school.
(Luckily, other than that I've never broken a bone in my body except for my pinkie finger while playing church basketball and it doesn't really count because I didn't know it was broken at the time and so I never got it fixed. Now I can bend it backwards at the second knuckle. Gail's thumbs do the same thing as my pinkie, only all by themselves.)
16. I remember going to Bible School with Becky when we were quite young. We went to the Berian Baptist minister's house for a time but when they taught us that babies were born black with sin we quit going. We had already missed out on the baby baptism thing so we were probably going to go to hell anyway. I was Christened however in the Episcopal Church and I even had Godparents, but I don't remember their names. I think my sister Tomie Lynn told me that story. Well I also remember going to another Bible School in the basement of the Homestake Club Building. That's where I learned the song "Jesus Loves Me This I Know.... For the Bible tells me so. Little ones to him below. They are weak but he is strong. Yes, Jesus loves me. Yes, Jesus loves me. Yes, Jesus loves me, the Bible tells me so". Also... "Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world. Red and yellow black and white, they are precious in his sight. Jesus loves the little children of the world". These are still a couple of my favorite songs and like the Declaration of Independence I think it can be said that "we hold these truths to be self evident... that all men are created equal." These precepts have been a part of my core beliefs ever since I was little. I know that we are all children of God and I love diversity. I am grateful for this knowledge and I am grateful for the diversity that has become such an integral part of the Glover Family today. The Navajo have an expression that I love when I talk about the brotherhood of all mankind and that is "bila' ashdla'ii dine'e daniidli"...we are all five fingered people.
17. My mother was baptized a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints when I was 4 and a half years old. I can not begin to express how appreciative I am for the missionaries that brought the fullness of the Gospel of Jesus Christ into our lives and I am eternally thankful that my mother recognized the truthfulness of their message and was willing to accept their challenge to become a member of Christ's church. My mother gave up cigarettes, alcohol and coffee when she joined the church. Her commitment to the Lord and His Church never wavered from that point on. My older sisters Christine age 12 and Tomie Lynn age 10 were also baptized at the same time as my mother. They too have been stalwarts in living the Gospel fully all their lives. I love that we are an eternal family. I don't remember Becky's baptism but it was a couple of years after mom's and she too has been firmly rooted in the Gospel all her life. I was baptized a few months after I turned 8 in December 1957, in Rapid City. It was cold but I felt warm. I think I was baptized by Joe Deeble who was our Branch President. I remember bearing my testimony for the first time in our little Lead Branch when I was 8 and a half. Even though my first testimony was founded more upon my mother's testimony, I can still remember feeling the promptings of the Holy Ghost bearing witness to me at that time.
18. The summer before I started third grade I sat on an old rusty nail. I was so embarrassed when mom had Evelyn Birtch, the next door neighbor lady, come look at my bare butt while I was in the bath tub. Sure enough they agreed that I had a puncture wound and I had to get a tetanus shot. (I don't know why they didn't just take my word for it. I'm the one that was crying about sitting on a nail.) Despite this experience, I have always loved to take long baths. We had the neatest old antique porcelain bathtub with Eagle claw feet. I loved playing in the tub. I still enjoy long baths but now I like to read in the tub instead of play with my army men. I attended the Washington Grade school K-3. My mother taught third grade there but I did not have her as my teacher. They had 2 classes that year and I was in Mrs. Perman's class. Gerald Mosely was in my mom's class. I liked 3rd grade. We learned about planets and other good stuff. I got to be one of the wise men in the Christmas play and I remember singing a solo verse of We Three Kings of Orient Are. I also remember getting whacked several times during the year with a ruler. The bad thing was that Mrs. Perman would use the edge of the ruler and not the flat side. It especially hurt on the fingers and top of the head. One embarrassing memory was getting my tongue stuck to the metal wire on the fence in front of the school one morning before school started. After the bell rang my tongue and I were still stuck to the fence. My mom's class room and my class room faced the street where I was stuck so everyone in third grade got a good laugh but me.
19. I fought with my sister Becky until she left for college my Junior year of high school. After that we became best of friends. We teased each other and called each other names. (One of my names was "Pair of White Pants" which all of my sisters called me because I always ran around the house in my underwear when I was little.) Becky and I were so bad about fighting that mom and dad had to drive two cars to keep us separated when we took trips to visit relatives. I even threw knives at Becky when she ran to the bathroom. (I always waited for her to close the door first.) I was quite proficient at sticking knives in the bathroom door or in the wall at the end of the hall. I can't believe some of the crazy things I did as a kid. I lucked out that none of my children were as bad as I was. (Hopefully none of my grandchildren will get any ideas from my disclosures either.) One time I threw mud balls at the neighbors freshly washed sheets that were on the clothes line. (Yes, I did get caught and I did get a spanking after apologizing to the lady.) Another time I got into our mail box and misplaced my mothers pay check along with the other mail. (I was in trouble big time and I think that may be the reason that I dislike opening mail to this day.) I sassed my mother one time and then thought I could run away from her but she caught up to me in about three steps. (Another spanking.) On another occasion, I don't remember what I had done wrong, but my dad told me to go get the strap so he could spank me. I did and he did. (How crazy was that. He was in a wheel chair and I could have easily run away from him. I guess I wasn't totally disobedient.) One of the things I did that my parents never knew about, until I told them years later, was raiding this vegetable garden with some of the other neighbor kids and then hiding behind a retaining wall and throwing tomatoes at passing vehicles. There were about five us and when we all made direct hits on Jack Titus's truck and his window was rolled down, he slammed on his breaks and we all split. I ran through the back woods to my house and sneeked in the back door and then came out of my room pretending that I had been sleeping. I think he did catch one of the other boys but I never got caught. I did go later and apologize to him but I didn't know the people whose garden we raided and they had moved away. That was also the night I heard my first dirty joke and I still cannot get it out of my mind after all these years even though I wish that I could. I think I was maybe 12 or 13.
20. I suffered the consequences of most of my misdeeds. I was playing Tarzan at Chris and Tom's place after they were first married. I was 10 years old. I was jumping off this wall and grabbing a bar on this swing set. I was doing okay but on one jump my momentum flipped me off the bar and I landed on my head. I was knocked out for about 30 minutes. When I came to I was sick to my stomach. (Probably another concussion, but who knew. In retrospect maybe I ended up with a brain injury and that might explain part of my weirdness or uniqueness as Gail calls it.) About this same time I also tried to become a tight rope walker. I had pretty good balance and I was actually quite good at it. I had found an old rusty pipe and I extended it from the roof of our garage into the hill side. My parents told me that it was dangerous and they didn't want me doing it but what did they know. I was home alone and I figured I could practice with no one knowing about it. The more I did it the pipe began to come loose from the dirt. It started to wobble back and forth and I lost my balance and fell. I wasn't that high off the ground but the problem was that as I was falling down the old pipe was coming up and I caught it above my left eye. It was bleeding pretty good so I put a cold wet wash cloth on my eye and hid under my bed. (I guess I thought if I hid under the bed I wouldn't get caught?) Anyway one of my sisters came home and found me crying under my bed. I had to go to the emergency room to get 7 stitches under my eyebrow. I also ended up with a nice black eye.

(So ends another chapter in my novel. Will I survive to my teen years? I must have. In retrospect, I feel sorry for my parents. It couldn't have been easy for them. I think they must have been thankful to only have one son.)