My Brief History (More Later)

BRIEF HIGHLIGHTS OF MY LIFE

By Recollections Johnson Carrillo
(these are childhood memories; I will write memories of my later life at another time.)

EARLY RECOLLECTIONS: The first reckonings I have of my life was my grandmother Sanders, whom I called "Nana." She was the one who made me feel good, even though I was sick most of the time. I was a frail child, looking like an orphan suffering malnutrition. I had a very poor appetite. Apparently I had an allergy to milk, which caused my poor appetite and illness. My grandma used to sing to me and always seem to be near when I was feeling low. My own mother was often very ill herself, and was not always able to care for me. This was when I was very young and lived with my grandmother and mother in Fairview, Utah, while my father was in the army during World War II.

I remember living in a subdivision in Orem with a few friends in which I used to get into fights with quite often. I used to push kids down the stairs, hit them over the head with rocks and bite them etc. But they always provoked me. Once, right after moving to Orem, some older girls put red ants all over me. It's funny that I can remember this, as I was probably only about two years old.

I remember being called "skinny" constantly by my peers. I didn't even know what skinny meant. I thought it meant you had too much hair on your arms. I was skinny all my childhood due to my illness from infancy. My father finally got me to start eating better, and by the time I married, I weighed about 95 lbs.! (At this writing, I refuse to admit my weight, suffice it to say it's a good deal more than when I married).

I remember being very shy when I started school. I had not been shy earlier as I had been able to stand and recite poems and sing complete songs at family reunions at the age of two. I guess my shyness was caused because of the way my peers always made fun of me because of my thinness. I remember hating kindergarten. (We only went for six weeks during the summer back then). I cried and actually felt sick at my stomach when I had to go. As a result, my mother had me go again the next year. I did much better then.

I would now like to just relate some of my feelings and experiences I had as a child about different times and occasions.

CHRISTMAS: I loved Christmas as most children do. I loved the smell of the tree and that special magic that is hard to explain. I loved to go to the five and dime store and look at all the magical items there. Nowadays, children could hardly relate to the items found then. Glistening bottles of perfume, Glowing trinkets, plastic dolls, perfumed soaps, all sorts of magical things. The favorite store we loved to go to go window shopping was called Kress'. It wasn't the things that I would get at Christmas that would excite me, it was that special feeling that is hard to explain, a kind of mysterious feeling. It wasn't the presents, it was the unknown of the neatly wrapped gifts that held a special wonder. When they were unwrapped and lay scattered on the floor, that special feeling was no longer there. I can truly say that the waiting was what made Christmas so special. It was saying to myself "It's coming, it's coming." I remember one Christmas my Aunt Beverly put a beautifully wrapped box for me under the tree. I just could not contain myself, I opened it one day when my parents were out. It was a delightful present; 4 bottles of Cologne in bottles shaped like elephants. One pink, carnation scent, one green, jasmine scent, one yellow, honeysuckle scent and one lavender, lavender scent. They were truly wonderful, but the magic was gone and I wrapped them back up again so no one would find out what I had done. Ever since then, I have waited for Christmas day to open my gifts. It is so much more exciting that way. I have always loved Christmas Eve more than Christmas Day.

I remember going to the annual Christmas parade held the day after Thanksgiving. We were always excited because we got to see Santa. I went one year with the neighbors and got lost after the parade and a policeman came and asked me my phone number. The neighbors finally found me, but I was scared for a while. One Christmas eve, I got up and could swear to this day that I saw Santa bending over the lit-up tree with his bells around his waist and placing toys under the tree. My brother, Chris, and I loved Christmas a whole lot. Chris got so excited that he always got up really early and opened everything before the rest of the family got up.

PETS: As a child, and to this day, I always loved cats. When I was young, I went trough a great many cats. When I say I went through them, I mean they were always dying and disappearing, and then I would be very upset, but I would always get another. My favorite cat was named "Scappy." He was a lot like a human. He was the best cat ever.

MY BROTHER My brother, Chris, was a real hellion as a child. He was a lovable hellion though. He loved adventure. He liked to wreck up his toy cars to make playing with them more interesting. He loved to play army. He was mischievous like most boys but even more so. He and I got along pretty good though; even though he tore up my paper dolls, pounded the spokes out of my bicycle and made dents in the fender. He could talk his way out of anything. I wasn't so lucky; I was unrepentive, but since he always said "sorry", he was free to go out and be mischievous again. He baptized my sister's cats, killed toads and dug them up later, among some of the crazy things he did. We still had good times. I really liked going on vacation with him. We loved camping out and playing soft ball.

MY MOTHER: My mom always looked like a movie star to me. She had large eyes and beautiful skin and reminded me of Loretta Young. (I'm sure my children won't even know who she is, but she was a beautiful movie star back in the 40's and 50's.) She used to play guessing games with Chris and I when my dad was working late. She could make up really great stories to tell. I liked them a lot better than stories out of books. She made good things to eat. I remember the apple dumpling she used to fix in the old dutch oven. We loved it so much. I remember that she was really scared of mice and bats. One day, a bat was asleep during the day on the garage roof. She got a broom and was hitting him and screaming. I guess she was afraid he would get in her hair. She always wanted a piano when she was growing up. I had a yearn to play the piano too. She saw that I got one for my 11th birthday. She was learning to play along with me, but gave it up because she got discouraged. She shouldn't have done that. She liked operas and classical music and great literature. So did I. We went to a couple of operas together and read some Charles Dicken's books.

MY DAD: Dad was very hard-working. He was also very frugal. I remember our farm in Lakeview. He built a barn out of trees he cut down himself from the mountains so we could save money. He dug a root cellar too. We had every kind of animal imaginable on that farm. We had rabbits, chickens, pigs, a milk cow, even a couple of ducks. We did not have horses though. Dad only kept animals that could earn their keep. Horses couldn't be eaten or did not produce eggs, and we did not ride them. They were the ones who were always eating and Dad was not going to spend money on something that ate and could not be eaten or earn its keep. Dad had been raised on a ranch, but never cared much about horses. He rode them to do his work on, but not for pleasure.

Dad was always busy, but he always found time to play with us kids. He loved to throw bean bags at us, and we would hide behind the couch and when we rose up, he would let us have it. We loved every minute of it. We even had a basketball hoop in the living room and played ball all the time.

OUR FAMILY: Our family had really good times together. We played softball every summer evening after supper, and when it got dark, we played hide-and-seek. My parents played with us. All the neighbor kids came to our house to play because their parents were dull and liked to sit in the house all evening or go out with friends.

My parents were always doing things with us. When we played hide and seek, we really had fun. There were big bushes all around the house and lots of places to hide. My brother, Chris, and I used to like to play a game called "poison cars", it was a game that you would go in the front yard at night and look for car lights coming down the road. When you saw lights, you had to run around the back of the house before the car got to your place or you would be killed by the poison from the cars. Hardly any cars ever came down the street because we lived out on a dirt road seldom traveled, yet my cats always got killed on the road despite this. Kids today would hardly find any fun in the things we did, but it was a blast to us. One of the things I really liked to do was make dirt houses in the sand. I would stick sticks in the houses for chimneys and pieces of glass for the windows. I would often build them by the furrows my dad made for the irrigation water and pretend they were rivers or lakes. I liked doing this much better than playing with toys.

I liked using cats to dress up instead of dolls. I had one cat that was really congenial. His name was Scrappy, and he would let me do about anything to him. He was killed on the road, but I hope someday to meet up with him on the other side. I hope Heavenly Father knows how much I loved him and would really like to see him again. I found fun with ordinary things. I played with buttons and gave them names, I even had a flashlight named Barbara (I loved that name). I would collect pieces of broken glass. I liked all the pretty colors. I had quite a collection.

FAMILY VACATIONS:
I loved to go on vacations with our family. That is one happy memory many kids can't relate to. We had such good times together. One of my favorite vacations was going to California. I thought it was the most magical place in the world. I especially loved the palm trees and the ocean. I could have stayed out in the ocean all day and let the waves knock me down. To me there is something mysterious and frightening about the sea. When it crashes against the rocks it can be very scary, but it is also an amazing and breath-taking sight. I love to watch the ocean and listen to the sounds it makes. Another trip we went on was to Canada. We went in a camper my dad had made. Whenever we stopped for lunch or to camp for the night, we would play softball. We went to Yellowstone many times too. I just loved going on vacations, especially camping vacations and I still do.


SCHOOL:

For most of my elementary school days I went to a little old school on Geneva Road called Union School. I really liked that school. It was really small, only 1 classroom per grade. We had to go outside to another building for lunch. It was a really old school. I remember that there were very old black walnut trees growing outside the school. There was a girl named Jeneal who was a tomboy. She used to throw rocks up into the trees and knock down the nuts for us to eat. She could throw better than any boy. I loved those black walnuts. We used to play softball at recess. We learned a lot of songs and really enjoyed singing at that school. I don't thinks kids nowadays sing in school like we used to. I have always loved to sing, and I think it was because our teachers loved it and taught us so many songs. We learned to dance waltzes and foxtrots and all kinds of ballroom dancing. I didn't like those kinds of dances because I wasn't very graceful, and dancing so close with boys made me very nervous. But we learned to square dance, and I loved square dancing better because you got to dance with many different partners and you didn't have to be so graceful. We had a Spring Fling each spring and our parents would come and watch us dance. We practiced for ages. It was really fun. Another thing I really liked about the old school was at Christmas time we would learn so many songs. We had a great big tree in the upstairs hallway. It would glow with lights on dark winter mornings. We would stand around the tree and sing carols before class. There was a special magic those dark winter mornings. I would be so excited for Christmas. The tree all aglow would make me tingle.