04 Friday Jan 2019
My husband has decided that he wants to learn to play the flute. I feel fortunate that he chose a relatively quiet instrument. During early marriage, he decided to learn the guitar, but was too busy with work and family so gave that up. Now in “later marriage” we’re back to learning music again. Thank goodness he has his man cave. I can close the door. Maybe lock it if need be! Continue reading
28 Saturday Jul 2018
Born in Afton, Wyoming in 1911, he was raised on a farm south of Etna and graduated from the University of Wyoming in 1940 with a degree in civil engineering.
With very primitive tools, Lloyd performed his first survey in Cokeville, Wyoming, about 75 miles down the road from Etna, the town he settled in when he “came home.” The loop within those few miles took him from coast to coast working as a surveyor.
Wyoming was calling him home, however, and he returned to Etna in 1974. After obtaining his license, he established Lloyd B. Baker and Associates which continues to this day, now with Astech GPS, Traverse PC, and Visual Cadd software. He told me he could find any point he needs to on his 4-wheeler with tracks, under the four feet of snow we usually get during the winters. Lloyd continued working until past the age of 106. He said he didn’t see any reason not to!
Baker loved to dance and especially loved to sing. He entertained at two rest homes in the valley on Sunday evenings. He could still mostly remember fifty songs. One of those, “A Nest, The West, and You, Dear,” he sang for me, which was a delight.
Cheyenne Frontier Days was a highlight for him this past summer. It was the first time he had attended and had the delightful privilege of being photographed with ten beautiful Rodeo Queens!
Lloyd had always been an advocate of taking care of your body. He believed our bodies were meant to last a thousand years and if we give it what it needs for nourishment and don’t give it junk that is not nourishing, we’ll be fine. He relayed to me that he had arthritis once but it was interfering with his work, so he quit drinking milk, starting using real butter instead of margarine (which he feels is plastic) and stopped taking his vitamins. It wasn’t long before he felt fine. Lloyd ate a little meat, had a bit of “sweets” after each meal – always carried Peanut M & M’s in his pocket, consumed no chlorinated or fluoridated water, no bleached flour in anything, and was a believer that proper elimination is a must. He also used no soap.
Lloyd had five children, 17 grandchildren, over 40 great grandchildren, a couple of great, great,-grandchildren.
The last time I saw him I asked, “ What are some of the benefits of being a 107?” He quickly replied, “Everyone treats you better. After 100 you get treated a lot better.”
Lloyd left us on July 9th, 2018. He’s probably already surveying the heavenly clouds!
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08 Thursday Feb 2018
February is the month when you will find the florist’s shops overflowing with roses. Floriography was a method used by Victorians to send messages to others without uttering a word – thus the roses became symbolic of love, especially for Valentine’s Day.
There are several other flowers or plants that suggest love as well. Lovegrass is a very beautiful perennial with ornamental, wispy plumes. Its Greek name is eragrostis: eros meaning love and agrostis meaning grass. It’s also used as fodder for livestock. Continue reading
22 Wednesday Nov 2017
The first Thanksgiving in this country has many variations including what was for dinner. (Hint: it wasn’t beef.) They had whatever they could get their hands on which included different kinds of birds, deer, and crops they had grown. The cornucopia, also called the horn-of-plenty, is a symbol of those crops.
The origin of the turkey as the preferred bird for the meal is also debatable but the story I like best is that in the 1950’s the Saturday Evening Post ran a Thanksgiving cover (painted by Norman Rockwell) of a family around the dinner table with a scrumptious turkey as the main dish. It caught on like wildfire!
We all strive for the perfect
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24 Monday Jul 2017
The tower rises majestically some 1267 feet above the Belle Fourche River in Northwest Wyoming and is 867 feet from base to summit, with a base circumference of one mile. It is a spectacular sight, rugged, picturesque, and often used for weddings, filming, and commercial photography (permits required).
“Close Encounters of the Third Kind” is the movie that made the tower famous in 1977. It’s more than a movie to the Indians – to them it is sacred and they ask that people voluntarily refrain from climbing it during the month of June in order to show respect for the culture of the American Indians since June is a month when many of their ceremonies traditionally occur.
Mis-translation of a word back in 1800 gives it the name, “Bad God’s Tower” which morphed into “Devils Tower,” the apostrophe being lost due to a clerical error. Various tribes had many different names for it: Bear Rock, Tree Rock, He Hota Paha, Grizzly Bear Lodge, to name a few.
How it was created gives way to many legends. The Kiowa say that there were seven sisters who ran into a giant bear. They ran away and jumped on a small stump that quickly grew into the enormous stump we see today in order for the girls to escape. The girls were whisked up into the sky and became the stars that form our Big Dipper.
Cheyenne legend states that while some of them were traveling to worship the Great Spirit, one of their wives became enamored with a mate-less bear, the men chased the giant bear, it chased them up a huge tree, they killed the bear, the woman turned into a bear and made the huge rock her home. It became known at the Bear’s Tipi.
My favorite is the story of two young Indian boys who, as young boys will do, got lost. They walked for days trying to find their way home, to no avail. Eventually, coming face to face with Mato, a giant bear who shook the very earth with every step he took, they knew they were doomed. In their struggles to get away, they fell and the earth rose with them on it. Up, up, up it went to the height the tower is today. The bear could almost touch the top, but not quite. It clawed viciously all the way around the towering chunk of earth but finally left in frustration. Wanblee, a great eagle, extended his enormous talons for the boys to grab hold of and he delivered them back to their village, thus giving the boys quite a story to tell their grandchildren.
Geologist tells us that molten rock was forced up between other rock formations, some say it is the tip of an extinct volcano. Others feel the tower was formed underground, uplifted, and erosion formed what we see today. More recently I’ve heard that it is a petrified tree going back to the time of giants.
Now, I’ll tell you what – I would hate to meet up with a bear the size of which was as tall as the Tower, and I shudder to contemplate the size the people would have been to match their surroundings. Think how hard it would be to buy clothing!
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© Copyright 2013 Life in the Loony Lane | June Johnston. All Rights Reserved
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08 Tuesday Dec 2015
Posted in Events, Food, Humor, Places, Restaurants
So there we were, enjoying the company of friends, dining in the wonderfully rustic Old Yellowstone Garage restaurant, consuming delicious food, when all of a sudden this horrific boom startled everyone clear into next year. First we all looked at each other, then around the establishment, when lo and behold, we spied a bumper where it shouldn’t be. Sure enough, a truck had tried to come to dinner via a window – where four people were seated!
It was quickly obvious that no one was hurt, although the other man at our table announced that if anyone was, he was a lawyer (he wasn’t)! There were uneasy chuckles throughout the restaurant as staff began to handle the situation.
We all soon relaxed and resumed our activities, realizing we’d just had what would ordinarily be a once in a lifetime experience.
Oddly enough, the same thing recently happened at Tootsie’s Pizza, another restaurant we frequent here in Star Valley, only that vehicle tried to enter through the log walls and shut the business down for a week or so
One tends to think at times of what could go wrong- like when dining in the Space Needle at Seattle – one of my favorite life memories. The dining room on top turns one full revolution per hour and we were there at sunset. The big plus was that all of our children were still living at home. It was simply a glorious evening. It would have been a bit difficult for a vehicle to enter that restaurant – but an airplane gone awry might have!
Now it might be a stretch to say that our presence caused these two incidents, but a friend of ours said that if she drove up to a restaurant and Bob and I were there, she was leaving!
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© Copyright 2015 Life in the Loony lane June Johnston. All Rights Reserved
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14 Tuesday Jul 2015
Tags
architecture, castle, construction, holds, homes, moat, spires, turrets
If you would like to see an honest-to-goodness castle right here in Star Valley, Wyoming read my story in Wyoming Lifestyle Magazine. Here’s the link! http://www.wyolifestyle.com/currentissue.html Page 8. Enjoy.
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05 Sunday Jul 2015
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We have a couple of families of tree swallows that have taken up residency in bird houses in our back yard. They are such fun to watch. I think there is only one baby yet to leave the nests. He appears to be afraid if height. 🙂 Last year I saw one that would come out a little ways, look down at the ground and go back inside. Then he would repeat the action. I figured he was thinking it sure was a long ways down to the ground. I had to leave and by the time I got back he had apparently gathered his courage because he was gone. Of course, his parents and siblings were hanging out on a nearby branch chiding him for all they were worth. That was probably embarrassing. Looks like this one is going to follow suite.
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14 Monday Oct 2013
Ah, the joys of growing older. I used to joke that we knew we’d arrived when we were offered senior discounts at restaurants without asking. We just laughed about it – now it’s not so funny.
Weird conversations due to our hearing don’t seem nearly as comical as they used to. The volume bar on our television is a mile long on the low side now and almost nothing on the loud. Having to find the phone via the locater is commonplace; trying to find what Continue reading
09 Wednesday Oct 2013
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Do you think you would want to work until you are 102? I recently interviewed a gentleman that is doing just that. He is still healthy, agile, and sharp as a tack! Mr. Baker works every day, at least in the summer, since he is a surveyor and much of our land here is covered with 4-5 feet (or more) of snow through the winter months. Check out my article on pages 56-57 in Wyoming Lifestyle Magazine. http://www.wyolifestyle.com/Current%20Issue.html He is truly an inspiration.
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