Yesterday morning, I unexpectedly received a text from my good friend John Larsen. He was letting me know that he was coming to Grantsville to visit his dad and was wondering if I would be around. I replied that I would and we planned to meet up at some point.
John is another friend that I don't remember exactly when I met him, just that it was over forty years ago. We grew up in the same church ward, were in the same grade in school, from seventh grade through the end of high school we worked together for Sunnie Titmus on the sheep ranch, and we played football and basketball together throughout high school (John was the quarterback on the football team and the best basketball player in our class).
John's mom would cut my hair when I was growing up and since I usually went and got my hair cut with my many younger brothers, John and I would engage in some activity after my hair was cut while I waited for my brothers.
(When I got into high school, I'd have John cut my hair and then when he'd mess it up, Sherry (his mom), would fix it, free of charge. I'd found a loophole! She cut my hair right before I left on my mission and on this occasion, I did try to pay, but she let me know that missionary haircuts were free).
John's family lived on a farm of sorts out in Gundersen Acres (named for John's maternal grandparents). I remember Charlie, their old pony that we would ride at times, and the buck sheep that would charge you if you got in the pen with it (I learned this the hard way). They had their dog Blair (some kind of spaniel I think). They even named their cars (PeeWee is the one I can remember).
One activity I remember we did fairly regularly was wrestle. The problem was that John had done youth wrestling and knew how to wrestle. I did not. I remember he'd always do what I imagine is a fairly routine wrestling move and drive the crown of his head into my back. I was never ready for it. I don't know that I ever won a single time that we wrestled.
I didn't play tennis for too long, but everyone in Grantsville at least tried tennis. With the youth tennis program, we would go through a couple of weeks of lessons (taught by Johnny and his son Don Wayne Nelson at the time), and then play a brief schedule of one-set matches. I had the luck of having John as one of my opponents that first (maybe only) year I played (maybe third grade) and he smoked me. I did not handle it well. I refused to shake his hand, started crying, and took off across the field at the high school toward Quirk Street, exiting the school property through the Framptons' backyard. This was bad enough but was made worse by the fact that John's older sister Julie had given us both a ride to the match and so she felt somewhat responsible for my well-being. I do remember Julie finding me on Quirk Street and asking if I'd let her take me home, but I don't recollect whether I allowed her to or not. But I do remember that John never teased me or made fun of me about the whole incident.
I remember being out at the Larsens one night and John wanted to show me the trick where you throw a match into a jug and then put a boiled egg over the opening of the jug and the egg gets sucked into the jug. It was dark and Sherry wasn't sure she wanted us doing the trick and messing with matches, but Earl (John's dad) came to our rescue: "Sherry, I've seen them do it. And it is neat." We did the trick.
John was always incredibly patient with me. When we worked together, he was a faster/better worker on the ranch than I was, but he never said anything about it or complained. I don't ever even remember him acting annoyed at me in any way. In one high school basketball game, I don't remember if I had missed a shot or made a turnover, but I was frustrated, and as we ran back down the court, I felt the need to express that frustration. John (my teammate) was running in front of me, and I kicked his foot sideways, tripping him. He did look back at me, like "what the heck?!", but he just let it go.
John has always been a terrific athlete. While I was pretty good at football and had my moments in basketball, John excelled at both, and baseball as well. He could have had similar success with tennis and wrestling if they didn't conflict with other sports, or even volleyball, if it had been available at the time.
While John was the better overall athlete, I always thought I was faster than he was. At the end of basketball practice, we'd always do a running drill where we ran baseline to baseline and back twice. This was my drill and I routinely finished first when we did it. But I remember one practice near the end of our senior year, John beat me in that drill, and seemingly without too much effort. I don't know that I ever figured out what that meant. Did he have a good day? Did I have a bad day? Or had he just been letting me think I was the faster of us two all along?
Even now, I'll faithfully train to run a marathon and John will do sporadic or minimal training and get a similar time. The last race we ran together, I had been running a lot and John not so much. We ran most of the way together but when someone from behind tried to pass us toward the finish line, we both took off sprinting, and I couldn't keep up with John on the sprint. He beat me.
John always had a great sense of humor. On one occasion, John's sister Michelle was driving us to football practice and all three of us were in the front seat. We passed a cop and Michelle was worried she was going to be pulled over. John quipped "Yeah, I'm sure the cop is going to be like 'Wait a second...1984 Celebrity…that doesn't have a middle seatbelt!’” You know a joke was a good one when you remember it 30+ years later.
Another favorite memory I have is taking a road trip over spring break in 1999 to visit John's brother Mike and his wife Gina in Idaho. It was kind of spur of the moment as I recall. We decided that we would stop at every historical or scenic place on the way. I remember we stopped at a few places, but only remember specifically stopping at Willard Bay and taking a couple of photos with our shirts off. The only memory I have once we got there was going to work with Mike who was working on a huge potato farm and playing basketball in the giant machine shed at lunchtime. While I don't remember a lot of details I do remember it being a good time.
John moved to Southern Utah many years ago and so we haven't seen each other as much as I would have liked. But we've still managed to get together here and there. We've run a few races, or done some training runs. Or met for lunch when I happened to be in St. George. Or gone to a high school football game.
Which brings us back to yesterday. Saturdays are always a busy day for me. I generally do a longer run, and then during the spring and summer, I'll mow and edge the grass and weed the flowerbeds. I try to go to the Stansbury grocery store with Jeanell and check the dairy. And I do the big weekly shopping trip. All of this was taking time and it was getting later in the day and I hadn't yet made it over to say hi to John. Finally, on my way to the store, I decided to stop and visit for a few minutes.
As I was doing my yard work, I found that one of the zones of my sprinkler system wasn't working. So when I was visiting with John, I asked him if he had any ideas what the problem might be and he told me that he had fixed many such problems. He was planning to visit his cousin who lives in my neighborhood so I asked John if he would stop by and just look at it and he said he'd be happy to.
This ended up turning into a much bigger ordeal. The valves for my system were a little different from what he typically worked with and of course, the valve that wasn't working was difficult to get to and so we had to dig out the sprinkler box. We took the valve apart and cleaned it out but then had an extremely difficult time getting it back together. And when we did, it still didn't work. Before we messed with it, it would at least turn on manually, but after taking it apart and putting it back together, it wasn't even turning on manually anymore. It was now after 11:00 PM, he never had made it over to see his cousin, and we were in a worse position than we had been before we started.
John had been planning to fly back to Southern Utah early this morning, but altered his schedule so he could come back and help me fix the problem. But he and his brother had swapped cars (his brother had been down in Southern Utah and Vegas while John was up here) and John had to get that car back to the his brother at the airport. In Wesley’s immortal words from The Princess Bride, this didn’t leave much time for dilly-dallying.
I was at Home Depot as soon as they opened this morning, but they didn't have a valve exactly like what I needed. But I bought a few things, called my neighbor Rob on my way home (at 7:30 on Sunday morning) to see if he by chance had a valve like the one I had, and then texted John when I returned home. He ran back over and things came together. Even though the valve wasn't exactly the same, we were able to use it and after swapping the top part of the newly purchased valve with the top of the faulty valve, everything started working again.
I feel terrible that I ruined his trip. I never should have even mentioned the sprinkler problem or asked him to quickly take a look at it. But grateful for life-long friends like John who are always there for you.
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