Coral Pink Sand Dunes 2010
I think it is reasonable to say that all of those who journeyed to Southern Utah for the Clark Family Reunion at the Coral Pink Sand Dunes would agree that it was one of the very best Clark gatherings to date. This was in large measure due to the location and the assiduous planning of Poppie and his reluctance for anyone to do anything but enjoy themselves as he compensated with much work…even for Poppie.
The gathering consisted of Mom and Poppie, Sarah and the Davises, Ehren, Reuben and his crew, Emily and the Hemmingers (she recently pregnant at the time with the now healthy Brooke Hemminger), Jesse and Julia (she well into her pregnancy at the time with the now healthy Jace Clark), of course David, many of the Eskanders: Bruce, Stephanie, Amy, Alec and Alicia and their son Jackson, and Annie who managed to fly west from New York City for the event. Also to join were Lynn and Bruce and Leslie and the ever dependable Harry. Courageously Grandma braved the terrain and the August Southern Utah heat to be there also.
Poppie made a good choice with the Coral Pink Sand Dunes. The camp site was a marvel in and of itself, adjacent to the most spectacular expanse of quite literally pink, powdery sand that was an instant draw to nine of the youngest generation. These are some formidable dunes as was apparent from the abundance of professional dune buggies, which had to be looked out for at all times. These Coral Pink Dunes are also a short drive to Kanab where those not wishing to rough it in the camp site could relax in comfort at Perry Lodge and eyeball signed photos of John Wayne and John Ford as this area was key territory for the filming of old westerns whose crews stayed at the Perry. It was also an ideal location within close proximity to Bryce Canyon, Zion National Park and the Grand Canyon. These were the makings of a great summer reunion.
Day 1, Saturday Night and a Flash Flood
All arrived safely Saturday evening at camp. Some staying in Kanab joined also. Poppie had set up everything for maximum efficiency including a cooking area where he repeatedly stated with Poppie irony- “No women allowed.”
It was a spacious campsite complete with shower facilities and just yards from the dunes. Even in the camp the ground was pink sand.
This first day was largely uneventful as most arrived later in the day. The highlight of the evening was Poppie’s cooking and the presentation, by Stephanie, to all of the nine grandchildren, of toys of her design or designed by her firm. It can be said that Steph chose brilliantly and the toys survived the trip.
The day prior to our arrival in the sand dunes there had been a flash flood in Kanab. It had receded by the time most had arrived, but the sizable town, quite literally had a generous coat of red mud on all buildings up to several feet. But this was no deterrent as the town is beautiful regardless and those staying at the Lodge, Leslie and Harry and Lynn and Bruce, were not bothered.
Day 2 Sunday, Sand Dunes, Church in Kanab and Great Food
The Sunday of the second day woke us up to a gorgeous blue sky. Poppie was busy with breakfast and there was nothing to keep the kids from hitting the dunes and the men from taking a good bike ride.
The Coral Pink Sand Dunes truly merit the name. It is a breathtaking area too large to fully explore, with the kind of sand that is clean and powdery…and pink…just the right kind for Izzie, Sean, Aerie, Ella, Nikki, Ike and little Owie and Zoie, even Brady to some extent, to hit with full throttle.
After about an hour of heavy playing in this sensational sand, kids tired and with a layering of pink dust, men home from the ride, it was time for breakfast. This being had, we all then busily began to dress for church; we would attend the Kanab Ward Fast and Testimony Meeting that morning.
It was a great testimony meeting; our family occupied more than the entire front pew, and a number of our group bore their testimonies, most notably Mom.
The rest of the day being Sunday, there was not a lot of heavy activity other than good talks and good food. Leslie and Harry had joined us by then and the rest of the day was very pleasantly spent, reserving our energy for heading for the canyons the next day.
Day 3, Monday, Zion National Park, Bryce Canyon, More Great Food
It was decided after some deliberation that the elder generation would drive to nearby Bryce Canyon. Grandma had never seen Bryce so there was no decision that the older generation would head to Bryce, which was also lower impact with less hiking and strenuous activity.
For the younger two generations full of boundless energy it was decided that we drive into Zion National Park. We carpooled and after navigating through construction we arrived at our destination, the parking lot at the base lodge of the Park. With some scrambling to keep everyone together, we ate an enjoyable lunch under the shade outside of the lodge. This not taking too much time, we gathered and quickly boarded a bus that would take us to the Narrows.
This was no ordinary bus drive and Zion is no ordinary national park. The drive up to our final destination was truly a spectacular marvel. These mountain ranges are some of the largest and most dramatic to be seen in this country and are inspiring and truly magnificent. Upon reaching the end of the bus line at the Narrows, all of us, Clarks, Davises, Hemmingers and Eskanders enjoyed a rather leisurely hike, perhaps two miles, trough these majestic walls of stone, to the destination, a large pool, a wide span within a meandering river. Of course this was David’s cue to do some tumbling and diving; Reuben, Jesse, Steve, Alec and even Isaac got some sport in. But for those of us less inclined to die, it was a great area to wade in and hobble over rocks and branches and try to avoid the temptation of petting the squirrels, which bite.
Day 4, The Grand Canyon, Capture the Flag in a Lightning Storm, Even More Great Food
Our last day of this adventurous reunion was to be spent at the Grand Canyon no less. Some had not been to the Grand Canyon and everyone joined in on the excursion.
All of the many cars in the caravan made it directly to the parking lot where we gathered and headed to the lodge. Once through the lodge and faced with the vastness and the sublimity of the Grand Canyon, one finds there is nothing like it on Earth. Never was nature so big and man so small. We spent a good hour taking photos, having lunch, watching David do a back flip off the wall luckily oriented well enough to land on firm ground, and all enjoyed being together in this, one of the most truly spectacular of natures creations. This would be the last that all would be together as some had to go separate ways, but it was a joyous goodbye.
Back at camp it was getting dark, and although not raining, there was an imposing thunderstorm overhead. Sarah had brought an abundant supply of glow sticks for us to play capture the flag in the dark. It may have been slightly disorienting with the lightning and thunder and the color of lighted glow sticks in the depths of darkness, but it was my own personal favorite game of capture the flag I have experienced…perhaps it was just very dramatic. We all had a terrific time…no one really knowing who was winning or losing…it really did not matter. It was great fun.
The next morning went smoothly and we got our equipment taken down, trash picked up, cars loaded and it was time to say goodbye for now, thank Poppie and Mom for all of their hard work and head back to civilization, with coral pink sand residue lining our pockets, between our toes, and providing lingering memories that will never subside.
A Not So Brief Encounter
“1912, it was, in Idaho, in Filer, about 5 miles from Twin Falls, where I lived later. My mother was born in Minnesota and my dad was born in Nebraska, and they met. My Mother was visiting her cousins in Oregon, and she had gotten on a train, and she saw a young man walking outside her window, walking along, eying her. And she didn’t think anything of it and pretty quickly he came and asked if anyone was sitting in the next seat, and she said no, and he sat down and they started talking and they got acquainted. And so he got off at a hotel, he was going up to Canada, he had land up there so he was going up there to see if he could sell it, and she went home to Minnesota. And they started writing back and forth and then they were married. For a year and a half they had been writing and they were married in October.
So it sort of paralleled with my husband and I. William Ward’s parents were from England and her parents were born in Germany. They got married in Minnesota and then they moved to Oregon. She was a Lutheran and my Dad was a Methodist. You see when I was working- I was a telephone operator in Twin Falls- when I was working I had a split shift, sometimes I would work from eight to twelve, sometimes from six to ten, I would be going to work as he was coming home. He had moved too, when he had graduated from BYU, he had got a job in Twin Falls, and I would go back to my office and tell my friends ‘I saw the man I am going to marry,’ so, he would just smile at me and I would smile back, I didn’t speak to him and I didn’t get acquainted with him yet.
That was during the summer. Then I saw him all summer. I would go back and forth, walking and he would be walking home and we would be passing each other on the street. At New Years I had a date. In Twin Falls they had a radio station that had a big New Year’s Ballroom and they had the big bands come in, this was a big band, and so we went to the dance and he was there and he asked me for a dance and so I did. And then he asked me for a date for the next day, New Year’s Day.
So that’s how we got acquainted and we dated for all that year and then, New Year’s Day, the following New Year’s- it was one year later- we were married.”
The Filer Farm
“My dad was really a farmer, he loved to farm. He had two farms, one by Filer and we moved into one of the farms. He rented the other one. Then five years later we moved to town- to Twin Falls. But while we were on the farm, one little thing that happened was when there was a meeting at the schoolhouse- I don’t know what it was but my mother and aunt went to it- the men were not involved. It sounds like a PTA meeting but I’m not sure because of course, I was a baby then.
But they went, mother and my aunt, they went in a buggy and my Aunt was driving and my sister Wilma, over a year old, was standing holding onto the front of the buggy and I was in my mom’s arms. We got almost to the school, the horse got scared, something got in the way and the horse started bucking and the buggy fell over and my poor mom- she was the only one that was hurt- and she got a big gash and she got a big scar and always had her hair combed with her hair over it.”
“My older sister was Wilma and my younger sister was Juanita and there was just the three and I remember once visiting, when Wilma went to school- it was just a little schoolhouse- one of those old school houses when they had the isles and this one was grade one and this one two, three, four, and it was like that, just a small school, and you could see it from our yard, the school was across the yard. A sheep always followed Wilma to school. My dad had to always go get the sheep.”
“It wasn’t a town, it was the country- Filer- there were only about 500 people, and it was very small. The farm- they grew a lot of alfalfa and corn, and potatoes- now that I can remember, but maybe other things. They had chickens and pigs and we used to have to go over to my Aunts- she lived three miles over- and get the milk every night in a pail. We rode on a horse- Wilma and I did.
I can remember going to visit Wilma’s school and I can remember the teacher would give me some blocks and I would sit in the same row she was in, I was about four and a half, and I remember piling them up and looking at her, piling them up and she would say ‘Now you are getting it too high and they will fall over’ and it did! I remember that, that is very clear. I was five years when we moved in town, and then when I was six I went into the first grade. 1917.”
The Big City: Twin Falls
“The school was called Bickle, and we lived up Fifth Avenue East- a big yellow house on the corner. We lived there for two years and then we moved to a new, brand new house. My dad had two houses in town and then the two farms, and there for a while he was pretty affluent. And then of course the tumble came and we lost everything. He took care of these houses; he would go out to the farm and the other farm and see if anybody needed any help on the other house that we rented out to people. He had to take care of that.
We moved into this lovely neighborhood- it was a brand new neighborhood area- and they picked out the kind of house they wanted built; it was kind of a Hollywood bungalow. I think they were looking through a book and the one my mother picked out it was the kind of style of the house. We moved to town in 1918, the year my mother’s dad came from Minnesota to visit- grandma had already died. She died a week after my mother and dad were married. My dad was born in 1875 and my mother in 1878. They were married in 1908. My grandpa came to visit. He had a very German accent and I can remember him saying ‘Nice little girl, but she doesn’t mind!’ He died in that flu epidemic, 1918, and he died in our house.”
“You started first grade when you when you were six- you had to be six before you started school. It was a two story. At first they had a chute that they used in case of a fire but they took that off and built stairs on the outside, and it was a pretty building- it looks good now. Of course in those days, at six years old, I didn’t remember, but it was a nice building. Twin Falls in those days was about the same size as South Pasadena, about 30,000. Of course it is bigger now.
This year I started school was the year I started taking piano lessons, when I was six years old. They had recitals and I am not sure, I must have been about seven and Wilma was about eight and everybody came. They had chairs lined up, and they had each of us play solo and then they had a duet. So, when it came for the time of the duet, Wilma was sitting on a stool that twirls around and I was sitting on something else, some kind of a stool that did not twirl. Anyway, we were playing away and the door opened- somebody late came in- and Wilma stopped and twirled around and she started right where we left off! I was going on and on and Wilma didn’t miss a beat.”
“I didn’t get along with Wilma that well. She had a different childhood than I did. She claimed that she didn’t have a good childhood. I had a great childhood! I thought my parents were the most wonderful people! We didn’t have that much money by that time. We didn’t loose everything till closer till the depression time, but the farmers lost first since most of our money came from the farm and the rentals, when they started not taking much. Potatoes were 25 cents a bushel. But I got along with Nita my younger sister, my older sister- maybe she didn’t like me-
I was a smart-aleck! I had a wonderful childhood.”
The Ward’s Way
“We played outside a lot and the neighborhood kids came and our yard was the ‘main place.’ We played Run Sheep Run, Hide and go Seek….oh all those old games…it was just great! And our mom was so good to all the kids. She just was great. She was always a regular mom- she was home all the time- she didn’t want to go anyplace. I didn’t know anybody that worked outside of the home…in those days. Not even one. Of all of my friends the mother was always home. Not until the War, that changed everything. She wasn’t a ‘joiner,’ she went to church but she didn’t go to PTA and any of these things. We were Methodist and they saw to it that we went to church whether they did or not. They did together in our younger years but later they stopped.
My dad’s dad was still alive. My grandmas I never knew either one of them, but my dad’s dad came a lot. He visited a lot from Nebraska. He was married again. We just love her because I did not know my real grandmother but boy I loved that grandmother that came. She was really great.”
“In school there were some things I loved. History was my favorite. I really loved that. And I loved later- when I was going to high school- I loved Spanish. We had three grade schools and then a high school building and half of it was Jr. High and then half of it was sr. high. It burned down. It was a brick building and burned down after.
We went in little gangs, to parties together. I didn’t learn to dance till I was a teenager. Of course we just played together; there was no dating till…I was sixteen till I had my first date.”
“My mom sewed a lot, she made all of our clothes, she was a good cook and I think she enjoyed that; she just enjoyed her three girls. My dad always said ‘All my boys turned out to be girls.’ But he loved us all weather we were girls or not. My mother always had a coffee pot on the stove because neighbors came.
I had an aunt and an uncle who lived close- they had a farm not too far- who moved to California later, but they lived there, and people dropped in to see us. I just thought it was fun. I can remember just little flashes. I don’t think I’ve changed. I was kind of shy, I think I was kind of shy but I read a lot, I had my music to practice a lot- I could read notes- and my Mother loved it so much and she could play too.”
“I was a Girl Scout at one time and before that they had Camp Fire Girls, so I was both. At eight I was a Camp Fire Girl and at eleven or twelve I was a Girl Scout. We camped up in the mountains, stay for a week, that was so fun, that was great fun. We didn’t go on vacations like they do now. At one point, when grandpa came from Nebraska, they and my parents and Wilma went to Yellowstone, and left Nita and I out on the farm with the renters of the farm at that point. And we were so, well, I was, I don’t think Nita cared but I did, but my mother couldn’t handle two of us at Yellowstone and thought someone might reach out from one of those geysers and grab us.
And then another time, we took a vacation, all of us, and we took a tent, down into Snake River Gorge where the Shoshone Falls came over, and it’s almost as good as Niagara Falls- only ten miles from Spring Falls.”
Grandma Dances Her Way through The Great Depression
“Wilma didn’t like it that we lost all of our money but it didn’t phase me one bit. I still had as much fun after and it didn’t matter either way. It started with the farms- they were losing. It wasn’t as if the Crash came all of the sudden and everybody lost their money at the same time, it started with the farmers, and I would say that was 1923 it started. Then we lost one farm and then a year later we lost the other farm, and we didn’t loose the house in town we rented out, we didn’t loose that till 1928. We lost our ‘nice house’ before we lost the other one and had to move back into the older one in ’28. Then we had to move to a rental house and we rented all the time that I was in high school.”
“We lost the money by the time I was through jr. high. Everything was gone. I don’t know that it affected my mother that much. And of course it did. My dad was not as affected…of course a sad time but they did not dwell on it.
My dad was a retiring person but not shy. My dad was gone quite a bit. He had an oil well in Oklahoma and land up in Canada and he’d go to see how they were doing, every so often, and when our new place was built and moved in. Then they put the lawn in. Our mother had a hard time putting our play and all of our friends away from the yard so it would grow- he was gone and she was afraid we’d trample….oh it was fun!!!!”
“I remember when my dad first told my mom that we had lost the farms and he sold the Canadian lands. In the worst, ’35, and the Crash came, I can remember when my mother heard about the first farm that we lost- they didn’t go at the same time but one and then another- anyway, she cried, and that was all, that was all I heard about it. I guess she didn’t say too much on account of us kids, and kids don’t notice things like that so much.”
“Irene Foster, Elsa Anderson, Barbara Sanger, we all ‘played together. I rode my bicycle a lot. There wasn’t any dating, they guarded us. I graduated from high school in 1930. I had a lot of friends. You got a job unless you got married right away. I didn’t get married; I dated long after I graduated. Wilma and ‘Nita got married right away. I was having too much fun!
I really loved to dance and I did a lot of that. We always went to this radio station- big ballroom- they always had a big band there and then we roller-skated a lot- there was a big roller-skating rink and in the winter we ice-skated. We gathered and had a lot of fun. After I learned to dance I sure dated then.”
“I wasn’t ready to get married; I don’t know but neither one of them [Juanita or Wilma] stayed married. I was just not ready. My best friend was from Burley Idaho and she was a Mormon and I went with her to Church sometimes but nobody-I don’t know of any missionaries-I never heard of one till I moved to South Pasadena, even in Vale- nobody came to teach me anything. I just had to pick it up as I went a long.
When your grandpa and I got married I knew he was a Christian, that’s all I cared, I knew we believed in the same thing, but there are so many things that are different.”
“There weren’t that many jobs, the Depression was on and I wanted to go to college and we just did not have the money. And since the girls were married, I had to work because my dad- he drove a taxi and he sold shoes, he did everything and gosh it was so hard, it was terrible. It did not effect me much because here I was working and dancing my way through life.
When I graduated I knew I had to get a job and the telephone company hired me right away. It was fun and I loved it, I really loved it- I could type and I played in the orchestra.”