Jerald DeGraw

Colleen, You are very kind:-) Richard, You are very correct - I see why some of Our good-thinking Cubbies are a bit reluctant to believe just how Dangerous a threat China is...after all, even on 'Mash' the saying 'Better dead than Red' was used, and SO many more, but We weren't really affected, as a Country, even tho' EXTREME atrocities were being committed for SO long. Nowadays, however, We are in Their 'Bullseye' for Many reasons. I really am not guiltless, I'm ashamed to admit, as I have initiated hundreds of orders to China, I suppose hoping to help some of the poor merchants, but not wanting to support the ABSOLUTE Tyrannical,  EVIL Communist Government - I know, I'm probably a GREAT Fool for believing that, just because I want a good deal :-( 

  Now, I will credit Ken for pegging Me as He did...Several Years ago, I turned into a complete A-- H---, buying up as many properties as I could aquire, MANY from My Very Good Friend and Fellow Cub, Lon Schow, along with an Auto Dealership and other businesses. Yes, I REALLY got too big for My britches, especially having grown up I very humble circumstances ( where Cummins Diesel now stands on Third West and 1038 So ). This pic, sadly, depicts My awful attitude...just before I lost a FORTUNE, putting Me in My place where I'm trying to stay...So...sorry...Ken and Others are MORE than welcome to help Me in that matter, and I Truly appreciate that:-)

 PS - Just for fun, does ANYONE still remember the 'Red Front' store on State and 17th? Do You think that name had any particular meaning? ( I read a Deseret News article, once, which addressed that very question:-)

Jerald DeGraw

Colleen, You are very kind:-) Richard, You are very correct - I see why some of Our good-thinking Cubbies are a bit reluctant to believe just how Dangerous a threat China is...after all, even on 'Mash' the saying 'Better dead than Red' was used, and SO many more, but We weren't really affected, as a Country, even tho' EXTREME atrocities were being committed for SO long. Nowadays, however, We are in Their 'Bullseye' for Many reasons. I really am not guiltless, I'm ashamed to admit, as I have initiated hundreds of orders to China, I suppose hoping to help some of the poor merchants, but not wanting to support the ABSOLUTE Tyrannical,  EVIL Communist Government - I know, I'm probably a GREAT Fool for believing that, just because I want a good deal :-(  PLEASE SEE TEXT BELOW 

  Now, I will credit Ken for pegging Me as He did...Several Years ago, I turned into a complete A-- H---, buying up as many properties as I could aquire, MANY from My Very Good Friend and Fellow Cub, Lon Schow, along with an Auto Dealership and other businesses. Yes, I REALLY got too big for My britches, especially having grown up in very humble circumstances ( where Cummins Diesel now stands on Third West and 1038 So ). This pic, sadly, depicts My awful attitude...just before I lost a FORTUNE, putting Me in My place where I'm trying to stay...but having a hard time NOT 'Tooting My Own Horn'. So...YES, Ken and Others are MORE than welcome to help Me in that matter, and I Truly appreciate that:-) Yes, I have a few Momentos and souvenirs from days gone by, but I don't mind telling Anyone that I LOVE getting by on the GRAND sum of $1048.00/Mo from SS and I LOVE shopping at Dollar Tree and Harbor Freight! :-)

Richard Smith

Everything we have been taught is wrong, we know very little about how many entities and dramas have taken place here. We have been fraudulently taught that there has only been 6,000 years since Adam til now, but we are beginning to discover, that is just rubbish. Those who have controled mankind have intentionally hidden the truth so we wouldn't learn who we really are and they did that by kepping us poor, uneducated and constantly working to survive so we didn't have time to explore and learn the truth. That is now changing and our generation is one of the first that is finding, on the most part, that we can retire, have money and time to explore and learn the truth. Here is one of those truths and I hope to provide more such info as time goes on. Hope most will enjoy what I post and hopefully many will do the same.

Jim Priskos

My dear Dale, your opinion is, and always was appreciated by me. Regardless of which side of an idea I feel more comfortable with, I always want to know all sides. My concern, however, remains that there is to much division in the posts. I called it labelling, like the words Anglo, African American, minority/majority. Way to many tags, how about just refering to everyone as people. The more we specify difference, the less we become close to each other. Anglo is a great example, I don't think I am a minority/majority, since I am predominantly of Greek descent. But I also don't consider myself Anglo, whatever that is. I'd rather not have a label.

Thanks

Jerald DeGraw

Oh, SO sorry, My Good Friend...for the first time I must disagree, If I'm allowed...We are now in the 7th THOUSAND years since Adam and Eve, according to Man's reckoning of Time...it's off, just a bit, tho'...The True 7th Thousand years is known as 'The Millenium', where there will be NO physical suffering, no sorrow, hunger, disease, and other such things that have plagued Man (and Women, Beast, etc) since the beginning of Time. PEACE, which SO Many have been wishing and praying for, during these 6,000 years (Hippies, sign-holding Folks in the streets EVERYWHERE, a VERY high percentage of ANYONE who has been asked the age-old question "What do You wish for"?), WILL abide for ALL living in that 7th period of Time. Well, enough preaching (WAY too much for Most), and I probably have misunderstood what You were actually trying to convey, in My OLD Age, Richard, so I now Don My dirty old Country clothes and get the H out of Everyone's hair :-)

PS - PLEASE, don't ANYONE leave this Joyful site, because of Me ( tho' I wouldn't blame You), RATHER, start a referendum to get Me out-o'-Dodge ( or any ONE of You just simply tell Me to "Go to Hell' ) It's a LITTLE too soon for Me to go there, but getting VERY close...but I WILL promise to limit My words to the 'Normal talk-of-the-Day, if that's what Y'all want :-) 

   PS - 2 I really liked the video, Richard, especially the beginning with the good music and when He mentions that He, like Myself, LOVES All animals and Life. Now, may I just say that there is NOTHING contradictory to what He portrayed and Christianity...those Who are True Christians surely believe, and not just in a metaphorical way, the story of David and Goliath, as We are taught that there were, indeed,  'Giants in the Land'. If giants, why not Pygmies, after all, Some of Our great actors, teachers, and others, were Little Folk. 

Dale Charlie Salazar

Sorry if I offend you Jim but the fight is not over.  The Confederate and Neo Nazi flags still flying freely and quite frequently in the streets ot the nation.  Attacks against Asian people (again) and previous attacks against Hispanics, (again).  The march thorugh Charlottsville chanting "Jews will not replace us" (again).

If I wear a label Jim it was given to me.  As long as there is racial hatred and inequality I will stand and fight.

I hope some day we can live in a world where labels are no-longer needed.

Thank you, however, for your position and opinion.

Jerald DeGraw

Is EVERYONE ready for a drastic rise in gasoline prices? Don't blame THIS Clown, blame the OTHER one :-(

Paul Michelsen

Got a two-wheel Put-Put. all set.

Jim Priskos

Dale, you truely are a product of the media that was a part of your life for so long. With a label for these people and another label those people and and another for everyone that is not like you. As far as offending me, good luck, I grew up on 4th East and 6th south and attended Sumner Elementary where I was that minority you speak of all the time. I learned then, 60 plus years ago, not to see color and difference, instead, see the person. I encourage you to continue to fight for your causes, however, I think today is a great day to step away from all labels and all of the million things that make us different. Find strength in what makes us alike. We have all faced injustice. We all see the signs and slogans that enrage us, it's just that some of us work through it and some of us allow those things to consume us. Think long, which kind of person will you be, the labeler or the true difference maker?

Jerald DeGraw

I'm liking all this (who cares, Clown Boy:-) Actually, I AM still a boy...can't seem to grow up...DON'T like being called a Man...something wrong in My head, I guess ( besides severe daily migraines, many concussions and 4 Transient Ischemic Attacks...Ya' Think?) but I'm gonna just go with that, if it's OK with everyone :-). So...I'm worried about the rest of You...Where's Fontana, Hampshire, Schow, Ledbetter, Smith, Alvera, Burns (not Frank), Weed, Wheatley, Wong, Westerkamp, Wall, Wallace, Ward, Woodrome, Wilson, Whiting...Wait...What?..............EVERYONE???!!!

Gerd Eysser

Remember for decades we were encouraged to be 'color blind'.   Good or bad advice then?  Now?  

Dale Charlie Salazar

Yes Jim labels are bad.  I thought we were past that as well until three young men accosted me one evening three year ago outside a 7-11 telling me I didn't belong in this country that I should go back to Mexico. I had not known fear like that in many years.

As for my label of the new Superintendent in the City District, I feel this is historic. Excuse me. This would've been unheard of 10 or 15 years ago.  It brought back the cause we crusaded for 50 years ago in a quest for equality and acceptance.  

I will say this about South.  I felt less racism here than any othere school I ever attended except Sumner or the school in El Paso I attended in Junior High.  People at South were much less judgemental than East.

I'm enclosing our 4th grade picture from Sumner and I'm puzzled how you determined you were a minority.

Jerald DeGraw

Love it...keep 'em coming...PLEASE :-)

Richard Smith

Hi Jerry, I have a small advantage because of a decade of research and public speaking which began with Zacharia Sitichin a Russian born Jew who dedicated his life to exposing one of the world's first cosmologies with advanced medicine, culture, libraries, education, and interpreting ancient Sumarian language. He is considered to be responsible for bringing the ancient Sumerian culture and their gods, the Anunnaki, the Epic of Gilgamesh and a picture of the everyday Sumarian lives to our modern purview. Here is a world timeline he created from his decades of research. Definitely outside the 6,000 year timeline that was imposed so we wouldn't learn about who we are and where we came from.

Charlotte Warr (Andersen)

When I was a child my oldest brother was sent on a mission to West Texas/Nothern Mexico for 2 years. I remember being with my family when we greeted him at his homecoming and getting off the bus. One of the first things he told my parents when he got off the bus was that he had met a girl and he was going to turn right back around and return to her and marry her. She turned out to be hispanic. My parents were appalled. They immediately put the pressure on him saying it was unacceptable and what kind of life could he have with a mixed marriage. (I was eavesdropping because I'm sure it was not a conversation I was supposed to hear.) After some coercion my brother relented. I don't know if he ever wrote to the girl or apologized but I do remember feeling quite disappointed in my parents and I think I lost a bit of respect for them. My brother met a very nice girl at BYU and they are still married to this day.

My second oldest brother was sent on a mission to Alaska/Bristish Columbia. He returned and shortly after a girl followed him home, uninvited. My mother managed to put her up somewhere. I can't quite remember if had had to share a bed with my sister because of Shirley. But, boy, did I hate her. She was mean and bossy and I was abhorred at the thought she might become family. She was determined to marry my brother. But he finally sucked up the strength to tell her to go home. He married my sister's best friend instead.

My third brother was sent on a mission to England. He came home an atheist. He and I think very alike.

Charlotte Warr (Andersen)

Charlotte Warr (Andersen)

Richard Smith

Charlotte, thank you for sharing what is obviously a personal and potentially hurtful experience. Short of doing my family laundry in public, I too experienced a profound shock upon learning about prejudice in my own family. I was born in Salt Lake City, in a house a stone throw east of the Coachman restaurant on State and 1300 South. My mother, a devout Mormon; was too prejudiced. Her mother, my grandmother, with her mother, my great grandmother, had left Denmark in the dead of night to come to America after being converted by Mormon missionaries. My great grandfather and another daughter learned the next morning of my great grandmother's decision. I'm not sure why but they ended up in Preston, Idaho.

My mother, after a divorce because her husband wandered with more than his eyes, met and became attracted to what my grandmother said was a man who was too good looking to be allowed to live and that he could sell "shi#" to a farmer. I have no idea what possessed my mother but my father was a polygamist and although his first wife said no way, and divorced him, my mother became his 3rd wife. It didn't last long and when I was 2 1/2 years old my mother "got out".

It was during, what was to become the State of Utah's last polygamist witch hunt, and although too young to remember a lot of it, we lived minute to minute always waiting for the "warning" phone call to come. When it did, and it came several times during my young life, the bags were always packed and ready to go to avoid the Sheriff. The Mormon church which had made a secret agreement with the State of Utah to pay for the additional costs related to tracking down and arresting the polygamist father's throughout Utah, but found that all it really accomplished was to break up families, and send the state's welfare costs over the top. Although my mother never took a dime from state coffers, nor did the other "sisterwives", the State of Utah and the Mormon church decimated thousands of families. Today there are over 30,000 polygamists in Utah.

One time we found ourselves in Albuquerque, New Mexico, another time in Porcatello, Idaho. Pretty tough on school schedules for my older 2 sisters and a brother. My dad spent a couple years in prison along with many other polygamists.

The reason for the long story is because regardless of what life threw at my mother, she took it head first and single handedly raise 5 kids. She scrubbed other people's floors, and rented out 3 of the 4 bedrooms in our home, one of them her own (she slept on the couch and kept her clothes in a box behind the couch) to disabled military men. My mother, even after being excommunicated from the Mormon church, and then having to fight the church to allow me and my younger brother to be baptised, she remained faithful and dedicated to the Mormon church. Inspite of what I consider to be an incredible difficult road to travel, we always had food for every meal and a safe, and dry place to sleep, my mother was prejudice. I think this is what's called "white privilege" today.

How do you explain being prejudiced? I had no clue that my mother felt the way she did toward other races until I was in my 40's and her in her 80's. One time we were at Chuck A Rama, and as a large female waitress walked by, talking about how much her feet hurt, I was shocked to hear my mother say, "well, if you would miss a meal or two, they wouldn't hurt as much!" Wow, I really didn't know how to feel, that was just one of her prejudices.

My mother had been raised on a farm in Idaho, her and her husband's wedding gift was a small piece of land and enough gunny sacks that, after filled with dirt, became the foundation for their first home. Her dad didn't believe a woman needed an education so the 6th grade was the highest grade she completed in school.

I've learned in recent years that both my older sisters and older brother also carry prejudices but my younger brother and I don't, that I'm consciously aware, of but I'm still young.

I think being prejudiced can come from being discriminated against and/or seeing it demonstrated by a peer or someone significant in your life. I probably don't handle it well because I don't want to be around my older brother, whom I love very much, because his attitude towards others, simply because of race, is sickening. There are good, bad and contrary people in every race, religion, in both the seen and unseen worlds, but except for the suit we wear, everyone of us comes from the same spirit or intelligence source. Incidently, that spirit or intelligence doesn't need your acceptance or recognition to be.

There is a cure for it and I totally agree with Jim that if you dwell with or in it then it will consume and define you, but if you accept that we are all independantly, at different levels of understanding and that it is an individual problem, not an ethnic or other group problem, by forgiving and loving it will naturally go away.

Dale Charlie Salazar

Charlotte and Richard thank you for shaging.  Things about eiether of you i never knew.  In my world I was too afraid to get to know many people upclose because of my early history in Salt Lake and the negativity.

In my business the first lesson I learned was to "seek to understand."  I wish I had learned that lesson in high school and may have gotten to know some of you better.

Richard Smith

Thank you Dale,

Except for our families, it seems that those we grow up with, especially our high school buddies, are a constant in our lives. We all experience so many of the same "learning" experiences that, at the time we are going through them, we feel alone, isolated, and often victimized. We are just brothers and sisters with different mothers and fathers. We have so much in common and we can still learn from each other and be a source of support.

When my family moved back to Salt Lake from living in Malad Idaho for 5 years, 6th grade to 10th, I was so excited about going to South High. We lived at 10th East and 1300 South and I should have gone to East but I wanted to go to South. The student body at South High was larger than the entire population of Malad. I was so impressed with my Greek friends, Pete, and a dozen Jim's, Dino and so many others. There were so many of them and they were such a tight complimentary group, I was jealous, I had often wished that I had been Greek, lol. I so loved being at South.

Jim Priskos

Richard,thanks for the kind words about people with my ethnic roots. Also, Thanks to you Dale for the awesome picture of the 4th grade class at Sumner Elementary. If you really look at all of the students you see the diversity of the American experiment. And if you could  track each of them, again, you'd see the way each used there experiences in there later life, some for excellence some, not so much. That's also the reason South was the such a wonderful school, we had so many different cultural backgrounds. What a great opportunity to see and understand so many people. 

Charlotte Warr (Andersen)

Oh, Dale, the things our wayward typing fingers do to us! One more "g" and you would have been in big trouble! Thanks for my laugh for the morning.

Richard, I have to say my story was not painful to tell. But yours was truly sorrowful and I wish you had not had to go through such angst.

My husband still hears from from George Souvall 2 or 3 times a year. He and his wife, Mary are still hanging in there. He introduced us to the Greek Garden restaurant that used to be on 4800 S and State. I have a funny story about that restaurant if anyone wants to hear it. But I'm off to work this morning and don't have time for it right now.

Richard Smith

Dale, this is in your honor. Looks like this is how the secrets are going to become public. They cover Roswell and other alien crafts and body retrievals and even the alien autopcy. Very interesting and worth the watch.

Very graphic so be warned!

Richard Smith

Thank you Jim and Charlotte for your comments!

I appologize for not warning all of you that watched the alien video, I hadn't watched it completely until later and it is rather graphic and revealing. If you haven't watched it yet, it is awful what the aliens do to other species. They are scientists and don't appear to have a conscience. As our commander reported, he has seen the dark side of this species.

Paul Michelsen

The good ol days