SOMEWHERE IN OLD WYOMING....OUT HOME

I have been looking at old family pictures. I know these people all fairly well. When almost all of them were living in Star Valley, they were quite a tight group. When I was living there also, I was seven years old or younger. Interesting, my "childhood" memories are almost entirely composed of those days. Maybe that's because the sun was almost always shining there and it was a buttery yellow color you could almost taste. And, more practically speaking, I was shepherded about within the family group and had not matured enough to develop any kind of rebeliousness against family in my nature. Life for me was bliss in Star Valley.

My mother, aunts, and grandmothers would often get together for visits, and chat and gossip for what must have been hours. I recall, especially Grandma,standing and rocking back and forth just a tiny bit, responding to Mama and the others by saying, "Uh-huh," and "Oh my laws." When my little sister, Marie, and I would "play house" we loved to do the same, standing and rocking, imitating Grandma and murmuring "Uh-huh" and "Oh my laws" even if we weren't saying anything else.

Looking over old photos, very old now, nearly sixty years old, I am reminded of that special closeness that permeated our lives. We all knew each other and watched each other from many angles--the older looking after the young ones and the younger looking up to those we viewed as totally grown up, even if they weren't much past twelve years. I always knew cousins and aunties by name anyway. Their names moved about the house like dust. We are still fairly close now, as evidenced at weddings and funerals. We have hugs and feelings of love and genuine conern about the well-being of each that goes unchanged. However, we never visit or call unless an exceptional occasion calls for it, not since Mama and Daddy moved us down to Salt Lake in 1955.....anyway, cousin's never visit. I have no idea where anyone lives or what anybody is doing, unless he/she has just died. But the love that was planted out there in the meadows of Bedford and in the home of Gammy and Lyd in Afton thrives with as much life as it ever did. I look at the pictures and see very handsome men and beautiful women who worked like farm animals to keep their families warm and fed and invigorated with love for life and each other. There is one cousin and also one nephew who so mimic Grandpa's behaviour and mannerisms that it just "tickles me pink to watch it. I want my kids to see them so they have a good idea of who their GREAT-grandfather was. And the pictures of Grandma, happy and smiling, and young, enrich the memories I have of her. I barely saw her in Star Valley. She and Grandpa, I think, were some of the first ones to move away.

I honestly believe that my farthest back recall of anything ever, is telling Grandma and Grandpa goodbye as they departed for Salt Lake. And then, my family would journey down to visit them in their grand new house in Salt Lake. Gammy and Lyd would always move down to S.L. to avoid the harsh winters of Wyoming and they would live in hotels downtown. Visits to them was fun and sedentary, but Mama and my sisters would sit...for hours?... and go over every name they knew and chat and gossip. And then they would revive and review those who had already passed on. So I couldn't help becoming very well acquainted with them all this way. I felt as if I knew them because I did know them. I've never even seen a lot of them, but I do know who they are.

I'm very greatful for that, for the connection that goes way back as far as Victorian days and spans the entire previous century. I love the memories and the people and the places. Once we moved permanently to Salt Lake we always referred to Star Valley as "Out Home." I think it will always be Out Home to me. I even have a hunch that Star Valley will be where Heaven is for Gammy, and Grandpa and Mama, and many of the others. Often I wonder, and hope that my own children have pleasant, wonderful memories of someplace that will keep them warm in their lives. Our city has changed so much in the last thiry years. What is there to remember here? It's still changing. Bedford and Afton are very much still the same. But change is good and has to be. They will have memories of their own and millions of photographs. It will be different. But I hope, somehow, it's a little bit the same. I want them to have the same good feelings and remember a place with family and love and a sense of forever.