We drove to St. John's Arizona right after The Wild Thing. It was so dark that we couldn't see any of our surroundings besides dozens of mammoth jackrabbits. After we hit the first one, I was already calculating the psychiatric costs for Iris' PTSD treatment. Thankfully she had barely fallen asleep when we ran over the second one. Those stinkers knocked the body of the car out of whack. I am convinced they were both male bunnies: "Don't worry guys, I can make it."
Despite St John's whopping population of 3,480, it has 5 LDS wards. My ancestor, David King Udall was sent there as an assignment from the church as the first bishop about 10 years after the town was founded. David was a cattle rancher and later, a politician. I learned that he made half of his progeny be Republican and the other half Democrat so that he would be politically accepted throughout the state. in the different cities where his children lived. That may explain the great political divide in my family. My grandfather was a democrat until Reagan's funeral which hit a chord with him. My dad was Republican until something hit him; we are still trying to figure out what.
In Relief Society on Sunday morning, I introduced myself and they said I'm probably related to most of the people in the room. In fact, the woman sitting behind me was Ruth Udall Patterson. She was related a few generations back, but what was most amazing to me was that she was named after my great grandmother, Ruth Kimball Udall. Ruth K died when my grandfather was small and an only child. She was getting a D&C in LA and died from the effects of ether anesthesia combined with pneumonia. Her husband John mourned her death immensely. He rode out into the dessert one night to be alone with his grief when Ruth appeared to him and told him to get on with his life. He married Leah soon after.
This modern Ruth was quite a spunky lady.
As a joke, David asked her if she knew Brigham Young. She said, "No, but his wagon was in town for a while."
This is David's gravestone. As you may notice, he was buried in between his 2 wives. The kids are in front of their great-great-grandmother's grave: Ida.
Also in this cemetery are some of the ashes of Stewart and Morris Udall who also grew up in St John's. Legend says that one of Morris' eyeballs is also buried somewhere there.
After the cemetery, we went even more into the middle of nowhere. County Road 5152.
This is the little house where my grandfather went to school.
The school was later turned into a home.
They forgot their toothbrushes.
And left what I'm sure was once a juicy pie
Down the road is where the John Hunt Udall (son of David and Ida and my brother's namesake) clan lived. Ruth lived here until she died and then Leah and John were here until he was named the state Prohibition Officer and moved to Phoenix where he was later elected the mayor of Phoenix.
When they found out that John and Leah had 11 kids, Iris kept calling the house "petite."
Over and over again.
Max said, "Stop saying that, what does that even mean?"
Trespassers
After St John's, we drove to Pinetop to drop Claire off at running camp. Elijah was supposed to go too, but Hunt saw him limping as he ran and then examined his foot which had been injured on the fourth of July. It was a no-go for him, which he was extremely sad about.
I was so impressed that Claire was willing and excited to spend a week away. I got a few calls from the bishop's wife (our bishop was the director at the camp) who said she was a little homesick, but the little trooper made it to the end.
I drove to picker her up. It took about 3.5 hours to come home. Claire told me that she sleep walked a few times; one night she woke up to find herself locked out of her dorm for a while. Finally she and wandered over to the kitchen so "John with the hairy face" (that was her nickname for one of the counselors) could let her back in. After about 30 minutes of Claire's chattering, she suddenly asked for music and quickly fell asleep for a few hours and woke up ravenously hungry.
