Familial Research and Development

  I knew you were excited about this story finally finding the light of day. Back when, well, a little further back than that. Actually, a LOT further back. Okay, it’s like five and a half decades ago! Mom and dad would go grocery shopping. Usually, we kids got to go too. When we got home, everyone helped bring the food in and then I got to put it away. Oh, not just the throw it in the cupboard, separate it into dinner size for six packages and throw it in the freezer-that was simple. I got to cut up the chicken. Raw, cold, chicken. It was cheaper to buy the whole chicken than it was to buy cut up chicken. Besides-the butchers never took care how to carefully cut the wishbone piece away from the breast. They must not have taught that in butcher school/training, whatever. I learned how to cut the whole leg off, then separate the thigh and lower leg at the joint. Next came the wings and then the wishbone. Now to separate the back and ribs from the breast. Then you break the b...

  For the time frame, we had been members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for nearly a year at this point. We generally invited the proselyting missionaries over for dinner once a week. Bob had graduated high school and was renting an apartment. He was working and could afford to be on his own. He actually invited Barbara and I to come over for dinner once. It was very kind of him. Mom was frying up some chicken livers in a small frying pan. She must have been distracted with something and the light must have been up a little too high on the gas stove, but somehow the pan caught fire. When she discovered it, she hurried to get the pan out the back door so it wouldn’t burn the whole house up. And then the wind gust changed her plans for the day! She always wore a Mumu (that she had made) that came just below her knees. On her way out the back door a wind gust blew the flaming pan and contents back at her. The fronts of her shins and the tops of her feet were...