Lake Point Days 2019 conjured memories for me, a former Lake Point kid. This little farming area located in Tooele County Utah celebrated 165 years with the celebration. Pioneers of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who settled in the Tooele Valley were organized on April 24, 1850 into a branch of the Church by Ezra T. Benson. By mid-1854, E.T. City had been established in the area and then renamed Lake Point in 1923.
No, I didn’t live there way back then. My family moved to Lake Point in the Spring of 1957 when I was almost 14 years old. As a typical teenage girl, it was the worst day of my life. I had to leave all my friends, my school, and my comfort zone to move to a place where there might be a hundred families. It seemed like the whole town consisted of cousins, except to us of course. I was miserable and determined not to like it, no matter what.
I lived in that community for another six years and I learned to tolerate and even enjoy my associations. In July 1963, I moved about 15 miles south to live with my new husband in the metropolis known as Tooele, Utah, population 9,000. I’ve lived a lot of places in the ensuing 56 years, but this day I returned to enjoy the yearly celebration of what I consider my hometown, now numbering close to 2000 people. These days it has some of the nicest, most spacious homes in Tooele County.
When I was young, I knew girls who would lay out in the sun slathered with baby oil. The goal, brown the skin to a healthy glow. I didn’t do that. To me, it seemed like a waste of time to just lay there. I was what we now call a free-range child. My friends and I played outside all day, “out from underfoot,” my mother would say.
My friend, Louise, lived up the street. I would skate up to her house and stand outside calling her name, “Louuuuu-ee-es.” I don’t know why I didn’t walk up to her door and knock, it’s just what we did. When she wanted me, she stood in front of my house and called out, “Daaa-na.” We didn’t have phones, so that wasn’t an option. From there, strapped on roller skates adorned our shoed feet and we would traverse up and down the street negotiating the cracks, humps, and gravel the best we could. The skates we used fit over our shoes and could be adjusted with keys to fit our growing feet. Sometimes we had to oil the wheels and then be extra cautious because those wheels turned more freely when lubricated. And if we lost our key, we’d borrow someone else’s key, because they all worked interchangeably.
I went to visit grandchildren last year, and my ten-year-old grandson immediately wanted to show me something really scary. I followed him to the upstairs bathroom. He cautiously opened the door and pointed to the far sink. He didn’t want to go any further himself. I stepped 
in, and there in the basin were rocks. I looked at the youngster and then reached out toward the rocks. He shouted, “No, don’t touch those. Something is growing on them, and they might poison you.” I quickly withdrew my hand and looked closer. He warned me again, adding, “Aliens touched them.” “Where did they come from,” I asked, “And who put them there?” He told me his older sister emptied her fish tank and put the rocks in the sink. “I haven’t seen her all day,” he added. He said he was afraid the rocks had something to do with her not being around. I assured him I didn’t think that was the case and further that the rocks had barnacle looking growths on them, akin to things that grow over time underwater. I explained to him that I had seen like growths on boats and that his sister was no doubt out having fun with friends.
Ruthann Adams is an art quilter and has been involved in this creative outlet about ten years. “I enjoy the process of creating a picture from a story,” she explained. This year, her efforts are being rewarded with the acceptance of three pieces to be shown nationally in three different nationally acclaimed exhibitions.
“My mother was a quilter, but I never felt I had her needlework skills and so I decided early on I wouldn’t try to compete with her,” Adams noted. She elaborated, “My mother’s quilts were admired by many, including me.”
The stitchery bug bit the girl, but the bite lay dormant for many years until Adams went to a demo of landscape quilts and thought, “I could do that.” She found her niche and has been forging her craft since. Her creativity takes on three-dimensional shapes and is always based on personal experiences resulting in beautiful scenes from her life’s journeys.
Sacred Threads Quilts accepted Ruthann’s rendition of “Grief.” This exhibition appeared in Herndon, Virginia just south of Washington, D.C. for two weeks in July, 2019. Each quilt related to the artist’s spiritual journey.
Time marches on I’ve heard said and it shows vividly in these two pictures taken several years apart. On the left, see the dark-headed baby in my husband’s arms. On the right, that infant is the cutie standing in front on the far left side. She is a freshman in high school as of this writing. It seems like only yesterday these little ones were clamoring all over us. Now, our oldest grandchild is married and going to college. He’s full of idealism and determined to be an orthopedic surgeon.
George Bernard Shaw said, “The most precious thing in the world is youth. Too bad it is wasted on children,” while Robert Louis Stevenson said, “If youth only knew and if old age only could.” “Age is just a number,” I hear people say. I’d prefer to have those numbers on the bottom half of the half-decade mark. I don’t want to be 21 again. Well, maybe I do, but ideally, I’d want to retain everything I’ve learned since those years and avoid the stupid mistakes I made.