Stuff, Private Space and Honesty by Florence Draper

My memory has never been very good so I would always try to save some small token of a momentous occasion to remind me of the event. Following are some examples of what I saved.
Back to an early hair cut when I was about three years old. I hated watching my hair fall to the floor so my sister Gwen gave me a little light brown curl to save so I would always remember the color of my hair when I was three. She gave me a little silver colored container about the size of a quarter. Maybe it once contained rouge. I am not sure. But the small curl fit into the space exactly. Fast forward forty years or so. I find the container empty. I knew our newly adopted son had no idea why that bit of hair was important to me and why after more than forty years of saving I felt bad because it was gone. He had no idea why I was unhappy about finding the empty container.

At BYU I had a number of pretty rings in my jewelry box. I also had many roommates during the four years I spent in the dorm or Heritage Halls. Now I don’t remember what the rings looked like or who gave them to me except for the silver puzzle ring my brother-in-law Loren, a pilot, brought me from a foreign country. It was one of the few puzzles I could put together. Sometimes a date would take a ring off my finger to "examine it" and I would forget about it and never see it again. At any rate when I graduated the rings were gone except for the diamond I only take off to clean and it remains on my finger more than fifty years later.

Back in 1955 when I was twenty-one years old my mother and I traveled to and from Europe via the Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth, the large ocean liners of the day. I saved two momentoes from that trip. One was a button emblazoned with the British Lion from the uniform of a young Scotsman about my age who ran one of the elevators. He gave it to me so I would remember him. He was astounded that after accepting an inviting with him to ride the elevator, when we stopped between floors I thought we were going to talk and get acquainted. I convinced him that I actually was innocent of his intentions and there was something to life besides women and hard liquor. Hence the momento from his uniform. I kept the button in my jewelry box for nearly fifty years when it disappeared.

Being on board ship was fun. Lots of dancing and game thanks to the recreation director. During one contest I was dancing with a young man from "Down Under." We won the prize for dancing the longest with a potato between our foreheads. I was given a small silver plated spoon with the Queen Mary logo on the handle. That also lasted in my jewelry box for some time.

While in Belgium visiting a few days with my brother James, there serving a mission for our church, in we were eating mussels in Brussels when I bit into a small pearl. It was a little larger than the head of a pin. Since it had been cooked it wasn’t a great color and wasn’t exactly round but I thought it amusing to be eating mussels in Brussels so kept that small pearl with the other memory helps in my jewelry box. It lasted there nearly as long as the button.

Back to my youth. My oldest brother served a mission in the Southern States. Years later a daughter of one of the people he baptized asked to stay at our house while she waited to accompany her Navel officer husband overseas. We were a three hour drive from San Francisco where she set sail after a month or so with us. She was fun to be with. I was about ten or eleven years old. Mother had purchased individual crystal salt and pepper shakers with silver tops. Mother set a nice table at Sunday dinners. When this new bride left our home we never hear from her again... or saw Mothers pretty little salt and pepper shakers. A shame she thought more of those than of us. Things are of very little value, not near the value of memories they evoke of people and special events.

Wilson McDowell in the local paper

Merry Christmas to everyone.  We're busy up here in B.C. putting on the live Nativity.  It's been going on for 19 years and Louisa and I did it last year and are doing it again this year.  We've added a levitating angel (excuse me, the boy who is playing the angel prefers to be called a Heavenly Messenger - sounds more masculine), so that should be fun.  It takes place outside in a natural ampitheater (in one of the member's back yard) and usually gets anywhere from 800 to 1000 visitors.

As you can see, Wilson was available for the photo but only Nelya will be in the actual nativity.  Hope all is well.

Matt McDowell

Merry Christmas!

Here's our Christmas card. I realized I don't have many of you on my list, but want to wish you a very Merry Christmas. So here's what we sent: Either the snowman card designed by Eden or the one designed by Noah and an insert of our photo.

Inside the card it says:

Wishing you the Merriest of Christmases and the Happiest of New Years from the Gallagher family.

So for those who will get it in the mail in a few days, sorry for the spoiler. For those who I missed, I hope you know we think of you all and have fond memories of our past reunions.

Oklahoma Ice Storm

Every few years, we have a really nasty ice storm here in Oklahoma. The latest one began Sunday, Dec. 9. See a tree in our back yard covered with ice (Sunday afternoon). The storm continued and the second picture is the same tree this afternoon, Monday. I hope we can save most of it. --James Fife

Florence and Otto

My mom corrected me: both these photos are from their senior year at BYU, taken to send out with their resumes.

Testing the post

Hey Sage,

I signed up to contribute but kinda got freaked out about the privacy of blogging and the whole idea in general but now I'm bored so I'll try a post.  Caught me at a weak moment.

My wife, Louisa, and I moved to British Columbia about 18 months ago.  We have two kids, Nelya (age 7) and Wilson (age 4).  We had been living in Los Angeles (2 miles from Venice Beach) for the past 10 years.  We live in a pretty fantastic area, lots of skiing, biking, lakes, etc.  Plus it's not too cold.  It's knows as "the Palm Springs of Canada."  I know... crazy.  Anyway, we love it here.  Louisa grew up here so her folks live a couple of miles away and we were able to build our dream house.  We both travel for work -  Louisa is a focus group moderator, and I'm a screenwriter (currently on strike) - so we get back to L.A. fairly often.

I'm currently working on my Masters in Creative Writing at the University of British Columbia's non-resident program.  I've also got a new calling as a High Councilman and Stake Young Men's President.  

We have a dog (Friendly) and a cat (Chloe).  We got our first snowfall two days ago.  I'm not used to the snow so it's still very novel for me... and I can't wait to go skiing.

Draper Reunion 2005

We all had a great time at Katie's place in Wyoming back in 2005! It was complete with a pig roast and fireworks as well as knitting, oil painting, yoga and other fun classes! There were also fun competitions like which team could build a working robot from a bunch of old machines and who could dig the deepest hole with the Skidsteer digging machine (Thanks Katie)