Skipper Lee

This past week, my parents, Lynette, RJ and I drove to Denver for my Grandpa's funeral. After the funeral we drove around my dad's old neighborhood. We came to a park and my dad pointed out their neighborhood pool and told us that was where he punched out Skipper Lee.

Lynette started laughing and I asked for a refresher on that story. Here is the best I can remember it in my dad's words:




"I was about 15 years old and I gave Jimmy Burl a dime and told him to go to the pool and get me a green snow-cone. [How old was Jimmy?] Jimmy was 7 or 8 and he did what I told him. So 15 minutes later, Jimmy comes back and he's crying and NO SNOW-CONE! I asked him where the snow-cone was and he told me some kid stole it from him. So I told him to come with me and we went back to the pool.

We got there and I told Jimmy to find me the kid that ate my snow-cone...and it was Skipper Lee. So we went over to Skipper with green juice on his lips and I said: "Hey! Do you remember this kid?"

He said: "Uurrrrrhhh....."

I said: "Why did you eat my snow-cone?"

He said: "I didn't know it was yours."

Scott: "Well you owe me a green snow-cone!"

Skipper: "Urrhhhh, I don't have any money."

That's when I decked him in the face. [How old was Skipper?] My same age, 15. [Did anyone try to break up the fight?] We were outside the pool at the counter and it wasn't a fight, it was a beating. I sure got my 10 cents out of that loser, but what made me really mad was that was my last dime and I really wanted a green snow-cone."

It was really exciting for me to see Jimmy at the funeral. Here he is with my dad, I should have asked him if he remembered the green snow-cone ordeal. My dad did tell me Jimmy was the toughest 8-year-old he's seen, but he couldn't take on a punk 7 years older than him, so Scott had to go get his snow-cone revenge.

love you Dad!

Christmas '94

This past Christmas was my first as a parent. We celebrated with Rhett's family. The expensive electronics i.e. touch cell phones, i-pods, DS's, etc. our nieces and nephews received for Christmas reminded me of my 4th grade Christmas.



December 1994 I only had one thing on my mind for Christmas. I remember laying up-side-down in a wing back chair one Sunday afternoon lamenting to my mom:
"If I don't get a walk-man for Christmas I will DIE!!"

My mom was mad and quickly told me "If a piece of metal and plastic is worth your life, you'd better re-evaluate things. I don't think you should have a walk-man if you are so obsessed with it."

I remember flipping my legs forward off the back of the chair, somersaulting to the ground.

"Are you serious?" I said, my voice trembling..."you won't get me a... walk-man?" (Santa was blown for me before kindergarten)

Mom: "I don't know, you better start getting your act together."



I don't know if my behavior or priorities changed between that Sunday and Christmas morning, but the photo shows my emotions of pure joy to be holding my own walk-man, and relief my life was spared....thanks mom.
Many recesses after that moment were spent listening to my Ace of Base:the sign & Amy Grant: Heart in Motion tapes. I of course had to wear a hat or hood to hide the huge headphones from the recess monitors.

So this year as I saw the kids enjoying their DS tournaments, texting, or watching youtube on their touch i-pods, I could relate to their "electronic passions" but realized my walk-man was probably $20 and those touch i-pods are around $300, so if my kids also have an electronic they want and feel they may die if they don't receive it on Christmas, I'll just have them pick out their coffin beforehand.

In Memory of...

James Elwood Kelly

1922 - 2009

My grandfather passed away this past week at 86 and he meant a lot to me. He was:

a Marine during WWII,

a hard worker,

a son,

a brother,

a husband,

a father,

a grandfather,

a great-grandfather,

and the best man I've ever known.

1 Corinthians 13: 4-5 "Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up; doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. Charity never faileth."

If I were to sum up my grandfather, I would replace "charity" with his name.

He was my best example of what it means to be Christ-like. I named my son after him, and only hope Rhett James (RJ) can live up to his name and honor the man who first made it great. Grandpa lived a good life and as much as I will miss him, I feel peace.

Not much of a tribute, but he's been consuming the majority of my thoughts these last two weeks.

Winter Break

The holidays are great when you are a student because you have the holidays off, Rhett had the whole week of Christmas off between rotations! Throughout our marriage, one of us always worked Christmas or Christmas Eve and it was great to both have it off this year and to be with family.

We took all the kids from Delta up to AF Canyon to sled at Tibblefork. I hadn't been since 2003 and it was awesome as usual. I always forget how draining it is to hike my saggy bum back up the steep mountain, but it was worth it. My camera ran out of batteries and I was so mad because I wanted a picture of the bowl up in the pines off the water...maybe another time.

My nephew likes to hunt and got this goose. He said he was going to eat it and so I was interested to see the process. He plopped it down and told me: "Jess the technique I'll teach you today can be used for any birds you'll have in the future." Prior to this goose, the only dead animals I'd cleaned were fish. It wasn't too bad I guess, I kept thinking of a delicious Christmas Goose Dickens would have enjoyed. But when it came to eat the meat, I had a weird relationship with it and could only taste it (I'll admit it was actually pretty good). My first goose gives me sympathy for my ancestors that lived without butchers where you had to slaughter and prepare animals you raised for meat...I may have been a vegetarian.

Over the break we made another movie with all the kids in Delta...Tonto's Revenge. It was a western. I filmed it and Rhett edited it. We were showing him our footage and he pointed out the gambling addictions, theft, violence, focus on obtaining "women", and smoking represented in our film and Rhett said it was definitely not a G rating...but hey it's a western. What did he expect?

These were my favorite two scenes. This little nephew pretty much improvs all his lines and we don't know what he'll say. Tonto digs on tribal lands with his loyal squaw Bonto watching. They dug up a baby-- RJ. (the kids made the plot for this one)

My only regret with our film is we didn't integrate one of my favorite Jack Handey's in somehow...

"If I lived back in the wild west days, instead of carrying a six-gun in my holster, I'd carry a soldering iron. That way, if some smart-aleck cowboy said something like "Hey, look. He's carrying a soldering iron!" and started laughing, and everybody else started laughing, I could just say, "That's right, it's a soldering iron. The soldering iron of justice." Then everybody would get real quiet and ashamed, because they had made fun of the soldering iron of justice, and I could probably hit them up for a free drink."

Now we are living in Delta while Rhett finishes his rural family medicine rotation and I am working rocks for the family business. I have learned much about sedimentary minerals...like did you know fluorite is used in steel production and comes in a variety of colors from purple to green?