Someday I’m Going To Murder The Bugler

My mind has developed this odd twist.  I will often wake up with a song going over and over in in my mind.  I call it my Song De Jour.  Often it is a long-forgotten song I learned in my childhood, that I haven’t thought of for years.  In order to get it out of my mind, I have to sing it out loud, usually to Wendy, and it is sometimes kind of fun to reminisce about old songs and old times.  Usually after sharing my song de jour, it leaves my mind and I can think of other things.

This morning the song was rather strange and one I doubt I have even thought of for 60 years or so.  I think it may have come from some old World War I comedic army movie that my parents remembered.  Here it is.

     Someday I’m going to murder the bugler.
     Someday you’ll wake up and find him dead.
     For the heart is full of woe, just to hear the buglar blow,
     “You’ve got to get up, you’ve got to get up,
     you’ve got to get up, this morning.”

     Someday I’m going to murder the bugler.
     Someday you’ll wake up and find him dead.
     And then I’ll get that other pup,
     The one who wakes the bugler up,
     And spend the rest of my life in bed.

Dorothy and I would change the last line to “And spend the rest of your life in jail.”

I sang it to Wendy, and it began to leave my mind as expected. Then my thoughts turned to one of my mother’s rules, this was that you never point a gun, or anything resembling a gun, or anything pretending to be a gun (or weapon, probably including bow-and-arrow or knife) at any other human being.

This was a rule that was ABSOLUTE.  It was something a member of our family NEVER, NEVER EVER did.

When I was with my friends, this rule sure ruined the little boy games of soldiers or cowboys and Indians.  And my mother would have been absolutely appalled and sickened by today’s video games, and would have applied the same prohibition to them.

Somehow this rule impressed me that there was something very sacred about human life, and that we should not even play-act about something that might put these lives at risk.  I think that this was a valuable parenting strategy, that should be utilized in our day to teach this same lesson to our young people and our family.

Mini Temple Tour

Wendy and I did a mini temple tour for first week of April, the first week of three weeks of the Payson temple cleaning closure.  It was not like some of the temple trips we have made with lots of travel.  We stayed within Utah boundaries.  We went to Logan Monday, had dinner with Krysta and Nathan, stayed in a Logan motel that night, then did two sessions on the Logan temple and one more in Brigham City on Tuesday, staying at Soderquist’s house Tuesday night (they were all gone), did two sessions Wednesday at the Ogden temple, made a good visit with Dorothy, and returned to Soderquist’s empty house to sleep Wednesday night, and on Thursday did sessions in the Bountiful and Salt Lake temples, arriving home late Thursday afternoon, having each performed seven endowments in five different temples.  I was especially moved by the session in Salt Lake, as the workers were quite animated and expressive with the revised dialogue, and felt the tears start to come as Eve recited what the Givens have called her “Ode to Joy.”

I felt some sentimental emotions also in Logan, thinking that this was the temple of my great-grandmother, Martha Ann, and that some 130 years ago she was walking these same halls.  This was where my grandparents, Frank and Kate, were married in 1901, and where I was endowed in 1957 with such a marvelous spiritual experience.

We saw old acquaintenances in some of the temples--the Lyle Hendersons who were NC Raleigh missionaries at the same time we served and are now working in the Logan temple.  They are from Clifton, ID, where he was a football coach.  They knew the Chandler-Bells.
We were greeted by Wixoms as left the SL temple (currently Temple President and Matron and she former General Primary President).  Wendy knew her from earlier contacts.  Also in the SL temple we visited with Richard Oldroyd, serving as mens shift coordinator.  I knew him professionally (he was a well-know psychologist in the SL area) and he also had served as Wendy’s bishop.  On our session was a couple (the Duncans) whose wife was Vietnamese and in our branch when I was HC representative to the branch and then later also when the group was assigned to our ward during the time when I was the Bishop.  Her name then was Kim Huynh (Huynh Kim?).  She has served the Church all these years as a General Conference translator.  They have just received a mission call as a senior couple.

The Saints seem to be continuing their recently-found love and commitment to the temple.  All of these seven sessions were reasonably full.  And there were so many smiling faces among the patrons.  I had the thought that Disneyland was mistaken in its promotion of itself.  Our temples just might be the most joyful places on earth, filled with a quiet but wonderful familial and uplifting spirit.