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Chapter 10: West High School

In the month prior to my entering high school, some friends per-
suaded me to join them in going on a Boy Scout trip. Scouting had been
a terrible disappointment to me. Our troop did nothing for months at a
time. Our scoutmaster and assistant scoutmaster seemed to begin plan-
ning for our activities about the time they walked through the door of
the meeting hall. However, out of loyalty to my friends, I went with
them. The trip was to a remote mountain area that someone had once
visited. At the time the trail was overgrown with trees and brush that
scratched the cars that were taking us. We camped beside the right-hand
fork of a small stream. After a day of so, one of the scouts investigated
the source of a terrible smell nearby. He found there was a dead steer
in the stream from which we had been drinking! We then moved to the
other fork of the stream.
A couple days later we went on a long hike through the woods.
There was no trail. After an hour or two of hiking I realized that I had
a fever, felt terrible and couldn’t continue. Having always had a good
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ing it without any hesitation. That night, our Bishop Jorgenson and his
counselor Charles Thorpe (our next-door neighbor at home), drove up
to spend an evening with the scouts. I asked the Bishop if I could ride
home with him that night. He readily agreed. When I arrived home, it
was past midnight, so I simply slipped into the screen porch and crawled
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illness. Later that day he brought a doctor from the University of Utah
Medical School. They decided that I had Rocky Mountain Fever, which
is usually spread by tick bites. A raging fever ensued for several days.
While I had always been slim, I lost weight. I gradually recovered my
strength, but I was skin and bones for several weeks.
For years, I had practiced drop kicking a football. No one does
drop kicking any more because placekicking is far easier and results
in longer kicks. I had practiced drop kicking thousands of times, even

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