Some pictures and memories of my father

This is my dad, John Mathew Farrow, always known as Jack, with his three daughters. He is holding me, LaRae is in front of him, and Evelyn is at his right side. He never had any sons, but he loved his girls and was proud of us. LaRae was his little side-kick when she was in elementary school, and he called her Charlie.

I have a few early memories of him, and most of them are happy ones. He could be stern when I didn't obey, but mostly he was friendly and easy to be around. He had a fun sense of humor and could be a tease at times. I remember how he would talk me out of a pout by saying he could see my mouth starting to turn up at the corners. It wouldn't be long before I was giggling.

Sometimes when he had to be away from home for a few days he would bring me a surprise. We had an old record player that played 78 rpm records, and he brought me several with stories and songs on them. I remember one that had the story of David and Goliath on it, and some songs that went with it. Another had a song about the "Big Rock Candy Mountain," and I remember him singing along with it. One year when pogo sticks were popular with all the kids, he took me into a store and bought me one while Mom was shopping for groceries. That was a "big deal!"

He had an old red tractor when I was small, and as soon as he turned out of the field lane to come down the street towards home, I would hear the peculiar sound of it and know he was on his way. I would run out front, across the ditch, and wait for him. He would stop and help me up onto the seat in front of him and let me drive it with him down into the back yard.
I rememeber one Sunday afternoon I came home from Church all feverish and feeling awful. It was especially sad for me because Evelyn and Con came with their little kids, and I had to stay away from them. My dad felt bad for me missing out, so he came and spent some time with me in the bedroom so I wouldn't feel so left out. It turned out that I had the mumps! There was a small panic for a while, because he had never had them. Fortunately, he didn't get them from me.


I was probably in about eighth grade when the above two pictures were taken. My dad didn't have much formal education - he only completed eighth grade, himself. But he was intelligent and continued to learn much on his own. He was especially good at math and could put it to use in practical matters to figure out anything he needed. It seemed like he was always "figuring" something, and he filled MANY little notebooks and pieces of paper with numbers to figure costs, weights, measures, profits, etc., anything having to do with whatever occupation he was engaged in at the time. He mostly farmed during my growing-up years, but he also did carpentry and some mining. We never had alot of money, but we had a comfortable home and were never in need of anything.

I don't have a lot of memories of him spending time with me, one on one. I remember some daddy-daughter dates in Primary that he took me to, and one when I was in high school. I remember at the high school one, we danced, and that was probably the only time he ever danced with me. He didn't have much time to call his own, as farming is very demanding. But there were times he took us on picnics, and I remember him taking me fishing a couple of times. One time was at the dam up at the Summit creek, and I caught five fish that evening.

He was very supportive in me taking piano lessons for ten years. He loved it when LaRae and I practiced the piano, and he was always quick to pick it up if we were getting our timing wrong. When our playing got far enough along, he would often sit and strum his guitar along with our music.

My dad was very musical. He had a beautiful tenor voice, and he played the guitar. His lungs were damaged from years of gold-mining when he was young, so singing became hard for him. By the time I came along (and can remember him), he didn't do much singing, but he loved to strum his guitar whenever he was sitting to rest or watch TV. I made the guitar cake for him for his birthday one year, probably about his 65th. We were living in Summit, just across the street from my parents at the time.

This was taken when we were living in San Antonio, Texas. It was a long trip from Summit, but my dad was such a "softie" over little Chad, that he and my mom came to visit us twice in the year and a half that we lived there.

This picture was taken when we lived in Inglewood, California. He and my mom came to California several times to visit us.

This is the latest picture I have of my mother and dad together. It was taken just several weeks before my mother died August 13, 1974. She was 57 and he was 67 at that time.

He continued to live in their house in Summit for several months, but in November of that year he sold the house and moved to live with us in St. George where the winters were milder and he could breathe more easily. We were living in an apartment at that time but soon our house in Bloomington was finished, and he moved there with us.

My dad loved his grandchildren, and he was always patient with them and all their noise. I was expecting Kendall when he came to live with us. I was sick with the pregnancy, and he was very helpful to me. He always kept his stuff picked up, never left anything lying around the house. He made his bed every morning and kept his bedroom cleaned up. He was visiting my sister Evelyn in Salt Lake when Kendall was born. I called to let them know about the baby, and the next day I could hear someone in the hall outside my hospital room proudly saying "That tiny little baby with all that black hair is my grandson." (My room was right by the nursery window.) He had left Evelyn's to be there when I got home from the hospital, so he could help me. He was a wonderful father and grandfather.

Here are a few other memories:

When I was very young my dad would sometimes let me drive the car down the field road in the evenings when he went back down to the farm to turn off the water pumps. My mom and I would go along for the ride, and he would move over and let me sit in the driver's seat. The steering wheel had an outer wheel or ring, a middle ring, then the hub in the center. I was so short that I had to look out over the dashboard between the middle and outer rings to see the road. Once in a while, after turning off the pumps, instead of going right home, we would take the field roads and go on over to Parowan for an ice cream cone. That was a special treat.

A few weeks before I was to be baptized, an ornery cow chased him into a fence and messed up his leg pretty bad. It was quite a while before he regained his strength in it. I worried whether or not he could baptize me, and I remember asking if he thought his "gimpy leg" would let me down. He laughed alot about about what I'd said, but I didn't think it was so funny.

He had a bad injury to his eye just before Christmas that same year. He and his brother Lyle were cutting cedar posts. A limb that had been pinned underneath a fallen tree broke free and flipped him in the eye. It popped his eyeball open, letting much of the fluid run out. Lyle rushed him to the doctor in Cedar, but nothing could be done there. Arrangements were made to admit him at St. Mark's Hospital in Salt Lake. Lyle drove him and Mom to Salt Lake as fast as he could after calling the Highway Patrol and alerting them that they had an emergency. They made it in three hours and forty-five minutes, which was very fast on old Highway 91 back in those days. He had eight stitches put into his eyeball and had to lie flat on his back for two weeks. He was completely blindfolded for a week, then on Christmas Day his good eye was uncovered. I remember visiting him in the hospital on Christmas. Evelyn and Con, who were living in Salt Lake, came to Summit and got LaRae and me. We had been staying with Grandma Lawrence. They didn't give him much hope that he would ever see out of that eye, but he eventually regained fairly good sight in it. He said that without his glasses everything looked like it was on a slant.

Dad was not active in the Church when I was real little, but when I was elementary age he accepted a calling to be in the Sunday School Superintendency. From then on he never missed his meetings, and he gradually developed a very firm testimony of the Gospel through much study and prayer. He was one of the most honest people I have ever known. I loved my dad very much (still do) and I look forward to being with him again.