This is my family in about 1970. This is a photo of the haircuts I wrote about on page 30 of my memoir: I Can’t Miss the Encore. My mom’s sisters were professional beautitians. My mom was an artist but not when it came to haircuts and styles. Even our “Indian” replacement student had a haircut just like mine and my little sister’s next to me. (I had to cut her face because I didn’t have her permission to post her photo, sorry.) So, the three of us have those “cute” haircits. Our older sister wouldn’t let mom touch her hair. I’m the kid in the glasses in the front row holding the cat→the other cat.
My Durtschi Family and My Second Home in Teton Valley, Idaho
My second home was in Driggs, Idaho, in Teton Valley. The Tetons are MY mountains. My Durtschi cousins my mom’s family, are MY special cousins. When I was little and wasn’t very big, my Durtschi cousins and my family played together. Cousins who play, eat, sing, and pray together, stay together.
After we moved to Rigby, we drove “over the river and through the woods to grandmother’s house…” summers, and winters, during the holidays, we often drove back home in a blizzard. Grandma’s house smelled of freshly baked bread and strawberry jam, and flowers while Grandpa smelled like a barn. They lived in that same wooden slat house on Stateline Road, three miles east of Driggs with a wood cookstove for cooking and heat, and outhouse the house Grandpa built for his new bride before he even proposed. When I came along in 1959, they lived in a new Swiss chalet on the same stop with modern plumbing and heating, which my great Uncle Frederick built for them. I was number 28 grandchild of 44. My grandma was already 69 years old when I was born. When her little grandkids congregated in her kitchen, she fed us around the table surrounded by benches, which is still there. She called us “kinderli”, in her Swiss accent. That word meant “love” to me. Sometimes I got to stay overnight and sleep in the upstairs bedroom. I’d wake up in the morning, look around, and wonder where I was. Then suddenly remember, “I’m at Grandma’s!! I laid in bed relishing the moment before running downstairs to eat hot cooked Germade™ with fresh cream and sugar from a high-lipped plate instead of a bowl, which is how they ate it so it would cool faster. We drank fresh cow’s milk as we gobbled down Grandma’s fresh homemade bread slathered in butter and topped with fresh homemade strawberry jam, YUM! We were so blessed!
I loved my Durtschi Cousins! I was happy and playful, giddy and silly around them and a showoff, because I knew they loved me no matter what. They were, and still are, my best friends. I felt comfortable with them. Sometimes we fought but forgave quickly. Sometimes, after a weekend with my them, I laid in my bed thinking about the day I had with them. I went to sleep counting my cousins, instead of sheep. I named each one by one, all 44 grandchildren, from the oldest to the youngest, as I fell asleep. Unlike other relationships in my early life, when I was with my Durtschi family, I felt wanted and loved whenever I was around them. I knew I belonged to them and they belonged to me.
My Aunt Isabel made sure we had Durtschi reunions every year where we played and ate and heard the heroic stories of our grandparents and great grandparents, which often included Aunt Lena Deursch’s family. Besides the reunion, our Durtschi families had three main traditions: Green Canyon Hot Springs, St. Anthony Sand Dunes, and Teton Canyon. Nearly every summer, we met at Green Canyon Hot Springs. We played in the pool, then had potluck with sloppy Joes or roasted hotdogs and marshmallows. We all filled our shorts with sand at the St. Anthony Sand Dunes. We ran around and jumped off the dunes to see who could jump the furthest. When it got dark, we roasted hotdogs and marshmallows around the fire and crunched sand in our teeth, and again munched on Sloppy Joes, potato salad and Jell-O, of course. Then we knit our souls together as we sang campfire songs. We went on picnics and hikes up Teton Canyon. My favorite canyon in the world. Sometimes we camped at Cold Springs or gathered there to eat and play softball in the meadow among the skunk cabbage. We played other games in the mountains like, Cat and Old Sow, and we picked huckleberries and sometimes played mountain croquet, invented by my brother, Phillip, between the trees, rocks and stumps. We often attended church together, at the very same church Grandpa Durtschi built when he was the Bishop of Pratt Ward.
We popped popcorn played games, put together jigsaw puzzles, then at dark we began late night games like Kick the Can, Run Sheep Run, and No Bears are Out Tonight. We have x-country skied and snowshoed and backpacked together. We had Edward and Rosina Durtschi Family reunions where we listened to heroic stories about Grandma and Grandpa’s families and other ancestors while we roasted hotdog and marshmallows or had a fish fry after family prayer around the fire. These outings made me feel that all was right with the world.
We endured road trips in the school bus-converted RV caravanning through Yellowstone, and endured cousin caravans from home to Sacramento in our large yellow unairconditioned van, where Aunt Lucy, my mom’s twin sister and her family had later moved. We traveled together to Disneyland and on to Ensenada, Mexico and back again.
Grandpa Alfred served as a bishop of Pratt Ward in Alta Wyoming for 25 years, with Grandma by his side, which was nearly all my mother’s life growing up. There he helped build the small Pratt Ward Chapel on the Teton Canyon/Ski Hill Road. All five children served missions. Grandpa returned to Switzerland to serve a 14-month mission in 1953, sadly Grandma couldn’t go because of her health, but encouraged Grandpa to go back and find her family. He taught the gospel in his native country by word and deed, as did those missionaries who taught his and Grandma’s families years before.