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Day 8<br />
Start a Journal<br />
My grandpa, Bill Hurst, was a journal writer his entire life. His journal was<br />
quite simple. He just kept a small notebook in the pocket of his pearl snap<br />
shirts and jotted down a short description of the things he did and the<br />
people he did it with. This is something he did pretty much every day for<br />
his entire life. He also kept extensive diaries of his time as a forest ranger<br />
in the Wasatch Range.<br />
About 12 years ago, my grandpa took all these diaries and daily journal<br />
entries and began to write his memoir for his children and grandchildren.<br />
The finished product was a 500-page behemoth filled with stories from my<br />
grandfather’s life. Here’s just a few of the interesting things I learned from<br />
reading it:<br />
• My grandpa met my grandma by hitting on her while she worked as<br />
a telephone operator.<br />
• My grandpa helped pay for college by playing pool.<br />
• He worked as a sheep herder during the summers in high school and<br />
college. He gives a very descriptive account on how castrating sheep<br />
is performed. He did it just like this.<br />
• He has a scar from when he was hit by a car while racing his horse<br />
through the streets of his boyhood town. The horse died.<br />
• As a boy, his family traveled by horse and buggy.<br />
There’s more. Lots more. But while the stories are interesting, what I<br />
found more interesting was the commentary my grandpa gave on different<br />
events in his life. In these moments, he passed on some insights and lessons<br />
on what it means to be a man. My grandpa’s memoir is a treasure trove of