Lasterday

by Mark Hardy, Kevin Price (Illustrator)

Overview

At 3 years old, my first grand daughter was sophisticated, affable, and articulate or so she thought. Her vocabulary included words like Lasterday, Nexterday, and Inaminnit to communicate her concepts of time. Granted, these concepts were born, in part, from her perceptions of her fathers procrastinations. Dad, what doin Lasterday? Cake, inaminnit. Home Nexterdaykay? But, I have found these words to be exceptionally versatile in communicating those pleasurable and unbounded memories of times, places, and events the realities of which no longer fi nd place in our current time. Lasterday is a work of love, a flight of fancy, an effort to share with my beloved grandchildren, a cherished place, treasured times, and a sense of personal freedom that like the refreshment taken from those cold and clear mountain waters of my youth have run inexorably, as Lifes river, out of my grasp and beyond my view; and which exist now, but only as memories. In Lasterday, I found an ability to communicate, to my dearest ones, something in me that had been locked away. I entrust the words to you. May they help you to unlock memories of sweet times and places passed from view that you will share with those you hold dear. Lasterday, I rode my bike, up and down the hills, at night. In the dell where I grew up, the stars are bright. I pray that, with all the help that I can give, and with Gods blessings, my children and grandchildren will ride their own bikes into happy and productive lives to make cherished memories of Nexterday that maybe, Inamminit they will share with those who are most precious.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781491821312
Publisher:	AuthorHouse
Publication date:	10/24/2013
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	28
File size:	8 MB
Age Range:	4 - 8 Years

About the Author

Born in Salt Lake City, Utah, Mr. Hardy graduated from the University of Utah where he earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Mass Communication – Journalism. While pursuing his undergraduate degree, he earned a minor degree in French and Tahitian from his 2-year experience as a Mormon Missionary living in French Polynesia. Also, while attending college, he earned a place on the football team, and served a Communications-internship with the Salt Lake Office of Senator Orrin Hatch. Later, at night, he attended McGeorge School of Law in Sacramento, California where he worked full-time during the day to support his small family. Currently, he is licensed to practice law in California and Nevada where he serves as a litigation consultant, mediator, and judicial referee. His success in Litigation and in Alternative forms of Dispute Resolution stems from instincts honed by his life’s experience covering two varied and successful careers enhanced by a teacher’s intuition, a salesman’s instincts, a reporter’s curiosity, and the gambit of emotion born from 36 happily married years that have given him 2 children – both happy and successful in their own rights - and 7 charming grandchildren. Significant to his success are the cherished memories from his youth that infuse him. He grew up in what was then the small community of 3500 people called Granite, named for the stone that the founding Mormon pioneers quarried from the nearby Little Cottonwood Canyon to build the Salt Lake Temple. Little Cottonwood is home to the world famous ski resorts of Alta and Snowbird, known for the Greatest Snow on Earth. His family home was on 3 acres, nestled at the base of Lone Peak – the tallest mountain peak in the Wasatch Range of Rocky Mountains that guard the Salt Lake Valley; situated, in a protected dell, on a meandering, roller-coaster and rural road named “Dimple Dell”; and, included a horse barn that required painting, horses that needed feeding, lodge pole fences that needed mending, fire wood that need splitting, a long and steep driveway that needed plowing in the winter, asphalt repair in the summer, lawns that needed cutting, and two alphapha pastures that need watering. He spent days riding his bike, skiing the nearby canyon, swimming Little Cottonwood Creek and splashing in the cold mountain waters of the irrigation ponds and ditches that stitched together the orchards, berry patches, and family gardens put there – in his view and that of his friends – to provide, for their sampling the “community grown” apples, pears, cherries, melons, and an array of berries and vegetables. He played little league baseball, shot baskets on the hoop at the front of the barn, golfed, and played in the first organized football league in Sandy, Utah. Chores were not chores, but adventure; and play, within that wonderful community, was pure freedom. Like most places of our youth, Dimple Dell and the small Granite community have been swallowed by progress. The geologic vestiges remain, but the freedom of that place is gone…except in myriad memories that Mark keeps locked away, brought out not infrequently and shared, this time in a verse called “Lasterday…” .