Dad’s Scariest Story

In 1964, Dad was serving as Scoutmaster of our troop, sponsored by Union First Ward. It was summer time, and we were at Camp Steiner in the Uintah Mountains.

The older boys (14-17) had been allowed to go. I suppose that is why I was there. I was one of the youngest of the older boys. Joe and Darrell were there, but they were in the troop.

We were sitting around the camp fire one night, and the older boys were telling “ghost” stories to try to scare the younger ones. As I remember the stories from 40+ years ago, they were really pretty tame. There was the usual headless sheep header nonsense, and wolf man kinds of stories.

Dad wasn’t talking very much. I can almost hear him say, “Foolishness!” When the story telling had died down, he started to talk in a quiet voice.

He started to tell us about his most frightening experience. Dad spoke only a couple of sentences. He told us that he was most frightened during World War Two. He and a buddy were sharing a foxhole. (I’ve often wondered if that buddy was Ken, the man after whom I was named.) It was Dad’s turn to catch a little sleep. He woke just in time to find a Japanese soldier in the foxhole. Dad’s words were something to the effect, “You don’t know what it is like to be scared until you find a Jap soldier coming at you with a bayonet.”

That night, there wasn’t anymore scary story telling.