Written 1997
Age: 9
Year in 4-H: 3
Well, here I am again. But this time as a primary member that is going to be a junior member next year. Hi! My name is John Trammell. This is my third year as a primary 4-H member. I have a sister named Ashley. This was her first year as a primary 4-H member. She is 6 1/2 years old. My dad, steve, is the photography and rocketry leader. When he was my age he was also a 4-H member. My mom, Rozie, is our club leader. It sometimes gets a little hard to be the kid of a club leader. She expects us to help out when she needs extra hands to carry stuff and do other things too. This year I went to Arroyo Verde Elementary. I was in the third grade. It was a new school for me and made a lot of new friends. As it so happens, next year I am going to be at a new school again. Arroyo Verde was so over crowded, over 1,200 students, that the school district built a new school. So we are being moved to that brand new school. I guess a lot of my friends will be there too.
One, of the things that I do away from 4-H is play the piano. I like music and want to learn how to play an instrument. Since we already had a piano, my mom started me out on that. I have been playing now for 3 years. I have done recitals and have also participated in the Cultural Arts part at County Field Day. The first time I got a Gold Seal. The second time I was judged against all the other kids, including the seniors and didn't win anything.
The other thing I have been doing is swimming in the summer. I like to get into the water and know how to swim. I can be safe at the sametime have fun splashing around and staying cool. Swimming is a lot of fun and I wish we could have a swimming pool.
The other thing I have the most fun learning about is the computer. As I was in preschool, mom signed me up for Computer Tots. There we got to learn how to do very simple stuff working on the computers. But once I got into school, one of the most fun parts of the day was when we worked on the computers. Then Loma Linda University Education Department started doing a summer computer camp. I have done this now for 2 years. For 4 days in a row, we go to this room where everyone has their own computer and gets to learn how to do many things on the computer. We even get to print up some of the stuff we make. I really like working on computers. We hope to get one for our family soon, now that my mom is working part time and bringing home a little extra money.
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This is my third and last year as a primary member in 4-H. I really want to be a junior so that I can start earning medals and awards. I like to win awards. But to win awards, I guess I will have to work hard for them. My mom will make sure of that. But I guess I learned that in my first 3 years. One of the things I really like to to is collect rocks, minerals, and fossils. They all look really neat, but best of all, they all come from interesting places. We took some trips this year and on those trips we made an effort to learn about the earth, what the rocks tell us about the history of the earth and maybe what people or animals where in the area very many years ago. My mom and dad even took a geology class to learn some of this stuff so that they can help me learn this stuff. We went with them on 2 field trips. One trip took us out real close to the Salton Sea to a place called Rainbow Canyon. There we saw beautiful rocks and got to see the fault line. I learned that the rocks could get bent by the forces of the earth. When they move, we have a earthquake. We went in November and it was still hot. We drank a lot of water. But we like the spot so much that we went back 2 weeks later to do some rock collecting. There I got some conglomerate rocks, sedimentary rocks, and even found a round rock that looked like a mudball. When we broke it open we found some small crystals inside a hole. I guess what we found was a new geode that was being formed. It is about 3 million years old. We also collected some gypsum. But that crumbles real easy. We had pick it up real easy. But when we go out on these trips, we don't only collect rocks. We always bring my camera along. I am also learning how to take good pictures. I am going to be in the photography project so my dad is teaching me to start right with the camera. The next trip we took was a family vacation to Calico Ghost Town. We happened to go when the had the Civil War Days. We campled out there. I got to take a lot of good pictures. There was a really good rock and mineral shop there. There I found some fossilized animal poop. Boy is that funny. But there are different types of that too. One type is from meat eaters and another type is from the animals that eat plants. These are rare, but they make an interesting topic to talk about. we also drove out into the mule canyon there. we saw some very pretty rocks and collected some. At Calico we took the mine tour. We went into the mines to see what it was really like to be a miner. They turned out all the lights at one point and we couldn't even see our hands. Then they turned them back on. At Calico they minded for silver. After that, we drove out to see the Mitchell Caverns. We campled out there. That was a really neat tour. Even thought it was hot outside, it was cool inside. From the parking lot, it was a 3/4 mile hike up hill to get to the front of the caves. Once we got inside, one of the other peopl on the tour passed out. I guess he got a strange feeling being in such a small closed in area. We saw some really pretty Stalagtites and Stalagmites. I learned from my mom and dad that they were in a huge cavern in Yugoslavia when they were there on a trip. When we got home my mom showed me the book that they bought. Those caves were much bigger than the Mitchell Caverns. But I really like the one we visited. On the route home we stopped at Pisgah Crater. You used to be able to drive right up to it. But now they are mining it for the cinder rocks. These rocks are used in the gas BBQ's like the one we have at home. We collected some of the cinder rocks from the road side for my collection. Then we drove over to Boron. We went to the Museum and Visitors center ether. we got to see a neat movie on how they mine they borax. We are not allowed to go into the mining area. But once a year, they have a weekend long boron rock and mineral festival and then there are special tours of the mine and we would get to collect some minerals. We just missed it this year, so next year we plan our trip to land on that weekend. I can't wait to see it.
On the second field trip with my mom and dad's class we went out all the way to Needles. Right close to the river there is a special area where there are some ancient Indian Intaglios. Intaglios are like Petrogliphs but done in the desert floor and are gigantic. We had to do some hiking around and they are now fenced off so that the motorcycles can't drive over them. They are over 1 million years old. If we had a helicopter we would see them better. But we didn't so we looked at them from behind the fence. Of course I had my camera there too. Dad had to work at the hospital so mom had to do double duty.
Well, the fairs are coming early this year. So we had to get some more good photo's so that I could enter them into the fairs. We went out into the Cajon pass in my dad's Bronco so we could get on the dirt roads. We got bounced around but we had fun. I was using black and while film and did get some really good pictures, we hoped. Another photo field trip was to the Kimberly Crest in Redlands. We took late afternoon shots to learn about natural lighting. After we got all my pitures back we chose several to be enlarged. There two black and white pictures that were entered intot he Fair and two colors ones. The black and while ones were of our car fender and tire tracks and one of a tree with old bentup roots. The color ones were of the sheriff at Calico and the pond at Kimberly Crest. One day my mom and dad took me up to the Fair grounds but didn't tell me why. There I could out that my pond picture got Best of Show. I also found out that I was invited to enter it into the State Fairs Best of Show competition. Boy was I excited. My fender photo got a first place and the other two got second place. I didn't get to enter my rock collection because there weren't enough cases. Maybe next year.
This was also a very busy year for club work for me. As a primary I can't have a real officer position, but I was the official club greetor. I made sure everyone signed in and put name tags on. I also greeted the guests that came to our club. One of the clubs BIG projects this year was to plant the trees into Aurantia Park. The club got a $1,000.00 grant to plant trees. There were alot of kids interested in doing this. We had already planted two trees at the park and the city didn't get the water lines in right away. So my dad drove unfortunate (fortunate?) me out to water them. They survived only because we cared for them. Finally in October the lines were put in when they were getting ready to do Make-A-Difference-Day at the park. There were 250 people out there. Maybe more. It was very, very windy and cold. But we planted poppyseeds and trees, (not the ones we would buy from the grant money) and moved a lot of dirt and rocks around. We got real dirty and were tired by lunch time. But that's when we got to the fun part, eating pizza, brownies and drinking juice. Then we picked ip all our tools and went home. In November out club planted the first trees bought with the grant money. Mom hauled me around while we chose the spots for the trees and also when we went to buy them. We also went to pick them up. I sure learned alot about trees. In December, mom got sick with a bad kidney infection for things were put on holld. In January, the man we bought the trees from donated 8 trees to our project. But the City of Highland wouldn't let us plant them until the got a new planner. So that ment we had to keep the trees at our house. And guess who got to take fare of them? Fortunate me and Ashley, my sister/ We did this until June, when the City finally got their act together. But the amount of trees we took care of increased. We bought 11 more trees with the grant money and were stored at our house also. When the wind knocked them over I would pick them up. When they needed water, I got to do that too. Ashley had to water the iother trees. But finally, we planted them. There were supposed to be a lot of kids and parents there but we only got one other person to show up. And they had to leave early. Mom decided to go ahead with the planting because it was a very cool day and there was no sun She worried that the following weekend would get very hot and she was right. We filled holes. We carried dirt and rocks, we put trees into the ground. 19 trees all together. We finally got done at 7:00 that night. We were treated out to dinner and then were treated to Baskin Robins. We were very tired and rested the whole next day.
This year Field Day was up in the desert. I decided that I wanted to do a demonstration on how to press flowers. I liked working with pressed flowers. It was a little scarey but I did my demonstration. I got a gold seal. I also did judging. I got 3rd place on that. I also played the piano, but was not awarded anything.
In May my family went another trip. This time we went to Mammoth Lakes. We wanted to see the Devil's Post Pile which is made from lava. We took a volcanic tour of the area. We saw several craters and we went to a pumice mine. Pumice is a very light volcano rock that has a lot of trapped air bubbles. It even floats in water. We collected some more rocks for my collection. We also went to the ghost town of Bodie. It was very warm there. we visited Mono Lake. There we learned a lot about the lake. The one thing I remember about Mammoth is all of the moquitos. Billions of them. As a matter of fact, we came p with a good share the fun idea for next years field day, The Mosquito Macarena. Of course as always, I was taking pictures there too.
This has been a busy year. Next year we are going to be just as busy. And I will get to report on all of it this time. The next time I will be doing a story, it will be as a junior. So wee you next year. For real!!
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