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hospital bed crying, not knowing what to do, that my father decided to go back to college. He was poor, had eight children, and was going nowhere. My family isn’t quite sure how they pulled it off financially, sending my father to college while building a new home. But they did. Three years later, my father graduated first in his class from the University of Montana, with a bachelor’s degree in history and a teaching certification, and we had our own home.
    My father’s going to college was an outrage to the men on the Council. In the Allred Group, you didn’t need education. All men in the Group held the priesthood—the power, given by God, to act in His name and with His authority. They held it in their hands when they gave blessing to others while being inspired by God. Those who were deemed God’s most worthy followers were inducted into the authoritarian Council. The Council was also referred to by all members of the Group as the Priesthood with a capital P. All male members had the priesthood and could lead and guide their own families, but only the Council had the right to lead and counsel all Group members in all matters. That meant they could make decisions affecting everyone. As in “The Priesthood has decided that it is now permissible to marry first cousins.” These Council members, some of whom did not even have a high school diploma, were very vocal about my dad’s going back to school. His increased knowledge only added to his threat (and his being a son of the Prophet was threat enough). He was told that an education would destroy his faith. (At least they were right about something. )
    But I looked up to and respected my dad. Dad always seemed to have an answer for whatever was bothering my young mind. I found him one day next to his most recent drywall project. “Dad, where did God come from? Who was his dad?”
    â€œWell, son,” Dad paused, staring at his aluminum palette heaped with joint compound that he held like Picasso, “that’s a question every young boy and every forty-year-old man wants to know the answer to.”
    Dad taught me that we study history not for miscellaneous data, but to learn vicariously from other people’s mistakes. Life is much easier ifone is able to do that. But as Dad explained, many are unable to learn from others’ mistakes, let alone their own, and often think they are the exception, allowing history to repeat itself. Through my father, I learned I was no better, nor of less worth, than the next person, and if subject A performs an action to ugly consequences and subject B earns a similar fate, I will probably experience the same.
    Later that night, as everyone was filtering off to bed, which was when my mind came out to explore the world, I watched my father playing games of solitaire, reflecting in silence at the kitchen table as he shuffled the cards and then flipped them over to memorize them. He never maneuvered them; he just memorized them.
    â€œDad, isn’t that cheating?”
    â€œNo. I’m just memorizing what is there so I can win.”
    My father had no qualms about rationalizing the fact that he was cheating at solitaire.
    â€œDad?”
    â€œYes, son?” he asked as he observed the one-eyed jack.
    â€œWhy was President Kennedy shot?”
    The next morning my brother Court and I lounged in the kitchen with our Audrey Hepburn of a mother. “Boys, don’t make noise just to make noise,” Mom said, standing at the sink. I sighed, got up, and began to put away my pots and pans. They were my amazing musical instruments. I couldn’t understand why Mom didn’t appreciate them. But never one to be deprived of enjoyment, I quickly ran to my Tonka truck, which sat in the corner of the kitchen with long, worn treads in the linoleum where I had passed the truck hundreds of times before.
    â€œLance, would you like to take this outside and put it in the garbage for