Cannon Family Stories

When Tressa and I were first married I worked as a janitor in V Hall of Deseret Towers on BYU campus.  There were 6 floors in each Residence Hall  and a trash room with a trash cart on each floor.  One of my duties was to empty the trash carts each afternoon.  During the summer of 1988 Dominoes Pizza did a promotion with Hogle Zoo and  they advertised Dominoes Day at Hogle Zoo which was going to happen on a Saturday in Early September of that year.  Each time you bought a Dominoes Pizza it came with a coupon attached to the pizza box lid good for one free admission to Hogle Zoo on that day. As you can imagine 6 floors of college students bought quite a bit of Dominoes Pizza and many of those empty boxes ended up in the trash carts and many of those boxes still had the coupons attached.  So, I started collecting them.  I didn't have to dig through the trash carts.  I just took the ones that were clean and easy to grab.  By the time the ...

By Todd Cannon I can't remember if I wrote this one down before or not.  Forgive me if you have already read it somewhere. The curfew rule that I remember is that I had to be home by 12:30 a.m. when I was out on a Date.  This way I could get the girl home by Midnight and then have a generous 30 minutes to make it home on time.  Many of the girls I dated did not have a Midnight curfew though so I would figure out how long it took to drive from their house to our house and try to arrive home right at 12:30 a.m.  I actually got pretty good at it but if anything went wrong I usually had no margin for error (which, of course, is what the 30 minutes was suppose to give me but I was to young and foolish to recognize that)  There was a time in late 1983 or early 1984 that I had a string of bad luck and I was late getting home several times in a row.  Dad was not amused.  He told me that I had better be home on time in the future.  The very next time...

By Todd Cannon Tressa and I bought Season Tickets to BYU Basketball this year.  It reminds me of when Dad used to buy Season Tickets and take us kids to the Basketball Games.  I know he did not buy enough to take everyone to every game so we had to take turns.  I think he had 4 tickets although sometimes I think maybe he had 5, 1 for him and that 4 of us kids got to come along. I'm pretty sure the number 4 factored in somewhere. Dad would always buy everyone a treat before the game.  I remember some of the favorites being Cracker Jacks (back then you got something more than a sticker as a prize), Giant sized Red Delicious Apples, and popcorn in a small BYU megaphone.  When you finished your popcorn you could punch out the small end and use it to cheer at the game.  Then after Halftime (Dad liked to watch the Halftime show) when the concession stands where not as crowded Dad would go and buy everyone a drink.  They had Red Cream Soda.  For a lo...

By Todd Cannon I believe I was 6 years old so this would have been the Christmas of 1972, but if someone else thinks they remember it differently I will listen to a good argument.  Although I am almost certain it was no later than Christmas of 1973. Karl, Dave and I all had presents under the try that were small round tubes.  When we opened them up they were yellow tubes of Daisy BBs with a black cap.  I think it held 200 BBs.   Once all of the presents under the tree were open there did not seem to be any purpose or use for the BBs.  I actually wondered if we were just meant to find some creative use for them.  We had made slingshots out of Y shaped tree branches, several rubber bands knotted together, and some scraps of leather the summer before and I wondered if the BBs would be to small to use in that.  I also thought about the thin straws they gave us when we bought milk for lunch at school.  I wondered if I could use one of those as...

By Doug Maybe dad can comment on this story with some of the details about our road trip one year to Los Alamos, New Mexico.  I don't remember very many particulars of the trip except that I was about 16 and had my driver's license, and that Jona was not yet 16.  I remember this, because I was allowed to drive the van while dad was in some meetings or conferences for the day.  He and a bunch of other chemists were probably talking all about electrons and gluons or maybe about how many pencils they can fit into their shirt pockets even with a pair of sunglasses. I don't remember why only Jona and I went along with dad, I assume it was during the summer?  I honestly don't remember much about the time-frame.  I assume that Todd and Karl were working and couldn't get the time off, and Karen and Rob were too young for this kind of trip?  I don't remember. We hit a few sight-seeing places along the way, and one of them included the petrified forest.  I...

By Todd Cannon As I remember it there were a lot of trees in the yard of the Maryland house.  The Fall that we were there when Karl was 4 and I was 3 I remember Karl and I "helping" Dad rake the leaves up.  Dad would rake leaves into a big pile then he would bury one of us in the leaves and say things like "Where is Todd/Karl? I don't see him anywhere. Maybe he went back inside with Mommy."  Then the one in the leaves would pop out of the leaves  and shout "Here I am!"  Dad would rake the scattered leaves into a pile again and we took turns doing this over and over.  I never remember the leaves actually getting bagged or burned or whatever it was that Dad would eventually do with them.  Probably because it happened after Karl and I really did go "back inside with Mommy." Years later thinking back on this memory it occurred to me that this was not the most productive way for Dad to get the leaves raked up.  I have always been grateful that...

By Todd Cannon Going to St. George at the end of each summer for the Chicken Harvest was always one of my favorite things.  This first year we went I was given the job of  "Grim Reaper" as Dad put it. I would catch the chickens, chop off their heads, and then hang them up by their feet on loops of twine so that Dad could skin them. The first few years when we were all home we had plenty of people to help and Doug would often stretch the necks of the chickens out for me so that I had a good target for chopping.  As time went on and fewer of us were able to go Doug started helping inside with Grandpa cutting up and packaging the chickens before they were put into the refrigerator. I loved my job.  I got to be outside with Dad.  Catching, chopping and hanging up the chickens seemed pretty easy work.  But after a few years I started to feel a little guilty.  It was really only by luck that I got the outside Grim Reaper job and poor Doug was inside doin...