Leroy and the Devil

Grandpa Quist had Stephen captivated tonight with some stories from when he was a kid.  He also told an old family story about his Uncle Leroy that had Stephen on the edge of his seat.  It was so funny watching Stephen’s face as he listed to my Dad tell the story. 


For your reading pleasure, here is “Leroy and the Devil” in Uncle Leroy’s own words:

When I was about fourteen years of age, I drove my bicycle and carried a paper route about fourteen miles long.  This paper route went down in Lehi, back up into the Mesa area, down Alma Road and then on home again.  A canal ran around the northern perimeter of my route for about a mile, and this was the most dreary and desolate place.  There was only one house on this whole stretch of canal bank.  Two days before, the man who lived there was found murdered in his house, and the house had been burned.  Now the day before that, authorities had pulled a drowned man out of the canal right in this area.  I was scared to death to even go by there.  Now this was in the middle of the winter, and it was dark as it could be, and it stayed dark until I finished my paper route.  I didn’t even have a flashlight, but I would ride along this canal bank by staying between the seam and vapors coming off the canal and a bunch of willows along the other side of the road.  I could keep from running either into the willows or into the canal.  There were ruts, and it was bad.  It was something I wouldn’t wish on anybody, but in those days we were expected to help earn our sustenance, and so I was happy to get this paper route because it gave me some prestige in the community..
I’d get up every morning about 5:45 and go down to the road crossing where the paper man left the papers.  I would count out my 21 papers, fold them and put them into my paper bag which hung over my shoulder, and then pedal down the street.  I knew every rut in the road.  I knew everywhere to go without even seeing it.  I would bundle up as much as I could so I wouldn’t be too cold.  Vapor would come out of my nose.  I was just getting through that.  It was really, really rough.
But this time was coming down the canal bank, right down this desolate area, and all of a sudden something appeared right in front of me—right directly in front of me.  I knew it wasn’t a human being, but I couldn’t make out what it was, but what it really looked like was a demon.  It looked like Satan himself was standing right in front of me, and to make things worse, it was only about two feet in front of me when I stopped.  It was huge.  I t was bout four feet tall.  I coud see steam coming out its nose and vapors.  I could see a pair of glowing eyes looking at me, and I could even see horns there, and little hairy legs going down.  I stood there frozen with my feet on the pedals.  I couldn’t move.  I just there frozen for fifteen or twenty seconds.  Then all of a sudden it went “moo” and walked away.

Side note:  My Dad left out the part about the two dead men when he told Stephen the story…
My Dad told us a story about himself that I hadn’t heard before.  Here is my paraphrased version:

When I was nine or ten years old my parents bought me a “new” (used) bike to ride.  It was a faded red color and so I worked hard to paint it a nice metallic blue.  One day I wanted to ride it and one of the tires was flat.  I had seen my older brothers go next door to Robert’s Tires and use the air compressor to pump up their bike tires.  I was confident that I could take care of my flat tire on my own.  I went over and started filling up the tire with air.  The only problem was that I didn’t know when to stop filling the tire.  Without warning, the tire violently exploded with a deafening blast!  The old mechanic (Robert?) came rushing over to me yelling and cussing at me—he was so angry!  I couldn’t really hear much of what he was saying since my ears were ringing.  In fact, I couldn’t hear well at all for a few days and to make matters worse, the explosion had caused my rear fender to bend and my bike wheel wouldn’t spin anymore.  I was so worried about getting into trouble that I didn’t tell my parents about what had happened for a long time.

That story made me feel so bad!  Poor little boy was trying to be independent and instead got chewed out, deafened, and ruined his “new” bike!