Tag: Growing Up in Idaho

Old Idaho News: The Runaways

Remember the days when coffee shops, barber shops, and beauty salons were favorite gathering places? So many political and social discussions were had in those venues.

Early Idaho’s newspapers also were favorite sources of information. In fact, if you want to read about old families, businesses, and community problems, peruse the pages of some old community newspapers.

I was reading some century-old articles in the The Idaho Recorder a few days ago, looking for some items of interest regarding the good ol’ days of Lemhi County. I love the human-interest pieces often found in those old papers.

It seems in those old times, any family who ventured out of town for any reason got their travel story published. And the locals loved it! Every trip out of town was more than a road trip; it was an adventure – often fraught with danger and at least one vehicle break-down!

Local happenings become part of community and cultural history. A lot of information is gained from reading past news articles, including reading between the lines. Heck, even the lingo and slang found in the local dialogue is revealing. There’s a story everywhere you find people gathered.

In the April 8, 1921, edition of The Idaho Recorder, the precursor to The Recorder Herald of Salmon, I found some interesting news and a few names some old timers might remember. Apparently, there was a big spring snowstorm in the mountains earlier that week that wreaked havoc on the mail delivery for the Leesburg area.

Worst Blizzard Comes Late

“Eighteen inches of new snow that fell in the mountains during the storm of Monday made it difficult for Ferrell Terry, Star Route mail carrier, to deliver mail on schedule Tuesday, but he finally succeeded in making the fourteen-mile trip over the mountains to the camp of Leesburg, after being eight hours on the way. He left Salmon with the mail sack on horseback, as it was impossible to use the stage, as is customary, but after half the trip was accomplished, he was obliged to leave his horse and proceed on foot through eighteen inches of snow.”

That week, a ten-year-old boy was lost. Apparently, Little Jack Maher, as he was known, came up missing. Here are excerpts from that story. As illustrated, the Salmon Country can be unforgiving, especially during the cold seasons, which, in the mountains, can pop in at any time. Anyone who has spent much time in those mountains knows first-hand! But, you know, kids who grow up in the mountains know their way around and learn early how to take care of themselves.

Little Jack Maher is Lost For a Night

“In the evening at supper time his mother observed him pensively sitting on the back doorstep. A little later she missed him. The shades of the night were falling, and the parents became anxious. At their calls there was no answer from little Jack. All through the night they kept up a fruitless search for him. At dawn they called over the phone to tell neighbors and friends not apprised of the disappearance and soon, the Boy Scouts were called out, centering in every direction over the surrounding hills.”

As a point of interest, the Boy Scouts of America was founded in 1910 and soon spread throughout the country. Apparently, the scouting organization soon found its way to Central Idaho, as eleven years after its founding, a group of scouts were called-up to look for Little Jack.

Being boys who spent a lot of time out camping and playing, the boys had a good idea where to begin looking for the lost boy. On the west side of the river from Salmon is a series of cliffs and bluffs carved into the foothills by the river. To all the local folks, that area is known as White Rock. And that is where the boy scouts figured Little Jack headed.

“White Rock is the scene of many an imaginary wild adventure of boys, the most likely place in the world to find such an imaginative youngster as Little Jack. But when the searchers got there only the remains of a recent campfire were to be found.

The two regular scouts thus put on the trail were Clayton Scribner and Morton Havemann. They were accompanied by the distracted father, Jack Maher, Sr., as well as young [Monroe] Quarles (Little Jack’s best friend).

The scouts thought they would proceed to a homestead cabin that stood in sight to make personal inquiries. As they neared the place, little Jack stood in view before them, playing with a fuzzy puppy. The cabin belongs to Ben Hirshberger.

When Hirshberger went down to see about it, he found the child with no comforts except the big blazing logs which the young [kid] had cut with his little axe and dragged to his camp.

Little Jack is an unusual boy. In his make-up there is not a particle of cowardice. So far as courage and steadfastness goes, he would have stayed at White Rock all night long without a whimper.” (The Idaho Recorder)

The Hicks Boys Plan Their Escape

In 1974, my brother Mike and I decided to run away. We lived directly across the Salmon River from White Rock mentioned in Little Jack’s story. It was fall and cold weather was coming on. Dad and us boys had just finished hauling a dump truck load of wood from the sawmill, and it was laying in a pile in our backyard. It was Mike’s and my responsibility to ‘rick’ that wood in neat stacks back by the shed. I was ten years old, and my brother had just turned twelve.

The more we worked the more pissed we got. We were overworked and underpaid! After discussing our plight at some length, we figured our best course of action was to run from our lives of oppression and live down by the river in an old cabin we often visited. After much talk, we had a flawless plan established.

I would surreptitiously enter the house and haul out my new .22 Marlin rifle and all the shells I could find. I would also stuff my Buck hunting knife and clothes in my backpack and hide it on the back porch. Mike would do the same. He had his shotgun and enough shells to hunt ducks and kill any bears that happened along. I could shoot a deer’s eye out at 50 yards with that Marlin, so we could eat venison to our heart’s delight!

For the other needed food, we decided to make a raid on the family food storage. Nobody would miss those canned goods. And there was enough beef and pork in the freezer to keep us going for at least a few weeks. When we needed more supplies, we would sneak back in the middle of the night.

I was euphoric knowing I would never sit in another school class as long as I lived! And no more bedtime at 7:00 p.m. or doing chores for those ungrateful parents who were, at that moment, sitting by the fire with our sisters, relaxing, while we were out working in the cold!

Well, like so many other big plans and dreams I had as a young boy, my plan to run away and live independently of any adult supervision soon unraveled. Dad opened the door and called out, “Hey boys, supper is ready! Get in here and eat!”

Mom had the table set with a big cast iron pot of chili and a pan of cornbread. As Mike and I sat down and began wolfing down the food, all thoughts of living on our own down by the river suddenly vanished. Before bedtime, I made one last ditch-effort to get my brother to run away with me. “Jeff, there’s no way we can cook as good as mom. I’m staying home.” And that was that.

Through the generations, beef steaks, chili and cornbread, pies and cakes, and other delicious, FREE food have likely inspired a lot of kids to remain at home under their parent’s roofs. I’m thinking Little Jack Maher back in 1921 would’ve found that out soon enough, too.

A Teamster Looking for Work in Yellow Jacket

Around 1927, Vic and Clyta Hicks moved their family from their homestead in Pahsimeroi, Idaho to Yellow Jacket. Like so many folks trying to make a living in those days, Vic was looking for a bit of good luck to go in his favor.

Years before, he moved his family onto the homestead in Pahsimeroi, but he couldn’t secure enough water to get a good crop. Neighbors on bigger places had rights to the water in agreements that were decades old. Even from a canal his father-in-law helped build that ran next to his property, the water was already claimed. Water has always been sacred to ranchers and farmers. It’s their life-blood. If you don’t have water, you’re done as a rancher or farmer.

After trying unsuccessfully to secure water rights, Vic ran a small logging operation in Patterson, further up the valley, but that petered-out. So he and Clyta decided to take his team of horses, Dot and Gyp, and try to find work in Yellow Jacket. The mining operation in that area had started back up and Vic figured he could do some freighting or whatever else he could find. The family moved out in a wagon loaded with all their possessions and pulled by the two big blacks, Dot and Gyp.

Vic and Clyta’s son Harry, who was 11 years-old at the time, wrote about this event in his life history written in 1974. Here are some excerpts taken directly from his memoir regarding the move to Yellow Jacket.

“The first day, we headed up to the Morgan Creek divide. Mom and dad rode in the covered wagon seat. That prized team of horses; I remember their hooves were the size of the bottom of a nail keg. They weighed 2200 pounds each.

I’ve seen my Uncle Earl, as good a teamster as dad, risk his life as a showman trick on the performance of that team by casting aside the lines and directing the horses by talk alone. ‘Up a little, up a little, whoa back, who back!’ and so on.

When Dot and Gyp got old, dad sold the team to the city of Salmon where they sprinkled the streets, pulling the sprinkler wagon up and down the streets to settle the dust. The old fellow that drove them would crawl off the water wagon and visit with someone on the street or get a shot of bootleg and catch the team on the way back to the filler hydrant!”

“The first night we camped above the old Kingsbury ranch on what was Big Creek, now Panther Creek. While dad made camp, mom caught enough big trout for supper and breakfast the next morning. She tied a knot loop in a string and flipped the fish out of the water onto the bank. That night, we sat by the fire and told stories until I fell asleep.

The next day, we pulled into the stage station on Big Creek in Forney. The place was run by a typical French pioneer, Milt Merritt, with his big moss-horn mustache and broken French language. Mom got a job working there as a cook for the freighters that stopped in there regularly, and for the pilgrims, salesmen, miners, and such that came along the road. Dad went on to Yellow Jacket to find us a place to get settled-in.

My sister and I started school in Forney. The schoolhouse was a mile or so below town. The O’Conner kids went to school there, too.

I would meet every freight string of wagons as they came in, and I got to know them all. There was Hilliard Griebbler, who was from Tennessee and drove an 8 or 10 mule hitch. He had a jockey-box full of rocks and would cuss and throw rocks at the leaders because he couldn’t reach them with his whip. Then there was Ferrill Terry, a gently saint, but all man, who had a great sense of humor. I later worked for him in the CCCs.

I remember Charlie Mitchell, the stage driver. His boy Charlie and I went to school together in Salmon later on. Then there was Curt Roberts, another ring-tailed, rootin-tootin, mean son-of-a-gun from Tennessee, same as Rufus Isley.” (Harry Hicks History)

For some reason, the old cuss who worked the stage station intrigued me. I did some research and found a short volume of oral Idaho history given in 1969 by Wayne O’Conner – from the same O’Conner family mentioned by Harry Hicks in his personal history. According to O’Conner, the Milt Merritt mentioned above – the man who ran the stage station – was killed a couple years after the Hicks’ moved through Forney in 1927.

It would be well to mention a bit about the O’Conner family who ranched in Forney. The family migrated to Idaho from Iowa in the 1890s. Wayne was the son of Frank and Belle O’Conner, and he was born in 1897. O’Conners moved to Forney in 1907 and lived on the ranch there for some time. The interview I found was one given to Don Smith in Salmon in October 1969. Wayne discussed events in Forney near the same time this story takes place.

Wayne’s father Frank “drove the mail route to the Singiser mine, Meyer’s Cove, and on into Yellow Jacket.” He was killed in 1912 after being thrown from his horse. After his father died, the rest of the family continued proving up the ranch near Forney.

According to Wayne O’Conner, Milt Merritt’s name was actually Malcomb Benjamin Merritt, but people called him Milt or Malc for short. Merritt was a “little, short, heavy-set fellow and was crooked as could be. He was in horse stealing for a long time until the government got after him. He’d been into so much trouble, and been in the courts and everything, over shooting at people and stealing cattle and so on.” According to O’Conner, nobody felt very bad when somebody shot and killed him – even the Sheriff – who was Tommy Stroud at the time, seemed to care much. An investigation was done by the sheriff and his deputy, Vaughan Clark, but everyone had a solid alibi, and the case was eventually dropped and closed. The year Merritt was killed was 1934. (Interview with Wayne O’Conner, 1969)

Harry Hicks’ account of Yellow Jacket continues.

“Later that fall, we were to leave the schoolhouse at Forney and mother was to leave the cooking job, and we were to move over to Yellow Jacket. The road as I remember went up the same side creek where Forney was located, not the canyon where the O’Conner ranch is now. Mrs. O’Conner raised several good boys and girls there after her husband’s death. I believe I knew them all; they are scattered all over – same as we all.

We got an early start out of Forney. I remember the sounds the horses made as they pulled the two wagons with our stuff and junk – the creak of the leather and the jingle of the chains and the smells of the horses and plump, plump of those huge feet as they set down on anything. I could hardly keep my head on my shoulders as it kept rocking around; this part of the road was creek bottom. It became easier as the road began to rise and climb.

Along in the evening, we came to the town of Yellow Jacket. The town had it beginnings through Mr. Steen. Much later, my wife and I was to get to know the son of Mr. Steen – a man in his forties – Heber Steen – and we became good friends.

What a thrill it was to see the town itself – such a hurry and scurry of building. There was a carnival-like attitude in everyone. And the change in dress confirmed each kind of work. The general working type men wore overalls and logger boots and jackets. The company men wore tight legged pants and tight-laced boots.

We pulled our wagons in at the wagon yard. The big team shook their harnesses and gave a sigh. Everyone gathered around our outfit to see such a big team of horses, and the men began to carry on a familiar conversation with father. Some had already heard about the big team that had come up from the Camas Prairie several years ago. They had seen them in Challis at a pulling contest.

After the talk, we put the horses in the barn where they had to duck their heads to enter. Then they called for grain with a soft-coaxing whinny. They were fed hay and oats, and we broke open an extra bale of hay, as we would be sleeping in the barn too.” (Harry Hicks History)

Note: For those wishing to visit Yellow Jacket, Idaho, please keep in mind that much of the property around the old townsite is privately owned.

Anyone who would like a copy of the 1969 interview with Wayne O’Conner, please send me a message via email.

One Day, God Rode the Brooklyn Subway

Some stories need no introduction. But if there was one, I would say this particular tale restored my faith in humanity. The stories taught in this short story are exactly the values I learned Growing Up in Idaho.

Marcel Sternberger was a methodical man of nearly 50, with bushy white hair, guileless brown eyes, and the bouncing enthusiasm of a czardas dancer of his native Hungary. He always took the 9:09 Long Island Railroad train from his suburban home to Woodside, N.Y.., where he caught a subway into the city.

On the morning of January 10, 1948, Sternberger boarded the 9:09 as usual. En route, he suddenly decided to visit Laszlo Victor, a Hungarian friend who lived in Brooklyn and was ill.

Accordingly, at Ozone Park, Sternberger changed to the subway for Brooklyn, went to his friend’s house, and stayed until midafternoon. He then boarded a Manhattan-bound subway for his Fifth Avenue office. Here is Marcel’s incredible story:

The car was crowded, and there seemed to be no chance of a seat. But just as I entered, a man sitting by the door suddenly jumped up to leave, and I slipped into the empty place. I’ve been living in New York long enough not to start conversations with strangers. But being a photographer, I have the peculiar habit of analyzing people’s faces, and I was struck by the features of the passenger on my left. He was probably in his late 30s, and when he glanced up, his eyes seemed to have a hurt expression in them. He was reading a Hungarian-language newspaper, and something prompted me to say in Hungarian, “I hope you don’t mind if I glance at your paper.”

The man seemed surprised to be addressed in his native language. But he answered politely, “You may read it now. I’ll have time later on.”

During the half-hour ride to town, we had quite a conversation. He said his name was Bela Paskin. A law student when World War II started, he had been put into a German labor battalion and sent to the Ukraine. Later he was captured by the Russians and put to work burying the German dead. After the war, he covered hundreds of miles on foot until he reached his home in Debrecen, a large city in eastern Hungary.

I myself knew Debrecen quite well, and we talked about it for a while. Then he told me the rest of his story. When he went to the apartment once occupied by his father, mother, brothers and sisters, he found strangers living there. Then he went upstairs to the apartment that he and his wife once had. It also was occupied by strangers. None of them had ever heard of his family.

As he was leaving, full of sadness, a boy ran after him, calling “Paskin bacsi! Paskin bacsi!” That means “Uncle Paskin.” The child was the son of some old neighbors of his. He went to the boy’s home and talked to his parents. “Your whole family is dead,” they told him. “The Nazis took them and your wife to Auschwitz.”

Auschwitz was one of the worst Nazi concentration camps. Paskin gave up all hope. A few days later, too heartsick to remain any longer in Hungary, he set out again on foot, stealing across border after border until he reached Paris. He managed to immigrate to the United States in October 1947, just three months before I met him.

All the time he had been talking, I kept thinking that somehow his story seemed familiar. A young woman whom I had met recently at the home of friends had also been from Debrecen; she had been sent to Auschwitz; from there she had been transferred to work in a German munitions factory. Her relatives had been killed in the gas chambers. Later she was liberated by the Americans and was brought here in the first boatload of displaced persons in 1946.

Her story had moved me so much that I had written down her address and phone number, intending to invite her to meet my family and thus help relieve the terrible emptiness in her life.

It seemed impossible that there could be any connection between these two people, but as I neared my station, I fumbled anxiously in my address book. I asked in what I hoped was a casual voice, “Was your wife’s name Marya?”

He turned pale. “Yes!” he answered. “How did you know?”

He looked as if he were about to faint.

I said, “Let’s get off the train.” I took him by the arm at the next station and led him to a phone booth. He stood there like a man in a trance while I dialed her phone number.

It seemed hours before Marya Paskin answered. (Later I learned her room was alongside the telephone, but she was in the habit of never answering it because she had so few friends and the calls were always for someone else. This time, however, there was no one else at home and, after letting it ring for a while, she responded.)

When I heard her voice at last, I told her who I was and asked her to describe her husband. She seemed surprised at the question, but gave me a description. Then I asked her where she had lived in Debrecen, and she told me the address.

Asking her to hold the line, I turned to Paskin and said, “Did you and your wife live on such-and-such a street?”

“Yes!” Bela exclaimed. He was white as a sheet and trembling.

“Try to be calm,” I urged him. “Something miraculous is about to happen to you. Here, take this telephone and talk to your wife!”

He nodded his head in mute bewilderment, his eyes bright with tears. He took the receiver, listened a moment to his wife’s voice, then suddenly cried, “This is Bela! This is Bela!” and he began to mumble hysterically. Seeing that the poor fellow was so excited he couldn’t talk coherently, I took the receiver from his shaking hands.

“Stay where you are,” I told Marya, who also sounded hysterical. “I am sending your husband to you. We will be there in a few minutes.”

Bela was crying like a baby and saying over and over again. “It is my wife. I go to my wife!”

At first I thought I had better accompany Paskin, lest the man should faint from excitement, but I decided that this was a moment in which no strangers should intrude. Putting Paskin into a taxicab, I directed the driver to take him to Marya’s address, paid the fare, and said goodbye.

Bela Paskin’s reunion with his wife was a moment so poignant, so electric with suddenly released emotion, that afterward neither he nor Marya could recall much about it.

“I remember only that when I left the phone, I walked to the mirror like in a dream to see if maybe my hair had turned gray,” she said later. “The next thing I know, a taxi stops in front of the house, and it is my husband who comes toward me. Details I cannot remember; only this I know—that I was happy for the first time in many years.”

“Even now it is difficult to believe that it happened. We have both suffered so much; I have almost lost the capability to not be afraid. Each time my husband goes from the house, I say to myself, Will anything happen to take him from me again?”

Her husband is confident that no horrible misfortune will ever again befall the two of them. “Providence has brought us together,” he says simply. “It was meant to be.”

Skeptical persons will no doubt attribute the events of that memorable afternoon to mere chance. But was it chance that made Marcel Sternberger suddenly decide to visit his sick friend and hence take a subway line that he had never ridden before? Was it chance that caused the man sitting by the door of the car to rush out just as Sternberger came in? Was it chance that caused Bela Paskin to be sitting beside Sternberger, reading a Hungarian newspaper?

Was it chance—or did God ride the Brooklyn subway that afternoon?

Paul Deutschman, Great Stories Remembered, edited and compiled by Joe L. Wheeler

Take Back Your Life

Are you enslaved by daily habits or influences that stifle your productivity? Do you find yourself being plagued with tasks and activities that do not contribute to your personal goals and ideals? Here are a few simple steps to take back your life. As a kid growing up in Idaho, I learned values of hard work, self-reliance, and productivity. These simple measures explain how to accomplish that.

Personal Guiding Principles Statement
Everyone must draw-up and incorporate a few principles that will guide their decisions and activities in life. Nearly every person recognizes their own basic values that are learned from childhood. However, surprisingly, people often don’t construct those values into a fluid structure that will guide their decisions and activities. So, at the moment of decision, those people are not resolute and often get pegged with being wishy-washy, weak, or ineffective. If you are one of those people, you can overcome that weakness by creating a personal guiding principles statement (P-GPS).

Imagine yourself hiking through a thick forest without any distinct trail that will guide you to your destination. The beauty of the forest is magnificent as you bask in the exquisite colors and sounds surrounding you. However, you are troubled because the further you walk into the forest, the more lost you become since there is no defined trail. With the tall trees surrounding you, you are unable to determine your location or direction of travel.

Suddenly, you remember the GPS in your front pocket. After turning it on, you are quickly able to mark your location and the direction of your destination in relation to your surroundings. That is exactly what your P-GPS will do for you personally as you navigate whatever paths you choose in your career and personal life. Your P-GPS distinctly defines your personal “position” in context with your chosen surroundings and environment.

Your P-GPS is a statement containing some broad descriptors that explicitly define you. It’s a good idea to use terms in your statement that are broad and general, in order to cover all the vast expanse that defines your purpose and existence. Here is my P-GPS. Be compassionate and virtuous, honest and ethical, real and present, open minded but solid in my convictions.

You may be asking, “What does a P-GPS have to do with personal and time management?” The answer is your P-GPS is the foundation of principles and values with which your daily life is structured. In fact you may even recognize that the values contained in your P-GPS guided your educational choices, career path, and the other major elements in your life that subsequently dictate what your daily tasks entail.

Core Ideals that Dictate Actions
Every person has a few things with which they “hang their hat.” These ideals dictate a person’s views and actions and usually influence a person’s daily and weekly routine. Here’s an example. Consider all the people you know who follow a strict religious standard of Sunday worship. One of their personal ideals that govern their activities is the belief that Sunday is a day of rest and should be reserved for religious service and worship. Each Sunday, these folks make a conscious decision to be sitting in the pews at church. In contrast, consider your friends who find Sunday solace by visiting nature. Every weekend, they head for the hills to partake of nature’s beauty and serenity. Both of these groups have Sunday ideals but define them differently.

In order to take control of your personal life and manage your time effectively, you must determine what your core ideals are. Take some time, be true and honest with yourself, and define your core ideals. As an example, I’ve listed my core ideals:

happiness and safety of my wife and children
belief in God, daily prayer, Sunday church worship
career for professional growth and income
education

As you confirm your core ideals, you will recognize how they influence the daily and weekly activities in your life. If you are firm in those ideals, you will not allow outside influences on a whim to alter your actions based on those ideals. You will soon be recognized as one resolute in your goals and life’s direction. The actions facilitated by those ideals will define who you are.

Managing the Daily Grind
Everyone on earth has the same amount of time–exactly 24 hours each day to accomplish their goals and tasks. However, we can all stipulate that some folks just seem to accomplish a lot more with that 24-hour allotment than others. It’s a fact; they do. And the reason is they have a game plan.

After you’ve established your Personal Guiding Principles Statement and defined your core ideals, you have a great understanding of who you are and what defines you. You can now plan your days and weeks with purpose. Your planning will now illuminate your personal standards of excellence and draw you towards activities representative of your personal goals.

How often have you found yourself sitting at your computer, your eyes glazed-over, with your fingers methodically clicking your mouse as you surf through the countless images and links on your favorite social networking site? I’ve been there! I recall times that I easily wasted a full day checking out all the cool things my “friends” posted. Connecting with friends and associates via the internet has its place, but we all know that an inordinate amount of time can be lost in the process–time we will never get back!

So, how do we avoid the pitfalls of time wasting? The answer is found in personal discipline and planning. You manage the discipline part and then follow this simple planning sequence for immediate success.

You will need a daily journal recording device or notebook. Years ago, I used a small flip-notebook that easily fit inside my shirt or inside suit breast pocket. Now I use my iPhone. Whatever device you choose, you need to have it with you always and make sure it can easily be written in. Since I always have my phone wherever I go, I prefer to use it. If you like, a rectangular pocket calendar will work just fine.

Now for the “meat and potatoes” of this game plan. At the beginning and end of your day, you must allocate five minutes of quiet time for only yourself. Here is what you will do with this short, but invaluable time:

list on your chosen device the tasks that must be completed on this day–record them
review yesterday’s list of tasks and bring forward any that still need to be completed
rate each task according to importance and expediency
list activities that either you are expected to participate in or you desire to participate in
establish the time parameters for activities–IE. Internet surfing: 15 minutes, grocery shopping: 60 minutes, staff meeting: 30 minutes
record any prudent reminders–IE. Jimmy’s birthday, the visiting VIP’s name is Colonel Zogg
Review all your tasks and activities for the day and make a mental note how each contributes to your P-GPS and/or your core ideals
Review your task and activity list often throughout the day. Follow it explicitly! When an activity or task is complete, cross it out.
At the end of the day, take a moment to record your successes and make notes for the next day’s activities.

As you perform this exercise at the beginning and end of each day, you will soon notice your mind beginning to bend toward personal order and constructive time management. You will draw positive parallels with your tasks and activities in relation with your core ideals and guiding principles. You will gain self-discipline and will no longer find yourself being overtaken by mind-numbing activities that you admit are a complete waste of your valuable time, unless it is specifically planned.

As you incorporate this simple plan, I promise that you will be more productive. Productivity brings happiness. Taking back your life brings happiness!