INTRODUCTION

      My Dad grew up riding horses, milking cows, and raising rabbits.  He spoke of picking weeds that his parents had planted.  One summer, when his father was out of town, Dad was left in charge.  He had always wanted to have a perfect cow.  He had seen pictures of perfect cows in magazines.  He took his father’s new shears and sheared off every hair on the best milk cow they had.  It had no dirt, no flies, no hair.  It was mostly pink.  The next morning, his father came home and found Dad’s perfect cow, outside and shaking.  He did not know that a perfect cow did not want to be hairless in the middle of an Idaho winter.  The cow died, and Dad went on to other projects.

      The stories Dad told about life in Idaho seemed fictitious to me.  Growing up in the city, I lived in a neighborhood with a basketball court and a park, and enjoyed playing computer games with my friends.  We had a garden, where Dad planted weeds for the kids to pick, and we even tried raising rabbits.  I never could relate to his desire to live on more than a city lot, until I learned about his parents and grandparents.  Dad was a third-generation Idaho native.  One thing he taught me was to be proud of my name.  He wrote, “It is wonderful to be in the Rasmussen family.  I want to always be worthy of that name.  Take my dog, my gun and my pickup truck but don’t ever mess with my name.  That is mine to keep.”  The following is the story of the families from whom I inherited my name.