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EPHRAIM, Sanpete County — Sometimes small towns have big stories.
This one is true — but you have to go back nearly 40 years for this story. Back when Kelly Nielson and her sister, Becky Kjar, were, well, lets just say they were a little younger back then.
“It was a while ago, but I’ll never forget it,” Kelly said Wednesday. “I don't know how it all worked out that way, but it did."
In those days, along a row of buildings on Main Street in Ephraim, was a bar. One night, Kelly went in and recognized a man right away.
"I just knew it was Merle Haggard,” she said. “Our mother was a big Merle Haggard fan, so growing up (we had) lots of albums with his face on it. So I knew right off.”
Kelly said she walked up to the man and "just said, ‘You've got to be Merle Haggard.’ And he said, 'No I'm not, no I'm not.' And I said ‘Yeah, you really are.' "
Kelly can be persistent, and eventually Haggard admitted who he was.
Knowing restaurants in small towns don't stay open late, especially back then, Kelly said she invited Haggard to her home after he said he was hungry.
At their parents' house in Manti, Becky was home alone; the girls' parents were away on a trip to Minnesota.
"All of a sudden she walked in with Merle Haggard and this other strange guy and my mouth about hit the floor,” Becky recalled.
It's not every day Merle Haggard shows up at your house, so Becky made him a sandwich.
“I don’t really remember what it was. It might have been a scrambled egg sandwich,” Becky said with a laugh. “I was really nervous, but he was a very nice guy. We fed them and they left. It was a really weird experience.”
Before he left, they got Haggard's autograph on a piece of cardboard from a beer box. Then they went back to Haggard's motel in Ephraim, where he sang and played guitar for the rest of the night.
"It was just a fun night,” Kelly said.
Of course, no one believed their story.
"Who would think something like that would happen in a small town?” she said with a laugh.
However, when newspaper articles at the time reported Haggard missing because he never showed up to planned concerts in Denver and Salt Lake City, people figured the sisters were telling the truth.
"I just thought he was going on vacation, going somewhere, and just happened to stop by through here,” Kelly said. “I didn’t even know he was on tour until he told us he was supposed to be singing at a concert.”
Related Story:
Country icon Merle Haggard, champion of the underdog, dies
Country giant Merle Haggard, who rose from poverty and prison to international fame through his songs about outlaws, underdogs and an abiding sense of national pride in such hits as "Okie From Muskogee" and "Sing Me Back Home," died Wednesday at 79, on his birthday.Whatever his reason for missing the concerts, the sisters don't really talk about the encounter all that much anymore — that was until they saw the news Wednesday that Haggard died.
“It was sad to hear it. He was a big part of making what country music is today,” Kelly said.
"The first thing I thought about was him walking through the kitchen door,” Becky said.
Yeah, that one night when the "Okie from Muskogee" was in Sanpete County.
