LAYTON — Don’t kid yourself. Centenarians know how to celebrate a birthday.

They ought to, they’ve had more practice.

On Jan. 10, Philip Bergeson turned 100 years old. Early that morning — the middle of the night, really — Bergeson devised a special birthday surprise for Kathy and Ron Rash, his daughter and son-in-law with whom he now lives.

“At 1:40 in the morning we were awakened to this banging sound,” Kathy recalls. “We both jumped out of bed, and there he was in the hall, his cane in one hand banging a plastic garbage can in the other, saying, ‘Hey, hey, hey! Hey, hey, hey!’ Then he started singing ‘Happy Birthday’ to himself.”

Such is life at 100.

• RELATED: Happy 100th Birthday Philip E. Bergeson

Philip Bergeson was born Jan. 10, 1917, on a dairy farm in Lewiston, Utah. Because Bergeson was the youngest boy in a family of 12 children, his father put him in charge of naming the family’s dairy cows.

“I named a number of cows after my brothers’ girlfriends,” he says with a grin.

In 1935, Bergeson graduated from North Cache High School, where he was a cheerleader as well as the lead in the school play his senior year. He loved performing.

“He told me once if he wasn’t a farmer, he would have liked to be an actor,” Kathy said.

But by the time Bergeson finished high school, his older brothers had already gone off to college and other pursuits.

“They didn’t want to stay home and run the farm,” Bergeson says. “I didn’t want to be a farmer, either, but my dad’s health was getting bad. So I stayed on the farm.”

Bergeson would meet his future wife, Faye, at a dance hall in Preston, Idaho. They were married Oct. 2, 1940, and went on to have five children, 17 grandchildren and 36 great-grandchildren. Faye passed away in 2009.

Joe Bergeson, a son, remembers growing up on the family’s Lewiston farm. And he remembers having to get up at 5 a.m. to help his father milk the cows.

“I could hear his alarm go off upstairs, and I’d lay in bed and try to sleep as hard as I could,” Joe said. “Then I’d hear his footsteps come down the back stairs, and I knew I couldn’t get around it.”

Still, none of the children regrets growing up on a farm.

“It really was a Huckleberry Finn/Tom Sawyer childhood,” Joe says.

Daughter Elaine Pitcher remembers how cousins would come to their house in the summer for a “farm experience” and get more than they bargained for. Her father had instituted an informal little club among the nieces and nephews, and in order to join it, you had to stick your head in the toilet and flush it three times. If you did that, you got a ride on a horse.

“Nobody was able to make the third flush because they were laughing too hard,” Elaine recalls.

Joe says their father was famous for pulling gags like that. Cousins would come to visit the farm and Bergeson would tell them “We’ve got this cow with a crazy tit. Wanna see it?”

Joe says his father would then take the unsuspecting youth to one of the cows in the barn, and have them get down on the ground, really close to the udder.

“He’d get these kids looking close until their face was almost touching the udder, then he’d grab the udder, squeeze it and squirt milk in their face,” Joe says.

The children also remember their father always being ready to help others, and how he had taken the art of “visiting” to a whole new level.

“We were always the last people out of church on Sundays, because dad stayed to visit,” Kathy said.

Eventually, in the early 1960s, Bergeson sold the family farm due to health reasons.

“He has a bad back, and that would flare up several times a year and put him flat on his back,” Kathy said.

Like the previous generation, Bergeson’s sons weren’t interested in continuing the family farm — one became a college professor, Joe became a doctor.

After selling the farm, Bergeson was elected to the three-member governing board of the Cache County Agricultural Stabilization and Conservation Service, a federal agency that administered farm programs. He worked there until his retirement in the 1980s.

Bergeson’s love of theater came in handy most of his life. He was a storyteller, and often did humorous readings and emceed agricultural conferences or church events.

“He was well-known all over the state,” Kathy says.

Elaine says that when her father hit 95 years old, he started randomly inviting people to his 100th birthday party.

“He told me his goal was to make 100,” she said.

It was a reasonable goal. Of the eight Bergeson siblings who survived to adulthood, half made it to the century mark. A sister lived to be 103, and two brothers hit 102.

Philip Bergeson’s long-awaited birthday bash came on Jan. 14, with 75 family members and about 250 friends and other well-wishers in attendance.

Bergeson’s advice for longevity?

“All I can say is enjoy life,” he says.

Which, apparently, includes waking the whole house in the middle of the night to wish yourself a happy 100th birthday.

Contact Mark Saal at 801-625-4272, or msaal@standard.net. Follow him on Twitter at @Saalman. Like him on Facebook at facebook.com/SEMarkSaal.