DEMAR GALE
An Autobiography
HUMBLE CIRCUMSTANCES
I was born October ninth, nineteen sixteen at Bluebell, Utah, under real humble circumstances. We had a one room log house with dirt roof and floor. My mother had covered the underside of the roof with factory and white washed it. She also covered the log walls. The floor was clay packed hard as cement, unless water was spilled on it. Then it was slick and sticky.
I made a trip back to the old homestead in about 1965 and the house looks the same as I remember it on the eventful day that I was born.
When my mother gave birth, she had my two grandmothers as midwives. There were no doctors there, but I guess he wasn't needed. I was big enough to pretty well take care of myself. I was twelve pounds, nine ounces of all muscle.
I remember people coming to see the new baby and saying, "well, isn't he a nice, big baby." I really don't know much about this because we didn't have a mirror, but they say that I was really red with swollen eyes and my nose was flattened over quite a big portion of my swollen red face.
"RED"
My grandfather Merrell was bishop of the Bluebell Ward, so it wasn't long until I was introduced into the Church. My father gave me a blessing and a name. The name they gave me was a doosey, DeMar Gale. I have been called by the name "Red" ever since I can remember. The "Red" name didn't come because of my red face. I was born with a fuzz on my head that was kinda red and as I grew older the fuzz turned to red hair.
WATERDOG
I guess I didn't get around as fast as Paul Bunyan, but I learned to crawl pretty fast and had an inquisitive nature, my mother says. She claims I was always into something, like getting my hand in a mouse trap.
One day I was out on the lawn at my grandfather's place. My mother picked me up, I was sucking on something. She pulled it out of my mouth, it was only a waterdog. If you have never tasted waterdog, give it a try. They are real slick and wiggly.
LAVOIR
I was fortunate enough to have an uncle just three weeks older than I was. He also had red hair (six of my uncles and aunts were red-headed). His name was LaVoir. We had some real good times together. He wasn't very big and didn't care so much for the exciting things, like playing. He became a real student and I continue to like to play.
DONALD
Sometime along about this period, I think it was the first day of June, 1918, my mother gave me the cutest little brother, Donald. He wasn't very big and everyone said what a beautiful baby he was. He has continued along this same line until he has become a real handsome man. He must be young looking, because people are always calling me his dad.
MONTICELLO
Along about this time my folks decided that the pastures were greener at Monticello, Utah. We moved into a small house near the flour mill, were my father worked as the miller. This was a really exciting time in my life because I got to go to the mill where there was always indians trading for flour. I guess this is where I learned to like pine nuts because the indians would trade pine nuts for flour, so we always had all we could eat.
During this time dad and mother both got the flu. There was no one there to take care of them, so it fell my lot to build fires, carry wood, and do all the errands. They were both so sick they were nearly delirious.
It wasn't long after this that we moved into town, where we had running water out in the yard. This was a real novelty to someone who had never seen running water out of a hydrant. My brother Eldon was born at this place. He made me look real small. He weighed in at thirteen pounds, seven ounces, all fat.
One of the highlights of this time was when John R. Young came and visited us for a few days. He was dad's uncle and was married to Tammy Tammer Black. He was a real story teller.
GRANDMA MERRELL DIES
One cold, snowy night I remember there was a lot of sadness around the house. I learned that my grandmother Gale, Martha Black Gale, had died. At four o'clock the next day, Dad and another brother took her body to Blanding for burial.
HOMESTEADING
The next spring dad took up a homestead north and east of Monticello. I can remember when we left to go out to the homestead. We had everything we owned in a wagon and we were leading the cow behind. I thought this was quite a thrilling experience.
The first night out was one that made my hair stand on end. There were a lot of coyotes out there and all of them were howling all night. I couldn't get close enough to mother to feel safe.
I can't remember how long we stayed there, I sure enjoyed going after water. We would take the wagon and load three or four fifty gallon wooden barrels and go two or three miles to a lake. Dad would back the wagon out in the lake far enough that he could dip the water into the barrels.
Quite often he would take the twenty-two rifle and shoot some ducks or cottontails. It was fun for a four year old to clear the land and help build the log cabin. I guess this homesteading wasn't so profitable.
CARLYLE
We moved onto a big dry farm at Carlyle. This is four or five miles north of Monticello. I had a lot of fun and excitement here. My grandfather Merrill, my uncles Porter and Bill Merrill came down to work with dad this year. We must have had fifty head of horses to work and the farm to run. I enjoyed going out with Uncle Bill to plow most of all. He would let me drive the horses, usually four or six head on a big disk plow. One day I got off to get some rocks to throw at the horses and one of the wheels on the plow ran over my foot. I thought it had cut it clear off. But after three or four days I was out running around again. Mother didn't let me go out in the field for a while, so I was kind of helping around the house.
I had seen mother clean out the ashes from the old cook stove and dump them in the two holer toilet so the flies wouldn't be so bad. I decided that would be a good chore for me. I took them down and dumped them in. A few minutes later the whole thing was ablaze. I must have had some hot coals among the ashes.
I am not sure how the chores pertaining to the toilet were taken care of by the rest of the family, but I went out to the big horse barn.
This summer had a lot of experiences, but the harvest time was the best of all. We had a header that cut the wheat and elevated it up to a basket rack on the wagon. I would stand in the corner of the rack and drive the team while they loaded the wagon. The heads of grain would pile up around me. When it piled up to my arms, uncle Bill would pull me up on top and I would drive some more. When it was clear full we would go into the thrasher. The thrasher would run by horse power, six teams of horses with my grandfather driving them.
INDIANS
During this summer some of the indians on the reservation decided to leave the reservation. They stole some cattle and horses and beat up a few ranchers and then headed out into the bad lands. The Sheriff and posse went after them so there was lots of excitement around about the indians.
One day while all the men folks were gone a big indian came to our place. It really frightened me and I could tell my mother was a bit nervous. The indian was the Bishop's son, who was kind of a wild one. He was on his way into town to turn himself in to the Sheriff.
THE NICKEL
One night the folks were going into town for something and they left me with Granddad Merrell. I felt pretty badly that I couldn't go, so dad gave me a nickel. I still felt real bad, so I laid on the bed and cried. No one paid much attention, so I was about to quit. I put the nickel in my mouth and was laying on my back. I took a big breath so I could let out one last big howl and down went the nickel. This made this a lot more sad. I had lost my nickel and didn't get to go to town either. For the next two or three days I didn't use the two seater for fear I would never find my nickel. Luck was with me when I did recover my money.
EXCITING BIRTHDAY
In the fall Granddad, Bill and Porter were going back to Bluebell. It was the ninth of October, early in the morning. Uncle Bill went out and roped a burro and gave it to me for my fifth birthday. This was a really exciting time.
The creek by our place had some ice frozen on it from the night before. Mother took a wash tub and got enough ice to make some ice cream for my birthday dinner.
After dinner we decided to go gathering pine nuts about three miles from the ranch. I rode my new burro and we had a real nice day. We gathered a lot of nuts.
On the way home I was riding beside the wagon when the roads forked. The wagon took the right fork and I followed. But the donkey decided to take the left, so we parted. I don't think it hurt me very badly, but I sure was mad at the old donkey.
Uncle Porter ran and caught him, mother wanted me to ride in the wagon the rest of the way home, but I didn't want the men to think I was afraid of being thrown. So I got back on the ornery donkey. He wouldn't go with the wagon on the road, he wanted to go on the left hand road.
There was an indian camped on this road named Mancus Joe. He was kind of a bad indian. I was afraid of the indians, but didn't want to give up my donkey. So Porter grabbed the donkey by the tail and ran along behind me until we passed Joe's camp. I believe this was one of the most exciting birthdays I have ever had.
SPOT
I had a collie dog that went with me every place that I went. I thought more of this dog than anything else. There were a lot of freight wagons that camped near our place. One night a freighter camped near our place. He came up to the house and talked until after I had gone to bed.
The next morning I got up and looked for my dog, but he was gone and the freighter was gone. We asked some of the other freighters if they had seen my dog. They said that they had seen this man take him. I thought the world had come to an end. I guess I must have cried most of the time for two weeks.
One night about ten o'clock, quite a while after we had gone to bed I heard a noise on our porch. Then I heard scratching on the door. I jumped up and ran to the door. There was my dog, Spot, his feet were raw and he was about starved to death. My, that was a happy night. I don't think I slept at all, it was a lot better than Christmas.
MODEL T
Next spring dad traded what we had and got a Model T Ford car. I had never ridden in one before and dad had never driven one before. He took a few lessons and we loaded up and headed back to Bluebell.
We got up near Green River. There had been some heavy rain above us that had caused some flooding. The bridge was washed out, there were several cars stopped waiting for the water to go down. A couple of cowboys came along and put their ropes on the front of the cars and pulled them across. When it came our turn dad cranked the Model T up and drove right on through. I was sure proud that my dad was so smart. We drove on to Green River, where we camped for the night.
MOSQUITOS
The next morning I tried to wake up, but could not open my eyes. The mosquitos had bitten me until my eyes had swollen completely shut. I didn't see a thing until we arrived at Bluebell.
CIGARS
A short time after we arrived some of the older boys were going horseback riding. My uncle Arthur and I got to go with them. Arthur is two years older than I. My uncle Victor was the leader of those boys, they must have been eleven or twelve years old.
When we got out in the cedars, uncle Victor pulled some cigars out of his pocket and cut them in half and gave each one of us one. I thought I was pretty smart to get to smoke with the big boys. A short time later I started to get sick. I lost my breakfast and got so dizzy I couldn't stay on my horse. Uncle Victor held me in front of him and took me home. I didn't tell mother what was the matter for fear I wouldn't be able to go with the older boys any more. Victor didn't want to say anything because his dad was Bishop and he would sure get in trouble. I kept getting worse until Victor decided he better confess before I died. This ended my cigar smoking days for ever.
BULL FIGHTS
One of our most enjoyable pass times was to round up a couple of range bulls that hadn't seen each other before. We would put them together and watch the bull fight. This was real exciting.
Sometimes for a change we would tie a rope to the tail of a dry cow hide and pull it at a lope in front of the cows. It is surprising the effect it has on a heard of cows. They start to bellow and run after the cow hide. The cow hide sails along about two feet above the ground.
We ran the cows and horses so much that when our dads found out we were grounded for a while. This really hurts a boy that has spent more time in the saddle than on the ground.
When I was five my dad said I could ride anything I could stick on like a cockle burr sticks.
HARROWING
One day Granddad sent Victor out to harrow some ground to plant some potatoes. The rest of the boys and dad went down to the potato pit to cut sets to plant. I went down and talked Vick into letting me harrow. I got along fine until the circles I was making got so small that the harrow tipped over. It hit one of the horses and they started to run. I couldn't hold them, they ran right over the top of the potato pit. The harrow tore the door off, then the harrow hooked on the wood pile and broke it loose from the horses. The horses ran past the post, one on each side. This broke the lines that held them together. One of the horses stopped but the other one ran clear out to the bad lands. It was two days later they found him. Granddad spent two days repairing harnesses. I guess everyone thought the world was caving in when the horses pulled the top off the potato pit.
EARLY JOBS
The year I turned nine I was hired to be the janitor of our one room school house. All eight grades were taught in one room by one teacher, her name was Mrs. Dillman. I don't know if she was a widow or a divorcee. She only taught one year.
I would go down to the school about seven o'clock each morning to build the fire. Then I would sweep, dust, clean erasers and carry in enough wood and coal for the day. Then I would run home and go up to the cook house where the men from the bunkhouses ate. I also did the chores there. They had three or four pigs they fed the scraps from meals to. I would feed them and carry enough coal and wood to last the day. Then I would run home and change to school clothes and get down to school.
This having all eight grades in one room made it so that if you didn't understand what you had been taught the year before you could listen while they were having their lessons in the grade below you, or if you were bored with the lessons in your class you could tune in on the grade above you while they were having their lessons. I guess I didn't listen to either one because I would sit and dream of recess or noon when we could go out and play ball or ski, depending on what time of year it was.
For doing the janitor work I received $7.50 a month. I sure looked forward to the first of the month when I would get a letter from the school board with my check. We burned mostly wood so I would spend about an hour each night cutting wood with an axe. I got pretty good at this cutting. I also had to cut all the wood for the cook house. I generally cut on Saturday to get enough for the cookhouse for the week. I would cut two or three hours. I got paid $1.50 a week from them.
I quite enjoyed this job because Mrs. Gliens was so nice. She always bragged on me and said I cut the wood better than anyone; it was big enough, it didn't burn up in a hurry but still small enough she could get it in the stove. She generally had some cake, pie, cookies, punch, home made ice cream, or something good each time I went in.
In the summer time we hauled wood for the school and for our own home. The school paid me $8.00 a cord for wood. We would generally get five or six cords a year. The company dad worked for had a team and a wagon to haul wood. It cost $2 a day for the team and wagon. We would try to get two loads a day with dad's help.
The summer before I turned ten, dad convinced the boss at the mines that I was competent enough to go out with Donald and Eldon after wood alone. I remember one time Eldon and I went out alone. He was only six. I would have him ride the horse and would hook the chains on the dry trees. He would drive the horse and pull the tree over alongside the wagon. The horse he used for this was real good to pull, but once he started it was hard to hold him. Eldon was afraid of him. He would cry and say he didn't want to, but I would make him anyway.
I remember this one tree, a big cedar about ten feet tall and two feet in diameter. Eldon really put up a fuss when the horse tried to pull it and couldn't. So I had him try from another angle. He was crying like mad, but he tried. He finally got it down and pulled it alongside the wagon. Then he said we couldn't load it because it was too big to lift.
Well I had helped dad load some pretty good trees by cutting some poles about ten feet long and leaning them up alongside the wagon. Then we rolled the log up the poles by putting the chain under the logs, back up the side of the wagon and fastening it. We would bring the chain over the log, over the wagon, and hook the horse. This would roll the log upon the wagon. The point is to stop the log before it rolls clear over the other side.
Well, the first time Eldon was driving the horse and couldn't stop him quick enough; so it rolled clear over and off again. Eldon was really crying by now. I had him pull the log around in place again and I cut some cedar stakes to keep it from rolling off the wagon. Then Eldon was afraid it would come over and tip the wagon over. So I led the horse and we made it. I had nearly tipped the wagon over but I was sure proud that we had been able to load the wood alone.
I don't know why Eldon ever did what I asked him to do. I never did beat him and I don't think I ever yelled at him. Then we rolled another log on nearly the same size, this filled the bottom of the wagon. Then we finished up the load.
When we got home Dad couldn't believe that we could have done it. I think nearly every one in camp came to see the load of wood that Eldon and I had brought in by ourselves. There was a little over a cord and a half that was on the load. If I had been selling it to the school I would have gotten $12, but we used it at home. Today if two of my grandsons (one ten and one six or six and a half) tried something like that, it would scare me to death. I would like more of the kids today to take more responsibility.
ADVENTURE AT RECTOR
The year I turned ten, my uncle Sterling Merrell, a couple of years younger than I, had come to Rector. Rector was a mining town about 25 miles from our place if you went around the road, but only 8 or 9 straight through the hills.
One morning some of us were playing out on the ledges when someone mentioned Sterling being over to Rector. We decided to hike over and see him and our other uncles and aunts that lived and worked there. We were already a mile or two in that direction. It didn't make sense to walk back home and tell our parents where we were going because we could be half way there by then.
There was DeLoss Workman, he was the oldest, and his brother, a boy by the name of Paul Wilson, whose brother was the blacksmith at camp, Donald and I. Paul had come from Grand Junction, Colorado to visit for a couple of weeks. We hiked along the gilsonite veins. Generally there was only one vein. They had been mining them which leaves a cut about four feet wide. As we went along the cut divided and there was two of them, about ten feet apart. So we just walked between them. In a little while it divided and there were three veins. It was easier walking where they had kind of smoothed it out.
In about half a mile all three came back together, so we were trapped. We had two cuts about four feet wide down hill from us and one going up the hill. We didn't think we could jump up hill and get across. We didn't want to walk back half a mile, so DeLoss jumped first. He got back where he could get two or three steps, then he jumped. The first one took another two or three steps and jumped the next one. He said it is easy, so his brother went next. Then Donald jumped. By this time Paul Wilson was crying. He was scared to jump. The mines were two or three hundred feet straight down. I said I would go back with him, but the others said for me to jump and let Paul go back to camp alone.
Well, I jumped and made it all right. Paul was crying and yelling nasty things at us. We started to go, so he ran and jumped the first one fine. He had a torn pants leg. As he went to jump the second one his toe caught in his torn pants and he stumbled and fell. He lit on his belly on the other side with his leg hanging over the ledge. We grabbed him and we surely were frightened.
We walked on for a couple of more hours, but still didn't come to Rector. We knew we couldn't get back home much before dark, and we were hungry and thirsty. There was a telephone down on the railroad at the three mile junction. So we walked down to the railroad, about two miles. We found that we had to walk back toward home to get to the railroad phone. We got there and called the mining office, that was the only phone in camp. We had them go and tell our parents where we were.
We walked for about two more hours up to Rector. Our aunts fixed us a real good supper and we slept in the bunk house where my uncle Bill slept. He told us that if we had to "go," in the night, just use our shoe and then pour it out in the morning.
Next day we walked up the railroad to Watson, six miles from home. Then we caught Uncle Fuller Merrell, who drove the mail wagon to Watson three times a week. When we got home we had a bunch of unhappy parents. Paul Wilson's brother put him on the train the next day and sent him home. I guess to get him out of the undesirable company.
PRANKS
I will have to tell about a Halloween we had at the mines. We would take an empty spool of thread and cut notches around the edges, then put a nail through the center and wrap two or three feet of string around the spool. Then we would sneak up to a window, put the spool against the window and give a hard pull. It would make quite a racket. Then we would run like mad.
We got an idea to do this up at the bunk house where all of the single men slept. There was only one door to the bunk house. When we had done this before, one of the guys would run out and catch one of us. But we had a real smart idea. We had caught a couple of donkeys, so we snuck up and tied the donkey to the door knob. When the one inside tried to open the doors the light would frighten the donkey and he could pull back and close the door. So we kept rattling the windows. Then they got smart and one of the guys crawled out the window in the bunk house and waited for us. He caught a couple of us and took us in the bunkhouse.
Everyone in those days wore bib overalls and suspenders. The bunkhouse didn't have anything covering the ceiling joists. So a couple of the fellers unbuckled our suspenders, put our suspenders over the joists and buttoned them up again, leaving us hooked to the ceiling. We didn't dare wiggle too much for fear it would tear our pants, then we would be in trouble with our parents. They finally let us go.
We decided to play some more pranks. Everyone in camp had an outside toilet. We thought it would be great fun tipping over the toilet so that jwhen someone came out in the night they would fall into the pit. We tipped over four or five. Then we got to thinking that if someone got mad and went to the boss he would know that we were the only boys in camp big enough to do this and then our dads might get fired. So we went to the work of tipping them back up. It was much harder tipping them up than tipping them over.
WINTER FUN
We had a great deal of fun in winter. There was plenty of snow. There was a hill at the south end of camp we would ride down on our sleigh, then down the road for nearly a quarter of a mile further. We had a big German shepherd dog that we trained to pull our sleigh. Sometimes she would just run beside us. But sometime, if someone was lying on their stomachs riding down, she would jump on top and ride down. Then we would hook three or four sleighs together and she would pull them back up the hill. Nearly everyone in camp seven or older would come out at night and sleigh ride. We would build a big fire on top of the hill and sit around on sleighs and tell stories, drink hot chocolate and eat cookies. There would be men, women, and children. This was a fun time in our lives. It was like one big, happy family.
OUR HOME
Our home was a two room house. It had a kitchen and a living room. The living room also served as a bedroom where the folks and small children slept. Donald, Eldon and I slept in a tent about fifty feet in back of the house. We had a wood stove in it. We would make a fire about an hour before bed time so that it would be nice and warm.
One night we built a nice big fire and went sleigh riding. The stove pipe got so hot it started the tent on fire and burned a strip about a foot wide up to the top. Mother got some more canvas and patched it until it was like new. We never had a fire any more. We would get undressed in the house and make a dash for the bed. The top quilt would be as stiff as a board from the moisture in the air freezing on it. But once in bed we were quite comfortable until time to get up. Then we would jump out and run to the house, most always not even taking time to put on our shoes. Sometimes there may have been two feet of snow. I don't remember of anyone of us having a cold.
HUNTING
Some of the fun times I remember the most was our family hunting trips out around the shearing corrals hunting for cottontail rabbits. They were very plentiful. We would shoot them in the head with a twenty‑two rifle so it wouldn't spoil any meat. We got real good at it. Even mother would shoot them then put her foot on their head and pull their heads off. We would take a knife and slit them down through their ribs and give them a quick swing and a jerk and all the innards would pop out. Then we would wait until we got home to skin them. Once in a while, if you didn't get the right action, you would get a necklace around your neck of the innards of rabbit.
I remember one time we got over a hundred of them. By the time we got them all skinned and cleaned it would be nearly midnight. We put them in cold water with salt to let them soak overnight. Then we spent all the next day frying them and canning them in quart jars. Later they were very good for lunch, cold. Or they could be recooked for fried rabbit. It was very good. At nine years old I got so I could hit them in the head nearly every time.
One of the other pastimes we had was to go snake hunting. There was a hill about half a mile from camp we called Rattlesnake Den. Some of the guys liked to go and catch rattlesnakes. I didn't care much for it but I generally went along rather than be left out. Every time I would hear one rattle my hair would stand straight up and I would have a hard time keeping my feet in neutral. I don't think I ever caught one. I would stand back and watch some of the other boys as they would put the snakes in the sack and take them in camp to show. Then they would kill them and skin them for their rattles. I guess if you liked to live dangerously it was alright, but it wasn't my favorite sport.
TITHING
The summer I was ten I settled in Vernal. I stayed at grandmother Merrell's and worked for uncle Jacob Lybbert hoeing corn, hauling hay, etc. He paid me fifty cents a day. It was hard work. I worked for about a month. I had ten dollars, I sure felt rich. Doc Goodrich had a bicycle for sale. I wanted that more than most anything else I had ever wanted. He was asking $10, so I figured I would go out and get it on Monday.
While we were sitting in church I saw the Ward Clerk sitting on the stand taking minutes. I saw a person or two go up and give him some money for tithing. Then it struck me that I owed a dollar tithing. It bothered me all during Sacrament Meeting. I knew I should pay my tithing but if I did I wouldn't have enough to buy the bike. I decided I would buy the bike then next time I got some money I would pay my tithing. After all, you pay tithing on your annual increase, so I had plenty of time. Well, I wrestled with the problem and didn't hear anything that was said in meeting.
As meeting let out I don't know what happened, but there I was standing in front of Albert Goodrich telling him I had to pay a dollar tithing. As he made out the receipt, he asked me where I was working. I told him I had been working for Uncle Jacob Lybbert, but was through for a while. Albert asked me if I would like to work for him. He would pay me seventy‑five cents a day, so I took the job. When I went out of the chapel Doc Goodrich was waiting for me to see if I wanted to buy his bike. I told him I only had $9. He said that was fine, I could pay him the other dollar when I got it. My, was I a happy guy for paying my tithing.
If I hadn't let the Lord guide me to pay my tithing I wouldn't have gotten the first job that paid off at once and more than doubled my income. It is quite likely it wouldn't have had the opportunity to work with him.
UNCLE ALBERT
Well, I worked for Albert three days and he said I was one of the best workers he ever had, so he was going to pay me one dollar a day. I worked for him the rest of the summer.
I learned many lessons from Albert, like always being on time. He had taught at the high school for twenty years and had never been late and never missed a day of work. I can't say I have that good of record, but I think I could count on one hand the number of times I have been late. He taught me to give an honest days work for an honest days pay and never to gossip. I haven't done too good a job on this last one.
Albert was a firm man and I was kinda scared of him, but I liked to be with him. He was strictly honest. I stayed with him the next summer and worked for $12 a month and board. When we settled in the fall, he made it $15. When I went to high school I took four years of shop from him.
I will have to tell a little incident that happened when I was working with Albert. I had been cultivating corn with a one row, one horse cultivator. You could just fasten the reins up on the harness of old Belle and she would go up one row then turn around and go back down the next all day without having to guide her. I could just about sleep walk behind her, holding the cultivator. Well, it was kinda of a tiresome job.
One day Albert came home with a two row, two horse cultivator that you rode and guided the cultivator with your feet. If you pushed the right pedal the cultivator would go to the left, etc. I thought, "my, it would be nice to use it," But I didn't think I would ever be able to.
Albert took it out and told me to come over to where he was, about ten o'clock. I took my hoe, since I thought I would be hoeing the rows behind the cultivator. When I got there, he said to watch him for around or two then I could do it. I watched, but it didn't do much good. When I got on and started I pushed the wrong pedal and took out all the corn on both rows. He stopped me and explained again, then said I couldn't do it with him looking over my shoulder. He said if I didn't catch on before long, not to dig up the whole field of corn but to quit and bring the horses in.
After Albert left I pulled out of the field and into a patch of weeds and just set for a few minutes working my feet on the pedals until my right foot knew what my left foot was doing. In a few minutes I went back to work and didn't cut up any corn. I could even dodge out and pick up weeds between the hills of corn. If he had stayed and watched me I would have been so nervous I would never have learned. Over the years I have followed this practice with new men I have hired. I showed them how to do it, then got out and left them alone.
Then, in 1950, Albert, Calvin Mortensen, Glen Lybbert, and I formed a construction company. I worked with him for a couple of years building houses in Moses Lake, Washington.
SOCIALS
One of the things I remember about living out at the mines is the socials they had. They had a building there they called the dance hall. A couple of times a month they would have a social for the older ones, or maybe I should say the ones that weren't kids. Once in a while after I was eleven or twelve the folks let me go.
Everyone from out in that area, like Watson, Dragon, Rector and some of the ranches out in our area would come in. They would dance for a while, then they would have a pot luck dinner. Then they would dance until one or two o'clock and have some hot chocolate and cake or cookies. Dad and mother played for the dances. Mother would chord on the piano and dad would play the harmonica, drums, banjo or whatever. They could really get the place going.
GRANDFATHER MERRELL
I would like to write a little about the things I can remember about my grandfather Merrell. He was a small man. Probably weighed around 140 pounds, was five foot, eight inches tall and was pretty well bald. He had just a little fringe of hair just above the ears. He was a real gentle man. I never heard him get mad and raise his voice. He was an excellent story teller. I don't know how many times I had him tell the story of the white indian boy.
He told many stories about his early boyhood, I wish I could remember them now. He told of driving a team and wagon from up in Cache valley to Vernal in the winter when he was 14 years old. He went all alone and it took several days.
I remember the winter I was in at their place and we went down on the Green River on the old Slaugh place. Dad and Granddad Merrell was going to run the Slaugh place. Granddad, Arthur, LaVoir, and I went down and put up ice from the river in the ice house to last us through the summer. We would take the team and bob sleigh out on the river, and cut blocks of ice and haul them up to the ice house. The ice was about two feet thick. We would saw it with a big timber saw. Granddad was not feeling very well, he had stomach cancer but he was with us all the time until he couldn't work any longer. It was a great time to get to know him better. By spring he was so weak that they called the farming project off. He was nearly bedridden.
When Granddad first started to learn to drive the Model T Ford, it seemed if there was something to the side of the road he didn't want to hit, like a mailbox, there seemed to be a magnet that would draw him to it.
One time, when he was fixing a flat tire, he had it patched and was pumping it up when Brother Palmer came along and they started talking. While Grandfather pumped he didn't pay any attention to how much air he was getting into the tire. All at once, bang, and the tire blew out. I thought the two of them were going to jump to the top of the tree.
Another time when Granddad was working on the engine with the car running somehow he touched a spark plug and it shocked him. He raised up all at once and hit his bald head on the hood of the car. Blood was running down his head and on down his face. I thought he had almost killed himself, so I ran and got Grandmother. By the time she got there, he had his bandanna out and most of the blood was gone.
Granddad was a great one to bring candy home to the kids when he went to the store. This one time when he came back he had a sack. We all ran up to see what he had. LaVoir got it first and opened it. There was three or four plugs of chewing tobacco in the sack. He had gotten it to treat a sick cow.
Well, LaVoir unwrapped the tobacco and took a bite. We all thought Granddad would stop us. He didn't, so we all took a chew. We then went down to watch him doctor the cow. He pulled her head back and put a plug of tobacco on the back of her tongue so that she would swallow it. We kids swallowed the juice from the tobacco we were chewing. It wasn't long until you never saw a sicker bunch of boys. I think Grandmother was a bit put out with him, but none of us ever took up the habit of chewing tobacco.
Granddad continued to get weaker and was soon bedridden. On January 1, 1930 he died. I was a pallbearer for his funeral. He was really loved by all who knew him.
SUMMER BEFORE HIGH SCHOOL
The summer before I entered high school I spent most of the time out at the mine with the folks. I hauled several loads of wood with the team and wagon. Then I took the car, a big Willis Knight, removed the back seat and put canvas in to protect the sides. Then I used it to haul wood. We would cut it into stove lengths. We could haul about as much as a pickup at one time. We hauled enough wood that Dad didn't have to cut any all winter. When they left in the spring they sold several cords.
I remember one time we drove up a wash about half a mile, loaded up with wood. Then we found that the ground was so soft that the wheels would spin and dig in until I was stuck. I didn't want to unload the wood and it was about five miles home to get a horse to pull us out. We had a prayer and I had an idea. If I let most of the air out of the tires they would be softer and wider and wouldn't stick in the dirt so far. We did that and I drove right out.
I don't think I ever thanked our Father in Heaven for that help. When we got back down to the road, I had to pump up the tires with a hand pump. I used this procedure several times after that in soft ground. The time spent out at the mines gave me a pretty good education on learning how to work. I could cut more wood in a day than most any man that I ever cut with.
That summer Henry Wolf, the man that ran the toll bridge over the White River, wanted 300 cedar posts cut and piled along the road where he could get at them. He paid fifteen cents apiece for them. So we kids cut them. I was pretty good at cutting poles because I had learned to cut either right or left handed. I could cut the branches off in one place and cut half way through left handed, then change to right handed and cut it down without moving. It didn't take long to get the 300 posts cut.
HIGH SCHOOL
In the fall of 1930, I moved in from the mines and lived with Grandmother while I went to high school. Dad paid Grandmother $10 a month for my board. I think that was about all of the money that came in. They had the cows for milk and butter, eggs, pork and plenty of fruit and canned vegetables. Dad sent me $10 a month to take care of my expenses. I think that that year I had more money than almost anyone else in school. We walked three‑quarters of a mile, then rode the bus to school. It cost Dad $15 a year. Grandmother's boys didn't have to pay because she was a widow.
Sometimes the bus would be so full by the time it got to our corner that we would climb up and ride on the luggage rack on top. By the time we would ride the three miles to school it was pretty cold.
Going from a one‑room school house to a big city high school of 150 students, I was even afraid of my own shadow. I sure enjoyed basketball. I had never played before, but I was about the biggest boy in school. So in our gym class I was generally one of the first ones chosen. I picked up the game fairly fast since I had some real good teaches. Mr. Wilcox was my algebra teacher; I enjoyed him, but not algebra. Ruth Hart was my English teacher. She was a real patient teacher. English was not one of my strong subjects. I guess I only had two strong subjects: P.E. taught by Carl Davis and woodwork taught buy Albert Goodrich. Then biology taught by Mr. Colton and botany by Harold Lundell. He was my most loved teacher. Then we had Seminary by Anthony Cannon, I liked him real well too.
I got so I was not quite so afraid of people and made some real pals like Don Carter, Chick Acock, and John Walker. I also watched Dorothy Noel, but she didn't even know I was in school. I was afraid of her because I thought her family was the big shots of the country.
Two of Dorothy's brothers were the best athletes in the school. One of them was chief of police in the student body. I didn't dare talk to her until I was a junior. We had a real good basketball team my freshman year. I went to most of the games and then would ride the bus to our corner. Then I had to walk past the cemetery, I wasn't superstitious, but I didn't like it.
HOMESICK
At Thanksgiving I was pretty homesick. I found out that Harold Merrell and Carl Merrell were going out to the mines and taking a truckload of beef and pork to the boarding houses and some of the people at the mines. They said I would be able to ride out with them, but the cab was too small for three people. So I had to ride on top of the load. I would have ridden anywhere to get to go home.
I met them at Naples store. They had the meat piled as high as the cab of the truck, so I climbed up on top. They had a tarp tied over the load, so I sat on top of a half of frozen beef. I had my back to the wind and felt fairly good until the frozen beef started to cool me down from the bottom and the cold air started to go through my sheepskin coat. The temperature was nine below that morning.
They stopped out by White River to make a potty stop. I got off the load and my legs were so cold I couldn't stand. I finally got a little circulation going and walked down the road a little. They gave me a sandwich. They were stopped for about fifteen minutes and I got to feeling pretty good, but I was too cold to make a potty stop.
I don't know why I was so dumb as not to tell them how cold I was, but I had made a bargain; I would ride on the load. I guess I would have frozen to death before I would have complained. I can hardly imagine how two grown men could have let a person sit out that long on a frozen load.
When we got to Watson they stopped and unloaded some of the meat at the store. So, for the next five miles or about half an hour, I sat down behind the cab. When we got home I jumped off the truck. My legs wouldn't hold me up so they had to carry me into the house.
I spent Thanksgiving Day in bed. My feet were so frostbitten that the skin peeled off. I couldn't wear my shoes for more than a week, so I was unable to go back to school for nearly two weeks. This put me behind and I was behind for most of the rest of the year.
I went home for Christmas and had a real good time hunting cottontails, skiing, and all those fun things. The folks took me back in after Christmas, so the trip was some better than the trip at Thanksgiving.
After Christmas I started playing basketball with the freshmen basketball team in the interclass tournament. We beat every team and took the tournament. We did this all four years I was in high school. The coach told me to practice during the summer and come out for basketball next year. He gave me an old basketball and we put up a banker at Grandmothers.
I had a fun year, but when school let out I decided to go home for the summer rather than just spend the summer working for Albert Goodrich the on farm. I think Donald went in and worked for Asel Manwaring that summer. Eldon and I hauled wood, cut cedar posts, hunted cottontails and bad a real fun time.
In the fall I went back in to school. Times were a bit harder, so I couldn't get as much money from the folks. The bus didn't run so we walked the three miles to school. I had about the same teachers that I had as a freshman and wasn't afraid of anyone.
TOM SWIFT
I think I was the biggest boy in school unless it was Tom Swift from Greendale, a little place over on the other side of Brush Creek mountain. This was about the first time Tom had ever been away from home. They tell me that when they put shoes on him to send him away to school that he backed clear out of the country watching the funny tracks he made wearing shoes. When they put a tie on him he stood all day thinking he was tied up. Well, he was a little funny and nearly everyone made fun of him.
One day, out on the front lawn I saw a group of boys in a circle. There was a lot of noise, so I went over there. Tom was in the center. They were poking and making fun of him. If he tried to defend himself, four or five boys would tackle him. I knew how I felt when I first came, so I stepped into the circle and told these guys off. I said, Tom and I would take the whole bunch on and if I ever saw anyone making fun of Tom again I would thump them until they wouldn't know who they were. That ended the trouble for Tom.
There is one more little deal that I would like to tell about Tom. We had a big block "U" up on the side of the hill as you leave Vernal. The white had worn off so our class decided to go up and repaint it. We used lime and cement. The lime sacks weighed 60 pounds apiece. It was about half a mile from where the trucks dumped the bags of cement and lime to the mountain. They assigned two boys to a bag of lime. One would carry it for a ways and the other would take his turn. I said I would take one alone. Tom took two and we were the first ones up to the "U".
I got Tom to come out for track and throw the shotput. He couldn't throw it like you are supposed to. He would throw like he was throwing a baseball. He could throw it ten feet farther than anyone else in competition, but he was disqualified because they said he couldn't throw, he had to "put" it.
PLAYING BALL
I went out for football and made the second team. In order to get to travel with the main team you had to do real well in practice the week before. During practice, Tom Bingham and three or four seniors that were too small to play football would come out and watch. They kept yelling for me. Every tackle that was made they would yell, "Did you see how Gale took him," even if I wasn't anywhere near. Well, it accomplished two things. I really started to try harder and the coach started to watch me. I really started to go. The second team beat the first team in scrimmage two nights in a row.
Vern Hatch and I got the chance to go to Moab to play. I was sitting on cloud nine. Some of the boys went out the night before the game and got drunk on wine. We got beat. When we got home, the coach found out about the wine and canceled the rest of the football season.
I turned out for basketball. The main team was made up mostly of seniors, it wasn't a very good team. Many times during practice the second team would beat the main team. I had never suited up with the main team, but I was on the starting lineup of the second team.
We always played a preliminary game first. I remember we had a game with Altamont, a small school on the other side of Bluebell. The next week we had a game with Roosevelt. They had the strongest team in the district this year. So our coach, Carl Davis and one of the main players, Lyle Anderson, stopped off at Roosevelt to get a line on how they played. Harold Lundell took the team up to Altamont. The second team started. The gym had such a low ceiling that we were hitting the ceiling instead of the baskets. They were licking the socks off us. Lundell called time out and told me to work under the baskets and for everyone to pass the ball to me. I was bigger than anyone else on the floor, so when they would pass to me, I could go up and make a basket.
In those days, you jumped center after every basket. I would jump center and tip it to a guard, then run down under the basket and make another basket. Well, it was by far the best game I had played. I made 20 some points. We won. So, Lundell drew me a suit for the main team and told me to suit up. About the same thing happened with the main team. Everyone was hitting the ceiling. We were getting beaten so he sent me in. It worked pretty well until they put two guards on me and I couldn't shoot. Everyone else still hit the ceiling. Well, they beat us and the next Saturday they beat us and it ended our season. It was the first season Uinta hadn't gone to the state tournament in sixteen years. Carl Davis counted his chickens before they were hatched.
WARD TEACHING
LaVoir Merrell, my uncle who is three weeks older than me, and I were assigned to be ward teachers together. We were assigned Uncle Frank Merrell, David L. Richards, Noah Rhodabeck, and Merrill Kerin. Merrill Kerin had been sent to the state pen for selling liquor to the indians.
We would always go to David L. Richards' first because he was the best of anyone in the ward on scriptures. We could get a few pointers to give the rest of the families.
Merrill Kerin wrote to his family and told them how grateful he was that he had such good home teachers to look after his family. They came to church often and we thought we were doing a bang up job. He got out of the pen in six months and came to church a couple of times. Then he landed back in jail for stealing sheep from his neighbor, Noah Rhodabeck. The next time we had to teach his family they told us how sorry he was and how he had repented and gone and asked forgiveness of Bro. Rhodabeck. Bro. Rhodabeck had forgiven him and he felt real good again.
The following fall when Merrill was hunting deer he was sitting on the front of the wagon when they hit a bump. The gun slipped out of his hand and fell and hit the wagon tongue. The gun went off and blew his leg off at the knee. He spent the next six months in the Veteran's Hospital. He had turned over a new leaf and we thought maybe it was worth it to get a change in his life. We were very happy he came home with a new wooden leg. He went to church two or three times and was picked up for bootlegging. We gave up and were changed to teach someone else. But there sure is a good feeling when you do see someone change their ways.
I went out for track in the spring. I ran the 220 in the relay, threw the javelin and threw the shotput. But it was so far to walk home after practice that I confined my time to the P.E. classes. The coach kept trying to get me to come out, but I wasn't that interested in it.
Dad had decided to leave the mines and move into Vernal and try farming. We moved onto the Haws place, just below the cemetery along Halunger Gulch. I think we had 40 acres of pretty poor ground with lots of weeds.
THE DEPRESSION
The Depression was just getting started and there weren't any jobs to be had, anyplace. The price of cream and eggs was pretty near nothing. We had half a dozen cows, two horses, about a dozen pigs, and a flock of chickens. The eggs and cream about paid for the sugar and other things we had to have at Naples store. Mother made our soap, we raised a good garden and canned a lot of tomatoes and vegetables. We got apples from Asel and Elva Manwaring, so we had a lot of dried apples. We ate buffalo berries, potawatomie plums and apricots that was so woody you would get slivers in your mouth when you ate them. I don't think there was many people around any poorer than we were, but we never went hungry.
Our clothes had a lot to be desired. I had a pair of corduroy pants that mother had to sew up in the crotch nearly every time I wore them. I remember we saved enough from eggs and cream to get each one of us boys a pair of striped bib overalls. We wore them to church and for "best" all summer. My shoes had big holes in the soles. I would put a piece of cardboard on the inside to keep my feet from wearing out. I don't think we had any socks.
There wasn't a lot to do so the ward got together and built a tennis court behind the church. We used to have dances on the court during the summer. Albert Goodrich, Jacob Lybbert, and a few others that were school teachers or, had some other means of having a little cash coming in, put up the money for the cement. All who contributed in labor got passes to go to the dances. They charged 25 cents a ticket. I think we had the biggest crowds of any in the valley. We had a good orchestra. I used to really enjoy them.
Glen Lybbert and I were the ticket takers and the bouncers, if anyone got out of hand. We had a few scary times when a group would get a little high on home brew. There were several that threatened to lick us, but they were generally too drunk. We would throw a hammer lock on them and push their arm up between their shoulders and they would leave with very little fuss.
There was a group of us that always got together, Glen Lybbert, Morris Cook, and John Walker and me. It was a toss up who would bring Dorothy Noel. I just stood back and looked mooney eyed. Other members of our group were Elizabeth Walker, Ruth Bingham, Ruth and Ada Winder, Ruth and Ruby Wilkins, Elaine Goodrich, Eunice Johnson, Lavoir Merrell, Donald Gale, and Wendell Johnson. LaVoir went with Elaine, Donald with Elizabeth, and I generally went with Ruth Bingham. She was Dorothy's best friend, so if I went with her I was in Dorothy's company. We had a real fun summer.
We couldn't afford gas for our car, so we tore the body off and made a rubber tired wagon out of it. I had to depend on Glen most of the time for transportation. Sometimes a bunch of us would go to a party in the wagon.
Times have sure changed. I hear a lot of the young folks saying, "what can we do, I am so bored." It kind of makes me a little hostile that with all the things they have they can't use a little imagination and come up with some things to do. We have been doing so much for them they have a hard time even turning the television on. I don't think we ever lacked for something to do.
One of our most fun things was pasture parties. We would go up in Walker's pasture, make a big fire and play games until it burned down to where we could roast wieners and marshmallows. Then, we had some home made ice cream and cookies and cake. The girls were always coming up with ideas like candy pulls, or waffle dinners, etc.
When school started in the fall I was looking forward to being in classes with Dorothy, but she must have read my mind because she went to Jordan High her junior year and lived with her sister Mary Rigby. I turned out for football and made the first string as a left tackle. I think I played pretty good ball. I played most of the time. They never had to take me out for injuries. I was either tough or I would run so they couldn't hit me.
MORE BALL
When deer season came along the last of October, I asked the coach if I could go with my dad deer hunting. He said, "yes", so I went and we spent a week deer hunting. I don't think the coach expected me to be gone more than two or three days. I missed one game and we got beat.
Well, when I got back and went to my locker to get dressed for practice, I didn't have a suit. I thought the athletic manager must have sent it out to be cleaned. So I asked him and he said the coach had told him to pick up my suit, so I went home.
The next day the coach looked me up and asked me why I wasn't out to practice. I told him I had been kicked off the team. He said I needed to come and apologize to the players for letting them down on the game that they lost. I said I had too much to do at home and didn't have time for football, so I didn't play any more football.
When basketball started I turned out but I guess the coach was still mad at me. He said I wasn't in good standing with the athletic society of the school and I would have to apologize to the student body before I played basketball. I told him I didn't have anything to apologize for and went on about my business.
Just before the Christmas holidays he called Don Carter and I into his office and asked us to turn out for basketball. I told him I wasn't going to go before the student body for anything. He said he had talked to all of the players and they all wanted me to come and join them. He gave us a new pair of shoes, new sweat pants and shirt, and two new game suits, white to play home games and blue for trips. I was happy to get to play.
I was the center and I could easily out jump anyone in our league. I walked or ran to school every day, so I was in better shape than anyone else on the team. I also milked 13 cows night and morning for Clarence Palmer. We won most of our games but were beaten out in the district playoffs. So we didn't get to go to state. We were a bit disappointed.
I guess I had ought to tell of one of the most embarrassing times of my life. We were playing Roosevelt. I jumped center and tipped the ball to a guard. He passed it back to me and I started to dribble down for a lay up. Just before I shot, I realized I was the only one down at that basket, it was the wrong basket. I was so embarrassed, I acted like I knew what I was doing and dribbled down the floor for a lay in. But my face was still red after the game and most of the guys kidded me about it.
SCHOOL DAYS
Harold Lundell was my most fun teacher. He gave me a lot of responsibility. We went all over the valley dehorning cows and docking sheep. He would generally have me do the cutting to show the others how to do it. A lot of the time he would have LaVoir and I on special projects. LaVoir was on the stock judging team that won the state competition. Then they went on to nationals and won the national stock judging in 1934.
I remember one time in our biology class we went to the dog pound and picked up a big German shepherd. We took him to class and put him to sleep with ether. Then we cut him open to watch how his heart and lungs worked. After we were through Lundell asked LaVoir and I to skin out one of his hind quarters. It was a real chore getting every little piece of hair off. Then he had us take it down to the home ec. class and ask them if they would roast this leg of lamb because we were having a special ag meeting and wanted roast lamb sandwiches. While they were cooking it, you could smell chloroform all over the school.
Lundell's brother‑in‑law, Don Olson, and Dorothy's brother, Doug, had let the air out of Lundell's tires when he had a date with Ruth Hart. He never did say anything to them like he knew who did it, but he had been planning for some time to get revenge. Dorothy used to tend his kids after his wife died, so he had her make a chocolate cake. He brought the cake and had LaVoir and I start slicing the meat.
He had buns to make sandwiches. He found Don Olson and Doug and told them to go on up to the room and he would go round up the rest of the ag club. They came up and I gave them a bun and some meat, catchup, mustard, and the whole works.
Doug took one bite and said, "I don't know what kind of meat this is, but it isn't lamb." Don ate one sandwich, fixed another, and insisted it was lamb. I never had such time to keep from laughing. Lundell sure got even. Later, I would like to write a little more about this wonderful man.
Tony Cannon was another good teacher. He taught Seminary and was track coach. I have never seen anyone with so much patience. Most of the kids came to that class just to goof off. He organized a male chorus. I don't know why I ever was asked to be in it, but we went all over the stake and sang at Sacrament Meetings. I didn't sing very loud, but I enjoyed the companionship.
Dorothy came back to Vernal for the last part of her junior year. We were in Seminary and English together. She was still going with Morris, Glen, John, and once in a while, my brother Donald. I never had nerve enough to ask her for a date. I was scared of her and didn't want my friends that was dating her to be mad at me.
I remember Morris Cook had a date with a little girl from Cedar City that was visiting her aunt when he found out that Dorothy was back from Jordan High. He asked if I would take Dorothy Norris, the girl from Cedar City, so he could date Dorothy Noel. Like a big fool I agreed. Why didn't I tell him to take care of his own date and I would take Dorothy? We all went to the dance in the same car. It wasn't long after that I threw all caution to the wind and asked Dorothy for a date. She has been sorry ever since. I have been under her feet ever since.
SCOUT CABIN
The summer of 1933 we decided to build a log scout cabin on the church grounds. The winter before we took on a project to raise money for the concrete, the doors, windows, and shingles, etc. We went out near the Utah, Colorado line, where there was a lot of cotton tail rabbits. Calders Creamery hauled butter and some other produce to California. They agreed to take all the cotton tail rabbits we could get at 25 cents a pound. They averaged about a pound a piece. They had to be shot in the head so that none of the meat was damaged.That winter we sold over 500 cotton tails to Caulders. This gave us about enough money for cash outlay for the building.
BRUSH CREEK
Glen Lybbert and I went up on Brush Creek mountain and cut and hauled enough logs, 6 to 8 inches in diameter and 30 feet long. This took several loads. It took us a day to drive up and cut the logs. Then, the next morning we got up real early, loaded the logs and got back home about dark. I can't remember how many trips we made, but I sure enjoyed it. When we got the logs down, the scouts, under the direction of Frank Goodrich, peeled them and treated them with something to keep them from cracking. We got the building completed that summer. It made a nice place for the scouts. It had a fireplace in one end. On Sundays they used it for a classroom.
The last part of July, Albert Goodrich and uncle Jacob Lybbert got a timber permit to cut logs and take them to Johnson's sawmill at Green Lakes on Brush Creek Mountain. We spent three weeks cutting timber and hauling logs to the mill. We got out between ten and fifteen thousand board feet of lumber. We could haul just over a thousand feet per load on each wagon. It took us about six trips to get the lumber hauled out.
We had all of it hauled out but one trip or two loads. We left home about four o'clock on the second of November. When we got up to Brush Creek, about fifteen miles from home, there was a man with a team and wagon loaded with wheat. He lived in Minala, Wyoming. He had gone to Vernal to work in the grain harvest and had taken wheat for pay. When we got to Brush Creek he stopped and camped for the night under a ledge that sloped under quite a ways. He had backed his wagon under the ledge to keep the moisture off the wheat. Then he unharnessed the team and put the harness on back of the wagon. He took his team down to the creek to give them a drink. When he came back the wagon had rolled down against the ledge pinning the harness against the ledge. He couldn't get his harness out to pull the wagon out. So we hooked on to his wagon and pulled him out. He was out of matches and didn't have any hay for his horses. We gave him half of our matches and about half of our hay. Then we headed for the sawmill.
The mill was forty‑some miles from home. It was generally thought to be more than one day's drive from home. We figured by leaving early we could get there about dark. Then we would load up the next morning and drive back half way. Then we would come home the third day. By the time we got to the mill it was dark and it had began to snow. The moon was full so even with it snowing it was pretty light. There was no wind. The snow was coming down in great big flakes. Everything was so quiet and peaceful, I have never seen the mountains so pretty.
We unharnessed the horses, fed them and built a fire in the cabin. Then we decided as hard as it was snowing, we had better load up right away. When we got loaded and our load chained down, we went in and made supper; fried steaks, fried potatoes and onions. Man, did it taste good. We went to bed. It was so comfortable and warm that we got to thinking that as hard as it was snowing be better get up and get started or we may be snowed in.
It was about ten thirty at night, but the moon was shining bright enough that we could see pretty good. We hooked up our team and Glen took the lead. He had the bigger team and when you started them for home nothing could stop them. There was about six to eight inches of snow. Glen would go until he would be about a quarter of a mile ahead of me, then he would unhook from his wagon and come back and hook on to my team to help me catch up.
From the mills to Red Springs campground was seven miles, all up hill. It took us seven hours. It was starting to get light and the wind had come up until quite a blizzard was going. When we got to Red Springs, there was this man with this load of wheat about froze. He had to use all of his matches. His horses were give out. We took our axes, cut down a couple of dry trees, collected a bunch of dry branches with dry needles on them. They started to burn about like putting gas on them. It wasn't long until we had a good fire and cooked some breakfast. We had this fellow eat with us. We spent about an hour there.
We thought we would pull on over the top of the mountain to what was called the cow cabins to where we could spend the night. When we got there the door had been left open and the cows had been in. The wind had blown a bunch of snow inside. It was seven or eight miles on down to brush creek, so we decided to go on.
A man by the name of Hancock from Jensen had come up on top of the mountain to get a load of quaken aspen poles. By the time he got there, the snow was so deep he decided to go back empty. He passed us. Not having a load, he was able to take some short cuts. We knew that there was no wood for a campfire down at Brush Creek because it had been used for so many years that all the wood within three or four miles had been used up. We stopped along the way and threw some dry cedar on the wagon, enough to last for several days.
When we got down to Brush Creek, Mr. Hancock hadn't been able to start a fire. He was about to roll out his bedroll and go to bed in a cold camp. He was real glad to see us. He had nearly a hind quarter of beef because he was a cattle man. We made a big fire and got out the dutch oven. We ate steaks until they were sticking out of our ears. Then we rolled our bedrolls under the ledge, out of the wind, and had a real good nights rest.
The next morning we had a good breakfast and just got started home when we met Merrell Goodrich, Uncle Jake Lybbert and Dad. They had called the forest ranger. The ranger said there was more than a foot of snow on the mountains and the road was closed until spring. So they had come in Merrell's pickup with snow shoes, skis, a lot of warm clothes. They expected to see us coming out, riding the horses leaving the lumber there until spring. They offered to drive the wagons on home but we decided that we could do it.
This was November the third, opening day of pheasant season. We took our lumber home, got our shotguns and went out and got our limit of pheasants. I have never seen the hunting so good.
CEDAR CHEST
This same fall, Glen and I decided to go back on Diamond Mountain, on Cross Creek, where there was a bunch of red cedar to get a load and take it down to Harold Merrell's saw mill. We would have it cut so we could make some cedar chests that winter. Glen, Donald, and I left right after school on Friday night. We drove up to Brush Creek at the foot of Diamond Mountain. We fed our horses, and ate supper and went to bed. We didn't have a watch, so I don't know how long we had slept, but one of us woke up and decided it must be about daylight. We got up and fixed breakfast. None of us was very hungry. We kept thinking it was getting daylight. We got back nearly to where we were going to cut logs before it got light.
We cut down a big load of logs and loaded them on the wagon. Then we found the horses couldn't pull the load up the first hill. We had to unload and pull the wagon up empty. Then, we pulled the logs up with a chain, one at a time. We loaded them again, and proceeded on our way. We did this three times. It had gotten dark as we were driving along, the horses cut the corner a little short and the wagon fell off in a hole. We had to unload, get some poles, block the wagon up and fill in the hole. Then we pulled the wagon out and loaded up again. We decided we were give outs, so we just pulled out in the sage brush and made camp for the night. We made it home the next day. It was Sunday. I have never been so tired.
By the time we got the logs sawed up, I think I only got enough lumber out of it for one chest. I made a chest for mother for Mother's Day. She still has it. It is pretty beat up, I guess I should work it over and give it to one of the granddaughters as a remembrance of their grandmother.
The end of the summer, mother's uncle Abe Goodrich, asked me if I would like to work with him tearing down an old school house out at White Rock. They were going to use some of the material to build the new Alteria High School that would be north‑east of Roosevelt. I sure welcomed this opportunity, it had been a long time since we had much money coming in. I was paid $2.50 a day. Uncle Abe said if I wanted, I could work all year on the new high school. He thought I had graduated from high school already. But when he found I was only a senior, he encouraged me to go and finish up my high school education. I did work until I was three weeks late in starting school.
They decided that the school couldn't afford to play football that year, and so they started practicing basketball about a month early.
By being late in starting school, I found out which classes Dorothy was taking. I got to take English, a class in commercial arithmetic, and American History with her. We always sat together. I remember one time we were the only ones in the class that got a passing grade on a special paper. Dorothy and I prepared our papers separately. When I got mine back there was nearly as much red writing on it as there was blue (correcting the misspelled words and punctuation marks). Dorothy's was much better.
There was three more that was different, but they had been copied by the rest of the class. My uncle LaVoir Merrell had done his own paper, but then he let one of the girls in the class copy his. She let someone else copy hers until about a third of the class was like his. Then Lucille Springham let one of the boys have a copy of hers and several copies turned up like that. Then there was someone else's who had an original and let others copy it. There was only two in the class that hadn`t been copied.
No one would have ever thought to ask to copy my paper, and everyone knew that Dorothy was honest enough they wouldn't want to ask her. Anyway, we were the only ones in the class that got a passing grade. I think I even got a "B". Miss Heart told the class that we were the only ones to get a passing grade. I think I was more proud of that than most anything I did in high school.
BASKETBALL
We had several pre‑league basketball games. We would generally have two games with the same team. For instance, we would go to Price and play a Friday night game, then play a Saturday night game. Two weeks later they would come and we would host them.
Granite High from Salt Lake came out to play with us. They were the all state champs the year before. They had a center playing for them that was 6 foot 6 inches, and was the top scorer in the state. I was scared to death of him. We had spent quite a bit of time practicing on how to keep him out from under the baskets, and how I could get the tip off and get down to the key fast. Then the guard would pass to me, I would pivot like I was going to shoot and pass to a forward coming in for a layup. It really worked well, the only problem was I couldn't get the tip off. We were pretty good about keeping him away from the basket. His name was Crolton. He later became one of B.Y.U.'s top men.
At half time they were about ten points ahead of us. Tommy Bingham was the referee. He came in the dressing room and told me I was out jumping Crolton every time, I was just a little slow. I wasn't timing my jump right. So after the half I went back in with a little more confidence. The first jump I beat him, and our play worked. We all took part and we beat the mighty Granite team. Saturday, we really had a crowd out and we beat them again. We won every game the rest of the season and was picked number one team in the state.
One time while I was at Price at Carbon High, I was playing basketball and at half time when we were shooting around before the game started a guy came up to me and asked if I was any relation to Bill Merrell. I told him Bill was my uncle. He said he thought so, because we looked somewhat alike and played quite a bit the same kind of game. Then he told me of a time that he saw Bill playing and a woman in the crowd dressed in a mink coat yell and tell Bill, "hey Red, your a heck of a good ball player but you sure aren't much for looks." Bill answered saying, "well, lady, I have you beat. I can play ball anyway." The guy said the gal never said another thing for the rest of the game.
We won our district and went to state and stayed at Hotel Utah. This was quite a thrill for a little country boy. Harold Lundell went with us to help the coach. Karl Davis had taken his wife with him, they shared one room. The coach asked if I would share a room with Lundell. He said Lundell had asked for me. I was real flattered but scared. The rest of the team were put in two large rooms. Lundell had lost his wife a few months before. She had an operation for tonsils and bled to death under the anesthetic. We laid awake for hours talking each night. He told me how much he had loved her, how he nearly went crazy thinking about her. I have never seen a man cry like he did. Each night he would thank me for listening.
I found out that the team had got a bell hop to bring up some bottles of whiskey to their rooms. Everyone but Everett Manwaring, the athletic manager, and Ken Hadalock, had indulged. We took off like a house of fire and were ten points ahead at half time, but by the fourth quarter Ken and I were the only ones that could run the full length of the floor. We lost, so that night the boys had another drinking party. We took off like we could really win this one, but run out of gas again. We got beat and out of the tournament. The coach found out what had happened. He loaded all the team, except Evertt, Ken and I on the bus and sent them home. We stayed and saw the rest of the tournament. The coach took us to two or three shows. We went golfing with him and Lundell. When we got home the rest of the team had to get up before the student body and ask their forgiveness for the way they had represented the school. I was sure thankful that I didn't have to stand up with them and have my parents, my bishop, my brothers, and sisters, uncles and aunts, all be ashamed of me.
The Pep Club gave the team a banquet. I finally got up nerve enough to ask Dorothy for a date and she accepted. That was one of the most fun nights I had ever had up to that time. I still had to take turns with Glen, Morris, and John, but I did take her to several school and church dances.
GRADUATION
Glen had a date with Dorothy for high school graduation. I talked her into telling Glen that she was going with me. I didn't have anything to wear for a suit, so Lester Nielsen, my uncle, offered me his suit and I accepted. I had generally ridden with Glen on dates, but after I stole his girl, we weren't seeing too much of each other. Grandmother Merrell made a nice bouquet of roses that I took to Dorothy. It was four miles to school. The folks were going to graduation, so Dad hooked the horses to the rubber tired wagon and I rode with them up town and then walked over to Dorothy's. We then walked over to the school. She looked beautiful, all fixed up for graduation.
As we marched through the line to get our diplomas, the principal stopped Dorothy and gave a little speech about her being the eleventh child of the Noel family to graduate from the Uintah High School. We had a real fun night. After I took her home, I had four miles to walk and go over in my mind how much I cared for her.
The next two days were busy ones. LaVoir and I had to go and help Lundell, our teacher, take care of some things. We had been doing projects the last two years to get money enough to take the Ag Club to Chicago to the World's Fair.
WORLD'S FAIR MONEY
There was 18 of us from Vernal going down to Cedar City to do assessment work on iron claims for General Steam Corporation. Merrell Goodrich took us down in his truck. Almost everyone was working for stock in General Steam, but I was going to work for Albert Goodrich. He got $5 a day in stock and paid me $1 a day to work for him. I was real pleased to get a little money to go to the World's Fair. Lundell was paying my ride and food for me for helping with all of the projects.
I can't remember who all went, but there was Donald, Glen, and I. We had been there a couple of days and we had eaten so much baker's bread that the one in charge of the project asked if anyone could bake bread. Donald and Glen spoke up and said that I could, so I was appointed camp cook. I baked ten loaves of bread every day and had hot cakes and baking powder biscuits for breakfast. We went out and shot a deer, so I had venison, fried potatoes, and onions and new bread with butter and honey. About every other day I would cook a pot of beans, I have never seen so much food eaten in my life. I had four of the guys take turns every day on clean up.
After about ten days most of the guys got tired of the job and went home leaving six of us, then six boys came down from Salt Lake. They had never done any hard work before either. They had blisters on their hands and that had taken off their shirts and got some pretty bad sun burns. They were very miserable for about a week. They really liked my cooking. They had never eaten biscuits, home made bred, venison and potatoes and onions. We would eat about a deer a week. After these boys came down, they were there a couple of weeks and then they went home.
Another group of older fellows came from Vernal. Uncle Windfield Heilenger, Uncle Jacob Lybbert, Frank Goodrich, and Mandford. They had us go down by St. George, up at a place they called Gold Mountain. It was a lot prettier country, lots of deer, and a nice cold spring next to the cabin. We made uncle Winfield Heilenger the cook. He mixed up a batch of sour dough, he was an excellent cook.
We were there to make a road, they had an old cat out there. We had to go ahead and drill and shoot the big rocks so that he could make the road. Some of the rocks would be about as big as a truck, we would put about a half a dozen sticks of powder behind them. The mountain was so steep that when they came loose, they would roll down the hill taking trees six inches in diameter like they were matches. A lot of times, it would go through a bunch of brush and deer would come out on all sides. We stayed there until about a week before the fourth of July. Then we went home to get ready to go to the Fair.
I forgot to tell about Dorothy writing letters every week. Glen and I would get a letter from Dorothy on the same kind of stationery. I was a bit put out to say the least, I don't know what she was telling Glen, but she wasn't telling me how much she missed me and how much she loved me; but I was real glad that she would answer my letters. I know Glen was a bit unhappy too. Some of the guys would tease us but not too much, we were the biggest ones in camp.
On the way home when we passed through Hurricane, the temperature was 115 degrees in the shade. We were riding in the back of an open truck. When we got home we found that it was the driest year in history, there was no water in the canals, so about ten families had gone down on the Green River and put in a pump. We disked up about 100 acres of ground, harrowed it, and marked it off in three foot rows and ran the water through and soaked it pretty good. Then we went through with hand corn planters and planted in the furrows where we had watered. In five days the corn was coming through the ground. We finished the day before the fourth of July.
FOURTH OF JULY
We really had a wild fourth, Glen had brought a case of dynamite with him from where we had been making roads. I tied a dozen sticks together and tied them on a tree limb about six feet off the ground. Our neighbors had an old horse that hadn't heard a thing for ten years. Well, about four o'clock in the morning, just as the sun was coming up, I set off the charge. It was much louder than I thought it would be. That old horse threw his tail in the air and you would have thought he was a colt. He ran about a quarter of a mile up through the fields and then just kept ranting around. I think it kind of cleaned out his ears.
The night of the fourth there was a big dance down at the outdoor dance floor. Everyone was shooting off firecrackers, we took about a dozen sticks and tied them on to Glen Lybbert's pasture fence, which was about 100 yards behind the school house. We put a long fuse on it, lit it, and went back to the dance. We got a partner and started dancing. When that charge went off, it shook the trees. We went back over and it had blown out about a rod of fence and some windows in the school. We sure thought it was fun until we saw the damage it had caused. Glen had to go fix the fence the next morning so his sheep wouldn't get out.
WORLD'S FAIR
Donald and I left for the World's Fair at five the next morning. We had two one and one‑half ton trucks with sides about two feet high and an opening about two feet and a top to keep out the sun. There were some wooden grub boxes that we could sit on and everyone had their bedrolls. Lundell drove his car and he would go ahead and buy groceries for the day and make arrangements for a place to stay that night. He generally got permission to stay at a city park. Otis Weeks and Dorothy's brother, Wright Noel, were chaperons. One in each truck. There were two truck drivers, the chaperons and 54 boys.
As we were leaving Vernal, some one sat on Martin Gerald's suit case and mashed the lid in. There was three bottles of whiskey in it. Otis Weeks was the one riding in our truck. When we stopped to get gas he had them pour out the whiskey. About half the boys went with him and they didn't pour all of it on the ground. Lundell heard about it and said if there was more of that kind of thing going on, who ever didn't abide by the rules would be put on a bus and sent home.
Last year we had our fiftieth year reunion and some of the guys were kidding Martin Gerald about the whiskey. As we were thinking back on it, we remembered that Martin had strayed off some place in Denver and we didn't take a head count as we left. We were out of Denver about forty or fifty miles when we discovered that Martin and one of the little freshmen were missing. Lundell turned around and went back to the last place we had seen them. The state capital building. The one little boy had gone into a rest room and when he came out everyone was gone. When Lundell got there, the police had him and had been calling ahead trying to find us. Lundell couldn't find Martin, so he left word for the police to put him on a bus and send him on to Chicago.
We found out later that Martin got to bumming around and missed the truck. He decided to stay in Denver and found a job for the summer. When we met him at our reunion, he had become active in the Church and so had many of his drinking buddies, some had even been bishops.
The night we spent in Denver we slept in the city park. Three or four of the boys had their pants taken with their wallets in them. Lundell helped the boys with their finances. I have often wondered how much the trip must have cost him. If it meant as much to others as it did to me, it would have been worth it. He played a great part in molding the lives of many, many boys.
Whenever we would stop to gas up, there would be a great rush to the rest room and to the soda pop coolers. We would use both rest rooms and the attendant had a hard time collecting for his pop. Sometimes there wouldn't be enough time for every one to go to the rest rooms. When we would get back on the road again there wouldn't be that much traffic. The ones that couldn't wait would stand at the back of the truck and let fly.
Most of the boys would stay up late and so when we would get on our way they would stretch out in the back of the truck and go to sleep.
As we were going through Kansas, there was an awful lot of grasshoppers, they were all through the truck. When someone would get to sleep and his mouth would drop open, someone would catch a grasshopper and drop it in his mouth or hold it by the wings and let it's front legs scratch his tongue or the end of his nose. Sometimes if they would get sound enough to sleep, they would unfasten his belt, pull down his pants and use his belt to tie his legs together. When he would wake up and find himself all undressed and couldn't get his pants up, it took quite a lot of talking to keep some of the boys from fighting. I never slept one minute while on the truck, but I always got a pretty good night's sleep.
When we got to Chicago, Lundell had made arrangements to stay in private homes. The families rented us the homes, about 25 of us to a home. We would put our bedrolls out in the living room, the lucky ones got bedrooms. LaVoir and I slept in a bedroom together with about half a dozen guys on the floor in their bedrolls.
At the fair there were hundreds of booths to spend money at, but most everything that was worth while to see came with your fair ticket. Some of these included all the science displays, the world champion diving, many shows from around the world, like dancing, singing and acrobatics, boxing, Ripley's Believe it Or Not, Ford motor plant, and the Chrysler Corp. I only spent $3. Some of the boys spent as much as $50.
The only things I spent money for were some trinkets to bring home to the folks and Dorothy. I gave Dorothy what I thought were the best. I had forgotten that I gave Ruth Bingham some little trinket also. Later, after we were married, Dorothy said I gave Ruth a nicer present than I did her. Either present would have made their wrists, or whatever part of their body, turn black because it was probably pot metal.
The last night we were there about 25 of us went to the White Horse movie theater a couple of blocks from where we were staying. A couple of nights later we were listening to the news on the truck radio and it told of Pretty Boy Floyd, the most wanted criminal, being shot at the White Horse Theater. It made it quite personal, knowing where it all took place.
On our last day of the trip home, two of the boys had been giving each other such a bad time as threatening each other that Otis Weeks had the truck stopped out of Green River, Wyoming. We all piled out of the truck and Otis said we were going to get the fighting settled; anyone that had a grudge better get it over with. The two boys squared of with each other and kind of walked around in a circle challenging each other. No one seemed to start the fight. Otis said that they had better get with it or shake hands and decide to shut up. They shook hands and there wasn't any more said. I was always lucky I was the biggest one so no one ever gave me a bad time. The day we got home I called Dorothy and got a date for the show. It was good to be back in her company.
HOEING CORN
I spent the rest of the summer down on Green River hoeing corn and watering. I have never seen anything grow so fast. On a still night you could stand out in the corn and hear it crack and pop as it grew.
There was a place in the river about a hundred yards down from the pump where the water came up against the bank and had made a hole about 8 feet deep. The bank was 10 feet above the water. As soon as we had finished our lunch, we would run for the river. The last one in was what we used to call a "nigger baby". We would undress as we ran, we would dive in our birthday suits. One time, Glen forgot to take off his hat and he had to swim like mad to get it. It was always the last thing he took of when he went to bed at night and the first thing he put on when he got up in the morning.
The Green River has a habit of changing its course. River carries so much sand that it could fill in a hole overnight. While we were home for the weekend this happened to our swimming hole. When we came back on Monday we went running to swim, I was the first one to dive. The river had changed and left the water only 2 feet deep. I hit with my hands, then my head. I had a stiff neck for a week.
I have never seen corn so high. You couldn't reach the top of some of it with a long handled hoe. The ears were above our head. There were several of the stocks that were 14 feet tall. We decided to cut the corn green, before the frost hit, so the cows would eat it better. It was a good thing that we raised the corn because we never got one drop of water down our ditch that year.
We raised one of the best gardens we ever raised. There was a gulch that ran the water the year around about two hundred yards down from our house. Each morning we would take two number 2 tubs and two 5 gallon buckets and we would carry water for the garden. Each tub would hold three 5 gallon buckets, so we would be carrying about 40 gallons each trip. We raised tomatoes, cabbage, potatoes, radishes, carrots, and parsnips. The garden was full of wild morning glory so we had to weed the garden. Every morning the morning glory was up again to say, "Good morning, DeMar." The reason my arms are so long is from carrying those heavy tubs of water every morning.
When it came time to cut the corn, they divided the field into so many acres per family, according to the amount of work done. We started hauling our corn with team and wagon. It was twenty four miles round trip. By starting at daylight and hurrying, we could get two loads a day. We did this for about a week. Then we decided to go down and cut and pile corn all day, then take a load home. That way we would get it all cut before it froze.
The Goodrich's came and wondered if I would cut for them and help haul in their truck if they would haul our corn in return, so we did that. We could put about five times as much corn on a load and could make many more trips in a day. We could also start earlier because we had headlights to see with. O'Donell Goodrich, Glen and I hauled the corn.
O'Donnel had a four‑ten pistol shot gun. There were a lot of pheasants along the road in the morning and evening. We shot a lot of them. There was a lot of ducks along the river also. I made the statement that if they shot a duck I would swim out and get it. Well, O'Donnel shot one and it lit over near the far side of the river.
I took off my clothes, ran down the bank and dove in. I have never felt anything as cold. It was the last of October. I swam over and got the duck and tried to swim with it in my hand. Then I tried to swim with a piece of it in my mouth, but I couldn't do it. So I would tread water, throw it as far as I could and a little upstream, then swim out and wait until it got to me; throwing and swimming all the way across the river. By the time I got to the bank, I was so cold I had a hard time getting up to the truck. I just got in, I was so cold I couldn't get dressed. They had the heater going full blast but it still took me at least an hour before I quit shaking. We never did eat the duck. I think that is one of the most stupid things I have ever done.
POST GRADUATE WORK
Well, we finally got the corn harvested and I couldn't find a job. Dorothy was going to take a post‑graduate class at the high school because her mother was quite sick and her dad had asked her if she would skip college that year and take care of her mother. So, I decided this would be a good thing for me to do to. I could be with her a lot more and I wanted to take some more shop.
I took two classes in woodwork, one auto mechanics, one public speaking, one Shakespeare, and one physical education. I enjoyed this time because I was better prepared to study. In shop I knew a lot more than any of the others, so Albert gave more liberties to do what I wanted. He also had me help some of the slower ones. Karl Davis had me help in P.E. and play on the second team to give the varsity a little more trouble. They had a very good team that year, they were a lot better in attitude than the team I had been on. I don't think any of them would have broken training.
I guess if we would have had the money after this period, I would have tried to go to college.
THE OLD MAN
Right after Christmas, Bernard Winkler, called and said they were to hire a man at the mines. I went out and Bernard took me over to the foreman's house. It was only 30 or 40 yards from Bernard's. They called the foreman "The Old Man". Bernard introduced me to him and said that he had heard that they were going to hire a new man and I would like to get the job. The Old Man grunted a little and said they weren't hiring and that he was going to lay off a man or two.
I was pretty discouraged but Bernard said that we should go down to Dragon, a town about six miles away where Mr. Dehay, the superintendent of the mines lived. I was kind of afraid to go, after getting turned down once. Bernard nearly had to drag me. We went in and I was introduced to Dehay. He reached over and shook hands and said that from the looks of me I was the very man he had been looking for.
They were going to start a new mine over across the White River in about a month and he wanted me to work over there. In the meantime, I was to go tell Mr. Price to find work for me.
I sure did hate to go and tell Mr. Price I had gone over his head. When I went and told him he was a little put out with me, so he asked if I had ever cut any wood. I said that I had. There was a big pile of wood in front of his place and another in front of the cook house. He thought that a day or two on the woodpile would finish me off. I started work. It sure was a hard job swinging an axe all day, not knowing whether the boss was looking down your neck or not.
Well, I stayed at it and about ten o'clock, Mrs. Price came out and brought me some lemonade and cookies. She said I had cut three times more wood and it was a better size than anyone they had cut for them before. I really tore to it. By night I had a real big pile cut up and a lot carried in the corner of the garage. The next day he sent me down to the cook house to cut, then back up to his place the next day. Mrs. Price came out with more lemonade and cookies. She said The Old Man really liked the way I worked but not to expect him to ever tell me.
The next morning when we reported to work he asked if I had ever cut cedar posts. I told him I had cut a few. So, he sent me up to the hill above the mines and said to cut posts and stack them along the road for the trucks to pick up. I was sure glad for the change because there was more variety; a period when I would be looking for posts, and a time carrying them out. Art Wilson was running the tractor to hoist the sacks of gilsonite out of the mines. He showed me where to go to cut and to leave my lunch bucket at the shop where they kept the tractors and to come and eat lunch with them. I went out and found a place where there was quite a few posts and started cutting.
At lunch time, when I went down to eat, the men asked me how many I had cut. I said I hadn't counted, but I had better do it because I was supposed to tell The Old Man how many I had gotten. This kind of made me a little apprehensive because I didn't have any idea how many I was supposed to cut. I really went to work and when I got through I had 110 posts cut and stacked along the side of the road. When Art Wilson asked me and I told him how many, he swore and said that was three times as many as any one ever cut. They figured 35 was plenty for one day. When The Old Man asked me and I told him, he used a little profanity and said I had enough posts cut for a year.
So, for the next two weeks I just rode around with The Old Man listening to his tall tales and helping him do a little prospecting. He was really quite a character, he smoked a pipe, the saliva would run down the stem and a steady stream would drip off the end. Occasionally he would take it out and spit between the spokes of the steering wheel, he had a puddle between his feet all the time. He drove the car with the gas nearly to the floor and regulated his speed by using the clutch.
He did lay off a couple of men and that made them none to happy with me. Finally, The Old Man decided he wanted a tunnel run through the hill from the west towards the east, where they were already working. And, he wanted a shaft sunk from the top of the hill down to give ventilation to the tunnel. He put Glen Merrell and another man putting down the shaft and had me, Bill Seabers and Bill Reaves start the tunnel across. Bill Seabers was the one running the tractor and Bill Reaves and I would dig, we used a slip sraper.
They had two drums on the tractor, we took one cable and put it through the pulley at the back of the tunnel and back to the back of the scraper. The other cable would be fastened to the front of the scraper, so the tractor man could pull the scraper in and I would load it and then he would pull it out. I would have to follow it out and dump it. We worked at this for about a month, we were back in the hill about 75 feet.
TRAGEDY
Glen Merrell and his partner had been digging the shaft on top of the hill, they were down about 25 feet. They had to hoist the gilsonite up in a bucket with a hand windless.
This particular morning Glen's partner was sick, so The Old Man told me to go and run the windless for Glen and Bill Seavers and Bill Reaves would work alone in the tunnel. There was a place or two they needed to put some timber to fasten the pulley on. I had to let Glen down in the bucket. He would put one foot in the bucket and hold on to the rope. The bucket held about 25 gallons.
We had just gotten started, when Bill Seavers came running up the hill. He was so out of breath we could hardly tell what he was saying. He told us the mine had caved in and he thought Bill Reaves was dead. I hoisted Glen out and told him to run down to the bottom of the hill where he could see The Old Man's car parked and I would go and see about Bill Reaves. It was three miles from where The Old Man's car was to camp by trail and twelve around by the road. About the time Glen got to the car, The Old Man took off, so Glen had to run to camp.
I ran down the hill and back into the mine. I didn't have a lamp, but I could see a big rock pinning Bill Reaves against the wall. I tried to move it, but it was too heavy. I ran out and got a bar. About the time Bill's Seavers got there, I got the bar under the rock and pried it up. I asked Bill Seavers to pull him out, but he couldn't do it, he was shaking so hard. So I put a rock under the bar and had Bill stand on it and I pulled Bill Reaves out. His legs were so broke up they felt like a bunch of jelly. I listened and couldn't hear any heartbeat, so I just picked him up in my arms and packed him out. When we got to the outside, I put some sacks down and laid him down and covered him with sacks and waited for The Old Man.
We waited two hours and I said I would run to camp and see what had happened. Bill Seavers wouldn't stay alone and he was shaking too hard to walk, so we just sat. About noon, here came The Old Man. He hadn't gone to camp, he had gone to Dragon. So finally, Lucille Merrell had driven Glen to Dragon and found The Old Man. We loaded Bill Reaves in the trunk and Glen and I walked back to camp.
The Old Man took Bill to Dragon so the doctor could look at him and pronounce him dead. Finally, The Old Man came and asked me to go with him to tell Bill Reaves wife. I have never seen anyone scream and yell like she did. They asked me to go with the body to Vernal to the funeral home. We put him in the back of the pick up with a tarp over it.
When we got to Vernal, there was a big dance, so I called Dorothy and I took her to the dance. I guess I was not very good company, the events of the day kept going through my mind. It was the longest day of my life up until that time. I kept thinking that if Glen Merrell's partner hadn't been sick, it could have just as well have been me or both of us.
Then I thought the Lord must have something in mind for me. After I got home in bed, I could still see Bill Reaves. He chewed tobacco and when I picked him up there was tobacco running down his chin. I nearly became sick at the time and laying in bed thinking about it I nearly lost my dinner.
Bill Reaves had a wife and two boys, six and eight years old. She was several bricks short of a full load and very poor house keeper. Bill never took her any place and she was never allowed to drive. Bill spent all the money, she had never had anything to do with it. She got a check for $10,000 from the state. She went out and bought a new car and a little home in Vernal. She had more boy friends than you could shake a stick at. I don't know if she ever remarried.
Bill Seavers, the one that ran the tractor, took a month off and you could never get him back in a mine again. They dropped the project we were working on.
INDEPENDENCE MINE
Mr. Dehay sent Dee Manwaring, Art Wilson, Lee Collier, and me out across the White River to open up a mine. They called it Independence. Art Wilson ran the hoist and took care of the ore on top. Lee Collier and Dee Manwaring did the digging and I sacked the ore in 225 pound sacks. We would ship 50 sacks a day, for which we would get paid $8.00 a piece. This was really good money for a kid 18 years old.
I started paying off a $300 bill we had at the Naples store and bought a 1934 Plymouth. Dee Manwaring would sing love songs to me all day long because he knew how much I loved Dorothy. My favorite was "The Bells Are Ringing For Me And My Girl." The four of us batched it, Art Wilson and I did most of the cooking. Art was a real good cook and I wasn't that bad. We ate a lot of sour dough hotcakes and biscuits.
We had a lot of water in the mine. We had a place dug about a hundred feet below where we were working where the water would collect. We had a pump run by a gasoline motor that we would pump three times a week. The water would run out in some big tank and then Jim Nick, a sheep man, would bring his sheep up and water them. Then he would invite us up to dinner. He was the best sour dough cook I have seen. We would have biscuits, lamb, fried potatoes and some kind of dessert.
One weekend LaVoir and I took Dorothy and Elaine Goodrich out to the mines. We took them down the ladder about 300 feet and showed them where I worked. The I prepared them a meal of sour dough biscuits, venison, and fried potatoes and onions. This was just before Thanksgiving. The night after Thanksgiving, I popped the question and she accepted.
OUR ENGAGEMENT
I sent off for an engagement ring and had it come to my Aunt Elva Manwaring's because the mail was delivered to their house but our mail was put in a mail box about a quarter mile from the house. Aunt Elva thought she would pull a trick on me. She bought a fifteen cent ring at the store, but I happened to be there when the mail was delivered and I picked up my ring. Elva was up town, she didn't know I already had my ring. She called me and said my ring had come, so I went along with the joke. After she had given me the ring I showed her the real one. Then I decided to give Dorothy the cheap ring first.
I made a date for the show. As we were walking to the show, I took her hand and slipped on the cheap ring. When we got under the next street lamp, she looked at it and was very polite, saying how beautiful. I could tell she was very disappointed so I took out the real one. She told me she was trying to think what she was going to tell her friends about such a cheap ring. I was very ashamed of myself for pulling such a cheap joke on her.
About this time in my life I was ordained an Elder by James Karren. We went to our Bishop and got our temple recommends and then the two of us went to President Calder, the Stake President. He didn't call us in separately, but talked to us together. He didn't give us much of an interview, but asked if we wanted to pay some tithing so he would know we were tithe payers. Dorothy told him she paid her tithing to the Bishop, so he didn't say anything more about it but signed our recommends and we were already to go to the temple.
EVAUNE'S BIRTH
The day before we were to be married (27 May 1936), my sister Evaune was born. The doctor came to the house and delivered the baby. Soon after he left mother started to hemorrhage, so grandmother called the doctor. He said for me to come to the drug store and he would have a prescription for some ergot to stop the hemorrhaging. I don't think I ever drove so fast in my life. I was in town and back in about fifteen minutes. Mother got better that night.
OUR WEDDING
Dorothy's friends had a little shower for her and we left at two the next morning for the Salt Lake Temple. We planned to go to the 8:00 session. Dorothy's mother and her brother Donald went with us. On the way out we had eight flat tires. We would take off the tire, patch the tube, put it back on and pump it up. Then we would go a few miles and do the same thing over again. Finally, about the bottom of Parley's canyon, I had another flat and the tube was so far gone I couldn't fix it. So I hitched a ride into Salt Lake and got a new tube and hitched a ride back and fixed the tire. I pumped it up and made it on in to my Aunt Ruth Black's place. I was dirty and tired and had big blisters on my hands from doing so much pumping.
We cleaned up and made it to the 11:00 session, I was scared to death. They didn't give the groom as much attention in those days as they do today. I didn't have anyone to go with me. Dorothy had her mother. I can't remember much that took place, but I can remember the name she gave me through the veil, and the new name I was given. I remember the instructions that the Temple President, President Franklin D. Richards, gave us. He said, "never go to bed at night with hard feelings against each other." I think we have done this pretty well. I couldn't stay mad at Dorothy very long at a time.
THE HONEYMOON
After we got out of the temple we went to the little coffee shop on Third South and Main or State Street and had dinner. We had chicken fried steak, potatoes, gravy, corn, soup, and a dessert for twenty-five cents a plate.
After we had eaten, I took the car to a service station and had four new-used tires put on. Then we drove to Logan, where Virginia, Dorothy's sister, was going to college. Dorothy and I drove all over town trying to find a hotel but there was some kind of convention going on and all the hotels were full. We finally found a little hole-in-the-wall, with a bathroom down the hall. I was so tired I hardly knew who I was, but we finally got to sleep. We got up the next morning and went to Virginia's for breakfast.
LIFE IN OREGON
I picked up Dorothy's mother and Doug, and started for Klamath Falls, Oregon, where Doug and I were going to try to find work. We drove to Twin Falls, Idaho, there was a circus in town so we stopped and went to the circus.
The next day we drove to Bend, Oregon and the next day we went on to Merrill, where Howard and Elna live. Doug and I spent a little time looking for work on the farms, but the wages were a little low, so we went on up to Klamath Falls and stayed with Mary and Roland.
Every day Doug and I would go to each mill to see if they were hiring. One day we spent in Klamath Falls, Doug took one side of the street and I took the other. We went to every business in town, grocery stores, cafes, everything. Doug got discouraged and went back to Merrell, Oregon to a job on a farm for seventy five dollars a month and board. I kept going back to the sawmills.
EWANA BOX COMPANY
One morning I was standing in line at Ewana Box Company, there was about a hundred and fifty waiting in line when the superintendent came out of his office. He walked along shaking his head. I got out of line and followed him until I got away from the bunch in line and asked if there ever would be a job. He looked at me and said, "You have been coming every day for two weeks, haven't you." I said, "yes," He said he remembered seeing the red hair. I was really thankful for red hair at the time. He said, "go up to the office and he would give me a job when he came back." He took me out in the yard where they were grading air dried two by twelves, fourteen and sixteen feet long. I would pull the lumber off the chain and put it on the cart where it was then hauled to the planing mill. When I got this job I had just fifty cents left in my pocket.
The next afternoon a man from the finance company, which was financing our car, came by and picked it up. It was kind of a low time in our lives. I rode the bus to work for a week. We went down to Sears and bought a bike for $5 down and $5 a month. I rode the bike to work.
After three weeks we finished up the job and I was laid off. I went back to the superintendent and asked about a job. He said, "I thought I got you a job," I told him I had worked too fast and finished it up. He told me they had been having trouble with the union since it was non-union. Union organizers had been trying to sabotage the mill by turning off the oil cups on some of the larger machines that were located down under the mill. He asked me to spend a few days watching to see that no one, except he or the maintenance man touched them.
Down under the mill a lot of chunks of lumber had fallen off the conveyer belts and made quite a mess. So I spent a couple of days cleaning up, it gave me something to do so I wouldn't get so bored. I noticed a man adjusting an oil cup on one of the main machines. I walked up behind him and touched him on the shoulder. He nearly went through the floor. I took him by the arm and said, "Lets go up and see the superintendent." When we got there the superintendent started to laugh and told me this guy was in charge of the molding department and he had a right to adjust the oil cups. He said he was real impressed with the way I cleaned up and had taken care of things at the mill and had another job for me.
The superintendent took me and introduced me to the assistant superintendent, Mr. Peterson, who everyone called Pete. Pete's wife was L.D.S., I had met her at church. Pete and I became good friends. He started hauling me to work so I didn't have to ride my bike. We could drive clear into the mill, where as most of the workers had to leave their cars in the parking lot and then walk a quarter of a mile into work. He gave me a job working on a band saw ripping off the edges of the lumber. The job paid fifty cents an hour more, which brought my pay to $4.50 a day. I worked at this job for about two months.
Then they started an afternoon shift and put me dumping cribs that came from the dry kilns. This put my pay at $6 a day. The man that graded the lumber that I dumped on the chain was kind of the boss on the afternoon shift. We only had about half as big a crew as on the afternoon shift. They were doing twelve to fifteen cribs a day. Al, the grader, said "Lets get ten cribs." He was kind of the one that controlled the number. If I put too much on he couldn't grade it, so I pushed it off at the speed he asked for. Then I would run like mad to get another one so it wouldn't a long time he was waiting. We got ten cribs pretty easy. So we did this for a few days. Then Al said, "Lets try twelve." So we got twelve. The superintendent would post on the board each day the number of cribs each crew got. We finally settled down to fifteen for the afternoon shift and eighteen for the day shift.
We would eat lunch in the grinding room. There was about ten of us one night. A rough talker started talking about his niece being married in the Salt Lake temple. He said they were married in the nude. I just set there and didn't say a thing but Al spoke up and said, "Red, that is what they all called me, is that true?" "You are a Mormon, aren't you?" I said I was and that I was and what the guy said about the temple was the farthest thing from the truth possible. More modesty was shown in the temple than any place I had ever been. Al said that he had spent three years in Utah and he figured what I said was true. They all started asking questions about the Church and nearly every night during lunch we would talk about the Gospel. It was too bad I wasn't better prepared. I am sure I could have gotten some of them interested.
My brother, Donald, was looking for work so I asked Pete about a job for him. He said to have him come up so right after Christmas Donald came up and started working the afternoon shift with me. We had a two bedroom house on the east side of Klamath Falls. Donald stayed with us and it was hard to get along with out a car. So Donald and I bought a 1931 Chevy. This made it much better to get to church and shopping, especially with Dorothy being six months pregnant with DeLoris. Roland Rigby was Branch President so it wasn't long until Donald was working in the Branch.
KLAMATH CLARKS
I'd like to insert a part of my history in here that is about forty-eight years ahead of where it would fall. Dorothy and I were working in the Seattle Temple and I was asked to help train a Brother Clark. I found out he was from Klamath Falls and had moved there a month or two before we had left. When we got to talking, we had me. I couldn't remember much about him, but he knew everyone that was there when we were. He was Branch President for years and spoke at Pete Peterson's and June Peterson's funerals. Pete was my boss at the Ewana Box Plant. He also spoke at Jack and Eudora Morris' funeral, Jack was counselor to Roland and Eudora was Relief Society President. She had never had any children, but had always kept Dorothy on the straight and narrow on how to care for DeLoris when she was first born. It was a great joy to have the Clark's there in the temple and talk about old times. Klamath Falls had grown from a small branch to a Stake.
DELORIS ARRIVES
When DeLoris was born (2 Apr 1937), Dorothy only stayed in the hospital four days then they let her come home. She was supposed to stay in bed for another week and a half. So I hired a practical nurse to come in and stay and take care of Dorothy and DeLoris. I was paying her four dollars a day, two thirds of what I was making. She was very poor help. I would come about two in the morning, DeLoris would be crying so I would change her and get her a bottle.
DeLoris was a little stinker, she wouldn't nurse Dorothy. We would take the milk with a breast pump, put it in a bottle and feed her. By the time I got this done and to bed, it would be three o'clock. Then DeLoris would wake up at six. I would get up and feed her, get breakfast for Dorothy and our hired nurse and leave for work at twelve-thirty.
After three days of this, Dorothy said she couldn't stand the gal being there, she was always complaining how sick she was. So I let her go and hired our neighbors ten year old girl to come in and stay with Dorothy until I got home. When I got home she and Dorothy would have DeLoris fed and asleep. I would get up at six and get Dorothy and DeLoris bathed and breakfast. Dorothy didn't stay in bed the two weeks like the doctor had told her. She didn't like the bed pan, so when I wasn't there she would get up and go to the bathroom.
It wasn't long until she was telling me how to fix meals and wash dirty diapers. I was afraid she was going to hurt herself, but she got along much better than I did. During about three weeks time I dropped from a hundred and eighty five pounds to one hundred and sixty pounds, the smallest I had been since I was in the seventh grade. It didn't take long to gain it back and some more.
DeLoris was blessed the first weekend in May. While I was giving her a blessing she had a little trouble with her bowels. It made such a noise it could be heard all over the building. By the time I got her back to her mother, she was a mess. Her diaper was not as tight as the pampers were today. She was kind of dripping all over he new dress. It took Dorothy the rest of thee meeting to get her cleaned up. But we still loved her and love her more every year since.
It wasn't long after DeLoris was born, about six weeks, when Roland and Mary moved to Brigham City. They wanted Dorothy and I and Donald to move into their home until it sold. Then, Mary came up with the plan that Dorothy ought to go down with her and spend a month to show DeLoris off and visit the folks. Dorothy hadn't seen her folks for a year, so they took off and left Donald and I batching it. All we ever did was work, eat and sleep.
I was going to the mill two hours early each day to learn to be a grader, which paid $8 a day, about the best wages in the mill. Donald got kind of tired going in that much early. We had been doing this about three weeks and I was getting really lonesome for Dorothy and DeLoris.
BACK TO UTAH
When we got up one morning there was a telegram from the people I used to work for at the gilsonite mines asking me to come back to work for them. I didn't even give Donald a vote. By two o'clock we had gone out to work, quit our jobs and had everything we owned stacked in and on our car. We tied the beds and table on the top of the car. We put dishes, sewing machine, bedding, and clothing in the back seat. You couldn't hardly see the car. Then we took off for Vernal.
We stopped in Merrill and had dinner with Howard and Elna and left there at eight that night. We took turns driving a hundred miles a shift. It is 1200 miles from Klamath Falls to Vernal. We would have made it in about 24 hours, but we got over to about Duchesne when our lights went out on us. So we pulled over and slept for a while. The moon came up so we started driving. Each time we would see a car coming we would pull off the road and stop. We arrived home just as it was getting daylight. My it was great to see Dorothy and DeLoris.
I stayed there for two days then drove out to the mines and got there just as the men were going to work. Dad was working there and was glad to see me. I think Old Man Price acted more glad to see me than anyone. He said, "Go get your work clothes on, I need some posts cut." So I cut posts for a couple of days. Then he said that they wanted to start up the mine again at Independence. He wanted me to go with him and check it out and see what it would take to get it back in shape to work.
We drove out and got our lights and went down into the mine. It was 300 and some feet down, you climbed down a 16 foot ladder to a landing, step over and down another 16 foot ladder until you get to the bottom. I hadn't paid too much attention how far down we had gone when we came to the bottom. The old man was in lead, he stepped off the ladder and started to sink a little. He grabbed the ladder. We got to looking and found that the water had risen about 100 feet during the two years that the mine hadn't been worked.
A tar like substance had seeped out of the walls and covered the water until it looked like the bottom. When we got to taking stock of where we were, we lacked a hundred feet to being to the bottom. I don't know how long the old man could have stood there before he would have broken through, he was plenty scared. We crawled out and went to another mine we had just started. It was only about a hundred feet deep and was dry. We decided that is where we would work. The boss had a hoist to send out and we built a building to put it in. In about two weeks we were in production and I was working about 30 miles nearer Dorothy and DeLoris.
THE NEW MINE
We started the new mine with Earnest Winkler, Lee Goodrich, one more I can't remember, and myself. We were batching it. The other three didn't like to cook, or didn't know how, so the first two weeks we ate corn flakes or Wheaties, which we called laying mash. Having laying mash three times a day got kind of tiresome to me, so I started a batch of sour dough and had sour dough biscuits, hotcakes, fried potatoes and onions. I would take the twenty-two and get a couple of cotton tails every two or three days and have a little rabbit once in a while. I would make pudding or cookies. I did all the cooking, the other guys were willing to let me.
After a few weeks they opened another mine or two and got some more men out there. Then they opened a cook house and we all ate there. Mrs. Bodley ran it and she was a real good cook. In a month or two I got them to transfer me back to Rector, where I could get a house and move Dorothy and DeLoris out there. Donald got a job out there. He, Lowell Reed and Ralph Hodgiskinson lived at the bunk house and ate at the cook house.
Donald and I decided to go deer hunting up the Missouri Creek. Bernard and Arthur and I used to hunt up there. The road was just for wagons, but we used to make it up to the Carl Bathurst place in the car by doing a little shoveling, but the best hunting was about three miles up to the Clarence Deckers place. A car had never been up there so we always walked on up and carried the deer out. Clarence was always a lot of fun to talk to.
AFTER VENISON
One morning Donald and I decided to go up to Bathurst and hunt deer. We took a couple of shovels and took off just before daylight. The first fifteen miles weren't too bad, although we were the first ones to drive up in the last three or four years. We drove up the bottom of the Missouri Creek. It was fairly dry and fairly smooth until we would come to a place where it was too narrow and rough, then we would shovel a dug way up the bank and go up through the sage brush to where we could get back in again. We had to do this four times before we got to Carl's place.
We got there about ten o'clock and decided with an hour or so of shoveling we could get back in the creek and go another way. We worked until we finally got up to Clarence's. I think we were the first car to get in there, they always went by horseback or with a wagon. It was getting late enough that we didn't have time to hunt any deer, so we started out.
Donald was driving and he ran over a big rock that hit on the fly wheel housing and we were high centered. We got the jack out and we jacked it up off the rock. We couldn't start the car and get it in gear with it running because it had busted the throwout bearing and the clutch wouldn't work. Donald got in, put it in second and I was able to push him enough so that it started.
We drove for quite a way in second, but our gas was so low we decided we better try speeding up the motor and letting it die down until the gears meshed with the motor. This would get it in high gear. We made it home and ran out of gas as we were pulling into the yard.
The next morning we got up early and took the pickup and Ralph Reed and Lowell and went right up to a real good hunting place. We got three deer, came home, dressed them out and gave most every one in camp some meat. Lowell said he couldn't stand deer meet, so he didn't want any. A day or two later Dorothy invited all the boys to dinner. She had fixed Swiss steak. Every one but Lowell was eating and saying how good. He took a little taste and then ate more than anyone else. He kept asking Dorothy when he could come to dinner again. We ate a lot of venison that year.
DAVIS FARM
Work got slow, so we moved back into Vernal and rented the George Davis farm. It was 60 acres, so we decided to try farming it. Times were tough so I got a chance to work for the county on a road project with my team. The PWA furnished the men and shovels for them to lean on. They got $4 a day and I got $3 for me and my team. I used a fresno, a kind of a scraper. One of the men was supposed to hold the handle until it loaded up and then follow behind and dump it, but the first time the scraper caught on a rock and threw the guy that was holding the handle so no one else would do it. So I held the handle with one hand and drove the team with the other. I did this for about three weeks. Then the job was finished and that was all the money we had all year.
Dorothy was pregnant with Douglas, we would probably have starved if it hadn't been for our folks. Dorothy's dad would slip in some groceries once in a while and Dad would bring up milk, butter, and meat. We raised a few vegetables. This was one of the hardest times of our lives. We didn't even have enough to buy diapers for the baby we were expecting.
DOUGLAS ARRIVES
The time came for the baby to be born, but I guess Dorothy didn't think it was a good time to bring him into such poor conditions. Finally the doctor decided it had gone on long enough. The baby was about three weeks overdue, so he had Dorothy come to his office and he gave her a shot and told her to go straight home and to call him as soon as she had her first pain. We hadn't much more than arrived home and she started having contractions. So we called Dr. Hanson. He came right out. He didn't want Dorothy in the hospital because there had been so much staph infection.
We had arranged for Sister Walker, Elizabeth's mother, to come. She was a practical nurse. Doug still refused to be delivered for about two hours. He finally came so fast that he was real blue. It sure did scare me. I was there watching the delivery. Dr. Hanson took him by the feet, chucked him under the chin a few times and he began to cry. The doctor handed Douglas to Sister Walker and put all of his attention on Dorothy. It wasn't too long that all was going well and I could breathe again.
This event took place about three o'clock on May 27, 1938. We sure did love him and spoil him. He never did get over it. His wife and children and ward took over where we left off.
MERCUR MINING
Our crops didn't turn out that well and the price was practically nothing. That fall Dorothy moved in an apartment in the same building with her folks. Her brother Doug and I went out to Mercur to work with my brothers Donald and Eldon. We all four lived in a boarded up 10 x 12 tent. We had two army cots, we fastened one on top of the other and made bunk beds out of them. Donald and Eldon slept on the bottom bunk and Doug and I on the top. I have never been any closer to anyone than to Doug.
Doug and I worked afternoon shift, we were drilling dry and it would be so dusty we couldn't see each other at arms length away. We would come home at night so dirty we would look like black boys. We would make a fire, warm up the tent a little, heat some water and take a sponge bath and crawl into bed so tired we could hardly move. Next morning we would get up and eat with Eldon and Donald. There was six other young fellows batching out there and nearly every night they would come in and eat with us. We had to take turns since getting eight to ten people in there made the tent pretty full. They would go to the store and buy something and bring it in and eat with us. They liked hot biscuits and venison and potatoes and onions. It seemed like I had fixed this kind of menu at times before.
SECOND CHRISTMAS
I caught a ride to Salt Lake. I didn't have hardly any money, I bought two or three little presents for DeLoris and Doug and I bought Dorothy a pair of house slippers. I caught the bus to Vernal. I arrived there at two in the morning the day before Christmas. I had a half a mile to walk, it was about fifteen below, I have never been more happy to get home to my family.
Christmas morning Dorothy put her house slippers on. I don't think she had worn them much more than an hour when they started to come apart. They were probably the cheapest slippers ever made. I was sure happy to be home. Dorothy's and my folks had taken good care of her. I stayed until after New Year's then hitch hiked out to Salt Lake and caught a ride on out to Mercer.
MISSION ORE
I went back to work in the dust for about two weeks. Then Doug, Donald, Eldon and I went into partners and started making a little more money. We had some pretty good ore. In the spring I rented an apartment and moved Dorothy and the children out. Donald, Eldon and Doug moved in with us. Dorothy did the cooking. The mine that we were working petered out, so Donald and Eldon got a lease in the mine they called the Resolute. Doug and I got ore down in another mine. Chad came out and went to work with us and Dad came out and worked with Donald and Eldon. We all got into some pretty good ore.
Doug got a call to go on a mission and we had the best ore in the camp. In just over a month Doug had enough to take him through his entire mission, so he sold his lease to Chad and I. I think that was the last ore we shipped out of there. By then Donald had decided to go on a mission, so they were in real good ore and Chad and I went in partners with them. The saying was going around that where ever the Gale boys put their pick that is where the ore is. I didn't tell them to have some of their group prepare for a mission and the Lord would bless them with ore.
LITTLE DOUG'S LEG
When our little boy Douglas was just over a year and just learning to walk good one day he would start to fuss every time we would put him down on his feet. He wouldn't walk or stand and when you would pick him up and touched his one leg, he would cry. When we got to checking it was kind of red and swollen. Our neighbor was a registered nurse that had been working in the Lehi Hospital. She advised us to take him to Dr. Eddington. Her husband drove us down. When we got to the hospital the doctor was not in, so we went over to the American Fork Hospital. There the doctor examined him and said it was a little arthritis and to take him home and keep it warm and he was sure it would better in a few days.
We went back past the Lehi Hospital and noticed Dr. Eddington's car there. So we took Doug in and as soon as Dr. Eddington looked at him he said, "I hope I am wrong, but I think he has a bone infection." He looked in Doug's mouth and there was some infection around one of his teeth. The doctor told us to take Doug home and keep hot packs on his leg for 48 hours and then bring him back. When we brought him back you could see where the infection had centralized. Dr. Eddington suggested Dr. Tirie do the operating. He said he was the best in the west. So Dr. Eddington called Dr. Tirie and set the operation for the next day.
I watched as they cut down to the bone an incision about four or five inches long. You could see the bone was sort of like honeycomb, it was soft. The doctor used an instrument kind of like an ice cream scoop, only much smaller, and just scraped the bone away. There was a piece about as big as a match stick that was still hard. They cleaned that well and put some medicine on it, then they put a cast on with a hole over the incision and packed the hole full of gauze.
Dr. Eddington paid Dr. Tirie and said I could pay him later. Dr. Tirie only charged $75, he had come clear from Salt Lake to do the job. Dr. Eddington said that was the only time he had known Dr. Tirie to operate outside of Salt Lake, and that he usually charged $500. Dr. Eddington wouldn't take anything for his part in it, he kept Doug in the hospital for a week and put a bed in his room for Dorothy to sleep on. Dorothy stayed right with him. The hospital bill was only $25. I have never known a doctor that had as much concern for his patient's well being. He was our doctor for Leon, Ken, and for me when I had an operation. He treated us all the same way.
We took Doug home but it was so far out to the mines that we decided to move into Lehi where we would be near the doctor. Dorothy was expecting Leon at this time, so we wanted her near the doctor for that reason also. The folks had moved from Vernal to Lehi and were just across the street from us.
We had to change the gauze every few days, it would stink so bad it nearly turned your stomach. Doug stunk so bad that Dorothy wouldn't take him to church. This had been going on for two months, Dorothy was due any day, so Dorothy's mother came out to help.
After three months they took the cast off and x-rayed and found a new bone had grown on to that little piece until you could hardly see where the damage had been done. They had replaced the cast three or four times, Doug was pretty hard on casts and on DeLoris. He would kick her with the cast, she learned to stay her distance.
LEON ARRIVES
One morning as I was leaving for work Mother Noel said, "I think this is the day," but Dorothy wouldn't let me stay home. She said everything would be fine. Chad was living with us and working out to Mercur. When we got home Mother Noel had a real good dinner ready. We sat down and started to eat. Mother Noel said, "aren't you going to ask where Dorothy is?" I said I just thought she must have gone across the street to the folks place. Well, she hadn't. Not much after I left for work she had gone to the hospital. Leon was born the tenth of April, 1940.
It didn't take me long to finish that meal and get up to the hospital. I was sure relieved to see that all was well. I was a bit perturbed that Dorothy would let me go when she knew it was the day. But she has always been one not to want to make a hardship on anyone else but herself. I sure did love her and our new baby and my love has increased 100% since then for both of them.
SCOUTMASTER
I was called to be the scoutmaster in the Lehi First Ward. We had lived there about a year when we got notice they were going to sell the house we were in, so I told my scouts that the one that me a home to rent would get a dollar. The next day Jay Higgenson came and told about a house on his paper route. It was in the Lehi Fourth Ward. I went and looked at it, it was an all-brick home, with two bedrooms for $13 a month. Our landlord lived in a little adobe house behind us. His name was Bro. Coates. He was one of the nicest men I have ever known. We moved in and on the second Sunday they called me to be the scoutmaster.
THE MERCUR BRANCH
I didn't mention that while we were in Mercur I was called to be first counselor in the Sunday School, Mercur Branch. The Sunday School President had had his drivers license revoked for a year for drunken driving. The Branch President would have a cigarette occasionally. During this time in Mercur the camp organized a softball team and played in a tournament at Lehi. On the 24th of July we had a big celebration with a carnival and a program. The Relief Society sang the Beer Barrel Polka and our team played a game of softball. We won because Donald and Eldon and I were on the team. We won the division at Lehi and went to Salt Lake and played in the state finals. We came in third. We had a really good pitcher so we didn't have to play that well on defense.
WATKINS ICE CREAM COACH
The following spring Watkins Ice Cream asked me to be coach of a team for them. They furnished suits with their names on them and they paid all costs. It was a fun time but we didn't have a very good team. We won a few and lost a lot, we weren't the best in the league and not quite the worst. I made a lot of good friends and got to eat a lot of ice cream. Every time we won the team would go to Watkins for sundaes and milk shakes. Once a week I also met with management to talk about the team. They, of course, brought out the ice cream.
LEHI HOUSE
The house we had rented was taken over by the owner's son, so we had to move again. There were several pretty nice homes for sale, so I decided to talk to our banker and see what we could do about buying. There was one home I wanted that was all brick, a garage, two bedrooms, a bath, living room and kitchen and a full basement that was unfinished. It was for sale for $2700 and the payments were $200 down, and $25 a month. But the banker said the interest would kill me, it was 5%. So he recommended that I buy an older home made of adobe brick. It was for $1000 with $100 down and the bank would loan me all the money and the monthly payments would be $20 a month. So we bought that one and moved in. I did some remodeling, put a cellar under the kitchen for food, etc.
KENNETH ARRIVES
Kenneth had arrived on November 18, 1941. Grandmother Merrell had come down from Salt Lake and helped Dorothy for a couple of weeks. I was able to watch the delivery, it wasn't quite the shock that it had been with Doug. He was born in the Lehi hospital and Dr. Eddington delivered him. The total cost was only $50 for the doctor and the hospital.
On the way to Salt Lake to take grandmother home we were listening to the radio and they announced the attack on Pearl Harbor. it was quite shock because we didn't think any small country like Japan would dare to attack us. We figured that in a few months the United States would have them licked. Then it looked like I may have to go into the service unless I got into a job that would help the war effort. And digging gold didn't help, so we left the mines and went to work as carpenters.
RUPTURE REPAIR
I guess I had better back up just a little to before Ken was born. I was picking some loose rocks off the ceiling of the mine when a fairly big chunk came down and hit the pit and drove the handle down into my groin, cutting the bottom of my abdomen on my pelvis, causing a rupture. I went to the doctor, he said that someday I would need to have it repaired. But it didn't bother me that much so I put it off until it looked like I was going to leave the mine. Dr. Eddington recommended that I get it fixed while the mine insurance would pay for it. He said some other companies may not hire me until I got it done.
So I checked into the hospital as soon as I had the garden planted. I figured I would be home in a week. They kept me there for one whole month. They wouldn't even let me go to the bathroom for fear I would rip the stitches out, so I laid on my back for a month. Then Dr. Eddington said I could go home, but couldn't get up for at least another week. So they carried me out to the car and into the house.
After about a week the doctor came and looked me over and said it looked good and that I could get up and start walking a little. My was I happy. I hadn't seen the garden and we had a litter of pigs I wanted to see. So I kicked my feet out of the bed and pulled my pants on and stood up. My legs wouldn't hold me, I fell down and got back to the edge of the bed. I set there for a while until the circulation got going. After a while I got to where I could walk a little, so I went out to the barn. By the time I got there I was so tired I wondered if I could get back to the house. After I had rested for a bit I made it back in. Dorothy had done an excellent job with the garden and animals. I kept getting up and walking every few minutes.
KEARNS AIR FORCE BASE
In a couple of days I figured I bad better go and see if I could find a job. Glen Lybbert was working up at Kearns Air Force Base as a carpenter. He said I would have to join the union to work there. This gave me a lot of concern because I didn't know much about carpentry. I had taken four years of shop in high school and could handle the tools pretty well, but I didn't know anything about construction. Some of the guys said they (the union) would ask me a few questions before they would let me join, such as how to square a building and for me to tell them six, eight and ten. I didn't have the slightest idea of what that meant. I went in for my interview with fear and trembling. When I got in before the examining board I was all ready to turn and run. All they asked me was could I pay $10 down and $10 a month dues.
My first day on the job was a long one. I had only been out of bed four days and it was a ten hour day. I wasn't sure I was doing but before I had been there a week I was made lead man over six others. I guess one reason was that I had more tools than anyone else. We really didn't have to know much, we were putting on siding. Then one day the foreman came by and told me to make a bunch a steps to go up to the barracks. I had never seen a step cut out, let alone going it. So I looked up an old builder and he showed me how to use my square to lay out steps. So I made a set of steps and it pleased my foreman. So for a couple of weeks I cut out steps. It got really boring, besides it was hard work using a hand saw for ten hours a day.
LEHI BRICK PLANT
I had become a pretty good friend of the mayor of Lehi. One day he came up to the house and asked if I and Glen Lybbert would come and work. They were building a new brick plant in Lehi. I was pleased to do it. It was only three miles from home instead of forty. So Glen and I were the first carpenters to work at the Lehi brick plant. We were putting in forms for concrete for the brick kilns. The brick was used to make the blast furnace and open hearth fire brick for Geneva Steel. We worked there about six months. Glen and the foreman didn't get along too well, but the superintendent liked Glen and I.
One day the foreman was explaining how he wanted a job done. We had a helper there with us. When the foreman had given us his instructions and turned to walk away the helper asked Glen what do we do. Glen said, "now that so and so is gone, we will do it right." Well, he hadn't gone, but was standing behind Glen. Well, I knew our days were numbered.
That evening at quitting time the foreman brought our checks and said they had to cut back for a couple of weeks, so he was going to let us go for a while. He would call us back when he needed us. That is the only time in my life I ever got a pink sleep and I hadn't said a thing.
MINE ACCIDENT
They were renting jack hammers and drilling equipment at Geneva Steel. Glen and I had equipment enough to bring us about $200 a month, but it was still out at the mines. Since we didn't have a job we went out to pick up our equipment. The jack hammer was still down in the mine and up a rise about one hundred feet. So we went down to get it.
I went up and when I would get within about ten feet of the top my light would go out because of gas that had accumulated at the top. Glen came up and I stood on the ladder as far up as my light would shine and Glen went on up and picked up the hammers and handed it to me. Then he came on down past me and I handed him the hammer. We went on down until we were two lengths of sixteen foot ladder from the bottom. When I stepped on to the ladder it broke and we fell. Glen dropped the hammer and fell backwards and lit with his back on the hammer. I fell down sixteen feet, hit a timber, and fell another sixteen feet. It knocked our lights off so I had to feel around in the dark until I found a lamp.
Glen was trying to get up and was yelling, "my back is broken." I finally found my lamp and lit it and got Glen to lie still. I ran out of the mine to get help. There was one man out there. We picked up an old cellar door about two feet wide and six feet long. We took it back into the mine about six hundred feet and got Glen on it. Then we carried him out to a cabin where one of the men lived, the snow was so deep that we lacked about a mile of driving up to the mine, so I ran down to the car and drove down to the little town of Mercur about two miles away and got a man with a truck to come and break a road for me. Then I took out a head of him. I poured on the gas and didn't stop. I drove up to the mine. The front seat of the car on the passenger side lay down, so we put the cellar door in and laid Glen on top of it and I took off for Lehi. I was pretty scared. I thought for sure he had a broken back. I kept asking him if he could move his toes. He could, but he was in so much pain that I had a hard time getting him to lie still.
When we got to the hospital Dr. Eddington took him in and x-rayed. He found that the three spurs on the back of the vertebrae had been broken and two verterbre had small fractures. But the spinal column itself had not been injured. They put him in traction laying on his stomach.
The doctor asked how I was. I had been so excited that I didn't think anything was wrong with me. But the doctor insisted on looking me over. One leg from my knee to my crotch was nearly black from where I lit straddle of the timber. But there was no broken bones.
I went and told Glen's family and went on home. By the next morning I was so stiff and sore I had a hard time walking. Glen was in the hospital for three weeks. When we went back to the mines after our tools someone had walked off with them.
GENEVA CARPENTER
I had to find a job so I went out to Dugway where an Army camp was being built. Dad and I got a job out there carpentering. After Glen got out of the hospital he got a job at Geneva Steel. After he had been there for about a month he talked to superintendent to calling the union hall and requesting me to come to work.
Glen and I were back as partners. We were putting the big timber on top of the maintenance building. The timber was eight inches thick, sixteen inches wide and twenty five feet long. We would bolt these timbers onto steel trusses eight feet apart. Then a tongue and grove 3 x 6 decking would nail on top of them. I wore out several pair of carpenter overalls on the seat before I got so I could stand up and walk up these trusses. It was nearly a hundred feet to the ground.
We worked on this project for about three months. Then we were transferred up to the rolling mill to do the same thing. They couldn't find anyone that would work that high. We spent another four or five months on this job. By then they had started laying off. They would take a whole crew and lay them off and if the foreman wanted to go back to work with his tools he would stay on.
Every time that a crew that Glen and I were working on was supposed to be laid off the superintendent would transfer us on to another crew. I could see the handwriting on the wall, so I tried to get Glen to quit and we would go to school to be pattern makers. When the plant started up we would have steady work. Glen said as soon as we get laid off we would do that.
TRADE SCHOOL
After about a month I quit and started school. Glen kept on working for another year and a half. By the time he was laid off I was working at Geneva Steel and teaching school at night. We were living in Lehi so I caught the train at 5:00 in the morning to get to Provo to school. I was there until 9:00 at night and then caught the train back home getting in about 10:30. I did this for three months then a job came up driving school bus from Lehi to Provo picking up high school students from Lehi, American Fork, Pleasant Grove and Orem and taking them to vocational school. The would go to school half a day, then I would take them back to high school and pick up another bunch for the afternoon classes. Then I would get to go to school for three hours in the morning and three hours in the afternoon.
My pattern making instructor made arrangements for me to make patterns for some of the foundries around and they paid me 75 cents an hour. With the $100 a month I got for driving school bus, it made it so that we were able to put a little money in the bank.
MOVE TO PROVO
When spring came and school was out we decided to move to Provo. They had started a new building project on fifth south. We went down and bought a new home at 1035 East Fifth South. We were able to sell our home in Lehi for $1800, giving us a profit of $500 after paying for the materials I had used to remodel. The new home cost us $5900. It was sure nice to get into a brand new home. By this time I was working at Geneva Steel as a carpenter.
The pattern shop had not started yet, so I hired on as a D-carpenter and was teaching at vocational school three nights of the week for three hours a night. I had only worked at Geneva about a month when my boss said that I was better than any of the A-carpenters, but there was no openings for A-carpenters. He asked if I would like to work in the office with him taking on special jobs when there wasn't any work in the office. The men teased me a lot about being Lynn Stone's secretary. They called me Rosy. We had a lot of fun. They didn't dare give me too bad of a time because I was the one that handed out the job orders. They were afraid I would give them the nasty jobs. Lynn Stone was one of the nicest men I have ever known.
(When we went to Provo during 1987 I stopped in and had a nice visit with him. He was getting pretty feeble. I plan to stop and spend some time as we left for our mission but he passed away a couple of weeks before we got there.)
LYNN STONE
Lynn Stone gave me every opportunity to work up and quite often he would call me in the office for lunch and we would discuss the gospel. Other times he would bring his lunch and eat at my work table. I had a large table by my work bench that I did lay out work on and made my assemblies on. Everyone that was working in the shop would bring their lunch buckets and we would all eat at my table.
HARD DIVINITY
Sometimes when I made a pattern I would mix up a compound that is a little like plaster of paris. You mix it with water and make a plaster cast of the pattern and in about ten minutes it would set up and you could get an idea of how the pattern was going to work. One day when I had some mixed up it looked so much like divinity candy it gave me an idea. I brought some walnuts to work the next day, mixed up some plaster, mixed in a few walnuts and spooned it on to waxed paper. It looked more like divinity than the real thing. Lynn was out of the office so I took a couple of pieces of candy, wrapped them in waxed paper and put them in the top of his lunch bucket. When he came back I said you just as well eat lunch with us. When we started to eat and saw the candy he placed it off to one side and ate the rest of his dinner. Then he took a piece of candy and tried to take a bite. But it was as hard as a rock. He looked at it and tried again, this time he really bit down. Nothing happened and we all started to laugh. Then he knew it was a joke. He said, "I should have known my wife hasn't made candy in years, and she's never made divinity that looked that good." He was sure a good sport. There were many of them in the shop that tried my candy.
JOY NIELSEN
Joy Nielsen was my shop teacher at vocational school. When the pattern shop started Joy came out to the plant to work as head pattern maker. He is probably the best I have ever known to figure out the best way to do a job. If it could be done with a machine he would use it. When I was at school he went back east and bought a pattern milling machine, the only one west of the Mississippi. He spent some time at the factory learning how to use it and when we got it in the shop he and I spent about two months figuring all kinds of projects we could use it for. When Joy got out to the plant he got them to buy a pattern miller for the pattern shop.
After about six months Joy was made superintendent of the foundry and they made me head pattern maker and hired two pattern makers out of Salt Lake. They had both been pattern makers for twenty or twenty five years. I think they both resented having a kid telling them what jobs to do and then I was responsible to check them to be sure they were right. I didn't have to worry too much about this, they were very good. Neither one knew much about using power tools, except saws, joiner and sanders. They wouldn't even try to learn about the pattern miller.
CRUSE HOWE
Cruse Howe, the best one, and I were building patterns for an ingot mold. Two different sizes, the insides of the patterns were fluted, sort of scalloped. Cruse laid his out and started cutting his out with chisels. I went down to the pattern miller and started to set it up to run them. I spent more than a day making knives the right shape to do the cutting. Then nearly another day setting up getting ready to go. Cruse kept telling me I was wasting my time, he already had six or eight pieces made. It took 48 pieces. Finally on the third day I had all my pieces cut to width and length and took them down to the milling machine and in 30 minutes I had mine all done and smooth enough that I had very little sanding to do. Everyone was exactly the same. Cruse apologized for the way he acted and asked if I would grind some blades and run his through for him. He never tried to learn how to use the machine, but would have me do the machine work for him. We became the best of friends.
After I left the shop and moved to Washington he wrote me and said he had nothing to live for. He had lost his wife and his two children didn't see eye to eye. He sounded very depressed. In a couple of weeks I got a letter telling me that Cruse had shot himself. I often wondered if I had been there working with him if things would have been different.
Lynn Stone gave me every opportunity to work overtime. I would put in a shift at the shop and then go to the open hearth and work as a carpenter at a shift. It really helped pay the bills. At the open hearth after so many heats the brick on the top of the furnace would burn so thin they would have to be replaced. They would knock the top end in and scoop it up with a crane then the carpenters would come in and put up trusses with one by fours over the trusses. The trusses they had were so heavy that they would have to be set with a crane. When the brick had been laid we would drop them inside and have to hook on to them with the crane and pull them out of the furnace door. Sometimes when the crane was busy loading a furnace the carpenters may have to wait one to two hours for the crane to set trusses. Then when we were ready to pull them out we may have to wait another one or two hours. Having six carpenters just sitting may add up to sixteen or twenty man hours.
It was taking around two weeks to get a roof repaired, so Lynn Stone asked the assistant foreman and I to see if we could design a truss made out of plywood that six carpenters could lift and put in place and then lift out through the doors when we were through. We laid it out on the floor and started cutting patterns. When we got the first one nailed and glued up four men could carry it easily, so Lynn had a crew come and nail them and I did the cutting. The first furnace we repaired after getting the new trusses took four days. After some more planning, like getting a special rail road car to get all our trusses, one by fours, nails, tools, and everything on, and spotting it in front on the furnace, we got the time down to eight hours to set the trusses ready for the brick layers. They worked around the clock and had it ready to go in twenty four hours.
It made such an impression on the big shots at U.S. Steel, they had Lynn Stone come back to Pittsburgh and show them how to do it. Some of the carpenters were a bit unhappy because we had worked ourselves out of a lot of overtime and didn't get to sit around as much. But it made their job a lot more secure because Geneva Steel could compete with all the other steel plants.
MARVIN ARRIVES
About this time our number five son came along. He was born May 30, 1945. We named him Marvin Howard. Our friend Jenny Swapp tended our kids while I took Dorothy to the hospital. After Marvin arrived I called Jenny and told her it was a boy again. When DeLoris heard, she said, "another stinkin' boy," it kind of sounded like she wanted a sister.
Shortly after Marvin was born, Geneva Steel shut down. In one day over 5,000 of us lost our jobs and everyone went down and got in line to sign up for unemployment. The next day we borrowed a car and drove out to Vernal to see if I could find a job. We visited for a couple of days and I got a job working for N. J. Moore, the banker in Vernal remodeling the old, red front garage into some apartments.
KEN IN THE BARPIT
We started home and got out about fifteen miles and the kids were messing around in the back seat. I stopped and sat everyone down and just got up to speed, about 55, when I felt cold air on the back of my neck. I looked in the rear view mirror just in time to see Kenneth go sliding down the barpit. I stopped and backed up, knowing there wouldn't be a chance he would be alive. By the time I stopped and jumped out he was crawling out of the barpit. It had scalped him down one side and I could see scratches on his skull. Dorothy handed Marvin to DeLoris and I gave Kenneth to Dorothy. She wrapped a diaper around his head and I headed back for Vernal. The car generally had a hard time going up the grade at 50. But when we hit the top of the hill we were doing near 90.
We stopped at Dorothy's folks' and called the hospital. They said there wasn't a doctor in town, Dr. Hanson had just left to go to Greendale on an accident but to bring Ken on in. We gave him a blessing and when we got to the hospital Dr. Hanson was there. They had caught him at his office just as he was leaving. I went into the operating room and watched them scrub the skull and the scalp. Then the doctor took some scissors and trimmed the scalp so there wasn't any ragged edges, then sewed them together.
About this time I started to get a little woozy. So the doctor said to the nurse to get me out of there before he had another patient on his hands, so she took me out and set me down and put my head down between my legs. In a minute I was all right. They sat Ken up in bed and had cold packs on his head. We had to stay with him for 48 hours because of the concussion. He got along very well and was very good to keep the cold packs on. Dorothy and I didn't sleep a lot during this time. In four days the doctor said Ken would be able to travel, so we took him home and in a couple of days I caught the bus back to Vernal to start work on the apartments.
HOT PACKS FOR ALL
I stayed with Dad and Mother Noel, I was thankful to be able to be with them. This was a real bad time, being away from the family. Douglas had started having pains in his leg again.
I don't think I mentioned that a while before we left Lehi, Douglas was stricken with infantile paralysis. Dorothy had to wrap him in strips of hot blankets every hour and had him laying on the dining room table. At this same time Leon and Ken became sick, so Dr. Eddington had them in separate rooms. And Dorothy was giving them the Kenny treatment the same as Doug, just in case they had it too.
I went to Vernal with J. Nielsen and the superintendent of the open hearth and the superintendent of the Lehi Brick Plant to hunt pheasants. While we were there a twenty-two went off accidently and I shot myself in the leg. I had to go to the doctor in Vernal and when I got back I had to keep hot packs on my leg for three days. So there Dorothy was, putting hot blankets on Doug, Ken, and Leon and hot towels on me. I don't know how she ever survives, but no one ever heard one word of complaint out of her. She has been a great strength to everyone who has ever come in contact with her.
Now back to the story. I was in Vernal working as a carpenter, Dorothy was in Provo taking care of the children and trying to make all the payments on the check I was getting. It bounced nearly every time. I went to the banker, who we were building for, and he advised me to put my check in his bank as soon as I got it and then I would be the first to be paid when he paid the contractors. So I did this and things went some better.
PENICILLIN FOR DOUG
At this time Doug was having more trouble with his leg. One day he got hit with a bicycle and broke his other leg. This kept him down for a while and he didn't have so much trouble for a while. But it started up again and Dorothy took him to Dr. Taylor in Provo. This is when penicillin was first being used and a shot had to be given every four hours around the clock. Dorothy would set the alarm and wake him up and give him the shot. When we first started the treatment, Dorothy had him in the hospital. But Dr. Taylor said he would train Dorothy to mix the medicine and give the shot because it was costing $9 a shot to have the nurse give it. If Dorothy gave the shot it cost $3.
So Dorothy brought him home and started the around the clock treatment. After a few days it seemed so cruel to wake him in the middle of the night, she decided to try and give him the shot while he was sleeping. So she jabbed him in the hip and he came too and in no uncertain terms, Doug let her know to never do that again. He wanted to be awake and prepared. I don't know of any two people that could have gone through this treatment as well as my two special people.
I think there are very few people that could have gone through what Dorothy went through worrying about the family with her husband away so much, not much money and no car. I feel mighty blessed to have such a partner and as the years have passed I realize that the Lord has made very few people in this pattern. He must love her very much to help her through these trials. No one could love anyone more than I love her for the way she has given me so many choice spirits and taught them the way that she has.
SALT LAKE DOCTORS
Doug did get some better for a while. He had a special teacher come to the home two or three times a week to help him with his school work. He was very quick to learn and spent a lot of time studying. He has always been an "A" student. It wasn't long until his leg started bothering him again. Louise Newby heard about it and her husband, Berns, was interning at a hospital in Salt Lake and he recommended a doctor in Salt Lake. Dorothy took Doug to see the new doctor. He examined him and said when school is out in the spring to bring him back. Doug was in a lot of pain at the time and Dorothy knew that we couldn't wait until spring. Louise knew of a doctor Okelberry, one of the best bone specialists in the west. So through Berns, they were able to see him while Dorothy was still in Salt Lake. As soon as Dr. Okelberry looked at him he said this little fellow must not suffer any longer. They put him in the L.D.S. Hospital. They operated the next day and scraped all the old bone away and started him on penicillin again.
PRIMARY CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL
Doug was in the L.D.S. Hospital for about ten days when the doctor told Dorothy to go to the Primary President and get Doug put into the Primary Children's Hospital. There it would cost much less and he would get better care, and could be going to school. I can't remember how long he was there, but it was some months. Dorothy would catch the train up from Provo to visit him. All this time I was away trying to earn enough to keep the wolf away from the door.
About once a month I would get out on the road and hitch-hike home. I didn't have the money to take the bus, and besides it took about three times as long. I remember one time I got seven rides and made it home in three hours. The last ride I got was just out of Duchesne from a man from Chicago. He was going to Salt Lake. I had planned on getting off at Heber, but when he found that he could go through Provo and it would only be 35 miles further, he took me on down to the Orem bench. I caught the city bus on home for fifteen cents. I got off the bus and Dorothy was standing waiting to get on to go to town to do some shopping. She postponed the shopping, I can still see in my mind how beautiful she looked standing there and how surprised she looked when I got off the bus.
Doug was still in the hospital, so I borrowed a car from Joy Nielsen and we drove up and spent some time with Doug. Joy was very good to us. When I got ready to go back to Vernal, he took me to Heber where I started my hitch-hiking.
During the time I was in Vernal I built some bedrooms and a bath in the basement for Otis and Jenny Weeks and stayed for a time with them. Otis had a slaughter yard where the butchered cattle and hogs. His brother worked there and some nights after work I would go and help for three or four hours. I got pretty good at it. I could tell some pretty good tales about this winter, but I will move on.
MOTHER AND DAD NOEL
I enjoyed the time I spent with Mother and Dad Noel. She especially liked to have me there to help with the prayers. Dad never prayed, but every morning and evening we knelt in prayer. When I wasn't there Mother had it all to do. But when I was there I got to do most of it. It didn't matter who was there, Dad would tell them we knelt in prayer and invited them to kneel with us. They always did, even if they had no religion.
IDAHO VENTURES
In the spring Donald, Victor, Arthur, and LaVoir started a car sales and service station in Blackfoot, Idaho and asked me to come and help them with the building. This was some distance farther away but I could get home more often because LaVoir would be going down to see his family, or Donald would be going home. It was this spring that I got acquainted with Hannah and Wilma Barnes. LaVoir and I thought that these girls would be the perfect ones for Art and Donald and sure thing, it came to pass. I worked on the building and some on the farm. Dorothy and Doug came up to see me one time. It was the highlight of the summer. They spent about a week and LaVoir took us home.
PILOT ELDON
Eldon came up to see us a couple of times while he was taking flying lessons. He would land in Victor's hay field. One trip we were afraid he wasn't going to get off the ground. The hay had grown up to about a foot high. This made so much resistance that he couldn't get up enough flying speed. He got down pretty near the end of the field and it didn't look like he had nearly enough speed. He kind of kicked it into the air about ten feet and flew just above the ground just a ways until he could get up enough speed. Then climbed up, circled around and told us good by. He didn't fly in there any more. I enjoyed the summer but it was a lonesome time being away from the family.
NO UNEMPLOYMENT
I considered myself lucky not to have to stand in line for unemployment. I have never had to draw a penny. While I was in Idaho I was offered a job teaching shop and coaching. I thought this is what I would do. I also got a contact from Vernal to teach shop and coach at Uintah High. I was having a hard time deciding which one to take. The money was about the same but security seemed a little better in Idaho because they didn't require a college degree. But when the men came back from the service they would probably bump me in Vernal, but if I could do the job in Idaho I would be pretty secure. I had decided that this is what I would do. So I started looking for a house.
BACK TO GENEVA
But one day I got a call from Geneva Steel asking me to come back to work within two days. They had a special job they wanted me to do, so I left Idaho that day and went in for my interview and physical. My interview was with my uncle LaVoir Merrell, we sat and visited for a couple of hours and then I went for my physical. The doctor was a friend of mine, we sat and visited until the superintendent of the open hearth called to see if they were through.
The superintendent wanted me to get over to the pattern shop so he could show me what he wanted done. He met with me for an hour and said he would like me to start the next day and spend as many hours a day as I could. He said I could have anyone I wanted as a helper, so I picked Leon Nielsen. He was a real good worker. He didn't know anything about pattern making, but that is what I wanted so he wouldn't be telling me how to do it. Joy Nielsen came over and Joy, Lynn Stone and I spent the afternoon visiting. I was on the payroll all day. It seemed good to be back with old friends and a steady job at a higher rate of pay.
For the next month I spent 10 hours a day working. They had me making a special ingot mold. Joy Nielsen would come over occasionally and go over the pattern to make them so they would mold the best. I got the pattern ready in plenty of time to meet the deadlines. I enjoyed the work in the pattern shop. Every pattern was different and some quite a challenge. Some of them were so small that it was hard to handle them, and some of the ingot molds the pattern weighed nearly a ton.
MAPLE THRUST BEARING
I remembered one Sunday night I had gone to a meeting when I got a phone call from the plant that said a thrust bearing had gone out at the rolling mill and the mill was shut down until I could get another one made or until they could get one sent in from the east. They were made of ironwood from South America. They asked me if I had anything at the shop like that. I told them birdseye maple was the hardest wood I had and I would have to glue it up with waterproof glue to get it big enough. They told me to try it and a car would be after me in 30 minutes. I hurried home and changed and they were there for me.
The bearings were made in two pieces, a top and a bottom. I glued up the material, which took me until after midnight. One of the guards came in with a real nice lunch. After lunch I laid out the size and shape and made a template to check it with. By then the glue had been setting for about four hours, so I put it on the lathe. About four in the morning the guard brought me some more to eat. By the time the crew came in I had the bearings turned, I threw them in a barrel of oil and let them soak for about four hours. The rolling mill superintendent came down and looked at them. He said they looked fine and to make two more sets in case they wore out too fast. He said he would order me some iron wood from South America. I made the other two sets during the week and about eight months later a log about sixteen inches in diameter and five feet long came. No one knew what it was for. Then I remembered it must be for bearings. I put it down in the corner and it set there for about three years. Then I got Lynn Stone to make some table lamps, etc. with it. The bearings that I made were still working fine. When I left there the first set of bearings were still being used.
Another time they came and got me on a Saturday and said a big casting had broken and they wanted me to make a new one. They had the broken one in the welding shop to get it welded. They had sent back east to get the pattern and they said they would use the one that got finished first. I worked all night Saturday and all day Sunday and Sunday night. I finally got through about 8:00 on Monday night. The welding shop could have finished first but the heat warped the casting and they had to heat the whole thing over and straighten it.
During the time that I was working the only breaks that I took was while the glue was setting up. I would lay down on my bench for an hour or two. They kept me very well fed and Lynn was there to give me any help I needed. As soon as I got it done I took it over to Joy Nielsen at the foundry. I watched them mold it and cast it. The pattern itself took two men to handle. After it was poured and taken out of the sand it took several hours to cool enough that it could be machined. Joy cast two of them so they would not have the problem again. After a few times like this they kept a pattern made in anticipation of breakdowns. I sure enjoyed the work and the men I worked with.
While I was in Provo I was the Scoutmaster for a while. Then I was made MIA Superintendent. I was in that position until we moved to Moses Lake.
PROVO CORPORATION
We had a group of thirteen families that formed a corporation and bought a heard of Jersey cows and a fifteen acre pasture. We got our groceries at the same price as the stores, we really enjoyed this group. Even after twenty-five years we got together at Gordon Swapp's when he knew that Dorothy and I were going to be there.
MYRNA ARRIVES
It was about this time that Dorothy became pregnant with Myrna. All the people I worked with were betting whether it would be a girl or a boy. Jim Williams, a good friend of mine at the plant, thought it would be a girl. On December 22, 1948 DeLoris finally got her little sister. We were all so happy. Of course, we wouldn't have sent him back if it would have been a boy.
On December the twenty-fourth, Jim Williams went to see Dorothy at the hospital. He called me and said Dorothy was coming home and wanted me to come after her, and to bring a blanket. I thought she had baby blankets with her and she wanted a blanket to keep herself warm. So I borrowed a car and went after her with a big blanket. It was a baby blanket that she wanted. Little Myrna was lost in that great big blanket. We stopped on the way home and got a Christmas tree.
I had been dreading fixing up for Christmas without Dorothy there. You never saw such a happy bunch as our kids to get their mother and baby sister home. That was one of the happiest Christmases we have ever had. Dorothy had spent a lot of time preparing and DeLoris was so excited to have another girl in the house, and not another stinking boy.
THE BOYS NEED WORK
Things were going very well at the plant. Lynn Stone had turned over the pattern shop pretty much to me and the maintenance superintendent had me doing a few special jobs for him personally. So I had plenty of work to do and no one to tell me what to do. But I was getting quite anxious about what to do about the boys living on a corner block in Provo. I felt I had to find some place that they would learn to work. Uncle Jacob Lybbert, Glen, and Forrest, had written wanting me to come up and go in partners with them in the farming business. I had always been a farm boy at heart, so I was kinda leaning in that direction. Forrest called and made me the proposition to come and live with him and Betty until school was out.
GOODBY APPENDIX, GENEVA
I had been having some pains in my stomach so I decided to go and see the doctor. He said I had an appendicitis and it would be smart to have it out while the plant's insurance would pay for it. I was afraid I would get out on the farm and have it rupture on me. So I went in and had an appendectomy. It was quite different than my hernia operation. I was up the same day and went home on the third day. My side was a little tender, but I felt that I needed to get back to work so that I could give them my two weeks notice.
A week from the time that I had the operation I went out to go to work. I had to go and get clearance from the plant doctor. I new him very well, he was interning at Lehi Hospital when Doug had his bone surgery. When the doctor looked at the incision and felt my side he said that it looked real good. He asked when I had been operated on. I told him that it had been seven days, he nearly went into orbit. He said company policy was to take a month off. I explained to him that I was supposed to be in Moses Lake in three weeks. He called Lynn Stone and asked how hard a job I would be doing. Lynn said I wouldn't be lifting anything heavier than a pencil, and if that was too much he would lift it for me. So I went to work the next day and two or three days later I handed in my resignation.
Lynn had known for months that I was thinking about moving. For two weeks I made little things for the bosses around the plant, such as nut bowls, geese decoys, rocking horses and table lamps. I was as busy as I had ever been, but I didn't do anything for the shop.
I had worked for seven years without taking a vacation, except for the year before when we had gone to Moses Lake to see the country. Dorothy and I had taken Dad's car and spent a week in Moses Lake the summer before. We had liked the climate and it looked like a nice place to raise children. In April the year before, LaVoir, Voniel, Arthur and I flew to Moses Lake and flew out over Victor Merrell's home in May Valley. We buzzed him a couple of times and he jumped in his car and led us to the airport on the east side of Moses Lake. There wasn't much of a town and he went through town at seventy miles an hour so that we could follow him easier. This was a delightful trip, we had a good visit, and the trip only took four hours instead of twelve if we had driven.
Back to the story. Lynn Stone did everything he could for me. He arranged for me to draw my vacation pay. When I left the maintenance superintendent called me down to his office and we spent an hour talking about the Moses Lake area and farming. He told me to go on up and spend a year and get this farming out of my blood then to come back and my job would still be waiting with no seniority loss. I told him I was happy with the offer and thanked him for it. But I felt I owed it to the boys to have a place for them to learn to work.
FLIGHT TO WASHINGTON
The Ward gave us a real nice going away party and Arthur Dalton offered to fly me up for the cost of the gas, which would be less than a bus fare and much faster. We left Provo on the 18th of March, 1949. There was more than two feet of snow on our back lawn. We had a very good trip until we got to Yakama. We were going to go to Seattle and stay overnight with a friend of Art's. But when we got to Yakama there was a pretty bad storm over the mountains so we decided to fly to Ellensburg and then on to Moses Lake. There had been several announcements on the radio for anyone flying from Yakama to Ellensburg to watch for a red and white plane that had gone down in that area. I was kind of anxious about flying and this didn't help.
As we left Yakama the map showed that we followed up the Yakama river to Ellensburg, so we started following the river and finally came to some pretty high mountains. When we looked at the map again we found that we were on the wrong river. We turned around and we started to loose a little altitude. The plane started to miss and my heart started to miss also.
Art told me to look for a field big enough to land in, then my heart nearly stopped. We were flying at about 500 feet. Art said there was about three miles of straight highway with no cars on it, so we better land there. He looked at his instruments and found that the carburetor heat button had been pushed because we were not using the engine to climb the carburetor was freezing up. So he pulled out the button and in a minute the engine started to run smoothly.
My heart smoothed out a little and we flew on to Ellensburg and didn't see the plane that was down. When we landed in Ellensburg there was about two feet of snow on the sides of the runway and a strong side wind. My heart pretty nearly stopped again as we bounced across the runway, but we finally came to a stop. I was sure glad to get out of there because I needed to go to the rest room and I wanted to relax for a minute or two. Art was still thinking of going to Seattle if the storm would let up. I was surely glad when they told him that all the small planes had been advised not to try it.
I was quite concerned about taking off in that wind, but we kind of flew into it at an angle. I don't think we had gone 100 yards when we were in the air. We flew on to Moses Lake and flew over Glenn Lybbert's house. They were out in the fields, so we flew down pretty close, cut the engines, and yelled at them and told them we would be at the airport. Art wanted to land in the field, but I had had enough for one day. Forrest jumped in his pickup and by the time we had landed and parked the plane he was there to pick us up.
LANDED IN MOSES LAKE
Forrest and Betty had an apartment in Uncle Abe Goodrich's home. They didn't have any children and Forrest kind of teased me about trying to populate the earth by myself. Betty worked and was not L.D.S., but she was a real sweet girl. When Forrest had met the family and had got to know what special people they were, he told me maybe I had ought to go ahead and try to populate the earth. He didn't do too badly himself, they ended up with seven children, five of them were by c-section.
The next morning we took Art to his plane and I started work and it really was work. Forrest and I would leave the house in the morning while it was still dark and we would have to use the lights to come home by at night. I really enjoyed it and it took a lot of the loneliness away while I was away from Dorothy and the family. I was working so hard during the day and was so tired by the time I got home I would be asleep before my head hit the pillow.
Forrest was not real active in the Church, but he always did his home teaching and any job that had to do with physical work for the Branch. About the middle of April Forrest bought a pickup from Donald in Ashton, Idaho. We left Moses Lake about five in the afternoon and it was in the nineties. When we got to Wallace, Idaho, it was snowing. We hadn't brought any warm clothes with us. Glen and I had to stand out on the back bumper to get enough traction to get over the mountain. There was six inches of snow, so we were pretty cold when we got there.
We arrived in Ashton about six in the morning. Donald had shoveled the snow out of the driveway so we could get the pickup out. The snow was three feet deep, quite deeper than Moses Lake where the potatoes and wheat were up and the fields were all green.
Dorothy had caught the bus up to meet me and have a short visit. She had Myrna with her. We had lunch, put Dorothy on the bus and started to Moses Lake. Forrest and I drove the pickup and Glen and Annie drove the car. About midnight we developed something wrong with the gas in the pickup, so we towed it into LeGrand. We got in LeGrand about six and had to wait until about eight in the morning for a garage to open. We found out that we needed a new fuel pump. We finally got to Moses Lake about noon. The temperature was still in the nineties.
FARM HAND LIFE
We worked real hard and got all of the crops in. We planted thirty-some acres of sugar beets. It was the first beets planted in the Columbia Basin. Dad and Mother had moved out and bought sixty acres about a mile north of Moses Lake. They planted fifteen acres of beets. There were 300 acres of beets planted that first year, and all of them were planted by L.D.S. farmers.
We planted fifteen acres of watermelons and thirty acres of onions. We worked hard and I got home after dark and left before it was light, so I didn't get to see the folks except on Sundays. I generally had dinner with them but would go with Forrest to tend water in the evenings.
MOVE TO WASHINGTON
The last of May I took the old truck and about five o'clock I headed for Provo to get Dorothy and the children. When I got to Pendleton I was a bit tired, since I had been working since four-thirty. I got a motel. About one o'clock a big truck came by and I woke up. I couldn't get back to sleep so I started driving. I figured I would stop at Burley, but it was only four o'clock, so I had a hamburger, got my hair cut and thought I would drive on to Brigham City and stay with Mary and Roland. When I got there it was after ten, so I didn't want to wake them. I figured I would go on to Salt Lake and stay with Grandmother Merrell. When I got there I decided it was only an other hour and a half until I was home. I can't remember much from Salt Lake on home. When I got there I was so tired I couldn't go to sleep. About the time the kids woke up I went to sleep.
When I finally caught up with my sleep we started packing. The Chadwick's said they wanted to go on a vacation, so if I would buy the gas they would take Dorothy, Myrna, Marvin and DeLoris. I took Doug, Leon, and Ken with me. The boys and I left a couple of days ahead of Dorothy and the little ones.
We drove as far as Caldwell, Idaho the first day. On the next day we drove on in. The roads were quite different in those days. They went through every little town. It took three hours from LeGrand to Pendleton. We got to the folks place in Moses Lake about four in the afternoon. We moved into a little house out on the farm that we were renting from Forrest's in-laws. It was kind of small, but we were able to survive.
The next morning Uncle Jake Lybbert and I went up to a little town near Wenachee and bought us a cow. The kids called her Minhacha. I don't know where they got that name. Dorothy and the Chadwicks came and the next morning we went with the Chadwicks to see Grand Coulee Dam. They were very impressed with the country, but not with the heat. It was 112 degrees when we got back to folks place.
We didn't have a car so Forrest went into Dunn Auto and bought two new two-ton trucks to use on the farm. We used the one truck for our transportation that summer. Dorothy, DeLoris, Marvin and Myrna rode in the front and the three big boys rode in the back. We lived twelve miles from church. We met in a government administration building. With our family the branch was over 90 people. I was put to work as Deacons advisor and Dorothy was in the Primary. There were a lot of L.D.S. people who had bought ground there and was waiting for water from the Grand Coulee dam.
MOSES LAKE BRANCH
The branch grew very rapidly. We were so crowded that we applied to the Church for a new building. They okayed a small chapel that wouldn't be half big enough by the time it was built. So Melvin Jorgenson, who was the Branch President, and Dave Stevens, who was Counselor, and Uncle Jacob, took a list of names of those who had purchased land and went to Salt Lake. They met with LeGrand Richards, who was the Presiding Bishop of the Church. When he saw the number who would be there in the next few years he went to the First Presidency and got a bigger building okayed. We started planning for a new building to start in the fall.
FIRST HARVEST
I have never worked as hard and for as many hours as I did that summer. Forrest would pick me up about four in the morning and we generally quit at eight thirty or nine at night. When we were harvesting potatoes and onions sometimes I would get in a long line waiting to dump my truck. Then it would be midnight before I would get home. We had some good crops. The beets were thirty tons to the acre, near a record at the time. Potatoes went twenty two tons of number ones and the onions made near forty tons. The price wasn't as good as I would have liked, I didn't make as much as I should have. There was just too many expenses.
THE KAISER
We got enough to go down to Ashton, Idaho, where Donald was running a garage and bought a Kaiser. It was a pretty nice car, it was kind of a forerunner to todays station wagons. The back seat folded down and made it about like a pickup. We visited with Donald and Hannah and drove on down to Provo and visited some of our old friends there. I went out to Geneva Steel and visited some of the guys. We got back home just before Thanksgiving. Some of the farmers were still harvesting potatoes.
Mr. Graham wanted the house we were staying in for his son, so we moved down the road about a quarter of a mile into a little two bedroom house. The kitchen and living room were one big room, there was a screen porch where we put bunk beds for the boys. The snow would blow through the screen until they would have an inch or two on top of their beds. It was tough times but I don't think it hurt us that much. I got a job driving school bus and worked on the church. The church job was donated labor.
Abe Goodrich was superintendent of the church job and his eyesight wasn't very good, so he asked if I would help him. We had really good turnouts for about a month. We were pouring the footings on January 9 and a cold front came in about noon. By dark it was near zero degrees. We were afraid it would ruin the concrete. It stayed cold for over a month so we couldn't do any work on the church.
SNOW IN MOSES LAKE
We were snowed in out at our place, the roads had drifts three or four feet deep. I drove out through the fields to the highway. On Dorothy's birthday, Feb. 9, Howard and Elna invited us in for dinner. It was 36 below zero when we got ready to go home about midnight. The car wouldn't start, so we took Howard's pickup. The next day I took the carburetor off and it was full of ice. There were very few cars running, school was closed, there was some people that got stranded in their cars and froze to death.
Spring broke about the first of March and everyone quit helping with the building of the church and went back to farming. Uncle Abe asked if I would stay and work for half pay and donate the rest. This worked out pretty well for us because I was driving school bus. It gave us a little cash and my transportation to work.
I enjoyed this time working with Uncle Abe. He was a good builder even if his eyesight wasn't very good. He could tell if things were not square or not plumb better than a lot of builders today.
This place we were renting, Scotty Snedan's, had about 30 acres. I planted 20 acres of beets and a large garden that was watered from a well. The well broke down right at the wrong time and I lost part of my beet crop. It made things kind of tight getting only half pay from the church and school being out, so I wasn't getting anything from the bus job. I worked twelve hours a day getting only six hours pay. The church building went along very well. Uncle Abe got Asael, LaVel, and Dee Manwaring to come up and lay the brick. By the time the crops were in we had it ready for plastering. Dee, Asael and LaVel did the plastering and the farmers came and did the hod carrying and other manual labor. Glenn Lybbert, Clarence Berry and myself took over the finishing work. We got all the outside finish done while they were doing the plastering.
Scotty Snedan, the one we were renting from, wanted to move back in so we had to find a new place. We moved in with the folks for a couple of weeks. I don't know when I have felt quite so down. I was about ready to go back to Geneva Steel, but the children were learning to work and it seemed like a good place to raise a family.
RON ARRIVES
I guess I had better back up just a month or two. Ron was born in Scotty Snedan's place. It was really hot, with no air conditioning. Dorothy was not very comfortable. He came on the 21st of September, 1950. Ron was a very good baby. It was a good thing because if he had been a naughty baby, the way things were going, we would have given him to the indians. We are sure happy today that he was good and has been a real joy to his parents. Having another boy really cinched it, that I couldn't take them back to Provo with nothing to do.
We found an old home down on the peninsula with twenty acres. I planned to raise potatoes. I can't think of a man in his right mind moving a family in a place like that, but with so many people moving in there wasn't any other place to rent.
BRANCH CLERK
The church was nearly complete. There were so many new people that they made two branches, with Dave Stevens, President; Albert Goodrich, First Counselor; Jack Gilbert, Second Counselor, and I was the Clerk. People were coming so fast that we never had a meeting that we didn't have to open up the doors to the overflow area.
I can remember when Neldon Richens was the Ward Clerk and there was never a meeting that he didn't come in late and then march down the isle and up to his desk. I made the statement many times that if I was the Ward Clerk that I would never come in late.
The first Sunday after I was installed, Douglas asked if the boys could take the truck and go on ahead and get the sacrament prepared. I said they could, so they left. When we went out to go we found we had a flat tire. I had to get a pole to pry the car up and block it well. By the time I got to church the prelude was playing. I did have to walk up the isle.
The next week I checked the tires and got in the car. Doug pulled out ahead of me. About a block down the street I ran out of gas and by the time I got to church the prelude was playing and I had to walk up to my desk in front of everyone again. I learned that you don't say what you would do if you were in someone else's place.
The crop of potatoes didn't any more than pay for the seed and fertilizer.
There was a lot of people wanting new homes, so Albert Goodrich, Calvin Mortensen, Glenn Lybbert and myself formed a partnership and went into the building business. We had all the work that we could ever do. We did most of the work including brick, electrical, most everything except plastering and plumbing. We made pretty good wages.
REX ARRIVES
About this time we had a new arrival come. Rex appeared on the scene on December 24th, 1952. Dorothy spent all day getting ready for Christmas never saying a word about having pains. About eight o'clock she said maybe you had better take me to the hospital. I took her in and she said I had better get back with the children. They shouldn't be left alone on Christmas eve. She said it would be some time yet, so I went home, got the kids to bed and the phone rang. The nurse said I was the father of a new baby boy. He must have been born just a few minutes after I left. That is the way Dorothy has always been. The family has always come first.
Rex was such a sweet little fellow and we were a little better organized, so we didn't even consider giving him to the indians even if he did cry a little more than Ron.
GOODRICH FARM
Albert Goodrich had a hundred acre farm out near his place that he offered to sell to me. He put up the money to build a new home and I would pay him back on the returns from the farm.
Douglas worked for Dave Stevens. Ken worked for Burg Jensen. Leon worked on our place and was to receive the money from seven acres of beans. He really worked hard all summer, in fact we all did. Every morning we would get up about four and spend two hours shoveling the sand out of the ditch. We would get the water set, Douglas and Ken would go to work and I would put in a ten hour day carpentering. Leon would weed and cultivate our beans and melons. We had about ten acres of melons. They were coming along real good, the vines were nearly across the row.
About the first of July we got a real hard wind that rolled most of the melon vines up in knots and pulled most of them out of the ground. It was too late to replant. There was enough to give us and our friends all we wanted to eat, but nothing to sell. Our beans looked real good, especially the seven acres that Leon had for his.
Donald, Victor and I went in partners to buy a combine to harvest our beans. Vic got his out but it started to rain and all that we got out of ours was the seven acres Leon had and that went to pay for seed and fertilizer.
Finally about Christmas we sold the rest of the beans to a sheep man and he turned his sheep in and they ate them. I wasn't able to make a payment on the farm to Albert Goodrich.
DELORIS' THYROID
About the time Rex was born DeLoris had a thyroid gland operation. I remember when we took her up to the Deaconess Hospital in Spokane my stomach was all churned up. If it hadn't been for Dorothy, I don't know if I could have gone through with it. She was always stronger in these times. When they wheeled DeLoris out with her throat cut from ear to ear and with her hands tied, so she wouldn't tear the stitches out, I thought I couldn't stand it. I can't remember how long she stayed in the hospital, but I remember we had to take her back quite often to have her checked and to see how much medication she needed. After the first time, Dorothy took her by herself. We were so hard up that I had to work six days a week, ten hours a day.
TB DIAGNOSIS
It was about this time that Doug and DeLoris got brainwashed in school that everyone should have an x-ray of their lungs to see if they had tuberculosis. They talked me into going to a mobile x-ray unit and having my lungs looked at. About the next thing I knew I got a notice to come and have some larger pictures taken because I had a spot on my lungs. I went to Euphrata to the hospital and had some bigger pictures taken and in a few days I got word back that I had TB.
I was to report to the Selah TB Hospital for treatment. The treatments could last as long as a year. Dorothy and I went down and had some more tests taken and they said it was dormant but that I had better come and spend some time in the hospital because it could flare up at any time. They wanted me to check in right then, but we had a lot of building going on and the weather was good. So I said I would check in the first of February. I figured that I had better be in the hospital during bad weather when I couldn't work.
So on February 2, 1953, Dorothy took me to the Selah Hospital. I had a hard time keeping from crying all the way down. Just past where the road turned off to Quincy, there was a State Patrolman going on ahead of me, so I just drove along about 100 yards behind him for about five miles. He turned on his red light and turned it back on me and pulled me over. I didn't have any idea what I had done. He came back and told me I was speeding. I said, "I was just following you and figured you would be going a good safe speed." He gave me a lecture and asked why I was in such a hurry. I explained that I was going to the TB hospital and wanted my wife to get home before dark. He gave me a little more lecture about using a police car to pace my speed, and so since then, if they are going too slow I pass them and if they are going too fast I drop off.
When Dorothy let met out at the hospital it was one of the most depressing times of my life. I didn't have any idea how long I would be there and I had a feeling that my time on earth wasn't going to be much longer. I was put in a ward with three other men, one was a priest for the Church of Christ, another was a farmer from Sunnyside, Washington, and the third was a guy from Yakama that talked non stop about girls and how he was a real woman killer. When we would get our shots he would yell and say how much more it hurt him than anyone else. He said how much worse he swelled after each shot.
One morning after we had our shots, he was making such a fuss I asked to see how bad it was. He showed us his bottom and it was swollen a little. But I had a spot bigger than an egg, so I showed him and said it wouldn't hurt near so bad if he would forget about it. He quit making such a fuss, and I asked him to keep his dirty stories and jokes to himself. He soon asked to be transferred to another room, so we were all happier.
They fed us a big breakfast and then at 10:00 the juice cart would come around with juice, milk, chocolate milk, cookies, etc. Then at twelve o'clock we had a big lunch and at 2:00 the juice cart would come again. At 5:00 a big dinner was served and at 8:00 the juice cart would come again. They claimed that if a person was gaining weight it wasn't likely he had TB. So I ate like I was going to be sent to the butcher. When I went in to the hospital I weighed 180 pounds. I set a goal for myself to gain to 200 pounds. I made it a week before I went home. I have had a goal to go back down to 180 ever since, but it still stays right at 200-210.
Dorothy was real good to come down to visit. That was the only thing that kept me sane. I would wake up each day about five, go take a shower and make my bed. Then I put on fresh pajamas, read, eat, sleep, read, eat, sleep, and worry.
One day I asked the doctor how long I was going to be there. He said they would have me swallow the tube again and take the cultures and would get back to me. Of all the things they did to me swallowing the tube was the worst. But with the help of the Lord and a doctor that wouldn't give up, we made it.
About a week later the doctor came in and said that they had made a mistake. I didn't have TB, but the spot on my lungs was caused from working in the mines. So seven weeks after I was admitted, I was released. I think it was six months but Dorothy swears it was just seven weeks. Dorothy and Rex came down and got me, I could hardly stand it to wait to get home and see the rest of the family.
Every time I have a physical the doctor says we better keep track of those lungs. When Dr. Kerr examined me for our mission, he said the spot seemed to be getting smaller. I know the Lord has blessed me many times with good health in spite of the doctors.
FLOYD ARRIVES
After all of this, we were blessed with a cute little red-headed boy. Floyd was born December 12, 1955. Thinking back on the summer and seeing the hard times we had, Dorothy had been out there in the beans weeding even when it was hard to stoop over. We had a lot of fun at times. Marvin would take one row and the bigger boys and DeLoris would each take two. They would get a little ways ahead of Marvin then they would say, "come on flash bulb," he would go like mad until he would get ahead of them. Then he would stop until he got behind them again. He would go like a flash, so they nick named him Flash Bulb.
It makes me want to cry when I think back and see how hard we all tried and then came up with nothing. I guess I was not meant to be a farmer. I suppose we didn't come up with nothing, really. The children learned to work and to be dependable. I don't know of a family that has been any more successful, both spiritually and financially, and we love them all.
Albert, I guess, could see that I wasn't going to make a big success at farming, so he let me off the hook and I didn't pay for the year that I rented the house. He just kept the house and hired a man to run the farm. We moved into town and the boys continued to work for Dave Stevens, Forrest Lybbert and Thern Baker.
About this time Leon was working for Dave Stevens. He drove Dave's pickup home sometimes. I don't know if he had a drivers license or not, but he got stopped by a policeman and when he asked him his name, Leon said, "Douglas Gale and I left my drivers license home." So Doug had to go to court for Leon, there aren't many brothers who would go through that for his younger brother. I guess Doug was just getting prepared for his mission.
I neglected to say a while back that I was put in the Bishopric with Dave Stevens and Wayne Simmons. When I was set apart by Henry D. Moyle he gave me a very nice blessing. I can't remember very much of what was said, except that I would have a great influence on the missionary work of the Church. Everyone that heard the blessing commented on it. I figured that with seven boys I sure would have a great influence on missionary work.
FIRST STAKE CENTER
About this time we were getting ready to build a new Stake Center, so Bishop Stevens asked if I would quit contracting and go to work for the Church. The wages were about the same and there was not nearly the worry about when and if I would get paid. Ben Cardwell, from Hood River, was supposed to be the supervisor. He spent most of his time on the road. He was supposed to be buying material for the church, so he had me take charge while he was gone. It wasn't long before he was gone most of the time, sometimes he wouldn't come for two or three weeks at a time. He mostly turned everything over to me.
We were made the Moses Lake Fourth Ward. Douglas was the first missionary to go from our Ward. At his farewell we had a sacrament meeting attendance of over 110%. For over a year our attendance was over 80%. There were 18 priests in our Ward and 16 of them went on missions.
SPORTS FAN
There is quite an important part of my life that I should tell about. I am quite a sports fan. I love to hunt, fish and many other sports. I think that a lot of this has rubbed off on our family.
From about as early as I can remember I felt that I had to be out on opening day of hunting or fishing season. Quite often this day came on a Sunday. I would always salve my conscience by thinking it only comes once a year. I can worship my Heavenly Father as well, or better, in these wonderful mountains than in any church. So each opening day would find me fishing or hunting. Stake Conference always seemed to come on the same Sunday. So all the wives would get the word about keeping the Sabbath day holy, and they were the ones already doing it. Dorothy always told me what was said in conference but never complained about my actions.
When we moved to Moses Lake, so the boys would have something to do, I started thinking that maybe I wasn't really setting a good example by going hunting and fishing on Sunday. So I made a slight change in my actions and started going on Monday. At times I would take the boys if they could get out of school. I couldn't see much difference, only there wasn't nearly as many people out there to scare the fish away.
We made many trips as a family, or the boys and I, up the San Poil river and many creeks coming into it. But I think our favorite country was above Winthrop. The way we got started there was when I took Leon up to go smoke jumping between Twist and Winthrop. This was a real trial for Dorothy to see her son go and jump from an airplane to fight forest fires. Leon consoled her that there had never been a serious accident from the Winthrop base and it was the first one to be established.
It was only a couple of weeks after Leon started, while he was still in training, that a fire broke out not far from the base. They took a bunch of the trainers by truck to fight the fire. They flew over with food and supplies. Something happened to the plane and it crashed not too far from where Leon was fighting the fire. He was the first one to the accident and everyone in the plane was killed. The crash started another fire. When we heard this on the radio we were real nervous about having Leon smoke jumping. He soon became a full-fledged smoke jumper and did it for two years. His mother never did like it.
Back to the fishing. When I dropped Leon off at the smoke jumpers camp, Floyd Winder, Clark Larson, and I went up to Falls Creek and had a real fun time. The country was pretty and there were quite a few streams. We caught our limit of fish quickly.
The next spring the Explorer Scouts planned a trip with horses up to Hidden Lakes. Ken wanted to go, so I borrowed Doc Goodrich's horse for him. They needed someone to drive the truck and take some of the horses so I volunteered. I can't remember how many trucks went, but Ned Richens, Floyd Winder and I each took one. Ken drove his car and we left the trucks and drove Ken's car home. The trail to Hidden Lakes takes off from the end of the road that goes up to Eight Mile Creek. We were the first ones in that spring. The Forest Service was just ahead of us repairing the road. There were quite a few trees that had fallen across the road and there was still a lot of snowdrifts that the grader had to push out of the way. Lester Lybbert, Ken and some of the other scouts went ahead of the grader and sawed the trees so that the grader could push them off the road. We got to the end of the road late in the afternoon.
While the scouts were pitching camp, Floyd, Ned and I got our fishing poles and started to fish. I don't know how many fish we caught, but we had enough for everyone for supper. The next morning the scouts packed up and headed for Hidden Lakes. Floyd, Ned and I took Ken's car and went down the creek a ways and fished for three or four hours. We got our limits and enjoyed it so much that for the next twenty years the family spent a week up there. When we started it was a dirt road with weeds and grass growing in the center. A few years later they paved the road and made several camp grounds.
I remember one year Dad and Mother went with us. The three older boys went with Dad to fish and I took Myrna. I had on hip boots and she just had on tennis shoes. But she got in that cold water and waded with me. I would show her where to cast her hook and she was catching fish nearly every time she threw it out. At the time twelve fish was the daily limit. When we got back to camp Myrna had her limit and probably some of mine. I sure enjoyed these trips.
The year before Floyd turned five we went up Eight Mile Creek. I took Floyd with me and when we crossed the creek I would carry him. I would cast the line in and hand the pole to Floyd. When he would get a bite he would haul it in. After a little while he got tired of me carrying him across the stream. So he asked if he could wade like the big boys. The water was so cold I didn't think it would last long. So I said, go ahead. We fished for about an hour and I kept telling him it was time to go to the car and get warm. He said that he wasn't cold, but his lips were blue. He kept on fishing and finally he caught one. Then he said that we could go to the car now that I have my limit. He had caught twelve fish. He was sure proud to show his mother and the big boys that he had caught his own limit. I don't think there has been many times since then that he has gone home without catching his limit.
Floyd Winder and family went with us one year. We were fishing down below Ruff Grouse Camp Ground early one morning. We had seen several deer an otter, and had caught several fish. We heard a splashing in the creek a little ways below us. We thought it was a deer or a cow. When we got down the creek about fifty yards we could see where little streams of water were running down the bank from where some animals had crossed. As I got closer I could see bear tracks in the sand. I told Floyd Winder a bear and two cubs had just crossed the creek. He said he thought it was time to go back to camp. He did up his line and started up to the road which was a couple of hundred yards away. I had to hurry to catch him. When we got to the road we could see bear tracks and where water was still dripping off of them. Floyd didn't know what to do since the bear was going in the direction of camp. He had a hard time deciding whether to follow the road or go back to the creek. I finally talked him into following the road. When we got back to camp he loaded his family in the car and went home leaving us all alone to be eaten by the bears. I have seen bears many times up in these mountains.
One day Marvin and I had been fishing in this same area. We were walking up the road, there was a bunch of chipmunks running around about fifty yards. One was sitting on a rock. I picked up a rock and threw it at him and darned if I didn't hit him. Marvin ran up and picked him up and said he was going to take him to camp to show mother. Then he was going to pull off his tail and put it on his hat. We walked along with Marvin playing with the chipmunk. All at once it came too and grabbed him by the finger. He started shaking his hand to get it loose. He threw it up the road a ways, then started chasing it to get its tail back. He was sure disappointed that he hadn't pulled off its tail when he first picked it up.
RON'S REFRIGERATOR
About this time we moved out to Ron Anderson's basement house about ten miles out of Moses Lake. It was here that Ron helped us get a new refrigerator. He liked to open the door, get hold of the handles and raise his feet off the floor and swing. I had gotten after him several times, but he had a hard time remembering. Or else I didn't get his attention. This time he opened the door and started swinging. For some reason it tipped over. I can't remember what stopped it from crushing him, he didn't get hurt, but he nearly drowned. There was at least three gallons of milk, a gallon of root beer, some orange juice, a couple of quarts of peaches and several other things. He wasn't hurt but he was really frightened. From the sound of the crash and the screaming I thought he was pinned underneath. It broke off the door and we couldn't make it work any more, so we had to get a new refrigerator.
You couldn't punish Ron because he was so tender hearted. He would have sobbed all night. I think for this reason he got away with more things than anyone else in the family. To hear Leon tell it, if it would have been him, he would have gotten a real licking.
FLOYD'S DRIVING
I guess while I am telling tales about the boys at Andersons, I will have to tell about Floyd. He was about three years old. I had some sacks of feed in the trunk and I had left Floyd in the front seat while I unloaded them. The driveway was fairly steep and I had left it in park. I had just unloaded the last sack and looked around. Floyd had pulled it out of park and was coasting backwards down the hill. I ran and tried to get in the car but about that time he gave the wheel a pull and cut it down over the bank, through the ditch and out into the grain field that was being watered. He was standing up in the seat just laughing. When he hit the ditch I was sure it would throw him into the windshield, but he never lost hold of the wheel. The car sank in the mud up to the axle. I had to go and get a tractor to pull it out.
It was while we were living at Andersons that Ken rolled his car. I don't know what happened, he was dodging someone and over controlled and rolled it over in the barpit. We were mighty thankful that he wasn't hurt and the car just had minor damages.
DOUG'S MISSION
It was about this time, before Douglas went on his mission, that he was working out at the U & I sugar factory. There was a young man out there that wanted to get in the Army, but he didn't have enough education. Doug took it upon himself to teach him. Everyday he would prepare lessons. I can't remember whether Doug got him in or not, but I think he did.
Douglas left for his mission while we were living at Andersons. When Doug was set apart I was thinking it would be real nice if LeGrand Richards would do it. When Doug's name was called, they said go with Elder Richards. When we got there Elder Richards said, Elder Gale, I would like your daddy to stand in with me. What a thrill it was to be able to help an Apostle set my son apart for his mission.
Doug went to Eastern Canada. Elder Monson was his mission president. He hadn't been there very long when he wrote back and said his mission president would become one of the general authorities. Doug was a real good missionary. It wasn't long before he was called into the mission office to act as secretary for the mission.
Doug was so busy in his work that he didn't get around to writing to his parents for over a month. His mother wrote to President Monson and asked if he could tell her what had happened to Elder Gale, she hadn't heard from him in over a month. We mailed the letter and that afternoon we got a nice letter from Doug but it was too late to get our letter back. President Monson kind of explained to Elder Gale that you write to your parents each week. From then on every time that new missionaries came in President Monson instructed them about writing to their parents each week. Then he would say, "don't we do that, Elder Gale."
Doug wrote home and said, "lets set a goal that each of the Gale family members will go on a mission." I think we have done pretty well.
While on his mission Doug baptized Bro. and Sister Jacob DeJager and wrote home and said, "I have just baptized a person who will be one of the general authorities." He is now in the First Quorum of Seventy.
I haven't kept up very well on what DeLoris has been doing. When she graduated from high school, she decided to be a dental assistant. We took her to Seattle where she went to school. After graduation she went to work for Arthur Kay, who was in the Stake Presidency. She lived with them for a while. Later he became the first president of the Seattle Temple. Each time he would see us he would ask about DeLoris and say how much they loved her.
DeLoris worked there for some time then came back home and started to work as a secretary for Claude Wakefield. He was in the Stake Presidency. It wasn't long before she was called on a mission. She went to Detroit, Michigan. She did a good job, but was a little discouraged with one of her companions.
DELORIS' MISSION
I should tell you about sending DeLoris on her mission. When she was called in to be set apart I had hoped she would be called in to LeGrand Richards. But she was called to go to the same person who ordained me a Seventy, Levi Edgar Young. I got to stand in for her and Ardis Zirker.
HUNTING DOGS
While we still lived in Provo the boys got an Irish Setter that they named Queen. There were very few dogs that could compare with her. In most respects she was an excellent hunter, and the most obedient dog I have ever known. We would talk to her the same as talking to a person and she would go anywhere I asked her to. If I wounded a pheasant she wouldn't quit until she had found it. Everyone in the area would borrow her or come and get us to go hunting.
Queen began to get on the old side, so several of us got together and decided to get two German short haired pointers, a male and a female. Ken Earl was to take the male and I would keep the female. Each of us put in $25. I think there were ten of us. We would raise pups and each one would get a pup from old Duchess. We looked through a lot of hunting magazines and picked out the dogs that had the best records and got a pup from them. It cost a little over $100 apiece. They were three months old when we got them. They were real nice dogs.
Duchess was smart and fairly easy to train. I had her so that she would retrieve anything that I would throw out. She was only four months old when pheasant season opened. I had taken her out with Queen. She would set birds. I thought I had a real winner.
On opening day I was driving along a plowed field and saw a big rooster hiding behind a mound of dirt. I figured this would be a perfect place to try Duchess. I let Queen and Duchess out of the truck and got my shotgun. In a minute they were both set. I got ready and told Queen to get him out. He flew up and I knocked him down and Queen ran and got him. I couldn't see Duchess anywhere, I called and still no sign of her. When I got back in the truck she was in the front seat just a trembling. She had jumped up through the window, the shot had frightened her so badly that I couldn't get her to go with me when I had the gun.
So I left her home the rest of that season and started shooting around her with the twenty-two while one of the boys held her. I used the shot gun and finally we shot off a bunch of fire crackers. By the next season she was used to the guns and was one of the best dogs in the country. I was offered $500 for her several times. She would go with anyone that wanted to hunt, so all of our friends used her. Leon especially liked to hunt with her.
One time Sheldon Law came down to hunt with Leon. I came just as they got back to the house. I asked how they had done. Sheldon said that Leon caught as many as they had shot. I asked how he did it, so Leon said come out in the beet field and he would show me. We hadn't gone very far when Duchess set and Leon laid his gun down and said get ready in case I miss catching him. He circled around Duchess real slow until he could see the pheasant and said it was a hen. Then he worked his way behind her and jumped and caught her over the back and held her wings down. Then he threw her in the air, feet up. It was really something to see her trying to fly upside down. Just before she hit the ground she got turned over and flew off. Leon said that he had caught several hens that day and some roosters. We had a great deal of fun after that trying to catch them by hand.
Duchess had several litters of pups, always eleven at a time. Every one who invested got their pups and we sold several. But we never seemed to get their money, they always said "next payday." Many of them got ran over, including Ken Earl's dog, Duke, Duchess' husband.
When we moved to Richland I let Ken have Duchess. He took her to Spokane and had her bred to the national champion. He got a beautiful litter of pups and when they were about two weeks old a car ran over Duchess and killed her. It was a real sad affair. We haven't owned a dog since.
While living at Ron Anderson's I framed the house on top of the basement and got it ready for sheet rock. About this time Ron wanted to move in, so we moved into a house that Bishop Stevens had down near O'Sullivan Dam. It was a much nicer home. It was about twelve miles out of town.
FIRST CHAPELS
In the meantime I had quit contracting and gone to work for the Church. I had finished the Moses Lake Stake House and the first phase of the Warden Chapel. Then they asked me to go to Othello and finish that chapel. The superintendent there couldn't figure out how to frame the roof from the cultural hall into the existing building. So he packed up his tools and went back to Portland and didn't even tell the Bishop he was going. They called me from Salt Lake and asked if I would go and finish it.
About this time Brother Horsley from the Church Building Committee came to see me and asked if I would go to work full time for the Church. He said that when I had finished the Othello Church they would have another building ready for me. I had a great deal of apprehension because I didn't have that much confidence that I could figure out how to do the job and it may end up like the Othello job.
HAZELTON CHAPEL
About the time I finished Othello they asked if I would go to Hazelton, Idaho, and get the bids out for a new church there. I went down and stayed in a motel. I had a hard time getting anyone to bid because someone in the past had called for bids then gave the contract to their friend, so no one wanted to spend the time figuring bids when they knew that someone else would be doing the job.
I finally got most of them to realize that I was a stranger and I didn't know anyone any better than the next man and that the low bidder would get the job. I spent three weeks in the motel and when I went to church there was so few there that I was pretty discouraged. I couldn't find a house to move the family into and I was pretty homesick and lonesome.
The Stake President came to see me and told me quite a bit about the ward. He said that he felt that the Lord had sent me to get the ward back together. The Hazelton Ward and the Eden Ward had been put into one ward and Eden was mad because the church was being built in Hazelton. I had made up my mind that I was going to call the building committee and tell them I couldn't do the job. I got all the bids into Salt Lake and went home. I told Dorothy I was going to tell Salt Lake to find someone else. She kind of put me straight when she said that I had always taught my family that if you ever take on a job you do not quit until it is finished or you have proven you can't do it, not because it is too hard.
I got an old trailer that had had a fire in it that Uncle Dan Olsen had tried to fix. He had made such a mess of it I decided to take it so he wouldn't ruin it completely. I got new aluminum siding, fixed up the cabinets where the fire had been and repainted the inside. It looked real good.
About the last of August, 1959, Leon and I left for Hazelton. Bill Watts offered to pull the trailer down with his pickup. We parked it on the back of the church grounds, next to the city park. We hadn't much more than pulled in when a car load of girls came driving around checking out the new boy that had come to help his dad build the church. They drove around the block four times before they got enough courage to stop. There were five of them. It didn't take long until they were just like old friends with Leon. They didn't even know his dad was there. It didn't take long after we got there until sacrament meeting attendance had doubled because everyone loved Leon. Not only the girls, but mothers and fathers and the boys scattered around.
Leon and Gay Henry became very good friends. They were on a city basketball team that beat most every other team they played. Gay and Leon liked to hunt jack rabbits. I would take them out to Okelberry's place. There was a lot of sagebrush there. Gay had spotlights hooked up to a car battery. They would get in the back of the pickup and I would drive along slowly and they would spot the rabbits with a light and shoot them with a twenty-two. I was going to tell what they did with the rabbits, but I will leave this to Leon.
We had many good times together and spent long hours working on the church. Most days we would put in ten hours and a lot of times it was twelve or sixteen.
JUDITH BLACK
It was along in the spring that Gay's cousin, Judy Black, came home from Salt Lake. Gay made a date with her for Leon. It turned into a permanent romance. Judy knew how to make friends with Leon's dad. She brought banana bread, pies, and lots of little goodies. I didn't see much of Leon in the evenings after this. He had a lot more important things to do.
By this time the ward had become much more active and we had several men coming every day to work on the church. Sacrament meeting attendance had gone up to over 50%. Leon had a great influence on the numbers. He bought himself a nice little Chevy car so he would have a nicer car to date in.
Leon got his call to go to West Virginia on his mission. We went home for his farewell and took Judy with us. As we passed the way station at King's Hill, Leon passed a car right in front of the way station where it said "no passing." Judy told him that he would be getting picked up, but it didn't bother Leon much until we got down the road about ten miles and a state patrol car picked him up and we had to go to Glen Ferry to see a justice of the peace. It cost him $35 and delayed us two hours.
Sunday as we were going to church Dorothy and I and the rest of the family were in the car going to meeting when we met Leon and Judy coming the other way. We stopped to talk to them and one of our neighbor girls, who was fifteen years old, came driving down the road looking at us. She ran into the back of Leon and broke the back of the front seat off. Leon and Judy ended up in the back seat.
There was about $500 damage to Leon's car, but it didn't appear to have hurt anyone. We left Leon's car in the garage to be fixed and drove our car back to Hazelton. In a couple of weeks we went back and traded cars. Leon sold his car to Ken and Ken came to Hazelton to work with me and Leon left for his mission. It was sad to see him go, but I knew it was what the Lord wanted him to do and I knew he would be a great missionary.
LEON'S MISSION
When Leon was to be set apart I prayed in my heart that LeGrand Richards would set him apart. When the names were called Leon was called to go with Elder Richards. I was on cloud ten. I thought I would be standing in with him, but when we got there Elder Richards said that our president had asked that he not have the daddies stand in any more and he said that we want to do what our president asks us to, don't we. I had to agree. Elder Richards is such a loving man.
HELPER KEN
It was a joy to have Ken there in Hazelton with me, he fell right in line to take Leon's place in the center of all the young people, especially the girls. Uncle Fred took a liking to him the same as Leon. The building went along real well.
I would start work at five. Ken and Leon Hatley would get breakfast then call me and we would have prayer and breakfast and start officially at 6:30. Ken and Leon would take turns stopping a half hour early for lunch to get lunch ready. We would spend a half an hour eating and then get back to work. Ken and Leon worked ten hours a day and I would put in twelve to sixteen, depending on how many volunteers there were and how late they stayed. Sometimes Ken would come back and put in more time.
Ken and Bishop Christopherson got along real well. They did a lot of kidding with each other. This is when I found out that Ken wouldn't put up with anyone saying anything disrespectful about his dad. If anyone would say, "tell your old man something." Ken would say, "I don't have an old man, if you mean my dad, say so, but don't call him the old man."
It brings a real warm feeling to my heart to know that not one of my children have ever said or done anything to bring disrespect to their father or mother or brothers or sisters. What a blessing this has been to our family. I hope it will be passed on to the grandchildren.
One day President Baker called and asked if we would bring his daughter Clair home with us. She was visiting her grandmother in Burley, Idaho. When we arrived in Moses Lake at President Baker's home he came out and visited a few minutes and asked Ken how old he was. Ken told him 18 and would be 19 in November. President Baker asked if he could see him in his office at 2:00. When Ken got home after the interview he said President Baker had just received word from Salt Lake that the missionary age had been changed to 19 and he had asked Ken to go on a mission. It was a real shock to us.
I thought that I would have Ken with me until we finished the building, then he would be able to get a quarter of college in and work for the summer before he left for his mission. Doug would be home by then. I didn't know how we could have four on a mission at the same time. Ken said that he would go on the mission and he went back to Hazelton with me for three weeks then went home and worked for President Baker and Dave Stevens until time to go. He did this so he could spend some time with his mother. I remember when he gave his farewell talk in the ward he said if he could take his mother as a companion they would convert the whole mission. They probably would.
KEN'S MISSION
When Ken was set apart for his mission I was still thinking that I would like LeGrand Richards to do it. But Ken was called to go with Elder Critchlow. When it was over I was glad that Ken had Elder Critchlow, he got a wonderful blessing.
It was a real sad time when we left Ken off at the mission headquarters. Nearly half of the family was on a mission, but we knew the Lord would bless us and them as long as we did what he asked us to do.
LONESOME IN HAZELTON
It was a lonesome trip to Hazelton and still more lonesome after I got there. I didn't have much volunteer labor because there wasn't much to do except finish work. I worked sixteen hours a day because it was too lonesome in the trailer. I didn't spend much time cooking, the ward was really good to have me out to dinner on Sundays. They would bring me in a lunch once in a while. The work went along pretty well, the architect came and made the final inspection and said that it looked very good.
One of the most inspirational times of my life was the night before the dedication. I had everything looking really good, flowers around, I had the speaker system going with the Tabernacle Choir playing and Dorothy came walking in. I was so happy that I had to shed a few tears. The service the next day was beautiful. I stayed on a few days more, moved the trailer over to Judy's grandparents, loaded up my tools and the ward gave me a farewell party and a wristwatch. I was thankful that I had listened to Dorothy and not thrown in the sponge.
I found out later that I had saved $40,000 on the job, the church split the savings with the ward, so they were able to pay off their share nearly two years early.
The next day, after I got home, I went to work with Melvin Jorgensen building an addition on his home and remodeling the rest. I got a call from Salt Lake asking me to go to Richland, Washington and build a new Stake Center there starting in April.
Doug got home from his mission, it was sure good to have him home again even though we knew he would be going in the service soon.
MOVE TO RICHLAND
We went to Richland to see about building the Stake Center and found President Thompson was in the Veteran's Hospital at Walla Walla, so I went to see Bishop Harmon, who sent me to see President Julian Neilson. He said there had been many delays on starting the building and asked if I would like to build him a home while I was waiting. So we finished up Jorgensen's home and moved to Richland Village in Richland, into a two bedroom, small home.
Douglas was called into the service and left for boot camp. DeLoris returned home from her mission, what a joy to have her home again. Myrna was so glad to have her sister to share her bedroom. Dorothy was happy to have someone to talk "woman talk" to again. We put Myrna and DeLoris in one bedroom, Dorothy and I in the other and the boys had the wide open basement for their bedroom.
It was about a month after moving to Richland that President Thompson called me to be an alternate member of the High Council. There were only three of us that didn't have a doctorate degree, President Thompson, Dan Sullivan and myself. I sure felt inadequate.
I built the Nielson home, it was a fun home to build. Then Earl Wheelwright asked if I would build a home for him while we were still waiting for the Stake Center to start.
About this time we got a call from Doug saying he was being released from the service. Dorothy had written to him saying that I had been sick, so he thought they were releasing him because he was needed at home. They didn't tell him why, but we were delighted to have him home again. He started working with me on the Wheelwright home. Then, Jim Orton wanted me to build him a house. These were all nice, big homes. I built Dick Perkins home before Wheelwrights, it was the biggest of them all. Then I built Grant Strong's, all of these were on Sunset Street. All of these men had their doctorate degrees, they were the nicest homes in town up to that time.
BACK TROUBLE
It was getting time to start the Stake Center, but Bishop Maun asked if I would come out in the country and at least help him get started on his home. He was out in what is now known as Meadow Springs. He had 130 acres, he was the Bishop of the Third Ward, which is now the Kennewick Ninth Ward. He is also a physical therapist at the hospital.
I had been having a lot of trouble with my back, at times I could barely get out of bed so I went to see a neurosurgeon to see if he could give me some relief. He couldn't find anything wrong, so he sent me to Dr. Petty, a bone specialist. He x-rayed and couldn't find anything wrong, so he sent me back to Dr. Dumphey, the neurosurgeon. I asked him if he thought physical therapy would do any good, so he sent me to see Bishop Maun. When I went in he said that he had been watching me and he thought he knew what was wrong. He gave me a good massage and put a hot pad on my back for half an hour. Then he put me on the mat and gave me some exercises to do. I haven't had a bad attack since then. He continued the treatment for a month, then told me to continue the exercises at home. He wouldn't take any pay, said he would consider it a donation to the Stake Center because I would be worth a lot more to the project. I finished his home and started the Stake Center sometime in April about a year later than when I had been sent to start it.
RICHLAND STAKE CENTER
I hired Donald and Clarence Berry to help me on the Stake Center. They were paid, all others were donated labor. Later, when we started the brick work, I paid three quarters wages and expected them to donate one quarter. It worked out real well. The tending was mostly done with volunteer labor. I had more than 25 volunteers every day and as many as 75. Most of them were craftsmen of some sort. I appointed Bro. Guyman as head of the plumbers, he picked his crew of plumbers. Bro. Dan Sullivan and Leo Fernbaker were appointed as head of the electricians.
Doug Allen, an inactive who smoked and cussed a blue streak, was head of the sheet metal. He told me that he would do it if he could pick his crew and I would keep my hands off them. I promised. He picked his crews and if someone didn't show up he would call the wife and give her the devil for keeping him home. It wasn't long until he had a full crew all the time. He quit smoking and took his wife to the temple. He was an usher at the Stake Center until he died in 1984.
The Stake Center came along real well. I had a good turnout of skilled people and Relief Society served a lunch every day from the time we started until we finished. When they told me they planned to do it I thought after each ward had had a turn it would die out. But they came just as well at the last as they did at the first. The lunches were always good, like fried chicken, salads, pies, cakes. They served from about 20 to 75 men. The one that I called to ask the blessing on the food would be the first one in line to eat.
Everything went real well until the day we were pouring the beam that held up the lintee beams. They were 80 feet long and rested on the wall on one end and on a beam between the chapel and cultural hall on the other end. I had poured a beam three feet wide and three feet deep with a lot of one and a quarter inch steel in it. The lintee set on this and then I was pouring a three foot by six foot beam around the ends of the lintee and on top of the first beam.
We were nearly through when I was on top with my brother, Donald, Kent Harmon and one of the men when I felt the beam settle. I thought, how will I ever get it straight. It had only settled about an inch. I looked over the edge and all at once the whole roof started to settle and fall.
It broke a couple of ribs on Bishop Harmon, sprained Donald's thumb, and I didn't even get a bruise. Vernon Merkley was pushing a wheel barrow full of mortar for the brick masons, he had caught his toe on an electric cord and unplugged it, so he had stopped to plug it back in just as the beam caved in. One lintee fell one way and the other the other way, leaving a spot about ten feet wide that he was in. A brace from one of the timbers hit him in the back and knocked him down. He went to the hospital for a couple of days with Bishop Harmon, but he just had bruises. I think that was the worst day I ever spent in my life.
The firemen and I took flashlights and crawled around under the building and where we could get between the beams, looking to see if anyone else could be under it. No one else was hurt.
I had asked the people that made the beams if I could pour the beam in one pour and just leave holes to put the lintee through. They said they did it that way as much or more than pouring twice. I wanted to get away from having to form it twice. It would be much easier to pour. I called the architect and asked if I could do it that way and he turned me over to his engineer. He acted like I was a little kid. He said, "you will have to learn to do things the way they are drawn."
The day before we poured there was about twenty big-wigs, the city building inspector, church building inspector, Stake Presidency and several others along with the architect. They had their picture taken in front of the bracing, holding it up. They said everything looked fine. Well I had to go to Salt Lake and meet with the head of the Church Building Committee, President Thompson and President Davis went with me. President Thompson really gave them "what for" because the plans didn't have it drawn the way I wanted to do it and the Church Building inspector should have caught it if I was doing it wrong. He said they weren't paying me to be an engineer, so the Church Building Department and the architect paid to replace the damages, about $50,000.
I know the Lord blessed us that no one was hurt that day. Every morning before we started work we had prayer, asking that there would be no bad accidents. There was a terrible accident, but no bad injuries.
It was a real challenge to get the Stake Center back in shape. They wanted to tear down the back wall because they were afraid it was damaged. After they had lifted the broken beams from off of it, it sprang back straight. We decided it would be better to knock it down and get inside with a cat and push all the trash out. It took more than a day with a 5 ton ball swinging on a crane to knock it down, then all the steel had to be cut with a torch. They planned to tear the south wall down so they could get inside with a crane to set the beams. I asked if it would be possible to set up heavy scaffolding and put a rail on it with a kind of little trolley to set the one end of the beam on and carry the other end with a crane.
I went to a machine shop and had them fix the trolley. It only took them a couple of hours, it took nearly two days to set up the scaffolding. We had a big steel beam made to replace the concrete one that broke. Once they had it set and the scaffolding in it only took six hours to set the broken lintee. It would have taken at least two days to tear down the wall and two weeks with four masons to replace it, plus the cost of brick, block and mortar.
I had done a lot of praying about how to repair the damage. One night, just as I was going asleep, the idea came to me to use a rail and trolley. I had a hard time selling the idea but after it was done, one of the riggers asked if I was an engineer. I told him no, I had never been to college. Every time I think about it I know who the engineer was and how the Holy Ghost brought it to my mind. This delayed the finishing of the chapel by about a month and cost about $50,000.
One time we were having Stake Conference and Apostle Joseph Fielding Smith came up. President Thompson wanted him to lay some brick in the entrance on the north side of the building. We set it all up, President and Sister Smith ate lunch with us. There was 75 workers there that day and about half of them just stood and watched. I have a picture of President Smith wearing my hard hat laying the brick. There aren't too many people that have had the President of the Church wear their hat.
I had some interesting experiences building the church, besides the big cave-in. There was a non-member whose wife was a member. He put a lot of time in working for his wife. He was working on the baptismal font one day and I asked him if he wouldn't like to be the first one to use it. He said that he would give it some thought. He was the first. Bro. McAlphan, a real swell fellow.
There were several that smoked when they started working there and stopped by the time we had finished. I think the building played a real part in it.
We finished some time in 1963. The building turned out to be a beautiful one and the people enjoyed it because they had helped build it. Most of the sisters had been involved in serving lunches and dinners, they did play a great part by creating more interest in what was going on. I made a lot of lifetime friends.
PRESIDENT LEE
When we lived in Moses Lake I was in the Branch Presidency as the Clerk when President Harold B. Lee came up, he wasn't President at the time. Sister Bell Lybbert had been sick for many years with heart trouble. She and Bernard Lybbert had known President Lee in Canada. When they heard he was coming they arranged for him to go out to their home and give her a blessing. I was invited to go with them, so I got to stand in the circle with him as he blessed her. He didn't bless her that she would be healed, but that she would be able to rest and not have a great deal of pain. She didn't suffer and it wasn't long until she passed away.
President Lee gave us some instructions on anointing that I shall never forget. He said to anoint a person you pour a drop or so of oil on the crown of the head and say, "by the power of the Priesthood that I hold, I anoint you with this holy consecrated oil, that has been consecrated and dedicated for the healing of the sick, in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen."
These exact words are not necessary, but kind of in this order, but you do not give the blessing. The one that seals the anointing gives the blessing. He said that sometimes the one doing the anointing says it all and leaves nothing for the one doing the sealing to say. I have seen this a few times.
LEON'S WHIPLASH
We got word that Leon was having a lot of trouble with head aches, caused from a whip lash when the girl ran into the back of his car just before he left on his mission.
The Missionary Committee had him sent to Salt Lake. The doctors put a brace on his neck and sent him home. As long as he wore the brace he was fine, but if he took it off for a few minutes the headaches would start up again. He tried to get them to let him go back and finish his mission with the brace on. But they put him back in the hospital and operated, fusing some of the vertebrae together. While he was in the hospital Judy came to see him every day. It wasn't long before they were engaged and not too long after that they were married. They moved to Moses Lake where Leon worked on the missile project and Judy worked in the bank.
JACK NELSON
A short time before we finished the Richland Church, Jack Nelson asked if I wanted to go in partners with him in the building business. He would furnish the land and the money and do the selling and I would do the building. I took him up on it.
Jack and I started by building a home and selling it to President Tingey. We built two more next to that one, then we went down on Thayer and built a nice home with a stone front.
VERNE FISCHER
It was about this time that a good looking red-head used to come and see us once and a while and then take DeLoris with him some where. I can't remember me, or just DeLoris, if he could marry her.
But there is one thing I can for sure remember, and that was the day they were married in the Idaho Falls Temple. Harold Davis' father was a counselor in the Temple Presidency. I had met him a time or two before when he had come to see Harold. Harold was the First Counselor in our Stake Presidency. Harold's father asked if I would come and sit on the stand with them in a meeting that was held before the temple session. I didn't really think much about it until he said, "Bro. Gale will be our first speaker." It was the worst talk I have ever given, and probably ever given in the Idaho Falls Temple. I was still shaking when we got home the next day.
MARILYN KAYE
I remember the day that Marilyn was born. It was the same day that Floyd was being confirmed. We had been at the hospital with DeLoris while she was in labor. I dashed up to Fast and Testimony Meeting and confirmed Floyd. I walked down off the stand and right on out the back door and went back to the hospital. Dean Powell stood up and went up to the Bishop and said I had said it wrong. The next Sunday I went in the Bishop;s office and we did it all over. Dean said I had said "The Church of Jesus Christ" and not of "Latter-day Saints." I think I said it right, but anyway, it was done over. I don't know what date was put on his record.
Anyway, I hadn't any more got to the hospital when the cutest little bald headed girl you ever saw was born. She turned out to be a beautiful red-head, our first granddaughter.
We had moved from North Richland in the First Ward, to a house on Farrell Lane owned by Wayne Simmons. It was a duplex that had been made into a single family dwelling. It had six bedrooms and a living room so large you needed field glasses to see who was on the other end.
It was a this time that Doug brought a friend home for a few days. A lovely girl by the name of LaVon Walters. We fell in love with her at first sight, but we were afraid Doug wasn't paying enough attention to her to catch her.
Ken had returned from his mission and was dating a cute little Rew girl. I knew her dad but hadn't had much chance to get acquainted with Cherrie. Ken and George Oats ran around together and neither one of them seemed to get very interested in any one girl. We were not as concerned about having Ken on our hands forever as we were Doug, since he was nearly an old bachelor.
BUILDING MISSION
In the meantime the Church Building Committee asked if I would go on a building mission. They said I would have to be totally out of debt. They wanted me to go in about three months. I still owed for the truck and the car and some doctor bills. I didn't think there was a chance I could ever be out of debt, let alone in three months. I said if I could get out of debt I would go.
I finished up the house the night before we left for Houston, Texas. Jack had sold the house to President Harmon and I had received enough from the three other houses to get me out of debt and have $1000 in the bank to get Marvin started on his mission. I didn't have any idea if we would make any profit on President Harmon's house or not.
I knew the Lord had blessed us, this was more money than I had ever made in a year before. It brought what Nephi said when he was sent to get the brass plates. The Lord gives no commandment unto the children of men save he prepare a way that it may be accomplished.
It was getting close to the time to leave for Houston, Texas on our building mission. There was not a Stake Conference being held in Richland, so we were asked to go to Moses Lake to be set apart. Elder Paul Dunn was the visiting General Authority. We were the first missionaries that he set apart after being called as one of the General Authorities.
Leon and Judy had moved to Richland and lived not far from where we were living. When we got ready to leave for Texas Leon stored most of our stuff. Shawn, our first grandchild, was nearly a year old. He used to stick his finger out at me and I would act like I was going to bite it. He would jerk it back and then laugh. The night before we left for Texas they were over visiting. Judy was holding Shawn and he stuck his finger out. I bit but he didn't jerk back, so I ended up biting his finger. He looked at me for a second like "what did you do that for?" then he started to cry. I wasn't sure he would ever talk to me again.
Well, anyway, we were on our way to Houston. We had the truck loaded with every thing including the kitchen sink. Dorothy drove the car with Myrna was co-pilot and which ever one of the boys that wanted to ride with her. Going down, it didn't make much difference which vehicle they were in because Dorothy stayed so close it was like one car. I can't remember if we drove all the way from Richland to Provo in one day or not, I think we stayed at Burley over night. Then we stayed at Orem for a day, then drove 500 miles a day until we got there.
I remember the afternoon we arrived in Houston. We were going down the highway just at quitting time. Everyone was going home from work. A little ways down the road appeared an interchange about five levels high with freeways going in every direction. I didn't have an idea which one I should take. Just before we reached the interchange there was a dirt road on my right. I turned off and we drove for a hundred yards or so.
I stopped and went back and told Dorothy we had better have a word of prayer. In a few minutes we drove on about a half a mile and came to a paved street with a service station a block down the road. I drove in and asked if I could use his phone. I had Bishop Webb's number.
When I called a lady's voice said, "Mrs. Webb speaking," I told her Brother Gale was here but that I was lost. She asked me where I was, which I, of course, didn't know. The service station attendant told me such and such a street. I told her that and she said, "you aren't lost, just drive south one mile and you will come to a shopping center. Go to the south end and there will be a dirty old Buick with a fat lady sitting in it. When I got there I found the Buick, it wasn't old nor dirty, but there wasn't any one sitting in it. We parked next to it and in a minute or two a pleasingly plump lady came out and got in. I went in and asked her if she was Sister Webb. She was and she was waiting there for the Bishop who rode the bus to work and she picked him up here each evening.
When the Bishop got there they took us to our new home about six blocks away. The furniture was still in the crates. He said he would be by in a couple of hours and take me to see the architect. I hurried like mad to get the beds set up. When he came I spent until after eleven o'clock talking to the architect. The Bishop met me the next morning at eight and we started the building. I thought I would get a day or two to get settled, but Dorothy and the kids did most of the settling. That was on Friday
Saturday I had a crew to help stake out and get ready to start drilling for concrete pillars. Sunday every one was saying how hard the schools were and how most new students had a hard time. One of the first days after Myrna started they had a test and the teacher told Myrna she didn't have to take it and it would not be counted against her. She went ahead and took the test and had the highest score in the class. The boys did about as well in their classes. It didn't take long until they had friends all over the place.
I had been there about a week when I got six building missionaries. They knew next to nothing about anything and nothing about building and nothing about the gospel. Four of them had had a big party the night before they left and got real drunk. They liked to brag about it. I started teaching them each morning at seven, then at eight we would start building. A couple of them had portable radios that they carried around in their left hand. It is real hard to drive nails with a radio in the hand you hold the nails with. But it wouldn't have helped much for them to have had both hands free anyway.
There was one of the boys, Bill Lindsey, who had done some wrestling in high school and decided he was going to throw Brother Gale. Every morning we would go for a round or two. He could come at me with his hands up and I would grab him by the wrists with both hands and twist it until he would have to turn around, then I would push my hand up between his shoulder blades until he would yell. Then he would put his head down and charge at me. I would go over his back, under his arms, then I would turn over backwards and throw him on his back until the ground shook. I wouldn't let go of my hold. I would stand up and slap him down again until he would yell that he had enough. This happened every day for a month or more.
One day I slipped on the grass and hit my knee real hard, but I didn't let him go until I had him on the grass a couple of times. When I tried to walk I couldn't put any pressure on my leg. I called Dorothy, she came and got me and took me home. We were supposed to go to a show with Dr. Vewig and his wife that night. Dorothy called him to see what to do about my knee. He said to put hot packs on it for tonight and to bring me in tomorrow. He told her to go ahead and bring Myrna and come to the show. So I stayed home and packed my knee. The next morning Dorothy took me in and Dr. Vewig drained the blood and fluid from my knee and gave me a shot of cortisone. The he put a cast on my leg from the hip down.
A few days before Ron had been between the pickup and a cement wall when Bill Lindsey had backed up and pinned his leg against the wall. The leg was broken, so now we had two casts under the table. No one else could get their legs under the table.
One day I got a call from Salt Lake telling me they were having trouble with the building in Carbondale, Ill. They wanted me to catch a plane out the next afternoon, fly to Dallas, and meet Bro. Yancey. He was in charge of all the buildings from Canada to Houston. Dorothy and the kids took me to the airport at the other side of Houston. When I got to Dallas I called to see if they had gotten home all right. It took them a half hour longer to get home than it took me to fly to Dallas.
The next day we flew on to Carbondale and the building supervisor met us and took us to the church. He had put the footings for the steeple in the wrong place, so he had poured another footing on top of the first one. But the one that was in the right place didn't have enough steel sticking up through, so the architect said it all had to come out. The building supervisor wouldn't do it, so the architect had shut the job down. That was the reason I was there.
The builder had the walls up for the chapel. They were two by six studs, eighteen feet long. I didn't think he had the walls braced well enough, so I asked him if he didn't think we should brace it some more. He kind of laughed at me and said they had sixty mile an hour winds a few days before and it hadn't hurt anything. When Bro. Yancey and I were in the motel it rained and blew until I didn't think the walls could possibly stand. The next day, sure enough, they didn't. But it didn't break them hardly at all.
So with the building out of the way, I asked Bro. Yancey if I could use some dynamite and blow the footings out. He gave me the okay, so I bought some powder and caps and got a compressor, and a jack hammer. The next day one of the building missionaries and I took the whole thing out and got ready to pour the new one. They thought it would take me at least a week. The architect was very happy. I made up all the trusses for the whole building, got a crane, stood up the walls, put the trusses on and tacked all the sheeting down. The architect said that even with all the trouble I was at least a week ahead of what they would have been. I was there two weeks and plenty glad to get home.
Dorothy and the kids picked me up at the airport. She was much more comfortable driving in Houston than I ever was. Myrna and the boys did about as much work on the church as the building missionaries.
Myrna developed a real friendship with Rena Eady. She was a lot of fun and talked with a southern accent. She and Myrna went to BYU together.
Ken and Doug called and said they were going to be married on our wedding anniversary. I called Bro. Yancey to see if we could go to the wedding. He called Salt Lake and they said it was all right. They were planning a conference for the building missionaries in Bloomfield, so I could stop on the way back and go to the conference and then haul the missionaries home. They would fly them up. So, Ron, Dorothy, and I took off in the afternoon and drove straight through to Provo, twenty-seven hours. I was one tired Josè.
On the twenty-seventh of May we celebrated Doug's birthday at Dads and Mothers. Then we had the Baccalaureate services that night. I was a bit tired. The next morning, on our wedding anniversary, Doug and Ken took two lovely ladies to the temple and they were married by Elder Monson, Doug's mission president. It was really a beautiful ceremony.
Doug, of course, married LaVon Walters and Ken, Cheryl Rew. Before the day was completed we went to Doug's graduation from BYU. It felt like time and all eternity in one day. LaVon was one tired little girl. We kind of slept on each other's shoulder. Doug had said for years that he wouldn't marry until he had graduated from college, but he didn't quite make it. It was a real full day.
We spent one more day in Provo then drove to Bloomfield for the church building conference. It was nice to have all the building supervisors and missionaries together. Several of them had worked together before. Some of the supervisors talked over their building problems and missionary problems. It was nice, but I have wondered if the amount gained was really worth the amount spent. We spent two days there and then I loaded the missionaries in the station wagon and headed home. That is a long way when you have to listen to Bill Lindsey and Tex tell big tales all the way home.
Myrna stayed home and rode heard on Rex and Floyd while we were gone. They seemed to get along really well. A few weeks after we got back Myrna went to Utah with someone from the Ward and then on up to Richland to spend the summer with Leon, Ken, Doug and DeLoris and their families.
The Ward members had kind of gotten tired of taking the responsibility of hauling the boys to work and picking them up and then coming and working on the building themselves. I got real tired of asking for help, so we kind of took over the whole program. I would go and pick up some of the boys and then take them home again at night. I would be pretty good alone trying to get the job finished.
I remember one night I had four people out, one of them was the Stake President. I had them sanding doors. I had already done more than half of the doors. The President came to me and said, "don't you have a job that is a little bit more important, I don't think that I can afford my valuable time to do this sort of work." I told him to go ahead and do the important job he had to do and I would stay until I got it done, and that is what happened.
Jack Nelson had been writing about once a month to see when I was coming home so that he could get things lined up to start building again. The Church wanted me to stay with the building program as a hired supervisor instead of a Church calling. I decided to go home and go into the building business with Jack. Most of the building missionaries had been released, so I finished up most of the building by myself.
There was a few things like finishing the hard wood floors, setting the plumbing, and other odd jobs that had been sub-contracted out. I had the architect supervise those.
We got word from Myrna that she had rented a duplex and had all the furniture in so we left for home. We arrived there on October 8, just a year to the day from the time we left to go to Houston. Going to Houston, Dorothy had stayed right on my bumper, but she drove enough during that year to get enough confidence that I had a hard time keeping track of her and we didn't even have Myrna as the co-pilot. The time we spent in Houston was a highlight in our lives and a lot of hard work. We were real glad to be back in the Northwest.
BUILDING OUR HOME
Jack had property bought and ready to start building. I only had a couple of days and we were back in the building business. I am not sure whose house we built first and I don't know if Doug started working that fall, but I think he did. Anyway, we got going in the building business and Jack bought fifteen acres of ground on Saint Street and said it looked bad for the company for me to be renting while building for everyone else. So we took the first lot to be sold on Saint Street property.
I remember the day we picked out our lot. Leon and Judy, Myrna, Ron, Rex, Floyd and Dorothy and I went up. The wind was blowing like mad, I picked a lot that would allow us to get a little daylight in the basement. We looked through lots of house plans then picked one with 1700 feet on the main floor with three bedrooms. Myrna had one bedroom, one for the guest room, and Dorothy and I had a nice big bedroom. Ron, Rex and Floyd each had a bedroom downstairs with a large family room. It was quite different from the time when we had the whole family home with only two bedrooms and a basement.
HIGH COUNCIL
Shortly after we got back from Houston I was called to serve on the High Council. In those days one of the General Authorities had to set you apart as a High Councilman. I think it was Elder Gordon B. Hinkley that set me apart. I had worried a great deal about speaking in meetings. When I received my blessing he blessed me that I wouldn't have any problems with my speaking assignments. I felt much better about it, although I wasn't that hot of a speaker.
The same day Elder Hinkley gave Brother Gunter, from Othello, a blessing. Brother Gunter had been worrying a great deal about finances for his farm. Brother Hinkley didn't mention speaking, but blessed him that his finances would be available and that he would be able to do the work of the Lord. Brother Hinkley did not know one of us from the other. The only way he would know the things that we needed would have been by the Spirit.
I sure enjoyed the time I spent on the High Council, especially the time spent with President Thompson. He would come by the job where I was working and have me come and set in his car and talk. We found that my grandfather and his grandmother were brother and sister. I was happy to be a relative of his.
GRANDCHILDREN
Gregory has arrived in the picture before this. LeAnn and Craig must be on the way, but I guess I had better not try to keep track of just where each grandchild comes along or I will get myself in deep water.
There was a few things that happened while building our house that I should mention. The whole family helped. At times Myrna would go up on the roof and help nail. So one day Dorothy decided to help. There wasn't too much trouble getting up on the roof, but coming back down was a different story. To step out around the ladder and put her foot on the rung was more than Dorothy could do. I thought I was going to have to put her on my shoulders and carry her down. We finally got her down, but that was the last time we ever got her up on the ladder.
Rex was helping move some scaffolding and a cement block fell off and hit him on the head. Dorothy had to take him to the doctor to get stitches. It wasn't long after this that Floyd found it great fun to put a scaffold plank over a block, then put a brick or something on one end and jump on the other end to see how high he could throw the thing in the air. He was showing Rex how high it would go and he lost track of where it went and it came down and hit Floyd on the head. Dorothy had to take him down and get stitches. I don't know if Floyd was just jealous of Rex or not, but he got stitches too. I sure enjoyed the time spent working with the family on our home.
The big problem was that our rent payment had been less than $100 a month. Now the mortgage payment was $213, plus insurance and taxes. But it was only a year or two before rent had gone much higher than our house payments and I was able to deduct interest and taxes from our income taxes besides.
MARVIN'S MISSION .
I haven't mentioned Marvin's mission. I guess because I had been so involved in our own mission. He was called to the California Spanish Speaking Mission. He had kind of a hard time at the Language Training Center, but all at once, either through prayer or hard work or both, he picked it up faster than most of the others. He hadn't been in the mission long before the Mission President could see his potential and he was called as an Assistant to the President. I thought I would pop a button, I was so proud.
Marvin didn't quit his mission when he was released. If we stopped to get gas or whatever, he would ask people what they knew about the LDS Church and if they would like to know more. Marvin gave one of the best reports to the High Council. He helped me some with the building, then went to Moses Lake and worked for a while and then went down to BYU in the fall.
KIDS ON THEIR OWN
Ken and Doug worked for me full time for a while until Doug went to work for Batelle and went back to school to get his master's degree. He has moved up in management until now, if you ask me, I would say he would likely be the new president of Batelle.
Ken worked for me until he graduated from BYU. Then he went to work for an insurance company as a claims adjuster. He worked there a few years, in Seattle. Then Jack Nelson had him come back to Richland to help with the buying and building jobs.
Leon worked out in the area and went to Columbia Basin College until he became a millwright. Shortly after he became a millwright he quit working in the area and sold water softeners. He helped me once in a while on the buildings. He moved to Seattle and sold for Boise Cascade and Western Kraft.
Verne and DeLoris worked in Richland for a time. Verne worked as a draftsman, but the cold winters were bad for DeLoris. Her skin would break out and she would have a real bad time, so they left for the warm climate of Arizona and wound up in San Manuel. It looks like the family is starting to scatter, we would keep them under our wing but I guess it is better this way.
ENDNOTE
DeMar finished writing this history while they were living in the comfortable home he built after retiring from Nelson and Gale Construction, on Rupert Road, between West Richland and Benton City, Washington. He had a large workshop, with every woodworking tool imaginable, a barn (where curing hard woods and hay for the animals was stored), vegetable and flower gardens, a corral and pasture, where they kept horses, which they enjoyed riding. They were called as ordinance workers in the Seattle Temple in 1979, a long drive across occasionally dangerous roads, but they enjoyed serving in this capacity. He and Dorothy enjoyed this place for over a decade. Their sons Douglas and Kenneth lived nearby and Douglas served as their bishop. DeMar and Dorothy were called on a full-time proseliting mission, faithfully serving in Arkansas and Missouri for 18 months. (DeMar’s father, Luther Gale, also served his full-time mission in Arkansas.) DeMar also wrote about his mission experiences, from 1985-86. When they returned from this mission, a 50th Wedding Anniversary celebration was held in Benton City. In 1993, they sold their home in Washington State and moved to Mapleton, Utah, near their brothers and sisters, Marvin’s family and their grand children attending BYU in nearby Provo. DeMar enjoyed following BYU sports and trout fishing with his brothers, for which they bought a boat, and visiting with their children, who were now scattered in several states. DeMar also built a workshop behind their home and continued to work with hard woods, crafting many beautiful heirlooms, including inlaid tables, bowls, grandfather clocks, etc. However, his health began to fail when he was in his late 70s and DeMar was finally diagnosed with Multiple Myeloma, a cancerous condition of the bone marrow. He experienced considerable pain and was hospitalized. His children were called, and all nine immediately came, and finally a decision was made to take him home, with the assistance of Hospice. Two days later on Sunday, April 6, 1997, following a blessing by his sons, DeMar peacefully passed from this life. A funeral attended by all of his children, grand children, great grand children, living siblings and many relatives and friends, was held. A transcription of the funeral is also available. DeMar was buried in the Mapleton, Utah Cemetery.