The Life Sketch of

Beatrice Ivy Turner

Written by herself for her 50th Wedding Anniversary
Text Box: Beatrice Ivy Turner (Chandler) Written By Herself Written in 1977 to Celebrate Her 50th Wedding Anniversary (Page 1 of 3) [Editors Note; Beatrice Ivy Turner Chandler was known as Ivy throughout her life, she was born 13 August 1910 and died on 1 June 1996. Aged 85 years nine months and nineteen days. See also History of her Husband William Thomas Chandler Sr.] Before I start my story, I must give a little family history. Ivan Vane Turner, my dad, was born in Onsborrow Kentucky in 1882 to George Washington Turner and Georgeann Yates Turner1. He was the oldest of six kids2. His folks were converts to the Mormon Church. Before that, they were Masons. Grandma belonged to the Eastern Star ladies organization of the Masons. When dad was fourteen years old, they left their home in Kentucky and came to Utah were they went to the temple to be sealed for time and all eternity, on 15 Sep 1898. The fourteen years Dad [Ivan] spent on the Ohio River, he learned to excel in boating. He could go anywhere in a rowboat, also an excellent swimmer and fisherman. The rest of dad’s early life was spent in Murray. They lived at 601 Vine Street, Murray. His [Fathers (George)] profession was a Steam Engineer. My mother Harriot Elva Potter Turner, was born in Dover3, Utah. She was the seventh child4 in a family of thirteen born to Wallace Edwin and Harriot Susan Kempton Potter5. My father and mother were married on 6 Jan 1904 in Salt Lake City. They were early pioneers to the Uintah Basin about 1906 or 1907. I can see why they wanted to move here as it is a Beautiful place, with the mountains and streams, many places to fish and hunt. In all our traveling around, I have never found a place I liked better for a year around climate and things to do. None of dad’s folks [George Turner and Georgeann Yates] could never understand why he wanted to come here, but at this time most of mother’s folks [Wallace Potter and Harriot Kempton] moved here. My Dad and George Potter [Harriot’s older brother] came together the first time by team and wagon and brought their first load of belongs. The trip one way took about ten days. The next trip they brought their families. Dad’s first homestead was about where the Ballard6 Church house stands nowa then North to the hill, but he was getting out wood and posts north of LaPoint in the Deep Creek7 area. And, he found a place he liked better. So he gave up the place he had and re‑filed on Deep Creek. Dad moved his family to Deep Creek when I was very small. Here we lived for about twelve years in a three room log house with a dirt roof. They now had three kids, having buried a boy just older than meb, just before I was bornc, in this humble home, five more children were born, making a total of nine‑five girls and four boys in this order: Bernice [Pronounced Burnis], Harlan, [Jessie] Arnold [(died)], Ivy, Wanothel, Hurley, Wilbur, Earnest, Vera8. We had a happy home but a busy one. One of my earliest memories is of threading green beans on a string to hang up and dry. I was not quite three when I moved there and I remember so well getting lost in a cornfield. Seemed like to me it was hours, but mother said that it was probably twenty to thirty minutes as I wouldn’t stay in one row long enough for Bernice to find me. My mother was a good homemaker and our log cabin was a happy home. Mother played the organ and we had one in our home. She would play and we all helped her sing, mostly church songs, as she was very religious. One song she sang a lot and there were tears in her eyes lots of the time, was “Oh Where Is My Wandering Boy Tonight.” Later I realized, this was because my brother Harlan ran away so much. Even from early childhood. Mother was very talented as all the Potters were. Some of her talents were music, art, homemaking, and sewing. She had taken a correspondence course in sewing early in life so she could make anything. One time Dad’s folks had sent a box of clothing to make over, and mother made her a dress out of a serge overcoat, trimmed it in brown satin. She wore it to a dance. Everyone was bragging about her new dress. Dad told them she made it our of an overcoat. He said he was just bragging about what she could do, but mom was real mad at him. She didn’t want people to know she made it. I am sure they must of had their quarrels, but we kids never heard them. There was lots of love in our cabin. One time when Grandma [Harriot Susan] Potter was staying with us, we had a bad storm and the house leaked. She was getting after Dad and he told her, Well, mother, when it’s raining I can’t fix it. After it quits, it don’t need fixing.” After the scolding he got, needless to say, we fixed the roof. I have a dearly beloved sister Wanothel or Wanda as we called her. It fell her lot early in life to help mother in the home and tend the newest baby at the time, and from earliest memories I have, I did the outside chores: feeding chickens, bringing in the wood, carrying water, anything a small child could do. I learned to milk when I was seven years, but we always found some time play. We had two play houses. One was the hop house, it was about a twelve by twelve woven wire over top and all. In early spring this would be completely covered with hops. The hop house had two purposes—play house, and mom gathered the hops. We always had a hop pillow. This we used if we had ear ache or head ache. We warmed the hop pillow to put us to sleep. As a play house it was great; but our best play house was down by the creek in the willows. Here we made our furniture out of rocks, boards, or anything we could find. Any cans or bottle lids, everything was taken to the play house. We always had a few things sent from Aunt Ivy’s that her daughter Wandaquin had got tired of (dolls & dishes). Many happy hours were spent here. We could always do our washing in the creek. Dad worked in the mines off and on all his life. Many is the time we got very little for Christmas, but they were happy times. We would go with Dad to the hills for a tree, decorate it with popcorn threaded on a string, rose berries that we gathered along the creek—also on a string, colored chains made at school, fancy cookies, and whatever else we could find. We always got some candy and nuts and whatever the folks could make for us. Dad always made the boys new sleds and tops he could whittle out of wood. Mother made clothes for everyone, and doll clothes from the scraps. One time we got cradle for our doll made from a shoe box. The lid made the rockers. Always happiness and love for one another. One time when Earnie was about three years old (He was always a chatter box. I think he must of been born talking), we couldn’t get him and Wilbur to sleep, so Vern Sheffer, Bernice’s husband, dressed up with some wool for whiskers and a stocking cap and looked through the window. When Earnie saw him he said, “Oh Santa, am I glad to see you. Go up to the hay stack and feed your reindeers. Mom has some milk and cookies for you. We will be a sleep in a minute.” And I don’t think either of them moved the rest of the night or said another word. But, we couldn’t convince him that Christmas was only one night, so Dad put a horse manure biscuit in his stocking. Was he excited. Said Santa brought him a horse, but he got away. Some years we spent Christmas with the folks in Bennett with Amasa, Arnold and George Potter. These are special times and memories. As I have said, Amasa played the fiddle, George the harmonica, Arnold would find something he could beat or drum on. Everyone would sing or dance or just listen, then the grownups would play cards a lot. Sometimes we spent Christmas with the Labrum’s, Jess and Bell and family, as they had a bigger house than we did. We always played games or cards here. Sluff, Rummy, and Hi‑Five were most popular. When I was about ten, the folks sent in the catalog and got me a new bridle. I was the happiest kid on earth right then. Some of the other things we got were over boots, leggings, and wool socks; also mittens and caps. Whatever they could afford, but they were happy times for me. As far back as I can remember, I have loved the out of doors and rode my horse. Before I was very big, I would herd the cows, go to the neighbors to borrow, and visit with my best friend, Mable Johnson. There wasn’t too many girls my age. Mable lived on the head of the creek. Ella Smith lived way down the creek. Me in the middle. I was a little older, but we three were always the best friends all through school. I still consider Mable one of my best friends. One of my earliest memories was going with my brother Harlan behind him on a horse to the sheep camp for bum lambs. I couldn’t of been more than four then. We knew every trail, every spring, every hill & hollow for miles around; and we always stayed for dinner at the camp—fried mutton, sour dough biscuits, and gravy. To this day, I like all three. We usually hit all the herds around two or three times a week. We never got a lamb every day, but usually, sometimes two or three. We had lots die, but usually raised anywhere from thirty to fifty. We had one Holstein cow that always gave three or four gallons of milk at a milking, all through the summer while feed was good. My sister Wanda never cared much for the horses or out of doors like I did. She would only ride a horse if necessary to get where she wanted to go, but me, I was just like a mountain sheep. I covered the hills after cows or horses, always bare feet in summer, on a horse if I could catch one, but by the time I was five or six, you couldn’t of lost my any where on Deep Creek. Dad did lots of tracking and from the time Harlan and I were quite small, he would let us go along on our pony bare back. He had a pair of hounds called them Punch and Judy. They were both big, but Judy was a greyhound and she could run down a coyote easy. Punch was a real big dog and slower, but would kill anything. Put them after a coyote and follow Judy’s baying, and cut corners, pretty soon we catch up, then Punch would kill it. He used to trap all kinds of animals. Caught several black bear, coyotes, lots of bobcats, badgers, muskrats, and a few beaver, lions, and weasels, anything to make a dollar. I loved to do anything out of doors. With the stock, I always broke all the little colts to lead, the big ones too. If I could get a rope on them and get the other end over a snubbing post, they stayed tied up until I could handle them. I don’t think I ever talked back to my Mom or Dad in my life, and I loved them both so much. Dad whipped me twice. Both times I needed it. One time in May, mother was in Vernal9 with the smaller kids (just before Wilbur was born) at Grandma Potter’s, and Dad started after the horses. He said I don’t want you and Harlan playing in or around the creek, still snow in the canyons. I was seven or eight at the time. Well, he wasn’t gone long and came to look for us—found us playing in the creek. He had a rope in his hand and he gave us a good one that we needed. The other time we were playing after school till dark. He warned us several times then we got it with the razor strap. One day during the war, Winter of 1917 or 1918, everyone had the flue. Most of our family had it at once, but Wanda and I were the last ones to get it. We really had our hands full for a week taking care of the sick and doing the chores. She was six and I was eight. Mother stayed up and around until Bernice got to feeling better, but Dad was the first one down and the last one up. For two or three weeks, he was bed fast, ate very little food, but would drink current juice and apricot juice. One day, Alf Johnson come from the head of the creek six or seven miles with team and wagon to break a road from the coal mine about two miles into our place; had all his horses leading behind the wagon to brake the road. We had a bad storm with eighteen inches or two feet of new snow and we hadn’t been out for a week or more. He also bought a fifth of whiskey. Now days the Doctors say that won’t help, but from then on Dad started to improve. Mother fixed him a hot toddy every night and he would sleep instead of raving all night. I have always felt like he saved my Dad’s life. I have always been thankful for the things the Johnson’s did for us. Many is the times that they led a string of horses down the creek to break the trail about two and a half miles so we could go up the creek instead of around by the Government coal mine. This they did spring and fall. Made it a couple of miles closer to school. I might add here that Mable, his grand daughter was my very best friend all my life. I used to ride my pony up there every time I got a chance. Mable ‘s mother, Cloe, would always fix me something nice. Sometimes, I would ride down the creek to see Ella Smith. I think I was the oldest of the three but we grew up together, Ella has been dead many years now. I grew up chasing the horses if Dad needed one, and handling the cows. Dad always had a few to look after for folks and friends in Bennett. These took more care as they never stayed with the milk cows; but I got a few extra dollars. By now I knew every spring and stream and the face of the mountain, where the feed was best at different times of the year, where the horses and cows were most apt to be. We always went bare footed in Summer, but they would take us to town in the fall to buy our winter shoes—usually split leather, boys lace up above the ankle. These were both for warmth and wear. Mothers three brothers still lived around. Uncle Amasa and Arnold still at Bennett, George and Abby had moved to Neola. About this time Uncle Arnold and Aunt Hazel moved in with us for one winter. They built a lean‑to on our house for a bedroom and we all ate together well. They moved some fruit and vegetables into our cellar. I went to the cellar most of the time and I opened a bottle of Aunt Hazel’s sweet pickles. I had ate most of it when Bernice caught me and told Mom. Well, I had to get the bottle, take it back, and tell her what I had done. I must of been eight or nine then, and it was a hard thing to do. I cried and coaxed Mom, but she said take the bottle to her. I finally did. She said, “Oh, that’s all right. Just ask me or bring a bottle up for dinner.” Amasa and Arnold played for lots of dance at the old schoolhouse—Amasa on the fiddle. The Taylor’s played the guitar—just anybody they could find to play. Everybody went, kids and all, always had pot‑luck lunch and a very good time. Dad used to tell me I would chase my pony ten miles to get to ride her two. He was right about the miles we covered as whoever went to look for the horses might cover from Johnson’s to the top of Little Mountain, then if the hobbles were broke, chase them home. So we grew up fast on foot like the Indians. Speaking of Indians, we saw quite a few usually in early spring or fall. One time Mom and Dad and the smaller kids were in Vernal to be gone a few days and three big fat Indians come up to our gate, the trail that went down creek, and just sat there. Bernice and Harlan both started on me to go let them through before it got night. Finally they won. I go out with hair in braids, bib overalls on. One of them said, “Are you a boy?” I said yes. They sure did laugh. This broke the ice. They wanted something to eat, so I pulled them some turnips. They went on down the trail. Wanda had a real bad scare; she was about nine. She had been sent to the neighbors to borrow something from the Perry’s on the south about two miles. On the way home, she heard a noise in the brush. She said it sounded like someone screaming. She wanted to go see, but the folks had always told us never to go into the brush for anything so she ran on home. Dad said it was probably a lion sure enough. Perry’s killed one the next few days along the creek. It’s a wonder that some of us wasn’t seriously hurt as we were thrown from horses every few days. Horse jumps sideways, off we go. If it bucks you off again, then ever so many times you just fall off. Never anything worse than skinned elbows and knees. Another thing I learned to do real young was to fish. Harlan and I started to fish in the creek for suckers with a lasso made of a piece of screen wire tied on the end of a stick. We would spend hours getting one out, getting the lasso behind the gills then jerk, land him on the bank. As we got older, we tagged along behind my Dad to help carry his fish. Was nothing for him to catch a flour sack full in a day. He was the best fisherman I ever saw. I don’t think to my knowledge he was every beaten. All his relatives tried for years to beat him. As us kids got older, he would cut a willow pole and tie a line and fly on it for us. He never used anything but flies. Guess that’s why I love fly fishing. All my life I have spent time with Harlan, looking after him, as he ran away when he was real young. He would go to the neighbors and stay all night, but if I was with him I could get him home at night. When he was gone, either Bernice or me had to go look for him. Usually me on my pony. Most of the time I kept it either staked or hobbled, but she was constantly getting loose. So It become mine and Harlan’s job to herd the cows, round‑up the horses, do the milking and other chores—by now we had several cows. One thing I forgot to mention so far was that I owe my life to my sister Bernice and brother Harlan. As the cows had been turned out to get a drink, they didn’t come back. So, Mom bundled Harlan and me up in leggings over boots, everything to keep warm, and sends us after them—three cows and a calf. Well, they had decided to go down the creek to Perry’s about two miles, so foolish kids, we take their trail and follow them in fifteen or twenty inches of loose snow. We were wet and cold when we got there. They dried us off, getting us ready to go home. About this time Bernice come after us. Start the cows home, us following. About half way I get cold and tired. I kept falling down. Bernice keeps butting me with her foot, making me get up and go on. I remember crying and saying, “let me lay down and rest; I am not cold any more.” The next thing I remember was mother putting my feet and hands in cold water and me screaming, “It hurts”—to draw out the frost. Bernice and Harlan had taken turns carrying me on their backs which was quite a job as I was past eight then. I never forgot the pain of getting them thawed out. My feet were froze, so when they put them in water, ice froze on my feet. Then Mom rubbed them with Watkins Liniment several times a day, but it was two weeks or more before I could walk on them. They were red, swollen and sore. We had many hardships in those days, but learned to cope with them. I often wonder what courage it took for Mother to let us leave for school in snow, but guess she thought there was safety in numbers, and that we would look after each other. One of the first things we were taught was how to find things to burn, to build a fire in all kinds of weather. Many the times we stopped and built a fire and we very seldom left without a pocket full of matches. With all the work we had to do, we found lots of time to play. Seems like Harlan and I were always wet from playing in the creek. Sometimes Wanda was with us. Or we were going rabbit hunting with a flipper and a barb wire to twist them out after they ran down a hole. Mother was always glad when we brought home rabbits as it helped with meals. Many times Mother spanked us and scolded us for leaving our assigned jobs to do things we wanted to do. This I still do—what I want to first—the rest when it has to be done. Some of the other things we did that was fun at the time, was taking the entrails out of a rabbit and rolling it in a ball of the mud, then roasting it in the fire for several hours. Then break the mud ball. The hair and hide will stick to the mud. The meat comes out clean and very good. Also corn thrown in a fire with the shucks on is very delicious, also onions and potatoes. We had a spring about a mile from our house; about half way up a hill. It was Dad and Mom’s dream to build a new house at the foot of the hill and pipe water in for pressure. We had a big garden planted here and when Harlan and I were sent here to weed it, we always found something to cook for dinner in the fire. Many of a Sunday picnic was shared with all the family watering or weeding the garden, or just having fun. We never seemed to worry about what we would do. We made our own entertainment. Of course, there were parties and dances most every week and everyone went, brought a pot‑luck lunch, and fun times for everyone. One time when I was about nine, we had a real bad winter and all the cows had to eat after February was what Dad would carry home from the mine, where the guys that come after coal would feed their horses and leave the scraps. This he brought home from work in a sack so we had to quit milking her. Well, about May, Harlan and I made our first trip to the sheep camp and came home with two bum lambs. Dad says “We can’t buy milk for no lambs. So after crying a while I took my lambs to the coral and milked the old cow, got about a half cup, it looked just like water, and fed the lambs. Next morning one was dead, but we milked the cow again. Milked her three or four times that day and fed the lamb each time I got a few more squirts. By the time the herds quit lambing, Harlan and I had thirty lambs and enough milk for the family besides. Now the feed was good and it was late fall before she had her calf. So if you have enough determination and stay with it long enough, you can finally get milk. Another thing that stands out in my mind was the good times we had with the Arnold boys. There were four of them. They lived about one and a half miles to the north of us on Crow Creek. They were the first family I remember on this place. Wilbur and Bill were older, but Manford (or Kay), and Kimble were our age. Me being a tom‑boy, Harlan and I mixed right in. We went by their place to school. One day we gathered pine cones before they were ripe, put them in my stocking cap, got pine gum on two braids as big as your wrist. Well, my head was washed in coal oil, turpentine, then just combed and pulled out. Dad would never let us get our hair cut. Another thing, every day for a month before Easter, all the Easter eggs were hidden by Easter time about a bushel basket full. To color eggs in them days, we used onion skins, rabbit brush, cedar bows, and beet juice. For years after, the Arnold’s left the creek, I couldn’t eat eggs. Ate too many every Easter until I got sick. Another day, we played hookie from school and spent the day throwing rocks carried from the hill at a badger caught in one of Harlan’s traps. Needless to say, we spent the next Sunday carrying the rocks out of the hay field. Lots more work than carrying them down. Another job Harlan and I took on about this time was going to the store for groceries once a week on our ponies. At first Harlan always went with me. We always rode Indian style, no saddles, but Harlan could never go alone as he never got back the same day and sometimes I would have to go find him. Sometimes Wanda went with us. Bud Mullins was the store keeper then. It was around twenty-five miles round trip. We would carry a seamless sack with the necessary things that Mother would need for a week in each end of the sack. Threw it over the pony’s neck. Then a fifty pound sack of flour on top of that. Bud Mullins would load me up then give me a can of coal oil to carry in my hand. The trips we had the oil were the hardest ones to make, but we always found time to visit with Ella Smith either going or coming; so, I was always in the dark getting home. When I got close to home, I could always hear Mom calling me. I can see now how she must of worried about me. With a little effort, I could of made it before dark. During these years, I spent more and more time on my pony either hunting cows or horses or going to town for groceries. By now I am doing the milking alone and most of the things Dad don’t have time for. All the schooling we got up to now, we had to walk up by Johnson’s two and a half or three miles up the creek, or four or five miles around by the government coal mine. So we didn’t go to regular in the winter time. Never if there was a storm on. We always had to walk as we never raised enough hay to feed the horses. They had to winter like the deer on a sunny side hill and eat brush and weeds. We never had one die, but they always come out in the spring real poor. All this time the school had been up by Johnson’s, ten or more miles from the kids on the lower end—the Smith’s, Justice’s, the Guy Long family, and later on Parish’s, so they built a new school house—one room, one teacher—half way. Less than a mile west of the government coal mine. Now we were one of the nearest ones to school. We did, a time or two, get up to twenty or twenty five kids, but most of the time around fifteen. I have a picture of the whole school, fourteen kids. Five of them were Turner’s That’s the last year Bernice and Harlan went to school. Bernice went to Salt Lake, Harlan just quit. My Mother was never very well and most of the time Bernice stayed in the house to help Mother; and Wanda tended the smaller kids a lot. But Harlan and I helped Dad in the field, but Harlan got worse to run away as he got older, so more and more I helped Dad in the field. By now I could do most any kind of farm work. It was did in those days with a team. But I harrowed, mowed or raked hay, or planted whatever was to be done. Every year or two Dad would trade off the lambs we raised for cows or horses or whatever he needed the worst, and buy new. We were milking ten or more cows and had a small cream check. Dad was still working in the coal mine part time. Us three older kids did the milking. A scary time, bad experience—about this time, Mother and I and all the younger kids went to Vernal to spend a week with Grandma Potter. I did the driving—took a full day to get there. Well, we picked apples and apricots and plums, were bringing them home to can and we had got nearly home when one of our old slow work horses went loco and ran away. Just after we passed Johnson’s, they left the road and ran into a big gulch. The horse that was running away jumped, the other slid down the bank, the wagon tongue stuck in the ground, the back wheels stayed on top of the bank. I jumped out; Mother went out to the bottom of the gulch with the horses. I managed to drag her free before I went for help. Also, got the rest of the kids out of the wagon. Mom was knocked out; was still out when I got back with help. She was months getting over it, if she ever did. The horse that went crazy had to be killed as he would take spells after that and just run for half a day at a time. Seems like we had more time to visit then than we do now. After we started to milk more cows we could never all leave at once for overnight as Dad never was a good milker. His hands had to many calluses. Would pinch the cows tits and they would kick him. About this time, my sister Bernice met Vern Sheffer who was working in the mine for Dad. They met at a dance. Well, they started going together. At this time, there were dances at the school house once or twice a month. Also parties around the community. At this time, Vern would come to see Bernice on a big Chestnut Sorrel passing [sp?] horse. All that first summer, Mom would send me and Harlan along with them to the dances on our pony as a chaperon; but by fall they were so serious and Bernice was only Sixteen, so the folks sent Bernice to Salt Lake to go to school. But she went to work at the Murray Laundry instead. After two years, she come home and married Vern anyway. They moved into a two room log house on Vern’s homestead on Mosby Creek. Vern still worked for Dad at the mine. Here they lived until Mother died in 1928. Then they lived on our place on the creek for a year or two; then we lost the place and they moved back onto their homestead. I will never forget the first time [I remember] Grandma [Georgeann] and Grandpa [George] Turner came from Murray to see us. They come in Uncle Earnest new Model A Ford. There was Earn, Odie, Grandma and Grandpa Turner, and Florn Brown, my cousin. Well, they stayed two weeks and we fished and hunted sage hens most every day. We had borrowed all the saddles we could form the neighbors, also a few horses to have enough to go around. Grandpa never went unless we took the wagon, as by then he was getting quite crippled up. One morning before day light, we were getting ready to go. Everyone had picked their horses the night before. Dad was always playing tricks on them. We had one horse that had been tin canned. This is tying a string of cans to a horses tail to scare them away from your place. Naturally she was afraid of anything that rattled so Dad ties the tin cups and coffee pot behind the saddle. This was Earns horse. So we had a rodeo before we left. We took the wagon and went over to White Rocks and the Uintah River so Grandpa could go along. Grandma and Mom and the small kids stayed at home; also Bernice, as she never liked the outdoors or fishing like I did. Usually Grandma and Grandpa stayed home with mother as Grandma was afraid of bad roads with either car or wagon, Uncle Earnest said she walked half way. Every time they come to a narrow dugway, she would holler “LET ME OUT.” That’s why it took them two days to get here in a new Ford. I think it was a Model A. Grandpa and all the boys loved to fish, but she never went along. The next year, we had this group plus Aunt Polly and Uncle Gerold Brady. Also Aunt Ivy Brown, a widow. She was my name sake. Her son Florn, Earn, Odie, Grandma and Grandpa Turner in two cars. In them days it took two days to get to our place from Salt Lake. The first night they stayed at Heber. Come on in the next day. Dad would never let Wanda or me have our hair cut, and we had so much—two braids as big as your wrist and below our waist. The first thing Aunt Polly done was grab the scissors and cut it off. We felt pretty naked for a while. We never saw to much of Dad’s folks for it was so far away and the roads were so bad, but after this whenever they could all get vacation at once, they would come out. One time when all of Dad’s folks were there from Salt Lake, we took everyone on horses and in the wagon up to Dry Fork River fishing. Grandma was afraid of bad places. This was the only time her and her two girls, Ivy and Polly, ever went. We went up past Mosby Creek, up the face of the mountain past Lighting Springs to the end of the road and made camp. Had a couple of tents that they had brought. We spent three or four days up there. Some of us had to go down each night to do chores, but fun times for me. The ladies and Grandpa stayed in camp as it was a mile down steep hills to the river. Well, in them days, we salted our fish to cure them in a box. Needless to say, we had lots of boxes of cured fish when we come home. The ones we brought home fresh, Dad would put a layer of fish and a layer of leaves. These would keep several days; kept as cool as possible, wrapped in a wet blanket. As I said, this was the only trip Polly, Ivy, and Grandma ever went on with us. They enjoyed the scenery, but to much hassle for them. I always rode a little pony with not enough shoulders to keep a saddle on. Well, Earn insisted on riding her with a saddle. We were going to White Rocks Canyon. we got to the Canal coming out of the canyon, the pony put her heard down to drink. Earn and saddle went down onto her neck and into the creek. Earns feet stuck in the stirrups, his hands on the bottom, his head above water. Well by the time I got him loose, we were both soaked. The rest stood on the bank and split with laughter. Earn was sure mad at them—would’ve let a man drown. Uncle Gerold Brady, Dad’s youngest sister’s husband had a good car and him, Earn and Odie Turner, and Florn Brown come out quite often for quite a few years to go rabbit hunting and go fishing; and they loved to hunt sage chickens. The first time they brought home a bunch of sage hens, my cousin Florn said Aunt Elva “If I can have the gizzards I will clean them all.” Mom just laughed and when he got started to cleaning them he found out their gizzard is just like the crow—no meat on it. He was sure one surprised guy. Another experience we had with Dad’s folks. They had all gone fishing with the wagon and tents and taken Grandpa. I was left home to catch up on my cow herding and Uncle Royal Potter had got in the night before, and Harlan stayed home too. In the afternoon we had a cloud burst up near the spring and above it where our main garden was planted. Well, it was a ten foot wall of water down the draw, one‑half mile south of our house. Aunt Ivy had been in a flood in Bountiful in the spring. When she heard the rocks hitting together and the noise, we had to leave the house and cross the creek that went by on a foot plank and go up on the hill on the other side. Needless to say, we really got wet. Harlan and Royal come home. They had been up on little mountain side where the cloud burst was. Pretty soon they are down at the house looking for cigarettes or bull durum. Polly and Ivy are screaming at them to get over here before they get washed away, but it took them (Royal and Harlan) more than an hour to talk Polly and Ivy back home. But a few days later when Dad took them up to the garden and there were tons of rocks and sand covering the bottom of the garden, some rocks two or three feet across, they felt like they had a right to be scared. After this, Harlan ran away more often and I spent more time looking for him at the neighbors. As far as LaPoint and Bennett. I always felt like part of Harlan’s trouble was the way Dad treated him. All my life Dad never thought that I could do no wrong or there wasn’t anything that I couldn’t do. So for this reason, I put forth more effort to please him; and he picked at Harlan who was slower and compared him to me which I think was unfair to him. And he quit even trying to do things. When I tried to talk to Harlan he would say, “Well I can’t do it right anyway.” About this time, he ran away and went to Salt Lake to live with Grandma. He left on my pony; road her to Heber. By then she was so sore footed he sold her and hitch‑hiked on. In a year and a half later the pony came home. Needless to say the time he was on the road and I couldn’t locate him, Mother nearly lost her mind worrying about him. When he got there, Grandma called Burton’s, the only phone on the creek, and Tom brought us word he was in Salt Lake. Harlan and I were awfully close and I missed him the year and half he was in Salt Lake. All my life I had looked after him. The scaredest I ever was, I believe—one time (I am thirteen now) my Dad sends me to take Mother to White Rocks to the doctor. It was just before Vera was born. In the wagon had Wilbur and Earnest with us. By the time Mother got in to see the doctor, it was late afternoon. We started home—come to the forks in the road, Mother said take the right. I said no mom, the left. She was so positive that I gave in; couldn’t defy my Mom. After dark we end up at the end of a wood road. I get the horses headed back, got about a mile, Mom says stop the wagon lets rest a while. We had a little hay in the wagon box so Mom and the two little boys lay down. We had a couple of quilts; this is the first of November; and I built several big fires as I knew Dad would be looking for us. He had went to White Rocks and back home not realizing that it was me building the fires until he got home and we weren’t there. At the time, our fires were five or six miles north of Tridell—they could see the lights in the homes. About midnight Mom asked me if I could find my way to Tridell on one of the horses. I was so frightened. It was no problem me getting out for help or getting back to her, but leaving her. She said I’ll tell you if its necessary. Dad found us at daylight on his second trip, and Vera was born that night after we got home. Mother was never very well. She used to pass out for no reason she knew of. And no doctor ever told her what caused it. She never knew when she would have a spell. She might be in the yard or garden or in the house. She would be limber as a dish rag. Many the time I have run from our place to the Little Walter coal mine four or five miles and Mother would still be out when we got back on foot. Have known her to be out for twenty four hours. She would tell us that some times when she was out that she could hear us crying, but she couldn’t move or say anything. The Doctor never did know for sure what caused her to do this. Not to often, but sometimes, two or three times during the summer. The doctor just said “Put a wet towel on her head and keep her warm.” She did have some medicine she took, but I don’t remember what for; but she hadn’t had a spell for several years before she died. For this reason Dad always had one of the kids old enough to go for help with her at all times. When I was fourteen, we moved to the Little Walter coal mine. Dad had bought half interest in it and Mother and Wanda and I were going to run the boarding house. There was anywhere from six to twelve men working depending on the demand for coal. By now, Wanda and I were getting to be young ladies, but if we had a date to take us home, the boyfriend tied his horse behind Dad’s wagon and rode with us. And Dad was always pulling some trick on the boyfriend. One time a guy asked Dad if he could take me home. Dad said if you are man enough to crank my truck. Well he spun the crank for half a dozen times, then Dad says “Vern you try it,” and then he turned the key on this time and it starts right up. Well, after kidding him a while I was allowed to ride home on his horse with him. This was the summer I was sixteen. Most of Mom’s brothers and sisters now have moved away five of them with their families had moved to Anderson and Redding California, most of them had sold out and gone into other kind of work. Grandma Potter was getting ready to move to Park City with Millie and Cliff. Mom’s one sister Aunt Chrystol and Charley Lewis have lived in Vernal all their lives, both of them are school teachers. While we were living on the creek, we had a branch Sunday School in the summer time and one day the Bishop come to see Dad and wanted him to be Superintendent of the Sunday School and have it the year around. Dad said no. He couldn’t do it because he smoked. He couldn’t set up front and have people know that. The Bishop said, “Ivan, you work in the timber a lot cutting posts and poles. If you break the reach or tongue of your wagon, do you unhook and go to town to get a new one?” “No,” Dad says, “I just find the best stick I can find, whittle it down and use it.” Bishop Morell says “In the Church that’s what we do. We go into a community and choose what we think is the best we can find. We give him the job, and the priesthood and responsibility will whittle him down and make him fit for the job. We know you have a testimony of the gospel. We think you can do it. You are honest and fair, always as good as your work. Just try it for a while.” Day says, “No, I will quit smoking first,” which he never did. After Dad bought the mine, he rented the place on the creek to our school teacher, brought three or four horses to the mine and also the cows, but sold the cows after a year. Our neighbor, Jess Labrum, wanted six of the best ones; would give him $10 a head more if he could pick them. Well, the first cow he picked, I had named kicky. She was to have her calf in a couple of weeks. One of the best cows. Dad told him he couldn’t milk her—that no man could. Only I had milked her for several years. Then we proceeded to tell him why. About three years before, I was milking ten head by myself so Dad decided to help me. He choose this cow. She would run over a three gallon bucket night and morning, but she was nervous anyway; and Dad’s hands were so calloused and cracked that he pinched her tits and she kicked him. Dad had an awful temper so her beat her. This goes on for over a week. The only way he could milk her was to tie her so she couldn’t kick, then she would stand and beller. So Dad gave up and turned her out. The calf had frozen so after the first day her bag hurt so bad, I started working with her, just kindness. Finally I got her milked out. After that, I had no more trouble with her, but she was afraid of men. But Jess said, “If Ivy can milk her he could”. But a few weeks later he told Dad you were right. He had made her a nurse cow. Had four calves on her. This is another case of kindness. I handled both the cows and horses with kindness. Well, a friend of Dad’s bought the rest of them in Bennett10, so me and my pony take five cows and a bull to Bennett. I spent several days with Amasa and Aunt Maggie. While there, I went to my first big dance. I went with a crowd of six. My date was Wayne Snow. This was a really a thrill for a girl like me and my first real date. I wasn’t quite sixteen then. We went to Victory Park Dance Hall. Wanda and I become much closer now that we were at the mine and doing the same kind of work. We were happy there and Mom and Dad seemed real happy too. Dad had talked her into moving, but she said it wasn’t to be permanent. She still wanted the dream house by the spring. The work wasn’t too hard compared with what I had been doing. Usually from six to nine men besides the family, Wanda and I had lots more time to read or do what she wanted to. I still had two horses at the time, so I rode a lot just for fun. We brought hay from ranches for them. Well, before we realized it, three years had gone by. I am now seventeen, Wanda fifteen. Well about this time, Jim Rasmussen asked Dad if I could go to Randlett and stay with his wife Bessie and help his boys do the chores—mostly the milking. My folks talked it over and decided I could go, but before I left, Mother had another real long talk with me about the facts of life and boys I might meet, and what to expect from them. Mother was a good teacher. All our life we lived by the ten commandments: Thou shalt not steal, shall not lie, shall not commit adultery, love one another, keep the Sabbath day holy, all these and many more were taught to us regular. Now she tells me I am leaving home so young, and that I must never drink or men will take advantage of you. I was young for those days, mainly in experience as I had been sheltered so close. But she ended her lecture by saying always act like a lady and you will be treated like one. Never be ashamed of the standard you have set to live by. I can testify this is true. For the next two years, I went out with dozens of boys, but was always treated like a lady. My mother had never drank any liquor in her life and never been around drinking. Right after they were married, Dad come home drunk. He was so sick she thought he had been poisoned. She was holding his head with a wet towel, but he got no better. So she ran down the block get Grandma [Georgeann?]. The minute she opened the door, Gram said the darn fool is drunk—end of sympathy. Grandma said that when Dad [Ivan] first started thinking he should be big enough to get drunk, it was Christmas time. He was going with Mom [Harriot]. He had a date. Well Gram told him to bring his bottles home, not to make a fool of himself in town. As he come through Murray that night, he stopped two or three places to have a beer. Each place gave him a fifth of whiskey. He brought it home, told Gram to fix him a drink while he got ready to go. Well he had two or three stout drinks and passed out. Grandma put him to bed. He slept in his new suit until the next evening, gets up and says, “What did you give me? My head feels awful.” “I only mixed what you told me to,” Gram says. He started to get ready for the dance. Gram says, the dance was last night. She says it was a good lesson for him. It must of been as I never saw my Dad drunk in my life. He did drink a little after Mom died in later years, but not while he was raising his family. It’s a wonder we didn’t drive him to drinking. Randlett Well, Mother helps me pack my few clothes in a sack. She also made me two new dresses. I get on my pony, still no saddle. I had just turned seventeen then, when I started for Randlett.11 I had never been further south than the China man’s store east of Ft. Duchesne12. Had my favorite dog and horse. She had a colt. I gave the colt to the Rasmussen boys. Well, I fitted right in at Bessie’s. She said I was the girl she never had. She worked in the M.I.A. She knew all the kids both girls and boys. The first M.I.A. night she said this is my new daughter. Make her welcome so she will stay. This they did. There were probably twenty or more girls and boys around my age at M.I.A. I was immediately absorbed into all activities in the ward. I never lacked for an escort no matter where I was going. I worked hard. Here they had three boys. The oldest about thirteen and we milked twelve or fifteen cows all winter besides the feeding. Also chickens and pigs to take care of. And they gave me $1.50 a week and board and room. I got along good, but missed my folks so much, I made two or three trips home by October. About the first of October I brought Wanda down with me. We were both going to school—the 9th grade. She stayed with Ella and Robert Moore, [Ella is] Bills sister. Bill drove mail for Moses Moore Robert’s Dad and they furnished him with a car. This gave him an added attraction. Then too, he was four years older than me and that also made him more attractive to me. The very first time he asked me to go anywhere with him, Iva was coming home for Thanksgiving for a few days and Bill was supposed to pick her up in Roosevelt13. I had come up to the store, was just starting home, when he stopped and asked me to go for a ride with him after Iva. I said “Yes,” and got in. We went first up to Wing’s store. He needed a pair of gloves and he bought me a pair too. They were red with green and black stripes around and around, made of wool yarn. When he got into the car he dug his out to drive and said here, put these on to keep your hands warm. When we picked Iva up and went back to the car, Iva got in next to Bill and he said to her let Ivy in first. You ride on the outside. I don’t think that from that day Iva ever liked me very well, but from then on I started going with Bill. I was running around with Bud Aulmiller. Bessie liked him better. She never liked Bill very well. She said later that it was because Bill was older. Jess Jensen was five years older than Bill and he ran around then with Vera Knight. Bill was going with Arelda Jobe, but they had quarreled. There was a special show in Roosevelt The Robe, I think. The school bus was going to take everyone that wanted to go, but I got there to the Randlett store just in time to see it leave. About that time, Bill come along with Mildred Knight as his date. I had saw Bill a few times but Millie was real active in M.I.A. She said lets stop and take Ivy. This they did; so my first time out with Bill was by accident. After the show, he took Millie and I to the drug store for ice cream. He turned to me and said what would you like. Well dumb me I didn’t know what they served there; but Millie come to my aid said, I’ll have a banana split; so I’d have one too. Well he took Millie home first, brought me back to Randlett, and we made a date for a week away—our first real date. Well gossip had it that Bill was practically married to Arelda Jobe and I was going out with Bud Aulmiller and William S. Merill at the time, so it was a month or so before we started to go steady. Then too Bessie didn’t like Bill. Main reason he wasn’t LDS and to old for me, she said. My sister, Wanda, ran with a younger crowd at this time, but we both rode our horses home for Thanksgiving weekend. Mother didn’t feel to good and Dad had hired a women to help her with the work, Dorothy Brant. So we went back to Randlett. Bill and Jess ran around together. Jess with Vera Knight and I started going with Bill quite a bit to dances and parties. Well, one night he told me if I would drop my boy friends he would drop his girl friends. Just before Christmas we started going steady. Wanda caught a ride home two days before Christmas. I didn’t go as I had a date with Bill on Christmas Eve at Leota and one Christmas night at Randlett. I felt real bad when I got home to Bessie’s after the dance. And when they came in, I was crying. So Jim took me home early the next morning. But I felt so bad when I got home to think I had missed Christmas with my folks. Mom was so sweet. She said don’t feel bad. It is right that you should go out and have fun at your age. What kind of a fellow is he. I tried to tell her. She said, just remember to always be a good girl. I didn’t realize then that I had spent my last Christmas with my Mother. We had never been to Church much as we were part of Tridell, ten miles by team and wagon. In good weather they had Church in the school house at Deep Creek, but Mother was a good teacher; very religious. She taught us from Church works, The ten Commandments: Honor they father and mother; Love one another; Honor the Sabbath day to keep it holy; Thou shalt not commit adultery. We always had blessing on our food. These teachings and many more were always part of our daily life. These teachings had helped me keep from doing some of the things other kids did. Then she taught us that the veil was so thin that people that had passed away could see what we were doing and greave for us, but could not help us. I often thought of this when I was asked to have a drink or smoke, or come up against temptation. When dating I often felt myself saying to myself, what would Mom have me do. Then I could hear her saying act like a lady and be treated like one. No truer words were ever spoken. The young girls now days don’t want to look like a lady and most of them don’t act like one either. Mother ‑ The Sadist Time in My Life Jim Rasmussen come home one weekend and said my Mom was real sick and bed fast. The next day, me and my pony started for the Little Walter coal mine and home. I got an awful shock when I got home and one of the first things she told me when I got home was that she wasn’t going to get well, and that Dad was going to take us kids to the temple and have us sealed to him and her. Well, we all cried and tried to talk her out of this. Told her she had been sick before, but she said not this bad. Then she would say be good girls, help your dad, and remember what I have told you, and always act like a lady when out with boys. That night she was worse. She was not rational. She would talk about her family and sing Church songs, talk about the ten Commandments, The Articles of Faith, all about religion. I sat up with her the first two nights, then Wanda come home too. The next day I went to Roosevelt for the doctor. He did not help her at all, so I went to Tridell for the Elders. When they got there, as soon as they lay their hands on her head to anoint her, she would quiet down and by the time they finished with the sealing and the blessing, she would be OK, and stay that way for many hours. These next three weeks gave me quite a testimony of the gospel. To see this happen over a period of three weeks. Every couple of days we would go get the Elders she could be singing and not know any of us for hours, maybe 24, but by the time the Elders left, she would be OK again. Then we could talk to her and visit sometimes up to fifteen or twenty hours; then she would drift back again. We had the doctor three or four times during this three weeks, but nothing seemed to help her. The doctor told Dad she was pregnant. Mom said she wasn’t. After nine kids she should know, but she hadn’t had a period in months. Nothing anyone did seemed to help and after three weeks, she passed away.d The day before she died, she told me while she was awake that she had been for a walk with her Dad into the most beautiful garden; that he was coming back for her soon. The next day she was gone from us. Well, most of Mom’s brothers and sisters that were anywhere in Utah came to the services. Arnold, Amasa, and George with their families were in Anderson and Redding California. Dad’s were still in Murray. They all came. I can’t remember to much about that time. Seems like I was in a daze. I remember Grandma Potter holding me close and saying why couldn’t it of been her instead of Mom. That she was old and worn out, but Grandma lived another twenty years or more after that. I know most of the folks were there and friends by the dozens. I remember Bill didn’t come, and I was real disappointed with him. I remember Jim and Bessie Rasmussen were there. We had the services in Tridell, as we were a part of the Tridell ward. I think this was the saddest day of my life. Also end of our happy home, as a home isn’t happy without a Mother. My sister, Bernice, had two little boys by now. Dad lived seventeen years after Mother died, but his life was shattered and he never forgot my mother. And raising the family was nearly too much for him. Also, the farm on the creek could never be home again for him. The cabin by the spring would never be built. My Dad got old nearly overnight losing Mother and leaving him with seven kids at home, two of them teenage girls. Vera only four was nearly more than he could take. Well, in them days, you made your own casket. The neighbors came in and made her clothes. Also, the casket. They lined it with cotton bats, white satin and lace. When it was finished it was real beautiful. We buried her in Tridell e. We were never left alone for the next two or three weeks, but nothing seemed to help much. Things didn’t go to well. Dad had promised Mother he would go to the temple years before. Now he blamed his self. Said she didn’t put up enough fight. Well, he threw his Bull Durum away. In less than a month he was sick and looked like an old man. We took him to Doctor Franks in Vernal. He told him his first responsibility was to the family he had left. He gave him some medicine, told him to get a sack of Bull durum, and go ahead and raise his family; that he could fulfill his promise to Mother when he got his kids grew up. Well in the few weeks since Mother died, his hair which was black and waving had started to turn gray, and he began to look old. I have been around death quite a bit, but never have I saw anyone suffer and as lost as my Dad was. He couldn’t sleep and didn’t try much. He would sit up most of the nights and drink tea. And this really took his health away. He worked long hours, ate very little and worried about his family. We that were close to him watched this change take place. So I was real glad when he started to talk about going to California among Mom’s folks. I realized later that this was a bad thing to do as it brought back to many memories. Planning A Trip About this time, he started to talk about going to California, to pay the Potter’s a visit. Uncle Amasa lived at Bennett all the years we lived on the creek and he was a horse trader, also broke horses. He would buy a balky horse then fight with it until he made a pulling horse out of it. Then trade it for two balky ones. He was to our place two or three times a month over the years as he cut posts and hauled wood from the creek so we were real close. Then several years they lived at the mine and worked for Dad. One time when we lived at the mine, I was just getting ready to go to the creek to get five barrels of water when Amasa drove in. He said, “take my team and wagon. Save going after yours.” So I did. He didn’t tell me he was driving a balky horse. It was one and half miles to the stream; got there OK, filled up, got half‑way back before they balked. I was nearly two hours getting home. Tried to ride him, to lead him, to beat him. This is the kind of things he did for a living; but he and Dad were the best of friends. Also Dad and Arnold. They all loved fishing. Spent many days together so when he talked about leaving that’s where he would go. Dad had an old Model T truck with a low speed rear end. Fifteen to twenty five miles was the best it would do. This we started to get ready to go. During the next few months I didn’t see much of Bill. He came up one time on his horse. A time or two with Jess Jensen and Vera Knight, so when I left in June I felt pretty bad. Didn’t really know how things stood between us. I decided it was more on my side, the love, than Bill’s. Well, Dad leased the place to Bernice and Vern Sheffer and he had borrowed $500, on it to make the trip—they were going to pay it back, and turned his half of the coal mine to his partner, Clarence Jensen. Visit all the folks in the Basin. George Justice was working for Dad at the time and he asked him to go along so in June, we packed up what food and clothing we had, bedding and camping equipment. Dad and George and seven kids. Well, the next twenty-five days were quite an experience. We made it to the other side of Heber the first day and camped on a stream. Had fish for supper and went on into Murray the next day. We spent a couple of weeks in Murray with his folks. This was an exciting time for us. Since Mother passed away, Wanda and I had been closer together and I knew that I needed to be a buffer between her and Dad as they both had fire hot tempers. Well, Odie, Dad’s brother, was about twenty-two at the time, and Florn Brown, my cousin, a little older than me. They really took us around. Odie was always the center of the group. No matter where we were he knew everyone. Out at Salt Air, Lagoon, the Old Blue Bird Dance Hall in Salt Lake, also the show, our first show time. They really gave us the works. This was our first trip to the city. It was hard to believe the things that went on in the city. From this time on, Odie held a special place in my heart. California Up until now, every time I went any place in a car I got car sick, but after nine days on the road to California, in the back of a truck, I never got car sick since. We left Murray, went out past Wendover, Lovelock, Reno that route. It was worn out gravel then and a hot 110 or 115 degrees in the shade but no shade. So hot if you patched a tire with a cold patch, all you could try then, the patch would melt off. And we couldn’t keep a spare. So when we would have a flat, Dad would have to push his tire to town and back while all us kids sat under the truck. This went on day after day until Dad decided to drive at night while it was cool. Thought maybe he could keep the tires on it but couldn’t keep the lights going so decided to drive by the light of the moon. Decided to camp about midnight. Dad was going to get some sticks to make a fire to make some tea. First sage bush he got close to had a rattler in it. “George, I think there is a snake in every bush, drive on.” The next day, Dad stopped and picked up enough wood to make tea when we camped. So that night when we camped, we camped in a sand flat. Just got the fire going good when the scorpions started to crawl out of the sand. “Drive on George.” After that, we either camped by a town or stayed in the truck. One morning we had got within about fifty or sixty miles from Reno, had a blow out. Dad had to walk to town, after he had been gone a while, it was so hot I told George to take the old tire off and fill it full of old clothes and rags and see how far we could go on it. He said “It won’t work.” “Well if you don’t do it, I will.”, so we did. We started slowly down the road, me sitting over the tire, watching it. “Hold it George, It’s smoking.” He stopped it with the brake up and filled it full of water. “Drive on George.” By the time we met Dad coming back, we had used two ten gallon cans of water but we were nearly to Reno. Was Dad glad to see us coming. When they took the tire off, the rags were just like paste. Well after nine days of these kinds of things, we got to Redding California. We had quite a reunion with Aunts, Uncles, and cousins. For a while we lived with Uncle Arnold and Aunt Hazel, as they had a farm with cows, chickens, and a small orchard. Since Mother died, Wanda and I have become real close. I loved her dearly and I thought that I should keep her with me as much as possible because things that the other kids did were a temptation to her. Drinking and smoking and worse. These things were never a temptation to me and I thought if I kept her with me, Dad would have to blame both of us for the things we did and I could be a bumper between them. When they were having a battle, if I stepped in he never slapped me. But by then I was crying and she would be yelling back at him. If I stepped between them he would always cool down. He had a real hot temper. So did Wanda and they always clashed. He would never let us wear anklets or bobby socks in them days. It never bothered me but when she got away from the house, she always put them on. We were to wear long stockings and a garter belt when we dressed up. Dad was always showing up and catching her. Then sparks would fly. These next few months were fun times for Wanda and I. Everyone accepted us and made us welcome. We all went to work picking fruit. This was hard work but we were all used to working hard. Wanda and I went to work for one of the wealthiest families in the community. They had a big orchard and owned their own packing house. They also had a big family. Both girls and boys about our age. Their oldest boy, Lee Grisson, was twenty-two. They had all the things money could buy. Fancy house and several cars. Well, we started work, picking peaches at eight cents a box. Well, the field boss watched us awful close. “Only pick the straw colored ones. These are for packing. The next crew will get the ripe ones for drying.” Well, after the first day, the boss’ son, Lee, started stopping at our trees to help us. He drove the truck to pick up the full boxes and leave us empty ones. Lee would hurry like the devil then stop and pick peaches for us for fifteen or twenty minutes out of every trip he made. With this extra help, we could just about keep up. Uncle Royal’s ex‑wife could pick one‑hundred boxes each day. More if she really hurried. When we arrived in California, Lee was going with my cousin Laura Potter, or so I was told later. From the time I met him, he never went with anyone else. He tried to get me to go with him. He had a brand new Chevy Coupe with a rumble seat. He would pick Wanda and me up and take us home from work as it was two or three miles to Uncle Arnold’s place. Lee worked for his Dad on the place. His trade was a mechanic. His logic was, “Why work if you don’t have to?” Working for his Dad, his time was his own. He could come or go as he pleased and he always had lots of money. Well, I wasn’t engaged to Bill, and hadn’t saw him for several months when I left Utah, but I thought that I loved him and I didn’t want to hurt Lee, so I told him when he started asking me to go out that I was engaged to Bill. “Well, where is your ring? If you were my girl, you would have a diamond. Bill, he is in Utah. He can’t expect you not to go anywhere.” So after a few days, he won out. Wanda and I went to the show with him. All the time we were in California, I very seldom went without taking Wanda, so after a few times he brought his buddy along for Wanda’s date. Uncle Arnold told Dad that he saw Lee out with Royal’s ex‑wife so Dad didn’t want me to go out with him. Well, that’s the only time I ever lied to Dad in my life. But it didn’t take long for him to find out. George Justice told him. I think that was the maddest that Dad ever got at me because I lied. But after a while I won him over. After a lecture on the does and don’ts of life, he gave his unwilling consent to go out with Lee but he set a curfew. Lee was six feet tall, black hair and brown eyes. He was twenty-two and at this young age, he had really been around. He thought there was nothing that money could not buy, until he met me. I had been taught different standards in life. I lived by a different set of rules. I always took Wanda with me everywhere I went. She started going with Lee’s, buddy Benny. There were always two or three couples or maybe two carloads went together. Laura Potter, my cousin, was always along with her newest boyfriend, at the time Cliff Cox. For the next eight months we went everywhere together. Out to dinner and a show. Every show that came to Redding, Anderson, or Chico. To two green kids from the hills, who had never saw a show until a few months ago, it was a great time. We went to every fair, both county and state, for miles around. To roller-skating or just stayed home with the crowd and played cards. This we did quite a lot, as the house Dad had rented was an old house, but had a big front room. We could even dance at home as several played the harmonica or just we would just play the phonograph. We went to every carnival we heard about. Into Sacramento for special events. It was about as far away as Salt Lake is from the Basin. Lee was a pitcher for the ball team. He later pitched for the Boston Red Socks, so we had enough stuffed toys, dolls and junk from the carnivals to fill a room. We would all take turns throwing but he never missed. Finally, the manager would have to stop him. Sometimes it would take the cops to make him stop. Dad went with us lots of times to the fairs; both county and state. He finally learned to like Lee. Anyway, he quit fussing about him, but we never quite got in on time and Dad always waited up for us. The later we were, the madder he got. I tried to be a bumper between Dad and Wanda, she always yelled back at him and got in trouble. She never learned. Lee was the only guy I ever went with that never ran out of money. I wonder since, how much the four of us spent on those carnivals. They always had a girl on a high-diving board. You threw the ball through a six-inch hole, trip the catch, dunk the girl. He would stay at this until he would nearly drown the girls. Lee always treated me like a lady. He was a perfect gentleman. When the four of us went out to dinner, he always picked up the ticket. Also, for most of the other places we went, all four of us. And I think that I might have married him if things had of worked out different. In the spring, Lee was trying to get me to marry him. I liked the money and good times, but fate stepped in and my Grandfather Turner died in Murray so within two days we were ready to come home on the train. Uncle George took Dad and the kids, Wanda and I went with Lee in his car to Sacramento to catch the train. He tried to get me not to go, but to marry him. I told him I couldn’t leave Dad at a time like this and it was the last time I ever saw him. I am sure my life would have been different if I had married Lee and if Grandpa’s death hadn’t come when it did. Just one more thing about lee. I want to say here. It bothered my conscience for years and that was the nasty letter I sent Lee after I met Bill again. And what caused me to do it. I didn’t know that Laura Potter held a grudge against me about Lee until eight years later when Bill and I were in Oregon with four kids. After I had been back in Salt Lake about two months I got a letter from Laura saying that our old crowd thought that I had changed Lee but that she had been out with him several times the past week and that she had saw him several times with Royal’s ex‑wife a lot lately. This hurt me but made me mad too, and I wrote Lee a real nasty letter and told him what Laura said and that he needn’t write me any more because Bill was back in my life. And I still loved Bill and I sent his ring back. I got one more letter from Lee just before I married Bill. He said he was the one that took the chance. He thought he could win but I proved to him that money couldn’t buy everything. But Laura had lied about him and that if I every needed anything, I knew where he lived. But the nasty letter I wrote has always bothered me. I could have let him down more like a lady should, as Lee was always a perfect gentleman where I was concerned. He treated me like a lady. Right then I didn’t feel like one. We buried Grandpaf the first of January and we all stayed there with Grandma Turner. Here is where our city relations got even with us for the tricks we played on them. Like telling them the sage chickens in the field were our turkeys until they told Dad he sure had a big flock of turkeys. Dad said there was not a turkey on the place. Then we told them we had a pony that had been bucked in the rodeos and never learned to let a man ride her. We were always putting one of them on her and then laughing when they got dumped off. Now Odie got even by telling his friends, “Well, we have had the girls tied down by the track to get used to the trains and traffic.” Then he would say, the girls were, “here for a month before a man got shoes on them.” Or he would say, “You don’t need a phone. Just put your head out of the windows, they can hear you.” Then he would tell my date, “A good thing you didn’t get here early. Man just got her shoes on her.” But Uncle Odie always took us with his crowd to Salt Air, or Lagoon. He always saw that we had money for rides, also partners for dancing. We used to go to the old Blue Bird dancing in Salt Lake. Odie was always the center of the crowd and he always showed us a good time. But he never got over joking with us and telling his crowd that we were his nieces from the sticks. But Uncle Odie was always my favorite Uncle. He always had a spot in my heart. In the Spring, Dad came back to the Basin. He brought Hurley, Wilbur, Earnest, Vera, and Harlan home with him. Traded his part of the mine to Jensen for forty acres in Tridell with a four‑room house on it. But Hurley was awful young to take over the managing and cooking for a family of six people. She was only twelve years old then and Vera was five. Wanda and I stayed in Salt Lake with Grandma but I realized later that it was a selfish thing for me to do, as I know now that things would have been different if I had come home with the family. As Hurley was like Wanda, very hot tempered, and she needed a buffer to keep the tempers down. But we got used to the good times we were having in the city. Wanda was not sixteen and I was eighteen. We had, both of us, found jobs we didn’t want to leave. But Dad wouldn’t stay in the city. I went to work in a broom factory making brooms for $4.50 a week. Wanda was doing house work for people. We paid Grandma $1.50 a week for room and board. Well when I got back to Salt Lake, I got to thinking about Bill. I hadn’t written to him in months or heard from him so I wrote him. He wrote back and said that a group of them from the stake M.I.A., were coming to Salt Lake some time in March to dance at Salt Air in a dance festival. It would be groups from all over and he would like to stop and see me. Then when I saw Bill again, I was so thankful that I had not married Lee Grisson as I knew that I still loved Bill. It was the new car, the money, and the places he took me. The lovely home his parents had and all the glitter that went with it. It was all things that I had never had so far in my life that fascinated me. I didn’t see Bill again until spring when he came to Salt Lake and went to work in the cannery. The six months that Wanda and I stayed with Grandma, we followed two continued shows each week. For four or five months and only missed three issues. We saw every show that came to Murray. If we didn’t have a date, we went by ourselves. Every Saturday Grandma Turner would take Wanda and I out to dinner and a show. We always ate at the New York Cafe on Broadway and went to the old Pantages Theater. They always had a vaudeville between the acts. Grandma enjoyed these trips to Salt Lake on the street car as much as we did. We just gave her an excuse to go. We always went in time to do a little shopping too. Grandma always paid for these good time Saturdays. One time I will never forget they had a Spanish dancer between acts. She had a snake wrapped around her waist and up around her hair. Well that was the end of that show for us. Grandma said “Let’s get out of here. That darn snake might get away.” She was deathly afraid of snakes or mice. One day she was getting ready to go and a mouse was inside her dress. It started to run down inside her dress. She grabbed the mouse through her dress, got the scissors and cut around her hand. When she dropped the mouse on the floor, it was dead. Grandma was a kind and generous person. She always kept sweet rolls and fried pies for us on hand for us to eat. Grandma raised six kids of her own. Also two orphan boys just younger than Dad. They were five or seven when she took them. Florn and Wandaquin Brown that were early teenagers when her daughter Ivy died. Then Earnest’s wife ran away with his boss and left her four to raise the youngest, eighteen months old. The four were the age of my four oldest kids. Grandma was in her middle sixties to sixty-five when she took on these kids. She told me that every night when she prayed, she would ask God to let her live long enough to see Earn’s kids through school. This she did with the help of Uncle Odie. As Earn died with cancer of the lungs a few years after his wife left him. Grandma worked hard. She had two or three acres of ground. Some fruit trees of all kinds. She raised her own vegetables. Always had a lovely garden and until the day she died, she did her own canning of fruit and all kinds of garden stuff to help with their living and to take care of Earn’s kids. About the time the youngest of the four started high school, she fell and broke her hip. This made it real hard for her as it never healed proper and she must work from a wheel chair now. But she still did her canning with the girls help. I went there one time and found her canning peaches with the girls help but she tightened every lid. SHARING Come share the joys of Life with me For all of our tomorrow. And if sad days we sometimes see Then we can share our sorrows. The sun will shine and make days bright If we can be together, Our lives will be a sheer delight No matter what the weather. Come join me on this joyous way And hear the steady beat; Of music in our hearts each day That makes our lives complete.

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Elbert Morton Chandler