On July 4, 1919, at the home of William Edison and Amanda Graham Dray, I came into this world. The time was 1:00 o’clock A.M. and the only thing that kept my birthday from being the third of July was that daylight savings time was in effect due to World War 1.
Dr. West of Afton, Wyoming was there along with my Grandmother Dray, who was a midwife.
This home was a log cabin with a dirt roof and was on Grandpa Dray’s homestead at Forest Dell, Wyoming, about eight miles south of Smoot, Wyo.
Mother’s youngest sister, Aunt Vera, who was about fifteen at the time, came in and took one look at me and said “He’s an idiot, isn’t he.” Grandmother Dray was angry with her and informed her I was a very healthy normal baby boy.
My parents were Frank Layland and Meletha (Chat) Dray. They lived on a homestead in Thomas’s Fork Valley near Raymond Wyoming. As soon as Mother was able to travel Dad came over and took us home with a team and buggy.
There was much love in our home that summer. Both Mother and Dad liked to ride horses and much time was spent ridding in the hills with Dad holding me on a pillow on the pommel of his saddle. Mother said the summer passes quickly and on into the winter.
Uncle Charles Layland came to visit and to see me for the first time that summer and the first thing that he did, when he picked me up, was take off my stockings and look at my toes. He then said to Dad “He’s not yours Frank.” My Dad had two toes on his one foot that were joined together.
The winter of 1920 was the time of the flu epidemic, when so many people died.
Mother and I had gone over to Grandmother Layland’s for a few days to visit and Dad came over with a team and bobsleigh to get us. When he came over he was sick and had a fever. Grandmother fixed dinner for them but Dad did not feel like eating but asked if he could have a dish of raspberries. Grandmother said she only had three bottles left and wanted to save them for a special occasion. That was the last time she saw Dad and she regretted not giving him the raspberries the rest of her life. Five days later Dad died with the flu.
Mother was alone with Dad when he died as everyone was either afraid to come in where the flu was or had sickness of their own. I had the flu at the same time and Mother did not think I was going to live. She had cattle and horses to feed and did not dare to leave me in the house with Dad as he was in a delirium. She took me out with her to feed the stock and put me on some hay in the sleigh box while she scattered the hay for the stock. A cow pulled the hay I was on onto the snow. Mother broke down and cried. Dad heard her crying and got out of bed and came out of the house to where she was and put his arms around her. That night he died.
Grandpa Dray and Henry Erickson from Star Valley came over and buried Dad. There was just a short graveside service. Mother could not leave me to go to the burial. No one came in to help. She was alone with his body two days before help came. I think this experience was one of the reasons Mother was always the first to go and help others in their time of need.
Grandpa Dray took us back to Forest Dell with him and that is where I made my home for almost five years.
Mother leased the homestead out to a Mr. Evens and went to work at what ever kind of work she could find. She worked in the post office at Afton, Wyoming. Clerked in several different stores in Afton and Smoot. She cooked on several ranches in the Valley and at Cokeville, Wyoming. Anything to keep her and I in clothes and help Grandma and Grandpa Dray take care of me.
After two years they started to build a road over Salt River Pass into Star Valley from Geneva, Idaho. They brought in a group of convicts from Rawlins, Wyoming to do the work. These men were all trustees and up for Pardon or Parole, Mother got the job of cooking for them and the many other men who worked to build the road. This required a large crew because all of the work was done with horses or by hand with pick and shovel.
By taking this job Mother was able to take me with her and ad Grandpa Dray was working as powder man on this job I most certainly had a lot of attention. Mother said every man on that crew played with me in the evenings.
In addition to the crew there were always some other people there overnight. It was a two day trip from Montpelier Idaho to Afton and the top of the Salt River Divide cabin was an overnight stop.
There was a drummer (salesman in this day and age) came there one night and stayed all night. He was a very good ventriloquist. I had a kitten, for a pet, that talked to me all that evening. Anything I asked it, the kitten would answer me,. Mother had a hard time getting me to go to bed that night, so the next morning when I got up, the drummer was gone. The first thing I did was hunt up my cat and ask it, how it felt this morning. Of course the cat wasn’t talking, so I proceeded to ship it until it would talk. Mother rescued the cat and gave me a few swats on the rear for being mean to the cat.
There was a man and women from New York who stopped there twice. They wanted Mother to let them adopt me and take me back to New York. Mother was still disgusted with the, for even thinking she would do such a thing, years later.
One of the things that I played with the most when I was at this age was a muskrat trap that Uncle Jay Layland gave me. Mother said I would drag it around by the hour. Uncle Jay said that was how you could tell I was a Layland, as all of the Layland men loved to trap and hunt.
After that summer with the road crew was over Mother went to other work and I went back to live with my grandparents again.. It was at this time that there was an epidemic of diphtheria and I can remember the doctor coming around every day and having their throats swabbed with the most horrible tasting stuff that was ever made. At least I thought so.
At the age of three, because of the busy schedule of Mother and Grandma I was still not house broken. At this time it was decided by those in authority that I should learn to be a neat and tidy boy. Everything went according to schedule until one day when Mother was home and there were some visitors. There were some other children there for me to play with and in the excitement of it all, I had an accident. Mother asked me why I didn’t tell her and I said, “Well, you should have watched me.” That was the wrong approach to my Mother. Aunt Vera said the Mother took me by the hand and my feet scarcely touched the ground until we reached the outhouse in the back yard. There Mother rubbed my nose in the mess and impressed upon my mind with her hand on my backside that I had not done the proper thing. It was a lesson welled learned as Mother said there were no more problems.
Grandmother and Grandfather Dray were very dear to me. I called Grandma, Nanny and Grandpa, Daddy and there were closer to me than Mother at that time in my life.
It was at this time that Carl McCoy came to live with my grandparents. Carl had been deserted by his mother and his father asked my grandparents if they would take him and raise him. Carl stayed with them until Grandmother died. He was five years older than I , but we were very close. What one of us did not think of, to get into, the other would.
At that time all men who worked horses carried a whip. This was made of a willow staff about three feet long with a leather lash about four feet long attached to the small end. The last tapered from three quarters of an inch at one end to about one quarter or less at the other end. With practice you could pop this whip and make a noise about like a cap gun. This was a delight to boys our size and we decided to make us each one. There was a slight problem in finding leather to make the lash but this did not stop two boys with a dream. We just went out in the barn and cut four feet of on of Grandpa’s harness lines. Well not being to accomplished at leather craft and the art of handling a pocket knife, we just couldn’t make the tapers so the lash would pop. It was back to the barn for more leather until when Grandpa discovered what we were doing, we were cutting up the last line of his harness.. Now Grandpa swore a lot but he never laid a hand on either one of us. He just said “Mandy, can’t you make these ____ ____ kids behave?” Well Grandma could and she did with a well placed hand to the seat of the problem.
From that it was on to more skilled tasks, such as the repair of Grandpa’s prized watch. We found out that there were a lot of parts in a watch and that most of the learning came from Grandmas hand being applied to the seat of the problem. Grandpa had to send that watch back to the factory to be repaired. Grandpa gave me that watch later and I still have it today.
In the summer time we were allowed to run around bare foot most of the time and one day I stepped on a bone. It went through my foot, in the instep and just broke the skin on the top of my foot. My foot became infected and my Grandmother went out to the barnyard and got a fresh cow manure, that was still warm, and made a poultice for it. She mixed turpentine with the cow manure, heated it and wrapped my foot in it. Some of these old remedies may seem a little far fetched but my foot healed very well.
The Alvin Walton family lived near the Dray ranch and they had two daughters, Wilda, and a year older than me Ree, who was a year younger. One day Wilda and I were down on our hands and knees playing bear, and in a true bear style I bit Wilda on the bottom. Once again Grandmother’s hand of education was applied to my seat of learning.
Aunt Vera married Wesley Osmond when she was about seventeen. Their first child was a boy and they named him Eugene. He died when he was about three weeks old. I though he was the nicest thing that ever happened. When he died, I heard them talking about burying him and I cried and said “Please don’t put Gene in the trash hole like old wiere.” Old Wiere was a dog that Grandpa had that died and Grandpa took him over a hill and put him in a hole, used to dump trash, and shoveled some dirt over him. I thought that was what they did with people to.
I had a Teddy Bear, that Grandma and Grandpa gave me, which was a constant companion and I dragged him around by one arm until I wore both of his legs off. I had a doll, with a tin head and a rag body, which I named Bobby after Bob Somsen, who I thought was very nice and who was about three years younger than I.
In the spring of 1923 Mother took me over to Raymond to visit with Grandma Layland. While we were there Aunt Mattie and Uncle Garrett Somsen came over to visit also. Aunt Mattie told Mother of this man at Wayan, Idaho whose wife had died and that he was looking for some woman that he could hire to come in and cook, and keep house for him and his three sons. Mother wrote to this man about the job and he wrote back and told her to come.
We left Star Valley, June 9, on the Afton to Montpelier stage and went as far as Montpelier the first day. The next day I had my first train ride. It was from Montpelier to Soda Springs.
It was on this trip that I had my first experience with high finances. A lady that we rode on the train with gave me an Indian head penny. I spent it for candy as soon as we reached Soda Springs.
We stayed all night at the Stock Exchange Hotel in Soda Springs. It was run by Matt and Bessie Stoor, the parents of Budd, Lewis, Robert, Wilma, Farrell, Betty, John, Max and Frank (Buster), who were to become my close friends.
June 11, 1923
The next morning we left for Wayan aboard the Grays Lake mail and stage. This was a model T Ford owned and operated by Al Deaton, the father of Del Deaton. We arrived at the Wayan post office that afternoon, and were met by Isaac Vias, and taken over to his ranch. There I was to spend all of my growing up years until I was seventeen years old.
Mother said I was very homesick and cried to go back to Daddy and Nannie. She was almost of the same opinion.
Isaac had three sons, Oscar who was the eldest, 18 years. Roy - 16 years, Alfred 14 years This was to by my family but I did not know it at the time.
I cannot remember any thing about the first summer and Mother never told me of anything that happened.
On October the 26th, 1923 Isaac Vias and Mother were married at Paris, Idaho. Mother wanted me to call my new stepfather daddy, but I already was calling Grandpa Dray, daddy, so we settled for my calling him Daddy Vias. I called him this until I was about fourteen years old and then I started to call him Dad.
Dad could not have treated me better if I had been his own son. He never laid a hand on me in all of the years that I knew him, but a scolding from him hurt me worse than any whipping Mother ever gave me.
I went by the name of Rex Vias from that time on until I was twenty one years old. Then because of legal dealings and because I had never been Adopted, I started to use my own name. Dad wanted to adopt me but Mother didn’t want him to.
The old home ranch had 240 acres of land, with Gravel Creek running through the center of it. The old home was a big two story log house. It had four bedrooms, one down on the first floor and three upstairs. There was also a storage room upstairs. The first floor had a big kitchen, a pantry, a living room, as we called it, the one bedroom and a large room we called the back room. This room was where Mother did her washing all of the time. Also it was where every one went to take their bath in the old wash tub. In the cold winter months this room became a workshop for us all. This was the time of year that I loved, because there was always some kind of activity going on. There was harness to be washed, oiled and repaired, saddles to be taken apart, washing, oiled and fixed. Shoes were repaired and half soled as Dad had a complete set of cobbler tools. It was unheard of to hire this kind of work done.
Dad was an excellent carpenter and cabinetmaker and when this other work was not being done, in the old back room, he would build bob-sleighs, furniture, and covered sleights. Here is where I gained my first real knowledge of carpenter work and repair work. Dad always had time to show me how to do things and let me do them on my own.
The horse barn was about 75 fee long. It had a stable at each end that held five head of horses each and in the center was a hay mow which held three big loads of loose hay. There were always four teams of horses and two saddle horses kept in there in the wintertime. These horses we used to haul hay to feed the cattle and sheep. One team was used almost entirely for traveling and to go to Soda Springs with. These horses were essential to the lives of everything and every body on the ranch, in the wintertime. Upon them depended the feeding of all livestock and in case of sickness they were the only way there was to get a doctor in or get a person to the hospital. (More about his later.)
There was another log building which had three separate rooms. On the north end was the wagon shed, which housed the buggy and the wagons, in the winter time, and was later used as a garage for the automobile. The center was a blacksmith shop, which had a forge which had a large bellows, made of leather, that a man pumped, and this blew air through the fire causing it to burn hot enough to heat the iron. Her horseshoes were made and fitted, plowshares were sharpened and many other things were done which required the use of iron. The south end was a granary in which oats and barley were stored for winter feed for live stock. A years supply of flour was always kept in this place, on a special platform.
It was in this wagon shed that I have one of the earliest memories of the ranch. In the winter of 1923-1924 Mother sent me out to tell Dad to come to dinner and as I passed the door of the wagon shed, to go to the shop, a white weasel started after me. It just as well have been a lion as it would not have scared me any worse. It chased me all the way back to house and Mother came out and drove it away.
The next summer Grandpa A.J. Layland came to see me. This is the first time I can remember seeing him. The main things that I remember about him was his tallness and his bald head and mustache. I can remember his covered wagon and horses as they impressed me the most.
Aunt Mattie and Uncle Garrett lived about five miles from us and I can remember playing with Earl, Elaine, Frank and Bob, when they would come over to visit. Aunt Mattie and Uncle Garrett were always very good and loving to me. They always gave me something for Christmas and for my birthday. They were the only ones of my Father’s family that ever did this. I loved them both very much.
In that summer of 1924, Dad took Mother and I to see Grandpa and Grandma Dray in Star Valley. I guess the reason that I remember this so well is because I was going to see Daddy and Nannie for the first time on over a year. Dad and Mother had a Chevrolet car, 1923 model with open top, as were all cars in those days. The wheels had wooden spokes and you had to crank it by hand to start it. We flew along at about fifteen miles and hour and the dust boiled up around us until you could hardly breath. The road was not graded at that time and most of it was just two ruts worn in by wagons. We made it as far as Montpelier the first night, where we stayed at the Burgoyne Hotel. The next day we went as far as Grandma Layland’s place where we stayed for the night.
This was my first memory of Grandma Layland and it was not too impressive. I remember Grandma Layland, she was a very petite and beautiful woman and I wished very much to have her hold me on her lap but I don’t remember her ever doing this. She had many things in her home that I wanted to look at but she always said, don’t touch, don’t get dirt on the floor or stay out of the orchard. In later years she was more loving with me but that first impression sure did stick with me.
The next day we went on to Star Valley and I can remember the old car creeping along up over the Salt Creek divide. Dad had to stop every so often and let it cool down and then add water to the radiator. It seemed to me as if we would never get there. We did get there and I can still taste ‘Grandma’s warm bread and jam.
While we were over there we went to visit Mother’s Grandfather and Grandmother, John and Katherine Graham. Two things I can remember about me great-grandparents are , the two of them and Dad sitting around in their kitchen smoking their pies, and Great Grandmother churning butter with an old dasher type churn.
Our return trip only took two days as we did not stop in Thomas’s Fork Valley. This must have been in June because I can remember wild flowers along the road.
That summer Lee Reese worked for Dad in the hay field. He ran a mower pulled by a team of horses and he would take me down in the hay field with him and let me ride on his; lap until I would fall asleep and he would take me back to the house. Lee was a real hero to me.
I can’t remember any thing else about that summer but that fall in October Great Grandfather Graham died and I can barely remember going back over to Smoot for his funeral.
In November of that same year Grandma Dray was operated on for cancer. Dr. Kackley performed the operation in the hospital he had set up in the old Fryer Hotel. Grandma came and stayed with us until she was strong enough to make the trip back to Star Valley. Grandma was never well after that and in March she died at the home of her Mother in Smoot, Wyo. Mother and I were over there when she died. I remember walking to the store with some of the other kids and seeing Tom Comm building her casket out of pine boards. I can remember feeling that my whole world had fallen apart when she died.
The summer of 1925 brought many good things into my life. Grandpa Dray gave me, Grandma Drays little dog Pal, and we were together all of the time, until someone killed him. August Branford gave me my first horse, Old Jazz.
In June of 1925 Leith Somsen was born and while Aunt Mattie was in the hospital Earl, Elaine, Frank and Bob Somsen stayed at our place. Earl was four years older than I and Frank was ten months younger. Frank and I got along pretty well together but Earl, who was about twice our size would take all of the toys away from us and Mother would have to come out and even things up. This went on for a few days and finally Mother got tired of Frank and I running in to tell her what Earl had done. She told Frank and I we were going to have to settle it ourselves. Mother said that about an hour later she heard a scream that sounded as if some one was being killed. She rushed to the door and looked out and there we were. I had Earl by the bib of his overalls in front and Frank had him by the suspenders in back and we were both kicking him on the shins. Mother said there was no more trouble over the toys. As we great older Earl and I became very close and had many goo times together.
That fall I started to school at Wayan. The old school house had one room and one teacher. The original room is not the north end of the Grays Lake Gym. There was a cloakroom each for the boys and girls and a small library. The toilets were outside and the water was piped down to the schoolyard. We had to go outside to a drink of water. In the wintertime the water was left running all of the time to keep it from freezing up. If you happened to touch the water pipe with your lips or tongue you would freeze to the iron and pull the skin off. Many times this happened to all of us.
The heating system was a big wood burning stove which stood in one end of the room. The small children were seated near the stove and the older you were the farther away from the stove you had to sit. On a cold day you studied with your coat on.
There was no school busses in those days Most of the kids rode horses to school. It was a common sight to see three on one horse. Some of the older kids, twelve or thirteen years old, drove a team and wagon or sleigh and brought their younger brothers and sisters. A few even walked.
I rode old Jazz the three and one half miles around the south end of the valley as I was to small to open the gates and go through the fields. I rode around the south end of the valley and joined Edna Soderman, who was in the eight grade. We would ride together on to school.
I had a real crush on Edna and said I was going to marry her. Mother said I would have to wait until I grew some whiskers to do that, and the one day Oscar cut my hair, and I felt up along the side of my face where the short hair stuck out. I was sure that his short hair was whiskers so I went and told Mother I was ready to marry Edna now. Edna became an invalid soon after that but we were always the best of friends. She died in a nursing home in Lava Hot Springs.
Edna’s father, Abe Soderman, had a big white rooster that chased me every time I cam over there. To me there was nothing more ferocious than that darn chicken.
My first grade teacher was George Muir Jr. He was Ewart Muir’s father and a very kind and patient man. He rode a horse from him home at Gray to the school at Wayan every day that he taught school. I remember how I used to hate to go to school. I would have been outside playing by choice. One fall day, at the last recess. I just took my lunch box in hand and got on my horse and went home. I played along the way so I got home about the regular time. It seemed that I had pulled this off O.K., until Mr. Muir came to our home that evening. I had visions of a good whipping from Mother and a lot things that would happen to me at school the next day. Mr. Muir never said a word about this Mother, nor did he ever say anything to me. Mother never did know about this and I never tried this again.
My class mates that first year was Millie Call. She was one year older than me and went all through grade school together. Millie married Ken Bench of Logan Utah and moved out of the valley. Others in school that year were: Sylvia (Liebman) Sibbitt, Bernience (Leavitt) Sibbitt, Clyde Sibbitt, Paul Swain, Bud Swain, Edna Soderman, Ben Call, Ola Call, Earl Somsen and Elaine (Stoor) Somsen.
Sylvia was the oldest one in school and she took me to raise that first year. She made all the other kids toe the mark.
My second grad teacher was Bernie (Crawford) Morgan. She also rode a horse to school from the Morgan Ranch. New kids in school that year were: Frank Somsen, Elmer Stoor, Idella (Evans) Stoor, June (Swain) Huff, Elnora (Vonberg) Reese,. That year I rode to school with Idella and Elmer as I was still to small to open the gates.
In my third year of school my teacher was Elmoyne Brewer, who came from Paris, Idaho. She as a tall, very nice looking young lady, fresh out of school and a very competent teacher. She is the mother o George Hansen, the congressman from Idaho.
This year brought the Matt Stoor, Roy Stoor, and Warren Petersen families back into Grays Lake Valley. There were all former residents. Benda (Burton) Petersen became a classmate of mine. This made three girls and one boy in the third grade. Budd, Lewis, Robert, and Wilma were the Matt Stoor children in school that years. Odell, Marvin, Ellise, and Marie were the Roy Stoor children and in the Warren Petersen family, Benda, Sophia, and Venice, Ver Mae (Smith) Duback and Relda (Walker Stanley) Jensen also started to school that year. Lucille (Hirsbrunner) Reese was also in school this year.
There was not playground equipment at our old school so we created our own fun at noon and recesses. The big hill by the school was kept busy in the winter time with sleigh ridding and skiing and on the stormy days there were boxing matches and snow ball fights for the boys and hopscotch and jacks for the girls. When spring came we would hunt ground squirrels with our flippers and we made wooden guns which shot rubber bands. With these we played cowboys and Indians. Fall of the year brought baseball and mumble peg.
Bernie Crawford was my next teacher. This year there were two teachers at the Wayan school as there were to many students for one teacher to handle. The schoolroom was divided off with a board petition about eight feet talk and there were four grades on each side. Spit balls and erasers would come flying over when the teachers back was turned. George Muir was the teacher for the upper four grades. Bob Somsen, Desmond Call and John Resse started to school this year.
It was at about this time that I was stuck with the rodeo fever and it sure made for a lot of skinned noses and bruises. Matt and Bessie Stoor lived at Emil Stoor’s ranch the first two years they were at Wayan. There was a big barn on the ranch at that time and it had a cow barn on one end to catch the manure. This was cleaned out every day and hauled out on the hay land. Emil had a bunch of calves up around the barn, weaning them. They were almost a year old and large strong calves. Budd, Lewis, Robert and I ran them into a chute and were taking turns ridding them out. I got on this one calf and as he bucked past the cow barn he threw me through the open door and into the manure gutter. I lit on my head and shoulders and slid the full length of the gutter pushing the manure ahead of me over me and around me. The manure was in my eyes, moth and ears. I wasn’t hurt but I sure was a mess. We were not suppose to be riding the calves in the fist place.
Bert Winchel was my teacher in my fifth year of school. He was raised in Henry, Idaho but was living at Firth, Idaho at the time he taught at Wayan. Bert was the father of Glen Winchel, who lived in Henry, and also a brother of Lester Winchel. I don’t remember very much about this year of school.
Mr. Winchel also taught me in my sixth year, and if I remember right this was the year that we tried out chewing tobacco. The teacher knew that we had been chewing even though he had not caught us in the act. Mr. Winchel built up a big fire in the old heating stove and had us go to the blackboard next to the stove to do some arithmetic problems. It was not long until the heat and the tobacco started to war against one another and we all got sick. I spent the next week of noon and recess staying in the house as did the rest of the boys. We all got a whipping from our parents.
In my seventh year of school Miss Katsilometes from Pocatello, Idaho was my teacher for the first two months and because of sickness in her family she resigned and was replaced by J.B. Chattin.
Mr. Chattin was a big man and tried to be a very strict disciplinarian. This caused him more grief than he seemed to be able to cope with. He got alone fine with the girls but the more strict he tried to be the ornerier the boys became. We smoked cigars in the old horse barn at school and always had a lookout to watch for the teacher. One day at noon we were down in the barn smoking and it was Earl Somsen turn to watch. He saw the teacher coming an hollered to us. We all slipped out and locked the door leaving Earl on the inside. The teacher caught Earl and he was the only one who didn’t lose his noon’s and recess’s.
Inez Resse was staying at our home that winter and riding to school with me. She had a bay saddle mare which she rode and it had a tail which almost dragged the ground. The boys cut the horse’s hair off even with the tail bone and took some of it in the school house and put it on top of the stove. It stunk so bad that the teacher had to dismiss school. Inez was real put out over the deal and between her reporting it to the teacher and the hair on the stove we were called up to the front of the room to apologize to her and to the teacher. We all lined up and as we were about to start our apologies, Bud Swain took his handkerchief from his pocket and blew his nose. Inside the handkerchief he had hidden a nose blower which almost deafened us when he blew it. No one cracked a smile and Bud very calmly folded up his handkerchief and put it back in his pocket. We all had to carry a small piece of that horse hair with us to school the rest of the year.
That fall when Halloween came we went over and tipped the school outhouse over. The next day Mr. Chattin sent us out to tip them back over the holes. We grunted and groaned and pretended that we could not lift the girls toilet, so Mr. Chattin took a firm hold on the peak of the roof and when he was ready to lift we all gave it a good heave. The toilet went completely over and landed on the other side of the hold and Mr. Chattin came down in the hole up to his knees. He sure was a mess.
Lou Mathews was my teacher for the next three years as we had two years of high school at Wayan at that time. Lou was not a refined person as you might expect a school teacher to be but I believe that every student that he taught liked him and learned from him. He would be out on the school grounds playing baseball with us every noon and recess. It was Mr. Mathews that taught us to play soccer and it seemed he could always find things to do to keep us out of mischief.
When school was out each year my summer vacation was spent helping with the work on the ranch. It seemed there were endless miles of fence to be repaired, manure piles to be hauled out on the meadows, dams to be built, ditches to be cleaned for irrigation and then machinery had to be repaired and made ready for the haying season.
Until I was about thirteen years old my most responsible job in the hay field was driving the stacker team. Than at the ripe old age I was put on a mowing machine and sent out t do a mans job. That was a happy day in my life. I can still see my first mower and team. Babe and Pearl were a team of brown mares. Babe was the larger and had hind legs that bowed out until you could have crawled between them without touching either one. Pearl was more trim built and was the livelier of the two. The mowing machine was a McCormick Deering with a four and one half foot cutter bar. Every round you made around the patch of hay you had to get off the mower and oil it with an oil can. In eight hours we were able to cut about four acres of hay with each machine. There were three of us mowing most of the time and sometimes five. The house next and moss in the meadow would clog up the cutter bar and then we would have to get off and clean it out.
The hay on the ranch grew very tall and thick at that time and was mostly timothy and clover. The field mice were almost as thick as the hay and skunks would go into the hay and kill and eat the mice. Every once in a while some one would run into a skunk with one of the machines. When this happened you could back the mower up and the skunk would come free of the cutter bar. I ran into one that would not come off and it didn’t matter what I tried it still stayed there very much alive. Well by that time the air was filled with odor of skunk and I didn’t think it could get any worse so I got a monkey wrench out of the tool box and put the skunk to rest. When I went in for dinner they wouldn’t even let me in the house to eat and for several days after that no one seemed to like me because they all stayed at a distance and didn’t take deep breaths when I came round.
Later the five foot cut mowers were made and Dad bought two of them. I thought that they were really the answer to cutting hay. The oiling system was improved and you only had to oil them once or twice very half day.
It was about this time that Tom Lallatin came to work in the hay field for the folks. Tom and I became the best of friends and had many years of good and bad times together. I have always thought that Tom had a great influence on my life and helped me to be a better person. Tom worked for Dad in the hay for about five or six years and our home was a second home for him as long as Dad and Mother were alive.
When some one was needed to go out and stay with the sheepherder I seemed to be the most un-needed one at the ranch so I was sent. The folks and the sheep allotment on the Forest that started at the Gravel Creek campground and went south to Midnight Springs, east to the road running north and south on Williamsburg and west to the top of Henry’s Peak. At that time there were no road’s into that areas so we had to use a pack horse to get our suppliers and to move our tent and equipment into the area with the sheep. All cooking was done over an open fire or in a dutch oven. I had lots of good times out there and sometimes I got awfully homesick.
I had a yellow dog that Otto Petersen gave me when it was just a puppy. I called him Jiggs and he and I hunted pine grouse with an old 22 rifle. Jiggs would find the grouse and I would shoot them. We sure ate a lot of grouse those years. I think that I was eleven years old when I first went out.
The one herder that I was out with, that I remember the best was Cy Nordstrom from Price, Utah. He was a nice man and always carried a sling shot with him. He was as accurate a shot with that sling shot as most men are with a rifle, so we ate a lot of grouse that summer too.
Another herder that Dad had was Joe Nelson. It was told that Joe had been a member of the Hugh Whitney outlaw band. He always wore a pair of dark glasses and would never sit with his back to a door or window. Joe had a scar below his lover lip and his lover gm and front teeth had been shot away. You could never get him to talk of his past but he always carried a holstered six gun.
The lambs were trailed to Soda Springs, in the fall of the year, and shipped to Denver or Omaha to be sold on the market there. It wasn’t until later that trucks were used to haul livestock to market, and even then they were not trucked any farther that Soda as those first truck I can remember could only hold about fifty head of lambs. The cattle were trailed even later than the lb. Wool was taken to Soda by wagons to be shipped on the Railroad. Everything that was used or sold was moved by Rail. At one time Soda Springs was the largest shipping point for lambs and wool in the west. The number of sheep that grazed the forest land and summer range around Grays Lake was estimated to be about 75,000 head, and now I don’t think there are over 10,000 head grazing the same range. The Grays Lake Wool Pool was known as one of the best lots of wool throughout the country for it’s fine quality of clean wool, and always sold for a higher prices than the other wool around the country. (In the later years I served on the Board of Directors of this Poll.) There were around 10,000 sheep in that Pool at one time and now I don’t think there are over 100 head in the same vicinity. The sheep were all trailed to the summer range and for a period of about ten days every year you could see the herds trailing over the cut of from Henry through Grays Lake. They would be spaced about a mile apart and would travel from daylight until evening. The dust never seemed to settle during that time.
A man by the name of August Donner lived at the bottom of the Divide Mt. Where the sheep trail came down into the valley. His house set back from the road about fifty feet and he had a board walk from the house to the fence and a stile over the fence to the road. The board walk had a tunnel under it that led under the house at one end and to the stile at the other end. The stile was closed in and large enough for a man to sit in and be hidden from view. There was a false panel in this box and Donner would hide under here and when the sheep came close he would grab one by the leg and drag it under the stile and turn them loose down the tunnel. He always had some sheep but they sure had a lot of different colored brands on them.
Mr. Mathews taught me in school the last two years at Wayan. We had two years of high school out there at that time and there were two teachers for the ten grades of school. Ida Morgan taught grades one through five in one room and grades six through ten were taught by Mr. Mathews in the other room. I don’t know they did it but they seemed to have more time for each student than the teachers did in the school in Soda, when I came in for my junior year.
The fall of 1935 found me in high school in Soda Springs. Sure was a change for a country boy, no horses or cows and AI had to walk every place I wanted to go. I played football that fall and didn’t get along to badly. The Soda team known as the Soda Red Wave at that time. Our coach was Harold Jacoby and hew was good. The High School was at the building that now houses the Soda Jr. High. There was no gym there, so we had to run from the High School across town to the old Hooper grade school. Where there was a gym, put on our uniforms and run back down the city square for football practice. When practice was over we would run back to the gym shower and put our clothes on and then we were free to go home. When I say we ran I mean that Jacoby ran with us and seen to it that we did run. Some of the members of the team that fall were: Gene Chester, Mack Tigert, Joe Lallatin, Louis Anderson, Wilson Henkins, Max Woodal, Shoupe Gorton, Bob Bolton, Ellis Leavit, Melvin Gregoir, and Cluade Hanson. The shoes we wore had cleats on the soles about an inch high and about three-quarters of an inch wide. The only padding we had was our shoulder pads. Our legs were bare from the shoe tops to our knees. I can still remember how those cleats hurt when you got run over.
I took Glee club, which was about the same thing as Choir is now except we put on an operetta called “The Gypsy.”
I never went out for basketball. I just wasn’t interested in that kind of a game. I took boxing instead. That went along fine until I got hit on the throat and caused an abscess in the inside. Dr. Ellis Kackly lanced it for me and when it started to heal there was a piece hanging down that kept my throat sore and make it hard for me to swallow. I went back to the Dr. and he sat me down on a chair, and looked down my throat, said a few choice swear words, told me to open my mouth a little wider. Then he reached in with a pair of scissors and cut that tit off. I just about came unglued, because it sure did hurt. He looked at me over the top of his glasses, as he always did, and said “that hurt like @#!*% didn’t it.” I missed a couple of weeks school with that deal and then I got the measles. They wouldn’t let me back in school for six weeks, so all together I was out of school all of February, two weeks in January and part of March. I started back anyway and was making pretty good progress when Mother called and told me that Aunt Kate bush had passes away in Michigan. She asked if I would be willing to quit school and come home so that they could send the money it took to keep me in school, to Uncle Glen so he could bring Betty and Ben back to the ranch. I was discouraged with school any way so I went home.
The winter of 1935 and 36 was one of the hard winters in this part of the country. There were times when the snow was so deep that people could not get from Soda to Conda with anything but skis. At that time they were trying to keep the highway open to Conda but there was not the equipment to do even that. From Conda to Grays Lake was never kept open until later years. The snow was so bad that winter that part of the winter, the only mail that came into Grays Lake was brought in on skis.
When I got home I went to work for Les Crawford for the big wage of $15.00 a month and board. Les and I hauled hay from Eagle Creek to Wayan with two four horse teams and sleighs. We would leave home at daylight in the morning, drive to the Beus ranch load up our loads and start back. We would come back as far as we could before the road started to thaw out and then we would unhook our teams and let them eat from the hay lands. We would sit on the loads and eat our lunch, then we would wait for the roads to freeze up in the evening, take our loads home after dark. If we tried to move during the day the sleighs would have cut through the road and we would have been stuck as we were traveling on top of three feet of snow. The next day we would feed the cattle one of the loads of hay and then unload the other one on a separate feeder for the day after. This was we made a trip every second day and gave the horses a day of rest in between. I was glad to be with Les and Bernie as their was a second home for me. When we got all of the hay I went back home for awhile.
In April the muskrat trapping season opened on Grays Lake and Henry Huff and I moved a sheep camp to Beavertail Point and trapped rats. That was a lot of hard work and long hours. We each had a hundred trap set out and ran our trap line twice a day, once in the early morning and again in the late afternoon. The rest of the day was spent skinning rats and stretching the hides, and making new sets. As long as the ice was solid enough to hold we used skis to travel but when the ice started to break up we used a special made boat which was pushed with a long pole. There was not open water to use oars as the rats were in the heavy bulrushes and fed on the sweet grass. We would come in wet and cold every night. We would put on dry clothes have supper and then skin and take care of our afternoon catch. It was eleven or twelve o’clock before we got to bed. The harder you worked the more money you made. We caught about nine hundred rats in the twenty days the season was open. At one dollar each we made more money than most men did in a year working for wages.
Uncle Garret Somsen and his brother John were camped at the same place as we were. Also Matt and John Stoor were there with us.
The sage roosters were drumming, every morning and evening, on the ridge about camp, so John Somsen killed one. The season was closed of course and the game Wardens came out to check on our trapping every day or two. John told us to be sure and warn him if we say them coming and he started to cook the old rooster. About the time the pot was boiling good we say the warden coming and told John. He took the pot off the stove and hid it in his bed. When the coast was clear the pot went back on the stove again. This would happen several times in a day, as the fellows would holler game warden when ever a car was spotted. John cooked that old rooster for three days and it was still so tough you couldn’t eat it. Uncle Garret said it was so tough that you couldn’t even stick a fork in the soup without bending the tines. John would up feeding it to the dog. Those were some pleasant times for me.
When trapping season was over we moved our sheep over near Henry, Idaho to range lamb. Oscar and I went with them and did the taking care of the lambing. Our sheep camp was parked on the ridge east of highway 34 and north of the Enoch Valley road. At that time all of that country was open sagebrush land with no fences or plowed fields.
Range lambing was relatively easy when the weather was good. About all you had to do was keep a close watch on the ewes and lambs to see that they didn’t get mixed up or a ewe not claim her lamb and run off and leave it. If this happened, we had to catch the ewe and tie her to a sagebrush, then see to it that she let the lamb suck. Several times a day we would ride out and let these lambs suckle. We had to watch for ewes that had trouble delivering their lambs and help them. The standard equipment carried on your saddle horse was, a sheep hook, sheep shears, several pieces of rope, a bottle of iodine, a bottle of sheep dip, some pieces of cloth to mark the spot where you had a ewe tied and a rifle to shoot any coyote you might see.
When the weather was stormy range lambing was a cold, wet, miserable and discouraging job. The lambs that were born would chill if they did not get right up and get some milk. The ones that chilled we had to take to the camp and warm up. Even then a lot of them would die. You were always wet, cold, and miserable. Then the storm would clear, the sun come out and it was a pleasant job again. One day as I was walking back to camp, leading my saddle horse (Sandy), I stepped up on an old badger mound. It caved in with me and it scared my horse. She pulled back and pulled me with her. If she hadn’t done this I would have fallen into a lava rock crevasse that we were never able to find the bottom of. There are many such crevasses in that part of the country and I have often wondered if any one had ever fallen into one and never been seen again. I once heard a lamb down in one but we were not able to reach it to get it out.
At shearing time I tied fleeces and was pretty good at it. I could tie a thousand fleeces in a day easy. That was about the amount of sheep that ten shearers could shear in one day. I didn’t have any trouble finding work during the shearing season. It tied for Pet and Joe Girrard, Vic and Leon Bollar, Cyril Luau, and August Branford. They paid me one cent per fleece, which made a good wage in those days. After the sheep were on the summer range it was back to the ranch for the summers work. Haying season generally started about the first of July and sometimes lasted until the first par of September.
For recreation there were the dances at the Eagle Creek dance hall on Saturday nights, baseball games on Sundays and a wiener roast some night during the week. At these parties we would build a big bonfire and play Run Sheep Run.
After haying was over the cattle would be brought in from the summer range and put in the fields. This would take three or four days of steady ridding to bring them in from Rassmusen Valley. Then the ones to be sold were cut out and trailed to Soda Springs to be shipped to market on the railroad. It took three days to drive them to Soda stockyard. We would then ride our horses back to the ranch which took another day. The next job was getting out our winters wood. It took twenty cords of wood to heat the old ranch house through the winter. There was no such a thing as a chain saw at that time so all of the wood was chopped down with an ax or cut down with a hand say. It was then loaded on a wagon and hauled home, where it was piled and later cut into stove length with a buzz saw. The it all had to be split into small enough pieces to go in the old cook stove. The heating bill was nothing but the work was plenty.
When snow came the cattle and sheep were put on feed yards and every day hay had to be hauled on sleighs to feed them. In the evenings after the dishes were done Mother would read out of some novel to us. Zane Gray, James Oliver Curwood and Peter Kyne were among the favorite authors. This to me was some of my most pleasant memories of home. I can still see the picture, in my mid, of us all sitting in the front room with fire burning in the big old back heating stove. Outside you could hear the wind whistling around the house as a blizzard raged, but inside we were cozy and secure. The gasoline lantern gave off a bright light for Mother to read by and she did enjoy reading to us.
The spring of 1937 was pretty much routine with calving, lambing, branding, fence repair and shearing. About ten acres of grain was planted each year for feed for the houses but none was raised for sale.
In April I trapped rats on the Lake again and did real well again. Tom Lallatin came for a visit and told me that Jack Young was looking for a man to work at the Dud Ranch. I wrote and asked for the job and Jack wrote back and told me, I could have it. It was then that I bought Old Red, for seventy five dollars, from Abe Soderman.
On the ninth of June Tom and I packed up our horses, with sleeping bags, clothes, and food for the trip. I rode Red and had the pack on Sandy. Tom rode Smokey and packed his belongings on a horse he bought from Bud Weaver. The first day we rode to Art Bells ranch at Brockman Creek, the next day we rode through the hills to the Fall Creek ranger station. There we spend our second night and it started to rain. The next day we rode all day in the rain and got as far as Pine Creek Pass above Swan Valley. An old German by the name of Arp Harvey had a farm in the canyon and we paid him to let us stay that night. Arp was a bachelor and not as clean as he could have been. He make his living by milking a few cows, running the milk through a separator and selling the cream. He wore a pair of knee high rubber boots and I thought that the reason was the mud in hi barn yard. I was wrong on the guess as I found out when we entered his house. In the middle of his kitchen sat a big tub of the dirtiest water that I had ever seen in a house. This was where he washed the mil buckets and separator parts. Around the tub was about an inch of cow manure and mud on the floor. He was very pleasant to be around and wanted us to sleep in the house but we told him that we would sleep out in the barn and watch the hoses. The barn smelled better than the house did.
The fourth day found us ridding through Teton Basin. We ate our lunch at Victor Idaho and rode on to Tetonia where we stayed that night at James Hansen Farm. Mr. Hansen let us sleep in his barn that night and the next morning he and his three daughters came out to mil the cows, at the same time we were getting ready to leave. Tome and I stayed and helped them milk the cows, mainly because they were real pretty girls. We then started to leave again when Mrs. Hansen came out and insisted that we come in and eat breakfast with them. As I remember we were not to hard to convince. From there we rode north through Drummond and came out on the Cave Falls Highway at Green Timber. We followed the highway east to the J-Y Wyodaho Ranch, where I met Jack Young and his wife Jerry.
Jack catered only to boys between the ages of fourteen and eighteen, and there were not any adults or girls as guests. The boy came from New York City and most of them were from wealthy families. All of them were Jewish. Some of the boys we had out that summer were, Eddie and Dave Seidman, Buddy Wassell, Pet, jack and Herb Oppeneimer, Bill Merz, Joe Kaufman, Pete Geiger, Tom Cole, Dick Roseblum, Harold Jacoby, Bob Zion and Marty Kelmienof. Also Bill Kline.
My job was to teach these boys how to saddle up and ride a horse and also how to take care of and handle their horses. We would take them on trail rides to get them ready for the big rip into Yellowstone Park. There were also horses to be broken to ride and general ranch work to be done. In the evenings we would have a big bonfire and all sit around it singing and playing music. I got along pretty good as I could play the guitar and harmonica but I never was a very good singer.,
After the boys were hardened in for a long ride, we left the ranch and started into the park. With an outfit that size we could only travel fifteen or twenty miles per day because breaking camp and packing p in the mornings and unpacking and setting up camp in the evenings was time consuming. Morning and evening meals were cooked over an open fire but we carried a lunch for our noon meal.
The tents, sleeping bags, and all of the supplies were moved each day, to our next campsite, by truck. Andy Gardner was the truck driver and Jack Lufkin was the camp cook.
We entered the Park at the Bechlor Entrance. Camped the first night at Bechlor meadows, then on to the Shoshone Geyser Basin, from there Geyser is just a few miles from Old Faithful Lodge and geyser. Andy took every one who wanted to go to the Lodge in the back of his truck. After leaving Lone Star we traveled north to Mammoth hot Springs, stopping at Nez Pierce Creek, Norris Geyser Basin, and then on to Mammoth where we stopped over for a day. From Mammoth we went to Tower Falls, then to Canyon Lodge and camped near the Yellowstone River. This was every ones favorite spot so we stayed there four days Lake Lodge was our next stop. Here we went fishing, boat ridding and swimming. It was from there to Thumb and then to Lewis Lake, then out of the Park to Flagg Ranch. We then headed west to Squirrel Meadows and in two more days we were back at the ranch. We had been gone almost a month so every one just rested for the next few days. Nothing big happened for the rest of the summer. There were a few short trips taken and a few rodeos attended. At the end of August the boys left for home to go back to school and Tom and I stayed to help Jack cut some house logs in Island Park. When this was done we saddled up and retraced our steps back to Grays Lake, getting there about the middle of September.\
That winter was spent at home feeding stock and working for whoever needed a man for a few days. I played the guitar in an orchestry every Saturday nite and made most of my spending money. Some of the men I played with were, Jess and Ernest Jensen, Henry Hugg and Charley Fulton.
The next spring (1938) brought lambing, and general ranch work. I was thinking of staying home for the summer, when Sid Titescrand Alf Walton from Thayne Wyo. Came and asked Tom and I if we would take a string of their horses out on a US Geological Survey in Idaho. They had to have men from Idaho to do the packing and cooking for the survey crew. Louis Bumgardner was with them, as he was the head of the survey crew and did the actual hiring. I wasn’t really interested until he offered a wage of one hundred thirty seven dollars per month plus board. That was more than twice as much money as was being paid anywhere else around this part of the country. Tom and I took the job and the next day Sid came back and took us to Thayne where we picked up the horses. After staying all night with Sid and Nellie Titenser, we left Thayne and headed for Victor, Idaho. We had twelve head of horses in our string and went as far as Palisades the first day. The next day we rode on to Victor. The camp was east of Victor about four miles, so we did not get there until after sundown. When we arrived we found five men waiting for someone to cook supper for them. I often wondered if they would have gone to bed hungry, if we hadn’t got there. Tom took care of the horses and I cooked supper. There wasn’t much of a choice of food in camp so we ate ham and eggs. I was about ready to turn around and go home. To make things even worse, the Chief Geologist from Washington D.C., Dr. Mansfield was there but as it turned out he was the only one who even offered to help me.
The men who were on the crew were; Louis Bumgardner, Ken Preston, Bruce Stoddard, Art Nelson, Tom and I. The purpose of the camp was to run a survey and make topographic map of all phosphate deposits north of Snake River and into the Teton Mountains. This is a very high grade of phosphate but would be expensive to mine as the vein stands on edge and goes deep into the ground.
We did not move camp very often and stayed two or three weeks at each location. Some of the camps we made were at, Mahogany Creek, Pole Canyon, Fog Hill, Rainy Creek and Upper Palisade Lake. Of all the spots we were camped at, the Upper Palisade Lake was the most beautiful. There was good fishing and the stream feeding it was fed by a glacier on Palisade Peak. The lake was formed by an earth slide which blocked the canyon to a depth of about three hundred feet. The Lower Palisade Lake was just below it and was that much lower in elevation.
While we were camped near Victor we would ride down there and go to the dances at the Log Cabin Inn. After leaving that camp there was not much social life for the rest of the summer. All of the other camps were to far away to ride in from.
About a week after I went to work, Louis came to me and said we had to fill out some employment forms so I could get paid. Things went along fine until he asked my age and I told him I was nineteen. He said that I should have told him that before he hired me, because according to Government regulations, no one under the age of twenty one was suppose to be employed. I told him that he had not asked me that, and then I asked him if he was satisfied with the job I was doing. He said that he was but on my papers I was twenty one for the summer.
The job lasted until the first of November and the snow drove us out of the mountains. Tom and I then trailed the horses back to Thayne and then went back to Grays Lake for the winter.
In December, I fed cattle for Uncle Garret Somsen for a couple of weeks while he went to Omaha with a car load of steers. When he left there was about eighteen inches of snow on the ground and then it started to rain and melted all the snow and left about three inches of ice over the ground. I had to haul hay from down at the ranch on the Lake to Williamsburg with horses. The ice was so slick that the horses could not stand up and pull a load so it was a real hassle to get the stock fed. I was glad when Uncle Garret got back, although I sure enjoyed staying with Aunt Mattie.
The rest of the winter was spend feeding the livestock playing for Saturday night dances and repairing and oiling all of the harnesses. One think I have failed to mention before is, every winter we would have one or two young horses to break to work in the harness. This was done in the winter time because it was easier to handle them on a sleigh than on a wagon.
The springs of 1939 came and once again I went back to trapping muskrats on Grays Lake. No where else could you make as much money in the same amount of time.
When trapping season was over I went back home and helped with the lambing and spring work. That spring I bought wire and built some new fence on the place that was later to be mine. All of the money I had made from the time I gone into the ranch that was later to be my own. Ever since I was a small boy, I had dreamed of owning my own ranch.
About the last week of June Tom and I started back to the WyIdaho Dud Ranch. This time we rode through to Idaho Falls and Jack young met us there with a truck and hauled our horses to the ranch. It took us two days to ride to the Falls from home. We spent the night with John Cummerille and his family on Cranes Flat.
When we arrived at the ranch Jack told us that, in order to stay in business, he had booked some adults as well as the boys. He asked me if I would stay at the ranch and take care of the adults while he and Tom went through the Park with the Boys. I agreed to do so.
A few days later Jack told me that one of the guests was coming into Ashton and I was to take the car and meet the train that she was coming in on. This was the first time he had told me that the guests were girls. I drove to Ashton and when the train came in this young lady got off and I was about as nervous as a hog on ice. After introducing myself to her, I loaded her suitcases in the car and we were ready to drive back to the ranch. I started the engine and shifted into what I thought to be reverse gear. When I let out the clutch we drove right up on the side walk. I had put the car in first gear instead of reverse. I told her that the car wasn’t broke to ride very good and that it didn’t neckrein worth a darn. She never let me live that down all summer.
This was Gertrude Lucas from Cleveland Ohio. There were three other girls who spent that summer at the ranch. They were Harriet Gulikson, Cammela Romstad, and Hazel Rossland. These girls were from Minneapolis Minnesota. Dr. Gorden Pollack and his wife Sonjia were also there for a while. Dr. Pollack was a dentist from New York City.
Peter and Amy Oppenheimer, the parents of the boys mentioned earlier came out for two weeks and I took them on a tour of the Park with the automobile. When they left they gave me twenty dollars as a tip. That was a small fortune to me at that time because I was working for seventy dollars a month. These people were wealthy but they were just as common and easy to get along with as anyone I have ever met.
The one thing that I learned from working on the Dude Ranch was, the people who were truly rich were easier to get along with and less demanding than the ones who just thought they were wealthy.
The most miserable rip I ever made into the Park was when I took three potato buyers and a stockbroker on a pack trip into the Park. They seemed to think that I was nothing but a flunky for them. They found out different before we got back from the trip.
I took three Doctors from Salt Lake City into the Park on a fishing trip. We packed in to the Bechler River where there was excellent fishing but the only one who got out of camp to fish was me. The doctors had brought along a case of whiskey so all they did was lay around and drink and eat. When the whiskey ran out they were ready to pack up and go back to the ranch.
That summer (1939) we had several new boys at the ranch. Elliot Bernstein, Allen Woog, Justin Gray, Merton Shapiro, Howard Blum, Allen Buxbaum, Robert Schaur, were there for the first time. Also Micky Newman and Robert Wise.
It was this summer that I was in the only serious automobile accident that I ever experienced. I was sent to Ashton for some supplies and three of the boys wanted to go along, so I let him. Elliot Bernstein was among the ones who went. He was the type of a boy who was always wanting to do something he was not suppose to do. He coaxed and pleaded with me to let him drive the car. He was Eighteen years old and had driven in New York City so I though he should be able to drive to Ashton. The thing that I did not realize was that he had never driven on a graveled road. We were traveling about thirty five miles per hour when he hit some loose gravel and lost control of the car. It flipped over and rolled three times and then came to a stop back on it’s wheels. One of the boys received a deep cut on his arm, so I bound that up and as no one else had anything wrong except bruises. I walked to a ranch house about a half a mile away. There I called the ranch on the telephone. Then I walked back to the car again and waited for someone to come for us. By the time some one got there I couldn’t walk or move my legs. They took me to the Doctor in Ashton and he found that I had a dislocated vertebra in my back. This soon healed and I was as good as new only a lot wiser.
This summer was a very busy one as we had a big year for guests and after the boys went back to school in September, there was another month booked solid with short pack trips into the Tetons and Yellowstone. It was the middle of October when I came home.
Tom and I bought a Model T Ford that summer and it was a relic. It was one of the first closed cars that Ford make, about a 1926 model. We sure had a lot of fun with it. We gave thirty five dollars for it and sold it that fall for the same price. In 1980 I saw one just like it at an antique show and it was valued at fifteen hundred dollars.
The winter of 1939-40 was spent much the same as the others had been, feeding stock and working a few days for anyone who needed someone to work for them. I played for the Saturday night dances again with chuck Fulton. I also broke a couple of horses, to ride, for Budd Weaver. Of course I wasn’t to hard for him to talk into doing this as I had a crush on one of his daughters.
I have failed to mention that every spring, after lambing, the lambs were brought into the corral for docking and branding. This consisted of cutting off their tails, ear marking, and branding them. The buck lambs were castrated at the same time.
The cattle we handled about the same way, only they were branded with a hot iron, and they were dehorned.
The spring of 1940 I did not plan to work out as I wanted to do a lot of work on my ranch. I plowed up twenty acres of ground and planted grain bought some more wire and put up a section of new fence. I even started to help in the haying. All of this time Jack was writing me letters trying to get me to come back to the Wyodaho. He then sent me a telegram stating that, if I would come up for the month of August and part of September, he would pay for a man to take my place at home, plus pay me a small wage and pay my expense up and back home. About that time I was lonesome for the wide open spaces any way, so I didn’t need much coaxing. We were about through haying anyway, so I packed up my suitcase, put my saddle-chaps and spurs in a gunny-sack and got on the train for Ashton.
Jack and Jerry met me at the station in Ashton and they greeted me as if I was their long lost son who had just returned. From what they told me they hadn’t been able to fin any help that they could depend upon to run their ranch, with exception of Tom. Some of the boys were threatening to go home because of the way the men treated them. The only way they had agreed to stay was when Jack told them I was coming and that Tom and I would take them on a long trip into the Tetons and Jackson Hole.
Tom and I fixed up a chuck-wagon and took nine of the older boys on a trip that lasted for a full month. We left the ranch and traveled south to Drummond and then down the east side of Teton Basin to @#!*% Creek.. We left the wagon there and packed up our horses. From there our trip took us to the top of Table Rock Mountain, which is on the east side of Grand Teton Peak, and when you are on the top of it you have the feeling that you could reach out and touch the face of the Grand Teton, but as you ride across the top you find a canyon with walls that are straight up and down, separates the Table Rock from the Grand Teton. It sue is an awesome and beautiful sight.
From there we rode into the Hidden Corrals, which was an old outlaw hideout in the early days of Butch Cassidy gang. There are only two ways to get into the corrals. The back entrance is well hidden and if you don’t know where it is, you would only find it by accident. It comes in over a very steep trail and winds around steep cliffs and underbrush. When I was there part of the old outlaw sentry dugout was still there, but that was less than thirty years after the outlaws used it. The other entrance is found by following @#!*% Creek upstream. It takes just an eight foot gate to close this entrance. The corral is completely surrounded by high rock cliff. There is about three hundred acres of beautiful meadow with trees and plenty of water, in the corral. The old outlaws used this as a hid out and also as a holding place for stolen cattle and horses. It would have been impossible to have gotten in without being seen. When we were there it was used as cattle range.
From there we went back to the chuck-wagon and then over through the Squirrel meadows and to the Flag Ranch near the south gate of the Park. We arrived at Flag Ranch early in the afternoon, so after camp was set Tom and I rode to the south entrance to the Park and got our camping and fire permits, that we could go into the Park the next day. While we were gone some of the boys decided to try their hand at cooking. When we got back to camp, every pot and pan that was in the chuck-wagon was full of half cooked rice. I had a fifteen pound sack of rice in camp and they had used over half of it. They had started out to cook rice and raisins but didn’t know that the rice would swell when cooked. Another of the boys had tried his mad at making a pie. He had made a beautiful pie. The crust was just perfect, but you needed an ax to cut it. We always carried dried apples, peaches, apricots and prunes in our supplies. Dave just put the dried apples and sugar in the pie crust and baked it in the Dutch-oven without adding any water to the apples.
The next day we left our wagon at the south gate and packed into the Park as far as Heart Lake. That night there was a full moon and ad it shined across the lake you could see those big mackinaw trout jump out of the water. They were feeding on mosquitoes and that was a sight to behold. I always said I was going back there fishing some day but I never made it.
The next morning we broke camp, but we left one teepee tent standing and we placed all of our food in there and then placed the other tents and our sleeping bags over the top of the food. The teepee was then closed, and we left to climb to the top of Mt. Sheriden. When we returned to the tent it looked as if someone had ridden a saddle horse in one side and out the other. A bear had paid us a visit, and he had torn up everything we had. The other tents and the sleeping bags were strewn over a large area, the pack boxes were torn up and the food was scattered all around. Anything that wasn’t in a tin can was either eaten or ruined. Most of the cans were bent. What the old bear didn’t eat he went to the bathroom on. We had to go back to the south gate and get more supplies. When we got back to the chuck-wagon, we decided to head south into or towards Jackson Hole and Teton national Park. Our trip took us on the back roads as gar south as Jackson Wyoming. We spent some extra time at Jackson Lake, Teton Park, and at Jackson, where we attended a rodeo. From there we went north again to the park and back to the ranch.
This was the last time I worked at the Wyodaho, as my own ranch kept me busy after that.
Jack’s business went to pot after that year, partly because of not getting good help and partly because of the World War II. He sold the ranch soon after that and moved to Idaho Falls, where he became Athletic Director for all Bonneville Schools.
I do not know for sure how many of the boys were killed in the way, but I heard that there were eight of them. The only one that I was sure of was Pete Geiger. Pete was the boy who sold me the pair of chaps, which I still have.
I cam back from the Dude Ranch on the third of September, and on the fifth Dad sold the sheep heard to Albert Beus. I kept my share of the sheep. I and Ullysses Lallatin trailed the herd to Soda Springs and delivered them to the Beus Ranch at Wood Canyon.
I worked on a threshing crew until all of the grain around Grays Lake and Enoch Valley was harvested that fall. By this time I had my own team of horses and wagon. That made it possible for me to earn some extra money. I had purchased the horses from Hans Sorensen in December of 1939. They were just two years old, when I got them, and were half brother and sister. They were Percheron breed and stood about six feet tall at the shoulder. They weighed about eighteen hundred pounds each and even though they did not match in color they were very evenly matched in size and disposition. Doc was gray, almost white, and a gelding. Blaze was a bay mare with a white strip down her face and two white feet.
I also bought a set of harness from Sears that same fall. I broke them to work and used them that winter to feed with. This team was an essential part of my ranch for many years.
It was the fall of 1940 that the ranch became officially mine. I bought enough netting wire to fence eighty acres of the ranch and fifty head more of ewes. This made one hundred head of sheep that I owned. I also had twelve head of cows and four horses. I sure thought that I had the world by the tail and a downhill pull on it.
I worked until snow came building the netting wire fence to hold the sheep. When snow came that fall Dad and I finished building the cow barn, at the home ranch. For the first time in the history of the old ranch we were able to milk our cows inside a barn. Before the barn was built we milked our cows out side in an open corral. When we sat down on a mile stool the snow would blow down our neck or else it was so cold that the mild would almost freeze before it hit the bucket. Those old cows sure didn’t give much milk in the winter time, but we were not in the business to get a log of milk anyway. All we wanted was enough for home use and to make butter from the cream.
Two years before this I bought three Holstein heifer calves and the fall of 1940 they had calves. I broke them to milk and started to ship the milk to the Grays Lake Swiss Cheese Factory. This gave me a small steady income, about thirty dollars a month. This was not much by today’s standards but at that time it looked pretty good.
Roy and Oscar had bought the ranch in Enoch Valley and were living over there. Alfred bought his place on Williamsburg and was on it most of the time. This left me at home to help Dad and Mother and to do my own work. In all of the time that I lived at home I never was paid for the work that I did. I never did give it a thought because I always knew that it was my home and figured that it was my duty to help keep it in repair in exchange for the security of having a home base. This lasted as long as Dad and Mother lived.
1941 - This year they started drafting men for the armed forces and I took my first physical exam in March of this year. I was classed 1A, which meant that I could be called at any time. Soon after that I was given a farm deferment and put in class 1B. I worked for August Branford, for a few days, several times during this winter. The rest of the time was spent feeding the livestock and routine work at home. When spring came I plowed up some more ground and planted grain, this was all done with horses.
I bought my first mowing machine and hay rake this summer. This was a big investment for me, as I paid eighty dollars for each of them. This summer was the first time I met Colleen Hayes. She came out to the ranch with Betty, and stayed a few days.
I had our sheep camp parked on my ranch and stayed in it at night as the sheep were in a pasture there and I didn’t want to leave them alone at night because of dogs and coyotes. I had some food in camp so that I could eat down there if needed. Betty and Colleen went for a walk and stopped at the camp. I was not there so they opened a can of pork and beans and had lunch. What they didn’t eat they put in the stove. I had to clean it out before I could light a fire.
I didn’t pay much attention to Colleen that time but I do remember that she had a sunburn and that I thought she was kid of cute. Little did I know what a part she was to play in my life.
On December 7, the Japs attacked Pearl Harbor and I was classified 1A again.
1942 - In February I was given another farm deferment and classed 2B. By this time many of the local boys had been called into the armed service that there was a shortage of help on the ranches in the area. Those of us who were left at home had to help out on all of the ranches in the valley. Where ever there was work to be done we did it. There were no men available to hire, so everyone got by as best they could. Haying time was the worst of all of the hay in the valley was ready at the same time. When it came time to harvest the grain, we started at one end of the valley and helped thresh the grain for everyone until we finished up at the other end of the valley.
In the fall of that year Louis Eschler bought two hundred tons of hay from us and moved his herd of sheep to the ranch to be fed. I helped him feed as well as feed our own stock. About half of the time he was gone so I had all of it to do alone. We had a lot of storm that winter so there were days when I would be out all day getting the stock fed. Lou paid me a good wage for helping him. When he got ready to leave that spring, he came in the house with a new pair of boot shoes and asked me to try them on. He said he had bought them for his own use, but they were to small for him. There were my size width and all, so he gave them to me. Seemed rather odd that a man who wore a size 10 EEE would buy a pair of boots that were 8 1/2D.
There were not any of the boys from Grays Lake who did not return home from the war safely. Those who fought were Al and Bernard Lindstrom, Robert and Farrell Stoor, Marvin and Odell Stoor, Bob and Leith Somsen, Keith Tingey, Desmond Call, Bill and Bob Gentry, Bud Swain, Glade Sibbett, Max Weaver, Clyde and Rex Weaver, Ewart and Bill Muir, Tom Lallatin, and Leo Reese. Not all of these boys saw action over seas, some of them never left the States.
In 1940 I was breaking a horse for Jack Young at the Dude Ranch and one day when I was getting on him, he started to buck before I was in the saddle. I hit my back on the cantle of the saddle and bruised it badly. It would swell up and then formed an abscess which would finally break and then it would go away for a month or two and then start the same process over again. I never had gone to a doctor with it because I thought that it would heal. In the fall of 1943 it got so bad that it hurt all of the time. I went to Dr. Ellis Kackley and he lanced it and told me that I would need to have it operated on. In September I went and had the abscess removed and the bone scrapped. After it healed I never had it reoccur but I sure couldn’t do much for about six months. That was what kept me from being drafted into the Army.
The summer of 1942 Colleen came out to the ranch with Betty. I never tied to date her as she and Betty ran around with the boys who were about five years younger than I. I thought that she would not be interested in going with an old man like me. I always took Betty to the dances and parties if she never had a date. She was just like a sister to me, so I didn’t thing anything of taking her girlfriends along too.
The spring of “42” I traded work with Dan Morgan in exchange for using his D2 tractor to plow up some more sagebrush and wild meadow land on my ranch. Doing this was a help to Dan and also made it possible for me to get work done that I could not have done with horses. I also traded work with Bus Roy. I always thought of Bus and Dan as two of my best friends, as we had a mutual trust for each other. I knew that if I ever needed help that they would be there and I tried to treat them the same way.
This last round that I plowed up put just half of my ranch under cultivation. The other half was still sagebrush, trees, and wild meadow, but I had built a netting wire fence around it and that is where I pastured my sheep. I was able to get a permit to graze my cattle on the Bridge Creek Cattle allotment of the Caribou National Forest during the summer months. In later years it became impossible for a small stock man to find grazing on the forest as the big stockmen with more money had bought up all of the allotments. Sure seemed unfair because the purpose of establishing the allotment system and the forest service was to protect the small ranchers.
The winter of 42-43 was another of those winters when we were snowed in for weeks at a time with no mail service. The State and county road departments were working to keep the highway open between Soda Springs and Wayan, but they did not have the equipment to do it. We had not kept a sleigh road open out of the valley so we were isolated when the snow plows could not get through. We were very fortunate in that we did not have any serious sickness in the valley that winter. We were able to keep our sleigh roads open around the valley even though the snow reached a depth of four feet and covered all of the fences. Some of the drifts were ten or twelve feet deep around the buildings at the ranch. About the first of April the roads were once again plowed open and we were able to drive to Soda Springs again.
Our sleigh roads were made by starting in the fall, with the first snow and by driving our teams of horses, hitched to a sleigh, on the same road every day or each time were going where the road led. The horses would step in the same tracks each time they went over the road and any new snow that had fallen or had drifted into the tracks would be packed down. The sleighs would follow the same track and each sleigh runner would ride on the horse track. By this process the roads were gradually built up until they were level with the top of the surrounding snow. The roads looked like railroad tracks stretching across the valley. Some times the road would build up higher than the snow at the sides of it. It took a very good horse to pull a load and walk on that road. Dad owned some of the best snow horses and Doc and Blaze could not be beat that kind of work. Many times I have seen horses fall off the road and the driver have to shovel the road down to get them back on it.
The hay was not baled but was put in large stacks that resembled huge loaves of bread. There would be about thirty tons of hay in each stack and we hauled it out to the stock on a hayrack that was built onto a pair of bobsleighs. These racks were about nine feet wide and fourteen feet long. We could haul a ton of hay on them. When the hay stack was first opened and was tall enough to stand above the snow level, hauling hay and feeding stock was not to hard. As the hay was fed to the stock the stack became shorter and soon the top would be even with the top of the surrounding snow. Each snow storm would then completely bury the hay stack and would have to be shoveled out before any hay could be loaded. Sometimes I have worked all day to get just one load of hay fed to the livestock. We always tried to have our hay loaded the day before to assure the stock were fed each morning. Sometimes the storm would be so bad that we could not feed at all. We would just wait until the storm broke and then start going again. There were days like this every winter that I can remember. Considering the among of exposure to the weather and cold most everyone stayed quite healthy. All of the ranches had twenty or thirty horses on them as all of the work of haying and farming was done with them. If the roads got bad in the winter we would gather a herd of them together and drive them over the snow road to Henry, so that the mail could get through. I read in my Mother’s diary where in 1943 I drove 110 head of horses to Henry.
Winter time was when the Valley folks would get together and have house parties. Everyone came to these parties that was able. None was left out and each family would bring something to eat. There was sandwiches, pie, cake, cookies, huckleberry jello, potato salad, homemade ice cream, hot chocolate, and coffee. Many times these parties would last all night and then you would go home the next day. The size of the party was generally determined by the size of the home. The old ranch house on the Vias ranch was the scene of many of these parties. One room would be used for card games, the living room had parlor games, such as Dealer Dollar and I Brought Back What I Borrowed. The back room, that was used for a shop, would be turned into a dance hall. Everyone brought their children to these parties, as it was unheard of to leave children at home alone. As the party progressed the beds would be filled with sleeping children and sometimes with older mothers who would lay down to get a little one to sleep and fall asleep their selves. There was no electricity so gasoline lanterns and kerosene lamps furnished the light.
Sometimes one of the local bootleggers would bring a supply of whisky to the party and then the party would be broken up by some of the men drinking to much and getting to obnoxious.
One time one of these fellows brought a supply to a part at our home and left it in his sleigh. After the men had gone back into the house, after having a round of drinks, my Mother went out and poured all of the whiskey on the snow. This caused a lot of uproar but never again did they ever bring their whisky to a party at our home. Not within the teachings of the Mormon Church but a well known fact in those days, some of the Bootleggers were from the better families of the Church and the one mentioned above had served a mission in the Hawaiian Islands.
The spring of 1943 was the same routine of ranch work but this spring started a new chapter in my life. School was out and the summer dances started about the first of June . Betty came home and with her came Colleen Hayes.
I had always enjoyed Colleen as a friend of Betty’s, but had never tried to date as I though that she would not be interested in going out with an old man like me. She and Betty were dating boys who were about five years younger than I. Sometimes I wished that she were older or that I was younger because she was a lot of fun to be around. She was pretty, had a good sense of humor, a nice personality, could play the organ and had a beautiful voice when she sang. Although she was L.D.S. and had a good moral character she never made an issue of religion. To me this was an outstanding trait. On June the twelfth as were all getting ready to go the dance Betty and Colleen said that they really did not want to go with the boys who were coming after them, so I said that they could go with Frank Somsen and I. That was not really an official date but it sure served its purpose. We dated all that summer and had a lot of fun together.
Fall came and with it came the end of the summer dances. Colleen was getting ready to go to Colorado Woman’s College in Denver to school and I was not over joyed at the prospect of her being so far away. We went to the dance September the fourth and after the dance we got in the car to go home and I asked her to marry me. I can still remember that night. Our car was parked by the fence at the schoolhouse, facing south, it was a beautiful night. There was a big full harvest moon shining down on u s and it lit up the Valley until you could see all of the ranches and the mountains around. There is a song that says “I saw a peaceful old valley with a blanket of hay for a floor” and that is exactly how it was that night.
Colleen didn’t tell me yes or no that night so I thought maybe she was waiting to see if she would get a better offer. She did say that she would like to have a little time to think it over. On the sixth of September I went into the Caribou County Hospital and Dr. Ellis Kackly operated on my back. I was in the hospital four days and then went to the Fryer Hotel and stayed three more days, then I went home. Colleen left for school on September 11, and I was sure lonesome without her.
After about a month I was back work ridding in the roundup, combined grain, and worked at the fall work that has to be done on the ranch. I bought another work horse from Hans Soresen. I called him Chip and he was a full brother to old Doc. I broke him to drive and had hoped that he would be a mate for Doc, as he was the same color and size, but he was not the same disposition so I sold him to Del Tingey. I also bought some more sheep, enough to make one hundred and fifty head of ewes. By this time I had thirty head of cows and four horses. This made for a nice income and I thought that I was well on my way to realizing my goal.
At Christmas time, Colleen came back from Denver, on her way to spend the Holidays with her Mother in California. I went to Georgetown to get her and there I met Aunt Lillis and Uncle Leon Sorensen for the first time. We drove back to Wayan and Colleen stayed at the Ranch for a few days and then went on to spend Christmas with her Mother in San Francisco. I did not see her again until school was out in the spring. We wrote letters to each other real often, in fact I wrote more letters that winter than I have written in all of the years since.
The rest of that winter was spent feeding stock, playing for dances, and breaking horses.
Spring came and with it came the busy time of the year on a ranch. Lambs and calves were born, fences to be repaired and all that goes with spring work on a ranch.
Colleen had given me an answer earlier and we were making plans to be married in June. She came home from school the later part of May and on the second day of June we went to Pocatello and bought her a set of rings, and had our blood test taken. About this time I was getting pretty nervous and wondered if I was cut out to be a married man.
On June the twelfth we were married in the front room of the old ranch house where I was raised. Bishop Delmar Schneider performed the ceremony for us and it rained all through it. Our Mothers signed as our witness’s and those present were, Edit Hayes, Meletha Vias, Isaac Vias, Ed Dray, Betty Petersen, Frank Stoor (Buster), Oscar and Verda Vias, Alfred Vias, Roy and Wilda Vias and Nadine Schnieder.
After the wedding we left for Afton Wyoming on a short honeymoon. We spent our first night in a motel in Afton and Colleen stuffed the keyhole in the door full of toilet paper so no one could look in. The next day we spent driving around Star Valley. That night we got us a room at the Vallion Hotel and ate in the restaurant there. We were both very self conscious and thought that every one who looked at us could tell that we were just married.
The next day we drove home through Tincup Canyon, which was beautiful with it’s array of wild flowers and chokecherry blossoms. We arrived home that evening and we were back in the routine of spring work again.
We were given a wedding shower at the Wayan School gym and received many gifts. Colleen was given another shower by Mrs. Ozburn in Soda Springs and received many more beautiful gifts.
We hired Ern Turners orchestra, from Bedford Wyoming and gave a free dance at the school gym at Wayan. This was the custom back then. Anyone that did not do this was considered a cheap skate and I sure did not want to be called one.
The fall of 1944 brought an end to another phase of my life. I rode on my last roundup in Rassmusen Valley, trailed the beef cattle to Soda Springs and loaded them on railroad cars to be shipped to Denver, Colorado, and took a carload of lambs to Ogden Utah. I did not know at the time that these were last times for all of these things but they were. Times were changing and we all have to with them too. Idaho Falls became the leading market for the livestock from the area and everyone of the animals went there by truck. The open range became of thing of the past. Forest grazing allotments were cut back and some were abolished entirely. The system that was established for the protection of the small rancher was also a thing of the past and the big stockman got bigger and small rancher was forced to cut down and some were put out of business.
After the lams and cattle were shipped to marked, I started to dig a well at the place we had chosen to build our house. This took most of the rest of the fall to finish as it was slow hard work. I did all of the digging with a pick and shovel and it consisted of digging a hole four feet square in the ground. I had to dig down sixty-five feet before I hit water and that was a lot of buckets full of dirt to pull out of the ground with a rope run through a pulley attached to a tripod. One man stood at the top and pulled the dirt up and dumped it. There were several men who helped me, but I did all of the digging myself.
In that same fall I bought a set of logs from Oscar Vias to build a house for us to live in. Every thing was rationed by the government that year and we could not buy lumber to build with. I couldn’t eve buy cement to put in a foundation, to start putting the logs up.
We lived with Dad and Mother that winter, and I did the feeding and chores. There were some parties and dances to go to that winter and Colleen went with me to feed the livestock some of the time.
Another big event taking place in our lives, Colleen was expecting and I was going to be a father and boy was I scared. I was also happy with the prospect. I took a lot of kidding from one of my favorite Uncles and from Grandpa Dray. We told ever one that if the baby was a boy we were going to name it Hezikiah and if it were a girl she would be called Mehitabell, Grandmother Hayes didn’t think those were good names but Mother thought it was funny as she knew we were not serious.
The spring of 1945 came and with it cam the usual busy time, lambing, fencing, and also a very wet rainy season. The roads were bad at that time as there was only a thin layer of gravel on the surface of the highway to Soda Springs and the automobiles would sink into the mud. There was no assurance that you could make it to Soda when you started out, so Colleen stayed in town with her Mother for awhile before the baby was due.
While she was away I put in forms and poured the foundation for our cabin. I then started to lay up the log walls, It was sort of a pioneer experience for me as there were no buildings on the ranch before this.
The weather cleared and roads dried up and Colleen came home again. On the nineteenth of June I was busy working on the cabin when Dad came down. He got out of the car and walked around the cabin, commented on how well I was doing, offered a few suggestions, got out his pipe and lit it and then he said that I had better come home as Colleen needed to go to the hospital. Mary lee Layland was born in the early morning hours of June the twentieth at the Caribou County Hospital in Soda Springs, Dr. Russell Tigert Sr. Was the doctor who delivered her. I thought she was the prettiest baby I had ever seen. She had a little round face, dark eyes and lots of black hair. I guess that I was what might be described as a proud father. There were no floral shops in Soda at the time but Krug Swain was custodian at the hospital and court house and he picked a large bouquet of flowers from the flower beds at the hospital for me to give to Colleen.
On July the fourth I brought Colleen and Mary Lee home from the hospital. The was very special event at the old ranch house as Mary was greeted by two grandmothers, a grandfather, a great grandfather, and Buster who was just the same as an uncle to her. She was certainly blessed with a lot of loving kin folk. I was afraid that I was going to drop her when I would hold her. It sure did take a lot of getting used to being a father.
Because of all the rain that spring we didn’t start to hay until the last part of July and that gave me extra time to work on the house. I was able to get the logs all laid up, the roof on and the windows and door in before I had to stop and get ready to put up the hay. After the house was this far along I was able to work inside and spent all of the days that we were unable to work in the hay field, putting in the partition and finishing the inside.
After the work was done that fall I built a brick chimney in the cabin. Dad went with me to Chub Springs and showed me where there was a sand pit and I hauled the sand from there for the mortar to lay the brick with. I had never been around any one who was laying brick, so I read in a book how to do it. I had to tear the first one down and start over but on the second try it sort of resembled a chimney so it is still standing. When I got through with it I thought it looked a lot like the pictures I had seen of Abe Lincoln’s chimney. The next step was to put up the sheet rock and after that was done Colleen and I both worked at parataping and then we painted the wood work and put wall paper up in both rooms. The finished product was two mall rooms, one ten feet wide by fourteen feet long and one twelve feet wide by fourteen feet long. The smaller room was our kitchen and in it we had a cook stove, a table and four chairs and a kitchen cabinet. In the larger room we had a bed, a chest of drawers and baby bed and Colleen’s piano. It was small and cozy but best of all it was our own home.
I had also built a small horse barn, just large enough for one team of horses and also a little house out back with two holes in the seat. Until you have gone out on a cold morning and sat on one of these cold seats you can never fully appreciate indoor plumbing.
About the first of February 1946, Colleen, Mary Lee and I moved into the cabin. We were glad to be to ourselves and in our own home eve if it was small. I went up to the folk’s twice very day and did the milking and fed the sheep and cattle. It was a lot harder that way and took more time but it was worth the extra effort for us to be in our own home.
The spring and summer of 1946 was a very busy time for me. After lambing and farming was over I built petition fences for pastures and put in a yard fence. I then got a permit for a set of stacker timber from the Forest Service and Tom Lallatin and I cut and hauled the logs to Earl Somsen’s sawmill where he sawed them into lumber for a new haystacker which I was going to build. Tome and I worked together and built the stacker in time to use it in the hayfield that summer. Tom and I worked together putting up hay that summer as he had bought the ranch which joined ours on the north. Tom and I had been friends for many years, so it was very easy for us to work together.
Tom and Lillian were married June 13, 1944 just one day after Colleen and I. Although Tom and I had been writing letters quite regular we neither one knew that the other one was getting married until after we were married. It came as quite a surprise to both of us. Tom and Lillian had a daughter who was very close to the same age as Mary lee and they were very close friends when we all lived on the ranches at Grays Lake. Colleen and Lillian became good friends and the four of us had many good times together.
After haying was over I built a shop and a pig pen out of the extra lumber left over from building the hay stacker. We were then able to keep our pigs at the cabin instead of having them up at the home ranch.
In September of that year Dad, Mother, Buster, Colleen, Mary Lee and I went down to Brigham City, Utah after peaches. This was the first time that Dad, Mother, Buster and Mary Lee had ever been in Utah. This may sound strange today but the people of that time were very conservative and did not spend money that was not necessary for their well being. This was the first time Dad or Mother had ever seen peaches growing on trees and they were very impressed by the orchards at Brigham City.
I built an enclosed porch on the cabin this fall which gave us another small room for storage and a place for Colleen to have her washing machine. On December the 22, 1946 a group of us got together and went Christmas Caroling. We had a big sleigh with a big wagon box on it, pulled by a team of horses, belonging to Pharis Petersen. We came out of John Soderman’s lane and as we turned the corner onto the main road the team started to run and the sleigh overturned spilling us all out onto the road. Colleen was thrown out and someone lit on top of her and broke her shoulder. That put a stop to our fun for that Christmas. Pharis and I took her to Soda Springs to Dr. Koeler. He tried to set her shoulder but it was not an ordinary break as the ball had broken loose from the end of the arm bone and had turned over in the socket. He was unable to set it, so he made an appointment with a specialist in Salt Lake City, Utah to have her shoulder set.
Dad let me take his car and on Christmas Day I started for Salt Lake City with her. Colleen wanted Lillian to go with her as Lillian was a registered nurse as well as a dear friend. Colleen’s Mother and Dad went with us also. Everything went fine until we got to Salt Lake City. I had never been to S.L.C. before, I was tired and worried about Colleen, it was snowing and I didn’t know where to go to get to the hospital. Colleen’s Mother would tell me to go one way and her Dad would tell me to go another, so I finally slammed on the brakes and told them to make up their minds. This hurt Colleen’s shoulder and she cried. I sure did fell bad about that. We finally got her into the hospital and then we stayed all night in a hotel. The next morning the Dr. was able to set her arum without operating and putting in a pin as we had been told that he would have to do. We were all very thankful for this turn of events. On the 29 of December we came back from S.L.C. Colleen stayed in Soda with her Mother and Lillian and I went back to Wayan. Mother was taking care of Mary Lee and Carmen Sue while we were gone. Tom had been doing my chores and feeding the livestock for me.
Colleen came home to stay on the second of January and I sure was glad to have her home again. Mother kept Mary Lee a few more days and then we went and brought her home to the cabin again. On the twenty third of January the Dr. took the cast off from Colleens shoulder and she had to work very hard to get it to move as it had become stiff from the break and being in the cast so long.
The south end of Grays Lake valley had never been on a mail route, we had always had to pick up our mail at the Wayan Post office. The rest of the valley had mail boxes to which the mail was delivered every day except Sunday and holidays. I wrote to the Postmaster General and requested that the south end of the valley be included in the route. He wrote back and stated that I would have to submit a petition signed by all the people who would be affected in any way by the change. I also had to measure the exact mileage that was traveled by the carrier now and the distance that would be traveled under the proposed route. I also had to draw a map of the old and the new routes. This was all done as he requested and after this was received by the department a Mr. Boudine from Denver came to inspect the route. He came by train and I met him in Soda t the depot. We traveled over the old and new routes and then had a lovely dinner that Colleen had prepared at the cabin. I then took him back to Soda Springs where he caught the next train back to Denver. The route was approved by the Postal Dept. and we had mail service from then on.
One day when I was in Soda I went into the Caribou Implement store, which was owned and run by Chris Lallatin. There was a new Farmall H. Tractor on the floor and I was looking at it when Chris said. “That is what you need to have on that ranch of yours.” I laughed and said that sure would be nice but it would be a long time before I would have money enough to buy one. No more was said and I had forgotten all about what had been said.
A couple of months went by and then one day in April I received a telephone call from Chris and he said, your tractor is here and you had better come in and get it. I told hi m that I hadn’t ordered any tractor and besides I didn’t en have any money to make a down payment on it. Chris said for me to come in and talk to him anyway, so that afternoon I drove to Soda and again I told him that I just could not buy a tractor because I just didn’t have any money. He said “Who said anything about money?” He told me to take that tractor out and bread up a bunch of ground and plant grain and what ever extra money I had at the end of the season I could pay him on the tractor. I asked him about a contract and he told me that my word was just as good as a contract with him. I did as he said and that year I had a good crop of grain and was able to pay him half of the money for the tractor. That fall when I paid him I again asked him about a contract or a note but he said I could just pay him when I thrashed my cats. In the mean time he had let me have a plow, a mowing machine and a spring tooth harrow, all with never a note or a contract signed. The next year 1948 I was able to pay him in full, but he never charged me one penny of interest and had no security of any kind all through the deal. Very seldom do you have a fiend such as this in your life, and I was blessed with two such friends. Dan Morgan was the other such friend.
After the spring work was over, Earl Somsen and I worked in the canyon and cut and hauled a set of barn logs to the sawmill to be squared for me to build a barn with. I put in a cement foundation and laid up the logs on the barn before I had to start putting up the hay. On all of the rainy days and all of my spare time I worked on the barn.
Colleen’s father, Riley Hayes , was living with us part of that summer and he helped me put the rafters up and the roof on the barn. We used a ladder to climb up to the top and one day as we were busy working, we looked over and there was little two year old Mary Lee standing on top of the barn. She had climbed up the sixteen foot ladder to help she said. Grandpa Hayes sure did love Mary Lee and now as I am a grandpa I can understand how he felt.
Colleen and I owned a 1934 Ford sedan at that time and it had a push button started on the dash. We always left it parked in front of the cabin and one day Mary Lee got in it and pushed on the started button until she drove the car into the fence.
It was this year that the Grays Lake telephone line from Soda springs was changed over from a grounded system to a metallic system and I took the job of maintaining the whole system. There were about thirty telephones on one party line in the Valley. The line went into Soda Springs where it joined the Bell Telephone system. This was not a steady job but it did give us an added income. I kept this job until 1960. In the winter part of the line had to be maintained on skis. I was also elected as a director on the Grays Lake telephone Company.
I was also Vice President of the Grays Lake Farm Bureau, one of the Directors of the Caribou County Farm Bureau, and one of the members of the sales committee for the Grays Lake Wool Pool; All of these jobs were without pay and at your own expense but I enjoyed working on them.
Some of the things that we were able to accomplish in those years were to get a group of Medical Insurance for the Grays Lake people, and start the Farm Bureau Insurance Company. I sold some of the first charter automobile policies. I had the first policy sold at Grays Lake.
We were expecting our second baby this year and were thrilled with the prospect. Colleen’s grandfather, John Riley Hayes Sr. Died in March of this year and was buried at Georgetown cemetery.
The spring of 1948 was a bad one, a lot of storms and bad roads. Some of the time the roads were impassable. I took Colleen to Soda Springs to stay with her Mother until the baby was born. We did not dare to take a chance on getting over the roads in case of an emergency.
On May the eight, Cecil Sibbitt came out to the lambing shed and told me that I had better get into Soda as I was about to become a father again. Monna Jean didn’t wait for me to get there but put in her appearance without me. When I got to the Hospital there was another little girl with dark hair and blue eyes to greet me. May the Eighteenth I went in and got Colleen and Monna out of the hospital and took them to Grandma Edith Hayes’s to stay for a while. On May 29, Monna Jean came home to the cabin for the first time. She was sure a cutie and was very much loved by her Mother, Dad, and her sister, Mary Lee.
The rest of that year was pretty much routine. There was the hay to be put up, the grain to be harvested, livestock to be taken care of and fall plowing to be done. Then it was time to start feeding again.
That fall we traded the old Ford car in on a 1941 Ford ½ ton pickup. It was green in color and good looking and we really enjoyed it.
I went hunting that fall as usual and killed two deer for our winter meat. We also butchered three hogs and had the meat cured. Our winters supply of food was brought home and stored and we were ready for another winter.
The winter of 1948-49 went down in history as one of the worst that this part of the country had known. The people of the valley had grown dependent upon the automobile and the snowplow. To a great extent they had lost some of the old pioneer tradition of preparing for winter with adequate food, fuel and medical supplies to last for several moths. There were no sleigh roads kept open around the valley and into Henry Idaho as we had done in earlier years. We had bought a thousand pounds of flour, one hundred pounds of sugar, and a good supply of canned goods, so we were well supplied with food. I had plenty of fuel oil and coal and wood to keep us warm.
The big storm hit on the first day of February, and it did not let up for two weeks. Within the firs two days we were snowed in, no mail service, no schools and the cheese factory had to close down as there was no way to get the milk delivered to it. Thirteen people from Grays Lake had gone to Soda Springs the day the storm started and were not able to return home for twenty days. All of the men who were gone had chores and stock to feed, and this threw a lot of extra work on the men who were left at home. Every one pitched in and helped so no livestock were neglected.
There were three ladies expecting babies during the month of February of that year. Benda Burton had her baby at home with the help of Frances Roy and Kate Petersen, Benda’s mother. Lillian Lallatin started from home to help but the baby was born before she got there. It took eight different teams of horses to get her there. The old party line was busy that night as every one was listening in and offering advice. There were no complications and mother and baby did fine.
The weather broke for a day and Carl Petersen flew a plane in and picked Leatha Tingy up and flew her to Afton Wyoming where her baby was born the next day. Eldean Muir was flown out a few days later.
The army sent in a Weasel and crew to rescue us. They ran out of flour and fuel oil at the Wayan Store so I loaded some flour and a barrel of fuel oil onto the hay rack and went over to the store with it. The weather was stormy when I went across the valley but while I was there at the store it got worse. The army Captain was not going to let me start for home as he said I could never make it home in that storm. I assured him that I had made it over and that I was sure I could get home. When I got home they called from the store and asked if we had seen anything of the arm Weasel. They had gone out to rescue me and gotten lost and wound up at John Sodermans.
Dan Morgan hired a plane to fly him home but when they got to Wayan they could not land so they went back to Soda. Dan said he would have jumped out with a parachute but there was not anyone on the plane big enough to push him out.
Earl Somsen and Max Weaver skied in from Soda and brought some medicine and the first class mail.
When the storm finally broke the state highway department started to open the highway from Soda to Wayan. They had a D8 Caterpillar and a V plow on it. Two TD 18 tractors with angle dossiers on them. The two TD 18’s would push the first layer of snow back and then the D8 would plow down the center. Then they would turn around and repeat the process back the other way. After about four trips they would have a trench just wide enough for one automobile to travel over the road. They worked this way one mile at a time and it took them two weeks to get the highway open to Soda springs. When they finished the snow banks on both sides of the road were ten or twelve feet high and the road was just wide enough for one automobile and if you met another car you had to back u o to a turnout, which was a spot every so far that was widened,, to get past one another. It was the fifth of March before we were able to go to Soda with an automobile again but after that the roads were open the rest of the winter.
After the spring work was done about the middle of June, Earl and Ree Somsen, Jay, Junior, Colleen, Mary Lee, Buster and I took a trip into Yellowstone Park. I stretched a canvas cover over the stock rack on the back of our pickup and built a shelf for the two little ones, Mary and Junior, to sleep on Ree and Colleen were to sleep in the bed of the truck and Earl, Jay Buster and I slept on the ground in sleeping bags. The first night out, Mary and Junior decided that they didn’t want to sleep up on the shelf so they were put down in the bed with Ree and Colleen climbed upon the shelf to sleep. Mary Lee would not go to sleep but kept on protesting so Colleen climbed down and felt around in the dark until she found a head of hair that she thought was Mary’s and gave her a slap. It turned out to be Ree’s head instead of Mary’s we all had a good laugh about this.
As we were traveling along the road one day we saw a bear and everyone but me got out to take some pictures and to get a better look. The bear started toward them and they all ran and jumped in the back of the truck and shouted for me to go. I looked in the rear view mirror and there was Mary running down the road. They had all run of and left her.
Dad became sick around the first of September and on the tenth Mother and I took him to the hospital in Soda Springs. He slowly became worse and on the twenty-fourth of September he passed away. Dad was buried in Soda Springs on the twenty-seventh of September, 1949. His passing left a big void in my life that no one could ever fill. Little did I realize what a stabilizing influence he had on my life and upon all of the Vias family, until he was gone.
When Dad died he left no will, so the estate had to be settled in court and Oscar and Alfred Vias did not show any appreciation for all that Mother had done for them through the years. They would have left Mother without anything had it been legally possible. Roy sided with Mother and this caused a break between the three brothers. The court awarded Mother the home, all of the livestock and eight acres of land. The rest of the land was divided equally among the three Vias brothers. Roy sold his share of the land to Mother and this gave her enough land to make a fair living.
From then until Mother died I had the full responsibility of running both her place and ours.
The spring of 1950 Colleen and I traded the Ford Pickup in a bought a new G.M.C. Three-quarter ton pickup. This was our first new outfit and we were very proud of it. We had Mary and Monna with us the day we made the deal. Monna cried when we left the old truck and drove away in the new one. She said “Goodbye trut” and waved to it as we drove away.
Tom and Lillian sold their ranch and moved to New Castle, Wyoming this year. We sure did miss them as we were very close friends.
That fall I built a double deck stock rack on the truck and hauled our lambs to Idaho Falls to market them. I could haul twenty-five head each trip so it took several trips down to get them all to marked. Some times Colleen and the two girls would go with me. One time Monna went with me alone and after I had unloaded the lambs at the stock yard we went to a café to eat. The waitress came to take our order and asked Monna what she would like to eat. Monna looked up at her disgusted and said, “Anything my Daddy wants me to eat.”
Mother, Grandpa Dray and Buster moved to Soda Springs for the winter so that Buster could go to high school. This was his second year. Colleen and I moved into the old home for the winter. This gave us more room but moving back and forth was a pain in the neck.
Colleen spent a lot of time teaching Mary and Monna to play the piano. She spent hours teaching them nursery rhymes, when they were small. Colleen was also very faithful in her church attendance even though I hardly ever went. When Mary Lee was three years old she led the Sacrament Gem in Sunday-School.
We lived at the old home until school was out and then moved back to the cabin when Mother, Grandpa and Buster came back to the ranch. The rest of that year was very much routine with no big events taking place.
That fall we moved again into the old home when Mother moved to Soda again for school.
This winter Riley, Colleen’s father was with us. On January the first 1952 we had to take Mary Lee to the hospital. She was a very sick little girl and we were all concerned about her. Her Grandpa Hayes was very concerned as Mary was the so called, apple of his eye. When we, Colleen and I left to take her to the hospital Riley had tears in his eyes. She was in the hospital six days during which time Colleen stayed at the hospital with her and Monna stayed with Grandma Chat. This was Mary’s first year of school and on the last day of school she fell out off the school swing and broke her arm. It seems as if this had been a bad year for sickness in our family.
Buster came and stayed with us when school was out that year. Grandpa Dray was sick and Mother did not move back to the ranch for the summer. She stayed in Soda and took care of Grandpa as he was down in bed for almost four months before he got better.
That summer Colleen developed an infection in her leg. When she was small an automobile had hit her and broken her leg and the bone was shattered so badly that the Doctor had to put a steel plate on the bone to hold it together. Through the years the bone had grown over the plate and now it had become infected. On the ninth of September, Dr. Allen Tigert operated and removed the plate. He had to chisel the bone away from the plate to remove it. This was a very painful ordeal for Colleen.
Grandma Hayes came from Boise to be with Colleen during the operations. Colleen’s sister Margie also came from Boise and stayed at the ranch and did the cooking and took care of Mary Lee. They stayed about five days and then went back to Boise as Grandma Edith was running a rest home there at the time. While Margie was at the ranch she said that she wished someone would kill a chicken so that she could cook it. I was not around at that time of the day but Marry Lee, who was seven at the time, heard her say it. A little while later Mary came to the house carrying a chicken with it’s head chopped off. She had gone out and caught the chicken and chopped it’s head off with the ax.
Monna Jean stayed with Grandma Chat during this time. On the seventeenth Colleen was released from the hospital and went to Mother’s where she stayed another five days before she was able to come home. Colleen developed infection again and had to take treatments ever day, so she went back to Soda and stayed for another ten days.
Things were not all bad for us through these years. We had a lot of good times, going on picnics, taking trips to Jackson Hoe, Star Valley and many other short trips. We also went to dances, had card parties and enjoyed our many friends. Some of those that we had many good times with were: Earl and Ree Somsen, Bus and Sis Roy, Paul and June Swain, Bud and Mable Swain, Russ and Mary Sibbitt, Laura McMullen, Reed and Doris Humphreys, Lyle and Benda Burton, Roy and Wilda Vias, Farrell and Margaret Stoor, Buster, Dan and Ida Morgan and many others who I may have forgotten to mention. This list would not be complete if I did not mention Robert and Lewis Stoor, our two bachelor friends who lived neighbors to us and who spent many hours in our home. The two o little girls especially liked Robert because he would play with them. Colleen put Mary and Monna’s hair up in french braids a lot of the time and one day Robert was there when she was doing Monna’s hair. He asked Monna if he could braid her hair which he did. Monna thought that was really something and called him “Tilly Robert.”
I have failed to mention the part that Colleen played through these years. She was the best helpmate that I would ever have wanted. At lambing time she worked with the sheep, taking care of the ewes and lambs. When it came time to put the grain in she took a turn at driving the tractor and did a lot of the preparation of the seed bed. In the hayfield Colleen drove the pickup to pull the hay over the stacker and she also drove the tractor on the sweep some of the time. Never during any of this did she neglect our two little girls. In the fall when the grain was being harvested she often drove the grain truck while I ran the combine. I was blessed to have wife such as she was and I sure did love her (STILL DO.)
Buster graduated from high school in May of 1953 and Mother and Grandpa moved back to the ranch. Buster and I worked together on the ranches and got along real well. The fall of 1953, H.W. Jacobs Company installed a set of truck scales at Wayan and put in four big steel granaries. Keith Jacobs hired me to run the scales and buy grain for them. This was a very responsible job as the grain had to be checked for moisture content and weighed accurately or it would rot in the bin and the company would lose money. I received two dollars an hour which was a very good wages at that time.
On the eleventh of September Mary went into the hospital with a badly infected throat and Colleen stayed in with her. Monna stayed with Big Grandma. The next day I went back to work at the scales and they came and told me that Grandpa Dray had died.
He had gotten up in the morning and had eaten a good breakfast. At about one o’clock that afternoon he had started to the old outdoor toilet when he felt tired and laid down to rest. Mother saw him and carried him into the house. He died before they got him there. We took him to Star Valley and buried him by the side of Grandma Dray, in the Smoot cemetery.
That fall we sold our beef cattle and bought some more milk cows. We had four head of milk cows already and bought six more. Farrell and Robert Stoor and I went together and bout a pure bred Holstein bull from Harris Mickelsen in Grace and we started into the dairy business in earnest. The cheese factory was running and that gave us a nice monthly income.
The spring of 1954 came and the cheese maker quit. The board of directors came to me and asked if I would make cheese for them and run the factory. Colleen and I talked it over and decided that we would take the job. I had never made cheese before but I was willing to learn. I bought me a good book on cheese making and a man came and gave me a few easy lessons and then I was a full fledged cheese maker. We moved to the factory the thirtieth of March. Buster and Robert Stoor took over the ranch work and our milk cows. I went over and helped them in my spare time.
Once again Colleen was working right along side of me. She washed all of the milk cans as I weighed the milk and poured it in to the big vat. She also helped with the cheese making process and the cleaning of the vat and equipment. We made good cheese as long as the milk was taken care of as it should have been. Then some people began to send sour milk and you just can not make cheese out of that kind of milk. Production dropped off and were forced to close the factory. We then started to send our milt to Thayne Wyoming.
We moved our family back to the cabin and went back to farming. Colleen Buster and I put the hay up again that year so I didn’t eve get out of one year of haying. I drew on the elk hunt this fall and killed my first and only bull elk. I had never drawn on a hunt before and even though I have sent in an application almost every year since I was never drawn again.
While we were outhunting that fall a man from another camp disappeared and was never seen again. A large group of us searched that area for two days but never found a trace of him.
After the fall work was over I put in a foundation and started to build another room onto the cabin. Grandpa Riley came and helped me with the frame work. About the middle of March we moved into the room and it sure did seem good to have the extra space as we were really crowded, the four of us in those tow rooms of the cabin.
April the third was a Sunday and Colleen, Mary Lee, Monna Jean and I went to Mother’s and watched L.D.S. Conference on television with Mother. We had supper with her and then visited a while before going home.
About six the next morning Buster called and said something awful had happened and would I please come right up. I jumped on a saddle horse and went up as fast as I could .. When I got there Mother was laying on the front room floor dead. She had a heart attack and it must have taken her fast as there was no sign of any struggle. We had her funeral in Soda Springs on the eight of April and buried her in the Soda Springs cemetery.
This certainly left me with a felling of great loss. All three of the ones I had loved all of my life were gone. In a space of five years the old home had been left empty of the loved ones I had for song, Dad, Grandpa Dray and now Mother.
Colleen and I moved back into the old home with Buster for lambing that spring. We moved back to the cabin again as soon as lambing was over and that was the last time we ever lived at the old house. Mother left a will giving Buster the old home and eighty acres and leaving me forty acres and all of the personal property.
I built another big shed type building that summer and also moved in a small lambing shed. From then on we lambed our sheep on our own place.
I took a job as lineman with the power company to supplement our income as it was slowing getting harder to make a living on a small ranch. This was a part time job and my duties were to turn transformers on that had kicked out because of an overload and to maintain any breaker switches which were struck by lightning. I also worked at any other job at which I could make any money.
In the first months of 1956 we found that we had another baby on the way. When we were sure of this we asked Mary and Monna what they would like to have more than anything else. One of them said a baby elephant and the other said a baby monkey. On the twenty second of September our baby boy was born and as he grew we decided that they both had gotten tier wishes as he would run through the house like an elephant and climb on every think like a monkey. Frank came into a home where he was surely loved by both of his big sisters and his Mother and Dad.
Our only regret was that his Grandpa Riley Hayes and his Grandmother Chat were not there to greet him.
In the spring of 1956 I hired Earl Somsen to clean the timber from the ground west of the cabin. He pushed the trees over with his cat and dossier and then pushed them p in big piles. I spent a lot of time burning these trees and it was several years before they were completely gone. Dan Morgan loaned me his D2 Cat and I plowed up the ground. While plowing I turned up several buffalo skulls, one had an arrow head stuck in the eye socket. The information of the ground showed that at one time the shore line of Grays lake had been there. This was very interesting to me as it was just like digging up a bit of past history.
This same spring our good friend Clark Burris died of a heart attack. He and I had made plans to go fishing the next day. His relatives gave he his fishing rod.
Early in September of this same year we received word that Riley was in the hospital in Ogden Utah. Colleen went down and stayed with him and was with him at the time of his death. We brought him back to Georgetown and his funeral service was held at the church there. He was buried in the Georgetown cemetery. His passing left another void in our lives.
On September the twenty-second Colleen woke me up early in the morning and said we should go to the hospital. About noon Frank Riley Layland came into the world. Here was another dark haired baby only this time it was a boy. We were elated, at last we had a son. When they told Colleen that it was a boy she hollered yippee it’s a boy.
That fall we, the Farm Bureau, got permission from the Forest Service to build a camp ground in Gravel Creek Canyon. A group of the men took their trucks to Alpine Wyoming, and hauled back toilets and tables from an abandoned camp ground there. The Forest Service took over and improved the grounds to the present condition.
At Christmas time we all went to Boise to Grandma Hayes’s. Because Frank was so small we went on the train. We drove to Montpelier Idaho and caught the city of Portland Dome Liner. I believe that this was the last train ride I ever had. Frank had a big smile even at this early age.
The Grays Lake School always put on a Christmas play and that year we had three children in it. Frank was playing the part of the Baby Jesus. I believe that this was the year that Monna Jean sang “All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth” as her front teeth were gone.
That winter we stayed pretty close to home because of our new little boy. Monna Jean even let him sleep with her Smokey the Bear, One night Beverly Johnson came up and stayed all night with Mary and during the night Frank started to cry and then he shut up. All was quiet for a while and then Mary called for us to come and get Frank. Colleen told her that it was not necessary as he had stopped crying. She said well good reason why, Beverly is rocking him. When he started to cry Bev. had picked him up and taken him out in the kitchen and was sitting in the rocking chair holding him.
The summer of 1957 Mary drove the pickup on the stacker and Monna helped tend her brother, when Colleen helped in the field.
After the hay was put up this summer I took a job with the Lower Valley Powers and Light Company helping build a power line from Gray to Brockman Creek at the north end of Grays Lake. This work consisted of digging hoe six feet deep and setting a forty foot light pole in it. While the poles were lying on the ground we would put all the hardware on them that was required. Some of the holes were in solid lava rock and had to be blasted out with TNT. After the poles were all set I went to work as a lineman, helping to stretch the power cable and tying it to the insulators. I had never climbed that high before and always felt uneasy with eight so for awhile I really had to give myself a pep talk to get me up the pole. I sure didn’t want the boss to think I was scared or I would have been out of a job. The more I climbed the easier it became until I got to where I could climb pole for pole with the more experiences linemen.
After the grain was harvested that fall I got another job, this time remodeling the Wayan Store for Odell Stoor. I put a new front on the store and completely built the windows that are in the store at the present time.
Buster joined the army that fall, so once again I had full responsibility of both of the places.
During the winter of 1957-58 I would stop at the cabin and pick Frank up when I came by with a load of hay. I had a big coat which I wore in the cold weather that had a parka on it and was lined with sheepskin. Colleen would bundle Frank up real well and then I would put him down in the front of the coat. I would button it up until all that was sticking out was his nose and eyes. Then we would go out and feed the livestock. He sure loved to go with me and I sure loved to have him. Sometimes his nose would get very red from the cold but he didn’t seem to mind.
The spring of 58 found us plenty busy with lambing and planting grain. We got along real well until haying time came around and then something had to be done to replace Buster in the hay field. This was when the Chief came into our lives. His name was Wammy Chedahap and he came from Forthall Indian Reservation. He was a full blooded Bannock Indian and proud of it. The whole family learned a lot of Indian lore from him. Chief was a very good worker and we got on swell until one weekend when it rained. He had a problem with alcohol and did not show up for work on Monday. Tuesday someone reported they had seen him down Tincup Canyon.
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sheep hook, sheep shears, several pieces of rope, a bottle of iodine, a bottle of sheep dip, some pieces of cloth to mark the spot where you had a ewe tied and a rifle to shoot any coyote you might see. sheep shears
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