My Life Story Lindsay M. Rawlins

In my lifetime we have gone from the horse and buggy days to flying and landing on the moon. I will tell my kids about the horse age.

My father was a good horseman and always had good horses. He always said not to whip a horse or a kid when you were mad because you would overdo it.

I can't remember who told me the following story. It was said that my dad had a team. They were brown, baully-faced, and stocking legged. Owen thought the team was named Rob and Fox. Dad used this team to make his living.

During this horse age, if a person had a good team and wagon he could haul freight all year round and make a good living. He hauled beets on dirt roads and there was a big mud hole. Dad would drive to the mud hole, wind his team, go one-half way through, stop and wind his team, and then pull on through. He always carried a whip but no one ever saw him use it.

As kids came along it was standard to raise a pair of colts and let a boy break them as a team. Dad started out with some Hammeltolans. They were about like thoroughbreds, you could ride them and work them. They would weigh about a 1,000 to 1,200 pounds. (They would cross them with a heavy draft breed of horse such as a Shire, Persian, Clydsdale or a Belgium.) Dad crossed with a Shire.

As a boy, the best horse we had was a mare that we called Babe. It was Reed's turn to have a team. Babe and another horse we had named Bird were bred with a two-year old stallion from a Belgium stallion and a Persian mare of Hyrum Karren. The colts we got were a pair of mare colts. Babe's colt was named Jane, and Bird's colt was named Jip. As we started to break them, Reed left on a mission, and I drove them for two years while he was gone.

Jane would give someone everything she had, and I don't remember whipping her. But Jip would pull out of fear and her memory wasn't very long. Now Jip wasn't as stout as Jane and that made a problem. So we set the double tree over so Jane would have to pull the biggest share. If Jane ever got a leg over the tug that run down to the single tree, she would kick straight back against you.

When they were four years old, Owen and I pulled them in a pulling match here in Lewiston. It was either the fourth or twenty-fourth of July. The day that Owen and I pulled them in the match, Jane got out of the tug on one side. I was a tall, skinny kid, holding the bits and a fat man standing there thought he would help me. He walked to side of Jane and went to take a hold of the tug. I let go of the team and pushed him back in time that Jane just missed him. I told him afterwards that I was sorry but it was her job to get back in the tug.

It was a rule at the match that one couldn't whip a team or swear so it worked a hardship on Owen to drive. Owen had to change his way of driving which put him at a disadvantage. He would get a little stage fright and he'd be told to holler louder, but he would say that he was hollering just as loud as he could. At home he could make more noise than that.

When Reed came home from his mission, we made a driver out of him at those pulling matches. He could talk on a street corner and driving at a pulling match was about like a street meeting. One had to talk loud enough that everyone could hear including the team. We traded Jip off for a mare we called Babe. So the team was Jane and Babe. He would out pull most of the teams. He would holler "Jane" and the pulling meter would keep coming.

When I was on a mission, Reed sent me $50 from the first prize winnings, and I got me a new suit. That was sure a good suit, and it was sure needed.

In 1942 he was getting ready to go to the pulling matches at the Richmond Black and White days. He had traded Babe off for a mare that he called Nell. She got hurt and that left him with Jane. So he teamed up with Ned Spackman from Richmond, who just had one horse ready, and Ned drove. At that late date, they had to get special permission from the Black and White Committee. Jim Murray, the chairman, said that matching a team that late was all right with him because they couldn't out pull him. The thing he didn't know, was that Ned's horse would do all she could for Ned, and it didn't matter to Jane, because she would give everything she had. As the match was coming to an end, Reed asked Ned to holler "Jane" and holler loud. Ned said, "She's outpulling my horse now." Reed said, "Do you want to win?" He said, "Yes." "All right, then holler "Jane" just as many times as you can and just as loud as you can and we can win." So that is what he did, and he won the match.

About six weeks after that Jane died in the night. We as a family loved that mare and it almost ruined the Rawlins' pulling team. I was on a mission, and I think everybody would have had a funeral for her if it would have been legal.

The old shed in the northwest corner of the barn was the shed used to park the white-topped buggy. The white-topped buggy had two seats in it. There was a curtain that could be pulled so one could drive in the rain and stay partly dry. Horace and Owen were coming home in that buggy, and they were wondering which horse could run the fastest. So they came just as fast as that team could run with the help of a buggy whip. Dad's brother, Frank Rawlins (who lived where Farrell Smith lives now) called up Dad and said, "Alf, your team has run away.

Dad asked, "Are they running straight down the road?

"Yes."

Did you see the buggy whip?"

Frank said, "Yes."

"Well those boys are trying to see which horse is the best." As Dad and Frank were talking, the team came in the yard, and Horace and Owen backed the buggy into the shed, Dad thanked Frank for telling him the story; When Owen and Horace came in, Dad asked them which horse could run the fastest. They were quite surprised that Dad knew all about it. Dad said "If you don't want me to know, run your horse races on a road where there isn't a telephone."

Farming and Making a Living

It must have been about 1929 or '30. Owen took the mare called Babe to a Clydsdale stallion and raised a colt called Tex. For a mate to him, they traded and got a mare colt from George Rawlins that was from the same stallion and a mare that George had. He named her Jen. This was a good team, and Owen did a lot of hauling beets in the fall and hauling gravel in the wintertime. Cache County would open gravel pits at different places in the county, and let everybody haul gravel for a certain price per cubic yard, In a long day with a team, one could make two loads. Owen and Howard would leave about five o'clock in the morning with two teams and get back after dark. Lots of times they would walk behind the wagons or at the side of the horse so they could keep warm. In the summer, they would spend about a month hauling wood out of High Creek Canyon, They would haul green maple and dry pine.

Owen's team, Tex and Jen, were a brown pair of about the same size. Tex was the bigger horse and the best horse to work. (About 1932, a seige of brain fever came through this country and killed a lot of good horses and we lost Tex to that disease.)

Now Jen used to make Owen so mad. She was lazy, and in her stall at night she would kick the stall. She had two names. If we ever bought a horse or a cow we always named her after the man's wife. When Owen would start to whip Jen, he changed her name to Nellie which was the wife's name of George Rawlins, I can still hear my Motn vain.

When one got uptown to the pulling match, Jen was the best. She was one of those horses that liked to pull. Jen was the first good pulling horse that the Rawlins's had. We matched her with everything in the neighborhood. She would be standing there about asleep. I would go up and undo the overcheck, walk around in front, and take hold of her bit. She would throw her head up and was ready to go. It would take a horse 200 pounds bigger to even stay with her. It always seemed to me that we had one horse that would pull and the mate was willing to let her.

Once I was hauad one horse that would pull and the mate was willing to let her.

Once I was hauling hay with Jen and a half witted colt. We eased through a ditch with a load of hay and got stuck. The colt jumped around instead of pulling and I couldn't get out. I tied up the lines and got a chain and tied Jen single-tree to the wagon, I undid her overcheck and walked around and took hold of her bit, and she came alive. She thought she was at the pulling match, I got to the side of the colt and kept hold of the colt. When Jen had pulled out the load, I said "Whoa" and she stopped and went right back to sleep. I was out of the ditch, and I got up on the wagon and went to the stack.

Owen and Howard would haul with two teams, and Reed and I would milk the cows. The cows would be in the barn and they would all drink from cups so they could get a drink and the barn was full of hay. We would milk about six cows each in the morning and night.

We always had a grain binder that would cut the grain and tie it in bundles. We did this for so much an acre. Everyone would take turns driving the binder and my job was to take them a change of team about noon and drive for awhile while they ate their dinner and had a little rest. We would change teams several times as needed sometimes as often as three times a day.

One time I was changing teams at Joe Hyer's place. (He lived where Grant Flygare lives now.) As was the custom, every farm had a few milk cows and the cows were trained so that in the summer one could take the bucket and stool and go out into the corral and milk the cows while they would just stand there. We were changing teams right by the corral. Owen and I were making the change, and Joe Hyer was milking his cows out in the corral. Joe's wife was holding the cow's tail. Joe was milking and saying, "Sow Sweetheart, Sow Sweetheart." The cow's tail came loose from his wife's hand and let Joe have it right in the mouth. He said, "So you ole son of a bitch," his wife grabbed the cow's tail and Joe went on saying, "Sow, Sweetheart, Sow Sweetheart." I asked Owen if Joe was taking to the cow or the wife, and he said he didn't know. But months later we found in the milk testing report that Joe did have a cow named Sweetheart.

When Reed graduated from high school, I think in 1932, the beets were all topped. There was a big pile of beets down at the factory that had to be hauled over to the beet dump and run into the factory. Those beets had to be pitched in the wagon with a fork. Dad told Reed that he should get Reginald Rawlins (we called him Rags) to go haul beets with him. It took two men to a wagon.

Dad called Uncle Gowdy A. Hogan who was the fieldman for the sugar factory and in charge of lining up teams (his wife was Dad's sister, Aunt Mint) and asked him to stop in to talk to him. When he stopped in, Dad asked him about Reed and Rags hauling beets. Gowdy said that if they could live the rules they could haul. The rules were no playing around, load so they don't get stuck, and work. Dad said those were the rules he would use anyway so they hitched up the wagon and used Babe and Bird. One day about the time that I was coming home from school, Uncle Gowdy stopped in and told Dad that the boys almost got stuck that day and that Reed took a whip and whipped those old mares right good.

Dad said, "Did they pull the load?"

Uncle Gowdy said, "Yes."

"Good, that's just what I would have done."

"It reminded me of you, and I thought you'd like to know."

The Rawlins' boys always worked together. We had a hay crew all by ourselves. They used to claim that Owen could stack the straightest and most beautiful stacks of hay under Dad's direction. Dad would say, "Owen, you're leaning that a little. Come back this way." It never rained through Owen's stacks for some reason or other. Dad and Owen had a communication that I think was not very often met.

I was the derrick boy. Now the derrick boy had two jobs. He rode the horse that pulled the hay from the wagon to the stack. And the other job was to take the blame for everything that went wrong.

Right down on the corner south of us (where Steve Bodily's house is now) we were putting up a big stack of hay. There was a big barbed wire fence that went both directions from the corner. It made a good corner. Aerial ran the fork, and Owen stacked. I ran the derrick horse. Dad sat out in the street in the old Model T Ford. We had to run three wagons. Mae drove back and forth between. Reed loaded and Horace and Howard pitched. Our third wagon wasn't a very good wagon. It didn't have all the boards on the bottom. After the hay was sticking up, it was fairly safe.

The wind was starting to blow a little after dinner, and Aerial had said,"When I raise my hands, you get up there and hit that old mare and get that hay up on that stack before the wind blows it over and the hay falls off the fork and I have to go again.

He raised his hand too quick, and I hit that old Babe that I rode. One of the fork tines, a Jackson fork, had gone down through the floor and run under the crossmember of the wagon. As I hit old Babe, I felt her groan a little more than usual. I looked back and up was going the hay rack, the hay, and Aerial. Just about this time he got excited.

I said, "Whoa" and jumped off that old mare, then dove through that fence to the north just like a hound dog. It was about that time that Aerial tripped the fork and fell to the ground, with the hay on Aerial and the rack on the hay. I knew the course of events and so did Dad. Dad was a crippled man and he walked with a cane. He started getting out of the Old Ford as I headed up home just as hard as I could go. When Dad got to the fence, he met Aerial crawling through the fence.

He said, "Now, Aerial, you go back and straighten out that mess."

"Not till I beat that kid."

Owen said, "If you've got to whip somebody then you let me down, and I'll take the kid's part. But today that kid won't get whipped."

Dad said, "That's right. Now you leave him alone."

"Not till I whip that kid."

There was quite a discussion among Dad and Owen and Aerial. Finally Aerial backed off but if they hadn't stopped him, he would have chased me clear up that road and beat me half to death. That dang guy would tune us younger kids up every once in a while. I don't think he had a very good sense of humor. If I could have got home, I might have got on my saddle horse and kept out of his sight, but Owen whooped and hollered and finally got me stopped,

I'd been derrick boy for a long time and I knew just exactly what my treatment was going to be. Anyway they got me back down there. Dad said, "Come on, you're safe." And I said, "I trust you, but I don't trust him." We made it through the day. Dad's job was to keep peace. Dad used to say, "One boy was a boy, two boys--half a boy, three boys--no boy at all." In raising our seven boys and three girls, I've thought about that many times.

One of those years when I was a little derrick boy, we were haying Aerial, Owen, Dad and I. One of those days we'd quit for dinner. Then got on the hay wagon and came home. We had to feed the horses, and I was give out. I was just a kid. I slipped off the back of the wagon as we came in the yard and run up the barrow pit in front of the house. I thought I was too tired to help tend the horses or help Mae and Mother with dinner. I crawled in under an old bed we had in the front room. I thought I'd just stay there out of sight until they came in for dinner, then I'd get up and eat dinner. But I went to sleep and I never did come to until they were eating supper that night. I slept all afternoon. When I woke up, I stirred around in there. It was dark so I crawled out and came in. They wanted to know where I'd been. So I told them. Owen said, "If I'd have known you were under there, I would have thrown a bucket of water on you." I'm sure he would of done, but when a little boy is out in the hot sun, riding a derrick horse all day long, day after day, month after month it seems like a long life. I don't suppose those older kids think that's what happened because they hunted all afternoon trying to find me. They said that they had an awful time running without a derrick boy.

Our First Missionary

I remember when I was six years old I was down in the barn cleaning and bedding the cows. It was the winter of 1926. Dad came in the barn, Owen, Horace and I were there. Dad said "The Bishop has asked me if I wne he wanted and he told me to pick one." The discussion went on between Owen, Horace and Dad. Nowadays we would have sent them both. Aerial had been gone a long time, and Owen had taken lead for a long time. Someone has to take lead. Owen under Dad's direction had done a good job. He and Dad had good communication. Owen said, "We can send Horace on a mission easier than we can send me." Dad said, "Well, that's right. But if you go, we'll try it and we'll do it and Horace can go when you get home." Horace was the one that went on a mission. That got the missionary spirit going. Dad's health was bad, and the depression was real bad and tough. Money didn't come easily.

My Newspaper Business

As l grew up, my means of travel was a saddle horse. I started out on a few but really my first horse was a grey mare named Snip. She was a single footer, that's a pace, and an easy riding mare. Every place I went, I rode Snip. If I were late for school, I'd throw the bridle on her, Jump on her, and ride her to school. When I'd get to school, I'd bail off, and she'd turn around and come home.

I delivered papers as a boy all through those depression years. I rode that mare winter, summer, rain, snow or 30 degrees below. I always had a few dollars in my pocket from delivering the papers. Every morning I'd get up and go deliver the Tribune. It was quite a job.

In the summertime, Dave Van Orden (Laura Jackson's father) delivered the Deseret News. I think they had a bigger route than I did. It was a more popular newspaper because it was church sponsored. In the early days the Trib was started out by anti-Mormons, however, the war between the two papers had been called off. (Dave was the same age as Dad.) He and his family used to deliver the newspaper at night. They'd milk a half a dozen cows and they'd sell the milk around town in the morning. Dave had a gallon bucket. He'd carry milk over and pour it into the customers' container and go back and get more.

Dave was a jovial old fellow, and he kept tormenting me. He'd torment me about being an ancient history peddler. He said, "I delivered all that news last night."

Well, I couldn't match wit with him on that, I hadn't enough experience.
I said, "Well, that's all right." I said, "You old sour milk peddler, you're so slow delivering that milk that the milk will sour before you get there." I didn't try to run competition with him on newspapers, I just called him a "sour milk peddler." That was his standard name.

Mae and one of Dave's girls (either Jessie or Afton) chased around
together all the time. One day Mae had been over there and Dave was a grumbling about me calling him a sour milk peddler. I don't think he told about the other part of the story of what he called me. Mae got after me and said, "You've got to quit calling him a sour milk peddler."

Dad perked up and said, "What's going on? What's happening?"

So I explained. "Everytime I see him he calls me an ancient history peddler--he says that he's already delivered the news the night before and that I'm coming in behind times. So I just tell him that the milk he carries around by the time he gets to the people the milk turns sour--so he's a sour milk peddler."

Mae said, "Yes, and he don't like that."

Dad laughed and said, "Leave it alone--Dave hands it out and he should be able to take it."

This paper business was something--the paper came every day. When I went to Church, I had to get up early enough to get it done. I guess that's where I learned to go on a dead run, to get there, and to hurry.

Trip that's where I learned to go on a dead run, to get there, and to hurry.

Trip to Bear Lake

Now I believe it was in 1938 or 39 when we were just finishing up the haying during the last of June or first of July. LaMont Hyde came over and he said, "Let's ride our horses to Bear Lake and spend the fourth of July over there, then come back." I looked at Reed and he said, "I'll milk the cows, go ahead." I had a good saddle horse--sorrel, bald striped face mare.

So I saddled up that mare that morning and LaMont saddled up his. I took a couple of quilts, tied in a coat. I remember a can or two of pork and beans and a few things we could eat because I knew we were going to have to stay one night up in those hills. We couldn't make it to Bear Lake in one day. It would take two days over and two days back. We went up High Creek Canyon, up North Fork and down into Franklin Basin. Then we went east over the hill from Franklin Basin. We were just kind of picking our trail. I hit a big canyon along in the afternoon and was trying to find a place to camp. I started down this canyon. LaMont kind of let me take lead because he didn't know where he was going, and I thought I did. We got clear down Logan canyon, went across the highway and across the river. There was a nice green area over there. We staked our horses there and made camp for the night and slept there that night. The next morning we went back up that canyon. We got up there about right and headed east. Oh that was pretty country. We ended up right on top of the mountains west of Fish Haven.

I said, "Well, there's got to be a road here somewhere so we turned and fiddled around and found a road and came down into Fish Haven. That was where we were going to spend the Fourth of July. We went over to an old farmer and I said to him, "We're from Lewiston. We came over here to spend the Fourth of July. I wonder if you have a pasture we can turn our horses in and if we can sleep on your haystack."

He said, "Do you boys smoke?"

"No, neither one of us smoke."

"All right, you can sleep on my haystack, and there's a pasture right down there." He pointed down towards the lake. "You can go in that gate and leave your horses in there. That'll be just fine. There's a little grass there. They can drink out of the lake and rest a couple of days before you head back."

So we did that, and we fiddled around there in Fish Haven and loafed around a little. We spent that day, the next day and I think the next day we started home.

When I went and thanked the farmer for the use of his haystack and offered to pay him for the pasture, he said, "No, I can't charge you for that. That belongs to Utah Power and Light."

I said "Good land!"

"Well everyone else around here pastures there, and they never charge anybody, and I knew that there wouldn't be any of those Utah Power boys around. They all take the week off to celebrate. It's been nice to have you here."

I assured him we were glad for his hospitality. So we got on our horses and headed west.

I had a little better feel for the country as I got coming back than I did going. But up in the top of those mountains I got turned around. That was my first experience with being turned around. I was going west but it was east to me. I knew I was going west; I could tell that by the sun. We got up on a mountain--oh that was pretty country. Grass was pretty all through those hills. Riding along there without a care in the world. (Other than the fact I wished I wasn't turned around.)

We were up on this mountain and looking down into the next valley, I could see a road. There was a car coming. So I kicked that mare in the belly and down that mountain we come on a run. I hailed that car down and said, "I don't know if I'm lost or what, but I'm turned around in my direction. Will you tell me. Is this Franklin Basin?

"Yes. This is the Franklin Basin road and you're going south."

"All right I'm straight and know where I am."

He kind of laughed like what's the matter with that kid.

I wanted to go to Steam Mill. I knew White Canyon. We wanted to hit White Pine, Tony Grove and come down through High Creek Lake. But I wanted to go to Steam Mill Lake. We went over to a sheepherder's camp there and visited with him for a few minutes. I said, Well now, Sir, do you know how to get to Steam Mill Lake?" He stood out there and he pointed in the direction and went on with a speech about certain trees on a hill. He gave about a five minute discourse about the direction and stopped and said, "No, that isn't the way." Then he started out on another lingo. Then stopped and that wasn't the way. I didn't want to know the way not to go.

After three times at that I said, "Will this trail lead to it?

He said, "Yes."

So we just rode on. I never did get to Steam Mill Lake. (I found Steam Mill Lake many years later, but I came in from another direction. We got back up that canyon which we thought was Steam Mill Canyon. That's where we camped for the night. We found a little water, but I never did get there. We went on down around the other way and got to White Pine, Tony Grove back into High Creek Lake and home. That was quite a trip. I always have thought about that.

But I never forgot the darn old sheepherder spending all that time telling the way not to go. I didn't want to know that. I always wanted to know the way to go.

I remember as we camped that night we tied those darn horses too close to the bed. That mare of mine snorted and stomped and carried on all night. One time I was telling that story and someone said that maybe the horse was scaring something away. I said, "Maybe all she was doing was keeping me awake".

"Well, how did you dare stay there."

I developed a habit of when I went to bed (I've slept lots of places.) I just make my bed, kneel down to the side of the bed and ask the Lord to give me a good night's rest and protect me from the night and go to sleep. I come a long ways from when my parents died and I was too scared to even go outside in the dark.

My Tumble With Snip

Back in one of those years, it must have been about-1929 or 30, I was about 10 years old. I was a paper boy. West of the Lewiston church house, there used to be a big ball diamond that was surrounded around the edges by great big poplar trees. (Eventually the Church decided to do away with the ball diamond. It belonged to Church property and most of the ball games went on Sunday. Gosh they'd have a rip-roaring game out there and they'd have more people out there than they would in the Church House. They made some changes and tore all that up and moved the grandstand.)

When they tore up all those trees, they pushed the loose dirt in.- I was up there and Lorin Rogers was with me. I was riding that mare of mine--that grey, snip-nosed mare we called Snip. (She was the finest saddle mare a kid could have.) She went across that, and she was going on full tilt. It wasn't uncommon for me to ride a horse on a dead run. She went into that loose dirt.

Her front feet went down, and she rolled endways with me. I laid out there, knocked colder than a cucumber. They took me over to Jerry Tiner's who was the druggist. There was a doctor there from some source. They checked me over and got me home. I came to the next day. I've asked a lot of people about what happened that day, but I never did get much information about it. That was one blank day, and it still is.

I remember when Reed and I saw the show, Jesse James, they were robbing a bank or doing something and while they were trying to get out of town, Jesse's horse rolled with him. As the horse fell, he kicked loose and got out of the way. That horse rolled somewhat similar to what my mare did. I read in the newspaper that the stunt rider that rode when that horse fell was paid $1,700.

Money wasn't very plentiful back in those years. Reed said, "You didn't get $1,700 for your roll."

The Earthquake

In 1932 or 33, we had an earthquake. I was riding my horse that morning. Darrell Hendricks lived down on the corner southwest of me, right across the road there. They always took the Tribune and were one of my best customers. I galloped down there, and gave them their newspaper. I was riding my mare, Snip. She almost fell down and that was quite unusual for her to fall. I thought "Good land you old mare, you've got awkward." I delivered the paper
and came home. I needed to get my clothes changed to go to school. Mother said, "We've had an earthquake this morning." I said, "How long ago?" She told me. I said, "By golly, that's why that mare almost fell down."

I went over to school. Our school was a great big three story brick building--big and square. It was a well built building. We didn't have fire escapes in that building. We had been practicing fire drills in the building for years so that if any emergency came, we could just march right out in style. We were right in middle of a change of classes. The hall on the second floor was chuck full. The principal, Mr. Carl Stoddard, and the teachers were in the hall, The second wave of that earthquake came and that old building began to sway. Carl Stoddard looked at us and down those stairs he went and right out that door with those teachers behind him and all us kids just pouring out of that building on the dead run with no sense of order. We ran off down the road to the playground to the west. We sat down there and waited and waited and waited. We kept wondering what was going on. In a little while someone got out by the building and shook the old bell and got us all back up there. By then Principal Stoddard got his countenance back to normal. He tuned us up for not coming out of there in order and marching out of there like we'd trained during a fire drill. I don't think we worried anymore about those fire drills he did. I never forgot that. I kidded him about that years latter. I guess he had to say something and that was as good a thing as any. This was my first encounter with an earthquake.

My Sister Ruth

I never did know much about Ruth. She died before I was born. She died in November of 1918, and I was born in January of 1920. I always thought I took her place. I don't know if I've done her justice or not. I asked Dad about her one time and he said that burying that little girl was the toughest thing he ever did. Then he began to cry, and that's all I ever got out of him.

At another time, I asked Mother. I said, "Mother, I don't want to bother you but if you felt like you could tell me a little about Ruth, I'd like to know. (She didn't live very many months--three I believe.)

Mother said,"Well, she took sick and died so fast, and Dr. Parkinson was a good doctor but just couldn't seem to do anything about it. I just grieved and grieved and grieved over the loss of that little girl and I just couldn't quit. One night, I don't know if it was a dream or whether it was a reality but Mother came back to me and said, 'Cora, I am taking care of Ruth and I will do it till you come to get her. Now, cut it out."' Mother said, "After that, I quit grieving. I knew my mother would take care of her."

Mine and Owen's Tonsils Episode

My first encounter with health problems I think was in 1927. I'd just finished my first grade in school. One bright day Dr. Parkinson and some other doctor came down here and took Owen and I and took our tonsils out. They laid me on the front room table and took out my tonsils. Then they put Owen on the table, they had to get the sewing machine table up there to make it long enough for him. Owen wasn't very tall, but he was a little taller than I was.

Uncle Gowdy Hogan and Dad held me down while they gave me ether, and I fought that ether with all my heart. When they finally got enough down me to put me out, I guess that fighting spirit was still there, and I started coming to. Now Dad never said anything to me about it, but Mother did. Mother said she finally had to leave because as I was coming out of the ether, I called them every dirty son of the gun name that I could lay my tongue to. Uncle Gowdy was in the Stake President at that time. He would look at Dad and say,"Alf, my land, that boy uses good language. Dad would say "Ya and he uses it proper to. It just comes right out--proper speech."

Afterwards I thought that was a pretty good deal. Mother would give me a nickel every day, and I'd go up and have me an ice cream cone. It was about the only thing that would go down that sore throat. I think it cost about a nickel and I thought that was a pretty good deal.

After they took Owen's tonsils out, Owen never talked for two weeks at least or maybe a month. Dad used to say, "My land, did they take your tongue out?" Owen would shake his head. It think it was about a month before he said a word. People got concerned--afraid they'd cut out this speech. When his throat healed up, then he began to talk.

Gall Stone Attacks

I used to have gall stone attacks, Reed and Howard were both used to it. I'd be out in the field working; we'd be hauling hay or whatever. I'd just quit and go somewhere where there was some shade and curl up in a knot--just as near a knot as I could, and see if I could go to sleep to sleep part of that off. That was real painful, and if I could sleep off part of those attacks, it helped make life more pleasant. One day Reed said that I was asleep under the wagon. The wagon was parked, and I crawled over there and went to sleep. Somebody came along and I was just as white as a sheet. They said that they'd better get him to a doctor.

Reed said, "You'd better leave him alone, Doctors can't help him. He'll be all right in a while. Don't you wake him up. Leave him alone." That's the way it went for years. From the time I was about 13 years old, until I was 27. In February when I was 27 I had my gall bladder out. By golly, I wish they could have done that when I was a kid.

Scouting

I did a little Scout work. I turned twelve years old in January of 1932. If my memory serves me right, that was the year they planned a two-week trip to Yellowstone. I believe we went up there in July or August. Vern Wiser was the Scoutmaster. Saul Hyer had been our bishop when they planned this trip but they had released him and put him in as first counselor in the Stake Presidency to President Pond. He planned that trip so he came along anyway. Dave Hendricks was put in as Bishop to replace him.

Wayne Wiser took his old truck with a beet box on it. They built some seats along there so we could ride along and watch. We had a pole over the top so we could pull a tarp over if it rained. They counted the seats and they counted the noses, and it seems like I paid $5 for my share of that trip. That was a lot of money. I took about $3.50 with me for spending money and that included my meals for two weeks. Burt Wheeler went along with us. He was on the Scout Committee. I never did forget him. He chewed a little tobacco, then he'd spit and the wind would carry it along and every kid along that side would have to wipe their arm or face or something. We finally kicked up a lot of fuss and tried to get him to ride in the back. He said that it made him sick to get in the back. I don't know if we ever got him to ride in the back or not. We tried. He was a good fisherman, though, and we ate a lot of good fish.

Wayne Wiser was a character. Always had a lot of fun. He rigged up a shocking machine some way. And he had a wire that hooked down the sideboards and around that truck. He shocked every kid every day.

When we got up to Yellowstone, he just couldn't hardly sleep at night. The bears would come snooping around, and old Wayne would slip out of his tent and into the cab of that truck and turn that shocker on. Good night! He put some bears into some of the finest demonstrations that ever happened.

We weren't required to stay in campgrounds though sometimes we did. They generally didn't want us in campgrounds because we were Scouts and they didn't want us around if they could get away with it.

If one wanted to see Mount Washburn they had to walk up there and walk down the other side. Wayne was going to drive around and meet us at the other side. His truck wouldn't go up over it. I didn't hardly think that walk was worth it but everybody else went, so I went. I was just 12 years old. Some of those kids were pretty good sized kids. Going up over Mount Washburn, I almost give out. Arthur VanOrden was a couple or three years older than me and he did give out. He was a great big kid. He was 14 years old and weighed 225 to 250 pounds. He was bigger then than he is now. I guess he got his growth early. Coming down the other side he give out, he laid down in the shade of the tree and said, "I'm going to die." So I set down there by him. I kind of enjoyed the rest anyway, and I didn't think they'd leave us. Later we came a sauntering down where the truck was. Everybody was there but us. They did ride us and give us a bad time. But we survived it.

Along into that second week was my first experience of being homesick. Oh good land, I was homesick. I would have bawled if it would have done any good. I'd never been away from home. I'd lived all those years in Lewiston. I'd been down to Logan and over to Bear Lake a time or two to see Grandpa before he died. But that was all.

The darn kids got to stealing. We had a few up there that were real good at that. As we left the Park, either Brother Hyer or Vern Wiser caught onto it. When we pulled out of the Park, they pulled over to the side of the road. The scoutmaster gave a speech and President Hyer gave a speech. I didn't even know about the stealing until then. One kid stole a lot of stuff and he caught wind that they were going to check him so he put lt in another kid's suitcase. The other kid didn't know anything about it. When they opened up everybody's suitcase, this one guy that had all the loot said, "Good land, where did this come from."

Many years later Dee VanOrden who was on that scout trip said to me, "I was surprised that that kid stole all that stuff." I said, "Good land didn't you know who stole that stuff?" I told him, and then said he'd stashed it in that other guy's suitcase. He said, "You know, for all these years I didn't know that."

When we got home, I didn't say anything about it. The mother of the boy who stole the things came to my mother and said, "Did you know that those kids stole all that stuff up there and your boy was in on it."

Mother said, "No, I didn't know anything about it. I'll question him."

"Well you better," and went on and on and on,

I laughed when Mother and Dad asked me about it and said, "That was the potlicker that stole the stuff, most of it anyway, and stashed it in another kid's suitcase. Now how come is she down here yakking about me. I haven't stole anything.

Dad and Mother said, "That's all right, we believe you, that's fine. We're glad you didn't do it, and we believe you." I was grateful for parents who believed me.

The next year, we went up Logan Canyon for a week of Scout Camp. The old Scout Camp used to be up there. Then they did away with it and went over to Bear Lake. Jim Last was one patrol leader and Burt Orchard was the other one. But Burt got sick and so his assistant patrol leader, Howard McGee, was the patrol leader. They had two patrols and we went up to scout camp.

Our truck driver got us up there in pretty good time. We hustled in there and picked out a place for our camp. Some of the officials came along and said, "You can't have that camp. We're not going to let anybody use that camp." So we moved over to another site. Then another troop came in. I think from Logan, and they let them have that campsite cause that was the only one left. We were a little bit ticked off when they come around and judged everybody's camp. They went over and judged this camp where we picked out and gave it first place. They said we got to give this camp first place because they picked the best place. We sure did grumble.

I didn't mind hiking in those hills, but I always thought I ought to have my saddle horse with me. We started on that long trek up to see Old Juniper I got so tired of walking up that mountain that me and another kid set down on the side. We felt that if Old Juniper had been there that long it can wait until some day when we've got a horse and we could ride up to it, but we weren't going to walk up there. So we set there and waited till the kids came back and we walked the rest of the way down the canyon with them.

I remember Preston Pond, George Pond's brother, was the Scout Executive. He was there dressed like an Indian. He put on a war dance and made fire turning a stick into another stick with a little bow with a string on it. He put on quite a show. I thought that was pretty good. I didn't get so homesick that year.

I guess a little authority went a long ways with those patrol leaders. Jim chased us all out of camp. Howard chased his kids all out. One other kid was up there sitting on the mountain with me waiting for things to calm down so we could go back down to Camp, There were two great big bull thistles. I said, "Now look, if I take my pocket knife and cut down in the root of this, you slip in the tent and put that in Howard McGee's bed. I'll slip in the tent and put that other one in Jim Last's bed.

That's just what we did. We slipped down there right quiet. Then we came around and tried to make peace with them. We said we'd wash the dishes or something. That night after dark we went to bed. Howard McGee rolled over on that thistle and tore his tent right down getting out of there. He thought a snake bit him. Ole Jim Last laid over there a laughing, then he rolled over and got his bull thistle, and he about tore that tent down. We never did admit that.

That was the last of my Scouting. I didn't do much with Scouting. I believe I got up to First Class.

Some years later, I was milking cows. We weren't in Scouts then, we were older. The Scouts had camped down on the Cannibal, back out on one of those pastures. They had a good camp down there and they were doing a lot oœ signaling. They were getting by fine. Jim Last come over and said, "Let's go down there and scare those kids." I said, "Well, I've got to finish milking my cows. So he stuck around. I got my cows milked, then we got in the car and drove down there. We parked out on the road and walked across the pasture. We got to the creek where High Creek comes down heading for Cub River. The creek was between us and the Scout Camp.

I said, "Jim, this is as far as I go. I'm not a going to wade that creek. That creek is high and cold." He said, "I'll show you how to do it. I'll just walk right across these limbs that's here." I said, "Well, go ahead. I'll stand right here and watch you." The creek had kind of washed out around those logs and limbs that were laying there. It was deep and it was cold. That water was right out of the snow. Ole Jim walked out on that brush then down through that brush he went into that cold water. He scared those scouts all right because he let out the most blood-curdling scream. They had to pull him out of the creek and stand him over there by the fire and get him warm and dried off so I could take him home.

Scouting is a good thing. It gets kids away from home once in a while. It kind of helps them get over getting homesick. It's a way to start weaning your kids.

Clayton Hogan and Horse Trading

I ought to put in a thing here about Clayton Hogan. He taught me quite a bit. I always liked my cousin Clayton. He was Uncle Gowdy and Aunt Mint's boy. Aunt Mint was Dad's sister. Clayton was some years older than I was. He was about the age of Owen or Aerial. There was a lot of things he did that I didn't like. He was never active in Church. He was always involved in a lot of other nonsense. I didn't like some things he did, but I liked Clayton Hogan.

When I was about eleven or twelve years old, he rode into the yard one day on his saddle horse. He said, "Uncle Alf (that was my father) you got more boys than I got. You don't need all of them. Why don't you let me have that youngest one." So I worked for Clayton all summer long. If I wanted to get time off to go on a Scout trip why I could go. I could tell him what I wanted to do and he'd arrange it so I could take a day or two off and go. Along with that and carrying newspapers and all, I had money to do what I needed to do.

Clayton was a trader--a horse trader, a cow trader. He knew animals. Along in the depression, things were real down, I remember one time Dad needed to sell a cow. He had to have some money. He called up Clayton and asked Clayton to stop in. Clayton came in and he said, "I need some money, Clayton. I thought I'd probably sell this animal." Clayton walked out and looked at it, and he said, "Uncle, I could give you so much money, or if you want to get it through the scales, I'll give you so much a pound. It's just strictly up to you. We'll weigh her if you want. Whichever is the most you can take."

I generally pitched his hay, and I got quite well acquainted with him. I think it was the year 1940 that Reed, I and Alton Haslam pitched his hay for him. I think it was the first crop of hay, along in the tail end of June. Clayton had quite a vocabulary. He'd always told me about one deal he was on. Fred Taggart beat him, and I thought that was quite an accomplishment for Fred Taggart to beat him. Clayton had beat a lot of people but it was all right with me for Fred to beat him on a deal. That wasn't alright with Clayton, he wasn't used to that. He'd generally come out on the best end of the deal; he was quite a trader. The last day of haying, we got up early one morning and started a couple three hours early. I can't remember if we were hired by the day or the hour. We got through about 3 o'clock in the afternoon, and that was a full day's work because we had started early. Reed and Alt and I were walking up the road carrying a pitchfork. Clayton come from town. He stopped and said, "How come are you leaving?"

"We're all through."

"That's good. How many days did you work."

I told him, and I had counted that day as a full day. I don't remember whether he knew that we had started early that morning or not.

He said, "Let's see. This isn't a full day."

I looked at him and said, "Don't you Fred Taggart me."

He flew into a rage and ranted and raved and carried on and used some words one doesn't put on paper. It seemed like that lasted five minutes. Alton wasn't used to that kind of language and that kind of carrying on, and he backed off. He thought we were all going to get whipped. Finally Clayton quieted down and wrote out a check to each one of us for a full day.

Alt never did get over that. I said, "Well, Alt, don't worry about that. I've worked for him since I was eleven or twelve years old." I knew what I was doing.

Our Trip to Lava Hot Springs

One winter we went up to Lava Hot Springs and Dad soaked in that hot water to help out his rheumatism. Howard went along as chauffeur. Howard was generally the family chauffeur--through my lifetime at least. I wasn't in school so I got to go. We went up to Lava and stayed a day or so. Dad soaked in that hot water. He got to feeling a little better so we went on over to Soda Springs.

They brag about that good Soda Springs water. Dad always liked that mineral water of course that was supposed to be the fountain of youth. Every country has their fountain of youth that's supposed to heal a lot of things. I never did like the darn stuff. I thought if one had to go through all that suffering to have a little water you might as well drink something else.

We stopped at Soda and Dad tanked up on that water he liked. Then we headed out for Bennington. Those old dirt roads had deep ruts. The Model T's had high wheels so they could straddle into the ruts and go along. One would go along in those deep old ruts and wouldn't see another car all day long. There weren't many cars. We were going down the Georgetown Divide Hill. Dad said, "Stop, I've got to go to the toilet." So Howard stopped. We didn't have any paper there or anything to use for toilet paper. Dad got out and squatted down around behind the car. He said, "Howard, would you get me something to use for toilet paper." The only thing Howard could find was some old ripe foxtail that had lasted through the winter. As he brought that back to Dad, Dad said, "My golly boy, I've raised you and taught you all I know. I send you after toilet paper and all you bring me is ripe foxtail." My Mother just set there and laid her head on that seat in front of her and laughed till tears run right down her face.

I kidded Howard about that through the years. That was the funniest sight. He always maintained that there wasn't anything else.

Dad's Feelings about the Church

One time as a kid they tried to get us to bear our testimony in Sacrament meeting, and I didn't want to do it. I wasn't very fluent in my speech; I didn't have control of it, and I didn't want to. Maybe I was a little bit rebellious too. Dad talked to me and said, "I would like you to do it."

"I don't want to."

He asked, "Why?"

I said, "I'm not sure of my testimony."

"Well, when you are sure then will you bear it?"

"Yes."

"All right, I'll buy that."

One time Dad said to me,"Lin, I never did believe in sending a kid to Church, but I can't take you. I took the others but I can't take him that I would go, and I've always gone. I've lived up to that agreement.

After we made that agreement I went back to him and said that I'd like to change our agreement. He said, "What's your trouble?" I said, "I'd like to be excused from Fast and Testimony Meeting," He said, "Well, why?"

I said, "There are three men there that take up most of the time, every time. They're always cussing the youth. (There were only two or three of us youth there, and it was a big ward.) They all take turns and tell us how terrible we kids are. They accuse us of sins that I don't even know what they're talking about."

Dad said, "You know the Gospel is true. Adherence to its principles will save you in the Celestial Kingdom. And do you know what you're doing? You're letting their actions drive you out of the Church. And I wouldn't let anyone drive you out of the Church. Don't let anyone drive you out of the Kingdom-drive you out of what is your birthright. You can have it, you've got it if you will just stay with it. I wouldn't object if you want to sleep through their sermons like a good high priest but I wouldn't let anybody drive you out of the Church. Don't do that." He talked me out of being excused from the meeting. I thought that was good wise counsel, and I've passed that on many times.

Sometime after that Dad asked me for the men's names. I gave him the three men's names. He said, "Two of them I knew as boys. I didn't act like they did when they were boys. I was a boy at the same time. The third man fits the bill. But don't worry about it. Whatever they do don't let them run you out of Church."

Some months later I was working on a thrashing crew with the man who Dad didn't know. It was a Monday morning right after a fast day when he had tuned the whole ward up. He had taken us all to task in his testimony. He'd taken just about all the time during the meeting. He shook those fists and waved those arms. He would have been a good street meeting preacher. I set there, and I looked at him. I didn't go to sleep; he made to much noise. So the next day we were on the threshing crew. We were pitching together. They'd paired us off pitching bundles together. There's one good thing about a threshing crew--sometimes the thresher broke down and you got to rest a minute or two. We'd caught up and the thresher had stalled. We set down in that old grain field, and it was hot. I'd been all day waiting for this opportunity and if it came what I would say. We set down there I called the man by name, and I said, "You took a lot of time yesterday. Here I am planning to fill a mi by name, and I said, "You took a lot of time yesterday. Here I am planning to fill a mission--trying to figure out a way to finance it. I don't know any rule I've broken that would bar me from it. I haven't committed any of those sins you accused us of yesterday. It must have been me you were accusing because there weren't very many kids there. (After I became a Priest, I administered the sacrament every Sunday, win, lose, or draw because I was about the only one there. Out of all the rest of the Priests, they'd get one there sometimes, but I was there.) I said, I don't understand your point of view. The ones you were accusing of all these sins weren't there. Now why didn't you say something to uplift the ones that were there instead of downgrading them.

He set there, and he looked right down at the ground. I waited quite a while. I thought well I guess if he wants to get up and clean up on me he's big enough to do it. Finally he lifted his head and said, "You know, I wish I could say that of my youth." Then I understood what Dad was trying to tell me that immorality breeds distrust and disbelief. They don't trust anybody.

As I got on my own mission, I found that to be more the case. The Prophet Joseph Smith was a preaching one time and a man came up and asked him for a sign. He said, "You're immoral." And somebody said, "That's right he is." So many times people see their own sins in other people. I guess that's so they feel better.

Dad's Death

I'm going to tell you a part of my life that is real tough to tell. I had just turned fifteen years of age in January of 1935. My father turned 63 on the 1st of February. I congratulated him on his birthday and he told me, "This is my last birthday. My body is wore out, and I'm never without pain. I'd like to raise you, but I can't do it. There are a few things I'd like you to do. I was going to go on a mission as a young man. Dad was blind at that time, and Mother had cancer--skin cancer. Some of the members of the family thought I ought to stay home and take care of Dad and Mother and I gave in to their wishes. Now if you get a chance to go on a mission, you go do it, regardless of where I am or what my condition is. I've got so close to death that I've lost the fear of it." (To a teenage boy that was hard to understand.) He said, "I'd like you to have another thing in mind. When I'm gone, don't grieve too long or too hard and above all don't become bitter."

Over my lifetime, I've found that there is more common sense in that little phrase than any one particular phrase I've ever know. His health deteriorated and because of the speech he'd given me, I watched him real close all summer.

In November the boys were all off working. Dad had deteriorated and was laying on the couch in what is our front room on the west side, over by the window. He had gotten to where he couldn't talk. I wasn't in school that day for some reason, and I went up town for something. I went in the bank and Uncle Goudy Hogan was there.

"Uncle Goudy, Dad's health is to the point where I don't think he'll make it through the day."

He said, "My land, I'll be right there."

In a few minutes, he came in the house. I guess over the years he and Dad had had disagreements. I don't know much about it or what it was, but he walked over to Dad and took Dad by the hand and said, "Alf, can you still hear me?"

"Yes, I can hear you."

"Alf, I have made offenses to you, and I've done you wrong, will you forgive me?"

Tears came into both those men's eyes and I saw two grown men settle differences.

Uncle Goudy said, "I'll be right back."
He went out in his car and went home and brought Aunt Mint back.

Somebody brought Aunt Eve, who was Dad's sister. She'd been a widow for several years. She came in and went over and took Dad by the hand and said, "Alf, can you still hear me?"

He nodded. He couldn't talk.

"When you get over there, will you tell Jode (short for Joseph) that I've lived over here alone long enough. I'd like to come and be with him. You be sure to tell him."

Dad nodded that he would.

Now I started rounding up the family. I couldn't get some of the boys.

By the time the beet toppers got there, Dad was gone. That was a pretty big blow. This was the patriarch of the clan.

As I sat there and watched my Dad die, I remember that he asked for my Mother. Dad just kept a looking for someone. Mother just couldn't face it.

Finally someone suggested that Mother go in by him because he was looking for someone. She went in and sat down by the side of him and took a hold of his hand and began to cry. He knew where she was and he just eased away. A man who had raised six boys and one girl.

We had lost Dad--we lost the shepard of the flock. He could tell us how to run the farm and what to plant. He told us how to work it so it grew better. It seemed to me that the crops didn't grow as good without his direction.

At the time of Dad's death, Mae, Owen, Aerial and Horace were married. Howard, Reed, and I were not. Neither our Dad or Mother has met, in this world, our partners.

Dad had sold his property to his bride some years before he died. All Mother had to do was record the deed for "love, affection, and a dollar." So the property ended up all Mother's.

Reed's Mission

As we went on a little to the winter, they got the farm work done. Reed and Howard hauled beets that year. I was still in school. That winter Reed and Mother got to talking. He said, "Mother, I'd like to go fill a mission."

She said, "That's just exactly the thing to do."

Between Mother, Reed, Howard, and I, we sat around the breakfast
table planning for Reed's mission. Howard and I told Mother and Reed that we would see to it that Reed had his money every month for his mission. The Church recommended $20 a month for a mission.

(Owen was working for Henry Johnson for $30 a month, six days a week, eight to ten hours a day. By the time Reed got back off his mission, he was up to $45 a month. A mission then took half a salary.)

Horace got home from his mission in 1928 so we didn't get another missionary out until 1936. May of 1936 Reed went on a mission. We'd get a milk check, and we saw to it that the first $20 went to Reed. The money went down to Salt Lake and I think they sent it to him in a cashier's check.

The Loss of Mother

After Reed left, another hard blow came. Mother's health got so bad and then we discovered that she haling her it was blood cancer. There was a big growth or swelling on Cora's left side. ling her it was blood cancer. There was a big growth or swelling on Cora's left side. When the docter operated Mother Rawlins hemorrhaged badly. When the doctor saw the condition, he packed her to stop the bleeding and discontinued the operation.)

That summer I'd been house cleaner. She told the older boys that on Saturday, I was to do her things. I had to scrub the house. Mother didn't believe in mopping the house. I got right down on my knees and scrubbed it. I got pretty close to Mother during this time.

I had too many things to do. I'd give up the paper route. There were more things than I could hack.

That fall she said to me, "I'm going to have Howard take me down and leave me at Mae's for a week or so, then you can come and get me. Can you get along?". (Mae was married and lived in Huntsville.)

"Yes, I can get along and go to school. We'll get it done. I'll get up and milk my half of the cow's (six)before I go to school.

Mother got ready to leave. I said, "You haven't felt very good have you?"

"No. I don't feel very good at all, something's got to change. I can't do this

I said, "Dad straightened out his property before he died. Maybe you ought to do something with yours. Whatever you do, don't put my name on it. I'm a teenager and I don't want nobody to bother me."

That day she gave Howard some pretty strict instructions, and I think he lived up to them as far as I know. She deeded the place and sold it to Howard and Reed for "Love, affection and a dollar" with instructions that when Reed got home from his mission they would straighten everything up. She didn't live to that time. I got the blame for that, but as we settled up the affairs we didn't have to give any to an attorney and we didn't get all taxed out of it.

In January of 1937 they operated on Mother and sewed her back up to die. We wired Reed that the operation was a failure and that Mother would die any day. They tried to keep her doped to where she could live. They were giving her enough morphine to put her out. They thought she'd die any day.

Someone had to stay with her in the hospital at least in the daytime. People of the family took turns staying with her in the hospital. Aerial and Dorothy lived out west of Logan. Dorothy came in one day to stay with her. Mother rallied and told Dorothy, "When Merle Hyer comes to get me; you let him in," and she insisted.

Dorothy said, "Yes, we'll do that." She didn't really know if Mother was just delirious and I think maybe she was.

Mother rallied and just raised all kind of fuss. She wanted to come home, so we brought her home in an ambulance. This was in February. That winter it was 30 or 40 degrees below zero every stinking night. Snow was up over the fence posts. One could drive a team and bobsled up right over the fence.

We were milking cows and had calves to feed. Howard and I were just running wild trying to keep up and we brought Mother home.

One night I got home and she said, "You call Bishop Dave Hendricks. Have him bring James Taggart with him and give me a blessing. I've got to get out of this pain. I can't take any more." (We couldn't give her enough morphine to put her out. She just screamed with pain. That cancer of the stomach is the most painful thing.)

I called the Bishop.

When the Bishop came in the door, he said, "Oh my land--she asked for James Taggart and I went right out to the car and went down and got Merle Hyer."

I said, "This is just fine."

Merle said, "Let's go get James Taggart."

I said, "No, it's cold, it's miserable, it's 30 degrees below tonight, this is good enough."

He came in and blessed her that she'd be eased of pain. Then she eased down and quietly slept away. By midnight she was gone.

We had to wire Reed. The telephone service wasn't any good. I don't know what he felt like in the mission field. I got a phone call the next day from Bishop Hendricks. He said that he had to return to call President LeGrande Richards, who was Reed's mission president. He was wondering if he should let Reed come home to his mother's funeral. I told the Bishop that the trains were blocked. It would take him two weeks to get home if he could get there at all. I didn't think he could get here because the Union Pacific coming across Wyoming was snowbound.

I said, "You tell him that the family decision is for him to stay there. We'll handle it here, and he'll handle it there. We'll write him a letter and tell him about the funeral."

Some years ago Reed asked me about that. He said he'd often wondered about it because LeGrande Richards called and said it was the family's decision for him to stay in the mission field.

I told him that I was going to tell him about it, and I'd forgotten to do it. I told him that I was the family. I couldn't figure out anyway for him to get home. I felt he was far better off to remember Mother as she was here before he left on his mission. She had deteriorated so much. Mother was a good sized woman. I don't know that she was excessively big but she was a pretty good sized gal. She weighed less than a hundred pounds when we buried her. She was down to just skin and cancer. To look at her would have haunted you--it would have broke your heart. I felt you were better off out there. I know how hard it was. It wasn't any easier here. If I was wrong, I'm sorry, but then that's just the way it was.

We put Allen (Mae's husband) in line. The six boys carried Dad to his grave November of 1935. The five boys and one son-in-law, Allen Jorgensen, carried Mother to the grave in February of 1937.

That was the toughest course I've ever went through. There's been things in my life since that I don't suppose I could have taken if I had not finally grown up out of this.

I was out of school for a week while we buried Mother, and I'll never forget one kind teacher that I had in American History. I was a junior in high school. Mr. E.B. Olsen lived in Logan. He asked somebody the day of the mid-year exam where I was. Somebody said that I was burying my Mother.

When I went back I asked him if I could make up the test that I missed.

He looked at me and said, "I thought you did just fine on that test. You did just fine."

I thanked him and a few years ago, I met him, and he was an old man. I thanked him again for that. People were real kind to us.

Fifteen months after my Dad's death, I had to lay my Mother to the side of my Dad. I was a seventeen year old boy. I used to get so lonesome and so homesick, that I'd go off my myself and sit down and bawl like a little kid. Then I'd get over it. I had to cook my own breakfast, put up my own lunch, eat my own supper and keep the house warm.

I guess I owe an apology to Aunt Em. She was Mother's older sister. Aunt Em, Aunt Albie, and Aunt Esther came to Mother's funeral. They lived in St. Anthony. Aunt Em was alone. Her husband had been dead for several years. She'd never had any kids of her own. She decided she ought to stay here and raise me. That was the last thing I wanted on this earth. My mother had never been very strict with me, neither had Dad. They trusted me, and, by golly, I didn't want to have to put up with her. So I asked Aunt Esther to take Aunt Em home with her and she did. Years later, I've kind of felt a little bad about the way I did it, but I was sure glad that she went.

I was a seventeen year old kid that was scared of the dark, and I had to grow up real fast.

But later he said, "Lin, I'd stop an let you out of the car to go to the house, and the house was probably going to be cold. There were no lights in the house many times. I thought to myself, my land, there he goes. There's nobody to check on him to see whether he's there. He said he couldn't understand that.

That's quite a way to grow up, but in the spring, I'd kind of got used to it. I never let anybody see my weepings and wailings. I did that alone, and sometimes I gave myself a pretty stern speech to get myself out of the dumps. I continued on to Church.

There were a lot of things I didn't have at home to come to. I had to make it where I went. I thought I'd missed a dad. Those people that had had their parents around all their life, that they could go to and have counsel with I kind of envied.

They always had a youth give a talk to mothers on Mother's Day. It fell my lot. The night before they had the June day midnight dance. I came home from that midnight dance, milked the cows, had a bath, and got ready to go to Church. Gwendolyn Hogan was playing the piano right behind me. She had been to the same dance I had. I said, "Are you wide awake?" She said, "No." I said you've got to play that piano to keep me awake so I don't miss my turn at the pulpit.

From the time my Mother died, they always had me talk in Church on Mother's Day. I had a good Mother. I had a good Dad, and I hoped I'd honored them in all my doings. From then until I'd fulfilled a mission or was married they always had me talk on Mother's day.
In 1938, Reed came home from his mission just ahead of Mother's Day. I had to give a part on that program as usual. I'd prepared one speech; Reed told me it was the wrong talk and he prepared one for me. I thought that was kind of him, but I got up there and gave my own anyway. I seen him just as I set down. He shook his fist, and I could read his lips. He said, "You've give the wrong talk." When I came down off the stand, here come Sister Drury to weep on my shoulder about the fact that my Mother was gone. (Sister Drury couldn't figure me out living down hbout the fact that my Mother was gone. (Sister Drury couldn't figure me out living down here, no parents to get me to Church, and I was still there.) Reed got there just in time; I grabbed him (I was the biggest) and drug him over there and she put here arms around his neck. So she wept on his shoulder and told him that speech. I had heard that speech two different times. I didn't need to hear it again. Then I came on home and was cooking dinner when he got here. He was almost too mad to eat his dinner.

Bachelor Days

After Reed got home from his mission, Howard, Reed, and I were living at home. We washed the dishes before we ate instead of after. One Sunday we'd come home from Church--one was washing dishes, another was cooking dinner, and I was sweeping the floor. I let out a war hoop because I saw coming up the path Laura Packer (I don't know what her married name is) and her husband carrying their little girl. This was the girl that Reed left behind when he went on his mission. I said, "Reed, you've got to stall her while we get a little bit of law and order in the house before you let her in." By golly, we just can't let her in yet. You go out there and do what you can do; keep her back as long as you can. Then you come in."

We got the doors open; we got the windows open; we got it a little bit more respectable, but not much. Then Laura came in. I used to tease Reed about this. She knew Dad was dead but she didn't know Mother was.

Years later when I was in the Temple the day Glen got his endowments before he left on his mission, there was Laura. She walked up and said, "Lin, is this your son?"

"Yes, Laura, this is my second boy. He's going to England on a mission. I have a boy in Canada now on a mission." Then I went around and got a hold of her arm. I said, "Now, Glen, do you remember me telling you the story of three old bachelors living at home. One came home from a mission, and they'd just come from Church. One was sweeping the floor, one was washing the dishes, and another one cooking the dinner and here come Reed's old girlfriend with her husband and their little girl. Old Laura's black eyes just sparkled and thank goodness I had a hold of her arm.

She said, "I could of killed him."

I said, "Who, Reed?"

"No, not Reed. That was my husband's idea, not mine. I wouldn't have come."

"Oh you've ruined my story. For twenty-five years I've teased Reed that he wrote to you even though you were married."

"He never wrote me one letter while he was on his mission."

"Oh dear, well you've ruined my story." I've met Laura a time or two and I've never forgot that. I thought an awful lot of her. She was a real fine gal.

I'd gone to college the year of 1938-39. I hadn't done too good in school. I was down there and got overloaded.

Preparing for a Mission

As the spring of 1939 rolled around I said to Howard and Reed one day. "Well brethren, it's time for me to fill a mission. I'll go this fall."

Howard said, "Well, I want to fill a mission."

It never dawned on me about Howard going on a mission. I said, "Why haven't you gone?"

"Well, I should have went when Edis went."

"Why didn't you?"

"Nobody ever asked me."

Reed said, "You mean the bishop has never asked you to go on a mission."

"No."

Then Reed said, "Tomorrow, you and I will go see the Bishop, and one of us will ask him about your going on a mission. If you don't want to do it, I will.

Good land, Howard was 30 years old, I believe. He should have gone ten years before. The family could have financed him just as easy then as any other time.

I said, "Now if you want to go, then you get out of here."

He said, "I thought I'd go in the fall.

"No you're not, you're going now, because I've waited all my life to go on a mission and that means I'll have to wait two more years. There are a few mad men tramping around Europe wanting to fight. We could get in a war and all of us miss our missions. Now you get out of here."

They came home the next night. Reed said, "We've got half his papers filled out today." He headed right on his mission, I think in May of 1939.

In the summer of 1940, President Roosevelt had asked that every young man that was available come in and spend a year in the army. There was quite a discussion between the kids around. The Bishop talked to me about going on a mission. He said, "Do you need to wait until Howard gets home?"

I said, "I'll figure that out and let you know." So we struggled around here with everything we had. Howard had been out a year and a half. I went up and told the Bishop that I'd go anytime after the first of December. He sent the papers in, and they sent me a call to go to the Southern States the 6th of January 1941.

We topped beets, and I'd been an assistant cow tester. I'd made a little money. I run around here all year trying to gather up some money. We'd like to have never got through getting the beets all off. The month of October we topped beets, and it snowed on us every day. To get the trucks out of the field, we'd hook the cat on it and pull with six head of hoses. It was wet, cold, and miserable all fall. In November it straightened out and we topped beets most of November and finally got it done.

Saul Hyer called me up. He was the first counselor in the Stake Presidency. (He lived down there where Bryce Gilbert lives.) He said, "Lin, I'd like you to haul pulp for me on Monday, Wednesday and Saturday." So I'd work for him those days a week. Mel Gilbert seen me hauling pulp. He said, "What are you doing?"

"I'm hauling pulp."

"Do you haul every day?"

"No, just about every other day."

"The days you don't haul pulp for him, come haul pulp for me."

I would take a team and a big old beet rack and wagon and go down and shovel on five ton of pulp with a good old scoop shovel. Mel's team would pull. I didn't have any trouble with Mel's team. but Saul Hyer's team, Cap and Turk, was another story. Turk would give you everything he had. Cap would pull hard depending on how much fear he had. He was the biggest horse, but he was the biggest nuisance too. It was a petty good team when it got right down to pulling the load. Saul would go down on his day and get three ton of pulp. When I'd show up there the next morning, he'd say, "Well, I didn't get quite enough, would you get five ton of pulp and bring it home?" The reason he never got five ton is he couldn't get out. He'd whoop and holler and yell but he couldn't get out.

I'd been raised to be a teamster. My father and brothers were good horsemen. We had good horses; we'd hook on a load, and get out.

One day that Cap quit on me. So I went and got a piece of chain two feet long. I got around to his side and got a hold of his bits and bridle with one hand. I beat that son-of-a-gun on the ribs with that chain and I hollered Cap and a few other words that I was quite fluent with. (I could cuss real bad. I always thought you had to cuss a more trouble with him.

Every day Saul said, "Gosh, you've got a nice load of pulp." He always said, "I'll come help you, but he never got there." I was always grateful he didn't. Cause I'd back down in that pulp silo. It was on an incline and slick. The horses had to be shod good, and then I'd start out. I'd take my big old sheepskin coat off and hang it on the horses mane to keep the coat warm. I'd roll up my sleeve and start shoveling pulp. On Saturday's I had to get two loads, One load to feed for Saturday, then feed it, then get another load to feed for Sunday.

One Saturday I pulled down in there for, a second load. Clarence Wiser, a fine man, who wore a great big old fur coat was there. He had rheumatism quite bad and a lot of problems, I knew him but didn't know a lot about him. There he had great big old mittens on, a great big old fur cap, and an old fur coat. He was trying to get a load of pulp. He'd throw on three or four shovels full, then he'd swing his arm. I backed down in there aside of him, put the sideboard down, took my coat off; Polled up my sleeves, pulled me aside of him, put the sideboard down, took my coat off; Polled up my sleeves, pulled my ear pads up, bent over and went to work with that shovel. Boy, there was a cold wind out of the north. The pulp was to the north of the wagon and there was a little steam coming off that pulp. I'd get right down between the wagon and the pulp.

Clarence would say, "Brother Rawlins, put on your coat, you'll freeze."

"Good land, Clarence, take your coat off and go to work. Work up a sweat, it'll cure all your afflictions," I badgered him.

"Ah," he said, "put on your coat."

Well I got my five ton on. I put up the sideboard and finished my load.

He was still trying to get that couple of ton of pulp. I said, "Well, I'd help you Clarence, but I gotta go. I've got to get this home. I've got a date with a girl, and I just don't really want to miss it."

"Oh, I'll make it," he said,

I was glad he had faith.

One Thursday I had an appointment to meet with the Stake Presidency to see about going on a mission. Earlier in the day, I had five ton of pulp on that wagon, and I started out of the pit and,was coming out all right. Right then Saul Hyer walked about the end of that pit. That Cap horse seen him and just throwed up his head and quit and started to back down. As I started to back down into that silo, Saul run around and throwed a big block behind that wheel. I said, "Let me back down."

"No, I won't leave you in trouble. I'll go and get someone to hook onto you."

"No, you won't. You just stand there and be quiet for a minute, and we'll get out."

So he stood there and didn't say anymore. That horse had turned his head right into the other horse so he could watch me, I got my lines straightened around. I didn't have a whip, but I could use the end of the line. I could raise a welt on a horse with the end of a line. I sat there and I sat there and I sat there. That horse throwed his head around straight and up, and I hit him with the end of that line and screamed at him. I talked to that horse just like the day I pretty near beat him half to death with a chain. I actually forgot Saul was there. We went right out and right up over the scales. I could hardly stop while they weighed.

Saul walked up to the side of the wagon and said, "I just can't understand the horse pulled with that kind of language."

Well I was embarrassed and I said, "Well, you drove him".

"I never talked to him that way."

I come on home, unhooked off the load of pulp and put the team in the barn, unharnessed them, got them ready for the night and fed them. I went home and helped Reed chore and had a bath.

I said, "Reed, I guess my mission's all off."

I told him about it, and I said, "I've got to go and face that Stake Presidency tonight. Maybe there's no sense going. I guess I blew it."

"Ah" he said, I believe I'd go.

So I got over there at the appointed hour and went into the old stake office which was right up in the middle of Richmond south of where the post office is now. I went in there and President Pond said, "Lindsay Rawlins, Alf Rawlins' boy. Which one?"

"Last one."

"Well, by gosh, don't you have a brother on a mission."

"Ya."

"President Hyer, doesn't Lindsay come from your ward?"

"Ya, he does. In fact he works for me; he hauls my pulp."

My heart just sank.

"Well, what do you think, President Hyer, about him going on a mission?"

"My, he's ready to go."

That's all he said.

President Pond said, "That's good enough for me. I'll sign this and we'll just ship this right out and he can go any time in December."

I got the call back a little later. I've often thought about that.

I told that story to Clem Rawlins just laughed. "All you did to Saul was remind Saul of when he was your age because that's the way he acted. He had language just like that before he went on a mission. Saul Hyer was one of the best speakers we ever had. He knew what he was doing. You just reminded him of himself."

I got ready to go. I got enough money of my own stacked up. I'd worked and bought me a couple of cows on my own. I wanted to do it myself pretty much. Reed told me, "I'll milk them, and I'll send you the money." Those two cows would have done my mission. But one of them died just as I was getting ready to go and the other one just after I got out there. I'd have been ahead had I taken the money. Twenty-five bucks a month would do me. I had $250 in those two cows. That was a lot of money back in those days. If I'd of had $250 and another $100 I'd have been okay. Mel Gilbert owed me some money. I'd been working for him and he was sending it to me by the month which got me Howard and I were both on a mission during January, February and March. Howard came home in April, I believe. His companion died and Howard brought him home.

Through us three missionaries trying to get ourselves on a mission, we almost went broke. Reed often said that if we hadn't went on missions we would have went broke and I believe that that's right.

I grew up with real bad health problems. When I was 13 years old, they discovered I had gall stones. That thing aggravated to the point I had ulcers before I got done with it. I sympathized with Mark on his mission because his health wasn't very good; neither was mine.

I've often said that I didn't have the health; I didn't have the time; I didn't have the money, but I thank the Lord that I went on a mission because I learned the gospel. I received a testimony that God lives and that Jesus is the Christ and that's where I found it--It was on my mission.

My Mission Farewell

I got my mission call to go to the mission home on January 6, 1941. They had my farewell along in December. As I went up and sat down on that stand I sat on the north seat from the rostrum. After the opening song, I felt my Father's hands come right down on top of my head, and they stayed right there until I got up to talk. I was a little bit confused, and I didn't dare turn around and look back- yet I hadn't been scared of anything for a long time. When I got up to talk, those hands left me and I've never felt them since.

I'd been running around here with about three girls at the same time. I brought a girl from Glenco down to my farewell--real fine gal. I talked to her. I really didn't want to get anything serious. I had planned for a long time to go on a mission. I thought that I wanted a mission before I got serious. She sat down in the audience betweeny.)

Dow Lewis, first counselor, was the member of the bishopric that was conducting the farewell. He got up and said, "This boy's leaving a fine pretty young wife home."

Bishop Hendrick said, "He's not married."

Dow went red and apologized to me and the girl and everybody. It fouled him up. Now Dow sometimes gave a right good speech, but that wasn't one of them. When Dow went on a mission he was a married man which was common in his day.

I went through the temple on the 21st of December for the first time. I should have gone a little earlier and gone a few more times; I would have known more about it. There were a lot of questions in my mind about the Temple ceremony, and I was many years hunting out the answers. It seemed I couldn't ask anybody, nobody would tell you. I didn't know where to ask or who to ask. I've recommended that my own kids go through early. I've carried the policy with my own kids to go in there and sit there in the Temple and try to explain all I know about it--it doesn't take long, but it takes out some of the unknown.

Beginning My Mission

I entered the mission home and spent two weeks there. I came home for the weekend. Bill Andreason from Preston had his car there, and he came home for the weekend. I came home and spent that last weekend here. The next week I went back, then on Wednesday I headed for the mission field.

I'd made arrangements to stop off at Independence, Missouri and spend a night with Howard who was on his mission in that area. He was not living in the fort nor the jail but in the city of Levenworth, Kansas. I went up not living in the fort nor the jail but in the city of Levenworth, Kansas. I went up and stayed overnight with him. I got up the next day and headed for Atlanta, Georgia. I got to Atlanta on my birthday, the 19th of January 1941; the day I turned 21 years of age. I met Blaine Hancey from Hyde Park in the mission office. (I remembered him from school. He was a year or so younger than I was.)

They shipped me right on to Mobile, Alabama. I got down there at 4:00 in the morning. Somebody met me at the train and took me over to the Branch President's place, President Moore. The only place available was right on the couch. That was better than any train seat I'd ever seen.

There was a mission district conference. The district president, Ned Woodruff from Pincher Creek, Alberta, Canada, was being released and going home. A man by the name of George F. Badowin was being made the district president. He was a married man from Berkeley, California. (He'd been out about a year, and he was ten years older than I was with a wife and a couple of kids down in California. He had a little fur store down there. His wife was running that and supporting him on a mission. He was a convert to the Church when he was 18 years old. He'd been a Catholic all his life.)

He and Ned wondered what to do. They had an Elder, John G. Knutson from Salt Lake. He had been eighteen months in South Africa. Then they closed the mission because of the war in Europe and shipped him to the Southern States for his last six months. He just didn't work; I don't think he'd ever worked before his mission. I guess he worked after. He wouldn't work with me. They said, "Let's give him this green country hayseed to inspire him."

Well years later at a mission reunion in Salt Lake, I saw Ned Woodruff standing there with his wife. I walked up and took a hold of Ned Woodruff and I said, "Ned Woodruff."

He said, "Yes, but I can't place you."

"You'd better place me--you son of a gun. I'm the green country kid that you recommended they put with Elder John G. Knutson to inspire him."

Ned just about sank. He said, "As I've thought about that over the years, I hoped I would never see you. Did he ever work?"

"Not while I was with him."

They sent us to Greenville, Alabama. By golly, for a kid that had just gone on a dead run day and night to get on a mission and to get with a companion who would go to bed at sundown and at 9:00 in the morning he still had a pillow over his head and was still asleep, it just about drove me crazy literally. That's when I wrote to Reed and told him he'd lied to me about a mission being the happiest two years of his life. He wrote a letter back to me that the smoke just coiled out of.

Elder Boyer and Elder Christoferrson were country elders and they'd stopped to see us. I thought that country elder looked life the thing to do. Those guys at least did something. I complained a little to Elder Boyer and asked him what to do and asked if he had any suggestions. He just shook his head. I said that I'd just about read all the standard works of the Church while he'd slept and I noticed when we went somewhere and met people that they'd ask questions, and I'd give the answers. He didn't know and that was kind of sad. I was with him until about the first of March. Then they transferred me to Montgomery, Alabama.

Up in Montgomery, Elder Brown from Roy, Utah and Clare Hull from Whitney were companions. They traded places with us and Clare went with Knutson. (I'd seen Clare before though I didn't know him, but I got well acquainted with him there.) I should of stayed there. I shouldn't have done that. About the first of April, they let Elder Knutson come home, and I was stuck with Brown. Brown wasn't any better.

This was my admission to missionary work. Two elders that didn't know stickum. They didn't know the gospel and didn't want to learn. Elder Brown knew a little bit but not much. The only thing he wanted to do was go to the 10 cents western shows with Roy Rogers and Gene Autrey. Every afternoon there in Montgomery there was a show. He didn't have very good eyes. I don't know what was the matter with them. Anyway, I discovered that if I'd make him stay there and see it twice, then his eyes would hurt so bad he couldn't see a show for a week.

He'd go tracting in the mornings and he really didn't care if he worked. He'd write to President Whitaker every week for a release then President Whitaker would write and bawl him out. "I'll give you a dishonorable release but I won't give you an honorable release."

Well Brown thought he'd done enough work for an honorable release.

Finally I wrote to President Whitaker and said, "President, in no way do I want to tell you how to run your mission or tend your missionaries, but I know my companion writes at least every week for a release. He gets another rebuke from you then he's so mad and ornery I can hardly live with him. I'd like to suggest you either do something about it or at least ignore him." From that day till the end he never wrote Elder Brown a letter--not once. Elder Brown would write and ask why he didn't answer his letters. He'd get after me and ask, "Why doesn't he answer me?"

"I don't know. Write and ask him."

I could have went with Christofferson when Boyer went home. Boyer went home in April and Knutson went home. So they put Hull and Christofferson together. That would have been good duty. I was with Brown and I'd swore I'd never complain again.

While Elder Brown laid and slept in the morning, I studied the gospel. We were tracting in a Church of Christ area. They had just built a new church house. They were trying to get enough money out of there to build that church house. They would follow us and pick up our tracts and that preacher would tear into us. Elder Brown never could defend the church. Oh that bothered me, and I didn't know enough. He'd tear us apart till you wouldn't believe it. I got to where I was almost too scared to go tracting.

We had district conference in the middle of April down in Magnolia, Alabama. Oh it was pretty country, a pretty time, a moonlit night. For that meeting Saturday night I had a list of questions. I was asking questions, and President Whitaker was answering them. Finally he said, "Hey, now wait a minute. Everybody needs to go to bed but me and you. Let's dismiss and I'll sit right there on that table with you until you're satisfied." He knew what I was up against. Nobody, nobody had ever put up with Elder Brown longer than six weeks. I'd had him six months, and I had to defend the Church. When he got through with me and got me straightened out, then I could handle those Church of Christ preachers. I went back and I could stand just about toe to toe with them if they'd tangle with us.

One day one of their members gave me some literature. That was the best thing they ever did. I said, "I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll trade you literature and promise to read every bit of yours." Gosh, she loaded me down. Going home Elder Brown said, "Why don't you throw that junk away?"

"Not till I've read it thoroughly. I need to know what they've got and what they're talking about!" By the next morning, I had it all digested. I then knew what I needed to know. From then on the Church of Christ preachers or none of the rest of them would tangle with me. They would say, "Good morning Elder, leave me alone."

The greatest joy I believe a Protestant preacher has is him. I found that out, but Elder Brown never got to that point.

We were a coming on into that July, and I was the only Elder that had ever worked with Elder Brown that long. Hull was with him the longest of anybody except me.

The branch president started coming to me for information. He'd ask Elder Brown a question and he didn't know, then I would answer. I may not have been too good of a diplomat and I kind of regretted this part of the story. I'll tell you this one for information, but I regret this part of it. When Elder Brown discovered that I had passed him in knowledge an this part of it. When Elder Brown discovered that I had passed him in knowledge and in understanding of the gospel, people would talk to me--they wouldn't talk to him. He was ignorant, he was rude. I was afraid if they would ask him something he didn't know, he'd have a speech that would just turn everybody off. He taught it negatively, and he didn't really care. I'd get in a conversation, and he'd break it up intentionally. He didn't want people talking to me, he turned just as bitter as bitter could be.

I said, "Now look Elder, don't do that. Don't you embarrass me anymore." When I told Elder Brown not to chip in on me and embarrass me again, he said, "I'm the senior Elder and I'll do this anyway I want to do it."

At that I said, "Now look, the very next time you embarrass me again and split up my conversation, I'll take you outside of town and beat the tar out of you. Then I'll bring you back in and bandage you up, but I won't go through this again. All these months I've labored with you, and I've put up with your nonsense but I can't take any more of this."

He just boldly said, "I'm the senior Elder, and I'll do anything I want. You can't whip me."

At that I took off my glasses, took off my coat, took off my tie, rolled up my sleeves and reached over and took a hold of him. I was ready to smack him one, and he backed off.

He said, "I'll report you to the mission president."

"Conference is coming up in about a month, and I wish you would. You don't dare tell President Whitaker."

I was always glad I didn't hit him, but I was ready to.

Now I'll enter a little bit here on the bright side. The first three months I was with him, we carried a record player and a bunch of records called the Fullness of Times. We never taught a lesson. We always played that. I always told him I didn't know whether we were Jehovah's Witnesses or what we were. But I went along with it and I learned an awful lot off those records. They were published in the latter part of the 1930's. They told the story of the restoration of the gospel and all about it. They were real good.

Our relationship had deteriorated between him and I where we didn't do much. I was glad when conference came. Conference came and went, and I didn't say anything about it. I would have squawked. This was in July and he wasn't going home till the next January or February.

He'd been out about a year longer than I had. He didn't know enough to even give a decent report home. It was kind of sad. I got more work out of him than anyone else ever got, but I wasn't doing any good there.

A day or two after conference I thought well I'm stuck here another three months, I better start figuring out what to do. I was sitting there one morning, and I was trying to calm things down a little bit. In walked the district president, George Badowin and his companion. He said, "Elder Brown, take my companion and go out on your regular tracting area. I'll take Elder Rawlins and we'll go tract somewhere else."

We all lit out and I said to Badowin, "Where are we going?"

He said, "As soon as those guys are out of sight, we're going back to the apartment. I need to talk to you."

When we got back to the apartment, Elder Badowin said to me, "What's really going on here?"

I said, "Well, it's kind of sad. I regret what's happened." I told him the story of what happened and how it had come about gradually. I said, "I regret that. But have you ever went tracting with him?

"No, I'll take your word for it. I haven't slept about you. I've worried about you for two weeks. When we got to conference, I met in a special meeting with President Whitaker.

President Whitaker said,- "President Badowin, I just don't understand what real sin Elder Rawlins has committed, but six months with Elder Brown ought to cover any sin a man would commit. Nobody else has ever stayed with him that long, and he hasn't complained. Haven't you got a conscience, can't you move him, he's entitled to something else."

President Badowin said, "Well, President Whitaker, he's the only missionary that's ever got any work out of Brown.''

"I know that but then I can't help that. I can't sacrifice Elder Rawlins all his mission. I can't do that. You've got to figure out something."

I'd had a siege of colitis about the first of July. I vomited till I vomited blood. I guess that's when my ulcer started, and I wasn't very well.

The last six months before I went on my mission, I hadn't had any gall stone troubles. I hadn't had any gall stone troubles the first six months of my mission, and I felt pretty good but about this time my health started going down.

So they put me in the country. I survived pretty good as a country Elder. Badowin left his companion with Brown, and I went with him to tour the district. We'd preach every night. All that studying I had done in Montgomery and in Greenville was starting to pay off. Now was the time to preach; now I had enough experience and studying done that I could preach.

I was with Elder Badowin about a month. Then they split Elder Hull and Elder Christofferson up, and I went in an old 1930 Dodge with Clair Hull sometime in August. We had a fourth--the southwest quarter--of the state of Alabama to cover.

This six months was the joy of my mission. Elder Hull and I had a good reputation among missionaries. We were both country kids, and we worked hard. Here's where I learned to preach, and we preached. We were called in to administer to the sick. We averaged cottage meetings every night. When we came to branches for the weekend, the branch presidents always wanted us to speak. This is where we learned to preach, and I got pretty fiery. I'm not bragging; I'm just telling fact.

I could get on a street corner, and I could hold an audience. That's the only place on earth that I know of that if one gets up to preach and they don't like what you're saying, they'll just walk off and leave. If that ever happens, the next time you get up to preach, you'll do a better job of it.

Elder Hull and I had some real fine experiences. We went to a little town one Saturday afternoon to hold a street meeting. We generally held one every Saturday afternoon. That was the standard rule in Alabama country. People came to town on Saturday, and they liked preaching. We took a man with us, a member of the church there. I've forgotten his name now. He'd been in the church a year or so. He hadn't been to one of our street meetings and he wanted to go. Three preachers ganged up on us. They thought we were a couple of hayseeds.

Elder Hull was conducting the meeting. He was pretty good on scriptures and that was the best day he ever had. We both preached and this member of the church then preached. Then we opened it up for discussion. The cops had been real fine. They'd blocked the road. We estimated we had somewhere between two and three hundred people there. The meeting started about 1:00 p.m. and we never got thleaning against the telephone pole. If he agreed to what we said, everybody agreed with him. In case he didn't understand the scriptures, I walked over by him with the Bible. Elder Hull stood there without anything in his hand. He quoted scripture, and he quoted where it was. I stood over by this man, and I let him read the scriptures that Hull was quoting to make sure that Hull quoted it right and in the proper order.

The member of the Church was standing around stomping his feet together, he wanted to say something but he didn't know what to say. He wanted to get in on it, he was all wound up. So he asked these preachers, "Do you take up a collection in your Church?" And one preacher said, "I sure do."

The member of the Church said, "Aren't you afraid to? Don't you know what the Savior did to the money changers in the Temple."

The preacher said, "Ya, but that was in the house of the Lord."

The member said, "Where in the world do you preach?"

That whole audience just roared. There was a little nonsense going on.

Finally the preacher said, "And the Bible says. . .a little nonsense going on.

Finally the preacher said, "And the Bible says. . .

The man in the striped overalls said, "Hey, preacher, these boys are quoting where in the Bible, you either quote where or shut up."

The preacher said, "I don't remember for sure where it is."

"All right then don't say it."

I've often wondered where that man came from because all at once I discovered him there. When the meeting was over, he was gone. I never thought anything about that until a few years ago, and I wondered if he was one of the three Nephites. He was sure a welcomed man at that meeting.

We were in a county that the missionaries hadn't done much. A couple of missionaries had been tarred and feathered about the turn of the century, and we were the first ones back in there. That county hadn't had the gospel for many years.

One time we went to Brother Roberts' place over on the west side of Alabama in Butler county. He said, "Elders, would you stay with us?"

I said, "Gosh, we'd be glad to."

Clair was the senior, but he never exercised any great control. We just worked together. I never spent much time of my mission as a senior companion. I was always on some kind of an assignment except with Hull. We just got along fine.

He said, "There's a man down the road here that is preaching agin' the Church. I think he was baptized as a boy, but I can't prove that. His wife's a member and his mother-in-law's a member. He's turned out to be a Pentecostal preacher, preaching again' the Church. Would you Elders go with me and we'll go down there tonight and see him."

Hull looked at me and said, "What do you think?"

"Well maybe we ought to talk to Sister Roberts and bypass supper. I wouldn't mind facing the devil, but I've got to be ready.'

We didn't have supper that night; we went fasting. They held that meeting in a big old building. I imagine there was somewhere around a hundred people there. The building was chuck full. They stomped their feet; they sang those old sad songs then they got down to pray--everybody but us two Elders and the Roberts' family, Brother and Sister Roberts and their girl. We didn't get down to pray with them. They prayed and they prayed and they prayed. They went on and on. They talked to the Lord. They used the name of the Lord, they sounded like someone had hit their finger with a hammer. I never heard anything so disgusting in all my life. They finally quit and got up .

The preacher said, "You know, it's been a long time since I heard two Mormon Elders preach. We've got two with us here tonight. I've met this boy somewhere before and he turned to me. (I don't know where, when, how or why but he'd never met me before in his life, and I don't know who he had me confused with.) He said, "We'll turn the preaching over to these two Mormon Elders.

Elder Hull looked at me and got up first. He'd get going and they'd say, "Amen, brother. That's the Bible." and that would befuddle him and confuse him. He wasn't used to that. He'd shift feet and change subjects. He crucified every talk. (Now if he reads this story, he might choke me.) He talked on every subject that he'd ever talked on and every one he'd ever heard me talk on.

I could see what he was a doing, so I reached down in my pocket and brought out a talk that I about had all laid out in form that he'd never heard me give. I was glad I had that one. The "Amen's" didn't bother me. This preacher afterwards invited us to stay at his home one night.

I knew a couple of lady missionaries, Afton Hyatt and Bernice Clifton. Bernice Clifton was from Savannah, Georgia. Afton Hyatt from Payson. (It was her younger sister that Peck (Clair Hull's nickname) ended up marrying.) They wanted to go to a street meeting and those two gals were real beautiful singers. Now Peck and I didn't sing very good. We sang a little loud, but we didn't sing very good. In fact Peck and I were together one day on a street meeting singing and somebody came along and dropped two bits in one of our hats that was laying there on the curb. What music there was died at that point, and I believe we were overpaid.

During this time is where I learned to enjoy my mission. Oh, to preach and to be able to hold an audience--I got to where I thoroughly enjoyed it. I never got up to do that without some fear and trembling, but I got to where I could hold an audience. We preached pretty near every day--win, lose or draw--we stayed with it.

We went down to a country town to the west of Mobile. We were holding a cottage meeting there one night, and I was telling those Holy Roller people (they were all Pentecostal) of how the Holy Ghost works. The way they were doing it was wrong, and I went right after it and they were listening. A dang dog right there aside of the door took a fit. It went through that house a carrying on. (They didn't vaccinate dogs in those days. If it took a fit and didn't come out of it, they'd shoot it.) I got the door shut and left him outside. When I came back to preaching, there was my audience standing on the chairs, standing on the tables, standing on the sofa just a waving their hands and shouting "Alleluia." I turned the meeting back to Elder Hull. He dismissed the meeting, and he quit. There was just no way--we'd lost -all we had. I never did really forget that one.

Along that winter, President Badowin said to me, "I'm going to split you and Hull up. You've enjoyed one another long enough. Elder Widgell has been out a little longer than you have, and he's always been a junior. (Of course I'd always been a junior too.) The Elders he's had have dominated him."

He was a good boy, but he hadn't been to school very far; he couldn't read very good, and he never got the gospel straight. He'd get up to preach, and he'd get it all tangled up. When he got through neither him, nor the audience, nor the Lord, nor anybody else knew what he'd said.

President Badowin said, "I'd like you to go junior under Widgell and go over to Butler County on foot and see what you can do with him. (Butler County used to be all Mormons.)

Ole Hull tore into Badowin till Badowin cried. He said, "All the things you've put Rawlins through you at least ought to make him senior to old Widgell he can do more with Widgell as a senior."

Badowin came back to me with tears in his eyes. He said, "It took all I had to ask you to do this, and Elder Hull tore right into me in your defense."

I said, "President Badowin, these last six months have been a joy and satisfaction to me. My health is fair. I can give you a pretty good day's work. I've been having some trouble with a mixture of gallstones and ulcers. I'll go, don't worry about it. I'll try and keep Widgell out of as much trouble as I can. I'll do what I can for him.

Badowin was getting about ready to go home. That was about his last assignment. I think that's the last I saw him. He was replaced soon afterwards and headed home to Berkeley, California.

So Hull took us over there and dumped us off. There was a Croaker family there. We had part of our stuff there and part of our stuff down in the other end of the county.

We started down through that county. I used to preach to old Widgell every night or more. That's where I learned to be a diplomat a little bit to get past him. We'd go up on a door to tract, and I was tired; I didn't feel too good. I'd go back over and sit down when it was his door to take and sit down on the porch and let him try. All those people would tear him apart- good land, he'd been out fifteen months. They'd tear him apart, and I'd just sit there let them do it, I'd take a door, and he'd try to help me. I finally caught on to what he was doing, and I said, "When I take a door, keep your mouth shut will you."

He said, "Ya."

Then he'd talk to me and say, "Why don't you help me?"

"What do you mean help you? This is treatment you should of had in the first months of your mission. You'll never learn that any other way. it. I had to learn it that way. everybody has to do that.

Every night when I it. I had to learn it that way. everybody has to do that.

Every night when I would go to bed, I'd go to sleep with him bawling me out about my preaching. That went on for a week or two--seemed like a month. I never said anything. Finally one day he said, "I guess I better quit bawling you out about your preaching."

I said, "Now that you've brought the subject up, why have you? You stand up there to preach and you teeter back and forth and you wind that arm around and you never say much. You don't hold your audience; you don't get the gospel out in true form. I hold that audience; I match my preaching with anybody in the district.; Why have you bawled me out every night?"

He said, "I thought that was the job of a senior Elder."

I guess in that 15 months of his mission, he'd never gone to bed but what one of those senior Elders hadn't bawled him out about what he'd been doing.

I said, "Oh dear, is that what they've done to you?

"Yes."

I said, "All right, call it off. That's not the way Hull and I worked together."

"I kind of envied the way you and Hull worked together."

One time we were up to the north end of the county and started down through. We got into Butler and got on the train. I was tired of walking. We went to a little logging town that was set out in the woods. As we got off the train there, we met a young man somewhere near our age on the street and introduced ourselves to him. We said that we'd like to find the custodian of the school house because we'd like to preach in it.

He said, "I'm sure you can get it, my father's in charge.

"We'd like to talk to your father."

"I'd be pleased to let you meet him. Come with me."

So we followed him down the street, and he turned into a place with a little picket gate. His dad was talking there to someone.

He said, "Dad these are a couple of Mormon Elders."

The ole man turned and said, "What do you want?

"We'd like to make arrangements to use your schoolhouse to preach in it tonight."

"You leave town." Then he flew into a rage about Joe Smith and about us Mormons. "Now you get out of town."

"Well, we've come a long way to tell you a story. If you don't want to hear it, we won't stay."

"That's right. You won't stay, now you leave."

"Well, if we're not welcome here that's what we'll do." and we started down that dirt road. They didn't have a culvert, those big ole logging trucks could go most anywhere. I remember there was a little stream of water running down that dirt road. As I jumped that ditch I said to Elder Widgell. "I hope the Lord doesn't hold that again' that man because he doesn't really know what he's doing."

We went on down the road and stopped to a man's place. It was a big fine home on the west side of the road. We walked up and knocked on the door and a fine middle aged lady came to the door. I told her who we were.

She said, "Gosh, I'm a Mormon."

"I didn't know we had any here."

"Yes, most of these people are Mormons. We haven't seen missionaries in thirty years. The last missionary that was through here was Elder Joe Biggs of Franklin, Idaho."

"I've met Joe Biggs, he lived just across the valley from me."

"You boys look a little tired. Have you had your dinner."

"No, I could use a drink of water.

"I'll give you a drink of water. Sit there on the big old swing in the shade; it's cool. I'll go out in the field and talk to my husband. Don't leave while I'm gone."

So she went out and talked to here husband a few minutes then she and her husband came in. Her husband shook my hand and said, "I haven't seen missionaries in thirty years. My wife's a member of the church, I'm not, but we'd be pleased to have you stay here and preach to us. My wife will fix you some dinner. What time would you like to hold preaching tonight?"

"What's the best hour?"

He suggested a time.

"We could scout around and tract this neighborhood."

"No, we have a grapevine that runs through these woods that beats Western Union. I'll pass the word. You boys have a nap this afternoon. We'll fill up the yard with people to preach to, and we'd like you to stay with us tonight.

That was nice of him and we accepted and that's just what we did. We rested that afternoon and that night we went preaching.

(Melba Clayson, Keith Clayson's sister, had sent me her picture. I wrote to her while I was on my mission. I'd cut that picture down and put it in my wallet. In most of the places you would preach. They'd put you in front of the fireplace, and the young girls would flock around you. You couldn't get out. Of course it was against their law to marry someone who had been married so I'd open up my wallet and introduce them to my wife. They'd back off from me just like I was poison. About half the missionaries that were out with me were married and they didn't know the difference. Then I could go right on through the house and outside to where those old boys were out whittling and spitting. They were the ones that invited you to stay. This was quite a standard procedure of mine. (Widgell thought that was terrible.)

They filled up the house and they filled up the yard. I preached loud enough so they could hear me. There wasn't a microphone but they could hear. I'd come a long ways and I wanted them to hear. That was a real nice evening. It was midnight before we got to bed and got all their questions answered. People said, "If you're coming down--come stay with us.'

About three o'clock in the morning I heard the old man up. So I got up, dressed, and went out and sat on the porch with him in the dark waiting for daylight. He sat there and told me he was a member of the Ku Klux Klan and told me a little bit about it. He said, "We're in a minority here. That's how we control the Negro people. They stay in order, we don't have any trouble." Then at the crack of daylight, he hooked up that old mule and went to plow his corn.

That morning we went on down the road--trucks or cars or anything that passed would stop and we'd be asked, "Hey, Elders would you like a ride?"

"We're just tracting down this street."

"Well it's about a mile to the next house. We'll take you to it."

That was the kind of treatment we got all day. That was a little unusual. On down the road there were some people that weren't members of the church who were friends of ours. We used to stop there and preach every time we went through. We stopped there and the lady asked, "Where did you stay last night?"

I told her then asked, "Why?"

"Did you stop in that little logging town?"

"Yes. What's going on? What are you driving at?"

"Did you put a curse on that town as you were driven out of it."

"No, I didn't."

"You didn't shake the dust of your shoes off against it."

"No, what are you talking about?

"Who ordered you out of that town?"

"The man said that he was the sheriff."

"All right. He got on a drunk last night with his friend which is quite usual for most nights. They got in an argument and his friend hit him on the head with the butt end of a shotgun and killed him. The word has passed that whole town and this whole county that he drove you out and you shook the dust of your shoes off again' him."

"He told us to leave; we didn't do the other part."

The thing they were scared of is that just a little bit south of there was a town by the name of St. Stephensville. It was a little logging community. They had a lot of timber there. Back around the turn oand tied them to a pole. They tied their hands together and their feet together, then run a pole between them. They carried them outside of town and laid them in the sun, in the heat, to die. Those kids worked and struggled and finally got untied. I don't know how many hours it took but when they got untied, they shook the dust of their shoes off against that town. Bats inhabited that place when I was there. Peck went down and saw the town, but I never did get there.

So as we walked up and down through that county, we got a real kind reception. Everybody said, "Come in, Elder. Wough that county, we got a real kind reception. Everybody said, "Come in, Elder. We're glad to have you."

Shortly after that Elder Widgell and I went to conference. In Elder Widgell's testimony, he said, "President Whitaker, you have me assigned to an Elder that's a liar."

At that President Whitaker turned to me and said, "What's he talking about?"

I said, "President Whitaker, remember when you were a country Elder down here on a mission. The typical cottage meeting is in a big old hall or room. They put you in front of the fireplace to preach. You have to preach loud enough so all the people in the house and all those in the yard will hear you. The front rows are lined with teenage girls that have worked all summer long in the cotton fields. They've got money to buy a decent outfit and some war paint. (I wish somebody would teach them how to put the paint on. They put it on so thick that if you ever kissed one of those girls you'd die of painter colic. At the end of the meeting, they flock around us. We're the only guys they ever see in a suit, and I can't get out of there. I got to get to the back of the room where the wives and mothers are with the babies. The old men who rule the roost are outside a whittling and a spitting. Those are the guys that invite us to stay. We're on foot and we've got to have an invitation to stay. When I introduce those girls to my wife they just back off like I'm poison. I can get out of there and shake hands with all those old spitters. They say, "Hey preacher, are you going to stop to our place?" That's the way 'we get a place to stay for the next night."

President Whitaker laughed and said, "I wish I would have done that when I was a boy because I was married and it would have been legal."

He turned back to Elder Widgell and said, "Elder Widgell, while you've been with Elder Rawlins have you ever slept out one night under the stars."

"No."

"Have you ever missed a meal?"

"No."

"Don't complain too bad at him. I believe he's doing you a favor. Maybe if that girl will have him when he gets home, it might even be prophecy."

Then Widgell said, "Well, he preaches false doctrine."

President Whitaker turned back and said, "What's he talking about?"

"I don't know, ask him."

So Elder Widgell said, "Well the other night we were staying at a place and the lady was speaking of the Bible. She said that Cain married an ape. Elder Rawlins said that he didn't either. He said the Bible doesn't say that. She asked him where did he get a wife. He pulled out his Pearl of Great Price and told her that it was scripture. He went on to tell that the Pearl of Great Price said that he took his brother's daughter to wife. Then he went back to the Bible to show that Adam and Eve had many sons and daughters. He doesn't have a right to preach out of that Pearl of Great Price."

President Whitaker said, "Who told you he didn't have a right to teach out of the Pearl of Great Price?"

Elder Widgell said, "The only place you're supposed to teach out of is the Bible."

"I never did tell you that. I think Elder Rawlins is clear on both counts."

While in this area, my health deteriorated considerably. Ray Wright who was the new district president from Lyman, Wyoming was down there. He was 20 years older than we were. His wife had died. He had kids the same age as we were. He had a siege of boils. (I used to call him Job.) The mission sent word for him and I to come in to the office. So we went in.

I spent the next couple of months in Atlanta under a pretty good doctor's care and got feeling pretty good. I loafed around that office and didn't do much.

Finally, I got to feeling a little better, and they sent me to central Florida to Ocalla. Orlando was headquarters. They had a lady in Ocalla who had about six kids. Her husband worked on construction wherever he could find work. He wasn't home very often. She fell in love with every Elder that came along. The mission president told his son who was the district president to send me over there. She wouldn't fall in love with me. She didn't. The only time I ever was senior companion was in Ocalla.

I worked there with an Elder Eccles. I was branch president in Ocalla and, he was my first counselor. We had three or four brethren around there, and I thought they might as well do that job. I'd sooner preach the gospel than worry about all those problems so I got them to set it up as a branch. Elder Eccles used to take out two hours every morning to write his girl a letter. I used to just pace the floor like a wild Indian.

I said to him, "Where have you worked?"

"I've always been right here."

He hadn't been out very long.

"You've never been on a country trip have you."

It wasn't uncommon for me to take a few tracts, a little suitcase with a few clothes and head right down the road. We'd find a place to preach and a place to stay. The next morning we'd do just the same thing.

I explained this to him and he said, "Oh, I'd like that."

At that time the district co-president was Elder Morris Buttaculper from Idaho Falls. He came to see us. I said, "This Elder has never been on a country trip. He doesn't know what it is. How about if we just take a loop out through this country and leave Monday morning. The branch president lived out about thirty miles. Why don't we go out to his place. We can make a loop out through here. We'll be back Saturday."

"I believe that would be just the thing to do."

So we took that trip. I preached to or with that Eccles every night and walked him all day. About Thursday we were walking down that dusty road. He threw down his suitcase and grabbed me and began shaking me. (He was a lot bigger than I was.)

"What's a matter with you. I haven't written that girl all week. I haven't even thought of her."

"Well she's never going to wait for you anyway."

After a few months in Ocalla, they switched us to Inverness and we tracted that out.

They sent an Elder Raymond Neeley from Salt Lake to take my place with Eccles, and I went down to St. Petersburg with Elder Theron Hall, a boy from Eager, Arizona. I'd known him in Alabama. I could hardly go because of my health. I spent a couple of months, August and September there. The latter part of September, the mission president called me into Atlanta.

He said, "Elder Rawlins, I'm ready to offer you an honorable release. You've done me all you can, you've given me all you had. I'll let you go home if you'd accept it."

I said, "I hate to go home. I'm four months short."

"If you stick it out the full time, we might have to send you home in a box. You've given us all you've got."

I said, "An honorable release I'll take." and I came home.

Returning Home

I got home about the first of October 1942.

The war was on. While I was on my mission every where we were heckled about being a draft dodger. We were called all kinds of words.

I came home and reported my mission. They put me in as Explorer leader. That winter I didn't do much. We got the beets out and the crops off. It was just about a year before I got to where I could do much. I had give it all I had.

The Draft Board

As I got home from my mission. I reported to the draft board and was summoned for a physical. I couldn't pass the physical. That was in the fall of 1942, and every year they kept calling me back. It's kind of tough to be left behind. It was August of 1945. The war was over in Europe. A lot of the boys were coming home, and they summoned me for another physical. That one I passed. I'll never forget the old doctor down at Fort Douglas.

He said, "You've dodged the draft all these years. Well we're going to draft you."

"Don't give me all that nonsense. I've never asked for a deferment. I've never asked for anything. Go ahead, I don't really care."

He lit into me, and the superior came to him and said, "Shut up. That boy's our guest, now cut it out."

That was the weekend that they dropped the first atomic bomb on Japan.

Then the emperor of Japan decided that was all he wanted so he called the war off. So I never went into the service. I was 25 years old.

I had a testimony of Dr. Cragun. He said, "It's good you didn't go, I don't think you could take it. I believe the Lord's got something else for you to do."

The Hogan Ditch

After my mission, Clayton Hogan and I were in the presidency of the Hogan ditch. It was an old dirt ditch and hard to get water down. I rt my water."

"Well go up the ditch and see what you can find."

He went up to George Pond's field, and George had his hay bunched. A bad wind had come along and whipped through there and put a couple of bunches of hay in the ditch and dammed the ditch off. It ran the water all over George's field. George was mad at Clayton for running water all over him. Clayton was mad at George because he'd stole his water. First one come to me and then the other. I knew both of them pretty well.

Clayton said, "I'm going to whip George Pond for stealing my water."

George came along and said, "I'm going to whip Clayton Hogan for running that water all over my field."

I said, "Now if you boys will fight, I'll go watch. If all you're going to do is just cuss one another, why don't you go pull that hay out of the ditch and let the water go on its way. Calm down and behave yourselves."

That was a normal thing for the ditch.

I've been glad in years to come that we've been able to cement that ditch. Instead of taking 18 hours to run the water down that ditch we can do it in about 2 hours. It doesn't sub all over the country. We get the water where we want it, where we need it. That's been a lifetime job on that ditch.

Everybody wants all the water whenever they want it. Not many people can be a man when it comes to dealing with water, and I've spent many years in this business. I'm president of it now. I guess I'll be there for a year or so.

Note by Julia Rawlins: He spent many years as water master. He finally had to tell everyone on the ditch not to talk to me about the water unless they wanted me to cuss them out. Rob Bowman didn't believe him and always called just after Lin left and the phone woke up my babies. I was never very patient about all that. He worked for and about the ditch until he died.

Courting

I started courting when I was 14 or 15 years old. Reed used to say to Dad, "I thought maybe I'd take Lin to the show." He didn't really care about taking me to the show. He just wanted an excuse to get the car. So I started going with Reed and took a date earlier than a kid ought to go. That meant I courted for ten years or better except the time that I was on my mission. I never courted on my mission. I taught the Lord's Gospel and not mine. When I came home, no girl followed me home.

I had to start all over again when I got home from my mission. I went hither and yon with different girls. My health wasn't too good and I wasn't really hunting a wife 'cause I knew I needed time to feel better. I was about broke and also needed a little time to get things going. (Dad said gall bladder and ulcer's were the problem.)

I'm a little lost for words as I tell this. I'm going to tell about my courting years. I don't tell this in any bragging way. I was no Rudolf Valentino. I tell this with only one thing in mind for my kids and my grandkids and whoever gets to read this.

Ah the stories are always written about those who win a girl or boyfriend; they never tell about someone else who loses. But I'm going to tell you about me. I came out second many times. I went with good girls. I never got serious before my mission. I spent most of my last two years before my mission with a Vernetta Larsen from Glenco. I never got serious because I wanted to go on a mission and I didn't want anything to stop me. As I left on a mission, I wrote to three girls. I wrote Melba Clayson, I wrote to Vernetta Larsen and I wrote to Nada Packer. They were three fine girls. When I came back from my missions, I went to see Melba and she was engaged tols. When I came back from my missions, I went to see Melba and she was engaged to be married so I didn't go back. I went to see Vernetta, and she was engaged. I didn't go back. I went some with Nada but that didn't work out.

Peck (Hull) got home from his mission soon after I did and we chased around together. I started going with a girl that I'd known since high school. She was a year younger than I was. She was an excellent dancer. We danced real good together. We got along good, and we started going together in the spring of 1944. I'd been home a year and a half. As the summer wore on, we went every where together. If she had things to do, I went with her. When I had things to do, she went with me. I didn't really plan to fall in love with her, but then again she was a good gal. She could be married in the Temple and that's where she was married eventually. Along into the latter part of the year, I got real attached to her. She had all the qualities I thought I wanted in a wife. She graduated from college while we were dating and was teaching school in Preston. She had sent a boy on a mission many years before, and he'd come home and went in the Army. He was over in England in the Army. She didn't really know what the status was. They still wrote. She used to let me read his letters. I didn't know if there was anything there or not.

I thought I'd fell in love with her. After I had rehearsed a speech to myself many times, I told her one night that I loved her, and I asked her to marry me. As I remember now, she didn't answer. We went on together for a few more times. After about a week, she brought the subject back up, and I was waiting for an answer. I wasn't waiting for the answer I got. She went on in as diplomatic a way as she could and said she was sorry that she had led me to this point, but she wanted to wait for that boy in England. So she declined the offer and recommended that maybe we not go together anymore.

That was a hard blow. I thought I'd thought this out straight. I thought I prayed about it. Of course I realized and always did that she had as much right to say no as I did to ask her. I saw her a time or two as we discussed this. She said, "You might as well come until we get through discussing this and you're satisfied.

I said, "This is hard to say but as I think this over if you don't want me then it's best that I don't want you. That was hard to say and as I left her I don't remember ever talking to her again. This was either October or November of 1944. I've never said a bad thing about this girl neither before that or after nor during it.

I remember I was living in Lewiston alone. I was working at the Sugar Factory trying to get everything going. I felt real bad; I believe the word would be heart broken.

Somebody who had just gone through a situation of that kind said, "Lin, you're entitled to two weeks of mourning and no more."He said that when he went through it, somebody told him maybe he could have two weeks of mourning and that was all. I believe that's good advice.

I know I was laying here in the house one night all alone thinking over my situation and wondering why. I heard my Mother say, "Lin."

I spoke out loud and said, "All right, Mother, I'll quit it, and I felt better after that.

The girl married the boy that went on a mission and went through the Army, and they were married in the Temple as they should be. I've never heard of her for many years. They live in the Salt Lake area and raised a fine family.

I've often thought about the scripture I heard in the show, the Ten Commandments. As Moses asked the daughter of Jethro to be his wife, she accepted. In her acceptance speech she said something like this. "I'll not be jealous of a memory." I hope that Julia feels the same way because she didn't know much about this story.

Working on the Railroad

The Sugar Factory was over and I needed a job for the winter. I got on the railroad on the bridge and building crew stationed at Cache Junction. They had a cook there and I had my meals there and worked there all winter. I crawled through all the culverts from Cache Junction to Mckammon, Idaho. I used to go into Logan at times.

Weekend Entertainment

One weekend I went to Salt Lake. Ted Bernhisel was down there in Med School and Arthur VanOrden had come home from Europe and was stationed as the MP at the Union Station in Salt Lake.
I used to go down there about every other week. I could catch a pass on the railroad and then I would come back and stop off where my pump car was. It made a pretty good arrangement. I'd stay with Ted in his apartment. Those potlickers said, "Hey come back next week, and we'll have a date for you." (I don't know what I ever did to those guys for what they did to me.)

As I got down there, Ted's date had cancelled out. She was sick or something. Arthur had a date with Lois, the girl he ended up marrying. I believe that was their first or second date, and they got me a date with a gal.

Later I saw a picture of her and her dad in the newspaper. Her dad was a professor at the University of Utah, and she had just completed a degree and was a professor with him. It was a father and a daughter both professors at the faculty of the University of Utah.

As we started out that night, the five of us, we didn't have a car so we went to where we were going by taxi. We went downtown to the Deseret Gym and watched Utah play some team. Then we went downtown to a block south of the Temple grounds to a show. That was the most miserable night I ever spent on a date. That girl cussed country kids all night. That's what we were--all three just country kids. She never said one kind word to anybody and she yakked at us every minute. I was never so sick of a date, and I kept a thinking what I was going to do to get even with them.

As we came out of the show about midnight, she was still a yakking. I got out of that show, and I put my hat on as we started north up that sidewalk. The sidewalk was chuck full. I said, This reminds me of the city man that came to the country, and he saw a little colt running around there in the farmer's yard. He said to the farmer, "Gosh, that's pretty little colt." Where do you get those?" The old farmer walked over to the squash patch and picked up a big ole squash and came over and handed this to the city man and said, "If you'll take that squash and go out here in the sagebrush and set on it for about six weeks that's just what you'll hatch."

So the city man took the squash and went and got him some provisions so he could have something to eat and drink. Then he went out there and set on that squash for about five and a half weeks and then he run out of food.

One warm day he said, " This will stay warm while I go get me something to eat. On his was back he got just about to the squash. He saw a jackrabbit jump up and run through the sagebrush. Of course, it had long ears just like the colt and that old city boy took off his hat. (At this stage of the game I took off my hat and went over and took a hold of the parking meter. I began to whirl that hat and was a screaming just as loud as I could.) "Here colt. Here's your mommy. Here colt. Here's your mommy.That girl ducked across the road and got on the trolley car and went home.

Ted said, "Why didn't you tell that story three hours ago."

I said, "You potlickers, I don't know what I'll ever do but the day will come when I'll get even."

The next morning we went to Church at the Institute at the University of Utah. As I walked up the steps and in the front door, I recognized the man over at the door of the chapel shaking hand with everybody as Cecil Reese. He grew up in Benson Ward and graduated with me from high school. He was down at the University of Utah studying chemistry. As I walked up there here stood that girl by him. He grabbed me by the hand and said, "Lin will you give the opening prayer?"

I said, "Yes."

At that she said, Huh, if you talk to him, I'll have nothing to do with you and took off down through the chapel."

Old Cec grabbed me and said, "You've got to stay with me until I get all this Sunday School in order. I've got to know what happened."

I said, "It won't take long to tell.

Meeting Julia

Frank Nielsen had an apartment in Logan, and I came in to stay with him over the weekend. I didn't go home very often. There wasn't much there. I came in along in the night. I expected him any minute. I took off my clothes, said my prayers and went to bed. I no more than got stretched out that bed when here come some wild Indian through that door and pounced onto me. We wrestled and wrestled around over that bed and down on the floor. Finally I got him down and reached over and turned on the light. I'd never seen that kid before in my life. He said, "I thought you were Frank."

"I assumed that. Now, who are you?

He told me his name. He had to have something to say so he started bragging about his girl. He gave me such a fine lingo about that girl of his, and the next night at the dance he introduced her to me. That was the first time I ever danced with Julia Whitney, and I danced with her occasionally that spring. They were going together and I didn't get in on it then. The next fall he didn't come back to school. I don't know what ever happened to him.

That's when I started going with her. I found something here that I hadn't found before! I asked her to marry me about the first part of February 1946 and we were married the 2nd of April.

I remember taking her down to the apartment where Keith and Gwelda Clayson were living. He was going to school. They had one little girl, Judy. I introduced her. I told Keith and Gwelda that we were planning to be married. Keith told me afterwards that Julia was the best one I'd gone with.

I said, "Hey, I went with your wife!"

He said, 'Well, I excluded her."

I used to tell Keith that the best thing I ever did for him was introduce him to Gwelda.

Preparing for our Marriage

I can't remember where I was, but I was dancing with Gwelda Clayson. She said," Have you taken that girl up and introduced her to your family?"
I said," No, I haven't even thought of it."

"You do that. She shouldn't marry you unless you take her up and introduce her to your family."

I said, "Well, I'm not going to meet hers until I get down there for the wedding. The only one of her family I've met is Venice.

Gwelda gave me quite a lingo--quite convincing. So I made arrangements and brought Julia up here to Lewiston to meet Howard, Owen, Reed, Horace and their wives. I also took her down to meet Mae.

Finding a Ride to Hurricane for Our Wedding

As it came time for us to be married, I wondered how to go down and get Julia. Fred Viebel and I associated quite a bit together. He was a cow tester here and had been married a few years. I thought quite a lot of Fred and Grace.

Fred said, "How are you going to get Julia?"

I said, I haven't really figured that out yet."

He said, "Grace and I would go along and chaperone you on your honeymoon. We haven't got to work. We think this is just the thing to do. I've got to play a dance on April Fool's night. So we could leave here April Fool's night.

I said, That's the best offer I've heard. I could go home and go to bed, sleep and be all ready to drive. If we took turns driving, we'd be down there in time to be married."

So we got all lined up for that. Julia drew me out a map on how to get to her place when we got into Hurricane. We left at midnight, and it was somewhere between 9 and 10 o'clock in the morning when we stopped in Cedar City and had breakfast. We got down to Hurricane and drove into the yard. There stood her Dad. He had just milked the cows. I think he had a bucket of milk in his hands.

Julia came running out of the house--hair all done up in curls or curlers, She had a lot of hair on her head at that time. When she let it down, it was down to her shoulders. She came running out there and grabbed me and said, "Oh, I haven't slept all night; I had a fear that you wouldn't show up.

I'd heard of Hurricane. Hurry Cane as we called it. Leon Sullivan from Hurricane served on a mission with me. I used to say to him. "Can anything good come out of Hurricane?"

Our Wedding

I think the temple session started about 1:00 o'clock that we were going to. We were going to have a reception that night. Fred, Grace, Julia and I got squared around and went over to St. George, had dinner, and bought our license. We were up to the temple about 1:00 o'clock ready to go. Her Dad and Mother were with us. None of my family was able to come. They didn't have a car that would make it. Velma said once, "You know we would have surprised you and Julia, if there would have been one car in the family that would have made it." We got married.

Our Honeymoon

Julia's sister, Dorothy, and Arlond lived in a little house right there to the side of Dad and Mother. Dorothy said, "I'll give you the house for your honeymoon." So that's where we spent our first night. The next day we got things sashayed around and put some of Julia's things in Fred's car. Her Dad and Mother were coming up anyway for Conference a few days later and they brought the rest of it.

As we got ready to leave Whitney's in Hurricane that next morning, April the 3rd. We got in the car. There stood my mother-in-law. She had never seen me before the day I came down and married her girl and was taking her off.

She said, "I know Julia will be good to you, now you be good to her."

I said, "Good land, I thought you'd be so glad to get rid of her you wouldn't even worry about that.

She broke into tears and she bawled and bawled. Gosh, I put my foot in my mouth. I hadn't dealt with a Mother for so many years that I didn't really know how, and I fouled that one up.

Julia got out and hugged her Mother. Finally her Mother quit bawling, and we went sailing down the road.

We went down to Las Vegas. Julia found she had fifty cents in her pocket so she spent it on the slot machines. I always claimed I married a girl that only had fifty cents and spent that on a slot machine.

We went through Boulder Dam and headed up home. We got home a day or two later.

Peck and Blanche Hull came to meet her. We decided the four of us would go to Salt Lake for April Conference. We went down there to my mission reunion and conference.

Julia's Dad and Mother were up to conference, and we got to talk to them. We finally found a room to stay. We rented the room, turned out the light. There were two beds, and by golly we got in bed with the right wife.

The Beginning of Our Married Life

I was glad to bring Julia home. This was a new life. I was no longer alone; I'd been alone 10 years, and I was grateful to have her. As I've thought about finding her and bringing her here, I read something where a man said, There was the one you fell in love with and there's another you thank God you married." Now I loved Julia when I married her, but after all these years and all the struggles she's gone through and the changes she's made to raise a family for us, I love her more now than I did when I married her!
We've had quite a life together.

Breaking Horses

When we got home from being married, we got squared around here. My brothers and I worked together to put our crops in and the crew was over to Horace's. We only had one tractor between us. We had a four-horse outfit, three-horse outfit, and the tractor.

There were three colts up on the hill that Mel Gilbert wanted us to break and a big bay mare named Babe, the good horse we had. We broke a lot of horses in our day and some of these guys thought the Rawlinses ought to break their colts.

As we got lined out that morning, I took a sorrel mare out of that four-horse outfit and hooked a big bay mare in her place. She was brand new and I put her on a jockey stick on the side. I took that sorrel mare and two other colts that were up on the hill and we harnessed them up. They had never been hooked before to that sorrel mare. I went and fastened me a seat on the harrows and headed straight up Horace's hill. I'd go up that hill and the horses would be just about ready to quit, and I'd turn and head them down.

Wilma (Julia's sister) and Rex Adams came in to see us. They came over to Horace's with Julia. There she saw the boy she'd just married out on those harrows going full tilt with those three horses up and down the hill just as hard as they could go. She wanted to know how long that had been going on, and Horace said about all morning. She about had a fit. I couldn't imagine a woman worrying about that. This Rawlins kid had done that all his life.

One time over at Horace's place. Horace got me to help him catch a colt. I caught that colt and tied it in his saddle horse's tail, then turned them loose. Up over that hill they'd go just as hard as they could run. That was the finest circus I'd ever seen.

Another time Howard had me help him catch a colt. We caught the colt and tied it to the mare we called Babe and turned them loose. When she got done with that colt, she could lead that colt anywhere. The first time I tried to lead it, the son-of-a-gun pulled that rope right through my hands and drug me around just like I wasn't in business.

Our Trip to Washington State

My brother, Aerial, was in Lewiston when I came home from getting married so he got to meet Julia. Reed sold his farm that spring. He sold it to Owen and moved to Washington to Walla Walla. Reed went back up with Aerial and got a job. Then he came down and got his wife and family. Reed made arrangements with Howard Shulberg to rent his truck and furnish the driver.

We had the crops in. We loaded up Reed and all his stuff in that truck, and Julia and I took him to Washington. Howard and Arlie also wanted to go.

Coming home with the four of us in the cab of that truck got pretty wearisome. We stopped at North Powder Oregon where Jim Last lived and spent the night. Jim only had one big ole couch. By the time Howard, Arlie, Julia and I were on one couch all night, I was glad when morning come and we started down the road.

Struggling to Make a Living

That summer the darn crops weren't very good. Our farm had got run down. We got waterlogged and couldn't raise anything. It was real hard to raise a decent crop. The wireworms came in and ate everything we planted. It was a sad year financially. I went to the sugar factory to pay my bills.

Keith and Gwelda Clayson were living in part of our house here. He was riding the bus and going to school.

Ray's Birth

In reading President Kimball's book, he said their baby was born 9 months and 9 days after they were married. Ray was born 9 months and 10 days after we were married so we hit pretty close. He was a welcome little boy. A little white-headed boy born the 12th of January 1947.

The Effects of Ether

As I prepared to be operated on for my gallbladder, I talked to Julia about the ether. I didn't want her there while I was coming out of the ether. I was afraid I'd use the same language I did when I was a kid and had my tonsils out.

Some years after I had my gallbladder out, Julia and I and Bob Hammond and his wife were down at the Temple and sitting in that first room. A man that we knew had an epileptic fit right there by the side of us. We just picked him up, took him outside, and laid him on the floor while they went on with the session. Then we picked him up and took him over to the hospital. Over there the doctor gave him a shot of penathol and put him out. When he came to he was all right.

In the middle of that transaction, he called up every dirty lousy son of a gun there was. I imagine it was a little bit like when I was a kid. When he came to, the first thing he said to me was, "Brother Rawlins, did I make a fool of myself.

I said, "You did just fine."

For years after that, every time he'd see me he'd say that he always wondered if I'd told the truth. I always told him that there was no sense wondering because I wouldn't have told you any different and not to worry about it.

When he was all right and his family came to get him. We went back to the Temple. There was a fellow from Brigham City that had helped out. He said, that they had operated on his father years ago. His Dad was a mild-mannered man who never raised his voice. He was operated on for a double hernia. His dad had filled a mission in France when he was a young man. The man who helped us had also filled a mission in France.

He said, "Dad was coming out of the ether, my brother just coaxed Mother to leave but she wouldn't go. Dad got about to that point of coming to, and he cut loose on us. He called us every dirty low down, son-of-a-gun there was in two languages. Thank goodness she didn't understand French, but I did. My brother and I were bigger than Dad, but we were doing just about all we could do to hold him on that bed. We kept saying, "Mother would you please leave." Finally in tears my Mother left; it almost broke her heart. We swore her to secrecy and told her not to tell Dad what he said because Dad had never spoke to her in anything but a kind manner."

The first thing Dad said when he come to was, What did I say? Did I make a fool of myself?" My brother and I assured him that he did just fine.

Sometimes in this anesthetic business you're not in control and things get a little bit wild.

My Gallbladder Operation

Dr. Cragun used to tell me back when they discovered I had gallstones, "Good land, I can't operate on you--a boy 13 years old. I can't take you in there and take your gallbladder out for two reasons. One is they'd laugh me right out of the medical profession, another one is you'd die. All these operations are a success but the way they do that one now the patients all die.

So in 1946 when I went in to get a physical to get married, he said, "We now have the technique. Let's get your affairs lined up and get squared around. This winter when you aren't doing much. I'll take out your gallbladder.

As you get ready for an operation, a lot of people are real kind. They come along to sympathize with you and tell you how many people died from that particular operation. Brig Spackman over in Trenton lost his wife in that operation. They had to change their whole way of doing it.

As I got ready for that operation. I had a friend, Theron Hall who lived in Logan and Frank Nielson administer to me. They said, "There's not a concern." As they proceeded, I'd been administered to and was ready to go.

I had a cow or two to milk and Owen milked them for me while I was in the hospital. I went into the hospital the 15th of February, 1947. Julia stayed with Theron and Wanda Hall in Logan and came up each day to the hospital to see me.

At the hospital, they gave me a spinal, but they gave it too low. They did the incision all right, but when they reached up in to get a hold of that gallbladder it was live meat. I said, "Hey you butchers."

He said, "You can't feel that."

"Feel that you crazy fool--that's live meat."

"Gosh," he said, "What are we going to do? We've got to put you out. It'll make you sick if we give you ether. "

"What do you think this is going to do. I ain't going to put up with you two butchers acting that way. "

So they had to put me out with ether. As they put me out, I was far enough out that I couldn't answer them, but I still knew when they cut that gallbladder out. It didn't hurt really. I was in and out, but I could still hear them. They were starting to sew me back up before I was clear out.

When I came out, the first thing I asked Julia was, "What did I do when I was coming out of the ether?"

She said, "You did just fine."

I don't know whether I did or whether I didn't.

As I came out of that operation, that darn nurse wanted me to drink some tea. I thought that tea was the nastiest stuff that they ever put together. I wouldn't drink it. The nurse said, "I'll report you to the doctor."

I said, "That's just fine. You'll have to beat me to him."

In a little while the doctor came in. She said, "He wouldn't drink his tea."

Dr. Cragun said, "I don't blame him I wouldn't drink it either. Let me see that sheet. "He wrote on there. " Feed him what he wants, when he wants, anytime of the day or night."

That nurse said, "That's a terrible diet."

He said, "He's had some stomach troubles and he knows what will fit in that stomach better than you or I."

Raley Rogers was in the hospital with me. He had a double hernia operation. We used to lay there and visit. I got well acquainted with Raley that week we were together.

Everybody ought to have a session or two in the hospital. It takes away all your self-respect.

Two days after they operated on me they came about 10 o'clock in the morning to change the dressing on my incision. They had me take a deep breath. They pulled that so tight that they shut the water off. I had done everything I knew to get rid of the water pressure. Finally I called the head nurse in. I said that darn doctor pulled that tape too tight and shut the water off, and I can't make it till morning without some relief.

She called up Dr. Cragun in Lewiston and he said " That darn kid shouldn't have any trouble with his water. Go turn on all the water faucets, get him up, pull that tape loose, then pull it back down."

After she did that, she couldn't get that tape back down within two inches of where he had it. They got me up, and I sat on the edge of the bed. All I had on was that night gown that didn't quite cover up all the essentials anyway. And I set on the bed and the sweat started rolling off me. I could hear that water faucet starting. I was holding the can and got so shaky I couldn't hold it.

I hollered at that nurse who was standing out in the hall waiting. I said, "Come here and hold that can."

She said, " That'll stop the water. "

I said, "Nothing will stop the water. Come here and hold that can. " She run in and knelt down in front of me and held that can. The water was running out of me and into that can.

Ole Raley was over there in that bed. To laugh just about killed him after that double hernia operation. He turned his head again' the wall and held his mouth to keep from laughing.

That can was getting fuller and the stream wasn't cutting down any. She said, "I'll mop the floor if I have too, but don't stop."

I said, "Nothing will stop me except for running out of water. "

If you'd ever seen a can so full of water that it just arched up, that was just when I quit. I crawled back into bed. The last I knew she was still there holding that can. It was so full she didn't know how to move it.

I was give out and I went to sleep. When I come to she was gone with the can of water.

Raley heard me rouse and he said, "Some day I'll whip you for that. I laid over here just dying while I'd laugh. I had to lay and turn my face east to the wall not to see that. That was the funniest sight I ever seen in all my life. " These hospital experiences are something else.

I got by fine in that hospital. When the enema time come to get things I was able to make it to the bathroom. So I didn't use a bed pan.

I was glad to get rid of that ole gallbladder. Ted Bernhiesel was an intern in the Dee Hospital. He came up and watched that operation. He told me afterwards that he didn't think that gallbladder ever did work and could see why I'd had a lot of trouble. It was just an old sore, it wasn't a gallbladder. I was glad to have Ted there. I'd waited a long time for that operation. If they'd had that procedure a few years quicker I could have avoided a lot of things--maybe even finished my mission.

I got along real well in that operation. That was a good thing. I came home and recovered real fast. I laid around here and made it through the winter and got ready for spring.

Those gall stone attacks were real severe. After my operation, I used to wake up at night thinking I was having one. My system was used to having them and it was a long time getting rid of them.

I got along quite well for twenty years. Then from there on I'd have to take Bilron capsules. It was a bile salt. Just before Glen went on his mission, I had to go back in and have another operation. Dr. Broadbent did it that time. Adhesions had come in and shut off the gall duct. They had to enlarge that gall duct and take out the adhesions from the old operation. They had a drain in me. I wandered around that hospital for three weeks. That was a long ordeal.

I discovered that time that I was allergic to Demarol. Everytime they'd give me a demoral shot I'd vomit for an hour or two, and then they'd be ready to give me another one. The nurse recommended that I tell the doctor this because I wasn't near getting over it. Dr. Broadbent came in and asked if I was still vomiting.

I said, "Everytime they give me a hypo shot I vomit till I get another one.
He said, "We'll switch you to morphine. "

After that I quit vomiting. Coming home my health improved then.
Two years before that time, Julia had her gallbladder out. I always said we got along so good because there was no gall between us.

My Calling as a Seventy

One day I was chasing a bunch of kids who were playing ball at the school. Milton Jorgensen of the High Council walked up to me and congratulated me on my new church call. I looked at him and said that I knew there was a vacancy in the Presidency of the Seventies Quorwas sure President Hyer said he'd talk to me. I said that I'd dealt with President Hyer all my life. He was in the Bishopric that sent me on a mission. He was the stake president not too many years ago that interviewed me and signed my recommend to let me get married in the Temple. I'd done everything he'd ever asked me to do. I didn't think there's any worry on his part. I told Milt not to worry about it. If it didn't happen, I wouldn't accuse him of transgression or shed any tears.

About the time Glen was born, and I bought a car. That was the first car Julia and I had. It was Model A Ford. It was a good car, and I liked it. I gave Norris Hyde $150. I just happened to have that much money. We went to stake conference in it. I went over Saturday night to the Priesthood session. I was sitting there when President Hyer run up to me and said, "Hey, Lin. We need you to work in the Seventies Quorum. Will you work?" I said, I'll do what you want. " He said, "I thought you would. " So I think it was after the afternoon session that the young apostle who hadn't been in the quorum very long, Spencer Kimball interviewed me and set me apart as one of the President's of the Seventh Quorum of Seventy. It was a job I held for ten years. I believe I worked with fourteen men in that assignment. We got a lot of things done in that quorum. That was a good experience. We'd wrangle things around till finally we'd come up with a working solution.

I'd been a seventy ever since I went on a mission. As Anton Ivans interviewed me for a mission, he ordained me a seventy. That was in the Fall of 1940. So I'd been a seventy for a little better than seven years. I had filled a full-time mission. I was a stake missionary when they put me in the presidency. I herded a bunch of kids playing ball, and I always taught a Sunday School Class. When put me in the presidency of the Seventies Quorum, I didn't quit all these other jobs I kept up with that too.

We had a party not long after I was in there. I saw where the Blood of Israel run pretty deep in that bunch. We fed everybody first then sold them seconds. That just about broke my heart. I thought that over and the next time we met. I said, "Now look, brethren, I can't do this. Let's run this quorum on a basis of whatever. But when we invite those quorum members and their partners, let's feed them. Then let's not be selling them seconds. I can't do that." So I talked them out of it.

We used to have a couple of parties a year. Along in the summer we'd take a Saturday afternoon and go somewhere for a party. The presidency, ththe summer we'd take a Saturday afternoon and go somewhere for a party. The presidency, the clerk and our wives.

One time just as we were getting ready to go to a party at Mack Park in Smithfield. We'd made arrangements for a babytender. Grandpa Luke Whitney and his second wife came. She had been a widow for thirty years. (His wife had died and he had remarried. Brother Whitney wasn't sealed to his first wife. She had been married to his uncle. She often said she lived twelve years with one husband and fifty years with another one.) In come Grandma and Grandpa. We put them in the car to go with us. We were sitting around there, eating our potluck dinner.

Faye Bernhisel always had a favorite saying. He made the statement. "When you're doing something that's real hard to do, it's just like making love to a widow you can't overdo it." Grandma had been a widow for thirty years and she looked at me and winked and laughed. I laughed and laughed and laughed. I just about died. Finally Faye sidled around there by me and said, "What did I say wrong?"

I said, "That lady right there married Grandpa just a month or so ago. She's been a widow for thirty years. "

He said, "Why didn't you hit me?'

I said, "It wouldn't have done any good." I laughed at that. Faye didn't use that statement so often after that. He was a little more fussy about where he said it. Working with these seventies was one of the finest church jobs I ever had. I held that for ten years.

Death of Rondy Tobler

When Glen was about two years old, (we may have had Nada) I got a call one night from Logan. Mr. Sullivan called Julia and said "Did you know that Rondy Tobler is in the hospital and real bad." (Rondy was Julia's uncle a brother to her mother. )

Rondy and Carrie lived out in Tabiona. He taught school there. Carrie's mother was a widow and lived in Logan. They had come in that spring to see her. He took sick, and they rushed him to Budge Clinic. (Wendell Budge was a member in that clinic. He started as a doctor here in Lewiston. Whenever anyone got anything wrong with them he took out their appendix. It didn't make any difference what it was. There was a saying that was quite famous here in Lewiston for many years. Appendicitis was called Budgitis.)

They rushed him to the hospital and took out his appendix. When he came to, they asked him how he felt. He told them they cut in the wrong place and didn't get the job done. It still hurt. They didn't believe him. A week later they finally discovered that it was a kinked bowel.
I guess doctors are about like mechanics they are entitled to mistakes. Wendell made one on my mother. She went to him because she didn't feel good. He just took her blood pressure instead of giving her a thorough examination. Often this was the situation. Doctors would hurry. Medicine has improved a lot over the years. He gave her some medicine to take the acid out of her stomach. Somebody told me that cancer didn't grow very good in an over acid stomach and that cancer just went on a rage that day till she died. This always used to harrow up my soul a little bit. I believe I've since repented.

I was a paper boy to Wendell Budge. I used to deliver papers to him here in Lewiston. I knew him and I tangled with him over my mother's health. Every year that I went to the sugar factory he'd usually come along and pull me out of line and visit with me for a few minutes. He tried his best to make amends. I believe maybe he did.

Wendell was the one that operated on him, and when I got back there they had just operated on him for a kinked bowel. Gangrene set in and they took about everything out of him that they could take, then they sewed him up.

I had administered to Rondy. He told Carrie after I left, "Two men had come and gotten me and were dragging me down a hall, and I didn't want to go. I wanted to stay here. I wanted to stay with you. I was fighting not to go. Lin's voice came into that spacious building that I was going to just as clear as a bell. They stopped and said you can now go back. " He lived about a week.

When they got hold of the family to tell them how bad that Ron was, I was there. I just couldn't see him leaving that wife and three little kids. I had a couple of little kids at that time. I didn't want to leave them to anybody else. So I got in on the discussion. Dr. Wendell Budge was telling what had happened. He was sorry that some of these things had happened but this was just the way it was. He didn't understand why that man lived. He had never seen a man in this kind of condition that was still alive.

Carrie was sick; she didn't have much hope of her husband living. His mother Grandma Tobler was all upset. I told Wendell, "I know why the man lives. He lives in spite of you not because of you. It looks like to me it was a royal mistake. But the man lives. Let's call some other doctors in."

He said, "I've called some other doctors in."

I said, "Who did you call?"

He told me.

I said, "Good crimeny, they're all members of your clinic. If they knew you had made a mistake, they wouldn't dare tell you how to do it."

But it was the policy of the doctors that you couldn't call another doctor in until you had legally taken the patient from that doctor. I coaxed Carrie and Grandma Tobler and they said "How will we tell him. They didn't do it.

I was walking out of that hospital one night. I had taken Julia down to stay with him. Someone had to stay. Dr. Cragun walked up behind me. He said, "I saw Julia up here in the hospital, what's the matter." I said, "She's got an uncle up here dying of Budgitis.

Cragun said, "Don't talk so loud. There's a couple of guys following me." Anyway over in the Clarkston Cemetery not long afterwards we buried Ron.

I had spoken at a funeral when I was on a mission but this was the first funeral I'd spoken to since I'd come home. That was real hard. They wanted Fenton Whitney to talk and a few people from down that way. It was bad weather - it was raining. It was along in the middle of June. Carrie lined up the program, and she had me on there. The family hadn't got here the night before. The Tobler family was scattered all over the west. Carrie said, "Now Lin we'll proceed with that funeral tomorrow and if they don't show up you lengthen your sermon. You've got the whole job." I appreciated her confidence.

As I've got into these fuson they are. I leave that to the other people. Everybody knows that. I tell them abouson they are. I leave that to the other people. Everybody knows that. I tell them about death and the resurrection. I go right into the gospel. I get in just as deep as I can wade.

We've enjoyed Carrie and her kids over the years. She's a real fine gal. She's done a real fine job with her kids. She's sent the only missionary in that Tobler family in that generation. The only one of that generation that went on a mission. Our kids were in the next generation. She's done a good job with her kids. She's lived as a widow all her life in Preston.

Calf Wrestling

A darn stray calf showed up here. I thought probably it was Seth Gregory's. So I threw it in the corral. I had a few cows around here and a few calves in a little corral. I was running around here working for someone all day and working the farm. Milking cows early and late trying to make a living. I was going to tell him the next time I saw him. But I didn't see him. It went on for a month or six weeks. I saw Seth one day and asked him if he had lost a calf. I described it and he said, "Ya, that's it. I said I threw it in that corral of mine so come get it.

He sent those two little boys, Ted and Rex after it and that wasn't fair. (Rex got killed some years ago while in the service. Killed in an airplane wreck I believe in Turkey.) They were good kids and that was the onriest calf that ever lived. I turned that calf out and that calf ran over those kids. They would try to drive it and they couldn't drive it. It would turn around and run right over them. They were just about to bawl. I said, "Let's put it back in the corral. " They said, "Our dad will just skin us if we don't bring that calf. "

I said, "You just go tell him I won't let you have it. You don't have to go through all this nonsense. You just tell him that and don't worry about it. He won't get after you."

The next morning Seth came up and he looked at me. He didn't know how really to start that sermon. He said, " The kids said you wouldn't let them have the calf."

I said, "Seth those are good kids and that's the ornriest calf that ever lived. I turned that calf out and it run right over those kids. I'll never let those kids have that calf but I'll let you have it. That's a job for a man.

He said, "Turn it out. "

I turned it out, and he took after that calf he got him a club and beat on that calf. That calf turned around and run right into him. I don't know who was the tiredest by the time he got that calf home. Then he tied it up and the danged thing died. He said, "I wish that calf would have died at birth. "

The Births of Nada and Jed

When we got ready for Nada, it was along in the spring of the year and we had our crops in. We were expecting her the last of April. When Julia decided to have a baby, you had to be there and ready. We got down to the hospital and Dr. Hansen was the doctor. When Nada was born Julia hemorrhaged. I was so glad that we had her in the hospital. That was a welcome girl in the house. We welcomed them all as they come. Julia was out kind of half loony with the anesthetic. She'd say, "What did we get?"

I'd say, "We got a little girl.

She said, "Oh I don't believe it. We've got another boy.

No the doctor told me that was a girl--big brown eyed girl.

She come along just fine and Jed come along eleven months later. I always said that Jed was stunted because when he crawled along the floor, Nada rode him as a horse.

Making a Living

Here we were with the four kids. I got into a deal with the sugar factory and rented them my place for a year if they'd pay the taxes on it and level it. They were supposed to provide me with a job. They made it so cussed miserable for me to live, I quit. I went down to Ogden and worked on a construction company with Robert E. McKee. They put me in as labor foreman. That was the worst job I ever had. I got a bunch of burnouts and had to try and get work out of them. I switched to a carpenter and then they laid me off for the winter. I couldn't find a job. Unemployment wasn't quite enough money. So Julia went down to work sewing at Mode 'O Day, and I tended those four kids.

Ray says it that all we lived on was bread and milk. I don't believe that. That's his story, but it was long enough ago I can't prove it. None of them were in school. I was tending those kids all day. I'd walk down to the barn or walk up town to get my nerves calmed down. That was the longest winter I ever spent.

Julia was down to Mode 'O Day running the sewing machine all day. One day she spun around on the road and run off the road with the car. It scared her half to death. I decided if she had to work. She had to have a better job than that. They didn't pay enough money and that wasn't the right place to have her work. If she was going to work, she might as well make more money than that.
She quit the next spring, and I went to drilling beets for the Sugar Company. They had a drill. I went down and said, I'll rent your drill. "

Dell Smith the manager said, "No, I won't rent it. I'll sell it to you for the same price. "

So I run that drill each spring till I wore it out. Then I bought a new one and run it. That was a pretty good drill. I used to drill beets in the spring, then work the sugar factory in the fall and milk a few cows. But I couldn't get going fast enough. Our family was coming along so fast I couldn't make enough money to do it.

Julia's Operation

While Julia was carrying Judy in the fall--Judy was born in March. I think it was along in October, Julia's legs just about killed her. She just couldn't walk so Dr. Skabelund and Dr. Cragun operated on her and pulled out those varicose veins. We'd fasted that morning. We began to have a procedure in the family that when someone was being operated on we fasted the morning while the operation was going on and had it a matter of prayer, and things seemed to get along better. We made arrangements for those kids. I think Ray and Glen were both in school. I had Nada and Jed. I don't know what I did with them. By the time I got the kids off to school and the other two sashayed around, and I got down to the hospital. They had got through operating on Julia and she was dead to the world. Dr. Skabelund said that he gave her so much penathol and she was still kicking and he didn't know when she'd wake up. I stayed with her, and it was time for the kids to come home from school so I came back home, got the kids from school, gave them their supper, and got them sashayed around. I got somebody to tend them and turned around and went back to the hospital. When I got back there, Julia had been asleep since noon. As I came in her room, she just waved her hand and said, "Hi. " That was the first time I'd ever seen her drunk. Seeing Julia drunk was something else. Her tongue was loose from both ends and just a rattling on. She knew what she was saying, but she didn't really care.

They got her up the next morning and walked her around because they didn't want her getting blood clots. They kept moving her around.
When I brought her home, she slept. She had been so tired. She hadn't slept in weeks or months. I'd get her up in the morning because she had to walk so far a day. We'd have breakfast and get those two kids off to school. Nada and Jed would play around here. I'd get her up at noon when I'd come in from work. Then she'd stay up till we'd have lunch thper and she'd go back to bed. In the morning I'd get her up. It went on for about two weeks that way till she got rested up. We didn't dare just leave her in bed. We had to keep her moving so she wouldn't get blood clots in those legs.

The Births of Our Six Youngest Children

The next spring when it come time for Judy we had to try two hospitals in two states to get her. When Julia got ready to have the baby, the water broke then we took her to Logan. She stayed there for two days, Dr. Skabelund said I've got to operate tomorrow night. Why don't you take her home. That night after supper he called me and said, "I'm going to go up to the hospital and stay there all night. I've got to operate in the morning. So we went up to the Preston Hospital and put her in bed.

He said, "Look, Lin, I'm all ready and I'm going to go over here and lay down in this room. Now you sit there with her and when you need me, you come get me."

That was the agreement I had. I set in there talking to her. This was our fifth baby. She grabbed the head of that bed and said, "Get that doctor." I went over there and jerked that door open and he was on the bed. I jerked him out of bed and he was half way across that room before he was waking up. They never did change beds with her. Judy was born. That was early in the night. So there was our Judy.

I believe they must have done something to the water system because March that year Judy was born. The next year in April Neil was born, the next year at Memorial day Craig was born, the next year on December 10 Mark was born, the next year the day after Christmas Nancy was born.

(This was quite a circus. I was at Thiokol at that time. They had Julia up to Preston in the hospital with Nancy. We took Nada and Mark up to stay with Carrie through the holidays. Nada tended Mark, Nada was a good baby tender. I herded the rest of the kids down here for Christmas for the rest of the holidays. We had Julia here for Christmas then rushed her up to the hospital the next day to have Nancy. ) Then a year in the coming February Gary was born. Heal the next day to have Nancy. ) Then a year in the coming February Gary was born. He ended out to be the last one of our family.

Making a Living

About 1956 or 57 we borrowed a lot of money. I bought that farm that we call the creek. I bought that from Faye Bernhisel for $6,750. On contract each year I'd give him a little money and the interest. That doubled our farming operation. That made it so that I had enough land that I could borrow from the Farm Home Administration to buy a herd of cows. We built the cow shed on the barn and started milking about 25 cows. We got along pretty good for a couple of years but '58 was a bad year. Milk prices weren't very good, and feed was high. I had a lot of trouble, and my set up was condemned.

In 1959, I had deliberated a decision with all my heart. I couldn't see how with the size of family I had, -- and don't any of you think I complained about the size, -- how in the world was I going to finance them. Ray and Glen were just as good a help as any man. They were just kids, but they were dependable. So Lorin Rogers and I in July of 1959 went down to the employment office in Logan and filled out an application and took an aptitude test for Thiokol. In August, they called me up to come out for an interview. I went out for an interview, and they hired me on the 14th of September as a lab technician. We cut back a little on the cows. When I was on swing shift, the kids would milk them. Sometimes they would milk and sometimes I would milk, and it worked just fine.

I was out to Thiokol when Nancy was born. I had been out there from September to December. They passed a ruling as company policy that if you were off sick the day before a holiday you didn't get the holiday's pay. As I went back after the holidays, we were off the day Nancy was born. So when I handed my supervisor Jim Crawford the candy bar to celebrate the baby.

He said, "What day do you bring your wife and baby home?" I said, "The day before New Year's.

He turned to his secretary and he said, "You call that outfit up and tell them that he's going to be off. "

I was off and got my pay.

Medical and Spiritual Challenges

Nancy was born in December of 1959. In February Craig had never started to talk. We run him all over the country. We took him down to Children's Hospital to see why he didn't talk. They said, "He doesn't have anything to say." They didn't know.

Along that spring of 1960, the last Sunday in May of 1960, they put me on the High Council. I sat on that High Council with Dr. Skabelund. Along that summer all at once out of in the clear blue sky he sold his practice to Dr. Dee Gibbons and moved to Logan.

We took all these kids up to Dr. Gibbons for some reason. We said to Dr. Gibbons. "Why don't that kid talk? He's old enough that he ought to be saying something." He just wondered around and never said a word. He went over and took a hold of Craig's hair. He said, "For one thing, he's short of thyroid." So they started feeding him thyroid. In a few months, Craig started to talk. I'm grateful for that. In fact he started to talk in a week.

Then we come around here to the time when in February of 1961 Gary was born. In about seven years, we'd have six kids. This made ten of them. Julia just couldn't get over the birth. She just couldn't get over it. She'd recovered when the other kids were born but this seemed to be the end of the road.

In July, on Sunday night about 3 o'clock in the morning, Julia woke me and said, "Help me up; I can't breathe!"

I jumped up and lifted her up. She was just screaming with chest pains. I run into the phone. She said, "Don't call the doctor wait until morning." I didn't dare wait until morning.

Dr. Gibbons answered the phone and said, "This is Dr. Gibbons.
"I said, "Dr, this is Lindsay Rawlins, I'm afraid my wife is having a heart attack."

I heard the phone drop and in a matter of minutes he came in the front door. He had a pair of sandals on and his pants on. His shirt in one hand and his satchel in the other one. By then I had moved Julia in the front room on the couch. She was sitting there gasping for breath. As Dr. Gibbons came in the house, he run over to her and checked her heart and then got something out of his case and gave her a shot in the arm. Then set there and kept track of her heart beat. He shook his head and said, "That's no heart attack. I'm convinced it's a gall stone attack. That shot I gave her should relieve it."

He stayed with her till she felt better and was able to sleep. He said, "Call up my secretary in the morning and come on in. "

The next day as soon as the office was open I called up and made an appointment and we went up to see him. It was the 3rd of July 1961. I sat out in the waiting room while she went in to be examined. Pretty soon out the door she come with tears in her eyes and went right on past me and out to the car. As she went by, I looked at her and wondered what had happened. As I looked back, the doctor was standing in the door and he said that he'd like to talk to me.

I'd like to say of Dr. Gibbons that he is our own kind of a boy, our own kind of a doctor. He was well trained. He'd been on a mission so he knew the church side of it. Many doctors didn't. He understood the gospel more deeply than if he hadn't been on a mission. He said, "Lin, I told your wife if you ever had another baby, it would kill her. You would lose her Lin if she has one more baby either in a mental breakdown or you could lose her actually in death. The only thing I know to stop a mental breakdown and she's real close is a hysterectomy. She just told me she wouldn't do it. That's why she left in a huff, that's the only way I knew to keep her alive.

I said, "Well, I went over to the calendar. "If you'll schedule her a week from this coming Friday, that gives me two weeks to convince her to be there."

"All right," he said, "in order to comply with the state law you'll have to have two other doctors confirm this."

I said, "Well, who do you want to help you?"

He said, "If Dr. Cragun were here I could use him, but he's in South America on a tour. "

I said, "I'd like Dr. Skabelund. "

He said, "I'd like Dr. Skabelund to give the anesthetic. There are two other doctors. I would prefer Dr. Willis Hayward to be the next one. "

I said, "Oh dear, the only objection I've got to Dr. Hayward is that he's a member of the Budge Clinic. "

He laughed and said, "I know what you're thinking but Willis Hayward has had some problems, he lost his wife. Somebody stole his wife, but he went on a mission as a young man. He's had some troubles since, I don't think he's active in the church now but he's the best help I can find along this line. "

I said, "Well, with you there and Dr. Skabelund there we'll accept Dr. Hayward. Would it be better if you set up the appointments?"

He said, "Yes, it would be." So then I went out and got iere and visited. Here was a tough deal. It was hard for her to understand that if a part of the body offend thee, you take it out. To leave those parts in the body was offensive to all the rest.

Dr. Gibbons also told me that over the world they had lost many women at this stage of the game. Any time after six children, you needed to take out those parts to avoid cancer which has cost the world a lot of mothers. He told me that they had the statistics to prove that in medical school.

As I started discussing this with Julia, it was clear in my mind that that was the thing to do. I said, "Now Julia you've got to tell your mother and your dad."

She said, "No I'm not going to."

I said, "You're going to have to tell them or I will. You think it over. There's one other person we ought to talk to. I guess we ought to go to the Bishop but he'd send us to the Stake President. Let's just bypass that one I'm serving on the High Council with President Holt, and let's go talk to him."

She said, "No, let's not us go talk to him, let's you go talk to him. All I'd do is cry andd, "No, let's not us go talk to him, let's you go talk to him. All I'd do is cry and I don't want to do that in front of him.

I said, "All right, I'll call up President Holt." I called him up. "If you've got time, I'd like to come visit with you."

He said, "Come on down."

I got down there and set down in his front room. "What can I do for you. "

I said, " This is the tougher part of your ministry." I told him where we'd been, and I told him of the escapade the night before. We'd been to the doctor and this was Dr. Gibbons' recommendation that she go through with this operation. Of course, that ends the family. Then the thing that bothered her was maybe she didn't have all her children.

President Holt sat there and looked at me and said, "My mind is just as clear as it's ever been, and I'm just as sure of what I tell you is the truth. I'll defend your wife, Julia, in any court in this world or in the world to come. She has fulfilled her job in bearing children but she hasn't fulfilled her job in raising children. So she should do all she could do to maintain life to raise those ten kids. Now she'll not come under condemnation in going this route, but if she doesn't do everything she can do to maintain life to raise the kids she's got, there's a possibility of some condemnation on that side." He said, "Would she like to talk to me?"

I said, "Well, she's afraid she'll break down and cry and she don't really want to do that in front of you."

He said, "I wouldn't want to embarrass her."

"She said she'd believe it if I told her what you said." I went home and told her what President Holt had said.

By then she had decided to call her mother, and she had called her mother while I was talking to President Holt and told her what was coming off.

Her mother said, "Your Dad isn't here. When he gets back, I'll tell him and he'll call you."

Her dad was in the Stake Presidency at that time in the Zion Park Stake. So he said when he called her back, "Julia, I think the doctor is right, and if you'd like, I'll come up and give you a blessing." She said, "I'd like that." He said, "Your mother can tend the kids while you're in the hospital."

That was a good gesture and a good offer. I think Ray was fourteen years old, Glen thirteen and Nada about eleven. Gary was not quite six months. Nada had done a lot of tending of Gary at this stage of the game. She'd done real well.

I went with Julia to see Dr. Skabelund at the appointed hour on the appointed day. With the three of us in there, Dr. Skabelund said, "Lin, I wanted to give you this speech a year ago, but something kept holding me back. Being on the high council I wasn't sure what the church stand was. "

I said, "You do the operations which are necessary to keep people alive." I told him what President Holt told me.

He said, "I didn't know that was the stand." Dr. Gibbons having been a missionary knew a little deeper about it than those who hadn't. President Holt had been on a mission with Willis Hayward in Czechoslovakia years before.

So we proceeded. Dr. Skabelund said, "I don't need to examine you Julia. I know what Dr. Gibbons is telling you is the truth and I'll sign it to that effect. So then she went to Dr. Willis Hayward who checked her over and confirmed that Dr. Gibbons' diagnosis was correct.

It was the middle of July when she went in for the operation. I had told my boss at work what I was up against and I was going to need some sick leave. He said, "You've got plenty of days of sick leave just use it as you need to." The morning that Julia went in for the operation, Dr. Skabelund came in to get her. She said, "I don't know why I'm going, I'm not going to have this done."

"Oh Julia," he said, "You'll be just fine."

I hadn't really convinced her, her dad hadn't really convinced her and neither had President Holt. She come along pretty well after the operation. But with her mother here doing her work she wouldn't stay in bed. So I said to my mother-in-law, "Now Mother I appreciate your help with all my heart, but we're killing you off because this is more work than you can handle and I can't keep Julia in bed with you here. In no way do I want to offend you, and we won't do it as good but between me and Ray and Glen and Nada and on down I'll ask each kid to do his part we'll get by. I'll take you down to Logan and put you on the bus and let you go home."

She said, "I believe you're right." She accepted it very gracefully and I appreciated that. So I called up and found out when she could go home and put her on the bus.

A lot of women around town used to show up here on appointed days and gather up all the dirty clothes we had and take them home and wash them and bring them back. Some of these women had only raised two or three kids, they couldn't believe there was that many clothes but there was. For that next year I would go on a High Council visit on Sunday night to church and I would leave Julia home in bed with Nancy and Gary in bed by her. I'd take the eight kids and set them down in the audience. I knew which kid could set by which one. I'd get them lined up in the position where they ought to be. Then I'd go up on the stand to take my part up there.
That was a real hard year. For that first year from July clear around till the next May, whenever I'd go to sleep, I went to sleep to the tune of her grumbling at me because I had talked her into that operation. Not once did I ever lash back. I had convinced myself it was my burden to bear that I would have to listen to that the rest of my life.

Along the next May I discovered that she wasn't grumbling at me. I was working long hours out at work and half the night here to get the crops in and keep the farming going. With trying to help her tend kids and keep the place a little bit in order. I was just running every hour of the day that it seemed like there was. When I hit the bed, I was gone completely. Somewhere about the first of June I said to her, "Julia, I don't remember you grumbling at me for the last month. Have you finally forgiven me for talking you into the operation."

She set down there and looked at me for a few minutes. She said, "This has been the most mixed up year I have ever known. I appreciate the fact that you've gone along with me. I've now got my thinking straight and I'm all right." I was grateful for that.
Julia's Gallbladder Operation

In March of that year, we had to take out hty well for a while.

Then the next winter she went back down to bed. I was talking to Dr. Gibbons that winter about it. That was the winter of 1962-63. He said, "Lin we're losing her and I don't know why."

Julia Returning to School

In desperation I remembered that when I married her that I had promised I would send her back some year and let her finish her college. She had four quarters left.
Along in March of 1963. I said to her, "Julia, would you like to go back to school and finish up and teach school while we send these sons on missions and through college." One day we got in the car and drove all around the valley to different schools. We decided the most likely job for her to get would be in elementary education. One morning she got up and went down to Logan to Utah State University and checked out all she'd done and talked to them. She was in home economics originally when she was going to school. They wanted to start her over as a sophomore and make her go through all that rigmarole again. She didn't want to do that. She went to Education and talked to them about elementary education. They accepted all she had and figured out that if she took six hours spring quarter then she would take a full load summer and all the next year. June 1964 she could have her certificate to teach and graduate from college. She registered for six hours spring quarter and started. She'd go from 4:00 to 6:30 I believe every Tuesday and Thursday.

I had sweat that decision out among my tears of trying to decide what to do

She'd been going to school about six weeks when I met f trying to decide what to do

She'd been going to school about six weeks when I met Dr. Gibbons on the street. He said, Hey, what have you done to Julia. I visited with her the other day and you've solved the problem. What have you done?"
I told him the story that we had come up with the idea of Julia going back to school and finishing her schooling.

Dr. Gibbons said, "You've found the trick. Lots of times when women are as sick as she's been the thing you have to do is get them up and change their environment. You'll probably never keep her home again. She's got something to get up and go do. You've extended her life at least ten years and maybe more. Adjust your affairs so that you can help her. You can work it out. We find this in the medical field many times."

In order for her to go to school, she applied for a scholarship and got it. She borrowed some money through one of the government agencies without interest. If she taught school, she only had to pay half of it back.

I went up to Rex Plowman at the bank and told him what we were going to do, and asked him if he would go along with me.

He said, "Yes. From a bankers standpoint, this is one of the better investments you've made. We'll go along with you. How much money do you need?"!

I said,"I don't really know. I'll go just as far as I can go then I'll come borrow just as small amount as I can borrow to get by with. I want to get through this and not be any worse off financially than necessary."

He said, "All right, go ahead I'll stay with you. So that's the way we proceeded.

That was quite a year. We went through spring quarter pretty well. Then she went full time when summer came. That meant that in the summertime we had ten kids running around here. I was gone to work. Ray, Glen, and Nada kind of herded the clan. Ray agreed to do the milking and farming. Glen did the herding of the kids. Nada took over Gary.

My brother, Howard, came over to see me one Saturday morning when I was milking the cows. He said, "What are you doing?"

I said, "What do you mean, I'm milking the cows. What are you talking about?"

He said, "What have you done, you've just turned your kids loose."

I said, "Ya, I guess. Why?"

He said, "What's Julia doing?"

"She's going to college."

He said, "How crazy are you?"

"Well I guess if you've prepared a speech for me maybe you might as well give it."

I stood there and listened to him while he gave me his speech about the wife going off to work and abandoning the kids and all the kids would go to hell. That was the basis of his speech. It seemed quite long, tedious, and quite boring.

I didn't go into details with him and I thanked him for his advice and counsel. I said, "You know Howard we had an Uncle, Harvey M. Rawlins, Jr. (Clem's dad) who claimed that voluntary advice wasn't any good and that's about what I think of your speech. He turned around and left.

When my wife went to work, I never had any thought of abandoning my kids, and I never have.

We got Elva Porter to help tend the kids. We'd leave the three youngest ones. That wasn't too satisfactory.

I must have stayed days most of that year because I remember I'd come home and we'd have supper then Julia would go to bed and I'd keep the kids around here and get them through their lessons, get them all to bed then I'd go to bed. I'd notice that the alarm clock would be set for 1 or 2 in the morning. I'd leave the furnace on, all stoked up for when she'd get up. She'd sit at the kitchen table. She'd pull the light on and there she would study. The house was quiet and warm. Somewhere along the line she would go to bed. I had to get up about 4:30 to get the cows milked and get squared around so I could go to work. She would go to bed, then she'd set the alarm and get up when necessary to get the kids off to school and her off to school.

That was quite a thing. She was on the honor roll most of the winter. In June of 1964, she graduated from college. Most of her family came up. I used to tell her that me and the kids would all be there in line and give three cheers as she walked down the road to get her diploma.

I remember the next Sunday was Fast Sunday, and I got up to bear my testimony. I was so grateful to have her through college that I broke down and just cried. That was the first time I believe those people in this ward had every heard me bawl in giving a testimony. I was so pleased to have this job done. I was so proud of her. She'd done real well. She had a contract to teach first grade at Smithfield that fall.

The next years at least until Gary went to school, I worked swing shift. That meant that I left here about 2 o'clock. We'd put him somewhere. I think some of the other kids just older would scoot home. Then the older kids would get home, then Julia would get home about 3 or 4 o'clock.

My Car Accident

We enjoyed that summer. Julia was home and her health was pretty good-the best it had been in quite a few years.

I was on the way to work one morning in my carpool. Vera was driving. Hugh VanOrden was in the back seat with someone else. He was a big fat guy made me look like a skinny fellow. On the road south of Cache Junction, she pulled out to pass Brooks Roundy in his pickup going down to the grainfield. Just as he got to the corner, he turned and put us into the ditch. It broke my left arm in five places between the elbow and the shoulder. It threw my left hip out and that's the worst pain I've ever had. When we came to rest out there in the barrow pit, I couldn't find my left arm. My glasses were off so I run my right hand and found my arm wedged in between the seats. The arm was numb and my hip was just killing me. I brought my arm back up in placer and I couldn't move.

My brother, Reed and Henry Ashcroft were in the car behind us. Reed run over to see what he could do while his carpool went on out to work.

The accident tore the cartilage loose in Hugh's knee and bruised up Vera some. Anyway I was the worse off of the bunch. Someone went to the phone to call the ambulance and called back home and told Julia that I was hurt. She and Glen came to the hospital. Glen was just old enough that he could get in the hospital as a visitor. The most welcome sound I ever heard was that siren of that ambulance coming after me.

When they started to move me, I said, "Go ahead, get a hold of me. This hurts so bad I can't hardly stand it. I know you're going to hurt me. Just get a hold, and let's get her done."

They found my glasses. They were kind of scarred up. Henry Ashcroft went on out to work and called my boss. Jim Crawford was the department head and Dell Davis was the supervisor. He said "Lindsay's been in a real bad car wreck. He's on his way to the hospital. He's going to be laid up for a while." They put Reed on sick leave or something to help me.

When I got to the hospital, they took me in and put me in on the x-ray table. They finally found Dr. Gibbons that morning. They x-rayed me and said, "Oh you're lucky."

I said, "I'm glad to know that.

They said, "Your hip is just thrown out of place. We can put that hip back in. That will be all right. That arm is another story."

So they put me out.

When I come too I was in the hospital room and Dr. Cragun was there. Dr. Gibbons, Dr. Thain, and Dr. Claire Payne, and Dr. Cragun were the doctors that put me together. They took a big belt and tied me to the ta they did this.

He said, That's just like lifting a horse. Dr. Thain and I got a hold of that leg and pulled it out straight and lifted it right straight up to where it was right straight up from you and twisted it just the right amount and it flipped right back in the socket. "We won't know if it's damaged the nerve. If it has the socket will deteriorate. We won't know for six months."

When I came to, the leg didn't hurt. They had a pin in my elbow and had my hand tied up in he air. From this pin they had a clevis and a nylon rope that would run out and over a pulley and down ain they had a clevis and a nylon rope that would run out and over a pulley and down and had four pounds of weight on it. That was to pull my arm back in place. Dr. Cragun was there.

I said, "Can I move my leg?"

He said, "Why don't you try?"

I moved my leg and it felt real good. It didn't hurt.

He said, "Keep that leg straight and let those muscles have time to contract back in. You've stretched those muscles real hard. They'll drop back into place and you'll be all right. Then I asked about that arm. They didn't tell me all the truth. Years later I found out that they had never seen an arm broke that bad that was ever any good.

I couldn't rest. I couldn't sleep. I hurt real bad. They kept coming in and x-raying me in bed. They didn't dare take me out of bed. I was black and blue all across the stomach. Finally I got my wits about me. I said, "Dr. Gibbons, what you worrying about."

He said, "You're bruised so bad across the stomach that I keep worrying about some internal injuries."

I said, "How did you put my hip in?"

He lifted up that shirt that didn't quite cover the subject, and said we pulled a big wide belt across here.

I said, "Ya, right where that black and blue was."

He said, That's right that's where we bruised you. I feel better now, I know what happened."

This was about on Thursday and I hadn't slept. A couple of boys come through administering to the sick.

I said, "Would you give me a blessing." They did everything but give me a blessing. I laid awake all that night thinking that I wasn't entitled to a blessing cause they didn't give me one.

Peck Hull (a missionary companion) come along the next night. I said, "Peck, would you administer me. I've got to have some rest." He gave me a blessing to give me some rest. That night I slept a little.

I believe on Saturday, President Holt came in to see me. He said, "Lin, what can I do for you." I said, "My land, come in and give me a blessing. I asked for a blessing the other night and a couple of young men came through and done everything but that and maybe I'm not entitled to one. But I've got to have some rest. Things aren't going very well. Things aren't coming into place like they ought to."

He went and got some oil and came back and by then Ralph Gleason who I worked with was in there and he was a high priest. I said, "Now, President, Ralph here is a high priest. He's qualified to annoint me and I want you to seal it."

He said, "All right.

Here's where I learned to administer to the sick. President Holt had more courage than most men so he went about to give me a blessing. He said that the Lord was pleased with my efforts thus far in life and there was work yet for me to do. He blessed the arm that it would come back into place, that those bones would come in where they ought to. He blessed the doctor that he would be alert and attentive and know what he was doing and make the right decisions, and he blessed my family that they would be all right in my absence. He didn't back off like most people do and say we want the Lord to do it. He was there, and by virtue of the Priesthood in the name of Jesus Christ which he had the right to use, he gave me that blessing.

Early Sunday morning, Dr. Gibbons come in the room on the run and said, "Lin, just a little while ago I reared right straight up in bed and the impression was so strong in my mind that I had to put six pounds of weight on your arm instead of four. Four is standard, four is normal, but I've never gone against any impressions that have been that strong, so I'm going to put six pounds on you.

It pulled that arm back into place. I believe I was about five weeks there tied to that bed before they could get the arm solid enough that they could put it into a cast. My land, that was a long time. Then I carried that big ole cast.

This was when Senator Goldwater was running for President and Lyndon B. Johnson was running for President. The only entertainment I had in that hospital was there was a nurse's aide in there that was such a strong democrat. She'd come in that room, and I'd call her Mrs. Goldwater. She'd stand back there and threaten me. She'd say, "If you weren't hurting so bad, I'd whip you."

Dr. Cragun came in to see me. He said, "Lin, I've got two patients down the hall. I wish I could get them in to see you. They're not hurt as bad as you are and they're dying and you're going to live. You're responding to treatment."

I told him that maybe he ought to take President Holt down to administer to them. I think he lost those patients. I don't suppose they had a blessing like President Holt gave to me.

President Holt went back and told the High Council that Sunday as they met that he'd been in to see me and that I'd be all right.

I always appreciate the man up on Mahogany Row out at Thiokol that I worked for by the name of Max Rueben. I never met him. Dell Davis and Jim Crawford went down to his office to hunt up what to do about me. I was going to be laid up for quite a while. Mr. Rueben said they could count all the sick leave that I had that I hadn't used up in the years I'd been at Thiokol. DelMar come in to see me and said, "You haven't used sick leave, you haven't abused it so I can cover you for three months without any problem. Then I can do something else for another three months so you're all right for six months." I also still had a weeks' vacation left.

One evening a man showed up in my hospital room. I didn't recognize him. He told me his name, and he said, "I work in Mr. Rueben's office and Mr. Rueben has said that there will be a layoff while you're here, but you're not on the layoff list. In fact, nobody under Jim Crawford is being laid off on this layoff." The man from Mr. Rueben's office said, "As soon as you can come to work, we realize your arm will be in a cast, you'll be on limited duty. If they haven't a job in the lab for you that will fit your situation, Mr. Rueben said, he'll have a job for you down in his office. I thanked him for the information. He said, "You're probably going to hear some bad rumors." Mr. Rueben didn't want me worrying about it while I was there in that hospital tied to that bed.

It was just an hour or so after this man left that Rule Lamborn came in. He worked as a supervisor under Jim Crawford. I told him what I'd just been told. He said, "Jim will be glad to know this." He told Jim Crawford. Dell Davis came back out the next night or so and said they appreciated the information from Mr. Rueben's office. Jim had said that the day you can come to work you come to work and we'll have a job that will fit your situation. I appreciated the kindness of these men. That lessened a lot of the worries that were there.
The next night or so, Frank Snow called me up and told me that I was being laid off. He thought he was real kind to me to tell me that information.

I said, "Now, Frank, I know a little more about this than you do or think I do and I'ind to you to let you have this information."

I believe it was eight weeks that I was off work. I returned to work with that left arm in a great big old cast. The unit chief in charge of the man under Dell Davis was Richard Cannon from Logan. I went to see him one day. I said, "Richard, I'd like to come on swing shift. I'm still tending kids. My wife started teaching school."

He said, "Fine, line up your ride and come on out to work. You'll have to go to Dr. Loomis. You can stop in his office. Bring a slip from your doctor.

As I went in Dr. Loomis's office I had that cast tied up around my neck. Dr. Loomis wanted to know how I felt. I told him pretty good considering the ordeal.

He said, "I'll just write on here limited duty and I expect that to be followed. I'll call Jim Crawford and tell him that."

As I came in the door, there I met DelMar Davis, Jim Crawford and a few of the others. Del began to say, How can you come to work? You've got that great big ole cast on." Jim Crawford said, "For crying out loud give the man a job he can do and let him go to work. He'aid, "For crying out loud give the man a job he can do and let him go to work. He's been through enough now and don't be giving him any more static."

That's all they were doing was giving a little static. I generally kept even with those guys on nonsense. They hadn't seen me for a couple of months and they were a little bit behind. I was glad to be back to work

As I started to work with an arm in a cast, Jim Crawford said, "Now, Lin, if they give you jobs you can't do, let me know and somebody will get their wires straight. I want you to get what rest you need. I want you to sit down and rest when you get tired, and I don't want any static out of these guys. On swing shift I worked under a man from Texas, Max Anderson. I remember he assigned me to run an acualer. That's a little moisture machine. It's got some of the stinkiest stuff, Peradine, that you mix up and check the moisture in most anything, in propellant or any of its component parts. You have to have things set up. It was a job for two hands. Here I was doing it with one hand. He wasn't very considerate. I worked real hard to do all those things with one hand.

One night none of the solutions were mixed up. There were gallon jugs that you had to pour out and make your mixes in. I was doing this with one arm. I went in the storeroom and got my solutions that I needed and the funnels, and got some ring stands and some things fixed up there so I could mix up the solutions.

When I started that process, we were in one hood back down a little aisle between the benches and the lab. Just over that bench in the other aisle, Ken Lowry, Chub as we called him, was titrating. Right behind him was the barrel for the junk. It was about half full of junk. I started to pour out but in the meantime while I had my back turned with the fans a running and the air conditioning and so forth, the janitor, Russ Rogers, come along and dumped the barrel.

Max Anderson with his soft-soled shoes had crept in the lab and was looking over Ken Lowry's shoulder to see if Ken was titrating right.

I finished this one glass jug and turned around and threw that right over the bench and into what I thought was the half full barrel. When that jug come to rest to the bottom of that empty barrel there was the crash of glass. Ken Lowry was awful goosey and so was Max. Max jumped and goosed Ken and they pretty near beat one another to death. When Ken came to rest he said to Max, "What are you doing looking over my shoulder?" Then they both stared at me and I said, "The last time I looked at that barrel it was half full. I didn't really do that intentionally." If looks would have killed a person, I would have been dead by Max Anderson.

Work at Thiokol

They got me to doing some work. All the strand burner heads had quit working while I had been laid up. That had seemed to have been my job for quite awhile. DelMar Davis came down and told Richard Cannon. Don't you assign Lindsay anything else till he fixes those strand burner heads. I realize he's got one arm but he can do it with one arm. It'll take him a little longer but I want that equipment to work. Max never did believe in anybody fixing anything. All you was to do on his shift was generate data. To fix any equipment so the data was right didn't mean a thing to him. He was so scared of his job that all you did was generate data.

Cannon said in the presence of Max, "Lindsay, you pick you out a good place in there where you can do it. Get yourself lined up and you fix these strand burner heads so they'll work. None of them work right. Here's your charge number. I don't want anything else out of you till that's done."

I was hurrying, doing my best and trying to get everything done with the right hand with not much use out of that left one and Max Anderson stood right behind me and just cleared his throat till I was so nervous I could have killed him.

I finally said, "Now, Max you're not doing any good. I'm going as fast as I can.

He said, "I can't grant you that much time."
I said, "There's no sense starting on this project."

"Oh yes, that's all you can do. Dell Davis will skin me if you do anything else. You've got to hurry."

I said, "I'm doing my best. If you can't go along with this, we might as well figure out something else."

He said, "Let me weld some of those wires for you." So I laid out some stainless steel wires and we were welding a copper wire on the end so we could cold solder it. So we laid some there. Every one he welded when it cooled off it just broke in two.

I said, You didn't do much good. He was upset at the end of that shift and so was I. The next night when I came to work, I went to Dick Cannon and said, "Dick, it's absolutely impossible for me to fix those heads."

He said "Why?"

I said, "Cause Max Anderson stands right over my shoulder and clears his throat till I get so nervous I could kill him but I'm not able."

He said, "He will not stand over your shoulder and clear his throat one more time." He jumped up and run out of his office. I'm not real sure what he told Max but Max never stood and looked over my shoulder while I did any of that work again. Max didn't know what was going on. He knew the answers that were supposed to be, but he didn't really understand. You couldn't go to him for help he didn't know anything. He was just a nuisance. He was a slave driver and that's all he was. He was a pain in the butt.

I've worked for lots of people of this caliber. Sometimes you can take a good ordinary common technician or good workman and promote them to boss and something turns over in their mind and they're not worth a dime after that. It's real hard sometimes to promote people.

A year or so later, there was a layoff. Jim Crawford told Max, "I'll break you back to an A Technician or I'll lay you off as a shift foreman."
He said, "I'll take the layoff." From all the nonsense he'd give us, I don't think he dared come back in there as a common man to work with us because he wouldn't have known how to run the tests, how to run the equipment, and I don't think he would have dared ask after all the nonsense he'd give us.

These years at Thiokol have been quite a time. One year there were seven A technicians that quit and went somewhere else that had seniority on me. I was able to stay.

I always used to wonder why I couldn't get on to the Sugar Factory fulltime. I could help train somebody then they'd get the steady job and I didn't. But I never really knew and I probably still don't. But the Sugar Factory has come and gone. I remember when President Neeley called me in in the Spring of 1960 and asked me if I'd serve as a high councilman. I told him I was working at Thiokol and there would be times I couldn't get to the Thursday night meeting but I'd do my very best. He said, "That's good enough. But what in the world are you doing out at Thiokol?"

I said, "I needed a job.

Ray and Glen had got up big enough that they could milk the cows when I couldn't get there. They were real dependable kids, and I had to have more money with the size of my family, I just was not making it."

He said, "Ya, but why did you leave the Sugar Factory."

I said, "I only worked there about three months a year and that wasn't enough.

He said, "You've gone out there with that fly-by-night outfit and it won't last."

I said, "If it lasts five years its better than what I've had."

I've often thought about that. Thiokol is still going after twenty years and the Sugar Factory has shut down and moved and gone.

I know along those years while I was on the high council Frank Lamb was assistant manager of Sego Milk in Richmond.

He said, "Why don't you come, there's a job opening, and be interviewed for it."

I asked, "What does it pay?"

He told me.

I said, "I'd have to take a cut in pay by half. I make twice that much out to Thiokol, and I'm not going to be interviewed for a job with half pay."

He said, "I don't blame you but we're an led by some source to where I went, to what I did so that I could have a good n led by some source to where I went, to what I did so that I could have a good job all these years while I was sending these kids on missions.

While I'm on this subject I might as well finish my term at Thiokol. I got up to be an A technician. The pay structure out there is such that I was an hourly man so I come under the Taft-Hartley law which seniority helps. The only other places above that is a group leader slot.

To go exempt where your chemists and so forth are, you go into management. They're a salaried person and don't come under the Taft-Hartley law and seniority doesn't mean a thing. I didn't have a chemistry degree so I never wanted to go exempt. I was content with the hour.

The best slot out there is a group leader's slot. I'm going to tell this so that if some of you run into this over the years in your own time it may help you. I had run a shift for a good ten or twelve years as an A technician, responsible for what went on. No extra pay.

Finally one day in the heat of battle they decided to make three group leaders in our section. They dropped me out as shift leader and put Neil Reed in on my shift to be the group leader and didn't give me the job. Neil was a good hard-working man. He'd been there almost a year longer than I had. He had a degree from college in dairy production. He was all right. He did fine, and I got along fine with him. I had no objection to that.

The other two group leaders I objected to. I'd seen shafts all my life. I'd never been promoted for some reason or another. Everybody thought that I was just a common ordinary guy that done the work, and somebody else had to do the telling. Sometimes those things are hard to take.

I thought it over for a week or two and finally summoned DelMar that I'd like to talk to him. I was in M9B which had been my home for many years out to work. I'd built up most of the equipment, I'd remodeled it. I had a good reputation. If my name was on the data, it was accepted. I told DelMar, "You've robbed me. I've worked for you as long as you've been a supervisor. Now when you get around to paying a man to run this shift you drop me out and put Neil in over my shift. He's always worked day shift. He's had a better deal than the rest of us. I knew he was the fair-haired boy. I can see why you put him ahead of me, but I can't see why you put Paul Nielsen or Lloyd Bunderson ahead of me. That's the lowest blow I've ever had out of you or anybody else." I thought I'd said enough so I stopped.

He paced around the room, and I guess I had him in a position that he couldn't answer. He said, "I hope you don't take this personal."

I thought how do you do it any other way.

That's all he said and left.

I told Orrin Baird the same thing, the same speech and he didn't answer either. I couldn't seem to find an answer.

Grant Thompson was the manager of the development lab. Grant and I visited at times. (He's in the stake presidency, he's been a bishop, he's now the stake president.) I said to Grant one night, I was out there as he was getting in his car. I told him how I felt about this and I told him what I'd told DelMar and what I'd told Baird. He looked at me and kind of laughed and said, "What did they say?"

I said, "They didn't really answer."

He said, "You had them in a position they couldn't answer." Lots of times people get in that situation that they just can't answer.

He knew the answer but he wouldn't answer either. There didn't seem to be an answer that I could get. This bothered me for a long time. I even looked around out there for other jobs. I didn't want to leave Thiokol I had about eighteen years in it by then. I was getting old enough. I had seen people that when they get up about sixty they start bypassing you. I wasn't sure that that was the reason I was being bypassed or some other reason that I couldn't find. But I couldn't find an answer and this bothered me. Over the years at Thiokol I had always defended the bosses, I had to be about half cheerful and work. For a lot of people their enjoyment in working is grumbling. I can't do that. I'm not built that way. So for two years it was pretty tough. I had a hard time consoling myself and straightening myself out. I was a little upset at my conduct. I didn't kick up any fuss but I had my feelings and I couldn't get my feelings straight. I had mixed emotions about this.

Then I saw a cartoon of an old man sitting down in a nice easy chair. He was leaned back and kind of relaxed, and he said, "You know I feel better since I give up hope." I had to turn that over in my mind many times before I caught the full impact of that. There's things in life that you can't have. There's things that you want with all your heart that you just don't get. No matter what you do you just can't get them. So if you give up hope on those things you'll feel better.

Since I decided that I felt a little better about the situation. I ran the desk one year for DelMar, he'd had a couple of men do it that had done a real poor job, there were five full file cabinets that were full of data that hadn't been logged up properly and hadn't been done. Nobody could find it. They didn't know where it was or what it was. They brought me in on the desk and I straightened that out in a year then they took me out of the desk and back out in the lab. It was jostled around among a few people. Brent Crosby's had it for a few years, and he did just exactly what those other guys did. He had boxes stacked up with data that just hadn't been finished. He hadn't done a very good job of it. He applied to be an engineer and I imagine he's qualified. I tell him he's got the right disposition to be an engineer.

I thought that over then I went to DeLMar and said, "Now, Del, I understand Crosby is trying to transfer out to be an engineer."

He said, "That's right."

I said, "With him vacating that desk, I would take it if you would give it to me. I've got five and a half years left at Thiokol and I would be content on that desk for that length of time. With straight days I could do my ecclesiastical work, I'm now in the bishopric and I could do that a little easier on straight days."

Del said, "Well, I've almost got a notion to take you right over there and give that to you."

I said, "Now look, I'm not crowding him out but if he goes and the job is available I'm interested. I got the job.

When I was on that desk before, I got the job done and got it completed. Then they switched Carl Lundahl to replace Baird as the unit chief in charge of the technicians. Baird was off work a lot of times that year. That was quite a year. I'd just about got the desk straight with what was going on and what to do. One day DelMar wasn't there and Baird was rushed to the hospital that morning. They had to operate on him. His stomach had come through on ulcers and they had to do a stomach operation on him. He didn't show up to work for about a month. With DelMar gone Wendell Christensen commonly known as the "Horse" run around there and gave everybody instructions. The next mourning he was giving everybody instructions, and I was sitted at that desk trying to get the paperwork straight. DelMar walked in and I felt somebody take a hold of my shoulder. I looked up and he said, "You run the section and delegate the work, pass out the work, Chris can go do his own work." Then he turned around and left. I looked up and there was Chris. He'd gone over and sat down at his des. It went on for a day or two and I was keeping the work straight. I assigned out the work. I went back in room 19 and asked Paul Nielson and Clyde Poppleton if they wanted some overtime the next morning and they both in unison said, "Can you give out overtime?" I said, "Go to hell." I turned around, walked off and left them. Then I headed down the hall hunting for somebody else to bring in the next morning for overtime. Those two run down the hall and caught me and said, "We'll take some overtime."

I said, "Don't be giving me any nonsense. I haven't got time." That was quite an
I said, "Don't be giving me any nonsense. I haven't got time." That was quite an experience while Baird was gone. When he come back, he was so sick I had to hide him in a place where he could sleep and get his rest and nobody would catch him.

One day while Baird was gone, DelMar said to me, "Lindsay, I won't be here for a couple of days. This is the charge number to put on my time card." I said, "All right." He said, "If you run into problems, Mr. Bill Brandt, the Department Head under John McDermott, he'll give you help. Go to him and he'll help you.

I said, "All right."

So the next morning, I was assigning out the work. I was going down the hall to check on something. Right in front of Bill Brandt's office Wendell Christensen said, 'Where's DelMar?";

I said, "I don't really know where he is, but he's not coming today."

Wendell said, "Why didn't he tell me?

I said, "I don't have the foggiest idea why he didn't tell you." As I looked over Chris's shoulder, there was Bill Brandt standing right behind him. I said, "Now Wendell, if you don't have anything to do, I could find a job for you." At that he faunched and fumed and went on down the hall. Bill said, "Do you need help with him?"

I said, "No I don't think so."

He said, "I'm here if you need help with him, I can do that."

I said, "I kind of enjoyed that."

He said, "I thought maybe you did.

After a year on the desk they switched and put Carl Lundahl in Baird's place. Baird had not really recovered from that operation very good. They took me off the desk. Del said he needed me out in the lab. I kidded Carl about firing me.
I guess it was Dorothy Reese that came on the desk to replace me somewhere around the first of July that year. In a matter of about a month she transferred out to a better job. She was a qualified secretary so they put Tom Fishburn on there. He stuck around there for a couple of months, then he quit and went back to school. Each time somebody would quit I'd have to go back in and straighten out that mess. They knew they were going to go and they didn't really keep up. Then Charlotte Giffen came in there on it. She stayed there for about five years. When Carl took over, it was new to him. In all due respects to him. I was out in the lab in the other building. I don't really know what went on. He'd get behind on logging out his work. I used to log it out for Baird. I'd logged it for a year. When Carl come on I don't know what his instructions were. He'd get behind logging out that data. They didn't let Charlotte log it out. She wasn't familiar with the lab procedures. After it got to her, she'd mail it but they didn't let her check the data. At least not at first. So it was all up to Carl. It would stack up and stack up and stack up. We were pretty busy. If Carl would take a day off for vacation, sick leave or whatever that DelMar would come get me, take me over there, and tell me to get this all logged out and caught up. If you have to stay over you do it, but don't leave till you've got that done. I'd do that. The next day when Carl would come back the first thing he'd do he'd come over and say, "What happened to my desk?" I'd tell him. He'd just fume. He didn't want me doing that. I said, "I don't want to do that. But what do I do with DelMar?" I told Del that all you're doing is causing trouble between me and Carl.

"Don't worry about it I'll handle it." But he never did say anything about it as far as I know.

That whole next year or better, everytime Carl would leave I would have to go straighten out his desk. That would just make him fighting mad. But there wasn't anything I could do about it and he didn't do anything about it. If he'd kept the desk caught up when he left, that wouldn't happen. So there got to be a little nonsense between us. I always respected Carl but he and I clashed quite often and that was the basis of it.

I wanted to go get Jed off his mission. I tried to go get Ray but that was in the wintertime. There was a blizzard on and we couldn't get there. Ray was getting married when Glen came home and that old car couldn't swim anyway, and I couldn't drive it to England. But there was Jed out in Maine and I wanted to go get him.

I had to write to the church and tell them I wanted to pick that boy up and what day should I be there. I kept asking Carl, I needed at least two weeks or better off right at the last of June to go get Jed. Carl kept shaking his head, "We've got too much work to do you can't go.

I didn't think we had that much to do and I didn't believe him. One day Carl wasn't there and I went to DelMar.

I said, "I've got to find out. I'm trying to get up the courage to go get Jed."

DelMar said, "If you want to go get Jed, you just go back there on that overtime sheet and on that calendar and you write in the days you want. You can have that time off. If you run out and don't get back on time, I'll carry you on noncomp, you've got no problems."

I said, "Carl keeps telling me I can't go."

He said, "You go put that down there and if he gives you any static come back to me."

I wasn't really sure if Carl was all ticked off or whether he wasn't but it all ended up the same. The next morning he said, "I see you wrote all those days down for vacation, and I told you you couldn't have them."

I said, "Yesterday I had to know cause I had to write to the Church last night for permission to pick Jed up. You weren't here so I asked DelMar and DelMar said I could go.

He said, "Ya, but I said you can't."

So at that I grabbed him and drug him up the hall to face Del. He did everything he could do and finally talked me into stopping. I was the biggest. Course since he's been taken out as boss, I've tried to get along with him.

Trip To Pick Up Jed

I was on graveyard shift the month we were getting ready to go after Jed. I can't remember if we left on a Monday or a Tuesday. I went out on graveyard shift so that at 8:00 o'clock that morning I had that day done. Over on that corner in Brigham City where the road comes down out of the canyon, then you turned south and went past that Texaco station where we generally gassed up (that was before that section of the freeway was in) There I waited for my wife and kids.

When I left to go to work that night I didn't really know whether Julia was going to go or not. She had said all the time that she wouldn't go. One day she said, "I'm not going. We don't have the money to go!

I said, "I know, I went up to the bank and borrowed $700 to go. I love you enough that I can't argue with you, but you can change your mind and can go with us till we're down the road far enough that you can't catch us.

When we left it was Judy, Neil, Nancy, and Gary, and Julia and I going in the 65 Buick that I had bought from Faye Bernhisel a couple of years before.

We put the luggage carrier on the top. We were ready to go. Everybody had a sleeping bag. We had a coleman stove along so we could stop alongside the road and cook our dinner or breakfast.

I waited on that corner that morning. I waited and I waited. My co-workers, Mark Emi and Craig Chaplan went over to a restaurant and got their breakfast and come back and stopped there and heckled me that my family had gone on without and that I might as well go home with them.

I said, "I believe my wife's decided to go and they have to wait for her." It seems like it was about 10:00 o'clock when they shoved off. I was glad that they were there. I never said a word. We just got in the car, and I stayed awake till we got the kids on the road to head up Weber Canyon. Then went to sleep and slept up Weber Canyon and out across the first part of Wyoming. There wasn't anything there to see anyway.

We camped that first night out about half way through Nebraska. The next day we went into Omaha, crossed the river to Council Bluffs, then went north to Winter Quarters. Over there to Council Bluffs I remember we stopped and had some ice cream. When we got up the country to Winter Quarters, Julia said,"Do you know where my purse is?" I said, "I guess it's back there where we had ice cream." From then on we made her leave the purse in the car. If she wanted something out of it she could get it out but she had to leave the purse in the car. So we turned around and went back and got it.

Over the years I've chased her purse all over the country where she's left it.

We went up and saw the sights at Winter Quarters, went over to Mormon Tollbridgeaska and Iowa was a lot better country than the Mormons ever found after they got to the mountains, but they had to come here for another reason.

I often wondered why the Lord brought them out here. But I read where John Taylor said that the reason they came to the mountains was that they had to raise a generation that could stand it. Every place they had stopped before, the Devil had dug them out and they needed a place. When they got to Salt Lake, they scattered people clear down in the South to Mexico and from Salt Lake to the north into Canada. It was about a thousand miles each way. They manned every stream and got on every little brook and built a commonwealth and a place to raise a new generation. The Lord granted them enough years of peace to do that. Now the church is established well enough they can go anywhere.

We went across Iowa. That was pretty farming country. I have farming blood strong in me. I remember when we got to Davenport, Iowa. We went across the Mississippi river then we had to swing to the South to hit the freeway. As we hit that freeway and headed east, I pulled out to pass a truck. This truck driver reached out and waved his hand down so I slowed up and went back in behind him. As we got up over that hill, there was a highway blockade checking speed. I remember Julia said, "Gosh, I thought he was just waving at us."

I said, "He don't do that for just common ordinary things." I always appreciated him. The courtesy of the road was quite a thing. Everybody should help everybody that's on the road for their betterment.

We went on across. We always had some milk and something to eat along. We took a little meat in the cooler that we had in the trunk so we had our own grub for a day or two. We stopped and cooked supper. After we had our supper we headed on for Chicago. As we got just out of Chicago, we pulled into a Campground. We always stopped at a KOA campground or one of their competitors. We would pull in there just about dark and drive that car up there into a slot that we had rented for anywhere between $3.50 and $6. In front of the car, Neil and I would put that tent up while the rest went to the bathroom and got squared around.
We put that tent up and blew up the air mattresses. Everybody had an air mattress. We generally put Gary in the car to sleep. Neil said he would sleep in the door of the tent to protect everybody. Julia and I and the two girls slept in the tent __those spooky girls.

That was the general procedure. Either night or morning everybody would have a shower and shampoo. We'd cook breakfast, take that tent down, load that tent up and put it in, let the air out of those air mattresses, everybody would roll up their sleeping bags and get ready to go.

I think we finally slid that luggage carrier just as far to the front of the car as we could go, then for balance we put the tent up to the front. We had to kind of balance it so we could drive it. If we got too much weight on that back end of that car then we couldn't drive it. We had to have enough weight on the front it.

We headed out from Chicago. We took the freeway loop around Chicago, then headed east. We got up there and crossed into Michigan, over to Detroit, crossed over into Canada then went up on the Canadian side on the St. Lawrence freeway. We had an appointment for Jed that following Saturday at noon in Maine. I said, "You be in your apartment at noon. We'll either be there or I'll call you." We went up the St. Lawrence freeway. We stopped and watched a ship go through the locks. That was interesting to watch. We stopped up thed a ship go through the locks. That was interesting to watch. We stopped up there and saw a few of the sights on the Canadian side. Then when we got to Montreal we switched to Her Majesty's Highway. (Good night, I'm glad Her Majesty would claim it. It was just a dirt road.) Then clear across back in the United States around through New Hampshire. That night it was raining so we stayed at a motel. Julia and whoever got to the bed first slept there. The rest of us slept on the floor. Generally one or two of those girls would get in bed with her and the rest of us would sleep on the floor.

The next day we headed right up the country. At noon we were in Bangor, Maine. I went to the phone and called Jed. I said, "We're in Bangor, Maine, I missed it fifty miles. Stick around. Why don't you go down onto Main Street as we come into town. Sit down there on the bench of the park." He said, "We'll watch for you." As we left we'd gotten that far with just one set of keys to the car. I didn't believe in traveling with just one set of keys. We went in a Sears, Roebuck store to have some new keys made. I had told Neil that he was the navigator. He searched out the way to go and the road. We had some maps we'd bought from Texaco for the trip so we would know where we were going. As we were standing there getting ready to check out of the Sears and Roebuck Store,I had the keys made and a few things we needed. I said to this lady, "Do you have a McDonald's here." She said, "No, we have a Carrie's, which is about the same thing." She started telling me and Neil how to get there. Of course Julia, Judy and Nancy and everybody was listening. When she got through, I said to Neil, "Do you know now where to go."
He said, "Yes."

I said, "I believe I do too."

I got out and got in that car and started down the road in Bangor, Maine. Julia and Judy was just a yelling at me that I was going the wrong way. But I could hear Neil in the background saying, "No, you're right. This is the right road.", They were just a going at me. I pulled right into Carrie's and they were still saying,"You're going the wrong way."

They had got turned around. Of course it wasn't them turned around, it was us turned around. When I pulled in there, I said, "Is this all right? Is this good enough?"

Julia said, "It was an accident." We run in but there was a convention. A bunch of people with some goofy hats on. They'd been drinking a bit of the forbidden ointment I believe.

I said, "Good night, you go back and get in the car and Neil and I will bring the hamburgers." We bought enough hamburgers to go around and some drinks. We didn't take time to cook that time. Occasionally we stopped this way. Then we headed up that country to Jed.

I remember as we pulled in, there sat Jed and his companion on that park bench. I turned the corner and said, "Julia, there's your boy." We jumped out and run over to get Jed. Then we went over to his apartment.

We had to go up into Canada to district conference that night. We went up to district conference and there we rented a motel. Neil took his sleeping bag and went and slept with the missionaries. So Judy, Nancy, Julia, and Gary and I stayed there. We had a swim.
Those missionaries faunched around all night. The next day we went to conference. I remember we met a girl from Utah that had gone up there to teach school. There was a couple of them out there teaching at the University. We met the assistant to the president. He was converted to the church by Bill Pond and baptized into the church by Bill when he was there on a mission many years before. This was back in the mission field to me. A place I'd longed to go back and never got there.

They gave Jed his release, wished us well, and Sunday night we went back to his apartment. We all stayed there and Monday we left. We loaded his stuff up. I thought the car was full before. By the time we got Jed's stuff in there and Jed: it was fuller than it was before. I remember Jed kept his tie on and his coat on all spruced up to snuff all the time we were in his mission field. We went down the country and stopped and saw a few people that he had helped bring into the church. I felt like Jed had had a good mission.

We camped over at the birthplace of the prophet Joseph Smith. We got in there. It was a little dark. We just pulled in there and camped. I remember a little car there. A couple of kids in sleeping bags right there on the table. The next morning we found it was a couple of girls in that car. They reared up. They had never even heard us come. They were Mormon girls that worked in Washington, D.C. They were on vacation touring around at some of the church sites.

We toured and had the lecture of the birthplace of the prophet. Then we headed out. The next night we got to Hill Cumorah. We got to the place where the church was organized. We'd been to the Sacred Grove that day. We'd been into Palmyra. We ate dinner up on the Hill Cumorah. As I looked out over that I thought about the battles that had taken place there. Two different civilizations died there in battle that we know of.

When we got through with the sites there. We went to the sacred grove. The Martin Harris home was under construction so we didn't go there. Then we headed for Niagara Falls. That's where we camped that night. We went down and saw Niagara Falls under the lights. That's quite a thing. Real pretty. The next morning we headed west. We saw the sites as we went along.

The next event was the Kirtland Temple. As we got there ready to go into the Kirtland Temple. This was interesting to me I said, "Jed, let's get as much information out of this guy as we can. He'll know we're Mormons." And he did. We quizzed him down and we got as much information as we could get out about that Kirtland Temple. (The Kirtland Temple is owned by the RLDS chruch.)

Then we headed for Chicago. Just west of Chicago we camped at the same place we camped when we were going out. The next morning we headed west, then south dawn to Nauvoo. It seems like we stayed overnight at Nauvoo. We went to Carthage on the way to Nauvoo.

At the Carthage jail, we were seated in the room where the prophet was shot and that ended the tour. I sat there, and I waited for most of the people to leave. A lady guide kept sticking around, and I finally discovered that she wasn't going to leave. So I said to my family. In this room was probably the place where Joseph the prophet set apart Hyrum to be president of the church. Good night! That lady guide climbed all over me.

I said, Wait a minute just calm down. Let me tell my story. When we go down there if you've got the history of the church I'll show you." So I finished my story. We discussed that and we got down there. She hustled me right into the library. I got out volume 6 and showed her where that was the case.

She turned to her husband and said, "I've never heard this."

He said, "That's right I've known that." She said, "Why didn't you tell me?" He said, "I don't know; I never thought you had the need to know."

The next day as we got into the Bureau of Information in Nauvoo we looked at a missionary, and it was Jim Cooper. He was Nada's age. He played football. He was the transplant from California that was at Sky View when we beat Logan for the first time. He outrun everybody and made a touchdown against Logan. He was there as a missionary. It was quite a thing to go around Nauvoo and see. I wondered if the mosquitos were that bad when the pioneers were there. It probably was worse, as they were restoring that city.

Here's where my great grandfather and his family came across the river. They took my grandfather, he was an eighteen or twenty year old boy. They built a raft and loaded the cattle on the raft. They built a corral on there and run them in on that raft and fastened up the corral.

They pushed that raft out on the river with the cattle on it and my grandfather on it to steer. (I imagine we'd do the same thing. we'd pick out one of the kids and send him to do it. We're about like Lehi if we're going to do something we send one of the boys.) In Granddad's history he said that they got out in that river and the cattle got scared and stacked up on one side of the raft and tipped the raft over and threw him out. He said he got a hold of an old cow's tail and hung on and that's how he got across the river. I guess we're here because of an old cow's tail.

The river was about a mile wide right there I think. At least it looked that wide to me.

As we left Nauvoo and went down the river. I saw a sign that said there was a ferry across the river.

As we went on down the river we found the road that came up to this ferry and went across. We drove out on that ferry at our appointed time. Everybody got out of the car. I remember Gary. He thought that was quite a thing. That water was just right down there just a few inches away. I think that was one of the highlights of the trip. I'd ridden on a ferry years before but it had been a long time. We went across and then hit the road to go on across Missouri. We wanted to hit into Missouri north of Independence up at Adam-ondi-ahman. When we got over in the Adam- ondi-ahman territory, we followed the road map, got off the road and went to Adam-ondi-ahman and went to where the sign was that said this was Adam-ondi-ahman. It was raining so hard we couldn't even get out of the car. I always wanted to go out and walk around that Adam- ondi-ahman country but we just couldn't do it. Then we looped around and got into Independence. We went to the Bureau of Information at Independence and took the tour there. We saw the duplicate of Liberty Jail. They told us about it. We saw the temple site where the temple is to be built in Independence. We sashayed around that town for awhile and went on out of town to the west almost to Lawrence, Kansas. There we bedded down for the night.

The next day we headed west across Kansas. That was hot. We'd go from road stop to road stop all day across Kansas. We'd stop and then we'd take wet towels and put around our neck. That old Buick would boil. There was a rest stop about every 30 or 40 miles. We'd pull in there and get the water and pour water down over the front of the radiator and let it cool the car off gradually, then fill it back up with water. Then we'd get another 30 or 40 miles. Julia and all the kids would wrap a wet towel around them or over their head to get what moisture we could. That was the hottest day we ever spent.

We came across Kansas and into Colorado. It had been standard practice that after we got down to half a tank of gas, we always hunted for another Texaco station. I carried with me a Texaco credit card. We'd charge it all on Texaco. We'd fill up.

We were just coming into Denver, Colorado from the east. We were getting down on gas. So we turned into a Texaco station off the freeway. He had a whole bunch of pumps there. Some said no gas at this one. We lined up and got in line for a gas pump. I said, "How many gallon will you sell me?",

He said, "We'll sell you all you want. All you can get in that tank. I told my supplier that the day I run out of gas I was going to lock the door and go fishing."

That year was about like year 1979. Everybody on the radio and television and so forth was a yakking that there wasn't enough gas and that we were going to run out of gas.
We filled up in Denver and come sauntering along through Denver and on out to the north and starting asking where should we stop. This was Sunday night. Everybody said let's go home. Jed, Judy, Neil, and I took turns driving. We headed up to Cheyenne then headed west. We had bought a set of tires from LeVere just before we went, but along out there in the middle of the night, we ruined one of the tires. We put the spare on, got into Ogden the next morning and stopped and traded LeVere that tire for another one. Put it on and we came on home.

I was always glad I made that trip. It cost somewhere around $700 for the trip. There's no free lunch. But I don't know when there would have been a better time for us to go and see the historic sites of the church--to go clear across the country. I remember when we were over on the Atlantic Ocean, Judy and Nancy run down there so they could stick their toe in the Atlantic Ocean. I believe one of them slipped and fell in. I don't remember which one. I threw rocks in there. A few years ago when Lyle got married, Craig and I went down to Lyle's wedding. Craig and I went out and waded in the Pacific Ocean. So I've had both toes in both oceans.

When I was on a mission in St. Petersburg, Florida, I stuck my toe in the Gulf of Mexico. I didn't really go swimming I just stuck my toe in.

Our First Cars

The first car the Rawlins' had was a Model T Ford bought when I was just a kid back in the '20's. The first time I ever watched the fireworks we all loaded in the car. The County Fair was here. They didn't have very good tires in those days. Right down there south of Smithfield we had two flat tires or three. We pulled off there to the side of the road, fixed those flat tires by candlelight or something, We stood there to the side of the car and watched the fireworks. At that time if you had a flat tire, you just took it off, found the leak, patched it, pumped it up with a hand pump, put it back on and went on your way. By the time we got the tires fixed the fireworks were over. We turned around and came home.

When they bought that Model T Ford,a salesman from Preston came down here and sold Dad the car. Then Dad went with him back up to Preston, bought the car turned around and drove it home. He tried to turn in the gate out here and run into the barrow pit. He was quite upset. It was about dark. I was just a kid. I asked him what happened.
He said, "I said, Whoa and it didn't stop."

For a guy that was used to driving a team all his life and then switching to an automobile, it was just like riding a horse that ran away. I don't think he ever tried to drive again.

We had about the first car around here on this street. All the women around here would ask mother if she was going to town on Saturday. She'd generally go to town whether she had anything to do or not. She'd take them to town. She'd always take Howard as the chauffeur. Howard was a pretty good chauffeur. He chauffeured for years every Saturday. He got so tired of that. He just longed for the day that Reed got his driver's license. When Reed got his license, he said, "Reed, it's your turn. I've had it. I'm not going to town anymore.

Those women would go there and shop all day long, then you'd try and round them up. Then they'd go back and pick up the best bargains. Some of those gals were about the best bargain hunters you ever heard of.

There was a house where the Housleys lived right down here north of where Bob Gregory's barn is. That's where Horace's wife's dad and mother lived the last years of their life. Reed drove down there and gathered them up. Thy were about the last ones to pick up. He was going to turn around and go to Preston. He was heading south. Reed went to turn around on top of that road and the road wasn't wide enough. The barrow pit wasn't as deep as it is now. It was leveled off a little better; the road wasn't quite as high. He went down through the barrow pit and around a telephone pole over by the fence, then back up on the road and on to Preston. Good night! They screamed and hollered and beat the side of the car and carried on. He took them to Preston.

The next week they wouldn't ride in the car. They'd like to go to town but not if Reed was going to drive. So mother demoted him and put Howard back on the job. Howard always accused Reed of doing that on purpose. Reed never admitted it.

The first car Julia and I ever had was a Model A Ford. It was quite old but it was a pretty good car. She'd never driven a car. A man should never marry a girl that doesn't know how to drive a car. You can talk to your daughter one way but you can't talk that way to your wife.

We were going up a hill. I had told her how to shift down. She went up and I said, "You'll have to shift down." She did but she didn't use the clutch.

One day she and Arville went to get apples. They drove up to a gate and Arville jumped out to open the gate and Julia drove right on through.

She took me down to Owen's to get the tractor one day in that Model A Ford. Ray and Glen were little kids. They always were wrestling no matter where they were. Well she never did think that was the right thing to do. Down by Lorraine Karrens, she turned around and spanked those kids in the back seat. Ray reared up and hollered, "Lookout Mama here comes a telephone pole." She was down in the barrow pit, jumping ditches and everything else. Instead of driving that car she was spanking those kids. She got it stopped before she got to the pole. Thank goodness. She set there and bawled awhile, then laughed awhile. By the time I got there some people come along to help her.

She said, "No, I'll wait for Lin, he's coming along with the tractor." So I pulled her back on the road.

I tell you that's quite a circus to teach your wife to drive an automobile. She drove that old Ford through fences and ditches and everything else. She finally got pretty good.

One time we bought a '46 Ford. We drove it till it about quit. Bryce Gilbert had gone in the service and he'd been driving a '52 Mercury. He'd broke that speedometer outrunning the speed cop. It was setting up there. I was helping Mel Gilbert move cattle.

I asked him, What are you going to do with that car?"

He said, "I'm going to sell it."

I asked, "How much do you want for it."

He said, "Do you want to buy it?"

I said, "I'd sure give it some thought. What do you want?"

He said, "$350."

I wasn't going to have enough money so I went to the bank and borrowed $350 for six months and bought the car.

We had just got word that Barbara's husband, Julia's aunt, had got killed in an accident. He was out with his truck and didn't come back. Thy hunted for him. I don't know that anybody ever knows what happened but he was laying there to the side of his truck dead. We took off to go to the funeral down to Hurricane. We headed down the road in the '52 Mercury. I drove most of the night. We could bed the kids down. Neil was just a little shaver. He took a little quilt and laid up in the back window with a little pillow. He was just small enough that he just fit right there. He said, " This is my place." We stacked kids all around in that car. I drove till somewhere around 3:00 o' clock in the morning. I was getting pretty tired.

I asked Julia, "How do you feel?"

She said, "I can drive."

I slouched down in the seat and went to sleep. About daylight I come to and put on my glasses and the telephone poles were just speeding by. We didn't have a speedometer and I said, "Julia, have you got your foot clear to the floor."

She said, "No, not quite. Why?"

I said, "Bryce Gilbert broke that speedometer at 120 mph and he wasn't wide open. Please let up on that gas and slow down gradual. I'm wide enough awake I'll drive from here on."

We had some pretty eventful trips going up and down this state.

Scout Jamborees

I've been a thinking about all those scout jamborees. Let's get them out here in sequence. I remember coming home from high council meeting one Sunday at noon. We were all here for dinner. Ray was 12 and Glen was 11. "There's a scout jamboree at Colorado Springs, Colorado." I believe it went in the last part of July. "Do one of you boys want to go?"

Ray and Glen both said, "Yes."
I said, "Oh dear I hadn't thought about both of you going but I won't draw between you."

In the morning it's first come first serve. In the morning your mother can take you down to the scout office and register. There was a whole bunch of kids down there and lined up the next morning to register. That meant that Glen would turn 12 in January and he could be ready. He had to pass off some merit badges and get lined up. He and Ray could both do it. We finally gathered up enough money and made the payments as needed to be and got ready for them to go.

We took them down to Logan, loaded them on the bus and they headed to Colorado Springs. That was Glen's first trip out anywhere.

I said, "Now look, I'll tell you everything I know, when you come back everything that went wrong don't blame it onto me." Cause that was kind of the way he did things as a little boy.

He said, "Can't I grumble to my Dad."

I said, "Ya, you can grumble but don't make it too tough." They were gone two weeks.

About four years later there come a jamboree to Pennsylvania State Park, alias Valley Forge. The world fair was in New York City. That was a big event. So those two kids got ready to go. LaVar Smith down here in the old third ward was one of the scoutmasters to go. He took two of his boys.

I remember that morning they loaded them on a DC-8. It was a big four engine prop plane. I guess it was kind of standard procedure when you fire up one of those motors to get them going that flames would shoot all over. When the propellers got to going them it would blow the fire out. We loaded all those kids on there and they got up there and bolted the door. Then they wheeled away the stairs. They started the motors on the other side. When they got over to this motor, the flames were shooting out of that motor. Julia turned to me and said, "Get those kids off that airplane."

I said, "There's no way I can do that."

She said, "Get those kids off that airplane."

I said, I can't jump that high. If I could, I couldn't get the door open."

There was a lot of men around there getting some orders from their wives to get their kids off that airplane. When the propeller got to going it blew out the fire and calmed down, and they took off. She was still standing around there wondering what about her boys on an airplane that had been on fire. They made it. They had a real nice trip. They were gone for two weeks and went to the world's fair. That made it so that those two got two jamborees.

When Jed come along to go, he didn't go the first time. But the second time he went. Neil was just 12 years old. Jed was about sixteen or seventeen. They went to the jamboree up at Faragot, Idaho. That was the first one. So Jed got one.

About the next year after that Jed got a chance to go for a week up to Ricks College for an All Church Explorer Conference.

Then a few years later Neil signed up to go to Japan to a world jamboree. Good night, that was so much money we staggered it out, but we made it. It took about $1,100. Neil worked that fall before milking cows for Mel Gilbert.

That fall Neil, Craig, and Mark hauled straw. They were going down this road somewhere just south of Bishop Bodily's. Craig was sitting on front of that wagon kicking that front tire and he caught his foot under the wheel. The wheel pulled him off and run over him with the wagon and broke his collar bone and broke some ribs. Neil was driving. He got stopped, picked him up, and put him on the wagon.

He got Mark driving while he held Craig on the wagon. I was to work and Julia had gone to school. Nobody told Mark to slow down, and he turned in the yard so fast he threw them off the wagon. They finally got him stopped and he went over and got Sister Jessop to take him to the doctor. Poor ole Craig was beat up there all winter before he could do much. He started school with one arm in a sling and he should have had the other one but he had to have one to use.
They started milking cows. I believe Mark was only about 11 years old. Neil had to have relief then Reginald got sick so Mark and Neil milked those cows all winter about 120 cows. Neil saved his money. He didn't quite have enough. We helped a little. I think Ray was on a mission or maybe Jed was out.
When we got ready for him to go I went up and borrowed enough money from the bank and he finished it out. That made two jamborees for Neil. Then about a year after that President Nixon had an Explorer Conference in Washington, D.C. and Neil went to that.

That year we were going after Jed to bring him home off a mission Craig and Mark got lined up to go to Faragot. We had an agreement with them that they stayed home and took care of things and milked Mel Gilbert's cows and done the work here, the irrigating and what not then we'd come home and Neil and Jed would take over for them while they went to Faragot to the Jamboree.

In 1977, Gary got a chance to go back to Pennsylvania State Park to Valley Forge to the jamboree. LaVar Smith was the scoutmaster. We finally got him to go. That meant all the boys got to go to at least one. Neil got two, Ray and Glen got two. I think it added up to ten jamborees and two explorer conferences among those boys.

I've always been in favor of the scout program. It gives a chance for the kids to get away from home and start getting them weaned. I've often thought about Abraham having a celebration when he weaned Isaac. Sometimes by golly it's worth it.

My Brothers and Sister

I come to the part in life that I've kind of gone around. I'm going to tell a little bit about my brothers and my sister. I hope they don't sue me.

This is from my point of view. I don't suppose I was the easiest kid in the world in raise. I had kind of got my independence early. I had starting delivering newspapers real early. Then I worked for Clayt (Clayton) Hoggan rather than work here. Aerial was married in 1926. So that meant I was six years old. He must have got home from his mission about the time Horace left. Horace got home from his mission in 1928 then he got married that summer. So they were gone from home, but yet they all tried to work together. I absolutely resented as a kid those older brothers after they got married still telling me what to do.

One time they sent me down to the end of the east field by the home. Of course, at that time it covered both my place and what Howard had (Sherm and Charlene's got it now). There was a little section down there, over on the north side that wasn't very good, kind of an old slew. We'd pasture cows there at times of the year. That was about all we got out of it. They had me down there herding cows all day long all alone. The reason I was down there was to keep the cows in. So I fixed the fence so the cows would stay there and wouldn't get out. Then I went off to play.

I got tuned up pretty good for that. My job was to stay with those cows.

I said, "The cows stayed where I put them because I fixed the fence."
But in their sight, that wasn't right. They didn't want me going off to play. I used to herd cows down Main Street a half a mile south and then a mile west. The clover would grow up and I didn't mind that. Reed and I got in on that part of the time. I didn't mind doing it with somebody but I didn't like to do it alone.

Working With Aerial

One time Aerial came up here and dickered with dad to have me come help him thin his beets. I don't know what kind of arrangements he made. Aerial had some beets west of the Hyer ditch down on the old Mower place. That's the place where Deb Bodily is. To have me come help him thin his beets. I didn't want to go. I'd been thinning with Owen, Howard, Reed, Mae and I. I didn't like thinning beets.
They sent me down to help Aerial. Aerial was pretty kind. He'd take me down there and show me which rows to thin then he'd turn around and go back to the house. I thinned all day. He'd come out and get me and take me in to dinner and let me rest a little while. Then he'd take me back and show me where to go then he'd turn around and go back to the house.

The second day of that along in the afternoon. Some kids come along the canal a playing. I laid down the hoe. I was all alone out there in the field. I didn't think much of thinning beets, and I don't believe there's any lonelier job on earth than to thin beets alone. Misery likes a little company and that's about as miserable job as ever was.

He came out there along there in the middle of the afternoon and found that I had only thinned about half a row of beets. He just beat the tar out of me. Finally he quit and went to work showing me how. I couldn't keep up with him and he went on down the field and I realized that I thought that I could outrun him and come back home.

I had my pony tied up at the end of that field. Wherever I went I had a pony. That's one thing they never took away was my pony. That was my means of transportation. That was mine. That was how I delivered the newspapers in the morning.I took off down that field for my pony just as hard as I could run. When he saw me go, he took after me. I got on my pony and come home.

I told Dad what had been going on.

I said, "Here he comes up the road to whip me again."

He said, "You go on up to the house. He'll not whip you."

I didn't hear the discussion between him and Dad but I never went back to help him thin beets anymore. The next day I went in on the crew out here and thinned with the rest of my family at home.

Aerial used to tune me up every once in a while. When I was about 14, Reed and I were out here in the yard killing a pig one Saturday, stringing it up. Dorothy, Aerial's wife, came along. There was always a lot of nonsense with her. I always enjoyed her. She said, "When you kill that pig, I want the bladder." I didn't know if she really wanted it. I thought she was just j I cut the bladder out and took it in and give it to her.
Then I came back out. Aerial come out in a few minutes and was going to whip me for that. So I took off my coat and I said, I imagine maybe you will whip me but by golly I'm going to get a few blows in or some kicks or something."

Reed piped up, "Well today, big brother, when you whip one of us, you're going to whip us both at the same time." He sided off right straight across from me 'cause Aerial was between us. Aerial would look at one of us then he would look at the other one, then he'd look back. We granted him the first move. Finally he cooled off and turned around and went back in the house. That was the last time we come that close to blows.

Dad was watching all this from the house. When we went in for dinner, Dad wanted to know what was going on. So I told him. He said, "When you go back out to work after dinner, stop in and tell Aerial I want to talk to him." Things were a little better between him and I from then on.

Dividing Up the Farm

After Dad and Mother died, Reed was on a mission. She gave Howard and I some pretty strict instructions. She had sold the place to Howard and Reed for love and affection and a dollar. I had asked her not to put my name on any property. I was a teenager and I didn't want my name on it.

We followed mother's instructions pretty well. When Reed came home from his mission the three of us banded our part together and put a federal loan on the place and paid the rest of the family all off. It was somewhere around $700 or $800 each. We were several years getting Owen paid off. We made a mistake as we were doing this. We didn't know that we had to buy stock in the company. So we were a couple of hundred dollars short. We talked to Owen and we shorted him a couple of hundred dollars. We finally got even with him. We finally got that paid off. We should have borrowed a little more money if we could have done. But we may have borrowed all we could. I don't remember that.

Anyway, my name wasn't on it. It never was until after I came home from my mission then Howard and I bought Reed out. We squared things off. That was when I got half of it and Howard got the other half. We divided the farm up in half and agreed that the one that got the home paid the other one $800 dollars. Then we flipped for it. I won the north half. It took me a couple of years to get Howard paid off, but I got him paid off.

When Howard moved his home in he got too close to the line. It was winter and we hadn't really measured it out. Later on we changed the boundary to where it's cter and we hadn't really measured it out. Later on we changed the boundary to where it's crooked so that I didn't farm close to his house. After he had added on I would have been right in that front room. But that was just a mathematical error made out here guessing at where it was instead of measuring it. That's where they wanted the house. They didn't want to go down the road across from Raley's barn so it worked out fine.

On settling up this property. Aerial told me several times that he was completely disappointed in the way it was done. I don't know what he wanted and I said, "Don't talk to me cause I don't have my name on anything either."

I never ever really got acquainted with Aerial. He moved to Washington. They left in '38 I believe and went to Washington. I've only seen him a time or two since. I generally check with him occasionally.

Owen was next. I don't remember what year he got married. I used to ask Owen a question and he would just grunt. I asked Owen once what he thought about the way the property was divided up and he said that he didn't like it. I asked him what he wanted, and he never answered.

In those years that we were going on missions and so forth we almost went broke literally. When I came back from my mission we were just hanging on by the skin of our teeth. It has been quite a struggle. I don't know whether the older boys knew that or not. I know back before Reed went we rented sixty acres over in Dayton. We put it into fall wheat and the next year we harvested it. We never did rent it again. It was a dry farm. While we were doing that, Aerial come to me and said "I want to get in on that." I said, "Good crimeney. There's Reed and Howard and I, mother and dad (I think Dad was still alive then, I know Mother was) and Owen. I said, "There's so many now that it won't make no difference how good a crop we get there won't be any money left. I don't think he'd even been over there.

Back in 1936 as Reed got ready to go on a mission we rented 30 acres between Spring Creek and Cub River on the north side. It's part of what Gary Allen has now. It was owned by a loan company, Miller and Vealy. Howard rented that. We did most things in Howard's name at this stage of the game. I was under age and that saved complications. Reed helped get the crop in before he left. We had some hay. That fall we sold the crop.

Dod Hyer had bought a 36 Chevy, four-door sedan. He drove it all summer. He went back to the factory and got it. That fall he wanted to sell it. He didn't have enough money to make the payment. He was selling cars anyway. It was for sale. He'd give $650 for it. I believe we paid him a down payment of $100 or something and he sold it for $500 or $550. We set it up on GMAC (General Motors Corporation Finance Plan). We took the crop off that 30 acres and applied all of that on that thing and set it up to pay the rest the next year. We had it rented the next year. The next year the crop finished paying for it. That's how we bought that 36 Chevy. That was just as good a car as there was around. That was in the fall of 1936. That made it so that we could go anywhere we needed to go. It served the whole family. We took lots of people lots of places.

Aerial came to me and said, "I don't think we ought to finance your car."

I said, "What are you talking about?"

He said, "You bought that off the farm."

I said, "We haven't bought that off the farm. This is how we've paid for it.

He said, "Well, you've got the family's herd of cows.

I said, "Just before mother died the bangs got into our herd of cows and the government took the entire herd. Then we had to start over. We borrowed the money from Lewiston State Bank a cow or two at a time and bought our own herd of cows. We financed Reed on a mission. Mother said you don't have to pay anybody off until after Reed comes home from his mission. Aerial and Horace got their mission off the farm and Reed can have his. So don't you worry about paying anybody off until that. I want it divided equal among all the kids including Mae. We lived up to those instructions."

Aerial told me he was disappointed in the way it was done. I didn't go into details with him and I don't really know what Owen thought. I'm not sure what Horace thought, but Arville told me many times that we'd robbed her of her inheritance. I don't know whether her people or anybody else got it done more equal than we did. I remember Aerial telling me once that I was getting more out of the farm than he did. I couldn't understand that.

Getting Acquainted With Owen

I never really got acquainted with Owen until the year he got sick. I think the winter of 48 and '49 he rode a horse that winter. That was a bad winter. He moved his cows down to his farm. He'd bought that farm from Reed when Reed quit farming. He rode a horse back and forth. Right in February when the last storm was on, that horse fell with him and broke his foot. So then I brought his cows up here and put them in my barn with mine and I milked his cows while he was laid up with that broken foot.

I kind of remember a humorous situation. He had a little miserable three titted cow that calved after I brought them up here. I was milking her and that danged little cow was mean. The one quarter was blind, the other would make up then it would gradually wither away. You couldn't get anything out of that one tit. He was sitting there with his crutches and his foot in a cast. He decided to reach up there and see if he could strip out that blind quarter. I had the hobbles on her. When he took a hold of that bogus tit that cow bucked and kicked and kicked out of those hobbles and kicked him right back against that wall. He picked up those hobbles and hit that cow. That was the worst thing you could do because the hobbles bounced and hit him about as hard as he hit that cow and by then I got down there and took the hobbles away from him.

I said, "Sit here and mind your business we've had enough trouble now."

He was going to kill that cow. That was all right but I didn't want it done in my barn, I would of had a hard time getting her out of that. Anyway I got him stopped. We milked his cows. That spring he got a going around a little bit but I think it was that July that he went down with virus pneumonia right in the middle of the summer.

LaVere was a little boy. On Sunday morning he came over here and he said, "Dad would like you to ge just can't go." I went over to see him and he was sick. He couldn't hardly get his bre just can't go." I went over to see him and he was sick. He couldn't hardly get his breath. Dr. Cragun was just moving out of Lewiston that day and Dr. Hansen moving in.

I got the cows milked, sashayed around, then I went uptown and got Dr. Hansen. I said, "I've got a brother that's sick." That was the first time I'd seen Dr. Hansen. He said, "I'll follow you down." He came down and went in and checked him over. He said, "Good golly, you've got virus pneumonia." You're going to have to be under strict treatment here for about a year at least and I'm going to have to see you every week. Well Owen never went to a doctor in his life. He didn't believe in it. If he ever got sick he said, "I'm going to die. I'm going to lay right here and die." I couldn't put up with that. So I had to take that guy to the doctor every week, no matter what I was doing. I used to hear the darndest speeches from him that you ever heard in your life. He was pretty fluent when he was giving those speeches. He didn't want to go to the doctor but I was the biggest and I took him.

Finally along that winter, I had gone over there and told him that he had a doctor's appointment. I came back to get him and he was in bed. I went in there and I said, "How come aren't you ready to go to the doctor.

He said, "I'm not going. I'm just going to lay here and die."

I said, "You've whipped enough times when I was a kid and today I get even with you. I grabbed him and he reared up and looked at me.

He said, "I'll go."

I said, "While I'm a hold of you, you bear this in mind from here on. When I notify you to go to the doctor you do it. I don't want anymore nonsense out of you. I don't want no more speeches - I've had all of them. It's just a rehearsal of what I've heard. But you're going to the doctor. If you're going to lay here and die I don't really care but I'm going to see to it that you are under doctor's care and you do what you're told."

He said, "All right."

I let go of him and he put clothes on and I took him to the doctor.

From then on I'd go down to his place periodically and he'd be milking his cows or doing whatever and I'd say Owen I need to know how you feel. Don't you just grunt you tell me how you feel. He'd set there and he'd stop and tell me how he felt. If I felt like he needed to go to the doctor. I'd say, "Now look will you call the doctor tomorrow and make an appointment and go for a checkup." He'd do that.

This was when I actually got acquainted with Owen and learned how to talk to him and learned what he meant and what he was doing and how he felt. That was sad to know him all my life but I never got acquainted with him till then. I traded work with him an awful lot and I got by fine with him.

I owe an apology to Velma here on this one. One day she called me. I was working at the Sugar Factory but I was home. I guess it was in the morning and I worked swing shift generally. She said, "Owen fell off the beet truck and he's up to the doctor's office. Can you come up?"

So I hustled up there and Dr. Skabelund met me out in the hall and said, "His blood pressure is down to the dead man's and I don't know why. I can't find anything wrong. I can't find it I don't know. I don't dare leave him alone. I want him to go to the hospital where we can check him every hour for a day or two till he levels out."

I said, "That's what we'll do."

"Ya, but he says he won't go."

So I went in there and I said, "Owen, you're going to the hospital.

He said, "I'm not."

I said, "You are.

He said, "I won't stay."

I said, We'll see about that." So we loaded him in my car and I took him to the hospital. I got him signed in there, got him in there, got his clothes off. He put on that night shirt. We got him in bed. I picked up his shoes, his socks, his pants, his shirt, garments and every stitch of clothes he had.

He said, "What are you doing?"

I said, "I'm taking these home with me."

He said, "You're not."

I said, "I am. You told me you wouldn't stay. By hell, if you want to go running down the road in that night shirt you can, but I don't believe you've got the courage. When they release you I'll bring those clothes back to you."

He cussed me and I just turned and left him there. When he was released from the hospital, this was the mistake I made.

I said, "I'll go get him."

Velma said, "No I'll get him."

I should have went and got him because he cussed her and everybody else but he could have cussed me and it wouldn't have mattered. I don't think he would have cussed me that much cause I got to where I didn't listen to all that nonsense. I got acquainted with Owen and I've always thought that maybe if I did some wrongs to him when I was a kid that maybe the care of him in those latter years might have made up for it. I hope so.

Horace

Horace used to get after me about a lot of things I would do. I got along pretty good with Horace I thought. I used to trade work with him. I told him a time or two, "You know Horace I don't remember ever doing anything as a kid to suit you three older ones. I could suit Howard and Reed. We got along pretty good. They were closer to me. I was closer to them. But you older guys I don't know whether I ever did anything right or not. You never did say so. It seemed like you cussed almost everything I did. So if you disagree with me, I must be right." Then he did cuss me. He didn't think it was that bad. That was from my point of view.

I got pretty well acquainted with Horace over the years. We had a lot of fun together. I remember he got me over there one time to help me catch his colt that he wanted to break. I said, "Let's tie that thing to that saddle horse's tail then we'll turn him loose. Up over the hill he went. The colt could outrun the saddle horse and pulled that saddle horse's tail up over his back. I tell you that was the dangdest race you ever seen in your life. That was kind of exciting. That thing learned to lead and that saddle horse learned to run.

Over the years I think we've got along pretty good. I finally got acquainted with him after my mission. He went to Washington for five or six years then came back. I became acquainted with him after he got back.

Julia and I had Ray and Glen (Nada may have been a baby.) We went up and camped overnight in Franklin Basin out there on a little creek and I stuck a fire cracker in Horace's hind pocket. He knew what I did and he just humped up. It blew the pocket right off his pants. Julia thought I was terrible.

I said, "You know, that son-of-a-gun when I was a kid put me in a gunny sack. I never did know, I thought it was Owen, a whipping and cutting that gunny sack all to pieces with a four-horse whip. Owen would just look at me and grin. He never would admit it or deny it.

I said, "There was enough nonsense going on down there. We played as kids in that barn. Horace was the biggest nuisance of the bunch."

Years later my kids are playing in the barn with half the neighborhood. There was a lot of racket down in that barn. Horace came in the house. He said, "I would kick all those kids out of that barn."

I said, "Half those kids are mine. If I kick them out they'll come up here, and I'll have all that racket in the house. I 'd rather have all that racket down in the barn. There ain't a one of those kids as bad as you used to be. Don't be giving me all that nonsense."

I remember while Reed was on his mission. W be terrible. Howard and Owen decided that we ought to dip all that. We had a dump boards on a chassis wagon. If we dipped that up with a bucket and poured it in from the corral. Right out in the field we'd dump the sideboards and it'd run out. That was the place to have it. We had some rocks in that corral just south of where the cement corral is. That was where this big lake was. So on the appointed saturday that's where we went. We took Howard's gray team, Maud and Bird, out in there and took buckets and filled up that beet rack. When they got through he said, "You drive it." I said, "I won't do it that's your team. It's not mine and I won't do it." He started out and the bottom of that corral was rough. We had big ole rocks in there to kind of hold the bottom a little bit. As he started out they went up over a rock or two and that manure run to the back then came up to the front and right up his back. At that we dumped the side boards and run that out and drove out. That ended that episode. Owen and I laughed till I thought he was going to whip us. He might have done, we were laughing so hard.

When Horace was back here from Washington. He moved back in a panel truck. Howard wanted to borrow that panel truck to take his calves up to Housley's to turn them out in the pasture. So he asked Horace to use the truck. He told him he could take it.

He came over here and asked if I would help him load the calves. I told him I would. We got the calves up in there and the door wired shut. There wasn't any panel to keep those calves out of that front seat. He said, "One of you go with me."

I said, "No I'm not going with you I've got something else to do."

Away he went. When he come back, he was just fit to be tied. I laughed at him. Horace was still here. Those calves had got excited and one had turned around and got the tail end the wrong way and messed right on that front seat where he was and switched their tail around and he was a terrible looking sight. When he come back he said, "You danged guys, I wanted one of you to come with me."

Horace said, "I knew waid, "You danged guys, I wanted one of you to come with me."

Horace said, "I knew what you were in for. You didn't ask me to go with you at the first. If you would I wouldn't have done it. You just wanted the truck and I loaned you the truck. You got them up there didn't you."

Then we had to clean the truck. There was always a little fun going on around here.

Time for Play

Owen and Howard bought a combine. I guess they used it the last year Howard was alive. They bought it from Ted Pearce over in Tremonton. That looked just like Alley Oop. They should have taken Alley Oops stone axe to it. It was an old combine. They wanted me to go in with them. I wouldn't do anything about it. Right out here south of my house there's all this area that we've mowed for years. That's where the kids would play ball. Now the grandkids are playing out there.

I was going to work on swing shift. Good night I saw them coming home with that, coming over Collinston when we were going to work. I thought my land what are those guys going to do with that. Anyway Ted had told them that that was a good outfit.

I got home the next morning. The next morning the kids got me out of bed. Every kid was so mad. They were out there playing ball and those guys pulled that right out there in the middle of that ball field and stopped it. Thy had to quit their ball game.

I said, "That will be moved by the time you come home tonight."

This brought back memories to me. I went to Howard and Owen and said, "You move that combine."

They said, We've got to do some work on that to get it ready to go."

I said, You're not going to do it in their ball park. You move that combine."

"Oh we don't have a place to park it." I don't really care where you park it but you get that out of those kids ball park."

"Those kids don't need to play ball."

That hasn't got anything to do with you. That's my land and that's my kids and that's my ball field. Now you get it out of there." I made them move it.

This brought back memories to me. I remember as I was getting ready to be a scout. We were going to scout camp. Up in the barn there was a canvas that had been up there for years.

I said to dad, "Can I have that canvas?";

He asked, What are you going to do with that?"

"I want to make a tent out of that. I can take that canvas. I haven't seen anybody use it. I don't even know where it come from."

"Ya, you can have it."

I got that canvas down and I fixed it. I sewed one end in it. I couldn't figure out how to put two ends in it and left a kind of a hole up to the top so I could put a pole through it, string it up on a pole and stake it down. I sewed some ties on it so I could stake it down. That was my scout tent. I went ahead and got some wax. I went through a whole rigmarole to waterproof that tent. I just got it ready to go.

I'm not real sure which one of those older boys wanted it. But they were going to get the water down there in the ditch. They had got the water all these years but that day they had to have the tent. I just coaxed and bawled and pleaded. I didn't want them to take my tent. Thy took it. They went down there. Thy had never put a canvas dam in. They had heard about it. They used boards that had a nail or two in it. They got the canvas dam in and it didn't hold. It washed around the side. So they jerked it out and caught that canvas on a nail and tore that tent in two. Now they didn't have a canvas dam and I didn't have a tent either. I'd like to have never forgive those guys for that. I have forgive them, but I still remember it. Like the old boy I forgive, but I don't forget. When they pulled that combine out in the middle of that ball field I remembered that story.

I remember one time I was 12 or 13. Along in those days they started a ball team uptown, a junior league. I went up to catch. I could have got on that team as catcher. Oh I wanted to play ball. But no way. All those guys said, "We've never had time to play ball and you're not going to play ball." What they had to do and what I had to do I didn't think had anything to do with it. When they pulled that combine out there I remembered these two stories.

My kids have had time to play ball. They didn't have any junior league around here till we got to Neil. Neil and Craig and Mark played Little League Baseball.

We used to go up and watch it. One day Vaughan Blair was the coach of the team that Craig was on. Craig as he was going up to the plate he was whirling that bat around just like Old Babe Ruth himself. I believe Mark was standing there. He said, "Craig's going to get a hit. That pitcher don't believe he can hit." That pitcher threw that ball right straight across that plate and Craig got a hold of that with that bat. He hit it way back over the second baseman's head. Way out there in the field and around the bases went Craig just as hard as he could run. He run just as hard as anybody but not quite as fast as some. Around and as he got to first base the first base coach was trying to stop him. But he just rounded that plate and headed for second. The guy out there in that field picked that ball up and threw it to second. He overthrew the second baseman. Craig touched that plate. Old Vaughn Blair was over coaching third. He was just a waving his arms and a shouting. "Stop Craig." Craig touched that second base right around and headed for third. The kid gathered up the ball and threw it to third base and threw it over the third baseman's head and into the bleachers. Vaughan was hollering "Stop here Craig." Craig rounded. (I could hardly hear for Julia sitting there to the side of me screaming to the top of her voice, "Run, Craig, run.") He touched third base and rounded it and headed for home. They gathered up the ball out of the bleachers and threw it to the catcher and threw it over his head and Craig had a home run. Vaughan and I have laughed about that many times. I believe that done Craig more good and I know it did his mother. That was quite a thing.

Howard

Now I'm going to tell a little bit about Howard. Howard was a good guy. I think Howard was the first one of the family to graduate from high school. If I'm wrong, I stand corrected, but that's my impression. Aerial, Owen, and Horace didn't. They thought they had too much at home to do. But I know dad talked to me about going to school and graduating.

He said, "I'd like you to get just as much school as you can. I was down here quite a ways before I got one of these kids graduated from high school. They would have been better off if they would have all graduated from school."

Howard was pretty good to me. I could communicate and talk to Howard. It seems I always could. I've told about him going on a mission in another place. I know when I was going to high school after Mother died. I signed Howard's name to my report card. The teacher would give me the report card and I'd take a pen and sim see that report card.

We owned that '36 Chevy together. He was eleven years older than I was. But he went with me. He didn't date much. I don't know why he didn't. He didn't get married till he knew better. I think he was 30 years old when he went on a mission. So he was 32 or better when he come back.

I got along pretty good with Howard all those years. I had pretty good communication with him. We got in a partnership once. But we quit there in the later years.
Finally I said, Good land, if we're going to have trouble with that. Let's just trade this thing around and you can handle what you want. I'm not going to have any trouble with you.

Mae

Mae really raised me. As a kid I wasn't sure who my mother was. Whether it was mother or Mae. I guess Mae told me once that I was her baby. I felt I'd taken the place of Ruth in the family. Mother's health wasn't too good in my lifetime. Mother and I went down and watched Mae graduate from college. She got a two-year degree. Reed said she came home that afternoon and helped us all thin beets.
I think she got marriid she came home that afternoon and helped us all thin beets.
I think she got married in 1932 when I was 12 years old. We'd see her a time or two a year after that.

One night Horace sitting here talking to Dad said, "What do you think of your prospective son-in law?

Dad said, He seems all right. Why?

Well he's a fun guy, and went on to tell about it.

Dad said, He looks a little better than some of the stock running around here. So he looks all right to me. He'd gone along with Mae's judgment for a husband.

Mae always tells a story on me. We had some lambs tied down the fenceline between us and the railroad. The railroad run right along just north of our house all these years until I was married and Ray was a little boy. He sat out there and watched them tear up that line. They used to send a weed burner along to burn the weeds along the track. We looked out and here come that burner. We run dawn to untie those lambs to get them away from the fence. She always quoted me as saying, by golly, we sure hurried we got that done in 15 minutes." My calculation of time wasn't too good. She kidded me about that.

Reed

Reed and I were closer than any. Reed and I always scuffled and wrestled and played.
After Reed came home from his mission, Reed or I were supposed to take change of teams and relieve Howard of the binder.

Reed said, I'll wrestle you for it two out of three times.

I thought, "That's kind of ridiculous because he knows darn well I can throw him down.

Aerial was there and said, I'll set here in the shed and referee it.

I was out there playing with him and danged if he didn't throw me down. I got a hold of him and went over and just picked him up and threw him down. Then I went to playing with him. I'll be darned if he didn't get a hold on me and got me down. That was two out of three.

While all this was going on Ben Housley went by. He rushed over to Horace's. Horace lived over here in town. Arville said, "He's not here."

He said, "Lin and Reed are out there just a fighting. I came to get Horace to go stop it."

He wouldn't stop it. He'd run over there to watch it.
He said, "I don't understand that."

She said, "This is a different bunch. These danged kids wrestle and play." That's kind of the way we grew up.

Reed and Howard and I used to go courting together. Howard was kind of bashful, and he'd drive the car. He always went along as chauffeur. Reed and I finally ganged up on him and said, "You're going to get a girl and go with us cause we don't need a chauffeur or chaperon."

This '36 Chevy had a standard shift right out in the middle of the front seat. The girl I had had her dress over that gearshift. The danged gearshift was just in the way anyway. Going up a hill I felt the car jerking along. I looked over there and Howard was just going out of his mind. The girl had her dress over that gear shift. He had to shift gears and he didn't dare get a hold of that gear shift.

I said, "Good crimeny move your dress before he has a heart attack."

"Oh she said, "I was wondering what was the matter.

Reed married Ethel. I tried living with them but that didn't work. She didn't know how to make bread. I'd been the family bread maker for years. I tried to teach her how to make bread. That was some circus. She's put so much salt in it you couldn't eat it. Reed was the only one that could eat it. She couldn't eat it. He always cussed me cause I didn't eat that bread. I couldn't do it.

Reed made some biscuits once in our bachelor days and put tooth powder in it instead of baking powder. Good night he threw those out for the dog and almost killed the dog.

Living with them didn't work. I've never wanted any of my kids to live with some of the married kids. That just don't work. When I came home from my mission I tried living with Howard and Arlie for awhile. We just had to separate because that just don't work with all due respects to them.

Raising My Own Kids

All these things, the way I grew up, the experiences I had with my brothers and sister have had quite an influence on me and the direction I have directed my family.

Ray started out to school. The next year he was so thrilled to take Glen over and introduce him as his younger brother. Then Nada come along. I'd see those two skipping down the road with Nada in between them a hold of each hand a heading to school. They went right into their first grade teacher. Here's our sister. That's about the way it went. Then Jed come along.

He would go to school and tell all these yarns. The windiest kid in the world. He didn't like school. The matter of working was just not in his nature. The dang kid wouldn't study. Every year it was just touch and go whether they would pass him or not.
He never did really study till his sophomore year in high school. He went out for football. So we had to buy him a pair of shoes and got him squared around and get him going. I told him this is going to be hard but stay with it. We'll take you off the chores. He come along. If you ever seen a kid limp on both feet as he'd get off that athletic bus. They run 50 pounds off him that first fall. Then he grew about four inches. That just made all the difference in the world in that kid. He'd come home and eat his supper and crawl upstairs. His bed was a low one. He'd lay his books out there and he'd study. That quarter I believe he got all A',s. The first time in his life. I said, "Good land Now we know you can get A's." Jed went on and did real fine in school after that.

Judy come along a couple of years behind Jed. They said, "Oh, Jed's sister." So she said they put her down in the dummy class. That made her so mad that she would come home with those flash cards and she'd sit on that stool, and she'd make Nada flash those cards to her until she just knew everything. Then they didn't have the room to put her up in the advanced group so they asked her if she would stay there anyway. She did. From then on she was the head of the class.

Then Neil come along behind her. He thought he ought to keep up with her.

I didn't realize for quite a while the competition between kids. But Ray and Glen used to study. They took an algebra class in high school together. I didn't like that.

Glen always got better grades than Ray. I think Ray beat him in algebra here. Glen said they'd go upstairs to study. Ray would lay his head down on the book and go to sleep. Glen woulders then he'd go back to sleep.

Getting kid to study is difficult. Everybody is wound up a little different. The competition I believe between Neil and Judy in studies was the keenest of the bunch.
Craig come along. Maybe it was between his first year and his second year that he went to the Edith Bowen School all summer. He went down to college a time or two during the summer. It kind of got him going.

Mrs. Mills was his first grade teacher. One night I come home from work. I was out to Thiokol then. Sitting there by me eating supper I noticed he was just sitting there with his head down.

I said, "What's the matter, Craig?" And he began to cry. Finally when we got him stopped and got him around. He said, "I told Mrs. Mills that I couldn't do that and she just took her thumb and she thumped me in the back and made me do it."

I said, "Well did you do it?"

He said, "Ya, but I told her I couldn't."

I said, 'Well, she knew you could. Good crimeny if I told you to do something and you didn't do it, I'd spat you. That would be worse than thumping you in the back." He said, "Ya." I said, "Come on she was pretty good to you." He just kind of come along here. I used to tell him that when he studied he had to do more than hold that book. It just wouldn't go in there by osmosis he had to read it. He could take a book and set right down in the chair and watch the television and think he was absorbing what's in that book but it just don't go in that way. Craig come along. He's filled a fine mission.

Mark and Nancy come along and went to school a year apart. They were ne mission.

Mark and Nancy come along and went to school a year apart. They were real competitive. I remember one quarter in high school Mark beat Nancy grade wise. She looked at me and said, "He'll never do that again as long as he lives." I don't believe he did. It wasn't the fact that he couldn't have done it. She studied harder. Mark got to tooting that horn in that band. I don't know how he ever learned to play 'cause he never practiced. Nancy come along in the band and those kids went with the band. Neil went with the band. Judy when she went to high school went in the newspaper business. That was quite an experience.

Nancy got to debating. I remember Norris Mickelson telling me once. He said, "These kids are just gone too much."

I said, "What are you talking about?"

He said that his girl was gone a lot and had too many meetings, too much church to do and too much of this.

I said, "Good land, you don't even know the half of it. I generally talk to Nancy Wednesday or sometimes Thursday night. She'd leave every week. That was the last I'd see her.

She'd take what money she needed. She was a good worker. I didn't pay her a salary but we tried to round up what she needed and she'd go debate every weekend somewhere. Sometimes they'd leave Thursday night after school, sometimes they'd leave Friday morning, sometimes they'd leave Saturday morning. Then they wouldn't get home till 2 or 3:00 in the morning. So I asked her if she would come in quiet. If there was something that she needed to tell me that was just fine. But if anything could wait till morning let's wait until morning.

That's kind of the agreement I've had with most of the kids. I told Norris, "Generally it's Wednesday night I visit with her for a few minutes and that's the last I see her till I go to get her out of bed Sunday morning so that she'll make it up and lead the songs in Junior Sunday School." That last year that she was in high school, Bishop Karren often said, "My land, that girl just runs between jobs.'

She was Laurel class president, on the debate team, played with the band, in the pep band and she was just on the go every minute.

Neil was the first one in the band, then Mark and Nancy. That come over a whole bunch of years about seven years I believe we've followed that band. They've been to Canada and they've been all over. I think it was Neil and Mark that used to whoop and holler along, whirl around and sashay around with those tubas. I kept looking for a little gal carrying a baritone. I'm kind of fond of that band. We've put a lot into it. The kids have worked at it a lot. I remember the scuffle we got into in 1976. They were invited back to Philadelphia. We went down there and fought with the school board, ranted and raved and still didn't get to go to Philadelphia. We done a little work and three of the board members didn't win the board election that next year. There was a lot of upset parents over that. When you have to go back to the parents over a lot of nonsense sometimes you can lose an election over that. That was about what happened. Mr. Stauffer was quite upset and so was Doris Budge. Mark Lindley decided not to run. He decided to run for County Commission. They paid more money.

They finally got a few rules changed to where now the band can go places and do things. It was kind of hard to get that going. Last year Nancy went with them and they went to the Indianapolis 500. We were all upset. Everybody around this country wanted to watch it on television. Down in California and every place else they run a full course on that band. The Salt Lake Station here threw a commercial right on top of it. We couldn't even see it. We were all upset. So was the whole end of the country. The band has been a good experience.

Gary graduated from high school. He had a hard time in school. When he got to going, it just wasn't working. He went the first year to kindergarten. He didn't learn a thing. We just couldn't give up to that. Somebody said, "He'll never learn.", But we just couldn't give up. The next year he was going to take Kindergarten over. He wasn't learning any more that year than he was before. We got him moved down to Smithfield to the special education class in first grade. He got going down there.

When it was time for his class to go to junior high he wanted to go with them, and his teachers thought he would be all right. I went over to North Cache to Keith Clayson the principal. I set down and visited with him about it.

That was the year he started to go to mutual. He hadn't gone to Primary with the kids. We just couldn't get him back from Smithfield to Primary. He did most of his primary work in Smithfield. He'd get out of special ed and go to primary down there. There just wasn't any other way we could figure out. Some years he didn't go. Most of the primary he got was in Smithfield. Actually he went to Sunday School with these kids but he didn't get to know them. So he started going to scout meeting. They would push him off. He'd been down to that dummy school as they called it. He'd come home from mutual a crying. This kid had picked on him and that kid. Julia would sit down and bawl with him. She was going to go to Mutual. No you can't go to Mutual.

Many years ago I had read a story about a fellow that was over in France in the army in World War II. He was stationed over there after the war and he married a French girl. She was of a well-to-do Frenchman. When he came back to America he brought her with him. She stayed with him and they had a little boy. This little boy was a year or two old. She didn't like America so she divorced her husband and took the little boy and went back to France. Well she didn't raise the boy she had a nurse do it. She didn't have time for him. So this guy started and by the time he got through the French courts and got custody of that boy, he was in his early teens.

He said he was so thrilled to have him. But the boy wouldn't dress like the American boys, he dressed like a French kid. He wouldn't go to school unless the nurse went with him. So the kids all teased him. The man said I just couldn't stand it. My boy that I had loved so hard and so long. Now I had him and he was a sissy. So he used to go to some of the kids about the kid's size. He'd say I'll give you a dollar if you'll roll that sissy in the mud. That was his own boy he was siccing that kid on. He kind of rotated that around between some of the boys so they could all get their dollar then he'd go home. The boy and the nurse would come. They would just be furious. Ruined his clothes. Well I'll buy you some more. That way he got him around and in the clothes like the rest of the kids wore. This kind of helped a little but not much. One day the boy said, "I don't believe we need this nurse."

"No I don't think so." "She'd like to go back to France and I'm willing to let her go. So he made arrangements and give her a month's salary and got her passage back to France.

It went on and he kept a doing this dollar business. So every once in a while he'd slip out to this one kid and say I'll give you a dollar if you'll roll that sissy in the mud. Finally one day he said, "Hey do you want to earn a dollar.

He said, "No way, that kid whipped the biggest kid in class today and I don't want nothing to do with him.", So then the dad went hunting his boy and he found him out to the ball field. They were playing baseballw been accepted. I got out my notebook and realized I'd spent $16 in this type of business to get the boy to where I wanted him to be.

I realized a little bit of that. Mark had fought most of the battles for Gary. I remember over to Junior High Gary was in the seventh grade when Mark was in the ninth. I think it was the next year. I know one kid was a picking on him in that seventh grade. Another one was a cuffing him around pretty bad, another kid come along and said do you want to quit or do I go get his brother Mark. That kid said, "Please don't tell Mark, I'll stop."

So t get his brother Mark. That kid said, "Please don't tell Mark, I'll stop."

So the next year Mark was down to high school. This one darn kid come along to Gary and told him to take his pants off. He wouldn't do it so then he'd kick him right in the unspeakable place He come home just a crying to his mother one night about that. She was about ready to go to school with him.

I said,"No let's do it another way.", I said, "Mark can you handle that." So the next day on the way to school he stopped. I never heard anymore about it. I got so curious. I said to Gary how did you work out in that. Oh he said, "Mark talked to that boy. He hasn't bothered me since."

He talked to him. He picked him up and sit him up there on that brick wall and held him with one hand and a speaking to him and the kid understood what Mark was a talking about. The time come that I told Mark he had to quit. Maybe he would have to teach Gary to fight. Most of the kids would tease and torment him. It was about like Craig. They just rode poor old Craig to death. But his junior year in high school all those hecklers had quit school and weren't going. That was about the way it was with Gary. About the time he got to his junior year they started leaving him alone.

Mark got in a lot of danged nonsense. The kids would torment Craig. Mark had to whip a few of them and he did that. I didn't like the danged kid fighting all the time. It got to the point where I was just the happiest man in the world when he got out of high school. The potlicker got in enough rounds down there. I told him if he would keep his mouth shut. He might could be buried in a rosewood casket. I put a lot of pressure on him that last year to get him to shut his mouth and let him go. Once you get on that black list you're a long time ever coming off.

I know that Craig enjoyed the last two years of high school. That's about the way Gary was. He enjoyed those last years. His last year as a senior, Gary worked as a janitor at the International Housing Company, south of Smithfield. They make houses right in that big building. Then they take them out and set them on a foundation. He worked down there half a day and then he went to school half a day. It worked quite well. I believe he does a pretty good job as a janitor. Everybody needs to learn to work.

I was talking about this business to Mark one time. I said, "You know as I look back over my kids. I don't know if they tormented the girls but at least the boys. Neil had less heckling than any of them. I was trying to figure out why. Mark said, "He's run with the meanest danged bunch of kids and everybody knew how mean they were. Some of those guys, I believe it was Steve Olsen. He would run a race with you, fight you, wrestle with you or anything else. I guess old Howard Morrill was about the same way. They're not sure that Neil isn't just as mean as they are." Maybe that's the trick I don't know. I'm not so sure the heckling is bad. It isn't all bad. Some of these rough edges on kids, that's the only place you can ever take it off. Sometimes it gets too much heckling so you have to figure out a way to tone it down. It seems like that's part of life for some reason.

I remember when Ray was in Junior High. The Junior High was here in Lewiston. I know this Tim Nielson from Richmond kept heckling him. Ray kept talking to me about it. I kept telling Ray he was going to have to whip him.

One night out here across the fence I was talking to Sylmar Jessop. Sylmar was principal there. He said, "Has Ray talked to you tonight?",

I said, "No, I haven't seen him. What happened?

"Well somebody run in my office and said there was a fight in the locker room."

I said, "Who?"

He said, "Tim Neilson and Ray Rawlins.";

I said, Who's winning?"

He said, "Ray Rawlins is winning.

Sylmar said, "That pleased me so well, I had to do this then I had to do that, then I had to do this. By the time I got down there the fight was over and Ray had won the fight. He was just blood from one end to another. Tore off his shirt.",

He asked Ray, "You're kind of a bloody mess. Now if you'd like to go home and clean up the afternoon would be gone and you could just stay home. You won't have to tell your dad if you don't want to. You're not kicked out. I'll explain to your teachers what happened and that'll be all right. There won't be anything wrong with it."

I said, "Good golly I told Ray that if he would whip that kid and he ruined his shirt I'd buy him a new shirt and if he ruined his pants I'd buy him new pants. That kid's heckled him all year."

Sylmar said, "I know that." I went in and checked and sure enough it had ruined his shirt. Julia thought that was terrible to tell my kid to fight.

(Craig's note)

At this part of the story I would like to add my side of the story about the wagon incident referred to in this section of Dad's history.
I think I should start by saying that as I woke up that mourning I fell out of bed and had I known what that day would be like I would have gone back to bed and stayed there.

We had been hauling straw all day long and I guess I was getting tired. So as we headed back to the field for another load I began putting my foot down on the road and the forward motion of the wagon would bring my foot up under the wagonbed. I had done this on other occasions without incident so after a few more times of doing this for some reason when my foot shot back, my body shot forward thus throwing me under the wagon and being ran over by the tires. After the first wheel ran over me, I remember lying on my stomach with my head in my arms thinking it was all over with and about that time the next wheel hit me. I know that when I fell off the wagon my glasses came off and were broken, and as I got up the first thing I was looking for was my glasses. I could barely see them and as I got up off the road. So I staggerd back up the road, picked up my glasses and started back toward the wagon and I was so
disoriented that I could't walk staight and ended up staggering into the barrow pit.

Now I think as Mark saw me fall off, he looked back and saw me all crumpled up on the road then he looked back at Neil and told him quite casually that I had fallen off the wagon. Neil got the tractor stopped and ran back to me as I fell into the barrow pit. He asked me if I was okay and when I said I was, he started yelling at me.

They got me back on the wagon and got it turned around and back on the road and that was when Neil let Mark drive. Now as I recall Mark had not very much experince in driving that tractor, so Neil put it in the gear and told Mark to drive us home. As we got toward home Mark turned into the driveway going the same speed as he was going down the road, fourth gear wide open. Now the wagonbed was loaded with loose staw and as Mark turned into the driveway Neil and I started to slide. Neil tried to hold onto me but then he started to fall off so hd.

I ended up with a cracked wrist some awful road rash and some bruised ribs. I was grateful to Neil and Mark for their asisstance in getting me home.

Ray's Mission
Here was the oldest boy going on a mission.

He had worked all summer the summer before down at St. George. He run the service station on graveyard shift for John (Julia's brother) while he was there. I saw in the newspaper that a bunch in St. George had gone up on the mountain and was carrying out some people that had got killed in an airplane wreck. There we saw our boy a hold of the stretcher bringing some of them out. He had been down there all summer.

We got him home in time that we got him into fall quarter at school. He lived here at home and drove back and forth to school.

He got his mission call just before Christmas to go to the Western Canadian Mission. We were thrilled with this. They put a quota on. I think Ray got the first quota. The bishop had just cleaned out everybody in the ward that fall before. Dennis Jackson, Mark Bright and everybody wanted to go before they put quotas on. I thnnis Jackson, Mark Bright and everybody wanted to go before they put quotas on. I think Ray was the first one to go on that quota business. We were thrilled. We all went down to the airport to send him off.

I remember I went to my boss out to work. You just couldn't get a day's vacation in January to save your soul. I would have been willing to take it. I said to the boss, "There are two days I need to be in Salt Lake. I need to be down there the day that he is set apart as a missionary and I need to be down there the day to fly him out." I was on swing shift that month. "Is there any way that I could get some vacation to go?" He said, "I'd have to write a letter and I'd have to go be interviewed up to the General Manager." He turned to Orrin Baird who was scheduling the work and said, "Lindsay has got to take his boy to Dr. Harold B. Lee two different days." Baird said, "Fine." and that was all there was to that.

We were thrilled to go down and watch him set apart. I believe it was Brother Howard W. Hunter that set him apart. Then we went down on a Sunday night and heard them bear their testimony in the Assembly Hall. I remember a little boy with horn rimmed glasses got up. He was from McGrath, Canada. He said, "I've done a lot of talking in my day in church but it's always been in that back corner." I guess they have back corners in church houses all over.

Sunday night we brought Ray home with us. He didn't go out until Monday night. I had Monday off and I was around the house with him. He just paced the floor that day just like a lion in a cage. He said, "Here the day has come to go on a mission and I'm scared now." It had finally hit him. I said, "Oh that's the best news I've heard. I never got scared until I knocked on a door and then I wondered what I was doing there. It never crossed my mind until then."

Ray went up to Coledale, Canada. He was right there in Southern Alberta with all our relatives. Mother had two brothers and two sisters go to Canada to Southern Alberta and raised their families and stayed there. He had more relatives around there where he spent most of his mission than he did when he was in Cache Valley.

Along about a year later him and LeRay Reese were driving a van. They were working on the Indian Reservation. They got in a real bad car wreck. It broke LeRay's leg between the knee and the hip and they were in the hospital.

He was in the hospital for a week and I just fidgeted. Finally he called us. I didn't know where he was. I hadn't heard from him. He told me what had gone on. I talked to him a time or two on the telephone but I couldn't straighten him out. Sometimes you let a lot of things that you can't do anything about bother you. He was letting a lot of things bother him.

I just coaxed the Reese family to go up there and put that boy in a cast and bring him home. That's what I would have done if it would have been my boy. I thought we had better doctors down here.

I went back and forth with that Ray for about a week. Then I thought about it. I didn't sleep one night. Then I got tuned up, and I remembered Reed writing me a letter when I was real sick and discouraged in the mission field. I settled dawn and I wrote Ray a six page letter. It made him so mad he burned it. I thought that was what he ought to do anyway. But a dad plays an important part in a kid being on a mission. I've promised every kid including him that if they ever got homesick or discouraged let me know and I'd get them out of it. Ray said it made him so mad he burned the letter then after he calmed down he wished he would have kept it. I'm glad he burned it.

Glen's Mission

Glen was getting ready to go on a mission at that time. He had talked to the Bishop and he was going to go that June. He couldn't get a quota until April. The Bishop had promised him the quota. He told him he would take it and go in June. I said, "Glen you better read this before you go. If you get homesick and discouraged I'll send you one just about like it." Ray filled a good mission. We had Ray and Glen out together for six months.

We got all ready to go get Ray. I wanted to go get every kid from his mission. I had taken the time off. I got vacation out to work. We were going to go between Christmas and New Year's and get him. That night before we left we were watching the television. It said that there was a storm from Utah up into Canada from the coast clear across through Utah, Idaho, Oregon, Washington, Montana and everything and you just couldn't see. I called Ray. They expected it to snow for three days. We just couldn't make it. All of these kids were standing by the phone bawling "You told us we could go." But we just couldn't go. It wasn't safe. That station wagon was pretty good but to drive in Blizzard for 700 miles straight north and turn right around and drive back I just couldn't do it. Ray asked what I wanted him to do. I said, "Catch a bus over to Lethbridge and come home." Julia was standing there and said, "Put him on an airplane." I said, "I can't in a blizzard. The airplanes aren't flying." We checked with the bus system and got up at 3:00 in the morning and went up to Preston to meet him. There we met him. That was a long ways from going up to Cardston to get him.

Glen had been in England about six months when Ray came home. Ray started school. I knew we couldn't go to England. I told Glen when he left that the Old Dodge couldn't swim so I didn't think I'd come and get him. He got home from his mission one night. The next day he went with us to the temple for Ray and Rosemary to be married.

Jed's Mission

We went along and Jed come along to go on a mission. I remember President Anderson said to him, "Jed whose idea is this of going on a mission. Yours or your dad's." He said, "President Anderson I've stood down at that airport and just bawled waiting for my turn to go on a mission. It's now here and I'm ready to go. I've been raised to go on a mission. I've just lived for that day and it's now here." President Anderson said, "I guess that's right."

When I got home one night on time there was Jed and most of the little kids and Sid Rogers out here tromping my grain down east of the house and barn. I got out there and threatened their lives and got them out of there. Then I began badgering Jed about what he was doing out in that grain field. He said, "Sid come over and offered me a dollar for that old rooster." I said, "You'd have more troubles than you could handle. That's the......

Listen to his own voice!

My Life Story Lindsay M. Rawlins

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