Augustus Crawford Hardy

Recorded by Augustus Crawford Hardy on July 6, 1978. Typed by Andie McAllister (great-granddaughter) on March 24, 2016. I was born May 11, 1915 to Gilbert Perkins and Mattie Ellen Crawford Hardy at Washington, Utah in my grandma Crawfords home. I am the second to the youngest child, and the only son. My sisters are: Alberta, Betty, Louise, and Inez. We moved from Washington to the old house on Main Street in St. George. The old house was made out of adobe, had a basement under it (one room) , had a lean too on the back, with two rooms. It had two big rooms on the main floor, it had two fireplaces, one in each room. There was a double deck porch going around the south and east side of the house. Up stairs there were three rooms. Dad worked on farms around St. George hauling wood and freight with a team and wagon. He used to go to Modena to get the freight from the railroad, and we'd bring it to St. George to different stores and then he'd take freight for the cow outfits on the Arizona strip and sheep outfits. The first trip I went with him was down to Pawcoom, Arizona. We went down there and hauled a load of bailed hay and grain and groceries to the cowboys on the roundup. I don't know how old I was, probably five or six. On the way back we got a load of wood at White Rocks and went on in to Wolf Hole. After we left Wolf Hole we was going down to Quail Hill and there had been sheep out through there and they had lost a lamb and I got off the wagon and put the lamb up on the wagon nd held it till we got down to Mokiak. When we got to Mokiak I didn't know what we was going to feed the lamb. Dad was working a mare that had a colt and we held this lamb up to the mare and it sucked all the way into town. Then we put it on the bottle. I remember one time when I was a little feller, don't remember how old I was, we went out to Modena to get a load of freight. After we'd left Enterprise and was out on those flat west of Berl, going into Modena the train was coming, the old smoke was pouring out of it, I could see it coming and I tried to get dad to hurry up. "Let's go a little faster," I wanted to see that train! It was the first time I had ever seen one. Anyway he pulled in front of Lunds Store and parked there. Him and Claud Morris went on inside and left me in the wagon. I was setting there on the wagon and here come the train in and I thought I was going to run right over the whole outfit! It came in on a circle and I was sure it was going to run right over me. I used to go with dad up to Apex Mine west of St. George. We'd go up there and get a wagon load of ore. We'd go up one day and camp and eat at the Mess Hall or the cook shacks, then we'd go back down and sleep in the wagon. The next day we'd load up and go back into St. George. Then we'd take the ore on up to Cedar City at the railroad. It took three days from the mine to Cedar City with a load of ore. Our team had a sorro named Blondy, she had a sorro mane and flaxey tail and the other old fox, he was a sorro. Betty, sister said I used to ride up to the back door on my Shetland pony and ask fro bread and jam because I was too lazy to get off. (I think that's just a fairy tale!) My Shetland was black and white. Dad traded Bill Graham a cow for it. Its name was Fox. That was his name when I got him. I used to ride him around town. He was a bucky little cuss at times. Uncle Sherm gave me a pair of those sharp round Mexican spurs. I used to keep him skinned on the sides with them. He bucked me off about two or three times every day. I used to ride him to take the cows to the pasture down below town. I delivered papers on him, the old Salt Lake Telegram. I used to ride him over to Washington to visit Aunt Julia and Uncle Alex. Aunt Julia was ma's sister, she married Alex Thayne. I spent one whole summer over there with them when ma went to Los Angeles when Roberta was born. I packed a flour sack full of clothes and stayed all summer with Aunt Julia. I slept in the top of the grainery. I had me nice room up there. I was the only one who had a Shetland in Washington and it proved to be pretty handy. All the kids wanted to ride him. They'd cut wood and milk the cow for me in order to ride the Shetland. I did a lot of my chores that way! Booth Turnbeaugh was my best friend while I was in Washington. He had a younger brother, Clyde that we let play with us once in a while. And there was Lynn Averett, Poncho Sandberg, and the Pectol Twins (Ruben and Rulon), and Woodrow Staheli. I was about thirteen at the time. Bill Turnbeaugh used to take us around town. They all had horses and I had my Shetland and I had to run like hell to keep up with them. We used to ride around the farms, especially in the late summer. We'd go down in the fields below Washington and find guys watermelon patch, and eat watermelon then we'd go swimming in the canel. There was an ole pond up at the grape vine where we used to go play and swim. They also had a swimming pool in Washington. It cost us 10 cents to go swimming. We'd trap gophers for old man Jolly, (I can't remember his name), anyway he'd give us a nickel a piece for them. We'd trap enough gophers to go swimming. About the first thing I can remember about my oldest sister Alberta was when she bought me a pair of lace boots and the were a sun-of-a-gun to lace up some mornings. I remember Betty one time wanted to cut my hair. She got me down with my head between her legs and started shaving up the back of my neck and down the side. I guess it looked like hell from what ma said. And Louise was nice to me a time or two. She knocked me down the stair steps a few times. They used to all thump me pretty good. Inez, she's younger than me, used to make her baul quite a bit. Ma used to tune me up quite often. When I'd forget to come and milk the cow at night. When I was off playing basketball or forget to cut the wood. She kept me pretty busy with wood cutting, milking cows, feeding the chickens and the garden. It seemed like these weeds would never stop growing. I went to 8th grade at Woodward and went as far as 11th grade at Dixie High. 11th grade was called third year high school then. My first teacher was Kathrine Miles, I think. I can't remember Mrs. Harmons first name. I had Aunt Lena Nelson, Harold Snow, Vernon Worthen, in grade school. One time I'd been up to Alex mine with dad and I found a tobacco can and filled it full of carbite. I was in 6th grade and so I give two or three of my friends a piece of carbide, and we all decided that when we went out for recess we'd take the lids off the ink wells and drop the carbide in and tighten up the ink wells and go on out. When we got back we came in and there was ink all over the place. The carbide had exploded in the bottles. I never did get caught in that deal. We blamed it on somebody else. We hid the carbide out in the woodpile. We used to torment the girls, one thing another like that. During the depression the church owned the school and they didn't have any money so in March of that year they closed it down. (1931-32) I went up on the Arizona Strip to work for Chet Thayne building a fence for him and then after that I went to work for Jack Wiggins helping him fence and general work around his ranch. Then I went to work for another outfit. He was a horse wrangler and stayed on there until November. After we'd trailed the cattle into to Modena and they didn't have anymore work for us so I just layer around St. George tip the next spring. It was too late to start school, so I worked different places around St. George. When spring came I went back out to the Arizona Strip and worked all summer. The Arizona Strip is all the land north of the Colorado River and the Grand Caynon in the state of Arizona. Most of my teenage years I worked on the strip. The next spring I joined the CCC Camp (Civilian Conservation Corp.) We were stationed at base camp Panguitch Lake all summer then we went to spike camp for 5 days up at Sydney Valley, which is now called Brian Head, building roads for the forest service and I took care of teams for awhile. Then I was transferred over to another camp over at Duck Creek then we went back to Panguitch Lake and worked on some roads and camping parks. I was about 18. I stayed for 9 months with the CCC's and I got out in April and went to work for Bob McComb in his tire shop and service station. The depression effected everybody's family. We had a little money in the bank and lost all of it. There was no place to work and that was when I went to the CCC's and dad was also out of work. They closed down the Apex and he went to work for Don Lightner Mine mining coal up above Zion Park then he went out on the strip and worked for Old Nutter cleaning his springs out and running pipe lines. We didn't have any money but had plenty to eat mama we had a big vegetable garden. Dad then went to work for WPA (Works Projects Administration) or Woodpeckers Assoc. When I got on at the CCC's they laid him off WPA. I got $30. a month. I kept $5. of it and then sent $25. home to the folks. I did pretty good on $5. a month, course they furnished our clothes, they weren't the best looking clothes in the world but that plaid lumber jacket they give us was the most popular jacket in the area. When we wore out a pair of boots we'd just have to go turn them in and they'd give us a new pair. I worked for Bob McComb for awhile then I got a chance to go back out on the strip with the cattle and stayed out there till the winter of 36 and 37. They had the big "Blue Snow", they called it, and everybody was snowed in and finally the CCC's come out with cats and trucks and provisions and cut a trail along the road so we could take some horses and go to town. We stayed in town till the snow melted off then I went to work for Marty Larsen on the Beaver Dam Wash and worked for him about a month and a half then we came to town and got running around there with some guys and decided to go to Idaho. So we got in this old car and went to Idaho on Thanksgiving day and went over to Twin Falls then over to Northern Nevada and down to California. When we first got to Idaho we were driving out a lane looking for a job and these guys come along in a truck and said, "are you guys looking for work?" and we said, "Ya". This was in Idaho Falls. They gave us a job thinning beets. The first thing we had to do was -- well they gave us two sheep wagons to live in, there was four of us, myself, John Wade, Rulon Baker, and Hollis Blake. We lived in there two wagons. First we had to go buy some short handled hoes so we could thin them beets. It was lean over and chop all day long! We started out on five acres and they had about 35 acres of beets. It took us a week to do five acres. I said were a little bit slow if they'd get some Phillipinos in there, and they could go on them others we told them to get the dam cusses in there, we'd dug enough beets1 Then they put us to work on the ranch, doing a little plowing, cleaning ditches, one thing another like that. They said if we'd help around the ranch we could live in those two sheep wagons all summer long or as long as we wanted to. So we helped around the ranch and they give us all spuds we wanted. We had to go down in the spud cellar and sort them out and we lived pretty good. We got to town and buy a bunch of groceries and all four of us chip in. We worked there in that outfit then the guy across the road wanted us to help him in the hay. So we went over to help him and he gave me a team to go out and rake hay. John Wade, he got a team to cut hay, and Rulon Baker, they put him to spiking or cocking as they called it. We worked there in the hay for another two weeks and I raked hay there till I was raking hay in my sleep. When we got all the haying done we had to haul it in and I rode the wagon and Baker and John Wade they pitched the hay up to me and we hauled it in and they had a big old Jackson Fork to unload it and put it in stacks. In the mean time Hollis Blake got a job where he worked the year before, from a guy by the name of Bert Frei. We worked for this Ward Falkner for two or three weeks then we went back over to the ranch where we were living in the wagons and we worked for them in the hay for a couple a weeks and about that time the grain got ripe so we helped them there with the thrashers. I run the wagon and thrasher as I was the smallest of the two guys. They put me on the wagon stacking and them guys would spike out in the fields. We'd pull in up to the thrasher and take a turn unloading. There'd be two wagons going into the thrasher at a time and unloading. When we'd get real tired we'd see a bundle with a bunch of clover in it we'd put it in cross ways and it would jam the thrasher and we'd rest for 15 to 20 minutes while they unclogged it. Then I went to work for a guy by the name of Speck Hughes. He put us to cleaning the ditches and ditch banks. We used a syth to clean off the Johnson grass and weeds off the ditch banks and camel banks. He put me with two big ole horses and I'd ride the lead horse and they had a ditcher, they called it, kind of a plow affair that would go down the ditches and throw mud up one side of it, you'd get one horse in front of the other. I rode the head horse an they'd run water down the ditch and as you went down it would throw the mud up and the water would float the loose down into the creek. I'd ride the lead horse down and then I'd turn around and come back and ride him up and throw the mud the other way. It would make real clean ditch banks and we had to do it about every month or month an half to keep those ditches clean. They had ditches on their farm where they turned the water out of the canels and we did them the same way. I worked for ole Hughes there a week or so, I don't remember, but we got his grain up then he wanted me to start breaking horses. They had a couple there I road a few times. Them other fellows couldn't get a job around there close so we went out to what they call Mud Lakes and we got a job in the hay there. We put that crop of hay up there and then went from there to Billings, Montana and worked in the hay there for 3 or 4 weeks on a big ranch. For entertainment we would go out dancing on Saturday nights. There was a dance in everyone of them little towns. In Idaho Falls we'd go out to the Eagles Club dance. They had a big dance there, lots of girls! Them ole farm girls would swing us around there like a pendulum. We'd try to make it to them dances every Saturday night. One time this guy wanted us to come out and shock grain, he was having trouble getting help, so he ask us if we'd work the summer. We went out to his place early that morning and we'd been to the dance the night before, and the first thing we did was go over to the well and get us a drink of water. That old boy said "I know you guys were all right last night, you didn't have nothing to drink, cis your sure thirsty this morning!" We shocked grain all day long, about 11 o'clock that morning this ole boys wife brought us out each a bottle of beer and hell did it taste good! We went in to eat at noon and then in the afternoon she brought us another bottle of beer. That night when we come in she had a great big ole turkey dinner for us. It was just like Thanksgiving. Thats one thing about those farms up there, when you go out on the thrashing crew, everyday its just like Thanksgiving. You'd go to one farm to the other. Each farmer would help the other. They'd send a man and a wagon or a man and a spike, or something like that and they'd add it all up and then they'd prorate it to each farmer. I drove that wagon for Speck Hughes and boy I tell you we did eat! Them old ladies up there would set everything you could think of on the table. Another thing we had there was a friend from St. George, old Jim Linder. He was a room master out at the War Bonnet Brewery in Idaho Falls. He invited us out there. So when we got off work one night we went out and he took us down in the brewery and we were just hotter than a pistol. We went down there and the temperature was just 32 degrees and he started to feeding us this cold beer and it didn't take us long to get out of there! We drank about two beers and we were so dam cold we had shivers. We were at Billings, Montana quite awhile, three or four weeks, I don't remember. We got all the hay up there then came down an worked in the hay again for them people we worked for before. Another guy called us and we went up to help him in the hay. A guy by the name of Bert Frei. I ran a hay wagon there and them guys were spiking hay up to me. Ole Curley Blake spiked a shock of hay up with a rattlesnake in the sun-of-a-gun. I drove the wagon up to a canel and and tipped the hay off and said we'd load it later, then we went back and got another load and took it in and told old Bert we'd put the hay on in a few days, when the dam snake crawled out of it. He said okay, so three or four days later, old Bert came along and he set a match to it, he wasn't going to lift it on and he didn't want us to with a snake in there. They put Baker and John Wade there on a job to clean up a spud pit and he sent me with a team down to the new Idaho Falls temple where they'd just started to building. I went down there and drove a team with a fresno or scraper when they was a gettin ready to build the temple, leveling it off. I worked there for 4 or 5 days. He paid me wages for his tithing or whatever it was that went into the temple his donation or building fund for the temple. We then went to New Sweden, we got the second crop of hay up and they started digging beets, we didn't work on that very much. Then we went over and glommed spuds. We was in this cabin down in Idaho Falls and this old boy come in and he was looking for a guy to help him in the spuds and so I went out and went to work for him about a month. I drove a team and wagon that hauled the spuds to the pit then I had to milk cows night and morning. The first thing they did on that ranch in the mornings was go out and feed and grain the horses then this man and his wife and I would go and milk the cows. I'll never forget, she had one old cow there that I tried to milk. It was the hardest cow I've ever tried to milk in my life. I told that old boy a calf would starve to death trying to suck her. Then his wife would take her and she'd milk her. He and I would milk 3 or 4 cows a piece while she was milking that one. After we got all his spuds in the pit he and his wife wanted to go to Colorado to see his brother so they got me to stay there and run the place. I had to milk these cows every night and morning, take care of the horses, and separate the cream. I had 2 five gallon cream cans I had to take down to a ranch a couple of miles below where I was at. They had a creamery there. He had a colt and I broke that sun-of-a-gun so I could take it and haul the cream down. I either had to hook up a team and put it on the wagon or pack two cream cans about a mile and a half down the road and full of cream it was quite a job. I didn't have anything else to do in the middle of the day, so I broke this colt. I broke him to pack my cream. When they came back from Colorado they laid us off just a day or two before Thanksgiving. I got back with those other guys that had been working in the spud pits over in New Sweden and we decided to go to California. We got in a hell-of-a-storm in there in Jackpot, Nevada. We got some gas out of a 50 gallon drum and there'd been water in it and it had froze our gas line. We were driving a 28 model Chevrolet. We froze up there that night and had to take the gas line out in that old desert. We built a fire and it was cold too, I mean it was cold!! We took the gas line off out there on that snowy road, thawed all the water out of the gas line by the fire then we went to Elko, Nevada that night.We was about froze when we got there. We went into this old cabin , they charged us $3. for it. We built a big fire in it and stood around about an hour or two till we could thaw out. Next morning we went up to town to get some breakfast. We went into this cafe and was eating breakfast an a guy come in and said, "Do any of you guys want a job?" I said, "Ya, I'll take a job, what kind ya got?" He said they wanted someone to come out and work on a cow outfit. Neither of the guys wanted to go they said they were going to rustle around Elko so I went out there on this ranch, and what it was, they had a whole lot of meadows down the river and in each one was a little stack of hay and a few head of cattle. I had to go down each morning and cut a little hay off the haystacks and feed them cattle and it would be in the afternoon when I'd get back. It was a cold miserable son-of-a-gun. It was in the latter part of November. One day them guys come out and said were leaving, going to California, you want to go with us? And I said, "You dam right, I'm going too." I went in and got my wages and boy it was cold out there, the wind was blowing snow. We went to Reno that night. From Reno we went down to Placerville and the next day on over into Sacramento. I went to see my cousin Gus Affleck to visit with him and he said, "What are you doing?" And I said, "oh were just wrestling for work, messing around, tired of that cold in Idaho." He said he thought he could get us a job. He said he wanted me to live out at his place. He said, "Go out there and we'll fix you up with a room." So those guys hauled me out there. When we got there Veda Affleck wasn't home and she had an Indian girl tending her kids. She wouldn't let me in so I sat out there and waited till she come home. She didn't know who I was, couldn't remember me. I told her who I was, and she invited me in and got me a room in the house, they only had 14 rooms in that house! Guss Affleck is my first cousin. He and I was both named after Grandpa Hardy. His name was Agustus. Aunt Lizzie, dad's sister married Dr. Affleck. Dr. Affleck was one of the first doctors in St. George, then he moved to the mining camps of Nevada. Guss got me a job in Safeway's. I worked there till just before Christmas. The first job I had in the store was packaging candy and nuts, brown sugar, beans and peas and they had them chocolate drops. I got so I couldn't eat a chocolate drop to save my life! I packaged bushels of hard tack candy. They'd just taken over this Pigley Wigley Store and was using their bags and after the first of the year, what we didn't have left of that candy, we had to dump it out and put it in Safeway bags. I kept at that till all the candy and nuts were done and then they put me to stocking shelves for quite a while and working in the produce department. The produce department was quite a deal. I had to clean the produce every morning and get it all stacked up for resale. I worked there in the deli for a while dishing out ice cream and slicing lunch meats. That's before the lunch meats and cheeses were in the butcher department. I sliced lunch meat and put it in packages. We got a big wheel of cheese and I'd have to cut it all up and wrap it and put it on display. The kids would come in for ice cream cones and I had to give them ice cream cones and bars. I worked in there for a couple of months. I never did make it home for Christmas, not till a couple years later. I spent almost three years over in Sacramento living with Gus. They had a room out next to their garage. It had a bath and everything in it so I moved out there, and come and go as I pleased. Some times I worked late at nights and other times I'd get up early in the morning and go to work. I worked at twelve different Safeway stores there in Sacramento. After I left Safeways I went to work for Lynn & O'Neal. I worked for them in four different stores. My first job, I worked in the main store and then I worked in the produce department and stocking shelves. They sent me out to this other store in North Sacramento. It was kind of a slum district and one of my first jobs there was selling wine. We had these big 50 gallon barrels of wine in the back end of the store and these guys would come in with their own jugs and I'd sell it for 65 cents a gallon. You'd get back there in that smell all day and you'd be about half sick at night. That wine would drip on the floor and them old guys would bring their old dirty bottles, it didn't make no difference, we'd fill em up anyway. I sold wine there, especially on Saturdays. I had to work Sundays and they'd give me Mondays off. I worked 6 days a week. Sundays was the same, every wino would come in and buy lots of wine and cheap hotdogs, bologne, and every darn thing you could think of that was cheap. Coffee was 15 cents a pound and on sale sometimes two for 25 cents, and we ground it right there. We had fresh coffee beans in packages and we'd drop it in and put the sack back up to the grinder and fill it up, and sale it that way. we'd ground it anyway they wanted it. That was pretty cheap coffee. I worked there for Lynn & O'Neal for about a year at different stores. Finally one day I got tired and quit and rode the ferry down to San Francisco to the Worlds Fair "The Golden Gate Expedition - 1939". Then I went and visited my Aunt Ellise over in Oakland. She was cooking for some rich people in the mountains some place. We went up there one evening and visited her and then went down with her husband and stayed with him overnight. I caught the train and went to Los Angeles and visited Alberta and stayed with her a couple of days and caught the bus into St. George. I stayed around St. George for a while helping dad around the yard. Elmer Larsen came out and wanted to go out and help him. I went out to Beaver Dam wash and helped him for a while.

Recorded by Augustus Crawford Hardy on July 6, 1978. Typed by Andie McAllister (great-granddaughter) on March 24, 2016. I was born May 11, 1915 to Gilbert Perkins and Mattie Ellen Crawford Hardy at Washington, Utah in my grandma Crawfords home. I am the second to the youngest child, and the only son. My sisters are: Alberta, Betty, Louise, and Inez. We moved from Washington to the old house on Main Street in St. George. The old house was made out of adobe, had a basement under it (one room) , had a lean too on the back, with two rooms. It had two big rooms on the main floor, it had two fireplaces, one in each room. There was a double deck porch going around the south and east side of the house. Up stairs there were three rooms. Dad worked on farms around St. George hauling wood and freight with a team and wagon. He used to go to Modena to get the freight from the railroad, and we'd bring it to St. George to different stores and then he'd take freight for the cow outfits on the Arizona strip and sheep outfits. The first trip I went with him was down to Pawcoom, Arizona. We went down there and hauled a load of bailed hay and grain and groceries to the cowboys on the roundup. I don't know how old I was, probably five or six. On the way back we got a load of wood at White Rocks and went on in to Wolf Hole. After we left Wolf Hole we was going down to Quail Hill and there had been sheep out through there and they had lost a lamb and I got off the wagon and put the lamb up on the wagon nd held it till we got down to Mokiak. When we got to Mokiak I didn't know what we was going to feed the lamb. Dad was working a mare that had a colt and we held this lamb up to the mare and it sucked all the way into town. Then we put it on the bottle. I remember one time when I was a little feller, don't remember how old I was, we went out to Modena to get a load of freight. After we'd left Enterprise and was out on those flat west of Berl, going into Modena the train was coming, the old smoke was pouring out of it, I could see it coming and I tried to get dad to hurry up. "Let's go a little faster," I wanted to see that train! It was the first time I had ever seen one. Anyway he pulled in front of Lunds Store and parked there. Him and Claud Morris went on inside and left me in the wagon. I was setting there on the wagon and here come the train in and I thought I was going to run right over the whole outfit! It came in on a circle and I was sure it was going to run right over me. I used to go with dad up to Apex Mine west of St. George. We'd go up there and get a wagon load of ore. We'd go up one day and camp and eat at the Mess Hall or the cook shacks, then we'd go back down and sleep in the wagon. The next day we'd load up and go back into St. George. Then we'd take the ore on up to Cedar City at the railroad. It took three days from the mine to Cedar City with a load of ore. Our team had a sorro named Blondy, she had a sorro mane and flaxey tail and the other old fox, he was a sorro. Betty, sister said I used to ride up to the back door on my Shetland pony and ask fro bread and jam because I was too lazy to get off. (I think that's just a fairy tale!) My Shetland was black and white. Dad traded Bill Graham a cow for it. Its name was Fox. That was his name when I got him. I used to ride him around town. He was a bucky little cuss at times. Uncle Sherm gave me a pair of those sharp round Mexican spurs. I used to keep him skinned on the sides with them. He bucked me off about two or three times every day. I used to ride him to take the cows to the pasture down below town. I delivered papers on him, the old Salt Lake Telegram. I used to ride him over to Washington to visit Aunt Julia and Uncle Alex. Aunt Julia was ma's sister, she married Alex Thayne. I spent one whole summer over there with them when ma went to Los Angeles when Roberta was born. I packed a flour sack full of clothes and stayed all summer with Aunt Julia. I slept in the top of the grainery. I had me nice room up there. I was the only one who had a Shetland in Washington and it proved to be pretty handy. All the kids wanted to ride him. They'd cut wood and milk the cow for me in order to ride the Shetland. I did a lot of my chores that way! Booth Turnbeaugh was my best friend while I was in Washington. He had a younger brother, Clyde that we let play with us once in a while. And there was Lynn Averett, Poncho Sandberg, and the Pectol Twins (Ruben and Rulon), and Woodrow Staheli. I was about thirteen at the time. Bill Turnbeaugh used to take us around town. They all had horses and I had my Shetland and I had to run like hell to keep up with them. We used to ride around the farms, especially in the late summer. We'd go down in the fields below Washington and find guys watermelon patch, and eat watermelon then we'd go swimming in the canel. There was an ole pond up at the grape vine where we used to go play and swim. They also had a swimming pool in Washington. It cost us 10 cents to go swimming. We'd trap gophers for old man Jolly, (I can't remember his name), anyway he'd give us a nickel a piece for them. We'd trap enough gophers to go swimming. About the first thing I can remember about my oldest sister Alberta was when she bought me a pair of lace boots and the were a sun-of-a-gun to lace up some mornings. I remember Betty one time wanted to cut my hair. She got me down with my head between her legs and started shaving up the back of my neck and down the side. I guess it looked like hell from what ma said. And Louise was nice to me a time or two. She knocked me down the stair steps a few times. They used to all thump me pretty good. Inez, she's younger than me, used to make her baul quite a bit. Ma used to tune me up quite often. When I'd forget to come and milk the cow at night. When I was off playing basketball or forget to cut the wood. She kept me pretty busy with wood cutting, milking cows, feeding the chickens and the garden. It seemed like these weeds would never stop growing. I went to 8th grade at Woodward and went as far as 11th grade at Dixie High. 11th grade was called third year high school then. My first teacher was Kathrine Miles, I think. I can't remember Mrs. Harmons first name. I had Aunt Lena Nelson, Harold Snow, Vernon Worthen, in grade school. One time I'd been up to Alex mine with dad and I found a tobacco can and filled it full of carbite. I was in 6th grade and so I give two or three of my friends a piece of carbide, and we all decided that when we went out for recess we'd take the lids off the ink wells and drop the carbide in and tighten up the ink wells and go on out. When we got back we came in and there was ink all over the place. The carbide had exploded in the bottles. I never did get caught in that deal. We blamed it on somebody else. We hid the carbide out in the woodpile. We used to torment the girls, one thing another like that. During the depression the church owned the school and they didn't have any money so in March of that year they closed it down. (1931-32) I went up on the Arizona Strip to work for Chet Thayne building a fence for him and then after that I went to work for Jack Wiggins helping him fence and general work around his ranch. Then I went to work for another outfit. He was a horse wrangler and stayed on there until November. After we'd trailed the cattle into to Modena and they didn't have anymore work for us so I just layer around St. George tip the next spring. It was too late to start school, so I worked different places around St. George. When spring came I went back out to the Arizona Strip and worked all summer. The Arizona Strip is all the land north of the Colorado River and the Grand Caynon in the state of Arizona. Most of my teenage years I worked on the strip. The next spring I joined the CCC Camp (Civilian Conservation Corp.) We were stationed at base camp Panguitch Lake all summer then we went to spike camp for 5 days up at Sydney Valley, which is now called Brian Head, building roads for the forest service and I took care of teams for awhile. Then I was transferred over to another camp over at Duck Creek then we went back to Panguitch Lake and worked on some roads and camping parks. I was about 18. I stayed for 9 months with the CCC's and I got out in April and went to work for Bob McComb in his tire shop and service station. The depression effected everybody's family. We had a little money in the bank and lost all of it. There was no place to work and that was when I went to the CCC's and dad was also out of work. They closed down the Apex and he went to work for Don Lightner Mine mining coal up above Zion Park then he went out on the strip and worked for Old Nutter cleaning his springs out and running pipe lines. We didn't have any money but had plenty to eat mama we had a big vegetable garden. Dad then went to work for WPA (Works Projects Administration) or Woodpeckers Assoc. When I got on at the CCC's they laid him off WPA. I got $30. a month. I kept $5. of it and then sent $25. home to the folks. I did pretty good on $5. a month, course they furnished our clothes, they weren't the best looking clothes in the world but that plaid lumber jacket they give us was the most popular jacket in the area. When we wore out a pair of boots we'd just have to go turn them in and they'd give us a new pair. I worked for Bob McComb for awhile then I got a chance to go back out on the strip with the cattle and stayed out there till the winter of 36 and 37. They had the big "Blue Snow", they called it, and everybody was snowed in and finally the CCC's come out with cats and trucks and provisions and cut a trail along the road so we could take some horses and go to town. We stayed in town till the snow melted off then I went to work for Marty Larsen on the Beaver Dam Wash and worked for him about a month and a half then we came to town and got running around there with some guys and decided to go to Idaho. So we got in this old car and went to Idaho on Thanksgiving day and went over to Twin Falls then over to Northern Nevada and down to California. When we first got to Idaho we were driving out a lane looking for a job and these guys come along in a truck and said, "are you guys looking for work?" and we said, "Ya". This was in Idaho Falls. They gave us a job thinning beets. The first thing we had to do was -- well they gave us two sheep wagons to live in, there was four of us, myself, John Wade, Rulon Baker, and Hollis Blake. We lived in there two wagons. First we had to go buy some short handled hoes so we could thin them beets. It was lean over and chop all day long! We started out on five acres and they had about 35 acres of beets. It took us a week to do five acres. I said were a little bit slow if they'd get some Phillipinos in there, and they could go on them others we told them to get the dam cusses in there, we'd dug enough beets1 Then they put us to work on the ranch, doing a little plowing, cleaning ditches, one thing another like that. They said if we'd help around the ranch we could live in those two sheep wagons all summer long or as long as we wanted to. So we helped around the ranch and they give us all spuds we wanted. We had to go down in the spud cellar and sort them out and we lived pretty good. We got to town and buy a bunch of groceries and all four of us chip in. We worked there in that outfit then the guy across the road wanted us to help him in the hay. So we went over to help him and he gave me a team to go out and rake hay. John Wade, he got a team to cut hay, and Rulon Baker, they put him to spiking or cocking as they called it. We worked there in the hay for another two weeks and I raked hay there till I was raking hay in my sleep. When we got all the haying done we had to haul it in and I rode the wagon and Baker and John Wade they pitched the hay up to me and we hauled it in and they had a big old Jackson Fork to unload it and put it in stacks. In the mean time Hollis Blake got a job where he worked the year before, from a guy by the name of Bert Frei. We worked for this Ward Falkner for two or three weeks then we went back over to the ranch where we were living in the wagons and we worked for them in the hay for a couple a weeks and about that time the grain got ripe so we helped them there with the thrashers. I run the wagon and thrasher as I was the smallest of the two guys. They put me on the wagon stacking and them guys would spike out in the fields. We'd pull in up to the thrasher and take a turn unloading. There'd be two wagons going into the thrasher at a time and unloading. When we'd get real tired we'd see a bundle with a bunch of clover in it we'd put it in cross ways and it would jam the thrasher and we'd rest for 15 to 20 minutes while they unclogged it. Then I went to work for a guy by the name of Speck Hughes. He put us to cleaning the ditches and ditch banks. We used a syth to clean off the Johnson grass and weeds off the ditch banks and camel banks. He put me with two big ole horses and I'd ride the lead horse and they had a ditcher, they called it, kind of a plow affair that would go down the ditches and throw mud up one side of it, you'd get one horse in front of the other. I rode the head horse an they'd run water down the ditch and as you went down it would throw the mud up and the water would float the loose down into the creek. I'd ride the lead horse down and then I'd turn around and come back and ride him up and throw the mud the other way. It would make real clean ditch banks and we had to do it about every month or month an half to keep those ditches clean. They had ditches on their farm where they turned the water out of the canels and we did them the same way. I worked for ole Hughes there a week or so, I don't remember, but we got his grain up then he wanted me to start breaking horses. They had a couple there I road a few times. Them other fellows couldn't get a job around there close so we went out to what they call Mud Lakes and we got a job in the hay there. We put that crop of hay up there and then went from there to Billings, Montana and worked in the hay there for 3 or 4 weeks on a big ranch. For entertainment we would go out dancing on Saturday nights. There was a dance in everyone of them little towns. In Idaho Falls we'd go out to the Eagles Club dance. They had a big dance there, lots of girls! Them ole farm girls would swing us around there like a pendulum. We'd try to make it to them dances every Saturday night. One time this guy wanted us to come out and shock grain, he was having trouble getting help, so he ask us if we'd work the summer. We went out to his place early that morning and we'd been to the dance the night before, and the first thing we did was go over to the well and get us a drink of water. That old boy said "I know you guys were all right last night, you didn't have nothing to drink, cis your sure thirsty this morning!" We shocked grain all day long, about 11 o'clock that morning this ole boys wife brought us out each a bottle of beer and hell did it taste good! We went in to eat at noon and then in the afternoon she brought us another bottle of beer. That night when we come in she had a great big ole turkey dinner for us. It was just like Thanksgiving. Thats one thing about those farms up there, when you go out on the thrashing crew, everyday its just like Thanksgiving. You'd go to one farm to the other. Each farmer would help the other. They'd send a man and a wagon or a man and a spike, or something like that and they'd add it all up and then they'd prorate it to each farmer. I drove that wagon for Speck Hughes and boy I tell you we did eat! Them old ladies up there would set everything you could think of on the table. Another thing we had there was a friend from St. George, old Jim Linder. He was a room master out at the War Bonnet Brewery in Idaho Falls. He invited us out there. So when we got off work one night we went out and he took us down in the brewery and we were just hotter than a pistol. We went down there and the temperature was just 32 degrees and he started to feeding us this cold beer and it didn't take us long to get out of there! We drank about two beers and we were so dam cold we had shivers. We were at Billings, Montana quite awhile, three or four weeks, I don't remember. We got all the hay up there then came down an worked in the hay again for them people we worked for before. Another guy called us and we went up to help him in the hay. A guy by the name of Bert Frei. I ran a hay wagon there and them guys were spiking hay up to me. Ole Curley Blake spiked a shock of hay up with a rattlesnake in the sun-of-a-gun. I drove the wagon up to a canel and and tipped the hay off and said we'd load it later, then we went back and got another load and took it in and told old Bert we'd put the hay on in a few days, when the dam snake crawled out of it. He said okay, so three or four days later, old Bert came along and he set a match to it, he wasn't going to lift it on and he didn't want us to with a snake in there. They put Baker and John Wade there on a job to clean up a spud pit and he sent me with a team down to the new Idaho Falls temple where they'd just started to building. I went down there and drove a team with a fresno or scraper when they was a gettin ready to build the temple, leveling it off. I worked there for 4 or 5 days. He paid me wages for his tithing or whatever it was that went into the temple his donation or building fund for the temple. We then went to New Sweden, we got the second crop of hay up and they started digging beets, we didn't work on that very much. Then we went over and glommed spuds. We was in this cabin down in Idaho Falls and this old boy come in and he was looking for a guy to help him in the spuds and so I went out and went to work for him about a month. I drove a team and wagon that hauled the spuds to the pit then I had to milk cows night and morning. The first thing they did on that ranch in the mornings was go out and feed and grain the horses then this man and his wife and I would go and milk the cows. I'll never forget, she had one old cow there that I tried to milk. It was the hardest cow I've ever tried to milk in my life. I told that old boy a calf would starve to death trying to suck her. Then his wife would take her and she'd milk her. He and I would milk 3 or 4 cows a piece while she was milking that one. After we got all his spuds in the pit he and his wife wanted to go to Colorado to see his brother so they got me to stay there and run the place. I had to milk these cows every night and morning, take care of the horses, and separate the cream. I had 2 five gallon cream cans I had to take down to a ranch a couple of miles below where I was at. They had a creamery there. He had a colt and I broke that sun-of-a-gun so I could take it and haul the cream down. I either had to hook up a team and put it on the wagon or pack two cream cans about a mile and a half down the road and full of cream it was quite a job. I didn't have anything else to do in the middle of the day, so I broke this colt. I broke him to pack my cream. When they came back from Colorado they laid us off just a day or two before Thanksgiving. I got back with those other guys that had been working in the spud pits over in New Sweden and we decided to go to California. We got in a hell-of-a-storm in there in Jackpot, Nevada. We got some gas out of a 50 gallon drum and there'd been water in it and it had froze our gas line. We were driving a 28 model Chevrolet. We froze up there that night and had to take the gas line out in that old desert. We built a fire and it was cold too, I mean it was cold!! We took the gas line off out there on that snowy road, thawed all the water out of the gas line by the fire then we went to Elko, Nevada that night.We was about froze when we got there. We went into this old cabin , they charged us $3. for it. We built a big fire in it and stood around about an hour or two till we could thaw out. Next morning we went up to town to get some breakfast. We went into this cafe and was eating breakfast an a guy come in and said, "Do any of you guys want a job?" I said, "Ya, I'll take a job, what kind ya got?" He said they wanted someone to come out and work on a cow outfit. Neither of the guys wanted to go they said they were going to rustle around Elko so I went out there on this ranch, and what it was, they had a whole lot of meadows down the river and in each one was a little stack of hay and a few head of cattle. I had to go down each morning and cut a little hay off the haystacks and feed them cattle and it would be in the afternoon when I'd get back. It was a cold miserable son-of-a-gun. It was in the latter part of November. One day them guys come out and said were leaving, going to California, you want to go with us? And I said, "You dam right, I'm going too." I went in and got my wages and boy it was cold out there, the wind was blowing snow. We went to Reno that night. From Reno we went down to Placerville and the next day on over into Sacramento. I went to see my cousin Gus Affleck to visit with him and he said, "What are you doing?" And I said, "oh were just wrestling for work, messing around, tired of that cold in Idaho." He said he thought he could get us a job. He said he wanted me to live out at his place. He said, "Go out there and we'll fix you up with a room." So those guys hauled me out there. When we got there Veda Affleck wasn't home and she had an Indian girl tending her kids. She wouldn't let me in so I sat out there and waited till she come home. She didn't know who I was, couldn't remember me. I told her who I was, and she invited me in and got me a room in the house, they only had 14 rooms in that house! Guss Affleck is my first cousin. He and I was both named after Grandpa Hardy. His name was Agustus. Aunt Lizzie, dad's sister married Dr. Affleck. Dr. Affleck was one of the first doctors in St. George, then he moved to the mining camps of Nevada. Guss got me a job in Safeway's. I worked there till just before Christmas. The first job I had in the store was packaging candy and nuts, brown sugar, beans and peas and they had them chocolate drops. I got so I couldn't eat a chocolate drop to save my life! I packaged bushels of hard tack candy. They'd just taken over this Pigley Wigley Store and was using their bags and after the first of the year, what we didn't have left of that candy, we had to dump it out and put it in Safeway bags. I kept at that till all the candy and nuts were done and then they put me to stocking shelves for quite a while and working in the produce department. The produce department was quite a deal. I had to clean the produce every morning and get it all stacked up for resale. I worked there in the deli for a while dishing out ice cream and slicing lunch meats. That's before the lunch meats and cheeses were in the butcher department. I sliced lunch meat and put it in packages. We got a big wheel of cheese and I'd have to cut it all up and wrap it and put it on display. The kids would come in for ice cream cones and I had to give them ice cream cones and bars. I worked in there for a couple of months. I never did make it home for Christmas, not till a couple years later. I spent almost three years over in Sacramento living with Gus. They had a room out next to their garage. It had a bath and everything in it so I moved out there, and come and go as I pleased. Some times I worked late at nights and other times I'd get up early in the morning and go to work. I worked at twelve different Safeway stores there in Sacramento. After I left Safeways I went to work for Lynn & O'Neal. I worked for them in four different stores. My first job, I worked in the main store and then I worked in the produce department and stocking shelves. They sent me out to this other store in North Sacramento. It was kind of a slum district and one of my first jobs there was selling wine. We had these big 50 gallon barrels of wine in the back end of the store and these guys would come in with their own jugs and I'd sell it for 65 cents a gallon. You'd get back there in that smell all day and you'd be about half sick at night. That wine would drip on the floor and them old guys would bring their old dirty bottles, it didn't make no difference, we'd fill em up anyway. I sold wine there, especially on Saturdays. I had to work Sundays and they'd give me Mondays off. I worked 6 days a week. Sundays was the same, every wino would come in and buy lots of wine and cheap hotdogs, bologne, and every darn thing you could think of that was cheap. Coffee was 15 cents a pound and on sale sometimes two for 25 cents, and we ground it right there. We had fresh coffee beans in packages and we'd drop it in and put the sack back up to the grinder and fill it up, and sale it that way. we'd ground it anyway they wanted it. That was pretty cheap coffee. I worked there for Lynn & O'Neal for about a year at different stores. Finally one day I got tired and quit and rode the ferry down to San Francisco to the Worlds Fair "The Golden Gate Expedition - 1939". Then I went and visited my Aunt Ellise over in Oakland. She was cooking for some rich people in the mountains some place. We went up there one evening and visited her and then went down with her husband and stayed with him overnight. I caught the train and went to Los Angeles and visited Alberta and stayed with her a couple of days and caught the bus into St. George. I stayed around St. George for a while helping dad around the yard. Elmer Larsen came out and wanted to go out and help him. I went out to Beaver Dam wash and helped him for a while.