Ruby Irene Hancock Biography

The following is from interviews with my mother Ruby Irene Johnson Hancock (2010).

My mother’s family came from Illinois; mama was born in Illinois.  My father’s family was in Missouri.

Q:  How did they meet?

A:  They somehow, I don’t know how, through the years the two families moved close together, and then they ended up in Arkansas. My parents were married in Missouri, but they lived in Arkansas after they were married.  Years after with two or three children they moved to the west.

Q:  How old were your parents when they got married?

A:  My mother was fourteen years old.  My dad was twenty-one.

Q:  Were they ready to be married at that young age?

A:  They went and signed up with the county and got permission and got married. 

Q:  You told me something the other day about your mother being married at fourteen, and you said you thought she was ready to be married at that age.

A:  Well, I assume she was because she was well taught to have a family, and my father had been an orphan since he was eight years old. I believe  my father William Forest Johnson  had been farming in the area where my mother Mabel Inez Johnson was living with her family, and that’s how they got together. My father was a hard working farmer and the oldest child in his home. My mother was the oldest daughter in her family. They were both able and hard working people, and they raised a good  family.  When my father was growing up his mother died when he was about eight years old and his father died not too long after that. Relatives took him when he was a child and put him to work in the fields, and that’s where he made his living all of his life. It wasn’t uncommon back then for folks to marry at a young age, but they did well, he raised eleven children to maturity as a farm laborer.

Q:  How many children did they have?

A:  Through the years they had twelve.  They lost one baby at ten days old.  And eleven of them, I was one of them was raised to maturity, in fact I’m next to the last one that’s still living here now.

Q:  So your father was a farmer in Arkansas?

A:  He worked for farmers in Arkansas and Missouri.  I have a letter from Aunt Beulah Johnson, the wife of my mothers brother Charles, who wrote to me and said “Your father worked for my Grandmother Lamb and she "took part care of the boys, but I remember my Aunt Jane Fisher at a town by name of Hayward Missiouri cared mostly for the boys".  My father was the oldest of the children. He only had two siblings and only one (Luther Lindsey Johnson) survived childhood from my father’s family. The youngest brother (Owen) died when he was very young. 

Q:  Tell me your mother and father’s names.

A:  Johnson.  My dad was William Forest Johnson.  My mother’s name was Mabel Inez Johnson, and they were not related.  She said lots of people tried to find a relationship.

Q:  Do you know the names of your grandparents on both sides, mother and father?

A:  I’m not certain of my father’s mother, but the name that I got, and that he was raised with was Mattie Clark (also possibly known as Mattie Ames), and his father’s name was David Johnson.  Then mother’s fathers name was Jesse Johnson, but her mother’s name was Harriet Caroline Weir, and her father’s name was Greenberry Weir.

Q:  So your Grandparents came from Missouri and Illinois?

A:  Jesse Johnson my mothers father came from Illinois,.  Forest Johnson my fathers father came form Missouri.

Q:  What brought them out west?  Why did Jesse Johnson and Mable Inez come out to California?

A:  My father had two brothers, Owen the youngest, we finally found had died as a baby. His other Brother, Luther, I understand sent Papa tickets to LA. Papa would not stay in LA very long. From our family records it appears they moved from Missouri in 1912. He could not stand the big city LA so they moved quickly out to Imperial valley, then they moved west in a horse drawn wagon to Tempe Arizona where Aunt Mildred was born.  I don’t know any of the particulars but for some reason, my mother had a sister and my father had a brother and these brothers maried sisters My fathers brother Uncle Luther he was not a farmer, I don’t know what he grew up doing.  He came out west as a young man and moved to California and when he got out there he thought everything was so wonderful that he encouraged Papa to bring his family and come out west. So he helped him gather the money to move my father’s family out here with him, and they came to California.   When they got to California, Papa didn’t like the city and wouldn't stay in Los Angeles. He moved out to the country and settled for a time south of LA in the Imperial Valley and went to work on a farm.  Uncle Luther stayed there in Los Angeles and worked himself up to a streetcar engineer. He stayed in LA  California, Momma and Poppa moved to Imperial Valley for a while, and went on and ended up in Tempe Arizona and that’s where we kids were raised. Goah (Buck), was born in Arkansas. William (Bud), Jesie, and Mary Grace, were born in Missiouri. Mary Grace died when she was ten days old but then the family came out west to California. Wilmer Luther (uncle Tex), and Hazel Joy(Aunt Joy),  were born at Imperial Valley California. Mildred Blanche, myself, Letha Pauline, Ernest Richard,  David Stanley, and James Cecil were all born in Arizona.

Q:  How did they get to Arizona?

A:  Papa told me when they moved to Arizona in 1916 they moved by wagon and buggy. The older boys helped to move. Mother rode in the buggy but did not help drive.
Q:  How much schooling did your father have?

A:  I never heard my father say, I was quite young you know.  He had four children before me.  He was still a farmer, and that was all he knew.  He was raised in Missouri, picking cotton farming and working in the field and he knew farming and the fields. Once, I asked him, “Poppa, how far did you go in school?”  He said “Well sister, I went to the fourth reader.”  He could read and write and take good care of himself.  My family did not keep very good records, that is all I can tell you about that.

Q:  How much schooling did your mother have?

A:  I couldn't tell you.  Mother never opened her head about school.  She could read and write, she loved to sing, and she raised a good family.

Q:  Tell me about your brothers and sisters.

A:  Goah, Herbert, Jessie,  Mary Grace.  They lost her, she lived to be ten days old, when she was born she had the measles.  And she never survived the measles. After that they moved to Arizona, then there was, Tex, Joy, and Mildred. I was born next, then Pauline, Ernest, Stanley, & Jimmy was the youngest. Momma siad I never had the measles. I never had the Mumps, Chicken Pox, any of the childhood dieses that I know of even though I was going to school when I remember my Brothers and sisters all going through those illnesses. I remember Mildred getting so upset with me because she got the measles when she was about eight years old and (she would have been about twelve) I never did get sick. The only kind of illness I ever had was headaches. I would get out in the sun and get sick headachs.

Q:  Were there alot of children lost to the measles back in those days?

A: I am not sure but I remember being very appaled at learning about some families losing so many children. My brothers used to tell a lot of stories, I went about my own business.

Q:  So your uncle brought out your fathers family to California or invited him out.

A:  Yes then they came to Arizona, and first lived in Tempe. 

Q.  Was he picking cotton in Tempe or growing fruit?

A:  That's where my older brothers should have told the story. I know at one time my father arranged for a deal on a farm and he was doing very well.  I don't know what happened but, he was beat out of that money. My brothers were very upset about that deal he was cheated out of. My dad was a hard worker, and a very good man and he never asked anybody to do anything he wouldn't do himself. He could show a terrible temper. He was not a big man, he was a tiny little man, , but he was a hard worker. and he knew farming.

Q:  What brought him to Tempe and what was he doing there?

A:  I'm sure he had this farm because I heard this story from my brothers about a Mr. White somewhere there in Tempe. Papa had got mixed up with him and he started influencing our Papa and he (Mr. White) finally ended up with the whole thing and papa was left without a dime.

Q:  So it was some kind of scheme?

A:  A scheme that they took away from a poor innocent kid who just came from the east and didn't know what he was doing.  I'm sure that's what it was.  I've heard my brothers complain about this guy at different times. I'm sure that's stories they heard from their daddy. They weren't old enough to really remember too much.  There was a lot of scheming that went on.

Aunt Mildred was the first one born in Arizona.  She's just older than I am.

Q:  And then Mildred, and then you.

A:  Right there in that part of the valley.  That was the busy part of the farming area, there was a living to be had in the farming areas.  I remember living next to dairies, and getting milk cheap.

Q:  Were you born in a medical center, a hospital, or in a home?

A:  I was born at home, but I had a Dr.  Mom said “You had a Dr, I had a Dr. for every baby that I delivered at home”.  Maybe it was a Midwife, but she didn't say Midwife, she said a Dr.

Q:  Could it have been a neighbor?

A:  It could have been a neighbor, it could have been a neighbor that did that.  A lot of women served as a midwife and did that for a living those days.

Q:  Were there any unusual circumstances around your birth or the birth of your siblings?

A:  I've never heard anything about circumstances around my birth. 

Q:  You were born at home in Glendale, you had a house in Glendale then?

A:  That's where my birth certificate came from was Glendale.

Q:  Let's go back to your mother's family.  What kind of people were they, your grandparents and your great-grandparents.  Were they strong Southern Confederates?

A: Grandpa Weir was in the war between the North and South. He was a Yankee soldier. Aunt Beulah said she thought he was a cooks helper as he was burned . I think he said the pot or kettle turned over when a stick holding the pot burned in two. The Weir and Johnson families were very well thought of. My grandparents, momma’s family, never did come west, and grandma's family never did come west.  I don't know very much about them.  I do have a few old pictures of Lizzie, and Uncle Lewis (Uncle Louis H. Johnson, brother of Jessie Erastus Johnson, Lavern has this picture). 

Q:  Do you remember any stories, that your mother might have talked about her childhood, things that she experienced growing up or what games or toys that she had when she was a baby.

A:  No, no I don't, nowadays people don't realized how little people in those days published everything.  They just did their thing, and that was it, they didn't talk about it to anybody else.

Q:  So you don't know anything about your father or mother’s childhood, what they did when they were growing up.

A:  No, I do not.  They were not real strong in religion, my mother and father went to church where they were when they were younger.

Q:  What church was that?

A:  When I first wanted to go to church it was the Nazarene.  So when I was born, living there in the valley and going to school, I wanted to go to church.  Every time my dad would get a job and have to move away.  Mom would use a neighbor that would let me ride to church with her.  She always kept somebody for me to go to church with, because I insisted on going to church.

Q:  Did any of your brothers and sisters....

A:  Didn’t any of them care a hoot. None of them ever went with me.  I don't know what they did when they were older; I mean the older ones when they were younger is what I'm saying.

Q:  Mom would you say that you had the desire to attend church?

A:  Well I think I must have, because somewhere I went to church, and I heard a preacher, and that man made me so impressed with the spirit there when he was preaching.  He was a nice young man, I was nine or ten years old.  I made up my mind that I'm going to marry a preacher.  That's what my life was built on.  Mother never objected, Papa never did object, he was busy.   Well my patriarchal blessing says I have a special calling. 

Q:  Do you remember anything about that sermon that the minister gave that inspired you?

A:  No, just the feelings that came over me.  For some reason I had that imbedded in me.  Even while I was a teenager, I didn’t change a hoot.  I still, when we moved from Phoenix to Clay Springs and on the ranch, the first thing I did was ask if I could go to church with the Mormons, because they had Sunday school in their home, and we lived in their neighborhood.  I asked if I could come to Sunday school with them, and they were glad to have me.

Q:  Nobody warned you about the Mormons? 

A:  No one did, Momma and Papa didn't care.  Papa had met some of the people around somewhere and commented “You know those are good people, they're doing alright, I just don't go for them” it just wasn't spiritual, it didn't shake them up.

Q:  Their meetings, they didn't disturb the spirit?

A:  They didn't make noise, they didn't get them moving and shaking them.  That was what Papa was used to. The Nazarenes didn't ordinarily, but when they had these special conferences or revivals, then boy things would, you know, really get moving and shaking.

A:  Greg to answer one of your questions about Grandma Mabel, when we would go down to stay with her in Arizona, we went to church with her, and I remember this, and she went to the Nazarene church, so she was a Nazarene for quite a while, I'm sure she was for most of her life. 

A:  I might add those revivals kind of scared me.

Q:  Let’s go back a little bit, back to the valley again.  You said whenever your dad would get a job he would work on different farms?

A: All I can remember is somebody needed a man over here, a farm laborer, and he needed a job, and that's what he would do.  Actually in those days those farmers would more or less furnish living quarters for their people.  If you’re going to hire a workman, you’ve gotta have him near so he could do his job.

Q:   They put him up too. When grandpa got a job you would go with him and live....

A:  We would live there.  We would move with the job.

Q:  There would be a bunkhouse or whatever?

A:  Whatever it was, a Mexican shack.

Q:  A Mexican shack, was the common terminology back then?

A:  It was to us kids, I don't know what others called them.

Q:  Were there a lot of immigrant laborers?

A:  There were. Lots of them, my dad could hardly stand the Mexicans.  They would always seem to beat him to a job.

Q:  So these foreigners taking American jobs were a problem back then.  Did you children also work on the farms?

A:  Yeah, my sisters did. As soon as my brothers got out of school; out of eight grade they were gone. Gone to California or somewhere to work in the fruit. They left home.

Q:  What kind of jobs?

A:  Picking fruit, there was lots of call for working in California.  I remember my brothers walking off, heading off to California.  Mother worried herself to death.

Q:  As soon as they could they were gone?

A:  They were gone.  I don't remember them being at home after they left.  Just us kids.

Q:  Just old enough to be on there way, and they were gone.

A:  Just old enough to be influenced by a wild friend of his and they were off hitchiking.

Q:  They didn't see much at home for them?

A:  There was no prospects of anything.  Every dime they made had to go to the family to feed them.

Q:  That reminds me, how did they travel?

A:  They were walking. 

Q:  They would get rides when ever they could.

A:  At that age of my life, was when everyone was moving from east to west to California. 

Irene:  From the dust bowl maybe?

A:  From the dust bowl, I'm sure it was. 

Q:  Let me ask you before I forget, it seems to me like I remember you telling me about one or more of your brothers riding the rails?

A:  Yes that was Tex, he was a little scoundrel. 

Q:  What would he do?

A:  He went off with his school buddy, and walked to town, and when the train left the station that night, they was on an empty car somewhere.  They went all over the country, and they were hobos.  No, somebody slap my face if they heard me say that.  That's kind of what they did.  They would gang up and have different places across the country where they would gang together and share what little they had.  Other than that I remember people coming to mama's door and ask for food, and she would always fix them a plate of food. 

Q: Now this was this during the depression?

A:  It was, it was the early thirties.  I was born in '21

Q:  So what work did you and the sisters or whoever stayed around the house what did you do on the farms?

A:  I never did, I would go to the fields and get a headache and papa would send me home.  I helped mama with the babies at home, mostly because I couldn't stand the heat. 

A:  I just would help mom, and we had our chores to do.  Joy and Mildred my goodness, they would put a shovel on their shoulder and they'd put a hoe in their hand and would take off and would thin cotton all day, shovel whatever needed to be shoveled, they'd irrigate the field, or whatever needed to be done to help their dad.

Q:  What year did you move from Glendale to Clay Springs?

A:  '35

Q:  How old were you?

A:  Thirteen

Q:  There's a picture of your family next to your truck all loaded up.  All those people in that picture went to Clay Springs?

Picture of moving Day

A:  Yup, my oldest brother Goey (Goah Ralph Johnson) he was the one that drove, he was the one that wore the hat.  He was driving.  See Papa had a truck, a homemade truck, I don't know what it was. It had a little gear, that was the one we loaded all the furniture on.  Then we had a pickup truck, that mama and the kids, and the girls rode in.  We had to get all of us up there, and that's how we traveled. 

Q:  So you had two vehicles?

A:  We had two vehicles.

Q:  So you were a wealthy family.

A:  We were, but I think one of the vehicles was thanks to Goey's (Goah) arrangements, because I'm not sure.  I think papa was able to pay for both of the vehicles.  Because we still had them after we got to Clay Springs, after we got to the ranch.  But he had a wife and family back home, Goey did, he just drove us up there don't ask me how he got back, but he got back.  He found his way back, but I don't' remember how.

Q:  Why did you move to Clay Springs?

A:  Because my dad was sick, he had a very serious illness.  He said he knew just as well as he knew anything  that the reason for it was drinking that hard water in Arizona; that surface water, Alkali.  All the farms had their own wells. That was before the good wells.  That was why we moved up there.  For some reason somebody told him there was good pickings up there, you could get a place to work and work in the timber or something. So my dad wasn't able to work, and just went up there and met George Parker and got permission to move into that house, and George said, “Mr. Johnson,  just move in, if anybody says anything, just send them to me.”

Q:  Now who was it that told your dad that?

A:  George Parker.  That was Lloyd Parker's dad.  He was an old rancher, he was Uncle Lloyd Parker's father. Mildred married Lloyd. 

Q:  So you moved up to Clay Springs without having a house?

A:  Yup, we hauled that truck, two vehicles, we had everything that we could use, that's all that we had that was on there. We moved out there to that ranch.

Q:  And squatted on that?

A:  Yes, we squatted on that place.

Q:  In that cabin that you didn't know who the owner was?

A:  George Parker told my dad that it belongs to, can't remember now, but it was a bank in California, it was a bank home, a repossessed place.  “Just move in there and if anybody says anything to you, just send them to me.”  It had been vacant for years and years.

Q:  Is this the cabin that....

A:  It's the cabin I've got the picture of, where I was married.

Picture of Cabin

Q:  So you moved up there, you unloaded all your furniture, Goah went back to the valley...

A:  And papa took the pickup, we must have had a little supply of food, I don't have any idea. We was there and it was days before anybody went out of the country, out away from the house.  We had the pickup truck, mama and papa would go and get the little check, unemployment check of some kind, or maybe it was just payment.  I don't know.  We lived there, Papa planted a crop, George Parker came a long and said “Mr.  Johnson, this cow, this cow, and this cow are mine. I'm giving you permission right now to take those cows, fix up your pen, round up those cows and their calves and put them in the pen, and then turn the calves out and keep the cows all night.  Milk the cows in the morning, and put the calves, up and let the cows go.”  That's where we got our milk for years. 

Q:  You shared the milk with the calves.

A:  We shared the milk with the calves.  Mr. Parker said those are my cows, it’s not hurting anything but me, they're on free range here, their getting their own food, it’s not costing a dollar to raise them, I'm giving you the milk.

Q:  Do you remember any trouble rounding those cows up, and milking them?

A:  I don't remember that.  There were so many little kids around.  Three little brothers, a little sister, and two big sisters.

Q:  It's simple, when a cow has a calf you catch the calf and put it in a pen during the day while the cow grazes. The cow will not go very far from the calf, after you milk the cow you leave both locked up together and then let the cow out again the next morning. It's simple, when the cows are in the calves aren't going to leave their mothers.  When the calves are in the cows aren’t going to leave their calves.

A:  That's right

Q:  When you have a range cow it takes a little bit of doing to make them milkable.

A:  I don't know how many but we had to have three of them to get enough milk to share with the calves and have enough for the kids.  I don't know how it all worked out, I just remember the process.

Q:  What kind of crops did your family grow up there?

A:  Corn, squash, and beans.

Q:  Just dry farm?

A:  Dry farm.  We had some good crops there.  There was a hundred acres of that farm.  Didn't cost us a dime to live there.

Q:  You didn't live there with a bank owned forever.  What happened.

A:  Tex came out to see us.

Q:  The scoundrel, the hobo, the drifter.

A:  The drifter, he came out to see us.  He stayed there with us several days, and then he had a job in California so he went back.

Q:  So he did settle down to earn some money.

A:  Yes, He was not married right away, but anyway, he was there, then the first thing we knew when we come home we got a letter from Tex that said “Dad, the ranch is yours, I paid for it, I bought it, I paid for it, and it's in my name.  It's yours as long as you live.”
After Tex bought it for Papa then we had to pay the taxes on the property but that was all it cost us.

Q:  Tex bought it for Papa and that’s why Aunt Catherine has it now?

A:  That's the ranch there that Aunt Catherine and her boys made a million dollars off of it when it sold.  There's a lot of other people that used it a lot of times in between then and now and made a lot of money off of it, I think. We lived there as long as my parents was well enough to live up there and take care of themselves.  Then papa got sick and passed away.  Of course the kids kept the place up. Then several years later they all moved back to the valley.  The kids, my brother, Uncle Bart, fixed a house right next to his, and lived in the valley.

Q:  What illness did your father have and what year did Grandpa pass away.

A:  Cancer of the liver.  He died of cancer on April 14, 1948

A:  He's buried in Rest Haven Cemetery on Grand Ave in Glendale.

Q:  What kind of work did you do growing up there in Clay Springs?  What chores did you do?  What were your responsibilities there?

A:  Well it really got on relief, I guess.  You know the welfare.  The boys went to the Three C stamps, some of them got into the Three C camp to support the family for a while.    

Q:  I don't know what that is, can you describe it for me?

A:  Civilian Conservation Corp.  It's a government job, that was a government job, one of Roosevelt’s programs.  Save the people of the nation.

Q:  The boys went off to the Corp.

A:  Everything went well.  My mom and dad, and they got dad signed on old age pension.

Q:  But still on the farm, what kind of work...

A:  He still grew his crops, he got to where he was then by a little garden. Mother always had a garden.  She'd carry water from the creek for her garden.

Q:  What chores did you do while you were there.

A: In the summertime I went to Snowflake and got a job working in the cannery to pay the taxes on the place.

Q:  What cannery did you work for?

A:  It was a farmer, Another government project I guess.

Q:  What did you can?

A:  Corn.  Uncle Bud would come out and raise big crops and we'd can his corn.  We'd brought some of the corn home.  In the meantime, what I worked for had to pay the government bill at that time.  We had to pay some taxes on the farm, on a hundred acres. 

Q:  I thought Tex was going to pay the taxes on the farm?

A:  When he lived there he did. When he went back he was working in California and Papa did some road work on the highway to help pay the taxes and my wages from the cannery helped.

Q:  When you were a little child, a girl, what was one of the first memories, your earliest memory do you have?

A:  This is the only one I can think of, I haven't thought of it in years.  One morning I got up and was running around the house, Jessie my older sister, my big sister, got me and she said “Ruby come, I want to show you your baby brother.”  I said “Who?”  She said, “Your baby brother.”  I said, “I don't have a baby brother.”  “Well you come and see.”  On the way in there I said.  “I don't care about the baby brother, but where's my little sister?”  I couldn't stop until I found my little sister.  She was who I was interested in, that little brother didn't mean squat to me at that point.  I had no idea there was a baby coming.  You know in those days you didn't.  As soon as I saw my little sister, I could take her and go out to play with here.  You could take him, he was alright.  I got two more of those, three baby brothers.

Q:  Who was she trying to show you?

A:  Uncle Buck, Uncle Ernest, Uncle Ernest was the oldest.

Q:  Which sister did you want to play with?

A:  Pauline, my younger sister, she was just younger than me.  There was in the middle of the family there was Joy, Mildred, Ruby, and Pauline, then down here after Pauline, there was Ernest, Stanley, and Jim, the last seven, that was the rest of them.

Q:  What's the first toy that you ever remember? Did you have a toy?  What did you play with as a toddler, a baby, or as a young child?

A:  I don't remember ever playing with toys.  I wasn't a little girl, I never was a little girl.  Mom always said I was grown up all my life.

Q:  You didn't have a doll that you would dress up?

A:  I did have the one doll, but it was kept up un the shelf.

Q:  To look at?

A:  Yeah. I had an uncle, Mama's next to youngest brother, Uncle Herman.  They'd come over to see us there quite a bit he got a little stuck on me and so he gave me a package, it was a kewpie doll.  He gave it as a special gift to me, I was the only one to receive anything from him. Pauline, and the boys, he didn't send them anything.

Q:  Did they have kewpie dolls back in the thirties?

A:  I guess so.  She was special, nobody ever played with her.  I don't remember even what happened to her because I can't remember that.  But I was so particular with her.  I remember cutting out pictures and making paper dolls, and doing that.  When the family gathered round at night I was with the adults I was never with the children, always with the adults, I kinda pushed myself in a little bit.

Q:  Tell me about the furniture you had in your house, the furniture you moved up into the cabin.  Describe it, furniture, and furnishings.  What did you load your truck with?

A:  I don't even remember.  I remember we had a big wooden box.  It was maybe about five or six feet long, and about two feet tall. We used it for a trunk and packed that up. After a while in the winter we used it for a wood box in the winter.  We had a table and chairs I don't remember if they were home made or not, they just looked good to me.  In those days, I remember mom had a nice sewing machine.  We had a good table and chairs.  I remember we had a cook stove, a wood stove.

Q:  So that stove was for heat and cooking?

A:  Yes, heat and cooking.

Q:  Did you cook on that stove in the summertime too or did you cook outside?

A:  We cooked  on that stove in the summertime, in the mornings.  We'd cook enough for dinner, for nighttime for supper. 

Q:  It was hot during the summer.

A:  Yes it was too hot.  We also had to go along the ditch banks to clear up the dead wood, and clean the canal you know, clear all the brush along to so we could take it home and use it for wood.  Because we had to burn wood.  I do remember a few a times my dad and the boys, when the younger boys started to grow up, they tended not to take off as much as the others.  And they went out to the desert to pick up all the wood out in the desert.  They were awful picky about where they got it.

Q:  Do you remember, what were the favorite stories you heard?  Nursery rhymes, or fairy tales or any kind of stories?

A:  I don't remember any thing. We didn't have radio, we didn't have anything.  So I don't remember anything like that, nothing that would emphasize it at all in my mind.

Q:  No favorite stories that your dad would tell repeatedly?

A:  No, my dad was not one to talk.

Q:  Do you remember, did Grandma sing any lullaby’s or anything like that?

A:  My mom and dad would sit out on the porch and we had this one big house just outside of the 18th canal about a mile east of Peoria. This is the same house where Jimmy was born. I remember especially with one of those roundabout porches.  They would sit out there and sing together every night.  They would sit out there and enjoy each others company.  He works hard, and she works hard at home, and in the evening the kids would go to bed, and they would sit out there and sing the songs and reminisce about when they was growing up I guess.  But I remember that, I wish I had learned some of those old songs.

Q:  What were we talking about?

A:  Toys I think or something.

Q:  Just besides making little cuts out of some magazine pictures and things, and just have the a little Kewpie doll is all you remember.

A:  Momma use to make quilts too you know.  Sometimes we'd help her cut up little quilt pieces of fabric you know to sew them together.  All the scraps in the house we'd gather to sew them together so we could make our beds. We did some of that, not a lot, because momma was an “I've got to do it” kind of person.  She thought she had to do everything, she had to do it.

Q:  If you couldn't make it you had to do without?

A:  Yeah, I guess so.  She did all the sewing for us girls, but I don't remember a time her sitting me down at the sewing machine and teaching me how to do it.  Because she didn't have the time to do it, she had to get it done.  I wonder if that's the reason.  I don't know, she loved to sew, she was very good at it, she made all of her clothes, and things, she made rugs, and quilts.

Q:  Well if I had to do everything that she had to do to keep things going, I wouldn’t have the patience either.

Q:  Or the time.

A:  My mother was very patient.

Q:  But your mother left home when she was fourteen to get married, so who taught her all of these thing?  Or did she teach herself?

A:  She taught herself I guess.  I don't know. 

Q:  Or she learned very young.

A:  I never questioned it at all.  But my mother was quite a woman.  She was never one to be out in front, she was never making noise to be seen, she was never out in front to be seen by anyone, she was always working behind the scenes.

Q:  You mentioned earlier that your father was a hard worker.  Tell me about your mother, what would she do, what was her days like?

A:  The first thing she would do when she got up in the morning was feed her chickens, and she would do it, my dad would always keep wood and stuff around.  She'd have breakfast ready for the family.  The chickens had to be fed because they had to lay eggs. That was part of our food.  She was always busy, she just always had something to do.  We always had to wash the dishes and clean up the kitchen everyday.

Q:  She planted some beautiful flowers around our home.

A:  She always had a beautiful garden, and a flower garden.  She raised her own garden.  Whenever she would move she would get permission to have a garden, a vegetable garden, and a choice of water rites to water with. She wanted no confusion over using the water for our garden, so she would always have water for the garden.  She would always have a beautiful vegetable garden.  Papa would do the digging up for it, but that was it. Then Mamma would do the planting she'd do the weeding she'd do the picking.  Course he would have to go and work in the fields. We had a pretty good life. 

Q:  At the cabin in Clay Springs she would haul water from the creek?

A:  She would carry water in buckets, up the hill up to the house and pour them around the flower beds she made around the front door.

Q:  Did you have running water in the house?

A:  No we had to carry it up there. The day we moved there the first thing dad did was send the boys down the hill to shovel and dig the well up.  Mr. Parker showed him where the old well was suppose to be.  It got kind of washed and filled it, so we had to dig it up so we would have water to drink.  But it was good clean fresh water you know, covered up in sand you know, we had to clean it out.  That's where we got the water for the house, we had to carry every pint of it up the hill.

Q:  Did you boil it or anything before drinking or anything?

A:  No heaven sakes no, it was good clean well water.

Q:  Before the days of pollution.

A:  That's right.

Q:  Did you have electricity?

A:  No.

Q:  What did you do for power? Oh I guess you didn't have anything you needed electricity for did you?

A:  We had a coal oil lamp. 

Q:  A coal oil lamp and a wood stove that you cooked and heated with.  And your plumbing was outdoors in a shack.

A:  That’s right.  Way out back away from the house.  We did great, we didn't have any problems.

Q:  What kind of challenges did you have with pests, with skunks or.

A:  We had bed bugs.

Q:  Bed bugs, tell me about that.

A:  I remember that, it was a terrible time, we never use to have bed bugs in the valley, but when we moved up to the other ranch the bed bugs was terrible.  One day papa was up, and ran into one of these guys who travels through the country selling potions and spoils, things to keep you happy you know.  Well he found some oil that he sprays with a pump gun.  He sprayed that oil in that house.  And we did it, and we never had another bed bug.

Q:  It must have been a good oil.

A:  It was a good spray.

Q:  You don't know what it was?

A:  I don't know, nest something. Anyway that was the biggest pest problem I ever remember.

Q:  Bed Bugs, you didn't have them down in the valley, only up in Clay Springs?

A:  Yes, up the timber.

Q:  What kind of transportation did you have, when you went to work in town, when you worked in Snowflake how did you get up there?

A:  Bud took me.  He was living on the next place over, he was working there too, so they would pick me up and take me in.  I helped them pay for their corn, and I worked and  paid the taxes on the place.  I don't remember how they worked it out I did what they told me. 

Q:  As you were growing up what was your favorite kind of food?

A:  Fried chicken.  It was about the only thing we ever had to eat.  Mom could make the best fried chicken.  She could go out in the yard and find out a chicken that looked like she was ready to go and have one of the kids run him down and catch him up.  She'd take the head off and have him cleaned off and put in the frying pan before you know it.

Q:  Didn't take her any time at all to get her chicken in the frying pan.

A:  The family was so big she needed to use two.

Irene:  "I witnessed that". 

A:  Well absolutely.

Q:  Tell me a little bit about that.

Irene:  Oh my goodness, when I'd go down to stay with grandma in Peoria, when she was living down there that was years later.  When she'd grab up one of those chickens and hold it in her arm right here, and take it by it's neck and she'd go whoosh whoosh, and that was horrifying but it tasted good.

Q:  Whoosh? And the head would pop off! So besides the homegrown vegetables and the chickens what kind of food did your family buy?  Did you buy food? 

A:  We bought rice, sugar, and coffee.  That was the big deal was the coffee and sugar, and lard.  We didn't use shortening, we used lard.

Q:  So the cash income that your family got came from....

A:  Came from the government.

Q:  Oh the subsidy...

A:  Yeah, the subsidy that he was drawing from the government.

Q:  What was the first holiday you remember celebrating?  What was the first one you remember when you were young?

A:  I guess Christmas, I don't remember anything else really.

Q:  Describe Christmas in your home.

A:  We always got an apple and an orange. 

Q:  Each kid got an apple and an orange?

A:  And maybe a few pieces of hard rock candy.  It wasn't like you kids, your dad went out and bought a whole box of it.

Greg: “The least favorite pieces of hard candy would be around for the next six months”. 

A:  But you would always eat it.

Q:  So how did your family celebrate Christmas?  Did you read the scriptures?

A:  We would always open our presents on Christmas Eve night.  We always had a special dinner for Christmas, on Christmas Day, that was it.

Q:  Did you read the  Nativity story in Luke or anything like that?

A:  Don't remember anything like that.

Q:  How did your family....

A:  Later on Papa went to town and bought one of these hand crank controllers you know.  We got some records.  We got some Christmas records that we would play on that.

Q:  A Victrola?

A:  Victrola.

Q:  You folks must have been wealthy.

A:  We did have one of those.

Q:  You guys were up and coming.

A:  You bet.

Q:  What were the songs that your folks would sing?

A:  I can't remember, they were old, old songs.

Q:  Old folk songs?  You don't know any of the tunes?

A:  I don't know anything.  I'm so angry at myself for never learning them.  I use to enjoy listening to my mom and dad sing.  My dad had a beautiful tenor voice.  Mom just had a voice kinda like mine, just basic soprano.

Q:  I remember you telling me before that your dad would harmonize.

A:  Yeah, it was beautiful, he had a beautiful voice.  I don't remember in the later year him ever singing anymore.  I don't remember him singing after we left the valley, and come up to the mountains.  Course he was sick.

Q:  He was not in good health?

A:  He was not in good health at all.

Q:  How did your family celebrate Thanksgiving.  Did you?

A:  We had turkey and dressing.  I remember that, we always had hens we never could afford a turkey.  Mama would roast them just as good as turkey.

Q:  So you just had a good feast?  What about Independence Day, on the fourth of July?

A:  Yeah, we would celebrate, I remember bringing some books home from school and I read some of the stories. The Pilgrims first Thanksgiving, I remember that.

Q:  So you would read those books, would you enjoy them as a family?

A:  I would just read them, I read to the family a lot.  I was the only one who would sit down and read.  I would read a book to the whole family.  When it was time to read the whole family would shut up.  It's time to read the story.

Q:  I remember when I was growing up that you and Aunt Joy would sometimes sing songs together.  Are those songs you learned when you were growing up or something you learned later on? 

A:  No we learned them growing up.  But you know I can't remember them now, just like Joy and I tied to sing that one that night, I can't remember.  I had copied some down when my boys were singing, you got some I think. 

Q:  Queen of my Heart, Little Green Valley, Lamp Light in Time of the Valley.

A:  Yeah.

Q:  I've got copies of those.

Irene: I always loved the one about the girl,  …

A:  Can't remember that one.

Greg: My Mother was a Lady

Irene: I loved that song.

Q:  How long did your parents live in Clay Springs?  Do you remember what year?

A:  We moved to the cabin at Airpine near Clay Springs on Jun 4th 1934. We had been living in Phoenix in the area of 7th Avenue near Grand. 

Q:  And when did they move back?

A:  I can't remember.

Q:  Your dad was ill, so they went down for treatment, is that when they moved back?

A:  They took him back because he had to go back to the Doctor.  Bud came up and farmed the ranch the next year.  Nothing was the same though, because of Papa, and Mama, she didn't like it up there without Papa.  Anyway, the place it was a gift to Papa, course we all knew that it was Tex's place you know, so there was no question ever about that.  Different ones would move in there and set up farm and farm something.  I know we did that a couple of times.  Then Andy and I bought Rod's place over the hill there and we raised a big crop of beans over there.  We kind of dived up a lot of stuff. 

Q:  Tell me more about school, you didn't go to school at all up in Clay Springs or did you?

A:  I didn't.  But, I went to school in Airpine and on Willow Gulch, through the seventh and eight grades.  Through the seventh grade I went to Airpine, which was just a one room school.  Pauline, Ernest, and Stanley and I, all three walked from the ranch over there and went to school.

Q:  How far was the walk?

A:  It was about three miles.

Q:  Okay so, you walked three miles to school.

A:  Yeah, then the next year, they had started building a new school over on the Parker Hill, which was a couple of miles over.  Split years in the Airpine school, and opened this one up over there, and that was where I went to the eight grade.  I was there with, there was one girl and I that were seniors, I mean we were eight graders.  We were competing for top dog.  Jean.  She was a girl that had grown up out in the hills. She was one of the Williams family.

Q:  So you and Jean Williams were competing for?

A:  Jean Williams, we were competing for valedictorian.   

Q:  And you made it?

A:  They just said two seniors, two valedictorians.

Q:  They gave you both?

A:  They gave us both credit.  Which was good, she was a good friend of mine. She died right after we left there, I can't remember or figure out happened to Jean.  She was just a smart girl, she was kind of old fashioned, she couldn't write to me.  She wasn't out and around much.

Q:  What can you tell me about the school you went to down in the valley before you moved up there to Clay Springs?

A:  Well I went to school all over that Peoria district.

Q:  Every time your dad got a different job, you had to go to another school.

A:  Well actually we'd often stay in the same school, but it would be a different bus route to get there.

Q:  Did you go to first grade, or kindergarten?

A:  No, you haven't heard this story?  No, my first grade, do you know where Bethany lives out in Buckeye.

Greg: No I've never been to Bethany's home.

A: We lived out in Buckeye, out past the Arizona Canal, out on the Deseret.  It was time to start to school, when I had already missed my six year old first grade.  I was there and had to start school there, so I went to the, I can't remember the name of the school, the kids all know it in town now, they've been there and visited.  I went to the school that is still there, I went to half of the first grade.  When the year come, when Christmas come, the cotton was over out there and we had to move back somewhere else.  I finished the second half of the first grade down on the one part of town, I can't even remember what it was called down on the side, in Peoria.  I finished up all of the, no then we moved over to Peoria, and I went to the Peoria school, what school was that?  But anyway the next year we moved over to Peoria and I rode the bus there, we moved two or three different places, but I stayed with the same bus and the same class.

Q:  So the first school you went to was out in Buckeye, was that a one room school also?

A:  Yes.

Q:  So how many grades were in that school?

A:  I suppose eight.  Joy was there, her last year in school she was there.  I'll tell you a story about school there. It was my first grade, my first year in school and Joy was one of the big girls.  She worked in the lunch room and got her lunch and so, well it didn't take me long to catch on.

Q:  Catch on to what?

A:  Joy was at the lunch room, so I would come out and peek in at the school window, and so she would come and snatch me and deliver me lunch. 

Also, that school was where I got my first paddling in school.

Q:  What did you do to deserve a paddling?

A:  I can't remember exactly what it was. The lunches wouldn't have anything to do with it.  There was a little black girl that went to school there, and she was always making problems for me.  One day she took some candy from somebody, I don't remember, and she had it in her mouth and she met up with somebody and she slipped it into my desk.  Then she went and told the teacher, “she's got the candy”.  I said, “I did not.”  So come and let’s see, and there it was, but I didn't put it there.  I got  in trouble, I said, “But I didn't take the candy, you can't do that.”  “Yes I can”.  “No, you can't paddle me”.  “I'll show you.”  So she took and she swatted me.  I never said you can't do it again.  Anyway that was my first year of school.  I got a paddling my first year.

Q:  And you didn't deserve it!

A:  I didn't deserve it.

Q:  Was that your first experience with black people.

A:  No, I played with the black people all the time. It wasn't anything.  But this girl thought she was somebody that wasn't.

Q:  So you went and came from school on a bus?

A: You know we stayed, we didn't get around much among other people.  When we lived on a farm we was on a farm.  We went to school on a bus and we'd come home on the bus.

A:  That’s why I didn't get to go the first year, my dad said there's not a bus and we're not going to send her to school. She's too little she can't walk to school.

Q:  So from your grade school, in your early school years, Joy use to sneak you lunch?

A:  Yeah that was in the first grade.

Q:  And then you had that little problem and got paddled?

A:  The thing that was interesting was that the building is still out there, everybody that hears about it they rush out there to go look at it.

Picture of school

Q:  The school is still there?

A:  Part of the building, part of the school is still there.

Q:  In Buckeye close to where Bethany lives.

A:  It's just outside of Buckeye, I think it's on 85.

Q:  So you've seen that school, that old one room school?

Q:  Yeah.

Q:  Where is it?  Is there an address?

Q:  Not that I would know.

Q:  Tell me, because it was a one room school for several different grades how did that work?  How did they teach all the different levels?

A:  Well they just, Greg to tell you the truth I was a little girl, I just don't know.

Q:  Did you learn pretty good there?

A:  I guess so, I did okay, I went from the first grade, I went half a year of first grade in one school and the other half in a another school, and then I went the full year in one school.

Q:  Do you remember the name of your first teacher?

A:  You know I don't, I never thought of that.  She wasn't nice.

Q:  Was she the one that paddled you.

A:  She's the one that used the paddle on me.

Q:  Did she ever believe you when you told her it was the other girl that stole the candy?

A:  She couldn't have helped so I don't think  she ever did.

Q:  Tell me about a typical school day in that school.

A:  Oh Greg, it's been so many years ago.

Q:  Anything in your mind that sticks out to you?

A:  We just went to school and be sure that we was in line for the school bus.

Q:  What subjects did they teach?

A:  Reading, writing, and numbers, spelling.  I remember especially spelling, because I was especially  proficient in spelling, I beat everybody in spelling, I remember that.   But English, give it to somebody else.

Q:  Not particularity interested in English huh?  Didn't like diagramming sentences or telling the difference between a noun and a verb? 

A:  Nope, no way, so many this and that got in the way.

Q:  Did you use a pencil and paper or did you use a slate?

A:  We used a pencil and paper.  We had the desks that lift you know.  The desk was on top, and you slide your books underneath. 

Q:  A little pocket desk.

A:  Yup.

Q:  Did you ever use an inkwell and those kinds of things?

A:  No, not that early I didn't.  I did years later in school.  I went to the next school and went to Peoria, after the first grade, I went to two schools in the first grade.  But after the first grade I went to a school in a different room and teacher, a different lesson every year, but same school.

Q:  So then you went to school in Peoria after that?

A:  In Peoria Area School right there on Grand Avenue.

Q:  Do you remember anything about those teachers?

A:  No, I remember I was in the second grade when I started there.  I remember one thing, they had a sand box, I don't know whether I was suppose to play in it or not, but I did.  I loved to plant things in the sand box.  I use to spend a lot of time there.

Q:  What would you plant in the sandbox?

A:  Well I’ll tell you one thing, you can go out here and get one of these Salt Cedars and cut it off and put it in that sand and wet it real good and in four or five days there would be sprigs coming out of it. 

Q:  Must have been fun.

A:  It was.

Q:  Better than putting a bean in a cup with some tissue. 

A: That’s right. 

Q:  Your favorite subject was spelling then.

A:  I liked to spell, I was good at it.  I like to spell.

Q:  You had no use for English?

A:  Nope, no use for English, a word is a word.

Q:  During your recess or breaks you played in the sand box.  What else did you do?

A:  After that, no I just remember that first year, I think I was playing in that when I was suppose to be in some other school.  I mean class.  But either way I, they use to assign different ones to decorate the sandbox for a week you know, and make it a party, a display what they wanted to grow in those boxes.  That was kinda fun, I liked to do that, but I only got one chance a week so that was not much time to spend.

Q:  How did you decorate it?

A:  I don’t know son, I can’t remember all of it.

Q:  What did you do for lunch in the second school?

A:  We went to lunch, and I guess the folks paid for it a lunch at a time.  I have no idea, I am too far gone to remember that.

Q:  What did you do during the summers?

A:  Not much in the summertime in the valley there, we had hot summers.  We usually lived out on the farm, it wasn't with the school. There were chores to do on the farm and things like that.  We helped Mama take care of the garden and we’d help mom with the taking care of the eggs and things like that.

Q:  Water and weeding.

A:  Watering and weeding, and raking leaves, that’s been a torment of my life.

Q:  What kind of weeds?

A:  Mulberry, I mean China-berry leaves mostly where we lived.  Kinda like what Levi’s got in the back of his house China-berry leaves they’ve got the berries about that big around that they called the China-berries.  They weren't very interesting really, they were a nuisance to me, I never would have planted one.

Q:  Those were your chores, helping around the farm. 

A:  That was part of it yeah.  Course we always had to help Mama with the house work too you know.  One thing she would have us help with, Saturdays were the days we would clean the house to get ready for next week.  Of course Saturday was always her day to go shopping through town.  I remember she use to always, we were very poor people.  Papa would get his check and he would giver her money to go buy the groceries for the next week.  I noticed no matter what happened, Mama would have a little candy for each one of us, no matter how skinny the check was or how much, she always managed to bring us one little candy each time.

Q:  That was enough.

A:  That was enough.

Q:  Talking about the chores around the house, tell me about the laundry day, doing the laundry and ironing, and things like that, tell me about that.

A:  You know, the most I remember was when I got big enough to use the scrubbing board.  That was a big chore.  You know the scrubbing board I've got hanging in my bathroom.  I used to use one of those, and I  know how to do that.  We would also have to have a black (burn area) out in the yard that we would build a fire around.  Heat the water, we would have to pump or haul the water, put it in the tub, heat it, build a fire around it, keep it hot, keep it burning good, until it was very hot.  Course the water we scrubbed the clothes in we wouldn’t want it very hot, we kept it tepid, so we could scrub our clothes in it.  Then we would change it to another  tub of water, and change the colors.  If there was any colors you didn’t put those in the hot water, if it was just whites you put it in the hot water and then we boiled those.  Like the towels, dish towels, sheets, and the pillowcases and things.  Those things we would boil until they got cleaned, this kind of white (gesturing to the bed sheets).  Then we would ring and rinse them through two waters, and hang them on the clothesline, until they dried.

Q:  So you would wash, and boil them, then rinse them out in two different waters.

A:  Rinse them out in two different waters. 

Q:  Then ring them dry.

A:  Then ring them up, as much as you could, then hang them on the clothesline.  My particular passion always was since I could remember, was not liking the way people hung clothes on the line.

Q:  You wanted it to look nice.

A:  I wanted it to look nice, I wanted it to be in order, everything in its place.  I was very particular.  Then I grew, got married, and we got a washing machine I got to do it that way, I didn’t have to work quite so hard. 

Q:  I remember when we lived in Roosevelt when we had to hang the clothes on the line in back of the house.

A:  Oh yeah, we didn’t have a dryer until I got too....

Q:  You were very particular about how the clothes were hung.  I even remember riding in the car with you,  I cannot tell you where we were, but you saw somebody’s clothesline and just said “ohh!”.  It upset you to see their clothes line in such disorder.

A:  I couldn’t stand to see clothes out of order on the line, a pair of shorts and a sock, and you know.  Everything had to be organized, that was the way you kept house.

Q:  Keep things in order.  How long would it take you to do laundry for the whole family.  Would you take the whole day?

A:  It would take the whole day Saturday. 

Q:  All day long.  Saturday was the laundry day. 

A:  In the afternoon, it was a good warm day, we could get them dry and off the line by evening.  It was another day we had to iron, after we got home from school. 

Q:  Back to your school days is there any particular friends you had in school that you remember?  Any good friends?

A:  I wasn’t a person to make a special friend.  I don’t know why.  I had of course this eighth grade girl, she and I were the only ones in that grade.  We were competing against each other, we were good friends, that was nice we enjoyed that year.  She had a sister just younger than her in the next year.  I had a younger sister too, we both had sisters.  I can’t remember anything special in that way son.  I wasn't one to pick a person out you know, and have a special person.

Q:  You didn’t have a pal that you would hang out with.

A:  I use to like, I’ve always kind of been noted to meeting people quickly you know.  People still tell me that at church  “Sister Hancock was the first one we met when we come to church.”  I’ve always been, I guess it’s because I’ve always felt I was an oddball, and I didn’t want other people to feel that they were that way.  I’ve never had very much confidence in myself.

Q:  So you kind of kept to yourself a little bit?

A:  No I didn’t, I tried to push myself a little on these people that were standing there.

Q:  You would seek out those that needed the attention, befriend the friendless.

A:  That’s what I would try to do.

Q:  Did you have any teachers that you had that stood out in your mind. Any teacher that helped you, or any instance that you can remember.

A:  My fourth grade teacher, Ms. Forney and she was an older woman, she was an old maid, she had never married and she didn’t have any children.  But she sort of just took me under her wing.  I thought she was absolutely wonderful. Mrs. Forney. She lived... in fact we come back from... years later I saw her down in Peoria.  She was an old woman.  But anyway, she was a really special one, I never, I don’t know.

Q:  What did she do for you?

A:  I think she felt like I was one of the poor people, that was a little disadvantaged, that didn’t have everything that all the other kids had.  But she was so nice to me, and she didn’t make any special things, that she just wanted me to know that I was her friend and that she was my friend.

Q:  Did she challenge you to excel, or did she help you?

A:  She was very particular about my lessons.  She saw that I did everything that I could to excel.

Q:  So she took an interest in your education?

A:  She did, she took an interest in my education.  She knew I was from a big family too.

Q:  Is there anything about her that stood out?

A:  I really don’t know, I don’t think she ever had a family, I don’t think so you know.  I remember seeing her years later and I can’t remember what circumstances it was.

Q:  Your fourth grade teacher, Ms. Forney was the teacher you thought had the most influence in your schooling?  Was good for you.  Any other teachers or students?

A:  No. We moved from there to the mountains, and we went to the school in Airpine, and there it was just a one room school.  I’m trying to think of that teacher’s name she had a husband, and I knew her, your dad knew just as well as he could. I can’t think of her name, some of the kids played with, I can’t think any of them.

Q:  Your last year of school was eight grade.  Why didn’t you go to school after that?

A:  It wasn’t necessary, they said your not forced to go after you graduate in eight grade, or sixteen years.  I lived out on the farm, out on the ranch, no possible way of getting back and forth. 

Q:  If you had gone on to school where would it have been?  How far would it have been?  How much?

A:  I would have had to go to Snowflake to high school.

Q:  Did they have buses going to Snowflake?

A:  They had going from Clay Springs.

Q:  Okay so you would have had to have gone...

A:  Gone to Clay Springs, lived with somebody, and then gone back and forth.  I was actually basically making plans to do that until I started going with your dad and he started talking the other way so.....

Q:  When did you first notice boys, when did you first get interested in boys?

A:  When I was in the fifth grade of school.

Q:  When you were in the fifth grade?

A:  I had a kid there his name was Edgar, Edgar something.  I thought he was the cutest thing.  Just as smart as he could be.

Q:  Just as cute as what?

A:  I never did have any boyfriends.

Q:  Did you ever talk to Edgar?

A:  Oh yeah, once in a while when we would meet in the auditorium and all get together you know.  I never did sit by him in school, or close enough to talk in school.

Q:  Did he know that you thought he was something?

A:  I don’t think so.

Q:  Never let on that you thought he was something?

A:  No I didn’t.

Q:  Any other boys that you thought were attractive?

A:  No, I was out at school, we had a..... there were some boys in school there in Airpine, my goodness they were something else.

Q:  What does that mean?

A:  I didn’t want anything to do with them.  So then there’s the only other year, then I went to school at the other school you know, and there’s no boys over there either just some a little bit different guys, didn’t impress me in the least.

Q:  Tell me about those boys that were something else.  What was it that was unattractive about them?  Describe them.

A:  I don’t know, one it was the family they come from, the second family.  They had a terrible reputation, course I wasn’t suppose to know anything about that.  Anyway they weren’t......., they didn’t care....... they weren’t interested either......  My boys in school was...

Q:  Tell me how you dressed for school.

A:  We put on a dress, pair of shoes, stockings, and went to school.

Q:  Any different than what you normally wore?

A:  We had to save our good clothes for school.  We’d come home from school and change our clothes so they would be clean and fit to wear to tomorrows school.  Sometimes I only had one dress fit to wear all week.  So that was something you know you had to take care of yourself.

Q:  So when you were doing your chores at home...

A:  We’d change clothes, we’d change out of our school clothes.  As soon as we got home we’d change out of our school clothes, and then put them on the next morning to wear to school.

Q:  Tell me about the clothes you were wearing while you were doing your chores?  Was it also a dress?

A:  Yeah I never wore jeans until after I was married, I never did.

Q:  How long were your dresses?

A:  Below the knee.

Q:  Mid-calf or just below the knee?

A:  Mostly just below the knee.  It was okay, they usually had full skirts you know.

Q:  Was it often a dress you wore to school or a skirt and a blouse?

A:  I mostly always wore a dress, Mama didn’t make skirts and blouses, she made dresses.

Q:  These were all clothes that you mother had made?

A:  Yes.  I’d get a piece of material that I thought she could afford, and then I would decided which dress I’d want her to make and I’d show her a picture of it and she would make it the best she could.

Q:  She didn’t use a pattern?

A:  No, she used newspaper.

Q:  So she would make her pattern out of newspaper, and would cut the material out.  She made patterns?

A:  She did, she made patterns.  The same with her quilt patterns.  She would use a pattern to go.  On so she made good use of a lot of newspapers.  

Q:  You don’t know of anyplace where she learned or had any training on how to be a seamstress?

A:  I don’t because she was married when she was fourteen.  It was two years before she had a baby after she was married.

Q:  Remarkable woman. 

A:  My mom was a pretty woman.  You remember the picture of her on the wall?

Q:  Yes, why did she marry such a small skinny man?

A:  I imagine because he was very pushy, he was.

Q:  He knew what he wanted and he went after it.

A:  He certainly knew what he wanted and he got it.

Q:  When you were growing up did your family celebrate birthdays in your home?  Did you acknowledge those.  

A:  No, Mama would make some dessert. We would sometimes have Jello. 

Q:  Jello, and cake maybe.

A:  There were never any parties.  It’s hard to say about it, sometimes it would be you forgot the thing, I don’t know, because I don’t remember.

Q:  That’s not unusual.  I remember coming back from a trip, you and dad had gone been somewhere one time, I was  just a youngster, maybe seven or eight around that age.  You came home, and asked how I enjoyed my birthday and I didn’t even know that I had had one.

A:  It’s not surprising Greg, because your dad never did anything for birthdays in his family.

Q:  I know growing up we’d usually have a cake or something.  That’s the same way it was in your family growing up.

A:  Maybe we’d make a little birthday, make a dish of j-ello for Sunday night.  

Q:  You did mention yesterday the singing.  Did you kids ever get involved with your parents singing much?  Did the children ever sing with mom and papa?

A:  No.

Q:  They would sing together?

A:  They would sing by themselves.

Q:  You and your sisters would later pick up some songs and sing?

A:  Oh yeah, we liked to sing.

Q:  The songs that you knew, how did you learn those, where did you learn those?

A:  I don’t know.

Q:  You don’t remember?

A:  I just don’t know.  We lived in a farming community around there.  There were several families that sort of visited together you know.  I mean, well there was a little family that was right there, that was Uncle Nelson’s family.  There was him, and then we had several sisters that was all of my sisters.  They had friends that had come in and they would party together.  You know we didn’t’ have any socials that we would go out and do.  Sometimes they would gather at somebody’s house and spend the evening.

Q:  Socializing?  So would you and your sisters, or whoever would go to a friends house and spend the evening.  What would you do for entertainment?

A:  I don’t know, I was a kid, I don’t know anything about it.

Q:  Did you sit around the piano and sing?

A:  We didn’t have a piano.  Nelson was a very good on the harmonica.  Tex played the harmonica very good.

Q:  Nelson Little?

A:  Nelson Little.

Q:  The one that married Aunt Joy?

A:  Yes Uncle Nelson.

Q:  He was very good with a harmonica?  Where did they live?

A:  They lived where David lived, right around Peoria area just a farming community that just people lived there, they all worked in the fields.

Q:  So this was in Peoria?

A:  They picked cotton, chopped cotton, and made a living off the farm.

Q:  That’s where Joy met Nelson?

A:  There’s one thing, there was another family there, there was the Little family. Their mother, that was aunt Roxy, she was Uncle Bill’s sister.  She didn’t have a husband, but she had two or three orphans.  They would join with my sisters and of course I had a couple of brothers.  Joy did a few things.  I don’t know if they would go out together, and I remember my dad was very, very particular about where his kids went and what they did.

Q:  He wanted to know what they were up to and was very protective...

A:  Yeah, I remember that.  Just a group of friends in the neighborhood.  Sometimes they would go to ball games or sometimes they would pick cotton extra hard and have enough money for a movie ticket.  Things like that, but we didn’t have much, our family wasn’t the only one. Lot of poor people around there

A:  Lot of poor people.  These people were all from Oklahoma.  Course we were native Arizonans. 

Q:  The Little Family came out from Oklahoma?

A:  Yes.

Q:  Now did Joy marry Nelson before you family moved to Clay Springs?

A:  No, Nelson, you know that picture I’ve got hanging on the wall of the truck load there?  Nelson took that picture of us.

Q:  So he was there on moving day?

A:  He was there on moving day because we were leaving the valley, and he was right there with Joy.  He road on that truck I don’t know how far, clear out in the middle of the desert some where before he ever got off and hitchhiked back home.  He couldn’t leave Joy.

Q:  So when did they meet up to get married?

A:  We moved up there in June and then in October, he come back up a couple times, he hitchhiked up there, then stay a day or two and then Papa would kind of run him off.

Q:  Thought he was spending enough time, and run him off when thought he’d been there long enough?

A:  Yeah, been there a long enough.  Then they decided they were going to get married, they agreed to it.  So he came back up, and they got married at our home. Where I got married in my house.  We had moved down to where they had the Turley Ranch, the boy and girls ranch out down the wash from where we lived in our log cabin place.  Anyway we moved down there one winter and but in the meantime, Joy and Nelson decided to get married, and they got in with the Justice of the Peace over in Pinedale.  

A:  Joy and Nelson was married in our house.

Q:  At the cabin?  Where your family had moved.

A:  The Turley’s had a girls ranch and a boys ranch, and they were about three miles apart.  They had big auditoriums at each place.  When we lived there they rented us the girls ranch one year, and we lived there one winter and that’s when Joy and Nelson had decided to get married.

Q:  Your family had moved from the cabin to the girls ranch?

A:  They were doing some work on the cabin that need some repairs kind of.

Q:  That was in the White Mountains?

A:  That’s it, Clay Springs.  They took it, and did some remodeling.  We could live, but not freezing to death you know.

Q:  You told me that your dad had done some of the work around the window casing, and things in that cabin.  What else did they do in the remodeling work?

This is a conversation between Mother, Greg, and one moms nieces. Cousin JoAnn 

Q:  I can tell you one thing I remember.  I can’t tell you where my parents were going, but you were living in the brick house north.  And mother left Don and I, I don’t think Randy was born yet, with you and Uncle Andy.

A:  Do you know where?

Q:  No I don’t know, I do know that you had a big house, or I thought it was big at the time I probably wasn’t very big, but you were quite a ways distances walking wise from our house.

A:  When Andy and I got married he already had this little home that he had built, so that’s where I lived

Q:  That must have been it.

A:  I had my own home from the day I was married, you know he had.

Q:  Was it brick or...

A:  No it was,  just a you know the little cabin.

Q:  The ranch house?  With the star on it?

A:  With the star on it.

Q:  The frame house with the wood siding.

A:  It was just a little frame house, but it had a basement, he dug a hole, and built the house over it so he had a basement, it was solid rock down there. 

Cousin JoAnn:  I was remembering that last night, and we had to walk, and I had a shoe that the tack was coming through on my heel and I had a sore on my heel.  For some reason I had a bottle of aspirin in my pocket, and when we got to your house, Uncle Andy took it away from me and put it way up where I couldn’t get it.

A:  He was good at that.

Q:  I don’t know why I had aspirin at my age anyway.

A:  He was a good medicine man.

Q:  I don’t’ know why I had the aspirin, maybe it’s because I thought that would solve my problem, but I was old enough to be smart enough to know what aspirin was.

A:  Funny things how we forget.

Q:  It’s what we remember that are the funny things.

Q:  Was it Joe Hulio who asked you to go home?

A:  Cleve.

Q:  Cleve Hulio?  Cleve Hulio asked to take you home after the dance?

A:  Asked to take me home, and I said you’ll have to ask my dad.

Q:  What dance was this?

A:  The neighborhood set it up, just all neighbor people gathered around.  This fun family, the Williams family was very musical, they all played musical instruments.

Q:  They’d hold the dance at the school or the church?

A:  They’d had us come,  Bud Crane, my brother-in-law, he calls dances you know.

Q:  Square dancing?

A:  Square dancing.  Anyway, Cleve asked me if he could take me home, and I said, “Well I’ll go home with you, but you’ll have to ask my dad if I can go.”  So he went to ask my dad.

Q:  So this dance was in Clay Springs at the church?

A:  No, it was at the old, see we had two programs out there, the boys ranch and the girls ranch in the summertime. 

Q:  Okay so it was one of those.

A:  It was the girls ranch.  We were using the ranch that night.  We was living there, we moved in there.  Anyway we were there at the dance.  Of course the boys would take up wood to keep a fire you know.  He went to ask papa if he could take me home, and papa said, I don’t know what he said, really don’t know what.  Anyway he did say, “You can if you take her little sister with you.”  Pauline, she’s just two years younger than me.  Then he went back to me and said, “Yeah, he said I could take you home, but we have to take your little sister.”  So he pawned her off to me.  But then we had to go and ask Andy if he would take us home, and he said, “I’ll give you my keys, you go take her home, then come back and pick me up.”  And then Cleve said “Oh but, I can’t drive.”  So Andy your dad drove me and Cleve as a date home from the dance.

Q:  So Cleve was the one that asked your father if he could take you home, and then Cleve asked dad if dad could take you home?

A:  No Cleve asked dad if he could take me home, but he didn’t know he was going to have to borrow a car to do it.  Then Cleve had to go back to ask Andy again, “You said I could take her home.”  Well he said “Here’s the keys.”  “I can’t drive.”  So Andy had to drive his car, and take Pauline along with me, and I was with, and Cleve was my date apparently, taking me home from the dance.  So that was the way they did things.

Q:  So wasn’t that kind of bold of Cleve Holyoke to ask you if he could take you home and he didn’t have a vehicle.

A:  Yeah I guess so.

Q:  Apparently he thought he had resources he could get.

A:  They were good friends you know, everybody worked together.

Q:  What did you think of Cleve Holyoke wanting to take you home?

A:  I just got in the car with Andy.

Q:  Were you impressed that Cleve would want to take you home?

A:  Well yeah, I thought this was great.  And then when he got me home, he had to leave both me and Pauline.  Then they went back to the dance or went on home, I don’t know.

Q:  What were your thoughts of a..,.

A:  I was just a thirteen your old girl at the dance.  And they were both dancing with me.  When it came time to come home Andy drove his car and took all the rest of us home from the dance.

Q:  When did you first meet dad, Andy.

A:  I was thinking about that yesterday, I couldn’t.  The country was, you know how countries are.  Just a country couple.  A bunch of kids.  Clay Springs, they wanted to have a dance.  The William boys was willing to come and share fun, they loved to do it and make their music.  They said “Okay, yeah, we’ll come play for your dance.”  So then we had to have.

Q:  So the music they would play, the Williams boys would play their harmonica and what else?

A:  That bunch they would play, the Williams boys, they were instrument people, guitars, violin, and the whole bit see.  They played real music with the drums and the whole bit, and they did it just for free, just for their country neighborhood.

A:  They were all good friends, and we just joined together for an evening of fun.

Q:  You don’t remember in particular when you first saw or met dad?

A:  I don’t, I know he saw me before I saw him.  Because he talked to me about it.  He said “Well I knew you, I knew you for a long time before you ever saw me.”

Q:  Before you were old enough to take out.

A:  Oh I remember I never paid any attention to you.

Q:  Mom, you told me last night that there wasn’t very many girls around that area.  And word got around that there was this old man out there with a bunch of girls.

A:  Yeah there was, and it spread like wildfire and everyone was volunteering to go see dad.  Andy ended up going out to see Papa and tell him that there was this particular horse there was that was available to borrow or buy, I don’t know what it was.  He needed a horse, a farm horse. 

Q:  Grandpa did?

A:  Yeah, Grandpa did, my dad did.  That’s when he come out there and was going to tell Andy that was there.  All he saw was Mama was out in the backyard working on the chicken yard fence.  I was out around the other side of the house scrubbing drawers, and I heard a car drive up and I went around this way to see who it was, nobody was there so I went around the other way and met Andy face to face.  I was wet from here to here you know scrubbing drawers.  He said, “Boy, that was a sight I never saw hide nor hair, you were gone. For a long time after that.”  I was sopping wet from scrubbing those clothes.

Q:  You were embarrassed about it.

A:  I was embarrassed yeah, I probably was bare foot. You know.

Q:  You were out doing your chores, you weren’t dressed to be the greeter.

A:  I was dressed for Saturday chores.

Q:  You weren’t dressed for suitors.

A:  That was the first time I ever had anybody take me home from the dance.  Cleve asked me to go, and then he had to borrow Andy’s truck.  Andy did the driving while he escorted me to the door when we got home.  Pauline was there too, she had to go with us.

Q:  Did you get a kiss?

A:  No sure didn’t.  No way.

Q:  Good.  Not on that first excursion. 

A:  He (Andy) would always come up to me, we be crowded around, somewhere around in Clay Springs the kids would gather together, gang up and have clubs you know.  He was always sighted about me.  I’d see him riding that horse.  You’d see a horse.  He didn’t have any impression on me.  Andy was the cowboy, any time a cowboy would get thrown off of a horse, off a bull, the boys would go get Andy and share the purse if he would ride it again.  He’d ride the horse but he would never never ever accept any money.  He never got paid for his riding.

Q:  Where was this that he was riding?

A:  In Clay Springs. 

Q:  They had a rodeo corral there?

A:  They had a great big lot there, and the school house was right in the middle of it.  They had all this ground around it fenced.  The kids would go right there.

Q:  So those were the rodeo grounds there?

A:  They would gather there.

Q:  What kids, what boys would gather there?

A:  All the neighborhood boys, the kids from around the country.  The Williams boys.

Q:  Your watching him ride these bulls and nothing impressed you?

A:  I didn’t know what riding was.  I didn’t know they were riding bulls.  I didn’t know he was trying to stay on it’s back.  I soon learned, he taught me what it was.  I remember the first fourth of July that we were there together, we were there with all the ranch.  Clay Springs was having a party, a rodeo, a celebration for the whole community, there was Pinedale, and Clay Springs, and then out down.  We all gathered there and had lunch and had a party in the afternoon.  They had a dance for the little kids to entertain all the little kids.  That night they had a dance for the big kids.

Q:  Did they do the dances in the schoolhouse?

A:  In the schoolhouse.

Q:  When, so this first dance when you were taken home from, that’s when you were about...

A:  That was when I was out at the dude ranch.

Q:  Out at the boys or girls ranch there.  You were about thirteen at the time?

A:  The girls ranch, yes.

Q:  You didn’t marry dad for several more years.

A:  I didn't marry dad until seventeen. Dec 25th 1938.

Q:  What other interactions did you have with him besides the community activities?

A:  I’d go to a number of  dances with Pauline in Clay Springs, and we would dance there.  If anybody wanted to take me home I would have to send them to Lloyd for permission.

Q:  Lloyd was Mildred’s husband?

A:  Yes.  He was already a  young man in the community, he was nothing new in the church.  He was well known and would help out with the little kids in the community.

Q:  He was a good community man.  Joann told me that they lived in Airpine?

A:  Yes, Airpine.

Q:  Which was just a few miles away?

A:  Actually it was a ranch right out there on the hill between where we lived and the Well Wash School.

Q:  Aunt Mildred was married to him, how long before you got married.

A:  I don’t know.

Q:  Did you go over to their house and spend much time hanging out?

A:  I use to spend a lot of time with Mildred, because Lloyd was out working.

Q:  After she was married you spent quite a bit of time with her?

A:  Yes, because she was always just over the hill from mom.

Q:  What kind of things would you do over there?

A:  I don’t know, she would raise a garden, I’d help raise it.

Q:  Did you help take care of her babies?

A:  No, I didn’t. I didn’t do much babysitting, oh, I did Joann was her first baby, Joann was my first little niece. 

Q:  Joann is seventy-four now, what is the difference between you?  There’s fourteen years difference, so she was probably born when you were about fourteen years old or so? 

A:  Yeah, we were all kids in the community, farm kids, hill kids.

Q:  Joann said she remembered coming over to your house after you got married, you had a basement in that ranch house.  She described remembering all the rock around.  Was that in the basement maybe?

A:  Well that basement was dug out of solid rock.  He (Andy) built the house over the top of it, it had rugged walls.

Q:  So that was what she remembered, at the star ranch.  He probably dug a lot out with dynamite.

A:  Almost certain, because your dad was a dynamite man. 

Q:  He dug that basement with dynamite to get those rocks out of there.

A:  It had a nice stair way down there.  It even had a hole in the foundation to make a window out on the front south side there.

Q:  You used that basement as a root cellar to store you food and things?

A:  To store our food, keep the food from freezing.  It was a nice basement.  It was primative, it was kind of rough and rugged, but it worked.

Q:  What was your first date, first official date with dad?  How old were you and what did you do?  Do you remember that, when was the first time you went out together?  Maybe Pauline had to go along with you?

A:  Oh yeah, she did, she went with us everywhere we ever went.  I don’t know that I can’t remember exactly.  On the weekends we would go over to Lloyd and Mildred’s house, in Clay Springs and come back home to the ranch.

Q:  Would you go off for a weekend?

A:  No, just Friday night. 

Q:  What did your father think of you, as a relatively young lady, going out with this older man?

A:  He didn’t say much, but he had every respect for your dad.  The only thing I ever heard him was one time when, he come to the house, and asked me to come somewhere, somewhere with him.

Q:  Who was your favorite childhood friend, and some things you did together?

A:  You know I don’t remember a special friend, we had our own kids you know.

Q:  Same way I am, never had friends, my friends were my brothers and sisters.  So was the person you played with Pauline or was it Joy?

A:  Yes, Pauline and I were very very close.  She was my little sister, and we were very close.  I was with her all the time, because every time we had something we had to go do, we’d involve making a decision or something, I would always say “Now it’s your turn to do the talking.”  She’d always have to be the one that was making stuff up, and she did, she was always the one making decisions.  I was afraid of people, I was very timid.  Pauline wasn’t.

Q:  She was more outgoing even though she was younger?

A:  Yes, very much so. 

Q:  Is that part of the reason your dad sent her with you on your dates?  She wasn’t afraid to tell if something went wrong?

A:  I don’t think that had anything to do with it.  I think we just needed to be together you know.

Q:  I think that was somewhat part of the courting culture in those days, have a third party go with you.

A:  Yeah, I think so.

Q:  You told me already that your mother was so busy with the sewing and mending that she never did take time to teach you how to do it.

A:  Mother never taught me how to sew or do anything.

Q:  Do you think she taught some of the younger kids?

A:  I don’t remember that she did, she did lots of sewing, lots of mending, Mom was always busy.

Q:  On the housekeeping, and the domestic skills, what ways did you put up food for winter?  How did you preserve your food?

A:  We called it canning, in fruit jars.  We canned everything in glass jars, just like we did when we were raising our family.

Q:  Just boil it in a big old canister with a lid on it.

A:  Prepare our food, and put it in the jars, put the syrup on it or whatever it needed, then seal it up and water process it, then it’s done.

Q:  Did you put away grains or anything like that?

A:  I don’t know; I remember mom and papa butchering pigs in the fall.  They would salt them and pack them. I don’t remembered the process, but you had to hard boil them before you could eat them.

Q:  They made a brine and filled them with saline?

A:  I don’t know, I don’t remember.

Q: Irene: I remember watching Daddy take a syringe and shoot that stuff into the pork, but that might have been later.

A:  I don’t remember that.  I know he would slaughter big pigs, then he would cut them into big slabs and salt them in between each other and pack them away.  We always had kind of salt pork, and in that way we also used the fat you know for our shortening.

Q:  Use the lard to make washing soap.

A:  Anything that was older, we saved every bit of waste fat to make homemade soap.

Q:  Do you remember the process of making homemade soap?

A:  Yeah, I remember that, I can make soap any old day.

Q:  So you would use lye? 

A:  Yeah, we’d use lye.

Q:  So you made your own soap?

A:  Not all the time, we never wasted anything.  We would save it and use it later.

Q:  When you fixed fresh side pork for breakfast you would save all of the side drippings off of that.  Saved everything.  You didn’t have electricity in that home.  How did you refrigerate food?  How did you keep food from spoiling?

A:  That was a problem, and that’s why the salt.  We had to, some of the meat we would just pack it down in the salt.  There would be so much salt that we would have to hard boil it so we could eat it.

Q:  Put it in a stew that needed salt anyway.

A:  Put it in a pan of water on the stove, and let it boil until it got the salt out so you could eat it.

Q:  When you would milk the cow, the milk would last for a day or whatever and then you would drink all that. 

A:  That was a big job in the valley, the only thing we had was the iceman.  He delivered ice, most of the time every day I can’t remember. We couldn’t afford it all the time.  We would keep it in a regular icebox, in the market you could buy a regular icebox made for that purpose.  You keep that in there, and keep the ice, but you could buy fifty pounds of ice if that’s what they had, and sometimes they didn’t.    But we did the best we could.  In the morning we would milk the cow, strain the milk, and there was a box in the side of the house where there was a big heavy shade tree, and we had gunny sacks on both sides of it so the wind could blow through.  And let the water run over that sack all day and keep the sack wet.

Q:  So an evaporative cooler.

A:  Most of the time it would be still good enough to drink for dinner supper.  Lots of times if it wasn’t we would just take the cover off of it, set it out let it clabber and make cottage cheese.  We’d have the curds.

Q:  So you would have cottage cheese and whey?  Again, you never threw anything out.

A:  We never wasted anything.

Q:  Did your family ever make cheese out of the cottage cheese?

A:  I remember papa and mom making cheese two or three times, but it wasn’t often.  Andy’s family, your grandma and grandpa Hancock they made cheese, of course they lived up in the cooler country, but they made cheese probably twice a week.  They also herded all of their range cows and milked them once a day too.  We couldn’t afford that, we had paid pasture here.  But they used to do that, and she made lots of cheese, Grandma Hancock.

Q:  Did she ever color the cheese, or just leave it the natural color.

A:  I never did see.  Dad and I made some several times, because he remembered how his mom would do it.  We would practice quite a bit, sometimes we had a pretty good piece of cheese.  That’s the reason I never did much with cheese, I didn’t grow up eating it, and I don’t care for it.

Q:  It wasn’t a part of your tradition growing up.

A:  But we always canned our fruits and vegetables.  We’d pickle our cucumbers, and pickle beets, we’d pickle that because that would keep.  We’d can our fruits, and we’d sweeten it with the sugar, and that kept that good.  He always had fresh canned stuff because we would can it every year.

Q:  You’d can tomatoes, corn, green beans.

A:  Not corn, it wasn’t...

Q:  You would freeze corn.

A:  Yeah, we did, we did that after we got prosperous enough to buy a cooler, a freezer.

Q:  Did you put up green beans?

A:  Oh yeah, always had green beans.

Q:  What about your potatoes, onions, squash, and stuff like that?

A:  We just had to grow that in the garden.

Q:  So you didn’t have a place to preserve them?

A:  Arizona was no place to raise potatoes.

Q:  So it wasn’t until you were in Utah that you were able to store carrots, and potatoes, and squash all winter long.

A:  Yeah that’s right, we did in the root cellars there.  That was after our kids was grown.

Q:  What about up in the white mountains? 

A:  Well there the summertime was kind of hard to keep things

 cold.

Q:  Do you know the first day that you thought that maybe he had desires that he wanted to get to know you better?  Was it the day he followed you around the house and met you face to face?

A:  It may have been because he was certainly there, but there was...

Q:  How did you become engaged?

A:  He just asked me if I think he had a chance, and I told him no.

Q:  You told him no?  Tell us more about that.

A:  Well Greg, you have all this written papers, do you remember those papers I gave you?

Q:  I want you to tell me now, I’ve got those letters you gave me yes.

Picture of letters from Dad to Mom

A:  He talked to me about that, and I said, “No, I don’t think so, I’ve got to go to school.”  I was making arrangements to go to Clay Springs to live with somebody, I knew I didn’t want to do it, but anyway but then I decided again, and he kept coming around.  The next day after I told him that Mama asked me “What is the matter with you?”  I said, “Oh there’s nothing wrong.”  She said okay, and she went on about her business.  I was about seventeen years, sixteen or seventeen.  Well at the end of the week I guess I got insufferable to live with.  She said, “Ruby, I’m going to tell you something.”  I don’t remember the actual words that she said, “I want you to do a lot of thinking and knowing what you’re doing and I want you to know that be sure you don’t let the sweetest thing in your life pass  you by.”  I cried half the night, and the next day I wrote him a letter.

Q:  What did you write?  I have the letter that dad wrote to you, but I don’t have what you wrote.

A:  He didn’t keep them.  I can’t even remember.  It was just something that I knew I wanted him, knew that I had to have him.  I wrote him a letter and asked him if he would come back.  And he did, the next weekend he came back.

Q:  And he was working in Winslow at this time?

A:  No he was working out on the mountain between Showlow and Winslow out in that area.

Q:  Was this at the same period of time that we wrote those two letters to you that I have?

A:  I think so.

Q:  You can’t remember anything said?  Any descriptive words?

A:  No, the only thing she said, and that particular time.  Maybe that was the reason.  Anyway he started coming back and we started spending more time together.  When she told me that, she knew I was in love with him.  So she encouraged me, but then when I told her after we got married, I told her that “Mom, I’m going to join the Mormon church.”  She said “What?  Your going to join the Mormon church?  Why are you going to do that?”  I said, “Well because, that’s what Andy did and he’s a good man.  I know he believes it with all his heart, and I can too.”  And she said, “Well if your sure, you can do that.  Be sure if you’ve got to join the church, be sure your a good one.  If you’re going to be a Mormon, be a good one.”  That exactly what she said.  If your going to commit to something, commit to it absolutely.  That’s the way it’s been.

Q:  Where were you when you decided to get married, the two of you?

A:  We were sitting out in front of that old log cabin at the ranch.

Q:  How did you tell your parents about that?

A:  I don’t even remember, I told them the next day or two.

Q:  Did he give you a ring at that time?

A:  No, I didn’t get a ring until we’d been married about five or six years.

Q:  Was that something you were disappointed about?  Were there any expectations about that?  Was it part of the culture then?

A:  No, he gave me a set, a bracelet and a ring set of petrified wood.  He was not too much into the traditional wedding ring, engagement ring.  Then he did, after we had been married two or three years he gave me a wedding ring.  On Christmas.

Q:  So you got a wedding ring some years later on Christmas?  On your anniversary?

A:  Yes, on Christmas.

Q:  What did you do for a ring when you went through the wedding ceremony?

A:  We didn’t have a ring ceremony, we just went to the temple.

Q:  No, I mean in your home?

A:  We didn’t have a wedding ring.  The bishop just married us.  That was not all that big of a deal then.

Q:  How long did you court?  How long did you date before you got married?

A:  I can’ t remember.

Q:  Was it weeks?  Or months?

A:  I think, I don’t know.

Q:  But you had known each other for many?

A:  Oh yeah, for a long time, we spent a lot of time together.

Q:  It seems to me that I remember you telling a story of dad bringing you home, and you going up to the loft of your home and watching him until...

A:  I did, that was that same night.  I walked up the stairs and watched through the window as that truck drove away, and then I fell all to pieces.

Q:  Why?

A:  Because I told him no.

Q:  He’d asked you did he ...

A:  Did I think that he had a chance.

Q:  Then you told him no, and then watched him drive away....

A:  I thought “Oh, my word, what did I do?”

Q:  The your mother talked some sense into you later.

A:  She caught onto it in a few days.

Q:  So you didn’t sleep well that night?

A:  Pauline was down in the valley going to school and I was just home with the little boys.

Q:  Now you said that you thought about going into town and going to school.  Going to high school.

A:  I was thinking of going there, because I had graduated from the eight grade. 

Q:  Some years before.

A:  We didn’t have any money, my folks didn’t have any money, and I didn’t have any money.

Q:  Was it going to cost to go to high school?

A:  Well yeah, I had to pay rent to somebody.

Q:  To live with somebody in town.

A:  Live with somebody in town.  He thought that he could manage it.  When I decided to get married I was just preparing for .......

Q:  Those letters that I have, were written while dad was working at the Readhead camp and they had a Winslow address. The first was Aug 23rd 1938 and the second was Sept 6th 1938. In the first letter he asked you to go with him to the M Men & Gleaner Dance in Lakeside. He somewhat formally signed this first letter J.A. Hancock, but he did draw a heart on it with an arrow through it.  In the second letter he wrote: "kiss your mother for me and tell her to use that shotgun if anybody gits hanging around you to close". He then closed by saying "Will close hoping and craving your love as I love you. Andy Hancock".

Q:  When you decided to get married how long was it between then and when you were actually married?  How long did it take to prepare, to plan for the wedding?  How long was the engagement?

A:  It wasn’t that long, it was in the fall.  I was staying with my sister, Aunt Jesse was having a lot of problems, she was very ill.  I was staying down with her down at Redflow I was down taking care of her, she was in the hospital a lot.  I can’t remember exactly, and we decided at Christmas time.  So it went from the fall to Christmas.  It wasn’t a very romantic thing.

Q:  So what time of the day were you married?

A:  Three o’clock.

Q:  Three o’clock in the afternoon.

A:  In the afternoon on Christmas Day.

Q:  You were married by Bishop Ben Perkins?

A:  Ben Perkins.  His (Andy's) family had brought out a big wedding cake.  I remember someone brought juice.  We didn’t have anything, my family didn’t have anything, so his family did the whole bit.

Q:  Bishop Perkins did?

A:  No Andy’s sister.

Q:  They provided the cake and the party.

A:  It was just Sunday afternoon, so it was Sunday, Christmas Day.

Q:  Who attend the wedding?

A:  Mildred and all her kids, her whole family was there.  I can’t remember, a lot of Andy’s family, they came out from Clay Springs.

Q:  His sisters, and was uncle Joe there?

A:  Yeah, and their families.  And Ben and Cindy.(?)

Q:  Uncle Don and Aunt Orfa.

A:  Yeah, just a family dinner was all it was.  Then we just went back to his home that he had a house set up.

Q:  You loaded up your few belongings, and went with him to your house.  Honeymoon was there in the house that he had built.  How did it feel having a house of your own?

A:  Well I thought it was pretty nice because there we always so many people that didn’t have homes.  I’ve always had a home since they day I was married. 

Q:  So you’re saying so many people didn’t have homes, or a lot of people were living in tents or were homeless?

A:  Yeah, they didn’t have... Clay Springs was a scroungy place.

Q:  Can you describe what it was....

A:  Course they were trying to build homes.

Q:  They lived in shacks or sheds?  Lean-to? 

A:  Yeah, they were kind of ramshackle things.  They did as they went along they finally got some nicer homes.   

Q:  So people settling in Clay Springs that didn’t have homes, what did they live in?

A:  They all had some kind of house to live in.

Q:  Some kind of shelter.

A:  A log cabin or something.

Q:  What conveniences did you have after you were married that you didn’t have when you were growing up, when you lived in the cabin?

A:  Not much, we didn’t even have water out at the ranch, we had to haul water out to the ranch.

Q:  You didn’t have a creek close by so you had to haul it.  When you hauled water how would you haul it in, or how did you dispense it for your use?

A:  Well he had some barrels sit in big spots in between some big pine trees out there made, put some barrels out in there and fill those barrels with water and load them up.  Then we’d open them and fill our buckets and take them to the house.

Q:  Gravity filled them up.  So you still had to do laundry the same way. 

A:  The laundry, wasn’t very often after that we got.  Well it was only over two years before we went Miami before we got a washing machine.  We went to Miami to work for a minning company because he couldn’t find a job.

Q:  So you were married Christmas Day, 1938.  What had dad been doing for a living before you got married?

A:  I have no idea, just living off of whatever.

Q:  Were Grandma and Grandpa Hancock alive at the time you were married?

A:  Grandma, she was.  Grandpa was dead before I met him, I never met Grandpa Hancock.  I knew her, he’d been in Miami working and he had to take her with him because he had to take her out of the mountain because of her health. 

Q:  So dad was the primary care giver for Grandma Hancock?

A:  Yes.

Q:  And she was not doing very well at this time?

A:  She was not doing well, she was doing very poorly but then she kept getting better.  About a couple of years before that she passed away.  At that time she moved into Aunt Orphas’ house with Orpha and Don.

Q:  Have you been able to remember anything else between your engagement and your wedding?

A:  No I haven’t, it really wasn’t that exciting.

Q:  He wasn’t much of a romancer huh?

A:  He was the best at that. 

Q:  Did he wine and dine you or wine and dine your parents more?  Did he pamper you or did he pamper your parents the most?

A:  Oh, no he didn’t pamper my parents.

Q:  I know your mother said “What were you thinking” when you told him you didn’t think it would work, what were your dad’s thought about you marrying?

A:  I didn’t talk to my dad about it, he just, he said one day, your dad come and picked me up and we were going somewhere and he walked out the door.  Andy was always a gentlemen, he was always a gentleman.  Papa said, I heard somebody say, I heard Papa say it to mom, “I think that’s going to be a match.”  Because he was walking me out to the car, and I always thought that was nice.  That was kind or romantic, he did.  My mother and father thought that Andy was absolutely awesome they always did.

Q:  Let me back up a little bit.  Somebody somewhere told me once that Dad at first was maybe interested in one of your sisters or two.  Can you tell me about that?

A:  Yeah, he come to ask for Joy.  Joy had left already with someone else, with Lloyd.  Then they never came back again.  Then he found out that Mildred was gone that same night.  Then your dad turned to my dad and said, “Well, there’s another girl, isn’t there?”.  He said “Yes, but she’s just a kid.”  That was it.

Q:  How old were you?

A:  I guess I was probably...... I think I was pushing fourteen.

Q:  But your mother was married when she was fourteen.

A:  Yeah. 

Q:  Your dad then said, “She’s just a kid”.

A:  But then Andy said, “But she’ll grow.”  And she did, he waited around until she grew. 

Q:  Did he court you in the meantime until you were seventeen?  Oh that’s right you went to dances and activities.

A:  We went to dances all the time, to rodeos and things like that.  Lloyd and Mildred just got through courting.

Q:  Aunt Pauline went with you a lot?

A:  Yeah, but she wasn’t the least bit interested.

Q:  But grandpa would always have her go with you.

A:  Oh yeah, she had to be a chaperone. 

Q:  After you were married, tell us about the first year of your marriage before the baby came.

A:  I can’t tell you much about that, it was just a busy time.

Q:  What about the dog?  Tell us about daddy’s dog.

A:  Well that dog, he didn't ask for me.  Andy couldn’t let the dog in the house that first day so he was ousted.  But then he kept it around, but he didn’t let it in the house.  He never did like me, I didn’t like him either.

Q:  So before you were married the dog lived in the house?

A:  Yeah, the night he took me home from the wedding, after the wedding.  We left my house and went over to his home on the ranch.  We went in the house, I walked into the bedroom, and the dog objected. 

Q:  Did Daddy carry you over the threshold?

A:  No, I tried to get him to and he wouldn’t do it.  He said, “What in the world is that for?”  I said, “Never mind, nothing at all.” 

Q:  He had not been made aware of that tradition. 

A:  No, he hadn’t, he’d never been encouraged to do it.

Q:  So the dog was out right away.

A:  Andy made him go outside because he was growling at me.

Q:  No wonder the dog didn’t like you, you came in and he had to go out.

A:  That’s right. Buck was his name.

Q:  Did you have, of course you did, can you describe some of the marital differences that you had early in your marriage?  Can you describe some of the things that you didn't expect or that he didn’t expect? Disagreements or differences on how things should be done, did you have differences and how did you resolve those?

A:  No I don’t think so.  I know the first morning he got up and cooked breakfast for me.  Asked if I wanted him to make me some coffee.  I said, “Why?”  He said, “Well, you drink it all the time.”  Then I said, “But you don’t.”  He said, “No.”  Then I said, “Well I don’t drink it either if you don’t.”  There never was anymore dispute over the coffee.  There wasn’t really a dispute.

Q:  After you were married you didn’t drink coffee anymore?

A:  Never.

Q:  Did you know that before you got married?  Had you thought about that?

A: I knew that, I knew he never drank coffee.  I drank coffee the day I was married.  I’m confident I had coffee with breakfast that morning.  But I didn’t drink coffee the next morning after the wedding.

Q:  So you expected that change.

A:  Absolutely, I knew that he did not believe in coffee.

Q:  What else did you learn about him after you were married that you didn’t expect?

A:  Nothing, we discussed a lot of things before we were married, our different lifestyles.

Q:  So you talked about the differences.

A:  We never had any problems.  When he said, “Do you want any coffee?”  And I said, “No.”  He said, “But you drink it all the time.”  I said, “I don’t need to drink it if you don’t.”  I was only seventeen, and I didn’t need to drink coffee.  It was a thing growing up in our home that we drank.  As kids we couldn’t drink coffee.  When we got to be sixteen we were allowed to drink a cup of coffee with our breakfast, that’s when I started drinking it.  I didn’t need that coffee very much.

Q:  It didn’t mean that much to you?

A:  No it didn’t mean that much.

Q:  What about other things in your family growing up.  Did they drink alcohol or have tobacco?

A:  No, my dad did not have any alcohol in the house, he did not smoke, he did not drink anything.  My brothers drank, but they didn’t bring it home.  In fact I thought that Tex was almost an alcoholic, he was a poor kid.

Q:  Was that at a young age?

A:  I felt so bad about Uncle Tex, so many times in his life.  He drank a lot.  He died of Lou Gehrig’s disease. 

Q:  Aunt Mildred was your only sister that smoked right?

A:  Aunt Mildred smoked, but she never smoked when she was home, it was after she married Lloyd.  Aunt Jesse smoked, but she never smoked at Mama’s home. I never had the least bit of desire for that kind of stuff.

Q:  Tell me about a typical day when you were first married.  In the first weeks and months, you would get up clean the house, cook breakfast, or would you go out into the yard?  What would you do in a typical day?

A:  You know, there was not much typical about it.  I told you he was on unemployment at that time, he didn’t have a job.

Q:  Where had he been working?

A:  He had been working on the railroad, on the highway down by Holbrook.  And had finished the job and been laid off.  So he started getting an unemployment check.  Then he had to find another job, because he only had so many weeks they were allowed unemployment benefits.  I don’t remember how that went.

Q:  Had he had experience working in the mines before you were married?

A:  Yeah he worked in the mines before.  When he and his mother moved down there several years before he worked in the mines and she kept house for him.

Q:  That was in Miami?

A:  Yes in Miami.

Q:  Copper mines?

A:  Copper mines.

Q:  About how old was he do you think he was when he first started working in the mines?

A:  You know honey, I have no idea.  He was twenty seven years old when we were married, I don’t remember.  He’d been living with his mom there in Miami working in the copper mines, but traveling to the Safford area where her family grew up, lot’s of relatives down there.  Then he was doing all of this courting down there.  Then he’d come back to Clay Springs, and started going with me. 

Q:  Who had he been courting down there?

A:  I don’t know, there were a lot of girls down there.  It was a busy active LDS community.  He went to church down there about every Sunday.  He’d pick his mother Friday night after work and they would take off down to Safford.  His mother had a sister down there.  They’d go down and spend the weekend with her and he’d do some courting, hunting a wife.

Q:  Dad never did serve in the military, and that was because he was working in the mines?

A:  I guess so because, I don’t know.  The Second World War was just getting into full swing.

Q:  He was too young to be in the First World War, and in the Second World War we didn’t get involved in it until...

A:  The Second World War, he didn’t get involved in it because we got married just before that.

Q:  Not only that, but the government needed ore for the military.

A:  They took troop after troop, soldiers out of the army and put them to work in the mines.  

Q:  He was already occupied helping the war effort by working in the mines.

A:  He went and got a job down there.

Q:  There was no need to draft him into the military because he was already where the nation needed him to serve any way.  Do you remember hearing anything about why or maybe dad had not considered or been called on a full time mission for the church?

A:  Because he had to support his mother.

Q:  He was the sole supporter of his mother, she was in poor health?

A:  She was very poor.

Q:  What kind of dialogue was there about that?

A:  I don’t know, I just know that they never did call him on a mission.

Q:  You didn’t talk to him about it.

A:  I don’t know that either, because I wasn’t that involved in the church that early in his life.  After we were married and Irene was born, he applied at Holbrook for a feed and seed loan with the government so we could farm.  They never did get it to go through with him.  He kept on going back after them and they hadn’t ever gotten around to it yet.  Finally he just had to get work so we just up and moved to Miami, and got a job at the mine.

Q:  Because you couldn’t get the loan for the farm.

A:  Then the guy called him back and said “Your loan has gone through .”  And he said, “What good is that going to do me this time of the year?  It’s the middle of July.  I just got a job.”  That old man kept running him around and around.  Andy went out because he never did, but he was working at the mine until after the war.

Q:  So how many years did he work in the mine after you were married?

A:  He was working, we moved down there when Irene was a baby.  Then he stayed working there, then Pearl Harbor came along, that scared the daylight out of me.  He stayed right where he was working in the mine.  He was a timberman in the mine, his was a very important job in getting the copper out.  He knew timbering, and he knew how to work in the mine, so he was working there and had a very good job.  So he stayed working there until the war was almost over.

Q:  So timbering, meaning he would shore up the mines?

A:  Shore up the mines, the drifts in the mines.  He would get great big timbers.  I don’t know anything about that, except what he told me.

Q:  Seems to me like I remember him working with dynamite in the mines as well.

A:  Oh yeah, they did, there was dynamite there.  He was a good dynamite man.  After we got out of the war he went up to Dutch John and worked out there for a long time, because they were building that road across the dam.  He was a very good dynamite man.

Q:  I remember growing up there was dynamite, fuses, and blasting caps accessible to us in Roosevelt.  Dutch John was later on in life thought wasn’t it?

A:  No, it was right after we were married, not to long, course we had several kids then too.

Q:  Well your kids came pretty quick.  Was this after you moved to Roosevelt?

A:  Yeah.

Q:  Tell me a little more about Clay Springs, or at the ranch there, how many cattle did you try to keep?  Tell me about the ins and outs of running some cattle on the place there.

A:  Your dad only had a permit for thirty-five head, that’s all he could run, and that’s what he ran.  He had a permit.   He took care of them, and he had to keep his job and keep up with the foresters, do his duties.  I know he had to pay so much a year for thirty-five head of cattle, he had to pay for the permit.

Q:  Was that permit through the US Forest Service or BLM?

A:  Permit through the US Forest Service. On the Sitgreaves National Forest.

Q:  Do you know what the cost was per head per month?

A:  No, I don’t, but I may have some stuff that would account for some of that, I don’t know.

Q:  I remember reading some notes that dad had made about some of the cattle, he had named them and kept notes on them, saying how well they did.

A:  I think those things were made after we moved out to the ranch, and we bought those cattle from his cousin down in Stafford. 

Q:  Which ranch are you talking about?

A:  We moved to the ranch from Roosevelt to Wickenburg. 

 A:  From Glenden Lamoreaugh.

Q:  It seems like I saw some notes from the ranch in Clay Springs.

A:  Well there could have been too, because he kept them there too.

Q:  That little store in Clay Springs was owned by...

A:  Ammon Hunt.

Q:  Ammon Hunt, and then Lloyd Parker bought it?

A:  No, Lloyd Parker opened one of his own and we bought that.  Uncle Lloyd was driving truck, and your dad was driving truck.  Andy was helping Lloyd haul stuff back and forth for his store.  Then Lloyd left the country, when Mildred left the country and he followed her.  That’s when we opened our store.  He hauled back from the valley for our store.

Q:  Why did Uncle Lloyd and Aunt Mildred move to the valley?

A:  They just couldn’t stand each other.  They didn’t move to the valley, they moved to Oregon.  

Q:  The moved to Oregon.  Who was it they couldn’t stand?

A:  Each other. 

Q:  So they both left?

A:  I think Mildred left first and then Lloyd followed her. 

Q:  Then you bought the store that they had?

A:  We bought Lloyd’s ranch and the store. 

Q:  About what year was that?

A:  I don’t remember, but we sold the store and left Clay Springs, the Winter of ‘56, the year you were born.

Q:  How long did you have the store?

A:  I don’t know, I don’t remember. 

Q:  Tell me about your house in Clay Springs, you had your ranch house there.

A:  That’s the only house we had, except the shack they built with the storehouse.

Q:  So when did you move to town?

A:  When Irene got old enough to go to school.

Q:  So she was about five years old.

A:  She had to come in to Clay Springs to go to school.

Q:  Did that house make things a little easier for you?  Did you have running water?

A:  No. 

Q:  You still had to haul water?

A:  Dad helped me well up some water after a while, he had a fight with somebody all the time.  Trying to get stuff straightened out all the time, he thought it should be, and would be.  Then finally, what happened to the store, we sold it and went to Utah.  We sold it in ‘56, and we moved to Utah.

Q:  How long after you were married did you join the church?

A:  I joined the church the ninth day of July.

Q:  The ninth day of July. 

A:  The ninth day of July, 1939

A:  When Irene was born then we went to the temple and were sealed with her.

Q:  So it was before Laverne was born. 

A:  Before Laverne.  Laverne was born in the covenant, Irene was sealed.

Q:   You were sealed on the twenty-seventh of June.

A:  The twenty-seventh of June.

Q:  So about a year and a half after you were married.  Tell me a little bit about that experience, tell me about being baptized.  If you were sealed a year and a half after you were married you must have joined the church a few months after you were married. 

A: Well I guess it was in July, I was married in December. 

Q:  So you were baptized in July, and were sealed a year later?

A:  Yeah.  We left Clay Springs on Sunday after church.  It was the bishopric, us and a few people, I don’t remember who.  We drove down to, of course I talked to Bishop Perkins who got us a recommend to be baptized.  We drove down to Taylor and up from Taylor towards Showlow to the little town of Shumway.  This little town of Shumway had this clear steam of water that went through town to the mountains.  So we went up there, got up there, I changed my clothes and got baptized.  The Bishop’s counselor confirmed me a member of the church. 

Q:  Did daddy baptize you?

A:  No.

Q:  How many people were baptized that day?

A:  Just me, as far as I remember.

Q:  You couldn't find a pool of water in Clay Springs?

A:  No, there was no water in that place.

A:  It was a real nice grassy hillside there, with a nice little stream of water going through it.  Ben Perkins straddled that stream, the river was quite narrow.  He just dipped me right in.  I said, “Why didn’t you baptize me?”  He (Andy) said, “I was afraid I’d drown you.”  So that’s as far as I remember.

Q:  How early had you decided that you were going to join the church?

A:  Quite early, because we were married before Christmas.  I’d been going to church for a long time.  We’d been reading and reading, he’d been teaching me out of the seminary books.

Q:  So that was a lot of your courting was going to church and reading the scriptures?

A:  It was, Andy your dad was the only missionary I had, he had to teach me the gospel.  So I got it, and he said, “Well, will you be baptized?”  I said, “Whatever you say.”  I never objected, I never doubted anything he told me, I did a lot of studying and a lot of reading.  He answered a lot of questions.  I never doubted one word that your dad told me.

Q:  You have one of the gits of the spirit that is spoken of in the scriptures: the gift to believe in the testimony of others.  You have a firm faith that everything that he told you about the restored Gospel of Jesus Christ is true.  And you have no doubts?

A:  Yes, I have no doubts.

Q:  That’s a wonderful blessing.  That’s a great gift of the spirit to have.  So you were baptized a few months after you were married, and then you were sealed a year later.  Tell me about your sealing experience, about going down to Mesa to the temple.  It seemed like I heard that was a challenging trip, a difficult day.

A:  It was a hard trip.  Because we had to take a load of lumber down to pay for expenses, we had to sell it.  We were there a good week.  Course he was a good salesman, he sold the lumber.  We traveled around there, stayed with some of the folks there in town.  We got the lumber sold.  We went to the temple, and bought some clothes to wear, were sealed and went home.

Q:  So you needed to sell the lumber before you could buy temple clothing and temple garments, and have fuel to go home.

A:  I’m not sure, but dad had people who knew him everywhere.  He had no problem getting himself lined up to go to the temple, he’d been going to church for years, and knew people for years. 

Q:  So that was daddy’s first trip to the temple?

A:  Yes that was his first trip to the temple. 

Q:  Endowments the same day.  That would have been a long day for both of you to go through and receive your endowments, go through the veil ceremony, and then go into the sealing room and have Irene sealed to you.

A:  It was, and it was in the middle of June and it was hot. 

Q:  It seemed to me that I remember dad saying that they were asking for a couple from California.

A:  They did.  It was us they wanted, they kept getting us mixed up.  It was in June there was only a few people in the temple.  I was getting pretty weary.  Because I didn’t know what was going on.  We got through it, everything went good.  We left that night and drove home to Clay Springs.

Q:  You’d been there for several days.

A:  We’d been there for a whole week.

 

Q:  Where did you stay?

A:  I don’t remember, he had sisters all over the valley, your dad did. 

Q:  Okay, so you stayed with family. 

A:  Who was it, Hazel, and one of the others was living there.  We had lots of places to stay.  We were always welcome and we were happy to have someone come and stay with us.

Q:  Did some of his family come to the temple for the sealing and endowment ceremony?

A:  I don’t think there was. There was two young men, two missionaries.  One of them was Don Jackson’s younger brother who just came home from a mission, Evan Jackson.  He was with us, he went in and took care of the baby while we were in the temple, and saw to it that everything was taken care of.  He knew me and he knew Andy.

Q:  So he helped take care of Irene.

A: He helped take care of Irene.

Q:  His name was Evan Jackson?

A:  Evan Jackson.  Then we took off that night for Clay Springs.

Q:  Were you glad to get home?

A:  I was.

Q:  Were you always glad to get home after a trip?

A: Yes

Q:  So in your first days or weeks as a member of the church was there anything that was different after receiving confirmation?

A:  Not really, I was familiar with everything because I had been going all the time.  I knew what went on in a Sacrament meeting.  I thought I got along really good.  Nobody objected at all, everybody was very congenial and agreeable and helpful and encouraging. 

Q:  So did Grandma Hancock go with you to the temple?  Was she down there?  She was not in good health at this time?

A:  No, she was not in good health.  She didn’t particularly like me.

Q:  Why?

A:  Because I was a little heathen you know. 

Q:  She might have had someone else in mind.

A:  I’m sure there were several girls around that time that she would have loved Andy to have.  There was a lot of women around who felt the same thing.  A lot of people had that idea, and I kind of just slipped in.  Made a lot of noise, and got it done.

Q:  You just took over.  Do you remember what your first calling was in the church?

A:  Sunday school teacher. 

Q:  What class?

A:  I don’t know, one of the junior classes.

Q:  Young children?  Primary age?

A:  Yeah.

Q:  How did that go for you?

A:  Okay, I use to go to Sunday school all the time when I was just a little kid you know. 

Q:  So it was no surprise for you to give Sunday school lessons?

A:  No.

Q:  Of course you were the reader in your family, you always read in your family.  So it wasn't unusual for you to be the one presenting something.

A:  Nope, not a bit.

Q:  What other things did you do in the church, early in your membership?  Did you join the choir?   Did you help out in the...

A:  Oh yeah, I always sang in the choir.  I always was in Relief Society.  I went visiting teaching.  Then later on I worked in mutual for a while, but not for long because I had the two little babies. 

Q:  What was your early Relief Society visiting teaching experiences like?

A:  They were good.  I didn’t have any problem visiting people.

Q:  You always had a companion?

A:  Yeah.

Q:  Did you get along with her?

A:  Yeah.

Q:  Who was your visiting teaching companion?  Do you remember?

A:  I can’t even remember.

Q:  Nothing that stands out then as a good story?

A:  No, not a good story there, there’s nothing exciting in any way about my life.

Q:  It’s very interesting though.  Let me ask you though, you had decided early on you were going to marry a preacher?  

A:  Yes, all of my life.

Q:  Do you feel like that dream had been fulfilled?  Because you married this Mormon?

A:  Yeah I did.  I think I got the best though.  I got a Bishop.

Q:  Tell me about at the times in the White Mountains and Clay Springs and around, when you were married, and the war got started, the nation was in turmoil, Pearl Harbor you mentioned that.  You were living in Miami at the time, how did that affect the community around you?  What kind of patriotic things did you see going on?

A:  Actually the thing I really only remember much was everything being rationed.  At that time we were having two or three kids.  We had food ration stamps.  We got along very well with the food rationing, and school kid rationing, because we had enough kids, and we always had enough stamps.  There was always somebody who was willing to trade me meat stamps and sugar stamps for coffee and that kind of stuff.

Q:  So the stamps were specific?

A:  Yeah.

Q:  So you could trade your coffee stamps for some meat stamps?

A:  Yeah, and sugar stamps.

Q:  So you traded the coffee and sugar stamps for other food that was good for your family.

A:  Yes.  There wasn’t any problem with it.  I never was short of anything.  I remember I went into the grocery store once, and I had my ration book there, and the man looked at it and said, “My word look at all those ration stamps you wasted.”

Q:  Meaning he thought you wasted them?

A:  I don’t remember what it was exactly, but there was ration stamps that he thought I was not making the best use of.

Q:  Did you work outside the home in your early married life?

A:  No.

Q:  Not until you owned the little store, and the store was attached to the home.

A:  Yes, I lived there and took care of the store, and my family too.

Q:  Let me back up again, you talked about the trouble your folks first had with bedbugs at the cabin before you were first able to spray it with some kind pesticide .  What kind of problems did you have in the new house you moved to? 

A:  I don’t remember anymore problems.  I know those bedbugs was the ultimate when it comes to bugs you know.  I think it was just that time of year or something, that they were real bad at that time.  We moved in there and sprayed it and cleaned those bugs out. 

Q:  So with your young children, living in the ranch house in Clay Springs you didn’t have any problems with those kinds of pests or.

A:  No, I never had a problem with bugs like that.

Q:  What a blessing.  The pictures I’ve seen looked like a dirty bunch or ragamuffins, it looks like they got along all right. 

A:  That's right. 

Q:  Did you participate in anything political, any rally's, or patriotic parades or anything like that during the war?

A:  No I didn't, I was too busy, I had kids to take care of.

Q:  Did you have a patriotic feelings and things in your home?

A:  Oh yeah, we were very conscious of what was right, and patriotic. 

Q:  Loyalty to your country.

A:  Loyalty, absolutely.  We bought savings bonds for the kids for a long time, then that kind of went out of style.

Q:  What happened to those?

A:  They got cashed in along the road somewhere. 

Q: Buy groceries with them?

A:  No, I don’t think so. 

Q:  Did you have any serious illnesses with yourself or your children in early life?

A:  No.

Irene: Mom carried the little kids into town to Aunt Ethel because she would know how to get the seed pods out of their ears. Whatever it was, the little kids put in their ears was just the right size and they were pushed right down deep in the ear canal.

Q:  What about pregnancies, bearing children, any serious problems or complications?

A:  I didn't have anything, the first illness was with you.  When you were a newborn, you were just a baby. 

Q:  I was born at St. John's. 

A:  You had an illness, and I don't know to this day what was wrong with you.  They never did diagnose it.  I had to put you in the hospital and you would stand there and cry for me.  “Mom wait for me, take me Mom.”  I had to leave you.  I was pregnant with Denzlo. I had a hard time.  Finally it passed over, and they said you can take this little boy home.  I never did know what was wrong.

Q:  Now that can't be the first serious illness with your children.

A:  That's the first one I can remember.  I didn't have any serious illnesses. 

Q:  Let's talk about that one for just a minute. You were out of town and somebody had called Iona Richins, and she came over to our house in Roosevelt, and she called you and said you had better come home.    

A:  Iona Richins, do you remember Irene? 

Q:  When I was two years old and couldn't stand up because I was so sick.

A:  We went over to the Valley to buy fruit to can, we hadn't gotten to it yet, and you called Iona over to come look at the baby.

Q:  Yeah, he was sick, and I didn't know what was wrong with him.

A:  She said for her to have her come home, have her come home, and we went home.

Q:  I've got to think about it a minute.  But you got really sick and it scared me, just like Alvin scared me to death one time.  I think he had a high fever, you were hot.

A:  I think he did.  He couldn’t stand on his feet.

Q:  Yeah, we just laid him down.

Q:  But Cory was sick one time, wasn't he?

A:  Yeah, but that was rheumatic fever, we knew what that was. 

Q:  I remember, you weren't very old, two years.

Q:  Had  Denzlo been born yet?

A:  No, I was carrying Denzlo.

Q:  So I was two years and something.

A:  Yeah, I was carrying Denzlo.

Q:  I just remember you having a high fever, and not knowing what was wrong with you.  Just panicking.  It scared me.

A:  I never did know what was wrong with you.

Irene:  I'd stand you up like this and your little legs would just fail.

Irene: Greg, I loved you with all my heart, and you were just sick.  Mom, what did he have?

A:  I don't know, I never did find out.  They just called me and said he was ready to come home and I was just so glad to get him home.

Q:  But when your first children were small, no real serious problems carrying or raising them?

A:  No.

Q:  As a very young mother you got along pretty well?

Q:  I don't even remember, were we in Clay Springs then?  I don't even remember.

A:  We were in Roosevelt.

Q:  As a young mother in Clay Springs.

A:  When I was raising my kids in Clay Springs we had Dr. Haywood.  Once a month Dr. Haywood would come to Clay Springs and have a clinic.  And anyone that hand any illnesses would come to him, and he would take care of them. 

Q:  So you would just go meet him at someones home.

A:  He'd go to somebody's home.  Yeah, and we'd go there, and go and be served.  He would take turns with you when you had problems.

Q:  When your first children were born, was Irene born at home?

A:  No she was born in the hospital.

Q:  In the hospital, okay.  Did you have any children born at home?

A:  Dale and Laverne.

Q:  Did you have a midwife there?

A:  No, the Doctor came out.

Q:  The Doctor came out to the house?

A:  The Doctor came out and delivered them.

Q:  Mom, was Aunt Orfa there too?

A:  We used Aunt Orfa and Ethel's house.  Aunt Orfa was there. 

Q:  I remember Aunt Orfa being there.

A:  Aunt Orfa was always there helping with whatever we needed. 

Q:  Aunt Mildred and Uncle Lloyd, their first baby was Joann.  She was born at home, and she told me that the Doctor came out to their house.

A:  He did.

Q:  She was born in December.  He came out in the middle of winter to their house.

A:  He did, absolutely, and delivered that baby on the fourth day of December.

 

Q:  Now how did he know that she was in labor or did she...

A:  Lloyd drove into Snowflake and picked him up.

Irene: Haven't you ever watched cowboy shows?

Greg:  I was just wondering.

Q:  But still it's impressive that a Doctor would go that far out of his way

A:  He did the same thing when Dale was born, I was on the ranch.  Andy left the ranch with me at the ranch, went to Mildred's house and brought her up to stay with me.  Then he went and picked up the Doctor and brought him back to the ranch.  He delivered the baby, Dale, and then went home.

Irene:  You know mom, I remember when Dale was born, but I don't remember when Laverne was born.

A:  No you were too young.

Irene:  But I do remember Dale.

A:  We were still in Miami when Beverly was born, and Laverne was born before that.  She was born in Grandma's old house there.

Q:  Laverne and I went for a walk with Daddy.  He took the afterbirth to dispose of it, but probably didn't think we'd ever remember it, but I remember that ugly thing.

Q:  Anything else about doctor care in and around Clay Springs that was interesting?  I think it was just fascinating.  Were there many midwives?  Who was the...

A:  Well Aunt Ethel was one.  She was just a widow woman, and she had three grown daughters.  She took care of that stuff, because it was important to her, she loved to do it, she was a good woman.  She had a lot of faults, but she was a good one to take care of all that.  It all worked out and everybody loved each other.

Q:  Aunt Ethel, did she have any training to become a nurse or did she just make herself available?

A:  I think she just made herself available. Grandma Hancock had trained her, because Grandma Hancock since she was a youngster was a midwife.

Q:  They would just help take care of women that needed help.  A pioneer tradition, that’s great.  Okay, when you first moved to the ranch house after you were first married, what kind of furniture did you have?  You moved in with this bachelor, what kind of furniture did he have when he took you to your honeymoon suite?

A:  I know he had a great big table in the kitchen.  He had, we had a bed, and I remember we lived in Miami for a while, we went down there and I had a big shelf I don't know what you call it, but you put stuff on it.

Q:  A sideboard.

A:  We had that and chairs, I don't remember where they came from, I don't even remember the chairs.

Q:  Did you have dressers to hold the clothes in?

A:  Yeah, Dad had closets in his bedroom.  I was always mad at his closets.  They were such tiny little things.

Q:  What other things did dad do for a living between the time that he was a child, it seems to me that I heard that he was a trapper, and he trapped around Young, and that area.

A:  There was one year, one winter where he went with his Uncle Press, his mother's brother.

Q:  So Press.

A:  Grandma Hancock's younger brother was Uncle Press Plumb, and Andy wanted to go trapping with him.  He was trapping down on the mountain.  He spent one winter down there trapping.  And that's all I can tell you.

Q:  You don't know how successful he was?

A:  No, I'm not sure, but he loved it, I know that.

Q:  I know years later he was a trapper, and he knew how to set traps.

A:  Yeah, he really liked it.

Q:  Any other professions he had?  He was a truck driver, and delivery.  Was he a truck driver, and deliverer before you got married or was that after?

A:  No, that was after we got married.  He started at a saw mill in Clay Springs, he started hauling lumber from Clay Springs to Phoenix, and did it a lot down there.

Q:  Whose saw mill was that in Clay Springs?

A:  It started out as Horace Crandall's and ended up as Reese's.  Anyway you know a saw mill.

Q:  They would harvest trees off of the forest service?

A:  Well they had to buy the timber from the forest service.

Q:  Then they was saw it into lumber. 

A:  Then they would hire their workers to bring it in, saw it up, and give it to truck driver's to haul it to sell it.

Q:  Where would dad sell it?

A:  He would haul it all over the valley there.

Q:  He would take it to the job sites.

A:  He would take it to the Safford area.

Q:  Mostly ranches as I remember.

A:  Well he went to, he did, because the lumber he sold was number five. They graded their lumber out.

Q:  So his probably was the edge cuts with the bark on it.

A:  He hauled, it was good lumber, but it wasn't choice.  He'd sell that for people to build their corrals.

Q:  He was able to get that at a real good price because it was a number five and then go sell it to somebody.

A:  He would just go down to the saw mill and they would load him up.

Q:  What else would he buy and sell?

A:  When he got to the valley, if anybody there to deal with, we had the little store you know.  He would buy stuff and bring it back.  Or he would buy hand grain and people could come and buy hand grain for their supplies.

Q:  What period of time did he do this?  What time did this occur?

A:  What time did you go to school Irene?

Q:  Well she was born in thirty-nine, so she was probably going to school in forty-four.

A:  Stuff like that I really don't know.

Q:  It was probably just right after the war.

A:  Yeah it was.

Q:  Any family members that served in the military?  Any close family members, friends and neighbors from your neighborhood that went into the military?  Do you have any stories of them?

A:  Yes.  Andy hauled a lot of hay and grain in for people to feed their stock, and self at Clay Springs.

Q:  Daddy was on his own at a very young age wasn't he?

A:  Yeah, your dad started baching when he was fourteen.

Q:  But he still took care of his mom?

A:  Well she lived with her girls at that time.  She was working at the hospital in Gallup New Mexico when Aunt Evy was in the hospital.

Q:  That's right when Aunt Evy had problems.

Q:  Now Aunt Evy had broken her hip, is that right?

A:  She had a TB of the bone.

Q:  Tuberculosis?

A:  Yes.

Q:  So they had to do surgery or whatever?

A:  She took this girl (Evy) that had been to the hospitals all over, and the doctors wanted to take her leg off, and she wouldn't let them.  She said, “Don't you dare.”  And then the doctor said, she talked to him and she said, “What can I do to help?” and he said, “The only thing that I can suggest, and the only thing that's going to help is that you move in with her, and you nurse her twenty-four hours a day yourself, and then you'll know that she's taken care of.” That’s what she did, she left Andy at the ranch, far from her. His sisters were staying in town so they could go to school and Grandma went to the hospital.

Q:  How old was daddy?

A:  He was about twelve years old.

Q:  So daddy had to fend for himself when he was twelve years old?

A:  Twelve years old. Your grandpa was driving a freight wagon from Holbrook to Globe, and he would come by, and we would go by the ranch and leave things for him to have.

Irene:  There was a story about Aunt Evys’ wound that Daddy told me.  I don't know if I'm relating it right or not, but Aunt Evy was really, really sick.  There was a dog that came down and licked Aunt Evy's wound.  They never had seen the dog before, and they never saw it after, and it left.

Q:  So the dog came and licked the wound?  Was it festering or infected?

Irene:  I don't know, Daddy just told me this story.

Q:  What happened to the wound after the dog left?

Irene:  It healed up.

Q:  Dogs do have very strong antiseptic saliva.

Irene:  The point that dad was trying to teach me was that the Lord, if you had enough faith, the Lord provided a way.  They never saw the dog before it happened and they never saw it after.  I remember that was kinda funny (funny here means unusual).

Greg:  The story is familiar to me.

Irene:  It's a miracle to me. Seems like I heard that before myself.  Do you remember stories of dad riding on the freight wagon with Grandpa Hancock?  It seems like I heard, it was a freight wagon pulled by horses or mules or something.

Q:  It seems to me that Dale has some of those old pictures, I don't know though.  I don't know where he got them.

A:  They haven't got dad riding on a freight wagon have they?

Q: So the house that you had attached to the store in Clay Springs, how many rooms, tell me about that house.

A:  You had the store room, you know dad built on to that.  He rebuilt that, I can't remember.

Q:  So it had the store, and behind that...

A:  Behind the store was our living room, and we had a kitchen, and then our bedroom.  Then behind that he built two more big rooms back there.

Q:  How long did you live there before he built on those two other rooms?

A: Anyway, it was sufficient.  We had a good store room.  I had a bedroom on that side of the storeroom, and the middle room was our family room type, where we would eat.

Q:  And that was open to the store?

A:  No, that had a door on it to the store.  And then there was a store room back here, and the one more bedroom.  So we added on two bedrooms and a bathroom.

Q:  It seems like I remember something about someone wanting to change something in there,when you and dad were not home, and while you were gone some of the kids cut a big hole in the house.

A:  Oh that was Irene and Dale.

Q:  Tell me about that. 

A:  Between the storeroom and the family room, you know that's where we all lived, gathered, and ate, the kitchen was on the other side of that.  There was this big room there, it was just a house that had been hurried up there to make room for the store.  So this building was there.  So from the door that went from the store into the family room and the living quarters was kind of crooked.  So Irene and Dale decided they were going to fix the door.  So they went up there to the door with their saw and a hammer, and sawed out a big old chunk of it.  It kind of went up like this you know.  So they made a new door in there.

Q:  Was it better than the old one?

A:  It was still there when we left.

Q:  You left it the way they built it?

A:  Yeah, because we didn't stay very long after that.

Q:  What was dad's reaction when he saw it?

A:  Oh my.  Dale and Irene, they were the big shots you know, they were the big kids.  What they did they got away with it.

Q:  So as not to bruise their ego you just left it the way they built it.

A:  Yup.

Q:  So were you happy, was it good living with your young family in Clay Springs there?  Were things going well?

A:  That’s all we knew son, Dad was working every day, and helping at home.  The kids went to school, and we'd eat, we were happy.

Q:  Again let me back up a few years.  During the Great Depression, much of the country fell into a depression, a lot of people lost their work, a lot of people lost their savings, income, the stock market fell.  How did the Depression affect the poor in the White mountains?  How did it affect your family?

A:  I can't recognize any way that it affected us, we were still just a poor family.  Dad had a job, we would eat, we sent the kids to school, the bus picked them up right in front of our door.

Q:  You know there's some lyrics from an old country song that said, “Wall Street fell, but we were so poor we couldn't tell”.  Is that how your family was?  The depression hit the rest of the country, your family was so poor it stayed the same for them.

A:  It didn't matter to us, we were doing okay. 

Q:  So you were so poor it didn't make any difference when the country fell into a depression.

A:  No.  We always had, dad always had a job, he drove a truck, he hauled it back and forth out of the valley.  Took care of all that we needed.

Q:  So what kind of a budget did you live on?

A:  I didn't have a budget.

Q:  If you got a nickle you spent it?  Is that how it went?

A:  If we had it we bought it, if we didn't, we didn't spend.

Q:  Tell me about...

A:  Greg, at that particular time, during the war and everything, Dad had a good job, he kept himself busy.  We had plenty for the family, we kept the store to help other people, and we got along great.

Q:  What was dad's job?  Did you already talk about that?

A:  Dad drove a truck, hauling lumber, buying and selling.

Irene:  Mom, when Dale and I took that wall out, we didn't have the store then did we?

A:  Yes, the store was there.

Q:  It was the door to the store.

Q:  No, it was the door from the living room to the dining room.

A:  But the living room eventually was the store room.  The store room came into the living room the living room turned into the store room, and the dining room and our living quarters,

Q:  Where the fireplace was.

A:  Yeah, we lived right there, the kitchen was down there, and my bedroom was this way.  And you girls had the bedroom over there.

Q:  Okay, I was thinking that we didn't have a store room when we cut that wall.

A:  No, that was the store room.

Q:  No I mean the grocery store where the poor people came.  Was it there?

A:  Yeah, it was there.

Irene:  Did you tell them about the time we ran out of propane for our stove, and we had to make Thanksgiving by cooking....

A:  You'll have to tell them that story.  That was you, you had just started high school.

Q:  But this was when we started Thanksgiving and we didn't have any propane.

A:  I know this is when you learned how to make pizza and you wanted to make that pizza, but it was Thanksgiving time yes, and you girls were going to school.

Irene:  I just remember having our turkey cooked over the fireplace in a dutch oven. 

Q:  Tell us that story Irene.  How old were you?

Q:  Mom said I was in high school.  I don't know how old I was, I know I was old enough to remember how traumatic everybody thought it was, us kids thought it was fun. 

Q:  You cooked the turkey outside?

Q:  No, it was on the inside fireplace in the house.

Q:  You put it in a big pot and cooked it over the coals or whatever?

Q:  Yeah, we had just run out of propane, we had a propane kitchen stove.

Q:  Well how modern.

Q:  It was one of the older ones, it wasn't modern, but it was nice.  To this day, I don't know how we cooked everything else, but we had our turkey on there, and our sweet potatoes.  Probably just salads and things that you didn't need a stove for.

A:  We always had sufficient to eat.

Q:  In the early years of marriage, what qualities did you most admire about your husband.

A:  The only thing I can think of was that I always thought he was just a top man.

Q: You won him away from all those other girls.

A:  I won him away from all the girls in Clay Springs, and all those girls in Safford, and all the courting he'd been doing for so many years.

Q:  And much to Grandma Hancock's disappointment you married him.

A:  Much to her disappointment I married, and we lived happily ever after.

Q:  How many years after was it that Grandma Hancock was happy that you married dad?

A:  You know, I really can't tell you that.  She was such a different person.  Andy told her that he was going to marry me, and he wanted to take her out to meet me and my family.  He told me and my mom that he was bringing her.  So we cooked dinner for Grandma Hancock, and him, and the rest of the family.  We had a lovely dinner.  Then that afternoon, he put us in the car and drove us up the woods and showed us some scenery that his mom had been wanting to look at.  Then he took her home.  The only thinking I got with Grandma, I knew she didn't like me. I mean I don’t know that she didn't like me, she was disappointed that Andy didn't marry a Mormon girl.

Q:  Maybe she had somebody picked out for him.

A:  Maybe.  She had decided that she...

Q:  Well, this is just my perception, I think too that he was her bread winner, she depended on him more than anybody else.

A:  Well absolutely, but he never ever neglected her in any way, he never did.

Q:  When you were married, where did Grandma Hancock live at the time?  Was she living with one of the sisters after that?

A:  Yes she was, I think she was living with Ruby.

Q:  What did Grandma Johnson think about you and Andy marrying?

A:  Oh Grandma thought Andy was the tops.  Your daddy was top man in my family, of course dad was just the source of their daughter.  Because Andy…. Dad thought he was great, mother just loved him, she called him her....., she always introduced him as “This is my big Mormon Bishop”.

Q:  Who helped you most during the early years of your marriage?

A:  We did it ourselves, we worked together.

Q:  Who did you help?  What did you do as service for you neighbors?

A:  Andy was involved with the church, very much.  He was bishop for four and a half years, and doing just fine.  I didn't think that we was good and great. 

Q:  I remember Daddy working really hard with all of the prospective Elders.  He worked with the Young Men in the ward, didn't he Mama?

A:  The Senior Aaronics, yeah.

Q:  Whatever it was then, he always worked hard with them.

Q:  Putting on rodeos with them and having them help out.

A:  Oh yeah, he was always....

Q:  In your early years of marriage were you always full tithe payers, and contributors to the church?

A:  Yes, absolutely.

Q:  Since a lot of your income may have been, some of your income, rather than cash may have been in kind.  Did you ever pay the Bishop in kind?  Maybe produce or something else?

A:  I remember one time the Bishop came and said, “Andy, I've got a problem.”  “Okay Bishop, what can I do to help you?”  He said, “Our ward owes 400 pound of pork meat.  Well what are we going to do?”  Andy said, “Well when are we going to go slaughter that pig I got out there?”  That's what happened.  He slaughtered it, put it on the counter in the store and took care of it and then hauled up to the Bishop's storehouse.

Q:  Do you know where it went from there?

A:  No, I don't know where it went from there.  All I know is that Bishop Perkins was tied, he had to have pork, some meat he was supposed to be supplying.  Dad raised pigs for a while.  He slaughtered them himself.

Q:  That was kind of like the budget assessment.

A:  Yes.  I remember that great big old pig.  I was talking to Eddy about it not too long ago.  I said, “Eddy do you remember coming into Uncle Andy's store and seeing that great big old pig on the counter?”  He said, “Yeah, I do.”  I said, “Do you remember your comment?”  He said “No, I don't”. I said, “Well I'm going to tell you.  You looked at it in an awful way, and looked at it.  Then you said, 'Dad, Dad, what's that horse doing there?'”

Q:  So how much did that pig weigh?

A:  I don't know, but it was a great big old thing.  You couldn't have got him in that corner there.

Q:  Did he weigh four-hundred pounds?

A:  I don't know how much he weighed.

Q:  He helped the Bishop out with his needs.  That's a great story. 

A:  Andy did a lot of things like that.  Because he was always looking for opportunities to do things like that.  He saw opportunity to raise these little pigs, feed them out.  Keep them on the farm, we had that big old farm down there.

Q:  What were your plans and dreams as a young girl or as a young bride for raising your family? 

A:  I can't tell you.  I didn't worry anything.  I just was working on the day.

Q:  You can't remember any specific hope and dreams or fantasies? 

A:  I loved where I was and what I was doing.  I loved my family.  We were busy in the church.

Q:  Didn't you have any imagination at all?

A:  I guess not.  That's an absolute fact, I really don't have much of an imagination.  I don't plan forward.  I was always happy at home.  Dad and I were always happy as we could be.

Q:  How many children did you want to have?

A:  You know I don't even remember.  All of a sudden I had fourteen.

Irene:  She's good at living in the moment.

Q:  You know I remember, I don't know if somebody had made some comment at church or something.  I remember dad getting up in a testimony meeting one day, and I don't remember all that he said, but I do remember this, and this impressed me.  He said “we've got a lot of children, and some people may or may not agree with that.  I want you to know that all of these children, every one of them was invited into our home”.  I want you to know that I was impressed by that.

A:  Well absolutely, and they were.  He meant every word of that.  That's what somebody asked me one day.  “Sister Hancock, why in the world did you have so many children?”  I said, “Well, why not?”  She just looked at me and I said, “You know what?  Heavenly Father kept sending me babies, and I kept accepting them.  That's how I happened to be with them.”

Q:  You told me more than one time that the Lord has really blessed you.

A:  He has.

Q:  With your children when you were young, and you have had a lot of children. He blessed you with three girls at the first so that they could help you take care of all these little kids. Then towards the end when Dad needed some extra help earning your living and working the ranch, and out on these contract jobs you had all these boys at the end of your family.

A:  That's right.  I felt that was a great blessing.

Q:  The Lord planned it that way to help you cope?

A:  Well I accepted it that way. 

Irene:  Well I think he planned it that way to help us learn.  You know it trained us girls.  It trained us how to raise our own children. 

Q:  When you left Clay Springs, why did you decide to move? 

A:  Several reasons.  We were raising three daughter at a very marriageable age.  We were living in a Clay Springs Ward where the majority of that community was somehow related.  We decided to move out, so that our daughters had a good choice.  It thought that was a good idea.

Q:  You moved to Fredonia first.  Why did you move to Fredonia?

A:  Because that was the first stopping place I guess.

A: Course we didn't stay there long.  We moved the 26^th day of December and we were in Roosevelt in the middle of September.

Q:  It seems to me that I heard something about employment prospects or something in Fredonia. 

A: There were two ranches for sale there.  Dad was very interested in one of them, very interested.  We defiantly wanted a ranch.  We had sold our ranches there.  We had the money and we were looking for a little ranch.  That's where we drove and started.  We went to Roosevelt, that’s where we stopped.  That’s the place that we actually wanted. 

Q:  So the place in Fredonia you weren't able to get that?

A:  They would not accept us, the people in Fredonia would not give us the time of day.  They didn't like us moving in there. 

Q:  I graduated from High School there.

A:  I know you did.

Q:  From Fredonia? So you spent a couple months there and graduated?  Didn't know a soul hardly.

Irene:  Yup.

Q:  When we left Clay Springs, the plan was to stay there with Aunt Orfa and Reba, my only cousin until I graduated.  But it didn't work out because I was the loneliest most miserable little girl in my life. 

Q:  You were too use to having all these kids around.

Q:  Because I didn't have my family. 

Q:  So you joined them in Fredonia then.

Q:  I don't know how I got there, I don’t' remember.  I don't know whether dad came back for me or what.

A:  I never regretted moving to Roosevelt.  Labretta said she did.  I never did.  Did you Irene?

Q:  No.

A:  No, I didn't think so.  We had a great fifteen years.

Q:  So you were married in thirty-eight.  You moved to Fredonia in fifty-seven.

Q:  Fifty-seven, that's when I graduated from High School.  In May or June.

Q:  In fifty-seven, so you moved to Fredonia at the end of fifty-six?

A:  Yes.

Q:  Then you moved on to Roosevelt because you couldn't buy the place you were hoping to in Fredonia, and then you bought the little seventy-two acre farm. 

A:  Yes, the little seventy acre place there.  We liked it, the house was already there, available to move into.  

Q:  When you bought it, it was mostly grease wood and sage brush.

A:  That's right.

Irene:  Mom, when we was in Fredonia wasn't dad working in some kind of fruit stand there?

A:  Yeah, he had a business there, he was driving his truck out of Phoenix, he was helping to buy and sell from Phoenix to Fredonia.

Q:  Didn't he have a partner there, Mr. Cluff?  Was that his last name?  His last name was Cluff.

A:  The people were Cluff.  We moved here to Wickenburg because of the Cluffs.

Q:  Same people?

A:  Relatives of them.

Q:  So that's the story.

A:  No that's the beginning.

Q:  I'm going to have Irene answer some questions.  I want to hear, I've just heard bits and pieces of this story.  When we moved to Roosevelt from Fredonia; from Southern Utah, to Northern Utah with all these kids. Tell me about the challenges at school.

Irene:  You mean the challenge I had with the principal.

Q:  Yes, I want to hear your side of the story.

Irene:  I really don't know what happened, but when the bus came home from school.  Labretta was an absolute mess, and my other little brothers and sister were upset.

I:  Well this was in elementary school. I said “What is the matter”?  She told me that they wouldn’t let them eat lunch in the cafeteria, and she was mortified.

Q:  Wait, this was after we all moved to Roosevelt, and all the kids were going to school, you were at home because you had already graduated is that right?

I:  Right, and Mom and Dad were out on a business trip. 

Q:  He was running around driving truck, still making a living. 

I:  At this time they were on a trip, and they were together.  I was so mad that I called the school, and what was his name, Mr. Blake?

Q:  It sounds right, I don't know. 

A:  What did you say?

I:  What was the principal's name of the grade school?  I don't remember, but I was driving.  I had a Driver's License, and I had that old blue Desoto of mom and dad's.  You know mom and dad had the old blue Desoto.  I called him and talked to him and he told them that they didn't pay their lunch money.  And mom and dad probably didn't have the money to give to them then.  There hadn’t been any problem before, they would let them eat and then dad would pay.  Well I went down to the school and gave him the one two.  Labretta was really upset because she had been refused lunch, and that really did upset me.  They did eat until mom and dad got home afterwards.  Do you remember that mom?

A:  Yeah.  Well they thought that everybody there had the…… this is my opinion.  We just moved in there, a big family, into the neighborhood.  Mom and Dad went and left the kids there and were gone several days. They went back to Fredonia.  Fredonia was a Mormon town down here on the north of Arizona see.  There was polygamists down here.

I:  Well I set him straight.

Q:  Did he ask you if we were a polygamist family?

I:  You know, I don't remember.  I was madder than hops, and I don't remember what I said.  I apologized and asked the Lord's forgiveness.  But I was mad that he had hurt my little brothers, actually it was little sisters, because Denny and Levi were not born yet.  It was Labretta, Alvin, Ruby, Cory, and Pam.

I:  The ones that went to school, I was very upset.  Because they were embarrassed, they were hurt, and they were, Labretta especially, she wasn't totally happy to be here in the first place or there.

Q:  And she was being ostracized.

A:  She detested that place till this day.

I:    She never got over that the whole time we were in Roosevelt.

Marty: I remember when I went to elementary school, they never questioned once about our lunch time.  That was years and years later. 

I:  Well there was another incident with the Roosevelt house.  There wasn't anybody else, it was just me.  The furnace was at the end of the hall, you know the long ……hall. I had a date with Kent Brighton, he was a return missionary, do you remember Kent Brighton? 

Greg:  I remember Bruce, Nancy, and Connie.

I:  Kent was Bruce's older brother.  We had no heat; I had my hair all done up in curls and everything. I had it all done in pin curls, and I knelt down in front of the furnace and I was trying to figure the pilot light out.  So I lit that match and I found myself clear down at the kitchen.  With no hair, I took my bobby pins out and it just took the whole curls out. But I still went to that dance with Kent.

Pamela: I was right there with her looking down to see what she was looking at and then boom.

Q:  You didn't cancel your date?

I:  I didn't cancel my date.  I didn’t think it was proper of me to cancel on him at the last minute, but I did tell him about my hair.  He never asked me out again. 

Q:  Well how noble of you to go out on a date anyway.

I:  Well that's the way dad taught us.

Q:  You didn't have any eyebrows or eyelashes I imagine.

Q:  I can imagine a lot of girls that would have broken that date real fast. 

Q:  I hadn't heard that story before.

I:  I was either being honorable or I was desperate.

Q: I like desperate myself; let’s say you were honorable. 

Q:  Well I don't remember that furnace.  When I was old enough to remember, we had the old coal stove up in the family room next to the kitchen.  That was the first heater we had that I recall, and then we eventually brought in that old coal furnace.

Irene: That came from our house in Roosevelt; Bruce installed it and got it working down there, after you finished digging out the basement. Well Louis helped out.  He helped him install.

Q:  That old coal furnace was a beast.  One of my jobs was to crawl into that coal bin and shovel out that hopper full of coal every day.  As often as not I went to school covered in coal dust. I would also dig out the clinker from the burner then put it into a metal bucket and after it cooled then I would take it out to the driveway and find a hole or low spot to put it in.

I:  At one time we had a propane heater.

A:  That was when we first moved there, that didn't last long.  It wasn't safe, and I was afraid it would...

Q:  I remember that old coal stove sitting out right next to the wall in the front room, right outside of the kitchen.

I:  It was propane. 

Marty:  No, this was coal, because I had to bring the coal in.

Q:  We had one that had coal, before or after the propane stove.

I:  Maybe I was married then.

Q:  We were old enough for us to remember, so you had to have been gone.

Q:  This is the one where we had to take the five gallon buckets and fill them up full, and it sure ate the coal.  So we would all get up in the morning, and sit around here, all on top of that furnace.

I:  We had this, the home was beautiful and nice you know, when we moved in there.   We had two nice bathrooms, it had water at that time because the cistern was full, but later on we had no bathrooms.

Q:  We had to haul water in because the pipes were a problem, the cistern, the water pump, things went out.  So we had to start from scratch and rebuild it over the years.

A:  But you know we managed. 

I:  We did, and you know I wouldn’t trade one minute of my life, not one.

Marty:  I remember that old coal stove in winter time in the evening, in the mornings you would get up and get to it as fast as you could, it was cold in that house.  I don't know how many times we would do this, but we would go outside and get cups of snow, put vanilla and sugar on it, we thought we were having ice cream.  Just stir up that snow with a little bit of vanilla and sugar, maybe pour some milk on it too.  We'd sit around the stove eating our snow ice cream.

I:  What good memories we have.  I use to, it was cold in the house, us girls had a bedroom in the back.   When I would go out on my dates, and I would come home, I would wiggle right down in between them.  That was the warmest place. 

Q:  Right in the middle.

I:  Because there was three of us that slept in a bed, I would get between Laverne and Beverly. 

Q:  By then they were warm, and they didn't mind I guess.

I:  They did some of that too.

Q:  Just how cold was it in Roosevelt?

I:  When I came down here, just last week it was seven degrees.

Q:  So it was a might cold at night. 

I:  This morning it was four below. 

Q:  And we think its cold here in Arizona. 

I:  I'm wearing a coat here.

Q:  I remember having a piece of bread and then smelling the vanilla thinking that smelled so good.  I got a piece of bread and I soaked that with vanilla, then I managed to sneak outside and out there I Thought I had a treat. It was so nasty I couldn't eat it.  I learned after that, that you had to put on a lot of sugar and just sprinkles of vanilla to make it work.

Q:  You told Ruby and Tom that your first kiss was when you were about thirteen years old, who was that?

A:  They said what?  I didn't even hear what you said.

Q:  Who did you kiss the first time, and when?

A:  Who did I kiss the first time?  Oh my stars, that's a long ways to go back. 

Q:  You’re avoiding the question.

A:  By the way there's a boy in school and his name is, he was Edgar.

Q:  Edgar?

A:  He went up by me one day and he smacked me on the cheek and I swatted him, and that was it.

Q:  So Edgar ran up and kissed you on the cheek, and you swatted him.  

Q:  How old were you?

A:  I think I was in the sixth grade.

Q:  So about thirteen years old.  The first movie you went to?

A:  The first movie I went to, I entered at contest, the State of Arizona had a picture painting contest, was that Little Woman.  Anyway who ever won the contest, and it was all of the sixth grade kids in the State of Arizona, and I won first place.  I got a book, and I don't know what happened to it.  I don't remember.

Q:  What does that have to do with going to a movie?

A:  Even before we left the valley and moved to Clay Springs, I entered another contest, but it was different it was a picture coloring contest I can't remember what the picture was about.  I think it was Little Women, but I'm not that sure.  We had to write an essay about the damages of smoking, and I wrote that.  I got first place in the sixth grade, and I don’t' know how many kids were in the contest.  So that was it.

Q:  So one of the contests you won had a ticket to the movie theater?

A:  Yeah, and I can't remember which one it was.  I know it was a Fox Theater.  I won it in the Peoria school.  The bus picked me up with one parent, and took me to Phoenix to where the Fox Theater was first opened, first Fox theater.  I watched that.  I can't remember but there was something else.  The man went Ra-ra-boom-di-a.

Q:  So you can't remember.

A:  That was the theme song.

Q:  That was the theme song, you don't remember the name of the movie.  You don't remember the story.

A:  Honey I was just a little girl, I'd never been in the big city.  I did, oh by the way, Papa wouldn't let me go on the bus to Phoenix, he drove me down with Mama, and took me to the door of the theater.  Then they waited until the show was over to pick me up, and take me back home.  From Peoria, from Fox Theater to Peoria school.

Q:  So your parents drove you there, and waited while you went to the movies, because they didn't have the money to go in. 

A:  They didn't have the money, and they wouldn't deprive me of the privilege of going, but they wouldn't let me go alone. 

Q:  Because they were afraid for your safety...

A:  Absolutely, something would happen to one of your kids.

Q:  How old were you about this time?

A:  It was the same time, this was the sixth grade.

Q:  And this was at night

A:  No. That was Saturday afternoon. 

Q:  Saturday, afternoon, and they still wouldn't let you ride the bus.  Protective parents? 

A:  They were, very much so.

Q:  They were very protective until you turned about sixteen, then this older man came along, and they said, “Here.”

Irene: Yeah, but she had to take her sister with her. 

Q:  It wasn't a free ride.  Do you remember anything about the movie.

A:  It was a...

Q:  A silent movie with a soundtrack?

A:  It had a soundtrack, I don't remember the people talking, but I remember the soundtrack.  Who was the guy that made that song.

Q:  I don’t' know, but I can find out.

A:  He was very popular for years. 

Q:  So while we're on that subject.  One time, after we moved to Wickenburg, we went to a film festival that the school was putting on as kind of a community event and we saw a bunch of Laurel and Hardy films, and you and dad came with Marty, Denzlo, Levi and I went to Congress where they had this little community meeting and showed those films.  You told me at that time that dad just loved these movies, Laurel and Hardy.  What kind of movies had dad seen when he was younger?

A:  I have no idea.

Q:  What kind of entertainment privileges did he have?  Do you know anything about that?

A:  Your dad was pretty straight laced.

Q:  Yeah, but still he liked Laurel and Hardy, he must have seen them somewhere. 

A:  Yeah, I guess so, he was a lot further along in worldly things than I was at that age. 

Q:  That's because he was ten years older.  So what kind of preparation did you have for being a wife and mother?

A:  Everyday, we went through the house every day.  I cooked and washed and cleaned, and ironed, took care of the babies.  Momma worked in the garden, she worked in the yard; she worked out in the field with my dad. 

Q:  That's a lot like the way we grew up.

Q:  When you were getting ready to have your first baby, what preparations did you make for that?  Did you make anything special?  Did you make up a nursery, or special area for the baby?

A:  Momma helped me make some baby clothes.  Night gowns, and we made our own diapers too.  We bought the flannel material and cut it out.  All homemade flannel diapers for my babies.  I did that almost to the last ones.  I did that until it got to be too much work to keep up with it, and it was easier to buy them.

Q:  I remember, I can't tell you the details, maybe the girls could help me, but we use to save our old flour sacks.  What did we do with our old flour sacks?

A:  We made dish towels out of them, and we made bed sheets out to them.  We took whatever we needed and sow a big white piece to go on something, we made sheets.  We made our bed sheets out of flour sacks.    

Q:  Was that hard to sleep on sheets with seams in them?

A:  Better than a straw tick.

Q:  Better than a straw tick.

Q:  Better than burlap.

A:  I never did try to make anything out of burlap.  We had to sew tick's together to make a mattress out of.  We'd sew the tick's you know, and stuff it with straw, grass straw, not hay straw.

Q:  So when you were growing up did you sleep on a grass straw tick?  What was your mattress?

A:  I don't remember everything but I'm sure we did a time or too.  The first that I really remember, we were getting ready to leave the valley to move to the mountains.  Papa had a deal, he bargained to clean the cotton up.

Q:  To do the gleaning?

A:  Glean the cotton, to pick the ones that were still there.  We would pick it a stock at a time.  Then he took them to the gin to have it ginned.

Q:  So the gin took out all the seeds.

A:  They kept the seeds as payment.  We had the lint.  I don't remember, I think two mattresses was all that we got out of it.  Mamma and Papa had a new mattress, and I don't remember who else got one.  Then there were another couple of tick's we filled with straw.  That time we did, that man giving the cotton, if we would pick it out of the field.  We did, we went out there with all the pickers in the county that picked the cotton and got paid for it.  We went out and picked what was left.  We made three mattresses. 

Q:  How long did it take you to pick cotton for three mattresses?

A:  I don't remember, but it was several weeks.  We just worked on Saturdays, and after school, things like that.  

Q:  It wasn't like a couple of hours then.

Q: So back to your babies and home with your new family.  What did your babies sleep in?  Did you wrap them up in some blankets in the corner of the room?  Did you have a bed for them?

A:  The best I can remember, mama's older babies slept in the bed with her.  Then papa would make a crib to put beside the bed.  Or make a big crib that two or three could sleep in.  We made our own bed cribs.

Q:  Then for you and dad and your babies, what did you make for your babies?  What did they sleep in?

A:  I remember when we were expecting Irene, your dad somewhere gathered up some rails, about this big, a whole lot of them.  Then somewhere, we got the springs, somebody threw them away or something, give them or bought them at a sale.  So then we build the springs to go over that wooden thing.  We didn't have any slides that went up and down.  We just had to reach over there to get the baby up or down. 

Q:  You built basically a crib.

A:  Yes for the little babies.

Q:  Okay, so dad built a crib for the babies.

A:  I remember that first time with Irene, she was the first one.  He whittled every bit of it with his pocket knife. 

Q:  He whittled out all of the parts of the crib with a pocket knife.  That reminds me, was dad good at throwing a knife and sticking it in the floor of the cabin? 

A:  I don't remember that.  I remember that story, I stepped my foot over the hole.

Q:  Tell us that story.

A:  You've heard it.

Q:  I don't know that I have, but I would like to hear it again.

A:  Somewhere we were goofing around in the house.  We had an old shack we were living in, kind of a ramshackle floor.  Somebody got goofing around, and I guess it was your dad, because he was about that age, showing off.  Throwing the knife at a knot hole.  I can't remember for the life of me how come he was doing that.  He's throwing that and I said something about it, and I set my foot over the top of the hole that had that knot. 

Q:  Well could it possibly be true that he had said something like, “I can put that knife right through that knot hole?”  You said, “I bet you can't.”  then just as you could see him throwing, you put your foot over it so it missed the knot hole.

A:  Very possible, because you know, imagine how you would have felt if you stuck your knife onto your kid's feet?  It wasn't that bad, it wasn't that deep. 

Q:  He didn't get the knife through the knot hole either. 

A:  He didn't get the knife through the knot hole.

Q:  Did dad feel bad?

A:  He cleaned my foot up, and told me how sorry he was. 

Q:  What about the story of milking your cows, and then straining the milk, and leaving a little bit of room in the top of the jar.

A:  I don't remember that Greg.

Q:  Where did that story come from?

A:  I don't remember.  I think they was talking about the cream raising on the milk.  How did the cream rise on the milk.

Q:  You had to leave a little bit of room in the jar for the cream to rise.

A:  I guess, you know really I honestly don't remember.  I remember the story as we told it.

Q:  You get credit for that, whether it was somebody teasing you or not. 

A:  I know I do, I'm sure I do.  It was my foot that knife went through; I know that.

Q:  What was the first job that you had to earn money after you were married.  Did you ever have a job where you had to go to work to earn money?  I know you had the little store in the house in Clay Springs.  But besides that did you ever have to leave the house to go work for somebody else?

A:  I remember one time I hired out to go up on the mountain.  There was a little log cabin up there.  We were living there, there was some people that lived way up in the forest, and they needed some help.  I must have been about twelve or thirteen years old, can't remember.  They come and asked if I would come and help them awhile, help with the cooking.  Mom asked me if I wanted to.  I didn't care if she sent me.  I really wasn't crazy about it.  I didn't need the money.  I went up there and I only stayed two days, and he brought me back home.  Why?  Apparently I didn't do a very good job.  That's the only thing I could figure out.  They said they changed their minds. 

Q:  Maybe they counted their money again, and decided that they didn't have that much to spare.

A:  Maybe they didn't need my help, I don't know.

Q:  Was there other guys up there looking at you, and dad didn't want that?

A:  No, it was just a family that lived up there.  I really don't know much about that.  That was the first.  The next job I guess was when I went down to Snowflake and worked in the cannery.  Where we canned corn.  I would help shuck the corn, and I would help silk the corn, and then put it back and they would turn it into, send it into where it was canned.  I worked there all summer, and payed the taxes on the farm. 

Q:  After you had moved to Roosevelt didn't you work somewhere?

A:  I worked at Casturals', Five and Dime stores.

Q:  What work did you do there?

A:  Clerk.  I would put things out, and help people find things that they wanted.  I didn't work a stand or money or anything like that.  I was just in the back of the store, help keep their place tidied up, kept things where they belonged.  If things needed replenishing, I would do that.  I probably just worked a couple months through the summer. 

Q:  Mama, at that same time were you the Relief Society president too?

A:  No, that was just before.  I was Relief Society president just after that.

Q:  I remember when you worked in...

A:  It was Casturals'.  All I did was keep the shelves supplied, or if she needed an errand run or something.

Q:  So how did that job come about?  Why did you take that job?

A:  Well, because we were going to start the school in the next few weeks, and we had to pay for school.  I needed some money I guess.  I don't remember ever feeling a need for more money or anything. 

Q:  It was in Roosevelt?

A:  It was.

Q:  I was married, and you were trying to earn some extra money to get the kids a new outfit.

A: Outfits to go to school.  I'm sure that was what it was, school clothes for the little kids.

Q:  Okay, so to help get them ready for school.  I keep jumping around a lot, but I keep thinking of things that I would like to know.

A:  But after that I worked at that job, and got you kids in school, I ended up pregnant and I quit work because the next year Denzlo was born.

Q:  Back when Irene was born, do you have any idea, or can you guess what the medical costs for Irene, for the doctor and hospital and those kinds of fees.  What did it cost for a baby back then in 1939?

A:  I remember exactly what it cost when she was born, because we went to the nursing home, I mean maternity home and baby.  Dr. Haywood took my case, He was the only doctor of course.  Dad took me down there and left me.  They delivered the baby and a few weeks later, dad went in to pay the bill he asked the doctor how much he owed him, and he said, “You know, Andy I need some work, will you come and do you want some work?”  He said, “Yeah, I do.”  “Well you pick me up a load of wood and bring it into my home.”  So they cut him up some firewood.  Brought it in and stacked it in his backyard.  They charged us $65 for her hospital, for the doctor and the hospital. 

Q:  So they credited that load of wood for $65, which is pretty expensive for wood back then.  But they credited that for the doctor.

A:  It took a lot of work. 

Q:  That paid the hospital and the doctor's fees?

A:  Yes. 

Q:  So do you think that good doctor took money out of his own pocket to pay the hospitals fee for you?

A:  Knowing Dr. Haywood, no he didn't, I don't think he did. 

 

Q:  It just wasn't that expensive in those days.

A:  It was whatever.

Q:  Yeah, but sixty-five dollars for a load of wood is pretty good credit for a load of wood back in those days.

A:  Well anyway that was what it costs.

Q:  That's great. 

Q:  I want to know, I know she's told me, but I want to know how long were you in labor with me?

Irene:  I went into the hospital at, I don't remember the date or all that.  We left home early in the morning, and I was having labor pains when I got out of bed.  I made arrangements to pack a little bag and everything.  So we went to the doctor's early in the morning.  I went down there and went into the, he had his own little shop there.  I went into the labor room, and I was in hard labor for twelve hours.  I had you that afternoon.

Q:  It was not an easy birth.

A:  It was not an easy birth.  You were coming doubled up, bottom first. 

Q:  Breech.

A:  He worked all day long on me and you trying to keep you straightened out, and inch at a time.  When they got you turned around, they got your feet behind you and you came head first. 

Q:  So they turned me around before I was born, but she had a hard time with me.

A:  No, you didn’t come head first, you came feet first, that’s what it was, feet first. 

Q:  No wonder I was difficult.

A:  Yes, that was very difficult.  That was the most difficult birth I had. 

Q:  Okay, now you claimed earlier that you didn't have any problems with your children until I was born.  But Irene was a real problem when she was born because she came a breech baby.

A:  She was, I didn't have any more from Irene until you.

Q:  Did you have any more complications from when Irene was born?

A:  No, as soon as we got her out everything was great.

Q:  Everything was fine.

Irene:  How was I?

A:  You were just fine, your head was perfect. 

A:  The doctor said you come feet first, it didn't hurt your head a bit. 

Irene:  So what happened with Greg?

A:  Well Greg came feet first too.  He had a little more, not much.  But he had to have some health.  He was fine, except, the Dr. left for Showlow, and about half way there, the nurses called him and told him to come back because we had an emergency.  I was about half dead.

Q:  You were hemorrhaging?

A:  Yes, I was hemorrhaging.  I was bleeding.  You see he had given me one of those needle things you know, a shot.  What was it called.

Q:  A block. 

A:  The doctor didn't pay enough attention, he left too soon. 

Q:  You started bleeding, and you couldn't feel it.

A:  I was bleeding and had gone to sleep.  Well I was exhausted, It was twelve hours.  Soon as he got back, he took over right quick and you sure heard some yelling.  You should have seen somebody moving.  I don't remember much about it, I was out of it.  He told me that I was very fortunate that he got back when he did. 

Q:  When Levi was born in 1962, do you remember what the cost was for a doctor and hospital?

A:  We went into labor, everything was fine, he gave me a spinal, one of those spinals that deadens the spine.  The Dr. said, we've got a problem here, because we don't have a muscle. 

Q:  Let's finish this about Levi.  What did it cost?  You  had the spinal, and do you remember what the bill was for...”

A:  You know Greg, I'm sorry about that, but I thought I saved that bill, and I can't find it.  But it was a hundred and some dollars.  It was a hundred and some dollars for the whole thing. 

Q:  For the doctor and the hospital. 

A:  For the hospital and the doctor.  I had the cashed check.  Remember the night you come to my house in Wickenburg, and I was destroying checks.

Q:  Yeah.

A:  Well I had that check, and I was going to save it for Levi. I don't know what happened to it.  Anyway, it was less than two hundred dollars.  It was almost two hundred, it was over a hundred.

Q:  Nowadays it costs thousands.

A:  Oh thousands, yes.

Q:  Just unbelievably ridiculous.

A:  Absolutely.  So you see when I was having my babies, it was no problem to have all the babies that I wanted, because it didn't cost that much.

Q:  The Lord really blessed us. 

A:  It didn't cost that much and the babies, they were very important.   

Q:  Tell me how you chose the names for your children.

Q:  I was told that I was named after Mark E. Peterson, an apostle.

A:  That what the Mark would have been.

Q:  That's what I was told when he was born.

Q:  Cory was named after Legrand Richards.

A:  He was. 

Q:  And some of the others have been named after apostles. 

A:  Since you mentioned it, I met Mark E. Peterson once.  He was a fantastic apostle. I thought the world of him you know. 

Q:  You told me that when I was young, I know that's what I was named after.  I know that Cory was named after Elder Legrande Richards. 

A:  Yeah.

Q:  But you and dad when you had a new baby did you talk over the names?  Or did you...

A:  Oh yeah.  We'd say, “What are we going to name it?  What are we going to name it?”  I don't remember anything...

Q:  How did my name come up?

A:  I wanted Cynthia, and Daddy insisted on Irene.

Irene:  It was your name!

A:  So that was simple. 

Q:  I love it, it's a great name.

Pamela:  What about my name?

A:  I don't remember Pam, you were kinda down in the middle of the pack.

Greg:  Lost in the middle again.  Pamela Fern.

Pamela:  I know, I've always been lost in the middle. 

A:  Let me tell you, each one of you had a lot of contemplation on them for your names. 

Irene:  I love the name Pamela Fern, I think that's a wonderful name.

Q:  Beautiful name.  But Labretta is the most original to me. 

A:  That's the one your dad came up with, without a word from anybody but himself.  He had a friend that worked up on the job it was an old man, he was quite a bit older than dad.  He was working with him on that job working on building a highway around the dam.  He was talking about just having a new baby and he needed to name it.

Q:  I thought that's when he got in the accident.

A:  So dad carted to the top of the mountain.  He said how he got his name, so dad picked that just right up.  Labretta.  Because this kids dad had come up with it right out of the blue with nobody had ever heard it before. 

Q:  I don't ever hear of it now.

A:  I know it, except that the Hancock's and the Homers have got several of them. 

Q:  They've got their marks on it haven't they?  Well Homers have got the marks on it, all their Labrettas.

A:  Well that’s okay, it's a good name.

Q:  I thought there was a story about daddy being stuck under a truck for hours.

A:  I don't remember that.  But he worked with that man a lot.  He might have spent a lot of time in the truck with this old man.

Q:  But there was a car accident, Daddy was stuck under a truck.

A:  Now that I don't know nothing about. 

Q:  You told me this story.

A:  I don't remember.

Q:  Is it the one up in the Book Cliffs, when you...

Q:  No. 

A:  No, no, no, it was right down by the dam. 

Q:  It was here in Arizona.  You said he had an accident.

A:  I don't remember.

Irene:  Do you remember the story of dad suffering with appendicitis?

A:  Well I didn't know that anybody else knew anything about that.

Q:  Mom, I knew about that.  I remember.

A:  Well you had better tell him the story.

A:  He was driving truck you know, and then he had this last attack.  I was carrying Forrest at the time.   Forrest was a big baby. 

Q:  Well he about died. 

A:  Yeah he did.  We had to rush him.  I got Aunt Orfa to help take me to take dad to the hospital, St. John's. 

Q:  But daddy was so sick for a long time before that.  He just wasn't....

A:  Well he kept having these appendicitis attacks, but he wouldn't go to the doctor.  He wouldn't do anything. 

Q:  Dale told me one time that dad was so sick when he came home from where ever, and he was so sick and Dale had to go get a neighbor to come help give him a blessing. 

A:  Well I'm sure that was Don Jackson.  I'm sure it was Don Jackson that did that.

Q:  Or Ralph.

A:  Ralph Rogers?

Q:  Whoever it was, it was an old guy that walked so slow, that Dale was worried that dad was going to die before he got there.

Q: Ralph Rogers.

A:  That wasn't Don then, it was an old man, what was his name.  He was, and he's the one that blessed Pam.

Q:  He could hardly walk, or walked so slow that Dale just kept worrying about it.

A:  He was an old man.

Q:  Was it Ralph Rogers?

A:  It wasn't Ralph.

Q:  Daddy got so sick, it just worried me to death. He would not go to the doctor before he got a blessing.

A:  Well we had rushed over there and then we got him to the hospital.  Then they saw that his appendix had burst.  Then they had to call Phoenix and send somebody up there with a plane.  There wasn't a doctor between them and St. John's that could do it.  They got him there, and operated on dad.

Q:  So they didn't send the patient to Phoenix, they brought the surgeon to St. John's.

A:  Yes.    

Q:  That's the way they did it in those days, bring them out in their horse and buggies.

Q:  That makes more sense.  Let the patient relax and let the doctor go to the patient.

A:  That's what they did.  They called a specialist out of Phoenix.

Q:  To do the surgery.

A:  To do the surgery.

Q:  To clean up the burst appendix.

A:  He flew up and I don't know where he met him whether it was in Globe or somewhere.  I don't know where.

Irene:  I also remember, that when, the hospital bill came was it was awful.  I know they never told us kids anything.  But I knew that they were worried about paying and getting that hospital bill paid and getting daddy home.  I knew it.  You guys say I worry, well that's where I learned to worry.  But I'll never forget, they passed the hat around in town.

Greg:  The community helped pay?

Irene:  The community, they got that money.

A:  Well I don't remember that.   

Q:  I remember it plain as day.

A:  Do you know who paid the medical bill for that surgery?

Q:  No.

A:  Uncle Lloyd Parker's brother.

Q:  I don't know who, maybe he came and said “Andy, this is from the community.”  I don't know.

A:  He did.  I don't know anything about that, but I know I went to Jim, Jim Parker.  I said “Jim, Andy has just had surgery, and I've got to get him home.  Is there any way that I can make arrangements with you to pay this bill?”.  Because Jim and Dad were close friends and they worked on their way, on the road together you know.  He just wrote a check and handed it to me.

Q:  But I remember this hat and this money.

A:  Well it could have been something because it was, you remember when dad had the wreck down on the highway? 

Q:  Yes.

A:  Well that's where the hat and the money.

Q:  Maybe I got those mixed together.

A:  Yeah, that's where the hat and the money come from.  Because all those guys down there on that Bill's restaurant down on the highway, every time the trucker's from Clay Springs would go down they would stop there.  They were all good buddies.  They were all friends.  Anybody that needed help they would help together.

Q:  Okay, so that's where the hat got passed.

A:  That was all free gratis.  Everybody helped.  This other Jim Parker paid the bill. 

Q:  I just got them crossed Momma.

A:  Your daddy paid the bill as soon as he got back on his feet.

Q:  So tell me about that car wreck that dad was in.  Where was that?

Q:  That's what I was trying to get you to tell about earlier.  You were expecting somebody, and I thought it was Labretta.

A:  I was carrying Labretta, just very early.

Q:  I thought that where daddy came up with the name Labretta.  See I get things confused too.  I was little, not very old, I don't know how old I was.

A:  I have to figure out the difference in your ages.

Q:  Where was this auto mobile accident or this wreck?

A:  Dad was driving truck from Clay Springs to Phoenix.  At this time of the year he was giving the kids a little break you know to give them a turn to go with him on a trip.   It happened to be Laverne's turn to go.  When he got up that morning, his truck was already loaded to go.  He got up and he told me, he said “You know I've changed my mind, you are going to have to tell Laverne that I can't take her this time, that for some reason I feel like she needs to be home with you.”  Okay, so he left.  About mid afternoon I got a phone call, and the Doctor in Holbrook said, “Ruby, Andy is down here in the hospital.”  “What?  He's suppose to be in Phoenix.”   “No, he's down here, he had a wreck this morning.”

Q:  They didn't have cell phones in those days.

A:  So sometime during the week before he loaded this load of lumber, he had loaned his truck to one of his nephews, Uncle Joe's boy, Star.  Star had borrowed it because he had something he needed to do with it. He took it out and did something, messed something up.  Anyway, he broke a brake line.  Jiggled it you know crunched it someway.

Q:  Brake line was damaged.

A:  The brake line was damaged.  He got going on the highway, he got going down that hill.  He knew exactly where he was.

Q:  Which hill?  Where is this road?

A:  What's the name of that, Ransburger?  No, that wasn't Ransburger hill. 

Q:  It was down the Salt River.

A:  It was down the Salt River Canyon, just before he got to the river.  Going from Show Low, just before he got to the river.  There's a big deep canyon there, and there's a big turn in the road.  Dad had lost his brake, he said, “I knew I could never make that turn, I knew I could never make that turn.  Well I was doing it anyway, I had to.”  That was why he didn't take Laverne, because he was impressed to leave the kids at home.  Anyway when he went down that hill, he passed one of his friends, who said, “Oh my word, that's Andy in that truck.”  He got sore you know on stuff and just on down the hill he knew he could never make that with almost a hinge turn.  He had opened the door, put his foot out the door, which was foolish, he would regret it later.

Q:  He was going to...

A: He was going to jump out.

A:  Anyway, later when it was all over, he hit this great huge boulder that was out on the edge of the road.  He hit that boulder and knocked it out into the road, which stopped him, and tore his truck all to pieces, and he was tied up in the truck.  The traffic kept coming and this friend of his said, “Andy is that you?  Andy is that you?”  And he said, “Well yes, get those guys out of here with their cigarettes.”  They were smoking.

Q:  With fuel pouring out.

A:  Anyway, he was tied up, his feet were locked in there around the two pedals.  He couldn’t get them out.  They had a terrible time getting him out of there.  But they did get the traffic stopped.  And I'm sure your dad could tell you how expressly it was because...

Q:  It seems to me that I remember when he was going down the hill he was going to jump out.

A:  He intended to jump out.

Q:  But there were some vehicles in front of him.  He thought, “I can't jump out while this truck his headed for other cars.”

A:  That's right, because he was always thinking about the other guy.

Q:  So he had to stay in the vehicle to keep in control until he got around those other cars.

A:  He got around there, but it just knocked that rock right out there in the middle of the road so nobody could go by then. 

Q:  So that rock stopped the vehicle at the loss of the truck but it most likely saved his life.

A:  About the middle of the afternoon, about five o'clock, later in the afternoon, I got word.  From Holbrook, Dr. Haywood saying, “Andy is down here at the hospital.”

Q:  So they took him in an ambulance from the site of the accident?

A:  He got out of that truck, they worked with him, helping him get his feet loose and get out of the truck, down on the pavement.  Then he had to ask somebody for a ride to Show Low.  Nobody offered him a ride everybody was going on about their business.  But he got to Show Low and Andy knew a man in Show Low there, so he got out of the car and headed for this garage, and the guy said, “Andy is that you?”  He said, “Yeah, could you take me to Holbrook?”  So he slammed him in the car and took him to Holbrook. 

Q:  That was Salt River canyon?

Q:  What injuries did he have?

A:  His face and his chest.  His chest hit the steering wheel, and he had his face broke across here, this bone was broken.  (She's pointing at her cheek bone.)  He split his jaw open here.  (She's pointing to the right over her mouth.)  That was all, except his feet, they were crippled up for quite a while, where they had to pry and dig them out of those pedals. 

Q:  Crippled from when they untangled them from the pedals.

A:  Yeah. 

Q:  Well daddy was laid up for quite a while after that.

A:  Oh yeah, he was a long time laid up because his face was all jammed up.  But you know, I think the biggest thing to come out of it was the truck was completely wrecked.  The insurance on the truck had been canceled just a week before. 

Q:  Of course, that’s what happens with me too.

A:  Anyway, we got about three hundred dollars out of the truck, we sold it.

Q:  And you got the hat passed around.

A:  Yeah, those guys down the hill they were just very, very, very generous.

Irene:  I remember, Momma I must have been only six or seven, but I was so impressed.

A:  You had to have been older than that.  You were going to high school, wasn't you?  You were a freshman. 

Q:  I don't know.  If you was carrying Labretta, what year was she born?

A:  I can't remember. 

Q:  I remember it very plain.  I thought, “My goodness, people are so nice.”

Q:  So I would like you to tell these kids here something unique about me, different about me from all your other children.  What did I do that your other kids didn't do?

Q: Or what should he have done that all your other kids did?

A:  He was just the best little guy you ever did saw, I don't know, you were just one of my kids.

Q:  Did you like him or Uncle Denny better?

A:  Neither one.  I loved them all the same, and you too.

Q:  So when you lived on the ranch in Utah, what was the most common dinner?

Q:  We didn't live on a ranch in Utah, it was a farm.  We had some cattle and sheep, a couple of horses, but it was a farm in Utah.

Q:  When you lived on the farm in Utah what was the favorite dinner.

A:  Did we have a favorite dinner Greg?

Q:  It's a question for you.  What did we eat most of the time?

Q:  Because I've heard stories, and I think he's exaggerating.

Q:  We'd have wheat for breakfast, water for lunch and...

Q:  Barefoot beans for dinner.

Q:  We'd have beans for breakfast, water for lunch, and swell up for dinner.

A:  That sounds about right.

Q:  You guys have got it good.

Q:  Well I believe that, I didn't know you guys had an outhouse until 1970 something?

Q:  We were glad to have it.

Q:  I'm sure. 

A:  You know we did, we were so grateful for everything that we had.  Everything was wonderful.  We all had a family together that loved each other, and we liked to be together.  We always had our meals together, most of the time. Very few without everybody being there. 

Q:  Were there two tables or would you just sit where ever you could? 

A:  We had one big table that we could all fit around.

Q:  The little ones had to wait until somebody got married or went on a mission before we could sit at the table.  We had to stand at the counter with the bread boards pulled out for our plate. 

A:  Maybe that was true.  Maybe I forgot those children, the little ones that had to stand at the bread boards.

Q:  In Clay Springs we had a really long table and we had a...

Q:  Mom, tell a story of when the older kids were young, I don't know, this must have been in the Star Ranch house, but you had a chamber pot in your house and Dale came into your room in the middle of the night to use the bathroom.  Remember that story?

A:  Yes I do, but it was when we were living in Clay Springs and we had the little grocery store.

Q:  Okay, how old was he?

A: I don't know, he was talking really good, and was beginning to grow up a little bit.  He knew when he needed to go potty in the nighttime that he would come into my bedroom because I had one in there and had the little kids come in and use it.  He come in, in a hurry and he started wee weeing and he was missing the pot.  I said, “Dale, Dale, be sure you use the potty.”  “Well whare isit?”  He couldn't find it, it was dark.  We didn't have electricity, we didn't have a lamp turned on. 

Q:  Well he went to the right place.

A:  He knew it was there somewhere, he just kept missing it. 

Q:  Mom, when we had that contract gathering up those cedar posts in the Bookcliff Mountains.  How much time did you spend out there?  You were out there most of the time weren't you?

A: Oh yeah, I was.  Levi was a baby, he was just learning to get around.

Q:  How old was I?  Probably ten or eleven. 

A:  You were ever impatient.  We'd be going somewhere and you would be “Let me out here, and I'll meet you over there.”  You wanted to run over the hill you know.  I was afraid I'd lose him out there. 

Q:  Did you ever lose me?

A:  No.  I did one day.  Your daddy did.

Q:  Tell us about that.

A:  Well it was just at home.  At that time I was working.  I don't know whether it was Greg or if it was Levi.  I think it was Greg, yeah I think it was Greg.  Dad was working in the field, and he was running around the house, he was suppose to be tending him, and I was working in town.  That one short summer I worked in town at Castoros.  Dad came in and he couldn't find him.  He searched, and searched and couldn't find him anywhere.  I don't know how long it took him to find him but he found him.  And where did he find him, do you remember?

Q:  I remember coming back one day and everybody saying, “Where have you been?  We've been looking all over for you.”  I'd fallen asleep out in the field. 

A:  Well I guess that was it then.  He'd gone to sleep and Dad was looking for him, and couldn't find him. 

Q:  I just laid down and fell asleep.  I had quite a sunburn. 

Q:  You didn’t know he was asleep.  You didn't know he was lost.

A:  But he would do that.  He would go off and play. 

Q:  I hadn't wandered away, I just fell asleep.

Q: Tell me the story of, in the Bookcliff Mountains when Marty, Forest, and I stayed there over the weekend and we raced everybody back.

A:  That wasn't the Bookcliff Mountains.

Q:  It was also when we went to Wyoming to build the fence. 

A:  That was when you went up over the Wyoming boarder over there.  You stayed over the weekend.

Q:  I think in Wyoming we just stayed over night.  In the Bookcliff Mountains some of you went to town, and we didn't want to go because we thought you were going to be back in a day or two, we just decided to stay there.

A:  Who was with you?

Q:  It was Forest, Marty, and I.

A:  Forest, Marty, and you.  Well you had a bigger brother with you didn't you?

Q:  Forest was the oldest.  One of the afternoons we were out exploring, we saw bear tracks going up the road you know, close to our camp.   So that night we started telling stories, we scared ourselves with what ifs.

A:  You never found the bear though.

Q:  No, we never found the bear, and he never found us.  The next morning when you came up, Denzlo came running up to our tent, and Marty said, “Don't tell anybody we were scared last night about the bear.”  And Denzlo heard him say that, and he turned around and told everybody that we were real scared last night.

A:  You can easily get messed up with those thing up there.  You know those are just a minimal thing that drift out of your minds eye and you know I forget about them.  Of course little kids they...

Q:  It made an impact on us.  Forest and I, stayed up on top of that bald Mountain.

A:  There at the corner of the states. 

Q:  Building that fence line up there.  It was not winter time, but it got cold up there with the wind blowing over that bald hill.

A:  He's not fibbing, he did it.

Q:  My question is why did he do it?

A:  Now that was my question too.

Q:  If your going to camp out, camp out somewhere where there's trees.

A:  When dad came home without my little boys.  “Why did you leave them up there?”  “They wanted to, I didn't see any reason why they shouldn't.”

Q:  It was either ride in that truck for three hours home in that truck, and three hours back in the back of that truck on the bumpy dirt roads.  We thought it was less pain to stay there.  The next morning we weren't so sure. 

Q:  Yeah, I was going to say, it's a little adventurous.

Q:  Did you have sleeping bags?

Q:  No.

Q:  Didn't you teach your boys anything?

A:  Yeah.  What, do you think I had sleeping bags for all of my kids and they just had to share a blanket?  They could build a campfire and cuddle up there.

Q:  I don't remember how old I was, but when I was pretty young, we had a contest.  We were going to have a family home evening or something was announced that we were going to have a contest, of  who could do the best job of keeping their room clean.  Sometime later Cory was the one that won that prize.  He got a new blanket for his bedroom.  I didn't get one.

A:  Well you didn't keep your room clean.

Q:  Not at any point.  What was the biggest number of kids you had sharing a bedroom?  Five kids all in one bedroom at any point?  Or...

Q:  Three in one bed at one point.

A:  Well probably multiple times, we did have a big house when we moved into Roosevelt.  It was a duplex shoved together to make one house out of two. That's what it was.  There was a kitchen on each end, and a bathroom on each end.  They pushed them together.  That’s why it was big enough for us to live there that whole time. 

Q:  Did you ever have all fourteen kids at home at once?  Or had some grown up and moved away?

A:  No, we had twelve.  Greg, you know.  We lived, how old were you when Denzlo was born?

Q:  Three.

Q:  When we moved there, Greg was the baby. 

A:  Greg was the baby, and I had twelve kids living at home there in the house with us.  We had all those kids.  And we had enough room.  We had about six bedrooms in it.  Then Dad was busy, busy, busy, digging a basement underneath it, down stairs. 

Q:  He didn't do it by himself. 

A:  No.  That’s for sure he didn't do it by himself.

Q:  Did Bruce help with that?

Q:  Well I didn't catch him helping.  That doesn't mean he wasn't there.  I remember going down there with a pick and a shovel, filling up a wheel barrow and taking it out, dumping it outside the house.  Then going again with my pick and shovel.  

Irene:  Sarcastic: Barefoot, with no pants, in the winter.

Q:  No it wasn't in the winter, we did that in the summer time.  But as soon as it was big enough to poor a little concrete, we'd poor a little concrete and that would be our bedrooms.  Then we'd keep digging.    

A: You know, those kids were not mistreated.

Q:  I don't doubt that at all.

Q:  Well let's prove it, tell me what you think; were we mistreated?

A:  We always had plenty to eat and plenty to wear.

Q:  If we ate fast enough. 

A:  When did you ever go to the table and not have enough to eat?

Q:  We always had enough to eat.

Q:  Always lots of beans, right?

A:  We didn't always have everything that we would like to have.  We had enough.

Q:  If we ran out of food at the table...but we had enough. 

Q:  Aunt Pam made a lot of bread.

Q:  We had bread, we had potatoes, we had beans, we had rice.

Q:  We had a garden in the summer.

Q:  We stored flour, we could always bake something. 

A:  Absolutely, even with all that bunch of kids. 

Q:  We might not have got lasagna and all that stuff, but we had food.

Q:  So what prompted the move from Roosevelt down to Wickenburg?

A:  Well, Dad was getting a little older, the kids were growing up quite a bit, and Dad was getting near retiring.  He decided, “I've had enough of this cold weather, I want to move back to Arizona.”  So that's what we did.

Q:  See what Dad did for a living quite often, he would climb those trees, and clear power lines or build corrals, or build fences.

A:  That's what he did for years.

Q:   That's how he made a living.

Q:  In Uintah Basin where Irene lives now, it's cold most of the year.  In the winter time it gets cold and it stays cold for a long time. 

Q:  Right now, Uncle Bob told me that it's up to twenty-four today.  We're having a heat wave.

Q:  And dad made a living out doors.  He had about all he could stand. 

A:  Yeah he did, he had about enough.  A lot of that time, he was climbing those big old trees with a leather belt around him with a chain fastened to the tree.  Sawing those limbs all off.  The clear them off and hook them onto his truck  and drag them off.  That's the way we got our pay check to live on. 

Q:  Decided he had enough climbing trees and enough being cold. 

A:  He got enough of it, that's right.

Q:  So down here did you have cattle and ranch?  What did he do for a living down here?

A:  We moved to the ranch down here.

Q:  So it was pretty much cattle?

A:  Yeah, we bought this big ranch, and rented the pasture out to some guy, where was he?  In Nevada?

Q:  Well we had different people.  We had the Carter's that had their cattle.  Then we had the guy in Kingman who had his cattle.  We had a couple different clients that I remember.

A:  Anyway we had several different herds of cattle on there.  They would pay us so much to let them be there.  Then we'd pay the bill out of it, we were leasing government land.  We didn't own all of it, we had two-hundred and sixty-two acres.  We ended up with this little place up here.  But it's ours, mine, nobody owes a dime.  Nobody's got a claim on it yet. 

Q:  Your still making money off of it though with renters?

A:  Yes, I've got some good renters.  

Q:  Do you remember some of the critters that were brought home?  Tell me about the animals that were brought home from some of your kids.

A:  Animals.  I don't...

Q:  One of the days that I saw disappointment on your face was when I brought a skunk home, do you remember that?

A: No, I remember there were several incidents of skunks around the place. 

Q:  Well probably because I brought them home and they decided it was a good place to hang out. 

Q:  I remember the first time Bruce and I took the kids to visit up there you know, the first thing he did was walk right into a rattlesnake.  You know he was wandering around.

Q:  You mean at the ranch?

Q:  He came back and said, “Get the kids and pack the car, we're going.”  He hated rattlesnakes. 

Q:  Well out there at the ranch, the first year we were there we pretty much filled up a jar full of rattles.  After that we quit killing them, we walked around them. 

A:  We got word that it was against the law to kill a rattlesnake, your not suppose to kill them on the range, in the desert.

Q:  Only if they come up to around your house.

A:  Only if they are around your residence. 

Q:  Out in the wild their protected. 

A:  Not too long ago there was eight of them in my back yard.  (Ruby?)

Q:  I bet there's quite a few stories about when Robert and Wayne stayed with us for a while.

A:  Robert was always hunting for rattlesnakes.  He usually found one.  I remember one day he was out, not to far from the house, I could see.  He climbed up on one of those pack rat nests.  He was climbed up on top of that, he heard a snake around him, he kept hearing it, he kept looking, and looking.  He never could find the snake.  That kid stood there for about as long as he could stand it.  Then he took this big old jump, he said, “I believe I could jump out there that far where there's no snake.”  And he got out of there, but he never did know where the snake was. 

Q:  Right in the nest there probably.

A:  Somewhere where he was standing around. 

Q:  What's the story about Robert?

Q:  He didn't like the raw milk. 

Q:  When he was little he use to call it cow's milk, he didn't like cow's milk.

Q:  So he bought him a quart of milk, or Grandma bought it for him or something in those cartons you know.  He put it in the refrigerator, he kept drinking, and drinking out of that.  And the boys would keep filling it up with cow's milk.  He would just keep drinking out of it.  I asked him about that not too long ago, he said, “You know mom, I just didn't even think about it, I kept kind of wondering how come this milk is never going to go?” 

A:  We had a lot of fun with the kids.  It was so fun to have Robert and Wayne come.  The kids teased them a lot, but they held their own pretty well too. 

Q:  The primary way of earning a living on the ranch was renting the pasture to other ranchers.

A:  Renting the pasture, and of course dad had just signed up, he just got old enough for Social Security.  He signed up for that, and here I had minor children.  He, they all got something.  That was a big help. 

Q:  So we had that income, we had the pasture that we would lease out.

A:  We sold lots of cactus off of the deeded property.  Until Dad and I decided that those men were taking a lot of cactus off of my little bit of deeded acres.  So we quit selling them.  

Q:  People want cactus?

A:  Of yeah, that cactus goes for a good price when you go down to the nursery down town.  That's what they want. 

Q:  My question is why would anyone go to a nursery to buy a cactus?

A:  Because you don't dare to dig one out of the ground.  

Q:  Why would you want one?  That's my real question.

A:  I know.  A lot of people come here from different parts of the world and they've never seen it so. 

Q:  Do you remember that time that Marty went out riding fence and clear out on the west end of the ranch, and didn't come home.  What was that story?

A:  He didn't come home that night.  I never did get what that was worth.  Uncle Stanley sure was excited.  He was scared that we were never going to find Marty.  But Marty came wandering in the next day.  He found somebody up there on the range or on the highway up there.

Q:  He actually got clear on the west end of the ranch, and had ridden so far and the sun went down, and he went to the neighbor ranch house, and that neighbor brought him around.  They put him in the truck and brought him home, and we were still out there looking for him all over the west end of the ranch.  We tracked that horse as far as we could until there was nothing but rocks on the backside of the ranch.  Even tracked over the rocks as far as we could. 

A:  He was just a high school kid you know.

Q:  He was seventeen. 

A:  Had that horse, and she was a pretty good traveler.  He just kept going, and he didn't know where he was going.  Thought he would get back to where he belonged soon, he finally did I guess. 

Q:  Was he out checking the fence?  Making sure that it was all still up?

A:  I don't know, I guess, I don't really know what his purpose was. 

Q:  A big part of our job was to keep the cows in on the ranch.  So when you would ride the fence, and you saw a bad place in it, you would have to stop and repair it. 

A:  So they don't stray.

Q:  So you don't lose the cattle.  That's what they call riding the fence, put some wire on your saddle, and a pair of fence pliers and start riding the fence.  If it's a small repair you fix it.  If it's a big one you make note of where it is and go back with the right equipment and take care of it. 

A:  Find a break in the fence, fix it. 

Q:  We did a lot of that. 

A:  Yeah. 

Q:  So, do you remember the two owls that I had there in Roosevelt? 

A:  I do, but I can't remember the details. 

Q:  Somebody had a hawk too. 

Q:  Well in Roosevelt, Alvin had climbed up one of those big old tall cotton wood trees, clear out by the Brighton's house.  He got two owls then.  I don't think Alvin was living with us at the time, he'd either gone, he was home for that weekend anyway.  He brought those two owls in.

A:  Well Alvin lived with us...

Q:  Alvin and Carol lived there for a short time.

Q:  Okay so maybe he was working or going to school.  So anyway, he turned them over to me.  And so, I'd catch what ever I could, a rabbit or whatever and feed them to those owls.  The first time I was feeding one of those owls, I'd caught a sparrow, and I thought, “How do you feed these owls?”  So I just tied that sparrow in the pin, and just tied, one of those sparrows up to the top of the cage and let it hang there.  I thought, “Well I guess they'll eat that sparrow when they get ready too.”  When I got home from school that night, one of these owls had his head sticking straight up, and had that string going straight down his throat. 

A:  I don't remember that.

Q:  Like fishing line.

Q:  It was just hanging there, so I cut that string off close to his beak, and it went on down.  So they could swallow a pretty good size chuck of meat.  I stoped cutting up meat for them.  When they got big enough, and thought I had fed them for long enough, I took the cage and put it out on top of what we call the barn. The old shed down in the back.  I put the cage on top of that.  Then the mother owl came and fed them the young owls from then on, I didn't have to worry about them.  That mother owl just kept on coming and dropping food on down in the cage there for them. 

A:  Took care of her babies.

Q:  Then after awhile I opened it up and they flew off.  It was kind of fun to just have them there.

A:  There's lots of things that go on I guess, in as big a family as we had that you don't keep track of every one of them. 

Q:  You don't want to know all of it.

A:  That’s right, a lot of them you don't want to know all about.

Q:  Then at the ranch I brought those two hawks and the oldest hawk never did get tame.

A:  I remember the hawks use to come in and I remember watching dad stand out there and feed one of those hawks. 

Q:  That's the one that I tamed.  I brought in two hawks, and again the parent hawk, at least one of them, would come in and nurture those.  So I locked the one up so they couldn't get to him.  The other one I let go, and then I'd shoot rabbits or whatever and I'd feed these hawks.  The one hawks stayed around for years.  I'd whistle to it and it would come to me.  I remember one day I went out and whistled to that hawk, and it came flying at me. I put my arm up and as I raised up my arm I realized my arm was bare, I didn't even have a long sleeved shirt on.  Those talons are sharp.  So just before the hawk got to me I got worried about those sharp talons on my bare arm and moved my arm down. Not knowing where else to go, the hawk landed on my face and when I turned my head in pain the hawk hopped to the ground near my feet. My face was scratched and bleeding.

Q:  He was wondering what in the world happened

Q:  Somebody had a hawk in Roosevelt for a while.

Q:  Alvin probably did, I'm not sure. 

A:  Alvin use to always have stuff around too.  Alvin was great with birds.

Q:  Like what kind of stuff would Alvin always have around? 

A:  Well birds like that.

Q:  Mom, you had a little squirrel in the house too that Alvin brought home. 

Q:  That was an Arizona chipmunk.

Q:  Yeah, but he brought squirrels all the time too.

A:  He brought it from Arizona when he went down to come to school. 

Q:  He and Carol got it down there.

A:  And when he and Carol were married they went down, and brought it back to Roosevelt.  That thing died in my linen closet. 

Q:  That's because the cat had caught it and we made the cat let go of it, and then it disappeared.  We couldn't find out where he went, and it was wounded and died in the closet.  Chiky, wasn't Chiky the name?

Q:  Yeah, and he was so cute.

A:  I guess so, I don't remember too much about it.  I was quite involved I guess.

Q:  You had a free range rodent running around your house, and you were all right with that, called him Chiky.

Q:  I have two lizards right now running around mine. 

A:  Yeah we had a lot of going on around our place at different times.

Q:  During the summer Robert and Wayne spent a lot of time at our place out in Roosevelt.  Robert was always looking for some kind of wild creature.  He started out catching Pollywogs, then he went up to frogs, and always lizards.

A:  Then he got into snakes. 

Q:  Then he got into spiders and snakes.

A:  I don't remember spiders.

Q: We use to find scorpions with him.

Q:  Scorpions yes, but spiders, harmless spiders, scares him to death.  He hates spiders, even just tiny little spiders.  Even like where we live now in the hills, spiders will get in the bathroom during the winter a little bit, and he'll shower.  I can hear him hollering and tearing that shower down. 

A:  Well never the less, our family had a lot of fun.  Had a lot of strange, maybe, ideas but I don't know.

Q:  Dad mentioned a story once, and I think the end of the story had you and grandpa driving up to the house as the front window was broken.  Do you remember anything about that?

A:  I don't know. 

Q:  I wasn't involved in that story but...

Q:  I thought you ducked, or was that one of the other brothers that ducked.

Q:  No it wasn't me.  Irene, Labretta...

Q:  I wasn't me, I was gone.  I think it was Ruby, she threw something, and somebody ducked, and it was her fault, his fault because he ducked.

A:  I don't remember all this.  Can you imagine how I'd been if I knew all that?

Q:  When Ruby tells that story, she said daddy was all over her, and she said, “It was not my fault because he ducked.”  Was it Alvin, or Marty?

Q:  It was one of the older kids, I remember that anyway.  But I remember that great big front window we had in Roosevelt.  If we were in the house and we saw the car pull in, and we were suppose to be doing chores, we'd duck down and run out that back door as quick as we can.  Try to get out of there before somebody found out we were in the house instead of out doing our chores. 

Q:  I might add, when we lived in Clay Springs, we had our home, you could see clear over by Ben Perkins, the Bishop's house.  Ben Perkins' house and part of the road.  We always had somebody out there watching to see if they could see mama and daddy coming, or daddy coming, or whoever.  And when they saw that truck, that house was in ship shape before they got home.  We had time to get it all spiffy. 

A:  It was very fun, a very interesting life.  To expect me to remember all that...

Q:  Well in Roosevelt, in the mornings, on school days in the mornings when it got close to time for the bus we would post a lookout, somebody watching for the school bus.

A:  From the west window, you could see the bus just as it came down the hill and we would know we had two minutes to get out to the highway.

Q:  You could see it coming over the hill form Myton.  As you see it coming down the hill you could tell it was a school bus.  That was probably two miles away. A long ways away, you could see the bus and know you had just that much time to finish our breakfast and head out to the bus.

Q:  When we'd come from Salt Lake, after we moved to Salt Lake and would come to Roosevelt, at least with our kids, they would start right at the top of the hill just as soon as they saw the house, “I see Grandma's house, I see Grandma's house.”  All the way in.

Q:  Do you remember when I rode the horse out down to Ioka and Levi was ridding on behind me?  The horse jumped out from under Levi when a truck went by and spooked him? 

A:  No, I don't remember.

Q:  Levi was left hanging in the air when the horse jumped out from under him and he got his face all scratched up.  It was a Sunday afternoon.

A:  Was it at Roosevelt?

Q:  Yeah. 

A:  My goodness, I could have lost a boy there.

Q:  Probably were a lot more times than that you could have lost a boy.

Q:  Well ask Aunt Labretta about the time she about ran over Levi.

Q:  Tell us that story.

A:  She ran over him with a pick up.  No she didn't, she backed over him, and the front wheel as she went back slid off of his hip here you know.  She was pretty scared and he was yelling pretty loud and she got out and found him.  She was sure she ran completely over that baby and she picked him up and wrapped him up in her arms and come running to me.  “Momma, I ran over Levi.”

Q:  It was a close call.  She tears up when she tells that story. 

A:  She pulled a couple of bad stunts with Levi when she was driving.  When somebody was working down in the Saint George area.  Dad was working down there and we went down and spent the weekend.  She was driving, we had the big old Station Wagon, she was just learning to drive.  She had Levi standing up in the back seat, I don't know what other kids were doing, Levi was a baby.  She pulled forward shoved her breaks on and slammed him down, he hit his head on one of those can openers you know with the sharp point.  Split his head open here.  We had to take him in to Hurricane to get him sewed up .  The doctor said, “I'm not going to try to deaden that to sew it up, bring him here, I'll sew him up.”    I had to stand there holding that baby screaming while he stitched that, with I don't know whether it was stitches or clamps or whatever.

Q:  It was probably just the regular stitches.

A:  It was just one of those bars that are used to open those bottles with.

A:  Levi’s still got that scar on the top of his head.  I'm sure he'll show it to you.

Q:  In those days they didn't require car seats.

A:  I raised all my kids without a car seat. In those days you didn't know what a car seat was. 

Q:  I didn't get to sit on a seat in a vehicle until I was fourteen. I would ride in the back of a pickup truck or have to sit on somebody's lap. 

A:  Well Greg you stinker, we had the great big old station wagon. 

Q:  Anytime we would go out on a job or anything we always went out in the truck, and I was always in the back of it. 

A:  I'm sure, I'm sure you had a lot of experiences, I know I did.

Q:  Do you remember that first winter we moved to the ranch. It was probably in January, because we'd only been there a short time.  We had decided early that we were going to go out and build some fence or something.  We headed out in the truck, and the wind was blowing, and it was sleeting. The freezing rain was just as cold as it could be for Arizona.  We headed out there and the truck stopped.  Denzlo, Levi, and I were in the back of the truck shivering and trying to figure out what we were going to do to survive for the rest of the day.  Dad stopped and got out of the truck and looked up at us and said, “This is Arizona, we don't have to work in weather like this.”  He got back in the truck, and drove home.  We were so excited but could hardly believe it at the same time. I could never recall work being called off on account of the weather before. 

A:   This is Arizona; we don't have to work in weather like this.  That was a good thing.

Q:  It was just so uncharacteristic of dad.  We thought, “Wow, this is great.”

A:  We don't have to get out in this storm.

Q:  You grew up in Glendale right?

A:  Well I was born in Glendale, but I grew up all around that circle there where the school was.

Q:  How much school did you go to?

A:   Through the eight grade.  I didn't do it all there, the last two years I went up to Clay Springs and did it up there at Airpine, a country school. 

Q:  Do you know how much school Grandpa went to?

A:  He went through about the same as I did, only he got a few more grade of Seminary because he went to Seminary without going to school.  The Seminary he wanted to go to, but he didn't want to go to school.  But he didn't go any farther than the eight grade. 

Q:  I was just asking about how much school you did.

A:  Now you understand why I'm not very bright.

Q:  Who said you weren't bright? 

Q:  Do you remember the story that Dad told, I've heard it a couple times, but it's been years.  Dad said that he was at school, and a cow came by and the window was open, and the cow bellowed and the teacher looked up and said, “Andy!”  The teacher thought dad was making noises, but it was the cow.

A:  I don't remember that story but I know he loved to pull stunts like that. 

 

Q:  Uncle Lee and Aunt Evy. She was quite a bit taller than him wasn't she.  She walked with a limp.

A:  She had a lame hip.

Q:  From a broken hip.  But he was much shorter, when I knew him, he was an older man and bent over some.

 A:  He wasn't very tall.

Q:  Your brother Tex use to sing that song,My Mother was a lady, and that's how you learned it?

A:  Well I guess so, because it was in the family you know, and he use to sing a little bit.  He wasn't very bold about it.  He liked to sing, and eventually started drinking, and then he was a mess.  He was my brother, I loved him dearly, but he was pathetic.

Q:  Well it seems like he was a...

A:  He would come to our house, when he had two teenage boys, in Clay Springs, more than once I'm sure, and brought his wife to visit with me.  Momma and Papa lived on the ranch at that time.  That’s the only time that he'd come back there.  When we first moved on this place he'd come out there an stayed a few days, and I remembered we had a little tiny bedroom in the back (she was pointing to a painting of a cabin haning on her wall), and we had to share that bedroom, me, Pauline, and him.

Q:  When he came back to visit?

A:  Well he was visiting there you know, he was our older brother. I remember that.  I loved Tex, I knew him when he was kind of an ornery little character because I had some black friends and he would run them off every time he'd see them.  He'd find a snake or a toad and chase after them because he didn't want them there.

Q:  That back room, the door on the left, that was your bedroom?

A:  Yeah, the door on the left.  It originally had a partition in it and the other end of the room was the kitchen.  When we moved there, after a while I had to be with Tex out there, because I remember Pauline and I sleeping in one end of that room and him in the other.  I mean this room was divided off into a little room and he had a bed on one side and we had our double bed on the other side.  When he left Papa just took the division out and made the whole room kitchen you know, because Pauline and I were upstairs in the loft, the little boys did to.  So five of us kids lived in the loft of the main room ceiling. 

Q:  Now how much older was Tex than you?

A:  I think he was about ten years older than me, I'm not sure. 

Q:  Tell me about your older brother.  When did he leave home?

A:  When he got up to the eighth grade I think.  I remember my mother, I don't remember ever having him live at home.

Q:  He just took off down the road?

A:  No they lived down in the valley somewhere.  He was going to school, but I think when he made the eighth grade and got out of it I think that's when he quit and joined the National Guard or something. 

Q:  Was it Military or was it Peace Corp?

A:  No, I think it was the National Guard, I'm not sure.  When I grew up he left home, he had a job as a truck driver and he was named Buck, Buck was who he was Buck Johnson.

Q:  So he was Uncle Buck.

A:  Uncle Buck, but his name was Goey Ralph.  I call him that now because I've got a picture of him, and Dustin looks so much like him I can't believe it. 

Q:  Dustin Hancock looks like Uncle Buck.  You've told some stories about Uncle Buck, I can't remember specifics.

A:  He was kind of a wanderer, he would come home and he would do anything in the world for Mom and Papa, but I think he left home because he was afraid his Dad would chance on him for quitting school and he didn't want to go to school, he wanted to get a job.  I don't remember, I wasn't familiar enough with the family at that time, I was just such a little girl, because he wanted to be on his own.  Then he got married before he was old enough to move hardly, I don't know when he was first married. That was my oldest brother.

Q:  Besides possibly joining the military or National Guard or whatever it was, what did he end up doing for a living?

A:  He was a truck driver.  He drove for Alabama, in Phoenix, the trucking company.  He drove for Alabama for years and years and years.

Q:  It was a local delivery service, it wasn't cross country. 

A:  Yeah, I think he drove over the road a lot too, but I don't know too much about it.  Anyway he drove, he was an Alabama truck driver. 

Q:  What story about him stands out in your mind that you know or you heard about?

A:  Not anything really except that every time he'd come home he would pick Daddy up and haul him around in his arms, he was such a big old husky guy.

Q:  That was when your dad was sick?

A:  My dad was, you see how little he is.  He use to pick him up, play with him a little while, and set him down. I think he was kind of ashamed of the way he treated his dad when he left.  He would try to be a good friend to him when he came back.  Anyway he got married and had a family, he had five kids.  The're all gone, except one, she's down here in the valley, we're trying to make up with her.  I finally caught up with her, found out where she was and Laverne and I talked to her last Easter, she come to the Easter picnic last year.  I asked her, I said, “Eleanor, we're so glad you come, we've missed you for all these years, we're glad you come.”  She said, “You know Ruby, I'm glad I came too, and I won't miss any more of them.”  She's very timid, and very backward.

Q:  That's cousin Eleanor?

A:  Yeah, and she's the only one of his children from his first wife, and she's dead too, they divorced before she died.  He buried Aunt Viola. 

Q:  You next brother is William Hurbert.

A:  That's Uncle Bud, Aunt Dee's husband.  You remember Wayne and he had three, Larry, Wayne, and the youngest one he still calls me.  I can't remember.  They're still alive.  Larry his gone, he died right after his mom and dad did, the oldest one.  He never did marry, he wasn't up and coming much, he just went on his own thing.  We never did know him very well because when he grew up he just took off there in Phoenix and did his own thing because they lived right in Phoenix.   

A:  Bud, he grew up in California, they all left here except Bud.  Tex and Bud went to California as soon as they got out of school, and went to work in the fruit fields for there was always work they could find there.  They had to pick cotton here, and they didn't like it, my dad was a farm laborer and he worked on farms.  They just up and left.

Q:  They didn't want to be a cotton picker all their lives?

A:  No they didn't and they moved to California, and they all eventually moved back to Arizona.

Q:  When they moved how old were they?

A:  They were just barely getting into the teenage years I think.  Because it seemed to me like they were so, Momma lost her older boys when they were just kids.  They didn't want to work with their dad in the field.  I'm assuming this, I never heard anything, but they got up and left, because that was the age when the hobos were so thick and everybody was catching the railroads and going and coming.  Well Tex, not Bud, I don't think Bud ever got into it, but Tex got on the railroad and he went, I don't know where.  Sometimes we wouldn't have any idea where he was.  But they finally came back home and then went back to California and settled down. 

Q:  Your oldest brother Buck was born in Mississippi county in Arkansas, then Bud, Jessie and Mary Grace were born in Missouri too.

A:  Where was Mary Grace? 

Q:  It says Missouri here.

A:  Missouri, okay, well she was buried here over in California I think. 

Q:  According to this record here, your parents had four little kids when they moved out west. 

A:  Uncle Luther, Papa's brother, had come ahead of Papa because he wanted to come to the west.  He brought his wife, because his wife was the sister to Mama.  Papa and Uncle Luther married sisters.  Uncle Luther moved west and then coaxed Forrest, his brother to move out here. 

Q:  Do you think his wife also wanted her sister out there?

A:  I guess so.  But when he got there, Uncle Luther was a conductor on a street car in the city, and Papa wanted nothing to do with that.  So he moved out to the western part of California, Imperial Valley, where there was a farm.  Then he went to work on the farm. 

Q:  What kind of farm labor did he do there?

A:  I guess cotton and whatever. 

Q:  Jessie was born in 1908, Mary was born in 1911.  Tell me about Jessie Agatha.

A:  Jessie Agatha was my sister, and Mary Grace was the baby that died.

Q:  Okay, but Jessie, tell me about her.

A:  She was the oldest girl, and she, there's not much about Jessie she left home quite young and got married.  Then she come back home because she was married and it wasn't any good.

Q:  So did she get married while you were still living down here in the valley?

A:  I don't know, doesn't it say where she was married?

Q:  Well it says here she married Orville Craig.

A:  That was her second husband.  She married a guy, I don't think he's even in there, I don't remember his name.  But she divorced him and then she married Orville Craig.  But she never had any children, and they lived together quite a while.

Q:  When she came back to live with you, did she come back to Clay Springs or was it down in the valley? 

A:  No it was down in the valley.  We moved from one place to the other in the valley so much.

Q:  So she did get married before you moved up on the hill then.

A:  Oh yeah, they were married a long time before we moved up there. 

Q:  Okay, any stories about here.

A:  I don't know whether Jessie got married before they left California and moved to the valley.  They moved to the valley in 1916, to Tempe in that area. That's where Mildred was born.  Joy was born in Imperial Valley.

Q:  One at time.  Any stories about Jessie.

A:  No except that she was a very unhappy girl.  She got married once, then divorced, then she got married again, and she never did have any children.  She smoked up a storm, and wasn't very happy with the way Mama and Papa thought of it.  She was just not very happy.  But she never had a child.  In later years when I was growing up, when I was a teenager, I loved her to pieces.  She took such good care of me. 

Q:  So you would go to her place and spend time with her?

A:  Yeah, I lived with her for a while because she was very ill.  She finally died with colon cancer. 

Q:  Where did you live with her?

A:  In the valley, different places where they would live.  We moved from here to there, sometimes we'd get moved and then have to move somewhere else where we were going to work.  That's what my dad did, he was a farm laborer when he would get a job that's where we would move to.  Because they were suppose to furnish housing for their workers.

Q:   What would you do with Jessie when you would go spend time with her?

A:  She had married Bud Craig, and he was working for the railroad, and I went up and lived with her and they were working  on the extra chain gang as a workers, they had called in, not regular work for the railroad all the time, but they needed help so they called these people in.

Q:  Temporary labor.

A:  Yeah.  That's where we'd go, and I did that for quite a while.  Then I got tired of that, she didn't need me anymore, so I'd come back to Mama's.

Q:  She had cancer when you were staying with her?

A:  I don't think so, she was just ill all the time.  She needed help, and I helped her, but I never did know what was wrong with here.  I knew, I found out later, much later that that's why she died was colon cancer, but it was several years later.  

Q:  She was forty when she died, it looks like.  Born in 1908, and died in 1948.

A:  They were very happy you know, he remarried after she died.  Jessie and Bug Craig, they were people that traveled.  They come from back in Missouri somewhere, but they traveled around to different places.  I think they caught the train or something, I don't know.  But her husband, and his dad were both musicians, and we loved that, we had a lot of music around.  Bud Craig could play the violin like you couldn't believe it.  We always enjoyed having them come to our house.  He played and the kids would sing along, we enjoyed that.  He never had a child, I mean until he remarried, then he had two children. I don't know anything about those.

Q:  Tell me about Mary Grace, she died as a child.

A:  She died as a child, just ten days old.  She had measles when she was born and never overcame it.  She died in ten days.  She was ten days old, Mama said.

Q:  Was that quite common in those days to lose children to Measles or childhood diseases?

A:  You know I don't remember, but I'm thinking it must be, because in an earlier book the lists, my Grandmother lost four children within two months, and it didn't say what for.

Q:  Which Grandmother?

A:  My mother's mother.

Q:  Whose your mother's mother?

A:  Jessie Johnson's wife was my mother's mother.  Mama was named Johnson before she married Papa.

Q:  So Harriet Caroline Weir, she lost four children.

A:  Harriet Caroline Weir, she lost four children.

Q:  That was probably measles or smallpox or something your not sure?

A:  I know that from the book.  It was just some kind of a thing that went on that year, I don't know. 

Q:  It says Ruby, Jessie, Verde, and Gladys all passed away.

A:   Ruby was ten years old when she died I think.

Q:  Ruby died in November 10^th of 1900, Jessie died October 16^th 1900, Verde died October 21^st of 1900.  Those three. 

A:  That one baby was the only one that mother lost.  Mother raised all of her children, and lost the one at ten days old.  She raised eleven of us to maturity.    

Q:  Willmar Luther.

A:  That's Tex.

Q:  Uncle Tex was born in 1912, and he was the first one born in California.  What can you tell me about Uncle Tex?

A:  We moved to Arizona, and as soon as he was old enough to run away from home he went back to California.  He had a friend there in Peoria, I guess they were both scoundrels because they both ran away together.  I don't remember, I was just quite small.  What year was that?

Q:  You know he was born in 1912, I doesn't say here when he left.  You told me once that he was probably twelve or thirteen. 

A:  He probably was when he ran away, and hopped a freight train with a friend of his. 

Q:  That doesn't mean he was a scoundrel.

Q:  He was using his resources.

A:  Well I guess he was a roustabout.  No he was really a good boy.

Q:  He wasn't a trouble maker, he just took advantage of an opportunity to get away.

A:  He wanted to see the world, and see what was going on.

Q:  He didn't want to pick cotton.

A:  He didn't want to pick cotton, didn't want to work in a cotton field with his dad. 

Q:  So what's your earliest memory of Uncle Tex.

A:  Him chasing those little black girls.

Q:  Tell me a little bit more about that.

A:  Every time he'd come home from school or anywhere they would be there.

Q:  How old were you then?

A:  Before I started school.

Q:  So just four or five years old then.

A:  Yeah, and these two little black girls were friends.  They lived there on the place picking cotton I guess.     

Q:  Family members of other farm laborers.

A:  I guess, all I remember is that they were little girls.  We just played.  Tex, every time he'd see one of them he would grab a hoe handle, or a shovel handle and start running on the ground like it was a snake or something and come and say watch out watch out.  They would run for home as hard as they can go.  Mama would scold him, “Tex quit tantalizing those little girls, they're not hurting you.”  Anyway they were black and he didn't like them.

Q:  And do you think that's why he did it, because they were black?

A:  I don't think so, I think it was just because they were girls, somebody to run from him.  Because we had black people all around, there was a lot of black people in Arizona, when we were living there, just like there is now.

Q:  Uncle Tex was born in 1912 you were born in 1921, he was nine years older than you.

A:  I knew it was something like that. 

Q:  He didn't want to be a farmer so he took off on the freight train.

A:  I guess, he took off with his friend of his.  He hopped a freight train right there in Glendale and took off in the middle of the night.  I don't know how long he was gone, but I know my mom and dad sure suffered over it, was so glad when they came home and then they got a hold of him.  I don't know anything about what went on, or about punishment or if he got any punishment, I don't know.  He did that two or three times.  Then finally when he got old enough to have a little bit more common sense or responsibility he went to California and got a job and went to work, met a girl and got married.

Q:  Made something out of himself.

A:  Yeah he did.

Q:  But you told me that Uncle Tex brought you to California with him once.

A:  He did, he come to Arizona to visit, he brought a friend of his, I remember Larry Bones, he come with Tex several different years to visit us in Arizona.  The two of them asked Mama if I could go, that they would like to take me to Aunt Grace's.  He was living with Aunt Grace, Mama's sister that was married to Uncle Luther.  Uncle Luther had died by that time, and she was a widow, and working.  Tex stayed with her and paid board to her.  

Q:  He lived again with Uncle Luther and Aunt Grace.

A:  Uncle Luther was my dad's brother. 

Q:  So the uncle that had brought your family out west, he stayed with them for a while. 

A:  Uncle Luther had passed away and Aunt Grace was a widow when Tex had come. 

Q:  Do you think that Aunt Grace facilitated Uncle Tex running away from home?  Did she provided him a place to live in California when he got there?

A:  I think so. 

Q:  She provided him an escape?

A:  Aunt Grace loved Tex like her own son you know.  She didn't have a son, she only had one little girl. 

Q:  So it was nice to have someone come and stay. 

A:  Yeah, but Tex lived there with her and took care of her and did things that young men could do that she couldn't do herself. 

Q:  By then Uncle Luther had passed away?

A:  Uncle Luther had passed away before that.

Q:  What caused him to die?

A:  He was a conductor on a streetcar and he just had a heart attack one day on the job and passed away.  That's what they said at home to Papa in Arizona.  I know Papa and Mama come over for the funeral, I don't know how they got there. 

Q. When you went to California you stayed with Aunt Grace? 

A:  Aunt Grace, and my brother, Uncle Tex. 

Q:  What did you do there? 

A:  Oh, what do kids do?  I don't know, nothing especially.  I know, Uncle Lance from Northern California worked up there, I don't know what the name of the city was, but he come down and got me and took me up to his house.  He had a daughter and three sons.  I stayed with them a couple of weeks.  Those two boys were just a little bit older than me, they had a ball trying to terrorize me, and they terrorized me alright.  

Q:  In what ways?  What did they do?

A:  The first thing they did was they took me on one of those big old roller coasters.  I thought I was going to die for sure. 

Q:  You went to an amusement park?

A:  I did.  I went to an amusement park with those two cousins of mine.  They just had a ball, but they didn't get the response that they thought they were because I didn't scream and yell, I just turned pale, and grabbed on, I shook, and I shook they didn't get a word out of me.

Q:  Was this a roller coaster or a ferris wheel?

A:  A roller coaster.  It went up up up up, and dived down into the ocean.  It scared the daylight out of me.  I never got on another one.  They just had a ball, and you know they were so good to me, they took me out to a movie and different things you know and showed me a good time.  They never abused me in any way except that way.  They wanted to hear me scream and yell, and I didn't.  I was too scared, I couldn't open my mouth.   

Q:  How did you get back home?

A:  I visited with them, and they wrote me letters over the years when I was growing up.  I lost track of them after I got married you know, they were still living in California.

Q:  So how did you get back to Arizona?

A:  Tex had to wait different times to buy my railroad ticket a portion at a time.  First one he bought to Yuma and I went to Aunt Blanche's.  He put me on the train, and called aunt Blanche and said that I was coming at such and such a time, and to pick me up, and she did.  That's mama's sister, Blanche, she lived in Yuma.  I stayed there I don't know how long.  The next time Tex had enough money, he bought me a ticket from Yuma to Phoenix.  Then they put me on the train and sent me to Phoenix.  Bud and Lee picked me up, there were living in Phoenix at that time.  Uncle Bud and Aunt Lee, they were picking cotton there somewhere in Phoenix.  Then from there, Tex finally sent them a little bit of money to pay for my trip form Phoenix to Holbrook.  That's how I got home.  I just went on four different trips.

Q:  So when you got to Holbrook, how did you get back to your house?

A:  When I got to Holbrook, it was in the middle of the night, and I was scared to death.  I got off of at the railroad depot, and I went in, I was scared to death, it was the middle of the night.  I talked to the man there, he said, “Young lady, what are you doing here?”  I told him I was suppose to catch the mail car the next morning to Airpine.  He said, “well, it's a long time.  You stay right in this office with me and don't go out there in that place where all those people are coming and going, and Indians and Mexicans.”  And so I did, I sat right there and I don't know what time of morning it was, but it was early and I was there probably two or three hours before the mail car come to pick up the mail there.  Then he put me on it, and I went home.  It took me to Airpine where we lived just across the street.

Q:  Was it a pick up truck or a car or...

A:  It was a pick up truck, I rode with the driver of the mail truck.  They made arrangements of that before, so that they could get me home that way.  As far as I know, I'm the only one of the kids that ever did that.  Joy went with her Uncle Charlis one time, but he was a detective, not a real...

Q:  A safety officer.

A: Yeah, but he come back and forth from Phoenix.  She just went from home to Phoenix, and I went from here to L.A.          

Q:  I'm not sure what the Arizona Department of Public Safety use to be...

A:  I'm not sure, but I think he, if I can think of it, these guys that are around here that are not sheriff’s, but they're...

Q:  DPS officers.

A:  Yeah.  I was safe, they knew that I would be taken care of.  Then of course the mail driver I got in the car with him at Holbrook. 

Q:  And from Airpine you walked home?

A:  Well I don't now, I expect Papa was there to meet me, I don’t' know.  It was just a half a mile or so. 

Q:  What did Uncle Tex end up doing for a living?

A:  I can't remember, because he lived years after he couldn't work.  He was a truck driver, my brother's were always truck drivers, until he got too sick to work.  Then he was just home, and she worked, until he died.  I don't know what he did, but he did have a nice job.  I know he was driving truck for somebody sometimes, I don’t' know for what.  I never went around where his work was or anything you know. 

Q:  The next is Hazel Joyce, and that's Aunt Joy.  She was born in Imperial County, California.

A:  She's just older than Mildred.  She was born in California. 

Q:  What do you remember about Aunt Joy?

A:  Well she was my big sister, and all I remember, when I started school we went and lived down in Buckeye, and by the way, the school is still there, I've showed it to half a dozen of the kids.  Anyway, she was in eight grade I think when I was only in first grade.  I had kind of a hard time when I started school, the teachers didn't like me and a little black girl, she sat right behind me and was always causing trouble with me and telling the teacher things that I had done, that I had stole something from her.  I just had a terrible time, but I finally got through that year and went on, and we moved back over to Glendale, in that Maryville area down here in Phoenix.  The second half of the first grade, I went to school there.  Where Joy was, she worked in the cafeteria at noon time.  I would always run up and peek through the door at her.  She'd come and bring me something so I'd wander away for awhile.  Just like a little sister will do you know.

Q:  So Joy worked in the cafeteria at the school in Buckeye.

A:  The Liberty School in Buckeye.

Q:  When you moved over to Maryville...

A:  I don't remember because it was after Christmas you know, and the second half of the year.  I don't remember what went on there.  I just remember being there, and then we moved to Peoria.  I went to the rest of school in Peoria until we moved into the mountains.

Q:  Did you have any more discipline problems at school?

A:  No I didn't, but I did have trouble at the first school, that little black girl was always making trouble.

Q:  Tell me that story.

A:  She was always telling the teacher that I stole something from her, and I would always say, “No, I didn't do that”.  But the teacher would always listen to her.  I don't remember exactly what happened, but the teacher was threatening me some way, and I told her, “Well I'm not going to do it.”  So she took her paddle and she paddled me twice.  I got a paddling in the first grade, first year of school.  It wasn't my fault, I didn't do it, I didn't do anything wrong.         

Q:  Tell that story where this girl had taken some candy and took it out of her mouth and put it in your desk where the teacher found it.

A:  Yeah, that was about that.  See, and I don't know why all that nonsense went on. 

Q:  Learning experiences I guess.  Any other experiences about Aunt Joy that stand out from your childhood?

A:  Aunt Joy was just a joy, she did everything for me that she possibly could, I was her little sister you know.  Mildred was older, Mildred was next to Joy.  I was the little girl, Pauline hadn't come along yet.

Q:  On moving day when you moved from Glendale on up to the valley, and Uncle Nelson rode the vehicle clear out into the desert just to be with Joy for a while.

A:  That's when we left Phoenix and were headed for Clay Springs.  That's when that was.  He rode on that truck until we got to, I don't know where, it was somewhere in the desert, but then he had to walk back, hitch a ride, thumb a ride back.  But then he come back up.  They ended up getting married in October after that up at Airpine.

Q:  So he came all the way up there to court her, to claim his bride.  What was he doing for a living, Uncle Nelson? 

A:  Yup.  He was just so in love with her, that he just hung around, and he come up two or three times during the summers.  We left Phoenix over there, I can't remember exactly, but it was the first few days of June 1935, and he come up there, and in October I think is when they got married.

Q:  They were married the seventh of October in thirty-four.

A:  Yeah, that's when it was, the next October, I guess or the next year, maybe it waited a year, I don't remember.  It must have been, because I think it must have only been thirty-five when we left. 

Q:  So Aunt Joy was nineteen when they got married.  So she lived up with you for a short time up in the...

A:  Well she lived there through the summer and he kept coming.

Q:  Then they got married.

A:  Yeah.

Q:  Then Aunt Mildred Blanche.

A:  That's Aunt Mildred that you knew over here.

Q:  She married Lloyd Parker there, in December 1934.  Tell me some stories about Mildred when you were young.  What did you do together?

A:  She was always getting me in trouble.  No she wasn't really doing that, but she was always doing things that she wasn't suppose to be doing, and then telling me about them.  I was afraid I was going to get in trouble because I was afraid somebody was going to find out what I knew about Mildred, you know.

Q:  Put you in the middle of it.

A:  Put me in the middle of it.  Really that was just the way it was.

Q:  Somebody the other day asked me, they said, “Can you keep a secret?”  They were just about to tell me something, and then they said, “Can you keep a secret?”  And I said, “Just as good as you can.”  Nothing more was said.  Whenever somebody wants to tell me a secret I let them know that it might not be a secret already.  If you want everybody to know about it, go ahead and tell me.  I didn't hear about it, what ever it was.  If it's a secret I probably don't really need to know about it, if it isn't a secret I probably know about it already.

So what did you like about Aunt Mildred except not liking her putting you in the middle of things?

A:  She and I were just close, and she was always tormenting me, telling me I was adopted.  She almost had me believing it you know.  She was a lot like Ruby, she was always doing something she wasn't suppose to and getting into trouble for it.  She would always tell me things that I didn't want to know. 

Q:  She wanted to share the guilt with somebody.  So she was four years older than you.  When you first moved up on the hill she was a pretty ripe age for dating.

A:  Well how old was she, when was that?

Q:  Well when did you move up there?

A:  Thirty-five, I thought it was thirty-five.

Q:  You moved up there in thirty-five, she was born in nineteen-seventeen, so that would have put her at eighteen years old. 

A:  Well I guess so because Joy was nineteen, Joy was married that same year.  Mildred was married in December, and Joy was married in October.  Maybe I've got my dates kind of messed up, I didn't think so.

Q:  Well this says that Mildred was married in nineteen-thirty-four. 

A:  Well that would have been the next year, we left in...

Q:  Thirty-three maybe?  It must have been thirty-three.  Soon after you moved up there she met Lloyd Parker.

A:  She met Lloyd and she never talked to anybody else.  

Q:  How long was she married to Lloyd Parker?  I know they got divorced.

A:  Oh, they had all their kids, they had five kids.  I don't remember when, but the kids were getting pretty well grown up. 

Q:  Then there’s you, and then Aleatha Pauline.  Let's talk about Pauline for a little bit.

A:  She was just younger than me. 

Q:  Pauline was born in nineteen-twenty three and she died in nineteen-fifty eight.  So she was just thirty-five years old when she passed away. 

A:  She was Eddy's wife, you remember Eddy.  She was Eddy's mother, that's what I meant.  She only had one child, Eddy was the only child. 

Q: What did you and Pauline do together?

A:  I think we were best friends.  The earliest remembrance that I can remember is when my sister Jessie come and woke me up early one morning, and said, “Ruby, come it's time to get up, and you've got a new baby brother, and I want to show him to you.”  And I said, “A new baby brother, but what about my baby sister?”  Well we got her too, I wasn't even going to look at that baby brother, until she assured me that I still had my baby sister.  Because I had thought somebody had......, “what had happened to my baby sister if you're showing me a baby brother?”  So I didn't know, I wasn't very interested in Ernest until I was sure that Pauline was still there, my little sister.

Q:  They were showing you Uncle Ernest?  Well what did Pauline and you use to do together?

A:  I don’t' know, we were just the best of friends.  We played together all the time.  I'll tell you one thing, we had to go do something you know, go make an appointment, or go see somebody for something or tell somebody something.  I always said, “Now you do the talking.”  She would. I would stand back and wait for her to make whatever explanation or whatever there was to be said, and she would do that.  She didn't mind talking.  We'd visit a neighbor or do something, you know.  One particular thing I remember was Mama picked a basket full of fresh figs, we had fig trees all around you know.  She picked a basket of fresh figs, and put them in a pan for us to take down the road, down the street to the store because she needed a dozen eggs.  She said, “Take these down and see if they'll trade me a dozen eggs for these figs.  We marched off down there, Pauline carried them in and traded them for a dozen eggs.  We took a dozen eggs home.

Q:  Bargaining worked there.

A:  Bargaining worked. 

Q:  I would think a basket full of figs would be worth a dozen eggs. 

A:  Well it would be, and they took them.  It was a little home market.  She was perfectly willing, those figs were all picked and clean you know, and everything nice.  Mama had gone and picked them off the trees, the best she could find, and traded for a dozen eggs.

Q:  What other kinds of bartering did your family do?

A:  That's the only thing I really remember.  Except I remember we use to walk down the street with a gallon bucket pail, the kind we use to buy lard in.  We called them a tin bucket.  We'd go down the street which was about a half a mile from where we lived, and take it in and trade it for a gallon of skim milk.  They were separating their milk, and they would give us that for ten cents.  So we'd take ten cents down and get us a gallon of milk. 

Q:  You would carry you milk back in your pail, in your tin.

A:  Pauline and me would.

Q:  You made her do the talking.

A:  Oh yeah, she would do the talking.  I was too afraid of people. 

Q:  Aunt Pauline married Walter Philip in 1941.

A:  Yeah, that's Eddie's dad. 

Q:  So she was twenty-two years old when she got married.  She waited a little longer than you did.  I remember hearing something about somebody saying, “A new family moved into the area, a family of girls.”

A:  That was when we moved up to the cabin.  

Q:  When you moved up to the cabin in the mountains.  Word kind of buzzed around down in town about all these girls that had moved in.

A:  Yeah, but that only got down to me.  Pauline, was younger than me.  There was Joy, Mildred, and me.  I was the one that dad said, “Well there's another girl isn't there, oh well she's just a kid.”  Andy said, “Well, she'll grow won't she.”  It was me that he was referring to there, because I was fourteen then I think.

Q:  Well you grew.

A:  I did grow.

Q:  Do you know, how your family knew that cabin was available before you moved in there?

A:  I don't know, they were just driving through the country and found it I think.

Q:  Found a vacant cabin and you just....

A:  Found a vacant cabin, no sign of anybody being around, and this man out riding the range, checking on his cattle, happened to ride by, and they talked to him, they asked him about it, “What about this place?” 

Q:  Go ahead and move in.

A:  That's what he said. 

Q:  Those people left town?

A:  "It belongs to the bank of California, and nobody has been here for years, move in".  He said, “If anybody says anything about it, send them to me.”  That was Lloyd Parker's dad.  So we moved in.

Q:  So you were squatters, but you had permission from a local resident. 

A:  Yeah we were squatters, but we had permission from a local man.  Nobody ever said a word to us about it.  After that for years everybody thought that it belonged to us. 

Q:  Well what's the bank going to do about it.  That's fine.

A:  That's fine.  We were living in it, and taking care of it, and improving it from time to time.  Building fences here, and building fences there. 

Q:  Uncle Tex eventually bought the property from the bank and told your dad.

A:  Yeah, and gave it to dad. 

Q:  So Uncle Tex was a good man.

A:  He was a good man.  He really was.

Q:  Not just a hobo roustabout vagrant.

A:  No, he wasn't, that was just a kid thing, and he met up with another kid thing just like him.  Tex was a wonderful man, but he did have that drinking problem.  We didn't have that in our family, except him.  We felt bad about it, but we loved him all the same.  We were crushed when he died. 

Q:  Aunt Pauline, she died relatively young.

A:  Pauline was very young when she died.  She died of a brain tumor.  She had been in the hospital for two or three, I don't know how long, several months before that with rheumatic fever.  We kept expecting to lose her any day then for a long time, be she over came that and went home, and was taking care of her family, which was Eddy, and her husband was working.  Then one night she was cooking dinner, Eddy was playing in the yard, he said he was twelve years old, but I didn't know he was that old.  Phil, her husband worked driving one of these trucks, he delivered meat for a big meat company, and he delivered a load to Kingman, and that's where he was when Pauline had her attack.  Eddy went in and found a pan on the stove burning, he turned the heat off and went in looking for his mother, and she was unconscious in the bedroom.  He ran to his neighbor for help, but she never regained consciousness.  Course they immediately sent the officers out to get Phil, and bring him to her, but he didn't get there before she died. 

Q:  So it was a brain tumor?

A:  I guess.

Q:  It was cancer or something?

A:  Yeah, it was cancer or something.  We were living in Roosevelt at the time, it was the first year we were there.

Q:  In nineteen fifty-eight.
   

Q: Uncle Ernest Richard Johnson.

A:  That was the one that was my new little brother, and then there was Stanley, and then there was Jimmy.

Q:  So Ernest was born in 1925.

A:  I don't remember much about the little boys when they were growing up.  I was there, you know, but I was going to school, Mama was home with the little kids.

Q:  You had Pauline, you didn't have any use for these boys.

A:  I didn't have any use for the boys.

Q:  They just represented work.

A:  I had my little sister, that was all that I needed. 

Q:  Ernest was born in nineteen twenty-five, so you were four years older than he was.  Do you remember doing chores that involved him, or taking care of him?

A:  I don't remember.  I remember very little about those little guys. 

Q:  What did you call Uncle Ernest, did you call him Ernie?

A:  Ernest, he was Ernest.  Stanley was Stanley too, until he grew up and went out on the work market, then they called him Dave.  David Stanley was what Mama had named him, but we called him Stanley.

Q:  We all knew him as Stanley. 

A:  Stanley was all I ever knew him by, because I moved away, he was just a teenager when I was married. 

Q:  James Ceicil. 

A:  Jimmy was a, when was he born.

Q:  He was born in nineteen thirty-one, so he was ten years younger than you. 

A:  He was just Mama's baby.  He was just I've got a picture of him and Stanley when they were little boys.

Q:  Uncle Ernest, how many children does he have?

A:  Well that's a problem.  I know he's got two by his first wife, three is all that he's fathered.  He raised one or two more from one of his wives.  But I can't keep track of them because there not that friendly. 

Q:  David Stanley, how many children does he have?  How are they?

A:  He only had two.  He had two, and they were the same mother, and then he got divorced.  The youngest one, Maude is still alive, and Maude has two daughters and one of the daughters is married and has a baby.  So Stanley has a, it was a boy, I don't remember.  So Stanley had a grand-child.

Q:  Stanley married a member of the church?

A:  He married, what's her name.

Q:  Melva McNeil.

A:  Melva McNeil from Show Low.  She was a sweet girl, wonderful.  He loved her with everything he had, but eh wasn't even grown, he was only eighteen years old.  He just wasn't even, he didn't make it.  Then he married two or three other times.  Labretta and I were listening the other day to his wife, his widow, talking about the others that he married.  Some of them I don't even remember.

Q:  So he had the two boys with Melva McNeil.

A:  Those two boys he had with Melva, then the youngest boy, he went to the Vietnam war, and come home and didn't make it.  I don't know whether, he was sick, he wasn't wounded that I remember, but he had a lot of problems, he was in the hospital a lot.  Well he passed away. 

Q:  Then Maude. 

A:  Maude is the only living one now, and Maude has got two daughters, and one just had a baby.

Q:  Maude lived in Flagstaff for a long time.  Where does he live right now?

A:  He grew up in Flagstaff, driving that truck.  Since then he retired after twenty whatever years, he retired and sold his home and moved to California because his wife was stationed over there, and she's still in big business with a drug company.  She's the mother of one of those girls that’s married, well she's the mother of both of them actually.   One of them got married and had a family, the other has never got married yet. 

Q:  And then James Cecil, Uncle Jimmy.

A:  That's Uncle Jimmy.

Q:  He married Norma Jean Gifford.  Course Uncle Jimmy was born in nineteen thirty-one, ten years younger than you are.  Just had the one wife?

A:  Yes.

Q:  Never fathered any children. 

A:  Never had a child, she wanted a baby so bad, but she never had a baby.

Q:  Course we kind of feel like he adopted us a part of his family.

A:  You know he told me that, he said, “Ruby, I just feel like you family is my family, it's the only family I have.  They all accept me as Uncle Jim.”  

Q:  Yeah we did, we loved him. 

A:  I know you did, I felt good about it.  Yes, Jimmy did love all of you kids.  He and Ernest just had a ball with each other, jazzed each other all the time and was making calls to each other all the time and telling stories, it was ridiculous.  But then suddenly it was a surprise to me when he just died.  I didn't know he had any problems.  I knew he had and accident and had to have some serious surgery you know.  He fell off his truck a couple of times.

Q:  He was a truck driver? 

A:  He hauled cotton.  He owned his own truck, he didn't drive for somebody else.

Q:  Irene was named Irene, because that's after you.

A:  Yeah.

Q:  Cynthia, do you know where that name came from?

A:  No, it was just a name I liked, Cynthia was.

Q:  It's a very pretty name.  What about LaVerne?

A:  Your dad named her because he had a girlfriend named Nedra, and LaVerne was his favorite school teacher.  When he as in the first grade.

Q:  So named after a favorite school teacher, and an old girlfriend.  Was it because of the girlfriend or was it because he liked the name?

A:  Well I think it was because he like the name because she was just a really nice girl, but he didn't know her for that long, she was just a very nice girl.  Nedra Turner, she lived down in Holbrook. 

Q:  Beverly, how did that name come about?

A:  I named Beverly, I like Beverly.  I named her May because I wanted something to go with Beverly but my mother's name is Mayble and Dad's mother's name was Madora.  So I just named her Beverly May, kind of for the two grandmothers.

Q:  Wasn't Grandmother's name Medora May? 

A:  Medora May was grandmothers name.  My mother's name as Mayble. 

Q:  Andrew Dale, named after dad.

A:  Yeah.

Q:  Do you have a reason why Dale was picked?

A: My dad thought it was the nicest name he had ever heard, Dale.

Q:  I think it's a good name.   

A:  I do, I like it, I think Dale is a very nice name. 

Q:  Labretta.

A:  Labretta, that was just out of dad's head somewhere. 

Q:  You don't know of anybody else by that name?

A:  No I never did know, I've never known anybody else with that name until Beverly named her kids that, now she's got two of them there. 

Q:  Labretta did not have a middle name?

A:  No she didn’t, but Labretta was it.  That's the way dad wanted it.

Q:  Alvin Bennett.

A:  I don't remember that especially, but I guess it's just because I liked the name.

Q:  Ruby.

A:  Ruby Sandra

Q:  Named after you.

A:  Well I didn't want Ruby named Ruby, but dad insisted.  Because he's got a sister named Ruby, and I was named Ruby, why so many Rubys?  Anyway, that's the way it was. 

Q:  Sandra just came along with it good?

A:  Yeah. 

Q:  That's a very nice name too.  Cory LeGrand.

A:  I liked Cory, and then dad went and named him after LeGrand Richards. 

Q:  That's a very good name.  Pamela Fern.

A:  I don't know anything particular about that.  I wanted Pamela, and I thought Fern went nicely with it. 

Q:  Forrest Clay.

A:  Now that was my dad, my dad is Forest.

Q:  You dad spells his name with one r?

A:  Yeah he does.  I don't know why I put two r's in Forrest name. 

Q:  I've seen when it's a name rather than a grove of trees I've seen it with two r's quite often.  So it's not unusual to see it spelled that way.  Maybe someone had suggested that.

A:  I really don't  know, I can't remember that far back.

Q:  Where did the middle name Clay come from?

A:  Dad wanted that, he liked that, Clay.  In fact he was the one that liked strange names more than I did, but he liked Clay.  Forrest likes it too, he likes his name, I think.  I don't know if you like yours, I do.

Q:  Then Marty John.

A:  Then Levi, he just had to be Levi because he was born on his dad's and grandpa's birthdays.  I put the William with it because my father's name was William Forest. 

Q:  That's certainly something, being named for two grandfathers.  Marty John, not named after anybody in particular, just liked the name?

A:  John just went with it good. 

Q:  Gregory Mark.

A:  Mark E. Peterson was a very favorite apostle of mine, and I liked Gregory all my life.  

Q:  Did you have any boyfriends named Gregory?

A:  No, I never had any boyfriends named Gregory.

Q:  You just liked the name.  You must have heard it somewhere.  Denzlo Glen.

A:  Now that was dad's name all together.  It's worked very nicely.  Denzlo loves his name, but he didn't want any of the kids to be named that, he just wanted to be it. 

Q:  Did you have any ideas growing up of what kind of parent you wanted to be?  What were you going to do differently than what your parents were doing, that you wanted to make sure you were going to do different?

A:  I don't know that I even had a mind to think about it.  I don't remember, I wasn’t much of a...

Q;  Much of a dreamer?

A:  No.

Q:  Do you remember any particular incident, when you knew or realized that your first child was on it's way?

A:  I don't, I just remember that I was as sick as a horse.

Q:  You just got sick, and figured this just must be it.

A:  I was glad it didn't last very long, and it didn't.  I had a bad three weeks of sickness with everyone of them practically.  That was all, and then after that, everything was great.

Q:  Most women would gladly trade three weeks for what they go through.  So did you have any prenatal care?  Did you go visit the doctor during your pregnancies?

A:  Yes, I went.  In Clay Springs, we had a doctor that once a month came to Clay Springs and visited anybody that was sick.  Once a month we had a prenatal, he came out just to pregnant women, is what he came for.  Dr. Haywood, he was an old fashioned doctor, and was very particular about pregnancies, and wanted people to take care of them and everything.  He was a good doctor. 

Q:  Do you remember the doctor recommending any special diets or anything you needed to do to take care of yourself?

A:  No, I don't remember anything.

Q:  Not like they do today.  Make sure your taking all kinds of good nutrition.

A:  No.  He might of talked to me, but it didn't make a good enough impression that I was impressed with it.

Q:  Through out all of your child bearing years, as far as pregnancy, and delivering children, what kind of complications did you have during delivery and pregnancies?

A:  The only complication I had son was when I went into labor with Irene, she was doubled up, and she tried to come buttocks first.  I was on the labor table twelve hours, with the doctor working with me and with trying to get her turned around, and stretched out to where she finally came feet first. 

Q:  She came feet first?

A:  She came feet first, her head was purple, and everything was great.

Q:  So she was born breech?

A:  No, she wasn't born breech, she tried to come breech, but feet first was how she came.

Q:  What did the doctor's suggest or did they say anything to you after that?

A:  Dr. Haywood didn't say anything.  He would just say, well I remember it was when I was on the labor table, it wasn't with first one, I think it was Dale.  He said, “What are you in such a rush for?  Your just going to do this again in a few months.”

Q:  Oh, he rushed to deliver the baby.

A:  Yeah, I wanted it to get over with.  It just started all over again.  He would tell all of the women that.  He didn't have the gumption enough to stay out of it. 

Q:  So this might be a little bit, I'm sure that caring for your children the most difficult things was the laundry, just trying to keep enough clean diapers.

A:  It was, it was a hard job.  I had cloth diapers with every one of my children.  I made them myself.  I bought the flannel and hemmed them.  I made my diapers.  I always had a good supply of good diapers.  It was a lot of work to get them made and get them clean all the time.

Q:  How far were you through your fourteen children were you when you finally got your own washing machine and didn't have to wash everything on a washboard?

A:  Beverly, I got a washing machine when Beverly was coming.

Q:  So pretty early on.

A:  We had moved to Miami, she was the third one.  We moved to Miami, and dad was working in the mine, and he bought me a washing machine. 

Q:  What a blessing.

A:  Yes, a blessing it was. 

Q:  Was it the old tub washers that went back and forth and had the ringer on the top?

A: Oh yeah, it was. 

Q:  Do you know what brand it was?

A:  I don't.  I imagine it was a Montgomery Wards, we bought everything that Montgomery Wards. 

Q:  Okay.  You know when Beverly was a baby, and then Dale was born soon after that.

A:  But I never had diapers for two babies.  I trained them and got them out of the diaper before the next baby came. 

Q:  Every one of them.

A:  I think so, as best as I can remember.  In later years it was a little, there was help with all that stuff too.

Q:  But as far as you know you had all of your children potty trained before the next one.

A:  Well basically you know, enough that I didn't have a lot of diapers. 

Q:  Well that's great, very commendable.

A:  I never slept with one of my babies.

Q:  You didn't drag them into bed with you.

A:  No sir.  My babies had cribs of their own.  Your dad would take the baby from the crib and bring it to me in the night if they needed to nurse, or to be changed or anything.  He never left the babies for me to pick up and take care of.  Then after I would get through with them he would take them and put them back in their crib.  That was one thing he would always do.

Q:  That's great, that’s a good example.

A:  Very good example.

Q:  Would he have to do that more than once a night sometimes?

A:  No, very seldom.  Most of my babies I had them weaned from nursing before they were very old.  They would sleep through the night without being fed.  Pam was the only one, she was kind of a little tornado.  Every time she had a wet diaper she wanted to be changed. 

Q:  She wasn't happy until she was changed. 

A:  No she wasn't.  She made loud enough noise at you. 

Q:  Were there any other complications?  I know you said that Irene tried to come breech, but were there any other complications with any of your children?

A:  With Levi, when I was trying to deliver Levi, he just wouldn't home.  He wouldn't come.  The doctor said, “Well Ruby, what do you expect?  You don't have any muscles left, everything is worn out.  You can't push him out.”  Levi was delivered with forceps, he had to be pulled out and consequently his little old head was beat up.  But it hasn't hurt him. He's a great kid.  He was such a good baby, Levi was a good baby.

Q:  Very calmed natured, and easy going.  He's the only one I remember, we were all so excited when he was learning to walk, I was old enough then to remember that and him taking his first steps. 

A:  I don't remember that, there was so much of that stuff.

Q:  I remember the meeting we had and dad called the whole family together, and he talked about Levi being born on his birthday and grandpa's birthday. 

A:  Well I don't remember that.

Q:  You might have still been in the hospital. 

A:  Might have been.

Q:  Dad had us all gather around like a big family home evening, and we all talked about it. 

A:  I know the night that he was born, we had a birthday party for dad planned at Irene's house.  Then he had to take me to the hospital.  That's where that was, at dad's birthday party I bet you. 

Q:  We gathered all around a talked about how he was born on his birthday.  Came up with the name.  I think we all sustained it, we all put our approval to it.  The only other complication you had was after I was born and the hemorrhaging, and the bleeding.

A:  Hemorrhaging, yeah that's the only complication I had.  That about got me.

Q:  Following that you also had more complications.

A:  I was anemic, and following that I never had enough blood.  I always had to have blood transfusions.  I lost so much blood, I don't know what complications, we didn't go through that much in those days, that’s the way it was.

Q:  Any particular character traits, or personality traits that you thought were unusual or different, or that stood out a little bit?

A:  I can't remember, can you think of any that I've talked about?

Q:  You said Pam didn't like being in a wet diaper.

A:  Pam didn't like that, she screamed a lot at night then when she wanted to be changed.

Q: Dale being the first son when he was growing up, how did he react to having all sisters for the first while?

A:  He was always...

Q:  Being babied by all these girls.

A:  Now which one was it that broke the evenness of them.  One of them was so excited because it was a girl instead of a boy.  The boys were ahead, he was way into that.  I think Dale was the only one that I don't remember he was just big boy, big daddy, big brother. 

Q:  So excited when the boys outnumbered the girls.  Well that would have been Denzlo.

A:  Anyway I do remember that, he was just so excited.  I remember Dale, when he went on his mission, was it Levi I was carrying? 

Q:  Yes, it would have been.

A:  Levi was born in August, and Dale went on his mission the following September, I can't remember what day exactly, but anyway.

Q:  I was in first grade when Dale had his missionary farewell at the ward.

A:  When Denzlo was born, Doctor Larsen, met dad up at the nursery when he was looking at the baby after the delivery you know, he put the baby into the nursery. He told dad, “I just met your son here, you would think he was the daddy of this baby, he was so excited.”

Q:  When Dale finally came home and saw the baby (Levi).

A:  He was so excited about a brother, it was a boy.  I do remember that, because Doctor Larsen told Andy, “You would think that oldest son of yours was the daddy of that baby, he's so proud of him.”    

Q:  Well that's good.  As a young parent when you and dad just had young children, did you ever feel overwhelmed?  Did the reality of being a parent overwhelm you?  Did you ever feel like, wow, what did I get into?

A:  I don't remember it ever bothering me.  I don't think it did dad either.  I did think we had enough of them a time or two.  They kept coming.

Q:  What did you enjoy most about being a parent?

A:  Oh son, I don't know, my life has always been happy.  I don't know that I had a special.  I’ve always been very happy with my children, I've been very proud of them.  Then dad kept telling me your not suppose to be proud, your suppose to be pleased.

Q:  Do you remember any particular reaction of any of your children at home to how they acted with a new baby?

A:  No, I don't remember that.  I heard people talking about other children being jealous of new babies, but I don't ever remember one of my kids doing that.  I don't know whether they were and I just didn't notice it, or pay attention to it or ignored it.

Q:  Are they any particular stories about your children that come to mind that you would like to share?

A:  Son I really can’t think of anything off the top of my head.

Q:  Let me remind you a story that Irene told me about.  You mentioned that the kids would sometimes take turns going with dad when he would go on his truck driving trips.  Well Irene went on a trip with dad, and he was getting very tired and checked into a motel and almost before she got to asleep he said, “let's go”.

A:  He woke up and said, “Come on girl, it's time to go.”

Q:  They probably had only been in the motel an hour at the most.

A:  Probably had, they just got good and sound asleep and he looked at his watch and decided to go.

Q:  Irene said they were driving, and driving, and driving, and dad said, “Where's the sun?  Why didn't the sun come up?”  He probably got up earlier than he thought he was. 

A:  I'm sure he did, because he took those two girls, I think he had Laverne and Irene both, I'm not sure, but anyway he checked into a hotel, he didn't usually do that, he usually just slept in the truck.  I think he felt that he had probably over slept, and it was time to go, and the girls were sound asleep.  So he woke them up and took them.  I remember that story, I didn't know anything about that when it happened, until the next few days.

Q:  Irene told another story, she and dad were driving down the road, and he stopped and picked up a hitchhiker that was a soldier.  They were riding along and the soldier was going on and on about what a beautiful girl she was.  Irene fell asleep, and they dropped him off.  When Irene woke up he was gone, there was a couple of coins in her pocket.  Dad told Irene, “Well that soldier must have left those coins in there.”  Irene thinks that dad put those in her pocket. and gave the soldier the credit for it.  She was quite impressed to have that money.

A:  I never did hear that story, so I don't remember that.  I remember one time Lavern was suppose to go with her dad, and he deiced before he left home, he told me, “I promised Lavern she could go this time, but I don’t think I should take her this time.  I'm just going to leave her here, and she can go another time.”  That's the day he had his accident, she never would have survived that if she'd been in the truck with him.  He was wedged in there, they couldn't hardly get him out.  That little girl in the seat with him would have been demolished.  So I know I was always grateful for that. 

Q:  There's a story I remember hearing you tell, I'm not sure which project this was, there was a construction site, and Dale was working with dad.  Trucks going by all the time in this forest, because there was so much noise with the construction and everything, the wild animals kind of got use to it, and didn’t pay much attention to it.  Dale saw a buck standing there with it's head behind a tree and Dale ran over and when he got up to the buck he slapped it with both hand on it's hind quarters.

A:  That was up at the Flaming Gorge dam.

Q:  Tell me that story.

A:  He did so that.

Q:  A deer had his head down behind a bush or a tree and Dale ran up and slapped the hind quarters of that deer. 

A:  That thing whirled around, and had him between his horns so fast that it scared dad to death.  He thought that boy was going to be demolished.  Dale was so scared that he just froze.  Then that buck went on. 

Q:  The deer whirled and Dale was standing right between those antlers.

A:  He was right between those big horns.  I remember that, and that was just before Dale left on his mission.  He was working up there with dad him a few days before that.  Dad was working for the, I think they were working on the dam there somehow, I know dad worked up there.

Q:  He must have been doing some contract work.  So he was working for Jim Wardell up there?

A:  No, I don't think he was, I don't think it was Jim Wardell up there.  He worked down in the south for Jim, but he might have up there too, I don't know. 

Q:  Seems to me I heard tale of a story of an old chicken that was crazy or beyond it's years, and Alvin was told to go get rid of it.  Tell me that story.

A:  I don't remember all of it, but anyway.  He took that chicken out and was suppose to kill it, I don't know what he did with it, but he took it down to kill it, and the next morning it was back.  Alvin was so absolutely overwhelmed, he knew he killed that chicken, but it came right back.  We had, one year a bunch of our chickens got the croup.  It's a real bad disease for chickens, their head swells up.

Q:  A poultry disease.

A:  Yeah, a poultry disease.  We had a lot of them, but that one old hen tried to get better two or three times, and I guess it never got better.  I don't remember the real facts of that story, but I know he was sure shocked when that chicken came back.

Q:  Any stories about Laverne and how she got along with the other girls?  It seems to me like there was some jealousy between Irene Laverne and Beverly. 

A:  There was, because Laverne developed and they didn't. 

Q:  Much more of a shapely physical development.

A:  Absolutely, and so it hasn't gotten around too much in the family, but I knew what it was.  The girls were so upset, they were always taking her bra and hiding it.  You don't need me to tell those stories.  That's what it was. 

Q:  Dale had tried to, I heard once, that Dale had tried to take a gun to school once for Western Days. He had a Smith & Wesson 44 Magnum pistol in a gun belt and the belt was fully loaded with bullets. The bus driver, Mr. Stubbs wouldn't let him on the bus with it. “Well here, you hold it.”  Dale said, “I don't want that thing.  You can't have it on the bus”. Dale found another way into school but managed to wear the gun on the bus going home. 

A:  Oh, I don't remember that. 

Q:  Was it Dale?

Q:  Yes.

Q:  He was dressed up with a holster and a handgun, hat, and coat, and whatever.

A:  Do you remember that?

Q:  I can't remember how he was dressed.

Q:  Stubbs said he couldn't get on the bus and he said, “Well here, you hold it.”  He says, “I don't want that thing.  You can't have it on the bus.”

A:  He should have taken it away and put it where he couldn't reach it on the bus.

Q:  Well he didn't want it.

A:  No he didn't.  But I don't remember that, there's a lot of  things like that, that I don't know anything about.

Q:  I'm trying to remember other stories.  Marty use to be, we could scare him easy.  We knew that he would be easily...

A:  He would be startled?

Q:  He would give a good reaction whenever we surprised him.  So after we learned that Forrest and I or whoever when ever we were out and about, if we could hide behind a bush or a tree and scare him we could always get a good reaction.  I remember that, it was not good of us to do that, but we couldn't help it.  A story about Forrest.  Quite often there in Roosevelt in the evenings after school where we had to go out and do the chores.  Quite often that meant that we had to go to the end of the pasture to bring the milk cow in to do the milking.  Sometimes we would get out there and on our way we would stop to hunt for frogs or polliwogs or play around, get exploring and not do our chores right away.  One time, Forrest came in late, and I don't know if he was going chores or had been sent to turn the irrigation water or whatever.  Anyway he was slow, late coming back.  Dad came looking for him, and this is a story that Forrest tells.   He says that dad saw him out in the middle of the pasture, when dad came from one end of it and dad yelled, “Joe.”  You know we use to call Forrest that all the time.  Forrest thought he said “go”, so he turned and ran.  Because he thought, well I had better get this done.  So he took off running, and dad had called him.

A:  He wanted him to stop and come here.

Q:  Dad had wanted him to pay attention, instead he just took off running.  Well dad caught up with him.  He says, “I hadn't seen dad run before, but I could tell you he can run when he wants to.”  Dad caught up with him.  He thought that he was unjustly dealt with because he was doing what he thought he was told to do.  Dad says, “Joe”, when he thought he said, “go.”  He was going.

A:  He was going home anyway.

Q:  He was going, and dad caught up with him.  That's a story that Forrest has.

A:  A lot of things happen like that.

Q:  What stories do you remember about Irene, Beverly, Lavern, Dale, Alvin, Cory, Labretta.

Pam:  All I remember about Irene was that she was my big kissdoe.

Q:  Irene was your big kissdoe,she took good care of you.

Pam:  I remember one day after kindergarten or something, I got home and the furnace needed to be re-lit.  So both of us when down there and poked our faces into that.

A:  Were you with her when that thing blew up in her face?

Q:  Yeah, I was mom.

A:  Well I don't remember you being there.  She's the only one that got her hair burned off.

Q:  Oh I had a few singes, Irene took care of that before you got home.  That thing blew, and it knocked us both backwards.

Q:  At that time the furnace was at the end of the hall, we didn't have the stairs going down, we didn't have a basement at that time. 

Q:  No, it was down at the end of the hall.

Q:  You leaned in to light that furnace.

Q:  And it went pow.  We had singed hair, and singed eyebrows, and ashes for lashes. 

A:  Thank goodness it didn't burn you to bad.

Q:  Then Cory, one day I went out on the back porch and I kept hearing this, “help me, help me.”  I couldn't figure out where he was, he was down that hole by the back porch in that well.

Q:  Well I thought Uncle Jimmy came by and found him there.

A:  Yeah, Uncle Jimmy did.

Q:  He did, Uncle Jimmy helped me get him out of that thing.

Q:  Did you call Uncle Jimmy's attention to it or something?

Q:  I can't remember.

A:  Well Jimmy said he heard him say, “Would you please help me?”. 

Q:  I was there somehow, I can't remember.

Q:  We had bed springs over that hole.

A:  We had bed spring over that, he'd fallen into that and caught.

Q:  He pushed it over a little bit, and was looking at something, and fell.

Q:  Was holding on to it. 

Q:  He was able to grab the spring or something, that was holding him there.

A:  Holding him there, keeping him from getting buried in that water.  Wasn't that much water, just slush and mud I imagine. 

Q:  Enough to drown you.

A:  Yeah, enough to drown you. 

Q:  I can't remembered what was going, but that little shed where those water holes were we had to get down there and clean it out a time or two. 

Q:  The pump house.

A:  The pump house had the cistern in it.

Q:  It had the cistern in it, but the cistern wasn't operating all the time.  Before we could get it going we had to get down there and we had to muck that out. 

A:  I don't remember that.

Q:  I do, because it was scary.

Q:  We had to get in there and wash down the walls, mop the floor.  There was silt and mud on the bottom of that thing that we had to scrape up wash down and clean out.  Wash all that out.

A:  See, I didn't know that, I don't remember that at all.

Q:  We did that before...

A:  Before we filled the cistern. 

Q:  Well one time we emptied it enough that we had to get in there and clean it all out.

A:  We hired a guy for a long time to fill it up with water.

Q:  Who was that?  The guy that lived down the lane where the Brighton s lived.  He lived down that way, he had a big old tank on the back of his truck.  Then there was another guy that lived in town that use to. I don't know who it was.  So many dollars per load of water.  But yeah, we had to clean that cistern out.

A:  I don't remember that. 

Q:  Well you weren't down in it. 

A:  No you wasn't down in it.  You weren't big enough to go down in it.

Q:  But I was down in it Mom. 

A:  It was probably because you wanted to see what was going on.

Q:  No, I was down there cleaning. 

Q:  I remember being down in there.

Q:  I was older than he was. 

A:  I guess you was.

Q:  We probably all got in there. 

A:  Probably so.

Q:  We all had to take our turn. 

A:  It had a cement bottom in it though.

Q:  Yes it did.  Cement walls, cement bottom, and a cement top. 

Q:  Yeah, that's what scared me, that it was going to shut that wall while I was in there.  Nobody liked me at the time.

Q:  That pump house, with the cistern under it, had four walls, a floor and a ceiling all of cement, but it had a couple of vent holes drilled into the floor of the pump house which was also the ceiling of the top of it.  I remember just as a wee lad out there in the pump house, I just thought it was interesting to push dirt into those holes and watch it disappear.  So that's part of the reason we had to go in and clean it out.  I didn't know where that dirt was going. 

A:  Well there was a lot of us.  With you there were twelve, dad and I made the fourteen of us.  You were the twelfth child when we moved there.  There was fourteen of us there for a little while. 

Q:  I remember all the bonfires we would make, and play kick the can around it.  We spent all day gathering all the trash in the yard and putting it in these big piles, and light it.  Then we would play games all around that bonfire.  That was always fun.

Q:  Hugh's brother, Hugh Homer, his brother came to Roosevelt and stayed with us a few days or something.  

A:  Well that had to be after they were married then.

Q:  After they were married, he came up there to Roosevelt and spent a little time.  Do you remember any stories about that?

A:  I don't know anything, I don't remember that either.  Lavern's oldest Merrill, came and stayed with us a while.  Remember he went cutting posts with you and drank up all the water.  The men were cutting the posts and the kid stood around there drinking that water up.  When everyone else came in for a drink there was no water left.  They sure didn't think much of Merrill after that.  That's just the way Merrill is, he just drinks water, the whole family does. 

Q:  We'd bring a whole gallon of water out there with us, it would last us till lunch, and it was gone. Tell us about Forrest and Cory getting into that accident on the tractor.

A:  Honey, I didn't see it.  I wasn't there, they got on the tractor, and went up and they had to get over into the pasture.

Q:  They had to go across the creek.

A:  They drove across the street and...

Q:  They said they were clear off the street when...

A:  Well they were because there was a road turned off there.  They had turned into that cut off there to get over across the canal.  The Gulch comes under the highway, and they had to get on the other side.  That guy just come on through there with that sunshine in his face, and he saw that tractor and he kept on trying to go around it swept those kids right off.  They were clear off on the other side of the ride.  I wasn't even at home, I was at Irene's doing my laundry.

Q:  I know Pam and I were home.  I opened the door, and that guy ran right in the door. 

A:  You and Pam were there then. 

Pam:  He said there was an accident down the street with a tractor.  I knew the boys had just left on the tractor, and it scared me to death.

A:  Who came after me?  Somebody come after me in the car.  I got back but dad had come from work the other way and went on to the accident and got off.  He recognized who it was as soon as he saw it.  He stopped and leaned down there and just in time to hear somebody say, “Well that one's dead.”  He said, “No, he isn't.”  He crawled down in there with both of them, and gave both of them a blessing under the tractor because they were in bad shape.  He was real mad at that guy that said they were dead, no there not.  Anyway, I just remember him saying that.  I didn't get down there in time to see much of what was going on.  It sure did scare me.  They were in the hospital for three days. 

Q:  I can't remember mom.  I called somebody. 

Q:  We thought there were three of them, we thought Marty was with them but Marty had been sent the other way across the creek to open the gates.  Marty waited there for them, and when they didn't show up he came back to the house.  He was sitting there eating at the table, didn't even know anything about it, because he had given up on them. 

A:  I remember that part.

Q:  Seemed like Alvin was in an accident somewhere. 

A:  Maybe he's the one that come and found the kids.

Q:  No, I'm talking about a different incident maybe.

A:  I don't know.

Q:  Alvin was in an accident, something tipped on him, he went into a ditch. 

A:  Another time?

Q:  Yeah.  Whey they were out hauling hay. 

A:  I don't remember.  They had several accidents there, Dale fell off the tractor, and broke his neck, we found out a long time later.  His neck was injured.

Q:  Alvin's leg or something was caught between the, I don't know if it was a tractor or a trailer.

A:  I think they were out in the field mowing hay or something.

Q:  Right next door to us, out in that field.

A:  Was it right out in that field across, it wasn't across the Gulch then?

Q:  No it was right out in that field.

A:  Yeah, we had a lot of...

Q:  Or was that Cory?  I don't know, somebody did. 

A:  Cory was there, I don't know.  We had a lot of little kids.  Cory and Forrest were on the tractor, the one that got ran over.

Q:  How did you manage to feed and clothe all your children while they were growing up?

A:  Dad worked and fed them, Dad worked.  When we got to Roosevelt we sold the place in Clay Springs, we had this money, and we wanted to buy a home.  We came there and bought the place, and it took practically all, but not quite all of it, for seventy acres and a house.

Q:  The house in Roosevelt was seventy-two acres. 

A:  Anyway, that's what we lived in, we had a little money left from the sale in Clay Springs.  Then dad started looking for a job, and he couldn't find a job anywhere.  He worked here, there, and anywhere.   Then he finally got a job cutting trees for people, trimming brush.

Q:  For the power company.

A:  Then he got a job at the power company, trimming out the power lines.  That was when the rural electric was being put in, electricity was being put in to all these farms so he cleared power lines.  That's when we got our power in there because they were putting it in there.  They had it in, but then we had to pay for it. 

Q:  That was Moon Lake Electric. 

A:  Moon Lake Electric was where he worked.  First he got the job and they borrowed some money and bought him a truck, he had a chainsaw and so he had this truck.  He started, he got acquainted with the guy that was running the power line, the head, the boss, he hired him.  He paid him so much for his truck and so much for his power saw, and for him, his labor.  That's how we lived there for quite a few years.  We didn't always have plenty, we always had enough.

Q:  We didn't have a lot to spare, but he had enough.

A:  We had enough.

Q:  Was that on that job where dad cut his leg open with the chain saw?  He had a great big old cut in his leg. 

A:  He did, I'm sure he did, he had several.  He also had one sat right over there in a chair because...

Q:  I'm thinking about the one in Roosevelt. 

A:  There's one out here where the bull got him. 

Q:  Well dad didn't like doctors, so he went home and opened up that cut and poured it full of salt and bandaged it and went back to work. 

A:  Poured it full of salt, bandaged it up, and went back to work.  That's the way your dad did things.

Q:  It worked.

A:  It worked.  He put that salt in it, and that killed any impurities that were in there you know. 

Q:  How many times did he bite his tongue off because it hurt so bad?

A:  Kind of a hurtful deal, but he managed, and he didn't have to pay a doctor to take care of it.  But then he did later on when he had insurance and he had some accidents.  It remember one of those was when he went into Doctor Haywood, no it wasn't Doctor Haywood.

Q:  Larsen.

A:  It was Doctor Larsen, in Roosevelt.  He'd sew him up, and fix him.  He told him to come back a day or two later and he was healing up so good, he said, “You heal up faster than any man I ever saw.”  So he did, he healed fast.  He wouldn't buy insurance he just took care of himself.

Q:  Going back to the stories about your kids, tell me some stories about when your older girls started dating.

A:  Son you know, I don't know too much about that.  They took care of themselves, they both drove you know.  Irene and Lavern both had driver's licenses because dad, they were both eighteen.  They had passed that stage you know.

Q:  I heard that when Merrill came by one time, he was looking for Irene, he was going to ask her on a date and she wasn't there and they said, “Well Lavern is here.”  Merrill said, “Well she'll do.”  

A:  I guess, I don't remember that, son I was so involved with my little kids and babies you know.  I had to get everybody in school, and get them all taken care of and all that.  Also they put me right in the Relief Society you know to help run that.  I had a pretty good job.  I got along okay, we did okay.  Before that job we got acquainted with the Richens, Charlie Richens.  He was the influence in giving dad.

Q:  Was it Charlie and Iona Richens?

A:  He called her Iona, any way he took dad to help him clean up a job up at the lake up at Dutch John.  He got a job up there, and he worked up there.

Q:  Was that clearing the reservoir for Flaming Gorge? 

A:  That was before he went to work for the power company.

Q:  But was that clearing the reservoir for Flaming Gorge?

A:  No that wasn't it, the clearing the Gorge was over in Duchesne. 

Q:  I remember that, that was the Starvation Reservoir. 

A:  Oh they had to, there was a lot of things, they put this big dam in.  Then they had to take this big bridge out, and dad took that out.  The people that owned it payed him to take that out.  How he did it with nothing but his truck, I don’t know, but he made it.

Q:  He brought all that steel in and put it in our back yard.

A:  He brought it home, you know why your dad did.  Then it was after that where Flaming Gorge was going full blast he got to work for the power company.

Q:  So first Charlie Richens got him involved with the...

A:  With the work up on the lake up at Dutch John.  Course he worked on the road up there for a while too.  He drove one of those things that rolls it out and flattens it when they first put something on.

Q:  A steam roller.

A:  Yeah, a steam roller. 

Q:  That reminds me, you told me one time that dad helped do work at the Petrified National Forest when you were still living in Arizona.  He worked up there on that, by Holbrook, St. John's area, he did work up there.

A:  He worked for the Highway Department up there.  They were putting in a highway there.

Q:  Putting in roads.

A:  Then they laid him off, and he was off for quite a while. 

Q:  What was he doing for them exactly?  Do you remember what it was?

A:  I don't remember, because we had just barely got married.

Q:  It seems to me I remember him telling the story or someone that when they were putting those roads in they would take those great big old petrified logs, they would just bull doze them into a gully and cover them up, there were so many of them.

A:  They did a lot of that.  The government kind of got in and stopped you know.  Then it was if you touched a piece of that wood it was trouble. 

Q:  What kind of games did you play with your kids?  Nursery rhymes, stories?

A:  The kids just kind of played outside, kick the can and all of that kind of stuff.  You heard hear talk about having a bonfire out in the field and running and playing out there in the dark.  There was nothing out there, just plain old sand and dirt, and weeds.  I don't, we had to get our irrigation clear over from across the road over on the pole line road, it had to come down across the highway there to come down to our place.  We had water from that, except what was over on the other side of the river.

Q:  Then there was the other canal, that we got from the canal over by the hills we called the Bench.

A:  Yeah, the other canal.  It was a lot of work, we had a lot of work there.   Thank goodness dad had a lot of kids, you know to help him.  You boys were always busy doing your thing.

Q:  What kind of meals did we have?  What kind of cooking?

A:  Do you know what, when dad and I went on our mission and the first time we met with the group the mission president had the audacity to ask me what I fed my family.  Everybody was astonished at the family that I had, then we went on a mission, and I don't even know.  We had potatoes and beans and rice, and how do... I don't remember what I fed.  Do you kids remember?  We always had meat.

Q:  Well I remember from my perspective, what kind of meat did we have?

A:  I know part of it was mutton.  Then we had beef.

Q:  We had mutton, and then beef, and pork, we had chickens.

A:  We had our own eggs.

Q:  Deer meat.

Q:  Oh yeah, we'd have venison.

A:  We had a lot of deer meat.

Q:  It seemed like every year we would get a part of what Bruce, Dad, Cory, or somebody would hunt.

A:  The excess that they had went to us.  We always had plenty of food.

Q:  I remember one time bringing a friend home for dinner.  Usually on Sunday, I would try to talk you into letting me bring a friend home.  Because it was always more interesting to have somebody else there than the normal family.  I always tried to bring a friend home when ever I could.  There were some placement kids in Roosevelt.  One of them was Alfonso Manny, he was staying with the Ashby's.  Then there was another one was Irvine Yazzie, I can't remember what family he was staying with.  Both of them were friends, and both of them came home with me on different Sundays between Sunday School and Sacrament meeting.  I remember one time after Alfonso had been to our house a few times, and then I took Irvine, and when we got back to church for Sacrament Meeting that night, Alfonso said to Irvine, “What did you have?  What did you have?”  because we always had something like a pot roast. Potatoes, carrots, and onions, and a nice pot roast.  Homemade bread with milk.  Just like a Thanksgiving feast to them, but our family ate like that all the time.  Alfonso was just so excited to hear what Irvine thought of the meal we had.

A:  Just a plain ordinary meal, that’s what we ate.

Q:  What was his opinion?

Q:  Irvine I thought told him very well how grand it was.

A:  I remember you brought Milo Whitehead home with you a few times.

Q:  A few times, I brought Ricky Murray, and others a few of them too. 

A:  Yeah, you were always inviting somebody home.  That's okay.

Q:  Sunday was really the only day we could invite a friend over.

Q:  I wanted to be hospitable you know and any other day was too much work. 

Q:  When you were raising your children how did you decide which kid was doing which chore, and how did you manage the chores for the kids?

A:  You know son, I haven't the slightest idea how I did that.  I don't know.  Sometimes I think we, girls how did we do that?

Q:  Whatever needed done, whoever was standing in that room that you could see, went and did it.

Q:  I'm talking about regular chores.  Who always fed the chickens?  Who always gathered the eggs?  Who milked the cows?  Who raked the yard?  Who did the laundry?  Who washed the dishes.

A:  I know Levi when he got big enough to drive the tractor, he cleaned the yard.  Because dad told him he could drive the tractor as long as he hauled away some trash every time he drove it.  Dad made a little wagon to pull behind it.  He was a good driver before we went.

Q:  All over the yard here?

A:  This was when we lived in Roosevelt, Levi was ten years old.  So that's why he wanted to drive the tractor, because he was younger.  He couldn't go on the highway, he did the yard.  He had plenty of room there to do it, he wasn't jeopardizing very much.  I remember that, but that's all I can remember.

Q:  You don't remember any other method of assigning chores?

A:  I remember dad was digging that trench down in the sewer, down in the gulch.  I was petrified that somebody was going to get trapped in that, I was scared to death.

Q:  That was just a narrow little cave.

A:  I know it was.

Q:  It went back there a long ways.

A:  It did, and it was dangerous.  Do you know how dangerous that was?  That soil was all sand, there was no rocks.  We had no rocks on that whole farm.

Q:  I remember some of the chores that I had.  Sometimes, I remember feeding the chickens, I remember gathering the eggs, I remember slopping the hogs, I remember feeding the cows, I remember milking the cows.

A:  Maybe you did it a week at a time, I don't know.  It was not that regulated.

Q:  On Saturdays, when I was young, I use to go to the laundry mat with Ruby, or Labretta, or you, and do laundry all day long.  It seemed like it was all day long.

A:  Well it wasn't all day long, but it was a lot of cleaning.

Q:  It took a few hours.  I also remember going to Irene's house with you, and spending time.  Doing things there.

A: You little kids, I'm sure you did a lot of things like that before you got old enough to go to school, because I would take you with me.  I had a car, and I use to go wherever I wanted to go.  That's one thing I use to do was drive, now a days I don't drive at all.

Q:  So do you think that there were just certain chores that needed to be done, and the kids themselves just worked out what who did what?

A:  You know, I hate to say it that they were that, my kids were pretty good, they knew that when dad came home from work that the chores needed to be done. 

Q:  If they weren't done they scooted away to go do it.

A:  If they weren't done they certainly left that television in a hurry.  When that truck pulled in they skedaddled out the back door.  You remember the big truck that dad drove, with the big boom on it to pick up trash.

Q:  Oh yes, I remember a couple of big trucks.

A:  Oh yea, he had several. 

Q:  We had to buy a new truck when the dump truck turned over, we bought a truck that we used to  fetch the dump truck. We turned it back over and brought it back home and delivered all the posts.

A:  Get it turned back on it's wheels.  Yeah he had a lot of that.  You kids had a lot of experience that way.

Q:  What were the differences between when you went to school and when your children went to school?  What was different about that?

A:  I don't remember ever stopping to think about it.  I was very familiar with what the kids were doing, in their school work, so it hadn't been that long since I went to school.   I can't remember what day I graduated the eight grade, but I got a diploma and book in there, I can't remember what it was, but I was quite young.  I was married at seventeen. 

Q: When you went to school, quite often you would walk to school quite a ways to get there, get rides, or ride a bus?

A:  No I didn't, after we left Clay Springs, course we didn't go to the store there, dad, he would do his shopping in Phoenix, or do it on a trip or something you know.  If I needed one or two things I'd send the kids to Amman’s store, but we didn't spend much money there, it was too expensive there.  Dad did the shopping when he was driving the truck.  When we went to Roosevelt I had a car and did the shopping there.  I always had a car and dad had his truck to go do the work.

Q:  When you were young you rode the bus or you walked to school?

A:  I rode a bus most of the time.  I remember I rode a bus the last half of the year I went to kindergarten.  From there I rode a bus until we moved back up to the ranch, and then we walked.  Either we walked from the ranch to Airpine, or we walked over the hill.  One year we, no we didn't either, we moved over there and it was right near the school.

Q:  At the boys ranch.

A:  The seventh grade, the eight grade we walked from the ranch, over the hill, to the new school they built at Parker Ranch.  They arranged for a school house to be built there on their place.

Q:  What kind of vacations did your family take.

A:  No vacations.  When the kids were out of school it was time to do the gardening and other things like that. 

Q:  What about when you were raising your children?

A:  You know it was pretty much the same way Greg.  I hate to say so, but my kids would tell you we didn't have many vacations.  If we had a trip to go to Utah, we did a lot more of that kind of stuff.

Q:  Mostly I remember a trip was associated with a reunion or something like that.

A:  If we had a reunion then we would go.  That was a big thing, and that would be the vacations we would take.  That was only not real often, not every year.

Q:  So the break with normal activities would be getting to go with dad on a trip or doing something like that.

A:  Yes, doing something like that.  He would take turns with the kids to take them with him.  He would a couple of them at a time.

Q:  When you were raising your kids what kind of celebrations would you have for holidays?  What would you do for different holidays.

A:  Ruby do you remember any holidays?

Q:  For UBIC we would always go down and watch the parade. 

Q:  Before we got to go we had to go out and weed the potato fields so many rows.  So we just went through those real fast because we knew we got to go watch the movie on the church lawn.  We got to go the talent show.

Q:  If we were old enough we got to stay for the dance.

Q:  I never did get to do that.

A:  I don't remember all this.  Didn't you ever go to the dances.  Well then Labretta and the boys did.

Q:  I doubt if Labretta did.  The boys all probably did.

A:  I don't know if the boys did.  Dale was always going some where, but he was always going with his friends.  I remember one particular  night he went and in the middle of the night he...

Q:  I remember that you got a phone call.

A:  He went off with some of his friends and went to town.  In the middle of the night and the officer called your dad and said, “We have your boy, what do we do with him?”  He was caught doing something, I don't know, but he was with some of the other guys.  It was not up to no good as far as I can remember.  But Dad said, “Well just lock him up.” 

Q:  How did that make you feel when daddy said to keep your son in jail?  Your true feelings.

A:  I thought that's terrible, but he's going to do what he wants to to.  But he didn't, he talked to the officer for a while and went down and got him.  He found out that he hadn't been into the mischief, he hadn't been with the guys that had whatever, I don't even remember.  There was a whole bunch of guys around Roosevelt.

Q:  Now unless this is a separate story, I remember it as Dale did spent the night, and then the next morning Dale called and said “They let me out.”  Dad said, “Well I didn't take you there, you get home.”  So Dale had to walk home from Duchesne.

A:  I don't remember that especially, because I don't remember him staying over night.  He probably remembers, and emphasizes it real well, you know how Dale does.  I don't think dad.  I really don't know.

Q:  Your not aware of what the charge was or why they were picked up?

A:  You know I did know, I thought about it the other day, and I can't think what it was.  There was something up on the bench, at Ben Stevenson Gas, I think he was thought to be in with that, I don't know if that was true or not, probably was.  I don't think Dale was really out to do real mischief, but I guess he was.  I know Marty ran over the mailbox down somewhere where he wasn't suppose to be.

Q:  Marty was on a date, and the girl was tickling him, and he lost control of the vehicle because he looses it.

Q:  So UBIC what did UBIC stand for?  Uintah Basin...

A:  Uintah Basin, what was it Ruby.

Q:  UBIC Uintah Basin Industrial Convention. 

A:   Uintah Basin Industrial Convention, something like that.

Q:  What other holidays were kind of a break or a celebration for the family?

A:  We had a rodeo, didn't they have a rodeo there sometimes?

Q:  I remember going to one rodeo there in Roosevelt, it was pretty small.  I don't know around what period of time that was for, maybe it was for the Fourth of July or something. 

A:  It probably was because we, well I guess it was in, was dad ever Bishop in Roosevelt or was that in Clay Springs?

Q:  No, that was Clay Springs.  But for the Fourth of July or the Twenty-fourth of July we really didn't take time off, we just maybe had some ice cream in the evening or something. 

A:  I don't remember that much, yeah we'd do something once in a while I guess.

Q:  So probably the biggest holiday we celebrated as a family was probably Thanksgiving?

A:  Yeah. 

Q:  We always got together for Thanksgiving, and had a nice dinner.

A: Yeah, we always got together for Thanksgiving.  When we moved down here was when it got bigger because mom and dad was in Arizona and more kids came than they did there.  Course it was mostly our family was more complete in Uintah Basin than it was down here.

Q:  I remember on Thanksgiving it was a tradition that almost every Thanksgiving we would butcher a, it was like a butchering season.  We would butcher some beef, or some mutton, or a hog.

A:  Probably a hog is what we would do there.  Because Jim Scottsky always talks about coming out there and helping dad.  He said he went out there and brought Labretta out, and went out, and for some reason and he said, “Well good, we're going to butcher a hog, do you want to help?”  He said, “Yeah.  I didn't know what I was getting into.  I've never forgot that day.”  Anyway Ji still calls me every once in a while.

Q:  Every Thanksgiving morning we would go out there and butcher a beef, or a hog, or a mutton, or something.

A:  Something.  It was the time to do it, it was cold enough weather. 

Q:  We'd hang the beef up.  Then the afternoon, we'd have a Thanksgiving feast. 

A:  Yeah, that's about it.

Q:  It was a kind, from when I was young until now, it was always a reunion time, if it was official or not.  We would gather around together.  What was it that was most important for you to teach your children?  What lessons did you try to teach your children?  What do you think was the most important thing for them to learn as they were growing up? 

A:  What is most important?

Q:  What are the family values?  What did you try to teach? 

A:  To live the gospel, we were very firm on that.  To remember who you are, we always talked about there.  We always had family prayer.  We weren't too good on Family Home Evening, but we did a lot of it, more than a lot of people did.  What do you think Greg?

Q:  I think obedience was important, that was stressed.

A:  Absolutely.

Q:  I think that a good work ethic was very important, we all had chores to do.

A:  You all had to do your chores. 

Q:  We all learned the importance of working and doing our part.  We learned service, anytime that there was someone that needed help, it seemed like dad and the boys would go.

A:  Service, this was a big thing.  You were the first ones there.

Q:  We would be at the welfare farm, at the widows house, or at the neighbors farm taking care of something that needed to be done.

A:  I remember that too. 

Q:  Sometimes we did work for people that was trading for something else, but quite often it was for service. 

A:  Yeah, that's what it was.

Q:  How did you discipline your children?

A:  I don't know, I always bring dad to do it.

Q:  “Wait till your father gets home.”

Q:  Did you hear that?

Q:  I heard that all the time.

Q:  I don't remember hearing that, maybe I didn't hang around long enough to hear that get said.

Q:  “When your daddy gets home, then we'll talk about it.”

Q:  Well did you ground your children?

A:  Sure didn't.

Q:  Grounding wasn't part of your discipline.

A:  No, I don't remember grounding very much, do you kids remember being grounded much?

Q:  No, we didn't know what grounding was.

Q:  Course we didn't have anything that we enjoyed doing to be grounded from.

A:  Yeah, that was it. 

Q:  We didn't have anything you could take away from us.  The only times we got out of the house was to go to a church meeting or mutual.  You didn't want to ground us from that.

Q:  We got extra jobs though.

Q:  What kind of worries did you have as a parent?  What concerned you most about your children? 

A:  Who they went out with.

Q:  When they were dating age?

A:  Yeah.

Q:  Who they were hanging out with.  What did you do to try to encourage the good behavior there?

A:  To make sure they knew the guy they were going with, and what kind of a guy he was, and that the family knew something about him. 

Q:  What was the most difficult part of raising your family?

A:  I don't think I had anything that was more particularly a problem than anything else.  I always thought my kids were pretty good kids.  They did a lot of things, different ones of them would do something that wasn't right sometimes.  Kind of like Beverly running off with that guy one night, and staying gone the whole weekend. 

Q:  Danny Bird.

Q:  Do you want to tell us more about that?

A:  Ruby was that Danny Bird, was that who it was?

Ruby:  Danny Bird.

A:  She went home from school with him, and didn't come home, and was going to go get married.  The first thing dad did was take up to his family and said, “You had better get that girl back home, and she had better be safe.”  I didn't go with him, so I don't know what happened. 

Q:  From Beverly's point of view, her story to me is she got more and more nervous as they drove further and further away.  She got scared, and finally had to stop, and she called Daddy at home.  That's Beverly's story.

A:  I don't remember Dad getting a call, but he probably did because he knew right where to go to get her.  Then when she came back home, and started back to school again.  He started hanging around again, and dad caught them at the school a time or two.  She soon got over it, she got scared enough, she thought he was going to take her over and make her... Because she was with his family you know.  I guess the whole family was involved.  But anyway, that ended okay, no problem. 

Q:  Was that the Bird family that lived over by Charlie Richens?

A:  They lived in that area, I don't know right where they lived.

Q:  So you say that your biggest concern was who your children were hanging out with, and who they were dating.  Does that mean that your biggest concerns came when your children reached the teenage years?

A:  Yeah, dating ages.

Q:  Did you feel adequate as a parent in addressing their needs and how to handle them?

A:  I felt like I should be the example, which I tried to do.  Dad was the one that made the rules and kept the rules.  I think everything... we had a lot of guys hanging around that I didn’t like, but it turned out they weren’t bad guys, the just wanted to show off, they wanted to be important, things like that.  That thing with Beverly was the only thing we ever had like that.  Irene, she went off with Bruce, with his family, and was gone a while.  That caused a problem, in fact she just ran off and got married.  They worked that out.

Q:  When she was of age, when she was over eighteen.

A:  She was over eighteen.

Q:  You really couldn't stop that I guess. 

A:  Well we didn't know about it in enough time to stop it.  They ran off to the valley you know.  We don’t talk about that much because everything turned out fairly well.  Anyway Dad had his thumb on Bruce, Bruce knew pretty well what dad was gonna do. 

Q:  Well I know after they were married Dad and Bruce did do quite a few things together.

A:  Oh yeah, Dad took him, and put him to work with him, he worked with him for a while. 

Q:  They did a lot of work.

A:  When he come back... The day that Dad went to the hospital, Bruce sat on the lawn with dad for half of the day and talked and talked.  Bruce was trying to get in good with dad then.  Anyway Irene told me afterward, they were married by that time, they had been married a long time, they had several kids, she told me later that Bruce told her or asked her, he said, “When I die..”  That was after Dad had died.  “Do you think your dad would teach me the gospel.”  We talked a little bit about that because Bruce had won, well he hadn't won dad over, but Dad was right and he (Bruce) wanted to be approved of.

Q:  He wanted to have dad’s approval.  When did he have this talk?

A:  It was the day that dad took sick and had to go the hospital.  It was the day after Thanksgiving.  The kids were helping dad with a lot of work out there that he couldn't do by himself.  Bruce had sat out there on the lawn because dad wasn’t in very good health either.  Bruce came out and sat with him, I don’t know what happened but they talked for a long time.  In fact the kids worked all afternoon, when he came in, Alvin was busy cooking dinner that night, for the whole group, it was the day after Thanksgiving.  Dad came in there and told me he didn’t feel well and I told him to come an' lay down, and he said, “Do you have any ice cream?” because his stomach was hurting.  I said, “No I don’t, but I’ll send somebody to go get some.”  He said, “No, don’t send anybody for it.”  Next thing I knew he had come back out of the bathroom and started vomiting, and that’s when I hollerd for the kids to come.  That’s when they called an ambulance and took him to the hospital. 

Q:  So your first daughter to be married was LaVern, she married Merrill.

A:  Yes, she married Merrill, and they went to the temple.  Everything was fine.

Q:  Then Irene married Bruce. 

A:  Irene married Bruce, she ran away though and married him.

Q:  How long after that was Beverly married?

A:  I don’t remember, I’d have to look at all the dates, it was quite a while, because Irene got married not very long after that.  They were living down there in Roosevelt, and didn’t come around much.

Q:  Did you ever go to anyone for advice for how to raise your children or how to handle a situation with your children?  Did you go to your parents, or your in-laws, or your bishop to get advice on how to handle your children?

A:  I don’t think so.  I don’t remember it.

Q:  You knew all your answers?

A:  I thought daddy did, or I guess I did.  You know I was raised quite strictly. My mom and dad raised me, and I sort of followed that rule I guess. 

Q:  Okay let’s change direction. None of your sons joined the military or were drafted into the military so they didn’t serve in the war.  How did you feel about that, were there concerns?

A:  Well I was concerned about that because I wanted my boys to go on missions.  As it happened, and this was happen stance I guess, because each one of them, when they got of age, my boys all registered but they never did get called up.  As it happened when it got to the age to go they were called (on missions) because they didn’t have anything against them, no calls had been made for the military, so all of you were qualified to go.

Q:  Dale and Alvin and possibly Cory were during the Vietnam drafting period.

A:  I know, it just so happened that in between their dates or their birthdays.  We talked about how the Lord had really blessed us because none of them had been called up.

Q:  They were either on their mission or married when the drafting time came up.

A:  Yeah, they just were never were called up.  They never was turned down or anybody....

Q:  I thought they refused Cory because he had a rheumatic fever.

A:  Well maybe, I had forgotten that.

Q:  And they refused Forrest because he had real bad ingrown toenails, and they wouldn’t take him.

A:  Well see I had forgotten that.

Q:  Does that sound right?

A:  Yes it does, because Forrest did have to have his feet in surgery.

Q:  But by the time Marty and I got there they had stopped the draft.

A:  They were through with that.

Q:  They had stopped the active draft.  Alvin and Cory were married relatively quickly after their missions.  

A:  Yeah they were.

Q:  So that dropped their drafting status way down.

A:  Yeah, real quick. 

Q:  What were your worries about the war?

A:  Well I guess I was more worried about my husband than I was about my kids.  When the Japanese hit Pearl Harbor I was absolutely scared spit-less because dad was working at the mine, and they needed him there.  All during the war when they had rationing and everything, we had enough kids to keep everything in put, the things that everyone was having a problem with.  Dad did have a problem with tires for his truck.  They were really rationed, but for food and clothing, stuff like that, shoes and sugar, I always had plenty of sugar because I had so many children.  Then if I didn’t, I could trade coffee to somebody for sugar.  Coffee was a problem.

Q:  The rationing tokens what was it.  What did they call it when you had a ticket for so much coffee or so much sugar?

A:  I don’t know what they called it, they just had books that had coupons in them and we could take them, I remember going to the store.

Q:  You could trade your coffee coupons for sugar or what ever else you needed.

A:  We did run short on shoes a time or two, on little kids shoes, but that was not a big problem.

Q:  Was that a rationing issue or was that a financial issue?

A:  I think it was, maybe we didn't need as many as they thought we should, I don’t know.  Anyway we didn't have any serious problem during the war that way.  All I was worried about was that they were calling so many people after the Japanese attacked over there, that they were going to call Andy, course they never did even mention him.

Q:  How did you feel when each of your children started leaving home? 

A:  I guess it just kind of felt something natural. 

Q:  Time for them to go?

A:  It was just, they had reached that time of life.

Q:  Was it emotional or difficult to see your kids leave home to either be married or go on missions?

A:  Oh no, the missions I was real happy about the missions, and I didn't have, I was a little concerned when LaVern wanted to be married so early.  Everything worked out great she got a good husband, everything went great they went to the temple.  Irene, it was too late for her, she did her own (wedding).   

Q:  Too late to be worried about that.

A:  Beverly come back, and when she met Hugh, I was all for it.

Q:  When your last child left home, Levi left home, how did you feel, just being you and dad by yourself here?  Or did you ever feel like that you were alone?

A:  No I guess I didn't, I didn't worry about it, because Levi had been on a mission, and had been gone, he had only been called on a year and a half mission, and he begged and begged to keep him another six months and they wouldn't do it.  I told him, don’t ever think that you didn't get a full time mission, because you did.

Q:  That was in the eighties when they had tried to cut the missions down to eighteen months because of financial concerns. 

A:  Yeah.

Q:  Then a short time later they extended them back to two years.  Levi was in that window and he only had eighteen months.

A:  He only got eighteen months.   All the rest of you boys served two years.  

Q:  Looking back what do you think are the best ways of raising children?

A:  Just the way I did.

Q:  You wouldn't change a thing?

A:  I wouldn't change very much to be sure, because I, maybe I would have been a little easier on the kids, I don’t know.  Do you think I was rough on you kids?

Q:  I don’t think you were.

A:  Do you girls think I treated you guys too roughly?

Q:  I think that we didn't want to, we learned, speaking for myself, I learned too late sometimes that you didn't want to cross dad when you weren't around, because when you weren't around dad was not himself, dad was not happy when you weren't there.  If you weren't there to temper things, we were in trouble if we got in trouble.  So you don’t have any advice for people raising children today?  What kind of advice would you give them?  Would you tell them to not to give them everything they ask for or....

A:  Give them good rules, and see that they live by them.  A child needs to know what to do, if you don’t give a kid rules and something to go by, they might have some problems.

Q:  What about agency, and what about their freedom to choose?  Don’t you think that’s important? 

A:  To a point.  Some of you get ideas that are clear out of hand, and that’s not good.  I don’t know Greg, I’m not that smart really.

Q:  I think you are plenty smart.

A:  Look, I give dad one hundred percent for raising our family, and I tried really hard to do my part, but what he said went. 

Q:  Well let me ask you a question, one day when I think I was in seventh grade, I went into a restroom at school and found a piece of pornography lying on the counter at school.  I grabbed it and shoved it in my pocked because I was going to study it later, look at.  I never did get to look at it, because I forgot I had it and you found it while doing the laundry and called me in and asked be about it.

A:  I don’t’ remember that.

Q:  Do you remember that?

A:  No, I don’t ever remember finding that.

Q:  You called me in and you asked me where I got it, and I told you and that I hadn’t even looked at it.

A:  You hadn’t even looked at it.

Q:  No. You gave it back to me and told me to go out and get rid of it.  I took the trash out to the dumpster and burned it right there with the trash.  I never looked at it, and burned it right there.  I just wondered if you remembered the incident.

A:  No I don’t remember that.

Q:  Well I just need to tell you that I thought you handled that just perfect, because you didn't make a huge issue out of it, but you did voice your concerns, and you let me know that it would cause you grief if I was ever to get involved with something like that.  But then you gave it to me and told me to take care of it, and get rid of it.

A:  Well good.

Q:  You don’t’ remember that?

A:  I don’t’ remember it, but I’m glad I did what you thought I said.

Q:  You have selective memory.  I’ve always been glad that you didn’t make a huge issue about it, I don’t know if you ever talked it over with dad or not, but I never heard anything about it, I just got rid of it.

Greg Hancock memories: 

One day at school I saw a small pornographic picture on the bathroom counter and as I was leaving grabbed it and stuffed it in my shirt pocket. I thought perhaps I would study it later when I could find a private setting. I forgot I had it! Later Mom called me into her room and asked me about it because she had found it while doing the laundry. I told her where and how I got it. She believed me, and gave it back to me folded over just as it had been when I stuffed it in my pocket. She told me she wanted me to take care of it and I was given other counsel which I cannot recall but I do remember feeling deep shame and embarrassment and also, being relieved to find myself still alive and wondered why I had been trusted to dispose of the offending material. I grabbed the trash from the kitchen and went directly to the trash barrel out back and burned the picture with the trash without ever looking at it. I was impressed to have been trusted to do the right thing and I have tried to not betray the trust extended to me.


When I was very young, probably four years old I was asked to prepare to say a prayer in Jr. Sunday School. I am sure I could have gotten along quiet well with saying a prayer as we were accustomed to saying many prayers a day at home, but in preparation for this assignment, mother took me to her side and taught me some of the principles of prayer. I remember her teaching me that we always should remember to give thanks first and then we could ask for the blessings we wanted. I do not remember actually offering the assigned prayer but I clearly remember the one on one time with mother.

 Another assignment I was given a few years later was to sing for Jr. Sunday School. I thought I would sing one of the songs I was familiar with from the “Sing With Me” Jr. Sunday School Hymnal, but Mother was not satisfied with a simple task and took me into her bedroom and insisted I learn a hymn from the regular congregational hymnal. I ended up memorizing all of the verses from the Hymn “Dearest Children”.  After singing in Jr. Sunday School. I was asked by the bishop to sing in a subsequent Sacrament meeting. I did not volunteer to memorize this song and in fact thought I was being asked for too much. Being encouraged to stretch my talents was very good for me and I later sang other solos, and in duets, and choruses as well as performed in a number of theater productions. I am grateful for being pushed along while I was young. I am not talented above average in any area I know of and I am quite sure I am below average in most areas but with the work ethic I have been taught from my youth I have been able to accomplish anything I needed to do.

At our home in Roosevelt a well had been dug after we arrived to seek water for our needs. The well was dug about 15‘ down but the water was slow to seep into the well and was never dug deep enough to produce large amounts of water. The water found there was not fit to drink because of the alkali etc. The open well was covered with old bed springs for a measure of safety. This well was next to the back door because the porch was without railing, care was needed to keep from falling when coming and going over the back porch. One day Cory was drawing water out of the well with a rope on a bucket. One of his assigned chores was to water the trees and other plants around the house from the well. Once while he was working at this he saw a frog from the water he was drawing and turning his attention to the frog he was distracted enough to misstep, lose his balance, and fall. He was able to grab onto the bed springs and held on to keep from falling into the well below. No one knows how long he hung there but Uncle Jimmy Johnson who was visiting from Arizona, came out onto the back porch and while standing there he heard a quiet timid voice ask: “will you help me”. Looking down he saw Cory with his arms fully extended hanging over the well. Cory was then rescued by Uncle Jimmy. Because of the hazard and the fact of the well lacking potable water; the well was filled in. We hauled drinking water or hired others to haul it for us for our household use for many years until the waterline was extended from Myton and was hooked into our home about 1970.

Moms last days:
Lavern: “Mom I’m glad you’re packed and ready for the trip”. 
Indeed, mother is ready; she has her wick trimmed and oil in her lamp.


Jun 30^th 2011                                                    

One of the tenants, Mike Thomas, was deeply touched by Mother and expressed his personal loss when she  was no longer able to visit with him and then passed on. The following is his initial reply to my inquiry about his experiences with her.   

                                                                                                                             

Thanks for stopping by and asking for me to write something about your Mother! The incredible Mrs. Ruby Hancock, It will be an honor to do so.!  There are times in your life when, a person enters your life, makes a contribution that words just don't give justice to!  Then they leave and a huge void follows and you can't explain why. It may take me a while to do what you ask, as it requires something I don't do often...THINK!  You know I jest, but yet I am not!  The great people you meet in life are sometimes just full of themselves, some who are called Charismatic, but when they leave, nothing is really missing!  There are very few who we meet in life that have something, nobody else had: "A Presence!"

Such was your Mother, Mrs. Ruby Hancock. From the first day I met her........I knew I had seen a lady of substance, experience, knowledge, and had heard all the excuses in the World for failure, but yet could encourage!  Your Mother had that secret ingredient in life called, "Substance!"  You knew, as soon as you said Hello!  There was more to be realized. Your Mother's eyes were like nothing I have ever seen!  Once you looked into her eyes........whatever you intended to say...should quickly be reorganized and you probably would benefit, before opening your mouth...to think over 'what you thought you were going to say!'  She could "read a human, horse or cow from a 100 yards away!  She had insight, knowledge, and the secret ingredient: "Presence!"  If your eyes, started finding "a place to go" she knew, but gave you time to think up "your excuse!"  Was patient, to a point!

Gregory: 2010 I got to see a lot of family tragedy from afar, not involved, yet was!  When Sister Ruby lost her husband and Sister-in-law was killed in a car wreck. Your Mother spoke about this: "Why did they have to go, take me, I am ready!"  In every family, tragedies happen, but 2010 had triple compound loss!  I may only be the fella in Apt 3 that turned it into a bunkhouse/ Tack Room, but I do recognize strength, integrity and honesty in my fellow humans, all 3 of them!

This is not my article or story yet!  Like I asked you: please send the OBit/and pic of Mom in that incredible Portrait Photo!  That picture should be hung up. Anywhere there is a human about to make the "wrong decision!" including me!  One look in those eyes that could see through your soul, would be enough!  You would know instantly, you had better: "think things over!" Before a human said two words, she was ahead of you!  I have only known 4 people in my 71 years that had that ability! If you had no conscience, before meeting her, you soon got one!

Gregory, this is not my statement or the article I intend to write, it is however, a "warm-up on theme and thesis!"  Theme of course/or might be the History, Meaning and Understanding of her life. The Thesis of her life is going to be very "hard to define properly!" I can't say that I will get it right, but I will try!  I do think however, The Thesis of Her Life has to center on one word: Presence!  A word that is almost impossible to define, until you looked in her eyes ONE TIME!  Talk about Lazarus Effect! He never met Ruby Hancock!

The following is the Obituary for Mother.

Our dear mother passed away on Wednesday December 22 after being on earth for 89 years. Ruby was a beloved Sister, Aunt, Mother, Grandmother, Great Grandmother, and Great Great Grandmother and her family will truly miss her. 

Born in Glendale AZ to William Forrest and Mabel Inez Johnson to a family consisting of 6 boys and 6 girls, all but one has preceded her in death. A brother Ernest Richard Johnson resides in Peoria Arizona. There are also many nieces and nephews throughout the country. 

She married her eternal companion John Andrew “Andy” Hancock on Christmas Day in 1938, Andy also preceded her 14 years ago on December 18, 1996. Oh how she looked forward to being with him again. She was recently asked by one of her grandchildren, “Grandma what was the very best day of your life?” she responded “The day I married your Grandpa!” She was then asked” What was the second? She again responded “The day we will be together again.” 

Ruby was always a wonderful example to her 14 children (8 sons and 6 daughters), 89 grandchildren 210 great grandchildren, and 24 great great grandchildren all of whom she knew by name and birth date. 
Her children are from the oldest to the youngest: Irene Schuening (Bob), LaVerne Chandler (Merrill), Beverly Homer (Hugh), Dale Hancock (Lynn), Labretta Wilkes (Hans), Alvin Hancock (Carol), Ruby Burgess (Tom), Cory Hancock (Linda), Pamela Briggs, Forrest Hancock (Rogine), Marty Hancock (Elizabeth), Gregory Hancock (Janet), Denzlo Hancock (Debbie), and Levi Hancock (Cyndie). 

She has always been an active member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints where she was considered by many to be their spiritual “Mom” and influencing them by her steadfast example and gentle ways, she was her brothers and sisters keeper, always dedicated to her Lord and Savior. She was always easy to speak with and constantly expressed her witty and fun personality. 

Her influence and companionship will be greatly missed, however Ruby and Andy’s comments, statements, and example will always be there to guide our family and bless our lives. 

Songs sung by mother at home:

Lamp Lighting Time In The Valley
recorded by Marty Robbins
written by Harold Goodman, Sam C. Hart, Joe Lyons, Curt Poulton, Dean Upson

D                                         G               D

There's a lamp burning bright in the cabin
                                                    A7

In the window it's shining for me.
       D          G                 D 

 And I know that my Mother is praying
            A7                                       D G D

For the boy that she's longing to see.

CHORUS:

                  G                                         D

When it's lamp lighting time in the valley

                                                         A7

Then in dreams I go back to my home.

         D                     G                    D

I can see that old lamp in the window

              A7                              D G D

It will guide me where ever I roam.

In the lamplight each night I can see her

As she rocks in her chair to and fro'

Tho' she prays that I'll come back to see her

Still I know that I never can go.

CHORUS:

So she lights up her lamp and sits waiting

For she knows not the deeds I have done

But I'll change all my ways and I'll see her

Up in Heaven when life's race is run.

CHORUS:
  

When it's lamp lighting time in the valley

And the shadows of night gently fall

Then I long for my home in the valley

And I miss you Mother dear, most of all

CHORUS:

My Mother Was A Lady             Jimmy Rodgers

Two drummers sat at dinner in a grand hotel one day,
While dining they were chatting in a jolly sort of way;
And when a pretty waitress brought them a tray of food,
They spoke to her familiarly in a manner rather rude.

At first she did not notice them or make the least reply,
But one remark was passed that brought the teardrops to her eye;
And facing her tormentor, with cheeks now burning red,
She looked a perfect picture as appealingly she said:

"My mother was a lady like yours, you will allow,
And you may have a sister who needs protection now;
I've come to this great city to find a brother dear,
And you wouldn't dare insult me, sir, if Jack were only here."

It's true, one touch of nature, it makes the whole world kin,
And ev'ry word she uttered seemed to touch their hearts within;
They sat there stunned and silent, until one cried in shame,
"Forgive me, Miss! I meant no harm, pray tell me what's your name?"

She told him and he cried again, "I know your brother, too,
Why, we've been friends for many years and he often speaks of you;
He'll be so glad to see you, and if you'll only wed,
I'll take you to him as my wife, for I love you since you said:

"My mother was a lady like yours, you will allow,
And you may have a sister, who needs protection now;
I've come to this great city to find a brother dear,
And you wouldn't dare insult me, sir, if Jack were only here."

Mother, the Queen of My Heart                      Jimmy Rodgers

C        G7           C    C7

I had a home down in Texas

 F                         C

Down where the bluebonnets grew

G7                     C     a

I had the kindest old mother

     D7                      G   G7

How happy we were, just we two

     C            G7            C

Then one day the angels called her

       C7                    F

It's a debt that we all have to pay

F                      C     a

She called me close to her bedside

       C        G7       C

These last few words to say

Son, don't start drinkin' and gamblin'

Promise you'll always go straight

Ten years have passed since that parting

That promise I broke I must say

  I started in gambling for pastime

  At last I was just like them all

  I bet my clothes and my money

  Not dreaming that I'd ever fall

One night I bet all my money

Nothing was left to be seen

And all that I needed to beat them

Was one card, and that was the queen

  The cards were dealt all round the table

  Each one took a card in the draw

  And I drew the one that would beat them

  I turned it and here's what I saw

I saw my mother's picture

And somehow she seemed to say

"Son, you have broken your promise"

So I tossed the cards all away

  The winnings I gave to the newsboy

  I knew I was wrong from the start

  And I'll never forget my promise

  To my mother, the queen of my heart

yodel: C   G7  C 

       D7  G7  C

Little Green Valley
Recorded by Marty Robbins

I see a candlelight down in the little green valley
Where Morning Glory vines are twining 'round my door
Oh, how I wish I were there again
Down in the little green valley
That's where my homesick heart will trouble me no more.


There's only one thing ever gives me consolation
And that's the thought that I'll be going back someday
And ev'ry night down upon my knees
I pray the Lord to please take me
Back to that little old green valley far away.


I hear a mockingbird down in the little green valley
He's singing out a song of welcome just for me
And someone waits by the garden gate
Down in the little green valley
When I get back again, how happy she will be.


And by a little babbling brook, once more we'll wander
And in a shady nook, we'll dream the hours away
And I will leave all my cares behind
Go where I know I'll find sunshine
Back to that little old green valley far away.