Earl & Eliza Halls
1921. Well, we had plenty of wheat we could trade for flour in Monticello. We made it through the winter.
(Earl) That winter I ran out of hay for my team, so I put a box on the front bob of my sleigh and went to Monticello. Coming home the next day there was a fierce blizzard, snow and rain mixed with plenty of wind. About five miles up from Monticello I met Bert Galloway. He told me to make it to his home and stay overnight, then he would help me home the next day. He knew I couldn’t make it home, and he would take his horses and help me. He said he would be back that night. Another mile or so I met Wally Anders and his brother-in-law. Wally told me the same thing, to stay at his place. They had four horses and a sleigh and expected to be home before dark. I lived some twelve miles beyond Anders’s home.
Well, the storm got worse, and by noon the sleigh was pushing snow to the end of the tongue. My horses were getting tired. I sat on top of nine bales of hay with a quilt wrapped around me. I was wringing wet. I came to a patch of timber and decided to feed the horses and eat my lunch, but when I got down I was too cold to unhitch the team. I managed to get my axe out of a box and work with it until I could unhitch and start a fire. After an hour I started out again, but only went about another mile. The snow got deeper, with drifts the horses couldn’t get through. They were give out. I unhitched at four o’clock and rode one horse and led the other. It was soon dark – the wind blowing and still snowing. I could only find my way by the shape of the groves of trees.
There was no sign of a road, but at about six-thirty or seven I saw a light at Anders’s house. Mrs. Anders came to the door, and of course, began to wonder about her man. I put my horses in the barn. She cooked some steak that I had with me, then she and her two small boys and I had supper. I had only seen her twice before. I was tired, but she kept thinking her husband and brother-in-law would come, and it was midnight before we went to bed. The two beds were only a foot apart and she and the boys slept in one. Or maybe she didn’t sleep. I don’t know. I did, in the other.
Later I learned that Galloway, Anders, and Anders’s brother-in-law had got back only to a bachelor’s homestead about five miles from town. The four had played cards all night. But the big question was “Whose wife was Halls sleeping with that night?” It turned out to be quite a gag. The next day I rode home. The storm lasted three days, and by the time the neighbor and I put six horses on a sleigh and went to Monticello and finally got my sleigh home, the hay had all been fed up.
(Eliza) With the advent of spring and with a barn half full of wheat, it was decided to get some mother pigs. We got three, one ate or laid on her litter, the others farrowed a nice bunch of beautiful little pigs. They went to market in the fall, with the same results as the wheat, hardly paying for the transportation. I remember the summer was one of those summers without rain, at least our garden wasn’t too good. But the wheat was doing well. Earl must have gotten it planted early. This was also the year of the jackrabbits. They liked the nice green wheat.
In the fall of 1921, when Glenn started to school, he rode the little gray mare, but she threw him and he wouldn’t ride her anymore so he walked the two miles. He would meet up with the McDonald kids that lived about three quarters of a mile from us. He came home quite put out one day and said, “I’m not a human bean, am I?” The kids had been calling him a human being. I explained that to him and he felt better. The McDonald girls were older than he and I think liked to tease him. I have an idea that they had something to do with the horse throwing him.
On December 12, 1921, Lorin entered the world. He wasn’t very anxious, but finally made it. He had to be turned a bit. Mrs. Bean was the midwife. Mrs. McDonald was also there as Mrs. Bean didn’t want to be alone. She only stayed until I was able to be up and around enough to take care of the baby. You know at that time we always stayed in bed a week. By that time we were either too tired to get up, or glad to, but I think we lost strength staying in bed that long. Try it sometime. All went well as usual.
1922. We killed and ate jackrabbits. Where they came from I never knew, but we ate jackrabbits and were thankful for them. I remember them hanging frozen on the cedar tree by the kitchen door. I got so I couldn’t eat or swallow another bite of jackrabbit. Things were bad that summer. Homesteaders began to move out one by one. It wasn’t a very pleasant year. We could see the end and there was nothing to do to stop it.
(Earl) The next year I planted my own sixty-five acres and had 110 acres to plow back with gas at sixty cents per gallon. Jack rabbits were getting bad, and we had a drought. I couldn’t pay my interest and principle. And neither could my neighbors. Most of them just left and let the banks sue them and get judgement. That generally meant three or four hundred dollars judgement besides the amount of the loan. Some went to Colorado and got jobs, and the government had a portion of their wages withheld to pay on the judgement. I beat them to it. I wrote to the Federal Land Bank and told them to send the deeds and I would sign them over to them. That is what I did to avoid the judgement. That fall, in September 1922, I sold what I could, but gave it away, you might say. I intended to leave the county and move back to Huntsville. Glenn and I took the wagon, team, and tractor to where I intended to store the tractor, in Frank Halls’s garage. There was no sale for tractors. They were up for sale on every farm. The country had gone to pot.
On reaching Monticello, I met the county attorney and he asked me if I wanted to manage a large ranch. I told him I would look it over. Next morning, he and a man by the name of LeFete who had just bought 1100 acres of farm land, and seven or eight sections of range land went to the ranch, seven miles north of Monticello. LeFete told me he wanted to build barns, hog pens, granaries, reservoirs, and so forth, and wanted me to be foreman. I would be paid $125.00 a month with a house to live in, and garden and meat furnished. Well, manna had started to fall from heaven, and I took the job.