Earl & Eliza Halls

(Eliza) Lorin was nine months old when Earl got a job managing a ranch for Mr. LeFete, who had foolishly bought it. He was from the East and thought he was getting something, big ranch, lots of water rights, only the water from the Blue Mountains didn’t last long enough for him to get very much. By the middle of July it was gone. The Blue Mountains aren’t very big or very high and more times than not there was less water than plenty. So in the end, poor Mr. LeFete got took.

Well, we were next to leave our homestead. It was a sad deal, after a ten-year struggle. Earl said we would sell our furniture. I asked what we would use for furniture on the ranch. He supposed it was furnished. Well, we sold. I wouldn’t let my sewing machine or organ go. All the rest was sold, but the beds. I’m not sure about the stove, and I sold a couple of items I have been sorry for since. A small marble-top table that Ma gave me, and the kids’ little wagon, but I doubt they could have used it on the ranch very much. So we loaded up the wagon and pulled out. I can’t explain how I felt, but I wasn’t happy. I guess Earl felt as I did, but we were at the end of the rope with bills to pay and a mortgage on the homestead. Glenn drove the tractor to the ranch.

Well, we got to the ranch. The house was occupied by two families that had been working on the ranch. One couldn’t move because their house wasn’t finished on their homestead. The others stayed until we moved in. They even held onto the milk cows, but they would give me milk when I asked for it, which I did quite often. I still wonder how they got by with it, because when they left, they left the cows behind. Maybe Earl didn’t want the job of milking. Well, we went to an old, dirty, rock house that was on the ranch, and cleaned it out. Someone built a long board table and benches and I began to cook for the men.

(Earl) The rest of that fall I had as many as thirty-five to forty men to herd. Mostly I rode a horse between jobs. We bought sixteen head of horses, seventy-five head of pure-blood cows and other range cattle, and thirty-five head of pure-blood pigs.

(Eliza) They were building dams, barn, shop, and all the things that LeFete thought should be on his dream ranch. Earl was supervising and I was cooking for the men. The owner was to pay us so much per meal. There were men from all over. Some were our neighbors, some were from back east, some from Monticello. Anyway, we were in this old house with a board table, a cook stove, and a fireplace in the old living room where we had our beds. I only remember one bed in this room so there must have been another room. But I was so busy cooking, I guess I didn’t go in long enough to remember it. I cooked for thirteen men for awhile. The kids I had very little time for. Lorin and Elden stayed around the porch. Glenn and Lyle had firewood and such to look after and then they were gone to where the action was, and I have an idea they thought other things were more important. There was no water to drown in. The ditch was in the oak brush where the pigs were running loose. I guess I had a tub and washboard to do the wash on. I cannot even remember where the water came from. All I can remember clearly is that table full of men and all those dishes. I remember one night, I was so tired after the men left the table, I just sat there and couldn’t face those dishes. One of the young working men saw me and came in and helped me do the dishes. Not many men would do that.

After all the building was mostly completed, we moved over in the big house with two rooms. The number of men was decreasing. The table was smaller, as was the kitchen. The front room was large and empty. It had a stove, the sewing machine, the organ which I never had time to play anymore, and the folding couch we had used for an extra bed on the homestead. After the other people moved out, we had one large bedroom. Here there was a chest of drawers and our bed. One small bedroom had a bedstead and one bed of ours where the boys slept. We weren’t overly furnished, but all we did was work, go to bed, get up, and repeat.

A Spanish family by the name of Perdencio moved in. He was a good worker and dependable. He moved into the old rock house with his family and he brought his milk cow, a large holstein, black and white. She came up with two beautiful twin calves. He was so proud of them. One day when hauling hay he thought he would be good to them and threw them a bit of alfalfa hay. They both bloated on it and died. I got his daughter, about sixteen, to come and help me wash, and I was learning to speak Spanish. When her dad saw a hired hand by the name of Jackson talking to her out by the trees, she was never allowed to come again. Later, one of the far neighbors sent word and said she had an extra washer I could take if we would come and get it. I wanted to buy it, but no sale. I couldn’t turn down a good thing like that. I sold her the organ when we left for five dollars, thinking I was being generous. I never got the five dollars. Maybe she didn’t have it or thought I owed it to her.

This Jackson was one of the farm hands, a stranger from no-one-knew-where. He was a congenial person and a good worker. I rather liked him. One time he wanted me to cut his hair. I was barber for the Halls family, but I said no. I finally gave in to get rid of him, but wouldn’t take any pay. Weeks later, he gave me a sack of candy. In the winter he brought us a hind quarter of beef. We wondered where it came from. I couldn’t have cared less. Later, Earl found out he was killing beef and selling it. He, like me, liked the guy and didn’t want to turn him in, so later on he told him he wouldn’t need him any more and he left. I have often wondered what happened to him. LeFete hired a cattle man who had a range grant and a herd of his own, a man from Monticello. Like Jackson, he wasn’t exactly honest. His branding iron got the wrong calf occasionally. As Earl didn’t have anything to do with hiring him, he figured it was none of his business and wasn’t going to be involved.

During the late winter before Don was born, the LeFetes came west. One day he came and saw me and said, “You didn’t have enough, you just had to have another one,” meaning the coming baby. I never said anything. I just thought “It’s none of your business.” A few days later, his wife came in to get warm. It was wet and sloppy outside. Lorin (“Toughy,” the men called him) came in for something, and, of course, his shoes were soaking wet, and she said I should not let the boys run around with wet feet. Neither did I answer her then. But I thought, “Lady, you don’t know what you are talking about.” I guess the boys had colds and coughs, but a healthier lot you will never find. The only trouble I remember on the ranch was Lyle and his croup, and that was only once. He and Glenn were riding the old gray mare to school, the one that threw Glenn. When we left, we left her and her colt to run free.

The chicken coop was so full of bedbugs we moved the chickens over to the once-was shop and burned the coop. Believe it or not there were bedbugs out in the trees and in the beds.

As the buildings were finished, there weren’t so many men around, about seven men for dinner. Most of them went home, as most now lived in Monticello, only a seven-mile drive. Elizabeth’s mother, Aunt Emma Woods, came to help for two weeks, but had other commitments so had to leave. But I got some sewing done while she was there. She practically kicked me out of the kitchen. One day she decided to make some doughnuts. The boys kept coming in for another doughnut. Aunt Emma said that if they didn’t stop, there wouldn’t be any left. As I had not been paying any attention to them, I told her that if they had had enough to tell them so, the next one was their last. I have an idea that they were the first doughnuts they had ever eaten.

Don was born May 9, 1923 in Monticello. I stayed at Frank and Lizzie Halls’s home. Aunt Emma, who lived with them at the time, took care of us. Dora took a vacation and came down to take care of things and the boys while I was away. There were still a few men to feed.

Earl’s father came for a visit. Earl gave him a paid job of irrigating the fields that spring, a job he was well qualified to do. The wind blew and blew and he said it blew the water uphill. But someone complained and Earl had to let his father go. He stayed on for awhile and then went home. As I remember it, it was a bad year as my garden dried out for lack of water.

Summer passed. I was still cooking. Don was a good boy and spent most of his time in the swing that Earl had made. Snow came, and so did the big, long-legged jackrabbits. They were all over, around the house and in the fields. Even today I cannot eat rabbit. One night the men left the haystack gate open to let the rabbits in. Then after dark they went out to kill them. They got more than 200 in one night. Winter passed. Spring came. Don was walking by holding onto something. I thought he was never going to take off alone, but one day when about 14 months old he was sitting on the middle of the kitchen floor. It was a beautiful sunny day in June. He got up and walked out of the house and onto the porch all on his own.

LeFete had imported a number of hogs. They used to get through the fence occasionally, but we had a dog that would drive them back. When he took after them, they always knew where they got out. The pigs did well, but the hog market was still no good. We were in an after-war depression, which was bad all over the states. Many people were losing their homes. Some of the homesteaders were moving out.

(Glenn) 1922. I do not remember Mother’s problems on LeFete’s ranch, but apparently it was hard for her. I must have spent most of my time with Dad. There was a lot of construction going on at the ranch. One of the projects was to store the water that came down a draw on the other side of the hill. A reservoir was being built there with the idea to pipe the water over the hill. LeFete had some very nice equipment, and beautiful teams of horses with brand-new harness. One day one of the horses slid off the embankment of the dam over into a fire that was burning some of the brush. As I recall the horse was burned, but not too seriously, but to me it was quite an incident. The project turned out to be a failure. They laid the pipe over the hill and I remember them pouring water in the pipe at the top of the hill to start a syphon. It was intended that the water be syphoned over the hill to the working part of the ranch. Apparently that part of the ranch was not far enough below the reservoir because the system never did work and was abandoned. I guess the pipe is still laying there in the hill.

Lyle and I went to school in a ranch house down on the main highway about two miles from our place. Today it’s at the end of the airport. I think the house is still there. I do not recall that we rode the horse to school. I recall walking. Along the way there was a big windmill. I’m not sure that it was on LeFete’s ranch. It may have been where we got our water. Anyway, one day I determined to climb this windmill. I was afraid of heights so I never looked anywhere but up till I got to the top. Then when I got to the top I locked my arms around the windmill very tight and looked down and it’s a wonder I didn’t stay there.

While working on the ranch I recall that I was in one of the fields mowing hay when one of those nice thunder storms came up with a flash of lightning and a bolt of thunder. The horses jumped and took off across the field. I took off too, right off the back of that mower seat and let them go. They stopped not far away by a clump of trees.

I wish my Dad had brought me up to be a fighter instead of such a sissy. One time out in the fields we were putting up hay. We did not use wheeled vehicles; we used drags. The hay was thrown on the drags and hauled to the stack yard and there stacked. I was assigned a team of horses and one of the drags. I had a knife that I prized very dearly, and the Mexican kids apparently picked on me and threatened to take it away from me, so one of the times when I went into the yard I asked Dad to take my knife so that I wouldn’t lose it. I should have whaled into those kids and showed them who was boss.

One time Dad and I were working with the pigs which was an annual spring chore. It was my job to sit on the pig and hold him while Dad did the cutting. One time one of those little beasts got me by the seat of the pants and bit me, and it didn’t feel very interesting. I think thereafter I changed my position.

Another time I was looking out the window of the ranch house while a thunderstorm was going on. I was looking into the field where the pigs were and I saw a bolt of lightning hit the middle of that field with instant thunder. It wasn’t over a half block away. Another time to celebrate the Fourth of July, Dad set a half stick of dynamite on a fence post across the road from the house and set it off. We had instant Fourth of July.

Once while surveying for a ditch Dad and I and another fellow rode horses up toward the Blue Mountains. I was riding bare back. Apparently we rode quite a long time because when I got back I was sure glad to get off that horse for my bottom was very sore. I’m not sure but what I got a blister.

While on the ranch, I guess part of the reward for helping Dad was a BB gun that we ordered from Wards or Sears and we got notice that it had finally came into the Post Office in Monticello. Dad let me go to Monticello to pick it up and I was the happiest boy in town. I must have run out of BBs for the gun because I used to shoot matches with it. I don’t know how come I didn’t burn the ranch down because those matches would always light when they hit. I always put the hot end of the match forward so when it hit a rock it would go off. One day Lyle and I were walking down the road toward the wash and he had a nice hole in the seat of his pants exposing the skin about one inch in diameter. Jokingly I told him to go down the road and turn up a stick and I would take a shot at it with the gun, not expecting to hit it as the matches always curved. In this particular case that match went straight to the point and hit right in the middle of that hole. Lyle jumped and hollered. I don’t know if he remembers it or not, but I sure do as I was embarrassed.

1923. Not far from the house was the creek from the Blue Mountains that was dry most of the time except for muddy pot holes. Along the banks there grew a lot of vegetation such as hops, chokecherries, etc. We kids used to play there quite a bit, particularly in the mud. One day we had one of those famous cloudbursts up on the Blue Mountains and it really let down some water. Dad realized there was going to be a flood down through there, and I remember him out in the field feeding the pigs in the middle of the day, hollering, “Pig, pig, pig,” to get those pigs out of the brush. They came running to their feed and sure enough, not long after, down came the water and covered half of that field.

(Earl) My mother died the next winter on February 24, 1924. I went to Huntsville for the funeral. I rode the mail 110 miles to the railroad, caught the train at midnight, and by the time I got to Huntsville, I was beyond sleep. I didn’t sleep for four nights and “was all in” by the time the funeral was over. We three boys, Clyde, Dale, and I paid the funeral expenses. Father’s earning days were over by then. It was the least we could do. My mother was a very hard-working woman who loved her children much more than they deserved. Mother went to work in a hotel at the age of twelve, making beds, sweeping, and doing all kinds of work too hard for a girl of that age. Her mother, my grandmother, taught school and later ran a dairy making butter and cheese and selling it to nearby towns. It was no small job for her to raise a family of six girls. She had left Grandfather when he left Parowan to find work in Eureka, Nevada. We kids probably could have eased our mother’s burdens more if we had tried harder, although we all worked. I, myself, have bought things for my younger brothers and sisters, I being the oldest and always working.

(Glenn) One day I was riding my gray mare out among the trees on a gallop or a lope. A tree branch came along and I dodged the branch one way, the horse the other. I left the horse and landed on my back in front of her. The horse stopped dead, both front feet dug into the dirt straight forward, but I was not hurt. Another thing that I remember about the horse was when Dad’s Mother died. This is the only time that I had ever seen Dad cry. It struck me deeply. Anyway, he got on the horse and rode to Monticello to make arrangements to go home to Huntsville for the funeral. He rode the horse very hard and when he got back she was soaking wet and covered with lather.

(Eliza) The summer of 1924 is sort of a blank to me. There were some turkeys that came from somewhere. LeFete must have brought them in. Earl asked what to do with them. He said, “Let your wife take care of them. She can have whatever they bring.” All I had to do was feed them along with the chickens. They laid their eggs in the brush and came in with their young, which were sold. I never did know what they brought, but I insisted I get a set of dishes and a little wagon for the kids. I had never seen any money for all the men I cooked for as I knew there were bills to pay, but for my turkeys also, that was too much. I got something for that work.

(Earl) The drought came – blew the grain out of the ground, roots and all, with large piles of dirt at the ends of the fields like snowdrifts. Jack rabbits were so thick they could clean a hundred-acre field overnight. There was no water to use for irrigation. We hauled out 200 pigs to Dolores, Colorado. They weighed ninety to one hundred pounds each. We got $2.30 each for them. They were used to make hog cholera serum. We hauled them seventy-eight miles in wagons. It was either that or let them starve to death. Grain was too high to feed pigs at that time.

We stayed at the LeFete ranch for two years. The ranch boss came from Kansas City and wanted me to take the ranch on a ten-year lease, but I had had all the farming I wanted. So he leased it to Jude Bailey, and I traded my tractor for a one-ton Model-T truck.

(Glenn) 1924. When Dad had all he could take of Le Fete’s ranch, he traded the tractor for a Model-T Ford truck. For some reason I was elected to drive the tractor into town. I don’t know what happened to Dad. I’m sure that he would have to drive the truck back, but for some reason I drove the tractor alone. I guess Dad was coming in later. Anyway, at about halfway the tractor stopped in a rutted road, the ruts being about a foot deep. This allowed me to get at the crank. It was a Case tractor, with the engine crosswise so that the crank was at the side. I was able to get at the crank and turn it, and the engine started. I do not know why it ever stopped. Had the engine kicked while I was on the crank, I would still be on my way to the moon.

(Earl) We left Monticello in the tin lizzie in September 1924, with our belongs, five boys, and $800.00 cash, and headed for Huntsville in northern Utah, with no job in sight. The roads were trails most of the way. It took us twelve days to make the trip. The truck broke down a half-dozen times. We had to buy an old motor at Woodside, Utah, and get connecting rods to overhaul it. I spent a day in the sand putting in rods. At one place twenty-six miles south of Price, we got stuck in the bottom of a wash in the sand. A truck came along and couldn’t pass, so they drove down and put a chain around the front axle and pulled us out, and left us waiting there with the axle sprung out until we couldn’t crank the engine. Yes, it was one of those you cranked. Also, the truck had a broken radius rod. A friend came along and was to send a radius rod out from Price. He couldn’t find anyone to send it out with, so he laid off work the next day and brought one out to us himself. The rod cost $2.90, and I paid his day’s wage, plus gas, which made it cost $18.90. And then, when we got to Price, I had to buy another axle and put it in.