Earl & Eliza Halls

During the depression years many men were out of work and were riding the trains from place to place picking up a job wherever they could. One day one of these men stopped in at the shop. He was a small man with good mechanical knowledge. He suggested to Dad that they build Dad a triphammer. So for the next week or so, he stayed with us at the house, sleeping in the barn, while they built a triphammer. This I was glad to see, for it replaced me as the blacksmith’s helper. I used to swing a twelve-pound sledge hammer for Dad as he welded points onto plowshares. I would swing this hammer until I thought my arms would fall off. The first triphammer was small, but worked very well. Dad built a larger, heavier one later, and gave the small one to his brother, Dale, who lived in Wyoming. This second triphammer was used by Dad for many years until he retired in 1955, then was used by Lorin until he gave up the shop in the late sixties.

(Lyle) Mother’s life was even harder in Morgan than it was before. The entire nation was in a depression, and Dad was making less money than he did in Huntsville. Most of the blacksmith work he did was for farmers who paid him with produce, grain, potatoes, hay for the cows, etc., so we had all that we needed to eat, but clothes for us kids had to be made by Mother.

(Lyle) Running in front of the home in South Morgan was an irrigation ditch with a foot bridge made of four railroad ties. Lois, at the age of one, fell into this ditch and floated under this bridge and didn’t come out the other side. One of the younger boys went screaming for Mother, who came running. She reached under the bridge and pulled Lois out just in time. She coughed and sputtered a few times, but was all right.

(Glenn) We had a battery radio that I think was given to us by Aunt Dora. I recall working with that squawking thing trying to tune in a station. Eventually Dad acquired enough money to buy a new Philco radio, and that provided us with some entertainment. We eventually got a telephone, one of those crank types, the only kind that was available at that time.

(Lyle) Dad, on a couple of occasions decided to make some wine. He would place a crock behind the kitchen stove full of crushed grapes and let them ferment. Not knowing how to make wine, he would bottle this juice before it was through fermenting. These bottles were small bombs, so when we went into the cellar where they were stored, we had to walk lightly or they would explode. When Dad would open one of these bottles, usually when he had company, he would place the bottle in the dish pan and cover it with a dish towel, then open the lid. After the wine had quit fizzing, they would wring out the dish towel and have their refreshment.

(Glenn) About the time that Elden became ill, I had acquired a 1921 Studebaker touring car that was a pretty nice car. It was acquired because it had a blown head gasket and the people driving it through Morgan wanted to continue on their way. We traded Lyle’s Model-T that he was building up for that Studebaker. I pulled the head and replaced the gasket and had a nice running car. With this car I would take Mother to Salt Lake to visit Elden. One time we picked up a woman hitchhiker. I think she was half crazy because we had one heck of a time getting rid of her. Another time I took Mother to Ogden to do some Christmas shopping. The roads were covered with packed snow, and on the way back a light drizzle had started making the roads extremely slick. I could step on the gas on that Studebaker and the wheels would spin. As we were coming up Weber Canyon, just over a hill above the power plant, there was a road truck with two men in the back who were shoveling sand on the road. A car was coming so I could not pass. I slowed down the best I could on the ice so as not to lose control and when the oncoming car passed I turned to pass the truck. The front wheels slid causing the end gate of the truck to hit the windshield post bending it back about four inches and putting the windshield glass in Mother’s and my laps. As the truck slowly pulled away at about one mile an hour, the end gate hooked onto my side curtain and tore it. The men in that truck just stood there with their mouths open. The driver never knew that he had been hit. Mother and I finished the trip to Morgan with rain in our faces, but she didn’t complain, and when we got there we were nearly frozen to death.