Earl & Eliza Halls

Later I cut the front seat of the car so that it would lay back and make into a bed. Then Otto and I went out to the desert to skin sheep. That year they had had a bad sheep kill. We would pelt the sheep, then take the pelts to Salt Lake and sell them for thirty cents each. We lived in the car. This gave us something to do and paid our expenses, including Otto’s cigarette habit. One day we had about twenty-five pelts laid out drying, and a Mexican came along and said, “This is my territory, go over there, lots of sheep over there. This is my territory.” So Otto and I, being young and gullible, gave into that, even though we carried a 30-30 rifle and, dumb idiots that we were, told him where our pelts were and gave him twenty pelts. We went over to the place where he suggested and worked two days, and found one sheep.

(Lyle) In 1933, Glenn, with Dad’s help, mounted a grain chopper on the back end of a 1921 Studebaker. They used the same engine to either power the car or run the chopper. Glenn would drive to the various farms and chop their grain charging ten cents per hundred. This gave him spending money and enough extra to enroll in a correspondence school on the repair of diesel engines.

In about 1935, Dad’s own teeth finally gave out and he had to have them pulled and a set of false teeth made by a Dr. Christensen. Now this dentist liked his liquor and was not too dependable. Finally, the teeth were ready, so Dad went up town and had them put in. He kept them in his mouth until noon, determined to get used to them. Then he said that he couldn’t take it any longer and went up to the dentist’s office. He found out that an Earl Williams was also getting new teeth and the dentist had given Dad the wrong set.

(Glenn) After the flour and feed mill burned, Dad suggested to me that I might make a portable grain grinder and grind feed grain for the farmers. I acquired the hammer mill from the burned-down mill, and mounted it on the back end of the Studebaker after removing the back half of the body. I soon found that I did not have enough power to drive the mill. I obtained a loan from the bank by having Dad sign with me and bought a grain chopper from a local implement company. By using two transmissions in the drive line I could run the chopper and still use the engine for power to the wheels. I mounted a scale on one side and an old fresno on the other. This I used to catch the chopped grain in. I went around the county chopping grain for ten cents per hundred pounds. I don’t know where we got the price from, but it was probably what the mill used to charge. Being dumb and not knowing that we should have minimums many a farmer called me to chop only one hundred pounds of grain, ten cents’ worth. This means that I had to unload that fresno that weighed one hundred pounds, and set up my rig for a measly ten cents. Some of the farmers were a little better, they would have me chop a thousand pounds, and that was a dollar’s worth.

I had my little business. I worked with Dad in the shop. I went to Wyoming and worked in the hay fields, and I worked on the local farms. I worked hard and my income finally exceeded my expenses. I was able to save up enough money to go to Los Angeles to a diesel engine school, as well as buy a candy bar once in awhile. I fell in love with a girl in Porterville, Delores Carter. We were married on April 12, 1935, and went to Los Angeles, California, where we made our home.

(Lyle) To complete his course, Glenn had to spend the final months at the school in California. He was dating Delores Carter at the time, so in 1935 they decided to marry and go to California together. This was the first of Mother’s children to marry and leave home.

One time a photographer came by with a goat and a cart and talked Mother into having a picture taken. Mother wanted to have the four younger children in the picture, but the photographer said only three, hoping to get to take two pictures. Mother could afford only one, so Don was left out. She never forgot how disappointed Don was, and how sorry she was to let this photographer talk her out of taking the picture of the four children. She even talked about this on her eighty-ninth birthday.