Earl Halls

 Father’s brothers, George, John, and Mosiah, owned 200 acres of land below the ditch on the south side of Huntsville, and quite a number of acres of dry land above the canal. They also had about nine sections of range land between Huntsville and Mountain Green and an 800-acre ranch in Geneva, Idaho. When Grandfather Halls was called by the church to help settle the Mancos district, he took his second wife and family, together with Dad and Uncle Tom. Of course, the boys in Huntsville got the land of the two places, but were left with their mother to provide for.

When we were in Huntsville, for several years Dad worked for his brothers on the ranch. Among other chores, we had ten cows to milk and ten cows that fed two calves each. I well remember, I helped milk the cows and get them out of the pasture in summer. I had to get up at five o’clock and wrangle horses from the pasture during haying season, and the putting in of crops. In the fall they gave me a ten-dollar gold piece. Of course I felt rich, and went to town to buy clothes. After doing my shopping I thought I should have a purse full left, with all that dough, but found that I had just ten cents change to put in it after the clothes were paid for.

While Maude was going to school in Ogden, she came home one winter with scarlet fever during the Christmas holidays. Of course, the whole family got scarlet fever, with the exception of Mother, Father, and me. It was all pretty well over, the fumigating all done, and we had started back to school. And about two weeks later, I took down with scarlet fever. That meant a whole bunch of fumigating to do over. That ended the school for that year. They had only six months of school then.

The milk men in those days came early. They drove wagons with long-bodied boxes on, and hauled five- and ten-gallon cans. The creamery stood about half way between Eden and Huntsville. The spot is now covered by Pine View Reservoir.

In 1903 my folks bought a home on the north side of Spring Creek. It was eighteen acres and cost $1,800. Father traded in a span of pure-blood Clydesdale horses as the initial payment on the home, and paid for it in yearly payments from then on.

On February 15, 1904, my sister, Ruby, was born. Doctor Shields was the attending doctor.

At fourteen, which I was then, I worked for my uncles in the summer and went to school in the winter. In the fall of the year I would follow a horse-powered threshing machine at the end of a straw carrier, a nasty, dirty job from dust, chaff, and weed seed. As I got older, I would pitch bundles. The old horsepower was run by twelve horses pulling in a circle, and the power was transmitted to the machine by a long tumbling rod to the face gear which gave the cylinder speed and knocked the grain out of the heads.

I pitched grain onto the table where a man stood and cut the twine bands that bound the bundles. If any one of us would throw a bundle with our forks and it would land with the heads toward us, he would knock it off and curse us. Also, we had better not throw one on top of another. After he cut the band, he would push it over to the guy who fed it into the machine. The grain came out into a box at the side of the machine in half-bushel measures which were counted, and then the man would put the measured grain in a sack. I sometimes held that sack for the measuring man and, boy, I’d better hold it right!

The farmers who were having their threshing done would furnish the feed for the men and the horses. They would feed the men before daylight, and we would work ‘til after dark, very often twelve hours, and almost always at least ten. All my life my right arm would not straighten out entirely from overworking it by pitching bundles on threshing machines.

Another job was baling hay which was done by horse power, a team walking around and around to provide power to push a plunger into the baler to compress the hay so a man could put a wire around it, weigh it, and tag each bale. This baling job took three men – one to pitch the hay from the stack onto the table, the next to take it from there and, with one foot, push the hay down into the hopper. The other man would wire, weigh, carry it away, and stack it.

Better watch out that a foot wasn’t down in the hopper when the plunger came in. Many a man lost a leg that way. A friend of ours went in head first when he was putting a wooden block in that had to go in to separate the bales. Killed him right now. This happened in Canada. He was a very fine young fellow.

At our Huntsville home, we carried our house water from Spring Creek, a creek that ran through our eighteen-acre farm. When the water was muddy, we got drinking water from a small spring about 100 yards from the house.

One summer after I finished grade school, I was staying home. I spent most of the summer hauling gravel on a wagon and stirring it on a mixing board with a shovel, mixing cement for fish ponds. We had no cement mixers, and that was hot, hard work in midsummer.

I wanted Dad to let me fix a barrel and put shafts on it with an axle in the center of the barrel and a door on the side. I could then put the gravel, cement, and water in, hitch the horse in the shafts, and lead the horse around to stir the cement. But no soap! Dad won out, and I stirred the cement with a shovel. I still think it would have worked.

By this time in my young life, I’d started to comb my hair and wear celluloid collars that came up under my ears, patent leather shoes, and derby hat, and I’m not sure that I didn’t look sideways at the girls.

My younger sister, Pearl, was born on February 9, 1906 at our Spring Creek home. Dr. Shields was the doctor.

In the fall of 1907, a depression hit the country. I went to Idaho to help Uncle George with the cattle roundup. I rode with Andy Evans most of the fall. We had two horses each, and changed horses every other day. There had been a lot of rain and the Bear River was high from Cokeville all the way down to the bottoms until it emptied into Bear Lake.

There were only certain places where we could cross the river without swimming a horse across, but Evans and I didn’t look for those places. We would dare each other to cross wherever we came to the river. 

One November morning, colder than all get-out, we came to a steep bank. There was a crevice in the bank where the water had run down, and below, a deep whirlpool hole. Evans went first, and his horse swam across while he stood in the saddle and held onto the horn to keep dry.

I had a small brown mare that day, and when she hit the water, she went under. Me too! When she came up, she swam around and around and then down we would go again.

Swimming wasn’t good with a pair of chaps, overshoes, and heavy coat on, so Evans hurled his rope to me and I put it around Dobbin’s neck and was pulled out. The nearest house was about two miles away. I shook so much I was sweating by the time we got there. We took some time to dry my clothes by a fireplace and thaw me out.

 Uncle George was going to make a cattle-buyer out of me, so we bought steers for about three weeks, all over Bear Lake County. A good two-year-old steer was worth about sixteen to seventeen dollars. He gave his check, postdated for thirty days. His banker had promised to cash his checks in thirty days. He had money in the bank, but all accounts were frozen. Then about the last of November I headed through the hills for Huntsville, going by way of East Bear Lake (Laketown). The usual way would have been by way of Cokeville over Monte Cristo and down Beaver, but Uncle George told me to take a shorter trail over Monte Cristo by way of Laketown. I did. I stayed in Laketown the first night. The second day I got pretty well up on Monte in the tall pines and quaking aspens, and it was starting to snow real hard. By four p.m. there were ten inches of snow and I couldn’t tell where I was going. I finally came across some fresh tracks, and a closer examination found they were made by my own horse. Well, I was lost, and there was only one thing to do. So I found a good pitchy log and started a fire, and one damn lonesome kid kept the fire all night. About ten p.m. it cleared off and got cold. The horse whinnied, and the coyotes howled to keep me company. In the morning the sun came up and showed me which side of the earth it was on. I saddled up and headed for home sweet home. And I do mean sweet!

When I was a young man, dances were the main entertainment, most every Friday night. People were not so clannish as they are now. I was a little backward about coming forward and spent several early dance nights just watching the rest. Then one night some of the older girls and a couple of married women seized me and almost danced me to death. But their feet sure got walked on. After that I couldn’t be stopped. I would rather dance than eat. Later my girl played the piano for the dances. I would take her to the dance and then I’d dance while she played. Generally she would come down for a dance. Maggie and I went together off and on for about five years, and then she married Charlie Felt. Maggie died of cancer in 1962 and Charlie died in 1966. So, I’m still here and I expect to keep goin’ for at least a few more rounds.

I attended the Utah Agricultural College in Logan during the winter of 1910-11. I was studying to become a blacksmith and horseshoer. Aside from forge work, wheelwright, and horseshoing, I also had English, math, and veterinary science. 

On February 27, 1911, a man came to fly his plane on the AC campus. There was a heavy wind that would almost blow us away, and he was parked with his plane at the corner of the shop where I was working.

On Mondays we had no school, but were allowed to work up there part time. We were to leave at noon, but four of us decided to sneak upstairs and watch the plane flight. We could afford that, but it would have cost a dollar and six bits if we paid our ticket. So, Andrew Peterson, Lawrence Felt, Horse Nelson, and I went up the stairs, sat by a radiator, and watched the plane.

But with the wind being as strong as it was, they had quite a time. They had it staked down with ropes, with trips on, and he sped up the motor sitting astraddle a plank, operating his controls with his feet and hands, and when he gave the order, they jerked the ropes and turned him loose.

He got into the air for about fifty feet, but the wind was too much for him and downed him. It broke his plane up pretty badly, but he was unhurt. The plane had to be taken to pieces, crated, and shipped east. I got in on that job of dismantling the plane and helping to crate it. The plane had an automobile engine, water cooled, and as I said before, the pilot sat on a plank and handled the throttle and controls with his hands and feet.

On March 7, 1911, news came that Thomas Smart had donated $10,000 toward building a new gymnasium, and the state legislature had voted the balance.

Well, the students went wild and had a funeral in the chapel for the old gym. Later they took the form of a casket, labeled it “The Old Gym” and took it down onto Main Street. They stacked wooden boxes around it, and set it on fire. Someone called the fire department, and there they came with their three horses drawing the fire department.

When they attempted to put the fire out, the students interfered and the firemen all got wet, but the fire didn’t go out until it had burned pretty well down.

On March 13, 1911, which was a Monday and again no school, I visited with my half-uncle, Frank, who was also taking blacksmithing. Frank and I were almost the same age. He came from the second family of Grandpa Halls. This day the boys were running races, and one fellow was trying to get on the college track team. But I outran the field that day and this fellow dropped out from the team. I guess he figured if I could beat him, there was no use.

On June 3, 1911, Frank Halls, Virgil Halls, and I started from Huntsville for Geneva, Idaho with 112 head of cattle and seventeen head of horses, which made a lovely combination – night herding and driving cattle for six days. The cattle and horses were Uncle Mosiah’s.

The Halls brothers had divided the land and stock. John and George were paying us for the trip. The entire trip took us ten days – on trail, branding and other things, and the train ride home. I was paid twelve dollars for it and it cost me two dollars for train fare home. If you want to get rich, work for your relatives.

During the winter of 1911-12, I fed cattle for Uncle John on the ranch on the south bench of Huntsville. He owned the land where the road entering Huntsville now crosses.

There were 200 acres below the canal. He paid me thirty dollars per month and I boarded myself. I was behind on finances from school the year before. One morning in March I woke up sick, toughed it out all day, fed cattle, and rolled all over the ranch house floor that night.

At seven a.m. next morning, I called Dr. Edward Rich in Ogden and asked him how soon he could operate on me for appendicitis. He said, “How do you know you have appendicitis?” I answered that I just knew. He said, “Can you be here by ten o’clock?”

Dad came and fed cattle for me. Mother and I went to the Dee Hospital, but before leaving, we went to David McKay’s home and I had him give me a blessing. He was the father of David O. McKay, present president of the church. The old man then came to the hospital and watched the operation, which I appreciated very much.

I was in the hospital for six days, and then Mother and I went down to Aunt Lottie’s and strayed there for a few days. Aunt Lottie lived on Jefferson Avenue, four or five houses south of the city cemetery. Very often I went there and helped her out one way or another. She was a widow. Her husband died on a mission in Germany and she had three little kids. But she was a very dear friend. 

She died in a car crash in 1967 on her way home to Logan after the commencement exercises at Weber State College. She and her daughter were up somewhere near what they call “Dry Lake.”

A car came onto their side of the road and ran head-on into them, killing the two and hurting a daughter-in-law who was in the back seat. Incidentally, while I was at Aunt Lottie’s trying to get over my hurts, I walked out in the cemetery and sat on a headstone and wrote a poem about my hospital stay which I later wrote out on the typewriter. This is what it said:

A Week Off

by Earl Halls

I reached the hospital at half past ten

Feeling so husky and strong, then

I could have turned the doctor upside down

And almost broken the surgeon’s crown.

I had taken a bath and my gown was on

I looked in the mirror and sang a song

And smiled at myself and wondered why

I had come there, perhaps to die!

But I smiled again at my strange case

For here was I, about to face

A table where, at the doctor’s will

I could not move, just take my pill.

So in I walked without a fear

Of sword, knife, or even spear.

I climbed on the table and was there strapped down

Just as though I’d robbed half the town.

But I took it easy and did not weep

And asked them to go, so I could sleep.

We joked awhile about this and that

In fact, we had quite a jolly chat.

Then all of a sudden my eyes they did cover

And very soon I began to smother.

(Continued)

Then from the earth I seemed to rise.

Things grew dark, how dim my eyes.

If death is worse than this affair

Oh, God in Heaven, hear my prayer!

When next my eyes finally saw the light

I was in my room and all was bright.

I tried to move, but oh, the pain

The knife and ether were to blame.

There are numerous things I will not mention

Because the night nurse drew my attention.

Her beautiful hair, eyes, and loving heart

Caused all my sickness to depart.

It seemed to me when my pulse she’d take

That my heart was swimming in a lake.

She would rub my back when it ached at night

With her nice soft hands, so pretty and white.

My heart with joy and rapture would swell

And the hospital seemed more like Heaven than Hell.

It seemed to me of all the joy

That ever came to this farmer boy

Came to me when I could see

That charming night nurse at the Dee.

When I had to go down to the doctor to get the plaster pulled off of my belly, I took it in there and read it to the office nurse. She called the doctor out and he read it. Then he said, “I’ll take you home.” He had one of the first automobiles in Ogden. Instead of taking me home, he took me to the hospital and called all the nurses out and wanted to know who that charming night nurse was. Well, I wish I could have fallen through the floor; kinda’ embarrassed me.

During the winter of 1912-13 I attended the UAC again. I quit in April to help Father with the spring planting. He and I ran Uncle John’s ranch on shares.