Dad's work experience

This picture is of my dad in the late 1940's in his office at Carbon College (later changed to College of Eastern Utah). This is where dad taught business classes for much of his life.

I have already talked about what a hard worker my father was and how he learned the importance of work from an early age. On this page, I want to show how this attribute was of value to him and all his family throughout his life. Thus, I am going to begin at the beginning with his childhood work experience. I think it is fascinating to read about a time when life was so labor intensive, but not so "fever-pitched" as it is today. As I read his story, it makes me want to go back to that hard, but simpler way of life.


Directly from dad's story:

My first recollection of going with my father to the fields when I was about 5 or 6 years of age. I remember going with him to help my uncles William and James Green to brand, earmark and dehorn calves before turning them on the mountain for the summer with their mothers. My grandfather Green was alive at that time, as I can remember him slightly. My grandfather was a well-to-do farmer and rancher, at least by the standards of that day. My father was employed by the Greens at that time. The Green's registered brand was the initials of my grandfather Henry Green (HG) on the right hip and the earmark was a hole and underbit in each ear. After my grandfather's death, my mother inherited his brand and it was the brand my father used all his life. Also the earmark.


After this first experience, I remember going with my father many times to plow, harrow, sow grain and many other farm jobs. I enjoyed so very much being with my father during this period of time. I admired him very much.

I guess the first paying job came when I was about 8 years of age. Uncle Will Green gave me a saddle pony and a saddle. It was one of the nicest presents I had ever received. Almost every family in the town at that time kept two, three or more cows for milk and butter. We milked four cows at that time. During the summer months all these cows from town were formed into herds and driven to the meadows West of town. These meadows were a mile or more West of town. There were several boys who drove the herds each morning down to the pastures and bring them back to town in the evening. The going price for this service was a penny per day for each cow. The largest herd was one driven down what was known as the Big Lane. It was directly West of the town. This herd was driven by a boy named Glen Christensen. He had approximately 100 head, so was making about $1.00 per day. That was a lot of money at that time, when the pay to a man for a day's work was $2.00 per day. I decided after getting my horse I might as well get me some cows to drive each day. So, I did a little soliciting with my father's help and was able to get about fifteen cows for my herd. The pastures for my cows were down the lane West of town known as Becky's Alley.

About this time I took a job with my Uncles Will and James to ride the derrick horse. They had a lot of farming land and nearly all summer they put hay into stacks to feed the cattle during the winter months. Hay bailers were unknown in those days, except the kind that bailed the hay out of the stacks if it was sold and needed to be shipped away. The power for these bailers was furnished by a single horse that traveled in a circle. It was here I experienced my first job of riding the derrick horse. I was about 10 years of age at that time. After the hay was loaded on the hayracks in the field, by hand, the wagons were driven into the stackyard and unloaded onto high stacks by a derrick. My job was to ride the horse back and forth all day for which I received fifty cents. After riding the derrick horse all day, I would get on my pony and go down and get my cows out of the pasture and bring them to town, making another 15 or 20 cents a day. Earning 65 or 70 cents a day I was really in the chips. I rode the derrick horse each summer until I was about 11 or 12 and then I was promoted to the field where I became a loader on the hayrack or as they called it then, the "tromper". The job of the tromper was to walk around on the hay as it was pitched on the wagon and pack it down so the load was solid and they could get more hay on the wagon. Sometimes it was a miserable job, especially if there was a lot of thistles, whitetop and foxtails in the hay. But it was part of the job, so you just did it without much complaint. Complaining didn't do any good anyway.

Note: It is so interesting to read dad's life story because he tells of all the different properties that they owned, where they were and what they grew on them. Dad's grandfather, Henry Green and an uncle Will died at about the same time and my grandmother inherited her share of the estate, plus part of her brother Will's share. This gave her a sizable farm and some cattle. Dad said that from that time on his father then had a farm of his own to work.


Back to dad's story:

When I was sixteen, I began doing a man's work. No more tromping hay on the wagon in the fields or riding the derrick horse or that kid stuff. I began doing the same work as my father, mainly pitching hay in the fields onto the hayrack. My father taught me how to run the big fork in unloading by derrick at the stackyards. My younger brother Theron was then old enough to take over the other jobs, as tromping and riding derrick horse. My father did the stacking.

About this time, my father, in order to interest me in the farm and the cattle business, gave me two cows. In a short time I had four head of cattle. When I began school at the University of Utah in the fall of 1922, I had built my herd to about 13 head. I sold out my cattle at that time in order to have money to help me start school. I had used some of the money I received from the sale of cattle previously to buy shares of stock in the Ephraim Sanitary Canning Company, a locally owned small corporation. During World War I they really prospered. When I left for school I sold this stock for $200 per share (he paid $100 per share)so my first venture in corporation stock was real profitable.

Also, during World War I my father gave me the use of an acre of land down the Big Lane, to raise potatoes. I planted, cultivated, irrigated this crop during the summer. When about ready to harvest in the fall, I went around town and took orders from people. I harvested more than a hundred sacks and sold them for $1.00 per sack. That was about one cent a pound. That was about $100.00. Pretty good return on an acre of land, measured in the value of the dollar at that time.

About this time my father purchased a grain binder to harvest the grain crops. We used three horses to pull the binder. There were many farmers who had grain to cut, but not enough to warrant purchasing a binder because the price was prohibitive. Because of this we did much custom cutting for other farmers. My father said if I would operate the binder I could have half the money received. The price of cutting an acre was $2.00. I could cut 9 or 10 acres a day. So I did pretty well on that job also.

My job each evening was to cut the kindling wood and fill the coal buckets. We had three stoves, and a kitchen range. For kindling we used dry aspen wood. Each fall after the farm work was done, we would go to the mountains East of town to get dry aspen wood for the kindling and also green aspen poles for the fences at the corral and the feed yards. I enjoyed so much going with my father on these mountain trips. These were trips where I really got to know my father. He was such a hard worker and taught me to be industrious and to work for what we received. I always appreciated the fact that he had so much confidence in my ability to do a job. He would trust me to do jobs that gave me a lot of satisfaction in my ability and made me proud and self reliant in the things I was doing.

Note: Do you suppose that Dad's father missed him when he went away to school? I suspect he would have liked to have his oldest son take over the farm, but that was not to be with grandma's strong emphasis on education. I would like to have heard some of the discussions that took place between them on this subject!

After graduating from high school and while attending the University of Utah, dad returned to Ephraim each summer and worked as usual with his father on the farm.

After graduating from the University of Utah, dad got a teaching job in Star Valley, Wyoming. Until he married mom, he went to Ephraim every summer to help his father. Teaching accounting and other business classes was dad's life career, however, he had much other work that he did, including part-time bookkeeping and accounting jobs, jobs with the forest service, painting jobs in the summer with the school district and of course non-paying jobs in and around our home. He always had a large garden and did all the maintenance and repair on our home. Also included would be projects that he helped his children with on their homes and yards and other neighbors and friends. He was always willing to "bring his tools and get to work". I believe that his early years instilled in him a work ethic that was of benefit to him and all his family and friends throughout his life. I remember during the last year of his life when he was suffering from cancer, he still planted a garden. I went home to visit during that summer and went out to look at the garden and couldn't believe there were weeds growing among the vegetables. It was then I realized how very sick my father was. Never had I seen weeds in his garden before. He was gone before another spring came. Oh how I miss him!