Life History of THOMAS WILLIAM ARNETT

(27 March 1885 - 22 January 1973)
An interview with Fred Arnett, his son and Doris Arnett Whatcott, his daughter.
My father was born in Missouri. I forget the town, December 8, 1856. His father, my grandfather, I believe came from Missouri, as far back as I know. I don't have the dates for his birth and death. My father's name was Ahijah Arnett. My grandfather's name was Thomas MacFarland Arnett. My mother was born somewhere in Illinois. I forget the town. Her name was Lucinda Norton. My grandfather Norton was born in Illinois as I remember it.

I was born in Cooke County, Texas on 27 March 1885. I think that Gainesville was the nearest post office. As I remember the folks saving, about twenty or twenty-five miles from Gainesville was where I was born on a cattle ranch. My aunt, mother's youngest sister, was living with my father and mother at that time. I was born the oldest of the family and we moved away from there before another child was born to west Texas, a town by the name of Benjamin in Knox County. It's about 200 miles west of Fort Worth. My uncle was manager of a big cow ranch out there and my father and grandfather went into the livery stable business. My father ran the one in Benjamin and my grandfather ran the stable in Seymore, Texas, which was thirty miles apart. In renting these horses and buggies out for transportation, from Benjamin they'd go to Seymore and they wouldn't have to send a driver. They would just put their horse or team in the stable at my grandfather's and the same way coming from there back to Benjamin. That way they eliminated a driver going back and forth every time. They could just hire a team out to a man and he would take it into the stable there when he got there.

After we moved to Benjamin there were four more children born in our family: Lella, Linda, Albert, and the baby was Edna May. Edna May died when she was small, right after her mother's death. Albert got killed in Sulpher Springs Valley in Arizona, after we moved out there. A horse fell with him and injured him. He was about seventeen.

I got my first lesson on obedience when I was about four, or between four and five, before we left that cattle ranch in Texas in Cook County. My father asked me to bring him a drink of water one time; of course we had a dipper and a bucket in the olden days, and I evidently got mad or wasn't in the humor of getting him a drink that day. Well, I took him a drink of water and he drank the water and handed me the dipper and said, "Put it back in the bucket," and I threw it at the bucket. It didn't go in. He said, "Pick the dipper up and put it in the bucket." "Well you must" -- "I don't want to." So Dad goes and gets him a switch and gives me a switching, a pretty good little switching! Then he says, "Put the dipper in the bucket." I said I don't want to." Well, he was getting ready to whip me again and my mother and Auntie that was living with us began to beg for me. Told him that he'd whipped me enough, that I was just a little fellow and should not be whipped like that. But Dad said, "No, he's going to put the dipper in the bucket." So he whipped me a little harder and a little longer "the second time. By this time, my mother and aunt were crying and begging for him to quit whipping me and not do that. Of course, that encouraged me, I thought well now I'll get by this time for sure. So he told me again to put the dipper in the bucket and I told him I didn't want to. So he got ready for the third round and by this time my mother and auntie were just sure having a cry on it, so Dad said, "Well, You girls go in the other room and just keep still-Tom is going to put the dipper in the bucket." So he started in for the third round. And that time he got harder and stayed a little longer. I made up my mind that if he ever quit again; I'd put the dipper in the bucket! Finally he quit. He says, "Will you put the dipper in the bucket?" I said, "Yes, sir!" So that was my first lesson on obedience, and from that time on I never had another whipping from my father. I didn't want any more!

My father was named Ahijah but was nicknamed Babe and he tells the story of how he got the name Ahijah. His grandfather, who was named Ahijah, had some horses and he told my father if he'd take the name Ahijah he'd give him a horse. So he took the name Ahijah. But people didn't like that much so they called him Babe.

My schooling is all in Benjamin; it started there and ended up there. I suppose the extent of my education would amount to about the fifth, or maybe the sixth grade. We went by readers at that time and I think I was in the fifth reader. My first teacher was a widow woman by the name of Mrs. Berry and she was teaching there when I left. However, I did get out of her room. I don't remember but one other teacher, I think they had three during that time. His name was Hamilton. There were two rooms; they called it the big room and the little room. I think Mrs. Berry had the first second and maybe third grades and the other teacher had the higher grades. He had some higher than I was even. I didn't care much about school. It was a cattle country, my folks always had horses and I liked cattle--so my mind was getting on that horse and getting out among those cattle. Therefore, I didn't get much education. I have seen in the last several years where I sure missed something. If I had a little education I would be happy now. I think I could have gotten along a little better in my work and things would have been a little easier. My recreation at recesses in school mostly was just playing Wolf Over the River. Just get out and run. Darebase--just run as far as you could and get back to your base before the other side could catch you. Run races and such as that--once in a while we'd have ball games. We didn't play much games of any kind there. I walked to school. It was about a mile. In the wintertime there was real cold weather. We had a big fire in the school. There was a big old black round-bottomed stove and the parents there supplied the wood. I was no athlete except running, I was a pretty good runner when I was a kid. Either on long races or short, I could hold out better than I could start.

I took my lunch--biscuits, beans, potatoes, pork and once in a while a mess of meat. Oh, we had quite a bit of beef. Meat didn't cost much in those days. A cow wasn't worth over eight or ten dollars.

Our recreation while we were small was ranching. Me and my playmates would get us a little spot of ground around somewhere and get a lot of corn cobs and scatter around along that spot of ground and that was our ranch. We'd make a little fire and heat a little wire and brand those cattle, those cobs - we each had a brand. We'd have a round up every once in a while. Before going to the round-up we'd throw these cobs around on the other man's ranches and we'd go in there and cut our cattle out, back to our ranch and then get theirs out of my ranch and get them back where they belonged.

I didn't have to work too hard, about all I had was chores and such as that. Milk the cows and get in the wood and such as that. No garden in that country; no washing dishes or any housework, all outside chores, but I had those chores to do and no matter what time I got in, dark or midnight or what, my job was to milk those cows and tend to them. No matter when I got there - they waited for me.

When I got a little older, oh say fifteen or sixteen years old, why us kids had to have something to do, of course. Get out a little at night-go to a party or something and before we' d go home we'd have to think of some mischief. So one night we rigged up a joke on one of the grocery men there. This grocery man was a pretty nice fella and good to us boys. He had two girls about our age and we thought it would be a good thing to play a joke on him. So we built a dummy, a man with some sticks with a crosspiece on it and dressed him up, put trousers on him and a coat. We sneaked up to his yard fence wasn't far from his door - probably about thirty or f forty f feet and we leaned this man up against the gate and we hollered "Hello." Well, this man, his name was Perry. Mr. Perry came to the door and he says "Hello," what do you want?" Well, this dummy didn't speak or say any more. He says, "What do you want?" Still no response. He says, "What do you want? So I know you can talk for you hollered 'hello.' By this time we were beginning to get pretty tickled. We had gotten back out behind some mesquite bushes, close enough where we could hear what was going on. Finally he got a little disgusted and said, "If you don't speak, I'm going to
shoot you." And he went in the house and brought his shotgun and he says, "Now listen, I'm going to give you one more chance to say something and if you don't, I'm going to shoot you. 'Now what do you want?" This man never did say a word. Then he whaled loose without saying any more and shot him- knocked him over then he went out to see who he had killed and found this dummy. He said, "them confounded kids, -if I could see where they are now, I'd give them a shot" This, little bit of recreation didn't amount to a great lot and in that little town where we were, -it was a sin to dance, so we couldn't have any dances. We'd have a little house party; sometimes the kids would get out the and almost dance.

They'd get out there and Skip to my Lou. We'd have these parties and talk and have little games and one thing or other, but our main recreation at these parties was Forty-Two. We played Forty-Two an awful lot and when it was crowded enough we would play progressive Forty-Two 'Dominos' and that is about all the recreation we had. Oh, we'd go buggy riding Sunday afternoon. Sometimes we'd race if we had a good horse.

Well, my girlfriend and I were hitched together from - I suppose - the time we first started to school. We began to look at one another as soon as we were big enough to look at one another, or to think about boyfriends and girlfriends. In fact, she's the only one that I ever was interested in, as long as I was in Benjamin. We never did do much courting, we just talked. We had kind of begun to talk something about marriage, but I couldn't think about getting married. I'd been working there for a dollar a day on this ranch, but a fellow couldn't think about taking a wife with a job like that. So I decided to go to California because Cousin Lana and her husband were going out and they wanted me to go along with them anyway. So I told this girl I'd go out there and stay a year and see how I came out; maybe I could make a little money and we could talk a little bit more about marriage. So I went off to California and stayed a year and when the year was up I still didn't have enough to get back home and think about getting married. I stayed another year and the same story, so I began to look for something better and I decided to go back to Arizona. This girl had two brothers working in Bisbee in the mines and she said they were doing pretty good there making pretty fair wages-more than I was making out in California I went back and started batching with those two brothers of hers. Still corresponding, but I hadn't much more than landed there until I got to saving up a little bit of money, and all my father and sister and a brother came out and lived with me. They'd gotten in hard circumstances back home in Texas. Father wasn't able to get work there so it fell to me to take care of the family, so I still didn't have much opportunity to think about getting married. So Lella, she was the oldest, and she kept house for us, Finally she married and Linda took over and kept house until she married. That left Dad and me and Albert. We batched then for a white until Albert got killed. That left it up to Dad and So, I then that was about the end of my courtship in the early days.

So I went on there for a few years and finally in about 1914 your mother came along Annie Gale. She came over there to visit a sister and I got acquainted with her. I believe it was in the fall of the year. We got to going together there and in 1915, May 22nd, she and I married in Lowell. Those who were invited were Annie Gale and myself and a Methodist minister and my father and her sister; that was the crowd at the wedding. Hattie Maxwell was the sister.

Before I left California, I left Porterville where I'd been with Cousin Lana and went across to the coast which was about forty or fifty miles. In the meantime, before I left Porterville, I'd bought a trotting horse, supposed to make a fast animal, and a little cart and harness. No, he was a pacer, because I had to use hobbles on him to keep him from trotting. He was pretty good but of course I had to work and make a living and didn't have time to trot him as much as he should pace him rather. So I didn't come out too hot on him. I just about broke even say nothing about feed- him for two or three months. Sold him and didn't make much money.

After we were married, I worked in the mines for ten years before we left Bisbee. Marvin was born in 1916 and Howard came along in 1917. Both were born in Bisbee. My father was still with us most of the time; however, he was out at the Sulphur Springs Valley on a homestead part of the time for a while. Then my health got bad and we had to come out of the mines. I got to where I was sick a good part of the time. I worked then for a few months at a lumberyard delivering lumber. With a wagon and a team still yet. Then we decided to move so mother wanted to come of course where her people were. But I had different ideas, I intended to try and get a few cattle and get out on this homestead where dad lived. She worked me a little bit, and said she would go over and see the folks, she hadn't seen them since she'd married. She began to pack up her suitcase and I came in one day while she was at it and she was packing the sheets and pillowslips and things like that, and I said, "What are you taking all 'that stuff over here for?" "Oh," she said, "When you come over to visit, we may decide to stay." And sure enough, we did. I went back and sold out the house and got what little we'd paid in on it in Bisbee and came back and we stayed in Franklin. We bought a little farm, Brother Mosely's farm where he wound up his days. There were five or six acres in this farm. A little later we got a chance to buy Grandpa Gale's old home place. Charles was born there on the old Grandpa Gale place and Fred was born there and Doris and Dorothy - all born on the same place.

This farm went right to the New Mexico line on the Arizona side. All together there was about forty acres of it. Probably about thirty acres of it in cultivation. Our living conditions were pretty poor. When we first bought that place there was a good well down at the bottom of the but we hadn't been there but a short time when we couldn't use it because of alkali. So we had to begin to haul water. I cut a forked limb off of a cottonwood tree and made a sled, took a horse and dragged the barrel up to the ditch and filled it up and pulled it back. We hauled it about 200 or 300 yards. We dipped the water out of the barrel with a bucket and it was hot in the summertime and cold in the winter. So that is the way we had our hot and cold water. There was two rooms in the house, a kitchen and a living room, bedroom and parlor all combined. We then got a chance to get this other place up by the road there and there were two rooms there, a little larger than we'd been using down below and we added two more rooms so we had worlds of room. We had to haul water I guess as long as we lived there.

When mother washed clothes it was all day long on a scrub board and she heated her water in a black tub. A woman wouldn't try to live this day and time the way we had to live in those days. They'd just give tip. First she had to settle the water from the ditch because it was muddy most of the time. She would let it set overnight and then dip it out of there and put it in the tub and put it over the fire and heat it, pack it back to another tub where the rub board was.

There was a little garden and a little fruit there. I got up around five. There was no tractor, but some horses to feed and cows to milk and pigs to feed before I could start to work.

The four boys and I went out one time after a load of wood in those little hills back out south and a little east of the house there. We scrapped around there and you kids packed in your arms full wherever you could pick up a little and I cut down a little old tree here and there and get a stick maybe a yard or two long. We got a pretty good little jag of wood and we got it piled up pretty high and started home. We started off down one of those hills to get back down to the road and the wagon began to slide down and the first thing you know the wheels wouldn't slide any farther and the load went over sideways. There we were with the wood on the ground and the wagon tipped over, three or four miles from home. What did we do? As well as I remember, I've almost forgotten, but I believe we happened to have a chain along with us in the wagon and we rut the chair, around the wood, what we could get under the wood, and then took the team loose and pulled that chain back over the wagon and put the team on there and pulled on that chain and put it back up on its wheels. Then put the wood back on that had fallen off.

Money was pretty scarce those days, I guess, we never did see any of it. For Christmas we'd go up in those little clay bluffs and pick up a little old cedar tree. One Christmas, it was getting so far to trees, they'd been cut out so far back that we went out and got some of this chaparral bush and tied a few limbs of that together, and called that Christmas. Mother popped corn and we strung that on string to decorate with. I don't remember that year whether you got an orange apiece or a banana or just a small bag of candy. I don't know just what you did get that year - not much.

Up until now I still wasn't a member of the Church, but I had gone along with Mother to try to help to pack the kids to church and I was ready for her to go most of the time. The ward teacher would come and they'd work with me and Grandpa Gale would come and sit up most all night and talk and talk on religion. I'd sit there and listen but I'd never say a word and one visit he made when he got ready to leave, he said, "Well, Tom, I can say one thing for you, you're a good listener." But I'd been going to church and living with mother and seeing the way she did and all. She was very patient with me; she would never crowd me or talk religion much to me. I guess she knew that I didn't want it and she somehow had a feeling to know that it wouldn't do to push me. One day we were putting up hay - Brother Crabtree and Mr. Barlow helping me, we swapped work in those days, and Lesley said, "The missionaries are going to have a meeting up here at the schoolhouse tonight. They are going to talk on the three degrees of glory - let's all go up and see what they have to say." It was only a short distance to walk across the wash there to the little school and I said I'd like to go and Mr. Barlow, he didn't belong to the Church, but he said he'd go along. So we went up there and they gave a discussion on the three degrees of glory and that's the first thing that I remember that interested me at all on the Mormon religion, but that appealed to me because it sounded so reasonable.

I had often, when I was a kid, in going to other churches and all, they preached Heaven and Hell and if you missed one, if you just barely missed Heaven, you were going to Hell and all those things and I could not figure out how it could be that way because of the many different ways that people live. I used to wonder what was going to become of me. I couldn't see that I was as mean as some of those fellows who were murderers and robbers and things like that, that they told us would go to Hell. I just couldn't see how it would be fair to send me there with them. Then I could look around and see a lot of people who were living better than I was and it wouldn't be fair for me to go with them, so what was going to become of me? So these missionaries that night explained things to where we find that there is a place for everyone, according to the way they live.

So after that, I began to pay a little more attention to what was said on Mormonism and I finally decided that I couldn't think of anything better so I joined the Church in 1922. Milo Gale baptized me in the ditch on the 4th of March right back of the church house. There was a pretty good little hole there washed out over the boards where they backed water up. Doris and Dorothy, the two girls, were born after I joined the Church, the other four children were born before I was a member of the Church. In 1927 we got in our open-top Ford and went to the temple. Mother and I were sealed for time and eternity and the children were all sealed to us.

In 1929 we decided we'd move from Franklin; however, we didn't sell out our land - we did sell our cows and our chickens and whatnot over there and went to Prescott to spend a year and perhaps move later. Aunt May and Uncle Earl had already moved up there and had been there for some time. Mother wanted to go where Aunt May was. So I got a job with the Santa Fe Railroad working around the station there. And in the meantime I took sick and had to go to the hospital; I believe I was there close to a month. I had pneumonia - pretty sick. My wages stopped, of course, and we didn't have anything saved up. No year's supply or church welfare or anything of the kind. However, the friends and neighbors were mighty good. While I was lying there sick the family got pretty low on finances, so mother thought of a scheme so she could bring in a little money maybe. So she made popcorn balls and put the boys out peddling popcorn down the streets of Prescott. Charles and Howard, I don't think, did very much, and Marvin not too much, but Fred was a real salesman. Fred' brought in the money. He was just eight years old and you might say they felt sorry for him, but he is just naturally a salesman, anyway. To help along a little with the family while I was sick and a while afterwards, of course before we got caught up again, Uncle Earl helped out a little. He was working on the city garbage truck and in those garbage cans he'd find some pretty good clothing once in a while which well to do people had thrown away. When he'd find anything that looked good to use he'd bring it home. So my family got lots of good out of that - things they'd probably had to have done without if it hadn't been for Tribbey. There was a store there by the name of Tribbey's and a lot of this clothing came from Tribbey's. It was a high-class store - it was good stuff - slightly damaged.

After I got out of the hospital and went back to work, it looked like we might begin to pay some bills and get straightened out a little and the Depression came along. They began to lay off men everywhere. So I was the last man that went on there at the Prescott yards and I knew I'd be the first one to go off. We all realized somebody was going to have to go, so I beat them to it a little bit and quit before they laid me off. So back we went to Franklin.

Got our place back, we had it rented out for a year. We got back there in August, I believe, and couldn't get our place back until the first of the year. The renters had it until then. So we rented a little shack down there by Archie Gilliland and lived there until the first of the year. Then we sold out our little place there next to the New Mexico line in Franklin and moved out on the flats south of Franklin. We traded out ahomestead there with Mr. Curry. Only a third interest, he only had a third interest in that it belonged to Frank McGrath - he had the other two thirds. We lived on the homestead there for five years and during that time the Depression was on, of course. We'd built up a little bunch of cattle, a few head, I forget how many, and we couldn't get feed to feed them. They were about to starve to death so the government took over and they were going to help us out. So they gave us $8 a head to let them shoot them. So that was some relief.

During that time we baled a little hay along and I got on the WPA. That was eleven days a month at $4 a day. During this time I had off I'd try to bale a little hay. I'd take the boys and we'd find a little haystack sitting around somewhere and we'd run out a few ton of hay and get a little money that way between times. Then they'd catch me at that and take me off the WPA. I was trying to help myself and they didn't want me to do that. I didn't think that was a good way to do, but that was the way that they did it. Then Sam Foster would get me back on again and he'd tell me, "Now you watch those Jobs around there, do what you can and don't let them catch you at it." So we struggled along and went through the Depression and came out alive. Never missed a meal but never had a dollar either.

While we were out on this little ranch - we called it a ranch - south of Franklin, Marvin got married, he and June, and there was a little house on this homestead right across the track from where we lived that they moved into. A little two-room house, it was small, but plenty of room for all they had.

So we had a few calves around usually and Howard got interested in roping. He had somehow gotten a hold of a little old pony they called Calico and Howard liked to rope on Calico. He got out there and practiced, and one of these calves - he had Don Wilkins out there one evening and they broke a leg on one of the calves.

We had running water there when the wind blew - we had a windmill and when the wind would blow the water would run right out that pipe into a barrel and we thought we were doing fine. Got to where we'd quit hauling water on a sled so we were coming right along in the world.

Along about '38 1 traded my interest in this little ranch we had out there for $1,000, sold it rather, to make a down payment on a little farm up in New Mexico, just across the line. The old Tom Merrell place they called it - had a little adobe house there with three rooms - two rooms and a little lean-to for a kitchen. It had been there for years and the walls were getting kind of weak. Along about Christmas time, Just at Christmas time, there was a rainy spell. It rained and rained and wet those adobe walls and one of them began to lean and I saw it was going to fall so we decided we'd better get out so we moved out to the chicken house to sleep so we wouldn't be in there when it fell. On Christmas Eve, sure enough, while we were out there with it raining and raining and the chicken house leaking and leaking, out went the wall. Doris came in after we'd all gone to bed and found the wall gone (she'd been out caroling or something) and she didn't know where to go or what to do or where to sleep.

During this time we had Charles on a mission. We were struggling along trying to keep him on his mission, when this wall went out and left us without a house. So we had to get in and do something about building another house. We went out and bought some old sheet iron pretty cheap and we used that. Of course, we had to have lumber to make the frame. We tacked this sheet iron on those two by four studdings and then put some holes, in the sheet iron and plastered over that and made a real good
wall. So by the time Charles got back home off his mission, we had a pretty fair house to live in.

This place we're speaking of here - when we moved there was when we started the partnership of Arnett and Sons. All four of the boys and myself went together on this and I put this 81,000 down that I got out of the little ranch as a down payment. Howard and Marvin were both working and borrowed $300 and bought a little John Deere tractor and put out there for me to start working on this farm. So we started with that on our farming and as time went on we bought a little more land and built up to where we had a little more land and got along fairly well. This Arnett and Son Company, we were trying to figure out some way to get to making a little money. Marvin sat down with a pencil and paper and figured out at $3 a hen, I believe it was, per year in the chicken business for the eggs. Well, if we could get hens around, we ought to make some money. So we worked around some to get a little money, Marvin did and bought a thousand white-legged pullets - starters, six weeks old pullets. Well, they began to die before long - cold weather, cold spring weather, the nights were cold and they began to die and we lost about half of them. Everybody began to feeling pretty sorry about them, but I didn't worry too much for I the boys in the first place you couldn't make anything on chickens, but I couldn't argue with them, especially Marvin. He had to try it out, he knew, for he'd figured it out. Well, the rest of them, the ones that didn't die, got up some laying, and eggs got down to $3 a case and 10 cents a dozen. Feed didn't come down in proportion, so we finally decided we couldn't stand that. So we decided to sell those pullets. And as I remember, I believe we got about 25 cents apiece for those hens, same price we paid for the baby chicks. I told the boys the only real money we'd made was on those that died for we saved feed on them. If they'd all have died we'd have been ahead.

Well, then the war broke out in 1941 and Howard had to go into the service, and Fred had to go into the Marines and Charles was still on his mission. So it left it to Marvin and I to run Arnett and Sons business. We had it there alone for a while until the boys got back. After Charles got back off of his mission, why Doris went. This was after the war. Then Dorothy went after Doris; she went on a mission to the Indians. While Charles was in the service, he was a pilot, he was shot down over Germany and we got the report that his plane had gone down and that the crew was missing and there was about a month there we never did know whether he'd been killed or if he was taken prisoner or what happened to him. It was quite a relief when we finally got word that he was taken prisoner and was still alive. We were mighty thankful to have him brought back safe and sound and also the other boys, Howard and Fred.

Along in this time somewhere, I don't quite remember when it was. I was second counselor to Bishop Scadlock in the Franklin Ward. I was with 'him for some time and I believe a couple of years, and then Bishop Burgess was the next bishop and I was first counselor with him for a year or so.

Well, the boys left, Howard got married and left home, and Fred got married. After Doris and Dorothy had filled their missions they both got married and Charles had married so mother and I were left alone again. Then we went on there awhile at this last place we called the Merrell place, and Mother passed away in 1956. 1 stayed there for two years after and I moved clown to Mesa in 1959, and I'm still in Mesa. Mother and I went on a stake mission; we worked among the Indians up in Morenci. We put in about fourteen months up there. Then we put in a few months around the upper valley there, after we left the Indians. When our two years were up we were appointed again in the Duncan Valley as stake missionaries and we made about a year or so and mother's health got so bad we were released on account of her health. During that time, we converted about seven people. Three of them, we didn't baptize until after she had passed away. Then I was appointed to another mission after she had passed on. Horace McBride and Milo, 1 was two years with those two men. The three I think that we really converted when Mother was with me were not baptized until the second mission that I was on, but they had really been converted before.

Well, as I said, I'm in Mesa now and why I came, I hate to say. It was on account of the kids; I didn't want to leave Franklin, but they insisted that I get somewhere closer to them. Finally I made up my mind to move down and I'm happy that I did now, After I got acquainted a little bit why I was pretty well pleased. After I was here in Mesa a year I got to going to the temple quite regularly and in the meantime I met Cornelia Brown. She was a widow and went to the temple and we began talking a little and I think the first conversation that we had we happened to walk out of the temple together and she and Hallie Childs always went to the temple together. We didn't walk out together, but we went together to the car. It happened to be that their car and mine were parked right close together and we got to talking there. Cornelia and I had a little conversation and it seemed like we were quite friendly and after that why we'd see each other occasionally at the temple and we'd make it a point to walk out to Hallie's car. The first thing you know, why Hallie would go home in her car and Cornelia would get into my car and I'd take her home. I'd suggest we'd go down by the Dairy Queen and get a root beer float once in a while and things went along until. We neither one wanted to get married, so we claimed, and really didn't when we started, I know that, but it seemed like we just got along so nicely and we just liked to be together. So one thing and another, why we finally decided, or two or three times we decided, we'd just quit because we weren't going to get married anyway and we were going to keep on until things would get serious. So we'd quit for probably twenty-four hours and she or me, one would call the other and see how we were getting along; just a sociable call. First thing you know, why I'd ask if it would be all right if I'd come over a little while and it went that way for a while and she got a letter from her daughter up in Brigham City.

They'd adopted a little baby and the baby came sooner than they expected to get it. The daughter was working and had no one to take her place and she asked her mother to come up and take care of the baby until she could break in another girl for her job. So we decided that would be the very thing. She'd go up there for a couple of weeks and we'd get kind of weaned away from one another and separated and it would be a good place to kind of make the start of breaking up. And when she came back we wouldn't go together anymore and that would the end of it. That was just the way to do it, just the very thing. But it didn't work out that way - she got up there and I'd asked her to write to me. She did and I wrote and she came back in a little while. It was worse than ever and she hadn't been back but about twenty-four hours and we decided we might just as well plan on getting married, so we got married the seventh day of November 1961. So we've been very happy, both Cornelia and I, with this second marriage we thought that we never would have. We didn't think it was the proper thing to do when we first started going together. But we find that we're much happier and much better off, each of us, than we were when I was over in that little room over on Second Street and her over in her little apartment all alone. We find that companionship is a wonderful thing. I have another wonderful wife and think I've been wonderfully blessed to have two good companions.

During my lifetime I've seen two wars, that is, I've lived through two wars. The first one I was working in the mines over in Bisbee in copper, and I was deferred for a certain length of time on account of the copper need for war uses. Probably would have had to have gone in a few more months if the war hadn't ended when it did. And during the second, I was too old. So I guess you'd say I was quite fortunate getting through without having to go to war, although my boys had to go, three of them out of four. But as I said before, I was really fortunate in getting them all back in good condition.

I've seen quite a change in the way of transportation in my time. My first way of getting around, except on my feet, was a burro. My dad bought one when I got big enough to ride him and I went from there to a horse, and then a horse and buggy, wagons and teams. I went to the Dallas State Fair when I was about eighteen years old and I saw two automobiles at the Dallas Fair. It was built about like and about the shape of the buggy I'd been driving my horse to. A horseless carriage - I thought it was funny that that thing could go without the horses. From there on you see cars improved until look what they have today - big old long cars, powerful - one hundred miles and better. And now here's the airplane come along. Nobody could have told me that man would ever be able to fly - get up in the air like that. What a deal! And now this atomic stuff, these missiles, these trips they're taking around the world - all that stuff has happened since I've been born. I don't know what's to come after I leave this world. I have no idea; I'd just kind of like to stay 100 years more - just for curiosity if nothing else.

The first car that I ever owned - me and my family - I had to trade a Jersey cow for. It was an old car that Curt Moyers had bought from the mailman. He delivered mail with it as long as it would run, he thought. Curt bought it and then he traded it to me when he got able to buy a little better car, for this cow. It had a board on the side of it to put his mail and packages and things Iike that and it came in very handy for us. This car was a 19115 model Ford, pretty good for the shape it was in, I guess. I didn't have the money to buy a jack so I'd get a little short two by four, then a longer two by four and put under there. I'd raise that thing up and then put another little piece of two by four to prop it up there to change the tire. Then push it off the two by four.

Well, we got along mighty nice with that little old car. I hated to give it up. This car had no top. I don't know how many years it had been run. It did have a windshield and when we'd go places in stormy weather we'd take a tarp along to put up over the windshield, not far enough down that we couldn't see, but to keep the rain off. This car I'm telling you about is the one we came over to the temple in to have temple work done. When we were getting ready to go - (Marvin and Howard were getting pretty good size kids then and I guess they had a little pride about it. They began to figure wasn't there some other way that we could go get a better car or something. But we told them no that was all we had.) - Marvin suggested that we get a big quilt and put up over them so that nobody could see that there was anyone in the back when we got into Mesa.

This transportation I've been talking about - I've seen these airplanes and I always declared that I'd never get in one of those things. I didn't want in nobody's airplane and there wasn't men enough to put me in unless they just tied me and bodily lifted me up and put me in. Finally when Marvin got his airplane over here he suggested one day that he'd take me over to Blythe with him sometime when he was going. I don't know what came over me, but I just said okay. And from that time on I never had any fear whatever about an airplane. We went over to the airport to get on it, stepped on there Iike I'd step into a car with no more no more thought about what might happen than getting in a car. What made that change I'll never know? I was 76 years old when I took my first plane ride. As far as boats are concerned and ships and taking trips across the water, that's one place I draw the line. I'm not going to change my mind on that. Because I do not like water and I know it would go under if I got on it because when I try to swim, I right down.

This refrigeration is a big change that has come along in my time too. We used to, if we had a well, we'd hang our milk and butter down that well on a rope, not in the water, but down where it was cool. We didn't have a well a lot of our life. We'd wet sacks and put them around a frame and shelves of some sort and set them in there. We'd keep wetting the cloths to keep them cool. Now look what you have - refrigerators, deep freezers to keep things cold as you want - ice if you want it.

Television, look what that's come to. Why, when we first had the radio, somebody said they'll be putting that on a screen, you'll be able to see those people talking. Do you think I'd believe that? I'll say not. Well, now we've got one in our own house. I'd just like to stay another hundred years to see what happens.

The way we used to have to take care of dried fruit and stuff like that - foodstuff, before we had these refrigerators and all these convenient things. Corn, for instance, you'd cut your corn off the cob and spread it out on a board with a cloth under it under the corn- and set it out to dry with a screen or something over it to keep the flies off of it . Dry your corn and put it away and it would keep for I don't know I now long. For a long time, as long as you keep it dry - and it's good to eat. Another thing, dried fruit, apricots and peaches you'd do the same way. Peel those and cut them in halves and take the stones out, spread it out on cloths and some way to keep the flies off and let it dry. And meat - cut it up into strips and dry that meat and call it Jerky. They used to do that a lot. I never had much experience with that because we always had fresh beef. But when they had no way of keeping it, why that was a good way to preserve a little meat and keep it on hand for a while. So many changes have happened in my day that I wouldn't know how to start to tell all of them.

When Howard was a little fellow, he was born with some kind of a throat trouble it seemed like. And he had a little trouble all the way along and I'd say when he was one and a half or two years old, he took a coughing spell and he just coughed and coughed day and night. Must have been about a day and a half of that and we couldn't check it and he couldn't eat, couldn't sleep. Mother suggested we have him administered to; that was before I joined the Church, so I went over and got Uncle Will and I forgot who he got to come with him. It wasn't but a short time after he was administered to, (I'm sure it wasn't over an hour) he went off to sleep and quit coughing - slept like a log for awhile and woke up and went to eating and as far as I know he hasn't had any of that throat trouble since. That was one thing that sort of helped me along, I guess.

As a closing message on this history that we've made here today, I'd just like to advise you children and your children and all my posterity to live righteous lives, always hold your testimony in the gospel and be active in church affairs. Live honest honorable lives that you might be an example before the outside public so that they will always think well of you and say that I'd like to live as those people live.