John
William Green and Annie Ellen Crist
John
William Green was born to Charles L. and Charlotte Green, July 16, 1892 at
Ririe, Idaho. At the age of two years
the family moved to Hagerman where he grew up.
June 29, 1912 he was married to his childhood sweetheart, Annie Ellen
Crist. Ellen as she was called, was born January 26, 1995 in Hagerman, to
Edmond Lee Crist and Elizabeth Ann Trescott.
Jack and Ellen lived in Hagerman after they were married.
During the flu epidemic of
1917-18 Ellen’s sister Laura and brother Dow died. Laura left three children, Bill, Frank and
Mattie Kinman, who came to live with Jack and Ellen. Between Ellen and her Dad, they raised the
children.
Jack and
Ellen raised a family of 6 children.
Leland Leroy was born April 6, 1913 one half mile east of Hagerman on
the old Secar place in a two roomed shack.
Dr. Greene delivered him. He
traveled those days in a one-horse buggy.
Ellen would put a horse collar on the floor and pt Leland in it where he
would be content for hours. Charles Edward (Charlie) was the second child born
April 30, 1917, followed by William Leo (Bill) born January 12, 1920. Next Ellen lost a baby at birth, Theodore
born November 19, 1923. He was too long
in the birth canal and had the cord wrapped around his neck. He never drew a
breath. Flossie Marsh was helping Ellen,
she took the baby over to her place. She
kept him until he was buried in the Hagerman cemetery. Then their only daughter, Jacqueline
Burdella(Jackie) was born April 7, 1926; followed by Marion Lee(Bud) on June
24, 1928 and Donald Leroy (Dude) on July 10, 1931.
Jack and
Ellen loved to go to the old time dances at Gridley Hall on the south end of
Hagerman. They would load up Leland and
away they’d go. When Leland got sleepy,
they would spread a quilt out on the stage by the music stand and there he
slept until the wee hours of the morning.
Jack and Ellen and Bruce Boyer and his girl friend
drove the horse and buggy over to Clover Creek, about ten miles north of
Bliss. They would dance all night and
come home the next day.
When
a young man, Jack helped his Dad in the family butcher shop in Hagerman. His dad also had a slaughterhouse out on the
ranch. They had an outside vat that they
scalded hogs in one at a time. It had
wooden platforms on each side for a man to stand on. They would roll the hogs into the hot water
by means of ropes. They would roll the
hog back and forth until the hair would start to slip. Then Jack and Dutch (they did it most of the
time) would roll the hog out on to the platform where they would put the hog
into a wheelbarrow and haul it up to the slaughterhouse. One would pull on the front while the other
pushed on the handlebars. Then they
gutted the hogs and split them and then put them in a cooler. They processed the beef right at the
slaughterhouse. They killed the beef by
knocking them in the back of head with a sledgehammer. They delivered meat to several places around
town that were just starting to operate.
One time
Grandpa Green (Charles) saw Leland playing with a pigtail that was on a dead
pig. He walked over to where Leland was
and said, “I’ll bet your finger is longer than that pig’s tail.” I said, “Oh no it isn’t,: so he said let’s
see. So Grandpa took Leland’s hand and
put it along side the pigs tail, then he rammed it (the finger) into the pig’s
bottom. Boy did Grandpa laugh. He was always cutting up with someone. Grandpa was full of fun and always willing to
help someone out. Leland didn’t think it
was much of a laughing matter, so to make him feel better, he gave Leland the
pig bladder. I took the bladder and blew
it up like a balloon and used it for a football for a long time.
After his
father died they began a farming operation.
They made many trips to the Camas Pairie, Shoshone and Hailey areas
peddling watermelons. These trips were
made with team and wagon. Although there
was not much money made, his joy came from working the soil and watching his
crops grow.
Jack’s
Uncle Jack and Aunt Joe came from Salt Lake quite often. Uncle Jack looked so much like Jack’s father
it was just like Charles was back with them.
Uncle Jack was a cut up, always happy and nothing went wrong. His wife was more quiet and sophisticated,
wasn’t happy with the outside privy, but was real nice. About every time they came up, a bunch would
get together and go up to Upper Salmon Falls fishing. Each family would take lots of food and
homemade ice cream and make a day of it, generally on Sunday. Part of the time the three Green brothers
would come up, Fred and Lou, Jack and Joe, Ted and Carneal. When this bun was
together, look out! There were water
fights that were never over until everyone was wet, young and old. Then there was watermelon fights. You would have watermelon all over your face
and clothes. A terrible mess. Everyone always had a good time.
Ted and
Fred were butchers and Uncle Ted was an inspector for the city. They always had better cars than the poor
Green’s at Hagerman, they still had the horse and wagon.
Fishing was
one of their favorite pastimes. The men
would go fishing early in the afternoon and come back about dinnertime and then
clean the fish (trout). Some would weigh
4 to 6 pounds. Then the women would cook
them. It was a meal that was clear out
of this world. Jack generally caught the
most and the biggest. Bill Kinman
generally gave him the most competition.
The family got together a lot and wonderful times were had.
Jack bought
an 80-acre farm. It was about 5 or 6
miles east and south of Hagerman on the top of the hill. Howard and Flossie Marsh lived just across
the road. The farm was in sagebrush and
unfenced when Jack bought it. Everyone
grubbed sagebrush and cleared the ground.
Popular trees were cut down and split up into fence post links. They were hauled by team and wagon t the
farm.
A house had
to be built. Several guys helped build
it. Fred Thompson helped a lot. He was one of the best carpenters at that
time. Fred was a cheese maker for the
Nelson Rick’s Creamery, located on the south end of town (the old rock house
Roy Jolley lived in).
Finally the
house was built, a kitchen, two bedrooms and a large dining and front room
combined. It had no electricity, no well
and an outside out house. They carried
water from Marshes across the street.
They had a well—112 feet deep and it had lots of water. They had to pump it up by hand for a long
time. Then Howard and Jack bought a
small engine and hooked it up to the well.
One year
the rabbits came in by the hundreds from the desert and were about to destroy
crops. Especially on the Owsley brothers
farm. The Owsley’s organized rabbit
drives. Most of the Hagerman valley
residents turned out. The people would
go out on the desert and spread out.
Then they started back to the ranch.
They all carried clubs. They would
yell a hoop and holler and scare the rabbits in front of them. They would kill lots of rabbits on the way
that would turn and run back through the group.
They would herd these rabbits into large netting pens, then close the
gates and let the kids go in and club them to death. There was a time that the highway would be
coated with dead rabbits (they were on their way to the river for water). About the biggest kill was 800 rabbits in one
drive. They held these drives about
every Sunday during the summer. A
disease finally hit the desert and for several years rabbits were pretty
scarce.
The rabbits
were quite thick on the rim rock East of Hagerman up by Jack’s farm. One night during the winter, Howard and Jack
decided to kill some rabbits. They got some
poison from the government and then got several gunnysacks of nice hay
leaves. Then they mixed the poison in
some water and added the hay leaves and stirred it all together. There were a few inches of snow on the ground
and the rabbits had already made their trails from all angles coming into the
hayfield. They scattered the poison on
the trails out of the sagebrush. The
next two days, they counted 1200 dear rabbits.
Even with
this, Jack liked raising rabbits. One
day he was talking to Willis Carlton.
They got talking about rabbits.
Willis told Jack to come over and he would give him some. He lived over by Tuttle. Dad took the wagon with a big pen in it and
went to get them. There were more
rabbits than they had ever seen, that is tame ones of all sizes and
breeds. Jack and Leland ended up taking
72 rabbits home with them. Jack just
laughed about the deal. They took the
rabbits home and put them all in one big pen.
They had to build more smaller ones to put the does in that were going
to have little ones (so the other ones wouldn’t kill the little ones). They buried ten-gallon milk cans in the
ground. Then put a stovepipe on a slant
down into the opening of the milk can so the little ones could come out when
they ere big enough. The old doe would
pull her hair from her stomach and mix it with hay and straw and fill the
stovepipe with it. When the little ones
were big enough, she would unplug it.
Each time she went down to nurse them, she unplugged the hole then would
cover it back up.
The
following winter was so cold and with very little money, they ate most of the
rabbits. It was said that every time the dog barked, the kids would run under
the house to get away from the dogs. The
hole under the house was for our female dog to go under and have her pups. Jack and Ellen always had pups or dogs around
for the kids to play with.
Allen
(Ellen’s brother) gave Leland his favorite dog named Laddie. Laddie was part
Shepard and Alaskan husky. Leland would
ride his horse to the show house in Hagerman (about 5 miles). He would tie his horse to the hitching rack,
take his chaps off and the dog would lay on them till he came out of the show
and was ready to go home.
One spring
morning, Jack and Leland were cleaning ditch and they noticed Laddie coming
from the sagebrush acting odd. When he
got to the, he was frothing at the mouth.
Jack said, “Son, he has been poisoned.”
They headed for the house, but he died before they got there. They later learned that a government trapper
by the name of Sam Malcot had set out poison and Laddie had gotten hold of
it. Sam heard about the problem and came
to their house to apologize. Leland told
him that didn’t bring his dog back. He never offered to get another one
though. Jack got Leland another Shepard
dog. They called him Ship. He turned out to be a better sheepdog than a
cow dog. Jack sold him to a sheepherder,
Ben Painter, for $25. He took him out on
the Bruneau Desert with him. About three
days later, the Ship came home. He had
taken off and swam the river, there were no bridges at that time. The herder came and got him again, Ship did
the same thing again. On the third time,
Jack would let the herder take him again.
One winter
when they lived up on the hill, there was a lot of snow. The wind came up and drifted all the north
and south roads full, some of them up to the top of the fence posts. The county commissioners called in the WPA
workers to shovel out the snow. The WPA
were guys that were on relief and didn’t have jobs, so the government paid them
and gave them commodities. They really
worked. There were no snowplows
then. Schools were closed several times
each winter on account of drifted roads.
The WPA would shovel the roads just wide enough for the busses to get
through. They made turn outs about every
½ mile. If you saw a car or wagon
coming, you stopped at the first turn out.
Just a while after they had shoveled the road out, another strong wind
came and blew it full again. This time
Jack and Howard took their teams and would pull cars, milk trucks and busses
through by cutting holes in the fences and going out into the fields to get
around. It was about a week before they
got the road opened this time. They
called the WPA out again. Some of the
farmers from Hagerman that had caterpillars with blades on them came and helped
this time.
During this
winter Jack was helping Johnny Jones feed sheep. They used teams and hayracks. They hauled about a ton and a half to a
load. They hauled hay clear from Wendell
and Tuttle to Hagerman to feed the sheep.
Several times they would have to put four head of horses on a load and
pull it a long ways, then go back for the other loads of hay. Jack did this to try and may ends meet.
He
would leave home about six in the morning.
Sometimes he would ride a horse, sometimes walk. It was about a three-mile trip. He came home several times about froze. When he got home, he and Ellen did the chores
until the kids got up big enough to help.
They
had kerosene lamps and iceboxes for refrigeration. Jack would bring home bum lambs. One time they had over a hundred that they
were feeding. A disease hit them and in
a period of about 24 hours, they ended up with about 30 lambs. They had some in the house and fed them on
bottles, (all times of the night, Ellen did most of this) until they were about
six weeks old. They got between $10-$16
when they were big enough.
During
these winter months they tried to keep the house warm by burning sagebrush and
a little coal. There wasn’t enough money to buy coal, so they hauled in an
average of about twelve loads of sagebrush a year. Every fall the neighbors would all get
together and go out east of their place and get wood. Some would rail while the others would load
the wagons. Their rail was a railroad
iron about twenty feet long with a bend at each end. They would hook a team of horses on each
end. The rail weighed several hundred
pounds, it really knocked down the sagebrush.
Guys would ride the rail to help.
It was a dirty rough all day job.
They would take their lunches.
The
wood supply by the farm finally ran out.
Then they had to go down through the valley and haul the sagebrush from
the Bruneau desert. The Owsley Bridge
was built by now. Son Thompson and Nin
Green were in a group of high school kids that were on the bridge when it was
finished.
One
time Jack took Leland out to help him get some sagebrush. They took a long pole and a chain to pull it
with. They unhitched the horses and
hooked the double trees to the chain that had the pole fastened to it. Then they would hook the pole around the
sagebrush and pull. They always looked
for the big ones. Jack hooked on to this
big one and Leland said, “Dad that is too big a brush for me to hold on to that
pole and pull it.” Jack said, “Oh, you
can do it son.” Jack started the horses
up real slow, they had to pull pretty hard.
The pole slipped out of Leland’s hands and the end of it hit Jack right
behind the ears and he went down like a dead beef (Leland’s description!) Leland let out a yell and started bawling,
and then he rolled him over and started shaking him. Jack’s eyes started blinking, and then Leland
knew he was going to make it. Jack
finally sat up, then got up. He wanted
to pull some more and Leland told him no way!
By the time we got loaded what we had pulled, Jack’s head was aching and
he could hardly see. He was mighty glad
to get back home. When they got back
home, Leland told Ellen what had happened, she cried and said, “Maybe Dad will
learn.” They did pull sagebrush again
though.
One
morning Jack and Ellen went to Hagerman with the team and wagon, that meant
that they would be gone most of the day.
It was about dark when they got home.
The kids were doing the chores.
They got out of the wagon and went into the house with two
packages. Pretty soon, Jack came out
with a gas lantern. It about blinded everyone, they weren’t use to having such
a bright light. It sure made their old
kerosene lantern look dim.
Jack
and Ellen did almost all of their shopping at Morris and Roberts store. They had hardware, clothing, coal and
groceries. It was a general all round
good store. They would charge all summer
and straighten up their bill when they sold their hay in the fall.
Johnny
Jones bought their hay most of the time.
The highest price ever paid was twelve dollars a ton. Jack and Johnny
would argue for hours sometimes for a dollar a ton.
One
day when Jackie was just big enough to walk around good, Ellen heard her crying
outside. She looked out the door. Jackie had gone down toward the barn and
stopped at their beehive and knocked the lid off. The bees were getting all over her. Ellen ran down to get her and the bees
attached her. They got all over in her
hair and really stung her. Ellen got so
sick they had to get the doctor for her.
Jackie got a few stings but it didn’t have too much affect on her.
One day a
salesman came to the home peddling Home Comfort ranges. He had a model of the big stove with
him. It was really pretty. Some how he talked Jack into getting it,
setting up payments. He said it would
come from the factory in about six weeks.
It came in about two weeks. It
came while Ellen was home alone. When
Jack and Leland got there, Ellen had been crying. Jack asked he what the matter was, she said,
“That darn stove came today.” Jack about
cried too. They didn’t have a dime in
the house. The next day he got some
money from Jess Ruddles, he had been sorting some spuds and he and Leland
collected some cow herding money and they got it paid for. It cost $150.
Ellen always said where there is a will there is a way.
One
afternoon Howard Marsh came over to the house and wanted Jack to pull a
tooth. Jack had a pair of faucets that
had been handed down through the Green generations. Jack didn’t want to pull it, but Howard
insisted. He showed Jack the tooth. Jack fastened the faucets on a tooth and
started to pull. Howard said NO, NO Jack,
not that tooth, it’s the other one. That
was the last time he ever came over to have a tooth pulled. Jack didn’t mind pulling kids baby
teeth. When he pulled Leland’s first
tooth, he tied a string onto the tooth, then tied the other end onto the
doorknob and shut the door. It worked really
well.
One day
Jack and Leland were driving the cows down to Parks Pond to water them. They got down to the pond and were watching
them drink and Jack just fell over on the ground and stiffened out. Leland was really scared. He finally poured water from the pond on his
head and face. Finally Jack started
wiggling, he laid there for twenty or thirty minutes. Finally he got up and staggered around a
while, then made it back up to the house.
Leland told Ellen what happened and she said it had happened twice
before. The doctor had checked him and
couldn’t find anything wrong with his heart.
Jack was
the first one of the family to be operated on.
He complained of severe stomach pains.
He ended up having his appendix out.
The operation cost $175.
Jack always
looked for ways to earn a little more money for the family. He and Howard Marsh worked the county roads
for years. They each had a team of horses on a grader. In the fall after the summer work was done,
several of the farmers would haul gravel to put on the roads. They hauled a
yard and a half at a time. They hauled
the gravel from six to fifteen miles.
Sometimes they would only make 2 trips a day from the gravel pit. They used what they called dump boards. They would pry up the big sideboard, then
they would pull the bottom boards over one at a time and the gravel would fall
to the ground in a pile. Then they would
have to scatter it out with the graders.
They generally worked for a month to six weeks every fall. At times the guys would have to leave home at
five o’clock in the morning to make their required trips for the day. They often raced with either the wagons
loaded or unloaded to see who could finish first. They were always trying to get ahead of each
other. When they got their required
trips in for the day, they could go home.
Jack’s brother Dutch helped with this.
One summer
the Chattertons, the Thompsons and the Greens went on a fishing and hunting
trip to Magic Dam. They all had Model
T’s. There wasn’t much of a road, it was
narrow, dusty and dirty all the way. The
fished all day the first day and caught 3-4 pound trout. Fish were plentiful because the access to the
dam was so hard. They camped at an old
shack a little ways from the dam. During
the night they would hear all kinds of noises.
The kids asked the folks what they were.
They found out, it was pack rats running all over the shack. Finally they got to sleep. The next morning when the women started
getting breakfast, they noticed that almost all of the silverware was
gone. They started looking and the rats
had carried it up into the rafters to their nest.
They left
Magic and traveled up to Carey to go hunting.
Fred Thompson almost got shot. A
sage hen got up between him and another guy, the other guy shot and it
scattered shot all around Fred. He
really told the guy off. Fred wasn’t
very big, he weighed around 130 pounds and was short but he wasn’t afraid of
anyone.
One day
Bill was driving the cows home from watering hole and one of the heifers kept
running back. Bill picked up a rock and
threw it at her and hit her in the eye.
It blinded her I both eyes. Jack
called the cow Audrey because he had bought her from Art Dennis (the
postmaster). Art had a daughter Leland’s
age and her name was Audrey, a cute little dark headed girl. Jack gave the cow to Leland after he was
married.
Sometime
later this heifer came up missing. When
they found her, she had fallen into the cistern. The cistern was dry at the time. A WPA worker had built it and they hadn’t put
a top on it. It was about 14 feet wide
and twelve feet deep. They had to build
a chute out of heavy planks, tied a heavy rope around her, then they hooked a
big block and tackle onto her and pulled her out. She ended up being their best mile cow. They had one old milk cow that weighed about
1500 pounds. She kicked like a mule. She acted like she would like to kill anyone
around, her name was Boxcar. Whenever
Jack was gone, Ellen would have to mile her.
She milked her by reaching over a two by four. She told Jack he had to sell her. Jack decided to put calves on her and send
her out on the Bruneau Desert with the rest of the dry heifers and steers. She
came up missing then one day Elmer Cook told Jack that she had gotten into the
quicksand at Bells Rapids on the west side of the river. She was so heavy they couldn’t pull her
out. The more she floundered the deeper
she sank and finally went out of sight.
In the
spring they took their cattle to the Bruneau desert, west of Hagerman. They would use the Gridley crossing making
it necessary for the cattle to swim across the Snake River. Occasionally an animal would be lost in the
quicksand bogs in the river. Taking them
across at this crossing was a lot closer than taking them to the Owsley Bridge or
way down to the Bliss Bridge. Most of
the “rim rockers” (farmers that farmed the Rim Rock area) had their cattle out
on the desert and checked them about every two weeks during the summer.
At the
Gridley crossing they would take their saddle horses down to the river and swim
them across. They would lead one horse
behind the boat the men were in and the rest of the horses would follow. One time one of the horses they were leading
behind the boat got his front feet in the back of the boat and just about
capsized it. The horse swam so high with
his front feet that they never used him as a lead horse again.
When it came time to bring the cattle back to
the ranches in the fall, they packed up their lunches, which consisted of a can
of sardines, made the trip again across the river, swimming the cattle back
across hoping to miss the quicksand.
One day
Jack, Dutch and Leland were out in the field checking the irrigation
water. Dutch said to let Leland drive
the care in. Leland and Jack weren’t too
much in favor of it, it was Grandma Green’s Model T, but Leland got in and
headed for the house. He did all right
until he wanted to stop. He hit the
clutch instead of the brake and ran into the end of the barn. It blew out the front tire and broke out one
headlight. Not much was ever said about
it.
The family
always had something going on with the boys.
Leland once stuck a currycomb under a horse’s tail. It kicked two boards out of the back of the
barn. The horse clamped down so hard on
the comb that they couldn’t get it out.
Finally they did, Jack gave Leland a licking for that. Later that day though, Leland tied two old
cows’ tails together and the big old holstein pulled the bush part of the other
cows tail off.
Another
time Ellen caught one of the boys lighting matches and poking them into
knotholes in the side of the house. She
ran into the house and got the teakettle off the stove and poured water into
the knothole to put the fire out.
The boys
like to go to the dances down at Jensen’s dance hall. One Saturday night, Charlie, Bill, Bob
Tupper, and Lyle Potter’s nephew were driving down the road to the dance. The CCC camp boys (boys mostly from New York
there with the Civil Corp of Engineers or Job Corp [there to work on the
roads]) were walking, they had no cars, to the dance. The boys decided they were taking up too much
of the road walking, so Lyle Potters nephew stuck out his arm, Charlie swerved
over, and the Potter kids arm hit one of the CCC boys. The next week it was roller-skating at the
Legion Hall in Hagerman. All the boys
were there again. One of the CCC boys yelled
there’s one of the ___ __ _ _______, and took out after Charlie. Charlie came running out to the pickup,
Jackie was standing there. He told her
to get him the clubs (they had been out killing rabbits). She told him no and she yelled at the CCC boys
to leave him alone and get out of there!
Charlie ran to Lade and Fred Thompson’s and jumped the fence and ran
into the house. The group of boys got a
hold of Bob Tupper and really beat him up.
Some of the CCC boys were going to Hagerman High School and knew Bill,
one of the CCC boys told Bill what was going to happen. A bunch gathered around Bill and he just sat
down in the street. They left him alone. Lade and Fred came out of the house, they had
called the Sheriff. The Sheriff came and
helped get Bob into their house and clean him up. The CCC boys went back to their camp.
The next
day everyone was in court. All the
parents had to go. The case was settled
with no fines and there were no more battles.
As the boys
got older and bigger they helped Jack more with the farm. They would hire out
for haying. They would make the trip to
town to work by horse and wagon, each night and morning. It was about a five-mile drive and quite a
bouncing drive in the old wagon on the gravel roads. They would move the hay derrick from one hay
yard to another. They would hook the
team onto the derrick to move it.
Ellen would
cook for 8-10 men during the haying.
They mowed the hay with horses and the mower would take a five-foot cut
of hay. They felt like they hayed all
summer.
Ellen
always raised a few turkeys for Thanksgiving and Christmas, and to sell for a
little spending money. They would kill
the turkeys, cool then out and one time decided to take them to Shoshone to
see, the price was better there.
Finally the
family bought a Model A. They thought
they had the world by the tail. They had
two kid goats that the kids played with all the time. They would get down on their hands and knees,
about two feet apart, and the goats would jump from one back to another. One afternoon Jack looked out the window and
there were both goats on the hood of the car.
Before he could get out there they were on top of the roof of the car. They ate the goats a little later
Ellen’s
father Edmund Crist died December 21, 1934. That Christmas was a meager one for the
family. On Christmas morning the
children gathered around the stove and each received one present. Jackie got fingernail polish and
remover. The next week, December 29,
Leland and Thelma Kirtland were married.
Jack’s
hands were callused from the hard work.
One time he got infection in one of the calluses. A red streak came and went clear up his
arm. They had to call for the CCC Camp
doctor in Hagerman to come see him. He
told them to take some sheets and place them in boiling water. Take them out with two sticks (like
broomsticks) and wring them out. Jack’s mother came and helped Ellen twist the
sticks and wrap the sheet around his arm.
The sheets were so hot that they couldn’t touch them. Jack’s arm looked like a dried prune after
each treatment. It did work and he was
fine again.
LDS
missionaries came to Hagerman from Carey converting several people. Jack,
Ellen, Thelma (Leland’s wife), and Bill were baptized on October 25, 1936. They
were baptized in Billingsley Creek, by the Rock Lodge with the water being very
cold. They were confirmed November,
1. After a few years there was enough
members that they decided to build a chapel.
Jack along with other donated time and equipment to haul the gravel with
horses and wagons to build the chapel.
In the
wintertime the snow filled the roads with drifts. Jack always had his horses ready to hitch to
the school bus and pull it through the drifted areas.
Jack’s
sister, Eva and husband Bert Wilde moved to Carey. Then Dutch and Amanda’s family moved to
Carey.
1940 he
moved his family to Carey where he farmed on Fish Creek. Jack and Dutch were
bringing a truckload of chickens, pigs and calves. They wrecked south of Richfield on one of the
hills. Animals went all over. They rounded up what they could and the
farmer that lived close let them put them in the corral that night. The next day Dutch, Jack and their boys came
and rounded up the rest and brought them all on up to Carey.
Jack
enjoyed his life on Fish Creek, many, many hours spent with his family fishing
and picnicking on the creek and picking chokecherries.
Most of the
weekends, families would get together and play baseball.
Because
there were no telephones, the families had set up the signal that if you saw a
mirror flashing, you knew something was wrong.
Generally Jack would signal to Nora and Joe Dieterle.
When things
happened that would stress Jack out, it was common for him to blackout. Once he had found that there was a hole in
the canal north of their place, it was starting to wash bigger. So he came to the house, got on the little
red Farmall tractor, went down and had the neighbors call on their telephone,
which was party lines, to the ditch rider.
Then he returned home and when he came around the yard fence he was
slumped over the steering wheel of the tractor.
He had passed out. The family ran out, untangled him off the tractor,
got him over to the porch. Ellen was
always the one to revive him, by this time there were people there to shovel in
the hole in the bank.
Many times
Jack would pass out while he was irrigating.
They would see him from the house and the boys would go get him and
bring him back to the house.
Jack worked
very hard trying to make a living on Fish Creek. He irrigated day and night. He would sleep down at the haystack so he
could change his water day and night.
Once after having been in the cold water, he had pneumonia and was very
sick. At that time there was no doctors
in Carey and they had to take him to Carey. Dr. Fox just sent him home to get better
there. His mom came up from Hagerman and
helped doctor him with mustard plasters.
In the
winter when the lane was drifted full he escorted ladies to Ellen’s quilting
bees, up and back, down the lane on a bobsled.
He made a smaller sled to haul the kids to and from the bus so they
wouldn’t have to walk up and down through the drifts. Anytime there was a birthday party or any
family gathering, he would haul them in his sleds. He loved the winter on Fish Creek.
The
families passed the winter getting together often and playing pinochle.
Ellen
enjoyed their life at Fish Creek. In the
spring of the year she would always go down in the gully that ran through the
Mint Peterson place and gather up all the turkey eggs. She would come back to the house holding out
her apron of eggs. Each day she would do
this. She would set the turkey eggs
under the setting chickens. She raised
the turkeys and then butchered them.
They would hang the turkeys out overnight and then take them up to
Hailey and sell them to the stores the next day.
Ellen had a
large raspberry patch. While picking the
raspberries she was very, very careful always watching out for the snakes. She always had a shovel handy to grab in case
she saw one. She made jam and canned the
berries. There were also some
gooseberries in the garden. West of the
raspberry patch grew some wild plums.
She would make jelly out of them.
Ellen loved
making her home beautiful with her flowers.
She would carry the water from the ditch that ran through the corral to
water her flowers and many rose bushes.
She always geraniums and always gave a start to anyone who wanted them.
Ellen always loved having her grandkids come and stay. The last thing heard at night was, “Sleep tight,
don’t let the bed bugs bite.” This was
really a warning. Ellen would fill no. 2
cans half way with coal oil and put them under the bed legs. This would make the bugs fall into the coal
oil and die. When they got DDT, it was a
blessing to all. No more bed bugs after
DDT!
On the farm
there were three houses. Jack and Ellen
lived in one, Jackie and Ellis in one and Charlie and Janet in the other. It made for great family gatherings and times
up Fish Creek.
In the
mornings, they would turn the cows out to roam the foothills to feed, then at 5
o’clock, Bill and Bud would be sent out to bring them back, and everyone milked
them. They separated the milk and there
was a creamery in town that they hauled the milk in to where they made cheese
and sold cream. Later Kraft Foods came
in and built the factory in town. A
truck then came and picked the milk up.
Hazel
Peterson felt the need for a Sunday School.
Everyone took turns having it at their homes. Wallace Mecham, Don Dilworth came out every
Sunday from the Carey Ward and taught.
Finally the old Austin schoolhouse was cleaned out and it was used for
Sunday School.
On November
12, 1952 Jack and Ellen were sealed for time and eternity in the Idaho Falls
Temple.
In 1957
Jack and Ellen moved to Sandy, Utah where Jack worked in a poultry plant owned
by Thressia and Lewis Owsley. Thressa
and Lou sold their poultry plant and Jack went to work on a mink farm. He retired in 1958 and returned to
Carey. On the trip moving back to Carey,
in the desert there was a bad dust storm.
They were involved in an accident Dude and Mary were taken to the
hospital in Pocatello. Leland and
Charlie were in a truck bringing the furniture and were not involved in the
accident. When Jackie, Ellis and Thelma
heard of the accident, they dropped everything and came over to the
hospital. Jack and Ellen were released
and they took them home. Dude and Mary
were in the hospital for a few days.
After
returning to Carey they did lots of fishing. Jack enjoyed fishing with his grandsons
and especially enjoyed the fishing trips with Alfred Albertson and Jess Peck.
Many family
Easter Sundays were spent with the family getting together for dinner. Some years the snow would still be there and
some not, but the warmth and love of Jack and Ellen were always felt by the
family.
They lived
in several homes in Carey but each one was filled with Ellen’s flowers, mostly
geraniums. Everyone was always welcomed
into their home.
On March
10, 1969 Annie Ellen Crist passed away.
The cause of death was listed as coronary occlusion and cardiac
arrest. She had been in the hospital for
a few days and had felt better that day. She was a member of the Carey Legion
Auxiliary and the Friendly Neighbor Club.
The services were March 14, and she was buried in Hagerman. The
pallbearers for the service were: John
Green, Eddy Green, Bruce Green, Curtis Rudd, Jerry Rudd and Randy Rudd,
grandsons.
Jack was
caretaker of the Carey Cemetery for two years and took much pride in keeping it
in good condition.
Jack held
the office of Elder in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. While in Hagerman he served as a member of
the Sunday School Superintendency and as a home teacher. After moving to Carey under the calling of
Bishop Eldon (En) Adamson, he with Albert Wilde were called to be stake
missionaries. Also he served as a home
teacher.
After Ellen
passed away, Jack went to live with Jackie and Ellis. She took great care of him.
On July 16th
the family had a big birthday party for him at Leland’s daughters in Paul. Eighty-six years young. He enjoyed watching the family participate in
a heck of a water fight. This generally
happened when the family got together, a Green tradition.
Jack’s
health was failing. On October 22nd
Jackie took Jack to the hospital in Jerome.
On the 23rd Dr. Nehr told Jackie that he was transferring
Jack to the convalescent home in Shoshone.
It was a heartbreaking time for the family, especially Jackie. Dr. Nehr left no choice. The next day they went to the hospital. Leland had dressed Jack and thought he was
ready to go. He had put another mans
clothes on him, so they had to change them.
Off they went to the center.
Jackie and Leland stayed late that night, it was the hardest thing to
leave him there. They shed many, many
tears that day.
On November
6th, Jack was readmitted into the hospital. His heart was in serious condition, he was in
intensive care. On November 11, 1978,
with Jackie and Charlie by his side, Jack returned to his Heavenly Father.
His funeral
was at 11:00 on November 15, 1978 at the Carey Chapel. His four sons and Peck
Bendorf and Ellis Rudd served as pallbearers.
The funeral procession went to the Hagerman cemetery. It was quite fitting that it went down the
old Bliss grade, down the old road he had traveled since his boyhood. He had driven cattle over it in his younger
days. The family had a dinner at the
Hagerman Church and there were about 100 attending. Quite a tribute for a great man.
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