Frank Greenwood History

     I am the son of William Richard Greenwood and Annie Crystal Greenwood, and the eldest of a family of eight.  I was born in American Fork, Utah, August 6, 1902; my parents were also born in American Fork.  I came into the world by a mid-wife, doctors were scarce in those days.  There ended up being eight children in the family.  I was the oldest, Bert is the second.  Grant, the third one, only lived a short time.  Mark, the fourth one, is retired and lives in Lehi. (any reference to now is as of August 1973- when the interview was given.) Wilson, who was a World War II veteran is now in the Veteran’s Hospital in Salt Lake after his third stroke.  He is completely paralyzed on both sides and in his throat and they feed him through a tube. Harold lives here and works down to the pipe plant at Geneva.  Irene, my sister, lived only a short time and died.  Vie, my sister, lives in Salt Lake and is married. 

     The first thing I can remember as a child was going up American Fork Canyon with my mother and dad.  It seemed such a long way.  We traveled in a wagon pulled by 2 horses.  Dad kept drawing attention to things of interest.  The steep canyon walls, high peaks, and especially the fast flowing creek in the bottom of the canyon and telling me to stay away from the stream.  He’d say “Don’t go near the fast water, if you fall into the water, you’d drown.  They could never get you out and you would go clear down.  They’d find me in the lake.”  This didn’t seem to matter to me.  I just figured I would still be alive and they could find me.  We were going to the “Dutchman Flats” where grandpa and Dad had a cabin.  I kept asking how far, every mile or so.  It was about 17 miles.

     I lived in American Fork Canyon.  My folks would live there and since I was the oldest, there was no reason to come down in the winter time, they would stay up there during the winter.  They were leasing a mine called the Whirlwind Mine and they hoped to hit some ore. Everyone thought you had to go higher to get the ore because the Miller Hill and the Pacific Mines were getting a lot of ore and they were always going up the canyon. We were just sixty-five feet over the top of all of the ore that Willard Cleghorn and father had gone down sixty-five feet instead of climbing, they would have hit a large body of ore. Once I started school we would live at the Dutchman Flats during the summer. Mother would bring us back to American Fork for the winter.  We would go back up the Canyon every spring when the roads were clean with snow.  Snow would be six feet deep many times.  The canyon has always been dear to me, it was so beautiful.

     The mine didn’t produce enough ore to make it worth while working any longer.  Dad would haul freight and groceries up to the mines and bring ore back from different mines in the canyon.  

     When you hauled ore, you would have to have a special built wagon to carry the heavy loads and four horses to pull the wagon. 

     There was a town built in the canyon named “Forest City”.  This was before I was born.  My dad would tell me about it.  They had a cemetery just west of the “Dutchman Flats”. They had a few kilns and smelted ore on a small scale.  Saw mills operated in the canyon to cut timber for the mines and for lumber for houses.

     The Union Pacific Rail Road, called the Oregon Short Line, was just one block North of Main Street, on First north.  There was a passenger train which ran on the line called locally as “the upper” (Union Pacific) now, a small high 2 wheel.  We would rush up to see the train come in and start again.  The piston would end up on dead center, it was necessary to blow the steam out of the cylinder so it would start.  The steam would shoot to the side about 25 or 30 feet.  We would run like mad to get away from the steam, which tickled the engineer no end, but the next time the train came, we were back again.  I think he did it on purpose.  We’d get a thrill and he a good laugh.  Automobiles were few and far between.  Horses would bolt and try to run away when a car or train came along.   

    (1901-1909) When I was very young, the family moved from the home I was born in 154 W. 200 N. to about 190 E. Main Street owned by William Grant.  Our life in American Fork was all that children could wish for.  One  time we went down to the depot of the D. & R.G. railroad south of town as a school class carrying small American flags to wave as President Theodore

Roosevelt passed through our town and waved to us as he stood on the back platform of his train as it passed slowly through town.   My life in American Fork was a happy time for me, going to the pasture with the boys who took the cows to the pasture in the morning and down to bring them back at night.  We would get to ride the horse and was a great experience for us.

      William Grant had a large family, 12-13 children from his first wife and 18 (?) from his second wife. [On a different copy, Frank says he thought they had 23 children.] The Grants were very versatile, they could paint, paper, make picture frames. I remember playing with the younger children.  Melvin, Francis, Clarence, Lillian and Pearl.  It was a wonderful experience.  There was something interesting going on all the time.  In the summertime Clarence, Francis, Pearl, Melvin would put on plays in the loft of their barn and charge a beer bottle for admission.  Bottles sold 4 for 5 cents.  The curtain was an old home spun carpet hung on wires and could be pulled back and forth.  It seemed they were washing every day.  The boys rigged up a bicycle with a belt running from the rear wheel, after the tire had been taken off, to the wheel on the washer.  The bicycle had been propped up in a stationary position.  They would sit on the seat and peddle the bike which would in turn run the washer.  This was about 1906 or 1907.  I thought was the first automatic washer.   So many happy memories, as living next door to the William Grant family and enjoyed going to their home to eat and sleep.  It was like living in a hotel.  My mother used to say, “I’m going to skin you if you don’t stop going over there to eat” I was made so welcome by Mrs. Grant (Aunt Rose) we called her, I couldn’t resist.  They (Grants) owned a store, and it was a landmark for many years.  They sold everything, dishes, pictures, everything from candy, marbles to Grand piano, picture framing, paper hanging, etc.  You name it, they had it.  Name was “GRANTS EMPORIUM”.  They lived in the East side of the building, and the West and South part was the store, located on the south side of Main Street about 180 E. Main. [Many years later it burned and had to be torn down.]  Mr. Grant used to play the piano every night after supper, when he finished he would say, “If you want anymore you’ll have to play it yourself.”

   Mr. Webb a shoemaker used to make our shoes.  He would place your foot on a piece of paste board and draw an outline and that was his pattern.  The lasted a long time you couldn’t wear them out, they would by handed down to the next child.

    Mary Evans who lived back of our house, an elderly music teacher from England.  She was always alone, I don’t think she was ever married.   She had to go at night to the saloon to get her bucket of beer.  We children used to peek through her window to watch her drink her beer and smoke her pipe which was very funny to us.

     I went to school in American Fork 1 year, the first grade.  1908.  It was very military, you would line up outside and march into the school and line up and march out at recess, etc.  They were strict disciplinarians, the teachers.  If you were in trouble, they reported to your parents, then you were in trouble.  I was very interested in school.  I liked it so I wasn’t trouble.  Early in the spring of 1909, my brother Bert came down with the scarlet fever.  I came home from school and cried because they had a sign on the front door “SCARLET FEVER”. This meant I had to stay home from school until the doctor said we could go back.  Low, wouldn’t you know I waited until Bert was practically over his and I came down with it.  That meant I was shut in for another 3 weeks, so I was out of school 6 weeks.

   When we were over the fever, you were required to fumigate the house.  This was done by placing a pan inside a tub with dirt in the bottom and the pan with sulphur in was set afire and smoke from the sulphur was supposed to kill the germs.

    We went down to Grandma Greenwood’s and stayed overnight until it was safe to move back

into the house.  On our way down to Grandma’s we passed the corner where dad had bought a piece of ground to build a house, and there was a house being built there.  Mother was very upset and said, “Will, I thought we were going to build there? Did you sell the ground?”  Dad just smiled and said, “We are building a house there.”  Mother was thrilled.  Dad had started the home while we were quarantined in with the fever and intended it to be a surprise.

     One day the Grants were killing a pig.  They used to put grain down in front of the pig, while it was eating, they would hit it between the eyes with the back end of an ax.  This would stun the pig.  They would roll it over and cut its throat.  This day they didn’t hit the pig hard enough.  It got up and chased them out of the corral. 

   While mother was at church we went into the house and started to play killing a pig.  Bert, my brother, was supposed to be the pig.  We put a rope around his leg just above the ankle.  He’d try to crawl under the bed and squeal like a pig.  We’d drag him out and he would chase us, crawling on all fours.

    Mother came home and almost had a heart attack.  There on the bread board was a large butcher knife. I really don’t know how far we would have gone if mother hadn’t come home.  Kids are great imitators.  It seemed innocent enough at the time.

     (1910-1911) During this time the church was excavating a large hole in the ground which turned out to be Alpine Stake Tabernacle.  It was all done by pick, shovel, teams pulling scrapers.  It took a long while to finish digging for the basement and 1912 it was finished.  It is sure a beautiful building.

     Going down to Utah Lake to fish, we caught bull head or mud cat we called them.  Into spring of the year about April and May was the best time to go, the fish would bite fast and we could catch a dozen or more in a short time.

       We had moved into a new home on the southeast corner of Second South and First East Streets and lived there a short while.  Dad found a job in a mining town called “Bingham Canyon”.  We moved up to the South end of the Canyon “Highland Boy.’  Dad drove team for the store, hauling the dry goods and groceries from the depot of the D & RG Rail Road station in the bottom of the canyon to the store some two to three miles up the canyon.   He drove a four horse team.  He also carried the payroll for the Highland Boy mine. He hauled vegetables and fruit as a peddler. He would make two trips a week to Salt Lake for fresh vegetables and fruit to bring to Bingham.  When I first moved to Bingham as a boy there were no automobiles in town. If you left American Fork with a load of vegetables to go to Salt Lake at five o’clock in the morning, you would get to the Half-Way House fifteen miles away. Then it would take you till about four or five o’clock that after to get to Salt Lake. You drive up in half an hour but it used to be a ten or twelve hour trip with a loaded wagon.  When they took radishes, onions and carrots, they put a wet burlap sack in the bottom of some crates.  Then they would fold the burlap over the vegetables and it would keep them from wilting.  They didn’t have these big refrigerated trucks. They also canned some of the vegetables.  I do not remember when they used to use oxen. I knew one fellow in American Fork Canyon that used horses at his saw mill to drag logs off the hill.  It has been interesting though to see the changes from the horse and buggy days to the Old Model-T Ford to modern transportation we have today. It was a tremendous time to have lived.

    Bingham was quite a rough, rowdy town.  You get accustomed to the type of town that you live in and I couldn’t see anything wrong with the brothels that were there.  It seemed every other door up in town was either a brothel or a saloon.  When there were 25 or 30 men to every woman, most of the miners considered a brothel to be a legal part of town.  As you grow older then you can analyze and compromise with some of the things that happened.  My mother, your sister or any woman was safer in Bingham with all those men in there than they are today on the streets here. No one bothered with a married woman.  If someone had, they would have been hung to the next Power Pole; they would be killed by the men themselves.  One night when my brother and I were going to a show we saw three men beating a man.  I knew one of the fellows around there was a policeman so I ran over and told him. He said, “It looks like they are going all right.”  He turned his back on it, and I found out later the man had tried to molest one of the men’s wife.  I heard them say, “If you’re not out of town in the morning, we’re going to hang you to that pole right over there.”  He was begging and pleading and bleeding and running.  They didn’t wait for the law; they took care of it themselves. 

     I don’t remember any lynching in Bingham.  The saddest part of the mining town was before they had insurance and other protection for the miners. They always made the statement that men were cheaper than timber.  They would stake out a place, take all of the ore out and just leave the pillars to hold them up and then they would knock them out and take them out.  If they got caved in, then the miners would be out there waiting for a job.  There wasn’t anything the miners could do about it; the owners made those kinds of decisions. That is how brutal it was.  As I grew up in those times I had a lot of respect for people of that type. 

    The people in Bingham were very close knit.  Your troubles were their troubles and theirs were yours.  Many tragedies seem to keep the people close together.  The people of Bingham seemed to have the understanding of life itself in the hard life of a miner.  They welded into one large group when disaster struck.  Mine accidents took many lives, and very few had insurance.  The sum total left would often be money collected by passing the hat in places of businesses and friends.  This dumped on the table of the widow or family was the insurance.  Unemployment was also a problem.  Credit was given by the small grocer to carry a family to better times.

     We would come back every summer to Grandma Greenwood’s to visit.  We lived in Bingham from 1909 to 1915 about six years.  At that time, Bingham was a town of six to seven thousand people.   To give an idea how busy this mining town was, when they built the Bingham-Garfield railroad there were four passenger trains that ran to Bingham.  Two on the Bingham and Garfield ( B & G) and two on the D & RG railroads. Two in the morning and two in the afternoon.  This will give you some idea of how many people were working there, people coming and going, since mining towns are so called boom towns.  This meant that turnover in miners was great.

     Our schools were filled with so called ethnic groups.  Austrians, Finnish, Italians, Greeks, Japanese, Slavs, you name it, they were all our friends, and got along very well. The schools in Bingham were possibly way ahead of most schools because of the amount of money earned there.  They were able to hire the best of teachers.  They were able to divert lots of money to education. The Coppertown Grade School, Highland Boy School, Central School, High School.  They were well financed.  Think of how many Nationalities needed to be taught English. We had spelling bees, those I could win once in a while, but never if Agnes Quinn was there.  Many times it would end up with Agnes and I, and some little simple word would stump me.  I did win a few times. Then I would feel bad for Agnes.  She didn’t know it, but she was my favorite girl. Going to school at Highland Boy was very different with all of the ethnic groups.  I never learned to speak any of their dialectics.  The swear words were the easiest to remember. When we had a difference, they would swear at us in their native tongue.  Our swear words were understood in all languages. Those words were spoken with so much emphasis.  Along with a few rock contests to settle our arguments. In Bingham the minorities were the majority.  Children were of many denominations, Greek Orthodox, Catholic, Methodist, Japanese, L.D.S. Many with no religious connections at all.

      Your introduction to Bingham was the cemetery at the mouth of the canyon, next to the

garbage dump just below the old Yampa Smelter. The smell of smoke everything on the hill, engine steam shovels, homes and all were fired with coal.

     Different parts of the canyon had names. Bingham itself encompassed towns called Copperfield, Highland Boy and parts called Lower Bingham (Frog Town to me.)  Freeman Gulch, Heaston Heights where our church was built, Markham Gulch running west off main canyon.  In the bottom was also Dry Fork, Railroad Avenue, and Hegland Avenue. The only street began in the bottom of the canyon and those taking off main street to go up the several gulches.  The main road forked in town by the old city hall.  The right fork was called the “Carr Fork”, and the left , “Main Canyon”.  Right went to “Highland Boy” and “Boston Con”.  The left to Copperfield and the underground mine call the U.S. Copperfield with store, school, a theater, bars and hotel.  In the Copperfield region were placed called Dinkerville, Jap Camp, Greek Camp and a place called Galena.

    The large open mining was South. South of the junction of the road and between Highland Boy and Copperfield.  Many underground mines, too many for me to remember also.

     Many overhead tram lines from mines to the Railroad in the bottom of the canyon.  Highland Boy tram went over the hill West to a Smelter in Tooele, Utah.  The U.S. Tram from Copperfield on the East side of the canyon to a head house in the canyon near the old D & RG railroad depot.  The Frisco Tram down to railroad in lower Bingham.  The Yampa to the Yampa Smelter in the lower end of the canyon.  Later a tunnel was run through the mountain.

     We lived just East of the Head House, it is a building where the empty buckets return from the smelter and came into this building to be loaded with ore and spaced out along the overheard cable to return to the smelter.  One day the pull cable broke and the loaded buckets came back down the mountain crashing into the Head House, and some swinging off their cable to the ground.  This was very dangerous but luckily none hit any homes.  Some of my friends and I were standing upon a small hill behind the Head House watching.  To us it was very exciting, even though it did a lot of damage.

     The canyon itself was so narrow and the only place to play was in the street.  Some of us were in trouble all the time, we devised our own entertainment, which turned out to be a don’t every time.  You’d be surprised how many small ants, working on one big rocks could loosen it enough to cause it to roll down the hill with a little push from 3 or 4 of us.  Sure would make a lot of noise crashing through the bushes.  Lucky they never hit a house.

      We tried mining in a kid’s way.  Digging to mine dumps.  Playing on Railroad cars. Hiring out to peddlers bringing vegetables and fruits to the canyon.  They would give us 50 cents to maybe one dollar a day to keep people from stealing, unloading loads of ore brought down from the mines.

Halloween was a time for pranks, not too well appreciated by the elders.  The night before Halloween was clothes line night.  Most of the time the line was tied to the out house, so you had to get it out of the way before you could push the outhouse down the next night.

     Sticking a shingle up through the board walks was another prank. One narrow street called Main St. about 20 ft wide.  Wooden sidewalks.  The walks were on trestles, so the walk wouldn’t be up and down.  We would crawl under the walk and take a 4 to 6 inch wooden shingle.  When the victim would walk by, we would push the shingle up through the crack. He would stumble over, turn around to see what he stumbled on, by that time we would be far away.  Some would catch on, we would hide under the lumber pile.  We could hear them say, “You little Blankety, Blanks, if I get my hands on you, I’ll break your neck.”

      Ed Zwicky ran the store, he would give us candy often.  I think this was a bribe.  The candy was so handy, we never did steal from him.  He was our friend, you know.  But boy the ones we called our enemies didn’t fare as good as from Ed.

     When we first moved to Bingham there wasn’t a Mormon church.  There was a Methodist church up in Highland Boy and they invited us all to attend, which I think had a leveling affect on us.  They tried very hard to keep us busy doing something worth while.  We enjoyed going to that church.  Later we attended the Mormon church, when we moved to Lower Bingham (or Frog Town).

    Bingham didn’t have too many serious crimes.  Many miners would get drunk on pay day and would have to be locked up until they sobered up, then fined and turned loose to be back in 2 weeks with another pay check.

     I can’t remember the date we moved from Highland Boy to Lower Bingham (Frogtown).  Dad had a new job.  He and another man opened a cafe in town proper.  Our house was built over the creek, which served as the sewer and was an open creek.  The house faced Railroad Ave.  The trains switching cars, night and day.  The main line track was about 30 feet from our bedroom window.

     We made new friends, Dewey Mayne and his brothers, family named Lott, Davis, Sammy Jenkins from Freeman Gulch, Scipio & Blanch Kenner, The Wright’s, Steve, Glen, and J.S., Ray Shelley and many others when we started to school.  Stillman’s, Irving, Tuffy, Francis Quinn, Toby Tobiason, Gerald Hoskins.

     We used to lay in bed at night and watch the engines pull their cars up the switch backs, delivering car loads of powder, lumber, etc. up the mountain.  It took two engines (cog engines, one pulling and one pushing to take their load up the steep grades.) These engines were called the shay 5 engines.  They had vertical pistons like an automobile engine but run by steam.  One to two cars was all they could get up the mountain with.

     We used to enjoy sleigh riding in the winter time.  We would make a bob sled by using 2 sleighs, one in front, one in the back and a board 6 to 8 feet long in between.  This way we could take 6 to 8 people at a time.   A lot of time was spent sleigh riding.  Three to four months almost every year.  It was dangerous and there were a lot of accidents.  All the 4 and 6 horses teams, people walking on the wooden sidewalk, didn’t leave very much room for us to sleigh ride, but we managed.  Dodging from the sidewalk into the street, back and forth, going fast.

     The canyon run southwesterly and this caused the sun to come up late and go down early.  The snow would stay on the ground for a longer time than down in the valley.

    Every bit of our energy came from coal.  The homes were heated with it, steam engines, steam shovels, etc.  In the winter time the smoke from all these things caused a blanket to cover the canyon and many times the sun looked like a pale sick moon.

     I can remember people using cleats on their shoes, spikes like metal prongs, that would dig into the snow or ice.  The prongs on inside and out side at the instep of your shoe so you could stand up, if you didn’t wear them it was impossible to walk.  The people would shovel the snow from the walk in front of their places.  We would go up and down the street pouring water on the walks at night.  This would freeze almost immediately.  Then we could sleigh ride right over the bare spots.  Trust a kid to improvise something to continue to use our sleighs.  If we coasted down the side canyons, some one would have to stand guard where we crossed the main street.  If some one was coming, we would throw sacks filled with straw in front of you to help you stop.  After Christmas we would use our old Christmas trees to throw in front of you.  We would duck our heads and close our eyes and plow into the trees, most of the time you stopped, if not, you just rolled off your sleigh.  I remember Glenn Wright ran into a wagon and injured his head.  He was under the doctor’s care for a long time.

     Bingham Mercantile was always remembered by all the old timers as the “store” C.E. Adderly owned the store. He had a daughter who was a natural artist.  She didn’t ever know, but she was always my idol.  Some of the Employees I remember were: Ross Hocking, Cora Hocking, Daisy Bogart, I can’t remember the others, but there were many.

     The canyon was loaded with possibly a hundred boarding houses. Too numerous to name and remember.  One I could remember in Highland Boy was McKenzie’s. It was close to where we lived in Highland Boy.  In the summer time the men all washed up on a long bench on the south side of the house.  They had a parrot which was chained to a perch and the end of the bench. The men had taught the parrot to talk, but he did best at swearing.  He used to say, “get you washed you S.B.’s” This tickled the miners and figured he was a well trained parrot.

    Some really interesting and tragic things happened in the mining towns in those days.

   November 21, 1913 Another episode which created a nation wide stir in those days.  Rafael Lopez, a Mexican boy killed Juan Valdaz over a girl or something.  After killing him he left town.  He went back to his cabin and took his rifle and plenty of shells and hiked over the hills East to the West Shore of Utah Lake and stopped at a farm house to get something to eat.

    The law was not far behind riding horses.  Bill Grant Chief of Police and 3 county Sheriffs, Whitbeck, Sorenson, and Jensen had trailed him to the house of Bert Jones. This was the next day after the shooting in the afternoon.  Sorenson and Whitbeck rode up to the house and Grant and Jensen stayed back to watch.  Lopez had seen them coming and left the house and was hidden in a wash, with two quick shots he dropped Grant and Jensen.  When the other two rode up he dropped Whitbeck from his horse. Sorenson dropped off his horse but Sorenson said not more shots were fired.  Later they said they found the spot where Lopez was hiding and found the empty shells.  Three empty and one which misfired lying on the ground. There would have been a fourth man if his gun had not misfired.

     They formed a posse and searched the area thoroughly, but could not find him.  Several times they thought they had him surrounded.  But Lopez had back tracked to Bingham and gone to a friends cabin at the “Minnie Mine”.  He took rifle shells, food and bedding and went into the mine.

    The care taker notified the mines foreman, I think it was Tom Hoskins. They tried to smoke him out by burning baled hay.  They did this for several days, but couldn’t locate him. They decided to go farther back in the mine.  While moving some of the hay, which was being carried by several miners back into some of the stopes. This was on   November 29, 1913. Four shots rang out, two other men were killed in the mine, Doug Hulsey and Joe Mandarich.  He was charged with killing of six men. 

      They tried for 4 or 5 more days to smoke him out.  When the mine was cleared of smoke, they made a search of the mine but no Lopez.  He had disappeared and was never found.  Many times since then he has been reported in Utah; Butte, Montana; and other places, but still remains a mystery to his whereabouts.

     At that time there were very few automobiles in the canyon and they used one to bring the bodies of the three policeman back to Bingham strapped to boards it being in the fall and cold weather.  They were covered with blankets.

        December 19, 1914 A bank robbery was exciting to the young people. About 3:00 PM a man (Bert Heaton) walked into the bank and pointed a revolver at three employees and made them lie on the floor, tied their hands behind their backs.  He made the cashier give him the combination to the safe, and scooped up $16,492.00 and locked the clerks in the vault.  He had the money in a seamless sack and came down the canyon to a livery stable to rent a buggy to drive down to the valley.  There wasn’t one available for awhile.  He went into an old outhouse to hide while waiting for a buggy.

     By this time the employees had freed themselves and turned in the alarm.  The place was a wild west show. The robbery was discovered and a search was started. Police going everywhere.  A reward was offered.  A stable boy had noticed a strange man enter the outhouse in the Bingham Coal and Lumber Company yard.  He notified the police.  They immediately surrounded the out house and called on him to come out, which he did with his hands up. He had been trying to shave off his beard.  One side of his face was shaven and the other side still had lather on.  We boys were laying down flat on the top of the lumber pile watching.  They tied his hands and place a rope around his waist.  A man on a horse rapped the rope around the horn of the saddle and he walked ahead of the horse up to the Jail.  The man on the horse kept a six shooter pointed at his back all the way.

     It was like a Western movie to the kids.  We played cops and robbers for weeks after doing the same scene over and over, some time I was the robber and then the policeman. That was existence to our gang.

     They had a good police force in Bingham.  William (Bill) Grant who was killed by Lopez, Phil Cullrton, Stan Davies many others I can’t remember.  But in the later years after I left there, two men from American Fork, Jack and Jim Householder.  They say they were some of the most colorful ever to serve Bingham.

     There was an episode about our family which caused a lot of excitement and problems.  My brother, Berton, and a cousin, Raphael Greenwood were playing with our Billy Goat and wagon dad had bought for us some time earlier.  They hooked the goat to the wagon, which had shafts and a harness made to fit the goat.  They loaded some hay and oats to feed the goat and a lunch for them, and went down the canyon which was supposed to be a little trip down to the mouth of the canyon. They decided to go to American Fork which was some 25 to 30 miles away.  Finally the goat tired, so they put Billy in the wagon and pulled him.

     Some farmers who were thrashing grain north of Fort Harriman saw the two and asked them where they were going? To American Fork they said.  They suspicioned they were runaways, so they kept them, fed them their supper and waited for some one to come looking for them.

     In the mean time, the sun went down, no Bert or Raphael.  Aunt Lou and mother were beside themselves.  They notified the police.  They began the search, and were sure they had fallen down a mine shaft or something terrible had happened.

      Dad and Roy came home and began their search.  Finally a Mr. Countryman {he ran a candy store in the lower part of the Canyon Hall} who owned one of the few cars in Bingham was coming up the canyon.  It was now around 9:00 PM. They stopped him and asked if he had seen two boys with a goat?  He said, “Yes, they are staying down in the flats with some thrashers.  They will hold them until morning.”

     So Dad and Roy hired a rig from the livery stable and went down to get them. By this time it was day light.  They loaded the goat, wagon and boys into the rig and returned back to Bingham.  It was 10 or 11 AM before they came home.

     They were so glad to see them, they didn’t whip them.  They scolded them and mother said, “Aren’t you sorry you caused so much trouble?”  Bert said, “All I’m sorry for- we left Billy’s bridle down there.”

     A year or so later Billy got into the grain bin and ate so many oats he bloated, and we found him dead.  We sure felt bad.

      A man wanted to give us $5.00 and he would skin Billy for the hid to make a pair of chaps.  We wouldn’t listen to that, so dad hauled him down on the flats and dumped him out, when he hit the ground, he burst open.

    A month later we were passing that area.  There some on the grain he had eaten was growing.  Bert said, “Look Billy’s got a green grave.”  So much for poor old Billy.

     There were so many things a town such as Bingham, that were interesting to young boys.  The tough teamsters and their real love of driving 4 horse teams, their expert way they handled the lines, the long whip, they could crack a whip between the ears of the lead horse and never touch the horse.  Their concern for and love of a good horse.

     I think almost every boy in the canyon wanted to be a teamster or a railroad engineer.  We mimicked both of them.  Some time it was real.  One teamster William Cloud (Cloudy Bill) they called him, would lay down in the bottom of the wagon box and let us set up in the high seat and drive the horses up the canyon.  We would holler at the horses and swear just like “Cloudy” used to do.

     Sometime when an engine was steaming, the engineer or fireman would let us climb up into the cab of the engine and set on the seat, put our head out the window and play we were driving the engine.  It made you feel so big to be driving a big engine.

    One late spring day several of we boys hiked upon the Mountain East of town to look for spring flowers.  A thunder storms came up, lightning and thunder, rain.  The lightning struck a electric light pole.  A large blue-white ball of fire ran along the wire and dropped to the ground.  We were really scared.  We didn’t understand what was going on.  We ran all the way home.  It seemed very mysterious to us.  We thought the Lord was really after us.

     The picture shows were silent and the music set the mood for the show.  Two ladies one played the piano and the other the violin. They played fast and loud when fights or horses were running fast, or slow and mournful music when the scene was sad.  I would read the writing from the screen to the younger ones so they would know what was going on. A continued picture which would get to the interesting part and on the screen then continued next week.  We would try to figure out how it would end all week and save up so we could go to the show next week.

     The 3 months vacation from school were spent in either getting to trouble or going to the valley and helping to work on my uncles’ farm, thinning sugar beets, carrots and hoeing weeds.  I would spend about 6 weeks on the farm and when I came back home my uncle would say “Well, you have had your board and room all this time, but I’ll give you 50 cents to take home with you.”

    If I’d stayed home I could earn $1.50 a day going with a vegetable peddler just watching the wagon to keep people from eating the vegetables or fruit.

    One day some of the boys went upon the hill to try out 22- rifle, my brother Bert and I went with them.  We all took turns firing the gun.  On the way home, Ken Lott was carrying the gun, he stumbled and the gun went off and shot my brother, Bert, in the leg.  It spun him around and he fell, hollering “I’ve been shot.”  We rushed to him and a stream of blood was running down his overall leg.  We carried him home, he had passed out and looked grey.  I thought he was dying.  Mother and the neighbor tore his overalls from him and were holding compress filled with flour trying to stop the bleeding. An army officer came to see what was the matter.  He immediately applied a tourniquet to his leg and stopped the bleeding.  He would have surely bled to death.  It was about an hour or more before the doctor came.  The bullet had gone through the leg and had ruptured an artery.  They cleaned it out and sewed it up.  It left a large bulge in the front of his leg where the bullet came out.  He was kept in bed and around the house for the remainder of the summer. 

    It always took me a long time to get home from school, there was much to see and do.  I always had to see what was going on and how it was done.

    While going home one afternoon, I heard a lady moaning and crying, the houses were right up against the sidewalks and the window was open. So of course I had to see what was going on.  I pulled myself up to look into the house, and there on a bed was a young girl trying to have a baby.  Boy did I take off for home and told mother what was happening.  She ran up to the lady’s house next door to where I had looked in, and got Tony’s mother, an Italian lady to help her.  They went into the house and helped to deliver the baby. She was unmarried and was trying to have the baby by herself.

     It always seemed that anything could happen in Bingham, and usually did.

     One day a man lived just down the street from our house came home drunk. He started a fight with his wife.  In the fight he grabbed a knife and cut his wife’s throat.  She ran outside holding her apron out and the blood was flowing into her apron. It was lucky a doctor was driving by, he ran over stopped the flow and saved her life. Her husband was sent to the State Penitentiary for

several years.  She waited for him and took him back when he came out of prison.

     There were a lot of jobs young boys could do.  I got a job down to Nick Zakaris’s little neighborhood grocery.  My job was to go down early every morning and sweep out, make the fire and dust.  I usually worked all day Saturday.  Nick lived in the back of the store in a very small kitchen and 2 x 4 bedroom.  I used to make the fire first when it was cold.  The first smell that struck me when I opened the door was that strong  STRONG smell of garlic.  I would burn sugar on the stove to help cover up that awful smell.  I got $2.00 a week with a 50 cent extra for working Saturdays.

     Nick’s family were still in Greece, he would show me pictures of his family and cry he was so homesick to see them.  He used to lay money around on the floor to see if I would take it. I finally gave him a 50 cent piece back and said, “Nick if you keep leaving money laying around on the floor.  I’m going to keep it.”  I never saw money laying around anymore.

     The different nationalities used to gather and have their dances and parties.  Food stacked high on tables.  They’d dance drink wine, sing, eat, and wouldn’t stop until sun up. 

     The large hole in the ground you see today (1978) was once a mountain back in the years I spent in Bingham Canyon from 1909-1915.

    To sum up my description of Bingham, it was typical type wild western mining town. It seemed very other door was a saloon, with gambling in the back, dance hall girls, which were for hire. There was probably 15 to 25 men for every women.  This made prostitution a profitable business.

     Deep dust in the summer and just as deep mud to splatter all over your house and you in the winter.   Fire hoses were used to wash away the mud in the spring.  Then haul mine dump material all summer back to level the road up.  Then repeat the same process again next year.

     The early fire fighting equipment was two wheel carts, with a reel to roll the hose on.

      The “Canyon Hall”, a large building at the corner of Main and Markham Gulch was the main entertaining center.  A stage for home dramatic and traveling shows.  The main floor could be raised and lowered on a slope for shows and raised back to the level for dancing, dinners, parties, fights, etc. 

     The canyon hall had a lot of traveling show troops come to entertain.  One of the highlights for me was running errands for the actors and actresses who came to Bingham with their road shows.  For a long time I wanted to be an actor, it seemed so glamorous to be able to travel.  Will Mayne who lived in our basement was a prop man for the shows.  He would take me with him, I could watch the show people rehearse their acts. They would ask me to run errands for them to get cold cream and other material for make up.  This made me feel I was part of their act.  They treated me like one of them, sure made me feel big.

     I can remember the name of one of my teachers.  I think it was in the 5th grade, [in another history, Frank says it was 6th grade in 1913.] I guess it was because she had such an odd name, Nellie Klopenstine, she was a good teacher, but very strict.  She always gave a lot of credit for effort and praise to the skies for excellence.  You know kids could go a long way on a little love and a lot of praise, and boy some of those minority group kids could use it. Do you know with all the ragged dressed and dirty little faces of those kids in Bingham very few teachers ever quit their jobs.  They were really dedicated. If they hadn’t been, they never could have stood up to the job of teaching the United Nations.

     Back in those days it was as hard to get a doctor as it is today, but they did make house calls.  Dr. Straup and Dr. Flynn were mining co. Doctors.  They were kept busy with on the hill and in the underground mine accidents.

    When the doctor made a house call, he completed his job while in your home.  Sometimes he would perform an operation on the kitchen table.

     My brother Mark fell from our back porch and a knife he was holding in his hand stuck in the eye brow just above his eye.  Mother pulled out the knife.  When the doctor arrived he used our kitchen table for his operating table.  He put something over Mark’s nose.  It made him doze, Doctor sewed up the wound.  They put him to bed and next morning he was running around playing with his friends. Cost $2.00 [another copy said $5.00] and advice was “If it shows signs of infection, call me.”

     The “Bingham Bulletin” was our paper.  Had all the happenings of a boom mining town.  Coupons to cut out and you could go to either the Monarch or Princess theaters for 10 cents and a coupon.

     Bougard’s butcher shop for your meats.  Or David Bills from Riverton would bring fresh meat sold to you direct, cut off piece, weigh it, put in your pan.  You had to eat it immediately, we didn’t have ice.

     Fire was a nightmare, the buildings and home were so close together.  When a fire broke out, it was almost impossible to keep the fire from spreading to other buildings.  The danger of fire was a nightmare to the owners.  The water pressure was so great they were about to apply plenty of water on the fire.  There was no pressure reducing valves in the water system. Those in the bottom of the Canyon kept a tin cup at the sink, if you used a cup or glass it would be smashed by the force of the water through the faucet.  Hence the tin cup.

     Many people from down in the valley peddled to Bingham.  Jake Greenwood, an uncle of my dad’s, was the biggest peddler in Bingham for a long time.  He was from American Fork down in Utah County. He had several wagons delivering vegetables and fruit to the canyon for a long period of time.  Later his son Roy picked up the job.  Legend has it that he liked to gamble.  They say he gambled away his team and wagon in a poker game.

     For many years the only transportation was the horse and wagon or the railroad.  The underground mines had to either haul their ore by team and wagon or overhead tram lines to the smelter.  With one main road 20 feet wide for all that traffic.

     Later the automobile, it was some job to drive in the canyon.

     A man from Bingham went to the license bureau to get a license.  Clerk said “Where are you from?”  The man said, “Bingham Canyon” Clerk said, “Hell, anyone who can drive in that town don’t need a license.”

                                                            Moving to Sterling, Idaho 

        We left Bingham in the spring of 1915 to move to a small town in Sterling, Idaho, located about 30 miles Southwest of Blackfoot, Idaho. The farm homesteaded years earlier by Dad and his brother, Harvey.  Father having 3 boys and could see that Bingham wasn’t the best place to raise a family.  It took 7 days to go from Bingham to Thomas, Idaho.  Distance of about 200 miles.  We traveled in an old sheep camp wagon, one of these old “home-on-the-range” wagons.   We camped out each night where there was water and feed for the horses.  Roads were mostly dirt and rough in spots.  We stopped at our grandparents place in Thomas, Idaho, some 8 miles southwest of Blackfoot.  We stayed a day or two before going down to the farm at Sterling, Idaho.

    When we arrived at the farm the only building was a one room home stead shack standing on a small bluff over looking a valley to the East, with a large stream of water running through the pasture to the East.  Moving from a house modern so to speak, water and bath in the home, to a one room shack and water in the spring down the hill to be hauled or carried uphill for 100 yards or so.  When we entered the place and mother saw the house, it was a real shock to mother, and she began to cry.  She was used to water and toilet in the house, four rooms.  Then to come to this, no water, and not even a little house out back. But being the pioneer that she was, only made her roll up her sleeves to begin to order water from the spring to start a clean up which started at the rafters in the roof to the walls to the floor, which I’m sure never happened to that shack before.  How to manage to make a home with one room and five in the family.  Well the box was taken off the running gears and placed along the North side of the shack. That was the bedroom for Bert and I.

     As soon as we arrived the first thing was to plant something we could eat next fall. There was no water to be had for crops.  So we would have to install a pump and gas engine to run it in a stream meandering through our place to the west of the house.  Ditches to be made, etc. After this was accomplished, since part of farm was still in sage brush, the job was to clear the sage from 60 -80 acres so we could plant fall wheat.  The primitive way to tear up sage was to get a railroad rail and clamp logs to the rail to keep the bottom of the rail next to the ground.  Drag it so as to slide the rail in a 30 to 45 degrees from the way the horses were pulling.  This made it drag sage out mostly by the roots.  We raked it in windrows.  The best time to burn sage was at night, when it wasn’t so hot. Then get ready to plow.  Later my father invented a rake that would dump like a hay rake.  We made it out of some old wagon wheels. 

    Jack rabbits were as thick as sheep in a herd.  When we started fires, the small jacks would run directly into the fire and scream about once or twice and be consumed by the fire.  I never could figure out why they did this.  I caught many of the little rabbits but was never able to raise one in captivity. They were very destructive especially in the winter time. They came to the haystacks where they were trapped and shot or clubbed just to get rid of them.  At the time they were so numerous they were a threat to our economy.  One year there was a drive to kill them.  The workers for the Union Pacific Railroad in Pocatello, Idaho, went on strike and those people needed food.  So we killed jack rabbits and shipped them over.  We put a string of netting wire fence out and herded them in there. Then we clubbed them to death with ball bats.  We would take the entrails out and since it was in the winter, they would freeze solid.  We put them in the car and transferred them to Pocatello.  We shipped five thousand rabbits over to them.  The workers skinned them and put them in a rabbit stew with some potatoes and carrots.  We were glad to get rid of them and they were glad to have them. 

    It is fantastic to think of the improvements in the type of work and the kind of machinery people have to work with now. They used to have dump boards on a wagon. When it was loaded, there would be probably two and a half cubic yards of gravel on it. Now they haul 35 or 40 yards. They used to have to put a snatch team meaning two extra horses to pull the wagon out of the gravel pit. When they reached the place they wanted to dup the gravel, they would pull up to the side and dump a little bit off at a time.  That is how they would make roads and it was very laborious and took a long time. If they used the same method today, it would be like in Peru or some of those places.  We never would get a road finished.

There has also been a great improvement in the machinery used in agriculture. We used to top beets by hand, we picked up each beet individually and cut the crown off with what looked like a large butcher knife with a hook on it.  Today I still stop along the side of the road to watch the beet machines because their operation still seems fantastic to me.  But if we had forty acres of sugar beets, we couldn’t hire enough men to get them out in the fall of the year.  My son-in-law and his partner had 450 acres of beets in Idaho last year.  It is fantastic to me because I have something to compare the present machines with.  If you do not have anything to compare the operation with, it is not so fantastic.  It is like going to see the Redwoods in Northern California; they don’t look very tall because everything around them is so tall.  The comparison would be like putting Mount Timpanogos alongside of what they call a mountain down in the southwest part of Texas.  What they call a mountain would be called a knoll here.  I do think we have lost a lot of pleasure of life by moving so fast.  The lack of communication one another is our biggest problem. 

     My brother, Mark and I were riding a horse down to get butter, at a ranch house about 2 miles from home. On our way home he (Mark) fell from the horse landing on his left elbow cracking the bone.  Being it was 30 miles to a doctor and only one telephone at the railroad station, it was some time before we were able to get the doctor and he came in a model “T” ford.  There were no x-ray machines available.  So he tied the arm up in a sling with a right angle bend at the elbow.  The fluid had hardened in the socket and the arm healed in that position, which it remains today.

     Times were hard and pay day comes on a farm once a year, maybe?  The second year dad started to build a home, and did so a little at a time, as he was able to find time to work on it.

 It was a wonderful to have a bedroom for ourselves and mother with a large kitchen in which to work.  A far cry from the one room shack which was parlor, bedroom and kitchen for Mom and dad and the boys bedroom was a camp wagon box taken from the running gears and placed on the North side of the so called shack.

     To the boys it was like a new world to have a horse to ride, hunting and fishing out of this world right on our farm.  A creek running through the East side of our farm filled with many fish.  This creek was called Boom Creek. Fish were plentiful.  It originated in several large springs about 5 miles north of our farm and ends joining with the Snake River several miles south of the farm.  Ducks nesting in our north pasture.  Cottontail rabbits were very numerous along the creek.  Coyotes were plentiful in the area and seemed to think our chickens were better tasting than rabbits, etc.  We had to declare war on them in self defense.

     The school here was a one room building and 1st to 8th grades that one room.  Each class went to a recitation bench before the teacher for their class work, while the others studied.  This was a far cry from the schools I was use to, boy.   It was a wonderful experience to me.   Each class studied while others were up before the teacher reciting their lessons, by question and answer period.  This was the way the teacher knew whether or not you had studied your lesson. 

I went to a little one room cross-roads school with 48 kids and one teacher.     Some of the older boys used to pour the ink out and fill the bottle with tobacco juice. Boy, what a mess when you dipped your pen in the ink bottle.  The students sat on a recitation bench from the first to the eighth grade. They studied while one grade recited before the teacher. Since I had been going to school in Bingham where they had top schools, my job was to teach some of these boys who were big enough to leave school to read.  I was just a kid and I was quite proud to be able to sit down with a big fellow and teach him to read. There were some discipline problems with 48 students.  The lady that taught school was from Nebraska and when she went home for Christmas holidays, she didn’t come back.  They hired a fellow from the Utah State Agricultural College to come up and teach, but he was an ex-football player and pretty tough. The three bigger students were going to run him out.   One of the boys was to go up the middle aisle and then the other two would come.  The recitation bench was one step up and twelve inches off the floor. This little short fellow could see what was happening.  Having had some experience as an athlete and a boxer, he just waited until the first fellow got close enough to him and he buttonholed him and put him on the floor.  Of course, if the others had rushed him all at once they could have handled him.  He put two of them down and the other one fell down trying to run out of there.  The teacher was kicking him in the pants all the way out.  The teacher was so angry, he was white. He dusted his hands off and said, “Now listen. I came up to run this school, and if there is anybody else who wants to go, let us go now while I’m in the mood.”  No one was in the mood.  He ran the school.  He even spent his own money on the school.  At that time a school teacher got 60 dollars a month and lived in a little shack out to the back of the school.  He bought his own basketball hoop for the boys and they played basketball and touch football with him.  The students grew up respecting him. He stayed there and became the principal of a four-room school which was built.    

      The townsite was small and the business buildings consisted of a large lava rock store, the upper floor was used for a dance floor in those days, a drug store, pool hall, hotel, lumber yard, hardware store, post office, train depot, four room school, baseball field and grandstand, blacksmith shop and lava rock LDS Church.

     The young people used to get together on Sundays.  After Sunday School, Fast Meeting would start.  The young people used to go down to “Boom Creek” and go swimming.  The water was so cold that a swim over and back about twice was enough.

     Riding horses was a past time. Almost every one had a saddle horse to ride.  We would get together and go down to a town called Aberdeen about 13 miles southwest of Sterling.  On our way back we would run races, it’s a wonder we weren’t all killed.

    Dances we held about once a month in the wintertime.  Everyone went young and old.  We danced with the girls, their mothers, sometimes their grandmothers.  It was nothing to have a young mother hand you her baby to hold while she danced.

     People here were friendly.  Hardworking farmers and cattlemen.  It was pioneering country.  Many of the families were still pioneering. [I am misspelling a lot of these names, I think] The Nelsons, Hayes run the Hardware Store, Blairs down by the church, Rosie the prettiest girl in town, she picked up potatoes one year for us, she had on flour sack pants which said “a” one on

the bottom;  Nugents, Arnold, Alice, Charles, Afton and Jessie, Rudy Settinger the Blacksmith, The Corbrigde’s, Charley, Pearl, Orville, Ruby, Lea;  Claunch’s Everett, Ellen, Christen, Luther, Satterfield and family;  The Strochein family, Herman Tercher and family, Tony Parson Family, Ralph, Greg, Marvin, Cornforth family, Andrew and Jane Nelson, Kurt Loveless, Brown Family, Goff’s John, Melinda, Bill, Clyde, Sarah, Jolen, Joe and others.  Partridge’s run the hotel.  Mart Driscoll’s, Agnes , Clara,  Deik, Bus, Marguerite, Bertha.

     They celebrated the fourth of July with a parade.  There were almost as many in the parade as there were spectators.

     Just before the parade started one time, a jack rabbit came running down the street with a dog after him. Everyone was yelling for the rabbit.  He wasn’t running too fast until he got to the crowd.  There was no way to dodge.  So he laid his ears back and left the dog far behind.  Everyone said it was the best part of the parade.  It looked like it was planned.  In the afternoon, there were horse races, a baseball games with the Indians from “Fort Hall”.  The Indians like to gamble, they bet on the races and games.

    The parade floats were built mostly on hay racks.  Horses pulling the float were decked out in bunting, small flags in straps above their ears.  The people enjoying themselves at least once a year.

     Rudolph (Settinger?) The blacksmith was wrestling a younger man in front of the Grandstand after the game.  A purse of $25.00 for the winner.  He threw Rudy the first time.  Rudy had been drinking. Still groggy from a head lock, jumped up and yelled, “I give you $25.00 if can throw me down again.”  So he said “How can you make money easier than that?”  So he threw him down again.  Rudy “I give you $25.00 you throw me again.”  He said , “Rudy I can throw you down all day long for a dollar a throw, go away.”  Some one had to lead Rudy away still hollering, “I give you $25.00 you throw me down again.”

     The cowboys used to come to the dances with their chaps and spurs on.  They came mostly to cause trouble.  They would fight and throw one or the other down the stairs, breaking ribs.  Next day they’d be over to the pool hall to brag about, broken ribs and all.  I can hear them now as they left the dance “Ye Hoo, Ride ‘em Cowboy.”  Powder River mile wide and an inch deep.  A $10.00 horse, $50.00 saddle, chaps, spurs as they rode out into the night as fast as the horse could run.

     Some of the fun things that happened like when you would be sitting on your horses with your leg around the horn of the saddle, sort of lounging back watching a ball game.  Some of the bigger boys would run up behind the horse, jump on him grab you and hold on to you, put their feet in the horses flanks.  The horse would go bucking across the ball field.  The fans thought this was great fun, yelling “ride ‘em cowboy”.  Some times you would get thrown off.  I did several times.  Lucky I never broke any bones.

     Curtis Loveless had white hair and was sitting on his horse kidding with some of the Indian girls about the ball game saying, “We’re winning”. And we were that day.  Finally one of the Indian girls said, “Listen, Silver tip.  You’re heard our fore fathers scalped yours, that’s a damned lie, but if ever, get you out alone, I’ll sure as hell scalp you.”  That really tickled Curt.

     Some of the antiquated methods of thrashing grain were still being used.  I remember the first year we had grain to thrash.  The only one we could get was a man who owned a grain separator, but the power he used was horse power, literally.  The horses walked in a circle turning a large gear they called a bull gear.  This gear turned other gears which would drive a shaft, which in

turn would drive the separator.  It was so slow dad said, “They can’t thrash enough grain in a day to feed the horses.”  This wasn’t so, but it made a point.  We were until after Christmas getting our thrashing done.  Needless to say we looked up more modern methods the next years.

    The Indians from the West side of the “Fort Hall Reservation” would come to our town to trade.  It was amusing to see them coming in their wagon, and white top buggy pulled by little Indian Ponies.  Some of the horses so small it seemed they could almost walk through the collars they were wearing.

     The men and boys on the seat up front, and the women and girls sitting in the bottom of the wagon in the back along with their wares.  They were coming to trade.  They would pull up to the pump by the Post Office.  The men would get out of the wagon and stand there.  The women would unhook the horses and tie them up.  Get the trading things out of the wagon.  The men would walk first with women following.  Some did have money to spend.  In the store the Buck (man) would trade first, buying one item at a time.  When he was through, the squaws (women) would do their trading.  It paid to watch while they were shopping.  They weren’t above shoving things under their dress and walk out with it.

    When they would come to trade with us.  We would watch while dad was selling grain to them.  If you didn’t watch, when they went the straps and others things went with them.

    I remember one instance, Johnny Work-Elboy.  An old Indian came to our house one day. He was afoot, he couldn’t catch his horse.  He put his face to the window, mother was darning some socks.  She looked up to see old wrinkled face at the window.  She screamed. We could hear her out in the field.  Dad ran down to see what was the matter.  Mother was crying.  When dad found out, he said to Johnny.  “Knock, Johnny when you come to the house, you scared my squaw.”  Johnny said “NO, look first.”  No use to knock if no one was there.

      The Indians came every week or so in the summertime to play ball, run foot races, or horse races.  One time they brought a horse over with an old buggy, bridle on and a squaw riding it.  Sure looked like a real old plug.  When it came time for this horse to run, it was matched with a bay mare belonging to Andrew Nelson. The Indians had pooled their money to bet on this horse.  Dad said, “Don’t bet on the Nelson horse, the Indians don’t pool their money to lose.”  They took the old bridle off, put on a light bridle and a small Indian boy on the horse.  This was to ½ mile race.  The horses ran neck and neck until just before the finish line.  The Indian hit the horse with a small switch. That horse almost flew to the finish line. It was a blow to Andrew.  This horse of his was training to run at the South East fair, in the fall at Blackfoot.  However the Nelson horse did win the race at the fair in the fall.

      One thing which can never be forgotten and that was the mosquitos in their season for about 6 weeks.  They would almost drive the cows, horses and you, crazy.  They were so bad they used to set a smudge under the cow while you milked.  Milking was done by hand.  You would take an old bucket, start a fire in it with straw, then throw dry cow chips on it to make it smoke, place it under the cow’s belly.   The smoke would stream along the cows sides keeping the mosquitos off while you milked.  Once in a while the smudge would catch fire.  The cow would take off, tip  you and the milk over.  Next thing to do was chase her into a corner and start all over again.  You could tell when they were milking down in the bottoms by the streaks of smoke coming from the corrals.

     If you went swimming during the Mosquito Season, you either dived in that oh so cold water, swam across and back and really dressed in a hurry.  Funny I never remember getting a cold.

     Buss Driscoll picked me up one night to take me up to the dance.  On our way up Buss had to make a side trip to take us up over the elevated beet dump.  This wasn’t enough he had to go over a large pile of dirt that had been excavated to build the new school, except when we came over the top, some one had taken dirt away from the North side.  All I could see was a black hole.  We bounced about 5 feet in the air when we hit.  I thought it broke all the springs, we didn’t even turn over.  Buss made me promise not to tell his dad.  Par for Buss’s antics.

     We were sure glad to see spring come.  Farm prices had dropped to a low you couldn’t give produce away.  We burned wheat in our cook stove; there was no money for coal.  The house had an odor like burning bread.

     One fall crops didn’t turn out too good.  Dad and mother got a job with Uncle Henry Munson, he was a contractor and had a contract to build a railroad grade at Soda Springs, Idaho.  He sent Bert and I back to American Fork, Utah to go to school.  Mother’s job was to cooked for 50 men, 3 meals a day.  Mother was pregnant with my brother, Wilson, so it must have been the fall of 1915.  Dad’s job was to be in charge of all the horses.

    Can you imagine the work mother had to do to feed 50 men, 3 meals a day and in her condition.  My mother was a small woman, but surely she was made of iron.  I have never ceased to be amazed at her ability to carry her load as mother and still be able to work 10-12-14 hours a day.

     We returned back to the farm in the spring of 1916.

     Like all kids, Bert, Mark and I had rabbits.  We had a buck rabbit penned in a apple box.  One night a cat pulled the bucks front feet through the wire and chewed them off.  This was a cause to declare war on cats.  We would keep the shot gun along side of us in our sleep camp bed room.  One night 5 cats were raising a rumpus.  I waited until they bunched and got all 5 cats.  I pulled both triggers at once.  It knocked me out of bed.  People would drop their cats off down at our spring hoping they would get a home.  It just wasn’t possible to keep that many cats around.

     The Bishop ward of our church was our nearest neighbor.  We used to trade work .  We’d cut hay for him and return use some of his teams.  This happened all the time in those days.  Trading work, machinery, and teams.   Not all farmers could afford all the machinery necessary to run a farm.  Many farm pieces were only used a 2 to 4 weeks a year, so it made it possible to use the implements in this way.

     That summer dad raised a lot of pigs and bought some more to fatten for market.  It was Bert, Mark and my job to herd these critters.  I think when they were born their heads were on the wrong end.  If you tried to herd them south, they’d sure go North.  I got so mad one day, I rode down to the grainery.  Dad said “What you going to do with the gun?”  I said, “I’m going to kill all them --------- pigs.”  That’s what I thought of pigs when I had to herd them.  They kept getting into Nugent’s potato patch.  Finally Charley came down and said, in Charley’s funny way.  “If you don’t keep your --------damn pigs out of our taters, I’m going to kill every ------one of em.” At the time I agreed with Charley. Nugent’s owned the farm just north of ours.

     It was some fun to watch the old sows coax the little pigs to swim “Boom Creek”.  There was alfalfa on the East side of the creek.  She would swim across and call her little by short grunts.  They would squeal and fuss because the water was so cold, but soon one would start across and the others follow.  I don’t ever remember of any of them drowning.

     There was always plenty to do, so our leisure time was either after dark or on Sundays.  After church we would ride horses out to some of our friends home and visit, or they would come to our place.  No telephones, no electricity.  So the news had to be by mail which was usually a week old when received it.

     In the winter of 1916 we went down to American Fork, Utah to stay for awhile.  My brother, Bert, was having trouble with his leg.  The one he wounded while we were in Bingham Canyon, Utah.  The doctor said the artery in his leg was starting to rupture. They took him to the hospital and said they thought the only way to save his life was to amputate his leg at the hip.  This was a terrible decision for mom and dad to make.  Dr. Clark in American Fork said he knew of a Doctor at the Jefferson Medical Hospital in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania who was a specialist in arteries, so they called the doctor and explained the problem.  He said if they would bring him immediately he thought he could save his leg.  At that time they would need blood donors for Bert. Dad’s blood was the type needed.  So Bert and dad went by train to Philadelphia.  Where the money was to come from was a real problem.  The Greenwood families, the Mormon Church came to the rescue.  Along with dad mortgaging his home.

   This left mother living in one room of our home in American Fork with 3 children. 

    Spring came in 1917, and Bert and dad were still in Philadelphia.  Mother said, “Frank, you’ll have to go up to Idaho to start putting in the crops.”  This meant I would have to quit school.  So the middle of March I went back to Idaho. The horses had been turned loose for the winter and had to be fed grain to get them in shape.   My cooking for myself, washing etc.  was something to behold.  Lucky there were a few chickens let around and the old cow had just come fresh.  You should have seen the kind of bread I made. Cook the whole wheat, had it for mush, bread fried it and had butter and syrup on it.  Syrup was called Sterling Strawberries.

    I worked hard at getting the crops in but was getting farther behind all the time.  Finally Uncle Andrew Crystal from Thomas, Idaho, came down with 3 of the neighbors, Adams, Broadhead, and Turpin came with their teams to help me get in the crop.  Thanks to those wonderful people who came to the rescue.

     In April of 1917 U.S. went to war with Germany to help our allies, France and England.  This started to take all the young men into the Army, Navy, etc.  This was leaving the farmers short of man power, everyone worked a twelve hour shift a day. The factories needed help very badly since the men had been subscripted into the Army.  They hired minors and the first women that went to work in industry. 

     In May of 1917, Bert and dad came back from the East.  They picked up mother and the kids and came back to Idaho.  I was so homesick to see them.  I went to Blackfoot to meet them.  When mother put her arm around me and said “You poor little orphan, you could plant spuds in your ears.  We’ll have to give you a bath.” I guess I didn’t take care of myself to good.

     I was working out to Satterfield’s farm in Grandview.  I was working in the beet field.  There was an eclipse of the sun, June 8, 1918. We all found a piece of colored glass to view it through.  Chickens were scratching in the field close to the barn.  It started to get dark, the old rooster called to the hens, they all went to the coop and flew upon the roost, they hardly had time to settle down, when it started to get light again.  The rooster crowed, the hens made a fuss.  It was a real short night.  I counted 5 or more stars at that time.

     With the country being at war and the demand for food caused farm prices to rise.  This was a good year for the farmer.

      I started High School in the fall.  We had to go to Blackfoot.  There were dormitories to live in.  You found a home that was renting a room. Ours was one room.  It had a stove you could cook on, a bed and we made a cupboard from old orange crates to put our dishes in.  In the corner we hung out clothes on nails in the wall and cover with a cloth, but they still smelled of our cooking, but it worked; we thought it was fine.  My Uncle Arnold and I , he was about 2 years older than I.  I was a freshman and he a Junior.  Mother would send a large dripper cake and Grandma baked bread and a pie. We would get an allowance of $12.00 a month.  We would live high on the hog the first of the month and have potatoes boiled, fried and baked in the end of the month.  Grandma only lived 8 miles out, she would drop in unexpected and sure raise the roof the way we kept house.  She’d clean up and cook us a nice dinner. Boy, was it different for a change.

     I sure had to work fast to catch up as I came in late, but it was fun.  They asked the freshmen boys to suit up for football.  Guess what? They used us for scrimmage and tackle dummies.  Two nights I turned in my suit. Just well let a train hit you as 180 lb. Player hit you at high speed, enough of playing dummy.  Everybody likes to get away from home about that age, you learn to do a lot of things on your own, maybe you learn by trial and error?

     I had to leave school early to help put the crops in.  Many of the farm boys had to do the same.  Every young man physically able was taken into the armed forces.  Farm help for the summer was hard to find.  All boys and girls in their early teens were helping to farm.  Farm prices had climbed.

Working in the Sugar Factory

    The fall of 1918.  I went to work at the Blackfoot Sugar Factory.  My Uncle was the chemist for the sugar company.  I was the sampler.  My job was to gather beet samples, juice, syrup from the evaporator sugar at different stages and the finished product. This job working with my uncle was to take some of the sugar beets after they were grown, grind them up and then press the juice out.  They had a calorie meter. In other words, you looked through one side of this thing and turned it back and forth until you matched the density of the juice you had pressed out with a standard density and that gave you a reading and told you the sugar contact of the beet. Then they would give the orders to dig the beets. The sugar beets were washed and then shredded with knives. The pieces would be about half the size of a French fry. The beets were then steamed under pressure to force all the juice out of them.  The juice was boiled until eventually it would crystallize. At this stage, it looked a lot like the brown sugar sold today.  The sugar was then put into a centrifugal spinner and that would wash it.  There would be a spray of hot water underneath the spinner and since it was spinning at a terrific speed the syrup would be thrown to the outside.  They would wash the raw sugar down into a long cylindrical tank called a dryer, which was tipped a little bit. It was hot and would turn and sort of hammer would hit the walls all the time to keep the sugar moving.  This would dry the sugar and it would come out as white crystal sugar. That is the process.

     The work day was 12 hour day at 50 cents per hour.  Boy, we thought we were going to be rich. We didn’t think anything about the twelve hour shifts because we had always had shifts that long.  If someone went on at seven o’clock in the morning, he got off at seven o’clock at night.  When the workers switched shifts, one man worked eighteen hours that day and the other fellow worked six. After he had worked a few weeks this way, he changed back to the other shift.  Most of the people considered these too long of shifts to work, so in the middle of the season the employees negotiated for 8 hours work at $1.50 per hour.  The company thought we were crazy. But, if the sugar was left to cool in the pipes, it would solidify and they would have to tear everything out to get it.  To keep the workers on the job, the operator of the mill set up the eight hour shifts.  The only way to get enough people for three shifts was to hire women.  This they did. To my knowledge it was the first time women started working in the factory.  There were Mexicans shipped in from Mexico to help.  

   About September 1918 the flu started. The Mexican boys were housed behind the factory in little sleeping quarters. They would die off two or three a night.  When those fellows would come to work in the morning and would be asked, “Why is Jose not here?” they would answer, “He died last night.”  They would just drag the dead out to the side and cover them up with a blanket.  They would freeze and in good time I guess they would bury them.   The flu reached epidemic proportions. There was no cure for it, you would start with a fever, eyes watering, and aching from head to foot.  In a week you were gone.  The thought it was communicated by sneezing and being around others, so they required everyone to wear a nose mask.  If you’re caught without a mask, the fine was $10.00.  My buddy who I was rooming with, had his mask down smoking. As he turned the corner, he walked into a policeman. The policeman gave him a ticket like he would give for a traffic violation and they fined my buddy 10 dollars for having his mask down.  I don’t know the masks did any good or not, but they tried everything they knew.  We didn’t wear them in the factory because it was so hot that you would smother. 

    The sugar company and the Mexican government had a setup for dealing with the workers, but I don’t know what it was.  I will tell you about the conditions under which they lived.  It was 18 or 20 below zero up there and it was so cold the guys would get sick. When a man was out herding sheep on the desert he wouldn’t have contact with anybody.  If he got the flu and died, the sheep would just be running loose. 

    During the war prices were high and we thought wages were good.  On the twelve hour shift, we were making a dollar an hour which was unheard of in those times.  After the change we made twelve dollars for eight hours of work.  The garb worn by the women was a pair of men’s bib overalls which didn’t fit very well; there was not anything like the slacks we see today.

End of World War I

     On November 11, 1918, The Germans surrendered. World War I was over.  What a celebration every city, town and hamlet in America were so happy, but for many their boys would not come back.

    The celebration in Blackfoot, everyone was following Frenchy who run a cafe, took a stuffed eagle from the cafe wall and led the parade, holding the eagle high, followed by the fire truck with siren blowing everyone marched behind singing, shouting.  The war was over.

    The job finished in February 1919.  I went back to Sterling.  Flu was still very bad and still uppermost on every one’s mind. Shortly after going home, Mother was going around taking care of the sick, I was going with mom.  Mother used a buggy to get around.  It was so cold we used

an old horse blanket to hang up in front and a kerosene lantern at our feet to keep warm.  I would do chores and took care of the livestock while she took care of the sick.  I remember well we went to the Coopers one morning and found 2 of their children had died during the night.  The parents were too sick to get out bed.  After doing chores, mother had me go out to the North side of the house and get ice to pack around the bodies after she had washed and laid them out.  There were too many people dying to get an undertaker.  No funeral services were held.  Just Grave side services.   A shortage of doctors.  The nearest doctor was American Falls, some 25 miles south.  Many families were all down with flu at once.  Mother, dad , Mark and Wilson came down with flu.  Bert and I didn’t contract it.  We were able to play nurse and chore boy, alternating our job.  Mother directed the cooking and nursing from her bed.  No one came to our house, but we were lucky having our own crew to do the work.

     Prices dropped so low after the war that there was almost a disaster. Potatoes were 35 cents a hundred and sacks cost 10 cents each. You could raise crops, but you couldn’t sell them.  There was also some talk of placing a large dam on the Snake River at American Falls that would inundate the lower part of our farm by water.  My father thought that if that happened our farm would not be worth much because that was our grazing and wild hay ground.  When we tried to sell our farm, I think the buyers got together and set the price they would offer us.  If we didn’t want to take the price, we would just sit there with land.  We could not afford to sit there with it because we had to pay taxes, make a profit, and pay interest on our money.  It was a vicious cycle.  They did eventually build the dam at American Falls.  I have visited Idaho since and they have moved the house away. The wave action from the lake water has cut about a twenty foot bank and I suppose it has caved in today. In our north pasture the wave action has cut through the sandy ground and they claim and old Indian village has been exposed. I have never seen it, but they tell me this.  It was a vicious cycle.  Dad said, “It’s all yours when you are through.” Since none of us boys wanted to be farmers, he said, “we will move back to Utah and you boys can get an education.”  At that time, the education system in Utah was much better than it was in Idaho.  Idaho didn’t have the facilities for a good school. The little town site of Sterling has disappeared off the map because of the lake. 

Moving back to Utah

    We sold out and in 1919 came back to West Jordan which is on the west side of the valley in Salt Lake County.  He found 40 acres in West Jordan about 20 miles Southwest of Salt Lake City.  He came back and talked it over with mother.  They decided to move back to Utah.  This time we loaded our animals and furniture in two railroad cars. 

    We arrived in time to plant some sugar beets.  The balance was in alfalfa hay.  We also raised pigs. 

     This meant we had to get acquainted all over again, but like all children we soon had friends to play with and things went along fairly well.   There was a market for hay and a sugar factory to deliver our sugar beets to.

     When fall came and time for school. I had to register at the Jordan High School which was southwest across the Valley about 6 miles in Sandy, Utah.  I rode a horse to get to the school to register. It wasn’t anything to ride a horse through because we rode horses in Idaho to get to and from school.  The rest went to West Jordan elementary about 2 miles from home. They had to walk, but I walked one mile south to the Bingham road to catch the school bus.

    Our neighbors were the Becksteads, Gardners, Woods, Lundquist, Coolies, Jensens, Holts, Dahls who operated dairies southwest from our place.  Olwiler’s, Horsley.

     Our fun was swimming in the canal which ran through the farm.  It was only 50 to 60 feet from the back door.  We had a platform covered with burlap sacks.  Towel hanging along side the window.  In the summer when it was hot we’d get out of bed, run, jump in the canal, swim down stream to the creek and dash back to the platform, dry ourselves off and back to bed.

     There was a show house in Midvale about 3 ½ miles from home, we would meet our friends and go to shows on Saturday night.  It seemed like when you are on a farm, Saturday nights and Sunday was about the only time you could get away.

     Dad got a job working a team on the Salt Lake County roads, part time.  I would drive either hauling gravel or grading on the roads.  One job was the grading of the Bingham road from State Street east of Midvale and coming West to the mouth of Bingham Canyon. 

    The pay was $4.00 a day for team and driver.  This kept me busy in the summers, road work and helping farm.  We also worked on the Redwood road from Taylorsville south to Bluffdale.

   We sold hay to a Greek who had a herd of goats back in the hills North of the mouth of Bingham Canyon.  In the fall and winter we would deliver hay to the goat ranch.

     The Greeks gave us two small goats, one black and one white.  They were mischievous; coming in the house, opening the chicken coop door letting the chickens out.  I came in the house one day after dinner and there was the black one upon the table with the dishes. I yelled at him to get down.  He did and jumped through the front room window.  Another time the Raleigh

man parked his car in the driveway, while he was in the house showing mother his wares, they jumped upon the hood of his car, then on the roof, which was canvas and danced small holes in the roof.  It cost dad $25.00 to fix the roof.  If that wasn’t enough they went across the road and went in Axel Lundquist garage, got in the back seat of Axel’s new Ford and chewed the back cushion to pieces.  Well that was the last straw, the goats had to go.  Dad said he was going to kill them.  We said we wouldn’t want to eat them, so he took them to Midvale and traded them for some beef roast etc. to a butcher.

     This era was from 1919 to 1922 and as yet most of our friends had never owned a car including us.  The horse and buggy was still our mode of transportation.  We hauled our produce to Salt Lake City, by team and wagon.  The sugar beets to the West Jordan Factory.  We did have an electrical railroad line called the OREM running from Salt Lake City to Payson.  Which ran within a mile or so of the farm.  Whomever had to run to Salt Lake would be driven by horse and buggy to either the Hibbard stop which was on the Bingham road 78th south, just west of Redwood road, or Bennion 1 mile east of Redwood road and ½ mile North.  After shopping in Salt Lake we would meet again to return home.  There were 5 to 6 schedules a day on the Orem line and we would meet the schedule they would be back on. Looking back travel was real time consuming.  

    A number of our friends from Bingham came down to renew acquaintances.  There was so much to talk about to catch up on old times.

    Our family by this time (1919) had grown to 5 not counting Grant who died as a baby.  I was 17, Bert 15, Mark 10, Wilson 3 and Harold had just arrived.

  This helped dad in one way he had 2 of us who could carry on when he was away from the farm.  Mark could drive team, run errands, and many jobs on the farm.

   The store we traded at was called BUTTERWORTH’S on the Northeast corner of Redwood Road and the Bingham Road (78 south). As was the custom, we traded eggs and butter for groceries.

   It wasn’t uncommon for a merchant to give credit for 6 months to a year.  Farmers pay day are once a year maybe.  So you see what a great service the grocery stores, clothing and farm machinery places played in our farm communities.

      Markets for our farm produce was much better than when we lived in Idaho.  We did well financially, but Bert and I didn’t care very much for farming, pay days were too far apart.

Like boys my age, I didn’t think dad was doing enough.  So we had words and I left home.

Back to Idaho for me

     I took the train to Blackfoot, Idaho, landed there with 10 cents in my pocket.  I went to a pool hall.  They usually had a blackboard where all the farmers listed their wants for help, hay, grain, potatoes etc. for sale.

   Well I found a job out in Riverside just out of Blackfoot. Paid $1.00 a day board and room.  The room was a bin out in the grainery.  It was fine in the summer, but oh boy fall and winter was really cold.  Get down to 20 degrees below zero.  I would heat some rocks in the oven and wrap them in an old pair of overalls.  That was my bed partner.

    I soon found out I was the hired hand.  Saturday the family would go to town and leave me with all the chores.  I stuck it out till the next spring.  Grandma Crystal lived in Thomas a farming area about 5 miles southwest, she looked me up and asked me to come thin beets for her.  I was sure glad to go to grandma’s.  I was a little homesick anyway.

    After I finished with the beets, grandma talked me into going home, she said, “Your dad needs you.”

     So back I went to West Jordan.  I arrived home about 7 pm.  It was early in June 1921.  Mother made a fuss over me; but dad said “Well, Hello” and went out to do chores.  I ate supper and talked awhile with mother and went to bed.  Dad called me about 5:00 am “Time to start chores, got a lot to do today.”

   I sure found out that home was a nice place to be after all.  My advice to young people is “If you think home isn’t for you, leave, you’ll find out, you’re just another person out there and maybe just another hired hand.”

     Things went fine.  We had good crops but Bert and I didn’t want to farm.

     Dad had a home in American Fork and said “Well if you don’t want to farm. We’ll move back to American Fork, your mother and I can make out and you fellows go find you a job.”  So back to American Fork.  We moved after being gone for 14 years.

    But you know after 13 years you have to get acquainted again.  Of course we had a lot of relatives here in American Fork.

Beginning of Survey Occupation

    I started looking for a job.  The first man I contacted was Bishop James T. Gardner.  He was Bishop of the First Ward and Utah County Commissioner.  They were making a road from American Fork Canyon to Provo Canyon, called the loop road.  He said they didn’t need any more help there, but in the first of July 1922, there would be a survey crew from the U. S. Geological Survey coming in to do topographic mapping under a cooperative program in which the county gave 25 percent, the state 25 percent, and the federal government gave 50 percent.  Then only a very small percent of the United States had topographic mapping and this was one way they were going about getting it done. 

     Bishop said “The people you will work for will be coming to Utah the first of July,” that was 1922.  I contacted a Mr. Harris down to the city and county building in Provo.  I think it was the 5th or 6th of July.  I was hired and my first job was to dig holes and place brass cap monuments, about 6" at the top and 10" square at the bottom and 18" high.  They were to leave about 3 inches above the ground.  These were placed at about 1 mile intervals in the direction there were needed for the topographers who were to come later. My bishop turned my name in and I got the job.

    My salary was $125.00 a month.  I thought I was going to be a millionaire.  Wages around here were $1.00 to $2.00 a day for farm help.  I also was given an old model “T” furnished by Utah Coop to take care of, keep gas in it, change oil, repair tires, and general upkeep.  The salary was based of 5 ½ to 8 hr days.  We had ½ day Saturday and Sunday off.  I didn’t know at the time but this was to be my livelihood for the rest of my life.

     Soon after we run the elevations in Utah, and Salt Lake counties, the topographers arrived.  I was transferred to that department.  We worked Utah county until about the 1st of September and moved to Salt Lake County and finished the season, which went to November 15th weather permitting.

    The crew was disbanded.  The yearly men returned to Washington D.C. and would return next spring around May.

    Work is scarce in the winter time in Utah after farming is finished for the season.

    I found a job at Keith O Brians store in Salt Lake in the delivery department. It was to be temporary just for the Christmas rush. I became acquainted with the city. My job was to route all parcels to different parts of the city.  Stores delivered back in those days.  I thought my job would maybe be longer, but Christmas Eve I received a box of candy and my check with a

termination slip also.  So left Salt Lake and went home to American Fork. For the holiday.  Gave up my apartment and moved back home.

    There wasn’t much to do for around 3 months.  In March I went out Magna to try for a job.  My cousin Norma and Jim Woodhouse live out there.  She (Norma) said I could stay at their place while I was looking for work.

     Clyde Goff from Idaho came out to see me and decided to find work too.  We rustled for a month and finally they called our names.  We had to pass a physical examination before getting the job.  I passed, Clyde didn’t . He was sure disappointed.  He left and went back to Salt Lake.  I owed Norma $70.00 for a month for our board and room.  It meant I would have to stay there some time to get the bill paid off.  I finally did about the middle of May.

   I received a telephone call telling me the surveyors were back in Salt Lake and would hire me back again.  I terminated and returned to Salt Lake and started to work about the 15th of May 1923.

  I found a boarding house at North East Temple and E Street with Mr. and Mrs. McClure.  It was a very nice place to stay almost like home.

    We worked in Salt Lake County until the money ran out and moved to Ogden, Utah, where money was available. Finished the season November 14th, 1923.

Work in Texas

   The crew received notice to move to San Angelo, Texas.  Since I did not have enough money to get into a University, I approached my boss, Mr. William H Griffin who had been a topographer from the Geological Survey for a many years and asked for chance to go south with those people to work in the cooperative work.   They were allowed to take one man, so he selected me.  The other boss also selected a fellow.  We drove the trucks from Ogden, Utah to San Angelo, Texas that winter.  We worked out of San Angelo in the west part of Texas for the U. S. Geological Survey. It was a good job since jobs were scarce in this country during this that time.  You worked during the summer and put your food away in the cellar and your coal and your flour, and then you sat and played checkers most of the winter. There wasn’t anything else to do.

    I worked with Major Griffin during the summer in Utah and in the winter he was transferred back to Washington and I went south.  Through the effort of Mr. Griffin, who took an interest in me and who was teaching me to make topographic maps and encouraging me to save my money and go to school, I worked almost five years for the U. S. Geological Survey in the mapping department.  I liked that work very much; it was something new for me and it was interesting to do.

     After five years, I decided I ought to get married, so I thought I would stay in Utah.  I tried to find a job for a while at different things until I finally decided to sell automobiles. I liked that job because I liked to meet people and I did real well at it.

     Before I was married, we worked all over the state of Arizona and Texas and parts of Oklahoma and New Mexico.  We took some of our crew who were working here in 1923 down to Green River, Utah.  Later they went down to Lee’s Ferry, near Flagstaff, Arizona, where they were headed by Colonel Birdseye and Birchard.  Some of those fellows conducted a survey of the Colorado River from Lee’s Ferry to Needles, California.  I wasn’t allowed to go because they needed someone to carry heavy loads and I was too small.  We took them down and provisions were carried into them at different stations along the way.  These surveys laid the ground work for some of the dams that have been constructed along the Colorado River such as Boulder Dam which is called Hoover Dam.  It is quite odd that they called it Boulder Dam.  They had two sites selected.  One was called the Boulder Site and the other was called the Black Canyon.  Then later it was called Hoover Dam.  At that time, the head of the Department of Interior was named Mead, so they named the lake after him.

     It was very interesting work.  It included triangulation for latitude and longitude control and for mapping work.  We ran elevations in from different points from them to work on.  The dams resulted from basic studies that were taken way back from about 1923 to 1926.

Married Life Begins in California

    I married Jennie Pearl Thornton in the Salt Lake Temple on June 24, 1926.   I sold automobiles during the summer and then my brother and I decided to go to California and look around for some work.  Ray Steele, who was a latitude and longitude control man, had gone to California to work.  We went to Los Angeles, and I contacted Mr. Steele who was working for Los Angeles County at the time.  He said, “Boy, they sure need men with your experience in topography.  Why don’t you go up and see Mr. Jones?  He is the fellow that does the hiring.”  About two weeks from the day I went to California on vacation, I went to work for Los Angeles County.  Like all the other fellows, I was hired for a month or six weeks; if we didn’t turn out to be all right, he didn’t have an obligation to keep us beyond that time.  That month or six weeks turned out to be sixteen years that I worked for Los Angeles County.  During that time I started going to night school at the University of Southern California in engineering.  Although it was a long, slow struggle to go through school that way, I did.

    A son, Ray John Greenwood, was born February 23, 1927 while living in Los Angeles.

     I was working for Los Angeles County when the depression hit in October 1929.  But Los Angeles County’s fiscal year starts the first of July, so they had enough money to keep us on until the first of July 1930.  Then there was a full fledged depression. There was no money to hire us so they laid a lot of people off.  They said they would keep as many as they could.  I went from $556 a month down to $90 a month but prices dropped too. I did the same work for $90 a month as I had before. I would work three weeks and I would be off one, so someone else could work too.  I never lost a paycheck. I didn’t say how much I made though.  Ninety dollars was a lot of money compared to not having a job.  Everybody lost a lot. The banks and everything closed.  Everything went into the cellar.  When the government got the WPA programs to try to give people work, we did a little better because we did the engineering for these projects.  I got back up to $150 a month.  That was quite a lot of money.  We got up to $200 a month and then my wages rose up to what engineers get today.

Earthquake in Compton in 1933

    The City of Compton was shook flat by the earthquake in 1933, I was in California then.  I lived just six miles from Compton. I lived down across from the Goodyear plant on Florence Avenue. It was called Florence but it wasn’t incorporated. They called a little business district Florence after the main street.  Florence Avenue.

    They had a major disaster plan in Los Angeles. Anyone working for the county or the city was called into service work during a major disaster. They had army tents and other things set up in four hours after the earthquakes. The earthquake shook for fifty seconds and in that time we lost water, power, gas and sewer. 

    I talked with one colored lady from Watts. It was a completely colored section before it was declared unconstitutional to keep members of the colored race out of an area. This old lady joked, “The President done closed the banks, but the Lord opened them.”  He shook the banks flat too.

       There were a lot of fires as well.  They burned out of control.  I am on the school board here and I shudder to think what would happen to the school buildings here if we ever had an earthquake.  If the building swayed one way, when it moved back the roof could continue to slide off.

   The biggest fires we had were in Huntington Park, Long Beach and those places.  The earthquake hit at five minutes to six on March 10, 1933.  It put everything out of commission.  All the children were home. If it had happened during the day when the children were in school, there would have been thousands of children killed because the quake completely demolished lots of school. They burned because the gas escaped into the building. Although the gas pressure went off quickly, there was enough gas to start a fire. I wouldn’t want to see or hear of another earthquake because that sacred me almost to death.

     We have a tendency to worry about quakes here. The aqueduct that runs to Salt Lake is right on the Wasatch Fault just above Draper.  Some of the workers have told me since I have retired that they have had four leaks on the line because the fault is moving all the time.

    [ In speaking about what would happen if an earthquake hit in Utah and the aqueduct was broke. ]  It bothers me that people have built their homes in those little ravines in Draper. They are beautiful little pieces of ground with a little stream running there. If the aqueduct broke, there would be two hundred gallons of water per foot pushing out and that would wash them out. The water would seek the low spots and that is right where they are building.

     You only have to see or be in one of those major disasters to realize how helpless you are.  They even felt that earthquake in Las Vegas, which was four hundred miles away.  They felt it in San Francisco, which is four hundred fifty miles from Los Angeles and in San Diego which is one hundred thirty miles from there.  The earthquake shook an area six hundred miles long and three hundred miles wide.  Compare the tremendous pressure caused by a thing like that.  Man is puny and he has no control over it. I can’t understand why people pay any attention to these guys predicting an earthquake. To predict an earthquake is just a wild guess.  They can tell where an earthquake might occur but I do not believe they can tell when.  

    A daughter, Elaine Ann Greenwood, joined the family on February 25, 1937.

World War II Begins

     One December 7, 1941, when the Japs struck Pearl Harbor, we had just come home from church and my wife was preparing a chicken dinner.  We just heard it over the radio; there were not any televisions programs at the time.  The news stunned us so badly; we couldn’t imagine it and none of us had any appetite for chicken dinner.  Controls were set up and all lights were turned out.  We were so afraid that the Japs would continue their destruction on the Pacific

Coast.  A block captain was elected and when a siren would blow, he had a stick so if there was a porch light on and he could not arouse anyone in the house, he was supposed to break the light and put everything in darkness.  Everyone took their turn to do those things, including me as a block captain.  At that time, they were shipping troops out.  Things were rationed in much the same way as they are talking about rationing them today (1973); tires were rationed; gas was rationed. 

   The relocation of the Japanese during the war was one of the saddest things that ever happened.  They were real loyal citizens and most of them were two or three generations removed from Japan.  The government took all their property away from them and put them here in Topaz and in several different places. They just lifted them up bodily and put them in the relocation camps because they had slant-eyes and you could see they were different. They didn’t say anything about a German because they couldn’t tell what nationality he was. I don’t know whether they ever restored the property to the Japanese-Americans.  If they had been aliens, it might have been different, but some of them were two, three and four generations removed from Japan. They didn’t even talk Japanese. They are intensive farmers. They can take three acres and produce more than you and I can on forty because each plant gets individual attention. There are no weeds growing on the bank because they plant crops there.       

   Mrs. Mary Kawakami here said they suffered terrifically here. They were in the mining camps at that time and they had to be awfully careful. Grandpa, as the Kawakami family called him adopted Mary’s husband, Charlie Kawakami. He brought him to America because there were too many kids in Japan. Grandpa was a very loyal American. He spent every dime he earned on war bonds.  I would like to have more Kawakami’s because they are real fine people. We have got acquainted since we moved back here. They are very willing to do anything they think will be good for the city of American Fork. 

   Some say the relocation plan was to protect the Japanese.  I am sure there would have been a lot of lynching if the Japanese had not been relocated. If you heard that your son had been killed by a Japanese sniper over in that country, you would feel very bitter towards the Japanese-Americans. They were figuring on what might be done but it was sad in what actually happened. I don’t think a lot of those people ever got paid for their property and they lost millions of dollars.

Moving Back to Utah- Geneva Steel Days

    There was a great influx in the war industry and companies all over the country wanted fellows in engineering.   I asked Mr. Alfred Hones, my county surveyor, if I could have a leave of absence.  He said, “No, I don’t think I can let any more men go and I won’t have an engineering department as such. If you leave, you will have to resign.”  My brother-in-law, Warren Anderson, who was an undertaker in American Fork like his father was and his son and grandson are now, said, “You have always wanted to come back to Utah and here is a good chance.  They are building a big steel mill here.”  I came to look the situation over and there was an opening for engineers. I called my wife up and told her to get ready to move back to Utah.  I had already dispatched a truck to go down to Los Angeles and I would come with it.  When I brought my furniture up here, lo and behold, I couldn’t find a place to live.  We lived with my brother and sister-in-law for awhile, but we still didn’t find a place.  Then I lived with my mother and step dad for awhile.  Finally, my sister-in-law took pity on me and ordered the people out of the home she owned so we were able to stay there.

     The Columbia Steel Company was doing the engineering work for this program and the government was furnishing the money for the construction of this steel mill.  In August 1942, I moved back to American Fork.  Since I had some experience in working with water and sewage, they hired me to take over the water treating plant and sewage disposal plants down at Geneva.  I was hired at U. S. Steel which was operating the plant for the government then to be in charge in auxiliary utilities.  The culinary water system including the cooling water from the little three hundred acre reservoir there, the sewage disposal plant and the oxygen acetylene plant were all part of what they called auxiliary utilities.  Since I had had experience while I was going to school in California, I was able to handle that job.  I also did some surveying and worked on the layout of the Geneva Steel Plan.  When I came in August 1942, they were laying out the plant on a grid system.  The system was laid out in thousand foot grids and the buildings were placed in these grids.  We put monuments made of concrete and a piece of steel every thousand feet. Then we worked on the specific buildings in the grid system.  I helped with the construction.  I wasn’t here for the boundary survey because they just condemned some farm ground and then started working.

    By law, any government that has the right to tax also has the right to condemn property.  Just like the state highway had the right to condemn here to build Interstate I-15, the federal government has the right to condemn property.  They can take your property, but they have to pay a fair price for it. I don’t know whether they condemned land Geneva got, but I know they could if they wanted to. If they wanted a piece of land and someone on the corner refused to sell they could condemn it.  Then they would have real estate people place an appraisal on the land and that is the price they would pay.  It someone had a dairy farm, they would say, “You can take yours cows and we will set you up on a dairy farm out in the Uintah Basin or somewhere else. But we are still going to take the property.”  Sometimes it isn’t equitable, but they have the right to do it. The school board also has the right to condemn property. We have only condemned a little piece of property that was owned by a lady in Pleasant Grove.  There are a few groups such as state, county, city and school districts that have a right to condemn property.  We have to prove that we need it first.

    Safety here was a lot better than at the mines.  When I worked at the steel plant, I had to figure out man hours I worked for my crew and what my percentage without an accident was because they paid insurance based on the accident frequency rate. The company always tried to prove that the accident was caused by unsafe practices and the worker was responsible for being injured. When I was the boss there, it was usually not due to unsafe practice but usually it was due to an unsafe condition which was the responsibility of the company. The average worked has gained a lot though the laws that have been passed and this had increased the longevity of man’s life. It has been a wonderful age to live.

     I worked on the utilities at Geneva Steel from 1942 to 1945.  In October 1945, when the war was over, they didn’t know whether they would continue to run this “war baby” plant.  The war was declared over on October 5, 1945 and everyone was scrambling for new jobs.  They shut Geneva down after the war.  U.S. Steel had to bid on it. There was a lot of finagling around to try to get the plant in here.  Geneva was a $220,000,000 plant when it was built and I think they bought it for $47,000,000. They figured the by-products of the coal that they cooked to melt the ore alone would pay that back in ten years.  No one knew if the plant would run so everyone was running for cover to get a job and I did the same.

Working for Bureau of Reclamation

     Deer Creek Dam in Provo Canyon had been constructed prior to the war, but the aqueduct had never been constructed to Salt Lake City.  Immediately after the war was over, this project started up to give some people work.  They had shut down the project for the war effort. They started drilling the six mile Duchesne tunnel, and surveying the aqueduct. The experience I had in topographic work before was valuable in helping me get a job with these projects.  On October 17 or October 24, I went to work for the Bureau of Reclamation to survey the line to Salt Lake City.  I worked there for a little over three years. 

       They had constructed some Salt Lake aqueduct tunnels before the war, including the Alpine-Draper tunnel.    In 1945 we went back up the canyon and started to make the preliminary surveys for the location of the Salt Lake aqueduct.  Later they started construction of it.  It was to be a sixty-nine inch inside diameter reinforced bell and spigot concrete pipe.  Where the internal pressure got so great on the invert siphon, we had to use steel to control the pressure.  We continued the preliminary work until the pipe was laid out. I might explain a little about the Provo River Project.  The Provo River Project was a way to divert water from the Duchesne and Weber Rivers. They would bring the Weber River water through the Kamas canal and then dump it into the Provo River.

     If you follow the Provo River fourteen or fifteen miles from Kamas to Mirror Lake, you reach the place where they drilled a tunnel six miles long.  The water comes from the North Fork of the Duchesne River and empties into the Upper Provo River. This is a transfer of water from one water shed to another.

    In 1922, allocation of water by the Upper Colorado River Compact gave Utah 22 to 23 percent of the average flow of the Green River.  The Central Utah Project they are arguing about users water that they were given then so actually what you have in Deer Creek is Colorado River Water.  No Provo River Water is stored there because it is all spoken for. Colorado River water is used to fill Deer Creek Reservoir.

     This is what I get so upset about. People are trying to stop the Central Utah Project. This country is such that unless we get more water, we cannot exist.  We are catching up with our water supplies quickly. We are in the deep trouble right now.   The thing that bothers me no end is that the Sierra Club is trying to stop this project, which is very vital to the economy of the state of Utah.  Everyone should be up in arms in the state of Utah and should demand it.  I don’t care how much the water costs because we have to have it.  They spend fifty billion dollars a year over in Vietnam to maim and kill people.  With the inflationary prices, the foes are right when they say it is more than a billion dollar project. I worked on that project and have seen how very vital it is to the state of Utah. We have been allocated water by the Upper Colorado River Compact and we should have it. The quicker we can get it, the more it will stabilize the economy in the state of Utah. 

    The tunnel was built out of concrete, expect where there is solid rock. There are just the inverts in the rock for the water to be able to flow.  They line all the tunnels now. They have completed three on the Central Utah Project that are all lined.  They have four more to build. They are working at Currant Creek now, building a tunnel.

    The Duchesne tunnel was bored with what they called “big jumbos.”  The drills on the sides just eat a hole in the mountain as it moves.  It spits the rock out in the middle and runs it back on a conveyor belt. Instead of going back in and painting the heads and keeping on line, they put a laser beam on it. They don’t need any engineers except for those who check to make sure so the water will flow through the tunnel.  This age we are living in is so fantastic.  Instantaneously under the new computer system, satellites are told where they are going and where they are and what they can do. If you and I sat down and tried to push that out in long hand we would be lucky if we did it in one evening.  All this modern equipment has a value.   I spent six years with U.S. Bureau of Reclamation.

Working for Metropolitan Water Users Association

     When the Bureau of Reclamation finished working and turned the job over, they were going to ship me to Moses Lake, Washington, to work on a canal they were building for the reclamation of some land.  Since we travelled around a lot, my wife thought she would like to settle down in Utah.  I contacted with Metropolitan Water District of Salt Lake City who was looking for a man to operate the aqueduct from Deer Creek Reservoir in Provo Canyon to the terminal reservoirs, two twenty-million gallon reservoirs at Thirty-third South and Wasatch Boulevard in Salt Lake Valley at the end of the forty-two mile pipeline.  Those reservoirs were all underground and they were large enough to play a football game in each one of them. I told William Hague of the Metropolitan Water District that I would like to go to work for him. He said, “What would you start for?”  I said, “I don’t feel I ought to start for less than what I am making here.”  After he contacted Mr. L. R. Dunkley who was in charge of the Provo River project for the Bureau of Reclamation, Department of Interior, he said, “The job’s yours if you would like it.”  I said, “I don’t like to burn my bridges behind me.  The Bureau of Reclamation requires two weeks noticed and I at least ought to give them that because I might want a recommendation from them someday.”  So I went to work for them, after the two week period.

     I was up Provo Canyon from 1945 and throughout the construction and then I worked on the operations of Metropolitan Water District’s pipeline to Salt Lake City and on the construction of the reservoirs.

    Later, I worked on the distribution of the water and as such, we were considered wholesalers.  We brought the water in from Deer Creek. There was a chlorination station at Deer Creek where the water was treated.  We called it treated water, but it was only chlorinated water and is not considered treated as such today.  At various outlets along the line, the water was measured through a meter and taken out by different companies. There were about eighteen irrigation companies and cities using the water in Deer Creek Dam. The dam has about 152,000 acre-feet of water in it, and 100,000 acre-feet are allocated to “shares”.  Each share is an acre of ground with one foot of water.

    Gradually, we ironed the bugs out of the system.  A line of this type is so large that I could walk through it with my hat on since I am so short. When that line is full though, there are 200 gallons per foot of water in it and forty-three miles is a lot of weight.  If you got this much water moving at fifteen or twenty miles an hour and you tried to stop it suddenly, you would blow the line up because all that weight would have to go somewhere.  The valves along the line are fixed so that they take five to seven minutes to gradually close.  If they wanted water in Salt Lake, it would only take about an hour and half from the time they ordered the water until they would get a raise in the level at Thirty-third South and Wasatch Boulevard; that is how fast the water travels. They would take the water out at different sections and then we would fill the reservoirs up with the remaining water. 

    When the reservoirs were built, the city thought they had water for Salt Lake City and County for many years to come. The forty million gallons of storage in the reservoir was supposed to last three to five days if something went wrong with the line.  We found later that we took more than that out in a day. We had a capacity to deliver about 105 million gallons of water a day and we would empty the reservoirs twice a day sometimes in a low year.

    Aerial photography is fantastic to me.  It is more accurate than what we used to do because the surveyor is up above looking down.  The first group that I knew that used it to any extent was the State Highway in California. I went to water and sewage engineering school at the University of Utah every year. While I was going to school, a fellow from the state road department in California came up and gave some classes in aerial photography.  Utah was twenty years behind.  I asked him, “This is fine in this hilly country, but how in the world when you have got a flat surface are you going to supply them?”  He said, “Our aerial photography specification calls for the measurement to be within half the interval of the contour.  For example, if  it was in foot contour, it will be within a half a foot.  Out of nineteen jobs that we have figured our cuts from aerial photography, there are only three of them that we have had to pay overage on the haulage.”  They could do it that close.

    The crosses in the middle of the roads all along the road are match points for aerial photography.  The men working in latitude and longitude controls set up the equipment for the match points and they still use them in aerial photography. I am still using that type of system in some private engineering. 

    The state of Utah had changed its system. The grid system, the Salt Lake Base Meridian starts south of the southeast corner of the Temple Grounds in Salt Lake and runs down through here. When we did survey work before, we called everything north and south. Now it is not south, but east and west. It is whatever they say it is. Now we can start at any place of the system and run back to another point and check it. We could not do this before.  For a long while there was too much distortion at the outer edge of the photography so we were only using about a fourth of it. We made a mosaic of the pictures by cutting out parts of the photographs and matching those points. This is not done with the 9-11 lens cameras they use now. They don’t throw very much of the picture away any more.

   The state is converting to a new outfit that used radio beam that transmits back and forth and you measure it.  It is as accurate as near as two feet in forty miles.  With an old three hundred foot steel tape which we called chains, the contraction and expansion in that metal alone from the coldest day in the winter time to the warmest day in the summer time you would be off several feet in one mile compared to the two.  They now have coefficients of expansion for steel and concrete.  They figure all this in the beam. If you want it reduced to horizontal, you reduce it. You just read your vertical line and reduce it. I have talked to these fellows. A five man survey crew is reduced to two. There used to be seven to eight different surveys to complete a road like I-15. Now they fly this valley once, photograph it and pick the information all off a map. They go through and set the elevations, lay these crosses out and match them up. The next time they come in, the yardage for all the cut and fill on the area is already figured. They have done away with cross sections and it is more accurate. It is fantastic to see the changes from the pick and shovel days to the carry-alls and to these machines they can build now. If you tell them what you want the machine to do, they can build it.

   In a lot of places where the contract is big enough, they will make a special machine to do that job.  When they are finished with it, they will sell it for whatever they can get because they have already got their money’s worth. The cost of hiring someone to do that job would be too expensive.  It shows the use of automation again.

   I talked to a contractor who is building the three miles of highway up Provo Canyon. I asked, “How many laborers do you have?”  He said, “Two; and if people weren’t running up and down the canyon and they did not have to direct traffic, we wouldn’t even have them.” In other words, the only laborers they hired were flag men.

   The cost of construction is higher than it used to be even without hiring all those men, but it does not compare to what it would be if you still had to hire the men. It would be prohibitive at those prices. It is quite fantastic to see the speed at which the machines can do the work.

    I worked in Provo Canyon and along the aqueduct line for approximately 25 years.  In 1970, I retired from the Metropolitan Water District.  Since then, I have done private consultant engineering work.

    Because of the changes in the survey techniques, boundary lines are changing with new surveys.  The county surveyor tells us we have to use the new coordinate system.  Since I am a private surveyor, I take the information down to the recorder’s office. They are very slow in the recorder’s office platting the land like it should be. I am doing a survey now in which there is 5,305 feet between the mile monuments. The monuments will stay where they were because that is where we have always worked to. There is usually an excess of feet between the mile monuments rather than a deficit amount. That is because they used a sixty-six feet gunter’s chain that had a hundred links on it. As there links wore, the chain would become longer. We leave the monuments where they are and change the bearing to fit right through the state.  Once the new survey is completed it is tremendous but it is hard to get anyone to adapt to it. Title insurance companies will not accept the new survey because it doesn’t compare with the old one.

   I think the best adjustment is to follow the law. Attorneys tell me the law says if the fence has been there twenty years, it can only be changed by the mutual consent of both parties.

   One of the reasons the fences are off is because of an earlier agreement between the owners. For example, if our families had had a common property line, as a rule a ditch would have run down that line. Now suppose your granddad had cattle and mine didn’t.  He would have come to mine and said, “Frank, I need to water my cattle and if you will let me put up a fence on your side of the ditch, I’ll be able to keep them off your land.”  He agreed to it and that fence became a line of demarcation that your granddad and your dad and you accepted until I walked in and started to survey.  Then everybody is upset. I told some people, “Why in the world don’t you just forget about it? You’re going to have to live together. If you argue about it, you are destroying your relationship and you will never be friends again.”  The people said, “We thought that fence was the boundary.”  I said, “It will if you will let it be.” One man said, “Yes, but it is twenty feet of my ground.” I replied, “So it is twenty feet of your ground. You didn’t know you owned that until I told you. I can sit down without a survey and make every bit of the property fit a map and they will give you title insurance on it, but it isn’t worth the paper it is written on.  The state tells the county surveyor to get the property transferred over to the new system. In some cases the property is a corner off over here and a quarter corner off somewhere else but you don’t take that property over and put it in. We keep those errors within the boundaries and leave the monuments and fences where they are.” Sometimes one person will be a lot more ground than another person, but if they have been happy with the fences all these years, why change them?  People say, “Well, look at the price of ground.”  I say, “But who gains?  You make an enemy out of your neighbor next door. Whether you win or lose in a court of law, you will spend the price of the ground on the case and only the courts and the attorneys will gain.”

    Two old fellows down here were arguing with each other and they had been friends all their lives. I said, “Why don’t you get out in that plowed ground and wrestle until you give out so you can’t hurt one another and then tell me what you want done. I am going to charge you so much an hour for the time I am working here and I need to know what you want to do.”  They said, “We were happy until you came down.”  I said, “Well, don’t call me. You are telling me that the fence is the line.  If you are happy with it, why don’t we rewrite it and you take it to your attorney.  He will run it through and it will precede any prior claim you have and the fence line will still stay there.  If the ground is in excess, it will be your ground just like you thought it was before.”  It is pretty hard to get people to do that.

   In the county recorder’s office, they are still very slowly changing.  The title insurance companies are not accepting this excess property. It has got to be changed but it is still a tremendous problem.  We all need education, from the state level to the county surveyor, to the title insurance companies to the people who are doing the private surveying. We need to say, “This is what we expect to find and this is what you want to get. I can’t help it if Joe Blow overlaps on your property.” It is just like the case of Chipman’s Store.  It has been there 101 years. They just sold it.  I surveyed it and said, “I don’t know whether common law applies or not, but the boundary is within a few inches of where it should be.”

   So far as God Almighty’s green earth is concerned, if you and I are up there looking down, these roads have all been here so long it doesn’t matter. Our boundaries on this lot are off 35 feet if we want to argue about it. When they subdivided this place, the boundaries didn’t meet by thirty feet but there was an orchard here. We sold that orchard and they surveyed lots from eighty-five homes. They cut the lot down to a little two by four for you and I to sit on. I am happy with it and I can’t tell any difference. I pay taxes on all this lot in Columbia Village.  It is real hard for some people to accept the fact that we do not have exactly the right boundaries. You are right when you say, “Isn’t this going to be hard to adjust?”  But we have to start somewhere. We have a lack of communication. 

School Board and Civic Organizations

    When I came back to American Fork, I was interested in my town and I joined the Lions Club. I thought I could get reacquainted with the people because a new generation had grown up since I left there.  I was interested in how the schools in the state of Utah because they were better than the ones I went to in Idaho.  I always figured that man ought to give something to his community.  In 1955, Mr. Tom Barratt said, “Frank, I have been on the school board too long. I have been on it for 25 years. Why don’t you run for the school board? We need a younger man in there. We are building new schools and your engineering experience would be valuable.”  I said, “If you think I can fill your shores, I will try it.” I have been fortunate to be re-elected every fourth year. I have been on the school board for sixteen going on seventeen years. I like it very much.

    I have seen a lot of development while I have been on the school board. I thought of all the people that were hopelessly underpaid, it was the school personnel. They have kept about the same wage scale despite all the new building coming in here. Tremendous prices were paid for overtime to build a steel plant, while these teachers were plugging along with the same salary.  Since that time, the school teachers have come into their own. I think we only use four or five old school buildings in the district. We have completely built new schools. Our population is growing so we will need more.

    I think I have had a liberal education out of it. I think I have been valuable because I have been able to add something to the board. We have a doctor, Dr. Boyd J. Larsen; a realty man, Eli Clayson; a druggist, Harvey Smith; a school teacher from Brigham Young University, Dr. Phil Shumway, and myself on the board.  It is a five man board which I think is a good size because we can get something done.  If the board is too big, you get too much direction. The doctor works for the steel plant and he knows what to do if anybody gets injured. I think we have a good board because of the variety of experience they have had. We don’t always agree, but we get some things done.  I have been very happy with the decisions. Each time an election comes up, I say, “I think somebody else ought to have a chance.”  They say, “We are about finished building, but an influx of people has come in and we are starting a building program again.”  I thought with my building experience I probably could add something to the board, and Tom Barratt assured me he thought I could too.  People have been very nice and they never turned down a bond issue.  We are now going after a three million dollar bond issue because we have to be bonded to the limit before we are allowed to get any state school money. We stand to get close to two million dollars of state money to help build our schools. We can’t afford to just sit back and be under our bond limit when we could obtain two million dollars of an allocation that will be distributed to hard-pressed school districts for buildings.  We feel that we should go after another bond issue to bring us up to the limit.  It had only been a year ago last May that we asked for eight million dollars and we were at the limit then. Since then we have paid some bonds back and the re-evaluation has pushed us up so we either have to bond or we are not eligible for that money.  The cost of building is tremendous. We are paying more now for a six-room addition to a school that we paid for a fourteen-room school when I first got on the board. 

    [a little more explanation of the bond issue] The state has some money they can allocate to people who have made maximum effort people who had bonded to the limit and still can’t complete their schools. If we don’t bond to the limit we are not eligible to apply for that money.  Since the assessed valuation of the property has gone up and we have paid off one bond issue the state says we are not eligible to apply for this money because we haven’t made the maximum effort.  If we don’t need the three million dollars, we won’t see the bonds, but we want the debt to be at the limit so that we are eligible for another million and half or two million dollars. We have three new junior high schools going up and goodness knows we can’t build them at the current prices with the eight million dollars that the voters gave us.  We will lose two million dollars without the bond issue.  What can we do if we cannot complete the schools?  We might even have to do that before we get them built.

    Schools get better than half the tax dollars in the state of Utah.  I don’t think any other state in the Union can compare to the amount of effort that Utah puts into its schools in dollars and cents per capita.  I think there are only one or two school districts out of the forty districts in the state where the cost per student is any lower.

    We are a policy making board, and the superintendent and principals follow our policy. If things do not work, we change the policy. That is a tremendous job. Our budget this year will be twenty-three million dollars. That is big business. We want maximum effort for our dollars, but we do want to participate in those state funds.  We think it is worth two million dollars to the people of this district to pass this three million dollar bond issue and get it up high enough that if the evaluation goes up next year we will still be eligible for state funds for the next two years.  We are getting behind in building schools; students are coming out of the woodwork.  I think we will probably go over twenty thousand students in the district this year.

     There is a teacher association which is making it harder and harder to negotiate with teachers.  I don’t like it because I think the negotiations should be done on an individual basis. We should not hire someone from Chicago to negotiate for the teachers in the Alpine District. We shouldn’t hire a man from Los Angeles to tell us what to do here.  It hasn’t happened yet, but that is what the teacher association is thinking about, hiring a professional negotiator. I think the president of the teacher’s association for the Alpine School District and our superintendent who represents us should do the work. These two people know more what this district needs than an outsider would.  The school district’s problems in the southeast part of the state are not like they are here.  The superintendent has to negotiate with the president of the association and come to some agreement on how much money the school district has to spend and how it can be spent.  I have no objection to bargaining because I think the teachers were way underpaid and they are doing better now they are organized. We get so much tax dollar and when that is gone, we can’t go borrow some money.  We also have to hire extra teachers when a teacher gets sick or incapacitated. We have to keep a reserve to hire other teachers.  It doesn’t make any difference whether they teach a whole class or fifteen kiddies because there is an epidemic of smallpox, measles or whooping cough.  The teacher gets paid the same price. But by the same token, if a teacher gets sick and is off a month, we have to put somebody in there. Where do we get the money to pay? We contracted with you to teach them.  When we are talking about twenty-three million dollars, we are talking about an awful lot of money.  I appreciate the problems and I think everyone on the board does. I think Dan Peterson, the superintendent, has been one of the most outstanding men we have had.

    {excerpt from Alpine Report, December 1976.]   “Working harmoniously with his fellow board members has been one of Mr. Greenwood’s greatest assets. He is well respected and sought after because of his wisdom, experience, and keen foresight.  Unique is his ability to come up with a timely story as he eases tensions when difficult decisions are being considered.  Truly, dollars and cents cannot measure the contributions he has made in giving direction, establishing policy, and in laying out plans for the future of education in Alpine School District.  Mr. Greenwood, although small in physical stature, has established himself as a “giant” among the educational family.”

    Because of my engineering experience, the city thought I would have some value to them so they appointed me to the planning board. I was on the planning board off and on for about fifteen years.  They didn’t have a city engineer and I thought if my experience is of any value to them, I ought to use it.  The only pay is the satisfaction of knowing you did something to help.  I have met very high class people in the school district.  They are really well educated people. They are hard workers.  Most people think that a school teacher has it easy, but I couldn’t be a school teacher. I don’t understand how they can control 30, 35, or 38 little characters without having their nerves go to pieces.  I think all people that I have worked with have had something to contribute.  

    I have always said engineering has been good to me.  During the Depression in Los Angeles things were really rough.  We went from $556 a month down to $90 a month and we worked three weeks and then were off one, so more men would have work.  Even so, I worked straight through the Depression days; from the time I started in 1922 until I retired, I never missed a day’s pay.

    I have two children who are both married.  My daughter lives on a ranch out in Rupert, Idaho and my son lives in American Fork and works at the steel plant. That is basically my life.  I takes in quite a period of time because I will be 71 Monday.

    [From the life sketch]  Frank retired at the age of sixty-eight which brought concern about what he was going to do, but it didn’t take long before he said, “I don’t know how I had time to work a full time job.”  At that time he became more involved with his favorite work and hobby of surveying.

    He served in many church positions. He was a member of the Junior Chamber of Commerce and Lion’s Club and served as a past president of both organizations along with other positions in civic organizations which he enjoyed.  He and Jennie have enjoyed the association and love of members of these clubs.

   He served on the Alpine School District for twenty-one years. He also served on the American Fork Planning Board for many years, also on the Board of Directors for the Provo River Water Users for over twenty eight years.

   Frank has given a life of love and service to his family and fellowman. He had been noted for his honesty and integrity, hard work and sense of humor. He loved hunting and fishing with his family and especially with his brothers, Burt, Mark, Wilson and Harold.

     Frank was always been a people person and had great love for his wife, children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.  He gave many young people an opportunity to work and taught them how to work.  

    He and Jennie have been married for sixty-one years and have much love for one another.  Frank graduated from his life on February 17, 1992 at his home in American Fork at the age of eighty nine. 

    

[This was compiled from three histories and notes for histories that Frank Greenwood started.  I, Tammy Stevenson,  attempted to put the histories together in the correct time frame.  However, many entries were not dated; so the time frame of events may be a little off.  Once that was done, I attempted to add in the details from the interview with Roger L. Miner in 1973. Then to give a more complete listing, added in some of the life sketch given by Elaine Greenwood Stevenson]