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"When I left Brigham? I'll tell you about my first train ride from Seagard Utah, to Price, Utah. There was my stepmother and myself and two brothers. One was about two years old and the other one was just a baby. We came to Price and grandpa Foote met us there with the team and the wagon. He took us to Huntington, we stayed there with my Aunt Franny that summer and I started school that fall. I caught Pneumonia that winter and couldn't finish school that year so I didn't get promoted. We stayed there again that summer, Mama went to help Aunt Irene cause she had just had a new baby. I stayed with Aunt Franny and her family. Then my Uncle Ray Case came by and they stayed there and fed the horses and helped out for three days. Then he asked me if I wanted to go to see my brother and my grandmother. Being only a child of six I said yes. So we left in the wagon and headed for Seagard. When we got to Farron Uncle Ray got off the wagon and had Aunt Minnie drive through the campground and set up camp. He then went up into Farron to tell my mom that he was taking me with him. She told him not to take me with him that I wasn't to go. Well, he said that if I wanted to go that he was going to take me with him. Mom was upset so she got the sheriff and my Uncle to come over to the camp. The sheriff gave me my choice to go with my uncle or to stay with my stepmother. And I chose to stay with my stepmother."
You were kind of Kidnapped then wasn't you?
"Yes I was."
How about when you got to Altonah?
"We came to Altonah with grandpa Foote and grandpa and them lived on the Mc Gary Ranch over here where Jerry Carroll lives now. I was 15 then.We went and stayed with them, my grandma and grandpa. My dad he got a job herding sheep up in the mountains for Oven Bennion and a Mr. Hansen. Then we stayed there until we moved down into Altonah town in back of the Altonah school house and I started school in Altonah again. I went to school there in Altonah until I was in the third grade and then we moved to Lapoint."
Tell about your experiences getting to school and getting lost?
"Well, we lived down on an indian lease when we first moved down from grandpa's. It was in 1919 when the flu epidemic hit and a lot of people died. People were dying from families so fast that they couldn't dig graves fast enough. I always cut through the field to meet the Colby kids to go to school. This one morning I was late getting to their house and it was awful foggy, so Aunt Julia pointed out where the kids were. I could see them when I left the house but I got confused in the fields because the fog was so thick. I wandered back toward my house. When I got there Aunt Julia put the oven door down and set me on a chair in front off it to dry out my clothes because I was wet to my waist. Then my father got there and wondered why I wasn't to school and of course I had to explain to him that I had got lost. When I was still in Altonah town I was baptized in the canal in back of the school house when I was eight years old."
Tell us about the chores you had around the house?
"I had chores to do, and when we went to Lapoint my father leased a farm from a man named Lester Foster and he run that farm for awhile. Mama helped him down there quite a bit, she was helping him haul hay one day and the load fell off and she was underneath it. It broke her arm, right in the elbow. They loaded her up to take her to Vernal to the doctor, they took the littlest of us Ammon and left the rest of us to do the chores. They took the buggy and the team and were gone way into the night- And while they were gone we had a neighbor that lived up way over the ridge from us came over and got us kids and fed us supper then to took us back home and put us to bed. It was way into the night when my parents got home and we had all the chores done. I had all the housework to do after mama broke her arm, so I had a lot of chores to do."
How about the spinning wheels, what did you do with that?
"Grandma Foote while we lived on the McGary Ranch, she had a spinning wheel that she would spin yarn on and we would knit mittens and stockings and sweaters and stuff on it. She would gather wool from where the sheep had been and off the sheep that my grandpa had. Then we would wash the wool and we would pull it apart and she would spin it. Then she would knit with the yarn she made. Then she had what was called carters and she would chord the wool onto pads and she would put into quilts to make the quilt batting for the inside of quilts."
How about when you met grandpa and how you came to know him?
"You want me to tell you that? About the time in Lapoint? Oh gees! We had moved down to a ranch in Lapoint. Then after that we went to another farm they called the Perry Ranch, there was 160 acres and there is when grandpa Foote and them leased a farm called the Wilson farm just south of us. Uncle Oliver and Aunt Mittie were down there with Grandpa and Grandma. While they were down there. Oliver needed a wagon from up here in Altonah. So, Clinton brought the wagon down there to Oliver. The river was so high you couldn't hardly get across, by time for him to leave you couldn't get across so he stayed there for three days with us. The first time he saw me I was in striped bib overalls, boys shoes, a blue blouse or shirt and my hair in pig tails That's the way he seen me."
So that was the picture he fell in love with, huh?
"Yeah it was."
"We lived on that farm for awhile then we moved down into town. Dad ran that farm for five years. Then when we moved down into town I went to school there until I was sixteen. Then we moved hack to Huntington, again. There dad worked on the farms and things for guys and then while the family was there I came hack to Altonah. I stayed with Edna Burgess and I worked for Mrs. Thompson that worked in the post office for a dollar a day and I did Edna Burgess' chores. She had a cow to milk and three little kids to care for. I did these chores every night and morning. Then I would go to Mrs Thompson's three days a week and got a dollar a day for the work I did there."
How about when you moved to Altonah then you were without your family. Is this when you started to see Grandpa?
"Yeah, I started seeing Clinton then. We went to the movies and to the Altonah dances."
How did he propose to you? How did he ask you to marry him? What did your dad think of this?
"He just asked me to get married. My father wasn't around he was still in Huntington, and I was eighteen then so I wanted to marry him and I did. But my dad always liked Clinton. I never had no shower and I worked for Clinton's sister and I always bought my own clothes. My wedding dress was a little blue crepe dress and I had a pair of plastic, what do you call its, black slippers. Grandma Bowden gave us a shower or reception at her house and all the family came up and all gave us a little gift. I lived with grandpa and grandma Bowden for that summer and then we moved down to a little old log cabin that they call the Lambert house now. We lived there that winter and then that next summer we went down to live where Dean Reay lives now and milked Oliver Bowden's cows for half the cream check when we sold the cream. Clinton worked in the creamery also and that was how we made our living."
About how much was a half of the cream check?
"They wasn't very much, one fellow that ran the cream station sold used furniture too, so out of our cream check we bought us some furniture. We would buy some butter and cheese at the creamery and then we would take the rest and go buy the other groceries we needed. You could buy things a lot cheaper than you can now, you could get a gallon of gas for about a quarter and things were economical."
How about after you had your kids? What kind of hair raising things did they put you through as a parent?
"Clinton and I were married August 7, 1929 and we never had any children until 1937 when Willard was born and then in 1942 Norita was born. We lived on a farm and we built an A grade barn to milk cows and dug a well so we could have water. During the 1930's and the depression before we dug wells we would pack our water. We had a water turn and during that water turn we was able to haul enough water in tubs to do our washing and have a bath. Eventually we built a cistern and ran water in a cistern until we could get wells. Then we got our A grade barn and Clinton hauled milk from Altonah and all around the country and hauled out to Salt Lake or the Murray area for Hi Land Dairy. In the truck he gathered milk from house to house in cans that people wanted to sell. He would take this over the canyon in milk cans that he had to keep cool. He would stop and wet a tarp down in the creeks and streams to pack around the milk to keep it cool so it didn't spoil. They would unload the milk when he got it there and he would load up the empty cans and come home. Sometimes it would he late into the night before he would get home, sometimes I would have the cows milked and other times we would still have the milking to do when he got home."
Can you think of any particular incidents that your children put you in that made your lives interesting?
"Oh my, Well, Willard was always getting lost. He would always wander off by himself. We had a little dog we named Brownie, that my brother Lavel had given us, that dog would follow Willard wherever he went so when we couldn't find Willard we would holler at the dog and she would come hack to us and then we could follow the dog back to where Willard was. Willard would always go off looking and watching things until he would get tired and he would lay down wherever he was and take a nap. So we had to wander around and find him. He become quite a handful as he grew up and did a lot of things that we didn't want him to. He was always full of mischief. He used to like to take his sister with him when she was old enough to go. The only problem was that he was never ready to come home when she was suppose to, so he would always find someone else to bring her home."
After your kids got married and left what kinds of things did you and Grandpa do?
"Well, we did a lot of fishing and camping and went with my brother and sister-in-law a lot. We went out in the hills camping and fishing with Charley and Wanda in a pond up above Vernal and caught a lot of nice fish. Then we went up on Petty and went camping and hunting. That was basically what we did for fun."
Did you have other jobs later in your life?
"I worked for Florence Jessen when she had a baby, She had little Dewey but he went with his father a lot, when she had Reay, I helped clean off the tables, sweep the floors and help tidy things up. In the room where Florence was I liked to go in there and play the old Victorola and Florence would write the old songs down, we nearly wore those old records out playing them over and over so Florence could write them down. I didn't really have that much work while I was there, she gave me three dollars a week to be there to help. It was lambing time and they had sheep while I was down there."
Were your kids married by the time you sold the dairy, or were they still at home?
"No, we were still milking cows when we bought this in 1972 and then we sold the dairy to Willard. Then he sold them and then your dad and mom got the dairy and the land and they started the old dairy back up."
What do you have left on your farm now?
"I have my sheep, beef cattle, raise a little hay, raise a garden, and beautiful flowers. "
Tell us about the winters you have seen throughout your life?
"We have had real hard winters. There has been winters that we have had to cut through the field to get the cream to town because the roads were too drifted in to travel. We would have to find our cows drifted in up the lane and we would have to go break trail for them and shovel them out to get them to the barn so we could milk them. This also happened when we would push them down to the spring on the Anderson place for water, before they could get back they would be drifted in and have to be shoveled out. When they finally got the roads cleared the drifts on the sides of the road were so high you could touch the telephone wires."
I can remember grandpa telling about snow on the fourth of July, do you remember that?
"It was the fourth of July and they were having a rodeo and parade here in Altonah and it snowed a lot. Altonah used to be quite a big town, it had 3 cream stations,a post office, 2 stores, a hotel and a pool hall. It was called a string town because everything was built in a string-like. There was Jesse Fallower's store and Maxwell's store. My father even had a shoe store and ran a hamburger stand. He sold hamburgers, sodas, and new shoes as well as repaired shoes."
When did Altonah's stores start closing? Was it during the depression or after that?
"No, there were stores here during the depression, Fallower's store was here quite a while after grandpa and I were married and then after they took the school to Altamont and the churches to Altamont things just started to close down."
Tell us how it was different having babies when you had your children and how the hospitals were and things.
"There wasn't a hospital unless you went to Roosevelt, so most of us just had all our babies at home. Willard was born in a little old log house up at grandma Bowden's and Dr. Witmore was the doctor and he came up and he got kind of angry with me because I called him too early. Grandma Bowden and Ardella Curry were there. Willard was born on the 8th of May in 1937. When Norita was born we lived down on the other place down by the barn and Dr. Miles was my doctor this time. I had almost had Norita by the time she got there, because it was awful stormy and the weather was real bad. Clinton had to go meet her with the team to get her on in there. Then she came up one other time when I was sick. That's how our doctors did, they would come if you were real sick otherwise we just doctored ourselves. Willard had the measles and they would have to cover the windows so the light wouldn't get in his eyes. We had made a trip to Salt Lake to see my folks and he came down with the measles so we came home. We had went to have Thanksgiving with them but we came home. We had a can of chicken noodle soup that year for our Thanksgiving Dinner. After Norita was born she got Pneumonia along with the measles. We had to have the doctor come up and help her and have her given a blessing because she was so sick. When she was just about two years old she cut her hand on an aspirin bottle that had been broken. She almost bled to death before we could get her to the hospital in Roosevelt. We had to keep her in the hospital overnight because she had cut her hand so bad and they had put stitches in it. I nearly passed out too when they stitched it up. Then they both had their tonsils out. We had to take them down to the hospital then. My brother took us down while Clinton did the milking. I had to stay with them then too. I had to stay down there alone with them all day because we had to be there so early. Willard he was kind of funny that day he would sing, "I don't love blue eyes, I love brown eyes."
You mentioned that grandpa hauled cream and that. What kind of vehicle did he haul it in?
"He had a little old Dodge pickup truck. He would take the milk and cream to Murray in this truck. When he would go around to pick up the milk he would use a little Ford truck box he made to put the cream in. When we lived over at the Rochel place he would take Grandma Bowden's car and she would go with him and he would take her and her cream to town. He had made the little box for the cream, well one winter he used it as a school bus to haul the kids up here to school in. There was two little Greek girls that used to ride with him and one of Jack Allred's girls. He would pick them up and take them and then bring them home."
How did you celebrate the holidays, like Christmas, how was it different from what we do today?
"We didn't get they toys like we do now. We were real happy if we had one little toy. We were happy to get some candy and nuts. We would have a family Christmas, we would get together and have a dinner and then come home and hang the stockings and then it was up to Santa. We played tricks on some kids we would put coal in their stockings, a potato or something. We just didn't do much celebrating."
We know you don't drive. Will you tell us some of your driving experiences that made you not like to drive?
"Well, we had a little ol' Chev car and we lived down there where Dean Reay lives now. We had this little ol' Chev car that didn't have a top on it, well Clinton had to come up to Grandpa Bowden's to hay. So, he wanted me to bring up the car, he had to have a horse for some reason. So he let me drive the car. I got out in the canal where there was no bridge. I was in the middle and the car quit on me. Clinton had to come on the horse and pull it out with horse and saddle. So when we got the car out it still wouldn't start so we left the car there until we came back. Then I tried to drive after that, but every time I took the car after that something would go wrong. I would either shift at the wrong time or the wrong way, so I said I was a jinx, so I quit driving."
How has your life changed maybe throughout the years?
"I don't really know of anything. I haven't ever done much different. Just the same ol' things."
What about shopping trips? I know that after everything shut down you didn't shop very frequently.
"We would only shop about every two weeks or so. I went into the store, it was Maxwell's store then and Mrs. Oman was running it then and she said to me, "
How far out of town do you live?
" and I told her about three miles and she said that the way I bought groceries she thought I must live up in the hills. What I bought would do me for two weeks or more til I got back to the store."
How about a person you especially looked up to or admired?
"No, nobody in particular."
"I was left alone once up here on the ranch to milk the cows and separate the milk and that. Grandma and Grandpa had another five head of cows down in Myton that were dry. They had gone down there for the separator and to feed. While they were gone the car broke down and they were down there in Myton and I was up here on the ranch. So I went down to Altonah and got one of my brothers to come help me. I had milk in every pan, in every bucket, and everything setting around just waiting for them to bring the separator. Clinton had called and left a message at the Maxwell store for them to tell my dad to send one of the boys up to help me. The only phone at that time was at the Maxwell store. But, they had forgot to tell him, my dad had been in the store two or three times, and they forgot to tell him. So I got on a horse and went down town with the intention of calling Clinton in Myton to see what had gone wrong. When I went in the store LaRae said Oh, Lenna, I was to tell you the car had broke down, the bearing had gone out and it would be a few days before they could get home. I started to crying, cause I was shook up to think had been gone that long and hadn't called me or anything. So, I went to my dadUs and my brother Ed went back with me. My dad made me put on a pair of boys overalls and stuff because it was cold, it was in the winter, with snow and that. We got so cold that we got off the horses and led them to keep warm. Clinton came a couple days later and LaRae at the store has always felt bad that she didn't tell me about that phone call."
How about getting electricity and TV?
"To get electricity we all had to sign up for it, so we all signed up to get electricity hooked up to our houses and stuff so we could have lights and the things that we needed. The first electric flat iron I had Clinton's aunt gave to me, to iron Willard's baby clothes and things. That was about 1937, and then we got milkers and electricity for them. Our first milk we had to cool in a water cooler that had a place to pack ice around it to cool it. It would hold four or five cans and if we had any more than that we would have to leave it out and cool a little at a time. Our television set was the first TV in Altonah. Mr. White brought it down and wanted to see if it would work in our house. It worked and Clinton bought the set. We had people from all around come up to watch our television set. One guy down in Roosevelt, I can't think of his name, had a little girl in something that was going to be on television so they came up to see her on our television. The people would come to see the Wrastles and the fights and whatever."
Go back and tell us your first impression of Grandpa?
"My first impression of him, He was a short little freckled guy. So short he couldn't hardly reach across the horse."
"I was trying to learn to sew, we used to sew a lot of our clothes out of cloth flour and sugar sacks. This one day I was trying to make me a bra. My dad came in and asked what I was doing and I told him, well he wanted to know why I wasn't using the sewing machine. I told him that I didn't dare mess with it cause mama always knew when I had messed with it cause I had messed it up somehow. So he said sit down over here and I'll show you. So, he sat down and helped me make my bra. It was just a flat bra. My father helped me learn to do a lot of things, he taught me how to mix bread, he helped learn to do a lot of things I learned to do, he had more interest in me. He bought me a pretty piece of linen, it was an orchid color and he bought Millie a piece that was green. We decided we wanted to make these dresses with trimming mine with the green and hers with the orchid. Well, I decided I wanted to make my dress. So, my mom said OK you can make it. I had a pattern that Aunt Mandy had made me a dress off from that I really liked, so this is the one I decided I wanted to make. Well, of course I didn't know that there was little pleats in the front in the waist. I couldn't make the skirt and the waist fit, so I went out to the garden and asked mom what to do and she told me I'd just have to figure it out. So, I went back in the house to think about it. I decided to take a seam right down the middle of it and took out about two inches from the middle. Then I didn't know how to put the collar on, so my dad helped me put the collar on, and he helped me put the sleeves in. So, that's the way I made my dress."
How many brothers and sisters were there in your family?
"In my immediate family there was me and my brother that was left. My mom had Henry, a set of twins that died, and me, I was the youngest. Then dad married again and there was, LaVell, Ed, Dee, Millie, a little girl that died, Wallace, Oscar, and Cuba. Wasn't that eight others beside us?"
(Note: Life Map included in archive)