Dictated 1967
My name is William Albert Olds and I was born in Lyman, Wayne Co., Utah 8 August 1891. Mother said that if I would be a good little boy she would let me play with the other kids; but I wasn't, so I've been a lone sheep ever since.
When I was little we used to have to herd cows up in the hills in the morning, then after school we'd have to go get them and bring them home at night. This was in Lyman and we had an old mule that we would ride to get the cows. On one trip when we went up after them, we tied the old mule to a big tree. The wind was blowing real hard and when we came back the wind had blown the tree over on top of the mule. Yeah, the mule was dead and we had to walk home.
I started school in Lyman, we lived there until I was about 8 years old and I was baptized there (3 Sept 1899). Then we started to come back over into God's country. We landed up in Summit, Iron Co. and Dad got a job herding sheep there and I used to go up with him in the summertime and keep him company. I remember one day Dad sent me out to turn the sheep back and there was an old bear. He was an old grizzly, Old Split Hoof they called him. He used to kill sheep around there pert near every night. When I saw this old bear, I wasn't very long getting back to camp. I don't believe that old bear could have caught me if he'd wanted to.
I went to school in Summit and the next summer I got a job herding buck sheep and I had to take them out around the flats and herd them during the day. I had one big old buck that I broke to ride and when I turned them out of the corral in the morning I would get on that old buck and away we'd go. We'd spend all day watching the bucks out in the sagebrush. Finally I bought a 22 when I was about 9 and I used to shoot rabbits. One day a mountain lion came around a tree close to where I was at. I thought I was a pretty good shot and could kill pert near anything, so I fired at this old mountain lion and I got him right through the butt of the ear and he dropped. I got him.
After we got out of Summit we moved down on the lower street of Toquerville. I went to some more school in Toquer, but not very much. I got a job over at Anderson's Ranch for Peter Anderson and I was working for ten cents a day, believe it or not. I hauled peaches out of the orchard and I worked all summer. Had an old horse and I'd go down and get a load of peaches and bring it back up and unload it and back I'd go again. For about 16 hours a day and for ten cents a day.
There was one day it was raining and we wouldn't work, so Peter Anderson said, "You kids might as well go home. If you can't work you can't eat." We generally got our dinner there. There was a Higbee boy and the girl that married Delbert Woolsey and we got about half way home when here comes Frank Anderson, Peter's son, in a buggy. He picked us up and took us back over to the ranch. We had dinner there and monkeyed around there the afternoon. We'd all walk over from Toquer in the morning, work all day for ten cents, then walk back home at night. I worked there all summer, then went back the next summer and worked and he raised my wages up to 25 cents a day, and by gosh you know I thought I was rich and had a lot of money. The next spring when I went back they raised me up to 50 cents a day to start and before the summer was over with they gave me $1.50 a day and that was man's wages. I was about 13 then and I got so I could buy a pair of overalls.
When I was about ten the flocks of wild geese would fly through in the fall and spring. Levi and I went up the creek to shoot some with shotguns. Levi shot and hit one and he told me to run and get it and bring it back. I thought it was dead, so I grabbed it by its legs and tossed it over my shoulder. He was really a big one and he wasn't dead and he just grabbed me by the seat of my pants and included quite a hunk of flesh. I was dancing around and yelling and Levi had an awful time getting it to let go of me. Finally, he choked it and then we carried it by the neck and kept its bill closed tight.
Then another time Levi and I decided to go deer hunting. I had a 22 and Levi had a rifle. We went up in the hills west of Pintura. Levi went up on one side of the canyon and I was supposed to go up the other side and scare the deer up to Levi. I was walking along looking down over the ledge from time to time and taking my time. Suddenly I saw 5 deer sleeping in the sun under the cliff, so I let go and shot all 5 of them with the 22. Levi didn't hear the shots, so I yelled and yelled until I found him and he came over, looked at the deer then said, "For heavens sake, why didn't you shoot all of them?" We had to go down and get the wagon to bring them all in and we shared with everyone in town.
The summer I was fourteen, I went up to New Harmony and herded sheep for Bishop Pace. I herded sheep for him for two summers. The third summer I went back up there and I'd been up on the mountain about two weeks and I went out around the sheep one day on my horse, and I went blind. I was all alone and I knew I couldn't trust my horse to go back to camp; she wouldn't go anywhere you wanted her too. I was about two miles from camp, so I just tied the reins to the horn of the saddle and turned the horse loose and he went to town. I got on this trail on my hands and knees and crawled back to camp. The nest morning here came Bishop Pace up to see what was wrong. My horse had gone back home. Bishop Pace took me to Cedar City to the doctor, and he gave it some big long fancy name and told me I was not to read or do anything to use my eyes. It was about six months that I was blind. I could tell night and day and if I moved my hand in front of my face I could see it, but that was about all. I went back home to Pintura and school started and they told me I should go and just listen to the class, but not to read myself. So I went to school and I'd been there for quite a little while. Finally one day the reacher called on me to read and I reminded him that I couldn't because the doctor had not given me permission yet. And he said, "Oh, you blockhead, you could read if you wanted to." And he threw a book at me, but I could see a little better by then and I saw it coming and I caught it and I got hold of the side of it and I landed it at him and it caught him just above the eye and cut quite a gash. I got up and walked out of the schoolroom and he followed me. When I got out on the sidewalk, I stopped and he come and grabbed me by the shirt collar and said he was taking me back to school. I asked him if he thought he was man enough and he said he was, so I grabbed him and up-ended him in the ditch. The ditch was rocked up on both sides and I hadn't any more than got in there on top of him, that the sheriff came along. I don't think you would call him sheriff then, constable or something. Well he came up there and stopped me. He said I'd better go back to school, but I said he was not man enough to make me either, so I went home. I laid around home there a day or two, then finally decided I'd go back to school. I went back to school and stayed the rest of the season then I went back to herding sheep the next summer. My vision came back gradually, but it took over six months before they would let me read. After it came back, I was all right, but I never did know why. Lately I have had trouble with my eyes, but that's old age.
We sued to take the sheep from New Harmony over on Kanarra Mountain in the summer time. I had this here all by myself and I wasn't very old. I lived in a tent and I had two little pups the firs summer that I went over on Kanarra Mountain. Levi was herding up above me on the hill there. I forget who he was herding for then. One night I had been up to Levi's for dinner and when I came back - he kept trying to get me to stay longer and I stayed later than usual - when I was coming down the trail I felt like someone was following me all the time. The trail was kinda crooked through the timber and when I got to the edge of the flat I started to run. Pretty quick I stopped and looked back and there was a big black bear tagging me down the trail. I ran on down to camp and got in the tent. I used to cook on a campfire and I had the honey bucket sitting on a log and a jar of sourdough sitting out and the frying pan and things set around this campfire. It was a nice moonlight night and I looked out and that old bear was out there. He got the honey bucket and started knocking it around until he got it opened and ate all the honey he could get out of it, turned and away he went. The poor little pups were scared so they climbed up on the bed with me. While he was eating and stomping around I raised up the back of the tent, and I thought Ole Boy, if you come in the front door, I'm going out the back. But he didn't come in.
I was getting old then and I thought I could get along without work so I quit. I was about 17, I guess, when I quit working for Bishop Pace in New Harmony. I went down and worked on the road at Kanarraville. They were building a road down around the edge of the hill south of town. It wasn't a highway then, just a road - sorta a surface road down at Camp Creek. I worked on that for that summer then I quit. I lived with Davis, what the devil is his first name. I can't think now. I stayed at their home and went out to work every morning. I worked a four-horse fresco scooping up dirt on the road. That winter I'd quit school then I went out and got a job herding sheep again that winter. I think it was for Clark Orton up in Parowan - no, it was for Bishop Marsden - President Marsden. The next summer I went out in Pine Valley country and kept the sheep there all winter. I worked for Marsden for about five years. Then I quit and went over in the Escalante country and worked in a mining outfit there. It was supposed to be gold. I worked in the Amalgamated. I had some big plates I had to wash off with quick silver ever so often. There was seven of these big plates in big vats. They were washing the hill down; it would wash down in the big vats and I had to wash the plates off about every four minutes. They would gather the gold. When I was working there I guess, that was about the first time I ever went out with a girl....FROM NOW ON THIS STORY IS GOING TO BE EXCITING.
The reason I went out with this girl.... one of the bosses, he was a married man from California. His family were down there and he was trying to step out with this girl, so some of us young fellows decided we'd better step in, so I was the first one that made a date with her. We went down to one of these dance places three or four nights. This boss - he was the night boss and I was working nights. I'd go on at eleven and work til seven in the morning. He used to sneak around all the time to see what we were doing. I got kinda tired of that, so I decided, by gosh, I'm going to set a trap for him. There was a back door to this place I worked - it was kinda a dugout' half room down and half above the ground. There was one step where you come in that was about that high (4 feet). It was in the wintertime when I was working there, and I had this big No. 3 tub and I filled it full of water and set it on the step, and I thought that would catch that guy. Along about 3 a.m. I heard this guy coming. He had one short leg, you could always hear him when he'd step down with the short leg, and I was watching the work, and all at once he stepped down in that tub of water and over it went on him. We were just about a quarter of a mile from camp and by the time he got back to camp he was dog gone near froze. His clothes were frozen stiff by the time he got to camp and changed. When I quit work the next morning at seven everyone else had eaten so I would go in and eat with the bosses. This fellow said he wanted to see me in the office right now. I asked if it couldn't wait until after breakfast and he said it couldn't. Well, the big boss was there and he said let's go have breakfast then we will talk. Well after we ate I went over to the office and this peg-leg guy had my check all made out and said that was for setting that trap for him and I was fired. So I went back over to the mess hall and just handed this check to the big boss and he just tore it up. He said I wasn't fired cause he didn't have any right to fire me. So, I went over to my tent - we lived in boarded-up tents, where we slept. I went over and went to bed. Pretty quick a fellow came in and said that peg leg was after me. I said to let him come. I had a 45 six-shooter and when I laid down I put this gun under my pillow. About a half-hour later I heard peg leg coming, he didn't even knock, just opened the door. He had a little six-shooter about four inches long, but before he could get that out, I had this old 45 out. I told him to drop that thing right sown on the floor, and turn and get out of there and not to show his head around this tent again. He dropped his six-shooter and left. I was kinda excited and couldn't sleep, so I took this six-shooter up to the big boss and told him what had happened. He told me to wait and he went and got peg leg and brought him in and asked me to tell him again in front of pet leg. After he told peg leg that there was an outfit going to Panquitch in one hour and he was to be on it. Well, peg leg left that day and I worked for that outfit until the next spring when they shut down. I don't think they ever did get much gold out of it. The last two months I was there they took me off washing and put me to hauling coal with a four-horse outfit.
Oh, I forgot, the spring before, they were hauling some big boilers from Marysvale, and they had one bringing in the horses and one with ox team. They were bringing them in for the mine. One of the guys with the ox team got sick and they came up and called for volunteers, so they asked me if I would, so all I could do was go. When I got out where that ox team was they gave me a whip that seemed like a mile and a half long. They told me to get over on the off side, so I went over on the off side. This other ox driver he hollered at the oxen, then said hit that lead ox with your whip. I brought that old whip around my head a couple of times and I thought I could pop him just right and when I let go of it, the bloomin' thing came back and just wrapped around my face. I undone it and I threw the whip over the ox team to the old skinner and told him it was his, and the oxen too. They had sixteen oxen on one wagon pulling this big boiler - two across and eight up. They had eight head of horses on the other one and they could pull as much as sixteen oxen with a lot less work. I quit that oxen job real fast. I had to walk back to camp that five or six miles and my face really smarted where that whip hit.
I was about twenty or twenty-one when I left that mine job, and when we came out of there it was sure cold. We had to chop ice a time or two to get across the creeks to get out of there in the wagon. So we came up to Panquitch and that's where someone made a big haul on me. I had $150 in my suitcase, and about four or five dollars in my pocket. We went in to eat. We just drove our wagon right up - hadn't been hooked up very long. I was going down to the Parks road to catch the stage to go home. While we was in eating someone drove up by the side of the wagon and took my suitcase and my roll of bedding. I had a roll of bedding that cost better than a hundred dollars, and a suitcase full of clothes with the $150 in it. I stayed and the sheriff said he would try to find my outfit. It didn't take long for my four or five dollars to go and by gosh, I went two days without anything to eat. I sat up in the hotel lobby, and I got so dog gone hungry that I went over to the hotel and ordered me a big breakfast and after I got through eating I asked for the manager. They said he was in the back, so I went back to talk with him. This guy used to stop at our place in Pintura a lot when he came down there. I told him I had eaten and didn't have the money to pay for it and if I could work to pay. He said that was against the rules. I asked him if he knew Tommy Olds in Pintura and he said that he had stopped there a lot. So, I told him I was his son. He told me to forget about paying then. We talked for awhile then he loaned me twenty dollars and I caught the stage and went home. The sheriff never did find the guy that stole my things.
Well, I laid around and helped around home for the rest of the winter and the next summer I went to work on that road in Kanarra and the put me as foreman over a little bunch of men to finish up the road. I worked there all summer and that's where I met Beth. She lived out at Camp Creek at that time which is where we was working. So I started to go out with her once in awhile, and finally she asked me to marry her and I took her up on it and we set the date to go up to Parowan and get married. I had a nice little team and a black top buggy. Cora, Beth's sister, wanted to go with up. I was pretty well acquainted in Parowan cause I had worked up there for several years. I knew everybody up there and knew the town like a book. So we went up the hotel and I drove in and put up my team, and we went in and got a couple of rooms. We came down to get something to eat and I asked one of the girls there where the courthouse was. The told me and we monkeyed around there and finally we went down to the courthouse and got our marriage license. We went back to the hotel and called the Bishop up. But we couldn't get him for a while. I told the girls at the hotel (I knew them all well) that we were going to go for a ride and we went down to the bishop's and got married. When we came back up, I just tied the team up out in front at the hitching post. We went up to the rooms and both rooms were filled with cowbells and horsehair cut up in the beds and everything else you could think of. We could see what was up and people were starting to arrive, so I sneaked out and untied the horses from the hitching post and here come the girls with their suitcases and we jumped in the buggy and away we went. We went over to Paragonah and stayed with folks over there that night and the next morning we headed back home. We went back down to Camp Creek where Beth's folks lived. Wasn't a sign of anyone around, so we went in the house, and all at once, by gosh, they busted down the stairs and it looked like 4 or 5 hundred of them. I still had the team out in front and I yelled for Beth to come on, but by gosh, before we could get out there two boys had grabbed the team and we couldn't get in the buggy fast enough. So they undone the team and took them down and put them up. Everybody from Kanarra was there and we had quite a time that night.
The road in Kanarra was all finished when we got married (my wife was Elizabeth Rebecca Williams and we were married 29 July 1913), so we went down to Pintura for about six months and lived in one room in my folks' home. I worked for Gregerson putting in a new ditch. Then we went back to Kanarraville and I ran William's (my father-in-law) farm at Camp Creek for one year. I took it on shares and was able to work out for other people a little while running the farm to get money, and we raised all our food etc.
It was a very cold and blizzardy night when Owen arrived and he had the colic the first night home. We had to walk the floor most of the night with him. We were so excited and thrilled to finally have us a baby and everyone in Kanarraville was almost as excited as we were and they all had to come out to Camp Creek and see him. He was a healthy baby and had very little illness. When he was about a year old we moved out to Quitchapaw and I went to work running the ranch for Spilsbury. We lived in the log house and spent the next three years there.
Inez Stewart, Beth's sister, lived in Kanarra and she had a new baby, so we went in to see her. Owen really made a fuss over the baby. We went back out to the ranch and the next morning about ten Beth waved to me out in the field, so I came in to see what was wrong. Owen was missing and she couldn't find him anywhere. I got on the horse and started down through the fields looking for him. I found him about two miles away. He was only two and a half years old and he was on his way back to see that new baby.
In 1927 we were living in Kanarra and Beth was expecting a baby. She became very ill as a result of the pregnancy. We knew this doctor in St. George, so we went on the stage to see what he could do for her. He put her in a nursing home for about a month. When the baby was being delivered, it was a very difficult delivery and the baby's neck was broken and he died immediately at birth. We gave the baby the name of William and then we brought this tiny body back to Kanarraville to bury.
We lived in Cedar City when Don was born. Dr. Prestwich took care of Beth and everything went just fine. He was born at home and was a healthy and beautiful baby, and Owen was very excited to have his very own baby at last. We gave his the name of Don Alden.
I herded sheep near Cedar City for a little over two years, then I was offered a job in Grand Junction, Colorado, for Mr. Blodgett, the president of the bank, taking care of his sheep. We moved to Colorado and we were only there two days when Don took sick with dysentery. The mosquitoes were terrible that year and he wasn't used to then and that made the dysentery worse. We had three doctors but the children were dying all around with the same thing and there wasn't anything they could do for them. He was very sick for about a week before he died at the age of 2 1/2 years. He was buried in Grand Junction. That was the only time in my life I ever asked for help, and I had stayed home to help Beth take care of Don and hadn't started work yet, so we soon ran out of money. I went down to the Red Cross and asked for a little help, but they refused me. I had supported the Red Cross all my life and the fellow there told me I would have to go get in the bread line. I told him that before I got in the bread line, he would be there. I went and reported this fellow behavior and he was fired and about a week later, I was walking down the street and sure enough there was this same fellow in the bread line.
I worked for Mr. Blodgett about three years. In the summer I took Beth and Owen up on the mountain with me and in the winters they lived in town. Then we moved up to Rifle, Colorado and I worked on a farm for about a year, then I went back to herding sheep. I herded sheep for the Webster Brothers from Cedar City who had their sheep out in Colorado. Then I quit that after about three years and I got a job running the coal tipple in the mine there. All I had to do was set in an easy chair and when the coal came up in buckets I just had to push a little button and it would start the machinery going and it would dump the buckets. It was a real easy job and I stayed there for about eighteen months.
We moved back to Craig, Colorado and I went to work for the Greeks. There was a lot of Greeks in that area and I worked for John Populass who was sorta the king of the Greeks there. I took care of his sheep and the pastureland where he grazed them. That's when Beth got yellow jaundice and it turned into black jaundice and she was in the hospital for about a year. There was no medication at that time and we had five or six doctors from all over the country to try to help her. While she was in the hospital, Mr. Populass gave me his pickup truck and told me to spend as much time as possible at the hospital and just dash out to check on things from time to time. He told all of the other Greeks about my troubles and what a good worker I was, and they all came to the hospital every day to see Beth and they all carried their check books in their pockets and they would keep asking me if I needed money. I always said no, but I bet I could have gotten ten thousand dollars out of them if I had asked. Owen was working out for other people at that time. He started working very young. Beth was in the hospital in a little place just north of Craig, I can't recall the name. That was about 1938 or a little later.
After Beth got out of the hospital we moved back to Craig and bought a little home. About a year later, maybe a little longer, Owen was in the coast guard and we decided to go see him. He was up in the Northwest - either Washington or Oregon. We got as far as Ontario, Oregon and Beth took sick again, so we never did get any farther.
Beth was really sick with female trouble this time. We moved down to Nyssa, Oregon, and rented a little house and there was a beauty about that house - it never did have a bathroom. The landlady had a little bathroom in the back of her house and we would have to run out there house the bathroom and to shower, and it was sure cold, and in the winter we had icicles running down our backs. I was working in the sugar factory all that season, then I got a job on a farm down in Homedale, Idaho. I was on this farm about three years as irrigation in the summer and in the winter I would feed stock and fatten up beef, pigs and such things out. We had a little house right on the ranch and Beth moved out there with me.
Then I got a job for the irrigation company as ditch rider or water master, so we moved into Homedale. I would turn the water into the farmers ditches when it was their turn and they would take care of it. I had to keep track of how many feet we used and make sure there were no problems along the canal. The canal was real big - almost like a river - it carried 700 feet of water from the Owyhee Dam. This job lasted about seven years.
Beth and I served as Stake Missionaries while in Homedale. We were very blessed and baptized about seven people and had several families nearly ready when we were released. We enjoyed this work very much.
In Homedale, I was going to work one morning and there was a deep turn just as the road crossed the railroad track. The weeds grew so high that you couldn't see anything. If I had been four inches farther along I would have been all right, but the train hit the rear bumper and spun the car around and threw me out. I had 22 stitches in my forehead and eight in the back of my head. I had a lot of cuts on the back of my neck, but they were not deep, so did not require stitches. I was in the hospital about two weeks at the railroad hospital over at Nampa. I was in the brand new Plymouth coupe that I had bought about a month before. The car was totaled out, but I got another one from the insurance company - a big Buick, but I couldn't make the sharp turns on the ditch with it, so I had to get rid of it and get a smaller car.
Beth's brother-in-law, Bob Allsop, was in the mining business down in Barstow, California. He and a friend had a copper and lead mine and they were going to lose this mine unless they could get someone to run it and use their name. I went down expecting good money, but they used my name as ownership and we worked there about a year and never got a pay day. The friend of Boss's died and the mine property went into litigation, and his wife wanted to sell , but her two sons didn't, so we couldn't get a penny out of them. I got fed up and quit. We lived in Barstow and I drove out to the mine which was about eight miles. Then when I left the mine I went and got a job as custodian of an elementary school, but after three years of that they passed a law that if you was over 70 you had to retire. So they retired me. I got a job at the post office as custodian and on the side line I had seven offices to take care of.
I was operated on in Barstow for two growths on the bottom of my foot. They didn't heal so good, so I went to a specialist and he told me I had infection of the bone. They would shoot stuff in the leg and two of the shots cost $35 each. The rest were only $2, and I took them pretty often. Finally the swelling started going down. It was so swollen that I had to open the seams of my pants to get them on. I was laid up for about thirty days. From then on I had trouble with blood clots in my leg and a lot of trouble with my legs.
Beth took sick real bad again, and she spent a year in and out of the hospital, then she spent a year in there all the time before she died. The bishop kept asking if they could help me with my debts, but I told him it was up to me to pay. I stayed working there about six months after she died and then I had that heart attack and had to quit.
Beth and I served another two-year mission in Barstow. We were released just before Beth took her last illness. I forgot to tell you that Beth and I went to the St. George temple and were sealed 5 May 1914. Beth is buried in Kanaraville.
I left Barstow and came up to Cedar City and rented a little place to sleep in, I ate over to Mel's all the time and I went to Dr. Prestwich and he got me feeling better. For just about a year I had to set up all the time. They wouldn't let me lay down because of my heart. Right now I feel better than I have since I left Barstow. (June 1968)
In 1964 I moved to Salt Lake and in October 16, 1964, I married a widow friend of ours, Mina Jensen Olsen in the Salt Lake Temple for time, and we have been living in her home in Salt Lake since.
After marrying Mina, I have been working as part time custodian at the Poplar Grove 3rd Ward Chapel. I work a little each day until I get tired, then I go home. It's inside work mostly and it keeps me out of mischief.
About the middle of June 1967, I went to the hospital to have a prostrate operation, and ended up having two for the same thing. (I haven't been worth a darn since.) I spent three months in the hospital. Came home once, but had to go right back. But I really feel pretty good if I didn't get tired so easily. But then I will be 77 year old in two months.
Inserted into history:
About the time that Will was in his mid-teens, possibly 15 or 16, the government undertook a project of transporting a small herd of buffalo to the Kaibab Forest with hopes of building up a large herd there. These animals were taken directly from the plains of the mid-west and they did not take kindly to human beings. After a very difficult journey, they arrived in Pintura and lodged the beasts in Gregerson's corral for the night. One enormous bull, fighting frantically for the freedom he feared he was losing, injured his leg very badly during the night. The next morning the government officials decided that he could not possible make the long trek onto the Kaibab Forest, so they left him in Pintura, and they continued on with the six or seven other animals.
This wild buffalo offered great entertainment for the young swains of that area. They would tease him continually, but always from the safety of horseback. The buffalo became affectionately knows as "The Old Crippler" (Refer to the history of George Olds) and proved to be quite harmless while he had this leg injury. After a time of possibly 6 to 8 months, he became able to travel about (during this time he was injured, he had the run of the town and just run loose) and he started back up the Black Ridge with possible intentions of returning to his home. The only problem was that he desired the road and if he saw a vehicle coming he moved to the center of the road and refused to move. He was such a huge beast and with provocation could be very dangerous, so regardless of the terrain, he was left alone, and some way the travelers managed to get past him without stirring up any wrath. Gradually "The Old Crippler" worked his way north and east until the next we heard of him, he was out by Lund, Utah. Again, in spite of the sandy level plains he still ruled he roads causing travelers to detour.
The government was notified of his whereabouts and efforts were made to load him into a railway car to be shipped back to join his herd. Finally, after dozens of attempts had failed to lure him into the car, they sent word to Pintura that if there was anyone down there who had been around him and that he was used to - would they please come up and get that blasted thing loaded into a railroad car. Anticipating a merry adventure, Will and four of his buddies hopped on their ponies and headed toward Lund.
Well, "The Old Crippler" recognized them all right, and it took them seven days of working all day before they got him loaded. After a couple of days they got him into the car and in just a matter of minutes he had that car busted into kindling wood. So then they took these big heavy railroad ties and completely lined another car with them. When the were finished they had walls at least 12 inches thick waiting to try their luck at holding him.
Once again the chore of luring "The Old Crippler" into the car began. They would tease him and get him to chase them and in this way try to get him to run up the ramp and into the car. At the end of the seventh day "The Old Crippler" ran up the ramp and the doors were quickly closed. Everyone stood in complete silence, waiting tensely to see if the can would hold. The noise was thunderous and deafening as "The Old Crippler" fought to get out. After two hours it was decided that the walls of the car would hold, so the train took off to hurry the poor creature to the freedom he had been fighting so frantically for. And five very tired young men mounted their ponies for a more solemn return trip to Pintura.
--------------------------
This history is
copyrighted and is offered for personal use and
research only.
It is not to be reprinted or used for commercial purposes without
written
permission.
Copyright ©2000
Valentine Tribute to Uncle Will Olds
---------
Return toWashington County Biographies Index
Return toWashington County Utah Genealogy and History Page
There have been
visits to this page.
---------------------------------------------------
Copyright ©2000,
2009 by
Cynthia B. Alldredge
(Page design
and coding)