Fun at School

L-R Back: Marilyn Lind, Barbara Baker, Vonda Bird; Front: Dwain Lind (kneeling), Marvel Lind (standing), Noel Nelson (standing), and Doug Lind (kneeling).

When I was in about the third or fourth grade, and Douglas was in sixth or seventh grade, we had been having our lessons as usual.  During the noon hour, about six horses came down the lane by the school house.  Doug was in an adventuresome mode, as he generally was.  I don’t know who made the suggestion that we run the horses into the school yard, but the gate was opened and the horses were run into the school yard.  Doug said, “I’ll get up on the fence in the corner and you crowd the horses into the corner,” which we did.  Doug jumped off of the fence onto the back of one of the horses, I don’t know whether he got hold of the mane or not.  The horse was very startled and started running and bucking.  Doug didn’t stay there very long, but it was very exciting while he was there.  Laurel Hill, the teacher, was a little agitated and made us turn the horses out in the lane again.  I don’t know if any thing was said to the folks or not.

The Old Ford

1919: L-R: John P. Lind, Lynn Clark, Philbert, Oscar & Laurence

On the ranch, in the shed below the road was an old 1916 (?) Ford Touring car, which used to belong to Grandma (Emma) Lind.  I think that it was the one that Uncle Oscar bought and after his death became the property of Grandma.  I don’t know if she ever drove it, but none the less it belonged to her.  Anyway many a happy hour was spent as a young boy as Doug and I pretended to drive the dusty old car.  It had a fold down top on it, four doors and two leather seats, the top was never put down.  I don’t remember if we were ever bank robbers, but we would chase the bank robbers and try to catch them.  Sometimes I would even get to pretend drive and that was very exciting.  We would get to go to many different places on exotic vacations, anyplace that our minds could think of to go.  It was a wonderful old car.

When Oscar was about 16, Dad told the boys they could have the old car if they could get it running.  Oscar and Dwain were the chief mechanics, Doug figured he was as good of help as they could find and Me, I was a good shade tree mechanic, most of my ideas went by unheeded.  After all I was only eight or nine and to older brothers didn’t know much.

The car was pulled out of the shed and work on it started in earnest.  First we got the motor running, because if the motor doesn’t run you can’t go very far.  After the motor was running and bands in the transmission were going, then we decided what to do with the body of the car.  It was decided to strip it down and make it into a pickup type vehicle.  The body was cut off behind the front seat, the back seat and the top were discarded.  A wooden platform was built on the back behind the seat that we could sit or stand on, so now we were ready to try it out.  The tires were no good as they had rotted while sitting in the shed, so the maiden voyage was made on the rims.

One of the interesting things about our “hotrod”, was that it had a Ruxstell gear in the differential.  This was kind of a low speed gear when you pulled on the floor mounted shift lever, giving it a two speed effect, high and low.

After we got tires on our auto, we were able to drive it all over on the roads at the ranch.  Oscar even taught me how to drive it, which I really appreciated.  We took it fishing, coyote hunting and one time we even decided to drive it to Grouse Creek to the 4th of July celebration.  There were about six of us that piled on to it and we were off.  Dwain was the chauffeur for us on that eventful day.  We putted down the road and up the mountain, as we started down the other side everything was going fine.  We came around Lower’s Curve and down to Poison Creek, as we were going down the grade by the creek, it started to pick up speed.  Dwain pushed on the brake and nothing happened, he tried everything he could think of, nothing worked.  We might make it around the gentle curve 1/4 of a mile ahead, but there was no way we could make it around Scott’s curve on ahead and we would go off the grade and down the hill.  The only alternative at this point, was to try and go up over the bank on the left and up the mountain.  Dwain grabbed the Ruxstell gear lever and gave it a hard pull, as he did this, every thing on the car seemed to work.  The sudden jerk almost threw us off, but we had been saved from serious injury or worse.

We went on to Grouse Creek and spent the day visiting with our cousins and friends.  The rest of the day was relatively uneventful.  The trip home was made in good order.

Oscar and Dwain went into the Army in World War II, Dad, felt sorry for a family with several boys in Moulton and gave our car to them.  They got it running and had lots of fun with it.  Us boys were really not very happy campers over the situation, but all turned out well in the end.

Our Trip To Yellowstone

In 1940, after the alfalfa hay was all in the stacks and the fields watered, our family (Philbert’s) and Uncle Raymond’s went to Heglar Canyon, east of Malta, Idaho to buy timber to build two A frame derricks.  After talking to the man who ran the saw mill and making arrangement to get the timber, we headed towards American Falls.  When we got to Highway 30 at Cold Water Camp, Idaho, they stopped to decide what to do and which way to go.  All of the older kids wanted to go to Yellowstone Park.  The folks, said they were not prepared to go to Yellowstone, they didn’t have enough ready cash to make that trip.  We had all of our camping gear, so the kids didn’t see why we couldn’t go.  It was finally decided that we would go as far as Blackfoot and see if they could cash some checks and if they could, we would go to the Park. 

Just outside of Pocatello, Uncle Raymond’s car overheated and stopped.  We received permission to camp in a freshly cut alfalfa field.  There were a lot of trains running on the railroad tracks, just across the road south of us.  There was an airport just north of us, they were training pilots, just prior to World War II.  They flew just as long as they could see in the evening and started as soon as they could see in the morning.  We, Country Kids, had never seen so many planes or trains.  We lay on our stomachs with our hands under our chins and counted the cars on the trains as they went by.  Between the planes and trains and kids counting, I don’t think any body got much sleep, but we had fun.

In Blackfoot, Dad and Uncle Raymond both got them a hair cut from Wayne Bird, who had lived in the Junction Valley some years earlier.  He was glad to cash a check for each of them, so we were off on our great adventure.  I don’t know how Aunt Mildred made out, Nila was only a few weeks old and they didn’t have disposable diapers back then.  At night they would pull the cars side by side, away’s apart, we would lay out our beds between them.  Dad and Uncle Raymond would sleep, one on each end, Aunt Mildred slept in the car with Nila, I don’t recall where Mother slept.  We kids just slept and didn’t worry about a thing.  Our meals were cooked over the campfire.

As we left Yellowstone, we drove through the Tetons and down through Jackson Hole.  When we arrived at the Snake River, we were amazed to see the bridge we would have to drive on to cross the  river.  As I remember it, it was just planking on poles driven and used as piles.  Two sets of planking about three feet wide, with a gap of about three feet in the center.  There were no guard rails on either side.  The road going down the canyon was under construction and very rough.  I don’t know how many were afraid to cross this bridge, but I certainly was.  I remember putting a quilt over my head and praying that we would be safe.  If we were going to fall in the river, I didn’t want to know about it.  The dad’s were good drivers and made it across safely.

When we got to Alpine, Wyoming, we camped for the night.  Some of the kids soon found a pretty black and white animal.  We were busy chasing it, trying to catch it.  When people saw what we were doing they started yelling, telling us to leave it alone.  We chased that scared skunk through a fellows campfire, upsetting his coffee pot in the fire.  The man wasn’t happy at all with us, our folks, well, they were grateful that we didn’t get sprayed.  We did have a good time on the trip.

The Phonograph Motor

When I was about three years of age, we went to Emerson, Idaho one day to visit Uncle Frank and Aunt Annie Morgan.  Uncle Frank gave us an old phonograph motor.  It was a wonderful thing.  We would put string around all the glass knobs on the kitchen cupboards and then around the phonograph motor, this would turn all the knobs on the cupboard.  This was our factory.  You could wind it up, tip it up on it's side and it would crawl along the floor.  I felt that I was just as able as any one else when it came to running this wonderful machine.  One day, Mother and I were upstairs in the East bedroom.  She was quilting, I was playing with the motor.  I had it turned up on it's side, as one of the big wheels would turn around, there was a hole that would come appear.  As this hole would come around, I would stick my finger in the hole and jerk it out.  I had done it several times, before Mother saw me.  She told me that I had better not do it any more, as it would grab my finger.  I waited and watched and when she wasn't watching, I stuck in my finger again and it grabbed me.  I immediately began to scream and cry and holler.  Mother came running, she couldn't back the motor up, so she left me crying and ran down the stairs, outside to the shop, got a hammer, ran back to her screaming child and proceeded to break the motor to pieces so she could get my finger out.  When the older boys came home from school, they were really upset with me, because I was the one who caused the motor to be broken.  In thinking about the situation, I think that one of the older boys must have showed me how to do this wonderful daring thing.  Nevertheless, I still have the scar to remind me of that wintery day.

Our Pet Deer

Having grown up in Junction Valley on the ranch, we were surrounded by the high mountains with the large reservoir, mountain streams and broad blue skies.  We enjoyed a country lifestyle with our cousins close by.  We had many adventures with wild animals, many varieties of birds, and fishing was a favorite pastime.  We liked to catch the crawdads at the creek and make willow whistles.  We had trap lines in the winter and in the spring we waited for the eggs in the magpie nests to hatch, for the bounty was better on the little birds.  It was a great childhood.

The folks first home was a little three room house near Grandma Lind at the Lind homestead.  The joy of having a pet deer began early in life, probably even with Dad and his brothers and sisters.  When Oscar was only about two years old, he liked to feed the bottle of milk to his pet fawn and walk around holding on to it’s tail.  They were friends.  Mother said that she always knew when Tom Sherry was in the neighborhood, because the hair on the pet deer’s back would stand straight up and then the dog would start barking.  For some reason the deer didn’t like Tom.

I remember us having several pet deer that we loved, one about every year.  Dad would go out riding and find a little spotted fawn laying under the bushes and bring it home. We would feed them on the bottle and they would follow us around and live around in the yard and pastures.  As they grew up they would take off to live in the wild of the hills.

One Sunday in the fall when I was about seven years old, we were on our way home from church at the school house and as we got up by Uncle Alex’s place we spied a buck deer with horns standing in the pasture by the side of the road.  We called for Dad to stop the car so we could get out to see him.  We were sure he was one of our pets.  Dad stopped, but warned us to stay back away from him because he was a wild animal and not one of ours.  But we were sure he was as we all hurried out of the car in our Sunday clothes and started toward him.  He stood still watching us and we were able to walked right up to him and pet him.  He remembered us!  We were so excited to see him all grown up.  We didn’t want to leave, but the folks finally convinced us to go home for dinner.

We always worried that our pet deer would get shot with the wild deer at deer season time.  We had one that we raised that had four prongs on each side of his horns and we wanted to protect him.  When deer season came along that fall, Dad got a big piece of red cotton cloth and tied around his horns so he had a big red bonnet.  It saved his live for that year, at least.

The habit of having a pet deer continued down through Virgene’s teen age years as well.

George Bronson Family Memories

In the Deseret News on November 4, 2010, we ran across the obituary of Mary Lou Bronson Salter Galer.  It included the following paragraph of her birth and younger years: “Mary Lou was born April 30, 1926 at the E. Y. Ranch near Almo, Idaho to George William Bronson and Luella Jones She was the third of seven children.  She grew up in a log cabin and endured many hardships as a child with her family in the mountains of Southern Idaho.  Through this difficulty she learned to be courageous and was loyal to the end.” 

It went on to tell of her accomplishments in life after moving with her family to Salt Lake in 1940.  Our thoughts turned back to the years that the family lived in Moulton, on the north corner of the road next to the school and were our friends.  Dwain, Doug and I reminisced yesterday of those days long ago.  Dwain remembered the day of his baptism at the Lynn Reservoir as he was joined for baptism by cousin Lucille, Mary Lou Bronson and her cousin Patty Lee Updike.  The Bronson family attended church with us at the Junction School.  George was a counselor in the Bishopric with Uncle Laurence as Bishop and Uncle Vance the other counselor.

I recalled the summer that the older Bronson girls decided that the Lind boys needed some “culture” in their lives.  Mother would drive Eldon and I down to the Lynn School.  Mary Lou taught us tumbling, bringing the mattresses from their beds to serve as mats.  Georgie Gay taught us tap dancing.  Doug doesn’t remember the dance lessons, but told of often attending the dances at the Moulton school and recalled that the Bronson girls could really dance.  Sometimes the dances were held at the Junction School.  We talked of the little local group who furnished the music.  The musicians included the Lloyds, George Bronson playing the violin and Chester Bullers who was known as the left handed fiddle player. Mother and Laura Pearl Bronson played the piano with the group.  Their music was great to dance to.  Laura Pearl always said her goal was to play the Tabernacle organ in Salt Lake City some day.

The Bronson Family were all girls and our family was mostly boys and we “ kind’a got paired up”.  VaLois was the oldest then Laura Pearl and Oscar, Mary Lou and Dwain.  Georgie Gay was paired with Doug and I “inherited” Ethel May.  George mentioned to Dad one day about the possibility of the union of the two families in marriage and Dad commented that that should be left up to the kids themselves, and it was.  One son was born on the end of the Bronson family and they named him Simon William Brennon Bronson.  We called him “SWBB” for short.

Mother was the postmistress and had the little post office on our back porch.  George Bronson was the mail carrier.  The mail was delivered three times a week.  George would ride his saddle horse to Oakley to get the mail and return home the first day. The next day he would ride up the valley to Lynn and deliver the mail to Mother, usually arriving “conveniently” just in time for dinner.  In the winter it was a long hard ride in the snow.  He would come into the kitchen and walk across the room and pick up our family hair brush and pull it through his tousled hair.  A thin leather held the wire bristles in place, but they layed down under the pressure of your hand.  Doug told that one winter day we decided that we needed to fix the brush “so it would get his attention.”  We set about to fix it by replacing the thin leather with a heavy piece that would hold the metal bristles erect.  We then waited for George to arrive on his next visit and to do his customary hair brushing.  He picked up the brush and brought it down applying the customary pressure which suddenly brought tears to his eyes.  The next time he used it he put it on his head very gingerly.  It became known as "George’s brush" after that. 

Doug remembered the Bronson family was having trouble with a leaky roof.  So they put a thin layer of cement on the shingles and that fixed the leaking problem.

The Bronson family left Moulton in 1940 and we lost track of them.  I remember Luella Bronson payed us a visit one time with her daughter, Ethel who had married.

Some memories of World War II

I remember coming home from Church on December 7, 1941 and listening to the radio coverage of the attack on Pearl Harbor that morning by the Japanese forces. That event forced the United States to enter World War II.

Life at home went on mostly the same, but we had friends and family who left for military service. Gerald Lind went into the Navy. Keith Nelson married Ila in the Logan Temple just before he was drafted and she lived with her parents while he went into the service. My cousins, Verl Toyn and Rulon Kimber were both killed during the war.

You can imagine the fear and concern my parents felt when Oscar and Dwain were drafted into the Army. Dwain wanted to sign up for the Navy, but Dad said no. Before reporting for duty, Oscar and Dwain attended the Logan Temple with Mother and Dad. They left within a few months of each other. Oscar went to basic training at Fort Ord in California and Dwain went to Fort Hood in Texas. We posted our gold stars in the window and prayed we wouldn’t have to exchange them for black stars. Both ended up serving as cooks, Oscar in Japan and Dwain in Italy.

I remember being lonely and concerned when they left. We waited anxiously for their letters. Doug and I found ourselves busier around the place, especially after Dad got sick. Dad got really sick for a while with Inflamatory Rheumatism. It started out with stiff joints and swelled feet, but got worse and worse. For most of the summer and all winter, Dad couldn’t do much work. He spent a lot of time with his feet propped up in front of the fireplace. Doug was attending Bear River High School in Tremonton and came home as often as possible. Dad gave approval for me to take 8th grade again, so I could be at home and help that winter. We couldn’t have done it without the help of our extended family, friends and neighbors.

In 2001, Brigham Young University requested information from WW II veterans about their wartime experiences. My daughter, Paula, heard about the request and had information sent to Oscar and Dwain. Dwain mailed his information directly to BYU, but Oscar sent his information to Paula for her to forward on. I spoke with Kathryn last week and received permission to post Oscar’s experiences. You can read them by clicking here.