In the year 1893 at Trenton, Cache County, Utah, on the 24th day of February, a baby boy was born to David Hill and Emma Flora Wheeler. I was this boy, the first child of this good couple.

When I was still a baby my parents moved to Tilden, Idaho, (this later was called Sterling). My father took out a homestead on the banks of the Snake River. At first we lived in what was called a dugout. This was a room dug out of a hill so that the hill could form three sides of the room. Father built a roof overhead and a front wall. Father panned gold from the Snake River to eak out a living. In those days you really worked hard to have the bare necessities of life. My father tells me that at onetime a cow or horse wandered over and tried to walk across the roof of this room. Of course the roof caved in. The animal landed in the middle of the room and the roof had to be rebuilt. I believe we spent our first winter in this dugout. Father then built a small room on the front of the dugout. My younger brother, George, and sister Laura were born here.

The summer of 1898 when I was five years old, my parents fixed up their covered wagon, loaded bedding and food, hitched up their team of horses, and took their three small children and started out for Logan, Utah. They camped out along the way. On November 10, 1898, they went through the Logan Temple and were sealed for time and all eternity. They also had us three children sealed to them. Father then worked in the grain harvest to earn money for the return trip home.

After this their fourth child, Howard, was born. About 1900 they moved to Rudy, Fremont County, Idaho. Here a fifth child was born, another brother for me, H. Ray. From here they moved to Pocatello, Bannock County, Idaho. It was here that I finally had the opportunity to attend school. I was nine years old. I was much larger than the other boys in my class. It was about this time that my mother and I both had a severe attack of rheumatism and I also had the measles. Between the two illnesses and medicine given me, I lost a good portion of my hearing. While living here my father worked on the railroad as a boiler maker.

In the spring we moved to Blackfoot, Bingham County, Idaho. The Blackfoot River was a mile wide from the spring floods. We drove in water for some time before we came to the bridge. But we finally made the crossing okay. Father bought a place in Blackfoot and we lived in a tent the first summer while they were building a house. After he got one room built we still slept in the tent until he could get more rooms built. this was slow as he did his own building and money was scarce. While living here, two more brothers, Elmer and Clarence, were born.

The remainder of the schooling I had I attended while living here. School was hard for me due to my being hard of hearing. My hearing was so bad that I could neither join in the play or the conversation. We had all the eight grades in the same room, under the same teacher. Each pupil was in whatever grade he was capable of in each subject. I hated school and stayed out at every opportunity. I used to get out early in the spring help with the plowing and planting. I also stayed out in the fall to help with the harvest. When I quit attending school I was in the third grade in some subjects and on up to about the fifth grade in other subjects.

In spite of our hard work it was very difficult to make ends meet. I remember one Christmas when Dad was out in the lavas getting wood. (Wood was the only thing we had to burn in those days.) He also could sell some wood to help with the expenses. Mother was not well enough to go anywhere and the Christmas shopping had to be done. So mother gave me two dollars (all she had) and sent me to town to do the shopping. There were nine of us in the family. I got some small toys for the little ones and small presents for the older ones, also some candy and nuts. We really enjoyed that Christmas even though it was a skimpy one.

Father rented a farm at Riverton, Idaho. We lived there for a short time, then moved to Wapello, Bingham County, Idaho. I was now old enough to work and help support the family.

About this time Mother, Laura, and I had a severe case of smallpox. I was completely covered with smallpox and was very ill. Father had been vaccinated and he took care of us. The other boys lived in a tent so they would not get the disease.

While living in Wapello my last brother, Merlin, was born. He was the eighth child born to my parents--their last child.

When my health was good enough, I hired out to other people to do their plowing. In those days most of the plowing was done with a hand plow pulled by a team of horses. These plows were called "foot burners", as you walked behind them holding on to the handles to keep them in the ground. Many, many miles I've walked behind these plows. I would plow about two acres a day, then harrow it twice. We walked behind the harrow as well as the plow. At first I used a twelve inch plow. When the fourteen inch plow came out, I got one of those and used three head of horses. I could cover a little more ground with this plow.

The first summer in Wapello, Father planted alfalfa between the sagebrush bushes. When it got to growing good we grubbed out the sagebrush and planted more alfalfa. We had a good stand of hay all the while we lived there. The folks who bought the place when we left plowed up the alfalfa and no one has been able to get anything to grow there since, due to the sandy soil there and the way the wind blows.

I had quite regular attacks of rheumatism for several years. The pain was severe and at times I was very ill with these attacks. When I was about fourteen years of age my rheumatism seemed to leave me. I did not have it again until I was a grown man.

Those years were good ones. I was very poor but I could work and I enjoyed it. I remember those summer mornings when I would get up at four o'clock in the morning and go tend my water, then milk eight cows and eat breakfast. From then until six o'clock in the evening I worked in the fields. Then came the chores again and usually I had water to tend again. About ten o'clock my day would end and I would go to bed, tired but satisfied with the thought of having accomplished something worthwhile.

When I was about eighteen years old I read about a herb that would help people who were hard of hearing. I talked it over with my parents and decided to send and get those herbs. They had to be smoked in a pipe. I was very careful that my younger brothers did not see me smoke this pipe. It didn't seem to help very much. Later on when I was working in the harvest with a large group of men, they told me that if I would smoke it would help my hearing. So I started smoking (something I regretted the rest of my life.) For a while it did seem to help. I remember one morning I was out tending water. The soil was sandy and we had to put the sand in burlap sacks to keep the dam from washing out. I had been working for some time, so sat down on the ditch bank to rest for a spell and have a smoke. As I sat there I realized that I could hear a trickling noise. Soon I discovered it was the water rippling along in the ditch that I could hear. This was the first time since my hearing had gone bad that I was able to hear water running. It was also about the last time that I ever heard it trickle in the ditch.

When I was about twenty one years old I had another real bad spell of rheumatism. I was sick nearly all winter. I had not been outside for three months but this day was very warm and I felt good. Dad was very busy with the spring work. He had to spread the manure, plow the fields, and get the crops planted. There was a harness that needed mending so I sat in the granary doorway in the sun and out of the wind and mended the harness. I was not out long and it made me feel good to be doing something useful. Well, I got the harness mended and enjoyed the afternoon, but I wasn't able to go out again for another three months. I had been out too long. That is when I learned patience.

One evening my brothers went jackrabbit hunting. There were a lot of jackrabbits in the sand hills. I was unable to go so I sat on the porch in the twilight and shot the rabbits that got away from them as they went by.

While we lived in Wapello my brothers and I did a lot of beet thinning. This was hard work. I, being the oldest, would take the lead row and keep the rest moving. I always tried to help teach my brothers how to work by example, not by force. One half acre is a lot of beets to thin in a day. We figured on making an average of that all through the season. My brother Clarence said I worked the stuffing out of him.

Most of the people had open faced wells. They consisted of a shaft about four feet square and as deep as you had to go to reach water. This was many, many feet deep. They built a curbing three or four feet above the ground, and the framework still higher with a crossbar over the top. Attached to the crossbar was a pulley. A rope was threaded through the pulley and a bucket tied to the end of the rope. When you wanted water for any of the numerous uses, such as drinking, cooking, washing clothes, bathing, watering the stock, and so forth, you lowered the bucket down into the bottom of the well, filling it with water, then pulled it back up again. We also kept milk or whatever we wanted to be kept cool down in these wells. Occasionally these wells needed cleaning. To do this a man had to be lowered into the well.

On one such an occasion, our bishop, Christopher Merkley, went down into his well to clean it out. The well caved in on him. Luckily he was not completely buried. His head and part of his body remained above the dirt. My father and I went to help, as did most of the community. It was decided a new shaft would have to be dug beside the old one in order to rescue him. We roped off a large area so the spectators could not get close to the well and cause another cave-in. We took long planks that would reach across the well and far beyond. We walked on these planks so our weight wouldn't be on the ground. While some of us were digging others built the framework, putting a few boards on the bottom to start. When the hole was down a few feet, we set the framework in, then added boards at the top as went to keep the sides from caving in. We had to be very careful so that more dirt didn't cave in and finish burying Bishop Merkley. We worked in shifts around the clock. As I remember it took us about thirty-six hours. When we finally got down to where Bishop Merkley was, we found his foot was caught under a large rock. It looked like another cave-in was coming, so we took a two-by-four, put it under his knee, and over the board on the new shaft and pried his foot loose. When we dragged him into the new shaft and the people standing around could see that he was free, everyone whooped and hollered. His wife was in the house at the time and nearly fainted as she thought the well had caved in on him again. His foot took a long time to heal. In fact he remained a cripple the rest of his life.

Another time the Snake River got real high and started flooding the neighbor's crops. We got together and really worked filling bags with sand to build a levee to save their crops. I really enjoyed helping other people.

One day a big storm was brewing. I had a friend visiting with me. My mother and sister had been somewhere with the horse and buggy. When they saw the storm coming they hurried home. As soon as they drove in, my father, my friend and I pitched right in to get the horse and buggy put in shelter. One took the horse, the other two the buggy. At one point we were all three in line, just then the thunder roared and a heavy bolt of lightning struck near by, so near, in fact, that it was felt by all three of us. Father felt it in his head. He had a headache for two or three days. I felt it in my chest, and my friend felt it in his legs. After the storm was over, we went to see if it had caused any damage. We found that the bolt of lightning was so strong it had pulled the nails halfway out of our well curbing. We felt real lucky and blessed to still be alive.

I was a ward teacher and really enjoyed going teaching. I can remember when Ozro Allen's wife died. I was called to go sit with her body one night. This was the custom in those days. This was not a pleasant job, but was one that had to be done. There were no morticians.

A neighbor of ours, Tyson Tucker, came home from his mission to England. He had met a girl there by the name of Jessie. He thought that we would make good mates, so he started us writing to each other. As time went on he sent to England and had Jessie come to his home in America. He invited me to come over for the evening. During the evening his wife served us each a quarter of pie. Jessie was telling us about her homeland. We ate our pie as slowly as we could. Suddenly she noticed we all had our pie eaten and she had not even started hers. She quickly cut her pie into just four pieces and gulped it down. I had a very hard time to keep from busting out laughing. I didn't care for this girl at all and told Tyson so. His wife said she could not imagine why he ever thought we were mated for each other.

While we were living in Wapello my father, my brothers that were old enough, and I started working in the sugar factory. We ran our farm in the summer and worked at the factory in the fall. My job was fluming beets. This consisted of shoveling beets onto a conveyor belt so they would go into the factory where they were made into sugar. This was a hard, cold job and my rheumatism started acting up. My brother Ray worked inside and he talked me into going inside to work. I was put on the third press, where they pressed the ground beets through a thick canvas. We worked twelve-hour shifts. They had a coal furnace for heat to make their steam. The coal was shoveled in by hand. My job was to shovel coal to keep the furnace going. It was a hard, hot job, but it sweated out my rheumatism and I was able to continue to work. My brother George was chief chemist and my father was the boiler room foreman. We all worked for twenty to twenty-six cents an hour.

One winter I went to Pocatello and got a job on the railroad. At that time trains were also run with coal heated steam engines. Everything near the railroad was black with soot. They had an old shed that they had made into a small room. I rented this to live in. I lived far enough from my work that I needed some kind of transportation. So I decided to buy me a bicycle. I heard of a man that had one for sale, so I went to see him. The bicycle was an out-sized one, but this man convinced me that since I was large for my age I needed a large bicycle, so I bought it. I proved to be very hard and tiring to ride, but since I couldn't afford another one I had to get along with it.

As my grandparents, Levi Lincoln and Ellen Lavender Wheeler, were getting too old to be off by themselves, we decided to build a house near us on the farm in Wapello for them to live in. There son, Burt Wheeler, was a carpenter, so he supervised the job. Father, my brothers, and I did all the work. We built a nice little two-room bungalow. When we got the house finished I took a team and wagon and drove to Rudy, Idaho, eight miles out of Rigby. It took all day to go one way. My uncles brought their outfits and we loaded all my grandparents' belongings in the wagons. This took anther day. The next morning we came down with our loads. We stopped in Idaho Falls to eat. My uncles ordered the meal. It sure wasn't enough to fill me up, but I didn't say anything. My father told me later that I should have told them and got another order of food. This trip took a total of three days. My grandparents were very happy in their little home. Later on we built two more rooms into their house. They lived by us the rest of their lives.

When I was in my twenty fourth year I was drafted into the U. S. Army and was sent to Fort Lewis, Washington. It was called Camp Lewis then. Dr. W. W. Beck was our family doctor at the time. He was the one that passed me for the service. My family nor I could ever figure why he sent me as he knew about my hearing problem. But they need men so badly that as the saying goes, "They passed everyone that was still warm." While I was there I was in Co. B426 Field Artillery. Being in field artillery was really hard due to my lack of hearing. The officers seemed to think that I was just putting on being deaf to keep from fighting. One morning they had a group all packed and lined up to go overseas. I was one of that group. They gave me an order that I did not hear. I told them that I didn't hear it, so they sent me once more to the ear doctor. I had been to many doctors, but this one was very gruff as he did not believe me. He started to examine my ears and he must have found something (although I never found out what it was) because he changed his attitude. From then on he was very gentle with me. They decided then and there to give me an honorable medical discharge. I was all ready to leave for home when we found we were quarantined for Meningitis. We couldn't leave camp for six weeks. I was in the army for a total of six months. During my stay at Camp Lewis I often went to the YMCA camp for entertainment. I took my turn on KP, lantern patrol, and other duties assigned me.

After I got home from Camp Lewis I bought a team of horses and a slip scraper and hired out to help build the Government Canal on the Blackfoot Reservation. I received $10 a day for my team, scraper and myself and thought I was earning good wages.

I sure did hate to milk cows and got out of it whenever I could. How I remember one old cow we had. She was really a mean one to milk. One morning Dad told Clarence to mild this cow. This was when Clarence was just a kid, and he fussed until Dad let him off. He then told Howard to milk this cow. Howard picked up a club and beat the cow, then sat down to milk. Our barn then was made by build two wire fences about two or three feet apart, filling it up between with straw, then building a roof over the top. There was a partition between the cow barn and horse barn made in the same manner. That cow stood so good for Howard that Clarence couldn't stand it. So Clarence came into the horse barn, picked up the pitch fork and poked the handle through a hole in the fence, giving the cow a jab in the ribs. Of course the cow jumped, knocked Howard over, and spilled the milk. Howard had no idea what had happened. I had to work real hard to keep from busting out laughing.

The summer of 1919 my brother Howard was called on a mission. We all agreed to help earn the money so he could go. That fall we contracted to put up a large field of hay to raise the money needed to get him ready to leave. There was my father, brothers, and myself who agreed to work and donate the money for his mission. We hired a few other men to help. Two of these men, who were close friends, found out what we were doing. They, too, donated their time to the missionary fund. Howard filled a good mission. It was well worth the effort that we had put forth to send him.

My sister Laura married Will Ransom. He had twin sisters, Elvina and Elvira. I got acquainted with them and started courting Elvina. After about a year of courtship, during which time many enjoyable things happened, I married Elvina Ransom on July 2, 1920. Elvina and I had a double wedding with Mary Burton and Roy Smith in the Logan Temple.

Money was really short and I couldn't find work that winter so Elvina and I lived with Laura and Will in Blackfoot. When spring came I finally got work again and we rented the other half of the house they lived in and moved to ourselves. In the fall, before we lived with Laura and Will, I worked in the Sugar Factory and we rented a small apartment in Blackfoot. I walked from the apartment to work. As I would walk along a feeling would come over me and I couldn't help feeling that we wouldn't be together very long. Soon the Sugar Factory closed.

My wife and I were very happy together, but our happiness was short-lived. It only lasted eleven short months. As the time grew near for our first baby to be born my wife's mother came to stay with us for a while. My wife gave birth to a lovely baby daughter, but my wife was very ill. She had albumen that turned into Bright's Disease. When the baby was a week old, Elvina started taking convulsions. We called my parents and Brother Earnest Hale, a long-time friend of the family. Elvina was administered to, Brother Hale being mouthpiece. Brother Hale promised Elvina that she would live. Her Patriarchal Blessing also promised her that she would live to raise sons and daughters in Zion. With all this, in just a few short hours she was dead. This shook my faith greatly. It took a long time before I got back to myself and regained my faith in the Church. She died when her baby was just eight days old. My father and mother took the baby and I home to live with them. We named the baby Elvina for her mother. My mother raised her until she was ten years old, at which time Mother died. During Elvina's first few weeks my sister, having a nursing baby, would nurse Elvina part of the time to help her get a start. We also fixed oatmeal water and the cream from cows milk. Ours cows were dry at the time, so a good neighbor, George Cobbley, let us get milk from him. Everyone was really good to the baby and I, but this was a really hard time for me.

We had only one sister, so when my little daughter came along my brothers accepted her as a sister and were real good to her. In fact they spoiled her to quite an extent. I remember one day when one of us emptied the ashes. She ran through them with her bare feet. They weren't hot enough to really burn her, but she cried and my brothers came running from different directions. They asked her why she went through the ashes. She said, "I wanted to see if dem was hot, and dem was."

In 1923, when my baby was still small, we moved to Wilson, Bingham County, Idaho. While living here I got a job as a traveling grocery salesman. I sold for the "Hitchcox Hill Co.". I traveled around with my team and white-topped buggy.

The next year we moved to the Fort Hall Indian Reservation. We rented four hundred acres of farm land. Here, too, we fixed a place for my grandmother to live. My grandfather had passed away while I was at Camp Lewis. Here, as usual, we had to work very hard. We worked long hours in the fields, plus chores and such. When the work eased up in the fall I got a job running a milk route for Kraft Cheese Factory. Between my father and I we kept a milk route for several years.

While living here my Grandmother Wheeler died. Later we had a real bad siege of typhoid fever. Three of my brothers, Elmer, Clarence and Merlin, and my daughter Elvina were all down at one time. We put the ones that were ill in Grandma's house and the well ones stayed in the other house. These houses were really close together. As we were still farming, we had two or three streams of water to take care of. After they started getting better, Merlin and Elvina both had back sets and we nearly lost them. During this trying time there were two families living close by that were really neighbors, the Seth Browns and the Dan Maurers. Many times one couple or the other would come in and take over so my mother and father could get some rest. We were really thankful for these good people. They were close friends throughout the remainder of my life. They played a big part in our lives. We were really thankful to our Heavenly Father when this siege was over.

One fall our ward bought an old school house and converted it into a church house. In order to get the money for it they took a job at the sugar factory on the night shift. These were twelve hour shifts and we were very busy in the fall harvest when the bishop came and asked Clarence to take a shift, so we told him if he could get someone else to go we would pay them wages. But he said he didn't want someone else, he wanted us. We went, along with several other men. All night the whistles screamed for more beets. We really worked. One by one the men gave out and went home. There was only one man besides Clarence and I that lasted the night. By morning we were really exhausted. We went home, rested a few hours and went on with our farming. Just a few days later the bishop came for us to take another shift. Working on the farm all day and shoveling beets all night was a real job. After taking a second shift we were more than exhausted. We lay down to get a few hours rest. As I was dozing off I said to Clarence, "I sure hope I never get this far in debt to the Church again."

Along with the hard times there were also the good ones. We used to have real good dances in the old Gibson School house. Sometimes we danced to the tune of a player piano, other times a fiddle. These dances lasted until the wee hours of the morning. All the family went to them. They would set two benches facing each other, take some quilts and make beds for the babies and the younger children. Everyone joined in the dancing and we really had a jolly good time. We had most of these in the winter and traveled to and from with a team and bob sleigh. We had our dates, too, for these dances. One time Clarence had a whole load of young folks to take home. It took him quite a while. That night I had gone home with the folks. As I went out to start the chores, Clarence was just driving in. I knew he must be very cold, so I told him to go on in and I would take care of the horses for him. (Clarence told this story after Earl's death. He said he would never forget how much he appreciated Earl taking care of his team as he was almost froze by the time he got home.)

Clarence and I worked together and had fun together. When Clarence was going with Myrtle, I went with her sister Vera. One time we had a double date. We took our Model T Ford and went up in the mountains on Wolverine Creek for a picnic. On the way home we were showing off and got stuck in the sand. Clarence and I had to get out and push the car out. If you've ever been stuck in the sand you know what this means.

Later on we went to a dance. There was one girl there that was really a fast stepper. I danced a fast dance with her. She went so fast I had to hold onto her belt to keep up. I told Clarence later that I felt just like when we were pushing the car out of the sand. We really got a good laugh out of that one.

We raised lots of wheat while living on the reservation. Clarence and I spent about two months on the threshing crew. We exchanged work with the neighbors and paid for any difference in time. They did likewise.

The 400 acre farm got to be too much for us and we rented different farms. One year I rented twenty acres and Clarence twenty. We worked together and divided the proceeds. I planted potatoes on my twenty. We got our seed from the Blackfoot Potato Growers Association. For every two sacks of seed in the spring we were to give back three branded bags of number one potatoes in the fall. We worked hard and had a bumper crop but the price was low that fall. We didn't have any cellars, so we put them in pits. To do this you dug a big hole in the field, filled it with spuds, then covered it over with vines, dirt and straw. When we decided to sell we sorted spuds for a month or more. The company then sorted them over and put the number ones in bonded bags. We ended up owing the company ten dollars and hauling the balance of our potato crop to the dump. All we had to show for our summer's work on our forty acres of land was hay to feed our stock through the winter.

While living on the reservation my mother became very ill with what was then known as Addison Disease. This was a disease where a gland stopped functioning and the person starved to death. Very little was known about this illness and how to treat it. We had doctors from back east and all over. She was ill for two years preceding her death. The last few months the disease progressed very rapidly. Clarence and his wife Myrtle moved in with us to help take care of Mother and Elvina. They stayed until after Mother's death in 1931. This was a very hard period of time for me. My mother suffered severely and there was very little we could do to relieve her suffering. She got so she could not lie down and it was hard for her to breathe. During all these hard times Maurers and Browns continued to prove themselves real friends.

After my mother's death there was just my father, youngest brother Merlin, Elvina and I left at home. Clarence and Myrtle went back to their own home. My sister Laura and her family came to visit for a while, as her husband was working away from home. We needed someone to cook and help with Merlin and Elvina as they were both still young. Father thought it would be nice to have Laura stay on with us. They lived with us until both Father and I remarried about three years later. Mixing all these families together wasn't easy. It took a lot of patience and work by all. Elvina was a bit spoiled and Merlin never ceased to be on her side. Laura tried hard to be fair with all but there were plenty of ups and downs.

I spent a lot of time with Clarence and Myrtle. I could pour my heart out to them and they understood. One winter Clarence herded sheep. I passed by with my milk route and would often stop for dinner on my way home. Their second boy, Dell, was just six months old. They had to tie him on the bed so he wouldn't fall and get hurt. As soon as I came in I would start sympathizing with him. He would cry and I would untie him and play with him for a while. He got so that as I drove up he would start fussing.

Along about this time I owned a nice sorrel mare. Dad had a brown gelding. We teamed them together and were they full of spirit. We were very fussy who drove them. They really could pull. Clarence was about the only one we would let drive them. He would hook them up to the bob-sled every morning to haul hay and feed the stock. (We were a family that was proud of our horses. If we got a balky horse we soon traded it off for a better one.)

I got a job driving milk truck for Challenge Cheese Factory at Idaho Falls. In order to do this job I bought me a new Chevy truck. That winter was a bad one. The temperature dropped to forty degrees below zero. It was so cold that I could not start my truck in the mornings. Clarence would drive the team and sleigh up behind the truck in such a way that the end of the tongue on the sleigh would fit against the crossbar on the truck. The horses would put their heads to one side and push the truck until it started. When it started, I drove off to my milk route and he went back to feeding the cattle.

In the spring of 1934, while I was running the milk route, a young lady who was visiting one of the families on my route asked me for a ride to town so she could return home. Of course I readily agreed. As we talked I became very interested in her. I told her that I was a widower with a young daughter, was looking for a wife, would like to keep company with her for a while, and if we could get along we could get married. She agreed to go with me. Before long I knew that I loved her and wanted her for my wife, but it took a little effort to convince her that I was the one for her. We married June 6, 1934, in the Logan Temple, seven weeks from the day we met. My father had also decided to remarry. We had a double wedding on my father's birthday. Several of the newspapers, both in Idaho and Utah, published articles about father and son having a double wedding.

The first summer we were married I worked for the CCC Camp on Mount Putman near Pocatello, Idaho. It was a government job. We took a truck load of Indians up to the camp on Sunday afternoon and brought them back on Friday evening or Saturday morning. During the week I hauled the men and equipment to and from their place of labor.

I had quit smoking so we could be married in the Temple, but working with all these men who smoked was too much temptation and I started again. This nearly broke my wife's heart. I regretted this all the rest of my life, but was never quite strong enough to overcome this bad habit, though I tried several times. I always taught my children that it was wrong and that once you started the habit it was very difficult to quit.

When I got through working in the mountains we bought a one house from my brother, pitched a tent with a board floor and sides beside it, and lived out on the farm on the Fort Hall Indian Reservation. Our first winter was spent there.

At Thanksgiving time we had Elvina's tonsils out. They were very bad, and she was ill all winter. Dora was quite miserable with her first pregnancy, too, so it was a hard winter. May 2, 1935, our baby daughter, Daveen, was born. Two and a half months later, July 18, 1935, my beloved daughter Elvina passed away. It was very hard for me to lose her.

Before the year was over I had all my teeth pulled. I was really ill for two weeks after having the last eight front ones pulled at one sitting.

October 26, 1936, a little son, Ralph Earl, was born to us. That was a bad winter. Beginning New Year's night we had a blizzard that lasted ten days. It snowed and blew and drifted for five days from the south, then turned around and came from the north another five days. By that time we were really snowed in. Dad and I were still running the milk route. We went to town one day with the team and wagon, but had to leave the wagon on the way home, go home and get the sleigh, and go back after the milk cans. We had to dig steps down into our barns, well, and house. To make matters even worse the temperature dropped to forty-three below zero. Dad made a shelter over the front of the sleigh and put a little kerosene stove in it to keep from freezing. During that cold snap we gathered in the middle room of the house and kept our little coal heater red hot day and night to keep warm. We were snowed in for two months.

That spring, 1936, we rented another farm on the reservation. We always called it the "tar paper house" because the outside of it was covered with tar paper. We had a government farm improvement loan to get machinery and such, so we would be able to farm. Until this time my father and I had been farming together.

The following fall we got a chance to rent a farm and twelve milk cows on shares from Brother and Sister Maurer. We had to move in the day they left on account of the cows. We moved between Christmas and New Year's. We were very happy to be able to get this place. I worked hard running the farm and earning a living for us - and I loved it. While were living here three more children were born to us. Donald Gifford was born on April 5, 1938. Ellen Ora on February 24, 1940, and Rayola Nov. 18, 1941. Dora had a hard time before each of the children were born and we had to hire a girl to help her.

The summer of 1939 Dora and I had the worst quarrel of our marriage. She wanted to go to the Gifford Reunion very badly. I was working from 4 a.m. until after dark and did not feel that I could take the time to go. I told her she could go with her folks if she wanted to but I would rather she would not. She went and enjoyed the day, but they had car trouble on the way home and she didn't get home for three days - and had no way to let me know what had happened. I was sick with worry and anger by the time she arrived home. That was the only time we ever went to sleep without clearing up any differences between us, and that time it took us about three days.

In July, 1941, I was mowing hay with a borrowed team and mower. The hay was full of wild oats that was taller than any of the children. I told Dora to be sure to keep the children away from the field, but Daveen and her cousin who was staying with us for a few days disobeyed and came to the field to see if I needed a drink. I scolded them and sent them back to the house. Imagine my horror a few minutes later when I suddenly saw Ralph directly in front of the mower. He had followed the girls without anyone seeing him. I yelled at the horses and quickly pulled them to a halt, but not before Ralph's leg was severely cut. I quickly tied up the horses, carried Ralph to his mother and told her to take care of him, then ran over a mile through the field to get Seth Brown to take us to the doctor because we had no car, and we were nine miles from town. Dora, in her excitement, wrapped Ralph's leg very tightly in a clean baby diaper and that saved his life. I could not sleep nights for a long time. Every time I would close my eyes I could see Ralph in front of that mower - and I was so afraid that he would be a cripple for life and that he would never walk again. He was finally able to walk again and I was able to sleep again.

The evening of May 31, 1941, my brothers came after me and told me that my father had passed away suddenly. That was a big loss, but he had lived a full and a good life and I had many good memories.

That summer the rheumatism in my legs was so bad that I had to have help most of the time, especially with the milking. It continued to grow worse and in the fall I had to start using crutches to walk. I was able to do very little except wait on myself. The doctor told me I would have to quit farming for a year or two if I ever wanted to walk again without crutches. That was really hard for me to accept. Farming was the only way I knew how to support my family and our future on the farm looked pretty good - if I just had my health. Reluctantly we sold all our farm equipment and cattle and went on Public Assistance.

My brother Howard had a little two-room house in Riverside, Idaho, that he said we could live in and he could give me some work and we could raise chickens. We moved over there in January.

In the spring we got a chance to buy an acre and a half lot with a five room house, barn, some fruit trees, a big garden spot, and pasture in Kimball, Idaho. We moved into this house the first part of June, 1942. We were within easy walking distance of school and church. I was happy that Dora and the kids could go to church regularly. There was a lot of the time that I just didn't feel like going, and when I did go I couldn't hear what was said. I tried several different hearing aids, but my hearing was not consistent so I couldn't get one that worked.

After we had been in Kimball for a while we were able to get our first car - a Buick coupe. It was not a very good car, but we were really happy to have it. It served us well for several years. We really felt bad when something went wrong with it and it was so old that the part was no longer available to fix it. Each summer we took the family to Wolverine Canyon east of our home for a few days. This was our vacation. We would arrange with the neighbors to do the chores. Dora would get the food ready, we would take the bedding off the beds to make our beds in the "hills", pack everything in the car, then hope that it would climb the hills to our destination. When we returned at the end of the week our vacation was over, but the happy memories would last for a long time.

Dora's father was selling McNess Products and was quite successful. I decided to try that, but I had to quit because I could not hear well enough to take the customer's orders. How I hated not being able to support my family. I wished many times that I had an education so I could do something to earn a living.

We had a good garden in Kimball. We bought a cow the first summer and really enjoyed the milk, cream, and butter. The next year we got some baby chicks to raise, and later we raised rabbits. Our garden fruit trees, cow, chickens, and rabbits helped with living expenses. I was also able to teach my children to work as we took care of the animals and the garden. I also went with them, taught them, and kept them working as they thinned beets and picked potatoes for the neighbors. I tried to make sure they gave full measure of work for their pay and did my best to teach them honesty.

Life wasn't all work and hardship for the children. Often as I sat in the sun (the warm sunshine helped me feel better) I would whittle a whistle from a green branch of one of our shade trees for one or more of the children. They loved those whistles, and the boys had lots of fun with the bows and arrows I helped them make. The children begged me to recite poetry I knew over and over again. Two of their favorites were "Tom Twist" and "Little Britches". I put as much expression as possible into the poetry because it was such a joy to me to watch their faces and to see their antics as they corrected me when I deliberately made a mistake.

We cut down two or three of our big cottonwood trees, one at a time, for firewood. Felling the tree was a big project and a challenge. We had to be careful that it didn't fall on the house and be sure that everyone was out of the way. The boys helped me. All of the kids had fun riding on the branches and such until the tree was all cut up - a project that took months because of my poor health.

The fall of 1944 my rheumatism got so bad that I could not get out of bed. During the next nine months I was only out of bed twice. For two weeks I was so bad I couldn't do anything for myself. Dora took very good care of me and the children. My pain was so severe that I had to have five or six hankies out at a time to have a dry one to wipe off the sweat. The doctor came to the house to see me and gave me shots in hopes of helping me. I began to doubt that I would ever get better - and so did everyone else. After I was finally able to get out of bed I was in a wheelchair for another three months. I went out in the wheelchair that summer and supervised the children as they weeded and watered the garden. By fall I was walking on crutches. Dora's brother, Denzel, came from Washington and told us he had heard that the climate there was good for rheumatism, so we decided to go home with him for a visit and give it a try. I continually grew worse the two weeks we were there. The climate was too damp. So we boarded the train and came home. I was on crutches for the next two years, then was well enough that I could get by without them part of the time, especially in the summer.

We had three more children after we moved to Kimball. Phil Gene was born May 16, 1946, and lived just eight short months. He was a beautiful, intelligent baby and was a real joy to us. David Lamar was born Aug. 30, 1948, and Kent Alvin was born Feb. 6, 1951.

The summer of 1952 Don was hit by a car while riding his bicycle and was severely injured. He spent one month in the hospital and the winter in a hospital bed at home. The doctor said that it was a miracle that he lived. It was a happy day when he first went out on crutches in the spring.

In 1955 our bishop, Afton Croft, talked with us and we decided to change from state to church welfare. They put in a badly needed new kitchen floor and helped us get a bathroom in. Dora and I built new kitchen cabinets. The house was badly in need of some fixing up and we were sure glad to get it done.

May 31, 1958, Ralph and his wife Evelyn took Dora and me to Salt Lake City where they were living for Ralph's graduation from business college. We visited several places of interest. The thing I enjoyed most was the drive up on the hill above the Capitol Building and looking at the city lights at night. I was very disappointed that I was not feeling well enough to go to Ralph's graduation. There were many times that I had to miss going with the kids when I really wanted to be with them to share their accomplishments and experiences.

The following summer Don received a call to go on a mission to Canada. I was too ill to go to his farewell meeting at church and had to bid him farewell at home because I was not well enough to go to the bus with him. Tears streamed down my face as I told him good-bye because I felt that I would be gone before he returned home.

Through the years of not being able to provide for my family I developed ulcers and suffered a lot with them along with my rheumatism. In Dec., 1959, they hemorrhaged and I was in the Veteran's Hospital in Salt Lake City for a month. I was finally able to return home on New Year's Day. It was good to be back home with my family!

My husband and I lived together for 26 years. Although we had a great deal of illness we were very happy. Throughout Earl's life he was kind and considerate of all with whom he came in contact. Many times he went without himself to help others, especially his youngest brothers. They tell of many times that he gave them a nickel or dime when they went to town so they could have money for candy or some small treat. I have never heard anything but praise for him from his brothers or anyone else that knew him. At the time of his death his brother Elmer stood by the casket with bowed down head and said, "He was always so good to me."

His brother Clarence made this statement: "During all of my life working with Earl, I've never known him to pass the heavy end of the work to someone else. He always took the heavy end himself." Clarence also said "Earl was never cross and mean with us boys. But when he saw us doing something wrong, he would call us to his side and talk to us in a way that made us see the mistakes we were making, and also made us want to do what was right." Earl's favorite expression was "By Jove" and that is the strongest language he ever used. When he said "By Jove", our children knew he meant business.

Many people have told me what a hard working man Earl was throughout the part of his life that he was able to work. After we were married and Earl's health failed him and a friend of the family, Seth Brown, said this, "I believe one of the reasons for Earl's poor health is the way he has worked throughout his life. I've never seen anyone that could beat him at pitching hay. He would work on one side of the wagon and it took two men on the other side to keep up with him." Earl was noted for hay pitcher and stacker and was always in demand.

Earl was honest and dependable. He never promised to pay a bill or do a job but what he kept his promise. Many times I've heard my father, G. A. Gifford, tell about one day at the feed store in Firth, how the manager, Mr. Fisher, and some other men were talking. Some of these men had unpaid bills. At this time Earl was no longer able to work and was very poor. Somehow his name came up, and the manager said, "I don't know of a poorer man in the country nor of one that is more prompt in paying his bills." This was my husband, David Earl Hill.