Family Retention Project: Personal History of my Great-Grand-Father Francis Miller

My Great-Grand Father:

 

FRANCIS ALONZO MILLER

                                                                                                                                                                                       (1910 - 1994)

Autobiography

 

      I was born in 1910, ½ mile South of Civil Bend, Daviess Co. Mo. On a farm known as the Betts place, where my parents lived for about one year or two.  I lived there long enough to remember the well that was about two feet across at top, and walled with native lime stone and was surrounded by square box like about 3 feet square and about the same height with booms on side to support a bucket pulley to draw water.

           

            I suppose this stays with my memory because they always had an eye on me to keep me away. They only had to put a cockle burr in the door and I was afraid to get close to the burr for fear of it. From there we moved near Gallatin only 10 or 15 mi.  There I have better memories.  The house set near a small stream or branch.  I remember my mother raised several turkeys and just before Thanksgiving they were loaded in a wagon and taken to market for extra cash. 

           

            My father did plant corn and hay and raised a few hogs and calves. My father played the violin by note and by ear.  There was no place to go or nothing to do evenings only self-entertainment so he often played the Fiddle. I always had some requests.  Some I remember such as “Old Dan Tucker,” “Kacey Jones,” “Little Brown Jug,” “Irish Wash Woman,” “Turkey in the Straw” and there may have been others.

           

            Late in the fall Uncle Charley Williams came to stay with us.  One day when he and father were cutting wood across the branch I wanted to go to them but mother said no, but after so much teasing she ask them if they would watch me. (The distance was only 30 or 40 yards,) Father said yes.  So mother put my new heavy over coat that she had just made, on me and let me go.  I did start.  When I got to the branch instead of crossing on the rocks I followed the branch until I had to hold my head high.  Needless to say there was not a dry spot on me. About that time Mother checked on me.  That is the only time I ever heard a cross word from either of my parents.  Mother took me to the house and stripped me, paddled me, and set me on the warming closet door to dry and warm.  This would be 1914.In March, 1915 we moved to the Compton place only ½ mi. from Grandpa Miller and 3 ½ mi. South of Pattonsburg where we lived for one year.

           

            By this time I was old enough to enjoy more with the kinfolks and neighbors.  We were often at Grandpa Miller’s where I could play with my Uncle Howard and Aunts Ellen and Monument.  They were older, but I was the first nephew so I was special, but also there were several first cousins first removed born in the same locality the same year I was born.  There was Lyman Waters, Albert Bruce, (Note: There was a space between Bruce and Reno so that it was hard to tell if there was a Surname or given name of Reno.  There was a Velma Reno born in 1910 in the Miller Family Records.) Reno and Mamie Cornett.  There were others I do not recall.  We did have company of old neighbors that we visited with on Sundays and often evenings. All I have mentioned lived in less than two miles.  When my grandparents moved from Illinois in 1894 there were several of their kin that had moved to Missouri several years earlier, and settled in the same locality, some whose farms adjoined. While living on the Compton place my parents got a reed organ which was an added attraction.  My father also played the harmonica and enjoyed it.

           

            The Miller family usually got together on holidays for dinner and to visit.  It was on one of those occasions that Father and Uncle Charley got some turtles and prepared them for dinner.  Aunt Catherine would not eat turtle, but did say the chicken was different, but good.  When she found it was turtle she accused them of being deceitful. One neighbor had a graph phone.  That was an Edison cylinder record player. The neighbor was Sam Frazier.

           

            During the winter months Father was persuaded to go to Lexington, Missouri, to work in the coal mine with Uncle Rutherford Snell.  That lasted one week as father smashed a thumb and came home.  We had visited them in the fall for a few days after an association meeting near the village of Dockery, a few miles north of Richmond, Missouri.  Grandfather had a new spring wagon in which we traveled.  We stayed in Richmond with a family whose name I do not remember, but they had a two-story house with a bathroom and city water.  We slept in a spare bedroom where straw was placed on the floor and bed clothes on that.  Grandpa, Grandma, Mother, and Father all slept in the same room.

           

            Grandpa and Grandma went back to Pattonsburg and we had an exciting trip to Lexington.  We went from Richmond to the ferry on the Missouri River in a Jitney (my first auto ride).  We crossed the Missouri River on a ferry boat (my first boat ride), then into Lexington in a Hack.  After a day or two in Lexington we went home on a railroad train (my first train ride).

           

            It was a tradition of my folks not to go into a new locality and buy a farm.  They must first lease for one year with the option to buy.  They said that gave them a chance to know more about the locality and the land they would be stuck with. This was the option taken by my father in 1916 when we moved to Coffee, Missouri.  The move was made in March, 1916.

                       

            My father was acquainted with one family of neighbors. The Billy Wynn family, or part thereof, went to same church near Bancroft. The Wynn place was about half way between the Millers and church.  Often the Wynn’s and Millers traveled together.

           

            One of the things that stays with my memory best while living on the Compton place is the places we would go, and there was only one kind of transportation and that was with horse and wagon or buggy.  When we crossed a bridge it was my ambition to climb on it or any other object of height.  And in later years I did just that.  However I often dreamed of falling, but never did. 

           

When we went some places a few miles away we often stayed two or three days, which was common practice in those days.  Most houses were not large enough to accommodate large gatherings so the women and small children slept in the house and men and boys slept in the barn or under the wagons.  Up to this time it was in the house for me.  I looked forward to the time I could sleep with the rest of the men and boys.I remember the move to Coffee and I thought it was a long move.  It was, I suppose, less then fifteen miles.

           

It while living on the Compton place that Father took me out of bed to the other room and showed me my new brother, William Chester. The same thing happened at Gallatin when I was shown my sister, Emma Jane, but my memory is not so clear on that event.  It was a great pleasure to have Grandma Miller come and stay a couple of weeks, as a woman was expected to stay in bed flat on her back for ten days after giving birth.

           

When we moved to Coffee the first of March, 1916, it was a wet season and father was not very strong and had a lot of ear trouble.  I forgot to mention he had a mastoid operation the year before.  His ear had run puss about all his life, and he could only hear with one ear.  He was told by his doctor there had not been enough removed the first time, and he planned on another operation when he had his corn planted in 1916.  We had good neighbors there also, like Frank Kepler, Cleveland Harold and the Wynn’s.

           

One thing I do remember was on one of those cool, wet days Father was getting ear corn from the crib, bringing it to the house, two buckets at a time to select seed to be planted.  He would not be out but a few minutes so he only would wear a piece of cloth taped over shoes with rubber soles.  It was on one of these trips to the corn crib that he stepped on a small piece of wood about one and one-half inches wide and three inches long with a rusty nail protruding long enough to pierce the overshoe he was wearing.  His foot was sore so he went to the doctor in Jameson, Missouri by the name of Wetzel who treated it.  It did not heal over but he developed lock jaw and only lived eleven days. 

           

The last day or two some neighbors came in to help care for him as well as Grandma Miller and Aunt Ellen Miller.  Grandpa was there also.  I was not permitted to go into his room for some time which was a big disappointment to me.  I suppose they though the end was near, as the ones in his room went to the kitchen crying.

           

 No one seemed to be watching me for the moment.  I went into his room where Henry Wynn was fanning him with an old palm fan as he could not breathe.  I went to the foot of Father’s bed, where he had a grip on the head rails of the bed begging for air.  I noticed that his feet were turning white and that whiteness traveled up his legs slowly, but not so slow that I could see it move up toward his body.  I knew then what had happened, that he was gone as I had seen corpse before.  The undertaker was called and he was taken to Pattonsburg.  He was embalmed in the house first.  We went to Grandma Miller’s for the night, and then to Pattonsburg where his funeral was held in the Baptist Church, Elder Watters Cash being the preacher from St. Joseph, Missouri.  He was pastor of the church where my father was a member at Gilman City, Missouri.

           

My mother could not take care of the farm with three children under six years of age. There was a sale held in a short time and all equipment and stock sold, except, I think, one small black jersey cow. We stayed at Grandpa Miller’s for a short time.  While there I went to school (as a visitor) with Uncle Howard, Aunt Ellen and Aunt Mournen.

           

One thing I shall always remember about these two aunts that day was their tatting, making lace to sell for spending money.  They kept their hands below their desks and the shuttles made a buzzing sound, they were so fast.  They had their book before them, reading at the same time.

            Mother rented a small house in Pattonsburg for a short time.  Then she bought a three room house a couple of blocks from the rented one.  We did not live there long as she rented the home to some one.  We moved two miles north of Pattonsburg to an old farm house on the Kelly farm.  There was also a larger house on that farm which was occupied by Warren Burris who was then the owner of the farm.  He had been taken in by the Kelly’s.  The Kelly’s had three daughters who lived in my time, none of them married.  I can only recall the name of one of them.  That is Lillie, and it was for her my mother was named as she was present at the birth of my mother.  I think they were school teachers in their earlier life, but when I knew them they were old and lived together in a large house on Highland in Pattonsburg.

           

Soon after we moved to the Kelly place the neighbors gave my mother a chicken shower as a surprise.  That gave us eggs and some for meat.

            It was while there that I attended the Walnut Grove School for one turn.  My teacher was Miss Retha Morgan.  I think her home was in Jameson, Missouri.  The school house was on one acre of the same farm, a small one room building on the same flat my mother got all of her schooling,

           

It was while living there my Uncle Charley came to live with us again.  He came on a Harley Davidson motorcycle from Hugo, Colorado.  That was the place Grandfather Williams homesteaded a few years before.  He only stayed long enough to prove up on it, and then come back to Missouri to his old home place which he obtained from his father-in-law.  It was the home of his first wife, Minerva Jane Lowery, daughter of Samuel E. Lowery and Emily Hand.

           

Soon after Uncle Charley (Charles Albert Williams) arrived he got a Missouri Press hay bailer with a seven horse engine and a team of mules.  He did custom hay bailing for a number of years as well as rent some farm land and farmed.

           

There was an interruption in his life at that time.  In 1918 he joined the United States Navy in World War One.  It seemed such long time that he was gone.  Uncle Samuel Williams went into the Army and was in action in France where he was exposed to some mustard gas from which he never completely recovered [14] though he lived many years.  We moved again the next year one mile south on the George Montgomery farm which was several miles from his modern farm in the north part of the county. 

           

I had never thought of why George Montgomery had 80 acres so far from his home place.  This is my guess--that it was inherited by his wife, Sarah Lowery Montgomery as it lies between other Lowery property that was acquired when Missouri and Daviess County was new land and country.

           

The Lowrey’s came early.  There was John, Greenleaf, Samuel, James, and Newton.  John is in the 1850 U.S. Census for Daviess County, Missouri, as was William Wortman who married Isabel Lowery in North Carolina. (This is not their sister, Isabel who was 36 years in 1850 Census in Guilford County, North Carolina.)  So she was perhaps an aunt.  James is said to have died soon after getting to Missouri.  James, Greenleaf and Samuel all married in Missouri.  It appears that John and Green (as he was called) left not long after their father died between the time the 1850 Census was taken in June and November term of Court. [15] Newton was the only one that came married a few years later.  The sisters, all except Damaris, who was twelve, 1850, and married in Guilford, County, North Carolina to Rufus H. Browning.  It seems their mother and oldest sister, Isabell lived in the household of Rufus H. Browning until their deaths.  There was Hannah married George Jeffries in Missouri.  Eliza married James Hugh in North Carolina and Aley B. married John W. Pegram in North Carolina where he died.  She then came to Missouri where she married Dr. William Pyle.  So much for the Lowrey’s to now.

           

When we moved to the Montgomery place we were in Pattonsburg school district to that put me in the town school where I was not the best student.  But I did get by with some questions.

           

While living there I would run off and go to town which was only one mile.  From there I would go to Big Creek swimming or run around town and play with whoever was around.  Most mothers did not want me around as I was not supposed to be a good influence on their sons.

 I do not think there was but one building in town that I did not climb except the Pattonsburg Savings Bank.  It stood alone with no other building near it, and it had an alarm system on the front. 

           

I think I shall say a little about the times of World War I.  Things are much different now in many ways.  The roads were all plane dirt as well as streets in Pattonsburg there was no oil or even gravel or rock on them.  When it was a rainy season mud was very deep.  Only horses could travel on the roads.  There were few autos anyway.  There were concrete sidewalks in town.  I can recall when mother and some neighbors went to an event at school.  They went bare foot to the side walk then put on their shoes the rest of the way.  There was a puddle of water where they could wash their feet

           

Since so many of the men were in the armed services a lot of the women took to the fields to plant and cultivate the farm crops.  Mother would go to Grandpa Williams to plow corn and plant or rake hay.

           

There was much death from influenza in 1918 and 1819.  Some days there would be two or three funeral processions go by our house in one day.  There was two grave yards across the road from the place we lived.  That was about 1/4 mile north--one the IOOF cemetery and Old Town cemetery where my father, grandmother and several great grandparents, aunts and uncles are resting in peace.  I have had work done on all that I know of.

           

Mother was very sick with the flu as it is called.  Grandma Miller came and stayed a few days with her.  The symptoms at that time were a person would be sick one day and feel good the next, but that was the day a person should stay in also for the exposure of the second would aggravate the disease and make the fourth a bad one and often fatal.  The flu left people weak with little resistance to the common cold and other infections.

           

It was under these conditions that Mother took down with smallpox, and it looked bad for her for a few days.  The doctor was called and when he left there was also a yellow flag left on our gate which was about two hundred feet west of the house.  That meant by law that no one could come in nor go out.  We were quarantined for some time.

           

It was during this time there was a fund raising event at the county fairgrounds which lay in the bottoms of Big Creek between our house and town, for the war bond sales.  I went to the crest of the hill overlooking the sight.  That is where I saw my first airplane.  The pilot was a lady by the name of Ruth Law, a noted pilot in her day.  She also raced autos that were on the race track.  The plane was a pusher type where she set out in front much like the first of the Wrights.

           

It was by the flu we lost Aunt Ellen.  She and Aunt Mournen had typhoid fever the summer before and nearly lost them both.  Aunt Ellen Miller was the third loss since 1916. 

           

I have to mention Grandpa Miller.  He in 1916 turned his horses out of the barn to go to pasture from the barn lot.  After horses were all in barn lot and barn doors closed he walked to north end of lot and opened gate to pasture.  As he held the gate open the horses ran through.  One of them kicked him in the face, knocking one of his eye balls out onto his cheek which left one eye.

           

In March of 1917 he was hauling corn fodder to feed in the west pasture when the wagon jerked and threw him to the ground.  He landed on his elbow.  He had a compound fracture where the bone came through the flesh and into the ground.  Grandpa was taken to a hospital in St. Joseph, Missouri where he was treated, but not for long as he developed gangrene and was gone in a couple of days or so.  The cause was he was diabetic and as far as was known that was the first anyone knew of it.  I myself did not know or hear of it until after I was under treatment for diabetes.  Grandpa Williams died under same conditions.  He had a little toe removed and was stricken.

           

During these years it was hard for Mother to keep food and clothing.  She took in laundry to help.  She would get $1.00 for a big washing.  We also had a large garden.  The cow kept us in milk.  The calf, each year was also a little help when sold.  Uncle Clarence Lowery gave her a runt sow pig which was kept on surplus milk and table scraps.  The sow grew out and made a good brood sow, having nine to eleven pigs to the litter.  These were sold, in part, to feed the ones left.  In the fall we would glean a field or two of corn that, at times, would take care of the whole litter.  We also had some meat from them.  In those days people often herded hogs and cattle to town on county roads to cattle yards on railroads for shipment to big city markets.  There were no trucks.  There was a walnut grove on the farm.  We would gather several bushels each fall.  We could sell them for $1.00 per bushel.

           

Mother would start canning in the spring.  Gooseberries were first--she would get fifty or sixty cents.  Then she would can green beans, tomatoes, and other things from the garden.  Grandpa Williams had cheery trees all around his house.  He also had an apple orchard of about three acres.  That made a lot of apples.  We would dry two or three flour sacks full (that is 48 pound sacks).  With flour sacks women made their underwear, and a little later on stock feed was packed in 100 pound printed bags of which they made dresses.  I can say now I never really went to bed hungry.

           

When Uncle Charley came home from the Navy things seemed good. He was not home too long before he bought a new Model “T” Ford.  I believe it was twenty-two years he kept the same Ford.  The last I saw it, it was rusty red instead of black.  It had not been painted. At that time Henry Ford said any color was good as long as it was black. 

           

There was a tornado that touched down between our house and Pattonsburg that destroyed several horse stables on the fairgrounds.  It followed Big Creek north mostly east for a short distance uprooting trees and pulling water out of the stream and leaving fish in a cornfield for some distance.  People soon gathered the fish to eat--the fish were still flapping.

           

There was a natural lake in the hills only a few hundred feet from the north end of the farm where we could ice skate in winter.  It was known as Old Town Lake.  It was around this lake that was first Pattonsburg until the railroad went in and the town was moved over a mile south to what was then called Elm Flat.

           

I was told by Montgomery Lowery that his grandfather, John Lowery, told him that the houses were built around this lake.  John came to Missouri before 1850 as he appears on the U.S. Census for that year. I did not see John Lowery, but I can remember seeing his wife, Aunt Lottie (Charlotte) setting on her front porch in her chair.  Their house was in easy sight of Grandpa Williams, less than 1/4 mile.

           

Some of the first settlers I did talk to.  One was Mrs. Venerable. I would like to have talked to her again and hear what her husband, Dr. Venerable had to do and why he fought the Mormons at Adam-on-diahman as he is mentioned in church history.  I would like to have talked to this old lady and ask her questions.  She would also let me smoke her old clay pipe.  I remember Grandma Miller still had her mother’s pipe.  They also grew their own tobacco

           

Back to my school.  Since we lived to far to go home for lunch we had to take it from home. We ate in our rooms then would go outside to play the remainder of the hour, weather permitting.  Otherwise we stayed inside.  We would talk, clean the room, wash blackboards or anything to take up time until 1:00 p.m. I was on one of these blackboard washings that Pauline Royston and I got some floor oil and washed the blackboard.  It sure was nice, black and shining.  We thought we had done a fine job, until we made chalk marks on it and they would not erase.  The last time I saw the blackboard it was still not black, but gray.  The board was real slate.

           

We did have a telephone with ten to fifteen party lines.  If I remember it cost $1.00 per month.  The phone company owned the lines and most everyone owned their phones.  I remember one time the company raised the rate and most of the patrons set poles at the crossroads and put a line over the road and tied on to the next barbed wire fence and used them for conductors.  They had no switchboard service, but all the neighbors could communicate, and that was the most they used their phones for anyway.  That lasted until we moved away.  All the phones operated on six-volt dc batteries.

           

Some time in about 1921, Mother received a letter from a man by the name of Harry Wynn.  I do not remember what it contained and perhaps never did that I remember.  It was not long after that he made a personal call at our home.  Soon after that he started making regular calls on weekends.  I could still remember him from before my father died.  He said his wife had died in 1918 leaving him with five little girls.

           

In 1922 my mother increased her canning to over 500 quarts for winter as she made plans to marry Harry Wynn.  That was exciting to me.  I liked what I saw of Harry Wynn, and Mother also thought that a union with him would be approved by my Miller family as they knew he came up in a Primitive Baptist environment.  This summer was a time of preparation for a long move, and a new start, but what?  Everyone was guessing.

           

When the time came Mother made the trip to Liberty, Missouri, and I stayed with Aunt Grace Long near Gallatin, Missouri.  I always enjoyed visits with them as I could play with Elwood and Dorothy.  Although it was not hunting season, we kids took the old hunting dog and went hunting in the afternoon.  We did make one catch, a skunk.  We took it away from the dog and started to the house.  The skunk came to life enough to bite me through the knuckle of my second finger.  It had me really worried as I had always had a great fear of rabies. 

           

You can imagine how we smelled after carrying the skunk a half mile.  Uncle Roy and Aunt Grace were understanding.  We did not get a scolding.  Uncle Roy helped us skin the skunk and bury the carcass.

           

October 14, 1922 was the day Mother and Harry Wynn were married.  The next day or so they picked me up at Aunt Grace’s and we went to Pattonsburg and prepared for the long move to Liberty.  Now I could call Harry, Daddy.  He engaged a man by the name of Harvey Fanning to make the big haul.  He had a Model T Ford, one-ton truck.  They put about all they could pile on it and started early in the morning for Liberty.  We went through a lot of towns.  We must have made ten or twelve miles per hour.  We first went through Pattonsburg, Winston, Marble, Cameron, Turney, Lathrop, Hold, Kearney and Chandler, then came to a large brick house two miles north of Liberty where we had thirty yards of oiled road before pulling into our driveway which was all the truck could do to climb.  The family was in a 1917 Ford touring car.  At that time there was no all-weather roads.  The only paved was a little in a couple of towns--the rest was dirt.  We followed a marked highway known as the “Old Cannon Ball Trail” from Des Moines to Kansas City...

           

Once to the house unloading started.  The house was a large square house with four rooms downstairs and four upstairs.  With two rooms on the west, the house faced east on ½ section of land.  The four rooms downstairs had large double sliding doors that opened so it made it like one large room.  There was plenty of room for all and besides myself, Emma and Chester, there were the Wynn’s: Vesta, Viola, Lillian and Pauline who was four years old.

           

I started to school in Liberty.  We walked two and one half miles.  I was in the fifth grade.  My teacher was Lottie Acers, a fine person.  I wore my best suit the first day which consisted of a coat and trousers that came to my knees and a long black cotton socks.  My folks could not afford that kind of clothes so after that it was bibbed overalls.

           

I should mention that Edna Myrle Wynn never lived with the rest of the family. [29] She lived with Dad’s sister Anna McNealey at Jameson, Missouri, until she married.

           

I had been in Liberty School for a few days when the boys in my class told me that they always initiated all newcomers and it took place at lunch hour.  There were twelve or fifteen boys.  They took off their belts from their pants and formed a double line and as they ran by the one to be initiated they would swat with their belts.  They started, Jack Kennedy was first on the right side of the line (he was the son of the chief of police).  He was a stout built lad and was the bully of the class.  Jack was the only one to get in a swing with his belt.  I laid a right fist on his nose and it really started to bleed freely.  The principal was on the steps of the school building when it started, and was there to grab us in seconds.  We were both taken to the office and given a lecture.  She told me that fighting would not be tolerated.  She told Jack that she knew all along that someone would call their hand on their initiations.  We were sent back to our room.

           

When I started home and had only gone past first building and was out of sight of school who should be waiting for me but Jack.  There we tangled again.  Jack got more blood on his white shirt.  I then clinched him and held his head against a power pole for the electric railroad that carried twelve hundred volts, D.C. to power the trains.  It had been raining and wet.  There were many tacks in the pole that gave him a good shock.  The other boys did not want any of me, so I went on home.

           

The next morning Jack’s mother came to school with him and went to the office.  She was told what happened.  I heard no more about the fight, but no one ever bothered me for a fight after that in Liberty.

           

I was always chosen as a tackle when we played football on the grounds.  I was, as a boy, under sized and light in weight. I should mention that Dad made $40.00 per month on his farm job.  We did well and Dad saved some money. 

           

I finished 1922-23 school in Liberty.  The next year Dad got $5.00 more from Bill Lindow and that was in the Nebow District, and a one room school.  Miss Margaret Land was teacher there.  I also worked there as at the former place.  I would take a team and wagon to Liberty and haul 55 bushels of shelled corn, shoveling it on then off for $1.00.  It was while there that I went to stay with Grandma Miller and Uncle Howard.

           

I went to Civil Bend Consolidated School where Miss Clara Bell was my teacher.  She was one of the best teachers that I have known.  I was still in the 5th grade.  I had done fairly in school up to the 5th grade, but starting it in Pattonsburg I did not make it through because I played hooky too much. My failure was in math. Each year I would miss getting fractions to a common denominator.  The first thing Miss Clara did was keep me in at recess to explain.  She came to my seat, sit down beside me, put her arm around me, and said, “Francis, it is just simply this,” then explained to me the process, and it was just that simple.  I caught on and was soon up with the rest.  Those were the most pleasant days of my youth.  I never skipped school another day.

            That year went smoothly and the kids there were tops.  When I started one of the first things kids wanted to know was just how well one can handle himself.  So each recess one or two would set up to wrestle.  The first was Roy Palmer.  He was about the same size and weight, but no match.  I tried several the same then they wanted me to try Jim Snyder.  He was taller and heavy.  I thought I would not have much of a chance with him.  So when we started I threw one leg behind him to throw him over if I could.  It worked and I landed across his mid-section and it hurt him knocking his wind out until it was hard for him to breath.  I did not find my match until the boys in high school.  I would like to say here that for the four years I attended Civil Bend I never seen nor heard of a fight among any of the boys.

           

We would go to an upper room over the Crissie (Christopher) Reno store and box two or three times a week.  Often I would go home with one of the boys and stay overnight and them with me.  Some were Jim Snyder, Cleo Reed, Lloyd Ketchum and the Cornett boys, Guy and Vivian.  The Cornett’s and Ketchum’s were related to me and they were double cousins.  The Cornett’s mother was Essie (Ketchum) Cornett and the Ketchum’s were son and daughter [34] of Daniel Ketchum, who was son of Ira Ketchum and Phoebe (Fitz Jarrell) Ketchum who was an aunt of Grandma Miller. They came from the same locality in Illinois as Grandma and settled next to Ketchum’s (Daniel).

           

As I said, I went home with other boys.  We often went hunting at night for fur bearing animals.  That was one of our sources for spending money.  It was on one of these hunting nights that we stopped at the Browns where they knew of a square dance in progress.  I should say a little about the Brown family.  There was Buck, Bessie and Jessie. In that same summer while at the Jameson Picnic, Vivian Cornett and I first met Bessie and Jessie.  We took them rides on the merry-go-round and Ferris wheel and spent some time on the grounds with them and had an enjoyable time. When school started at Civil Bend in September there were the Browns.  They had moved into the neighborhood.  We had no social contact with them, so-to-speak until we broke in on the dance.

           

We took off our four buckle overshoes and were invited in to watch the dance.  They invited us to dance, but we did not know how.  There Aunt Debbie persuaded Vivian then reached up the side of the inner door and got a loop of cord, threw it around my neck and said, “Come on, Bill.”  I did not resist that and got on the dance floor with Bessie.  I did enjoy it.

            For the remainder of that winter we went often to dances at Pattonsburg and other places.  We would go in horse and buggy, the four of us.  The parents would always be along.

            I mentioned I was called “Bill.  Most of the boys had a nickname like Guy Cornett was Twister, Vivian was Ginny, Ira Ketchum was Doc. how did I get Bill?  One day going home from school I recited a few lines of “Old Bill Diner” and from then on I became known as Bill Dyner.  The name stayed with me for a number of years until I was away from them all.

           

While going to Civil Bend School I had three teachers.  I have mentioned Miss Clara Bell. I had one year Marvin Brown.  He was tops and the last I heard of him he was working in a Sugar Mill in Ft. Collins, Colorado. 

           

There was Miss Crank.  It was while I had her that we had a spelling match on a Friday while the high school basketball team was playing out of town.  On those occasions they put 6th, 7th and 8th grades in assembly hall with what was left of high school for a match in math, geography or spelling.  This time it was spelling.  In class I couldn’t spell ten words I had studied.  On this occasion we would write ten words and pass them to the front where they were checked.  I ended up third.  The teachers were walking as always watching.  On Monday my teacher asked me as soon as book took up who was helping me.  I told them no one.  Then in a few minutes the principal called me into the hall and asked the same thing.  They were sure someone was helping me.  This has also posed a question in my own mind, as I had a feeling as if I was floating on the air.

           

When we had exams there was no way the teacher could arrange the classes to not have two of the same class set together without seating a boy and girl in one seat.  On one day I got in school a little late.  When I opened the door there set Wilda Snider in my seat.  Miss Clara said, “Francis, take your seat.”  I did and all eyes were on me and a few giggles followed.  The test was given one subject for each quarter of the day.  I was in seventh grade, Wilda in eighth grade.  The questions were on the blackboard.  I finished mine and laid them on teacher’s desk.  I then did the eighth grade in my tablet.  At recess time I went out with the rest of the kids.

           

The next morning come recess again.  The teacher dismissed all except Wilda and Francis.  When the room was cleared Miss Bell started by asking Wilda who did her test yesterday.  She said she did.  The teacher then asked her how come they were in Francis’s hand writing.  I had not noticed that she had signed the ones I was only playing with and used.  She really racked poor Wilda and only told me to attend to my own. 

           

When books took up again she held up the papers for the class to see.  She said the papers Wilda had turned in were among the best that were turned in.  The only thing  they were in the hand writing of Francis.  She then said that she could not understand how they were better when the writer was in the lower grade.

           

That started something between me and Wilda.  We became close friends and passed notes like kids in love do.  All went well until I went to my folks for a short visit, when I sent her a letter by mail.  I got one from her aunt telling me Wilda was too young to be corresponding with the boys.  Wilda’s mother died when Wilda was very young.  Her old maid aunt come to take care of her and Jim and made a marriage contract with the father to stay with them until the children were old enough to go on their own.  When time came she did just that.  I do not know for sure but Wilda may have gone to Iowa with her.  Jim told me years later Wilda was a school teacher in Marshall town Iowa.  I have not seen her since I got out of the eighth grade, and we never had a date.

           

Getting out of the eighth grade.  I had got along ok until the last recess.  When the bell rang to return to class and last exam we lined up to go up the steps.  There was a wall on our left side as we faced the stair case.  I was standing just behind Elsie Whitestone and kidding her I put my left hand on her left shoulder.  Elsie turned to her right and was talking to me.  The call came to march.  Went to our room and the principal followed and said I was expelled for hugging Elsie.  A few years later Elsie married Lloyd Ketchum.

           

This was mid-May.  The first of the next week Guy Cornett and Ira Ketchum were going to Lyons, Colorado in hopes of getting work in the mountain forests.  They would go to Kansas City.  That was a ride to visit my mother for me.  My mother knew both of them through their parents.  They stayed overnight.  It was decided it would cost no more for me to go with them to Colorado.  The next morning we headed west and after two or three days we were at Lyons, Colorado.  The man that was our contact guided us up a mountain canyon and let us into a cabin where we spent the night.  He also said we were three to four weeks too early as there was too much snow in the mountains.  The next morning we decided we did not have enough money to stay around that long.

           

We then went up the same road or canyon to Estes Park to get a look at the mountains.  We went east through what was called Devil’s Gulch, meeting the highway at Longmont.  We had left it at Loveland, Colorado.  We were headed north to Cheyenne, Wyoming to get to 30 highway as Guy and Doc (Ira) wanted to see two of their aunts that lived at Meadow Grove, Nebraska, so to Nebraska we then headed.  The Cornett’s families had come from Virginia to Missouri, but a number of their kin and friends had settled in Meadow Grove, Nebraska, so they would not be among strangers--I would be.

           

We arrived on Sunday.  I wanted work and they wanted to visit then find work.  On Monday morning I left Alex Cornett to find employment.  The third house I stopped at was a Dutchman by the name of Ben Schelacht.  He said he could use a man for three or four days to clean his barn and barn yard.  I took the job, and after a week he liked my work and asked me to stay and take care of the stock for a week while he and his wife went and visited his family and she hers.  He was of German and had a heavy dialect.  She was Bohemian.  The whole neighborhood was either German, Bohemian or Virginian.  While he was gone I did the chores; cleaned chicken house; hog house and had the grain binder ready to start cutting oats when he got home.  He had only expected me to do chores. He was well pleased that he put me to plowing corn a few days before oat cutting.  Then I shocked his oats and that was all he had need of then.

            He called other Dutchmen and found me a job until thrashing time.  He took me to Newman Grove to work for two weeks.  Then back to follow threshing for two weeks.  In that time he ask me to stay on by the month and he would rent more land.

           

While here I spent Sunday with the Cornett’s and other Virginians.  We had great times either at Meadow Grove or at Tilden just to the west.  It was by this that I met the Henderson’s who Virginians were.  Only they had gone to Galesburg, Colorado for the health of Mrs. Henderson who had T.B. real bad.  From there they went to Laramie, Wyoming where Mr. Henderson worked for Union Pacific Rail Road.  He had lost his job during the railroad strike moving to Nebraska with other [44] Virginians.  Grandville Henderson was a little older than I, but we got along well together.

           

Mr. Curtis C. Henderson had been hired again by U. P. In Laramie, Wyoming.  The family was moving back, and Grandville invited me to go with them.  In the family was Mrs. Loney Henderson; children, Grandville, 18; Edra, 16; Fields, 10; Fredie, 8; and Margaret, 6.  There was Laura who had been married and had a daughter 7 or 8.  Laura had been taken back to Wyoming by her husband, Bill Thompson who was also a railroad man she had known for some time in Wyoming. Bill Thompson’s father was foreman of a bridge builder’s gang on the U.P.R.R. and lived in cars on the track.  He also had a ranch four or five miles south of Laramie, Wyoming.  

           

This was a temptation I could not resist.  I bought the old ford from Guy and Doc to make the move. The Ford was touring car.  We cut off the back seat and built a box on back to haul our cargo.  The Henderson’s Ford was the same but we left the back seat as Grandville, Lonnie, Fields and Fredie rode in it.  That left Edra and I for the other.

           

We headed south and west to get to the Lincoln Highway (later U.S. 30).  We were loaded heavy so traveled slowly.  At night we set up camp and stayed where we could get water.  We cooked on an open fire.  The last day we stopped on Sand Creek west of Cheyenne and caught enough brook trout for a good meal which we cooked on the spot.  Then we went on to Bill Thompson Sr. and stayed until the next day.

           

Curtis rented a house in Laramie where we moved next day. The three younger kids started to school and Edra to high school.  Laura rented a one room and was working for Woolworths 5 and 10 for $10.00 per week.  Bill and Laura were expecting and they had the one room for a time until the baby girl came, and then they moved on.

           

Grandville and I went to work in the head lettuce sheds packing lettuce.  That did not last long as we got a big frost.  I then went to work helping a welder on the U.P.R.R.  The next door neighbor was Earnest Butz who was a switchman on the railroad.  He wife was Rachael, a French lady and World War I bride.  He was German by his parents in Nebraska.  Rachel told me his mother could not speak English and did not like her because she was French.  One of Earnest’s sisters treated her real well.  Earnest would tell me to take his car and take Rachel to the country to hunt rabbits.  I did a few times.  Then took her to the fireman’s ball.  She got real interested in me.  She was eight years my senior.

           

Grandville went to work in a garage, nights.  Grandville and I went duck hunting to lakes not far away.  When deer season opened we went to Medicine Bow National Forest and a few miles up an old logging road.  The day was cloudy but dry.  We pitched our tent and got a fire going and it started to rain.  We went to bed for the night.  When we awoke it was snowing and the tent was smashed down on us.  We made pan cakes and eggs and started to hunt.  The snow was more than knee deep, but wet.  We stayed that day and next.  We put chains on and started out.  It was slow going, and we got the few miles to the good road that had been traveled and snow broken.  We got about twelve miles from town and one blade come off the fan and went through the radiator.  We were along a bank of Denver mud.  We dabbed the hole full of mud about every mile or two.  We then limped into town. 

           

I had a gun that Gus Ojalah and I went to Medicine Bow and I bought the week before.  He was my boss on the railroad.  We was also married to Lanie Henderson’s niece, Steve Saxton’s daughter. We left Laramie after work.  It was cloudy.  It started to drizzle about the time we got to Medicine Bow.  I bought the gun a 38-55, 1885 model Winchester.  We started back--it was snowing a little.  Then it got heavy.  The Ford was stripped down and had no windshield.  It was very hard to see to drive.  We got home a little after midnight.  I got bumped from the railroad by an older employee, the road master’s son.

           

Mr. Henderson bid on a job running the coal chutes at Rock River, Wyoming.  He was furnished a nice six room house for keeping a fire and pump house clean.  The pump house was then a standby on the banks of the Rock River.  This move was made in mid-December of 1927.  At Christmas week Rachael Butz came to stay a week.

           

The next week I got a job for two weeks at the McTadem oil camp on a dairy farm while their regular man was in Denver, Colorado.  I then went back to the Henderson’s.  With nothing to do time was a burden.

           

On the 7th of February I started back to Kansas City to my folks.  When I got home Dad was not working, so I went to see Grandma Miller.  I loved her and Uncle Howard as well as all my aunts and uncles and cousins. They were all tops. Things had changed some.  Vivian Cornett was married and was expecting.

           

I have not said anything of Bob (Robert L. Cornett, the father of Guy and Vivian).  I have said many times that he and Uncle Eli Miller have had the greatest influence for good in me than any other while I was in my youth.  Their counsels and example I shall always be thankful for.

           

I would like to make mention also of one occasion when Amon Cornett was visiting his son Bob.  He made his home with his son, Guy in Detroit, Michigan and was a retired school teacher.  That kind of work was about all he could do as he was born with a deformed foot that was always a handicap for him. 

           

Essie (Ketchum) Cornett was the same kind of case.  I never saw her foot, but she had to have her shoe made and the toe was turned in at the arch to where her foot was wrapped with her shoe and had a steel brace on it.  She did bring up a good family.  There was Vivian, Guy, Mamie, Mina and a late comer, Jack, who now lives on Grandma Miller’s old farm.  He is a prosperous farmer, 1984 (editor’s note; in the manuscript he wrote it as 1884, but that was probably a misprint.)

           

I stayed at Grandma’s only a short time.  While there Uncle Howard got married to Cynthia Searcy who was living only a few miles away.  They were married in Troy, Kansas.  I then went back to my parents who were living in Minnieville, only one half mile from Birmingham, Clay Co., Missouri.

           

Spring was opening up and work also in 1928.  I got a job driving a mule in a rock quarry.  The same place Dad worked.  It was an underground quarry.  I drove a mule called Pepper to haul stone to the scales.  That mule was well trained and went where you told him by, G. Right Haw to right or back by the word.  The mine car he pulled were expected to gross 4500 pounds or more.  Some would weigh 5500 pounds.  Men were paid 17 ½ cents per 100 if 4500 or over or 12 ½ cents if under 4500 pounds.

           

In the summer of 1928 I was invited by neighbors, the Chiasm family to take them to the birthday dinner of the mother of a friend of theirs of several years.  Her name was Ida Gorbet.  The family name was Ed Woodcock.  This was something I did not think I should turn down as the Chiasm’s had a fifteen year old daughter that I could be with on the trip to Kansas City.  Ellis Chiasm, a son had been dating Daisy Woodcock for some time. The day was Sunday.  We had dinner and had talked a while, when someone suggested we four go to Swope Park.  We got parental consent, and the Woodcocks had a younger daughter, Ruby, a red head about the age of Ada that was with me.  I suggested we take her.  We got permission and the five of us went to the park and had an enjoyable time.

           

I had a 1922 Chevy touring car.  The fall came and the demand for crushed rock fell and the mine shut down.  Dad found another stone quarry a few miles east of Meltondale.  We moved there for a few months.  We lived in an old stone building.  They put up wires and hanged bed sheets for partitions.  I got work in a coal mine near Excelsior Springs, which was maybe ten miles.  I worked there one week when a man was killed.  I went in with Earl Woods, who had a girlfriend by the name of Bulah Clevenger.  He said she was a Mormon.  He did marry her and raised a family.  He left her and moved somewhere.  I heard it was California.

           

In a few days Rev. John Conley came to spend a weekend with my folks.  He was working for Missouri Portland Cement Company.  He said he thought I could get employment there also.  John Conley had boarded with my folks at Minnieville for some time.  He was then boarding with Red Moore, people he knew at Farmington, Missouri, in the lead mines.  I took him home to Sugar Creek, Missouri, where the Moore’s lived.  I went to work with John and Red the next morning and was hired and worked for about a month while the cement plant was being overhauled.  I enjoyed living with the Moore’s.  They had two girls about my age.  We never went anywhere together.  They were Cherokee Indians.  Mrs. Moore was an Indian that ran off with the hired man and was married.

           

I went back to Miltondale and only stayed a few days.  The next door neighbor’s name was Page.  They had a daughter I think a little younger than I.  I really never was acquainted with her.  I found since then this is the grandmother of Ernest Hatcher, Ruby Gayle’s husband.

            I then went to Grandmother Millers and stayed a few days.  Then I went back to Minnieville.

           

I then went to work for the same foreman and company at the Leeds plant.  I worked only three or four days and took sick with pneumonia and typhoid fever.  I was then boarding with Lee Lewis at 9th and Prospect in Kansas City.  Lee Lewis’s wife, May was a sister of Harry Wynn’s first wife.  My mother came and stayed with me until I could go home.  The day I took sick was April 4.  I was so weak I could hardly walk for some time. My diet was so strict I did not gain very fast.  I had Harry Drumond go with me to get my pay check as I was afraid to cross the street because of my vision.  After we got my check we walked to a soda fountain.  I got a malted milk which was no, no, but it seemed to get me started to doing much better.

           

In late May the Minnieville mine started.  I asked for a drilling job.  They said I was to lite, but I insisted and they gave me a drill.  It paid more--$.40 per hour instead of $.37 ½.  After a couple of paychecks I got a 1925 Chevy touring car.

           

I was talking to Ellis Chiasm and he said, “You cannot believe how much Ruby Woodcock has grown up.”  I told him I would go with him and check it out.  So on his next date I took him (he had no car).  I had a chat with Ruby and made a date with her.  That was the last girl I dated as the dates just happened. They were on Friday and Sunday each week.  We would usually go to a show and sometimes to the park.  One Sunday we took an extra girl, a friend of Ruby and Daisy.  We went to Swope Park.  We only had 5 cents between us.  We bought a package of chewing gum.  We each had one stick.  We did have an enjoyable time, I thought.  One Sunday we went to visit Ellis’s brother Claude.  It was while there I asked Ruby if she would marry me.  She said, “What did you say”?  I said, “Are you laughing up your sleeve”?  She said, “No”.  I asked again and she said “Yes!” We dated all that winter.  I don’t think I missed a week.

           

The mine did shut down, but I got a job as a night watchman at $25.00 per month.  There was not much to do but just stay in the office and keep the fire going in the office.  I also had a bed there. Sometimes Ellis and Henry Drummond would stay with me and would play cards most of the night.  When the mine started I asked for the job of helping the powder man.  I got it.  We would fix up to 1,000 pounds of dynamite per day to shoot the rock for the day.

            The dating still went on.  On the 13th of May, 1930 I made a little different date.  Ruby was to meet me at 9th and Grand at 9:00 a.m. in Kansas City.  She rode the street car.  We met and went from there to Olathe, Kansas, and at 12:00 noon we both said, “I do!”  We then went to a nearby restaurant and had dinner.  I took Ruby Miller to the Woodcock home.  I went on to my home.  In a few days I went to the Woodcocks and took Ruby and her things to my folks. 

           

We had attended the marriage of Ellis and Daisy a few weeks before and they were living with the Chiasm’s.  Dad Woodcock offered us the furniture they had left in an old farm house near Voland, Kansas.  Ellis, Daisy and I went out to see what was still there.  We found what looked like most of the things to start housekeeping.  Some things needed repair.  We hired a truck to haul it to Minnieville.  The cook stove did not look like moving.   We rented a house in Randolph and the four of us moved in.  I bought Ruby a new cook stove.  It was a Montgomery Ward wood and coal stove with a warming closet and reservoir to heat water.

           

The four of us moved in--Ellis, Daisy, Ruby and I.  We were generally happy there.  One problem we had was water we shared with next door.  We drew it with a bucket about twenty feet.  The neighbors tied their goat to the well curb.  Our house had three rooms and a basement with three rooms. The top three opened to a porch that was one or two steps to the street level.  The lower level was kitchen and a back porch not enclosed but with a good roof.  To solve the water problem we drilled a well on the back porch and put in a pump.

           

Ellis was working on the section for the railroad in Birmingham.  His foreman told him he would have to live closer so he could be on call.  We then rented the second floor of the old Sisam house in Birmingham.  We got along well there also, and it was there Ronald Francis was born.  We did well.  We had a beautiful baby to take care of.  We tried to keep him warm and happy.  I have come for a long time to believe we kept him too warm to a point he would perspire.  Then when in cool air he caught a cold that went into pneumonia.  He only lived a few hours.  We called the doctor who came to the house and gave us medicine for him.  He did not give us much hope for him.  Ronald passed away that night.  His funeral was the second day after at the Baptist Church in Birmingham.  I do not remember the name of the minister who conducted.  The girls in the village sang what I requested, “Little Jewels.”  When he passed away I went to a funeral home in Liberty.  They told me that was no need for them to go to Birmingham.  They sold me a little casket and a bottle of fluid to keep him wrapped in a sheet and soaked in the fluid.  We had no hearse, only using the back seat of a car.  He is buried in the cemetery in Liberty, Missouri.  This was in October, 1930.

           

It was only a few weeks before the rock quarry closed for the winter.  The next job I had was two miles east of Independence, Missouri.  To start with Ruby and I stayed with Ruby’s parents in Kansas City.  I rented a house, a small five room house in Independence, Missouri.  I went to a used furniture store and bought an oak dining room set with table, six chairs and buffet and a living room set with divan and two chairs.  When I went to the house a neighbor wanted to move me for $5.00.  He got the job.  His name was John, but I don’t remember his sir name.  I rode with him.  He was a Reorganized Latter-day Saint.  He had no wife, but a daughter about fifteen.  He talked a lot of church to me.  It did not sound bad to me.  We only lived there about three or four months until worked slowed and I was laid off.  About that time we heard John had been arrested for incest.  That was the second lesson I got about L.D.S.  Someone had told me there was little difference in Independence Mormons and Salt Lake City Mormons.

           

We had no place to go so we moved in with my parents at Minnieville. It was there that in September, Wanda Joy was born.  This was early in the Great Depression for our area.  It was hard to find work any place.  When one did find work, in most cases, it was short time jobs.  I did find work in a quarry at 87th and Lydia in Kansas City.  My old car quit me just before we moved from Independence.  The only way to work was by street car in Kansas City.  I could buy a pass for a week for $1.00 that let one ride any place it ran like Independence and several places in Kansas City, Kansas.

           

I then got Ruby and we lived with her parents.  It was back and forth from one to the other.  We let Ivan Lews use our furniture as he was then married.  In 1933 Dad Woodcock bought 80 acres one mile south of the village of Marvin, Missouri.  He was then living at 35th and Elmwood in Kansas City, Missouri.  He also bought a one-ton model T Ford truck and a pickup.  We started to move him to Marvin, Missouri. I was with one load along with Ronald Woodcock, Ruby’s half-brother.  We followed the pickup which had Ellis and his brother-in-law, Buck Cox.  It was dark and drizzling rain when we arrived.  We went in taking some bedding and slept until daylight, unloaded and went back to Kansas City.

           

The next week was much the same, except Earl Gorbet, Ruby’s cousin was with me.  The Pickup was much faster than the one-ton, and Ellis went on ahead of us.  One-mile before we got to Lamont, Missouri, I had a flat tire on the truck.  We could not jack the truck high enough to change the tire so had to dig under enough to change it.  When we did get it changed the spare was no better.  We waited until next day and stored it in a farmer’s barn and went back to Kansas City with Ellis and Buck.  Dad Woodcock could not get another used tire until the next week.  We went again and made it ok.

           

Then the family went to Marvin to live.  There was Grandma Gorbet, Alma and Grandma Woodcock.  Alma had rented room in Versailles where she went to high school and spent the weekends at home which was only about five miles.  Dad Woodcock kept working in Kansas City for Chapman Dairy where he had worked for several years.  I got a job at the Centropolis Quarry at 27th and Manchester in Kansas City.  I rented a three room apartment at 7013 Hugh in Kansas City.  It had an outside stairway.  The toilet was across the alley from the house.  We stocked up on groceries like 24 lbs. Of flour at 29 cents.  We had several sacks.  We had a three burner kerosene cook stove with an oven that sit over two burners to bake.

           

Dad Woodcock came to stay with us there.  He would go to Marvin most weekends.  He would ride a train which would stop to let off passengers or pick one up that flagged it for a pickup. The mail was thrown off and picked up from a hook placed there by the postmaster.  Yes, there was a postmaster in Marvin.  It was cage in the back of the general store which was operated by Asa Gunn who was a Primitive Baptist.  They had a church about two miles south known as Rock Church.  I attended a few times at their quarterly meetings.  That was the only church I went to in that area.  When I was young I went often--that is before mother married Harry Wynn.  I only went once with him and that was to Crescent Lake Primitive Baptist, where he made arrangements for he and Mother to be baptized and they took no children with them that I can recall.  As far as I know he never went back after baptism.  He never took us to church--only the one time that I can recall.

           

I shall get back to life at Marvin, Missouri.  We had all good and friendly neighbors there. They would go out of their way to help anyone in need.  They had a literary society in the neighborhood and would meet in the one room school house where they would use all the local talent to produce entertainment.  No one had any money as it was in the big depression.  Like I did some work for 50 cents per day for one neighbor.  Some of the neighbors would go to different houses for square dances.  Daisy and Ellis lived with the Woodcocks also part of the time.  We had nothing but were happy.  We would exchange books with neighbors to read.

            I bought a sow and six pigs for $6.00.  We fed them corn which was purchased at the Marvin store.  I would put a sack of two bushels on my shoulder and carry it the one mile and not sit it down until I was home.  I must say Dad Woodcock was still working in Kansas City.  He had a furnished room where he stayed.  As crowded as we were I do not remember having a cross word with anyone while there.  There were times when we would hear of a little work coming up at Kansas City and go try for it and sometimes could pick up a little work.

            In the late fall of 1934 I went to the store to get the mail when two young well-dressed men walked in.  One of them walked to Mr. Gunn and spoke to him.  They knew each other.  After asking about individuals in each other’s family the conversations changed on friendly basis.  The one said they had consent to hold a meeting that night in the school house, and asked Mr. Gunn to tell people that come in.  He agreed.  I went home and told the family.  There was nothing else to do and no place to go.  We or most of us went to the meeting. 

            To open the meeting they first introduced themselves.  The one needed no introduction as all the old-timers knew him as he had attended the same school and his family was raised on the farm adjoining the Woodcock family.  This one was Mark D. Jaynes, son of Guy Jaynes, who was at this time living in Idaho.  I do not recall the others name.  The meeting was interesting.  One spoke on faith and the other on the Book of Mormon.  The school house was well filled.  They said they would be back the same next week.  They offered to loan a Book of Mormon to any one that cared for one.  I do not know whether there were any takers or not. 

           

We went the next week.  We talked it over on the way, and decided if they made the offer again we would borrow and see what it was like.  The Elders were there on time, but one had been transferred and Elder Jaynes had a new companion fresh in the field whose name was Elder Sterling N. Holt from Texas.  At the meeting the offer was made again.  We took a Book of Mormon home with us.  We started right in on it.  Ruby was a much better reader than I so she did most of the reading, and it was all out loud.  When she was caring for the children I would stumble along as best I could.

            In the days I had been making fence post.  My hands were stained from the oak wood I handled.

           

When we went back to the next week’s meeting I took the borrowed book thinking they might want it back.  After the meeting I offered it to Elder Jaynes.  He took it, flipped the pages and handed it back to me and said, “Anyone who will read that much of this book in one week it is theirs for keeps.”  We had said before the meeting since we had accepted the loan of the book we would invite them to spend the night with us.  We knew they would have four miles to walk to their room in Versailles.  They accepted and went home with us.  I knew nothing of the missionary rules to be in bed by 10:00 pm.  I kept asking questions until after midnight.

The most we had to eat was bread and gravy and a little bacon and potatoes. 

           

The next week we had finished the Book of Mormon, and I asked to borrow a Doctrine and Covenants.  They did not have one but did have a Pearl of Great Price which we borrowed with promise that they would get a Doctrine and Covenant which they did the next week.  By that time winter was on us.  We invited them to stay overnight.  The next morning it was snowing and about six or eight inches on the ground.  We gave them burlap bags to wrap their feet, and they walked cross country so they could tract on their way to town.  I could tell Elder Holt did not like the idea, when they would have much better footing on the highway.  At that time the missionaries principle way of transportation was to hitch hike.  In those days mine was to bum a ride on a freight train.

           

The elders were transferred to somewhere else.  I do not know where.  They never challenged us to be baptized, but I know they brought the Gospel to us.  I had asked the Lord in prayer.  I had a dream or vision in which I had seen things I had never seen before.  I believed and wanted to know more.

           

Ruby was, as usual, pregnant.  That kept me close to home in 1935 until the first day of May.  At that time I kept her in bed for ten days after the birth of a child (editor’s note: This birth would have been Guy).

           

The furniture that we had loaned out was no longer needed so I had a neighbor go to Kansas City and move it to Marvin for $20.00.  In August I went to Kansas City and got a job that gave me enough to rent a house for $6.00 per month.  I made sure it was close to where we could walk to church easily.  I was staying with my folks about one mile away.

           

The first Sunday I went to the I.O.O.F. hall where I was told the church met, but there was no one there (editor’s note: the underlined appears to have not been written in so I added to complete continuity for the next paragraph).  That week I walked to Independence to get some literature as I thought my folks would accept it as I did.  They were not interested which was a disappointment to me.

           

I went to church the next Sunday and they were there.  They said they had gone to conference the week before.  They invited me to go with them to the chapel at 9th and Lydia where there was someone to be baptized that afternoon.  I was glad to go with them.  We left after Sunday school.  When we entered the building I saw the same thing I had seen in a dream only a few weeks before.  When we entered the chapel section I saw the same four girls rehearsing a song, and the same Sister Jackson playing the piano who, just as in the dream, came to the back and talked to the group from the Centropolis group which I was with.  This was the Kansas City Branch.  We then went to where the font was located, where one person was baptized.  This was my first time to ever see a group of Latter-day Saints in action or otherwise.

           

I started attending on a regular basis for a very few times before I got the same truck to haul our furniture back to Kansas City with Ruby and the three children.  I already had the house rented.  It was two short blocks from the I.O.O.F. Hall where the Centropolis Branch met.  I think it was the first Sunday we were settled that we went to 9th and Lydia and were baptized.  I had first went to the mission office and learned that Elder Sterling N. Holt was then laboring in Kansas City.  Elder Jaynes had returned home months before.  I asked that Elder Holt Baptize us, and he did on the 18th of August, 1935.

           

One of the first of the Sundays we attended one of our older children started to make some fuss.  I took her into the foyer and gave her a lesson by a few spats.  There was a certain elder that come out and got onto me for that.  I told him that he had a couple of kids to go back and check their reverence and he would do well.  That was the last time I had to take one out.  The others understood.  About the elder that followed me out--his wife left him with the children and he did not get to raise them.  He did remarry a fine lady and raise another family.

           

We remained in the Centropolis Branch until it was discontinued.  We were given a choice of where our membership would go either Kansas City Branch or Independence Branch.  We chose the Independence Branch as the distance was about the same.  We could walk two blocks and catch a street car and get within a block of Independence with no transfers.

           

I had bought an old Chevy panel truck for $20.00 with which we had made a few trips to Marvin to visit.  One evening while going south on Holmes St. in Kansas City a street car hit the rear end of the panel truck and bent one door so it would not latch.  Joy’s forehead hit the ignition switch and made a little cut.  In a day or so the street car company sent me a letter to come to their office to arrange a settlement.  When I went I told them I would be pleased if they would only fix the door so it would latch.  The man told me they had no shop to do that.  He did offer me $25.00 for damage to the truck and $10.00 for the injury to Joy.  I accepted and signed a release. I was then rich.

           

I went next day to Independence, Missouri and after asking the Branch President who suggested I see Bro. John Adlard who was in charge of some houses.  I went to his house and he was at home.  I told him that I was looking for a house.  He got us in his car and started to look at some houses.  They had various prices from $300.00 and up.  We selected a six room house with two lots for $600.00.  It had no water nor lights. It was an old solid house (note: this was the home at 910 South Emery.)  I paid $12.50 down and $12.50 per month.  That left us with enough to move on.

           

I have not mentioned my employment for some time.  For months I had looked for work.  In my spare time I went from door to door to sell Maytag washing machines on a 10% basis.  If I could move one a week we could eat.  If I sold two we were in luxury.  Mr. Bullard, the Maytag business was in Independence, also.  No long after moving to Independence I was called to work on the W.P.A. (Works Program Administration).  There I made $42.50 per month.  I traded for a Model a sedan.  I worked on the Blue Ridge for a few weeks and had a chance to powder (blast) on the Colburn Lake Dam cutting for the spillway.  That paid $72.00 per month.  I did some on Cleft Drive in North East Kansas City, and some sewer work other places.

           

There was an old feed mill next to my folks that I have to mention.  A man by the name of Ed Hogan rented it and started to mix and sell livestock feed as well as poultry feed.  While living on Ewing in Kansas City I hired to him for over a year.  I started at $0.25 per hour.  And worked ten hour per day.  He found I could to the maintenance work and straw boss.  He then gave $0.30 per hour.  The big warehouse burned.  He built a small one and was producing in a month.

           

I then went to Sheffield Steel to work.  I was making $0.65 per hour in the [78] shipping department.  Brother Mitz Allen in Independence had a d.c. welding machine and gave instructions for $0.25 per hour.  I had five or six lessons.  Getting back to the steel mill.  They sent me into the Faber construction building for a short job.  The next time I saw the superintendent I asked him for a welding job.  He said, “Are you a welder?”  I said, “No, but I can do the kind of welding I seen them doing.”  Within an hour I was sent for a try out.  I was there for a few months until work slowed in early September, 1941.  I was laid off and would have to bump the extra board.

           

I had bought a 1939 Chevy sedan.  When I got home I said to Ruby, “Let’s go to Salt Lake City.”  I then went to see Branch Pres. Stanley Bennion to get a Temple Recommend.  He gave us what we needed.  We then needed someone to help take care of the children while in Salt Lake City.  We got down to two for our choices--my cousin Goldena Lowery or my Aunt Mournen Moffit who had lost her son, Sammie, a short time before. We called Aunt Mournen and she would go.  We went to Amazonia, Missouri and got her.  We got an early morning start.

           

We drove to Laramie, Wyoming that day, found Curtis Henderson and stayed the night with them.  It was sure nice to see them again.  Grandville was married and had a nice little boy and lived next to his dad.  They had homesteaded 160 acres each and next to each other only four miles south of town.  Early Sunday morning we started for Salt Lake City, intending to stop and go to Sunday school in Laramie where they had a nice new chapel.  We were too early so we decided to go to Rollins which we did.  We were a little late there but went in.  They met in an old stone building. After Sunday school we went on.  Arriving in Salt Lake City we found a three room motel for $8.00 per night.  I had the address of the ward where Elder Jayne’s parents attended.  We went there plenty early for Sacrament Meeting.  We told people that we wanted to meet the Jaynes.  Soon Sister Jaynes came in.  She was not expecting us and did not know us.  When introduced by a member she invited us to stay with them.  We told her we had rented rooms, but would stay our last night with them.  Bro. Guy Jaynes was working nights so he was not at church.

           

The next morning we went to the temple.  Sister Jaynes was there to go through with us.  We did our ordinance work and after noon we had our children in for their sealing’s.  Ruby and I went through the next day for others.  We spent some time on the grounds with Aunt Mournen and the kids.  We then went to the Patriarch’s office for our blessings.  We then went to the Jaynes to spend the last night.  We then got to meet Bro. Guy and Guy, Jr. and Elder Jayne’s sisters.  They were a nice family and we loved them all.

           

We got an early start home, but took our time through the mountains, stopping to see things of interest.  We did make good time, not going high speed, only 65 miles per hour.  We were not far into Wyoming when an Oldsmobile convertible passed us carrying two service men at high speed.  In a short time we seen it again on its top.  Two cars were stopped.  One man appeared to be dead and the other was begging for more air.  We went on and next morning we heard both had died.

           

We stopped over night at the Henderson’s and had another nice visit.  The next day we went to Fredonia, Kansas where Grandma Miller’s brother, Joseph Fitz Jarrell had settled and had a visit with his descendants.  We also had a nice visit with them.  Aunt Mournen had seen some of them before.  We then went to Amazonia to take Aunt Mournen home then back to Liberty, Missouri

           

We left home and I was laid off at the steel mill.  I went back to the steel mill and after a little talk I was put on the Rigger Gang which was little better paying than before.  Things went fine with that assignment.

           

On December 7, 1941 in the afternoon we heard that Japan had bombed Pearl Harbor and sank the American Fleet.  In a few minutes I started home and at each bridge there was an armed guard.  That was a bad day for all Americans as that was the start of World War II.  We had been working seven days a week for some time. My foreman was known as Mike H.  He was a fine old man to work under.

           

There was a program by the government to train welders in special welding techniques.  I signed up to take the three month course in aircraft welding.  I was accepted and started to school at the old Manuel High School in Kansas City.  I would work at the steel mill at 7:00 am to 3:30 pm then go to school from 4 pm to 12:00 midnight.  When I finished aircraft welding which was all acetylene or gas welding I then took electric arc welding for ship building.  That made six months in school, five days a week and steel mill seven days per week.  The government said that all had to pay double time for the seventh day.  My foreman, Mike H. said. “Shorty, Wednesday will be your day off.”  I said, “Fine, Mike.  That is the best day of the week to hunt for another job.”  I was only off one Wednesday.

           

 I went to work for a construction company which was building a munitions plant at Eudora, Kansas.  The pay was just double what I was making at the steel mill, $1.50 per hour.

I worked there on heavy equipment until the next July. 

           

I heard of a construction company which was hiring for work on the canal projects in the

Arctic.  I went to down town Kansas City and was interviewed.  The man who was interviewing said he was not instructed to hire welders but would need some.  He would sign me on as a bulldozer operator.  The contract was for nine months.  In a few days I was on my way to Canada.  I told Ruby I would stick it out and unless something terrible happened I would not come home.  I was leaving a lot for her to care for, like milking goats and caring for several stands of bees.  She did a good job of it.  I took the tires off the car and put them under the house in the basement. Ruby did not drive at that time.  I left Kansas City for Canada about 8:00 pm on the Golden State Limited for Minneapolis, Minnesota.   We arrived about 8:00 am.

           

There was another welder from Kansas City that I had never known before.  His name was Earnest Tremaine.  He was also seeking his fortune.  His wife was expecting in a few months.  The train was crowded with some standing.  Ernest shared a seat with a young lady with little boy, three or four.  In Minneapolis we were given breakfast and taken for more interviews and physical exams which took most all day.  Late in the evening we were on another train for Canada.  When we were settled Earnest was seated again with the same young lady.  We arrived in Winnipeg about day light.  The lady by Earnest asked him if he would care for her son a few minutes while she went and freshened up a little.  We were in Winnipeg about half an hour and without changing cars headed west for Edmonton, Alberta by way of Saskatoon.  When we were leaving Winnipeg, Earnest still had the child.  He was worried the mother got off and missed the train.  I started to kid him by telling he would not have to wait for a son as he already had one, and that was a thing that happened before. In a few minutes she returned and Earnest was sure relieved.  I don’t think I ever called him Ernie again.  It was always “Pappy”, the name he went by in the Arctic.

           

We were in Saskatoon the next morning and late the next were in Edmonton.  We were met by an Army bus and taken to Camp Colder about two miles north and fed a late breakfast.  My pay started at Kansas City on a standby basis at eight hours per day.  I was in Edmonton over two weeks.  I was assigned to work nights in the maintenance shop.  I had been there only a few nights when the foreman brought a section of an army coal cook stove that was broken and said the Army had a larger group coming in next morning and they needed another cook stove very badly.  I welded the cast iron top and went to the body shop and got a disc grinder and polished it.  This was a USED job throughout.  The next day my foreman told me when I showed for work to go back to my barracks and come in at eight the next morning and that the Captain wanted to see me.  This gave me a scare.  What would the Army Captain want to see me for?  I did as told, and when I went into the Captain’s office and told him who I was he asked me if I had welded a cool stove top.  I knew then I must be in trouble over that. I told him I had.  He said he did not know they had welder that could do that kind of work and commended me for a perfect job and told me he was putting me on a portable welding truck and that I would be working days in the field.  That was what I did at Eudora, Kansas.              The days are long there in the summer, and after the evening meal and on weekends I would go into town.  On Sundays I attended regular meetings at the Branch there.  I also went to the mission home several times.  All during my stay in Canada I kept in contact with the mission office by mail.  The mission president would send me a list of members on the same job and their locations.

           

I liked to talk to the natives there.  They were so friendly.  One young lady on a street car who was dressed very well as we traveled she thought I was a G.I. as my clothing look like it. I told her why I was in Edmonton on standby to go to the Arctic.  She asked me what kind of work I did.  I told her I was a welder.  She then said she had not heard of the term, “weld”--what is welding?  I explained that metal is heated to the melting stage and then a filler of wire was fed into the melting puddle to form a solid piece of what had been one.  I always tried to start a conversation with everyone I met though I knew my way I asked everyone I met.

 

            One evening while going to the mission home I met a stately looking old gentleman how to get to that address.  He told me it was only a short distance straight ahead.  Then he asked me if I was in the U.S.Army.  I went only a short distance when I met a teenager.  He asked me if I knew who I had talked to up the street.  I told him, no.  He then told me the old man was the retired general.

           

We were advised to not try to take winter clothing, that we could get much better buys in Canada and much cheaper at the PX.  That was good advice.  I bought heavy woolens and flying boots, wool shirts and pants.  We were issued shoe pack that were rubber bottoms and leather tops, bed rolls and parkas. 

           

We boarded a train from Edmonton to Rouse Coupe, where we went the next fifty miles to Ft. St. John on a bus.  We were in camp there for three or four days when we were loaded on a C-46 Army transport plane and flew to Norman Wells, North West Territory.  We were then loaded on motor boat and taken across the Mackenzie River which they said was six miles wide.  We arrived in Camp Canal late in the evening.  They gave us a meal and assigned us a bunk to sleep in [90] igloos which was common in base camps.  They were semi-circle roofs and wide enough to have a row of cots on each maybe eight or ten.

           

The next morning they got us in a room for a briefing.  They had just started when a man came in and said that Dick Whitmore wanted two welders in his camp.  Volunteers were asked for.  Pappy (Earnest Tremaine) and myself raised our hands.  We were accepted on the spot.  The man in charge said that was unusual as most people wanted to stay in base camp.  In no time I was on a pole dolly loaded with pipe for the pipe line.  The truck driver was a young Jewish fellow from California.  The road was not bad, but with a heavy load it was slow going.  It started to rain a little and as we got higher in the mountains it turned to snow.  It was mid-September.  We or I was to go to mile 52 camp, and the foreman was Dick Whitmore. It was getting dark when we arrived.  The camp site was in a river valley, and it was beautiful.

           

I asked someone where I could find Dick Whitmore.  I was told which caboose to find him.  (These cabooses were built on sleds so they could be towed easily for miles.)  I entered and asked for Dick Whitmore.  A bearded man with a deep coarse voice said, “I am Dick Whitmore.”  I introduced myself and said I had been assigned to him and that I was from Missouri.  Then seven or eight men did likewise. One I do remember said he was Art (Arthur) Armstrong from Salt Lake City, Utah.  I said to him that I had been there for three days in 1941.  I told him that I had not really seen much of the town as I spent most of my time on Temple Square and that I went through the temple three times.  He responded, “No, you did not go into the temple.”  I insisted that I did.  He then asked me what I did there.  I said the first day I received my own endowments and the others  I did vicarious work.  He then said, “I guess you have been through.”  I then asked him if he had been through and he said no and that he was a deacon.  We were close after that and took walks in the bush to be alone.  We talked a lot about families and the Church.

           

We were in this camp for some time.  While there Dick Whitmore came into my shop which was a square army tent and told me we would have to stop building up cat idler rollers as we were running out of welding rods that would be needed to make repairs on broken machines.  I said, “Dick, we have a ton of rod.”  He said, “Where?”  I said, “In the supply tent.”  He said, “Take me and show me.”  We then went to the supply tent and I pointed to a skid with a lot of bare acetylene welding rod.  He told me it won’t work that way.  I said, “It will.”  So we took some.  I reset my welder and ran about six inches and raised my welding hood.  He looked at it said it looked better than the rest He then took me to the head welder’s tent and told Rex we had over a ton of rod in the tent.  Rex said it would not run on the arc welder.  Dick than took us back to my tent and said, “Shorty, run some more.”  I did and the head welder had to learn to use bare rod.  Our job was to build a road so the pipe could be laid.

           

We then moved to mile 76 which was another nice camp site.  There was one more move before we came to mile 136.  By this time it was getting very cold by Missouri standards.  The gravel to make the roads was frozen and the Lorain Shovels were breaking teeth out of their buckets.  All the welders were making shovel teeth out of whatever scrap iron they could find.  There was one difference in the ones I was making.  They were not breaking. The word got out and I was sent back to Canal base camp to make shovel teeth and show others how to make them so they would last.

           

I was only in Camp Canal two or three days when the big repair shop burned.  My tools were in the fire.  I had them in a good heavy box I had made before I went to Canada.  My tools were only smoked so I could use them.  Since we had not shelter in base camp I was sent to a pipe laying crew where I was put to welding pipe on the line.  I was running filler beads or the second pass of weld out of three.

            By this time the weather was 30 to 40 degrees below zero.  It was in this camp we had Christmas Dinner.  We had no bakery bread.  It was all made in camp and the turkey we had, if nothing else, was a treat from ham which was all too common.  That day was the worst day for weather, so far.

 

            We were going through a mountain pass.  Wind was strong.  I did not get cold, but the wind blew the snow in such that it got on the glass in my hood, which made it hard to see my work.  We had two Lincoln 250 pipe line specials on each sled with a plywood house over them.  With the gasoline welder running in them they were real warm inside.  About every hour all would get in one of the welder sheds to get warm.  I always stayed outside and kept a slow walk.  I was not cold and if I went in the cold went right through me so I stayed out till I got back to camp.  We started our day at 10:00 am as it would be daylight then and we would work ten hours.  The end of the pipe line was made when the north group met the south group from White Horse, Yukon.  I was put back on the road builders to finish the road, because soon after I was pulled off they built only snow roads.

 

            Ruby and I corresponded once or twice a week.  There came the time our mail came in from White Horse instead of Camp Canal.  There was six weeks I got no mail.  The first one I got  I could only guess what was in the letters she had written earlier as she said that her mother was ok and that she had left Vera to stay with Grandma and go to school.  The next day or so I got a whole bunch of letters.  I then knew about the death of Dad Woodcock.  He had been staying with Ruby and had gone home for a vacation.  When he got off the train he could hardly walk.  They called the doctor.  Dad Woodcock had pneumonia and died in a few hours.  Grandma Woodcock had the same and his body was held for some time so they could bury them together.  Grandma came out but was very weak.  That was big shock to me because he was just like a father to me.  He was so special in so many ways to me.  Six weeks had passed that I did not know of it and the folks at home were getting adjusted to their situation and after thought and prayers I stayed on.

 

            While I had gone back toward Camp Canal for the road work we had roads we could travel until the weather began to thaw then some were closed for most of the day and any long distance was done by night while the ground was frozen.  It was at this time I got a tooth ache and decided I had better go White Horse and get it pulled before I got stuck in and could not get out.  I got a ride with the man who hauled the mail in a four wheel drive pickup.  I took all my clothing, tools and sleeping bag.  We were in a convoy of other trucks that stayed together.  The lead truck got stuck.  It was very near where a camp had burned.  I looked a little ways and found a D8 Cat on a hill side that had been abandoned.  Its wheels were off the track.  I tried and it started.  I went and got enough tools to brake the chain track, put it on and started it and pulled all through the deep mud.  There was an Army officer in the convoy and after all was ready he found why I was with the group and told me that he would see I got paid full pay for my trip.

 

            It was night when we got to the hospital.  The captain was an M.D.  He told me the dentist would be the first job next morning.  The dentist said he would be glad to do it now so I could get a night’s sleep.  The captain said it was ok with him.  The dentist got me seated and gave the cocaine shots.  I told him that the dentist that pulled the tooth on the opposite side was a big man and was all over me before it came out.  The dentist made two tries and said that he saw why the dentist was all over me.  The third time it broke off.  He then cut away some of the bone surrounding it and pulled the roots.  The captain then put me to bed in a big ward that had the end bed free.  I did get a good night’s sleep.  The next morning a nurse came and took temperatures.  I was the last.  She said that I was the only one in the ward that was not pregnant.  All the others ate supper there and vomited.

 

            The next day I found a ride out to the line and started back to my old unit. The further we went the worse the roads got.  I only could go as far as Lake Sheldon.  There I went to work for another gang.  It was months later that the roads were opened all the way through.  The new gang were also nice fellows to be with.  As before many of them were Swedes from Minnesota.  At one time there were two French Canadians in our group.  I argued that the women in Missouri all cut wood.  I told them a man would not marry a woman that could not cut enough wood to keep the house warm. They said that was not a woman’s work.  I told them a man that did not keep his wife’s axe sharp was not highly respected.  This we would do any time we got together.

 

            The road construction was at times such that the dump truck would have to dump gravel over the end as the road was built over the muskcagg which was moss six inches or thicker, under which it never thaws.  They said the frost was thirty to one hundred feet thick.  In the valleys the water did not freeze from the top but since it runs over perpetual frost freezes from the bottom up.  Therefore a stream will change its course from day to day.  Near the time I came home I had the opportunity to get back where we built bridges in the winter.  I saw bridges where they were a long way from any streams or rivers.

 

            There was one fellow who had a bottle of beer in his locker.  Often he would take it out and rub the bottle and talk to it and put it back in his locker and lock it up.  One night he opened it and four or five drank it.  They then filled the bottle with diesel fuel and put the cap back on.  He set it on the floor.  One fellow who was out taking a shower came in and grabbed the bottle, and while wrestling with the others got the cap off again and put it to his mouth and took a big gulp of it. It nearly strangled him to death.

 

            I got a letter from my mother telling me they had bought eighty acres of land east of Lawson, Missouri, and had moved there.  She also said there was ninety-five acres next to them that could be bought for $3,000 with a house and a barn.  I wrote to Ruby and told her to get on the train and go look at it, as a farm was our goal anyway.  I told her if she liked it to offer $2750, cash and give them 10% down and the rest when her lawyer would approve the abstract.  She did go and see it, liked it and did as I suggested.  It was thirty miles from church, but we had good roads and we also owned thirty acres nearby and Harold Rollers who were good friends had their farm adjoining the thirty acres.  The ninety-five acres was on a highway.

 

            The contractors were finished.  The U.S.E.D. (United States Engineering Dept.) were taking over.  On my way home I first went to White Horse.  There we went by train (a narrow gauge) to Skagway, Alaska where we were loaded on an Army boat for Seattle, Washington through , what is known as, the inland water way.  We made two ports in route.  One was Juneau, the capital of Alaska.  The other was at Prince Rupert, British Columbia.  The ships orders were to let no civilians off.  While in this port, F.D. Roosevelt was elected to his third term.  The ship’s hold was filled with scrap iron.  It was an old wooden ship.

 

            We then proceeded to Puget Sound where they dropped anchor and the captain said he wanted us to have turkey dinner on him.  After a big feed we docked at Seattle, Washington.  It was on Saturday.  I went to hotel and got a room.  The first thing I did was fill the bath tub and soak off the scales of the last sixteen months.  The best we had before was a shower.

 

            I looked up the address of the church there.  Sunday I went to it.  It was a small building that had been purchased from someone else as the one on 9th and Lydia in Kansas City.  The services were fine.  I seated near the back.  I looked like a G.I.  When the services were over I was not introduced to one person.  It seemed I was ignored.  On Monday I went to the office of the company and got my ticket to Kansas City.  I had some time to shop.  I bought a suit of clothes and dress shoes and then went to the depot where I caught the train to Kansas City.

 

            The family was fine but so much changed.  If I had met Joy on the street I would not have known her.  She had grown so much.  The others were much the same.  It was near the first of the year-- I did not put tires on the car for a few days.  When I got home Ruby got a letter that the abstract on the farm had been cleared.  We went to downtown Kansas City where Ruby wrote a check for the remainder on the farm.

 

            The following Saturday we went to Lawson by train and I looked at the farm with Dad.  While walking over the place we met Tom Green who owned the fifty acres across the road and adjoining fifteen acres of the ninety-five.  He said he was thinking of selling.  I told him if he decided to sell let me know.  Dad told me the well on that place had never failed.  I went home.  The next week I got a letter from Dad saying Tom Green had decided to sell.  I then had my car running and went on out and made a contract to buy the fifty acres for $1500.

 

            The War was still going on.  I started to look for a job that would end as soon as the War did.  So I went to Remington Arms at Lake City which was also near home and hired on.  I sold our home in Independence and moved to Lawson.  I had a small house trailer I had made in which I lived through the week, going to Lawson on the weekends.  That did not last long as Harry Truman dropped two atomic bombs in Japan.  Next day after V.J. day I was laid off.  I could then go to Lawson.  That I did.  I sold the house trailer and went to the farm.

 

            I bought a Fortson tractor and an Oliver Roster Combination two bottom fourteen inch plow.  I also bought a horse for the kids and a little garden work. I planted only oats in field crop.  I then bought an old McCormick Deering grain binder.

            I went to work for Peppered Seed Company in Lawson where they were building seed corn dryers.  The buildings were all built.  My job was working with Earl Fry building conveyors in the top to carry the ear corn to the various bins of cribs.  It all had to be handmade.  The only bearings we could buy were for blue grass strippers.  The long rollers to carry the conveyor belts we turned of native wood on a homemade lathe.  That included both head and tail pulleys.  I stayed with Peppered all that fall and winter.

 

            The next spring I bought a saw mill from a man in Lawson.  The wood was all bad in it He agreed to saw material to rebuild it.  I went to Henrietta, Missouri to help him. We did the sawing with the mill, then took it down and loaded it, taking it to my place in Lawson.  In a short time I had the mill set up in one corner of my pasture.  I had no power for it.  I went to Birmingham and bought an old 1927 Twin City tractor, a 17-28 model.  I then bought new sleeves and pistons and put them in the tractor.  It was then in good running condition with ample power to pull the 52-inch saw on the mill.  I got a lot of logs to saw.  I got $20.00 per 1000 board foot for sawing.

 

            We had the best of neighbors near Lawson.  The kids went to a one room school through the 8th grade.  Then they went to Excelsior Springs High School until the last year we were there when they went to Lawson High School after we were voted into that district.  Harold Roller moved to his farm. He and I moved the saw mill onto the Watkins place southwest of Lawson.  This is the place that is now Watkins State Park where the famous old Watkins woolen mill yet stands as a historical landmark. We sawed much bridge timber on a 50-50 basis.  It was not easy to get custom sawing there and Harold went to work in the city.

 

            I then moved the mill about four or five miles and set it up a few feet from Trist Falls on 92 highway.  I got a lot to saw there and it was all hauled on good roads.  I sawed several barns that now stand in Ray and Clay counties.  My cousin Clarence Howard Miller came and stayed with us for a while to help in the mill.

 

            Early in the winter I lost the first joint of my right for finger.  I thought it would bother me handling logs and lumber.  I then went looking for an indoor job.  I tried General Motors in Kansas City, Kansas.  It did not look good as there must have been a hundred men filling out applications.  They were all turned in. Out of all those men there were two called in for an interview?  I was one and the other had been asked for by a foreman.  I was interviewed and given a physical examination and was told I would be called.  That was in early December, 1949.  I did not get a call.  Instead in less than a week they had a big layoff.  I just forgot about General Motors.  On January 10, 1950 I got a notice to report at General Motors Fairfax Plant in Kansas City, Kansas.  I responded and was told to work on January 12, 1950, on the second shift.

 

            There were several that started that day.  When asked what kind of work I did I told the man I was a welder.  The man said welders did not like the kind of welding they did there.  So he sent me to the trim department where I worked on seats assembly.  I did ok there.  One day when the body shop worked a little overtime I went there and asked the foreman if I could be transferred to body shop as a welder.  I had been in trim for about six months.  The next day I was sent to body shop for a tryout.  I was transferred in a few days.  When I was put on a gas welding operation it only took one day to break in.

 

            After a few months of gas welding I was put in the arc weld booth where I stayed until mid-1951 when they needed welders in maintenance.  I applied and was accepted.  That was where I wanted to be and stayed with it for the next twenty-five years.  In that department I had many friends I made over the years.  After four or five years they put me on the emergency cart which consisted of one millwright and one welder.  The job was on call for any breakdown in the plant.  We answered a whistle to call the dispatcher to find where to go.  The last ten years or so we carried a walkie-talky radio that kept us in touch with the dispatcher and all maintenance foremen.

 

            I shall now turn to the more human aspects while at General Motors.  To start with while in trim department we sometimes traded rides.  At other times we paid someone to ride to work.  It was forty-one miles from home to work.   In 1950 I bought a 1949 Nash 600.  It was a stick shift with overdrive.  It was good on gas like 25 miles per gallon on the road.  It did not require much maintenance.  We got 160,000 miles before we just let it sit, and that was because a truck hit the rear end and it could not be locked.  Guy was driving it to trade school in North Kansas City.

            When I went to maintenance my hours were a little different than production.  I started riding with Harold Wilson who lived in Excelsior Springs.  He was a mechanic in the maintenance garage.  I always liked him, and we did many things together.  He could also weld.

            I had a chance to buy into a flying club that had a 1941 Aeronica Champion airplane for $100.00.  I started to take instructions at the Lexington, Missouri Airport.  Soon I and Harold Wilson stopped at the Kansas City Municipal Airport.  One flying club had a Champion for sale for $425.00.  I bought it.  It was to be delivered to Lexington Airport.  I then could have choice of two to fly.   I soloed after about six lessons and took more instructions after that.  I made some cross country solos, and took my check ride from Kansas City to get my private single engine license.  It was not to too expensive to fly then as gas was cheap.  Guy got his A & E license about that time.  I could land on my farm and Guy could do work on the plane and sign it off.

           

When Patsy was a small baby, Ruby and I flew to Cedar Rapids, Iowa.  All went well until on our way home we were confronted with a small thunder storm.  I set the plan on a small pasture, tied it to two fence post, got back in and sit there for one hour and took off and landed at home.  I took one of the older kids and flew to Excelsior Springs and put the plane in the hanger.  Another followed us to take us home.

 

            Harold Wilson and I went to Pine Bluff, Arkansas to visit his father on a long weekend.  We had an enjoyable time there where I had my first and last bubble bath.  On our way home we got off course and lost.  I asked Harold if he could see a farmer below.  He said, “Yes.”  I said, “I bet he knows where he is and if so he can tell us.”   Harold said that we can’t land in those rocks.  I said we could and did.  We were only forty miles from Springfield, Missouri.  We headed for Springfield where we ate dinner, bought gas and flew to Excelsior Springs and called his wife who came for us.  We then went to work on time.

 

            As for church we were still members of the Independence Branch except for a year when the Adam-ondi-ahman branch was organized at Brookfield, Missouri I was first counselor to the branch president.  We still had Sunday school at Excelsior Springs except on first Sundays we met in Brookfield.  That did not last long and we were sent back to Independence Branch.  We still had Sunday school in a hall in Excelsior Springs where we had an average attendance of about 90%. 

 

The branch ended the Sunday school and we went back to Independence until one Sunday they told us not to come back next Sunday but go to the Memorial Hall in Liberty and there would be a branch organized.  So on that Sunday in 1954 we stopped in Liberty where the branch was organized with Milton D. Rogers as Branch President.  It was a brand new experience for me.  I knew only one person and that was Virgil Dick.  He had grown up in Independence.  It took a while to know what wife belonged to which husband.  The whole group was a fine group of brethren and sisters. 

 

            The growth was something too.  We would get started in a meeting place and in two or three months we would be overflowing or they would be afraid the floor would not hold us.  We wound up in a basement under a shoe store on the west of the courthouse square in Liberty.  It would get so hot there in summer with curtains for partitions that it was bad for everyone.  The President said he wanted the family heads to meet that evening at 7:00 pm and we would try to change things.  We met and all I can remember is that he said, “I figure if about fourteen or fifteen of you yahoos can bring in $500 next Sunday then we will build a house to meet in about six weeks.”  Yes! The next Sunday it was there and the house got started.  It was not much over six weeks we were in a nice clean house.

 

            Soon there was a new branch president who was Dell Johnson.  Our numbers still grew.  The branch boundaries were the Missouri River on the south and the Iowa line on the north.  There were 130 some members to start and President Johnson said it doubled every five years.  I think at times it has exceeded that. 

 

            Once in the new house things went well and it was not long until President Johnson was Bishop Johnson.  We were a ward in the Kansas City Stake.  It did not stay that way long and the Independence Stake was created.  That did not last long either.  The Liberty, Missouri Stake was made with Liberty the stake center. 

 

            I have gotten ahead of myself again. We have been out of that house for years.  We built a new chapel, a first phase deal.  We sold the house and paid off the new one, then started on phase two and added another wing.  While in the old building and Kansas City Stake I was called as Ward Clerk.  I do not know how soon but the stake is nearly ready to be divided again.  1984.

            We as a family have been blessed in that nearly all our family are active in the Church.  That is why I am not sad to see my sons move to a new locality as all have them have been called to some calling such a Stake High Council, Elders Quorum Presidents or Secretaries...  Our daughters have done as well as also our grandchildren.  So on to great grandchildren.  I know that twenty-one out of twenty-three are in regular attendance.  We are within a month of our twenty-fourth and I am sure it will follow its brothers and sisters.

 

            Now that there was a branch organized in Liberty while we were living at Lawson.  It took me four years plus I was running out of boys to run the farm.  With Guy married and living in St. Louis and Walter on a mission I was shorthanded.  Joy married, Vera married and Ann staying in an apartment in Excelsior Springs there were not so many at home.  I was making five or six trips per week to Liberty we decided to buy in or near Liberty.  I found a house with five acres just outside the city limits which I bought in August, 1959.  I had a farm sale and sold off all the farm equipment and moved to Liberty in time for the start of the school year which began September, 1959.

 

            We settled in Liberty and soon found we had all good neighbors, and the land is suitable to grow about anything we plant on it.  The house was a little smaller than we liked.  A part had been added that had a nearly flat roof that started to leak when it rained.  I told Ruby that I did not know how I could fix it.  I threw all the roof off the whole house and built five rooms and a bath on what was left then put a roof on it.  That made us ten rooms and two baths.  This is the first house we ever lived in that had a bath room.  What usually happens--the kids are all gone and have their own homes--we just rattle in this house, but we are seldom alone.

 

            These times were met with some minor problems.  I hurt my back in 1955 at work and was taken to Bethany Hospital and put in traction.  While there I had flare up of hemorrhoids and had them removed.  That was in August while very hot weather was on. After sick leave I went to work with restrictions.  The following April I was sent to St. Margaret’s Hospital where I had a herniated disk removed from my spine.  I was in five weeks because of pain.  I also was given a body cast that covered my entire body which I wore until the 3rd of July.  When I got home I walked with a cane in both hands.

 

            The boys cut the hay and raked it into big piles.  We would pull the hay bailer alongside.  They would pull it loose for me and I would pitch it into the bailer.  I still had the cast on my body, but we got enough to feed through the winter.  I went back to work in September, 1956.  The company gave me a $5,000 settlement and I bought an Allis Chalmers bailer for round bales and another farm tractor.

 

            I only worked a short time.  I went to work on Sunday.  I did not feel good.  It came lunch time and I did not eat.  I went home and did not eat breakfast.  We were going to a funeral of Mary Ann McDaniel’s brother (Guy was dating Mary Ann) at 10:00 am.  We went from there to Dr. Sanders office at 11:15 am.  He looked me over and took a blood test and said I was getting pretty hot and that I had appendicitis.  He said for me to go to the hospital and they would operate at 12:30 pm.  They did and I came out ok.

 

            I was visiting Stanley Payne on a Saturday in 1975.  He had his camper in his driveway with for sale sign on it. Someone drove in.  He said to his wife she had a customer and to go talk to them.  She did and soon came in and said the man wanted to buy the pickup also.  Stanley talked to her.  They wanted $2000 for the truck and camper.  On Sunday after church Ruby and stopped again to visit, and Mr. Payne took Ruby out and showed it to her.  We had seen it when they got it new in 1971.  On the way home Ruby said she would like to have it.  On Monday morning I stopped by where Stanley worked part time.  I asked him if the people bought his rig.  He said, “No.”  I asked him if it was still for sale.  He said, “Yes.”  I wrote a check on the spot for $2000.

 

            It was only two or three weeks that I got a pain in my side.  I went to the doctor who said I had a hernia. I went to Liberty Hospital and had the repair made.  It was not very painful.  I had to be off work for six weeks.  That was when we were glad we had a camper as we would go fishing and stay a day or two.  We did not go very far from home but we enjoyed being out alone.  We also did some visiting our kin and friends.

 

            I signed up for Social Security in 1975 to start January 1, 1976.  I figured how long I could work that year and not affect my Social Security.  It was March 1, 1976.  The last two months I worked they left me in the maintenance garage to make storage racks and take care of other welding that came in.

 

            The last days were sad ones as our grandson, David McDowell was born with a bad heart that the doctor said he could not live much longer with and there was a chance that it could be repaired to make him normal.  We went to the hospital to be there with him through the operation.  We saw him before he went to surgery and he was in a good mood and as happy and joyful as ever.  They took him into the operating room and we never saw his happy little face again alive.  He died that day and was laid to rest in the Richmond, Missouri Cemetery by the side of his great grandfather and only a few feet from David Whiter who was a witness to the Book of Mormon.

 

            Ruby and I had planned to some traveling as soon as I retired.  We planned to spend a week in Oklahoma with Ruby’s Aunt Rosa Pickett, then go to O’Fallon, Illinois and spend a few days with our son, Ray, come home and go to Salt Lake City, for the summer.  That was our plans.  We went to see Aunt Rosa for the week.  When we got home Ruby’s mother had been hospitalized as well as my mother.  Grandma Woodcock was past ninety at that time.  She, that is Grandma Woodcock, got out and seemed to be doing fine.  I took my lawn mower and mowed her yard and garden on July 29, 1976.  I had something to do when I got home.  I talked to her for a few minutes before I left for home.  She seemed to be as happy as usual.  The next morning Ruby tried to call on the phone.  After a few tries Ruby called Fern Atkins on whose place Grandma lived and asked her to check on her.  She called back in a few minutes and said she thought Grandma was gone.  We went out as fast as we could go and found her laying on her back with her cane in her hand.  She was dressed and had her breakfast and fed her cats.  Her funeral was held at the Cannon Hill Church of the Nazarene where she had attended.  She was then taken to Versailles, Missouri and buried beside Grandpa Woodcock and her mother, Ida Gorbet.

 

            It was mid-August that we headed west.  We went to Great Falls, Montana where Ruby Gayle wanted to see a missionary whom she corresponded with in a foreign mission.  We started early and took our time seeing sights on the way.  We met some fine people in Montana.  On our way to Rexburg, Idaho where we left Ruby Gayle for college, we visited with the Larry Orr family a day.  The first thing we saw as we approached Rexburg was a pickup truck flying about two hundred feet in the air under a helicopter.  This was only a short time after the Teton Dam had broken and had caused a big flood.  Ruby, Patsy and I then went to Sandy, Utah and parked our camper in our son, Bill’s back yard for a month.  That was a pleasant stay.  There was three weeks we would go to the genealogical library and search records. We were both rewarded well as we found several of our progenitor’s records there.

 

            We then went to Moab, Utah where we intended to spend a week with our son, Walter.  Their kids would be out of school the next week.  We did well there. One day, Mark, Robert and I went to the La Salle Mountains taking our lunch and just spent most of the day exploring the park.  It was a pleasure to spend time with them alone.  We also went to a church apple orchard and gathered wind fall apples.  We bought fruit jars and canned a lot of them.  I think they were the sweetest apples.  I also went with Walter on his turn to pick apples which went to the Church Welfare Program.  We spent a day in Arches National Park taking pictures and just looking at the wonderful natural formations.  We also went to Dead Horse Point one day.  That is a place where there is about an acre of flat plateau that is connected to the main plateau by a strip only a few feet wide and the rest is a sheer rock ledge about two thousand feet above the valley floor.  As the story goes, in the early days the wild horses were so numerous that the settlers herded a large number into the small area and put a fence across the entrance and let the horses stay to die.  We camped in Walter’s yard for the two weeks.  It was only a little over one block to walk to church.

 

            We left there early in the morning and drove to Dolores, Colorado where we visited with Lyman Waters, a first cousin, first removed.  His sister, Ellen Barton, and her husband were visiting.  They were making apple cider when we arrived.  They were going to stop and visit.  I said I would help and visit as we worked.  The father, Lee Waters, was still living and active and over ninety.  He still was driving an old Jeep.  He also did the cooking.  He had two kinds of light bread made from whole wheat that was as good as I ever ate. We left Dolores, Colorado, next morning and headed home.  We went over the Wolf Creek Pass.  At the top we stopped and ate and rested a while.  We also made some snowballs.

 

            That night found us on 24 highway where we gassed the truck and asked at the filling station where would be a good place to spend the night.  He said make a U-turn and stay in front of the store next to the station.  That we did on Main Street and on a U.S. highway.

 

            The next morning we pulled out as the day light approached.  We stayed on 24 to U.S. 40 then a few miles to a road side park where we had breakfast and went on a few miles to Hugo, Colorado where my mother had some cousins I had never seen.  I went to a barber shop and got a haircut and inquired where they lived.  I found Forest Williams at home.  He said he would call his brother, Wiley.  He called and no answer.  He said we would get in the car.  He knew where to find him. We went a mile or so out of town to the city dump.  He said that is his car.  I got out first and looked over the edge and there he was with a sack gathering aluminum cans.  I first asked him if he was putting them in or taking them out.  He said he was taking them out.  I said, “I am with the Colorado Health Department.”  I then asked him if he knew it was illegal to take things from a public dump.  He looked a little scared.  Then he saw his brother.  He said he then knew something was rotten in Denmark.  We then went back to town, the three of us.  While there we had a real nice visit as well as dinner.

 

            We, Ruby and I, started for home.  We approached Emporia. Kansas just before dark.  I asked Ruby whether we should camp for the night.  I said if we went on home we should be there about midnight.  She said, “Let’s keep on going.”  That we did and arrived at home in Liberty about 1:00 am.  Ruby did not have to rock me to sleep that night (Oct, 1976.).

 

            When I was home for a while I went to work for Dell Johnson (Dell’s Potatoes) where potatoes were processed, some cooked and they also cut French Fries.  I did a lot of welding with a tig welder, welding stainless steel.  When he had not maintenance man I would do about all the maintenance.  I had worked for him some for some time before I retired from General Motors as he could not find someone to weld the stainless steel.  I worked on and off into 1982.

 

            In 1982 there was a Gorbet family reunion held in Farmington, New Mexico.  Ruby and I went to that.  It lasted about a week.  That was a pleasant meeting where most of the people came and camped.  They were from many states.  There must have been over one hundred, about one third being Indians who descended from Ruby’s great-uncle who married an Indian.  The way it looked many of his children married back into the Indians.  They were fine people.  They were well educated and were from California.  Some were Mormons.  While in Farmington, New Mexico a fellow ran a red light and hit my car.  The damage was not so great that I could not drive it.  I had some metal to straighten out.  The man told the police he ran the red light.

 

            We left New Mexico and it was only a short drive to Dolores, Colorado, where I paid another visit to Lyman Waters.  He was living alone since his father passed away.  Lyman was born the same year as I.  He never married, and always lived with his parents.  He repaired radios and televisions in his home for years.  He also got an old printing press from an abandoned print shop.  He set the type and printed a book.  It was a history of a county where he had lived.  He only printed a few.  It was all hand set type.

            We left there and drove to Moab, Utah where our son, Walter lived.  We stayed there a week and went to Sandy, Utah, [133] for another week with Bill.  We then started for Liberty early.  We gassed the car in Western Wyoming and drove to Rollins.  It was here I missed my billfold.  I thought I must have lost it where I gassed last.  We had planned to stop in Rollins anyway and see Bill and Laura Thompson.  Laura was the daughter of the Henderson’s at Laramie.  They cashed a check for $50.00 and that was enough to get home.  That was the first time I had seen them since 1927, we also had dinner with them.    We left Rollins that afternoon for home-- we went straight home stopping only for gas.  I did not get sleepy on the drive from Sandy, Utah to Liberty, Missouri.

 

            We had been home only two weeks when Guy asked us if we would like to go to Utah with them.  Our answer was yes.  He drove a van.  We went to Ogden where Dennis was going to get married in the Logan Temple.  While there Ray and Sharon were camped in a tent at Sandy, Utah.  They came to Ogden and got Ruby and I and we got to go through the Jordon River Temple.  The next day we went to Logan and through the temple.  That was a great day as we were at the sealing of Dennis Miller and Janet Nadine Rivera for time and all eternity.  There were some people from Idaho who had lived in Liberty, George Johnson and Gus Boyde and some others there also.  This was 25 August, 1982.  Also from Missouri were John and Teri Brewer who were sealed to each other and their children.  Ruby and I had gone through the Ogden Temple while Walter lived in Layton, Utah.  At that time Joan Grisel, my first cousin, first removed also went with us.

 

            We were gone one week on that trip and I did not drive one mile.  One other sight on that trip, Bill showed Ray the way to the top of the mountain overlooking the Kennecott Copper Mine.  We could see all of the Salt Lake Valley from there. When Sharon looked down the mountain from the road she was scared nearly to death.  It was an awful experience for her.  It just plain made her sick.  I myself could cry for her.  I have to say it was the worst experience I have ever had watching her suffer and there was no place to turn around.  We just had to get to the top to turn around.

 

            There have been many interesting happenings that have slipped my mind.  That is why one should keep a daily record.  The only one I have is a small pocket notebook I had in the Arctic.

            I think I shall say a little of the activities in the L.D.S. Church.  I never was a deacon or teacher.  I was ordained a Priest a few days after baptism and an Elder a few months later by Elder Ralph Warner in the Centropolis Branch.  I held no calling there only to teach the adult Sunday School Class.  While in the Independence Branch I was Branch Genealogical Representative for a time.  I was called on a district mission with James M. Pope, Jr. as my companion.  He had served a full-time mission in the North Western States Mission.  We did some tracking in Independence.  We mostly held cottage meetings.  In these we taught only the first principles of the Gospel.  There was one lady that served with us.  She was Sister Letty Beckett who was the daughter of Valentine Dick who was my Branch Teaching companion for some time.  Sister Beckett was the mother of the wife of Brother Jewell Pope who was first Stake President of the Kansas City Stake, and this was the first stake in Missouri which included some of Eastern Kansas.

 

            I was away from Missouri while in Canada.  When I returned and moved to Lawson, Independence Branch started a Sunday school in Excelsior Springs.  I was called to be Presiding Elder and Harold Roller was called to the Sunday school.  Then the Adam-ondi-ahman Branch was organized in Brookfield, Missouri.  Brother Davis was Branch President.  I was his [137] first counselor.  We only met on first Sunday of each month at Brookfield, Missouri.  Other times we had Sunday school in Excelsior Springs.  This Branch was closed in a few months and we attended as before, going to Independence for Sacrament in the evening.  The Liberty Branch was organized in 1954 of which I have referred before.  Not long after the Kansas City Stake was organized I was called as Ward Clerk under Bishop Dell Johnson.

 

            After that we had sons that were called on missions.  Walter Mark Miller was called in January, 1959 and sent to the Central Atlantic States Mission.  The mission organized a mission chorus that traveled over the mission giving programs in many places.  Walter was in that group and got to see most of that mission.  At the end of his mission he was in Kinston, North Carolina.  He and his companion had a sleeping room with kitchen privileges across the street from the Branch Chapel, which was a full sized modern building.  Ruby and I went to Kinston, North Carolina to bring Walter home.  We arrived in the afternoon and found the house where he stayed.  The lady (Sister Alford) said he was across the street.  We went over to the church, and they were just finishing a missionary conference.  The Relief Society ladies had prepared a dinner for the missionaries and they invited us to join in.  That was an offer we could not turn down.  The missionaries had baptized their landlady.  She was a real saint.  She invited us to spend the night with her.

 

            The next morning we started home.  We wanted to see the Atlantic Ocean so we went to Harker’s Island to see the ocean and also the destruction caused from a hurricane a short time before.  Walter took us to the chapel on Harker’s Island.  They were making some minor repairs on the chapel.  It was barely scratched compared to most things in the same locality.  We ate a sea food dinner nearby, then started for Roanoke, Virginia where the mission home was.  It was here that Walter would get his release.  It was late when we arrived and we were invited to stay the night in the mission home.  We left the next morning for home.  We did make one stop at a place where Walter had labored and see the new chapel he had done some work on, and it was the home town of Eloise Johnson who was the wife of George Johnson.  We were soon on the road again and only stopped for gas until we got to Liberty.  It was all new to Walter as we lived at Lawson when he left for his mission.  We arrived in Liberty about twenty-four hours after we left the mission home in Roanoke, Virginia.

 

            Walter was only with us a few days when he went into the United States Air Force.  He said he wanted to get the military behind him.  That was a time when he would have been drafted if he did not sign up in one of the services and he had two years of college at Columbia, Missouri.  After his basic training he was sent to Okinawa, where he was stationed for some time.  When he did come home on a furlough he told his mother he was a confirmed bachelor and that he would never marry.  He was then sent to Peru, Indiana, to the Air Force Base there (Editor’s Note: Bunker Hill Air Force Base.)  He had not been there too long until letters came from him more frequently and he always mentioned a woman that was bothering him.  It was not very long that we had a phone call from him, and they were in Chicago, Illinois, on their way to the Salt Lake City Temple.

 

            Bill was next to be called on a mission.  His Bishop was Dell E. Johnson and his call was to the California Mission.  He went in October, 1965.  We did not get to go to Salt Lake City with him.  He was sent to Los Angeles, and at that time he had a garage apartment only a few blocks from my brother, Bill.  I did get to see him while he was on his mission.  My Aunt Mournen passed away.  This occurred February 3, 1966. [141] I worked Saturday night at General Motors.  Sunday morning I flew to Los Angeles, California, where my brother met me at the airport, then took me to his home.  We then went to the apartment where my son Bill and his companion were living.  They had contacted their zone leader and got consent to go to National City, California, with us.  We then went to National City where we were put up by friends of Aunt Mournen.  Monday morning we attended the funeral.  We went back to the friend’s home where we had dinner.  We then headed for the Los Angeles Airport where I caught a plane for Kansas City.  On arrival I got a taxi cab to take me to General Motors in time to work my shift.  I did not miss a day’s work.

 

            While on his mission Bill attended Uncle Levi’s funeral.  They died close to the same time.  While Bill was there his mission was divided.  Bill was transferred to San Diego and labored in National City.  That was perhaps why he could attend Uncle Levi’s funeral there. [142] Bill did not stay in Liberty very long until he went to St. Louis where he found employment.   He bought a mobile home and lived in East St. Louis where he batched until he got married.  In the church he was ward clerk. 

 

            The next to go on a mission was Rusty (Donald) who went to Salt Lake City, November, 1970.  His calling was to the New England States Mission.  His first assignment was Dartmouth, Nova Scotia where he stayed until April, 1971.  He was transferred to Kiene, New Hampshire July, 1972.  From there to Rockland, Maine in January, 1972.  He was transferred to Manchester, New Hampshire.  In April, 1972 to Oldham, Massachusetts.  He went there to Braintree, Massachusetts.  His last was from October 15, 1972 to October 30, 1973 was in Lynn, Massachusetts.  Donald’s first mission president was Paul H. Dunn.  After Rusty’s return home he enrolled at Rick’s College at Rexburg, Idaho where he stayed until the end of the semester.  Tom Craig went out to bring his daughter and some others back to Liberty. [143] Rusty called and asked if he could bring his girlfriend home.  The answer was, “Yes.”  When he arrived he brought back Evelyn Didrick, a girl whose home was Kualoff, Alaska.  She stayed with us until June.  We took her and Rusty to Salt Lake City where Paul H. Dunn sealed them in the Salt Lake Temple for time and eternity June 29, 1973.  That afternoon we took them to the Salt Lake City airport and saw them off for Anchorage, Alaska where they stayed until their first daughter was nine days old.  They then headed for Rexburg, Idaho to Rick’s College again.  Rusty then moved to Provo, Utah to attend Brigham Young University.

 

            The next missionary in our family was Dennis Miller, a grandson, who was called to the Utah Salt Lake City mission in June, 1978.  His mission was a very successful one.  Then Randy Miller, another grandson was called to the Oregon, Portland Mission, October, 1981, where he was well accepted.  At this time, I984, Gary Miller, another Grandson is serving in the Florida, Miami Mission.  I must not fail to mention our daughter-in-law, Phyllis (Garver) Miller, Walter’s wife also served a full time mission in England.

 

            I was called to work in the Genealogical Library in the Kansas City Stake in 1974 as well as Ruby.  It was a one day a week and four hours where we served until 1976.  When I retired and after about one year’s vacation we started again where we worked on Thursday afternoon until the Liberty, Missouri, Stake branch library was approved.  We then started in Liberty.  We find that calling exciting and interesting, especially when we extract names of people we have known in Clay County, Missouri, 1880.  Ruby extracted the name of Edgar Petty aged 9 in 1880.  He was the man Dad Wynn worked for [145] first after he and my mother were married.  I have seen others in Kearney Township, Missouri, we have known...

 

            I have not kept count of the names of my progenitors I have submitted for their temple work along with their children.  I started soon after I joined the Church.  I started by first talking to Grandma Emma {Fitz Jarrell} Miller.  Grandma, though old and forgetful of things current, she could tell me names and dates that she remembered from her youth.  How I wished many times that I could have had a tape recorder when I talked to her.  I am sure I did not get it all in the notes that I took at that time which was years before tape recorders (date 1936).

 

            I went to a family get together late in 1935.  While there Aunt Catherine and I sat on the front porch talking and were alone.  Aunt Catherine asked me, “Francis do Ruby and you go to church in Kansas City?”  I said, “Yes.”  Her next question was, “Do you go regularly?”  I said, “Yes.”   The next question, “Have you joined a church yet?”  Answer, “Yes.”  “Then what church did you join?”  I said, “The Mormons.”  Her comment was, “Why did you join those people?”  I said, “What is wrong with the Mormons?”  She then asked me what they believed.  I then read her the Articles of Faith which I had on a missionary card I had in my pocket.  She then said, “I don’t see anything wrong with that.”

 

            Upon joining the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Ruby and I lost the respect of a number of our friends and relations.  The friends did not mean that much anyway as we had in the Church the kind of friends that can be counted on.  As for our kinsfolk they, as far as I know, have accepted the fact and we are well accepted especially on Ruby’s side.  And I have heard no resentment from mine for many years.  My side of the family mostly live good standards.