We lived on the Norman Granlin Farm seven miles south east of Rosemary for two years. We made a living but never got very far ahead. In the fall of 1946 this place was sold so we moved to the A.L. Gallup farm where we farmed for two more years.
Here we were able to scratch out a living, but
again, we seemed to survive and that was about it. I fed cattle and farmed, and we were barely
able to keep the wolves from our door.
There were a lot of pheasants in the country at
that time and we made them a very tasty source of meat and many a meal. Floy did not serve them under glass as the
aristocracies were known to do, but she sure knew how to make them into a
delicious meal. I kept a steady source
of the tasty fowl for our table by building a blind in the barnyard, near where
I fed the cattle every day. After the
cattle were finished eating their daily fill, they moved out and the pheasants
moved in to feast on the leftovers. It
was then, I was able to use my little 22 caliber gun, to pick off two or three
birds and bring them to the house for eating.
One day I got a beautiful cock pheasant which I
determined too beautiful to eat. I took
him to the local taxidermist and had him stuffed. That stuffed bird provided a beautiful
ornament in our home for a couple of years.
Much to our consternation, one day, we returned to the house from a
grocery buying trip to Rosemary, to find our beautiful stuffed pheasant, in
tiny pieces all over our house. We had
forgotten to put the cat out when we left that morning.
Marvelle tells this story. It happened soon after I had given up my old
habits and took our family to church:
EXAMPLES
By
Marvelle Hyde Noble
In those days, people visited each other a lot
more, and one Sunday afternoon we were invited to visit the Reg Kesslers. Dad and Reg had rodeoed together in the
past. Dad said he had stopped because it
was a pretty rough way to try to make a dollar.
It was not that the animals were too rough for him, it was the lifestyle
that went along with it. When this happened,
I was about six and Lester Ann was two.
In the middle of their kitchen floor was a
galvanized tin tub full of ice and beer.
Reg was a big, boisterous man and when we arrived, he welcomed us and
the next thing he said was, “Come in, Clarence, and have a beer.”
Dad smiled that kind of lopsided smile he always
smiled, (If you want to see that smile today, just watch Neil when he
smiles. It is the same.) and he said,
“No Reg, I don’t drink anymore.”
My Dad was not a very big man, but he was very
big in my eyes that day. I did not even
realize what beer was, but I knew if my Dad did not want any, it was not a good
thing.
I will always remember exactly where Dad stood
in the kitchen, kind of leaning up against the cupboard with his arms folded
across his chest. I was in my usual
spot, standing beside him, watching his every move. Mom soon gathered us all up and we went home.”
It was about this time when a certain man came
to Canada with the soul purpose of finding converts to his version of the Gospel. The internet records the history of this
movement in Canada, as follows:
“1945 — Owen LeBaron
visits Cardston from Utah, preaches about polygamy and distributes pamphlets
about "The Work". Harold Blackmore, a prominent dairyman and teacher,
is one of the early converts.
1946 — Harold Blackmore
buys property in Lister, B.C. and what will later become known as Bountiful.
Blackmore moves there with his wife and children and a few months later,
marries a second wife in a "celestial marriage" in Utah. His second
wife is his first wife's sister.
Dec. 28, 1947 —Harold Blackmore's father, John H. Blackmore, is
ex-communicated by the mainstream Mormon church. John Blackmore, a sitting
member of Parliament from Alberta, is one of the most prominent Mormons in Canada.
He was ex-communicated even though he never practiced polygamy, he only
questioned the validity of Woodruff's Manifesto.”
By this time, we had become regular attenders
and members of the local ward. One of
the brethren from the ward invited me to a private meeting, He said the purpose
of the meeting was to straighten out a couple of LaBaron’s converts. I
thought about this for a week or so. I studied my scriptures in preparation for
the meeting. No matter how much I
studied and prayed about the issue, I did not feel good about attending. The night of the meeting, I had my scriptures
in hand, ready to leave the house, when I decided the confusion I was
experiencing, was a direct result of the advice I had read in the Doctrine and
Covenants:
“But behold, I say unto you, that you must
study it out in your mind, then you must ask me if it be right, and if it is
right, I will cause that your bosom shall burn within you; therefore, you shall
feel that it is right.
But if it be not right, you shall have no
such feelings, but you shall have a stupor of thought that shall cause you to
forget the thing which is wrong.”
So, the decision was made, I turned around and
prepared for an evening with my family.
This was long before we had learned about Family Home Evening, but we
had an excellent one that night. I read
from the Book of Mormon and taught my little family about following the
promptings of the Holy Ghost.
I later learned the meeting was not to straighten
anyone out, but the purpose was to recruit more converts. Soon after that, there were a few families
from the area who became involved with the Polygamists.
I had a hard time making a decent living in
Rosemary and I think it was because the Lord did not want us to stay where we
might be influenced by this movement.
In the spring of 1949, we moved to Boundary Creek.
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