Growing Up and Learning Part 2

I started school in Monitor at the age of eight.  I had to learn to ride and handle a horse before I could go as we lived five miles from school.  I started in a little school called, “Stone Wall”.  Then after one term, I started in another school called “Miner”.  I had a good horse and by leaving home at eight, I could ride seven miles and put my horse in the barn in time to be in school by nine.  I was never late for school.  Lyzzie made my lunch and put it in a red lard pail.  I hooked  the handle over the saddle horn and after seven miles of shaking and bouncing, my lunch was usually soup.   

These times are what I call the good old days.  We lived on a homestead of 160 acres and the grass was free for miles around .  There was no such thing as a hunting or fishing license.  The man with a big herd of sheep or cattle was rich.  Berries were plentiful; sarvis berries, choke cherries, gooseberries, and Hawthorn berries.  Trapping and hunting in the fall and winter helped provide a living.  There were fox, coyotes, badgers, weasels, and mink.  One winter the coyotes were killed by poisoning and as many as six were brought in each day.   

I lived up to George’s declaration that I was the “feistiest one of the bunch”.  There were times when I got into big trouble because of my shenanigans.  Some were serious.  Some were fun. And some were downright dangerous.  I had a little white dog named Spot. I had been sent to the chicken coop to gather the eggs.    The chicken coop door had a 2X4 attached that fit down into a slot when you wanted to keep the door shut.  The hens were all sitting on their nests, so when I went into the coop, I just left the door open.  I would only be in there for a couple of minutes.  I told Spot to sit and stay so the hens would not get riled.  He was a smart and very obedient dog, so he sat.  Just as I was checking the last nest, a gust of wind blew the door shut and I heard the 2X4 slip into place and lock the door!  I was locked in and it was not just stinky in there, it was also very cold!  Spot sensed I was in trouble and he started barking and raising a raucous.  I called to him. “Go get Lyzzie!”  Then it got very quiet, so I knew he had gone to do his deed.  It seemed like he was gone forever, but sure enough he came back with Lyzzie in tow.  I heard her talking to Spot.  “What is the matter?”  I called to her “Open the door!  I’m locked in!”  Lyyzie was a person who got very excited whenever things went wrong.  She was talking so fast I had a hard time settling her down so I could explain why I was locked in the chicken coop.   Finally, she opened the door, and I was free.    

When I went to bed that night, as usual, Spot crawled under the covers, cuddled up to me and we kept one another warm.  That night.  I held him extra close.  I loved that dog so much and he had saved my life. 

The next situation was a bit sketchy.  George had hired a guy to build a corral by the barn.  I was assigned to be his helper for the day.  I enjoyed the time with him, and we were going great guns but were interrupted on a regular basis by Lyzzie.  Whatever she was doing, she needed my help constantly.  Every time she needed me, she would come around the corner of the house and call, Clar-EENCE!!  Each time she called; I knew I had to check to see what she needed.  The guy was getting disgusted with her and finally, he suggested: “Why don’t you tell that woman to go shit in the lake!?”  I thought that was a good idea and since the man suggested it, I took that as permission.  So, the next time Lyzzie called, I followed his suggestion.  I was in big trouble when George came home that night! 

And if you think I was in trouble over that one, it was nothing compared to what happened one day when some people came to visit George and Lyzzie. They had a little girl about my age and the adults sent us out to play while they visited.

We played with Spot and the little girl was quite taken by my stories about hunting and trapping, being able to shoot a gun, and ride a horse. I don’t remember how we got on the subject of peeing, but I told her I could pee over the rafters in the barn. She did not believe me so we went off to the barn so I could prove my claim. I was just in the process of doing so when George and the little girl’s father walked in. I don’t know if they had something to prove by going to the barn but they sure weren’t impressed with my demonstration.

Growing Up, Playing and Learning Part 1

 As told by Dad, George Clarence Hyde

This edition is written in the first person as it comes from Dad’s personal history.

The next summer, 1920, I remember, we were putting up hay on a ranch near Brooks. George and Lyzzie (Eliza, his step sister who raised him) made rather good money that year, so they decided to take a trip. Lyzzie took me to Utah for the winter and George went to work in the logging industry in Walla Walla, Washington. We traveled by train and I can remember standing on the platform at the station when those big old steam engines would come puffing in. It would just about scare me stiff. We spent the winter in Utah mostly visiting my mother’s folks. I met the only one of my grandparents I ever knew, my mother’s mother. All I can remember is that she was very old and very poor. We visited two or three of mother’s sisters and two brothers. These are about all of mother’s relatives I ever knew. As for my father’s relatives, I have never seen any of them. Dad left home when he was fifteen and never returned. His relatives are all in Ontario, as far as I know.

We returned to Canada in the spring of 1921. We lived in Brooks for a while then we moved to Monitor, 200 miles north of Brooks. We left in the spring with a team and wagon, one colt, and a tent. The trip took seven or eight days. It seemed like much longer to me as 200 miles of rocks, hills, and mosquitoes is a long way in a wagon on just a trail and sometimes no road at all. Some days we did not see one house in our travels.

It was with great joy and relief that we arrived in Monitor at Uncle Nephi and Aunt Jessie’s homestead. We lived with them for two or three years, sometimes in the same house and sometimes at the sheep camp in the winter living in a covered wagon. This was called a sheep camp.

I was happy to have someone to play with. Ray was one year younger than me, Lindsey was a year or so younger than Ray, and Logan was the baby, just learning to walk. The four of us were all in the yard playing one day when Logan was badly burned. Lindsey was riding a tricycle; Logan was hanging on the back and Lindsey rode through the ash pile. There were a lot of hot ashes that had just been taken out of the cook stove that morning and they were still red hot. When Logan felt the heat of the ashes, he let go of the tricycle, fell in the ashes, and was severely burned. Uncle Nephi had the only car in the neighborhood. It was a Ford with an open top and just a windshield sticking up in front. It was started up and Logan was rushed off to a doctor at the high speed of 20 to 25 miles per hour. There is still a scar on Logan’s leg today.

The first winter in Monitor was a hard one and there was not enough hay to feed all the sheep. There was a terrible loss. That year, one thousand sheep went into the bone pile from hoof and mouth disease and starvation.

We spent four years in the Monitor district raising sheep and farming. I think though, Monitor could have been a paradise as far as success goes, if we had the know-how and the right management. There was free grass as far as you wanted to go, and you could put up hay by getting a haying permit from the government. For 50 cents you could put up all the wild hay you needed just for the cost of labor and equipment. There were dry years, but there were years when it looked like the Garden of Eden. Oh yes, I must not forget to mention raising a garden with very few or no weeds. There just were not many weeds in the country then. I remember riding a horse down the rows and there was a man on the back steering the cultivator.

After two or three years, Uncle Nephi and Aunt Jessie took their family and moved back to Raymond, leaving us alone on the homestead. Once again, I was alone with no friends to play with. I felt like an orphan. I was much in need of kindness and much in need of friends.

George was an experienced horse trader and when the work was slow, he would drive around with a team and democrat and trade horses with the neighbors. In the four years we lived there, he increased his herd from one team to twenty-four head.