1932

the great depression

We moved into a rock house just outside of town. Edith and Bill moved in with us, they were with us all winter and part of the summer. The depression hit and Bud was laid off from the smelter. Bill had a truck, him and Bud would go out and gather up sheep pelt, the sheep had already died. They heard that there were wild sheep on Antelope Island. The island was out in the Salt Lake. So they went over there and killed some of the wild sheep. They brought them home and cleaned them. I cook them and pack them in jars. In the middle of the night we would hear, pop, pop. That went on most of the night. When we get up we found all the lids had blown off the jars. I built a hot fire outside, put a tub on it and boiled the meat in the bottles, I boiled them all day. Then I put the lids back on. The first time I cook the meat I did not cook the meat long enough and there was an acid build up that blow the lid's off. We had sheep meat to eat up till we moved to Rangely.

disability & hay
We moved to another Rock house, and Edith and Bill moved with us. We were able to have a garden at that place; there were fruit trees on it. Bud was getting $18 a month from the government for a disability. That was all we had to live on. We had no money left to buy hay for the cow, (we always had a cow) so I went to the welfare and ask them asked them if they would buy hay for the cow. The welfare bought us a couple tons of hays. I believe he received the benefit for about two years. President Roosevelt took it away from him.
* * *

change of plans
While I was in the hospital, Bud wrote a man in Missouri for a job on a ranch. The man wrote back and said to come on out that he would be able to give us a place to live, where I could have a garden and that he could not pay very much in wages. We pack up everything that we needed in the truck and started to go to Missouri.

We got right out of Salt Lake City, when Dorothy two and half years old at the time; had a convulsion; she had a very high fever. We took her right in to the Children’s hospital in Salt Lake City. They found out that she had infected kidneys and she would be in the hospital for 10 days. I stayed in the hospital with her for a few days. Bud took the three children back to Toole and moved in the house that we just moved out of. The doctor dismissed Dorothy and we went back to Toole.

We decided that we would start again. When we left that house, the rock house, I left part of a watermelon open, a lamp a burning, and a good garden. The beds all made; anybody could have just gone in there and started housekeeping. I turn around and walk out, get in that truck with all the kids, their cloth and the bedding that we needed and started for Missouri.

From Aug. 1932 until April 1937 we lived at Rangely, Colo., on Douglas Creek on the homestead, at Vernal, Utah and Maybell, Colo. I can not remember the order of events, so the events may not be the order that they happen.

We went into Rangely to see papa and mama and the family before we went on to Missouri. Papa talks Bud out of going on to Missouri.

“Papa decided that he did not want Bud to take his family to Missouri, he said that it was to hot and muggy, that he would lose all of us if he took us to Missouri”.

We were not use to that kind of weather. Papa got Bud to file on a homestead up Douglas Creek. We stayed with papa and mama that winter, down on the river so the kids could go to school in Rangely. Bud worked for Don and Milton on the county road. Then Bud brought a great big old car from the Rector’s, a Buick, that what we had to go around in for awhile. I do not know what happen to the truck that we had when we moved to Rangely.