Interview with Walter Hyrum Iverson

Walter Hyrum Iverson was interviewed on November 22, 1968 in Washington City, Washington County, Utah by Fielding H. Harris, a representative of Voices of Remembrance Foundation. He related his personal history of living in various parts Utah. His wife, Annie May (Larson) Iverson, also participated.

FH:Would you please [give] your full name?

WI:[My name is] Walter Hyrum Iverson.

FH:How do you spell Hyrum?

WI:[It is spelled] H-Y-R-U-M.

FH:Where were you born?

WI:I was born in Washington [City].

FH:When were you born?

WI:[I was born] December 26, 1882.

FH:The day after Christmas! You were almost a Christmas present. [Laughter]

What was your father's name?

WI:[His name was] Hans Peter Iverson.

FH:[What was] your mother's [full] name?

WI:[Her name was] Dorothy "Dora" Carolina Johanna (Evers) [Iverson].

AI:[It is spelled] E-V-E-R-S. Her name was Dorthea and that is why she was called "Dora."

FH:What can you remember from your early childhood?

WI:We lived outside of town on a [small] farm. We had spring water and raised [some] ducks on the pond. I lived there for [inaudible] close to a mile from 00:02:00town and we walked into school.

FH:Were there any neighbors close by?

WI:Yes, there was a family above us a-ways by the name of Jacob Bastian. They had boys and we played together.

FH:Do you remember any of the things you did together? You did not have any fights did you?

WI:[Laughter] When we were going to school we fought all the time! When we were 00:03:00[children] we would get in fights, but it did not amount to anything.

FH:Were you still friends when you got through [fighting]?

WI:Yes. [Laughter]

FH:Tell a little about your [education].

WI: I started the first [grade] and went up [the grades]. Julia (Crawford) Thayne was my first teacher. I went to Luella Burgess' school awhile. Ida Duncan 00:04:00[and] Andrea Sproul were my teachers.

FH:Were they good teachers?

WI:They were all good teachers.

FH:Did you ever get in trouble with them?

WI:No, I always got along [well] with them. I guess [those] were about all the teachers I had.

FH: Did you enjoy school?

WI:Yes, I enjoyed school.

FH:Were you involved in any sport activities in school?

WI:We always played baseball and marbles during recess and after school.

FH:Did you like baseball?

WI:Yes, I liked to play baseball. [Laughter]

FH:In your early years [did events happen to you that were [an] adventure type [event]?

WI:I do not know that there were.

FH:Did you ever take any trips around here? Did you ever go down the [Virgin] River?

WI:Yes, there was a family down [by the river]. I had a pony and would ride down through the [Virgin River Gorge] canyon and come through Littlefield, Arizona.

FH:How many miles was that?

WI:[It was] about forty-five miles.

FH:[Did] you go down the Virgin River bed?

WI:Yes, right down the riverbed.

FH:[It is] narrow down there in some places.

WI:It is narrow [with] high ledges.

FH:You would have been in a spot if a flood of water came [through] there.

WI:I would have had to run up [the rocks]. There were [places] that I could have run up and got out. I was a young fellow. I thought if my horse got away from me I would have been left on foot, but I would have made it [out] some way. I made several trips down there. We had cows here and I would take six to ten head [of cattle] and drive them down through the river to Littlefield, Arizona. They had 00:07:00good rain there and they would [graze] there.

While we were there, there were a lot of coyotes, raccoons and different animals. My older brother, Martin [Iverson], a half-brother of mine, and I trapped quite a bit. We would catch a lot of raccoons and coyotes that would come into our melon patches. We would set traps there and [caught] a lot of them.

FH:What would you do with them [after] you trapped them?

WI:We would kill them to get rid of them. They would come and destroy the melons in the night. You could not get anything out of their fur, so we would trap them 00:08:00and kill them [to] get rid of them.

FH:Tell a little about your church activities when you were growing up. Was it difficult to be active [in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints]?

WI:I was taught to go to Sunday school, Mutual [Improvement Association] and meetings like that and I always went. After I [was] older, I was Mutual president a while and counselor to the Mutual president before [that].

FH:[It was] taken for granted that you would go to church.

WI:Yes, I went to everything.

FH:Did you start out with your life's occupation before you were married? What [did] you start out doing [for a living]?

WI:I first drove [the United States] mail [truck] from St. Thomas [Nevada] down the Virgin River, across the Colorado River [to] where the Virgin River empties into it. [It was] about twenty miles above Boulder Dam. I went up the other side about thirty to forty miles to a little mining camp at White Hills [Arizona]. I 00:10:00would leave St. Thomas early in the morning, right after daylight, and get into White Hills between ten and eleven o'clock at night. I made two trips a week.

I would come back and cross the [river] in a little canoe boat. There was a post office stop around the point of the water by the junction where the Virgin and Colorado [Rivers] came together. A man by the name of Daniel Bonelli had quite a ranch there. He would come over and ferry me across. I had a little pair of mules on the other side. I would catch and hitch them up and go on with the mail 00:11:00to Waddell [Arizona] with a buckboard.

FH:How many miles was that from there?

WI:[It was] about forty miles. The next day I would come back. I came into White Hills [when] there was only enough water to haul to the mines. A fellow by the name of Mitch Standen ran a water line about seven miles from a little spring out there. He had six little mules that he hauled water with. I would get in about ten at night and had to take my mules down to his corral and water them.

One night I came down to go to the corral where his mules were and one mule got 00:12:00out. I could not get him back [in] because, if I left the gate open, the rest would come out. The next morning when I took mine down to water, his wife came out and said, "Why did you turn my mule out?" I told her I opened the gate and he slipped out and I knew I could not get him back until all the rest came in. She gave me a good going over! [Laughter] I told her, "I have to [deliver] the mail and have to be on time so I could not stop and help get the mules in, but 00:13:00if you get someone to help you I will pay them on my next trip." After she gave me a good going over she said, "That is alright. He will come back in when he is dry."

FH:He would have to come back to get a drink of water. [Laughter]

WI:Sure! She took delight in giving me a [going over]. [Laughter]

I would take a five-gallon can of milk from the quarry there [on] every trip to a man named Honeywell. He ran a place up there where he was the sheriff. He heard her down the street going after me and said, "What is the matter?" I told him and he said, "She has no business doing that. You could not keep the mule 00:14:00when it got dry."

She had a big scar on the side of her face and I asked him [how she got it]. He said, "She came to town and got in a [fight] with another woman. The other woman told her to stay out. She went in the house and told her to go home, but she came in. She told her to go out and she was not going to do it. So she took hot water off the stove and slammed the boiling hot water on her. It took the hair 00:15:00off and left the scar down her face." [Laughter] She went home after that.

FH:How long did you deliver the mail?

WI:I drove [the mail truck for] two winters.

FH:How old were you?

WI:[I was] about eighteen or nineteen [years old].

FH:What did you do when you finished that job?

WI:There was a smelter on the [Shivwits] Indian reservation where I worked for a 00:16:00while. I had a brother-in-law and his boys who had a freight team on the ore road. He had a ranch above there and wanted to go up on the ranch in the summer and wanted to sell me the freight team. I bought it and hauled ore from the Apex [Mine] down to the smelter.

When business slowed, I could not make anything so I decided to go down to where a boom was coming on in Las Vegas [Nevada]. I went down to Mesquite [Nevada] and ran on to a man named Jeremy Leavitt. I was acquainted with him and he wanted to 00:17:00know what I was doing. I told him I was going to Las Vegas. He said, "If you will wait a day I will get an outfit and go with you." Bunkerville [Nevada] is about five miles from there. We went there and Bishop Bunker stopped us and we camped there for the night.

A fellow by the name of Ike Jennings ran the Grand Gulch Mine [on the Arizona Strip] east of St. Thomas. He wanted us to haul [the] ore. They had just [completed] a new road to go in there. They said Las Vegas was not what it was it was cracked up to be. He talked us into going out there, but the new road pulled the horses nearly to death so we made that [one] trip and took the ore to Moapa [Nevada] to the railroad.

Then we came back and went down to Las Vegas and found everything good there, but they told us that we would have to be careful because there were a lot of [men] holding people up. Coming into Las Vegas, we saw a person way down in the flats go into a big clump of brush. We did not see him come out so we thought maybe he was laying for us. When we [got there], he came out and stopped us and asked where we were going. We said we were going to Las Vegas to [pick up] freight. There were two [men] there who shipped freight to Bullfrog [Utah] and 00:19:00they wanted teams so he wanted us to go there.

AI:[Inaudible]

WI:There was only one house [in Las Vegas] then ─ [the Archibald and Helen] Stewart Ranch. That was as far as the railroad [ran]. A lot of freight that came in there went out to the mining country. We hauled [freight] about 100 miles out to Bullfrog and Beatty [Nevada], Rhyolite [Nevada on the east side of Death Valley, California], and those places.

FH:Was there only one house in Las Vegas at [that] time?

WI:There was only one house and [it] was the Stewart Ranch. We hauled out there for a couple of months and then [the mine] shut down. They did not strike ore 00:20:00there like they thought they would, so they shut down and we came back home. I had bought a little ranch above Gunlock, called the Bigelow Ranch [Washington County, Utah]. After I came home from Las Vegas I went up there and worked on [the ranch]. That is where we lived the first year after we were married.

FH:Talk about your father.

WI:He was a stonemason and I cannot ever remember seeing him mad in my life. He was good-natured and just as good as he could be. Everyone thought well of him. He had a little farm and we all worked there together. My mother was a housewife and had [the] family to take care of. My two older sisters worked at the Cotton Factory [in Washington City] to help make a living.

FH:Was life rugged in those days or was it easy to make a living here?

WI:We never made [much] money, but we never went hungry. We had plenty to eat.

FH:In other words, you made your living ─ grew the things you needed, made the things you needed and had everything you needed.

WI:We had our chickens, fish and milk cows. We [grew] our own bread stuff. We had to because there was no other way of getting it.

FH:There was not a supermarket around the corner, was there? [Laughter]

WI:No. [Laughter]

FH:Tell a little about your brothers and sisters.

WI:My two older sisters worked in the factory for several years.

FH:What were their names?

WI:My older sister was Emma [Iverson] and the other was Allie [Iverson]. They 00:23:00worked there until they were married. Emma lived on the Bigelow Ranch [because] her husband had part of the ranch. That was how I came to buy it because he lived there. Velda [Iverson] started [moved] up in the Delta country [Millard County, Utah]. They built up so high [that] we thought it was a good place to go, so we sold out after I was married. We were there the first two years we 00:24:00were married.

FH:Did your father go up there?

WI:No, he stayed down here.

FH:Did your brothers and sisters stay too?

WI:One of my sisters went there when she married.

FH:[Did] you have five sisters and one brother?

WI:Yes, one full brother.

FH:When you say "full brother" [does] this means there were other polygamist families? How many other wives did your father have?

WI:[My father had] three [wives].

FH:Do you know how many children there were all together?

WI:Each of [the wives] had seven children. Some of [the children] did not live 00:25:00until they were grown.

FH:How did you get along under the polygamist conditions? Was it a compatible situation?

WI:We got along fine.

FH:[Did] you think a lot of your half-brothers and half-sisters?

WI:We never had any trouble at all. We got along fine.

FH:Were the trips you took to Littlefield, Arizona [when you were] going down to [visit] one of the other families?

WI:After pa moved one family down through the Virgin River, I would go down there to visit with them.

FH:What happened to your one full brother?

WI:He, Wallace Iverson, lives three blocks east of here in town.

FH:[Does] he have a family?

WI:Yes, he has [a] family.

FH:What did you [do] when you were growing up that was fun? Or did you have any?

WI:After we moved to Littlefield, Arizona, we had horses. We would go out and ride ponies. We would go up in the narrows and catch a lot of fish, suckers, but not big fish. There were some deep holes we would swim in. We would have fun riding over hills. There were a lot of wild mustangs along the side of the 00:27:00mountains [and] we would run them down, catch them. Then we would draw cuts to see who had to ride them. [Laughter]

FH:Riding bucking broncos for fun! [Laughter]

WI:Yes, it was fun. [Laughter]

FH:Did you ever go to any dances when you were growing up?

WI:Yes, I always liked dances.

FH:What kind of music did you have to dance by?

WI:[There was] piano and a violin.

FH:What kind of dances did you do?

WI:[We danced] waltzes, two-step, polkas and square dances.

FH:[Do] you think they were better dances than the [young people] dance now-a- days?

WI:I do not know what they dance now! [Laughter]

FH:Did you ever go to any parties?

WI:Yes, we used to have parties all the time. Different [folks] would have a party and they would always invite us and we would go.

FH:What did you do at the parties?

WI:We would play games and they would always have a little lunch fixed.

FH:What kind of games would you play, Post Office? [Laughter]

WI:[Laughter] [We played] Post Office and different [games].

FH:[Did] you make your entertainment?

WI:Yes, that is what we had to do.

FH:Tell about your courtship and marriage.

WI:I did not have much courtship. She [Annie May Larson] lived here. I would come up from Littlefield, Arizona for Christmas and holidays. We would go to dances.

FH:How did you meet her?

WI:We were [both] born and [grew up] here. I have known her since she was [a young girl].

FH:How long did it take for you to know she was the right one?

WI:I have always known that! [Laughter]

FH:[Did] you grow up with this in mind?

WI:Yes. We have lived together ─

AI: Sixty-two and one-half years.

WI:─ sixty-two and one-half years.

FH:Where were you married?

WI:[We were married April 17, 1906 in] the St. George Temple.

FH:When you were first married what did you do? Did you get a home to live in?

WI:I had the place at the Bigelow Ranch [and] we lived there the first summer. That was when the boom up [in] Delta started and we went up there.

FH:[Did] you sell out?

WI:We sold out and went up [to Delta]. I helped work on the U. B. Dam [known as 00:31:00Yuba Dam] on the Sevier River. I helped put [the dam] in there and [it] waters all the country around Delta. [After we built] so much [of the] canal we could draw a piece of ground. I [drew] a piece of ground, built so much [of the] canal and paid [the land] off. But I did not like the country because it was too windy and cold so I sold [the land and] came down here.

My father had a ranch [that] he bought from Dudley Leavitt. Have you heard about him? Dudley Leavitt and Jacob Hamblin [worked] with the Indians in the early days. Dudley Leavitt had a good ranch, but when he died none of his boys wanted to farm, so [my] pa [bought] it. He wanted me to come back from Delta and take it over, so I did. We moved down there and did very well the first year. In 1910 a big flood came down the river and gouged every bit of [the land] out. I [was] disgusted and came up here and rented a place in the fields from Isaac 00:33:00Macfarlane. The first summer I worked here, I put up a lot of hay. We did not have [our own] home and this place was for sale.

Things were tight then [and] you didn't know [whether] to buy anything. It was not much of a place, but was owned by a person named Barlocker. He wanted to sell it, so I decided I would try to buy it. He wanted ─

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WI:─ $500.00 and that [amount] was hard to get in those days. He wanted $200.00 down. I had a good crop of grain below there and took it over to the grist mill in St. George where I stored my grain. I had some cows there and thought I would try to raise the $200.00 and get the place because we did not have any place to go. We were living in a little lumber shack. I had a [very] good team and a [fellow] out there always wanted to trade horses with me. I told 00:35:00him I would trade for $100.00 [inaudible]. He had a team of colts, but was working them [and] he wanted mine. When this place was [up] for sale, I was on my way to St. George to borrow [some] money to buy it. I met him on the road and he asked where I was going; I told him I was going to St. George. He asked if I would trade horses [with him] today. I said for $100.00 [inaudible]. He said, "No, I will l give you $85.00." So I thought a minute and thought: it would be $85.00 towards [the amount I needed] and told him okay, so we traded. He had some good colts and they made a good team.

I went up to the bank and thought maybe I could buy that [land]. The cashier said, "Money is [very] scarce and they are not letting out much money." He 00:36:00wanted to know, "How much security do you have?" I said [that] I did not have any security. He said, "Then you will not get [any] money." I talked to him for awhile and he said, "What have you got? [You must] have something for security? Do you have flour or something?" I said, "Yes, I have some flour." He said, "How much can you spare? Can you spare a ton?" I said, "Yes, I can spare a ton of 00:37:00flour." I had quite a bit of flour in the grist mill. He said, "You do not need to borrow any money. I will buy 1,000 pounds and my brother will buy 1,000 [pounds] at $4.00 a hundred [pounds] and that will make you $80.00." I already had the money from the other person and lacked $35.00 to have enough. I went to my brother-in-law on the hill. He ran a store where Quinton is now, Calvin Hall. He asked me what I was doing. I told him I was going up to try and buy Barlocker's place but lacked $35.00 to have enough money to pay him down. I 00:38:00said, "Would you have it to spare?" He said, "You go down to the store, the clerk has $35.00, and you tell them to give it to you." So I did and she gave it to me. I came up here and paid Barlocker.

When Barlocker was paid, he bought a place in Enterprise [Washington County, Utah]. He wanted to know if I had a cow I could spare him. I said, "Yes, I will get you a cow." We had brought one with us from down below when I was working out there and had plenty of feed. A fellow wanted to trade me a cow for some hay. I told him I would let him have a cow and he took it. Then he wanted to 00:39:00know if I had a horse or a pony that his boy could ride. I did and got $25.00 for it and he wanted a saddle that I had. Before I was finished he said he had a couple of cows and wanted me to get him another one. I told him I could get him another one. A fellow wanted to trade me [a cow] for hay. I went out and told him I would take his cow. So we made a trade. I had a little roan pony to bring up to the fellow I bought the place from. My neighbor out there said, "What are 00:40:00you doing with the horse?" I said I was going to turn it [over to] Barlocker. He said, "I bought a sorrel and she is a little bigger; maybe he would [rather] have her. Why not take her?" I said, "I can but I want it understood, if he will not take her I get the roan back." He said, "That is alright." When I got back he said, "I thought you had a little roan." I said, "I did but I have this one [the sorrel] too." He said, "I will give you $5.00 more for that one." So I made 00:41:00the trade. [Laughter] [Inaudible]

FH:That was a good way to pay for [the land].

WI:When I came back home mom said, "Where did you get $200.00?" So I told her the story. Every time I came in from Enterprise he would want something, a bale of hay or some grain or something like that. I would sell it to him. When fall 00:42:00came, I was supposed to make the $300.00 payment and I overpaid him a little bit. [Laughter] [Inaudible]

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WI:I believe in living right and I do not see how people can do a lot of things and [still] have a good feeling. [Inaudible] I feel good towards everyone.

FH:[Do] you believe [that by] living right you will have things come your way?

WI:Sure. If you treat your fellow man right and you want to deal, [if] you are their friend and you treat them right they will treat you right. I believe in that. I know it.

FH:Talk about your children starting with the oldest one first.

WI:The oldest was a boy, Reed Iverson; [he] went to school in St. George. When he [was] older we did a lot of peddling of fruit and vegetables around here. He got a pickup [truck] and peddled. I told him: whenever you go anyplace and sell, 00:44:00you treat them [right] so you can go back. He did and everyone thought [well] of him wherever he went. He went to Idaho and started peddling different [items]. There was a little service station in Inkom, Idaho that a person wanted to sell. He bought it and is still there now. He is doing well there.

FH:Whom did he marry?

WI:He never married. He comes down once a year and sees us. He used to come down 00:45:00in the fall, but would get caught in [a] storm going back so now he comes down in the spring. He is doing well. He has a trailer court, store and service

station.

My second boy [Dell Iverson] was drafted into [military] service [with the [United States] Merchant Marines. After he [was discharged], he worked [for] an airplane [company] in San Diego [California].

AI:[The company was] Boeing.

WI:Then they transferred him to Seattle, Washington. He married and is still there.

AI:His wife is Lilly Evelyn (Carroll) [Iverson]; they call her "Eva."

WI:They have two girls. He works for a construction outfit, and when it gets bad 00:47:00weather, they slow up. He is in the [Merchant] Marines and will go down to the shipyard and tell them he would like to make a trip. He has made two trips to [inaudible] he goes down there. This last trip they had a big load of lumber. He came there and they were shooting all night. He was afraid they would [be] bombed. They rounded up all the crews they could and worked day and night. It 00:48:00took them a week to unload it. There was a lot of lumber on the ship. He came back and talked like he did not want to go back there. He said he could see the suicide bombers come out and shoot until they shot one another down. They were getting close and they were nervous. They said they would give them a bonus if they worked day and night and get the ship unloaded, so they got out of there.

FH:I do not blame him for wanting to stay away from there.

WI: I would too, but I would not go down there in the first place. I always said 00:49:00I would like to go down and see where he was during [World] War [II].

FH:You have one more boy to tell about?

WI:Merrill [Iverson] went into [military] service too. He was only seventeen and we sure hated to see him go. He said, "If you let me enlist I can at least have a choice to get where I want to be or they will put me where they want me." He 00:50:00volunteered and studied electronic work. He enlisted as a radio technician and they tried him out and he passed. He had not completed his course so they sent him to school in Treasure Island and he graduated. They had another school in Logan [Cache County, Utah]. They sent him there and he went [to school]. Then they sent him to Corpus Christi, Texas. When he graduated from there, they sent him to San Diego [California] where he went to work.

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FH:[Was] he [in the] Radar Reconnaissance Patrol?

WI:Yes, once he went out from the dock. They had to stay down within 400 feet for the four miles out there. It was cold and windy, and they had only gone out 00:52:00about two miles and came down in the water. The tower man radioed that the plane had [gone] down. They sent a helicopter right out. He said it was not over twenty minutes. They all had their life [jackets] on except one who said, "We do not need them, we will not have trouble," but he drowned. It was about two hours before they could get them all out. The wind was blowing and they had to be careful with the boats because of the rocks, so it took them longer to get them. 00:53:00They would throw lifeboats [and] the wind would take them, but they finally got everyone on the ship. I asked how they got them up on the ship and he said, "They would throw down a rope with a ladder and they would grab a hold of it and they would pull them up into the boat." He said that [it] was a [very] cold bath. [Laughter]

FH:[Laughter] Where is he now?

WI:He is down in Albuquerque, New Mexico working for the Sandia Cooperation there. He has stayed [working] with the government.

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FH:What about your life since you married? [What] different work you have done?

WI:I got myself a good team. They were making a highway through here and I worked for Lew Whitney for two winters. We hauled gravel for the roads. After that, I worked just this side [of] the [Shivwits] Indian Reservation [where there was] a big gravel pit. I worked for ─ I can't think of his name.

FH:He was the owner of the plant?

WI:Yes, he owned the crusher. Thorn was his name. I worked for him all summer 00:55:00and helped build the road from the [Shivwits] Indian reservation to Santa Clara [Washington County, Utah]. I worked on the road in different places.

FH:Have you have seen this part of the area grow up?

WI:Yes, it is growing faster now than I have ever seen it. This [area] is anyhow.

FH:You have done a lot of construction work on highways and farming. You now have a farm. Tell about your farm.

WI:I have sixty acres in the field, part of it runs on the hills, but I am 00:56:00farming about twenty-five acres. I have it in hay and grain. I used to [grow] sugar beet seed but lately I have [grown] hay and grain. I have my own baling outfit and bale a lot of hay. In the winter, when there is not anything else to do, there is a lot of hay around to bale, [so] I baled a lot of hay.

After Las Vegas got going, there was a person who came here from Ogden [Weber County, Utah]. He was buying hay along the road and shipping [it] down to the 00:57:00stockyards on the railroad company. I had a baler and he wanted me to bale hay for him. I baled hay for him one summer. I baled a lot of his hay, but he also bought from others too. He had five trucks. I said, "How much hay have you hauled out of here this summer"? He said, "I will tell you when I come back. This is my last trip and I will tell you when I come back." The stockyards paid me for baling. When he came back, he had the slips we turned in and he said, 00:58:00"You baled 1,100 tons of hay for me. No, I have hauled out 1,100 tons and you baled 700 tons of that." He gave me the slips and showed me. That was a lot of hay! It is not so much now and it is a lot faster now.

We had a table, something like this maybe a little wider, along side the baler and you would lay the hay on it and drive down the field. I would feed against the baler. They would lay it up there and I would put it in there. It was hand tied.

AI:[Inaudible]

WI:He said, "I had never had to leave a bale of hay in the field that you baled. I never had a broken bale." We broke some but then we ran it through again.

FH:That is a good reputation you had. Would you give advice and counsel to your descendants? You are capable and have had a lot of good experience.

WI:I have worked with different people and some have smoked, drank and sworn. I did not approve of that. I know good and well that most of them know it is not right, but some of them do not believe in anything. [Good sense] would tell you to keep yourself clean and not tamper with booze, profane language, tobacco and stealing. You know that is not right and I do too. I do not believe in it and have not done it. [I] never did smoke in my life. [I] took a chew once and I 01:01:00sure paid for that! [Laughter] I was down at the store and [my] uncle came in. He chewed and it looked good [when] he nibbled it off. I said, "Uncle [inaudible] give me a chew of that." I was a [youngster], so he said to take a bite off the corner where I could get the biggest bite and it tasted good [and] I chewed it

We went up a block from there. Paul was [at] his lot working and I went down [there]. Uncle [inaudible] lived downtown and walked down the sidewalk. I was 01:02:00going in where Paul was, but I swallowed that [chew]. So when I got to the gate I decided I did not want to go down where Paul was. Boy, I was sick! There was an old house on the edge of town and I [went] in there and heaved. I was so sick I quivered all over. Mother had sent me to the store for some little notions. I stayed there until I started feeling better and then went home. I guess I looked sick and mother said to me, "What is the matter? Are you sick?" I said, "Yes." 01:03:00She did not ask me what made me sick and I did not tell her. [Laughter] She said, "You better go lay down." And I did. I stayed there for two or three hours until I [was] feeling better, but I never wanted more tobacco! [Laughter]

FH:[Laughter] That was a good lesson.

WI:It sure was! [Laughter]

FH:Is there anything else you would like to add? Would you like to bear your testimony?

WI:I believe and I know it. If a fellow lives right, he will prosper and be better for doing it. If you [inaudible] around the corner and try to take 01:04:00advantage of people, they will shame you, but if you trade decent and deal with them they will trade with you. An honest [fellow] will trust you.

I sat on a jury a week or so ago and a fellow had trouble over some water. He [had] used it as [long] as I remember. My brother-in-law used to own the place where the water comes through. There was a little stream [where] he lived. He 01:05:00always had [water] there [to] irrigate his garden, grape vines and fruit trees. It ran through his corral. I think he used it for the culinary [water] for his house. He wanted to know how far back I could remember. I said, "I could go back about seventy years. I was about fourteen years old when I lived there and the water ran there. I had been on the place time and time again and it still ran there." They were trying to take it away from this fellow. If you have used it in a small stream, you are entitled to it. They cannot take it away from you, 01:06:00but they tried to take it away [from him]. I have not heard how [the verdict] turned out.

I used to go to an attorney to help me with my Social Security. He liked to booze and smoke. I told him I never drank in my life. I have taken a drink of wine in my early days, but I never liked it. [I] never drank nor used tobacco, 01:07:00never did smoke. I do not believe it is good for people. He had done all of it. He said, "You would be a good [person] to go out and talk to people." I said, "I could tell them I do not think it is good but I think you would be [a] better [person to do that]. You could go out and acknowledge and tell them it was not good. [That] would [have] more bearing than what I tell [would] them. You drink it and know it is not good for you, so if you go out and testify it would have more bearing." He said, "You would have more bearing because you did not use it."

FH:It is a matter whether it is of greater influence to say, 'do as I do or do as I say'. [Laughter]

WI:He quit, but they tell me he has gone back to [using] it.

FH:Would you like to tell your descendants how you feel about the gospel?

WI:I think it is true.

[END OF TAPE ONE -- SIDE TWO]

FH:Can I tell you what I think you ought to say? I think you ought to say to your descendants, "Do as I have done."

WI:[Inaudible] I have tried to live right. I do not believe I owe a dollar to anyone. But if I did and they told me, I would go and pay it. I have donated 01:09:00lots to our town. They talked of donations when they put in the oil [on the streets] here. There was a tax, but I had more property along the line and I paid more on that oil than anyone in town. When they built the new church I was assessed $500.00, I think it was, and I paid that. They still needed help so I went on helping. I paid more than $700.00 on the new church, donated to them.

FH:This is what I meant: you are a living example of what you preach and believe 01:10:00to your descendants and this is what is important.

WI:Sure, I believe in it. I do not believe in pretending to do something and then be a hypocrite; I believe in practice what you preach.

[END OF TAPE TWO -- SIDE ONE]