Interview with Lawrence "Dale" Iverson

Content Warning: Contains words that are inherently offensive, insensitive and harmful.

Lawrence "Dale" Iverson was interviewed at his home in St. George, Washington County, Utah in 1971 by his cousin, Helen (Bundy) Russell. He related his life experiences during the time he spent on the Arizona Strip. Other participants were: his wife, Ruby (Meecham) Iverson, his daughter, Joann Iverson and his cousin, Nellie (Iverson) Cox.

HR:Can you remember your first school teacher?

LW:Yes, Mary Sue [(Gray) Iverson].

HR:Was Mary Sue your first school teacher?

RI:When [did] you move out there?

LI:We moved to Mt. Trumbull [Arizona] when I was ─.

HR:You [will] have to talk louder than that.

LI:We moved out there in 1917 when I was about three months old.

RI:[It was in] August 1917. Is that going?

HR:Yes, it is going.

LI:I went to Mary Sue [for] the first grade. Then I went to Dorothy [Lilian 00:01:00(Alldredge) Young] [for] the second, third and fourth grades. Then I went to Mary Sue again for the fifth and sixth grades. I don't remember my seventh grade teacher. Then that old boy from Short Creek [Arizona], what was his name? [He] was my eighth grade school teacher.

HR:[A] man from Short Creek?

LI:Yes. I think [William] "Bill" [Fay] [Bundy] and I were the only ones in that eighth grade [class]. Bill was older than me.

HR:[Was it] McEwen? He wasn't from Short Creek.

LI:No, it wasn't McEwen. But [Francis] St. John is the one George Jones put this 00:02:00sticker in his [chair].

HR:St. John?

LI:Yes. He was from Phoenix, I think. He was a Mexican. That was after you had been there.

HR:[It] must have been, I don't remember.

LI:Well, crap, you are what?

HR:Yes, I am a lot older than you are, I know this.

LI:Aren't you four or five or six years older than I am?

HR:I am fifty-eight [years old].

LI:I am fifty-four [years old]. You are four years older than me.

RI:Tell about some of the things that happened when you were going to school. Tell about George putting the cactus in ─. [Laughter]

LI:George putting the cactus in ole St. Johns [chair]? He was kind of a big, heavy boy and he had a cabin up there [near] Ensign [Griffiths'] place. I don't know, Uncle Willard [James Iverson] or somebody had a cabin up there. He would always go home for lunch. Of course, we would just run wild down there during the noon hour while he was home for lunch. He was kind of heavy set and when he would go to set down he would stoop over and about the time he would get six to eight inches from the chair he would just turn loose and go down ker-plop. [Laughter]

HR:[Laughter]

LI:George got one of those round sticker cactus like [what] grows out there in the flat. He put it just underneath [laughter] the cushion cover. He came in and we were all called in after lunch. We all got in there and everybody knew it was there. We were all sitting down there making out like we were studying while we were watching out of the corner of our eyes. He messed around there for awhile and finally went over there to his desk and sat down. He bent over there and went down ker-plop. Boy, he came up like [laughter] he had a stick of dynamite under him! [Laughter] He knew who [had done it and] he got on to George right away.

HR:I would say [so]! [Laughter]

LI:He kept George in for two or three recesses and [he was] going to whip him. George, he might get a whipping, but he was going to get in a lick or two [himself] while it was going on. [Laughter] George was in the seventh or eighth grade [and] he was a pretty big boy. It finally blew over and that was about all he ever did. [Laughter]

HR:Do you remember when [James Gwendol] "Ben" [Bundy] bit McEwen on the knee?

LW:[Laughter]

JI:Sounds like Newman [Bundy].

LI:No, I was over in the old schoolhouse then. I kind of half-way remember that name, but can't remember the [fellow].

HB:[Do] you [remember] how we used to play marbles all the time? Marbles, marbles at recess [and] at noon. We always had two bells. The first bell, we were all supposed to go to the bathroom, if we wanted to, and get ready to come in [to class]. As soon as that last bell rang, we were supposed to be in [the classroom]. [Leland] Dee [Alldredge] and "Ben" just kept playing and thought they could get away with it. [Laughter] About the time that they came in, [McEwen] was standing by the door and he grabbed [for] Dee. [Dee] dove around him, but he grabbed "Ben" and kind of upset him with his feet up in the air. He was whacking him and "Ben" bit him on the knee. [Laughter] That poor man! He must have really socked him because he went around rubbing his knee the rest of [the] day. [Laughter]

RI:[Laughter]

LI:[Laughter] That is like [it was with] that cactus [and] George Jones. I guess when he [Francis St. John] got up, it went through the pillow case and I guess it pulled all the thorns back out again, I don't know. I never did hear any more about whether he had to pick thorns [out] or not. [Laughter]

RI:Tell them about the time that snow came off the roof at the schoolhouse [while] Mary Sue was teaching.

HB:My criminy, I was there then! We darn near stampeded! We did stampede!

LI:We did stampede!

HB:Who all was tromped under? Theo Woods and who else?

LI:Seems like there was one or two of them that got tromped up a little bit. The only one that never moved was George. He sat right there next to the door [and] could have gotten out first. When we all got back in there [laughter] ─.

JI:What happened?

LI:It was in the spring of the year and that old schoolhouse had a [very] steep roof on it. It had snowed, I don't know how much snow, quite a bit of snow anyway, and it all melted off from the south side. There was quite a lot of snow on the north side of the building. The gable roof went east and west and it was shady on the north side. We had a little wood stove in there and [we] poured wood in [it]. It was real cold. There was about six inches of snow on the ground outside, I [would] guess. It got [very] warm [and] enough of the heat filtered up through the ceiling [of] the schoolhouse and melted the snow where it was 00:06:00frozen to the ceiling. It had old wooden shingles like this old building out here has.

JI:Yes.

LI:That was frozen and melted right next to the roof and it just turned into ice. Then all of a sudden that whole thing just turned loose [and] just slid off of there.

HB:The damndest noise that you ever heard.

LI:Sounded like the whole roof was coming in. Man, the [youngsters] all jumped up and out the door they went. Some of those [younger] ones [were] trampled under [foot]. [Laughter] After it was all over and we all [were] back in there, it was just before recess or noon, so we all went back out. We were checking out how far they all ran out from the schoolhouse. There was Mary Sue's tracks about fifteen or twenty feet in front of everybody else. [Laughter] She circled and 00:07:00came back again. [Laughter]. She always wore high heel shoes and we could see those high heel shoe marks out there in that snow where she ran. [Laughter]

RI:[Laughter]

HR:[Laughter]

LI:I remember one time [in 1924 or 1925], it was when your dad [Roy Bundy] had that store up there. "Bill" and I decided we would go up to the store one day and buy some candy. We had a few pennies. We went up to the store to buy something during the noon hour. We goofed around, playing along on the way up there. We got up there and [bought] what we were going to buy. About half-way 00:08:00down through the flat, about where that pond is out in the middle of the flat, just down [from the store], we heard the bell ring. We thought: that is too far to run [back] to school, so we decided we would play hooky for the rest of the day. We didn't have brains enough to know they could see us all the way down that flat. There was a little wash there and we [were] playing down through that wash, [just] messing around. We played along and just before it was time for school to let out, we had worked our way down right down to the schoolhouse.

Instead of cutting across [and] going into the school yard, "Bill" circled way out through granddads [Abraham Bundy's place], made a circle around the schoolhouse and headed for home. Instead of me cutting down the lane headed for home, I came right in to the schoolyard. That is when Dorothy was teaching and she [was my teacher]. She caught me! She asked me where I had been and I made up some kind of [a] story. She said, "No, you didn't. I have been watching you all 00:09:00afternoon. You have just been playing along up through there.

HR:[Laughter]

LI:You are going to have to stay here and make up for all of that [time] after school." Everyone else went home and she kept me in after school. The sun got lower and lower and lower and I was scared of the dark. I was scared to death of the dark. Boy, I was afraid she was going to keep me there until it got clear dark and I would have had to walk home after dark. I think she was about as afraid of the dark as I was because I could tell that she was starting to get nervous about the time the sun went down. [Laughter] Finally, she let me go, about the time the sun went down. Boy, out that door I went! I ran all the way home! I bet I beat her home [laughter] because she was living [at the] Alldredges at that time.

HR:[Laughter]

RI:[Laughter] Did she have about as far to go as you did?

LI:She had almost as far to go as I did. I think it was ─.

HB:Wasn't it two miles over there?

LI:I think it was two and a half miles over to [Isaac and Maria Delilah (VanLeuven)] Alldredges.

HB:Maybe it was.

LI:Maybe it was two miles, I don't know, because I had a little over three miles to go the way that we cut through. I got home before it got dark. Boy, I tell you, I made a record trip!

RI:[Laughter]

HB:[Laughter] Did your mom or dad want to know where you had been?

RI:They probably knew [inaudible].

LI:No, I can't remember that they ever said anything about how come I didn't [come] home when the rest of the [youngsters] did. They probably told them why. I don't remember ever getting any static from home [when] I got home.

I used to goof around. It used to be my job to go get the cows when I was a [youngster] at home. I would always goof around until it [was] dark and then I 00:11:00would have to go out and get the cows. I remember one time, I knew where this one old cow was, [so] I went out and got the rest of them, but I goofed around until it [was] dark. Dad and [my brother] George [Clifton Iverson] would usually go out and do the milking after I got the cows in and they would never go out and milk until it [was] dark. Dad always said we are moon high and we couldn't do anything until it got dark. So they went out to milk four or five cows.

They went out to milk and I knew I was going to catch heck if I didn't get this old cow. She was always up [in] the flat over there in those little hills towards Uncle [Omer] "Dick" [Bundy's] house. I knew where she was, but I didn't go get her before it got dark, and then I [was] scared of the dark. I finally decided that I would brave the dark, rather than brave dad when he came in from milking, [when] I didn't get this other cow. I took off and ran all the way out 00:12:00there. When I got out there, I grabbed the cow by the tail and I hung on to her tail all the way to the house. [Laughter] [Inaudible] I got her in just about the [when] they finished up milking. [I] got away without getting a tongue lashing from dad!

HR:[Laughter]

RI:[Laughter]

LI:I remember when I was a little [boy], dad used to have pigs out there all the time. He had a net wire fence out around the field down where the corn was, all the way around except on the west side. [The pigs] would go around over there, come in [and] crawl through the fence. He just had [a] barbed wire [fence] over there. I was supposed to watch those pigs and see that they didn't get over in there around the fence and get in to that corn. I remember there came up a rain 00:13:00storm one day in the summer time. When it rained, it would knock all the cedar berries off the trees. A lot of times they would head up through those trees eating those cedar berries. I figured I was safe and I wasn't watching them too closely. They got away from me and [wouldn't] come back in when it became night. I remember dad sent me out and told me I had to go and get those pigs. It was still cloudy, raining around and lightning. I would go out away from the house a little ways, stay quite a little while, then I would go back to the house and tell him I couldn't find them. I never did go very far. He sent me out again. Finally, mom felt sorry for me, so she went out with me. We went out a ways down around the pond and out through the flat. I remember she would call for those pigs. Every little while there would come a big flash of lightning. You could 00:14:00see for a little bit, just for a minute, from the lightning. We messed around down there for an hour, looking all over and we never could find those cussed pigs! [They were there] the next morning; they had come in during the night.

I remember we were down there, a day or two after that, doing something down along that field along that west side. I think dad had some poison out for rabbits or something or other, and we were checking [on] that poison. Dad was along with me and there was a lot of corn. The corn was up quite high and starting to form roasting ears. A lot of corn had broken off right [at] the ear. I said something like, "You know it looks like the grasshoppers are starting to eat the corn." Dad said, "Yes, grasshoppers? That is them pigs that you let get away that have done that!" I shut up [and] didn't say another word. [Laughter]

HR:[Laughter]

RI:[Laughter]

HR:They [grew] some mighty high rows of corn down there, too.

LI:Oh man! I remember when I was a little [boy] that corn would get so high. A lot of times if I would go with [my brother, Vearl] "Doc" [Iverson] to get the cows. A lot of times we would give them a [head] start, they would go around the fields, and go on home. I would be messing around, playing, and wouldn't stay close to them. It was a shortcut to go right through the corn field to go home. Boy, that corn was just like a forest! I was scared to go through it when I was a [youngster]. I would go around it every time, before I would go through that corn patch.

HR:There was some good corn that grew out there, I'll tell you. [Laughter]

NC:I never did see corn grow that high. That was a lot of corn out in Nevada, but I never saw corn grow that high.

LI:I remember dad had some sort of a white corn, with a white kernel on it, right there just west of the pond one year. I remember [my brother] Floyd [James Iverson] was a pretty big [youngster and] I remember the ears were up about as high as he could reach.

HR:I remember one time we had to get on a horse and ride down along the rows to reach the damn roasting ears.

LI:That is the way they were. I don't know just how old I was, but I couldn't even reach the ears. You would have to get a hold of them and bend the stalks over to even reach the ears. I remember Floyd was a pretty big [youngster] and he would have to reach about as high as he could to reach those ears on [the] corn [stalks]. [They] must have been twelve [to] fifteen feet high.

HR:Yes.

LI:I raised some corn down here on my farm one time, that same white corn.

RI:Yes, field corn.

LI:I could just barely reach the top of [the stalks by] standing up to the side with a shovel. [Using] the length of a shovel handle, I could reach the top of [the stalks]. I could reach the ears, but they were up as high as my head. That must have been the same type of corn, some kind of a white corn. I don't know where I got that seed; I just planted two or three rows of it. I think that was the year I bought those dairy cows down there [and] I went in to the dairy business. I had a whole bunch of corn, cane and milo all mixed in together down there. I sure had some good crops that year.

I remember the summer I was thirteen years old, we ran out of water out [on the 00:18:00Arizona Strip]. We took the cows up to Nixon [Spring on Mt. Trumbull] for water. We took them up to [my brother Vernon] "Vern" [Martin Iverson's place] on the mountain, what they call the old Iverson place now.

HR:Yes.

LI:We kept them in there for a week or two, maybe a couple of weeks. Then there was only a half section [320 acres] there and there wasn't very much grass, mostly just sagebrush. We had to take them out of there [because] we ran out of feed. I think dad hauled water from Nixon over there for awhile for them. Then we got to where we would drive them over to Nixon Spring once a day and back. Finally, Uncle Levi ["Lee" Aaron Iverson] and Uncle [Clement LeRoy] "Roy" 00:19:00[Whipple] I think it was, brought their cattle out there too. Then we took them way up toward Point Look Out [Mt. Logan], up to where the sawmill [owned by the Blake Brothers, Frederick and Benjamin] is, up along those lava beds up in there. We camped up there. There was a cement trough up there that they used when they had that mill running. Dad, Uncle Levi, and part of the time Uncle Roy were hauling water with a team and wagon in barrels from Nixon [to] water those 00:20:00cows. They would dump it in those troughs. They would go back and forth, all day long, hauling water and dump it in those troughs. They had a small trough [where] they would syphon it out [so] the cows could drink.

They [had] dumped the sawdust into a big wash there. [There] was a great big, high pile of sawdust. We would get those slabs that had been laying out for quite awhile, the bark had come off and the end would kind of turn up like a sled. We would peel that bark off and a lot of times it would be just as smooth. Part of that bark would just slide right off, that round part of the log would be turned up just a little on the end and we could make a sled out of that. 00:21:00George, [Melvin] "Meb" [Lee] Whipple and I, would [go] down there and play on that sawdust pile. We would carry those boards up to the top and slide down on that sawdust. I remember Uncle Levi, I think it was, had an old cow that he called her "Bugle." She would [go] off in those tall pines and bawl; let out a squall. It would just echo all over that mountain. [Laughter] It hardly sounded like a cow bellowing, just a high ─

NC:Pitched ─.

LI:─ pitched [bellow]. I remember one night we were down there [and] we had been playing on this sawdust pile. I had slid down and was down at the bottom of this sawdust pile. George went back up and "Meb" [had] slid off and fell off his 00:22:00board about half way down. He stopped about the time that old cow bawled across the canyon from where we were out in the trees there a ways. A day or two before that we had seen some cougar tracks up there. So when this old cow let out this bawl, George hollered "COUGAR" and headed for camp just as hard as he could run!

HR:[Laughter]

RI:[Laughter]

LI: "Meb" started up that sawdust pile as hard as he could run! He was afraid George was going to get away before him, so he turned around [laughter] and backwards he came right back down to the bottom. I knew right what it was as soon as I heard it. [Laughter]

Uncle Levi was always kidding "Meb," about [how] this Cougar was going to get his little mare. I don't remember what he called her. Dad had a team of mules and so did Uncle Levi that they had been hauling this water with, so one morning they went out looking [for them]. [They would] turn them loose at night or hobble them out and let them go out and graze. One day "Meb" and he went out to wrangle the horses [and] they ran across these fresh cougar tracks. [They] found 00:23:00one place where the cougar sat down in the road and swished his tail back and forth and smoothed the dust all out. Uncle Levi said, "I never really thought about trying to scare "Meb." I just made [a] remark like, "Boy, that old cougar just barely got up from there." He said he probably got that horse. He was just a kidding and said, "Boy, old "Meb" just got right up next to him and he didn't leave him a foot." [Laughter] He was just scared to death. [Laughter]

HR:[Laughter]

RI:[Laughter

LI:That same summer, oh crap, I don't remember how long we stayed up there. I think we left the ranch on my birthday, if I remember right, May 7th, with the 00:24:00cattle. We stayed up there all during May and June. Then on the Fourth of July, I don't remember it rained or if they hauled water. No, I think they finally just turned them loose. We just quit herding them. We had one big Holstein cow and dad took her down to the Kenworthy place. Was it the Kenworthy place?

HR:Kenworthy's place is over towards the ledge.

LI:Yes, it was down there, I think it was down there on that [Bowden Lakin] Kenworthy place. We had been camping down there and we turned the other cows loose. We had the horses and just one or two cows, I think it was down there on 00:25:00that Kenworthy place, inside of the pasture. Dad hauled water down there and he told us we could go home for the Fourth of July. I think he just turned us loose and we walked home from there, heading right straight off the mountain. I would run around barefoot up there all summer herding those dad-gum cows on those old lava rocks. I am telling you I made shoes out of boards, shingles and everything else, trying to wire them on my feet and I never could. I made some shoes out of boards and put wires through like these thongs they wear now-a-days. The only thing I ever had to tie them on with was wire, but the wire would make my feet sore. I remember when we were camped over there at that Kenworthy place, we walked over to Nixon Spring one morning, following the road. Just shortly after 00:26:00we left the Kenworthy place, we were following along this dusty road, the cows had been trailing up and down the road [making] a lot of traffic [and the road very] dusty. [We saw] fresh cougar tracks made the night before, and the cougar come into the road. I was thirteen [years old] and George would have been about fifteen [years old] at the time. This cougar went right up the road, followed the road all the way, until he got almost to Nixon Spring. I guess he was going on over there to drink. Just before he got over [by] the corrals, he turned back up off the road just north of the corrals there and circled around. I don't know where he went from there. His tracks [were] big, about four or five inches in diameter.

HR:It is a wonder you [boys] didn't get scared, turn around and go back when you saw the way he was going. [Laughter]

LI:Old George, he wasn't scared!

HR:He wasn't scared. [Laughter]

LI:Boy, I was scared! I mean every little [sound] I heard, cold chills would just run up and down my back [as] he plowed along and paid no attention to anything.

HR:You could tell a few of [his] stories. Were you around when he went out cougar hunting? Into the caves after them?

LI:No, I wasn't out there. I heard that story a lot of times, but I wasn't there. The story he told was he had been up there on the mountain [Mt. Trumbull] deer hunting. He had an old hound, that is when he had "Old Van," I guess. You remember that old hound called "Old Van?" He had seen this cougar track or 00:28:00something and, he [had] the dog follow the track a little bit. He went out onto these lava rocks. It was right up on top of the hill above Coal Springs is the way I understand it. He said that he went out onto the rocks and there were big, old caves down underneath the rocks [with] cracks in them. [He] said he was sitting out there on the rocks and every little while he would imagine he could hear kind of a [very] low growl. He would sit there [very] still and then he would holler and make a racket. Pretty soon, he would imagine he could hear this 00:29:00growl again. He said he sat there and the longer he sat there, the spookier he got, so he finally got out of there. [He] got on his horse, headed down off the hill, back down to Bundyville.

He went down by Uncle [James] "Jim" [Dennis Bundy's] and told [Loran Sylvester] "Bud" [Bundy] about it. "Bud: was home, I think Charnel Hallmark was out there at the time. There was "Bud" and [Lincoln] "Linc" [Delmar Bundy] and that night it snowed about two or three inches. It was [in] the winter time. They all went back up there the next day and sure enough this cougar had been in a cave there. 00:30:00He had actually heard it growling. He had been close enough to it that he could hear [the cougar] growling down underneath these rocks [in] this cave. He had come out of the cave during the night and they got on the tracks. I don't know whether they couldn't tell where they left the track, where they tracked it out and made [a] circle out. [But they] caught a rabbit, ate [it] and went back in the cave again. Or [maybe] they got out there with their dogs, but I know they took dogs up there.

Anyway, they got back in this cave again, messed around up there all day long, daring each other to go down in there. They had dogs and they knew the cougar was in there because they could hear it down in the [cave] snarling at the dogs. The dogs would go down there and bark at it, but that is as far as they would 00:31:00go. They would get down so far. I guess they saw a glimpse or two of [the cougar] before it would come out and [snap] at the dogs. They messed around all day long and they got a bunch of wood and started a fire to throw down in this cave [at] the cougar. They [had] all kinds of wood and made a regular bonfire down in this cave and they went back home again. The next day they went back up there again. The cougar was still in the cave, he had never left. They [were] setting up there, "Bud," I don't know if "Ben" was there, [but] "Linc" was there, George [and] I think Charnel Hallmark. They [started] daring each other to go down in this cave and shoot this cougar. So "Linc" decided he would go 00:32:00down and get her. I think he just took a .22 six-shooter. He was going to hold that [gun] in front of him. The rest of them all lined up around the mouth of the cave where they could see him. I guess the cave went down [very] steep and then kind of came up and these brow rocks hung down and back in the back of the cave. The cougar could get up high enough to where they couldn't see her, because they had to look down underneath these rocks. The cave kind of went up again in the back.

So "Linc" goes a-scooting down in there on his rear-end with the six shooter out in front of him. He would ease up a little more. The rest of them were all lined up around there with their .30-30s [.30-30 WCF (Winchester center fire)] all trained on him. If she came out, they were going to get her. "Linc" got down in 00:33:00there and came scooting down a little bit further, a little bit further and looking down underneath there. This old cougar, could see his feet coming and, I guess, "Linc" finally got to where he could see her feet. About the time he got far enough down to where he could see under this brow rock, enough to see her feet, she was standing up on a rock on the other side. She kind of ducked down to look at him and there they were, I guess, right face to face, and the cougar spit at him. [Laughter]

HR:[Laughter]

LI:"Linc" came out of there and they said it looked like he had lost every drop of blood he had in his body. He was just white as a sheet! [Laughter] He said that cougar had only three inches between her nose and his head. [Laughter]

HR:[Laughter]

RI:[Laughter]

LI:After he came out of there, he told them what the situation was down in 00:34:00there. So they [laughter] figured, if they went down head first, where their head was the lowest part of their body, then they could see her as quickly as she could see them.

Finally, George decided that was what he would do; he would go down head first with his gun out in front of him. He took his .30-.30 and he got down there far enough to where he could see her feet standing on this rock, or shelf, down under where this brow rock hung down. He kept easing down a little further and a little bit further. He knew by the look of her feet she stuck her head down far enough to where you could see it. He finally got down there far enough and started to get excited and she stooped down to look at him. When she did that, 00:35:00he let her have it. As soon as he shot, he just came a-scrambling out of there just as fast as he could. She floundered around down in there for quite a little while. They sent the dogs down in there and they didn't hear [any] static out of her, so they finally decided she was dead. [George], "Bud" and "Ben" went down in there. Sure enough, he had got her right between the eyes. That close range [the] bullet didn't even go clear through her head. It went through her head, but it stopped just under the skin on the back of her head, she was that hard 00:36:00headed, a .30-.30 right up against her. [Laughter]

HR:[Laughter] Darn little cusses, it is a wonder they didn't get killed.

RI:Those stories they tell, I don't know how any of them lived out there.

LI:I don't remember now, [but] somehow after they had killed her, they went hunting around there. They had their dogs and discovered that she had two little [kittens]. They were about yearlings. They got the dogs on their tracks. [They were] on horseback, treed them, and killed both of them. They skinned out the mother cougar that was in the cave. George killed her, and then he killed one of the little ones. Those two hides hung in the barn out there at the old ranch. 00:37:00Fact is, I wouldn't be too surprised if there are still yet parts of that old hide kicking around there in that old barn. That cougar hide sat up there on a rafter for years and years and years after George died. Well, it was after dad died. It has just been the last six or eight years that it finally got knocked off of there [and] trampled around down there. It used to be laying there on the floor of that barn. There still might be parts of it lying there, I don't know.

HR:I remember a time or two that "Bud" caught some and he had a chain around the neck. He had them down around there.

LI:I can remember hearing about when he had one of them chained up down there somewhere.

HR:That was when they lived in that place down there from the schoolhouse. On 00:38:00this side of "Jim's" pond there in that little house there.

LI:All the years that I lived out there, all the times that we use to go up there, hunt and chase around up on that mountain, I never did see a cougar. I saw a lot of fresh tracks. But I never did see one running loose out in the wild out there [in] all the years I lived out there.

HR:I never did either, only those ones that "Bud" had chained.

LI:One time George and I decided we would go up on the mountain. It was in the summer time. Of course, we would hunt deer any time we felt like it, and we tried to go up and hunt deer.

HR:George always had a sack full of jerky.

LI:Yes, or a quarter of a deer hanging on the back of the house. I don't know how come we left that time of the day, late in the afternoon. We want across 00:39:00over to Cove [Spring] and went up above. He had run onto this little flat [area] up there in the lava rocks. The little flat was all hemmed in with lava and the cattle never did get in. There was a lot of good feed in this little flat. We rode our horses over there that evening and hobbled them. We camped there that night and then we went from there on up on top of the hill and went around Woods Knoll above George Crosby's pond. [We] and hunted all around in there that day. We camped at Crosby's pond that night. There was a fence there so we kept our horses inside that pasture where the pond was. We had taken a pair of hobbles from home. A pair of brand new chain hobbles that dad had bought for his mules. 00:40:00Somehow we left those hobbles where we camped that first night [at] Cove Spring. The second day I was riding that little black horse that George used to have.

HR:"Old Nigger"?

LI:"Nigger" or "Piss Ant" or something like that! [Laughter]

HR:[Laughter]

RI:[Laughter]

LI:It was [a] little old black mustang. [The horse] wore a 002 [shoe], [very] small foot. We hunted all around Woods Knoll that first day and then camped down [at] the Crosby pond. The next day we went back up there hunting again. Where we crossed those tracks, that cougar had been following around those tracks. His track was just about big enough to fit inside the shoe mark on that horse I was riding. George was kidding me about [the] cougar [being] after me and would catch up with me. I was about half-spooky all the day anyway, [but] since we were hunting together, it wasn't so bad. Late that afternoon, [we] never did 00:41:00find any deer, so we finally decided to give it up. We had a pack horse. [George] said, "You go back to the Cove and pick up those hobbles on the way in and I will take the pack horse and head straight over to the rim and head off the trail into Uncle "Dick's" [place]. So that is what I did.

When I got over there to the top of the hill and started coming down off that trail where the cattle had gone trailing down in to Cove Spring, it was [very] dusty where they had trailed up and down that mountain. There must have been a mama cougar or something there. There were great big, old tracks heading down off that old dusty trail. You know how after the sun shines on the dust a while it kind of bleaches out and you can tell a real fresh track? You know how a 00:42:00[very] fresh track shows up? That is how that track was, just like he had barley stepped out of it. I kept watching my horse all the time and I had that old .30-.30. Man, I had the magazine crammed clear full and one in the barrel. [Laughter]

HR:[Laughter]

RI:[Laughter]

LI:I had it held ready all the time. I figured I was going to catch up to that cougar on any turn. When I got down in to where we had camped that first night, it was a heck of a job to get a horse in to there. Anyway, I tied my horse up. Finally, [I was] brave enough to tie him up, walked over there, got the hobbles, got back out of there and headed back off the hill. I never did see the cougar and the horse never did act like he could smell him. He never [was] nervous, but, boy, they were sure fresh tracks. The hair would stand up on the back of my neck, cold chills run down my back [and] goose pimples! [Laughter]

HR:Goose pimples! [Laughter]

HR:George always had flour sacks full of jerky, didn't he?

LI:I remember one time, when he went up there [during] one winter ─

[END OF RECORDING ONE.]

LI:─ and killed, I think, it was seven head of deer. He brought them down close to the road and hung them in the trees. There was snow on the ground [and it was] cold enough to keep them. He came back off the hill and told dad about it. Dad got the old team of mules, his old rubber-tired wagon, went up on the 00:44:00hill and came off with a whole load of deer. He covered them over with a tarp and came down off the hill with them.

RI:[Did he] jerk and bottle [canned] them?

LI:We jerked, bottled and canned them. Dad had that little old home canning sealer. You turned it with your hands and then put [the cans] in the pressure cooker. We always had canned deer meat and jerky. When we would go anywhere, we would throw cans of meat in the pack outfit to have something to eat. We would always eat it all. I don't remember ever wasting any.

HR:Criminy, no, we didn't waste any.

RI:Crap no, we didn't waste any.

LI:That was the days when there wasn't very many deer out there either. That old George ─

HR:He was a hunter!

LI:─ was a hunter. One time George, "Bud," "Linc" and I ─ that was when 00:45:00"Bud" had that 1936 International Truck. We all went up there, when old [Chester] Lavon Stout had that sawmill there. I don't know whether the sawmill was set up back up in there towards Point Look Out somewhere up in there, up that road there going towards Quaking Aspen Grove.

HR:They had that one [sawmill] sitting just on the other side of the lava beds, this side of the Quaking Aspen Grove. The last time it was right where you could look down in to Big Spring, where they had their [sawmill].

LI:This wasn't that far up. It must have been that [sawmill] there along those lava beds.

HR:Yes.

LI:We went up there one afternoon. "Bud" was going up there to get a load of lumber and we decided we would take in a little hunting while we were up there. It was George, "Linc" and I [who] went with him. We went out and hunted a little that afternoon; no, I guess we went up there that morning and hunted all day. George and I hunted down off of there and went down off the mountain towards Bob Sullivan's, down toward Little Springs, where Bob Sullivan lived. We went down to Bob Sullivan's to eat dinner with him that day. Then we left and went right straight west, back up over that mountain [and] headed back up toward the [the sawmill]. When we were heading up that mountain, we came across a fresh track. George got on that track like a bloodhound! I was a tip-toeing along behind him, [but] I could [only] see the track just now and then. He would walk along that track and every time I would step on a piece of sagebrush and make any noise, he would turn around and scowl at me.

I had never killed a deer. Finally, he stopped and said, "That deer is pretty close." We came up along there and there was kind of a little canyon that came down off the side of the canyon where you could see across. He said, "You go out on this point here, where you can see across on that hillside. It is kind of open in there, and you can see across there. And I will stay on the tracks. You should get a shot at him. He will be in that little draw right there." I said, "Okay." We were standing right on the side of a little wash on the hillside there. I stepped out in front of him and made about two steps and stepped down into this little swell. There was a big, bushy cedar tree right there beside us 00:48:00and this deer was right on the side of that bushy tree. When I made those two steps, he came out. George said, "Look out!" The deer didn't head around the hill like he thought he [would], he headed right down the point where I was going to go. When he hollered, "Look out!" I just dropped to the ground. BANG! Man, he shot right over the [top] of my head! It liked to have broken my ear drum. I was right out in front of his gun. He [the deer] took off and I jumped up and said, "Did you get him?" He said, "I don't know. I think so." We walked down there and sure enough, there he lay, dead as a door nail. He just shot one time.

HR:[Laughter]

RI:[Laughter]

LI:We cleaned him up and carried him on up the hill. We thought if we took him into the [sawmill], we would have to divide him with Lavon Stout. I think that 00:49:00was [when] he and Pearl [(Brown) were] married. There were some [fellows] working there for him, too, a bunch of them. So we hung him in the trees and went on in to camp. "Bud" and "Linc" [came] back in before the rest of us. They were loading lumber. I think Lavon would have to saw out the load before we could get any. That is the way it was and he had sawed out part of a load that day. We stayed up there that night. They loaded up the lumber, or part of it, that night and finished up the next morning. We went out and got the deer and loaded him up in the bed roll. He loaded part of the lumber in that old truck. [It had] such a short wheelbase [that] he loaded part of it up and [when] he got up high enough, he put a log across the front. Then he stuck a bunch of it out over the cab. Before we put this out over the cab, we put our bedroll with the 00:50:00deer underneath the lumber between the cab and this log. [It was] where you would have had to unload half of the lumber before you could have gotten to the deer, even if you knew it was in there.

We drove back down off the hill and got to where the road forked and got down in there to Bob Sullivan's [place]. We drove down that road a little ways and then pulled in behind the trees and parked the truck. We went out and hunted a little bit again that morning to see if we could find any more. We just came down to the truck and here came dad up there. He was horseback and was going over to see Bob Sullivan about something. He said, "You [fellows] better watch out, because Bud Kent is up there looking for you." Bud Kent used to be the game warden. We 00:51:00had heard a car go up the road just a little while before dad came along. I don't know whether he passed dad on the road or not. He had gone on up toward the [sawmill]. We hurried up, got in the truck, went back off the hill and skipped him. He [Bud Kent] never did catch up with us. [Laughter] That was the only time I ever did hunt up there. I never did get any wind of a game warden looking for me or anything. [Laughter]

HR:[Laughter] Tell the story about the canned milk. I want to hear it.

LI:When dad use to be road foreman? [Laughter] He would buy milk by the case 00:52:00and, man, I sure did like canned milk. I still like it as far as that goes. I could sit down and drink a can of it right now, just straight out of the can. Dad bought this whole case of milk and he was saving it for when he went out on the road so he always had milk for his Postum or ever what he drank.

RI:Mormon Coffee.

LI:Mormon Coffee, yes! George and I were messing around and we [found] this whole case of milk he had sitting there in the wash house, [out] there by the house. We didn't dare open any of it because we figured he knew how many cans he had in there. I had this little squirt gun that had this big syringe on it, like for a baby. [Laughter] It would hold a lot of water in a little rubber bulb. We 00:53:00took our pocket knife and a little daub of solder and bored right through that with a pocket knife. [We] drank about all the milk out, it felt like about a half-inch in the bottom. Then we [took] this squirt gun and filled [it] full of water [and] squirted [it] back down through that little hole. [We] filled [it] back clear full of water. Dad always had solder around there. We got an old bolt or something and stuck it [on] the stove, got it hot and melted a little bit of solder [on it] and put [that] over [the] hole and put [the can] back in the box. It was about a month or so later [when] Uncle Levi was up there one day and they [were] talking about canned milk. [The milk] gets kind of crudely in there. They were talking about how some brands of milk were better than others. Dad said, 00:54:00"You know, here awhile back, I opened a can of that milk [and] it was just like whey. It didn't have no curds or nothing. It was just barley colored. I never could figure out what was the matter." [Laughter]

HR:[Laughter]

RI:[Laughter]

LI:[Laughter] George and I just sat there and never said a word! [Laughter] We never did tell him about that. He never did know what happened to that canned milk. [Laughter].

I remember one time we had [a] bunch of sheep and we used to go down there in Blake Canyon [to] bring the early lambs and sheep out. We just turned them loose down there in Blake Canyon. All the herding we ever [had to] do [was to] make a 00:55:00circle, about every two or three days, clear around the rim of that canyon. Anything that got up too high, we would push them back down in to the bottom. [Elmo Aaron] "Frosty" [Bundy] and I were down there herding them [and] we were always chasing chuckwallas and anything we could find for amusement. One day I had run a chuckwalla into the crack of a rock and it just so happened that the top part of the rock was loose. I had a string in my pocket and I decided I could get this old chuckwalla out of this crack. I fashioned me a little loop and got some sticks. I slid it down in the crack in the rock, got a loop on his neck, tightened it up on him and then I lifted the top of the rock off. I had that old "chuck" captured! I took him into camp and tied him up to a chaparral bush.

We camped right there on the edge of that ledge. It was only about fifteen feet from where we had our tents set up to where it dropped right off [in] Blake Canyon. [It] dropped down there about 500 feet straight down. All the cans and [trash] we didn't want in camp, we would just pitch it over that edge. We had the cleanest camp in the whole [area], I'll tell you that! [Laughter]

HR:[Laughter]

LI:I took him in that evening. The next day we [were] out again, checking the other side of the canyon. It was clear dark before we got [in]. The only kind of wood that was down there was chaparral and ocotillo. [The] ocotillo had a bark on it just about like wax paper. You could strike a match to it and it would 00:57:00really burn. We got into camp and it was just almost clear dark. You could see a few little lighter objects on the ground. "Frosty" was busy [laughter] supposedly picking up pieces of this ocotillo bark. He was going to make a fire. He reached down and picked up that chuckwalla tied up to that bush! [Laughter]

HR:[Laughter]

RI:[Laughter]

LI:Boy, he let out a squall and dropped that [it]. I sat back and started laughing. [Laughter] He said, "That son-of-a-bitch!" [Laughter] He grabbed that string and swung it around about three times and sailed him over that ledge. [Laughter] I sure did laugh! [Laughter]

RI:[Laughter]

HB:[Laughter] It might as well been a snake. I remember one time you [fellows] had left for [the] sheep, early that morning. I don't know where in the heck we 00:58:00were ─ Bethel [Ramona Iverson], Barbara [(Bundy) Carroll] and I, but we decided we would go down and visit you. [Laughter]

LI:We were down there on ─ let's see, where were we? We were up there around those ─.

HB:You were about across from the ─.

LI:We were right across from the ends of the pipeline down there.

HB:Yes! When we caught up with you that is where you were.

LI:Yes. I remember we were headed down into the lava beds. Is where we were going? This side of Pa's Pockets. That was where we went [to] that spring. Wasn't it?

HB:Yes.

LI:We were taking them down there to lamb. You [girls] stayed down there a day or two, didn't you?

HB:Yes.

LI:Two or three days?

HB:I don't remember how many days we stayed down there, but we stayed several days. [Laughter]

LI:[Laughter] Yes, I remember one day down there, Barbara was going to cook 00:59:00dinner for us. We had been out chasing those sheep around all day and we came in and she cooked dinner. She burnt the biscuits in the Dutch oven. I said something to her, it hurt her feelings and made her cry. I had got on to her about burning the biscuits. [Laughter]

HB:[Laughter] I remember when we got home, of course, we walked down and we walked back. We [were] along over there about Ensign's [place] and the school section there [when] we ran on to "Prince." That darn fool horse would let us about get to him and then he would run. [Laughter]

RI:[Laughter]

HR:[Laughter] I was completely given out. Along the point there, as we were 01:00:00going, we were above Grandpa Bundy's fence and I just had to rest. There was a dance, or something, coming up that night and we knew about it. Barbara and Bethel just kept on going. [Laughter] They wouldn't even wait. I laid down and rested for two or three hours. It was evening before I got home, but they got home all rested up and ready to go! [Laughter]

RI:[Laughter] And you were dragging in!

LI:I remember one time Clarence [Ambrose Bundy] and I had been down there on the lava beds herding sheep. "Frosty" and George came down there to relieve us. They 01:01:00told us there was going to be a dance out [at] Bundyville. Crap, it was the middle of the afternoon when they got down there. We were clear up there by Hunters Cave; clear up there on the lava beds, almost on Pine Mountain, way up there in the lava beds. They told us that we could go. So Clarence and I decided that we were going to go to that dance that night and down off those lava beds we went. We jumped [up] a road runner about the time that we took off. We chased that son-of-a-gun. We almost caught him. We chased him all the way down that lava bed just as far as we could run. [Laughter]

HR:[Laughter]

LI:We had that son-of-a-gun just about tuckered [out]. He finally took off and went the other way. When we got down there about Sonny's cave, the trail turns off and heads up to, what do we call that? Up to Spring Flat? You go up through 01:02:00that flat to get to the end of the pipeline. We just ran and walked as fast as we could. We got up to your place, had a bath, and went on to that dance. We were [at] that dance about eight or nine o'clock. We had walked from clear out down in there. It was past mid-afternoon when we left. Shucks, it must be twelve or fourteen miles from there.

HB:And a lot of it is up hill, too. [Laughter]

LI:It was all up hill, after we [were] down off of that lava bed.

HB:Yes, that is right. [Inaudible]

LI:Until we [were] clear up on top there by Ensigns, then it leveled off along through there, but it was all up hill. We came right straight up Cole Canyon, right up the bottom of the canyon. We didn't follow up Whitmore [Canyon] and 01:03:00come up off the point, we went straight up the bottom of Cole Canyon and came out into Kinney Flat, just east of the Kinney cabin. Like you said, we [were] right along the hill there above granddad's and right into where your house is [in] there.

HB:Here about three or four years ago, Orval [Allan and Sally Bessie (Hamilton) Bundy] were going to put new plastic in that pond he had down there by that cinder knoll, out of that big Coal Wash or big spring wash or whatever you want to call it. We worked about one day to get that other one [plastic liner] out 01:04:00and then put this new one down in there without putting mud on [it]. The next day I decided to go down into the lake. I wanted to go so bad, yet I didn't know if I could make it down there and back. [Orval] said, "I think you will be able to make it. We will go slowly." So we walked down to the place [where] the names were written on the side of that rock years ago. It had been years since I had been down in there.

RI:I never have been down in there. [Inaudible]

HR:[We] took our socks off and washed them in the trough, got watered up, then we turned around and walked back. But I [had] a walking cane and came out of it real good.

LI:You know right there are big sand rocks. [They] have some water pockets on 01:05:00top of [it].

HB:You mean down in Blake [Springs]?

LI:No, it was right there on top, between cinder knoll and where the trail drops off. I don't remember now, [but it] seems like they were kind of a yellow sandstone rock. They showed up [very] plain. They had some quite deep pockets on top of them. You [would] know if it had been raining recently. Usually they will have water on them. Cattle can't get up on them. We were up in there when we were down there one spring. We went up that trail canyon where that old trail comes in down in to Blake Springs. I guess that was probably where you [folks] went down? You said you went from [the] cinder knoll?

HB:Yes, we went right down the trail there.

LI:One time I had been up there checking tracks to see if sheep had gone out of there and I come clear up on top. I [was] dry and I went over to these rocks to see if I could see a drink of water [from the] top of them. It was in the spring of the year and it was getting pretty warm in the daytime. I headed over to these rocks. Just before you get to them, there are two or three little step up ledges with cracks back up underneath of them. I was heading right toward these rocks, wasn't paying much attention, and I stepped right up on top of one of those rocks and a big old rattler [rattlesnake] rattled at me. He let out a buzz! It like [to] scare me to death! I jumped back, I think I had a walking cane, one of those old broomsticks. I [stepped] back and tried to get him out of 01:07:00there, but he crawled back in the rocks too far and I couldn't get him out. I don't remember if there was any water on the rocks when I finally got up on them or not.

HB:I found out [that] walking sticks really helped me to climb out.

LI:They can lift for you, the weight with your arms, that way you don't put all of the strain on your legs.

HB:It kind of steadied me too and boy, it was a help.

LI:Talking about rattlesnakes: one time we were down there, "Frosty" and I, down in Blake [Canyon]. Every morning from where our camp used to be, there were those rock pockets where the wash came down Blake Canyon.

HR:Was this Twin Wash?

LI:No, where the rocks came down Blake Canyon. That was down in the canyon, 01:08:00along that ledge there, where that big rim-rock pockets are, the water pockets where Blake Wash drops into the [Colorado] River.

HB:Oh, yes.

LI:That is where we always camped. There [are] some water pockets in the rocks [and] that was the reason we camped there. We were down at the lower end of the canyon there. Every morning we would go over to where the trail came around across Whitmore Wash, where the trail came into Blake Canyon, before where the road goes down now to where "Chet" takes the gas down to the boats.

HR:Yes.

LI:The trail used to come down around that point across Whitmore Wash and into the lower end of Blake Canyon. We would go around there every morning to check tracks to see if the sheep had gotten out of there and out on those other lava beds. They would sometimes do that. They would wander out of there, so we would check tracks every morning. If they had gotten out of there we would go ahead 01:09:00and run them back into Blake Canyon. One day, "Frosty" and I were over there and we didn't have anything much to do, so we decided we would build this rock wall so that we could keep these sheep from going over in there and we wouldn't have to check [them] every day. It wasn't too far up there where we built a rock wall. We started carrying the rocks around that hillside. We carried and we carried and we carried until we kept going out further and further. Finally, we made a trail where we would go out and gather rocks, get on this trail and come back to where this rock wall was.

There was one big low rock there that kind of had a little crack underneath it. We had been carrying rocks there for, oh crap, I don't know, an hour, I guess. [We] were going right past this rock, back and forth. "Frosty" was coming along there with a big rock, about all he could carry and he happened to lose his 01:10:00balance. [He] teetered out a little ways where he could look back under that rock and there was a big rattlesnake coiled up there. We had been stepping that close to him. I don't know how many times we walked back and forth there. He was just lying there.

HB:[He] never made a move?

LI:Never made a move or never made a sound. He [was] used to us and never paid [any] attention to us. Anyway, I was right behind "Frosty" with a rock in my hand. "Frosty" dropped his rock, jumped back and let out a squall! I said, "What is the matter?" He said, "There is a big rattlesnake on that rock." Sure enough, we got him out of there. Even after we got some sticks and got him out there and killed him, he never did rattle, only just a little bit, just buzzed a little bit. He could have bitten us any number of times if he had wanted to, we were just stepping almost within a foot of him every time we would go by.

HB:When [William] Cyril [Russell] and I [were] married, we lived down there. He was working for Cleon and we were living down there at the Big Springs. We parked a time there and [walked] up to Kinney cabin from Cole [Canyon]. We had been up to Cole and we had a load of stays that were coming down. Cyril was making a fence across and we were tying stays. We got down there and they had to carry stays across the wash there. I know it was the third trip when I had a load of stays and he was carrying a post and we went across this wash. I know it was the second trip or third trip. As I came along with them and raised up my foot to step down, I was going to step right on the darn [snake]. There he was curled right up there. It was early in the morning, he just kind of moved and 01:12:00made me happened to see the darn cuss.

LI:Had you stepped over him before?

HB:I guess that is what I had done, just stepped over him. Cyril went over it, too, same darn cuss. That very time, we killed three right there down [at] that Big Spring house where we camped. One [was] right under that house and under those trees in the lawn. Criminy, there are sure a lot of rattlesnakes in that [area].

LI:Talking about rattlesnakes: I was [in the] fourth grade [and it] was Easter time. We had a school picnic up there behind the Black Knoll for the Easter 01:13:00picnic. Dorothy Alldredge was one of the school teachers. I don't remember who the other one was. After we had the picnic, a bunch of [youngsters], the bigger boys, [and] I trailed along with them. Seems like I was in the fourth grade. There was "Bud," Dan, Milas [F.] Snyder, and I don't remember if George Elkhorn was going to school then or not, [Charles] "Charley" Elkhorn, and a whole bunch of them. We all went up [and] crawled up on the ledge on the Hurricane Rim. The wind was blowing, how the wind would blow! We would get up on those ledges and sail our hats out there, the wind would catch [them] and blow them back up over the hill. We played down along that ledge there, rolling rocks and everything and we [were] quite a ways down there, about half way down from the Black Knoll 01:14:00down to the fence, I guess, there above Uncle "Dicks." These [fellows] decided they would go back. It was about time we would go home, anyway. I thought: there is no need [of] me going clear back up there, I will just head down off the hill and go on home.

So I went along the top of the hill until I [was] down about where that trail used to go off down to Uncle "Dicks." I was coming down through the bushes and I come to a place where there was a big, low rock that was embedded in the hillside and had cracks all through it, a shattered rock. There was a lot of loose gravel that slid down the hill between this rock and right at the bottom there was [a] pine log laying there. It just formed a little shoot down between 01:15:00this rock and the log. Down to the lower end of it, there was this big sagebrush. We had to kind of crowd over against the rock to get past the sagebrush. The rocks [were] big enough that there were cracks down amongst them. I was crowded over against that rock and I stepped on a rock. It kind of turned under my foot. When it turned, there was a rattlesnake down in the rocks right underneath me and he started to buzz. I whirled around and kind of lost my balance. [I] went to put my hand on this rock, it was just about waist high, and [as] I put my hand down, I saw another [snake] jerk his head back in the crack in the rock and he started buzzing.

HR:Oh, no!

LI:Man, I am telling you I let out a squall you could have heard for ten miles! Scared! You talk about cold chills going up and down my back. I went back up 01:16:00that hill, stood there and shook and had chills for about five minutes. [Laughter] Boy, I walked fifty yards to get around a bush or a rock. I never got close to anything from there on home. [Laughter]

HR:[Laughter]

LI:I can remember I let out a scream! I could remember it after it was over. Boy, it sure scared me! I don't know how many there was there, but it sounded like they were everywhere! I know there were two there because I saw the one and the other one was down in the rocks underneath me. I don't know how many more there were, [but] it sounded like there were rattlesnakes all around me!

HR:[Inaudible]

LI:I went around that place. I never messed around there anymore. That was the only time I didn't try to get the snake, I let him go.

JI: Did anyone ever get bit by rattlesnakes out there? With all the rattlesnakes?

HR:George liked to have scared me to death with one. There was one time that I 01:17:00was down [at] your place, I guess they called it a harmless blow snake, but a snake is a snake to me and I am just petrified of them!

RI:[Laughter] Me too!

LI:I remember that.

HR:He chased me with that snake and I ran until I couldn't run anymore. He cornered me on the porch [by] the kitchen. He started to come forward and the closer he came, my knees just went [to] water and I went down. When he saw how really scared I was, he backed up. [Laughter] Oh my, I never will forget that! Of all the scary dreams that I always have, it is always with a snake. It seems like I always have a bunch of little [children] that I am trying to take care of 01:18:00and then these snakes come. I am trying to get these [children] out. Did you ever dream that you could fly?

LI:Yes!

HR:[Laughter] Well, when it would get to the critical points, it didn't seem like I could do anything else, but it seemed like I could fly.

RI:[Laughter]

LI:I remember one time in that big room, what they called the big room, in there where dad [slept]?

HR:Yes.

LI:There was a loft up in there and Floyd use to have his box up in there where he kept all of his treasures. Of course, [we youngsters] couldn't get up in there. So one time [when] everybody was gone and [there was] just me, mom and Bethel [were] all [who] were around the house, and of course mom couldn't hear, so I decided I would get up in there. I don't know if I gathered up boxes and chairs and [had] them stacked up until I worked my way up on to where I figured 01:19:00I could reach the railing and skinny up on over there and get in that box. I was going to get into some of Floyd's [treasures] up there. I don't remember if I [was] almost up in there [when] mom started coming back in there and I got excited or it just tipped over with me, but down I went. When I hit the floor, it knocked me out. When I came to, mom had me in my bed back in that other room. It seemed like I was dreaming that I could fly. It seemed like I flew across the room and hit the other wall. [Laughter]

HR:[Laughter]

RI:[Laughter]

LI:Like [the] time I [had] stomach flu or whatever it was out there. Every time 01:20:00I would get sick I would walk in my sleep. One time, I had been sick and I had dysentery, stomach flu or something. Dad was away at work. It was when he was the [Mohave] County [Arizona] road foreman. It was summertime and he was away from home. So mom had me sleeping in his bed. They always had two beds in that big room and I was sleeping in dad's bed where she could keep an eye on me because I would always get up and take off in my sleep. I would go out of my head and take off. Whenever I would get those feelings, it seemed like the ceiling was just closing in on me and I would just have to get up and get out of 01:21:00there. It was summertime and I didn't have a stitch of clothes on, I was stark naked. I [had] one of those dreams and it seemed like dad and "Vern" [were] in a quarrel and they were really going at it. It seemed like dad said, "Well, I will get my old .45 and we will see about that!" I thought: boy, I am getting out of here! And out of there I [went]! [Laughter]

HR:[Laughter]

RI:[Laughter]

LI:I went out that door. It was summertime [and] there was a screen door there and [it] was open. I took off out the door. Mom never heard me. The girls were home. Eva [Maree Iverson] was home and it seemed like Letha [M. Iverson] was there, too. They slept in that little room in the west end. There is a little room where they were. Out that door I went and out that front gate. I headed 01:22:00down the trail towards the pond. I was getting away from there. I don't know why I went that direction. I was stark naked and it had rained that day. We had caught about four or five feet of water in the pond below the house. I headed right on down towards the pond and right through that corral. We had a little stockade corral down there. I went right through that and right where the ditch went into the pond. Don't know why I didn't go around the pond, but I didn't. I went right in to that and right down into the water. I remember feeling the water coming right up on me, right up to my shoulders. I was thinking to myself: I am going to have to swim before I get across here. I knew how to swim.

I can remember that, but about that time I started coming out the other side. I came up the other side and I started over the bank. About the time I got to the top of the bank, I was all wet and that cool air hit me and I came to. I 01:23:00thought: what in the devil have I done to get down here? I sat down there on the edge of the bank and thought things over. I thought: I was having a nightmare. I went back in to the pond and washed the mud off me and went traipsing back up to the house. Mom had a tub setting out there by the eave's drop where she would always catch water when it rained. I got in there and washed the mud off of my feet and went back to bed. No one ever knew the difference until the next morning [when] I told them about it. [Laughter] They wouldn't believe me, so I took them out there and showed them where I had washed my feet, got that rain water all muddy, where I had washed the mud [from off] my feet when I got out of the pond. There was a little bit of mud that I had gotten on the sheets on the bed. I showed them that, and they finally believed me. [Laughter] I remember 01:24:00every time that I was a [youngster] ─

HR:[Laughter]

RI:[Laughter]

HR:I thought it was George [who] was doing the night walking? But I guess it was you.

LI:─ every time I would get sick I would always go out of my head.

RI:Is this a sixty-minute tape?

HR:I don't know how long this one is. It is probably thirty minutes on each side. Lonnie [Barrett] Cottam used to scare the living daylights out of me and I was a grown woman.

LI:Who is Lonnie Cottam?

HR:That is Melbourne [Bunker] Cottam's boy. I stayed there and took care of [his 01:25:00daughter] Alice [Jean Cottam], while [Effie] Marie [(Barrett) Cottam] was down working at the [Dixie Pioneer Memorial] Hospital. When Alice was [young], Lonnie slept upstairs and I slept with Joann [(Cottam) Balen]. It was across the hall there from Lonnie's room. He would make the most horrific noises and sounds like somebody was murdering him.

RI:In his sleep?

HR:Yes. I was just half-scared to open that door to wake him up.

LI:[Laughter]

HR:Sometimes it just sounded like he might be trapped and [was] tearing the screen off the darn window. Heavens! He would fall. [Laughter] He spooked me worse than anything I know of and he would never know anything about it.

LI:The one thing about those bad dreams [is] I could always remember it the next morning. It seemed like when I was having the [dream], it seemed like things were closing in on me. Man, I would get up and want to get out of there. I remember one night I was sick. I would get up and go out the back door. Dad caught me a couple of times. Finally, [he] got a two-by-four and nailed it across the door on the outside so that I couldn't get out. If I got up, I would have to go out through the living room where him and mom were there reading. [Laughter] I remember I would lay there and try to hold myself until it seemed like pretty soon, I just had to get up and go. I had to get out of there. When I did, I would bust out of there and away I would go. [Laughter] I remember they always caught me before. One time, I got out and started down the road. I [was] 01:27:00clear out [on] the road and started out toward the mailbox. I remember [that] dad [came] out and caught me. If you can get anything out of that to write [in] a book, I don't know what it would be.

RI:[Laughter]

HR:She [Nellie (Iverson) Cox] is right clever [about] putting [facts] together. [Laughter]

RI:Yes, she is.

LI:Talking about when we use to camp on that ledge down there in Blake Canyon: I remember Clarence, "Frosty" and I dared each other how close we could stand to the edge. There is one place where that old black rock broke off like a box, just like that. I remember I would go out there and stick my toes over the edge of that wash and just look right straight down there. I don't know how far. Some 01:28:00say it is 500 [feet], others say it was 700 [feet].

HR:That is a long ways!

LI:We used to go back up and get those big barrel cactus, those big, tall [cactus]. We would have to haul it a mile and a half to get to where we wanted to push it off the edge. Man, when they hit the bottom, you know how hard and tough they are, they would hit the rocks down there [and] would break into a thousand pieces, just splatter.

We used to have a trail, a gradual, gravely slope, that went around to where Whitmore Canyon dropped in there. We couldn't get up there and walk. We would get down on the side of that and would skinny around this trail. It was kind of a ledge there. There was one place there, just before we got over to the canyon, where this shelf came up [where] there was nothing underneath you. There was 01:29:00this little narrow ledge that came up and we would walk along there hanging on the rocks. We would have to stretch just as far as we could step across that and look just straight down underneath there. We would step across there and then get on ─.

[END OF RECORDING TWO.]

LI:There used to be another place [where] we used to put the dries [cows] clear down on the [Colorado] River. Every two days we would have to go down and check on them to see how they were getting along. We would go around that trail over into the Garden of Eden. There was a good trail where [Preston] Nutter made a big wide trail years ago. It was a good trail [and] went clear into the [Colorado] River where he was going to drive those cattle across that time. Or 01:30:00we could have gone across the mouth of Whitmore [Canyon] and gone around over on those lava beds where "Chet" went down. They would take [the] gas down where that trail goes in and there was a good trail that went in there. We could have gone either way, down one of those good trails. But we would go over there and start down [where] there was a place that we called The Shoot. We would go around that point where the trail goes over into the Garden of Eden and there was a narrow shoot. It was a shoot [and] went right straight down. It had high ledges on both sides of it. It was kind of a rock shoot that went down through there. We would go down that. Man, if ever a rock would have turned loose or got 01:31:00started down through there, there would have been no place we could ever go to get out of the way. The rocks would have come right down through that shoot [and] they would have just mowed us down. We would climb up and down that shoot. I remember one time we came up that shoot. We would always stay close together when we were climbing out of that. So if one broke any rocks loose, the other one would be up close enough that he could ─ but yes, we would kick rocks loose below us and they would go bouncing down through there. [They] followed it right down [as] there was no place else they could go, [but] just right down that shoot.

HR:That was for sure. I will tell you the good Lord had His arms around all of us out there for a long time or else we wouldn't have [survived].

LI:I remember one time we went across Whitmore [Wash] out on those lava beds, 01:32:00what they call the lower lava beds there where it drops into the canyon, where "Chet" goes now. I don't know if there were some sheep out on there. We went out there and were standing up on the rim, looking down into the canyon to see if we could see any of those dries [cows] down in there. We were standing there looking and we spotted a few sheep along the hillside and in the bushes along the [Colorado] River. It was George, "Frosty" and I. I don't remember which one of us, George or "Frosty," spotted a sheep that was caught in the quicksand right near the edge of the water. That sand down there on the old Colorado [River] gets quick down there. You get to jiggling that and pretty soon the whole thing will just slide right into the water. This old sheep was right [on] 01:33:00the edge of the water when we spotted him.

Down off of there we went, just jumping twenty feet at a time. "Frosty" and George went off and left me. I bet it wasn't over five or ten minutes, at the most, from the top of that canyon until we were down at the water. We just went bouncing down off of those lava rocks. There weren't any high ledges there, just where that lava dropped in. We [were] down there in time. They grabbed a big log that was there, a driftwood log, as soon as we got to the edge of the river and carried it out there. [They] threw it out, climbed onto that log, got that sheep and pulled him out of there. [They] saved him before he slid into the water. [Laughter] He [was] down to where the water was clear up on his side. He was 01:34:00almost ready to go clear under when we got to him. He had so much sand and water in his wool that he couldn't stand up for a while [so] he staggered around. Finally, that water drained out of his wool to where he could [move] and once he got going, he started running and the sand all shook out and away he went. He was just a yearling, a healthy sheep.

There was [a] time [when] Ruby and I [were] first married [that] we went out to the ranch and [were] up on the side of the Hurricane Rim where that sandy place is above the ranch house. [It was] where that big red spot is, the red sand rock. A little north of it is what we always called the Sandy Place, where 01:35:00gravel slides off the hill. We used to go up there and come down off, seeing how far we could jump in that gravel. The further down you [went], the coarser it got. [When] you [were] clear down to the bottom, it was plain rock then, big rocks. We climbed up above that first ledge and came around over to the sandy place. George and I were going to show Ruby how to get down off of there. George went first. He was jumping as far as this room is long. Just big bounds down into that sand. When he got down to the bottom he told Ruby, "Come on, I will catch you." [Laughter] So down off of there she went! [Laughter] She [was] 01:36:00running, she wasn't bounding [laughter]; she [was] going so fast [that] if he hadn't been down there, she would have sprawled on those rocks and skinned herself up before she never would have healed up! [Laughter]

RI:I was going so fast that if he hadn't stopped me I wouldn't have stopped! [Laughter] If [he] hadn't have been at the bottom. I could not stop myself!

JI:Tell about [the] time when you [fellows] got drunk. [Laughter]

RI:[Inaudible] [Laughter]

HR:[Laughter]

LI: We got drunk? Which time? [Laughter]

JI:It was a Sunday afternoon. I don't know whose wine it was, you stole somebody's [inaudible]. You and Barbara went over beneath a tree. Tell that [story].

LI:I had been in town with Ensign and I bought this half-gallon of wine. [I] took it out there and hid it along the road somewhere. One afternoon after church, I told "Linc" about this wine. [This was] when he had [an] old model Dodge [that] he called "Chick- chick." [Laughter]

HR:Yes.

JI:Chick-chick?

LI:It had a blown gasket on the manifold and every time it would hit that it would go "chick." It would just blow by and it would go "chick, chick, chick, chick," and there would go "chick- chick." [Laughter]. We got "Chick-chick," Barbara and Bethel and we went down the road. I had stashed it in the weeds 01:38:00somewhere down along the road. I think it was where dad had made that viaduct over the road at the lower end of Uncle "Dick's" between our place and Uncle "Dick's" place.

HR:Yes.

LI:[It is] the place that "Chet" has now. I think I had it hidden under there. We went there, got it [and] we started drinking that wine. [Laughter] I don't know why "Linc" got so drunk. It was Barbara and Bethel, they were a swiging it down. They didn't know what they were drinking. Barbara [laughter], she really [was] loaded! When we stopped up there on top of McCain Hill, [we] got out of 01:39:00the car and were messing around. Then Barbara got sick. [Laughter] She [was] down on her hands and knees under one of those cedar trees and started vomiting. [Laughter]. Right on top of that hill. I still think about that every once in awhile. I remember one time we went over there and she asked me if I had thought of that in awhile. [Laughter] I used to be pretty good at making home brew out there out of raisins, yeast and sugar. I used to have a batch going for every dance that came along. [Laughter]

HR:[Laughter]

RI:[Laughter]

HR:I know that home brew that Grandma [Juliana Johanna "Hannah" Dorotea (Christensen)] Iverson used to make was really good. She used to call it Spring Tonic. [Laughter]

LI:Yes, woman, that was good! Remember that? She laid some out there for dad. Oh man, that [tonic] was nasty!

HR:[Laughter] It was not nasty, not what I tasted!

LI:She made [it] out of bran, molasses and I don't know what all was in it.

HR:It was white, foamy looking [liquid].

LI:Yes, I remember it was kind of a clear amber, about like beer. [It was] about the color of beer.

HR:It had a tang to it.

LI:It had a whop!

HR:Yes, I would say it had a whop! [Laughter]

LI:She had made a bunch and after it had worked so long, it was supposed to have been put in air tight corks. We didn't have anything to cork it up with and dad put it in fruit bottles. But we drank it all up, supposedly all of it. She made 01:41:00it in the spring. Dad took six two-quart fruit bottles full of it and hid them down in the cellar. He saved that until the Fourth of July. [On] the Fourth of July, Uncle Levi's family came up there to have dinner with us. We made a bunch of ice cream and dad brought out this home brew that Grandma Iverson had made. He sat it on the table after dinner and they started drinking that home brew. I wasn't too old of a [youngster] then. Jimmy Zumwalt, Emer [Paul Bundy] and Rey [Lucero Bundy] came over there. Dad and Levi were sitting there drinking that home brew and they [were] feeling pretty good. They thought how funny it would be to get Jimmy Zumwalt drunk, too. So they were trying to feed him enough to 01:42:00make him drunk. [Laughter] They were drinking out of these aluminum cups mom used to have. I think she still had some of them when she died. We had two of them. Every time Jimmy would come by, they could coax him to have a swallow of that [brew]. Jimmy didn't like it [and] he wouldn't drink very much of it, [but] they would be coaxing him. I would come by and say, "Give me a drink of it. I will drink it." I would take a big swallow of it. Then I got to where I [was] feeling pretty good and it didn't seem like it was so nasty then. They had it in the kitchen, I [had] me a cup there, and I would take a swig or two when I went in there. [Laughter]

First thing I know, I was going in and out the door and it seemed like that step was about that much higher than it was, and I would step way up [to] go in the house. [Laughter] I remember about that time they got the ice cream frozen and that was about the last I remembered, I passed out! [Laughter] I woke up just before the sun was going down; we had about ten or fifteen little old dogie lambs out there to feed. I remember they milked the cows and it was my job and Bethel would usually go and help me. She came in and got me off the bed and sick, oh my! My head hurt and I felt sick.

RI:[Laughter] [Inaudible]

HR:[Laughter]

LI:I could smell that old sour [brew] for months after that. [Laughter] You 01:44:00would have thought that would have been enough. It was a long time before I ever drank anything, I will tell you that was for sure. [Laughter] Man, I sure was sick. I remember when I woke up my head felt like it was going to burst every time my heart beat. We had to go out there and feed those cussed little dogie lambs. Boy, that was potent old [brew]! I don't know if they ever got old Jimmy drunk or not, I don't remember. I faded out of that picture before it was completed. [Laughter]

HR:Was it "Meb" and Jimmy Zumwalt or was it somebody else, [who] found old Hunter Cook's gallon of wine in some darn [place]? They drank it and then peed in it and filled it back up! [Laughter]

RI:Oh, no! [Laughter]

LI:Yes, "Meb" and I think Jimmy were in on that. I don't know who all, maybe Legrand Woods. I don't know. All [those fellows] used to run together. They were about Clarence's age, too. He used to run in that gang with those [fellows]. Clarence never did do very much of that kind of [activity], though. He was always a pretty straight [fellow]. [Laughter]

RI:He was about the only one out there! [Laughter]

LI:I remember we used to go to [the] dances and those boys would come out there with their booze. They would always hide it out there along those fence posts in 01:46:00the weeds ─ somewhere along those fences. It wouldn't take them very long and they would get to feeling pretty good until they weren't quite so cautious. Then we would figure out about when they were going to go out for another drink and we would slip out the door and go out and hide somewhere. Or we would see them go out, we would slip out and usually the time we would get them spotted was about the time they were coming back. We would get an idea about where it was and then we would slip out about the time we figured it was time to go get another drink. We would get out there, pretty close, and wait for them to come out. They would come out and get their drink and then go back in, and then we would find right where it was and go steal their wine and drink it. [Laughter]

I remember one time old "Bud" and "Ben" stole some [brew] from "Pat." [James] 01:47:00"Jim" [William] Chadburn, I guess it was, was playing for a dance and they had some out there. "Bud" went out and swiped it. I don't know if they caught him, or just knew he got it. I remember they were going to whip him. "Bud" took off down that road and "Pat" took off after him. "Pat" could really get going in those days, too. "Pat" was quit a foot racer [and] down the road they went.

HR:I know it.

LI:Anyway, "Bud" got away from him. I remember "Ben," or somebody, saying they better go and they took off. They thought they better go [get some] help. If "Pat" caught him he was liable to kill him. We all stood around there and the dance had all broken up [by] that time. Finally, "Pat" came back and he never 01:48:00did catch him. I don't think "Bud" ever did come back that night. I think the dance pretty well broke up and we all went home.

I remember [another] time "Pat" and "Jim" Chadburn were going to play for the dance. They were both feeling real good when they got to the dance. The [youngsters] were yelling around so much [while] they were trying to tune their instruments, so they went over to the old schoolhouse. I remember Dee Alldredge had one of those pitch pipes [and] he was blowing that for them. They were tuning [their] instruments to it. They would tell him to play "A" and pretty soon they told him to blow "D" and so Dee says "ooooo." [Laughter] I remember 01:49:00"Pat" laughed like he really thought that was funny. I was just a little [boy] and I thought: it didn't seem like it was that funny to me. But "Pat" was about half-stewed up and everything tickled him! [Laughter]

HR:I remember when Dee use to play that horn. We hated it to death. [Laughter] We swiped it one time and hid it out in the girl's toilet. [Laughter] Oh boy! I have some questions here that Nellie told me to ask you. Should I ask you now?

LI:We are about out of tape now.

HR:Criminy! Joann just gave us one to put in [the recorder]. What are your 01:50:00earliest memories of the [Arizona] Strip? Your earliest memories? Did you tell us? I guess you were living in your mother's house there?

LI:I can just barely remember when I was a little [boy] my dad building that big room. I can remember that, very faintly, walking around on the floor joists, the 01:51:00two-by-fours, when dad was building that. That is about as far back as I can remember.

HR:You did tell about [your] school teachers. What land did your dad have on top? Do you still own it?

LI:No, I told about that. What they call the old Iverson place, the Schmutz own that now. "Vern" [sold] that to Schmutz when he left [the area].

HR:Was it "Vern's" and not your dads?

LI:Yes. "Vern" homesteaded a half-section down in the valley and another half-section up on the hill. When he left out there, he sold that up there to Schmutz. I guess dad bought the part down below, anyway, he got it. I don't know 01:52:00if dad ever did pay him anything. I guess he did because I remember he bought Vearl's, or "Doc's," off of him.

HR:How much [land] did your dad own down below?

LI:He had his section, half of Vern's and "Doc's." Then he bought [Clayton] LaVon [Jones], [but] that was after we were married [that] he bought LaVon out. That is all there is there now, three and one-half sections.

HR:Did "Doc" and "Vern" prove up on it? They did, didn't they?

LI:Yes

HR:Your dad bought them [out]?

LI:Yes, they homesteaded, proved up and dad bought them out.

HR:[Do] you have this land now?

LI:Yes, I own it. I bought it from the family after dad died.

HR:Which sections [do] you have of the original homestead?

LI:I have the old original, dad's original homestead. And I have Vearl's homestead, I have half a section of Vern's and then LaVon Jones' homestead. That is what I have there in the valley. I have 160 acres of the Whipple homestead that I bought from Gilbert Heaton after old "Meb" left out there.

HR:How many cattle are there at a given time?

LI:How many cattle are there at any given time? I figure that I am running about eighty head of mother cows. In the summer time when they all have calves, [there] would probably be around 150, 160 head there. Of course, that includes what I have leased from Herb [Bundy] now.

HR:How is your water situation?

LI:I have plenty of water to last me until next summer without any trouble at all.

HR:You haven't run out of water at all since you have had it?

LI:Yes. I hauled water two different summers out there since I took the place over.

RI:You hauled water the summer that [Claude] Wayne [Iverson] went on his [LDS] mission in January. You haven't hauled water since 1968 [or] 1969.

LI:[In] 1958?

RI:Yes, 1958 [or] 1959. It was the summer of 1959.

LI:The first time I hauled water since I first took it over was, when? In 1948? I hauled water that summer. I hauled water almost two months that summer. Then the last time I hauled water [was] for about two weeks and then it rained. I don't think I ever hauled off the mountain at all that year. Seems like I hauled 01:56:00some [water] from out there to your dad's school section, or [it is] Orval's school section now. Then it rained over on Poverty Knoll and I hauled water from the Floyd Hallmark pond for a little while. Finally, it rained there on my place. I only hauled [water for] about two weeks that last time. That is the last time I hauled and that was the summer that Wayne ─.

RI:It was longer than that [when] you hauled that summer?

LI:That was the summer [Kenneth] "Kenny" [Martin Iverson] was born?

RI:No.

LI:Oh, that was the first time I hauled.

RI:That was the first time [and] that was the second time. You hauled [water] three times. You hauled the summer [when] Larry [Dean Iverson] was [young]. You hauled the year that "Kenny" was born, then the summer and [when] Wayne went on his mission in January. That was the year you worked on the oil well. You put out the oil well and then you hauled water from May to September. You hauled nearly all summer long, that year. That was the last time you hauled water.

LI:That was when I was hauling for "Pat" and "Chet" and all of them. We hauled from the old Crosby Pond up there. We hauled all summer long. I know that pond was almost dry when it finally rained. We were really getting worried about what we were going to do for water and it finally rained. Everybody was hauling water that summer.

RI:[Inaudible] That was in 1959, I believe. That was the last [time] we hauled water.

HR:Which ponds hold best?

LI:The pond they call the Rock Pond that Duard Iverson built for me right on the lower end of "Doc's" place, there right against Willard's fence. I built that pond. When? I haven't had to haul water since I built it, anyway. I don't 01:58:00remember what year I built that pond.

HR:Do you clean them? How often and how?

LI:Yes, I clean them, but I have never cleaned that one. I built it and it has never been dry since I built it. It probably needs cleaning.

RI:You would have to hire a Cat [caterpillar to] clean it out.

LI:Yes, I would have to hire a Cat to do it. The last time I had any [ponds] cleaned, I had Lamar Bundy clean a couple for me. He cleaned what we call "Doc's" Pond, the one dad built originally on "Doc's" place. Then I had the 01:59:00little pond on LaVon Jones' place cleaned. And the one above the house, I had it cleaned, or partly cleaned; he never did get that finished. Phil McKinnon cleaned that one time. The last time he got it about half [cleaned] out, got stuck and never did get it finished. It has never been cleaned since. It needs it now.

HR:Did you ever plant seed grass?

LI:No, I never tried it.

HR:Did you ever plant crops?

LI:I remember when we first went out there, I rigged up [an] old tractor and was going to plant some rye or something. [It was] that homemade tractor that LaVon Jones had. I got it rigged up, well, I bought the motor that I put in it from [Hyrum] "Hy" Cox. I rigged it up and plowed a little bit of ground, but I never 02:00:00did try to plant anything.

HR: Did you go to dances on the [Arizona] Strip?

LI:I told her about the dances. [Laughter]

HR:Were there many there? Who played [for the dances]?

LI:When we used to have the good old dances, the Hallmarks used to play out there. [Nellie] ought to remember those days.

[END OF RECORDING THREE.]

LI:I went to work on the road that goes from Boulder Dam [Nevada] to Kingman [Arizona] when I was sixteen years old. That was 1934, if I remember right. 02:01:00Floyd and I worked down there that summer. I worked there for two or three months, I remember.

HR:How long did you live down [at] Tatum [Ranch, south and east of Kingman, Arizona].

LI:That was only one summer.

HR:One summer.

LI:I think that was the summer after I had worked on the road down there. I think that was the next summer after that, that [would be in] 1935. We moved out of there in the fall of 1936. We left the cattle down there on the lake, by Pearce Ferry that winter we had that cold snow, 1936 and 1937. That was the winter Grandma [Julianna Johanna "Hannah" Dorotea (Christensen)] Iverson died, wasn't it?

HR:Yes.

LI:We had our cattle down there on the lake that winter.

HR:Down [at] Tatum [Ranch]?

LI:No, down [at] Pearce Ferry, on this side of the [Colorado] River at Pearce Ferry. They left them down there. When they come out of there with them, they ferried them across the lake there and just left them there.

HR:How lucky! How lucky!

LI:There was good feed there. They just left them there and they never did get them out of there until the next spring, after that snow melted. I stayed down there and worked that winter at a mine down there. I hauled water down there. The water pipeline for the mine froze up and they could not pump water in there. They had a truck there and it had a 1,000 gallon tank on it. I drove that truck and hauled water for the mines that winter. Just barely made enough money to pay my grocery bill and my room and board. That was about all I ever got out of it. 02:03:00I just worked one or two days a week. I stayed down there that winter and when it came spring, the mine closed up and they never did open it up again.

HR:Who else left then? I guess nobody did, did they?

LI:No.

RI:What year was it that you moved the cows to Tatum [Ranch]?

LI:[It] was the spring of 1935, I am pretty sure, when we moved down there.

RI:Who went down with you?

LI:"Vern," dad and I took them down there. George stayed up here and took over the ranch. George, he helped us until we pushed them off the rim there at the 02:04:00lower end of Pigeon Canyon, down into [the] Pacoon [area] and he came back. Then "Vern" and I took over from there, on into Pearce Ferry and we ferried them across. That was the spring of 1935. We stayed down there that summer. That was the fall of 1935. We stayed down there that winter and the next summer. Then that fall we came back out [to the Arizona Strip] and we left the cattle there. That was the fall of 1936. They left the cattle on the [Colorado] River, until the spring of 1937 [when] they brought them back on up here.

HR:Tell [about] Holt Woods [inaudible]?

LI:Oh, [Nellie] probably means that shooting that Raymond Holt and Roy Woods got into. I wasn't there, I don't know. What was it? Was it something over Catherine that they got in a quarrel over?

HR:Yes.

LI:Didn't Raymond make some ─.

HR:He used to go with Catherine.

LI:Yes. Then she quit him [and] he made some nasty remarks about her. Isn't that 02:06:00what they were squabbling about? What [did] they get in a fight over?

HR:I don't remember what it was.

LI:Whatever it was, there was Holt and a bunch of [fellows] punching cows for Jack Findley. He had the Willard Iverson place leased, and they were in there gathering cattle off that place when Woods came down there. They saw him. There was "Frosty," "Meb" and Pug Morris, [the nephew of then Deputy Sheriff, Perlie Morris] and I don't know how many more [fellows]. Those are the only three I knew that was there at the time it happened. Raymond Holt was cooking for the 02:07:00outfit and they had their chuckwagon parked right there by the barn. Somebody saw Woods coming down through the flat and that upper wooden gate. He came down the lane and was coming across the flat [on] horseback. Someone said something to Raymond [like], "Here comes your buddy." They said when they saw him coming, he went over to his bedroll, got his gun out of his bedroll and laid it on that little door on the chuck box. They pull down off the back like [the] old chuckwagons used to have on them. Woods rode up there, started to cuss him out, told him that he was going to kill him and that he better get his gun. Holt had 02:08:00his gun there where he was cooking this meal, so they started shooting.

I asked "Frosty" what happened. He said, "Hell, I don't know. I got behind that barn about as quick as I could go. I didn't know what was happening. I know there were bullets flying every direction." [Laughter]

HR:[Laughter]

LI:Woods never did hit Holt, but Holt shot Woods right in the chest. [The bullet] went clear through his chest, nicked the bottom of his heart and came out the other side. When he started shooting, his horse started dancing around. After he [was] hit, he couldn't control his horse. His horse turned and ran up over that hill above the house. He [Woods] got [the horse] stopped up on top of 02:09:00that hill where that old fence line went over the hill. There wasn't any wire on it, just the row of posts that went over the hill there. He stopped by one of those posts and fell off the horse there. He took ahold of the post, slid and kind of fell off his horse. They went up there to see about him. Pug Morris got on his horse, went down to the Rosenberry place and got an old car they had down there. They went up, picked him up and put him in that car and hauled him to town [St. George] and put him in the hospital. [Woods] survived and is still alive, as far as I know.

HR:What is your brand?

LI:The brand that I have run until just this last year was George's brand, which was [the] Diamond Bar D. But I never did get it recorded in my name. Finally, 02:10:00just last spring, I recorded one of my own and call it a Seven D. Seven D Combined.

HR:Who were your pals on the [Arizona] Strip? Tell about [them].

RI:He already did that! [Laughter]

LI:[Laughter]

HR:I had a map that [Nellie] wanted me to have you mark off what grounds you had, but I don't know what I did with it. Maybe I didn't get it. We will have to come over one of these times with the map.

LI:That looks like a map there, isn't it?

HR:It is, yes, in [a] sense, but she had one that was just a ─.

RI:[Inaudible] the other side of it looks like, the other side. Turn it over, 02:11:00no, on the other side [inaudible].

LI:I was looking at this. [Inaudible] I can't see without my glasses.

HR:[Inaudible]

LI:[Inaudible] 240 acres of [inaudible] Iverson Estate. Apparently it is about one-fourth of Section Twenty-Five. West one-half, Northwest one-fourth of 02:12:00Section Twenty-five.

HR:[Inaudible] of your tape.

[END OF RECORDING FOUR. END OF INTERVIEW.]