by Ruth Chadburn Calland
September 16, 1986
Dedicated to sister Fay on her Sixty-fifth Wedding Anniversary
September 16, 1986
Dedicated to sister Fay on her Sixty-fifth Wedding Anniversary
We were decending the hills east of St. Thomas when my father pointed to the south and said, "See those two houses down there. How would you like to live in one of those?" Looking out of the wagon, I saw a couple of two-story houses surrounded by green fields and trees. As the wagon turned with the twisting road, I saw more houses and green fields and trees. There was one big square building that looked gray. That turned out to be the school.
The year was 1916. Our family was on a vacation to explore the virtues of the Moapa Valley. We had heard the climate was mild and the schools were good. We were living at the base of the Pine Valley Mountain in southern Utah and attending a one-room school. At that time I had six siblings, Jetta, Floyd and Fay were older and Louis, Dora and Mildred were younger. My father was Robert Henry Chadburn and my mother was Dinah Ann Hunt Chadburn.
We were traveling in a covered wagon. Had a good team of horses and plenty of hay. It was stashed on the floor of the wagon, covered by a tarpaulin and bedding. That is where we kids rode. Mom sat on the spring seat with dad. With a full grubbbox and a barrel of water strapped to the side of the wagon, we could camp any place Dad deemed fit.
While in the valley, I remember camping in a grove of trees and learning later we had trespassed on the grave of the town's namesake, Mrs. Logan. We found all the people friendly and we liked everything we saw. We returned home to the snow and ice with a desire to move to the Moapa Valley.
The following year, 1917, we sold our home in Central, Utah and headed back to the Moapa Valley to plant our roots. Our caravan caused a bit of consternation as we passed through the small towns. Dad drove the wagon with the household goods, Mom drove the wagon with the supplies and kids. Floyd followed on old "Dixie" the saddle horse and drove the cows with help from our dog. I think his name was Tip.
After several weary days and cold nights, sleeping on the ground, we reached the Virgin River. A flood had washed the bridge out and the water was pretty high. The County had hired a man with a team of horses to help vehicles across. The man, Rhiner Hannig, turned out to be a friend of Dad's. He told us the Foxley place in St. Thomas was for sale. He also gave us permission to use a tent-house they had just moved out of. He said they had put up a new building with a store in front and living quarters in back. We felt like w had just struck gold.
The next morning, after washing off the grime, we started for the Foxley place. It was quite the sight to see the whole family marching down the street. We turned the corner and went south, passed the school, Bunkers, Whitmores, Westovers, Strassers, Guetzel's shack and Harry Gentrys. Of course, we didn't know who lived there then but it was fun to guess about the people who were following us with their eyes. We crossed the bridge over the ditch and on south to the last place on the left. The Foxley place turned out to be one of the placed Dad had pointed to the year before. Harry Gentry lived in the other.
After looking at some property in Overton we went back and bought the Foxley place. They were moving to Salt Lake and didn't want to leave until later in the spring. So, we cleaned out the granery and camped there for two months. Dad went to work on the farm and we kids started school.
Mary Syphus was my teacher. I liked her a lot. She let me take books home to read and she promoted me to the fourth grade. I remember one day when the school was locked, the Frehner twins, Edith and Ethel, boosted me through the window to get a book they wanted. When I came back with the right one and they helped me down, I felt so proud I almost popped my buttons.
Finally the big day arrived. We put the Foxleys on the train and rushed home to move in. We bought the Foxley furniture too and we kids went through that house like a swarm of locust. First we pulled the footrests out on the two Morris chairs and let the backs down so we could lie out flat. Then we attacked the dresser with the long mirror, pulling out the drawers and opening the door to the top compartments that later became the hiding place for our creams and beauty aids.
fat and I did the upstairs together. In a hole in the wall in the back of the only closet in the house, we found a one-eyed doll. We named her Mary, after the Foxley's daughter. We had a few quarrels over who found her and who owned her but Fay soon gave up. She was leaving the doll stage and going in to the boy stage.
There was one piece of furniture, we named the "Queen Ann", that we couldn't have lived without. It was a folding bed that we moved into the dining room to catch the overflow. When it was closed it looked like a beautiful piece of furniture. At the top it had two mirrored doors that swung open and revealed all kinds of keepsakes and trash. It was there you would find all the current mailorder catalogs and old letters. You might even find a lost ball or treasured half-eaten candy animal. It wasn't long before Floyd was using the top of it for his gun cabinet. It was handy and high, out of reach of the little kids.
Soon Birdie Bunker and I were bosom companions. We raised a war garden at her place. We would harvest the crops and sell them to Sister Gentry at the back door of the hotel. With the money we purchased government thrift stamps to help the war effort.
Another patriotic service we performed was gleaning the fields for grain. Many a morning we left the house at six with our grain sacks. One would carry lunch in a lard bucket and the other the canvas water sack. When we arrived at the field, we would hang the water sack on a limb of a tree and let it swing in the breeze while we worked. To this day when I smell sardines it brings back memories of those delightful days --- sitting under a tree with sweaty bodies, full grain sacks and savoring every bite of a sardine sandwich and drinking the deliciously cool water from the water sack.
In 1918, when I was eleven years old, the first World War came to a close. The boys started coming home from France. We were thankful and happy when Uncle George, Dad's youngest brother, arrived for a visit. Both Grandpa and Grandma Chadburn had passed away while he was over seas. The family seemed to think that Grandma died of a broken heart because her baby was shipped to France soon after entering the service. Grandpa followed a few months later. He couldn't live without her.
When Bryan Bunker arrived home, the dreaded "flu" bug of 1918 came with him. He was very sick. The whole town was up tight. The schools were closed and we were all quarantined in our homes. Those who had to go out for food or on necessary errands had to wear masks.
My mother was pregnant with Verna at the time. We had to be very protective of her. None of us kids were allowed off our property. Floyd and I took the opportunity to roam the fields and trap quail. He made some figure four traps and a big wire cage. We would set the traps with grain under them. The quail would feast on the grain, hit the trigger and the trap would fall on them. We would then transport the quail in sacks to the wire cage at home. We feasted on quail all that winter. It sounds horrible to me now but then there were so many quail they were eating the grain as fast as the farmers would plant it.
Another thing we did to amuse ourselves was pick up shotgun shells and use them as soldiers and play war. We used marbles for guns.
All during this period I was mad at Fay. She thought she was too big to play with me. She was going out with boys. One evening while standing at the front door saying good-night to either Ozzie Gentry or Harvey Frehner, I've forgotten which, I threw the cat at her. The poor cat was frightened and put out it's claws to hold on. It clawed right into her arm and made a big bloody gash. I thought she would kill me but she acted grown up and pretended it was nothing. That cured me. I help my temper in check after that.
February 1919, Dad took Mom to St. George to have her baby. Fay went along to help. Jetta was left in charge of things at home. On my way home from school one day, Rhiner Hannig passed me going as fast as his team would travel. They were covered with lather and I wondered what was up. It didn't take long to find out. He had gone to the Colorado River to pick up a couple of prospectors. When he got to their camp he found both of them shot, stripped of their clothes and all their supplies gone.
The town was alive and buzzing with stories about a renegade Indian named Quio who lived on the Colorado. Two weeks before, he was blamed for robbing and killing a man in Searchlight, a little mining town not far from the river. There were so many stories going around that we were all nervous and jumpy.
One night after supper we were all huddled around the heating stove, getting our lessons and fussing with each other when Floyd jumped up and exclaimed, "For God sake, all you get on the floor!" Then he ran to the "Queen Ann" and grabbed his shotgun and raced to the back porch. We heard three shots. We were scared to death, thinking Quio would bound through the front door any minute.
When Floyd came back into the house, he was ashen and shaking all over. He said he had seen a man's ugly face peering through the window. When he got to the back porch the man was running through the plowed ground toward the lane gate and disappeared in the shrubbery. We were all sure it was Quio and that he would come back. I was all for getting out there but Floyd and Jetta thought we should get the constable.
It was a bright moonlight night and you could see pretty well but the shadows were spooky and black. I didn't volunteer to go. In fact, I was told to shut up and go in the house and take care of the younger kids. Floyd tipped the wheelbarrow up on its handles in the middle of the lawn and sat in it facing the street with his gun ready. Jetta slipped out the front gate and scampered up the street.
It seemed she was gone for hours but she returned with Bert Strasser, the constable and Dick Arnold, his assistant. With flashlights they searched around the house. The found a wash bench had been taken from the back yard and put under the window where Floyd say the face.
Our house was built on a high foundation and I guess he wanted a better view. On the bench the found muddy footprints. They followed the footprints through the plowed ground but when they disappeared in to the high brush, the search ended. The next morning Harry Gentry said he was watering that night and he heard someone in his corn field rustling the stocks as he ran through but he never saw anyone.
That is all we ever heard regarding our strange visitor. So, after sleeping at the Strassers a few nights we returned home to sleep and fret until the folks returned.
Then a drunken Indian by the name of Tom Rice came to town and tried to make love to Mrs. Arnold. That ended up with a shoot-out in the street. The bullets flew but no one got hurt. The Indian got in his card and hightailed it out of town. The posse followed him to the Virgin River. After a few potshots from across the river they let him go. That night the Strassers slept at our house because who knows what a drunken Inden will do.
It was in the summer time and very hot. We all slept outside. After going to bed that night we heard the front gate open. We all popped up in our beds. Mr. Strasser reached for his gun. Just then Brother Whitney called out, "Brother Chadburn?" He had traveled from him ranch in the cool of the evening and wanted to see my father about something. He said Tom Rice was bedded down at one of the springs and seemed perfectly harmless.
Well, it wasn't long before I was going through that phase I thought so disgusting in Fay --- liking boys. I would run my heart out to tag Vernon Bunker in a game of last couple out. In fact, Fay and I had become good buddies again. I was invited to dance by the big boys when the Victorola was rolled out to the front porch on a summer evening. Some of those old tunes --- "Three O'Clock in the Morning", "Isle of Golden Dreams" and "Valencia" still run through my head. we would become drenched by perspiration and then cooled by a gentle zephyr.
It wasn't long before Vernon and I became an item. Birdie and Reed Whipple were our best friends. We did lots of crazy things. fay had married Reuben Whipple by then and they lived at the Experiment Farm. That old house lent itself to our pranks --- water fights, ghost stories and we had a haunted house Halloween party there. Looking back, I don't know how they put up with us. That first love is so glorious and so painful!
By the time I graduated from high school in 1925, Vernon had been working in a bank in Las Vegas for two years. The romantic sparks had dimmed. I was working at the Gentry Hotel weekends and after school. One day while scrubbing sheetsbut under the old water tank, Laura approached me and said she was going to summer school in Berkeley, California. She had rented an apartment and was going to take her niece, Rebecca, with her. She wanted me to go as a companion for Becky while she was in school. All it would cost me would be my spending money.
From that trip I gained a lot of worldly experience and a desire to go on to school. But most of all I gained a true friend --- Laura. She was a real entrepreneur. I rode the range with her, sat on a fence and watched her sheep being counted, helped do some assessment work on a mining claim. But the most fun was visiting Bill Garrett and Art Colman at Gold Butte. That story must come later...
The year was 1916. Our family was on a vacation to explore the virtues of the Moapa Valley. We had heard the climate was mild and the schools were good. We were living at the base of the Pine Valley Mountain in southern Utah and attending a one-room school. At that time I had six siblings, Jetta, Floyd and Fay were older and Louis, Dora and Mildred were younger. My father was Robert Henry Chadburn and my mother was Dinah Ann Hunt Chadburn.
We were traveling in a covered wagon. Had a good team of horses and plenty of hay. It was stashed on the floor of the wagon, covered by a tarpaulin and bedding. That is where we kids rode. Mom sat on the spring seat with dad. With a full grubbbox and a barrel of water strapped to the side of the wagon, we could camp any place Dad deemed fit.
While in the valley, I remember camping in a grove of trees and learning later we had trespassed on the grave of the town's namesake, Mrs. Logan. We found all the people friendly and we liked everything we saw. We returned home to the snow and ice with a desire to move to the Moapa Valley.
The following year, 1917, we sold our home in Central, Utah and headed back to the Moapa Valley to plant our roots. Our caravan caused a bit of consternation as we passed through the small towns. Dad drove the wagon with the household goods, Mom drove the wagon with the supplies and kids. Floyd followed on old "Dixie" the saddle horse and drove the cows with help from our dog. I think his name was Tip.
After several weary days and cold nights, sleeping on the ground, we reached the Virgin River. A flood had washed the bridge out and the water was pretty high. The County had hired a man with a team of horses to help vehicles across. The man, Rhiner Hannig, turned out to be a friend of Dad's. He told us the Foxley place in St. Thomas was for sale. He also gave us permission to use a tent-house they had just moved out of. He said they had put up a new building with a store in front and living quarters in back. We felt like w had just struck gold.
The next morning, after washing off the grime, we started for the Foxley place. It was quite the sight to see the whole family marching down the street. We turned the corner and went south, passed the school, Bunkers, Whitmores, Westovers, Strassers, Guetzel's shack and Harry Gentrys. Of course, we didn't know who lived there then but it was fun to guess about the people who were following us with their eyes. We crossed the bridge over the ditch and on south to the last place on the left. The Foxley place turned out to be one of the placed Dad had pointed to the year before. Harry Gentry lived in the other.
After looking at some property in Overton we went back and bought the Foxley place. They were moving to Salt Lake and didn't want to leave until later in the spring. So, we cleaned out the granery and camped there for two months. Dad went to work on the farm and we kids started school.
Mary Syphus was my teacher. I liked her a lot. She let me take books home to read and she promoted me to the fourth grade. I remember one day when the school was locked, the Frehner twins, Edith and Ethel, boosted me through the window to get a book they wanted. When I came back with the right one and they helped me down, I felt so proud I almost popped my buttons.
Finally the big day arrived. We put the Foxleys on the train and rushed home to move in. We bought the Foxley furniture too and we kids went through that house like a swarm of locust. First we pulled the footrests out on the two Morris chairs and let the backs down so we could lie out flat. Then we attacked the dresser with the long mirror, pulling out the drawers and opening the door to the top compartments that later became the hiding place for our creams and beauty aids.
fat and I did the upstairs together. In a hole in the wall in the back of the only closet in the house, we found a one-eyed doll. We named her Mary, after the Foxley's daughter. We had a few quarrels over who found her and who owned her but Fay soon gave up. She was leaving the doll stage and going in to the boy stage.
There was one piece of furniture, we named the "Queen Ann", that we couldn't have lived without. It was a folding bed that we moved into the dining room to catch the overflow. When it was closed it looked like a beautiful piece of furniture. At the top it had two mirrored doors that swung open and revealed all kinds of keepsakes and trash. It was there you would find all the current mailorder catalogs and old letters. You might even find a lost ball or treasured half-eaten candy animal. It wasn't long before Floyd was using the top of it for his gun cabinet. It was handy and high, out of reach of the little kids.
Soon Birdie Bunker and I were bosom companions. We raised a war garden at her place. We would harvest the crops and sell them to Sister Gentry at the back door of the hotel. With the money we purchased government thrift stamps to help the war effort.
Another patriotic service we performed was gleaning the fields for grain. Many a morning we left the house at six with our grain sacks. One would carry lunch in a lard bucket and the other the canvas water sack. When we arrived at the field, we would hang the water sack on a limb of a tree and let it swing in the breeze while we worked. To this day when I smell sardines it brings back memories of those delightful days --- sitting under a tree with sweaty bodies, full grain sacks and savoring every bite of a sardine sandwich and drinking the deliciously cool water from the water sack.
In 1918, when I was eleven years old, the first World War came to a close. The boys started coming home from France. We were thankful and happy when Uncle George, Dad's youngest brother, arrived for a visit. Both Grandpa and Grandma Chadburn had passed away while he was over seas. The family seemed to think that Grandma died of a broken heart because her baby was shipped to France soon after entering the service. Grandpa followed a few months later. He couldn't live without her.
When Bryan Bunker arrived home, the dreaded "flu" bug of 1918 came with him. He was very sick. The whole town was up tight. The schools were closed and we were all quarantined in our homes. Those who had to go out for food or on necessary errands had to wear masks.
My mother was pregnant with Verna at the time. We had to be very protective of her. None of us kids were allowed off our property. Floyd and I took the opportunity to roam the fields and trap quail. He made some figure four traps and a big wire cage. We would set the traps with grain under them. The quail would feast on the grain, hit the trigger and the trap would fall on them. We would then transport the quail in sacks to the wire cage at home. We feasted on quail all that winter. It sounds horrible to me now but then there were so many quail they were eating the grain as fast as the farmers would plant it.
Another thing we did to amuse ourselves was pick up shotgun shells and use them as soldiers and play war. We used marbles for guns.
All during this period I was mad at Fay. She thought she was too big to play with me. She was going out with boys. One evening while standing at the front door saying good-night to either Ozzie Gentry or Harvey Frehner, I've forgotten which, I threw the cat at her. The poor cat was frightened and put out it's claws to hold on. It clawed right into her arm and made a big bloody gash. I thought she would kill me but she acted grown up and pretended it was nothing. That cured me. I help my temper in check after that.
February 1919, Dad took Mom to St. George to have her baby. Fay went along to help. Jetta was left in charge of things at home. On my way home from school one day, Rhiner Hannig passed me going as fast as his team would travel. They were covered with lather and I wondered what was up. It didn't take long to find out. He had gone to the Colorado River to pick up a couple of prospectors. When he got to their camp he found both of them shot, stripped of their clothes and all their supplies gone.
The town was alive and buzzing with stories about a renegade Indian named Quio who lived on the Colorado. Two weeks before, he was blamed for robbing and killing a man in Searchlight, a little mining town not far from the river. There were so many stories going around that we were all nervous and jumpy.
One night after supper we were all huddled around the heating stove, getting our lessons and fussing with each other when Floyd jumped up and exclaimed, "For God sake, all you get on the floor!" Then he ran to the "Queen Ann" and grabbed his shotgun and raced to the back porch. We heard three shots. We were scared to death, thinking Quio would bound through the front door any minute.
When Floyd came back into the house, he was ashen and shaking all over. He said he had seen a man's ugly face peering through the window. When he got to the back porch the man was running through the plowed ground toward the lane gate and disappeared in the shrubbery. We were all sure it was Quio and that he would come back. I was all for getting out there but Floyd and Jetta thought we should get the constable.
It was a bright moonlight night and you could see pretty well but the shadows were spooky and black. I didn't volunteer to go. In fact, I was told to shut up and go in the house and take care of the younger kids. Floyd tipped the wheelbarrow up on its handles in the middle of the lawn and sat in it facing the street with his gun ready. Jetta slipped out the front gate and scampered up the street.
It seemed she was gone for hours but she returned with Bert Strasser, the constable and Dick Arnold, his assistant. With flashlights they searched around the house. The found a wash bench had been taken from the back yard and put under the window where Floyd say the face.
Our house was built on a high foundation and I guess he wanted a better view. On the bench the found muddy footprints. They followed the footprints through the plowed ground but when they disappeared in to the high brush, the search ended. The next morning Harry Gentry said he was watering that night and he heard someone in his corn field rustling the stocks as he ran through but he never saw anyone.
That is all we ever heard regarding our strange visitor. So, after sleeping at the Strassers a few nights we returned home to sleep and fret until the folks returned.
Then a drunken Indian by the name of Tom Rice came to town and tried to make love to Mrs. Arnold. That ended up with a shoot-out in the street. The bullets flew but no one got hurt. The Indian got in his card and hightailed it out of town. The posse followed him to the Virgin River. After a few potshots from across the river they let him go. That night the Strassers slept at our house because who knows what a drunken Inden will do.
It was in the summer time and very hot. We all slept outside. After going to bed that night we heard the front gate open. We all popped up in our beds. Mr. Strasser reached for his gun. Just then Brother Whitney called out, "Brother Chadburn?" He had traveled from him ranch in the cool of the evening and wanted to see my father about something. He said Tom Rice was bedded down at one of the springs and seemed perfectly harmless.
Well, it wasn't long before I was going through that phase I thought so disgusting in Fay --- liking boys. I would run my heart out to tag Vernon Bunker in a game of last couple out. In fact, Fay and I had become good buddies again. I was invited to dance by the big boys when the Victorola was rolled out to the front porch on a summer evening. Some of those old tunes --- "Three O'Clock in the Morning", "Isle of Golden Dreams" and "Valencia" still run through my head. we would become drenched by perspiration and then cooled by a gentle zephyr.
It wasn't long before Vernon and I became an item. Birdie and Reed Whipple were our best friends. We did lots of crazy things. fay had married Reuben Whipple by then and they lived at the Experiment Farm. That old house lent itself to our pranks --- water fights, ghost stories and we had a haunted house Halloween party there. Looking back, I don't know how they put up with us. That first love is so glorious and so painful!
By the time I graduated from high school in 1925, Vernon had been working in a bank in Las Vegas for two years. The romantic sparks had dimmed. I was working at the Gentry Hotel weekends and after school. One day while scrubbing sheetsbut under the old water tank, Laura approached me and said she was going to summer school in Berkeley, California. She had rented an apartment and was going to take her niece, Rebecca, with her. She wanted me to go as a companion for Becky while she was in school. All it would cost me would be my spending money.
From that trip I gained a lot of worldly experience and a desire to go on to school. But most of all I gained a true friend --- Laura. She was a real entrepreneur. I rode the range with her, sat on a fence and watched her sheep being counted, helped do some assessment work on a mining claim. But the most fun was visiting Bill Garrett and Art Colman at Gold Butte. That story must come later...
