Bart and Rindy Harrison Part 2
Written by Eveard T. Harrison
One spring when the season was late and Dad was exerting his all to get the wheat seeded, my brother Fed bas born. Mother called me to the house and gave me a note to take to Dad, who was in the field two miles away. Old Charley made the two miles as fast as his weary old legs could go. Dad immediately turned the grain drill and our four best horses over to me and he and Charley went back to the house just as fast as we had come out. I thought I was getting up in the world. This was the first time Dad had trusted me with his four big Belgian horses. Dick, Prince, Flossy and Fly were a handful for any man and a kid had no business with them. To say the least Dad was much relieved when he found them in their stalls in the barn that evening.
Fred developed the urge to collect things at a very early age. Not stamps, nor coins but spare parts, wheels, bolts, angle iron, washers --- It was said that he could carry the "junk" home in his two hands faster than Stanford could haul it off in a truck. It finally paid off when he became the family tinkerer, inventor, and mechanic.
Late one summer we were to go back to Georgetown for a visit. On the eventful morning we were up early. Chores were being finished and a hired man was being briefed so he could carry on while we were away. A neighbor drove into the yard. He had a solemn conversation with Dad and then left. Father and Mother consulted briefly and announced our trip was off. Uncle Ralph, Dad’s brother, had had his back broken in a harvester accident. Dad and Mother left at once for the hospital at Soda Springs and we children were left alone in our disappointment. Nine days later Uncle Ralph died. A day or so before his death his doctor said, "Ralph, you Mormons are surely tough. You should have been dead a week ago." Mother said this was a tribute to Uncle Ralph’s clean living. We were proud of him.
That fall we moved to Bancroft so my parents could care for Uncle Ralph’s family, his wife having passed away just 18 months before he did. Our family then increased from seven to fourteen. Mother had ten of us to ready for school each morning, including Edris who was just starting school. When the weather was dry, we walked the two miles to school. In the winter we rode in a bob-sled. We were usually accompanied by the five Barfuss children who lived across the street. The next spring I received my eighth grade diploma. I was really somebody now. Neither of my parents had gone beyond the sixth grade and now they were happy their children could have more. Arrangements were made for others to take care of our orphaned cousins and back to the farm we went for the summer. Come autumn I entered high school at Bancroft and winter found us at Uncle Ralph’s again. Here my sister Anne was born. Mother’s health failed and doctor bills mounted. Frozen wheat and rock-bottom prices for livestock would not pay the bills so we lost our farm. While Mother was sick I stayed out of school on certain days to help with the housework. On one of these occasions it was necessary to discipline two year old Fred and put him down for his afternoon nap. He retaliated by calling me over and over again "Bolly Hornet’s Nest." "Bolly Hornet’s Nest" until he finally dropped off to sleep! All of us considered Anna the spoiled one. How folks can do so well on the first two or three and then spoil the last one was beyond me. However I must add that she rapidly out grew it until today she and Fred are standing by, ever ready to assist Mom and Dad while the rest of us are so far away.
The next summer found us logging at a sawmill on Dempsey Creek ten miles south of Lava Hot Springs, Idaho. The summer out-of-doors proved to be the tonic we all needed. Mother’s health improved and we all went into winter quarters at Downey, Idaho, feeling fine if now wealthy. The first winter at Downey was nip and tuck. How my parents kept six children clothed on 20-cent butter fat I will never know.
At Downey the family fortunes soon turned up a bit. Dad leased a large hay ranch and we were soon busy and happy again. We renewed our contacts with the Church and were soon well established in school. I started my second year of high school and Stanford, Blanche and Edris enrolled in the grade school. Fred and Anna started in due time. We all eventually graduated from dear old Downey High. In May of 1926 I graduated from the Downey High School at the head of my class. My average of 95 for four years of high school was not equaled for six years. It took considerable talking and lots of scheming and I was off to try a whirl at college. A few days before my seventeenth birthday I boarded a special train for the University of Idaho with $96 in cash and the bare essentials of clothing. It was understood that I would have to work for the rest of it; and work I did. I was now the "Prodigal Son." Had I been true to the traditions of my neighbors I should have gone to a Utah school. It was considered the first step toward apostasy to go way up there among the Gentiles.
After two months in Moscow, Idaho, cut off from Church activities I was very happy to see a note on the bulletin board announcing a meeting of all L.D.S. students at the "U-Hut." When I arrived there early Sunday morning no one was there. Thinking there was a slip-up somewhere I began walking about town to ease my disappointment. I was both lonesome and homesick. While thus engaged I passed a tall man in a dark suit carrying a familiar looking set of books. I was prompted to follow him. He went back up the hill to the U-Hut. It was Elder J. Wiley Sessions. A few month’s absence from Church activities proved to me the desirability of proper Church affiliations and not once since then have I found the teachings and activities of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints lacking interest.
One year at the U. of I. was all our resources would stand. Back home I went to help Dad make a new farm out of sage brush land. With Dad in the lead we grubbed sage brush, leveled land, built borders and irrigation ditches, and cultivated and planted. When the sun set we rested by milking cows and irrigating. I wondered if he ever got tired. He asked no quarter of any man and even after age began to leave its mark he still matched the younger men stroke for stroke. We were taught that work was what made life worth while, but play and recreation were just as essential. Dad loved the out-of-doors and many happy hours we spent together in the mountains cutting wood to keep the home fires burning. Frequently we would lay aside axe and saw to see what was on the other side of the mountain. Under bright summer skies or deep winter snows we went exploring together. These were happy days.
