Herald A. Vance Oral History Interview

Oral history interview with Herald A. Vance by Norma Vance. Topics include: Biographical information such as date and place of birth, parents and siblings; Growing up in a large family on a farm in Milburn, UT; His pioneer heritage; Hand-made toys and self-entertainment; His father's employment in farming and timber; The use of horses to pull farm equipment; His childhood home not having indoor plumbing until the 1950s; Everyday chores required to run the farm; How Milburn 7000 foot elevation affected the growing season; Participating work for milling timber with his family in C Canyon; Supplying lumber to Fairview and Milburn residents; How his mother baked ten loaves of bread every other day for the large family; Enjoying fishing, hunting, and roasting pine nuts; Attending school and church in the Milburn schoolhouse; Use of oil lamps; Mounting wagon on beds sled runners for snow packed roads; Finishing school in Fairview and Mt. Pleasant; Effects of the Great Depression; His father's declining health and subsequent death when Herald was fifteen years old; His mother selling the mountain property after his father's death; Not being able to participate in sports because of required farm work; Enjoying country western music; Learning to play the guitar; Trapping bobcats, coyotes, and weasels for the bounty and selling pelts for extra money; Assisting in tearing down the old school house and reusing supplies to help construct a church building in Milburn; Receiving a draft deferment for WWII as two of his older brothers were already serving in the U.S. Army and his mother was a widow and need help with the farm; His brother Ellis being captured and spending twenty-three months as a German POW; His own Army service in Japan the year after the War ended; Meeting his future wife; Courtship and marriage; His wife's Native American heritage; Raising their family of five children in Orem, UT; His work in finish carpentry, installing Formica, linoleum, carpet and various sales jobs; Selling encyclopedia sets door-to-door for Sears Roebuck; His service in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS); Bidding on and winning the purchase of the old Milburn Ward Chapel that he helped build; Remodeling the church into an event center; Opening a flooring store in Miburn; The death of his youngest son in a car accident; Joining the Timpanogos Gem and Mineral Society and going on rockhounding field trips; Taking up silversmithing; Selling the event center and finding a home near Fairview.

The oral history interview with Herald A. Vance, conducted by Norma Vance, highlights Herald Vance's life as one shaped by hard work, community involvement, and family ties. It provides insight into his upbringing in a pioneer family, his military service, his family's challenges, and his later work in carpentry, sales, and community activities. His story reflects the resilience and adaptability of those who lived through the Great Depression and World War II.

Oral History of Herald A. Vance Fairview Museum Oral History Project Interviewed by Norma Vance 26 February, 1994 Transcribed by Dawnell H. Griffin March, 1994 Fairview museum of History and Art Fairview, Utah 1994 Oral History Project Fairview Museum Interview with Herald Vance by Norma Vance 26 February 1994 Tape #1 Transcribed by Dawnell H. Griffin March, N: H: N: 1994 Norma Vance Herald Vance This is Norma Vance and I am at the home of Herald Vance in Fairview planning to interview him as part of the Oral History Community Project for the Fairview Museum. Today is February 26, 1994. I might mention that I am Herald's wife, Norma. H: Then I must be Herald Vance and I was born in Milburn in 1923, December 11th. I am a descendant of the early pioneers of Sanpete County on both my mother’s and father’s side. My father’s name was Byron A. Vance and my mother’s name was Ella Jensen Vance. My great-grandfather, Isaac Y. Vance was one of the founding father’s of Fairview and his name is on the monument down on the old school grounds in Fairview. My mother’s father, Peter Christian Jensen was one of the first settlers in the Milburn valley. Out in the rural area back in my early days things were quite different than they are for the young people today. We had to invent most of our entertainment. Our toys and playthings were home inventions and this caused us to become more or less creative in the things we did as well as the things we managed to build and play with. If you're aware of the string games that kids used to play, never a piece of string was wasted. When a package came from the store us kids would always make for the string - none got thrown away. I wore out a lot of strings twirling a button, if you've ever seen that done...it whiles away a lot of time. I was always glad to find an old coat button. A large size button on a string really hummed when it was twirled. We'd save the empty spools from thread when mother would quilt or do sewing and mending. Whenever a spool of thread was used up another toy was born. We might transform it into a little tractor or whittle one end to a point, fit a stick through the hole in the center and create a spinning top. I also made a lot of toys from empty match boxes. The box itself was a natural wagon and the cover was cut up to make wheels, tongue, double-tree and neck-yoke, all were held together with string. A lot of matches were used in our home those days, lamps were lit each night and fires started every morning, so the boxes were emptied rather often--but not often enough for a kid with a big imagination. It seemed it took forever for that box to get empty. I was always wanting a box to save something in or be a cage for those big fat, green grasshoppers I was catching; or to create some sophisticated piece of imaginary farm machinery. The more anxious I was to see that match box get empty, the slower it seemed to happen. When Christmas rolled around we usually had only one or two toys or gifts as the times would allow. About the best thing a boy could receive for Christmas was a pocket knife. This could open up a whole new field for invention. I made whistles from green willows and ran a lot of erands for Ma riding a stick horse cut from the willow clump out on the ditch bank. I made little hay dericks fashioned after those the older people built. We kids would pretend rocks were horses and string was the hay rope. So we played just like grown-ups, we figured. | N: What did your father do for a living, Herald? H: Dad was a farmer and he also spent a lot of time in the timber. He loved the mountains. He had acquired a lot of hill ground just east of home and therefore he worked in the timber a lot. He did a lot of sawmill work. Early on he also had sheep, but he was kind of wiped out of the sheep business when the Depression hit - I don’t remember much of that. I remember when I was very young Ma saddled up two horses and took me with her over into the Indianola Vally to take fresh camp supplies to Dad while he was working on the road with his team and equipment. He stayed out there in his camp wagon rather than to drive the tired team the seven or eight miles home each night. I couldn't have been more than five but I have a vivid recollection of the long ride on horseback and having lunch with Dad in the camp wagon. This road work mentioned was during the construction of U.S. Highway 89 from Fairview to Thistle as it exists today. Prior to that time 89 went through lower Milburn as well as the town of Indianola; it skirted the foothills crossing the creek numerous times before reaching Thistle. But in addition to this and other endeavors Dad was always a farmer. During most of my growing up years before my father passed away it was the farm and the timber. My first memories of his sawmill was in the mouth of Crooked Creek. Later the mill was moved into C Canyon. We spent several summers over there. Two years we took the cows over for the entire summer and hauled the cream to Fairview to the creamery once a week. N: About what time frame was that? When your family spent time on the mountain? H: 1932. I was about eight years old when we first went to C Canyon, so that would have been N: How many brothers and sisters did you have? H: Ok. We were a large family. There were seven of us living: Alvin, Darcey, (called Sam), Eva, Mack, Ellis, myself and Dale. Two children had died earlier; a girl age three and a boy one month old. N: So your parents had nine children, but two had passed away. H: N: Yes. What type of equipment did your father use on the farm and on the mountain? H: Horses [chuckle]. That was the source of power along with a lot of muscle grease. Power-driven machinery was not in wide use those days, especially up in our country. Of course Dad had all the usual horse drawn farm implements: plows, harrow, leveler, grain seeder, marker (for making water furrows), mowing machine, hay rake, grain binder, wagons, hayrack (wide, flat wagon bed for hauling loose hay), bobsled, and buggy, to name a few. Dad did all of the road work up Crooked Creek Canyon and across the mountain into C Canyon with a plow, scraper, a little giant powder and his team. Dad always had a good team as well as saddle horses. He usually had a few extra horses for use as pack animals, spare draft horses and for trading. Dad was a great trader. He loved trading horses, it was sort of a hobby I think. I don’t know as I should mention this, but one time Dad came home with a beautiful yearling colt, and he gave it to me. Boy, I could hardly believe it. Anyhow we had a saddle mare that was kind of an ornery thing. She liked to get the other horses in a corner and kick. Well, we didn't have the colt too long before the mare kicked him through a fence. He wound up with a broken leg and had to be destroyed. So there went this kid's horse and of course I never did have another one to call my own. N: Describe where you lived in Milburn, Herald, and the farm and what kind of crops were raised and harvested and so forth. H: Dad's farm was eight miles north of Fairview, about two miles from the north end of the Milburn Valley. He had a good forty-acre plot of ground. It was possibly as choice a property as any around except for the short season. It wasn’t rocky. You could plow most anywhere and hardly ever hook into rocks. Now of course this is what I experienced in my time. Maybe Dad hauled a lot of rocks away before I came along. I'm sure he did, but nevertheless it was excellent soil. He had a fair water right and he raised alfalfa and grains: wheat, barley, oats to feed the stock and to sell or trade. An old tally book of Dad's dating back as for as 1903, indicates goods were obtained as much by bartering as actual cash transactions. On this property Dad built a four room house from sawed logs. It was sturdy and warm but by today’s standards four rooms would be considered too small to raise a family that size. We were cozy and comfortable--I guess because we didn't know any different. Nevertheless it served us well throughout the family’s growing-up period. Later, during the 50s, Mother and Dale had a well dug which brought water into the house for the first time. They made improvements and an addition to the house which included a bathroom, utility and multi-purpose room as well as updating the kitchen with new cupboards. By then I had completed training as a cabinetmaker so I made the cabinets. N: I guess with a family of strong, healthy boys that would surely have been an asset to your father—on the farm and also in the mountains. H: Always, because they were quite spread out as to age. There between the oldest and the youngest. So we all took our turn on the the recurrent daily chores: feed and water the horses, feed and grain stable, milk the cows, separate the milk (with a hand cranked cream milk to calves, slop the hogs, feed the chickens and gather the eggs, was a 24 year age span farm as well as doing the cows, clean the separator), feed skim carry drinking water from the spring (about 200 yards below the house), chop and carry in fire wood. were performed twice daily—morning and evening. Of course inside chores were no and the most modern convenience being had about more than they could handle. I might mention that in as much as boys the younger ones) helped some with the seems like I did it forever. Most chores piece of cake either. With that many mouths to feed a wood-fired cook stove, Mother and my sister Eva out-numbered girls in our family, the boys, (at least house work. I hated to wash the separator but it When it came harvest time my mother was out there pitching hay or grain right alongside her boys! Looking back I don’t know how she did it. Of course when Ma was helping outside, Eva pretty well carried the entire load inside. But I remember when I'd help Ma on washday. That was hard work! Remember--all by hand at that time. Later, when we were able to get a gasoline powered washer it really made things easier for her. Our family relied heavily on what they grew from the garden. We always stored a winter's supply of carrots and potatoes in the cellar and Ma bottled a lot of string beans, corm, peas and cucumber pickles. She also bottled bushels and bushels of tomatoes, pears, and peaches she got from the Utah County peddlers who came down each fall. At this point Ma showed a bit of the trading ability she may have picked up from her husband. I remember numerous times, going into the chicken coop to catch three or four chickens she had traded to the peddlers for fruit. If you looked in Ma’s cellar in the fall you would see row after row of two quart bottles filled with fruits and vegetables for winter. With a family the size of ours it would have been a waste of time to use quart size bottles - one quart of anything just wasn't enough. We hardly knew what a pint jar looked like. N: Since the growing season was so short in Milburn, did you ever raise tomatoes? H: No, the season was too short. than two good cuttings of alfalfa. In fact at the upper end of Milburn we never had more We had some fall feed after that but not enough to cut. That's how much shorter the season is than in Fairview. of hay. You see we were nearly 7000 feet. They get at least one more cutting N: When you went on the mountain, Herald, what did you do--I mean, you and the boys, and your Dad and your Mother? How did things operate? H: When you said, “What did you do?” I was going to say, “As little as possible”! [chuckle] But that isn’t true. Everybody had their chores to do and pitched in. Well, I might mention the brothers who were there...tell what their chores were. Course you had to go out and cut the timber first and do the logging, everybody that was old enough participated in that. Ellis wasn't too old at that time but he helped in the logging as well as at the mill. But Mack and Sam mostly did the logging, along with Dad and Alvin. I joke about Dad saying I was going to be the sawdust monkey. I'll tell you that old metal wheelbarrow with its big iron wheel on front was heavy for a kid my size. I mucked out an awful lot of sawdust. But once in a while I'd need some help. If I let it get over the edge of the pile someone huskier than me had to get it back. Mack and Ellis did the off- bearing; this job was to take the lumber as it was cut, move it away and stack it. The same with the slabs--carry away the slabs to an ever growing pile that got bigger and bigger and longer and longer. By the time we left there it was quite a hike out to the end and back. Sam pretty well took care of the carriage, working the logs onto the carriage, turning them and setting them up for the next cut. Dad of course operated the saw and did the repairs, the sharpening and everything. Most of the time we were over there the mill was run by a big steam engine. Alvin, my oldest brother was the one who took charge of that department. He kept the steamer fired and provided the power when it was needed for the saw and of course he had the other work too. Most of our C Canyon time Eva was working in Salt Lake. N: Did you live in a cabin up there or what? H: We had luxury apartments! [chuckle] No, we lived in tents. Dad built a floor and side walls for our main tent. It was the largest tent and had Mother and Dad's bed and also a small cot for Dale, who was a pretty small kid at that time, about three when we first went over. That was also our living room, kitchen and parlor...all that one tent. It was a large tent but when we all sat in there to eat there wasn’t much extra room. There were sleeping tents besides that. I might mention that my two oldest brothers were married during the time we were on the mountain, so their wives were over there some of the time. N: What was your mother’s role up there, Herald? H: She cooked, baked and served three meals daily. She baked bread, pies, cookies or sour dough hotcakes every day and also found time to help around the mill. lot of my sawdust out and carried off a lot of slabs. She wheeled a During our years in the valley, Ma always baked bread every other day. She had a large dripper that held eight good sized loaves. The eight large loaves hardly lasted us two days, so she always put two single loaf pans along side the eight loaves in her large oven. Every other day she baked ten or more loaves of bread. On the mountain she couldn‘t bake that much at one time because the oven wasn’t that large. So that made her have to bake more often and supplement with sour dough biscuits and hot cakes. N: There was quite a crew of you, and sometimes company, right? H: Big crew. And I guess people seemed to catch the smell of Ma’s cooking as it passed over the rim of the canyon, because a lot of time we had company drop in. Mainly it was sheep hearders from the surounding area, and of course they always sat down to a meal. N: What did you do for recreation, Herald. mountain? I mean, in the valley and up on the H: When we had time up there we'd go fishing down in the main C Canyon creek, about a mile below camp. Sometimes we'd go over the ridge and down into the canyon to the southeast which was Silver Creek. Now we didn't have the new type fly rods and so on that you have nowadays. Dad had always liked fishing in the mountains and he had the old solid, tapered bamboo poles. They might be, oh, twelve feet long. But most of the time when we went down to the creek we took a hook and a string or some fish line and we cut a willow, tied the line on the end of the willow, tied our hook and a sinker to it, dug the bank off for an angle worm and we went fishing. Of Course, we kids always had a flipper in our pocket and we were pretty darn good shots, so the chipmunks really had to hustle to keep out of our way. We did a lot of hunting. We had a German Shepherd dog with us those years over there. And we had a lot of fun with him chasing chipmunks, squirrels and woodchucks. Another fun thing was roasting pine nuts. There was a large pine tree a couple of hundred yards above our camp and every fall it was loaded with pine nuts. We had to climb real high in the tree to be able to reach the pinecones out on the end of the branches. The pine nuts were the variety that had big long cones with very small nuts which were very tedious to shell. But sitting around a bonfire and smelling the aroma was more satisfying than the amount of nutmeat obtained. One time I had filled a couple of Bull Durham sacks (found around a sheepherder’s camp) with pine nuts. I'd spent hours picking them from the cones, and stashed them near the head of my bed. When I woke up I had nothing but shells-- the chipmunks had gotten into them during the night and had a feast. the duds. I guess they could tell the good ones by the weight. All that was left were N: Where did you go to school, Herald? H: For the first and second grades, I went to school in Milburn in a horse drawn school hack. In the winter we would heat rocks or bricks in the oven, then take them in a burlap bag to keep our feet warm until we got to school. Of course there was no plumbing in any houses or the school either, everything was outdoor plumbing (privies). The old Milburn School had been built in 1894 with stone and salmon colored brick. It was an attractive building with an arch over each of the two front entrances. Over one was a sign that said, "BOYS"”--the other, “GIRLS”. This building was later dismantled brick by brick and board by board about 1941, the material salvaged for use in the new Milburn Chapel. N: What about electricity? Did you have electricity? H: No electricity. Most everybody used coal oil lamps in those days. Dad was among the first to start using gasoline pump up lamps. We had Sunbeam brand lamps that we used in the living room and the kitchen. They took white gas and would be pumped up every night, lit and hung to the ceiling. N: They gave good light, exceptionally good ligh. One more thing about the road. do now days? it. Did they plow the Milburn road every storm like they I'll bet there were a lot of times the hack couldn't get through. Tell us about H: Well, the hack went on top of the snow. The roads were drug, they weren't plowed. They tried to move the snow back out of the road as much as possible with a horse drawn Vshaped snow drag. This also helped to pack the remaining snow which created a good snow road. Wagons were seldom used after there was a snow packed road. Wagon beds were mounted on bob sled running gears and the school hack was mounted on bobs also. Now mud was another thing, in the spring and wet season the road was just a mess, up to the wagon hubs a lot of times. For a number of years prior to 1930, Dad road master in Milburn. He was instrumental in getting the road graded and graveled first time. This was a great improvement but it still got real bad in wet weather until finally surfaced in about 1947. muddy was for the it was N: Where did you hold church? H: In the school house. N: Do you remember any of the first school teachers that you had in the old school? H: Oh, sure. The school house was the community building. If there was ever a town meeting then it became the City Hall. It was used for church or any other function. At least that’s the way it was in my time; I don’t know how it was earlier. I might remind you that my time began seventy years ago. So that reaches back. It isn’t hard to remember all of them because there were only two rooms. There were two teachers. that I started school. Leland and Leah Neilson were more or less newlyweds at the time Leah taught me in the little room and Leland taught the big room. There were four grades in each one, my grade had four kids. I have mentioned in some writing that I've done that it was quite an event when one graduated so to speak from the "little room” to the “big room”. N: You were a big shot then. You went only to first and second grade in Milburn, right? H: Yes. schools. N: School was discontinued in Milburn because the district was consolidating the Then where did you go? H: Ok, by that time motorized transportation was becoming a little more prevalent and they started bussing the pupils to Fairview and to Mt. Pleasant. I might add that Dad contracted with the county or with the school district to do the first bussing of the children to Fairview. The way I understand it Dad bought the bus, then contracted with the school board to furnish the transportation. However, only three years later the district decided to do there own bussing and that’s the way it has been since. Dad eventually rebuilt the bus into a cook shack. My oldest brother Alvin had been shearing sheep, following the shearing circuit from the southern part of the state on up into Idaho. For a couple of years Alvin took this cook shack to follow the shearing circuit. Alvin's wife Dorothy, the former Dorothy Cox from Fairview and my sister Eva went along to do the cooking. N: Those first years that you were at the school in Milburn sounds like it was the Depression era. What effects did the Depression have on your family? Did you feel the effects of it? H: Like a lot of people who say they were so poor they didn’t know they were poor. I think everybody during that time, especially out in the rural areas had rough times, that was the way of life. Something that made things even worse were the several years of extreme drought that occured about the same time. Things got so bad that people had to sell their stock for very little because there was no feed. My folks had cut their milk stock down to just enough to keep milk and butter on the table because of the feed problem. Mack said he remembered a large herd of cattle driven out of Milburn and loaded onto freight cars down in Fairview. They possibly went to government slaughter houses. The government subsidized them at $18.00 a head. N: So that will give you an idea how tight things were. When you left the mountain, was your father’s health begining to fail? H: Yes, that’s the reason we didn’t continue to work on the mountain any longer; we pulled out in the fall of 1936. Dad's health was declining at that time and he was in poor health the rest of the time and the last year or more he was bedfast before he passed away in June of ‘39. N: What was the trouble, the cause of death? H He died of cancer. N: And how old were you? H I was fifteen when Dad died. I had just finished ninth grade. N: With your mother left a widow - how did she keep things going? H: Ok. As I mentioned earlier Dad had quite a bit of hill ground and over the years Dad not only traded horses, he traded land. He had acquired a lot of the property on the mountain east of home through trading parcels of land with the Forest Service. Whenever he would find a parcel of land for sale, even over in Emery County or somewhere else, that joined the forest he would buy it, then trade it to the Forest Service for land joining his own. Somewhere along the line he went in partners with Jimmy Anderson and they were co-owners of this land at the time of Dad's death. Of course Ma was unable to continue any outside activities as far as her taking care of any lumber operations or anything like that. She sold her half to Jimmy Anderson for seven dollars an acre. This did help to pay some of the indebtedness incurred during the Depression with the Federal Land Bank. I guess this was quite common with farmers to keep afloat with Federal Land Bank loans. And with my older brothers going off to work and sending their pay home, they helped Ma clear her indebtedness. N: Ok Herald, let's go back to just one more thing about that timber business. your dad sell the lumber to? Who did H: A lot of people in Fairview built homes from lumber that Dad had sawed. Some of them camped over there and did their own cutting and logging, then Dad sawed the lumber for them. They were reponsible for getting it hauled off the mountain. Some who hauled their own logs to Dad's mill for sawing were: John Vance, Uncle Ed Housekeeper, Edmond Cox, Leland Nielson, Maitland Graham and Lyndon Graham. Their camps were upstream from the mill, about 200 yards from our camp. So you can see there was quite a bit of neighboring among the camps. Dad hauled the rest of his lumber with team and wagon from C Canyon across the mountain and down steep Crooked Creek Canyon. He stacked it at home in Milburn and local people bought it. This is how he marketed his sawed lumber. Now earlier on Dad supplied a lot of mine props and ties to mining companies. At one time he supplied cord wood to Cudahy packing plant for smoking and curing meat. I mentioned before, he had a love for the mountains and spent a lot of time there. N: Ok. After your father passed away what did you and Dale have to do there on the H: [laugh] Well, anybody that’s been on a farm ‘bout knows what takes place in a day. farm while you were going to school? Give us a for instance of a day. We're talking about the years just prior to my graduation I guess. We always kept a few milk cows, six or eight usually, or more depending on the heifers that freshened and the older cows that became unproductive and were sold for beef. Before and after school each day the cows had to be milked by hand, all the stock had to fed and cared for, and the stable mucked out. Mack and Ellis were over to the coal camps working in the mines and of course they didn’t spend very much time on the farm. Dale and I were pretty green at running Dale would have been only 12 years old. In fact, I remember the first time I ever Ma ran along behind me yelling, “Dump it! Dump it! Dump it!” I made those hay big nobody could get them off the ground. That's just one thing I remember. You have to learn by experience. a farm, see raked hay. piles so find you This was all done with a team you know. We had no baler, we never knew what bales were in those days. We didn’t have a side delivery rake like some people used. We would rake it one way and dump it into a windrow and let it sit there for a few days to dry until it was ready to be bunched. Then we would straddle that windrow with the rake and the team and rake it into bunches. It had to be dumped real often or the bunches got too big to handle...this was where Ma was sayin,’ “Dump it! Dump it!” With the rattle of the rake and the uneven pull of the load being dumped repeatedly, the horses got excited and went faster and faster and I remember Ma just trotting along there trying to keep up and make sure I was dumping piles small enough to pitch onto a hay rack because we did all that by hand with a pitch fork. [chuckling through this portion.] I learned a lot. N: I Guess the bus would leave pretty early in the morning on school days too. day started rather early. Is that right? So your H: Yeah, all the chores, breakfast and everything had to be done before eight o'clock because that's about the time the bus would leave, a little ahead of eight o’clock. N: You Milburn boys--when you had to catch a bus and didn’t have the automobiles like they do today--were you able to play basketball and football and all those sports? H: I never participated in sports mainly for that reason; because I had obligations with the chores that had to be done at home. I didn't have time to stay after school which is when those things were done back those days. They didn’t take a special bus for the activities. Any practicing was done after school for the athletes; had I participated I'd have had to stay after school and someone come get me. It’s an awful long walk from Mt. Pleasant to Milburn. N: What were your hobbies and talents that you developed in that time period, Herald? H: Well, Country Music has been my weakness all my life. I used to always have my ear glued to the radio and listen to Montana Slim, the Montana Cow Girls, Slim Rhinehart and Hank Williams to name a few back in that early time. Of course it was Western Music them days instead of Country and then they got to calling it Country and Western. Even as a little kid I used to sing on the local programs in Milburn when we'd have Christmas programs and Valentine programs and stuff. Before I graduated from high school when Ellis was working over to the mines, one Christmas he gave Dale a bicycle and me a guitar but I had nobody to teach me any music. I guess the reason I didn’t take chorus in school was because I didn't want to sing with a group. If I was going to sing I wanted to sing alone. I'd just 10 learn a song and sing it, no accompaniment or anything. Anyhow, pig headed as I was then that’s what I did. Teola Blank was living in Milburn about that time and she showed me how to fit my fingers on the strings for the C chord, and I finally got that down to where I could chord and sing so that’s what I played ever since. Dale and I sang on programs a lot before I was married, then Norma and I continued to do so up in Utah County all while we lived there and ever since we moved back to Sanpete. I might mention that we kind of jammed it up with some friends of ours up in Utah County after we were married. These friends got wind of a Gibson Electric guitar that some gal was letting her kids play with and they said the kids didn’t know anything about playing and were about to trash the guitar. So my friend thought that if I was interested I might talk this lady out of it. I asked her if she would make a switch-let me trade my guitar plus an extra $25.00 for her guitar. Mine wasn't electric but was still in good shape and good enough for her kids to play with. She was glad to make the trade for the extra money. That old Gibson is now a collector's item--I've taken real good care of it. I hope when I'm gone, my kids realize its value and don’t just discard it. N: Ok. You had some other hobbies too. H: Well, I was always outdoors and when the chores were done in the winter I would trap for weasels, coyotes and bobcats. At that time the state was paying a $6.00 bounty on coyotes and bobcats. I caught quite a few, so the bounty along with the money from the pelts helped quite a bit. I've always been real particular about how I've done anything and when I skinned my pelts I had a beautiful pelt stretched on the wood stretchers that I made. I saw an ad in the Sears catalogue, "Ship your furs to Sears” so I thought “Well, I'll try it”. And I sent my furs to Sears fur department. Every year they would have an award contest for the way the pelts were handled. Of all the pelts that were sent from all over the nation to their fur division there would be daily awards. They were nice official looking certificates, plus $5.00. In those days $5.00 was a pretty good little award--five days wages. Then they had an annual award. The daily awards would of course be combined and the annual awards choosen from them. During the time I was shipping my furs to Sears, I recieved three different daily awards with a nice letter saying that I could feel pretty proud of recieving the award considering the number of furs that arrived there every day. Course I never was lucky enough, or good enough perhaps, to get the annual award, but it did make me feel good to receive the daily awards. The weasel pelts brought from $1.00 to $2.00, depending on size and quality. Coyotes and cats brought an average of $6.00 each. One exceptionly large and prime coyote pelt brought $10.00 plus the $6.00 bounty. This pelt also happened to be one of those daily award winners. I guess you could call that “triple dipping”. Anyway that one coyote brought me $21.00, which I thought was pretty good. 11 Of course in the summer time we would take our flippers and go down along the creek and shoot squirrels or chipmunks, ground hogs, and so on. So I spent an awful lot of time out doors. People would visit and socialize with neighbors a lot more those days. Remember there was no TV to rob you of your free time. Sometimes when company came we'd freeze ice cream in the hand-cranked freezer while spending the evening visiting. Then have ice cream and cookies. As kids we'd sometimes get together around a bonfire, tell stories, roast potatoes or corm on-the-cob, and play games in the fire light. As young adults we had a lot of fun with a team and bobsled switching comers, like at a crossroad or turning into our driveway. N: You mentioned about tearing down the old Milburn school to build the Milburn church house. Can you give us a little more on that? H: Ok. This started about the time that I finished high school. 1941 would have been when the old school was torn down. You will recall that’s the time of Pearl Harbor too, that Dec. I graduated the next spring in ‘42 and I donated an awful lot of labor and time to the tearing down of the old school house as well as the building of the new chapel. The timbers, the boards, the planks, everything that could be used even to the nails, including the old square nails, were straightened and reused in the building of the new chapel. If you get up into the attic of the old Milburn church you'll see that all of the rafters, the joists, everything up there is the old rough sawn lumber that came out of that school house. You'll see the old nail holes that were in it originally, so you know it is from the old school house. Everything that is visible up in that attic as well as the joists under the floor came out of the old school house. I also helped with tearing down the bricks and cleaning off the mortar. Then helped haul the material up to the other site. N: What did you do then to help on building the new chapel? And who was the bishop? H: At the time of the building of the new chapel, Loyal Graham was the Milburn Ward Bishop. Ok, the lot where the new building was going to be built was on quite a slope. There must have been a two foot slope in the area where the chapel was going to stand and it had to be leveled. At the time the ground was being prepared I happened to be plowing on our family dry farm (up the sheep lane and to the north). I brought down mother’s team and the two-way plow that I was plowing with. I'd plow back and forth across the lot and then Amasa Terry of Milburn would scrape away the loosened soil with his team and Fresno scraper (horse-drawn land mover). I would then plow down another plow depth and Am would move the loosened soil. Of course the soil got heavier and harder as we got deeper. We only went down about five inches each upper side of the lot down to grade. After could be dug, it was dug by hand with pick was used for the foundation stone and even course, so it took a number of courses to get the we got the ground leveled down so the foundation and shovel. The old stone from the school house for the footing stones. They were placed in the 12 bottom of the trench and then built right on up. The trench had to be dug deep enough so frost wouldn't cause any movement in the stone. N: Did you get a few dates together while we were stopped to change the tape? N: Yes, if I back up a little I think this will help with the time frame and show the effect these dates and events had on my mother’s life—all of our family’s lives for that matter: Mack had been married only three months when the Japs bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. And Ma's world would soon be turned upside down. Now remember--only 2 1/2 years had passed since Ma had been left a widow and she was still struggling to overcome the effects of the drought and Depression. August 1942 - Ellis was drafted. He chose the Army Air Force. January 1943 - Mack was drafted. He chose the Army Engineers. June 1943 - Ma received notice Ellis was missing in action. About a we learned he had been taken prisoner. month later N: Prisoner of War? H: Yes, Ellis was a tail gunner on a B17 bomber, he was shot down over the North Sea and was picked up by a German mine sweeper. By the time the war with Germany ended he had been a German POW for twenty-three months. mother and they didn’t get better soon. Those years were very hard for my In the meantime I continued to help Ma on the farm. I was deferred from the service during the war years because I was a farmer and my mother was a widow who already had two sons serving the military over seas. My only other brother at home was too young to take care of things. Dale was five years younger than me so when I graduated in ‘42 he would have been only 13 years old. I was able to stay on the farm until the war ended. The time finally came we had all been hoping and praying for and our fighting men would all be coming home. We were all thankful for this but some situations came about at this time that worked a hardship on a lot of people and my mother was one of them. While the war was on it was considered vital to keep the home front strong so a lot of people working in defense plants, on farms and in small factories that were converted to the war effort were deferred from military service. When the war ended it ended the deferrments so they took one last big draft sweep. A lot of fellows who had been deferred were caught up in that final draft even though it was never intended that we stay in very long. I never could figure out the reasoning behind this. Most of us drafties were sent home within a year. A lot of my army buddies had been defense workers. Some of them had their own businesses and lost them when they were no longer nesessary. On the farm we had just got our small dairy herd built up to where the 13 cream check was helping out. Then when I was drafted Ma had to reduce the herd to where Dale could handle it and still finish school. I entered the army on Friday the 13th of September, 1946. I might mention another little thing. After I finished basic training I was sent to Camp Stoneman, California for shipment overseas. It was kind of interesting getting on the big ship, all the hubbub and everything and then passing under the Golden Gate Bridge. I didn’t realize until it was night and things had settled down a was my birthday. bit that it was December 11th. I was twenty. ry» years old. Forces on the southern island of Kyushu. ended my short service career. All day long I had forgotten it I went to Japan and served in the Occupation Within a year they released the draftees and that Ok, now we'll have to back up again to continue with the construction of the Milburn Ward chapel: I helped right on through until its completion. I helped with the mixing of the mortar for the brick layers and the painting inside and out. Bishop Graham and myself spent a lot of hours on the roof painting the shingles with heavy black paint and also the white picket fence out front. This is something that sticks in my memory because we had quite a time visiting while we were painting. Something that I wanted to mention too in the construction of the building, one particularly interesting event was when Jewel Peterson put the furnace in. He was kind of a tubby rascal and it was impossible for him to get under the low floor to install the heat runs. I was working on the church at the time so I helped him get the measurements he needed and then after he had fashioned the sections, I took them up in and fit them together. I secured them with screws and hung them to the joists with metal straps. I imagine it was about a hundred feet of heat runs that I assembled for Jewel. After we finished that area was sealed off with rock lath and plaster. So I was the last person under the floor when the church was constructed. Another place where I was the last person was the well. They had hand dug to about 45 feet deep, placed in an 8 inch well casing and back filled it up to within about 8 feet from ground level. This made it level with the floor of the furnace room where the pump would be installed. They had lowered the pipes inside the casing to the bottom of the well. At this level the pipes angled horizontally towards the wall of the building. They had need for something to seal off the top of the well casing so the back filling could be completed. So I was elected to get down in the well and place a big flat rock over this well casing to cap it. The men lowered me down by hand and I did my task with the big flat rock. But when I reached my arms up to get a lift back out I found that the guys had other ideas, they started laughing and shoveling the dirt in. They were having fun with me, I had to dodge to keep out of the way. They decided that I might as well stay in there and tamp down the dirt as they filled it back up which was fine. They weren't too careful about where they were throwing the dirt but it was all in fun and it helped make my job interesting. Nevertheless, that's why I say I was the last one in the well. Later down the road, I'll bring up these two points again. But at this point where do we go? N: When was the Milburn Ward Chapel dedicated? 14 H: I'll give you the statistics: The groundbreaking had been June 17, 1942. The first meeting in the new building was held on Mother's Day May, 1943. The chapel was dedicated on Feb. 13, 1944. I might say that electricity had been turned on to the building only a month and a half earlier on Christmas Eve. time. Milburn never had electric power before that After I came home from Japan Ellis and I were doing custom work with some farm equipment we had bought between us. Among my many customers in this venture was Lewis Jensen who had me cut a field of hay for him east of Fairview. After I was through he insisted that I come down to the house for dinner which I resisted because I didn’t even have a shirt with me. In those years I stripped to the waist in good weather and didn't know what a shirt was all summer. I was about the shade of a copper penny. So I was quite embarrassed when I got down to the place and found a beautiful young lady with long black hair dressed in blue jeans and midriff. She was Lewis and Mary's adopted daughter Norma. This acquaintance ultimately developed into a courtship and we were married and lived happily ever after. I'll always be grateful to Lewis Jensen for insisting that I come to dinner. I want to say that during this time that I was “falling” for Norma, I also learned of her Indian heritage. One interesting thing is the fact that as a real young boy I enjoyed petending I was an Indian and during my teenage years I was thrilled at the very deep tan I could acquire and I hardly put a shirt on all summer. At one time I even put a black rinse on my already dark brown hair. I have been extremely proud of Norma’s heritage throughout our married life and we have taught our children to respect their heritage also. I feel we have had a good life together and I could never have wished for a better mate to spend my life with. We have had a lot of beautiful years together. We went to the Provo area where we raised our family. Over the course of our time we've built two different homes. First one we built right across from Westmore School on South Main in Orem. We sold it and built a larger one a little further north, through the block from the Geneva Ward chapel. While we were building this home, I was working for Leland Wells as a finish carpenter and I'd put in nine hours a day then I’d go work on our new home until all hours of the night or morning. Through the summer months I primarily built this home on my own. worked like that all our lives. Norma and I have We just always bite off all or more than we can handle it seems. We raised a beautiful family. Our first pretty little dark haired daughter we named Suzanne. Then we had a dear little daughter Cindy. Unfortunately just short of two years old we lost her in a tragic accident. She got a bean lodged in her throat and suffocated. Our first handsome son, third child, Wayne was two months old at that time. Then we had another sweet and bubbly daughter Paula. And then our last beautiful little son Jerry was born. That comprised our family at that time. During our years in Utah County, I worked in a cabinet shop for a few years. I went to school on the GI bill and worked through the training program in the cabinet shop. Later I took a stab at various selling jobs. I was out on the road, didn’t do too badly on them. 15 All the time I kept doing some cabinet work and counter tops or some type of construction work. Where are we going? N: Keep going. H: Among those things I spent about five years working for Sears Roebuck. A couple of the years were in the store but most of the time I was out on the road in a department that was new to Sears at that time, I don't know if they’ve ever done it since...they sold encyclopedias door to door. That was really an interesting part of my life. It was fun and broadening. N: Where did you go? Some of the places? H: Oh, gee, I feel a little guilty telling about the sights that I was able to see while I was out selling and supposedly working my fingers to the bone. The reason I feel guilty was my wife and family wasn't with me. A few times several salesmen went on trips together but usually it was only two of us. We visited the Kiabab Forest and the north rim of the Grand Canyon on one trip to Kanab and Fredonia, Arizona. We took a lot of trips into Colorado; Craig, Meeker, Montrose, Durango, and several trips into the old mining town of Telluride. We would go and stay for two, three, four days at a time. Of course most of the selling work was done in the evening and that left the day times open so we did a lot of sight seeing. One particularly interesting fellow that I traveled with on a few occasions was Lindy Grant. He had been booked as the world’s youngest professional magician. We had a lot of fun with him on the trips because he was always showing us card tricks and different things. One time out in Ely, Nevada in our sales calls, he run across a school teacher and somewhere along the line he had mentioned his profession. So they set up a show for the kids in the school. I got to attend that and watch him perform for the school kids. Things like that were quite fun. Another fellow that was a super salesman was Howe Lund and he and I probably went on more trips together than anyone. We went to Kanab a number of times and enjoyed visiting old movie sets. We saw where some of the old movies had been filmed. The first time I saw Mesa Verde was on one of those trips. But one thing it did do for my family, I was made aware of a lot of these places and when it was possible for us to go with our kids we did so. Norma and I took them to a lot of these places. Maybe we would never have seen Mesa Verde if it had not been that I was exposed to it in that way. N: OK, Herald, why don’t you mention who your boss was and how Sears managed this department. And also did you work on salary or how did you get your money? H: Maybe I'd better explain how this all started. I had been working at Robarge’s Cabinet Shop in Provo for a couple years and old Robarge was turning out to be kind of a slicker. He had taken on this goverment subsidized GI Bill training program and was supposed to increase your pay every month as the government assistance would drop off every month. Well, he didn’t work it that way. The government assistance dropped off each month but 16 Robarge didn’t raise his end of it. When I finally quit Robarge I had just come to my last straw. I was making fifty dollars a week and we couldn't get by on it. So I told Norma I was going to Salt Lake to check out some ads and not to be surprized if I took a selling job. I'd had a little taste of sales work going selling storm windows. That out with a salesman for US rock wool up in Orem guy was making quite a bit of money and I thought, “Well doggone, if there’s a better way to make a living I'm for trying it.” I kind of shocked Norma when I come home with the news that I had taken a job selling encyclopedias. [laugh] She says, "Well if you think you can do it.” And so that’s how that started. You asked me to tell about my boss, how they handled it and so on. Sears Roebuck and Company had started a new department selling the American People’s Encyclopedia. Gene Collins had been sent down from Seattle to open an office in Salt Lake City. This happened to be the first ad they had run and I was with the first bunch of guys employed in this area. This was the first time Sears had ever gone outside the store to do door to door selling. That was what it was - complete cold canvas - door to door. It was mighty difficult for a little old timid kid from the country to go door to door. Like the old saying, “You can take the boy out of the country, but you can’t take the country out of the boy.” I guess that’s why I really enjoyed those trips we went on because they were always out into the rural country areas. It was extremely difficult for me to go down a street like in Salt Lake City or anywhere like that. Where Howe Lund and I both really did a lot better and enjoyed it much more was going out in the rural country areas. It worked out well for us. In the presentation Gene Collins showed us at the time I answered the ad I thought, "Man, if I can sell anything I can sell that.” Gee, each sale was $35.00 commission. course, it was strictly commission. There was no salary. You were paid sold. They told us the national average in sales so far in this department week. So you see if I was able to make three sales a week, three 35’s is dollars. Even if I was only half mediocre I would be about where I was so I felt I couldn't lose too much. Of only for what you was three sales a a hundred and five at the cabinet shop I mentioned too that this was complete cold canvas. Everything was right out of the blue. You called on people without an appointment. They didn’t know they were going to spend $180.00 before supper time [laugh]. The advantage was that it was Sears and Roebuck, they could add it to their account for as little as $10.00 down and nearly everybody out in the country had an account with Sears Roebuck. So it made the selling a lot easier and was a natural door opener. One thing that I used in completing a sale was trading--or buying something from them (maybe I inherited that trait). When the customer had a hobby I'd take something he'd made as a down payment. One time in Kanab I traded for a beautiful tooled belt with “Vance” stenciled on it. We're still enjoying a painting that I bought from Vera Gagon in Vernal. And other things. It caught on with the other salesman too. One day Howe Lund came walking down the street with a .22 rifle. I said, “Man, that must have been a hard sell.” Another time Lindy Grant fell heir to a puppy. 17 Oral History Project Fairview Museum Interview with Herald A. Vance by Norma Vance, March 1994 Tape #2 Transcribed by Dawnell H. Griffin March 1994 N: OK Herald, since we've changed tapes, would you like to continue telling about Sears? H: I mentioned this sales work was out of the Salt Lake Sears Roebuck store. We were living in Provo at that time so all this was done back and forth from Provo to Salt Lake whenever I would attend meetings and so on. Gene and his wife Rose probably had more influence on my life than anyone I’ve known, especially in the short time I knew them. Rose had been an instructor for what was called the Simmons Course in public relations, similar to the Carnegie Course. I went through the course and graduated with a diploma two different times during my five year period with Sears and I think it helped me. I could stand a lot more help, but... One thing that was stressed in this public relation course is positive thinking. They referred a lot to Norman Vincent Peale’s book The Power of Positive Thinking. A salesman’s attitude is his livelihood. overcome my self-consciousness. I think it helped me an awful lot to N: Did you have contests or anything like that? H: We had a lot of fun times as a group there. Old Gene was always promoting a contest. Every week it seemed like we could win something. It might be only a tie, a shirt, a hat, pair of socks, anything to make you strive for just ane more sale in order to get that prize. You would work harder to get a tie than you would for the thirty five bucks that came with that sale. We also had parties. Gene would set a quota for a given period and if we reached that quota he would take us to Beau Brummel’s Restaurant for a big feast. were included in this, and the Simmons Course as well. The wives It wasn’t just for the men or women involved, it was for their mates too. We were like a big happy family. It was really quite a great time in our lives. But I found that I couldn't continue indefinitely with that type of sales...knocking on doors. It really took it's toll. I became very negetive after years of it, and I found it harder and harder to make myself go out. So my trade, University interested after quitting Sears I took a stab my cabinet work. I had installed Appliance. One day the owner, in giving him a bid on more than at a few other sales jobs, but finally went back to a few Formica counter tops for a store in Provo, Blaine Hunter, called me and asked if I was a hundred counter tops. I said, “You're kidding!” “No!” he says, “There's a big project going up in northeast Provo and there’s over a hundred apartments.” I went see him! He showed me a layout of what they had done on 18 other similar apartments and told me what they‘d had it done for before. sure I can do that.” So that’s the way it stood. I said, “Well, I'm I guess I kind of thought it would never happen so I continued on with the work at hand and let it slip from my mind. I was selling water softeners for an outfit in Orem at the time. About three weeks went by and I got a call from Blaine and he said, “Are you ready to go to work?” I said, “What do you mean?” tops.” So he says, “Well those apartments are ready to go. I was dumb founded. They're ready for the counter So this old kid sharpened up his plane and went to work. As it happened, my nephew Jim Tribble had just returned home from a hitch in the Navy and was needing a job. With this size project ahead of me I figured I could use some help. So Jim went to work for me and it worked out real good--he was excellent help as well as a joy to be around. This was just the beginning. I wouldn't even dare take a guess at how many counter tops I finally wound up putting on. Ken Pinegar was the contractor on this project and he liked my work. So every time he built more apartments he made sure I did his Formica counter tops. This project was the King Henry Apartments, east of ninth east and north of seventh north in Provo. Over the years following that Ken Pinegar built an awful lot of apartments in Utah County; in downtown Provo, as far south as Payson and Spanish Fork and out in Orem. So I am sure I wouldn't be stretching at all if I said I installed way over a thousand counter tops in those few years following that time. During the King Henry job the fellow that was laying the coved linoleum in the apartments got behind a little bit and he says, "Herald, how about giving me a hand?” I said, " Well, I could spare a little time but I don’t know anything about laying linoleum.” And he says, “If you can hang cap and cove for me in a couple of apartments it will really help me. So I helped him for two or three days and it didn't take me long to decide that I was just as smart as he was and if he could lay linoleum so could I. And that was the amount of my training in the floor covering business. I started laying linoleum along with the Formica work, but I soon wised up to the fact if I was going to crawl around on my knees it was a little softer crawling on carpet. So I did a lot of both for a lot of years up there. Then of course that was what I was doing until the time that the old Milburn ward church came up for bids and Norma bless her heart, convinced me to stop and take a look. I resisted heavily, I didn’t want to get into a remodel job. I told her that it would be an uphill business to make a home out of the shell that was the old church even though it was a sturdy built structure. She insisted there was no harm in looking. So we talked to Bishop Kieth Hansen, got a key and stopped to “look.” I took some measurements, went home and sketched out the possibilities of making this renovation and that’s how that project started. OK, before we get any further into the Milburn project, I don’t want to completely leave Orem yet. And we're about to that point. 19 Let's go back to our family’s growing up period. I haven't mentioned before any church jobs that was held. Over the years we took our kids to church and tried to set a good example. We didn’t always find ourself there in the very best weather in the summer months because we all enjoyed the outdoors and the camping aspects. We have worked awfully hard all our lives and most of it was not an eight to five job. We found that weekends were about the only time we could afford time off to take the kids and go camping. I did work in various positions in the church. I’ve never been head over heals in church work. Maybe I'm a little rebellious or whatever. I think I'm a religious person, but I never wanted to be obsessed with church work. However, I did teach Sunday school. I taught the Deacon’s quorum. I was secretary for the Elder’s quorum for a time. I was assistant scout master for a while. The scout master was a neighbor of ours and when he was asked to except another assignment he said the only way he would leave being the scout master was if I would take it. So I was the scout master for a number of years. I enjoyed it, thoroughly enjoyed it. I loved working with the young people and I did what I could for them. We took many over night trips; into the High Uintas, out to the Jericho sand dunes, to the Old Irontown Ruins west of Cedar City and we floated in The Great Salt Lake. One winter trip we camped in a cave out here in Milburn and I might [chuckle] confess where that cave is. It is out in the cedars up under the railroad track between Milburn and Hilltop. There's a wonderful tunnel under a big high fill along the railroad bed and it's walled up with rock. It's about four feet high and three or four feet wide and it made an excellent cave for us to have our winter camp. The kids never got over it. They really enjoyed it. But I found more and more that I was limited to the time I could spend with the scouts. I couldn't take them out on overnight trips unless it cost me two or three days in the week away from my work. They couldn't camp out on Saturday nights. It was a time in our life when we were struggling and I couldn't afford not to work every day. It really bothered me that I wasn’t able to spend more time out with the boys so they could all earn their camping and other achievment awards. I might add a little note here. So I wound up throwing in the towel. A couple of years ago we were at the Stake Center in Spanish Fork to see our son Wayne set apart as a counselor in the bishopric of his ward. fine looking man passed me in the hall and he said, “Hi Scoutmaster!”. A I didn’t dream he was talking to me and I didn't recognize him as anyone I should know--then it hit me--it was Eddy Betts, one of my Scouts of nearly thirty years ago. N: H: What about the bid on the church then, Herald? What bid [laugh]. OK. The Fairview North Ward had inherited the Milburn Ward Chapel when the Milburn ward was annexed to Fairview North Ward. It was decided after it set empty for about ten years that they would sell it so they put it up for sealed bids. As I mentioned we went in and looked at it and we placed a bid. We didn't know if we would have any chance to get it but we bid about all that we figured we could afford, then more or 20 less just sat back to see what happened. Later on we were notified that our bid had been accepted by the General Authorities to purchase the church. At that time we were working pretty heavily in the carpet business. We weren’‘t in the sales end of carpet, I was installing and had one or two people working for me most of the time. Our oldest son Wayne worked with me for a number of years. youngest son Jerry became old enough divisions and stuff was really booming laying floor coverings in about a house started working on the place in Milburn he in a I Then when our also helped. The construction of new homes, subUtah county at that time, the early 70’s. We were day with the help that I had with me. When we would get my guys in Utah County started on what we needed to do for the next few days. Then Norma and I would come down, work a couple of days, then hustle back. So that's how it was for the first year or so. Finally it began to look like maybe this was going to get us hooked and we'd wind up moving. It was kind of like getting a tiger by the tail and you can't let go. The reason I say that, the beginning of 1972 is when we started remodeling on the building. Also coming up that year was my thirtieth class reunion. It looked like things were going to move along pretty good so like darn fools we offered our place to the committee to hold the class reunion which was to be August third. Well, we worked pretty hard that summer to get this place so we could hold the reunion. But we did make it and everone had a lovely time, in fact our class decided to have the next five year reunion there also. So my thirtieth and thirty fifth year reunions were held at our place in Milburn. We called it Meadow Lane Lodge after we got it under way. Anyone who ever attended an event there will verify that it was an adorable place to have any type of function like a class reunion, Lions Club meetings or weddings. And we did cater to an awful lot of them. Over the years since then we kept building on and expanding it to about double the original size. I'll not dwell on a lot of the construction and all that, however I do want to go back to notes I had made earlier. Remember I told of being the last person under the floor when the building was finished. I had crawled under many years ago to install the heating pipes for Jewel Peterson as he was too big to get under. Well, when we went to put some plumbing in the building then I was the first one back under there. However, I found that I wasn’t the same skinny kid of years ago and I was almost like a gopher trying to go up through there and push the dirt ahead of me. I took a shovel and kind of burrowed a tunnel ahead of me to get through so we could run the plumbing lines. So that was kind of interesting. Another thing too was when we opened the well to see if we could get it working...actually the well never had worked. I thought I'd dig it open and see if the pipes were able to carry water or if there was any water to carry. Fairview to bring his back hoe and open up the well. So I hired Eddy Johnson of I told him if he would dig down the side of the building until he hit the pipes, they would come out horizontally about twenty feet, that's about where the well would be. I told him to be real careful at this point because he would come to a big flat rock. I told him to not move that rock, just clean around it, to leave it in place if possible. He looked at me like. “What kind of a nut are you? How do 21 you know what's down in that ground?” Well, as it turned out, when he came to do the work I wasn‘t there. I was back up in Orem doing our work up there. When we came down that next trip the first thing I saw on the pile of dirt he’d excavated was my big flat rock I'd placed over the well casing some thirty years before. So I imagine he was a little surprised when he saw that old Vance did know what he was talking about after all. We did however wind up having a 300 foot well drilled as the original well was still inoperable. OK. For the next few years we continued to do everything. We were having more parties and weddings and continued to do more and more carpet jobs down here. We finally decided that we may as well get into it all over, so we opened up our little store. We filled a 12 by 14 foot room with wall racks to display carpet samples—thus we had Vance’s Carpets in Milburn. We were still doing parties and weddings as well as expanding our building size. It was originally thirty by sixty feet. We added another twenty-two feet to the east side which nearly doubled it's size. There were two stories on part of the addition, an upper guest bedroom and open loft on the north, a large vaulted area with a fireplace and nice kitchen with open family room above. It would be impossible to explain all we did up there. Twenty some years have passed since we was a big part of our life; a lovely part of times people had there and the association thank you notes we recieved from people first started working on the place in Milburn. It our life. The hard work was balanced with the fun with people who came to book the parties; the after they‘d had a very successful party at our place. By this time our kids were grown and pretty much pursuing lives of their own. When we made the final move to Milburn all were married except our youngest--Jerry. He married in 1980 but was later divorced. Then in April 1987 Jerry was killed in an automobile accident. So you see we've had some very sad times in Milburn as well. Our three surviving children have given us eight beautiful and wonderful grandchildren. One more word about the hobbies we were speaking of earlier. Somewhere along the line Norma and I took up rock hounding. I guess we picked this up from my brothers, Sam and Ellis. We joined the Rock Club in Utah County--this was not a rock music group--it was the Timpanogos Gem and Mineral Society. We had a lot of fun for a lot of years going on field trips with them as well as being involved with their annual Gem and Mineral Shows. One Christmas Norma and the kids presented me with a combination rock saw/grinding- polishing machine. With this equipment I have spent many hours cutting and polishing hundreds of beautiful stones. About the time we were moving to Milburn Ellis gave me a few instructions on silversmithing and I became pretty good at it. I designed and made dozens of rings, necklaces, bracelets, brooches, bolo ties and belt buckles. goodies. some. Norma has a large drawer full of I wear a few pieces, our kids wear some, and several ladies around the area wear Anyone knowing our heavy work load those early years in Milburn might wonder when I had time to play around with something like that. 22 Most of that jewelry was made after we had finished catering a party. Different times Norma buzzed me at 1:00 or 2:00 A.M. in my shop to see if I was ever going to come to bed. It was like anything else you love doing--once you get started you don't want to stop. Now more years have passed and we decided it was time to start slowing down some and felt that we should move to a smaller place, have less to take care of. This decision was not an easy one. So much of our lives had been put into that building during the 20 plus years there. But it was a chapter in our lives that had served its purpose and we felt we could move on to the next chapter without too many regrets even though the fond memories will never fade. So we sold our place in Milburn the fall of ‘92. We are now living in the former Golden Sanderson home located just north of Fairview which we had purchased earlier. We haven't found much of that slow down yet, but maybe there's still hope. 23 oat “ tin ey ae Ye Trapping With My Beautiful L350 Wife Norma Days Herald A. Vance After the hair has turned to silver