A Basket of Chips: An Autobiography

Basket of Chips, page 110

A Baket of Chips when my father was plowing the corn he put me on the mule's back with a switch to urge him along. I found it great amuse- ment to tickle his ears with the switch. He stood it for some time but finally revolted. Stopping suddenly in his tracks he began to shake until he had removed me as he would a horse fly. I picked myself up to the great amusement of my father. The mule's ears were safe from that time. At about this period Father bought from an eastern nursery, five young English walnut trees. Under good care three of them grew and after years of struggle they finally became acclimated to this part of the country. From those three trees thousands have been grown and distributed throughout this state and others. The nuts mature well and for thirty years these trees have born nuts without missing once. The largest tree now measures nearly sixty feet in diameter where the foliage spreads the widest. My father was also instrumental in improving the standard of countrv schools. A branch of the Congregational church schools called the "New West" was opened there with two ex- cellent teachers? ' He was the first to plant shade trees by the sidewalk and to indicate the walk by hauling gravel for that purpose. He did very well with his farm, garden, and little store, which Mother tended during his absence. About this time the Cooperative system began with branches in every town? His 14 "New West" started in Lehi in 1880, and the first four pupils included J. T's sisters Lilley and Rose. Another sister, Maude, started to school there in September of 1700. Gardner, Lehi, 257-58 and Harwood, "Autobiography," 38-37. 15 In the 1860s each Mormon village or settlement "was asked [by the L. D. S. Church] to establish, under the managership of its bishop, a cooperative store that handled all commodities at retail." Harwood's father, a non-Mormon, was a store keeper in competition with the L. D. S. co-op store in Lehi. This all happened before the establishment of the Mormon United Order in 187d, where the Mormons deeded over all their property to the church and adopted communal lifestyles in varying degrees. Arrington and Bitton, NOWZOE Experience, 126. For a study of this economic venture, see Leonard J. Arrington, Feramorz Y. Fox, and Dean L. May, Building the City of God: Community nnd Cooper&on Among the Ic10~2o~ (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1976). 110